MCT: Monday, August 19, 2019

• Evacuation Procedures
• Quake Seam
• Tour Bragg
• Hedgehog Books
• Wine Down
• Fairy Godmothers
• Ed Notes
• Henry Kissinger
• MAC Board
• Tree Fro
• Yokayo Bowl
• Electrical Spaghetti
• Boomer Grade
• Melanie
• Yesterday's Catch
• Weed/Wine Coturri
• Hedy & Jimmy
• Groupthink Journalists
• Why Denied
• Pure Mendocino
• Neoliberal Agenda
• Not Enough
• House Spiders
• Zimmer Interview
• Bandit Act
• Liberals Bad

SHERIFF ALLMAN has spent some asset forfeiture money on what he calls “self evacuation placards” that rural residents can pick up from local libraries. The placards are supposed to help law enforcement during a disaster in determining who has evacuated and who hasn’t. In theory, if the placards are properly deployed, a deputy would not have to go way up a long, remote dirt driveway in an emergency to notify someone of a pending or actual evacuation only to find out that they had already left. Allman also says the placards would make it easier to identify possible looters and other non-authorized people in a disaster/evacuation area. Presumably suggestions for placard use will accompany the placards at the pickup spot. Residents are asked to hang the placards at the end of their driveway when they leave. Deputies would then remove the placard and make note of the evacuation and use the contact info written on the placard to notify the resident when the evacuation order is lifted. The Sheriff told the Supervisors at the last July board meeting that he had ordered over 6,000 of the placards.

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WHEN AN #EVACUATION IS ANTICIPATED but you do NOT need to leave immediately, turn off your propane tanks to give your home the best chance of surviving catastrophic fire damage. This includes moving propane BBQ appliances away from your home. https://www.readyforwildfire.org/

(CalFire)

WEST MARIN, 1906 QUAKE

LONELY PLANET STOPS IN FORT BRAGG

In the past, Fort Bragg was Mendocino’s ugly stepsister, home to a lumber mill, a scrappy downtown and blue-collar locals who gave a cold welcome to outsiders. Since the mill closure in 2002, the town has started to reinvent itself, slowly warming to a tourism-based economy, with the downtown continuing to develop as a wonderfully unpretentious alternative to Mendocino (even if the southern end of town is hideous). Unlike the entire franchise-free 180-mile stretch of Coastal Hwy 1 between here and the Golden Gate, in Fort Bragg you can get a Big Mac, grande latte or any of a number of chain-store products whose buildings blight the landscape. Don't fret. In downtown you’ll find better hamburgers and coffee, old-school architecture and residents eager to show off their little town.

SALE this week at Hedgehog Books in the train cars in Boonville on travel and language books, as well as books in Spanish for kids & adults. Open today until 2:30. Regular hours next week.

RHYS ET AL

Editor,

The sad irony of the wanton destruction of wildlands and protected wetlands and streams by Rhys Vineyards is that the wine industry has reached a plateau and will very likely begin to contract.

To allow continued conversion of hillsides, oak woodlands and, increasingly, the coastal hills as climate disruption changes growing areas is immoral, irresponsible and economically foolhardy. The wine trade press increasingly focuses on declining sales from changing demographics and reduction in expendable income. Research “declining wine sales” on the internet and a slew of reports and presentations can be found.

Sonoma County is facing a multitude of challenges to its economy and ecosystems. It’s imperative to diversify industry, agriculture and, most importantly, maintain and expand biodiversity.

The loss of biodiversity in the monoculture of the wine industry can be stopped by a moratorium on new vineyard and winery development. For existing vineyards, there are specialty crop grants to install native plant hedgerows, and assistance from resource conservation districts and other organizations for cover cropping, planting for pollinators, restoring wildlife corridors and water management.

Get involved with your city and county planning for a say in how we all move forward.

Natasha Granoff

Santa Rosa

GRANDDAUGHTER’S NEW FRIENDS

ED NOTES

FROM an on-line paper this morning: "Hongkongers fight for democracy. Algerians fight for democracy. Sudanese fight for democracy. Russians fight for democracy. What do Americans fight for?" If the daily provocations out of the White House don't get Americans into the streets, nothing will. Say what you will about us 60's people, we took action — well, some of us did, but the big demos for civil rights and the even bigger ones against the war on Vietnam expressed majority political opinion. I'd say cyber-world has made us dumber, distracted and apathetic.

