MCT: Thursday, May 9, 2019

• Showers Forecast
• Hospital Agreement
• Clinkscale Clinkbound
• Detention Trail
• New Drivers
• B Teams
• Quiz Noche
• Dog Event
• Pup Shot
• Smoke
• Timber Scam
• Monkey Do
• Permits Online
• Ed Notes
• Yesterday's Catch
• Kerouac & McCarthy
• Venezuela Legislation
• Research Skills
• Tremendous Loser
• CFMC BBQ
• Meetings Cancelled
• Baby Bat
• Wacky Clubhouse
• Fight Advice
• Fawkes Rocks
• Vaccine Therapy
• Salmon Season
• Hellish World
• Beatnik Sweep
• Forest Management
• Found Object

WARM AND DRY CONDITIONS will prevail across the region through Friday. Cooler coastal conditions will return during the weekend, but interior areas will remain warm and mostly dry through early next week. Widespread showers will become increasingly likely by the middle of next week. (National Weather Service)

ANNOUNCEMENT FROM COAST HOSPITAL interim CEO Wayne Allen on a tentative agreement between MCDH management and the hospital union:

• Term of Agreement: a two year agreement from July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2020
• Wages: 1% retro back to July 1, 2018 and a 2.5% wage increase effective July 1, 2019
• Increases apply to all employees (union & non-union) but must be on payroll at ratification dates for the retro increase
• Subject to a favorable union ballot ratification by May 17, 2019 and then ratification of the MCDH Board on May 30, 2019
• No changes in benefits or pension funding

Full story later in week.

(Malcolm Macdonald)

IN SPITE of an impassioned and reasonable plea by defense lawyer Justin Petersen for leniency, Jantz Sterling Clinkscale was sentenced Tuesday morning (May 7th) to seven years in the state prison for transporting a kilo of methamphetamine into Mendocino County from Los Angeles, a violation of Health & Safety Code 11379. Noting Mr. Clinkscale’s mild nature and lack of violent crimes, Judge Cindee Mayfield imposed the mid-term of three years, rather than the aggravated term that Probation Officer Sandra Plaza was asking for. However, an additional one year was added because Clinkscale had three prison priors; and the mid-term of three years was doubled due to a strike prior.

It was this strike prior that Mr. Petersen was asking the court to strike – Petersen explained that Clinkscale had pled to an assault with a deadly weapon – a car – as part of a reduced plea deal in the past, and that it wasn’t really a ADW (assault with a deadly weapon) because all Clinkscale had done was scratch the bumper of a Dodge pickup with his VW Jetta while trying to get away from another unmarked police car, that no one was hurt and the damage was insignificant.

Deputy DA Joe Guzman said that the damage and injuries were irrelevant, the conviction must stick as a strike prior, and Judge Mayfield (somewhat reluctantly it seemed) agreed. These kinds of deals are common in the courts and it often happens that a strike prior for scratching a bumper on a big truck – something the legislature never had in mind when crafting the Three Strikes law, Petersen said – and other similarly minor incidents cause these harsh sentences to be imposed where reason and compassion makes them seem wholly out of proportion to the crime.

(Bruce McEwen)

LOL - NEW COASTAL TRAIL ACCESS - ‘RETRO DETENTION CAMP FEEL’

Checked out the new trail opening. Fort Bragg is still going with that retro-detention camp feel.

As I walked a couple of tourists asked me: "What happened out here? Or Was this some sort of military base?" I guess I missed my opportunity to say. Yeah, Fort Bragg. (Gisele Reaney)

(via MSP)

WITH A BIG THANKS TO YOU for sharing MTA job posts, a talented new group of bus drivers is coming aboard. Juan Garza, Jim Dhuyvetter and Miles Thornton will drive our inland routes. Allison Fullbright will join our Fort Bragg coast driving team. All are in training right now but please say hello when you see them behind the wheel in a few weeks. Cheers! http://bit.ly/MTAhome #EnjoytheRide

Mendocino Transit Authority, Transportation Service

TO ‘B’ OR NOT TO ‘B’

To the Editor:

This is a response to the letter, “A plea to the measure B committee,” dated April 14, 2019. I am truly concerned as well. I have written to the Board of Supervisors, mental health officials, over the last several months. I have not been given the courtesy of a response. I wonder if anyone, including the measure B committee, can even read. So here again I offer a suggestion.

Patients reside in our community. Some live in housing. Some live on the streets. However, they all live within our community. Often, when they decompensate, they require hospitalization. This costs money, money that most patients do not have. Yet, recidivism is the fact rather than the exception. Relapses occur often. For some, this is too often. The watchful eye of mental health technology has not been able to change the process. However, there have been some successful interventions by some clinics, not all in California, that have decreased the relapse time for some patients to the point that they could almost live “normal” lives. I know, some say that 1/3 of all schizophrenia cases will mend themselves. Yes and another 1/3 will be in and out of the hospital most of their lives, while a third 1/3 will be in the hospital most of their lives. With this knowledge, we should then change what we do. Some suggestions follow:

1. Probably with grant money, we should create teams of mental health workers. Perhaps we should start with just three teams. Each team would consist of a BA level counselor and a licensed psychiatric technician or a Licensed Vocational Nurse with a mental health background. A Licensed social worker should be the team leader. Each team would have sixty clients, thirty for each team member. The BA level worker would use the Licensed Vocational Nurse or Psych-Tech to assist with medication issues and shot clinics. Their primary responsibility would be to visit clients in their homes, or places where they reside. Weekly visits would be made during the intake period and continue until the client was stable.
2. The Licensed Certified Social Worker supervisor would only have a caseload of 15 clients. The primary duty of the supervisor would be to assist the teams with professional decisions regarding care and policy. Periodic meetings should take place where each team presents a case for discussion. Not only would this assist with helping the client, but it would also be a teaching tool for the team members. From a financial point of view, this would give the Community Support Teams the strength of seven (7) licensed social workers in essence, while only having one. Obviously, the supervisor would also be doing chart review. Unless, of course, there was a Quality Assurance Nurse as part of the team.
3. A psychiatrist would be involved in all care. Each client would be seen according to a schedule. It would be the duty of the Support Team Psych-Tech or Licensed Vocational Nurse to schedule the appointments with the psychiatrist. The Licensed Vocational Nurse (LVN) or Psych-Tech would sit in on the meeting with the psychiatrist unless the client objected. At that time, if the need for any long-term acting medicine, such as haldol or prolixin injection was necessary, the doctor would give the order and the LVN or Psych-Tech would administer the medication. Treatment plan review could be done as well.
4. Home visits and assistance with daily living is what is necessary to keep a client stable. If one monitors each client on a weekly basis, fewer chances for decompensation occur. The team members would be required to see clients as often as deemed necessary by the team’s client review process. Assistance with daily activities can almost take any form of help; shopping for groceries, clothes, looking for a place to live et cetera.
5. Advocacy for the client is also necessary in care. If we do nothing else, we should be an advocate. Our community needs to know about mental illness. Our community needs to know what it can do to help. Without this knowledge, we stand helpless and watch our brother fail. Team effort will be useless without the help the community can give. We need places for the homeless, the suffering and the impaired.

