MCT: Tuesday, August 20, 2019

• Missing Hans
• Criminal Enterprise
• Flea Market
• Scanner Snatcher
• Old Grader
• Pressed Flowers
• Epistolary Irritations
• Book Sale
• Chamber Mixer
• Ukiah Trail
• Evacuation Placards
• Great Day
• Organized Religion
• Dead Trees
• Remain Linear
• Sad Stories
• Planning Agenda
• Big Tree
• Clerk's Tale
• Record Player
• Festival Donations
• Yesterday's Catch
• Repo Future
• Fifties Eating
• Sanctioned Violence
• Private Spurs
• What's Ahead
• Tie-dyed Tippler
• The Wheel
• CigarDebt
• Banning Miscreants
• Marco Radio
• Thistle
• Continuous Improvement
• Maned Wolf
• Drag Racing
• Diminishing Fortunes

MISSING MAN

From the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office would like to remind citizens who may be using the outdoors this time of year to be observant during their activities.

Hans Lippuner was last seen by his house mates on October 16, 2018, in the Dow’s Prairie area of McKinleyville. Hans is a white male, 59 years of age, about 5‘8” tall and weighs about 140 lbs. He has short brown/gray hair and blue eyes. He is a tree climber, mechanic, and machinist. He is an avid outdoorsman and was known to spend time out camping, fishing, and rock climbing.

Hans was last known to be driving a white 1998 4x4 Ford Econoline van, California License 4ANN813. Below is a picture of Hans and his unique van.

Anyone with information about this case 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.

FEDERAL LAWSUIT HITS FAKE POT COPS

“The best case scenario is we have a chain of command up to the city manager that is totally incompetent and unaware of what’s happening in the department,” said Izaak Schwaiger, a Sebastopol attorney representing the plaintiffs. “The worst case scenario is the Department of Public Safety is an outright criminal enterprise that needs to be shut down, and that’s precisely what we’ve alleged in this complaint. We believe that to be the case.”

pressdemocrat.com/news/9920719-181/new-lawsuit-accuses-rohnert-park

SCANNER SNATCHER EXPLAINS

Dear Mr. Editor,

(May I call you Bruce?)

I am Sarah Walker, of the recent infamous Scanner Snatcher article emblazoned upon your lovely paper.

Thank you so much for taking the time to capture and share such a momentous occasion in my existence.

Unfortunately, I am not a subscriber to the AVA, and I have yet to read the entirety of the article, though I'm sure from previous readings of your paper, it is done colorfully with an artful tongue in cheek that only you can muster.

I wanted to offer you something, and request something at the same time. A trade, if you will.

How about you allow me this article to read, and any others, in your opinion, that may be useful to me and Mr. Mangrum in our current circumstances, and I (possibly Mr. Mangrum as well) in return, will give you some history on dealing with Mr. Porter, the justice system, and current issues plaguing my family?

No one knows, and until now, I was embarrassed at having been involved with certain agencies, however, some airing of county agencies may be just what the judge needs to instill a bit of fairness into the next set of orders. Maybe not so much with regard to Judge Behnke, but certainly, one would hope, for Judge Moorman.

A bit of insight: We have been trying to get our children returned to us, Mendocino County took them and now we are at the point of a .26 hearing and I'm alone out here while Mr. Mangrum is getting primped and pampered at Hotel Mendocino. I can not visit him as I was an inmate (first time!!) within the last 6 months. This occurred July 4th, yet we were not arrested until the 25th, when we were exiting Courtroom G at the close of our 12 month Juvenile Dependency Review, in which the judge adopted the Agency recommendation for termination of services and setting for .26 hearing to terminate our parental rights.

AMAZINGLY disgusting story of how a family caught in a situation unbeknownst to them, eight miles outside Willits, down a long winding dirt road, and their car breaks down a few months after being evacuated in the Mendocino Complex Fires. I have two children, Mr. Mangrum has three, and we have four together. Our four are the ones in foster care and going up for adoption. They range in ages 4-9.

My attorney conveniently was on vacation directly after this hearing, and I'm on my own with the Writ Petition. Mr. Mangrum has been incarcerated since our arrest on July 25, and his appointed attorney for the CPS case has not contacted him. Corrections staff, despite my call to them regarding the nature of the proceedings, refuse to give Mr. Mangrum the papers he was booked with, even though a strict deadline for filing existed.

Needless to say, he missed his filing, and it is all up to me to figure out how to scrape together something resembling a Writ Petition. I'm scared beyond belief, I'm no danger to my babies! We all just want to go home.

I have not seen or spoken to my kids since being released from jail. They have been moved somewhere in Lake county.

I do not know when, or if, I will see them again.

My mind was not paying attention that day in early July, when Mr. Mangrum showed me what I thought was a phone. I intended to locate store staff, so that it would be returned. My squeeky clean record should be enough to find that reasonably believable. I don't steal.

Porter is upset with me from another case where he badgered me and I didn't take it quietly. He's nothing more than a bigheaded bully, and one day he will have to face all the hurt and injustice he created during his War on Crime. Once he learned of the CPS case, he has been relentless.

Karma is a bitch. She waits for no one.

That's the only thing I find comfort in, knowing he won't get away with it forever. It will catch up to him at some point.

It does nothing to change the fact that my children are forever traumatized, their innocence forever robbed, the ability to put full faith into someone as well as the ability to simply feel safe —forever gone.

I am the only person in their lives that never left them, never turned my back , no matter how hard life was. We always had each other. And we were good with that. We were coming out of the hole.

But Mendocino County child welfare workers must have had a doozey to tell the judge. I wouldn't know. I wasn't told of the detention hearing. Never had one.

