A READER sends along this accompanying note: From his perch in the high desert of western Nevada, remote control and cup in hand, Chan Laughlin, aka Travis T. Hipp, (“the poor hippie’s Paul Harvey”) pontificated to the world every morning about politics, truth, justice, and modern life. One of the few remaining practitioners of free-form, seat-of-your-pants radio commentary, he worked with few notes and distilled the days events into greater truths that sometimes surprise even himself. Before he died, Chan said he is “still alive and only slightly wounded” in his latest battle with the authorities. They raided his house last year and charged him with felony marijuana trafficking. But all the charges were dropped after the cops failed to produce evidence of any crime.
” “KPIG is expanding slowly and I get a ten bucks a day raise for every new station,” he bragged, “so I am finally making as much as I did at KNEW in 1968, not counting inflation. At this rate my career will take off at 75 years of age, and my fame as the voice of the geriatric revolution will go down in history! Play Politics but keep your powder dry!”

FROM HANK SIMS’ crucial HumCo blog, LostCoastOutpost.com: “The Very Last Chapter of the Reggae War: Dimmick Ranch Under Foreclosure. A legal notice in this morning’s Times-Standard mentions that the Dimmick Ranch — one-time home to ‘Reggae Rising,’ the rogue offshoot in the Late Great SoHum Reggae Wars — is under foreclosure. Redwood Capital Bank is scheduled to auction off the property on the courthouse steps on June 7, after owner Tom Dimmick, who once had hoped to transform his family property into a world-class entertainment venue, defaulted on a $1 million loan. The Reggae Wars broke out in 2006, when Dimmick and concert promoter Carol Bruno attempted to wrest control of the hugely successful ‘Reggae on the River’ festival from its sponsor, the Mateel Community Center. In the legal actions that followed, the Mateel was able to maintain control of the the ‘Reggae on the River’ brand, but Dimmick and Bruno — who had been booking the festival for years — soon announced that they would throw a rival festival, to be known as ‘Reggae Rising.’ The split triggered a civil war within the SoHum hippie community, with longtime Mateelians bitterly lining up behind one faction or the other. Dimmick and Bruno began to put on other types of concerts on the property, which lines the South Fork of the Eel near the Humboldt/Mendocino County line. But Dimmick later acquired full control of the ‘Reggae Rising’ festival from Bruno, and in 2010 he failed to acquire proper permits from the county. Everything went downhill from there. In the meanwhile, the Mateel Community Center’s original ‘Reggae on the River’ festival carries on, though much downsized from its glory days. With the Dimmick Ranch gone under, the final outcome of the Reggae Wars seems pretty conclusive: Everyone lost.”

A MS. JACQUELYN CLARK has been fined $110.50 for having a dog off-leash at Navarro Beach, an infraction. Ms. Clark was cited by State Parks. We bring it up because it’s the first we’ve heard of someone getting a ticket around here for an off-leash dog. And we totally approve.

OSCAR WILDE died in 1900. In February the previous year he had visited his wife’s grave. In a letter to Robert Ross he wrote: “It was very tragic seeing her name carved on a tomb — her surname, my name not mentioned of course… I brought some flowers. I was deeply affected, with a sense also of the uselessness of all regrets. Nothing could have been otherwise and life is a terrible thing.”

Betterly

Church

Chase

AS THE SUMMER OCCUPY PROTESTS commence, so do the frame jobs. Three young guys are looking at highly dubious “terrorist” charges worth 85 years each in prison. The allegations begin with a police assumption that the three are “self-described anarchists.” “Brent Betterly, 24; Jared Chase, 24; and Brian Church, 20 are alleged to have showed up in Chicago for the NATO summit demonstrations with Molotov cocktails to attack Obama’s re-election headquarters and Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s house. The three “also discussed using swords, hunting bows and brass-knuckle handles.” (What’s a brass knuckle handle?) The allegations have been formalized as conspiracy to commit terrorism, material support for terrorism and possession of explosives. The undercover cops who set up the arrests cannot be found while everyone who knows the trio say the charges are simply preposterous. The protest, one of the city’s largest in years, was to end at the lakeside convention center hosting the two-day meeting, which is focused on the war in Afghanistan, European missile defense and other international security matters, all of it funded by the everyday people of industrialized countries.

Alvarez-Carrillo

Colberg

22-YEAR-OLD Maricruz Alvarez-Carillo, of Fort Bragg, the mother of an infant present in her vehicle at the time of the mayhem, was sentenced Friday to four years in state prison for an ax attack last year on two persons during a gang fight near the CV Starr Community Center. During the January 28th, 2011 attack, Alvarez-Carillo had pursued 16-year-old Richie Olstad. Olstad eluded Alvarez-Carillo but the ax-wielding young mother attacked Alissa Colberg, Fort Bragg’s self-described “Dominant Female,” when Colberg ran up to help Olstad repel Alvarez-Carillo. The Dominant Female sustained deep cuts to her face and chest during the attack. In addition to two convictions for assault with a deadly weapon, Alvarez-Carillo picked up another felony conviction for witness intimidation in a separate incident, meaning she’s a three-striker who’s looking at 25-to-life if she commits another felony. Alvarez-Carillo is not a documented gang member but hangs out with Sureño gang members. Dominant Female and Olstad are members of a rival gang, a white subset of the Norteños, it seems.

RECOMMENDED READING, three Frisco books, two of the three recommendations accompanied by caveats: Jubilee Hitchiker: the Life and Times of Richard Brautigan by William Hjortsberg. Lots of interesting stuff in here, especially in its recreation of Brautigan’s austere early life in Eugene, Oregon, in a struggling working-class family whose matriarch married a series of marginal men. The book is also good at bringing back the San Francisco of the beatniks, just before everyone else got in on the act as hippies, the difference being that the beatniks were artists; the hippies more a reaction to the multiple suffocations of the suburbs. Brautigan lit out young for San Francisco and never looked back, breaking off what tenuous affection he seemed to have for his family. One of the most interesting passages is Hjortsberg’s encounters with Brautigan’s real father, at least by Brautigan’s mother’s say-so, who said she became pregnant by him and he fled at the accusation of paternity. A crusty old boy who always denied patrimony and hadn’t heard of his famous son when the relentess Hjortsberg tracked him down, makes a very strong case that the crusty retired laborer was indeed the author’s father, not that either the old guy or Brautigan ever seemed interested. Hjortsberg’s research is, as they say, exhaustive. It’s also exhausting. There are pages and pages of Brautigan’s encounters with unpleasant North Beach persons, all of them, of course, with artistic pretensions, among them many poets of dubious abilities who wrote in the minimalist style of Brautigan mostly, one suspects, because their trite observations, arranged vertically on the page, was all they had to say, and as soon as they said it they disappeared. This bio isn’t brief but should be. Whatever you think of Brautigan’s work, he got on and he got off. The book is very heavy, as in heavy weight. It is physically tiring to hold up from the prone position, which is how I do most of my reading. I know this is a silly complaint, but if you read lying down, bring a pillow to prop the thing up on your stomach or, I guess, substitute two hours with it for your daily push-ups. It could have been at least 300 pages shorter, and you wonder if Hjortsberg had an editor. I read it because I liked Brautigan’s Trout Fishing In America, and I liked a couple of his short stories very much. Off this biography I doubt if I would have cared much for the man himself.

