Mendocino County Today: Saturday, Feb. 19, 2022

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COASTAL CLOUDS AND FOG will be persistent in some areas today, while interior sections see one more warm and sunny day. Brisk winds will bring cooler weather Sunday into early next week, with showers and some mountain snow likely for portions of northwest California Monday into Tuesday. (NWS)

27 NEW COVID CASES reported in Mendocino County yesterday afternoon.

ANDERSON VALLEY HEALTH CENTER: We have rapid COVID-19 TAKE HOME TESTS. We would like to distribute some to families and businesses in our community. Please contact Leah or Fabi at the clinic to arrange for pickup of your free test.

MENDO’S SLO-MO BETRAYAL OF MEASURE V

by Mark Scaramella

On Monday, December 16, 2019 The Board of Supervisors discussed “Possible Action Regarding Implementation of Measure V, ‘Declaring Intentionally Killed and Left Standing Trees a Public Nuisance’.” 

The Item was put on the agenda by Supervisor John Haschak.

In the months leading up to the December 2019 item in his August 2019 “Supervisors Report,” Supervisor Haschak declared, “There are many twists and turns to this saga, but the bottom line is that in 2016 County Counsel approved Measure V going on the ballot, the people voted for it [by a wide margin], and it should be enforced. In the interest of my constituents and all the voters of Mendocino County, I will work with my colleagues on the Board to see that Measure V is fully implemented.”

Right after Measure V passed, Mendocino Redwood Company took the position that they were exempt from nuisance laws — including Measure V — based on California’s “Right to Farm” (trees) Ordinance. 

MRC’s dubious claim was soon submitted to the Attorney General’s office for an opinion. Months went by. More months went by. More complaints were presented to the Supervisors demanding that some kind of action be taken. The Supervisors effectively avoided those complaints again and again by simply saying that they were waiting for the Attorney General’s opinion before they took any action. Finally, two years later, the Attorney General boldly declared that his office had some kind of unspecified “conflict” which prevented them from issuing any opinion on the subject of Measure V.

The Board then asked County Counsel Christian Curtis to weigh in, given the absence of an Attorney General opinion. 

On November 18 of 2019, a month before Supervisor Haschak put his bold item on the agenda, County Counsel Christian Curtis issued a formal and carefully considered opinion citing applicable sections of The Timberland Productivity Act of 1982, as well as sections of federal occupational safety rules, refuting MRC’s claim that their hack&squirt tree poisoning was a “timber operation” under the law which would be entitled to immunity under the Right To Farm ordinance. Therefore, Curtis concluded, Mendocino County “does not see a basis for concluding that MRC has blanket immunity to Measure V.”

A few days after that MRC requested and was granted a private meeting with Haschak, CEO Angelo and County Counsel Christian Curtis. Obviously, no memo or record of that meeting was prepared.

Then, the week before Haschak’s agenda item was scheduled for discussion, on December 7, Haschak’s position on Measure V had morphed into: “I have placed on the Board agenda for our Monday, December 16, meeting a discussion of the County’s enforcement mechanism. As your Third District Supervisor, I would like to see positive economic development happen rather than a drawn out legal battle with MRC over this contentious issue. … My hope is that jobs can be created and MRC’s forest practice of wasting this valuable resource can be ended.”

The word “Enforcement” had suddenly disappeared and Haschak had magically shifted to a wimpy opinion that somehow the standing dead tanoaks could be a wonderful raw material and that MRC might somehow hire a bunch of woods workers to chop down the poisoned trees to create… what? Firewood? Flooring? 

Never happen, of course. Local firewood companies have made it clear that they’d never sell poisoned wood to their customers as firewood and tanoak simply has no commerical value.

Several Measure V enforcement advocates quickly accused Haschak of meeting privately with MRC in the weeks between his enforcement statement and the December 19 meeting, presumably to soften his earlier position that Measure V “should be enforced.”

It was obvious that MRC had correctly observed that Haschak had no backbone and was susceptible to the timber industry’s standard delaying tactics: “Let’s discuss this,” “My hope is…” “Jobs…” “positive economic development,” etc. — these kinds of irrelevant phrases are intended to obscure and further delay the question — already three years had passed before Haschak even brought it up. 

“Enforcement”? Haschak had removed the word from his Measure V vocabulary.

Predictably, at that December 16 Board meeting, the Board voted 4-1 [McCowen dissenting] to turn the enforcement question over to an ad hoc committee of John Haschak and Ted Williams — after Williams amended his ad-hoc committee motion to include a requirement that the County’s Code Enforcement staff look into a pending complaint about MRC’s tree-poisoning practice and report back in around 30 days.

The Board didn’t even consider demanding that MRC “voluntarily” offer a plan to mitigate the nuisance and then the County could evaluate it and perhaps negotiate further improvements before deciding whether to go to court to dispute MRC’s bogus claim. 