Community Support Teams, Mendocino County

1. A primary clinic housed in Ukiah consisting of three teams of a BA level worker with an LVN and one team leader with an advanced degree. Each team member would have at least 15 clients (maximum 20) and the team leader 5 clients. Weekly meetings for all team members to present their most recent admission to the all the teams so that each would have some knowledge of the patient condition.
2. A satellite clinic in Fort Bragg with two teams consisting of a BA level worker and one LVN. The team leader in Ukiah would make periodic visits to assist with patient reviews and provide consultation as necessary. Each team member would have at least 15 clients.
3. One psychiatrist would be assigned as the Clinical Support Team doctor to advise and prescribe medication for Ukiah and possibly one for Fort Bragg. Each LVN team member would administer the medication to the clients of his/her team.
4. It is possible that team members may be required to travel to areas beyond the Ukiah and Fort Bragg clinics. This is a situation that would have to be worked out as established caseloads are developed.

Overview

A client would be referred to the CST Leader from a concerned citizen, clinic, emergency room or hospital. The team leader would then assign the client to one of the two person teams (LVN, BA level counselor). The person assigned would then attempt to contact the client to perform a possible intake. If the client is in crisis, the team member would work with the appropriate people involved and the client would eventually be evaluated for CST follow-up.The counselor would establish a chart that would be kept by the CST in a locked room or if in a building of mental health, a special section that would always be available to CST team members.

Once a client is established, there would be weekly visits by the assigned team member and the client would become part of that team member’s case load. Ongoing visits would depend on the client’s stability and/or medical condition. At any time that the client becomes unstable and in need of CST help a counselor would make a visit to determine if the client needed to be hospitalized. There would be a team member on call on weekends, holidays, and after hours on work days. This would insure that any client belonging to the CST would have care by someone who knows their case history, even if briefly, and that response would be that day.

With five teams having the capacity for 30 clients each, 150 clients could have care in the community. Extending the team case load to 20 would increase the coverage to 200 clients. In a population of 15,000 with an incident of 1.2 percent for schizophrenia, we could assume approximately 180 clients needing CST care. Obviously this only speaks to the most serious of diagnosis; there are many other mental illnesses to contend with. However, having a CST available is a first step in a containment effort to establish a form of outreach that would keep situations from becoming deadly for the mentally ill.

With all the talk about what we can do, it is about time that the people in the community ask the question, “Why haven’t we tried this approach?” I know that I have certainly brought it up many times. I get smiles, nods, and nonverbal signs of agreement, but nothing more. Measure B committee, wake up!

William J. Russell

Ukiah

QUIZ TONIGHT, Thursday, May 9th, is the second Thursday of the month and that can mean only one important thing - The General Knowledge and Trivia Quiz at Lauren’s! Tip-off' at 7pm. I hope to see you there. Cheers, Steve Sparks / Quiz Master

MOBILE ADOPTION IN PHILO

AN EXCITING NIGHT ON SPY ROCK ROAD: THREE BLACK MALES, A DEAD PUPPY, THREE CAR JACKS, 100 POUNDS OF BUD, A CONFEDERATE VEHICLE, THREE PEOPLE AND THE THREE BLACK MALES MISSING, ONE MEXICAN AND HIS GIRL FRIEND IN CUSTODY

Two people are in custody and authorities are searching for three others after a home invasion turned into a kidnapping and a puppy murder, according to the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office. Lt. Shannon Barney said Rigoberto Santos Landa, 40, and Katherina Andrea Speer, 43, both of Ukiah, were arrested Tuesday on suspicion of conspiracy to commit robbery. Landa and Speer were booked into Mendocino County Jail on bail of $50,000 each. Three other men are still on the loose, authorities said. Those men are described as black males in their 30s with athletic builds, short hair and Jamaican accents.

The incident began Tuesday afternoon when an unnamed male victim and two of his neighbors were at the victim’s home on the 9200 block of Spy Rock Road outside of Laytonville. They heard a gunshot and the man saw two people standing on his lawn, later identified as Landa and Speer, Barney said. The man exited his house and he and his neighbors were confronted by three black males with handguns.

One of the neighbors had a puppy at the residence, and one of the men shot and killed it, Barney said. “The one guy shoots the puppy, and the victim took it as a ‘If you do not comply, this will happen to you,’” he said.

The suspects then allegedly tied up all three victims and searched the residence, finding about 100 pounds of marijuana, Barney said. He said he wasn’t sure if the victim had a permit to grow marijuana, but the investigation was focusing on the home invasion and not on the victim’s possession of marijuana.

After taking the marijuana, the three men took the homeowner with them, saying they needed him to show them how to get back to the highway, Barney said. They left Landa and Speer at the house with the other two victims still tied up, Barney said. Within 2 miles of the victim’s house, the suspects crashed their car, flipping it onto its side, Barney said. They attempted to roll it back over but were unable to. They then attempted to carjack a passing pickup truck, firing three shots at the truck as it sped away. The pickup truck also crashed, and the three occupants are believed to have escaped on foot. The three men then carjacked a second passing vehicle, a white Ford Explorer with a Confederate flag on the hood. They apparently escaped in the stolen vehicle, leaving its occupants, two adult females, behind.

Meanwhile, the two victims left at the house managed to escape, and overpowered Landa and Speer, restraining them and taking them to the Sheriff’s Office, Barney said. Sheriff’s investigators do not know what relationship Landa and Speer have to the other three men at large, but it is believed they were working together, Barney said. “The Hispanic couple (Landa and Speer), when the deputies contacted them, were completely uncooperative. They wouldn’t say anything to us,” Barney said. “Invoked their rights to an attorney and didn’t give us a statement. … Without somebody’s cooperation, it’s hard to tell what happened.”

Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Communications Center at 707-463-4086 or the WeTip anonymous crime reporting line at 800-782-7463.

(courtesy pressdemocrat.com)

6 MONTHS AGO… A MORNING I WILL NEVER FORGET. Thankfully my loved ones made it out alive, even though everything burned in this hellstorm.

