MCT: Monday, July 8, 2019

• Low Pressure
• Women's Sports
• Eel Overlook
• Encampment Lessons
• Rail Scam
• Flamboyant Antidepressant
• B Redux
• Distant Fireworks
• Fire Risk
• Comforting Lies
• Flynn Interest
• Abreu Case
• Albion/Little River BBQ
• Dead Reasons
• PG&E Shakedown
• Yesterday's Catch
• History Lessons
• New Jobs
• Wanted More
• My Ex
• US Militarism
• Cowboy Bud
• First Impressions
• Krishna Cocktail
• Grandma Noir
• Softball Tournament
• Found Object

A BROAD AND SLOW-MOVING AREA OF LOW PRESSURE will drift off of the Pacific Northwest coast this week. This system will bring widespread clouds Tuesday and Wednesday, with inland temperatures running cooler than seasonal averages. Only spotty light rain is expected in northern portions of our area on Tuesday and perhaps into Wednesday, with an otherwise dry week ahead. (National Weather Service)

"THE SUCCESS STORY of women’s sports under Title IX shows how marginalized groups can be given opportunities through policy interventions; how the talents and passions of individuals can be fostered when they have institutional support."

Sunday was a big win for the power of public policy to level the playing field.

NIGHT LIGHT OF THE NORTH COAST: Eel River Overlook

by David Wilson

The magic of the night was all around, so very quiet with only the sound of the redwood forest around us sighing in a light breeze and merging with the soft susurrus of the Eel River far below. From a protected hollow high above the river my companions and I looked out over a world bathed in starlight, the galactic core of our galaxy reaching upward from the southern horizon and complementing the curve of the river below. At that moment, at that place, we felt between the heavens and Earth.

There is no forest more beautiful than the redwood forests of our part of the planet. They occur natively only in a few narrow bands along the coast of North America, and we are blessed to have some of those forests in our backyard here on the California north coast. To stand among them beneath the stars is a treat very few people in the world will experience first hand. We who live with these wonders may sometimes forget what a blessing they are.

It is easy to lose perspective in our busy world. As humanity we are perhaps overly concerned with ourselves. We forget that we’re actually quite small, a small species on a minute world that is a part of something much, much larger. We pretend to set ourselves outside of Nature when we look at it. But we are deep within it and riding for our lives on the tiniest of motes in space, a sea of Nature so large we can’t even grasp it.

On evenings like this, looking up into the incredible Milky Way galaxy of which we are a part, it’s interesting to imagine myself traveling out into space and looking back at the receding Earth. As Earth shrinks I see how small we really are. At about the size of a little blue marble, our atmosphere looks a mere sheen on the surface. It gives some perspective relative to the Universe in which we live. So fragile are we out there.

Traveling further into space, the sun contracts to a faint dot behind us, and Earth cannot even be seen. Even from within our own solar system we can lose sight of our planet entirely. How consequential can our earthly squabbles be when we’re afloat in a space so vast that our entire world, our entire solar system, is swallowed up completely in the view before we even reach the next star? Often we set ourselves apart from Nature in our thinking, putting ourselves outside of the natural Universe, looking in as if it were a snow globe in our hands. That would be an illusion; we are in that snow globe. From way, way out in space where we can see how small the Earth really is, we see that we’re barely in control of anything. We may think we are, but we can’t even steer this thing we’re on; all of humanity is just riding on a bit of dust adrift in an inconceivably immense sea of space that we hardly understand. A wave we might never see coming could wash right over us, and the rest of the Universe would never even know. Or care.

Does that make our little world insignificant? Or infinitely precious? A question to settle in your soul.

“A shooting star! Over near Jupiter!” I missed the meteor at the time, but not the magic of the night. Below us the Eel River glided between Redwood-covered hillsides under the night sky. I was with a former student and her friend and we played with our cameras while we stood in awe of the night. I found the meteor as I examined the photographs later. Humboldt County, California.

From the immensity of space the distant core of our galaxy rises over the Eel River. We will never understand it all, but I did mark a few points along the way. From the Avenue of the Giants, Humboldt County, Earth.

