Mendocino County Today: Sunday, Nov. 28, 2021

Dry Days | Outlaw Ford | Land Grab | Trail Hall | Walmart Heists | Light Festival | Mendocino 1948 | Internet Fiber | Yesterday's Catch | Flu Odds | Dems & Pubs | Lula v Bolsonaro | No Maters | Human Population | Courthouse Square | Bugs Missing | PG&E Charges | Fuel Fossils | Flow Kana | War Good | Marco Radio | Ukiah 1937

DRY WEATHER with above average daytime temperatures are forecast through the end of next week. (NWS)

STOCKING STUFFER

If you are looking for a book to cozy up with as winter sets in, search no further than the novel Outlaw Ford. 

Karen McGrath, curator at the Kelley House Museum, said, "I cannot put into words how much I am enjoying the wonderful tale crafted in Outlaw Ford. What a feast of words and images."

The story follows the middle child in a family of thirteen at the beginning of the previous century. In the span of a generation the Fords ride a funny and fateful trail from Mendocino County to points beyond and back to California, encountering disparate characters like Flashy Flaherty, No Knees Kelley, and the Scourge of the Plains, Ol' Death Himself.

Outlaw Ford is available at Mendocino's independent book store Gallery Bookshop. The online ordering system at gallerybookshop.com is as easy, if not easier, than the corporate dealers. You can also call them at 707-937-2665 to acquire your copy of Outlaw Ford.

MARY ROSE KACZOROWSKI:

Looking Through The Gloss Of A Land Grab

There is no argument that we love the Skunk Train and its history. The Skunk Train along with other California Excursion tourist trains around the state have become noteworthy historical tourist attractions. Small operations in the scheme of things. Fort Bragg area attractions are numerous from the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens to whale watching and fishing excursions, hiking trails, several State Parks and Campgrounds, local museums and art galleries and on and on.

The land grab on the former Georgia Pacific Mill Site is out of character for the aspirations of this small town that faces water emergencies, a destination for short term tourists, as a refuge from fires and extreme heat, loss of the once thriving fishing industry.

A college town with dorms– this could be a successful vision for Fort Bragg and would be more sustainable year round then seasonal tourism. This would build upon and coalesce around the successes of The Noyo Center for Marine Sciences, the world famous Krenov School of Fine Furniture, and the revitalize college with Mendocino College Coast Campus.

How many years since we have seen the ole 45 locomotive that is widely used in their advertising? We are still waiting to see the Mendocino Railway walk it’s talk. (Read more about this below.)

Interestingly, Mendocino coastal residents found something unsolicited in their mailboxes and post office boxes this past week –” The Little Stinker”.

The four color 8-page 11×17 newsprint newsletter entitled “The Little Stinker” (yep that is the name of it!) put out by the Mendocino Railway/Skunk Train/Sierra Energy outfit presents some ambitious development that runs roughshod over the City of Ft. Bragg’s “Mill Site Specific Plan.” The Mill Site Plan was informed by hours of public scoping sessions and expert input with keeping in mind the General Plan Update processes and Local Coastal Program (LCP) amendments, etc. (see https://city.fortbragg.com/176/Georgia-Pacific-Mill-Site)

The “Little Stinker” makes a whole host of claims one of which states, “Taking ownership of a large portion of the historic coastal Mill Site, the Skunk Train will work with experts to develop a world class-destination, breathing new life into this unique stretch of coastline.”

Hmmn?

Who is the “stinker” that says taking ownership will trump public input and all the General Plan zoning, and policies and guidelines set forth by Ft. Bragg City Council and which in turn must be certified by the Coastal Commission?

This tourist train with its ticket office/gift shop/depot located at the Foot of East Laurel Street is much loved and one of the several attractions in Ft. Bragg’s historic downtown. However who is in charge of Fort Bragg’s future is the question.

The Skunk Train public relations press releases keep shifting including with some unrealized plans over the years, and more so, ever so recently, to fit what appears to be the whim of private development.

