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Mendocino County Today: Monday, Aug 29, 2016

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VELMA’S FARM STAND is the name of Chris and Stephanie Tebbutts’ new commercial venture on Anderson Valley Way in Boonville. They will be selling flowers, olive oil and seasonal fruit Friday to Monday from noon to 5pm until the end of fall.

Digital Camera

THE TEBBUTTS and their gifted builder, the excellent Mr. Triplett, have done a brilliant re-model of what had been a prosaic garage and the long-time home of a mysterious figure said to be a Spaniard, who lived in a tiny room in a corner of the structure. I believe he was a retired old guy who'd worked for Buster and Velma Farrer, owners of the property prior to the Tebbutts. Velma Farrer was quite interesting herself. As a young woman in the 1920s she'd lived for some time in Cuba. How she'd come to live in the then-remote Anderson Valley with a crusty rancher who was old even when he was young is not known.

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STURDY METAL DESK Free! Good condition. Exciting vibes replete with almost forty years of violent prose and top secret communications. Woodgrain top. Even some hanging folders. If this desk could talk people would die. Can be picked up at AVA office. First come, first served. 895-3016.

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ShanleyBarnSaleWeb

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LOCAL POT GROWERS TAKE ANOTHER PAGE OUT OF THE WINE HANDBOOK

Mendocino County growers could become the first in the nation to establish marijuana appellations, a move meant to promote their product over generic weed.

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/5958381-181/mendocino-county-growers-plan-pot

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FROM TOMMY WAYNE KRAMER'S essential Sunday column in the Ukiah Daily Journal: "The words ‘It’s Back to School Week!’ bring sadness and despair to the hearts of schoolchildren everywhere. I understand. They make me sad too. Sending children into a nine-month slog of tedium and psychic abuse as they march toward a meaningless diploma seems monstrous and unfair. We should all be embarrassed. We could do better. Think about an afternoon spent in a room being ‘instructed’ by a poorly educated schoolteacher rambling away on a subject he knows less about than your next door neighbor. Think about another hour exposed to the gassy exhalations of someone who, when the school day is finished, goes off to a yoga class or a tai chi session with her dog…"

NOTHING there I disagree with. Beyond elementary school where most of us learn to read well enough and master enough math to see us through life, the rest of it is a waste of student time and public tax money. When the hormones begin to writhe and moan about the 7th grade although the newspapers say the pubes are rarin' to go at ever earlier ages, seat time in a classroom is pointless for everyone beyond the academically interested who will go on to require technical training as doctors and engineers. Everyone else, including would be lawyers, teachers, helping professionals and so on through the mists of vague non-disciplines and the millions of blah-blah jobs requiring nothing but the common gift of gab, should be apprenticed out to people who actually know how to do things. The "kids" (all rise) could re-assemble every afternoon after work to play sports.

THIS ISN'T FAIR, or representative of the Boonville student body, but the other day as I was drinking coffee and thinking good thoughts on my front step, school had just let out, and young people were streaming by. Most of them were bent slightly at their waists studying their multi-purpose phones where, I was sure, they gazed at negative social input. Two girls dressed in tight, black clothing disruptive of the contemplative aspects of the educational experience, smoked cigarettes as they ambled along shrieking merry f-bombs at each other, heedless and uncaring that the nearby geezer was looking on. I seldom feel sorry for teachers, but I wondered what Boonville's harried faculty did with these two doomed creatures all day, debauched children prematurely blitzed by forces they're already too handicapped to ever hope to defend themselves against. The schools double down on the handicap by their total irrelevance to what young people are going to need to make their way in a crumbling society.

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WARREN HINCKLE

October 12, 1938 - August 25, 2016

Hinkle&MuttLast call came for Warren Hinckle on August 25, 2016. He died from complications of pneumonia and was surrounded by his family. A renowned editor, writer, publisher and iconoclast, Hinckle first made his mark as the revolutionary editor of Ramparts magazine in the 1960s. He transformed it from a sleepy Roman Catholic lay magazine into a pioneering art-filled New Left political magazine that launched "radical chic" and influenced magazine design for decades.

He always believed there was a right and wrong side to a story and once you figured out the right side you never gave up. He burned his draft card for an iconic cover of Ramparts, which he used to tirelessly oppose the Vietnam War. He published Che Guevara's secret diaries and exposed the CIA's secret infiltration of student groups on university campuses, for which he received the George Polk Memorial Award for Excellence in Journalism. He was also awarded the H.L. Mencken Award and the Thomas Paine Award for his later journalism work.