(To keep abreast of David Wilson’s most current photography or peer into its past, visit or contact him at his website mindscapefx.com or follow him on Instagram at @david_wilson_mfx .)

AIRPORT ROAD - LESSONS FROM ENCAMPMENT

Ukiah Police: Community really needs to understand engagement vs. enablement

by Justine Frederiksen

A large encampment on Airport Road that quickly grew out of control taught the Ukiah Police Department a lot of valuable lessons about Ukiah’s relationship with its homeless residents.

“It was a social experiment that was forced upon us, and that went very wrong, very fast,” said UPD Chief Justin Wyatt, speaking recently about the efforts to evict the few dozen people who were camped along the city road between the airport and the businesses on Airport Park Boulevard in a long line of tents, pickup trucks and large RVs that was clearly visible from Highway 101.

A growing group had been staying there for months “not because we were allowing them to, but because we couldn’t not allow them to,” said Wyatt, referring to last year’s decision of the Ninth District Court of Appeals, Martin v. the City of Boise, that declared it inhumane to arrest people for sleeping on public property when they had no other option.

However, Wyatt pointed out that the ruling “does not allow you to embed yourself on public property. Public property is there for all to use, not for you to build a residence on.” Which is what many of the dozens of people did on Airport Road, “setting up not just tents, but rigid, permanent structures” with hammocks, laundry lines and even decorations alongside them.

“Some of the people had created landscaping designs out of beans and other food items,” said Wyatt, explaining that a lot of the “tons of trash” picked up by city staff after the campers were moved was discarded food, some of it provided by residents delivering the campers pizzas and other items.

“That is not engagement, that is enablement, and the community really needs to understand the difference,” said Wyatt, pointing to the report by Dr. Robert Marbut (hired by Mendocino County officials to assess the local homeless population and make recommendations designed to reduce negative impacts such as the risks to public health and the environment from people defecating and urinating in public places and waterways) which describes such charitable acts as largely self-serving impulses that long-term only help people stay on the streets longer rather than help them improve their situation.

“We actually engaged with someone who was delivering pizzas to the campers and carefully explained why it was harmful and he finally said, ‘You’re right — but I’m not going to stop doing this, because I think it’s the right thing to do,’” said Wyatt, explaining that his department is consistently encountering “strong resistance” from many sectors in the community to the notion of “collaborative engagement,” which is providing services in a systematic manner designed to successfully remove people from homelessness.

Wyatt said when the UPD decided to remove the encampment that was creating public heath and safety risks due to crime, fire danger and waterway pollution, they didn’t want to just push people out — instead, they wanted to find permanent shelter for as many people as possible while making as few arrests as possible so as not to harm anyone’s chances of qualifying for housing in the future. So Wyatt had an officer from his Special Enforcement Team talk to each person and create a list of names to give to the local service providers tasked with finding housing for those in need.

“And he flagged the single women, the people with children and the veterans,” said UPD Capt. Sean Kaeser, explaining that most of the service providers declined to be involved with the process until the morning of the eviction, despite repeated overtures from the UPD. “And then suddenly that day they did have housing for the people with children and the veterans.”

“But it is not the UPD’s job to be meeting with their clients and collecting this data for them,” Wyatt said. “I don’t think the community wants to pay a gun-carrying police officer, whose job it is to enforce laws, to go down there to engage homeless residents and collect social services data.

“But currently, the UPD is the only agency that is addressing street-level homelessness, which is what the community wants addressed — the people sleeping in front of their businesses and (defecating) in creekbeds,” said Wyatt, explaining that he recently sat down with Mendocino County officials to discuss that issue, and he said that they have agreed to create a position tasked with street-level outreach, “but that will take time. And that’s a big job.”

When asked to respond to the assertion that the UPD is “the only agency in the city addressing homelessness on the street-level,” Camille Schrader of Redwood Community Services, the agency that runs the emergency winter shelter and hopes to open a day services center next month, said she and other RCS staff members recently “met with the city and shared a lot of the things we are doing to support them, and reiterated that without a day resource center and year-round shelter, support really is limited.”

