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Posts published in “Essays”

iPhone Upgrade

Something amazing happened when I went to get a new phone last year: I didn’t buy one, because instead of pressuring me to spend a bunch of money, the salesperson helped me keep my old…

Scripture & Strategy

Reputable cannabis clinicians and righteous activists want the Medical Board of California to close down the “recommendation mills” that provide 18, 19, and 20-year-olds with access to dispensaries where they can buy megadoses of THC.…

Meditations On The Dodge Dart

For a period of 32 years, from 1988 to 2020, I owned a grand total of two automobiles. Both were Dodge Darts that had rolled off the Chrysler assembly line in the early 1970s. The…

Willie & Me, 1972-2018

I first met Willis Tucker in the early spring of 1972. I had moved to Anderson Valley the year before, bought part of the old Ingram Ranch in Navarro with the intent to plant wine…

Promises, Promises

As a simple matter of principle, and a tiny dash of “Screw you!’ added for flavoring, citizens should vote against anything having to do with tax increases or tax extensions. Otherwise, how stupid will Mendocino…

Anderson Valley Tasting Rooms: The Early Years

A couple of months ago, I wrote about my early encounters with winery tasting room in Sonoma County. Back then, I promised to write about the early days of tasting rooms in Anderson Valley. While…

Remembering Mike Davis

Mike Davis’s work reached my generation of radical readers in the 1990s, in the context of the fall of the USSR, the rise of Clintonist third-way triage, the EZLN in Chiapas, and the interpenetration of…

World Population Reaches 8 Billion

The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that the human population on Earth will exceed 8 billion by the end of November, 2022.  As of this writing on November 1st, the population is estimated to…

Willis Tucker, A Shining Light

Willis “Willie” Tucker was born on the family farm in Meyer Creek, Arkansas, in 1926.  The farm, his daughter Marti Titus believes, was around a hundred acres of gently rolling bottomland along the creek where…

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