HIGHWAY 128 was closed at Flynn Creek Sunday evening a little before 8 in anticipation of flooding of the Navarro River. By 9pm the river was rising fast and would soon reach flood stage at 23 feet. Upwards of two inches fell on Sunday. Locals are keeping their weather eyes on it.
MARSHALL NEWMAN NOTED Sunday: "Looking at the current numbers now, it is obvious the gauge isn’t working – it registers 0.01 inches of rain every six-eight hours and has for the past three days. As the saying goes, 'Close enough for government work',”
THE DEPARTMENT of Water Resources (DWR) rain gauge for Boonville (located in the hills above Stalag Calfire, south of town) recently went kaput. So as far as the DWR is concerned the Anderson Valley has only one rain gauge left in operation, and yesterday (Sunday) that gauge, located near the Yorkville Post Office, reported 2.84 inches. It was that station’s wettest day of this rainy season, and brought the High Roller's total up to 29.88 inches. (If you're new to the area, High Roller, is Boontling for residents of the Yorkville area.)
WITH 128 closed, and Sunday's big rain seemed to have exhausted the early morning of Monday Anderson Valley and all was quieter than usual when the sun came up in a cloudless sky. The schools were closed as our young scholars and their teachers could spend the day contemplating the significance of Martin Luther King, and even the early morning coffee people at Mosswood and the Redwood Drive-In seemed fewer.
SPEAKING OF THE SCHOOLS, we're sorry to see Erica Lemons leave the school board. Always a strong and independent voice for the good and the true, and often swimming against an incoming rip tide of automatic Yes votes and some truly insufferable colleagues, Erica has been an absolute rock for the true interests of parents and children in a historically corrupt context of administration-selected trustees chosen for their first allegiance to overpaid administrators and an entrenched apparatus of featherbedding high school teachers. We hope the new trustees prove as trustworthy as Erica was.
AND SPEAKING of school sports, Anderson Valley's male-type Panthers knocked off Covelo and Laytonville last week. The girls participated in a hoops jamboree in Point Arena, and both teams play Friday night in the Boonville gym against PA.
CLAUDIA JIMENEZ is throwing a muy grande sale at All That Good Stuff. If you spend at least 20 dollars you get 20% off the purchase. And just in time for Valentine's Day.
WHENEVER the big rains fall, I think of my old friend, Pebbles Trippet, daughter of a mayor of Tulsa, former Trotskyist, groundfloor beatnik, oft-jailed marijuana crusader. She lives about a mile up from the mouth of the Navarro. Sunday's deluge might cause Pebs some serious anxiety, although she's tough to scare. She once told me she could swim to safety if she had to. I don't think she was kidding. Several years ago during a heavy rain, the redoubtable Pebs wrote:
“About an hour ago, I called 911 to report the wrecked vehicle that went off the road on 128 at the 1.7 mile marker from the coast. A fallen alder caught the vehicle on its slide down into the Navarro River or else the people and the vehicle would be floating down the muddy rushing river to the ocean. No one was hurt; they have the alder to thank. My backyard is starting to flood. The frogs are singing full throat, but the river is now 10 feet lower than last night due to the break in the weather. This is not yet like the Dec 31 2005 true flood that ran me out of my cabin, perched on five feet of stilts with two feet of water lapping at the calves of my legs and rising. I was rescued at dawn Jan 1 in a neighbor's canoe. Two of my three cats made it through the trauma. It'll take another long ferocious rain before anything like “floodstage” is reached for the people who live along the Navarro River, most of us off the grid.”
A READER WRITES: "I had an MTA bus come up behind me on 128 the other day (the driver was balling the jack, as they say) and the bus’s banner in the rearview mirror read HAIKU with a backwards "K" — all the other capital letters mirrored correctly. It was fun to imagine a bus whose only fare was to recite a short poem. The haiku bus."
DUBIOUS STAT from the Press Democrat: "25% in county using opioids." We understand that the stoner community loves oxycontin and downers like it, but 25 percent is a suspiciously large number of people.
