Mendocino County Today: Friday, Nov. 5, 2021

Off & On | 24 Cases | Another Death | Falling Back | Panther Sports | Davis Search | Quote Quibble | MCDH 1970 | Farm Stand | Garden Tour | Nadel Stall | Book Sale | Eyster Backhand | FB Trestle | Ed Notes | Perched | Boontling | Yesterday's Catch | Let Go | Buster Record | Ag Water | Cat Door | Food Policy | Westport | Coal Use | Barges | Anti Antivaxxers | Asesino | JFK Murder | Battle Tested | Electric Future | Barcelona 1936 | Redistricting Meeting | Coast Cove | American Zionism

LIGHT RAIN is expected today and early Sunday, mostly north of Mendocino County. Cooler, drier weather is expected late Sunday and Monday before another front moves in early Tuesday. Elevated winds, more widespread rain, and high elevation snow are all expected with this second front. (NWS)

24 NEW COVID CASES and another death reported in Mendocino County yesterday afternoon.

MENDO COVID DEATH #90

A Mendocino County resident has passed away from COVID-19. Our thoughts are with all of their family and friends. 

Death #90: 56 year-old woman from the Fort Bragg area; not vaccinated. 

Public Health asks all Mendocino County residents to think about the ways they are protecting themselves and their families from COVID-19. When in doubt, consult with and follow all CDC and CDPH guidance. Vaccination, masking, and social distancing remain the best tools for combating COVID-19. 

Fully vaccinated people over age 65 (or over age 50 with certain health conditions) should strongly consider getting a COVID-19 vaccine booster to improve immunity. If you have questions about boosters or vaccines in general, speak with your doctor, or call Public Health at 707-472-2759. To find the nearest vaccine clinic in your area, please visit the Public Health website at: www.mendocinocounty.org/covid19 

NCS CHAMPIONSHIP VOLLEYBALL GAME vs. Mendocino, Saturday November 6 @ 7:00pm!

Congratulations to the AVHS Varsity Volleyball team for defeating Fremont Christian to move onto the NCS Championship Game vs. Mendocino High School, this Saturday, November 6th at 7:00pm. The game will be played at Mendocino High School. We want to pack the Mendocino HS Gym full of Panther fans and supporters, so please purchase your tickets as soon as possible!

All tickets must be purchased through the following site: gofan.co/app/events/443494?schoolId=CIFNCS

Tickets are $12.00 for adults and $5.00 for students. *Cash is not accepted at the door*.

On the website for tickets it says that the game is being played in Anderson Valley. *This is an error*, *it is being played at Mendocino High School*.

Get out there and support our Lady Panthers!!!!

James Snyder

Principal/Assistant Superintendent

Anderson Valley Jr./Sr. High School

 (707) 895-3496

* * *

POSTSEASON SPORTS UPDATES

Wednesday night our boys soccer team traveled to play San Francisco Waldorf at Amazon Crocker Park in the lower Mission District. It was a hard-fought game in fake turf and under stadium lights, but the boys ended up losing 4-2. We had an exciting penalty shot scored by senior Miguel Padilla and a free kick scored by junior Steven Torales. Though we didn't advance to the semifinals, it was an exciting conclusion to an interesting season. 

On the other side of the Bay in Fremont, our volleyball team defeated Fremont Christian in the fourth set after three close sets. Now Anderson Valley will be competing against our local rivals Mendocino in the Finals. Considering that the only two league losses this season were to Mendocino, this will be an exciting end to an extraordinary season. We will travel to play Mendocino on their home court Saturday, November 6, at 7:00. (Arthur Folz) 

SEARCH FOR MISSING HUNTER IN MENDOCINO COUNTY TURNS TO EEL RIVER

by Matt Pera

A man who went missing during a hunting trip in Mendocino County late last month may have been swept away in the swollen Eel River during a fierce storm, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office said.

John Davis, 48, from Humboldt County, was last seen early Oct. 24 by his son. The two of them were camping beside the Eel River when the rising water came into their tent and woke them up, said Capt. Greg Van Patten, a Sheriff’s Office spokesman.

Davis’ son hiked back to their vehicle, but Davis opted to stay, saying he would relocate the tent, according to Van Patten.

In the days since, more than 200 searchers have combed about 22 miles of wilderness looking for Davis near the campsite, which was about four miles east of mile marker eight on Highway 162, Van Patten said.

Search crews from several counties, including Sonoma, helped look for Davis in the days after he went missing, and the National Guard and California Highway Patrol searched the area with helicopters. But as of Thursday, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office was the only agency still looking for him.

The Sheriff’s Office is now focusing its search on the river, looking for Davis in the water and along the banks.

“He was an accomplished hunter and camper,” Van Patten said. “We feel we would have come across him if he was on the land still.”

Authorities believe Davis was either swept away by the water while in his tent or while trying to cross the river, Van Patten said.

Searchers found Davis’ dog the day after he was reported missing, but they have not located his tent or any of his belongings.

Davis was described as 5-foot-11, 220 pounds with brown hair and blue eyes. He was last seen wearing a camouflage rain jacket and neon green pants with a reflective stripe.

The Sheriff’s Office is asking anyone with information about Davis’ location to call 707-463-4086.

A Facebook page dedicated to updates on the search has been created.

(Press Democrat)

WHO OWNS COAST HOSPITAL?

Mendocino Coast District Hospital Board Treasurer John Redding commented on Chris Calder’s recent report about the Coast Hospital District Board’s attempt to address problems at the Adventists Coast Hospital. The AVA’s Chris Calder replied and this exchange ensued.

