MCT: Saturday, June 6, 2020

• Cool Weekend
• Live Oak
• Coast Notes
• Boonville 1909
• Naulty Note
• Boonville 1966
• Covelo Crackdown
• Navarro Mouth
• Baby Season
• Ukiah Theater
• Graduation Ceremony
• Bull Team
• Ed Notes
• Swallow Nestlings
• Doohan's Gig
• Yesterday's Catch
• Dam Nation
• Anton Stadium
• Hitched Together
• Vichy Springs
• Honoring Friendship
• Facebook Friends
• Heavy Bags
• Victory Theatre
• Acute Psychosis
• Bailout Beneficiary
• Biden Nosepin
• Lively Up
• Buddha Gate
• LA Arrest
• Remove Them
• Counterfeit Bill
• Broken Contract

COOL WEATHER this weekend with a slight chance of sprinkles on Saturday night. On Sunday, temps will remain cool with daytime highs in the 60s and 70s and overnight lows in the 40s. Temps will return to a moderate summerlike pattern mid-week with inland daytime highs in the 80s.

COAST NOTES

by Chris Calder

ONGOING DEMONSTRATIONS

On Tuesday, June 2, hundreds of demonstrators — peaceful, cheering, singing, chanting, mostly young, mostly female — lined Main Street in Fort Bragg, joining in nationwide “Lockdown Tuesday” protests calling for racial justice and police accountability in America.

They got steady support-by-honk from passing motorists, with just a few “all lives matter”-style complainers throwing in their two cents as well.

Fort Bragg's police department and Mendocino County Sheriff's deputies were on hand as well, mingling more than policing. Fort Bragg's city manager and a majority of the Fort Bragg City Council were there too, with council member and media maven Lindy Peters interviewing attendees for broadcast on the city's Facebook page.

By dusk on Tuesday, the block between Town Hall and the Guest House Museum was quiet again. But on Thursday, the block came alive again. This time, forensic-style outlines of bodies commemorating people of color killed by police in the US in recent years filled a good 30 yards of sidewalk.

Demonstrators knelt for eight minutes and 46 seconds to commemorate George Floyd, whose death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers triggered the ongoing national outcry and days and nights of sometimes violent protests.

"We were all a witness to murder," wrote Ui Wesley of Fort Bragg. "Today, my brothers and sisters had allies from our community show up to kneel with us in solidarity. Our City of Fort Bragg elected officials and police Chief came out to show their support. Hundreds of residents and visitors drove by to honk, waive and cheer us on. We could all feel the LOVE."

On Thursday right after the protest, Wesley said events will continue on Main Street in Fort Bragg, maybe not every day, but building to the Juneteenth (June 14) national day of protest. 

"We're here to show our tears," Wesley said. "We're here to show the snot running down our faces," Wesley said to a small clutch of local jounalists, as she wept.

On her Facebook page later, Wesley credited the many local people who brought a wide array of skills to create the Fort Bragg event.

"Not all communities are lucky enough to have people who have the ability to do the above," she wrote, "or have the experience needed to have a legal, safe and impactful demonstration or protest. These processes aren’t easy. It doesn’t feel just. People get frustrated and violence occurs. We are seeing that all around the world. Before you criticize and judge some of the actions you are seeing (i.e., riots, looting), ask yourself if you would be willing to put in the work for change?"

GRADUATIONS

The other lively events in Fort Bragg this week were the high school graduations — Noyo Alternative High School on Wednesday and Fort Bragg High School on Friday.

Both were movable feasts — grads and their families in cars and pickups, touring town to the cheers of residents gathered in their front yards. Poster-sized portraits of the grads line the vacant millsite fence along Highway 1, appropriately near Taco Bell, a favored Timberwolves' feeding ground.

SEARCH CONTINUES

Luther Jackson, the 77-year-old man reported missing from his Little Valley cabin (Willits area) on May 21, will again be the subject of a concerted search effort on Sunday, June 7. Law enforcement and Search and Rescue personnel will again converge on the rural but relatively populous area about ten miles north of Fort Bragg, and the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office is asking residents to stay off the roads there as much as possible on Sunday. Jackson is a longtime resident, sound of mind and body by all reports, who reportedly told an acquaintance recently that he had found an old marijuana grow site in the woods that he was fixing up to use himself, including building a makeshift bridge across a creek so he could get there.

