MCT: Sunday, October 4, 2020

• Scaramella Birthday
• Dominating Ridge
• Evacuation Order
• 20 Deaths
• Boonville Monitor
• Hillside Burning
• Grape Harvest
• Under Siege
• Cat Special
• Criminal Element
• Coast Logging
• A'Dair Article
• Tanbarking
• Pudding Creek
• Downtown Mendocino
• Drug History
• Ed Notes
• Dark Foreboding
• Concrete Obstacles
• 1970s Mendosa's
• Osbourn Sentenced
• Yesterday's Catch
• Confused Cult
• Bob Gibson
• Seafoam Wreck
• Prop 15
• Airborne Jalopy
• Public Health
• Cuffey's Class
• Pepys Disasters
• Fame
• Men Friends
• Golden Gate
• Grotesque Environment
• Flags
• Not Scared
• Covid Documentary
• Guilfoyle Article
• Imagine Driving
• Marco Radio
• Free Speech
• Climate Politics
• Trivia Answers
• Found Objects

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARK SCARAMELLA!

A PERSISTENT WEATHER PATTERN will continue through about mid week under a dominating ridge aloft. Very dry conditions with generally above normal temperatures are expected for the interior while coastal areas remain mild with periods of fog, low clouds and some smoke. A significant cooling trend is expected toward the end of the week...with the possibility for rain increasing into next weekend. (NWS)

YESTERDAY'S HIGHS: Ukiah 99°, Boonville 96°, Yorkville 96°, Fort Bragg 60°

AUGUST COMPLEX - WEST ZONE EVACUATION ORDER ISSUED FOR AREA NORTH AND EAST OF ROUND VALLEY IN MENDOCINO COUNTY

Joint Press Release between the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office and CALFIRE

Effective Immediately

Zone N: North of the Middle Fork of the Eel River including the Eel River Ranger Station and Black Butte Store, west and south of the National Forest Boundary, East of Williams Creek.

Road Closures:

FH7 (Mendocino Pass Road) and M1 (Indian Dick Road) at the Eel River.

Highway 162 (Mendocino Pass Road) at Short Creek.

Notes: The public is reminded to stay vigilant on current fire conditions. Please continue to adhere to road closures and any Evacuation Warnings and Evacuation Orders. Please remember to drive slowly and yield to emergency personnel in the area. There may still be smoke in the respective areas as firefighters continue their suppression operations.

The Mendocino National Forest will remain closed, for updated forest closures visit: http://www.fs.usda.gov/mendocino

View the most current evacuation map at: https://tinyurl.com/MendoEvac

For more information about wildfire preparedness visit: http://www.readyforwildfire.org

EIGHT MORE COVID CASES in Mendocino County on Saturday (one more "South County" case, and another death) bringing the total number of cases to 996 and deaths to 20.

BOONVILLE now has its own air monitoring device at the AV Firehouse which automatically reports its reading at the purple air website.

Go to: https://www.purpleair.com/map?opt=1/mAQI/a10/cC0#1/25/-30 and zoom into your local area to see the air quality in your area.

For example today (Sunday) Boonville’s air quality is rated 53 which isn’t too bad. But last Thursday, Oct. 1, when the wind conditions made it impossible to even see the hills from Highway 128, Boonville’s air quality was a throat-choking 375. 

NORTH BAY WILDFIRES CLOUD WINE GRAPE HARVEST AS TOTAL LOSSES COULD APPROACH $500 MILLION

Images of destruction from the Glass fire around the northern Napa Valley vividly depicted the peril in some of the nation’s premier wine grape vineyards. In all, more than a dozen wineries in the valley, where grape-planted land sells for as much as $1 million an acre, sustained property damage and singed grapevines as of Friday.

pressdemocrat.com/article/business/smoke-and-fire-cast-a-pall-over-north-coast-wine-grape-harvest-total-loss/

SUPPORT SHERIFF KENDALL

Dear Supervisors, 

There seems to be a huge increase in violent drug related crime as of late. Much of it appears to be connected to the illegal pot industry and we are seeing extremely violent criminals coming into the county with bad intentions. 

I have no stake in the pot industry and never have. Never will. Having said that I understand there is a legal 'regulated' avenue now occuring in our county. I would guess there are far more illegal grows than there are legitimate ones and it is time to address it vigorously. 

I am seeing truckload after truckload of water going to the hills. I'm sure the environmental damage occuring is devastating. Obviously we are experiencing alarming high crime events connected to all this marijuana. Covelo seems to be under seige by bad actors with bad attitudes who are growing illegally. 

I would suggest that our Sheriff be given everything he needs to deal with the marijuana black market and the threat it is posing to the citizens of Mendocino County. MCSO appears to be very focused on the safety of our communities and for that I am thankful. Let's make the safety and security of Mendocino County citizens a priority. 

Sincerely, 

Marty Arkelian 

Willits 

SUPPORT SHERIFF KENDALL

Supervisors:

I would urge all of you to pick up a copy of this week’s Willits Weekly newspaper (Thursday - October 1, 2020) 

In it, you will find a particularly poignant plea from Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall for the communities’ support to combat a growing problem in the County, ie., the criminal element that’s being attracted to the area by the illegal growing of marijuana. (Page 2, titled "Illegal marijuana fueling growing crime problem.”) 

Sheriff Kendall has my full support — who else would I look to to keep us safe? Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, Willits Police Department, Little Lake Fire Department, and Brooktrails Fire Department — all of them need our cooperation and you need to be aware of that cooperation and support for their efforts. 

Gail Richards 

Ukiah

COAST LOGGING

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LAZ COMMENTS ON LINE: 

In the Willits Weekly Mike A’Dair has an article on the September meeting that went unrecorded.

willitsweekly.com/documents/WillitsWeekly_10012020_APages.pdf

ODD THINGS at Pudding Creek had some Fort Braggers fearing the peculiar presence. Dave Gurney clarifies: “No, it wasn't man-made pollution, but still pretty strange. It was a mass wash-up of pyrosomes as in this: nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/06/pyrosome-fire-body-bloom-eastern-pacific-warm-water/

The "black micro-plastics" one person mentioned was really bunches of eel grass decomposing."

