Mendocino County Today: Saturday, June 4, 2022

By AVA News Service on June 4, 2022

OFF AND ON MOSTLY LIGHT RAIN will continue north of Cape Mendocino this morning. More significant rain will spread into the area this afternoon and tonight. This rain will be widespread and beneficial. Showers will linger on Sunday, with drier and warmer weather expected next week. (NWS)

AVUSD WEEKLY UPDATE

Dear Anderson Valley Community,

I hope you enjoyed the week! Summer is in the air with one more week of school. The kids are doing a great job! Congratulations to our amazing graduates at all of the promotion intervals. A special congratulations to our graduating Seniors! They are an impressive group and heading out on their Senior Trip today. We wish them well, and can’t wait to watch their journey to see “all that they will become”!

Important Dates–Please let us know if we can reserve you a chair!

Six grade graduation June 6–High School

High school awards night: June 7 –High School

Eighth grade graduation June 8–High School

High school graduation June 9–High School

Measure M:

Please return your ballot for Measure M by mail or to the fairgrounds election box no later than THIS Tuesday! A fact sheet for this important infrastructure work is attached.

Pooled Testing Next Year:

It appears that the State is shifting away from supporting the pooled testing model and will be providing over the counter testing options for schools. We have ordered 2,000 kits to start the school year off, and we will keep you posted as the directives unfold from the State.

District Office Relocation

As part of our realignment in the district, we will be relocating the District Office to the High School Career Center the last week of June. We will keep you posted. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us via phone or email at any time with questions or suggestions.

Summer School

Please reach out to your site office with any questions about summer school. This is an amazing opportunity for a combination of academics and recreational activities. We thank Charlotte Triplett and Stefani Ewing for coordinating these programs over the summer.

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for your time and dedication to your students’ education this year. It has been a wonderful road back from Covid-19 and we look forward to a tremendous 2023-24 school year! School starts for students AUGUST 15!

Sincerely yours,

Louise Simson

Superintendent

Streptocarpus (photo by Everett Liliberg)

A MEAN-SPIRITED TAX PROPOSAL

Editor,

The BOS is threatening to poison the well for permanently increasing the sales tax support of our libraries. This next Tuesday they will again be discussing what sales tax ordinance they would put on the November ballot. What is the story here?

For many months a group of library supporters have been working on a proposal for a permanent sales tax that would fund the operations and building maintenance for the County Free Libraries. They are now circulating a petition to put it on the ballot in the November election; they need 6,000 signatures of registered voters by the end of this month. A major selling point has been that even though the sales tax support for the library would increase by 1/8¢, the total sales tax would actually decrease because Measure B sales tax would decrease by 3/8¢.

Apparently some Supes looked at that 3/8¢ and said “Well, why don’t we grab that opportunity to get $7 million a year?” and put it on the May 17 agenda as “a possible sales tax ordinance.” Despite the innocuous wording, it seems that there was advance notice to some residents of finer detail; all public comments were supportive of water or volunteer firemen. The BOS directed the staff to draw up a plan to divvy up the money between Fire and Water. (Sounds like a reprise of the Auditor/Treasurer merger rushed/no plan to take advantage of an “opportunity”?) Adoption of the ordinance requires a 2/3 vote so they went for two items of popular interest.

There is no debate that the volunteer fire departments need help, but, if Supervisor Ted Williams wants tourists to contribute to services they use, surely the $600,000 Williams, McGourty and Mulheren gave to Visit Mendocino could have been used to pay down some of what the County owes the fire departments. Or the $400,000 they spent on remodeling their chambers. Community members throughout the county could band together and put an initiative on the ballot for 1/4¢ sales tax dedicated to volunteer fire districts. It would only need 50%+1 to pass.

But, Water? Potter Valley/Eel River Diversion came up a lot. This is not a new problem; it has been many years in the making. The Mendocino County Water Conservation Flood Control Russian River Improvement District (popularly known as Russian River Flood Control) holds and administers Mendocino County’s water right to Coyote Dam waters. For at least the first 30 years after the dam was completed it GAVE AWAY that water to anyone who wanted to pump it. Their rationale was that the property owners paid for the bond so they should get to use it for free. Sonoma County Water Agency charged their users; look at the different results.

Perhaps it’s time the property owners within the Improvement District put up some more money for their benefit. The Improvement District has the power; for example, it could levy a parcel tax. It has the water right to protect. The County has been putting money into the Joint Powers Agreement. Why should county shoppers subsidize the wine industry? The County has no water right to protect. Could this be a gift of public money?

How does all this impact our libraries? Petition signature gatherers are encountering push-back, as in "I’m saving my vote for Potter Valley.” As Dan Gjerde and John Haschak noted, a County measure has little chance of passage because the voters have little confidence in the competence of the BOS. They remember cannabis, Measure B, the Auditor/Treasurer merger fiasco, etc. Furthermore, as Gjerde astutely commented, if confronted by two sales tax measures the reaction of many voters is to vote No on both.

At the moment, Williams, Mulheren, and McGourty are poised to approve putting this sales tax on the November ballot. I suspect they will like any “plan” the staff brings forward.

What a mean-spirited proposal. Raise your voices! Thank Haschak and Gjerde for their support of the libraries. Demand no County-sponsored ordinance on the November ballot.

If they persist, I, for one, would support a recall. County residents love their libraries. The BOS? Not so much.

Linda Bailey

Ukiah

Old AV postcard from e-bay. Indian Creek Bridge (via Marshal Newman)

STREET FAIR & FIREWORKS VENDORS SOUGHT

The City of Point Arena is accepting applications for food and arts/crafts vendors for the 2022 Street Fair & Fireworks Festival on July 2. More information is contained in the Street Fair Vendor Form located below or at the following link: pointarena.ca.gov/2022/04/independence-weekend-celebration-returns-for-2022/

FFA AWARDS NIGHT

Let me share tonight... Beth Swehla casually invited me last week to an awards dinner for FFA. I was juggling an important Anderson Valley Health Center Board meeting, which I left early, to be able to attend her event, and boy, was I glad I did.

The room was packed with parents, siblings, grandmas, babies, and kids that were there to celebrate their work and achievements. The potluck food was AMAZING. The FFA officer core was polished and well-rehearsed in their scripted event. The numerous students recognized and celebrated for their achievements in this program were OUTSTANDING. After an hour of this program, I want to create a whole FFA school. If the FFA program can turn out students that are that polished, that hard-working, that eloquent–what a model. If that program has the parent support and pride that I saw tonight—I want that for our whole school. Best of all that lovely group of current FFA officers took the time to respect and reflect on their admiration and support of Ms. Swehla. It was amazingly touching, and the seamless translation facilitated by the officer core, to make it accessible to all in attendance, was admirable.

From the set up, to the decorations, to the program, to the awards, to the installation of new student officers, it spoke of excellence and quality. All I can say is "well done"--and I am proud of you.

Congratulations to outgoing officers:

Lisset Ochoa, President

Tricia Anguiano-Rubio, Secretary

Julian Leivanos, Treasurer

Lucy Espinoa, Reporter

Willow Douglass-Thomas, Vice President

Yuliza Lopez, Sentinel

So proud of you all. I continue to be blown away about what you all do together. This is special. I hope you know it.

With sincere appreciation,

Louise Simson, Superintendent

COMMUNITY NEEDS

Editor,

Hello my dear friends-

Dear 5th District voters, whoever you choose for the upcoming Supervisor race, I ask that you not base your vote on the vicious caricatures that are being constructed around John Redding, neither our Democracy, nor our local community, can function in a healthy manner under these conditions. It is my sincere hope and prayer, that as a community, we foster a politic that nutures unity, coherence and beauty, not one of toxic divisiveness; that plays off the darker angels of our fears and prejudice and harms our local community. Thank you.

Chris Skyhawk, former 5th Ditsrict candidate (2018), Fort Bragg

Re: Chris Skyhawk’s Letter to 5th district voters....

Chris, glad you are doing better. Thank you for your continued service. I already voted and exercised my constitutional right to voicing my opinion. Without sharing my choices as guaranteed by quasi HIPPA rights, all I am willing to share is that I voted Kendall (hands down) as the guy the Mendocino County needs. All the rest is a crapshoot, and District 5 needs the strongest leadership of all, especially when they serve as chair.

There is responsibility in service whether paid or as a volunteer (I am both), and when you drop your passion for quality service, you may as well ask yourself are you serving to the best community needs? And those needs are defined at the post office, a hands on meet and greet, a Boonville parade, interaction with your community neighbors. Pinches yes, Scaramella yes, but today a handshake agreement don't mean much. We folks are called "old school," but I heard a good one on the Amazon prime series of Bosch, "No grad school.” —appropriate for my interest in the situation.

The world of people no longer honor their own contracts of social respect, and grace to one another. We seem to be a ship of fools, but I am meandering from the point.

During our lock down here in Mendocino, I perfected my gardening, and the only news I watched was Stephen Colbert, Randy Rainbow, and Jimmy Fallon. Spent some time on PBS news hour, but every morning between 3 am and 6:30am as Mike Kalantarian put the website together, I would reap my daily quotable rewards from Boonville Central, The AVA.

So, you can share this diatribe with the AVA or any social media, but no matter how you vote, Get out there, or mail in your ballot.

Randy Burke, Gualala

SUPERVISOR MULHEREN EXPLAINS the bond consultant and sales tax / cannabis advisory measure agenda items:

The BOS previously discussed refinancing current bonds, and trying to a quote $3mill for the new wing of the jail and $3mill for other deferred building maintenance, that’s what the bond counsel is for.

The Sales Tax item is on the agenda for Wednesday the 8th. Accountability of the funds moving forward is key. I wasn’t on the Board when the cannabis tax went through but as a member of the City Council when Measure Y was passed I still look for that update and review on the City website every year. When asked in the past about the cannabis tax there was no movement to provide accountability. There’s a different Board, a different fiscal team, a new Auditor and interim CEO; I don’t know that the effort to back track would be worth it but certainly moving forward the budget could identify any increases due to cannabis tax and how they are distributed to the items in the initiative.

Hopefully the community and Board members are paying attention to the RFPs that go out for various County functions, they are all public record, but as for water hauling we certainly know it will be necessary in year 3 of the drought.

Any questions that you have feel free to drop me a line. MulherenM@MendocinoCounty.org

Oh one more thing;

I wanted to make sure that you knew that County HMIS data is collected on the COC website. Here’s a link: https://handupnothandoutmendo.com/

Also their meetings are on YouTube. They are currently updating the homeless Strategic Plan which was adopted by the City Councils and County Board of Supes a couple of years ago. Happy to answer any questions you have about homelessness anytime.