Adding personal insult to public insult, during the Board discussion Supervisor Dan Gjerde took an entirely uncalled for shot at Supervisors Williams and Haschak, accusing them of “grandstanding,” adding, “Why are the two new supervisors determined to be in the minority? They are just looking for an opportunity to be outvoted. Supervisor Williams refused to support this [enforcement] before, and now he’s looking for an opportunity to be in minority again.”

Supervisor Williams replied, “I would prefer to be in majority. We have only asked that Code Enforcment follow up on the pending complaint. We need it to work on this. The ad hoc is still necessary.” 

The Haschak-Williams ad hoc committee met once on January 29 and issued the following statement: “Code enforcement was directed to investigate the [one pending] complaint and return and report to the Board their findings. The ad hoc committee will report on their findings from their January 29 meeting. [There were none.] The Board of Supervisors may provide additional direction or take action as appropriate.”

At the following meeting, Mendocino County’s chief code enforcement officer, Trent Taylor, told the Supervisors that he had “investigated” Comptche resident Terry d’Selkie’s nuisance complaint about Mendocino Redwood Company’s standing dead trees on property adjacent to hers. Taylor said that he was unable to determine if there was a violation because nobody was home when he arrived and he couldn’t see from her residence which trees were dead. He added that the photos that Ms. d’Selkie provided weren’t good enough, and that he didn’t have authority to go onto MRC property, and he didn’t have the staff or resources to do a full assessment even if he did have permission.

During the ensuing discussion, Supervisor McCowen claimed that Measure V was “self-enforcing” since with Measure V anyone who was burned out of their home due to a standing-dead tree fire could sue for damages. Hence, the County didn’t need to be involved.

Ms. d’Selkie was among several public commenters who refuted Mr. Taylor's ridiculous claim.

“I went into the Code Enforcement office to see what the process was to do their investigation. They had called me probably about a week after the last Board of Supervisor's meeting, right before the winter break. I'm a teacher and I had left town for two weeks and I told them I would not be home but that they could probably see those dead standing trees from the road. When I spoke with the gentleman who was here earlier [Mr. Taylor] yesterday, he said that it was no secret that MRC was hacking and squirting and leaving standing dead trees everywhere. We see evidence of that. I asked if he saw it when he came out to the road. He said, ‘Well, we couldn't really see unless we went onto somebody's property,’ as he told you. But at no point did he say that the pictures I've provided were not good enough to show where the dead standing trees were. It's pretty obvious there are standing trees there. I told him that if he was looking from the road he probably could not tell which parcel number was which, but it was definitely MRC land. So I guess there was some miscommunication there. My complaint addressed the issues we have been talking about. There is an increased risk of wildfire to my home. I took the initiative to make sure I've done fire suppression around my home and on my land. This also lowers the value of my land because of the dead standing trees in my viewshed. And it is my only viewshed. That's what I see, dead standing trees, every time I look out there. The law says they need to be removed within 90 days of the poisoning. If this is not done, what's the penalty and what is the point of the law? Why is there no penalty for breaking the law that is the will of the people? If I break the law, something will happen to me. It's no secret they are violating the law. None of you think it's a secret. It's happening. If this were your land and it was in your viewshed and you looked out into the forest and saw dead standing trees, would you be sitting here saying, 'Oh, well, too bad, we don't have any enforcement, we can't do anything?' I don't think so. I think you would make sure that something was being done to enforce this law that was voted in by the people.”

Supervisor Ted Williams, who aggressively promoted Measure V as Chief of the Albion-Little River Fire Protection District and used it as a campaign issue, added, “I don’t think it’s appropriate as we approach the three-year mark of the passage of Measure V to leave it dangling. A decision needs to be made. We need to determine where we stand.”

After some more discussion, Supervisor Williams made a motion to direct County Counsel to come back to the board at the next meeting with an “enforcement plan” on March 24th which was to “focus on mitigating expense and a firmer intention to collaborate with industry to reach compliance with a willingness to fast track alternatives where possible.” However, several officials noted that the board's agenda was crowded for the next few weeks and it probably couldn't be discussed until late March. Supervisor Williams reluctantly agreed, “if that's the best we can do.”

In March of 2020, as we all vividly recall, Covid took center stage and Measure V disappeared from everyone’s radar and has never been discussed since. The Board Directive to Mr. Curtis to prepare an “enforcement plan” and return to the Board on March 24, 2020 remains on the Board’s growing list of ignored Board Directives to this day, two years after the very belated “directive” was issued. Status: “IN PROCESS.”

AN OLD GUY WRITES:

As long as healthcare exists to make money for corporations, it will continue to get worse.

