MCT: Wednesday, May 22, 2019

• Drier Weather
• Head-On Collision
• Music Expo
• Adult School
• Open Studios
• Limited Facts
• Playing Doctor
• LakeCo History
• Nurse Retirement
• Mystery Man
• Black Market
• Butterfly
• Pier Tax
• Whale
• Gardner Notes
• Area 101
• FB Rez
• Paddlewheeler
• Measles
• Super Patriot
• Grape Concern
• Joker Sez
• Oligarchy
• Chavez Ravine
• Planning Cancelled
• Rose Walk
• SF Heartbreak
• Immediate Care
• Laytonville High
• Just Refuse
• Springtime NY

RAIN GOING AWAY? The National Weather Service says most of the rest of the week should be clear and sunny with a slight chance of rain coming in over the weekend. Highs in the 70s, lows in the 40s and 50s.

THE CHP REPORTS A TWO-VEHICLE HEAD ON COLLISION on Monday between a 2018 Lexus and a 2001 Ford on Highway 1 north of Fort Bragg involving unidentified parties, a 76 year old man from Westport and a 58 year old man from Fort Bragg. Both men suffered major injuries. Alcohol not suspected.

AS PART of the Jr./Sr. High School Exhibition, the music department is featuring live student performances! Come cheer them on next Tuesday, May 28th, from 6:00-7:30 pm!

THIS FRIDAY May 24th the Anderson Valley Adult School will be celebrating the end of another successful school year. All community members are welcome to join us in celebrating the achievements of our hard working fellow community members! The ceremony will go from 5:30-6:30 pm in the AVES cafeteria, followed by a taco dinner outside of the Adult School. Come one, come all!

ANDERSON VALLEY OPEN STUDIOS THIS NEXT WEEKEND! A TREAT TO LOOK FORWARD TO ON MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND

by Yoriko Kishimoto

Anderson Valley is known for its magical alchemy of redwoods, vineyards, goats, great food and wine… and of course artists!

On Memorial Day weekend, Anderson Valley Open Studios asks local artists to clean up their private studios a little (just a little) so you, the public, can find your way up windy roads, under green canopies of trees, across creeks and squeeze into the studios to see where they work, check out some of their new work, and connect with the creative process.

The yellow signs up and down 128 will lead you to the artists’ studios from 11 to 5 pm on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, May 25th-27th.

The artists this year are:

• Steve Wood - architectural renderings, models and photographs
• Charlie Hochberg - photography of “painterly” panoramas
• Judy Nelson -glass beads and jewelry inspired by the valley
• Xenia King - paintings in oil and acrylic, oil pastels and photographs
• Laura Diamondstone - paintings and drawings with mixed and upcycled media/materials
• Yoriko Kishimoto -oil and watercolor from the four winds
• Saoirse Bryne - scarves, wraps and fabric ottomans incorporating art of rope making
• Kate McEwen - printmaking, photography, art: time and the obsolete
• Marvin and Colleen Schenck - post-impressionist landscape painting, printmaking, jewelry, mixed media
• Jan Wax and Chris Bing - porcelain and stoneware art pottery
• Deanna Thomas - plein air paintings in oils and pastels with an expressive brush and tonal palette
• Michael Wilson and Susan Spencer - art assemblages in their Beat Gallery
• Nadia Berrigan - photography of landscape and light, composition and its abstraction
• Rebecca Johnson - a poetic and contemporary interpretation of place, painting and sculpture
• Doug Johnson - crystalline glazed and wood fired salt glazed ceramics
• Rachel Lahn - mixed media sculptural paintings and encaustics that capture the elemental rhythms and forms

In an era where we spend too much time on the computer and phone, connect with the part of you that is hungry for that hands-on, creative process. This is a free and a unique opportunity - I hope everyone will visit at least a couple studios if not all. Check out https://andersonvalley-artguild.org/open-studios for more info on each artist and a map! We welcome you to visit, get inspired, and perhaps get an original piece of art!

BACK TO BOOKS

Editor,

Books and magazines are dead! It is online for all of us. We catch a snippet of science here and there — be it real or fake news. We can’t wade through a book or even a magazine. Our knowledge is regulated to fragments from Wikipedia and Facebook.

It is easy to pick sides with limited science. Fake or real news balance one another easily with limited facts or pseudo-facts. However, real science depends on extensive knowledge and the balancing of the scientific method. Fake news cannot stand that scrutiny.

