MCT: Saturday, April 27, 2019

• Fire Cause
• Census Jobs
• Colvig Resolution
• RussiaGate Results
• Chimney Sweeps
• Shy People
• Cat's Back
• Press Briefings
• Ed Notes
• Snake Oil
• Budget Woes
• Impossible Boast
• Farm Report
• Yesterday's Catch
• Whitesboro Breakfast
• Unregulated Capitalism
• Plant Sale
• Measles Survivor
• Support Group
• Vaccinators Attacked
• Criminal Mixup
• Healthcare Issues
• American Groundswell
• Maga Maga
• Plant Sale
• Garden Workshop
• Criminal Mixup
• Spineless Joe
• Oak Preserve
• Marco Radio
• Stable Genius
• City Selection

'TARGET SHOOTING' CAUSE OF 15,000-PLUS ACRE PAWNEE FIRE

St. Helena, CA – After a thorough investigation, CAL FIRE Law Enforcement Officers have determined that the 2018 Pawnee Fire that burned 15,185 acres in Lake County, CA was sparked by target shooting. Investigators were dispatched as part of the initial response to the Pawnee Fire and immediately began working to determine the origin and cause of the fire.

The ensuing investigation uncovered evidence that target shooting sparked the fire on June 23, 2018. CAL FIRE was assisted during the course of the investigation by the Lake County Sheriff's Department, Lake County District Attorney's Office, Sonoma County Sheriff's Department, and Rohnert Park Department of Public Safety.

Don’t let target shooting end with a wildfire, here are some tips you should take when target shooting:

• Place your targets on dirt or gravel, shoot in areas free of dry vegetation—and avoid shooting on hot windy days.
• Bullet fragments can be extremely hot and can easily start a fire.
• Use safe targets, shooting at steel targets or rocks may throw sparks into the nearby vegetation. Use paper targets or clay pigeons.
• Ammunition type matters, steel Core and solid copper ammunition have the highest potential to start fires. Lead core bullets are less likely to ignite surrounding vegetation.
• Incendiary or tracer ammunition, ammunition that “burns” can easily ignite vegetation so should not be used in flammable areas.
• Keep a shovel, fire extinguisher and extra water on hand, in case a fire does start.

Report all fires Immediately CALL 9-1-1.

(CalFire Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit presser)

200 CENSUS JOBS BY THE END OF MAY IN MENDOCINO COUNTY

The Census wants to hire 200 people by the end of May 2019 to begin working on getting everyone in Mendocino County counted. This is just the beginning, because they will continue hiring for the additional phases of the run-up to Census Day, April 1, 2020. Hiring local people will be an economic boost for our community, The jobs will last for about a year. Salaries start at $16.50 to $18.00 an hour, with mileage reimbursement and flexible hours. You must be an American citizen, have a social security number, and be able to pass a background check for the past 5 years. (There is no drug testing). Info and application at: 2020census.gov/en/jobs

Kathy Wylie, M.S. Ed., gglgrl@gmail.com

COLVIG BACK ON THE JOB.

I am very pleased to announce there has been a resolution on the court case involving Principal Colvig. Based on his cooperation, character, and evidence provided the district attorney has offered Mr. Colvig a deferred judgement. This means essentially that during the next two years that Principal Colvig needs to not have an issue of this nature and provide support to local districts on how to handle difficult situation like he was faced with. I appreciate Mr. Colvig’s willingness to accept this offer and put this situation behind us without a court case which would involve staff and students and create a great deal of media hype.

This is one of the most complex issues that I have deal with in my long career. I look forward to Mr. Colvig being back to work as our principal. WUSD was very careful to not take sides and waited for the court system to work through the process. During this process the district completed an investigation and am completely confident with my decision to get him back in the office and leading WHS.

Mark Westerburg, Superintendent, Willits Unified School District

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MANDATED REPORTER PROSECUTION RESOLVED.

A criminal jury trial set for this coming Monday involving a Willits high school principal was averted Thursday afternoon when a resolution agreeable to both parties and the court was reached in the Mendocino County Superior Court.

Defendant Michael Charles Colvig, age 45, of Willits, plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of being a mandated child abuse reporter who failed to make mandated reports as required by law.

