MCT: Sunday, February 9, 2020

• Shifting Winds
• Negligent House
• Pet Stephanie
• B Details
• Bohemian Chemist
• Elevendinitis
• V Enforcement
• 1923 Fire
• Female Polygamist
• Ed Notes
• No Country
• Nowhere Trail
• Pence Returns
• Widespread Outages
• 1876 Scientist
• Civic Failure
• Norma Jean
• Lion Shot
• Groj Sale
• Devil Himself
• Yesterday's Catch
• Bebe Grande
• Fonseca Art
• Progressive Gathering
• Demented Song
• Roger Kahn
• DCI Vera
• Investing Hitler
• Iowa Saboteurs

NORTH WINDS will transition to east-northeasterly today through Tuesday, with gusty conditions expected across exposed ridges. In addition, east-northeast winds will promote warm dry weather through early portions of the upcoming work week. Otherwise, the next chance of light rain will occur with a weak frontal system on Thursday. (NWS)

HOSPITALITY HOUSE LOOKS THE OTHER WAY

by Malcolm Macdonald

On September 5, 2019, the night manager at the Hospitality House, on North McPherson Street in Fort Bragg, heard what sounded like a dog crying in pain. Stepping outside to a dirt area alongside the building, the night manager spotted Nathaniel Secker and his dog. Secker was beating and yelling at the animal.

The manager also noticed a sleeping bag on the ground and a makeshift campsite set up in an alcove immediately adjacent to Hospitality House (HH). The night manager informed Secker that he would have to leave the premises.

According to at least one other person familiar with the situation, Secker had been camping on the HH property for three days and nights. Allegedly, permission to trespass and camp had been granted by another HH manager. Apparently some of the legitimate clients inside HH had complained to management, saying they were afraid of the man outside who was displaying multiple outbursts of anger. Reportedly, the manager who had first allowed Secker on the property did nothing, even after the complaints from within the facility.

On the Fort Bragg Police Department (FBPD) log sheet for September 5 there were two relevant calls to Hospitality House. One reported a subject hitting his dog at the site, but not “doing it now.” That occurred in the late afternoon, with an addendum, “Spoke to Hospitality House staff, said no dogs were allowed to be there, said they would call back tonight if there is anything to report.”

The second FBPD report on Sept. 5 contains the heading, “Trespass,” followed by, “unwanted subject on the south side of the building. Subject contacted and left upon request.”

Hospitality House officials did not push for charges to be filed against Mr. Secker. Subsequently, multiple citizens became aware of Secker's treatment of his dog. FBPD was contacted. Sergeants McLaughlin and Awad put out a call for witnesses to come forward.

Meanwhile a central business district store owner asked Hospitality Center (the flagship operation that oversees Hospitality House) executive director Carla Harris how and why the incident at Hospitality House could have happened. Mr. Secker had apparently been camped just outside the building for multiple days with, as noted above, clients complaining about the disturbances he created, and both day and night managers supposedly staffing the place.

According to the business owner, Ms. Harris promised to perform some sort of investigation into the matter. In a letter sent to Fort Bragg's City Council members, the business owner stated, “Carla Harris assured me that she was going to do an investigation on how and why this could happen with both day and night managers present. She never followed through with any information on an investigation. Carla did not revise policy and also did not instruct her employees to respond to the press release that the Fort Bragg Police Department put out requesting witnesses to come forward. She could — and should — have asked her employees to talk to our Police Department and District Attorney. She never followed through with any information.”

The work of the FBPD brought forth not one, or two, but four witnesses. A Starbucks barista, two employees of Dollar Tree, and a FBPD parking enforcement officer. Each had witnessed Secker violently and viciously abuse his dog in three separate incidences. These witnesses sat through one full nine-to-five Ten Mile Court day without a promised preliminary hearing actually taking place, some of them sticking around though they were losing time at their workplaces. They stayed through parts of two more court days before each testified. No one affiliated with the Hospitality House or Hospitality Center attended the preliminary hearing or any of the other court dates in the Secker case. The prosecution was handled by Mendocino County District Attorney David Eyster.

The business owner's letter bears witness to the lack of cooperation Hospitality House and Hospitality Center provided to the police investigation. “I attended all of the court procedures and not one manager from the Hospitality House showed up.”

The business owner also referenced a Public Safety Committee meeting held while the district attorney's office prepared its case against Secker. At that meeting Hospitality Center Executive Director Harris answered questions from two city council members concerning the dog beating outside HH. Harris stated that the manager who had allowed Secker to trespass on HH property acted appropriately. Harris also gave the council members the impression that all was well at HH. A day later she fired the manager in question, presumably while all was still well at HH.

The work of DA Eyster and the compelling testimony of the four witnesses, concerning Secker's brutal treatment of the dog, led to a guilty finding on two felony counts.

The story doesn't end there, however.

From the time of Secker's arrest to the day of sentencing in January, 2020, and beyond, the dog was confined within the animal control center in Ukiah. More or less isolated for months, he was eventually returned to the Humane Society in Fort Bragg, where the same business owner, alluded to above, took over a re-training regimen of the canine who was re-named Brewer. The business owner gave up multiple hours each morning to work with Brewer, who in a matter of only a couple of weeks went from a frightened isolate to a tail wagging polite, people-friendly animal. He is with an adoptive family now in a new, safe home.

The business owner who worked near magic in retraining Brewer in such short order is not so optimistic about HH and HC. The letter to the Fort Bragg City Council concluded with this assessment, “The Hospitality House and Center continue to abuse our Police Department. They continue to make bad decisions for the community, I’m requesting Carla Harris be questioned on [HH's] policy for animal abuse, violent guests and why she did not follow through with policy changes [which are] endangering everyone, including an innocent animal. She must be held accountable for her actions — and the lack of them.”

