MCT: Tuesday, August 6, 2019

• Weather Change
• Affiliation Committee
• Fingers Crossed
• Swept Clean
• Trade War
• Airport Day
• Ted Talk
• Women's Grove
• Whithered Voice
• $100kzyx
• Fair Entries
• Yesterday/Today
• Vineyard Desecrations
• Roadside Spring
• PG&E Copters
• Hunnicutt Investigation
• County Wages
• Oral History
• CAAC Apps
• Yesterday's Catch
• Clarity Lagging
• Latte
• Broken Country
• Dark Undercurrents
• Movie Biz
• Meme Yourself
• Come a'Thistling
• Housing Meetings
• 2019 Shooters
• Blood Money
• Discomfort Tour
• Comments
• Confessional Art
• Gun Laws
• Fiber Art

WARM INTERIOR TEMPERATURES will continue Tuesday, but a cooling trend is expected Wednesday through the end of the week. Coastal marine clouds and some light drizzle will continue to be present along the coast through at least Wednesday, but may decrease late in the week. Scattered showers and thunderstorms will be possible Friday and Saturday. (National Weather Service)

THE AFFILIATION AD HOC COMMITTEE of Mendocino Coast District Hospital made no definitive move toward finalizing a deal with Adventist Health as a result of a special meeting held Monday evening, August 5th. The ad hoc committee, comprised of chair Steve Lund along with fellow MCDH Board members Amy McColley and John Redding did announce they are continuing negotiations on a thirty year lease plan with Adventist Health.

The ad hoc committee also decided to forego any attempt to have a deal in time for a November ballot measure, which would have to be in the hands of the county clerk at least eighty-eight days prior to the election day.

These actions essentially delay the take over by Adventist to a March ballot that will require a simple majority of coast healthcare district voters approving the inevitable deal with Adventist Health.

(Malcolm Macdonald)

ONE PLANT OVER?

To the Governor of California, the Sheriff of Mendocino County, the Commander of the National Guard, the California Department of Agriculture, the California Department of Fish and wildlife, and various newspapers and radio stations:

My name is Nick Felli, I reside at 3784 Dos Rios Road out of Laytonville. I am obviously one of the biggest illegal "growers" in Mendocino County. Until your media famous Operation Clean Sweep I was growing six (6) big plants in my garden in the open known to anybody from sky or road. But wait, I have a "huge" greenhouse made of 2x4s, clad in construction clear plastic, measuring 10' x 8' x 6’ (wanna borrow my measuring tape?) containing six small plants for genetics. Furthermore I had the audacity to have another towering three-foot hybrid plant behind my trailer. Holy bleep! That is 13 "plants"! (Let me do the media spinning for you: Boss, that is 116.666% of the legal limit.)

Question: any of you know the difference between the "letter" and the "spirit" of the law? Any of you ever drove 57.8 mph? Any of you live in my neck of the woods? If I was to overtly plant and disrespect the law, don't you think I would "overtly" grow more than six cannabis plants? Needless to say coming back from a short camping trip I was shocked and bleeping disgusted by your spineless and cowardly act of cutting all my plants down. (Five years of genetics gone forever, bleepers).

I then learned that you also had cut down the 12 plants of my retired landlord and his wife. Did I mention retired? Wow! Cutting down a 60-year-old mom and retiree’s garden. What a score! Whoever is the commander of this operation — I will not waste my unlimited time and infinite resources being red taped ad infinitum trying to find out who she/he is, so I will just name "it" Commander Bleeping Spineless — needs to be fired, demoted or reassigned. If you do not know the difference, in this part of the County, between supplemental income and the “I don't give a bleep, 15,000 gallons a day, let's put up another blinking greenhouse, illegal ‘grows’," you have no business in your business!

What goes on in your morning briefings? Listen up, boys and girls, we have identified and located two major illegal growers posing an imminent threat to another burgeoning, inefficient government bureaucracy of an overregulated overhyped overtaxed "legal" cannabis market. Let's show them old unlawful fogies that we mean business and that "we" will not tolerate that blatant display of lawlessness.

Okay! So Commander Spineless: Where is my list of crimes? My probable cause? Where is my bleeping warrant? When the kids doing your dirty cutting work are asking among themselves, "What the bleep are we really doing here?" you know that something is seriously wrong! Well, Commander Spineless, it takes a real man/woman to admit that you are in the wrong place at the wrong time hurting the wrong people.