Look forward to hearing from you — good day,

Sincerely,

Ruthless Sticky Fingers Sarah, the Scanner Snatcher Walker

Willits

NIGHT LIGHT OF THE NORTH COAST: Metal Beast and Stardust Skies

by David Wilson

Late one night along a dirt road in the hills in the middle of nowhere in southern Humboldt County, a couple of guys rendezvoused to photograph an old metal beast crouching in the dirt beneath the stardust skies of the cosmic realm through which we float, as a species almost completely unaware of the larger significance of our tiny insignificance. I was one of them, and my friend Kris was the other.

The opaque blue sky ceiling of daytime shutters our eyes to the space in which Earth floats, and insulates us against thoughts of our minute scale in the vast scheme of things. But at night our vision punches through the blue dome and we see the magnificence of the greater cosmos in which our little dustball drifts. Most of our waking lives we don’t even see the stars, let alone consider our place among them.

Growing up under the dark skies of a rural area allowed me to enjoy the heavens whenever it was clear. If ever I forget how precious that gift is, when I take folks who are coming from the city out to enjoy our relatively dark skies, their oohs and ahhs remind me how awe inspiring the sight of a sky full of glittering stars truly is. If your mind can grasp it, you will see how tiny we are and how large the rest of the Universe is — where by “we” I mean all of humanity on Earth, not just you and a few pals. “We” are all together on this little ball drifting through the cosmos. Compared to the rest of it, Earth is smaller than a bit of dust from a crushed grain of sand out there, and all of us scurrying around on it are as the smallest of sub-sub-microscopic organisms. We sure are a serious lot for being so tiny.

Rural life also gave me respect for private property and a skepticism for the rural roads shown on maps. Long before my family’s time there a stage coach used to run right though our property, even using the old house that was there as a stop, and continue to either Piercy on the South Fork Eel River or west toward the coast. Traveling in a westerly direction from what would become our place, the road followed Indian Creek up past the old logging ghost town of Moody to the Whitethorn Road and Usal Road, and from there one could go down to Bear Harbor, or north to Shelter Cove. The Usal Road even connected with Highway 1 to the south. Long after the stages had ceased to run, automobiles continued to use the road.

That was a lot of access out the little road, but the through access had closed down by some time in the mid-20th century, before my time. We landed on the property in the 1970s, and all of the connections through it to Piercy and the coast had long since been obliterated, lost to private property and timberland crisscrossed with logging and skid roads. But from town out to our place the road remained intact. It was still the same dirt road that used to run north-south through there so many years before our arrival, only now we were at the end of the line. Beyond us was logging and ranching land with different lines of access.

No, the road out to our place was no longer a through road, but Rand McNally and other makers of folding travel maps of the 70s, 80s, and 90s apparently never got the word. We turned back many a traveler who would try showing us by the little lines on their map that the road did, in fact, go through to the coast or to Piercy, while we would point to the bald fact that it did not go through. Too bad for them, as they were by then 30 minutes out of their way down a dirt road that they’d have to backtrack. If only they’d had smart maps.

Or not…?

A hot, dusty day found me visiting the old place a few weeks ago. It’s still every bit the dirt road it ever was. At the turn to my dad’s driveway I paused to let an approaching vehicle pass. It slowed and stopped, and as its trailing column of dust caught up and settled around us the driver lowered his window.

“Hi,” he said. “Are we on the right road for the coast? My Google Maps says…”

Oh, golly, I thought, that again? And now Google is sending them out here? Jeepers.

When exploring the smaller back roads it’s easy to become confused and lost, or misled by the map itself — including Google Maps — and end up on private property. If you find yourself on an unfamiliar dirt road in your explorations, you should probably turn around and find a paved road. You could be deep inside private property.

Later that night as Kris and I photographed the grader beneath infinity’s starry sky, the annoying quirks of the mapping world and other vagaries of human life slipped quietly from my consciousness until only the wonders of the Universe remained.

My friend Kris photographed the old Grader sitting beside a dirt road in the hills of rural Southern Humboldt County.

A meteor streaked over the old Grader as I photographed. The bright star next to the meteor’s tail is the planet Saturn. Jupiter is the largest, brightest point in the sky just above the grader’s roof.

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

YOU CAN SEE her work for yourself at Susan Robinson’s website, but if you’re looking for a perfect gift for a flower lover, Ms. Robinson’s stunningly preserved pressed local varieties are just what you’re looking for. Like some of you, I always enjoyed finding a grandmother’s pressed flower in an old bible or book, but unlike flowers preserved that way, Susan Robinson manages to retain full color in those she mounts in glass. Her work can be found at Sunrobins Botanical Arts and is highly recommended both for their own sake and because all flora are found in the Anderson Valley, some of it only in the Anderson Valley.

THE LATEST in epistolary irritations? "Warmly yours.” And always from a stranger. Message sign-offs are technically valedictions to close off salutations. I prefer my old friend Vern Piver's simple valediction, "Later" or, more formally, I prefer anything ranging from "Sincerely" to "Thank you."

SALE this week at Hedgehog Books on travel and language books, as well as books in Spanish for both children and adults. Hedgehog is to the rear of the train cars in Boonville next door to Boont Berry Farm. Hours 12:30 to 5:30.

AV CHAMBER MIXER. The AV Chamber of Commerce is having a Member Mixer. We want to celebrate our new Visitor Guide brochure and welcome our Members!

DATE: Wed, Aug 21st 6-8pm,

LOCATION: Disco Ranch, 14025 Hwy 128, Boonville.

