MCT: Monday, June 3, 2019

• Summerlike Weather
• AV Graduations
• MacKerricher
• Emergency Notification
• Pet
• Stormclouds
• Elderhome Event
• Lumber Rail
• MTA Pass
• Chiefmobile Nixed
• Apache Woman
• Ed Notes
• Open Sesame
• Slugs Galore
• Yesterday's Catch
• Paleolithic Diet
• Norma Jean
• Regenerative Farming
• Ferlinghetti Books
• Cannabis Op-ed
• Social Decay
• Vampire Squid
• No Socilism
• Northern California
• Desert Island
• Last Harvest
• Grace Manor
• Found Object

HOT AND MOSTLY DRY conditions will prevail over the interior through the middle of the week while cool and cloudy conditions persist along the coast. Much cooler temperatures are expected inland for the end of the week. (National Weather Service)

GRADUATIONS IN ANDERSON VALLEY

The 6th grade, presumably with a basic grasp of our lingua franca, moves to the junior high school on Monday, June 10 at 6pm.

Graduating high school seniors will attend an awards night at the high school on Tuesday June 11 at 7pm.

The 8th grade, presumably with an even firmer grasp of Gringolandia's prevalent tongue, graduate on Wednesday, June 12, at 6pm.

And on Thursday, June 13th at 7pm, high school seniors formally emerge from 12 years of instruction to confront a world of turmoil and woe.

MACKERRICHER PARK

GET READY!

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UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Patches was surrendered to the shelter when his family could no longer care for him. Patches knows sit, down, and speak, and he would love to take some canine refresher courses! Patches is focused, engaging, athletic, playful, energetic and joyful, with a velvety coat and beautiful, brown eyes. His boundless enthusiasm may make him a great running partner. During his evaluation and meet and greet, Patches was introduced to our tester dog, Chipper, and both dogs were good boys!

Patches aims to please! He is a smart dog who will thrive with a guardian who has time to spend with him. Patches is a 2 year old, neutered male, mixed breed dog who weighs 46 pounds. There’s lots more about Patches on his webpage: http://www.mendoanimalshelter.com/dogblog/patches

The Ukiah Animal Shelter is located at 298 Plant Road in Ukiah; adoption hours are Tuesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday from 10 am to 4:30 pm and Wednesday from 10 am to 6:30 pm. To see photos and bios of the shelter's adoptable animals, and the shelter's programs, services and events, please visit us online at http://www.mendoanimalshelter.com For more information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

GATHERING STORM

THANKS FROM THE ELDERHOME

Editor,

The Anderson Valley Elder Home Board would like to thank everyone who made the Memorial Day Lions Club Barbecue an enjoyable event and a successful fund-raiser for the Elder Home.

A big thank you goes to the Anderson Valley Lions Club, which helps our own and other A.V. non-profits with their fundraising by arranging the site, cooking and serving the meal, and selling tickets at the event. They provide a valuable service to the community.

Every year, many businesses and individuals donate items for the silent auction: these include artists, wineries, restaurants, merchants, and other community members donate lovely items, including gift certificates, classes, and interesting experiences. We are always fortunate to have a great collection of items for auction. Thanks also to Joe Blow for providing the excellent music as their donation.

Thank you to all who came out to make this a success. We are truly blessed to live in such an active and supportive community,

Sincerely,

Cynthia McMath, Anderson Valley Elder Home Board

Yorkville

OFFSHORE ELK, Back In The Day

(via MendocinoSportsPlus)

MARK SCARAMELLA NOTES: A friend of my late Uncle Joe Scaramella, a big beefy Italian immigrant named Big Jim Ceciliani, told me once that he worked at one of these log loading facilities on the Coast in the early 1920s — versions of this arrangement could be found at nearly every Coastal town at the time. According to Ceciliani, the early set-ups of the crude load carts that rolled on these narrow gauge track spits with the logs (or railroad ties, or rough milled lumber, or whatever) did not have brakes. The railroad spit had a gentle downward slope, at the end of which was a wooden stop where a rickety looking gantry-A-Frame crane was used to transfer the load to the waiting boat. But there was no easy way to control the speed of the heavily laden carts as they rolled down toward the stop. One of Ceciliani’s jobs, he said, was to stand alongside the tracks toward the end of the run and, if the cart seemed to be going too fast, grab a rope that was tied to the rear of the cart and try his best to slow the cart down before it hit the stop at the loading point. Ceciliani did not mention if the carts ever got going too fast and ran off into the drink, so I assume they didn’t, at least not on Ceciliani’s watch. I imagine, however, that since they even felt the need for a job like that, there must have been a few accidents. And that’s not to mention other complications that could arise such as all kinds of weather, wind, fog, ocean swell, currents, tides, crew availability and skill, equipment malfunction, etc. This picture is misleading because it gives the impression that conditions at the end of the track were always nice and calm and clear. It took a lot of nerve, ingenuity, skill and brute strength to manage these set-ups.

