QUOTE of the day from economist (and former Reagan Administration Assistant Treasurer) Paul Craig Roberts: “The US economy cannot recover, because the US economy depends on consumer expenditures for more than 70% of its activity. The offshoring of middle class jobs has stopped the rise in middle class income and caused a drop in consumer spending power. The Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan compensated for the absence of US consumer income growth with a policy of easy credit and a policy of driving up home prices with low interest rates. This policy allowed people to refinance their homes and to spend the inflated equity in their homes that Greenspan’s policy created. In other words, an increase in consumer indebtedness and dissavings drove the economy in the place of the missing growth in consumer incomes. Today, consumers are too indebted to borrow, and banks are too insolvent to lend. Therefore, there is no possibility of further debt expansion as a substitute for real income growth. An offshored economy is a dead and exhausted economy. The consequences of a dead economy when the government is wasting trillions of dollars in wars of naked aggression and in bailouts of fraudulent financial institutions is a government budget that can only be financed by printing money. The consequence of printing money when jobs have been moved offshore is an inflationary depression. This catastrophe could begin to unfold this year or in 2013. If Europe’s problems worsen, flight into dollars could delay sharp rises in US inflation until 2014.

VETERANS should beware of Mitt Romney for lots of reasons, especially this one: Romney has announced his phony baloney 11-11-11 plan. It’s not a goofy flat tax plan like Herman Cain’s, it’s worse. 11-11-11 was the date Romney proposed doing away with VA Medical and replacing it with vouchers for private insurance. Only Veterans wealthy enough to meet the co-pay required to get private insurance would get healthcare under the Romney Plan. Some 500,000 Iraq/Afghanistan Vets have gotten VA care out of 2.5 million who have been deployed. Mitt’s plan is consistent with the Republican Party line that the sick should pay for their own care and only then at huge profit for other Republicans. Mitt did his bit during the Vietnam War via Mormon missionary work in the Provence wine region of France. In the 2008 Iowa primary season he told a Vet who challenged his support for the Iraq war that while nobody in his family has ever served, “my [five] sons are doing their patriotic duty by working on my campaign.”

TOM BIRDSELL is a member of the Mendocino Coast Hospital District Board of Directors. Last week he warned that the County’s only public hospital is facing financial hard times. Hospital CEO, the capable Raymond Hino, the man who restored Coast to fiscal health, said the new crisis has been brought on by “….. expenses rising at a faster pace than revenues, rising debt load, the economy and reduced utilization. For the past two years, we have been able to mask poor operating results with non-operating revenue; we can no longer do that. The affect of non-action at this time will be to jeopardize the future of MCDH. We cannot allow that to happen.” A number of cost-savings steps are being considered.

FOUR MEMBERS of the California Public Utilities Commission have approved a proposal that “allows” PG&E to charge residential customers an initial fee of $75, plus $10 each month, to opt out of the company’s controversial $2.2 billion SmartMeter program. CPUC President Michael Peevey, who drafted this little piece of extortion and functions merely as an extension of the power monopoly he allegedly supervises in his public office, described the shakedown this way: “We want to empower customers, and we think this a major step to do so.” Some empowerment. Some 150,000 households led manyy people who consider the Smartmeters a health hazard or an violation of their privacy, are expected to pay up to get out. PG&E will take in $11 million up front plus $18 million a year from the people who opt out. The meters save PG&E many millions of dollars they otherwise paid human meter readers.

ACCORDING to a little birdee

The Supe who’s always so wordy

Will soon leave Mendo behind

Then Mendo will find

That they’re much better off with Dan Gjerde

]]> http://theava.com/archives/13972/feed 0 http://theava.com/archives/13922 http://theava.com/archives/13922#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2012 06:19:44 +0000 The AVA http://theava.com/?p=13922 THE MENDOCINO Coast Recreation and Parks District Board has voted to close the CV Starr Aquatic Center pending a special election to fund it. The spiffy indoor pool and exercise facility opened in 2009. “The district does not have sufficient capital to continue operating the swimming pool,” said the Center’s Executive Director Jim Hurst (who has been volunteering his time for months). Hurst said the complex has been running a deficit of $22,000 to $29,000 a month. Fort Bragg voters will decide on March 6 whether or not to approve a half-percent sales tax projected to generate some $700,000 to revive the Center. It will close on February 15th pending the election.

THAT 14-YEAR OLD Santa Rosa girl who died during a sleepover at her home last summer overdosed on GHB, part of a class of “date rape” drugs popular among young people at dance clubs and raves. Takeimi Rao died from drinking a fatal dose of Gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid mixed in a soft drink. GHB is popular among the young and the dumb for its euphoric effect. It was classified as a food and dietary supplement and sold in health food stores in early 1990, according to government reports. Within the year it was deemed dangerous and banned for over-the-counter sales.

RESEARCH by scientists at Humboldt State University and the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) says the onset of sudden oak death in North Coast forests could help fuel forest fires. The non-native disease, which infested trees in the Bay Area in the mid-1990s, is found in 14 coastal counties in California, from Monterey to Humboldt. Sudden Oak Death thrives in the coastal climate, and has killed hundreds of thousands of tanoaks and true oaks in the last 15 years. Tanoak, which dies quickly from the disease, is one of the most flammable oaks in California. It is also the hottest burning hardwood in North America.

STATE CONTROLLER John Chiang said Tuesday that California will run out of cash by early March if the Legislature does not take immediate action. He recommends borrowing and delaying some payments in order to deal with the shortfall, which he projects will last seven weeks. Absent that kind of action, the State will have to issue IOUs and delay tax refunds. The controller said the nut of the problem is that the state is spending $2.6 billion more than was included in the budget while tax revenues are $2.6 billion below projections. Chiang said that leaders need to find $3.3 billion to bridge the seven-week period.

WORKERS at Kaiser Permanente throughout California have gone on strike over contract disputes involving Kaiser’s mental health and optical employees. The National Union of Healthcare Workers says its 4,000 Kaiser employees are staging a 24-hour strike over proposed cuts to health care and retirement benefits. It’s their fourth walkout since contract negotiations started in 2010. Union leaders say as many as 17,000 Kaiser nurses from the California Nurses Association could join the action in solidarity. The union represents mental health and optical employees at Kaiser. Kaiser officials say the union has failed to respond to their proposals on wages and benefits. All Kaiser hospitals and medical offices are expected to remain open during the strike, with Kaiser relying on replacement workers and nurse managers for additional staffing.

LEARN the secrets of Floodgate Farm Salad Mix: growing techniques and medicinal properties of the flavorful herbs, flowers and greens. These classes feature the late winter salad garden, and you will get some seeds for the planting season along with tasting the salad, a green smoothie and kim chi. $20 donation or work trade. You may bring something to share for potluck at the end of the Elk class and beginning of the Boonville class. Bill Taylor and Jaye Moscariello will teach both classes; Wendy Read may coteach on March 3. For more info call Bill or Jaye at 707-877-1668 or visit www.touchtheearthmusic.com

THERE WAS money to build the pool

Everyone thought it would be cool

But funding operations

On only donations

Is bordering on being downright cruel

Marcia and I were walking on Big River Beach yesterday, the wet sand firm underfoot—Big River swollen and muddy from the recent deluge, a light rain falling.

As we reveled in the windy wet, free from our various indoor practices, our conversation ran from gossip to silence to politics to silence to memoir to silence to what we might have for supper. And at some point Marcia asked me about a speaking engagement I’ve accepted, a keynote address at a writers’ conference, the dreaded topic—The Creative Process—chosen for me by the conference planners. I say dreaded because I think most of what I’ve ever read about the so-called creative process is hogwash, and I fear that anything I might add to the dreaded subject would be hogwash, too.

Long ago I worked in a day care center overseeing a mob of little kids. The day care center was located ten minutes from Stanford University and we were forever being visited by earnest graduate students writing theses about educational techniques, educational philosophies, educational processes, and God knows what else pertaining to mobs of little kids. Having no degree of any kind, let alone a degree in Small Child Management, I found it highly amusing to be the frequent recipient of attention from these humorless academics, some of whom, I’ll wager, went on to author textbooks for aspiring nursery school teachers, kindergarten teachers, and other Small Child Management educators. Could it be that information gathered from interviews with me conducted by these earnest humorless people helped shape curricula for early childhood education in America? I hope so, but I doubt it.

One day as I was supervising my mob of kiddies in our outdoor playground, a woman named Stella, a doctoral candidate at Stanford, stood beside me, clipboard in hand, asking questions about my supervisory process, a process I had theretofore never tried to elucidate to anyone.

Stella: I note at this time that all the children seem to be safely and happily occupied. I have recorded a current population distribution of one group of five children, two groups of three, four dyads, and three solitary individuals. Would you say this is a typical distribution of the total?

Todd: Um…well, certainly not atypical.

Stella: Would you characterize these as established groups or new and/or developing configurations?

Todd: The configurations are ever changing, though girls tend to hang out with girls, and boys with boys, especially among four and five-year olds. Two and three-year olds tend to be more gender polyrhythmic, if you know what I mean.

Stella: (makes a note) We’ll come back to gender aggregates, but for now I’m curious to know what specific actions you took to precipitate this particular distribution of individuals and groups, and if you employed any specific techniques for settling the children into these successful play actions?

Todd: Are you serious?

Stella: Yes. I have noted zero incidents of crying, fighting, or moping in the entire population for over fifteen minutes now, which defines these play actions and this particular population distribution as successful.

Todd: Could you repeat the question?

Stella: (reading) What techniques did you employ for settling the children into these successful play actions?

Todd: Let me think about that for a minute. (shouting across the playground at a five-year-old boy about to destroy a sand castle just completed by a four-year-old girl) Don’t do it, Lance.