RON COBB

(ED NOTE: The following is the best description I've read of The Great Transition. The author wishes to remain anonymous.)

I was 19 years old in 1963, entry level tech typist job at a tiny start-up company in SoCal (Teledyne, global success as it turned out) working on applied science proposals for the Department of Defense. For some reason I cannot explain, I knew how equations worked (vaguely) and kept finding errors in the handwritten copy, which garnered the attention of the lead scientist and a very late night conversation in which he said to me, quite gently, that he thought I might enjoy the LSD experience.

Boss of the production department had a brother at the time using the stuff in “guided” psychotherapeutic work at Esalen Institute (this was right around the time that Tim O’Leary burst onto the scene), just a coincidence — no conversation with him about it, but the two facts caught my attention.

Thought about it for another four years, slaving over a hot Frieden Just-O-Writer as the (only) production person at Art Kunkin’s LA Free Press, as the scene erupted in Cali. Couple of “electric Kool-Aid acid tests” in remote warehouses, didn’t go but heard rants and raves from folks wandering through the paper’s chambers in West Hollywood.

Then, of course, music morphed into “psychedelic rock” and the Beatles took over for a decade, wiping Elvis and Rock-a-Billy boredom off the map. Never cottoned onto the whole “hippie” thing (and was considered a real weirdo in the press pack — super picky copy editing while assembling the 36-page tabloid every week “by hand,” as it were). Art had bought the beta test version of the monstrous Compugraphic phototopositing system, fed by the punch tapes out of the Frieden.

Three plus years of literally cutting and pasting the copy, filming the plates, driving them in the middle of dark Saturday nights to the printer in canyonesque downtown LA. One of my weekly tasks was driving up to Ron Cobb’s apartment in W. Hollywood to pick up his cartoons, is how I know about his OCD and extreme phobias. 

After observing the to-ing and fro-ing of reaction to the acid craze (Art Linkletter’s son “thought he could fly” — that’s what Art said, anyway; who the fuck knows what was going on in the kid’s mind — and died in a fall from a building; bad news) (George Harrison and the rest of the boys went to India and the whole world shifted to a new plane of song creation, wonderful.)

I had quit my job at the Freep that summer (pissed off that Art bought a $3,000 time clock for all of us 19 employees to use, somehow managed to pour a whole pot of fresh coffee into it and told him what he could do with his…) I was living in an apartment over a pawnshop two blocks from the Pink Pussycat, with roommates who proved to be the most loving caregivers I have ever known (which emerged because of the care I needed after that first existential excursion — because the experience was so truly beautiful and overwhelmingly happy that when I “came down” I spiralled into a depression that lasted weeks (they took me to a country house and let me work it all out in peace, for weeks, incredibly generous, understanding, and kind).

Coming out of that, I ended up in such a deep depression that I found myself on the brink of slow suicide but roused my body in time to split LA entirely — hitchhiking north from Sunset Boulevard with my backpack and about 12 bucks, into the breach! (Masonic and Fell at midnight, no idea how to get to Berkeley and the location of my sole contact from Free Press contacts, no problem! Those were the days.)

Something saved me tho, from the heyday of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll (did see some tremendous artists, sociological sea changes — like Harvey Milk’s campaign against homophobia and the continuation of the Free Speech movement and protests and the final culmination of Nixon’s fiasco; the whole ten years screaming and marching to stop the fucking “war” — as well as witnessing people transform their lives one way or another). 

This might amuse you: For a few months I had a similar typesetting job at the San Francisco “Good Times,” but got fired for being “too uptight” (demanding copy by printer-driven deadlines, and correcting sloppy copy — an insult to the tender feelings of the authors, tsk). Had a teeny shot at a copy-editing slot at Rolling Stone, got a cool interview, but saw that almost everyone in the room was toasted on the shiny white stuff, and couldn’t deal. Just a girl nerd trying to pay the rent.

Finally gave up on the silliness and got back into the “straight” world of applied science manufacturing, just in time for the technical revolution of semiconductors, and fared wonderfully in it (again, no real idea how, but some mental faculty that was of great use in the right situation). In between I must have taken the stuff another dozen times — recalling the moment of return to Oakland from Concord after seeing “2001: A Space Odyssey” while ripped to the gills on it, the lanes converging as they do at the approach to the Caldecott Tunnel becoming impossible for me to distinguish and had to give one of my equally stoned passengers the wheel — wheeeeeeee!

Did a couple of extended (and “worthwhile”) tours with real peyote — never saw any of the vaunted visions but had a lovely time after getting past the puking stage. Later, working at another applied science company in Berkeley, had the extreme pleasure of working for the former UC Press editor of Carlos Casteneda’s fantasies. 

Enjoyed all the easy-to-get psychotropics (especially ‘shrooms and really excellent hashish) but never got strung out or smoked at lot of pot, while watching the early Seventies scene turn sour on Cocaine, then the shitty stuff (PCP, crank, heroine) and turned back to “employment” as all my friends drifted north to raise their off-the-grid, back-to-the-land families. Some of them, I guess, still around — but not in Lake County.

Vivid memories, still halfway decent cognititive capacities (wearing down, but still outpacing the majority of the people I have to deal with here in this redneck recidivist, Civil War reject backwater — where there are still remnants of the Klan and a few olders who believe that the “moon walk” was faked.

Current state of the world beyond my wildest dreams or worst nightmares — can also still remember listening intently to Edward R. Murrow live on my Philadelphia grandmother’s old Philco radio, picture myself hunkered down in rapt attention in that turn-of-the-century kitchen (she was the proud owner of one of the first electric washing machines, where I was the puller while she churned the sheets through the wringer, and hung them on high clotheslines in the back yard — best smell in the world).

Ah, love.

PS: One of my few regrets is not having ever had a chance to speak with Ron Cobb again, would have loved thanking him.