(Via Kathy Wylie)

SWEET DEALS

Editor,

It's good work you do in this era of unchecked greed. I have noticed in my area (Ingelnook just north of Fort Bragg), that the logging is proceeding at an unprecedented rate and that PG&E is getting in on the act by aiding and abetting this ratepayer subsidized cash grab by the timber interests such as Lyme Timber.

Here is how it's playing out, private or corporate entities are working with PG&E contractors to clear all timber of value within hundreds of feet of the power lines. What a sweet deal, the ratepayers pick up the tab for the felling and the timber interests pick up the profits for hauling the trees off to the sawmill.

This might be the mother of all loopholes or the result of unintended consequences, hard to say, but none the less unchecked Capitalism is having its way with the forests in my neck of the woods.

I often wonder where is the outrage? It is easy to get upset about what is happening in the Amazon Rainforest, but when it's happening in our own backyards and the State and PG&E are complicit who will do anything about it?

It seems the time has come that we require yet another state agency which supersedes all other agencies, and that agency would be called "The Department of Climate and Ecosystem Protection." The trees are the lungs of the planet. Who will speak for the trees?

Sincerely,

Tim McClure

Fort Bragg

WELCOME TO MENDO, GARY

I can't find where a simple building permit is issued online? We need a new electrical box installed and will be using a licensed contractor. Even the process of getting a permit is not clear on the Building Department's County website. Seems I have to drive 45 minutes to Ft Bragg or 1 1/2 hours to Ukiah. And if I lived in Gualala - add another half hour to that. My contractor would charge us a half day (or more) so we were going to pick up ourselves to save some money and time. I looked up most counties and they have a simple online system. Here's the one for Sacramento

https://actonline.saccounty.net/CitizenAccess/Default.aspx

And here's the one for Sonoma

http://sonomacounty.ca.gov/PRMD/Permits-Online/

If the County is worried about climate change, why have people in Gualala drive between two and four hours round trip for a simple building permit?

(Gary Levenson-Palmer)

ED NOTES

MAYPOLE CELEBRATION LIVES (in Albion)

The Maypole danced and wound by the good folk at Isis Oasis's beautiful Beltane, we were invited to offer prayerful solicitations to the Divine. I took my moment. May the benevolent prayers of all fly into the sky, fall gloriously upon the good earth, our home, and All That Is of the Earth. May the rivers flow pure, filled to the banks. Allow pools of old school Salmon to be held safely, running toward the sea when its time. Allow the sea to be free of plastic and other poisons, to support the creatures of the sea a full and free life of good health. May the air be pure, allowing all to enjoy the breath of life. May the fires of Beltane bring peace amongst family and friends, binding all to the good life upon the earth. I beseech this by the pure air, by the alchemical fire and the nurturing water, and by the sacred and benevolent earth.

Amen. And So It Is.

With love and Beltane blessings,

Marylyn Motherbear

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MUCH UNHAPPINESS in the Mendo Ag Department where unhappiness has reigned for three years now. Joe Moreo lasted five days as department head, and Diane Curry, previously the interim ag commissioner, was summarily marched out department offices the instant her resignation reached CEO Angelo, but not before Curry had delivered some harsh truths on the County's hopelessly failed pot licensing program. (Smart, capable people have always seemed to threaten Angelo.) The current unhappiness seems to be focused on the new boss, Harinder Grewal. One employee has filed a grievance against him, at least two other women are trying to transfer out. The department has been under-staffed and overworked ever since the introduction of the County's cockamamie marijuana licensing effort.

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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING, and a definite collector's item, can be yours for a flat $10 care of Jonah Raskin, Petaluma Hill Road, Santa Rosa, Ca 95404. The reading I'm recommending? "Oaky Joe Munson's Marijuana Adventures & Misadventures," as told to Jonah Raskin, with an introduction by the inimitable Emily Hobelmann who's no stranger to outlaws herself. The collected tales of the vivid Mr. Munson are attractively presented in booklet form, complete with color photographs of the legendary Oaky Joe with friends and in his garden.

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THREE KENNEDYS have teamed up to write a piece for Politico critical of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his anti-vaxx “misinformation campaign that’s having heartbreaking—and deadly—consequences.” RFK Jr. is one of the country’s most prominent anti-vaccine hysterics who has called inoculations “a holocaust” and accused drug makers, the government, and the press of being in cahoots to hide danger from the public. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Joseph P. Kennedy II, and Maeve Kennedy McKean write: “We love Bobby. He is one of the great champions of the environment … However, on vaccines he is wrong. [RFK Jr.] is part of this campaign to attack the institutions committed to reducing the tragedy of preventable infectious diseases. He has helped to spread dangerous misinformation over social media and is complicit in sowing distrust of the science behind vaccines.”

CATCH OF THE DAY, May 8, 2019

TRAVIS ADAMS, Arrington, Washington/Fort Bragg. Fugitive from justice.

KYLER CASEY, Fort Bragg. Trespassing/refusing to leave, failure to appear.

PHILLIP CRUZ, Hopland. Parole violation.

ELIAS ENGLISH, Ukiah. Resisting.

SKYLER GIST, Mendocino. Concealed dirk-dagger, protective order violation, probation revocation.

ROMERO GONZALEZ, Upper Lake/Redwood Valley. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

JUSTIN HIETALA, Ukiah. Petty theft with priors, resisting, probation revocation.

JODI HODGES, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

MICHAEL JONES, Redwood Valley. Grand theft-bicycles, stolen property, controlled substance, paraphernalia, disobeying court order, probation revocation.

MARC LUCAS, Ukiah. Parole violation.

MELINA SALAZAR, Fort Bragg. Vandalism, failure to appear.

ANTONE WEBB, Sonoma/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

SILAS YOUNG, Willits. Domestic abuse.

MAN TO MAN: JACK KEROUAC MEETS JOE MCCARTHY ON TV

by Jonah Raskin

Think of the 1950s and it’s hard not to think of the bomb, blonde bombshells like Marilyn Monroe, Beat Generation writers and that all-American ogre, Senator Joseph McCarthy who burned himself up and burned out quickly, though not soon enough for those who feared him and detested him. Jack Kerouac, the King of the Beats, never actually met Joe McCarthy, the big, alcoholic bully, but they virtually met through the medium of television that came into its own in the age of McCarthyism and the Beats.