First, the last few paragraphs of Calder’s report:

“According to Treasurer Redding, even though the district never applied for any relief funds, large amounts were deposited in district accounts by HHS ‘according to some algorithm,’ eventually amounting to $5.8 million. Unsure if the district actually qualified for the money, the board spent none of it. Now, he said, it appears that the district can keep at least $4.4 million. ‘That will go a long way toward building a new hospital, or whatever,’ he said. ‘We're kind of flush with cash right now,’ he said, adding that at least $3 million in additional money for adjusted MediCal and MediCare payments has also just showed up in district bank accounts. ‘They think we still own the hospital for some reason,’ Redding said.”

Redding: The correct website address is http://www.mchcd.org. The “www” must be used to get to the new website. Also, the last quote is incorrect. Peevishly yours, John.

Calder: No, the last quote is not incorrect. Watch the meeting. “For some reason, they think we still own the hospital,” is exactly what Redding said. Truth matters, Mr. Redding.

Redding: Yes, I said that but not in the context in which you place the quote. I had remarked that CMS has delayed a $2.1 M payment owed the District because they think we still own the hospital. This was referring to the fact that the CHOW, or change of ownership, is still pending even though that document was filed months and months ago. Context matters, Mr. Calder. If you want to get the story straight and are unsure of what was meant, just call me for clarification or comment. Instead of asserting that truth doesn’t matter to me. Which seems more applicable to you than to me.

Calder: I stand by my reporting. The statement Redding made in his initial comment that the quote was incorrect was false, and you acknowledge that. Now he says it was taken out of context. That is also false. The context in which he made his statement is the context in which it was reported: Redding referred to MediCal and MediCare making reimbursement to the district related to adjustments of payments from previous years. I think at this point, an interview with Redding, all on the record and recorded, by both of us if you like, would help the public understand both his commitment to the truth, and the job he is doing representing the people of the Mendocino Coast and their healthcare needs. When can we sit down and talk?

VELMA'S FARM STAND AT FILIGREEN FARM

Friday: 2-5pm; Saturday: 11am-3pm

At the farm stand this week: apples, pears, quince, winter squash, potatoes, onions, beets, chard, kale, celery, scallions, and more. We will also have dried flower bouquets and wreaths, olive oil, and dried fruit (peaches, prunes and raisins) for sale as well. All items are certified biodynamic and delicious! Follow us on Instagram for updates @filigreenfarm or email Annie at farmstand@filigreenfarm.com with any questions. We accept cash, credit card, check, and EBT/SNAP (Market Match available too!)

JUDGE NADEL TURNS DEAF EAR TO COAST TIMBER EMERGENCY

Dear Friends and Forest Lovers,

We believe our case is very strong. Yesterday, Judge Jeanine Nadel of Superior Court in Ukiah postponed our TRO hearing to protect Enchanted Meadow. She ordered the emergency hearing to be heard sixteen days later on November 19, at 9:30 am in Dept. E. In the interim the Mendocino Redwood Compan may continue to log and desecrate the Enchanted Meadow environs.

Contact us at info@friendsofenchantedmeadow.org if you're someone who “cares a whole awful lot.” Thank you!

Friends of Enchanted Meadow

Quote from the Lorax: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.”

* * *

Beth Bosk: Somebody needs to run against Jeanine Nadel. She's bought and paid for by MRC. The whole purpose of a TRO is to put a stop to permanent damage so a case can be made.

Jeanine Nadel has used this stall before to allow total destruction to go unabated. This is the second time on this THP. Are you or do you know an attorney willing to run against her? There will be plenty of help.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Dear AVA Editor:

In reference to your back-handed election endorsement in which you wrote, “[DA Eyster] makes reasonable and proportionate charging decisions.” Thank you for the professional compliment and thank you for noticing.

As for the claim of my having “imperious personality tendencies,” I had to pause to research this niggle, as I couldn’t tell whether this was another professional compliment or an ad hominem attack.

According to the very old Webster’s Dictionary sitting on my bookshelf (yes, I still have and use books), an imperious personality is “befitting or characteristic of one of eminent rank or attainments; commanding, dominant, intensely compelling.” So, in that Websterian context, thank you again for the professional compliment and thank you for noticing.

However, your misguided attempt to portray the interim auditor as a competent underdog is a disagreement I will leave for another day. As we both know, her fight ultimately is not with me or my staff, as we were not the five votes she took for granted but failed to procure at the Board level.

You really fell off the wagon and must have hit your head hard in leveling criticism at the high-quality investigators working in my office who promote public safety and assist in investigating serious and violent crime. Even you, Messrs. Anderson and Scaramella, have in the past acknowledged the DA investigators for their high-level functioning and expertise in a wide array of investigative functions ranging from officer-involved shootings to homicide investigations to complex and intricate white collar criminal activity.

I have to admit I did laugh a little when I saw your misfired arrow that I somehow manipulated CEO Angelo to somehow “pad” my office with investigators.

The current number of investigators working under my supervision is based on demonstrated real world public safety needs vetted by the county personnel department, the CEO’s office, and, ultimately, the entire Board of Supervisors. The number of investigators positions needed was approved long before I was sworn in as DA; all I have done was seek out high quality law enforcement candidates to upgrade each position when opportunities presented themselves.

I trust your hard fall was not from a “defund the DA” bandwagon. The DA investigators are necessary to and important for dealing with the realities of a more violent class of defendant that we are unfortunately having to help investigate and vigorously prosecute on almost a daily basis.

Thank you for this opportunity to thank you and to share important information.

If you would like to further “investigate” the DA investigators and their importance to local law enforcement and public safety, please feel free to schedule a meeting with Chief DA Investigator Bailey and I over here in Ukiah. I believe you know the way over the hill and, while I have been the DA, you folks have always been welcomed in the “inner sanctum,” as you have in the past referred to my basement office.

