Mendocino County Today: Friday, April 1, 2022

Sun | Rainfall Totals | 5 New Cases/1 Death | Covid Monthly | School Testing | High Water | Sandbar Breached | Horse Team | Ukraine Updates | Tiny-Home Ordinance | Hansen's Field | POW Labor | Distracted | Burn Permits | Lumber Ships | Garden Starts | Hidden Mountain | Ed Notes | Timber Outlaws | Low Gap Whiskey | Adult Classes | Company Store | Beer Trail | Yesterday's Catch | Eyebrows | Log Train | Organized Farmworkers | Cliff House | Family Tragedy | Putin Puppets | Regime Change | Libya Flag | KZYX Gig | No Hate | O Malcontents | Hedges Interview

LOCALIZED MARINE LAYER CLOUDS will be found around coastal Humboldt the next couple mornings, otherwise high pressure will bring mainly clear and dry weather to northwest California through Sunday afternoon. Frosty mornings for some interior valleys will give way to unseasonably warm afternoons today and Saturday. The next shot of rain will arrive Sunday night into Monday. (NWS)

RAINFALL TOTALS, monthly figures for the 2021-22 rain season (Oct-Oct) thus far:

5 NEW COVID CASES and another death reported in Mendocino County yesterday afternoon.

COVID MONTHLY CASES/DEATHS (Mendocino County)

2020
229 / 9 (Jul)
392 / 8 (Aug)
260 / 2 (Sep)
210 / 2 (Oct)
420 / 2 (Nov)
964 / 4 (Dec)

2021
876 / 11 (Jan)
382 / 5 (Feb)
131 / 3 (Mar)
82 / 2 (Apr)
194 / 1 (May)
164 / 1 (Jun)
323 / 2 (Jul)
1365 / 12 (Aug)
1107 / 20 (Sep)
519 / 5 (Oct)
518 / 10 (Nov)
400 / 6 (Dec)

2022
3429 / 12 (Jan)
793 / 6 (Feb)
202 / 3 (Mar)

BOONVILLE SCHOOL SUPE SIMSON reports, "We had a positive pool at each site from Wednesday's testing. Affected staff have been notified. Nurses will be in tomorrow for rapid testing."

NAVARRO RIVER SANDBAR BREACHED

The Navarro River mouth sandbar at Navarro Beach is breaching as I write this. When I first checked a little after 5 PM there were a group of kids on the beach digging on a shallow trench across the sandbar using their hands and driftwood. They soon left and I thought their little 2 ft. wide channel would soon close up.

Near the beginning of Hwy.128 at the 0.18 mile marker the water was a few inches higher than it was 48 hours earlier, when the water had reached the unpaved shoulder at the lowest spot. Today it had reached the edge of the asphalt pavement.

The Navarro Beach access road was still closed and barricaded due to flooding for the past 2-3 weeks. There were two large passenger vans parked there from a school in the Sacramento Valley. The kids I had seen on the beach were just getting back and loading into the vans. I spoke to the driver/chaperone who said the early teen kids had found an existing shallow ditch across the sandbar and decided to help it along just for fun. They were then told by an adult who showed up that doing so was illegal due to wildlife laws, and they stopped digging.

Returning to a lookout spot on the Navarro Grade I saw that the ditch was flowing fast and getting a little wider. I took some photos and videos to document it. I returned home, but decided to check once more just before dark, arriving at 8 PM, 20 min. after sunset. By then there was a raging torrent through the bar, and it was apparently several feet wider and deeper than when last seen. There was no visible drop in the water level yet. However, I expect the channel to be fully developed overnight and the estuary water level should be several feet lower by Friday morning.

There is no chance of Hwy. 128 flooding in the near future on account of the sandbar damming the river mouth. Ironically, I saw signs of a natural breach developing a bit further north of Pinnacle Rock, where water was flowing through the sand below the surface, emerging on the ocean side just above the surf line. So the bar would have breached naturally in another day or two if left alone. Because of the lack of rain and low river flow, the new channel will probably close up in a few days, and the cycle will start again.

I'll try to post some photos and video on Facebook later this evening, and plan to check it again in the morning.

— Nicholas Wilson

UKRAINE OVERNIGHT, assembled from the Washington Post:

European leaders on Thursday rejected Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demand that “unfriendly countries” pay for natural gas in rubles, an apparent bid to help stabilize the Russian currency amid sanctions over the war in Ukraine.

The once-plummeting ruble is already rebounding, buoyed in part by oil and gas exports — despite Western countries’ moves to halt or reduce their use of Russian energy. President Biden on Thursday announced an unprecedented release of 1 million barrels of oil a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, an effort to curb rising gas prices, for which Biden has blamed Putin.

Meanwhile, Britain, France, Germany, the Czech Republic and others have balked at Putin’s new decree on gas purchases, set to take effect Friday. Leaders of the Group of Seven major economies agreed earlier this week that they would defy Moscow and continue paying in euros or dollars.

Officials and aid workers say they are preparing to evacuate more civilians from the port city of Mariupol on Friday.

Ukrainian and Russian negotiators are set to resume talks online Friday, head Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia said.

The Russian general some call the “Butcher of Mariupol” earned a reputation for brutality in Syria.

A Ukrainian official said Russian soldiers are withdrawing from the “main part” of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant site.