NORVEL GOES ROGUE, ALBIN-SMITH JUST GOES

by Rex Gressett

That damn Fort Bragg City Councilman Bernie Norvel did it to us again, saving money standing up to the machine, looking for honesty and promoting transparency.

What's up with that.

Look, the Chief of Police is accustomed to a certain deference. He always has a new car. Geeze. Chief Lizarraga came to our toy village after being pensioned off from one of the largest and most powerful police forces in the nation. New cars for the ruling class is part of the deal.

In the big city, Lizarraga was a spokesman for William Bratton, a law enforcement officer of national prominence. For some people, William Bratton is intensely controversial. Some hardasses like him. By all accounts, he is a big fish.

It is one of my celebrity boasts that I knew Bill Bratton remotely when he was at the 13th precinct in the West Village. Not well enough to call him Bill. That was before 9-11 and the lucky advent of profitable power metastasis that provided so many talented people in an emergent police state the full scope of their vision.

Lizarraga is not in Bratton's pay grade, but LA is after all LA. The police force has 9,000 cops and 3,000 civilian personnel. They all have new cars.

Obviously, we have a blue chip guy with certain expectations. City finances be damned.

Then here comes Bernie Norvel. What an embarrassment. In his misguided way, Norvel is actually watching expenditure, taking care of his constituents and worst of all he keeps flaunting facts.

It was enormously unusual.

For the first time in living memory, a mid-year budget meeting was commandeered (by rather exquisite parliamentary maneuver) to engineer a small but highly symbolic interruption in the predictable allocation of money to its divinely ordained purposes (pork).

No new car for the chief.

And I beheld the voice of many angels.

I don’t know what we are doing to do about Norvel. It came out in the discussion that he had physically gone down to the police parking area and noticed that there were a few almost new cars just sitting there. Apparently, Councilperson Bernie Norvell thought that looking at the facts and standing up for the people of the city was doing his job.

It came out in the discussion that Norvel had actually spoken to the garage mechanics.

Apparently, he talked transmissions and conversion and mileage. Ok well and good. But to bring that kind of thing up at a midyear budget meeting when the whole apparatus of second-tier City Council apparatchiks were already signed on and lined up for budget day?

It was normal planning and the regular dispensation of city money to powerful insiders all shot to hell.

It did not take a rocket scientist to see that newbie city council person, Jessica Morsell-Haye, had proven vulnerable (no doubt in the naivete of her limited experience), to Norvel's interruption of routine profligacy.

Jessica Morsell-Haye also knew the numbers. She knew the cars. She was familiar with the mechanic's evaluation and had apparently been seduced into sympathy with the radical idea that with all the cars we have that are not being used (or barely being used).

Buying the Chief a nice new car might not be strictly necessary. Newbie councilperson Jessica Morsell-Haye stood solidly by Bernie Norvel and protected the people of the city. It was unprecedented.

One of the things you catch on to over the course of many meetings is that real ideas are rarely discussed, real decisions rarely occur, real progress is rarely made except when the City Council splits the vote.

All the consensus in the world is nothing more than a green traffic light for the preplanned agenda to which the Council normally contributes nothing.

The City Council has a lot of prestige, but they only meet every two weeks and they only get paid about $300 a month to do it. No one expects them to do very much.

In general, the Fort Bragg City Council does not plan, they do not propose, they do not innovate or originate or design. They either rubberstamp or they don’t. That’s their job. Most of the time they do it together as a happy clique of unified smiling syncophants. When a Council vote splits, it's rare, but you know something is happening. When they don’t vote together like trained seals but split the vote into principled opposition like human beings it means they have come to a point in the river of consensus where the decision has gotten a little out of the baby food generalities to which they normally limit themselves.

