Mendocino County Today: Sunday, March 13, 2022

Between Drops | Stolen Hour | Day 18 | Road Cleanup | Macdonald Book | JDSF Review | Donated Vests | Red Larkspur | Reopening Chambers | Pet Adoptions | RCS Money | Ukiah Farmers | V History | Pomo Painting | Schmitt Family | County Management | Soldiers | Ed Notes | Bomb Shelter | Village Gathering | Saying Gay | Rail to Trail | Yesterday's Catch | Boycott Effects | Mass Extinction | Rules | Madness | NATO | Dear Marilyn | Laptop Harassment | Back Worse | Mendo 1883 | Marco Radio | Mendo 1903 | Farmer Direct | Mendo 1916 | Pacemaking | Back Cat | CA Wolves | Children's Dance

LIGHT SHOWERS will linger today, mainly during the morning north of Cape Mendocino. Another front will bring heavier rains and gusty winds to the region by late Monday, with showers tapering off Tuesday afternoon. (NWS)

WHAT WE KNOW ON DAY 18 OF THE RUSSIAN INVASION

Zelenskiy says ‘Russians cannot conquer us’, seven civilians die trying to flee fighting around Kyiv, and western leaders draw blank in Putin talks 

by Martin Farrer

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy claims Russian forces have neither the strength nor the spirit to conquer Ukraine. In his latest video address on Saturday night, Zelenskiy said: “The Russian invaders cannot conquer us. They do not have such strength … They are holding only on violence.”

Zelenskiy also claimed on Saturday that the Russian army had suffered its biggest losses in decades. He said 31 Russian battalion tactical groups have now been rendered incapable of combat.

Seven civilians have died after coming under Russian fire while trying to flee fighting near Kyiv. Ukraine initially accused Russia of firing at a convoy of civilian evacuees from the village of Peremoha while they were in a designated humanitarian corridor, but later said it was not such a route.

The town of Volnovakha in the Donetsk region of Ukraine has been totally destroyed by Russian bombardment, according to regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko. A local hospital was destroyed, forcing people to gather in the basement as pro-Russian separatists took over the town. 

Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg says Russia may use chemical weapons following its invasion of Ukraine and that such a move would be a war crime. He told a German newspaper that Russia could manipulate false claims of possible western deployment of such weapons as a pretext for its own use of them.

France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, spoke to Russian president Vladimir Putin by phone on Saturday and urged him to order an immediate ceasefire. But a French official said: “We did not detect a willingness on Putin’s part to end the war.”

The Ukrainian ministry of defence says Russia’s generals are uncertain about their “strategic objectives” and have been hindered by fierce resistance from Ukrainian forces. The latest intelligence update says the Russians were regrouping and trying to assess the strength of Ukraine’s defences.

New satellite imagery of Mariupol is showing the widespread damage suffered since Russian forces surrounded the city 12 days ago. More than 1,500 civilians have been killed, and humanitarian aid groups say those remaining have not had access to water or medications in days.

The rate of refugees crossing the Ukrainian border has slowed, but neighbouring countries are still struggling to provide shelter for the estimated 2.6 million who have fled since the Russians invaded last month. About 13,000 refugees were evacuated through humanitarian corridors today.

At least 79 children have been killed and more than 100 have been injured so far in the war, according to Ukrainian officials.

British people who open their homes to Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion will get £350 a month ($456) under a “cash for accommodation” scheme, as ministers try to make amends for the UK’s chaotic response to the crisis.

Ukrainian officials informed the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, that Russia was planning to take “full and permanent” control of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant – an allegation that Russia denies.

People have taken to the streets of cities all over the world to protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including in Berlin, Warsaw, London, New York and Los Angeles.

US president Joe Biden has authorised $200m in weapons and other assistance for Ukraine, the White House has said.

(www.theguardian.com)

MALCOLM MACDONALD: I have a brand new book out, Mendocino History Exposed. Twenty-two tales spanning the history of Mendocino County from the 1820s through World War Two. From the Pomo to 19th century UFOs, through murders and the lawmen who solved them, on to the Tire Baby. You'll find this gem at Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino. Give them a call at 707-937-2665 if you can't drop by in person.

Mendocino History Exposed should be up on their website gallerybookshop.com later this coming week. You don't have to be from this locale to appreciate Mendocino's connection to Moby Dick or the Pig War, let alone the exploits of Eliza Bowman and Anna Morrison Reed. Shootouts, stagecoach holdups (with a twist), an Alfred Hitchcock sighting, and the bloodiest feud of the Old West. Who doesn't love a good feud! You get all that and more in Mendocino History Exposed.

SHERIFF’S OFFICE DONATES BULLETPROOF VESTS TO UKRAINE

The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office this week donated 15 surplus ballistic vests to Ukraine. The older vests will be picked up by the California Office of Emergency Services (CAL-OES) as part of a statewide effort to provide Ukrainian individuals and families with an added layer of safety. The humanitarian effort is focused on residents staying in the Ukraine and those refugees fleeing into surrounding countries. 

Law Enforcement agencies from across the state are coordinating with CAL-OES and the California National Guard to help save lives in this unprovoked war.

VAL MUCHOWSKI: Now blooming in Low Gap Park: Red Larkspur. Also called Canyon Delphinium.

SUPERVISOR MULHEREN on reopening the Board chambers:

March 1 Board meeting Item 3aj) “Adoption of Resolution Finding That State and Local Officials Continue to Recommend Measures to Promote Social Distancing In Connection With Public Meetings Recommended Action: Adopt Resolution finding that State and local officials continue to recommend measures to promote social distancing in connection with public meetings; authorize Chair to sign same.”

Mulheren: Haschak would like to resume meetings in person. CoCo [County Counsel] advises that you would have to continue to have the resolution if you want to have any type of hybrid meeting. CEO advises that renovations to chambers should be complete in March [no date specified] with the possibility of chambers reopening to the public in April [no date specified]. CEO requests that all five members of the Board be present for the first meeting due to security concerns. Item approved, majority would like to see an agenda item on the 15th of March with a presentation on various models of reopening the Chambers that includes policies and Dr Coren attend to discuss safety.”

