MCT: Monday, September 9, 2019

• Autumnal
• Philo Produce
• Native Plants
• Mendo Coast
• Orchard Buyback
• Climate Action
• Peak Boo
• Comptche Arts
• AV Village
• Kritter Karnival
• High Rent
• Manual Entry
• Ed Notes
• Yesterday's Catch
• Mother's Voice
• KinderCar
• Opening Day
• Dictatorships
• Park Lions
• Minuscule Wages
• Dem Clubbing
• Tree Bombs
• Outage Plans
• Both Sides
• Nordic Hellscape
• Pentagon News
• Present Collapse
• Official Sources
• Future Listening
• Schrodinger's Patriot
• Barbarian Country
• Exit Afghanistan
• Fascism Choice
• Losing It
• Cannabis Scares

COOL INTERIOR TEMPERATURES will continue through the middle part of the week. Scattered showers will be possible across the northern part of the area through Tuesday. Isolated thunderstorms will be possible on Tuesday across portions of Del Norte and northern Trinity counties. (National Weather Service)

THIS WEEK AT BLUE MEADOW FARM

Colorama!

Heirloom, Early Girl, Roma & Cherry Tomatoes; Corno di Toro, Gypsy, Bell, Pimento Sweet Peppers; Padrons, Jalapenos, Anaheim & Poblano peppers; Italian & Asian Eggplant, Zucchini & Patty Pan Squash; Romano Beans, Garlic, Cucumbers, Basil; French Prune Plums, Broccoli & Cauliflower starts; Sunflowers & Zinnias

Case prices available

Blue Meadow Farm, 3301 Holmes Ranch Rd, Philo, 707-895-2071

RENEE!

Native Plants presentation

1:00 Monday, Sept. 9

Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens Meeting Room

Fort Bragg Garden Club Presents:

Native Plant Communities of the Mendocino Coast

Presented by, Renee Pasquinelli, conservation co-chair for Dorothy King Young Chapter of California Native Plant Society, and California State Parks Senior Environmental Scientist (retired).

This will be an informal talk with photos and time for questions and discussion. Topics will include native plant identification, issues affecting native plant conservation, incorporating native plants in the landscape, maintaining your existing native plants, and more. All are welcome, no charge. Refreshments served. Fort Bragg Garden Club meets at 1:00 p.m. on the 2nd Monday of the month, Sept. thru April (except Dec.) usually at Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens Meeting Room. 1:00 refreshments, followed by Renee’s presentation, then a short Garden Club business meeting.

Peggy Martin, Fort Bragg Garden Club

MENDO. LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT.

JAMES MARMON WRITES:

RE: ORCHARD AVE. BUYBACK

The Shraeder’s bought the Orchard Ave. property for $2,550,000 on 06/06/17. They used $500,000 gifted to them by the county for the down payment. I wonder if they’re going to keep the existing building or give that back to the County as well. The County had previously leased that building before the Shraeder’s bought it. The Schraeder’s had to get out from underneath that property because they did not get the 5 million dollar grant that they promised the County they would receive to build a CRT and CSU with. Lot’s of questions need to be asked. I hope one of the Supes pull this consent item, even at the risk of pissing off Angelo and Schraeder.

“friends don’t question friends”

zillow.com/homedetails/631-Orchard-Ukiah-CA-95482/2093477563_zpid/

Also the Schraeders found out that they couldn’t bid on operating the PHF, CSU, and CRT combined if they are the owners of the property because they would have an unfair advantage over other bidders.

PS. There’s actually 3 lots on that property, 1 empty and two with the existing building built on the two.

loopnet.com/property/631-s-orchard-ave-ukiah-ca-95482/06045-0023404200/

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ED NOTE: If this transaction is approved — on the consent calendar no less — on Tuesday, we will submit a Public Records Act request for all documents related to this suspicious buy back.

MENDOCINO COAST FRIENDS: can your workplace join the one-hour general strike for climate action on Sept 20? Here are a couple of posters you can use. One says "We're closed in support" and one says "We proudly support" -- for those organizations that can't close down but want to participate. You can also wear a green armband to take part while staying on the job.

THE THREE FACES OF EVE

The AVA, Attn: Bruce Anderson — September 4, 2019

Re: Cease and Desist Use of Personal Image

Dear Anderson Valley Advertiser,

Your newspaper organization continues to use my image without my permission. I demand removal of my personal photograph from your website within 15 days of receipt of this letter.

I am the owner of the photograph which you used to sell newspapers and continue to use online.

My professional photograph depicts me smiling with my arms folded. I am wearing a light blue shirt. I own the rights to that image.

Article: Mistrial Declared, Date: March 8, 2017, Archives/66338

Failure to remove the photograph and/or article will resiult in legal action which may include claims of invastion of privacy, violation of right of publicity, libel and defamation, among others. I will seek damages and other court orders absent your voluntary cooperation.

You do not have my consent to use my image.

As a courtesy, I request you remove the booking photo as well and remove the article. Or, make the article private.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I do not consent of publication of this letter and/or my personal cellphone listed below. Please contact me with any questions or concerns.

Best regards,

Lindsay R. Peak, Attorney at Law

The Law Offices of Lindsay Peak

Ukiah

ED REPLY: Is this some kind of pictorial three-card monte you're playing here, Ms. Peak? Who is which?

COMPTCHE’S 15TH ANNUAL LOCAL ART SHOW, including Hands On Demos! & Sales plus Tasting Valley Wines, Saturday, September 28, 2-6PM, at the Community Hall On Comptche/Ukiah Rd. 1/4 Ml East of Flynn Creek Rd. Good times to be shared in this welcoming town. Join us & have lots of fun on the 28th!

ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE EVENTS LIST

https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/index_list

AL NUNEZ, REPORT FROM GROUND ZERO:

Rent…

At times it seems like you pay more into having a spot to live then trying to do something more with your life with that hard earned money in hopes to making it better and easier to live. When that time of the month comes it's a struggle to let my money go like that, but I do because I don't want to get kicked off of earth just yet. I loved it when I lived on a place inland for 13 years paying only $200 a-month living in my motorhome, shoot had my own area on a 23 acre property, and solid ground, no swamp in the winter. I payed for my electricity my own bill which was cheaper rates then what i'm paying now. So far when I move from one place to another rent and all is getting to be more expensive which causes me to have to work more, tiring me some. In godly days did they pay rent? Taking a break from painting parts on truck, slow process being as weather goes hot then cold, fog blowing in again. I had done alot of different restorations way faster inland when living there, being the weather was more appropriate for it, allowing paint to dry fast. I think about how it takes more out of me to do my restorations out here, making me wonder what the hell am I doing to myself struggling with this, but I keep at it because I can't stand to not finish something I started. Gona get the truck done even if it breaks me, either way it will be my ticket to paradise somehow someway somewhere I keep telling myself. Gotta go, the sun is back out some.

ED NOTES

IF YOU'VE NEVER experienced a Boonville Fair, this weekend it's on, on, on! Fun stuff for children of all ages. I try to get down to the Fairgrounds early afternoon of the opening Friday, when everything's still fresh, often seeing people not seen in many a moon. Last couple of years there's been something of an exhibit revival in that young people, especially young family people, are again participating. I'll miss the Apple Bowl football game, and already miss high school football as it disappears from the Redwood Empire, hastening to add that I've learned to enjoy watching soccer now that I've mastered the rules, a learning process that took me a full decade. Saturday nights at the Fair used to feature lots of fighting, but now that fighting is weaponized hand-to-hand combat of the recreational type is no longer the drunken fun it used to be. Slim Pickens famously said that Boonville was the roughest town he ever called a rodeo in, which is saying something considering he called rodeos all over the country. The Anderson Valley is considerably calmed these days now that naked aggression is fully clothed and the violence is strictly passive-aggressive. The dogs bark, the caravan moves on.

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THE ESSENTIAL TOMMY WAYNE KRAMER: "Why don’t we see Hispanics begging? Why no roaming bands of Mexican drifters hanging around town, doing dope, harassing people at Safeway and camping at the railroad tracks with their vicious chihuahuas?"

OR ASIANS? OR BLACK PEOPLE? Or darn near any other ethnic rep other than beat down palefaces? On the subject of ethnic generalizations, school people right here in Boonville, where the student body is about 85% Mex-American, that portion of the student body presents virtually no disciplinary probs, their orderliness seemingly rubbing off on the gringos, who also don't act up much. I think that young Hispanics are better behaved because their families are, or tend to be, still intact and their children are raised to be polite and respectful of others, especially adults. Used to be gringo offspring were similarly brought up, but along the way, and again school people will verify, the parental attitude changed to, "Why are you picking on my baby?" Even if, especially if, the parents are, objectively, 5150 and their children are on heavy meds by the third grade.

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CORRUPTION? ON THE NORTHCOAST? I'M SHOCKED, SHOCKED, I TELL YOU. The only shocking thing about it is how little has been verified. But more verification may be in the offing. The FBI has announced that they are actively pursuing leads as to funny business in the still mostly outlaw cannabis industry. As the G-People put it, “States require licenses to grow and sell the drug—opening the possibility for public officials to become susceptible to bribes in exchange for those licenses. If you suspect a dispensary is operating with an illegally obtained license, or suspect public corruption in the marijuana industry," call us. “It’s our role as the FBI to help to ensure that the corruption doesn’t spread in this new industry. The corruption is more prevalent in western states where the licensing is decentralized—meaning the level of corruption can span from the highest to the lowest level of public officials.”

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I MOSTLY WATCH the BBC Television's World News, switching to ABC with the appalling David Muir the last few minutes of the half hour to see if Muir has outdone himself in the pure mawk he concludes his nightly hysteria with. The deliveries of Muir's correspondents — perfectly formed Kens and Barbies with big, white teeth — reporting from wherever are especially amusing; they pose themselves as if bracing against a hurricane wind and wildly gesticulate no matter the content of their presentation. Muir's concluding mawk is always about something "positive," at least as the feeble minded define positive — a kid with no arms playing high school football, a soldier back from Afghanistan "surprising" his kids at a school rally, a dog rescue lady exchanging soul kisses with beagles. The BBC rarely descends to manipulative sentimentality, and their newscast, often including a fat, blind guy, isn't constantly interrupted by ads for drugs whose side effects are more lethal than the disease allegedly being fought. Anyhoo, the other night I was struck by a clip on Brit prime minister Boris Johnson, a deeply cynical and buffoonish individual but, like Trump, the perfect guy to accelerate the looming apocalypse, walking down some London street with what appeared to be a single body guard and, here's the surprising part, getting in running arguments with passing pedestrians, one of whom was so aggressive, that in the American context, he would have been gang tackled and packed off to a secret service basement for a week of interrogation. The British PM is very unpopular, but there he was virtually unprotected in a public place fully engaged with random hecklers. I believe Coolidge was our last president to regularly appear in public without a small army of security. Any time a president comes to the Bay Area, the Secret Service cordons off two or three surrounding blocks and posts snipers with high powered rifles on neighborhood rooftops. Here on the "progressive" Northcoast, our alleged reps are unlikely ever to simply announce a time and a place where they are available, unfiltered, to the Great Unwashed. And I can't even imagine any of them holding their own in open debate as, I remember, and remember vividly because it was memorably hilarious, the time then-Congressman Bosco convened a genuinely open session (the only one since by any of them) in the auditorium at the State Building in Santa Rosa. During Bosco's opening remarks, which were met with open derision, a long line of critics formed to denounce him on this or that issue. (He was terrible on all issues, and how in hell he wound up as shot caller for what's left of the old Northcoast Railroad… Well, it's unlikely the FBI will take that one on.) The very first person to question Bosco teed off on him. As did the next two speakers. And then Bosco got mad and started hurling insults back at the audience. "Well, if you don't like it, get a new Congressman." Which we did, a lateral move called Frank Riggs. But Bosco losing it was his finest hour, and probably the only hour in his years of pure, hustling self-aggrandizement that we saw the whiney, self-righteous guy whole.