Known as a deferred entry of plea, those pleas are now being held by the court in abeyance for the next 36 months. If the defendant complies with all of the terms of his DEJ, the guilty pleas may be withdrawn and the charges will be dismissed at the end of the 36 months.

During the next 36 months, defendant Colvig must prepare for the District Attorney's approval a presentation for school administrators and employees on the duties and obligations of mandated reporters. The presentation must include a section on the legal consequences of failing to report.

Once said presentation has been approved by the DA, the defendant must offer to and where said offer is accepted present his project to the administrators and employees working in each of the nine school districts in Mendocino County.

Defendant Colvig is also required as a term of his DEJ to donate $800 per year, for a total of $2,400, for the next three years to the Willits Center for the Arts, said money to be earmarked for scholarships for and other assistance to the Center's Kids' Art Camp each July.

Finally, defendant Colvig must obey all laws and not commit the same or similar offenses during his term of deferred entry of judgment.

The attorney who handled the prosecution of this case is Deputy District Attorney Melissa Weems. The law enforcement agencies that developed the evidence to support the prosecution were the Willits Police Department, the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office, and the District Attorney's own investigators.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Cindee Mayfield presided over Thursday's resolution.

(District Attorney Presser)

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ED NOTE: Colvig entered a guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge under the deferred entry rule, and he was place on 36 months probation.

What is Deferred Entry of Judgment?

Deferred entry of judgment is a program in California that allows a judge to stop short of entering a conviction in a criminal case. In order for the program to function, the defendant must plead guilty to the crime they are accused of committing. In exchange for this guilty plea, the court gives the defendant the opportunity to complete a term of supervised probation. If all of the terms of probation are completed successfully, the court will dismiss the criminal charges. As a result, a defendant can avoid a conviction for a crime they actually committed. Simply put, deferred entry of judgment is a type of plea bargain.

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FROM THE ARCHIVE

MICHAEL COLVIG is the principal at Willits High School, one of a bunch of Colvigs clustered at the Gateway to the Redwood Empire. Michael Colvig's father sits on the Willits School Board, a school board like any other, meaning fully capable, and sometimes blithely willing, to commit their own crimes and misdemeanors. So when little Colvig, Colvig the Third we might call him, sexually assaulted a classmate at an off-campus party, the senior Colvigs, pillars of the Willits educational effort, had themselves a dilemma. Should little Colvig's crude and apparently drunken attempt on his classmate be reported to the Willits Police as the law requires? Colvig the principal decided to handle the matter in-house, his own house, not report it as he's supposed to.

AND HERE HE IS, Michael Colvig, the first school official in Mendocino County's history booked into the County Jail for failure to protect a student. Judging from his mug shot he doesn't look especially anguished, but then a lot of these school people look kinda unevolved, kinda…

DA EYSTER is also faced with something of a political hot potato. Will Colvig be prosecuted while Eyster's campaign treasurer and presumed pal, former Willits School Board member Chris Neary, and just might be exerting undo influence? Doubt it. We’ve never heard of Eyster ducking the tough ones. The way we tardily got it is that it was Eyster himself who initiated a full-on investigation of the principal’s failure to do his legal duty when word reached Ukiah that Willits officialdom was sweeping it under the town’s all-embracing rug. Although I rather sympathize with the Colvigs in their desire to protect Colvig The Third, I'm pretty sure that I, back in my parental days, would have tossed my kids to the legal wolves if they'd been guilty of a crime this bad, a sexual assault. And child-abused them, too. Colvig The Third’s victim, I'm sure, has figured out that she'll get a big pay day from Willits Unified, and she should, and School Board Colvig, and Lawyer Neary and their colleagues should fire Michael Colvig from his principal's job, but they won't. The big pay day for the vic is a certainty, but after the DA’s prosecution everything will, I’ll bet, just kinda go away. Why? It's Mendo, Jake.

BLOWBACK IS A HARSH MISTRESS

by James Kunstler

In this universe of paradox, inequity, ironies, and fake-outs one strange actuality stands above the rest these days: that the much-reviled President Trump was on the right side of RussiaGate, and the enormous mob of America’s Thinking Class was on the wrong side — and by such a shocking margin of error that they remain in a horrified fugue of outrage and reprisal, apparently unaware that consequences await.

