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Posts published in “from the archives…”

50 Years of James Bond

The most successful saga in postwar popular culture got off to a conscientious start after breakfast on a tropical morning in Jamaica early in 1952. Ian Fleming, forty-three years old and ten weeks away from…

One Stamp

It was right around 2:56pm PST, and the Post Office closes — or, at any rate, bars new entrants — promptly at 3 on Saturdays. There were perhaps 40 folks fidgeting in line; five vacant…

Tipping in America

Tip-skimming has surfaced in Boston, and there can’t be a tipper in America who, on hearing the news, doesn’t exclaim, “The greedy bastards!” In a lawsuit filed March 7 in Suffolk Superior Court, five former…

Making Noise

This morning, as I drove into Boonville for my cup of tea at Glad's, most of the vineyards had their sprinklers going full blast protecting the vines from frost. The water, of course, is robbed…

Let’s Play 162

So, why is baseball wonderful? Certainly, not because George Will and George W. pretend to be fans. Not on account of any of the hackneyed reasons (absence of time-clock; actual strategy and thinking involved). Sure,…

The Mother of All Drug Meetings

“The Goal of this forum …is to become informed about the production, distribution and use of methamphetamines, and to develop action groups that will lead…to positive change within our community.” Anderson Valley's war on methamphetamine…

Marin County and the Permissive Society

Like John Walker Lindh I grew up in posh, left-leaning Marin County and joined an authoritarian cult that methodically killed thousands of my fellow Americans. It was 1973 and after years of exposure to permissive…

Dear Luisa

In the Saturday edition of the Record-Bee there's a letter to the editor from Luisa Acosta, a Finley resident who shares her concerns about the effects of the recent vineyard developments on Lake county. Well…

When Billy Graham Planned To Kill One Million People

There’s a piquant contrast in the press coverage across the decades of Billy Graham’s various private dealings with Nixon, as displayed on the tapes gradually released from the National Archive or disclosed from Nixon’s papers.…

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