Mendocino County Today: Sunday, March 6, 2022

Dry Warming | Calypso Orchid | Sabers Rattling | Seeking Anson | Courage Videos | Pet Pluto | Crofoot House | See Ya | Mental Health | Hardware Display | GJ Agrees | Mary Jane | Baseball Dying | Trent Video | Crony GJ | Ukraine Convoy | GJ FAQ | Jazz Age | Peptoc Hotline | Water Grants | Grammar School | McGuire Promises | 1910 Class | Salmon Forecast | Albion Crew | Auto Tips | DeFencing | Small Burn | Yesterday's Catch | Tenderloin | Lovely SF | Absinthe Day | Remote School | War Casualties | Beatle Burning | Ukiah Craig | Big River | Marco Radio | Ukraine 89 | War Crime

COLD OVERNIGHT LOWS continue the next couple of nights, although temps overall trend warmer through mid week. Dry weather persists through the work week, with the next chance for precip possibly occurring next weekend. (NWS)

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN has escalated his rhetoric in his confrontation with the West, saying that sanctions are tantamount to a declaration of war and threatening to treat any country that declares a no-fly zone over Ukraine as part of the conflict. The threats came as Moscow's brutal assault on Ukraine saw a mass civilian evacuation from Mariupol derailed when Russian forces ignored a promised ceasefire and continued shelling the southern city. On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky repeated his plea for NATO to establish a no-fly zone in a meeting with the US Congress — but the idea faces strong bipartisan opposition in America, and NATO leaders have rejected it, pointing out that it would draw the alliance into direct military confrontations with nuclear-armed Russia. (Daily Mail)

LAKEPORT POLICE OFFICERS SEEKING PUBLIC ASSISTANCE IN LOCATING FELONY WANTED SUBJECT

We are seeking James Ryan Anson, 33, of Lakeport California (White male adult, 6-1” tall, 200 pounds, blonde hair & blue eyes) on felony warrant charging: willfully inflicting corporal punishment resulting in a traumatic condition and under conditions likely to produce great bodily harm infliction of unjustifiable physical pain on a 3 year old child. 

Anson is aware of this investigation and is avoiding law enforcement. He lives in Lakeport but was last known to be in the Santa Rosa area. Anson has prior encounters with police involving evading in a vehicle, resisting arrest, terrorist threats, robbery, burglary and domestic violence. We have information that he could have recently been in possession of a handgun. 

Anson should be considered dangerous and we ask the public not to approach or contact him but immediately notify their local law enforcement agency. Persons with information related to this investigation or the whereabouts of Anson can contact Officer Melissa Bedford at 707-263-5491 or by email at mbedford@lakeportpolice.org 

Under newly enacted AB-1475 Penal Code Section: 13665 this agency has determined that the suspect is a fugitive or an imminent threat to an individual or to public safety and releasing or disseminating the suspect’s image will assist in locating or apprehending the suspect or reducing or eliminating the threat.

EUREKA PRODUCTIONS Latest Video Trailer: On Courage

http://eurekaproductions.tv

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Pluto is the sweetest puppy at the shelter. This beautiful dog was unfortunately born with a deformity of his left front leg. Don't let that leg fool you—it doesn’t slow this dude down one bit! Pluto is a happy dog, and he’s looking forward to his new home, where he can make his new guardian happy too! Pluto is scheduled for surgery this week, and we are hoping he will be adopted and able to spend his convalescence in his forever home, rather than the shelter. Pluto looks like he might have some Catahoula in his DNA—a wonderful fun, loving, smart, multitalented and loyal dog breed. Pluto is 5 months old and weighs 45 adorable pounds. 

For more about Pluto, visit mendoanimalshelter.com While you’re there, check out our canine and feline guests, 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. 

GOING HOME

by Mike Geniella

In these turbulent times it is good to go “home,” even if for just a short visit.

Almost 20 years have passed since I lived in a place our family always called “the Crofoot house.” The fine old house, even though empty and on the market, warmly welcomed me back.

It was a sentimental, and calming visit. I was reminded how fortunate we were to have owned and lived in such a stately icon of Mendocino County’s post-World War II lumber boom. The Crofoot house was built when the county was regularly one of the top five producers in the state’s billion-dollar timber industry.

I arranged to meet Dan Crofoot last week at a house that stirs deep feelings in both of us. Crofoot grew up there in the 1950s and ’60s. Terese and I purchased the house from Dan Crofoot’s parents when we arrived in Mendocino County in 1985. We raised our sons there, relished the old swimming pool on Ukiah’s sizzling summer days, and invited family and friends to join us. We celebrated birthdays, baptisms, and Little League parties. A string of grammar school to college graduation gatherings were held for sons Peter, Luke, Nate, and Sam. Finally, in 2004 we decided to sell and downsize.

It is a house that beckons potential buyers. 

The Crofoot house features old-growth timber originally milled at the family sawmill operation down the road near where old Highways 20 and 101 used to intersect at “The Forks.”

The builders were Jane and Bud Crofoot, legendary members of Mendocino County’s timber aristocracy.

When Bud Crofoot died in 1993, the New York Times noted in his obituary the Crofoot family in the 1940s came to the North Coast of California and “set up sawmill operations in the Ukiah and Anderson valleys during the heyday of Mendocino County's timber industry.” The Times described the Crofoot mills as being among the ‘most successful’ in that era. 

The Crofoot house indeed reflects the arduous work and successes of Jane and Bud Crofoot, brother John Crofoot, and other family members. John Crofoot’s son Tom, a former Mendocino County supervisor, lived in it too.

The house sits on a knoll overlooking Lake Mendocino Drive. It was constructed before the east fork of the Russian River was dammed to create Lake Mendocino. 

The all-redwood Crofoot house evokes a by-gone era. 

When the house was built it was especially large for the era, a 2,400-square-foot custom built home with swimming pool and Sunset magazine-style barbecue area. There was a giant slab of a redwood tree trunk which used to be a perfect place for visitors to sit, put up their feet and drink a glass of wine or two. 

The place features a wood-paneled guest room attached on the east side of a separate two-car garage. Bud Crofoot put in a shower large enough to fit a burly San Francisco 49er player who came to visit. The Crofoots had season tickets since the days of Kezar Stadium. 

Jane Crofoot, an artistic individual who ran a family sawmill while her husband was away in the military during World War II, designed the Craftsman-style house. Her touches were everywhere, from a painted cowboy mural on a son’s bedroom wall, to forest scenes on interior walls in the living areas. She painted a life-size mermaid on the pool’s bottom before it was filled. 

“My parents loved to share the house with family and friends, and they entertained regularly,” recalled son Dan Crofoot. 

The elder Crofoots were close friends with other aristocrats of the North Coast timber industry including Vivian and Frank Crawford and Jane and Bob Harrah. Jane Crofoot, Vivian Crawford, and Jane Harrah were pilots in their day, and owned their own airplanes. They regularly flew their husbands to family timber operations spread across Northern California and the West Coast.