PUBLIC HEARING ON TINY HOMES ORDINANCE

A public hearing before the Fort Bragg City Council will be held on April 11, 2022 at 6PM at Town Hall and via Zoom to consider introducing a Tiny Homes ordinance. To read the public hearing notice, click this link: 04-11-2022 Tiny Homes Ordinance 980-2022

MENDOCINO COUNTY'S FIRST ‘ALIENS’ & POWS 

by Katy Tahja

If readers were ever curious about how WWII effected Mendocino citizens, here’s one answer. While many people are familiar with the internment camps for people of Japanese ancestry that the government established during World War II, few folks realize this was not the only group incarcerated in California. Residents of Mendocino County born in Germany or Italy were considered “enemy aliens.” Then prisoner-of-war (POW) camps were established all over Northern California.

People of Japanese descent were considered threats to security on the west coast and these folks were forced into internment camps. When the government looked at the sheer number of Italian and German Americans, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, they realized they couldn't incarcerate them, but they could watch them closely. A Mendocino City family’s travails is shared later in this story.

Why did California end up with POW camps for German and Italian servicemen captured in the war? England and France were war zones and did not have the time, space, or energy to develop and sustain camps. Meanwhile the USA had wide open spaces and a need for workers, since young men had been drafted into the military. The USA help the worldwide war effort by accepting POWs.

Consider this problem. Let's say you were a German sailor on a freighter pulling into San Francisco Bay after the USA entered World War II. You, and your ship, were under arrest. The USA was not going to let you go back home and become a military man, or let your ship become involved in the enemy's Navy. These enemy aliens went to POW camps. They were joined by 175,000 military prisoners from Europe that Great Britain sent West on Liberty ships.

What does a nation do with these thousands of men who didn't speak English but had strong backs? Put them to work! Got a cotton field that needs picking and is owned by a German who has US citizenship? Send German POWs. Got a Vineyard that needs grapes picked and it's owned by an Italian American? Send Italian POWs.

Over 65 POW camps were established in California. Large camps sent smaller crews with guards to dozens of locations. German and Italian groups were never mixed — the camp had one ethnicity. Among the work the prisoners did was logging, agriculture, field work, canning, fish processing, clothing manufacturing, work in arms and ammunitions factories, and building transportation vehicles for land, sea, and air. They were paid 80 cents a day, a comparable wage for a civilian day laborer at that time

In San Francisco Bay Angel Island had been an immigration center, and during the war, processed and dispersed POWs. If a prisoner had medical experience and training, he was placed in a military hospital to work with staff there. Other POWs might be doing housekeeping or landscaping at the same location.

It was a rule that detainees were decently housed and fed the equivalent of meals served American servicemen. They did their own cooking and baking. Italian prisoner groups got more pasta, and Germans received more potatoes. Detainees had canteens or they could spend script they had earned. Religious services were available, as were classes to learn to speak English.

Around Northern California, POWs worked in almond grows in Arbuckle, in Auburn during Civilian Conservation Corps projects, and in Tule Lake cleaning irrigation canals for farmers. In the Central Valley there were 4,100 Germans at Yuba City and Beale Air Force Base, and 2,400 at Fort Ord near Monterey. Crews works on Highway construction, but most work was agricultural.

Just over the state border in Malheur County, Oregon, for example, POWs in two camps were responsible for seven farms — 7,500 acres of potatoes, 3,500 acres of onions, and 3,000 acres of lettuce between 1944 and 1946. They also worked in sugar beet fields.

In Camp Flint near Auburn the local Italian community brought POWs cookies and cake. At Tagus Ranch in Tulare County prisoners were allowed dogs, cats, and doves as pets. Friendships and romance between prisoners and the public had some detainees returning to the US to establish citizenship after the war.

The war ended and the prisoners were returned to Europe on the same ships that were bringing servicemen home. Sixty-five camps for POWs closed down in California.

Now, for the local connection. 

Once World War II started, any resident from a country we were fighting was immediately under suspicion. Not every immigrant had taken the time to obtain citizenship. The Piccolotti family, who ranched on Big River, outside of Mendocino City, faced many problems.

Italian natives Pete and Rosa Piccolotti migrated to Fort Bragg, married, and had eight kids. In 1942 three brothers went into military service and the family moved to Big River. Meanwhile the parents were declared enemy aliens and for national security were not allowed to travel west of Highway One. Their post office and bank were in Mendocino City, and they couldn't go there. Friends did errands in town for them and the Mendosa family delivered produce to Fort Bragg for them.

During the war, two Piccolotti brothers died from non-combat health issues. In 1948 Pete and Rosa started studying for all the hard questions a judge might ask during citizenship proceedings. They were sponsored for US citizenship by Joe Mendoza and Ernest Madera.

When big day came, the Piccolotti family and friends drove to Ukiah, and when the judge interviewed them he asked if their sons served in the military? “Yes! Four of them,” the proud parents replied. That was all the judge needed to hear, no questioning needed. He said, “You are citizens.” A happy ending.