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FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AGO, ON THIS DAY, THE FIRST AFRICAN SLAVES ARRIVED IN JAMESTOWN. The New York Times launches "The 1619 Project", a major editorial initiative, examining the legacy of slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are. "The 1619 Project" is not history your old high school U.S. History textbook. If you want to understand the brutality of capitalism, you have to start on the plantation. Our country's founding ideals were false when they were written. They were lies. As kids studying U.S. history, we were made to believe lies.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html

ED NOTE: Foundational myths against realities aside, the true miracle is that we've come this far to produce the greatest show on earth, and given the size of our fine fat population most of us wouldn't trade it, even for Norway. Why just now looking out my office window, a laughing family of five has emerged from the Redwood Drive-In slurping ice cream cones. USA! USA!

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FROM SUNDAY'S PD: "To reduce the risk of wildfire, PG&E is prepared to initiate public safety power shutdowns based on weather conditions, particularly high winds. As previously reported by our staff, Sonoma County has more customers with a high probability of having their power shut down than any other county in California. These events could last for days and affect a large portion of our communities. At The Press Democrat and our affiliate publications, we have been working diligently to prepare for the impact of a shutdown and want to let you know what you can expect from us…"

WHICH IS NOTHING. Unless you consider a partial guide to allegedly helping sources unreachable during power shut-offs. A respectable media would be demanding that PG&E become a truly public utility, not capitulating to the arbitrary decisions to shut us down by a handful of shareholder reps.

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PROUD BOYS IN PORTLAND. Proud Boys? Sounds like a Jamaican reggae band minus the fun. A thousand people for and against — total — showed up up to exchange insults, but the media run-up to the ho-hum non-event made it seem like it was the first battle of civil war. A large majority of my fellow Americans, I daresay, wish a plague on both houses. I do. On one side you've got proud boys who can't spell fascist, on the other fascists who think they aren't.

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LOCAL DEADBEATS must have salivated at this announcement in local papers: "Flow Kana will be hosting a series of free community picnics throughout the Emerald Triangle in August and September, including one in Hopland this Sunday….. About Flow Kana: Flow Kana is the first family-run cannabis company to empower family-run, independent farms. By giving scale to cultivators and brands that place community and the environment first, Flow Kana is able to bring truly intentioned, beautiful sun-grown products to all of California."

FLOW KANA hosting free community picnics throughout Emerald Triangle?

WHAT'S NEXT? Full page color glossies of junior tokers lighting up in sunlit fields of corporate cannabis? As George Carlin always said, 'Take away the bullshit and this country collapses like a busted souffle.'

FLOW KANA has got to have major money behind it. I know I'm not the only one to suspect that Big Tobacco is fronting the major property purchases around here and the "family" events like the one advertised above.

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OVER THE COURSE of a long and often turbulent life, Wyatt Earp became a living legend. He was, at one time or another, a saloon keeper, a brothel owner, a lawman in different jurisdictions, a gambler, a miner of gold and silver, and a professional referee for boxing matches. Late in life he was a consultant for western films in Hollywood. His detractors claimed that his reputation was inflated and that he was both a crooked referee and an unreliable source for stories of his exploits. His many admirers disagreed and support him as one of the toughest lawmen of the American west. Faint rumors that the Earp Brothers owned a ranch in the Yorkville area of the Anderson Valley have never been substantiated, but Wyatt did live in San Francisco.

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THIS SONOROUSLY DECEPTIVE lede in last week's ICO got us laughing out loud: "Point Arena Council members and city residents on Tuesday expressed concern that the Housing Element draft required by state law, does not accurately represent the capacity of the city and community. But passing it is the only option in order to obtain certain grant funding from the state…"

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THE COUNTY OF MENDO is expected, by the delusional State of California, to get 1,826 new housing units up and teeming with grateful citiizens, like, maybe, one of these days. It would be truly miraculous if even a hundred of the desired units got built in any one year. Meanwhile, the County talks housing to perpetual death while ignoring, as former Supervisor Pinches often suggested, installing a few trailer parks on County-owned land here and there throughout marvelous Mendo. And the Supervisors are unlikely to recognize, let alone draw upon, the remarkable Ledsons, the father-daughter team who own and manage the Circle Trailer Park in the center of Ukiah, the only true low-cost housing program in the County.

