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A Holiday Quiz
Dear Dr. Zack: The holiday season breaks like a campaign promise upon the diamond-encrusted hull of the S.S. Reality. Now comes word that the Democrats will suspend the minority’s right to a...
View ArticleCelebrity Saviors
“Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows-Larkin of the influential Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in England say many of the solutions proposed by world leaders to prevent “runaway global warming”...
View ArticleRiver Views
We’re the bright young men, who want to go back to Nineteen-Ten, we’re Barry’s Boys. We’re the kids with a cause, yes a government like grandmama’s, we’re Barry’s boys. We’re the new kind of youth at...
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Ken Kesey’s Early Years
In the mid-1960s, Ken Kesey stormed the public stage like few writers ever have. His first two novels, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion, were immediate American classics...
View ArticleFrom The Archives: Food & Forgetfulness
(June 2001) Driving to town the other day I got stuck behind a livestock trailer taking calves to auction. Bumbling along at 30 mph I was forced to listen to an NPR interview, by Terry Gross I assume,...
View ArticleWhere Was Carlos Marcello?
Fifty years on and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy remains a national puzzle wrapped inside the enigmatic riddle that was Lee Harvey Oswald. Did he act alone? Or was JFK killed by a...
View ArticleSonic Trash
Praised by some as the summation of Robert Redford’s distinguished acting career, his latest film begins without music, just the stillness of a calm sea at dawn, the wide-screen expanse bathed in...
View ArticleImmigration Law & Its Casual Cruelties
This is the story of Rafael Morales, a Mixteca native of the State of Oaxaca, Mexico who “sneaked” into the United States, and eventually landed in Healdsburg, California, where after 8 years he...
View ArticleTwo Weeks In Myanmar
But first, the tourist holiday part of the show: Yvonne and I finally got out of Sittwe for a much needed vacation. We met my sister in Yangon and spent a couple of weeks seeing what the rest of...
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Reasons To Be Cheerful
Alexander Cockburn, who died of cancer at the age of 71 on July 21, 2012, was a prose powerhouse who left an admirable body of great columns about all manner of matters political and cultural....
View ArticleFortunate Son Redux: White Bird
Max and Maureen sailed White Bird, a sleek 42-foot trimaran, across the Pacific from Lahaina to the San Francisco Bay, where Max would oversee some refurbishing, purchase new sails and rigging, and get...
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Adventures In Salamanca
1977 and 1978 were good years to be living in Spain. El Caudillo, Francisco Franco, had died in November of 1975, and the country was intoxicated with its newly acquired freedoms. A new newspaper, El...
View ArticleChristmas In Myanmar
Dear all, Finally sitting in our new home in Sittwe, Myanmar, listening to the many sounds of the evening, monks chanting, students reciting homework and of course the blow-up bouncy castle in our...
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Mendo’s Black Mesa Caravan
In late November and early December, I was among five people from inland Mendocino County who stayed with elder Dine’ (Navajo) families at Black Mesa, an uplands mountain plateau on Navajo/Hopi...
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Detroit (Part 2)
Day 3 — Detroit Today we go to a ballgame at old Tiger Stadium, in Detroit. Life is good, real, real good. And, MOTOWN, baby, Barry Gordy’s home — Hitsville, USA. The MOTOWN sound, its museum. Bob...
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Google: One Of Our Biggest Tax Dodgers
Yesterday San Francisco’s politicians announced that Google, Apple, and other Silicon Valley companies will be charged for the use of the city’s bus stops. Until yesterday the private buses, untold...
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Down The NSA Rabbit Hole
What does spending $100 billion over the last ten years get you? It gets one huge, bloated, ineffectual agency of government — the NSA (National Security Agency). While the actual budget of this spy...
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Defending Dennis Rodman
Dennis Rodman’s recent trip to North Korea with a team of retired NBA players to take part in an exhibition game was akin to John Lennon and Yoko Ono going to bed in public to end the war in Vietnam,...
View ArticleThe Conference Championships
As most fans know, the Denver Broncos won at home at Mile High Stadium over the New England Patriots 26-16. Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning capped one of the best years ever for a quarterback by...
View ArticleMedical Price Gouging
An epidemic of sky-rocketing medical costs has afflicted our country and grown to obscene proportions. Medical bills are bloated with waste, redundancy, profiteering, fraud and outrageous over-billing....
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