To learn more about this time of California history, read “American Prisoner of War Camps in Northern California,” by Kathy Kirkpatrick, or “Piccolottis, My Life on the Ranch by Big River,” by Alice Piccolotti Ivec. The last title can be read at the Kelley House Museum

BURN PERMITS REQUIRED EFFECTIVE 12:01AM APRIL 4, 2022

Mendocino County, CA - Beginning on Monday, April 4, 2022, at 12:01 a.m. the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) Mendocino Unit will require dooryard/residential burn permits for residential burning within Mendocino County.

Burn Permits are available online:

• CAL FIRE: https://burnpermits.fire.ca.gov

Property Owners can access this website to obtain a burn permit, free of charge, by watching a short educational video and submitting an application. Permits must be printed, signed, and on hand while burning. The process provides the necessary information needed to conduct the burn safely, while minimizing the chance for fire escape. Permits are valid for the calendar year in which they are issued and must be reissued annually on or after January 1st of each year.

• Mendocino County Air Management District: http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/aqm/burninginformation.html

Burn Permits can still be obtained at the CAL FIRE Mendocino Unit Howard Forest Headquarters in Willits, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, or at your local CAL FIRE Station. Not all CAL FIRE stations are staffed seven days a week: please call before traveling to your nearest station to assure staff will be available to assist you.

IMPORTANT: Calfire Burn Permits are only for residents who live in the State Responsibility Area (SRA), or where CAL FIRE has jurisdictional authority. It is the responsibility of the landowner to check with local agencies to determine any additional permits that might be required and if there are any additional burning restrictions for their area. 

You must have possession of a signed permit while you are conducting a burn. If you lose your permit or it expires you will need to obtain another permit before you start burning. 

Before you burn, call Mendocino County Air Management District at (707) 463-4391 to confirm that you have all the required burn permits and to ensure it is a permissive burn day. Burning can only be done on permissive burn days and is prohibited on none burn day CAL FIRE Mendocino Unit reminds everyone that it is their individual responsibility to use fire safely and to prevent fires. Anyone with questions is urged to contact the Mendocino CAL FIRE Howard Forest Headquarters at (707) 459-7414, or their nearest CAL FIRE Station. 

GARDEN STARTS!

Next week I plan to post a list of plant ‘extras’ I’ll have available for anyone who failed to contact me and still has interest in local organically-grown starts for their garden. Some folks apologized for not contacting me early enough to pre-order so I did plant extras of some things.

This week I began planting starts that takes less time, such as squashes and cucumbers. If anyone wants zucchini, spaghetti squash, or cucumber starts they should contact me soon while there’s time for me to have them ready before the end of April.

Geoffrey Pomeroy

Natural Products of Boonville

geoffrey@naturalproductsofboonville.com

THE WOMEN OF THE HOG FARM [Laytonville] 

Hidden Mountain was invited to a meeting of the Hog Farm’s ‘First Church of Fun’ around 1977, where she was initiated by the Fallen-Arch Bishop and the Altered Boy; it turned out to be just her kind of a celebration. She subsequently jumped on the bus, and her first bus trip with the Hog Farmers was to the start of The Longest Walk, an action in support of Native American treaty rights. She raised Navajo Churro sheep at Black Oak Ranch for many years and hosted visiting Navajo and Hopi elders during those years. She and Goose helped start a rug project with the elder Navajo ladies to help them sell their weavings at a more equitable price than they could get from the reservation trading posts.

Hidden Mountain is a nurse practitioner and a midwife and filled in at the Hog Farm in that role. She is a great cook and served as the backstage caterer at the Hog Farm Pignic. She is also the business manager for the Black Oak Ranch event facilities, making sure the ranch can continue to host wonderful events every summer. HM directed the Family Nurse Practitioner program at Holy Names University in Oakland for many years. She got a Ph.D. in nursing from UCSF in the 90s, studying the impact of historic psychedelic experiences on the lives and values of people who had reached middle age. The Hog Farm showed up to her graduation wearing pins stating, "Yes, Mom took acid,” which was the name of her dissertation. She is now an Adjunct Professor in the Integral and Transpersonal Psychology Ph.D. program at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). She is also associated with the new UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics and with the Center for Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy and Research at CIIS, where the plan is to educate professionals and the public about the ways that psychedelics can and have benefited peoples' lives and health.

ED NOTES

MY NEIGHBOR here in central Boonville is Ricardo Suarez. He owns and operates the Redwood Drive-in, putting in long hours week in and week out. He told me about his encounter with the woman who recently tried to pay for gasoline with a fake twenty. Ricardo spotted it as a fake and kept it, taking two more counterfeit Jacksons from the loudly complaining scammer who inisted that the bills were good. During the argument about the fakes, the faker identified herself as Baylie Blunt, Blunt as in marijuana blunt. “I told her if she would wait for a deputy to get here and he says the bill is good, she could have all three back,” Ricardo told me, At the mention of the cops, the woman bolted from the store back to her GMC and drove off south. A man was in the vehicle with her and, Ricardo said, there was no front license plate.

DANNY PARDINI, EDDIE SLOTTE and I took a close look at the bills, concluding they definitely would have fooled us. Ricardo said he'd been burned before by a couple of fake hundreds (ouch!) but the fake twenties were the first bad bills he'd seen in a while.

TURNS OUT that Ms. Blunt, a resident of Fort Bragg, is well known to law enforcement, having often been booked into the County Jail for this and that.