After Ramparts folded, partly due to government confiscation of the "Guerilla Warfare in the USA" issue, he founded Scanlan's Monthly with his friend and New York journalist Sydney Zion. At Scanlan's he famously united Hunter S. Thompson and British artist Ralph Steadman for the first Gonzo journalism piece ever published "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved."

Having started his career in public relations under the tutelage of the famous ad man Howard Gossage, he pioneered publicity techniques such as placing full page ads in national daily newspapers announcing important stories to increase magazine sales and protect from government backlash.

He was also the editor of City of San Francisco magazine, Frisco, War News (published during the Gulf War); and The Argonaut, which he began publishing as a quarterly book of politics, art, and writing in 1992 and then as a San Francisco political newspaper and website.

He worked for many years as a reporter and columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, and the San Francisco Independent. He ran for mayor of San Francisco in 1992.

Known for his trademark black eye patch (he lost his eye in a childhood car accident on Christmas Eve) and black patent leather dancing shoes with bows, he was an old-fashioned reporter who worked mostly in bars. He believed there was nothing related to writing or publishing or life that you couldn't accomplish in a good saloon. He owned a series of basset hounds, which he said he preferred for their curious design, even temperment, and excellent expressions. Bentley and Melman were as well known by the dispatchers of City Cab, bar owners, and readers of his columns as he was. He tried the patience of every deadline he ever met but was a creative force that could find just the right typeface, headline, artwork and layout to make a "nothing" story into meaningful news.

Hinckle is the author of the following books: his autobiography, If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade (1974); Guerilla War in the USA (1971); The Richest Place on Earth (1978); The Fish is Red: The Story of the Secret War Against Castro (1981) and Deadly Secrets: The CIA-Mafia War Against Castro and the Assassination of JFK (1992) both with ex-CIA agent William Turner; The Big Strike: a Pictorial History of the 1934 San Francisco General Strike, and Gayslayer! The Story of How Dan White Killed Harvey Milk and George Moscone & Got Away With Murder (1985); and the forthcoming Who Killed Hunter S. Thompson?

In 2013, UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library published his oral history, "Warren Hinckle: Journalist, Editor, Publisher, Iconoclast," based on 43 hours of interviews between 2009 and 2012.

The Great One was born and raised in San Francisco, he attended St. Cecilia's, Archbishop Riordan High School, and the University of San Francisco. He also attended Hastings Law School but never completed his degree. His mother Angela Catherine DeVere was a survivor of the 1906 earthquake. His father, Warren James Hinckle, was a shipyard worker and died on a barstool at the Philosopher's Club in West Portal.

In addition to many friends and colleagues, admirers and detractors, he is survived by his longtime partner and loving advocate Linda Corso; his children Pia Hinckle (Chris Mittelstaedt) of San Francisco, Hilary Hinckle of New York City, and Warren Hinckle IV of Boston, stepdaughter Sarah Flohre of Virginia; and grandchildren Lucien, Fiona and Simone Mittelstaedt of San Francisco and Maxwell and Ava Cane of New York City; a brother, Robert Hinckle of Reno, NV and sister Marianne Hinckle of San Francisco; as well as his former wife and friend Denise McCarthy. He was a loving and eccentric father and grandfather who was famous for his beer pancakes and teaching everyone how to play liar's dice.

His family expresses their deep gratitude to Dr. Aissa Haman, his physician, whose kindness, skill, humor, and tenacity kept him going so long; to Dr. Remo Morelli, Dr. Jose Eguia, Dr. Robert Murray, Dr. Daniel Raybin, Dr. Robert Weber, all the loving and amazing nurses, therapists and staff of Team Hinckle at St. Mary's Medical Center. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Saint Mary's Medical Center Foundation, 450 Stanyan Street, San Francisco, CA 94117 or Golden Gate Basset Rescue, PO Box 4958, Petaluma, CA 94955.

A Vigil will be held at 6pm and a Rosary at 7pm on Monday August 29, 2016 at Saints Peter and Paul Church, 666 Filbert Street, San Francisco. A Mass of Christian Burial will follow on Tuesday August 30, 2016 at 10:30am. Private interment.

