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Posts published in November 1999

Vintners Behaving Badly

On Thursday, December 2, 1999, the Mendocino County Planning Commission will meet in the Cafeteria at the Boonville Fairgrounds at 9am. On the agenda are two Major Use Permit proposals from two local wineries located…

Parlez Vouz Anglais?

She had been waiting for this day for months. On this one test rested the ultimate fate of her young life. Such is the way in a bureaucratic society, her mom said. It was a…

Tim Leary Remembers the 60s

While I was writing the first “unauthorized history” of Dr. Timothy Leary and the psychedelic movement in America in the 1960s, I dropped in at the UC Berkeley Student Union for a fascinating lecture Tim…

Dope and the 11-Year-Old

When 11-year-old Spencer Musgrave appeared at Laytonville’s combined elementary and middle school on a recent Monday morning, the first thing he did was head for the office to get an absence slip. Spencer had been…

Bad Mondegreens

In the 1950s a kid standing next to me in church was singing along with "America the Beautiful," ending with "stand beside her, and guide her, in the night, with the light from a bulb."…

Spinning Populism in American News Media

A specter is haunting America — the specter of populism. Now that Patrick Buchanan has left the Republican fold to seek the Reform Party's presidential nomination, a lot of journalists will be analyzing his denunciations…

Getting Giddy about Georgia-Pacific’s Tree Sale

With considerable fanfare, The Timber Company (aka Georgia-Pacific of Atlanta) has announced that it will follow suit — like its anti-trust spin-off Louisiana-Pacific, G-P is getting out of Mendocino County. L-P always used to proclaim,…

In Dreams

When I was in my late 20s I started having these incredible flying dreams. I could take off from a standing start and find myself sailing over

Columbine: Revenge of the Brains

From the very first day this story has read like a movie in progress. The opening images of two boys in black, two gothic young men with thin faces, black raincoats and high-powered rifles suddenly…

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