4+ day, 19+ hour ago   (357+ words) My father told me to build things to last five generations. Not for myself, not for my children, for people whose names I'll never know. That's how you think when you manage timberland. You plant trees you won't live to…...

4+ day, 19+ hour ago   (214+ words) When I heard that the federals wanted to do away with the Forest Service's experiment stations and so forth, I thought "Good, give them to the schools." I left a Vermont farm in the 1990s to go down to Asheville, N.C., where…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago   (573+ words) The Smithsonian is at it again. But now, not just the Air an… There's a new delivery system in town. There was a time, not too many years ago, when drafting and enacting California’s budgets was a fairly transparent and…...

2+ week, 4+ day ago   (545+ words) It’s funny how lightbulb moments happen. Recently I read an essay by linguist and author John McWhorter about tweaks we make in how we speak in order to give our words more emphasis. So instead of saying, for example, “It…...

3+ week, 2+ day ago   (337+ words) When does a “citizen” initiative cease being a citizens’ initiative? That’s a question we’ve been asking since 2017 when the Supreme Court’s decision in California Cannabis Coalition v. City of Upland suggested that if citizens put a measure on the ballot…...

3+ week, 4+ day ago   (588+ words) The state budget is an obvious source for anyone interested in how California finances its programs. However the budget, including the latest version enacted in June, is only a rough outline, a collection of suppositions and guesses, some educated, others…...