HeyJaredDreamland: A Sam Quinones newsletter
A newsletter for independent journalism – my stories and others', interviews, reporting, writing and more.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 11
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- Sep 27, 2026
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“Chris from South Dakota” -- on the Dreamland Podcast (opens the original)
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It is not easy to find stories of people working daily to keep a meth addiction behind them.The supplies of the drug, nationwide, are more potent, cheap, and mind-mangling than ever. So when I find one such story, I want to tell it. Partly this is to encourage others in recovery, and those (and their loved ones) who are still using. Partly — I won’t lie — this is to keep me positive, too, as I continue the reporting on methamphetamine that I began in my book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1
“Gizmo” -- Prison inmates raise a pigeon: a Dreamland Podcast audio tale (opens the original)
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I began talking with Richard Gatica over the phone in 2009, when another inmate I was interviewing put us in touch.He is serving life in a California prison for three separate murders.We have been in contact at least once a month since then. He wrote a powerful memoir of his life, which has many stories, a few of which we’ve turned into audio tales for this newsletter (See below).It’s all part of my attempt to use this platform as a full, wide-ranging, often off-beat expression of my independent
On the 25th anniversary of 9/11 -- a poem my father wrote after the terrorist attack (opens the original)
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My father, Ricardo J. Quinones, was a comparative literature professor at Claremont McKenna College, in Claremont, California. He wrote five books of poetry before he died in 2019 of complications from Parkinson’s disease. He was 83This poem he wrote shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.<div cl
Alec from South Dakota, recovering drug addict/tuba player -- a Dreamland Podcast audio tale (opens the original)
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This is the kind of story you signed up for when you subscribed to my Dreamland Newsletter. …One reason for starting this Dreamland Newsletter was to expand the ways I told stories to reflect that many stories I had to tell.One new medium that I’m loving is what I call an audio tale — 6-8 minutes of someone telling a personal story, edited, with some music. I’ve recorded several — especially from a prison inmate named Richard Gatica, who turns out is a true storyteller. (See below for his great
`Prop. 47 likely contributed to increased homelessness, addiction, overdose’ (opens the original)
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A report this week by a California think tank came to some frank and fascinating conclusions.The Public Policy Institute of California’s Homelessness and Drug Use in California assesses the effects of a number of state criminal justice reforms and their effect on homelessness and drug addiction. Special focus is on Proposition 47, which almost 60 percent of California voters approved in 2014 and went into effect the next year.Prop. 47 reclassified as misdemeanors many drug
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