The Crofoots also included among their close friends the late corporate timber executive Harry Merlo. He sometimes was a business partner of the Crofoots, who in turn were godparents to his only son, Sonoma County’s Harry Merlo Jr. 

Dan Crofoot recalled that in his childhood he called the senior Merlo ‘Uncle Harry.’ “I would sit on his lap while people partied, and Harry played his harmonica,” said Dan Crofoot.

The Crofoot house stands today as testament to the boom times of Mendocino County’s once mighty timber industry. Into the 1980s the county was consistently ranked among the state’s top five lumber producers.

Big timber was the county’s economic engine for decades. The timber economy loomed so large that Ukiah civic leaders erected big redwood signs at each end of town boasting ‘Home to Masonite.’ The landmark Masonite plant, shuttered and razed 50 years later, had employed hundreds of workers who recycled lumber mill waste into wood products including interior doors and trim exported worldwide.

Dan Crofoot remembers Harry Merlo sitting at the dining room table with his father and sketching out plans to split off a lumber division of the giant Georgia-Pacific Corp. to form a new timber company – Louisiana Pacific Corp.

L-P, as it became known under Merlo’s leadership, became one of the largest timberland owners on the North Coast. When the timber boom turned to bust, corporate logging practices came under intense scrutiny. Eventually L-P lands were acquired by the Fisher family of San Francisco, who created Mendocino Redwoods Company as a long-term investment arm. The Fishers also bought a swath of Humboldt County timberlands once owned by venerable Pacific Lumber Co. Those lands are now managed as Humboldt Redwoods Inc. Together, the holdings represent one of the largest tracts of commercial redwood forests anywhere. 

Changes were sweeping through the timber industry when my family and I moved into the Crofoot house in the mid-1980s. A Texan pulled off a surprise corporate takeover of Pacific Lumber Co., ushering in a noisy era of accelerated logging and environmental protests. 

At the Crofoot house, legislators, timberland owners, and environmental leaders mingled at gatherings Terese, and I hosted during my newspaper career. What the future held for the timber industry was a regular topic of debate.

I recall a time when fiery Earth First! activist Judi Bari came to the Crofoot house to drop off logging-related documents. She stepped inside, and after taking in the Crofoot house’s lodge-like interior, quipped, “You and I are going to have to seriously talk redwoods.”

Author Susan Faludi stayed with us while she researched a book on Bari, and the controversies that engulfed the region over timber practices.

Former state Senate Majority Leader Barry Keene sat at the dining room table one time and mused over pending legislation to rein in the effects of logging on the environment. Keene glanced around, smiled, and noted that “the era when old trees were so plentiful that this kind of house could be built is over.”

By the time the latest owners Catherine and John Hatch bought the Crofoot house, the big timber era was over. 

The Hatch family made substantive improvements to the aging home before putting it on the market two weeks ago. Already, there are buyers from Santa Rosa who are in contract negotiations, according to agent Marcia Morgan Lazaro of the Coldwell Banker office in Ukiah.

“The quality of a home like this withstands the test of time,” said Lazaro.

Dan Crofoot, his daughter Jessica, and I chose to visit the house together one last time before its sale.

The walls could not talk but we did. We shared our deep and lasting admiration of a house that ‘Bud and Jane built.’ 

The Crofoot house’s sunken living room is a standout, for example.

A north wall is anchored by a big brick fireplace built by Crofoot mill worker and skilled mason ‘Okie John.’

“Everyone in town wanted him to build their fireplaces,” said Dan Crofoot. 

The living room is large and open, and is paneled on three sides with tightly grained, tongue-and-grove redwood. Old-growth redwood beams crisscross an unusual ceiling featuring large rectangles of wood resembling the interior of slabs of redwood bark.

The house is divided by a wide north-south hallway which allow refreshing breezes to sweep through the house on summer evenings. Columns of stately redwood anchor one end of the living room, which features two large plate glass windows allowing abundant light to illuminate the lodge-like interior.

A family room features random boards of prized curly and birds eye redwood. At one end, Jane Crofoot painted a scene from the family cabin near Elk on the Mendocino Coast.

Outside, a paved drive encircles the house. Our youngest sons learned to ride their bikes on it, and they and their brothers used to stage track events on it with kids in the neighborhood.

A gravel road leads from Lake Mendocino Drive, past painted white corral fences surrounding two separate parcels that have always been owned in tandem with the house.

During the Hatch ownership, a country day school play area was carved out of a small apple orchard. There are chicken pens, a small animal barn, and other enclosures.

The Crofoot house is an oasis in a rural residential neighborhood undergoing change. The little Lucky Angler market, once a neighborhood fixture on a prime corner on the way to Lake Mendocino, has become a cannabis dispensary. 

Times change but the Crofoot house remains a lasting tribute to the people and a rich resource that once shaped the Redwood Region.

CARE FOR MENTALLY ILL IS NOT OPTIONAL, SHOULD BE A LEGAL MANDATE

by Jim Shields

Gavin Newsom’s mental health proposal released this past Thursday is the first workable, feasible and, dare I say, spot-on plan, that if enacted into law, could actually begin to solve a 50-year-old problem. 

Perhaps as Governor, Newsom is making amends for doing absolutely nothing to curb the mental health-homeless dilemma during his tenure as Mayor of San Francisco.

And, as I’m fond of saying, problems just don’t happen, people make them happen.

And, as I’m certain Newsom knows and understands, the main people causing the problem are who and what we call nowadays the “mental health-homeless-industrial complex.”

And, these are also the very same people who are at all levels of government, including right here on the home turf of Mendocino County. Nation-wide, they’re long-time gatekeepers of a bottomless rat hole down which billions and billions of dollars have disappeared over five decades of creating, recreating, and re-recreating mental health stabilization/wellness/recovery programs and connections to social services and housing programs. Needless to say, not a single one of these programs or plans have ever accomplished even the slightest measure of success.

Here in Mendocino County, the mental health-homeless-industrial complex has had a stranglehold on the mental health-homeless issues for over 20 years. 

Here’s the sad history of mental health care in Mendocino County as excerpted from columns I wrote back in 1999-2001:

A couple of weeks ago, I reported to you that the Supes — with the exception of Mike Delbar — caved in to Mental Health Director Kristy Kelley’s demand to permanently shut down the county’s Psychiatric Health Facility (PHF). I’ve said time and time again, the Board just doesn’t have the political will to tell the Mental Health Department to do its job: Provide acute psychiatric care for folks — some of whom are also caught up in the criminal justice system. For you anglers out there, you’re familiar with the old saying about when a fish stinks, it stinks from the head down. The Mental Health Department is stinking up the joint, and you can look no further than its head — Ms. Kelley — to find the source of the stench. The Supes, withe the exception of Dave Colfax, swallowed hook, line and sinker, Kelley’s pitch that the Board could utilize $900,000 in purported savings from the PHF’s closure “towards the development of a comprehensive and effective mental health system of care.” This new scheme would result in kinder, gentler “helping professionals” from the Mental Health Department reaching out and laying the healing hands on the troubled souls who no longer would require the services of the PHF unit. How’s the new system working? Several days ago, the helping professionals locked a troubled soul in a DMH vehicle for three hours on a sweltering day. The abandoned troubled soul kicked out the car’s window in order to relieve himself. It’s also way past time for the Supes to relieve Kelley — permanently — from her post.

