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Posts published in “from the archives…”

The Wrong Kind of Growth

Is it growth or is it cancer? Whichever it may be, we want it, and elected officials and their would-be replacements are out in force promising us plenty of it. They talk as though there…

Noyo Harbor Confidential (July 30, 2003)

I stand before you a humbled man. Last Sunday I was out trolling for salmon with Mike the Rookie and showing him how to tie fishing knots. I've been tying knots for 40-odd years, beginning…

Ralph Freedman, The Horizontal Hire

Another vivid chapter was written into the big book of Only In Mendocino County last Friday when Mendocino County’s personnel director, Susan “Sue” Campbell, testified that she was sleeping with Ralph Freedman

So You Want to Be a Football Hero

Saturday night, the fairgrounds. The alumni football game against Deep Valley and hordes of Panthers old and new prowl the bleachers and field. I see Don Summit, Deep Valley’s hoops coach, and my old teammates…

Riding Forth on the Fourth

Good idea, a Fourth of July ride. Otherwise I would be home in desultory conversation with family and friends, probably drinking too much, and certainly catching a fireworks show celebrating what we Americans hold most…

My Birthday

JULY 22ND is my birthday, and if any of you say, "I knew you were a Cancer!" you are permanently prohibited from reading this newspaper. I'm way, way too old to care about birthdays. They…

Knock Knock, Who’s There? The FBI

“The FBI is here,” Mom tells me over the phone. Immediately I can see my mom with her back to a couple of Matrix-like figures in black suits and opaque sunglasses, her hand covering the…

Want to Meet the Real WMD Swine?

Week after week Bush and his people have been getting pounded by newly emboldened Democrats and liberal pundits for having exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and his still-elusive weapons of mass destruction. One…

Kenny Johnson’s Escapes

Back in olden-times (the 1980s) I was in Marion, the fed’s end-of-the line maximum security penitentiary for the third time, counting off the days, weeks, months, and years of my 199-year sentence given to me…

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