Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022

North Winds | 96 New Cases | 3 Deaths | Greenwood Wharf | PV Project | Wildflower | Unity Club | 28 Days | Panther Basketball | Mystery Object | Food Bankers | Rain Harvest | Supes Notes | Grape Stomp | Cannabis Program | Ed Notes | Fallow Time | Garcia Salmon | Stagecoach Stop | Steroid Barry | River Crossing | PA Cyclone | Yesterday's Catch | Albion Barge | Tom Vaquero | Wits End | Saint Brigid | Hunter Thompson | Don't Try | CalCare Dies | Anti Hippies | Heed Ulysses | Cattle Drives | Lost Illusions | Thug Life | War Biz | Cub Scouts | Poet Laureate | 1930 Braggers | Cheating Culture | Rogan Statement

GUSTY NORTH WINDS will continue across northwest California through Thursday. Otherwise, cool mornings, mild afternoons, and near-zero rain chances are expected for much of the region during the next seven days. (NWS)

96 NEW COVID CASES reported in Mendocino County yesterday afternoon.

THREE MORE MENDO COVID DEATHS

Three Mendocino County residents recently passed away with COVID-19. Our thoughts are with their families and friends. 

Death #115: 92 year-old man from the Ukiah area; vaccinated with comorbidities.

Death #116: 76 year-old man from the South Coast area; unvaccinated with comorbidities. 

Death #117: 80 year-old man from the North Coast area; vaccinated with comorbidities. 

Public Health asks all Mendocino County residents to consider the best ways to protect 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 should strongly consider getting a COVID-19 booster to improve immunity. Boosters are available for everyone age 12 and older. 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/covidvaccine 

“EVERYBODY’S AT RISK”: PLAN TO ACQUIRE MENDOCINO COUNTY POWER PLANT UNRAVELS

by Mary Callahan

Plans to acquire an aging power plant in Mendocino County to ensure continued flows of Eel River water into Lake Mendocino and Sonoma County have unraveled.

A coalition of organizations from Sonoma, Humboldt and Mendocino counties abandoned their quest to acquire the century old Potter Valley hydroelectric plant, saying it could not meet an April 14 deadline for submitting a federal license application.

The plant, about 80 miles north of Santa Rosa, is owned by Pacific Gas & Electric, which in 2019 announced plans to abandon it and surrender its license.

Water users downstream maintained the plant was critical because Eel River water is diverted through its turbines into Lake Mendocino and the Russian River. That, in turn, supplies users as far south as Sonoma and northern Marin counties.

Without the option of acquiring the plant, stakeholders predict years of uncertainty, quarreling and, ultimately, higher costs to water users.

“Nobody has a slam dunk here,” Rep. Jared Huffman said Tuesday. “Everybody’s at risk.”

Huffman, D-San Rafael, was largely responsible for bringing together the coalition known as Two-Basin Solution Partnership with the aim of acquiring the Potter Valley project license.

Members included the Sonoma County Water Agency, the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission, the Round Valley Indian Tribes, Cal Trout and Humboldt County Public Works.

Their goal was two-pronged: The first was to secure continued transmission of water from the Eel River, some of which has been funneled historically through the power plant’s turbines to generate electricity. The second goal was to pursue removal of Scott Dam, a seismically vulnerable, 138-foot concrete structure that blocks the upstream passage of federally protected salmon and steelhead trout.

The application effort derailed, in part, because funding from PG&E for at least $18 million in planning and studies was not forthcoming, and the partners had yet to form a regional entity to be the formal licensee.

The coalition asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, for more time last fall to prepare its case, but the agency denied the request.

The result appears to put an end to discussion about acquiring and re-licensing the power plant, which all agree is inefficient and, at the moment, inoperable due to a failed transformer bank.

It also means the partners can focus on ensuring water diversions and dam removal becoming part of PG&E’s license surrender and plant decommissioning process, officials said.

But “this is not going to be easy,” said Pam Jeane, assistant general manager for Sonoma Water, the dominant drinking water wholesaler in the region.

PG&E, whose license expires in mid-April, will be granted annual extensions while the surrender process unfolds — which could take years or even a decade or more.

The latest developments will likely set up battles between competing interests, such as environmentalists and agriculture, to ensure final decommissioning orders include provisions they care about. Those could include water rights and dam removal.

Huffman noted that the only thing PG&E has of value out of the whole deal are the right to the water, so they’re not likely to part with them cheaply.

But PG&E will be allowed to propose its own vision of what decommissioning should look like first, and federal regulators will make the final decision.

It’s a process, said Jeane, “that could range from putting a padlock on the gate and walking away to removing every single piece of concrete out there.”

That includes Scott Dam, which impounds Lake Pillsbury in Lake County, and even smaller, Cape Horn Dam, which forms a small reservoir at the entry of a mile-plus-long tunnel leading to Potter Valley and the power plant.

Cape Horn is equipped with a fish ladder many deem inadequate to aid the fish that use it, with features that actually make them vulnerable to predators.

Those who advocate removing Scott Dam and even Cape Horn Dam say a study released in December by the National Marine Fisheries Service offers leverage for persuading FERC to require dam removal.

The study considered conditions in the upper reaches of the Eel River, California’s third largest salmon and steelhead trout watershed behind Klamath/Trinity and the Sacramento/San Joaquin Basins. It identified plentiful suitable habitat for winter- and summer-run steelhead trout, and fall-run Chinook salmon.

In addition, said Alicia Hamann, executive director of Friends of the Eel River, conditions in the power plant license that allow for incidental loss of fish listed under the Endangered Species Act leave PG&E vulnerable to litigation if they no longer hold the license and fish remain imperiled due to the dams.

“We have science on our side, and really what it comes down to is there’s a strong legal argument to be made that the project owners have a responsibility to correct the century of harms that have been done to the Eel River,” Hamann said. “The Eel is a river of opportunity. It’s our last, best chance to protect wild salmon and steelhead in the entire state of California.”

There also remained the “wild cards” of Lake County, the Lake Pillsbury Homeowners’ Association and allies who will likely fight to preserve the recreational asset created by Scott Dam, Huffman said.

In addition, there is extensive work needed to educate and organize Russian River water users about the high-stakes campaign ahead to ensure water keeps flowing from the Eel River.

A nearly $2 million grant acquired in December from the California Department of Water Resources will aid that effort. Part of the money will go toward a “Russian River Water Users Forum” to help determine who benefits, who should pay, and how much, Jeane said.

But the bottom line, is there are no guarantees, Huffman said.