Tom Cochrane

The Sea Ranch

BETSY CAWN fills in some history blanks: “PSG got started in Lake County with operations in Lucerne, where it opened a small residential facility and also took over the run-down, fifties-vintage Sands resort.”

Lucerne is still the home of Dr. Gardener’s addiction treatment clinic, right up the road from Lake County’s Behavioral Health Department offices — moved from the centrality of Lakeport (with proximity to the Mendocino College Campus, at the time, and access to commercial resources most of us poor folk patronize — pharmacy, low-cost groceries, insurers and the laundromat) to the heart of “severely economically disadvantaged” poverty and dead-end low-cost housing.

During the Valley Fire (2015) the Anderson Springs clients were evacuated to an open air, impromptu camp, and then to the facility that provides detox/rehabilitation services (where the AVA’s Flynn Washburne repaired to after his most recent fall off the wagon) at some distance from the “town” of Clearlake Oaks, with no bus service, and many miles away from temptations found in the City of Clearlake.

Lucerne’s loss of the old motel, razed by the County after it was condemned, occurred during the pre-crash real estate frenzy, during which their “Community Club House” (donated to the town in “perpetuity”) was also demolished — to allegedly make way for a beautiful new “Days Inn” that never materialized. The modest event center, operated by the American Legion, gave way to a barren parcel adjacent to an unimproved county “park,” across the highway from crashpads and trash-packed single family “homes” filled with tranquilized (or otherwise subdued) inhabitants who haunt the “avenues” on mid-night strolls through vandalized vacant “second homes” or abandoned shacks, picking up “loose change” and heisting sellable treasures or breaking in to the Senior Center’s thrift store in desperation.

The Sheriff’s Office, in late 2018, publicly announced that there were insufficient staff to provide patrols, and in early 2019 instituted an “on-line” report filing system — because there are no deputies available to respond to calls for anything less than murderous mayhem, and even then it can take up to two hours for law enforcement to arrive.

A retired, respectable, mind-your-own-business resident was severely beaten by meth-and-alcohol driven neighbors on a rip, but thankfully the local Fire Department’s EMTs were available to respond.

All this after around 15 years of “redevelopment” that devoted local tax revenues to sprucing up a defunct shoreline area called “Alpine Park” — where the multi-million dollar public restrooms are now closed at night due to deleterious habitation by junkies and punks who have gone so far as to set the toilet paper on fire to keep warm.

Meanwhile, the Adventist Hospital Clear Lake (formerly known as “Redbud”) in collaboration with government, private, and non-profit agencies has invested several years to implementing the Camden Coalition’s successful intervention of chronic emergency service demands on medical responders in the area of Clearlake (the city) and Lower Lake.

Lake County Behavioral Health Department’s latest “outreach” facility (called the “Big Oak”) is located in a stingy strip-mall corner office in Clearlake Oaks — for the benefit of “homeless” mentally suffering clients who used to be able to reach those services close to public facilities (library and senior center) as well as those commonly needed commercial resources, in the city of Clearlake, but who now must travel via the slow and infrequently available Lake Transit bus service, and back.

Unlike Mendocino County, Lake County finds ways to keep its unfortunate and/or lame losers off the beaten path and out of the public’s attention, but not without the costs of petty crime and neighborhood squalor. And now, Sutter Lakeside has belatedly joined the fray as part of a highly questionable “collaborative” supported by Mendocino’s North Coast Opportunities and Redwood Community Services, that Adventist’s local hospital Community Wellness Department fronts under the “Hope Rising” project. A completely structureless “organization” with no address but endowed with its own “board of directors” and a paid “executive director” who reports to the Adventist administration but is paid by someone else. There’s no end to the lunacy, even as Adventist pours its heart into the bottomless pit of need, only to be exploited by the developmentally disabled county government and its “private” partners — like NCO and RCS.

CAN YOU IDENTIFY THIS INDIVIDUAL? He appears to be approximately 6'02" and over 200 pounds. He was observed in the Boatyard Shopping Center on 05/20/2019 wearing a rain jacket and camouflage shorts. Please contact Officer Awad at (707) 961-2800 ext. 180 if you can help identify this individual.