Stella: Wow. (flips to a new page) Would you characterize that as a tone-based warning or a content-based warning?

Todd: Both. And now if you’ll excuse me, Megan is about to slug Bianca and I would like to intervene before their play action becomes highly unsuccessful.

“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”— Yogi Berra

I want to be helpful to people who aspire to write, so I will try to come up with an inspiring keynote address—because inspiration can sometimes get the ball rolling—though in truth there is no “the creative process.” Each of us has to roll our own ball our own way, and that’s all there is to it: rolling your own creative ball. I use rolling to mean doing, acting, working—everything else is just talking about rolling, which is not the same as rolling, believe you me.

“It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.” — W.H. Auden

Thirteen years ago I published The Writer’s Path, a book of my original writing exercises, and before the silly publisher took the book out-of-print, The Writer’s Path sold ten thousand copies with never a penny spent to promote that most helpful tome. Excellent used copies of The Writer’s Path can be found on the interweb for mere pennies plus the dreaded shipping charge.

I designed each exercise in the book to be a non-analytical way to practice a particular aspect of the writing process (not to be confused with the creative process.) For instance, many writers (as in most writers) have big trouble rewriting their initial drafts. Among the many underlying causes of this big trouble are: 1) rewriting skills are developed through thousands of hours of practice, and very few people are willing to work so hard for so little in return 2) rewriting is all about change, and most people are deathly afraid of change 3) rewriting reveals the inadequacies of the original drafts, and such revelations, especially for beginning writers, can be huge bummers.

So I came up with a series of exercises involving the swift creation and destruction and re-creation and re-destruction and re-creation of lines of words, intuitive processes that obviate fear and short-circuit analytical thinking—the great enemy of spontaneous word flow—to give writers invigorating rewriting workouts.

Writing, drawing, and playing music are muscular activities as well as mental processes, and I have no doubt that all original stories, pictures, and songs result from synergetic collaborations of our physical muscles with our cerebral muscles, along with valuable input from unseen agents of the unknowable, if you believe, as I do, in such fantastic nonsense.

“The world is a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.” — Sean O’Casey

When at 19 I embarked on a vagabond’s life and could not take a piano with me, I bought a guitar in the sprawling mercado of Guadalajara and taught myself how to play. A year later, having spent a good thousand hours developing a thumb-dominant style of picking and strumming, I stood on a sidewalk in Toronto, strumming and singing. And lo a miracle befell me. Yea verily, dozens of smiling Canadians threw coins and paper money into my dilapidated cardboard guitar case and thenceforth I was a professional musician. Not long after that initial sprinkle of heavenly largesse, I bought a much better guitar and for a time made a minimalist living as a troubadour.

Eventually my piano regained supremacy in my musical life and my guitar became (and remains) a sometimes friend. Two years ago, Marcia and I produced two groovacious CDs of instrumentals and songs featuring guitar and cello (When Light Is Your Garden and So Not Jazz), though of late my focus is on piano improvisations and Marcia is happily immersed in various classical music pursuits. But I digress.

What I set out to say was that I became a highly functional guitarist through thousands of hours of practice, and I always—this is key—used a thumb pick (on my right thumb) when I played the guitar. And then a few years ago I made a startling discovery, which was that unless my right thumb was actively involved in the playing of a tune, I (this body brain spirit consortium) had no idea where to put the fingers of my left hand to make the chords for any of the songs I knew. That is to say, my right thumb, for all intents and purposes, is the only part of me that really knows how to play my songs.

“People who write about spring training not being necessary have never tried to throw a baseball.” — Sandy Koufax

Marcia’s mother Opal is ninety-three and still drives her car all over Santa Rosa where she lives in her own apartment in a commodious retirement community. Two years ago, Opal took up pocket billiards, otherwise known as pool, playing twice a week with friends in the billiards room across the hall from the ping-pong room. When Marcia and I go to visit Opal, we play three or four games of pool with her every night, Marcia and Opal teamed up against Todd, their dyad getting two turns for every one of mine, which makes for a fairly even contest.

What I find most inspiring about Opal learning to play pool so late in life is that every time we play with her, she not only plays better than when we last played, she plays much better.

Todd and Marcia’s CDs are available at Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino and from UnderTheTableBooks.com  and NavarroRiverMusic.com.

THE MENDOCINO County Republican Central Committee will meet February 8, 2012, 7pm-9pm at the Yum Yum Tree Restaurant, 383 S. Main Street, Willits. No guns, please. For further information contact: Stan Anderson, 707-321-2592.

WE WERE STARTLED to hear that “the following cases were heard in Ten Mile Court. Monday, Jan. 23 Presiding: Visiting Judge, The Honorable Galen Hathaway.” Hathaway’s 80 if he’s a day and goes back to the Little Lake Judicial District, Willits, not that age should disqualify him. But Mendocino County has eight superior court judges and a magistrate. Six of the superior court judges are active while two seats remain vacant. Yet here’s Hathaway picking up a fat supplement to an already fat retirement check by sitting in as a “visiting judge” in Fort Bragg. And over in Ukiah we’ve got Leonard LaCasse sitting as a visiting judge. So where are our six judges at a time where there are fewer court cases being filed because Eyster is setting a lot of pot cases before they get to court? Mendocino County has a small army of retired judges serving as visiting judges all over the state, working as they choose for the big bucks.

A PROPELLER BEANIE event occurred at the Grace Hudson Museum last night (Tuesday) called “UFOs: Their Spiritual Mission and Role in Coming World Changes.” Co-sponsored by the Mendocino Environment Center and Sharing for Peace Network, the presentation advertised a Valley telephone number for information. The world is certainly gone to heck in a frayed handbasket, but it’s unlikely that ET and his friends would want to take over management.

WORKERS at Kaiser Permanente throughout California have gone on strike over contract disputes involving Kaiser’s mental health and optical employees. The National Union of Healthcare Workers says its 4,000 Kaiser employees are staging a 24-hour strike over proposed cuts to health care and retirement benefits. It’s their fourth walkout since contract negotiations started in 2010. Union leaders say as many as 17,000 Kaiser nurses from the California Nurses Association could join the action in solidarity. The union represents mental health and optical employees at Kaiser. Kaiser officials say the union has failed to respond to their proposals on wages and benefits. All Kaiser hospitals and medical offices are expected to remain open during the strike, with Kaiser relying on replacement workers and nurse managers for additional staffing.

THE END of pot permits and fees

Was done with edits with ease

But if they don’t stop there

The cupboard could be bare

If it’s left to the federales

MEMO OF THE WEEK.

From the weasel-lipped communiqué below you’d never know that the Boonville PTA has been ripped off for $23,000:

Dear Parents,

It was recently brought to our attention some problems with the finances in the PTAV’s bank account, an account separate from the district’s. PTAV and the district are working with law enforcement to determine who is responsible and to recover the funds. The PTAV Board is being restructured to better achieve the goals of the group. The PTAV’s mission has always been to support its members (parents and teachers) and create a closer relationship between home and school.

The PTAV Board is committed to rebuilding a positive and collaborative relationship with the parents, teachers, and members of the community at large. Please be patient while they work through this restructuring in the next couple of weeks.

The PTAV is a dynamic and active group of parents and school staff who have provided the help and funds to not only maintain, but to expand the programs in our school in the last five years. We are grateful for all the work and support this organization has provided.

Sincerely, JR Collins Superintendent; Donna Pierson-Pugh, Principal; Nicole Mclain, PTAV President

VETERAN conservationist and nationally known bear expert Gary Alt presents a one-hour slide show and talk on Sunday, February 5 at the Grace Hudson Museum. A popular and riveting speaker, Dr. Alt will educate us on the natural history and general ecology of all three of North America’s bear species–polar bears, brown bears, and black bears.The presentation is free and starts at 2 pm, with refreshments to follow. Visitors can also discover the Museum’s current exhibit, “Bear in Mind: The Story of the California Grizzly,” which closes on February 12. The Grace Hudson Museum and Sun House, as you absolutely must know by now but in case you don’t, is at 431 S. Main St. in Ukiah. General admission to the Museum is $4, $10 per family, $3 for students and seniors, and free to members or on the first Friday of the month. Give us a growl at 467-2836.

THERE’S A CERTAIN karmic justice in Air Quality District Manager Chris Brown’s imposition of a $123,000 fine on Mendocino County for “failure to conduct (an) asbestos survey prior to renovation of a commercial building” and “failure to properly notify [the Air Quality Management] District” before beginning the November renovation of its former Mental Health building at 860 N. Bush in Ukiah. Because…

BECAUSE MR. BROWN has gained a local reputation for imposing unreasonable requirements and fines on private companies for purely bureaucratic violations unrelated to actual air quality. Now he’s suing the County, which not only amounts to one branch of County government suing another, but here’s where the karma comes in, the Board of Supervisors also sits as the Air Quality Management District’s Board of Directors and has routinely signed off on Brown’s fines on everyone else. Air Quality is a state agency working under the auspices of the County, meaning the County signs off on its pass-through funding. Or doesn’t sign off on its pass-through funding, so Brown better watch it. Supervisor Pinches, bless him all his days, recently questioned Brown’s need for a brand new costly hybrid SUV, but most of the time Brown goes unchallenged. With Brown’s whacking the County to the tune of $123k over nothing at all, really, a lot of contractors fined by Brown are celebrating that the County is getting a taste of Brown’s arbitrary lash.

WE CONTINUE to be amazed whenever anyone expects marijuana laws to be “clarified” by state or federal officials. Late last year, pundits were saying that the State Supreme Court was expected to “clarify” pot laws by agreeing to hear the “Pack” case out of Long Beach where a lower court ruled that local jurisdictions couldn’t “permit” the growing of a federally illegal substance.