“Yes, the water supply is absolutely at risk, both from an infrastructure and a water rights perspective, and the Russian River interests are going to have to focus on that,” Huffman said. “On the Eel River side, I think there’s a very good chance that PG&E is required to remove at least Scott Dam, but how that happens, you know, and what other mitigation requirements are imposed ― what it means in terms of a healthy Eel River ― I just think there’s huge question marks, and whether it turns out being something that’s fought and litigated for decades to come.

“So nobody has a slam dunk scenario to get everything they want here,” he said.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

UNITY CLUB NEWS

by Miriam Martinez

The Anderson Valley Unity Club will hold its regular meeting in the Home Arts Bldg. at the Fairgrounds on Thursday February the 3rd at 1:30. This will be an in person meeting, so masks are required. I know we usually have a catered lunch in February, but not this year. We are not quite “usual” yet. I am glad to report that most of our students have returned to class with negative test results. We will have a guest speaker, Supervisor for the 5th District, Ted Williams. Supervisor Williams will speak for around 20 minutes, followed by a period for questions. If you are interested in our ground water or resident deputy Sheriff, or any such concern, prepare a question for him. Dress warmly and bring your own water. 

Our Lending Library will be open on Tuesdays 1 to 4 and Saturdays 12:30 to 2:30. You can check out one of our new book selections or adopt a gently used book, video or disc. Hardbound books are still only $1 and paperbacks just 50 cents. You may donate a selection of books in good condition on either Tuesday or Saturday. Annual dues are only $3 for unlimited access to books & magazines. Come on in a read a while. Our long-devoted Treasurer Cindy Wilder is moving to Sonoma County. I'm going to miss her bright smile and sunny disposition. We need a volunteer to step up to the task. Throw your hat in the ring if you can balance a checkbook. Please let the Election committee know you may be willing to try to do the job. 

Enjoy the Spring-like weather. Just be careful walking on the frozen steps in the morning. I'll see you Thursday February 3rd at 1:30 in the Home Arts Building. 

LOCAL HOOPS! Friday (1/28) in a last minute reschedule because Laytonville was hit with COVID again, Mendocino JV and Varsity boys traveled to Boonville instead. An undermanned Panthers team played hard but dropped the JV game 36-46. The varsity game was clearly lopsided with Mendocino winning 85-47. 

Saturday, (1/29) the Junior High boys finally got some games in during the B Team Jamboree. Lots of first game jitters for the boys but they improved throughout the day, with Eagle Peak winning the tournament. 

Monday, (1/31) Jr High basketball was back in action, this time with River Oak Charter School visiting. Jr High girls lost their first game. Jr High B Team started out slow but chipped their way back, eventually winning 26-24 in the final moments. The Boys A Team also lost against a talented River Oak team but they are showing much improvement. 

Tonight (2/1) Round Valley comes for a visit, with JV boys starting at 4pm, Varsity girls game at 530pm and Varsity boys at 7pm. I’d like to note that so far, our varsity girls are undefeated in League, and everyone should come cheer them on.

---

UPDATE (this morning): Last night Anderson Valley Panthers played against Round Valley Mustangs here at our home gym. Since there were not enough of our girls available to field a junior varsity team, our JV boys tipped off at 4:00 sharp. They fought hard, but ultimately lost 36-45. Our varsity girls team followed and defeated the Mustangs 45-39. To close the night, our varsity boys lost 35-58. So far, our girls team has remained undefeated, but they are missing a game against Mendocino, which we hope to make up before the end of the season. Our next game will be held here on Tuesday, February 8 against the Laytonville Warriors. It is a varsity-only game, and will also be our senior student recognition night.

TRUDY SMITH ASKS:

Can anybody tell me what this is? Found it somewhere in Yorkville. It's very heavy.

THANKS FROM THE AV FOOD BANK

Editor,

At the Anderson Valley Food Bank, we are grateful for the support we have received from the community. Every bag packed, truck unloaded, bag & box distributed, grant and donation received, toy drive, and word-of-mouth supporter is appreciated by all of us. 

In the past two years, in particular, we’ve also found ourselves fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of many generous donations. We understand donating to the Anderson Valley Food Bank is a deeply personal way to support your community and we appreciate every contribution. 

We couldn’t do this without your support! 

Thanks to:

Sandhya Abee, Scarlett A’Hearn, Jared Adams, Karen Altaras, Bruce Anderson, Cynthia Arbanovella, Ellen Irene Athens, Judith Auberjonois, Nicolette Auschnitt, Courtney Bailey, Kathy Bailey, Linda Baker, Jillenon Barr, Judy Basehore, Rafael Bennett, Connie Best, Alice & Rick Bonner, Janet Boonyagarn, Jim Boudoures, Maura & Defasco Burks, Chris Butler, Bill Chambers, Ann Christen, Kyle Clarke, David & Mickie Colfax, Jeanne Collins, Sheila Colombana, Jean Condon, Neil & Mary Darling, Steve Derwinski, Laura Diamondstone, Michael Dilley, Patrick Dilley, Loretta Dudzik, Liz Dusenberry, Jeanne Eliades, Melinda & Jeffrey Ellis, Jim Ellison, Wendy Emal, Amy Epstein, Estela Espinoza, Catherine Evans, Anne Fashauer, Linda Filer, Arthur Folz, Curt & Nancy Frost, Nancy & Glenn Gasaway, Ron & Gail Gester, Jean Gibson, Stephanie Gold, Rob & Barb Goodell, Rob Guiliani, Lynn Halpern, Valerie Hanelt, Robyn Harper, Danni Harris, Amanda Hiatt, Hans Hickenlooper, Tim Holliday, Sue Hopkins, Abeja Hummel, Martha Hyde, Nancy Ippolito, Virginia Island, Glynnis Jones, Philip Kampfer, Gerry Karp, Kathleen Kinzie, Heidi Knott, Benna Kolinsky, Steven Krieg, Sachiko Kusachi, Eric Labowitz, Kit Lee, Caliegh Lennerth, Peter Lit, Helen Longino, Rahm Luminar, Ulysses Keevan Lynch, Kathy MacDonald, Joanie Maerzke, Darcie Mahoney, Larry Maillard, Sandy Maillard, Bill Maruna, Jeff & Judith Malnick, Sarah McCarter, Denisse Mattei, Milla McClellan, Tanya & Marcus McCurry, Kate McEwen, Kathleen McKenna, Cynthia McMath, David Minkus, Sheila Morgan, Ossie & Kiddo Moseley, Sarah & Ken Mucha, Linda Nayes, P.J. Neilsen, Judy Nelson, Michael Nessenberg, Marshall Newman, Susan Newstead, Sandra Nimmons, Karen Ottoboni, Margaret Owens, Jan Pallazola, S & L Parker, Danny Patterson, Wendy Patterson, Buffy Paula, Margaret Pickens, Donna Pierson-Pugh, Mark Pitner, Captain Rainbow, Jim & Jill Rathe, Margo Rawlins, Mike Reeves, Jack Ridley, Marty Roderick, Ginny Roemer, Caryn Roth, Sharon & Les Sauer, Tex & Lynne Sawyer, Margaret Schadeck, John Scharfenberger, Pam Scommegna, Barbara Scott, Bill Seekins, David Severn, Sharon Shapiro, Tom Shaver, Gwyn Smith, Steve Synder, Lucia Soto, Annie Stenerson, Barbara Stephens, Kris Steven, Cindy Storman, Elizabeth Summers, James Taul, Shirley Tompkins, Charlotte Triplet, Mark Triplet, Dawn Trygstad, Sandy Turner, Ali Wahl, Ann & Gary Wakeman, Tina Walter, Laurie Wayburn, Mary Anne Wilcox, Brad Wiley, Rachael Wilkerson, Jody Williams, Bob Wilms, Colin & Margaret Wilson, Patrick Wilson, Nancy & Steve Wood, Joe Zicherman, Brooke Zobrist. 

