MCT: Saturday, August 10, 2019

• Epstein End
• Eddie McKenzie
• Thunderstorm
• Golf Fire
• Rattlesnake Bite
• Senior Talk
• Protest Cancelled
• Adult School
• Ban Rhys
• FSC Rating
• Firewood Needed
• Lunchbreak
• Dangerous Driving
• Weed Busts
• Yesterday's Catch
• Rude Awakening
• Mendo Startups
• News Frazzle
• Mental Plan
• Dem Demise
• Gary Webb
• Uncivil Warring
• Domestic Terrorists
• Dutch Savage
• Pres Twit
• Ukiah Symphony
• Travel Advisory
• Changing Landscape
• Slow Start
• Republican Party
• Nation Sunk
• Library Receipt
• Marco Radio

JUST IN: Billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan on Saturday. The 66-year-old was awaiting trial on charges of conspiracy and sex trafficking. The charges carried up to 45 years in jail. He was accused of arranging to have sex with girls as young as age 14 in the early 2000s at his properties in Manhattan and Florida. Epstein’s death comes just one day after the court unsealed more than 2,000 pages of documents detailing the lurid allegations of his sexual abuse of underage girls. His suicide occurred just two weeks after Epstein attempted to take his own life on July 24. He was found semiconscious at the time and had visible injuries on his neck, both signs of a possible suicide attempt.  

MASS OF MOISTURE OFF POINT ARENA 6:30 PM

And it's headed our way!

Friday evening weather radar indicated that a mass of storm clouds would move across northern Mendocino County overnight with a patch of rainfall making landfall on the south coast late afternoon and then dissipating by Saturday morning as it approaches Willits. And, as expected, rain (maybe a tenth of an inch) lightning and rolling thunder arrived in Boonville around 8:30pm, scaring cats, and sparking fears of lightning fires but also dampening the ground and lowering evening temps. But by 9pm or so it had moved further inland.

GOLF FIRE NEAR CLEARLAKE EXPECTED TO BE FULLY CONTAINED BY SATURDAY

KELSEYVILLE (CBS SF) 2:30pm, Friday, August 9 — The 33-acre vegetation Golf Fire burning in south Lake County was 30 percent contained Friday morning, Cal Fire said.

The fire started around 1 p.m. Thursday on Soda Bay Road and Golf Drive. Forty structures were threatened but none were damaged, Cal Fire said.

Full containment is expected on Friday, according to Cal Fire.

Evacuations were ordered in the Riviera West residential area bordering Clear Lake and an evacuation center was established at the Kelseyville High School on Main Street in Kelseyville.

Repopulation of the Riviera West area is expected late Friday afternoon, and an advisory evacuation of the Riviera Heights area also is expected this afternoon.

Soda Bay Road was closed from Golf Drive to Crystal Drive, but the closure will be evaluated this afternoon, Cal Fire said.

PG&E, which de-energized electric power in the area, is anticipating restore power after it inspects power lines, according to Cal Fire.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

(KCBS News)

MAN BITTEN BY RATTLESNAKE AT PHILO VINEYARD

The scanner said (9:37 am) the Anderson Valley Fire Department, CalFire, ambulance #7420 and an air ambulance were dispatched to the tasting room of the Husch Vineyards, 4400 Highway 128, Philo for the report of a "21-year-old male, rattlesnake bite on the hand."

At 9:48 am, however, the entire response except for the ground ambulance was canceled.

It was interesting to note that the Ukiah Valley Medical Center (UVMC) DOES have anti-snake venom in its inventory.

AV Ambulance arrived at the scene @ 9:50 am. The ambulance said @ 9:56 am they would be "transporting one patient Code 2 (no lights/siren) to UVMC." The hospital also asked the ambulance to inform them if they should get the anti-venom ready.

(Via MendocinoSportsPlus)

AV VILLAGE EVENT: This Sunday at 4pm Dr. Mark Apfel will discuss End-Of-Life Issues and Options at the AV Senior Center. Our monthly gathering will be at the AV Senior Center this time. Hope you can join us for refreshments and a talk with our own Dr Mark Apfel on end-of-life issues and options - including POLST (Physician’s Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment) and DNR. We will also provide everyone with an ICE (in case of emergency) card to keep in your purse/wallet.

DARN IT - SUNDAY PROTEST OVER ANYTHING CANCELED

Well, now we'll have a void in our schedule. The one-person protest in Fort Bragg Sunday @ 11:00 am has been CANCELLED - darn it. This was the announcement Friday on the MCNlistserv: "Sunday's Protest at Fort Bragg City Hall Canceled. Sorry to cancel. We'll have to stand against fascism another day."

