Mendocino County Today: Sunday, Feb. 13, 2022

High Clouds | California Toothwort | Joanne Mary Frazer | Pet King Hulk | So-Called Patriots | Hound's Tongue | Marijuana Market | Other Side | Beloved Skunk | Yesterday's Catch | Navajo Weaving | Martha Gellhorn | Air Keg | Country Halftime | Miss You | Trucker Tizzy | No Retreat | Malm Balm | Valentine Dagger | Execution Horror | Face Melt | Manuscript Thief | Diver Down | Marco Radio | Jughandle Trestle

WARM WEATHER WILL START TO COOL TODAY with high clouds spreading over this afternoon. Light rain and gusty winds are expected Monday and Tuesday for coastal Humboldt and Del Norte counties. Cooler, moister conditions early this week will give way to warm, dry weather later in the week. (NWS)

JOANNE MARY FRAZER passed away peacefully in her family home Monday morning, February 7th, 2022. 

Born on November 24th, 1952, she spent virtually her entire life living in and giving back to the local Fort Bragg community. Her parents, Thomas David Cooney and Mary Lucia Cooney, raised her to love this town and its people as they had, both being known and respected in their own realms. She is survived by her older brother, Thomas D. Cooney, and younger sister, Cathy M. Grisdale, who always loved and supported her. In 1972 her father passed away, and she helped to take over Cooney's Sporting Goods, the family store. However, a lifelong wanderlust led her to buy and maintain a new business, Fort Bragg Travel. This allowed her to follow her passion, travel the globe, and help countless others do the same. For over 30 years she worked tirelessly to help everyone she could to explore the world, and make their fantasies real. She was a vibrant woman, full of life and love. She had a passion for dance, whether ballroom or tango that never left her. She even cultivated an organic farm for many years on the family property, helping new life and possibilities bloom. Together with her former husband, Noel C. Frazer, she raised two children, Scott T. Frazer and Juliana M. Frazer. She was a devoted mother, always willing to help, listen, or give advice in any way she could. Through all this she continued to give back to the community and volunteer through volunteer through Soroptimist International. She was a strong feminist, always willing to help out struggling women everywhere. As such, in lieu of flowers please feel free to give any donation to Soroptimist International of Fort Bragg via PayPal (julianafrazer@gmail.com). 

There will be an outdoor Celebration of Life ceremony this Saturday, February 12th, at 2 p.m. for family, friends, and anyone who wishes to pay their respects at 401 N Harbor Drive in Fort Bragg.

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

This uber-handsome dog needs a specific type of home and guardian. King is not a "cuddly” kinda dog, and we think he may have lacked socialization and experiences (meeting new people, being in new situations and places, etc) during his formative years. The good news is KH has some confidence and allows basic handling. King needs an experienced guardian, and a home with no children. King H is a Shepherd mix, 1 year old and 90-ish pounds.

For more about King Hulk, 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.

SO-CALLED PATRIOTS

by Mike Geniella

The so-called “Mendocino Patriots” are planning on Sunday to show up outside the Ukiah home of the County Public Health Officer to protest his decision to continue indoor masking requirements for another month.

The Patriots in doing so are ignoring past requests that they confine their protests to public places, and not at the private residences of decision makers.

“Join us for a rally at our Public Health Officer’s house this Sunday, February 13, at 1:30,” declares the notice put out to Patriot followers.

“We’ll meet in Michael’s craft store parking lot at 1:30, then leaving the parking at 1:45 to head to his (Dr. Andy Coren’s) house.”

The Patriots’ notice claims that Dr. Coren’s decision to keep the indoor masking requirements in place through March 15 is an abuse of local authority, and prolonging “the nightmare.”

Like escalating rhetoric ala, the Canadian truckers’ blockade, the Patriots claim Coren’s latest order issued on Feb. 11 allows the “government to take you from your home and detain you somewhere else if they don’t think you are quarantining properly.”

