Mendocino County Today: Friday, March 11, 2022

Warm Sunny | 8 New Cases | Fortified Kyiv | Steve Hall | Schools Negative | Vaccine Clinic | Sally Schmitt | Magdaleno Investigation | Lost Hour | Enhanced Mayhem | Nasty Nate | Game/Dinner | Caspar Lumberjacks | Schlafer Chevron | Father/Daughter | Bleak Outlook | Gender Reveal | Wild Pigs | Blackberry Festival | Ed Notes | Ukraine | Mendo Housing | Mill Pond | Tiny Homes | Nutt Acquitted | Haschak Report | Orcus Mouth | Dispensary Exclusion | Yesterday's Catch | Lockout Ends | Port Solidarity | Teacher Salaries | Aussie Toughs | Modern Music | Verify | History Repeats | War Toll | Long Table | Ecologist Wolff | Oligarchy | Ignoring Citizens | Sesame Gang | Double Reading | Sandbagged Cathedral | Weekly Therapy | War Criminal | Greedy Bastards | Iron Mountain

MORNING FROST and freezing temperatures will make a sharp rebound today as a mostly sunny and warm day develops. Widespread light rainfall will arrive on Saturday, before another round of beneficial rainfall with better coverage of higher totals moves in for Monday and Tuesday. (NWS)

8 NEW COVID CASES reported in Mendocino County yesterday afternoon. (Note: The County has announced their Covid data will henceforth be reported weekly.)

KYIV MAYOR Vitali Klitschko said today that Ukraine's capital city has been “turned into a fortress” ahead of the Russian assault, with about 2 million people — half the residents of the metro area of the capital — having fled as Putin's troops draw ever closer. “Every street, every house is being fortified, the territorial defense is joining,” Klitschko said in a televized interview Thursday. “Even people who in their lives never intended to change their clothes, now they are in uniform with machine guns in their hands.” People with loved ones trapped inside the besieged city of Mariupol were trying desperately on Thursday to connect to phones inside the city, which has been virtually cut off from the outside world by an escalating and indiscriminate bombing campaign by Russian forces. (Al Jazeera)

IN MEMORIAM: STEVE HALL

We are sad to announce that Stephen Hall died quietly in his sleep on February 22, 2022 after a courageous fight with Parkinson’s disease. He leaves a huge void in the lives of his family and friends, after a well-lived life.

AV SCHOOLS TEST NEGATIVE

Superintendent Simson: "Wednesday's Covid-19 pools all came back negative!"

SALLY SCHMITT, TREND-SETTING RESTAURATEUR, DIES AT 90

Sally Schmitt, who with her husband, Don, opened the French Laundry, the now famous restaurant in the Napa Valley of California, in 1978, and in doing so helped solidify the valley as a food-and-wine destination and start a culinary movement built on seasonal local ingredients, died on Saturday at her home in Philo, Calif. She was 90.

Her family announced her death, which came just weeks before publication of her memoir and cookbook, “Six California Kitchens: A Collection of Recipes, Stories, and Cooking Lessons From a Pioneer of California Cuisine.”

Today the French Laundry, in Yountville, Calif., is renowned as the flagship establishment of the chef and restaurateur Thomas Keller and turns up routinely on lists of the best restaurants in the country and the world. But as Mr. Keller, who bought the restaurant from the Schmitts in 1994, is always quick to point out, the Schmitts, and especially Sally Schmitt’s cooking, started it all.

“Kind and generous, forthright, and unpretentious,” he wrote in the foreword to her forthcoming book. “A culinary pioneer but also a throwback, preparing dishes that evoked the most delicious versions of your favorite childhood meals. That is the Sally we all came to know.”

The Schmitts arrived in Yountville, about 60 miles north of San Francisco, in 1967 to manage a shopping arcade, and soon Sally had taken over a hamburger-and-sandwich place there. Four years later she opened the more ambitious Chutney Kitchen, which served lunch and, once a month by reservation only, dinner. Soon the dinners were twice a month, and she added theme dinners and more.

The couple had noticed a local stone building that had once been a French steam laundry (as well as a bar and a boardinghouse), and when it came up for sale they bought it.

“The building was so crude, so clearly humble,” Ms. Schmitt told The San Francisco Chronicle in 1993. “There was not one good piece of hardware or woodwork or molding to keep. There wasn’t — there isn’t — a single straight line in the whole building.”

The restaurant they opened there in February 1978 also had its own personality. With Mr. Schmitt curating an extensive wine menu, Ms. Schmitt planned and prepared the meals, one menu each night, built around what was in season locally and in supply. Guests had their table for the evening; they were welcome to linger for three or four hours if they chose.

The area was already known for wine, but the French Laundry and a few other restaurants helped make it a foodie destination as well. By 1980 Ms. Schmitt was noticing a change.

“We now get people up here from San Francisco for dinner,” she told The Napa Valley Register that year, “where the reverse has generally been true.”

Ms. Schmitt was not a culinary-school diva; she often said that her influences were her mother, an aunt and a home economics teacher she had in high school.

“Some things can’t be improved upon, because they’re so basic and so real,” she told The Chronicle. “I resist the trendy stuff. Sometimes even if I like something, I won’t do it until it cools off somewhat.”

With her emphasis on locally sourced ingredients, Ms. Schmitt is viewed as a pioneer in what was eventually known as California cuisine, but she didn’t think of herself in those terms. “French country cooking is what I lean to,” she said in the 1993 interview, “the braised meats, simple things, lots of vegetables, homey desserts rather than pastry-cart desserts.”

Her kitchens tended toward low-tech.

“I’ve always tried to keep it simple,” she wrote in the new book, “which is why I’ve never felt the need to use a food processor or microwave. Instead, I’ve had good sharp knives, pots and pans, a big chopping block, a wooden spoon and a whisk. I’ve always loved to work with my hands. It’s what cooking is all about.”

Her cuisine, she said, wasn’t about taking a philosophical stand.

“I didn’t have a mission,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 2020. “I wasn’t trying to prove anything to the world about simple, fresh, local food. It was just the way I cooked. I didn’t really have a statement to make. I just put food on the table.”

Sarah Elizabeth Kelsoe (who was always known as Sally) was born on Feb. 28, 1932, in Roseville, Calif., near Sacramento. Her father, Henry, worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad, and her mother, Helen, was a homemaker and schoolteacher.

She grew up in the Sacramento Valley, where her family had enough land to grow vegetables and keep a cow; as a child she churned butter and learned canning. And kitchen techniques.

“As soon as I was ready, my mother put a paring knife in my hand, and I peeled potatoes,” she wrote. “And when she thought I was ready for a larger knife, I was cutting vegetables by her side.”

She studied home economics at the University of California, Davis, though she transferred to the university’s Berkeley campus for her final year, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in 1952.

She married Donald Schmitt in 1953. Her first cooking, she said, was done for their family, which eventually grew to five children.

“Even though I loved cooking, I never thought about going into the food world,” she wrote of that time. “There were no women chefs in those days. Plus, cooks were looked down upon in those days; there was no such thing as a celebrity chef.”

After the Schmitts sold the French Laundry, they joined their daughter Karen Bates and her husband, Tim, at the Apple Farm in Philo, where Sally Schmitt would teach cooking classes.

Ms. Schmitt’s husband died in 2017. She is survived by two sons, Johnny and Eric; three daughters, Kathy Hoffman, Ms. Bates and Terry Schmitt; 10 grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

A number of those descendants logged time working at the French Laundry, and some went on to their own culinary careers, including her grandson Perry Hoffman, now a chef at the Boonville Hotel and Restaurant in Northern California. In a telephone interview, he recalled doing various chores from a young age in his grandmother’s kitchen — roasting peppers, peeling onions and more.

