MCT: Monday, June 22, 2020

• Summer Week
• Nicholas Lapkass
• Gray Fox
• Planting Trees
• Piercy Gas
• Disappointed Sheriffs
• Drive-In Movies
• Phoebe Chicks
• Ed Notes
• Westport Highway
• Queenie's Reopens
• Another Bragg
• Leggett Cottages
• Covidman
• Pacific Coast
• Pot Ordinance
• Devoy Grove
• Mental Crisis
• Yesterday's Catch
• Thankful Fourth
• Flag Wavers
• Lavender's Leggett
• Demagogue Donnie
• Furious Rally
• Arnold Horemian
• Gibson's Cummings
• Giusti Update
• Camp Piercy
• Defend Police
• Doom Cough
• Poisonous Racism
• Hell Tunnel
• Petite Corrida
• Found Object

THE FIRST FULL OFFICIAL WEEK OF SUMMER will bring an extended stretch of hot, dry and sunny weather to interior northwest California, while cool onshore breezes and marine layer clouds keep most coastal areas seasonably cool. (NWS)

NICHOLAS LAPKASS 

Nicholas Lapkass of Ukiah CA passed from this life into the next, after a short time in hospice care, in Roseville CA on February 9. 2020. He was 90 years old. 

He was born in Riga, Latvia on Jan 9, 1930. His family fled the advancing Russians towards Germany in the waning months of World War II, where they spent five years in Red Cross displaced persons refugee camps. In 1950 he emigrated with his family to the US, settling in Jackson Mississippi, and began the process of building a new life in the United States. He married his wife Valda in 1959 in San Francisco, then they lived in Columbus Ohio, San Francisco, Fairfield and Davis before arriving in Ukiah in July 1965 to accept a position at the Mendocino County Library. 

In Ukiah they raised their two sons, Robert and Paul. Nicholas was a huge proponent of education. He earned a BS from Wittenberg University and two Master's degrees (in Speech & Theater, and Library Science) from Indiana University and Case Western Reserve University, and spoke four languages. Helping connect people to needed information was a big passion in his life, and he served as the beloved local Reference Librarian in Ukiah for 26 years. He WAS Google long before Google even existed, and could quickly locate useful information for library patrons about any arcane topic. 

He also took great pleasure in serving in his community: by reading stories in the elementary school, running a Children's Theater, teaching Russian and German to local residents, and serving on the Mendocino County Grand Jury for a number of years in retirement. 

Nicholas was preceded in death by his wife of 57 years, Valda, in 2017. He is survived by his sons Robert and Paul; daughters-in-law Marilyn and Ulrike; sister-in-law Vaida Graves and brother-in-law Maris Pantels; niece Stephanie Hammond, several nephews, and their respective families; and grandchildren Jason, Logan, and Nicole. 

Nicholas loved and was proud of his entire family, and was beloved by his community for his smiling helpfulness in the library and beyond. He will live on in cherished memories, and will be forever deeply missed by all those he leaves behind. 

Final internment will be at Cypress Hill Memorial Park in Petaluma. A private graveside family remembrance service will be held there later this year. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations may be made in his memory to the Ukiah Valley Friends of the Library, or the American Cancer Society.

GRAY FOX

NOTES FROM A SMALL FARM

Petit Teton Monthly Farm Report - May 2020

Dear friends,

We, the human population, are in upheaval; we have shoved the wild to the brink of extinction and it is responding in kind; the climate, in tandem or cahoots with the viruses, is working a different angle with the same goal of resetting the balance of the earth. 

Meanwhile our farm continues to grow food, is supporting great numbers of birds - nesting on or next to the house are swallows, finches, phoebes, hummingbirds and orioles - and a wide variety of wild animals, native plants, and trees. Last year's acorn set from our very old (200 years?) and huge Valley Oak, mother to the front flower and fruit tree garden, was massive. In the past I have made acorn flour, but no longer have the time, so we collect the acorns for the pigs and I pot up as many as I can for future planting (see picture of our hot tub deck bedecked with oak starts). Right now there are near 30 which I just stepped up to bigger pots. The leftovers, and there are lots, plant themselves wherever they fall and require pulling or digging up...a lot of labor. Of all the remediation we have performed on this land, growing and planting trees is my favorite, followed closely by pruning and shaping them. 

When we moved to Anderson Valley sixteen years ago, during our first spring the Valley Oak had a big acorn set. I put acorns in pots and was thrilled to watch a number of trees grow. About two years later we planted six of them along the road to our 501 property. They are now fourteen year old juveniles, well over 25' tall and have filled out making shade for the chickens. Each one has a different character and I love one best for its shape, leaf, color, and structure, which is more graceful than the others. (See the photo of the mom tree in the background and my fav in front.) But they are all my children, along with the hundreds of other trees of various types we've planted over the years, at least 25 of which we grafted. I don't play favorites; sometimes gawky youths grow to beauties with a careful pruning or a slow maturing, or one's eyes realize that gawky too can be beautiful. 

Happy summer solstice; happy Juneteenth...If you're feeling down, losing yourself in nature may bring you up. 