DA Dave

ED NOTE: All highly debatable, but I'll take the DA up on his invitation for an in-person visit, but as always prior to visits with the county's lead law enforcement officer in the ancient basement catacombs of the County Courthouse, putting my affairs in order and making sure at least a dozen people know where I am.

ED NOTES

OF COURSE the Republicans have announced they will SUE to stop Biden's “unconstitutional” plan to fine businesses up to $14,000 for unvaxxed workers: GOP and unions say rules will lead to staff shortages and make Americans “choose between the shot and putting food on the table.”

IF BIDEN were a credible president and not the obviously incapacitated shell he is, no matter what he does the yobbos will oppose it. If their orange blimp had ordered a national vax administered straight into their eyeballs the yobbos would have lined up the next day.

WHY THE DEMOCRATS LOSE: I think Stephen Rosenthal has it exactly right as far as he goes: “If the Dems have any hope of retaining a semblance of relevancy in the 2022 elections, they’ll need to stop the psychobabble about race, gender, name changes, defunding the police and climate change. I lean toward the Progressive wing of the party so I’m not implying that those things aren’t worthwhile, but right now most folks don’t give a shit about any of them or what the state of the world will be in 2075. They care about $5.00/gallon gas and $100 for a bag of groceries. The focus needs to be on runaway inflation and a serious bully-pulpit effort to stem it. Another round of stop-gap stimulus payments won’t do a thing, but implementing strict counter inflationary controls – on everything from energy, housing, food, health care, the list goes on – will get the public’s attention.”

YUP, and the national libs, feeble and as out of it as they are, even when they are correct, lack the propaganda fire of the fascisti with all their flash-bang graphics and Fox News zippy simplification. These latter-day Goebbels know how to reach the inner depths of the primitive brain. The lib media, by contrast, is not only cringing, it's as tiresome as the Democrats’ lead figures. And nobody reads anything longer than a tweet.

A PHILO WOMAN stopped me at the post office today, introducing herself as a subscriber before she admonished me, “I read your paper every week but you're too negative. Don't you like any Democrats?” Hmmm. I racked my brain for a Democrat I liked, it being assumed by both of us that we absolutely loathed all the Republican officeholders. “Ro Khanna,” I blurted. “I like him. And I like AOC.” She came back with, “Biden isn't all that bad, Bruce.” Not to provoke the old girl further, I didn't say, “Yes he is, always has been, but now that he's an international living symbol of elder abuse, I feel sorry for the guy.” “Gotta go, hon. Nice seeing you.” It wasn't until I was back in the safety of my vehicle that I realized I'd called her, “hon.” Just blurted it out. And I criticize Biden…

RE PG&E's local onslaught, a Yorkville reader comments, “Regarding PG&E contractors; You should see Big Oaks Drive in Yorkville, they’ve been here for two months and have devastated it. We’re calling it No Oaks Drive now.”

FORTY YEARS AGO, The Christian Science Monitor came to town, and…

A Wee Deek On Boont Harpin'

by Stewart McBride 

BOONVILLE, CALIF. April 9, 1981 — Shortly after quitting time in the Anderson Valley, loggers in plaid wool shirts and steel-toed boots park their pickup trucks and track mud across the floor of a restaurant here. Inside the old-timers play pinochle, the radio plays Johnny Cash, and lumberjacks inhale homemade huckleberry pie and slurp down a horn of zeese.

Here in Boonville, a remote hamlet 100 miles north of San Francisco, a "horn of zeese" means a cup of coffee and the term derives from a local hunting camp cook in the 19th century whose initials were Z.C. He made a bitterly strong pot of java. At this restaurant -- also called the Horn of Zeese -- you can also order jeffered (hot) and fridgy (cold) sandwiches, fridgy charl (ice cream), scrambled easters (eggs), mashed boos (potatoes), boont butter (gravy), a teesle and borp slibs broadie burger (bacon burger with cheese), or the "fogeaters special": sertle and boarf boos (fish and chips). The menu further announces the rudy nebs (water) is free, and that "It's bahl to deek on you. Hope you enjoy harpin' tidric and are plenty scottied" which, for the uninitiated, roughly translates: "It's good to see you. Hope you enjoy a chat and that you are plenty hungry."

This apparent jabberwocky, tossed around the Horn of Zeese, is more than short-order slang; it is a unique local language called "Boontling" or "Boont." The lingo has been around since the 1880s, has a distinct vocabulary of at least 1,500 words, and is a colorful regional quirk which defies both the melting pot theory and standard Walter Cronkite English, and has attracted the attention of linguists and anthropologists alike.

At the turn of the century nearly 500 people living in the vicinity of Boonville spoke the language. Today, while most anybody in town can order a meal or greet somebody at the post office in "Boontling," only a couple dozen of the oldtimers like Buzzard, Wee Ite, Weefus, and Deekin are fluent and can, as they say, sit around "harpin' a heelch of the ling of the land of the Beeson tree."

Bob (Chipmunk) Glover is one of those men. His great-grandfather, born in Switzerland, was one of the first homesteaders in the Anderson Valley. He arrived in 1855 and Chipmunk has taken it upon himself to preside as self-appointed historian, linguist, and staunch defender of Boonville's language and culture. You might say Chipmunk is to Boontling what the Academie Franaise is to French.

He writes a weekly column in Boont for the town's Anderson Valley Advertiser. The column is called "Chipmunk Harpin'" and its author claims the ability to speak both "deep" and "light" Boontling, depending on the occasion and erudition of his audience. He advises, for instance, "If you're going to write a song in Boontling that you want to become a nationwide No. 1, you wouldn't do it in deep Boont."