The Patriots are promising to have “extra signs on hand so don’t worry if you don’t have time to make one.”

Dr. Coren has said still high local hospitalization rates are driving his decision not to lift masking requirement at this time in Mendocino.

To lift the requirements now in a county where local medical facilities remain tested would be “inviting problems,” said Coren.

Dr. Coren told local news website MendoFever.com on Thursday that his primary concern is about local hospitals and their capacity and the fact that “our Mendocino hospitals are full, with 0-1 ICU and 0-1 general admission beds available most days in the last 1-2 weeks.”

The limited capacity has meant “our facilities have had to postpone care to many who need hospitalization and even transport out of county local patients with emergency problems, such as surgery,” Dr. Coren told MendoFever.

Supporters of lifting Mendocino’s current restrictions cite a MendoFever.com reprint of a published a story from CalMatters.org that shows other rural counties with higher rates of hospitalized Covid patients than Mendocino including Lake, Siskiyou, Shasta, Tehama, and Del Norte. Those counties in general have been among the most resistant to Covid-related protection requirements. 

CalMatters research shows that Mendocino County’s hospitalization rates are higher than neighboring Sonoma, Humboldt, and Napa counties.

Dr. Coren’s policies have been scorned before by local critics including the Patriots. In early September, Dr. Coren voluntarily appeared before a large and mildly hostile crowd in a parking lot outside a local gym club to debate proposed vaccine mandates for employees and customers of local restaurants and bars.

Yet even the organizers acknowledged Dr. Coren’s decision to publicly meet with critics, and they praised him for “a lot of trust, courage and respect on his part.”

But the Patriots are not having any of that now.

“Our silence is prolonging the nightmare. We need everyone to stand together and say enough. We WILL NOT comply.”

The Patriots made headlines in early December when twenty-one of them showed up at the Ukiah Co-Op and grabbed shopping baskets but refused to wear masks as required by store policy. Employees offered them individual masks.

The Patriots disrupted the Co-Op’s check-out line, and one of their children opened and started eating chips they insisted they intended to buy. 

Patriots do not list their membership or organizers. They claim their intent is to “unify community members of Mendocino County, regardless of political affiliation, to peacefully stand up against overreaching local, state and federal governments.”

“We disagree with the intrusive handling of Covid-19 and the restrictions and mandates placed on us with little to no justification and without following standard public health guidelines that have always been in place,” according to the Patriots web site.

California’s indoor masking requirements will be allowed to lapse statewide next Tuesday, Feb. 15. Rather than requiring all residents to wear masks indoors, vaccinated residents can remain unmasked indoors, while unvaccinated individuals must remain masked. It is unclear who will enforce the unvaccinated requirement.

Even though California and other states are rescinding indoor mask mandates still championed by the federal Center for Disease Control, the state allows counties to assess their individual conditions and determine whether indoor masking requirements should remain in place.

Dr. Coren, citing Mendocino County’s still high hospitalization rate and the recent extraordinary surge of the omicron variant cases, contends it is not yet safe enough from a public health perspective to lift the indoor masking requirement.

THE MARIJUANA MARKET: ON LINE COMMENTS

(1) It sounds like you have more fixed costs than hidden costs. Let’s run through this. When I used to develop and manage large vineyard projects throughout the 90’s we broke everything down in acres. From direct cost of goods to gross revenue per acre. I imagine you could apply the same methods to growing pot. I would always use conservative production projections based on historical average data and would always account for 10% of potential earnings for hidden costs. This would not only apply to yield but also profit as that’s a variable in the commodity market too. You need to dial your operation in so you have the least amount of unexpected expenses as possible. Just like the grape industry, it all comes down to quality of product and yield at the end of the year. The larger the yield the lower the cost of goods generally. It’s really hard for me to believe that it costs over $400 to produce a pound of pot. You might need to pay someone like myself to do an analysis of your operations to see where you can cut the fat. Every varietal of grape yields a different purchase price per ton. So, for a typical Sonoma County red wine grape variety, if you figure $2,200 a ton and 5 tons to the acre you should get about $11,000 an acre in revenue. Take away our average of $5,000 in costs + $150 per acre for harvest and you get $5,850 per acre in net income.