The world that was opened up to me with that gift. He seldom left his home, so it was a surprise that afternoon when I answered the knock on our door to find him standing, so shyly, with those two genuine Sandoz-dosed sugar cubes. No words were exchanged that I can recall — and now I’m trying to picture how he effectuated the hand-to-hand delivery (wrapped in a piece of tissue?), because of his extreme aversion to physical contact, his hands always raw from constant “sterilizing” throughout his waking day.

But more than that, his heart in every drawing, piercing the facade of hypocrisy and unflinchingly etching the dismal reality of our lives and times. I so wonder what he would have said about this devolution of my beloved “country.”

ED NOTES

AS A ZILLION conspiracy theories kicked off this morning, a platoon of doctors, perhaps the most ever assembled for a single big shot, appeared outside Walter Reed Hospital to say that Trump is fine, that the captain of the SS America remains at the helm capable as ever. “The team and I are extremely happy with the progress the president has made. He's been fever free for 24 hours and we are cautiously optimistic.”

“CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC” is a phrase ordinarily applied to someone on the brink, and soon the media were abuzz with reports like this one from Bloomberg Business: “The president’s vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning and the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care. We’re still not on a clear path to a full recovery.” Trump's doctor had refused to answer questions on whether Trump had been on oxygen, and suggested he was diagnosed on Wednesday and wasn't clear on whether the president's liver or lungs have been damaged. Trump himself has not appeared, which has to mean he's sicker than his doctors and gofers will concede.

THE LEGIONS of the Gaunt, many of whom are probably in worse overall shape than Trump, what with their obsessive vigilance over their vital signs and wheat juice diets, constantly cite Orange Man's age, 74, and “co-morbidities” — excess weight and bad diet — that put him at high risk for the plague. Well, now he's got it but he got it because he didn't mask up and associated with lots of other people who weren't masked up. Will his “co-morbidities” conspire to finish him? A fat guy of his age isn't necessarily unfit, although I've never seen mention of Trump's exercising other than his riding around a golf course in a motorized cart, which doesn't qualify as exercise. Who knows, really? 

I, A PERSON of Trumpian dimensions kept more or less proportional by a zealous push-up regimen, succumbed to the distance running craze of the 1970s, getting myself in the best shape of my life, so good I managed 6:30 per mile over a 3-mile foot race at Spring Lake in Santa Rosa, my best-ever time. But it was at that race that a fat guy, and I'm talking a guy whose adipose jello-jiggled the entire three miles that I chased him, astounded me that he just kept on jello-jiggling a couple hundred yards in front of me, ran through the finish line and straight to the tailgate of a pick-up truck where his elderly parents served him a manhattan! I went on to run several marathons, including HumCo's Avenue of the Giants, a beyond dumb thing to do, I say in retrospect because God didn't build us, me anyway, to run any distance beyond twenty miles where I inevitably “hit the wall,” as running fanatics put it, meaning the last six miles were an agonized shuffle, nipples bleeding, singlet white with sweated body salt. (You laugh, you sadists?) Best time I ever managed was 3:40. 

IF TRUMP came in around 160 he'd be positively frightening, especially with the orange creature's nest on top of his head. His excess weight gives him the gravitas he needs for his visuals, odd visuals for sure, but visuals that hold up until he starts talking, and then we know he's…

TRUMP SPEAKS SATURDAY (verbatim)

Looking a little worn out, President Trump issued a videotaped statement from Walter Reed Hospital in Maryland Saturday night:

“I want to begin by thanking all of the incredible medical professionals, the doctors, the nurses, everybody, at Walter Reed Medical Center, I think it's the finest in the world, for the incredible job they've been doing. Uh, I came here, wasn't feeling so well, I feel much better now. We're working hard to get me all the way back.

I have to be back, because we still have to Make America Great Again. We've done an awfully good job of that, but we still have steps to go, and we have to finish that job. And I'll back, I think I'll be back soon. And I look forward to finishing up the campaign the way it was started, and the way we've been doing, and the kind of numbers that we've been doing, we've been so proud of it.

But this was something that happened, and it's happened to millions of people all over the world. And I'm fighting for them, not just in the U.S., I'm fighting for them all over the world. We're going to beat this coronavirus, or whatever you want to call it, and we're going to beat it soundly. So many things have happened.

If you look at the therapeutics, which I'm taking right now, some of them, and others are coming out soon that are looking like, uh... Frankly, they're miracles, if you want to know the truth, they're miracles. People criticize me when I say that, but we have things happening that look like they're miracles, coming down from God.

So I just want to tell you that I'm starting to feel good. Uh, you don't know over the next period of a few days, I guess that's the real test, so we'll be seeing what happens over those next coup -- next couple of days. I just want to be so thankful for all of the support I've seen, whether it's on television or reading about it.

Uh, I, most of all, appreciate what's been said by the American people, by almost a bipartisan consensus of American people. It's a beautiful thing to see and I very much appreciate it. And I won't forget it, I promise you that. I also want to thank the leaders of the world for, uh, their condolences, and their -- they know what we're going through, they know what, as your leader, what I have to go through.

But I had no choice, because I just didn't want to stay in the White House. I was given that alternative, "Stay in the White House, lock yourself in, don't ever leave, don't even go to the Oval Office. Just stay upstairs and enjoy it. Don't see people, don't talk to people, and just be done with it." And I can't do that, I had to be out front.

And this is America, this is the United States, this is the greatest country in the world, this is the most powerful country in the world. I can't be locked up in a room upstairs, and totally safe, and just say, "Hey, whatever happens, happens." I can't do that. We have to confront problems. As a leader, you have to confront problems.

There's never been a great leader that would've done that. So that's where it is. I'm doing well. I want to thank everybody. Our first lady is doing very well. Melania asked me to say something as to the respect that she has for our country, the love that she has for our country. And we're both doing well.

Melania is, uh, really handling it very nicely. As you've probably read, she's slightly younger than me, just a little tiny bit. And, uh, therefore, just -- we know the disease, we know the situation with age versus, uh, younger people. And Melania is handling it, statistically, like it's supposed to be handled.

