Mendocino County Today: Sunday, Feb. 6, 2022

Warming Trend | Night Shadow | Free Lunch | Pet Reba | Gridiron Breakfast | Infantile Banter | Bear 77 | Advisory Measure | Piercy Dam | Throwback 1932 | Gaslighting | B Fuddled | Hunting Party | Car Washer | Ed Notes | Doc Fulton | Public Officials | PG&E Returns | MAGA Trim | Art Contest | Yesterday's Catch | Passed Years | Blue Door | Hemingway House | Comptche 1890 | More Water Later | Big Sounds | Marco Radio | Mendocino 1988 | No Emergency | Live Alone

HIGH PRESSURE ALOFT will result in quiet and dry winter weather through the weekend and into next week, with an overall warming trend. A few patches of clouds or fog may threaten coastal areas tonight or Monday, otherwise expect sunshine to prevail for most of our region. (NWS)

FREE FOOD PHILO — LIBERATE EVERYTHING

Free Food Philo (an initiative of Love to Table, 501(c)3) is distributing meals in town to those in need. We cook nourishing meals using produce from our farm and others, and would love to offer you a warm lunch on Monday Feb 7. If you could use a home cooked meal, or have a friend in mind who does, please reach out to Arline (415) 308-3575 call or text, who will head up distribution in town.

~ This week’s menu ~

• Chicken Drumsticks with Homemade BBQ Sauce
• Roasted Root Veggies
• Couscous
• Peanut Butter Cookies

Thank you for letting us be of service.

For more information on Free Food Philo / Love to Table, check out: unconditionalfreedom.org/love-to-table/

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK Reba is a gentle and affectionate soul. She likes to bury her head in your lap while getting pets and lovin'—it’s very cute. Reba is easy to walk on leash and mellow indoors. She really perked up when she met a fellow canine guest. German Shepherd Dogs are smart, loving, and loyal. This breed excels at canine obedience, and they enjoy mental stimulation--they're always up for learning new tricks. Reba tested positive for heartworm, which we will treat. During her treatment, she will need 30 days of strict, limited activity.

For more about Reba, visit mendoanimalshelter.com 

While you’re there, check out all of our canine and feline guests, and our services, programs, events, and updates. Visit us on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter/ For information about adoptions, please call 707-467-6453.

THE SUPER VALENTINE BOWL

A great way to start your Sunday Feb. 13th.

HEART SHAPED PANCAKES And FOOTBALL FLAPJACKS, gluten free on request, cooked on the gridiron and made with love. Add the Maple syrup or fruit topping, bacon,eggs, juice and coffee...and you got the best way to start your day.

It's the second Sunday of the month and time for the AV GRANGE PANCAKE BREAKFAST from 8:30 to 11:00.

Be mine just before Valentines and Superbowl, no penalties for facemasking, (in fact we all facemask), but watch out for illegal use of the hands.

So c'mon down, bring your own plates and silverware or use the disposable gear at the Grange. Think of it as tailgating for Valentines Day.

AT BIRD & BECKETT BOOKS AND RECORDS

February 17th, 7:30 PM, Byron Spooner in conversation with Robert Mailer Anderson…“An hour of infantile banter and serious litjabber from two pillars of the Bay Area writing scene.”

Rounding Up A Bison
Stories by Byron Spooner
Andover Street Archives Press

Details at: byronspoonerjudithaynbernhard.godaddysites.com/

Praise for Rounding Up A Bison: 

Byron Spooner’s stories read like common speech and speak with deep tones that never feel literary, but sound like a full measure of humanness, and we can ask for no more, ‘Rounding Up a Bison” does the job with artistry and an adroitness that is rare. This is an exciting contribution to contemporary writing.

— Neeli Cherkovski

A major teller of stories is Byron Spooner, who has mastered the art of conversational technique, with all the memorable precisions of images from his own childhood as well as from the many others he’s invented. The result is these brilliantly composed works that make anyone say, “Wow, I was just told what I just read: a beautiful book of stories!” American literature, welcome your newest short-story master.

— Jack Hirschman

With working-class wit, a strong sense of absurdity, and an ear for the conversations of not-so-wise guys, Spooner spins stories from the busted front porch of a faded American Dream. From hard-drinking Hackensack holidays to scheming dog-eared New York booksellers, his characters eke out their livings and mistake-riddled lives calling to mind the early work of Richard Price and Richard Russo.

— Robert Mailer Anderson

I got my copy of Rounding Up a Bison. I’ve been reading it this afternoon and recommend it highly.