Stay well,

Nikki Auschnitt and Steve Kreig

PIERCY GAS STATION

FORMER SHERIFF TOM ALLMAN:

Re: Police Oversight/Review Commission. It is certainly time to discuss this, but it was extremely disappointing to know that neither Supervisor Williams or Chair Haschak gave Sheriff Kendall a chance (respect) to discuss it prior to posting it on social media. The two supervisors are right to be engaged in such a necessary topic, but it is obvious that their desire is to politicize it instead of being productive. Shame on them both. Let’s talk about it and let’s see what we can do to improve things. Let’s not politicize it and make the conversation even more difficult than it already is. 

THEATER NIGHT AT THE GRANGE

This is a great community here in Anderson Valley. Look what the creative folks from the AV Grange created! 

Yep, it's a good ol' Drive-In Theater right in the Grange parking lot. This weekend (Fri-Sat), starting at 9pm (actually a bit later since it stayed light out for so long - longest day of the year this weekend), $10/person (I think - could be car - not sure) and they serve refreshments and have bathrooms open! And a double feature - Young Frankenstein and Honey, I Shrunk The Kids! Contribute to your community and come enjoy the wonderful weather and social time!

(Text & Photo by Debra Eloise)

BLACK PHOEBE CHICKS

ED NOTES

SO THE GIZMO kids sabbed Trump's big night in Tulsa. Apparently fans of Korean pop music registered hundreds of thousands of tickets for Trump’s rally as a prank. When TeamTrump tweeted asking supporters to register for free tickets using their phones, gizmo thumbs flew, encouraging their global comrades to register for the rally but, of course, not show up. It worked. Lots of empty seats.

VANDALS have pulled down the Golden Gate Park statues of Ulysses Grant and Miguel Cervantes. A howling pack of morons also knocked Junipero Serra off his long-time plinth at SF's Legion of Honor. Cervantes is the greatest writer in the Spanish language, and Grant? Ordinarily considered a great American hero by even the idiot standards of these times, apparently Grant's sin being his marriage to a daughter of a slaveholder, but without Grant it would have taken a lot longer for the Union armies to subdue the traitors of the Confederacy. The war was stalled until Lincoln appointed Grant to get the Union troops moving, which he did. It's also an historical consensus that if Grant had succeeded Lincoln as president rather than the retro-cracker Johnson, Grant would have crushed the neo-Confederacy terrorizing freed black people in the wake of the Civil War and, as Grant had promised, if he had been in position to follow through with his famous plan of forty acres and a mule to former slaves, The Reconstruction would have been a reconstruction of the great evil of slavery, but… Serra, in the PC catechism, is a huge villain as the father of the California mission system, and now one more victim of the great re-write of American history, as if expunging certain figures will erase their perceived crimes. Yeah, yeah, pulling down statues isn't erasing them, and statues honoring them, the censors promise us, doesn't remove them from the history books, but the history books are next, you can bet on that. And then novel, and then… Of course if you think history should be determined by mobs of illiterates you've got lots of company.

SPEAKING of illiterate mobs, right here in Mendocino County, the Nice People, Ukiah branch, are surreptitiously circulating a petition demanding that the Ukiah Daily Journal remove columnist Tommy Wayne Kramer from its pages. This isn't the first time the book burners have pursued TWK, although the poor old Ukiah paper, owned by a Denver-based hedge fund, is already on the ropes without being beset by purple fascists, and TWK's invigorating Sunday columns are a lot more popular than the Nice People can imagine, not that they ever step outside their echo chamber or are endowed with much in the way of imagination. Well, all I can say is wait until the free speech soldiers at the MEC, at KZYX, at Dan Hamburg's house in Oregon, at the grave of the One True Green, Richard Johnson, wait until our free speech brigade gets wind of this latest round of Mendo censorship. All of the above will go to the wall, the wall, I tell you, to defend Tommy Wayne's right to publicly say what's on his mind! 

THE LATE Rayshard Brooks' girlfriend is being sought for burning down the Wendy's where Brooks was fatally shot by Atlanta police, which certainly raises the love bar a notch or two. Would your sig-other torch a fast food emporium for you?

HIGHWAY 1 at Westport

SHE'S BACK!

Queenie Roadhouse Cafe Grand Reopening, Friday July 3. New hours, New days, 9am till 2pm, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday

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FORT BRAGG HAS A DECISION TO MAKE

There’s a whole lot of division right now over Fort Bragg’s name, which honors a Confederate general, Braxton Bragg. Whether or not you believe it’s important that the town was named before the Civil War, the fact remains that it honors a reprehensible and incompetent human being. Neither of which are qualities that community represents.

The Fort Bragg Advocate-News has gotten numerous emails, phone calls, social media posts and more from people (both local and not) who are deeply concerned about the subject. Many of them are in support of the change. Many are vehemently against.

This is at least the fourth time since 2004 that this subject has come up. The most recent was in 2017, which suggests the matter is increasing in both frequency and urgency. In 2015, then-mayor Lindy Peters pointed out the enormous expense of changing the city’s name. “The cost of changing all the addresses, all the companies, all the institutions, it would be a nightmare for the post office, a complete nightmare for our local post office,” he told a CBS station in San Francisco back then.