The Chief's new car split them like a coconut.

I have not always loved the Brown Act. It defines everything in California government, but I don’t have to adore it. I intuitively want the City Council to talk and argue. I don’t care if they get pissed, frustrated or embarrassed if it is an antidote to all to the wasting disease of rubberstamping.

The rubberstamp is, of course, much easier on the Council. It is normal and normally it is wielded in a friendly way while smiling broadly and glad-handling the public. It is, in other words, SOP (standard operating procedure).

In this Fort Bragg mid-year budget meeting, the value and wisdom of the Brown Act really jumped out at me. Under the provisions of this defining legislation, only two Councilpeople can talk outside of the meetings. It was clear that two of them had been in a discussion which meant that three councilpeople were out of the loop.

When the chiefs’ new car came up, carefully concealed in the complexities of data that normally prevent untoward interruption of city hall administrative process, Norvel counterattacked with a battery of his own data and made them generally look like fools or privileged exploiters, or possibly both.

Victor Damiani, the Finance Director and his associated grant-getting team, were stunned to be getting direction from the Council which is indeed their job but which they rarely get in any meaningful way.

Mayor Will Lee caught on to the complicated number picture Norvel laid out and sided with Norvel and Morsell-Haye. No $46k car for the Chief — even if the grant-getters could weasel up $25k to dull the pain.

Councilor Lindy Peters, God bless him, parsed unfamiliar numbers efficiently like an expert and came down predictability on the side of pork for the insiders. No surprise there, power and pork to the power holders is Peters' mission and vocation.

All that precedent busting responsible governance left councilor Tess Albin-Smith kind of sitting there wondering what the hell was going on.

She blinked for a while and then demanded gleefully that they go to hybrid electric vehicles.

How can you argue with that? Her bright idea might cost us a couple of million. They were working to save $25k. She missed that part.

The city might indeed go to hybrids someday in some form but this was not the most useful time to mention it. She looked like a fool.

Then she told everybody, expansively, that it wasn’t the Fort Bragg Police Department’s job to haul miscreants over the hill to jail, which of course was completely inaccurate.

Later (or was it earlier?), she stepped out of line again to indicate her approval of the expenditure on the perennial planning project for the Glass Beach staircase. (Yes, they are still talking about it, five years on down the road ).

Albin-Smith was in favor of the staircase, but insisted that every effort must be made to keep unwelcome outsiders (tourists) from looting the limited supply of precious bottle glass at Glass Beach.

This new idea flew in the face of all previous City Councils who have done everything possible to encourage the tourism that Glass Beach brings to the city. One suspects Albin-Smith did not know Glass Beach is our number one draw, out pulling even the Skunk Train. Mischievous and probably unethical City Council plans have been repeatedly suggested for sneaking fake ocean glass on to the site.

The idea has always been to keep the people and the money coming in. Albin-Smith had not heard about all of that.

Albin-Smith and Norvel were the two innovators at the budget meeting.

Norvel innovated and pushed the city council into making a responsible decision. Tess Albin-Smith innovated as well, in the uninformed, chaotic, half-baked style that she has made her own.

ELSIE VANCE CHESTUEN. Chiricahua Apache. Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Early 1900s.

ED NOTES

PLOTS THICKENING. Barbara Howe has not only been summarily dismissed from her position as head of Mendo Public Health, she has now been legally restrained from contacting Tammy Moss-Chandler, boss at Mendo Health and Human Services. What the heck is going on? We'll have a look at the TRO and report back.

WEEKEND NEWS feasted on another mass shooting, but for the feel good segment the Chuckle Buddies like to wrap up their catastrophic visual segments which featured the eight winners of the National Spelling Bee, the first tie since the bogus contest began. It's bogus because the little savants get long lists of the mostly obscure words they'll be spelling in advance, which they duly memorize without having the slightest notion of how to use them in sensible context. It reminds me of John Milton teaching his daughters Latin and Greek pronunciations so they could read to him, but prohibiting them from learning what the languages meant.

ON THE SUBJECT of insanely child-focused parents, the other day at a little kids' baseball game — both my grandchildren are participants — most of the parents were recording every at bat of their little prodigies, with one guy yelling at his kid, "Remember, Bobby, five bucks if you hit the ball into the grass."

