NOTE: Changes in our print schedule mean the mail dispatch from Boonville is now on Thursdays, not Wednesdays. Subscribers, stores, and newsstands beyond the Anderson Valley will get their paper-papers a day later than previously. And Anderson Valley will get its weekly quotient of unvarnished truth on Thursdays.
SEEKING HELP FOR RACHEL JUSTER, written by Margaret Holub:
Many of us know Rachel Juster. She was born with liver disease and was adopted as a very ill infant by Sherman (of blessed memory) and Susan Juster and raised in Boonville. She was named and became bat mitzvah in our shul. Rachel is now 27 years old. She and her family have always known that one day she would need a liver transplant. With much personal and medical care she has made it to her present age. But the time is now here, and Rachel’s life is in the balance. Her doctors have told her that she has had as much prophylactic treatment for her condition as she can have.
When a person needs a liver transplant they can receive a donation from either a deceased donor or a living donor. A healthy person can have a section of his or her or their liver removed, and it will regrow in a matter of months. (The transplanted section will also regrow in the recipient.) Still it is a big surgery, with a significant recovery and risks.
Rachel is in the process of getting “on the list” for a cadaver donor. There are not enough donors for every person who needs a liver. If a living donor can be found for Rachel, she will not need to face these odds.
This is an almost unimaginable thing to ask of a healthy person, to undergo this surgery and recovery, especially for someone they may not know well. But after talking with Rachel about her current situation we decided that it was worth sharing her need for a liver.
The most basic requirements for a donor are that they have the same blood type as Rachel (O positive) and that they be in good health. I believe there may be age and other criteria as well. If someone is willing to explore the possibility of becoming a donor for Rachel, there would be extensive medical evaluation and counseling before their participation can be confirmed. I also do not know about insurance and other costs — all this would need to be explored.
If this is in your own realm of possibility and you would like to find out more, please be in touch with Rachel directly at racheljuster0@gmail.com, and she will put you in touch with her medical team. If you would like to circulate this letter further, please feel free to do so. If you would like to discuss this with me, please contact me. I don’t have any medical knowledge about this process, but I might be able to help you explore spiritual and ethical questions.
Let’s all keep Rachel in our hearts and prayers.
Margaret Holub
PS. Here’s a photo of Rachel in her early teens along with her high school graduation picture:
ERNIE PARDINI perfectly expresses what we all feel: “It’s Saturday night in the middle of town at mid evening, and there isn't a sound anywhere. No cars, no voices, no dogs barking, no chickens crowing. Nothing. Very eerie. For the first time since the onset of this pandemic I find myself wondering if our lives have been changed forever, never returning to the world we left behind. How long as a people can we endure the loneliness of this self-isolation before people start going stark raving mad? For the first time since this all started, I find myself afraid of what's yet to come.”
FROM THE AV HEALTH CENTER: We got vaccinated! Over the past two weeks we vaccinated all our eligible staff and 30 EMS workers. We worked in partnership with AV Fire and Redwood Coast Medical Services to get vaccines out to Gualala. Stay tuned for more info on when we will be able to start vaccinating our patients!
BOB ABELES WRITES: “Apparently in Mendocino County, officialdom has outsourced the vaccine into the capable hands of Adventist Health, the 'health care' combine run by cultists and staffed by random temps. Sleep well my droogs, sleep well.”
VICKI WHITEHEAD: My friend is looking for an artist named Trudy Smith who was in the valley at least 5 years ago. She sold a painting to Nancy Adams who has passed and Nancy's wish was for the painting to be returned to Trudy. Please contact Debra (707) 573-5448 if you have contact info for Trudy.
DAGO TOWN, NAVARRO
Southeast of the Navarro mill was a community of hotels and restaurants called “Dago Town,” pictured here in 1906. At the very far left a portion of the twin Hotel can be seen. Next door is the Toscano Hotel, owned and operated in its early days by the Pasero family. The third hotel, seen in the center of the photograph, is the Hotel D’Italia. The Stearns Lumber Company constructed this building, intending to use it as a hospital for their mill workers, but it never operated in this capacity. Alciede Bacci, of Vinegar Hill, converted it to a restaurant, bar and hotel. In 1907, Joe and Sabatine (Mama) Pardini purchased it and the name changed to Pardini’s Hotel. Mama and her sister Beppa provided the Valley with sumptuous dinners for over 50 years. Later it again underwent extensive remodeling, becoming the Navarro Inn, which burned down in 1974. To the far right is the Ainsley Hotel. The group in the picture was gathered for a Fourth of July celebration.