Appetizers and Beverages compliments of the Chamber and Disco Ranch.

Please RSVP ASAP, (707) 895.2379 or andersonvalleychamber@gmail.com.

JUSTINE FREDERICKSEN of the Ukiah Daily Journal reported Thursday that the City of Ukiah awarded a contract of about $1.4 million to a Cloverdale construction outfit for “the final planned stretch [Phase 3] of the Ukiah Rail Trail, a paved walking path that runs north to south along the railroad tracks.” Phase 2, about a quarter mile of trail, previously cost about $1.5 million. We have not been able to find the official total length of the finished trail, but it was previously described as “in the center of Ukiah.” This latest “final” phase supposedly “runs north from Mason Street to nearly Brush Street” along the railroad right of way, which looks on the map to be about 1500 feet. So let’s assume that the total length of the Ukiah Rail-Trail is less than a mile at over $1.5 million per quarter mile, or at least $5 million for a mile of finished paved trail. The money is coming from a Caltrans grant. 

THE ONLY summary description of the project we could find was on the Mendocino Council of Governments (MCOG) website. (MCOG is the artificial intermediary joint powers authority that handles transportation project planning for the County. To venture into the thicket of Mendo organizations is to suffer a virtual thorn-storm of acronyms — M-blab, M-blob and so on. (“This project [is] a multi-use bicycle and pedestrian paved trail, within the Northwestern Pacific Railroad right-of-way in the City of Ukiah, including a pre-engineered flatbed rail car bridge, trail fencing, lighting, and safety enhanced crosswalks.”)

LET’S NEXT ASSUME that this is the kind of hiking/biking trail that Senator Mike McGuire envisions for the North Coast Railroad Authority right of way — his “Great Redwood Trail.” McGuire says the Great Redwood Trail would run along the total length of the railroad right of way which is about 300 miles. So — and this is a big if piled on top of a big assumption, the math works out to over $5,000,000 x 300 or — and we can’t even imagine this number: $1.500,000,000. Or, $1.5 billion. The cost per mile will be less in some areas, but will probably be substantially more in the Eel River Canyon, on the remote chance this chimerical project ever reaches Dos Rios.

SPEAKING to a Humboldt crowd about the project last May, McGuire said the project “will take many years to complete,” adding, “We’ve always known that creating the Great Redwood Trail is not gonna by quick and it’s not gonna be easy. It has to be done carefully, not fast. It has to be done right.”

TRANSLATION: Never gonna happen. The Ukiah Rail-Trail is the pet project of Ukiah City Councilwoman Maureen ‘Mo’ Mulhern who apparently is planning to run against Second District Supervisor John McCowen for his Supes seat. McCowen has been a big apologist for the North Coast Rail Authority scam over the years which never ran any actual railroad traffic. So, rail-trail fantasies being central to Ukiah political thinking, if “Mo” can somehow replace him, she will probably become the Great Proponent of the Great Redwood Trail which will replace the North Coast Railroad as the North Coast’s Greatest Waste of Money. And her mantra as regards the Great Redwood Trail could become: "Mo Money."

(Mark Scaramella)

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.

GREAT DAY IN ELK

THE LAST FEW DECADES sure have been bad ones for organized religion. Conservative Christians have decided that the sum total of the Bible is about reestablishing the sex and gender mores of the 19th century. Liberal Protestantism is so unassuming that hardly anyone even remembers it exists. The Catholic Church has been responsible for the deaths of millions in Africa thanks to its mindless belief that God hates condoms. Much of Islam has been taken over by the toxic Saudi strain. Israel has turned into an apartheid state. Hindus in India are apparently now dedicated to creating a religiously pure state. And even Buddhists have been acting badly lately.

Kevin Drum, Mother Jones Magazine

MRC VS. DEMOCRACY

To The Editor,

On June 7, 2016, Mendocino County voters approved Measure V, declaring intentionally-killed and left-standing trees a public nuisance. At issue was the local timber industry practice of poisoning millions of trees and then leaving them to die in our forests. The Measure's intent was to mitigate the fire hazard that results from this practice (known as hack-and-squirt). To be clear, the Measure did not prohibit the practice of poisoning trees but merely asked practitioners to clean up the mess and not leave an ever-expanding fire hazard in their wake. Measure V passed by overwhelming majority (62%), the will and desire of the people was clear.

One month later (July 6, 2016), Dennis Thibeault (Mendocino Redwood Company VP) sent a letter to Carmel Angelo (Mendocino County CEO) claiming that timber operators were "exempt from a public nuisance determination" and the county lacked "authority to adopt any ordinance restricting its practice." This corporate saber-rattling was all it took to frighten the County into inaction on the newly passed Measure.

Countering MRC’s claim of exemption is this passage from CA Government Code, Sec. 51115.5: "Notwithstanding any other provision of law, timber operations conducted within a timber production zone pursuant to the provisions of the Zberg-Nejedly Forest Practice Act of 1973 (Chapter 8 (commencing with Section 4511) of Division 4 of the Public Resources Code) shall not constitute a nuisance, private or public."

Nine months later (March 2017), after residents continued complaining to county officials about their inaction, County Counsel came up with the idea to solicit the state Attorney General's office for an opinion on the matter, asking: "Does state law preempt the enforcement of a county ordinance that declares 'intentionally killed and left standing trees' to be a public nuisance?"