C.V. STARR CENTER

The C.V. Starr Center, Fort Bragg's shuttered recreation palace (three swimming pools complete with a two-story slide and “Lazy River” qualifies it as a palace) will stay closed until January, according to a proposed 2020-21 budget presented by the Mendocino Coast Recreation and Park District to the Fort Bragg City Council Thursday night. Mendocino Coast Recreation & Parks District Executive Director Dan Keyes has already been let go and the district is running on a skeleton crew of a couple of maintenance people and part time administrators keeping neccessary paperwork flowing. Fort Bragg's city government, which provides the lion's share of C.V. Starr operational funding, has the final word on the fate of the C.V. Starr Center, and will be looking over the proposed budget in the coming weeks.

BOONVILLE, 1909

BOONVILLE, 1966

COVELO CRACKDOWN

The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office has been receiving numerous complaints regarding illegal marijuana operations in Covelo area during the past several months. Complaints were made about several large, unpermitted, growing operations in the Hulls Valley area, approximately nine miles north of Covelo. The complaints included the discharge of firearms on a regular basis, leading to safety concerns from residents in the area.

On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at approximately 8am, the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office responded to Covelo to serve two separate search warrants on Hulls Valley Road regarding these complaints.

One of the locations where a search warrant was served is a remote piece of vacant Tribal Land, that had several plastic style greenhouses, all containing growing marijuana. Nobody was located at the location during the service of this search warrant, although evidence at the scene clearly suggests person(s) had recently been there. Deputies located and eradicated 1,507 marijuana plants and seized a loaded .22 caliber rifle.

At the conclusion of the first search warrant, members of the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office responded to the second location, which was located approximately half a mile away, also on Hulls Valley Road. Upon arrival, deputies encountered a vehicle occupied by four Hispanic male subjects at the entrance to the property. These subjects were detained and interviewed. The investigation linked them to this second illegal marijuana growing operation. As deputies entered further on to this second property they discovered two additional subjects who were detained and four additional Hispanic males fled the location on foot into the thick brush and were not apprehended.

As a result of this search warrant, a total of fourteen greenhouses all containing growing marijuana were located, to include one outdoor marijuana growing site. All marijuana was being watered by an unlawful water diversion from a nearby creek.

A total of 3,141 marijuana plants were discovered/eradicated. The search also revealed a loaded AR-15 rifle, two loaded handguns and several high capacity magazines.

At the conclusion of this investigation a complaint will be filed with the DA's Office related to felony charges of conspiracy and illegal cultivation of marijuana against those identified. The suspects could face additional charges of possession of illegal weapons and illegal water diversion.

Suspect(s): Brandon David Hanover, 19. Erick Viscaino Bautista, 22. Pablo Barojas Jiminez, 23. Juan Carlos Huerta-Flores, 40. Jose Antonio Vizcaino Bautista, 21, and Juan Manuel Rosas Huerta, 19.

NAVARRO MOUTH, 1920s

FROM RONNIE JAMES

Nuisance animals under the house or in the attic: This is baby season. Both those animals have a nest of babies under your house. it is also illegal to trap and remove. If you wait four weeks the babies will grow up and follow their mom outside in the night. Then when you're sure they are out, just put in a little one-way door (can be one hinge at the top and a scrap piece of plywood) so they can't get back in and your problem will be solved. If you board it up now, the mother will rip your house apart trying to get back to her babies, or if she's locked in, she'll do the same trying to get out. Much easier to just let them move out on their own. Also, contact Wildcare about their humane exclusion program. They have lots of answers as they specialize in that sort of thing, information is free, they only charge if they send people to do the work.

discoverwildcare.org/wildlife-resources/wildcare-solutions/

UKIAH THEATER, 1948

MSP’S ‘YEP - SURE DON’T MAKE SENSE’ DEPARTMENT

A person posted on the Fort Bragg Current Events Facebook page:

“I know I may get an earful for posting this question, but here is goes. How does the school district justify not having graduation ceremonies in the traditional form but encourage a peaceful protest, which drew a large gathering of people clustered together?

Hear me out.

I have a close family member out of the area who is graduating from high school with honors. She has busted her ass to keep a 4.0+ GPA throughout her high school years, playing sports and cheerleading. Her class is about 40 students and their ceremony is normally at the local collage football stadium, where there is ample room to “gather in a safe manner.” Nope, they get to drive up and receive their diploma and drive away.

A number of appeals to the school board have fallen on deaf ears.