CATCH OF THE DAY, SEPTEMBER 08, 2019

BRET BAKER JR. Lakeport/Ukiah. Recless driving sentencing, misdemeanor hit&run with property damage.

CRYSTAL CARDONA, Willits. DUI causing bodily injury.

TIMOTHY DAWE, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

NOE GARCIA JR., Ukiah. County parole violation.

JACOB HEATH, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

PETER JENSCH, Healdsburg/Leggett. DUI.

TAVION JOHNSON, Willits. Domestic abuse, false imprisonment, probation revocation.

RODNEY PROCTOR, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

DARTANYAN ROBINSON, San Francisco/Ukiah. Under influence.

JOSHUA WAGNER, Redwood Valley. Stolen vehicle, burglary tools.

WHOSE VOICE IS IT ANYWAY?

by Daisy Tennant

I realized I wanted to be a voice actor at my mother’s funeral.

Dramatic, but true. I had been playing with the idea for quite a while but it was this event that pulled my heart and mind into the sharpest focus.

My mother, Emma Tennant, was a novelist who had over 50 books published in her lifetime.

The thought of seeing her disappear forever behind the absurd curtains that crematoriums coyly use to deal with the bare fact of death almost stopped my heartbeat.

What kept it ticking as I waited interminably for the day of the funeral was the task I had given myself of reading an excerpt from one of her books as part of the service.

I knew I wanted to find something that would convey the sophisticated fluency of her spoken voice.

I narrowed it down to her autobiographical fiction and then it didn’t take long to decide on the witty, ironic voice of her 15 year old flame-haired heroine Robina in ‘The Adventures of Robina, by Herself’.

Here, my mother plays the role of Editor. Robina’s story is framed by an archivist who has written down an oral tale told to her one stormy night in the library of a Scottish castle by an older Robina reminiscing about her misadventures as a debutante in 1950’s London.

Mixing archaic stylistic devices with modern idiom, a curious tone emerges that for me captures my mother’s particular flavour of irony. Behind the wit is a non-stop Me-Too nightmare, as the innocent orphan-become-debutante is assaulted by lecherous lords at every turn.

As I re-read the slim Faber 1981 paperback with its cover featuring a fantastical wild red-haired woman I remembered how my mother had particularly enjoyed writing ‘Robina’ and how she handed the manuscript to me when she finished it and said ‘you’ll like this one’ with a glint in her eye.

She was a notoriously fast writer and wrote Robina in 3 weeks with the kind of relish that perhaps comes from finding the right tone and framing device to narrate personal episodes that have long waited to be voiced.

The first-person narration of nearly 200 pages could be read aloud in one sitting and feels like it was written without pause. And that’s probably not far from how it was done. My mother had an impetuous temperament and could not write fast enough for her speaking voice.

In preparing for her funeral, I had the revelation that she was above all an oral storyteller.

This insight was prompted by an old interview on youtube I came across whilst browsing for references to ‘Robina’. In it she says she would have preferred to tell stories round the fire than write them down.

So many of my mother’s habits and attitudes suddenly made sense. It explained how she would rush a synopsis or manuscript to the publishers and call them within the hour to get a reaction.

Yes, writers want an immediate response to what they’ve so vulnerably offered up, but usually acknowledge the convention of waiting at least some days if not weeks before dialing an editor’s direct line.

Not my mother. But now I understood that it was because she saw the publisher as a live audience who was being intolerably slow in reacting.

I was amazed to note how quickly and fluently she expressed her thoughts in the interview. The speed was coupled with grammatical correctness and complicated sentence structures. She had learned how to connect her brain to her mouth expertly.

And she loved to talk. Growing up, my bedroom was beneath the living room, where she and her close writer friends sat and talked into the early hours, their voices increasing in volume and hilarity with each top-up of whiskey, thrashing out ideas for books.

My mother’s voice is what I think of when I think of her now.

As I rehearsed reading aloud the extract, I grappled with questions so familiar to voice actors, such as –

How can I convey this person’s voice as truthfully as possible?

How can I bring my personality and emotional experience into this while getting out of the way of the author’s voice?

How can I make this interesting for the listener?

How can I include my point of view without commenting in a way that takes the listener out of the story?

I may not have articulated these questions quite like this at the time, but they were there. And in this case, the added question:

How can I be true to my mother’s authorial voice when I have so much deep feeling about her, and particularly now, as I am saying goodbye?

Was I trying to do something that would be best avoided, I wondered, and thought of not standing up to read.