We already exist in a situation where there is plenty of diffuse healthcare in highly populated areas, but in the rest of the state, and the country in general, healthcare is scarce, and delivery of healthcare has been allowed to become degraded to the point where the lowest trained and qualified persons are actually responsible for handling the patients, while the highest educated and trained sit at desks and operate computers, go to meetings, and spend their time “selling” and promoting the facility…

Doctors are therefore now administrators, nurses have become typists, and patients are “cared for” by CNA’s, NA’s, and an assortment of “travelers” who are often sponsored, by recruiting companies, to work in the USA on H1B Visas, and who never become citizens…

Dumber and cheaper employees, often who can’t even speak English, are not a good look for American Healthcare, and, Dumber and Cheaper Politicians have also become a general rule…

My Father died in 2015, at 90, and his last acts were to refuse to stay in a hospital or a SNF, choosing to die at home, with Hospice care and family. As I get older, I see the wisdom…

When you are approaching death, you should be treated with respect and dignity, not simply warehoused and ignored by persons from a different culture…

My Mother was able to afford assisted living until she had a stroke and lost the ability to do anything at all, and was unable to eat, shower, toilet, or speak. The SNF withheld her meds, I had to stand there and demand that she be kept comfortable, and, in 6 months I never had contact, face to face, with any physician or administrator, and was held at arms length and forced to communicate at phone “care conferences”, where I got the distinct impression that nobody gave a shit about my mother, and that she was receiving terrible care from a group of persons who only were concerned about their paychecks, and their lunch-breaks…

I, at 70, have a great deal of anxiety about end of life care, and, the lousy state of the average hospital… You should too!

Your local hospitals do not have the ability to recruit or retain staff, all of the facilities are operated by overpaid clowns, who will squeeze a quarter with one hand while throwing away $100 dollar bills with the other…

American Healthcare is extremely poor, substandard compared to some “third world” countries, and, as a society, we treat animals better than we treat dying humans.

If this idiot congressman is in charge of improving general care, and if state employees and “appointed” county officials are administering the state of care in counties, we have a lot to be afraid of.

My response at this time, is to avoid medical care of all types, at all costs, and, the condition of Medicare and it’s corollaries is disgusting, impossibly expensive, and completely bogged down by overregulation, poorly trained and incompetent caregivers, bad pharmacies employing absolutely untrained persons, and laws suspended for COVID “emergency”…

Our government has failed to administer healthcare, our available healthcare organizations have failed to deliver comprehensive care, the overall standard of care has become shockingly eroded, and healthcare has become a concept better avoided than consumed…

Stay healthy, protect yourself, be your own advocate, and make some plans, because your government is on a downhill course…

This was written by an Ancillary Healthcare Professional, with 40 years experience. It is my opinion that healthcare in America and Northern California in particular, is very poor, and that most facilities are operated by crooked, lying, selfish con-artists, and that each one of them is failing, in many ways, to care for the population effectively.

One more thing: Healthcare is shot in the ass with fraud, incompetence, and greed.

Welcome to America! Take care of yourself!

ALEXANDER CARPENTER GIVES UP:

Well folks, if things work out as we are planning (and hoping), Patience and I will be moving to Costa Rica in a few months. For over ten years, we have had some land 5 km up the coast range on the Pacific side, in the south near the Osa peninsula, where we will build. So I bid you all a fond farewell, and will periodically update you on our progress. And I reckon that visitors will be very welcome to our guest suite... 

The immediate purpose of this message is to offer up my remaining cultivation resources to whomever is willing to pay a fair price for them. These are components useful for a small indoor grow (does anyone do that anymore? I reckon I'll find out). Some of this equipment may be outdated (or, heavens, un-fashionable), but it is all of excellent quality and fully functional, and I'll provide instruction on set-up and tips on use. I would be happy to sell all this as a bundle, or piecemeal, but it all must go. 

Available: 

• 42 Tropf Blümat individual-plant osmotic watering valves, with drip-line tubing and other plumbing, distributing, and routing valves
• 1 custom-built self-contained 40-plant Aeroponic cloning installation, complete with
• 24-inch 4-flurorescent-tube light fixture
• Nutrient-solution reservoir with pump and spray-head manifold
• Water heater
• Digital air-temp and water-temp thermometers and regulators
• Mechanical fan and light timer 
• Airflow fan 
• Air-pump and air-stones for reservoir 
• Cutting-block 
• Reservoir heating pad 
• 4 Titan Mercury 4 high/low fan-speed controllers, paired with digital air-temp thermometers (to inform us)
• 1 hand-held pH meter 
• 1 hand-held Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) meter
• 5 HydroFarm TM01715 digital light-timer switches 
• 1 pair Uvex welding/Grow-light protective glasses
• 1 8-inch Vortex VTX800 ducted air-fan
• 1 Diversitech CP-22 sump pump 
• 2 reservoir pumps for drip and Tropf Blümat watering
• 5 light-powered in-tent or outdoor negative-ion generators
• 2 manual AC-voltage motor-speed or light-brightness controllers
• Various nutrients and stimulants and chemicals; various trimming scissors; various plumbing and electrical gear

If you are interested, or know someone who should be interested, please let me know, and we'll work out a mutually satisfactory transaction. 

Thanks, and highest regards to you all...

