Mendocino County Today: Friday, April 8, 2022

North Wind | Deck Temp | Hare Creek | Zero Snow | Property Tax | Caspar Mouth | Water Solutions | Tulips | CSD Minutes | Portuguese Beach | Chopper Game | Gardening Workshop | Handymen | Voter Registration | Ed Notes | Mendo Bluffs | Mad Campaign | Yesterday's Catch | Motorboat Lawman | DC Covid | Doughboy Parade | Ukraine | Human Be-In | Pay Teachers | Noyo Fleet | Ukraine Diary | Egypt Zeppelin | Leave CA | Prick Cop | Auto Camp | Cheap Wine | World Movers | Homeless Seniors | Online Theology | 67 Fashion | MAC Shows | Fundamentals Good | Reckless Coaching | 73 Lineup

STRONG AND GUSTY NORTHERLY WINDS will develop this afternoon and persist through the weekend. A cold front will bring a chance of showers with high mountain snow late Sunday night into Monday. Another chance of rain with mountain snow will arrive around mid week. Below normal temperatures are likely through much of next week. (NWS)

YESTERDAY'S HIGHS: Ukiah 93°, Boonville 92°, Yorkville 91°, Fort Bragg 71°

JUDY VALADAO: Yes, this is in Fort Bragg on Whipple St. in the shade on my deck.

HARE CREEK VOLUNTEER WORK DAY

The regular 2nd Saturday Hare Creek workday is this Saturday, 4-9-22, from 9:30 - 12:00.

Whatever time you can arrive or need depart, your efforts at Hare Creek are appreciated :)

Weather.gov is currently showing a chilly start, and warming up from there.

If you would like to be part of helping to develop and maintain this little gem, or just come by and see what we're up to, you are most welcome! With the great-outdoors ability to socially distance, I invite you to come help on this Hare Creek volunteer work day. I no longer know what the "rules" are re Covid & masks. Please be respectful and compassionate toward others comfort and safety. Everyone please, stay safe.

Pick your project. There's plenty of non-native invasives to continue eliminating. This Saturday's group project will continue to be the ivy at the bottom of the trail as it opens to the beach.

Bring water, gloves, and your favorite tool(s), or borrow one of ours.

We meet at the end of the Mendocino College parking lot (look for Lenny's blue Forester), and wander across the field to the trail. Need directions? Please arrive by 9:30 or reply to this email (or phone Lenny at 1-707-962-0824).

In service to The Mendocino Land Trust,
Lenny Noack

APRIL SNOW SURVEY

Although there was some snow in the area, there was no snow to be measured at both the Anthony Peak and Plaskett Meadows sampling sites. Mendocino Pass on FH7 is still impassable, as seen in this photo taken in the Telephone Camp area the day of the survey.

Historically the April 1 average is 26.9 inches for Anthony Peak and 15.2 inches for Plaskett Meadows, based on measurements made during years 1991-2020. The last time crews measured zero snow for the April survey was in 2015.

Read more: https://go.usa.gov/xux8q

A REMINDER FROM THE [County] TAX COLLECTOR:

The second installment of your 2021-2022 Secured tax bill is due by Monday April 11, 2022 without penalty. Postmarks dated 4/11/2022 are accepted as a timely. When the statutory due date falls on a Saturday or Sunday, the hour of delinquency is 5:00pm the next business day.

You may pay online at www.mendocinocounty.org/taxes, search by your parcel number or address. You may also drop your check payment at the County Administration drop box located in the drive through roundabout. The drop box will be closed on Monday April 11, 2022 at 5pm.

Please see the Tax Collector website at www.mendocinocounty.org/ttc for more information.

Thank you!

GUEST EDITORIAL: SOLVING MENDOCINO COUNTY’S WATER PROBLEMS!

by Former Third District Supervisor John Pinches

1. Fire Jared Huffman who said, “If you tear out Scott Dam you would have more water” -- a stupid statement. Scott Dam creates Lake Pillsbury which gives year-round water to Lake Mendocino down to Sonoma County and two North Marin water districts, one of which provides water to Jared's home. We cannot afford leadership like this.

2. Scout Lake (East of Willits) can be raised which would provide water in dry years by gravity flow to Redwood Valley and North Ukiah Valley. This is a cheap and quick project as the water line can be laid along PG&E natural gas pipeline right-of-way.

3. Sherwood Valley is a high and wet valley where a couple of wells can be drilled and water can be piped to Fort Bragg via the county road, mostly gravity flow. Above ground, very cheap, and quick. A downhill pipe is cost-effective compared to hauling water from Ukiah uphill in diesel trucks.

These projects can be done in less than a year with financing from state water funds out of the $7 billion bond which was approved by the voters in 2014. Very little of that money has been applied for. (Mendocino County has never applied for any project money.) All Mendocino County has done is hold senseless meetings, hire a consulting firm for $330,000 to say, “We are in a drought.”

Let's do something.

