MCT: Sunday, June 9, 2019

• Above Normal
• Pets
• Cactus Bloom
• Village Meeting
• Safety Outages
• Hitcher Man
• UFW Time
• Rainbow Ridge
• Nice Inc
• Revenue Auditing
• Yesterday's Catch
• Your Life
• Rachel Carson
• My Prez
• Climate Ignoramus
• Mueller Speaks
• Unacceptable Speech
• 1937 Bus
• Learning Process
• Olsen's Grooming
• Dangerous Precedent
• Parking Spaces
• Tuskegee WACs
• Tech Bribes
• Wage Slavery
• Big News
• Oligarch 6

ABOVE NORMAL TEMPERATURES are expected across the region Sunday through the middle of the coming week. Isolated thunderstorms will be possible over the Trinity Alps Wednesday and Thursday afternoon. Otherwise, very little precipitation is expected during the next seven days. (National Weather Service)

SHE'S BACK—CAPPED LETTERS AND ALL!

Ukiah Shelter Pets Of The Week

Oh Nectarine--what a fun playful kitten you are! Nectarine is a 2 month old, neutered male, buff color kitten. He lives at the shelter with his brother, Tangelo, who is just as cute and frisky as he is. The two would LOVE to be adopted and grow up together, as they are very bonded and enjoy each other's company immensley!

Fred Astaire is a nimble, athletic, good looking dog who is 11 months old, neutered, and weights a svelte 41 pounds. Fred is a great dancer (of course) and full of joi de vivre! When he met another playful shelter dog, Fred was raring to go. Fred is mellow for a puppy, fun and funny, smart and engaging. We think Fred might be part Border Collie. Fred has that Border Collie focus, and a loving personality. His Border Collie roots means he might excel at training, flyable, agility and other types of canine/human interactive fun. Fred loves treats and had a blast exploring the shelter play yard. Fred will give you kisses, and he is a very affectionate dog.

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

CACTUS BLOOM DAY NIGHT

AV VILLAGE MEETING THIS AFTERNOON

AV Village will be meeting this afternoon, Sunday, June 9, the 2nd Sunday of each month, 4:00 to 5:30 at Lauren's. We are very excited to launch our website at this meeting and will provide help accessing it for those who want it. For members, the website will provide a link to request services and much more! Our poster is attached. Also, Anica Willliams, our Coordinator, has created an AVV Newsletter which we plan to send out monthly. If you would like to receive it, let Anica know at: andersonvalleyvillage@gmail.com

See you at Lauren's.

Gwyn Smith

PG&E’S ‘PUBLIC SAFETY’ OUTAGES: This is going to get very interesting…

by Mark Scaramella

As if to prove they’re, or maybe for practice, or maybe because they’re so spooked by ongoing liability and criticism, PG&E turned off power for several Northern California communities on Saturday. It’s a sure sign of things to come.

“To help reduce the risk of wildfire and keep our customers, their families and their homes and businesses safe, the company may be turning off power in areas of the North Bay and the Sierra foothills where extreme fire risks exist,” PG&E said in a news release. “We know how much our customers rely on electric service and would only consider temporarily turning off power in the interest of safety during extreme weather conditions,” Michael Lewis, PG&E’s senior vice president of electric operations, said in a prepared statement.

PG&E says they anticipate cutting the power only in “truly extreme fire danger weather” while recognizing that there “are safety risks on both sides of this issue,” vice president Aaron Johnson said.

Besides thousand and thousands of local residents, fire departments, hospitals, health clinics, telecommunications towers and other utilities such as water districts will also lose power, possibly for several days at a time. While some of these essential services will have backup power sources such as generators or batteries, it will be costly, and concern remains about whether residents will be prepared.

It’s all very new territory for everybody. Especially PG&E.

Marin County fire Chief Jason Weber said he was worried about being able to get out emergency notifications such as evacuation orders, especially if fire is approaching while power is out. Email, text, video and call alerts can only go so far as the phones, computers, televisions and telecommunications equipment have power.

Marin County, which seems to be the first Norcal County trying to get ahead of the problem to the extent possible, plans to launch a pilot program in July that will create emergency plans for in-home support services patients. Skilled nursing facility officials are set to meet with PG&E in late June to discuss preparations. At the same time, they will work with local agencies and partners “to spread awareness of the outages to patients and residents.”

Nevertheless, it is possible that some areas may need to rely on themselves to have a stock of potable water until the power is turned back on. Local water districts are expected to discuss plans for other water saving measures during these outages, such as curtailing irrigation.