(The San Francisco Chronicle)

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THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE HIPPIES

by Warren Hinckle (Ramparts, 1967)

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Allen Ginsberg remembers an evening in 1955 which could stand as well as any for the starting point of what was to become the most thorough repudiation of America's middlebrow culture since the expatriates walked out on the country in the 1930's. The vanguard of what was to be the Beat Generation had gathered at the 6 Gallery on Fillmore Street for a poetry reading moderated by Kenneth Rexroth, a respectable leftish intellectual who was later to become the Public Defender of the Beats. Lawrence Ferlinghetti was in the audience, and so were Kerouac and his then sidekick, Neal Cassady, listening to Michael McClure, Phil Lamantia, Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen read their poetry. Ginsberg was there too, and delighted everyone with a section of the still unfinished "Howl," better known to Beats as the Declaration of Independence.

Two distinct strains in the underground movement of the '50s were represented at this salient gathering. One was a distinctly fascist trend, embodied in Kerouac, which can be recognized by a totalitarian insistence on action and nihilism, and usually accompanied by a Superman concept. This strain runs — deeper and less silent — through the hippie scene today. It is into this fascist bag that you can put Kesey and his friends, the Hell's Angels, and, in a more subtle way, Timothy Leary.

The other, majority, side of the Beats was a cultural reaction to the existential brinkmanship forced on them by the Cold War, and a lively attack on the concurrent rhetoric of complacency and self-satisfaction that pervaded the literary establishment all the way from the Atlantic Monthly to Lionel Trilling. Led by men like Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti, the early Beats weighed America by its words and deeds, and found it pennyweight. They took upon themselves the role of conscience for the machine. They rejected all values and, attempting to carve a new creative force, they told America to "go fuck itself."

America reacted, predictably, with an obscenity trial. …

The danger in the hippie movement is more than overcrowded streets and possible hunger riots this summer. If more and more youngsters begin to share the hippie political posture of unrelenting quietism, the future of activist, serious politics is bound to be affected. The hippies have shown that it can be pleasant to drop out of the arduous task of attempting to steer a difficult, unrewarding society. But when that is done, you leave the driving to the Hell's Angels.

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NotNever

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THE 2015 COUNTY AG REPORT is pretty puny without including pot stats, our lead export crop. Over the years we see a decline in a real economy based on timber, fish, apples and pears, sheep and cattle, to a total ag product worth only $221.8 million. Wine grapes for '15 were valued at $88.2 million while timber came in at a mere $83.7 million. Government, if you include teachers and the rest of the ever-larger edu-apparat, is the County's largest employer.

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MENDOCINO COUNTY CROP REPORT, 2015

(Excerpt from introduction) — The total gross agricultural value for all commodities produced in 2015 was $221,840,400 which represents a 3% increase compared to the 2014 value of $214,475,900. The leading agricultural commodity continues to be wine grapes, at $88,287,000. Agricultural production, excluding timber, totaled $138,110,100. Timber represents the second highest value commodity, with a gross “at mill” value of $83,730,300. Mendocino County ranked 5th in the state in timber volumes and produced roughly 7.5% of the state’s total timber harvest in 2015. The small increase in the overall gross value for all commodities in 2015 resulted primarily from improved returns for timber, pears and pasture and range. A 32 % increase in pear tonnage, coupled with improved returns, resulted in a 50% increase in gross dollar value. For apples, decreased tonnage overall counteracted elevated price per ton returns, resulting in a value nearly equal to 2014. Overall cattle returns were lower, even with favorable market prices most of the year. Prior years of herd size reductions and the need to maintain or start increasing herd size resulted in fewer overall animals going to auction. Increased production in milk could not offset lower returns, resulting in a drop in overall valuation compared to 2014.

Full Report:

http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/agriculture/pdf/2015_crop_report_complete.pdf

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COUNTY CLERK NEEDS AN EDUCATION