Changes to camping, Parking laws

To prevent the Airport Road encampment from forming again, Wyatt said city officials are crafting a new camping ordinance that will address the court decision that declared it inhumane to arrest people for sleeping in a public place in California and several other western states.

“And that was the right decision — sleep is a basic human need,” Wyatt said. “However, you cannot take up permanent residence in a public place, so we are updating the city’s camping ordinance to address this notion of ‘embedding yourself’ in a public area.”

Another more immediate step was taken this week by the Ukiah City Council, which voted nearly unanimously to prohibit all parking along Airport Road.

“I do support the action (to prohibit parking along Airport Road), which is something I’ve been advocating for more than a year,” 2nd District Mendocino County Supervisor John McCowen told the City Council at its July 3 meeting, describing Airport Road before the tents and vehicles were removed as “Quite the encampment. And this (council) is on record as supporting, in concept, the Robert Marbut Report recommendations, one of which is zero tolerance for encampments. That is not the same as zero tolerance for campers, (because) everyone will be somewhere. But there are some areas that are more appropriate than others.

“(Airport Road) is adjacent to a waterway — what we call a ditch between the road and the railroad tracks is actually a waterway,” said McCowen. “So, a) there should not be tolerance for encampments, and b) if there is an encampment, it should not have a negative impact on the environment and businesses. Also, (that encampment) took away an amenity from the people who walked in that area for exercise, either alone or with their dogs, because it became completely unsafe to do that anymore.

“And as (City Manager Sage Sangiacomo pointed out) not everybody simply got moved around,” McCowen said. “City administration and the city police department worked very closely with the providers in the county to try and get people housed and there was some success there. Other people found other, more appropriate, places that they could be.”

“I’d like to see something a bit more proactive on how we handle the homeless issue, (because) we’re not to a point where we’re really on top of it that I see,” said Council member Steve Scalmanini, thanking McCowen for his comments, but adding that he didn’t know where the “more appropriate places” McCowen spoke of were, and while he was glad to hear that some of the people had gotten housed, “I don’t know how many were and how many weren’t.”

RAILS TO TRAILS — MORE HISTORY & BACKGROUND about the secret sweetheart deal that created the debt that is now being “audited” for payback to Doug Bosco and John Williams of the Northwest Pacific Railroad as part of the fantasy/scam conversion of the rail right of way to a “great redwood trail.”

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Putting The Public Up Front

by Bernie Meyers (June 2011, when Meyers was on the Board of the North Coast Railroad Authority)

WHERE should hundreds of millions of your tax dollars go — to pay for police, fire and schools — or to a private freight rail operator which was able to get a lease with a public agency via backroom dealings and meetings that violated public disclosure law?

What if the lease was never examined to see if it was fiscally prudent? That scenario may soon be coming down the track, unless that lease is amended to avoid the inevitable result. [Ed note: it was not.]

The public agency is the North Coast Rail Authority. The operator is the Northwestern Pacific Co.

In January 2006, NCRA requested proposals from operators to haul freight on its right-of-way. Five entities responded. NCRA’s activities — interviewing the bidders, choosing NWP’s bid, and the negotiations for the lease — were performed by NCRA’s Operator Committee, whose meetings were held without any public notice and without any public participation. The OC appears to have violated the law governing the public’s right to observe public business:

• The OC did not report in any meaningful way to the public; when it reported to the board, it did so in secret in board closed sessions;

• The selection criteria utilized by the OC and the board was never revealed to the public and there is no way to determine how or why NWP was chosen;

• In June 2005, the Operator Committee met at former Congressman Doug Bosco’s office; in December, the committee apparently interviewed an owner of the Island Mountain Quarry; between the time the request for proposals was issued in January 2006, and the choice of NWP as the winner in May, NCRA utilized the quarry owner in a pitch to the state for funding, and NWP listed both that owner and Mr. Bosco as principals;

• The May 2006 telephone board meeting, at which NWP was chosen, violated the law. The meeting notice failed to identify the locations from which members called in and failed to give the real intent of the meeting. Of course, no members of the public were present;

• After NWP was chosen, lease negotiations started. While NCRA still had the ability to negotiate with another bidder, it did not, giving NWP every advantage, to the taxpayers’ detriment. Other bids were more favorable (two included a percentage of revenues going to NCRA), but NCRA stuck with NWP.