RE THE NEW YORKER article on HumCo: "Too many glossy words saying nothing in the end. It would be interesting to hear from the smaller 1st-2nd generation farmers point of view, or the disenfranchised women, all outside the permit process now, whose stories will be much different. There are many reasons some couldn’t attempt to navigate the permitting process, the snarky have, have-not mentality is getting so tiresome. Those groovy digs behind the electronic gate weren’t constructed and maintained on legal cannabis profits, or “fishing,” we have the black market to THANK for anyone doing anything in the regulated market. People act so coy, and I’ve yet to see a single mainstream article that reflects what’s really going on."

(On line comment)

RUMORS FROM POINT ARENA

A READER WRITES: Heard last night in Point Arena that there is an undertow amidst the Council and possibly Shoemaker that in order to salvage the PA pier, an ordinance may be in the works to seek support in the form of a Parcel Tax of $34.00/parcel (improved with structures and unimproved and unimproved parcels) on all lands between Elk and Gualala. Apparently the thought is that the Point Arena Pier provides a real service to the inhabitants of these parceled areas. Don't know how it would work, don't know how it would pass muster with the populace, don't know how an incorporated City can pull that one off with the unincorporated areas, but it sounds about right in that the PA Council recently held a Goal setting revision meeting on May 24, 2019 to present goals to perform a complete makeover of the town: Skateboard parks, City interior golf courses, a Frisbee golf course, revised signage of welcome into the City limits, etc. But the agenda does not specify a pier ordinance. I did not attend so I do not know how it turned out, but the rumor of a parcel tax for the pier lives on.

GREY WHALES from Navarro Beach, Sunday, May 8th

EMILY DOES GARBERVILLE

by Fred Gardner

Although it's entitled "How Legalization Changed Humboldt County Marijuana," Emily Witt's May 20 New Yorker article is not about new plant varieties but about new socioeconomic realities. Nor is the smoothly written piece as thorough and authoritative as the title suggests. It's hard to become an expert based on a brief visit to a region. Consider these lines from Witt's opening paragraph:

"For more than 40 years, the epicenter of cannabis farming in the United States was a region of northwestern California called the Emerald Triangle, at the intersection of Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity Counties. Of these, Humboldt County is the most famous.

What data show that Humboldt is more famous than Mendocino? Doug Sahm and the McGarrigle Sisters never wrote songs about Humboldt. I say Mendocino is more famous.

"It was here, in hills surrounding a small town called Garberville, that hippies landed in the 1960s, after fleeing the squalor of Berkeley and Haight-Ashbury."

It was towards the end of the '60s — after the assasination of hope — that some hippies began fleeing the cities. And the new settlers included plenty of veterans seeking peace and sanity after Vietnam.

"They learned the practice known as sinsemilla, in which female cannabis plants are isolated from the pollen of their male counterparts, which causes the females to produce high levels of THC."

Sin semillas in Spanish means "without seeds." Gringos turned it into a one-word noun defining not the growers' practice of isolating female plants but to the flowers put out by sexually frustrated females, swollen and laden with resin, desperate to catch a grain of pollen. (A farmer who really digs plants, Bob Cannard, says, "You’ve got to allow a plant to have a few seeds. How can it be a truly content plant without sexual fulfillment?")

And it's not just THC production that gets enhanced when unpollinated female flowers are forced to keep putting out; levels of all their cannabinoids, terpenoids, flavonoids and other components are also elevated.

TO BE CONTINUED…

---

Red Reishi vs. Varroa destructor

A parasitic mite called Varroa destuctor has been "a primary factor" in the collapse of bee colonies (along with pesticides and loss of forage land), writes mushroom expert Paul Stamets in an essay published 12/28/18 in the New York Times.

"This mite, Varroa destructor, injects a slew of viruses into bees, including one that causes shriveled wings, a primary factor in widespread colony collapse. Worse, these parasites have rapidly developed resistance to synthetic pesticides.

"Beekeepers in the United States lost an estimated 40 percent of their colonies between April 2017 and April 2018. But we might be able to save honeybees at least from this parasitic scourge without chemical intervention…

"Our research shows that extracts from the living mycelial tissue of common wood conk mushrooms known to have antiviral properties significantly reduced these viruses in honeybee colonies, in one field test by 45,000 times, compared to control colonies. In the field tests, we used extracts from two species of wood conks, the red reishi and the amadou. The famous 'Iceman' found in a glacier in 1991 in the Alps carried amadou in a pouch 5,300 years ago. The red reishi has long been used as an immune-boosting tonic in Asia.

"Our hypothesis — and that's all it is, we don't understand the mechanism behind the results — is that extracts of wood conk mushrooms strengthen immunity to viruses."

