He stroked his beard, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes in thought. I’d known Ben Eleazar for many years, but never could predict how long such pauses would go on. I’d once waited two hours and twenty two minutes. “Ok,” he said,... Continue
Public Citizen
Like water circling the bathtub drain, our consumer society expends a lot of energy but ultimately spirals down a bottomless hole, and unless more water is continuously added, nothing but an empty tub remains. Of late, the “water” being added is money printed by the... Continue
“Ashes to ashes, shed to shed.” So go the notebooks of Von Meier. For over 40 years my friend Kurt von Meier kept a daily notebook. A compulsive documentarian, he stored his filled notebooks in file boxes, and as they accumulated, placed the boxes in... Continue
How is it that time after time governmental process and policy results in harm to the public? Hearings are held, reports commissioned, experts consulted, and yet decisions are constantly made that endanger health, despoil the environment, cause economic hardship and erode public confidence in the... Continue
Males of many species mark their territorial boundaries. The other day my wife accused me of marking mine. I will confess to feeling shocked by her comments at first. The shoes I leave under the coffee table in the living room, a pile of mail... Continue
The wealthy and powerful expect to get what they pay for, and most often they do, spending billions on lobbying and campaign donations to guide the hand of government. Though lip-service is paid to the free market, tax rules, land-use law and public policy all... Continue
The subject of two articles in today’s newspaper have been conflated in the title of this column. Article one involved the prospect that as the world’s population reaches 8 billion people, the need for a protein-rich food source will create an international diet of bugs.... Continue
For the North Bay wine country, including Sonoma, tourism has been a mixed blessing. Just one-hour’s drive from five million people looking for a weekend escape, the boom in tourism has both irrevocably altered the rural landscape with wineries, hotels and backed-up traffic and simultaneously... Continue
There is a yogic practice in Tibet that takes place in a charnel ground, or what we call a graveyard. Graveyards in Tibet, which is mostly rock, are not the neat and grassy parks we have here in America. Tibetan charnel grounds are bone-scattered yards... Continue
We think we live in a world of things: cars, dogs, trees, tables, salt shakers, cardboard boxes, underwear... the list is nearly inexhaustible. Every culture has its own words for each thing, and each thing has many sub-categories, right down to its molecular structure. So... Continue