Press "Enter" to skip to content

MCT: Friday, August 9, 2019

* * *

ANOTHER LAKE COUNTY FIRE —

THE GOLF FIRE broke out about 1pm Thursday on a southwestern hillside above Clear Lake in a forested area that was one of the few areas not already burned in prior Lake County fires.

At last report on Thursday evening 19 acres were burned. The fire appeared to be moving up the hillside to the ridgeline above Clear Lake.

(photo by Kent Porter)

Evacuation orders were issued for the 250-home Riviera West Subdivision with over 1200 residents with limited egress. Several dozen homesites are immediately threatened. By late afternoon Calfire’s quick action on ground and in the air resulted in a report of 30% containment.

* * *

HEAT TO RETURN next week. While lower than average temps will prevail Friday and Saturday, with even a chance of showers and thunderstorms Friday night and Saturday morning inland, summer heat is expected to return starting Monday for the rest of the week with highs in the mid- to upper-90s. Light winds, decreasing next week as the temps rise.

* * *

FOLLOWING UP ON Willits City Council woman Madge Strong’s remarks to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

Besides urging the board to enforce Measure V which declared standing dead trees to be a nuisance, Ms. Strong mentioned PG&E's use of pesticides along their right-of-way to clear their lines:

Strong: “Measure V also applies to PG&E. I understand that they are clearing vegetation, but they are not necessarily ‘clearing’ it, they are cutting things down and leaving them strewn around which is another fire hazard. Whether it's private property owners or public utilities or public entities, everybody has an obligation to protect us from fire hazards that threaten all of us. The public passed Measure V by an overwhelming majority.”

After some discussion of Measure V and the now moot request of the Attorney General for an opinion on its enforceability, Supervisor John Haschak later replied: "Ms. Strong made an important point considering what is hanging over us with the power shut-offs. It has also been brought to my attention that there have been some fire hazards created by PG&E and the use of the herbicides, especially where I've seen it along Highway 20 between Willits and Fort Bragg. There is certainly concern about that and the use of herbicides since Caltrans doesn't do it in Mendocino County, doesn't use herbicide. I think PG&E should be respecting that agreement we had with Caltrans and not be using herbicides along the roadside. I would like to see that included in a future letter that would go out to PG&E. PG&E noted that if people didn't want herbicides used on their land that they could call and opt out of that herbicide used by PG&E on private property. My wife [aka the Third District’s Shadow Supervisor] called that number that supposed to be the opt out number several times and the people at PG&E there had no idea what she was talking about. I've heard that from other people too that that number is not viable. I recommend that PG&E have an opt in and if people want herbicide usage that they should give their positive permission. I would like to see those directions given to PG&E since they don't seem capable of having an opt out line that functions properly.”

Board Chair Carre Brown pointed out that they had already sent one letter to PG&E. "We asked them to come back to refocus. We have had no communications since they were last here and we do want them to come back and focus on a number of issues that they could not answer for us previously."

County Counsel Kit Elliott suggested that Hashack’s opt in idea be put on a future agenda. Apparently a representative of the California Public Utilities Commission is expected to appear before the Board on August 20. Haschak agreed to work with County Counsel to ask PG&E to deal with the opt out line problem and the opt in option. Supervisor Ted Williams said he had additional concerns regarding PG&E as well and would work with Haschak in following up.

CEO Carmel Angelo later apologized for PG&E saying their rep is very busy and has been very helpful in the past and the CEO was working to bring her back in front of the Board when the PG&E rep can fit it into her schedule.

TROUBLE IS, that particular PG&E rep, Ms. Alison Talbot of Eureka, is just a liaison type functionary and in no position to commit PG&E to anything, much less to answer specific Mendo-related questions. They need someone much higher in the PG&E hierarchy — but are not likely to get one.

(Mark Scaramella)

* * *

SURPRISE: MRC CLAIMS THEY’RE EXEMPT FROM MEASURE V

Letter to the Editor,

Mendocino Redwood Company would like to comment on the August 7, 2019 article written by Mark Scaramella in Mendocino County Today regarding tanoak treatment. The treatment of tanoak to restore the natural balance of conifer to hardwood is a tool used for decades across the county, the country, and around the world. Small private landowners, industrial landowners, and state landowners all use this tool to achieve this goal in a careful and controlled manner according to state regulations. Mendocino Redwood Company additionally seeks Forest Stewardship Council certification for its forest management activities. This third party certification, born out of standards established in the 1990s by environmental groups, has been achieved by MRC for 19 consecutive years.

MRC was created from lands purchased in Mendocino and Sonoma counties with the publicly declared mission to be good stewards of the forest and at the same time run a successful business. This set a different, sustainable and better path from the legacy of previous owners. This legacy includes tens of thousands of acres of redwood and Douglas fir forest that are now dominated by tanoak. MRC is committed to restoring these forestlands to the natural balance of conifer and hardwood.

Beginning in 1998, when MRC was established, we spent several years on a variety of methods to treat tanoaks (including an ill-fated and expensive effort to make tanoak flooring). After much effort, we concluded the most effective way to bring back a healthy conifer forest in our lifetime was to treat tanoak, selectively, carefully, in the woods, literally tree by tree.

CalFire, the Lead Agency on forest regulations, independently reviews and verifies all Timber Harvest Plans (THPs). THPs are considered a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)-equivalent Environmental Review Document. Among many things, CalFire reviews THPs for fire safety and requires mitigations where appropriate.

MRC has reviewed its internal policies to encourage fire safety. These include procedures and processes we have used for more than a decade, such as:

a. Partnering with communities to place dedicated firewater tanks, improve egress for remote neighbors and coordination of activities with local fire districts.

b. Working in Sacramento to encourage investment in Mendocino county infrastructure through the return of taxes paid locally and deployment of CalFire resources. c. Donations of time, equipment and money to Volunteer Fire Departments.

MRC strengthened its practices to improve coordinating with local fire districts, fire experts, climate experts and CalFire on pilot projects for fuels hazard reduction and additional road access in the remote parts of the County.

After reviewing state and local laws regarding public nuisance, Mendocino Redwood Company determined it was exempt from public nuisance determinations in regards to standing dead trees. See the Mendocino Redwood Company letter to the County of Mendocino at https://www.hrcllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ltr.-CAngelo_MendoCo_7-6-16.pdf.

From our inception we have encouraged transparency and we have a publicly stated policy of taking anyone to anywhere on the property to see our practices first hand. Additionally, we post our inventory and other forest facts on our website. You can find more information at www.mrc.com.