Stamets and colleagues at the University of Washington and the US Department of Agriculture are developing a feeder so that "citizen scientists" can provide bees with virus-fighting mushroom extracts in sugary water. "Millions of these feeders are needed," Stamets estimates, "to reverse the decline in bee populations."

---

ART KUNKIN, founder and editor of the LA Free Press, one of the first "underground" newspapers, died April 30 in Joshua Tree. Kunkin launched the Free Press in 1964. It provided detailed coverage of the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley (inspiring a lawyer named Max Scherr to launch the Berkeley Barb), the Watts uprising, the pot scene, the rise of La Raza, antiwar protests, women's liberation, and every other strand of "the movement" of the '60s. The Freep, as it was called, was home base for the great cartoonist Ron Cobb.

According to the Times obit,

“By the end of the 1960s it had a robust circulation near 100,000. But Mr. Kunkin was beginning to encounter financial difficulties — partly as a result of his acquisition of a printing press, which became a financial burden, and partly as a result of his decision to publish, in August 1969, the names and addresses of 80 government narcotics agents. 'There Should Be No Secret Police,' the headline on that article read, but it led to lawsuits that crippled his operation…

"In 1973, while the mainstream American Society of Newspaper Editors was meeting in Washington, the underground press held a counterconvention across town. The two groups even got together for a joint session (as it were).

“'While besuited editors looked on uncomfortably,' The Boston Globe wrote, 'L.A. Free Press editor Art Kunkin passed out cider and marijuana before presenting an inventory of plots, crimes and assassinations he said had been ignored by daily newspapers.'"

Kunkin came from New York and graduated from Bronx Science in 1945. He was "an organizer for the Socialist Workers Party," the Times obit recounts, "and acquired some journalism experience working on The Militant, the party’s newspaper, as well as other leftist publications. In the 1950s, after service in the Army, he worked as a machinist for General Motors and Ford… 'I worked for five years in auto plants,' he said in an interview… 'and those factories are prisons. And from my experience, those people in there are radical as hell. But you never hear about that.'"

In a 1996 interview Kunkin said, "What made the difference between the alternative press in the 1960s and the mass media,” he said, “was that the mass media looked on all events as isolated — errors that the system could correct. The sense of the 1960s alternative press was that these issues were all connected, that they indicated a certain sickness of the society. And this sickness has not decreased.”

Kunkin's retrograde message —"that these issues are all connected"— is worth repeating now that so many activists are caught in a single-issue trap. The "entourage effect" applies in politics as well as in pharmacology. Maybe more.

—Fred Gardner

CZECH Lodge/Shell Gas Station 9 1/2 miles North of Laytonville. Now referred to as Area 101 -

FORT BRAGG ORIGINS

REDWOOD MARY WRITES (on the MCN chatline):

"The Mendocino Indian Reservation was discontinued in March 1866 and the land opened for settlement in 1867 for $1.25 an acre. No one asks what happened to the indigenous people.

Read below and more at: http://www.militarymuseum.org/FtBragg.html

“Established in June 11, 1857, Fort Bragg was located about 50 miles south of Cape Mendocino and situated one and a half miles north of the Noyo River, at the present town of Fort Bragg, Mendocino County. It was established within the Mendocino Indian Reservation for the purpose of both controlling and safeguarding the area's Indians. Established by 1st Lieutenant Horatio Gates Gibson, 3rd Artillery with a detachment from Company M, the post was named for Captain Braxton Bragg, 3rd Artillery, a Mexican War veteran and later a general in the Confederate Army. There was a period of agitation to have the post's name changed because of his disaffection but the post retained the name during the Civil War.”

CLARIFICATION, I HOPE: There is still a tiny Native American in-holding out on the Fort Bragg bluffs settled by, as I understand it, the families who survived Mendo's own Trail of Tears, that one to Covelo, where all the Indians from the Fort Bragg, Anderson Valley, Point Arena and points between, were driven at Army gun point to the Nome Cult Rez established at Covelo. Native Americans from the Sacramento Valley, in a second forced march were also driven at gun point to the Covelo reservation. The trail from the Mendocino Coast to inland ran roughly along what is now the Branscomb Road to what is now Laytonville, then to Covelo via Long Valley. Mendo had just become a recognized county in 1850 but not trusted to govern itself. (Some things never change!) Mendo's affairs were handled out of the marginally more settled Santa Rosa. But the initial genocide, which is not too hyperbolic a term for the attempt to exterminate all the Indians in the Eel River Basin, which kicked off with Jarboe's Rangers, a company of hired killers paid by the state of California to murder all the Indians they could over a year's time. Jarboe went on to become Mendocino County's first badged lawman, responsible for law and order in Ukiah. The slaughters of native peoples in Mendocino and Humboldt counties was as horrifying as any mass murders of Indians anywhere in the country. Incidentally, the new state of California refused to pay Jarboe's entire bill for sneaking up on Indian camps and murdering men, women and children, accusing him of padding his kill stats and fudging his reimbursements chits.