• The notice for the September 2006 board meeting, when the lease was supposedly approved, does not adequately indicate that the lease was to come before the board for approval.

The end result is that the public did not see the lease in its final form before it was signed.

• At no time, from the time the RFP was considered through the time the lease was signed, was any member of the public able to comment on the substance of the dealings.

Because a long-term lease can have severe financial repercussions, it is essential for the agency to make every effort to include the public in its decision-making and explain its reasoning. Unfortunately, this lease is the product of secret dealings, with old friends on either side, and without proper public notice or input.

Now that NWP is getting ready to roll, it wants to change some of the lease terms without giving NCRA and the public sufficient time to consider options. The NCRA needs skilled, unbiased counsel to guide it to a fiscally prudent agreement.

Over a billion taxpayer dollars could be riding on this. We need to have public overview and insist on fiscal prudence.

Otherwise, vital public services will be shoved into the baggage car while the operator rides in first class.

(At the time this editorial was written, former Novato Mayor Bernard Meyers was one of Marin's two representatives on the eight-member North Coast Rail Authority board of directors.)

MEASURE B IDEAS MAKE SENSE

The Mendocino County Grand Jury has released a report gently critical of the Measure B committee and the lack of progress on the critical need for local mental health infrastructure.

Measure B is a half-cent sales tax that raises about $7 million per year. The money is supposed to go to building three facilities in the county: 1. a crisis stabilization unit which is a locked facility where law enforcement can bring people in mental health crisis to be held and treated on a short term basis; 2. a psychiatric health facility, also a locked facility for longer term care; and 3. a crisis residential treatment center, where people could voluntarily go for up to a month for mental health or addiction treatment.

It has been 18 months since the passage of Measure B and not only have none of these things been started, we don’t even have an idea where we’re going to locate them.

The process is overseen by an 11-member Measure B committee which has been meeting once a month since it was formed, but has not really accomplished much of anything. It is important to note that this committee can make suggestions to the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, but only the supervisors can make decisions about how to spend the money.

The grand jury thinks part of the problem is that the 11-member committee is just to big and unwieldy to get things done in a timely way. They suggested the committee form two small ad hoc committees. One would look exclusively at locations for these facilities, and the other would focus on operations and the treatment plans for these facilities. Then those committees could report back to the full committee to make recommendations to the board.

This idea makes sense to us. Smaller groups dedicated to one topic can get a lot more done more quickly. Any 11-member group is going to be off topic 25-40 percent of the time.

The grand jury also suggests that the Board of Supervisors do more to prepare for the decisions they will need to make when the Measure B committee makes it recommendations.

Things like setting goals now to get recommendations and planning for the construction of these facilities, wherever they are located. We agree that the board should be doing more to push this process along. So far they seem to just be sitting back waiting for the Measure B committee to act.

Measure B is a critical part of our county’s mental health system. It’s what the voters put their faith in, concrete facilities to deal with our mental health crisis. We agree with the grand jury that it’s taking too long to get it done.

(K.C. Meadows, Editor, Ukiah Daily Journal, Courtesy, the Ukiah Daily Journal)

FIREWORKS over the roof of my neighbor's house.

MORE THAN JUST THINKING ABOUT WILDLAND FIRES

by Jim Shields

It’s good to be back after a two-week hiatus. This is a busy time of year for the Laytonville County Water District as we have to close out the fiscal year, prepare and mail out our annual Consumer Confidence Report, and a number of other required filings.

Anway, speaking of water, you can’t fight wildfires without it and recent weather conditions have created higher-than-normal fire potential for the Golden State, especially up here in Northern California.