THE SECOND RECOMMENDED reading is David Talbot’s Season of the Witch — Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love. As a veteran of that turbulent time and place, I can say Talbot’s book, like the Brautigan bio, is very good at helping us remember what an intoxicating sea change in American consciousness took place at ground zero in the heady months of 1966 and ‘67 before the great fall induced by drugs and murder. A very large number of talented people had appeared in one smallish place at one time — writers and musicians and artists and a solid population of people who appreciated it all. Even the Chronicle was still a lively read, and in magazine journalism there was Hunter Thompson and Warren Hinckle. (I’ve recently re-visited Hinckle’s prescient deconstruction of the hippie movement, and I can still remember the huge discontent it caused, among the libs especially. (http://www.unz.org/Pub/Ramparts-1967mar-00005) Then as now the stoners tended not to read anything. But read it yourself and tell me if Hinckle was wrong.) When hard drugs arrived at street level — accompanied by long debates on whether or not cocaine was a hard drug with the consensus opinion being that it wasn’t until it was obvious it was — and Jim Jones cooked a Frisco mayoral election then took off for Guyana to murder his parish, and Moscone and Milk were assassinated, and the Zebra killers were randomly murdering white people to create slaves in the next world, and Zodiac was doing the same thing, and a lot of hippies took off for Garberville — the City of Love suffered a serious shortage of affection. The SFPD was viewed by large sectors of the population as a kind of badged criminal gang itself. My own interfaces with the lawless Tac Squad at political demonstrations certainly got me sprinting the hell out of the way of them. Talbot says that cabals of cops were plotting to kill their own chief, Charles Gain, whom they viewed simply as one more city official expediting the wholesale conversion of San Francisco into a kind of national weirdo center. That eternal local punching bag, Tim Stoen, is obliquely fingered by Talbot as the guy who engineered the electoral fraud that elected the liberal Moscone mayor over a Sunset District conservative named Barbagelata, whom I recall as sputtering with unhinged rage at what he also insisted was the takeover of the city by hippies, gays and an assortment of radicals allied in a kind of grand conspiracy of degenerates, one of whom attempted to fire bomb Barbagelata’s house. Caveat: Talbot thinks a combination of the steadying maternal hand of Diane Feinstein as mayor succeeding Moscone, and the great 49er football teams of Bill Walsh, were pivotal in pulling the city out of its death spiral. I think it was more the improvement in the national economy combined with the influx of wealthy people, wealthy gays especially, that brought a sedating calm and the artistic blanding to the city that prevails to this day, that and the tardy realization by the forces of reaction that hippies and gays weren’t any more politically radical than Barbagelata was.

THIRD RECOMMENDATION: The Final Leap — Suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge by John Bateson. I defy anyone to read this book and still oppose a suicide barrier. I’m ashamed to say I’d been instinctively, unthinkingly opposed to a barrier because (1) I assumed it would destroy the Bridge’s aesthetic. Yes, I thought, a few annual jumpers did not justify structural modifications certain to change the visual splendor that the genius span presents, a callously ignorant assumption most famously stated by William Faulkner when he said, “….If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of old ladies.” Depends on the old lady, I’d say. I doubt if I’d be tempted to commit matricide even for that poem. Shakespeare’s collected works? Well, if that was the trade-off the old girls might have to go. This kind of thinking is easy in the abstract, but when you learn, as we do in The Final Leap, that survivors of the last jump, with one exception who did finally end her life, say they would never attempt suicide again, and that people seem to be jumping with more frequency, and you listen to the friends and relatives of jumpers, it’s time for a net or a much higher rail, both of which, we learn, can be accomplished with no aesthetic harm.

AS IT IS, going over the side is simply a matter of climbing over a four foot fence and pushing off. Four seconds later and….. Well, the physical consequences are found in this most interesting and persuasive little book which manages, in 250 pages, to thoroughly cover all aspects of the subject, including a roster of the 1200 people known to have died by jumping off the Bridge. There is, of course, a larger number of people suspected of dying in death leaps but their remains simply disappeared, either carried off by the ferocious tides almost three hundred feet down or, their chest cavities ripped open on impact to admit a rush of water that sinks them unseen and irretrievably to the bottom. Why do people commit suicide? According to Bernard Mayes, founder of San Francisco’s suicide hot line, the first suicide hot line in the country, “They have no one to talk to.” Mayes tells this story of a visit he made to the apartment of a recent jumper. “The guy was in his 30s and lived alone. Pretty bare apartment. He’d written a note and left it on his bureau. It said, ‘I’m going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I won’t jump’.” Apparently, no one smiled and he jumped. And that statement contains just about all you need to know about the psychic state of our form of social organization, another subject for sure, but suicide in this unwell country is more prevalent than any other place in the world. Jerome Motto, a psychiatrist who works with suicidal patients at UC San Francisco, also gets right to the point. “If people started hanging themselves from the tree in my front yard, I’d have a moral obligation to prevent that from happening….. If an instrument that’s being used to bring about tragic deaths is under your control, you are morally compelled to prevent its misuse.” The instrument most alluring to many suicidal people, and not only suicidal people from the Bay Area but everywhere in the United States and abroad, is the Golden Gate Bridge. It comes with its own built-in fatal attraction. So, why does the Bridge Authority resist? A combination of ignorance and moral callousness, it seems, perhaps best summed up by Mendocino County’s very own Jim Eddie of Potter Valley, a former County supervisor and a long-time Bridge trustee. “In October 2008, when the board voted 14-1 in favor of a safety net, the only ‘no’ vote was cast by James Eddie, the family rancher representing Mendocino County….. Eddie said that the people in his district didn’t think a barrier was needed.” I don’t recall Eddie doing any polls on the subject but he’s probably right. Bridge safety is not a day-to-day Mendo concern. But it should be of concern to everyone given that someone jumps every ten days off an international treasure we all own. Also recommend is the affecting 2006 documentary film by Eric Steel, The Bridge (available via Netflix). Design proposals are being considered (http://www.bridgerail.org/), but the Bridge Authority keeps on dragging its obtuse feet.

• Claude Hooten, the new owner of KMFB — now KUNK — set free ten people who had been there for a total of a couple hundred years. He converted the station to a more conventional sports-and-pop-music outlet, bearing slight resemblance to the distinctive, one-of-a-kind “renegade radio” that listeners and sponsors heard for decades, through several earlier changes of ownership.

Thomas Plowright & Bob Mariano

“I hope you print the truth,” Mrs. Plowright said as this reporter left the courtroom.

I didn’t have time to ask what she meant by that remark, but I’ll bet she thinks her son is seriously misunderstood.

The record shows that Thomas Plowright III was charged with a whole lot of drug-fueled crimes committed over a relatively brief period of time, including crimes against nature at the Plowright property on Nash Mill Road, Philo.

Not those kinds of crimes against nature — crimes against the natural world, sometimes called the environment. Defendant Plowright plowed up a blue line stream, Mill Creek, near Philo, that many people have labored long and hard to restore.