Granted, there’s a lot to not like about Mr. Trump: his life of maximum privilege in a bubble of grifticious wealth; his shady career in the sub-swamp of New York real estate; his rough, garbled, and childlike manner of speech; his disdain of political decorum, his lumbering bellicosity, his apparently near-total lack of education, and, of course, the mystifying hair-doo. His unbelievable luck in winning the 2016 election can only be explained by the intervention of some malign cosmic force — a role assigned to the Russians. At least that’s how Mr. Trump’s antagonists engineered The Narrative that they have now quadrupled down on.

To make matters worse, this odious President happens to be on the right side of several other political quarrels of the day, at least in terms of principle, however awkwardly he presents it. The Resistance, which is to say the same Thinking Class groomed in the Ivy League and apprenticed in official leadership, has dug in on the idiotic policy position of a de facto open border with Mexico, and embellished that foolish idea with such accessory stupidities as sanctuary cities and free college tuition for non-citizens. Their arguments justifying these positions are wholly sentimental — they’re stuffing little children in cages! — masking a deep undercurrent of dishonesty and cynical opportunism — not to mention putting themselves at odds with the rule-of-law itself.

During the 2016 election campaign, Mr. Trump often averred to forging better relations with Russia. The previous administration had meddled grotesquely in Ukrainian politics, among other things, and scuttled the chance to make common cause with Russia in areas of shared self-interest, for instance, in opposing worldwide Islamic terrorism. This was apparently too much for the US War Lobby, who needed a Russian boogeyman to keep the gravy train of weaponry and profitable interventionist operations chugging along, even if it meant arming Islamic State warriors who were blowing up US troops.

Being falsely persecuted from before day one of his term for “collusion with Russia,” Mr. Trump apparently found it necessary to go along with antagonizing Russia via sanctions and bluster, as if to demonstrate he never was “Putin’s Puppet.”

Meanwhile, by some strange process of psychological alchemy, the Thinking Class assigned Islamic radicals to their roster of sacred victims of oppression — so that now it’s verboten to mention them in news reports whenever some new slaughter of innocents is carried out around the world, or to complain about their hostility to Western Civ as a general proposition.

Two decades after the obscene 9/11 attacks, the new Democratic Party-controlled congress has apparently decided that it’s better to make common cause with Islamic Radicalism than with a Russia that is, in actuality, no longer the Soviet Union but rather just another European nation trying to make it through the endgame of the industrial age, like everybody else.

The Thinking Class behind the bad faith Resistance is about to be beaten within an inch of its place in history with an ugly-stick of reality as The Narrative finally comes to be fairly adjudicated.

The Mueller Report was much more than just disappointing; it was a comically inept performance insofar as it managed to overlook the only incidence of collusion that actually took place: namely, the disinfo operation sponsored by the Hillary Clinton campaign in concert with the highest officials of the FBI, the Department of Justice, State Department personnel, the various Intel agencies, and the Obama White house for the purpose of interfering in the 2016 election. It will turn out that the Mueller Investigation was just an extension of that felonious op, and Mr. Mueller himself may well be subject to prosecution for destroying evidence and, yes, obstruction of justice.

John F. Kennedy once observed that “life is unfair.” It is unfair, perhaps, that a TV Reality Show huckster, clown, and rank outsider beat a highly credentialed veteran of the political establishment and that he flaunts his lack of decorum in the Oval Office. But it happens that he was on the side of the truth in the RussiaGate farrago and that happens to place him in a position of advantage going forward.

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page.)

JUSTICE FOR SHY PEOPLE

by Rex Gressett

One thing in life that you can really count on — government. The representatives and administrators that watch over us here in Fort Bragg are empowered specifically to keep us from harm. That’s their gig. Let us reflect that harm might come unexpectedly from accident or adversity or it might be something we inflict on ourselves. We are amateurs. They know what they doing. We don’t really need public participation. That’s why they don’t encourage it.

Super city (ex-)manager Linda Ruffing, in a kind of kiss-off to the city, left us a Code of Civility, which now stares down at us at every City Council meeting from the massive projector screen, a reminder to the people not to get out of line, or say anything too upsetting.

