- Farm To Table
- The Good Years
- After The Cloud
- Why Nevedal?
- Boss Skunk Says
- How To Keep The Pandemic Going
- The End Of Days
- We’re Hiring!
- No Guarantees
- The Ancient & Anciently Wrong Pogo Assertion
- How Inflation Works
FARM TO TABLE
Hello Community,
For the last year our non profit Unconditional Freedom Project has been at work at the Mendocino County Jail. Our programs there include training the jail residents on the jail garden, planting and harvesting vegetables and working on bee keeping alongside Sheriff Kendall.
We are looking to add chickens there, and seeking a chicken tractor and 12 chickens to donate to the jail garden. If you have one or know someone who might be willing to donate or make one, please reach out!
If you’d like to learn more about our program the Mendocino County Jail, listen to the sheriff talk about it here on KZYX: https://jukebox.kzyx.org/index.mob.php (Scroll down to “Citizen U or TKO” Wednesday, February 9) or read more about our program here: https://prisonmonastery.org/
Unconditional Freedom Project
Ukiah
THE GOOD YEARS
Editor,
Greetings from Enon, Ohio! Being 74, I find it’s time to go through much of what I’ve accumulated over the years. One set of things in that category is Anderson Valley Little League, circa 1975-1976!
Those were interesting and good times that we shared helping young men to follow the dream of many on the baseball diamond. (Hey, I remember the Anderson brothers blasting softballs far over my head in left field in the valley softball league, I playing with Harold Perry on the Boonville team!)
It was definitely a league that meant traveling from Anderson Valley to the coast and Manchester, Pt. Arena, and Gualala, but I enjoyed that.
I have plenty of good memories of my five years as pastor of the Anderson Valley and Philo United Methodist Churches from 1973 to 1978. I got married and moved to Biggs and Princeton, California, then got divorced, and several years later met Tim Alexander’s first cousin while attending a national church meeting in Ohio. (By the way, Tim and Sandy divorced and he's now living in Goodyears Bar, 4 miles south of Downieville on California 49.)
I moved to Ohio in 1984, served a small church and worked for a Christian television station there before we (wife Patti, her son and daughter and our son) moved to Auburn, California in 1990. (Here’s the 1976 team picture.)
We moved back to Ohio, serving two small churches in the northwest area of Dayton, then to the northeast part of the metro area in Enon in 2007, retiring in 2017.
We took a family trip to California in June, 1989 with the Alexanders and spent one night in Boonville with Tim’s mom. The Boonville church held a potluck for us. Unfortunately, that was the last time that I’ve been in your neck of the woods. I’ve missed it. Those were good times with many memories.
Life has been good. Patti and I have 2 grandsons in Colfax and 2 grandsons and a granddaughter in Cortez, Colorado, so we spend a good amount of time on the road.
I’m glad you are still at it, sharing your thoughts (I’ll call them that!) and life in an area that I called home and miss often.
Here’s to you and any folks who are still around and may remember my time with you all.
Sincerely,
Jeff Mohr
Enon, Ohio
P.S. – Just saw an article about “Yewgene” Waggoner from April 22, 2020. I was lucky enough to be the fifth man on his team in 1973-1974. With Jim Hans, I was there to attempt to get rebounds when Gene and Gary plus David Summit missed… Not that often!
AFTER THE CLOUD
Editor,
If, Mr. Anderson, unlike you, I find Tommy Wayne Kramer to be periodically banal and irritating, must I forbear to comment, as “he” is a fictional device, the ventriloquial instrument of Tom Hine? Would it be as amiss for me to take issue with "him" as to complain to the publisher of Penguin Books that I heartily disagree with what Emma Bovary asserts on page 223? Notwithstanding the possibility that “Kramer” is a satirical puppet of sorts expressing sentiments distinct from those of his puppetmaster, I respond to the puppet as follows.