* * *

Over the last six months and in as many articles on the parks closures, you might think we are getting some real answers out of elected officials, the Department of Parks and Recreation, and the California State Parks Foundation about what is really going on. WRONG!

We all want to believe that our system of governance really has our best interests in mind and will not willfully harm them. DON’T GO THERE!

For six months, I have been asking elected officials, bureaucrats, and self-appointed “people’s advocates” what is going on and how they propose to avert the train wreck that is in sight. The standard answer given is, “We are doing our best.” DON’T YOU BELIEVE IT.

Half way through this draft article the realization came to me that much of it is by way of review of what has already happened and facts that many readers are already familiar with. Perhaps, then, it is best to deal here with the real threat to the future of state parks that no one wants to talk about: privatization. Of course, if you ask state elected officials about it they claim to be ignorant of any pending takeovers of state parks by private for profit companies. Ask the professed professional advocates for the parks, The California State Parks Foundation, and the answer is “Don’t Go There.” Ask the Parks Department officials and have your phone calls and e-mails ignored. Let’s give the elected officials, such as Jared Huffman and Noreen Evans, the benefit of the doubt. Jared Huffman says he is in the dark. Noreen Evans, as of May 14, responds that our concerns are right on target. But if so, ask how and why? Who, after all, is in charge? Are nameless bureaucrats in charge, some of whom may see their future out of government service and into one of the for-profits that is seeking to take over state parks? We all are aware how the revolving door mechanism works.

What we do know, as acknowledged by Roy Stearns at California Parks, is that The State Public Works Board on February 1st issued Requests for Proposal to for-profit concessionaires to bid on 21 parks. Included on the list four in Mendocino Mendocino (Hendy Woods, Russian Gulch, Westport-Union, and Stankish-Hickey (see RFP # 2 & 3). Also at risk of being turned over to for profits on the North Coast are Castle Crags SP, Grizzly Creek Redwoods SP, and Benbow SRA. Proposals are due by May 29 at California Deparetment of Parks and Recreation, Concessions, Revervations and Fees Division. (http://www.parks.ca.gov/concessions .)

While we cannot say with certainty that the for-profit entity seeking to take over these four parks is indeed The California Parks Company, it is not unreasonable to assume just that. This company, founded in 1975, is seeking fresh opportunities to take over some of our most precious state parks, those Jared Huffman calls “low hanging fruit.” By “low hanging fruit” what Huffman and others mean is those parks with the most attractive targets for profiteers—established camping facilities. The bundling proposal said to be in the works for Hendy Woods, Russian Gulch, Standish-Hickey, and Westport-Union is just that, “low hanging fruit” ripe for a for-profit picking.

What might it mean if The California Parks Company takes these four parks over? Consider what the company is already doing at Big Basin State Park. While there are “primitive campsites” available on hiking trails, these have no water, no bathrooms, no picnic tables, no grills, and allow no fires. As for the main campground, tent-cabins are available for a minimum of two nights (three on holidays) for between $75 and $125 per night. And if you need supplies of any kind, why go into town? There is a store and gift shop on site. Most of the operations are run by non-professional, low wage workers who have no stake in the park or its precious resources. It is no stretch to assume that a for-profit company to maximize its profit potential on the North Coast would want to put in place such a gentrified operation. Only the well-heeled, urbanized camper type need apply. Reservations only. On a budget? Forget it.

What can one learn from the website for The California Parks Company? The message from John Koeberer, CEO, is that “Increased public funding of the parks just isn’t an option.” To his way of thinking, “voters declared their opposition to increasing taxes to maintain state parks…” He wants you to “consider these private sector alternatives.” He claims, by the way, to be a park professional. As a former president of the California Chamber of Commerce, and currently Co-Chair of the Tourism Committee of the Chamber, and former member of the California Travel and Tourism Commission, he should know what his chances are to maneuver the State Parks into his orbit.

Mr. Koeberer says quite openly that “some parks don’t belong in the state park system. Most of these are among the smallest of our parks (note how he calls them our parks) and lack any semblance of statewide…. significance.” His solution? “California needs an independent task force (similar to the Defense and Realignment Commission) to assess which parks should be retained and which should be buttoned up and maintained until times are better.” Would any of us want such pro-business, in it for the money, type deciding which of our parks to save and which to condemn? Keep in mind that no ordinary citizen, and almost no professional wildlife management professional, biologist, or the like is ever likely to see the inside of the conference room of such a commission. Case in point, The California State Parks Foundation has 30 members on its board. They are to a person from banking, commercial real estate, corporate law, wealth management, PG&E, and the Disney Company.

According to John Koeberer (just Google The California Parks Company to see), “Many parks could be packaged on a regional basis for private-sector management…” “Private enterprise has shown it can accrue operating savings on an average of 30% better than government…” Of course, he ignored the fact that the State Parks Districts are indeed regionally based operations, such as the Mendocino District.

True, the state rangers have to divide their time between the “low hanging fruits” and those small units that in his estimation “don’t belong.” Nor does Mr. Koeberer acknowledge that the only way to achieve savings is to ignore “deferred maintenance (that $1.3 billion backlog in current terms) as well major repairs. On good authority, it is common knowledge that the State Parks Department will still carry the burden of major repairs at state parks, even if they are run by a for-profit. In return, the state might receive up to 3% of the revenues. Talk of low rent? As for Koeberer’s glancing comment about better times, any for-profit agreement is very likely to be for a minimum of 5 years, and in many cases 10 or more years, else why would they do it. Options to renew might effectively remove a state park permanently from state control.

There is one thing that Mr. Koeberer says that I agree with: “The California State Park funding crisis has given our state the opportunity to redefine how our parks are managed in ways that will assure their quality, relevance and access for Californians now and into the future.”

However, Mr. Koeberer’s solution is to gentrify the most profit making potential parks, effectively shutting off access to those with more modest means, while at the same time Balkanizing a system that to this point has remained whole and undivided.

Mr. Koeberer lists some of his (Innovate(ive) Revenue-Generating Solutions” as automated fee collection at park entrances, parking lots and showers that could collect revenue 24/7, more privately owned and managed tent-cabins, park models, yurts and other popular new forms of alternative camping, and special events (concerts, competitions and spectator events). In short, he advocates more revenue collection opportunities at every step of the way and a Disneyland atmosphere replete with competitions and spectaculars. If your idea of a state park is that of a refuge from the frenetic pace of life outside its borders, forget it if Mr. Koeberer has his way. Can you picture it: Hendy Woods Futurama! What is Mr. Koeberer’s defense for his ideas of innovation? “It is in the DNA of entrepreneurs to invent new ways to stimulate revenue.” Has he no clue that State Park custodians, our park rangers and administrative staff of the system, should have in their DNA the instincts to protect, preserve, and leave nature as much alone and without modification as is humanly possible?

Well, at this point, perhaps it is best to reserve a discussion of the current wave of legislative initiatives for another week. Let’s leave it that you, the reader, now have a better idea what is in store if private for-profit companies end up running our state parks, any of them. It is up to you now to press our elected officials and the Department of Parks and Recreation for answers. It is up to you to make them understand that for-profit operators are not the solution to our current fiscal problems in maintaining state parks. What might you say to Jared Huffman, Wes Chesbro, and Noreen Evans? Tell them to keep pressing for the right solutions and not to close our parks. As for privatization initiatives: tell them “Don’t go there!” These parks belong to 35 million California citizens, and are not for sale.

