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Posts published in “Essays”

By Any Other Name

The other day at a red light, a Cadillac Escalade SUV sat in front of me, looming over the Toyota Cressida to its right. Suddenly it occurred to me that I had no idea what…

Crawling With Buckeyes

I arrived in Ukiah a long time ago, back when stegosauruses roamed Laytonville, the Dead Sea was merely ill, and no one in Mendocino County had ever heard of marijuana. You might think these were…

Raphael Mechoulam

The Israeli chemist Raphael Mechoulam, who died last week at 92, should have gotten the Nobel Prize for his role in figuring out how marijuana exerts its effects within the body. ("Elucidating the endocannabinoid system,"…

Snow

Pale-jointed knuckles grip the wheel. Squinting, trying to detect shapes of any kind beyond your windscreen. This rates as a full-bore white-out. Zero visibility. Now you’ve lost sight of those blurred red tail-lights that were…

The Willits Farewell

My ad hoc midnight threnody serves as a collective farewell–– To Mark and Ina Walker and her sister Mabel Black, Mark told me how to grease a wagon wheel and sharpen a scythe, and he…

Anderson Valley’s First & Only Black Family

In Boonville, real wilderness can often begin a few feet from the pavement, as it does throughout the Anderson Valley and much of Mendocino County. I would hike due west from my house, down into…

The Once Great, Now Late SF Chronicle

The fact is inescapable; the news media landscape has changed in the 21st century. On television, cable news channels have expanded exponentially and broadcast news channels have expanded the hours devoted to news. On radio,…

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