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Posts published in “from the archives…”

The Good, the Bad, and Fort Bragg’s Dan Gjerde

About 60 Fort Bragg voters attended the one-and-only Fort Bragg City Council candidates' forum two weeks ago. A dozen or so attendees exited Town Hall half way through the local League of Women Voters' two…

Botox, the Naked Empire & War on Iraq

I’ll get to Botox and Iraq in a bit. Let’s start with the Naked Empire. Naked in the sense that those who decide on American policy and those whose job it is to sell that…

Is There Any Hope for Darryl Watkins?

Pick up any of the papers that are Lake County based, and sooner or later you're bound to find some trace of local arch-conservative Darryl Watkins. His letters to the editor have been a more…

Ride to the Blue

It's Saturday morning Labor Day Weekend and I wake up early thinking about where to ride. Hmmmm. Crater Lake? That blue caldera, impossibly blue, and that beautiful 35-mile ride high around its rim? Last night…

9-11 Reflections

I watched a fair amount of the mainstream media coverage of the first anniversary of the 9-11 tragedy, and was deeply troubled by much of what I heard and saw. I had hoped that there…

Diversity-Worshippers Encouraging Separation

Whatever it is these days, it’s connected with immigration. The West Nile virus is suspected of imperiling the future of any number of birds and mammals; milfoil, an immigrant grass from distant shores, is threatening…

Nine Eleven

While the country celebrates (if that's not too inappropriate a word) the anniversary of the World Trade Center bombing, one of the television stations heads its broadcast “America On Alert” and the whole country holds…

Chippin’ Them Rocks

This summer’s extraordinary rescue of nine trapped Pennsylvania coal-miners verged on miraculous. Scarcely noted was the hellish nature of everyday conditions below. Those who work down there seldom live long, or well. Like many horrific…

Melo’s Lap Dog

At my house, all talk of Fort Bragg politics is forced to a halt when the noon whistle blows. Out-of-town guests unfamiliar with the ambiance of living in a company mill town have been known…

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