PG&E said they will try to provide residents a 48-hour notice of the planned shutoff with another update 24 hours later. But, there is no guarantee that this lead time will be consistent and there could be times when no warning is provided.

Most of Mendo is in the “elevated” danger category, with parts of eastern Mendo in “extreme” fire danger area, so essentially all of Mendo is subject to these “public safety power shut-offs.”

According to PG&E’s “Criteria For Determining A Public Safety Power Shutoff”—

“A Public Safety Power Shutoff will only be done when the most extreme fire danger conditions are forecasted to help reduce the likelihood of an ignition and help keep our customers and communities safe.

No single factor drives a Public Safety Power Shutoff as each situation is unique. PG&E carefully reviews a combination of many criteria when determining if power should be turned off for safety. These factors generally include, but are not limited to:

A Red Flag Warning declared by the National Weather Service

Low humidity levels, generally 20 percent and below

Forecasted sustained winds generally above 25 mph and wind gusts in excess of approximately 45 mph, depending on location and site-specific conditions such as temperature, terrain and local climate …

Condition of dry fuel on the ground and live vegetation (moisture content) …

On-the-ground, real-time information from PG&E’s Wildfire Safety Operations Center and field …

observations from PG&E crews …

---

PG&E’s plans, approved recently by the Public Utilities Commission, also say: “We anticipate that a Public Safety Power Shutoff could occur several times per year in PG&E’s service area, although it is impossible to predict with complete certainty when, where and how often extreme weather conditions could occur given the rapidly changing environmental conditions. The most likely electric lines to be considered for shutting off for safety will be those that pass through areas that have been designated by the CPUC as at elevated (Tier 2) or extreme (Tier 3) risk for wildfire.”

I.e., Mendocino County, among others.

“Our goal, dependent on forecasted weather and other factors, is to send customer alerts at 48 hours, again at 24 hours and again just prior to shutting off power, when possible.”

But if the power’s already out…?

“We are asking customers to go online to pge.com/mywildfirealerts to be sure we have their updated contact information. We will use this information to reach out to them by phone, text and email in advance of a Public Safety Power Shutoff, if forecasted weather conditions allow, and throughout the event until power is restored.

In addition to notifying customers directly, we will provide outage updates and information through social media, local news, radio and the pge.com website.

Public Safety Power Shutoff events may be cancelled if forecasted weather conditions improve. In that event, we would notify customers that forecasted weather conditions have improved in their area and we are not planning to turn off their electricity for safety.

We are also encouraging customers to visit pge.com/wildfiresafety for tips to prepare an emergency preparedness plan for their home or business.

Note, there is no advance notice when we need to turn off power at the request of a state or local agency due to an active wildfire or other emergency response situation.”

---

According to Mendocino County CEO Carmel Angelo at last Tuesday’s Supervisor meeting, County staff is preparing a presentation for the Board in an upcoming meeting on how the County plans to deal with these outages when (not if) they occur. Coastal Supervisor Dan Gjerde noted that the County should also anticipate that if power goes out on very hot days over inland Mendo, a lack of air conditioning might produce a flood of cars heading for the Coast and the County and the Coast should be prepared for higher traffic there if the outages last for the few days PG&E says they will.

FOLKS, I really wish I could drive but I am not allowed to. it is in fact dangerous to put me behind the wheel of a vehicle, which is why you always see me hitchhiking or walking. so, if you would kindly give me a ride to Ukiah or boonville when you see me on the corner of 253, everybody would benefit and the world would be a safer place. I would hate to buy a vehicle and put everybody at risk.

MY TIME WITH THE FARMWORKERS UNION

by Dave Smith

From 1968 to 1973 I was Executive Assistant to Cesar Chavez charged with computerizing the United Farm Workers Union. Starting in Delano, we soon moved the Union headquarters to Keene, California, located in the hills east of Bakersfield near the town of Tehachapi.

It was a former Tuberculosis Sanitarium given to the Union by a Hollywood movie producer. Cesar named it La Paz. This time period followed the Union's march on Sacramento and encompassed the Union's grape and lettuce boycotts, its greatest membership growth, and Cesar's famous fasts, culminating in the Teamster's Union barging in to challenge the UFW in the fields. Rapid loss of members and insider fighting soon reduced the Union's power and visibility.