THE INEXORABLE slide backwards to barbarism. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed 880 cases of measles in 2019, marking the worst year for the disease in America in 25 years. Health officials have now confirmed cases in 24 states, with 41 new cases in the last week alone. Thirty of those new cases were reported in New York. Despite the total number continuing to rise, a CDC spokesperson told CNBC the pace of the disease appears to be slowing down. Officials continue to attribute the recent surge of cases, which was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, to an increasing number of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children. The CDC said Monday there are several outbreaks in progress across the country, but the majority of cases are concentrated in two outbreaks in New York City and New York’s Rockland County. The newest state to declare a measles case is Oklahoma, where a person contracted the measles after traveling domestically and internationally.

MAY SHOWERS have put a damper across North Coast vineyards, wetting them at an inopportune time when they’re nearly blooming and raising the risk of damaged wine grapes and a smaller 2019 yield for certain varieties.

Because of the pelting rains and accompanying windy conditions, chardonnay and pinot noir grapes have the greatest chance to suffer from shatter, the term used by vintners when a grapevine’s delicate flowers don’t pollinate and develop into grapes.

The Carneros, Russian River Valley and Alexander Valley growing regions have seen those grape varieties already in bloom, vintners said. The full extent of the crop damage won’t be known for a few weeks until fruit set — when the small flowers are fertilized and transformed into tiny grapes. Then growers will conduct their grape cluster counts.

Following the unseasonably wet weather, local growers worry the predicted humid conditions could cause mold and mildew on the vines which would take an even greater toll on their grapes.

“It’s not ideal,” said Alison Crowe, director of winemaking at Plata Wine Partners in Napa, as she drove around the Carneros region near the San Pablo Bay. “It’s not necessarily impacted quality. It will impact the quantity.”

Another rain system was expected to pass through Sonoma County late Monday and dump another quarter-inch of precipitation, before yielding late Tuesday to dry and warmer weather, said Steve Anderson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Monterey.

Santa Rosa has had 47.88 inches of rainfall since Oct. 1, the start date the weather service tracks in its annual rainfall total. That is more than 12½ inches above the annual average through Monday. Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport has registered 4¼ inches of rain so far during May as of noon Monday, almost 3 inches above average.

“The timing of the recent rain was not ideal, another curveball from Mother Nature. However, fortunately, we had only a small percentage of our vineyards going through bloom,” said Karissa Kruse, executive director for the Sonoma County Winegrowers trade group.

The Balletto Vineyards and Winery in Santa Rosa has 1% to 5% of its grape crop in bloom as of Monday, owner John Balletto said. However, he expects 50% of his crop to start flowering next week and he’s concerned about the high humidity in the forecast after the unusual heavy May rains.

“That could be a problem for pinot noir,” Balletto said.

Siduri winemaker Adam Lee estimated that 25% to 30% of the pinot noir crop in the Russian River Valley is in bloom and the winds that came with the recent rains also played a role in damaging flowers, including even breaking canes.

“It could be a little bit of loss of crop or a lot of loss of crop,” Lee said.

In Sonoma at Ram’s Gate Winery, about 50% of the chardonnay crop is in the flowering stage, said Joe Nielsen, director of winemaking. Nielsen said he doesn’t yet know the effect on the vineyard from the wet, windy weather because it’s been too muddy to drive tractors over it to assess.

“Right now, it’s just sort of wait and see,” he said.

Even those who haven’t had any of this year’s grape crop bloom on their vineyards are concerned with the weather. This year’s growing season is coming off a 2018 harvest that reached a record $2 billion in value with mostly high yields across Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino and Lake counties.