THE POINT ARENA City Council has approved conversion of the derelict Sea Shell Inn as a cannabis products manufacturing and distribution center. All this maneuvering around pot legalization, or quasi-legalization, reminds me of the build-up to Tulip Mania — huge investment, big crash.

FROM WILLIE BROWN'S column in the SF Chron: "….Windows on the World, Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik gets it right: This story about the lives affected by 9/11 should blow the hinges off the doors at festival competitions. It's co-written by our own independent filmmaker, Robert Mailer Anderson, and hurray for him."

PETALUMA'S Kenilworth Junior High School has issued a yearbook recall because four student pictures depicted them flashing white power hand signals. A what? An upside-down OK hand signal. Given that the offenders are 8th graders they probably had no idea what they were doing other than it was sure to concern whatever adult who recognized it. I didn't, but I remember when male children considered it mondo boffo to get away with a surreptitious Boont Salute.

BOONVILLE has a couple of guys who fly Confederate flags from their vehicles, the symbol to most of us representing treason and slavery, and to me only slightly less offensive than swastikas.

SLUGS GALORE

Coast Listserve comment: Anyone else noticing an abundance of slugs in the garden? Worst year I remember, perhaps due to the heavy late rain…?

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Liz: The slugfest here by my little seasonal waterway/foresty patch seems to be as usual. Snot pleasant! May they at least spread luscious mushroom spores.

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Deborah: I use little cups of beer around the garden. It works great!

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FRANK HARTZELL WRITES: While the seemingly endless rain has irritated me and my chickens and drowned part of my garden it has birthed an incredible amount of life, more than I recall seeing here in the past. There are more bats, more swallows, more dragonflies and more of their favorite food, mosquitoes. The chickens, who shriek in protest if they sink into the mud and refuse to go into even a 1/4 inch of dreaded water, are having a delightful time with the bumper crops of insects and green sprouts in their domain, usually becoming rather lifeless this time of year. Nothing seems to eat the plentiful banana slugs but the small slugs are devoured and nonetheless also more plentiful than ever. Rain brings simultaneous death to some and a bloom of every kind of life. Kingfishers, herons and hawks come to eat, the latter greeted with hard shouts and arm waving they seem to laugh at. The frog cacophony on the pond is deafening. Sex season is extended up and down the kingdoms of nature seemingly.

CATCH OF THE DAY, JUNE 2, 2019

RENEE BADGER, Hidden Valley/Willits. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent.

ROBERT CAMPBELL, Ukiah. Concealed dirk-dagger, parole violation.

SUMALEE FOLGER, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

THOMAS GALINDO, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

RYAN KNIGHT, Willits. DUI, controlled substance, smuggling liquor or controlled substance into jail.

JOAQUIN MARTINEZ, Redwood Valley. Probation revocation.

BRIAN MARTINSON, Willits. Protective order violation, probation revocation.

MICHAEL MORRIS, Ukiah. DUI.

MICHAEL PERRY, Ukiah. Disobeying court order.

WILLIE SAMUELS JR., Oakland/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, no license, probation revocation.

CHRISTOPHER STAFFORD, Willits. Under influence, trespassing on railroad property, Disorderly conduct-alcohol, battery on peace officer, criminal threats, resisting.

LANDON TOMLINSON, Springfield Missouri/Ukiah. Fugitive from justice.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Fast for one day per week and you will not have to worry about Type II D. Eat natural yogurt with live cultures/enzimes & make sure to take vitamin C on a regular basis.

Beer has too much yeast and that will cause GI Tract difficulty so it’s best to stay away from too much brewers yeast. Alcohol coverts to acetaldehyde and it produces fat/carb effect because it converts to sugar which is just more useless carbohydrate.

The upper paleolithic diet is best for long term health. Think hunter/gatherer anthropology and then take a good look at the modern diet which is front loaded & back loaded with far too much refined white sugar or fructose which will destroy the nephron tubes in the liver.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Norma Jean Mortensen, aka Marilyn Monroe

FARMING AND CARBON

Editor:

We were pleased to see the May 19 column “Keeping carbon down on the farm,” in the Ukiah Daily Journal which echoes our positive experience with regenerative farming at Fetzer Vineyards. We farm 960 acres and have found regenerative practices to improve soil fertility, drought resiliency and biodiversity levels, and to support soil’s natural ability to reintegrate carbon from the atmosphere.