John Andersen

Director, Forest Policy

Humboldt Redwood Company, LLC

Mendocino Redwood Company, LLC

707-272-1177 cell

707-962-2820 office


MIKE KALANTARIAN REPLIES: Lots of standard blah blah with this one high-handed zinger: "After reviewing state and local laws regarding public nuisance, Mendocino Redwood Company determined it was exempt from public nuisance determinations in regards to standing dead trees." That is an amazing statement: We disagree so it doesn't apply to us.

PS. I would like to hear someone explain what the AG's "conflict" might be.

MARK SCARAMELLA ADDS: And the validity of MRC’s amazing statement remains to be seen.

* * *

THE 41ST ANNUAL WESTPORT VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT BARBECUE

The Westport Volunteer Fire Department is sponsoring its 41st Annual Fundraising Barbecue on Saturday, August 17, 2019 from noon to 9 p.m. on the Westport Headlands. Enjoy an afternoon and evening of fun, great food and live music while helping support the Westport Volunteer Fire Department. Admission is free.

Live music will be provided by Lost Johnson Productions and Highway 1 Sound, featuring several great local performers including Mighty T-Bones, the Thorn Petals, Highway 1, Sue Sisk & Danny Barca, Erin Brazill & Derek DiOrio, Steven Bates, Calvin Turnbull and Sarah Flaim. There will also be an after-sunset dance party and light show.

Our famous barbecue features barrel roasted tri-tip, chicken and a vegetarian option. Meal tickets are $15 for adults and $12 for kids under 10. Beer, wine and dessert can also be purchased.

There will be plenty of fun activities for the whole family (sorry, no dogs). Many craft merchants will have their wares for sale. A beautiful quilt and several other great raffle prizes can be won. There will be a silent auction featuring Mendocino wines. Helicopters from Reach/CalStar, CalFire and CHP will be arriving and departing if weather and availability cooperate.

The Westport Volunteer Fire Department provides year-round initial 911 emergency response service for medical emergencies, motor vehicle accidents, traumatic injuries and fires on the Northern Mendocino Coast. Our response area covers roughly 108 square miles, from mile post 72 to the Usal Road turnoff on Highway 1.

* * *

ED NOTES

ANDREW YANG, the tech entrepreneur whose platform consists primarily of the universal basic income, became the ninth Democrat to qualify for the upcoming September debate in Houston, joining mega-hack Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, empty suit Beto O'Rourke, wobbling Kamala Harris, and the glibly vague Cory Booker.


NO SURPRISE that the SMART train is entering a death spiral, announcing yesterday that it would have to extend the "temporary" sales tax, which has so far sustained it. Will the voters pour good money after bad? Probably. The thing is there and it even runs from San Rafael to Santa Rosa, neatly evading major population centers as it goes. Used to be that two trains each way ran from San Rafael to Eureka, with a connecting line running from Willits to Fort Bragg.


EXPLAIN RUSSIAN HISTORY in one sentence: "And then it got worse." (Old Russian joke.)

THIS PHOTO was from the now disbanded homeless camp in Ukiah between CostCo and the railroad tracks.

The Ukiah City Council is now and forever discussing permanent solutions to local homelessness affecting, county-wide, according to the Marbut Report, about 200 people, many of them drug and alcohol addicted. The nut of the prob is what to do with people who, in the days before America lost its way, were placed in state hospitals until they recovered themselves. Ukiah, and Mendocino County, will be discussing the homeless prob for years to come, the discussion led by people paid to discuss it, a major disincentive to practical solutions. When you have a small army of "helping professionals" who make their livings off dysfunction, and leadership that doesn't lead, the dysfunction, here, there and everywhere, is going to continue.


IS IT just me or is the Ukiah Safeway staffed by unhappy people, strikingly unhappy people. I understand the alienation of labor and sympathize with it, but Safeway workers seem to be unhappy beyond the usual misery standard, not even the pro forma, eyes-averted, "How are you today?" Just down the street at the Ukiah Co-Op, the workers are all smiles, virtually dancing at their tasks.


MASS HYSTERIA. Turn on the news and someone is sobbing something like, "My god, I can't even go shopping without worrying I'll ever come home again." Thousands of people fled New York’s Times Square in panic late Tuesday when backfiring motorcycles caused the mob to stampede. Your chances of getting shot on the street, while greater than in most countries, are about as likely as getting killed by a piano falling on your head. Look at it this way: England got bombed every day and night for an entire year during World War Two, and not so much as a public snivel! Suck it up, America!

* * *

FOODSHED NEWS

WE ARE WELCOMING A NEW VENDOR to the Boonville Farmers' Market tomorrow: Odin's Organics Dog Treats! And Forget-Me-Not Flowers will be returning with their beautiful bouquets. Of course all the regulars will be there: Wilder Kombutcha, Inland Ranch with pastured meat and eggs, Cinnamon Bear Farm with fresh veggies, Bramble Family Farms Olive Oil, Agua Fresca and Horchata, The Forest People mushrooms, Angel's Innovations Natural body Care and more. If all that is not enticing enough, you can even get a glass of wine and sit on the deck and listen to Leslie and Michael Hubbert play their sweet music.

Market is from 4-7 in the parking lot of Disco Ranch, see you then!


Bucket Ranch strawberries are coming on strong and they are SWEET and delicious! We are picking about 40-80 flats per week in Boonville, usually on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays. Email kendra@bucketranch.com or call/text 707 845 3851 if you would like to buy any number of overfilled flats for $30 each (there are 12 pint baskets per flat). We are proudly Mendocnio Renegade Certified and these berries were grown organically. Time to stock your freezer for smoothies all year long!

(Ed note: $2.50 a pint is a very good buy for fresh organic strawberries.)


Happy Summer — Looking for excess summer produce (seconds) boxes for making jam, krauts and other healthful goodies. Do you have any excess produce available later this week for pick-up? Fruits, Veggies, Herbs and more :) Also looking for used hand tools for processing produce :) including food mill, mortar and pestle and jars with lids. Much Thanks :) Contact: farmingroots1@gmail.com


C'mon Home to Eat Meeting

C’mon, let’s plan! October is the month that AV Foodshed especially spotlights local food with events, featured articles, challenges, and activities that center on the food grown locally in Anderson Valley. There will be an organizational meeting on Wednesday August 14 at 4:00 p.m. at the tables outside of the General Store. Come share your ideas or send them to avfoodshed@gmail.com

* * *

KOSHER

Dear AVA,

My name is Jacob Silverman and I am currently housed in the Mendocino County Jail — the mental health isolation part of the jail where we are either wearing lime green suits or you get a dark green smock like I like to wear. We get no shirts, blankets, sheets, shoes or even boxers really, I should be in the protective custody part of the jail because that is the safest place I can go without fellow inmates who aren’t already being protected trying to harm me and spit on me and cuss at me. They even try to make my kosher meal not so kosher.