(Bill Swindell, Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

CATCH OF THE DAY, MAY 20, 2019

(Not available due to illness)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Biden is the same old shit warmed over. Voting for Joe is just perpetuating the same old DC song and dance. Joe is embedded in the flesh of Wash just like all the rest of the ticks. Having said that, there’s no reason to think that Trump is any less corrupt than the rest of the Washington crowd. If anything, he’s more power hungry, and money hungry than all of them. I’m really stymied this time around. No idea who to support. The oligarchs who control things, will not allow anyone to take power who does not conform to their expectations, and make no mistake, they run the show, unless Trump is successful at making himself President For Life, in which case they will have to line up behind him for their turn at the trough.

The Democrats are no longer the party of the blue collar working class, because there is no blue collar working class anymore. The good paying manufacturing jobs are gone. Like I’ve said before, that was the only way poor people could lift themselves out of poverty, and now those days are gone. After WWII, the country made so much money that there was no way the corporations could hog it all, even though they tried, the middle class managed to get enough to enable themselves to become the middle class. That boat has sailed, however, and much of the country hasn’t woken up to the ugly truth, which is that we are gonna get poorer as a class until we wind up in about the same shape as we were in the thirties. Not good news, but there’s little point in trying to sugarcoat it. What you see in Wash DC is the way it’s gonna be from now on. Money flocks to power, and the sooner people can figure out how screwed they are, the better chance there is that they can do something about it.

CHAVEZ RAVINE, with city hall in the background

NO PLANNING

The June 6, 2019 Planning Commission cancellation notice has been posted on the department website at:

mendocinocounty.org/government/planning-building-services/meeting-agendas/planning-commission

MENDOCINO HISTORIC ROSE WALK

This Sunday, May 26th, All ages welcome!

Historic Rose Walk led by docent David Tahja

Exclusive guided tour of the historic roses in the town of Mendocino.

Roses were a passion of Daisy Kelley MacCallum, and many of the roses she planted throughout Mendocino still bloom.

11am - 1pm, Adv tix $10.00 at KHM office or day of to Docent.

Rose Walk will last about 90 minutes.

Meet on the Kelley House porch by the water tower.

Info 707-937-5791

HOW SAN FRANCISCO BROKE AMERICA’S HEART — the love affair is over.

washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-san-francisco-broke-americas-heart/2019/05/21/ef9a0ac0-70ea-11e9-9eb4-0828f5389013_story.html

REBORN

The time is 7:15 PM. The day is Monday, but it doesn't matter in the slightest. With my daughter, I had a routine doctor's appointment today, the shortest in recent (faultering) memory. At the end, I thanked him from the still make at the bottom of my soul. I may certainly be more staken, but I am pretty sure that his eyes were moist.

I recall conversations like this as graduating seniors showed me their acceptances to Yale, to Bowdin, to Princeton and Stanford and Berkeley, all unbelievably with four year free rides. The opportunities were generous. Their educations would be free. Their lives would be different.

One of my continuation students has become an important figure in raising awareness of the lifelong ravages of endometriosis. A long and scary journey from being expelled from middle school for punching her principal. I don't feel comfortable being proud, but I am very proud of the powerful voice that she has carried as a leader for increasing awareness of this terrible disease. Gulp. Amber, you are a gem and a powerful voice. I am very proud of you.

Laytonville High School is like a scruffy dog which gives birth to gives birth to a regal line. Graduates are on the staff of the University of Maryland. Colleges or junior colleges in Texas, New Mexico, California. Laytonville's graduates fly for Delta Airlines on trans-polar, international routes. They are fire fighters and cops. A couple are ex-cons. They are every single of of them, fine people, now mostly well into middle age. Divorces, deaths, ugly diseases, missed opportunities. The American story.

I am going next Wednesday into an assisted care facility. I will likely die there. I am moved to tears. I have seldom felt more here. And here near the end of it, I bow and say thank you. It is good. My yes, it is good. I love you. All . . .

To be continued. For a while.

(Bruce Brady)

SPRINGTIME IN NEW YORK by Elliot Sperber

New York’s a glorious place

In the spring

Why would anyone split

When the leaves are so green

To go sit like a mouse in a house

And chew cheese, yes

And New York’s so nice

With the breeze through the trees

And the gold-dotted starlings who peck

With their beaks

As the violet pigeons all preen

In the streets

And you won’t see shells

Slicing children apart

Just cars crushing kids

Two or three times a week

And you won’t see children in jail

By the border, just ICE by the courthouse

As so many do,

you can look away too,

And like them can say

That you just never knew

As the ice sheets collapse

And the green parrots flew

Through the streets and the trees

Of New York in the spring

In 2019