(via MendocinoSportsPlus)

OUTLAW WINEMAKER SHOULD BE BARRED FROM OPERATING IN MENDOCINO COUNTY

by Jim Shields

You could say the Silicon Valley “tech entrepreneur and winemaker,” aka, Entitled One-Percenter, got off easy with $3.76 million in penalties for criminally thumbing his nose at county and state regulations and laws.

To Kevin Harvey, the owner of a Branscomb area 4,500 acre ranch, the nearly $4 million in fines is mere pocket change.

Real justice would have called for the fines plus a permanent shutdown order for the vineyard operation. After all, Harvey is an outlaw.

Under state laws regulating marijuana, outlaw cultivators who commit environmental crimes are permanently barred from growing.

State Water Board and Fish and Wildlife officials say Harvey never obtained a single permit.

According to the State Water Resources Control Board (my boss at the Laytonville County Water District), Harvey was assessed $3.7 million in penalties for committing multiple violations of the federal Clean Water Act while developing a hillside property that straddles the South Fork Eel River and North Fork Ten Mile River watersheds in Mendocino County.

“The illegal and permanent loss of wetlands and streams caused by the vineyard construction was an egregious violation of state and federal law,” said Josh Curtis, assistant executive officer of the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board (North Coast Water Board). “This settlement demonstrates our commitment to protecting and restoring our region’s waters and maintaining a level playing field for the vast majority of the region’s vineyard operations who work proactively to meet or exceed environmental regulations.”

According to a statement issued by the Water Board, “A multiagency inspection team discovered a series of illegal activities on the 20-acre vineyard, including the permanent fill and loss of a half-acre of wetlands and 2,148 feet of a stream channel buried beneath the property. The development also involved the improper construction of roads and stream crossings – causing irreparable harm to already fragile wetlands – and was conducted without the required permits or authorization from state agencies.”

Harvey’s Rhys Vineyards spans 4,591 acres over 41 parcels in and around the North Fork Ten Mile River watershed and nearby outlying areas of Mendocino County. In addition to the Clean Water Act, the infractions violated the state’s Water Code, North Coast Water Quality Control Plan, and Fish and Game Code.

The investigation, and ensuing settlement negotiations, involved the State Water Board, North Coast Regional Water Board and Department of Fish and Wildlife, and stretched over four years.

A State Water Board official explained the settlement represents a substantial and unique agreement involving multiple agencies and Water Board programs, and a significant penalty coupled with required corrective actions.

The settlement requires Rhys Vineyards to pay approximately $1.89 million of the $3.7 million penalty to fund two habitat restoration projects: One is a supplemental environmental project (SEP) in the nearby South Fork Ten Mile River, overseen by the Nature Conservancy, to restore aquatic habitat to support resident fisheries and wildlife. The other is a project to enhance instream habitat in Dutch Charlie Creek managed through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

The agreement also requires the vineyard to correct the entire road network on the property, mitigating or eliminating future sediment impacts. This kind of soil erosion, from the hillside to the watershed below, is a major source of pollution on properties throughout the region. Excessive sediment negatively impacts the migration, spawning, and reproduction of salmonid species, such as endangered Chinook and Coho salmon and steelhead trout, found within the impacted watersheds.

“The extraordinary coordination of enforcement actions among the agencies was instrumental in bringing Rhys Vineyards into compliance and results in significant downstream fisheries restoration,” said Julé Rizzardo, an assistant deputy director in the State Water Board’s Division of Water Rights. “We believe the extent of the cooperation is a road map for future joint actions that will protect California’s precious environmental resources.

Rizzardo also said, ”The settlement resolves the vineyard’s violations with two stipulated orders, an order addressing water rights violations issued by the State Water Board and an order addressing water quality violations issued by the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.”

State officials did a commendable job in bringing Mr. Harvey to justice, however it’s incomplete. He has forfeited his right to operate a vineyard in Mendocino County, if not the entire state.

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

ALETHEA PATTON WRITES: 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.

WEARY, BUT UNDAUNTED

AVA,

Today we start "new spelling" a scheme popular and promoted during Teddy Roosevelt’s administration. It works like this: you spell the words like you speak them. Example: instead of “use to be great” it now will be “usta be great.” The idea didn't take off but we like it.

We now scan over the July 31 issue of the AVA.

The first page, the leadoff writers, Jim Shields and Jonah Raskin. The first a good reporter and editor exposes Monstrous Behavior. Raskin highlights social concerns and culture through the wine country murder mystery murk that pays.

Bruce Anderson, muckraker supreme, exposes, enlightens, puts down, elevates and amuses as always.

Bruce McEwen, the Albion Nation's and Mendo’s greatest court reporter, reports a victory of the working-class son over his Ph.D. father. Viva justice!

The letters are always a favorite and the biggest surprise was when I started to read “modern tech dooms us.” I got excited. The writer was penning all the ideas we have always expressed. We were stoked! Blown away to find out while reading further that the author was “The Mad Trumpster, "Jerry of the Apes" Philbrick. We both admire Tom Allman and we both breathe in and out, but that's about all we share in common. Or is it?