Two-and-a-half years later, the AG's office responded to Mendocino County Counsel Katharine Elliot: "With regret, we must cancel your request for an opinion on the following question: ‘A county ordinance declares certain intentionally killed trees that are left standing to be a public nuisance. Is such an ordinance preempted by state forestry law governing the conduct of timber operations — specifically the Z'berg-Nejedly Fprest Practic [sic] Act of 1973 or the California Timberland Productivity Act of 1982?’ Unfortunately, we discovered late in our internal vetting process that we should withdraw from the matter in order to avoid a risk of a conflict of interest arising. We are sorry that we are not able to produce an official opinion on your question. Thank you for your interest and understanding."

More than three years have now passed since voters declared this practice a public nuisance. The timber industry claims they can ignore our law and continue leaving dead trees in their wake. During the two full years (2017, 2018) since Measure V became law, Mendocino Redwood Company, alone, distributed 1,605 gallons of imazapyr (the herbicide used for hack-and-squirt) on 10,414 acres. This is enough poison to kill over two million nine-inch diameter trees. Meanwhile, Mendocino County officials continue to cower. This represents a complete failure of democracy. These entities have no respect for the will of the people. We're going to have to insist.

Mike Kalantarian

Navarro

A FORT BRAGG WOMAN WRITES:

I was at Lake Tahoe in the late '60s. I already had the mindset that when people wanted to interrupt to say things, the first thing is to understand what they are saying, and then respond as if you were really interested in what a person was saying. When you listen to that, many times if you stay linear with it, you can get rid of 'em post haste. So I walked out onstage, had on a brown leather suit, and the shoes I had on were high-tops and had sort of like a dark brown mustard color. It was a midnight show, so the people have a chance to medicate themselves with alcohol. The room holds 750—Harrahs, Lake Tahoe, one of the most beautiful rooms in the world. And a woman's voice shouted out, "I hate those shoes!" And because of the way I think—which is not to challenge, not to beat up the person but to understand what the person has just said and to remain linear—I said, "Madame, you are very, very fortunate, because these shoes will not be performing." And, man, I never heard from her again.

THE PRESS RELEASE out of the Sheriff's Department began, "On Thursday, August 15, at about 11:04 am, Mendocino County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to a suspicious female who parked her vehicle (a silver Nissan X-Terra) and was trespassing on a piece of property near Valley Road and Eastside Road in Willits…."

And went on to describe the odd behavior by a 39-year-old Willits woman that resulted in her arrest with bail set at $35,000 dollars. But what the press release — merrily commented on by its on-line audience — didn't say because its author probably didn't know is that the poor woman had lost her young son to a drowning accident maybe a year ago, a tragedy that could unhinge any parent. Sad stories behind arrest announcements are nothing new, but this one is beyond.

THE SEPTEMBER 5, 2019 PLANNING COMMISSION AGENDA has been posted to the department website at the below link:

mendocinocounty.org/government/planning-building-services/meeting-agendas/planning-commission

THE WALMART CLERK’S TALE

by Harvey Reading

Jared hates crowds. He avoids gatherings of humans like any normal person would avoid the plague. He is tense from the moment he enters a store, like Wamart, until he can breathe a sigh of relief after escaping through its exit doors and back to reality. Lately, he has begun to do his every-two-months perishables shopping early in the morning, just after the local Walmart (the only grocery store locally save for the Kroger empire store) opens its doors, before the hordes of shoppers arrive. Unfortunately his arrival also coincides with numerous employees stocking numerous shelves to replace numerous items sold the previous day. But, Jared considers that a small price to pay for the peace of mind the lack of a crowd brings him.

In June, he had completed his shopping at a little before seven in the morning. The only open cash register had three people awaiting its services, including one cart that was overflowing with the bounty that graced the shelves of the store. The woman just in front of him had only a couple of items and no cart. Shortly after Jared was accepting his predicament, he heard a female voice, a rather melodious one at that, announce, “I can help someone here,” as she opened the checkout line, just to Jared’s right.

Graciously, Jared allowed the woman with the handheld items to move first to the newly opened lane, then followed her in line. He soon found his purchases being checked out by the attractive young woman, and in a very efficient manner. Now, as anyone who has shopped at Walmart knows, the process of checking out is a two-way sort of street, one wherein the clerk removes the items from the belt, scans them, and then places them into bags that are arranged in a merry-go-round sort of assembly that rotates the bags to within reach of the customer. The purchaser then has the responsibility for placing the bags into the cart for transport from the store. Jared suspected the routine was in part intended to cut down on extraneous conversations between clerks and customers. The attractive young clerk was extremely efficient, making Jared move quickly to stay ahead of her as he retrieved the bags. He barely had a chance to even glance quickly at her, though, when he did, he got the feeling that there was something familiar about her. Just what it was eluded him, and the only words they exchanged were the customary “thank-yous” exchanged as the clerk handed Jared the receipt.

As Jared replaced his debit card into his wallet, he saw the clerk closing the checkout line, since no one was waiting. Having done so, she walked out of the workstation. As she walked, she looked at Jared, and, as she passed, he could barely here her say, “Thank you Jared,” in an incredibly low voice, just before she turned and walked away to her next job, whatever that may have been. Jared exited the store with his purchases.

Jared later found himself first wondering how on earth the clerk knew his name (since it doesn’t appear on the receipt), and second, why she had thanked him a second time. He found himself frequently preoccupied over the next few weeks wondering just who the clerk was, and where had he seen her before.

Jared didn’t shop again until nearly mid-August. He saw nothing of the pretty young brunette clerk then. In fact, he was beginning to wonder if he had just imagined that she had said the words he was sure he heard. A couple of weeks later (Jared is not the quickest of people to figure out certain things), it finally hit Jared square between the eyes, just who the young clerk was. To do so, Jared had to travel mentally about 6 years into the past.