MINUTES: REGULAR MEETING OF THE MARCH 2022 WATER PROJECTS COMMITTEE

Anderson Valley Community Services District

CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL: Called to order by Valerie Hanelt at 10:30 am. Present, Kathleen McKenna, Joy Andrews, Val Hanelt, Kathleen McKenna, David Coleman, Jack Locey, Kim Bennett-Strong

RECOGNITION OF GUESTS AND HEARING OF PUBLIC: Guests Jim Lutticken, Janet Lombard, Zachary Rounds (State Water Recourses Control Board), Amy Little (District Water Board), and Morgan Baynham. 

DRINKING WATER PROJECT: Engineer Jack Locey reported that the amendment for extra funding came through. He is working with the AV School District and developing the preliminary negotiation points for acquisition of the well and related water treatment components at the Elementary School and also for the well site at the northeast corner of the High School Campus. Also, his surveying team set up for the new layout at the Meadow Estates well field to accommodate the wishes of the Meadow Estate Water Board.

CLEAN WATER (WASTE) PROJECT: Engineer Dave Coleman reported that the amendment for extra funding came through. He is making plans to do the soils investigations at the Valley Views (Boonville) site and explained the issue about using soil samples to determine the depth of the water table as it doesn’t look as if we will have enough rain to observe it through rainfall. We are setting up an on-site meeting with the parcel owner to get permission for the tests and to discuss the project. 

Chair Val Hanelt explained the steps in the water projects process. Both the projects are working on finishing acquiring the components. After that is settled, the engineers can develop rate studies for the CSD to consider. Once the CSD has approved what the rates will be, the CSD can appeal to LAFCO (Local Agency Formation Commission) to be approved to be a water district. We can also begin our public outreach as we will know the answer to the question most people ask, “How much will the rates be?” Kim Bennett-Strong will be more involved during this process.

Val Hanelt also explained that the District will be reaching out to Meadow Estates parcel owners to see if there is any interest in being part of the Wastewater project. 

NOISY, LOW-FLYING HELICOPTER over Boonville Thursday morning was, take your pick, a PG&E line-check; a private party out of Willits; or a police agency.

GARDENING WORKSHOP, APRIL 9TH 

I will be offering a gardening class/workshop on Sunday April 9th at the Noyo Food Forest Learning Garden in Fort Bragg. My co-instructor is Veronica Storms the NFF garden manager. We will meet in the shade house at 10:00am and I will be speaking about how to care for and cultivate healthy garden soil with time for questions and discussion. At about 11:00 we will move outside to look at fertilizers, compost, worm castings, cover crops, sheet mulch, and have some demonstrations and hands on practice of different methods of preparing garden beds including double digging and using a broad fork. 

The cost for class is $30 and class size will be limited. The shade house is a large covered outdoor space with plenty of fresh air and room for distancing. If you would like to sign-up please reply to this email. You will receive a confirmation that you are signed up and another email later to confirm your place before the class. You can pay on the day of the class. 

Happy Gardening 

Sakina Bush <sakina@mcn.org>

NEED A SKILLED HAND for maintenance/yard, electrical stuff or a master at vehicle repair? Call Boonville local J.R. 415-531-1859. Affordable!

FOR THOSE MISSING THE STARR MECHANIC, I'm available for mobile service. 30+ years as an automotive tech/mechanic. Give me a call for an appointment or any questions you might have. 707 684 0701 or 707 489 5951. (Name not in original post.)

ED NOTES

AS OF MONDAY NIGHT, The Press Democrat is being printed at the San Francisco Chronicle’s production site in Fremont. How the mighty have fallen! 

WASN’T ALL THAT LONG AGO that the Rose City daily, via the New York Times, invested heavily in a huge printing plant housing the latest in print technology, a huge electronic press housed in a mammoth plant fronted by a vast lawn just south of Santa Rosa, the surreal entirety of it highly visible off southbound 101. The lawn alone, what with water and chemicals and 24-hour dandelion and gopher protection cost thousands a month in upkeep.

MIKE GENIELLA REMEMBERS, “The New York Times, soon after buying the PD, invested $40 million-plus in the printing plant site and state-of-the-art press. It even had robotic devices loading newsprint onto the new press, a marvel at the time. The PD was the envy of most newspapers thanks to the infusion of NYT money, which also covered an interior remodel of the downtown PD headquarters housing the news, advertising, and circulation departments. There was a host of other benefits from the NYT cash infusion, including charitable contributions to local museums, events, etc. I was even allowed to have a charge account at Wildberger's, the iconic downtown Ukiah market where I used to get supplies for the Ukiah bureau.”

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT was so central to the life of much of the Northcoast, including all of Mendocino County, that Geniella, and often a second Ukiah-based reporter, and even one based on the Mendocino Coast for awhile, were kept busy covering events in the county. 

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS LATER, newspapers in paper form, including this one, are dead or dying, murdered by the internet.

HOW IMPORTANT to Mendocino County was the Press Democrat and, before it was looted by a hedge fund, the Ukiah Daily Journal? Look no farther than the functioning of county government. The AVA is the only media remaining that covers county functioning, and we’re easily cordoned off by the supervisors because there’s no media back-up for our comprehensive reports on official wrongdoing and the simple incompetence of our supervisors. The PD and the Journal would have made it impossible for the gross derelictions that we report because they would have weighed in on the more egregious offenses against the public good.