Mark Scaramella Notes: OK, thanks. We don’t see an agenda posted on the County’s website for Wednesday the 8th, though; only Tuesday the 7th.

NORTH BAY ALL-LEAGUE BASEBALL

Here are the complete all-league teams, voted on by league coaches.

Oak

Most Valuable Player

Brett Neidlinger, Jr., Windsor

Pitcher of the Year

Austin Ford, Sr., Ukiah

Offensive Player of the Year

Nate Phelps, Sr., Cardinal Newman

First Team

Wesley Allen, Sr., Outfield, Maria Carrillo
Damian Escarcega, Sr., Outfield, Windsor
Ethan Rinehart, Sr., Outfield, Ukiah
Tyler Nordyke, Sr., Infield, Windsor
Brady Boyd, Jr., Infield, Cardinal Newman
Caleb Ford, Sr., Infield, Ukiah
Carson Smith, Sr., First Base, Maria Carrillo
Landen Rota, Jr., Utility, Cardinal Newman
Elijah Hackathorn, Jr., Catcher, Windsor
Mason Lerma, Jr., Pitcher, Cardinal Newman
Antonio Rivera, Sr., Pitcher, Windsor
Josh Volmerding, Jr., Pitcher, Maria Carrillo

Second Team

Gio Lucchesi, Jr., Outfield, Maria Carrillo
Anane Wilson, Jr., Outfield, Cardinal Newman
Jack Lazark, Jr., Infield, Cardinal Newman
Caze Derammelaere, Jr., Infield, Rancho Cotate
Trenton Ford, So., Infield, Ukiah
Vero Poueu, Jr., First Base, Cardinal Newman
Sam Valenti, So., Utility, Montgomery
Cameron Duran, Sr., Catcher, Rancho Cotate
Carson Dillon, Jr., Pitcher, Windsor
Lucas Hermes, So., Pitcher, Rancho Cotate
Jack Larson, Jr., Pitcher, Cardinal Newman

MATT LEFEVER: Taking place at Cook’s Valley Campground in Piercy, CA on the Humboldt/Mendocino border, the Northern Lights Music Festival for 2022 has built its name based on a taste-making mix of cutting edge music, industry-leading cannabis programming, and serene natural landscapes.

RYE N FLINT:

I have some news to share. Ever go talk to Caltrans workers about what they are doing? They never got the memo about loose lips sinking ships, and they will talk your ear off about the latest “Millions of dollars being wasted project” in Mendo County. They are usually sitting in their work vehicle on their cell phone, “Watchung” the subcontractors and making sure they are doing their jobs safely, according to Caltrans protocol. Has anyone noticed the 2 concrete “Homeless temples”, as the Caltrans workers called them, under the Talmage overpass in Ukiah? Anyone notice the strips of land being cleared on both sides of the highway north of Perkins street? Guess what they are spending millions of dollars on? Surprise surprise, It’s a border wall to keep the Homeless from building “encampments” under the Orr Creek bridge on Hwy 101. The wall will be 3 feet deep, in concrete, 10 ft tall, and supposedly climbless and cutproof. The Caltrans guys said that it was built by the same company in Texas that builds the border wall there. How interesting. They also told me that the homeless will get a couple tools from the new Harbor Freight in Ukiah and cut through the fence the day after it is complete. What a huge secret waste of money, when we really just need our crappy Mendo roads fixed. Just remember what our DOT leader said to the SUPES… “Spyrock road is in great condition and has been paved half way up for a deacade.” BAA HAAA HAAA HAAA! This county management is ridiculous.

Rye N Flint

P.s. – Matt Kendal is actually a good guy, with good political skills. No one will ever match The Mighty Tom Allman, but Trent is a libertarian hypocritical joke. I can see a good illiterate base voting for him though. The power of the con man’s voice lives on.

Brotherhood of the Holy Ghost, Crown Hall, Mendocino

A TRIBUTE TO LOCAL FARMER MIKE BROCK

(We were so sorry to hear about the loss of our dear local farmer, Mike Brock, of Brock Farms. In honor of Mike, we wanted to share an article he wrote for the AVA in 2013 for our Connecting with Local Food series, which chronicles his journey into farming and living in Anderson Valley. We are grateful to Mike for his amazing green thumb. (I think we all remember those prize-winning pumpkins!) And his commitment to nourishing our valley for decades with healthy, beautiful produce. Our hearts go out to the Brock family during this difficult time. — Barbara Goodell)

I Was Born At A Very Early Age

by Mike Brock (AVA, September 4, 2013)

I guess you could say the idea of Brock Farms started at an early age. I was hooked at 12 by the magic that you can plant this little seed and you get a watermelon, or this one a carrot, and this one a corn stalk. I think for most folks seeing a seed you have planted and germinated is always a good feeling. I soon raised a garden and built a mini barnyard with chickens and a billy goat. I liked selling some of my veggies at a small lemonade-style stand outside our driveway. I wanted to be a farmer. Someone guided me into 4-H where I entered my produce and raised sheep and showed them at the Monterey County Fair. I have always wanted to be a farmer and wishing I could be a rancher from the get-go. I wasn't in line to inherit any land, so after years of saving my money and after schooling, I went looking through Montana, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado for the right place to set up shop and farm.

In 1978, I came down Highway 253 into Anderson Valley. It was all ranches and apples with a good winter climate and ocean nearby. Plus, it was relatively close to my paternal family. I was sold. My first wife and I were fortunate to buy a 4.5-acre spot with good water next to master homesteaders, Jan and Flick, who were a huge source of knowledge of living off the land and raising food. We followed their lead. Perhaps you could say it was a domestic, controlled way compared to the savvy locals who hunted and fished the Valley's bounty without the feed and fences.

In 1982 and '83, I was blessed with two beautiful daughters, April and Maia, who, in 1992 rode in what I think was the only Farmers' Market parade float convoy ever. They rode with a 12-foot paper Mache carrot we had made. The leader of the pack was George Gowan and his incredibly designed apple market rig. George's rig (welded by his son) was a farm stand on wheels, ready to go the minute he pulled into a market. It was a very brilliant idea. Perhaps this was the birthplace of fixing the starting times for farmers' markets. This allowed everyone to catch up and be on the same playing field as George, who was probably sold out by the time you were just pulling in to the market!

I had started raising hogs with three sows and a boar, and sold weaner pigs. It was a touch and go operation: selling at the Ukiah auction yard sometimes was rough, at times having to buy my own stock back to save them from being sold too cheaply. I took them to the Petaluma auction and did better. Having children around the farm and keeping them safe was always paramount. The pigs made me nervous with children, so I sold them off. Growing organically just made good sense for a lot of reasons also.

Around 1986 when I was single again, I met Vickie Stone, who swears that one our first dates consisted of holding a piglet while I castrated it. It's possible, but what the hell was I thinking? Vickie also liked farming — a match made in heaven and how can you let a cute girl like that go? We started working and planting and began vending at various farmers' markets around 1989 with strawberries, raspberries, potatoes, and tomatoes. We also had planted a large area of asparagus. We hit markets in Ukiah, Cloverdale, Willits, and Healdsburg and finally settled with Ukiah and Willits at that time. We definitely kept our teaching jobs. Regardless of how much experience at play- farming I had, we made lots of mistakes and missed moves. Pretty much the list of things to deter your efforts is long. Growing organically sometimes seemed like throwing things to the wind and if it lands right you could get a crop. Sometimes it's like that. It's tough, but not all that dramatic. Hell, our great grandfathers were pulling it off and it was their norm. A lot of soil amendments were free back then. Now it's big business for a lot of reasons and pricey.

Luckily for me, Vickie and I got married 1992, and with her hard work ethic and extreme talent at weeding (seriously, she is a machine) it was a major, major help for a farm that didn't use herbicides. The insect and pests seemed to balance out after a while, the good ones eating the bad ones. Our biggest problems are the weeds.

Brock Farms started to get stronger and began to expand. Farmers' markets were just getting started around then and seemed to be everywhere. Markets were extremely slow in the beginning, but were catching on with the public who seem to want a fresher, local product. The Boonville Farmers' Market started around 1991. Great! No drive time or gas. This market was real slow out of the chute. We still needed to go to the Ukiah Saturday market. So Vickie would attend Boonville and I went to Ukiah. We put a trailer hitch on her Sentra coupe, and the car could act like a truck. We were hitting four markets a week back then.

Personally I like small towns, but the smallness of the Boonville Farmers' Market makes it real tricky. How much do I pick to take so I don't lose my socks? This phenomenon also makes it nearly impossible to attract and keep the wide variety of vendors' offerings that the larger markets can support. Vendors from outside the area may pop in for a while, but soon the economics don't add up, and they drop. It seems really easy to outgrow our little market and search for other areas to sell your product. Our best years in Boonville seemed to be the "green bucks" era. In reality, that was subsidized with a grant, but the market picked up in activity. Now days it's just simply a sweet place to meet and get fresh veggies,

In 1993, baby Hannah joined the family. It was then we decided Vickie was more suited for teaching and I for farming, so we juggled the two worlds and tried to make ends meet. Around then, that dang Dave Gowan introduced me to the giant pumpkins, which led to a huge farm distraction but a helluva ride "playing" farm style. We traded back and forth winning some pumpkin contests and prize money. As Nancy put it, "You boys had a lot of fun with that pumpkin stuff." Heavy emphasis on "boys." I didn't care, it was paying for 50 yards of compost each season for the farm and I was having a lot of fun.

Around 1995-96 we cut back on markets and shifted more towards the coast. We went to Fort Bragg, Mendocino, and occasionally doubled Saturday duty with Gualala, and always Boonville.

In 1996, our neighbors Jan and Flick and Brock Farms were knocked off their feet with a fire. The fire pretty much took out barns, livestock, and farming equipment, but spared our homes. We were dazed, to put it lightly, but rapidly were set back on our feet with inspiring support and help from friends and just plain good people in the Valley community and outside it. We came back stronger and better with all their inspiration and help.

Along came baby Julia in 1999. There are a lot of funny stories about juggling children, farming, and markets. Building temporary corrals in the area you're working in or using your truck cab as a playpen only to find pennies from the ashtray from here to China in very odd places — the worst place being my radio cassette player. I don't think they missed a button or knob. Everything blasted on the minute you started the truck, though basically it worked – somewhat.

The years fly by with raising young children and the challenge of jugging all the dependent living things on a farm and off. The challenges of farming organically all seem mostly a game of defense, and in the end it's what you want to do but you still have to pay the bills.