Libraries need not exist, you argue, as everything is on Kindle. I suppose, if you don't mind the world's literature being virtual, being kept in reserve on the other side of a corporate gatekeeper, and dependent on an external power supply being provided to a device made by slaves in China. Has anyone genuinely read and finished “The Magic Mountain,” “Moby Dick,” or the “Charterhouse of Parma” by reading it on Kindle? Of course not. Besides, every choice of book, every "turn" of the page, becomes part of a data set associated with any sap oblivious enough to read books via computers, a data profile sold to third-party information brokers or handed over without a warrant to one of the government's alphabet agencies. Not to mention the fact that all computer devices run mostly on oil and coal, not some minty ether. Some day "the Cloud" will dissipate and the decision to entrust so many treasures to its safekeeping will seem like history’s greatest fatuity. As for bowing before the juggernaut of Amazon, besides doing your part to sign the death sentence of used bookstores, you feel no embarrassment when an algorithm tells you what “people like you” would like to read next? You are comfortable with the proposition that your penchants and interests are so predictable that a machine knows better than you do what book should be next in your venture of self-education? You don't bristle at being moved down a chute that spares you the uncertainty of fortuitous and serendipitous discoveries?
The Internet has made so many pleasures unnecessary.
Regards,
Volt-Voort
Rome, New York
ED REPLY: You might agree, VV, that all of us are regularly "banal and irritating," but I agree with you "that the internet has made so many pleasures unnecessary." You may be reassured that I, having known Mr. Kramer for forty years, can attest that he is most def a book guy, and his description of the Ukiah Library as a kind of book-themed out-patient center is, I'm afraid, accurate.
WHY NEVEDAL?
To the Editor:
A few factoids about Mendocino County Cannabis Czar, Kristin Nevedal:
ONE. Kristin Nevedal is a direct report to the Board of Supervisors, a unique arrangement considering all other department heads report to the CEO, except for elected department heads, like the Sheriff, County Treasurer, or District Attorney.
TWO. The County of Mendocino’s website stated the position of Cannabis Program Manager was opened and closed within 19 hours. I did not see it posted for two weeks.
See the following: https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/mendocinoca
Cannabis Program Manager
Ukiah, CA
Full-time Permanent – $83,699.20 – $101,732.80 Annually
Category: Administration / Management / Professional / Miscellaneous / Customer Service / Project Management
Department: Cannabis Program
Bilingual English/Spanish encouraged to apply.
The current vacancy is in Planning & Building Services – Cannabis Program, Ukiah. This position is an at-will; exempt from Civil Service. This position reports to the Board of Supervisors and works closely Cannabis Program Ad Hoc Committee and the Planning and Building Department. Under administrative direction, implements the goals, strategies, policies and programmatic framework for the issuing of permits/licenses through the Mendocino County Cannabis Program. This position shall take the necessary steps to manage…
Why didn’t the County of Mendocino and the Board of Supervisors interview all candidates before hiring Ms. Nevedal?
THREE. The Board of Supervisors did not publicly require Ms. Nevedal to resign her board seats with the “California Cannabis Industry Association” (CCIA), the “International Cannabis Farmers Association” (ICFA) and the new trade association in Mendocino, the “Cannabis Business Association of Mendocino County” (CBAMC) of which ICFA and CCIA are “organizational partners”?
https://www.cacannabisindustry.org/board-of-directors/
https://www.icfa.farm/our_team
2021 Policy Priorities for the New CBAMC include:
1) Mendocino County Board of Supervisors’ adoption of a Phase 3 cannabis ordinance which includes expanded cultivation up to 10% of parcel size in agriculture-appropriate zones by Spring 2021.
2) Procurement of Annual Licenses from the State of California for Mendocino County cultivators.
So, it looks like CCIA and CBAMC have their new inside woman direct with and paid for by the Mendocino government. Hello Agribusiness! Goodbye legacy farmers! Goodbye small independent family farmers!
FOUR. Ms. Nevedal has no apparent educational qualifications nor professional licenses. She has held chairs and committee seats and was apparently appointed by a governor to something…so what!? She was a great networker. She was a great schmoozer. That doesn’t make her qualified.
By comparison the County Ag Commissioner is required, by law, to be professionally credentialed.
