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Beating Off In Mexico

It bothers me to age; I won’t deny that. I am bothered by what time does to my notions of invincibility. I am not bothered by the inability to remember — but by the inability to forget.

Class Struggles In Sweet Cider

This is the part where Karen Wheeler jumped in and turned the world around, whether because Karen Wheeler is one fine bowler herself and enjoys as much as anybody kicking the butts of the folks over in Greensboro, or whether, as I’ve said, her heart has spots soft for Gus, I don’t know.

Occupational Disease

Loggers are notorious hard-asses. Hard labor, danger, long hours, and constant, male-only intimate companionship almost guarantee a hardening of the heart. Work gloves can protect soft hands but psyches protect themselves with calluses. It seems simple enough when seen from a distance, but up close, like everything in life, it gets more complicated.

Gift Horse

Legally Piggly

The main objective of the Wall Street lawyers was for the corporations to get out from under the tax control of the American government. In 1933 the American people had saved the corporations by subsidizing them; then, twenty years later, the Wall Street lawyers moved them out of America, getting the American people to pay for the move.

At The End Of The Fiscal Year

Ten months prior to being eligible for his company’s pension and benefit plan, after almost twenty years, Ben Ross was fired.

Favorite Magazines

Muckraking, infamous mergers, the Jeffersonian ideal

Tarnished Gold

Our Seed Stock Is In Jeopardy, But Do The Seed Companies Care?

Corn is the most valuable United States crop. When a few companies, or a few varieties, dominate its seed market, conditions are ripe for economic and ecological disaster.

Life At The Top Of The Dial

The WDBS Story

WDBS is an institution, as much a part of local culture as Somethyme Restaurant, Apple Chill Fair, Breadmen’s, Carrboro and canoeing the Haw River. It’s one of the things that makes this area a nice place to live. Without it, life would be different.

The Chain Gang

Consumers foot the bill for the supermarket monopolies. And what a bill! A 1975 government report found that 41% of the increase in food margins in a nine-year period was the result of rising advertising and promotional expenses — money spent not to better our diet but to manipulate us as shoppers.