Valley People (Sept. 21, 2022)

SERVICES FOR ALICE PEDERSEN FASHAUER will be October 9th. 11:00 AM at the Ukiah Seventh-day Adventist Church, followed by a potluck gathering at our vineyard at approximately 2:00PM.

MENDO DA BACKS CASH STRAPPED AV AMBULANCE: Mendocino County's District Attorney David Eyster and Anderson Valley Ambulance are working together to help prevent drug abuse and related problems because of the current Opioid crisis in Mendocino County. This crisis has been growing at an alarming rate over the past couple of years. We have been fortunate in Anderson Valley, but we know it will eventually reach us. We have been training on the use of naloxone and overdoses within our department and carry it on our engines and ambulance. However, that is a reactive measure. We plan on being more proactive working with the schools and other agencies to help educate the community. The District Attorney reached out to Anderson Valley Fire’s Ambulance Service and contributed $24,042 of asset forfeiture money towards this effort and as support for the Anderson Valley FD Ambulance. This contribution is both timely and appreciated. We hope to continue this partnership in the future. 

BOONVILLE-BASED MAIL THIEVES: On Friday, September 9, at about 1:30 am, deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office assisted Ukiah Police Department officers on a traffic stop in the 500 block of North Dora Street, Ukiah. Deputies identified the four occupants of the vehicle as Marlen Nunez-Alvarez, 19, of Boonville, Victor Martinez, 22, of Boonville, Elijah Devine-Gomes 19, of Boonville, and a 17-year-old male.

Deputies assisted the UPD officers in searching the vehicle and located numerous stolen checks, personal documents, and US mail which belonged to people who reside in various locations throughout Mendocino County. In total, Deputies counted 53 stolen checks, which totaled over $60,000 in value. Some of the checks were already forged with the names of some of the occupants in the vehicle. It was determined that Nunez-Alvarez, Martinez, Devine-Gomes, and the 17-year-old male were conspiring in an attempt to cash or trade the stolen checks for financial gain.

THE MENDOCINO COUNTY Sheriff's Office is currently working with the United States Postal Inspection Service to attempt contact with all the identified victims in this case. Nunez-Alvarez, Martinez, Devine-Gomes and the 17-year-old male were placed under arrest for grand theft, possession of stolen property, and conspiracy. Nunez-Alvarez, Martinez, and Devine-Gomes were booked into the Mendocino County Jail where they were to be held in lieu of $15,000 bail separately.

The 17-year-old male was booked into the Mendocino County Juvenile Hall.

THIS QUARTET of mailbox thieves all listed Boonville home addresses, although I've been unable to find anybody who knows them. They are a good bet to be the same people who broke into boxes in the Philo and Boonville post offices. 

SUNDAY’S big rain was not quite a trash mover (Boontling), but it was met with relief and delight by everyone on the Northcoast, dropping from 2 to 3 inches of much needed moisture on the Anderson Valley. Con Creek, my personal rain gage, has been dry for nearly two months, but as of Monday morning it was revived and burbling merrily along. More! More, Rain Gods!

COMMUNITY CHURCH SERVICE

Fair Weekend Church Service

September 25th 2022, 8:30 AM

At the Apple Hall, 14400 CA-128, Boonville

Please come and worship with us.

Questions, call; Dave Kooyers (707) 895-2325

AVA CERTIFIED: Today we took a trip to Whispering Winds Nursery to take in a heavy dose of the beauty of Ukiah. This locally-owned nursery is a wonderland of flowers, trees shrubs and more. 

The space is wide open with room to roam and take in all the delights. Maybe you’re looking for fruit trees? There’s a section for that. Or maybe you need some locally-made pots and decorations? Because Whispering Winds has that too. Make sure you check out the indoor featuring lush ferns, palms and houseplants. 

You can find Whispering Winds Nursery at 1575 South State Street where they’re open every Wednesday through Monday and closed Tuesdays. (Much deserved on-line plug for a wonderful nursery.)

BILL KIMBERLIN: When we were kids, nothing was more exciting to my brother and I, than going to Boonville. Maybe Christmas, but it was close. My mother's sister and her husband owned a summer resort with almost a mile of river front on the Navarro. It was idyllic. I still visit it, and now it is called River's Bend. Back then it was called, Ray's Resort.

I still get excited as I turn off at Cloverdale and head up Hwy 128. These photos I took on my recent trip to my summer house here in the Valley. I was greeted by the pumpkin man at Brock Farm as I pulled in to pick-up the incredible produce Vicki and family produce there.