THEN last week we saw a headline that read, “Attorney General asks Legislature to clarify pot issues.” Attorney General Kamala Harris has sent letters to the state legislature asking it to “clarify” medical marijuana laws associated with cultivation and distribution, declaring that she has no intention of issuing “nonbinding guidelines.” Good luck in getting the legislature to clarify anything, and look for the pot laws to remain like the old joke about the baseball umpire: “I’ll show you the rule as soon as the ink is dry.”

MS. HARRIS told the legislature to review

The state’s pot laws and clarify at least a few

But we know they won’t clarify

Much less demystify.

They simply say to the public: Screw you.

WALMART got another five hours last Wednesday from the Ukiah Planning Commission. Long and short of it is that Ukiah officialdom is down to discussing the landscaping. Translation: The big expansion is a go. There’ll be more meetings and more denunciations of the Arkansas octopus, but expansion was built into the original approval and can’t really even by modified much. The monster that ate America marches on.

INTERESTING EVENT in Boonville last week. A bunch of boys went off campus at the noon hour to do their version of the movie, ‘Fight Club.’ When they straggled back bloody and bruised for a long afternoon of study and prayer, the high school principal, an uneven fellow named Tomlin, declared that henceforth the campus would be closed at lunch time and, additionally, 20 or so boys would be suspended for a day while the ringleaders would get more mandatory time off. One kid, who happened to be on probation, was packed off to juvenile hall. The discipline, in the ancient tradition of American high schools, was arbitrary, but the principal was unhappy for other reasons. Not only did the Fight Clubbers post their hijinks on the internet for global viewing, several of them had some pointed criticisms of principal Tomlin. Overall, so what? Teenage boys should be encouraged to bleed their hormonal lines once in a while, and this event was really no more serious than boys being boys. Which they aren’t allowed to be much anymore beneath the great PC mommy blanket that smothers all spontaneity, all joy, all life in educational Mendocino County.

FOX NEWS and related rightwing blowhards aside, during WWII the national debt was more than 100% of Gross Domestic Product, which it will probably be again soon. To beat back crippling debt, FDR, a member of the One Percent in the days the RC believed in at least a modicum of noblesse oblige, raised taxes on the big incomes to 90% where it stayed for 21 years. Capital gains were taxed at the same 90% rates as ordinary income. Did the ruling class disappear? Nope, they still made a lot of money and the general prosperity lifted all those boats the bullet heads are always claiming to want to lift. It’s simply not true that fair rates of taxation applied to the rich stifle free enterprise.

WE DEFY ANYONE to follow the babbling brook of supervisor Kendall Smith’s rhetoric, but here she is, verbatim, justifying even more money for supervisor’s salaries in a county where the average person earns $24,000 a year: “I think that these specifics on the motion are premature and I will go into that little bit. I believe that we need to look at elected official salaries collectively. We did that with the other electeds. We made a rather arbitrary stab by just taking a point in time to roll back those salaries. The reason we did that is that over time they had collectively received either five or six salary raises, meaning that the salaries were on an upward slope because they were tied to the department head bargaining units. Not so with the Board of Supervisors. So in effect setting our salary, or keeping our salary at $68,000 would be in sync with the timeframe that we hold the other elected supervisors to, other elected official salaries are, and that being the case…” and blah blah blah blah blah blah for another 10 minutes! As the unhinged solon from Fort Bragg rattled on and on, she waved a chart that she seemed to think justified more than the Supes’ $68,000 plus the usual array of fringes government people give themselves. The chart illustrated the supe’s salaries of nearby counties. Average them out and what do you get? You get that Smith isn’t making enough money screwing up County government.

SUPERVISOR HAMBURG isn’t quite as fuzzy-thinking as Smith but he’s close, and his reasoning with its arrogant class assumptions, is much more offensive: “My thinking about this is quite a bit simpler than Supervisor Smith’s,” he began, probably intending no irony. “For one thing, I feel like we just talked about this. I guess it was back last April. January? So it was January? A year ago. Okay. It really came up fast, I’ll tell you. Because I remember the arguments at that time was that we didn’t want this to be a job for only independently wealthy people. We didn’t want this to be a job that people did part-time because they couldn’t afford to live on the salary and perhaps even have a family, and I think even if at the $68,000 level that’s somewhat of a challenge. [!] The other thing though that concerns me about trying to knock this salary down further is that currently we are paid between, if you look at our MCLEMA [the Mendocino County Law Enforcement Management Association] chart that was in our packets, we are paid between the Administrative Services Manager I and a Substance Abuse Program Services Manager, according to the management tables. So currently we are paid between an admin service manager and a substance abuse program manager. And if we go down another $7,000 we will be paid between a staff Services Manager I and the Assistant Registrar of Voters. No matter how you slice it to some degree your worth to the organization is related to your pay scale, and I’m not saying that our salaries should be up at the levels of some of these comparatively high paid elected officials. But I think if we are paid like middle managers, that’s sort of where we are putting our value, that we have the value to the organization, to pick another department — a Sergeant, right around the salary of a Sergeant (in the Sheriff’s Department). How many sergeants do we have? I don’t know. So we are about there with the 13 or so sergeants. I don’t think we are middle management. Even though we get paid like middle management. We are in charge of a large operation here. I know that everybody on this board puts in a tremendous amount of hours. I know we just imposed this 10% cut around the county but we are somewhat different than all the other positions in the county. The Board of Supervisors has — I think that we are one of those of types of employees that don’t, when we leave the office, we don’t really leave the job. It’s the kind of thing that at least for me and I’m sure for the rest of you, it is something that is pretty much on your mind all the time.”

WE GET A LOT of this implicit class warfare from Mendocino County liberals, that their dubious abilities are worth more money because their tasks are somehow worth more than other kinds of work. The arrogant assumption that the cool people should be paid more than, say, WalMart shoppers comes up all the time on a range of issues. For instance, class privilege assumptions are woven throughout the WalMart discussion now raging, and lots of libs, especially the ones holding down the well-paying public jobs in Mendocino County, think like Hamburg, who really believes he should make more money than a cop or a plumber or a logger or an anybody who hasn’t enjoyed his from-the-cradle advantages. Getting back to WalMart, of course it’s twice as bad as its critics say it is, but lots of Americans, especially here in Mendocino County, don’t have shopping options. A mega-food market at WalMart prices appeals greatly to people making the average Mendocino County wage of $24,000 because WalMart is what they can afford.

BY A 3-2 VOTE, Hamburg and Smith dissenting, Supes pay was whacked a permanent 10%. They’ll now make about $61,000.

WILLITS IS trying to trade grass

For pavement to build a bypass

But the ground’s much too soft

To keep pavement aloft

So afterwards their bypass’ll be grass

To put it in context however, I was to find images depicting Person & Environment, White Privilege and Systems Theory. I threw in the Feminist part because it’s related.

Let me know what you think.

Person, privilege and systems 1:25:12

The images used in these slides are my own, created while an undergrad at both College of the Redwoods, right here in Fort Bragg, CA and at Prescott College in amid the high desert of AZ.

Enjoy?

ANGELA PINCHES, the daughter of 3rd District supervisor Johnny Pinches has been charged with “possessing marijuana for sale and maintaining a place for cultivation.” Ms. Pinches’ bust occurred in September when first the Sheriff’s Department, then the Drug Task Force raided her Redwood Valley home. She was not arrested on either occasion. The two raids got gleeful attention on the front pages of the two area dailies out of Santa Rosa and Ukiah, as has the announcement that the DA will now play Let’s Make A Deal with Ms. Pinches, meaning he will settle her case in a plea deal for “eradication fees.” Under this approach to pot cases the defendant gets the charges reduced to a misdemeanor and the DA gets the fine. Under the previous DA, lots of these cases were going before juries and the DA was losing them and, in the process, the DA was losing large amounts of public money pursuing them. DA Eyster’s strategy of keeping pot cases out of court as he settles for fines is a win-win all round, although the bustee probably grumbles at the amount of cash he or she is out. But he or she would grumble even more if he or she got state prison time, not that many have out of Mendocino County lately. Supervisor Pinches is for marijuana legalization. His public stance for legalization, and law enforcement’s long-time suspicion that Pinches himself grows the love drug at his Laytonville ranch, has gotten him and his family extraordinary attention from law enforcement. The supervisor told the AVA recently that he has also been subjected to numerous IRS audits which found nothing of suspicion but cost the supervisor a large amount of money in accountant and legal fees. The county’s cultivation ordinance at the time of Ms. Pinches’ two visits from the forces of law and order, permitted marijuana collectives and cooperatives to buy permits from the Sheriff’s Office to grow up to 99 plants per parcel. Angela Pinches told the police she’d intended to join a collective but hadn’t gotten around to it. She’s due in court the 22nd of February, but don’t expect to see her there; she’ll pay the restitution pay and take a misdemeanor.

WE WERE STARTLED to hear that “the following cases were heard in Ten Mile Court. Monday, Jan. 23 Presiding: Visiting Judge, The Honorable Galen Hathaway.” Hathaway’s 80 if he’s a day and goes back to the Little Lake Judicial District, Willits, not that age should disqualify him. But Mendocino County has eight superior court judges and a magistrate. Six of the superior court judges are active while two seats remain vacant. Yet here’s Hathaway picking up a fat supplement to an already fat retirement check by sitting in as a “visiting judge” in Fort Bragg. And over in Ukiah we’ve got Leonard LaCasse sitting as a visiting judge. So where are our six judges at a time where there are fewer court cases being filed because Eyster is setting a lot of pot cases before they get to court? Mendocino County has a small army of retired judges serving as visiting judges all over the state, working as they choose for the big bucks.