RIGHT HERE in Boonville, beginning in the early 1950’s and into the early 1970’s, the late Homer Mannix operated a kind of living print museum on the ground floor of the eponymous Mannix Building, in which Homer also housed the justice court he presided over and an apartment for the mysterious Marie Helme, the last of the hand typesetters plucking, at ambidextrous, hummingbird speeds, each letter of every word from an overhead type case. Marie hand-crafted every edition of each weekly edition of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, which was then produced on an ancient linotype machine.

EVERY AFTERNOON after finishing her literally incredible task, once shared by thousands of similarly highly trained American printers going all the way back to Benjamin Franklin, Marie, a familiar sight in downtown Boonville clad in her long black coat, made her way down the street to the Boonville Lodge for a single short-bottle of beer the bar kept in stock just for her. Marie was perched at the end of the bar one afternoon quietly sipping her beer when another patron was shot dead. Marie finished her beer, picked her way unobtrusively through the tumult and walked on back to her room at the Mannix building.

HOMER’S MULTIPLE ENTERPRISES were a labyrinthian combination of small apartments and ground floor businesses with his antique print shop the star attraction. (Homer’s nephew, Mike Mannix of Boonville, knows all the stories, and Mike is well worth a trip to the Boonville transfer station where he presides to hear them between customers.) Marie had come west after a stay in a Michigan state hospital for treatment for her compulsion to disrobe and stroll about public places which, in 1940’s Michigan, was considered aberrant behavior even in California.

THIS PUBLICATION manages to survive against competition from innumerable free websites; podcasts; what’s left of other newspapers; radio; television (where a majority of Americans get all their information about the great world beyond them); the round-the-clock deluge of dubious information delivered by the internet; music; movies, and whatever face-to-face human intercourse remains when we’re not looking at a screen.

THE BOONVILLE WEEKLY was founded 70 years ago by Eugene ‘Geno’ Jamison, a Native American “born right here in Covelo, April 2, 1915. I'm a Nomlackie-Concow Indian. I was raised by my paternal grandfather most of the time. My mother was also born here in Round Valley. In 1926, at the age of eleven, I was shipped off to an Indian school, the Sherman Indian Institute for Orphans in Riverside County. I was there for six years. I went through academic training, military style training. I was 17 when I finished at Sherman, graduating in '32. I wanted to go to the Marines or the Navy because of those six years under military training. You went to bed at somebody's command, you got up at somebody's command. I learned the basics of printing in the school's print shop. I received 10,000 hours and six years of vocational training in printing at that school. I never did make it to the Marines, going to work for the Arlington Times instead. That's where I really learned the printing trade.”

JAMISON went on to spend years at the Mendocino Beacon, settling in Mendocino to raise a family. Geno wouldn’t recognize today’s newspaper business. He saw the best of it.

70 YEARS LATER, the AVA, once produced entirely in Boonville, is assembled electronically in Boonville but printed in Hayward, trucked from Hayward to Healdsburg, then carried to Boonville by car where the editor himself distributes it in the Anderson Valley. Subscriber editions are bundled into mail bags by zip code and dropped off Thursday afternoon at the Boonville Post Office where a mail guy picks them up and off loads them in Cloverdale where a southbound mail truck retrieves them in the middle of the night for deposit at the vast NorCal Oakland distribution center, from where the Mendo bags are sent back to the various post offices of Mendocino County and points beyond. 

THINGS can go wrong at any point in this complicated process but, surprisingly haven’t. So far.

AS PRINT PEOPLE die off or treacherously trade their newspapers for telephonically transmitted updates on the Kardashians, the AVA in print form dies a little each week. We’re doing better at our daily on-line paper, making Boonville’s beloved weekly one of a media minority to turn a tiny profit behind a pay wall. I’m encouraged to often hear from on-line customers that the AVA has become their morning newspaper. Me, I’ll always miss the print editions of the SF Chronicle, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat and all the in-county newspaper-newspapers.

SO MANY QUESTIONS, so few answers. A revived and now costlier $118 million Mendocino County Courthouse project envisioned near the historic train depot on Perkins Street promises huge changes for downtown Ukiah. It will be the single largest public construction project in recent memory. The potential effects on downtown are huge. What is to become of the old courthouse, which occupies a site used for courthouses since the 1850s? Where will court-related offices be housed, including the District Attorney's Office? Stalled in 2016 the courthouse project is now among the “highest priority trial court capital-outlay projects for the judicial branch,” according to state court officials.

DIARY OF A MAD CAMPAIGN

by Malcolm Macdonald

Vicki Williams is the campaign manager for John Redding's run for the Fifth District Supervisor's seat held by Ted Williams. On April 6th, Vicki Williams posted this on her Facebook page: “Did you know that the Board of Supervisors not only allocated money for climate change 2 million but another 2 million to Adventist health when they're RICH AS F$$C? 4 million dollars that could've changed our lives wasted. Ted Williams You need to go!”