A PASSAGE from "A Cook's Tour" by Anthony Bourdain...

ROCCIE?

AVA,

Greetings, I have heard that the Mendocino Art Center is paying the executive director, Roccie Hill, to live in Santa Rosa and work remotely.

As I understand it in the six months she worked and actually lived here she fired three people, two quit and two board members resigned. The board has had information of her toxic nature and instead of letting her go at six months they cleaned house and gave her a golden parachute and instructed the staff to say she did a great job.

That place needs a new board.

Allen Lynwood

Mendocino

UKIAH BOWLING ALLEY MAY CLOSE SEPTEMBER 14

After occupying its building near Raley’s on a month-to-month lease for much of the year, the owner of Yokayo Bowling Center said his business is now scheduled to close for good Sept. 14, 2019.

“Even if we get another last-minute reprieve like last year, a month-to-month lease just won’t work again,” said Mike Schutz, who has owned the business for the past 11-years.

“The bread and butter of this business are the leagues, and they just can’t operate month-to-month like that. If we were to extend the lease, it would have to be at least until May (of 2020) to let them have enough games (because people pay for a whole season).”

As it stands now, Schutz said he received notice recently that he would need to vacate the building by mid-September, but he was able to extend it through the end of the month to give him more time to sell the lanes and equipment inside, which he owns and does not plan to relocate. “There just isn’t a big enough location here to move to, and building a new location just isn’t an option.

“It is sad,” he said Saturday of the prospect of the business shutting down. “I feel bad for the town, the bowlers and my employees. And oftentimes when things like this happen I ask God, ‘Why, why, why?’ And then three weeks later I realize, ‘Oh, that’s why!’ And I say, ‘Thank you!'”

Schutz said he still doesn’t know who the new tenants of the building might be, but his understanding was that they are willing to pay significantly more money than him to lease, or to buy, the building.

Before his lease transitioned to month-to-month last year, Schutz said he made offers on the building that were not accepted. This week he said he did not find the current asking price acceptable.

The building is owned by Erickson Brothers Properties and represented by John Lazaro of Coldwell Banker. Lazaro could not be reached for comment Saturday.

On Sunday, Sept. 15, Schutz said he plans to host a party for the league bowlers, “giving them a chance to take pictures and bowl one last time.” He said the bar might remain open for another week after the bowling alley closes.

As for his plans afterward, Schutz said he didn’t know yet, though he admitted, “I’ve been asked that a lot lately.”

(Courtesy, the Ukiah Daily Journal)

CABLING AT WOODSTOCK

THANKS FOR NOTHING, HIPPIES

by Lawrence Livermore

In the interest of full disclosure, yes, I was a hippie, and yes, I was at Woodstock.

I’ve spent most of the intervening half century pissing off the hippies and making fun of the grandiosely styled “Woodstock Nation,” but I can’t deny harboring a smallish soft spot for them somewhere in my too-often hardened heart.

My thoughts, however, are not so kind.

Yes, the music was good, the majority of it, anyway. It was wonderful that half a million of us could sit in a muddy field for three days without killing and eating each other (if we hadn’t had homes to go back to when it was over, all bets would have been off).

But it was not the dawning of a new age of harmony and understanding that people make it out to be. Either Jerry Rubin or Abbie Hoffman – I always get those guys mixed up – opined that it was more like a funeral than a christening, and I wholeheartedly concur.

A funeral at which a lot of fun was had, granted, but that didn’t leave the corpse of the hippie dream any less deceased. I’m reminded of a biography of the Grateful Dead, which describes the band rolling down Broadway in a chauffeured limousine, smoking cigars, drinking champagne, and hoovering up prodigious amounts of cocaine.