Oh, now approval and permits have been issued for a peaceful protest in their little town, but these kids can’t have their graduation? “For the safety of students and their families” is the excuse the school board has given.

Anyone else outraged over crap like this or am I the only one? It is so beyond hypocritical. 

I am all about peaceful protests. I have been a part of a few. I actually fully support the protests when they are done in such a way that nobody is excluded or reprimanded for peacefully sharing their thoughts.

But, how is a graduation ceremony a big safety concern, but a protest, one that people are encouraged to take part in, not of any concern?

Anyone willing to weigh in? Any parents of a graduate as ousted as I am? I don’t even have a horse in the race, so to speak, but it still ticks me off.”

(via MendocinoSportsPlus)

BULL TEAM, NAVARRO, 1910s

ED NOTES

THE POLICE FATALLY SHOT nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, N.J., who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African-Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer. (WSJ)

WE'VE GOT a full 'strawberry' moon tonight, a perfect setting in which to howl down the coronavirus and support for the men and women in the trenches fighting it. 

IS THERE ANY CORRELATION between full lunar appearances and lunatic behavior in human-type beings? Hard to say in today's social context, aberrant behavior as seemingly prevalent as it is, but I've known cops, cab drivers, other persons working night shifts who say there's a definite increase in general craziness when the moon is full.

CENSUS FORMS are much improved over the confusing and too-lengthy questionnaires of yesteryear. And just as easy to complete on-line. But I still see lots of them hanging here and there around Boonville, unattended to in their little plastic bags, despite or because of, "Your response is required by law" in bold type on the enclosed envelope, a threat about as meaningful as those mattress warnings not to remove them. A sprightly young Hispanic woman is counting noses in Boonville. We'd love to interview her about her experiences which, given these odd times, have got to be memorable.

WE GET lots of unusual mail, among it some great stuff, including this successful handwritten poem from Susan Van Knopka called "Open the Window On The Landing Where A Small Tree Waves":

Open the window on the landing where a small tree waves

Breathe in the mingling Jasmine and Rosemary

Put your lips for a flower kiss, softly

Bend to embrace Japanese Maple

Let it spring back as maroon leaves, lacey red, dance in the light

Smile as someone scrutinizes and say "we all need hugs"

Lay in the grass: hands, cheek, smell the earth

Rub your hands with Fennel, then cup your hands to your nose

Reach for the Bee Bomb, do the same

Put a Mullen leaf in your pocket and see what happens

Taste some wild mint and miner's lettuce

Pick up a bay seed, take it home to a cool place, plant and wonder if

Stride up Indian Rock and peruse the distant bay

Believe the joy of early birds

See the sky, read the weather

Sit over a small stream on a rock wall wet with moss

Everything sings

Watch in the darkness how the lightning moves

Fall asleep in rain

CORNEL WEST: “It looks like the system can’t reform itself. We’ve tried black faces in high places… BLM emerged under a black president, a black attorney general and a black homeland security director and they could not deliver.”

ANOTHER GAFFE from Biden? “Do we really think this is as good as we can be as a nation? I don’t think the vast majority of people think that,” Biden said during the on-line event aimed at his black supporters. "There are probably anywhere from 10 to 15 percent of the people out there that are just not very good people, but that’s not who we are. The vast majority of the people are decent, and we have to appeal to that and we have to unite people—bring them together.” 

SEEMS TO ME not so much a gaffe as a reasonable guesstimate at the number of opportunists among the crowds of demonstrators. But more closely considered, the arsonists and looters would be a much smaller percentage of demonstrators and, generally, arrive later in the evening to do their thing.

IN OUR CONSUMER paradise, with bright, shiny things dangled constantly before the envious eyes of millions unable to afford them, looting isn't surprising, although I was surprised at the brazen theft of 74 "premium cars" from a San Leandro dealership. Those guys were organized! And the lesson learned is how quickly things can fall apart and how overwhelmed the police have been over the last two weeks. (Another startling visual was a forty-foot cherry picker being lowered to use as a battering ram to break through the front doors of a chain store.)

NEST SUCCESS

FROM ME, ANONYMOUS

Doohan cut her hours from 70 to 15, official, and officially, today. Not one word, today about the $100,000 salary increase after being on the air for almost two hours 2:00-4:00. They didn't take my call.

CATCH OF THE DAY, June 5, 2020

IVY BODWIN, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

DANIEL CONNERS, Clearlake Oaks/Ukiah. Protective order violation.

