Mendocino County Today: Thursday, August 11, 2022

Inland Warming | Whitesboro Cove | Back to School | Arson Cat | Children's Festival | Yard Sale | AV Responders | Mayme Sutherland | Cleaning Service | Senior Center | Moors Review | Harborfest Volunteers | Wildfire Survey | Hilma & Tom | Abortion Stories | Yorkville Social | Ed Notes | Yesterday's Catch | Skyhawk Radio | Higher Rasa | Spidervision | All Love | Minimum Payment | Overheard | Your Future | Prosecutorial Accountability | Marjorie Rawlings | Ukraine | Inclusive Society | Rivera Exhibit | Beware Librarians | Optimist Tale | Imbecile Tolerance | SF Map | Rasputin Friends | Abolish CIA

A GRADUAL WARMING TREND will kick off today for interior areas, while mostly seasonal conditions persist at the coast. Areas of smoke will persist inland and continue to impact high temperatures in the vicinity of wildfires. (NWS)

AV SCHOOL UPDATES

Dear AVUSD Jr./Sr. High School Parent/Guardian,

Do you feel the expectation in the air? Do you see the improvement that we've made in this property? “Ok is not ok”. Your kid deserves the same experience as kids at Ukiah High, Mendo or Fort Bragg. I expect that.

Do you feel the commitment that the staff has been here over the summer to make sure your kid comes back to an environment that feels incredibly exciting and transformative? Did you see what John Toohey and his family and a core of volunteers are saying what is expected to be achieved by your kids. I hope you do. Because a lot of people have spent this summer making sure that happens.

This week, we've had the required parent/guardian check out of materials. If you didn’t come, your job is to get here. We have some significant changes going on here. No more cell phones at the Junior High level. Kids need to learn to talk to each other. Chromebooks will stay at school for the Junior High level, and at the high school tech policies will be enforced. Parents/guardians need to make their meetings. Teachers need to reach out if there are issues.

At the high school, we've ordered amazing new technology, coordinated by Wynne Crisman, but there is an expectation this technology will be protected and cherished. If not, we can go back to pencil and paper because that works great. The CTE teachers of Nat Corey Moran, Assistant Principal Stephanie Ewing, and John Toohey have been meeting to set an expectation of thrive. 

I am a straight shooter. It is unacceptable to me that your student arrives at school late. Please make sure they get here on time. It is not optional. Please make sure they follow the dress code, it is not optional. Vero Barragan is the Behavioral Liaison, who will be your student’s Fiercest Defender, but she also infuses FIERCE expectation about what is required. 

We've had a personnel change in the PE department, but I am delighted that Coach Flick has stepped in and said “yes” and we are set for the first three weeks of school until we determine a solution. Coach Flick has saved me twice in two years. First leading the Volleyball team last year to an unbelievable championship and then again this year. We are grateful to him. 

This is a new day in Anderson Valley. This is a new day of facilities, expectation, student achievement, student excitement, STUDENT RESPECT and all that we can become. Led by the high school student council, we will embrace a post acute-Covid era, where we will embrace that school is about learning, but it's also about relationships, extracurriculars and so much more.

If your student is late, we will be calling within the first period to get them to school. We will send a van to your house. Attendance is not optional.

Please remember, if your student drives to school they must be fully licensed. There is huge liability to the district and to your family personally, if they are not licensed. Unlicensed drivers (including drivers with just a permit) may not park in our lot. I am working to bring behind the wheel training back to campus for summer. In the meantime, if your kid is not a legal driver, put them on the bus.

Let me talk about the clubs….weight room, angel davies and photography, glad donahue and gay straight alliance, deleh and her hiking. Lots cooking here.

To my amazing kids enrolled in mendo college dual enrollment and auto mechanics. I am so proud of you. For my wednesday auto mechanics kids, I will review expectations with you when we are back to school. Attendance is not optional. Work is not optional. Success is expected. This is the first step in your college career. I am proud of you.

Regarding the dinner on Thursday, August 18,--it is required, if your student plays sports anytime during the year. If they don’t play sports and you want to come, come! CALL THE OFFICE AND RESERVE YOUR SPOT, SO WE HAVE ENOUGH FOOD. This is a parent/guardian dinner ONLY. 

I am so ready to have your kids back.

Call me with questions or suggestions,

Louise Simson, Superintendent, Anderson Valley Unified School District, Cell: 707-684-1017

---

UPDATE:

Wow! Wow! Wow!

I saw a lot of parents and guardians at the school today picking up their student’s materials. Well done! If you have not picked up your student schedule and signed all the required forms, tomorrow is your last day between 11 and 3. We're doing our part, you need to do your part. Every parent needs to come to the school tomorrow between 11 and 3, if you have not already picked up your kid’s schedule. It's a new day in Anderson Valley. I can't believe how many parents/guardians showed up. I'm proud of you.

Make your reservation for our parent dinner on August 18th. Terri Rhodes is cooking for us, so we know it's going to be good tasty. Lots of information to discuss with Coach Toohey. Lots of good social time because we're back and we are in it TOGETHER.

