Mendocino County Today: Sunday, Oct. 16, 2022

Cooling | Found Cat | Chamber Music | Mendo Hills | Prescribed Burns | Skate Park | AV Events | Theater Fundraiser | Puppies | Seeking Malique | Studios Tour | Panther Pride | Ed Notes | Hauling Tanbark | Unappreciated Advice | Goldie Gone | Marijuana Mess | Dem Endorsements | Shark Alert | Yesterday's Catch | Suspect Caught | Many Storms | Washington Crossing | Still Hopeful | Psychic Fair | Big Questions | Paradisal Ideal | Marco Radio | Kid's Pistola | Solutions | Twain Lecture | Kardashian Watch | Ukraine | Throwing Rocks | Apocalypse Soon | Goodbye Miami

A COOLING TREND will begin on Sunday across the interior, followed by subtle warming by mid-week. Meanwhile, periods of low clouds and fog will continue to plague coastal areas. (NWS)

FOUND CAT - PHILO

Very large black cat with a blue harness at the Anderson Valley Farm Supply

I will try to trap him today. We noticed him last week and I just set up the feeding station today to track him and noticed he has a harness. On the other side of his body you can see it’s around his leg. He is skittish. Please contact me if you’re missing your black kitty or if you maybe live near and he’s been visiting? Hoping he has contact info or a chip. I’ll update the post.

AV Farm Supply: 895-3884

CHAMBER MUSIC, 3pm Sunday, October 16, at the Mendocino Presbyterian Church

Brass Over Bridges will perform brass favorites ranging from the Renaissance polyphony of Giovanni Gabrieli to the jazz of Duke Ellington. Committed to finding new and exciting pieces for the brass quintet, they will also perform three selections by celebrated contemporary composers. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Brass over Bridges gets inspiration from cultural diversity and seeks to engage audiences by bridging barriers of style and artistic discipline.

symphonyoftheredwoods.org/opus.php

PRESCRIBED BURNS NEAR PARLIN FORK

Cal Fire Mendocino Unit will be conducting a prescribed burn, located east of the community of Fort Bragg, north of Parlin Fork Conservation Camp, 23000 State Highway 20, north of Highway 20, and west of Willits. Smoke will be visible in the area. Burning is planned periodically from Monday, October 17, 2022, through Friday, October 28, 2022, 12 noon to 5 p.m. each day, weather and air quality conditions permitting.

HELP BRING A SKATE PARK TO ANDERSON VALLEY

Anderson Valley needs more public spaces for recreation and community connection - especially for our growing youth. 

Our AV Jr/Sr High Service Learning Team (SLT) - a student group that works to improve the community - is partnering with the Parks & Recreation committee of our AV Community Services District (AVCSD) to support bringing a Skate Park to Boonville, welcoming skateboarders, roller skaters, bikers and scooters of all ages to share recreation together, making for meaningful and vibrant community connection. 

Want To Learn More? Website: http://avskatepark.org/ Learn all about the project, current status and updates, and show support by signing the petition and/or donating. 

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Community Meeting 

Monday, October 24, @5pm 

AV Firehouse Community Meeting Room

Why A Skate Park In Anderson Valley?

There are very few public spaces in our community for young people to spend time together, and few opportunities for non-competitive, healthy recreation. The void of such public spaces and opportunities encourages youth to congregate in less visible areas (e.g. under bridges, in empty houses or cars) and engage in risky, unhealthy activity. A skatepark will inspire AV youth to be more active and fosters healthy community connection. Skateboarding, roller skating, biking and scooting are great outlets, physically and mentally, for young people, and can be a vital source for promoting mental and physical well being.

Who Will The Skatepark Serve?

The AV skatepark will welcome skateboarders, roller skaters, bikers and scooters of all ages. Skateparks are a rare space where community members of all ages -- from toddlers to retirees -- share recreation together, making for meaningful and vibrant community connection. 