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Beautiful Stephanie was used as a breeder dog in her past life. Although she is shy and needs time and lots of TLC to gain confidence, she is making good progress at the Shelter. When she meets other dogs, Stephanie does some barking--a trait that is very German Shepherdy! Let's get this sweet girl a forever home where she will be a well-loved member of the family. Stephanie is a 6 year old, spayed female and weighs a very svelte 52 pounds. Stephanie is eligible for the shelter's Senior Dog Discount.

The Ukiah Animal Shelter is located at 298 Plant Road in Ukiah. Adoption hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Visit our website for information about our canine and feline guests and all of our services, programs and events: mendoanimalshelter.com For more information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

SUPERVISOR TED WILLIAMS ON MEASURE B

Our “Mental Health Treatment Act” Measure B, spearheaded by esteemed Sheriff Allman, had the goal of improving mental health treatment throughout our county. The need for improved services exists more today than when Measure B was proposed. Seeing tax dollars accumulate and lose value in real terms against inflation continues to worry me. Execution of facilities and services has moved at a crawl with little progress to show. I’ve been educating myself about the various types of facilities, cost models and the reality of providing mental health treatment. Concurrent with becoming slightly less ignorant, my sense of financial distress over Measure B has skyrocketed. I’m not one to sugarcoat.

Correct me where I’m wrong, but this is how I see it:

Measure B had a central mission to "Provide for assistance in the diagnosis, treatment and recovery from mental illness and addiction by developing: 1) a psychiatric facility and other behavioral health facilities.”

You can read the full text of the Measure at mendocinocounty.org/home/showdocument?id=10497

The Measure B sales tax will provide ongoing revenue for maintenance and operations of approximately $1.8M per year. As I’ve researched Psychiatric Health Facility (PHF) and Crisis Stabilization Units (CSU) units in other California counties, it’s become apparent to me that the $1.8M will not cover the cost. Not even close. I know our County’s Health & Human Services Agency believes additional funds currently sent out of county would combine for a greater total, but to date nobody has been able to show me projections. I presently doubt we we can operate a PHF or CSU even if it’s the only thing we do with the Measure B revenue. If I’m wrong, show me your numbers.

I’ve heard keeping mental health treatment local will reduce spending. To date I have not been privy to any analysis. I hope it’s true, but again, demonstrate the theory.

I’ve heard keeping patients local would reduce the load on ambulances. It can’t be a deciding factor in Measure B next steps, but actually, mental health transports are probably keeping desperately needed revenue flowing to the ambulance services. Remove these transfers and we might see an even worse ambulance situation.

State reimbursement for patient care at a CSU is capped at less than 24 hours. This type of facility might help a patient for a day, but then what? Mental health treatment isn’t a sandwich menu of checkboxes. It’s not about a CSU or a CRT, it’s about a gamut of services working in harmony.

I recently heard San Francisco might only have 40 PHF beds for their population of 850,000, approximately ten times our County population. With third party partners with quasi-PHF beds, perhaps the number could be interpreted as high as 80. Do we really need a 16 bed facility?

Crisis Residential Treatment is an alternative (or ideally, complementary) model. It often has less advanced staffing and therefore a lower operating cost. The model has been proven elsewhere, including to our south in Sonoma County. The CRT could be effective in early treatment, reducing the need to send patients to a higher level of care.

A CRT was planned on Orchard Avenue in Ukiah under Redwood Community Services with use of a $500k California Health Facilities Financing Authority grant. The facility was not built. The land was acquired by the County recently and the State scolded us for lack of follow-through, telling us to either open the facility next year or give back the $500k. I was part of unanimous board support to continue the project, because we’d otherwise be in a position to return the $500k. I expressed some of my regret on Tuesday —

because I believe the grant sets us up for a net loss, both in dollars and time. It’d be less expensive and more timely to purchase an existing residential building. Much of the success of the CRT model is based around the residential nature, which requires patients to live in a residential setting without institutional decor.

I had heard the operational expenses of a CRT would not significantly fall on the county. After meeting with a CRT provider, I’ve come to understand 50% reimbursement by the State is the maximum available with 45% being a more realistic target. For a facility that could cost $800k/year to operate, this is significant. Perhaps the County has other sources to offset our match. But again, it has not been presented.

Reimbursement for patients in CRTs is capped at 30 days. Without transitional housing as a next step, it’s foreseeable that we’ll be wasting money on ineffective treatment. The continuum is critical. Solving one or two components of the continuum will not successfully meet the overarching goals of Measure B. Full spectrum care results from planning, not unsystematic partial measures taken over a period of time. We don’t have a plan.

I objected to a $3.3M contract for design of facilities we might not be able to operate. Arguably, the contract is in phases and work could stop after the first phase. Even so, I’m against spending money on design work when we don’t know what we can afford to operate, let alone how many buildings or locations.

I was thankful to find board support for action I proposed on Dec 10, 2019: "Discussion and Possible Action Including Direction to Executive Office to Perform Operational Feasibility of Proposed Measure B Funded Facilities.” Sheriff Allman summed up my request, calling the end product a “business plan.” Jason Wells of Adventist Health was notified of the item and offered a letter suggesting Adventist's hospitals could operate as a provider for secure in-hospital psychiatric care, potentially mitigating the need for new construction.

Details, feasibility and cost are still to be determined.

CEO Angelo noted the State’s intention to redirect MHSA funds. This could impact our financial story.