Pebbles Trippet deserves our greatest respect and admiration for her sane and outspoken defense of masturbation. First we have ever seen in a major newspaper.

Jack Magne warns us of the dangers of the proposed asphalt plant near Willits. Next a letter from my personal hero, Peter Lit (who bailed me out of Low Gap after too long of a stay) who laments over the utility of protest and we get the point.

Yesterday, August 6, Hiroshima Day, we got picked up hitchhiking from Albion to Mendocino by a contemporary gal from our Mendocino Friends meeting (Quakers). Sandy was going to the Mendocino Post Office for a demonstration against nuclear weapons and war. Two other old ladies joined us. We put up the table and posters and gave out leaflets promoting the 6:30 PM movie, “Hiroshima Mon Amour,” and getting good support from the locals. Having been active and arrested in the peace movement since the 1950s, we, like Peter, grow somewhat weary. An old Wobbly once remarked at one of our "pinwheel" picket lines that we might as well just pray.

At 80 I am worn out, demented and weary. We do exactly that. We pray with great vigor for divine intervention. Winston Churchill said, "Don't ever give up."

Next, Mark Scaramella exposes once again the pot permit mess. Valley People follows with local events and personalities. Alan Freberg introduces Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti to New Orleans in 1968. Page 7 follows with legal notices, a Gordon Black poem and a want ad.

Here's another want ad: need half-cord of firewood, dry and split for small box stove. Have cash. Call Captain Fathom, 937-2852 in Albion.

Heaven help us all,

Alan ‘Captain Fathom’ Graham

Albion

DRIVING IN MENDO, AN EXCHANGE

When Coming Down Caspar Road --

Daney Dawson wrote:

I think that this is a sign of the Me First Movement; it's all about me, me, me! Who cares that others are affected, America is a Free Country and I can do what I want! Damn everybody else.

Marco McClean:

Exactly. Slow down is always good advice, but even the posted speed limit, that seems like crawling along when you're in a car, is too fast for dogs' and deer's and driver's brains, depending on distractions like /a squirrel!/ or a flash of sunlight through the trees, or a sneeze, or looking at the heater control for a moment, so the other side of it is, keep your darling pets out of the road. If they cause someone to crash, that's on you. And if the dog isn't in the road, it won't get hit in the road no matter how late anyone is for work.

I once backed over a cat in Tim's driveway at about a quarter of a mile an hour, and as Charlie was dying he looked at me like, What kind of an idiot /are/ you. I'm /orange/. Literally crawling along can be too fast.

Albion Ridge Road is also a problem. When I get down to the 30mph part --from the 40mph part, which, ha ha-- and there's somebody close behind me I pull over into a driveway or the fire station and let them go, and before I can even get back up to 30 again they're gone, ahead, around the next curve, so they're /standing/ on it. There's a giant white pickup truck that does this a lot, that comes to mind. And there's no place to go to get out of the way if you're on a bike. Most of the road the ditches come right up again it and there's no shoulder. Every winter, half the time the power goes out in Albion it's because some doofus knocked over a power pole with his truck, and it's always at night, and think: they had to be going fast enough to fly over the ditch.

I don't think people should be able to get a driver's license until they're 25 or 26 years old, or even older. And a single DUI should remove your license for ten years. A dog that knows to stay off the road is a smarter person than a drunk.

BBBBUTTT, BUT I THOUGH IT WAS LEGAL!

Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

On 08-05-2019, Deputies with the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office Marijuana Enforcement Team (MET) began a four-day countywide operation targeting large scale illegal cannabis cultivation. The Sheriff’s Office was assisted by the California Department of Justice and National Guard, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, California Department of Food and Agriculture, Cal Fire, Humboldt County Code Enforcement, Humboldt County Environmental Health, and State and Local Water Boards.

Together they served a total of sixteen search warrants on eighteen parcels. During the service of these search warrants, Deputies eradicated approximately 40,000 growing cannabis plants, and seized over 2,300 pounds of processes cannabis. Other items that were seized include methamphetamine, opium, butane hash oil, and 8 firearms.

Multiple County Code, Water Board, Environmental Health, and Fish and Wildlife violations were observed, including 28 water diversion violations and 58 water pollution violations. None of the properties search were permitted for cannabis cultivation.

Several suspects were identified, two were arrested, and charges are being sent to the DA’s Office.

The enforcement action taken in these types of operations is in large part generated by complaints from the community. Anyone with information about these cases or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.

CATCH OF THE DAY, AUGUST 9, 2019

JAMES AUSILIO, Ukiah. DUI.

SHELLENE BROWN, Leggett. DUI.

AUDRA DORSEY, Redwood Valley. Paraphernalia, suspended license, probation revocation.