Both CAL FIRE and the National Interagency Fire Center issued reports this week that contained similar warnings indicating that fuel sources and weather conditions will be more conducive to significant wildland fires than normal for the month of July across a large swath of Northern California.

“The fuel beds in California have become more continuous than what is typically seen,” the Fire Center’s executive summary says. “When the hot, dry, and windy patterns develop during the middle to late summer months, the large fire potential in these areas will elevate.”

These elevated wildfire risks are expected from July through at least October.

Also, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection conducted a risk assessment that found an estimated 11 million residents, or 1 in 4 Californians, live in areas considered to be at “high risk” of a wildfire.

CAL FIRE maintains a risk assessment program that ranks statewide all towns and cities with populations of more than 1,000 that are in “Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones.” Statewide more than 75 towns and cities with populations over 1,000 were ranked with at least 90 percent of residents living within these High Fire Hazard Zones.

I checked the assessment for Inland Mendocino County and discovered the following:

Apparently, the safest inland town is Willits with none of its 4,891 citizens or 2,074 housing units at very high risk. In ascending order, other inland towns were ranked as follows:

1. Ukiah, 16,077 pop., 6,501 housing units, 1 percent at very high risk.
2. Covelo, 1,255 pp. , 542 housing units, 2 percent at very high risk.
3. Brooktrails, 3,235 pop., 1,444 housing units, 3 percent at very high risk.
4. Laytonville, 1,227 pop., 562 housing units, 35 percent at very high risk.

So my town ends up with the distinction of topping CAL FIRE’s local fire risk rankings.

Meanwhile, in Sacramento Gov. Gavin Newsom recently met with local government emergency officials where he told them to “prepare for the worst” this summer and fall.

“We just can’t take this anymore,” Newsom told the gathering. “The state can’t take 2018 again. Can’t do 2017. … We can’t take it anymore.”

Indeed, the Interagency Fire Center’s report supports the almost inevitable certainty of another dreadful wildfire season by pointing to the major areas of concern being the “dead and down fuel load” and “heavy new brush growth” following a very rainy May and a very dry June.

And, of course, although the report doesn’t mention it, the issue permeating all the bleak wildfire predictions is never before in state history have so many people lived in these high fire risk areas. It’s called the WUI factor, i.e., the Wildland Urban Interface.

In an excellent but little-read 2018 story by AP reporter, Christian Britschgi, he shrinks what is a complex issue into the single most important factor plaguing this new era of monstrous wildfires:

“The issue is compounded further by the polar opposite ways in which California state law and localities treat development. In those cities and counties affected by wildfires, regulators are quick to waive zoning laws and permitting requirements post-disaster. These redevelopments are also exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)—which mandates expensive pre-construction environmental reviews, and which can stall projects for years. In other parts of the state, CEQA is in full effect and restrictive zoning codes and permitting requirements make it incredibly difficult to build more residential housing. This is particularly true in large (and largely wildfire-free) urban centers. In short, California is encouraging people to build where they should not, and discouraging them from building where they should. Incentives are aligned in such a way that it makes more sense for property owners who’ve lost a home to fire to rebuild it in the same spot rather than move to a location where their home would most certainly never be at risk of burning down …Sadly, this means Californians are likely looking at future that includes more unnecessary property destruction and fire-related deaths.”

(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, and is also the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: www.kpfn.org.)

FLYNN WASHBURNE, Facebook updates,

July 7, 2019: “…I lived another year. I'm clean and sober, I'm well-housed and-fed, got a car, a job, some féria, a raft of kick-ass Facebook friends, a few awesome live-action ones, and I'm healthy.”

June 26, 2019: “Some time ago, while still a guest of the state, I was contacted by an admirer of my writing down in LA who'd come across it by accident. He's since written again a few times and recorded a desire to meet should he ever venture north, which he has and we did. Turns out he's in the entertainment biz, specifically a producer and documentarian, and admires my work to the extent of wanting to work with me on an as-yet unspecified project, and will be optioning my story and content for potential cinematic or tv interpretation. How exciting is this? I mean, really. Better late than never, right? My one fear-actually just the first and foremost one-is that I will, in classic Flynn style, determinedly and systematically sabotage any possibility of success, leaving this fine opportunity a smoking heap of rubble as I walk away wondering how these things keep happening to me.”