After failed attempts to hire a Project Manager for Measure B, Isabel Gonzalez took the job. Not much later, she gave notice and the County is in a position to recruit again. The project as scoped is impossible and her departure should be treated as a red flag about structure. The Measure B Citizens’s Oversight Committee chair commented on this concern last Tuesday:

I’ve heard grumblings about the CEO being at fault. She’s an easy target, but you could pull CEO Angelo out of the picture completely and the problem would remain. Her job is to execute at the pleasure of the board (majority). If policy needs tuning, that’s on us. We haven’t told her what to do with Measure B to make it a success (although recent direction to provide feasibility of working with Adventist is a good start).

A 2016 analysis by the county indicated approximately $4.5M would be necessary to fund a mental health facility. Why did we ignore our own report?

The Measure B Citizens’ Oversight Committee is an assemblage of hard working stakeholders who care deeply about the outcome. This committee is capable of brainstorming and providing oversight, but it’s the wrong vehicle for deep financial feasibility, simply because of lack of staff with expert knowledge in convoluted and moving target State finance models.

The lack of credible outcome reports from the $19M RQMC contract is outside the scope of Measure B, but in the abstract, it’s precisely my worry. The train has already left without a schedule or destination. It’ll be a train wreck if we don’t get our plan together.

https://www.kzyx.org/…/bos-approves-19-million-mental-healt…

What do you want me to do?

---

Mark Scaramella replies: You have answered your own question, Supervisor: I suggest you ask staff for “credible outcome reports” such as unduplicated numbers of people served, how frequently they are served and for what, how many are sent out of county and for how long and what cost, number of release plans prepared, and number of times those particular individuals have returned to treatment. (For starters)

JIM ROBERTS on “the latest news from Philo”—

After a great deal of legwork and state compliancy we have been granted our provisional license to open The Bohemian Chemist at The Madrones. The space is complete and we are actively looking for candidates for a couple key positions.

1. Licensed massage therapist/ familiarity with optional cannabis therapies is a plus.
2. Licensed Security Patrol Officer who meets the requirements of the Bureau of Cannabis Control.

Our target date to open is late March/early April which will coincide with the opening of Wickson Restaurant and relaunching of the Sun & Cricket shop.

MEASURE V ENFORCEMENT DELAYED AGAIN

(Serfs kneel in fear at feet of Mendo's largest landowner)

by Mark Scaramella

Mendocino County’s chief code enforcement officer, Trent Taylor, told the Supervisors last Tuesday that he had investigated Comptche resident Terry d’Selke’s nuisance complaint about Mendocino Redwood Company’s standing dead trees on property adjacent to hers. Taylor said that he was unable to determine if there was a violation because nobody was home when he arrived and he couldn’t see from her residence which trees were dead; the photos that Ms. d’Sielke provided weren’t good enough, and that he didn’t have authority to go onto MRC property, and he didn’t have the staff or resources to do an full assessment even if he did have permission.

As expected, a parade of locals disagreed with Mr. Taylor’s non-assessment.

Beth Bosk went on at some length about state laws that she thought were being violated until Board Chair John Haschak cut her mike when she refused to stop talking. However, along the way, Ms. Bosk suggested that the simplest way to enforce Measure V if Mendocino Redwoods wouldn’t do it, would be to hire a contractor to go out and cut down the standing dead trees and send the bill to MRC — an option which has been used in other cases and other jurisdictions.

As the discussion reverted again into the pros and cons of standing dead trees, Fort Bragg City Councilman and Fourth District Supervisor Candidate Lindy Peters was among those who strongly pointed out that we live in a democracy and that debate is over, the people have spoken and the Board is obligated to enforce Measure V, adding that MRC’s implied threat of legal action against the County should not deter the Board from enforcing a voter approved initiative.

Supervisor John McCowen, landlord to the Mendocino Environment Center, claimed that Measure V was “self-enforcing” since with Measure V anyone who was burned out of their home due to a standing-dead tree fire could now sue for damages; the County didn’t need to be involved.

Several locals thought that McCowen's statement was not only jaw-droppingly preposterous, but that even if a burned out family tried to sue, they probably couldn’t prove that a fire had anything to do with standing dead trees.

For her part, complainant Terry d’Selke told the Board:

“I went into the Code Enforcement office to see what the process was to do their investigation. They had called me probably about a week after the last Board of Supervisor's meeting, right before the winter break. I'm a teacher and I had left town for two weeks and I told them I would not be home but that they could probably see those dead standing trees from the road. When I spoke with the gentleman who was here earlier [Code Enforcement’s Trent Taylor] yesterday, he said that it was no secret that MRC was hacking and squirting and leaving standing dead trees everywhere. We see evidence of that. I asked if he saw it when he came out to the road. He said, 'Well, we couldn't really see unless we went onto somebody's property,' as he told you. But at no point did I tell him that the pictures I've provided were not good enough to show where the dead standing trees were. It's pretty obvious there are standing trees there. I told him that if he was looking from the road he probably could not tell which parcel number was which but it was definitely MRC land. So I guess there was some miscommunication there. My complaint addressed the issues we have been talking about. There is an increased risk of wildfire to my home. I took the initiative to make sure I've done fire suppression around my home and on my land. This also lowers the value of my land because of the dead standing trees in my viewshed. And it is my only viewshed. That's what I see, dead standing trees, every time I look out there. The law says they need to be removed within 90 days of the poisoning. If this is not done, what's the penalty and what is the point of the law? Why is there no penalty for breaking the law that is the will of the people? If I break the law, something will happen to me. It's no secret they are violating the law. None of you think it's a secret. It's happening. If this were your land and it was in your viewshed and you looked out into the forest and saw dead standing trees would you be sitting here saying, oh, well, too bad, we don't have any enforcement, we can't do anything? I don't think so. I think you would make sure that something was being done to enforce this law that was voted in by the people.”

