At my first newspaper job after college I was on the night news desk, where your shift didn’t end until you checked the first copies of the next day’s paper as they came off the…
Posts published in “Essays”
The notion county employees are underpaid is a joke, and that government workers are “public servants” is a lie. Are county workers threatening to strike? County Supervisors ought to smile, hold the doorways wide open,…
Does anybody around here remember California Governor Gray Davis? You know, the guy who so hopefully set up extra card tables at the Capitol to battle energy monster Enron during the 2000-2001 Energy Crisis? Didn't…
“Play it again, Sam,” is not the actual line and it is not uttered by Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. Ingrid Bergman is the one who tells the piano player, “Play It, Sam.” The tune she’s…
Very old friend Kenny Hurst is a great story-teller and journalist too. I found that out right away almost fifty years ago when he wrote a flamboyant report for the “other” Anderson Valley newspaper I…
Barbara Ehrenreich made a quick visit to San Francisco last week to promote her new book, “Dancing in the Streets.” Her noontime talk at the Commonwealth Club Jan. 18, excerpted below, was attended by about…
In 1988, the World Health Organization resolved to eradicate poliomyelitis; polio for short. This followed the confirmation that the last case of smallpox was diagnosed in October 1977 and the WHO declared smallpox to be…
Where is Ronald Reagan now that the Regents at the University of California need him? Long gone, of course, to the Republican Party Heaven, while veterans of People’s Park, including Stew Albert, who came up…