After they canned City Manager Ruffing, the ex-mayor, Lindy Peters, went further in pursuit of civic decorum by urging audiences not to clap or cheer at city council meetings. Line up, speak your piece until the three-minute timer goes off, sit down.

That’s the rule. Our new mayor, Will Lee, has duly endorsed the no-clapping rule and looks to be a strong and diligent proponent of mandatory civility.

In the small blowback consequent upon the introduction of these innovations, there was some discussion about free speech. A few malcontents thought that the City Council was supposed to represent us, not oppress us, and that to restrain polite clapping was an insult to the people of the city.

The City Council and the administration explained that the crackdown on free speech and the restraint on comment and clapping were necessary to protect shy people.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to oppose the policies of government in your local town, or to comment on them or to express your concerns, our wise leaders have pointed out that it might be upsetting for some sensitive souls to hear opinions that disturb them.

Concern for the sensibilities of the shy was unknown to the founding fathers, and even to the framers of the state constitution. Those neanderthals mistakenly thought that rigorous debate and the free expression was a vital part of a living democracy.

When the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) ad hoc committee was formed by the city council to make recommendations about the conduct of general elections, it was an important responsibility. Bernie Norvell, by far our smartest City Councilperson, cautioned Scott Menzies about his participation in the committee. Menzies and Norvell know each other. Predictably, Menzies, in concert with freshly elected councilperson Tess Albin-Smith, hijacked the committee in a kind of crusade for multiple choice voting.

Mr. Menzies, who ran for city council in 2014, has said publicly that he was everybody's second choice and would have been elected if there was a multiple choice ballot where second and third and fourth choices would count.

The CVRA sub-committee became a farce. Tess Albin-Smith is our least experienced councilperson. (Prior to her surprise election she had never attended a City Council meeting.) She and Menzies dissolved the ad hoc committee (temporarily) to do the hard work of selecting the way that Fort Bragg voters will conduct elections themselves.

Menzies and Albin-Smith formed a subcommittee of two to look into it. The rest of the commission was assigned lesser tasks. I demanded that the committee meetings be made public. Since they were being conducted in Town Hall all they had to do was turn on the video. No deal. The city manager sent me this email:

"Hi Rex, The City has not and does not intend to film or televise the Election System Review Committee meetings because this committee is a not a Standing Council Committee established by the City Municipal Code. It is also not a committee that is making regular decisions or regular recommendations to the City Governance. It is a community committee with a very narrow purpose — to research, evaluate and make a recommendations to the City Council on a preferred election system. As you know this is a time-consuming process and open dialog and sharing of information is important. For volunteer members, being televised can inhibit communications. The committee is subject to the Brown Act, which means that the agendas are published and the committee is open to anyone who would like to attend.”

Shy people to the rescue.

UPON RETURNING TO MENDOCINO

by Cat Spydell

Twenty-two years ago, I moved away from Mendocino County and the Northern California coastal redwoods, and I returned to my childhood life outside of L.A. in Palos Verdes to live with my widowed mother and raise my two kids. A lot had happened in between my previous tenure in Palos Verdes: I had gotten married, had two kids, tried to move to Alaska with my husband and toddler and then returned to Mendocino when I found out I was pregnant with Child Number Two, to live in Fort Bragg. Sadly our marriage failed, I couldn’t make ends meet alone, and when my kids were two and four I made a hard decision to move in with my mom and raise my kids in that suburban oasis called Rolling Hills Estates where I grew up, spending my time as a kid alternating between riding ponies on the horse trails and body surfing at Rat Beach, and wanting the same kind of life for my own offspring.

As I drove out of Mendocino after dusk that last time in 1997, I pulled over on Highway 128. It was a clear cold winter night, and my children were asleep in their car seats. I stepped out of the running car, my old station wagon full of those most precious to me: my kids, two Siberian huskies, and my cat. I stood under simmering stars and said my promise aloud to the sky: “I will be back.”

Last Thursday, that happened.

After a long absence, I returned to Mendocino, to Philo in fact, and the turn-off to my new home in the woods is near where I pulled over and promised the stars, the moon, the nearby trees and anyone else listening, that I would indeed be back.