— Eric Spooner, my brother

If you’re miserable because Ray Carver is gone, and the delicious Jean Shepherd is still dead, don’t be. if you love the ringing-clear dialogue and impossibly true-to-life behavior of the characters in Daniel Woodrell (Winter’s Bone), don’t be blue, run to your local independent bookseller and get a copy of local book man Byron Spooner’s Rounding up a Bison. Hell, run between the raindrops and snag a copy and bundle up once you get home and read it. All. Tonight. You may thank me tomorrow.

— Beverly Langer

MEASURE AJ. ADVISORY VOTE ONLY. “If Mendocino County adopts” (November 2016 was clumsily worded as) “business license taxes on cannabis businesses by the adoption of the measure adopting Chapter 6.32, Measure AI, should the County use the majority of that revenue for funding enforcement of marijuana regulations, enhanced mental health services, repair of county roads, and increased fire and emergency medical services?” 

This was an “advisory measure” because if they formally earmarked the funds as they “advise” here it would have required a two-thirds vote. But AJ passed with almost 69%. In the “argument in favor” on the ballot the proponents said, “Vote ‘YES’ on Measure AJ. Tell this and future Boards of Supervisors to spend the ‘Marijuana Tax’ money to pay for critical County services. Signed: s/Carre Brown, 1st District Supervisor Mendocino County Board of Supervisors. s/Tom Woodhouse, 3rd District Supervisor Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, s/Carol Mordhorst, President / Health Advocate Mordhorst Services Inc., s/James E. Little, Fire Chief (Laytonville); s/Marvin Trotter MD, ER Physician.” 

---

Interestingly, 1) nobody has ever even added up the “marijuana taxes” taken in so that “a majority” could be handed out to the four categories of “critical services” listed, much less asked about adding it up, much less handed out anything at all, much less retroactively as it should be back to 2017, and none of these proponents listed here, much less the Supervisors or the Auditor or the Grand Jury, have uttered Word One about their advisory measure ever since. Hence, not one penny of “Marijuana Tax” has gone to roads, mental health services or emergency services (although by default, some of it may have accidentally been spent on cannabis code enforcement since that office is growing bigger by the day). Instead, Mendo/CEO/Supervisors have simply kept the “marijuana tax,” ignoring the “advice” Mendo’s voters approved, knowing that they could because Mendo’s voter-approved measures don’t mean much to them and most people would forget about it, and it was only “advisory” anyway so why bother taking advice from the voters? We only said things like “roads” and “emergency services” to sell our version of the pot permit program (accompanying Measure AI), but never really had any intention to follow it. Besides, CEO Angelo never told us to follow the advice and we’re too busy doing strategic plans and “setting policy” and combining departments for no reason at all to give a damn about what the voters approve. It’s probably only a few million anyway; hell, we wasted $4 million on Camille’s Crisis Residential house and nobody complained, so who cares? Further, if anybody does ask about it, we can always just say, Oh yes! Sorry about that. We will talk about it and Darcie will tell us how hard it would be to even calculate the amount at this late date and it was before her watch, so we’ll issue a “board directive” to have staff look into it and set up an ad hoc committee and then not bother to meet so we can re-ignore it for a few more years knowing it will be forgotten again and by then there’ll be a new crew of highly paid administrators and supervisors who will just go through the same motions again. (Mark Scaramella)

TODAY'S MENDOTHROWBACK is timely. As the future of Mendocino County’s Potter Valley Project is in question, ninety years ago today The Redwood Daily Journal announced in their February 5, 1932 issue Pacific Gas and Electric would be spending nearly $300,000 to upgrade the Potter Valley Project's hydraulic turbines dramatically increasing the power plant's efficiency.

Over six months, starting in the summer of 1932, workers would install an 8,500 horsepower hydraulic turbine and a new generator replacing two 2,500 horsepower generators designed in 1909. The powerhouse would also get a new interior layout including "new circuit breakers, switchboard, and related equipment.

The powerhouse's four electric generators had an installed capacity of 12,750 horsepower and the modern equipment was expected to bring the installed capacity up to 16,750 horsepower.

Maintaining the same volume of water passing through the powerhouse, the new equipment was predicted to increase the generating equipment efficiency from 46% to 85%. 

The Potter Valley Powerhouse became PG&E's property in 1929 after acquiring it from Snow Mountain Power Company. Foreseeing an increase in demand, PG&E engineers started a study to improve the property's productivity to meet increasing demand.