“That’s when we realized the revolution was over,” someone supposedly said. “The revolution was over, and we had won.”

As nouveau-riche small-town boys from California, the Grateful Dead can be forgiven for not noticing that only their costumes and choice of background music distinguished them from a limo-load of young Wall Street bankers out for their own night on the town. Likewise, the Woodstock Generation went forth into the world convinced, as the Doors had sung: “They’ve got the guns, but we’ve got the numbers, gonna win, yeah, we’re taking over!”

Anybody notice how that’s been working out?

The baby boomers were a generation of superlatives: the biggest, richest, most drug-addled, and, perhaps, the most delusional in history. Yet they were also meant to be the most idealistic, most political, most committed to human rights and preservation of the environment.

Half a century later, the lights are going out around the world. The United States, ground zero for the hippie love and peace movement, is controlled by a coalition of far-right extremists and theocratic cultists that would have been unimaginable in 1969 (the then much-reviled Richard Nixon would be a left-of-center Democrat by today’s standards).

Kind of fitting, isn’t it, that Peter Fonda, who died on the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, uttered the pivotal line of Easy Rider: “We blew it.”

Yes, baby boomer bashing is a bit overdone these days, thanks in no small part to a right-wing/libertarian campaign to make Gen Xers and millennials so mad at the old people that they’ll punish them by voting their own Social Security and Medicare out of existence.

And it’s not as if my generation hasn’t been a party anything worthwhile. Women, African-Americans, and homosexuals are now considered almost full-fledged people, definitely not the case at the beginning of the 1960s. Until Republican baby boomers seized control of Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court, democracy was starting to make inroads into parts of America where it had seldom if ever been seen before.

But considering what we were promising compared to what’s actually been delivered, I wouldn’t blame anyone for reporting the entire Woodstock Nation to the Better Business Bureau and/or the district attorney for wholesale, systematic fraud.

You could start a good, long-winded argument – though maybe not so much as in the past, as quite a few of us suffer from shortness of breath, or lack it altogether – among my fellow old-timers by posing the question, “Where did it all go wrong?”

Disregarding the starry-eyed zealots who will insist that the revolution is still in progress or will arrive shortly, you might get some consensus around the idea that the dream expired when the bands started breaking up and their members launched solo careers. Not that music was the sole benchmark of the movement, but for what it typified: the abandonment of collective action in favor of what became known as the Me Decade.

The wretched excess of the 1970s also embodied the (similarly self-centered) woo-woo spirituality misrepresenting itself as the “New Age.” There was nothing remotely new about it; imputing mystical powers to rocks, feathers, face paints, or chanted nonsense dated back to the dawn of time. Hand in hand with this flight into magical “thinking” came the steady disparagement if not the gleeful abandonment of anything resembling logic or reason.

There were other factors – the energy crisis and subsequent recession of the 1970s, new technology that changed the nature of work and undercut the power of the unions and the labor movement, for example – but what tripped up the baby boomers more than anything else, at least in my opinion, was this replacement of rational analysis, planning, and organization with emotions and symbology.

Today’s identity politics, the lumping together of people into groups based on gender, ethnicity, or social inclinations, the insistence that one is either “for us or against us,” “racist” or “anti-racist,” “progressive” or “reactionary,” with nary a scintilla of ambiguity of or nuance, almost certainly had its origins in the drug-drenched 60s protest movement, in which feelings inevitably wound up trumping facts.

I wouldn’t be so quick to make that charge if I hadn’t seen and experienced it myself. Though not old enough to join sit-ins against Jim Crow laws or journey south to register black voters in the early 60s, I knew exactly how vital this dangerous, sometimes life-threatening work was. But by the late 60s, my efforts, and those of my peers, revolved around getting high with the local SDS chapter (Student Dope Smokers, as more than one wag dubbed us) and hatching grandiose plots to overthrow the government.

Most of us couldn’t organize our way out of our living rooms, while a few went so far off the deep end as to blow themselves or others to smithereens with homemade bombs. We lived in a post- (or pre-?) intellectual fantasy world, where results counted for nothing as long as the “vibes” were right, where imagining something was as good as, if not better than making it actually happen.