Sincerely yours,

Lousie Simson

Superintendent

TAI KWAN MENDO

Temple of Kwan Tai Children's Festival of the Hungry Ghosts

Saturday, August 13th 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Volunteers needed at 11:30 AM. Help kids take part in Chinese culture at activity tables, from showing them how to color a dragon head mask to catapulting a ghost over the LEGO steps! Mendocino Community Center; all welcome! Crafts provided, you bring the FUN.

Meredith Smith <merrie@mcn.org>

VOLUNTEER FIREFIGHTERS RESPONDERS RESPONSE

Dear Community:

A big THANK YOU to all of you who attended our fund raising event for Anderson Valley’s First Responders. What a lovely evening with great food, wine/beer and music. 

Special thanks to the following for their contributions: AV Lions Club, Jeff Moss Cruise Control Band, AV Market, AV Brewery, AV Farm Supply, Antoinette Von Grone, Aurelia, Bee Hunter Wines, Boonville Hotel, Disco Ranch, Domaine Anderson, Farmhouse Mercantile, Goldeneye, Handley Cellars, Husch Vineyards, Jack’s Valley Store, Jeff & Merry Miller, Larry Mailliard, Lee Serrie, Lemons Market, Lucille Estes, Lula Winery, Marvin Schenk, Meyer Family Cellars, Michael Wilson, Nancy McCloud, Navarro Vineyards, Pepperwood Pottery, Philip Thomas, Roederer Estate Vineyards, Rossi Hardware, Sandy Mailliard, Seebass Wines, Scharffenberger Cellars, Susan Bodine, Terrie Lockwood, The Apple Farm, The Bohemian Chemist, Tom McFadden, Toulouse Winery, Valerie Gowan, William Allen and Judy Nelson. We apologize if we have missed someone, it was not done intentionally, just an oversight on our part!

Anderson Valley Volunteer Fire Fighters Association

CORY’S CLEANING SERVICE (Anderson Valley)

Apartment-House-Office

Thorough, Professional, Convenient

One time, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly.

707/353-0324

(AVA Recommended)

AV SENIOR CENTER NEWS

A lot going on in August at the Anderson Valley Senior Center…

We sadly say goodbye to our student chef, Allen Ford. It’s back to school he goes! We enjoyed a great summer with him and really appreciated all of his help. Hopefully he is taking away savvy kitchen skills he learned from our cook, Bob Vaughan and will come back to us next summer. Thanks for your hard work, Allen!

Save the date! The AV Lions will be sponsoring the senior center with a Tri-Tip and Chicken BBQ on August 20th. But it’s more than just a dinner!

There will be a silent auction, raffles (including Giants Tickets), no-host bar, a corn hole tournament, ping pong and live music by Jeff Moss & Cruise Control. A great family-friendly Saturday Summer evening and all proceeds benefit the AV Senior Cemter! Festivities kick off at 4 pm at the Center, 14470 Hwy. 128 in Boonville! See you there!

We will have our first post-pandemic evening meal on August 23rd. Dinner is at 6 pm but come early at 4:30 pm for a free planetarium show sponsored by NASA. Vaccinations/Masks required.

MTC's production — THE MOORS

A review by Marylyn Motherbear Scott

In its last weeks, thru August 21, 2022

Playwright — Jen Silverman

Director — Roxy Seven

Actors: EMILIE — Pamela W. Allen, AGATHA— Jessica Carroll, MOOR HEN — Ricci Dedola, MASTIFF by Mark Friedrich, MARJORY — Laurel Livezey, HULDEY — Jasmine Norris

These times, wherein life itself seems fragile, Mendocino Theatre Company offers The Moors, a production that displays, in dark comedic fashion, the internal dialogue and the feelings that come with the current-day experience, pandemic isolation, end-of-the-world angst. The show’s program sets the time in the 1840-ish — it is more ISH than not. The setting is in England with a Question Mark — in today’s world, boundaries of land are hard to see and harder to hold, those of the psyche no less.

The Moors is a brooding, existential, poetic, theatre of the absurd, reminiscent of Camus’ and Sartre’s existentialism, Brecht’s alienation theatre, Ionesco’s theatre of the absurd. The Bronte sisters, the writings, art, the lineage of their short-lived windswept existence is the inspiration for The Moors. The fog of the “bleak moors” rolls in, strangely similar to the climes of our Mendocino coast. Though the artistic natures of its inhabitants are more dramatically stated in the play, a resonance is sensed. This production of the Moors offers a bold, even shocking, sometimes sexy, certainly entertaining array of psyches, a cabaret of the soul with no holds barred.

From the moment we enter the theatre proper, we are greeted by what appears to be a parlor, decorated in lush and seductive rococo fashion, somewhat opposite to, yet inclusive of, the darkness of the moors. In this way, the stage itself invites the audience, almost unbeknownst, to the opposing themes of seductive beauty and oppressive angst. 

The audience meets most of the characters within a short time of opening. The lady of the manor Agatha, is played with cool and detached precision by Jessica Carroll. As you might guess, there is more beneath the all-spit-and-polish surface of Agatha; her modus operandi, from the get-go, is far from subtle. 