How Much Will It Cost?

The projected cost is around $250,000, but this figure is likely to change based on custom modification of the skatepark design and community donations of supplies and labor.

Who Is Involved In The Skatepark Project?

The project was initiated by students in the AV Jr/Sr High Service Learning Team (SLT), a student group that works to improve the community. The CSD Parks and Recreation Committee is partnering with SLT to support the project, and is acting as the fiscal sponsor. A community skatepark planning group is also being formed to help guide the project, and open community meetings will be held regularly to solicit input during the planning process.

Learn More…http://avskatepark.org/

ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE EVENTS CALENDAR: andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events

UKIAH SHELTER PETS OF THE WEEK

Puppies! Puppies! Puppies! The Shelter is filled with the cutest, sweetest puppies in Northern California! And there are more in the puppy pipe line--every size, shape, and breed. If you’ve been thinking about adding a dog to your home and have the time and TLC for a pup, visit our website at mendoanimalshelter.com and click on the Pups And Young Dogs link. If a puppy woofs to you, you can begin the adoption process ASAP, on-line. Then call the Ukiah Shelter at 467-6453 and speak to our Adoption Coordinator. 

If you can’t adopt, consider fostering. Our website has information about our Foster Program, on-going Dog And Cat Adoption Events, and other programs, services and updates. 

Visit us on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter/

For information about adoptions, please call 707-467-6453. 

ANYBODY SEEN MALIQUE?

On 10-13-2022, at approximately 3:33 pm, Ukiah PD personnel attempted to stop the driver of a 2016 Audi Q5 for a traffic infraction. The driver failed to yield to police officers, driving about 40 mph in a residential zone and failing to yield at stop signs. The driver continued to recklessly evade officers and attempted to turn into the parking lot at 711 South State Street. The driver failed to negotiate the turn and drove head on into the south side of the building. The driver exited the vehicle and fled eastbound on E. Gobbi St, where officers lost sight of him. A search of the area led to the detention of a male matching the driver’s description, but video surveillance and the circumstances lead to his release. The suspect remained outstanding and was unable to be located. He was last seen by witnesses in the area of Marshall St, running northbound from E. Gobbi St. 

The collision into the building led to major front-end damage to the vehicle as well as an approximate 100 sq ft hole in the side of the building. No persons in the building were harmed, and there were no known injuries resulting from the collision. 

Public cooperation and surveillance allowed UPD officers to later identify the driver of the vehicle as 23-year-old Malique West-Colvin, who is known to be a resident of Laytonville, CA. West-Colvin is being sought by UPD for the reported incident and is also wanted for violations of State Parole, including absconding for over a year. 

Below are past mugshots and recent surveillance of the suspect. If you have information about the suspect’s whereabouts, please contact Ukiah PD’s non-emergency line at 707-463-6262. 

JAN WAX: The excitement about the Anderson Valley Open Studio Artists' Tour is growing. The dates are Nov. 11, 12, and 13 and we look forward to seeing visitors, old and new.

PANTHER PRIDE

ED NOTES

I CAN'T remember his name, but there was a South Coast guy who tromped the Mendo outback searching for pioneer apple trees. He propagated quite a few, which he sold out of his farm near Point Arena. I've seen what I assumed were ancient apples and roses at abandoned back country homesteads but hadn't come prepared to take cuttings. Mendocino County's patterns of 19th century settlement left many traces of life where there is none now.

THE GRANDMA STUBBLEFIELD ROSE, Beth Swehla comments: “I purchased a rose from Ken Montgomery, at the Anderson Valley Nursery. He said it was the Stubblefield Rose. I planted it on a fence behind the Domes classrooms at the high school. Not sure if it is truly a Stubblefield. Ken was usually right on with his plant ID.”

THE MENDO HEALTH DEPARTMENT used to keep clap stats, which in my memory never showed any signs of abating and, presumably, venereal disease of all kinds still rages in the county. 