Organizations: 2M Associates, Anderson Valley Brewery, AV Elementary School, AV Grange, AV Lions Club, AV Unity Club, Ardzrooni Vineyard Management, The Boonville Hotel, Fort Bragg Food Bank, Free Food Philo, Giving Tree Farms, Hallomas, Inc., Philo Methodist Church, Navarro Vineyards, Sueno Latino, Williams Associates, Community Foundation of Mendocino County, The George & Ruth Bradford Foundation, 

Don’t see your name on the list? Let us know! You deserve a personal thank you and our records need to be corrected. 

Interested in volunteering or making a donation? Send us an email: andersonvalleyfoodbank@gmail.com, 472-6772.

Anderson Valley Food Bank

PO Box 692, Boonville, CA 95415

SUPES NOTES

Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting continued the recent tradition of being as out of touch as they can possibly be. They blathered with their expensive Sonoma County consultants for an hour or so about their pointless Strategic Plan. Then they listened to some depressing news about the pot and grape crops, choosing at the end to decline the first-ever pot crop assessment as not having enough data to be useful, but not discussing the economic and budget implications of the depressing crop news. They bounced the failed pot permit program around for a while, trying to avoid dealing with it. The current “ad hoc” pot permit committee (Supervisors McGourty and Haschak) is only addressing the pot permit “portal” and the “equity” program which is supposed to help the few remaining pot permit applicants navigate the ever expanding pot permit process and bureaucracy. They asked Supervisor John Haschak to be the Board’s liaison to the pot people and set himself up as the Board’s one-man standing committee pot point person, but he didn’t like that idea, so they blathered about “red-lining” (aka tweaking) the pot permit county code and maybe holding a special pot permit board meeting. 

Nobody thought of asking the County’s newish Grand Poobah “Cannabis Program Director” or the Planning Commission to recommend changes to the pot permit program. 

They congratulated themselves for a few microscopic bureaucratic improvements the Planning Department has made of late. 

Not a word about the looming two-year drought and the County’s (empty) big drought preparedness plans from last year which are going nowhere as Lake Mendocino is drained for downstream vineyard ponds — not one water storage project having been developed or submitted for grant funding, and the Town of Mendocino facing another, worse, water shortage this year, despite good water development ideas having been floated by Coast people like Steve Gomes. Not a word about the ill-considered consolidation of the Treasurer and Auditor offices. It was probably the most irrelevant board meeting we’ve ever witnessed, and we’ve witnessed quite a few. 

(Mark Scaramella)

CAKEBREAD, 2022

NEWS FOR MENDO’S DOZEN OR SO REMAINING POT PERMIT HOPEFULS

County of Mendocino Cannabis Program Update - February 9th

To assist the public in keeping up to date with the Cannabis Program we are hosting another information session. Please join us on February 9th, 2022, from 3:30pm – 5:00pm (PST) for this virtual update with the Cannabis Ad Hock and the Mendocino County Cannabis Program. Registration is required and must be submitted prior to the start of the meeting (registration must be prior to 3:30 p.m. PST).

Sincerely,

MCP Staff, https://www.mendocinocounty.org/government/cannabis-program

ED NOTES

VALLEY OLD TIMERS may recognize Sarah Morrisette's name on this cartoon posted last night. Sarah spent her young years at the Rainbow Commune on deep Greenwood Ridge west of Philo, magically emerging a fully functioning, talented adult, demonstrating again the resiliency of children. I only visited a couple of times when the “collective” was going strong and that was only to drop someone off and, as an extremely uptight white hetero male fully committed to order and self-discipline, the chaotic lives led at Rainbow held minus-zero appeal. 

ANDERSON VALLEY still being a community at the time — late 1960s through the 1970s — we tended to know everyone else through the great melting pot of the Anderson Valley schools where our children were classmates and fast friends, and where the feral offspring of distracted parents would meet and later intermarry with the sons and daughters of “rednecks” to produce that whole new beast, the Hipneck. 

I GOT TO KNOW the late Jack Hayward, a principal at Rainbow and a man widely regarded as impossible. I enjoyed listening to him when he stopped by, and listening to him is what you did with Jack — he talked, you listened which, in lesser raconteurs, can be excruciating but his monologues were always interesting, often in ways that seemed unintended. When Jack was literally the last person at Rainbow when the property had been sold to a vineyard, Susan Faludi, researching a book, and I went up for a visit. She wanted to meet a ground floor counter-culturist, and who better than Jack Hayward who'd also been a stalwart at one of the first hippie communes in all of NorCal, Morningstar in West Sonoma County. 

IT WAS A LATE SUMMER afternoon when we arrived. Jack, who never did rise from the prone position on his bed in a shack-like structure, looking at the ceiling most of the time, delivered a capsule history of “the movement,” as he called it, often repeating the phrase “We walked lightly on the land.” Ms. F and I looked at each other. “Lightly on the land?” Outside Jack's door the land consisted of foot-deep blowing dust for several hundred yards in all directions, site-prep for an industrial vineyard. The land had been stomped on so thoroughly we could have been at Chernobyl. 

JACK'S LAST DAYS in the Anderson Valley were unhappy ones. He was apparently estranged from friends and family to the extent that he said Jimmy Humble and I were “the only people I can depend on,” in which case Jack was as bereft as it's possible for a man to be.