Okay guys, let's move on and find real offenders. All that technology and "intel" and you still can't find your way out of a postage stamp! Governor, sheriff, Spineless et al, you can go home with your head held high with no less than 30 government vehicles — where is the Army, the FBI, Homeland Security and the CHP when you really need them? In half a day you managed to eradicate 18 plants and a few stragglers! High fives for the righteous! I'm sure you needed such a number to round out the 9,982 plants you so efficiently cut down in the previous half hour on the way here so that you could print another BS headline: 10,000 baby! Please pat your spineless backs again!

You have flown over my garden and dwelling five times this year alone! Front camera equipped chopper (3x), unmanned aerial vehicle (1x) and a drone (1x). What happened to all that data? Do you hire a legally blind person to review it and confuse six with 600? Could you morons really not find a more worthwhile target? Do I need to teach you to review your own data? What am I? A training exercise? Look at his gates — see they are open and unlocked. It's easy access on maintained roads. Let's teach Beth and Billy how to work the cutter, never mind whose lives we [bleep]!

What laws and whose orders give you the "right" to ransack my living space? Why go through my personal belongings and records? Again, what is my crime? My own government does this. Why not cut and go? Why?

It is crystal clear to me that the money part of your "operation" is of more importance. (Got to fund that behavior, don't we? I am so relieved that you couldn't find my $999,988 stashed under my bed and the 505 pounds gleaned from last year's sales of my seven plants (Whoops! Did I say seven? Why didn't you bust me then, bleeps?) Have you found it, I would have gladly given you the extra 20 bucks needed to make another BS headline. What? You didn't know that you can make $1 million from the sale of seven plants? Boy, you guys really have a lot to learn, one of those things being to keep pissing off people will engender its own unforeseen consequences. The smoke you people hide behind comes from a fire that does stink! I judge people by what they do, not by what they blah blah blah blah. You have lost the last shred of respect I had for you, your actions prove that you are nothing but legalized, budgeted, indiscriminate, uniformed thugs hiding behind the letter of your laws. Better wear those dark shades or someone might actually see how few brains are left behind them! You are a waste of energy, time, taxes, resources and most of all a waste of breath! I can't for the life of me think of any better way to spend the meager resources of his county.

Wait — hiring a few more inspectors and clerks to speed up real permitting? No, that really would be mismanagement of funds, wouldn't it? Way more fun to cowboy up the hills.

Anyway, I like to spend 115 cents on my dollar so your agencies can balance your budgets. The Governor, Commander, Sheriff et al — you are all invited, say mid-February, to come for a photo op showing the creation of so many well-paying jobs around here. Got a job washing those vehicles every day? How many gallons does that waste? I'll let you answer that one.

You can tell I am in a great mood after your show of intelligence, compassion, care and respect for the people who live year-round here. In normal times I would stay polite and ask you to find a preferred spot, drop your lower garments, put both hands in front of you, choose your favorite one, stick that hand’s middle finger out proudly and ram it up where the fabled sun doesn't shine! But your bleeping acts lost you any rights to decency. So it is from the bottom of my heart that I unkindly ask you all to go [bleep] yourselves!

Nick Felli

Laytonville

PS. If you guys care to make another friendly visit you know where to find me or do you need ANOTHER grant to launch a new satellite and receive new GPS phones so you can find where the [bleep] you are? I am sick and tired of your military approach to a civilian cause. If you act as pigs, be ready to be treated as such. Not one person pro or con cannabis that I have talked to since thinks that you have done right by us. You want to legalize cannabis cultivation? Act legally!

THE STOCK MARKET fell into a deep tailspin Monday attributed to Trump's trade war with China. The Dow Jones Industrial Index was down 767 points before the end of trading, near the level of its biggest one-day selloff ever.

IN RETALIATION, China let its currency, the yuan, drop to its lowest level against the dollar in more than a decade before trading started Monday in New York, a move that Trump denounced as 'currency manipulation,' the rest of the world as tit for tat. A weaker yuan against a stronger dollar means that U.S. companies doing substantial business in China raises the cost of their goods for Chinese customers who won't be buying those goods.

THE BOONVILLE AIRPORT OPEN HOUSE/Airport Day and Potluck Dinner is this Saturday, August 10 at the corner of Estate Drive & Airport Road. A Coast Guard contingent is scheduled to arrive at 11 AM by helicopter. They will be landing and spending a few hours here. The public is welcome to visit with them. Other festivities begin at noon. Potluck dinner at 5pm. Drinks provided. More info: Cindy or Kirk, 895-2949.

