The giant Burning Man structure went up in flames on Labor Day weekend as usual, and I watched it — online. It looked very dramatic and impressive. As the tens of thousands of “BM” attendees gathered around to watch and cheer in person as the smoke and fireworks rose to the sky, it also reminded me of the main reason I don't go up there to witness it all in person.
Posts published in “Essays”
My brother sent me a fascinating article published recently in New Scientist that warns of the impending loss of a gigantic part of our recent cultural heritage. To quote from the article: “Magnetic tape begins to degrade chemically in anything from a few years to a few decades, depending on its precise composition.”
Whistling down the Amtrak line in the region of Fernley, Nevada, about five in the afternoon, in the observation car under a lid of smoke from Sierra Nevada fires, scanning the murky sagebrush hills for…
In 2004 San Francisco committed itself to a revolutionary economic and environmental rejuvenation project centered on complete overhaul of the city's energy system. Or did it? The plan back then called for investing over a…
I went to Berkeley’s first task force on homelessness the other night. It answered a few questions for me, but it also raised a lot more. Chief among them, I guess, is what is the…
The great American pianist Cedar Walton died last week at the age of 79 at his home in Brooklyn after a short illness. Like almost all jazz musicians, Walton made his living largely on the…
The effects of Garberville’s transient population are said to have reached a critical point and merchants have appealed to the Board of Supervisors for help in dealing with a variety of social problems related to…
Labor Day. Time again for politicians and union adherents to praise organized labor. Time again for others to pontificate about the supposed decline and growing irrelevance of unions as they continue to lose members and…
When the Northern Humboldt Union high school board met July 26 to discuss Trustee Dan Johnson’s plagiarized June 13 commencement speech, Board President Mike Pigg apologized for the delay. He said the board hadn’t been…