An early August road trip heading east from the city of Ithaca across New York State promises calm, pastoral progress. With farming in steep decline the forest has for decades been reclaiming large swaths of…
Posts tagged as “essays”
My wife and I are both great supporters of the Junior Livestock Auctions held at local fairs. Recently we attended the pig auction at the Sonoma County Fair. 4-H, FFA and independent junior members purchase…
We are coming up on the 25th anniversary of the Election Day on which California voters legalized marijuana for medical use. Expect a wave of self-congratulation from the activists who went on to legalize the…
Two swallowtail butterflies are again fluttering in my backyard, bringing me cheer for about the 20th year in a row. It remains a mystery whether the same pair of butterflies, now deep into old age,…
On the road from stirring symbol of hope and change to the Fat Elvis of neoliberalism, birthday-partying Barack Obama sold us all out It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.…
Marijuana was the surprise ingredient in the economy of the backwoods in the mid-seventies and made a lot of twenty-something dirty hippies, slackers, and university-educated back-to-the-landers rich overnight when awareness of sinsemilla arrived. (The high…
Who didn’t see it coming? The Taliban take-over of Afghanistan. Maybe not as fast and as dramatic as it happened. But anyone without blinders had to have seen it coming from a long way off.…
Before we get started let’s learn how to correctly say rodeo, it’s ro-dee-o, not ro-day-o. I never participated in a big-time rodeo venue. One time I entered a junior rodeo at the Cow Palace. The…