WE NEGLECTED TO MENTION another large sole-source gift to Ms. Schraeder and her Redwood Community Services outfit at the Supervisors’ March 1 meeting, also on the consent agenda:

Consent Item 3ai) Approval of Agreement with Redwood Community Services, Inc. in the Amount of $719,712.00 to Provide Facilitation of Restorative Youth Justice Court Services for the Period to Commence Upon Approval of Agreement through October 31, 2024 Recommended Action: Approve agreement with Redwood Community Services, Inc. in the amount of $719,712.00 to provide facilitation of Restorative Youth Justice Court Services for the period to commence upon approval of agreement through October 31, 2024; authorize the Chief Probation Officer to sign any future amendments to the agreement that do not increase the contract dollar amount; and authorize Chair to sign same.

(Mark Scaramella)

MEASURE V ENFORCEMENT

Editor:

Good morning. I was just considering your praise for the book “Empire of the Summer Moon,” about Quannah Parker and the Commanches. I could not agree more with your praise of the book. It is an incredible story. I think I’ve read it 2 or 3 times - an epic story!

Anyway, I’ve been very wary of dipping a toe into the calamity of local politics, considering the results of my last endeavor. But Mark Scaramella wrote about Measure V a little while back with the word “betrayal” attached to his analysis. When Ted Williams and I were both with the Albion-Little River Fire Protection District, he as chief, me as Board President, we proposed the prohibiting of leaving Dead Standing trees, within our District boundaries. As President I eventually pulled it as a number of our Board members were very resistant to the idea that a board should exercise such authority, and their commitment to this position was seriously undermining our ability to function as a board with the more ordinary matters of business. 

Of course, Ted and others went on with the concept, and eventually came up with Measure V which became a centerpiece of his successful campaign to be 5th District Supervisor. 

I imagine this piece of local history might be completely irrelevant at this point, but we had favorable legal opinion from then-County Counsel Doug Losak.

I am unsure if sifting through the old record would, at all, be helpful toward moving enforcement of Measure V forward, and may be only an interesting historical artifact. But the public record is certainly available. 

Thank you,

Chris Skyhawk

Fort Bragg

---

Mark Scaramella responds:

At this point in the long-drawn out, sordid history of Measure V, there are three relevant county documents and a board meeting video that are most relevant. 

The documents are: 1. Measure V itself. 2. County Counsel Christian Curtis’s analysis of MRC’s bogus exemption claims which convincingly proves that MRC is not exempt from nuisance rules — an opinion that his own Board, including Williams, has ignored and refused to back, even though they gave Curtis a big raise as if his opinion should carry some weight with them.

And 3. The Board’s February 2020 “directive” to Curtis to draft an “enforcement plan” for Measure V. That directive is still listed as “in process” on the Board’s ever-growing list of unaddressed Board directives.

There’s also the embarrasingly subservient February 2020 Board of Supervisors meeting where the subject was last discussed when Curtis was given his “directive” to prepare an enforcement plan.

Unless Williams or one of his timid colleagues agendizes these items for an update on Measure V, there’s no point in discussing it any further because for now the Board has shown zero interest in their own County Cuounsel’s well-reasoned opinion and no interest in asking him where his draft of the “enforcement plan” is.

If it were up to us — of course it’s not and never will be — the best course of action is to ask MRC directly what they are willing to do voluntarily about the problem in light of Curtis’s analysis. Then if they do nothing or don’t respond by a date certain (30 days) file a formal abatement notice at least on the MRC parcel across from Ms. Terry d’Selkie’s Comptche parcel (as specified in her still pending complaint) and put a lien on that parcel if nothing is done and take it from there. In theory, if MRC refuses to abate the nuisance, the County can seize the parcel and sell it for the cost of paying a third party to do the abatement. (Although we doubt Mr. Curtis will mention this option if he ever develops an enforcement plan.)

Even this modest step by step approach, however, is obviously well beyond the capacity of the five tiny minds that currently sit as Mendocino County Supervisors.

JULES TAVERNIER & THE ELEM

by Mike Geniella

"Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo”: Paintings, baskets, regalia. 9:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Through April 17. $15; $12 for those 65 and older; $6 for students; free children 17 and younger. Free admission for Bay Area residents on Saturdays. De Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, S.F. 415-750-3600. deyoung.famsf.org 

A striking 19th century Jules Tavernier painting at first glance seems focused solely on native Pomo dancers performing before a large group of Elem Colony indigenous people gathered in an underground roundhouse on the eastern shore of Clear Lake. 

Yet the rediscovered 1878 masterwork, now the centerpiece of a special exhibit at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, tells a larger, more dramatic story of a North Coast tribal encounter with an emerging dominant white culture. The Metropolitan Museum of New York is sponsor of the West Coast presentation of a painting that was in France and out of public view for more than a century.

“It is historic because the painting is one of the earliest pieces of California art to capture North Coast native people on canvas,” said Sherrie Smith-Ferri, a Mendocino County resident and recognized national scholar on Pomo people.

Smith-Ferri said, however, as important is the powerful twist in a historical narrative that lurks in the shadows of Tavernier’s painting “Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake”. 

Artist Tavernier depicted the presence of a wealthy San Francisco investor who commissioned the painting, and his noble French banking partner who was given it as a gift upon its completion. 

Curators at the Met acquired the painting at auction in 2016 and researched and documented the importance of the Tavernier painting before presenting it publicly during a retrospective of the French-born artist’s work in New York, and now San Francisco.

The painting documents an encounter in the 1870s between the Elem Indian Colony in Lake County and wealthy white investors who believed native land was theirs to own. The painting was commissioned by San Francisco’s leading banker at the time, Tiburcio Parrott, as a gift for his French business partner Baron Edmond de Rothschild. 

Met curators realized the painting “celebrates the rich vitality of Elem Pomo culture, while also exposing the threat posed by White settlers, including Parrott, who was then operating a toxic mercury mine on the community’s ancestral homelands.”

Parrott’s Sulphur Bank Mine would plunge the Elem Colony into decades of economic and social upheaval, and pollute the eastern end of Clear Lake, the state’s largest freshwater lake. In 1990 the long-closed mine was officially declared a federal “Superfund” cleanup site.