Yes, I'm the only inmate who receives a kosher meal. Boy that was a lot of paperwork pushing. Sorry you hard-working kitchen workers. I'm one of the rarest redheaded Jewish people you'll ever meet. Not only am I stingy, but I'm also a fake, an elder abuser and I can't leave small innocent women and kids alone for anything. Just look up my arrest records online. Go to the people search and you can find any and all of my criminal records. I say this to you because I am soon to get out and I will have a real bad problem. I think I'm going to need all the help I can get from not only the Probation office but also the Ukiah Police Department, the Sheriff's office, the Fish and Game Department and the notorious Covelo tribal police. I can't forget the public either. Please help me with my wild and crazy ways.

Sorry A-Mod for all the loud and nasty things I say to you all. One of these days I will grow up and find out what a level 4 yard is like at the California Department of Corrections.

Sincerely,

Jacob Silverman

Ukiah

* * *

LOCAL RAVEN-ROOK

* * *

JUST BACK FROM MULE CREEK

Dear AVA,

My name is Joshua Hanover. I am currently back from B-Yard Mule Creek State penitentiary in Ione. I'm back because of a child custody hearing on my baby girl Jasmine (Little Foot) and over whom I had an intimate relationship with her mother who was 15 going on 16 at the time in 2017. Around the same time of my famous (Trevor) Jackson 5 crusade. That happened to go bad with a little bit of help from me. Thank you for the help Mr. David Eyster. A big shout out to Mr. Eyster and the fellows down at the District Attorney's Office.

It's alright guys. Jasmine's mother is fine. She finally got her driver's license. Only three more years and she'll be able to go to the bar. I'm just sorry I have got so much time left.

I'm writing really to say that I've got letters sent in from family members who have (to my regret) learned that Trevor Jackson's daughter got taken from her mother by the Mendocino County Social Services department because of my decision to turn state's evidence on not only Trevor Jackson but also Matthew Sturgis, Alex Nunez and, sorry Chino, I wish I could remember your real name. I'll have to go back and look through my paperwork just as soon as I get back to my special needs yard.

Well I should wrap this up. But first let me say thanks again to Mr. Eyster for allowing me to be of service to my county. But sorry to Trevor Jackson. Sometimes casualties fall in my line of work. God bless you Mendocino County. I will see you in eight and a half years. I'm ready to go and ready to work for any and all of you law enforcement officials.

Sincerely,

Joshua “Big Mouth” Hanover A#263

951 Low Gap Road

Ukiah CA 95482

* * *

OH, ON LINE!

Esteemed editors

Some just-print journalists (digital dinosaurs) are a little bit slow. When I got a comment from Jonah Raskin on “Oldie but Goodie” and it wasn’t in the print edition I thought "How the hell did he read that?” And then the little brain storm says “Duh, sweetie, there’s an on-line, go-read-it-there, AVA site." So now I know how he read it.

— Wordscribe Katy Tahja

* * *

CATCH OF THE DAY, AUGUST 8, 2019

Bennett, Couthren, Dearing

JEREMIAH BENNETT, Hendersonville, Tennessee/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

ZEBULON COUTHREN, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

JONI DEARING, Fort Bragg. Trespassing/refusing to leave, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

Gouber, Hollis, Ladd

JACK GOUBER, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting.

JOSEPH HOLLIS, Fort Bragg. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, battery, robbery, brandishing, criminal threats, conspiracy.

CODY LADD, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, parole violation.

Lusby, Marsh-Haas, Miller

ANDREW LUSBY, Ukiah. Tear gas, controlled substance, paraphernalia.

HEATHER MARSH-HAAS, Ukiah. Controlled substance, parole violation.

JEREMY MILLER, Cloverdale/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

Reyes-Ramos, Rivera, Rosales

ANTONIO REYES-RAMOS, Ukiah. Domestic abuse, probation revocation.

PAUL RIVERA, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, disobeying court order.

BENJAMIN ROSALES, Santa Rosa/Calpella. DUI.

Stough, Whipple, Zurita-Paz

WALTER STOUGH, Fort Bragg. Trespassing/refusing to leave, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

DOUGLAS WHIPPLE III, Covelo. Probation violation.

MARCELINO ZURITA-PAZ, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probatioin revocation.

* * *

NANCY PELOSI’S BAD ATTITUDE TOWARD PROGRESSIVES

by Norman Solomon

Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine that a letter from the billionaire real-estate broker George M. Marcus was hand-delivered to the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, asking to meet with her. What are the chances that Pelosi would find time on her calendar?

Hint: Marcus gave $4.5 million to Pelosi’s House Majority PAC during the 2018 election cycle.

Or, if the letter had come from the hedge-fund billionaire James H. Simons -- who gave $10 million to that PAC during the last election cycle -- would his request for a meeting with Speaker Pelosi be granted?

In contrast, we don’t need to speculate about what would happen if Pelosi received a letter from seven progressive organizations “urgently” requesting a meeting to discuss her recent dismissive comments about four progressive congresswomen -- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib.

That’s what happened on July 17, when a letter was hand-delivered to Pelosi’s office in Washington. It was signed by progressive groups with millions of active supporters -- Demand Progress, Democracy for America, Just Foreign Policy, Our Revolution, Progressive Democrats of America, and RootsAction (where I’m national coordinator). It was also signed by the largest caucus of the biggest state party, the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party.

After a delay of more than two weeks, Pelosi’s office replied on August 2: “Unfortunately, Speaker Pelosi is unable to meet at this time. We will be sure to let you know if anything changes in her schedule.”

Pelosi has earned a reputation as a highly skilled legislative manager and a prodigious fundraiser. But her solicitous skills at cultivating wealthy patrons (the top 15 donors gave a total of $37 million to her House Majority PAC during the 2018 cycle) are matched with her rather contemptuous attitude toward progressives who don’t fit into the equations that compute for her on Capitol Hill.

Our letter pointed out that “the ultimate fate of legislative and electoral efforts will depend on active support from millions of people at the grassroots.” But inside the Capitol bubble, Democratic leadership seems to see progressive grassroots energy as more of a threat than an asset.

A month ago, Pelosi went out of her way to disparage Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley and Tlaib for voting against a bill that lacked adequate refugee protections at the U.S.-Mexico border. Pelosi told the New York Times: “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world. But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”

Pelosi later met with Ocasio-Cortez, but that did little to repair the damage. Lost in the media hubbub was the reality that Pelosi didn’t only express thinly veiled contempt toward four deeply progressive congresswomen; she was also conveying a similar attitude toward millions of Americans who share their political outlooks, while many have been drawn into political engagement due to their achievements. As our letter put it, “Dismissive comments about new progressive members of Congress have given the impression of a disdainful attitude toward like-minded progressives and Democratic activists across the country.”