Alexander 

PS. I know it's been a while since any of you have heard from me. Perhaps you can imagine why, given all the noise and drama of the Cannabis fake-legalization scandals and the relentless Covid hysteria. This last has been very enlightening about how our civilization really works, and on how and what we learn these days. My take on this, in a large, liberating, and sanity-advancing context: "Random Riffs in a Time of Engineered Madness"

Alexander Carpenter
alexander.carpenter@icloud.com
305 Sovereign Lane
Santa Rosa, California 95401
707-527-2732

ED NOTES

Noyo Center acquires Carine’s Fish Grotto property in Noyo Harbor

COUNT ME among the thousands who enjoyed giant cheeseburgers at Carine's along with fries the size of railroad spikes. Happy memories of Mama Carine, too.

SCHOOL HOUSE BLUES: Our school district is looking at a $400k-plus deficit with enrollment down from 650 a decade ago to 450 today. And the physical plants at both the elementary and the high school sites are badly in need of repair. Funding, as our formidably informed Superintendent Simson explains, is complicated:

”I am sure you know this, and we may have talked about it already, but the way our budget is funded is via Local Control Funding Formula or LCSF. What that means is that the funds that are received are very targeted for specific uses. I don’t just get the cash and can spend it where I wish we could most affect student achievement and engagement. It has to be spent in targeted programs such as after school programs or services for homeless or foster youth, among many other categories. It’s a very complicated budget process. We held an engagement process earlier this year to explain the budget. Someday, my dream is the state will pare down the bureaucracy and hand us a pot of money and say, “Go do the best you can for kids — and we would see amazingly, magical results across the state, I think." 

NOT TO ARGUE with the sage, but I think lots of us are aware of the humans doing the heavy lifting. I'm hyper-curious about how the young women who staff Ukiah's Windmills restaurant are getting by on what they can make as waitresses in a killer inflationary economy. Of course they aren't the only people getting squeezed, but what makes the plight of wage workers more poignant is they don't see political options. Hardly can blame them in a ruthless economy that doesn't even offer a political class that might lift their boats, and even if they asked, say, a local “activist” for advice on a political counter-attack they'd be pointed in the direction of the Democratic Party, which hasn't represented ordinary people since LBJ, and while the media constantly vilifies the few presently elected Democrats who do.

LATE IN 1962, on my way to Sarawak with the first wave of American Peace Corps Volunteers, our lush Cathay Pacific flight put down in Sabah, as North Borneo was called. Everywhere there were women doing the public work — work on the roads, beating back the jungle for new buildings, carrying bricks for those buildings, and seeming to do most of the carpentry. Reading the history of the area I learned that there had been a major loss of men to the Japanese during World War Two when the Japanese occupied the Borneo states, such a comprehensive loss that women made up the large part of the labor force.

THE JAPANESE, initially welcomed throughout Asia as a sympathetic alternative to the British colonizers, were soon universally hated for their brutality. In North Borneo they'd conducted mass executions of men and boys down to the age of 12 for the feeble guerilla raids on them by local bands of patriots, summoning all the residents of a town to the football (soccer) field to watch as they murdered a hundred or more sacrificial males, often by decapitation. Twenty years later, middleaged women, of necessity, had replaced male labor because their men had been executed.

AN ON-LINE COMMENTER recently said that the question of whether the Skunk Train is a “public utility” will have to be resolved in court, since the City of Fort Bragg has filed court papers challenging the Skunk Train’s claims that they are a public utility and which they used to acquire the old Georgia-Pacific millsite in Fort Bragg.

We reminded the commenter about the late Judge Conrad Cox’s ruling in the case of Dominic Affinito’s “one story too tall” North Cliff Motel in Fort Bragg, which to this day stands as a monument to what Roanne Withers correctly described at the time, “factual and legal hogwash”: theava.com/archives/135426

There are more recent examples of Mendo judicial rulings which are presumably “legal” and presumably “factual,” but which are either outright wrong, more “hogwash,” or provide no practical resolution for local controversies. The lawyers make out nicely, especially when they drag the cases out for years and years, as Dominic Affinito had done in the case of the North Cliff, flouting all land use law from the Coastal Act to Fort Bragg laws. 

And then there are the appeals, of course.

Cases like these usually end up favoring the side with the deeper pockets, irrelevant of who may be in the right. In the “North Cliff Motel” case, the city was criticized for paying the escalating legal costs because the obviously illegal extra floor was already there. And after Judge Cox’s ruling, although there were clear grounds for appeal, Fort Bragg decided to not spend any more money for lawyers and gave up.

By the time the Mendo courts get around to even issuing a “ruling” on the coastal mill site, there’s a good chance sea level rise will making the question moot.