“War is over if you want it,” proclaimed that fatuous multimillionaire hippie duo, the same ones who wanted you to “imagine no possessions” despite needing two massively expensive apartments to hold just some of theirs. “I wanted it, and it’s still not over,” retorted some Facebook smartass 50 years later.

Speaking of fatuous, I spent a half hour – ok, more than that, honestly – carefully perusing Woodstock crowd photos hoping I might be in one of them. It’s not that I need to prove to myself or anyone else that I was there, but owing to the chaotic state of my life at the time, I don’t have a single photo of myself from around 1967 to 1971, and wouldn’t mind seeing what I looked like during that era.

No luck, however, though I did spot someone resembling my younger brother, who was also there that weekend. But the crowd scenes evoked memories of watching the Who play the finale to Tommy as dawn brought the houselights up on the masses splayed across the mountain.

“Right behind you, I see the millions, on you, I see the glory,” they sang, and even without the drugs, it wasn’t hard to understand what they were talking about. Half a million bedraggled hippies – though you didn’t have to squint too hard to turn them into millions more – lay amid their wreckage like Washington’s army at Valley Forge or the last refugees from the apocalypse. Everything would be different from now on, that much seemed blindingly obvious on that translucent pastel morning.

It would be, too, though in few of the ways we imagined. Today a third, maybe closer to half the young people in that crowd are dead or soon will be. Many more checked out long ago, mentally if not physically, while others have gone over to the dark side of full-throated Trumpism or worse.

Those of us who remain with mind and body relatively intact owe it to ourselves and even more to posterity to avoid wallowing in cheap sentiment and false nostalgia, but also not to succumb to cynicism or despair. We’ve been given our chances and spurned far too many of them, but the right choice, the right action can, in an instant, transform a lifetime of mediocrity and futility into something scarcely short of miraculous.

Even if going out in a not necessarily pleasant blaze of glory is not our particular cup of tea, we can at least refrain from doing any further harm. The final report card for our generation is not yet in, but for this interim, getting-near-the-end marking period, the verdict remains crystal clear: “Must do better.”

SOME CAME TO SING

Some came to pray

Some came to keep the dark away

CATCH OF THE DAY, AUGUST 18, 2019

RICHARD BURNS, Cloverdale/Ukiah. False ID, probation revocation.

SCOTT FABER, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

SPENCER HERMAN, Hopland. Under influence, probation revocation.

TROY HOAGLIN, Laytonville. Parole violation.

SUMMER MARSH, Laytonville. Misdemeanor hit&run.

JESSE MCGARY, Elk. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

TANIA MENDOZA-GONZALEZ, Talmage. DUI, suspended license (for DUI), probation revocation.

DANIEL NELSON, Clearlake/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

BRYAN NEWBERRY, Willits. Probation revocation.

KEVIN PHILLIPS, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JENNIFER RISCH, Willits. Evasion.

LISA SALISBURY, Fort Bragg. DUI.

BACK TO THE FUTURE WITH WINE AND WEED MAVEN PHIL COTURRI

by Jonah Raskin

“I’m a dinosaur,” wine and weed maven Phil Coturri says at HopMonk Tavern in Sonoma on a day when the temperature hits 101. Coturri is talking to 50 or so members of the Sonoma Valley Cannabis Enthusiasts who have gathered in the back room of the tavern to hear his words of wisdom. Coturri goes back and forth from weed to wine and wine to weed, but he gives the cannabis enthusiasts what they want to hear: stories culled from a lifetime of experience growing and smoking marijuana and loving the marijuana plant for itself. Coturri is the real deal and the audience knows it.

It’s not everyday that a four-decades long marijuana grower shows up in public and talks about his crop. In fact, it’s a very rare occasion anywhere in California. Phil Coturri is a poet and a Dead Head who grows grapes and makes wine for the marketplace. Winery Sixteen 600 is the name of his winery, which he co-owns with his sons, Sam and Max. He does not grow cannabis to sell. He’s an “amateur,” from the French which means a “lover of” something.