An MRC rep, a Mr. John Anderson, told the Board that he was willing to keep talking to the ad hoc committee about the problem, but, of course, wouldn’t commit to anything else, legally or in the woods.

After some more discussion, Supervisor Ted Williams made a motion to direct County Counsel to come back to the board at the next meeting with an "enforcement plan." However, several officials noted that the board's agenda was crowded for the next few weeks and it probably couldn't be discussed until late March. Supervisor Williams reluctantly agreed, "if that's the best we can do."

Williams’ motion was approved 4-1 with Supervisor McCowen dissenting, apparently firm in his belief that the prospect that a burned-out homeowner might sue MRC and their well-funded corporate attorneys would effectively enforce Measure V.

UKIAH HISTORY: Masonic Temple roof collapses in 1923 fire

ukiahdailyjournal.com/2020/02/07/ukiah-history-masonic-temple-roof-collapses-in-1923-fire/

ED NOTES

I’VE NEVER BEEN ABLE to read detective fiction, even the good stuff by Hammett, Chandler, Ellroy, etc. It doesn’t hold my interest. Their biographies are more interesting than their art, it seems to me. I have the usual complaints about tough guy fiction — the characters are one-dimensional, women are cartoon figures, and it’s hard to stay interested in either stick figures or plots whose resolution one is uninterested in. Besides which the so-called tough guys presented are so crudely drawn that it’s obvious the writers don’t know the difference between tough and vicious. But the other day I received an anonymous gift of a book called ‘The Steam Pig’ (1971) by James McClure, a South African writer. I made the schedule-destroying mistake of reading the first page and didn’t look up for the next six hours. It’s much better than a detective story in that it also provides a hundred little glimpses of the reality of South Africa circa 1960, the kind of detail through which one finally gets the full picture of what the apartheid society really meant in human terms. Over the years, I’ve relied on J.M. Coetzee, Doris Lessing and an essay writer named R.W. Johnson for my information on South Africa, but this mystery writer McClure manages to convey more about the country in this unlikely genre than all of them put together. Many thanks to the Ukiah person, whoever you are, for alerting me to this wonderful writer.

TOM ALLMAN posed this question this morning:

HMMM. A criminal acquaintance of mine, responding to the end-of-the-world hysteria at the millennium, was asked a similar question: "Me? I'll buy an extra box of shotgun shells and harvest my neighborhood."

THE MEDIA — the chuckle buddy outlets anyway — are creating a lot of the fear around the coronavirus. It's not yet known how it's spread, but what is known is you won't die from it if you're reasonably healthy. But you get the overall impression from the mainstream media that if you get it, you die. This dangerously false impression is reinforced with clips of Chinese authorities dragging suspected cases out of their homes, and a still photo of the same dead Wuhan guy lying in the street who's apparently been lying there for two weeks now.

SO FAR, the risk factors for developing severe illness from this virus are thought to be similar to those for other respiratory illnesses. You're not going to drop dead because an infected person breathes on you. Older people and those with underlying illnesses, such as diabetes or high blood pressure, and men generally, are so far the primary vics.

DISASTER PREP. My impression is that given the now annual enhanced fire danger, and the general anxiousness about the drift of big events that many people feel, us rustics are pretty well prepared for a brief collapse of Western Civ. Any longer than a month, say, we're talking Donner Party.

SORRY to see this casual libel from James Kunstler: "The Iowa fiasco was universally seen as an effort to trip-up Bernie Sanders, the elderly Leninist who, ironically, seeks to turn the entire federal bureaucracy into a colossal version of the very Iowa caucus that was engineered to thwart him."

THE ORIGINAL LENINISTS murdered and jailed conservative socialists of the Bernie type. On the off chance Bernie isn't sabbed again by the middle-of-the-road extremists of the Biden-Pete-Klob type and is elected, and by some even greater miracle enacts medicare for all and the Green New Deal, he's still to the political right of FDR's New Deal, which was very good for most Americans, opposed, of course, by plutocrats, grandparents of today's plutocrats who malign him.

THE BRITS have a Minister of Loneliness. Given the prevalence of despairing isolation in this country as manifested in drug and alcohol addiction and a greater suicide rate than any other developed country, maybe we need a ministry like that here. Even a lightly populated crossroads like Boonville is fundamentally a community of strangers, more a collection of isolated affinity groups, with a whole bunch of isolated individuals affiliated with nobody.

NOT A ‘TRAIL TO NOWHERE’

At a Ukiah City Council meeting on Feb. 5, the subject of the safety of the “Great Redwood Trail” Ukiah segment arose. When we first read Ukiah Daily Journal reporter Justine Fredericksen’s title — “Getting more people on Ukiah’s Rail Trail - New rules intended to help people feel safe,” we assumed that the issue of the trail being used by transients and druggies would be discussed. We were wrong. Apparently, the “safety” issues were “slow speed” electric vehicles (yes/allowed) and vaping (no smoking including vaping), as if the cops don't have enough to do without enforcing smoking restrictions. Deputy City Attorney Darcy Vaughn added that improving safety would “allow us to improve public perception of the trail.” Perhaps she was addressing the common view in Ukiah that the trail is either a lib-lab fantasy or a hobo highway — but, of course, these common perceptions of this particular boondoggle were not mentioned.