A RANCHO NAVARRO RESIDENT called Friday morning to tell us he was on hand when the contingent of deputies arrived at the birthday party he was attending after a neighbor reported hearing gunshots in the area. The caller said a total of six cops arrived, four via Highway 128 and two the back way out of Orr Springs Road. “They were great,” said the caller, who added upon arrival the deputies quickly realized that the “gunshots” were “bottle rockets” that the partiers had fired off in celebration of a one-year old’s first birthday. The caller said that the deputies reminded the partiers that fireworks are illegal, asked them to stop without issuing citations, and rode off into the night like so many Lone Rangers. 

THOMAS JONES FOUND GUILTY

A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned from its deliberations early Thursday afternoon to return guilty verdicts and true findings across the board against the trial defendant.

Defendant Thomas Dean Jones, age 66, formerly of the Talmage area and Oregon, was found guilty of the special circumstances premeditated murder (1st degree) of Jamie Eugene Wilcox, his stepson, as charged as Count One.

The jury found true allegations of special circumstances alleging that the killing of Mr. Wilcox was for financial gain and committed by means of lying in wait, as well as a special allegation that the defendant personally and intentionally used a firearm to kill Mr. Wilcox.

In a second count, the defendant was found guilty of the attempted murder in the first degree of Jayme Schneider Garden, the spouse of Mr. Wilcox.

In regards to this separate crime, the jury found true two special allegations alleging that the defendant inflicted great bodily injury on Mr. Garden and that the defendant personally and intentionally used a firearm to inflict that great bodily injury.

Finally, the jury found true sentencing enhancement allegations that the defendant was previously convicted in February 1979 of three separate armed robberies in Lake County, as well as an additional three separate armed robberies in Sonoma County.

The murder and attempted murder were perpetrated at a family compound on Twining Road on September 23, 2020 just after 8 o’clock in the morning as the two victims were in their car and preparing to head into town to go to work.

It is noted that the defendant, against judicial and other advice, opted to exercise his constitutional right to self-represent and act as his own attorney leading up to and during the course of the jury trial.

After the jury was excused, the defendant’s bail status was converted to no bail. He then demanded a speedy sentencing hearing.

With that the defendant’s case was referred to the Mendocino County Adult Probation Department for a background study and recommendation. Such a report is used and relied upon by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for prison system classification purposes.

The defendant’s formal sentencing hearing is now scheduled for March 17, 2022 at 9 o’clock in the morning in Department A of the Ukiah courthouse.

Because special circumstances were proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the mandatory sentence that now must be imposed on defendant Jones is life without parole (LWOP) in state prison.

The law enforcement agency that developed the evidence underlying the defendant’s convictions was the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.

The Ukiah Police Department, the California Highway Patrol, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife provided mutual aid back on the morning of September 23, 2020. The District Attorney’s own Bureau of Investigations provided victim/witness and trial support.

The prosecutor who presented the People’s evidence to the jury and argued for the verdicts that were returned by the jury was District Attorney David Eyster.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder presided over the four-day trial. He will also preside over the sentencing hearing in March.

(DA Presser)

SALES FAILS

On Wednesday, February 16th, 2022 at about 2:40pm, Willits Police Department (WPD) Officers were dispatched to the Chase Bank (234 S Main St) for a reported robbery in progress. A description of the male suspect was broadcast and he was last seen fleeing the bank on foot. An undisclosed amount of money was taken. No weapon was observed, but the bank employee, in fear for her safety when the money was demanded, handed over cash from her drawer. 

Upon WPD Officers’ arrival at the bank, they heard a Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) Deputy request immediate assistance about a block from the bank as he was out with a subject, later identified as Jonathan Sales, 39, of Willits. 

Sales matched the robbery suspect’s description. When the Deputy made contact with the suspect, Sales assaulted the Deputy who deployed his Taser. Sales was subsequently handcuffed and detained. 

During the course of the investigation, bank employees positively identified Sales as the suspect. Video surveillance and additional eyewitnesses confirmed Sales was indeed the bank robbery suspect. The amount of money taken from the bank was located on Sales’ person. Sales, after being provided with a Miranda Advisement, provided incriminating statements as well. 

Sales was medically cleared prior to being transported and booked in the county jail for Robbery. 

The Willits Police Department would like to thank the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, the bank employees and the witnesses from the community for their valuable assistance in this case.

(Willits Police Presser)

ON HATE SPEECH

To the Editor:

In response to Tommy Wayne Kramer’s latest opinion, it appears that the author doesn’t believe there is such a thing as hate crimes or hate speech. His words indicate a defensiveness, as if only his own race is targeted by these laws: “only members of certain demographic segments could possibly be charged with a hate crime.” He is certainly wrong.

The law isn’t only for white folks, or Christian folks, or whoever he thinks is getting the jab. For instance, according to US Justice Department hate crime statistics, Of the 6,780 known offenders in 2020:

55.1 percent were White, 21.2 percent were Black or African American, 15.7 percent race unknown

The U.S. established its hate crime law as part of the Civil Rights Act which made it illegal to “by force or by threat of force, injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone who is engaged in six specified protected activities, by reason of their race, color, religion, or national origin.”

Mr. Kramer is wrong, and he could use some humility besides.