— Matt LaFever (MendoFever.com)

EMILY STRACHAN puts her finger square on it:

The Road Not Taken. First rate managers hire first rate staff. Second rate managers hire third rate staff. The County had a candidate for the Measure B project manager position who had the background and leadership skills to plan and implement Measure B. The excuse for not hiring her was her salary requirement. Considering all the creative monetary pencil sharpening the County engages in, I have a hard time believing that excuse. Instead of hiring an experienced manager the County chose to hire an inexperienced person who was incapable of wrestling the project away from the Measure B Committee which was engaging in shared non responsibility.

---

JOHN MCCOWEN responds:

Emily Strachan – Good insight on the Measure B project manager position. Carmel Angelo brought forward a $3 million plus contract for Nacht and Lewis, the Measure B architects, so the salary requirement of the project manager candidate could not have been an issue. Especially since the money was not coming from the General Fund but from Measure B. The real reason? Personal loyalty and a willingness to follow orders are the only qualifications that really matter to Carmel Angelo who has a pattern of hiring people based on her ability to boss or bully them.

Carmel Angelo was one of eleven Measure B Committee members, but the Measure B project manager was completely under her thumb. To quote from the Measure B Clerking Instructions, an internal document: “Schedule time to meet with Carmel and Janelle [Rau] to review all items. Bring 3 complete copies of draft agenda and all agenda summaries to this meeting (1 for Carmel, 1 for Janelle, and one for yourself). Incorporate any directed changes into agenda summaries/agenda.” 

Not only did Carmel Angelo assume the authority to direct any changes to the agenda and the agenda summaries, but she also held pre-meetings immediately before every Measure B Committee meeting. These meetings always included four or more of the Committee members and were most likely violations of the Brown Act. Carmel Angelo’s control of the Measure B project manager and the Committee continued right up until she realized Measure B had become a liability.

The project manager was abruptly fired and responsibility for the Committee was transferred to Behavioral Health. Although she ostensibly washed her hands of responsibility for Measure B, Carmel Angelo has continued to call the shots. The decision to discount partnering with Adventist Health and study Whitmore Lane as the only alternative was made by Carmel Angelo.

Partnership with Adventist Health would have facilitated shared use of facilities, professional personnel, access to the Adventist Health network and on-going economies of scale for all aspects of operations and maintenance. Without this partnership it will be much more difficult to cost effectively staff and operate the PHF (Psychiatric Health Facility) which was the keystone of Measure B.

BRENDON SHAW-GRIFFIN: Is your vehicle dirty from winter? Did you spill coffee? That's no problem for me, I'm super convenient right here in Philo and I wear masks too. Give me a call and I can wash vacuum and detail your car right here in the valley. "A" package is just a wash. "B" package is a wash and vacuum and "C" package is a wash, vacuum and detail. 707-558-5301. Let's get those vehicles detailed for spring. Message me or call me.

ED NOTES

EARTH FIRST! came and went on the Northcoast with Judi Bari, circa '88 to '90 when the health and welfare of the environment became secondary to Bari's travails after she survived an attempt by her ex-husband to murder her via a car bomb in May of 1990.

THE MENDOCINO ENVIRONMENT CENTER was opened about that time in a law enforcement-convenient location opposite the County Courthouse by Gary and Betty Ball, arriving about the same time as Bari, departing post-Bari. Bari and her husband maintained offices at the MEC, premises owned by former supervisor, John McCowen.

BECAUSE EARTH FIRST! talked up and occasionally engaged in, industrial sabotage, the FBI used the MEC at 106 Standley as a listening post, keeping track of potential eco-terrorists, as that inflated term was promiscuously applied to people who identified with the principles of the non-organized Earth First! non-organization.

WHICH is purely my surmise as a simpatico person who was there and fairly close to the principals and couldn't help but notice the lurk-murks who hung out at the MEC pretending to be hippies, the costume required for participation credentials at the time. The fake hippies looked more like gym rats than monkey wrenchers, not that it mattered because there were plenty of snitches among the inner circle, among them Judi Bari's husband, Mike Sweeney, imo.

THE NEXT INCARNATION of earth warriors will be far more numerous and far more serious because it is more obvious now than it was thirty years ago that it's either us humans or eco-catastrophes on a scale that upsets everyone's poisoned apple carts.

A FELLOW NAMED MALM is writing in the highbrow journals that the logic of the rolling eco-disasters will require thousands of people in each area of the globe dedicating themselves to stopping the destroyers by whatever means it takes up to and including assassinations of individual destroyers. Malm is more influential by the day.