“We didn’t really know how special it was until much later,” he said. “She was just so good at everything she did. It was so simple but so complex.”

(nytimes.com)

UKIAH POLICE INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION SAYS MAGDALENO ‘NAKED MAN IN STREET’ RESPONSE WAS NOT A POLICY VIOLATION

(Ukiah Presser)

An independent investigation has been completed, examining the Ukiah Police Department (UPD) response on April 1, 2021 to an individual who was exhibiting erratic behavior in public. During the incident, a number of methods to subdue and restrain the individual were used, and there was community concern whether the actions were consistent with applicable laws, policies, standards, training and best practices.

Independent Investigative Consultants, LLC was engaged by the City of Ukiah to conduct the investigation. They independently investigated how the Ukiah Police Department officers responded to the call for service on April 1, the specific tactics that were used to restrain the suspect, and whether those tactics complied with Department policies. The now-complete investigation has concluded that there is no sustained finding that Ukiah PD actions violated the Department’s use of force policy.

“Regardless of the findings, an incident such as this warrants reflection,” said Police Chief Noble Waidelich. “Even though the Police Department policies, including its use of force policy, are adopted to and do comply with state and federal standards, as a new Chief, I want to make sure that my staff are providing the highest level of service possible to our community. I am committed to ensuring that our officers receive the best training, not just the minimum standards. To that end, we are actively partnering with other local agencies with expertise in mental health, disabilities, and substance abuse, as well as obtaining new tools to assist with nonviolent de-escalation.”

Ukiah Police Department is actively engaged in a pilot program in cooperation with Mendocino County that provides for a Mobile Crisis Worker to respond alongside a police officer to calls for service that are likely to have a mental health component. This program is supported by Measure B, which is funding a variety of mental health programs and facilities throughout the County. The Mobile Crisis Response Team is now available 8 am to 6 pm seven days a week, and the County has secured grant funding to increase staffing for this program and to fund costs of infrastructure for its deployment, including vehicles. Additionally, UPD has partnered with the Redwood Coast Regional Center for an upcoming training specifically on officer interactions with people with disabilities.

To ensure that UPD’s policies are consistently in proper alignment with state and federal standards, UPD partners with Lexipol, the nation’s leading content, policy and training platform for public safety agencies. This helps the Ukiah Police Department remain progressive in delivering the highest levels of public service and adopt community response protocols that are based on national best practices. In 2021 the Ukiah Police Department was recognized by the Lexipol Connect program for achieving Gold level status for consistently and effectively disseminating policies to officers, issuing timely policy updates as laws change, and ensuring officer are trained on policies. Additionally, UPD participates in the state’s voluntary POST program, the California Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training. As a participating agency, UPD abides by the Commission’s standards and receives expert guidance on implementing state standards, rules, regulations and training.

Chief Waidelich continued, “After considerable reflection, we must focus on how we move forward. I am choosing to take this department in a direction where it is commonplace to see staff lending a helping hand and assisting all of our community. For example, earlier this month, when the Redwood Empire Food Bank was short staffed, UPD stepped in to help. We’re attending neighborhood meetings and working daily to provide services that support a higher quality of life for all residents. I am also committed to hiring staff who reflect the makeup of our community, because this is our home, too.”

Transparency continues to be a priority as well, and the current UPD policy manual, along with previous versions, is posted online and available anytime for public review. It can be found at http://www.ukiahpolice.com, under the “About” tab, titled “UPD Policy Manual”.

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COPS INVESTIGATING COPS. Wondering who does the independent investigating occasionally referred to in local crime stories? Here they are, retired cops organized in Windsor as:

Independent Investigative Consultants, founded in 2011. We specialize in management consulting and administrative personnel investigations. Our consultant/investigators include Paul Henry, Hank Schreeder, Jeff Weaver, and Keith Hinton.

We have over 150 years of combined law enforcement experience covering all aspects of administrative, criminal, civil, personnel, and pre-employment background investigations.

Today's environment demands that our public service agencies achieve the highest levels of performance and accountability. Unfortunately, our agencies' employees occasionally fall short of performance expectations. When this occurs, you need a consistent, reliable, and thorough administrative investigation that will ensure not only a complete and accurate understanding of the facts, but will also support a transparent commitment to accountability.

The consultants at IIC have completed over 250 administrative & internal affairs investigations. We specialize in conducting thorough and objective investigations that provide comprehensive documentation of the facts.

IIC also offers consulting services that include analysis and auditing of current policies and procedures. This process involves an analytical review of current practices to identify potential risk and organizational liability, specializing in areas of Dispatching, Records, and Property and Evidence for law enforcement.

Our clients include law firms, law enforcement agencies, fire departments, school districts and special districts in the greater bay area, the central valley and northern California.

Please visit our website at: iicinvestigations.com

FRIENDS OF FAULKNER PARK: Thought EVM [PG&E’s Enhanced Vegetation Management] couldn't get any worse? SB396 would allow PG&E to access your private property to chop down your trees without your permission, without review by a qualified expert, and without compensation for any damages. Please consider reaching out to your elected officials asking them to oppose this atrocity. Spread the word on social, write letters to editors, tell your friends.

ATTENTION GROOVERS: Ok…gonna try this again! DJ Nasty Nate dance party at Anderson Valley Brewing this Fri & Sat at 4:30 pm. Friday show includes a visual screen. Both are outdoor shows, dress warm but not too much…need room to wiggle! 

AV SENIOR CENTER will host a game after afternoon and take-out dinner on Wednesday, March 23 from 3-5pm. Masks required. For more info or a ride or to sign up for the games and/or (free spaghetti) dinner call the Senior Center in advance by March 23 at 895-3609.

CHRIS CALDER: “Currently, the North Coast of California has one of the most expensive gasoline markets, as per AAA’s County Gas Prices Report. Their map provides a county-by-county breakdown of the average cost of a gallon of gas. Coming in first place on the North Coast is Humboldt County at $5.70, second Del Norte at $5.64, third is Sonoma at $5.57, fourth is Trinity at $5.41, the fifth is Lake at $5.43, and coming in sixth for the cheapest gas currently on the North Coast in Mendocino County at $5.35. Worth noting, it looks like Mono County, east of the Sierra Nevada mountains has the state’s highest gas prices at $6.02."

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MENDOCINO COAST GAS STATION CHARGING $8.64/GAL

by Justine Frederiksen

A Chevron gas station in the tiny town of Mendocino was charging $8.64 a gallon for regular gas Wednesday morning, which was $3 more than the Chevron on East Perkins Street in Ukiah.

Many local residents reported not being surprised at the high prices at the pumps on the coast, including 5th District Mendocino County Supervisor Ted Williams, who said, “They’re always high.”

Mary Benjamin, a reporter with the Fort Bragg Advocate-News and the Mendocino Beacon, took a photo of the gas pumps at the Chevron station on Main Street around 11 a.m. that showed the price for regular was $8.64 per gallon, and the price for Supreme was $8.85 per gallon.

Benjamin said those prices were only shown on the pumps, not posted on a large sign, and only one pump was operating. She said no one was there to speak with at the station.

According to the American Automobile Association’s gas prices tracker, the national average charged for gas on March 9 was $4.252 per gallon, and California’s average price was at $5.57, with neighboring Nevada at $4.77, Oregon at $4.66 and Arizona at $4.40.

When asked Wednesday if the price per pump charged at the Chevron in Mendocino was the highest gas price in the state, Aldo Vazquez, the AAA spokesman for Northern California, said he did not have that information.

When asked how AAA determines the average price per gallon of gas in the state and in each county, Vazquez said they take an average of all the receipts from people’s trips to the pumps.