RUMORS of Jack's frenetic end times in the Anderson Valley suddenly ended. The last time I heard of him he was somewhere in the Northwest, and then I heard that he was dead.

PROTECT SALMON

Editor:

The Independent Coast Observer deserves thanks for covering ongoing restoration efforts and examples of salmon and steelhead response. Increasing numbers of coho and chinook salmon and steelhead are spawning in the Garcia River.

Concerning the coho and chinook, it should be noted that their presence closes the nutrient circle that has been broken. All salmon die after spawning. Their carcasses transport nutrients from the ocean to the river.

Emerging and rearing salmon and steelhead juveniles feed on the flesh itself and on the insects that feed on the carcasses. Additionally the nutrients work down into the gravels and feed insect well beyond the winner spawning.

At one time the Garcia River had a distinct run of “half pounder” steelhead that followed the coho and chinook salmon to feed on some of their eggs and nutrients. These were not sexually mature fish and they would return to the ocean and later return as adults to spawn potentially at a larger size than the Garcia was known for.

So the Garcia River has the potential to function on the historical complexity it once had. That said, these fragile runs need protection. The Department of Fish and Wildlife has given a very high priority to the Garcia River to protect salmon from poaching.

If the Pomo tribal leaders and members are looking for a way to contribute to this recovery, the most important contribution they can make is to protect migrating salmon and steelhead from being killed.

Once all salmon and steelhead were state and federally listed it became illegal for anyone including tribal members to harm them. If the tribal leadership does not have dedicated staff to patrol the river, federal game wardens have authority and are available to assist. In addition to the funded $1.4 million estuary enhancement project, a side channel, juvenile rearing channel project has been developed for the Kendall/Boer Ranch using Caltrans off site mitigation funding.

Craig Bell

Garcia River watershed planner

Point Arena

BONDS IS NO EXEMPLAR

Editor,

I have been a San Francisco Giants season-ticket holder for 40 years. I used to love watching Barry Bonds hit until the evidence came out that he used performance-enhancing drugs and he chose to lie about it. After that I remained sitting after each homer he hit.

Scott Ostler's Chronicle column on the baseball Hall of Fame vote states that what Bonds did wrong doesn't matter. Ostler couldn't be more wrong. Our children need a good example to live and play by and if they follow Bonds’ way, they will learn that to get to the top is more important than how we got there.

Bonds spoiled his chance at entering the Hall of Fame and he spoiled many fans enjoyment of watching him play. He chose his path and I hope future players learn by his mistakes.

Robert Nice

Redwood City

MENDOTHROWBACK: 2.2.1938— A 'Baby Cyclone' Flattens Barns and Uproots Trees in Point Arena

(Combing newspaper archives, MendoFever will work hard to provide a MendoThrowback every day of the calendar year to remind residents of days long gone.)

It was 84 years ago today when a vicious storm struck the Mendocino County Coast flattening five barns, uprooting vegetation, and reminding Point Arena residents of the primal power of the Pacific.

An article from the February 2, 1938 edition of The Redwood Journal dubbed the storm a “baby cyclone” and described a twister that “skirted the southern edge of Point Arena.”

Reportedly, residents of Point Arena “looked in awe as the circular funnel of wind swept in past Ed Pedrotti's place” which took down a barn sending hay in all directions.

The storm tore towards the high school demolishing Lobree's warehouse and two small barns on the Halliday property. The funnel cloud swept through Mike Buti's property uprooting several trees, continued on to Chester Christensen's place and then Fred Henderson's where two more barns collapsed. The “baby cyclone” continued into the hills and disappeared from there.

Abel Olsen watched the storm's fury from his window and told The Redwood Journal he was "knocked back from the window as the swirling wind struck the side of his house, breaking the window panes."

The path of the storm was littered with cypress hedges and trees and multiple livestock in the vicinity were "skinned up." Workers from the Work Projects Administration were dispatched to clean up the wreckage. 

— Matt LaFever

CATCH OF THE DAY, February 1, 2022

JORDAN CAMPBELL, Willits. Failure to appear.

CHEYENNE COLLINS, Fort Bragg. Disobeying court order, failure to appear, probation revocation.

GROVER HUNTER, Ukiah. Controlled substance, narcotics for sale.

ANTHONY LOPES, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent Flyer)

JAMES RAY, Hopland. Assault weapon, ammo possession by prohibited person, felon-addict with firearm, short-barreled rifle, suspended license for DUI, failure to appear.

JAMES WHITMAN, Ukiah. DUI.

AZAIAH ZACARIAS, Ukiah. Controlled substance while armed, loaded handgun not registered owner, undetectable firearm, concealed weapon in vehicle, marijuana sales, conspiracy.

TOM VAQUERO, PART 2 

Tom Vaquero’s real name was George Wood, which later changed to “Tom Wood.” Colloquially he became known as “Tom Vaquero.” He came from the New Brunswick area of East Coast, an area of shipbuilding and sailing ships. He signed on to a whaler, and thus set out to travel the world.

It’s not known exactly where and how far Tom Wood travelled, but he apparently sailed all over the Pacific, including the "Sandwich Islands" (Hawaii), where he first encountered the skillful vaqueros who maintained the huge cattle ranches of the Big Island.

But the whaling business was a dirty and bloody affair. When his whaling ship finally made it back to landfall in Sausalito California in the year 1841, he jumped ship and made his way north to the wildlands of Bodega and Tomales Bay. He thus is recognized as the first Anglo settler of Marin County.

He made friends with the local Miwok Indians, learned their language, and ended up marrying what was universally described a very “winsome” Indian maiden, and set up a trading post near the mouth of Tomales Bay. He hunted sea otters, elk, bear, and wild cattle for their hides, collected tallow, and with the help of his Indian friends, collected abalone shells which were a very popular trading item for the Spanish, French, English, and Russian packet ships that plied the Alta California Pacific, making regular stops at his trading post. Sometimes there were weeks between visits of a ship, and historical accounts record that at times there were a thousand Indians camped out by the side of Tom’s trading post on the shores of Tomales Bay, waiting for the next trading vessel to come in. Tom Wood was considered “chief” by both Indians and whites, the master of the area who dealt with all the local trade in just north of San Francisco.