Tavernier’s work “is a beautiful but bittersweet painting,” said Smith-Ferri. It is a large oil painting, measuring 4 x 6 feet, and is a masterful display of Pomo dancers, their regalia and tribal basketry. 

Smith-Ferri, a retired director of Mendocino County’s Grace Hudson Museum, is a key collaborator in the development and presentation of the special Met sponsored exhibit of Tavernier’s work. 

The exhibit “Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo” was first staged at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art last fall. The Met then assisted in bringing the exhibit to the de Young where the painting is being displayed for the first time ever in Northern California. The exhibit is now in its final weeks at the de Young Museum, with a closing scheduled April 17.

The Elem painting is the centerpiece of an exhibit that in all features a collection of 60 Tavernier paintings, prints, watercolors, and photographs, and important examples of Pomo baskets, headdresses, and other regalia. About a dozen Pomo items on display are on loan from the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah, and others are from the Mendocino County Museum in Willits. 

Tavernier was a French born artist who came to prominence in 19th century California where he had studios in San Francisco and Monterey. He later lived and worked in Hawaii, where he did a series of paintings of the Kilauea Volcano and won rave reviews. In 1889 Tavernier died of alcoholism at his studio in Honolulu.

Met curators after recognizing the painting’s historical importance asked Smith-Ferri, a recognized Pomo basketry scholar nationally, to join a special team that included Robert Joseph Geary, an Elem Colony tribal cultural leader and regalia maker, and Eastern Pomo artist and tribal curator Meyo Marrufo to bring a Pomo perspective to its planned Tavernier exhibit.

“Our goal was to show that ‘California native art’ was alive and well and thriving long before non-Native people showed up,” said Smith-Ferri.

As their culture was pushed to the margins, Smith-Ferri said many Pomo artists turned to making baskets and other artifacts for commercial sale to support themselves and their tribes. The works are beautifully done and show native skills, but they lack connection to every day tribal life.

Smith-Ferri said Pomo artists are returning to making baskets and regalia meant to stay within the native community.

“We have come full circle. We were here then, and we are here now. The art survived,” she said.

Smith-Ferri’s collaboration with the Met and the de Young is a highpoint in a distinguished career.

She is a member of Sonoma County’s Dry Creek Rancheria band of Pomo Indians. Her father Bill Smith was the first native studies instructor at Sonoma State and Santa Rosa Junior College. Smith-Ferri earned her doctorate in cultural anthropology from the University of Washington. Besides guiding Ukiah’s Hudson Museum for two decades, Smith-Ferri has consulted on Indian basketry-related exhibitions nationally including several for Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian. She is currently working with the Dry Creek tribe in Sonoma County to create a tribal museum and archives.

Smith-Ferri said the Elem painting captures in exquisite detail the regalia worn by Pomo dancers, musicians, and the Pomo basketry of tribal artists who are portrayed in the underground Clear Lake roundhouse where about 100 people gathered. 

Standing in the shadows are three white men, who are dressed in gray business suits and shown staring passively at the Pomo dancers. 

Smith-Ferri said normally outsiders would not have been permitted inside a tribal roundhouse, especially at a “people’s dance” that originated for “protection” after Pomos had already experienced enslavement, starvation, and disease.

Smith Ferri said Met research documented that the group represented in the painting included financier Tiburcio Parrott y Ochoa, the Mexican American son of American Consul John Parrott, and Baron Edmond de Rothschild of the French branch of the famed banking family, and a Rothschild aide.

Elizabeth Kornhauser, who oversees the American paintings collection at the Met, in 2016 described Tavernier’s work in detail: 

“The artist spent two years creating his masterwork, developing a composition of nearly 100 figures, including the two young Pomo male dancers, who enact a coming-of-age ritual. The dancers are surrounded by the tribe and their white visitors, including Parrott and Rothschild

Thus, Tavernier captures the very moment when the white settlers laid claim to the tribal lands. 

With brilliant technical finesse, he renders the dimly lit interior using highly controlled tonal variation and flashes of color to enliven the scene.

 Upon its completion, Parrott presented the painting to Rothschild, where it remained in his family until its arrival at the Met. 

With the addition of this work, a new narrative is introduced—the ancient presence of the Native American on the land is disrupted by the settlers' belief in their right to ownership of that land.”

Smith-Ferri said for her the Tavernier exhibit underscores how California’s Pomo people and their art not only survived but are enjoying a resurgence. 

Smith-Ferri said on April 2 at the de Young she and other advisors will discuss the Pomo “cultural revitalization” during a public forum. 

“Besides our art, we are seeing significant changes in tribal sovereignty, economic opportunities, and legal frameworks that are critical to the Pomo future,” said Smith-Ferri.

Elem cultural leader Geary told a San Francisco Chronicle art reviewer he believes the current exhibit is a powerful way to underscore how Pomo culture has survived. 

“We’re still here. We’re still dancing. We’re here today. We’re not just something that’s caught in this picture,” Geary told the Chronicle.

Smith-Ferri, Geary and Pomo curator Meyo Marrufo are featured in a short film on a loop at the start of the exhibit. Museum organizers say it provides insight into the ceremony and Pomo art captured by Tavernier in the roundhouse painting: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnUJNcviI0g

WHO RUNS MENDOCINO COUNTY? AN ONLINE EXCHANGE, ANNOTATED

(The following exchange on Mendocino News Plus was prompted by the Editor’s comments on Tiny Houses in Thursday’s Ed Notes. Anna Stockel, despite all the Supervisors’ hand wringing about affordable housing in the County, is being sued by the Board of Supervisors to prevent her from living in her own home (a tiny home in the form of a trailer) on her own property.)

ANNA STOCKEL: “If we eliminated the CEO and assistant CEO and instead hired a CFO we could use the salaries from the eliminated positions to build 18 tiny houses.”

TED WILLIAMS: “Anna, who would manage the departments on a day to day basis? An executive is standard operating model for counties.”

ANNA STOCKEL: “A manager?”

TED WILLIAMS: “Anna, that’s the CEO by another title.”

ANNA STOCKEL: “Is a quarter million dollars a year not including benefits standard pay? And why the heck does she need an assistant?”