Along the way we have had a lot of support and this a great place to say thanks to: the fire recovery team; Dave and Nancy Gowan for their help tracking down items of need and selling them near cost; Regina Schwenter for major well support; the Valley's own version of Alice Waters, aka Lauren, for her solid, consistent support, and willingness to take our bitten seconds; all the Boonville Farmers' Market managers who mostly volunteer time to keep our market afloat: the support from our customers; and the AV Foodshed Group: a heartfelt thanks to all!

If you need something during the week, swing by the farm at the bottom of Peachland. If you go to the 2013 Fair, check out the giant pumpkin enthusiast exhibits and the new long gourds and giant pear gourds. Maybe a new contest in the making?

The red paws on the Kangaroo Paw plant are blooming with green and yellow flowers. Reminds me in a way of Audrey II in the Little Shop of Horrors? Multiple mouths with yellow fangs? (caption/photo by Dave Eyster)

EXCHANGE OF THE DAY

James Marmon: North Coast rail dispute intensifies with competing bids from Skunk Train and coal export company: pressdemocrat.com/article/news/north-coast-rail-dispute-intensifies-with-competing-bids-from-skunk-train-a/

Bruce Anderson: The coal train is about as possible as the Great Redwood Trail. Jeez, some people will believe anything. O hell yes. A mysterious Indian tribe will ship coal, which is being phased out everywhere else in the country and the world, out to Oakland then train it to the port of Eureka on rail tracks that don’t exist and never will exist. Gawd, what is this place some kind of cargo cult?

Rye N Flint: I’m really not sure how serious to take this whole coal train fear campaign. I think a coal train to Humboldt is one of the stupidest ideas and a disaster waiting to happen. It is also the most expensive section of track to maintain in the entire country, so why would they actively use it, when the port of Oakland is so much closer to the nearest rail spur? I don’t get it. The irony is that there is a Coal seam, aka a coal deposit, that runs through the Eel river just Northwest of Covelo. You can see “COAL” in big bold letters on old land maps. Why wasn’t it ever mined? Because the landscape was too treacherous and it was economically infeasible… back then! So why is it a good idea all of a sudden?

I had a backhoe operator tell me the other day that he doesn’t understand why the liberals in Mendo are so opposed to industry… While we were excavating petroleum contaminated soil from and old home heating oil tank… I guess the “reasons” go right over conservatives head. Maybe they like the taste of diesel in their drinking water? or… maybe… they will keep scratching their heads as to why the Salmon are as abundant as they used to be…

Bruce Anderson: That Covelo coal was mined circa 1920, and there was more coal mined on Poonkinney Road near Covelo, and much of it was mined by Italian miners, hence a few blue-eyed Indians named Carlo and Gino. Maybe someone who knows more about this interlude can flesh it out, but I think Mendo coal was fairly quickly exhausted but was hauled outta here by the old Northwestern Pacific Railroad, present day access to whose right of way has magically become the property of Northcoast Democrats.

ED NOTES

PACIFIC WEBMAIL reappeared Friday morning in a deluge of backed up cyber-communications. Then disappeared again for an hour or so, but soon came back again. Maybe crazy people have taken control of the Ukiah-based internet business, and are switching us on and off for the heck of it. Whatever, as the young people say, Pacific has an odd business strategy in never answering their phone, never explaining what the heck is going on. And a bunch of us loyal customers all the way back to the founder, the great Jim Persky!

THE CITY was totally fogged in this morning when my daughter, bless her all her days, drove me over the bridge to St. Mary's where I get my bi-annual shots of super glue to my aged knees. We miraculously found a parking spot in front of the splendid St. Ignatius Church at Parker and Fulton. When I'm by myself I like to go in and sit for a while to marinate my skeptic's bulk in the quiet beauty of its interior. Say what you will about the Catholics, they know, or knew, how to do architecture. Lenny Bruce (sic) said they built beautiful churches throughout the world as places the impoverished could get away from their poverty for an hour or so and to intimidate peasants with the pure splendor of the church compared to their starvation-level life conditions. At St. Ignatius, the worshippers are overwhelmingly Filipinos, other Asians, Latins, with a scattering of elderly white people, mostly women. I've never seen a young person inside the place. I think atheists are too harsh on believers. If faith gives them comfort, why try to argue them out of it? As Marx explained “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” (Your smartypants non-believer typically invokes only his last sentence.) Of course the Spanish Republicans had every justified cause to execute priests and burn down churches given the tight affiliation of the Church with the rich and fascism generally. At the same time, many Catholic revolutionaries have been communists. Live with contradictions, I say!

MY FRIEND MICHAEL WEIST commented that he never thought he'd find himself agreeing with Kissinger. Me too. And Chomsky and Kissinger on the same page re Ukraine? Unthinkable. But there they are. They're correct, seems to me, in arguing that the Biden drift of more and more weapons to Ukraine without emphasizing a ceasefire and serious peace negotiations this abomination of a war constantly risks a nuclear exchange. I watched a jolly “scholar” on the BBC, her big white perfect teeth wreathed in a constant cannibal grin, saying that Biden's policy is correct, that Ukraine “must win,” and if Putin goes to the nukes, we go to the nukes!

THE ABOVE MEME wafted into my computer, reminding me to tweak the gun community with the statement that hunting with any kind of enhanced rifle — scope, thousand yard range, high power — isn't the kind of hunting a reasonable person would brag about. Try bow hunting, camo buddies. Or try pig hunting like Ray Arujo did it in the Waipio Valley of Hawaii circa 1960. Ray would wait for his dogs to trap the pig in a surround before jumping on its back and cutting its throat. The guy's face looked like the pigs got in plenty of good shots, too. I saw Dyaks dynamite whole stretches of remote Borneo rivers to harvest finned protein. That was also in the early 1960s so they've probably made some eco-advances since. That was in a place where 12-year-olds thought I and my black partner, Al Johnson, were some kinda tag team ghosts. The kids had been peacefully tapping their longhouse's rubber trees when we appeared, putting a fright into the poor things they've probably never forgotten. Al had one of those new-at-the-time instamatic cameras, which made him king of the jungle for the few days we stayed over, with Dyaks coming from all over to have the magic man snap their photos. They hadn't heard of America, or at least were fuzzy on the concept, thinking we were odd emissaries from England, whose empire still included the Borneo states at the time.

A WHOLE LOTTA Warriors' fans are saying they lost to the Celtics last Thursday night because Nancy Pelosi was at the game.

Emily Parker of Comptche with fresh haircut (photo by barber Mitch Ortiz)

MENDO EXCHANGE (Coast Chatline)

Erif Thunen wrote: Even though he is in favor of police in schools, OK with assault rifles (if they're licensed), and against Covid restrictions (like wearing masks in indoor venues)? These positions make me uncomfortable; I would have thought you, too.

— Erif.

Marco here. Trent will get five percent of the vote. In this case it doesn't matter what you do. There's an old episode about voting, in South Park. The story unfolds so that, at the end of each story beat, one character says to another, So your vote doesn't count, or See, my vote counts. At the very end, when it's pretty well heartwarmingly determined that the little boy's vote counts after all, there's a quick predictable twist, the screen goes black, and a boy says, Now your vote doesn't count.

— Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org

CATCH OF THE DAY, June 3, 2022

JACK ALVAREZ, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

JAMES CADLE, Ukiah. Possession of blank checks-fraud.

CESAR DELCAMPO, Ukiah. Under influence.

AMBER FRENCH, Ukiah. Petty theft-merchandise.

SARAH HARWOOD, Willits. DUI, suspended license for DUI, probation revocation.

ASHLEY LENHART, Ukiah. Suspended license, failure to appear, probation revocation.

BRADLEY MALLETT, Laytonville. Under influence, county parole violation.

ALEXANDER POULIDES, Willits. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

DANIEL REBOCA, Ukiah. DUI.

MATHEW VICCHIONE, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.

JACOB WALTRIP, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

JERMAINE WATSON, Clearlake/Ukiah. Loaded handgun not registered owner.

LARRY WOLFE, SR., Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

FANS ACCUSE NANCY PELOSI OF CURSING THE WARRIORS following Game 1 NBA Finals loss to Celtics

by Grant Marek

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unexpectedly drew the ire of Golden State Warriors fans on Thursday for a photo posted to Twitter immediately after tipoff of Game 1 of the NBA Finals.

The photo in question, posted to the @teampelosi account, was of the speaker donning a Warriors hoodie and a yellow leather military jacket along with the caption, "Let's go, Warriors! Champions on and off the court. #Dubnation." An SFGATE investigation turned up a startling find: the jacket in question was actually the exact one Pelosi wore to her weekly news conference on June 13, 2019, the same day the Dubs lost Game 6 of the NBA Finals to the Toronto Raptors.

In a playoffs filled with bad omens, Dubs fans pointed to the Pelosi post as a death knell for Golden State, which dropped Game 1 120-108 in San Francisco despite taking a 12-point lead into the fourth quarter.

For many, the Twitter post conjured memories of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz posting a photo of himself courtside in a Rockets t-shirt just before tipoff of Game 7 of the 2018 Western Conference Finals between the Dubs and Rockets in Houston, an eventual 101-92 Dubs win.

"You jinxed it. Stop," pleaded one fan. "Pelosi Curse," added another. "Pelosi is the new Drake," joked another, referencing the Toronto rapper who earned a reputation for being something of a bad luck charm, with his presence leading to losses for everyone from the Alabama Crimson Tide and Conor McGregor, to the Philadelphia 76ers and Kentucky Wildcats.

Pelosi, the first and only woman in U.S. history to serve as speaker of the House, moved to San Francisco in 1969 and has represented congressional districts within San Francisco since 1987. She appears to have been a staunch supporter of the Golden State Warriors on social media since 2015, the year the Warriors won their first title in 40 years. Pelosi appeared in the Dubs' victory parade that year, was there for Golden State's White House visit in February of 2016, and in 2018 famously invited Steph Curry and co. to the U.S. Capitol after then-President Trump said the NBA champs would not be welcomed to the White House.

The Warriors will get a chance to attempt to reverse the "curse" Sunday when they host Boston in Game 2, Sunday at 5 p.m.

(sfgate.com)

MARTIN MASON HAZELTINE was born on July 31, 1827, in Vermont. He and his brother George I. Hazeltine studied photography in St. Charles, Illinois, and then in New York City. In December of 1853 the two brothers moved to San Francisco where they operated a daguerreotype studio. Largely independently of George, M. M. Hazeltine continued in photography for decades, producing pictures of Yosemite and other scenic areas California, Oregon, and Idaho. In the mid-1860s (ca. 1866-1867), M. M. Hazeltine moved to Mendocino; his many photographs taken there and elsewhere were later published by such firms as J. P. Soule and Lawrence & Houseworth. He entered a partnership with J. J. Reilly in the 1870s based in Stockton and Yosemite Valley, but returned to Mendocino on and off until the 1880s. In the later part of his life, he lived in Idaho and Oregon. He died in 1903.