True to form, at HopMonk Coturri enumerates the ways that he’s a “dinosaur” in the world of weed. For starters, he calls it “pot,” though that’s not the politically correct term today. “Cannabis” is but Coturri doesn’t go there. He’s also a dinosaur in that he likes to smoke joints and doesn’t care for salves, edible and tinctures, though he’s also concerned about the health of his lungs and may have to change his delivery method.

Unlike many commercial growers these days, he starts with seeds, not clones and cultivates his pot in sunlight not in a greenhouse. Coturri doesn’t aim for weight but for flavor, which is dependent, he says, on terroir, which is equally important for grapes as it is for wine. He wants pot plants with a high level of THC, much as he wants wine with a high level of alcohol.

“All my adult life I’ve been growing intoxicants,” Coturri says. “I started smoking pot when I was 14, which was the same age that I started to work in vineyards. In those days, I couldn’t have gone around saying ‘Hi, I’m Phil Coturri and I smoke pot.’” Nor couldn’t he have said that he was a “guerrilla grower” and that he concealed his irrigation lines. At least once, he tore up his plants because he didn’t want his sons to get the wrong idea about their dad. Not surprisingly, they soon found out anyway. It’s hard to hide the smell of pot.

“This is my mantra,” Coturri says and sips his ice tea. “When I think my pot crop is ripe, I don’t harvest. I wait another two weeks and then I harvest when the plants are at ultimate ripeness. I want sticky, sticky plants.”

Coturri operates nearly the same way in grapes as he does with pot. He’s organic everywhere. At times, he drops as much as 50% of the fruit that’s on the vine, much to the annoyance of some vineyard owners who disapprove of his style of management.

Fledgling pot growers took copious notes when Coturri talked about healthy soils, composting, cover crops and mites, which can be a big problem.

“Early in the season, my pot plants grow side-by side with sunflowers and marigolds, and birds and bees are flying around,” he says. “After a while, I cut down the sunflowers so the buds are in full sunlight. I like fish emulsion in the vineyard and also in the garden where it encourages bloom and improves flavor.”

Coturri began to come out of the cannabis closet a couple of years ago. As a result of going public, he lost some clients and gained others in the vineyard management business.

It's not just the smoking of pot that gives Coturri pleasure. “My garden is a refuge from the world,” he says. “Being there is therapeutic.”

A young marijuana grower in the audience explains that he will soon be a father. He wants to know at what age it will be okay to smoke in front of his child. “Don’t hide it,” Coturri says. “I drank wine with my grandfather when I was a boy. We all learn about intoxicants from the time we’re born.

HEDY & JIMMY at Hollywood Park, 1940

MEMO TO MAINSTREAM JOURNALISTS: CAN THE PHONY OUTRAGE; Bernie Is Right About Bias

Here's the sad reality: There doesn’t have to be a memo from the owner to achieve the homogeneity of coverage at “centrist” news outlets that media watchdog groups like FAIR (which I founded) have documented in study after study over the decades. It happens because of groupthink. It happens because top editors and producers know — without being told — which issues and sources are off limits. No orders need be given, for example, for rank-and-file journalists to understand that the business of the corporate boss or top advertisers is off-limits, short of criminal indictments. No memo is needed to achieve the narrowness of perspective — selecting all the usual experts from all the usual think tanks to say all the usual things. Think Tom Friedman. Or Barry McCaffrey. Or Neera Tanden. Or any of the elite club members who’ve been proven to be absurdly wrong time and again about national or global affairs. And then ask yourself why someone like Noam Chomsky can be quoted regularly in the biggest mainstream outlets abroad, but almost never in mass media in his own country — even though he mostly analyzes the policies of his own country’s government."

commondreams.org/views/2019/08/17/memo-mainstream-journalists-can-phony-outrage-bernie-right-about-bias

PURE MENDOCINO

There is still time to be part of it, but not much! Pure Mendocino 2019, is August 24, 5 to 10 p.m. at Dark Horse Ranch, Ukiah. We have a small number of tickets left. If you are interested, email or text your contact info and how many tickets you want to karen@crcmendocino.org 707-354-4745. Tickets are $135 and include wine tasting, appetizers, sit-down, multi-course dinner served family style, live music by The Back Porch Project, and dancing under the stars. Reservations are required. Online ticket sales are closed due to a small number of seats remaining. Thanks!