Observers of the vote counting after the June primary election got a rude awakening from County Clerk Sue Ranochak. Thinking they were just going to do what California law allows and encourages citizens to do – observe the counting of ballots in their local elections office - the women got instead hostile and high-handed treatment. Mrs. Ranochak apparently thinks anyone who is observing an election ballot count is part of some conspiracy aimed at playing ‘gotcha’ with her office. She makes it clear they are there at her convenience and that she will not allow any funny business. She views anyone wishing to observe the process as someone she must keep at a distance and provide as little real opportunity to observe as possible. The problem is that her attitude is backwards, misguided, and we would venture as far as to say not legal. That’s probably why the women who tried to observe the ballot count in June have filed a complaint with the California Secretary of State’s Office. The law is clear. Observers are meant to be in the room with the ballots, able to see each ballot as it is counted. They are allowed to be in the room when provisional ballots are validated. Mrs. Ranochak is wrongly convinced that outsiders should not be allowed to actually see a ballot up close enough to see what’s on it. The reason that’s wrong is that ballot privacy is only a concern when the person who just voted has the ballot in hand and can wave it around for anyone to see. Once the ballot is in the box, no one can say whose ballot it is. So seeing a ballot being counted does not give an observer any clue as to who cast it. The same can be said for provisional ballots. First, the envelope which holds the ballot and contains the name and other information must be confirmed. At that point it is impossible to know how that person voted. No reason not to let someone watch the process. Once the ballot is taken out of the envelope and stacked with the rest of the anonymous ballots, again, there’s no reason not to let observers in to watch. Mrs. Ranochak instead forced observers to watch through small windows behind closed doors, or at distances in a room from which they could not see, or were blocked by cardboard boxes placed strategically in the way. We also learned in this process that Mrs. Ranochak has a hand picked cadre of counters who are given no impetus by her to do it quickly. We will give Mrs. Ranochak the benefit of the doubt and assume that she simply doesn’t know or understand the elections law. She needs to get up to speed by November because there’s no doubt there will be observers wanting to test her process when they have read Carole Brodsky’s fine three-part series on this issue beginning in today’s edition.

K.C. Meadows (Courtesy, the Ukiah Daily Journal)

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BigPharma

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SONYA NESCH WRITES: Sheriff Tom Allman and I will be on a call-in Mendocinotv show on the Sheriff's Initiative at 6 pm Wednesday August 31. You can also comment on their website under the notice of the show.

Our Initiative website is http://revivementalhealthservices.com

Check it out. As you know, "Right now, people suffering from mental illness and addiction do not get the help they need. As taxpayers, we pay for expensive, ineffective, temporary solutions. Let's create the infrastructure to provide appropriate, local, long-term solutions."

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Naturally Mendocino will host a Forum on the Mental Health Initiative for Mendocino County

Hosted by Skip Taube

Call (707)964-0101 to participate in the discussion or chat at https://livestream.com/accounts/62078/events/6056365

Currently, Mendocino County does not have facilities for inpatient treatment of psychiatric and substance use disorders. People who need these services either don’t get them, or wind up in jail, or must be sent to hospitals several hours away - an ineffective system that is enormously costly to Mendocino County

The Proposition Will:

Raise sales tax by half a cent for five years to raise $20 million for new facilities that will provide crisis residential and psychiatric inpatient treatment, alcohol and drug treatment, and training for first responders and mental health professionals;

Create a special fund for the money raised, and a commission of citizens and public officials to oversee its use;

Build facilities that serve all of Mendocino County with the services we need locally, creating jobs and providing better quality of care.

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MCN RESTAURANT NOTES

<1> Don't know if I said this before, but I gotta rave about the new Noyo River Grill down in the North Harbor, had a superb lunch today! No, I am not a stakeholder, just a grateful aficionado of nice eateries hereabouts! Great food, perfect view. And the piece de resistance — a great deck so my dogs can enjoy the afternoon with me! Watching the boats, and a real show by three very frisky seals mid-harbor. Now that is how to do a nice Sunday afternoon! And after another Great Day in Elk, pretty much aces the Coastal Perfection!

<2> I'll add my recommendation to one for Django's.  That's a bit further down the harbor road towards the ocean.  We've eaten there twice.  The food is good, the fish and chips very good, and the music was good one time and terrific the other time.  I don't even know the name of the owners.  Nice place.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, August 28, 2016

Antonsen, Ball, Barnett
Antonsen, Ball, Barnett

JORDAN ANTONSEN, Weott/Ukiah. Drunk in public.

MARTIN BALL, Ukiah. Drunk in public, resisting, probation revocation.

CRAIG BARNETT, Fort Bragg. Community Supervision violation.

Bautista, Brackett, DeGroot (Frequent flyer.)
Bautista, Brackett, DeGroot (Frequent flyer.)

DOROTHY BAUTISTA, San Francisco/Point Arena. Domestic battery.

CRYSTAL BRACKETT, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

JENNIFER DEGROOT, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

Gage, Gustin, Hoisington, Kaye
Gage, Gustin, Hoisington, Kaye

KARL GAGE, Covelo. Probation revocation.

RICHARD GUSTIN, Willits. DUI.

MICHAEL HOISINGTON, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

ALEXANDER KAYE, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

Larsen, Magdaleno, Tinsley, Wilson
Larsen, Magdaleno, Tinsley, Wilson

JONATHAN LARSEN, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

GERARDO MAGDALENO, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, no license, resisting, probation revocation.