According to AAA, Mendocino County’s average price per gallon was actually lower than the state’s average at $5.43 per gallon, and nearby Sonoma County’s average price slightly higher at $5.693. Another neighboring county, Humboldt, had nearly the highest average gas prices in the state at $5.82.

Also on Wednesday, AAA had Mono County, located along the border with Nevada, as the county with the highest average gas price in the state, and Vazquez said that had been the case for at least a year.

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OWNER OF THE MENDOCINO COUNTY GAS STATION CURRENTLY THE MOST EXPENSIVE IN THE UNITED STATES SPEAKS OUT— ‘IT IS WHAT IT IS’

mendofever.com/2022/03/10/owner-of-the-mendocino-county-gas-station-currently-the-most-expensive-in-the-united-states-speaks-out-it-is-what-it-is/

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ED NOTE: Schlafer Chevron, Mendocino, has been nationally vilified for posting the highest gas prices in the country. This is the second year in a row for the Schlafers. Years ago, I managed to get myself stuck near the Fort Bragg end of Sherwood Road, at least partly because there was no sign at the Willits end of Sherwood warning travelers that Sherwood was impassable at its west end. Foolishly thinking that because I had 4-wheel drive my vehicle was unstoppable, I drove that wild 20-some miles only to get high-centered on a cavernous, mud rut three or four miles from the nearest phone, assuming the homeowner would let me in to use one. So I footed it to one house, then another, rudely rebuffed at both, and then all the way into town where I called headquarters in Boonville to explain my plight. Within the hour one of the male Schlafers picked me up and soon thereafter pulled me free from the mire of Sherwood. So far as I'm concerned, the Schlafers can charge a hundred dollars a gallon. Fort Bragg has a bunch of service stations less than ten miles up the road from Mendocino. 

THE LATEST ISSUE of the California Farm Bureau Magazine reports that “The optimism spurred by heavy snowstorms in December has melted away and the 2022 water year is now looking bleak. After facing the driest recorded January and February in state history, the California Department of Water Resources reported that statewide, the snowpack stood at 63% of average for the date (end of February) after conducting the agency’s third manual snow survey of the year.

“This year is probably going to be the worst year ever,” said Thad Bettner, general manager of the Glenn-Colusa County Irrigiation District. “It’s been a brutal year for California all around.” 

In a summary of his remarks, provided by the state water board, State Water Resources Control Board Chair E Joaquin Esquivel said they are “considering water curtailments in critical watersheds to preserve supplies for cities and limiting the amount that water rights holders may be able to divert this year.”

A MUCH SMALLER VERSION of this situation faces Mendocino County, of course. And Official Mendo, despite all the talk of forming a Water Agency and developing grant funded water storage and delivery projects, has done absolutely nothing to mitigate the problem or prepare for it. 

WHAT’S KINDA SURPRISING is the silence of the Cheap Water Mafia about the looming drought’s impact on their grapes. We can only assume that they 1. know that expecting the County/Supervisors to do anything about the problem is a waste of effort/breath, or 2. Many of them have already siphoned off enough water to fill their ponds along the Russian River and don’t want to draw any more attention to the problem. 

SUPERVISOR JOHN HASCHAK seems obsessed by the problem of water trucks delivering diminishing water supplies from private wells to illegal marijuana grows and expects to propose some rules to address that problem a little later this month, but that effort is already too late since the illegal pot market is way down and its water draw will be reduced accordingly, and it won’t do much to increase anybody’s already low water levels. In addition, Haschak’s proposal may also make it harder for legitimate water haulers to provide water to thirsty residents who are running out.

THAT FARM BUREAU report also includes a discussion of the rapidly increasing fuel costs on California’s sprawling agriculture. The inflationary pressure on California’s food producers affects fuel, propane and fertilizer costs, historically a significant part of a farmer’s budget. 

(Mark Scaramella)

STATE SENATOR BILL DODD'S PIG HUNTING BILL; online comments:

They are not native to this area and cause severe damage to actual native species and the ecosystem. They need to be eradicated like the pest they are. What's truly disgusting is how soft we have become to issues like this. Bleeding heart.

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Watch "The Pig Bomb"

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What are the pigs thinking?

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Well the pigs thinking "Where's a she pig" and then a little later he's thinking "Where's food" then a litte later he's thinking "Where's a she pig" then a litle later....

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Hey! I resemble that comment. 

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The bill is designed for wineries. There is a lot of non native animals, plants, insects in the USA including humans. We are not a civilized world if we continue to eradicate for profit.

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It isn't just wineries that are having problems with feral pigs. They are in areas that have sensitive waterways and ecosystems, and they destroy nearly everything they come across. They are also in cities sometimes and can be aggressive. The fact that they are so incredibly destructive is the main problem.

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Bill won’t do anything unless they open it up to state property hunting.

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I heard they are Russian boars on CNN.

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So there is no public place in soco you can hunt them except lake sonoma, which requires you get picked in a lottery... and can only use a bow... and have to have a boat. so really only a few limited number of people even have the chance to hunt. now those 10 people can pay less for tags, and that's going to solve an over population/pest problem? if you say so....

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Add Wild turkeys to that list as well...definitely NOT Native...

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JEFF FOX:

Regarding the wild pigs in California, domesticated pigs became feral when settlers in the 18th century allowed them to free range. Then in the 1920’s a rancher in Monterey imported some European wild pigs (a far different animal than the already feral domestic pigs) to release onto his land so he could hunt them. I had heard as a kid that several European immigrants brought them because they preferred the meat and enjoyed hunting them. Ultimately the Euro pigs interbred with the already feral domestic pigs and created the hybrid that’s out there now. The physical features of the European boar persist, far more hair, long floppy tail, etc.

As for the hunting regs, when I was a little kid there were no hunting restrictions at all as they were considered an invasive. Later they were declared a “game animal” by the state (undoubtedly viewed as a potential revenue source from hunters) and the DFG started requiring a hunting license. Later pig tags were required, but it was very inexpensive around $6 for a book of five tags, often enough to last a season for an active hunter. Later in the early ’90’s DFG converted to a single tag at twice the price of the book of 5 tags. Now the single tag is nearly $25. Meanwhile, over time landowners (especially the urban transplants) have become more restrictive in allowing hunting on their parcels. They complain about pigs but an old hunter like me struggles like hell trying to get access to land to hunt on. Pigs are highly intelligent animals and quickly figure out which lands lack hunting pressure and spend most of their time there, so if you are a landowner that doesn’t allow hunting it’s no surprise that you will have more pigs present.

The bottom line is the proposed legislation will do little to nothing because it does little to encourage an increase in actual hunters. Switching back to a single validation that allows harvesting a larger number of animals will help, but it’s effect is that the very few that have access to land can kill a lot more animals rather than increasing hunting at large. Providing better incentives to landowners to allow hunting, such as tools for screening potential hunters, releasing owners from liability, etc. would go a long way towards dealing with the pig population. It would also help feed people as well, both the hunter’s families and others that get gifted the meat (food banks are a common recipient).

COVELO! VERY NICE EVENT. Covelo isn't the dangerous place it's portrayed as, which isn't to say there aren't bad people there, but this event is free of them.

ED NOTES

FIRE CHIEF AVILA says last night's reports of a major fire in Philo was a false alarm. “It was a glow from a greenhouse that someone thought was a structure fire,” the Chief said Thursday afternoon.

THE OLD PHILO MILL is for lease. Located in central Philo complete with structures the imaginative could put to productive purpose, the mill hasn't milled in many years. Nice site for hurry-up housing on its several acres with a good water source, I'm sure the Supervisors will take a close look. 