MENDOCINO NEWS PLUS: “Which is fine [having a manager] but the CEO should work FOR the BOS, not the other way around? From what I’ve read (mostly AVA) it seems [CEO] Carmel [Angelo] ran the show at her whim & left the Board impotent.”

TED WILLIAMS: “That’s an AVA fiction. She carried out direction of the Board. I’ve talked to her sometimes hourly throughout the day.” [Williams equates talking with one Supervisor, himself, as following direction of the Board.]

ANNA STOCKEL: “The CEO gets $374,406.41/yr including benefits and still needs an assistant?” 

TED WILLIAMS: “Anna, there is an incredible load of work. The salary is low compared to most counties. [A typical data free assertion by Supervisor Williams.] Managers of 1200 employees in private sector earn far more.” [And either produce positive results or they’re soon out of a job.]

ANNA STOCKEL: “I count six people [department heads] plus the Sheriff & Coroner for some reason? [The CEO would love to have authority over the Sheriff, but doesn’t. Which is why she used County Counsel Christian Curtis to set up the Board of Supervisors for an expensive ongoing conflict with the Sheriff. So far the inept Curtis has been in court for six months fighting over whether the Sheriff gets to pick his own attorney (Duncan James) or has to accept one hand picked by Curtis.]

TED WILLIAMS: “Anna, the idea that the Supervisors can run the county directly is nonsensical. [Especially with this Board of Supervisors!] Two Supervisors have no legal authority to direct staff. Three together do, but this requires 72 hour published notice of decision making. [Here Williams is contradicting his earlier assertion that just one Supervisor, himself, talking to the CEO meant she was following Board direction.] An organization the size of the county cannot be run this way. It takes a manager. The manager is typically labeled a CAO or CEO.” 

The CEO and assistant basically work 7 days a week and often late into the evening. [Yes, of course they do, in the same way the lavishly paid and missing in action former Health Officer, Dr. Doohan, worked tirelessly for the people of Mendocino County from poolside at her home in San Diego.] If I were having surgery I’d want a reasonably paid doctor, not one paid below market, lower than any other in the state. [CEO Angelo and her assistant are not the lowest in the state.] Same goes for the executive of a county. We aren’t comparable with neighbors, but I don’t want to be so cheap that our organization fails to perform. The executive does make a difference.” 

ANNA STOCKEL: “In Humboldt, Nilsen, the previous CAO, was the third highest paid county employee in 2019, the most recent year for which data is available through Transparent California. She made $279,063 in salary and benefits, including $196,029 in regular pay. Of the 18 other county administrative officers whose salaries we (Lost Coast Outpost) found listed on Transparent California, Nilsen’s ranked 12th from the top, below the likes of CAOs in Fresno, San Benito and Monterey counties, but above those in Lake, Inyo, Trinity and Glenn. The closest county to Humboldt population-wise on the list is Kings County, whose CAO made a bit more than Nilsen with a base pay of $203,506. And I don’t see a single county where they have an assistant CAO.

GARY R. McCRAY: “[Speaking to Ted.] You are probably right following current standards. But maybe that really is the problem, current standards are not up to current (and future) needs. There definitely seems to be a problem mirrored in corporate society in general where top paying positions get excessive pay scales while acquired and taxed funding often gets wasted, misspent and absorbed into unreported corruption. All of that exists right here in our own teeny, tiny county, in spades. The more time that goes on the less functional and expensive our ‘governance’ becomes. New rules, fewer people and better use of computer and communication technology could actually redirect this counties funds to providing more benefits for the people and less gravy for those who really don’t need it anyway. Just a thought. I know it won’t happen, but you all know that that is the actual problem. That and MIMBY of course.”

* * *

THE LAST COMMENTER summed up Mendo’s current (and future) dilemma. Mendo is firmly wedded to the old outmoded way of doing things. As CEO Carmel Angelo prepares to put Mendo in the rearview mirror she leaves behind a top heavy bureaucracy of overpaid and underqualified “managers” who were hand picked based on personal loyalty to her. The current Board of Supervisors have not met publicly in two years and is widely regarded as the most inept in decades, maybe in history. They hand out lavish raises to the CEO, County Counsel and their cronies. They picked a pointless fight with the Sheriff by intentionally underfunding his budget, then threatening (illegally) to hold him responsible for going over budget. They paid a consultant $75,000 (plus travel) to draft a “Strategic Plan” that is neither strategic, nor is it a plan. They voted to combine the two key financial offices of the county without any explanation of the benefits of doing so nor any plan on how to accomplish it. This last rash action provoked the highly respected Treasurer-Tax Collector Shari Schapmire to resign, saying she couldn’t work with the current Board. Then there’s Cannabis. And Mental Health. And the list goes on. If Angelo has been doing such a bang up job, why did her list of outgoing whereases (signed by Williams) provide not one actual accomplishment but just a series of opinions about how wonderful she is, many of those opinions from organizations and people outside Mendocino County? 

ED NOTES

ONE TALKING HEAD says “Stalingrad” and today all the talking heads are saying Stalingrad as they identically discuss Ukraine. Stalingrad is the city on the Volga in southern Russia where the Russians stopped the Nazi advance with close-up street fighting, bombings of civilians, cluminating in a Russian victory at the estimated cost of two million casualites, total. 

THE UKRANIANS have fought off the Russians going on three weeks now, with the battle for Kiev shaping up as a repeat of the catastrophic original Stalingrad. Do the Russians have the ability and the will to fight a Stalingrad in all the Ukranian cities? 

HERE at Boonville's international affairs desk we predicted that there would be a ceasefire this weekend. Wrong again, Boonville, as military experts now predict this abomination could go on for months. I go back and forth from thinking that NATO should call Putin's nuclear bluff and forthrightly back Ukraine and fearing that the risk is too great. How far can Putin take it? To the limit, it seems, which is no limit.

AS IT IS, NATO countries and US are supplying the amazing Ukranian fighters with the weapons needed to hold the Russians off, a fact which Putin has already said is de facto NATO support for Ukraine, as the fight for Ukraine destabilizes Europe and gnaws at the American economy.