Lynn Gulyash

Potter Valley

HOW TO KEEP THE PANDEMIC GOING

Dear Editor,

I wonder what we can do today to perpetuate the pandemic? Oh, I know! Let’s gather a lot of unvaccinated, unmasked people to demonstrate against measures to end the pandemic! We can infect each other and then go to the hospital and see how many nurses and doctors we can infect. Liberate our virus! LOV! Liberate our virus! LOV!

Stephanie T. Hoppe

Ukiah

STILL LOOKING

Hi my name is Alfred Nunez and i'm 62 years old, single, no dog no cat. I am a handyman caretaker kind of guy looking for another place to live. I have a motorhome i live in, a stepvan that i keep all my tools in, and a little truck and a log splitter. I can do carpentry, mechanic, and gardening work. I have plenty of other skills and the tools to do that work also. I can pay alittle rent or we can do a work trade for my stay. I live in Albion and i'm hoping to find a place around the coast here. I have a sewage tank that i put my sewage in and then i put it in the back of my truck and drive it to the Chevron gas station in Fort Bragg and dump it at their sewage dump station for five dollars. I have local work and character references. I do not have internet at home, you have to call me to contact me. Thank you... 

AL Nunez <allymotocat@gmail.com>

CATCH OF THE DAY, February 18, 2022

JOSHUA CATES, Willits. DUI.

HECTOR CHAVEZ-BEJINEZ, Ukiah. DUI, disobeying court order. 

SEAN FLINTON, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

GREGORY GRIFFITH, Merced/Fort Bragg. DUI.

JESUS HERRERA, Willits. Trespassing, under influence, disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting, failure to appear.

JOSEPH HIPES, Willits. Controlled substance for sale, felon-addict with firearm, county parole violation.

TONY MAPLES, Redwood Valley. DUI with priors.

GEORGE ORWELL: “All people who work with their hands are partly invisible, and the more important the work they do, the less visible they are… I have noticed this again and again. In a tropical landscape one's eye takes in everything except the human beings.”

“WHAT TWISTED PEOPLE WE ARE. How simple we seem, or at least pretend to be in front of others, and how twisted we are deep down. How paltry we are and how spectacularly we contort ourselves before our own eyes, and the eyes of others…And all for what? To hide what? To make people believe what?”

— Roberto Bolaño, 2066

MEANWHILE, LIKE A CORONAVIRUS ITSELF, the trucker protest movement has infected America. A “People’s Convoy” is assembling around Barstow, California (the capital of the Mojave Desert, where there’s plenty of room to assemble), with a launch date of February 23, next Wednesday, destination: Washington DC. Won’t that be… interesting? What will the government of “Joe Biden” do? Likewise invoke some sort of emergency powers? Declare yet another “insurrection” as with January 6, 2021? Mess with the truckers’ bank accounts, and those of the people who support them? Do they want to inspire a run on US banks at a juncture where the extreme fragility of the global banking system threatens to blow up financial markets? Standing by on that.

— James Kunstler

THE END OF DAYS

Editor: 

At the time, the Tubbs fire was billed as the largest, most destructive fire in California history. This was followed by the Camp fire, a worldwide pandemic and now a drought that’s the worst in 1,200 years. Fires, plagues, droughts — I’m not a religious person, but I’m beginning to think someone’s trying to get our attention.

Deborah Colyer

Santa Rosa

HARRY TRUMAN’S MOTHER never forgot the burning, looting, and thorough destruction of western Missouri by U.S. forces during the War Between the States. When her son Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States, was invited to dinner by a prominent family in Kansas City, a family who had profited handsomely by the War, she reportedly made this remark.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Labels. I sometimes think they exist to aid in censoring speech/ideas, and to discourage people from being exposed to inconvenient truths via threats of association.

Left. Right. Conservative. Liberal. Progressive. Libertarian. Give me a label that the mainstream hasn’t attached a wedge issue to. All of these labels have some sort of deal-breaker for me, and perhaps that’s by design. I used to say a “classic liberal” is the closest thing I resemble, which, since the overton window has shifted has more trappings of a modern day conservative than liberal.

I prefer to say I belong to no established group, that I am an individual with a unique set of beliefs that sometimes aligns or overlaps with some of the beliefs under the mainstream labels.

INTERVIEW WITH THE LATE BOB MCKEE IN 2016 EXPLORES THE CONNECTION BETWEEN CANNABIS AND SOLAR POWER

When Bob McKee passed away in January, a library of northwestern California knowledge slipped away from this earth. But luckily, interviewers had captured some of that library in the form of interviews.

In 2016, Jeff Spies interviewed him. Spies told us, “We filmed the interview as part of the production of a documentary film on the birth of the solar PV industry. We interviewed Bob several years ago to capture his story of settling in Southern Humboldt and helping create the community of homesteaders that was instrumental in launching the solar PV industry. Our documentary is called “Solar Roots – the Pioneers of PV” and you can view a teaser clip at this link.