The City of Fort Bragg came out with some rough numbers Tuesday, estimating that it would cost approximately $265,000 to make the change. It’s not just new signs and changing the name of the post office either — it’s new business cards and letterheads for everyone, changing the logos on city vehicles and buildings, new police uniforms, and a total update of the city’s software and financial programs, which have the city’s name and logo built-in.

City Manager Tabatha Miller said the city would likely need to help hire a publicist, “because no one would recognize us anymore.” It would also mean losing a lot of the steam that the recent “Visit Fort Bragg” campaign gained for the city, and figuring out how to keep that already-rocky project rolling in the middle of a name change.

The city would also need to update its information with every agency it does business with, including multiple state and federal agencies, tax collections and even CalPERS. Local residents and businesses would also have lots to deal with, changing addresses, business logos and much more.

The residents of Fort Bragg have a huge decision to make. We’ll just note that there was a Union General named Edward Stuyvesant Bragg (February 20, 1827 — June 20, 1912) who served honorably in the Civil War and went on to have a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and a diplomatic career. Perhaps the city could adopt him as their namesake and in so doing rebuke and reject Braxton Bragg in the process.

K.C. Meadows, Editor, Ukiah Daily Journal. Courtesy, the Ukiah Daily Journal

DANN CREEK PARK, LEGGETT

ASSIGNMENT: UKIAH - THE HUNT FOR COVIDMAN

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

It’s Tuesday, just before midnight and COVIDMAN is sprinting east on Mill Street, weaving into and out of the shadows, ducking into doorways, dodging behind trees, keeping on the move, staying one step ahead of his pursuers, sometimes even a block ahead.

They’re out there. K knows they’re out there. Sometimes he spots a glimpse of a white lab coat slipping into a row of hedges, sometimes he sees a white sedan roll slowly by with the Mendocino County Health Department seal on the door. They’re out there, tracking him down.

For reasons K cannot understand the newspapers and radio stations began calling him “COVIDMAN” and targeting him as the problem, making him the face of the pandemic, the cause of all our woes.

What a joke. Do they think it was COVIDMAN up in Covelo dancing around the casino and sneezing on the crowds in the parking lot? Was it COVIDMAN at that church in Redwood Valley holding hands with everybody and urging people to lick each other? Was COVIDMAN at the Ukiah High graduation party pawing everybody? Ha.

But somehow the public is convinced he’s the one responsible for the overcrowded hospitals, the nursing home deaths and the waves of disease sweeping not just Mendocino County but the whole country. And it all started out so innocently.

He’d been stuck at home for months homeschooling his three kids and watching a lifetime’s worth of Netflix over the course of a few weeks. When he noticed his trouser leg fibers had begun weaving themselves into the fabric on the couch and that his skin was the color of his ash-gray walls he knew he had to take action.

Monday morning he gathered the kids in the kitchen, presented each with a diploma and told them they’d all graduated cum laude and that it was time for them all to get the hell out and go find jobs.

Well, almost. What he’d actually done was send ‘em across the street to his sister’s house for a few days in exchange for 100 rolls of Charmin ‘Extra Plush’ toilet paper. But he told them they’d still graduated, so when he got back the homeschooling thing would quiet down and he could spend a week just reading Huckleberry Finn to them.

That should’ve been it. Except a guy down the road was peeking out his window and saw K wasn’t Social Distancing when he said goodbye to his kids. So George Snitchwell called the Healthwatch Hotline. Cars were dispatched. Healthcare Professionals in the Technical Tactical Response team swung into action.

K’s trail wasn’t picked up until he rolled through Boonville at approximately 1:47 p.m., reportedly with a dog not wearing a seatbelt, in the seat next to him. A Confidential Pandemic Alert Report also noted neither K nor the dog wore approved masks over mouths, noses and/or snouts.

By the time he reached Navarro by the Sea a helicopter was hovering above. Radio communications were established with the head of county wellness facility operations. Surveillance teams were dispatched. Operation COVIDMAN was launched.

K, unaware, stopped in Albion and filled up his Mustang but failed to first cleanse the gas pump nozzle and handle, a flagrant violation of updated health guidelines. After wiping his hands on his trousers, another violation, he proceeded to a beach without distancing his automobile two lengths from other cars. Also noted: he had not been witnessed washing his hands for at least 73 minutes despite twice touching his dog’s head.

Security forces comprised of local, state and federal officers engaged, subdued and apprehended K on the beach. He was placed in the back of an ambulance and transported, sirens and lights in full-blast emergency mode, to the County Jail. His dog was “neutralized” according to the report.

Once at the Low Gap parking lot, K feigned a coughing and sneezing fit, terrifying health care workers who burst out the back of the ambulance and ran straight to Ukiah Adventist Hospital to be tested. Five times each.

None suffered contamination but all three retired from county employment due to “stress and anxiety.” They received disability pensions for life, plus had a day in their honor and a banner across State Street for their “Valor and Commitment to Community.”

Meanwhile K ran south out of the parking lot. He sprinted through the golf course, around Todd Grove Park then down Pine Street to City Hall. Surveillance footage showed him washing his hands in the fountain, then resuming his dash eastbound down Mill Street. And that was it. He’s not been spotted since, despite public bulletins and photos posted on light poles, in newspapers and online.