“PUTIN is gambling he can raise the stakes faster than NATO and Ukraine and force a settlement. My sense is that his strategy will only backfire, putting Putin in an even worse position. At that point, there is no telling what Vlad will do next. But you can bank on at least one thing: He will strike back at the West for his failings in Ukraine. What happens when a nuclear-armed dictator with the ability to literally destroy civilization in 30 minutes is backed into a corner he doesn’t see a way out of? Pray to God we don’t have to find out.” — Harry J. Kazianis is the senior director at the Center for the National Interest.

5th DISTRICT SUPERVISOR Ted Williams is a great one for long essays on why something can't be done, in this case his thousand-word treatise on housing while much local housing stock is rented to tourists. Ted says it would take years to formally, legally crack down on absentee landlords. Illegally, families in dire need of housing might consider simply occupying transient housing or simply burning down a couple of them as a warning to the rest of the grasping petit bourgeosie that they're next if they continue to cater to weekenders. But neither strategy is likely to be deployed in the mellow context of Intoxicants County at this juncture in the perfect political entropy achieved by local government.

HERE'S where it's at: In a county of a mere 90,000 people, half of them doomed children coming of age in social chaos, with a small local government, it is, in Williams-think, impossible to create genuinely low-cost housing. 

HAD to laugh at Williams' reference to running housing policy by the County Counsel. O hell yeah. Refer it to the Office of Obfuscation where eight or so legally credentialed ditherers are prepared, 9-5, to screw up any and all public policy for all time.

THE ONLY WAY Mendo will ever enact progressive public policy is if a like-minded slate of candidates captures control of the Supervisors. As it stands, elections are about as intellectually consequential and relevant as they were in the 4th grade, electing people who should never, ever be in positions where they can affect life as it's lived.

WHYTE OWEN: Between AirBnB, Vacasa and Vrbo there are more than 250 unoccupied single family homes available year round for short term rentals in the Gualala and Point Arena zip codes alone. There are no published data on where the owners live, but the owner of the one next door to us, rented constantly by tourists, lives in Seattle.

ELI MADDOCK: Ted Williams really seems to want to tell us what we can’t afford. Both housing and weed permits too. And septic systems are amongst the simplest things to construct save for cost. Tank, pipe and gravel. And a good ditch. Cost driven up by expensive permits and only two county approved contractors who have cornered the market. Add to that I am hearing fewer and fewer new systems are being approved. I’m no scientist but I think putting wastewater back in the dry ground would be a good thing!

CHIEF WAIDELICH of the Ukiah Police Department: “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.”

OUTGOING CEO ANGELO sets the local record for a major Whereas sendoff, but three-term Supervisor McCowen is chased off like a stray dog without a single Whereas. Why? Because the Whereas Queen didn't like him, and the five cringing supervisors wouldn't even give the guy that simple, meaningless “honor” for fear of her.

AV VILLAGE MONTHLY IN-PERSON GATHERING: RESPONDING TO CLIMATE CHANGE 

Sunday, March 13th 3 to 4:30 PM Anderson Valley Senior Center. Refreshments served outside. For many people, those four words trigger a variety of negative emotions: sadness, despair, guilt, anger, fear, hopelessness, apathy, uncertainty, insecurity, confusion. Why would anyone want to spend time exploring or discussing such a topic? Discussing our aches and pains actually sounds more pleasant. However, there are numerous things we can do to respond to climate change and our fears about the future. First and foremost, we need to break the silence. Our fears are invariably diminished when shared. So too, is climate change. Second, we need to take meaningful actions. These range from personal commitments to political engagement. Both require becoming well informed about the causes, likely consequences, and mitigation of climate change. If you are interested in such work, we hope you will join us.

Please RSVP with the coordinator. Thank you!

Anica Williams 
Cell: 707-684-9829 
Email: andersonvalleyvillage@gmail.com

STATE SENATOR MCGUIRE: THE TRAIN IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE TRAIL

On Monday morning at 10:30am, the North Coast Railroad Authority (NCRA) will be holding their final meeting. 

After nearly 30 years of controversy, massive policy setbacks, and straddling bankruptcy for years – the agency that was charged with trying to bring rail back to the North Coast will officially cease operations, per state law passed by Senate Majority Leader Mike McGuire. 

And, at 11:30am on Monday, the Great Redwood Trail Agency will spring to life! This new agency, created by SB 69, will take over the rail corridor and is charged with advancing the Master Plan later this fall and building the Great Redwood Trail on top of the current rail bed. When fully built, the Great Redwood Trail will run from the San Francisco Bay to Humboldt Bay, becoming the longest rail trail in America. Senator McGuire will be speaking to kick off their first meeting.

“The Great Redwood Trail will be a game changer for the North Coast. Over 25,000 miles of former freight rail line have been transitioned to trails over the past 30 years throughout America and we couldn’t be more excited to move the Great Redwood Trail forward here in Northern California,” said Senator Mike McGuire, the author of the legislative and budget items that created the new agency. “The Great Redwood Trail will be a world class destination for hikers, cyclists and nature lovers here at home and from across the globe. Stretching from San Francisco Bay to Humboldt Bay, the Trail will encompass 300 miles of the most beautiful landscapes on the planet. Monday will be a historic day for our region and we can’t wait to say goodbye to the dysfunctional North Coast Rail Authority and say hello to the Great Redwood Trail!”

The Trail will serve not only as a recreational, social, and exercise path, but will quickly become an economic driver for the North Coast communities it runs through. Outdoor recreation was a $93 billion dollar industry in this state before COVID, and the revenue has been steadily climbing to return to that level.

The meetings will be held via Zoom and can be accessed here:

NCRA’s final meeting:

Date and time: Monday, March 14 at 10:30am

Zoom Meeting ID: 825 2940 1844

Passcode: 808342

CATCH OF THE DAY, March 12, 2022

GEORGIE BRITTON-HOAGLIN, Covelo. County parole violation, resisting.

AMBER FRENCH, Ukiah. Under influence.

DAVID GARZA, Medford, Oregon/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

THOMAS JENKINS, Bridgeville (Humboldt County)/Ukiah. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent, suspended license for reckless driving.