THE FORT BRAGG Police Department "is continuing to follow up on numerous leads and evidentiary discovery following the murder of Fort Bragg resident, Dennis Boardman. Investigators have recovered Mr. Boardman’s vehicle from the Carpenteria area of southern Santa Barbara County. After being secured by law enforcement, Mr. Boardman’s vehicle was processed for any evidence that may prove useful in the investigation. Investigators are still awaiting forensic results from the state Department of Justice (DOJ) crime labs in regard to analysis of evidence collected from the crime scene and from Mr. Boardman’s vehicle. The autopsy of Mr. Boardman’s body did not reveal which of the injuries discovered on his body actually ended his life, but investigators believe that several of the injuries appeared life-threatening. Investigators recovered possible weapons used in the crime at the scene, and they are currently being forensically examined. The Fort Bragg Police Department will work diligently to resolve this crime and will continue to release information as it becomes available."
LOCAL PSYCHOLOGIST GREG SIMS has compiled a new book called “Personal Peacefulness-Psychological Perspectives.” The optimistic-into-pollyannish Sims proposes that the Valley try to organize to achieve some kind of personal peacefulness. Sims writes: “So far the AV Grange and the American Legion Post 385 have responded by voting to support this effort. I have asked one additional agency and am waiting to hear from them. But if other agencies wish to offer their support please respond to me at P.O. Box 1, Boonville, Ca. 95415. A planning session will be followed by a general meeting sometime after The Variety Show, sometime in March, perhaps Sunday afternoon March 13th from 3 to 5pm at the Grange Hall on Highway 128 between Philo and Boonville. There will be a more in-depth discussion as to how to support ourselves and each other in our peaceful growth and to manifest it outwardly.” Sims’s lengthy article summarizing the book has been posted on-line at the AVA’s muy groovy website: www.theava.com.
THE MAJOR DESCRIBES his recent Boontling adventure: On my way back from the Boonville Post Office Tuesday afternoon a hippie-ish man dressed in tattered shorts and an old tie-dye t-shirt shouted something unintelligible at me. And kept shouting. It was cold and he seemed underdressed, a sign of likely drunkenness. Random verbal abuse is not an unfamiliar experience among people associated with this publication. A supervisor, since retired, also a locally infamous public drunk, once spit at my shoe as he grumbled, "Get that?" That encounter occurred in this very same location as my Tuesday encounter. These days, alone and ignored, the supervisor, confined to his redwood retirement, mutters to himself up in the hills. This guy looked and sounded quite drunk. I tried to ignore him, but he just shouted louder. Highway traffic added to my difficulty in making out what he wanted. After a few more steps he came closer and I made out the word "Boontling" in his torrent of high decibel address. "Hi! My name's Rusty! I'm from Santa Rosa! Do you know any Boontling?"
"Oh, a couple of words maybe," I said, guardedly, not knowing where this was going.
"Name one!" he demanded.
"Kimmie Codger?"
"What's that mean?!"
"I'm not sure, something about a fire engine?"
"Isn't there something about a phone?" he asked.
"Bucky Walter — phone booth," I replied.
"Any more?"
"Horn of Zeese."
"What's that?"
"Cup of coffee."
"Cup of coffee! Horn of Jeeesh! Cup of coffee!" he shouted triumphantly as he turned around to address an aging female flower child. "Cup of coffee!" he screamed again. "See?! I told you there was a language here called Boontling!"
The woman nodded, grudgingly.
He turned back to me. "Thanks," he said, a satisfied smile on his face.
I guess I could have wished the guy "happy burlapin',” but if he looked up burlapin' in the Boont dictionary he and his girl friend might have taken serious offense at my presumption.
AV FIRE CHIEF ANDRES AVILA reminds us that a County Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) meeting will be held at the Boonville Fairgrounds dining hall January 28th from 6-8pm. Everyone is encouraged to attend. AVFD has provided local information on subdivisions subject to high risk and prevention projects to map out our needs in the CWPP. Cal Fire, Mendocino Fire Safe Council, and their partners will be there to discuss any questions the public might have and present fire prevention information.
AVOIDING WILDFIRES is certainly one way to Age in Place, but this fire avoidance meeting is set for the same time as the Health Center's scheduled annual meeting at which, according to the bylaws, as Mrs. Herr observes, "The Directors shall be selected at the annual meeting of the Corporation in January." She points out that since "there are no published December minutes nor a January agenda, it is anybody's guess as to what is happening. Supposedly the Board decided that web info would be handled 'in-house' from now on.