As the moment came, I decided I would stand up as I felt that it was going to help me. I had a burning desire to convey my mother’s voice to those gathered there and to hear it for myself.

I wanted them to know who she was, what she had been through, and all the subtlety of her character. And I wanted to know all that myself.

Several of her friends read at the funeral, mostly writers, and one British theatre actor, who had known my mother for 50 years. He read from another of her autobiographical novels “Girlitude.”

Hearing the way he brought her personality to life by filtering it through his own was a gift.

I went to see him at his flat a week later and before I left tentatively mentioned my desire to narrate an audiobook of ‘Robina’ and to pursue voice acting in general.

He affirmed my sense that this was a great direction for me and poured me a stiff whiskey. ‘I haven’t heard from my voiceover agent in months’, he said.

He was in his 80s and had been acting since his 20s. Even he, who had worked a lot and in prominent roles the past few decades, felt vulnerable.

The decision to pursue voice acting didn’t come completely out of the blue. I had some acting experience and training, was an Alexander Technique teacher, and had worked various jobs that were connected in some way.

But as any voice actor knows and any beginner soon finds out, voice acting is a highly exacting skill in and of itself.

Plus the technical demands of working remotely are significant, not to mention the importance of having an entrepreneur mindset and being ready to brave the unknown galaxies in good spirits.

I knew that it would be an endless journey which I would take one leap at a time. I often think of my mother’s voice as an impetus to keep leaping.

PATRIOTS MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN: The Silence of the Rams

by Stephen Elliott

Bridgewater, Massachusetts, Opening Day 9-8-19, Steelers at Patriots, pregame – As often happens here in the South Shore, sugaring starts right around Super Bowl time, early February, when it’s below freezing at night, but daytime temperatures reach the low 40’s and above. We have a little backyard sugaring operation with about 15 taps right here in town. The season here lasts into March and then we go a couple hundred miles north to donate a little labor to the “real” family sugaring operation in Vermont.

So, on Super Bowl Sunday I got a couple of blackberry pies into the oven (one for the neighbors, as a form of prayer) and went out to tap trees. I only got five tapped and then it was dark and almost game time. Threw together a meal and then struggled with our dysfunctional old TV and missed the first four or five minutes.

I liked the quiet first half with its subtle tactics, all about field position. Belichick is a douche in many ways, chief among them dumping, and dumping on, good players (see, e.g., Richard Seymour and Malcolm Butler), but for nearly 20 years it’s been comforting to have some things handled well; he, Brady, and a succession of coordinators have brought a fine-tuned sense of pace and an awareness of game conditions, where the sun is, wind direction and strength, surface condition, ball inflation, play calling – in short, good situational football!

There’s some sputtering early, Brady’s first pass picked, Gostkowski’s first field goal missed, but Gostkowski hits early in the 2nd quarter and we lead 3-0 at halftime. Biggest play of the half? Center David Andrews’ recovery of a Brady fumble late in the 1st quarter, averting likely disaster. Patriots at their best, doing the heads-up, unglamorous things.

Second half is the same grinding battle for field position, featuring an insanely long punt by their Johnny Hekker, and our Ryan Allen drops in some beauties, fully exploited by our unrivaled punt coverage team.

With 3:36 left in the 3rd Jason McCourty makes a huge play, racing 18 yards from the right side to the middle of the end zone to break up a pass to Brandin Cooks, who’d been open forever. Tied at 3 after 3.

In the middle of the 4th quarter I see Gronkowski get position and leverage inside their five. I see Brady’s pass floating prettily. Our TV freezes when the ball’s in mid-flight. I see nothing more until the extra point after Sony Michel’s short plunge, for which wrecking-ball fullback James Develin and Gronk had cleared the way.

I decide to listen to the car radio. When I start to drive toward Brockton, there's just over 2 minutes left, we're still up 10 to 3, and have the ball in good field position. Soon it’s 13 to 3 and over. So nice to relax toward the end of a game. I’m now in the dark parking lot of the remains of a shopping center on Brockton’s south side. The anchor super market has been closed for 20 years. 80% of the retail space is shuttered. Spooky American Wasteland.

Don’t know, anyway, if I could’ve taken another game like the Conference Championship in Kansas City where Patrick Mahomes played Texas Red and Brady played The Stranger in a perfect reenactment of Marty Robbins’ Big Iron. Listen and see what I mean!

On the way home I stop at the Yangtze, a quaint old Chinese restaurant in West Bridgewater, and have a shot of Grand Marnier. Just a couple of older Chinese guys there. Everybody happy. Patriots’ safety Patrick Chung, an old Oregon Duck, has a Chinese dad and a Jamaican mom. Go to Sophia George’s song “You’re Too Girlie Girlie”, a reggae all-time classic. And the last of your compulsory listening assignments, dear AVA readers, is Four Dead in Ohio by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, in honor of our Super Bowl MVP, super slot receiver, Kent State alumnus Julian Edelman.

Over the next day or two I finished tapping, happy in the late winter sunshine and the glow of victory, and then had five weeks of excellent sugaring, making more syrup than we can use with plenty for friends and neighbors.

It's now September, minutes before kick-off, and the Steelers await, never easy. Let me add that it’s been a rather trying off-season with the Celtics having flamed out ingloriously, the Bruins having screwed up a 7th game on home ice with the Stanley Cup there for the taking, and the Red Sox on a fast track to oblivion.

Also, of course, there’s been the affair of Trump ass licker, Robert Kraft, and his patronage of an establishment called The Orchids of Asia, apparently specializing in happy ending massages. Big questions for tonight: Will Kraft have the decency to stay home and NOT participate in raising Banner # 6? One can hope, but not likely. And who will be his special guest in the owner’s box? Alan Dershowitz?