Later in Ms. Frederiksen’s report we were told that Ukiah City Councilwoman (and Second District Supervisor candidate) Maureen ‘Mo’ Mulheren has an upbeat opinion of the trail now that it extends almost three miles (!) along the tracks in Ukiah. Mulheren has been hosting monthly (sic) walks on the trail and is glad it’s been lengthened recently, albeit at a cost of about $4.5 mil.

Mulheren’s next trail walk on Feb. 15 is called “the Cupid Shuffle” when people can walk “all the way to Brush Street and back which is about three miles!” “It used to be a ‘trail to nowhere’,” said Mulheren, but now that it’s a whopping three miles long, “you can go up and back and get in a 5K.”

Which is about as far from nowhere as you can get.

(Mark Scaramella)

PG&E'S ALL-WEATHER STRATEGY

Editor:

PG&E is at it again. Trying to exit bankruptcy, shaking up its board, doing a few accounting tricks, hoping to settle in time to use the new wildfire insurance fund (“PG&E pledges to shake up board in bid to placate state,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Sunday).

Sounds a bit positive, right? Read on and discover that things are “already so bad” that PG&E is going to — guess what? — impose deliberate blackouts in “parts of its sprawling service territory” for the next few years. It says it will occur in dry, hot and windy conditions. Really? Hot? There was a frost advisory at the end of the last public safety power outage. Frost! Some cities are planning for new homes to be all-electric. Great.

It was the widespread outages in the fall which shut off streetlights, heat, businesses, traffic signals, ATMs, gas stations, water and on and on, that finally shook up officials to do something.

We aren’t hearing about it now because it isn’t happening right now. But you can be sure it’s coming. We’ve come full circle. PG&E can settle, use the new insurance fund, raise prices on customers (it already has permission) and placate Gov. Gavin Newsom. The result is — wait for it — widespread power outages. Deja vu is a vicious foe.

Janie Haggerty

Cotati

CIVIC FAILURE

Dear Editor,

Lake County’s “Continuum of Care” organization released a quick report on the results of the homeless 2020 “Point in Time” count, at its February 6 meeting.

Last year’s count has not produced any such report, so there is no way of knowing what changes may have occurred (other than in the selection of coordinators to conduct the 2020 exercise).

Please note that in my comments on your editorial titled “Credibility Problems” I mentioned the age of the eldest unhoused resident — 94 years old — that inflames my soul, adding a “last straw” sense of ire to the stack of cold kindling that rests at the bottom of social/civic “slash” pile for which able bodied people solicit “participation” from the victims of this civic failure.

Betsy Cawn

Upper Lake

I SHOT THE LION

Editor,

Mendocino County has a problem keeping their roads in shape, or worse than decent shape because they're terrible, but they cut some brush on Flynn Creek Road and it looks better.

Mendocino County used to have six or eight trappers. They kept animal predators under control. We don't have any now. None. We had Gary Johnson, he was good. But Mendocino County got rid of him. About two years ago I had a mountain lion problem killing my calves. I lost three calves before I found out what the problem was. I found the tracks. I called Gary and he said I had to have a carcass but I didn't have a carcass because the cat was packing them off. The calves were two or three days old. Gary said he couldn't come out unless I had proof of a kill and he would have to charge me for it. I said never mind I'll take care of it myself. And I did. I solved the problem. I did not go and get on my knees and beg the cat not to kill my calves. I didn't say I would give the cat catnip to keep them off my calves to satisfy the god damn environmentalists. I shot the son of a bitch. Problem solved.

I wanted to take it down to Yountville and hang it by the tail in front of the Fish and Game office, but my wife would not let me. So Mendocino County people, get your heads out of your ass and bring the trappers back.

Thanks to the Sheriff's department. They do a great job grabbing the bad people who come to this county even though we have an idiot for a governor who made this a sanctuary state. My wife reads the police logs every day and we see what's going on. I don't know what happens after they get arrested. They probably get let right back out of jail. But the sheriffs are trying to do their job and doing it very well. Thank you.

Congratulations to Matt Kendall for becoming Sheriff. I will miss old Tom Allman. I liked him. I know Matt will do a great job. A good man. Good luck, Matt. I wish you my best.

God bless Donald Trump, kick some ass.

Jerry Philbrick

Comptche

PS. I hope President Trump enjoys tearing up the Democrats running around crying like a bunch of baby goats. They deserve everything they get. Thank you. Good job.

TRUMP FIRST

Editor,

The nonpartisan federal watchdog agency, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said that Trump broke the law that limits power to withhold money allocated by Congress, exactly what he was impeached for. So it's not that the Democrats are lying or obstructing it's honestly been the Republicans and Trump.

The Impoundment Control Act is the actual law that Trump broke. Fact!

Also the nonpartisan group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, found "unprecedented corruption" in the Trump Administration in a recent report. They found 2,310 conflicts of interest. So if Trump was honestly trying to "drain the swamp," he should start with himself first! That's at citizensforethics.org.

The Republicans who voted against having witnesses at Trump's "trial" all violated their oaths to God, "impartial justice", the Constitution and all of us US citizens. No witnesses allowed is a fraud trial. 80% of Americans wanted witnesses in a recent poll!

Trump looks and talks like the devil himself at the prayer breakfast when he says he disagrees with what the minister had just said who was quoting Jesus's own words! Who else but Satan would disagree with Jesus’s central teachings on forgiveness? Trump, who has a beam of wood in his own eye, but yet points out the speck of wood in Pelosi's and Romney's.

Trump is a lying criminal psychopath. True!