* * *

(2) You’re literally comparing apples to oranges. It’s not that simple. Wine grapes don’t require such involved cultivation methods. Additionally other factors such as harvesting curing and manicuring are more complicated with Cannabis and that increases costs of labor. To address the elephant in the room, the tax scheme is much higher with cannabis. How much is the tax per square foot of vineyard growing space again? Are grapes taxed by the pound at harvest? I know the wine is taxed after it is made but I feel your comparison is a bit unequal.

* * *

(3) Your tax examples for pot are exactly similar to the process of producing wine. Minus the per square foot tax you describe from your locality. Which seems to be minimal as a set cost. $1 a square foot? So you have 10,000 square feet with a local tax of $10,000? Seems like 10,000 square feet should produce a minimum of 1,000 pounds of cannabis annually. The remaining excise taxes you describe appear to be the distributors’ and retailers’ responsibility. This should not be a consideration in your calculations. I still have not heard a valid argument as to why it would cost anyone $400 to grow 1 pound of pot. Based on my production hypothetical above, your local excise tax accounts for $10 per pound. Please give me a detailed breakdown of the remaining $390 required to grow a pound of pot.

* * *

MARK SCARAMELLA ADDS: None of the above assessments address the cost of land or water, nor do they deal with the lost opportunity costs associated with permit processing delays associated only with pot. Pot growers I know say that, not counting land and water, to grow primo bud it costs several hundred dollars per plant (which might produce several pounds depending on strain and climate) for starts, soil, amendments, tools and grow frames — plus labor (watering and harvesting, mainly) and several hundred more per pound for trimming, give or take. There’s also a larger loss factor with many outdoor cannabis grows from fungus and mites and animals and so forth than there is with grapes. And there’s financing cost which applies to any borrowing which can easily double the cost for interest. 

In my old manufacting engineering days we used to use a 3:1 (price:cost) rule of thumb for cost estimating at each level of sale. That is: At the manufactering level you had to sell your product at three times the cost of materials (excluding labor) to make a decent return on investment. At the retail level you had to sell your product at three times the wholesale price you paid to make a decent return. So, if a wholesaler is selling trimmed bud for $500 per pound, then that means he has to keep his materials costs (not counting labor) below about $165 per pound. But you can’t cut materials costs just because your selling price goes down. Hence the predictable current squeeze. 

Also note that legal pot is much more regulated than grapes and costs much more to get licensed. (There are no licensing requirements for vineyards.) It’s much easier to lose your shirt with legal cannabis, than with grapes. (And grapes are risky to begin with — the old saw that the way to make a million dollars in the wine industry is to start with ten million still applies to some degree; more to pot.) The very high black market prices illegal growers used to get, made these grower-wholesale-retail margin considerations moot, but that market has collapsed and Mendo Grown is fast becoming Mendo Groan.

BELOVED SKUNK

"Mendocino Railway and the Skunk Train have announced the findings from their Demographic Survey spanning the years of 2016 to 2021, while Visit Mendocino County (VMC) recently released their Annual Report for 2020-2021, and the results of both validate that the Skunk Train remains Mendocino County’s most popular and beloved attraction."

— Fort Bragg Advocate News

CATCH OF THE DAY, February 12, 2022

JACK ALVAREZ, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, controlled substance, paraphernalia, contempt of court. (Frequent flyer.)

ESTEBAN FAUSTO, Talmage. Criminal street gang member with loaded firearm, loaded handgun-not registered owner, ammo possession by prohibited person, felon-addict with firearm, parole violation.

HANNAH FOSTER, Potter Valley. DUI.

DERRICK MCCAIN JR., Willits. Robbery, domestic battery, criminal threats, child endangerment, disorderly conduct-alcohol, damaging communications device.