SUPERVISOR TED WILLAMS will be at the Manchester Community Center this Wednesday night at 6pm. Williams will meet with the community at the Manchester Community Center. This is a potluck dinner where we sit around the table with Ted; however, you do NOT have to join the potluck to attend. Everyone is welcome to join the discussion. The Manchester Community Center is at 43970 Crispin Road just east of Highway 1. NO RSVP needed.

NIGHT LIGHT OF THE NORTH COAST: The California Federation of Women's Clubs Grove

by David Wilson

It is quiet among the giant redwoods late at night, and oh, so dark. The redwood forest feeds my soul, and my photographic imagination sparks in the dark. Night provides a canvas of black, within which lies a latent image for me to reveal with strokes of painted light.

So it was as I stood before the Hearthstone at Women's Federation Grove (California Federation of Women's Clubs Grove) in Humboldt Redwoods State Park late one summer night. So still, so black. Without my light I could see nothing, but I felt the great forms of the towering trees around me. Through an opening between their crowns some stars peered down into the scene.

I wanted to photograph the Hearthstone, and use my lighting to make it stand out against its surroundings. In the complete blackness I could selectively illuminate the areas I chose, leaving the surroundings in darkness. I used my flashlight to light the scene, bouncing it off of a warm-toned scarf to soften and warm up the light. Before opening the shutter I had draped the scarf over one arm, then during the exposure I bounced my flashlight off of it while slowly walking from one side of the the structure to the other behind my camera, bathing it in an even light. The 30-second exposure was barely enough time for me to light the structure evenly.

The light in the trees behind the Four Fireplaces wasn’t planned. My friend arrived during the exposure, the headlights of his car shining through the trees from behind the building as he approached along the winding little drive into Women's Federation Grove. I saw him coming as I made the exposure, and I feared his headlights would ruin the image, but I also hoped that their back-lighting would be exactly what the photograph needed. It turned out to be the latter, another of the serendipitous accident that so often grace my outings and add magic to the images I bring home.

The California Federation of Women’s Clubs Grove is a day use area situated amongst magnificent redwoods on the Avenue of the Giants. With access to the South Fork Eel River, picnic tables and restrooms, it’s an ideal place to spend a sunny afternoon. In the summer a footbridge crosses the river, making both banks accessible.

The Grove entrance is a few miles north of Weott on the Avenue of the Giants. For more information on the site, and on Humboldt Redwoods State Park in general, the Humboldt Redwoods Interpretive Association Visitor Center is located south of Weott on the Avenue of the Giants, and on the web at http://humboldtredwoods.org .

The Hearthstone sits among giant redwoods at California Federation of Women's Clubs Grove.

A view back toward the Grove from across the summer foot bridge. The light is from my flashlight. The Grove has no illumination of its own at night.

(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.)

WHATEVER HAPPENED to the Mendocino Voice? They used to be on top of things. Now they're only averaging 19 posts per week and the majority of those are shared from other sites - there is no original content anymore. Every post on their site in August is a "share" from another site.

We know it's summer but jeesh - they dropped coverage of almost all meetings, traffic conditions - even weather and when you visit their site, you're assaulted multiple times with pleas to donate money - never a good sign.

So much for "providing a better quality of news" from throughout Mendocino County and promising the coverage of "breaking news." Wonder when they last turned on a scanner or looked at the CHP Incident page ?

Based in Willits, they were out-posted by the Willits News 42-to-19 last week.

They pride themselves on "fire coverage" yet have missed every recent fire reported over the scanner - except for the one at Usal Beach - and then it was a "share' from CalFire.

Their "fire coverage" lags significantly behind, and can't hold a candle to, the excellent job Danilla Sands does on a daily basis at "Potter Valley/Redwood Valley Fire 2017 -- Mendocino Fire Alerts/Resources."

We hope they stage a comeback, they're very nice people.

(MendocinoSportsPlus)

JERRY KARP WRITES to tell us that KZYX has received a $100K gift from the Dean Witter Foundation. “We thought folks would be interested to know about the major contribution, and to learn what we're considering to be the best ways to make use of those funds. Please check in with station manager Marty Durlin if you have questions.”