Played by the inimitable Mark Friedrich, Mastiff, man’s best friend, the dog, is seen sitting sadly with his head lowered. Occasionally he lifts his head to look around and, each time, Agatha, commands, Down!, a command that resonates throughout everything in the Moors and beyond. Mark as Mastiff offers a beautiful and touching poetic monologue that sets the overall tone of the play.

Agatha’s young sister, Huldey, played by the young Jasmine Norris, is performed to sweet and innocent perfection; until, it is no longer sweet and innocent. Maybe nothing is. And that, too, has a head-banging perfection uniquely its own. Well done, Jasmine.

The maid, Marjory (she of another name), is played to head-bowing submissiveness by Laurel Livezey. Laurel’s performance as the maid carries a chilly and subdued resistance. Ultimately donning a London Lace bib, Marjory displays the certain danger that lies behind silenced desire; nay! Rather she carries a sinister ambition to tumble what is up, and turn right what is down.

Into the parlor comes Emilie, played with all of the nuance and finesse we are used to seeing from Pamela W. Allen who has graced the MTC stage with her fine acting skill time and again. Emilie arrives at the manor, having responded to letters from the Master, who the audience never sees but who lives on, on many levels, in our mind’s eye. He lives for sure, in Emilie’s heart, a result of romantic words said in the letters, words the audience can only imagine. Emilie has kind-of fallen for him. Desire for the male letter writer morphs into a surprising gender issue. The shift, like so many in The Moors, happens quickly, suggesting that romance like other emotions, lives more in the projection of the psyche’s desire than in something substantive.

The issue of the personal and the social, the secret and the shown, melds into every nuanced word and action in The Moors. As you might imagine, things change on this stage in a flash and a fog-ish fumble. Some fall right out of the sky, 

It is so with the namesake of the play, the MOOR HEN, played so perfectly by one of MTC’s most active and comedic actors, Ricci Dedola. She is the Be Here Now aspect of living. When Mastiff and Moor Hen meet, it is, for the dog, love at first flight. The moor hen, however, is a bit shy, feeling she is not a match for his size nor his nature, but she is persuaded to enter into a friendship with the dog. This relationship has much of marriage to it. She offers a mindful presence. He offers eternal and idealistic devotion. Nature weighs in, as something of fight or flight plays in the mist. It is interesting that the dog and bird represent the most human emotions, while the humans display the most beastly.

Being seen and not being seen is a theme in the play. Intimacy and desire are never far afield, though sometimes hidden in moorish mist. Personal power politics, gender issues, love eternal, love interrupted, the loneliness of separation; all the mysteries of attraction, beauty, fear and danger are represented; and, in the final analysis, up for the grab of interpretation. Take a moment to enter The Moors. Enjoy this alluring one act play of comedic Mystery. 

All the ways of seeing are enhanced by the amazing skills of costume design by Anakin Melamed, the music and sound design by Scott Menzies, scenic and lighting design by Jeff Rowlings, Prop Master is Allison Tuomala, Technical Director and Master Electrician is Dale Cohn . Special applause for Director Roxy Seven and stage manager Sidney Droz.

Please note that in order to support indoor seating safety, all must show proof of Covid vaccination. Masks must be worn throughout the entire performance. 

For tickets and info: (707) 937-4477 www.mendocinotheatre.org

HARBORFEST VOLUNTEERS SOUGHT

Harborfest returns on September 4, 2022! This is a very important local event -- the money raised is used for repair and maintenance of the Pier. We are seeking volunteers to assist with parking, selling tickets at the entrance, selling t-shirts, general maintenance during the event and clean-up after. We're also looking for anyone who might be interested in working behind the grill. Volunteering for this event is a great way to give back to the community and have fun at the same time. All volunteers will receive tickets for drink and food. Please contact Barbara Burkey at 707-882-2683 or City Hall at 707-882-2122. Thank you!

WILDFIRE RECOVERY AND RESILIENCY SURVEY

The Prevention, Recovery, Resiliency and Mitigation Division (PRRM) invites residents of Mendocino County, past and present, to complete the Recovery and Resiliency Survey!

Responses to the survey will help PRRM track the recovery progress, assess unmet needs in the community, improve future disaster recovery efforts, and plan future recovery and resiliency projects.

The survey is available now and responses will be collected until September 15th, 2022. 

Please visit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MendoDisasterRecovery

If you were impacted by the following wildfires, we need your input!

• 2017 Redwood Complex Fire
• 2018 Mendocino Complex Fire
• 2020 August Complex Fire
• 2020 Oak Fire
• 2021 Hopkins Fire

For additional information, please contact PRRM at: mendocinocounty.org/community/fire-recovery

707-234-6303│disasterrecovery@mendocinocounty.org

ROE RAGE - WOMEN SHARE ABORTION STORIES

About 100 attend Ukiah gathering Saturday

by Justine Frederiksen

When Laura Hamburg took the stage Saturday evening, she got straight to the point.

“My story is called, ‘Abortion, Abortion, Abortion’,” Hamburg told the crowd of about 100 women and men gathered outside the Ukiah Players Theatre Aug. 6 for Roe Rage, an event which sprang to life after the recent overturning of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court Decision that legalized abortion, Roe v. Wade.