Best Regards,

Rob Mahon

Covelo

CATCH OF THE DAY, February 8, 2020

ROBERT BERG, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol & loitering, paraphernalia, resisting, probation revocation.

JERRY ENGLAND, DUI-alcohol&drugs, suspended license, controlled substance probation revocation.

PHIL HAULTAIN JR., Ukiah. Domestic battery.

KELLY OTT, Willits. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent.

KEVIN PIKE, Disorderly conduct-alcohol, parole violation.

JAIME RODRIGUEZ JR., Ukiah. Parole violation.

RHONDA SANDERS, Willits. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

ZACHARY SIMON, Willits. DUI, pot possession on school groiunds, controlled substance, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

STREET ARTIST JR Installs Massive Face of a Child on Mexican Side

EXUBERANT IMAGES

Lecture on Native artist Harry Fonseca--Feb. 15 at Grace Hudson

by Roberta Werdinger

On Saturday, February 15 at 2 p.m. at the Grace Hudson Museum, independent scholar and curator Brian Bibby will present an illustrated lecture, "The Life and Art of Harry Fonseca." Bibby will discuss the work and legacy of the internationally renowned painter and printmaker, who was of Nisenan Maidu, Portuguese, and Hawaiian origin. The event is free with Museum admission.

Fonseca was born and raised in the small community of Bryte, across the river from downtown Sacramento. The ancestral village of his Maidu great-grandmother was also nearby, at the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers, adjacent to downtown. However, the local Maidu culture and ceremonial life had been badly fractured since the arrival of Euro-Americans and the establishment of Sacramento. Thus, Fonseca grew up in a mixed-cultural family in an urban environment without much exposure to traditional Maidu or Native activities.

However, a close friend of the Fonseca family was Henry Azbill, a Maidu-Hawaiian man who had been born and raised in the Maidu community at Chico. Azbill became a primary resource and inspiration for Harry concerning Maidu culture, as he had experienced the last days of the great cycle of ceremonial dances at Chico in 1905-1906. Azbill’s mother, Mary, had been one of the main female dancers and was also a basket maker. Around 1971, Azbill took Harry to the Wintun-Pomo-Wailaki community at Grindstone Reservation (Glenn County) to attend the Hesi ceremonial. This was Harry’s first experience with the beauty of Native Californian dance, song, and ritual, and inspired him to explore the many other ceremonial dance figures and material aspects of the culture.

In 1979, Fonseca moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, which has a strong Native arts scene, and dedicated himself to his artwork full time. He developed a colorful, exuberant, and yet highly crafted style, in which Native icons--most notably, Coyote--sport leather jackets or snappy suits, lounge in cafes, and otherwise take their place in the modern world. “Coyote is the trickster figure found in traditional Maidu oral literature," Bibby says. "Harry positioned this figure into every possible scenario, freeing it from the past and placing him in the present. Coyote is the master of disguises. He is both creator and destroyer, sometimes all within a single stroke. Maidu (and others) Coyote myths are outrageously funny, and Harry ingeniously injected a ridiculous humor into his Coyote works, capturing much the same effect of the old stories.”

Bibby frames the large corpus of Coyote stories as a reflection on the human condition. “Coyote is the trickster who himself is usually tricked in the end. The trickster literature (nearly a universal human concept) was/is an ingenious method of revealing the contradictory nature of life on this planet.”

Fonseca had a prolific art career, creating a wide range of works, or series of works, including his impressionistic works based on Native rock art; a large series entitled The Discovery of Gold & Souls in California, addressing the effects of the mission system and gold discovery on Native societies; and Pollock-inspired works referencing the seasons.

Bibby and Fonseca became friends when they met at Sacramento State College in 1972. He now helps administrate the Harry Fonseca Trust, which is dedicated to preserving his legacy. (Fonseca died in 2006.) Bibby has consulted on and curated several exhibits on Native culture, including The Fine Art of California Indian Basketry (1996), Precious Cargo: Childbirth and Cradle Baskets in California Indian Culture (2004) and American Masterpieces: The Artistic Legacy of California Indian Basketry (2010). However, Bibby maintains that the most important aspect of his own career and life has been his many years spent among his friends and elders, immersed in Native culture and everyday life, including his initiation into the ceremonial roundhouse at Grindstone Reservation nearly 50 years ago.

This presentation is linked to the Museum's current exhibit, Metaphor, Myth, & Politics: Art from Native Printmakers. The exhibit features contemporary works on paper from 29 Native and Indigenous artists from around the globe, all drawn from the C.N. Gorman Museum's collection at the University of California, Davis. The show is traveled by Exhibit Envoy and supplemented at the Grace Hudson Museum with works by California Indian printmakers.

The Grace Hudson Museum is at 431 S. Main St. in Ukiah. The Museum is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 4:30 p.m. General admission is $4; $10 per family; $3 for students and seniors; free to all on the first Friday of the month; and always free to Museum members, Native peoples with tribal ID, and standing members of the military. For more information please go to www.gracehudsonmuseum.org or call (707) 467-2836.

