Seattle’s first retail outlet for marijuana opened in July, some 20 months after Washington state voters passed Initiative 502. Legalization as defined by I-502 is now becoming real — but it doesn’t apply to people…
Posts published in “Essays”
What’s a riot without looting? We want it, they’ve got it! You’d think from the press that looting was alien to British tradition, imported by immigrants more recent than the Normans. Not so.
When I was in my early thirties, I lived on a monthly disability check from the state: $268. My rent for a small room in a boarding house in a scary neighborhood in downtown Sacramento…
The Decater family runs Live Power Community Farm in Covelo, a diversified, solar-powered CSA farm that for 27 years has supplied its 200 member families here in Mendocino County, and the Bay Area, with fresh, high-quality biodynamic/organic food. They plow and till the land with their six draft horses. Besides growing almost fifty varieties of vegetables, they raise sheep, cows, chickens, and pigs.
This year’s Humboldt County Grand Jury Report calls for an end to after-hours releases from the county’s jail facility between 9pm and 6am and finds that not returning indigent offenders to the locations where they…
The other morning I answered the phone to the mellowed tones of a retiree named Bill who had somehow got hold of my number. “Hello, can I speak with Alexander Cockburn?” There was an alluring…
Each Kindle or electronic e-book owner in France buys an average of 4.6 books a year. In Italy, a country with a reputation of not being very honest, 4.4 is the average number for the…
An early August road trip heading east from the city of Ithaca in the middle of New York State to southern Vermont promises calm, pastoral progress. With farming in steep decline the forest is reclaiming…
I am a 21-year-old semi-adult and, being quite interested in me, I think often of my future. I have climbed to the top of youth and now have my fullest gaze at the adult world.…