In fact, he had to travel back to Mother’s Day 2013. At the time he didn’t know it was Mother’s Day, since his mother had died in 1986, but he soon became aware that it was.

Jared’s neighbor at the time, Henry, knocked on his door at about nine in the morning. He asked Jared if he would like to go out on the “lake” for some fishing. Knowing that fishing would be unproductive but also having nothing else planned, Jared agreed and they retired to Jared’s garage to get Jared’s little boat hitched to Jared’s little pickup. As they drove away from Jared’s little house, Henry announced that they needed to drive by the house of Henry’s grandmother, so that they could meet up with one of Henry’s on-again-off-again girlfriends and her children.

That was the moment when Henry realized it was Mother’s Day. He also recalled conversations between the woman and Henry, in which she tried to convince Henry to take her and the children out to the lake on Mother’s Day. Jared realized he had been had, but at least Henry was for once sober, so Jared figured what the hell.

At the lake, one of the girlfriend’s daughters, aged 12 at the time (a slender brunette named Brandi), asked Henry if she could operate the boat. Jared said it would be fine as long as it was OK with her mother. It was. Note that the other two of the girlfriend’s children and one friend had decided that hiking in the desert was preferable to riding in a small boat, so little was seen of them throughout the day. Plus they were sulking after having been caught joy-riding in Mom’s car earlier.

So, Jared and Henry and Mom and Brandi entered the boat. Jared sat in the passenger seat to the left of the steering wheel, and as Brandi walked toward him, she expressed surprise to learn that she was expected to actually operate the boat, not just steer it while seated on Jared’s lap, an occurrence with which she was apparently familiar on other outings. Henry and Mom sat in the front of the boat.

Jared quickly ran Brandi through the operating procedures of the little open boat, and off they went. Brandi seemed to enjoy being in charge and was operating the little boat like a pro in no time. After a couple of hours, during which Henry unsuccessfully tried to catch a fish in the middle of a very hot day, they returned to shore. Everyone but Henry and Jared left the boat, and all met again at the boat ramp, where the boat was trailered and all went to their respective homes. All-in-all a fairly typical family outing even though not all were related.

That was the last time Jared had seen Brandi. He saw Mom at the memorial service for Henry after he drowned in a boating accident. Jared had noted that Brandi was intelligent and affable but found it odd that she hadn’t thanked him for letting him operate the boat. But, hey, the kid was only twelve.

Once Jared had remembered that Mother’s Day outing, he knew that the mysterious, attractive clerk was a now-grown-up and an attractive young woman named Brandi. He also knew that what she had said at the checkout station was simply a long-delayed appreciation and acknowledgment of his having allowed her to operate that little boat so long ago. Now, aint that sweet?

JANE DICKERSON, Grace Hodson, and Susan Wynn standing around a record player at the YWCA, 1946.

BOONVILLE BEER FESTIVAL DONATIONS

Amidst ideal weather conditions, thousands of thirsty craft beer fans arrived in droves on Saturday, April 27th to help the 23rd Annual Legendary Boonville Beer Festival raise over $100,000 to support local non-profits throughout the Anderson Valley.

Spanning over two decades, The Wee Boont Foundation (with support from Anderson Valley Brewing Company) has dispersed over $1.7 million dollars in donations from the annual “Bahl Hornin’ Tidrick” (that means ‘Craft Beer Festival’ in the local Boontling dialect of the historic Anderson Valley.)

The festival theme for this year was “The Wild Wild West” and showcased over 80 breweries and cideries at the Mendocino County Fairgrounds in Boonville, CA. Attendees had nearly endless choices of beer to choose from, as well as dozens of assorted vendors and food trucks. But it’s the festive and laid-back atmosphere that has made this “destination festival” a must-attend event year after year. Since the inaugural festival was held at Anderson Valley Brewing Company in 1997, it has grown exponentially and continues to draw people from across the United States and around the world.

This year’s net proceeds were shared by the following non-profits:

Anderson Valley Animal Rescue, AV Historical Society, AV Fire Department and Volunteer Firefighters Association, Navarro River Resource, AV Land Trust, AV PTO, AV Elder Home, AV Lions Club, AV Education Foundation, AV Sports Boosters, AV Senior Center, AV Ambulance, the Kimmies of Cody Mosh, AV Health Center, AV Housing Authority, Emerald Earth Society, AV Food Bank, Hendy Woods and KZYX Public Radio.

The 24th Annual Legendary Boonville Beer Festival will be held on Saturday May 2nd, 2020 so mark your calendars!

For more information on volunteering and participation opportunities, please contact:

Debi Paslay (dpaslay@avbc.com)

Administrative Assistant / Event Coordinator

Anderson Valley Brewing Company

(707) 895-2337, x10

CATCH OF THE DAY, AUGUST 19, 2019

ENRIQUE BARRUETA-CRUZ, Ukiah. DUI, no license.

SONO CARRIGG, Ukiah. Burglary, vandalism, parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

FRANCISCO GOMEZ, Vallejo/Hopland. Suspended license (for DUI), probation revocation.

RANDOLPH GUEVARA, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

FRANCISCO MENDOZA, Redwood Valley. Protective order violation.

MALCOLM SESSIONS, Nice/Ukiah. DUI.

DANIEL YEOMANS, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

THERE IS NO NORMAL

by James Kunstler

The wheel of time rolls forward, never retracing its path, but because it is a wheel, and we are riding in it, a persistent illusion persuades us that the landscape is recognizably the same, and that our doings within the regular turning of the seasons seem comfortably normal. There is no normal.