“Abortion is common, abortion is shame-free, and abortion is healthcare,” Hamburg continued, explaining that her intent in repeating the word “abortion” as loudly and as frequently as she could was to scrape as much secrecy and shame off the word as possible.

“We needed to see each other, and we needed to hear each other, and we needed to (talk) out loud about our abortions, because it does help,” said Hamburg, describing how “Roe Rage” took shape in the backyard of Ellen Weed’s home. “And the real fundamental reason is because abortion is so common. And yet we don’t talk about them, at least not enough. So we’re done (being silent), and we’re here to talk about them.”

“My abortions saved my life, shaped my life, and freed me,” said Hamburg, explaining that when she got pregnant as a teenager working three jobs in Mendocino County, she sought an illegal abortion from a doctor in San Francisco.

“And he told me that a fetus was a soul knocking at the door to come in, but if the mother wasn’t ready, then that soul would come back when she was,” Hamburg recalled. “Because having a child was an agreement between that soul and the mother, and that forcing a fetus to become a child was cruel, particularly cruel to the child.”

Kate Magruder then spoke of how she also got pregnant at 17 in Illinois, but was unable to get an abortion. She tried to kill herself at seven-months pregnant, then gave birth to a boy who was adopted.

When she got pregnant again after moving to Ukiah, Magruder said she sought an abortion from the same doctor in San Francisco that Hamburg had seen.

“He told me, ‘This little spirit understands exactly why you need to do this’,” MacGruder recalls the doctor telling her, words she describes as “the greatest gift I have ever been given.”

When Weed took the stage, she recalled taking a Greyhound bus from New York to Pennsylvania to seek an illegal abortion in 1963 when she was 20.

“And I was lucky — I had a real doctor, and I survived,” said Weed, explaining that she had one friend who became infertile after an unsafe abortion, and three others who died after their procedures. “Girls and women will have sex, girls and women will get pregnant, and girls and women will get abortions, whether they are legal or not. And no court in the world is going to change that.”

(Courtesy, the Ukiah Daily Journal.)

ED NOTES

YEARS AGO and far, far away, I had my first experience with the FBI. That experience was removed from actual contact with a real live G-Man but, because of my leftwing associations in my early twenties, the FBI warned the Peace Corps that I, a harmless liberal all my days, might be a little too left to foist off on unsuspecting Malaysians, the result being a delay in my dispatch overseas while the feds looked into my background, discovering that I was among the marchers in the famous 1965 demo at Selma, Alabama, by which time I was in living fact in Mukah, Sarawak on the island of Borneo. 

BACK in the hostile embrace of the USA in '67, and active in the opposition to the War On Vietnam, I remember a visit to my SF apartment — two bedrooms for $150 a month in the Haight-Ashbury, my wife so weirded out by the street hijinks outside she refused to leave our home unless I accompanied her, I was almost as weirded out myself. When I'd left The City in early '63, there were a few beatniks beating bongo drums on Upper Grant, but when I got back the beatniks had inspired a mass movement pegged to ditch dope and slovenliness. (Old timers will recall the warning sign at the old Navarro Inn by the Sea that read, “I don't mind the hippie movement so long as it keeps on moving.”)

SO, one afternoon as my brother and I were catching up on what our father called “crank lit” — The Minority of One; I.F. Stone's Newsletter; The Nation, and so on, there was a polite knocking on the door. Two guys dressed like Mormon missionaries identified themselves as FBI agents. They asked my brother if he had any weapons. Bro was just out of federal prison as among the first resister in the U.S. to refuse to register for the draft, and he was quickly processed on into the federal prison at Lompoc for an 18-month stretch.

WEAPONS? No. Why do you ask, Agent Automaton? Curley and Mo explained that President deGaulle of France was coming to town, and they apparently had Bro down as a potential assassin. The sophistication in play here was numbing. Why would a leftwing American want to pick off deGaulle? In solidarity with Algeria, but wasn't it deGaulle who de-colonized Algeria? Anyway, we were still chuckling when one of the agents, puzzled by Bro's political stance, asked Bro what he would do if Mexico invaded the United States. Bro replied that he wouldn't fight the Mexicans, but if those goddam Canadians invaded he'd certainly pick up the gun.

MY NEXT ENCOUNTER with the FBI came in 1990 with Agent Daley. He ambled into the AVA office in central Boonville slurping an ice cream cone a month or so after Judi Bari was blown up in Oakland by her ex-husband, Mike Sweeney. “Can I look at your letters file, Mr. Anderson?” No, you can't. As you know, Mr. Daley, newspaper communications aren't public, besides which we don't keep a letters file.” He also asked me who I thought did it. I had no idea, and the very mention of Sweeney as perp was a subject that got Bari's first lawyer, the estimable Susan B. Jordan, fired. Jim Shields of Laytonville's Mendocino County Observer also denied the feds access to his files, a fact Bari ignored when she claimed the Mendo media fully cooperated with the FBI. Not true, but then the old girl wasn't exactly scrupulous when it came to truth-telling.