And, uh, that makes me very happy, and it makes the country very happy. But I'm also doing well. And I think we're going to have a very good result. Again, over the next few days, we're going to probably know, for sure. So I just want to thank everybody out there, everybody, all over the world, specifically the United States. The outpouring of love has been incredible. I will never forget. Thank you, very much.”

JENNY KIMBLER is a new name to me, but she's the first Ukiah candidate for public office I've heard who gets right to the realities of our county seat: “Public safety, homelessness,and small businesses. Considering this is the first time a pandemic like this has hit in my lifetime, I feel they should have treated Ukiah a little differently than Sonoma County, but hindsight is 50-50. But now it’s time to open the businesses up; it’s time to open up our schools."

THE UKIAH CITY COUNCIL has been synonymous with incompetent management for a long time — drive one end of State Street to the other for confirmation — but Ukiah city politics are uniquely juvenile even by small town standards, a town whose entire west side has been mentally stuck in high school at least since 1980, and it's that population that dominates Ukiah politics and also has a baleful influence on county politics. 

GHILLOTI CONSTRUCTION is doing their standard good job on the Ukiah Streetscape project as documented by Ukiah’s Deputy City manager Shannon Riley on a weekly basis. But the construction work is not the problem. The problem is that after all of Ghilotti’s fine work, Ukiah will be a much worse place to visit because the project turns Ukiah’s State Street — the town’s primary traffic artery — from four lanes to two. But not just that awful development — it’s worse. We didn’t realize how bad this was until we saw the recently posted “typical” intersection diagram which not only shows the lane reduction (turning the middle lane into a left-turn only lane) but the stupidly dangerous build-outs at the corners. 

Anyone who’s driven in Ukiah knows that not all drivers observe the niceties of the lanes, especially at night. And yet here’s a “streetscape” that sticks large lumpy odd-shaped concrete obstacles right into the lanes in both directions and the cross-streets. (Did someone think this was “traffic calming”?) What could possibly go wrong? We wonder if Ukiah Police Chief Justin Wyatt approved this typically unworkable Ukiah-ish design — because this crazy scheme is an accident waiting to happen at every streetscaped intersection and is guaranteed to make his department’s job harder. PS. And of course all of Ukiah’s oh-so polite drivers will never use the left turn lane to get around slow moving traffic only to realize there’s a car waiting to turn there. 

(Mark Scaramella)

A DEFENDANT’S BID to avoid prison and be placed on local supervised probation was dashed Friday afternoon in the Mendocino County Superior Court.

Defendant David Lloyd Osbourn, age 54, of Ukiah, was instead sentenced to 16 months in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The defendant was ordered remanded into custody at the conclusion of the hearing and booked into the Low Gap jail facility in preparation of the Sheriff having him transported to San Quentin for new prisoner intake.

The defendant was convicted on July 2, 2020 by plea of the unlawful possession of child pornography, a felony.

Acting on information provided to law enforcement by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Ukiah Police Department began an investigation of the defendant in April 2018.

Later, the District Attorney’s own investigators joined in the investigation, a joint investigation that ultimately lead to the defendant’s arrest and conviction.

The attorney who reviewed the original investigation, charged the defendant with crimes, and handled the defendant’s prosecution from start to finish was Assistant District Attorney Dale P. Trigg.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Ann Moorman presided over today’s sentencing hearing.

CATCH OF THE DAY, October 3, 2020

JOHN BOLTON IV, Laytonville. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

JESSE DUGGER, Ukiah. Battery, vandalism, paraphernalia, failure to appear.

TRACY ESLINGER, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery.

JUAN LOPEZ, Willits. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, county parole violation, resisting.

JADEN LUNDY, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery, battery with serious injury, probation revocation.

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

DAVID OSBOURN, UKIAH. Possession of child pornography photos. 

DOMINIC SHAUL, Willits. Touching intimate parts of another against their will.

DAVID YADON, Willits. Controlled substance, failure to appear.

CARDINALS HALL OF FAMER BOB GIBSON DIES AT 84 AFTER BOUT WITH CANCER

Baseball Hall of Famer Bob Gibson died Friday at age 84, the St. Louis Cardinals confirmed to ESPN.

Gibson, who was born in Omaha, Nebraska, played all of his 17 MLB seasons with the Cardinals from 1959 through 1975.

He announced in July 2019 that he had pancreatic cancer.

The nine-time All-Star and two-time World Series champion earned 251 wins, struck out 3,117 and had a 2.91 ERA and was known as a fierce competitor who rarely smiled.

The two-time Cy Young Award winner was named the World Series MVP in the Cardinals' 1964 and 1967 championship seasons. He was the National League MVP in 1968.

At his peak, Gibson might have been the most talented all-around starter in history, a nine-time Gold Glove winner who roamed wide to snatch up grounders despite a fierce, sweeping delivery that drove him to the first-base side of the mound and a strong hitter who twice hit five home runs in a season and batted .303 in 1970, when he also won his second Cy Young.

Averaging 19 wins per year from 1963 through 1972, he finished 251-174 and was only the second pitcher to reach 3,000 strikeouts. He didn't throw as hard as Sandy Koufax or from as many angles as Juan Marichal, but batters never forgot how he glared at them (or squinted, because he was nearsighted) as if settling an ancient score.

In 1968, "The Year of the Pitcher," Gibson made a case for one of the greatest seasons ever produced by a starter. He went 22-9 with a 1.12 ERA and 13 shutouts, leading to the pitcher's mound being lowered from 15 to 10 inches. Gibson completed 28 of his 34 starts.

"I was pissed," Gibson later remarked about the rule change brought on by his dominance.

Even with the change, Gibson remained a top pitcher for several years and in 1971 threw his only no-hitter, against Pittsburgh.

"This is a very sad day for all of Baseball," MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. "Bob Gibson produced one of the most decorated pitching careers in history with his intelligence, athleticism, durability and toughness. One of only three players to be a two-time MVP of the World Series, this legend of October will always be remembered as one of our sport's fiercest competitors. His performance in 1968 with the Club he represented all his life, the St. Louis Cardinals, is on the short list of the best pitching seasons ever.