Finally, though, and here’s where Jeffrey St. Clair should take it easy on the Patriots, we’ve got Michael Bennet in the fold and may he make some white people (quarterbacks especially) uncomfortable, and we’ve got linebacker Jamie Collins back after a couple of years in exile. Redemption! Go Pats! God Bless Ilhan Omar!

DELUSIONAL THINKING

Officials have confirmed two mountain lion sightings at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The city Recreation and Park Department said it has posted signs after the mountain lion was seen in the park’s west end on Tuesday and at Lake Merced on August 21. Officials said neither report describes aggressive behavior by the big cat toward humans. They said it is normal for mountain lions to roam in natural areas, including in San Francisco, and that they have, or soon will, move out of the area. (AP)

APOCALYPSE BOOGIE

The next Meeting of the Inland Mendocino Democratic Club is Thursday, September 12th at 5:30 pm at Todd Grove Park Picnic Area, Live Oak Avenue, Ukiah, CA 95482. Let’s all join together to make our county an oasis of Justice and Peace. Together, in coalition, we can take progressive action and protect our county from the conservative nightmare. Come lend a hand. All are welcome.

See us on Facebook and at http://inlandmendodems.org

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A dance party in Ukiah to support the Mendocino Democratic Headquarters: Join Will Siegel and Friends on Saturday, September 14 for a dance party to be held at Canova Records at 246 N. State St. in Ukiah. The band will feature local favorites Will Siegel on guitar and vocals, Steve Baird on Bass and vocals, Tom Aiken on keyboards, Ellie Siegel on mandolin and saxophone, and John Huxsol on drums. The band will perform selections for your dancing and listening enjoyment. Their song repertoire will include jazz, blues, and some good old rock’n roll. Show time is 7:30-10:00. Food and wine will be included in the ticket price and proceeds will support the Mendocino Democratic Headquarters for 2020.

Buy tickets here https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dance0914

PLANES CAN PLANT A BILLION SEEDS A YEAR WITH SEED BOMBS

LAKE COUNTY TOO

PG&E'S "De-Energization Protocols" / Mendo County Response

To: E.J. Crandell (Lake County Supervisor)

Dear E.J.,

On July 24 and August 14, 2019, senior center managers in Lake County (Middletown, Clearlake, Clearlake Oaks, Kelseyville, and Lucerne — but not Lakeport, which has the largest proportion of senior meal services in the county, including Lucerne’s “Northshore” population), met to discuss how to handle the possibility of extended “Public Safety Power Shutdowns” and their potential impacts to homebound participants in the federally-funded “Meals on Wheels” programs.

On August 14, the group was joined by Lake County Fire Protection District Chief Willie Sapeta, Sheriff Brian Martin, and Lake County Public Health Department’s Dean Eichelmann, to discuss the concerns of senior center service providers — including those who work directly with the homebound, multiply-disabled, and resource-limited persons who rely on daily nutrition services — if and when an “extended” power outage occurs (as “planned” by Pacific Gas & Electric Company).

The information we gleaned from those two meetings can be summarized as follows:

1) There are no plans to “declare an emergency” [requiring the implementation of care and shelter facilities] when such an event occurs.

2) Senior centers are “on our own” for supporting the enrolled participants in the Elder Nutrition Program [federally-funded by the Older Americans Act, administered by the Lake and Mendocino County Area Agency on Aging, within the Department of Social Services].

3) Sheriff Martin expressed his concern that PG&E is advising that people who are experiencing difficulties resulting from such a power outage should use “9-1-1” to report problems; the Sheriff said that the 9-1-1 dispatch services will be overwhelmed by these calls and there is insufficient staff to handle them.

4) Chief Sapeta expressed the need to prepare before hand so that the dependent population has the ability to sustain itself throughout such an event; senior center service providers are making such efforts but are neither funded nor staffed to assist the socially, fiscally, geographically, and emotionally isolated recipients of “Meals on Wheels” nutrition services.

5) The Department of Social Services, including Adult Services, Adult Protective Services, Area Agency on Aging, and Public Guardian, has access to records of enrollees in the Elder Nutrition Programs, and can provide information to law enforcement and fire protection districts [providers of emergency medical assistance] about the location of these vulnerable persons, but persons dependent on In-Home Supportive Services (registered with the Department of Social Services), who are most likely not enrolled in the federally-funded program due to in-home assistance from a separate program, are currently left out of preparedness outreach, because the Department of Social Services has no way to communicate directly with the IHSS workforce — due to the relationship of workers with their union (SEIU).

We requested that the Department of Social Services find a means of communicating directly with the IHSS workforce to (a) provide information that would support their ability to prepare their care recipients for such an event, and (b) direct them to appropriate senior centers to help their clients access additional information and become aware of resources available through the centers’ Information & Assistance staffs, for which the County’s Department of Social Services provides funding to supplement the Older Americans Act funding for Elder Nutrition Services. [Phone calls last week to the Mendocino County SEIU representative, “Raul” (last name unknown) have not yet been answered.]

As senior center operators, those of us participating in these two meetings are endeavoring to accommodate the anticipated needs of our homebound and ambulatory but aging-impaired participants in the very limited Elder Nutrition Programs; we’re used to "sucking hind tit" here in Lake County (pardon my crudeness, please — but that’s what it’s like to operate a senior center here; see the current Lake County Grand Jury report, for example) and we will make every effort to support our program participants, but we also know that when push comes to shove, the local Fire Protection Districts are the responders who will be called to the locations of mobility-impaired older adults for a multitude of problems. And we are doing our best to minimize the impacts on all first responders with our limited means, so that they are not overtaxed in times of duress.