JENNIFER TINSLEY, Lucerne/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

SEAN WILSON, Willits. Domestic assault, protective order violation.

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SPOTTY JUST ABOUT GONE

From the PD, 8/28/16

SACRAMENTO – Spotted owl added to endangered list.

Wildlife officials say the northern spotted owl has been listed under the California Endangered Species Act. The state’s Fish and Game Commission voted unanimously on Friday to add the threatened bird to the list, ending a four-year process by the Environmental Protection Information Center, or EPIC. EPIC Program Director Tom Wheeler called it a “small step toward recovery.” Scientists say that owl numbers are now dropping at an annual rate of 3.8 percent. Five years ago, the rate was 2.8 percent. The northern spotted owl was labeled as a “threatened species” under the Federal Species Act in 1990 but the owls’ population has continued to decline. Experts say changing the owl’s status from threatened to endangered could lead to efforts to increase owl habitat on federal lands.

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THIS WEEK AT THE UKIAH LIBRARY

www.mendolibrary.org

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BURNERS LIGHT THE FUSE!

Thousands of 'dreamers and doers' descend on Black Rock City for world famous counter-culture festival that operates purely on barter system

BurningMan1

Burning Man kicked off on Sunday as thousands of revelers made their way into the Nevada Desert for eight days of art and alternative living.

The annual festival, which began in 1986 as a bonfire, takes place in Nevada's Black Rock Desert.

Thirty years after its first incarnation, the event is so populous with tens of thousands of people attending, the dried up lake where the event is held becomes Black Rock City.

Black Rock City is 'a temporary metropolis dedicated to community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance', Burning Man's website says.

On Sunday, hundreds of RVs began rolling into the Black Rock Desert, carrying thousands of revelers to Burning Man.

Pictures of unique art began leaking from the event as attendees posted pictures to Instagram.

One image showed a giant honey bear, while another showed a red sign that said 'Virgin On The Rocks'.

BurningMan2

At Burning Man, participants can visit art installations and participate in camps. This year's camps include an annex for spandex aficionados and the festival's popular air-conditioned Orgy Dome.

About 70,000 people attended Burning Man last year. More than 3,200 of them arrived via a temporary airport built especially for the festival, USA Today reported.

No currency is exchanged at Burning Man, with festival goers exchanging goods instead and operating as a ‘gifting society’. Money can only be used to buy ice and coffee.

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Ten Principles of Burning Man

Radical Inclusion

Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.

Gifting

Burning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.

Decommodification

In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.

Radical Self-reliance

Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.

Radical Self-expression

Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.

Communal Effort

Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.

Civic Responsibility

We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.

Leaving No Trace

Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.

Participation

Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.

Immediacy

Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.

Source: http://burningman.org

Volunteers began putting together the Black Rock City Airport about two weeks ago. The FAA keeps in touch with its managers, but doesn't have an official role in the private airport - and neither does the TSA.

In the past, Burning Man has been attended by tech moguls including CEOs Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg.

(Daily Mail On-Line)

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FISH AND GAME COMMISSION ADOPTS MARINE PROTECTED AREA MASTER PLAN - THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

by Dan Bacher

The California Fish and Game Commission on Wednesday, August 24, adopted the controversial Master Plan for Marine Protected Areas in California that delays regional scientific reviews of MPAs, as originally promised, from every five years to every ten years.

After a very short discussion and hearing public comment, the Commission by a 4-0 vote approved text related to traditional ecological knowledge and then adopted the proposed final Master Plan for Marine Protected Areas and the Marine Life Protection Program pursuant to the Marine Life Protection Act (Pursuant to Section 2850, et seq., Fish and Game Code)."

The Commission had already voted to supported the plan with the 10 year reviews in previous meetings, in spite of hearing considerable testimony from anglers opposing it. The approval of the plan, with the addition of Traditional Ecological Text, was a mere formality.

I made five points in my testimony before Commission President Eric Sklar, Vice President Jaque Hostler-Carmesin, Commissioner Anthony C Williams and Commissioner Peter Silva regarding “the Good, the Bad and the Ugly” in the Master Plan:

The Good: First, I strongly support the inclusion of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) from California Indians in the Master Plan. This is long overdue, considering that the marine protected areas were “completed “ in December 2012 without one single Tribal scientist ever being allowed to serve on the Science Advisory Teams for the MLPA Initiative.

The Bad: Second, the proposal breaks the original promise given to anglers by officials that regional reviews of the alleged "marine protected areas" created under the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative would be conducted every five years. The new plan changes the regional reviews to once every ten years, a move that anglers and public trust advocates, including myself, strongly oppose because it results in less frequent scientific monitoring of the MPAs.