DONNA PIERSON-PUGH WRITES: Hi Fair Fans, This Friday 8/9 is the deadline for submitting paper entry forms for the produce, flowers, home arts, with a separate form for each division. You have until 8/31 if you submit them online! Be sure to include any item that you may have, as if you don't submit it there is no problem, but you can't submit something for which you have not included on the entry form. Download from mendocinocountyfair.com and print these forms. Submit the forms to:

Mendocino County Fair and Apple Show, PO Box 458, Boonville, CA 95415

All Livestock Must Enter Online!

Online entries close August 30, 2019

Paper Entry Forms – due August 9, 2019

Entry forms may be faxed to (707) 895-3011 only if no entry fees are required. Use a separate entry form for each division.

Remember to sign entry forms.

POCKET CHANGE: Kevin Harvey, a Silicon Valley multi-bucks, owns the vertical vineyard at Navarro called Rhys Vineyard. In 2017 he bought into the old Masonite site north of Ukiah where he plans a winery amid the stark concrete slabs and pop-up manufacturing plants. Additionally, Harvey owns 4,500 acres west of Highway 101 near Laytonville which drains into Ten Mile River and the South Fork of the Eel. At this ecologically sensitive site, Harvey bulldozed a protected wetland and filled in a streambed, the better to plant grapes. For this atrocity the “entrepreneur” has been fined $3.76 million by the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. Given that the guy’s a billionaire we can safely assume he calculated that the damage he wrought in Laytonville was simply a cost of his boutique winery business.

HARVEY occasionally flies into Boonville International. I happened to be walking past the airstrip one late morning when he’d just arrived in a spiffy plane seating maybe a dozen people. I asked the pilot who the plane belonged to. “Sorry, I can’t tell you,” the pilot said. But an airport informant divulged the great secret.

AT NAVARRO, Harvey the magnate bought the old Horse Haven Ranch, a dilapidated Valley landmark of color-coordinated red barn and house. Because Mendocino County has no grading ordinance, or any other laws that might deter a well-heeled wine investor from committing crimes against nature, Harv proceeded to plant grapevines on hillsides so steep Mendocino County is just about the only county in the state where he’d be permitted to do it.

PERTINENT on-line comments re Harv’s depredations:

• Why don't they remove and shred the plants like they do to the other green plants that are put in illegally? Also, was there any archeology survey done being local Tribes lived all over the area hundreds of years ago!

• Yet he keeps to keep the land with all illegal grading in place. $3.7M is chicken scratch to this guy. He wins! The land should should at the very least be donated to a conservation organization as recompense.

• No militarized raids on this place though. No troops. No ransacking of the facility.

• Do they have to restore the land or do they get to keep going?

A FACE BOOKER ASKS, “Has anybody gotten sick from drinking the spring water on the 128 in Yorkville at mile marker 176?” That water would be well on to the Sonoma County end of Highway 128 where suddenly the long-dormant water pipe drains into a trough-size concrete basin has begun flowing again. I was so happy to see its resumption last week on my trip south, I pulled over for a swig, and it was as sweet and as refreshing as I remember it from yesteryear. No ill effects so far.

LOW FLYING CHOPPERS EXPLAINED: Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) will continue to inspect power lines in Lake, Mendocino and Humboldt Counties for the next couple of weeks, using helicopters equipped with Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology. The inspections are part of PG&E’s expanded and enhanced vegetation management work, implemented following the 2017 and 2018 wildfires as one of many additional precautionary measures intended to further reduce wildfire risk.

ON JULY 18, 2019, the Fort Bragg CHP was called to investigate a hit & run collision on Highway 1 at Little Lake Road that tragically resulted in the death of Calum Hunnicutt. Our investigation has been ongoing since the crash happened and the diligent investigation work by our officers has led to a person and vehicle of interest. [a well known Fort Bragg name, ed] The vehicle was impounded for evidence on 07/19/2019. Due to the fact that the individual name has not been released at this time, we are unable to release any information regarding their identity (per government code 6254(f)). If an arrest occurs we will provide additional information at that time. We would like to thank the Coast community for their continued support of us during our investigation. We are very grateful for the tips and information that has been provided to help us piece together this investigation. We would also like to express our sincerest condolences to the Hunnicutt family during this incredibly difficult time in their life. We will continue to work diligently in our quest to bring the person/people responsible for Calum's death to justice. Anyone with known information pertaining to this incident is asked to call the California Highway Patrol Ukiah are office at (707) 467-4420. CHP Press Release, 8/1/19

MSP ASKS 4th District supervisor, Dan Gjerde, “Your $85,000 per year Mendo supervisors voted themselves a pay increase in late 2017 - going from $61,200 to $85,500. All the administration & department heads have received pay increases - yet the rank & file are still laboring for 22% less than they should be making.”