Kerouac, who died 60 years ago in 1969 at the age of 47, made his mark as a novelist who explored the amity and the enmity between guys who drove cars very fast, listened lovingly to African-American jazz and hiked a bit in the wilderness. Male bonding was his stock-in-trade. Kerouac’s fictional women are mostly on the sidelines; his mother, a tough working class, French-Canadian, was at the heart of his life, which meant that wives and girlfriends rarely got through to him. Still, the guy who was often a loner and a misfit even in the Beat crowd of male misfits, wrote two short novels with women as the main characters: Maggie Cassidy (1959), which has never been widely read; and Tristessa (1960), which is popular in Spanish in Mexico.

Of all the public figures in Kerouac's day, the politician and demagogue who fascinated him more than any other was Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, the junior Republican from Wisconsin, whose sinister antics disrupted American life and led to the word “McCarthyism,” which is still with us. Donald Trump descries it everywhere even while he uses the tactics of McCarthy to batter his enemies, real and hallucinated.

In Kerouac’s eyes, McCarthy was yet another American mad man, though, with his infamous lists of the names of supposed Communists he persuaded many of his deluded fellow citizens that he was the sanest of the sane.

In July 1955, soon after the conclusion of the riveting Army-McCarthy hearings, when McCarthy tangled with liberal lawyer Joseph Welsh—and lost—Kerouac wrote from North Carolina to Ginsberg in San Francisco to say that he had just written a “big science fiction fantasy preview of the city of the future.” Kerouac added that he wrote his fiction fantasy “during the Army-McCarthy hearings and so it has a wildly hip political flavor.”

What Kerouac didn’t tell Ginsberg is that he actually watched the hearings on TV at the house of his sister, Nin, took copious notes and typed them up. The notes are in the Kerouac archive at the Berg Collection in the 42nd Street Library in New York. They have never been published, not even in the book titled The Unknown Kerouac, which offers previously unpublished writings, including his journal from 1951, which offers profound commentary on jazz.

No one seems to know that Kerouac’s notes on the televised 1954 hearings even exist. I have read them and have made notes on Kerouac’s notes. In this essay I have paraphrased Kerouac rather than used his exact words to respect copyright.

I watched the Army-McCarthy hearings when I was a boy, though I mostly remember Emile de Antonio’s documentary, Point of Order, which gleans the best parts of the TV drama and boils down hours and hours of testimony to make an artistic whole. What I remember most about the actual hearings when I was 12 is a crowd of adults, many of them ex-communists, shushing me when I dared to speak. They were glued to the TV and didn’t want to miss a single syllable.

65 years ago, in July 1954 Kerouac sat for days on end in front of a black-and-white TV and bonded, in a strange way, with the man who dominated the screen and who had claimed for years—going back to 1950—that Communists had infiltrated the U.S. government. Kerouac had attended Communist Party meetings in the early 1940s. An anti-Fascist, he idealized the Soviet Union and the Russians who were battling Hitler’s armies. “Had a little discussion with a few Reds,” he wrote in April 1941. The following year, he told a young woman, “I wish to take part in this war, not because I want to kill anyone, but for a reason directly opposed to killing—the Brotherhood. To be with my American brothers, for that matter, my Russian brothers.” McCarthy would have called him a “fellow traveler,” a “pinko” and a “Commie simp.”

The anti-communist crusade came close to Kerouac himself. When McCarthy promised to expose the “Reds” and drive them from the agencies where they supposedly worked, Kerouac could feel the threat. It was of course a big lie; for McCarthy the bigger the lie, the better.

Kerouac’s copious notes on the Army-McCarthy hearings say more about Kerouac’s politics—a mix of iconoclastic populism and pseudo-radicalism—than anything else he ever wrote and published, though he offered valuable insights in “About the Beat Generation.” Indeed, in that 1957 essay he reflects on the Korean War, the Cold War and the political and cultural repression that followed the end of World War II when misfits and hipsters—his American heroes—“vanished into jails and madhouses or were shamed into silent conformity.”

Kerouac’s notes on the Army-McCarthy hearings have some of the punch of that 1957 essay, plus they provide a self-portrait of the author himself hunkered down in front of the TV, a mass media he detested, though he would also appear on TV in the wake of the publication and success of On the Road.

He mostly made a fool of himself by talking about God. Kerouac does much the same thing at the end of On the Road where he writes, “don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear?” That’s just silly, though less dangerous than William F. Buckley’s book, God and Man at Yale also from the 1950s. Kerouac called that kind of writing, “goofing.”

No scholar seems to have described Kerouac’s notes on McCarthy, perhaps unwilling to tarnish the image of him as hipster, cool cat, King of the Beats and the author of “The Duluoz Legend,” a series of books that are supposedly the all-time greatest works of literature written by an American in the twentieth-century. That’s what Columbia University Professor Emeritus Ann Douglas claims.

For Kerouac, the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, which went on for 30-days, were a psychodrama and an allegory in the manner of New England author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, that provided a window into the heart and the soul of the American nation in the mid-1950s. Kerouac wanted the hearings to be broadcast at night so that average Americans could watch them at home when they got off work. Then, he reasoned, they might learn valuable lessons about their own country, whether they lived in cities or on farms, and whether they were mid-western Christians, or New York Jews like Roy Cohen, McCarthy’s slick sidekick and chief council and later one of Trump’s mentors.

For Kerouac, McCarthy was a kind of Everyman: devious and fake, fearless and authentic, a truth teller, a narcissistic, a crusader, and a paranoid politician who behaved as though he was the only actor on the stage of televised history. The entire mediated spectacle confirmed Kerouac’s long-held belief that there were in fact real Communists embedded in twentieth-century American society.

At times, he showed himself to be a dialectician. The televised hearings, he insisted, revealed and magnified the secret life of the nation, especially the ways that Soviet-style communism had made inroads into the U. S. At the same time, Kerouac felt that the hearings failed to uncover American anti-communist political intrigue and subterfuge that should have and ought to have been revealed. After the first day of testimony, he hoped that Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA, might be revealed as the chief villain of the piece. But that was not to be.

At the heart of the hearings, Kerouac saw a kind of fog rather than a jewel. In that sense, for him, the conclusion was anti-climactic, though he reasoned that the hearings marked the end of McCarthyism, at least as embodied in McCarthy himself. Kerouac knew that behind the scenes, J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI, had back-peddled and abandoned McCarthy who played the part of the scapegoat; at times, Kerouac even felt sympathy for the Devil himself.

In Kerouac’s eyes, the hearings were an exercise in sexual politics. He viewed the male bonding that occurred between McCarthy and Roy Cohen as a twisted case of brotherly love with little brother enamored of big brother. Kerouac was certain that Cohen was a homosexual. When he saw Cohen on the TV screen, he imagined oral sex between men all across America, as though there was a vast underground of homosexuality. Indeed, there was.