DONAVAN PARRISH, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JAMES PELLEGRINE, Ukiah. Controlled substance, concentrated cannabis, suspended license, disobeying court order, failure to appear.

DYLAN PUGH, Upper Lake/Ukiah. Sell/transport marijuana, probation revocation.

TONY RAMOS JR., Redwood Valley. DUI, suspended license.

BRETT ROBBINS, Hoopa/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ANTONIO RODRIGUEZ, Ukiah. No license, forgery of registration.

JAMES WALKER, Potter Valley. DUI.

150,000 MEN & ONE WOMAN

When I worked on the movie, “Saving Private Ryan” where we re-created the Normandy Landing using Special Effects, I did some research and came across another interesting fact related to the real invasion itself. 

There is a lot more to this story. On June 6th, 1944 150,000 men and one woman hit the beaches of Normandy. That woman was Martha Gellhorn, a journalist and the third wife of Ernest Hemingway. She was going to be a credentialed reporter for Collier’s Weekly until Hemingway found out and told Collier’s he would report for them, so due to his fame he got her credential. 

On June 5, 1944, however, journalist Martha Gellhorn hid herself in the bathroom of a hospital ship — just one of the 5,000 vessels set to sail across the English Channel with some of the estimated 150,000 to 160,000 men and 30,000 vehicles headed to Normandy. 

“Where I want to be, boy, is where it is all blowing up,” Martha is quoted as saying. By dawn on June 6, better known as D-Day, her hospital vessel landing craft was on the beach of France, shortly before the invasions began. By nightfall on June 6, 1944, more than 9,000 Allied soldiers were dead or wounded. More than 100,000 others — including that one female stowaway — had survived the landing. Now that is guts. Hemingway and all the other male reporters saw the landing thru binoculars from far away. 

When she left Hemingway she was quoted as saying, “I don't need a Papa.” 

— Bill Kimberlin

LUFTHANSA serving draft beer in the 1960s

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Just to show you how things have changed…my daughter was a high school sophomore in 1994 and her cheerleading squad performed in the Super Bowl halftime show. The stars were the Judds, Travis Tritt and Clint Black. For all of you who aren’t “in the know” these were country music celebrities not rappers. I was born and raised in Atlanta and you cannot imagine in your wildest dreams the changes that progress has brought. NOT!

THE GREAT INTERNATIONAL CONVOY FIASCO

As America puts the Canadian Prime Minister's unmentionables in a vice over a truck protest, it's clearer than ever: the world's leaders have forgotten how to govern

by Matt Taibbi

The White House issued a statement Friday, after Joe Biden chatted with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The two leaders agreed that the actions of the individuals who are obstructing travel and commerce between our two countries are having significant direct impacts on citizens’ lives and livelihoods. The Prime Minister promised quick action in enforcing the law, and the President thanked him for the steps he and other Canadian authorities are taking to restore the open passage of bridges to the United States.

Translation: Biden told Trudeau his testicles will be crushed under a Bradley Fighting Vehicle if this trucker thing is allowed to screw up the Super Bowl, or Biden’s State of the Union address. Trudeau’s own statement that day came off like the recorded video message of a downed pilot:

I’ve been absolutely clear that using military forces against civilian populations, in Canada, or in any other democracy, is something to avoid having to do at all costs.

An anxious Trudeau promised to deploy law enforcement in a “predictable, progressive approach” that would emphasize fines and other punishments. Because demonstrators will see that the “consequences” for those continuing to engage in “illegal protests” are “going to be more and more extensive,” he said, “we are very hopeful” that “people will choose to leave these protests peacefully.”

Switching gears just a bit, he then added, “We are a long way from ever having to call in the military.”

Such a move, he said, would only be a “last resort.”

And, er: “We have to be ready for any eventuality.”

Trudeau’s speech was clearly designed to convey to protesters that he was under heavy pressure to call in the air strike, making the New York Times headline covering all this — “Trudeau Rejects Calls to Use Military to End Protests,” — particularly humorous in its disingenuousness.