IT SEEMED like a good idea to post rates of infection to alert the general public — the uncontrolled lust sectors of the population anyway, not that they were likely to see the statistics or take heed if they did — that syphilis of the congenital type has increased every year in California. In 2020, 107 cases per 100,000 live births were reported, a staggering 11-fold increase from a decade prior. That rate far exceeds the California Department of Public Health’s 2020 target to keep congenital syphilis numbers below 9.6 cases per 100,000 live births — a goal it outstripped almost as soon as it was set.

I TURNED to Betsy Cawn, a one-person general information office, to see what she could find on current rates of infection.

Betsy:

Following up on your query about STDs in Mendocino county, I rang the department’s main number this afternoon (472-2600). After waiting on hold for 16+minutes the call was answered by a very nice woman who said she was the only person available to take calls and she apologized for the long wait. I said I was in search of basic public health data such as STDs, and she answered first by saying that the department used to produce an annual report but she thinks it’s all done by the state now. She also explained that her supervisor, who might know more about it, will not be back in the office for another week and some days. 

I then went to the state websites:

https://www.countyhealthrankings.org/reports/2020-county-health-rankings-key-findings-report

https://www.countyhealthrankings.org/app/california/2022/rankings/mendocino/county/outcomes/overall/snapshot

But I couldn’t find an easy way to get the info, so I resorted to asking our Lake County Public Health Department’s Public Health Officer, who is just a whiz and very very customer oriented. In the space of a couple of hours, he replied as follows (below). 

I’m curious to know, now, why you’re interested in the STD numbers. I think I relayed to you the report that was provided to the county Board of Supervisors in 2000 about the results of the county “suspending” the provision of “family planning services” for the previous 15 years and the consequent rises in all of the related health factors, including STDs. I was stunned that there was even a question of whether such services should be reconsidered, and even more shocked to hear a newly elected Supervisor vociferously oppose the re-instatement of those services (because of his family’s religious beliefs, which were supported by many of the people in the jam-packed chambers, who also “identified” themselves as vineyard/winery owners/operators and … Catholic). 

That experience was one of the early ones here that spurred me to create the Essential Public Information Center, and I’ve been battling the goddamned county ever since. 

So lovely to have a real PIO to get help from, eh? 

YES, Betsy, although we had a PIO in Mendo not that long ago, he disappeared soon after he was hired. I can say, though, that most of Mendo's individual departments are good about providing information, although the DA has gone silent since Mike Geniella retired.

AS A KID in Marine boot camp, 1957, 15 weeks of shocks to the central nervous system apart from constant physical beatings long since prohibited, they showed us lean, mean fighting machines a short film on venereal disease that began with a couple of Marines in dress blues walking down a bar-lined street when a convertible bearing two impossibly beautiful women pulls up alongside them. “Wanna have a good time, boys?” The good time boys fairly leap into the vehicle and off they go. But the very next segment featured a National Geographic-like clip of a guy whose testicles are so swollen he's carrying them in a wheelbarrow. The message? Well, for openers women are so dangerous — the Marines were hopelessly retro on all social subjects even for 1957 — that even wholesome-looking babes in a Cadillac convertible will get you basketballs where your nuts used to be. It wasn't until I took a college biology class that I had a clear idea of what venereal disease was and how it circulated.

ACCORDING to the Press Democrat, Santa Rosa and Sonoma County, combined, have spent $44 million so far this year on a homeless population estimated at about 3,000 people. (That’s almost $15,000 per.) As with VD stats in Mendocino County, there is no estimated figure available for how much is spent on the Mendo homeless, but you can be sure it's a lot of money, almost all of it public money spent on a very small population of people, two of whom I spotted huffing dope at the bus stop next to the Ukiah Co-0p just last week, which used to be misdemeanor crime. 