GJERDE REPLIED: “Hi Paul, yes, we now know that County employees are, on average, roughly 22% behind the market. That's why this year's budget set aside a record $5 million in local tax dollars plus another roughly $4 million in State and Federal dollars to move all salaries as close as possible to market. We are in negotiations to work out the details. …For the record, I am one of the few people you have ever met who has voluntarily declined part of his salary. In solidarity and in fairness with my co-workers, my salary is $15,000 below the approved amount.”

BILL HEIL & LINDA PERKINS ON YOUTUBE!

THE FIRST APPLICATIONS for the County’s “Climate Action Committee":

MICHAEL POTTS, Caspar: Memo: “Climate change, whether anthropogenic or naturally cyclical, has been a deep concern of mine for more than 30 years. As a Board Member at Real Goods, and its Chief Technical Officer, I was asked to write a book, The New Independent Home, about "living under our own power," in other words, with a very small carbon footprint. Denis Hayes, founder of Earth Day, describes me as "a visionary with dirt under his fingernails" and an expert on self-reliance. As a founding member of Caspar Community’s Board, I learned the importance of consensus, the best means to generate it, and the ability of small communities like mine to develop resilience. Resilience in the face of inevitable and possibly catastrophic change – the incidence of large firestorms is an example – requires a level of awareness and readiness that is at the center of my work. I am eager to help my County integrate this awareness, readiness, and resilience into its everyday life.

AND MARIE JONES, Fort Bragg: “I am the Community Development Director for the City of Fort Bragg. I have prepared a green house gas inventory and a Climate Action Plan for the City of Fort Bragg. I am also very knowledgeable about climate adaptation strategies and the impact of climate change on natural communities, sea level rise, sea acidification, agriculture, water availability, etc. I welcome the opportunity to serve on this board.”

CATCH OF THE DAY, AUGUST 5, 2019

JESSIE ANGUIANO-LOZANO, Willits. DUI, misdemeanor hit&run, child endangerment, suspended license (for reckless driving).

VANESSA CAMP, Willits. DUI.

NOE GONZALEZ, Yuba City/Ukiah. False personation of another.

VICTOR LOPEZ, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting.

ROXANN RASMASON, Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, suspended license, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

ERNEST SALO, Fort Bragg. Under influence, false ID, probation revocation.

STEVEN SIMPSON, Ukiah. Community supervision violation.

SHANNON STARRETT, Willits. Protective order violation.

DYLAN STECKTER, Ukiah. Suspended license (for DUI), probation revocation.

TORREY THURMAN, Fort Bragg. Under influence, probation revocation.

CEDRIC WARDEN, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

JEFFREY WOLDEN, Antioch/Hopland. Controlled substance.

DAVID WOOTEN, Fort Bragg. Burglary, probation revocation.

HOLD THE TEDDY BEARS & CANDLES

by James Kunstler

In a nation afflicted by fads, crazes, manias, and rages, mass murder is the jackpot for nihilists — begging the question: why does this country produce so many of them? Answer: this is exactly what you get in a culture where anything goes and nothing matters. Extract all the meaning and purpose from being here on earth, and erase as many boundaries as you can from custom and behavior, and watch what happens, especially among young men trained on video slaughter games.

For many, there is no armature left to hang a life on, no communities, no fathers, no mentors, no initiations into personal responsibility, no daily organizing principles, no instruction in useful trades, no productive activities, no opportunities for love and affection, and no way out. This abyss of missing social relations is made worse by the everyday physical settings for everyday lives based on nothing: the wilderness of parking lots that America has turned itself into. Such is the compelling myth of the New World as a wilderness that we obliged ourselves to re-enact it, minus nature, including human nature, especially what may be noble and sacred about human nature.

The old truism sticks: when nothing is sacred, everything is profane, and what could be more profane than slaughtering your fellow humans en masse, for no good reason? Just because you felt like it at the time? Another time, you might feel like scarfing some tacos, or checking in on the free porn sites, or tweaking some crushed-up oxycontin. One message from the culture of anything-goes-and-nothing-matters comes through loud and clear: if it feels good, do it! And if you feel bad, do something to make yourself feel better.