"Bob was a loyal friend to many people throughout the National Pastime, and he will be deeply missed. On behalf of Major League Baseball, I extend my deepest condolences to Bob's family, friends, Cardinals fans, and all those who respected one of the greatest pitchers who ever lived."

Gibson's death came on the 52nd anniversary of perhaps his most overpowering performance, when he struck out a World Series-record 17 batters in Game 1 of the 1968 Fall Classic against the Detroit Tigers.

"It was just so hard to beat him," Chicago Cubs slugger and fellow Hall of Famer Billy Williams once said about Gibson. "One year, Roberto Clemente hit a line drive that hit him right in the shin. He pitched another five, six innings to finish the game, then it turned out he had a broken leg."

Jack Flaherty, who was the starting and losing pitcher for the Cardinals in Friday's season-ending loss to the San Diego Padres, shared his condolences on Twitter.

St. Louis catcher Yadier Molina, who has played his entire career with the Cardinals, said the news of Gibson's death put Friday's defeat in perspective.

"It's kind of hard losing a legend. You can lose a game, but when you lose a guy like Bob Gibson, just hard," Molina said. "Bob was funny, smart, he brought a lot of energy. When he talked, you listened. It was good to have him around every year. We lose a game, we lose a series [Friday], but the tough thing is we lost one great man."

Gibson's tenacity set him apart from many of his peers. He snubbed opposing players and sometimes teammates who dared speak to him on a day he was pitching, and he didn't even spare his own family.

"I've played a couple of hundred games of tic-tac-toe with my little daughter, and she hasn't beaten me yet," he once told The New Yorker's Roger Angell. "I've always had to win. I've got to win."

Equally disciplined and impatient, Gibson worked so quickly that broadcaster Vin Scully joked that he pitched as if his car were double-parked. He had no use for advice, scowling whenever catcher Tim McCarver or anyone else thought of visiting the mound.

"The only thing you know about pitching is you can't hit it," Gibson was known to say.

His concentration was such that he seemed unaware he was on his way to a World Series single-game strikeout record (surpassing Koufax's 15) until McCarver convinced him to look at the scoreboard.

During the regular season, Gibson struck out more than 200 batters nine times and led the National League in shutouts four times, finishing with 56 in his career. His 13 shutouts in 1968 led McCarver to call Gibson "the luckiest pitcher I ever saw. He always pitches when the other team doesn't score any runs."

He was, somehow, even greater in the postseason, finishing 7-2 with a 1.89 ERA and 92 strikeouts in 81 innings. Despite dominating the Tigers in the 1968 Series opener, that year ended with a Game 7 loss -- hurt by a rare misplay from star center fielder Curt Flood.

Gibson's 1.12 ERA in that regular season was the third lowest for any starting pitcher since 1900 and by far the best for any starter in the post-dead ball era, which began in the 1920s.

Signed by the Cardinals as an amateur free agent in 1957, Gibson had early trouble with his control, a problem solved by developing one of baseball's greatest sliders, along with a curve to go with his hard fastball. He knew how to throw strikes and how to aim elsewhere when batters stood too close to the plate.

Hank Aaron once counseled Atlanta Braves teammate Dusty Baker about Gibson.

"Don't dig in against Bob Gibson; he'll knock you down," Aaron said, according to The Boston Globe. "He'd knock down his own grandmother if she dared to challenge him. Don't stare at him, don't smile at him, don't talk to him. He doesn't like it. If you happen to hit a home run, don't run too slow, don't run too fast. If you happen to want to celebrate, get in the tunnel first. And if he hits you, don't charge the mound, because he's a Gold Glove boxer."

Only the second Black player, after Don Newcombe, to win the Cy Young Award, Gibson was an inspiration while insisting otherwise. He would describe himself as a "blunt, stubborn Black man" who scorned the idea he was anyone's role model and once posted a sign over his locker reading, "I'm not prejudiced. I hate everybody."

But he was proud of the Cardinals' racial diversity and teamwork, a powerful symbol during the civil rights movement, and his role in ensuring that players did not live in segregated housing during the season.

He was close to McCarver, a Tennessean who would credit Gibson with challenging his own prejudices, and the acknowledged leader of a club that featured whites (McCarver, Mike Shannon, Roger Maris), Blacks (Gibson, Flood, Lou Brock) and Hispanics (Orlando Cepeda, Julian Javier).

"Our team, as a whole, had no tolerance for ethnic or racial disrespect," Gibson wrote in "Pitch by Pitch," published in 2015. "We'd talk about it openly and in no uncertain terms. In our clubhouse, nobody got a free pass."

Flaherty, who is Black, grew close to Gibson in recent years. The right-handers would often talk, the 24-year-old Flaherty soaking up advice from the great who wore No. 45.

"That one hurts," Flaherty said. "He's a legend, first and foremost, somebody who I was lucky enough to learn from. You don't get the opportunity to learn from somebody of that caliber and somebody who was that good very often."

"I had been kept up on his health and where he was at. I was really hoping it wasn't going to be today. I was going to wear his jersey today to the field but decided against it,"

Jim Palmer, a contemporary of Gibson's and a Hall of Famer for the Baltimore Orioles, shared his thoughts on Twitter.

"Dave Johnson would sometimes run in from 2nd base and say give them the Bob Gibson! I'd say, there is only 1 Bob Gibson," Palmer wrote. "Wasn't that the truth. Talented, competitive, a warrior on the hill! So glad I got to know him. Will dearly miss him."

Gibson -- who went by the nickname "Hoot" after cowboy and silent movie star Hoot Gibson -- was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, in 1981. He was inducted into the team's hall of fame in 2014.

Among his other honors, Gibson was ranked No. 31 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players and was elected to the MLB All-Century Team in 1999.