In the years between 1841 the Gold Rush of 1849, Tom “Vaquero” Wood continued his training and experience of Spanish cowboys — “vaqueros” — who worked the large haciendas of Alta California. He learned and developed what was an obvious natural talent. His exploits on horseback were epic. He could ride at full gallop and lean down out of his saddle to pick up a handkerchief or a silver dollar laying on the ground. One of his tricks was to ride up at full gallop and deliver a tray of wine glasses to a spectator, unspilled. He had a standing bet with anyone willing to take the offer that he could bust any wild bronco with a silver dollar under each stirrup, and never lose the coins under his stirrups while breaking the bucking bronco. If he failed, he would sacrifice his bridle, saddle and spurs. No one ever won him on this bet. A horse whisperer to be sure.

And of course, he was master of the lost art of rope tricks, which were very entertaining for the rodeo crowds of his day. He must have been a great story-teller and entertainer too, because he was a popular, if not the star performer at the massive San Raphael Rodeo/Fandango that occurred every year in that city in the late 1800’s.

(by David Gurney, more to come…)

ELLIE GREEN:

“I'm so scared by what I hear on the news these days that I'm not WATCHING news anymore! I'm scared & I'm HORRIFIED. (The latest is NAZIS in FLORIDA screaming at JEWS to GET OUT!) But what European country will TAKE Americans & allow us to stay? Britain will only take Americans for 6 months - unless you're a MILLIONAIRE of course. And I only speak English, but it's not too late to learn a new language, even at my age, which will be 88 in May. If I was younger, I'd stay & FIGHT, but I'm not only old, I'm disabled & can't drive any more. WHO WILL ACCEPT ME? Italy? Denmark? Spain? Anybody know?”

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: LITERARY GENTLEMAN FROM LOUISVILLE

by Jonah Raskin

Warren James Hinckle III — the iconic San Franciscan with an eyepatch and a beloved basset hound named Bentley — called his autobiography If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade. He followed his own advice. With heaps of help from the extravagantly creative British artist, Ralph Steadman, Hinckle made Ramparts, once a lemon of a publication, into a juicy, muckraking magazine that was essential reading for everyone on the left in the mid and late 1960s. Later, at Scanlan’s magazine, Hinckle connected Steadman to Hunter S. Thompson, who had been writing journalism for more than a decade, including sports and a brilliant book on the motorcycle gang, the Hell’s Angels, published in 1967. The boys on their bikes didn’t appreciate the attention and roughed up the author, which made for good publicity.

Thompson always had a nose for notoriety as well as for the news, though he didn’t really find himself until 1970 at the age of 33 when Hinckle published in the pages of Scanlon’s, his sensational article, “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved.” Alas, the magazine soon folded. Steadman provided the art for Thompson’s expose of Louisville’s filthy rich. Apparently, he drew the illustrations with lipstick and eyeliner.

Peter Richardson tells the riveting story of the Hinckle/Steadman/Thompson triumvirate in Savage Journey (University of California Press; $27.95), a biography, in which he also traces what he calls the “Weird Road to Gonzo.” True, the road could be bumpy with twists and turns, but Thompson’s journey looks and feels a lot more civilized than Richardson makes it seem. At times, Hunter — as friends called him — even appeared to be a gentleman of the old school, especially with his long cigarette holder and shiny bald head and in photos of him sitting next to Senator George McGovern in 1972. Gonzo was a genuine part of his act; much as Beat was a genuine part of Kerouac’s act.

It was A. Craig Copetas, a longtime friend of Thompson’s and his editor at High Times and Esquire, (two magazines Richardson omits from his story), who emphasized his identity as a gentleman. “My wife and I visited Hunter at Owl Creek in Colorado,” Copetas told me. “My wife freaked out because Hunter and I were futzing with guns, and talking about the coverage of war. She was so freaked she ran outside. Hunter followed her and apologized. In addition to everything else about him, he was a real Southern gentleman.”

Copetas persuaded me to reread Thompson, take him seriously as a writer and to appreciate that his “lesson to writers was that you have to make your reader your sidekicks so that he or she is with you and participating in the story.” I tried to do that in my own neo-gonzo, adventure story, Marijuanaland: Dispatches from an American War, published by High Times.

Call me crazy, but I admire Thompson’s, The Rum Diaries, as much as I admire Fear and Loathing. I admire his craft as a novelist and also because he offered his work as a moral compass. I said that in the essay I wrote for Warren Hinkle’s collection of essays, Who Killed Hunter S: Thompson?: An Inquiry into the Life & Death of the Master of Gonzo. Contributors include: Johnny Depp, Emory Douglas, William Kennedy, Paul Krassner, Gary Trudeau, Wavy Gravy and Tom Wolfe.

“Who killed Hunter”?

“America!” the same monster that killed Jack London.

Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone magazine figure in intimate and intriguing ways in the gonzo/murder mystery story. Wenner published Thompson’s breakthrough book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, in 1971.Those two words, “fear” and “loathing,” were Thompson’s tickets to fame and success in much the same way that the two words, “naked” and “dead,” brought Norman Mailer acclaim with the publication of his first novel in 1948. Like Mailer, Thompson understood that it was far better to be a bad boy in America than to be a good boy, especially if you want to make literary history and arrive on best seller lists. Of course, it also helps to have talent and even a bit of genius. Thompson had both. He also put the reader in his sidecar.

Once he started his journey — after a substantial apprenticeship — there was no stopping him. In 1972, he published Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail in which he skewered the national political scene that Nixon had poisoned and that would come back to bite him with Watergate. A collection of Thompson’s letters, Fear and Loathing in America, was published after he commited suicide in 2005 at the age of 67. Remember? He put a gun to his head, pulled the trigger and blew his brains out. Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone, subtitled The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson, appeared in print in 2011.

Savage Journey is Richardson’s fourth book. His first was a biography, titled American Prophet, of Carey McWilliams, the editor of The Nation and the author of Factories in the Field, which amplified the message that Steinbeck broadcast about California ag in his epic novel, The Grapes of Wrath. Richardson’s second book, which is about Ramparts, is titled A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America (2009). His third, No Simple Highway, offers a cultural history of the Grateful Dead (2015). The L.A. Times review of Richardson’s bio of McWilliams was titled, “The Conscience of California.”

Since then, Richardson, rather than McWilliams, has emerged as the conscience of California, or at least one of them, and as a kind of prophet crying out against Trump and his boy in “the wilderness of North America,” as Malcolm X called it.

His bio is not the first to track Thompson’s life on and off the page. William McKeen wrote Outlaw Journalist and Jann Wenner and Corey Seymour compiled an oral history, as did J. C. Gabel and James Hughes. There are bound to be more biographies. As Richardson points out in his Introduction, Thompson’s archive is under lock and key, “reportedly housed in a Los Angeles storage facility and contains some eight hundred boxes of materials, including a massive trove of letters that Thompson began producing and saving as a youth.” Until that material is available to scholars and researchers, any bio of Thompson, however competent it may be, is bound to be incomplete.