Now that the “Freedom Convoy” is inspiring similar protests not just in the United States but in France, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, and other places, it’s clear every Western leader from Biden to Emmanuel Macron on down wants Trudeau, rather than any of them, to take the political hit that would ensue from any use-of-force resolution to this crisis. All of these leaders seem equally to be laboring under the delusion that a decisive enough ass-kicking in the Great White North will make this all go away. Until then, there seems to be no plan in any country that doesn’t involve tear gas, truncheons, or getting Facebook to blame troll farms in Bangladesh for stirring up the “discord.”

As for talking to protesters, that’s out of the question. As Politico recently put it, the “conspiratorial mindset” of the demonstrators means “sitting down with them could legitimize their concerns.”

Since we can’t under any circumstances have that, the only option left is the military “eventuality.” Or, as former Obama Deputy Homeland Security Secretary and CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem (the same person who went nanny-bonkers over the Southwest Air “Let’s Go Brandon” incident) put it, “Slash the tires, empty gas tanks, arrest the drivers, and move the trucks.”

Any sane person should be able to see where any of these ideas would lead. The problem is, we’re heading into our third decade of Western leaders embracing not thinking ahead as a core national security concept. It’s like these people went to anti-governing school…

taibbi.substack.com/p/the-great-international-convoy-fiasco

JUST ANOTHER NUT WITH A GUN

AVA,

As you approach your death, as one dying day slides into the next, as one brain cell after another becomes incorporated into amyloid, you rage against the presumed meaningless inevitable by adopting the latest shiny objects of cleansing and restorative ultravi fantasy, Feldmarschal Malm’s Army of Ecowarriors, who alone at this late date leap into the ranks of last ditch planet savers, who, fearlessly purified by baptisms of incontrovertible righteousness, will sacrifice themselves upon the altar of salvation through violence to save us all from the satanic killers of Life! It all must be true, because “smart” people think so. “Operation Planet Save,” your ass. I thought you had more sense than this, Mein Redaktor. When you sober up, write a column about what will actually happen when the demented eco-heros start smashing stuff up. Remember what Ken Kesey said to Tim Leary after the latter embraced political violence (“Dynamite is the White Light of the Void.”): “You’re just another nut with a gun.”

Jay Williamson 

Santa Rosa

THE THING THAT I THINK VERY STRIKING is that no one, or no one I can remember, ever writes of an execution with approval. The dominant note is always horror. Society, apparently, cannot get along without capital punishment—for there are some people whom it is simply not safe to leave alive—and yet there is no one, when the pinch comes, who feels it right to kill another human being in cold blood. I watched a man hanged once. There was no question that everybody concerned knew this to be a dreadful, unnatural action. I believe it is always the same—the whole jail, warders and prisoners alike, is upset when there is an execution. It is probably the fact that capital punishment is accepted as necessary, and yet instinctively felt to be wrong, that gives so many descriptions of executions their tragic atmosphere. They are mostly written by people who have actually watched an execution and feel it to be a terrible and only partly comprehensible experience which they want to record; whereas battle literature is largely written by people who have never heard a gun go off and think of a battle as a sort of football match in which nobody gets hurt.

Perhaps it was a bit previous to say that no one writes of an execution with approval, when one thinks of the way our newspapers have been smacking their chops over the bumping-off of wretched quislings in France and elsewhere. I recall, in one paper, a whole series of photos showing the execution of Caruso, the ex-chief of the Rome police. You saw the huge, fat body being straddled across a chair with his back to the firing squad, then the cloud of smoke issuing from the rifle barrels and the body slumping sideways. The editor who saw fit to publish this thought it a pleasant tidbit, I suppose, but then he had not had to watch the actual deed. I think I can imagine the feelings of the man who took the photographs, and of the firing squad.

