See ya

Sometimes you know when it’s time to break a new trail for yourself.  I felt like that when I tried to get out of Chicago the first time, in 1982.  I got as far as Palisades State Park, near Garretson, South Dakota, on a bicycle.  Gravity pulled me back to Chicago for another three years, when a way to make a living in Minnesota found me.

The current situation is nothing like that, and I’m not following a dream so much as being evicted.  Prudery and fear make a potent combination, and my opinions have been declared hazardous to the wealth of the corporation, so the Chico News & Review will no longer publish From the Edge, which can now be found right here—please, pass the word.

I remember saying many years ago that I wanted to sell my thoughts.  I didn’t know then what that meant, and yet writing a column has obviously let me do exactly that.  Boy, am I ever grateful.  I’ve been reading some of the old ones, and they often still make me laugh, which is as good as it gets.

When Tom Gascoyne asked me in ’05 if I’d be interested in writing a monthly column, I said no, although I would do one biweekly, because that way I thought I might be able to build a readership.  That’s what happened, and for over a year From the Edge alternated with Carey Wilson's Culture Vulture.  When The Culture Vulture was plucked, I started writing every week and have mostly kept at it since.  I came to loathe that relentless deadline, although it keeps me limber and I plan to continue writing weeklyish.  I’ll also keep doing commentary on KZFR.

I’ve been fired several times, and this time wasn’t bad.  I once announced my departure over the company public address system, which pleased me no end and yet can’t hold a candle to being able to say goodbye to you like this.  The last few years have been hard for me and my family, and I deeply appreciate the compassion and generosity my readers and listeners have shown to us.

What I’ll miss most is the occasional Gentle Reader politely introducing yourself and letting me know that you appreciate what I’m trying to do, even when I’m not sure what that is.  I like that, and without my mug in the paper every week I expect that’ll taper off.

I've lost a big chunk of income, and I'd appreciate you subscribing to this with the PayPal button above.  Anyway, thank you for your attention and please tell your friends and neighbors where I am.  Namaste.

Censorship

The Chico News & Review has refused to print From the Edge twice in two months.  Do you think they’re trying to tell me something?

The first time an editor rejected my work was in late ’97.  Minnesota Law & Politics had recently published a piece about cops, but when I submitted an article about parent’s rights the editor decided it was way more than the lawyerly community could stand.  The magazine has since gone out of business.

I started writing From the Edge in 1998, and when we moved to California I’d phone them in to KFAI radio.  My producer refused to broadcast one because I had absent-mindedly used one of the words the Federal Communications Commission bans.  My bad.

A while back whoever was my editor then—I’m on my eighth—refused to print a column I’d written about clemency for Roman Polanski.  The editor said the whole staff agreed with him.

A couple of months ago I wrote a piece about my recent experiences with mental illness and the way mentally ill people are treated in Butte County, one in particular.  That time CNR staff decided that what I’d written might get the paper sued, and they refused to print it.  Fine.  Wussy, but fine.

This last refusal takes the cake.  I wrote about the Sid Lewis mess, based entirely on published accounts on web sites of the Chico Enterprise-Record and KRCR television, and I referenced nothing that wasn’t available around the world.  I didn’t think privacy would be an issue, and it wasn’t.

I’m usually way behind the news cycle, but Lewis had only recently been arrested for masturbating in front of a 17-year-old girl, and I had something to say about both him and the girl.  I didn’t know anything about Lewis’s arrest last year on charges of assault with a firearm and corporal injury to a spouse until I read about it in the CNR.  I was feeling pretty pleased with myself for being up to date when actually I wasn’t so much current as too soon.  Unbeknownst to me, there’s apparently a limit on these things.

Here’s what my editor said, in part, “It’s a brand new case and there is way too little information available to be putting out opinions in the paper as to what's going on with either Sid or especially the girl who made the allegation.”

I’m not a reporter, and I feel no obligation to be fair or balanced.  I never thought anybody would expect me to toe the CNR’s editorial line in any way out here on the edge, because I haven’t and I don’t.  I guess that’s the problem.