There is for us, at this moment in history, an especially harsh turning (so Strauss and Howe would say) as our journey takes the exit ramp out of the high energy era into the next reality of a long emergency. The human hive-mind senses that something is different, but at the same moment we’re unable to imagine changing all our exquisitely tuned arrangements — especially the thinking class in charge of all that, self-enchanted with pixeled fantasies. The dissonance over this is driving America crazy.

The wheel hit a deep pothole in 2008 turning onto the off-ramp and has been wobbling badly ever since. 2008 was a warning that going through the motions isn’t enough to sustain a sense of purpose, either nationally or for individuals trying to keep their lives together ever more desperately. The cultural memory of the confident years, when we seemed to know what we were doing, and where we were going, dogs us and mocks us.

The young adults feel all that most acutely. The pain prompts them to want to deconstruct that memory. “No, it didn’t happen that way,” they are saying. All those stories about the founding of this society — of those Great Men with their powdered hair-doos writing the national charter, and the remarkable experience of the past 200-odd years — are wrong! There was nothing wonderful about it. The whole thing was a swindle!

They are feeling the wheel’s turning most painfully, since they know they will see many more turnings in the years ahead, and the direction of the wheel is vectoring downward for them. The bottom-line is less of everything, not more. That is a new ethos here in America and it’s hardly comforting: Less income, fewer comforts, more literal hardships, fewer consolations for the universal difficulty of being alive. No wonder they are angry.

It’s this simple. We landed in the New World five hundred years ago. It was full of good things that human beings had barely begun to exploit, laid out like a banquet. There was plenty of good virgin soil for growing food, the best timber in the world, clean rivers and great lakes, ores full of iron, gold, and silver, and down deep a bonanza of coal and oil to drive the wheel through very flush times. The past century was particularly supercharged, the oil years.

Imagine living through the very start of all that, the blinding, fantastic newness of modernity! Look back at the stories and images around Teddy Roosevelt and his times, and the confidence of that era just astonishes you, An emergent cavalcade of wonders: electricity, telephones, railroads, subways, skyscrapers! And in a few more years movies, cars, airplanes, radio. Even the backstage wonders of the day were astonishments: household plumbing for all, running hot water, municipal water and sewer systems, refrigeration, tractors! It’s hard to conceive how much these developments changed the human experience of daily life.

Even the traumas of the 20th century’s world wars did not crush that sense of amazing progress, at least not in North America, spared the wars’ mighty wreckage. The post-war confidence of American society achieved a level of in-your-face laughable hubris — see the USA in your Chevrolet! — until John Kennedy was shot down, and after that the delirious moonshot euphoria steadily gave way to corrosive skepticism, anxiety, acrimony, and enmity. My generation, booming into adulthood, naively thought they could fix all that with Earth Day, tofu, and computers, and keep the great wheel rolling down into an even more glorious cybernetic nirvana.

Fakeout. That’s not where the wheel is going. We borrowed all we possibly could from the future to pretend that the system was still working, and now the future is at the door like a re-po man come to take away both the car and the house. The financial scene is an excellent analog to our collective psychology. Its workings depend on the simple faith that its workings work. So, it is easy to imagine what happens when that faith wavers.

We’re on the verge of a lot of things coming apart: supply lines, revenue streams, international agreements, political assumptions, promises to do this and that. We have no idea how to keep it together on the downside. We don’t even want to think about it. The best we can do for the moment is pretend that the downside doesn’t exist. And meanwhile, fight both for social justice and to make America great again, two seemingly noble ideas, both exercises in futility. The wheel is still turning and the change of season soon upon us. What will you do?

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

FORMER FBI AGENT Michael German, interviewed on NPR following the far-right Charlottesville, Virginia riot, accurately depicts those hate groups at that riot and how police and Trump responded to the rightwing’s murderous rampage (NPR, August 15, 2017).

Here’s a key segment of the German NPR interview:

GERMAN: Well, that disavowal [Trump’s] was very reluctant and late. And the white supremacist groups got the message from that, that this is sanctioned. But more important is that the police in these cases – and Charlottesville isn’t the first one, there were two in Berkeley. There was one in Sacramento and in Huntington Beach, Calif. – are policing these protests very differently, where they’re allowing violence and these running street battles to happen. And that is – that, again, is a state sanctioning of this kind of violence that gives – that makes them far more dangerous.

— Howard Lisnoff, CP

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Comfort and convenience in the USA – Things we will be seeing a lot less of in the near future. Perhaps you already are. Even if you are in the top 20% income bracket and are still fairly comfortable, you probably have begun to notice a bit more inconvenince in your day to day activities. Those in the top 1% haven’t noticed and probably won’t as long as they still have their handlers and arrangers managing their lives. For those in the bottom 50% bracket, you get to deal with more discomfort and inconvenience with every passing year. That’s why a large group of doomers hope for a fast collapse scenario: they don’t want to or can’t deal with the slow steady grind. For that shrinking group in the middle that still have jobs and can afford a few of life’s perks along the way, the stress and fear of falling off the ladder or even down a few rungs is taking its toll. Most young people of working age already realize they are not going to have the opportunities their parents had. And it only took three generations to play out. I took my chances several years ago and left the states to live in a place that had seen lots of hard times recently but was on the rebound so it hasn’t been so bad. I think most Americans alive today are just not psychologically prepared for whats ahead.

JANIS JOPLIN pouring herself a drink before going on stage at Woodstock, 1969.

THE WHEEL

The wheel is turning and you can’t slow down,

You can’t let go and you can’t hold on,

You can’t go back and you can’t stand still,

If the thunder don’t get you then the lightning will.

Won’t you try just a little bit harder,

Couldn’t you try just a little bit more?