ERNIE PARDINI NOTES: My great grandmother and grandfather, Giuseppe and Sabatina Pardini owned one of the hotels shown in this picture. It was called the Hotel D’Italia. It remained in my family until 1953 when my great uncle Danny Pardini, who was running it at the time, was killed in a car wreck. It was later called the Navarro Inn until it burned down in the 1970s.
A READER WRITES: When we bought our place here a couple decades ago it came with a Ferrell Gas propane tank and account. We stayed with them until we discovered their "creative" pricing scheme, wherein they essentially charge all their customers different prices, depending on what they felt they could get away with. Once we discovered this scam we switched to ER [Eel River] Energy, which was a locally owned business who charged everyone the same, fair, price for propane. Unfortunately, ER sold out to a bigger conglomerate, ThompsonGas, a couple years ago, so I am afraid we may be returning to the bad old days. We haven't filled our tank in awhile, so I don't know where the price currently stands with Thompson. My advice to any propane delivery customers is to call around and get price quotes before ordering. Hopefully another locally owned business will pop up again (or already has).
THERE WILL BE A 2021 AV GRANGE VARIETY SHOW!
You heard right, we are going to do the 30th annual AV Grange Variety show this year.
Only it won't be at the traditional time in March.
There's no way we would do a virtual show, we've discussed an outside show. Wow, can you imagine how that opens up the possibilities? LARGE animal acts, monster truck pulls, motorcycles leaping the stage. That idea is still on the table, but it lacks a very important ingredient..... you, us, all of us together, you gotta hear the roar of the crowd, and smell the greasepaint.
It's most likely we'll wait until we can gather in the Grange hall again safely. Let’s aim for September, we'll keep you all informed.
But now is a great time to start working up your fabulous act, you got time after all. We encourage skits and of course animal acts, get creative. It will feel soooooo good to be together again.
Questions? ideas? get in touch,(oops), with Captain Rainbow who has a new phone number, 472-9189
AV HIGH SCHOOL'S ag teacher, Beth Swehla: “I have put a large trash can outside my classroom for donated bottles. Thanks. I am trying to gather 30-40 2 liter soda bottles for a rain gauge project. I want my students to each make a rain gauge at home. Do you have some to donate? I need them to be clean with lids. I need them soon. The bottles will need to sit for 3 days before I can safely prep the take home kits. I will put a box outside my classroom, Dome A, at the high school. Please wear a mask when you place them outside my class. Thank you.”
JEFF BURROUGHS WRITES: The recent reconfiguration of State Street in the greater downtown Ukiah area has really begun to take shape.
After a lengthy and at times very tumultuous relationship between locals and those responsible for cratering the streets, detouring the citizens and turning a deaf ear to its constituency, it would appear that some real progress has been made. I found myself being able to park right in front of Peking Tokyo Restaurant to pick up my to-go food order… something I was easily able to do before all of this crazy money construction began. But wait you say? The newly constructed areas for street parking that will allow multiple cars to park, diagonally, in front of downtown businesses is gonna be better than the old archaic, limited parking of cars along the single curb, right ? Uhhhh weeeell, no!
With no clear markings for the diagonal parking yet I simply parked my pick-up truck parallel to the sidewalk and as tight to the curb as possible but when I attempted to exit the vehicle I had to quickly close my door because the street traffic was right there. Imagine what will happen when vehicle’s rear-ends are sticking out there when parked, then imagine how traffic will have to come to a complete stop or actually have to back up themselves to clear traffic. And as I drove away from the weird set-up on the street in front of the restaurant I realized that this change to revitalize downtown will split the town right down the middle like a dull knife. Through traffic, people trying to get from one end of town to the other, unless they want to get bogged down in a quagmire of stop and go traffic every time someone backs out of the new diagonal parking, they will simply detour around downtown to School Street or more likely to the 101 freeway , bypassing all of the downtown businesses turning it into a dead zone not unlike the way down town LA looked in the Kurt Russell film "Escape from L.A."
DANNY KUNY WRITES: “To my friends out here on Facebook: I will be deleting my account. The reason is, if big tech can just shutdown and cancel our President, keep him from posting his thoughts and opinions then I want nothing to do with social media. This is supposed to be a free country where EVERYONE here can say what's on their mind. I will be deleting my account in 30 minutes. To all my friends, please take care and have a safe year.”