The next morning Supervisor Williams responded, “Vicki, with the credibility of the Redding campaign on the line, please provide proof that the Board of Supervisors allocated $2M county general fund to Adventist Health.”

About three hours later, Vicki Williams shot back, “Ted! Were you not at the meeting that I posted a clip of? If anything's on the line it's your reputation[.] I'll be happy to provide the video on instant message. I have published it several times you were sitting right there when the caller called in and you know that it was allocated.”

Ted Williams: “Vicki, meeting date and item number where a board motion approved $2M general fund to Adventist Health?”

Vicki Williams (no relation): John Redding Will you please answer Ted's question publicly since you are the treasurer of the hospital board.”

Though John Redding uses the same language, “treasurer of the hospital board,” at times, he has been treasurer of the Mendocino Coast Health Care District Board (MCHCD) for approximately three years (plus), with time off every year or so when he is dissatisfied with the outcomes in the annual election of MCHCD Board officers. 

Apparently, John Redding was not quite at the ready, so Vicki Williams continued, “AVA says you allocated almost 46 million to Cal Fire on consent calendar? You avoided the ten [AVA?] questions and still are? This is not looking good we're at almost $50 million worth of unbelievable irresponsible spending.”

Ted Williams: “Vicki, not accurate. Prove it. Show us $50M of spending.”

Seemingly not one concerned with her original accusation, Vicki Williams switches gears: “Why don't you answer the AVA questions if you don't have anything to hide Ted!?”

Pretty close to classic political propaganda. Insinuate that the opponent has something to hide. 

Supervisor Williams sticks to the figures Vicki Williams has raised: “Vicki, show us the $50M of funding votes, including the $2M general fund allocation to Adventist Health. It's my impression Redding's campaign is sharing fiction. This is your opportunity to prove your case. Otherwise, the Redding-Vicki campaign deserves publication in http://theonion.com.”

Ted Williams addresses his opponent directly a few minutes later: “John, show us the $50M of cited spending and the $2M county general fund to Adventist Health?”

At some point in the thread, Redding realizes that the Cal Fire expenditure is $4.2 million over several years, not $46 million. Redding states, “As expected, the Supervisors blindly approved the retroactive $4.2 million five-year Calfire dispatch contract on the consent calendar without a word of discussion about savings that might result from the dispatch consolidation they committed to a couple of years ago, or the amount of the contract or the reason it's nine months late. Seems your campaign might be lacking some credibility.”

Supervisor Williams will not be diverted. He sticks to the question: “John, show us the $50M of cited spending and the $2M county general fund to Adventist Health?”

Supervisor Williams continues to ask for proof from Vicki Williams about her original spending claims. Redding asserts that the President of Adventist Health Mendocino Coast gave a presentation to the MCHCD Board about the Blue Zones project and received $2 million. His words: “The president of the Adventist hospital in Fort Bragg gave a report to my Board (~ 1 year ago?) that the Blue Zone Project received a grant from from the County of Mendocino in the amount of $2million.”

Ted Williams responds: “Blue zone presentation never went to BOS. Adventist Health will not back your claim. Total fiction. Prove me wrong.”

Supervisor Williams adds, “John, we have not approved $46M. You've got to do some basic research. I won't dispute every single claim [you make], but you have a long series of misinformation flowing. It's embarrassing.”

John Redding tries to divert into other topics. At some point after the supervisor challenges Redding to cite a BOS meeting date where the original expenditure allegations were approved, Vicki Williams interjects, “Ted Williams lying.”

The back and forth goes on a bit with Supervisor Williams sticking to a prove your original claims point of view. Here is where you might want to rest your credibility judgment. If one examines Vicki Williams Facebook page where this interchange took place, the thread stops with Ted Williams stating, “John Redding Your claim of $2M for AH [Adventist Health], Hospital, Blue Zones, anything similar, is not true. Show me the meeting where we approved such an expenditure or retract the misinformation.”

Then Vicki Williams: “Facts!!!”

That is what someone looking at the post would be left with as soon as two hours afterward. However, the conversation did in fact go on.

John Redding: “I will stand corrected on the Blue Zone information. Several of my Board colleagues [he does not name any] recall Judy Leach making that statement at our Board meeting. However, she just now emailed me, thanks to your quick work, that AH did not receive a grant. I apologize for the error.” 

Never one to let a straightforward apology stand, Redding adds a bit later, “And a footnote for those following this thread – Judy Leach of AH [President of Adventist Health Mendocino Coast] did write ‘let me be very clear that to date there has not been any financial transactions between our organizations regarding this project [Blue Zones].’ What does ‘to date’ imply?”

Ted Williams clarifies: “John, it means the county has not paid AH or Blue Zones. Anyone watching county meetings would also know there has not been discussion of this topic.”

A few hours later Vicki Williams did offer this up on her Facebook page: “Thanks Ted for exposing that you guys did not allocate 2 million to the hospital. Great work! Now about the 10 unanswered questions? When I'm wrong I say I'm wrong!”

And so it goes in just a matter of one night and the following morning of Mendocino County's Fifth District.