Nor have Trump’s racist tweets about the four congresswomen changed the realities of how destructive it is for Speaker Pelosi to disparage those emerging leaders and their truly national grassroots constituencies. If Pelosi is supposed to strive for evenly piloting the Democratic aircraft as House speaker, why is she periodically throwing smoke bombs at its left wing?

The party should be called to account when its leaders let their ostensible principles slide. Pelosi’s ire at the four dissenting Democratic congresswomen was triggered by their strong opposition to inadequate protection for refugees. As our letter to Pelosi said: “At a time when flagrant institutionalized cruelty, racism, xenophobia, misogyny and other forms of bigotry have reached new depths from Republican leaders, we can ill afford the slightest wavering from unequivocal opposition to such extremism. Efforts to strengthen our resolve should be welcomed.”

At the same time, a key underlying reality is Pelosi’s alignment with corporate Democrats who worry about being primaried in 2020. Two of the four congresswomen in “The Squad” -- Ocasio-Cortez and Pressley -- won their seats by defeating incumbents in Democratic primaries last year. They’ve set a good example for progressives while making many House Democrats nervous.

This week, several thousand constituents have used a RootsAction webpage to send individual emails to House Democrats, telling their representative: “I realize that the Speaker is powerful on Capitol Hill, but I ask you to summon the courage to speak up and push her to permanently stop taking sides against progressive lawmakers.”

As I wrote nine months ago, “progressives should recognize the longstanding House Democratic leader as a symptom of a calcified party hierarchy that has worn out its grassroots welcome and is beginning to lose its grip. Increasingly at odds with the Democratic Party’s mobilized base, that grip has held on with gobs of money from centralized, deep-pocket sources -- endlessly reinforcing continual deference to corporate power and an ongoing embrace of massively profitable militarism.”

At a time when the virulent racism of the Trump regime is becoming more flagrant, it might seem a divergence to challenge the Democratic Party’s leadership. On the contrary. The imperative of preventing Trump’s re-election will require massive engagement and huge turnoutof the Democratic base -- exactly what doesn’t happen when party leaders are aloof, elitist, enthralled with Wall Street and dismissive of genuinely progressive principles.

(Norman Solomon is cofounder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 Democratic National Convention and is currently a coordinator of the relaunched independent Bernie Delegates Network. Solomon is the author of a dozen books including "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.")

* * *

GUNS & DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Misha Valencia in the NY Times:

Every 16 hours, a woman in the United States is fatally shot by a current or former partner. Intimate partner homicide is one of the leading causes of death for women in the country, with nearly half of all murdered women killed by a partner…

Sarah Mervosh in the NY Times:

A new study has found that a higher rate of firearm ownership is associated with a higher rate of domestic violence homicide in the United States, but that the same does not hold true for other kinds of gun homicide.

That means that women, who make up most victims of domestic homicide, are among those most at risk, said Aaron Kivisto, an associate professor of clinical psychology at the University of Indianapolis and the lead author of the study.

“It is women, in particular, who are bearing the burden of this increased gun ownership,” he said…

(Courtesy, District5Diary)

* * *

MEET COOL NEW PEOPLE

Anderson Valley peeps! This is the second festival for OmRising at Camp Navarro this August 16-19th. It's really a festival about being in the redwoods, dancing, yogaing, listening to music and getting to know some cool friendly new people. It's all in the name of creating kindness and community in a time that really needs us to connect other than on social media.

I will be teaching a workshop there as well, on developing your intuition. A skill we ALL have, yet underutilize.

* * *

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

It’s common to bash the political Left and its anything-goes nihilism but I don’t see anything better coming from the Right. Theirs is a lot of pretend piety and patriotism all used as a cover for the real agenda of taking care of their rich paymasters.

How many young guys are unmarriageable because there’s no reliable bread-winner work that would allow for the support of a child-bearing wife and her offspring? But this is the direct result of the agenda of the Right, the mass demolition of a way of life and means of making a living. I think it was a past CEO of GE that said American workers make too much money. Maybe he can pray tell us all just where the fuck the market for GE products comes from if not decently compensated consumers? The gig economy? Blow me.

And so you have a multitude of young guys with no outlet for their prodigious energies, neither a steady job nor a discernible career nor a nubile young chick to return to after a hard day at work.

IMO what you see has got a common thread, whether it’s the regular as the rising sun shoot-em-ups, or the pro-Brexit vote, or the French gilets jaunes rock throwers or the even more violent version in Hong Kong. Life for the common man is getting shittier and shittier and the response of the ruling class is to deplore, to down-play the damage they’ve done to people, or to distract from real material needs by talking about irrelevancies.

Maybe university faculties could take a break from climbing the Everests of unreality and come back down to earth and have a gander at this. Or, on second thought, better not as anything that comes out of those quacks does more harm than good.

* * *

* * *

EDYACATE YERSELF

Take online Mendocino College classes through the AV Adult School!

The AV Adult School is teaming up with Mendocino College to offer all you need to take an online MC class here in AV. We can help you register, provide internet and computer access, and have a teacher available to support you with getting started, oriented, and any technical problems that come up along the way.

New Computer Lab Class,

Mondays 6- 8 p.m. and/or Thursdays 10 am- 12 p.m.

Teacher: Cyd Bernstein

Cost: $11 for the semester (plus the cost of any class you choose to take online)

Registration is 8/14 or 8/15 5-7 pm at the Anderson Valley Adult School/ Escuela de Adultos de Anderson Valley 2300 Anderson Valley way, or call 895-2953 if you need more info. Please spread the word!

AV Adult School

* * *

* * *

SATURDAY NIGHT COVERED

Whitesboro Grange Spaghetti Dinner this Saturday!

It's a beautiful summer here on the coast and who wants to think about cooking when there's so many fun things to do! Well don't worry about dinner on Saturday night because the folks who run Whitesboro Grange have you covered! Join us on Saturday, August 10 from 4 - 7PM for a delicious spaghetti dinner featuring Bob's famous spaghetti sauce (both traditional and vegetarian option available), garlic bread, salad, beverage and dessert - all you can eat for only $8/adult, $4/children 6-12 and under 6 eat free! You won't find those prices at any restaurant in town, and what an opportunity to treat the family to a dinner out! Grange proceeds are used to support local families in need as well as other community service organizations such as the Albion-Little River Volunteer Fire Department, Project Sanctuary, Redwood Coast Senior Center, 4-H, Hospitality House, Veteran's organizations and local food banks. Located one mile south of Albion, turn on Navarro Ridge Road and head eat for 1-1/2 miles. Turn at the Whitesboro Grange sign.