JASON DAVIS, Ukiah. Vandalism.

PEDRO GUZMAN-MARTINEZ, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting.

JAMES JONES, Eureka/Willits. Taking vehicle without owners’s consent, controlled substance, suspended license, evasion.

MIGUEL MARIN-AGUIRRE, Philo. Domestic abuse.

ANDREW MAYNARD, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

CURTIS MULLER, Ukiah. More than six pot plants, conspiracy, probation revocation.

EMERGENE PHILLIPS, Covelo. Kidnapping for ranson or extortion, robbery, assault with deadly weapon with great bodily injury, false imprisonment.

RHONDA SANDERS, Willits. Controlled substance, protective order violation.

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

DAM NATION & WOODY GUTHRIE

by David Yearsley

It is a miracle—even if not as great as the natural one it describes—that a song so simple, so welcoming, so resolute, so reassuring, so optimistic as Woody Guthrie’s “Roll on, Columbia” is not dragged down by the ironies that eddy around it.

The song springs from a clever musical pun. Guthrie re-used the music of Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene” to deliver the message that the Columbia River’s “power is turning the darkness to dawn.” Human advance could now hold back the night—whether good or bad.

Guthrie had left New York City with his family in 1940 for Los Angeles, and then made his way up the coast to Portland. Alan Lomax, a folklore archivist at the Library of Congress had recommended Guthrie—both were Communist fellow travelers—to contribute to a documentary on the Columbia River dams planned by the Film Division of the Bonneville Power Administration. Guthrie was to write songs, perform them on screen, and even narrate.

While on the payroll of the Department of the Interior, Guthrie toured stretches of the region and the river, still untamed aside from the massive dams of Bonneville and Grand Coulee on which construction was nearing completion. In the space of a month Guthrie wrote twenty-six songs, recording many them as the Columbia River Collection.

But the documentary’s producers became worried about giving a man with suspect political affiliations a central role. The project was anyway shelved after America joined World War II in late 1941, and when the movie finally came out in 1949 as The Columbia: America’s Greatest Power Stream, parts of only three of Guthrie’s songs were to be heard across the twenty-one-minute running time.

The subversive potential of Guthrie’s lyrics remains mostly submerged, the songs intermittently floating to the surface as fragments of heroic populism and homespun wisdom, as in the chorus of “Roll, Columbia, “Roll—a different song, than “Roll On, Columbia” (the force of Guthrie’s originality comes not in musical forms, harmonies and melodies; poetic invention and delivery give this music its power):

Uncle Sam took the challenge in the year of ’33

For the farmers and the workers and for all humanity

Now river, you can ramble where the sun sets in the sea

But while you’re rambling, river, you can do some work for me

Aside from the truncated appearances of Guthrie’s voice and guitar, the uninterrupted sonic flow of the movie comes from the symphonic score of William Lava, a handy Hollywood composer who did the music for everything from a Zorro picture in the 1930s to Road Runner cartoons and Twilight Zone episodes in the 60s. Rather than Guthrie’s folksy wisdom extolling the virtues of hydroelectric power and its democratizing potential, the authoritative voice-over was read by Phil Irwin, who would later co-host the Voice of America morning show.

Far more famous than the film, “Roll On, Columbia” did not make the final cut.

At its core a patriotic song, the lyric doesn’t conceal its intrinsic violence, instead hymning the soldiers of Manifest Destiny who make war on the first nations:

Tom Jefferson’s vision would not let him rest

An empire he saw in the Pacific Northwest

Sent Lewis and Clark and they did the rest

So roll on, Columbia, roll on

It’s there on your banks that we fought many a fight

Sheridan’s boys in the blockhouse that night

They saw us in death but never in flight

So roll on, Columbia, roll on.

The next three verses, which Guthrie sings on The Columbia River Collection, were clinically excised from the version enshrined as the official folk song of the State of Washington in 1987. These lyrics continue with episodes from the war of conquest, and at last mention the vanquished directly:

Remember the trial when the battle was won,

The wild Indian warriors to the tall timber run,

We hung every Indian with smoke in his gun;

Roll on, Columbia, Roll on!

Only the European conquerors are given the right to die heroically. The matter is put to rest along with fallen natives in the next verse—“The Injuns rest peaceful on Memaloose Isle”—before the song concludes with the triumphant quelling of the river. Yet another irony is that most of these burial islands were themselves buried by the reservoir of the Bonneville Dam. The native remains were removed to the mainland. The dead were not allowed to rest peacefully.