JOHN REDDING: Life can be so bizarre when dealing with people with no sense of irony. At the hospital board meeting last night Supervisor Bow Tie Williams urged me to step down as Treasurer. Get it? He has done such a bang-up job with the County's finances he can lecture other people on the subject. Maybe when Bow Tie Ted gets around to straightening out the three sets of books he says the County has he can go on the lecture circuit. Until then his pronouncements are those of a buffoon.

TWO MONTHS AFTER DISAPPEARING, the Search for Lake County’s Goldie Lee Morse Has Gone Cold

Just over two months ago, 38-year-old Middletown woman Goldie Lee Morse picked blackberries with a roommate in the Lake County town of Cobb. For an unexplained reason, Morse left her friend behind, walking towards an unknown destination without a wallet, cell phone, and or shoes. Other than a series of sightings and encounters in the subsequent twelve hours, Morse has not been seen or heard from since. Authorities are actively investigating her disappearance. After over one thousand hours of searching, reviewing surveillance footage, accessing Morse’s phone and social media, conducting interviews, and more, there are no leads into Morse’s disappearance.…

mendofever.com/2022/10/15/two-months-after-disappearing-the-search-for-lake-countys-goldie-lee-morse-has-gone-cold/

SHERIFF KENDALL:

The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office has been working extremely hard this year. With all your help the Sheriff’s Office Marijuana Enforcement Team has seized over 200,000 marijuana plants, almost 30 tons of processed marijuana and 43 firearms. We have been forced to focus our efforts on the most egregious violators due to the extreme shortage in personnel which most law enforcement agencies are facing. This was just a drop in the bucket. We are looking much better than we were last year in many areas, however we have a long way to go until we have this problem cleaned up. I continue to receive calls from residents concerned about violence and environmental degradation. Please understand we are trying very hard to get to all of the problem locations.

Recently I read an article, in which a press release completed by Attorney General’s Office was quoted. I don’t know how many people in Mendocino County read this article however I found it to be a little insulting. This article seemed to be declaring the legalization of marijuana a success in California. Sadly, as I read the article and realized, Sacramento must be a long way from Mendocino County. I began to wonder if the policy makers truly understand what’s going on in rural California. It’s not that they haven’t been told yet it seems they probably aren’t listening. Clearly the roll out of legalized marijuana has been a much different experience for those of us living in the emerald triangle.

Reading this press release made me realize those of us who have seen our county at a time prior to legalization and at a time following it, have a much different view of what has occurred here. I can tell you, as a rural sheriff I feel as if the policy makers came to our county, hit it with a wrecking ball then began praising themselves for offering us a broom to clean up the mess.

The article stated, “California has the largest safe, legal and regulated cannabis market in the world, but unfortunately illegal and unlicensed grows continue to proliferate.” I have not seen a safe, legal, or regulated market in Mendocino County. I doubt the families of the homicide victims murdered in grow sites over the last few years would agree with this statement. I also doubt the legal cultivators, many of whom have poured their life savings into a failing system would agree either.

In 2020 I, along with other Northern California Sheriffs, met in Trinity County with members of the state’s marijuana policy team. During this meeting we asked several questions including, what are the plans for enforcement against drug trafficking organizations as well as how would they deal with the marijuana being diverted to the black market and shipped out of state. We also brought up the struggles of finding personnel and asked who would be handling the enforcement of the massive wave of illegal marijuana which we all knew was coming.

As the conversation continued, we asked if the state had any plans to regulate the market ensuring these things wouldn’t happen. We asked if they had a target number of product production which would supply the needs of legal marijuana within the state. We pointed out the fact that producing beyond market saturation would cause diversions to the black market. The black market would have a negative impact on legal farms and as the prices drop, the violence, environmental impacts and damage to the legal farms would continue and escalate. If the black market isn’t dealt with all legal markets will fail. That is simply a fact. All these questions seemed to fall on deaf ears. The issues we are currently facing were predicted in that meeting by the rural sheriffs in California.