… On the down side, closing the PHF and opening a CSU would increase various costs, such as case management and transporting mentally ill offenders to far away state institutions such as Atascadero or Patton. 

Colfax wasn’t buying the crisis argument. “Given the history of the agency you’re responsible for the (Ukiah PD) killing of (DMH patient Marvin Noble), plus two other jail suicides of (DMH) clients,” he said, “and all the potential impacts on other departments, like the Sheriff, Jail, DA, Courts and Public Defender, I want something in writing, on paper, from all those affected by this (closing the PHF) before we make a decision.” 

Captain Gary Hudson, who oversees the jail, told the Supes his facility had failed the last two inspections by the Dept. of Corrections. He said the jail was out of compliance with one-quarter of the positions vacant. If the PHF unit closes, it would place the entire operation at risk. “We are at our limits also,” Hudson stated. “With the inability of the PHF unit to function as a PHF, the jail could not operate as a jail.” 

Hudson was referring to the seriously mentally ill inmates who must be housed at the PHF because the jail is not equipped to deal with them. He told the Supes that transferring inmates from here to facilities in Patton or Atascadero would require 12 to 14 hours processing and transport time. That cost is multiplied each time the mentally ill offender is returned to Mendocino County for a court appearance. Furthermore, it would result in less street patrols since those deputies would be assigned transport duties.

Since we’re on the subject of how government treats humans, the situation with the County’s Psychiatric Health Facility is truly criminal. The PHF (pronounced “puff”) unit has been shut down since last December (1999). The PHF unit deals with the very, very mentally ill, some of whom are violent and/or criminal offenders. These folks require 24-hour attention in the special facility. The County Jail is neither equipped nor does it have the qualified staff to care for people who are charged with crimes but are also mentally ill. Likewise, harmless but mentally ill folks who wander the streets getting into mischief don’t belong in jail. They need care and treatment. But when the county’s Mental Health Department closes the only facility that offers specialized treatment, there are no good alternatives.

According to MH Director Kristy Kelley, her PHF staff is burned out and can’t handle the stress of their jobs … but allow me to say this: These are handsomely-paid professionals. One has to presume they went into their chosen profession with their eyes wide open. If they no longer can perform their jobs, they need to get off the County’s payroll and find something else to do … It was painful to witness, but at Tuesday’s Supes’ confab (August, 2001), the criminal justice types reluctantly threw in the towel. We’re speaking of the Board’s decision to permanently close the county’s Psychiatric Health Facility. You can’t blame the Sheriff, Public Defender, Probation Department, DA, or the Courts for running up the white flag. They all saw the handwriting on the wall months ago. … As you can imagine, that situation makes things a bit difficult for an already short-staffed Sheriff’s Office, which provides the out-of-county transportation for mentally ill inmates from the hospital to the courts. Likewise, defense attorneys are burdened with literally going the extra mile to meet with clients who may be in an Alameda County facility. Needless to say, family and friends of the mentally ill encounter the same sorts of difficulties.

But those are the prices that everybody pays when the county is working “towards the development of a comprehensive and effective mental health system of care.” When you think about it, closing the PHF is somewhat similar to the Supes’ decision to close all of the county’s landfills. Back then the Supes didn’t have the political will to deal with the dump issue. Now, we just ship the garbage out-of-here, out-of-sight, out-of-mind — it’s somebody else’s problem. Just like with our mentally ill.

* * *

OK, that’s enough history, let’s return to the present and look at Newsom’s plan. 

Newsom’s proposal appears to offer more absolutely needed services to homeless people with severe mental health and addiction disorders — the so-called “dually diagnosed” because they are on drugs and are crazy — even if that means forcing them into care, a move that many, especially the mental health-homeless-industrial complex, will oppose as a violation of civil rights, or some other equally specious argument. Keep in mind, their entire game plan is to maintain at all costs the status quo because that’s their gravy train.

Additionally, Newsom’s plan would require:

• All of California’s 58 counties to set up a mental health branch in civil court and provide comprehensive and community-based treatment to those suffering from debilitating mental illness.

• The mentally ill would be obligated to accept the care or face criminal charges, if those are pending, and if not, they would be subject to being held in psychiatric programs involuntarily or lengthier conservatorships in which the court appoints a person to make health decisions for someone who cannot because they’re mentally ill.

What a revolutionary concept.

Just imagine, no longer will people who are incapable of making rational decisions be able to refuse life-saving care.

Geez, if the California Legislature approves Newsom’s proposed law, we can actually look after the best interests of all those folks — mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, spouses, friends, and maybe a few strangers — who can’t look after their own best interests themselves.

Why it’s almost like we could become a truly caring society, taking care of people who can’t take care of themselves.

(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, observer@pacific.net, the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org)

ROSSI & SON HARDWARE, Boonville: “We literally try to cram a little bit of everything into our little store.”

CEO’S PLOT TO TAKE OVER SHERIFF’S COMPUTERS NOW AIDED AND ABETTED BY COUNTY GRAND JURY

by Mark Scaramella

The just released Grand Jury report reveals that CEO Angelo’s attempt to take over the Sheriff’s computer system is being further pushed by the County Grand Jury.

Although the Grand Jury report is misleadingly titled “Mendocino County’s Trailing Information Technology,” and has a bunch of computer analysis, the GJ insists, “Mendocino County can benefit from a consolidated IT [Information Technology] shared services model that allows for greater flexibility in staffing assignments, systems equipment and focus on the IT Initiatives of Mendocino County. Background investigations would continue to be required of IS [Information Services] Staff that support the SO [Sheriff’s Office] systems if they must access DOJ [California Department of Justice] or FBI provided systems. A dotted line responsibility would exist between the Sheriff or Undersheriff and the CIO [Chief Information Officer.”

They also “find” that “The SO IS Department has been allowed to operate separately from the County’s IS department, which is a detriment to efficient delivery of services and cost effectiveness.”

The Grand Jury recommends that “the BOS [Board of Supervisors] establish a consolidated, shared County IT Department responsible for all IT functions under the direction of a Chief Information Officer/Director of Technology by FY 2022 [June 30, 2022]. Any centralized IT staff that support the SO shall receive the requisite background check required by DOJ” — as if a background check of non-law enforcement tech staff is all that’s necessary for the consolidation idea to proceed. 

The Grand Jury’s comments regarding other areas of the County’s computer system seem legitimate, if unsurprising, and deserve attention — particularly the one that notes that “[Technology] Project status reporting is not clearly or regularly represented to the public and the BOS, thus leaving them uninformed of IT’s priorities and project initiatives,” an observation that applies to a lot more than the County’s computer operations.

But the GJ’s inclusion of the CEO’s ill-conceived attempt to take over the Sheriff’s computer system in their computer findings and recommendations undermines the reports usefulness.