Guthrie’s was a voice of the displaced and dispossessed, yet this down-to-earth propaganda music helped to dispossess and displace people that had for millennia lived on and from the river he sang about. Perhaps the broadest irony is that Guthrie’s bardic gift—flowing if not with the power of the Columbia, then at least with unsurpassed fluency—yields “natural” music that praises the destruction of nature.

While Guthrie brandishes the sword of empire in “Roll On, Columbia,” the film gives far more maneuvering room to the European symphonic arsenal and its massed orchestral forces of triumphal brass, striving strings, martial cymbal crashes, and fateful harmonies overcome.

Supported by the covering fire of Lava’s score, the documentary script, written by Stephen Kahn who later made his money in the timber business, also picks up the banner of empire: “Men have followed the great river of the West down to the Pacific, to sow their crops and cut the timber to build a colonial empire sending out its boundless resources to the far corners of the earth.” Where before there had been rapids and leaping fish, a freighter filled with regional resources steams through the now-navigable waters.

We are encouraged to marvel at the trunks of mighty evergreens as “old as Magna Carta” now ready at least for summary felling. Later we hear of the utopian vision “to build an industrial empire from the wasted power of the Columbia”—its “thirty million wild horses” to be tamed, broken.

The river is itself an empire that must be conquered: “Upstream and in the mountain tributaries the Columbia has been an uncontrolled giant, boiling over rapids and cataracts thirty million horses plunged relentlessly to the sea. From the beginning of time this power roared unharnessed to the Pacific. Only the returning salmon instinctively fighting their way upward to spawn could defy the crashing falls and cascades.” Tremolo strings, heroic brass strains, cymbal bursts, capture the drama of the leaping salmon, sliding back down slippery rocks, yet miraculously ascending giant steps against the raging waters. This makes for one of the longest scenes in the movie—and one of the saddest. They are gone, the rapids and the fish.

We see native fishermen on their wooden platforms: a bit of “pre-civilized” flavor, the skilled poling of their nets a kind of “primitive” ballet that can never meet the demands of industrial production and the greater use for which the river is destined. These people were promised recompense with the rise of the dams and the inundation of their fishing grounds, rights guaranteed by treaty. They were given little to none of it. And what could replace what was lost?

These images of the “untamed” river and its people recede as we turn to the dynamiting of gorge walls and the pouring of millions of tons of concrete. Power lines stretch from the dam out into the desert. Towns spring up to house the armies of workers, many from Guthrie’s Oklahoma. Grand Coulee Dam rises, bigger than the pyramids, and Guthrie sings again for a few short film minutes:

I clumb the rocky canyon where the Columbia River rolls,

Seen the salmon leaping the rapids and the falls

The big Grand Coulee Dam in the state of Washington

Is just about the biggest thing that man has ever done.

Everything is in these twenty minutes: conquest, migration, industrialization, looming environmental collapse, extinction. A Columbia Grizzly fishes.

We even face the end of time. Lava’s music becomes devout as Irwin intones: “In the barren hills below Ground Coulee the waters grew warmer, and almost magically, the atomic bomb was born …”

Swept away by the dams and by the documentary is native history, even if we are allowed those few shots of native fishermen working their nets from wooden platform jutting into the still-raging river: “And so for 100 years, the river of the West was untamed, the same swirling fury which Indians have swept for salmon since the days of Captain Meriwether Lewis”— as if this life-sustaining practice and the peoples it nourished only came into existence when discovered by European “explorers.”

Past the midday point of the film, just after the prayer of thanks to the atom bomb, Woody’s voice raises a plaint above a restive, relentlessly unchanging minor chord in “Pastures of Plenty.” The title partakes of another kind of irony: the plenty has been for the few, not for the many. We’ve heard excerpted stanzas from this same song at two other moments in the film, last time accompanying scenes of refugees fleeing the Dust Bowl in overladen trucks. The Exodus is now answered by another biblical scene: tremendous flocks of sheep fill the causeway atop the Bonneville Dam as they are driven into the Promised Land that will soon bloom from the vast irrigation projects drawn from the Columbia’s Holy Waters:

Look down in the canyon and there you will see

The Grand Coulee showers her blessings on me.

At the end of the film the vast network of dams is prophesied on the Columbia and its tributaries: damnation; dam nation.

We were made to watch The Columbia documentary in grade school back in the 1970s. I remember it is as inspiring, not least for the way Woody’s voice lent the images and story the necessary common-man authenticity.