That was Tuesday. K called me Friday morning and invited me down to his hideout at the Ukiah Movie Theater which he’d entered through an unlocked back door.

I go visit every day or two. He’s doing well on a popcorn diet augmented by Milk Duds and Junior Mints. Did you know they now serve beer at the theater? He’s finished two kegs of Heineken and is halfway through a Corona.

Meanwhile the hunt for COVIDMAN intensifies. The reward is up to $100,000.

(Tom Hine lives in Ukiah and sometimes writes under the much-loved “TWK” byline. Courtesy, the Ukiah Daily Journal.)

CANNABIS ORDINANCE FIX ON THE WAY?

by Jim Shields

Before turning to other matters, I have something I want to scratch off of my to-do list.

I want to recognize Supervisor John McCowen for taking the lead on attempting to fix what has long been the county’s unfixable Cannabis Ordinance.

Recently I wrote once again in this space that notwithstanding the fact that after four-plus years of the Cannabis Ordinance being on the books, only 10 percent of pot farmers have made application to the program. By any process of program evaluation or measure of a program’s effectiveness, the Mendocino County pot ordinance is an abysmal failure. The people it is supposed to shepherd into legal status have voted with their feet. They will not be forming a line at the county’s pot application shop any time soon, if ever.

I said that there’s really only one viable option left to the Board of Supervisors, and it appears that McCowen now realizes that also.

If I understand his proposal, it’s very similar to what I’ver been proposing for a long time: Repeal the existing non-workable cultivation ordinance, thereby deferring to the state’s regulatory framework, rules and regulations. Don’t waste any more time unloading responsibility and accountability on the state when Mendocino County rules and regulations aren’t working. Get rid of convoluted and redundant local regulations, adopt the state’s basic framework, bring the county into line with the state on many levels, from code definitions to licensing types, and the result will be an exceptionally lean and streamlined process that focuses locally on land use rules setting out where pot can be grown.

If that is McCowen’s proposal, or something close to it, I’ll support it, and offer any support that may be needed to implement it.

The reason I’ve always had a keen interest in marijuana policy is I’ve always said there is no one in this county in either the private or public sector who doesn’t benefit directly or indirectly from pot. I’m a good example of that dictum.

I own a private sector business, the Mendocino County Observer. A certain percentage of Observer revenues are pot dollars. That’s undeniable.

I’m also the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, which is a local governmental agency, clearly part of the public sector.

A certain portion of District income is derived from the pot industry. For example, approximately 65 to 70 percent of our customers grow marijuana. The water district also provides water — via water trucks — to people who live outside district boundaries. Those sales amount annually to approximately one-third of our income. We know that a lot of that water is used for pot cultivation. As a public policy consideration, the effect of those water exports is that growers using our water are not illegally diverting water from watersheds.

The bottom line is it’s time we get this cannabis issue right because if we do everybody is going to benefit. And that is the definition of the best public policy you can make.

(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, and is also the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org.)

DEVOY GROVE, PIERCY

FORMER FORT BRAGG MMA FIGHTER FLIPS OUT AGAIN

On January 21 2020, Officers of the Fort Bragg Police Department responded to a report of a possible attempted child abduction that had occurred at the Arco Fuel Station (1004 S Main Street, Fort Bragg). 

Officers met with the reporting party and victim at the Fort Bragg Police Department. During the investigation it was determined an adult male had approached the front passenger side window of the vehicle the victim was seated in. Once there the suspect made an offer to the victim, a 13 year old female, “to party.” A parent seated in the rear of the vehicle overheard the comment and exited and confronted the suspect. Once confronted by the parents the suspect fled the location. A description of the suspect was provided to the investigating Officer and based on that description a “be on the lookout” was issued for Shawn Bias of Fort Bragg. 

During a search of the area Officers were informed Bias was currently in the area of Whipple and Maple Streets. Officers responded and located Bias. Bias was interviewed and an infield show up for identification was performed. During the infield show up Bias was positively identified as the suspect by a parent of the victim. 

Bias was placed under arrest for annoying a child, and transported to the booking facility at the Fort Bragg Police Department. During his arrest it was determined Bias was in mental crisis. He was booked and then transported to the Mendocino Coast District Hospital where he was cited and placed on a mental health hold per 5150 of the Welfare and Institutions Code. He was released to the care of a mental health professional. 

If you have information related to this investigation please contact Sergeant McLaughlin at (707) 961-2800 ext. 123 or jmclaughlin@fortbragg.com. 

— Fort Bragg PD presser

CATCH OF THE DAY, June 21, 2020

GREGORY BRUNNER, Lakeport/Ukiah. Burglary, petty theft with priors, DUI, paraphernalia.

JUAN CALVILLO-RIVERA, Willits. DUI.

GARY COOPER, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

GAIL ELDRIDGE, Mendocino. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation.

URSULA FALLIS, Ukiah. Burglary, taking vehicle without owner’s consent, DUI causing injury, controlled substance, evasion.

GUADALUPE GUTIERREZ, Ukiah. Cruelty to child with injury, smuggling controlled substance or liquor into jail, disorderly conduct-alcohol.

TRAVIS HUMPHREY, Redwood Valley. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

BRIAN LENHART, Ukiah. Under influence, controlled substance, paraphernalia, disobeying court order.