Wendy Meyer, wbmeyer56@gmail.com

* * *

THIS IS A NORMAN ROCKWELL PAINTING called Murder in Mississippi. It depicts the final moments in the lives of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, three civil rights workers killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan 53 years ago this summer for registering people to vote. That's not ancient history. It's not even history. It's current events.

* * *

HOW CAN ANYBODY TELL?

The Board of Supervisors Standing Committee meetings scheduled for August 12, 2019, have been cancelled.

* * *

4000 MILES!

Opening weekend audiences https://youtu.be/lvZPwNQvOZ0 love 4000 MILES! Here's what they are saying:

"Very entertaining evening. The play is wonderfully acted and such a sweet story. Don’t miss this one folks " -- R.D.

"It is heart warming and Jimmy Betts (grandson) and Ann Woodhead (grandma) put on amazing performances." -- L.W.

"What a great cast!" -- K.H.

Amy Herzog's poignant comic drama 4000 MILES, directed by Betty Abramson and featuring Ann Woodhead, Jimmy Betts, Laurel Livezey, and Sidney Droz continues this weekend. Performances are Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 2:00 pm. Tickets are just $25 for adults and $12 for youth 22 and under.

For more information, go to mendocinotheatre.org or call 707-937-4477.

Box office is open at noon!

Director Betty Abramson discussed the play in this YouTube video by Alice Williams: https://youtu.be/8X3cQ_pjV24

Mendocino Theatre Company mendotheatreco@gmail.com

* * *

ARLO GUTHRIE: “Deportee”

* * *

CITY OF POINT ARENA HOUSING WORKSHOP, August 13 at 6:00 p.m. in the City Council Chambers at 451 School Street regarding the Draft 2019-2027 Housing Element Update.

Residents of Point Arena are encouraged to attend the hearing where they will be given the opportunity to provide input on this proposed Housing Element Update. All interested parties are welcome to attend the meeting or provide written comments via mail to PO Box 67, Point Arena, CA 95468 or by email to admin@pointarena.ca.gov (mailto:admin@pointarena.ca.gov)

A copy of the Draft Housing Element Update and a comment form are available on the City’s website, https://cityofpointarena.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c164a8c82a2a5af8db4de85b1&id=9ef32b3f46&e=d0e3cdc057.

More information is available at the following link: https://cityofpointarena.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c164a8c82a2a5af8db4de85b1&id=cb4988a41c&e=d0e3cdc057

Paul Andersen, Deputy City Clerk

City of Point Arena

* * *

* * *

I LAY IN BED THAT TUESDAY MORNING and thought: This is the system that I have been working for, the system I have been part of, for a dozen years — fifteen, including the Marine Corps. It’s a system that lies automatically, at every level from bottom to top—from sergeant to commander in chief—to conceal murder. That described, as I had come to realize from my reading that month [the Pentagon Papers], what that system had been doing in Vietnam, on an infinitely larger scale, continuously for a third of a century. And it was still going on. I thought: I’m not going to be part of it anymore. I’m not going to be part of this lying machine, this cover-up, this murder, anymore.

Daniel Ellsberg, “Secrets”

* * *

TRIBUTE TO PAUL KRASSNER with Michael Simmons, Jonah Raskin, and Judy Gumbo Albert

Rag Radio Today!
2-3 p.m. (CT) Friday, August 9, 2019
KOOP 91.7-FM, Austin, TX

Today, Thorne Dreyer's guests are journalist and musician Michael Simmons, author and former Yippie Jonah Raskin, and original Yippie Judy Gumbo Albert. This is the second of three Rag Radio tributes to the late Paul Krassner -- legendary social satirist, editor of The Realist, and a founder of the Yippies, and our dear friend and colleague -- who passed away July 21 at the age of 87.

Streamed Live: https://www.koop.org/listen-now

* * *

ART OPENING IN WESTPORT

Jacquelyn Cisper's Art Opening at The Westport Hotel and Old Abalone Pub. This evening (friday August 9th) 5-6:30pm. Come on up to the beautiful Westport Hotel and enjoy snacks, drinks and live music by Christopher Cisper, while you view the art show and meet the artist. Then maybe make an evening of it and stay on for dinner?

https://www.facebook.com/events/431180740809528/

The show will be up through mid September so if you don't get a chance
tonight you can check it out another day.

* * *

PANAMA CANAL DROUGHT: Restrictions Placed on Ship Cargo — “The Worst Drought In History”

The Panama Canal, and Central America more broadly, is experiencing one of the worst droughts in its recorded history. With less water, the canal is forced to place restrictions on the number of cargo ships can carry, meaning carriers have to limit the shippers they can serve on routes that rely on this waterway.

mfame.guru/panama-canal-drought-restrictions-placed-on-ship-cargo/

* * *

* * *

A BRIEF HISTORY OF EARLY MENDOCINO COUNTY

by Bruce Anderson

Feliz Creek today, where it passes beneath highway 101 at Hopland is, in the summer, a parched expanse of dry streambed that is barely discernible as a watercourse. Only when it comes alive in the winter as it runs off from its headwaters in the west hill and on into the Russian River can you get some idea of how crucial it once was to the pre-mission Indians traveling from Clearlake to the Pacific. They walked west up the seam of the Feliz into the hills separating Hopland from the Anderson Valley, pausing at the Feliz headwaters at the western tip of what is now the McNab Ranch before they walked over the ridge and into the Anderson Valley near Yorkville, and from Yorkville along what is now Fish Rock Road over the last hurdle of the Coast Range mountains to the Pacific. Indians made that annual trek for thousands of years.

There's a spirit rock at the Feliz Creek headwaters, a huge boulder covered with laboriously encrypted symbols carved into it over the millennia, thousands of years of directions, fertility prayers, perhaps statements of gratitude for the easy abundance enjoyed at the Edenic meadow the spirit rock sits in.

The Feliz Creek spirit rock stopped functioning as a pre-historic message board about the time of the Gold Rush when the Indians were suddenly ripped out of their ancient ways of life and began to die in large numbers. But on still nights, a mere five miles from interminable 101, it's easy to imagine this paradise as the Indians found it — thick with Feliz Creek's annual migrations of steelhead and salmon, and an unending amplitude of nourishing flora and fauna. These days, far below the spirit rock, at Hopland, a tourist interlude on Highway 101, there's an enterprise called Real Goods that sells unresourceful rich people the expensive technology they think they need to live like the Indians of the Spirit Rock time.