We all lived on room and board and $5 a week. I remember when Cesar asked me to ride with him from Delano up to see La Paz. I picked out the building for the computer department. I hired 4 programmers to come and develop the computer system that a group of graduate students in the business school of Stanford University had developed for us to handle the membership, medical plan, and credit union so that we could service the members, in Spanish and English, wherever they showed up on their seasonal treks from Arizona/California, through Oregon to Washington.

When the Union was threatened by Proposition 22 in 1972, the computer department dropped everything and moved to San Francisco to help defeat it. And again we dropped everything and helped the McGovern Presidential campaign.

The UFW struggled on for many years until Cesar's death in San Luis, Arizona in 1993. The obvious replacement in leadership was Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the Union, negotiator of the labor contracts and as responsible, if not more responsible, for the Union's successes as Cesar. But "machismo" prevented the only chance that I believe the Union had to regain its former visibility and power, and Dolores was passed over for the husband of a Chavez daughter to become President.

La Paz was established as the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument by President Obama in October 2012, and it is the memorial garden and grave site for Cesar and his wife Helen, as well as the location of the Cesar Chavez Foundation run by the Chavez family.

On a recent trip I stopped by to visit La Paz. In the former Administration building is a beautiful photo presentation of the Union's history along with the usual t-shirts and coffee mugs for sale. The rest of the grounds are a ghost town of memories for those of us who once lived there. Shown in the photographs provided are the grave site, the building that housed my computer department, the one-room shack my family lived in, and a gathering of the children who lived there, including my son Josh, born in Tehachapi… with Cesar and his dogs, Huelga and Boycott. I cherish those memories.

LOST COAST LEAGUE CRIES "FOUL" when Humboldt Redwood Co. Begins Felling Old-Growth at Rainbow Ridge

Activists on Rainbow Ridge have reported that logging by Humboldt Redwood Company (HRC) commenced late Wednesday, June 5, in the last remaining unprotected intact Douglas-fir/hardwood forest in coastal California.

prnewswire.com/news-releases/lost-coast-league-cries-foul-when-humboldt-redwood-co-begins-felling-old-growth-at-rainbow-ridge-300863554.html

NICE PEOPLE DOING NICE STUFF

IT COULD HAPPEN HERE

Humboldt County’s recently elected Auditor discovered some irregularities in their revenue tracking system which incorrectly counted some departmental revenue twice because some of it was transferred between departments. Mendo’s equally opaque accounting system is subject to the same problem because of cross charging of things like legal services, vehicle maintenance and other convoluted arrangements which can make it hard to determine where certain funding is coming from. It looks to us like Mendo County Auditor Lloyd Weer is only considering revenues from the usual first source (sales tax, property tax, grants, bed tax, etc.). But the process is so complicated that there’s still a chance that some departmental revenues are counted twice. We’ve never seen an independent audit which addressed the possibility, so it probably wouldn’t hurt to check because if the revenues are not there, surprises could result in some surprise service cuts.

PS. Humboldt County’s sales tax was recently reported to be down by 4% compared to last year, a substantial decrease. Yet Mendo continues to forecast a 4% increase.

— Mark Scaramella

CATCH OF THE DAY, JUNE 8, 2019

JERRY BAILEY, Willits. Suspended license (for DUI), no license, probation revocation.

MEREDITH BOONE-DENHEM, Ukiah. False registration tabs, probation revocation.

MICHELA CAMPBELL, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation.

LARRY COMMANDER, Philo. Parole violation.

NORMA DELACRUZ, Ukiah. Stolen vehicle, disorderly conduct-alcohol.

TRACEY EDWARDS, Ukiah. DUI.

ANTONIA GONZALEZ, Ukiah. Under influence, paraphernalia, disobeying court order, probation revocation.

CHARLES HENSLEY, Ukiah. Probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

PHILLIP LOPEZ JR., Ukiah. Domestic abuse, robbery, criminal threats, parole violation.

KYLE MCNAMARA, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

ISAAC WALDREP, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

A STRANGE BLIGHT

by Meehan Crist

Not long ago, the marine biologist Victor Bonito and I sat on a deck overlooking a palm-studded stretch of turquoise coastline where thousands of dazzling reef fish – pink and emerald parrotfish, blue and yellow unicorn fish, orange-and-white-striped clownfish – had recently washed up on the shore, dead. The ocean along the western edge of this Fijian island, the “big island” of Viti Levu, had become too hot for its inhabitants to survive. The fish lay rotting in the sun with nubbly starfish and the occasional gelatinous octopus, their brilliant colors fading, while thousands more floated belly up on the surface of the sea. Villagers waded in, trying to scoop up and save what they could, focusing on fish that serve as food and provide income for their families. Children swam after the bright, dead creatures washing out to sea. “It is our treasure,”’ they lamented, “disappearing.” Bonito, wearing an old grey T-shirt and sandy shorts, looked out over the gently ruffled surface of the sea, remembering how the massacre unfolded. He works on coral restoration in these waters, and he told me that soon after the fish die-off, nearly a third of the inshore corals bleached.