LUIS LUVIANO-OLIVARES, Windsor/Ukiah. DUI, suspended license.

PATRICIA MOORE, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. County parole violation.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

SILAS YOUNG, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation.

FACING TOTAL ISOLATION

by Anna Aslanyan

Spreading ‘false’ information about Russia’s military, according to a law passed by the Kremlin last week, can put you in prison for fifteen years. For taking part in an unauthorised protest, you are likely to get fifteen days the first time; repeat offenders face up to five years behind bars. Many of the Russians taking to the streets in protest against the invasion of Ukraine have risked their freedom before. A decade ago, thousands were arrested at large-scale anti-government demonstrations. Some got two weeks; others, two years.

Are these people now to be punished by the West for having failed to subvert Vladimir Putin’s regime? It’s hard not to ask this question when you hear calls to boycott Russian culture en masse. In the UK, before the new ‘oligarch taskforce’ introduced long overdue economic sanctions, the government announced that ‘across sport, the arts and entertainment, we are ostracising Putin on the global stage’. Cutting ties with pro-Putin artists is a gesture of genuine support for Ukraine. But suggesting that ‘no republication of Dostoevsky should see the light of day’?

‘The situation is really wild, cruel and absurd,’ Ilya Leutin, a young filmmaker and writer, told me, speaking from a small town in Russia. Those of his friends who haven’t already left the country are regularly detained by the police for taking part in anti-war protests. One of them, Lida Kanashova, a screenwriter, goes out daily on her own with a placard saying ‘Let’s stop the war together’. ‘Some passers-by shout at her, “fascist scum”, some offer words of support, some just stop for a chat,’ Leutin said. ‘She talks to police every day. I think she is a real hero.’

On learning about his British publisher’s decision to postpone his short story collection (‘it’s not a good time to be publishing Russian books’), Leutin wrote back: ‘Russia deserves this isolation.’ I asked him to clarify. ‘I believe,’ he said, ‘that the events in Ukraine will make us, millennials and zoomers, feel ourselves inside the evil empire.’ He is currently making a feature film based on the stories of teenagers persecuted by the FSB for their social media activities. The movie has no chance of being released in Russia, and any hopes of showing it abroad appear to have been dashed too. ‘I can probably just watch it myself in my bedroom,’ Leutin said. ‘Anyway, it’s much better than watching bombs outside, like my Ukrainian relatives and friends do.’

Some independent media have been closed down entirely in Russia; others have suspended their websites and removed some of the content. Book publishing is still holding out. Petr Favorov, an editor at Alpina Nonfiction in Moscow, whose authors include Mary Beard, Steven Pinker and Carl Sagan, told me they intend to carry on as before: ‘We are certainly not going to stop translating English books.’ So far there have been no indications that their Western colleagues might pull out of any agreements, though Favorov wouldn’t be surprised if some followed the example of McDonald’s. ‘If cultural links were severed,’ he said, ‘that would be pure madness.’ And if people who didn’t respond with boycotts to the conflicts in Iraq, Palestine or Yemen were to change tack now, that would be ‘hypocritical madness, or perhaps mad hypocrisy’.

Ilya Kalinin, a cultural historian from St Petersburg and the editor of Versus, a liberal arts and humanities journal, talked to me about the effects of the war on the peoples of both Ukraine and Russia. ‘It’s precisely the part of society that has always been critical of the regime,’ he said, ‘that is facing total isolation, both internally and globally. The bitter irony about the consequences of such a boycott is that they will be in accord with the wishes of the very regime supposedly targeted by it.’

Cultural and academic contacts, Kalinin stressed, are key to understanding between nations. There are a lot of things the world is desperate to understand about Russia right now. Why did they invade Ukraine? Do they know what they want? Will they nuke us? A blanket ban on Russian culture won’t bring much light. It’s chilling to think that the only literature worth smuggling out of Russia might soon be samizdat; even worse to imagine a world with no Russian literature at all.

RULES FOR SONS:

1. Never shake a man’s hand sitting down.

2. Don’t enter a pool by the stairs.

3. The man at the BBQ Grill is the closest thing to a king.

4. In a negotiation, never make the first offer.

5. Request the late check-out.

6. When entrusted with a secret, keep it.

7. Hold your heroes to a higher standard.

8. Return a borrowed car with a full tank of gas.

9. Play with passion or not at all…

10. When shaking hands, grip firmly and look them in the eye.

11. Don’t let a wishbone grow where a backbone should be.

12. If you need music on the beach, you’re missing the point.

13. Carry two handkerchiefs. The one in your back pocket is for you. The one in your breast pocket is for her.

14. You marry the girl, you marry her family.

15. Be like a duck. Remain calm on the surface and paddle like crazy underneath.

16. Experience the serenity of traveling alone.

17. Never be afraid to ask out the best looking girl in the room.

18. Never turn down a breath mint.

19. A sport coat is worth 1000 words.

20. Try writing your own eulogy. Never stop revising.

21. Thank a veteran. Then make it up to him.

22. Eat lunch with the new kid.

23. After writing an angry email, read it carefully. Then delete it.

24. Ask your mom to play. She won’t let you win. 

25. Manners maketh the man.

26. Give credit. Take the blame.

27. Stand up to Bullies. Protect those bullied.

28. Write down your dreams.

29. Always protect your siblings (and teammates).

30. Be confident and humble at the same time.

31. Call and visit your parents often. They miss you.

32. The healthiest relationships are those where you’re a team; where you respect, protect, and stand up for each other.

THE WOLF & THE BEAR

by Ted Dace

Imagine a world without NATO. Imagine a world where Russia and Ukraine are friends. In a world without NATO, the idea that Russia would bomb and occupy its neighbor is just some crazy fantasy. In a world without NATO, Europe is at peace, and every country belongs to the same continent-wide security alliance, just as Mikhail Gorbachev proposed more than 30 years ago. 

Even with NATO, Europe would be at peace if Washington's European military arm had simply accepted Russia’s application for membership in 2000. In this case NATO itself would be the formal basis of a united and peaceful Europe. But that’s not what NATO wants. 