FORESTS are consumed by wildfire, fish die in hot rivers whose waters are drying up, whole towns burn off the map or sink beneath floods, polar ice melts, sea level rises, extinctions, and eco-collapse surrounds us, millions of destitute people flee lands no longer able to support them. Malm points out the obvious — there has not been an equivalent acceleration of aggressive opposition. “The daily business of politics has started to look trivial, if not insane.”

“CONFRONTING the facts can be paralyzing. How to Blow Up a Pipeline, one of a number of recent books by Andreas Malm, opens by quoting an observation made by John Lanchester in the London Review of Books back in 2007 that terrorism had thus far been markedly absent from the climate movement.

“That might have been a sign of the times. There was little appetite in the years after 2001 for discussion of the merits of terrorism. Even if the definition is wide enough to include the ELF’s campaign of sabotage and property destruction, climate activists have been at pains to stress their non-violence. But now, Malm suggests, an insistence on pacifism as the sine qua non of the climate movement presents a paradox. Despite the urgency of the crisis and the ubiquity of appropriate targets – the SUV, the refinery, the head offices of major fossil fuel firms – that can be disabled with relative ease, no sustained action against them has been taken. For Malm, this reflects both the ‘general deficit’ of climate action and the particular form of inaction characteristic of activists themselves.”

THE ABOVE PARA is from a recent London Review of Books article. It represents what a lot of smart people are thinking, and it won't be long before smart young people take up the do or die challenge. Us old folks might make our own contributions to Operation Planet Save by committing a few eco-felonies ourselves on our way out the door.

BETSY CAWN:

Public officials are subject to criticism, it comes with the job. Our CAO complained that her feelings were “hurt” when citizens objected to being treated harshly by the county after the Valley Fire. Citizens here are consistently ignored and the level of dialogue with the Board of Supervisors (especially since Phil Murphy debarked for Oregon) is pretty much reduced to being allowed three minutes for comments — to which the Supervisors mostly do not reply. (One exception being Supervisor Sabatier, who fancies himself some sort of statesman.)

I find that for the most part the public in general is reluctant to offer any “negative” comments, being respectful to a fault (with Facebook comments leavening the brew — often larded with ad hominem nonsense) or obsequiously obiesant in some hope of receiving the crumbs of attention the elected officials deign to waft their way.

How our Lake County Administration gets away with its fantastical dream-weaving in lieu of funding public health and safety programs and taking real action to protect the watershed, shoreline and Clear Lake — responsibility for which was granted to the County of Lake in 1973 — beats me.

CATCHING EVEN INSIDERS ‘OFF GUARD’, PG&E DECIDES TO RETURN THE POTTER VALLEY PROJECT

by Sarah Reith

The future of the Potter Valley Project which diverts water from the Eel River to the Russian River is more uncertain than ever, with a regional coalition declaring it will not file for the license application and PG&E unexpectedly taking steps to operate the project under an annual license until the next development. 

PG&E, which owns and operates the project, announced in 2019 that it would not renew its license and was no longer trying to sell it. The coalition, which agreed to prioritize fish passage and water supply, was the only entity to express an interest in taking over the license. But on Monday, the group sent a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), explaining that it will not file an application by the deadline in mid-April, when the current license expires. 

The decision has been widely anticipated, since the coalition, consisting of  Humboldt County, California Trout, the Round Valley Indian Tribes, the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission, and Sonoma County Water Agency (known collectively as the Notice of Intent, or NOI parties), has been unable to gather the estimated $12-18 million needed to conduct the studies required by various regulatory agencies. 

The project has been what PG&E spokesman Paul Moreno calls “non-economic” for years, which is why the company decided to bow out of the ongoing operational and maintenance costs. The water diverted from the Eel River is far more valuable to Russian River water users than the power generated by the project. But that flow, which can get as high as 270 cubic feet per second, has been severely curtailed since a transformer in the Potter Valley powerhouse went offline in July. PG&E estimated that repairing the transformer bank would cost between five and ten million dollars, and could take up to two years. 

Then, in a surprising turn of events, on Wednesday, PG&E’s director of strategic agreements told the NOI parties that PG&E had “concluded it is beneficial to PG&E’s electric generation customers to proceed with the work necessary to return the powerhouse to full operational status.” Moreno said in an interview that the company expects to be able to recoup the costs of the repair, which are still unknown, within five years, during which time the company plans to continue operating under annual licenses from FERC. PG&E is not currently under orders to decommission the project, which Moreno described as “kind of a relicensing process in reverse.”

kymkemp.com/2022/02/04/catching-even-insiders-off-guard-pge-decides-to-return-the-potter-valley-project-which-diverts-water-from-the-eel-river-to-full-operational-status/

FROM US NEWS: Just as a disparity along political lines exists when it comes to getting vaccinated against COVID-19, partisan divides are apparent in relation to deaths from the disease as well. A U.S. News analysis of COVID-19 data from USAFacts alongside voting results from the 2020 presidential race shows that counties where former President Donald Trump received the most votes by a massive margin have a 52% higher death rate over the course of the pandemic than counties where President Joe Biden won in a relative landslide…

BLACK HISTORY ART CONTEST

All kids aged 18 and under are invited to create art of any medium about Black History.