Won’t you try just a little bit harder,

Couldn’t you try just a little bit more?

Round, round robin run round, got to get back to where you belong,

Little bit harder, just a little bit more,

A little bit further than you gone before.

The wheel is turning and you can’t slow down,

You can’t let go and you can’t hold on,

You can’t go back and you can’t stand still,

If the thunder don’t get you then the lightning will.

Small wheel turn by the fire and rod,

Big wheel turn by the grace of God,

Every time that wheel turn ’round,

Bound to cover just a little more ground.

The wheel is turning and you can’t slow down,

You can’t let go and you can’t hold on,

You can’t go back and you can’t stand still,

If the thunder don’t get you then the lightning will.

Won’t you try just a little bit harder,

Couldn’t you try just a little bit more?

Won’t you try just a little bit harder,

Couldn’t you try just a little bit more?

Words by Jerome J. Garcia / Robert C. Hunter / William Kreutzmann

TROUBLE MAKERS BEING FORCED TO GO ELSEWHERE

Sacramento sues to bar 7 men from street

Rare move follows complaints of nuisances, threats

The city of Sacramento has filed an unusual lawsuit to ban seven men considered to be a “public nuisance” from a popular business corridor.

The lawsuit alleges the men are “drug users, trespassers, thieves … and violent criminals” who have illegal weapons and ammunition and have forced police to dedicate an “excessive amount” of resources to the Broadway corridor.

City Attorney Susana Alcala Wood filed the suit Aug. 9 in Sacramento Superior Court, according to a copy posted online by The Sacramento Bee. The suit includes declarations from local business and property owners, who claim they have been threatened.

Alcala Wood said in a statement Sunday such lawsuits are not appropriate in every situation, but this case warrants legal action. She said this type of suit will only be filed with the neighborhood’s support. “The City of Sacramento will seek injunctive relief when criminal activity in an area has become excessive when compared to similar neighborhoods, and other enforcement remedies have not proven successful,” she said. “In this case, the residents and businesses along the Broadway corridor have been subjected to ongoing criminal activity from a relatively small group of people. The suit looks to address that issue head-on and protect the safety of everyone who lives in or visits the area.”

The suit is filed against Sean Conner, Michael Dibiasio, Dimitriy Gologyuk, Troy Green, Kelvin C. Peterson, Joseph Soto and Kenneth Whitlock. Some of the men are believed to be homeless and efforts to reach them Sunday were unsuccessful. It also wasn’t known if they had lawyers who could comment on their behalf.

“Homelessness is not a crime, and this lawsuit does not seek to make it one,” Mayor Darrell Steinberg said in a statement. “What the city is attempting to do is safeguard the public safety and well-being of residents and businesses in the Broadway corridor who have been subjected to ongoing criminal activity by a relatively small number of people, some of whom also happen to be homeless.”

The lawsuit seeks an injunction that would bar the men from being in the designated area “at any time.” The city argues that unless the men are banned from the area, their activity will continue to “cause great and irreparable injury to the residents and businesses,” who have “suffered emotional distress in the form of fear, intimidation and anxiety.”

(Stefanie Dazio, AP)

PRE-STRESSED MICE.

"Literal machine translation often misses the mark by a mile, but true translation can seem to spin off past the moon. Take 'He was never more sinister than when he was at his most polite, which is probably the truest test of breeding.' (J.M. Barrie's description of his Captain Hook.) Here it is in Scottish Gaelic: 'Bheir e air falbh thu gu saoghal dìomhair. Tall agus tana, tha a ghàirdeanan sìnte a-mach a' toirt comhfhurtachd agus uabhas dhuinn.' Which gives, 'It takes you away to a mysterious world. Tall and thin, his outstretched arms comfort and shock us.' And there is the entire story compressed to madness, backwards and in high heels, or rather: Agus tha an sgeulachd gu lèir air a dhlùthadh gu cuthach, air ais agus ann an sàilean àrda. ('And some rin up hill and down dale, knapping the chucky stanes to pieces wi' hammers, like sae mony road-makers. They say it is to find out how the warld was made!') Eat your tea and get to work."

The recording of last night's (2019-08-16) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KMEC-LP Ukiah is available by one or two clicks, depending on whether you want to listen to it now or download it and keep it for later and, speaking of which, it's right here:
https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0346

KNYO always comes through like a champ because it’s the first place the MOTA signal goes. On show nights, half an hour or so into the show I’ve got used to putting on a song and using the time to go to KMEC’s computer via remote to check whether the proper switch was set so I won’t be kicked off the air /there/ by automation reverting at the top of the hour (10pm), and I put it right if it's not right and leave it alone if it is. (Then at the end of the show, just before 5am, I let go of KNYO and set KMEC back to normal.) But this time, at 9:30, the switch I’m used to seeing in KMEC's operating computer was not on top, and the song was half over and I didn’t have time to go digging. Were things working anyway? I listened to KMEC on my phone: someone's singing soulfully in Spanish about his inflamed corazon. Tch. Alicia, formerly of KMEC, works at KZYX now, but I texted her. She phoned KMEC. Turns out, a deejay there who shall remain nameless had wandered in, decided to just cut off my show that I spent all week getting ready for and instead play her own records, because, heck, why not, ya know? Sorry, bye, and fixed. And… I think that’s fine. She's not likely to do it again, but eventually something else goofy will happen or something will break or a person will get a wild hair or a cosmic ray or an EMP will flip some bits, and we will all deal with it. Really this is more like the world I'd like it to be than rigid compliance with expectations in all things. Fascist clockwork may make the trains run on time, but slack is the meat and potatoes of life, and so what if nothing is perfect? Think what a nightmare a perfect world would be. We wouldn’t even be conscious of the horror of it. It'd be like Camazotz. (Not the cross-eyed Mayan bat god but the planet in A Wrinkle In Time.)