Here’s what the MLPA Initiative South Coast News, the official publication of the Initiative, actually said on October 16,2009, contradicting claims by Commissioners that this promise to conduct five year reviews was never made:

“Q: If an area is closed as an MPA will it always be closed?

A: Not necessarily. The MLPA specifically requires monitoring, research and evaluation at selected sites to facilitate adaptive management of MPAs and ensure the system meets its goals and objectives. Within the MLPA master plan, it is recommended that the MPA network be evaluated approximately every five years. As MPAs are re-assessed for effectiveness, changes may be necessary, either to individual MPAs or the network as a whole. This may mean changing boundaries and/or allowances for extractive activities depending on how well MPAs are meeting goals. Just because an area is closed to one type of use or another does not mean that it will always be that way.”

The Ugly: Third, the plan does nothing to make the faux "marine protected areas" created under the MLPA Initiative into real ones. The alleged "Yosemites of the Sea" created under the privately funded initiative fail to protect the ocean from fracking, oil spills, offshore oil drilling, pollution, military testing and all human impacts other than sustainable fishing and gathering.

Fourth, the plan accepts as legitimate the tainted "marine protected areas" created under the helm of a Big Oil lobbyist and other corporate operatives with numerous conflicts of interest.

Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association and relentless advocate for the expansion of fracking and offshore oil drilling and the evisceration of California's environmental laws, chaired the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the Southern California Coast at the same time that the region's marine waters were being fracked by her industry.

She also served on the task forces for the Central Coast, North Central Coast and North Coast. The Commission should support an investigation into what Reheis-Boyd knew about fracking off the coast at the time she served as Chair of the task force. (www.dfg.ca.gov/...)

Fifth, the proposal fails to challenge the terminally flawed "science" employed to create MPAs under the "leadership" of a convicted embezzler. A federal judge in San Francisco on May 20, 2014 sentenced Ron LeValley of Mad River Biologists, the former co-chair of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Science Advisory Team for the North Coast, to serve 10 months in federal prison for his role in a conspiracy to embezzle over $852,000 in federal funds from the Yurok Tribe.

In spite of numerous complaints, the Fish and Game Commission refused to review the legitimacy of the "science" used to create the "marine protected areas" developed under his helm at the same time that he was engaged in a conspiracy to embezzle money from the Yurok Tribe."(www.dailykos.com/...)

I urged the Commission to finally address these unresolved issues posed by the "marine protected areas" created under the privately-funded MLPA Initiative. As expected, no Commissioners, all appointed by Governor Jerry Brown, replied to my comments and those that others made before the Commission on this issue.

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PULITZER PRIZE RECIPIENT AND EMMY AWARD WINNER, HEDRICK SMITH, on KMEC Radio, Monday, August 29, at 1 pm, Pacific Time

John Sakowicz and Sid Cooperrider interview Hedrick Smith on KMEC Radio.

Smith is the former New York Times Washington Bureau Chief who has gone on to publish five books and produce more than 50 hours of long-form documentary television. His most recent book, "Who Stole the American Dream?", which came out in September 2012, landed on The New York Times national bestseller’s list,

In 1971, Smith was a member of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for its work on the Pentagon Papers. He won a second Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1974 for stories from Russia and Eastern Europe.

Smith has also won many television awards. His Frontline shows, "The Wall Street Fix" and "Can You Afford to Retire?" won Emmys and two other awards and his Frontline shows, "Critical Condition" and "Tax Me If You Can" were nominated.

Smith has won or shared the Columbia-Dupont Gold Baton for the year’s best public affairs program on U.S. television twice. He has also won the George Polk, George Peabody and Hillman awards for his excellence in reporting along with two national public service awards.

See: http://hedricksmith.com/about-hedrick-smith/

KMEC Radio broadcasts at 105.1 FM in Ukiah, CA. We also stream live from the web at www.kmecradio.org

All of our shows are archived and available as podcasts. We may also post some shows to our Youtube channel.

Please support all-volunteer KMEC Radio and the Mendocino Environmental Center by becoming a member. We are your community radio station.

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THE HAIRY-KNUCKLED ANGELS OF OUR BETTER NATURE.