THE FEDS CLAIMED to be looking for correspondence that might lead to the person who placed the bomb in Bari's car, a search belied by their eventual statement that the case was closed “because no one would talk to us.” Duh. Not even a grown-up excuse for not arresting the obvious perp.

WHEN IT was revealed that the FBI had been alerted by one of its own agents that a dozen Saudis were taking flying lessons in Florida but waiving the classes that taught them how to land, and they soon flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center, I wasn't surprised.

AND I won't be surprised when it turns out the FBI raid on Trump's Mar A Shlocko found nothing with which to at last harpoon the Great Orange Whale, an eternal quest by the equivalently corrupt Democrats which also includes the phony Steele Dossier and Comey's Russian hoax. Suborning a presidential election? Jan 6th? Nope, and whoever could have thought Trump, of all people, could ever possibly be regarded as a victim? Way to go, Libs.

CATCH OF THE DAY, August 10, 2022

JOSIAH ARMIJO, Willits. Domestic battery.

NOE CARRANZA, Ukiah. Pot cultivation/processing, assault weapon, short-barreled rifle, conspiracy.

CESAR DELCAMPO, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

AARON HERNANDEZ, Fort Bragg. Bringing controlled substances into jail, probation revocation.

FELIPE HERNANDEZ, Novato. DUI, suspended license, controlled substance.

KEVIN SHAW, Ukiah. Shuriken, controlled substance, probation revocation.

NAKEA SIMS, Laytonville. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun. 

EDWARD STEELE JR., Ukiah. Fighting or challenging in public.

LANCE TREPPA, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, county parole violation.

UNIVERSAL PERSPECTIVES, KZYX 

Please join host Chris Skyhawk for Universal Perspectives on KZYX this Thursday August 11, at 7pm, as he continues his series “Surviving late stage capitalism: What’s next?” His guests will be Ken Taylor from the Grassroots Institute’s Water Coalition- we will be discussing local drought resiliency in the face of climate change and extended droughts, and also Mike Mease of the Buffalo Field Campaign (B.F.C.). We will look at the historic role Buffalo have played in the health of the prairie ecosystem, and how restoring wild buffalo populations can lead to healthy ecosystems. Listen locally at 90.7 or 91.5 fm or online at kzyx.org

WHAT MORE CAN I SAY?

Govind Bolo Hari Gopal Bolo | Janmashtami 2022 Special | Tripti Shakya: youtube.com/watch?v=_eOQb0eO_-w&t=6s

Janmashtami (Krishna's birthday) is an auspicious spiritual global celebration, which will bring the higher rasa to anyone who performs bhakti yoga sadhana.  What more can I say?  What more do you want??  ~Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare~  🙏📿😊

Craig Louis Stehr

LOYALTY’S SHELF-LIFE

Dear Editor,

It's been a while since I have written. I have been down south for several years, Level 4-Lancaster. Hot as hell. It's on and crackin' almost every yard. But I'm back up to North Salinas Valley, making my way to San Quentin. Hopefully I will be there before the end of 2023.

You mentioned Tai Abreu? How is he? Is he free? Can I get in touch with him somehow? Maybe I will leave my address? Luckily a friend of mine spent $52 and got me a years worth of your paper. I love reading it. I also get a kick out of the petty thieves and womanizers who call themselves “convicts.” You really don't qualify by stealing an EBT card or burglarizing some chick's house when she finally falls asleep. I may not see eye to eye with my codefendant, but even he commits real crimes.

Who am I to talk, right? Ha ha ha. Laughing like the Joker. In society's eyes I'm garbage and in prison. I am almost a celebrity. I would give it all up to be free one more time. I've learned my lesson.

The lesson is “loyalty” has a shelf life. Period. The lesson is, when you get a sentence like I got you separate the chaff from the wheat. I don't have as many friends in my life, but the friends I do have are quality who really care about me and who I really care about, not what they have for me or what I have for them. None of that matters. It's just all love. It's better that way, don't you think?

I hope I haven't ruffled any feathers. Make good choices and be productive.

Walter Miller #AE 5304

Salinas Valley State Prison

PO Box 1050

Soledad, CA 93960

MAGA GOES FULL DEFUND THE POLICE Following Trump Raid (Coast Chatline)

Alan Haack wrote:

I'm sitting in a restaurant today. Four of the other four tables around me are discussing the FBI raid, all of them upset that this could have happened. When I went home and looked at the internet, I saw Trump and Fox News and heard the same talking points. The people I'd seen at breakfast had already ingested and memorized the Trump line and were repeating it as if it were true. It's remarkable how quickly that happened and how thoroughly they are buying the line. If I had ever wondered whether the Trumptards would wake up, start thinking for themselves and demand truth, I have lost that naivete. This will continue. Fortunately, they are utterly stupid low-class failures but there are a lot of them. The ones I saw today were loud old white men in poor clothing. His base. 