Creativity encouraged! It could be digital art, visual art, performing arts, poetry, drama, etc!!

There will be winners for all age categories. Prizes provided by Black Lives Matter, Mendocino Chapter.

Art must be submitted by Feb 23rd at midnight.

Questions or having issues uploading the art? Email mendocinoblm@gmail.com

Put a link to the art here in this form or email the art to mendocinoblm@gmail.com

1 entry per child. Prizes for winners in all age categories. If you attend school, put your teacher and school and they could win a free box of books by Black authors!!

CATCH OF THE DAY, February 5, 2022

JERRY BAILEY, Willits. Ammo possession by prohibited person, probation revocation.

JESUS BELTRAN-CHAIDEZ, Ukiah. DUI, suspended license.

JAY JACKSON, Willits. County parole violation.

JOHN LOPEZ, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

MICHAEL MCDANIEL, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.

FRANCISCO OLVERA-RAMIREZ, Fort Bragg. DUI.

ZAHIR PECHERON, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

“I HAVE LEARNED that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance. The cloud clears as you enter it. I have learned this, but like everyone, I learned it late.” 

— Beryl Markham, West with the Night (1942)

HEMINGWAY & HIS HOUSE

by Joy Williams

In 1851 Asa Tift, a “brainy, cultured, suave gentleman” from Groton, Connecticut, a merchant and builder of Confederate ships, built a limestone mansion from native coral rock at 907 Whitehead Street. Its mansard roof and iron flanged pillars, of vaguely Second Empire or Spanish colonial design, the Hemingway House is unlike any other house in town Key West, Florida.

Ernest Hemingway and his wife Pauline bought the house in 1931 for $8,000, a monetary gift from Pauline’s wealthy uncle Gus. The house was in a gross state of ill repair with a grassless yard dotted with a few scraggly trees. It was a “miserable wreck,” according to Pauline who also referred to it as a “damned haunted house” after a piece of plaster fell from the ceiling and lodged in her eye. Nonetheless, just before Christmas the Hemingway’s with their two small sons, nurses and cooks, moved into rooms still jammed with carpenters, plumbers, plasterers, and crates of furniture shipped from France. Hemingway worked here winters in a small room over what had once been a carriage house until his divorce from Pauline in 1940. At that time he crated all his belongings -- papers, books, guns and hunting trophies -- and stored them in a back room at Sloppy Joe’s. (When Mary Hemingway, his last wife, went into the room in 1962 and opened the boxes untouched for decades she found original manuscripts blackened with mildew and eaten by rats, uncashed royalty checks, and rotted animal skins.) He then went off to Cuba for a new, if brief, marriage with Martha Gelhorn, and a new house, the Finca Vigia or “Lookout Farm,” nine miles outside of Havana. It was at the Finca where the ghastly collection of inbred cats roamed and not in Key West where the pet population, which numbered several peacocks and included only two cats, one of which the children once dyed a dark green producing unknown consequences. Hemingway however did have over 50 cats in Cuba and once boasted of shooting a peasant’s dog which had molested one of them. He had intentionally gut shot the animal so that it would take three days to die.

Ernest Hemingway as every school child knows, fished, drank and wrote in Key West. He wrote ‘Death in the Afternoon,’ ‘The Green Hills of Africa,’ and ‘To Have And Have Not,’ as well as a play, ‘The Fifth Column,’ and a considerable number of short stories including ‘The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”

‘A Farewell to Arms’ was completed in 1929 in a house he and Pauline had rented on South Street, the same house where his mother had sent a chocolate cake and the Smith and Wesson revolver his father had used to commit suicide.

“Christ, this is a fine country!” Hemingway wrote a friend, enthusiastic about Key West. Between trips to Arkansas to shoot grouse, pheasant, ducks and geese; Wyoming, to shoot bear, elk, mountain rams, and eagles; and Africa, to shoot elephant, lion, rhino, buffalo and kudu, Hemingway fished the Gulfstream. As the biographer Carlos Baker remarks in somewhat of an understatement, he “enjoyed life immensely without being sensitive to it.” Once when the poet Archibald McLeish visited him and they went kingfishing, they found the fish weren’t running so Hemingway “took to shooting terns, taking one with one barrel and the grieving mate with the other.” Besides shotguns, he also carried onboard a harpoon and a machine gun for sharks and the stray pod of whales.

