Public Citizen

Larry Barnett lives in Sonoma where he was elected to three terms on the City Council and served twice as Mayor. A thirty-five-year resident, he currently serves on Sonoma's Planning Commission, where he recently was Chair for two years. Until her passing, he was married to his wife Norma for 50 years, has two daughters and three grandchildren.

If water could talk

Mother Nature came crying to me last night. “I’ve had it,” she said, her tears falling loudly on the skylight, “I’m done.” But the creeks, dear one, had heard it all before, And just laughed. Life as we know it is impossible without water. Water... Continue

Perfecting my disappearing act

Life on earth is very, very old, a couple of billion years, at least, and nearly all the creatures that have ever lived have disappeared. Were it not for photographs, we’d lack a visual record of our recent past, let alone that of our ancestors.... Continue

Of mind and meat

The mind/body split is quite a persistent delusion, even though the two are inseparably bound. In a supreme act of imagination, “I am self” decides that it is something apart, not only from the body but almost from the rest of the universe. This tendency... Continue

Getting ready for anything

My friend Richard Reoch recently lost his wife of 50 years. That experience prompted him to write the following about getting ready for anything. “Thank you for teaching us,” the nurse said to me as she took out her phone and photographed what I call... Continue

Health and science denial

“We see that in modern times many stones lack the virtues formerly attributed to them.” - Petrus Garsias Episcopus, 1639 I was struck by the irony of learning that Representative Steve Scalise, a conservative Republican, is being treated for cancer with stem cells,... Continue

Freedom, first and last

At the subatomic, quantum level upon which all physical matter appears to be built is freedom, probabilistic indeterminacy that manifests to us as choice or even purposefulness. Although ultimately subject to the physical laws of the universe, only a fraction of which we fully understand,... Continue

Systems of self-propagation

Does the universe self-organize into self-propagating systems? Are systems created by human beings self-propagating? The answers to these two questions might explain why things are as they are, and how they will continue to be. First, let’s settle on some definitions, beginning with what a... Continue

Woe is democracy

There’s a lot of talk nowadays about democracy. The threat of authoritarian government is rising, even in the good ole’ U.S. of A. Much can be said in favor of democracy, but it’s not perfect. While all people may have been created equal, in capabilities... Continue

Rushing towards oblivion

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the endless problems of the world; things always seem to be in turmoil. War, hunger, bigotry, Fascism, economic collapse, political extremism, lethal pandemics, over-population, artificial intelligence; the list goes on and on. Most of the world’s problems are... Continue

Rise of the machines

Of the elements of the Industrial Revolution (1760-1830), the development of interchangeable parts was among its most significant. Not simply the efficiency of building machines was affected; workers were reduced to interchangeable parts, too, which greatly enabled the growth of capitalism. As economist Karl Polanyi... Continue