NORTH BAY BOH EMIAN | JUNE 1 8-24, 20 14 | BO H E M I AN.COM
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BOHEMIAN
Rhapsodies Song of the North Bay Organic Farmer BY JONAH RASKIN My bedroom’s in the fields, my kitchen’s in the ground. Radishes restore me, sunflowers fertilize me. I’m nurtured by the cover crop I cut down and turn over in the belly of the earth. I pollinate and I plow, yoke barnyard to backyard, feed the whole town, talk farmer talk at supper table, pass bowls of organic chard and bushels of country charm. I walk the farmer walk through valleys of alfalfa and rows of wheat, gather new potatoes and ripe tomatoes, pledge allegiance to compost and mulch, sing a pagan hymn to fecund flowers and ungainly weeds, watch the peas climb skyward, take the seasons a second at a time, in drought or flood, wade through waves of spring, inhale the heat of summer, wrap autumn’s evening shadows around my shoulders and wear the light of the harvest moon across my wildly beating heart.
Jonah Raskin is the author of ‘Marijuanaland’ and ‘Field Days: A Year of Farming, Eating and Drinking Wine in California,’ and is a frequent contributor to these pages. We welcome your contribution. To have your topical essay of 350 words considered for publication, write openmic@bohemian.com.
Who’s to Judge?
Norman Solomon is not exactly the best judge of any Democrat (“Who Is Levine?” June 11). He does not know the party or its leadership. He spent his life as a selfappointed critic of Democrats. He has only been a registered Democrat since 2007. Before that, he was active in the Green Party and helped Ralph Nader challenge Gore in 2000 (and elect Bush in the process). He did attempt to capitalize on his minor celebrity among the left by running for office, but he was beaten by someone he labeled a corporate Democrat (Jared Huffman) and a Republican. He has called nearly every Democrat at the national level a “corporate democrat.” So now Levine is labeled the same way Solomon has labeled Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Barack Obama, Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom, both of our state senators, Jared Huffman and a hundred other prominent and historical leaders of the Democratic Party. The Democrats win here and throughout California by being a bigtent party and by not being as narrowminded as some of its newer members such as Mr. Solomon.
VICTORIA HOGAN Via online
Collect Calls The gouging of county jail inmates through outrageous phone charges is widespread. The families of Marin County inmates can expect to pay $4.50 for a local call through Global Tel Link, which was discredited by the city of San Francisco and sued for $1 million last year. Global’s contract with the Marin County Sheriff’s Department calls for a 55 percent “compensation fee” per call based on its overpriced equipment and tolls.
Balancing the jail budget on the backs of poor people is morally indefensible. This is after the sheriff just purchased a tank for $700,000 to flesh out his paramilitary force, which was so sorely needed in Marin.
That most inmates—and, by extension, their families—are poor is a given. Just go down to Courtroom N at Marin Civic Center any weekday morning and watch the judges and prosecution extract money from those least able to pay. So jail it is. Getting to use the phone to find help securing your release thus becomes a near impossibility. Just more burden on the taxpayers and the families of the inmates. Matt Taibbi, in his new book The Divide, shows how there are two systems of justice in this country: a painless nonprosecution for the rich (Wall Street and the well-to-do) and a horribly vindictive meat grinder and destroyer of families for the poor.
ALEX EASTON-BROWN, MARIN UNITED TAXPAYER’S ASSOCIATION Lagunitas
Speak Up Neighborhood and citizens groups concerned about development in the wine country are speaking up, and members of the established wine industry are getting involved. If you are a group or individual that would like to be part of the conversation, please contact Geoff Ellsworth at the email address napavoice@gmail.com or sonomavoice@gmail.com, depending on which county you are from.
GEOFF ELLSWORTH St. Helena
Lie and Repeat The U.S. seems to have a hard time figuring out reasons for its wars, especially the ones it wages on Iraq, so