In an effort to share how such practices positively impact carbon storage, we recently released the results of a study that found our organic and biodynamic vineyards store more soil organic carbon than a neighboring conventional vineyard. Studies like ours highlight farmers’ unique ability to reduce negative environmental impacts in real time, ultimately helping to restore the carbon balance — a vital element in the fight against climate change.

We appreciate that Gov. Gavin Newsom recognizes the power of soil management for tackling climate change and that he proposed $28 million for the Healthy Soils Program. We hope the Legislature will go even further, also funding impactful programs like on-farm water conservation and projects that turn livestock manure into compost. With financial support from the state’s Climate Smart Agriculture programs, California farmers and ranchers can continue to play a critical role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Joseph Brinkley

Director of vineyard operations, Fetzer Vineyards, Hopland

JEFF MCMULLIN WRITES:

Re: Ferlinghetti Books:

Still his best work imo. 1971

FLOW KANA: CANNABIS FARMERS SETTING A NEW STANDARD

pressdemocrat.com/opinion/9654973-181/close-to-home-cannabis-farmers

SOCIETY IS IN DECAY — WHEN THE WORST IS FIRST AND THE BEST IS LAST

by Ralph Nader

Plutocrats like to control the range of permissible public dialogue. Plutocrats also like to shape what society values. If you want to see where a country’s priorities lie, look at how it allocates its money. While teachers and nurses earn comparatively little for performing critical jobs, corporate bosses including those who pollute our planet and bankrupt defenseless families, make millions more. Wells Fargo executives are cases in point. The vastly overpaid CEO of General Electric left his teetering company in shambles. In 2019, Boeing’s CEO got a bonus (despite the Lion Air Flight 610 737 Max 8 crash in 2018). Just days before a second deadly 737 Max 8 crash in Ethiopia.

This disparity is on full display in my profession. Public interest lawyers and public defenders, who fight daily for a more just and lawful society, are paid modest salaries. On the other hand, the most well compensated lawyers are corporate lawyers who regularly aid and abet corporate crime, fraud, and abuse. Many corporate lawyers line their pockets by shielding the powerful violators from accountability under the rule of law.

Physicians who minister to the needy poor and go to the risky regions, where Ebola or other deadly infectious diseases are prevalent, are paid far less than cosmetic surgeons catering to human vanities. Does any rational observer believe that the best movies and books are also the most rewarded? Too often the opposite is true. Stunningly gripping documentaries earn less than 1 percent of what is garnered by the violent, pornographic, and crude movies at the top of the ratings each week.

On my weekly radio show, I interview some of the most dedicated authors who accurately document perils to health and safety. The authors on my program expose pernicious actions and inactions that jeopardize people’s daily lives. These guests offer brilliant, practical solutions for our widespread woes (see ralphnaderradiohour.com). Their important books, usually go unnoticed by the mass media, barely sell a few thousand copies, while the best-seller lists are dominated by celebrity biographies. Ask yourself, when preventable and foreseeable disasters occur, which books are more useful to society?

The monetary imbalance is especially jarring when it comes to hawks who beat the drums of war. For example, people who push for our government to start illegal wars (eg. John Bolton pushing for the war in Iraq) are rewarded with top appointments. Former government officials also get very rich when they take jobs in the defense industry. Do you remember anyone who opposed the catastrophic Iraq War getting such lucrative rewards?

The unknown and unrecognized people who harvest our food are on the lowest rung of the income ladder despite the critical role they play in our lives. Near the top of the income ladder are people who gamble on the prices of food via the commodities market and those who drain the nutrients out of natural foods and sell the junk food that remains, with a dose of harmful additives. Agribusiness tycoons profit from this plunder.

Those getting away with major billing fraud grow rich. While those people trying to get our government to do something about $350 billion dollars in health care billing fraud this year – like Harvard Professor Malcolm K. Sparrow – live on a college professor’s salary.

Hospital executives, who each make millions of dollars a year, preside over an industry where about 5,000 patients die every week from preventable problems in U.S. hospitals, according to physicians at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The watchdogs who call out this deadly hazard live on a fraction of that amount as they try to save lives.