CATCH OF THE DAY, April 7, 2022

LELAND BEAN JR., Willits. Controlled substance, protective order violation paraphernalia, resisting, probation revocation.

JIMMY DYKES, Willits. Reckless driving, protective order violation, resisting, probation revocation.

JASON GOWER, Willits. Shoplifting, grand theft, selling access card, stolen property, false ID, bringing controlled substance into jail.

DEMETER MCFADIN, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

MARISSA MENDOZA, Vallejo/Ukiah. DUI.

ELEVTERIO MONTALVO-PEREZ, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, domestic battery, contempt of court.

EVAN MURDEN, Willits. Controlled substance, no license, evasion.

TONY PAUL, Ukiah. Failure to apper, probation revocation.

JUSTIN SLAGLE, Willits. Protective order violation.

VICTOR VARGAS, Ukiah. Contempt of court/disorderly conduct, resisting, probation revocation.

NANCY PELOSI AND OTHER LAWMAKERS TEST POSITIVE FOR THE CORONAVIRUS

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California tested positive for the coronavirus, her office said on Thursday, the latest high-profile official to do so as the virus spreads through Washington. Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi, said she was asymptomatic, and had previously been vaccinated and boosted. He added that Ms. Pelosi, 82, had tested negative earlier this week.…

nytimes.com/2022/04/07/us/politics/nancy-pelosi-covid-positive.html

UKRAINE UPDATE, April 7 2022

The UN General Assembly (UNGA) has voted in favor of a US-initiated resolution to suspend Russia from the world body’s Human Rights Council.

Of the 193 members of the UN assembly, 93 voted in favor of Russia’s suspension while 24 voted against and 58 abstained.

Ukraine has urged citizens in the country’s east to flee as Moscow refocuses its offensive on the Donbas region.

President Alexander Lukashenko says Belarus must be involved in any deal brokered to end the war.

Russia’s prime minister says attempts to isolate Moscow from the global economy will fail as Western powers roll out new sanctions.

The eastern regions of Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk are seeing the worst of the fighting after Russian forces withdrew from around the capital, Kyiv.

Ukraine’s government has told residents in the country’s east to evacuate “now” or “risk death” ahead of a feared Russian onslaught on the Donbas region.

Ukrainian authorities cannot help people evacuate from the eastern front-line town of Izyum or send humanitarian aid because it is completely under Russian control, the Kharkiv regional governor has said.

An International Committee of the Red Cross team has led a convoy of buses and private cars carrying more than 1,000 people to Zaporizhzhia after they fled the besieged southern port of Mariupol on their own.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg says there is no sign that Russian President Vladimir Putin has dropped “his ambition to control the whole of Ukraine.”

Bucha deaths

Nearly all the Ukrainian civilians killed in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha were deliberately shot, the town’s mayor, Anatoly Fedoruk, has said.

These killings were “very probably war crimes,” French President Macron said in an interview.

Putin accuses Ukrainian authorities of being behind “crude and cynical provocations”.

Germany says that satellite images from last month provided a strong rebuttal of Russian denials of involvement in civilian deaths.

Separately, a video posted online and verified by the New York Times appears to show troops fighting under a Ukrainian banner shooting what is believed to be a captured Russian soldier outside a village west of Kyiv. 

— Al Jazeera

PAY SCALES

Dear Editor:

This is a response to an article in the March 16 edition titled "Pay Them Properly." I wholeheartedly agree with that. Teachers in the state are so underpaid for the jobs they do. I feel they should be getting $89,000 a year and a correctional officer should be getting $35,000-$50,000 that the teachers are getting. That would be the right thing to do. Teachers have an education and they work hard at what they do. Correctional officers sit on their asses seven hours a day. The reason I say they sit on their tail end is because they only work one hour unlocking doors during the day and that's all they do.

I keep seeing how the state is trying to close schools in some of the poorest neighborhoods in some of the largest cities. This will affect mostly black and brown kids. Then these cities talk about using the money they save to build new jails and prisons. It makes me think they want to build these institutions so these kids who the state fails to educate will have a place to go -- prison or jail."

Teachers have to have an education to teach our kids. A correctional officer only needs a GED and they make over $100,000 a year. And they don't have to worry if they are going to be paid either because their checks are always on time like clockwork.

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) was getting $102,000 a year per prisoner to keep people in prison and now it's costing you the voting public $113,000 per prisoner per year. That $11,000 in just over a year for each inmate. The CCPOA budget rose 1.2 billion for 2021-2022. This information is from an article on a study put out October 30, 2021 by Harry C. Goodwall Jr. 

I think it's time the voting public stop this madness of closing schools and start building schools instead of building jails.

As the population of California’s Correctional System goes down the cost of keeping people incarcerated keeps going up. Somebody is getting screwed here and I think it's you, the public. Send your kids to school, not prison!

Respectfully,

Charles Statler

Soledad

UKRAINE DIARY

Feb. 28, 2022. Kiev, The Ukraine. They say: "I don't know what day of the week it is but I know this is the fifth day." And: "Ukraine is the first and only country to have won its membership in the European Union by military means."

