NEWS
Drug bust at Joplin house
An alleged psychedelic drug manufacturing operation at Janis Joplin’s former Lagunitas compound was uncovered by chance last week, and five suspects have been charged in connection to it. More than 20 pounds of the hallucinogen dimethyltryptamine, known as DMT, was recovered from the premises, according to Marin County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Brenden Berry. All suspects—Mark…
Driver in fatal crash will face prosecution
Ten months after a Fairfax teenager was charged with misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter in a deadly Woodacre crash, a Marin County Superior Court judge on Monday denied her request for diversion, deciding to pursue further prosecution. Inside the windowless courtroom, artificial lighting cast a pallid haze over the tearful audience as Judge James Chou delivered his…
Valley garden celebrates 15, looks to future
Beneath an archway of pale-pink wild roses, the weather-worn gate of the San Geronimo Valley Community Garden opens onto terraced rows of raised beds and wood-chipped, winding pathways. Summer heat beats down on the dry grasses of the hillside, but within the woven-wire fence, boxes brim with dark leafy greens, tall scallions, and sprawling squash…
Another bad year for seal pups
Harbor seal pups born on Point Reyes beaches numbered among the fewest in 27 years of monitoring, according to the National Park Service. Sarah Codde, a park service marine ecologist who authored a report released in July, says the decline is partially due to coyote activity, but it also reflects a statewide trend. Every spring,…
At El Niño town hall, an info shower
It’s still months away from the greatest impacts that California shores may feel from the unprecedented El Niño. But it’s not too early to prepare. Last Tuesday, State Senator Mike McGuire held a town hall meeting to spell out what the brewing climate patterns could mean for Northern California, and a group of panelists…
Doctor takes over KDAN
For months, KDAN, the lilliputian radio station on the eastern shore of Tomales Bay, appeared destined to vanish from the airwaves. Its owner, Jeff Cotton, a radio aficionado who has built small-town stations across the West, was scaling down his operation. He had spent nearly a year trying to offload it to the right buyer—someone…
FEATURES & OPINIONS
A soldier’s plea for Palestine
I was 10 years old and on a school bus in Haifa when our teacher directed us to look out the window. She stood at the front, her voice crackling with patriotic fervor, and pointed to a hill in the distance. “What do you see?” she asked. “Nothing,” a boy shouted. “Exactly!” she said. “You…
In the Fields, August 13, 2026
If you press a fingernail into the tissue of a young olive at McEvoy Ranch, you can feel a transformation. It’s called pit hardening, a mid-summer phase of development when the cells surrounding the seed turn into a hard, woody shell. That’s a sign that the fruit will soon start accumulating oil. The olives are…
The Critic’s Seat, August 13, 2026
Writer-director John Waters has a cult following as a counterculture master of trashy, high-camp humor. His low-budget film “Hairspray,” released in 1988, earned him a significantly broader audience. It’s a reflection of 1960s America, when teenagers were glued to television dance shows and the racial divide was as black and white as our TV screens.…