FIVE. Ms. Nevedal is not a “local and long-time cannabis professional.” She moved here a few years ago from South Carolina. You would think the Board of Supervisors would have hired someone who has actually been in our industry for a long time and knows our problems with Mendocino County’s insane, unworkable regs first-hand.
John Sakowicz
Ukiah
PS. KATHY AND CARMEL
Regarding Jim Shields’ article about how Grand Jury foreman Kathy Wylie calls any criticism of outgoing County CEO Carmel Angelo, “hate speech”…I always thought Wylie was in Angelo’s pocket.
Look at the public record. Wylie always steered grand jury investigations away from Angelo. Nary a single critical grand jury report by Wylie’s coffee klatch of senior citizen grand jurors on the CEO office and the CEO’s years of bullying the Board of Supervisors, the Sheriff, and county department heads.
Nary a single critical grand jury report on the county’s mythical financial reserve. The so-called “reserve” was built on the backs of county workers who suffered high vacancy rates in their departments. It was built on deferred maintenance of county buildings. It was built on a ballooning unfunded county pension liability.
Nary a single critical grand jury report on the county’s RICO investigation by the U.S. Attorney on public corruption in the local cannabis industry, county government, and and local law enforcement.
Nary a single grand jury report on how Angelo privatized mental health services and made Camille Schraeder and her friends at Redwood Community Services stinking rich with almost no accountability.
Nary a single grand jury report on how Measure B funds were hijacked to become Angelo’s private county slush fund.
Nary a single grand jury report on how the carpetbaggers and scallywags at Flow Kana had all their zoning and permits fast-tracked and rubber-stamped to the detriment of local farmers.
Nary a single report on how Angelo consolidated power at the CEO Office…bringing auditor and treasurer functions, budget, emergency services, risk management, IT, and general services into the CEO’s Office along with the existing human resources and county counsel.
Nary a single critical report on how Angelo “disappeared” numerous county employees, including department heads, resulting in numerous expensive wrongful termination lawsuits.
BOSS SKUNK SAYS
Editor,
Last week Fort Bragg city councilmembers Albin-Smith and Peters asked Mendocino Railway to “get on board” with local permitting. This is a surprising request given that Mendocino Railway has been doing exactly that since 2019, following its purchase of the northern portion of the millsite, until the city abandoned its development process in January 2021 and told us to create our own plan.
We did as requested, meeting with the city ten times in 2021 while also focusing — with city approval — on acquiring millsite south. In May, after we told the city we had reached a deal with GP, the city suddenly and without explanation ceased all communications with us and, apparently, tried to take our deal with GP for itself, forcing us to file our eminent domain action to ensure we simply had a seat at the table. But GP’s discussion with the city went nowhere, and GP contacted us in October to tell us that their discussions with the city had ended and asking how we could close our original deal. As settling the eminent domain action was easier than closing the deal via a purchase and sale agreement, that is what we did.
Unbeknownst to us, the city — which for some reason ignored our eminent domain action — in October filed a lawsuit challenging our public utility status. And the city then in November, after learning we had closed our original deal with GP, sought out of pure spite to block a $21 million loan we seek to improve our railroad with more ties, to improve bridge safety, and to reopen Tunnel #1 (improvements the council bizarrely claims to still support today despite its efforts to prevent us from making them). Councilmembers have also made knowingly false claims about us in meetings and in the press that have caused enormous harm not just to our company but also to the many local residents and businesses who depend on us, at least in part, for their livelihoods.
The council — without reason — questions whether we will abide by local development regulations and CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act). This is despite our consistent statements over many years that we always do our best to follow all applicable laws and will continue to do so. We submitted our proposed plan for the 77-acre millsite north for city approval within three months of purchasing that property. We agreed that the housing, hotel, commercial, and light industrial elements the city wanted built were all subject to local regulation. And we also set aside 40% of the property as open space and parks, not to mention the extensive setbacks from the Coastal Trail. The city knows we are in our third year working with the Department of Toxic Substance Control on environmental remediation of the property, despite not having caused any of the contamination ourselves. We planned to work just as closely with the city and environmental regulators as to millsite south.