The wonder is that the way we live these days hasn’t turned more people into homicidal maniacs, considering how many are out there feeling bad in this grotesque landscape of incessant motoring, vivid purposelessness, and lost aspiration — unless these bloody skirmishes are the precursor to some more general outbreak of murderous havoc. It’s not hard these days to imagine the political animus ratcheting up to something like a new civil war. If it works out that way, it will be the most psychologically confused political event of modern history.

The Walmart is the perfect setting for these ceremonies of nihilist wrath. The sheer size of these places makes the “consumers” inside feel small, and informs them that they are at the mercy of colossal forces for their pitiful daily needs, their Hot Pockets, their disposable diapers, their roach spray. The shooter is just a momentary concentration of everything else grinding the dignity and meaning out of American lives. The bad karma in these dynamics compels some periodic release. Cue some young man jacked on his own hormones and a comic book conception of human power relations.

I’m not persuaded that a ban on gun sales will do anything to prevent more of these deadly episodes because there are already too many firearms loose in America. But it is probably necessary to make some kind of statement, say a ban on military-type weapons, and I rather expect that will happen. But the political process of recognizing what really ails this society is mired in bad faith, idiocy, and neuroticism. And the political actors are signaling their ineptitude clearly, which only adds to the sweeping demoralization of everybody else.

We await a restructuring of American life into real communities of people working together at things that matter, and it will require the demise of the things that have worked so hard to destroy all that, namely, the tyranny of the giants, the town-killing Walmarts, the suffocating monster of government, the media manipulators of reality, the too-big-to-fail banks. The people alone won’t loosen the grip of these monsters and, honestly, they lack the will to even imagine life without all that. But history onrushing will do it for them, first in the form of a financial fiasco that upsets the meaning of what “money” is, and all the instruments calibrated in it; and then with an economic collapse of supply lines and activities that we can’t afford to carry on anymore.

The people may have to be dragged kicking and screaming into that new disposition of things, just because it’s so hard to let go of what you’re used to. Something like this appears to be underway now in global business and markets. For a while, it will only add to the confusion. Clarity is a lagging effect.

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page.)

ANOTHER SHOOTING LETTER

Editor,

I wrote a letter to the editor about gun violence in February 2018 — after Parkland. I drafted another one but never sent it after another shooting. I cannot remember which one I wrote it in response to, but I know I didn’t send it because I thought I would sound repetitive, a whiny teen doing nothing but writing.

In that letter I wrote, “The shootings are closing in.” How can I help but feel the truth of that now? My grandmother lives 20 minutes from Gilroy. Every time my family drives past the festival, I say, “We should go to the Gilroy Garlic Festival.” We laugh about how the town perpetually smells of garlic, about the goofy garlic cartoons. We have never gone.

Maybe I am whining too much; too much talk, not enough action. But I’ve marched. I’ve posted. I’ve written. I’ve signed petitions. What else am I supposed to do? I recently turned 18, which gives me some voting power, but what are my younger peers to do? We’re terrified, everywhere. This is absolutely a cry for help because America’s youth are too often the targets and the perpetrators. We are broken.

Caroline Duffy

Santa Rosa

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

It will get really bad once there is any “move” to begin confiscating guns on a large scale. The problem is that the government is not really seen as legitimate anymore though most people go through the motions still of following through with their daily activities as normal. Once there is any sort of disruption like a prolonged power outage or some sort of banking meltdown the veneer of civilization will be ripped away very easily as animosity and pent up frustration bubble just beneath the surface.

THERE IS A STRANGE IRONY in what happened to “Red Badge.” Even though a lot of people in the business think otherwise, my other pictures did all right at the box office. "The Maltese Falcon" was a very great success. I believe it grossed over four million bucks. Another one was "In This Our Life.” “Across the Pacific" was also very successful, and “Key Largo” was a very great success. “The Treasure of Sierra Madre” was a very expensive picture — $2.8 million, I think it cost — and even though it didn't make an immediate and resounding bang at the box office, it did very well, and by this time it should be showing a profit. “The Asphalt Jungle” made money, and “We Were Strangers,” although it wasn't successful, didn't actually lose money. The only picture I ever made that seems as though it's going to be marked down simply as a box office failure is “The Red Badge of Courage” and I thought that was the best picture I ever made.