The article went on to discuss future direction to focus on environmental, economic, and labor impacts from illegal cultivation. I didn’t see anything discussing the violence which has been long associated with drug trafficking organizations.

Homicides, robberies, and environmental destruction have become the new normal for rural communities. We had two rolling shootouts in the Ukiah and Willits area on highway 101 this year. Drug Trafficking Organizations are not one trick ponies. Once they have established a footing in our rural areas, they bring fentanyl and other hard drugs as well as human trafficking, violence, and intimidation. We are seeing these things occur and continue to occur in our county. We simply can’t have this in Mendocino County.

State agencies such as the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, are incredibly helpful for us in Mendocino County. They are stretched incredibly thin as almost all law enforcement agencies currently are. The state CAMP program is extremely helpful as well. These agencies have always been force multipliers. Sadly, the CAMP program is a shadow of what it once was, we only received 7 days of assistance from them this year. The problem isn’t with boots on the ground, it’s the policies which have restrained us from making true impacts.

Over the past several years we have been working hard with staffing shortages, we’ve taken on these issues, and I am happy to report we are making a small dent in many areas. It is a small dent however, we will continue to work on this. This all comes with a price. Our deputies are placed in danger each time they enter one of these sites. We must work collaboratively to meet the current needs. Again, locals are being placed in harms way due to decisions made by policy makers far from the problems.

We did receive some assistance this year from our legislators, I would like to thank Senator McGuire, who came through for rural counties providing funding through the state to assist us in our work regarding these issues. I am very grateful for his assistance.

We must stay focused and continue to work towards a solution that will meet the needs of our communities. If we don’t continue to progress things will digress again. Little to no enforcement on the illegal market has created the perfect storm for our communities.

In order to face these new challenges, I have been and will continue to work with other sheriffs including Lake, Humboldt, Trinity, and Butte Counties. We are continuing to work together and support each other as we investigate these crimes. We need the state policy makers to step up and provide more personnel for enforcement, also we need them to change the flawed policies which have brought these problems to our communities. 

The first step to fixing a problem is admitting there is one. Without changes in policies these issues will continue. Please help us by letting Sacramento know there is a problem. Reach out to our state leaders and legislators, let them know we have a problem and together we can come together to find a solution.

Thank you,

Sheriff Matt Kendall

SHARK ALERT

In the last two weeks we have had 3 shark encounters [off the Mendocino Coast] ranging from a sighting by surfers at Virgin Creek to bumping, circling and following ocean kayakers at Laguna Point. Our most recent report was of a 12–16 foot Great White just north of Van Damme swimming under and circling kayakers.

It is normal to have increased shark sightings and interactions this time of year hence the term “Sharktober”. There have been no recent attacks in Mendocino County, but there was a recent attack in Humboldt and Monterey County causing severe injuries.

Please share this information with your coastal friends, kayaking and surfing enthusiasts, and visitors to our beautiful coast. For more information about sharks and how to best protect yourself, please visit: saveourseas.com/worldofsharks/how-to-avoid-shark-attacks

* * *

Information About Earlier Shark Attacks In Our Area

The last shark attack in Humboldt County occurred less than two weeks ago when an attack sent a surfer to the hospital on October 2.

The last shark attack we remember before that in Humboldt County was on August 28, 2020 in Shelter Cove when a kayaker was thrown into the water after the large creature chomped his vessel.

The kayaker, David Alexander, said he saw the shark chomp down on either side of the tip of his vessel. He told us. “He had the front of my kayak literally in his mouth…It was like he was smoking it like a cigar…It was surreal.”

Simultaneous to seeing the shark, Alexander was being thrown from the kayak. “I hear the thud.. feel the push and I’m rolling to the right,” he said. With his gear and his glasses falling into the water with him, he went under then bobbed up.