This time, as indicated in the “Little Stinker,” it is about the increasing the railroad’s footprint along the former Georgia Pacific Mill site with expanding enterprises as in hotels, condos and a sundry of what not transport ideas. All that and more are part of the scheme of things. Is this all really about investors and developers’ ocean side dream property? A Cypress Station at Cypress Street on Highway 1 with a restaurant?

Why now is this enterprise claiming rights as a federally operating railroad? Hmmn? By the way who has been paying into the Railroad Retirement and Survivor Benefits for the Skunk Train R.R. employees? Many more questions need to be asked here.

Meanwhile precarious geological complications have not once but twice have put this tourist excursion train out of action.

The Skunk Train’s Round House in Ft. Bragg has been in disrepair for years. The former Mill Site dry sheds still stand waiting for their promise of rebuild and repair. The area public wants daylighting of creeks and the toxic cleanup on the closed areas of the Mills Site and HOUSING and so on.

Are the tracks and bridges along the railroad’s switch backs and canyons still stable on the way to Willits? Who keeps it all in repair along the rugged terrain?

The Skunk Train tunnel west end collapsed in 2015 and the east end collapsed in 2013. In 1998 Rail-Ways Inc. private freight operator for NCRA Line north of Willits closed because of slides.

In 1989 a series of devastating storms flooded the Eel River to record heights effectively destroying the line between Willits and Eureka forcing its closure. Further storms and subsidence closed the section from Willits south to Petaluma.

In February 2001, after repairs, the NWP resumed operations south of Petaluma. However, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) declared the track unfit for traffic in October 2001 and operations ceased. Not sure what is in the mix now after all that.

A skunk does not change its stripes and the Skunk Train – a tourist train it is!

According to the Federal Railroad Administration, “Tourist, scenic, historic, or excursion operations are railroad operations that carry passengers, often using antiquated equipment, with the conveyance of the passengers to a particular destination not being the principal purpose.”

By the way- The Skunk Train is one of many numerous and noteworthy attractions that bring visitors to this beautiful coast: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attractions-g32400-Activities-Fort_Bragg_Mendocino_County_California.htmlnumerousattractions

mendofever.com/2021/07/23/skunk-train-smokes-and-sputters-in-fort-bragg-due-to-exhaust-system-fire/

CALLING ALL DUPES!

SIGNS OF THE TIMES, an on-line comment:

My son works at Walmart at the Bayshore Mall [Eureka]. He told me of at least two instances where thieves have loaded up shopping carts with expensive merchandise, then fled out the fire doors to the lane that runs behind the mall. They have accomplices waiting in parked vehicles back there who help them dump the merchandise into the cars/trucks, then they speed away before anyone can get out there to grab a license number. One employee who confronted a thief was threatened. I’m sure EPD knows all this from the reports Walmart management filed.

My first question is why are vehicles allowed to park back there anyway? And why isn’t EPD patrolling that area during the times these crimes happened… before closing at 11 pm?

I’ve told my son not to interfere with any thieves… none of the cheap shit Walmart sells is worth his life or limb. Walmart needs to install high resolution cameras on that side of the building; cameras powerful enough to be able to obtain any license plate numbers. And the mall needs to eliminate parking in that lane entirely… installing barriers to prevent parking would be helpful. They can’t block the fire exits but making it impossible to park would be an excellent deterrent.

Retail theft hurts us all and if you see suspicious fuckers hanging out behind Walmart, jot down a license number. Make it obvious that you’re doing it. Or, do what I did once recently… take a pic with your phone of the people in the car. My son told me that the night I did that, they found a shopping cart full of stuff abandoned by the fire door… someone chickened out knowing they were seen. And no, I didn’t do that for Walmart or my son, I did it for US. We all pay higher prices because of retail theft.