— John Huston

BEAT BACK STAR THISTLES

Navarro Point stewarding this Thursday, 8/8,

10am-noon

Hello. This Thursday, August 8th, is the second Thursday of the month, our monthly Navarro Point stewarding day, and I’ll be out there removing thistles from 10am til noon. Please let me know if you’ll join me there this Thursday or not, and if you have any questions.

Happy sunny summer!

Tom Wodetzki tw@mcn.org

ADDITIONAL PUBLIC MEETING FOR THE HOUSING ELEMENT UPDATE

The County of Mendocino will be holding one additional public meeting to discuss the process of updating its Housing Element. Currently, two workshops have been scheduled for County residents to provide input, ideas and comments on the proposed goals and policies in the Housing Element. The first meeting is Wednesday, August 7, 2019, in Fort Bragg beginning at 6:00 PM, at the Fort Bragg Veteran’s Hall, 360 Harrison Street, and the second meeting will be held on Thursday, August 8, 2019, in Willits beginning at 6:00 PM at the Willits Veteran’s Hall, 189 North Main St. A third meeting has been scheduled for:

August 21, 2019 starting at 6:00 p.m.

Fort Bragg: Fort Bragg Public Library, 499 Laurel Street

If you are unable to attend any of these meetings, comments may be submitted to the Planning and Building Services general email at pbs@mendocinocounty.org.

The Housing Element is intended to address changing county wide community housing needs. As such, this requires regular updating of this document by the local government entity. Additionally, the Housing Element contains an overview of the housing needs in the unincorporated area of Mendocino County. The Element includes an analysis of both the constraints that may impact housing development as well as the resources available to facilitate the Element’s intended goals and policies.

For more information about the Housing Element Update process please contact Mendocino County Planning and Building Services at pbs@mendocinocounty.org or contact Keith Gronendyke at (707) 234-6650.

NO BLOOD MONEY IN OUR BANKS

by Steve Heilig

At last year's San Francisco “March for Our Lives” rally in response to gun violence, speakers urged everyone to divest of any investments they might have in the gun and ammunition industries. They detailed how such investments often are buried in many retirement and pension accounts, mutual funds, and more.

“Are you unknowingly supporting the gun industry?” one young woman pointedly asked.

Why might this matter? We now know all too much of our nation’s tragic and bloody gun violence problem. As this past week has shown, it's getting worse, not better. Beyond being reminded by recurrent mass shootings, the ongoing slaughter includes close to 100 people per day, including suicides. Gun lobbyists argue these are unavoidable, or only “mental health” problems, but the undeniable truth — now known despite efforts to suppress gun-related research — is that where there are more guns, there is more carnage. You just can kill nearly as easily with a knife. This is both a mental health and gun problem, and if we reduced guns in the equation, we'd have less slaughter.

We also know that sane restrictions on gun sales, ownership, storage and use can save lives, are constitutional even under the Supreme Court's Heller ruling upholding the Second Amendment, and are supported by very strong majorities of Americans, including most gun owners. Real improvement will take generations, as there are at least 300 guns out there, but we have to start.

So why the lack of progress? One of the biggest factors in maintaining the tragic status quo is all too well-known: The gun lobby — infamously the National Rifle Association — which kills almost any effort to further regulate guns.

The NRA’s work is really all about money — for the gun and ammo industries, and for themselves. Thus it seems decreasing their profiteering might be an effective tactic to decrease the slaughter. Responsible companies refusing to sell weapons or to advertise or accept advertising of them are good steps. Divestment could be another. Movements to remove organizational and individual investments from unhealthy and objectionable industries and practices, such as the tobacco industry and apartheid in South Africa, have gained medical and public health professional support and had positive impact.

So it’s time to practice what we preach.

I am a 35-year customer of San Francisco’s Wells Fargo bank. I have a substantial account and mortgage with them. I’ve liked that my bank is based here in my home city. But they have had some serious scandals in recent years, including opening fake accounts, and more. And I was also dismayed to read in the New York Times that “Wells Fargo is the largest financier in the nation of the gun industry and is the main bank for the National Rifle Association.” Further research revealed that Wells Fargo has lent more than $400 million to the gun industry in the past half decade — since the slaughter of schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary School — and has remained unapologetic about such practices.

Wells Fargo is changing leadership, including board members and executives, and I have attempted to remain a loyal customer despite the scandals, pending the new leadership’s efforts to confront those.

My local bankers are great and of course are not responsible for their top executives' decisions. One told me she hates what the bosses have done and is embarrassed by it all. I feel for her.

