From the Monterey shale under our very feet to the Bakken formation beneath the Great Plains, the United States is riding high on an almost incalculably huge pool of oil that new technologies and methods of extraction now make accessible. In fact, recent reports indicate that these vast reserves might outstrip those of the rest […]

Now that the Tea Party has taken its ball and gone home, leaving the government of the United States in shutdown, we sadly must all admit that, while awful, this closure is far from the worst thing to befall us. OK–perhaps “befall” is inaccurate, in that it implies something happening to us, when in reality […]

To tolerate in silence and endure these freakin’ bigots is itself akin to violence– let’s cork these leakin’ spigots. Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on the first of January, 1863, in a time vastly more difficult than we endure today. We call it the Civil War. This year, merely droning, President Obama declared June […]

In Strawberry Canyon in days of yore, our sturdy eleven could run up the score. But now a wanion hangs over our fellows– and not even Heaven can make gold out of yellow. Football is back–particularly for me, college football. Perhaps nowhere else in American sport is there so ballyhooed and comprehensive a tradition. This […]

The surrounding greenery a proscenium to this view, from my feet upward: tan, green, cobalt, grey, white, sky blue. A rippling, sun-dappled sea offering the sudden flash of a tiny breaker dashing spray upon jagged rock. The horizon, azure, flat as a razor beneath pale roiling cloud where, momentarily, the partial arc of a rainbow […]

Last month, our inaugural edition debuted a day early, on the 5th, and by the next day, by request, was on its way to France. I remain proud of our accomplishment, but to be honest, felt more like Eisenhower, on another sixth of June, 69 years ago. The paper was a success, sure, but would […]

Mainstream media, reduced at least to the level of local newspapers, has placed a noose around the neck of our news. Rather than opening a vast panorama of choice, in the same vein as the Internet, local newspapers often constrict our news horizon. Consider the national web of smaller, corporate-owned papers: apart from sports, many […]