THE ODDLY premature communiqué a few paragraphs below was e-mailed to us Tuesday as a press release, and sent home the same day in bilingual form with elementary school children. Edu-prose ranging from fuzzy to impenetrable, I read it twice before concluding that it said some money is missing from the PTA fund but we are wonderful, you are wonderful, we are all wonderful, and somehow while we were all being wonderful the money went missing.
FOR A WEEK NOW, the name of the accused has been promiscuously circulated. What if she's innocent? Her reputation has been seriously damaged before the investigation of the allegations is complete, and barely just begun. Maybe the money isn't missing, merely misplaced in one of the wonderfulness boxes.
SERIOUSLY, THE WAY these things normally work is that the accused is first confronted with the discrepant figures. He or she is then given an opportunity to explain the figures. If the explanation is defective the police are called. The police do an investigation and submit their findings to the District Attorney. The DA investigates. If he finds that an embezzlement has occurred he can either seek reimbursement or prosecute or both.
PRECEDENT. DA EYSTER, some of you will recall, sent a letter to Supervisor Kendall Smith telling her to either return the money she chiseled from the County on her travel account or else. Smith gave the money back because Eyster wasn't jiving around. Smith would have been arrested and charged.
THE SUM alleged to have disappeared in this case is $23,000. The accused said Monday night that she had just learned of the letter being circulated and that people were already calling her a criminal.
JANUARY 30, 2012. Dear Parents, It was recently brought to our attention some problems with the finances in the PTAV’s bank account, an account separate from the district’s. PTAV and the district are working with law enforcement to determine who is responsible and to recover the funds. The PTAV Board is being restructured to better achieve the goals of the group. The PTAV’s mission has always been to support its members (parents and teachers) and create a closer relationship between home and school. The PTAV Board is committed to rebuilding a positive and collaborative relationship with the parents, teachers, and members of the community at large. Please be patient while they work through this restructuring in the next couple of weeks. The PTAV is a dynamic and active group of parents and school staff who have provided the help and funds to not only maintain, but to expand the programs in our school in the last five years. We are grateful for all the work and support this organization has provided. Sincerely, JR Collins, Superintendent; Donna Pierson-Pugh, Principal; Nicole Mclain, PTAV President.
ANOTHER INTERESTING EVENT in Boonville last week. A bunch of high school boys left the campus at the noon hour to enact their version of the movie, ‘Fight Club.’ When they straggled back bloody and bruised to resume the educational experience, the high school principal, an uneven fellow named Tomlin, declared that henceforth the campus would be closed at lunch time and, additionally, 13 boys would be suspended for a day while the ringleaders would even more punitive time off from the rigors of secondary scholarship. Tomlin's disciplinary crackdown occurred for no real reason at all, but it's in the ancient tradition of American high schools in that it was wholly arbitrary; some of the involved got whacked, some didn't. But Principal Tomlin, who pulls down $92,000 for half a year's work, was also unhappy for other reasons. Not only did the Fight Clubbers post their faux fisticuffs on the internet for global viewing, several of them offered full-face denunciations of Tomlin himself. A high school's discipline guy is always going to be somewhat unpopular, but this guy is a little more than unpopular with his funding units, er, students. High school kids, boys especially, seriously dislike him, and there are lots of grumbles about him from parents, too. Anyway and overall about the Fight Club incident, so what? Teenage boys should be allowed to bleed their overloaded hormonal lines once in a while, and this event was really no more serious than boys being boys. Which they aren't allowed to be much anymore beneath the great PC mommy blanket that smothers all spontaneity, all joy, all life in educational Mendocino County.
FROM a Mendocino Beacon of January 1938: “The Fashauer brothers of Greenwood Ridge were at Elk, Monday. They were returning from the Ray ranch on Navarro Ridge where they killed a large sheepkilling bear. The old dog and her two pups ran the bear for over ten miles but were unable to tree him. The bear was so done out that Anthony Fashauer shot him while he was on the ground. He weighed about four hundred pounds, and was found to be full of sheep meat.”
SMALL SCHOOL HOOPS is coming down to a three-way duel between Mendocino, Point Arena and Laytonville.
THAT'S A NICE community gift Wendy Blankenheim and Doug Read have given us in the big, illuminated, nighttime heart glowing red out of the winter night on the hillside just north of Breggo Winery.
AND ANOTHER crucial community donor is Ms. Arlene T's early morning trash pick-ups along the Boonville roadsides. She's out there darn near every day picking up after us, and we sure as heck appreciate her efforts.
APOLOGIES to Miss Grecia Herrera whose surname we inadvertently dropped from last week's basketball account.
YORKVILLE MAN, 79, missing, but no sooner did we get the bulletin last Thursday than he wasn't missing, and doesn't a person have to be absent more than a couple of hours before the alarm bell is rung?
THE TALENTED singer Nahara knocked 'em dead at Lauren's last Saturday night while down at the Philo Grange the Anderson Valley Film Festival, organized by Steve Sparks, garnered some $2,000 for the Senior Center and other Valley non-profits. Steve summed it up as “An excellent festival. Raised about $2,000, the same as always but in a day less and without the $50 we usually ask from 20 or so local businesses. Good films, good discussions, fine food and bar provisions, many plaudits for our efforts.”
