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Posts published in “Essays”

Brown Signs New Med-Pot Regs

Governor Jerry Brown has signed the package of bills known as the Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act. The very name implies that the herb is dangerous. Two weeks ago Jeffrey Hergenrather, MD, a Sebastopol potdoc,…

Bang, You’re Dead

Apropos of the recent Roseburg, Oregon, school massacre that left nine dead, President Obama said, “We’re going to have to come together and stop these things from happening.” That’s an understandable sentiment, and the president…

Another View Of The Idyllic 50s

I read with interest the online comment on growing up with the simple pleasures of small town Ohio in the 50s and 60s. Real eggs, a milkman and all the rest. There is something to…

Death In Mendo, 1949

Sometimes the museum where I docent gets a donation that opens my eyes with amazement. The “Family Worksheets” for six months from late 1949 into 1950 from a local funeral home came into the museum’s…

Last Rights

Californians have just won a right that we all hope we will never need to use: The right to physician-assisted dying. Governor Jerry Brown signed California’s End of Life Option Act last week after what…

Panther Soccer (Oct 14, 2015)

As the Panthers made the two-plus hour journey to the “wilds” of western Sonoma County to play Tomales last Wednesday afternoon, they were looking to bounce back from two recent morale-sapping defeats. The situation was…

The Love Attack

Living in Southern California, you get used to humans visiting atrocities and depredations on one another. What else would you expect from a region that funds and shelters a terrorist organization like the Los Angeles…

Fin Again—Wake!

We just returned, Marcia and I, from a nine-day journey to Oregon, our motive operandi a visit to my brother and his wife in their new digs in Portland, they among the wave of humanity crashing onto Portland, which is now the fastest growing urban area in these United States. We stayed in Gold Beach and Yachats on the Oregon coast on the way up, two nights in the Portland manse with mein brudder und his wife, a night in Eugene with friends on the banks of the Willamette, two nights at the lodge at Crater Lake, a night with friends in Arcata and…

Smoky Hike

Nearing mid-October and no end in sight to this drought. The etymological root of the word drought takes us back to the old, Old English term “drug.” Readers can make their own jokes or serious…

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