March 22, 2018: Taking vehicle without owner’s consent, stolen property.

July 21, 2018: Taking vehicle without owner’s consent, probation revocation.

May 11, 2021: Taking vehicle without owner’s consent, stolen property, county parole violation.

July 9, 2021: Failure to appear.

February 2, 2022*: Taking vehicle without owner’s consent, stolen property, controlled substance, paraphernalia, county parole violation, failure to appear.

* GRAND THEFT BLUNT

On 02/02/2022 at approximately 7:00 AM, a Ukiah Police dispatch received a call reporting a vehicle had just been stolen from in front of a residence in the 500 block of Marleen Street. The reporting party/owner of the vehicle advised the vehicle had been left running, in order to warm up, in front of the home. The caller provided a description of the vehicle and its last known direction of travel. 

UPD officers responded and began searching the area in an attempt to locate the vehicle. Within 10 minutes of receiving the call, a UPD Detective located the vehicle traveling southbound on Old River Road, near Hopland. The driver of the vehicle changed directions and began traveling northbound on Old River Road at a high rate of speed. Due to the Detective being in an unmarked vehicle, he maintained sight of the vehicle and provided updated information to other UPD Officers regarding the vehicle’s location. While marked UPD units were responding to the area of Old River Road, the driver of the vehicle abruptly turned into a driveway, within the 11000 block of Old River Road, and stopped the vehicle. A high-risk (Felony) stop was performed and the driver was detained without further incident. 

The driver was identified as Bailey F. Blunt, 26, of Fort Bragg.

A search of her person resulted in the discovery of suspected methamphetamine and a methamphetamine pipe. She was found to be on Post Release Community Supervision (PRCS) for a prior violation of taking a vehicle without owner’s consent. Additionally, she was found to have three local Felony warrants for her arrest. Terms of her PRCS included “obey all laws.” She was arrested for Vehicle theft, Possession of a stolen vehicle, Violation of PRCS terms, Possession of a controlled substance, Possession of paraphernalia and the three Felony warrants. She was subsequently transported to the MCSO Jail for booking. The owner of the stolen vehicle came to scene and took custody of the vehicle. Blunt was not known to the victim. 

(Ukiah Police Presser)

FOR MANY YEARS Lucille Estes of Airport Estates has been my go-to garden advisor, plant identifier, recipient of my magazines, and gracious hostess of my many visits to Lucille's showplace garden which, I hope, will continue to be maintained without Lucille's vigilance. 

Lucille has suffered a stroke and is moving to Lake County to live with her son. She called me to say goodbye, speaking in her usual upbeat voice. “I'm saying goodbye,” she said. “I'm leaving Boonville.” That was a call I was not prepared to hear, if one can ever be prepared for bad news from a good friend. But Lucille promised to send me her telephone number when she settled into her new place in Lake County.

A BOONVILLE WOMAN WRITES: There is a transient in town (Boonville Hotel area) that followed my little sister and I home on our walk. When we noticed him we started walking faster and he sped up as well so we ran home to get our parents. He went as far as to follow us past our gate, into the property and up our long driveway. When our parents came out they went after him and he turned around crossed the street and walked west to Boont Berry but then stopped turned back around and walked east on the general store side of the road. Im sure he’s still in the area. BOLO and careful, he has a green/black jacket, shoulder length hair , a beanie and 2 backpacks. I saw him in the afternoon in yorkville area I guess he made it to town.

A LOCAL COMMENTS: The other day I called 911 because there was someone, obviously not sound, staggering down the middle of the road. I did not feel safe to stop, and am really glad I did not hit them. It does seem that there are more transients than I remember. These are tough times. I will continue to have compassion, as well as caution.

POLLY GIRVIN: Cal Fire is killing the oak trees throughout Jackson State Forest with the application of a toxic poison called Imazapyr that is applied by cutting into the tree and squirting the poison in...Hence it is called hack and squirt. And yes the citizens of Mendocino County voted overwhelmingly to prohibit its use, but we live in a county that has long been a hand servant for the timber industry and in this instance has simply chosen to ignore the will of the people.

POSSIBLE NEW CLASSES at the Adult School - your input needed

The Adult School is exploring offering some more classes this coming fall, with the hope that things will feel safer and more comfortable in person.

We already offer many non-credit Mendocino College classes, such as English for a Second Language, GED preparation, and sometimes computers. Mendocino College has been engaging in an effort to approve non-credit curricula specifically designed for older adults. They have recently approved a few classes that, if we can find a teacher who qualifies to teach it, we could potentially offer through the AV Adult School as soon as fall 2022.

Here are some options we are currently considering:

Option 1: ART522 - Watercolor Painting for Older Adults

This course will introduce older adults to a variety of techniques unique to watercolor media through an exploration of still life, landscape and non-objective painting. The focus of the course is on the development of personal artistic interest, aptitude, creative self-expression and enrichment of quality of life. Course activities will promote or help maintain physical, mental, social and emotional well-being and accommodate varying skill levels. Instruction in color theory, tools, surfaces and mixed media techniques will be provided.

Sometimes these links get weird, but you can see the course outline in more detail here.