JUSTIN JASON, Ukiah. Petty theft (two separate bookings on two different days for the same charge)

CALEB MACARTHUR, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation.

OLIVER MATTSON, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

STEVEN MEHTLAN, Ukiah. DUI.

BRIAN MUNIZ-ALFARO, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

RYAN NELSON, Fort Bragg. Disobeying court order.

CARROLL PEGERON, Roseville/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, controlled substance.

MICHAEL RATLEY, Willits. Burglary, grand theft, felon-addict with firearm.

DERRICK RIDENOUR, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

HEATHER ROGERS, Willits. Disobeying court order, probation revocation.

KEITH VANDENBERG, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

SARA WARRAS, Willits. Controlled substance transportion, sales, unlawful display of registration, suspended license.

KAREN YAW, Talmage. DUI.

RUDE AWAKENING

by James Kunstler

Now that everyone and everything not “woke” is a racist, a white supremacist, and a domestic terrorist, the mau-mauing of America is complete. The mug of strong English tea on my desk (a beverage from the worst modern colonialist nation) happens to be white.

It is ashamed and disgusted by its privilege of holding captive eight ounces of a beverage-of-color. The beverage’s final indignity, of course, is to be ingested in my white body, and turned into countless chemical reactions there that benefit me while annihilating the beverage’s existence, which surely amounts to cultural appropriation, a kind of servitude, and ultimately murder! My wickedness will never be forgiven. Ironically, I drink strong English tea at 6:50 a.m. in order to get “woke.” Maybe I should switch to Yogi Detox Tea. (Warm milk would only accentuate my loathsome privilege and put me back to sleep.)

You see, I’m trying to imagine something like the thought process of the average Wokester. If the Left were a person, it would be in a locked ward by now on twenty milligrams of haloperidol QID. But we gave up on mental hospitals decades ago. So, the Left is on the loose out there in streets, threatening to “stab motherfuckers in the heart” one moment and ululating against gun violence in the next. I suppose stabbing motherfuckers in the heart is progressive because it allows you to get up-close-and-personal and share your lived experience with the motherfucker in question just prior to inserting the blade. Guns are so… white!

Pretty soon, America might have to start asking: what exactly is “progressive” about going insane? I think we’re getting close to answering that, and the answer is: nothing. The Left has managed to drain the meaning from the word “progressive.” We will not be able to take it seriously for generations to come (if there are any generations to come). The Left has applied every possible gimmick from the bad faith trick-bag to disable thinking in this republic generally, and the language that serves thinking. But its contorted maledictions are working mainly against itself as one preposterous idea after another bursts out of its collective pie-hole and into the blue-checked Twitter windows.

Speaking of “stabbing motherfuckers in the heart,” why are the “progressives” who moiled outside Senator Mitch McConnell’s house the other night not cooling their heels in a federal lock-up for threatening to assassinate a public official? That’s the usual procedure. How difficult would it be to locate them? Nobody has even asked — a peculiar development.

Twitter boss Jack Dorsey took the predictable “progressive” action of banning Senator McConnell’s election campaign account for posting a video of the very mob looking to “stab motherfuckers in the heart” outside his house. That should be good, at least, for a hearty lawsuit against Twitter that might raise the consciousness of the 23-year-old wokester myrmidons Jack Dorsey hired to pretend that their diligent bannings of non-woke Tweeters are the work of supposed “algorithms” — as well as Mr. Dorsey himself, the arrogant prick behind it all.

Any decent psychological detective can conclude why the Left, including especially the Democratic Party — formerly a pillar of our political system — has gone insane. Losing a national election two and half years ago traumatized the base. In the process, the party made the rueful discovery that it was devoid of reality-based political ideas. This prompted the adoption of reality-optional excuses for failure masquerading as political ideas: Russia did it! Trump was “Putin’s puppet.” That clinically paranoid meme, and the massive investigatory activity it provoked, ended in more failure, so profound that the party still can’t face it.

But the Democratic Party must sense that it is about to be held accountable for all that. The Deep State officials who acted out that shadow-play on its behalf, with all its seditious overtones, are about to be frog-marched into the grand juries any week now. The party itself, or at least its executive gang, the DNC, may be included in the clean-up operation. It’s really hard to see how the party survives that. Its loyal historians will probably say that some motherfucker stabbed it in the heart. More factually, the Democratic Party first lost its mind, and then committed suicide.

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

STARTUP MENDOCINO COMPETITION GALA--AUG. 25

Startup Mendocino:

Competition Gala encourages innovation

On Sunday, August 25, from 3 to 6 p.m., West Business Development Center will host a Startup Mendocino Competition Gala Event at Mendocino College Theater in Ukiah. The family-friendly event will include entertainment from the Mama Grows Funk band, wine from Frey Vineyards, beer from North Coast Brewery, pizza from Slam Dunk -- and a chance to meet the best and brightest minds in our county's entrepreneur and business community.