Even in sports, where people think the best athletes make the most money, the reverse is more often true. Just ask a red-faced Brian Cashman, the Yankees GM, who, over twenty years, has spent massive sums on athletes who failed miserably to produce compared to far lesser-paid baseball players. Look at today’s top ranked Yankees – whose fifteen “stars” are injured, while their replacements are playing spectacularly for much smaller compensation than their high priced teammates.

A major reason why our society’s best are so often last while our worst are first is the media’s infatuation with publicizing the worst and ignoring the best. Warmongers get press. The worst politicians are most frequently on the Sunday morning TV shows – not the good politicians or civic leaders with proven records bettering our society.

Ever see Congressman Pascrell (Dem. N.J.) on the Sunday morning news shows? Probably not. He’s a leader who is trying to reform Congress so that it is open, honest, capable and represents you the people. Surely you have heard of Senator Lindsey Graham (Rep. S.C.) who is making ugly excuses for Donald Trump, always pushing for war and bloated military budgets, often hating Muslims and Arabs and championing the lawless American Empire. He is always in the news, having his say.

Take the 162 people who participated in our Superbowl of Civic Action at Constitution Hall in Washington D.C. in May and September 2016. These people have and are changing America. They are working to make food, cars, drugs, air, water, medical devices, and drinking water safer. Abuses by corporations against consumers, workers and small taxpayers would be worse without them. Our knowledge of solutions and ways to treat people fairly and abolish poverty and advance public services is greater because of their courageous hard work. (see breakingthroughpower.org).

The eight days of this Civic Superbowl got far less coverage than did Tiger Woods losing another tournament that year or the dismissive nicknames given by the foul-mouth Trump to his mostly wealthy Republican opponents on just one debate stage.

All societies need play, entertainment, and frivolity. But a media obsessed with giving 100 times the TV and radio time, using our public airwaves for free, to those activities than to serious matters crucial to the most basic functioning of our society is assuring that the worst is first and the best is last. Just look at your weekly TV Guide.

If the whole rotted-out edifice comes crashing down, there won’t be enough coerced taxpayer dollars anymore to save the Plutocrats, with their limitless greed and power. Maybe then the best can have a chance to be first.

(Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!)

GOLDMAN SACHS is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

— Matt Taibbi

AND NO TO COMMONISM, TOO!

YOU NEVER KNOW

Editor,

It really irritates me when I hear the Bay Area news calling us, "Northern California." We're not in Northern California. We are in Northern-Northern California -- Ukiah, Lake County, Santa Rosa, Petaluma, Sonoma, Fairfield and up around Sacramento and I-50 and up to the Nevada border. That's Northern California. It should be another state. We don't need the filth of San Francisco and farther south. That's not part of Northern California. If we broke off from San Francisco south, we could get rid of the stinking Democrats like Gavin Newsom and his tribe. We need our own state with a decent governor, not living under Southern California rules. Might be another 20 or 30 years, but it will happen eventually. Believe me.

The global warming climate change and Air Resources Board hoax is going full steam. The American people are being bilked out of billions of dollars. How many subdivisions do you think there are in the United States? Millions of them. People in subdivisions are like sheep, they follow each other while some pathetic liberal professor can come out with a thing like, We have to do something for global warming and we have to vote on it and some guy in a subdivision will call his buddy and say, Did you hear that? Yes or no? And they say Yes and the next guy says, Me too. And then the whole subdivision votes and they don't know what they're voting on. No idea. If 50% of people in subdivisions would vote for something that really makes sense we wouldn't have stupid stuff like climate change and the California Air Resources Board. We had no choice on that. It was their way or no way. That's the way Mary Nichols and Arnold Schwarzenegger's wife and Jerry Brown and those people had it. Nothing we could do about it. Democratic Party one-party dictatorship. It goes on and on as long as the Democrats are in control and stupid people listen to them and vote for it.