Chipmunk, who draws his nickname from a miserly grandfather, is a small man, barely 5 feet 2 inches, with an acerbity and intelligence sufficient to compensate for his size. The day we met for lunch at the Redwood Drive-in across Route 128 from the Horn of Zeese, Chipmunk ordered a "chipmunk burger," and as it arrived in one of those red plastic mesh baskets, he began his lecture on the region's language and geography.

The Anderson Valley, like all Gaul, is divided into three parts. Three towns to be exact: Boonville, Philo, and Navarro. "And the people from Boonville are a different breed of cat," confides Chipmunk, bearing down on his burger. The pioneers who settled in Boonville in the mid-19th century were largely Southern mountain folk. Many came from two counties in appalachia: Washington County, Va., and Ashe County, N.C. They brought with them Scotch-Irish brogues and Southern Democratic politics. During the Civil War they cheered for Dixie.

The people, however, who settled in the lower end of the valley, in Philo and Navarro, were Germans, Italians, Swiss, and Swedes, from northern Republican regions like New York and Illinois. They were Yankees at heart. And so, throughout the 19th century, Anderson Valley carried on its own backyard civil war with the "Boonters" on one side, and the "Poleekers" (as the residents of Philo were called) and the Navarroites on the other.

Denmark Creek, which separates Boonville from the other two towns, is still known in the valley as the "Mason-Dixon line." Even the wildlife seems to respect the border. "There are all kinds of rattlesnakes around Boonville but never has a rattlesnake crossed the Mason-Dixon line," says Chipmunk.

Separated by only six miles, Philo and Boonville remain worlds apart. Even the weather is different. Philo's annual rainfall is 10 inches more than Boonville. Consequently, the lower end of the valley is characterized by fog, towering redwoods, and luxuriant undergrowth, while Boonville is a dryer, brushier terrain. Settlers in the lower valley went into logging, but Boonters stuck primarily to subsistence farming on small plots with a few pigs, chickens, sheep, and apple trees.

The Boonters' Dogpatch life style, their isolation, their clannishness led the people in the neighboring towns to label them hicks, hillbillies, and "squirrel bacon." (The last is an apparent reference to the large quantities of wild game Boonters consumed.) The Boonters, in turn, showed their disdain for the outside world by calling city folk "bright-lighters" and "turkey necks" (gawkers), and labeling coastal dwellers "fogeaters," "ab (abalone) chasers," and "briney kimmies." ("Kimmie" is Boontling for man, probably from the Scotch-Irish kimmer or "comer.")

Thus the language grew in part from the Boonters' xenophobia, and it was used as a defense mechanism, a way of gossiping about strangers in their presence without being understood. It was also a means of passing time in a town that was long on time and short on entertainment. After the summer sheepshearing and hops picking the winter rainy season brought mudslides that made roads in and out of the valley nearly impassable. In these pre-radio days, young men in cabins or deerhunting camps would sit around making up new Boont words as part of an improvised game that sounds like a forerunner of Password.

"You'd find a bunch of sheepherders going up the side of Bald Mountain," says Chipmunk, "to a cabin with an old sawed redwood table and all sitting around a kerosene lamp, talking and developing this coded language. The game was to 'shark' each other, which meant to say a new word in the proper Boontling structure and make the other person ask, 'What does it mean?'"

"Why, Edna Wallach said her husband used to sit up with a dictionary 'til three in the morning, inventing and devising words that he could use when he came to town to shark the Boonter. The trick was, it must fit the proper structure in terms of use of phonemes, glottal stops, and vowel shifts. You understand, these were not men of great education but they fit the language into tight forms. The term 'to harp' means to say, speak, or explain, but 'to hark' is to improperly use the Boontling language.

"You see, a Boonter is a bragger, a theatrical person, playing on the stage of life, playing it to the hilt and hoping someone is watching," says Chipmunk with the aplomb of a Henry Higgins playing to an audience of Eliza Doolittles. "Context, context is everything in Boontling. Take, for example, the word mossy which as a verb means to change the subject rapidly in a conversation. But as a noun it means a kitchen apron.

"An old-timer at the Anytime Saloon once had said he had taken all he could from the boss, so he reached back, untied his apron and threw it in the air. The boys said it just sailed like a butterfly, and ever since, when you say somebody 'butterflied their mossy,' you mean they quit their job," says Chipmunk , who between paragraphs is making quick work of a chocolate-covered donut.

Dr. Charles Adams is a former English professor at California State University at Chico in northern California who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Boonville language, which was eventually published by the University of Texas as a 272-page book called "Boontling, An American Lingo." In strict linguistic terms, Boontling is not actually a language, says Adams.

"It's really a jargon because the linguistic structure, the phonology, grammar, and syntax are essentially English. And yet Boontling is far more complicated than, say, the sort of jargon used by baseball players or plumbers with a specialized vocabulary to talk about their particular business," Dr. Adams explains. Dr. Adams, who now is associate vice-president of the university, spent three years doing research, boarding off and on with Phocian McGimsey, a local oldtimer who proved to be one of Adam's chief informants.

What makes Boontling distinct, of course, is the vocabulary. In addition to borrowing words from Spanish, Pomo Indian, Scotch-Irish, and what Dr. Adams calls the Midland America dialect, Boontling's "other productive sources of words were individual coinages based on local anecdotes, imitation of common sounds, and the distortion of English words and expressions, mainly by merging words, dropping or adding syllables, and shifting the natural accent," he writes.