Startup Mendocino is an innovative initiative that incubates new businesses and puts them through intensive training in order to compete for cash prizes from community sponsors. Geared to foster innovation and spark new thinking about what is possible in Mendocino County, the competition is designed to support and accelerate new businesses in our local community.

The final Competition Gala begins at 3 p.m., when five finalists will compete for $20,000 in prizes. Under the eaves outside the Mendocino College Theater in Ukiah, Frey Vineyards, North Coast Brewery and Slam Dunk pizza will tempt visitors with their delicious offerings while the Mama Grows Funk band sings their funky tunes. Children are welcome, with family-friendly entertainment and non-alcoholic beverages on tap.

At 4 p.m. the show will begin. Inside the 450-person theater, everyone will receive a voting ballot before they take their seats. After hearing from event sponsors and a few special guests, the first of the five finalists will take the stage at 4:30 p.m. You’ll hear about their business, their market, customers and big ideas – and what they could achieve with $10,000. Listen closely – because you, the audience, get to vote along with three judges, on who wins the prizes.

The five finalists are:

Lia Wilson & Scarlett Trillia, The Red House, Co-working space, Fort Bragg

Brian Newell & Jennifer Anderson Ande, Clog footwear, Fort Bragg

Lama Nasser-Gammett, The Forest People, Organic mushroom jerky, Boonville

Tom Jacobson, Are We Safe Yet?, Cybersecurity, Ukiah

Kate Maxwell & Adrian Fernandez Baumann, The Mendocino Voice, News outlet, Ukiah

Learn more about the Final Five by going here: westcenter.org/mendo-business-news/startupmendocinofivefinalists

Tickets for the event are $10 and are available at the door, or by clicking this link: westcenter.org/workshops/2019/8/25/startup-mendocino-gala-event

Startup Mendocino sponsors include: West Business Development Center, America’s SBDC, The John and Sandra Mayfield Fund at the Community Foundation of Mendocino County, Adventist Hospital, Savings Bank of Mendocino County, Economic Development and Financing Corporation, Mendocino College, North Coast Brewery, Harvest Market, The John Pack and Linda Francis Family Fund at the Community Foundation of Mendocino County, and the Ukiah, Coast and Willits Chambers of Commerce, The Coast, KOZT, Slam Dunk Pizza, and Frey Vineyards.

Media contact: West Business Development Center, (707) 238-2108

THE PLAN

Draft 2019-2020 county Mental Health Servies Plan

(MHSA) Annual Plan Update

The Draft 2019-2020 Mental Health Servies Plan (MHSA) Annual Plan Update is out for Public Comment The Behavioral Health Advisory Board (BHAB) will accept public comment on the Plan during a part of its meeting on August 21,2019 in ELK The BHAB meeting will be held at the Greenwood Community Center, 6129 South Highway 1, from 10 am to 2 pm. The Public Comment Hearing on the Plan will be one item on the Agenda. The Agenda will be available one week prior to the meeting at:

https://www.mendocinocounty.org/government/health-and-human-services-agency/mental-health-services/mental-health-board

Any questions or comments, please contact Colleen Gorman, ProgramAdministrator at gormanc@mendocinocounty.org or call (707)472-2324.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

The Dems are flopping around like a fish out of water now because they’ve completely betrayed their one true political base (although, admittedly, it’s hard to remember now exactly when it was they last represented them), the working class rank and file of the former solidly middle class of this country. You remember them, the people that used to actually buy things (imagine that!) with their money, rather than stash it in thinly disguised gambling instruments, otherwise known as the stock market. Having done so, they now find themselves in direct competition with the current owners of their newly adopted constituency, the Republican right; who, say what you want about them, suffer no confusion about whose interests they serve and don’t mince any words about it whatsoever. And in the current political landscape of universal dissembling and/or downright misrepresentation, that one thing alone is enough to guarantee that the Dem brand will from this point forward be permanently tarnished and likely soon be defunct altogether. Not that they were serving any useful purpose in continuing on anyway. Better the Devil you know…

DAVID HOROWITZ’S HATE GROUP, CIVIL WAR & THE WHITE HOUSE

by Jonah Raskin

“People are scared and frightened. The country is on the verge of a war between people of color and law enforcement, and the White House seems to be spurring it on.”

Greg Sarris, Chairman the Federated Indians of the Graton Rancheria

Last month, I wrote an article about the 1970s clandestine organization, the Weather Underground, which appeared in Tablet magazine, and that prompted an irrational and uncivil response from Daniel Greenfield, published in FrontPage, a right-wing political website, edited by David Horowitz, from the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Greenfield libeled and targeted me, too, as “a stooge for a communist terror group that murdered Americans.” Thanks, Dan. I appreciate the compliment. “Stooge” is a word I haven’t heard for a long time. In fact, it doesn’t belong in our current political vocabulary. Your boss, Mr. Horowitz would be proud of you. For decades, he has specialized in targeting American lefties, including teachers and writers, he dislikes.