NEXT WEEK, it will be announced that an Anderson Valley woman has been arrested for embezzling some $27,000 from the local PTA, which is all the money the PTA had in its account.

A PRESS RELEASE from the Green Party says Joe Louis Hoffman, lately known as Joe Louis Wildman, “is hosting a training for all activists who want to help us register 100,000 new Green Party members in California in 24 months. Green Party leaders from across Northern Ca plan to attend. We hope you will join us.”

ANYBODY WHO THINKS Hoffman-Wildman is working for the Green Party either suffers from amnesia or doesn’t know his first allegiance is to the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. This guy lives in Potter Valley. A few years ago, he sabbed John Lewallen’s run for Governor as a Green just as David Cobb was selling out Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader via the “safe state” strategy promoted by Democrats who wanted to keep any challenge from the left out of states where Kerry could be harmed in his run against Bush. Hoffman-Wildman wants 100,000 dupes to register to vote as Greens or whatevers so they can vote to re-elect the disastrous Obama. The Greens are pathetic anyway and might as well simply rejoin the Democrats, but Hoffman-Wildman is no Green. He also got us the two worst supervisors in Mendocino County history by working overtime to twice elect David Colfax and Kendall Smith to the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors. Anybody who signs up for this so-called registration training is a SAP.

THE LAWS are a Gordian Knot

Contradictions: There are a lot.

What’s legal today

If you comply and pay

Tomorrow’s just more outlaw pot

JIM HARBAUGH caught some flack last week because Bay Area sports writers didn’t like his replies to their dumb questions. A Chron writer named Eric Branch asked Harbaugh what he did after the 49ers’ overtime loss to the Giants. Harbaugh answered, “Is it just California that everybody just wants to know how you feel? Care about what you thought, what you did, how you felt, how your pinky feels. Is that just a California thing? Back where I come from, nobody really cares. In my opinion, it is a California thing.” No, coach, it’s an idiot thing, not specific to the Golden State. A couple of weeks ago I heard a radio sports guy tell Harbaugh that the coach needed to spend more time with his family! Worse, the radio jock phrased this preposterously intrusive statement with, “Dude, you need…”

FUN WITH SPAM. The on-line invite was to a UFO Congress. I wrote back, “Tinfoil hats optional?” The UFO people promptly replied, “We prefer no tinfoil hats.” I asked, “Propeller beanies?” No answer.

TO THE PODIUM came applicant Sako

Whom everyone expected to be wacko

But they were all floored

When he told the Board

That he no longer wanted paybacko.

THAT DISPUTE last Friday between famous winemaker Paul Dolan and his Texas partners at the Mendocino Wine Company, formerly Parducci, required the soothing mediation of Sheriff’s deputies. The Texans, Tim and Thomas Thornhill, are in ongoing disputes with Dolan stemming from the break-up of their partnership. As Dolan left the company’s Parducci Road, Ukiah, premises Friday afternoon with some his office equipment, an argument broke out between him and the Thornhills. Dolan said the stuff was his, the Thornhills said it was theirs. The dispute became heated and deputies were called to the scene by alarmed office workers who feared the men might come to blows. The deputies soon had things calmed down. They  determined that the beef  was a civil dispute, not one for the police. Dolan made his bones at Fetzer Vineyards, Hopland, where he founded America’s largest organic wine operation.

MENDO V. MENDO. Mendo Air Quality has fined Mendocino County $123,000 with the EPA lurking in the on-deck circle. Air Quality says the County’s “failure to conduct an asbestos survey prior to renovation of a commercial building” and its “failure to properly notify the Air Quality Management District” before the County began work on its former Mental Health building at 860 N. Bush Street in November made the fine necessary. Of course the matter couldn’t simply be addressed and remedied in-house, the Air Quality guy, Chris Brown, had to make a literal federal case out of it.

SUPES Smith and Hamburg say

‘We’re special — don’t cut OUR pay!’

Special? Like how?

Like right now?

‘Oh no! Like every day!’

SMALL SCHOOL HOOPS: Tuesday night, Mendocino thumped Covelo 92-48 while Point Arena pounded Anderson Valley 63-19, Small school hoops is coming down to a three-way duel between Mendocino, Point Arena and Laytonville.

JOHN SAKOWICZ and incumbent Bob Mirata have been appointed to the two vacant seats on the Mendocino County Employees Retirement Association board of directors. Mirata was reappointed, actually, having already served for six years. He was unanimously voted on to the Board, but Sakowicz was opposed by Supervisors Hamburg and Smith. Sakowicz has been highly critical of retirement management, at one point suggesting criminal malfeasance and calling for a forensics audit. He told the Supervisors, “I think I’m over that now,” and that such an audit would be “counter productive.”

THE MENDOCINO COUNTY SUPERVISORS voted 3-2 Tuesday to permanently reduce their salaries by 10 percent. The Supes base salary will go from $68,000 to $61,200. Guess who was opposed? Kendall Smith, of course and, somewhat surprisingly, Dan Hamburg. “If we go down another $7,000, we’ll be paid between a staff services manager one and the assistant registrar of voters,” Hamburg said. “No matter how you slice it, to some degree your worth to the organization is related to your pay scale. I’m not saying that our salaries should be up at the levels of some of these comparatively high-paid elected officials, but I think if we’re paid like middle managers, that’s sort of where we’re putting our value. I don’t think we’re middle management even though we get paid like middle management,” continued Hamburg. “And I know we’ve just imposed this 10 percent (pay cut) around the county. But we are somewhat different than all the other positions in the county. We’re one of those types of employees that when we leave the office we don’t stop working.” Smith, who also refused to take the voluntary 10 percent cut her colleagues took last year, cited the pay of supervisors in nearby counties.

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT is soliciting slogans for a proposed welcoming billboard south of Cloverdale: We wrote in to suggest, “Welcome To America’s Intoxicant Capitol — Marijuana to Merlot!” but haven’t heard back.

HAVE A GLASS OF CHAINSAW! Friends of the Gualala River is organizing an event at the February 7th meeting of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors the 4′x18′ petition banner featuring 20,000 signatures from people opposed to a massive clearcut on the Southcoast to install vineyards and high-end homes. 70,000 more signatures in opposition were collected but couldn’t fit on the banner. TheSoCo supervisors will see that this conversion project is universally opposed.

MR. WILLIAM DOWDELL is a Fort Bragg street personality of the type who often comes to the attention of the Fort Bragg Police Department. In the long gone days when California enjoyed a viable state hospital system Dowdell, and others like him, would have been sequestered at the state hospital at Talmage. These days, Mendocino County’s floating cadre of Dowdells, about a hundred of them, are briefly held at the County Jail in Ukiah and sent back out to their preferred streets. Last week, Dowdell, pulling his trademark suitcase, and having already been ejected from a downtown business, walked east to the Paul Bunyan Thrift Store where he unleashed a second blast of obscenity-ridden denunciations, non-specific type, at everyone on the premises. It was offensive enough, and appeared to be unending, that Dowdell was taken into custody. Also last week, Dowdell parked his suitcase on the bike path near the Noyo Bridge. Along came the custodian at the Fort Bragg Middle School hustling to work on his bike. In the early morning murk the custodian didn’t see Dowdell’s suitcase, and hit it full speed. He was thrown from his bicycle and injured severely enough to warrant emergency treatment at Coast Hospital, but not before limping off to get the school ready for the day’s classes, THEN he went for treatment. Dowdell may now be facing more serious charges than “using offensive words in a public place,” and somebody needs to recognize the custodian’s devotion to his duties at Fort Bragg Middle School.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “This will be routine training conducted by military personnel, designed to ensure the military’s ability to operate in urban environments, prepare forces for upcoming overseas deployments, and meet mandatory training certification.” — LA Police Department.

I PAID $50 for some fruit of the vine

They told me it was oaky and fine.

But damn! Just my luck.

It was just two-buck chuck.

I shoulda bought whisky, not wine.

***

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To whom it may concern:

This letter is religious in nature. It concerns the City of Ten-Thousand Buddhas (CCTB) located in Talmage, California. Please forward this letter to the government in Talmage.

I have reason to believe that the religious institution, The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, does not provide protection to the surrounding community. Several years ago I attended a religious activity that lasted for a week. While I was there I was told by a female member of the Buddhist order, a Mrs. Chen, that one morning the community at CTTB awoke to find the grounds covered with snakes. Mrs. Chen attributed this invasion to a sinister, spiritual force at work. It is possible this evil force could invade the entire city of Talmage in an attack on CTTB.

My claim is startling but reasonable to a religiously minded person. I fear for the safety of the residents of Talmage.

Sincerely,

Walter Chang

The notices currently taped to both sides of the glass doors of the Mendocino Post Office proclaim that starting February 14, 2012, our post office will henceforth be closed on Saturdays, and postal business shall only be conducted Monday through Friday from 8 AM to 4 PM. That our government, otherwise known as the Council of Evil Morons, would choose Valentine’s Day to kick off this latest contraction of our terrific postal system strikes me as ironic and cruel, as well as evil and moronic.

I and most Americans over fifty first learned how the postal system worked when we were in First and Second Grade and our teachers helped us create and operate our very own in-classroom post offices for the purpose of sending and receiving Valentines to and from our classmates. At Las Lomitas Elementary School we had actual post offices (built by handy parents) that took up big chunks of classroom real estate. These one-room offices featured windows behind which stood postal workers from whom we could buy stamp facsimiles (fresh from the mimeograph machine) to affix with edible white paste to our properly addressed envelopes. These envelopes contained store bought or handmade Valentines, and we would drop these childish love missives into cardboard mailboxes located across the rooms from the post offices. Then every hour or so postal workers would open these mailboxes, empty the contents into transport bags, and carry the mail to the post offices wherein the letters would be sorted into cubbyholes bearing the names of the recipients. And we, the children, got to be the postal workers and do all these fun jobs. How cool is that? For a six-year-old, way cool.