DA EYSTER informs us that the David Giusti trial is scheduled to begin April 4. Dave, a frequent ava correspondent, is looking at a murder charge for a brawl over an outdoor Ukiah sleeping spot that saw the other combatant not demonstrating signs compatible with life when the police arrived. 

ROGUE UKIAH COP Kevin Murray's sexual assault jury trial is scheduled to start on Monday, March 14 in Judge Carly Dolan’s courtroom in Ukiah. Murray stands accused of sexual battery, forcible rape, burglary, drug possession, being armed with an assault weapon, and forcible oral copulation with a child under 14 years of age, rather a full felony monte for an officer of the law. Murray has been out of custody after posting a $200k bond. Murray’s case file shows that five attorneys have had something to do with his case since the original charges were filed last April: Stephen Gallenson, Orchid Vaghti, Chris Andrian, Jane Gaskell and Macci Morse. Gallenson is listed as an associate of Chris Andrian out of Santa Rosa. Presumably, the DA’s senior sex-crimes prosecutor, Heidi Larson, will be prosecuting the case.

I BOUGHT GAS at CostCo on Wednesday for $5.09 a gallon. Thursday, it's $5.19 at CostCo and an average of $5.40 countywide, prompting lots of Brandon memes aimed at Poor Old Joe from the political right. Anybody care to speculate how the orange blusterer would have handled inflation? Ukraine?

JEFF FOX'S interesting riff on feral pigs got my nostalgia going for my scant experience with the wild creatures. I say “scant” because I've spent many happy hours hiking the Mendo outback, still marveling all these years later at how wild it is not far from the pavement. I hit a slow-to-take-off buzzard one night coming down the Ukiah Road near Bell Valley one night, cracking my windshield so thoroughly I thought for a second the thing was going to join me in the driver's seat. Hit a deer in almost the same spot another night, and there went another windshield. I've caught glimpses of bobcats, never have seen a mountain lion or a bear, but by far my most memorable wildlife interface was with a coyote, me at one end of a culvert, him at the other just off Anderson Valley way, maybe a hundred and fifty feet from the front door of my old place. The coyote stared at me, I stared back, and on we stared at each other for several minutes, me finally walking on. Not to go all woo-woo on you here, but I could have sworn that coyote was messing with me, laughing at me, and I understood, I thought, why the coyote figures so prominently in Native American mythology as having human characteristics.

CONFIRMATION, if any is needed, that we have too many lawyers in this country, are the television ads by lawyers claiming they'll chisel more out of insurance companies for your accident claim than you can if you try to do your own chiseling. The visuals offered by these advertising hustlers making their dubious pitches inspire zero confidence, but given the cost of television advertising the great unwashed, many of whom are equivalently larcenous, must be flocking to them. There's an Asian woman with enormous breasts promising she'll get accident vics the max payout which, I suppose, is probably true as she mesmerizes all the males in the courtroom; then there's the two Dunnions, father and son in combative pose, but my fave is the sweaty-looking dude from Jacoby and Meyers with the big, desperate eyeballs like his foot is caught in a bear trap.

MY UKRAINIAN FLAG hasn't arrived yet, but I'll settle for this fine line from the usually prosaic Press Democrat: “Sonoma County has gone blue-and-yellow lately, and not just when the mustard erupting in every field meets the azure of a March sky.” I'm surprised the dunces who edit that paper let it slip on by. The story continued, “A week ago, Healdsburg lit its iconic, century-old, steel truss bridge in the colors of the Ukrainian flag — a particularly strong symbol of solidarity with a nation defending itself from an invasion by Vladimir Putin’s Russian regime, considering the body of water flowing beneath it is the Russian River. Someone in the Guerneville area went further, covering a white sign that read “RUSSIAN RIVER” with a placard reading “UKRAINIAN RIVER.” It was yellow on top, blue on bottom, an inverted Ukrainian flag meant to conjure the international symbol of distress…”

MENDO HOUSING (Coast Chatline Comments)

1. Yes---and the housing is another unreachable thing. A young man working in the XRay Department at the Hospital in Fort Bragg told me today he has to commute to work from MANCHESTER every day! He can't find a rental closer to his workplace. Anything that rarely comes up is super expensive. I couldn't commute from that far away to Fort Bragg for a job,m but that's what he has to do. And we need skilled young people like him to work in this area at vital jobs such as in healthcare, teaching, etc..

2. These messages are discussion, and I continue the topic, with apologies to those who are offended by discussion. BUT, this is a critical issue for all of us living on the Coast. You can ask Judy Leach who is managing, somehow, the Adventist Mendocino Coast Hospital, about the difficulty of staffing with our housing situation. Think about it: how are we going to be a thriving Blue Zone community supported by the medical services of Mendocino Adventist Health when we have no housing to offer? Ask Mendocino Coast Clinic about their open positions. etc etc. As a community, we need to come together with ways to house the people we need to be here - and I look to our non-profit foundations such as the Mendocino Community Health Foundation and the Mendocino Community Foundation, to take lead roles in this. ..."And he is not the only one in the radiology department alone. At the meeting discussing if the hospital had a future they mentioned that housing was needed to recruit and maintain staff. This is crucial in all departments. The pickle is that the available houses are scare and very expensive. Vacation rentals appear to be more lucrative as well as selling to the highest bidder. People who have the means to own on the coast are in a special position to curate the community here. The community has already changed so much in my lifetime. I'm curious to what the future holds."

3. Good questions, y'all! The current $$$ituation sucks the Big One. Change zoning regs for more density? Massively tax unoccupied 2nd homes? Accept live-in vehicles & designate safe parking areas with basic amenities? Meanwhile...minimum car trips & carpool whenever possible? Lean on MTA to expand range & service?

4. Governments cannot force private property owners to create housing. Residents on the Coast should be screaming for development of housing.

5. Isn’t that exactly what the Skunk Train has been trying to do? Add housing and development. We should support that enterprise to get a great boost in local housing, jobs and to the local economy.

6. Condos and hotels on South of Mills Site? I don't think so -- Do know this operation has a plan that they brought to the City Council for housing and sharing the Dry Sheds with North Coast Brewing on the North end of the Skunk Train property and they have *not done any action* or ground breaking on that and it has been over a few years now. Action is louder than words- don't you think? I have Press Democrat articles with interviews with Mr. Hart and Mr. Pinoli going back to 2006 when Skunk Folks talked about so many plans and nothing happened.Same old same old. Meanwhile they keep acquiring properties here and elsewhere! Folks need to think this through on what really is going on.

7. A trash burning plant which imports trash from neighboring counties and diesel-spewing trains are not the right kind of development for Fort Bragg. We need to diversify, not return FB to the days of being a company town where a distant corporation makes all the decisions and all the money.

Keep in mind it is not the Skunk Train that is projecting this "vision" onto Fort Bragg. It is Sierra Energy, owner of Sierra Railroad, owner of Mendocino Railway, owner of the Skunk Train. So while they want us to feel all warm and cuddly about the Little Stinker, this deal really stinks for the north coast. And they are doing it through questionably ethical/legal means.

Anyway, what will happen to downtown FB if their project happens? It will die. But don't worry, we can just bulldoze it and build chain stores. Where will the profits go? To locals? No, to corporate stockholders and owners. And do you really think that the housing built would be "low income"? I doubt it. Fort Bragg wants the Skunk Train, I get it. The rest of it, we can do without

8. The Housing Action Team of Mendocino North Coast is working on some possible solutions. Check them out: https://www.hatmendocoast.org/

This is copied from their "about" page:

Introduction

With the growing income inequality, low- and moderate-income people have not only lost ground economically—they have also lost ground literally, in the places they call home. Our community, like many across the country, is grappling with a housing crisis that affects residents struggling to find good, safe, affordable places to live.