MENDO BOTANICAL GARDENS LIGHT FESTIVAL

The Festival will run rain or shine each Friday, Saturday, and Sunday through December 19. Advanced tickets are required — GET TICKETS NOW at https://www.gardenbythesea.org/calendar/fol/ 

We would like to thank our sponsors for helping to support this beloved holiday event 

• The Coast KOZT
• Friends of the Gardens (FOG)
• Coast Hardware & Radio Shack
• Community First Credit Union
• Redwood Investments
• George Petersen Insurance Agency

SENATOR MIKE MCGUIRE

California is launching the largest high speed internet project in American history.

This historic initiative will help bridge the digital divide and provide reliable and affordable internet access to millions of unserved and underserved residents.

The bottom line is this: The pandemic shined a spotlight on the massive disparities that exist in California’s small towns, urban cities and rural counties when it comes to the lack of reliable internet activity.

This is why the State is moving with speed to deploy projects throughout California, now, and in the coming months.

The first 18 projects were recently announced, including 80 miles of critical high speed internet fiber that will be developed in Lake County along Highways 20, 175 & 29.

This initial project in Lake County will be the first of several more that will be announced for the North Coast – and other regions in the Golden State – in the coming year and we couldn’t be more excited.

So many have worked so incredibly hard to move this massive infrastructure project forward. Grateful for the partnership of Assemblymembers Aguair-Curry, Wood, Quirk-Silva and Speaker Rendon along with Senators Gonzalez & President Atkins and Governor Newsom.

CATCH OF THE DAY, November 27, 2021

KATIE CRONIN, Fort Bragg. DUI.

EDWARD GOCHENAUR II, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

JUSTIN HIETALA, Ukiah. Burglary, vandalism.

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

JORGE LEON, Willits. Failure to appear.

THOMAS MADDOX, Willits. Protective order violation, probation revocation.

VERONICA OROZCO, Philo. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, suspended license for DUI, failure to appear, probation revocation.

ADAM VASQUEZ, Hopland. Controlled substance, probation revocation.

NEIL WALDRON, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

TIFFANY WASHBURN, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

CHARLES WEBB, Willits. Touching of intimate parts of antoher against their will.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I don’t know about anyone else, but I lost the ability to feel any concern after the second or third “variant”. What are we up to now? Five? Ten? I don’t care. I live in a large, sparsely populated rural county, and from what I can tell we’ve had a 3.5% infection rate and a 0.05% death rate. Given the vagaries of the tracking methods, that could be the infection/death rate for the seasonal flu. 

I attended a large family Thanksgiving gathering with a number of people I had never met, no masks or social distancing or checking virus passports at the door. In fact, I don’t think anyone even mentioned the plague. I’m so optimistic for the odds of my survival that I’m ready to take the same risk again for Christmas.

LULA VS. BOLSONARO

by Forrest Hylton

It’s just over two years since former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was freed from jail, and eight months since he was declared innocent of all charges brought against him. As Brazil heads towards elections in October 2022, with the economy in recession, Lula holds a commanding lead over his electoral rivals, President Jair Bolsonaro and his former justice minister, Sergio Moro – the judge who put Lula in jail.

But anything could happen between now and election day, especially since Donald Trump’s political star appears to be waxing again. Bolsonaro – who once said to Trump in public, unsolicited and unrequited, “I love you” – has long taken the former US president as a role model.

Inspired by the events in Washington DC on 6 January, Bolsonaro called for a coup against Congress and the Supreme Court in Brasília on 7 September. No detachments of soldiers or military police showed up, but anti-Bolsonaro protesters did, en masse. The police separated them from the president’s supporters and the day unfolded without violence.

Bolsonaro is the only G20 leader not to have been vaccinated against Covid. In New York for the UN General Assembly in September, he and his team, forbidden from entering restaurants, were reduced to eating pizza on the sidewalk. His health minister, Marcelo Queiroga, the fourth since the pandemic began, flipped off protesters outside the Brazilian Mission. He later tested positive for Covid.