Pure Mendocino is one week away: August 24 from 5 to 10 p.m., at Dark Horse Vineyard. We have a few seats left and would love to sell them to you.

Pure Mendocino is the signature fundraiser for the Cancer Resource Centers of Mendocino County and makes our work possible by raising a fifth of our budget.

Individual tickets are $135 and include a multi-course meal served family style, wine, dessert, live music, silent auction, and dancing under the stars. Reservations are required.

Please call, text, or e-mail Executive Director Karen Oslund directly if you are interested in attending, as online sales are closed due to limited seats remaining.

Karen Oslund, 707-354-4745, karen@crcmendocino.org

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

The key here is to dissect the problems. Yes, White males are the wealthiest, and Blacks in general the poorest (with lower class Whites giving them a run for their money). But what are we talking about here? In my view the fortunes of lower classes in general in the US and much of the western world are diminishing, not just because of racism or bigotry, but especially because of the inordinate influence of a small group of extremely wealthy people on international trade and investment practices. And because of the stranglehold of Wall Street on Main Street. Are you complicit in your own oppression? Good question. Maybe the question can be reconfigured: do you support the neo-liberal agenda, having bought into the presentation of open borders as one of tolerance and openness to new cultures and new-comers, as an agenda of people who are superior in intellect and social attitudes. Because maybe you better have a second look at what you’re buying into.

MY MENAGERIE

My menagerie is a dog, two cats, three chickens, two goldfish and ten or twenty million house spiders. I've gone from a full-on arachniphobe when I was little to a much less scaredy-cat spider-watcher and sort-of friend, but enough's enough. Who gets used to the sensation, in the dark especially, of the unmistakable touch of the spider-strand across your face, of the ineffably light touch of tiny spider feet across one's wrinkling brow, balding head?

Not me. So I've got to sweep them down. I don't like to do that. Living things (MOST living things, let's not parse this too closely) have all become people to me. The sowbug in the weeds I'm pulling from my garden ("my garden"! What a joke!) has no concept of itself as an insignificant crustacean, as a meal-ready-to-eat for anybody. It is a creature with a mission, to dine on dead vegetable matter, meet and greet a mate, and all that--much like me. (Once a woman dared me to eat one. That was an unjustifiable murder, but a dare's a dare. I ate. It had no particular taste, any more than the fly I thought was a kernel of corn. In both cases, there was a tiny unwelcome crunch--the fly's wings, the bug's body--but nothing too disgusting. If I were a survivalist on "Naked and Afraid," I'd welcome a handful of sowbugs. When you see how a tiny bit of protein restores sanity in the jungles of offshore Philippine islands, you don't scorn such things.)

So, anyway, I have to take a breath and sweep spiders. I don't extend the consideration that Ellie does. She'll vacuum spiders, then go to the woods and empty the bag. I draw the line. I doubt a house spider is in happy condition after being sucked into the vac bag, and I'm pretty damn sure they won't survive outside in the woods. I find everything in the woods but not house spiders. Daddy-long-legs, yes, but not your typical house spider. She said, what, do you suppose they only came about after humans built houses? I said yes. You gotta keep the little woman in her place.

There's a spider by my mouse pad as I type. This morning it was belly up, looked dead. I wonder what happens to things, like dead spiders. Where do they go? So I looked at this one--not a dust spider, a serious arachnid, the kind little Mitchie feared could kill ya. I blew on it a tiny stream of breath. Talk about "breath of life"! All six legs started waving, but they found no purchase and she stayed belly-up.

That was hours ago. She returned to motionlessness, but a bit of breath or turning the bare overhead light on or off generated more waving. "Hey, I'm dying here. A little peace and quiet, please!" So she remains there (or he does). It's not helplessly on its back, now. One foot is hooked over the edge of the pad. She's lying on her side, ebbing away (I think; maybe she's waiting for me to forget, rest my hand on her or simply forget she's there, so she can make a sudden scurry and stop my heart.)