Self portrait of M. M. Hazeltine (left) and brother George in front of cabin on Clear Creek near Shasta in 1857 - while working gold claim.

UKRAINE, FRIDAY, 3RD JUNE

It's the 100th day of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with no end in sight to the war. The fighting has killed thousands, forced millions to flee the country and left Ukrainian cities in ruins. Both Russia and Ukraine have claimed some successes and losses. In recent weeks, Russia has focused its efforts in the east and south, now controlling one-fifth of Ukraine. In the eastern Donbas region, Russian troops are making gains in a grinding artillery battle as Ukraine awaits new shipments of longer-range and heavier weaponry from the West. The war has had global ripple effects, and cease-fire negotiations have stalled.

More than 2 million Ukrainians have crossed back into the country since the heaviest violence shifted away from the capital, Kyiv, and other population centers. The European Union's border agency, Frontex, said now more people have started going back to Ukraine than are leaving. But the United Nations refugee agency still says Ukrainians are experiencing "the largest human displacement crisis in the world today," with 7.1 million people displaced within Ukraine and more than 6.5 million refugees.

Russian troops occupying the Ukrainian city of Mariupol are still detaining civilian men and sending them to overcrowded camps in the area, according to the city's Mayor Vadym Boichenko. He told reporters in Kyiv that 100,000 residents remain in his devastated port city, now under full Russian control. Boichenko, who fled before Russian forces captured Mariupol, says food and drinking water are scarce and there's no electrical power or cellphone service. Thousands of bodies are buried in shallow, makeshift graves.

Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the West of "shifting the responsibility" on Russia for a looming global food crisis. Russian forces have occupied much of Ukraine's coastline, but the Kremlin blames the blockages of food shipments on Western sanctions and on Ukraine's defensive mining of Black Sea ports. After a meeting with Putin, Senegal's President Macky Sall, who leads the African Union, tweeted thatRussia's leader "expressed readiness to facilitate" wheat exports. Speaking to state TV, Putin said Russia wouldn't attack grain shipments if Ukraine demined the waters, or that exports could go through Belarus, which would require lifting of sanctions on that country.

The European Union stepped up sanctions on Russia, including against Russian military commanders the bloc describes as the "butchers"of Bucha and Mariupol, cities where Ukraine blames Russian forces for atrocities. The new blacklist also includes former gymnast Alina Kabaeva, described as "closely associated" with Putin; the adult children of Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov; and Arkady Volozh, who immediately stepped down as CEO of Russian tech giant Yandex. All this came a day after the U.S. rolled out new sanctions on Russian officials and oligarchs.

— NPR

WIN OR LOSE, WARRIORS WON’T SOLVE SAN FRANCISCO’S PROBLEMS

by Jonah Raskin

The headline above the fold in the San Francisco Examiner on Thursday June 2, read “Golden Opportunity,” followed by “How the Warriors can bring us together, and restore San Francisco’s tarnished reputation.” The article quoted the Warriors CEO, Joe Lacob, who said, “We need to change this national narrative about San Francisco. It's terrible. People think it’s all homeless people and drug addicts and empty stores and burglaries.” He nailed it, or at least much of it.

I wanted the Warriors to win as much as anyone else, but I didn't think that beating the Celtics would work wonders. San Francisco columnists have a way of clutching at straws. Sports victories rarely if ever solve social and political problems. At best, championships provide distractions from drug addictions, homelessness and chronic burglaries. They don’t offer the kind of New Deal that Roosevelt offered in the Depression or the Great Society that LBJ promised to deliver in the 1960s. You probably know that already, but it still seems worth saying.

I watched the Warriors lose big to the Celtics at Celia’s, my neighborhood bar, in Ocean Beach, San Francisco, California. At the end of that first game, a woman who was sitting catty-corner away from me said, “I was watching you. I saw the expression on your face go from glad to sad in less than a minute.” I’m sure she saw what was there. It was an automatic response on my part. I didn’t have to tell my face to change its expression.

Al Saracevic, the Examiner’s able, eloquent columnist, explained that the 49ers "Helped San Francisco heal in the early 1980s…after the brutal and bloody ‘70s,” and that “the Giants helped galvanize the City in the wake of a major economic crisis.” That’s giving far more credit to the 49ers and the Giants than they deserve. It doesn’t acknowledge the civil engagement of citizens.

What happens if the Warriors lose to the Celtics, who looked unbeatable in the first game of the series? If they lose does that mean the City goes even further in decline? Indeed, it seems to me that win or lose the battle against the Celtics, San Francisco will have the same social and political problems to solve. Al Saracevic knows that. At the end of his column he writes, “The Warriors won't solve homelessness, Or curb the drug trade.” But he adds, “They have a chance to offer us hope, provide common ground and build civic pride. They have a chance to make us all look good.” On Thursday night the Warriors looked bad, and the streets of the city, with its homeless and its drug addicts looked as bad as ever. Don’t count on a miracle on the basketball court.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Nobody seems to ask the question, “who says it’s Pride Month”? I don’t remember a vote being held. It’s like when someone tells me it’s National Doughnut Day, or some kind of international ‘awareness’ day. Somebody on the morning news shows or their Yahoo feed tells them it is this or that “day”, and they just accept it as fact. No, it isn’t one of those globalist corporate days. Remember when holidays meant a day off work? The new slave class in America never gets a holiday.

CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE: The blues don’t make you feel bad. The blues lift you up. The blues help get rid of that bad feeling. Life can be hard, but in the meantime, let’s party. At first, I was going to all of the clubs just as a blues fan, and I wasn’t asking to sit in. I didn’t tell anybody I played. I was happy just to be there. These guys - like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson - just thought of me as a fan, because I’d request tunes. But one night in this club called Pepper’s Lounge, Muddy’s home club, this waitress I’d gotten to know real well told Muddy, "You oughta hear Charlie play harmonica." That changed everything. He insisted I sit in. A lot of musicians hung out at Pepper’s, and they heard me playing with Muddy, and they started offering me gigs. I was about 18.

IT’S EDUCATION, STUPID!

by Fẹmi Akọmọlafẹ

Maybe it is time the Collective West does something about its educational system.

Watching the performances of Russians and Western officials, one immediately notices that the much-touted and ultra-expensive “education “ provided in the West today is actually not up to par.

The Russian actions in Ukraine revealed a West where leaders remain emotional juveniles who continue to REACT jerkily to Russia’s deft moves. That’s when they are not busy projecting their own values and behavior onto the Russians.

Not only have the Russians vastly outplayed the West militarily, economically, and geopolitically, the actions/reactions of the West have boomeranged mightily to Russia’s advantage. The hyperinflation ravaging the West is just one example.…

In addition to always being on top of their game, Russian officials always come across as well-educated, well-informed, well-mannered, sophisticated, cultured, and respectful. Western officials, on the other hand, attack the world as haughty, naughty, ill-mannered, ill-educated, uncultured, provincial, and narcissistic imbeciles.

They lack the elementary decorum necessary to engage peers in respectful manners. Ok, superciliousness, fueled by racist arrogance, might partly explain why they behave so, but we cannot discount the possibilities that they simply lack the education, the culture, and the home training required for civilized behavior, especially in encounters with other cultures.

The question needs to be asked how the Collective West ended up with the current gaggle of clowns holding positions of responsibility?…

thesaker.is/its-education-stupid/

FROM MCCARTHYISM TO TRUMPISM

by Heather Cox Richardson

Today, with the radical right the most loyal voting bloc in the party, Republican leaders refuse to call out even the most extreme statements from their followers. But once upon a time, Republican politicians were the champions of reason and compromise. Famously, on June 1, 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican from Maine, stood up against Republican Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin and his supporters, who were running roughshod over American democracy.

Born in Skowhegan in 1897, the oldest child of a barber and a waitress, Smith was a teacher and a reporter who got into politics through her husband, Clyde Smith, who was a state legislator and newspaperman. Soon after they married in 1930, she was elected to the Maine Republican State Committee and served until 1936, when Maine voters elected Clyde to Congress.

Once in Washington, Margaret worked as her husband’s researcher, speechwriter, and press secretary. When Clyde died of a heart attack in April 1940, voters elected Margaret to finish his term, then reelected her to Congress in her own right. They did so three more times, always with more than sixty percent of the vote. In 1948, they elected her to the Senate with a 71% majority.

When she was elected to Congress, the U.S. was still getting used to the New Deal government that Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt had ushered in first to combat the Great Depression and then to fight for victory in World War II. Smith’s party was divided between those who thought the new system was a proper adjustment to the modern world and those determined to destroy that new government.

Those who wanted to slash the government back to the form it had in the 1920s, when businessmen ran it, had a problem. American voters liked the business regulation, basic social safety net, and infrastructure construction of the new system. To combat that popularity, the anti-New Deal Republicans insisted that the U.S. government was sliding toward communism. With the success of the People’s Liberation Army and the declaration of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949, Americans were willing to entertain the idea that communism was spreading across the globe and would soon take over the U.S.

Republican politicians eager to reclaim control of the government for the first time since 1933 fanned the flames of that fear. On February 9, 1950, during a speech to a group gathered in Wheeling, West Virginia, to celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, an undistinguished senator from Wisconsin named Joe McCarthy claimed that he had a list of 205 communists working for the State Department and that the Democrats refused to investigate these “traitors in the government.”

The anti-New Deal faction of the party jumped on board. Sympathetic newspapers trumpeted McCarthy’s charges—which kept changing, and for which he never offered proof—and his colleagues cheered him on while congress members from the Republican faction that had signed onto the liberal consensus kept their heads down to avoid becoming the target of his attacks.

All but one of them did, that is. Senator Smith recognized the damage McCarthy and his ilk were doing to the nation.

On June 1, 1950, only four months after McCarthy made his infamous speech in Wheeling, Smith stood up in the Senate to make a short speech.

She began: “I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition. It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear. I speak as a Republican, I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States Senator. I speak as an American.”

Referring to Senator McCarthy, who was sitting two rows behind her, Senator Smith condemned the leaders in her party who were destroying lives with wild accusations. “Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism,” she pointed out. Americans have the right to criticize, to hold unpopular beliefs, to protest, and to think for themselves. But attacks that cost people their reputations and jobs were stifling these basic American principles. “Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America,” Senator Smith said. “It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others.”