In his narcissistic autobiography, Radical Son: a Generational Odyssey, Horowitz heaps scorn on Jessica Mitford, Warren Hinckle, I.F. Stone, Bob Sheer, Eve Pell and Todd Gitlin. In his autobiography, Horowitz also attacks the Black Panthers. He claims that there was a Panther “killing ground” in the mountains above Santa Cruz that was “littered with the charred bones of comrades they had murdered for stepping out of line.” Pure bullshit.

Horowitz is still selling bullshit. Now, he has Daniel Greenfield to help him sell it. Greenfield’s article shows me that you don’t have to be an African-American, a Latino, a Latina, or gay to be the target of a right-wing hate group. If you speak your mind and tell the truth you, too, can be a target. Indeed, members of the radical right are calling for a civil war, a bloodbath, and, in the case of Mr. Greenfield, “a reckoning.”

At the end of his rant about me and article for Tablet, Greenfield writes that “A reckoning will come, not in academic papers or reviews, but in the crimes that have never been repented, and will therefore come again, until the tide of lies, blood and treachery bring down the same system that covered up the crimes of the Weathermen, and brings a revolution against the revolution.”

Greenfield lives in a fantasy world of lies, blood, treachery and crimes.” He sounds like the sort of person that Congresswoman Barbara Lee had in mind when she recently noted that, “There are a lot of people who are living on the edge, who have mental disorders, who are stressed.” She added, “All you need is a trigger. And this president is that trigger for people who are unstable.”

While Greenfield calls for a “revolution against the revolution,” Horowitz’s organization—which describes itself a “battle tank”— says it is gearing up to “fight a war.” The David Horowitz Freedom Center website adds that “the political left has declared war on America and its constitutional system, and is willing to collaborate with America’s enemies abroad and criminals at home to bring America down.”

Horowitz has it all wrong. It isn’t the left, but rather Donald Trump and the members of his Republican Party, who have declared war on the U.S. Constitution and are collaborated with the enemies of democracy at home and abroad. All of which makes the 2020 presidential election especially important, as all of the Democratic Party candidates understand.

I have always thought of Marianne Williamson, who is one of those candidates, as a person who didn’t minimize the dangers to democracy, but she did just that recently when she said that “a low-level emotional civil war” was being waged in the U.S. The bodies that piled up in Dayton, El Paso and Gilroy tell a different story. Our embryonic civil war is a lot more than low-level and way beyond merely emotional. It’s high-level and it’s being fought with bullets as well as with words and over-heated rhetoric.

On Townhall.com, a Trump supporter published an article with a title that read, “Why Democrats Would Lose the Second Civil War.” The fact is that no one would win a second civil war. Everyone would lose. Civil Wars are devastating to everyone. Ours was and so has every civil war that has been fought ever since then.

Jon Soltz understands the truth about civil wars. The chairman of VoteVets, a veterans advocacy group whose members fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, he urges Americans “Do NOT buy guns (or any weapons) to use against your fellow Americans.” Soltz added, “We are NOT in civil war.”

In the radical right his words are falling on deaf ears. Those who don’t already have guns are buying them and using them against people of color. No wonder that Greg Sarris, the chairman of the Federated Indians of the Graton Rancheria in California, noted in July, “People are scared and frightened. The country is on the verge of a war between people of color and law enforcement, and the White House seems to be spurring it on.”

As Barbara Lee pointed out, Trump is the trigger.

I’m with the nineteenth-century American writer, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who wrote a poem titled “The Warning” in 1842. Longfellow predicted the coming of the Civil War and a time when “the vast temple of our liberties” would be “a shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish.” Horowitz, Greenfield, the folks at Fox and the president himself, feed the hate and the anger of those who want a civil war. Our own liberties, which are fast eroding, might become a mass of wreck and rubbish. The warning signs are nearly everywhere.

(Jonah Raskin is the author of For The Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman and American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ and the Making of the Beat Generation.)

GIVING THE FEDS even more power to go after “domestic terrorism” in the wake of the El Paso shooting means that this power will almost certainly be used with more punishing effect against Leftists, from blacks to Native Americans to environmentalists to migrants to labor and anti-war activists (if there are any left). Just like it always has been.

— Jeffrey St. Clair

FORMER PRO WRESTLER Dutch Savage, left, pictured with wrestler Andre the Giant, helped mentor young wrestlers like Jesse "The Body" Ventura and Rowdy Roddy Piper before they became stars of the World Wrestling Federation in the 1980s. Savage died Aug. 3 of a stroke. He was 78.