My kids are now 24 and 26. My mother, who I took care of in her last years, recently passed away, and we sold the family home. The huskies and cat are long gone, and now in their stead is a polar-bear looking Colorado Mountain dog and another similar and much beloved calico cat. There is also our Insta-famous peacock (#RadthePeacock if you are curious), a large pony, three goats and a pig. The animals, from my volunteer rescue in Southern California called Pixie Dust Ranch, and I all moved back to live out this Mendocino country lifestyle together.

So far, I am reminded of my early days in Mendocino County. Back in the early 90s, my husband Mike and I moved to Comptche from San Pedro. Mike was hired to build the family’s existing Comptche ‘hippie shack’ into a 2-bedroom retirement home (complete with Jacuzzi) for his mom and stepdad, the Chisholms. I went from being a Long Beach-based goth “Thursday Poet” one day, to a country-dwelling homesteader-hippie girl the next.

We moved into the one-room shack that hosted a beat up rather frightening swivel recliner, a banged up couch, and a janky wood-burning Franklin stove, and a bookcase with a lot of nautical-themed books and the Lord of the Rings triology (I would become Tolkien’s biggest fan that summer).

The transformation suited me. There was something magical about living in the redwoods, about having to build a fire to stay warm and cook food, and having to fill up water jugs at the roadside communal cistern so we could later shower from a metal tank, to drink that same water, and to use it to prepare food and wash our dishes.

There the days and nights rolled into one, and when darkness fell, we merely lit candles and prepared for bed. Little by little, we made ‘improvements’ to the Comptche property in our efforts to create a happy future home for Mike’s mother and step-dad, and our lives went from feral, to tempered, to tame.

I remember once when the phone landline rang for the first time, I about jumped out of my skin. Then the road was built up to the cabin, and we no longer had to hike up the skinny deer trail with our water jugs and groceries. Then the well went in, and we didn’t have to go wait for an hour to fill our water jugs. We moved the old recliner to the front porch and brought our bed and our own furniture into the home. Friends visited, in awe of our trepidation and bravery. But little by little, those improvements took the magic of roughing it away.

Nonetheless, I sobbed the first time I took a hot shower in that house, by then pregnant with our first born. The country lifestyle had been conquered. I missed the uncombed days. This is my experience again now. It is fleeting, even more so than 25-plus years ago.

I moved up here to the country again from Suburbia last week. I have running water, but only in a couple places. No shower, no kitchen sink, no toilet, no refrigeration, no stove, no oven, no Internet. But that will all be fixed soon. I have no electricity or solar power, but I have a generator for lights I can turn on at night. My toilet is not functioning, but I have a plumber (my ex-husband Mike!) coming to fix it later this week. Tomorrow Joe the propane guy is coming and I will likely have a refrigerator instead of a cooler, and a real stove instead of my butane camp one to cook on. I know it’s all going to be okay.

Going forth, I shall still live in the deep woods, but with all the home comforts, except for this week. For this week, I am free like I was a couple dozen years ago. I am bathing in the pond by my back door, reveling and in awe of the freezing water temps. I am drying in the sun, au naturel. I am utilizing the camp toilet I purchased for ‘dry camping’ at the RTR (“Rubber Tramp Rendezvous”) in Arizona in January (check it out if you are an RV enthusiast).

Indoors and outdoors are all one here. My body is browning in the late spring sun, my hair is nappy. No one sees me here. I am free to do what I like, and I am enjoying ‘glamping’ in my new home until all the amenities are put back into place and I am tamed. Somewhat. Even if I have solar power and running hot shower water and a flushing toilet and all that, there will always be a part of me that will bathe in wild waters, use a headlamp flashlight instead of the light switch, heat up dinner on the woodburning stove… That part of me didn’t disappear. She was waiting here in Philo for me to return all along.

ED NOTES

WATCHED an interesting documentary on the Mumbai Railway, amazed that all those trains, with their many thousands of daily passengers, coordinated out of a single headquarters in that teeming city, ran all those trains on time. Contrast Mumbai, an "emerging nation" that never quite emerges, with NorCal, where the SMART train often doesn't run at all, and when it does runs nowhere much of where anyone wants or needs to go. And, to top the fiasco off, is dependent on massive annual public subsidies. As is Mumbai's rail system, but it works.