I’ve returned to the movie this week when I was reminded that June 10^th marks the centennial of the passage of the Federal Water Power Act, often held to be an important accomplishment of Woodrow Wilson’s progressive agenda. With this victory in the battle against monopolies and trusts, we are often told, hydro-electric developments would be pursued in the name of the people (though not those first peoples of the Columbia Basin). In the Great Depression, the New Deal then took up the cause: Roosevelt gave his name to the reservoir made by Grand Coulee dam. Oh, for the days when the federal government was a force for good!

Only 50 of Columbia’s 1,000 miles flow freely now—at the Hanford Reach, whose warming waters birthed the atomic bomb. Columbia no longer rolls on, but loiters and warms, then foams in manic free-fall over its many dams before trudging on to its next holding tank.

Next Time: Woody, Dad, and the Dams.

(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

OLD ANTON STADIUM, UKIAH

RACISM, POLICE VIOLENCE, AND THE CLIMATE ARE NOT SEPARATE ISSUES

by Bill McKibben

Having a racist and violent police force in your neighborhood is a lot like having a pollution-emitting factory in your neighborhood.

I find that lots of people are surprised to learn that, by overwhelming margins, the two groups of Americans who care most about climate change are Latinx Americans and African-Americans. But, of course, those communities tend to be disproportionately exposed to the effects of global warming: working jobs that keep you outdoors, or on the move, on an increasingly hot planet, and living in densely populated and polluted areas. (For many of the same reasons, these communities have proved disproportionately vulnerable to diseases such as the coronavirus.) One way of saying it is that money buys insulation, and white people, over all, have more of it.

Over the years, the environmental movement has morphed into the environmental-justice movement, and it’s been a singularly interesting and useful change. Much of the most dynamic leadership of this fight now comes from Latinx and African-American communities, and from indigenous groups; more to the point, the shift has broadened our understanding of what “environmentalism” is all about. John Muir, who has some claim to being the original modern environmentalist, once explained that “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” He was talking about ecosystems, but it turns out that he was more correct than he knew: the political world is hopelessly (and hopefully) intertwined with the natural world. So, for instance, living in a community with high levels of air pollution impairs human bodies—it raises blood pressure, increases cancer. But so does living in a place with a brutal police force. As one study recently put it:

“When faced with a threat, the body produces hormones and other signals that turn on the systems that are necessary for survival in the short term. These changes include accelerated heart rate and increased respiratory rate. But when the threat becomes reoccurring and persistent—as is the case with police brutality—the survival process becomes dangerous and causes rapid wear and tear on body organs and elevated allostatic load. Deterioration of organs and systems caused by increased allostatic load occurs more frequently in Black populations and can lead to conditions such as diabetes, stroke, ulcers, cognitive impairment, autoimmune disorders, accelerated aging, and death.”

Or, to put it another way, having a racist and violent police force in your neighborhood is a lot like having a coal-fired power plant in your neighborhood. And having both? And maybe some smoke pouring in from a nearby wildfire? African-Americans are three times as likely to die from asthma as the rest of the population. “I Can’t Breathe” is the daily condition of too many people in this country. One way or another, there are a lot of knees on a lot of necks.

The job of people who care about the future—which is another way of saying the environmentalists—is to let everyone breathe easier. But that simply can’t happen without all kinds of change. Some of it looks like solar panels for rooftops, and some of it looks like radically reimagined police forces. All of it is hitched together.

VICHY SPRINGS RESORT, UKIAH, 1900s

HONORING FRIENDSHIP - Fund for the Visual and Performing Arts

Giving Back Giving Back June 5, 2020 Honoring Friendship 

by Megan Barber Allende Chief Executive Officer, The Community Foundation of Mendocino County 

Patricia Scott was born two months before the stock market crash of 1929, just a decade after the Spanish Flu. Now in her nineties, Pat is living through the nation’s second largest pandemic. But in between these two life events has been social work, music, sculpture, and community. After graduating with her masters in social welfare, Pat began working at UCSF Children’s Services, and a friendship blossomed between her and her supervisor Shirley Reece. Sharing a passion for classical music, the friends never missed an opportunity to attend the symphony together. With Reece’s recent passing, Pat desired a way to remember her dear friend and the music they so loved. This is why she created the Fund for the Visual and Performing Arts to support both amateurs and professionals throughout the county. 