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was established in 1949 ostensibly to counter the Soviet military threat. The Soviet Union had taken Eastern Europe, including East Germany, as a result of defeating the Nazis in 1945. At no time did Josef Stalin or any of his Soviet successors show any intention of seizing any more territory in Europe. The idea that NATO was a defensive organization was put to rest after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Instead of folding, NATO soon began expanding eastward, gobbling up the countries that had once been allied with the Soviets. 

George Kennan, architect of the US policy of Soviet “containment,” said that NATO expansion "would be the most fateful error in American policy in the entire post-Cold War era" as it would "impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking." Since the 90s when Boris Yeltsin was the first president of Russia, Moscow has consistently and forcefully stated that Ukrainian membership in NATO is unacceptable. Yeltsin's successor Vladimir Putin has been absolutely clear that a NATO -aligned Ukraine is the “red line” that would provoke a Russian response. 

Yet Washington, starting in December 2017 under President Trump, has been arming Ukraine to the teeth. As a result, by December of last year Putin considered Ukraine a de facto member of NATO. The effort to turn Ukraine into a militarized anti-Russian state, which began in 2014 with the State Department-sponsored overthrow of Ukraine's Russia-leaning elected government, is no different than the CIA operation, beginning in the summer of 1979, to arm the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan in order to trigger a Soviet invasion, which took place in December of that year. 

By training Ukrainian troops and arming them with anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons, even conducting practice bombing runs a mere 13 miles from the Russian border, NATO deliberately crossed Putin's red line, goading the Russian bear into an attack that would then justify economic counterattack and increased flow of arms into Ukraine, turning it into a European version of Afghanistan. In short, the US is once again destroying a country in the course of punishing the great bear of the East.

But why does the US consider Russia its enemy? To understand this, we must go back to March of 1992, only months after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when a Pentagon planning document was leaked to the New York Times. Known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine, named after then Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the authors of the document stated that the US, now the world's only superpower, would act unilaterally to prevent any regional power from threatening its economic and military dominance. The Defense Department, in other words, had become the Offense Department. With China still decades away from economic might, the only threat to US global power was Russia, inheritor of most of the territory of the former Soviet Union. Like a football team on a roll, NATO would drive past the 50 yard line as deep as it could go. 

Putin is a threat according to the Wolfowitz Doctrine because he not only reoriented Russian economic policy to favor domestic interests over Western investors but openly supported and traded with Iran, dared to criticize US military attacks against Iraq and Libya and even got in the way of the US plan for regime change in Syria. Worst of all is the prospect of Russia serving as the conduit of a new economic alliance stretching from Germany to China, an alliance that would severely erode US global dominance. This threat was represented most clearly by the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would have delivered Russian natural gas directly to Germany. If the now cancelled pipeline is a field goal, a touchdown would be economic sanctions wearing down the Russian people to the point that they rise up and send Putin packing.

Yes, Putin lit the match, but it was NATO that poured the gasoline. The butcher of Chechnya is guilty as hell, but US and NATO leaders knew exactly what this guy is capable of and baited him into doing it anyway. Maybe instead of fixating on the mote in our brother's eye, we ought to remove the plank from our own. 

LIBS PLAY ROUGH: The Delaware computer repair shop owner who alerted feds of incriminating emails, text messages, photos and financial documents on Hunter Biden's laptop in 2020 says he's faced harassment from the IRS and the government ever since, and now faces bankruptcy. “I was getting a lot of death threats,” John Paul Mac Isaac, owner of The Mac Shop in Wilmington, told The New York Post Saturday. The paper broke the story of the contents of the laptop in October 2020, which came into Mac Isaac's possession after an “inebriated” Biden brought it in for repairs in April 2019 and never picked it back up, the 45-year-old store owner says. Files found in Biden's personal computer included emails showing shady business dealings by the current US president's son with foreign officials, and texts that showed him repeatedly using the “N-word” and accidentally overpaying a prostitute $25,000 from an account linked to his dad. It also uncovered a 2015 effort by Biden to set up a meeting between Vadym Pozharskyi, an advisor at a Ukrainian energy firm, and then-vice President Joe Biden, and other instances of Biden looking to cash in on his family connections. After the Post broke the story of the laptop's contents, Mac said the in-person threats got so bad, that he had to enlist local police to provide him with round-the-clock protection. “There were multiple situations where people came in and you could tell they were not there to have a computer fixed,” Mac Isaac said. “If there were not other people in the shop, I don't know what would have happened,” he told The Post. “I was having vegetables, eggs, dog s-t thrown at the shop every morning. I had to have a Wilmington trooper parked in front of my shop all the time,” he revealed to the paper. 

— Daily Mail

BUILDING BACK WORSE

Editor: 

Build Back Better. Does anyone truly believe that? Gas prices are over $5 a gallon and on their way to $7-plus. Food prices have become an obscene joke — just look at the discount prices at Costco. Unless you are an American passport holder the southern border is only a line on a map. Joe Biden’s stern warning to Vladimir Putin has sure made it better for Ukrainians or, wait, was that Iranians? Old Joe’s just a little confused about who Putin is burning alive. But he is going to hold somebody accountable.

Frank Sanderson

Willits

MEMO OF THE AIR: Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga.

"This morning a bird woke me up. It was a lark, or a peacock; something like that. So I said hello. And it vanished, flew away, the very moment I said hello! It was quite mysterious. So do you know what I did? I went to my mirror and brushed my hair two hundred times, without stopping. And as I was brushing it, my hair turned mauve. No, honestly! Mauve! Then red. Then some sort of a deep blue when the sun hit it… I'm sixteen years old, and every day something happens to me. I don't know what to make of it! When I get up in the morning and get dressed, I can tell something's different. I like to touch my eyelids, because they're never quite the same. Oh, oh, oh! I hug myself till my arms turn blue, then I close my eyes and cry and cry till the tears come down and I can taste them. I love to taste my tears. I am special. I am special! Please, God, please don't let me be normal!" –Luisa, in The Fanasticks

Here's the recording of last night's (2022-03-11) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA): https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0479

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 at 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 will read it on the radio this coming Friday night.