Stable and affordable housing is key to inclusive economic growth and is crucial to making Mendocino County’s changing economy work for everyone. Yet many of our renters have to spend most of their monthly income on rent. As low-cost rental homes are replaced with luxury housing or converted to vacation homes, hard-working families are priced out of homes that gave earlier generations a path to the middle class.

The Housing Action Team of Mendocino North Coast (HAT) is working on projects to address the serious and chronic challenges facing the region’s renters by significantly expanding the supply of permanently affordable homes—especially housing that low- and moderate-income workers and families can afford.

The Housing Action Team

HAT’s area of interest is Mendocino’s north coast between Westport and Navarro Bridge. Our volunteers are coordinated by Elizabeth Swenson and include: Fort Bragg and County elected officials and City staff; organizations that support at-risk and homeless families and individuals; community leaders interested in improving the lives of the working poor; and individuals desiring to stimulate the economy by providing workforce housing.

We meet in Fort Bragg the second Thursday of the month to create and execute projects which encourage Fort Bragg and Mendocino County policy makers to meet the demand for housing and engage and inform the north coast community about regional housing needs, challenges and opportunities.

Recognizing there are many ways to achieve our goals, HAT committee members propose projects they feel are important, achievable and personally compelling. Projects that are supported by enough members are assigned subcommittees to develop and deliver them.

HAT is actively tackling the issues of affordable housing and we can always use volunteers who’ll help create and implement projects that deliver results. For more information, meeting times and locations email HATMendoCoast@gmail.com.

Vision, Goals, Objectives, Strategies and Measures Vision: Our vision is every person in our area will have access to safe and secure shelter.

Goal 1: North Coast Housing Action Team will successfully identify and influence policy makers to increase housing stock on the North Coast.

Objective 1: Work with City and County agencies and individuals to provide oversight for housing in our region and influence policy makers to meet the demand for housing on Mendocino’s north coast by: reducing regulatory barriers implementing housing positive policies securing funding for housing establishing housing staff at the City and County level enhancing inter-agency coordination.

Strategy & Measurement

Send at least five letters to City Council members and Supervisors with proposed and regulatory and policy changes. Attend and speak at five Council and Supervisor meetings related to housing. Influence two or more “housing positive” policy changes in County and City policies and regulations.

Objective 2: Influence policy makers currently involved in the GP mill site rezoning process to include zoning for affordable and diverse types of housing.

Strategy & Measurement

Hold a policy training workshop in March for HAT members to learn the language of regulation and housing policy.

Development of “housing positive” policy in the Mill Site Reuse Plan & LCP Amendment that result in affordable and diverse types of housing. Send one HAT letter to City Councilmembers with proposed and regulatory and policy changes.

Attend and speak at six Council meetings related to housing and the Mill Site Reuse Plan over the next three years.

Goal 2: Engage and inform the north coast community about housing needs, challenges and opportunities.

Objective 1: Educate the community about options and opportunities for investing in affordable home development and rehabilitation; rental and homeownership assistance; and Community Land Trusts.

Strategy & Measurement

Organize three public education workshops and programs to: 1) identify barriers to affordable housing; 2) improve community knowledge about housing and housing development opportunities; and 3) provide housing boot camp to help people interested in building an ADU. Publish three articles a year on housing.

Make 10 presentations to local community, professional, social services and health organizations to support collaboration between diverse sectors working to create safe, affordable, and secure housing. Help to increase the number of ADUs constructed in Fort Bragg from 3-5 per year to 7-10 per year.

Help to rezone the Mill Site for at least 225 housing units that serve a variety of housing needs: affordable, senior, working class, etc. Disseminate housing information through social media (establish a Facebook page), brochures (new ADU brochure), and utilize other media channels such as radio and TV.

(Ron Hock)

9. Could landowners who want to get out of the rental business do rent to own/ owner finance? From my naive perspective that would encourage the occupant to take care of the property as it would eventually be theirs and the original owner would get paid and then some from interest. Maybe they would also be covered better legally? They could get a big pay out from selling outright but everyone involved in the process gets a piece of the pie and with the cost of most properties in the area the down payment is unaffordable for working class families.

So far the solution that I've seen being effective is that employers are providing housing. That was brought up at the hospital meeting and Adventist mentioned they've had to do something similar at other campuses but I'm unsure if that will be pursued.

10. No, that sounds like a great idea... Of course there's the old school approach, vet the heck out of your renter.

1. Professional with long term employment

2. Good credit history (no recent bankruptcies or gross black marks.)

3. References from prior landlords

4. Personal references

5. Strong local affiliations with local businesses and/or social organizations

6. Lack of criminal record

7. Lack of outstanding debts (eg Child Support, etc.)

8. History of remaining in one place for a long time

9. Seems cordial, pleasant, good natured, respectful, sane, reasonably intelligent, and forthright

Someone who tags all these bases is likely to be a fair gamble in being a decent renter. There are no sure bets in this world, but at least this person isn't going to start a meth lab in your kitchen or knock holes in your walls to store guns and ammunition. Of course this would preclude a certain class from renting your place, and you might want to make folks who might otherwise have a hard time getting a place get a shot at a better life... but that charity comes with the risk of renting to folks who will destroy your property. So, it then lies with the landlord to find the balance between charity and equity.

TINY HOMES ON FORT BRAGG PLANNING AGENDA

The Fort Bragg Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on Wednesday, March 23, 2022 at 6:00 PM at Town Hall, 363 N. Main Street, regarding an amendment to the Inland Land Use and Development Code to include regulations on moveable Tiny Homes.

To read the Public Hearing Notice, click here: 03-23-2022 Tiny Homes Ordinance Public Hearing

NUTT ACQUITTED

A coastal Mendocino County Superior Court jury completed its deliberations Wednesday afternoon and returned to the Ten Mile courtroom to announce it had acquitted the trial defendant of the single charge.

Robert Charles Nutt III, age 54, of Fort Bragg, was found not guilty of residential burglary that was alleged to have occurred at a residence within the city limits of Fort Bragg in December 2021.

The law enforcement agency that investigated the case was the Fort Bragg Police Department.

Deputy District Attorney Eloise Kelsey was the prosecutor who presented the People’s evidence at the trial.

THE HASCHAK REPORT:

We had an interesting, informative Northern Mendocino County Town Hall with Senator McGuire, Sheriff Kendall and Supervisor Gjerde. Senator McGuire is the second ranking senator in the State Senate. His efforts on behalf of Mendocino County, whether it be water, safety, cannabis policy, or economic development have been stellar and having him in that Majority Leader position will continue to serve us well. 

Topics that we discussed were water, safety, cannabis, and the environment. I appreciate that Senator McGuire helped secure $600,000 in additional state funds to help deal with the illegal cannabis grows in our County. Together we have been working on workforce development and Career and Technical Education. Working with Mendocino College and the Mendocino Office of Education, together we have helped get programs on construction, medical, and EMT/paramedic training started.

Last week, I visited the California Conservation Corps as they worked on Blue Lakes Road northwest of Willits. The 20 young adults were creating a shaded fuel break along the road. This is work that the Sherwood Firewise Council helped organize with Fire Safe Mendocino (FSM) to provide greater safety to our communities in case of a fire. FSM just finished two months of fuel reduction work in the Brooktrails Greenbelt. They also have programs for free defensible space work for qualified seniors and persons with disabilities and free community chipper days. Go to their website at https://firesafemendocino.org for more info. People helping build stronger community. The County is planning fuel reduction programs in the Laytonville and Covelo areas.

At the March 15 Board meeting, Supervisor McGourty and I are proposing rules around water extraction and water hauling. I have received too many calls from people without enough water for residential uses or who fear the effects on our groundwaters from excessive pumping. We want the Board to give direction to enforce existing rules, add some restrictions to water hauling, and create a regulatory program to reduce these activities for illegal purposes.