The emphasis in Savage Journey is on geography, especially the places where Thompson lived, that he wrote about and that nurtured his creativity, from Louisville, where he was born and raised, to San Francisco, which he called the “best place in the world” to live in the 1960s, then to Las Vegas, Nevada, which instilled in him a sense of fear and loathing, and finally on to to Aspen, Colorado, where he ran for county sheriff and didn’t win. The outlaw as a lawman made for an ironic chapter in his life.

Not surprisingly, Savage Journey is probably the most academic of the books about Thompson. After all, it’s published by the University of California Press. It boasts nearly two dozen pages of notes, many of them tied to Thompson’s own work, including the fear and loathing books, and an eleven-page bibliography that begins with Oscar Acosta, Thompson’s sidekick on his wild rides. It ends with Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and (1968) and The Kandy-Colored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965), both of which anticipated the kind of in-your-face journalism that Thompson would embrace. If you want gonzo writing don’t turn to Richardson. If you want serious, balanced, thoughtful prose you’ll find it here. You’ll also find what academics call a thesis and arguments.

“I would argue that Thompson was not only an accomplished journalist, satirist and media critic, but also the most distinctive American voice in the second half of the twentieth century,” Richardson writes.

Right now, in the world of American letters, and in the wake of Joan Didion’s death on December 23, 2021, at the age of 87, that statement would be contested. In a way, there couldn’t be a worse time than right now for an enthusiastic defense of Hunter S. Thompson as a journalist, satirist, media critic and American voice. This moment belongs largely to Joan Didion, the California New Yorker, who expressed over the past half-century the kind of values in the distinctive voice that editors and publishers in New York have wanted to hear.

Richardson devotes several pages to Didion. He aims to speak cautiously and to be balanced, allows that Didion was “precise,” and adds that she was also “fragile, even neurasthenic.” Perhaps so, though she could be as scathing in her prose as Thompson in his.

“The social breakdowns she documented in her work mirrored the psychological ones she was experiencing personally,” Richardson writes. The same might be said for Hunter S. Thompson, whose addictions to illicit drugs, fascination with guns and suicide suggest his own dark psychology which mirrored some of the social patterns he explored in fiction and non-fiction and in books that broke the barriers between them.

(Jonah Raskin is the author of Beat Blues, San Francisco, 1955.)

SOMEBODY ONCE ASKED ME what my theory of life was, and I said, “Don’t try.” That fits the writing, too. I don’t try; I just type.

— Charles Bukowski

WHY SINGLE PAYER DIED IN THE CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE, AGAIN

by Alexei Kosseff

Despite, or perhaps because of, an aggressive last-minute push by progressive activists ahead of a crucial deadline, legislation to create a government-run universal health care system in California died Monday without coming up for a vote.

The single-payer measure, Assembly Bill 1400, was the latest attempt to deliver on a longtime priority of Democratic Party faithful to get private insurers and profit margins out of health care. Because it was introduced last year, when it stalled without receiving a single hearing, it needed to pass the Assembly by Monday to continue through the legislative process.

But even the threat of losing the party’s endorsement in the upcoming election cycle was not enough to persuade the Assembly’s Democratic supermajority to advance the bill for further consideration, effectively killing the effort for another year.

After several tense hours Monday afternoon, during which a scramble of meetings took place just off the Assembly floor, Assemblymember Ash Kalra, the San Jose Democrat carrying AB 1400, announced that he would not bring up the measure for a vote.

Kalra declined multiple requests to discuss his decision and whether he would seek another path forward for his proposal. Following the floor session, he waited on a members-only balcony outside the chamber until a group of reporters was told to leave by a sergeant-at-arms.

“I don’t believe it would have served the cause of getting single payer done by having the vote and having it go down in flames and further alienating members,” Kalra said on a Zoom call with disappointed supporters later in the evening, in which he shared that he believed the bill, which needed 41 votes to pass, was short by “double digits.”

Stuck between powerful interests 

The political obstacles to such a radical restructuring of the health care system remain enormous, even in a state as putatively liberal as California.

The influential California Chamber of Commerce, which represents business interests in the state, labeled AB 1400 a “job killer” shortly after it was reintroduced in January, indicating it would be a top priority to defeat. Its lobbying campaign — joined by dozens of insurers, industry groups and the associations representing doctors and hospitals — included social media advertisements and a letter to members denouncing the “crippling tax increases” that would be needed to pay for the system. After the bill stalled Monday, the chamber declared it would be ready if ideas from the “dangerous proposal” resurfaced.

Republicans were eager to make it into an election issue this year. Though Kalra’s bill was largely conceptual, with a separate measure introduced to address the financing, they attacked it as a massive tax hike on Californians. (Kalra proposed a series of taxes on businesses and high-earning households to fund the single-payer system, estimated by legislative analysts to cost between $314 billion and $391 billion annually.) A 4,000-page petition signed by voters who opposed AB 1400 sat in the back of the chamber on Monday for Assembly Republican Leader Marie Waldron of Escondido to use as a prop in a floor debate that never happened.

Democrats also faced a squeeze from the left flank of their party. Activists with the California Democratic Party’s progressive caucus said last week they would push to withhold endorsements from members who did not vote for the bill. That ultimatum generated fierce anger in the Assembly caucus from members who felt cornered, though many refused to speak publicly about their frustration.

Backlash from activists

The decision not to bring up AB 1400 for a vote on Monday may have been about protecting members from having to take a position one way or the other on the bill, as Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon did with the last single-payer measure in 2017.

Legislation to move the state toward a government-run health care system passed the state Senate that year, but was held by Rendon without a hearing because the bill included no plan to pay for it. That put him in the crosshairs of single-payer supporters, who blasted him on billboards.

This time, Rendon said he supported the effort, but he was not closely involved in rounding up votes for AB 1400. He declined to answer questions after the floor session on Monday and, in a statement, he pushed the blame onto Kalra.

“The shortage of votes needed to pass this bill out of the Assembly indicates the immense difficulty of implementing single-payer healthcare in California,” he said. “Nevertheless, I’m deeply disappointed that the author did not bring this bill up for a vote today. I support single-payer and fully intended to vote yes on this bill.”

The explanations are unlikely to assuage the measure’s most enthusiastic proponents.

The California Nurses Association, the main sponsor of AB 1400, slammed Kalra for “providing cover” for his colleagues by not holding a vote.

“Nurses are especially outraged that Kalra chose to just give up on patients across the state,” the association said in an unsigned statement. “Nurses never give up on our patients, and we will keep fighting with our allies in the grassroots movement.”