In two hundred years California has gone from Junipero Serra to California Cuisine and the computer. The ad-sals, as Mendocino County Indians called the white invaders, started slow but were soon everywhere, the first of them arriving in Mendocino County to stay in 1848.

The Indians predicted in their ghost dance prayers of the 1880's and 1920's that the ad sals would eventually be swallowed up in great cataclysms and they, the true people, the Indians, would resume living the old way they’d lived for millennia before the destructive invaders had descended upon them.

The Spanish missions were established in California late in the 18th century. They were the work of father Serra who'd walked on his martyrs bare feet from Mexico to Monterey. A garrulous fanatic, Serra committed himself to "slipping the gentle yoke of Christ” over the heads of "neophytes," as unyoked Indians were called by the Franciscans, all of whom had been born in Spain. The Indians resisted the yoke, and many died in a resistance so fierce and unyielding that they killed the babies born of rapes by the Spanish soldiers who accompanied the missionaries up and down Spanish California from San Diego to San Rafael and Sonoma.

The saving of Indian souls and the training of their bodies in the organized labor that would make the missions prosper was the earthly goal of the missionary effort. Dangling an irresistible amalgam of regular meals and eternal life, with Spanish soldiers standing by to make sure the Indians stayed with the padres when hospitality hour was over, the Franciscans had their first free labor.

In a kind of cosmic irony, the religion of the pre-mission Indians, complete with one god and an after life whose rewards were based on one's earthly behavior, was very similar to the one imposed on them by the padres and their body guards.

Men separated from women, men and women separated from their tribes, many of the Indians of California south of what became the Sonoma-Mendocino county line were soon highly trained serfs whose skilled labor made the missions rich. The missionized Indians spoke Spanish, and had quickly become the fabled vaqueros essential to the success of the cattle-dependent land grant rancheros that had been established in the vastnesses surrounding the missions. Indian women were just as essential to the patrician comforts of the land grant estanzas as skilled household workers.

Heavy handed imperialists that they were, Spain, the monks, and the Mexicans who came after Spain and the monks, regarded Indians as human beings with souls worth saving; the ensuing Yankees saw the Indians as so many sub-human pests, and would wipe them out in the two murderous decades beginning with the Gold Rush.

The first Americanos to arrive in California in force, the gold seekers of '49, considered Indians as vermin, Mexicans as greasers, blacks as slaves, Chinese as yellow peril, and each other as snakes, but only Indians were killed recreationally. As a government report put the casual extermination of California's native peoples, “Never before in history has a people been swept away with such terrible swiftness.”

The missions absorbed Indians, Christianized them, Spanish soldiers and Mexican settlers married them, trained them as ranch hands and domestics, and preferred not to murder them so long as they remained docile and productive. Which they didn't. Early California history is replete with large-scale Indian uprisings and attacks on the missions and the Mexican rancheros and then the Yankee settlers.

Early on, European, Mexican and Yankee visitors would make the inevitable naked savage observation and then, in the same paragraph, marvel at how well the Indians seemed to do in all sorts of weather, how finely made and attractive Indian basketry was, how beautifully functional their cold weather clothing was. But the civilized men never took the next logical step in recognizing and being instructed by the genius of a people so perfectly at home in the abundance of the world as they found it.

One of the more thoughtful European observers did, however, came close to perceiving the root of Indian resistance. “You often hear of civilized men going native and never wanting to return to their former lives, but the desire among primitive people for civilization is non-existent.”

Once the Indians south of Mendocino County were thoroughly missionized — or dead — and the padres were confident that these “neophytes” believed that the mission life was superior to life back home with the tribe, the Christianized Indians would be sent out into the outback to bring in their wild brothers and sisters as replacement labor for the Indian labor lost to white man disease. By the time Mexico realized that the mission formula — armed proselytization — had created a string of highly prosperous outposts from San Diego to San Rafael and Sonoma, Mexico was inspired to declare independence from Spain and the missions privatized and parceled out to the well-connected.

That was it for the missions, a mere fifty years. California would belong to independent Mexico until the Gold Rush, less than thirty years after the last mission was privatized.

History was picking up speed.

The first mission at San Diego was established in 1769.

Spain and the Franciscan monks ruled California from their headquarters in Mexico City until Mexico declared independence from Spain in 1821.

Mexico loosely presided over distant California from 1821 until 1850.

In 1834, some eight million more acres of California had become the vast ranches of roughly 800 grantees, their domains reaching as far north as Hopland, hence the prevalence of the surname Feliz today after that first grandee.

A typical land grant was ten square miles. These economically independent, self-sustaining ranchos were empires unto themselves. They grazed thousands of cattle, sheep and horses, and employed hundreds of missionized, Spanish-speaking Indians who made these sprawling fiefdoms as prosperous as fairy tale kingdoms.

The Gold Rush began in 1848, and California was a state by 1850 with uncharted Mendocino among its founding counties, but governed for nearly ten more years from the Sonoma County seat at Santa Rosa.

By the time of the Gold Rush, with Mexico exerting what government it could over the Yankee-dominated, restive new population of California, Mexican land grants had been established everywhere in the state as far north as what is now the Mendocino County line. There were two undeveloped land grants in the Ukiah Valley, but only the one based in Hopland was a working ranchero. Two Mexican aristocrats were given land in the Ukiah valley but they never established ranches on it. Hopland was as close as the outside world got to Mendocino County before 1850, apart from slave-taking expeditions into the Ukiah and Anderson valleys by Spaniards, then Mexicans, then Yankees as early as the first years of the 19th century.

The Gold Rush finished the Indians. The world rushed in so fast that the Indians of Northern California were engulfed, the Mendocino County Indians with them. By 1850, a 150-ton steamer, the Jack Hays, was hauling gold prospectors from San Francisco up the Sacramento River to Red Bluff, and Red Bluff was just over the Mayacama Mountains from what was inland Mendocino County in the new state of California.

While all the Spanish missionizing and Mexican land granting had gone on in the greater Bay Area, Mendocino County slept on, ancient ways unmodified by the missions, and only occasionally affected by missionized Indians. The only reason Spaniards and then Mexicans came north to Mendocino was to capture Indians for slave labor either on the missions or the rancheros spread around the great San Francisco Bay. But when Redick McKee made his long, post-Gold Rush slog from Sonoma to Humboldt Bay in 1851 — nine days from Laytonville to Fortuna alone — to convince the inland Indians to assemble themselves in area reservations, the Indians listened to “the little white father's” pitch then rejected it. As McKee himself put it, “They had seen a few white men from time to time, and the encounters had impressed them with a strong desire to see no more, except with the advantage of manifest superiority on their own part.”