A quote sure to ignite controversy from the Solar Roots trailer: “Thank god for the marijuana business. That’s what made solar happen.”

The interview With Bob McKee delves into that connection but mostly explores the roots of the Back to the Land movement and the changes from the Sixties through the Eighties.

(Courtesy, KymKemp.com / Redheaded Black Belt)

THE PROCESS FOR DISTILLING WHISKY is believed to have been brought to Scotland by monks, sometime between the 12th and 14th centuries, perhaps due to the difficulty in obtaining wine there. Scots acquired a fondness for the beverage, and along with their expertise in distilling it they also developed expertise in avoiding the taxes imposed on it. Scottish immigrants brought both of those skills to the United States and practiced them assiduously. 

During the aging process some of the whisky evaporates. The monks called this “the angels’ share,” and that's what it is still called today. How quickly the angels take their share depends upon the environment where the aging is occurring. Whereas in Scotland the angels’ share is about 2% per year, it is much greater in Kentucky. It takes about three years for a barrel of spirits aging in Scotland to be reduced as much as an identical barrel aging in Kentucky would be reduced in a single year.

STAFF REPORTS!

The Staff Report(s) and Agenda for March 3. 2022, is posted on the department website at: mendocinocounty.org/government/planning-building-services/meeting-agendas/planning-commission

Please contact staff with any questions.

Sincerely,

Brooke Larsen
Administrative Assistant
County of Mendocino
Planning and Building Services
860 N. Bush Street
Ukiah, CA 95482

THE ONE AND ONLY "BEACH BOYS" circa 1962 .....

The group that began the California surf craze a year earlier in 1961. The boys vocal harmonies were influenced by the Four Freshmen who also delivered smooth harmonies. The group charted 30 hits between 1961-1966, including 13 top 10 hits and three number ones. Certainly, the Beach Boys reigned as one of the most influential acts of the rock era before the arrival of the Beatles, and continued their string of hits right through 1966's "Good Vibrations." There were more hits to follow, but nothing to compare to their golden years.

Being that I live on the West Coast with the beach right across the street, they were on the radio ALL the time and their records were some of the very first in my collection. Still have a few to this day! Indeed, before the Beatles, their music was the MOST influential during my youth. Who else was shoot'in the curl and digg'in the surf back then?.... or at least the music?

Interesting footnote.... the surfboard seen in this picture here recently sold at auction for nearly $70,000! 

THE MISTY CITY

by Herb Caen (1976)

“San Francisco, the gateway to the Orient, was a city of good food and cheap prices; the first to introduce me to frog's legs ala Provencale, strawberry shortcake and avocado pears. Everything was new and bright, including my small hotel. Los Angeles, on the other hand, was an ugly city, hot and oppressive, and the people looked sallow and anemic. Nature has endowed the North of California with resources that will endure and flourish when Hollywood has disappeared into the prehistoric tar pits of Wilshire Boulevard…”

In his autobiography, Charlie Chaplin thus recalls his first visit to California, in 1910. His observations are unremarkable, to be sure, but how eagerly we who are fascinated by San Francisco read these words as we read everything we can lay hands on about the mysterious City That Was. We keep trying to solve the riddle that haunts us all our lives: What was there about old San Francisco that made it so special in the eyes of the world? Why did this small city, pulsating at continent’s end under a cocoon of fog, capture and fire the imagination of sophisticates who had been everywhere? If there was real magic, where did it go? Or is it still in the air? And if it has vanished indeed, how responsible are we who came in the wake of the mythmakers?

Will Irwin, a respected observer who knew the pre-firequake city as well as anybody, insisted to his death that something intangible, some mystical quality, vanished in the flames of 1906. “There was only one San Francisco,” he often said. “The city that arose after the quake was quite another thing.” To him and a few others, the new city looked, felt and even smelled different, but he must have been judging too hastily, for generations of San Francisco lovers were yet to come, Charlie Chaplin among them. In the seagulls’ screams, the chunk chunk of ferryboat paddles, naughty giggles in upstairs rooms at the St. Germaine and Blanco’s and slap of cable on what Gelett Burgess called “The Hyde Street Grip” — in these things and more, the magic seems to have endured long after 1906.

The city has many lives but few golden ages and most of us suspect, not without hard evidence, that this is not one of them. We stare at the ancient, flyspecked, yellowing photos of cobbled streets long gone, we gaze at the almost foreign faces of yesterday's San Franciscans, looking for the key. In their photos they look solid, stolid, not particularly dashing. Yet they must have had style in profusion; one has only to read the lavish menus of circa 1910, the accounts of glittering balls, the stories of escapade and scandal to know they were a rare, crazy lot. Pampered, poised forever on an earthquake fault — no wonder the San Franciscan had a reputation for living fast to die young and beautiful.