ONE MIGHT WONDER why it’s taken 20 years to “review” and update the Plan. The answer to that one is right there in this week’s agenda. “If there is general community consensus…” the Plan can be amended.

THERE WOULDN’T BE “’CONSENSUS” on a guarantee of eternal life from this gang, but the nut of the prob is “Visitor Serving Facilities.”

VSFs ARE DEFINED as hostels, hotels, inns, b&bs, motels, student/instructor temporary housing (at the Art Center), single unit rentals, and vacation home rentals, which pretty much covers most structures in Mendocino’s pseudo-Victorian theme park. But the County collects bed tax on these little rental money machines so the County has a direct interest in knowing how many of them there are — ka-ching! ka-ching!

BUT, AS WE KNOW, Mendocino Village also contains among its small permanent population an overabundance of pickers of microscopic nits. These people will spend hours on how thick an asphalt patch on a sidewalk should be and what color to paint a window frame, never mind something as daunting as defining a “rental unit.”

SO ASKING THESE PEOPLE to reach “general community consensus” on which units are B&Bs and which are vacation home rentals and which are some petty chiseler’s spare bedroom that he occasionally rents out to touri is like trying to get Bill Clinton to define a sex act.

AN EARNEST YOUNG WOMAN out of the Fort Bragg Planning Office tried to inventory Mendocino’s rentals a few years ago and was roundly denounced by nearly everyone at the first Supes meeting when the poor thing presented the fruit of her labor.

A PROVISION in the 1992 Town Plan says, “The total number of rental units allowable, 234, shall remain fixed until the plan is further reviewed and a plan amendment is approved and certified by the California Coastal Commission.”

SO WHAT do people do who want to rent out their garage or that extra bedroom when the number of rooms has been fixed at 234 since 1992? They rent it anyway but they don’t list it, which means the County gets no bed tax.

THE MENDO Grand Jury wrote the County up back in 2008 for failing to update its Town Plan, the Fort Bragg planner’s valiant attempt to enumerate rentals having gone nowhere. The Grand Jury’s 40-page report was called “Byzantium By The Bay,” that title nicely summarizing the prevailing reality. The GJ went on to say that its investigation had found that “the County of Mendocino has failed, since 2001, to administer licensing of Vacation Home Rentals and Single Unit Rentals in the Town of Mendocino as required by the Mendocino Town Plan.” In other words, a whole lotta people were renting off the books.

THE COUNTY asked the same Fort Bragg planner to respond to the Grand Jury’s criticism, but not being much of a writer, she ended up making things murkier.

NOW A NEW BOARD OF SUPERVISORS has decided to take another whack at the Mendocino Town Plan. We suggest that all of Mendocino Village become a “Visitor Serving Facility” with every third structure designated a visitor serving facility.

ANOTHER OPTION might be to urge the Town of Mendocino to incorporate, thus relieving the rest of us of responsibility for endless discussions of definitions, thereby ensuring in perpetuity an objectively crazy dispute that only the town’s residents enjoy.

MENDOCINO FILM FESTIVAL Kicks Off Take 7 — Celebrate Mendocino Film Festival’s seventh year of bringing independent films to the Mendocino Coast at our Kickoff Party on Wednesday, May 23 from 5 to 8pm at the MacCallum House Restaurant and Bar in Mendocino. We expect festival tickets to sell out and this is your chance to purchase tickets to the Film Festival before the box office opens. We are counting down to the Mendocino Film Festival, June 1 through June 3, in Crown Hall, Arena Theater, and Coast Cinemas. Film Festival board of directors, programmers, and friends want to celebrate the best Festival ever—with you. Join us in the Bar & Cafe for drinks and casual cafe dining or in the dining room for a gourmet dinner — all exquisitely presented and prepared by Executive Chef Alan Kantor. All proceeds benefit the Mendocino Film Festival and help bring films and filmmakers to the coast. For dinner reservations call 937-0289 or visit www.MacCallumHouse.com. Bar opens at 5pm. Dinner is served 5:30 to 8:30pm. For more information about the Mendocino Film Festival selections visit www.MendocinoFilmFestival.org.

]]> http://theava.com/archives/15581/feed 0 http://theava.com/archives/15509 http://theava.com/archives/15509#comments Wed, 09 May 2012 22:40:28 +0000 Will Parrish http://theava.com/?p=15509 To paraphrase Upton Sinclair’s 1923 book The Goose Step: A Study of American Education, some of the greatest sociopaths in this country’s history have affixed their names to university buildings in an effort to burnish their reputations.

Sonoma State University provides a perfect illustration. One of the individuals most criminally culpable for the predatory banking practices that led to the 2008 economic meltdown, former Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill, donated $12 million to help construct a new music venue on campus. The main concert hall, adjoining lawn, and commons performance venues are now named after Mr. Weill and Mrs. Weill, whose name is Joan.

MANCHESTER Elementary School’s website says it serves 56 students grades K-8. Based on its state test results, it has received a “GreatSchools Rating of 3 out of 10,” but “the school community has reviewed this school and given it an average rating of 5 out of 5 stars.” Translation: Not a very good school but its staff and parents think it’s boffo. Manchester Elementary also has its own school board. The school is looking for a 3 in 1 combined superintendent, principal and teacher. There’s also a vacancy on its school board. Superintendent of County Schools, Paul Tichinin, is trying to get one of his preferred citizens, fogbelt old girl Cindy Biaggi, into the superintendent’s job. She may be supremely qualified, but a recommendation from Tichinin should come with a bilingual neon Peligro! and Buyer Beware warnings. A vacant school board slot just might be filled by the persistent critic of the Point Arena schools, Susan Rush, but Tichinin and Co. will of course move both rezes to make sure she isn’t seated. Of course independent, smart people like Mrs. Rush is just what’s needed everywhere in Mendocino County, and especially in Point Arena’s historically troubled schools.

DAVE GURNEY will be in Superior Court, Ukiah, this Friday at 9:30am. “In support,” Gurney explains, “for our lawsuit against the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative (MLPAI) and their private facilitators, for civil rights and Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Law violations back in April, 2010. That’s when I was arrested for legally recording a public meeting of the MLPAI, and for asking a question. It’s for ‘Summary Adjudication.’ I’m not a lawyer, but this means they are trying to get the case thrown out early to avoid the embarrassment of going to trial. The lawyers will be arguing over the phone, and a ruling by the judge is not expected until later.”

AT LAST. Work has begun on the 75,000-square-foot Adventist Hospital in Willits, a $64 million project approved by State hospital regulators just last week. The enterprise will be spread over  33 acres donated by the Handley family beneath their old ranch southeast of town.