Senator Smith wanted a Republican victory in the upcoming elections, she explained, but to replace President Harry Truman’s Democratic administration—for which she had plenty of harsh words—with a Republican regime “that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty would prove equally disastrous to this nation.”

“I do not want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear.”

“I doubt if the Republican Party could do so,” she added, “simply because I do not believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans are not that desperate for victory.”

“I do not want to see the Republican Party win that way,” she said. “While it might be a fleeting victory for the Republican [P]arty, it would be a more lasting defeat for the American people. Surely it would ultimately be suicide for the Republican [P]arty and the two-party system that has protected our American liberties from the dictatorship of a one-party system.”

“As an American, I condemn a Republican Fascist just as much as I condemn a Democrat Communist,” she said. “They are equally dangerous to you and me and to our country. As an American, I want to see our nation recapture the strength and unity it once had when we fought the enemy instead of ourselves.”

Smith presented a “Declaration of Conscience,” listing five principles she hoped her party would adopt. It ended with a warning: “It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”

Six other Republican senators signed onto Senator Smith’s declaration.

There were two reactions to the speech within the party. McCarthy sneered at “Snow White and the Six Dwarves.” Other Republicans quietly applauded Smith’s courage but refused to show similar courage themselves with public support. In the short term, Senator Smith’s voice was largely ignored in the public arena and then, when the Korean War broke out, forgotten.

But she was, of course, right. Four years later, the Senate condemned McCarthy. And while Senator Smith was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, McCarthy has gone down in history as a disgrace to the Senate and to the United States of America.

THE INCREDIBLE POLITICAL AND MEDIA JOURNEY OF JESSE AND TYREL VENTURA

by Matt Taibbi

Back on March 12th, not long after Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, the New York Times ran one of the first of what would become a series of gloating articles about the demise of Russia Today. The state-sponsored TV network had just been yanked off the air by government fiat in Europe, and removed in America by private carriers like Comcast, Xfinity, and DirecTV.

A role at RT America was a rare job in an industry where if you had screwed up, were washed up or were completely new to the field, there weren’t many other options.

The Times listed a series of those “screwups” and “washouts,” including the paper’s own former star war reporter Chris Hedges and the father-son tandem Jesse and Tyrel Ventura.

The paper neglected to mention that none of these figures had failed at anything, but rather had been driven out of the mainstream press essentially over opposition to the Iraq war.

In fact, if not for one of the most scandalous stories in the history of American media, former Navy Seal, pro wrestler, and Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura might still be occupying Rachel Maddow’s slot on MSNBC, broadcasting from Minneapolis rather than New York (“All we get is the East Coast, the West Coast,” Jesse told the network then, “You don’t hear nothing from the heart of America, and we’re true America”). Jesse and Tyrel moved to Substack this week, launching their site Die First, Then Quit, but their journey here — by way of two extraordinary censorship campaigns — just might be the ultimate illustration of how politics, not ratings, decides who’s allowed to sit in the big chair on primetime American television.

Jesse and Tyrel tell the story in their own words below, but briefly: in early 2003, at the height of pre-war mania, MSNBC hired Jesse at big dollars to pilot a prime slot. At the time, the “6’4”, Porsche-driving populist,” as the Washington Post sneeringly called him, was on every network’s short list. He had name recognition from the WWE and Hollywood, credibility with middle America as a veteran, and had rattled the two-party system to its core just years before, beating Republican Norm Coleman and Democratic Party royalty Hubert Humphrey III in the 1998 Minnesota gubernatorial race under the Reform Party banner.

“I was the hottest commodity out there,” Jesse recalls now. “Fox, CNN and MSNBC got in a bidding war for me. I signed a three year contract with MSNBC. I was supposed to have Rachel Maddow’s slot.” MSNBC appears to have hired Ventura in the belief the former Navy underwater demolition expert and Predator jungle warrior would wave pom-poms for the coming Middle Eastern conflict. In truth, “I had been very vocal in my opposition to invading Iraq, still am today.” To make a long story short, when the network found this out, they essentially un-hired Ventura, but not before tellingly asking one of his aides about his war stance: “Is there any chance he’d change his mind?”

Simultaneously, MSNBC fired Phil Donahue, another antiwar voice. Unnamed network sources slandered both figures on the way out. Ventura wasn’t fired in one sudden move: “Jesse Ventura’s America” was first shifted to a weekly show at 7 p.m. on Saturdays, the cable equivalent of the graveyard shift, or “the bottom of the cable news closet,” as son Tyrel says now. A Variety account of his dismissal after 12 episodes summed up (emphasis mine): “Even though Ventura had improved the ratings for the timeslot, MSNBC insiders said the program was simply too expensive to produce” — ironic, given the network went on to pay Ventura millions of dollars to not work at all during the early years of the war.

“I’m under contract,” Ventura recalls. “I couldn’t do any other news shows, and they paid me the entire three years.” Media writers meanwhile were told Donahue was fired for “poor ratings,” even though he anchored MSNBC’s highest-rated show, beating even the heavily promoted Hardball With Chris Matthews. Both Donahue and Ventura insisted at the time that pressure from outside the network led to their dismissals. “It came from far above,” Donahue said. “This was not some assistant program director.” Ventura in the interview below says MSNBC president Eric Sorenson “got phone calls from two people way up in the echelon of the Dems and Repubs,” asking why Ventura was being given a forum. Media critic Rick Ellis at AllYourTV.com even published an internal MSNBC memo saying the network was afraid of becoming “a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag.” Ventura ended up back on the air with Conspiracy Theory With Jesse Ventura, averaging 1.6 million viewers at its launch in January 2010, TruTV’s best month of ratings ever, before ending up at RT, where son Tyrel also hosted a show called Watching the Hawks.

RT was taken off the air in a more complex but no less unsettling censorship episode, but the notion that Ventura got there by screwing up or washing out is not just fiction, it turns reality upside down. Similar to the criticism Glenn Greenwald gets for appearing on Fox, it ignores that crucial detail that Ventura was blackballed from mainstream green rooms long before he got to Russia Today.

“I was banned,” Ventura says now. “Big media censored Jesse Ventura and they left me no other recourse.”

Die First, Then Quit is going to have broadcast, podcast, and print elements, and will touch on political issues as well as tell personal stories from Ventura’s career, which is a canvas and a half from any perspective. “He’s lived a truly Renaissance man’s life,” is how Tyrel puts it. Jesse, who candidly admits he may have created the blueprint for a future insurgent presidency — “In some ways, I feel responsible for Donald Trump” — came fairly close, as he explains below, to running for president on the Green Party ticket in 2020. Full disclosure: when I heard Ventura might run, I offered services as a speechwriter, in retrospect an absurd move because Ventura is nothing if not someone who does his own talking. Jesse gets into some weird stuff on air, and I disagree with him about a lot of things, but he has a pair of qualities that helped make him a unique figure in the history of American populist politics. One, he’s honest. Two, his sympathies in politics clearly lay with voters, not donors.

It’s always seemed to me that if one or the other political party could commit to that basic package, they’d never lose another election. But they just can’t bring themselves to prioritize people over money, which is why there’s so much voter dissatisfaction, and by extension why someone like Donald Trump was able to win the presidency despite being outspent nearly 2-1 by Hillary Clinton.

Ventura went from being a talk radio host to a gubernatorial candidate when he heard the state of Minnesota was going to keep a $4 billion revenue surplus. Next thing you know, he was on the ballot, running ads like, “I believe Minnesota should return the entire $4 billion tax surplus to the hard working people who paid it in. I believe Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones are two of the greatest rock bands ever.” Politics doesn’t need to be hard, but our two reigning parties insist on making it so. “If you have common sense today, that makes you a genius,” Ventura says.

It’s yet another indictment of the American media system that a popular, bankable media figure like Ventura has essentially been squeezed out of the mainstream media landscape. At the same time, his arrival is yet another gain for Substack, and I don’t just say that because Predator was awesome. I’ve heard criticism of Jesse from various Washington-based pundit types who denounce him as a joke and an unserious person, pointing to TruTV episodes about the Bilderbergs or Reptile-People (“Lizard-like shape shifting humanoids: are they real?”). To which I always shrug and reply, “Yeah, but does your party take money from Goldman and Raytheon?” What would you rather have, an honest wrestler or a polished sellout?

Below, he and son Tyrel talk below about their new venture, their political and media journeys, Hollywood, and other topics.

Matt: Governor, how are you?

Jesse Ventura: Good. I wanted to say, personally, thank you, when I dabbled in running and you offered to be my speech writer. That would’ve challenged you probably more than anything else in your life, attempting to write words for me.

Matt: They would have been very general guidelines.

Jesse Ventura: I remember when I did my first NBC Saturday Night Main Event. We’re going to go on NBC and here’s Dick Ebersol, the crown prince of NBC Sports, who runs it. I arrived that night and in front of me was this massive notebook.

I opened it up and started reading and it was my script where a writer was writing, “So and so says this and Jesse replies with this.” I’m reading this and Dick Ebersol walked by and I motioned him over. I said, “Dick, come here.” And he comes over and I said, “Dick,” I said, “I got to be blunt with you.” I said, “Two years ago, NBC didn’t give a rat’s ass about wrestling. And now you’re going to tell me that you have someone capable of writing for me? You have someone who can write what Jesse Ventura thinks and who has more knowledge of wrestling?” I said, “I don’t work that way.” I said, “I respond to what I see in the ring and you can’t write that for me.”

Fortunately for me, Dick Ebersol was good. He sat there a moment and thought he goes, “You’re right. Get rid of that thing.” And I said, “Thank you, Dick.” But I’ll always remember that, this big, thick notebook of, “Here’s what you’re going to do for Jesse Ventura.”

Matt: That tells you that they had absolutely no idea what the appeal of wrestling was all about.

Jesse Ventura: These were Johnny-come-latelies. All of a sudden we were red hot and they’re jumping on board going, “Ooh, let’s get Saturday Night’s Main Event.” We started rotating with Saturday Night Live. It was massive for us. We beat Saturday Night Live’s ratings. When we were building up for Mania III, Saturday Night Live had Madonna as the guest host and she was red hot. We came on a week later and blew her numbers out of the water.

Matt: What was the route from wrestling to politics?

Jesse Ventura: When I left wrestling, I then went and did talk radio, which gave me that experience of dealing with an audience on a daily basis. I even did morning drive, man, for a couple years.

Matt: Christ. That’s heavy lifting.