"Rocks and logs can bite like dogs but words will never hurt me." (Valentine, in MirrorMask)

The recording of Friday night's (2016-08-26) KNYO and KMEC Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show is available to download and keep and skip around in via http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

A pretty fast, energetic show. I’m over the cold, and I was in Fort Bragg at the station for this one, so I could make as much noise as the material required to be made, rather more of a trombone in a trombone bar than an alto recorder in a posh hotel lobby. A particularly interesting poetry section. The /real/ holy hand grenade. Devolution in brain size. Mothra as metaphor. Zoological bullying. Sex robot brothel future. Single-payer health care. The feminist vagenda. A particularly appealing approach to atheism. Further Koch Bros perfidy. A defense of the classic Disney villainix. The latest installment of Rob Schneider’s riveting /My Own Private Shock Corridor/. A Popular Mechanics reporter's week on the Conspira-Sea Cruise. Etc.

Also at http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find links to a shiny selection of things to read and play with and learn about, that wouldn't necessarily work via radio, but that I found while putting radio shows together. Just scads of things. Literally mountains of great stuff, going back years, and all of it free. So much joyful snark and snee and timeless and timeful information, oh, oh, oh.

Marco McClean

memo@mcn.org

http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

13 Comments

  1. BB Grace August 29, 2016

    re: “They rejected all values and, attempting to carve a new creative force, they told America to “go fuck itself.”

    And America (Boomers) that listened, got to work to accomplish the demand.

    Are we fucked enough yet?

  2. LouisBedrock August 29, 2016

    Jim Updegraff’s repeated warnings about the degradation of the environment have been alarming; however, Mr. Updegraff may be understating the problem.

    “Humanity’s impact on the Earth is now so profound that a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – needs to be declared, according to an official expert group who presented the recommendation to the International Geological Congress in Cape Town on Monday.

    The new epoch should begin about 1950, the experts said, and is likely to be defined by the radioactive elements dispersed across the planet by nuclear bomb tests, although an array of other signals, including plastic pollution, soot from power stations, concrete, and even the bones left by the global proliferation of the domestic chicken are now under consideration.”

    “Evidence of the Anthropocene–
    Human activity has:

    —Pushed extinction rates of animals and plants far above the long-term average. The Earth is now on course to see 75% of species become extinct in the next few centuries if current trends continue.

    —Increased levels of climate-warming CO2 in the atmosphere at the fastest rate for 66m years, with fossil-fuel burning pushing levels from 280 parts per million before the industrial revolution to 400ppm and rising today.

    —Put so much plastic in our waterways and oceans that microplastic particles are now virtually ubiquitous, and plastics will likely leave identifiable fossil records for future generations to discover.

    —Doubled the nitrogen and phosphorous in our soils in the past century with our fertilizer use. This is likely to be the largest impact on the nitrogen cycle in 2.5bn years.

    —Left a permanent layer of airborne particulates in sediment and glacial ice such as black carbon from fossil fuel burning.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/29/declare-anthropocene-epoch-experts-urge-geological-congress-human-impact-earth

  3. Rick Weddle August 29, 2016

    re: ‘…fucked enough yet?’
    There’s a lot Hinkle never learned about ‘hippies.’ Like, there were only three (3), total, ever,…things like that. Nobody, even Hinkle, can see All, and there is no significant record of those who can always recognize what they DO happen to notice. For a Press Star, Hinkle seems to have fallen for the Formula Groups Method solidly; you simply sort folks by color, age, income, wardrobe, and so on, then you can tidily exalt your favorites, and bad-mouth those you don’t know and don’t want to. It’s less trouble, in the short run, than actually thinking. It can circle about and get a solid grip on your backside later on, though.

  4. Jim Armstrong August 29, 2016

    A few elections ago, I was informed that one of the election department’s hand writing experts had determined that my signature was not my signature and that my ballot had not and would not be counted.
    It turns out the “secret” ballot I mailed in is still in the envelope with my name and signature on it and is stored somewhere for an undisclosed period of time.

  5. Alice Chouteau August 29, 2016

    Where did Hinckle get the impression of ‘unrelenting quietism’ and passivity by the hippy movement politicially? In 1967, when he wrote that, hippies WERE the anti-war movement in New York City…huge demonstrations there, and all across the country. On the Mendocino coast, hippies were activists for environmental issues.
    AC

    • LouisBedrock August 29, 2016

      Thank you Alice.

      I grew during the Vietnam war. My cousin Alan was blown up by a mine, so the name Bedrock appears on the Wall.

      Friends fled to Canada to avoid participating in that hideous imperial war. Others were beaten up and imprisoned. We shouted, demonstrated, occupied buildings, and passed out leaflets.