Anyone who has walked the city’s beautiful Coastal Trail can see the unique opportunity presented by the millsite. Ideally, we should work together with the city on a plan that builds upon our community’s strong working-town history, our hospitality and tourism industry, and our potential to attract high-paying technology, green energy, healthcare, and blue economy jobs. And though the millsite is a brownfield that needs redevelopment, we can’t lose sight of the fact that it borders an amazing environmental gem that needs protection. Nor can we lose sight of the need to retain Fort Bragg’s identity and authenticity.
We need to work together with local agencies to achieve these goals, to develop a vision that everyone can support. But the city has refused to speak with us, preferring to hold closed-door meetings while making knowingly false claims about us in public. We thus welcome councilmembers Albin-Smith’s and Peters’ interest in moving forward in a more productive manner and will gladly meet with them if they are willing.
Rail switches merge parallel train tracks into one, serving as a good metaphor for our relationship with the city. Currently, we seem to be heading in a similar direction but on separate tracks. But we share the common goal of ensuring that millsite development provides the maximum opportunities and benefits for our community so I’m hopeful we can find a switch that will bring us onto the same track.
I look forward to a time when the rest of the council joins councilmembers Albin-Smith and Peters in seeking to work towards a more promising future together.
Chris Hart, Mendocino Railway
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
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
WE’RE HIRING!
Editor,
I wanted to reach out to our communities regarding recruitment of deputies, dispatchers, and professional staff. Currently every law enforcement agency in California is suffering in personnel numbers and Mendocino County is no exception.
We have a large personnel vacuum created due to several factors, which have put Sheriff’s Offices in a tough position to provide the level of service our communities deserve.
I am currently working towards hiring incentives which will match other agencies within Mendocino County and I believe this will help with recruitment of qualified applicants.
Hiring incentives are currently being used by other law enforcement agencies in Mendocino County and throughout California, and I believe these incentives would attract qualified candidates to apply with the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.
I am asking the folks in our communities to assist with helping us recruit qualified applicants. We recently hired three local people to send to the police academy, two from the Coast and one from the Covelo area.
The Sheriff’s Office is not just patrol and corrections deputies. We also have need for professional staff such as dispatchers, secretaries, and clerical staff. It is my ambition to hire qualified persons from Mendocino County who will have pride in serving the community where they live.
We love to hire our local people, and with the tremendous amount of support we constantly receive from our communities I know people coming from outside of our area will be welcomed by our communities as well.
Mendocino County is a great place to live and to work. Please go to the Mendocino County Sheriff Website at https://mendocinosheriff.org/ and click on the “Jobs” section.
There you will find links to job descriptions and our Human Resources department where you can apply for open positions.
Thank you
Sheriff Matt Kendall
NO GUARANTEES
Editor:
I forget phone numbers and don’t even try to jump the tennis net anymore. I chop wood and beat back the brambles around our old house along the coast, just south of Trinidad. The prospect of death is not particularly troubling, but I dutifully use a mask, I took the time to get anti-COVID shots, and I will be in line for a second booster.
Vaccination is a safety net, but nothing is 100% certain, except for death and taxes — right? My trusting and fragile 89-year-old younger sister had her vaccinations but died in agony of COVID-19. Her caretaker relative had refused vaccination and tested positive. He had the virus and may also have been exposed to retrograde religiosity and the faux-news freak show.
Who knows what goes in this digitally disintegrated decade? In any event, if you are inclined to be anti-vax: beware. Stock up on guns and toilet paper. You never know when some downwind Democrat is going to sneak up and scare the scat out of you.
John Wiebe
Trinidad
THE ANCIENT & ANCIENTLY WRONG POGO ASSERTION
Letter to the Editor
You could still phrase it better, Mr. Anderson. “Stop both” what? “Murder by capitalism” and what else? Felonious direct action by another generation of impassioned eco-fools? Those are two referents. Is that what you mean? You want to stop the capitalists and the anti capitalists?