“I was probably about 4 feet from the shark,” he told us. “I’m in the water…I don’t know if he is looking at me, but I’m looking at him….When he hit the boat, I fell off on the same side his face…I could see both eyes–one side more than the other…His eyes are so dark…I could see his teeth and his gums. You see those rows of teeth…that’s something else.”

Earlier that year on May 25, a shark bit a kayak so badly that that it sank. We also interviewed that kayaker, Michael Thallheimer, Jr. He told us, “I was in the water maybe 15 minutes…It never left my mind the whole time that [the shark] might be going to come back. I had a freshly killed fish dangling around my feet because it was clipped to my kayak…I kept telling myself, ‘Be calm. Panic is not going to do any good.’”

In July of 2018, a woman received a relatively small bite at Trinidad Beach.

In 2012, a shark bit a surfer off the North Jetty. He needed surgery after the encounter.

CATCH OF THE DAY, October 15, 2022

CASSIDY ALLEN, Willits. Controlled substance, under influence, paraphernalia.

JOSE BUENROSTRO, Ukiah. Concealed dirk-dagger.

DARIN CRUMRINE, Ukiah. Harrassing-threatening or obscene phone calls, protective order violation.

ERNESTO DESANTIAGO, Sylmar/Ukiah. Parole violation.

RYAN HACHEY, Willits. Failure to appear.

TARA HILL, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

BRIAN LENHART, Ukiah. Controlled substance, county parole violation.

JACK RIEDLE, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

POLICE IN STOCKTON say they have caught a suspected serial killer responsible for a handful of murders that have haunted the Stockton and Oakland areas.

Authorities say they apprehended the suspect, identified as Wesley Brownlee, 43, just as he was about to claim another life. Stockton Police Chief Stanley McFadden said on Saturday, 'Early this morning he was on a mission to kill, he was out hunting.' 'He was wearing dark clothing and had a mask around his neck. He was also armed with a firearm when he was taken into custody. We are sure we stopped another killing." Brownlee is suspected to have been terrorizing the community for more than a year. 

His first suspected killing occurred last April 21, and his most recent 'hunt' took place less than one month prior to his arrest. He is now in custody and is scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday afternoon. McFadden said his officers were able to make a breakthrough in the case because of 'community tips' and 'good old fashioned police work.' Authorities have so far been able to connect six gun deaths in California cities to a single murderer since the beginning of 2021. 

STORM OF MAJOR EVENTS

by John Arteaga

Wow, what a ‘storm’ of major events, seemingly unrelated, (but perhaps not so on closer examination), coming down this last month! The apocalyptic destruction wrought by hurricane Ian in Florida and points north brings to mind the whole political dichotomy on which our nation is currently foundering.

This catastrophe for the hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens will affect us all. We will not, as a society, turn our backs and let them all die of thirst and exposure on their suddenly marooned islands after their one route to the mainland has been wiped away by the storm.

This is what it means, or should mean, to be a country; that we take care of each other in times of need. Never mind that the far right politicians, like Florida’s idiotic governor Ron De Satanist, tried his best to prevent federal money from going to New York and New Jersey (blue states) after their destructive weather events in recent years.

Seeing the footage from Sanibel Island, apparently a little sand spit of a barrier island on which the who-needs-all-this-government-regulation Republican-led state government permitted their idol, the mythical ‘free-market’ to build housing for hundreds of thousands of trusting souls who now suddenly find themselves homeless refugees due to an entirely predictable occurrence.

I mean, though the Republican Party has labored for generations now to destroy any belief that government can possibly do any good for us, in fact, government, on all levels, is as much a necessity of life as food and water. If you don’t believe that, there are a number of countries around the world where there is barely any functioning government; believe me, no matter how great your belief in your own ‘self-made’ abilities, you would not want to live in any of them.

Government, at its most basic concept, is society’s collective effort to harmonize human interaction, to prevent us from harming or killing each other. The fact that any governing power would allow people to populate these barely-above-sea level barrier islands, were especially now, with observable sea level rise and increased hurricane activity caused by global warming, strikes me as a most egregious dereliction of a government’s most basic duty.