Audet

GOLDIE WATCH: Goldilocks and all variations thereof have been retired as per the request of their designee, Ms. Jacqueline Audet of Fort Bragg. From three reported sightings of Ms. Audet last week in the Harvest Market shopping area, she is doing well, although one reporter did encounter her in the hard booze section of Harvest and was compelled to comment, “She wasn’t loaded yet.” Another eyewitness said he thought Ms. Audet “was beginning to show the signs of hard wear and tear from her very unfortunate lifestyle choices.” We remain hopeful that Ms. Audet, now one of the Mendocino Coast’s most remarked upon citizens, will soon consent to an interview.

The coverage included stories from the Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, North Bay Bohemian, and of course several here in the AVA. Most of the stories focused dually on Artesa’s project and that of Premier Pacific Vineyard, which has proposed to clear roughly 1,800 acres of redwoods for wine-grapes on the ridgetops and bluffs of its nearby 20,000 acre “Preservation Ranch” property. Rarely has any North Coast wine industry entity received so much negative attention, this being an industry that carefully identifies itself with the trope of enlightened small farmers in bucolic settings living in harmony with the land.

Yet, i’s easy to see why the “Fairfax” project has raised international alarm. The project would involve clear-cutting mostly second-growth redwood forest across roughly 154 acres of the total 173 acre project site. After chainsawing the trees, the Artesa crews would cleave the redwood and Doug-fir stumps and roots from the earth, deep rip the soil with massive Caterpillars, and apply huge quantities of pesticides, herbicides and lime, thereby making way for 116 acres of vineyards, 18 acres of graded vineyard perimeters, nine acres of water reservoirs, two acres of roadways, a one-acre corporate yard, and a vast perimeter of exclusionary fencing.

The project would also decimate an ancient Kashia Pomo village site, despite the protests of Kashia elders and traditionalists, who carry on a cultural memory of the site stretching back thousands of years. I profiled the Kashia’s most outspoken opponents of the project, Violet Parrish Chappel and Vivian Parrish Wilder, in a pair of pieces here in the AVA last year. And that’s not even to mention its impact on the already badly damaged Gualala River watershed.

Clearly, Codorniu/Artesa’s higher-ups have been rattled by the criticism. Company reps claim that the “link with the land and the environment is the foundation stone of all [our] activity,” and that they have “always shown a firm commitment to the land and its natural surroundings” throughout the company’s nearly 500 year history. If they were genuine, they might have taken the criticism as cause for carefully reconsidering the project, even if that merely meant opting for a less sensitive area in which to add to their existing global array of vineyards and wineries.

Instead, they hired one of the most infamous public relations firms in the San Francisco Bay Area, a company with a history of propagandizing on behalf of many of the world’s most ecologically rapacious corporations — Singer Associates.

To wit, the following somewhat self-aggrandizing description of Singer Associates’ function, courtesy of its web site: “[company founder] Sam Singer has been dubbed ‘The Fixer’ by the San Jose Mercury News, a ‘Top Gun for Hire’ by the San Francisco Chronicle, and one of the most powerful people in San Francisco by 7X7 Magazine for his ability to turn the news around when things look dire for his clients.”

Chevron Corporation, for instance, hired Singer to help it manage the public image after-effects of the record $18.5 billion fine an Ecuadorian judge ordered it to pay in February 2011 — a verdict upheld by an appeals court in January — as compensation for the incredible amount of damage its subsidiary, Texaco, caused across a huge swath of the Amazon basin. In the course of several years, Texaco dumped oil-drilling waste in over 900 unlined pits, discharged 18.5 billion gallons of toxic water into local streams and rivers, polluted the forest with natural gas venting, and caused illness and deaths among indigenous people.

Since then, Singer has used its network of media contacts to promote Chevron’s entirely predictable allegation that the ruling arose from rampant corruption in the Ecuadorian court system, while amazingly also asserting that Texaco adequately cleaned up the mess long ago.

On a vastly smaller scale, Singer is doing its utmost to mystify public perception of the Artesa “Fairfax” project, including by way of the new web site, www.artesasonoma.com . The front page bemoans “inaccurate” newspaper reports related to how Artesa intends to “clear cut old-growth redwood trees” [emphasis added] and “interfere with fragile fisheries.”

Of course, no newspaper has ever reported that Artesa is clear-cutting “old-growth redwood trees. Virtually all remaining old-growth treet on the property were clear-cut 50-75 years ago. More than 97% of the North Coast’s redwood old growth has been cut. Anyone with even passing familiarity of regional timber terrain knows the towering 300 foot giants that were once pervasive here have long since been destroyed.

Rather, Artesa plans to clear-cut thousands of second-growth redwoods (many if not most of these trees being at least 80 feet tall) and Doug-firs, thereby also destroying the habitat of the hundreds of species of plants, mammals, birds, amphibians, insects and fungi living in the forest.

For the record, the AVA has never stated that Artesa would “interfere with” fisheries. The terms we prefer are “decimate” or “ravage,” which have the virtue of more accurately reflecting the present dire state of the Gualala River watershed, and especially its Wheatfield Fork (one of three main forks of the Gualala. That particular portion of the river ran dry in 2008, for the first time in recorded history, mainly owing to intensive nearby vineyard development.

The Artesa “Fairfax” development would only make things much worse, greatly increasing the volume of sediment washing down into the watershed, while also depriving the soil of its ability to absorb rainfall that has historically percolated into the watershed, regulating the river level during crucial spring and summer months.

As for the destruction of Kashia sacred sites, Artesa’s Facebook page boldly states, “Our plans will not impact the heritage of any Native Americans.” Contrast that statement to one made by two people who actually have a “Native American” heritage, Kashia elders Violet Parrish Chappel and Vivian Parrish Wilder, who come from a long line of tribal spiritual leaders:

“That patch over there — Artesa land in Annapolis — that is a blessed place for us. We went there as kids. We picked berries there with our mother. We picked berries for necklaces. There is another place over there where there is a lot of Manzanita, and that was really important to us. We made spoons from that and also awls to make baskets. These are the things we grew up with… We know that whole area is a village site. All these places were occupied and used by our people. The whole place is one. “

For his part, University of Florida archeologist Peter Schmidt referred to the whole region in and around the site as “one of the densest and most significant, interactive clusters of human habitation along the Sonoma coastal hinterland.”

A pair of other Sonoma and Mendocino Coast tribes have also weighed in on whether the project would “impact the heritage of any Native Americans.” The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and the Manchester Band of Pomo Indians joined the Kashia in passing a strongly-worded resolution earlier this year opposing the project, asserting that it “threatens our watershed, forests, sacred sites, archaeological sites and tribal cultural resources that are of cultural and religious importance.”

It’s not yet clear where the various Pomo opposition will go, although Parrish Chappel and Parrish Wilder have strongly advocated for the land to turn into a new center for education on Kashia Pomo culture. In a conversation last week, Kashia Tribal Chairman Emilio Valencia told the AVA, “We’re still in process with Artesa, and that’s all I can say about that right now.”

Project Approval Looms

In spite of all the opposition, CalFIRE is on the verge of certifying Artesa’s proposal. In February, the agency produced a final Environmental Impact Report maintaining that all environmental and archeological impacts from the project can be “mitigated” such that they will be “less than significant.”

Bill Snyder, deputy director of resource management for Cal Fire, justified his agency’s looming approval of the project to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat thusly in the April 6 edition: “At that point in time, for us to say we’re not going to approve your project because we just don’t like it, that would be inconsistent with state law. It’s not a popularity contest.”