Amar Shergill, chairperson of the California Democratic Party’s progressive caucus, said he would continue with plans to pull endorsements from Assembly members who did not publicly support the bill.

During the Monday night call, he and other advocates repeatedly criticized Kalra for setting back their movement and urged him to name the members who were opposed. “We are protecting them from negative scrutiny of a ‘no’ vote,” Shergill said.

Kalra said it would give him more time to work on winning over colleagues who were on the fence about AB 1400 and try again next year.

Where was Newsom?

One prominent Democrat who did not express support for AB 1400 was Gov. Gavin Newsom, who ran for office in 2018 on a platform to create a single-payer system in California but has since distanced himself from that pledge.

During a press conference in January to unveil his budget proposal, Newsom reiterated that he believed “the ideal system is a single-payer system,” but dismissed questions about Kalra’s approach.

“I have not had the opportunity to review that plan, and no one has presented it to me,” Newsom said at the time.

As AB 1400 marched toward defeat, the governor remained mum. His public remarks in recent weeks focused instead on several of his own budget proposals that he said would bring universal health access to California, including an expansion of Medi-Cal, the state’s health insurance program for the poor, to all residents regardless of their immigration status.

The distinction he has drawn between universal access to health insurance and an actual universal health care system has infuriated the nurses’ union, one of his earliest endorsers during the 2018 campaign, who accused him of flip-flopping on single payer. It seems unlikely to cause him much trouble in his upcoming re-election campaign, however, where he has yet to draw a significant challenger.

(CalMatters.org)

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO this week, Sylvia Beach, who ran the bookstore Shakespeare and Company on 12 rue de l’Odéon in Paris and nurtured a community of expatriate writers that included Richard Wright, T.S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, Thornton Wilder, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, placed in the bookstore’s front window a 732-page novel she had published, “Ulysses” by James Joyce. “Ulysses” had been rejected by numerous publishers in English speaking countries. The book, which was banned in the United States and Great Britain because of its “obscenity” until the 1930s, takes place during a single day in Dublin, June 16, 1904. It would swiftly become one of the most important novels of the 20th century, drawing its inspiration from Homer’s “The Odyssey.” “Ulysses,” which I have read three times accompanied by a book of annotations by Don Gifford to catch the literary and historical references, is timeless. It captures the dazed, unresolved wanderings all of us take between birth and death, calling us to a life of compassion and understanding, and cautioning us to eschew the seductive calls to trample over others to worship idols.

— Chris Hedges, scheerpost.com/2022/01/31/hedges-heeding-james-joyces-ulysses/

THE TEXAS QUOTE OF THE DAY:

"It has been estimated that, between 1867 and 1890, approximately 10,000,000 cattle went up the various trails. Each year there were from 150-200 herds of about 2500 head each. A herd required 12 men, at least six saddle horses for each man, and a mess wagon and team. The cattle traveled on an average of 15 or more miles per day, or 450-500 miles per month. Each year the cattle movement up the trail required an army of 2400 cowboys and 14,000 saddle horses. From first to last, between 45,000-50,000 cowboys using almost 300,000 saddle horses took part in the drives. The cost of operating a trail unit was about $500 a month. It cost the drover between fifty and sixty cents to transport a cow from Southern Texas to the Kansas railroad stations." 

— William Curry Holden, "Alkali Trails," 1930

LOST ILLUSIONS

Sylvain Cypel’s transformation from liberal Zionist to ferocious critic of Israel.

by David Shulman

November 10, 2021: Twenty Israeli settlers, armed with guns and clubs, their faces masked, descend upon the hamlet of Halat al-Dab’ in the South Hebron hills. They attack the Palestinians who live there, smash windows, cars, and whatever else they find. Six Palestinians are wounded, at least one from gunshots. There are Israeli soldiers nearby who make no attempt to interfere and who leave the area while the pogrom is going on. I use the word deliberately. What happened that day in Halat al-Dab’ is not different in kind from the pogrom in Nikolayev, in Ukraine, in the early years of the twentieth century, when my grandmother’s brother was killed by Cossacks.

September 28, 2021, Simchat Torah, the end of the Sukkot holiday: Dozens of masked settlers storm the tiny Palestinian encampment of Mufagara, also in the South Hebron hills, wreaking havoc. Basil al-Adraa, an activist from the nearby village of at-Tuwani, reported that the settlers… 

“…went from house to house, and broke windows, smashed cars with knives and hammers. A large stone they threw hit a 3-year-old boy, Mohammed, in the head, who is now in the hospital. The soldiers supported them with tear gas. The residents fled. I can’t forget how the villagers left their houses, terrified, the children screaming, the women crying, while the settlers entered their living rooms, like they were possessed with violence and wrath.”

September 17, 2021: A convoy of activists from the Israeli-Palestinian NGO Combatants for Peace and other organizations is bringing a water tanker to a village near at-Tuwani, which has no access to running water. The army violently attacks the convoy with tear gas and stun grenades. Six activists and a journalist are wounded; one of the activists is thrown to the rocky ground by the senior officer in command and has to undergo surgery on his eye. Seven Palestinians are arrested.

No one should think that these events—a random selection—are aberrations or exceptions to the rule. They are now the norm in the occupied Palestinian territories. Settler violence, backed up by Israeli soldiers, happens every day. Government ministers and high-ranking officers, including the army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Aviv Kochavi, make bland statements condemning the violence but do nothing to stop it. Some of them actively support it. The goal, by no means a secret, is to expel Palestinians from their homes and lands and, eventually, to annex as much of the West Bank as possible to Israel.

Any means to achieve this goal is acceptable. The Minister of Defense, Benny Ganz, has recently outlawed six Palestinian human rights organizations on the pretext that they are connected to Hamas. The vehemence with which the government and the security goons had defended this pretext is evidence that they know it is false -- yet another attempt to stamp out Palestinian protest and dissent. Some readers might be reminded of the days when the ACLU was attacked by Joseph McCarthy as an alleged Communist front organization.

All of this is Israel in 2021. So what is a one-time liberal like Sylvain Cypel supposed to make of it? His father, Jacque Cypel was an outstanding leader of labor Zionism in France and also the editor of the world’s last Yiddish language daily newspaper, Unzer Wort. (It closed down in 1996.) The young Sylvain, bilingual in French and Yiddish, grew up in Bordeaux and Paris where he was a member of a labor Zionist youth group. He went to Israel after high school, served as a paratrooper in the Israeli army and studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After living in Israel on and off for 12 years, he returned to France where he eventually became a senior editor at Le Monde and then editor-in-chief of Courier International.