TAI ABREU is at San Quentin awaiting the spin of Mendo's judicial wheels. If there's any justice left in the justice system, he should be released with time served. If you came in late, Abreu was one of three young — 19 — Fort Bragg men whose stoner plan to rob a gay LA man resulted in the man's death less than a mile from the Fort Bragg Police Department. Under the revised California Murder Law, a person present at a murder subsequently sentenced to life without the possibility of parole can get his sentence revised downward if there's no evidence he committed murder which, in Abreu's case, directly applies because there isn't any evidence he committed murder. In fact there's no firm evidence the victim, Donald Perez, was murdered in the bizarre, mid-day episode. I say 'bizarre' because Perez, a fit ex-Marine was somehow over-powered by three un-athletic, no-history-of-violence 19-year-olds, dragged into the bushes off an ordinarily busy logging road on the southern outskirts of Fort Bragg and duct-taped to a tree, where he hung for nearly a month before the police were directed to his remains roughly 15 feet from the road where, one afternoon, I watched pedestrians, bicyclists, a coupla trucks, and a guy walking his dog who paused to smoke a cigarette as he stared down directly at where Perez's body had been discovered between the road and the Noyo River, also busy with recreational canoe-ists. How Perez's remains went undiscovered for all that time is almost as mystifying as the violent, in-plain-sight disabling of the guy prior to his being taped to the tree between the road and the Noyo. The police surmised that once Perez had been secured to the tree, one of the three caballeros plunged a knife into his throat, but that remains a surmise because his remains were so deteriorated that the cause of death could not be for a fact determined. Given what we know of the three perps, Abreu was the least likely to muster the supreme psychopathy it takes to plunge a knife into a man tied to a tree. His two confederates had motive and one had the psychopathy: Aaron Channel often denounced "child molesters" who included, in his opinion, Donald Perez because Perez had engaged in unresisted sexual exchanges with August Stuckey a few months prior to Stuckey's 18th birthday. Channel was released from prison three years ago, Stuckey, is presently undergoing a prison sex change to female, and is eligible for parole. Channel and Stuckey wisely took plea deals of 20-to-life, Abreu was talked into taking his non-case to a jury, that case consisting solely of an argument that he hadn't been advised of his right to counsel. The entire farce of a trial took not quite two days, during which Abreu's "defense" called no witnesses in his behalf or even attempted to introduce exculpatory evidence. Now 37, and having managed a nearly perfect record during all his years of incarceration, plus having taken all the college courses offered, if the revised Murder Law doesn't apply to this guy, it doesn't apply to anybody. Tai Abreu T6118, San Quentin Prison, 3C36, I Main Street, San Quentin, Ca 94964.

ALBION LITTLE RIVER FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICT JULY 13TH BBQ!

Saturday, July 13th from 12-5p.m. at the Fire Station near the Little River Airport. Amazing food, beverages, music, fun, kid stuff, adult stuff all for an amazing cause. We are seeking a few last minute sugar shack donations and raffle/auction ticket items.

https://www.facebook.com/events/349579415754005/

PG&E’S SHAKEDOWN

Editor,

Wildfire Plan Fizzles—

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wildfire plan doesn’t get it right. The governor’s plan sounds like a slap on the wrist and a bailout for PG&E, using taxpayer and ratepayer money.

PG&E has demonstrated over and over again that its shareholders are its primary concern. PG&E has shown repeatedly that maintenance of its infrastructure is less important than profits, and that attitude has brought us to the present situation. There is no reason to suppose that PG&E will do anything different in the future and no reason to hand it a large amount of money.

The Public Utilities Commission has rubber-stamped an apparent attempt by PG&E to hold the people and government of California hostage with a threat to simply turn off the power in what it calls a “public safety power shutoff.” This seems to be nothing less than extortion — absolve us from responsibility or else. Well, I don’t want to pay any ransom money, and I think the shareholders should be accountable.