Hemingway liked marlin fishing best for marlin were “fast as light, strong as bucks, with mouths like iron.” Tuna, perhaps, were not so exciting even though they could take just as long to catch. It took him seven hours to land one 11.5 foot, 540 pound tuna and after getting drunk he strung it up and used it as a punching bag. Hemingway also once used the poet Wallace Stevens as a punching bag in Key West. He blackened his eyes and fractured his jaw after the older man had apparently remarked that Hemingway’s writing was not his “cup of tea.” One mystified biographer wrote, “For reasons that remain obscure, the poet seemed to have baited the novelist into some kind of fight.” Stevens was 20 years older than Hemingway, a portly insurance executive, and certainly no boxer. When he threw a punch at Hemingway’s jaw, he broke his hand in two places.

During his first years in Key West, Hemingway chartered the boats of Bra Saunders, Charles Thompson, and Sloppy Joe Russell. In 1934 at the height of the Depression and in the same year that the town had declared bankruptcy, Hemingway bought his own boat -- a 42 foot black cruiser with mahogany trim built to his specifications in a New York shipyard. “A really sturdy boat,” he described her, “sweet in any kind of sea, and she has a very low cut stern with a large wooden roller to bring the big fish over.” He called her the ‘Pilar,’ one of his early names for Pauline, as well as the name of a Catholic bullfight shrine in Zaragoza, Spain. He docked her at the Navy station in the submarine pen where he and his friends, the “Mob,” liked to swim. She rode out the 1935 hurricane there.

Hemingway did a lot of fishing on the Pilar. In 1942 he employed her in a daffy manner as a submarine hunter in the Caribbean, having convinced the Navy to equip her as a Q-boat with a supply of bazookas, grenades, and short fuse bombs. The Pilar was seized by the Castro government in 1960, a year before Hemingway’s death, and is still on the lawn in front of the Finca in Cuba.

Hemingway thought his house on Whitehead Street resembled “Joan Miro’s ‘The Farm’ as it might have been painted by Utrillo.” If that does not exactly crystallize the vision for you, imagine it being in the 1930s the finest house in town, a mansion with all French windows, staffed with servants on an acre of land and possessing the only basement, bathroom and swimming pool on the island. The pool is 60 feet long and was dug by pick and shovel for $20,000, an amount which the guides like to point out would be equivalent to spending over $225,000 today. 

Hemingway lived very well here. In 1936 he was putting the finishing touches on his Key West book, ‘To Have and Have Not,’ a novel that showed the poverty-stricken plight of islanders during the Depression as well as Hemingway’s considerable disdain for fellow writers, literary hangers on, Gulfstream yachtsman, and tourists. ‘To Have and Have Not’ is a not very successful attempt to fashion a novel by taking three previously published stories -- the most excellent one being “After The Storm,” about a fisherman and smuggler named Henry Morgan (based on Sloppy Joe Russell) and attaching them to subplots of love triangles and capitalistic boorishness. But it’s Hemingway’s Key West book and it captures the jarring rhythms of a town on the skids.

Hemingway became Key West’s most famous citizen and immediately fell prey to his fans. “I have been driven nuts by visitors in this last 10 days,” he wrote to the editor Maxwell Perkins. “Everything from movie stars up and down and they have cost me a week’s work except for one good day. The people all come at once and always in the cool season when I have to get my work done.” In 1937 Toby Bruce, a driver, friend and general handyman for the Hemingways, built a privacy wall around the property from bricks salvaged from Duval Street, dug up when the town lay down its first sewer system. By 1940 Hemingway was gone. “Those who live by the sword die by the sword,” he said rather uninspiredly, explaining Pauline’s replacement by Martha. After all, Pauline had replaced Hadley. And Mary was to supplant Martha. Pauline, who had provided him with the wealth he so enjoyed and despised, died suddenly in Los Angeles in 1951. When asked by Tennessee Williams who had met her in Key West, how she had died, Hemingway replied, “She died like everybody else and after that she was dead.”