HARBOR LITE WORK PARTY

Progressive Work Party this Sunday at Harbor Lite Lodge, 2pm to 4pm

Make A Difference Every Month

Every second Sunday of 2020, join with your North Coast neighbors to protect democracy and build our civic community. Together we will write letters & postcards, make action plans, reach out to voters, and otherwise do the work to make this place--and this world--more just and sustainable. 2pm to 4pm at Harbor Lite Lodge, every Second Sunday. Please park in the unpaved lot across the street from the hotel. Activities Will Come From The Following Organizations: Coast Democratic Club; Flip the First; Indivisible Mendocino; Latino Coalition; Mendocino Coast Jewish Community Justice Group; Sister District Project--North Coast Chapter; and other local activist groups. For more information visit progressiveworkparties.com

ALEX JONES set to music

ROGER KAHN — 1927-2020

Sportswriter who penned ‘Boys of Summer’ the 1972 book which blended baseball sentiment, sociology and the seminal sports culture of the 40s and 50s.

by Bruce Weber

Roger Kahn, whose 1972 book about the Brooklyn Dodgers of the early 1950s, “The Boys of Summer,” melded reportage, sentiment and sociology in a way that stamped baseball as a subject fit for serious writers and serious readers, died on Thursday in Mamaroneck, New York. He was 92.

His son Gordon Jacques Kahn confirmed the death, at a nursing home. Kahn had most recently resided in Stone Ridge, New York, in Ulster County, after living most of his life in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Kahn’s 20 or so books, many about baseball, include a couple of novels, a portrait of the volatile but winning 1978 New York Yankees, a biography of Jack Dempsey and a collaboration with Pete Rose on Rose’s own story, published in 1989, just months after he was banished from baseball.

But it’s fair to say that Kahn’s most memorable work sprang from early in his career.

In the spring of 1952, he was a 24-year-old reporter for the New York Herald Tribune when he was assigned to travel with the Dodgers. It was a rich time in the game’s history, especially in New York, the undisputed center of the baseball universe, home to three teams and three fervent fan bases.

For 10 seasons, from 1947 to 1956, one New York team or another — the Yankees, the Giants or the Dodgers — won every World Series but one. The Yankees were in the midst of their still unequaled streak of five consecutive World Series victories.

Just a few months before Kahn joined the Dodgers’ press entourage, the team had lost the pennant to the Giants, their crosstown National League rivals, in a three-game playoff, which ended with Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard ’round the world,” perhaps the most famous home run ever hit.

That stunning playoff loss was one of many anguishing disappointments for Dodger fans of that era. Though they loved the players — among them Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, Carl Furillo, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella — and knew they were first rate, they lamented the team’s seeming inability to claim a championship. (In fact, up to that time, the team never had; Brooklyn finally won the Series in 1955, beating the Yankees.) It is this fecund territory that Kahn, looking back from a distance of decades, harvested in several books, often entwining memories from his own Brooklyn boyhood and his coming-of-age as a journalist with tales from the clubhouse and the barroom and the diamond.

“The Boys of Summer,” for which he revisited many of the old Dodgers years after their playing days, was the first and, by most estimates, the best of these — as influential a baseball book as has been written in the last 50 years. “At a point in life when one is through with boyhood, but has not yet discovered how to be a man, it was my fortune to travel with the most marvelously appealing of teams,” the book begins. “During the early 1950s, the Jackie Robinson Brooklyn Dodgers were outspoken, opinionated, bigoted, tolerant, black, white, open, passionate: in short, a fascinating mix of vigorous men.”

Though reviews of “The Boys of Summer” were hardly uniform raves, it became one of those books routinely described as classics. In 2002, Sports Illustrated placed it second on its list of the best 100 sports books of all time, behind only A.J. Liebling’s revered collection of boxing pieces, “The Sweet Science.”

“A baseball book the same way ‘Moby-Dick’ is a fishing book,” the magazine wrote of “The Boys of Summer.”

Kahn’s book, it said, “is, by turns, a novelistic tale of conflict and change, a tribute, a civic history, a piece of nostalgia and, finally, a tragedy, as the franchise’s 1958 move to Los Angeles takes the soul of Brooklyn with it.”

Roger Kahn was born in Brooklyn on Oct. 31, 1927, just a few weeks after Babe Ruth and the Yankees swept the World Series from Pittsburgh. His father, Gordon, was a history teacher and baseball fan blessed with such a memory for trivia that he helped provide questions for the radio quiz show “Information Please.” Roger’s mother, Olga (Rockow) Kahn, taught English and had little tolerance for baseball but imbued her son with a love of mythology, Shakespeare and Walt Whitman.

He spent three years at New York University before joining the Herald Tribune as a copy boy.

After his two-year stint with the Dodgers, Kahn covered the Giants for the Herald Tribune in 1954. He later wrote for Newsweek, the Saturday Evening Post and Esquire.

In the 1960s he wrote two books on subjects other than sports: a consideration of his faith, “The Passionate People: What It Means to Be a Jew in America,” and a report on student unrest at Columbia University, “The Battle for Morningside Heights: Why Students Rebel.” He wrote regularly for the New York Times in the late 1970s.

Kahn’s marriages to Wendy Meeker, Alice Russell and Joan Rappaport ended in divorce. In addition to his son Gordon, from his marriage to Rappaport, he is survived by his wife, Katharine Johnson Kahn; a daughter, Alissa Kahn Keenan, from his marriage to Russell; and five grandchildren. Another daughter, Elizabeth, died within a day of her birth. And another son, Roger Laurence Kahn, who struggled with mental illness and drug addiction, took his own life in 1987.

Kahn wrote about Roger in a memoir, “Into My Own: The Remarkable People and Events That Shaped a Life.”

(New York Times)

SHAKESPEAREAN VERACITY IN “VERA”: The Working Class Cop Show From Bloody England

by Jonah Raskin

“I’ll be gone in a tic,” Vera Stanhope says and means she'll soon scram and be out of the way. She uses words and expressions like “me backside,” instead of “my backside” and “dodgy” rather than “sketchy,” which seems to be the preferred American word to describe a lowlife character. Time and again, Vera wages psychological warfare with detainees she suspects of committing crimes, exclaiming, “Help me!” as though she wants them to feel sorry for her, turn state’s evidence and fess up. “DCI Vera Stanhope,” she barks, flashing her badge, though not all the time. Sometimes, she barges in, pokes around and asks probing questions and finds telling pieces of evidence. There’s no privacy in the world depicted in this series. The cops can and do know everything.