Even the Globo media empire, which aided and abetted the overthrow of Dilma, the imprisonment of Lula and the rise of Bolsonaro, was struck by the contrast between Lula and Bolsonaro last week. Lula received a standing ovation in the European Parliament and met with the French president, the German chancellor and the Spanish prime minister. Bolsonaro and his sons rode around in a miniature motorcycle gang in Qatar, following a trip to Dubai. The Gulf monarchies were his first stop after the climate talks in Glasgow. He may be courting buyers for Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned oil company, or laying the foundations for a prolonged period abroad after 2022. The immensely rich and immensely unpopular economy minister, Paulo Guedes, said the Arab petrolarchs were thinking of buying two of Brazil’s leading football clubs, Flamengo and Palmeiras.

Now that Trump is out of office, Bolsonaro is probably the leading figure of the far right internationally: the caretaker and guard dog for a project that allows neo-Nazis to come out of the woodwork and participate in public life. Environmental destruction in the Amazon, where most of Brazil’s indigenous people live, is up 22 per cent on last year, reaching its highest level since 2006. Bolsonaro’s unpopularity is also reaching new heights, but he still has his core support of between 20 and 25 per cent, and is likely to maintain most of that, since everyone else has already bolted.

Likewise, Lula is probably the greatest social democratic leader on the world stage right now – in part because he has no real rivals – and there can be little question of his widespread support abroad. Foreigners don’t vote in Brazilian elections, though.

Lula and the PT’s search for allies in Brazil’s political center has yet to bear fruit. Ciro Gomes, the leader of the center-left PDT, continues to attack Lula and Dilma as well as Moro and Bolsonaro, even as his own presidential hopes evaporate. The support of parties to the left of the PT, such as PSOL – led by the radical urban activist Guilherme Boulos, who ran for president in 2018, mayor of São Paulo in 2020, and will run for governor there in 2022 – will need to be earned, and cannot be taken for granted. In terms of electoral coalition building, the bulk of the work remains to be done.

Boulos is an organizer in the Homeless Workers’ Movement (MTST). He recently shared a photograph of the film-maker and actor Wagner Moura eating at an MTST occupation in São Paulo after a screening of his thriller about the death in 1969 of Carlos Marighella, the communist theorist of urban guerrilla warfare. Moura, who starred as Pablo Escobar in the Netflix series Narcos, has been outspoken on the European and US film circuits about censorship in Brazil.

At the end of Marighella, which stars Seu Jorge and highlights police brutality against Afro-Brazilians during the military dictatorship, moviegoers in Salvador, Rio and São Paulo have applauded, shouting: ‘Fora Bolsonaro!’ But it will take more than shouting at the big screen to get him out (and most Brazilians can’t afford to go to the cinema). It seems clear that the president will serve out his term and run for re-election.

According to the PT, 28 million people have dropped off the government’s emergency aid rolls, and 20 million are hungry. Of the nine million who lost their jobs in the first eight months of 2020, 70 per cent were black. Brazilian police killed 6416 people in 2020: most of them were young, black and from the urban periphery. So are the 200,000 people in jail on drug offenses. Blacks earn less, are fired first, and are more likely to be working in the informal economy without rights or protections, according to a new report based on the National Household Sample Survey. Two million more have joined the ranks of the informally employed since 2019, which represents 55 per cent of the total labour force.

It was Black Consciousness Day on Saturday. There were anti-racist, anti-Bolsonaro demonstrations in 105 cities across Brazil, though outside São Paulo, they were not massive. In Salvador da Bahia, which has Brazil’s largest urban population of African descent – 82 per cent identify as preto (‘black’) or pardo (‘mixed-race’) – events began in Pelourinho in the morning with the cleaning of the statue of Zumbi, the leader of the 17th-century Quilombo dos Palmares (a quilombo was a community of people who had escaped enslavement). In the afternoon, a wide range of unions and other organizations gathered in Campo Grande. People marched to the Praça Castro Alves, named after the great Bahian abolitionist poet and playwright. The main speakers were women of African descent, along with the communist member of parliament Alice Portugal.

As with previous anti-Bolsonaro demonstrations, the numbers were underwhelming. Turnout in next year’s elections shouldn’t be: in both 2014 and 2018 it was around 80 per cent. The north-east was the only region to vote against Bolsonaro last time. The president is the most widely loathed politician in Bahia – 74 per cent disapprove of him – followed by Guedes and Moro. The latest polls show Lula taking 63 per cent of the vote here in Brazil.