* * *

Marco McClean here, 

Alan. It wasn't that long ago that grocery stores had a whole book and magazine aisle, with separate sections for the different subjects. Science-fiction paperbacks were a top item. There was a wedge-shaped grocery store on Clear Lake that was more of a bookstore with groceries in it than the other way around. One of my best lost-track-of-time-reading experiences was when I was, I think, 12, and my family had a booth selling cans of peanuts in the Roseville Farmers' Market/Fleamarket and auction yards. I wandered off past the waterbed booths and the paintings on black velvet* booths and bootleg cassette tape booths and all the rest, the other-planet-slum-like wet and steaming plywood toilet closet alley, and so on, and found a book on the rack in a regular grocery store at the edge of the place. It was The Beast Master by Andre Norton, about a downtrodden telepathic Navajo and his genetically enhanced pet animals. As I recall, he had a weasel and a tiger (or a wolf, maybe) and a hawk. I sat on the floor to read that and the world vanished, and when I finished the book it was late, the lights in the store were on and it was dim outside. Everything was closing down. I went back to our booth. My stepbrother Craig (R.I.P.) was there, waiting in case I came back, while everyone else was out searching for me because they thought I had been kidnapped or stuffed in a hole. “Mom's gonna kill you,” Craig said.

Austin Lounge Lizards - Paint Me On Velvet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdSf1GTS3PM

DISTRUST LEADS TO NO-SHOWS

Dear Editor,

This is in response to a story in your July 13 edition, “Low Juror Turnout.” This is my opinion as to why people are failing to respond to these jury summonses.

Prosecutors are charged with a solemn duty to ensure our criminal justice system functions in an impartial, fair and faithful manner. To that end, prosecutors are afforded broad discretionary powers concerning the implementation of their sacred duties: who to charge and with what crimes, requesting appropriate sentences and conducting criminal prosecutions.

Instances of prosecutorial misconduct, even allegations of misconduct, destroy the faith in our system of justice held by members of the public. Any hint of a prosecutor failing to uphold the highest standards of their office is quite troubling. Whether those failures are accidental or intentional does not matter. The detrimental impact of all allegations of prosecutorial misconduct goes beyond any one individual case, impugning faith in the system as a whole.

The lack of transparency about the extent of prosecutorial misconduct in the United States undermines the legitimacy of the justice system.

Look at what the term “prosecutorial misconduct” means. It is any conduct by a prosecutor that does not comport with a law or procedure or ethical rules governing prosecutorial activity at any point in a criminal proceedings, regardless of the prosecutor's intent.

The common usage of the term “prosecutorial misconduct” implies a sense of moral failure, such as intentionally hiding or destroying evidence or information that demonstrates innocence.

News agencies across America reveal acts of misconduct on a daily basis. These anecdotal tales provide a troubling glimpse into the potential level of inaccurate and illegitimate convictions across the US criminal justice system. The increasing number of demonstrated cases of prosecutorial misconduct, many of which have put innocent men and women in prison for decades, sows disgust and discontent throughout the community, making the jobs of ethical high quality prosecutors even more challenging.

There have been some studies done that have made recommendations that would help prevent some of the most egregious types of misconduct.

Eliminate absolute immunity for prosecutors.

Create a civil tort remedy for individuals who are harmed by intentional or grossly negligent prosecutorial misconduct.

Consider a criminal statute specific to intentional suppression of evidence and apply other statutes relevant to prosecutorial misconduct.

We should also engage citizens and other stakeholders in the necessary conversations about prosecutorial accountability. This is the only way by which we can enhance the role of the prosecutor and improve the confidence in our justice system. We must demand accountability, integrity and fairness from prosecutors who are among the most powerful citizens in our country, yet rarely are they ever held to answer for their misconduct that often has devastating consequences for the victims and their loved ones.

Maybe when the district attorneys are held accountable for their blatant disregard for we the people then perhaps the people of the community will start showing up for jury duty. Until then I hope and pray they continue displaying their discontent for a system that is heavily tilted against we the people.

I believe those who have a badge or anyone who works within the field of law enforcement should be held to a higher standard of accountability. They shouldn't be able to break the law just because they have a badge. Maybe I am wrong for thinking like that, but that is my thought.

Charles Statler AT-7102

CTF Central C-W-133-Low

PO Box 689

Soledad, CA 93960-0689

AUTHOR MARJORIE KINNAN RAWLINGS was born on August 8th in 1896 in Washington, D.C. Rawlings is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Yearling (1938), and her popular memoir Cross Creek (1942). Rawlings lived for many years in Cross Creek, Florida where she wrote short stories and novels, most of which were about life in rural Florida.

Rawlings' last novel, The Sojourner, was published shortly before her death in 1953, in St. Augustine, of a cerebral hemorrhage. She is buried at Antioch Cemetery near Island Grove, Florida. Rawlings left her property to the University of Florida, where she had once taught creative writing. In 1970, Rawlings' Cross Creek home was listed in the National Registry of Historic Places. Today, the property is designated as The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park.

UKRAINE, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10

Headlines…

Explosions at a base in Crimea destroyed at least eight Russian jets, satellite photos indicate.

A Russian missile attack kills 13 in a district near a key nuclear plant, a Ukrainian official says.

Ukraine’s experimentation with drones gives it a technological advantage.

Russia detains a former state television journalist who protested against the war.

Hungary settles Russia’s bill with Ukraine to restore oil flows.

Russia wants to divert electricity from a nuclear plant to Crimea, says a Ukrainian official.