What the Finns called a Molotov cocktail we call a Bandera smoothie. At first I wanted to send my European friends the recipe, but now I think we will manage by ourselves. February 25 was my birthday and I asked for two presents -- turning off Swift and closing the sky over Ukraine. I got the first one. I'm happy.

These Russians are not people. Now that they have had a kick in the teeth from our army they are killing civilians with indiscriminate rocket strikes. Children's hospitals and high-rise buildings, buses and ambulances. During the night, Iskandar rocket systems fired on the city of Zhytomyr. They destroyed the Marila Prymachenko Museum and burned her pictures.

This morning in Berdiansk, one of these monsters from Moscow shot an old man for refusing to hand over his mobile phone.

In Kiev there are air raid sirens every half hour. There are antitank obstacles in the streets.

I promise: my great-grandchildren will hate theirs and teach their children the same. The children hate them already. Sorry if this sounds inhumane or politically incorrect.

A generational divide: The kids are saying this is Harry Potter against Voldemort. The adults that it's David against Goliath.

People are joking: "Learning about this period in Ukrainian history is going to be a lot of fun." For instance:

The Roma stole a tank while the occupiers were looking for petrol.

Homeless people in Dnipro are offering to collect bottles for Bandera smoothies.

The thugs in Obolon hijacked an armored personnel carrier with their bare hands and gave the "liberators" a good kicking.

Villagers are capturing tanks but not reporting them to the armed forces because "they might come in handy on the farm."

Village women whom the occupiers ask for food are feeding them sleeping pills, then locking them in their basements. And then they wonder what to do next -- make them dig the garden or send them The Hague. Or maybe both.

"All this gives new meaning to the words of the Ukrainian writer Mykola Hohol (Nikolai Gogol): "Rare is the bird that can reach the middle of the Dnipro." They are calling Gogol the founder of the Ukrainian air defense forces.

"Russian warship, fuck off" isn't obscene language but the military political message. Linguists, please make the appropriate amendments to Ukrainian dictionaries.

The singer Maria Burmaka lives in Podil. She has good sound equipment at home. Each morning she sets up her amplifier in the window and sings the Ukrainian national anthem. The residents of temporarily occupied Berdianski sing the Ukrainian national anthem on the city square right in front of a column of Russian soldiers.

Children are being born in bomb shelters in the basements of hospitals and in the metro. Archbishop Yevstratiy wrote that if there is no priest to hand, anyone who has been baptized in the Orthodox Church can baptize children. All you need is water, a person to carry out the baptism and the clearly enunciated phrase: "Servant of the Lord (insert name) is baptized in the name of the father, amen, the Son, amen, and the Holy Spirit. Amen."

It is not only children who are being baptized in the shelters and basements. And not only because of the fear of death, but for the sake of life after victory.

Right now, God is in Ukraine. And as they say in the Ministry of Defense, he looks like a soldier in our Armed Forces.

— Olena Stiazhkina, Kiev, February 28, 2022. Translated by Uilleam Blacker

EGYPTIAN MEN WATCH as the Graf Zeppelin floats over the Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt, while atop the Great Pyramid of Khufu, 1931.

ONE LESS KAREN

Editor: 

I’ve come to the conclusion that Californians should have read the writing on the wall and move to a better location during the prolonged drought. The fact is, the state cannot support so many people. We moved to Hawaii a year-and-a-half ago. Yes, there is drought even here, but not throughout the entire state.

Karen Cooper

Hilo, Hawaii

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Nothing against Tiger. It just bugs me that he accrued no charges from the driving incident. I have been to hundreds of car accidents. I have seen people wreck their cars and be charged by the police for all sorts of offenses even though no other party was injured. For example, I had a guy hit a deep puddle and careen off the street with his beater F150 and total his truck on a tree. Busted face, did not want an ambulance. Poor son ‘o bitch needed that truck. Cop wrote him up for speeding, lanes violation, etc. I tried to talk to the cop but he was a young whippersnapper and had no use for my common sense. Pissed me off. I’ve been out of the towing business for 10 years now. Even back then there were the prick cops and the good cops. 

Prick cop: Everybody's an asshole and the enemy 

Good Cop: I’ll listen to what you have to say

FARROW'S AUTO CAMP and Conoco service station on Route 66, Holbrook, Arizona. It is dated by the card owner as 1938. We can see numerous pieces of petrified wood around their business. It was typical in those days to get this from local ranches near the Petrified forest and use it as decoration or to sell smaller pieces to tourists. Rates were $1.00 to $4.50, there were 17 cabins, 7 private showers, and 7 private toilets.

CAN GROCERY OUTLET'S $5.99 WINES POSSIBLY BE ANY GOOD?

Shopping at Grocery Outlet Bargain Market is a Bay Area tradition — one with particular resonance in this time of wacky inflation. The Emeryville chain, founded in 1946, is famous for prices so low they feel scandalous, due to its strategy of buying food companies' unwanted excess. It's the kind of place where you can still buy Valentine's Day cookies in April, and where you might find a whole freezer full of only butter pecan-flavored ice cream. It's also perhaps the last remaining place where you can buy a dozen eggs in San Francisco for $2.50.