In his response — written by his “conflict” attorney Duncan James of Ukiah — the Sheriff pointedly objects to the Grand Jury’s recommendation.

“[State law] clearly indicates the Sheriff by law shall have sole and exclusive authority over his network, data, and computers.”

“There is a point at which the Sheriff must maintain control over physical and virtual security to comply with the law and not compromise his investigations,” adds Mr. James.

“In spite of public representations made by the County Counsel, neither the CEO, Board of Supervisors, County Counsel or his office, have control over Federal and State DOJ connections or the right to access data from the DOJ directly. County Counsel is not the System Control Host or the Agency Head of the Sheriff's Office. … The County Counsel has no permissions to directly access or control the DOJ connection. Only the Sheriff is responsible for compliance of downstream DOJ agencies within the County in addition to Probation, HHSA SIU, and the Superior Court. … There are numerous examples of COUNTY IS employees that: made active threats against the SHERIFF’S IT network, which threatened the integrity of the entire computer and email system; maintain PC’s [personal computers] and other equipment in all locations including the DA, Probation, and Public Defender that was on active felony probation; and, could not have passed the background check required by Federal/State DOJ regulations.”

James then goes into detail with examples of the kinds of problems and compromised security that a consolidated computer system would present. James says that in 2015 an unnnamed Assistant CEO (Alan Flora was the Assistant CEO at the time) was “looking around” in confidential law enforcement files and documents.

James also cites a more recent example where emails from the Sheriff to his outside attorney were blocked by County Information Services, presumably at the CEO’s behest during the dispute over whether the Sheriff should be able to hire Duncan James as a legal advisor in his dispute with the CEO and the Supervisors.

“Trusting the confidentiality of the email system to Administrators that do not report directly to the Sheriff is a recipe for failure and abuse,” concludes Mr. James for the Sheriff, adding, “County IS still retains control over the Sheriff’s email system and is thereby able to designate any person it chooses as an ‘Administrator,’ which would grant them access to the Sheriff’s email system; or, install any filters they wished to control the email received by the Sheriff. There is no evidence history will not repeat itself.”

James then provides extensive details about the negative impact that access by unauthorized persons to law enforcement computers and communications would have on open investigations and other law enforcement functions.

The Supervisors could put a stop to this by simply telling the CEO’s office to follow the law and adequately fund and staff the Sheriff’s computers. But so far, like with almost everything else in County affairs, the CEO steers the good ship Mendo, and the Supervisors bumblingly stand by and let it happen. Now it appears that the Grand Jury has climbed on board the CEO’s ship as well.

---

ALAN FLORA CORRECTS: "Mr. James is incorrect in his stated timing of any snooping. While I was the Assistant CEO in 2015, the alleged incursion had happened prior to my arrival and various security measures had been implemented by that time which precluded any such activity from happening again. I trust upon a more careful review the record will corrected."

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

So let’s see, a gallon of gas is about $5.50 and steadily rising, a bag of groceries will put you out more than $100, minimal housing has become unaffordable to three-fourths of the population and Bernie Sanders, among others, is concerned about baseball? Dave Zirin even laments that Biden missed an opportunity to address the impasse in the State of the Union address, as if that’s one of the most pressing issues facing America.

I’ve got news for Sanders, Zirin, et al; as a lifelong baseball fan I couldn’t care less. I’m done. The game I know and loved has been ruined by a clueless Commissioner and nonsensical rule changes designed to “speed up” the game, when in fact the average time of a game increased by 9 minutes last year. Strikeouts, home runs, defensive shifts that literally strangle the offense and limit the action have turned the game into a bore, something to be endured rather than enjoyed. And I haven’t even mentioned a massive cheating scandal that went virtually unpunished!

I haven’t gone to a game for years, not only because of the cost but the incessant, ear splitting, headache inducing bombardment of noise piped through the sound system. This latest lockout or whatever you want to call it has made me realize that if baseball goes away I won’t miss it.

I don’t know if I’m a lone wolf and fans will come streaming back once it returns (and it will), but I suspect baseball has damaged itself to the point where it will join hockey as merely a fringe sport. America’s National Pastime? That train has left the station. 

— Stephen Rosenthal

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ED NOTE: Agree completely. During the last Barry Bonds years, steadfastly remaining seated when another chemically-induced baseball was propelled into McCovey Cove, I found myself disinterested in who won the game, enjoyingly most the play at shortstop by Omar Vizquel, then Brandon Crawford. I'd buy the cheapest seat I could find at the top of the ballpark from where I could scan much of San Francisco Bay between pitches, and I loved taking the Marin Ferry both ways, always picking up a sandwich in the Ferry Building rather than pay ballpark prices like $15 for garlic fries. It all made for a long day, but where else in the world can you spend a few hours in more beauty?

AS A SPORTS FAN, the only team I follow anymore is the 49ers, and by “follow” I mean read about. I haven't paid much attention to the Warriors since the Rick Barry days because I think the individual play these days is boring, although the Steph Warriors are still fun because they mostly play as a unit. I love track and field, but haven't seen a meet in person since Oregon but used to occasionally watch a high school event in Ukiah or Fort Bragg. It's a shame what's happened to baseball, a game I grew up on and played a lot of unto college where the Cal Poly records show I was even worse than I remembered, maybe because, by my second year, my childhood had belatedly ended and I was preoccupied with adult concerns without quite ever becoming one.

FORMER MENDO DEPUTY TRENT JAMES LATEST

CRONYISM ON THE GRAND JURY

Editor,

For those interested in the FACTS of the Mendocino County Grand Jury, our grand jurors are typically "sheepeople" who follow the lead of perennial foremen like Kathy Wylie. 

And just like the same few foremen are recycled year after year, the same grand jurors are recycled year after year.

These sheepeople are a coffee klatch of senior citizens with time on their hands. They also like the per diems they get paid and their mileage allowances. It's a nice supplement to their Social Security checks.

Above all, our grand jurors are compliant, docile. They are intimated by the likes of Kathy Wylie, Carmel Angelo, and Jeanine Nadel.

Just look at the public record.

No aggressive, meaningful investigations into how CEO Angelo grabbed and consolidated power, privatized services like mental health and in so doing made her friends rich, purged department heads and other senior management who didn't kowtow resulting in wrongful termination lawsuits, hijacked Measure B funds, railroaded cannabis ordinances, failed to provide meaningful, detailed monthly reports to the Board of Supervisors, controlled both the Board's agenda and the Board's clerk...and on and on.

And now we also read in the Sheriff's response to the 2021-2022 grand jury report how CEO Angelo had her assistant illegally surveill county workers back in 2015.

The remedy for our pathetic grand jury?

New foremen. New grand jurors. And if we don't get them, the Board of Supervisors should slash the grand jury's budget. By law, the county grand jury is required to do only one report a year.

I would also like to see the conduct of our grand jury investigated. A neighboring county's grand jury may be able to conduct this investigation. Or perhaps the California Attorney General could investigate.

Bottom line?

The cronyism that plagues county government goes deep. It even includes our grand jury.