You can always contact me at haschakj@mendocinocounty.org or 707-972-4214.

FORT BRAGG DISPENSARY EXCLUSION ZONE

Editor,

For more than two years our neighborhood in the Central Business District has pushed back against the City of Fort Bragg’s efforts towards permitting cannabis dispensaries and other types of cannabis operations within the CBD. What began as a tussle with the City Council over efforts to issue a cannabis permit at 144 N. Franklin Street, has escalated to include a community-wide coalition against such permits. The opposition includes hundreds of anti-cannabis signatures from merchants, property owners, and residents; two voter initiative petitions presently making their way among registered Fort Bragg voters, and a very sour taste over ill-conceived administrative attempts to by-pass due process and totally ignore legitimate residential neighborhood cannabis concerns.

Suddenly it appears our City Council may finally be listening to the serious roar to protect residential neighborhoods shouldering the East side of the Central Business District. This new conversation embraced by most Council members at the February 28th Meeting — would essentially prohibit commercial cannabis dispensaries, nurseries, manufacturing, or distribution from being permitted on the East side of North Franklin Street., including to the Eastern Boundary of the CBD.

This would be achieved either by measured Buffer Zones; or by a unified Exclusionary Zone prohibiting cannabis operations of any kind from the Center Line of North Franklin St., and anywhere East of that Center Line, within the CBD. This more streamlined Exclusionary Zone Option would in turn only allow cannabis permits West of the Franklin St. Center Line.

There are other issues to be ironed out with regard to the proposed West side cannabis applications which subsequently would be permitted (environmental, review, project sizes, etc.). But in the interest of a compromise that promises to respect and protect neighborhood rights, we endorse the East Side of The N. Franklin St. Center Line Cannabis Exclusion Zone Option. And we sincerely hope there are no political ploys designed to blow up this compromise at the last moment, which would undermine the Fort Bragg Planning Commission’s diligent efforts to stand up for neighbors and neighborhoods.

Bill Mann and Susanne Rogers

Fort Bragg

CATCH OF THE DAY, March 10, 2022

JONATHAN CARTER, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JONATHAN CERVANTES, Ukiah. DUI.

CODY LADD, Ukiah. Parole violation.

CHARLES MAXFIELD JR., Willits. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, county parole violation.

CODY MENDEZ, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

BRIAN MUNIZ-ALFARO, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

SIERRA RATEKIN, Little River. Domestic battery.

DANIELLE ROMERO, Willits. Domestic battery.

JARRETT STERGIOU, Fortuna/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

NEIL WALDRON, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, criminal threats, resisting, probation revocation.

WILLIAM WILLIAMS JR., Willits. County parole violation.

AZAIAH ZACARIAS, Ukiah. Failure to appear, resisting.

MELVIN ZAVALA-CRUZ, Ukiah. Switchblade in vehicle.

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL’S players and owners ended their most bitter money fight in a quarter-century Thursday when the players’ association accepted management’s offer to salvage a 162-game season that will start April 7. The work stoppage ended at 7 p.m. sharp, closing an acrimonious 99-day lockout that delayed spring training and threatened to cancel regular-season games for the first time since 1995.

AT LEAST 20,000 PORT WORKERS say they will no longer load or unload any Russian vessels or Russian cargo coming into or going out of all 29 ports up and down the West Coast. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union calls it an act of solidarity with the people of Ukraine.

PAY THEM PROPERLY

Editor,

Any teachers who strike for higher salaries will have my support as an ex-teacher. In a March 2018 letter to the editor, I wrote about teacher salaries and how abysmal they were. Seems it hasn’t changed much since then.

The past two years have been difficult for teachers and students. Teaching and learning via Zoom couldn’t have been easy. It’s time for school districts to recognize that teachers are important employees and deserve salaries that allow them to live decently.

A single teacher who makes the salary given now would have a difficult time, considering the cost of housing, gas, food, etc. Teaching is not an easy job now due to many outside situations, or should I say dangers? It is beyond time that school districts give teachers what they deserve for doing a very important job.

Linda Elliott

Cloverdale

AUSTRALIAN TOUGH GUYS, 1928

ALL THE GOOD MUSIC has already been written by people with wigs and stuff on. Basically what people want to hear is: I love you, you love me, the leaves turn brown, they fell off the trees, the wind is blowing, it got cold, you went away, my heart broke, you came back, and my heart was okay...Modern music is people who can't think signing artists who can't write songs to make records for people who can't hear. Most people wouldn't know good music if it came up and bit them on the ass...If lyrics make people do things, how come we don't love each other? 

— Frank Zappa, 1986

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

No one should ever trust a pic or video taken after about the year 2000 ever again. Multiple sources need to be employed now to verify any story (which was technically always the case, but now it’s a clear-cut requirement). Anyone who believes something because of a picture or video is either unintentionally ignorant or just plain stupid.

WAR IN UKRAINE

Editor,

The scale of the destruction in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol at the hands of Russian forces has emerged in new satellite images that show devastated residential building, blasted parklands and smouldering grocery stores.

Shown alongside images from before the invasion, the pictures paint a bleak picture of the damage done so far to the besieged city, which Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy described as “ultimate evidence” that genocide of Ukrainians is happening in the wake of the shelling of a maternity hospital.

The city’s deputy mayor, Sergiy Orlov, told reporters of several civilian targets hit so far, including numerous residential houses, a children’s and maternity hospital, the main administration service building, and the city’s giant Avostal metallurgical factory.

Orlov said 1,160 people had been killed already, with 47 buried on Wednesday alone. About 200,000 people want to get out of the city, but with humanitarian corridors shelled, only around 2,000 to 3,000 are able to leave a day.

Frank Baumgardner
Santa Rosa

WATER ON HER MIND: Jane Wolff, Global Ecologist Extraordinaire

by Jonah Raskin

“Large scale changes can’t be undone and there’s no going back, but people can usefully intervene in landscapes to renew and support ecosystems, remediate pollution and encourage biodiversity to foster the complex web of relationships that characterize healthy environments

– Jane Wolff

Born in St. Louis near the Mississippi River, the author, teacher and ecologist, Jane Wolff, lives and works in Ontario, Canada. “Up stream” is how she describes her current location. “Water is key,” she adds. “It can tell you about all the other systems.” Wolff writes beautifully about water in two books, Delta Primer and Bay Lexicon which sprang from her research in the San Francisco Bay Area, her “old stomping ground,” she calls. In her unorthodox and even heretical view, the San Francisco Bay Area belongs to one huge, “hybrid ecosystem” built by nature and by human beings. It includes the Sierras, the rivers, including the Sacramento, that flow down from the mountains, the delta where fresh water meets salt water, San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate and finally the Pacific Ocean. In the cast of North American environmentalists and ecologists, Wolff offers a unique view of a complex and nuanced ecosystem where millions of people live and work, big ag operates, often ruthlessly, and species like salmon fight to survive. In her world culture meets nature.

A magna cum laude graduate from Harvard and Radcliffe, and now an associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, Wolff learned heaps when she worked at the San Francisco Exploratorium from 2007 to 2014. Before that, she served as a research and design consultant in New Orleans and also as a Fulbright-Hayes Scholar in the Netherlands. She has delivered lectures from Amsterdam to Zurich and from Berkeley to Sydney, Australia.

In the Mississippi Delta, in the Netherlands and elsewhere, as Wolff explains in her books and in her essays, nature and culture have conspired to create recipes for disaster: “inevitable cities in impossible places.” Still, her work suggests ways to avoid the kinds of catastrophes that the author Raymond Dashmann spelled out in his depressing 1965 book, The Destruction of California. Prognosticators have been echoing him ever since then.

