Where I Go: Seeking Peace on the Upper Slopes of Mount Shasta

How Cycling (and Tandem Biking) Has Made My Rural Northern California ‘Neighborhood’ Home

“Lonely as God, and white as a winter moon, Mount Shasta starts up sudden and solitary from the heart of the great black forests of Northern California.”
—Joaquin Miller, from his 1873 autobiographical novel, Life Among the Modocs

When you move to a new neighborhood, you scout it out. It’s all a matter of staking out territory, getting comfortable in your new surroundings. If you’re in the city, your early forays on the streets might lead you to that perfect pastry at the corner bakery, the savory brick-oven pizza from a …

by Tim Holt | May 27, 2021

A Mural Once Familiar to Thousands of Farm Workers Comes Home to the Coachella Valley

The Artwork, Commissioned by My Old Boss Billy Steinberg, Is a Reminder That There’s an Alternative to Today’s Brutal Agribusiness

by Doug Adair | May 10, 2021

This month, a mural once familiar to thousands of farm workers in the Coachella Valley returns home. It depicts more than just the vineyards and grape pickers at David Freedman …

How Two California Lakeside Communities Are Ending Chronic Homelessness—at Jet-Ski Speed

In the Pandemic, South Lake Tahoe and Lake Elsinore Are Showing Other Cities Ways to Support All Their Unhoused Neighbors

by Joe Mathews | March 9, 2021

Have you given up hope that California will ever get its 150,000-person homeless population off the streets? Are you dubious that your hometown could ever reduce its homelessness to zero? …

Even After a Decade of Reforms, California’s Era of Mass Incarceration Is Far From Over

The State’s Progress in Reducing Prison Populations and Racial Disparities Is Real. So Are the Remaining Challenges

by Joe Mathews | February 25, 2021

Over the past decade, California has made real progress in reforming its criminal justice system and reducing its prison population, but the state’s era of mass incarceration is far from …

The Huge Electric Leadership of a Small California Town

By Building Its Own Microgrid, Rural Gonzales Charts a Path to the Energy Future

by Joe Mathews | February 16, 2021

If California is lucky, our energy future could look like a small town in the rural Salinas Valley.

Longtime readers of this column will not be surprised to learn that the …

Rural Food Banks Have Never Been More Important

COVID Has Created Thousands of New Clients for California’s Smallest Food Banks—And New Challenges That May Outlast the Pandemic

by Juan Martinez | February 8, 2021

Before COVID-19, our little food bank here in Kings County served 1,000 families, on average, a month. But in the pandemic, we are now working to feed more than five …

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