After retiring, Gibson was an "attitude coach" for Joe Torre, his former teammate, with the New York Mets then followed Torre to the Braves, where Gibson was pitching coach. Before that, he was a backup color analyst for ABC's Monday Night Baseball in 1976, and briefly was a color commentator for the New York Nets of the American Basketball Association.

In 1990, Gibson was a color commentator for baseball games on ESPN, and in 1995, he again worked with Torre as a pitching coach, this time with the Cardinals.

Gibson died less than a month after the death of a longtime teammate, Hall of Fame outfielder Lou Brock. Another pitching great from his era, Tom Seaver, died in late August.

(ESPN.com)

YES ON PROP 15

Editor: 

Proposition 15 on the Nov. 3 ballot modifies Proposition 13, which has all property assessed when sold. You will hear the opposition to Proposition 15 say it is going to raise your tax on residential property and big corporations will move out of California. These are both false.

Proposition 15 has nothing to do with residential property. After Proposition 13 went into effect 40 years ago, big corporations were paying the largest part of the tax. Now home owners are paying the largest share because loopholes in Proposition 13 allow large corporations to transfer their properties without paying the tax.

Proposition 15 requires the assessment of large corporations’ properties every three or more years. Small businesses with property worth less than $3 million and agriculture land aren’t affected. There are other exemptions for businesses too.

The tax would raise $11 billion for school districts and local governments each year. Both need more money to meet residents’ needs. Vote yes for Proposition 15, supported by many nonprofit groups, the League of Women Votes of California and the League of Women Voters of Sonoma County.

Gene Zingarelli

Santa Rosa

PREVENTION FIRST

Dear Editor,

Scientific American and the lessons the Harvard Professor failed to learn “for fighting COVID-19.”

Taiwan, China, and New Zealand have suppressed, contained and eradicated the Covid-19 pandemic. These countries have accomplished this feat not with drugs or vaccines but with tried and true Public Health Science: Mass testing, contact tracing and strict quarantine (isolation). Despite this obvious fact a major article has just appeared in Scientific American, October, 2020, which ignores this reality. 

Doctor Haseltine, former Harvard Medical School professor, writes, “What we learned from AIDS,” lessons for fighting COVID-19. After 40 years of the HIV pandemic, 1.7 million people around the world and 40,000 in the US still get infected every year with HIV. 

Dr. Haseltine, who has funded many biotech companies, writes that “the hope of beating COVID-19” lies with vaccine development, treatments with drugs and changing human behavior. 

Surprisingly the author concludes the article by saying that he was in Wuhan, China at a Health Summit in November 2019. Some weeks after returning home he got a call from Wuhan, and was informed that China was aggressively confronting the COVID-19 epidemic with mass testing, contact tracing and strict quarantine (isolation). Dr. Haseltine acknowledges “our failure to contain this pandemic”. He also has failed to learn the most important lessons--only a robust public health infrastructure can protect the population and contain, suppress and eradicate an infectious pandemic. 

The first order of business is prevention of infection. Investment and commitment to a Public Health Infrastructure is essential to protect the public and prevent millions of infections, disease and deaths. Treatments and vaccine are helpful additions and make biotech and pharmaceutical corporations billions in profits, but cannot prevent a new pandemic. 

Dr. Nayvin Gordon

Oakland, California

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

SAMUEL PEPYS ON PLAGUE AND FIRE

1665 was the year of the great plague in London. Pepys had heard rumours of its approach; it was in Amsterdam in 1664. Plague was in any case endemic in London, and severe outbreaks were expected every few decades: 1593, 1603, 1625, 1636 had all been bad years. In 1625 40,000 Londoners died, and a look at the parish registers shows deaths attributed to plague in almost every year of the century up to 1665.

The rich could not count on being spared, but they usually left London when the plague was virulent; and since it was carried by a particular flea and fleas proliferated in town, getting away was certainly the best move. This is what the court and almost everyone else who could afford to do so, including many doctors and clergymen, did.

The poor were the expected victims, squashed into their low-ceilinged, unaired rooms, their meagre, piled-up lodgings, narrow courtyards, alleys and streets. For most of them it was impossible to give up their occupations and move away...

The Great Fire of London in 1666:

He [Pepys] saw that the fire was being driven by the strong easterly wind, and that the dry summer weather had made everything combustible; and he decided to take action. This is when he instructed his boatman to take him to Whitehall, where Sunday service was in progress in the chapel. 

He went straight up to the king's closet and started telling people about the fire. It seems that no one had yet heard of it, and word was quickly taken to the king, who sent for him. Pepys told him what he had seen and advised him and the duke to order the blowing up of houses to stop it spreading further, telling them that the destruction of houses in the path of the fire was the only way to stop it.

This was his key role in the great fire of London, as the first to inform the king and the giver of sound advice. The king told Pepys to go to the lord mayor with the command to have houses pulled down and the promise of soldiers to help.

Pepys set off back towards the fire in a borrowed coach...they drove as far as St. Paul's, then walked on eastwards along Watling Street, meeting crowds of refugees, among them sick people being carried on their beds and into Canning (i.e., Cannon) Street, where they found the mayor, Sir Thomas Bludworth, in a state of exhaustion: "he cried, like a fainting woman, 'Lord, what can I do? I am spent! People will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses. But the fire overtakes us as fast as we can do it.'"

...Instead of returning to Whitehall for more instructions, Pepys simply walked on, fascinated by the strangeness of everything, seeing what he could see. This became his other great service, as a reporter to posterity. His description of the fire is one of the most famous set pieces in the Diary, and deservedly so...

From Claire Tomalin's "Samuel Pepys, The Unequalled Self"

I STILL HAVE A FEW FRIENDS among men (not quite the same as the others, the first ones) and they and the dead have always mattered more to me than any lovers. Lovers somehow never seemed serious; there was something I couldn't quite believe -- and even in the most anguishing intoxicating depths of a love affair I would always rather be with my friends who were my own people and where I belonged. I found this very queer. I bet you do to -- very unwomanly and probably neuter of me. I only loved the world of men -- not the world of men and women. I only loved the men as they were themselves, not as they became in relation to women. Perhaps I am simply a born visitor -- meant to go, as a stranger, into someone else's territory having none of my own.