In ‘The State of Israel vs the Jews, Cypel describes the change that came over in the years following the 1967 war:

“I had always thought that when Israel was founded as a refuge for the persecuted Jews of the world justice had been on the Israeli side. But I was gradually discovering that the expulsion of the Palestinians and the seizing of their land had been deliberately brutal.”

By the time he left Israel he was an anti-Zionist, hence ostracized by some former friends. He clearly could not tolerate the cognitive dissonance that so many of us in the Israeli peace movement have to live with. As he puts it, “Israel is evolving into something no idealist could stomach: a racist, bullying little superpower.” The raison d’etre of his book lies in documenting and substantiating this thesis.

BEAM UP THE NUKES, SCOTTY

Editor: 

Every day there’s another news story about how we’re playing chicken on the high seas and in the air with Russia and China. Are we headed to war with one or both of these countries? All three of us are nuclear powers. Are we going to sign a gentlemen’s agreement not to use nuclear weapons? What would that kind of war look like?

“Star Trek,” season 1, episode 23, was about two planets that had been at war for millenniums. They had established a form of civilized warfare where they had computer-simulated attacks. After an attack a certain number of their population, drawn by lottery, had to report to a death chamber. This way property and their form of government weren’t destroyed.

Without resorting to nuclear weapons, will the United States, Russia and China only destroy each other’s ships, aircraft, surface weapons and, of course, military personnel? Especially military personnel.

Just think: We could keep defense job programs working full time, and the manufacturers of casket-size flags and gold and blue stars could continue to make money too.

Temple O. Smith

Cloverdale

INTRODUCING MENDOCINO COUNTY’S NEW YOUTH POET LAUREATE: SIDNEY REGELBRUGGE

On February 1, Point Arena High School sophomore Sidney Regelbrugge begins her tenure as Mendocino County’s Youth Poet Laureate (YPL), having been selected from a competitive field of 12 students by distinguished local poets and teachers.

For those who have followed Regelbregge, this honor is no surprise. Regelbregge was the 2021 winner of Point Arena High School Poetry Out Loud recitation contest and the runner-up for Mendocino County. In the summer of 2021, she was the Mendocino Writer’s Conference High School Scholarship winner, where she won third place for her short story, Promises for Another Life, in the young adult category.

As youth poet laureate, Regelbregge will conduct at least five public appearances, such as readings or workshops – ideally one within each supervisorial district if COVID restrictions do not force events online. Her first virtual poetry reading to celebrate her appointment will be March 13 at 3:00 pm via Zoom with local poets laureate Melissa Eleftherion-Carr of Ukiah and Blake More of Point Arena. Visit tinyurl.com/YPLMarch2020 to register and receive a zoom link.

Along with the title, Regelbregge receives a $500 prize and an opportunity to publish a collection of her own poems or to spearhead a broader youth publication opportunity.

Regelbregge said, “I’ve spent my entire life stuck between the forest and the Pacific Ocean. I am a fifteen-year-old poet, who also exists in the world of music and mixed literature. I am an only child, who speaks her mind and at times when words are hard to say out loud. Written emotions on a page are my other communication. Poetry is the outsourcing of emotions when everything and everyone in the entire world feels like they are against you. Poetry is the expression of all emotions and feelings, it's the feeling of love by a wood fire, it's crying on the front porch watching your first love drive away. Poems are the outbursts of anger when no matter how much you scream no one hears you. To me, poetry is my heart and soul, the unjudged place where everyone is welcome. It gives voices to those who don't have one themselves. Poetry is home. It’s always safe and has been my home for many years and one I hope to invite others too.”

In addition to being a poet, Regelbregge plays concert piano and saxophone and is a multi-sport athlete.

Blake More, current Poet Laureate of Point Arena, longtime poet-teacher, and Mendocino County Area Coordinator with California Poets in the Schools (CalPoets) served as one of the judges on the youth poet laureate panel.

She highlighted Regelbregge’s statement: *To me, poetry is my heart and soul, the unjudged place where everyone is welcome**, *and then said, “This statement from Sidney is one reason I’m so thrilled that she will be our youth poet laureate for Mendocino County. She is a remarkable young woman, and she sees poetry as a way to give voice to those who don't have one themselves. One of her goals as YPL is to help youth and others in the community to discover the safety of poetry. It will be an honor to read with her and experience the joy and marvel of others as they witness and are inspired by her grounded intelligence and depth of expression.”

More encouraged school or community organizations interested in having Regelbregge make a public appearance at their venue to reach out to her at blake@arenatechcenter.org. More also praised the two other finalists in the youth poet laureate competition: Ukiah High School senior Nia Rich and Developing Virtue Girls School senior Amy Lui, both of whom “write with great skill and understanding,” she said.

The Mendocino County Youth Laureate Program is organized by California Poets in the Schools and supported by the Bill Graham Supporting Foundation, with additional support from the Arts Council of Mendocino County and Mendocino County Office of Education.

Mendocino County Superintendent of Schools Michelle Hutchins said, “I want to thank and recognize Sidney for sharing her talents with us. Her participation as well as our other finalists represent excellence in our schools. Lifting youth voices through the written and spoken word is another example of the great work MCOE supports.”

"WHILE THE US PROTESTS that it never gave assurances to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastwards, declassified documents prove otherwise. But even in the absence of declassified documents and contemporary statements by political leaders in 1989/91, including Secretary of State James Baker and German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher (which can be confirmed), it is all too obvious that there is a festering wound caused by NATO’s eastward expansion over the past 30 years, which has undoubtedly negatively impacted Russia’s sense of security. No country likes to be encircled, and common sense should tell us that maybe we should not be provoking another nuclear power. At the very least, NATO’s provocations are unwise; at worst, they could spell apocalypse.

It seems, however, that we in the West have become so used to what I would call a ‘culture of cheating’, that we react in a surprised fashion when another country does not simply accept that we cheated them in the past, and that, notwithstanding this breach of trust, they should accept the ‘new normal’ and resume ‘business as usual’ as if nothing had happened. Our leaders in the US, UK and EU contend that they have a clean conscience and refuse to consider the fact that the other side does feel uncomfortable about having been taken for a ride. A rational person, a true statesman, would pause and try to defuse the ‘misunderstanding’. Yet the US culture of cheating has become so second nature to us that we do not even realise when we are cheating someone else, and we seem incapable of understanding that denying our actions and reneging on our words adds insult to injury." 

—Alfred de Zayas, Professor of International Law at The Geneva School of Diplomacy.

JOE ROGAN STATEMENT On His Podcast Controversy

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