ED NOTE: Agree. The tech giants have delivered the biggest blow to free speech ever, and the liberals cheering them on don’t seem to realize their own right to say whatever’s on their minds is also now imperiled. There were mechanisms in place to erase the more egregious violations of on-line free speech, such as calls to kill non-white people, and most Americans can be, or should be, trusted to judge for themselves the validity of opinions of whatever from whomever. There was no need to close down the major platforms, and the reason they were shut down was to suit prevalent Democrat opinion following the events of January 6th.
WE ARE SERVING UP TAKE OUT MEALS Thursday, Friday & Sunday evenings during the month of January. This Thursday evening 1.7.21 we'll be making Whole Roasted Heritage Chicken (serves two) served with roasted matsutake mushrooms, fingerling potatoes and persimmon chutney- and of course a little something sweet. TBD. $60 take-out meal for two. pick up from 5:30 to 6:00pm.... order online @https://boonville-hotel-restaurant.square.site — happy rainy days to you all & take good care
BOB ABELES WRITES: Watching events unfold Wednesday I again felt a feeling that I last felt on September 11, 2001, a hollow feeling somewhere beyond sadness, a place on the borderline where despair begins. For the previous weeks I had concerns about January 6, a date that the President had all but circled in red sharpie. My concern grew when the President returned to Washington a day early. Then came the warning letter signed by all the former Secretaries of State. It was clear that something bad was brewing and it was set for January 6.
As had the 9-11 story, the story from the Capitol unfolded like some poisonously deformed flower. First banal bits about before with a smattering of the terrible now followed by an unbearable onslaught of nothing but NOW.
Here are my thoughts on where to go from here.
This was a premeditated attempt perpetrated by the President to throw havoc into the electoral procedure, the procedure that was about to declare him the loser of the 2020 election. The aim was to overturn the election. That the attempt was planned and executed so poorly is certainly our collective good fortune. This was sedition. It cannot be ignored.
Today, the President needs to be removed from office. I was encouraged to see the Vice President stand up to the President, but his duty is not yet done. He needs to meet with the cabinet and invoke the 25th Amendment, removing this dangerous President from office.
THE ANDERSON VALLEY is discovered fifty or so times a year by outside media. Our first discovery of 2021 was by Forbes magazine, and elicited this local response: “I sniggered then, and I snigger now. Did the author fly into town on a Learjet or Gulfstream?”
NO, THEY DON'T arrive by private jet. These intrepid gastro-explorers typically fly into SFO where they rent a car and head north for a week or two of freebies from the wineries, hotels and restaurants they discover in the great wilderness behind the Green Curtain. (The Green Curtain falls north of Cloverdale and lifts north of Crescent City at Pelican Bay.) Only wealthy media like Forbes can afford to fund the plane tickets and rent-a-cars these days. Before the fall of newspapers, even the larger dailies, papers like the Des Moines Register and the Philadelphia Inquirer, annually sent explorers up Highway 101. Why even the beloved Boonville weekly got discovered by a bunch of these expense account wilderness trekkers, including one hack who confessed he needed “a hook” (reason) to visit relatives in West Sonoma County, and the Boonville weekly was his hook. This guy swaggers in — swaggers, no exaggeration — and says, “I'll be right back. Gotta get some local color.” Ten minutes later he's back with the local color, which turned out to be a comment from Jimmy Humble that I call him, “Jimmy Bumble,” which I don't bother to deny because I don't want to engage this moron any longer than minimally necessary. Mr. Hack had cracked himself up with his local color, which duly appears in his piece, proving that his editors are even lamer than he is. Still chortling over his Humble-Bumble discovery, the guy says, “Gotta take a dump. Where's the bathroom?” I know the standards of basic decorum have slipped, but we need to know why he's going to the bathroom? I direct him down the hall to the one thin-walled commode serving the upstairs floor of the Farrer Building. There are several loud, defecatory explosions followed by… Well, passersby could have been knocked unconscious. Back from the noisiest bathroom visit in the 9 years we were headquartered in the Farrer Building, Mr. Big Time Media demands, “How long you been doing this?” and rolls through a few more minutes of disinterested questions during which he takes no notes. Thirty minutes later, he leaves with, “How long will it take me to get to Sebastopol?” Oh, I assure him, if you take your time, about an hour west over Mountain View Road then south on Highway One. You’ll be there in time for lunch.
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