The Hemingway House Tour

You will enter the grounds. The plantings are nice. It is lush. Figs, elephant ears, a magnificent date palm. Then you’ll see the excessive inauthentic collection of cats, clumping around on their malformed toes -- cats eating, cats brawling, cats having more cats in little cages. You will take the tour. It will cost you six dollars (children a dollar and a half) and will take 30 minutes. Four people give tours 10 times a day. The most eccentric tour is given by a tiny man with a tiny belly and tiny tight skinny shiny black pants. You will be in a mob and he will call you “beanies,” he will call you “little sparklers,” he will tell you to keep it “flowing and glowing” as you follow him tripping through the rooms. He is a movie buff and you will hear about Loretta Young and Rock Hudson and Lauren Bacall. There is a chair in the bedroom which he will point out because Franchot Tone sat in it in a production of The Fifth Column. Franchot Tone was married to Joan Crawford at the time. The bedroom abounds in strange little chairs, uncomfortable chairs, keyhole chairs, even a midwife’s chair. Later of course you are shown The Chair, the cigar-maker’s chair Hemingway wrote in. (“Everything in that place is false,” asserts one of Hemingway’s sons, Patrick.) The books of the house are all enclosed behind wiremesh, although there is a good selection of his works in paper for sale in the drawing room. “I had no idea he wrote so much,” you will hear. Glance inside the pages. Other than this, his life’s work, Hemingway is dead as a doornail in his place.

COMPTCHE SCHOOL, 1890 (courtesy Kelley House Museum)

PROPONENTS OF 'MORE WATER NOW' Pull Initiative Due to Lack of Funds, Signatures

by Dan Bacher

On February 1, the corporate agribusiness and water agency proponents of the controversial “More Water Now” initiative announced that they were pulling the initiative from qualifying for the November 2022 ballot due to the lack of funds needed to gather the necessary signatures.

“Today the More Water Now campaign announces an end to its efforts to qualify The Water Infrastructure Funding Act of 2022 for the November state ballot,” according to a press release from the campaign. “Despite crafting an initiative that would solve California’s challenge of chronic and worsening water scarcity, and despite recent polling that indicates over 70 percent of California’s voters support increased state spending on water infrastructure, the campaign has been unable to attract the financial support necessary to gather the required 1.0 million signatures.”

The initiative proponents said the priority for the campaign now shifts to 2024. “Our steering committee members, all volunteers, remain in contact with hundreds of donors and volunteers who are urging us to try again,” they stated.

“More Water Now,” the corporate front group created to support the initiative, was set up and developed by “The Liberty Lab,” the high-priced P.R. firm behind:

 - The Recall of Governor Gavin Newsom - Women for Trump - The Keystone XL Pipeline

“They’re financed by powerful multinational corporations and polluters who want a bottomless slush fund to profit at taxpayer expense,” according to Friends of the River (FOR).

FOR had a much different take on the failure of the initiative, pointing out that “swift action and strong leadership” by Friends of the River “proved to be successful in defeating the destructive Water Infrastructure Funding Act of 2022. “

FOR said the so-called “More Water Now” or “billions for billionaires” ballot measure “would have funded water projects for wealthy landowners and irrigation districts from public funds, likely for decades, and undermine bedrock environmental legal protections to fast-track implementation.”

They further noted that many of the projects are opposed by local communities, tribes and conservationists for the damage they would cause to drinking water, habitats, tribal and public lands

“Essentially, this measure had the potential to undo much of the work Friends of the River had accomplished in protecting and restoring California rivers the last five decades,” said Ron Stork, Friends of the River’s senior policy advocate. “It was pretty bold, and a significant commitment of taxpayer resources for projects that are ordinarily supposed to be paid for by the beneficiaries of the project.”

As soon as the initiative was made public, Stork said Friends of the River quickly created and led the formal opposition to the initiative by forming the “Stop the Water Scam” political committee in 2021. The group grew to over two dozen organizations that “took clear and united opposition to the threatening initiative through significant education, communications and outreach efforts.”

Despite announcing defeat, the ballot supporters vowed to bring the initiative back in 2024. FOR and other members of the Stop the Water Scam Committee said they not surprised. FOR Resilient Rivers Director Ashley Overhouse commented,

“After almost 50 years of protecting and restoring California Rivers, Friends of the River is not shocked the outdated mentality of ‘dam our way to paradise’ continues to resurface. We will continue to stress that healthy rivers are a part of the solution to the climate crisis. A state with so many dams and diversions will be of little value in an equitable and climate resilient water future. If the initiative proponents come back, FOR and the other members of the committee will continue to be an experienced, organized and united front.” 

Initiative backers claim on their website that The Water Infrastructure initiative “funds construction of water supply infrastructure and water conservation programs to end water scarcity in California forever” for “an estimated $50 billion over the next ten years (less than this fiscal year’s state budget surplus).”