Jesse Ventura: Oh, I don’t wish it on anybody. Then I also did three years of broadcasting in the NFL. I did two years with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and one with the Minnesota Vikings where I did color commentating. So I made a transition for myself out of being pigeonholed to only wrestling, I expanded myself outâ¦ I had become mayor [of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota] in ‘90, over a local issue and then went back to the private sector. And then it was during talk radio I heard they had a huge surplus in Minnesota and they were going to spend it. I’m on talk radio going, “Wait a minute, that’s our money. You can’t just spend it. Just because you’ve overtaxed us and the economy has been so robust that you’ve brought in more money than what you’ve budgeted for, doesn’t mean you could be kids in the candy store and start running around and buying every little thing. You give the money back.” I actually think the Dems and Repubs in Minnesota today, the two parties, I think they want me back as governor, Matt.

Matt: Really? Would you consider doing that?

Jesse Ventura: You know why? Because we’ve got another $8 billion surplus, which is the very thing I ran on and they’re not giving it back again. So clearly, they want me to come out of the woodwork and run again, so that I could give the money back in a sales tax rebate. They did it three years here. They called them Jesse checks.

Matt: The surplus issue is what led you to the governor’s office the first time around. Were you surprised by how well you did?

Jesse Ventura: I came out on radio and then I made the statement, which got me in trouble. I went, “Gee, maybe I should run for governor.” And when you say that on a popular, statewide talk radio show, it’s like, uh-oh, you’ve just thrown an M-80 into the fire, because it exploded and started to spread flames in every direction. And then I got myself to the point where I had to run because my credibility was on the line then.

Matt: Not to make light of the accomplishment, but what did the fact that you won tell you about the unpopularity of the two parties at that time?

Jesse Ventura: You know, in some ways, I feel somewhat responsible for Donald Trump. He came and visited me after I won. He flew in here on his jet and did big photo ops with me and all of this stuff. I helped blossom him. At the time, we embraced him because we had affiliated with the Reform Party from the Minnesota Independence Party, and we were just looking to become a legitimate third party. We wanted the movement to rise. And when Donald Trump started playing with us, we all fell under his mystique a little bit. You know: “Donald Trump, the big player, tons of money, ooh.” He rattled his sword, “Maybe I’ll run for president as a third party candidate.” And we thought, “Well, wow.” All we were doing then was begging for legitimacy and anybody that could bring that to us, we would embrace. But the thing about Trump was, he would always rattle the sword, but never pull the trigger. That’s why in 2016, he caught me by surprise because I just thought he was back rattling the sword again.

Matt: What did you think of his tactics?

Jesse Ventura: He did it differently than me. See, and I can’t argue with the way he did it. He took on the Republicans and defeated them first, and then took on the Democrats and defeated them. I like to say he took on the Bushes and he destroyed the Bush dynasty, then he took on the Clinton dynasty and destroyed the Clinton dynasty. Where I would’ve taken them both on at the same time and I might not have been successful doing it that way. You can’t argue with Trump’s success. He did it, but he did sell his soul to this right wing. I mean, he’s about as right wing as — you’re going to tell me Donald Trump goes to church and really reads the Bible? Laughable. Oh, and can you imagine for a moment if Barack Obama had been married three times and had children from each marriage, what the Republicans would’ve done to him? If Barack Obama had behaved like Donald Trump, he would’ve been just total red meat for the Republicans.

Matt: What does that tell you about Trump? You know him a little, so you must have some insight. How sincere is he in what he’s saying?

Jesse Ventura: He’s sincere as the day is long for himself. For himself. Believe me, he’s sincere — about him.

Matt: In 2020, how close were you to running, and do you think you would’ve won?

Jesse Ventura: Well, I was very close. I literally went to the Green Party and offered myself saying, “Look, let’s make a deal. You got access in all the states. You can get me on the ballot. And then from there, I’ll get myself in the debates.” I said, “Leave that to me. Let me go out on the street corner for a few hours and I’ll get it.” (laughs) “I got that, because you got to get in the debates. But you have the ability to give me that platform.”

I guess they wouldn’t accept. First of all, they’re fractured into two elements, which then required me to do all that repair work. And then I’m going to fix a political party, and in a matter of months, take on the Democrats and Republicans. Not even Jesse Ventura can do that.

Matt: You might have won anyway. I mean, those two candidates were not terribly impressive.

Jesse Ventura: But, Matt, I had to have ballot access. And I couldn’t get the Green Party to pull the trigger. Instead, they want to go with Howie Hawkins. Now, Howie may be a great guy, I don’t know him, but — I already was polling 15 to 18%. The Greenies, to me, dropped the ball. They had the opportunity but their infighting did them in.

Matt: Does it seem like the Green Party, sometimes, almost behaves like it doesn’t want to be a bigger force in politics?

Jesse Ventura: Matt, you hit the nail right on... absolutely. Their behavior was — you know what I had some of them say? Wait till you hear this: “Is he one of us?”’ I threw my hands up. I said, “I was a mayor. I was a governor.” I said, I believe in climate change. I think it’s the most dangerous thing in the world right now.” I said, “What more do I need to do?” Am I one of them? What does that even mean?

Matt: Did they mean, “An insignificant political afterthought?”

Jesse Ventura: Exactly!

Matt: What happened at MSNBC?

Jesse Ventura: In a nutshell, I came out of office and I was the hottest commodity out there. Fox, CNN and MSNBC got in a bidding war for me. I signed a three year contract with MSNBC. I’m supposed to have Rachel Maddow’s slot. I signed a three year deal with them, they’re pretty lucrative to start off.

But I made them do the show from Minneapolis. I had a little power, and I said, “Look, all we get is the coast, the East Coast, the West Coast. You don’t hear anything from the heart of America, and we’re true America. This is the heartland.” They agreed. So we’re building the show in Minneapolis, from St. Paul. Also, the build-up to the Iraq war is happening. I had been very vocal in my opposition to invading Iraq, still am today. I’m still opposed to what we did there, in invading Iraq.

So as we’re getting ready to go on the air — MSNBC president Erik Sorenson had hired me earlier — we had gone to the Super Bowl and were driving up to LA and he said something really interesting to me. He said, “You know when I hired you, I got phone calls from two people, way up in the echelon of the Dems and Repubs. I won’t tell you who they were.” He wouldn’t reveal it to me. But he said, “They wanted to know why we were giving you a national forum.”

Matt: Because they were the impression that you were pro-war?

Jesse Ventura: No, no. Just, why was this guy who’s a threat to the Dems and Repubs now at MSNBC? They saw what I did in Minnesota with the statewide radio show. I became the governor. You give me a national forum, I could be the president.

That’s what they were afraid of. But anyway: moving on from that, what happened was we’re building up to doing the show. We’re getting ready to go on, the producers are on, everything. They had hired Phil Donahue at the time, the daytime guy. Phil was on at night that he was their highest rated show. Well, Phil, just like me, opposed the invasion of Iraq. We were both very vocal, we were against it.

Well, one of my subordinates gets a phone call, “Is it true the governor doesn’t support the upcoming invasion of Iraq?” “Oh no, he’s vehemently opposed to it. He’s a Vietnam veteran. He says this is Vietnam all over again. Very opposed to it.” Next question was, “Does [headquarters] know about this?” “We don’t know.” Big third question, “Is there any chance he’d change his mind?”

And my subordinate goes, “No, I don’t think so.” He said, “I was with the governor for four years. I’ve seen him change his mind, but only when he didn’t know enough and he educated himself and understood something more, then I’d see it.” But he said, “This is war. He’s a veteran. And no, he ain’t going to change his mind.” Well, I wasn’t allowed on and they pulled Phil Donahue. So anybody, if you go back to the run-up to the Iraq war, you won’t find any opposition in the mainstream media. Nobody was allowed on who was questioning it. They made sure of it.

And then, Matt, I’m under contract. I couldn’t do any other talk shows. I couldn’t do any other new shows and they paid me the entire three years. I never did anything for it.

Matt: That’s an incredible story, because it speaks to their willingness to forego ratings. They’re giving up two on air personalities that would’ve been big draws for them. But also, just for purely political reasons, that they would be willing to make that decision is amazing, or it seems like that from the outside. Was it?

Jesse Ventura: Matt, you have to understand something. At that time, the parent ownership of MSNBC was General Electric. Well, they’re a huge war profiteer. Do you think they want two of their paid yapping mouths on TV against the war that they’re going to make a bunch of money on?

Matt: A recent piece in the New York Times about people who had worked at RT talked about how RT was where you went if you had “screwed up, were washed up, or were completely new to the field.” Was that what happened with you?

Jesse Ventura: Oh no. I was banned. Big media censored Jesse Ventura and they left me no other recourse. I have to speak out on things, that’s my nature. RT gave me that platform.

Matt: A question for both you and Tyrel: what was your experience with RT?

Jesse Ventura: I can honestly say this: They flew me to Moscow, me and my wife, at the 10th anniversary of Russian Today and Vladimir Putin was the keynote speaker. I met Gorbachev that night. And Putin came across the room to me, held out his hand and said, “Thank you, governor.” And I said, “You’re welcome, Mr. President, for what?” And he said, “Well,” he said, “I just want you to know that you will have complete artistic control and you can talk about anything you want.” And I said, “Well, thank you. I appreciate that.” I can only tell you, Matt, the man that I met that night, I’m trying to figure out who this guy is now, because he wasn’t the guy I met that night. I can say the four years that I was at RT, never once did they tell me what I could or couldn’t say, never once.

Tyrel Ventura: One of the reasons that I said yes to the RT America deal was simply because I knew that I’m like my dad, I only want to talk about what I think is important to people, important to working class people, important to average Americans, and what will truly impact their lives. And most news stories in today’s world don’t, for lack of a better term. And mostly, it’s all just kind of American Idol in the new’s business. I think that’s why people are flocking. That’s why one of the reasons Substack was so appealing to us, is that prior to this, even at RT, Jesse was given free rein to talk, so was I. I was never censored on stories or anything like that in my seven years there.

But at the same time, you still had to deal with the machinations of corporate news that get in the way of just being able to speak to an audience. That was the most important thing. At RT — they gave us free rein, but at the same time, the corporate culture there was such a mess that it made just the act of doing the job hard. It wasn’t what we were able to do on air, that part was easy. It was just dealing both externally from the pressures of suddenly being labeled as traitors or propaganda pieces for Moscow. But also, internally, they had serious problems on an internal level. It always felt like you were working at a startup that was understaffed.

Matt: Well, welcome to Substack. What’s going to be the format of Die First, Then Quit?