PG&E should be taken over by the state and operated as a public utility. A “disaster fund” financed by all taxpayers should be set up.

Tom McFadden

Philo

CATCH OF THE DAY, JULY 7, 2019

NICHOLAS HALVORSEN, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, battery on peace officer, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

NICOLAS JUAREZ, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. DUI.

CHASE LOUCKS, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

BRANDON MITCHELL, Laytonville. Probation revocation.

OSCAR SANCHEZ, Ukiah. Domestic battery, controlled substance, probation revocation.

DEXTER SULLIVAN, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

You see countries that are all about ancient glories, their people making a living off of them, catering to open-mouthed foreign tourists, with Greeks banging on about Alexander the Great and the Age of Pericles and Italians going on about the majesty of ancient Rome and the triumphs of the Renaissance.

But do we learn from history? No, we don’t, not least because history is seen to be the preserve of dusty old perfessers and because history is seen to be boring and irrelevant.

But you can’t run away from history. And, while you can’t run away from history, you also can’t let it become a dreamland to avoid the realities of where you’re at now, and what goes on under your nose now. So, as you so aptly put it, less fantasy, more reality.

WE WANTED MORE

Let us have madness openly.

O men Of my generation.

Let us follow

The footsteps of this slaughtered age:

See it trail across Time's dim land

Into the closed house of eternity

With the noise that dying has,

With the face that dead things wear--

nor ever say

We wanted more; we looked to find

An open door, an utter deed of love,

Transforming day's evil darkness;

but We found extended hell and fog Upon the earth,

and within the head

A rotting bog of lean huge graves.

—Kenneth Patchen

DEMOCRATIC BOMBS

Editor:

The Independence Day display of US militarism put on by Trump and the Pentagon was beyond disgusting. A crude and wasteful exercise of an obviously insecure rich brat bully. Clearly America is a weak and pathetic nation that has confused force with power.

Only sadist and masochist could delight in the gross display of death and destruction that so dominates the imbalanced identity of America. Only suckers and fools would get off on such glorified violence.

Does anyone really like rich bastards and bitches who strut around showing off all their trinkets? Do you know anyone who likes violent, mean, stupid, rich assholes who impose their will on to others? Why do so many Americans accept mental illness in the ruling class that would not be tolerated in their own communities?

Only a people rendered empathetically illiterate by the mind managers of consumer capitalism could enjoy such a sickening parade of Imperial grandstanding.

U.S. militarism is the pornography of the industrial arts perverted by the profit motives of Capitalism’s bottomless pit of greed. The gluttony of America’s long consumer orgy has harmed the entire world while leaving itself sick in body, mind, and soul. The psychopathological, mass murdering Pentagon thrives as it destroys from within the very country it’s supposed to protect. The DOD is not defending America as it bashes up the world securing the immoral wealth of the 1% at the expense of all the rest of us.

America suffers from the following illnesses;

• democracy deficit disorder
• income disparity syndrome
• justice withering disease
• chronic empathy malaise
• truth allergy pandemic
• earth abuse ailment
• Imperial citizen amnesia

Perhaps someone had better call a doctor before it becomes time to call a priest!

Ross Dendy,

Elk

A COWBOY named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in Montana when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced toward him out of a cloud of dust.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni® suit, Gucci® shoes, RayBan® sunglasses and YSL® tie, leaned out the window and asked the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"

Bud looks at the man, who obviously is a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell® notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3® cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop® and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany …

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot® that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL® database through an ODBC connected Excel® spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry® and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet® printer, turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says Bud. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on with amusement as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then Bud says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?"

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

"You're a Congressman with the U.S. Government", says Bud.

"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required," answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions of dollars worth of equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about how working people make a living - or about cows, for that matter. This is a herd of sheep…. Now give me back my dog."