Even though she has been playing piano most of her life, and her sculptures have graced gallery walls, Pat still considers herself an amateur; which is why it was important to her to include amateur artists in the fund. 

“I came to visit Mendocino in the late 60s and was inspired by the Art Center, so I took some classes,” Pat recalls. “I grew up during the depression in West Los Angeles and went to Girl Scout Camp. I started doing wood carving to make gifts for people. Years later as an adult I began taking sculpture and carving classes.” 

The goal of this fund is to build strong organizations that provide visual and performing arts experiences in Mendocino County, which will include leadership grants for arts organizations, supporting efforts to maintain and grow audiences, and to support the production of art in our county. 

After leaving her job in San Mateo working in community health and prevention, Pat moved to Mendocino in 1972 and found a growing community of artists. She took classes in art and became very interested in sculpture. 

“After a year I needed to do something, so I bought a music store with a friend in Mendocino and we ran it like a community center. We met so many people that were interested in playing an instrument or buying music. There was very little classical music in Mendocino at that time, so we set up a chamber music series called Sunday Afternoon Concerts. Then a little orchestra started, and a chorus, then the music festival. All as people were moving to Mendocino from the Bay Area in the 70s and 80s.” 

This community of artists is part of what inspired Pat to create the fund. She hopes that by supporting the arts it will inspire others to join her in this effort to grow the fund to support the arts in Mendocino County. 

As Pat’s community of artists grew, both visual and performing, her friend Shirley would come up from San Francisco to attend gallery openings and performances. 

“We were always interested in nurturing the mental health of children, and had a strong interest in preventive activities that support children such as the arts, theatre, and music.” Pat says. 

After Shirley’s passing, Pat called the Community Foundation to discuss her planned giving. In discovering there was not a visual and performing arts fund for the entire county, she knew it was meant to be that she develop this fund as a memorial for her friend. 

“The reason I went to the Foundation,” she says “is Mendocino has really been my family in the years I’ve lived here. I’m not married and don’t have a family. I give to the community and they give to me. That is what I value. But the whole county needs art: valley, mountains, and coast. I want this to be open and wide enough for everyone.” 

As we talk, Pat’s passion for art, her care for her friend, and love for her community are evident. By focusing on what she loves most, she was able to create a portfolio at the Community Foundation that will support the communities she cares so deeply for. This portfolio includes the Fund for the Visual and Performing Arts, which she has opened now to experience the unique thrill of her contributions making an impact on the art community around her. 

Visit our website to learn more about the Fund for the Visual and Performing Arts, or to make a contribution. 

VIRTUE SIGNALING

Editor,

Right after my lunch, I sat down at my computer to catch up with news and e-mails. I looked out my office window and saw a frail thirty-something year old woman struggling with three bags of groceries. It's humid as hell, and the packages looked heavy, so I offered her a ride. 

She gratefully accepted.

The packages were heavy—I loaded them into the trunk. She explained that she had gone to buy a few things but wound up with three bags full of groceries. It happens.

She only lived four blocks away right on my street, Harrison Ave. We both had on masks. I dropped her off and helped her carry the packages to her door. She asked my name and told me that hers was Sheila. She thanked me profusely. 

This epidemic confronts people with dilemmas and we must make choices. 

I'm glad I chose the horn of the dilemma that I did.

— L. Bedrock

VICTORY THEATER, UKIAH, 1914

OF COURSE, this is also a moment of maximum collective acute psychosis in America. The nation is pretty badly shook-up after three months of corona virus lockdown. Millions watched their careers, incomes, businesses, and futures wash down the drain. Upsetting as the killing of George Floyd was, these losses are monumental in comparison. 99 percent of the people in America are scared shitless about where all this economic damage is taking the nation — even as they watch the stock markets go up and up and up. By the way, the past week of looting, burning, and rioting was especially fruitful for Wall Street. D’ya think that might eventually tick off a few taxpayers who understand that the stock-pumping is being accomplished by the Federal Reserve brokering more national debt in their name? 

— James Kunstler

THIS TREASURY OFFICIAL IS RUNNING THE BAILOUT. IT’S BEEN GREAT FOR HIS FAMILY.

Deputy Treasury Secretary Justin Muzinich has an increasingly prominent role. He still has ties to his family’s investment firm, which is a major beneficiary of the Treasury’s bailout actions.

propublica.org/article/this-treasury-official-is-running-the-bailout-its-been-great-for-his-family

LIVELY-UP, JOE

Editor,

A word of advice to Joe Biden from a retired Lance Corporal.