DA EYSTER'S APPEARANCE at the Unity Club on Thursday (tomorrow) is sold out for lunch, but interested persons should know they are welcome to hear the DA anyway after the sold out noon meal. If you arrive at 1pm you can hear what the DA, who will be accompanied by Sheriff Allman, has to say over coffee and cookies. The event is at Rivers Bend Retreat Center, Philo. With Eyster and Allman you get a twofer, Mendocino County's two top law enforcement officers.
THE ANDERSON VALLEY Fire Department is coordinating a Free Chipping Project in the Anderson Valley Area for the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council. As in years past, persons interesting in having free chipping done on their residential property can contact Colin Wilson at 895-2020. The project is designed to provide free chipping service to people who are creating defensible clearance around their homes and along their driveways in the greater Anderson Valley. Call for details.
THE FEBRUARY meeting of the Anderson Valley School Board will be held on Monday, February 13th in the admin trailers at the elementary school, tedium kicks off at 7.
FORTY YEARS AGO if you'd seen “End Corporate Rule” on the Fairgrounds billboard you'd have rubbed your eyes and looked again, and it would have said, “Kill the Hippies.” But darned if End Corporate Rule isn't up there right now for David Cobb's appearance tonight. (Tuesday)
A BOX VAN driven by Kenneth Fuller, 61, of Petaluma, unaccountably left Highway 128 at Haehl Grade near Yorkville last Thursday morning and rolled on down into a gully. The accident was witnessed by a passing Elk firefighter who quickly determined that Fuller, a scrap metal recycler, had not been injured. But the van contained propane cylinders requiring that hazardous materials protocols be adhered to and, after several hours, it was determined that no toxics had escaped the van.
VIOLET CARPELLO RENICK isn't the only local enjoying the remininscences of the late Maurice Tindall. Violet, among the few native people remaining in Mendocino County who grew up in a Pomo-speaking home on Anderson Creek across the road from Evergreen Cemetery, remembers as a child shopping at the old Tindall Market in Boonville where her grandfather, Frank Luff, spoke a dialect of Pomo with Tindall. “Maurice Tindall was the only white man my grandfather knew who could speak our language,” Violet recalls. I will always enjoy Violet's remark to an uppity old timer who was bragging about her seniority in The Valley. “Well,” Violet said in a quiet voice of ultimate triumph, “my family has been here for 10,000 years.”
WHILE we're working the ethnic beat here, this from the January 29, 1887 edition of the Mendocino Beacon: “China New Years was celebrated by the Celestials of this place in a very enthusiastic manner. From Saturday morning until Monday night there was almost a constant fusillade of fire-crackers and bombs.” It was these Celestials who hand dug the Navarro Cistern which provides the perfectly sweet and pure water enjoyed by several Deepend households to this day. Chinese also hand dug the Skunk line tunnel outside Fort Bragg and the Eel Diversion Tunnel at Potter Valley.
A PROPELLER BEANIE event occurred at the Grace Hudson Museum last night (Tuesday) called “UFOs: Their Spiritual Mission and Role in Coming World Changes.” Co-sponsored by the Mendocino Environment Center and Sharing for Peace Network, the presentation advertised a Valley telephone number for information. The world is certainly gone to heck in a frayed handbasket, but it's unlikely that ET and his friends would want to take over management.
BLACK JANUARY. Steve Sparks writes: “Gentlemen.... Amongst all the turmoil and scandal of the stories featuring J. Schmitt and All That Good Stuff, the High School Fight Club and its accompanying student suspensions, and the PTA's financial irregularities, perhaps the most disturbing piece of news I have heard this past few days is that The Boonville Saloon, formerly The Boonville Lodge is closing and the liquor license is being sold to an establishment in Point Arena. If this is true we may never get one back here in the Valley. Say it ain't so!”
MY FRIEND SEAN at Pic 'N Pay laments the deteriorating local business climate. He says his business was alarmingly down in 2011 and 2012 is off to a bad economic start. Sean's distress is widely shared in the Anderson Valley, and there's not so much as a glimmer of hope at the state and national leadership levels.
THE VALLEY'S very own Kathy Cox, a truly excellent teacher, is offering Spanish language classes for adults at the high school beginning the week of February 19th. Fifteen sessions at the bargain rate of $150, days and starting times to be determined at the first meeting on Wednesday, February 15th, 5pm, in the Career Center Classroom.
THE NEWLY formed Anderson Valley Tennis League team scored 3 wins no losses in their first match-up with Cloverdale. Tina Walters paired with co-captain Arnaud Weyrich in a see-saw match with the first set ending in 7-6 after a tie-breaker and an equally hard fought 6-4 second set. J.R. and Jeanne Collins won their first set 6-2 but then had to dig deep to pull out a 7-5 win for the second set. The combo of Peter Gordon and Rich Ferguson proved too much for the Cloverdale team with a 6-4, 6-3 triumph. Well done team AV. The next match will be on the home courts at the high school at 10 am on Saturday, February Come out and cheer on the home team.
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