Put up a damned sign

It was at a very low point in my life—I’ve had a few of them now—that I caught Bolinas, affectionately known to locals as Bo-Bo, at the end of the time when it was nice. On sunny weekends, college kids would flood Brighton Beach for an all-over tan. I developed a deep enough tan that I felt I was accepted, for perhaps the only time in my life, as a local, as someone who belonged there. As hard as my material circumstances were, there was the consolation of that magnificent beach.

Bolinas had, for a long time, a reputation as a counterculture town. It is on the south side of the Point Reyes peninsula. Nature has been generous here and the people knew it. In self-defense, they famously tore down the road sign indicating the way to their town off Highway One whenever Caltrans put one up. These acts were attributed to the “Bolinas Border Patrol,” adding to a sense that Bolinas was in another country and wanted nothing to do with the authorities who plunged us into so many wars.

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Teach them scientific method and they think they know everything

I went by the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair this afternoon, bought a few books, and stayed for a talk. I was hungry, and I’d bought enough books that they were a drag to lug around, so I didn’t stay long, but I thought I’d pass along some impressions.

First, there was a bustle to this event that I didn’t perceive the last time I went. Interest in anarchism—or at least this book fair—seems to have increased.

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