John Sakowicz

Ukiah

KATHY WILEY:

For those interested in the FACTS regarding Grand Jury conduct prescribed by California Penal and Government codes, please see the California Grand Jury Association's FAQ on local grand jury operations.

https://cgja.org/sites/default/files/faq_2020.pdf

Per California Penal code, at least 12 jurors must vote to undertake any public action including the selection of investigations and the publication of Grand jury reports.

HEALDSBURG ON CNN

West Side Elementary in Healdsburg made the national feed on CNN ... with something GOOD.

cnn.com/2022/03/04/health/peptoc-hotline-california-students-wellness/index.html

MENDO WATER AGENCY:

DWR awards $49 million to help small communities prepare for continued drought conditions. Of the projects rewarded grant funding, two are in Mendocino County:

-The State will award $3.2 million to construct back-up source connections and storage tanks for the California Environmental Indian Alliance (for Manchester Band of Pomo Indians, Round Valley Indian Tribe, Yokayo Tribe).

-The Redwood Valley Water District will receive $1.8 million to drill a new well.

STATE SENATOR MIKE MCGUIRE: “We’re going to put fiber along Highway 101, along state and county roadways, connecting rural hospitals and schools in every corner of the state,” he said. “We’re taking a worst-first approach, addressing the unserved first, then the underserved second. And on the North Coast, we have more unserved communities per capita in the state of California.”

…

This year, McGuire said, the state plans to hire more than 1,100 firefighters “to be able to start fixing the California firefighter shortage. We’re hiring 16 additional hand crews, with 40 firefighters each, and we’re finally going to be able to have three firefighters per engine. The current average is 2.5 per engine, and that is unacceptable.”

(from Justine Frederiksen’s Ukiah Daily Journal report of Wednesday Night’s Town Hall meeting with McGuire, Sheriff Kendall and Supervisor Haschak)

PROLONGED DROUGHT MUDDIES OUTLOOK FOR SALMON SEASON IN NORTH BAY

by Mary Callahan

On the surface, the outlook is relatively bright for this year’s chinook salmon season, a popular time for sport anglers up and down the North Coast, and a potentially profitable one for the commercial fleet.

State and federal scientists issued their annual forecast this week and estimated more than 396,000 adult salmon were waiting to return to the Sacramento River system, known as the Sacramento fall run, to spawn this year and would be ready to catch.

That’s higher than all but one of the last seven years and would be the highest, except experts admittedly overshot with their 2015 forecast.

Those who fish in the ocean from Monterey to Eureka have some reason to feel optimistic after a strong season last year.

Salmon is the second most lucrative type of fishing in Bodega Bay, behind Dungeness crab. It has brought in half a million pounds in each of the last three years, with earnings in the $4 million ballpark.

Most of the salmon caught off the Central and North Coast are Sacramento fall run stock.

But there are complexities that govern how much fishing access will be offered when the season dates are set this spring. Among them are the need to ensure sufficient numbers return upstream to produce the next generation.

And questions abound about the impact of low water flows and high-temperatures as the ongoing drought enters a third year.

Could this be the last decent season for a while?

“There aren’t any clear answers, unfortunately,” said Marc Gorelnik, chairman of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, which manages commercial, private and tribal fishing in federal waters of California, Oregon and Washington. “I think there’s a great risk of decreased abundance in the coming year because of basically the failure of natural reproduction in the Sacramento fall (run).”

Extreme drought has created challenging conditions for each life stage of California’s anadromous fish — the term for fish that hatch in fresh water, live most of their lives in salt water, then return to freshwater streams to reproduce.

Reduced water levels mean the water is warmer and potentially too hot in some areas for juvenile salmon that are still maturing upstream or preparing to migrate out to the ocean in spring.

When streams dry up, fish stranded in pools of water eventually die. Adult salmon also need a cold flush of water, typically from autumn rain, to signal that it’s time to swim up river to prepare to spawn.

Their redds, or gravel nests, need sufficient cool water to prevent the eggs from drying out.

Most fish leave the ocean and return upstream to spawn at age 2 or 3, so those in the ocean now are likely the last generation that didn’t have to endure dismal river conditions, though all reports indicate this year already is worse.

Hatchery fish have been struggling, as well. One test group was fitted with sonic tags and released from the Feather River Hatchery near Oroville, and by the time the salmon reached Rio Vista, 80% had perished because of poor river conditions, said Harry Morse, a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

With nature raising so many barriers, humans are trying to help, in part by kicking up efforts to truck Central Valley hatchery smolts, or young fish, to saltwater bays so they can bypass poor river conditions on their way to the ocean.

State fish and wildlife last spring transported more than 16.4 million young salmon to San Pablo, San Francisco, Half Moon and Monterey bays, allowing them to bypass 50 to 100-plus miles of drought-impacted freshwater streams.

The level of success won’t be known until early next year, when the full accounting of tagged hatchery 2-year-old fish is made, Morse said, but this summer might give some indication.

Last year, 48% of the salmon caught by the commercial fleet and 64% of the recreational catch were hatchery-born.

John McManus, president of the Golden State Salmon Association, which has been a strong supporter of smolt trucking, said he had a lot of faith in their success and expected greater reliance on hatchery fish going forward. He said the state’s five hatcheries typically produce about 32 1/2 million fish, but two were going to hatch some extra to help mitigate drought losses, for a combined 34 million.

Hatchery fish “provide a Band-Aid and a bridge to get us through the worst spots,” he said. “I mean we saw a fair chunk of that this year last.”

Next week, the Pacific Fishery Management Council will begin accepting stakeholder input and guidance from state and federal scientists to develop three alternative sport and commercial season calendars, which will be finalized in early April.

The outcome is expected to reflect a need to ensure that spawning returns reach the target ranges of 122,000 to 180,000, the goal believed necessary to ensure sustainability of the Sacramento fall run — those hatched in the Sacramento River system and who then would be instinctively inclined to return there to spawn.

Last year’s returns didn’t reach 105,000. If the goal is missed a second year, fishery managers could declare the run “overfished.”

In addition, vulnerable stocks of Klamath River fall-run chinook, which were declared overfished in 2018, stray below San Francisco, intermixing with Sacramento fall run.

Fishing opportunities are expected to be curtailed when the Klamath stock are most likely in the area, further limiting opportunities.

So even though the forecast is higher than last year, with the constraint, the season “could be worse,” said Dick Ogg, vice president of the Bodega Bay Fisherman’s Marketing Association.

And the forecasts themselves, though informed, are still “a guess,” he said.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

EATING OUT IN MENDO

[1] I recently ordered food to go from the website. Once I got home I questioned the amount I was charged. The order would have come to $39 plus tax, but I was charged $51. Not realizing it at the time, I added a tip on top of that amount. I called the next day to question the discrepancy and was told that there is a 15% “gratuity” added to EVERY order. In addition, I had been charged an extra $2.70 by mistake. After some discussion the person I spoke with offered to refund the $2.70 plus the additional tip I had paid.

[2] Same practice at the Good Life Cafe in Mendo. Unfair; a tip should be the customer's choice. So now the choice is not to patronize places that do this.