In parts of Russia-occupied Ukraine, Moscow controls the internet. 

A Russian filmmaker finds himself trapped between Hollywood and Moscow.

(NPR)

DIEGO RIVERA BACK IN TOWN, AGAIN

by Jonah Raskin

Diego Rivera is back in town again. No, not in person. He died in 1957 in Mexico City at the age of 70. But his art is in San Francisco, where he painted murals in 1930 at the Stock Exchange, and again in 1940 at the Golden Gate International Exposition. Rivera’s art is at the SFMOMA, and, while it’s well worth viewing, the comments by the museum can be obtuse. Maybe look at the art, decide for yourself what you see, think and feel about it, and don’t take the interpretations as the final word.

Those interpretations, unlike the art, are unsigned. Whoever wrote them didn’t know how to talk intelligently about Rivera’s radical politics and his radical way of looking at the world and representing it in murals and paintings.

The museum allows that Rivera was a communist. It doesn’t hide that fact, as other museums have done in the past, though it also aims to sanitize Rivera, made him less revolutionary than he was in person and on walls and canvases and also rebuke him for what the museum staff perceives as his sexism in a painting that depicts women bathing and washing clothes in the Tehuantepec River.

The nude figures have breasts. “Today,” the text that accompanies the painting reads, “We should be more critical of Rivera’s eroticization of these indigenous figures, part of a broader cultural tradition in which women from so-called exotic locales—Andalusia, Algeria—were objectified by white European artists, writers and intellectuals, almost invariably men.” The museum seems to be aiming to cover its own ass and not open itself to rebuke from critics who might lambast the inclusion of the nude females.

Yes, Rivera was a man, but he was a Mexican hombre, and not a white European. He regarded the indigenous inhabitants of Mexico as sexual beings, but it’s possible to see and realize that he didn’t eroticize them or turn them into exotic figures. The museum doesn’t take him to task for a painting that depicts two women making tortillas, though it might have slammed him for connecting tortilla making exclusively to women. In Mexico, as elsewhere, some jobs and tasks were linked to women, others to men. That’s the way the gender cookie crumbles.

The museum also explains that some of Rivera’s work was not “overly anti-capitalist” as paranoid North Americans feared it would be. But look closely and you’ll likely see that Rivera tended to render workers with empathy, but not capitalists or members of the bourgeoisie. True, he painted a portrait of Edsel Ford, Henry Ford’s son, but in his jacket, white shirt and blue tie, his body rather stiff and hard, Edsel seems more machine-like than human.

Rivera’s “America” includes both hemispheres, North and South, and implicitly rejects the notion that the U.S. and no other part of the “New World” was the real and the true America. For Rivera, as his art shows, workers created society’s wealth. They provided the foundation on which everything else was built.

In that sense, his work is Marxist and perhaps even explicitly communist. In 1933 in New York, Rivera painted two small frescoes for the Communist League of America, a Trotskyite organization, that depicts both Lenin and Trotsky, with Lenin in the background and Trotsky in the foreground. Rivera also memorialized the hammer and the sickle in his art, and let’s not forget that in 1934 the Rockefellers destroyed the mural it had commissioned in 1932 and that was slated for Rockefeller Center in New York. Who says the Russians under Stalin were the only ones to censor politically charged art?

I grew up in a lefty family and was introduced to Rivera’s work as a boy. When I lived in Mexico City in 1975 I went everywhere looking for his murals, and, years later when I visited friends in Guanajuato City, where Rivera was born in 1886, I saw the small museum which honors him and his work.

The SF MOMA exhibit reveals that Rivera was technically brilliant, and that he mastered his craft as well as Michaelangelo mastered his during the Italian Renaissance. The exhibit includes Rivera’s portraits along with his murals and makes a convincing case that his smaller canvases were as expertly done as his big works. His portrait of his second wife, Lupe Marin, who preceded Frida Kahlo, is a masterpiece. You can’t look at it and not sense how deeply Rivera felt about her.

Perhaps my favorite piece in the SF MOMA show is “The Flower Carrier” from 1935 that depicts a small Mexican man on his hands and knees, with a huge basket of flowers on his back while a woman larger than him aims to balance the weight. Another piece shows a barefooted woman carrying an immense load. You can feel her and hear her groaning. Clearly, Rivera loved Mexican workers and peasants, as well as the workers and peasants of all the Americas.

Bravo, SFMOMA for mounting an exhibit that runs until January 2, 2023.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Is there anyone you know of who’s not a politician that you think might make a good president! 

I thought so.

If this drought keeps on, the western US is going down the tubes to the point of being almost uninhabitable. Environment always trumps everything else. Even in Boston the landscaping is all wilted.

The issues people here are mostly interested in don’t matter much when we run out of resources.

The White Hose (not a typo) is saying inflation is zero. Wait until steak is $20 per oz., gasoline $20 per gallon and so on. If anyone is smart, they ought to stock up on beer, bandaids and bullets before it’s too late. You think crime is bad now, wait until roaming gangs invade the burbs.