One rich source of Boont vocabulary is the names of local residents. Boonter Jeff Vestal kept a big fire going in his fireplace even in the summertime, so a fire became a jeffer. Charlie Ball was a local Indian too shy to speak, so if you charlie ball someone, you've embarrassed them. A buckey walter is a pay telephone because the first phone in the valley was owned by Walter Levi and a call back then only cost a buckey -- a nickel. A Beeson tree is a riding saddle because they were made by local saddlemaker Henry Beeson, who carved them out of buckeye wood. Nettie Wallace was always adorned to the hilt, so anyone overdressed is said to be nettied. If you're ot'n, you're working hard because an old Swede named Otto always kicked up a lot of dirt and sweat when he worked. (The term white oakin', the antonym of buckeye -- to loaf -- also means working hard because white oak is difficult to split.)

In the Boont, Leo (Sandy) Sanders is a "Poleeker," because he resides in Philo, on the other side of the Mason-Dixon line. He lives in a pink house on the edge of a cow pasture that is part of the 160-acre homestead his grandfather settled in 1864. Sandy recalls as a youngster learning Boontling on the sly, against his mother's wishes. "One of my classmates in high school went to Boonville on weekends and came back on Mondays with new words. Soon all the boys around school were harpin' Boont. Philo people, of course, were never welcomed in Boonville. There was no love lost between us. The baseball games usually broke up in fist fights, the dances likewise."

Over the last couple of decades, however, the people of Boonville, Philo, and Navarro have foregone their McCoy-Hatfield feuding, and joined hands to preserve the valley's unique lingo, which many fear is dying out. Mr. Sanders's wife, Edna, whom he affectionately calls skoolch (schoolteacher), taught Boontling throughout the 1960s to third graders in the Anderson Valley Elementary School.

Her students wrote stories in Boont, plays in Boont, and divided Boont words and syllables the way one might dissect any new language. Ironically, not only did they learn Boontling but, according to Mrs. Sanders, their English reading scores were 9 percent higher than those of the children who didn't study Boontling. While teaching she compiled two Boont booklets which are sold at the Horn of Zeese: "A Slib of Lorey" (A Bit of Folklore) and "Bahl Gorms in Boont" (Good Eating in Boonville), a collection of local recipes.

At that time the Sanderses also helped form an informal group called the Boontling Club for the expressed purpose of protecting the local language and culture. The use of Boontling had fallen off dramatically after World War I, when many of the language's inventors went off to fight or work in shipbuilding and never returned home. The dilution of Boontling was furthered by the lumber boom in the 1940s, which brought in thousands of bright-lighters (in five years, the valley's population tripled) who looked down their noses at the backwoodsy lingo. For nearly two decades Boontling was driven underground. During the mild revival in the 1960s Charles Adams arrived in town to work on his dissertation.

In 1964, when he started work, the Boonters were still defensive, somewhat ashamed, and afraid another outsider might write them off as a bunch of country bumpkins. "I took it slow," says Dr. Adams. "We first talked about hunting and rifles, which I know something about. Then I struck a bargain with the club. I would provide them a scholarly record of the language, if they would provide me an opening to the oldtimers. They cut a deal and the rest is history."

Dr. Adams worries that Boontling is rapidly on the way to becoming "an artifact, a historical curiosity." But Chipmunk and the other Boont loyalists reassure themselves "use of the language has always been cyclical" and soon it will be back in vogue.

Part of keeping any language alive is molding it to the changing needs of its users. While the addition of new words to Boontling is a "highly sensitive subject among the oldtimers," says Chipmunk, he makes a point of trying to liven up his weekly column with fresh Boont terms much in the old Password game style, which promoted use of the English language in the late 19th century.

One new word is "grale." "That's what all the young people are trying to save now, the gray whale," he says. 'Posey tweed' is another, and it means a flower child, or hippie." Unfortunately, most of the posey tweeds who have been settling in the valley are not seriously studying the local language, and as Chipmunk says, "Boont is not like learning to ride a bicycle; you've got to keep it up."

A Boontling glossary

Though Boontling is largely a spoken rather than a written language, Dr. Charles Adams compiled a dictionary of some 1,500 Boont words, of which the following is a "wee deek" (brief look):

• ale A letter. (Reshaped "a letter.")
• beljeek A jack rabbit. (Combination of "Belgian" --Belgian hare -- and "jeek" for "jack.")
• bohoyk To laugh loudly. (Imitative).
• boshe Deer; to hunt deer. (From Pomo Indian bishe, "deer.")
• buckeye To loaf. (From the longer expression "cutting buckeye." The buckeye shrub is soft, brittle, and cuts easily.)
• buckey A nickel. (Nickels once had the head of a "buck" Indian on one side.)
• chigrel Food; to eat. (Related to the Scotch-Irish chig and chiggle "to chew.")
• doolsey Candy, sweets. (Spanish dulse.)
• eeld'm Wife; old woman. (Reshaped Scotch-Irish "old dame.")
• featherleg A cocky person. (Bantam roosters have feathers on their legs.)
• forbes Fifty-cent piece. (Reshaped "four bits.")
• haireem A dog. (Reshaped "hairy mouth.")
• higs Money. (From "hig," a local term for a "hog dollar," a silver dollar.)
• itch neemer A person who no longer craves drink. (Reshaped "itch no more.")
• lockin' A wedding.
• pike To travel.
• seertle A fish; a salmon. (Reshaped "sore tail," local word for spawning salmon.)
• skipe A preacher. (Reshaped "sky pilot.")
• smeelch Coins; small change. (Reshaped "small change.")
• squeakyteek A digger squirrel. (Imitative of its bark.)
• tidrik A party; social gathering. (Probably from "tea drink.")
• trashmover A heavy winter storm.
• tweed A child.

(Stewart McBride was a Staff correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor in 1981.)

CATCH OF THE DAY, November 4, 2021

BRENT ANDERSON, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

EDUARDO AVALOS, Boonville. Suspended license.