(https://gmail.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=cea1e601922fa82e47579cc80&id=997a955688&e=358077c1c9)

Option 2: ENG503 - Creative Writing for Older Adults

This course will introduce older adults to a variety of creative writing skills. The focus of the course is on preserving intellectual acuity through the writing of creative fiction and non-fiction. Written expression is explored through the development of memoirs, personal essays, stories, poems, and/or short scripts. Students will have the opportunity to sharpen creative writing skills, computer skills, and interact with a supportive community of fellow writers. This course provides older adults an opportunity to recall, organize, and share life experiences about events, family, health, or work, as well as by the use of imagination. The instructor will provide help as needed in the basics of plot, point of view, characterization, dialogue, setting, and revision.

The course outline in more detail can be found here.

(https://gmail.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=cea1e601922fa82e47579cc80&id=dc3cd1b9fc&e=358077c1c9)

Option 3: Spreadsheets (Computers)- This course would work a bit differently.

Possible short-term courses on spreadsheets (Excel, google sheets)- The college is exploring whether it might be a good idea to offer short (16 hour total) non-credit courses on different computer topics. For now they are considering offering a course on spreadsheets (like Google Sheets or Excel). The course would be offered via zoom, probably out of Ukiah, but then different adult schools (like ours could participate via zoom but have staff on ground to help the students participating. In the meeting where this came up, several adult schools said it would be better to offer something like this on a weeknight for around two hours than on a weekend. The possible schedule would be for two hours, two nights a week for four weeks, maybe in October.

These classes would be very low cost for older adults ($12-$16 for the entire class), and if there is a majority of older adults enrolled, also accessible to folks of other ages. The first two would run from late August to mid-December.

If it seems that there is an interest among AV Village members, then the next step would be for us to look for local folks to teach it. The minimum qualifications are not too strict, but do require a BA and experience. We would, of course, want someone engaging and fun to do it. Maybe there are even potential teachers in AV Village!

Thanks for your time. I hope to hear back from you when you have a moment.

Please reply to: Maggie Von Vogt mvonvogt@avpanthers.org

School Co-Coordinator & Language Teacher

Anderson Valley Adult School

office: 707-895-2953 (tel:(707)%20895-2953)

cell: 707-867-5774

BREWS WITH VIEWS: Trekking the Mendocino County Beer Trail

Beer is as beloved in Mendocino County as wine is, and with award winning breweries, beer-centric festivals, and homebrew aficionados, it's not surprising that you can find a great place to enjoy a brew or two anywhere in the County! Before making plans, check out what's happening this Spring along the Mendocino County Beer Trail. Beer Trail (https://www.visitmendocino.com/beer-trail/)

Beer Fests

Join Barkley the Bear for the 24th Annual Boonville Beer Festival featuring over 65 breweries, live music, food vendors and fun! Tickets are on sale now for this April 23rd event. Next month, on May 21st, Anderson Valley Brewing Company is hosting the Mendocino County Homebrew Festival with homebrewers sharing their craftiness!

What's Happening

(https://www.visitmendocino.com/events/?tribe-bar-start-date=&tribe-bar-end-date=&tribe_paged=1&tribe_event_display=list)

What's Brewing

Seven distinctive breweries call Mendocino County home - from Ukiah to Willits, Anderson Valley, Fort Bragg to Point Arena. Ukiah Brewing Company was the first certified organic brewpub in the country, while Northspur Brewing in Willits is the most recent addition to the scene. In between these breweries sits Hare in the Forest Brewing in Potter Valley with their artisanal small-batch brews and appointment-only visits. Anderson Valley Brewing Company has been a brewing maverick for over 30 years, winning a cache of awards along the way. Fort Bragg boasts two breweries - the award-winning, B-corp certified North Coast Brewing Company, and Overtime Brewing - a relative newcomer yet already establishing itself as a local favorite. DISCOVER (https://www.visitmendocino.com/beer-trail/)

Taprooms, Eateries & Markets

Wherever you go in Mendocino County, you'll find a darn good selection of beer - whether at a restaurant, a corner market, or a high-end restaurant. Piaci's Pub & Pizzeria in Fort Bragg may have the most diverse selection of beer - in bottles and on tap. In Ukiah, Westside Renaissance Market has an excellent bevy of fine brews. Cafe Beaujolais in Mendocino Village boasts a phenomenal beer list with rare and hard-to-find offerings, while Coyote Valley 101 Tap House counts over 100 beers on tap! Beer Here

(https://www.visitmendocino.com/beer-trail/)

Views to go with Your Brews

Look for lodging specials while trekking the Mendocino County Beer Trail. The Beachcomber Hotel Group in Fort Bragg is offering mid-week discounts, promotional beers at check-in and complimentary bike rentals. Hopland's Thatcher Inn has Anderson Valley beers on tap and offers up a discount rate with code MendoBeerTrail2022; and in Mendocino, book two nights between April 15 - May 15 at Brewery Gulch Inn and receive a North Coast Brewing growler. For all lodging specials and restrictions, click here.

(https://www.visitmendocino.com/see-do/deals-and-special-offers/)

CATCH OF THE DAY, March 31, 2022

MATTHEW DAUSMAN, Calpella. DUI.

ANGEL ECHEVERRIA, Fort Bragg. Loaded firearm in public, stolen loaded weapon, vandalism, stolen property, conspiracy.

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

SARA LYN GILCHRIST, Fort Bragg. DUI.