[3] Same at Fog Eaters. A birthday meal had a mandatory 20% tip added. The food was delicious — however we did not use the facilities, dishes, delivery, or wait staff. I won’t do this again per my budget needs. Glad though to support our local restauranteurs during these hard times and very grateful for the delicious and innovative vegan fare provided by Fog Eaters.

[4] I can tell ya'all never worked in the service industry. If you can afford to eat out, you can afford to tip your server. End of story. Less than 20% is rude. I do agree that the establishment should be upfront about their policy before the customer pays. The Goodlife staff tells me every time that a tip has already been added.

* * *

TIPS — DO WE KNOW THE WAIT STAFF IS ACTUALLY GETTING THE TIPS? 

[1] I'd like to hear from a few wait- and behind-the-scenes staff people. Are they actually getting the tips added to the meal totals? And who gets the tips we leave on top of the added on tip that we didn't notice? 

[2] Having kids that worked the restaurants through high school, college and beyond, I saw how they depended on tips. In North Carolina, where they now reside, I think the restaurant owners pay them a minimum wage of $2/hr and some change. (Because they get tips.) Fortunately for the servers in California they get a wage plus tips. I remember my dad telling me some history of tips. What I recall is that the monetary incentive was placed on the table prior to ordering and that TIP stood for “To Insure Promptness.” Do we leave a tip for poor service? Also, do you tip a business owner since they're already making the profit on the meal? How much is tipping an act of compassion and how much is it an act of expressing appreciation for great service? 

[3] The Good Life Cafe says the “gratuity” is so their employees can have a livable wage. I think livable wage is important and they should pay their employees a livable wage. If that means they have to raise their prices that’s fine, then customers know the true cost of the item they are buying instead of paying an additional tax that is called a “gratuity.” 

[4] I know of one local business that has a 20% charge added. That money is split between ALL the workers— cashiers, wait staff, cooks, cleaning crew. That seems fair to me. If added to prices, the business might lose customers? I don’t know how other food businesses handle the situation. 

ATTENTION PYROMANIACS

Emerald Earth Sanctuary (Mendocino County) is looking for a few more volunteers to help with a couple of burns on March 6th (Sunday) and 8th (Tuesday). From Emerald Earth:

We’d love your help with this small burn in a redwood/tan oak/Doug fir forest that has slash from a timber-harvest/thinning in 2019. Meet at 10am at Emerald Earth Sanctuary outside of Boonville. You’re welcome to come the night before--there is limited indoor space for a few people to stay, and we’ll have a campfire. We’ll provide lunches.

Please sign up here if you’d like to join us (please indicate which day(s) you are available): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YcT7-zECJh4u30uBLDP2rqeokrWnyWdg63DoYlTP4AY/edit?usp=sharing

In Community,

Abeja Judy Hummel

Director, Emerald Earth Sanctuary, 707-972-3096, abeja@emeraldearth.org 

CATCH OF THE DAY, March 5, 2022

JONA CHAPMAN, Gualala. Disorderly conduct-drugs, parole violation.

BRITTANY DAVIS, Ukiah. False personation of another, failrue to appear.

ANTONIA GONZALEZ, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

JESUS GONZALEZ, Ukiah. DUI, suspended license, failure to appear.

MARK GUNTHER, Cincinnati/Fort Bragg. Domestic battery, robbery, false imprisonment, witness tampering by threat or force.

ASHTON KORC, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting. (No booking photo available.)

BENJAMIN SCHNYDER, Oroville/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-drugs, controlled substance.

JOHN SILSBY, Healdsburg/Mendocino. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun.

JOHN STOLLER, Pacifica/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

KATELYN WALKER, Willits. Failure to appear. 

THE MEDIA MADE ME THINK SAN FRANCISCO WOULD BE AN APOCALYPTIC HELLSCAPE. But it was lovely.

by Billy Binion

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard more discussion about a city over my lifetime than I have about San Francisco. That’s a weird thing to write, because, up until about a month ago, I’d never actually been.

An East Coaster for most of my life, my exposure to the city had mostly been confined to the apocalyptic, 24-hour news and social media cycle of crime and drugs and poverty that has come to define it.

San Francisco is currently the place most of us can’t stop hearing about because its story arc has been, I suppose, propped up as an archetype of the contemporary American story.

And that story is a tragedy — a once-golden place now irreparably tarnished.

So when I finally traveled there for the first time in late January, I was confident there would be no level of decay that could surprise me — a far cry from that hopeful place I’d seen depicted in the 2008 screening of “Milk” I attended as a high-schooler.

I checked myself into my hotel next to the Tenderloin, dropped off my stuff and steeled myself for a weird and perhaps dangerous few days. I expected to find something evocative of a war zone — one where crime ran so rampant that you couldn’t walk to dinner, and if you were brave enough to do so anyway, you’d have to climb over rolling hills of drug paraphernalia and human feces to get there.

Instead, it was lovely.

My solo trip mostly consisted of a self-guided walking tour over the course of four days: from Union Square through the Tenderloin and down to the Mission, through the Panhandle and the Haight, from the Ferry Building to Chinatown and over to the Castro. What I experienced was a charming, colorful, animated place — a city that, like any city, appeared to have its share of problems, but still managed to coalesce in a way that only it can.

That’s not to say that San Francisco’s issues don’t require addressing. There are onerous housing regulations that exacerbate homelessness, myriad rules hamstringing would-be business owners, high tax rates that impact those without means and a decadence that sometimes prioritizes government virtue-signaling over the needs of constituents.

I would never presume myself capable of diagnosing every problem within a four-day tour of the city. But my introduction to the Bay Area was a helpful reminder that the media, of which I am a member, have a general tendency to ratchet up the negative while all but eliminating the positive, leaving consumers with a much bleaker story than exists in reality.

There’s certainly no short supply of that when it comes to San Francisco, especially over the past year.

“I don’t let (my staff) go out there by themselves,” Pennsylvania-based CNBC host Jim Cramer said last week, referring to the tourist-friendly waterfront the Embarcadero. “Even in daytime.”

Activist Michael Shellenberger regularly beats a similar drum that, as he tells it, is meant to serve as a corrective to left-leaning media indulgence. But his approach — which recently included scaling a fence to break into the Tenderloin Linkage Center — is more likely to put himself at the center of a doomsday culture-war story than to tell the full one.

So let’s look at a more full one.

Much has been made, for example, of the supposed recent spike in property crime in the Bay Area. The numbers, however, are inconvenient for that narrative. In 2021, property crimes were down about 11% from 2018 and 2019, and down even further when compared with 2017.

Property crimes in 2020 were a low for the decade.

But what about violent crime? It’s also down from pre-pandemic levels; in terms of homicides, you’re more likely to experience violence in Hampton, Va., than you are San Francisco. The city does not crack the top 65. As it usually goes, that trend is particularly applicable to the more upscale neighborhoods like the Embarcadero, where Cramer puzzlingly says he is afraid to let his people go for a walk.