These Valentines postal operations stimulated many other sectors of our classroom ecology. Making art took on new and urgent meaning, as did writing. Anyone could send a regular valentine, but only artists and poets could make valentines covered with glitter (affixed to that same edible paste) bearing heartfelt original (or accidentally plagiarized) rhymes. Roses are red, violets are blue, please be my Valentine, shoo bop doo wah.

Valentines were the gateway drugs that turned me into the snail mail addict I am today, which is why I am so sad and angry about the decline and impending fall of our beloved postal system. Yes, I appreciate a good email missive, one without typos or grammatical errors; but the best email pales next to a mediocre piece of real mail found in my post office box, a one-of-a-kind Easter egg of love waiting to be discovered amidst the bills and junk mail, something made just for me that took someone more than a few seconds to compose and send, something steeped in what psychologists call “quality time” — loving attention undivided.

“Love is metaphysical gravity.” — Buckminster Fuller

Get over it, Todd. No. I take Marshall McLuhan’s observation “the medium is the message” as a warning that what we think we’re doing may not be what we’re actually doing. McLuhan was speaking about mass media, television in particular, a medium through which I thought I was watching shows I wanted to watch, when in actuality I was allowing myself to be seduced by processes designed to entrain me to think and feel the way our corporate overlords want everyone to think and feel. Television is a medium of conquest and control. The message of that medium is “Do and be and buy what we tell you to do and be and buy or you will never be safe and happy. Ever.”

So it came to pass that I and many other people figured out the real message of mass media and television and broke free from that enslavement and stayed free long enough to help engender and partake of a brief renaissance of creative freedom known as the Sixties, a cultural revolution largely defined by its independence from mass media and corporate control. Some say the Sixties lasted into the 1970’s, and some say reverberations of that renaissance continued into the 1980’s, but for however long the groovy vibes of the Sixties kept on vibing, the important thing to know is that the innovative energy and expressions of that renaissance were eventually captured and drained of their power by the corporate media apparatus; and the next iteration of television was the computer and the internet and all the attendant satellite devices that define this digital age.

When I quit watching television in 1969, very little else changed in my life. My arts of writing and music were independent of television, and communications for personal and business matters were fast and effective by telephone and through the post office. But a couple years ago when I came out of a trance to find myself watching a basketball game on my computer, having sat down with the specific intention of rewriting a story, it suddenly dawned on me that computers are nothing more than interactive televisions, and now, oops, virtually all my personal and business dealings are inextricably bound to the use of the computer. Today I send my essays to the Anderson Valley Advertiser and other prescient publishers via email, I offer my music and books and art for sale through the internet, and to abstain from using my computer in the same way I abstained from using television would render me immediately and entirely removed from all but the most local of cultures, counter or otherwise.

Yet to stay hooked up to my computer is to be an active and addicted user of a medium that is the message, “Do and be and buy what we tell you to do and be and buy or you will never be safe and happy. Ever.” Except just as there are more layers to the computer/internet interface with our lives than there were with that earlier version of television, so are there more layers to the new medium’s message. Now, along with being told a million times a year what to do and be and buy, we are also compelled through the brutal elimination of alternatives to spend most of our time peering at our computer screens if we wish to feel connected to what we think is most important and meaningful, i.e. what is happening right now in those fields of endeavor we are most interested in.

Post offices, in my view, are among the last few vibrant vestiges of the non-computer way of doing and being, which is the real reason the Council of Evil Morons wants to strangle that marvelous system; so there will be no alternative, none at all, to computers and the internet as a means of doing and being, except on a local basis — very local. Which brings me to my latest idea for kindling the next cultural and social and political renaissance that will save the world and usher in the long awaited age of global enlightenment, which then may or may not precipitate contact with brilliant aliens who have been waiting for us to make the evolutionary leap from stupid selfish poopheads to smart generous sweetie pies.

My idea is that we start our own local post offices, without the aid of computers. We can use telephones to get the ball rolling, but not cell phones. These extremely local post offices will be adult versions of the post offices we had in First and Second Grade, manned by fun loving volunteers. Stamps created by a wide range of local artists will cost a nickel. You will need one stamp for every ounce of mail you send. Post office boxes (cubbyholes) will rent for ten dollars per year. The money collected from selling stamps and renting cubbyholes will go into maintaining the postal buildings with their clean and commodious adjoining public restrooms and teahouses.

Among the many cool things about these local post offices will be that they will be open seven days a week from morning until night, they will have tables and chairs where people can sit and write letters and decorate envelopes and gossip, of course, and they will have multiple gigantic well-maintained bulletin boards whereon anyone may post anything. Neato one-of-a-kind rainproof mailboxes created by local artisans will be scattered throughout the local watershed — and mail will be collected from these neato mailboxes several times a day and transported to the post office in colorful burlap bags. Then the letters will be sorted into our cubbyholes throughout every long day, thus making everyone feel safe and happy.

Yes, it would be easy to set up this kind of local post office using computers, but making something easy doesn’t necessarily make it good.

Todd’s snail mail address is PO Box 366, Mendocino CA 95460. His web site is UnderTheTableBooks.com.

• A 10% permanent general wage reduction effective the first full pay period after formal approval by the Board

• A labor management committee which will meet the second Thursday of every month.

• The term of the agreement will be until June 30, 2013.

• There will be an increase in annual Personal Leave hours from 24 to 30.

• All previously signed Tentative Agreements (TA’s) will be adopted.

• All PERB charges will be withdrawn with prejudice.

• The Union agrees to the County’s new tier of retirement for new hires whenever this is adopted. The deal will be formally approved on February 14th.

STATE PARKS officials have packaged Hendy Woods with four other state parks in Mendocino County to put them out to bid for operation by private parties. Hendy Woods, Russian Gulch State Park, Westport Union Landing, and Standish-Hickey (near the Humboldt County line), and Austin Creek State Park in Sonoma County were identified as up for grabs. State Parks officials deny that this is an effort to privatize the parks, but in the next breath say the deals would only be for five years. Private concessionaires would be required to share 3% of their profits with the state. A local nonprofit would be required to put 100% of the proceeds back into the park. Level playing field? Not quite.

THE DEAL was set to be approved by the State Public Works Board last Thursday but has been held up to address “outstanding concerns.” The biggest outstanding concerns are that local groups were blindsided by the proposal, which is stacked against them and, natch, favors outside corporate interests. The local non-profits, relying on shoestring budgets and volunteers, are struggling to come up with a plan to operate the parks, but such a venture by people with no experience running a large scale enterprise like Hendy Woods requires time and planning.

ACCORDING to the Sheriff’s Department, Oxycontin, Oxycodone, Vicodin and Norco ”are the most abused polypharmacy (the mixing of many drugs in one prescription) drugs we have in the county right now. Each is running about $10 a milligram.”  We’ve heard from various sources for several years that certain physicians are writing scrips for people they know are dope heads.

SOMEWHAT SURPRISINGLY, candidate Jared Huffman was denied the endorsement of the state Democratic Party regional delegates who met last Saturday in Santa Rosa. With 50% approval being necessary to endorse, Huffman got only 48% to a strong 37% for upstart Norman Solomon, 12% for Marin County Supervisor Susan Adams and 1% for San Rafael businesswoman and political neophyte Stacy Lawson. The lack of an endorsement from local party insiders is a clear victory for Solomon, given that Huffman has the endorsement of Congressman Cork Top, Assemblyman Wes “I’m Looking Into It and I’m Very Concerned” Chesbro, and a long list of current and former corporate bag men and women. (The noble exception being Sonoma County Lynne Woolsey, the only progressive Democrat from this area to hold office at the higher levels since Clem Miller back in the early 1960s. We don’t know who she’s supporting.) For the last 20 years or so a handful of Democratic Party insiders have met behind closed doors to anoint the next hack or hackette to occupy the local power slots at four times the pay of the average working citizen of the district. You know we live in turbulent times when even the relentless party nuzzlebums of the Democratic Central Committees can’t agree on a candidate.

ALISA COLBERG, 18, a gang-affiliated Fort Bragg woman who describes herself as Fort Bragg’s “dominant female” — move over Kendall Smith — was seriously injured last January in a hatchet attack by 22-year-old MariCruz Alvarez-Carrillo during a gang fight near the CV Starr Aquatic Center. Ms. Alvarez-Carrillo, 22, the mother of a child about a year old, lives at 215 Minnesota Avenue, Fort Bragg. She was found guilty of three counts of assault with a deadly weapon last week but not guilty of gang affiliation. (Huh?) Alvarez-Carrillo will be sentenced on February 24th. Also last week, Fort Bragg police had great difficulty arresting a 17-year-old gang-banger at 215 Minnesota. That address is the site of much gang-related violence. One of the arresting officers suffered a fractured wrist in the struggle to take the delinquent into custody.

THE GOVERNOR’S BUDGET speech last Wednesday morning bodes ill for state schools. The gov is basically holding the schools hostage pending the outcome of his ballot initiative to raise taxes. If the measure fails, schools could see funding cuts of 10 percent or more. First to go in Mendocino County will be school buses. Mendocino has already eliminated student transport.

THE ROBES want a new Taj Mahal

With parking and portraits in the hall

Of  Their Honors of yore—

In a real eyesore

Which in the first temblor will fall.