In Bay Lexicon, her illustrated field guide, Wolff pays special attention to Heron’s Head Park, a mini paradise and a microcosm of sorts on the edge of San Francisco Bay that reflects a tragic past and that points to the possibility of a more harmonious future than the present day portends. “Who Built Heron’s Head?” Wolff asks. Her answer: “The combined product of intention and accident.” She adds, “Heron’s Head Park exists because abandoned infrastructure became an armateur for new nature.” With ocean levels rising and the San Francisco shoreline threatened as never before, Heron’s Head Park has become a popular destination for locals and tourists. Humans as a species love vanishing and vanished places, Wolff writes.

On the controversial topic of bay “restoration,” she suggests that “large scale changes can’t be undone” and that “there’s no going back.” To restorationists those are fighting words. Wolff prefers the concept and the word, “rehabilitation,” and argues that people “can usefully intervene in landscapes to renew and support ecosystems, remediate pollution and encourage biodiversity to foster the complex web of relationships that characterize healthy environments.”

Heron’s Head might well be a window into the future of San Francisco Bay. Owned and maintained by the Port of San Francisco and operated by the Park and Recreation Department, it offers a habitat for a variety of creatures. A Field Guide to the 100 Birds of Heron’s Head helps bird lovers identify species.

In 1970 construction began for an “embankment” in the Hunter’s Point/ Bayview neighborhood that was to serve as a terminal, aka a pier, number 98, for container ships that would transport cargo globally. The pier was also meant to provide an anchor for a second bay bridge that would take vehicles back and forth from San Francisco to the East Bay. Construction continued for seven years, Wolff writes, until in a referendum when voters defeated “the span plan.“

In Bay Lexicon, Wolff tells a riveting story about the massive cleanup that resulted in the removal of thousands of tons of concrete, asphalt and debris. In 1999, Pier 98 was reborn as Heron’s Head Park where “plants and animals colonized the new land and a marsh energized from the rubble.”

Wolff offers a quotation from William Faulkner (“The past is never dead. It isn’t even past”), and argues that while landscapes change, “they always contain traces of their previous states: souvenirs.” In Bay Lexicon she deciphers “souvenirs” (i.e. mud, debris and nineteenth-century shipwrecks), and offers key words such as “land,” “water,” “work” and play” to unlock secrets of past environments and extoll the present.

“Heron’s Head‘s pleasures derive from its wildness—and from the scarcity of such wildness at the edge of the bay,” Wolff writes. “What’s rare is special; what’s special brings delight.” The park and its surrounding landscape belong, she argues, to a “hybrid ecology,” that speaks to her and to environmentalists like her about the tangled intersections where nature and culture, land and water come together.

I’ve ambled along the paved abutment at Heron’s Head until I was surrounded on three sides by water and treated to spectacular views of bay landmarks: downtown skyscrapers, including the Salesforce Tower, Oakland, Twin Peaks and Mt. Diablo. I’ve heard the cries of gulls and the sounds of waves breaking on the shore. (The Heron Head jetty is said to resemble the head of a heron, when viewed from above.) The park boasts an EcoCenter that provides environmental education, workshops and public outreach. It has a living roof, a rainwater harvesting and reuse system and solar energy. A sign reads, “The EcoCenter represents a critical effort by a community experiencing significant environmental stress to launch a positive response to the legacy left by the Navy, utility companies, industry and decades of irresponsible land-use planning.”

Getting to Heron’s Heads means traveling through an area with factories, warehouses and railroad cars. It can feel like returning to an era when San Francisco was a major North American port and a manufacturing center. It’s the sort of place that, as Wolff explains, is fast disappearing, or has already disappeared in the Bay Area, and that has sometimes been replaced by upscale restaurants and posh shops designed to deliver food, wine and leisurely pleasures to consumers.

Labor, she observes, has been displaced by play. Harry Bridges, once the feisty head of the San Francisco Longshoreman’s Union, is now largely a ghost on what was a thriving waterfront, though Wolff honors his memory and observes that now as always “behind workers there are other workers.”

Wolff’s first book, Delta Primer (2003), boasts a preface by former California state historian, Kevin Starr, plus dozens of maps, drawings and facts. “All the powerful and conflicting forces that are shaping the California landscape today converge in the Delta,” Wolff writes in her Primer. These forces include “suburban development, environmental politics, the changing economics of agriculture, and the endless demand for water.”

Wolff has a unique voice and a special role to play. She also belongs to a wave of young academics that includes Matthew Booker, the author of Down By the Bay, as well as her former colleagues at the San Francisco Exploratorium, Peter Richards and Susan Schwartzenberg, both of whom are artists. They’re all keenly aware of the current global crisis and have devoted their professional lives to the study and understanding of the environmental past as well as the environmental present, hoping to arouse citizens and policy makers and perhaps avoid catastrophe.

During a recent conversation with Wolff, I asked her if she was deeply worried, or only mildly concerned about the state of the world today. “Yes, I’m alarmed!,” Wolff said. She added, “San Francisco is different from New Orleans and New Orleans is different again from Amsterdam and New York, but places where rivers meet oceans and seas will always be in flux. They are not always compatible with the kinds of cities we build in North America.”

She suggests learning from indigenous people that “everything is a relationship,” and also from the Dutch who realized in the face of sea level rise that to survive they had to live with water and not fight against it, too often an American way of responding to water: make it invisible, make it go away as fast as possible. In The Netherlands, Wolff realized that hundreds of years of Dutch history and Dutch hydrology couldn’t be imported directly and slapped down in the US. One size does not fit all, though she looks for models and templates.

“People have long been making changes, thinking that they will create stability and permanence in fluctuating landscapes,” Wolff told me. “In fact, the changes simply redirect the landscape’s flux and often exacerbate their instability and impermanence.” The law of unintended consequences unfolds almost everywhere that she has looked over the past two decades: San Francisco Bay; the vast, intricate Sacramento/ San Joaquin Delta; the Mississippi with its upstream tributaries and watersheds; and in The Netherlands where three rivers, the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt, meet the North Sea.

In her Lexicon, Wolff describes San Francisco Bay as “a landscape type,” and adds “If you come from someplace else, you might not recognize the details, but the big themes will be familiar.” One of the major attractions of both Delta Primer and Bay Lexicon is that the reader is never lost. The maps and the texts mean that even a stranger to the bay and the delta soon knows her way around. Wolff’s love of beauty also goes a long way toward making friends and converting citizens to her undogmatic ways of looking at land and water, not as two alien places separated from one another, but interconnected, and in a sense twins and doubles of one another, two halves of a whole that make up our blue planet.

Sometimes Wolff’s comments seem predictable, but she also offers real surprises as she does in an essay about the rise and fall of St. Louis, Missouri, her hometown, a city built brick by brick, and later, in the aftermath of white flight, dismantled brick by brick. “Saint Louis, Brick City” may remind readers how delightful an essay with big ideas can be.

Historians, geologists, ecologists and nature writers could learn a lot by reading Wolff on St. Louis, or from “Cultural Landscapes and Dynamic Ecologies: Lessons for New Orleans,” an essay published in 2014. How comfortable she quickly became in the post-Katrina world, and how sobering her account of the city’s hydrology and engineering! Environmentalists from Toronto to Sacramento and Amsterdam to San Francisco might read Bay Lexicon and Delta Primer, think critically and engage in a dialogue with Wolff’s ideas, maps, drawings and hybrid ecologies. Both books are too big for a back pocket, but they are designed for walks and adventures. Armchair explorers will also likely find them a delight.

Jonah Raskin is the author of Beat Blues, San Francisco, 1955.