— Martha Gellhorn

ARCHITECTURE IN THE LONG EMERGENCY

by James Kunstler

Anyone who has traveled outside the USA to towns and cities in civilized foreign lands, and who then comes home to the punishing wilderness of American suburbia must, at least, suspect that something crucial in our culture has been out of order for a long time. It’s taken decades to build out the San Fernando Valley, and the countless other grotesque environments for daily life like it from sea to shining sea. What’s painfully absent is the quality I will call charm, and that is no small thing.

The conditions in a place like the commercial highway strip—of which there are tens of thousands—cast a spell of deep existential horror upon our everyday lives. You get not just the totalizing renunciation of conscious artistry in the design and assembly of our surroundings, but also the ferociously aggressive and immersive ugliness we’ve managed to substitute for it. This immersive ugliness of the highway strip is actually entropy-made-visible, and entropy is the force in nature that you really don’t want to mess with, since it is the bringer of stasis and death. Naturally, we’re repelled by it. And yet, we’ve foolishly managed to surround ourselves by it.

The quality of charm in man-made places is quite the opposite of what entropy represents. It attracts us. It invites us into the adventure of living within nature and within our own humanity. It alerts us that we have a reason to live. It’s the quality that unifies the things of this world and produces in humans a bond of gratitude for being here. You don’t have to work harder to achieve a charming place than you do to design, finance, permit, and construct an arterial highway of muffler shops, fast food shacks, big-box stores, and acres of free parking. But you have to know that the difference matters.

Two books might give our ailing culture a clue. The first is the revised edition of Cognitive Architecture (forthcoming this October) by architect and neuroscientist Ann Sussman, with Justin Hollander, an urban design professor at Tufts University. The concise and breezy book introduces a set of straightforward neuro-cognitive discoveries about how the brain interacts with our surroundings that offer an enhanced understanding of the mysteries of charm.

For instance, the visual sector of our brain has evolved to devote more than half its capacity to recognizing faces. Our brain wants to apply that faculty to buildings. Our eyes seek out patterns in them that denote we’re in the presence of humanity. When buildings are detailed correctly, we can read their “faces,” inviting us to understand what we’re looking at. That’s a big reason that traditional buildings come in types, each with its characteristic demeanor. They inform us that we’re seeing a house, a church, a city hall, or a power plant. Sometimes, those buildings even wear hats (they have interesting roofs).

World War I changed all that, Sussman and Hollander say. The slaughter of the trenches so shattered a generation of young men that their post-traumatic stress transformed culture dramatically. Modernist architects such as Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe were so emotionally damaged by their war trauma that instead of visually processing human faces in their buildings, they neurotically reenacted the horror by designing buildings that looked like bunkers and fortifications. The blank façade ruled. Ornament was deep-sixed. Windows became mere holes in the wall. Building typologies were done away with so that one might mistake an art museum for an insecticide factory. World War II only reinforced the PTSD of the earlier war, and Modernism has ruled ever since, despite the discomfort and revulsion it provokes for many ordinary people.

Mathematician Nikos Salingaros’s straightforward new book, A Theory of Architecture, does a masterful job of revealing the hidden mathematical coding that connects human cognition with architecture that is comprehensible and meaningful to us. Salingaros is a long-time colleague and collaborator with Christopher Alexander, whose groundbreaking 1977 book A Pattern Language unlocked the lost secrets of creating successful human environments—places in which people actually liked being. Salingaros takes it deeper into the science. Buildings express themselves in nested hierarchies of form that must be mathematically consistent with each other at each scale, from the smallest detail to the thing as a whole. “The suppression of ornament…” he says, “results in alien forms that generate physiological and psychological distress.” He has a great deal more to say about the connections between human emotional needs, physics, and the interplay between them, and it goes a long way towards explaining the catastrophe of the built environment in our time.

The odd part of all this is that it’s now necessary to get the backing of science to validate what used to come naturally: the ability to build pleasing places. Architects from Vitruvius through Brunelleschi, Bullfinch, Richard Morris Hunt, and thousands of others were eager to execute building designs that complied with the laws of the universe and the operations of the human brain. They all received some sort of training, of course. That knowledge and skill was transmitted by a long succession of their predecessors back to the most distant antiquity. A few traditionalist hold-outs survived the Modernist decades, disdained and pitied by the mandarins of academia and the celebrity starchitects.

Now, the coronavirus, the plague of our time, has accelerated another turning of history. Western civ and the economic horse it rode in on are suddenly in a lot of trouble. The familiar certainties of modernity itself are collapsing, along with manufacturing supply lines, capital flows, and energy supplies. The result of all that is liable to be a society far less intoxicated with technological triumph and grad school mystification. A lot of the fabricated, modular building materials of the past hundred-odd years that made Modernist architecture possible will no longer be so easily available—concrete, plate glass, titanium claddings, steel beams, aluminum trusses, and much more.

This new disposition of things, which we are quite unprepared for, will demand a revival of the building wisdom of the ages. It will be a vast improvement over the anxious, neurotic exercises that can now be plainly described as yesterday’s tomorrow. The necessary return to traditional modes and materials will yield a revived architecture of grace notes, humility, and decorum. Wait for it!

(James Howard Kunstler is The American Conservative’s New Urbanism Fellow. He is the author of numerous books on urban geography and economics, including his recent work, Living in the Long Emergency: Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward.)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

This crud spreads like wildfire without mitigation. Bullshit, It is no more contagious than any other flu or virus. Just luck of the draw. I may be infected tomorrow, but in the past couple of months I have traveled coast to coast. I do not wear a mask unless absolutely forced to. At first I masked up to humor some folks, and I still don a mask around some old friends who have other health issues and are scared of the virus. The stupidest thing the USA did was to shut down the economy over this. I have a few friends that have contracted the virus and came through with flying colors. Some at the age of 65 or so and some in their 30’s. I personally don’t know anyone who died from covid. It hasn’t spread like wildfire in my community. Here, it has mostly been a problem for more elderly people, (80 yrs. and up). A local nursing home had the most deaths, but there too, some residents who were stricken recovered surprisingly fast.