      After Kent State and Jackson State, a friend of mine was handing out anti-war leaflets. She was told “I wish they’d killed all of you”.

      We “hippies” closed down universities, marched on Washington, held vigils, and raised hell. Some us served in the army and organized resistence from within the machine.

      I like Hinckle, but ‘unrelenting quietism’ and passivity by the hippy movement politicially’–Bullshit!

  6. Jim Updegraff August 29, 2016

    Louis: The determination of when the anthropocene started has been under discussion for some time. I would agree 1950 would be a good starting time for the reasons cited in the report. I am busy with a Quaker project but I will have comments on a couple of other items in today’s AVA Also, I will have a letter to the editor in a couple of days about new problems that have come up because of climate change.

    • LouisBedrock August 29, 2016

      Roger that, Jim.

    • George Hollister August 29, 2016

      A good starting point would be about 2 million years ago when people started using fire. The use of fire by people, that changed landscapes, had a continental impact. In the “New World”, this did not happen until about 12,000 years ago. The environment of the New World, 12,000 years ago became a human world. Good book is, “1491” by Charles Mann.

      What followed the discovery of fire, were a number of human developments that at each conception, transformed again the environment people lived in. And the human population grew. The use of coal and then oil, as energy, drove the industrial revolution but was just one of many developments along the way of human evolution. Of course we tend to be myopic on these things. The way it was 100 years ago was “pristine and natural”. Hardly.

      • LouisBedrock August 30, 2016

        Thus spake the apologist for the lumber industry.
        Did you even look at the article in THE GUARDIAN?

        “The current epoch, the Holocene, is the 12,000 years of stable climate since the last ice age during which all human civilisation developed. But the striking acceleration since the mid-20th century of carbon dioxide emissions and sea level rise, the global mass extinction of species, and the transformation of land by deforestation and development mark the end of that slice of geological time, the experts argue. The Earth is so profoundly changed that the Holocene must give way to the Anthropocene.”

        Did you get that George? DEFORESTATION. And let’s not forget the effects the dispersion of radioactive materials from the testing of bombs and the emissions and waste products of reactors like Strontium 90 (half life of 28 years, radioactive for about 550 years), Cesium 137 (half life of 30 years, radioactive for 600 years), and Plutonium (half life of 24,000 years, radioactive for 500,000 years. One-millionth of a gram of Plutonium is a carcinogenic dose according to Dr. Helen Caldicott.)

        George Hollister’s comments on the environment have as much validity as the Pope’s comments on overpopulation, Ford or GM spokespeople’s views on public transportation, or Monsanto’s assurances about GMOs.

  7. George Hollister August 29, 2016

    So the State has now stepped into the Spotted Owl arena. Why?

    “Experts say changing the owl’s status from threatened to endangered could lead to efforts to increase owl habitat on federal lands.”

    What needs to change is the Spotted Owl narrative that ran off the tracks 25 years ago. The narrative is that Spotted Owl numbers are declining because of less “habitat”, whatever that means. It has something to do with “old growth”. Of course logging is the number one reason for this supposed reduction of “habitat”

    The reality is Spotted Owls do well where there is a lot of food for them to eat, which is in second growth forests, not “old growth”. Their numbers are declining because of the increased presences of a close relative, and more aggressive competitor, the Barred Owl, which has recently moved into Spotted Owl territory from the East. Increasing owl habitat on federal lands, or anywhere else, is not going to change the reality. Unless we kill Barred Owls, on a mass scale, or start to propagate Spotted Owls, Spotted Owls appear doomed. Of course saving the Spotted Owl requires changing the 40 year old narrative, that the Spotted Owl decline is the fault of logging. But there is too much invested in the false narrative, for too long, for that to happen.

  8. Rick Weddle August 30, 2016

    re: ‘…unrelenting quietism…’ among ‘hippies’…

    Real Hippie #1, JP, walked across the crosswalk with Real Hippie #2, Johnny, in Richmond, California, in broad daylight in 1966. Their wild hair bushed about their heads like fuzzy halos, like ungodly, scruffy angels of disrepute, their bellbottom jeans flapping merrily, bells jangling. A car waiting at the light honked, startling them, and a big red face behind the wheel leaned out and hollered,’Hey, faggot! Are you a girl or a boy?!’ JP never altered his rhythm at all, he just side-stepped enough to approach the driver’s door in a step and a half, and nailed the loudmouthed driver hard enough by his left eye to knock him across the car into his passenger on the other side. JP and Johnny proceeded on their stroll like nothing unusual had transpired. There was honking and hollering behind them for a while.

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