***

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SOURCES INSIDE SEIU say that the membership has ratified an agreement with the County for a 10% wage cut. The agreement is for 18 months and gives the County the right to adopt a lower tier of retirement benefits for new employees. Employee morale, already in tatters, was further shredded by the outside SEIU organizers who managed to convert the usual workplace discontent into rage, all the while getting the workers a 12.5 cut rather than the 10% they could have had from the outset. The negotiations were complicated by an absence of leadership at the Supe’s level where they, too, went for outside negotiators well-known as union busters. County employees, after months of fumbling by their alleged representatives, will soon be back at a 10% wage cut.

TEN PERCENT was always the real number. This week’s Board agenda included labor agreements with the Deputy Sheriffs Association, Law Enforcement Management (MCLEMA), and the Management Employee bargaining units, keeping the current 10% cuts in place. The deputies and law enforcement administration have been at 10% cuts since July 1 of 2010 and have agreed to extend the cut to June 30, 2013 while the management unit extended their cut for another year until next January. The County is reportedly trying to keep all the current cuts in place, but if the deal with SEIU for 10% goes through, the Public Attorneys Association, who had previously swallowed a 10.5% cut, can be expected to hold out for 10% in their next negotiation.

THERE ONCE was a Supe from Fort Bragg

Who got caught with her hand in the bag

She denied to the end

That she meant to offend

But the money the DA did snag

(back)

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MENDOCINO COUNTY has a 9.5 month inventory of properties in foreclosure as of December 2011, according to a report by Linda Williams in last week’s Willits News. This represents 271 Mendocino County properties now in the foreclosure pipeline with either a notice of default or a notice of trustee sale pending. Countywide there were 345 county foreclosure sales in 2011 and 335 in 2010.

SHERIFF ALLMAN has been hedging his bets on what the end of Mendo’s zip-tie/cultivation ordinance might mean to his budget (assuming the Board of Supervisors does as predicted and ends the “permit” part of the ordinance on Tuesday). The County (i.e., the Sheriff’s Department) has received something like $500-$600k last year from the pot permits and associated pot payments, and the pending end of the program in the wake of serious Federal threats might translate into a $500k hit to the Sheriff’s budget. Allman told the Ukiah Daily Journal last week that he doesn’t yet know what the budget impact of suspending the permit program would be. “Through June 30, we’re OK,” Allman said. But there are obvious questions about the next fiscal year’s budget which the County will begin to formulate next month. Allman added that no layoffs are planned for the near future.

NINERS LOST BY 3 in overtime Sunday at Candlestick. Unable to convert a third down for the whole game, questionable play-calling, plus two crucial bad plays by the same guy, were responsible for the loss. The Giants played better, all-in-all, winning 20-17 on a sudden death field goal.

INEXPLICABLE TRAFFIC jams in the southern areas of the city caused fans to sit for hours in unmoving lines of vehicles. Some passengers jumped out of cars on the main offramp to the ‘Stick and walked to the stadium. A Muni “playoff express” bus reportedly left Van Ness and California at 11:30am but took more than three hours to reach the park. On the offramp, about a half a dozen people on that bus flipped open an emergency window and hopped out.

GIANTS FANS fans entering Candlestick were handed cards on how to contact police if they felt threatened; undercover cops dressed in Giants gear patrolled the crowd.

THE MENDOCINO BOOK COMPANY presents a reading and booksigning by writer and scholar Tony Platt, author of “Grave Matters: Excavating California’s Buried Past,” on Friday, January 27, from 6 to 8 pm. “Grave Matters” is the history of the treatment of native remains in California and the story of the complicated relationship between researcher and researched. Tony Platt begins his journey with his son’s funeral at Big Lagoon, a seaside village in pastoral Humboldt County in Northern California, once O-pyúweg, a bustling center for the Yurok and now the site of a plundered native cemetery. Platt travels the globe in search of the answer to the question of how do we reconcile a place of extraordinary beauty with its horrific past? Grave Matters centers around the Yurok people and the movement to repatriate remains and reclaim ancient rights, but it is also a universal story of coming to terms with the painful legacy of a sorrowful past. Tony Platt is the author of ten books and more than 150 essays and articles on race, inequality, and social justice in American history. Tony Platt, now a professor emeritus, taught at the University of Chicago, the University of California, Berkeley, and California State University, Sacramento, where he received awards for teaching and scholarship. He has been a visiting professor at Chuo University, Tokyo, and at Queen’s University, Belfast, and was a visiting researcher at the Huntington Library and the National Museum of American History. Platt lives in Berkeley and Big Lagoon, California. The Mendocino Book Company is at 102 S. School Street in downtown Ukiah. For more information, call 468-5940.

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AS THOUSANDS of passionate fans descend upon San Francisco for the 49ers’ National Football Conference championship showdown with the Giants on Sunday, officials are touting a widely ignored text-messaging service as a solution to bad fan behavior. The service, Badfan, was introduced to Candlestick Park about three years ago. It is an anonymous text-messaging tip line that goes straight to stadium security personnel, but it is seldom used by fans, even though reported problems and security crackdowns at the stadium have increased from 2008 to 2010. Calls for police and medical services and the number of fans ejected from their seats combined more than doubled over a three-year period, according to the most recent available data from the San Francisco Police Department. In 2008, the police and security officers ejected 187 fans from the stands. In 2010, they ejected 274. During last Sunday’s NFC Divisional playoff game against the New Orleans Saints, police and security officers ejected 54 fans from the parking lot and stadium. Security officials say that many fans treat Badfan as a joke, or use it incorrectly. About half of the text messages sent to the system are pranks or fakes, according to team officials. A significant number of texts are useless to security officers because they do not include location information. During a preseason game with the Raiders last summer marked by violence in the stands, stadium security officials received only about 20 text messages that were not fakes or pranks, but 90 requests for medical service, including one for a man who was beaten unconscious in a restroom, and another for a fan who was shot several times in the stomach in the parking lot after the game. In 2010, the 49ers began revoking the season tickets of fans if they or their guests were unruly. After the chaotic Raiders game, Candlestick Park tightened its parking lot hours and imposed stricter tailgating and alcohol-consumption rules. Greg Suhr, San Francisco’s police chief, said more than 25 percent more officers than usual would be on hand on Sunday. At the request of the NFL and the 49ers, more officers than usual will be undercover, some wearing Giants garb and sitting in the stands. Officers or 49ers team staff members will hand out Badfan cards to fans as they enter the stadium. The test will be whether fans choose to use the text-messaging system. After last week’s game, a letter to The San Francisco Chronicle from an upset Saints fan spread rapidly online. The fan, Don Moses, a Mill Valley resident who attended the game, said he was shocked by the “hostility, vulgarity and intimidation” he faced. He described a group of large men who continually cursed and threatened his family. “One of my daughters asked me, ‘Why don’t you do something, Daddy?’” Moses wrote. “Do what? Fight 10 guys, call/text security when all those guys behind me would know who would have fingered them?” Chief Suhr nevertheless urged fans to use Badfan. “The officers’ actions are crisp and immediate,” he said. (Courtesy, the Bay Citizen)

FACTOID from CNN’s South Carolina exit polls in Saturday’s Republican primary: 65% of the 2,381 (Republican) voters polled described themselves as “born again or evangelical Christian.”

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SAY GOODBYE to Mendo’s Medical Pot Cultivation Ordinance. Tommy LaNier, of the White House funded “National Marijuana Initiative who opposes marijuana for medical or any other purpose, told KQED’s Michael Montgomery this week: “The other three US attorneys … have also advised those places where they’re trying to regulate marijuana — which is illegal under the Control Substances Act — they cannot do that. This is just another process; Mendocino was on the list to do it in the first part of January. … I can’t speak directly for the US Attorneys because they’re working on individual cases, but I would think it would send a message to those cities that see what’s going on in Mendocino and that they’re most likely going to be advised that they’re in violation of the law if they haven’t already.”

Supervisor John McCowen commented: “We had a very successful local, state, and federal program to eradicate marijuana in Mendocino national forest last year. I personally very much welcomed the participation of the federal authorities. They eradicated over 600,000 plants, took out miles of irrigation lines, dozens of illegal dams, tons of garbage. I think there were over 130 arrests, one prosecution. So who are we kidding? The federal government is making no serious effort to prosecute the people who are illegally cultivating marijuana for the black market and who are harming the environment, and instead they’re trying to knock down a program that provides for the cultivation of medical marijuana in compliance with state and local law, protection of the environment, protection of neighborhood impacts. If they really want to go after all the marijuana they think is illegal – great. And after they clean up the trespass growers in the national forest who are polluting and destroying the environment, then let’s talk about people who are complying with our local program. But otherwise, if you’re not going to provide the resources to solve the problem, then don’t interfere with our efforts on the local level to bring order out of chaos. … We’ll see on January 24, when county counsel brings forward her proposed amendment and the board of supervisors makes its decision. But if the ordinance is to conform to the Pack decision, and the federal threat, then it is likely the program will be effectively dead in terms of the permitting system.”

VERN PIVER of Fort Bragg was released from UCSF on Wednesday. Piver had been hospitalized to treat brain tumors. He said Friday he has to go back to the hospital “a couple more times for follow-up treatments,” but for now he gets to stay mostly at home.

AS EXPECTED, Mendocino County has designated Chief Planner Roger Mobley as “Acting Director of Planning and Building Services,” in the wake of the departure of former P&B honcho Nash Gonzalez. Gonzalez left for a much higher paying job in Santa Clara County earlier this month.