A lot of Kerouac’s notes are stream of consciousness. You might say that, like the science fiction story he wrote at the same time, they have “a wildly hip political flavor.”

Joseph Welsh, the lawyer for the Army, struck Kerouac as an effeminate, upper class Bostonian, though Kerouac also appreciated Welsh’s wit. Women should not be present at the hearings, unless they had relevant testimony to give, he insisted, though why he felt that way, he didn’t say. It could be he didn’t want the male energy in the room to be diluted. In a sense, the hearings were all about the patriarchy: male power, privilege and ambition.

Senator John Kennedy, who attended the hearings, looked boyish in Kerouac’s eyes. In fact, Kennedy was just 37, five years older than Kerouac. Unlike many other Democrats, JFK—who served in the Senate with McCarthy beginning in 1953—never attacked McCarthy publicly.

To Kerouac, Ray Jenkins, a lawyer from Tennessee and special council for the senate subcommittee, seemed like a character out of a William Faulkner novel. Arkansas Senator John McClellan reminded him of William Burroughs’s surrealistic world. He cast veteran actor Ralph Bellamy in the role of David Shine, who was wealthy, Jewish, a staunch anti-communist and apparently Roy Cohen’s lover. When Kerouac watched Senator Symington he thought of bandleader, Glen Miller. Instinctive, he didn’t like the sight of the generals in their uniforms, or the whole idea of the Pentagon with its bureaucracy and red tape. The army was just as bad as McCarthy.

The press coverage of McCarthy seemed superficial to Kerouac. For special rebuke, he singled out Murray Kempton, the liberal columnist for The New York Post. Kerouac never met a liberal he really liked. On the other hand, he understood why right-wing columnist, Walter Winchell, loved Roy Cohen: he made for great gossip.

Kerouac noticed all the little tics, the facial gestures—McCarthy’s habitual scowl—and the constipated body language of all the players. At one point, Kerouac imagined a kind of grotesque spectacle of the august personages on TV leaving the hearings to take a shit; he used the four-letter word.

The hearings also made Kerouac self-reflective. In one sentence that seems totally out of place, he offers a portrait of himself as a marijuana smoker who has been to a whorehouse in Mexico, he boasts, and who has seen police corruption right in front of his own eyes.

What he seemed to be saying was that he knew the seamier sides of life and couldn’t be shocked by anything on TV. The transparency of Mexican society felt preferable to the veiled hypocrisy of American life. Near the end of the hearings, he thought about the past and decided that history ambled along and didn’t race ahead. Nothing of importance happened in a hurry.

The lesson he derived from the mediated event was largely cynical: human beings prefer hate above love, and blindness above clear thinking. The big unknown for Kerouac was the American people, whom he envisioned as a kind of slumbering beast that might wake and then, who knew what? The future he envisioned tended to be dark.

In one of his last letters to Ginsberg, in October 1960, Kerouac explained that he had watched the Nixon-Kennedy debate on TV and decided to vote for Kennedy, though he explained that Kennedy wasn’t his hero. Of Nixon, he wrote, “He is very evil.” Indeed, Nixon carried on the worst of McCarthy. Kerouac added apropos Nixon and Kennedy, “both are phony and both are outright warmongers, the communists are right on that.” He added, in a flash of uncharacteristic utopian optimism, “why don’t we be hip planned socialists and make food and [electrical] power instead of gas bombs.” Indeed, Jack, why don’t we?

At the end of the 1960s, Kerouac died a lonely “hermit writer,” as he called himself, who was detached from his Beat brothers. Readers who haven’t discovered his work, might start with Maggie Cassidy, which goes back to Kerouac’s own youth in working class New England, and then move on to Tristessa, which features a Mexican prostitute/junky who is described as an “Aztec, Indian girl with mysterious lidded Billie Holliday eyes.” Kerouac liked his women dark, strange and forlorn. He liked men who were con-artists who were “mad to live, mad to talk, made to be saved” and to “burn, burn, burn…like spiders across the stars.” Kerouac burned very hot and so did mad man Joe McCarthy, who lives on today in the person of our president.

RESEARCH SKILLS 101 FOR TEENS

May 14, 2019 — 3:30-4:30 PM

Teens will learn how to develop essential skills needed to navigate through "Fake News" and find reliable sources needed for school projects, reports, or to simply share with friends. Every 2nd & 4th Tuesday of each month at the Ukiah Branch of the Mendocino County Library.

AS A BUSINESSMAN TRUMP WAS THE BIGGEST LOSER OF ALL

newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/as-a-businessman-trump-was-the-biggest-loser-of-all

THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MENDOCINO COUNTY'S 25TH ANNIVERSARY BARBECUE

June 2, 2019 — 1:00 to 3:00PM

Nelson Family Vineyards 550 Nelson Ranch Road, Ukiah

Celebrating 25 years of giving in Mendocino County honoring the contributions of our donors, founders and board members. With a special highlight on our scholarship program.

Beneath the Oaks for a BBQ lunch prepared by Mac Magruder and Kristin Myers.

Local wines. Live music by Schindig!

Space Is Limited - Rsvp By May 10

Using One Of The Following Options:

Online: https://Communityfound.Eventbrite.Com

By Email: Rsvp@Communityfound.Org

By Phone: (707)468-9882

WHY BOTHER?

Board of Supervisors Standing Committee Meetings May 13, 2019 - CANCELLED

Community Partners, Colleagues, and Interested Parties:

The Board of Supervisors Standing Committee meetings scheduled for May 13, 2019, have been cancelled.

Please contact the Executive Office at (707) 463-4441

(tel:707/463-4441) if you have any questions regarding this message.

CAAC PULLED II

To the Editor:

Wow!

At the Board of Supersivors (BOS) meeting on Tuesday, May 7, at the suggestion of County Counsel, the BOS pulled Agenda Item 4-i.

Agenda Item 4-i is also known as the resolution in support of the Climate Action Advisory Committee (CAAC). It is also known as John McCowen's gift of a political platform to the his tenants at 106 W Standley Street in Ukiah-- the self-proclaimed "climate warriors" at the Mendocino Environmental Center (MEC).

In giving the MEC the gift of the CAAC, McCowen may have been building a voting block of the MEC's membership list in support his re-election bid in 2020. He'll need every vote he can get. His re-election will be strongly contested by Ukiah's Mayor, Mo Muheren.