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THE BIG BERNIE MEETING at the Harbor Lite in Fort Bragg on Saturday is one of 2274 nationwide. The Berners have hit the ground running this time but, of course, all the major media are talking up Biden as the antidote to "extremism," which is awfully rich applied to a liberal like Bernie. The sub-argument from the middle of the roaders is that Biden is the only Democrat who can beat the orange beast. As the male version of Hillary, Biden is just about the only Democrat who could lose to monster man, assuming people pay, or allowed to pay by mass media, even the slightest attention to Biden's shameful record. The super delegated Demos are busily figuring out ways to shove Biden down our throats on the Lesser Evil argument they've hit us with for fifty years now. I could live with Tulsi or Liz or even Kamala, but Biden? Never.

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THE DISCO RANCH WINEBAR and Wineshop is now open in Boonville in the old Aquarelle space. Stop in for some nibbles and wine on the terrace or take a bottle or two home to share with friends and family. Come in and ask owner Wendy Lamer what the story is on the "Disco Ranch"! Welcome to the Valley Wendy! Open Thursday-Monday 10:30-6:30pm or whenever the last one leaves at night. Next Friday, May 3rd, the AV Farmer's Market is in the Ranch parking lot, 4-7pm.

Boonville Road winery will be pouring wine that evening!

LOTSA SNAKE OIL being peddled in 1905, the year before the FDA came about.

LAZ ON THE COUNTY BUDGET: RE: Dope…

James Marmon: You asked if I thought the CEO was meeting with corporate types regarding the marijuana situation? The short answer is yes, got no proof of it though. This game goes deeper than just sucking up.

This county according to Mr. AVA and others, is in heavy budgetary trouble. You got a runaway retirement fund, a BoS who will rubber stamp any increase laid in front of them, a sheriff who habitually runs in the red with overtime and other expenses, a failed marijuana licensing program, a questionable mental health situation, county roads and infrastructures that have gone wanting for decades, and those are the obvious ones.

To keep the county afloat this CEO has to bring operating capital in from any source she can find so she can keep spending it. The small growers are a pest to the county. They take up time arguing and debating the nuances of the process, ask embarrassing questions at BoS meetings, write letters to the media, and then as previously mentioned the county men have to go inspect them… in sketchy even dangerous places. The big money boys roll in, they play the game, throw a lot of flash around, then once entrenched do as they please. We have a Prez who is a master of it.

You keep it coming…

PETIT TETON MONTHLY FARM REPORT - March 2019

The weather has gone from spring to summer overnight; as a result of the great winter and spring rains the weeds and grasses have gone to 5' after two days of heat; everything that can bloom is blooming, including vegetables; the ground is drying so fast we have to set up the drip water systems; and all of it means we're running fast to keep up. Another 1000 onions went in the ground this week along with fennel, carrots and shallots; there are hundreds of stepped up tomato plants waiting in the wings; the cucumbers and squashes are started; beets are swelling in the hoop house; cherry tomatoes are setting and peppers turning red in the greenhouse, and Mendocino farmers' market starts next week. We're tired!

A two foot long king snake was patrolling in the hoop house yesterday; birds and frogs are everywhere; the front door swallows have laid their eggs and the orioles are nest building in the front yard valley oak along with the usual crowd of acorn woodpeckers who squabble over everything; our chickens have outdone themselves egg laying this season and the king pigeons are producing large numbers of squab. Our two piggies were taken to market, well, one pig because the other refused to climb into the trailer (she will have a different fate), and there's a new cow in three freezers. Let the season begin.

We've included a photo of our view from the hot tub wisteria grotto in which we spend an hour each evening drinking a beer and relieving our sore bodies after a day of hard labor. It's our life saver. We wish you all an equally pleasant one!

Nikki Auschnitt and Steve Krieg

Petit Teton Farms, Yorkville

CATCH OF THE DAY, April 26, 2019

JOEL ALVAREZ, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, probation revocation.

MARK BRANDT, Portland, Oregon/Ukiah. Importation of more than an ounce of pot, paraphernalia, probatioin revocation.