All over the world, mass animal die-offs are on the rise, from “melting” starfish to Russian seals washing up on the shores of Lake Baikal to more than 200,000 appealingly hump-nosed saiga antelope lying across the Kazakh steppe. And the walruses. Oh, the walruses. We’ve seen this sort of thing before, and then as now the die-offs were caused by human activity. In Silent Spring, her ecological masterpiece, Rachel Carson wrote of fish and birds mysteriously dropping dead all across America (“In the summer of 1960 the refuge staff picked up hundreds of dead and dying birds at Tule Lake and Lower Klamath … herons, pelicans, grebes, gulls”), describing the mysterious pattern of mass deaths with the urgency and suspense of true crime. Of “one of the most spectacular fish kills of recent years,” she writes:

“Shortly after daylight on Sunday morning, 15 January, dead fish appeared in the new Town Lake in Austin and in the river for a distance of about five miles below the lake. None had been seen the day before. On Monday there were reports of dead fish 50 miles downstream. By this time it was clear that a wave of some poisonous substance was moving down in the river water … a week later the chemicals were doing their lethal work 200 miles below Austin.”

Following the scattered clues wherever they led, Carson painstakingly pieced together an unassailable case against chemical pesticides, then being indiscriminately dumped over field and stream in white clouds, and in smaller but more intimately toxic loads by American housewives cultivating their gardens and moth-proofing their babies blankets.

Reading Silent Spring today, in the hazy reddish glow of climate catastrophe, is both an exhilarating and a melancholy pleasure. The story of Carson’s dogged pursuit of truth against all odds – the lack of settled science, her own daily struggle with breast cancer, the personal attacks launched by the chemical industry after the book’s publication – is profoundly inspiring at a time when hope in such endeavors seems to be in short supply.

There is much to be learned from her methods. Carson was alerted to the problem of toxic chemicals poisoning animal populations by a letter from Olga Owens Huckins, a gardener and birdwatcher who witnessed a pile of dead songbirds frozen in postures of convulsion around her birdbath, which had become contaminated with DDT in the wake of a campaign to control mosquitoes. The observations of the bald eagle enthusiast Charles Broley, who observed the precipitous decline of eagle populations in Florida, proved as worthy of her attention as those of scientists in cutting-edge research labs. Gathering together far-flung studies as well as reports from local birdwatchers, sport fishers and hunters, and scientists across a range of disciplines from pharmacology to wildlife ecology to genetics, Carson showed that not only do indiscriminate spraying and other toxic government policies result in dramatic mass animal deaths, they leave behind a lethal cocktail of chemicals that leach into the food chain and into the cellular depths of plants and animals, including humans, altering our genes and causing cancer. As she wrote to William Shawn, her editor at the New Yorker, where her book was serialized before its publication, “I have a comforting feeling that what I shall now be able to achieve is a synthesis of widely scattered facts, that have not heretofore been considered in relation to each other. It is now possible to build up, step by step, a really damning case against the use of these chemicals as they are now inflicted upon us.” In a letter of June 1958 to her friend and great love Dorothy Freeman, she wrote: “Knowing what I do, there would be no future peace for me if I kept silent.”

Carson is rightly remembered as the writer who launched the modern environmental movement. She is celebrated for taking on the cultural myth of harmlessness promulgated by a chemical industry looking for new peacetime markets for chemicals developed in wartime, an agricultural industry desperate to control crop-threatening pests, and a government that had failed spectacularly to protect the public interest. “The obligation to endure,” she wrote, “gives us the right to know.”

(London Review of Books)

IT IS NOT UNFAIR to point out that President Trump, on many important subjects, is just an ignoramus.

A vivid illustration of this unfortunate fact came this week in London, when it was revealed that Prince Charles, a knowledgeable environmentalist, had tried to educate the president on climate change — and utterly failed.

“I believe that there’s a change in weather, and I think it changes both ways,” Trump told “Good Morning Britain” host Piers Morgan in an interview broadcast Wednesday. “Don’t forget it used to be called global warming. That wasn’t working. Then it was called climate change. Now it’s actually called extreme weather, because with extreme weather, you can’t miss.”