Pulling the Agenda Item 4-i also means that the gift of a $94,812 contractor's job at the CAAC for the MEC's president, Alicia Bales, was pulled. That job was cronyism, pure and simple.

County Counsel will bring the item back in June.

When the CAAC is brought back by County Counsel, here's what the BOS should insist as prudent requirements:

the Mendocino County Resource Conservation District should administer the CAAC;

the person hired as CAAC program manager should be a "domain expert" on controlling carbon emissions, and should not be a mere activist or political extremist; and

the $110,00 budgeted for the CAAC in general funds from the county is start-up money only; it will be expected that the CAAC seek sustaining federal and/or state funding.

Everyone agrees that the planet is imperiled by global warming. It's settled science. My hope and prayer are that the county's efforts in this area are not corrupted by "tribal politics" nor by one personality. What Mendocino County does not need at this point in time in fighting global warming and controlling carbon emissions is an activist with a personal agenda linking global warming with a wacky socialist agenda.

The CAAC should be truly independent of tribal politics. Its program manager should be a licensed environmental engineer, climatology scientist, recycling and waste management engineer, , licensed hydrologist, solar energy engineer, or other such expert.

John Sakowicz, Ukiah

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ED NOTE: The MEC people can be fairly described as wacky, but not socialists. Their personal behavior derives much more from fascism than democratic socialism. Honest socialism has always had a problem with the fake left, hustlers and exhibitionists who parasitically glom on to whatever legit resistance there is, cannibalize it, driving out the hardworking and the truly committed. You'll never hear the names of most of the people who did the true heavy lifting in the Redwood Summer period, the people who doggedly, knowledgeably, challenged Louisiana and Georgia-Pacific's cash-in of the Northcoast woods. I defy anyone to name one ecological triumph led by the current gaggle of crackpots dominant at Supervisor John "River" McCowen's little clubhouse at 106 West Standley, Ukiah.

THERE IS, PERHAPS, NO FAIRER MAXIM among all the many which our national genius has brought forth, than that which advises us not to hit a man when he is down. For, apart from its implicit generosity, to which every true Briton must whole-heartedly respond, it is, like most of our more exalted percepts, full of the soundest practical sense, since, in mental as well in physical combats, he who flings himself upon his fallen adversary must needs stoop to a similar position himself, and thereafter run great risk either of exposing himself to some unconventional blow, or of being dragged down in the same grapple by which his enemy manages to rise. It is, as a matter of technical interest, far better to wait until the fallen man has half, but not more than half, scrambled to his feet, before rushing in to finish him off.

— John Collier, 1930; from "His Monkey Wife"

MISINFORMED

Editor:

Jackie Braun is simply wrong. Her “facts” are deceptions.

Public sanitation is important, particularly to stem waterborne diseases such as cholera and typhus. Measles, chicken pox and influenza, for which we are vaccinated, are airborne, or transmitted by person-to-person contact. They are controlled by vaccination, not better public sanitation.

Vaccine testing certainly does include placebo controls in appropriate circumstances.

In the 1980s, self-deceived people like Braun were promoting the idea that vaccines cause autism (wrong). As a result, producers (“Big Pharma”) were sued, suffering significant judgments, causing them to stop production. Supply fell to dangerously low levels. As a result, the government established the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in 1988, and production resumed. There have been an average of 1.2 awards (for all adverse reactions) per 1 million applications of vaccine. Only one controversial case of autism was awarded.

Big Pharma is a handy target, but not because of the money manufacturers may make from vaccines, which have been nearly miraculous in their prevention of previously common diseases.

Braun should be ashamed of herself. Currently, we are witnessing the largest outbreak of measles (considered eradicated in 2000) since 1994. Irresponsible words can have dangerous consequences.

Dr. Jeffrey A. Rapp

Healdsburg

OCEAN SALMON ANGLERS off the California coast will be able to spend more time on the water this year chasing after Chinook Salmon (also known as King Salmon). Sport fisheries in the Klamath Management Zone will open from late May through early September. Fort Bragg and San Francisco areas will reopen mid-May after a short-term closure and will continue through the end of October. The Monterey management area is open now and remains open through late August.

The 2019 recreational ocean salmon season dates for the California coast are as follows:

In the Klamath Management Zone, which is the area between the Oregon/California border and Horse Mountain (40°05’00” N. latitude), the season will open May 25 and continue through Sept. 2.

The Fort Bragg and San Francisco areas, which extend from Horse Mountain to Point Arena (38°57’30” N. latitude) and Point Arena to Pigeon Point (37°11’00” N. latitude), respectively, opened April 13. Fishing closed on April 30, 2019, reopens on May 18 and will continue through Oct. 31.

The Monterey area between Pigeon Point and the U.S./Mexico border opened on April 6 and will continue through Aug. 28.

The minimum size limit is 20 inches total length in all areas north of Point Arena. In the San Francisco area, the minimum size limit was 24 inches total length through April 30. When this area reopens on May 18 it will be 20 inches total length for the duration of the season. In the Monterey area the minimum size limit is 24 inches total length for the whole season. The daily bag limit is two Chinook Salmon per day. No more than two daily bag limits may be possessed when on land. On a vessel in ocean waters, no person shall possess or bring ashore more than one daily bag limit. Retention of Coho Salmon (also known as Silver Salmon) is prohibited in all ocean fisheries off California.

Ocean salmon season lengths were restricted in certain areas to limit harvest of Sacramento River fall Chinook, the main stock supporting California’s ocean fishery. Under the terms of the federal Salmon Fishery Management Plan, this stock is classified as “overfished” following low returns of spawning adults in recent years. In an effort to hasten the rebuilding process, the Pacific Fishery Management Council made the decision to limit the fishery so that a greater number of adult fish return to the river to spawn this fall.

These season dates and size limit restrictions in combination also serve to minimize impacts of the ocean salmon fishery on ESA-listed Sacramento River winter Chinook and California Coastal Chinook stocks, as required by federal law.

Ocean salmon regulations in state waters automatically conform to federal regulations using the process described in the California Code of Regulations Title 14, section 1.95. Federal regulations for ocean salmon were published in Federal Register 84, section 19729 on May 6, 2019, and are effective immediately.

Public notification of any in-season change is made through the National Marine Fisheries Service Ocean Salmon Hotline. Before engaging in any fishing activity for ocean salmon, please check one of the following resources for the most up-to-date information:

CDFW website, www.wildlife.ca.gov/oceansalmon

National Marine Fisheries Service Ocean Salmon Hotline, (800) 662-9825

CDFW Ocean Salmon Hotline, (707) 576-3429

Press release from the Department of Fish and Wildlife

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I live without hope,

We’re finished.