For some reason, I spent three hours editing the recording of last night's show to try to make it sound better. I don't do that, but I did it; I took out all the places where I or a caller stuttered or repeated ourselves, and removed whole chunks of where I clearly sounded like I was saying something I did not mean to say. It's so different when you're hearing it from when you're saying it; how can people ever even communicate? I edited out long sections of dead air and places where I interrupted and was stomping all over the caller... I just tried by digital artifice to make it sound like we're all smarter and like I knew what I was doing, you know? (Also I removed about twenty /you knows/ or /ums/.) And the whole time I was thinking: This is wrong, to do this. It's only radio; it's what it is, it was done when it was over. Stop this compulsive egotistical scab-picking and touching-up. But I did not stop. And I put off saving the file because it's enormous, it's an eight-hour-long WAV file and it takes like five minutes to save it. So of course eventually my editing program seized up and wouldn't recover and I lost all the modifications, and I didn't even say a swear word about it; honestly, I was relieved. On one hand, there goes three hours of tedious work for nothing. But on the other hand, it taught me a lesson. And you get the whole goulash, the original un-messed-with show, see above.

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:

Let it go.

https://boingboing.net/2022/03/07/watch-little-girl-in-ukrainian-shelter-sing-let-it-go.html

Opus 3 – It's a Fine Day. This girl has the most perfectly-shaped skull I've ever seen. She's like a CGI character.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM8iDJw39QA

Princess Octopockle. (via WeirdUniverse)

https://twitter.com/factoryyouth_/status/1496558853701390340

And the first commercial drum machine. The musicians' union tried to have it banned. (If you don't care to know how it works and you just want to hear it play, skip ahead to 6:50.)

https://theawesomer.com/the-first-drum-machine/659819/

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

(POT) FARMER DIRECT

Editor,

Congratulations to MendocinoCannabis.Shop’s “Farmer Direct". 

A farmer-owned business model was always the answer. Flow Kana was never the answer.

A farmer-owned business model is the only fair deal.

A supply chain that is owned and operated by farmers captures the 90% return of the retail price that would have otherwise gone to outside Wall Street predators like Jason Adler, the true owner of Flow Kana.

https://www.mendocinocannabis.shop/home

MendocinoCannabis.Shop’s “Farmer Direct" includes 20 Mendocino-based, small legacy cannabis farmers who were selected from Mendocino Cannabis Alliance (MCA) members. Participants include: 

• Arcanna Flowers 
• Esensia 
• Flying Tiger Farm 
• Greenshock Farms 
• HappyDay Farms 
• Laughing Farm 
• Lost Paradise Organics 
• Martyjuana 
• Mendocino Natural Farms 
• North Fork Garden Society 
• Pacific Cultivation 
• Perrin Family Farm 
• Radicle Herbs 
• Redwood Remedies 
• Silver Dragon Cannabis 
• Sun Roots Farm 
• Tall Tree Society 
• That Good Good Farm 
• The Bohemian Chemist 
• WildLand Cannabis

THE MELTDOWN THAT THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT IN FREEDOM & DEMOCRACY HAS BECOME

Warmest spiritual greetings, At this moment I am at the Building Bridges homeless shelter in Ukiah, California. The pacemaker put in by Adventist Hospital is helpful in guaranteeing that the heart works efficiently. I've met with several adult crisis agencies, and have put in housing applications, and even receive a weekly therapy session (which is supportive, uplifting, and appreciated). 

I need to locate others who spiritually identify with the fact that our eternal spiritual identity is "prior to consciousness". I need to locate others who have realized that we are not these bodies nor these minds. I need to find others who know that it is the Divine Absolute, which is prior to consciousness, that utilizes these bodies and minds for its higher will. 

I am asking for cooperation to move out of the Building Bridges homeless shelter in Ukiah, California. The staff telephone number is: (707) 234-3270. My email address is: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com. I am accepting money at: PayPal.me/craiglouisstehr. Amidst the worsening chaos of America's floundering national social experiment, I need to get hooked up with others for peace & justice activism. At 72 years of age, with the past 50 engaged in frontline activism which includes 23 years with Catholic Worker, radical environmentalism with Earth First!, Beyond Extreme Energy, and others, and 15 times being in Washington, D.C. which includes participating at D.C. Occupy, plus writing about all of this, publishing everything, and so on and so forth, it is a mistake for me to be idle now. 

Please do something. Thank you.

Craig Louis Stehr

ANDY CAFFREY: Well, I just got my first pair of new glasses in ten years. Went with the biggest lenses I could get. As a visual guy, my metal-rimmed glasses were like looking through tubes. I want a less-obstructed view.

And my cat Ash has a new pleaseure. if he's on a chair as I walk by, or sitting on his scratching post, he'll jump at my back like a flying squirrel and clutch onto my sweater with his claws, then climb up to my shoulders! Fortunately, my shoulder hangs a little out from my back, so I don't get clawed too bad. He has also elaborated on this practice. Whenever I bend over, he'll jump onto my back and then just make himself at home, sitting upright until he gets interested in something else and jumps off. I haven't figured out yet how to get him off without getting majorly clawed. He's done this like ten times now, in the last week or so.

WOLVES RETURNED TO CALIFORNIA. So Did ‘Crazy’ Rumors.

Kent Laudon, a wolf biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, woke up one morning last year to a flurry of text messages from a rancher in the state’s northernmost county. He was asking about a post with wildly specific details spreading across Facebook that urged people to find a red truck that was transporting breeding wolves along Route 97 into Siskiyou County, Calif. Mr. Laudon was not surprised. This wasn’t the first post of its kind, and it wouldn’t be the last.

“Wolves make people crazy,” he said of these persistent rumors. “And for the record: No, we’re not importing wolves. That never happened.”

Wolves don’t need to be dropped off in California because they are returning on their own. The last of the state’s original wild wolves was killed by a hunter in Lassen County in Northern California in 1924. Since 2011, a series of roving canids have come and gone. Now it seems that in the state’s far-north counties, families of wolves are there to stay, with a relatively stable population of about 20 wolves. That number may fluctuate once spring begins and new pups emerge from their dens, but California can probably expect to have wolves calling the state home for years to come.…

nytimes.com/2022/03/11/science/california-wolves-misinformation.html