WHEN I ARRIVED at Occupy San Francisco at California and Montgomery at about 1pm Friday afternoon, a dozen or so protesters had been arrested, several of whom had locked down at the entrance to Wells Fargo Bank. About a thousand people had turned out, many of them with placards that said they weren’t afraid of the One Percent. The protest coincided with the two-year anniversary of the decision by the US Supreme that removed all limits on political contributions, meaning the rich and their corporations gained even more control over the political system. A small group of protesters also marched in the Mission District at a Bank of America hoping to disrupt foreclosure auctions. Newly elected Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, indicted on charges he assaulted his wife, showed up in support.

THE YEAR of the Dragon commences Monday.

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JOHNNY OTIS, the “godfather of rhythm and blues” and a long-time resident of Sebastopol, has died in Los Angeles at age 90. Otis was a fixture at KPFA for many years. Probably his best known song was “Willie and the Hand Jive.” His given name was John Veliotes. He said he adopted a black affect because “As a kid, I decided that if our society dictated that one had to be black or white, I would be black.”

WITH ONLY PHIL BALDWIN having the cojones to vote NO, the Ukiah City Council late Wednesday night upheld the Ukiah Planning Commission’s certification of the Environmental Impact Report for the proposed Walmart expansion. The EIR for the project was certified by the Ukiah Planning Commission but earlier this month, attorney William Kopper of Davis filed an appeal on behalf of Citizens for Sustainable Commerce, Steve Scalmanini, Allen Nicholson and Jeff Blankfort. Walmart wants to expand to include a full grocery supermarket, alcohol sales and operate 24 hours a day. The store doesn’t need the city’s approval to be open 24 hours and sell liquor or even more groceries, but it does need approval to expand. The Ukiah City Council chambers were packed to overflowing for the meeting.

FORT BRAGG Police Chief Scott Mayberry has presented the Dana Gray Elementary School, the town’s only elementary school, with a check for $5,000 to support the Gang Resistance is Paramount (GRIP) program. Fort Bragg, Willits, Ukiah, and even Point Arena suffer gang infestations.

BORIS George Boris Doubiago has died at age 74. He was best known locally as the former husband of poet Sharon Doubiago and the father Dan Doubiago and Shawn Colleen Doubiago. Dan Doubiago graduated from Mendocino High School from where he went on to play big time college and then professional football.

THE WILLITS SCHOOL BOARD Wednesday night approved a policy to protect the rights of “transgender and gender non-conforming students.” The policy is believed to be the first in Mendocino County.

UKIAH HIGH’S boys basketball team nearly upset top-ranked Cardinal Newman of Santa Rosa last night, losing in the last seconds by two points.

SAN DIEGO attorney Thomas Warwick is representing Cody Fisher’s re-sentencing hearing before Henderson. Warwick is a member of the powerful state Judicial Council committee that oversees new courthouse construction statewide. The Judicial Council intends to build a new Courthouse in Ukiah to replace the perfectly serviceable existing Courthouse. This question seems obvious: Is Judge Henderson accommodation of Warwick and Fisher part of a clandestine deal to ensure the new Courthouse? Mendocino County judges desperately want a new Courthouse. None of them are likely eager to alienate the big shot lawyer who has a large role in site selection for new courthouses, and it’s been years since any defendant got him or herself a re-sentencing hearing. Are we talking pure coincidence here?

3RD DISTRICT Supervisor Johnny Pinches told us Tuesday that he expected work on the long-awaited Willits by-pass to begin soon. Pinches said only one more wetlands protection sign-off by the Corps of Engineers is needed for the massive project — comparable in scope to the Cloverdale by-pass only with more environmental hurdle to clear — and the project is a go. Pinches said funding, despite the state of the economy, is secure.

TO EMPHASIZE that the feds are serious about cracking down on what the feds see as Mendocino County’s outlaw pot regs, a U.S. attorney drove up from San Francisco to personally warn the Supervisors that Mendo authorities would be held personally accountable if Mendocino County didn’t stop selling what the feds view as licenses to grow.

ALISA COLBERG, 18, a gang-affiliated Fort Bragg woman, will be in court again next week. Miss Colberg, who describes herself as Fort Bragg’s “dominant female” — move over Kendall Smith — was seriously injured last January in a hatchet attack by 22-year-old MariCruz Alvarez-Carrillo during a gang fight . (This week’s AVA describes the event in detail in a story by Bruce McEwen.) Only last week, the Fort Bragg Police had great difficulty arresting a 17-year-old gang-banger at 215 Minnesota Avenue, Fort Bragg, for several years now the site of much gang-related violence. One of the arresting officers suffered a fractured wrist in the struggle to take the youth into custody.

FEEDBACK from Mr. Patrick Pekin: “Dear Mr. McEwen: My wife and I enjoyed your recent article regarding our trial with Mr. Stoen, P. v. Alvarez-Carillo. The finger-snapping was particularly humorous and made me wonder who the title might be directed at. One thing though, our last name is spelled “Pekin.” Please be so kind as to make a note of it. Maybe I’ll see you around court tomorrow while I wait for the verdict. Yours, Patrick Pekin”

THE GOVERNOR’S BUDGET speech Wednesday morning bodes ill for state schools. Mendocino County schools could see their funding cut by 10 percent or more.

6-10 INCHES of rain is expected to fall on the County over the next few days.

SMALL SCHOOL BASKETBALL: Point Arena beat Laytonville by 3 Tuesday night. PA, Laytonville and Mendocino each have one league loss. Mendocino beat Anderson Valley Tuesday night. Mendo’s coach, Jim Young, says, “No surprise there, this year, but hats off to Boonville coach Eddie Slotte. He drove 4 hours from Davis after seeing his kid to make game time. He has his guys playing real hard, just not big enough for my 6’6, 6’4 pair. My big Nicolas Knoebber had 18 pts, 16 rebs. AV Girls beat Mendo girls by 20. That puts them in a race for 3-4 with the Layton girls. Best AV girls team I’ve seen in 10 years. PA and Covelo are a step above and will only lose to each other.”

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I used to know a loquacious drunk who punctuated his pontifications with the disclaimer, “Of course, memories are, at best, only fair approximations of what actually happened, so please don’t quote me.” At least I think that’s what he said. And I took his disclaimer to mean that his memory was not so sharp, whereas my own recollections were essentially photographic and therefore highly accurate. Silly me.

A few nights ago we watched the movie Bedazzled (the original work of genius, not the execrable remake) created by and starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, with a stirring cameo by the preternatural Raquel Welch, and we laughed so hard at some of the scenes I felt five years younger at movie’s end. I hadn’t seen Bedazzled in thirty years and feared the sarcastic romp might not stand the test of time, but it did with ease. However, what did not stand the test of time were my memories of favorite scenes from the film, for they were, as the drunk foresaw, only approximations of the actual scenes.

Indeed, I was crestfallen that my most favorite scene (as I remembered it) only barely resembled the actual scene in the film. Which scene? The one in which Raquel Welch brings Dudley Moore breakfast in bed. In my misremembered version, Raquel’s seduction of the hapless Moore lasts a good ten minutes and features the nearly naked Raquel erotically enunciating each syllable of the expression, “hot buttered buns” as part of an excruciatingly slow build to an orgasmic finish; when in actuality Raquel spat that delectable phrase rapid fire in the midst of a badly blurted speech prelude to seductus interruptus. Yet thirty years ago my brain seized on those three little words and made them the centerpiece of a seduction scene far more lurid and glorious than the one they filmed.

“Memory is a child walking along a seashore. You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things.” — Pierce Harris

During one of my many stints as a single man, I attended a party featuring scads of married couples and two single women, one seven-feet-tall, the other a midget, though now I’m not so sure about their heights. I am sure I fell into conversation with a vivacious married woman and ere long her jealous husband joined us. To assure him I had no designs on his wife (though she certainly inspired several marvelous designs) I asked them how they first met.

Vivacious Woman: We were working on the same float for the Rose Bowl parade and…

Husband of Vivacious Woman: No, honey. Rex and Sally set us up on a blind date a couple weeks before the parade.

Vivacious Woman: No, dear, you’re thinking of Tom and Rita. And it was two weeks after the parade. And it wasn’t a blind date because we already knew each other. No. You approached me ostensibly to borrow some pink flowers, but I knew you just wanted to get a closer look at me.

Husband of Vivacious Woman: Honey. Come on. You think I don’t remember how we met? It was only four years ago.

At this juncture, we were joined by a beautiful pregnant woman and her dumpy bald husband, and before Vivacious Woman and Husband of Vivacious Woman could come to blows over their divergent Rose Bowl memories, I asked Pregnant and Bald how they first met.

Pregnant: I was dating his brother…

Bald: You were not. We met long before you ever dated Jack. At the bowling alley. Remember? Then you went out with Jack a couple times, and then…

Pregnant: A couple times? I went out with your brother for a year, and if he hadn’t been transferred to Atlanta…

Bald: Ten months is not a year.

Pregnant: That’s true. Ten months is technically not a year.

“Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food.” — Austin O’Malley

Speaking of crazy people and what we think we remember, in my former life as an author of books published by large publishers, I often performed in bookstores, cafés, theaters, and college auditoriums. And though I enjoyed performing and my audiences were generally appreciative, I eventually shied away from such public exposure because crazy people kept coming to my performances and zapping me with their psychic toxins. Here are two such encounters as I remember them.

Encounter #1: I am in a large old bookstore standing on a small dais facing an audience of sixty people. I have sung a couple songs, accompanying myself on guitar, and read a few stories, and the laughter and applause have been raucous. The master of ceremonies (the owner of the bookstore) announces a fifteen-minute intermission, various people thank me for my performance, an aggressively attractive woman hands me her business card and suggests we meet for coffee, and an old friend hugs me and whispers, “Watch out, buddy, she’s crazy as a loon.”