SALVADOR HERNANDEZ, San Diego/Ukiah. Battery with serious injury.

ADAM KESTER, Willits. Failure to appear.

DANIELLE LOGAN, Willits. Failure to appear.

RAMON MACIEL, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation.

REBECCA RODRIGUEZ, Rohnert Park/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

JENNIFER SMITH, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

PANCAKES WHITESBORO GRANGE SUNDAY

A traditional pancake breakfast will be served at the Whitesboro Grange on Sunday, April 28th. Breakfast includes orange juice, pancakes with maple and homemade berry syrups, ham, eggs your way, and coffee, tea or hot cocoa. The public and visitors are invited to join neighbors and community for a hearty pancake breakfast. Adults $8, ages 6-12 half price, children under 6 eat FREE. Breakfast is served from 8 to 11:30 a.m. Whitesboro Grange is located 1.5 miles east on Navarro Ridge Road. Watch for signs south of the Albion Bridge.

Ronnie James, ronnie@mcn.org

ANNUAL SPRING PLANT SALE

Fort Bragg Garden Club

April 27

10 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Amerigas parking lot

300 S. Main St, Fort Bragg

(Corner of Maple and Main Streets)

Proceeds to fund high school scholarships and Garden Club projects.

VACCINATE!

Editor,

I have read many articles that describe the increase in measles but give few reasons for getting vaccinated. Here is my story: I contracted measles as a child before the vaccine was licensed in 1963. A complication of measles that occurs in 1 out of every 1,000 cases is encephalitis (swelling of the brain), which can lead to convulsions and possibly death.

I was that one who had encephalitis. I had convulsions and was in a coma for two weeks. I feel very fortunate to have survived. I also am lucky that I didn’t suffer severe brain damage or deafness, which can occur in severe cases.

I encourage parents to consider the ramifications of their decisions concerning measles vaccination. Because measles is highly contagious, your decision affects not only your own children but the entire community.

Janet Greene

Occidental

IDIOCY, FROM ALBION TO ISLAMABAD

ISLAMABAD — Not Just Here. Polio vaccinators attacked; 1 killed Two gunmen on a motorcycle shot and killed a polio vaccinator and critically wounded another in southwestern Pakistan on Thursday, bringing the death toll among vaccinators working in the country’s anti-polio drive to at least three this week, officials said. The shooters opened fire on a group of vaccinators in a remote village near the border with Afghanistan, said Samiullah Agha, assistant commissioner of Chaman. Polio vaccination teams have suffered several attacks since a countrywide vaccination drive began April 23. Islamist militants and hard-line clerics say the vaccination drive is a foreign plot to sterilize Muslim children and a cover for Western spies.

(Press Democrat news services)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Let’s cut right to the chase on the healthcare “issue.” By “issue” I mean the untenable costs. For starters, you should be doing all you can to stay healthy. That means giving up behaviors that are unhealthy. Examples? Eating unsafe foods, engaging in unsafe practices, going to unsafe places, etc, etc, etc. But let’s just start with eating unsafe foods. Reputable medical experts estimate that 80% of health problems are avoidable through lifestyle choices, mainly what you eat. So for starters, don’t eat bacon, hotdogs and lunch meats. The IARC/WHO classified processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen, the same category as tobacco smoking and asbestos. So here’s my advice, cut your probability of health problems by 80% by making intelligent lifestyle choices. Then, realize that the other 20% are the subject to the luck of the draw. Sooner or later, something will kill you. Nobody gets out alive. Accept that fact. If you don’t, then you be held hostage by the fear of dying which will ruin the value of whatever time the Almighty has granted you. And be assured that there are people who will look to help you subjugate yourself to that fear and capitalize on it.

AMERICAN GROUNDSWELL 2019

Muffled and silent it moves

Roiling quietly

Urging to rise, rage and be felt

By all of us.

We need only to look and be shown

By fair hearings and live evidence

All the grift, lies and blind corruption

Our Country now endures.

Just show us. We’ll respond.

We’ll absorb, soak up, feel and roar

All its muffled rage

Into an American tsunami.

—Jim Luther, Mendocino

SPRING PLANT SALE ENDS SUNDAY!