Of all the shockingly low-priced items at Grocery Outlet, I always marveled most at the wines. Peruse the wine section of any of its 200-plus California stores, and you'll see prices that feel like they must be a mistake: Chardonnays for $2.99, Cabernets for $4.99, even Napa-appellated bottles for under $10.

How do they do it? More important, can wines at those prices be any good? I've written extensively in the past about why good California wines rarely come cheap — mostly having to do with the fact that running any sort of business costs a lot here, especially if you are treating your workers well. When I see a $2.99 bottle, I'm instinctively suspicious. 

So I called Greg Kobayashi, Grocery Outlet's director of wine, beer and spirits, to ask how the whole operation works. He described the company's wine-buying strategy as “opportunistic”: As with the food it stocks, it's taking advantage of excess inventory that suppliers are willing to get rid of at a major discount. “If a winery estimates it's going to sell 10,000 cases of wine, it may produce 12,000 cases,” he said. At the end of the year, when the winery wants to move on to selling its next vintage, it could sell the extra 2,000 cases to Grocery Outlet.

The result is that most wines at the store cost 60% less than their original retail price, Kobayashi said, and also that the vintage might be a little … mature. “Our customers are trained to understand that it's not going to be the current vintage,” he said. In my recent visits to a few different locations, I noticed lots of red wines from 2016 and 2017, and even a couple from 2014. White wines are trickier, since they may show signs of senility a little sooner. For that reason, Kobayashi said they tend to price whites more aggressively, to ensure that the inventory moves quickly.

Still, he emphasized that the company's buyers are picky, rejecting about half of the wines that come across their desk. “We have to kiss a lot of frogs,” Kobayashi said. Often, a wine is OK but the math just doesn't pencil out. There are wines Kobayashi would happily take if he can sell them at $4, but not if his costs push the retail price up to $15.

Wine selections vary greatly from store to store, since the managers of each location select as much as 85% of the wine themselves. Even within an individual store, the inventory shifts constantly; a wine that's here one week is likely to be gone the next. In 2021, Grocery Outlet sold about 1.8 million cases of wine in total, Kobayashi said, representing about 15,000 individual wines.

That's a lot, and I don't purport to have tested the wine selections at any Grocery Outlet comprehensively. But over the past few months, I've bought a selection of bottles from a few different Bay Area locations, just to see what these prices can really buy. The results have been mixed.

There have been some gems, like Jean-Luc Colombo Les Abeilles Cotes du Rhone for $5.99, a very solid, if simple, red blend that you'll find for $12-$18 elsewhere. I was pleasantly surprised by Skyfall's 2017 Walla Walla Cabernet Sauvignon ($5.99) and Spur Ranch's perfectly drinkable $3.99 Sauvignon Blanc, among others.

But I also had one very strange experience, involving a sparkling wine from Opta, a winery in Portugal's Bairrada region. The brut is priced as high as $18.99 online, but cost just $5.99 at the Visitacion Valley Grocery Outlet. Maybe this is why: When I removed the foil, crumbles of black debris fell from the cork, covering my hands in a sticky mess. I'd never seen something like this before — had the metal cage surrounding the cork rusted over? I was too grossed out to investigate further. I took the bottle outside, and my husband later smashed it open with a crowbar to empty the liquid so that we could put it in the recycling bin.

“The tricky part about wine is that it evolves,” said Kobayashi. “You may get a wine that's been skunked or turned. But when you put a hot retail price on there, people are willing to try things.”

Indeed. Once the mess was cleaned up, I found that I wasn't harboring much anger. I certainly felt less annoyed than I have in the past when I've bought an expensive bottle of wine that's turned out to be corked or prematurely oxidized. At $5.99, what had I expected?

(Esther Mobley, SF Chronicle)

CALIFORNIA SENATOR PROPOSES CHECKS FOR LOW-INCOME, HOMELESS HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS

As efforts to provide a guaranteed income spring up around California, a lawmaker who has pushed for such state-funded pilot programs has set his sights on another population he says should benefit — low-income high school seniors on the brink of adulthood.

State Sen. Dave Cortese, a Democrat from Campbell, is sponsoring a bill for the state to give no-strings-attached checks to about 15,000 high school seniors who have experienced homelessness, starting from around the time of graduation to their fall enrollment in college or vocational school or their entry into the workforce.…

lostcoastoutpost.com/2022/apr/7/california-senator-proposes-checks-for-low-income/

ON-LINE THEOLOGY

(1) So basically all Biden did is throw taxpayer money at everything and every other country but our own! Big deal, he fixed roads! And GOD created Adam and Eve! Not Adam and Steve! A boy is a boy and a girl is a girl! Real simple. How is this even relevant? How's ur 7 dollar gas and food prices? Thanks sleepy joe 4 the disaster the country is in!

(2) Adam and Eve? Whose two sons married their sisters, and one son killed his brother? That Adam and Eve?