ATTENTION LOCAL EXHIBITORS

Hey all…

Got any garden delights growin’ and wanna show ‘em off? Bring whatever veggies, fruits and herbs you wanna help the AV Grange display this Thursday night Sept. 22 at 6pm in the fairgrounds Agricultural room. This is a special night at the fair for locals to be a part of it all and also get a sneak peek! The 2022 AV Grange exhibit theme is “Lettuce Turnip the Beet!” PM me if’n you’re interested in participating in the parade float also! 

— Chalynne Marie Peterson

I THOUGHT BACK to a memorable headline in the Ukiah Daily Journal in the late 1970s: “Boonville Declared Lawless.” Us Boonvillians were mostly amused, some of us seriously upset with the after-dark hijinks emanating from the Boonville Lodge. The legendary and physically imposing Deputy Squires was dispatched out of the Sheriff's Office to restore order as the Anderson Valley's resident lawman, which he singlehandedly soon did via a judicious combination of reason and an occasional application of force.

AV JR./SR. HIGH SERVICE LEARNING TEAM STUDENTS continue to make progress towards their mission of developing a skatepark in Boonville! In July, the project was granted $8,000 by the AV Community Services District Recreation Committee, which is partnering with SLT kids in the effort and serving as fiscal agent for the project. A graphic designer has been hired to create 3D renderings of the community park with the skatepark and other park improvements included — soon to be showcased in the launching of the new AV skatepark project website and fundraising campaign (stay tuned!). Next Tuesday, September 20th at 5pm, AV community park neighbors are invited for a meeting at the park to discuss potential transfer of the community park area from the school district to the CSD, and planned recreation developments, including the skatepark. (Noor Dawood, Anderson Valley Adult School)

THIS IS HOW WE ROLL! It doesn't get any better than when our families come out on a Saturday and create a TK/Kinder yard that is transformed by their efforts. Simultaneously in the library, the school board members devoted an entire Saturday (missing their important family events) to meet to reset a vision for the coming year. Transformative stuff. Thank you Ms. Mayne and Ms. Soto. Thank you school board members. Thank you amazing parents, guardians, staff, families and kids. This is how we roll.

Happy tears here....

Louise Simson, Superintendent, Anderson Valley Unified School District

TUESDAY'S (September 11th) two hour power outage in the Anderson Valley is so far unexplained. I've suspected for years that PG&E deliberately offs us simply as a reminder that they have us by the short hairs. Tuesday's outage was precisely two hours, a little too neat to be caused by a falling tree limb, especially this year as most lines have been denuded of vegetation or even the threat of vegetation.

SOME POLL OR OTHER claims that an overwhelming majority of Americans say they are at least moderately concerned about getting access to quality health care, but that majority agreement disappears over what to do about it, although roughly two-thirds of adults do agree it is the federal government's responsibility to ensure all Americans are covered. Which it is, but isn't in the only country in the world without it in some form or other. 

MY MEDICAL STRATEGY is to stay away from doctors who, at my age, and at any age if you're insured, will give you the fatted calf special, batteries of tests mostly designed to profit their sponsoring hospital. I like the doctor I occasionally see at St. Mary's in San Francisco, a man named Yoss. He won me when he said I should be tested for whatever it was, and I said “Nope.” And he said, “OK.” Once they start testing us geezers they are certain to have you trotting around the medical labyrinth waiting in lines for some other alleged specialist. If there was a Boonville doctor with just him or her in a small house whose front room was his surgery I'd sign right up. But not a chance. The Adventist monopoly wouldn't permit it.

WHICH IS THE WAY it was in the Anderson Valley and lots of small towns up through the early 1960s with our own Dr. Bradford. Old timers tell me Bradford would take cords of wood, abalone, deer jerky, whatever his patients could manage in payment for his services. (Was he nicknamed Shoveltooth? Being that the old boy was from a less sensitive time when people were often called by their most prominent feature — Red, Fats, Hose Nose, and on into unrepeatable ethnic slurs then common. As a twelve-year-old, a redheaded kid I delivered newspapers with was routinely greeted with, “Red on the head like a dick on a dog” by one of his customers, a comment that would get an adult a perv jacket if he said that to a kid now.)

WHERE WERE WE? Oh yes, modern medicine. The only local doctor I've known who I liked on a personal level was Logan McGahn, a young guy fired over a contract dispute with the Nice People who comprise boards of directors everywhere in Mendocino County. Not that I've disliked the others, but McGahn was a guy who actually listened to your description of your STD or whatever it was ailing you. I also admired the late Fort Bragg neurologist, Peter Glusker, and also Dr. Graham, for their kind attention to my late sister, a memorably difficult patient.)