Tyrel Ventura: We’ll probably put out about two to three pieces a week. We’re aiming to kind of go with one article, one podcast, and one video, one kind of video interview or video rant.

Matt: You guys should do live streaming commentary.

Tyrel Ventura: Look, I’m a huge fan of Mystery Science Theater, if you remember that old show. If I can put something together like that on State of the Union addresses and things like that, moving forward with me and Jesse just commenting on what they’re saying as they say it live, we’ll definitely try to make something like that happen.

As far as topics go, I mean, it’s probably going to be a mix of current headlines that everybody’s talking about, as well as stories that no one’s talking about that they should be talking about or should be paying attention to. And also, at the end of the day too, we’re also going to showcase Jesse. One of the great things about my father is he’s lived a truly Renaissance man’s life through everything that he’s done. And so you’re also going to get a good bit of stories from his life and the things that he’s experienced and the wild nights that we’ve had together at times, from hanging out with Harry Dean Stanton and Jack Nicholson late at night at Nicholson’s house. We’ll get into all sorts of wild stories and things like that.

Matt: The father/son thing has to be fun for both of you.

Jesse Ventura: Oh. I couldn’t be happier at this point in my life. I mean, what could be better for a father than at this point in his life to work together every day with your son. I can’t tell you how wonderful that is for a man of 70 years old. Certain things, money can’t buy.

Matt: Last thing. Jesse, are you thinking about running for president in 2024?

Jesse Ventura: Right now, Matt, I can brag to you and say this. I’m probably the only person that can bring the country together. If you elect me president, I guarantee it, within three years, the Democrats and Republicans will be singing kumbaya by the fireside together, as they’ll both be my opponents. See, they’d get in bed together to oppose me.

Matt: But would you think about running?

Jesse Ventura: If I had ballot access in all 50 states and had it at a year or two ahead of time, yeah. As to why: you remember when Robert De Niro in the movie, Men Of Honor, Cuba Gooding turns to him and says, “Why are you doing this, chief?” And Robert De Niro looks at Cuba and goes, “To piss people off.” Well, that’s kind of how I feel now.

Matt: You want to piss people off.

Jesse Ventura: Why not?

Matt: As good a reason as any!

DOWNTOWN SANTA ROSA, before and after the 1906 Earthquake

MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio all night Friday night!

Hi! Marco here. Deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is around 6 or 7pm. After that, send it whenever it's ready and I'll read it on the radio /next/ week.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg as well as anywhere else via the regular link to listen to KNYO in real time: http://airtime.knyo.org:8040/128

Any day or night you can go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night the recording of tonight's show will also be there. Also there you'll find a steamer trunk full of educational raiment to try on until showtime, or any time, such as:

Parents throwing a polio party to get their kids some natural immunity. I had a teacher once who was a recipient of some of that sort of natural immunity; one of her arms was useless for any purpose but hanging her keys on a finger.

https://www.shorpy.com/node/26647

The way the camera follows us in slo-mo.

https://theawesomer.com/slow-mo-in-the-movies/619404/

And "...There can be few people who feel even the slightest sympathy for the spongers (not spong-ers, but spun-jers) who call themselves hippies, and who, by their shameless actions, disparage the plight of decent people who cannot find homes." I don't know about that. They called attention to how many whole buildings are empty at any given time, that /decent people who cannot find homes/ are kept out of by the rich fucks blithely playing Monopoly with all that property. It's the same today, more than half a century later. There's easily enough empty housing and warehouse and office space in the Bay Area, for example, to put a good roof over every homeless person there eight or ten times over, and for the same reason. Every once a awhile there's a protest, families move in, and when the owners, on a cruise in the Caribbean or relaxing at their hunting lodge or being carried up Mount Everest on a pressurized sedan chair by Sherpas or otherwise fecklessly gallivanting about the globe, are informed and outraged, they call the police and the police do what we have all come to understand is their primary job. But the announcer here is right about one thing: It's always been hard to feel sympathy for well-off people's children merely pretending to be poor for something to do.

https://laughingsquid.com/turtle-attempts-to-climb-log/

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

Sheriff’s deputies with gambling equipment seized in 1934 in raids at The Old Colony Club, Clover Club, and Club La Boheme. Source: LAPL

COST TO CALIFORNIANS $10 TRILLION BY 2045 FROM OIL AND GAS, Consumer Watchdog Reveals in New Report

by Dan Bacher

Los Angeles, CA—A new report released today by Consumer Watchdog reveals that the true cost to the public of California’s oil and gas production and combustion is estimated to reach $10 trillion by 2045.

Californians will be paying more than $400 billion annually in public costs caused by fossil fuels between now and 2045 when the state aims to be carbon neutral, according to the report.…

elkgrovenews.net/2022/06/cost-to-californians-10-trillion-by.html

TIPTOE TO THE GAS PUMPS

Mr. Gasoline man, please give me some gas
My tank is almost empty, so fill it fast
If you will just fill her up, I promise you this…
I'll put a tulip in your hair and blow you a kiss
Let's tiptoe to the gas pump and fill her up
Give me all you got 'til I scream I've had enough
Everybody clap your hands and sing in harmony
Come tiptoe to the gas pump with me

Put a tiger in my tank, please don't delay
I've been waiting in endless lines since early yesterday
So, Mr. Gasoline man, fill her to the brim
So I'll have enough gas to go through this line again
Let's tiptoe to the gas pump and fill her up
Give me all you got 'til I scream I've had enough
Everybody clap your hands and sing in harmony
Come tiptoe to the gas pump with me

[Kids:] Hey you big oil companies, us kids will like to ask…
When we grow up and learn to drive, what will we use for gas?
[Tiny:] Ha ha…So you say things are shaking up? But only time will tell.
Why, I've got more oil in my hair than you've got in your wells.
Hey there Mr. President, things are really tough.
Speaking for the people, I think we've had enough.
We're shipping food, but still no crude…I tell you that's not right.
This flower child has gone hog-wild, I say it's time to fight!

Let's tiptoe to the gas pump and fill her up
Give me all you got 'til I scream I've had enough
Everybody clap your hands and sing in harmony
Come tiptoe to the gas pump with me

[Gas Man:] Yeah man, can I help you man?
[Tiny:] Yes, please. Will you consider taking a ukulele in trade for a gallon of gas?
[Gas Man:] No man.
[Tiny:] Well how 'bout a tulip?
[Gas Man:] I don't think so.
[Tiny:] Well, how about one of my brand new 45 RPM records?
[Gas Man:] Wow man! Say, what's the name of it?

Come tiptoe to the gas pumps, tiptoe to the gas pumps…
Come tiptoe to the gas pumps with me.

— Tiny Tim

SITTING HERE in the common area at Building Bridges homeless shelter in Ukiah, CA, fully aware that there is much more possible than rotting in the quagmire of American postmodernism. I am enjoying watching a spiritual ritual worshipping the fierce lion form of the god Sri Krishna. Considering that I didn't go out for a walk today, since walking up and down State Street in the Mendocino county seat is mostly pointless, instead, I just kept voluntarily doing the trash and recycling here. Indeed, that place looks great, with others sweeping up outside and mopping floors indoors. I mean, by not identifying with the body and the mind (i.e. ego and its "story line"), one just flows along in time and space.

There is an upcoming dental appointment on June 24th, and that's about it. I am not fretting over mortality nor money. I do understand that social life has become near meaningless in the twilight of American consumerism. Seriously, I am not interested in the newspaper advertisements anymore. Stopped watching television years ago. The popular music scene is bizarre and you know that it is.

Contact me if you ever want to do anything frontline, in regard to direct action on the planet earth.

— Craig Louis Stehr

THE LONG ROAD HOME, Part 1

This episode is the first of a two-part series called The Long Road Home, looking at the hurdles placed before those those who leave prison and struggle to reenter society.

by Chris Hedges

The United States has 25 percent of the world’s prison population, some 2.3 million people, most of whom are poor, although it represents less than 5 percent of the global population. Its prisons are notorious for their violence, overcrowding and human rights abuses, including the widespread use of solitary confinement. But what is often not examined is what happens to those released from prisons into a society where they face legalized discrimination imposed by numerous laws, rules and policies that result in permanent marginalization, thrust into a criminal caste system. These former prisoners are often denied the right to vote, can lose their passports, are barred from receiving public assistance, including housing, and blocked from a variety of jobs. They must often repay exorbitant fines, abide by arbitrary rules imposed by probation officers, and avoid committing even minor criminal offenses if they go back to prison. The hurdles placed before them are momentous and help explain why within five years a staggering 76 percent return to prison. Today, in the first for a two-part series called The Long Road Home, we look at what happens to those in the United States who leave prison and struggle to reenter society through the eyes of five former prisoners, all of whom I taught in the college degree program offered by Rutgers University in the New Jersey prison system, who collectively spent 119 years in prison.

chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-chris-hedges-report-show-the

20 Comments

john ignoffo June 4, 2022

Of course Kissinger questions our proxy war because it will drive Russia ever closer to China. I may disagree with Pope Francis on several issues, but he did have the audacity/courage to say that NATO should not have been barking at Putin’s door. My fav politician circa 1950 was Wallace (Henry, not George!). How far we have fallen…

Reply
- George Hollister June 4, 2022
  
  What exactly did NATO do to infuriate Putin? Ukraine was granted sovereignty by Russia 30 years ago. Has Ukraine threatened to invade Russia? Has any NATO country threatened to invade Russia? Who do the citizens of Ukraine believe they are fighting for, and for what purpose?
  
  I respect Henry Kissinger, and think he has made a good point. But there is a flip side to his point. What is Putin thinking exposing Russia to the more likely possibility that China could merely walk in unopposed, and de facto take over Russia East of the Ural Mountains? It seems to me China, and not NATO is the bigger threat to Russian sovereignty.. Putin seems oblivious of the fact that Russia is the much weaker sister in the Sino Russia alliance, and China has little to gain from it beyond access to Russia’s resources.
  
  Reply
  - Harvey Reading June 4, 2022
    
    Glad you have no position of real power…
    
    Reply
  - Rye N Flint June 4, 2022
    
    Reply
George Hollister June 4, 2022

I attended the FFA awards night at Fort Bragg High School on Wednesday. The students respectfully ran their own program, prepared the food, and did the cleanup. There appeared to be a good relationship between staff and students. And everyone appeared to like being there. Judging from the number of awards given out, it was evident the FFA students had a busy year. From listening to the students last names it was good to see a broad representation of Fort Bragg sir names going back over a hundred years, up to the present. For me, an outside event on a foggy evening in Fort Bragg was a bit cold, but I am not from Fort Bragg, and will dress warmer next time.