BIDEN NEGLECTS TO MAKE THE CRUCIAL REQUEST TO THE CITIZENRY FOR HIS PROGRAM

by Ralph Nader

The President’s State of the Union speech before a joint session of Congress is the media event of the year for the occupant of the Oval Office. Joe Biden spoke for an hour, covered lots of predictable policy ground, and also praised, promised, and reassured “the people.”

But, as President Biden has done many times in public speeches and addresses, he failed to engage the people as his allies to confront his policy opponents in Congress.

All his priorities – social safety net protections, rebuilding community infrastructure or public works, more aggressive action against climate crises, and paying for these programs by repealing the Trump tax escapes for the large corporations and the super-rich, are being blocked by 50 GOP Senators and two Democratic Senators.

Biden’s reluctance to invite the people to phone, write or email these obstructionists in Congress reflects his personality of not criticizing the GOP opposition when addressing the public.

Here is what Mr. Biden could have said to mobilize the citizenry and stay with his amiable style:

My four major programs register large majority support among the American people. It is easy to understand why. People want their public services to work. They want the roads, bridges, public transit, their water and sewage plants, their public clinics, and broadband upgraded and maintained in good repair. People need their well-equipped heroic emergency responders to rescue them in times of danger. That’s what your taxes are supposed to be for public needs.

Furthermore, the American people want their government to have the facilities to protect them from climate violence and not just when the tornadoes, hurricanes, massive wildfires, floods or droughts, and other natural disasters hit us. Increasingly, the people are worried about more of these calamities worsening for their children and grandchildren.

You know what? It doesn’t matter whether they are conservatives or liberals, small businesses or large company owners, members of the chambers of commerce or unions. That’s why all the polls register loudly: “Do It, Now!”

We also know that the American people are compassionate. They know that misfortune, calamity, bad luck, or disabling depression could befall any of us. Half of the working families in our country are poor. They struggle to meet their daily needs and debt payments. Fifteen million children go to bed hungry in America! Our traumatized veterans return home and find themselves homeless, unemployed, uncared for and committing suicide, all in higher proportions than is the case with the civilian population.

Workplace hazards claim many workers’ health and safety. Toxics in the environment expose some people more than others. All these people who are our neighbors, friends, and relatives call for the compassion of those Americans fortunate enough not to be in distress. All religions historically instruct their adherents to take their charitable responsibilities seriously. We learned this as kids attending our places of worship.

Our proposed programs have, for decades, lent a helping hand to needy workers – daycare and family leave – and to needy unemployed such as wider access to Medicare, Medicaid, home healthcare, nutritious food programs, and energy assistance. In 2021, this Congress appropriated funds that gave over 60 million non-partisan children approximately $300 per month per child. Mothers and fathers called this supplemental help during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic a timely lifeline. It expired in January. Many in Congress have refused to temporarily renew this emergency help.

My fourth program, which would repeal the Trump tax escapes answers the question members of Congress always ask. How do we pay for these services and initiatives I have outlined (which by the way, economists tell us help promote economic growth and head off heavy expenses, as with safety, health, and health insurance improvements)? The super-rich and the giant corporations should step up their patriotism and finally pay their fair share as people like Warren Buffett and the Patriotic Millionaires’ organization have argued for years.

Just in the period of Covid-19, the very wealthy have increased their assets by a trillion dollars and INCREASED their wealth while a pandemic has claimed more than a million innocent American lives and destabilized the economy. These privileged and wealthy people and super-profitable corporations are benefitting from the lowest federal income taxes their class has paid since before World War II.

Congress itself has documented the huge tax escapes available to the super-rich. One stunning fact stands out: In 2021, 55 corporations that earned $40 billion paid zero in federal income taxes. They can get away with this because their lobbyists stay in touch with their members of Congress who make their privileges possible.

That’s not fair by any standard of fair play for the American people. I don’t know any American workers who can make record wages and pay no federal income tax.

My proposals would restore the taxes on the super-rich and giant corporations, including foreign corporations doing business in the U.S. to where it was before the Trump cuts. Even then they were paying in federal income taxes far less than companies and super-rich were paying in the prosperous nineteen sixties.

My fellow Americans, aren’t you getting tired of State of the Union speeches by presidents condemning gouging prescription drug prices and the ban on Medicare negotiating volume discounts with the big drug companies, as the VA and the Department of Defense do now, with nothing happening on Capitol Hill? Aren’t you tired, as I am, of a succession of presidents condemning fraud on the government by business crooks or promising to make America more self-sufficient in critical areas, and nothing happens in Congress?

The list goes on – for a higher minimum wage, enforcing the law against corporate crime, monopolies and daily rip-offs of consumers, and letting workers have an easier time forming trade unions.

Still, Congress – not all lawmakers of Congress by any means – does nothing and in some instances actually passes legislation making some of these abuses worse.

Enough already. You the people gave your sovereign power under our Constitution over to the 535 members of Congress. You must demand that your delegated power be used by Congress to lift up and serve the American people ‘indivisible for liberty and justice for all.’ You know their names, their phone numbers, and their emails. Let them hear from you! Or you can call the Congressional switchboard at 202-224-3121. Ask the legendary Capitol operators to take you to the offices of your senators and representatives. If just 30 million out of over 300 million Americans do this simple task, I guarantee that you’ll change enough minds to make these great advances against frustration, anxiety, dread and fear a daily reality.

In addition, the White House will place these programs in clear language with numbers on a new White House website Yes.org. When you contact your members of Congress, make sure you insist on a response to your message. If your members of Congress do not respond to your demands, send them again and again to their national and local offices and, if you wish, to the local media.

We only need a handful of legislators to change their minds or to be independent of mind, to get these long-overdue changes enacted. As was done throughout American history, when members of Congress decided to do the right things, despite special interest negativity, it was because they heard your voices, your reason, your personal pleas, your compassion, and your respect for what our Founders called “posterity.” Only you now can make members of Congress rise to their “better angels.”

Thank you and God Bless America.

Why didn’t Biden’s speechwriters save this solemn, mass-media-covered occasion from being another exercise in rhetorical futility?

MARK THIS DATE! Authors Double Reading, Sunday, April 24, 2 pm, Little River Inn

Ginny Rorby and I have new novels out. Like Dust I Rise for Ginny and In Common for me. Gallery Bookshop will sponsor a double reading on Sunday, April 24 at 2 pm, at the Little River Inn.

Hope you will save the date and come help us celebrate. There will be cake. 

THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE AMIENS CATHEDRAL

The First World War ravaged the French territory. Many cities were drowned under the bombardments and several monuments were destroyed or threatened. It was the case of the Amiens Cathedral which was protected thanks to an ingenious saving intervention.…

sensesatlas.com/territory/the-consolidation-of-amiens-cathedral/

THE CRAIG REPORT

Spiritual Therapy

Had a superb morning at the Redwood Community Crisis Services on Dora Street in Ukiah. Part of adult crisis support services here is that you get a weekly free therapy session! I’ve discovered that this is wonderful…to spend an hour discussing one’s situation, and all of its ramifications. All of the angst, worry, doubt, fears…the whole bag of hell is opened up, and a feeling of calm results. The fact that a Spiritual reality is at work is validated with the therapist. This is the social service that the homeless really need to be receiving more of.

Craig Louis Stehr

Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

Telephone Messages: c/o Building Bridges>>> (707) 234-3270

PayPal.me/craiglouisstehr

THESE COMPANIES ARE STILL DOING BUSINESS IN RUSSIA

Halliburton, Hyatt, Burger King, Citi, Philip Morris, Pirelli, Bridgestone Tire, Marriott, Hilton, Baker Hughes…

popular.info/p/these-companies-are-still-doing-business