Yet, the project clearly violates various elements of state law. The Gualala River is officially listed as impaired by high temperature and excess sediment under the federal Clean Water Act. California forestry law prohibits any additional harm to a federally listed impaired river. Meanwhile, the on-site archeological studies have been far shoddier than the California Environmental Quality Act mandates, not to mention a provision of the Sonoma County General Plan that requires preservation of “significant archaeological and historical sites, which represent the ethnic, cultural, and economic groups that have lived and worked in Sonoma County.”

Annapolis resident Chris Poehlman, president of Friends of the Gualala River, says his organization is working with environmental attorney Steve Volker to explore what avenues are best for possible litigation. The Center for Biological Diversity and the Redwood Chapter of the Sierra Club are among the other visible environmental groups opposing the project.

Spurred on by the widespread media attention, various state politicians and candidates for local office have gesticulated in the direction of not fully supporting the project. State Sen. Noreen Evans and Assemblyman Wes Chesbro both contacted Cal Fire with “concerns,” and Evans asking that any decision be delayed to allow more tribal input and implementation of new county vineyard erosion rules that address tree removal on slopes and ridgetops.

Those new rules are being crafted by the Sonoma County Agriculture Department office. They would update an existing ordinance, which the SoCo Supervisors passed in 2000, which meagerly govern agricultural development on hillsides and steep slopes. The new rules would likely delay approval of Artesa’s project by a few months, forcing them to reconfigure their plan to account for restrictions on tree removal in steep areas and adjacent to streams.

In February, a San Francisco Examiner Political Bluzz blog article touting the Artesa project appeared a few months ago, which was exactly identical to an Artesa press release. That is, other than the mysterious addition of three paragraphs accusing Poehlman of Friends of the Gualala River of undertaking “anti-immigrant, anti-Spanish tirades” on account of the following statement the Press Democrat attributed to him: “This is a foreign corporation coming into the coastal forests of California wanting to cut down our forests for their corporate gain.”

It seems that Artesa’s hired PR gun, Singer Associates, is following basically the same playbook — including ad hominem attacks — as it has used in its defenses of Chevron-Texaco’s monumentally destructive activities in the Amazon jungle.

The public relations battle concerning the project promises to ramp up in coming months, after CalFIRE officially approves the project. As Friends of the Gualala River noted in a letter to Codorniu’s Barcelona headquarters in March, asking the company to withdraw their project, “We fully expect media coverage to surge again to greater levels during inevitable objections or challenges to the final permits for the Artesa project.”

The LA cop was armed with a high-powered rifle and his concealed duty weapon. The bush hippy had a .22 pistol.

The cop hasn’t gotten over the encounter.

“I have never in my life been so terrified. I have been in gunfights with LA gangsters and in many dangerous situations over the years, but nothing as bad as this. I have been forced to seek counseling and I’ve been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder from this incident.”

It was supposed to be “the dream hunting-vacation of a lifetime” for LA County Sheriff’s Sergeant Tui Wright. But, he says, his Westport wilderness outing turned into a lifelong nightmare.

“This incident will not be leaving me, in my dreams, any time soon,” Wright said, and he wanted Keith Jacovac to pay for his nightmares with 15 years in state prison.

But Ten Mile Court’s prosecutor, Deputy DA Timothy Stoen, cut a deal with Jacovac’s lawyer, Justin Petersen, that got Jacovac 30 days in jail and probation.

Part of the reason Jacovac got off light was a slew of letters in support of him, encomiums from all segments of Mendocino County society, including pillars of the community, some of whom are friends of presiding Judge Ann Moorman. These many, many letters, unprecedented in Bush Hippy legal history, extolled the virtues of the defendant; some of them suggested the LA cop was the perp.

The facts of the case were certainly in dispute. Not only facts, but some of Mendocino County’s most revered, not to say “hallowed,” traditions came into play.

“There is a long history,” Justin Petersen began, “in the Westport area concerning the Wages Creek Road area where this incident took place. There are about 15 to 20 houses along the sunny side of the creek and none on the shady side. Historically, therefore, there has been no hunting on the sunny side for obvious reasons. The residents have always had an agreement that the hunting would be done over on the shady side where there are no houses. In fact, my client had permission from Pic Sosa to post the area in front of his house with No Hunting and No Trespassing signs, an arrangement made over dinner with Pic some time earlier, and here I have a photograph of one of these signs right where Mr. Wright was found with the deer. And Pic Sosa himself got in a fistfight at a barbecue with someone for hunting in one of these posted areas.”

Prosecutor Stoen objected that there was no proof of this agreement about posting the area, but the photo was accepted into evidence by Judge Moorman.

Petersen continued: “When law enforcement arrived my client told them that in 25 years this was the first time he’d ever had anyone hunting in his front yard, especially after dark. Now, of all the many letters we don’t have one from Mr. Pic Sosa — who is no friend of my client — but he is a friend of Mr. Wright. Another thing about this area along Wages Creek is a long history of vandalism and break-ins, and my client told law enforcement about numerous instances of vandalism, and that this crap has been going on for years, and that he thought Tui Wright was someone who was up to no good when he first went down there. He saw the deer next to the No Hunting sign, then, and knew it was a hunter. But it is also important to note that the Aaron Bassler business was going on during this incident, and likely as not some of the break-ins and vandalism were his doing. All the people who live on Wages Creek Road were very agitated and even Tui Wright knows that.

“Now, the facts in this case are disputed, but my client says the shots were fired below his house where Tui Wright was ultimately found with the deer well past eight o’clock at night. And my client can hear these shots whistling through the vegetation. And he knows it is past eight because that’s when his son gets off work at the Westport Store. And he doesn’t want his son walking home through the gunfire so he goes to pick him up. Now, we all know you can’t hunt after dark. But you can mesmerize deer with a spotlight, and I know Tui Wright has denied this, but here he is on the last day of what he himself describes as a ‘dream hunt’ and he still hasn’t got a deer. I suppose that on this, the last night of a dream vacation from LA, it is possible that, well, even some lawyers have been known to stretch the Fish and Game rules a bit — not that I personally have any such experience with that…”

This comment caused a few gasps of restrained merriment in the courtroom because the entire male Petersen lawyer clan was once arrested in Wyoming for an illegal elk hunt.

“Be that as it may,” Petersen continued, “Tui Wright was on a quad equipped with a spotlight and even the neighbors heard shots after dark. So as a result, my client goes down there and meets Megan Perry. She says she saw these guys and it didn’t look right to her, and she asks my client to check it out. So he does. He sees Tui Wright and, thinking he’s a burglar or a vandal, says he’s sick of this. Like he told law enforcement, he thought it was someone other than who it was. He went home afterwards and called Pic Sosa and apologized; next day he called Jonathan Langenderfer’s [the 12-yeaar-old who was with Mr. Wright] mom and apologized to her.”

The charges against Jacovac were pointing a gun at Wright and the kid and threatening to kill them.