As I make my way outside for a breath of fresh air, a big man with long hair and a neatly trimmed beard approaches me. He is wearing a red plaid shirt, gray slacks and brown hiking boots, and I recall seeing him smiling at me during my performance — smiling gigantically. I stop walking when this man is within six feet of me and I fully expect him to stop at a reasonable distance from me, but he doesn’t stop until his face is within a few inches of mine.

“You kept looking at me,” he snarls. “Why were you looking at me?”

“I beg your pardon, but…”

“Don’t deny it,” he spits. “You kept looking at me because you thought I liked you, didn’t you? You saw me laughing when everybody else was laughing and you thought I was laughing because I liked you but I was only laughing because I wanted you to think I liked you when I don’t like you. I hate you. And if you don’t stop looking at me, I’ll kill you.”

“Now you’ve gone too far,” I say, looking around for help. “And I’m gonna call the police if you don’t leave on your own.”

“Fuck you!” he shouts, running away into the night. “Fuck you famous writer asshole motherfucker piece of shit!”

Encounter #2: I have just finished performing for a good little audience in a small café, (by good I mean they laughed at the funny parts and cheered at the end, and by little I mean more than ten but less than twenty) having larded my reading with improvisations rendered on a remarkably in-tune old upright piano. I am making my way toward a table where a half-dozen people are waiting to buy my books and home made cassette recordings, this being in the days before the advent of CDs and digital everything, when a slender cowgirl blocks my path, her red velvet cowboy hat dotted with silver sequins, her blond hair sprinkled with gold glitter, her black cowboy shirt detailed with creamy white embroidery, her skirt rawhide brown, her shiny boots lime green, her age somewhere between thirty and forty-five.

“Hey,” she says, her voice as breathy as the wind they call Mariah (not really, I just couldn’t resist using that expression), her accent distinctly Serbian, “can I speak with you for little moment?”

“Sure,” I say, happy to see the people waiting to buy my books have fresh drinks in hand. “What can I do for you?”

“You are so generous,” she says, staring at my lips — her eyes shattered blue marbles. “I can hear how generous in your music, and…well…I can see things. Is my special gift. To see things. You know what I mean? What can be and what cannot be when certain things don’t or do fall into place, or not.”

“I think I have an inkling about what you mean,” I say, imagining her face without cowgirl war paint and guessing she is way more than cute. “What do you see?”

“I see you must stop writing.” She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and nods prophetically. “You must give everything to music or gift will be taken away.”

“But why? I like doing both. Music and writing.”

“Maybe you like doing both, but they don’t like you doing them both.” She opens her eyes and glares at me. “Just as I would not like you doing me and doing somebody else, too. I could not stand it. I would go crazy.”

“But music and writing are not people,” I say, relieved to see no holster, no gun. “And I like doing both.”

“No, you don’t,” she says, sudden tears spilling from her eyes. “You are afraid to give yourself completely to music because…such intimacy terrifies you. I can see clear as day. I can see your life on one path or another path. And if you do not stop writing and give yourself only to music you are doomed to play in junky rat holes like this for rest of life begging people to buy your shitty little books and shitty little tapes, when you could be huge.”

“Maybe so,” I say, wondering what it is about me that attracts such cuckoo birds, “but if not for this junky little rat hole, I never would have met you.”

“There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory.” — Josh Billings

What are we without our memories?

When I was forty-three, my seventy-year-old mother led me away from the Thanksgiving feast, made sure we were not overheard, and whispered urgently, “I’m losing my mind and it’s not coming back. I’m in a nightmare and I want it to end. You have to help me kill myself.”

I realize now that my mother’s request was perfectly reasonable, but at the time I couldn’t imagine abetting her suicide, which I felt would make me a murderer. Twenty years gone by, I can easily imagine seeking the proper pill to curtail the horrendous suffering I watched my mother endure for twelve long years until finally, blessedly, at the age of eighty-two, she died in the skilled nursing facility where she had spent her last few years, having spent the previous eight years in a storage facility for those suffering from the brand of dementia known as Alzheimer’s.

Every few weeks for the years of my mother’s internment, I would take the train from San Francisco to Menlo Park and walk the half-mile from the station to that pea-green warehouse where Avis was a favorite of the friendly staff of Mexicans. They pronounced her named Ah-vees and identified her as ella que andando: she who walks, for my mother did little else when she wasn’t sleeping.

One day, after my mother had been in the joint for three years, I found her — lank white hair, plaid slacks inside out, yellow blouse wrongly buttoned, mismatched shoes — walking down a dimly lit hallway speaking to no one.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, catching up to her.

“They wanted fifty-seven and I told them where do you think?” she said, frowning at me. “How did you get here?”

“I took the train,” I said, holding her hand.

“You’re allowed to do that?” she asked, shaking her head. “I don’t trust him. Hiding under the mattress over his bandana.”

I took her outside where we could amble along the cement walkway that outlined the facility, my mother trying the locked gates to see if they might open — the air scented with stink from a nearby car fire.

“Would you like to go somewhere else?” I asked, hopelessly. “Into the village for an ice cream cone?”

“I sleep in a refrigerator,” she said, sitting on a bench and looking at her hand. “What a funny fig.”

I sat beside her and she jumped as if shocked.

“It’s only me,” I said, making light of her surprise.

“Who are you?” she asked, frowning suspiciously. “How did you get here?”

“I’m your son. Todd. I came on the train.”

“How dare they,” she said, pouting. “I gave him 57 and he spilled nobody over again.”

“Are you thirsty?” I asked, wanting only to soothe her.

“I had 57 overviews with red disasters,” she said, shaking her head. “But they couldn’t get over the river. Kaput.”

An old man, bent and grizzled, came around the corner, walking with mincing steps and peering intently at the ground.

My mother leapt up, embraced the old man, and kissed him on the lips.

The old man stuttered, “I haven’t… I don’t… why… who… okay.”

My mother took the old man’s hand and walked away with him, forgetting all about me.

“They hid under the milkshake and stayed there,” said my mother, kissing the old man’s cheek. “And pretty soon the shit was dry.”

Todd Walton’s writing and music may be found at UnderTheTableBooks.com.

This proposal begins with its executive summary: “The Hendy Woods Community Inc. proposes to create an alternative to park closure by providing volunteers, financial contributions and revenue enhancements sufficient to allow the Department of Parks and Recreation to run Hendy Woods at no net cost to the state general fund. The following paid seasonal positions at Hendy Woods will be replaced by volunteers: two park aides, two maintenance aides, one maintenance assistant. Hendy Woods Community will assist with fee collection, be responsible for trail maintenance, assist with maintenance of structures, provide docent/interpretive services, and will raise funds and provide revenue enhancements sufficient to meet all normal DPR expenses in excess of fees collected at Hendy Woods.”

The proposal goes on to point out that nearly 50,000 visitors annually visit Hendy Woods, contributing significantly to our “tourist dependent community” of 3200 people “If,” in the immortal words of the late Smokey Blattner, “you beat every body out of the bushes.” A number of those 3200 residents are part-time, occasional, hermitic, or on the run from the law. But when polled they unanimously support Hendy Woods being open.

The proposal to assume local responsibility for the park continues: “Within the last five years the very extensive water system has been rehabilitated to the point where it is currently functioning well. The septic leach lines have been recently cleared. A new wheelchair accessible bathroom and shower facilities have recently been completed. With the very minor exception of one outhouse roof in the Day Use area, the campsites, water access points, bathrooms, cabins, visitor center, park access kiosk and other facilities have been well maintained. Eliminating public use of these facilities and allowing these facilities to fall into disrepair would waste this recent investment of state funds.”

“The Anderson Valley Volunteer Fire Department’s principle firefighting water access point for the north end of Anderson Valley, the Valley’s largest population concentration outside of Boonville, is installed inside the park near the RV septic dump station, according to Anderson Valley Fire Captain Roy Laird. It offers a virtually limitless water supply and good pressure for firefighting.”

Among the negative economic impacts that would result from the closure of Hendy Woods are loss of affordable camping, reduced wine sales and loss of jobs at The Valley’s numerous tasting rooms, the end of handy public access to the Navarro River, reduced attendance at local summer events such as the world music festival and the County Fair. [Closure would] “imperil the Anderson Valley Brewing Company’s Beer Fest which is the single largest annual source of money for many nonprofits in the Valley.”

The proposal sums up, “Anderson Valley has demonstrated its commitment to working with the Department of Parks and Recreation to keep Hendy Woods open by sending numerous letters to decision makers, attending a wide variety of events and volunteering to work at the park and raise money. We understand the nature of the commitment we are making and have deliberately avoided plans that do not seem feasible, such as a complete takeover of the park. We are volunteering for duties that we can sustain for at least two years. Volunteers have already signed up to perform the functions we propose to perform. Fundraising is already underway. Anderson Valley is highly motivated to help keep Hendy Woods open.”

The rest of the proposal is formatted as a draft contract from Hendy Woods Community to the Parks Department.

Also included is a likely budget showing current costs and savings that would accrue from local monetary and volunteer contributions. It is not clear how much of the regional parks overhead cost is attributable to Hendy Woods, so those numbers, if they apply, are excluded. Effective fee collection, as Ms. Bailey said, by local volunteers, would produce additional revenues.

For the time being Hendy Woods Community does not expect to solicit cash donations, but to instead rely primarily on pledges from local people, businesses and organizations pending approval of application for nonprofit status.

The CSD’s Budget Committee voted unanimously to recommend to the Community Services District Board that the CSD act as sponsor for the organization until the nonprofit status is approved. If approved by the Board, the CSD would handle the small amounts of donated money associated with the nascent effort to somehow keep Hendy open. Ms. Bailey agreed to prepare basic paperwork for the district to ratify as soon as possible.