(London Review of Books)

CHINA'S POPULATION STRATEGIES: This is the simple result of a society that held a long honored belief that male child is valuable and a female child not.

When China made a unilateral decision to limit population growth, families murdered unwanted girl infants or left them to huge Government orphanages to die of neglect and malnutrition. An entire generation was stripped of it's female population.

Young male only children, grew up, without any girls, to meet, date, play with or ultimately marry and start families. So they started looking for wives in adjoining Asian countries. But in the end the vast majority of young men will never have families, resulting in a very real population collapse.

Funny, In 1995, the women leaders of the world got together in Beijing for a conference to address the serious problems facing the future. They came to a strategy for preventing the human population from exceeding 7 billion people. Their answer was to make available to every family on the planet; Basic Education Birth Control Basic Health/Medical Care, and The freedom of self determination.

With those four things, the birthrates in first world nations was in steady decline. They felt that the human race would top out at 6.7 billion, and begin a slow but steady decline to a more natural holding population below a billion people.

They did a brilliant report on their plan and the sociological studies it was based on, and the men of the world simply ignore them... Nothing was done, we approach 8 billion people, with a now certain peak exceeding 10 billion before we could see any drop, if we instituted the plan set forth by women in 1995.

This is of course moot. We've been polluting our environment horribly and every indication suggests we are on the verge of a collapse in reproductive viability... So in the end nature will fix nature's problem... Us. 

— Marie Tobias

YOUNGER PEOPLE MAY NOT KNOW IT, but every older person remembers very well that any road trip up to about 20 years ago meant a windshield covered in insects, crushed by the impact. Today, this doesn't happen the same way.

It might look great to travel with a clean windshield. But doesn't he tell you nothing? After all, where did the insects end up?

Scientists associate the dramatic decline in insect populations with agribusiness due to the destruction of natural habitat and the application of pesticides. The decline of insects, besides being a tragedy in itself and by itself, affects all earthly ecosystems, such as the bird diet, reptiles and amphibians, and pollination of plants, etc. The collapse of insect populations could be the precursor to the collapse of Earth's ecosystem.

SOLAR ISN’T FREE

Editor: 

I’m tired of people thinking all owners of solar power systems do not pay their share of supporting the operation and maintenance of the power grid. For over 10 years, our family has had a solar power system that generates about 35% of our total annual power usage. We need to supplement our system’s power with purchased power that we receive from Sonoma Clean Power. We also are billed by PG&E for transmission, distribution and other charges. Since 2016, we have paid PG&E over $13,000 for non-energy charges. This is not a charge for electricity. That sure is a lot of money for non-energy charges. It seems to me that we are doing more than our share in financially supporting the power grid. No additional surcharges are necessary.

Ken Brown

Forestville

WHY FLOW KANA STOPPED PAYING ITS TAXES

To the Editor:

I just read that Mikey “Little Big Man” Steinmetz at Flow Kana stopped paying his taxes. No mystery there. Let's be real. His business is failing.

Investors, like Wall Street hedge fund robber baron Jason Adler, have dumped $175.5 million into Flow Kana, and they want a return on their investment.

But it isn't happening. So, Flow Kana is in a survival mode.

Instead of focusing on quality, Flow Kana is now focusing on cutting costs, and that includes not paying taxes.

To help with the survival thing, Flow Kana has hired a few high-powered executives.

CEO Jarom Fawson was hired to source new financing, do corporate restructuring, and renegotiate deals. 

COO Kevin Haslebacher was hired because of his depth of experience in retooling struggling operations by utilizing a combination of Variance Analysis, TPM and LEAN principles.

Meanwhile, since COVID, sales declined steadily across California’s legal market, according to data compiled by Colorado-based BDS Analytics.

Layoffs?

You bet! In 2020, Flow Kanna had layoffs -- a November round, which followed layoffs on March 13, March 30 and April 30. Layoffs continued in 2021.