TOTALLY UNDER CONTROL — Alex Gibney’s new insider documentary about the onslaught of the covid virus.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totally_Under_Control

latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2020-10-02/trump-covid19-documentary-totally-under-control-trailer-alex-gibney

NEW YORKER PUBLISHES EXPLOSIVE STORY ON KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE'S DEPARTURE FROM FOX NEWS

by Eric Ting

After Kimberly Guilfoyle's former assistant at Fox News accused the former first lady of San Francisco of sexual harassment in 2018, the network paid the assistant more than $4 million to avoid going to trial, the New Yorker reports.

Citing two "well-informed sources," the New Yorker's Jane Mayer reported that the assistant wrote a 42-page complaint regarding Guilfoyle's inappropriate behavior, but it was never filed in court and is covered by a nondisclosure agreement following the large settlement. The former assistant was not named in the New Yorker story "out of respect for the rights of alleged victims of sexual harassment."

In 2018, HuffPost contributor Yashar Ali reported that Guilfoyle — who is currently the Trump campaign's finance chair — was forced out of Fox News after allegations of inappropriate conduct that involved her reportedly showing off photos of male genitalia. Guilfoyle's attorneys called the claims malicious and false, and sent letters threatening legal action against media organizations, including SFGATE, to attempt to prevent journalists from covering the claims.

Mayer provides even more salacious details in her story published Thursday.

"According to a dozen well-informed sources familiar with her complaints, the assistant alleged that Guilfoyle, her direct supervisor, subjected her frequently to degrading, abusive, and sexually inappropriate behavior; among other things, she said that she was frequently required to work at Guilfoyle’s New York apartment while the Fox host displayed herself naked, and was shown photographs of the genitalia of men with whom Guilfoyle had had sexual relations," Mayer writes. "The draft complaint also alleged that Guilfoyle spoke incessantly and luridly about her sex life, and on one occasion demanded a massage of her bare thighs."

Mayer's story is full of denials from Guilfoyle's attorneys and allies, but Mayer writes she was "able to independently confirm several of the assistant’s accusations." Specifically, "The allegation that she was required to work at Guilfoyle’s apartment while Guilfoyle was barely clothed or naked was substantiated by several of the assistant’s confidants, including an eyewitness, who recalls being surprised by the sight."

Other key sections of the New Yorker story include Guilfoyle reportedly attempting to "buy off" the assistant, her role in defending former Fox News boss Roger Ailes amid former Fox host Gretchen Carlson's lawsuit, and Mayer writing, "As I reported on this story, associates of Guilfoyle’s contacted me, offering personal details about the assistant, evidently in hopes of damaging her credibility and leading me not to publish this report."

In a statement to the New Yorker, Guilfoyle wrote, “In my 30-year career working for the SF District Attorney’s Office, the LA District Attorney’s Office, in media and in politics, I have never engaged in any workplace misconduct of any kind. During my career, I have served as a mentor to countless women, with many of whom I remain exceptionally close to this day.”

Guilfoyle, who is currently dating Donald Trump Jr., has appeared at countless Trump campaign events over the past year. She also delivered a prime-time speech at the Republican National Convention in August.

The Trump campaign and Fox News have not commented publicly on the article.

OLÉ

The recording of last night's remarkable (2020-10-02) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on KNYO-LP Fort Bragg is right here: https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0404

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

Kinetic sculpture. It’s all balanced and close to frictionless. No motors or electricity or magnets involved, nor witchcraft. boingboing.net/2020/09/30/ten-kinetic-sculptures-by-anne-lilly.html

Funny Vietnam war stories. tinyurl.com/FunnyVietnamWarStories

Neural network natural history. (via NagOnTheLake) thisiscolossal.com/2020/09/sofia-crespa-ai-natural-history/

And Grandpa guzzled a gallon of good gasoline. neatorama.com/2020/10/01/Alphabet-Insanity-2/

— Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

THE POLITICS OF CLIMATE IN ELECTION 2020: Zoom Presentation by Doug Nunn--Sunday, October 11 at 4pm

Dear Folks of the Mendocino Coast.

On Sunday, October 11 at 4pm I will present a Zoom talk on “The Politics of Climate”. Here below the details including the Zoom link. 

Please show up if you are interested. 

All the best to all of you! 

Doug Nunn 

“I want clean air. I want clean water. I want the cleanest air, want the cleanest water. The environment is very important to me.” 

Such was the claim made by President Donald Trump at the White House earlier this year. As we head toward the 2020 election in the midst of Western wildfires, following on those earlier in the year in Australia and the Amazon, and as the Trump administration works to emasculate and throttle the EPA, the Clean Air Act and the Paris Climate Accords, we must ask ourselves, what are the political realities of the Climate crisis in this election year? What are the environmental fiascoes we could face with 4 more years of Trump, McConnell and the politics of ecocide. 

I am now offering a “Politics of Climate” presentation a follow up to the Climate Reality project show I have been presenting for the past 2 years. The “Politics of Climate” talks about the history of environmentalism in the US, the breaking of the longtime consensus on National Parks and conservation during the Reagan administration, the hiding of increasing evidence of Climate Change by the fossil fuel industries, and the one-sided denialism of the Republican Party in the last decades. Exploration of the Green New Deal, Cap & Trade, and Carbon taxes are part of the presentation as are a discussion of both the Biden and Trump candidate platforms on Climate Change and the Environment. The show is about an hour long and will be followed by a Q & A. For further questions, please check in at dnunn@mcn.org 

Go Mother Earth! 

Please click the link below to join the Politics of Climate webinar: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86955667063

TRIVIA ANSWERS (from yesterday's questions)

1. Marco McClean correctly answered the first question (Peter Bergman owned property off Comptche-Ukiah Road).
2. The artist of the "Fighting Clowns" album cover was comedian Phil Hartman.

FOUND OBJECTS

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