McKee was the first Indian agent appointed for Northwestern California. (In an irony of local history it was a man named McKee who played a huge role in the back-to-the-land movement of the 1960s and 70s. The latter-day McKee sold thousands of acres of logged-over Mendocino and Humboldt county land to “hippies” on very easy terms.)

The first McKee’s instructions were to protect Indians by establishing reservations for them from Lake County north to the Klamath and Trinity rivers because Indians, wherever white miners and homesteaders had appeared, were being murdered in very large numbers. McKee's mission failed, and the Indians were finished as coherent tribal entities in another decade.

Little White Father McKee, incidentally, on his endless slog north from Clearlake, stopped by the cabin of the Ukiah Valley's first settler, George Parker Armstrong. A member of the McKee expedition, George Gibbs, would write, “We found a small building of logs, or rather poles filled in with clay, and thatched with tule. Its furniture was somewhat incongruous; for upon the earthen floor and beside a bull's hide partition, stood huge china jars, camphor trunks, and lacquered ware in abundance, the relics of some vessel that had been wrecked on the coast during last spring.”

George Parker Armstrong! Mendoland's first aesthete!

North of the Feliz land grant estate based at Sanel, as Hopland was then known, the Indians lived as they had for ages, mostly untouched but fully aware, and already wary, of the white civilization mestastazing south and east of them. The Northcoast Indians weren't “living naked in a state of innocence and ignorance,” as an early visitor to Northern California put it; they were merely unaware of the murderous imperialism about to overwhelm them, a people without guile, defenseless against people who were all guile.

No one among the early ad-sals admired the Indians as they found them — perfectly, ingeniously adapted to their world. The newcomers simply wanted what they saw as virgin land for their cattle, horses, hogs, and homesteads; the Indians were in the way. Literally. With their traditional food sources immediately disrupted by the settlers' cattle and horses, the Indians tried to live as best they could, begging or stealing from the homesteaders. But there was barely enough food for the settlers let alone whole colonies of disoriented brown people, and the homesteaders, struggling for survival themselves, murdered their desperate neighbors as simply one more obstacle to their success in the new land.

The Yorkville Indians tattooed their young women's chins because the Indians said the tattoos repulsed Catholic slave traders. Descendants of pioneer Anderson Valley families nevertheless wrote that the Spaniards were benign explorers who only wanted to extend European civilization into southern Mendocino, hence dewy-eyed statements like this one: “The visits of these Bueno Hombres with their religion, not greatly unlike that of the Indians, had a lasting impression on the Ma-cum-maks as they lived side by side with their kindly Spanish settlers.”

Also in the first quarter of the 19th century, parties of trappers, Russians with their Aleut-Pomo body guards, along with French, English and American trappers and mountain men, passed through even the remotest areas of inland Mendocino, some of them with their Indian wives and children in contingents of a hundred or so, the children suspended from horses and mules in the woven willow traveling cages that were the car seats of the time. And long before these ghostly parties passed through Sonoma and Mendocino counties, Sir Francis Drake had put in at Marin County where he marveled that a single Indian could easily carry burdens it took two or three of his sailors to lift, let alone move.

By 1840 the Russians had exhausted the sea otters that their outpost at Fort Ross depended on for cash flow and had sold Fort Ross and much of Bodega to John Sutter, the freebooting Swiss who, you might say, was California's first credit card entrepreneur, parlaying his mere signature with Honolulu merchants into an astounding 48,000-acre agricultural community just north of today's Sacramento that Sutter called New Helvetia. Sutter also bought and sold Indians, as did most of the early, pre-Gold Rush settlers the Mexican government had given land and citizenship to.

When the Russians sold out to Sutter and sailed out of Fort Ross just before the Gold Rush, Sutter dismantled the settlement, hauling everything he could use over to his Sacramento estates, first by sea down the coast to San Francisco Bay then up the Sacramento River to New Helvetia and Sutter's experimental farm and retreat at his Hock Farm on the Feather River not far from the Sutter Buttes you see to the east off 1-5. General Vallejo gave Sutter permission to drive the Russians’ surplus cattle and sheep through Sonoma and east on into the Sacramento Valley. Sutter outfitted his small army of the biggest Indians he could find in the uniforms of Czarist Russia left over from Fort Ross. They must have been an impressive sight galloping through the Sacramento Valley, and as a fighting force, Sutter's Indian army greatly intimidated the under-manned Mexican garrisons of the Bay Area in between their primary job of policing the always restive Indians of the Sacramento Valley.

Sutter had fully absorbed the successful formulas for prosperous colonization he'd seen at frontier forts east of the Rockies, which also ran on Indian serfs, and he'd seen the Russians’ thriving militarized outposts at Sitka, Bodega and Fort Ross, all of which were also dependent on Indian labor recompensed by free room and board, chits for purchases at the company store, and the coarse cotton Mexican manta shirts the Indians prized. Some Indians liked these arrangements, most didn't.

There were constant Indian rebellions throughout the mission and Mexican occupations, all of them foiled by the political genius of General Vallejo who'd made the 6'7” Solano, chief of all the tribes of the North Bay, his enforcer. The giant Solano was also giantly gifted. He learned to speak a perfect Spanish and an English superior to that of many English-speakers. Vallejo and Solano negotiated with dissident tribes when they could, ruthlessly suppressed those tribes with whom there was no negotiating.

By the time of the Gold Rush, enormous and enormously prosperous land grant cattle and sheep ranches checkered the state all the way north to Rancho Feliz at Hopland. The politically nimble General Vallejo served as regional administrator of the vast missionized land grant areas between San Francisco and Mendocino and Lake counties. He called his domain the Northern Frontier.

Indian women married into Spanish and Mexican families, and missionized Indian-Mexican men married unmissionized Indian women, and the new European-American ways of living thus radiated outward into southern Mendocino, mostly from the land grant Rancho Feliz in the present-day Hopland valley.

Rancho Feliz Indians had, since the founding of the vast rancho at Hopland, been related to Mendocino County Indian families in the coastal areas of the county. Ad-sal surnames like Azbill and Lincoln became prevalent in eastern Mendocino County, while Indians descended from the Spanish, then the Mexican periods of California, were named Cruz and Feliz and Lopez and Oropeza and Ortiz; descendants of those first mixed families still thrive in contemporary Mendocino County.