NICHOLAS BAKEWELL, Willits. Protective order violation.

MOSIYAH BLACKWELL, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

DUSTIN BLAKESLEY, Ukiah. Domestic battery, failure to appear.

MICHELLE CARR, Ukiah. Controlled substance, probation revocation.

WILLIAM FRANKS, Ukiah. DUI causing bodily injury.

JACOB HASS, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ROBERT MCKEE, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

JOSE PACHECO JR., Ukiah. DUI.

AMANDA TERLOUW, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

KRYSTAL WILLIAMS, Willits. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, failure to appear.

ANTHONY HOPKINS BRIANNA WIEST GOES DEEP:

Let go the people who are not prepared to love you. This is the hardest thing you will have to do in your life and it will also be the most important thing. Stop having hard conversations with people who don't want change.

Stop showing up for people who have no interest in your presence. I know your instinct is to do everything to earn the appreciation of those around you, but it's a boost that steals your time, energy, mental and physical health.

When you begin to fight for a life with joy, interest and commitment, not everyone will be ready to follow you in this place. This doesn't mean you need to change what you are, it means you should let go of the people who aren't ready to accompany you.

If you are excluded, insulted, forgotten or ignored by the people you give your time to, you don't do yourself a favor by continuing to offer your energy and your life. The truth is that you are not for everyone and not everyone is for you.

That's what makes it so special when you meet people who reciprocate love. You will know how precious you are.

The more time you spend trying to make yourself loved by someone who is unable to, the more time you waste depriving yourself of the possibility of this connection to someone else.

There are billions of people on this planet and many of them will meet with you at your level of interest and commitment.

The more you stay involved with people who use you as a pillow, a background option or a therapist for emotional healing, the longer you stay away from the community you want.

Maybe if you stop showing up, you won't be wanted. Maybe if you stop trying, the relationship will end. Maybe if you stop texting your phone will stay dark for weeks. That doesn't mean you ruined the relationship, it means the only thing holding it back was the energy that only you gave to keep it. This is not love, it's attachment. It's wanting to give a chance to those who don't deserve it. You deserve so much, there are people who should not be in your life.

The most valuable thing you have in your life is your time and energy, and both are limited. When you give your time and energy, it will define your existence.

When you realize this, you begin to understand why you are so anxious when you spend time with people, in activities, places or situations that don't suit you and shouldn't be around you, your energy is stolen.

You will begin to realize that the most important thing you can do for yourself and for everyone around you is to protect your energy more fiercely than anything else. Make your life a safe haven, in which only ′′compatible′′ people are allowed.

You are not responsible for saving anyone. You are not responsible for convincing them to improve. It's not your work to exist for people and give your life to them! If you feel bad, if you feel compelled, you will be the root of all your problems, fearing that they will not return the favours you have granted. It's your only obligation to realize that you are the love of your destiny and accept the love you deserve.

Decide that you deserve true friendship, commitment, true and complete love with healthy and prosperous people. Then wait and see how much everything begins to change. Don't waste time with people who are not worth it. Change will give you the love, the esteem, happiness and the protection you deserve.

snopes.com/fact-check/anthony-hopkins-let-go/

TRUE WATER MATH

Editor,

Keta Hodgson is furious that she received a glass of water at a restaurant without asking, citing it as a needless waste. Let’s do some arithmetic. If every citizen of Sonoma County (rounded to 500,000) goes out once a week and receives that pint of water, that works out to 3.25 million gallons per year. That is the amount roughly seven acres of cannabis require per year. Sonoma County has permitted 10,000 times that acreage for cannabis. This is to say nothing of vineyards and other crops. So while I would agree that every little bit helps, let’s keep our outrage in perspective. Every citizen could cut their personal drinking and flushing to zero, and it would barely dent the water deficit when compared to the usage of agriculture.

Paul Kitzerow

Santa Rosa

BLUE ZONES PROJECT: Mendocino County Food Policy Summit

Dear Mendocino County Friends,

We would like to invite you to the Blue Zones Project Mendocino County Food Policy Summit. This summit will bring together community stakeholders to discuss best practices in food policy and to identify concrete policies and programs to implement in Mendocino County.

We hope you will share your vision for improving Mendocino County's food environment on: Tuesday, November 16, 2021; 9:00 am - 12:30 pm

This meeting will be virtual. Please register by clicking on this link: eventbrite.com/e/blue-zones-project-mendocino-county-food-policy-summit-tickets-198565674277

Zoom link to follow with RSVP.

Tina Tyler-O'Shea, Executive Director, Blue Zones Project Mendocino County 

M : 707.972.5420 - Tina.Tyleroshea@sharecare.com

OVER 40 COUNTRIES PLEDGE AT U.N. CLIMATE SUMMIT TO END USE OF COAL POWER

More than 40 countries pledged to phase out coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, in a deal announced Thursday at the United Nations climate summit that prompted Alok Sharma, the head of the conference, to proclaim “the end of coal is in sight.”

But several of the biggest coal consumers were notably absent from the accord, including China and India, which together burn roughly two-thirds of the world’s coal, as well as Australia, the world’s 11th-biggest user of coal and a major exporter.

The United States, which still generates about one-fifth of its electricity from coal, also did not sign the pledge....

nytimes.com/2021/11/04/climate/cop26-coal-climate.html

DAILY BEAST: If anyone was unclear about how Chris Rock feels about anti-vaxxers, attend one of his standup shows, and you’ll get an answer. TMZ reports that he took aim at ridiculous anti-vaxxers, specifically Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving, during a Wednesday concert in New York featuring several bands and comedians. Posing a question to the crowd, he said: “Where’s my anti-vaxxers at?” Though New York City’s vaccine mandate requires those who attend shows to have gotten the jab, some people in the audience cheered, to which Rock responded: “You dumb, Kyrie motherf*cker!”