JEFFREY MURRAY, Ukiah Suspended license (for DUI), evasion, probation revocation.

TIMOTHY PRINZING, San Francisco/Fort Bragg. Battery against peace officer in performance of duties, trespassing, disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting.

LUIS SANCHEZ-TORRES, Ukiah. Domestic abuse, controlled substance.

TODD SMITH, Windsor/Ukiah. Cruelty to child with injury.

BRANDON STONE, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

DECLARATION OF INTERDEPENDENCE: NOTES FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY 2020

by Jonah Raskin

Call New York “The Plague City” and count your blessings if you live in Ukiah, Willits, Boonville and beyond and are separated by 3,000 prophylactic miles or so, which is serious social distancing, something that’s difficult to achieve even with the best of intentions in the Big Apple.

New York is also "The Crowd City" which helps to make it “The Plague City.” New Yorkers pile on top of one another in skyscrapers and squeeze next to one another in subways and busses, except those New Yorkers who flee Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx and go to their own country homes or to the country homes of friends who live in counties with names like Sullivan, Rockland, Franklin and Duchess, where one can see glaring social inequalities, the people with money on one side of the town or the valley, and the people without money on the other side of the town or the valley. Except when the folks without go to work in the kitchens and the fields on the estates and in the mansions of the folks with.

Do you still want to visit? Are you ready to pack your bags, leave Willits, Ukiah, Boonville, and beyond, fly across the country, land at JFK or Newark, though you’d be taking a big risk if you traveled by plane. There’s always a risk flying to New York and spending time there. Call it “The Risky City” where you might lose your shirt and all your money, your credit cards and even your sanity.

Mind you, when I go to New York I stay with friends who have the wherewithal to own a place in the city and another in the country, which is surrounded by a forest with bears, and an unpolluted river downhill and suitable for fishing. It’s the perfect place to wait out a pandemic, and while I have spent a dozen or so summers there I’m not going this summer. Too risky.

I was born in the Plague City, went to college in the Plague City, had sex for the first time in the Plague City, got high for the first time there, played rugby there, rioted there, was arrested and jailed there. I don’t have to wish for a plague on New York. It is now and has been plagued for decades by the plagues of racism, classism, sexism and ageism, though it does not have a monopoly on any of those isms.

Best to shelter in place now, stay where you are, celebrate the Fourth of July in Willits, Ukiah, Boonville and beyond with family and friends you love, drink locally brewed IPA, or a good Cab, eat from your own vegetable garden or buy fresh produce from an outdoor farmers’ market, be thankful you’re not stuck in sweltering, humid New York and that you can feel the cool air that blows in from the Pacific, enjoy the fog, and do remember the Declaration of Independence that says “All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Years later at Seneca Falls, New York, a group of feisty women drafted in 1848 a “Declaration of Sentiments” in which they added the words “and women” so that the new document reads “all men and women are created equal.” An improvement on the original, but the Declaration of Sentiments would not have existed if it had not been for the 1776 Declaration of Independence, which might be rewritten today to include “interdependence” which is necessary no matter whether you live in New York, Willits, Ukiah, Boonville and beyond.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Well, in our 99% white town, on the green, biggest pride flag you ever saw, and a gigantic Black Lives Matter poster.

Many revolutionaries in this woodsy suburb, LoL.

Some of the houses on main street date to 1656. A few years back an owner of one of those old saltboxes posted a British colonial flag in his front yard, causing a big uproar … he was denounced as ‘promoting colonialism and racism’. That’s the kind of place this is.

LAVENDER’S, LEGGETT

JEFF BLANKFORT NOTES:

I watched Trump's entire speech before an adoring crowd on Saturday and it was a clearly a triumph of demagogy as well as a call to arms, if necessary, against those who challenge his and their vision of US supremacism.

He spent considerable time attacking Joe Biden but perhaps his most effective moment in doing that was recounting Biden's massive plagiarizing of Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock's speech when running for president in 1988 which forced Biden to drop out of that presidential race and should have barred him from ever being a Democrat party candidate again if, for no other reason that doing so was indefensible and became an Achilles Heel that any opponent not in the tank like all of his leading Democrat opposition must have known about and failed to mention.

SIGNS THAT TRUMP WAS FURIOUS IN TULSA

In the end, history may record that the most revealing thing about President Trump’s rally in Tulsa last night was the way it was covered by the all-news networks.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/most-triumphant-sip-water-ever-taken/613342/

ARNIE

by Paul Modic

The story goes that Arnie Horemian arrived in Southern Humboldt in a Porsche with his hot girlfriend in the early seventies after being an insurance salesman in Los Angeles.

We all lived in the middle of nowhere but Arnie took it a step further building a yurt above the mouth of Whale Creek, hauling the building materials on his back along the trail by the creek about a half mile, completely isolated with no neighbors.

Once as a party was ending at Dale and Buffalo's Crazy George wanted me to go with him to Bear Harbor. “You can help push my van over that bad dip in the road,” he said.

“Don't do it,” Buffalo said but off we went down Needle Rock Road and we ended up at Arnie's yurt for a day or so. Arnie shared his five gallon tin of raw cashews (70 cents a pound bulk at the co-op) and I remember being mildly shocked when they ripped pages out of a book to start fires.