Meanwhile, in Mendocino County, an entirely different approach has been taken, which is described in the following excerpt from yesterday’s Anderson Valley Advertiser. Please consider the significance of that report, and the opportunity for Lake County to participate in (or similarly emulate) the coalition with Napa and Sonoma Counties and the City of Santa Rosa "(the Joint Local Governments)” in establishing requirements described in the AVA article.

Sorry to bother you on your official day of rest; as you know, today is the day we provide a two-hour radio program for citizens interested in disaster preparedness, response, relief, and recovery on KPFZ (88.1 fm), and this plea emerged from the process of program content development. Today’s program will include reading the AVA report excerpted below.

Thank you for taking the time to consider our concerns, and for all of your support in representing the County of Lake’s 3rd Supervisory District.

Most respectfully,

Betsy Cawn

The Essential Public Information Center*

9475-A Main Street

Upper Lake, CA

707-275-9376

epi-center@sbcglobal.net

LARS RASMUSSEN, the Prime Minister of Denmark:

“The Nordic model is an expanded welfare state which provides a high level of security for its citizens, but it is also a successful market economy with much freedom to pursue your dreams and live your life as you wish,” he added. “We have universal health coverage - you don’t pay to see your doctor or go to the hospital. We have a high degree of social security. You are entitled to benefits if you lose your job, if you get sick, if you are disabled. We have one year of maternity leave, we have subsidised early childhood education and care and we ensure care for our elderly if they cannot manage on their own,” he said. “We also have a strong and free educational system. Students in institutions for higher education and university do not pay for their education, on the contrary, they receive educational grants for studying,” he added.

THE PENTAGON WANTS MORE CONTROL OVER THE NEWS. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

The Pentagon is using a moral panic over “fake news” to gain influence over the domestic news landscape

rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/darpa-fake-news-internet-censorship-879671/

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

It boggles the mind, so much destructive power in so few well-manicured corporate hands. You wonder how this could have been allowed to happen. For all the manly jaw-clenching of tens of millions of gun-owners purporting to defend the America, none did. What good were all those rifles? Did they defend the borders? Um. no. Wall Street ruined the country and much of the world and nobody lifted a finger, let alone fired a shot. Nor did I to my everlasting shame and disgrace. Mea fucking culpa.

As for tyranny, if you don’t like the tyranny of an oppressive nation state, there’s the corporate alternative. You want to know what it’s like to live in an authoritarian regime? Go to work for any large company.

It’s not like this is just so much verbal blithering, the demolition of the US economy outside of coastal enclaves is eyeball proof, eminently visually verifiable. It’s right under our nose. And it’s not like the societal consequences are unknown. The litany of calamity is right there for all to see; throngs of homeless, half of them gone nuts, a host of precariously employed and therefore unmarriageable young men, the prevalence of family break-up and of unwed motherhood and the disasters that by itself spawns. And the tens of thousands of yearly deaths by suicide, alcoholism and opium-derived drugs.

And so it’s not like the concept of “collapse” is the fantasy of dystopian writers, it’s the reality in the here-and-now.

The irony, of course, is that the destroyers of the nation state themselves need that same nation state to survive. Yes, madness, gender confused and otherwise. Good way to put it. Yes, we’ve slipped a gear or two along the way. To say the least.

FAKE NEWS HAS A LONG HISTORY in America. Its most pernicious incarnation is never the work of small-time scam artists. The worst “fake news” almost always involves broad-scale deceptions foisted on the public by official (and often unnamed) sources, in conjunction with oligopolistic media companies, usually in service of rallying the public behind a dubious policy objective like a war or authoritarian crackdown.

THE FUTURE OF LISTENING

by David Yearsley

Back in the spring an email arrived in my in-box from Davinia Caddy, a music historian working in New Zealand. She asked if I’d contribute a short essay on the “future of listening” to a new on-line venture being launched by Naxos Records and for which she will serve as editor. Headed by the indefatigable octogenarian Klaus Heymann, who founded the company in Hong Kong more than thirty years ago, Naxos is still thriving even in this age of doom—or better doomsayers—for classical music recordings.

The new digital initiative will be called Naxos Musicology International and is aimed at reaching a global audience. NMI (if it goes with that acronym it will have to be shared with the National Museum of Ireland and the National Measurement Institute in Australia) will pursue this goal with the benefit of the label’s strong digital platform, using it to offer accessible and enlightening scholarship not just to other academics but, more importantly, to enthusiasts. Alongside historical research, aesthetic reflections, critical analysis, the site will publish opinion pieces and course syllabuses. This last category comes in place of the book reviews that make up the typical closing section of academic journals. These syllabuses strike me as a quick and valuable way for the interested to educate themselves by finding out what professors across the world are teaching, reading, listening to. (I wonder if universities might begin to assert copyright control of the syllabi of their faculty.)

It is often claimed that with knowledge comes greater enjoyment—and, it might be hoped, higher sales for Naxos. This is perhaps especially the case when it comes to obscure repertoire, a Naxos specialty. Heymann long ago rejected the relentless issuing of the classics—Beethoven symphonies and the like—practiced by the major labels, in favor of issuing previously unrecorded music. Given its avoidance of duplication, Naxos can rightfully claim itself as “the world’s leading classical label as measured by the number of new recordings it releases and the depth and breadth of its catalogue.”