IN-PERSON EXHIBITIONS - SECOND SATURDAY RECEPTION

Artists in Residence & Emmy: Lou Packard Exhibitions Opening tomorrow at the Mendocino Art Center

April 8-May 1, daily 11am-4pm

The Artists in Residence (AIR) Exhibit features new artwork — including functional and sculptural ceramics, jewelry and paintings — created by the artists during their residencies at the Mendocino Art Center. AIRs showing their work are Winchi De Jesus, Miles McCreary, Grace Potter, Austyn Taylor and Nan Whitney. The AIR program brings both emerging and established artists from across the country to this unique northern California region, providing creative space for artists to expand and explore their craft, collaborate and create new bodies of work.

More information: mendocinoartcenter.org/exhibitions/artists-in-residence-2022

Emmy Lou Packard Artist of Conscience

April 8-May 1, daily 11am-4pm

Emmy Lou Packard: Artist of Conscience explores the life and artwork of this much loved artist who spent 10 years living in the village of Mendocino, and was responsible for spearheading an effort that resulted in saving our natural headlands from private development. See Emmy Lou’s work in the Mendocino Art Center’s Nichols Gallery before it travels on loan to the Richmond Art Center, June 21 through August 20, 2022.

More information: mendocinoartcenter.org/exhibitions/emmy-lou-packard-artist-of-conscience

Second Saturday April 9 - 5pm-7pm - Free admission

Enjoy snacks and wine, meet this year’s Artists in Residence and see their new work.

Note: Masking is recommended in the Mendocino Art Center galleries and Gallery Store, however they are no longer required.

THE BAD AFTERTASTE OF THE NCAA MEN’S TOURNAMENT

by Dave Zirin

On Sunday night, the NCAA men’s basketball final epitomized March Madness, but perhaps not in the manner that the creators intended. The game itself was a classic: two college hoops blue bloods—the North Carolina Tar Heels and Kansas Jayhawks—squaring off, with Kansas engineering the biggest comeback in NCAA finals history and securing the 2022 national championship by a score of 72–69. The North Carolina team was particularly compelling. Under the leadership of first-year head coach Hubert Davis, they were in danger of not even making the tournament during a mercurial first part of the season. But they not only made it to the madness of March. They advanced to the finals by defeating archnemesis Duke, sending their legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski into retirement. And yet, despite all of this basketball nirvana, a stench remains from the North Carolina side that no one seems to want to discuss. Davis is so likable, the team was such a plucky underdog, and they came so incredibly close that all the media wants to do is cheer their effort and move on. But the odor lingers. As the game went on, it was difficult to not feel more and more uneasy with what was on display.

The Tar Heels were operating with just a six-person rotation, meaning that most of the team was reduced to cheering the players on the court. It also meant that the weight and strain of a 40-minute game would be on only six pairs of shoulders. Perhaps their most vital player, center Armando Bacot, sprained his ankle in the previous game, so was already hurting but determined to persevere. Then, in the game itself, two other players were badly hurt. First there was sharpshooter Brady Manek. He took an unintentional elbow to the forehead that caused his head to jerk backward. Manek looked dazed but stayed in the game, as officials reviewed to see if the blow was in fact done with malice. Yet, even with this break in the action, there was no evidence that anyone on the coaching or medical staff checked to see if Manek had a concussion.

Then there was Puff Johnson, the team’s sixth man. With just four minutes to play, Johnson dropped to his hands and knees and threw up on the court, after motioning to his chest. This was terrifying to witness, bringing to mind people like Hank Gathers and Reggie Lewis, players who died after experiencing heart problems on the court. But Johnson’s nausea was explained away by the announcers’ saying that the Tar Heel bench was telling them he had taken a blow to the stomach (although no replays were shown to demonstrate this). One might think that would be all we would see from Johnson, but he was put back in with 38 seconds left after Bacot went down with yet another twist on the same ankle he had injured two days prior. This took place after the floor board of the Super Dome actually came unglued, causing an injury that may have cost North Carolina the game. Bacot, after falling down, hopped to the front court before the officials called a time-out. (The Kansas players, up only one point, waited for Bacot instead of going in for a layup, a remarkable act of sportsmanship.) While all this was happening, the announcers praised everyone’s toughness for “gutting it out.”

But while toughness was shown by the players, a similar courage was not shown by the coaching staff. These are kids, and of course they are going to want to play. This is when adults need to step in and tell the young people what trainer Eddie Futch told Joe Frazier before the 15th round at the Thrilla in Manila. “Sit down son, it’s all over. No one will ever forget what you did here today.”

Futch, in the most brutal of sports during the most brutal of fights, showed the kind of care the North Carolina coaching staff should have demonstrated. Davis seems like an excellent coach, with a heart as big as Carolina itself. But he had a responsibility to make sure Manek was checked for a concussion, to sit Johnson for the rest of the game, and to not let Bacot imperil an NBA future by playing on a bum ankle.

Yes, I get it. This is the finals, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Yes, this multibillion-dollar tournament is a far cry from “amateurism.” It’s big business, and we all know it. But to the youths leaving all the blood, sweat, tears, and other fluids on the court, this is not a paid endeavor. More needed to be done to protect them from themselves. Failure to do so, was indeed, madness.