Make your spring garden the most glorious yet! It is time to stock up on plants, gardening tools and books, and much more at Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens' annual Spring Plant Sale. The sale runs through Sunday, April 28 during the Gardens' normal operating hours, 9:00am to 5:00pm (no admission fee to shop; no admission fee to dine at Rhody’s Cafe which is now open daily). Gardens' Members receive 20% off; non-members receive 10% off all plants and select store items.

GARDEN WORKSHOP ON SATURDAY, MAY 11TH

On Saturday May 11, 2019, from 11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m., Mendocino County Museum will host a Garden Workshop, in legacy of the “Victory Gardens” of World War I, which sprouted a movement across America to grow local self-supporting community gardens.

Sarah Marshall, Gardens Project Coordinator with North Coast Opportunities, will present the workshop that will include: Home Gardening Techniques, Tastings of Freshly Grown Produce, and a Behind the Scenes Tour of the Willits Community Garden following the presentation (The Willits Community Garden is located across the street from the Museum adjacent to Recreation Grove Park).

This program is held in conjunction with Mendocino County Museum’s special exhibit from the National Archives Over Here: Americans at Home in World War I showing April 6 - May 26. This program is offered FREE to the public, and includes FREE admission to the Museum. For more information about the exhibit or our exhibit program calendar please visitor our website: www.mendocinocounty.org/museum.

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Museum Hours and Admission Information

Admission will be FREE in conjunction with the Garden Workshop on Saturday, May 11, 2019. Mendocino County Museum is located: 400 E. Commercial Street in Willits, California. The Museum is open to the public Wednesday-Sunday 10 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. Admission: Adults $4; Students 7-18 $1; Children 6 and Under FREE; Mendocino County Library Card Holders FREE. Visit us on our website for more information about programs, hours, admission, and more: www.mendocinocounty.org/museum.

JOE BIDEN is a spineless politician who mouths off about Charlottesville not necessarily because he’s anti-racism — he voted against busing and wrote the crime bill — but because he thought it made things too obvious. He’s all for “law and order” and “safe communities” though.

— Mike Gravel

THE LIVE OAKS and Valley Oaks and the rest are amazing, some big groves left on private property. One very fancy winery has kept 100 acres of these pristine out behind the tasting room and nobody can really even see more than the first acre, nor do they balyhoo it. Its one of the nicest California oak preserves you will ever see, all on private vineyard and winery property.

(Frank Hartzell)

MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio all night long!

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio, 9pm to 5am, Friday, April 26, on KNYO Fort Bragg (and KMEC Ukiah, and via KNYO.org), live from 325 N. Franklin, next door to the Tip Top bar of stage and screen fame.

Deadline to email your writing to be read on the air tonight is 6pm or so. If you're not done by then, just send it when it's ready and I'll read it next week. Or call and read it on the air yourself: 962-3022. Or visit, if you're in town. Waltz right in and head for the well-lit room at the back. Bring your banjo, impossible invention, snide asides, genuine guilelessness and/or nascent barely-under-control superpower to show off, describe, fib about or otherwise demonstrate, whichever applies.

I already have the usual vast folder assembled of little bits of whatever I've been reading all week ready to relay: science, nonsense, patronizing baloney, tips for living graciously, and so on, on literally thousands of subjects, not just International Workers' Day, so if you're shy, that's okay, I'll be fine just knowing you're out there breathing and/or working. And if Willow Arthur shows up, which she might, she'll read the runes and count the cards and tell your fortune. All that and a bag of chips, or rather dollar store chocolate raisins and Fruitastic gum. /Gum on the radio./

A few educational amusements for while you wait for tonight:

Hobo nickels.

https://dangerousminds.net/comments/probably_the_most_beautiful_hobo_nickels_in_the_world

A cardboard transmission

https://theawesomer.com/cardboard-manual-transmission/522126/

And the fascinating story of Virginia O'Brien, with videos.

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2019/04/virginia-obrien-the-deadpan-dame-of-old-hollywood/

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

BOP MOPE A REEBOP!

The City Selection Committee Meeting Agenda for the May 1, 2019, meeting has been published is now available on the County website:

https://www.mendocinocounty.org/government/board-of-supervisors/agendas-and-minutes/city-selection-committee