The trail to the ocean went right by my cabin and Arnie and others traipsed through now and then. No one locked their doors but I put a padlock on mine and called it my Arnie lock, just in case.

One hot summer day in 1976 Arnie decided to just hang out naked in downtown Whitethorn. Special Forces vet Bill Kelly thought that was too much and attacked him with a tire iron breaking both his arms. He was a sight with those double casts the rest of the summer. (Bill had somehow gotten together with the local musician Cody Carey who had taught me how to drive stick in her old yellow truck.)

One day I was walking up the Yellow Dirt Road on Christmas morning shirtless when Arnie came along walking the same way gnawing on a big turkey leg.

Arnie spent a couple years building a boat and we wondered where he was going to go in it. It might still exist behind the old drinking stump in Whitethorn. That fiberglas thing weighed a ton.

In the early eighties at one of the first Rock and Reggae on the Rivers there was Arnie dancing on top of one of the huge speakers on the stage. Nobody cared, just how it was back then, before he went crazy.

From excessive Heinekin (high-class drunk?) Arnie descended (ascended?) into magic mushrooms (Amanitas) and started speaking his own language, gibberish. He said he stopped eating because he was tired of shitting.

We were hanging out in front of the Branding Iron just before it burned down when Hoy came up and said, “Arnie died.” 

Arnold Howard Horemian. November 22^nd 1942 to August 26^th 1983.

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Ballad of Whitethorn, 1976

Once was a sniper with the special forces

Now he's shooting seal lions on the ocean

She was a singer in a country band

They got together on that welfare road

Ups and downs and broken arms

Violence cries feed me baby

Will I make it up again

I don't know please touch me someone

For grass is the religion of the hills

Bushy plants and flowers

Instead of Jesus Christ and pills

Welcome to the flower top family

GIBSON'S, CUMMINGS

IN SOLITARY FOR NO REASON

AVA,

How y'all? Been awhile since I've been staying with my older daughters in Nevada and my Crow wife and other young ones in Crow territory (modern-day Montana). Coming back to weird ripoff narktown Ukiah on business where it is business as usual: come to Ukiah on vacation, leave on probation. Before my modern history I need to seriously clarify some pages of the press concerning my dad, David B. Giusti. To all those out there who think it's cool to make my business theirs, do you brush with Mendotinite gossip today? According to Mendo medical exam board c.1985, my dad passed on at 68 due to pneumonia brought about by acute lung cancer and cirrhosis liver disease. At a trial the FBI forensic expert testified that there never ever was any weapon wound on David B. Giusti’s body and concurred with the Mendo medical man on cause of death. My dad must have been pretty sharp to fight five years in World War II, mostly at Guadalcanal. He won Bronze and Silver stars and came home without a scratch. He did deserve a Purple Heart for contracting malaria. (Remember the tsetse fly legend?) This is a true story and if Marvel Mello, Paul McNabb and John ‘Brick’ Cernac were still alive they would verify. I think they all had Silver Stars too except Brick’s was for Army All-Star baseball!

My dad almost pulled through but a certain deputy sheriff in conspiracy with a wicked stepsister snuck into the hospital and pulled the life-support plug on my dad. I won't mention names until I have solid evidence. So anybody who feels the need to talk about the dead and open old wounds, feel free to write me at the county jail now or keep your mentally retarded trap shut about me and my dad! My dad died 37 years ago and I haven't lived in Fort Bragg or Mendocino much at all since. You gossips basically drove my poor mama to an early grave also! You might remember my mother, Bruce, we all met right here in county jail. I guess you were here for punching out some nosy bureaucrat back then. There's tons of them here. You could probably get part-time work! Most of these are sneaky however. They rob mostly poor and homeless people day and middle of the night and sell their crank and other poisons etc.. And if you get arrested with a wristwatch or other jewelry, nice clothes, probably even money, forget it. These crooks stole one of my driver's licenses and a nice wristwatch, jewelry and nice clothes have disappeared via Ukiah super coppers. Does District Attorney Eyster think this non-law and order town is a joke? Him and these so-called "peace officers" or "public servants" need to remember their own motto: crime doesn't pay. And they will answer to God as sin never goes unpunished! This joke has gone way sour and hopefully Mendo voters will prove it in the next election — retirement call. These lies and fabrications by your office and in that Police Department broadcast make Ukiah look like a criminal fantasy island. I met a normal guy about my age from San Francisco on Perkins Street one day. He said he felt safer in his hood in San Francisco than in Ukiah!

I like what old boss man Jerry Philbrick writes about President Trump. Of course Trump has a lot of problems with the cabinet people he appoints. I guess he feels they are all innocent until proven guilty which Trump usually figured out quick enough but then he has to go through the appointment process all over again, a bureaucratic maze or nightmare. Let me tell you about his first appointment to the Department of Interior (they oversee Native American affairs). This dude’s name is something like Zisk, he was the lone congressman from Montana. His office was in my wife's hometown of Billings. My Crow tribe was having some serious problems with ATF in local saloonkeepers. So I strolled to this congressman's office to find a solution. He wouldn't see me but he sent a salt-and-pepper team (black and white guys) to attempt to eliminate me from the streets. This guy knew he'd never win another term there so he campaigned hard for Trump and got a Cabinet job. A native hater as Secretary of the interior? Are me, Trump and others missing something here? Maybe this dude was sabotaged by the moon people who have been known to visit Billings?