CASSANDRA HUTCHINGS, Ukiah. Stolen vehicle, controlled substance, paraphernalia, vandalism.

CODY LADD, Ukiah. Parole violation.

MICAH MILES, Seattle/Ukiah. Assault with semiautomatic firearm.

CHERRI ROBERTS, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

JUAN TOVAR-SEVILLA, Ukiah. Concealed dirk-dagger, contempt of court, failure to appear, probation revocation.

GERALD SIMPSON, Willits. County parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

DONOVAN WILLIAMS, Ukiah. County parole violation.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Those tattooed-on permanent makeup eyebrows are the worst thing that ever happened to women. Look at thousands of them online and there’s maybe one that looks legit the rest always look like caterpillars taped on their foreheads. The worst of it is they actually paid for it!!! Then add mite lashes… “Hey, baby, your eyebrows and lashes are the sexiest thing I have ever seen,” said no man ever.

TROUBLE IN THE TULIPS: Organized Farmworkers Win Basic Demands in a Quick Strike

by David Bacon

Tulips and daffodils symbolize the arrival of spring, but the fields are bitterly cold when workers' labors begin. Snow still covers the ground when workers go into the tulip rows to plant bulbs in northwest Washington state, near the Canadian border.…

davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2022/03/trouble-in-tulips.html

MITCHELL CLOGG: 

I get notices, from all over the place, telling me about This Day In History. 

On this day in history, in the year 1955, four of the seven members of the Clogg family lay in coffins at a funeral home in Baltimore. By coincidence, 2022’s March dates are the same as 1955’s. They died day before yesterday, drowned when their little boat tipped over. There were also two others, adult friends, Bill and Roberta Pollard, also drowned, now in a different suite at the same funeral home. 

My father, Mitchell Downes Clogg, for whom I and my son were named, was in charge. I and my two older sisters were not present. I was sixteen and a half at the time, my sisters three and four years older than me. My kid brother, Judsan, age eleven, drowned. So did my sister, Chanel, seven. There was a puppy on board, the Clogg-family dog. He was never found.

The bodies were all recovered from a small island in Sinepuxent Bay except for that of family friend Bill Pollard, who was in shallow water not far away. Sinepuxent Bay is a bay that connects Chincoteague Bay, where wild ponies still live, to the Atlantic Ocean at Ocean City, Maryland.

I don’t know how this happened. There were no surviving witnesses. It is a remote place and was more remote in 1955. They all had spent a weekend at an all-but-unknown hunting lodge, a tumbledown place used for hunting ducks and geese and having fun. “Lodge” seems unsuitable. They called it “Mostly Hall,” because it was, and "High Winds Gun Club," which it also was. It had a wall-mounted telephone with a hand crank on it.

High winds blew throughout their stay, that weekend, particularly when it was time to leave and go home to Baltimore. It was cold. The combination of wind, waves and an overloaded boat killed everybody. At a hearing convened by the U.S. Coast Guard, local people said that my father ignored advice that the weather was unsuitable for his party to cross Sinepuxent Bay.

All the bodies were fully clothed except my mother’s had no shoes. The boat, by law and custom, had life preservers, but none of the corpses wore one. I do not know why.

Nor can I say just what stirs me to write this. The date, I suppose. The end of March always recalls 1955 to me. My family’s demise has never receded from my consciousness. I have never been able to imagine their final experiences, even after sixty-seven years of trying. I know it had to be awful. The Coast Guard decided they had enough evidence to lay the blame squarely on my father, and I have no good reason not to concur. My father was an “alpha male,” well liked and respected for his accomplishments. His legacy is tragedy and disgrace.

He was buried—they all were buried—in rain-soaked graves on April 1st, 1955, April Fools Day, my father’s forty-fifth birthday.

PUTIN PUPPETS

"REGIME CHANGE" DOESN'T WORK, YOU MORONS (Part 2, continued from yesterday)

by Matt Taibbi

One, when Biden says, “This is going to take time,” and speaks about pressure for an “entire year,” he’s referring to time that will cost piles of Ukrainian lives every day. Maybe the Ukrainian people are willing to sacrifice those lives. But Zelensky only just said, “We are looking for peace, really. Without delay.” He’s repeatedly asked for help in negotiations and expressed a willingness to embrace a future of Ukrainian “neutrality.” There’s obviously ambivalence among American pundits and politicians toward any settlement that might be seen as rewarding Putin for his aggression, but the question is if that’s our call to make, or that of the Ukrainians bearing the punishment.

Second, and more important — regime change doesn’t work! It may be the most proven hypothesis ever. Our record is so bad, the standard for measuring “regime change” isn’t even success or failure anymore. It’s more like failure, or heads-on-sticks failure. As in, “Did the intervention end in American-allied locals hurling themselves at the landing gear of departing aircraft in an effort to flee World War Z-style crowds of bloodthirsty nationalists?” Any regime change effort that ends without Americans beheaded, barbecued, or castrated — even if it accomplishes nothing — now goes in the plus column by default.