Rock performed not far away from the Barclays Center, home to the Nets. Before exiting the stage, he made one last J&J vaccine joke before introducing The Strokes, according to TMZ. Rock, who is vaccinated, recently recovered from a breakthrough case of COVID.

WHAT THE CIA IS HIDING IN THE JFK ASSASSINATION RECORDS

by Jacob Hornberger

With President Biden succumbing to the CIA’s demand to continue keeping the CIA’s records relating to the Kennedy assassination secret, the question naturally arises: What is the CIA still hiding? (See my blog post entitled “Surprise! Biden Continues the CIA’s JFK Assassination Cover-Up.”)

To understand what they are still hiding and why they are still hiding it, it’s necessary to go back to the 1990s during the era of the Assassination Records Review Board — and even further back than that to November 22, 1963 — the day that Kennedy was assassinated. 

People often say that if the CIA and the Pentagon had orchestrated the assassination of President Kennedy, someone would have talked by now. 

That’s just not true. When it comes to murder, people don’t talk. They know that if they do talk, they run the risk of themselves being murdered, maybe their families too. People who participate in murder schemes know that they had better keep their mouths shut or else.

One example is Mafia figure Jimmy Hoffa. We still don’t know who killed Hoffa. That’s because no one talked. Another example is Johnny Roselli, the liaison in the CIA-Mafia partnership to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. We still don’t know who murdered Roselli. No one has ever talked.

People who talk also run the risk of being prosecuted because there is no statute of limitations for murder. A good recent example is real-estate heir Robert Durst. He was recently convicted of murdering a person twenty-one years ago.

So, it was always a safe bet that the CIA and the Pentagon would be able to keep their regime-change operation in Dallas sealed in secrecy.

However, not so with respect to the fraudulent autopsy that the Pentagon carried out on President Kennedy’s body on the evening of the assassination. When the ARRB released people who had participated in the autopsy during the 1990s, they talked.

As I detailed in my books The Kennedy Autopsy and The Kennedy Autopsy 2 and in my online presentation in our Zoom conference last spring, a fraudulent autopsy was an essential part of the cover-up in the assassination.

The problem that the plotters had, however, is that in order to carry out this part of the cover-up, they had to enlist the assistance of many people within the vast national-security establishment who played no role in the assassination. Since all those people were innocent and mostly unwitting participants to the cover-up, they didn’t have the same incentive to stay quiet as the people who knowingly participated in the assassination itself.

The military did its best to keep everyone quiet by telling the autopsy participants that what they were doing was classified. Everyone in the military knows what that means — people are expected to take classified secrets to the grave with them. Participants to the autopsy were required to sign written secrecy oaths. They were also threatened with court martial or criminal prosecution if they ever revealed what they had done or seen.

As I pointed out in The Kennedy Autopsy, the scheme for a fraudulent autopsy was actually set into motion at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. Immediately after Kennedy was declared dead, the Dallas County Medical Examiner, Dr. Earl Rose, announced his intent to conduct an autopsy on the president’s body, as Texas law required. That was when a team of armed Secret Service agents, brandishing guns, told Rose in no uncertain terms that they would not permit him to do the autopsy. Forcing their way out of Parkland Hospital, they took the body to Dallas’s Love Field, where new President Lyndon Johnson was waiting for it. Johnson then took the body back with him to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where he delivered it into the hands of the military.

Although the mainstream media always treated all this as normal, given the dominant role that the national-security establishment was playing in Cold War America, it was actually quite bizarre and aberrant. The military never had any jurisdiction or legal authority to conduct the autopsy. At that time, killing a president was not a federal crime. The United States was not at war with any nation state. Kennedy was not killed on the field of battle. His killing was a straight murder case under Texas state law. Any criminal prosecution for the assassination would take place in Dallas. A genuinely honest autopsy would be a critically important part of that criminal prosecution, especially since a sharp team of criminal-defense lawyers would inevitably be defending the accused.

The military was mostly, but not entirely, able to keep its fraudulent autopsy secret for some 30 years, until the ARRB began releasing people who had participated in the autopsy from their vows of secrecy. As the ARRB began forcing the military to release its records relating to the autopsy, the dam of secrecy surrounding the autopsy broke wide open. That’s when the fraud became apparent. That’s why the JFK Records Act was such a nightmare for the Pentagon and the CIA. If it hadn’t been for that law, there is no doubt that the military’s fraudulent autopsy would still be shrouded in secrecy today. 

What the Pentagon and the CIA learned from the era of the ARRB is that the community of assassination researchers is composed of some very smart people. By analyzing the evidence that the ARRB was succeeding in getting released, assassination researchers were able to put together the pieces of the puzzle that established a fraudulent autopsy, along with lots of other pieces of circumstantial evidence establishing that what occurred on November 22, 1963, was a highly sophisticated national-security state regime-change operation.

The leading figure in this endeavor was Douglas Horne, who served on the ARRB staff. Anyone who reads Horne’s five-volume book Inside the Assassination Records Review Board will inevitably conclude that the autopsy that the military conducted on the Kennedy’s body a few hours after the assassination was fraudulent to the core. 

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, there is no innocent explanation for a fraudulent autopsy being conducted on President Kennedy’s body, especially given that the scheme for a fraudulent autopsy was launched at the moment Kennedy was declared dead.

It stands to reason that if a government agency is being forced to reveal records relating to a regime-change operation, that agency is going to keep the most incriminating evidence secret for as long as possible. We still don’t know what the CIA is still hiding, but we can safely assume that there is a good reason why the CIA does not want to let those super-smart assassination researchers get a hold of it. 