Good Lord, it’s breathtaking that anyone could pack so much ignorance into so few words.

The correct answer for what human-generated emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are doing to the planet is, of course, all of the above. There is indeed global warming — the past five years have been the hottest since record-keeping began, and so much sea ice has melted that shipping lanes are being charted across the Arctic Ocean. There is indeed climate change — this March, temperatures in northern Alaska were 30 to 40 degrees above normal, or what used to be normal. There is indeed extreme weather — scientists have long predicted that deadly weather anomalies, such as the widespread outbreak of tornadoes last month, would become more common as the temperature continues to rise.

— Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post

COLLEGE ADMINISTRATORS CARE ABOUT YOUR SPEECH RIGHTS–IF YOU’RE A NAZI

They disapprove of speech favorable to Palestinians, however.

stevesalaita.com/college-administrators-are-devoted-to-your-speech-rights-if-youre-a-nazi/

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

With all due respect, I think your energy is better served pushing forward and leading by example. You obviously have had some success and are quite apt in holding on to a belief system that is creating negative feedback loops for yourself. What if you spent some time to dig into some real issues that will affect the future of our children.

Noam Chomsky

Chalmers Johnson

Gore Vidal

Eustace Mullins

John Taylor Gatto

Chris Hedges

Matt Taibbi

Maybe you can transcend all this fussing and fighting and act, instead of react.

There’s plenty of real problems out there in the world. Our schools have stopped teaching kids how to think, instead, simply what to think.

I have seen things in the comments section that are incredibly helpful in understanding the community perspective on some real issues.

I don’t agree with everything everyone says, and often I’m presented with a new way to look at data and information.

Get back to thinking, feeling and doing things that inspire you to be a better version of yourself. We all learn through engaging in, and testing our operating systems against the demands of the external world.

As Jim Rohn says, keep testing and retesting your philosophy about the way things are.

“Make sure you are a product of your own conclusions."

Be more like Jim, you might have better luck with all aspects of your life.

I’m working on it as well.

“It’s not who you love, but do you love.” — Michael Franti

LT. JOHN PIKE, the infamous pepper spray cop at UC Davis, just got $38,000 for "damages" he suffered from being hated by the entire world. This sets a dangerous precedent for all trigger-happy cops. If Pike can get a settlement, the cops who regularly shoot unarmed black teens might feel entitled to one too.

ORACLE ARENA VERSUS CHASE CENTER

In Saturday’s Chronicle, John King praises the design of the Oracle Arena that the Golden State Warriors are about to abandon. The article's hed: A look at why pro basketball and Oracle Arena were a perfect fit.

King doesn't mention another important "fit" that Oracle has always had for the Warriors: the massive parking lot right next to a freeway, as opposed to the new Chase Center, which will have only 950 parking spaces for an arena with 18,000 seats.

What could go wrong with that?

Mission Bay Neighbors Begin Pre-Freakout About Chase Center Parking Situation.

sfist.com/2019/04/12/mission-bay-neighbors-begin-pre-freakout-about-chase-center-parking-situation/

(Rob Anderson, District5Diary)

columbusbicentennial.blogspot.com/2012/01/tuskegee-air-women.html

WSJ.COM: DEMOCRATIC CONTENDERS RAKE IN CASH FROM TECH ANTITRUST TARGETS

Several presidential hopefuls have harvested big campaign donations from employees of the technology companies they want to break up

wsj.com/articles/democratic-contenders-rake-in-cash-from-tech-antitrust-targets-11559929116

SURPRISE! NOTORIETY.

Said hello to yet another old dude I'm pretty sure I had never seen before. I am beginning to understand why. Who knows? It might even sometimes be great news and an invite to the celebration. Smalltalk, in this case, brought the news that my name was in the newsetter.

This was big news because I had never learned that a newsletter even existed, let alone that my name was in it. Actually, on it. A waiter brought me a copy. There's my name. It's there with a list of June birthdays, facts about flag day, a daily schedule for the month, listing games with Martha (!), exercise classes, games with other people, and more (!). And did by up with a flourish: June holidays, the monthly residents meeting, a word search puzzle, encouragement to participate, and a note that completed word search puzzle can be turned in at the front desk for a treat.

And you thought that old people just sat and stared at the nearest wall. Well, they do. But they are thinking. Or taking selfies…

(Bruce Brady)

KNOW YOUR OLIGARCHS (#6)