But as a public health professional and medical ethicist, I cannot overlook this link to an industry partly responsible for the ongoing gun violence in our nation. Gun violence is a public health and medical epidemic that cannot be supported, and “thoughts and prayers” aren’t nearly enough. Thus my intent to divest all my resources from Wells Fargo, and to urge others to do likewise. Beyond talking to your own adviser and banker, there are resources online to help do this; goodbyegunstocks.com is just one.

Of course, should Wells Fargo choose to publicly remedy this shameful problem soon, I will gladly reconsider. But I sincerely hope my hometown bank will do the right thing. I am under no illusion that even a true gun/ammo divestment movement will solve our gun crisis, but as so much of this sick and tragic American epidemic is about money and profit, and since the NRA is mired in its own scandals and declining fortunes, maybe every little bit will help.

And by the way, I say all this as an NRA-certified Junior Marksman, so please don't try to shoot at me.

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] Public education is not free. A majority of public school students could just as well not show up and they would be just as “educated”. In fact, students might find themselves more inclined towards self-education if not burned out in those ghettos of learning. I have seen it first hand as a teacher and previously as a student. Our institutions are fraudulent and need to be reconsidered on a mass scale to the demands of our time. Our industrial base is decimated and it follows that a public school system based on the industrial factory model is falling short. The property taxes folks are forced to pay more and more towards would be better served to secure those folks' own well being. Step into a classroom for a year or two and see yourself how respectful students are for their “free” education at the expense of the folks footing the bill. Classic case of stealing from Paul to give to Peter. The worst students run the classrooms. They know there are no consequences and when inclined those students can turn the entire classroom into a zoo at the drop of a hat.

Can’t hit ’em and they can’t be kicked out. Public schooling is a total shit show.

[2] The real problem with the Democratic Party is that it’s the party of urban coastal “top twenty-percenters” of the professional and managerial classes. The past thirty years have a been a s’mores and grape soda party for them, and they expect people who weren’t invited to that little party to be enthusiastic about keeping them in s’mores and grape soda indefinitely. All that other stuff is just a chiffon-thin veneer designed to conceal the party’s abject abandonment of the working class. I don’t expect any of this to end well at all, which is why I don’t get hot and bothered anymore about whatever flavor of Kool-Aid people on the Internet choose to drink these days.

ART HAS TO BE a kind of confession. I don’t mean a true confession in the sense of that dreary magazine. The effort it seems to me, is: if you can examine and face your life, you can discover the terms with which you are connected to other lives, and they can discover them, too — the terms with which they are connected to other people. This has happened to every one of us, I’m sure. You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discovered it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that they are alone. This is why art is important. Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important. Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to them from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it’s true for everybody. Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace. They have to disturb the peace. Otherwise, chaos.

— James Baldwin

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY II

People who live in other countries look at the USA and see insanity. “Yeah, we just need more good guys with guns to shoot the bad guys with guns”. I’ve got guns, maybe 15? they stay locked up in a cupboard and one comes out once in awhile for hunting. Some of these guns have been handed down through the family and are almost 80 years old. Funny, no AR15s or handguns among them. You can own a restricted handgun in Canada, to shoot at a range, only. If you are caught deviating from the route to and from you will lose the gun and maybe your vehicle on top of a big fine. If you have a restricted license and you are pulled over, the RCMP have the right to search your vehicle and home.

We have an asshole who just moved into the neighbourhood. Last week, on a drunk up, he punched a woman friend in the bar when she got in his face, (ain’t drunks grand?), and the RCMP escorted him out, and later checked up on him at home. If there were guns in play, in possesion, someone would have been shot. That is, unless a good guy pulled out his piece first and blew him away. He’s back at work, the mouthpiece went home with her husband, and everyone lived to see another day.

FIBER ART EXHIBIT OPENS AT GRACE HUDSON--AUG. 17

On Saturday, Aug. 17, from 2 to 5 p.m., Grace Hudson Museum will hold a reception for its new exhibit, "Stitching California: Fiber Artists Interpret the State's People, Life, and Land." Several artists participating in this juried show will be present. The event is free and open to the public. The Grace Hudson Museum is at 431 S. Main St. in Ukiah. The Museum is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 4:30 p.m. General admission is $4; $10 per family; $3 for students and seniors; free to all on the first Friday of the month; and always free to members. For more information please go to www.gracehudsonmuseum.org or call (707) 467-2836.