Originally known for this admirable project of filling out the classical music repertoire with no-frills CDs, Heymann’s Naxos early on anticipated the potential of streaming; for a decade the company has been offering subscriptions to music schools, universities, and public libraries whose members and patrons can listen for free. Through my account at Cornell University I had, on September 4th 2019, immediate access to 2,225,190 tracks on its 145,755 discs. These numbers are visible on the upper right corner of the Naxos catalogue homepage. I checked again this morning, and the figures have gone up to 145,956 and 2,258,061: more than two hundred discs in two days. The Naxos catalogue is a huge and ever-expanding resource, one I have used frequently, often with amazement that high quality performances of long-buried musical treasure can so be easily conjured from the ether.

As laudable as this vigorous expansion is, the Naxos music-odometer puts me in mind of other running tallies I’ve seen: like the ever-increasing number of square miles of Amazon rain forest that have been cleared (now similar whizzing numbers of burning acres) or the tons of carbon being dumped minute-by-minute into the atmosphere.

This is pretty much what I told Davinia, though in less overtly pessimistic terms. These days I try, vainly, to live for and in the moment, rather than think of the future. Advance, development, research, plentitude, excess: these drive Naxos to mine its musical riches, delivered to the world for its betterment, uplift, amusement, distraction.

Much of my listening to, writing about, and performance of music has been devoted to the work of J. S. Bach. To judge from his early biographers, Bach must have been one of the most directed, focused, engaged, and critical listeners of all time. According to these admittedly hagiographic accounts, Bach’s sharp ears could catch even the smallest mistakes emanating from anywhere in any ensemble he was leading. When listening to a fugue by another musician, he would dadsplain to his son Wilhelm Friedemann about the clever operations that could (and should) be performed on the theme, nudging him smugly when those predictions were proved correct or shaking his head when these artful possibilities were not seized on.

When listening, Bach was virtuosically in the moment but always thinking ahead to the climax of the piece. But his listening was futuristic on a much longer scale, too. Right up to the end of his life, even after he lost his eyesight, Bach labored on monumental projects such as the B-Minor Mass and the Art of Fugue, a compendium of the techniques that had so often sent his elbow into Friedemann’s ribs.

The future of a musical theme was just one temporal cycle within the much larger one of a lifetime of research into God’s creation. These concentric circles were encompassed by the widest one still to come: eternity. There, the saved would be surrounded by the unending harmony of rapturous counterpoint—infinite complexity become simple sounding truth. Sonic ambrosia listening did not serve a purpose. It did not challenge the imagination. It did not improve a performance or lead to a better job. Listening to the angels, even joining in, was not a competition. This hearing was in the moment and forever.

The names we give to sonata form—the dominant structural paradigm of Western classical music—speak to a kindred reliance on time and progress: the opening movement of a symphony, to cite the most prestigious of classical genres, is the exposition; it is followed by the development, and closes with an altered return of the opening material in the recapitulation. The first two terms—and even the third—might be applied to the Amazon basin or the growth forever of attitudes we live by: discover your raw material, exploit it, let it improve your life.

Failing the religious salvation anticipated by Bach, even as he mentally parsed the fugue subject of friend or foe, the longer view says the future of listening is as bleak as that of the natural world. That is one reason, I believe, that so many students (and professors) at this university and elsewhere listen to music as they walk, ignorant of what is around them. Even as they march to their next class they are in the moment, distracted from their future, both near and not far enough away.

Yesterday I nearly collided with a young woman ensconced in her own private earbudded audiotopia when she stepped into a cross walk against the advice of the DON’T WALK signal. Later that afternoon I was nearly run down myself by the driver of a large SUV – not on her cell phone, but clearly listening to something. Maybe it was music. Whatever it was, she nearly ended my future listening.

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest book is Sex, Death, and Minuets: Anna Magdalena Bach and Her Musical Notebooks. He can be reached at dgyearsley@gmail.com.)

WHEN I WAS GROWING UP in Mobile, there was no such thing as an eccentric because individuality was permitted. It's only with the moment the dollar became God and the flattened-out culture of the mass media which has happened since World War II that the people who formerly might have been called — at the most — colorful or opinionated, now are thought of as eccentric or something. Somehow the television has created a race of morons. People in Mobile just sit around and blink like lizards do.

And sex in America. In Europe they take it for granted. That's one of the things God has created to keep us from being bored in our stay on this planet. In America they still haven't decided what it is. The Catholics think all of it’s alright. Episcopalians think you can do anything as long as your fingernails are clean. But the fundamentalists think it's all perverse and they are trying to take over the country. The Europeans laugh and never talk about it and do it all. I'm telling you, when I came back here I had to adapt to life in a barbarian country. Barbarian.

But I'm glad to get back and into the traditional American mock battle: artists versus Philistines. In Europe the arts are considered something usual, for daily consumption. In America there is still the old Puritan suspicion that it's all hothouse stuff. So I'm back where I started, sharpening my pen, my brush, my spade, my scissors, my pruning shears, my cheese parer, and the taps on my new tap shoes.

— Eugene Walter, “Milking the Moon"

TRUMP HAD THE RIGHT INSTINCT to press for the U.S. to leave Afghanistan. The situation there is getting worse by the day and there is nothing that any number of U.S. troops can do to change that. The Afghan government is utterly corrupt. Its troops and police have high casualty rates and fail in every battle. The Taliban own most of the countryside. Why negotiate with the Taliban at all? As the U.S. can do little to them they would have no incentive to stick to any promise they make. The U.S. should just leave as soon as it can. There will come a point when the only way out will be by helicopter from the embassy roof. Check the maps. That day will come sooner than many assume.