Actually, on further thought, it won’t matter to stock up because some seriously bad and militarily armed groups will come and take everything away from you. If you try to resist them, they’ll kill you and your family without blinking an eye. Preppers will be slaughtered too; it’ll just be a little harder to wipe them out. I’ve read comments from some of these persons in the past and they are truly frightening.

There will be survivors – the true mentally tough people. Eventually things will get better. I know, I’m just an optimist.

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SF 

by Danielle Echeverria

A color-coded, off-color parody map of San Francisco that defines neighborhoods by their supposed characteristics — and their food — is going viral on Twitter, becoming a real-time barometer of people’s intense feelings about the city and its stereotypes.

As with anything on the internet claiming to represent “all you need to know” about the city — especially when it leans heavily into San Francisco’s food scene — it attracted plenty of attention after it was posted Tuesday afternoon, with more than 10,800 likes and 575 retweets by midmorning Wednesday.

The map, created by Twitter user @elizalian, labels the Richmond as the “good asian food” area, and Chinatown as “bad asian food,” while the Mission is the area with “all of the good restaurants and bars.” The Tenderloin is labeled as “avoid unless getting Vietnamese food.”

Other neighborhoods are labeled according to dismissive or offensive stereotypes that have proliferated over the years: the Castro is simply labeled “the gays,” North Beach is “the Italians,” the north waterfront is “tourist trap” and Haight-Ashbury is “hippies and drugs.” The Marina is labeled “frat central.”

Hayes Valley was deemed the “most well rounded neighborhood,” while Pac Heights, Cow Hollow, Russian Hill, Nob Hill, the Western Addition and north of the Panhandle were all labeled “boring.”

Everything else? Unmarked entirely.

this is all you need to know about San Francisco:

Its creator did not immediately reply when The Chronicle reached out for comment, but she engaged on Twitter with users whose responses ran the gamut, with many adding their own observations and suggestions — many tongue-in-cheek, some more pointed.

“Whoa whoa this is an over generalization. The Sunset has just as much good Asian food as the Richmond,” said user @dtran320.

“The Filmore is boring???? Japan town is boring? Italians in Chinatown? There are so many things wrong with this map I am insulted,” said user @w3Andrea.

One just reposted the map with a label over the Presidio saying “Everybody remember where we parked.”

While user @sf_tech_bro called the map “the perfect mix of accurate and provocative,” others called out the stereotypes.

“Do you actually know any gay people lol? Cuz Dore and Folsom would like a word, “ said user @PollyAndPeter said — followed by user @Bthebird, who said “this map smells homophobic to me idk.”

Soleil Ho, the Chronicle’s food critic, suggested that the map’s maker needs to get out in the city more.

“The absolutism of the statement ‘this is all you need to know’ is great for virality, but it’s undercut by the fact that this is obviously all she needs to know as someone who is mostly stuck in her side of town!” they wrote.

Ho also pointed to another person’s response on Twitter that said “This was made by someone who spent 7 months in SF in 2014.”

The map’s creator acknowledged that it is not the end-all-be-all of the city — she used the opportunity to ask Twitter users for their own recommendations in other parts of San Francisco.

“Seems like a good opportunity to get everyone’s favorite spots in SF,” she wrote, with a link to an interactive map, “especially for the boring and unmarked areas.”

Longtime San Franciscans, including many Chronicle readers, are likely to have their own opinions — share what you think in the comments!

(San Francisco Chronicle)

WHY THE CIA NEEDS TO BE ABOLISHED

John Kiriakou with Chris Hedges

The CIA, from its inception, carried out assassinations, coups, torture, and illegal spying and abuse, including of US citizens, many of which were exposed in 1975 by the Church Committee in the Senate and the Pike Committee in the House.  Congress attempted to enact laws to curb the widespread criminal activity by the CIA. Senate and House intelligence oversight committees were created and after the Iran-Contra scandal a statutory Inspector General at the CIA was appointed.  But this oversight has largely collapsed following the attacks of 9/11 and the so-called war on terror. The activities of the CIA have once again reverted to the shadows. The CIA, at the same time, has transformed itself into a paramilitary organization, with its own armed units and drone program. The US allocates a secret black budget of about $50 billion a year to hide multiple types of clandestine projects carried out by the National Security Agency, the CIA and other intelligence agencies, usually beyond the scrutiny of Congress. 

John Kiriakou worked for the CIA from 1990 to 2004, first as an analyst, and later as a counterterrorism operations officer overseas in Bahrain, Athens, and Pakistan, where he was the CIA’s Chief of Counterterrorist Operations. He led a series of military raids on Al Qaeda safe houses in Pakistan capturing dozens of suspects, including the 2002 raid that captured Abu Zubaydah, then thought to be the third ranking member of Al Qaeda. He was also the first CIA officer to publicly confirm that the CIA waterboarded prisoners, and that such an action was torture. He also confirmed that torture was an official U.S. government policy, rather than wrongdoing by a few rogue agents. He became the sixth whistleblower indicted under the Espionage Act by the Obama administration and was sent to prison for two-and-a-half years. Joining me to the discuss the CIA, how it has evolved, how it sees its mission, what it does, how it works, and the effects of its clandestine operations around the globe is John Kiriakou…

chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-chris-hedges-report-podcast-john