Golden Ages. They came in waves, inundating the young city, spreading its fables. Abandoned sailing ships in a Gold Rush harbor whose boundaries long since have been filled in. Gas lights and lamp lights, fleas and sand, cobbles, cables, cobwebs and the clatter of carriages in and out of enclosing courtyards. Golden ages of garish mansions on Nob Hill (how nouveau the rich and how rich the nouveau) and the old Palace Hotel, with one-thousand items on the menu daily and 10,000 bottles of the finest French wine gathering dust in the sellers. Golden age of snobbish Gertrude Atherton, Jack London and George Sterling and a bohemia of candlelight and Dago red (you could say Dago then) on Nannygoat Hill, the free souls wearing hand-loomed clothes and Indian turquoise jewelry, singing their way to Marin each weekend on the gingerbread ferries, the beautiful boats of extravagant proportion.

From the testimony, there was still magic in the 20s, described so warmly by Charles Caldwell Dobie, illustrated by the filigree etchings of E.H. Suydam. Still a smallish town, maybe 600,000 people, but hardly any of them commuting, all of them very much involved with the life of the place, ruled indulgently by Sunny Jim of loose rein and looser reign, a few tall buildings going up here and there, but always, more by accident than design, in the right places. “The quality city” was one of San Francisco's least inspired slogans, but the quality was very much there. You still get the sense of it in the Flood Building lobby, at the Merchants Exchange, in the solid, built for the ages exteriors of the old St. Francis and Fairmont.

The Saroyan/Sam Spade city — perhaps that was the last of it, as far as storybooks are concerned, but there is no way to give up on San Francisco once you have fallen under its spell. You keep looking for the magic, and now and then when the wind and the light are right and the air smells ocean clean and a white ship is emerging from the Golden Gate mist into the bay and the towers are reflecting the sun’s last rays — at moments like that you turn to the ghosts and ask, “Was this the way it was?” And there is never an answer.

OUT OF THE COVID CRISIS, BUT CALIFORNIA IS STILL IN A STATE OF EMERGENCY

For weeks, Gov. Gavin Newsom teased that California would soon enter a new phase of its response to the coronavirus pandemic, one in which the state shifted its perspective to how to deal with an endemic disease that will likely be a regular part of our lives.

But when that moment arrived Thursday, Newsom made clear that the new strategy did not mean the fight was over. His long-awaited announcement came with no eulogy to the pandemic, no lifting of additional health restrictions and, despite growing calls from conservative critics, no end to the state of emergency that began nearly two years ago. …

lostcoastoutpost.com/2022/feb/18/out-of-the-covid-crisis-but-california-is-still-in/

POINT ARENA PROCLAIMS

https://pointarena.ca.gov/document-category/council-agenda/

MEMO OF THE AIR

Good Night Radio live from Franklin St. all night tonight!

Deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is about 6pm. Or send it whenever it's done and I'll read it on the radio next week. Text-only, in the body of an email, please; I'm on dialup today. Also I'll try to remember to check email sometime during the show, so if something occurs to you and you wanta squirt it in, that might work.

Plus you can call during the show and read your work in your own voice. I'll be in the clean, well-lighted back room of KNYO's storefront studio at 325 N. Franklin, where the number is 1-(707) 962-3022. If you swear like a sailor, please wait until after 10pm, to not agitate the weasels.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg as well as anywhere else via http://airtime.knyo.org:8040/128 (That's the regular link to listen to KNYO in real time.)

Any day or night you can go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night the recording of tonight's show will also be there.

Besides all that, there you'll find a whole rabbit hutch of educational nuggets to play the ancient Chinese game of Go with or construct an abacus out of, or whatever, until showtime, or any time, such as:

A list and map of Manhattan neighborhoods. There are many more than you'd think, if you get your knowledge of them from movies and teevee, which give the impression there are only like ten or so. Theater plays give some more, I guess. I like the sound of Far Rockaway, and Canarsie; also Tribeca.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Manhattan_neighborhoods

A fascinating essay about an assortment of entertainment produced by cults. (58 min.)

https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2022/02/cult-culture.html

And a panoply of historical hoards. (via NagOnTheLake)

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/654848/most-dazzling-hoards-ever-discovered

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

ROOM 11

Emergency Survival

Warmest spiritual greetings, Please know that I am booked into the Voll Motel located at 628 North State Street in Ukiah, California Room #11 until the late morning of Tuesday February 22nd. I have less than $300 in the bank, plus $88 in food stamps. The computer is in need of a DC Jack being soldered in, which RespecTech informs me will cost $184, which I cannot presently afford. PLEASE KNOW THAT I MAY NOT BE ABLE TO ANSWER EMAILS FOR AWHILE! My friend Elizabeth has offered to receive telephone messages for me at: (707) 714-4176. Otherwise, I am on foot, have access to markets for food, and America is welcome for my 72 years of a life genuinely lived, with the past 50 years being involved in peace & justice and radical environmental activist activity. Thank you for your solidarity, and please do whatever you can do in order to ensure that I remain alive as long as possible. Peaceout.

Craig Louis Stehr