— George Orwell, 1944

THE MANUSCRIPT THIEF

by Rosa Lyster

I was in New York a few years ago when a Big Summer Book came out. One of those novels where it’s impossible to gauge from the reviews whether or not it’s any good, because the publicity campaign is so aggressive and anyway the critical response isn’t focused on whether the book is good or bad, but on the mere fact that it exists. The Big Summer Book is here, and now we are all reading it.

The book was not good – a plot dependent on the assumption that men and women basically hate each other, a catalyzing dilemma I couldn’t care about, hundreds of ideas and conversations so annoying they made me slightly breathless – but to judge by the ecstatic tenor of the reviews, no one shared this assessment. It was a bit of a lonely feeling, but not really – sometimes, people have to like things that are rubbish.

Up until that point, I hadn’t really spent any time around publishing people, had had only glancing contact with what we are still legally permitted to describe as “the New York literary scene,” and I was ready to be knocked out by all of it. What a life, to be able to go to a bar on the afternoon that a provocation by Mary Gaitskill has appeared in the New Yorker and sit down at a table with people who are ready to talk about it! 

Imagine: you are in a diner, and a quite well-known critic is sitting a few tables away with his head in his hands. The woman you are having lunch with turns out to be his colleague, and she tells you that the reason he has his head in his hands is that, having run out of excuses, he has no choice but to write about the new adaptation of Cats, which he hates in a way that is not enjoyable. To be moved beyond exasperation by something like that – it’s ridiculous, obviously, but it’s also sort of thrilling, as well as an underlying requirement of the job. Why do it, otherwise? That’s how I’d always thought about it, and so the way everyone was carrying on about the Big Summer Book didn’t really bother me, because from far away, it seemed sincere.

One afternoon, I bumped into a friend of a friend, who had recently written a short but glowing review of the Big Summer Book for a legacy publication. There it was, poking out of the top of her Bayswater bag. I asked her if it was good and she looked at me blankly and asked what I meant. “The book,” I said. “Is it one of the ones that are good?” “Of course not,” she said, and then gave herself an admonishing little shake as she retied her ponytail. “Sorry,” she said. “Maybe it is good. It easily could be – it’s just that I haven’t read it.” I was already in a terrible mood – very hungry and sweaty – but an actual wave of despair washed over me as she spoke. I remember standing in the street blinking sunscreen out of my eyes and thinking: These people. These people don’t care about books at all.

I’ve since modified this opinion, and seen that for every person who does this job for cynical and ultimately mysterious reasons, considering its objectively thin rewards, there is someone for whom these things actually do matter, but I’ve never managed to regain my initial sense of dazzled proximity to glamorous intellectual life. I have wanted to, though. 

So when the news of the manuscript thief started circulating, I was ready.

Someone, or possibly a cartel of someones, was impersonating influential figures in the publishing industry to get access to unpublished manuscripts. They would pretend to be a heavyweight literary agent, say, or an editor, and would send convincing-looking emails to publishers asking that they send on the soon-to-be released novels of an array of writers, some famous and some not. Sometimes they’d approach the writers themselves. They’d make such underhanded moves as changing a letter or two in their email address (e.g. @randornhouse.com instead of @randomhouse.com), using great sneakiness and considerable amounts of time and energy to do – what? To read a book slightly earlier than everyone else did.

This was the best bit: there was no evidence that the thief was benefitting in any material way from all this devious labor. It was a mystery. As Cynthia d’Aprix Sweeney said to the New York Times, it was “befuddling.” “Why on earth is someone stealing unpublished book manuscripts?” the Times asked. They could not answer the question, and neither could anyone else, beyond saying that this was one of these weird things, basically, which may be more of a satisfactory answer than people like to admit. 

All this stealthing around would, of course, have taken on an entirely different cast had there been any evidence that it was being done for motives of greed or revenge. As matters seemed to stand, however, there was not. The manuscript would be sent, the error would be realized, the wait for the menacing email would begin, and then – nothing! The end! Even people who reasonably got the creeps about the lengths to which the thief was prepared to go to secure a copy of Beautiful World Where Are You? before it hit the shelves could find nothing more to say about what was happening than that it was weird.