God bless Donald Trump

Jerry Philbrick

Comptche

PS. I see they have a gun safety class for young children now. A good idea, being safe with a gun. But it's not going to help gun control which they are hoping for. They need to teach human control, teach little kids how not to kill each other. You can teach a kid anything you want. When he gets to be about 10 he’ll know all about it. But when he gets to be 18 and starts drinking and taking drugs and gets married and then divorced or gets fired from his job and is pissed off at somebody, certain people will pick up a gun and use it. That's what we have to watch out for. People who act weird, somebody fired from their job — you got to watch their attitude after that. Human beings are unpredictable, they can be fine one minute and then snap and be pretty bad the next. Also bigger things piss them like corruption and dictatorships. We're not too far from that right here. It doesn't give anybody the right to kill anybody, but that's what promotes it, it makes people sour and have ill feelings. Some of them lose their cool and pick up a gun. You could be sitting in McDonald's or Denny's and someone could come in and — boom boom boom! You're dead. You never know. You never know who's on drugs. You never know who's been in the war in Vietnam or Iraq and has come back and is psychedelic and sees things and starts shooting. We have to worry about everybody including ourselves. Promote self-safety. Watch people. Watch how they act. You gotta keep your head on a swivel like I used to teach my football players. Watch what goes on, even in Wal-Mart or Safeway, anywhere, to stop something bad from happening.

PPS. Our governor is now asking the Legislature to stop anti-Semitism or something, doing bad things to the Jewish people in Israel. What the hell? Who came up with this guy for a governor? Nobody came up with him. He came up through the ranks, the Pelosi ranks. He learned how to be a bad person at an early age. He is Nancy Pelosi’s nephew. They are all related, Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi. The whole bunch are related. That's what the governor is doing now. He's going after the Jewish people. It's the most sickening thing I've ever heard of. This man has to be stopped. This is the kind of thing that puts people in the mood to shoot. You can only look around at what's happening in this state and this country and see how easy it is for a person to get pissed off and how easy it is to get your hands on gun. You can never stop that. There are guns everywhere. The black market. Why do we have people causing trouble? People like Gavin Newsom, and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and deBlasio and Andrew Cuomo and that woman Cortez and that bozo Congressman from Southern California. People have to use common sense.

PPPS. Political correctness is one of our worst enemies. If a man yells at his wife and she calls 911 the cops show up, take him to jail, he gets no chance to defend or explain himself. A child calls 911 and says my dad is being mean to me, cops show up, take your dad to jail, no chance to talk. Don't you think that infuriates people? Just those two things alone.

WHEN AUTUMN CAME, the last harvest was so occupying that one forgot that it meant leaving the garden for the return to Paris. Not only did the winter vegetables have to be gathered and placed to dry for a day before packing, but their roots and leaves had to be put on the compost heap with manure and leaves and packed down for the winter. The day the huge baskets were packed was my proudest in all the year. The cold sun would shine on the orange-coloured carrots, the green yellow and white pumpkins and squash, the purple eggplants and a few last red tomatoes. They made for me more poignant colour than any post-impressionist picture. Merely to look at them made all the rest of year's pleasure insignificant. Gertrude Stein took a more practical attitude. She came out into the denuded wet cold garden and, looking at the number of baskets and crates, asked if they were all being sent to Paris, that if they were, the expressage would ruin us. She thought that there were enough vegetables for an institution and reminded me that our household consisted of three people. There was no question that, looking at that harvest as an economic equation, it was disastrous, but from the point of view of the satisfaction which work and aesthetic confer, it was sublime.

—Alice B. Toklas, 1954; from "The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book"

MY WORLD

I am in my new home, Grace Manor assisted living, near downtown Eugene. I finally (with the assistance of an on-staff CNA) learned the requisite password to access the internet. So here I am, eh?

There is much to do. I still have maybe a hundred or so of what used to be a few thousand books. This place is tiny (350 sq./ft.), so there is no room. They sit over there in the near corner, awaiting their new homes. My kids, I imagine. Or a used bookstore somewhere. The collection consists mostly of accidental survivors, with a few classics (Melville and Hawthorne. Emerson. Dickens and Joyce. Howard Nemeroff. My master's thesis, a scholarly examination of Hilton's influence on Nemerov, with a few paragraphs to prove that I was fully cognizant of the centrality of the pastoral elegy to the western literary tradition. Heady stuff for a nineteen year old.

Grace Manor sports quite a cast of characters. The first noticeable thing about them is that they are, emphatically, old. Well, actually a few seem to be of middle age, and a handful are really old and wizened, seemingly confined to their wheelchairs.

I am fortunate to have landed here. These are, apparently, my people, at least for these last (perhaps) couple of chapters. I hope you enjoy what I expect is to come. Failing that, just stare blankly. Hardly anyone is likely to notice.

(Bruce Brady)

FOUND OBJECT