The final insult?

Flow Kanna's “"shop floor experience” sucks. Ask any trimmer who's worked there.

Admittedly, I've never liked these guys at Flow Kanna. Flow Kanna's founders are carpetbaggers in our county. Carpetbaggers and scallywags. They've come all the way from Venezuela. 

Flow Kanna's investors are fat cats from Wall Street and Silicon Valley. 

And in better times, Flow Kanna may have promised jobs to county government shot callers, John McCowen and Carmel Angelo, for their betrayal of local cannabis farmers. 

Betrayal? Yes! We are small, independent, family-owned farms. And that doesn't fit into Flow Kanna's business model of making sharecroppers out of us in a tenant farming system. And we don't want to grow their seed. We weren't down with GMO cannabis coming from Jason Adler's biotech companies, Trait Biosciences and Pebble Labs, in Los Alamos, New Mexico. 

Know this much: If Flow Kanna isn't paying its taxes, it's either a crazy publicity stunt or they're broke, or both.

The vultures are circling.

John Sakowicz, Ukiah CA

California Cannabis Taken to Tax — We’re Not Going to Take It Any More | by Michael Steinmetz | Nov, 2021 | Medium

View at Medium.com

* * *

Del Potter adds:

Re: Letter to the Editor: “Why Flow Kanna Stopped Paying Its Taxes”

Translation:

Flow Kama hired some qualified people to assist dealing with a declining, over regulated market allowing John to frame as corporate voodoo what is normal business practice in order for him to maintain relevance.

Del Potter, PhD

Chief Science Officer

Alvarius Pharmaceuticals

CHOO CHOO TO THORGELLEN.

”Just wait until conspiracy theorists discover they're part of a conspiracy to use conspiracy theorists to spread disinformation via conspiracy theories.”

The recording of last night's (2021-11-26) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) is right here: https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0464

Email me your writing on any subject and I'll read it on the radio next week. That's what I'm here for. If it's more than plain text, please provide a link to the media you want me to see or hear, rather than attach it.

This show: Kent Wallace on Viet Nam opportunities (and the first serialized installment of his 2020 novel). Part 2 of David Herstle Jones' new book-in-progress. Craig Stehr update. Train-ride company prematurely declares Fort Bragg (CA) land grab (*see below) fait accompli. An overview of faux pas (plural, say fo-POZ) of everyone from dictators to philosophers to police to birthday party clowns. Jill Sobule's I'm A Monster. Poetry of D.H. Lawrence, Notty Bumbo, Douglas Coulter. Ada Jones, William S. Burroughs. Tommy Wayne Kramer on the true creepy Manson Family story. Covid conspiracy lunacy further debunked. Harper's, Molly Bee, and on and on, from microbes to ancient galaxies, from mushrooms to meatballs, until the 1942 Weird Circle radio play What Is It?

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

Macy's parades of yore, for the day before Thorgellen. (via Everlasting Blort)

https://apimagesblog.com/historical/2019/11/25/95-years-of-macys-thanksgiving-day-parade

A trailer for a new movie about smallpox, in Blackfoot language.

https://boingboing.net/2021/11/23/watch-this-trailer-for-new-film-made-entirely-in-the-blackfoot-language.html

West Side Hannukah story.

https://www.neatorama.com/2021/11/25/West-Side-Chanukah-Story/

Fiddler on the Roof, free, the whole megillah. “Even a poor tailor deserves a little happiness.” (3 hours) It reminds me: the dream scene in Gloriana Opera Company's middle-1980s production of this was wonderful and terrifying, with the ghost of angry grandma careening around on ten-foot stilts, real bats... I think half the people in town were in that show. Small town, but still.

https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2021/11/fiddler-on-roof.html

And fish lips.

https://laughingsquid.com/fish-perform-verdi-la-traviata/

*Here's a story of another town with a seemingly inevitable railroad deal and a man with a plan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taJ4MFCxiuo

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

HISTORIC UKIAH FILM, 1937