FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS 2012 DATE CHANGE AGAIN! DUE TO THE IMMINENT WEATHER, FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS IS CANCELLED TONIGHT, WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 5TH, 2012.
The new dates for Festival of Lights will be: Dec. 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 14th, 15th & 16th. Please join us! Thank you and we apologize for any inconvenience. Join us at the 3rd Annual Festival of Lights where thousands of lights transform Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens into a magical Winter Wonderland! We look forward to the upcoming dry weather, due Thursday!
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MENDO Board of Supes: “Retain Outside Counsel” in Response to Federal Subpoena of Ziptie Records
By Kym Kemp (Courtesy, Lost Coast Outpost)
The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors met Tuesday to discuss the federal government’s subpoena of records from its Ziptie Program which allowed medical marijuana growers to purchase bands for up to 99 plants in order to provide medicine to patients. After a period of public comment in which “people involved in the medical marijuana industry locally” urged the Board to protect those involved in the program, the board agreed in a private session to have their County Counsel “retain outside counsel” and “take appropriate action.” The Ukiah Daily Journal (UDJ) has been requesting to see the federal subpoena and, finally, through the Public Records Act gained access and published the subpoena yesterday. According to the UDJ, Fifth District Supervisor Dan Hamburg believes the federal government may be “after the money (from the 9.31 program).” However participants in the program worry that the records which include “records of inspections, applications, and communications, to include emails, with Mendocino County 9.31 Program permit applicants [and] permit holders” may be used to go after the medical marijuana growers themselves.
Today, the Emerald Growers Association, a medical marijuana group which has taken an interest in the matter, issued a statement celebrating the Mendocino Supervisors’ actions. In Ukiah yesterday, two members of the EGA Board of Directors and our amazing pro-bono legal council, Khurshid Khoja, hand delivered legal arguments to the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors and also spoke during public comment to implore the county to NOT hand over the personal and financial information of legally-compliant medical cannabis farmers to an over reaching federal government. After deliberating, the board voted in favor of patient rights by directing the county attorney to hire outside counsel to address the federal subpoena. A sincere thank you to the Mendocino County BOS. Hooray for Justice! The County could incur expensive legal fees by this action. However, several attorneys have offered their services Pro Bono.
A READER WRITES regarding the decision by the Mendocino County Supervisors to resist the federal subpoenas for records of the County's aborted pot licensing program: “Really? Hiring an outside counsel for advice on a federal grand jury subpoena? For what purpose? The feds have the authority to do what they're doing. Pot ordinance followers waived their disclosure rights. So why are we going to spend thousands of dollars on this? Also, UDJ story sez lawyers have offered to do pro bono. Again, really? Then turn to the want ad section, and check out job postings for a new MTA general manager, a Human Resources benefits administrator and a new administrative assistant in the county executive office. Combined we're looking at combined salaries in excess of $200,000 per year. Where's all of this money coming from?”
THE CHP SAID Wednesday that the driver of the big rig that overturned on Highway 128 Tuesday, closing the road for several hours, was reportedly distracted prior to the collision “by items in the vehicle.” Ramon J. Severns, 37, of Santa Rosa, was driving a loaded moving truck Tuesday afternoon when, at about 1:12pm, he lost control of the vehicle. It overturned, blocking both lanes of the road in the area of Meyers Cellars about seven miles southeast of Boonville. Neither Severns nor his passenger, a 50-year-old Lakeport woman not named in the accident report, were injured. Highway 128 was not reopened to through traffic until 6:20 p.m. Travelers were diverted through Ukiah and Hopland.
THIS ONE SOUNDS bogus, but given the pure number of pervs out there, it may have happened. According to Ukiah Unified School District Superintendent Deb Kubin, in a letter sent to parents Tuesday, a 7-year-old girl, a student at Yokayo Elementary School, reported that while she was walking home after school headed north on Dora Street, a man asked her to “go with him to the store.” The kid said no, and the guy allegedly grabbed and threatened her but she broke away and ran to her home down the street. According to Ukiah Police Department Captain Justin Wyatt, the girl described the man as “a dark male, unknown race, wearing white shorts, white Van's shoes, a black hat with green money signs all over it and a red brim.” As if that outfit weren't vivid enough, the little girl said her would-be abductor wore “a red and white striped shirt that had a brown horse image on the front with a heart above it.” But nobody saw anything untoward, and Dora Street is teeming with people after school, and pretty busy the rest of the day.
FOR ANYONE drooling over the opportunity to give MCOG your input on their Vision Mendocino 2030 project, here’s the link to their new on-line survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Visionmendocino2030
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THE FIRST TIME I paid close attention to Dave Brubeck’s music was after a friend gave me a copy of vibraphonist Emil Richards’ album, “A New Time Element” in the early 60s on which Richards played well known pop standards to non-standard beats. Georgy Girl was set to 5/4 time. Havah Nagilah was set to 9/8 time. Etc. (Samples at: http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/6838732/a/New+Time+Element.htm) One of Richards’ best rearrarangements was his reverse version of Dave Brubeck’s famous “Take Five” — done in 4/4 time! Amazingly, Richards’ version sounded weird even though it was in standard time. I had worked for weeks to come up with an abbreviated 5/4 version of Take 5 myself and I knew its basic non-standard 5/4 time signature (1-2-3, 1-2). So hearing it in 4/4 time was downright fascinating. And even harder to play, although it should have been easier. That was just a small example of how effective Brubeck had been in establishing unusual time signatures in the minds of jazz listeners of the late 50s and early 60s. It was genuinely ground-breaking.