— Moon of Alabama

HE'S GETTING CRAZIER

That is a direct quote from a Republican strategist as reported two hours ago by Business Insider: "He's deteriorating in plain sight…"

Some of the new concern is related to Trump’s continuing insistence on saying he was right that Dorian could hit Alabama…

But what people are telling Business Insider reveals the degree to which those who are seeing him up close are concerned he is totally cracking up:

“Asked why the president was obsessed with Alabama instead of the states that would actually be affected by the storm, the strategist said, ‘you should ask a psychiatrist about that; I'm not sure I'm qualified to comment’."

One person who was close to Trump's legal team during the Russia investigation told Insider his public statements were "nothing compared to what he's like behind closed doors.”

"He's like a bull seeing red," this person added. "There's just no getting through to him, and you can kiss your plans for the day goodbye because you're basically stuck looking after a 4-year-old now."

"No one knows what to expect from him anymore," one former White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations about the president, told Insider. "His mood changes from one minute to the next based on some headline or tweet, and the next thing you know his entire schedule gets tossed out the window because he's losing his shit."

He cancels a trip to Denmark because they won’t sell him Greenland. He cancels a trip to Poland (whom he then congratulated for getting invaded by the Nazis 80 years ago) saying he has to monitor Hurricane Dorian, then goes golfing for much of the weekend. When he did travel abroad, to the G7 in Biarritz, he made so many outlandish claims that even those leaders who thought they had figured out how to put up with him were reduced to stunned silence.

(Daily Kos)

Subject: Correspondence Received, Agenda Items 5-h, 5-i, September 10, BOS meeting

Dear Supervisors:

CANNABIS IS ON THE AGENDA AGAIN…At Tuesday's (Sept 10) Board of Supervisors meeting, the county comes again to revisit our Mendocino County’s cannabis ordinances.

Unfortunately, corporate interests, like Flow Kana and Gotham Green Partners, have been allowed to influence county policy. 

THE ALTERNATIVE OPTION…The alternative option to county policies that favor big money interests, like Flow Kana and Gotham Green Partners, is a supply chain business that is owned and operated by a non-profit farmers co-op.

It could be a regional co-op. The cannabis farmers of the Emerald Counties. The small, family farmers. The handcrafted, heirloom farmers.

This alternative supply chain owned by the co-op would be an e-trading platform, supported by e-payments and e-tracking systems. A company called Helix could help us. Helix builds out sophisticated Electronics Communications Networks (ECNs). 

An ECN can integrate blockchain technology to facilitate real-time transaction of wholesale cannabis product between licensed operators in regulated markets. Furthermore, the platform would allow new and existing cannabis businesses to manage infrastructure in their supply chain, inventory and compliance functions.

Similarly, the bricks-and-mortar facilities for grading, processing, and warehousing would also be owned and operated by the co-op.

The entire venture would be funded by a public bond from the State of California’s IBank Bond Financing. See: http://www.ibank.ca.gov/bond-financing.

I HAVE A QUESTION…Why was cannabis “legalized”? Why wasn’t it simply “decriminalized”?

I’ll tell you why: Not to set the plant free, but to make Wall Street richer. To make the rich, richer. Guys, like Jason Adler. (Read my article, “Flow Kana’s Deal with the Devil” posted on my Facebook page. It’s been shared 275 times by your constituents.)

The rich get richer. All the while, the rich influence state policies to crush any mom and pop competition, and limit the amount individuals can personally grow, so cannabis farmers have to sign on with corporate cannabis. Sign on with corporate cannabis, like Flow Kana and Gotham Green Partners, or get forced out.

If farmers step out of the little box created for them, then the county makes it difficult to get a permit, then fines them or has them arrested and files for asset forfeiture… all for growing a medicinal plant…a compassionate use plant.

What happened after “legalization” is so perverted, so twisted, so very wrong. 

Cannabis has not been legalized. Not really. It has been heavily regulated -- and continues to be regulated at today's Sept 10 meeting -- for the benefit of rich investors…to extract what little wealth there is in the rural local economies of the Emerald Counties.

Make no mistake about it: These investors are outsiders, and they have one agenda…for the rich to get richer. That’s how capitalism works. It’s predatory. It’s based on extraction. 

At a rally for all employees at Flow Kana, which an employee secretly videotaped, Flow Kana's CEO Michael Steinmetz, shouted out above the applause, “We will become the Coca-Cola of Cannabis! We will become the Coca-Cola of Cannabis! We will be rich!”

It was scary.

Let me be clear: Flow Kana is scary. Gotham Green Partners is scary. 

Let me be clear: Wall Street’s dark money is scary. Big Tobacco is scary. Big Pharma is scary. Cannabis GMOs are scary. 

And Jason Adler is linked to all of the above. Again, please read my Facebook post. It has been fastidiously researched, and everything stated as fact, has been vetted and re-vetted.

A FINAL WORD…End-stage capitalism is especially scary. It’s killing the planet. Guys like Jason Adler are killing the planet.

We need a new business model. And a farmers co-op and a cannabis exchange are it. We can -- and should -- own our own supply chain.

Our county's farmers are the starting point of what I call, the "value chain". 

The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors can lead the way. Instead of tinkering around the edges of ordinances that have failed us -- ordinances like the ones for your consideration before you today -- you can think out of the box, and act boldly with state bond financing, technology, and vision. The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors can act to save our small farmers and our beautiful way of life.

John Sakowicz
Candidate, Mendocino County 1st District Supervisor