Say it ain't so, Joe. A photo in the May 11, 2020 issue of USA Today shows you wearing the uniform of an unworthy opponent: blue suit, red tie. What's next, Joe? A MAGA hat? Here's some food for thought in your basement bunker: put on some thinking caps.

Staying home during crucial months of a serious pandemic shows you to be sensibly cautious and respectfully concerned about others, unlike a famously self-absorbed public figure. By wearing a mask in public on Memorial Day you have set a good example; unlike a president who’d rather serve his vanity than his citizens. This is good, Joe. But, put away the blue and red, buttoned-down conservative non-style. In an up-tempo reggae tune, Bob Marley has words for all of us: "Lively up yo self!"

Maybe go with a well tailored tan suit, sir. Charcoal shirt. Yellow and green tie. Drop the lapel pin. That's old-school Republican shtick. And the blue suit. Trash the red tie. You'd be better off in a red suit and a tie with blue polka dots. Americans like flair and flamboyance. Little Richard, James Brown and Jimi Hendrix rode those coattails a long ways. Get folks to sit up and take notice, Joe. Get a tattoo. Maybe the green and silver screaming logo of the Philadelphia Eagles. "Lively up yo self," the man sang. "Don't be no drag." Maybe go with a dark chocolate suit, yellow shirt and green and black tie.

Make it clear to voters that you will not tolerate racism in any form. Let the people know that you are aware of the many ways that hidden hatred takes away the human dignity and peace of mind from innocent citizens. Let them know that the poverty and pernicious redlining that allows a coalition of lawyers, politicians and real estate agencies to confine large segments of the population to the most unlivable sectors of neglected cities will be legislated out of existence.

Since you are hosting Zoom sessions from your home, just leave the suits in the closet. Try a tasteful gray pullover, cardigan or thin cashmere sweater. Show some bling. Maybe a few silver chains to match your hair color. A Maltese Cross would blend well with fewer angular features and cranial contours. Get down with some Grecian formula. Darken your hair so gradually, Joe, that not even Agent Orange or his beauticians will notice.

Stand up for public institutions, Joe. Public schools funded by the public, need to serve the public with the best learning environment that educators can provide, in the best school buildings money can buy. Country folk need to feel certain that the United States Postal Service will drive miles down a rural road to deliver nothing more than a postcard reminding you that your car's motor oil is due for a change. Let people know that the heavy-hands of police brutality will be placed in handcuffs. Let them know that when jackboot thugs look to stomp on human rights you will be there like a junkyard dog. That you will be there when unscrupulous lenders hook the innocent into usurious and unfair agreements. That you’ll block the bigots who use economic advantage to manipulate and fleece the unsuspecting.

Joe, another piece of advice: take up where Ralph Nader, Winona LaDuke and Geraldine Ferraro left off. It's time that the reins of power be shared by the capable hands of women and people of color. Be a catalyst for change instead of a good old boys club booster.

America has been called a "melting pot," Joe, but often it seems more like a panful of stone cold separation. We need some hot rocks under that pot.. We need a capable and faithful fire tender. Say that you'll be that, Joe.

George Walsh

Lincoln City, Oregon

10,000 BUDDHAS GATE, TALMAGE

I WAS ARRESTED FOR PEACEFULLY PROTESTING IN DOWNTOWN LA

When people tried to leave the protest, as we had now passed the updated curfew (at 4:21 they changed the curfew from 6pm to 5pm) and police tension increased, we realized we were cornered. There were hundreds of cops and national guards that cut us off for blocks. Those who tried to leave peacefully were jumped on by multiple men and tased. Everyone was peaceful, getting on their knees and even laying face down to show compliance. Then each person was arrested. What happened next was not only unnecessary and illegal, but inhumane.

instagram.com/p/CBBNXXkJs0a/?utm_source=ig_embed

I’M KEENLY AWARE of the whole history behind these statues, but it’s just stunning that in the year 2020 there are still people fighting to keep them. Nobody who fought a war of rebellion in the cause of slavery deserves to be glorified. That’s it. There’s no more to the argument. Just take them down. All of them.

A COUNTERFEIT $20 BILL

When you have privilege, a crime is a 'mistake,' and when you don't, a mistake becomes a crime.

scheerpost.com/2020/06/04/a-counterfeit-20-bill/

THE CONTRACT IS BROKEN