I don’t mean to denigrate the way Cramer or Shellenberger or any number of people may feel — particularly those who live in the city and have watched it change. Though I’ve always considered myself to be politically homeless, I view the world broadly through a libertarian lens, which is to say: Mayor London Breed and San Francisco’s supervisors aren’t exactly my kindred spirits. I have no problem conceding that San Francisco has issues to tackle. But feelings, by their nature, are subject to the beholder — just as my blissful four days exploring San Francisco could never paint the definitive picture of what does or does not plague the city.

San Francisco is no stranger to people projecting their feelings onto it. In the 1970s, it was a bastion for diversity and acceptance at the forefront of changing cultural mores; today, it’s a crime-ridden cesspool reflective of the American decline.

I posit a simpler alternative: It’s a pretty place, rich with culture, that will continue to experiment with mixed results, as places tend to do. You likely won’t hear such a benign story on cable news. So turn it off, log off of Twitter and go outside.

(sfchronicle.com)

---

ON LINE RESPONSES:

[1] Who is this guy? Nobody walks through the Tenderloin and says SF is wonderful. The media doesn't make anyone feel or think anything. It presents a depiction. To think otherwise is projection. Property crime is at a low because nobody bothers to report it anymore.

[2] I walked from Fillmore and California to Mission Bay last week. As I always have, I skirted the Tenderloin, and saw a few random people who looked pretty awful, and a few concentrations of tents under freeway overpasses. Mostly, it was a pleasant walk amongst people pushing baby strollers, walking dogs, strolling their neighborhoods, eating at restaurants and cafes…At no time did I feel remotely in danger. And Cramer is an idiot if he thinks the Embarcadero isn’t a safe place.

THE GREEN FÆRIE!

Buttermilk Junction wishes all of our Facebook fans a Happy National Absinthe Day!

National Absinthe Day is an unofficial national holiday of obscure origin that is celebrated on March 5 in honor of Absinthe, a.k.a. “The Green Færie,” an alcoholic beverage that is said to have been created in 1792 by a French physician living at Neuchâtel, Switzerland, one Dr. Pierre Ordinaire, who invented a distilled patent medicine known as “elixir of wormwood,” which was “composed of aromatic plants of which only he knew the secret.”

According to Wikipedia: Absinthe is historically described as a distilled, highly alcoholic beverage. It is an anise-flavoured spirit derived from botanicals, including the flowers & leaves of Artemisia absinthium (“grand wormwood”), together with green anise, sweet fennel, & other medicinal & culinary herbs. Absinthe traditionally has a natural green colour but may also be colourless. It is commonly referred to in historical literature as “la fée verte” (the green fairy). Although it is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a liqueur, absinthe is not traditionally bottled with added sugar; it is therefore classified as a spirit. Absinthe is traditionally bottled at a high level of alcohol by volume, but it is normally diluted with water prior to being consumed.

Absinthe originated in the canton of Neuchâtel in Switzerland in the late 18th Century. It rose to great popularity as an alcoholic drink in late 19th- & early 20th-Century France, particularly among Parisian artists & writers. Owing in part to its association with Bohemian culture, the consumption of absinthe was opposed by social conservatives & prohibitionists. Famous absinthe aficionados include Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, Aleister Crowley, Edgar Allan Poe, & Lord Byron.

Absinthe has often been portrayed as a dangerously addictive psychoactive drug & a hallucinogen. The chemical compound thujone, although present in the spirit in only trace amounts, was blamed for its alleged harmful effects. By 1915, absinthe had been banned in the United States & in much of Europe, including France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland & Austria-Hungary. Although absinthe was vilified, it has not been demonstrated to be any more dangerous than ordinary spirits. Recent studies have shown that absinthe’s psychoactive properties (apart from that of the alcohol) have been wildly exaggerated. A revival of absinthe began in the 1990s, following the adoption of modern European Union food & beverage laws that removed longstanding barriers to its production & sale. By the early 21st Century, nearly 200 brands of absinthe were being produced in a dozen countries, most notably in France, Switzerland, Australia, Spain, & the Czech Republic.

BARTELL’S BACKROADS LOOKED AT TINY, CHARMING WHALE GULCH SCHOOL (via kymkemp.com)

THE UKRAINE CONFLICT

Dear Editor,

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been ongoing for approximately ten days. The number of civilian casualties is unknown. As of last Monday there were 227 civilians killed and 522 injured including at least 50 children. Clearly many more are currently dead or wounded. Nearly 1.5 million Ukrainian citizens have fled; millions more may soon try to escape death or injury.

In an interview televised by KQED last night, former Senator Barbara Boxer noted, “Putin is living in the past.” By invading independent Ukraine, his aim is obvious: to restore Ukraine to Russian control: a part of the Soviet Union.

Total military casualties are also unknown, but as of yesterday Russia states its number of dead soldiers is 498 and 1,597 wounded, while Ukraine puts the number of killed Russians at 9,000 with over 3,500 wounded.

While statistics are unclear, what is clear is that Putin’s war is becoming increasingly costly to the Russian Army. Russia faces a united front of 30 nations in NATO, now joined, at least in part, by Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Finland, and Sweden. Even traditionally neutral Switzerland has invoked economic sanctions. Putin may start WWIII.

Frank Baumgardner

Santa Rosa

THE HELPING PROS COME THROUGH FOR CRAIG

Alive in the Mendocino County Social Services System

Warmest spiritual greetings, Please appreciate the fact that the Mendocino County Social Services System has come through incredibly well in ensuring my survival at the moment. Being evicted from the cannabis trimmer scene (which developed where I was living for over one year in Redwood Valley), necessitated having long time friends Pay Pal me money to remain indoors in Ukiah motels, which eventually resulted in the heart's two chambers not working together properly due to a number of factors related to my social situation, which necessitated a pacemaker being implanted at Adventist Hospital, and concluded with my being safe and secure at Building Bridges winter shelter where I am right now.

Social Services is working to place me in a subsidized studio somewhere in the Ukiah area. Ukiah Crisis Care is meeting with me on a weekly basis for a relaxed conversation, which I am finding to be very important and effective...just being able to interact with somebody else in an informal manner is valuable beyond measure right now. 

Beyond all of it, I remain resolute in continuing to do the peace & justice & environmental activist work that I have been involved with the past 50 years, and ultimately, I am only really interested in doing that which is pleasing to God. 

Craig Louis Stehr
Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com
PayPal.me/craiglouisstehr
Telephone Messages: c/o Building Bridges (707) 234-3270

MADAM MOSKOWITCH: the Moscow witch, the Russian Gypsy queen.

"The international situation was desperate, as usual." — Kurt Vonnegut

Here's the recording of last night's (2022-03-04) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA): https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0478

Thanks a lot 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 can too. As well as go to KNYO.org, click on the big red heart and give what you can. Also email me your work on any subject and I'll read it on the radio this coming Friday night.