MRS. HERR COMPLAINS that the news and announcements generated by the Center have lately been of the generic happy talk variety, such as, "It’s AVHC’s 40th anniversary!! Our founder Franklin Apfel opened the doors of the health center on this day January 8th, 1976. Shortly after Dr. Mark Apfel joined in September and has been taking care of Valley residents ever since. Thank you to our founders and to our loyal patients, donors and friends who keep our doors open. Happy Anniversary AVHC!"
AS I RECALL, founding father Franklin Apfel then spelled his name 'Phranklin' Apfel, which inspired some merriment in the County Jail where Apfel also functioned as Jail medico. Inmates called him 'Phucking Phranklin because they were unable to hustle him for opiates. The first Health Center, then called a clinic, was located in the long abandoned Ricard structure at the south end of Boonville. Aggrandizement soon set in, hence the mini-hospital we enjoy today in the northwest corner of the high school's playing fields. That aggrandizement also ran up a large indebtedness the community has struggled to pay down ever since it was incurred.
MRS. HERR CONTINUES: "But the Board has a legal responsibility to publish minutes of their actions, and of any committee actions, and those cannot be generated by the staff of the center. How about it Board? What did you decide last month, and how's it going? What's the money situation? Was/is the fundraising a success? Are the committee goals being satisfactorily met? Anxious concerns? Good results? The Board will meet at 6:00 at the Health Center. It should be possible to take in part of both meetings?
"BUT IF YOU DO HAVE CONCERNS about wildfire hazards (standing dead trees; how the State Responsibility Area fees are collected, and how and to what entity are they dispersed? Why does the County and CDF allow development in SRA's where there is no fire protection? Do come and speak out."
THE YORKVILLE FIRE STATION FIRE HYDRANT is now finished. The hydrant is gravity fed by a supply of 15,000 gallons of rainwater stored on the hillside behind the station. Rainwater provided by the firehouse roof is caught in a 350-gallon tank and is pumped up approximately 100’ in elevation to the storage tanks. The capacity, pressure and location of this hydrant provides a very efficient and much needed water source for Anderson Valley’s east battalion. This was a successful endeavor due to the many people and entities that contributed. The property owner Scott Hulbert, the Yorkville Community Benefits Association, The Community Foundation of Mendocino, the AVFD and all the donations and volunteers helped to bring this project into fruition. (Fire Chief Andres Avila)
ONE MORE EXAMPLE of mole hills to mountains in the prevalent context of sexual hysteria occurred recently at Ukiah High School where the music teacher has been fired three months after he allegedly addressed a female student "inappropriately."
FROM JUSTINE FREDERICKSON'S story in the UDJ, "According to the Ukiah Police Department, a female student in October of 2015 accused the teacher, who is not being named because criminal charges have not been filed, of making an 'inappropriate comment,' which was described further as 'a sexual innuendo.'"
HOLD IT RIGHT THERE. We understand from reliable sources that the guy greeted the girl with something no more sinister than a merry, "Hello, beautiful." It's a stretch to squeeze sexual innuendo out of that unless he followed it up with an invitation for some truly inappropriate hubba-hubba. But Lt. Sean Kaeser nevertheless said the UPD’s investigation of the incident led them to determine that a charge of 'harassing and annoying a juvenile' was applicable, and submitted its report to the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office for review.
DA EYSTER will certainly toss it, but in the mean time the music teacher's life is suddenly blitzed with perv implications on the front page of his hometown newspaper. And it develops that the alleged teen victim of the innuendo is a pal of another girl who tried to get the guy fired last year because she was unhappy with the grade she got in his music class.
"THE DISPLACED teacher was hired in 2014 and quickly expanded Ukiah High’s languishing band program from 20 to 80 kids under his leadership. “He’s an expert in beginning instruments,” said a Willits music teacher, Mr. Sherrill, a friend of the ruined music teacher. "…it’s really unlikely that the county will get another teacher as great (as he is). If this complaint is determined to be false, the district should re-hire him.”
UKIAH WON'T. Count on that. Superintendent Kubin has already thrown the guy under the school bus, simply taking the kid's word for it three months after the alleged "crime" that she'd suffered cop-worthy sexual harm.
THE BIG ONE creeps ever closer to Boonville. Someone struck gold in Cloverdale last week when they (the winner is still not identified) bought a Powerball ticket at the Quik Stop worth about $660,000. We're next!
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