“Defense,” Petersen said, “disputes that the gun was pointed at anyone. We would also argue that this offense does not constitute a criminal threat. The probation report says my client does not express any remorse and maybe that is why they are seeking the 180 days in jail, but my client is remorseful. He does express remorse for what he did, but not for what he didn’t do. What my client did was he made a mistake, and I think an understandable one. He threatened them and he ejected them from the property. They were spotlighting deer and he thought they were doing something else. With respect to the jail time, I think it’s preposterous that my client should go to jail for this.”

Prosecuting DA Tim Stoen said he had also read the many letters attesting to Jacovac’s good character. “And I’m very impressed with what the defense has done. Mr. Jacovac has many redeeming characteristics and is well thought of in the community. But I am deeply troubled that what he did was act like a vigilante … and the lack of remorse is also very troubling. Now, what Mr. Wright did was perfectly legal in every way. He was hunting with written permission from the landowner, Mr. Sosa. He did nothing that was culpable, and if it had not been for the character of Mr. Wright — he had a concealed weapon — after the gun was pointed at him, this could have developed into a very tragic situation. But because of the 12-year-old who was present, Mr. Wright chose not to go that far. So if his character was good enough to show that admirable restraint, then it is good enough to be believed when he says he shot the deer legally.

“These are the facts from the preliminary hearing: Mr. Wright testified that the defendant ‘threatened to kill me’ and ‘to put a bullet in my brain.’ Also, J.T. [the 12-year-old] said the defendant trained the pistol at both of them. And Mr. Wright said, ‘I briefly considered drawing my duty weapon, but thought it would be a losing proposition’ …so the defendant got a break. Considering the seriousness of this, the jail time should be 365 days; 180, if anything, is too short.”

Sgt. Wright is assigned to the Malibu/Lost Hills Station Search and Rescue team, and a veteran of some of the most difficult mountain searches in the area. Sgt. Wright also has experience with L.A.’s Juvenile Intervention Program. After apologizing for not wearing a suit to court, he said he was legally hunting with written permission and had brought along a friend’s son “to observe and assist.”

“I observed a legal buck,” Sgt. Wright said, “which I shot and killed during legal hunting time. I wasn’t shooting from any road or at any structures, and there was a good backstop. I agree with Mr. Stoen. I believe the defendant has some very good qualities. But we’re talking about an incident that ended in a felony conviction. Now, there’s been some talk about me shooting after dark. But I shot the deer at six o’clock, well before dark. In hindsight, it may have been a little later. Maybe 6:15 or 6:20. Also, there’s been a lot of talk about why I didn’t gut the deer, which is the usual practice. But I heard some gunshots from the direction of the defendant’s property, and that made me nervous. So we dragged the deer out to the ATV. Just then this truck came down the road and skidded to a stop, nearly colliding with the ATV. The defendant then got out and threatened to kill me. He threatened to kill both of us, repeatedly, and told us to get out of there.

“I thought about defending myself, but considering the 12-year-old, I had no choice but to beg for our lives, and that’s what I did. I did anything I could to keep him from pulling the trigger. I reached for the deer and the defendant said ‘Leave the deer there, and leave!’ He continued to point the gun at me and told me to leave. Now, what has not been mentioned is that I met the defendant the day before. I was wearing camo pants, which are favored by hunters for the big cargo pockets and a bright orange vest. He asked me to leave the gate closed so a horse didn’t get out. I did not see a No Hunting sign, which may have been put up afterwards. Eventually, I did get the deer back. But, to back up a bit: Pic Sosa and I grew up together. He never told me there was no hunting on the north side of the road. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Sgt. Wright arranged some papers from a thick envelope and resumed his narrative.

“Eventually, we fled for our lives back to Westport. I believe the defendant was following us. We almost crashed and I told J.T. to slow down. J.T. was driving. We fled into the back yard of a house. There could have been a dog there, I didn’t know, but I was terrified. In fact there was a dog there, a huge mastiff, which could have ate me, but what am I going to do? The homeowner could have shot me and would have been perfectly justified in doing so. It was a terrifying incident. I told J.T. to slow down and called 911. There was a white pickup following us. Law enforcement showed up eventually. It took a very long time. They returned my deer to me. I was told he was a marijuana grower and that he thought I was there to steal it. In fact, they all [the residents of Westport and Wages Creek Road] looked at me and sneered, like I was a terrorist or something. I had heard these rumors that they all grow marijuana in the Wages Creek area and now I believe they are accurate.”

Sgt. Wright then launched into a long description about how the incident had caused him to seek counseling and lose work. He didn’t know if he could continue in his stressful line of work. He said he worried he might “freeze up” at a decisive moment or shoot someone who didn’t deserve to be shot. He said he’d been diagnosed with PTSD. The 12-year-old’s mother told him the boy had also been badly shaken by the confrontation.

“The name Bassler was brought up,” Wright said. (Bassler, a backwoods guy, had shot and killed two men in that area of the Mendocino Coast and was still on the run at the time.) “Basically, that is what the defendant has done to me. In my opinion, he should get over 14 years for armed robbery — taking my property, my deer — and terrorist threats, all strike offenses. Yet he acts like he’s the victim in this case. And this angers me because I expected him to stand up like a man and accept greatly reduced jail time. I also believe he hasn’t turned in his guns as part of the restraining order. And also…”

Timothy King of the Probation Department had rolled his eyes at some of Sgt. Wright’s more piteous digressions into victimhood; he now had his face buried behind his hands in disbelief.

Sgt. Wright then launched into a lament about how the Northern California outback had become a free range entitlement area for marijuana growers who “feel they can run other people off. I was a fool to think I could hunt in this lawless area. This incident will not be leaving me, in my dreams, any time soon.”

No evidence was introduced that the defendant was a pot farmer.

“And, now, your honor,” Wright continued, “I’d like to just briefly explain that I was hunting with a scope on my rifle and, as everyone knows, you can’t see through a scope at night with a spotlight.”

Scoped rifles are in fact the weapon of choice for spotlighting deer.

Far from being brief, Sgt. Wright was going on and on when another judge came to the door and reminded Judge Moorman that it was well past noon and she was expected at a memorial ceremony commemorating a long-time Mendocino County jurist, the late Frank Petersen, defense attorney Justin Petersen’s uncle. Following a group photo of Mendocino County’s legal establishment out on the Courthouse steps, Sgt. Wright resumed his tale of unending woe.

“I’ll be brief, your honor” — a chorus of muffled groans greeted this latest promise from the traumatized L.A. cop to at last wrap it up.  “The defendant and all these letters all tell about seeing me after dark. But it was only after a long search that we were able to find the deer. Then there was the long drag out to the road where the ATV was parked.”

On and on about the struggle to drag the trophy out to the ATV. Then a parting shot at Mr. Petersen: “Defense has had excellent counsel in this case,” the implication being that if Jacovac hadn’t had excellent counsel Jacovac would be headed for the state pen.

Judge Moorman assured Sgt. Wright, “I believe everything you say. I also believe you are sincere as to how this has affected you psychologically, and that is regrettable. I encourage you take some solace in that you have had your say.