DEACTIVATE THE SOURCE

Letter to the editor in the NY Times:

Race, Guns, Vitriol and Violence—

I applaud President Trump’s suggestion that we need to start policing the proliferation of hate on social media. I suggest that we start by deactivating the source of so much of the discord and vitriol plaguing our political discourse: his Twitter account.

Michael Scott

San Francisco

BRIDGING THE GAP:

Introducing Ukiah Symphony's new season

New season with new music director at Ukiah Symphony

Excellence remains same

by Roberta Werdinger

While the 40th anniversary of the Ukiah Symphony Orchestra will usher in a new music director, new board members, and compositions from newer composers woven in with established classics, its high level of musical achievement and cultural relevance will remain the same.

That is the firm conviction of Phillip Lenberg, now presiding over the Symphony's 2019-2020 season. Born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Russian immigrant parents, Lenberg was instilled from an early age with a deep appreciation for the arts. After two years at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto he received an undergraduate degree from Stony Brook University in New York, followed by a Master's Degree and DMA (Doctor in Musical Arts) from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, where he focused on performance. In between guest conducting gigs in San Francisco, where he moved upon graduating, Lenberg taught at the French-American International school and at San Francisco State University, paving the way for his leadership in Mendocino College's Symphonic Band.

Lenberg's emphasis on education remains firm; he wants the orchestra to serve as "the role model" for all those in the community who wish to develop and express their musical interests. For this reason he is presenting a 30-minute talk before each concert, instilling listeners with the stories and personalities behind the music. He is also maintaining a presence, with Symphony board members and musicians, at the Ukiah Farmer's Market on summer Saturdays, providing live music and information on everything from membership to tidbits on the musical history he so knows and loves.

Because some 20th century music can be relatively inaccessible--something Lenberg readily admits--education is even more important, as audiences can be introduced to new composers, who often operate under new paradigms. Each of the four concerts Lenberg has programmed for this season include at least one 20th century composer, all of whom he describes as "very accessible." Lenberg is also committed to programming with cultural, racial, and gender diversity in mind; he glows with enthusiasm when he describes the four female musicians featured in this season's concerts.

Lenberg will continue the Symphony's custom of opening the season with a jazz concert on September 14-15, with "Black, Brown, and Beige." "The concert is focused on the classical side of Duke Ellington," Lenberg explains, pointing out that Ellington was studying piano within ten years of Brahms's death. The concert will also feature compositions by Ellington's long-time arranger, Billy Strayhorn, including "Rhapsody in Blue." Bay Area gospel vocalist Shelene Huey Booker will provide vocals.

"Finnish and Unfinished," on December 7-8, 2019, matches the music of two composers who were both on what Lenberg calls "two very personal journeys": Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8 in B minor, widely described as "unfinished," and Jean Sibelius's Violin Concerto in D minor--the only concerto he ever wrote--along with other music by the Finnish composer. The concert features Russian-American musician Polina Sedukh, whom Lenberg describes as "an incredible violinist" with "an intensity, sensitivity, and stylistic understanding that matches this concerto perfectly."

In "Baroque Revisited," on February 8-9, 2020, Lenberg incorporates four composers, three of them rooted in the 20th century, who wrote and performed in the Baroque style of 1600 to 1750. With the dates of their compositions ranging from 1877 (for Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme) to 1972 (for Alfred Schnittke's Suite in the Old Style), this concert reveals Lenberg's dedication to "holding up the canon" while also "bringing in composers that are not regularly performed." Cellist Natalie Raney, based in San Francisco, will perform with the orchestra.

"Bohemian Borders" concludes the season on May 16-17 of 2020. It features four major composers--Mahler, Chopin, Beethoven, and Dvorak--who lived in or around the province of Bohemia, a Central European stronghold of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The music reflected a style both romantic and introspective, with a blending of high art and folk roots. Mezzo-soprano Melinda Martinez Becker will provide vocals for Mahler's "Songs of a Wayfarer."

"There's a kind of magic when you hear live music," Lenberg concludes, reflecting on the orchestra's overall role in the community. "When you go to a concert with 50 people playing different instruments, making this massive sound, it is impressive whatever your tastes are." The evolution of this season and of this important local institution in the years ahead is sure to be impressive as well.

Season tickets for the 2019-20 Ukiah Symphony Season are $90 for ages 18 to 64, and $75 for age 65 and up. Tickets for a single concert are $30 general; $25 for age 65 and up; and free for students and others under 18. (Buying a season ticket is like hearing four concerts for the cost of three.) Season and single tickets are available at www.ukiahsymphony.org; single tickets are sold one month prior to each concert at the Mendocino Book Company. Tickets are also available at the door, with cash, check, or credit cards all accepted. All concerts take place at the Mendocino College Center Theatre in Ukiah, with free parking and wheelchair access. For further information please call the Ukiah Symphony hotline at 707 462-0236.