Someone has now been arrested on suspicion of this weird behavior, and is facing federal criminal charges for what the prosecutor terms “his misdeeds.” Filippo Bernardini, a 29-year-old Italian employee of Simon & Schuster in London, was nabbed by the FBI on arrival at JFK on January 5. In a statement the prosecutor said that Bernardini “allegedly impersonated publishing industry individuals in order to have authors, including a Pulitzer prize winner, send him prepublication manuscripts for his own benefit.” The prosecutor didn’t expand on what that benefit might be gained.

If found guilty, Bernardini could get up to twenty years in prison for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, because tricking people into sharing copies of manuscripts with you turns out to be seriously illegal even if you are not going to do anything with the manuscripts except read them, or maybe just stare at them in your inbox and think: I love books. Reading is the life for me.

(London Review of Books)

ABSO-BLOODY-LUTELY.

"It's kitchen sink time, Judge. I'll be pulling out all the stops." -Douglas Wambaugh

Here's the recording of last night's (2022-02-11) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA): https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0475

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 go to KNYO.org, click on the big red heart and give what you can, just because it's the right thing to do.

Email me your work on any subject and I'll read it cold on the radio this coming Friday night. This is a great way to learn to express yourself in writing and be understood. You hear for yourself where to put the commas next time so you never again must clench your fists, eyes and/or spirit in angst because of people thinking you're saying the exact opposite of what you want to. You learn to vary sentence length. Verb nouns and nounize verbs, why not? Funly tyrant the language to /your/ will and purpose for a change. Like Orson Welles told Ed Wood: "Why spend your life making somebody else's dream?" That's not a question, it's a whole ocean of pearls of wisdom.

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:

A short, touching, and numinous film about the immigrant experience. It makes me think of /The Arrival/ picture book by Shaun Tan.

https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2022/02/depayse.html

How easy flying is (if all you want to do is fly), given light, strong materials and a modern little motor. It helps that the raft itself is also a wing. From The Fifteenth Pelican (and, later, the Flying Nun adaptation): “When lift plus thrust is greater than load plus drag, anything can fly.”

https://boingboing.net/2022/02/10/safety-aside-this-ultralight-looks-like-a-lot-of-fun.html

A.I.-generated species of birds.The Lesser Bobber, the Rabid Wood-chipper, Henson's Fractal, the Surly Drunkard, Spectacled Ringwraith (my favorite), Headless Horseman, Eastern Grump, That-Which-Sings (second place). (via MissCellania)

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1487913576929103884.html

A twenty-minute talk by Herb Deutsch, co-inventor of the Moog synthesizer.

https://theawesomer.com/giants-by-moog/657089/

And there are tiny eel-like creatures in vinegar, like the jungle of microscopic mites in your eyebrow follicles. It's okay; they're not parasitic and they're not dangerous, they're just swirling and dancing and eeling in the vinegar, the way the mites in your eyebrows think of you as their planet. And the way the two-to-five pounds of bacteria in your digestive tract happily enjoy your hospitality and repay you by helping digest for you all your life and hardly ever rebel against working conditions and block bridges and honk horns and send food back the wrong way. We need each other. "When someone does you a solid, don't be a yutz." — Tony Stark

https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2022/02/vinegar-eels-dancing-in-water-drop.html

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

JUGHANDLE TRESTLE

The trestle was built in 1885, under the direction of engineers and bridge builders from the Central Pacific Railroad. It was 1000 feet long, 146 feet high, 82 feet wide at the base and 12 feet wide at the top. It consisted of seven 20 layers or "bents," each 22 feet high and 10 feet wider at the base than at the top. At the time, it was one of the largest and tallest structures of its kind. The earthquake of 1906 caused the trestle to "collapse like a row of dominoes" but it was quickly rebuilt closely following the original specifications. (Kelley House Museum)