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Posts published in “Essays”

A Personal Tribute to Jazz Master Randy Weston

Way back in the early 1970s I stumbled upon a then-new record titled "Blue Moses" by pianist Randy Weston. It had a very colorful, almost psychedelic cover and a roster of top jazz stars like…

Biloxi Days: The Monument

Toward the end of my four-year tour at Keesler Air Force Base outside Biloxi, Mississippi, it was becoming clear that President Nixon’s quixotic attempt to “Vietnamize” the Vietnam war by, among other things, training Vietnamese…

Measles

My mom was trained as a registered nurse during the Second World War. She spoke often of the miracle of penicillin, at that time only available to the troops, and a new future where so…

Solving Drugs

If a behavioral phenomenon that is demonstrably and seriously harmful to society becomes a pattern, we (the societal we) pass a law against it, which is our way of saying: Don't do this thing or we…

Objectivity

Judge Faulder invited your trusty correspondent into his chambers last week for a little discussion on Objectivity In The Press, opening with the White Queen’s Gambit: “Your writing is delightful, Bruce, just delightful. I’d much…

The Promise & Perils of Hemp

Tony Linegar, the former Mendocino Agricultural Commissioner, is in his eighth year as Sonoma County Ag Commissioner. Not surprisingly, he’s not fading quietly into the sunset, not with yet another controversial crop on the horizon.…

Biloxi Days: The Leak

I happened to be in the office of Chief Master Sergeant Ralph Johns, the Field Maintenance superintendent, when he received a call from Sergeant Wilkins in the aero repair shop over in Hangar 3. It…

David Hope & Son

Fort Bragg resident David Hope, Sr., is 96 years old and has spent nearly the whole of his professional life in the timber business, almost all of it in Mendocino County after he moved to…

My Visit to the DWR

With so much water this year, you probably think the state wouldn’t care about water for the coming growing season. Well, I am one of the lucky ones who got a stinging letter from the…

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