Anyway, not long after that I went into this drug slinging bar in Billings to get my wife away from weirdos. I must have been slipped a Mickey on the way in. I was then attacked by five people who tried to stab me. My wife took the knife away but I ended up spread eagle on the parking lot with two broken arms and re broken shoulder. Nevada cops had broken it that the first time about a year prior. My wife got me in an ambulance. The cops pulled out but like my lawyer said later, "There is a homicide every week at that bar," so the cops left after just making sure I was alive. I heard that phony bar even puts the price of their drugs on a chalkboard behind the bar! First of all Montana people don't know what real good drugs are, they buy weed from Colorado and most of their doctors can't spell codeine. One of my granddaughters born there came up with a Mendo joint once and conned me into smoking it with her. We were both stoned for a week doing the "Willits Wiggly Giggly." My kid goes, What was that? I said, I told you Mendo’s the best.

Next letter I will run down the latest on the Reno law enforcement system. For now my advice to anyone visiting Reno is to keep a real low profile while there.

David Giusti

Mendocino County Jail, Ukiah

PS. They never let me see the AVA at this jail. Could you send it to me please? I would like to proof read my articles because years ago they sabotaged one of my letters to you!

I am broke on the books and real low on writing paper. If anyone out there could find it in their heart to send me a little change it would be appreciated greatly. I might even send a refund as I have a little money but no way to use it use an ATM card in here.

If you hear from the beautiful Tammy Whipple or the daring Alan Crow tell them hey for me. Yes, Alan is a real piece of work. We were in here together years ago and I had a bunch of postage stamps. So he told me he had a brain tumor, probably cancerous, and about a year to live. So he conned me into lending him 10 or 20 stamps. How fast does brain cancer grow? That was 20 years ago. I hate to pull his cover, but evidently his cancer went away with my 20 stamps! 

I’m in solitary confinement again for no reason. I only get out of the cell one hour every other day. That's about at least five hours shy of the Supreme Court decision. Once I spent two or three years in solitary in prison. I ran out of cowboy books to read. I met a Cuban guy who ran the law library. So for about a year and a half straight 24/7 I read law books. I probably know more about criminal law than District Attorney Eyster. I certainly know more about law concerning incarcerated prisoners than anybody else in Mendocino County. Has Eyster ever even prosecuted a case to the box — full trial? Supposedly he's putting in for one now. Well if I'm gone long, the Get Giusti conspiracy will just change hands.

Sincerely, Youncault, a.k.a. David C. Giusti, number 3979, 951 Low Gap Road, Ukiah, CA 95482.

Print this if you want. Everybody thinks I'm nuts anyway. Moon people smoke and drink sodas but don't touch alcohol? There must be enough water on the moon to grow tobacco. They sure smoke a lot. More about that in the next letter.

---

(BACKGROUND) GIUSTI ARRESTED FOR VIOLENT ATTEMPTED MURDER

"On Tuesday, March 17 at approximately 12:47 am, officers were dispatched to the area behind CVS (155 South Orchard Avenue), in the area of the loading dock, regarding a report of a male who was bleeding severely from his head. An anonymous male requested a Denny’s employee telephone 911 regarding the injured male.

Upon arrival, UPD officers located a 57-year-old adult male lying on the concrete floor of the loading dock. The male was lying in a large pool of blood and he was bleeding profusely from his head.

The scene indicated there had been an altercation, as there was a large amount of blood on the walls near where the injured male was located. David Giusti (age 67, of Ukiah) was also located in the area of the loading dock and initially denied any knowledge of what happened to the victim.

Officers rendered first aid and summoned EMS to the scene. While Officers were rendering first aid, Giusti walked away from the scene pushing a shopping cart. As other officers arrived, Giusti was located a short distance away and was detained.

Giusti was covered in blood and had a shopping cart that was filled with his personal belongings. Officers located a blood-covered wooden dowel inside the shopping cart. The subsequent investigation revealed there had been an argument between the victim and Giusti and evidence caused officers to believe Giusti was responsible for the victim’s injuries. Giusti was arrested without incident.

EMS transported the victim to Adventist Health Ukiah Valley hospital where he was treated for significant injures to his head. The injuries rose to the level of Great Bodily Injury, and would most likely lead to permanent disfiguration and could have been fatal had he not received medical treatment.

The victim was later transported to an out of the area trauma center for further medical treatment. At the time of this press release, the victim was in stable condition.

Giusti was transported to the Mendocino County Jail where he was booked for the aforementioned violations. Giusti remains in custody with a bail of $250,000.

The Ukiah Police Department’s Detective Bureau has assumed the investigation of this incident and are attempting to identify the anonymous male witness, who requested the call to 911. Anyone with information regarding this incident is urged to contact UPD.

The Ukiah Police Department would like to thank the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department personnel who assisted with the initial investigation of the incident.