Steve Knight was one of the founders of the California Indian Brotherhood whose first meeting was convened in Ukiah in the winter of 1926. Knight is certainly among the most talented sons of Mendocino County. He steadfastly represented and defended the interests of the Indians of Mendocino County to white authority at all levels of government, up to the federal government. His was among the most articulate voices in summarizing the transition from Mexican to American rule as it affected Mendocino County Indians:

"Mexican people built no missions up here, so the Indians were allowed to live pretty much as they had been before and after the Mexicans came, and the Indians were given certain areas of land to use to grow things for themselves. They built brush fences around them, had their homes there, planted gardens, had corn and everything they needed to eat on these places. When the Americans superseded the Mexicans the Indians were aware of the change — they seem to have known there was a change — they didn't resent the Americans coming in where there was just a few came in, but finally then the miners came in by the hundreds and by the thousands, then trouble arose between the Indians and the whites. Then the American government sent agents among the Indians to make treaties with them in order to get the Indians on reservations where they might be protected, but mostly to forestall Indian uprisings. These agents came out, made treaties with the Indians, promising them certain reservations. The Indians signed these treaties in good faith. They thought these treaties were final when they signed their name to them — they did not know it had to have the approval of the Senate of the United States, so the Indians were expecting to be moved onto the new reservations, but these new promised reservations were being filled up by white settlers. Then those Indians realized that they had been fooled. But the old people up to very recent times (the 1920s) believed that the government would make some other settlement with them. These treaties were pigeon-holed in the archives of the United States Senate for 50 years. No one ever saw them until after the 50 year term had expired. Someone then dug them up and made a few copies of some of the treaties. When these old Indians were told about the treaties having been recovered from the archives they became very much interested and told the younger Indians about how these treaties were made, by whom signed.”

In January of 1848, before his Indian, Hawaiian and Mormon workers deserted him for the gold fields, and before the mobs of gold seekers overran Sutter's thriving estates, California was estimated to be home to 7,500 Spanish Californians; 6,500 foreigners; 3-4,000 former mission Indians living near towns or on ranchos. "Wild" Indians were not counted in this rough census; no one had any idea how many of them there were in the great unknown between Sonoma and the Oregon territory.

By 1850, the criminal drifters who had not struck it rich in the gold fields began wandering through Mendocino County's untouched magnitudes, much of it perfect country for the raising of sheep and cattle. Mendocino County's empty solitude surprised these first ad-sals; the rest of the state was already mostly claimed. The Mendocino County ad-sals couldn't believe their good fortune, and they weren't about to share it with the people who'd lived harmoniously in it for 12,000 years.

The first permanent white residents of the remote mountains and canyons of the Northcoast were killers and outlaws, many of them on the run from the settled areas of the country. The law was a late arrival to Northern California and, I would say from my contemporary experience, never has fully prevailed.

As the relentless Confederate sons of Missouri staked out Mendocino County's myriad, well-watered little valleys, they shot Indian men where they found them, helped themselves to Indian women, sold Indian children into slavery, rez-ed the Indians they hadn't managed to kill, indentured them, and segregated them for the next one hundred years.

Ukiah's schools were only integrated in 1924. Aggressively opposed by a majority of white residents, the Ukiah schools were finally pried open by court order in 1923, with Steve Knight leading the charge. The rest of the town remained segregated up through the 1950s with a nastiness as mean and low-down as the segregated American South. Indian women could not get their hair done in the town's beauty parlors, Indians were not allowed to try on clothes, let alone purchase them in the shops of the county seat, Indians could eat only in one Chinese-owned restaurant, and Indians were allowed in one Indian-only section of the Ukiah Theater. Two decorated Indian veterans of World War Two were denied breakfast at the Blue Bird Cafe when they got off a northbound Greyhound. Ukiah wouldn’t get all the way color blind until deep into the 1960s.

* * *

FOUND OBJECT

7 Comments

  1. Bruce Anderson August 9, 2019

    Uh, the Norman Rockwell painting. I don’t think so. Doesn’t look like anything else he ever did. One of you aesthetes out there please authenticate.

  2. Harvey Reading August 9, 2019

    FOUND OBJECT

    Which will be the first woman president? The second?

    • Lazarus August 9, 2019

      FOUND OBJECT
      Not even with “a 10-foot pole.”
      As always,
      Laz

  3. Harvey Reading August 9, 2019

    “IS IT just me or is the Ukiah Safeway staffed by unhappy people, strikingly unhappy people. I understand the alienation of labor and sympathize with it, but Safeway workers seem to be unhappy beyond the usual misery standard, not even the pro forma, eyes-averted, “How are you today?” Just down the street at the Ukiah Co-Op, the workers are all smiles, virtually dancing at their tasks.”

    Sounds similar to what happened to the local Safeway here. The idiot store manager destroyed employee morale and ran the store into the ground, to the point that Safeway closed it (rather than firing the incompetent). Now we have a grocery store and a half, locally, counting Walmart. The local Kroger empire store is showing signs of stress, too, so, before long we may have only Walmart. Aint corporations grand?

    The employees at the now-closed Safeway would sometimes reminisce about the good ol’ days, when clerks and butchers and produce workers made a decent living, with good benefits, long, long ago, before scumballs like Reagan and complicit democrats, like Ted Kennedy, came along and much-weakened unions allowed them to call the shots.

  4. Alethea Patton August 9, 2019

    Mendocino Redwood Company seems to be very proud of its Forest Stewardship Council rating. The FSC rating allows Mendocino Redwood Company to charge a premium for the lumber they harvest and sell. Maybe instead of trying to appeal to MRC to adopt practices that do not use herbicides and put the citizens of Mendocino County at great fire risk, we should make an organized effort to appeal to the Forest Stewardship Council to pull MRC’s rating until the company operates in a truly sustainable and responsible manner.

    I make the better part my living as a house designer and always specify that FSC lumber be used in the construction of my designs. I do this in an effort to support a lumber industry that uses less destructive logging practices. What are my clients getting for their money by purchasing FSC lumber? How did the FSC determine that slash and squirt is a “sustainable” and responsible practice?

    Since moving to Mendocino County and seeing first hand how irresponsible MRC is in their stewardship of their forests; leaving huge slash piles wherever they log and employing “slash and squirt” policies on Tanoak (the Beautiful Tree), I am beginning to wonder if the FSC rating actually means anything. Come on citizens of Mendocino County – let’s put pressure on the Forest Stewardship Council – maybe that will make a difference.

  5. Joanie Stevens August 9, 2019

    re:Safeway. Safeway was bought out a couple of years ago. Since that time workers cannot depend on regular shifts or regular hours. Many shifts were cut and that’s why there are never enough checkers or folks to help in the deli, produce etc.

Leave a Reply to Alethea Patton Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

-