I was reminded of this odd memory by hearing of Dave Brubeck’s death Wednesday at the age of 92. Looking back now on Dave Brubeck’s prodigious jazz output, one is struck by how he — almost alone — was able to popularize tunes with offbeat rhythms and odd time signatures in a music world that had been stuck in 4/4 and 3/4 since before J.S. Bach. Right off I can easily recall such fascinating tunes as:
Blue Rondo A La Turk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH2aeRzO9xk
It’s a Raggy Waltz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3eimKbIdHU
Three To Get Ready http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmaC4WwspS4
Unsquare Dance
Etc.
Brubeck didn’t overplay either. He didn’t show off, didn’t jive off into rarefied unlistenable musical territory that only other jazz players could understand. Instead he relied on clever tempos, surprising short riffs, cuts, and understated harmonies and melodies which appealed to a broader audience, while at the same time demanding that they pay attention to the music via the near-eastern-ish timings that require you to think and listen carefully before just tapping your toe. Another impressive aspect of Brubeck’s compositions and performances was the way he incorporated classical elements. (If you don't hear a good bit of Mozart in Blue Rondo, you need to listen more carefully.) In a way he was also out of synch with the times when he assembled one of the first highly popular mixed race jazz groups in the late 50s and early 60s with ultra-cool jazz bassist Eugene Wright — who was more important to establishing the foundations of those off-beat tempos than most listeners realize.
There will be plenty of conventional obituaries and remembrances of Dave Brubeck, his life and his impressive jazz legacy. But personally, I’ll always appreciate the way Dave Brubeck demonstrated how rewarding it is to take a serious but unconventional approach to music — and life. (Mark Scaramella)
Feds 9.31 subpeona appears to be an attempt to chill free speech on county Ordinance drafting revisions in Mendocino, by going after all communications of the public with the Board of Supervisors on this matter.
In other words, if you express any opinion on how County Code 9.31 may be made better or worse, are you guilty of a federal conspiracy for doing so, or is the subpeona merely a launching pad for further investigation and to squelch continued discussion on cannabis at the County level.
cuchulainxxx@yahoo.com
Mendo Chistka
“Arrest! Need it be said that it is a breaking point in your life, a bolt of lightning which has scored a direct hit on you? That it is an unassimilable spiritual earthquake not every person can cope with, as a result of which people often slip into insanity?”
(Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago Vol. I. p.3.)
Heads up! Satanville homies! If you pull together, and, practice omerta, you might side-step the in-coming bad weather, or, at least, mitigate its worst effects. It’s probably too late to do anything about phone traffic patterns. The first wave of people indicted, have to hang tight, no one can roll. If they hold their mud, the feds won’t get the necessary corroborating evidence to continue their purge. It will be rough on those who get caught up. They will need community support, both encouragement not to cave, and, financial assistance.
When, and, if, the “G” is blocked, the feds will get mean, and, put the wood to whoever won’t roll. Phone taps and pen registers, alone, can’t sustain their cases. It’s crucial for them to flip enough people to keep their prosecutorial machine grinding along. Soon, their inquisitive attention will illuminate Satanville’s true character in the same manner that light defines the shape of an object. If everyone thinks only of themselves, of doing time and/or losing their stuff, the game will be lost before it’s begun. Those that steadfastly hold up under pressure, risk losing everything, … except their souls.
Satanville is the reification of a collective consciousness. It is thought made real, aggregate mental energies instantiating a flesh and blood community based on the idealism of the late sixties, and, sustained by anarcho-capitalist illegalism. Over the last couple of years, there has been an absurd rush to “become white,” “get legal,” and metamorphose into peti- bourgeois country squires, this has led directly to the current legal malaise. There is no getting legal. Satanville exists beyond the law. Anarchistic outlawry is the public expression of its raison detre. Illegalism is the communal confession. All notions to the contrary, are self-deceiving. It is a genuinely anti-structural environment.
Anti-structure precedes all form. It is the creative cusp between now and next from which all ideas emanate. It’s the peak of an acid trip, the stage at which everything becomes possible, rendering all codes of conduct plastic as play-do. Anti-structural environments are inherently unstable; absence of structure begs structure. Minds form these future structures from re-combined bits and pieces of past experience, hence, the unfortunate palimpsestic re-assertion of the bourgeois attitude, representing, ironically, the very ideology the old-time new-comers were seeking to escape.
Satanville isn’t just a physical location; it’s a state of mind. But, can it last? Can anywhere, or, anyone, bear the weight of such bedizened dreamings? Perhaps, the vision has proved too unpredictable, too frightening, too heavy, for earnest hippie kulaks yearning the lost comfort of their chains. “Honest, Mister Man from Uncle, it was all just a shimmering mirage…. “
Great Preston’s ghost! Gang! All for one, and, one for all. Hang together, or, hang alone.
Pugachev
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