ON THE GENERAL SUBJECT of medicine, quack division, Jim Dodge writes: “…I noticed, isolated as it was in legal notices, an undocumented assertion that hydrogen peroxide kills covid. It lacked both attribution or context, and I feared people who believed it might power snort it into their respiratory tracts. It struck me as uncommonly irresponsible, even for you. What's up with its bold insertion in legal notices?”

AHEM. I know I'm the editor of Boonville's esteemed weekly, but if I'd seen this ad pre-pub, I'd have approved it anyway because (1) it was a paid ad and (2) purchased by my old friend, Dave Smith, who up and died on us before he could pay for it. Which of course is irresponsible of me every which way, not to say mercenary. Now that my colleague, The Major, has brought the ad to my admittedly defective attention, I hope it wasn't by quaffing hydrogen peroxide that Dave was hastened to his grave, and I'm surprised that he could have believed it as a covid cure. Knowing him, it may well have been a joke. (I've paid dearly over the years for joking in print, believe me.) Still and all, I doubt an ava reader would be so gullible as to ingest a nutball covid cure on the say-so of a terse, unelaborated upon bold type assertion. If an ava ad said, “Jesus Saves” would you say to yourself, “Well, ok, sign me up?” (Note: I’ve always agreed with E. M. Forster who famously declared he’d betray his country before he’d betray his friend.)

EVERY DAY we grow a little more urban, a little less distinct as a specific place. Old timers and Not So Old Timers will remember when our postmasters stamped each outgoing envelope with the bold type date, time, and place of dispatch, and you're getting to be a Valley Old Timer if you remember Melvin ‘Woody’ Wood at the Navarro P.O., Peggy Bates and Berna Walker at the Boonville P.O., Thelma Pinoli and Dot Becker at the Philo Post Office; and I'm probably wrong here but wasn't the memorable Leo Marcot postmaster at Yorkville?

MELVIN ‘WOODY’ WOOD lived at Rancho Navarro. His life revolved around his art which, in my opinion, was of a very high quality but about which he was guarded, as if he wasn't confident in his ability. I tried to buy a painting from him but he always put me off, a sure sign of a true artist never entirely satisfied with his work. (I'm happy to report I'm the owner of a Saffron Fraser original, and hope to buy another original piece from the talented Philo painter. For a small population of people, there's a lot of talent in the Anderson Valley.)

DAYLA HEPTING perfectly captured Woody as Navarro postmaster in this paragraph: “Not long after that she [Pat Grim] quit the job, Melvin ‘Woody’ Wood took it. Woody had an entirely different view of it. He laughed a quiet chuckle as he tossed a new book of Postal rules into the trash and went off to have a beer with the boys under the drunk tree, actually drinking alcohol while representing the United States Post Office. Even I could not have done that. It was startling. And in sharp contrast to Pat's reign.”

PAT GRIM. Never has a person had a more fitting surname. Ms. Grim was once an immediate neighbor of mine on Anderson Valley Way. She regularly popped up to complain about something happening at my place, always a happening address, especially the sound of children playing basketball. Jeez, I used to wonder, what else annoys her? A beautiful sunset? Bird song? Hendy Woods? 

I'D SHINE GLOOMY PAT ON because I felt sorry for her. “Come in and have a cup of coffee?” Which she'd of course refuse. So I'd say, “Yes, ma'am. I'll get right on it,” and ignore her. One day she came over three times to complain about the merry hoopsters, as if they were being noisy at 3am. I remember complaining about her constant complaining to a person who shall remain nameless. “You don't understand, Bruce, she's depressed. Guys like you are too dumb to be depressed.”

I WASN'T SURPRISED when I learned that Ms. Grim had jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. I’d never known an unhappier person.  I hope she found peace and maybe even a few laughs on her eternal journey. Trite as the advice is, and not that anyone has ever asked, I prescribe vigorous exercise as a sure-fire antidote to suicidal thoughts, or just plain mental funk. Walk until you drop! Hit the weights until your muscles scream. Works for me.

REBECCA JOHNSON Open Studio 2022, two autumn weekends one in October; one in November. Expect an unexpected art experience in the rural hills of Northern California. My studio is an oasis by design. To speak the language of this land, to capture these moments in time, is the work of a lifetime. Contemplative and Contemporary ART about a place I call home. My studio is in Philo, Anderson Valley, California. Celebrating 25 years in the Barn. If you are too far away to visit then see my website wwwRebeccaJohnsonArt.com. Also by appointment contact rebecca@rebeccajohnsonart.com. I look forward to your visit. 1200 Highway 128, Philo, CA 95410 (Rebecca Johnson)