But according to opponents, the initiative “creates an indefinite slush fund managed by unelected bureaucrats to pay for wasteful projects long backed by powerful special interests. It’s a scam on California taxpayers, a throwback to the days of enormous water projects that benefit few but are paid for by all of us. It’s corporate welfare at its worst.”

It would divert 2 percent of the state’s General Fund every year to build water projects without legislature review. In 2021-22, that would amount to $3.92 billion. According to the non partisan California Legislative Analyst[s Office, it would cost more than $100 billion to the state’s taxpayers.

A CASE OF THE BAZAZZAS.

"Oh, 'scusi moi. I was just pampering myself with a Sleeping Beauty glow masque." "Actually, I've also been wearing that masque, except I've combined mine with a Scrubulator oxygenation masque for complete relaxation." "I think chemically you're not supposed to combine those." "Oh, really? I feel fine. It's like a faceful of hot snakes."

Here's the recording of last night's (2022-02-04) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA): https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0474

Thanks heaps to Hank Sims for all kinds of tech help over the years, as well as for his fine news site: https://LostCoastOutpost.com

And thanks to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, which provided almost an hour of the above eight-hour show's most locally relevant material, as usual, without asking for anything in return. (Though I do pay $25 annually for full access to all articles and features, and you should too if you can. As well as shower some largesse once in awhile upon KNYO. Why not go to KNYO.org, click on the big red heart and exercise your largesse muscles right now? Let them entirely off leash to run free and cavort and frolic.)

Email me your work on any subject and I'll read it on the radio this coming Friday night on the very next MOTA show.

Besides All That, 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 the show together. Such as:

I'm inviting you to compare your own pursuits and obsessions and dedication and accomplishments and joy in life with Lily Hevesh and her projects, like this one:

https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2022/02/this-hexagon-is-world-record-domino.html

Coney Island. The romance, the happy pinheads, the soft-focus ropes of Edison bulbs in cigar smoke and steam and tangible smell of wet wool, the heaviest tapdancing pianist in the world, the amazing and perturbing headless woman, tattoo tent, clanking wheezing rides hanging by a thread, dueling calliopes, kielbasa sandwiches and taffy candy that /glues your teeth shut/... A phone with games in it can't really replace this, but it has, alas. It's all gone, a world lost forever.

https://tinyurl.com/ConeyIslandInABlender

Here's some quickly replaceable property being damaged, barely the money equivalent of a single car crash, and probably insured against. Alcohol kills 3,000,000 people (!) every year and ruins and blights the lives of many millions more and their families. It's addictive and more destructive than all other recreational drugs combined. I can easily imagine many good reasons for this woman to do as she did. Maybe a drunk driver killed her little daughter. Maybe her drunken lout of a husband just gambled away all their savings or slapped her face and/or merely bellowed viciously at her through a locked bathroom door one too many times while she huddled behind it, weeping. Maybe she came to a realization of the harm from her own drinking and, despairing of not being able to ever give it up, just snapped. People speak of waste-- "what a waste, all those bottles"-- I'm thinking of the blithe waste of production of all that poison in the first place, regardless of whether it ends up clean and fresh on that floor or mixed with vomit on a hundred other floors and in the street. [Update: I see that they removed the video. I wonder why.]

https://boingboing.net/2022/02/01/modern-day-carrie-nation-singlehandedly-destroys-shelves-of-liquor.html

And twin shoulder-mounted eye-tracking high-power lasers. They set on fire whatever you swivel your eyes to look at, no matter how far away, so be careful. You don't want to shoot somebody's eye out, like that guy last week in Virginia who shot his glovebox pistol at a deer in a field, missed three times, of course, but felled his 81-year-old neighbor 140 yards away and then had to go over there and futilely try to stop the bleeding with a towel while he waited for police to show up. He's in a lot of trouble. It's against the law to shoot across a road at a deer.

https://theawesomer.com/supermans-heat-vision-irl/656553/

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

WHEW!

No emergency message today!

Warmest spiritual greetings, Please know that I will not be sending out an emergency survival message today. Whereas I am only identified with Brahman, (i.e. that which is prior to consciousness, as opposed to the body-mind complex), and whereas the mind is chanting the Maha Mantra continuously, along with a few Catholic prayers for good measure, there is no further need for me to continue to beseech this experimental postmodern American society to assist me in moving on to my next highest good. 

Whereas the Divine Absolute is not itself insane, all will eventually be taken care of. I sincerely pity anybody relying on this crazy postmodern world for anything at all. ~OM SHANTHI~

Craig Louis Stehr