This is a fascinating piece on Ken Gonzales-Day, the artist and author who explores the history of lynching in the American West. We usually think of lynching as something that had to black people in the South. But it was far more pervasive, especially in the American West, where non-whites of all varieties were lynched […]
Tag: California
Exhibit A: The rise of 8-legged frogs. These happen at the end of a long ecological chain that begins with farm runoff from our heavily fertilized agricultural landscapes. Exhibit B: Farm towns in Cal
This story about the siphoning of water from the Sacramento River to the big corporate farms and cities of southern California says a lot about the future of water resources in the West, and the natio
For this week’s Forestry Friday post I want to follow up on last week’s discussion of drug cartels destroying the forests of Mexico by bringing this story into the forests of California. A team of scientists at UC-Davis conducted a study about recent deaths in the population of the rare Pacific fisher, a member of […]
On this date in 1970, the United Farm Workers achieved its greatest victory, ending its five-year grape boycott after growers agreed to a contract, the first in the history of California farm labor. F
The California Senate has rejected a fracking bill that seems like common sense: Under Pavley’s bill, oil companies would be required to give 30 days notice to land owners whose property line or
I was very happy to see President Obama use the Antiquities Act of 1906 to create Fort Ord National Monument in California, protecting some of the last wild land in the Monterey Bay area. It looks super cool and I would love to visit. I don’t however see how using the Antiquities Act is a […]
I think it’s great that Los Angeles is creating a new wetland in south Los Angeles. Part of a 9 acre park, this 4.5 acre wetland will bring much needed green space to a gritty neighborhood sorel
This year is the 100th anniversary of the San Diego Free Speech Fight, when I.W.W. speakers were routinely denied their First Amendment rights for speaking in public about workers’ rights. Locke
An iconic moment in environmental history is the construction of the Hetch Hetchy Dam. San Francisco, always desperate for fresh water supplies, looked to the Sierra Nevada to quench its thirst by the late 19th century. However, most of the Sierra’s water was owned by mining companies, used for hydraulic mining, by which high-pressure water […]
Read about the new crime wave sweeping America’s tubas: BELL, Calif. — When thieves broke into the high school music room here this week, they cut through the bolts on all the storage lockers
In the hipster world, California’s Coachella Valley is known for strange creatures such as Animal Collective and Deer Tick that appear once a year to gigantic crowds of bearded men, women with b