Decades of hyper conformity and the accompanying hyper consumerism, has pushed the last train out of the station.

As a young man, why even try anymore?

Looking around me, as I walk down the street, most people's faces (young and old) are filled with the looks of horror, desperation and fury.

I don’t want to become one of them as I get older, but I feel myself becoming one despite my desperate efforts not to. There feels like no way out of this hellish world!

I hope it all collapses, so that “history” is possible to restart, so that there is some possibility and future other than clinging to an increasingly impoverished, narrow institutionalized life.

But with climate change why even hope for that?

Looking forward to a life of Misery and Hopelessness!

-A Millenial

THE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA FIRES: THE FOREST MANAGEMENT-WILDFIRE RISK CONNECTION

by Felice Pace

DEAR KQED and Morning Edition reporters and editors:

This morning I listened to your reports following up 6 months after the Camp Fire. Thank you for focusing on how the destruction caused by that fire has exacerbated California's affordable housing crisis. Your reporting has, however, still failed to examine whether there is a connection between the proximity of industrial forest lands managed with clearcut-plantation forestry and the levels of destruction experienced in the town of Paradise and also in the town of Redding (Carr Fire). I write today to ask you to complete your reporting by examining this important question. Attached is the news briefing I sent out at the time. It can help you identify the independent as well as fire establishment sources. Today I am also putting a new proposal on the table: I am calling for California state legislation and/or new rules at the Board of Forestry to require that all Timber Harvest Plans (THPs) that include lands within 1 mile of a residence, group of residences or town to include an analysis disclosing how the proposed logging is likely to impact fire risks to nearby homes and communities. I also propose federal legislation to require the same analysis whenever the Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management proposed logging within 1 mile of a residence or group of residences. How about it? Isn't it high time for KQED and NPR to take a hard look at how logging as practiced on public and timber industry land impacts the risks from wildfire experienced by California and other western communities? Please do not continue to scapegoat climate change to justify ignoring other important factors in the destructiveness experienced with recent western wildfires. By addressing the forest management/fire risk connection (which is well documented in the scientific literature) you can play an important role in making communities and people less at risk from wildfire.

(NPR Folks: Please share this message with Kirk Siegler.)

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Because of the human losses involved, and because politicians of all stripe are weighing in on how governments should reduce fire risks in response, Northern California's Camp and Carr Fires deserve the benefit of in-depth investigation by media of all types. This Briefing Paper is being distributed in hopes that, now that the immediate fire risk has ended for the year, it will be used by reporters and editors to better understand how forest management impacts fire risk and to evaluate the “solutions” being proposed. In particular, I hope you will investigate and report on what I believe are key ownership and forest management factors that are not being discussed by CalFire and Forest Service spokespersons or politicians and that, consequently, are almost never mentioned in media reports.

But first, a bit about why you should consider what I have to say: I moved to far Northern California's Klamath River Basin in 1971 and by the 1990s I was directing the Klamath Forest Alliance and playing a major role in the campaign to protect the remaining ancient forests on public land in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. Along with current Klamath Forest Alliance staff, I've walked parts of and studied all the large fires that burned in Northwest California since 1987 and I've studying related suppression actions. I've been dealing with logging and other proposals to “reduce fuels” as a hedge against intense fire effects for more years than I care to relate. If you want to learn more, a web search will net plenty. You can read the Klamath Forest Alliance's wildfire reports at this link.

And now the briefing:

President Trump says poor forest management is the reason the West is experiencing devastating wildfires. He advocates “raking” the forest; but he is really just attempting, with limited success, to sing the timber industry's tune: The industry and its political supporters have a long history of working to stoke and manipulate the public's fear of wildfire to increase logging on our national forests.

It is important to understand that most of the fires which threaten and burn residential areas and towns in the American West do not come from forests but rather from chaparral and other shrublands and from grasslands, including oak woodlands. Nevertheless, there are western residential areas and towns located in and near forests and that is particularly true in Northern California. In the case of this year's Carr and Camp Fires, public and private forests were involved, as were grasslands, oak woodlands and shrublands.

President Trump is correct on one point: for communities located in and near western forests, there is a connection between forest management and the risk of catastrophic wildfire. But Trump is way off the mark about where that risk is greatest and what needs to be done to lower the risk that a wildfire will “blow up” in a forest and then move into a town or residential area.

When it comes to the risk that a forest area will burn catastrophically, both the relevant research and experience on the ground are clear: clearcut-plantation forestry results in forests that are especially prone to high intensity fire effects, especially when compared to older and naturally diverse forests (see selected citations at the end). In Northern California, the lands where highly flammable young, conifer tree plantations dominate are not national forest lands but rather private, industrial forest lands. Furthermore, those private industrial lands are typically located at lower elevation as compared to national forest land and they are often located closer to towns and residential areas. As a result, it is private, industrial timberlands which present the most wildfire risk to Northern Californians, their homes and communities.

In Northern California, Green Diamond Resources, Fruit Growers (Sunkist) and other corporations control extensive expanses of forests. Sierra Pacific Industries is by far the largest private landowner. Here's a map of SPI's Northern California holdings

The now devastated town of Paradise is close to SPI forestlands as is the city of Redding where the Carr Fire recently devastated parts of town. Those SPI lands are a sea of clearcuts and what follows the clearcuts: single species or mixed conifer tree plantations that are logged when they are only 80 years old or even younger. In other words, those private industrial forest lands are at high risk for catastrophic fire effects. During the Carr Fire alone SPI lost 1900 acres of tree plantations in spite of CalFire's extensive efforts to minimize the loss of SPI's plantation investment.

Many clearcuts are visible. They begin just north of Paradise Lake and its surrounding residential areas. Between those clearcuts are conifer plantations thick with young trees. Virtually all clearcuts visible in the image are on private forestland and most of that land is controlled by Sierra Pacific Industries.

It is unclear at this time what role SPI clearcuts and the plantations between them played in the devastation visited on Paradise and that is not likely to become clearer. That's because CalFire and politicians like Doug LaMalfa, who got $19,000 in donations from Sierra Pacific Industries and its executives this last election cycle (https://www.followthemoney.org/entity-details?eid=1560957&default=candidate), will say nothing critical of this large and very powerful timber company. CalFire and the Forest Service are part of a Fire Establishment that is happy to stoke fire fears in its own (funding and power) interest; but they will not talk straight about fire risks on private industrial timberland or reveal how much taxpayer money they spend trying to keep fire out of the timber industry's tree plantations.