The plot is always the same. Our diplomats speak loftily of self-determination, civil liberties, and democracy. Then the local population does something daft, like attempting to nationalize their own oil or copper reserves or voting for a nationalist or socialist, at which point the CIA is forced to intervene and install a responsible leader like the Shah, Pinochet, or Suharto. If the new U.S-friendly leader hangs on, he or she over time becomes increasingly dependent on arms, “security advisors,” and World Bank/I.M.F. loans, mass-disappearing dissidents into fingernail factories or wiping them out with death squads, while also often raiding the treasury as a carrying charge for services rendered. This results in more domestic fury, leading to more calls for “aid,” until the by-now-hated U.S.-allied figure is steamrolled by a nationalist/communist/fundamentalist movement 1,000 times more hostile to the U.S. than anything that existed previously. See: Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and today’s Russia (hold that thought). 

In 2016, the Washington Post published an article by a Boston College professor named Lindsay O’Rourke noting the United States had either toppled or attempted to topple other countries’ governments 72 times between 1947 and 1989. The list is an astonishing compendium of disasters. We apparently can’t even murder people competently, spending taxpayer money on Dr. Evil schemes to make Castro’s beard fall out or have him walk past exploding sea shells (the CIA even spent a million in Indonesia on a failed plot to make a porno movie using a man in a General Sukarno mask) while real assassinations, O’Rourke wrote, were only ever pulled off by foreigners:

“Not a single U.S.-backed assassination plot during this time actually killed their intended target, although two foreign leaders — South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem and the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo — were killed by foreign intermediaries without Washington’s blessing during U.S.-backed coups.”

O’Rourke also concluded that “after a nation’s government was toppled, it was less democratic and more likely to suffer civil war, domestic instability and mass killing.” The Cato Institute came to the same conclusion, noting that regime-change efforts “are likely to spark civil wars, lead to lower levels of democracy, increase repression, and in the end, draw the foreign intervener into lengthy nation‐building projects.”

“Regime change” is a theory of pre-emptive conquest and therefore based on the same lunatic logic that drove Putin to invade Ukraine. Our version posits that all threats can be eliminated by covering the planet all over with American-style liberal democracies. It is, no joke, a version of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s famous “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention,” the idea that “No two countries that both have a McDonald's have ever fought a war against each other.” This theory Friedman “confirmed” with McDonald’s for a 1996 Times column, and he wasn’t kidding. He wrote that while in the 50s and 60s developing nations thought “having an aluminum plant and a U.N. seat” made them “real countries,” having a McDonald’s was now the truer indicator:

“When a country reaches a certain level of economic development, when it has a middle class big enough to support a McDonald's, it becomes a McDonald's country, and people in McDonald's countries don't like to fight wars; they like to wait in line for burgers.”

The Russia-Ukraine war blew Friedman’s theory to shit, but was fun while it lasted. “Regime change” supposedly traces back over a century to Woodrow Wilson’s famous argument that the world must be made “safe for democracy,” but from the Cold War on presidents have bent it in an even more pre-emptive direction. Bill Clinton talked about “checking global threats abroad before they threaten our territory” by “enlarging the community of democratic and free market nations.” George W. Bush’s National Security Strategy described a need to “extend the peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent,” and because “the allies of terror are the enemies of civilization,” we must “hold to account nations that are compromised” and “deny them sanctuary at every turn.” 

Regime change is a uniquely American form of xenophobic naiveté. It’s not ignorance of the “Chemicals TURN THE FREAKIN' FROGS GAY!” variety. It’s an even more dangerous type: bushy-tailed products of the Kennedy School and the Hoover Institute somehow cruising straight from top schools into positions of authority at places like the State Department and the NSC despite knowing less about the world than the average Survivor contestant or Men’s Health editor. Each may be only barely literate at graduation, but they’re all always certain of one thing: inside every foreigner lies a loyal, McNugget-loving American waiting to get out, and all the world’s problems will be solved if only they are all empowered.

I never met Victoria Nuland, but I knew scores of people like her in the expatriate community in Moscow. On Friday nights they binge-drank in clubs like the Hungry Duck like they were still on campus, often even dressing in their Harvard, Penn, and Princeton sweatshirts. The drunkenness made them like everyone else in town, only being monolingual they tended to go home mainly with each other rather than risk contamination with locals (I always imagined they read chapters of The Great Game to one another as foreplay). 

These people replaced the old Sovietologists who used to populate the embassy in Moscow, all linguists and accomplished historians who’d built careers mapping the vast geography of shadows behind the iron curtain. The old guard knew a lot but hadn’t been trained in the new binary language of “freedom” versus “evil,” and could never have been convinced that trying to turn Moldova or Georgia into Nebraska overnight would work. So they were replaced en masse in the Clinton years by people like Michael McFaul, human haircuts whose knowledge level was zero and whose idea of genius was Strobe Talbott, but were game for what they thought would be a simple social engineering project: just give all the old Soviet Republics, Russia included, little junior-America starter kits — constitutions, free markets, elections — and permanent ally states would instantly materialize.

Not only did this not happen, but the champions of democracy these people chose turned out to be a rogues’ gallery of wildly creative scoundrel-failures. Georgia’s Mikhail Saakashvili, taking office after the 2003 “Rose” revolution, was hounded not only by corruption charges but by accusations that his political prisoners were sexually abused in prison. Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the Tulip revolution hero, put his son in charge of business matters and was so infamous for corruption he ended up having to flee for his life to Minsk, of all places. Boris Yeltsin nearly drank the entire net worth of the Kremlin State Property committee and was so unpopular that national referendums on his rule might have been fixed twice — once in 1993, and once in the infamous “Yanks to the Rescue” election of 1996 — just to keep the locals from voting in someone else.