In the UK, “DCI” is the abbreviation for Detective Chief Inspector. In other words, Vera Stanhope is the boss, and don’t you forget it. She leads the Northumberland & City Police, a fictitious place somewhere in the north of England, West of the North Sea and east of Manchester. London doesn’t figure on the series, nor do Cambridge and Oxford. But “Vera,” as the show is called, reveals the “Other England,” or the “Real England,” as one might describe it, that doesn’t usually appear on the BBC and isn’t debated in Parliament. Still, you can count on it for veracity. It reminded me of the north of England I knew and loved when I was a student there years ago. When Vera asks a woman if she stayed in touch with her brother after he left home, she says, "Down in London you don't really keep in touch." The society is coming apart at the seams. DCI Stanhope connects the dots.

Available on many devices, including Netflix, "Vera" is British noir, and hardboiled in the manner of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Prime Minister Boris Johnson would call it a smear on the British national character. After all, most of the ordinary Brits who appear in the series don’t like the police, “the coppers,” and they’re all too willing to lie to them. At 93, Queen Elizabeth might not know of its existence. She has other pressing matters on her mind, though she could learn a lot about her “subjects” from watching the show, now in its 10th season and with each episode running 90 minutes: plenty of time to peel back the layers, dig deeply, explore all the angles and get the suspects to commit perjury and otherwise trip themselves up.

Vera Stanhope (Brenda Blethyn) doesn’t carry a gun, but she carries the series with her name, that was first broadcast on ITV in England and that’s now available on DVDs. Wikipedia says that Blethyn is "known for her portrayals of working-class women." "Vera" will amplify that reputation. Not surprisingly, given the excellent acting, "Vera" is the most popular DVD (with adults) at my local library. British TV critics have reviewed it, and, while some have liked it begrudgingly, they have not commented on its originality. Maybe “Vera” cuts too close to the bone. Maybe it presents aspects about England, now supposedly free from Europe that the English don’t want to face in the brave new Boris Johnson era. Indeed “Vera” holds a mirror up to England and reveals a society mired in crime, corruption and cover-ups. The writers, producers and directors might be exaggerating to make their baby intensely dramatic, but in its essentials it exudes a sense of veracity.

The show offers chase scenes, but they’re usually on foot. Guns are sometimes fired and people are wounded and killed, but for the most part there are no big explosions of the kind that litter U.S. TV cop shows. What a relief that is! And it’s exciting to have a rather common looking woman as the lead investigator who doesn’t speak the King’s English.

No one recommended “Vera” to me. I came upon the first DVD in the series while browsing the shelves in my local library, and, though the title and the image of the detective on the front cover didn’t leap out and grab me by the throat, they intrigued me enough to borrow it and then to go on borrowing. I have had to put my name on a waiting list, but I have found that the wait has been worth it.

The first season was shaky, the narrative lines sometimes confusing and the characters not as clearly delineated, as I would have liked. But there was enough friction there for me to keep coming back for more. DCI Vera Stanhope has some things in common with other TV cops, including a sense of curiosity and sheer doggedness, but she also strikes out on her own and redefines the role of the detective chief investigator. As a British friend of mine says: “she’s real.”

Almost everything about Vera herself is big: body, voice and mind, which works overtime, and at home as well as at the office. She almost always wears a coat, hat and scarf, and while I know I said she has a big body, you never see it, not even when she’s alone in her own house, which she inherited from her father, and hitting the bottle.

A loner obsessed with her work, she exudes a certain Shakespearean ethos. The Bard himself would find her as intriguing as, say, Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra, though there’s nothing royal or aristocratic about her. The episode titled “Dark Road” is as close to Shakespearean tragedy as 21st century TV can be, with an evil villain who's "a controlling nut freak."

Vera is thoroughly working class and has grown up around enough tough guys not to be intimidated by them or their rough language. Everyone in the cast of characters, including Vera herself, has a distinct accent. Listening to each and every one of them talk, provides a kind of amplified, authentic tape-recording of British English as it’s spoken today.

The cast of characters is multicultural and reflects British society today so much so that it seems at times to be intentionally sociological. Each episode carves out its own territory and explores it ruthlessly, sometimes using montage and sometimes following three or four story lines at the same time. “Vera” demands close attention, but that’s not hard to do, especially when the setting is the spectacular moors, a remote farm with stone barns, a thicket and the rugged coast. Indeed, the show is a feast for the eyes as well as a riot of the spoken word. You might watch “Vera,” go British for a night or two in the comfort of your own home and pray the Brits don’t allow Boris Johnson and his crew to muck up England more than they already have. If they do, send Vera on the case. She’s incorruptible.

(Jonah Raskin is the author of “Dark Day, Dark Night: A Marijuana Murder Mystery.”)

IOWA DEBACLE FUELED BY ANTI-BERNIE BILLIONAIRES, RUSSIAGATE HUCKSTERS, FAILED DNC ELITES

Max Blumenthal breaks down the shadowy network of billionaires, Democratic elites, and Russiagate profiteers behind the Shadow app that ruined the Iowa caucuses, and a wider effort to stop Bernie Sanders’ progressive momentum.

thegrayzone.com/2020/02/07/iowa-debacle-fueled-by-anti-bernie-billionaires-russiagate-hucksters-failed-dnc-elites/