That’s why the national-security establishment will fight tooth and nail for permanent secrecy on their remaining JFK assassination-related records. Oh, the Pentagon and the CIA will most likely authorize Biden and the National Archives to release some innocuous records for appearance’s sake. But make no mistake about it: They will make certain that Biden, the National Archives, and all future presidents comply with their demand for permanent secrecy on what they need to hide on a permanent basis.

(Courtesy, CounterPunch.org)

THE FUTURE IS ELECTRIC

by Bill McKibben

Because electricity is so much more efficient than combustion, totally electrifying our country would cut primary energy use about in half.

If you’re looking for faint gray linings to a very dark cloud, there is, I suppose, one slight benefit of humanity’s three-decade delay in dealing with climate change: we get to see the dimensions of the problem quite starkly because it looms so large. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), with its Sixth Assessment Report in early August, underlined what we already know: the world is on a trajectory for destabilizing increases in temperature. The report is epic in scope and quality, the product of thousands of scientists volunteering long hours to sift through millions of pages of research. But it pales before the reports that nature issued this summer: record heat waves from Canada to the Mediterranean, record fires from California to Siberia, record floods from Belgium to Henan. If people in eastern US cities looked up from reading newspaper accounts of the IPCC report, they could see a smoky haze in the sky, the product of blazes a continent away.

That haze lets us see one thing more clearly: some of the solutions long on offer—from a carbon tax to changes in personal behavior—no longer qualify as enough, at least by themselves, since they won’t work as quickly as physics demands. The IPCC has told us we need to cut emissions in half in this decade to have any hope of meeting the targets set in the Paris Agreement. There’s one obvious route to reaching that goal, and it’s the path that Saul Griffith describes in Electrify: we must immediately figure out how to electrify everything we do, and we must supply that electricity with non-carbon energy. The era of setting things on fire—coal, gas, oil, wood—to produce power must end. Instead, we’ll have to rely almost entirely on the large flame that burns 93 million miles away.

Born in Australia and educated at MIT, Griffith is now a Californian. He’s an engineer and inventor, the recipient of a MacArthur grant, and a serial entrepreneur; among other things, he founded Otherlab, a research and development firm that studies energy usage across the US, and Rewiring America, a nonprofit that promotes the movement to “electrify everything.” He’s apparently also apolitical (which undermines his analysis, but more on that later). What he understands, above all, is where energy comes from in our world and how it’s used. His highly detailed flow charts showing things like the energy demands of outpatient health clinics—roughly equal, we learn, to those of houses of worship—are scattered throughout the book, undergirding his analysis.

As his title suggests, Griffith is fairly single-minded. Electrification is to climate change as the vaccine is to Covid-19—perhaps not a total solution, but an essential one. He begins by pointing out that in the United States, combustion of fossil fuels accounts for 75 percent of our contribution to climate change, with agriculture accounting for much of the rest. (His charts, confusingly, use “CO2 emissions” and “greenhouse gas emissions” interchangeably; given the emerging prominence of methane as the other significant greenhouse gas, this conflation is misleading, but not enough to dent the basic outline of his argument.) The US uses about 101 quadrillion BTUs (or “quads”) of energy a year, and Griffith’s data is so granular that he can tell you how much of that goes, for example, toward driving children to school and church (0.7 percent), flying military jets and transport planes (0.5 percent), or lighting billboards (0.005 percent).

The purpose of this exercise is to highlight the biggest users. Our homes use about a fifth of all energy; half of that is for heating and cooling, and another quarter for heating water. “The pride of the suburbs, the single-family detached home, dominates energy use, with large apartments in a distant second place,” Griffith writes. The industrial sector uses more energy — about thirty quads — but a surprisingly large percentage of that is spent “finding, mining, and refining fossil fuels.” A much smaller amount is spent running the data centers that store most of the Internet’s data, though, as he points out, much of this is wasted — “that photo of your kids you uploaded for Grandma will be seen only once, but it will require tiny amounts of energy forever as it is stored in some backwater memory bank.” (There’s also the rapidly growing use of fossil fuels to mine Bitcoin, which now requires as much energy as powering Finland.)

Transportation uses even large amounts of energy — and for all the focus on air travel, passenger cars and trucks uses ten times as much. The commercial sector — everything from office buildings and schools to the “cold chain” that keeps our perishables from perishing — accounts for the rest of our energy use.

(Bill McKibben is a founder of ThirdAct.org and the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury. His new book, The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened, will be published next year. November 2021. Courtesy, the New York Review of Books.)

REDISTRICTING MEETING

The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors will conduct a virtual public workshop per Elections Code section 21607.1, on Tuesday, November 9, 2021, at 1:30 p.m., or as soon thereafter as the matter may be heard, at which the Board of Supervisors will receive an update from staff and the Advisory Redistricting Commission, and conduct a public workshop to receive public input on communities of interest and potential district boundaries. 

Meetings are live streamed and available for viewing online one the Mendocino County YouTube page, at https://www.youtube.com/MendocinoCountyVideo or by toll-free, telephonic live stream at 888-544-8306.

The public may participate digitally in meetings in lieu of personal attendance. Comment may be made in any of the following ways: via written comment to bos@mendocinocounty.org, through our online eComment platform at https://mendocino.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx, through voicemail messaging by calling 707-234-6333, or by telephone via telecomment. Information regarding telecomment participation can be found at:

https://www.mendocinocounty.org/government/board-of-supervisors/agendas-and-minutes.

For further information call (707) 463-4441.

INSIDE THE UNRAVELING OF AMERICAN ZIONISM

How a new generation of Jewish leaders began to rethink their support for Israel....

nytimes.com/2021/11/02/magazine/israel-american-jews.html