I CAME TO NEW YORK in 1964 and this is one of the first things I saw. (Larry Livermore)

COCKTAILS & KRISHNA

Spiritual Unity for All

Following a thoroughly enjoyable Mendocino County Friday evening, beginning with a mid-afternoon trip to Vic's at the intersection which serves as "downtown" Redwood Valley, took a taxi back to where I am staying for more cash, and then continued on in the taxi to the Ukiah Brewing Company. Sipped down two margaritas while enjoying the exceptional appetizers, and then gorged on a T-bone steak dinner. Left in a taxi cab for the return trip to the valley. Awoke the following morning suitably dizzy, and realized on the spot that my whole purpose is to go beyond where I am at. Simply put, I only am seriously interested in the unified spiritual condition. Not identifying with the body and the mind, but identified with the Holy Spirit. It's has been an almost impossible challenge over the past 40 years to be on the front lines of peace & justice and radical environmentalism, with no significant support from the American society, and enduring the fact of having no money either. And yet, somehow what needed to happen was accomplished. And I didn't get killed, or worse. No greater proof of the existence of the Divine Absolute is necessary. In retrospect, it is nothing short of totally amazing that I am still on earth with a basically good attitude. For now, I am at The Magic Ranch which is a place continually evolving in a very good direction. I do not know how much longer I will be here. Always seeking opportunity on the front lines, I'd leave if there were anything to go to. But then this is America, and it should not surprise anybody that I get no offers. No significant solidarity, no housing, no money, no nothin'! So I sit here at the dining room table automatically writing down the bones. All I want is for all of us to be unified in God.

Craig Louis Stehr

Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

“I’m writing a Grandma Noir. The premise is this: a lady comes to an old person’s home, but nobody likes her. Suddenly she turns up dead and our protagonist Helen has to solve the mystery. There’s a motorized wheelchair chase. There’s a Viagra orgy. There’s a villain who’s faking Alzheimer’s while masterminding a pill-trading operation. It’s got everything. I sent the book to a bunch of agents. I got a nibble from one of them. She told me that she made it to page 100 before quitting, so I figure I’m on the right track.”

MORE NEEDLES

Editor,

The Anderson Valley Fairgrounds have a wonderful little softball park. They used to have some great softball tournaments. They need to fix that park up and have an old-timers softball game on some upcoming Sunday. Maybe a little barbecue. Give the money to the high school sports. It would be fun. It would be great.

God bless Donald Trump.

Jerry Philbrick

Comptche

PS. How would you feel if your child was raped and butchered and mutilated by an MS 13 or some other illegal alien? Thank the Liberal Democrats for that. How would you like it if your wife was killed in a head-on collision by a DUI? Thank the Liberals and their illegal aliens for that. They want open borders. They think it's fine that illegals come in here to our sanctuary state. That's how stupid the Liberal Democrats are. Fascists. Communists. Socialists. Sons of bitches. That's all they think about — away from the United States, doing everything they can to hurt our government and our Constitution and everything else that goes with it. Makes me sick. It makes me sick we have people like Gavin Newsom in office, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Kamala Harris, Cortez. I could go on and on. But I won't. It's sad. We have to live with people wanting to get us killed and other people trying to make us safe.

PPS. The small town of Needles in Southern California has done a good thing. They have declared their area a sanctuary area for gun owners and the Second Amendment. They won't obey any stupid laws that California has put out to the gun owners. Most of the deputies there have said they will not process anything that the state has done. They won't enforce the laws. We have to get this in more cities and town and communities. Stand up to these bastards like the people in Oregon did with the CARB situation. It would work. We have to stick together. I can't wait to see the outcome of all this.

PPPS. Have you noticed that Gavin Newsom smiles when he talks? That's the mark of a crooked man. A no good person. He knows he's guilty and he is trying to cover it up with a smile while he talks. Now he's going to give the illegal aliens driver’s licenses and they won't even have to pay for them and they don't have to take any tests and they can't read English but they’ll be driving around in our public roads and he is trying to give them free citizenship so they can vote. That's all they want. That's the only reason they want open borders. They don't care what these illegals will do to our public. They just want the votes. That's all.

FOUND OBJECT