“Now,” the judge said turning to the defendant, “with respect to Mr. Jacovac, I would like to note the following: You are 54 years old and have never been in court before on any criminal matter, at least, and that is to be commended. And while I am impressed by the way you are thought of in the community, I am troubled by the sadness this situation could have resulted in. You were both carrying loaded firearms; you were both upset and fearful and this could have been an all-round bloody tragedy. Now, the letters do play a role. I have to draw some conclusions from them. Mr. Jacovac is very highly regarded in the community, but no one should walk away from here thinking I don’t feel a great deal of contempt for this kind of thing — to confront someone with a firearm was foolhardy, Mr. Jacovac. Now, I know you’ve reached a disposition in this case and the Probation office is recommending 180 days, but custody is not always the answer. Your record is also very admirable. I expect every adult to live their entire life without being a defendant, but I think that since these circumstances are likely never to be repeated — and the 136.2 [restraining] order aside, you cannot posses a firearm ever again, Mr. Jacovac, and that’s the reason this isn’t going to happen again. But just remember, your first thought is not always your best thought. Having said that I’m going to follow the plea agreement and place you on probation for 48 months and impose a jail sentence of 30 days. Also, I’m going to add 100 hours of community service since you seem to be the kind of person who does that sort of thing anyway. This was a one of a kind incident and I’m very glad it didn’t have a different result.”

Afterwards, Sgt. Wright told this reporter he wasn’t surprised that Mendocino County has the amount of violence it does. “The facts speak for themselves. Mr. Jacovac had excellent counsel, but that’s all a smoke screen. He should have gotten 14 to 15 years. Anywhere else in the state, this would have resulted in a prison sentence.”

*There are three kinds of people in Mendocino County: pavement people, bush hippies and hill muffins. Pavement people live within walking distance of a store; bush hippies live deep in the woods; hill muffins, who like their views, dwell on the ridges. The largest concentration of bush hippies in Mendocino County is strung out (sic) along Spy Rock Road, north of Laytonville, and the muffs live on the ridges everywhere in the County.

• PRESIDENT: There’s no choice. Both candidates represent the concentrations of wealth that have brought us to where we are, which is rolling, unaddressed catastrophes negatively affecting every area of American life. We suggest a vote for Rocky Anderson, former mayor of Salt Lake City, whose positions on the issues are what we want — a fair system of taxation, single payer healthcare, an immediate end to the futile wars on the Mohammedans. ROCKY ANDERSON FOR PRESIDENT

• UNITED STATES SENATOR: Not incumbent Dianne Feinstein, for God’s sake, and not her for the same reasons that Obama should not be re-elected President. The Democratic Party incumbents are the other half of an ongoing conspiracy against the welfare and well-being of most Americans except the One Percenters. In fact, Obama and Feinstein represent the One Percent. There are 23 other persons running for Feinstein’s seat. Pick one. Us? We’ll vote for Marsha Feinland, a retired teacher, running under the grand old auspices of the Peace and Freedom Party. FEINLAND FOR US SENATOR

• UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE: Back in the 1960s, the Northcoast was represented by a liberal, Kennedy-esque Democrat named Clem Miller. He was the last Congressman we’ve had that might be described as “progressive.” Since Miller’s death in a plane crash, which did not prevent him from winning re-election, the first dead man to pull that one off, the Northcoast has been interchangeably represented by corporate hacks of the Mike Thompson variety, of which the Thompson- annointed Jared Huffman is one. Norman Solomon would take us back to a Clem Miller-like future in that Solomon will represent the interests of the every day people of the Northcoast, not the wine and war votes of Mike Thompson. SOLOMON FOR CONGRESS

• STATE ASSEMBLY: Not Wes Chesbro, a career officeholder out of Arcata who has never held a job other than elected office. Ever wonder why Mendocino County suffers major boondoggles like the heavily tax-subsidized Mendocino Transit Authority? Wes Chesbro. He stays in office by diverting public funds to his Democratic Party allies like the ones at the MTA and other County non-profits; in return the people employed in the power slots at the Northcoast’s non-profits beat the drums for Wes. Called by its right name, this is corruption. A vote for Chesbro is a vote for More of the Same. Dump Chesbro for Tom Lynch, also a Democrat but a Democrat of the better type. A small businessman out of Sonoma County, Lynch knows what it’s like to survive in the free enterprise jungle created by the bi-partisan political monopoly. TOM LYNCH FOR ASSEMBLY

• PROP 28 — TERM LIMITS. Of course. Yes on 28. The people opposed are the hackeroos who want their stays in public office prolonged — forever, if they can manage it. This bill would limit the number of years people like Wes Chesbro could stay in the state legislature. YES ON 28.

• PROP 29 — TOBACCO TAX. No. The constant raising of the smoke tax occurs in lieu of fair taxation on the rich, few of whom inhale anything other than cocaine. NO ON 29

• SUPERVISOR, 2ND DISTRICT. JOHN McCOWEN. McCowen has been a conscientious, non-partisan supervisor. His opponent, Andrea Longoria, a County worker, may be well meaning but it’s more likely she’s been shoved into the breach by the SEIU, the bumbling Sacramento-based union that botched County pay cut negotiations and is still unhappy with the Supervisors’ necessary budget cutting. McCOWEN FOR SUPERVISOR

ECOLOGY ACTION will hold a GROW BIOINTENSIVE^SM Sustainable Mini-Farming Tour in Willits, CA, on May 19, June, 2, from 10am to 4pm and June 24, August, 4, 2012 from 9am to 3pm. This will be an exciting opportunity to learn of GROW BIOINTENSIVE^® philosophy and techniques, which have been developed by the Ecology Action staff over a 37-year period. GROW BIOINTENSIVE Sustainable Mini-Farming makes high “Green Revolution”-type yields possible organically, while using open-pollinated seeds and just a fraction of the water, fertilizer and energy resources of other agricultural methods. Presenters of the tour will be John Jeavons, Director of Ecology Action and author of the best-selling book How to Grow More Vegetables (now in its 8th edition and at present translated into seven languages, including Braille), Ecology Action staff, apprentices and interns of Ecology Action. GROW BIOINTENSIVE^SM tours have been very popular since they began in 1982. People from all walks of life and levels of experience—farmers, hobby gardeners, teachers, and representatives of large and small organizations—find the tours informative and useful. The tour will consist of a discussion, and demonstrations on Compost, Double-Digging, and Seed Propagation—as well as the perspective and whole-system approach, which tie all these topics together. The tour will be fun as well as instructive. Registration on-line (www.growbiointensive.org). The cost of the Tour is $25/ person. It is best to register well ahead off time. Ecology Action is rediscovering the scientific principles behind this resource-conserving, life-giving method that is based on successfully tested agricultural techniques that are thousands of years old. These techniques can be the first step towards achieving food self-sufficiency while living more gently on the Earth. In a world with as little as 50 to 100 years’ worth of soil productivity remaining, this efficient food-raising approach that works with nature will be important! For more information, please contact: Ecology Action, 5798 Ridgewood Road, Willits, CA 95490-9730. (707) 459-0150 · (707) 459-5409 (fax). www.growbiointensive.org. (This workshop requires pre-reading and pre-registration.)

ALTHOUGH MANY might be kinda balky

For some Dems it might even take saki

But you really can’t vote

For “Money” or “Hope”

So you must cast your feint fate with Rocky.