Besides all that, at http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you can find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not necessarily radio-useful but nonetheless worthwhile educational items I set aside for you while gathering the show together. Such as:

Blink and they’re gone.
https://vimeo.com/305929872

Clearly if you're afraid of mountain lions and other big cats you should always have a roll of toilet paper with you, on a stick, to offer up and occupy the beautiful monster while you flee slowly backward blindly into a crevasse, and/or to trade to get your little dog back before it's too punctured to be of any use.
http://misscellania.blogspot.com/2019/08/wild-cats-vs-toilet-paper.html

Instinct. "Of which we lost most."
https://hemaworsten.blogspot.com/2019/07/instinct-of-which-we-lost-most.html

About the ants. Can't we all just get along? No.
https://theawesomer.com/the-world-war-of-the-ants/535357/

And English translation captions for a seal. There's a caption contest on the last page of every New Yorker magazine, and I don't know why but I always imagine the caption to be something like what this seal is saying. It's just primally funny, for the same reason: the little office workers, or rich people at a cocktail party, or space creatures, or someone trapped on a desert island, always saying, "Blefgh! … GAAGH… mmmph!… NNNUHngg," and so on, and understanding each other like an amorphous cloud of birds, the sky black with birds, all turning this way and that at the same time, ink swirling in a glass of water.
http://misscellania.blogspot.com/2019/08/talking-seal.html

-- Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

EDITH HOLDEN (1871-1920), thistle flowers and bees (1905)

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

by Michelle Hutchins, County Superintendent of Schools

Every year, California schools are evaluated on a variety of measures, everything from students’ math and English skills to suspension rates and chronic absenteeism. When things don’t go well, school districts scramble to put new programs in place that will improve scores the following school year. Although this is admirable, it doesn’t always work out as intended.

There are a couple reasons for this. Many of the problems school districts are trying to solve have evolved over time, and one year is not enough time to address the problems. Also, real, lasting change requires a systematic approach. Improvement science is the study of change—the study of which improvement strategies actually work—and one of the key components is timely feedback. Without real-time data, school districts have no way of knowing whether their strategies are having the desired effect. It’s like taking weekly tests but not getting any results until the end of the year. How do you know what to work on throughout the year? The answer is, you don’t.

Recently, Stanford University and the Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) published a research brief titled, “Continuous Improvement: Building System Capacity to Learn.” The report identifies some fundamental steps California school districts need to take if we are to affect long-term change.

Continuous improvement is a management philosophy for organizations that places learning in the center. Learning organizations stay relevant because they constantly update their processes to adjust to changing times.

Process Improvement

The report accurately points out that systems get the results they are designed to get, so if things aren’t going well, the system isn’t designed well. The best way to change a system effectively is through a continuous improvement process that includes the following phases.

1. Defining the problem – understanding the problem
2. Diagnosis – evaluating current processes
3. Intervention – using data within iterative cycles to see if planned changes work
4. Impact – evaluating the interventions based on overall goals
5. Sustainability – monitoring results and refining interventions

This continuous improvement process has been used in healthcare and other industries for years with great success. It breaks down problems into manageable, bite-sized increments and tests solutions in a real-world setting with immediate feedback so the strategy can be adjusted and retested. PDSA is an acronym for plan, do, study, act. During the Intervention Phase, a team can use the PDSA model over and over until team members get the results they want. It’s like mini-pilot projects with constant refinement.

Resource Investment

This all sounds great, but if you haven’t done it before, you need specific training which costs money—something many school districts don’t have. It also requires a data collection and distribution infrastructure that doesn’t exist right now. The exciting news is that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has earmarked 60 percent of its $1.7 billion in education during the next five years to support school improvement networks nationwide.

With access to training and coaching on how to improve and the data to support it, California schools will be in a better position to create sustainable change. We need to close the achievement gaps that exist among students of different backgrounds. We need to design education so we are constantly preparing students for a future that may not even exist today. We need to stay mindful of students’ academic development, as well as their social and emotional development.

To assist local school districts, the Mendocino County Office of Education (MCOE) is training its staff members, who can then help districts develop and implement process improvement plans. Sustainable change doesn’t happen overnight, but it can happen and MCOE is here to help.

MANED WOLF

This is the Maned Wolf. But names can be deceiving. It is not a wolf. Nor is it a fox on stilts. In fact, it is not closely related to any other living canid, neither dog, coyote, or jackal—it is its own, unique species. The Maned Wolf is found in the grasslands of South America. When fully grown, it can reach up to 35 inches, the tallest wild member of the canine family—scientists theorize that their legs evolved to help them see above tall grasses and shrubs while looking for prey. When threatened, their thick mane hairs stand erect, making them look even larger. They are omnivores, eating armadillos, rodents, reptiles, and birds, as well as roots, bulbs, and a tomato-like fruit that, due to its popularity with the wolf, is known as the wolf apple. Unlike real wolves, the Maned Wolf doesn’t form packs or mate for life—for most of the year, they hunt, travel, and sleep alone. Their urine smells so much like marijuana smoke that the Dutch police department recently hunted for a pot-smoker illegally lighting up at the Rotterdam Zoo before realizing their culprit was a wolf marking its territory. Sadly, only around 17,000 mature Maned Wolf adults are thought to be left in the wild—their numbers have been decimated by hunting and habitat loss. #BeholdSomethingBeautiful

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE WEEK

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.