But sod this pointless quibble. No, I don’t agree that the Earth is being murdered by capitalism. The Earth is being murdered by human beings. Human beings whose essential nature hasn’t changed in a million years, regardless of whatever economic systems they have been hitched to. And what are these systems? Variants of control cycling between doing as you please to doing as the rulers please, back and forth over time. Sod all the long winded professorial huffing and puffing! Screw the vicious scrabbling over the true party line! None of this really matters now.
Human beings are animals and consume their needs from the planet like all other animals. We’ve just evolved, if that’s the word, to have an increasingly broad view of what constitutes needs. There is no such thing as a successful economic system that does not provide for the needs that people perceive are desirable. People are people, and if they prefer to get their shampoo from a capitalist display of a thousand varieties rather than out of a communal vat in a communist drug store, they will not be thwarted forever regardless of all the high minded appeals to delusions of social reconstruction and the ludicrous belief that choosing the latter system/shampoo will “save the Earth”. It’s the totality of consumption that is at issue; the dynamics of mass demand. Will people tolerate their deliberate impoverishment? Not for long by governmental fiat. But all our hands will be forced by nature, when there will be no choice.
The illusion that must be dumped is the fantasy that human beings are perfectible. If only this and if only that, dream the partisans of systems. “If” is the loneliest word in the world! People want what they think they want. Does capitalism manufacture unnecessary needs for profit thereby damaging the ecosystem a little faster than other “social” isms do? Before you answer check out the eco-wreckage in the former socialist world; but if so, only because capitalism is more efficient than the competition in creating and satisfying human wants. Does nature attach greater moral blame to the logging of redwoods in Mendocino than it does to cutting Siberian forests? No. Either way, it’s slow death by a thousand cuts for everyone.
But one generation of excitable morons such as I passeth away and another cometh unto the stage. Naturally the young will be upset when they notice the walls closing in but we’ve seen Malm’s movie before and it doesn’t end well. The most certain path to ecosystem destruction is marked out by the thoroughly self assured out of blind conviction of their rectitude, dreaming of a glorious future that never arrives. So, no doubt a few Exxon board members or whoever will get bumped off and a few self styled revolutionaries will get locked up. Does the Earth care? No. We have 7 billion going on 9 billion people on this planet, most of them already have little to eat and less to do, and the future is inescapably ugly regardless of who is tending the switches. Jesus isn’t coming back, beneficent space aliens won’t appear, the super-rich won’t save anything (sorry, Ralph), social reformers for all their intense sincerity won’t reform much at all and violence no matter how emotionally satisfying will only make everything worse, faster. The anthropocene era will be geologically marked by a thin deposit of industrial junk sandwiched between thousand-foot layers of sandstone. If there’s any way around this, I don’t know what it is. Fortunately I’m just one dumbass, and new minds are born every day, so let’s try to have faith in the future. Any of you pud brains have a better idea?
Yours,
Jay Williamson
Santa Rosa
PS: And now for something completely different. It wasn’t Justin Beaver (joke) at the Stupor Bowl, it was Enemanem (joke).
ED REPLY: This pud brain points out that eco-damage is much less severe in the sensibly socialist Scandinavian countries where people have restrained unrestrained capitalism. Capitalism is not inevitable. No human organization is inevitable. If Lenin, for instance, hadn't overthrown the Czar that particular capitalist system would have continued to starve and whip peasants and 10-year-olds would have continued to be sold in the sex markets. America, whose downward spiral is accurately reflected in Super Bowl half-time shows, is clearly headed in that direction but hasn't quite reached true nadir. Here in Liberty Land, capitalism will go through a fascist phase with the return of Trump in 2024 as the natural world continues to choke to death on free enterprise. We will then get a version of Soylent Green unless young eco-Lenins can mount an effective counter-attack.
HOW INFLATION WORKS
Editor:
When prices go up in the normal course of events it is called economic growth, and it is considered a good thing. When wages go up, and business then raises prices to get a share (and more) of the wage increase, it is called inflation, and it is considered a bad thing warranting measures that result in wage decrease or stagnation. I am still waiting for someone to convince me that the deck is not stacked against the working stiff.
Patrick Coyle
Santa Rosa
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