GOVERNOR NEWSOM’S Clean California Initiative will include some money for the “Central Boonville Beautification” project, specifically art, crosswalks, and street trees.
ART? Uh oh. Could be dangerous to The Valley’s psychic well-being if by “art” the Governor means a large installation of a permanent eyesore of the type San Francisco has strewn around The City.
FIRECRACKERS. That wasn't guns and bullets shooting last week in Navarro that had cop cars flying through Boonville. It was a party near Navarro enlivened by strings of firecrackers.
OUR more or less accurate thermometer read 75 degrees in Boonville today at 2pm. My fruit trees are budding out as February becomes early June. The fire authorities are already warning us to be fire-careful. Used to be the serious fire season commenced late May early June. We've had less than an inch of rain since January. Earth is still moist but low humidity and warm days are drying it out fast. Put the ominous weather in the context of everything else that's going haywire and the general anxiety out there is itself nearly combustible.
THE TEENSY power conferred on Ted Williams as supervisor seems to be going to his head. Ted suddenly announced this morning that public expression would come at the end of Tuesday’s meeting. Has public comment become so annoying to their majesties that the public comes last? Has public comment ever taken more than 15 or 20 minutes? Often, there is zero public comment, the public having rightly concluded that nobody's listening.
PHILO: Brendon’s Auto detailing is booming. “I’m getting great revues and ratings on my quality detailing job. It takes me roughly 3.5 hours to fully clean your vehicle. Dog hair is a hard one but that's no problem for me. I got the tools and the know-how. PM me for more appointments! Have a great week y’all God bless! Brendon Shaw Griffin, 707-558-5301.
FOR RENT, PHILO
500 square-foot single wide mobile in good condition.
bedroom, bathroom, living/dining room
single person, cat ok. Garden space for vegies, lovely surroundings, private
$1100/mo incl water, electricity
895-2291 available mid-March
MEANWHILE, AT THE GROCERY STORE, inflation is slamming Americans as basic costs of living — food, shelter, electricity, gas — have skyrocketed during Biden's presidency. Inflation hit a 40-year high in January, with prices rising 7.5% from last year. That number was driven by higher costs of food, electricity and shelter costs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Thursday. Medical costs have also risen during the pandemic.
77 DEGREES here in Boonville Thursday afternoon. Con Creek, my guide to The Valley's eco-welfare, is fading fast but still has an encouraging flow, encouraging, that is, if it were flowing like this in August.
MY DARK GRAY CAT has to stay out of the sun on these abnormally sunny warm days because the sun heats her dark fur up to where she’s almost hot to the touch. She’s good at finding shade; she better be as summer arrives. (Mark Scaramella)
THOSE EARLY MORNING vans seen by early risers are transporting vineyard workers from hither and yon. Big grape labor shortages within Mendocino County.
HEAD DOWN TO AV MARKET in Boonville to get your Valentine Flowers! Lots of beautiful flowers designed by the Floriculture class!
FREE FOOD PHILO (formerly known as Love to Table) 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 14. 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: Meat & Mushroom Ragu over Polenta
SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS: How does it happen that SoFI, a student loan re-financing company, could spend $625 million to put its name on the LA Rams football stadium when 45 million Americans are drowning in $1.8 trillion in student debt? Today would be a good day for the President to cancel student debt.
JEFF BURROUGHS responds to Brad Wiley's stories of Vinegar Ridge:
Very interesting history indeed. I remember hearing a funny story about the old vineyard up on Greenwood Road, the one that the Pardini family once owned.
I believe it was sometime around the turn of the century when this story takes place.
It was mid-summer and a young Ernest Pardini (Sr.) had been working for one of Wendling’s elder citizens doing odd jobs for different folks all over the valley. One such job was cutting and delivering firewood to people up on “Vinegar Ridge,” and so on this particular day it was decided that a load of firewood should be delivered to the Pardini ( no relation to Ernest) Family. When the two arrived at the entrance to the ranch they proceeded through the two familiar wooden gates and made their way up the small hill to the family cabin. As they continued on with their wagon load of firewood they did not see a single soul about the place. Curious, they got off the wagon, set the wheel brake and walked around the cabin for some time calling out but no one answered. Investigating further, young Ernest walked up to the side of the cabin, peered through one of the cabin windows that had been left open, and to his horror he could make out the unmistakable sight of human bodies strewn about the floor of the cabin. Ernest jumped back and yelled out for his partner to “come quick!” When the other fellow ran up to Ernest he asked what was wrong, to which Ernest replied, ”They’re all dead, look!” The out of breath fellow looked at Ernest with puzzlement then slowly leaned in toward the open window and peered in. Upon seeing the entire family laid out on the cabin floor he jolted back and fell over backwards. He fumbled around on the ground trying to gather himself then leaped to his feet and took off in a dead run. Ernest was just about to follow behind the man when he heard a moaning from within the cabin. “They’re alive!” Ernest busted through the cabin door with a swift kick of his boot and ran to the first body he came too. It was then that he got the first whiff of what smelled like very strong wine. When he looked down at the child's face he realized the child was not injured at all, just drunk.
After piecing it all together Ernest and the other fellow realized the family had stopped work for lunch that day and with their meal had drank too much of their own wine and one by one passed out on the cabin floor.
Ernest and the other fellow unloaded the wagon and left without uttering another word.
ME and two of my heirs and assignees, daughter and granddaughter, visited the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. I hadn't been there since the famous Tomb Soldiers exhibit, which I'd found disappointing because the replicas weren't painted as the originals were and there were too few of the emperor's army to convey the monstrousness of his memorial. Granddaughter especially enjoyed a wrap-around butterfly light show, which in us old acid trippers was so thoroughly enveloping it might have induced serious flashbacks, and she often paused to take long looks at complicated Hindu statuary and, of all things, a case of Malay krises, curved executioner's daggers. I found the exhibits short on historical explanation resulting, to me, in a lot of interesting stuff out of any context. And at $15 per for adults and $10 for children the museum is too expensive for young families, although there were many milling around the covid-culled floors. Old timers will remember the site as the old San Francisco Library. They've kept the long stairway, I was happy to see, with the exhibits leading from it.
HAD TO LAUGH at a trendy exhibit called Seeing Gender, “the museum’s first exhibition to explore the collection through the lens of gender.” Gender seen consisted of several pieces of chaste statuary that made no gender-bending point visible to me, but I'll assume that “These four emerging curators have placed artworks from disparate cultures and periods side by side to show how gender — whether fluid or fixed, divine or sensual, subversive or orthodox — is constructed, performed, and depicted throughout Asian art in provocative and inspiring ways” know their genders. (How many genders are there these days, anyway?)
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