Reply
Marilyn Davin June 4, 2022

Ordinary Americans have few enough avenues to social change these days, though one staple of my Berkeley youth seems to have fallen out of favor: The Boycott. If you live in a consumer society the proverbial pocketbook is the only place where it’s at.
Do not under any circumstances purchase fuel or otherwise patronize the sole Mendocino gas station. An SFGate reporter actually polled far more remote rural gas stations near the Oregon border and could not find a gas price within shouting distance of the usurious 10 bucks a gallon charged by Mendocino’s Queen of Greed, who shed crocodile tears to the reporter about her efforts to cling to profitability amid the latest gas crisis. Indeed. Despite all evidence to the contrary, we are not totally powerless. If you live nearby proudly carry a sign to the gas station exposing the owner’s greed and suggest that motorists in need of fuel drive a few minutes down the road to Fort Bragg. If people stop buying her gas I predict a price drop. And if she makes good on her threat to close up shop and go away, at least young people will have been able to see, first-hand, what a real-life civics lesson looks like. And to help them identify the social cues that prove the eternal adage that greed, by its nature, is insatiable.

Reply
- Marmon June 4, 2022
  
  The sole Mendocino gas station was mentioned this morning on Fox And Friends Saturday broadcast out of New York.
  
  Marmon
  
  Reply
  - Bruce Anderson June 4, 2022
    
    That story has been recycled for a year now, this time going international. Europeans have to buy gas in liters, and drive little tiny cars if they own cars at all because they also enjoy effective systems of mass transit. We drive road combat-size tanks that consume preposterous amounts of fuel while rightly bitch, but blindly, about fuel costs while the oil combines rake off huge windfall profits. Biden could freeze fuel prices today, rolling them back at the same time, while smacking the oil dictatorships with huge and painful windfall taxes. But, natch, he won’t, and we’ll all soon be paying ten bucks a gallon, at least.
    
    Reply
    - Rye N Flint June 4, 2022
      
      Speaking of windfall… have you heard that Eureka is moving forward with a giant wind farm? How’s that rollin’ coal going to flow now?
      
      Reply
Chuck Artigues June 4, 2022

Why is it, that when people comment about the war in Ukraine, they don’t seem to acknowledge that the vast majority of Ukrainian citizens are committed to this fight. Think about it, the Ukrainian government passed out weapons to it’s citizens. When is the last time that happened? The Afghan government hired it’s citizens as soldiers and they would sell their weapons to the Taliban. So if the united people of Ukraine are willing to fight for their freedoms, how can we fail to arm them?

Reply
Jim Armstrong June 4, 2022

Beneficial rain.
I think the NWS means no flooding.
This is haying season. What if you have your hay down, drying or already baled and waiting to pick up.
Not beneficial.

Reply
Rye N Flint June 4, 2022

Does anyone read anymore?

I’m wondering because there are a lot of people that seem confused over Russia’s tactics against Ukraine, and the US reaction. If only they had read “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997)” by Zbigniew Brzezinski.

“Brzezinski, a Polish-American diplomat and political scientist, graduated with a PhD from Harvard University in 1953 and became Professor of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University. He served as a counselor to President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and was President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor from 1977 to 1981. As a scholar, Brzezinski belonged to the realist school of international relations, standing in the geopolitical tradition of Halford Mackinder and Nicholas J. Spykman, while elements of liberal idealism have also been identified in his outlook. Brzezinski was the primary organizer of The Trilateral Commission.”

“Regarding the landmass of Eurasia as the center of global power, Brzezinski sets out to formulate a Eurasian geostrategy for the United States. In particular, he writes that no Eurasian challenger should emerge that can dominate Eurasia and thus also challenge U.S. global pre-eminence. Much of Brzezinski’s analysis is concerned with geostrategy in Central Asia, focusing on the exercise of power on the Eurasian landmass in a post-Soviet environment. In his chapter dedicated to what he refers to as the “Eurasian Balkans,” he uses Halford J. Mackinder’s Heartland Theory. ”
-Wikipedia hivemind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Chessboard

What the wikipedia description doesn’t reveal is the importance of Oil and Gas prices. The fluctuations in petroleum prices are like a global pump and dump scheme, that are slowly but surely draining the pockets of you and me. I found this wonderful youtube video that explains it pretty clearly:

Reply
Rye N Flint June 4, 2022

Re: COST TO CALIFORNIANS $10 TRILLION BY 2045 FROM OIL AND GAS

Did anyone in Redwood Valley get free backup batteries and solar for their water well, so they can have water during PG&E shutdowns? What benefits did my fellow rural Mendocino citizens receive from PG&E, after they admitted criminal negligence? Higher bills because we get pay for their mistakes? I still have a power line coming from their transformer pole with 2 tree connections, over to our main breaker. While I was installing my own solar at a cost of $6k for a 4000 watt array, a PG&E line inspector walked onto our property, and told me they would be back to eliminate the hazardous connection in 3 weeks. That was in October 2021, and nothing ever happen. Oh wait that’s not true, our rates keep going up. No batteries to run our water well in a shutdown. No release from the petroleum addiction power companies. And now… PG&Evil wants to DECREASE the rate that we get for producing solar energy! They want to DE-incentivize renewable energy production? YA Basta! Enough is enough! Call and email Senator McGuire and Gov. Newsom Today! Power in numbers!

“The Details of CPUC’s Disastrous Proposal for Updating Net Metering in California
Californians: Take action now to protect rooftop solar!”
https://votesolar.org/the-details-cpucs-solar-net-metering-proposed-decision/

Reply
Rye N Flint June 4, 2022

Online comment of the Day. ““who says it’s Pride Month”? I don’t remember a vote being held.”

Yes, us in the “LBGTQ+” community don’t have a centralized system of voting for a puppet leader. We have no one to follow, and no one to throw tomatoes at. No one to have hate rallies against. No one to vote for, so the other guy doesn’t win. …and it’s not all Gin and Roses… For example, I am the “B” in the the acronym, for bisexual. The acronym used to be LBG, for Lesbian, Bisexual, and Gay. But for some reason, Transsexual/Transgender/Transvestite got included as the Letter “T” even though it is about what gender they prefer to be acknowledged by, they were lumped in with us LBG folks that had sexual preferences outside the status-quo. I never got to vote on that. I have been told that I have to “support” it by accepting it. Pride month eh? Yeah… I wasn’t on that committee either. So, now we start getting into how do informal groups form. How do groups properly organize when they want to avoid the pitfalls of the centralized system of power that most of us refer to as the “Patriarchal system”?

A second wave feminist, named Jo Freeman, noticed these same cracks forming in her affinity groups as well, and recognized the need for formal roles, and democratic voting structures for these positions of power within organizations. Otherwise, you would have what she called, “The tyranny of the structureless”

In her own words: “The basic problems didn’t appear until individual rap groups exhausted the virtues of consciousness-raising and decided they wanted to do something more specific. At this point they usually foundered because most groups were unwilling to change their structure when they changed their tasks. Women had thoroughly accepted the idea of “structurelessness” without realizing the limitations of its uses. People would try to use the “structureless” group and the informal conference for purposes for which they were unsuitable out of a blind belief that no other means could possibly be anything but oppressive. If the movement is to grow beyond these elementary stages of development, it will have to disabuse itself of some of its prejudices about organization and structure. There is nothing inherently bad about either of these. They can be and often are misused, but to reject them out of hand because they are misused is to deny ourselves the necessary tools to further development. We need to understand why “structurelessness” does not work.”

https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

-Rye N Flint

Reply
Marmon June 4, 2022

RE: MENDOCINO RAILROAD CO.

Maybe the Crow tribe could hook up with Round Valley tribes and re-visit this again. Coal could be stockpiled on the old GP millsite and loaded on to barges headed to China.

EAGER BUSINESSMEN, BIG TALK, AND RAILROAD PROGRESS–ROUND VALLEY COAL FIELDS.

“The mine’s bright prospects drew the interest of a number of very wealthy investors from the timber industry. A group of Ft. Bragg men took the lead in plans to open up access to the coalfields that “would yield a daily output of 3000 tons for a thousand years without being exhausted, and bring 10,000 new people to Round Valley:”

https://kymkemp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Ft.-Bragg-to-Coal-field-RR-route-SFCall1893-12-31.jpg

https://kymkemp.com/2021/10/01/odd-old-news-eagar-businessmen-big-talk-and-railroad-progress-round-valley-coal-fields-part-two/

Marmon

Reply
- Rye N Flint June 4, 2022
  
  Oh great, Maybe Northern California can pay back the US debt to China… And the salmon can pay too…
  
  https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-debt-to-china-how-much-does-it-own-3306355
  
  Reply
Marmon June 4, 2022

PLEASE!!!

A little less Lye N Flint and a little more Marmon

Marmon

Reply
- Rye N Flint June 4, 2022
  
  Name calling never got anyone popularity…
  
  Reply
George Dorner June 4, 2022

The whole coal train panic is ridiculous. The NW Pacific RR failed because it was not economic to repair storm damage. And now, someone is supposed to spend billions of dollars on repairs, so they can ship coal away from the Bay Area ports to Eureka because….?

Reply
Craig Stehr June 4, 2022

Got up this morning at Building Bridges homeless shelter in Ukiah, CA and following usual morning ablutions, continued with voluntarily taking care of the trash and recycling. The mantrams from the previous evening’s YouTube viewing of the Narasimha puja in Bangalore, INDIA were resounding in the mind. Imagine chanting silently mantrams to the fierce lion manifestation of the god Sri Krishna, while emptying waste baskets into outside containers, and then lugging them to the collection area and separating out the recyclables, while bagging the aluminum cans for a trip to the recycling center in Willits by a shelter resident, (who then purchases ground sirloin and grills it here for sumptuous sandwiches for everybody, and serves additional snacks, etcetera. And right now it’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon, and time to go check the LOTTO tickets to see if the Divine Absolute is channeling money for 1. the last of the dental work, to be followed by 2. going forth on the planet earth for environmental and related direct action. This is how it is when one is no longer identified with the body nor the mind, but is identified with the Immortal Self, or Atman, or Brahman. This is all about the non-dualism which has gotten a lot of media attention over the past 50 years. This is the tearing of the curtain of maya, or illusion, and thus knowing the mystery. [This is my report to the AVA front office from the Mendocino county seat on June 4th, ’22. Gotta get offline, and take an amble north on State Street to see what’s brewing.]

Unless this gets censored, here is your bonus track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUpxj7CyxEM

Reply

Mendocino County Today: Saturday, June 4, 2022

20 Comments

Leave a Reply Cancel reply