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Posts published in “Essays”

Of Bicycles and Oil Wars

Behold the hills of Marin. The stately redwoods grow tall and prosper, and they provide shelter for myriad birds and shade for the ferns on the forest floor. A squirrel runs outward on a branch…

OFF THE RECORD: Hospital Footnotes

A FEW FOOTNOTES to Mr. Sanicki's report on the independent audit presented to the Coast District Hospital Board last week. Four people commissioned the audit — Tom Birdsell, Mike Dell'Ara, Richard Miller and Vince Taylor,…

The Raps and the Wrap Up (Part 5)

Prosecutor Kevin Davenport looks like a 6'4" Clark Kent. He's in his early 40s and wears dark, conservative suits. He looks like a movie prosecutor. Or a mortician. The grandson of famed Bay Area attorneys…

Who Are These Kids? (Part 4)

August Stuckey didn't know Tai Abreu and Aaron Channel well. They regarded him as "goofy" and "at least ten degrees off." But Channel had a generous way about him that made allowances for outcasts. He…

How the FBI Spied On Edward Said

“The FBI has a long, ignoble tradition of monitoring and harassing America’s top intellectuals. While people ranging from Albert Einstein, William Carlos Williams to Martin Luther King have been subjected to FBI surveillance, there remains…

Mendo Justice Gets the Case (Part 3)

District Attorney Vroman saw the case against the three young co-defendants who were involved in the murder of Donald Perez as emphatically open and just as emphatically shut.  "Each one of them was charged and…

The Interview, The Victim (Part 2)

Detective Kevin Bailey is a youthful, fit-looking man in his mid-thirties. He comes across as a genuinely nice guy. Bailey is close enough in age and general experience to the young people he mostly deals…

One Murder, Four Deaths (Part 1)

Two days after the September 11th everyone will always remember, a lithe 39-year-old ex-Marine named Donald Perez took $200 out of his savings and headed north for Mendocino County. Perez was on the road in…

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