The Ukiah Symphony’s sponsors, program advertisers, and donors make it possible to bridge the gap between ticket sales and concert expenses, which average $15,000-18,000 per concert. Those interested in helping to support the Symphony may now make a donation online at www.ukiahsymphony.org.

PROCEED WITH CAUTION!

I FANTASIZE. I dream of an America where citizenship is rewarded. You pass a little test, say, on current events, and you get a $25 tax rebate in the mail. You demonstrate easy familiarity with your ballot, via a 60-second quiz, you get a cash reward for doing that and for voting. Put a little sugar on it. What cranks my frustration to the screaming point is that we know what needs to be done to improve--across the board--but we cave to commercial interests that benefit from the way things are. The American People are generally progressive. It's how we started as a nation--BEFORE we ever were a nation! It's been part of the New-World experience, never completely, always with detractors and resisters, but by and large. It's not hard to tell a Bill Gates from a David Koch. But the Kochs and Kissingers and Arab princes are not going to change voluntarily. They need to be coerced. Mitch McConnell is hardly the only shithead in the bunch. Any out-of-the-box thoughts out there?

Ah! In the meantime, a mountain of bad news has been discovered re Brett Kavanaugh. Supremes are impeachable! "The other conservative justices would never convict him," you say? That depends. Their "base" is washing swiftly away. Conservatives get VERY reasonable when they don't have cops and armies, Swiss Guards, safe-enough public approval… We might be looking at a whole new social and political landscape very soon.

(Mitch Clogg)

SLOW START TO FIRE SEASON

August through at least October is predicted to be significantly high for wildfire potential, making for a slow start to fire season with dangerous fire conditions.

krcrtv.com/news/local/a-slow-start-to-fire-season-heres-what-to-expect-in-august

TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA of how far The Nation has sunk, read the following:

“On July 24, 2018, The Nation Magazine and its poetry editors, Stephanie Burt and Carmen Giménez Smith, made this statement about the poem below, which contains disparaging and ableist language that has given offense and caused harm to members of several communities: As poetry editors, we hold ourselves responsible for the ways in which the work we select is received. We made a serious mistake by choosing to publish the poem “How-To.” We are sorry for the pain we have caused to the many communities affected by this poem. We recognize that we must now earn your trust back. Some of our readers have asked what we were thinking. When we read the poem we took it as a profane, over-the-top attack on the ways in which members of many groups are asked, or required, to perform the work of marginalization. We can no longer read the poem in that way.

We are currently revising our process for solicited and unsolicited submissions. But more importantly, we are listening, and we are working. We are grateful for the insightful critiques we have heard, but we know that the onus of change is on us, and we take that responsibility seriously. In the end, this decision means that we need to step back and look at not only our editing process, but at ourselves as editors.

---

If you got hiv, say aids. If you a girl,

say you’re pregnant––nobody gonna lower

themselves to listen for the kick. People

passing fast. Splay your legs, cock a knee

funny. It’s the littlest shames they’re likely

to comprehend. Don’t say homeless, they know

you is. What they don’t know is what opens

a wallet, what stops em from counting

what they drop. If you’re young say younger.

Old say older. If you’re crippled don’t

flaunt it. Let em think they’re good enough

Christians to notice. Don’t say you pray,

say you sin. It’s about who they believe

they is. You hardly even there.

— Anders Carlson-Wee

PUBIC LIBRARY RECEIPT SHOWS HOW MUCH MONEY YOU SAVE BY BORROWING INSTEAD OF BUYING BOOKS

boingboing.net/2019/08/08/public-library-receipt-shows-h.html

MEMO OF THE AIR

MOTA: Good Night Radio Nagasaki Day show tonight, with Max Forseter on piano.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio Nagasaki Day show tonight, with Max Forseter on piano.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio, 9pm to 5am tonight (Friday, August 9, Nagasaki Day) on 107.7fm KNYO Fort Bragg (and 105.1fm KMEC Ukiah, and via KNYO.org), live from 325 N. Franklin, next door to the Tip Top bar.

Deadline to email your writing to be read on the air tonight is 6pm or so. If you're not done by then, send it whenever it's ready and I'll read it next week. Or visit if you're in town tonight. Max will probably exeunt early but I'll be there until tomorrow morning, reading and reading.

Here are a few educational hors d'oeuvres for while you wait for tonight:

Italian rides. Osteria ai Pioppi.

A Glimpse Inside a Handmade Amusement Park, 40 Years in the Making

No way to prevent this, says only nation where this regularly happens.

https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2019/08/it-happened.html

Joe Rogen interviews Bernie Sanders. (68 min.)

https://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2019/08/if-you-only-listen-to-one-video-about.html

And a hundred and ten cornets close at hand.

Japan’s Best Marching Band

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org,
https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com