Mitch Clogg

GARY ZIMMER on KZYX 11-noon Monday August 19.

Jaye and I are interviewing the "father" of biological agriculture, Gary Zimmer, on the Monday 19 August Farm and Garden Show starting just after 11 until noon (streams on kzyx.org, or locally 91.5 FM Willits and Ukiah/90.7 FM Philo/88.1 FM Fort Bragg). He is the keynote speaker at the Healthy Soil Summit (details below). Last month's guest John Kempf is presenting two workshops there. The great thing is that there is only one session at a time so all attendees hear the same information making it a rich and deep learning opportunity. There is a cost to the summit but it may be worth learning from some experts and pioneers in biological farming.

Bill Taylor edibleland@earthlink.net

Redwood Valley

LOCK 'EM UP!

Editor,

In reply to John Arnoldt of Fort Bragg: When I said that somebody should be hung from a light pole that was a reference to somebody who commits a horrible crime like killing a little kid. You are pretty much admitting to the fact that liberals do that. Maniac Democrats have a way of liking to hurt little people and creating dissent among the American people. So if you don't like what I said, too bad. Maybe you are guilty.

There are probably at least 20 or more left liberal Democrats who should be rounded up and taken out of politics and put into a dungeon somewhere where they get nothing but bread and water for the next three or four years. Maybe then they would learn to appreciate the freedom they have. It's sad to see how these people operate and what they think about and the things they come up with and the blame they put on President Trump. It is unbelievable. Maybe it's me, I don't know. Maybe I don't see it right.

You liberals always have an answer for everything. You answer a question with a question. You are never guilty, you are never wrong, you lie, you cheat, you steal, you are broken, you are filthy. If the truth was known that Jeffrey Epstein guy was probably murdered in his cell by somebody who didn't want the word to get out about how many liberals he represented. It's all about money. When that much money is involved anything can be done.

Hang on people, we are in for a rough ride, but I'm looking forward to it. The liberal far left Democrats have to be taken care of. I hope it happens in the near future.

God bless Donald Trump.

Jerry Philbrick

Comptche

PS. On second thought, we should take these unwound liberals down to one of those holding centers at the border where all the illegal immigrants are and throw them in with all those people. That's who they love! Open borders! Criminals! I don't know why President Trump doesn't round them all up and take them down and put them in the holding centers. That would be great, wouldn't it? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I am. That's the way I feel.

PPS. Nancy Pelosi just led a contingent of taxpayers that we are paying for down to Central America to see if she could straighten things out down there. She lives in San Francisco and always flies on a private jet to New York or wherever. I don't think she has set foot on the streets in San Francisco in years. She doesn't know about all the filth and the grime and the slime and people urinating and having bowel movements right on the sidewalks. It's right in plain sight. But she is not working on her own problems in San Francisco or Los Angeles where it's even worse.

PPPS. The San Francisco thing was caused by Gavin Newsom when he was mayor. Along with that worthless Jerry Brown. When are you people going to wake up and see that a rotten son of a bitch is running our state? We have some real dandies in California and California people just sit there and put up with it. I would like to be locked in a room with Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown with no doors to get out for about 10 minutes, just the three of us with the lights down low. I would love that. No holds barred. Just to get even. I hope President Trump makes all the Liberal Democrats disappear in his next four years. No more sanctuary cities in the United States. One of these days this rotten Gavin Newsom, our governor, will get somebody killed or a bunch of people killed. How long will it take for people to realize that? Stand up on your hind legs like they are doing in Hong Kong. They want to get rid of the left and put in some right.

PPPPS. Have any of you noticed the smell at certain times of the day around news time when the social media is spewing their poisonous phegm? It invades your nostrils; MSNBC and CNN and CBS and ABC and NBC and the New York Times and the Washington Post. The news media are what is ruining this country because they blow things out of proportion and don't report the good stuff and they use fake news and somebody ought to run over them and stop them immediately. They don't tell you that several people have called for Gavin Newsom's recall and there are different agencies around the state trying to take the state back. Can California stand up and demand a change? This maniac Gavin Newsom is hurting the country very bad. The only way to get good news is on Fox News or One America News.