Therefore, if the public is going to get a true and full understanding of forest management fire risks and solutions, members of the media must ask CalFire and Forest Service officials, and politicians like LaMalfa, about the fire risk on SPI Lands and the role those lands played in the fires that devastated Redding and Paradise this fire season. Is the priority for forest “thinning” truly on public lands, as the politicians claim, or should the priority be those lower elevation private industrial forestlands located close to communities and residential areas? Please do not allow the fiction that it is the national forest lands which represent the greatest wildfire risk in Northern California to stand without close scrutiny. Please ask the hard questions about the gorilla in the corner that CalFire officials and the politicians do not want to acknowledge.

To learn what scientists have discovered about how tree plantations and naturally diverse forests typically burn in Northern California and the fire risk each represents, I suggest talking to Northern California's premier forest researcher, Carl Skinner, who is now retired, and his colleague, Erik Knapp, who is based at the US Forest Service Research Station in Redding. Eric can help you find Carl in retirement. Some of the many research reports these two have published on fire topics are linked to at the end of this brief.

Why more national forest “thinning” won't reduce wildfire risks

Calls for “thinning” national forests to reduce fire risk are widespread and logical: less fuel = less risk. But in the real world it is not that simple.

First, it is not clear that any amount of forest “thinning” would have altered the behavior of the drought and wind driven Carr and Camp Fires. In that regard, Agricultural Secretary Sonny Perdue let the cat out of the bag to NPR on November 21st. During an interview with Steve Inskeep, Perdue responded to a question about the impact of global warming on wildfires by recalling that we had fires that were “even larger” during the 1930s drought. In the 1930s, before helitac, air tankers and the era of national forest road building, fire suppression effectiveness was limited to the few portions of the national forests that had good road access. Fortunately, the mostly uncut, naturally diverse forests rarely burned catastrophically.

Forest “thinning” by definition opens the forest to more light and drying winds. For that reason, thinning for fire risk reduction is problematic. That's because, as every experienced firefighter knows, shade is the firefighters friend; opening the forest to more light and wind drys fuels and increases fire intensity. Furthermore, if the forest canopy is opened to more light and competition for moisture is reduced, shrubs and small trees sprout and regenerate; within 5 to 8 years of a “thinning” treatment fire risk is greater than before the forest was thinned. On the other hand, if maximum canopy is retained, a practice known as “thinning from below”, shade is maximized and tree regeneration and shrub resprouting post logging is significantly reduced. Naturally diverse, closed-canopy forests become less and less prone to catastrophic fire effects as they grow older.

If national forest managers know that maximizing the forest shade canopy reduces fire risk, can't they plan “thinning” to retain maximum shade? The answer is “yes” if those managers would pay for the work up front using service contracts. In most cases on most national forests, however, Forest Service managers insist on using the timber sale contract to “thin” forests. And that is the problem: when the timber sale contract is the tool, timber economics, not what is best for the forest or what reduces fire risk most over time, determines what gets cut and what gets left behind.

In our steep and remote western national forests, getting a timber sale to secure bids and be purchased usually requires adding large, fire resistant trees to the mix of what will be cut and removed. To reduce logging costs, too much canopy is removed and logging Debris (“slash”) is often left behind, increasing fire risk. And that is why those pesky “environmentalists” whom Trump and Purdue rail against file timber sale exceptions and lawsuits.

The timber sale contract was a great tool when the mission was getting logs from remote national forests to timber mills; but because it is ruled by economics, the timber sale contract is a poor tool when the mission is fire risk reduction. CalFire and Forest Service managers are in denial about that factor; if they are aware of it, they choose to keep the knowledge to themselves. That's why I hope you will help educate the public about problems with national forest timber sales as the preferred method for reducing fire risk on federal forests. If you would like to see how reducing fire risk via timber sales plays out on the ground in Northwest California, please contact me.

Let’s debate the whole enchilada

Reporting about western wildfires is becoming more sophisticated. Some editors are even penning editorials that get beyond the simplistic solutions being promoted by the Forest Service, timber industry and the politicians who serve the timber corporations. But to date I can find little to nothing in the media that focuses on how private industrial forests are being managed, and especially whether that management decreases or increases the risk that a wildfire will burn catastrophically, threatening not only homes and communities but also forest ecosystems and water quality.

That's why I am suggesting that you and your media outlet focus attention on those parts of the complex story that are not getting attention, especially on those factors which are being intentionally not mentioned. Please ask CalFire and Forest Service officials and politicians like Doug LaMalfa, Sonny Perdue, Gavin Newsom, etc. these hard questions:

Some activists claim private industrial timberlands pose the greatest wildfire risk to Northern California communities because they are closer to the towns and are dominated by highly flammable tree plantations. Do you agree those lands pose fire risks and, if so, what should be done about that?

Extensive Sierra Pacific Industries clearcuts and single species tree plantations are located near Paradise and Redding and directly adjacent to some of the residential areas that burned catastrophically in the Carr and Camp Fires. What role did those industrial forestlands play in creating or exacerbating the devastation in and around Paradise and Redding?

Why are timber sales rather than service contracts being used to “thin” national forests? Because they must be commercially viable, are timber sales a poor tools for fire risk reduction? To make a commercial timber sale attract bids and purchasers, isn't it necessary too include too many large trees and reduce canopy shade too much resulting in more fire risk over time?

Thanks for reading this far. Please help achieve a full public debate that considers all relevant factors.

Additional Resources

As mentioned above, the best sources I know of for information on fire and fire risk reduction in Northern California are two Forest Service researchers: Eric Knapp and Carl Skinner (retired). Below is contact information for Eric; he can put you in touch with Carl Skinner:

Eric E. Knapp, Research Ecologist, 3644 Avtech Parkway, Redding California 96002. Phone: 530-226-2555

Here are links to research and web resources that underlie and back up what I claim above and which will help you more fully understand forest management in Northern California and across the West, its impact on fire behavior and whether claims that logging, including thinning, will reduce fire risk are well founded or serve other agendas:

https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/32027

https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/26474

https://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr208en/psw_gtr208en_525-534_stone.pdf

https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ecs2.1695

https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs_other/rmrs_2008_keane_r003.pdf

http://www.pacificbio.org/publications/wildfire_studies/Roads_And_Wildfires_2007.pdf

http://www.pacificbio.org/publications/wildfire_studies/Assessment_2000_Wildfires.pdf

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_lands/forests/ecosystem_restoration/fire_and_forest_management.html

https://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/knapp/psw_2013_knapp003_mciver.pdf

https://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/weatherspoon/psw_1996_weatherspoon001.pdf

FOUND OBJECT