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Posts published in “from the archives…”

Toxic Stew

One of the saddest aspects of pesticide research is reading literature about the experiments performed on lab animals. Millions of animals are slaughtered every month so the toxicity of chemical compounds can be tested; and…

The Case for Vouchers

School’s open again, this time with higher standards. Yep, we’re going to raise academic requirements despite the non-existence of a constituency to back them up when we do. We pretend a lot. Support for disciplined…

Inside the County Jail

Cell Block D, Mendocino County Jail, Ukiah — My home for the past 40 days is a barren, white metal room, compartmented into four cells of five inmates each surrounding a small dayroom in the…

Nader’s Press Snub

Remember the papers eight years ago? A charming maniac entered the Presidential race as a third-party candidate in October. Over the final month of the campaign, The New York Times mentioned Ross Perot in nearly…

Narcissism as Politics

Not far from Stafford there's a thousand-year-old tree, once slated for destruction, that will now live on for centuries. Except for a pitifully small “buffer zone,” the primeval forest surrounding it will vanish while this…

Captain at the Mouth

Charles Fletcher, or Captain Fletcher as he was often called, was a sailor who was the first to settle at the mouth of the Navarro River sometime in the early 1850s. He ran a ferry…

Marines and Timber Cowboys

When I returned home to our beautiful Anderson Valley from my tour of duty with the Army Paratroopers just before Christmas of 1962, it was an extraordinarily brilliant day — crisp, but cloudless with the…

St. Julia and the Apostles

I walked into the Booksmith bookstore on Haight Street in San Francisco at 6pm to see what time famous tree-sitter Julia Butterfly Hill’s presentation was to begin. The reading was set for 7pm, but the…

Roy Laird’s Shop Burns Down

Pam Miller was in the house and Roy Laird was out working on the other side of his 20-acre Holmes Ranch property on his four-wheeler last Tuesday night a little before 7pm when they both…

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