Yeltsin’s rep as a Western puppet who brutalized the press, blew off a national non-payment crisis suffered by miners and other working-class laborers, and didn’t crack down on years of rampant capital flight (engineered by his thieving oligarch pals) out of a starving country, led directly to the widespread support for his hand-picked successor, the vicious nationalist Putin. This raises the question: if we succeed in deposing Putin over Ukraine, what evidence is there that we won’t end up with someone even worse than Putin in the Kremlin in very short order, like we did last time? Who thinks we wouldn’t screw this up on a grand scale, given that we already botched it once? Any replacement for Putin the U.S. would find acceptable would have to evince a range of views putting him or her directly at odds with most of the population, like for instance a tolerance for NATO expansion. The seeds of reaction would be there from the jump. That’s in the lucky case we don’t provoke civilization-ending nuclear war en route to helping install a new Russian leader.

The people who run our foreign policy look back at the incredible record of failure of American regime change efforts — hundreds of thousands dead in Indonesia, maybe two million in Indochina — and are incapable of seeing the basic truth that was on display for all the world to see in Iraq, and also now in Ukraine: people will fight to the death rather than accept any kind of foreign rule. For people like this, regime change efforts never failed because they were doomed insane paranoia, but because of overlooked logistical errors, like not sending ground troops into Laos to block the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 

Former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, who became a #Resistance hero for speaking out about his differences with Donald Trump, wrote a whole book called “Dereliction of Duty” that argued America lost in Vietnam because Johnson and Kennedy wouldn’t listen to the Joint Chiefs, who “always knew what was needed to win in Vietnam,” like a “large increase in the number of advisers.” He leaves out our massacres of civilians, herding of locals into “strategic hamlets,” and use of child-disfiguring Agent Orange, and the resistance all this inspired. McMaster is now a go-to quote about the need for regime change in Russia. These people will never stop believing regime change just needs more time under the hood, and it’ll work the next time. 

As was the case with Saddam Hussein, the argument here isn’t for leaving a monster like Putin in power. It’s about not inviting something worse to take his place — an Ayatollah, Islamic State, a resupplied Taliban — through inerrant arrogance and incompetence. Are we really going to do this again? How many times is enough?

HELP WANTED

Job Description:

This is a temporary part-time position assisting the KZYX Membership Department before, during and after a Pledge Drive. The position will have an administrative role during the Drive. Pledge Drives are performed in a fast-paced environment and in a teamwork setting.

Jobs will include: managing volunteers, cleaning and organizing, using Excel files, answering phones, assembling and mailing packages, creating and posting information to the KZYX website and social media outlets, data entry, and more.

This position will begin two weeks prior to a Pledge Drive for up to 10 hours per week. During the Pledge Drive hours will increase to 20 to 30 hours per week. Post- Drive, the position will be 10 hours per week for two weeks.

When:

· Begin job April 18 – April 30, 2022: 10 hours/week

· Pledge Drive: April 30 to May 14. Hours increase up to 30 hours/week

· Post-Drive May 14 – May 31: 10 hours/week

· Possible other hours TBD

Job Duties to include, but not limited to:

· Recruit and schedule phone volunteers for shifts during Pledge Drives

· Assist with ordering Thank You Gifts as needed

· Package and mail Thank You Gifts

· Address and mail postcards

· Help with cleaning and setting up the studio and phone room for the Drive

· Assist with volunteer management 20 hours per week or more during Pledge Drives

· Cleaning/organizing phone room and other common room areas as needed

· Help to create and post pictures and graphics related to fundraising for KZYX social media outlets

· Data entry

· Package and mail Billing letters

· Call or mail Thank You letters to volunteers after the Drive

· Other duties as assigned by the Membership Dept

Other Considerations:

· The 2022 Spring Pledge Drive will benefit the new Ukiah Building Fund, and will last for 2 weeks. The dates are Saturday, April 30 to Saturday May 14.

· Pledge Drive shifts will have odd hours and will include working as early as 7am or as late as 8 to 10pm. However, shifts will not be longer than 8 hours at a time.

For more information PM or contact me at (707) 895 - 2324

WATCH FOR THE BIRDIE

The cuckoo clock is ticking...

Sitting at a table in the common area of Ukiah’s Building Bridges homeless shelter at 1:42 in the afternoon. The ACER computer with a new AC adapter cord, which RespecTech found to be the only problem technically, (and not the dc jack which Emerald Technology mis-diagnosed to be the problem in Garberville), is now useful again. Ate a sumptuous 11:30 morning meal at Plowshares today, served by those dedicated Catholic Workers. You may wonder why I am sharing this information. After all, it does not appear to be of any particular universal importance, and maybe not even global, national, statewide, nor even regional. O Malcontents of Postmodern Planet Earth, the cuckoo clock is ticking. Identify with that which is prior to consciousness. Eternal Witness. Chant “I’m not the body, I’m not the mind, Immortal Self I am.”

Craig Louis Stehr 

JIMMY DORE INTERVIEWS CHRIS HEDGES