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:

George Formby - Madame Moskovitch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi8QMts0uYE

The anti-tank weapon a woman wants. Don't try to get an off-brand one and save a few thousand dollars and think you're gonna fool her. She'll know right away.

https://twitter.com/NashaCanada/status/1498909963326050307

How to help Ukraine. Choose your way. They're all here.

https://tinyurl.com/VettedCharitiesHelpingUkraine

And Ukrainian hats. (via Everlasting Blort)

https://www.demilked.com/traditional-ukrainian-flower-crowns-treti-pivni/

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

THE GREATEST EVIL IS WAR

by Chris Hedges

Preemptive war, whether in Iraq or Ukraine, is a war crime. It does not matter if the war is launched on the basis of lies and fabrications, as was the case in Iraq, or because of the breaking of a series of agreements with Russia, including the promise by Washington not to extend NATO beyond the borders of a unified Germany, not to deploy thousands of NATO troops in Eastern Europe, not to meddle in the internal affairs of nations on the Russia’s border and the refusal to implement the Minsk II peace agreement. The invasion of Ukraine would, I expect, never have happened if these promises had been kept. Russia has every right to feel threatened, betrayed, and angry. But to understand is not to condone. The invasion of Ukraine, under post-Nuremberg laws, is a criminal war of aggression.

I know the instrument of war. War is not politics by other means. It is demonic. I spent two decades as a war correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans, where I covered the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. I carry within me the ghosts of dozens of those swallowed up in the violence, including my close friend, Reuters correspondent Kurt Schork, who was killed in an ambush in Sierra Leone with another friend, Miguel Gil Moreno.

I know the chaos and disorientation of war, the constant uncertainty and confusion. In a firefight you are only aware of what is happening a few feet around you. You desperately, and not always successfully, struggle to figure out where the firing is coming from in the hopes you can avoid being hit.

I have felt the helplessness and the paralyzing fear, which, years later, descend on me like a freight train in the middle of the night, leaving me wrapped in coils of terror, my heart racing, my body dripping with sweat.

I have heard the wails of those convulsed by grief as they clutch the bodies of friends and family, including children. I hear them still. It does not matter the language. Spanish. Arabic. Hebrew. Dinka. Serbo-Croatian. Albanian. Ukrainian. Russian. Death cuts through the linguistic barriers.

I know what wounds look like. Legs blown off. Heads imploded into a bloody, pulpy mass. Gaping holes in stomachs. Pools of blood. Cries of the dying, sometimes for their mothers. And the smell. The smell of death. The supreme sacrifice made for flies and maggots.

I was beaten by Iraqi and Saudi secret police. I was taken prisoner by the Contras in Nicaragua, who radioed back to their base in Honduras to see if they should kill me, and again in Basra after the first Gulf War in Iraq, never knowing if I would be executed, under constant guard and often without food, drinking out of mud puddles.

The primary lesson in war is that we as distinct individuals do not matter. We become numbers. Fodder. Objects. Life, once precious and sacred, becomes meaningless, sacrificed to the insatiable appetite of Mars. No one in wartime is exempt.

“We were expendable,” Eugene Sledge wrote of his experiences as a marine in the South Pacific in World War II. “It was difficult to accept. We come from a nation and a culture that values life and the individual. To find oneself in a situation where your life seems of little value is the ultimate in loneliness. It is a humbling experience.”

The landscape of war is hallucinogenic. It defies comprehension. You have no concept of time in a firefight. A few minutes. A few hours. War, in an instant, obliterates homes and communities, all that was once familiar, and leaves behind smoldering ruins and a trauma that you carry for the rest of your life. You cannot comprehend what you see. I have tasted enough of war, enough of my own fear, my body turned to jelly, to know that war is always evil, the purest expression of death, dressed up in patriotic cant about liberty and democracy and sold to the naïve as a ticket to glory, honor and courage. It is a toxic and seductive elixir. Those who survive, as Kurt Vonnegut wrote, struggle afterwards to reinvent themselves and their universe which, on some level, will never make sense again.

War destroys all systems that sustain and nurture life – familial, economic, cultural, political, environmental, and social. Once war begins, no one, even those nominally in charge of waging war, can guess what will happen, how the war will develop, how it can drive armies and nations towards suicidal folly. There are no good wars. None. This includes World War II, which has been sanitized and mythologized to mendaciously celebrate American heroism, purity, and goodness. If truth is the first casualty in war, ambiguity is the second. The bellicose rhetoric embraced and amplified by the American press, demonizing Vladimir Putin and elevating the Ukrainians to the status of demigods, demanding more robust military intervention along with the crippling sanctions meant to bring down Vladimir Putin’s government, is infantile and dangerous. The Russian media narrative is as simplistic as ours.

There were no discussions about pacifism in the basements in Sarajevo when we were being hit with hundreds or Serbian shells a day and under constant sniper fire. It made sense to defend the city. It made sense to kill or be killed. The Bosnian Serb soldiers in the Drina Valley, Vukovar, Srebrenica had amply demonstrated their capacity for murderous rampages, including the gunning down of hundreds of soldiers and civilians and the wholesale rape of women and girls. But this did not save any of the defenders in Sarajevo from the poison of violence, the soul-destroying force that is war. I knew a Bosnian soldier who heard a sound behind a door while patrolling on the outskirts of Sarajevo. He fired a burst from his AK-47 through the door. A delay of a few seconds in combat can mean death. When he opened the door, he found the bloody remains of a 12-year-old girl. His daughter was 12. He never recovered.

Only the autocrats and politicians who dream of empire and global hegemony, of the god-like power that comes with wielding armies, warplanes, and fleets, along with the merchants of death, whose business floods countries with weapons, profit from war. The expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe has earned Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Analytic Services, Huntington Ingalls, Humana, BAE Systems, and L3Harris billions in profits. The stoking of conflict in Ukraine will earn them billions more.

The European Union has allocated hundreds of millions of euros to purchase weapons for Ukraine. Germany will almost triple its own defense budget for 2022. The Biden administration has asked Congress to provide $6.4 billion in funding to assist Ukraine, supplementing the $650 million in military aid to Ukraine over the past year. The permanent war economy operates outside the laws of supply and demand. It is the root of the two-decade-long quagmire in the Middle East. It is the root of the conflict with Moscow. The merchants of death are Satanic. The more corpses they produce,  the more their bank accounts swell. They will cash in on this conflict, one that now flirts with the nuclear holocaust that would terminate life on earth as we know it.

The dangerous and sadly predictable provocation of Russia — whose nuclear arsenal places the sword of Damocles above our heads — by expanding NATO was understood by all of us reporting in Eastern Europe in 1989 during the revolutions and the break-up of the Soviet Union.

This provocation, which includes establishing a NATO missile base 100 miles from Russia’s border, was foolish and highly irresponsible. It never made geopolitical sense. This does not, however, excuse the invasion of Ukraine. Yes, the Russians were baited. But they reacted by pulling the trigger. This is a crime. Their crime. Let us pray for a ceasefire. Let us work for a return to diplomacy and sanity, a moratorium on arms shipments to Ukraine and the withdrawal of Russian troops from the country. Let us hope for an end to war before we stumble into a nuclear holocaust that devours us all. 

(scheerpost.com)