(Ukiah Police Presser)

CAMP PIERCY, HIGHWAY 1, 1925

DEFEND THE POLICE

Editor,

Defund the police? Should be Defend the police. We need our police, our law enforcement. Black lives matter? Certainly they matter, so do white lives matter, and all the other lives matter, all lives matter. When you take one or two or three black people a month getting shot and then you have 3-5 people a day and sometimes 10 or 12 on weekends shot and killed in Chicago, all-black? Where's the black lives matter there? Not a word. Every time a police officer gets involved in an officer involved shooting there is hell to pay. Everybody starts screaming. Why aren't they screaming about Chicago? It's a joke. If we lose our police force there will be more black people killed except for the good ones than you can imagine. People will defend their homes and their businesses one way or another. And that's when the gunfire will occur if there’s no police. You don't defund the police, you defend them. 

God Bless Donald Trump

Jerry Philbrick

Comptche

RACIST POLICE TERROR, POISONOUS TIP OF THE CLASS WAR

Editor,

The fight against racist killer cops helps all workers:

For decades, over 1,000 people a year have been murdered by the police and almost never has a cop been fired or put on trial for murder. During the last 40 years we have had both Black and White presidents, and the killings go on. We have had Black and White, male and female, mayors, judges, prosecutors, and chief of police and the cops continue to murder, maim, and brutalize. Only when multiracial masses in the hundred thousand across the country marched, demonstrated, tore down statues and burned police cars and police stations did some cops get fired and finally charged with murder. The multiracial masses know that “liberty and justice for all” is a lie. The demonstrators understand that In spite of the corporate media’s description of the police as primarily racist killers, police murder is racist class terror. White workers killed by the cops get less media attention. In fact, cops murder more poor working class Whites than Blacks every year. In 2016 the police killed 266 Blacks 133 Latinos and 574 Whites. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database This multiracial battle against the racist police nationwide is benefitting ALL workers.

The fight against racism can stop the war on social services for the working class:

Racist stereotypes and propaganda promoted in the corporate media create the false idea that government social safety net programs like Medicaid and Food Stamps mostly benefit minorities. The reality is:

1) Medicaid is 43% White: 30 million White people and 12 million Black people.

2) Food Stamp recipients are 36% White: 14 million White people and 10 million Black people.

The massive movement to stop racist police terror has the power to preserve and expand social programs. The Trump 2020 budget has $2 Trillion worth of cuts to the social programs Medicaid and Medicare. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trumps-proposed-48-trillion-budget-will-seek-cuts-to-medicare-medicaid-2020-02-09 Racist propaganda allows politicians to get away with cutting or defunding social programs which hurts millions of Black and White workers. 

The fight against racism can stop the war on the health of the working class:

Racism hurts Black and White working class people in Flint Michigan and many cities in New Jersey. In one of the largest environmental disasters in US history the politicians deliberately diverted poisoned water into the drinking water system of Flint, Michigan in 2014. No one went to jail for the deaths, and disability of 100,000 adults and children. Flint Michigan has been labeled by the racist media as a “Black “city. Flint is 54% Black and 40% White. The reality is that there are 40,000 Whites in Flint who also suffered. This is how racism harms both Black and White working class families.

In New Jersey, eleven cities have more lead affected kids than Flint Michigan. The six most heavily poisoned cities are considered “Black” cities because they have large Black populations. Atlantic City, the most lead poisoned, is 44% Black 27% White—40,000 total population. The other five most affected cities have White population from 9% to 45%. Many thousands of both Black and White people and their children are poisoned because of systemic racism that allows the profit system to spend less on public services for all workers, while the top 1% gets $Trillions in massive tax breaks. The mass movement against police terror can demand expanded social programs and health care for ALL.

Racism is the tool to divide and rule:

The famous Abolitionist Frederick Douglas said: “The hostility between the Whites and the Blacks of the South is easily explained. It has its root and sap in the relation of slavery, and was incited on both sides by the cunning of the slave masters. Those masters secured their ascendancy over both the poor White and the Blacks by putting enmity between them. They divided both to conquer each.” 

Winning the class war with multiracial working class unity:

Today the Corporate Masters, the top 1%, still use the poisonous weapon of racism in their war against the working class. Multiracial unity is the working class antidote to their racist poison, and essential to win the class war.

Dr. Nayvin Gordon

Oakland

Dr. Gordon writes about health and politics and can be reached at: gordonnayvin@yahoo.com

THE WAY TO HELL, ALFRED KUBIN, 1904

LA PETITE CORRIDA

The Little Bullfight.
Pablo’s lithograph, that one.
I’ve watched it moving.
You’ve seen it too, yes?

It moves, doesn’t it?
Color! Action! Cheers! Olé!
So panoramic.

Just seeing the print
Inspires. But to be in it!
Imagine being in it!

To be one with them:
The torero. His helpers.
The horse. The crowd. And the bull.
Such compelling characters.
We care what happens to them.

We respect them all.
We feel what they feel,
See all that they see,
Hear the blaring roar they hear,
Breathe the heat, inhale the dust.
We’ve become them all.

Only small, white, blank paper.
Just four bright colors. And then:
Olés! erupt. God, the noise!
Motion! Light! Blinding color!
And empathy too!
How does he do it?

He lets us help him do it.

—Jim Luther

FOUND OBJECT