Years ago the only structures built on these kind of land formations (if they can even be called that) where little fishing shacks that would occasionally be blown away by a storm or hurricane, and the property owners would spend a few thousand dollars to build new ones. No one even thought about insuring them; no rational insurance company would touch them with a 10 foot pole. But wait! Uncle Sam to the rescue! (with our money!). Suddenly megabuck mansions were being built on these sand banks all along the East Coast. No problem! If they get wiped out by a storm the public will pay! That means you and me. Sheesh! It literally puts us all on the hook to pour our hard earned money into the sea and watch it get washed away in the next bad storm.

The ultimate folly now would be for us to pay to rebuild these ill considered developments the way they were; I have been hearing about this development near Fort Myers (which took the full brunt of the storm) called Babcock Ranch. Apparently some thoughtful builder decided to create this development in such a way as to accommodate the occasional hurricane passing through; with its own large solar electricity source, underground utilities, and roads that are significantly lower than the surrounding buildings, as well as hurricane rated glazing, this large development came through the storm with no power interruptions, no flooded homes, uninterrupted Internet service and no blown out windows.

No doubt it must be more expensive to build homes with these no-brainer features (considering the region), but to rebuild any of these destroyed buildings in any other way just seems like penny wise, pound foolish. As far as the insane development of barrier islands, the only rational approach to ‘insuring’ them (on the public’s dime) is to buy up the property for its insured value and tell the residence to look elsewhere to rebuild. There should simply be an absolute ban on this kind of guaranteed-to-end-in-disaster housing.

Remember, a year or so ago, that enormous seaside condo tower in (of course) Florida, which suddenly, and without warning, completely collapsed in the middle of the night killing many of its residents? I remember seeing in the coverage of the tragedy the exposed rebars protruding from this support column in the underground parking structure, where the floor slab had been shorn away; there were perhaps four little rebars sticking out, contrasted with the construction drawings, which showed that there should have been a dozen or so. No wonder it collapsed!

These are the kind of tragedies that one can always expect when a society buys into the evidence-free right wing Republican dogma that if we can just cut regulation and government interference enough, we will suddenly live the best of all possible worlds. It is truly amazing that they are still able to sell that nonsense to so many people.

It’s like the infuriating propaganda that they have been selling for generations about the Republicans being more fiscally responsible and better for the national economy. HELLO! The numbers are in! Check the graphs! Every time a Republican is in the White House it’s the same failed ideology; cut taxes for the rich, spend money like a drunken sailor (mostly on ginned-up wars), and let the national debt balloon. Then when a Democrat becomes president, even though their policies are invariably better for everyone, including the very rich, start kvetching and carping about the TERRIBLE national debt problem (never mentioning the fact that they created it and the Democrats are having to address it)

Let’s hope that more people will finally get wise to this trick before these midterm elections!

STILL HOPEFUL

Editor: 

Each day seems to bring further descent into the darkness of ignorance and mean-spirited discourse from those among us who glorify lies, bad behavior, rudeness, fear mongering, obfuscation, false conspiracies and authoritarianism over the rule of law protecting basic human freedoms and the thriving and survival of our species.

And yet, despite this darkness, there are simple people fighting to bring the light of democracy, kindness, assistance, justice and equality to the world — every day.

I want to honor all the teachers, counselors, therapists, artists, great statesmen (and women), working folks and those who would reach out to their fellow humanity with kindness and love, despite the hate and crassness that rules our political, religious and social discourse.

I believe there is still hope. I believe.

Marc Andrade

Santa Rosa

YO, REAPER! WHEN'S OUR DATE?

Spiritual Update~Ukiah, California

Warmest spiritual greetings, Yesterday afternoon, meandered north on State Street to The Pub for a necessary and well-deserved three pints of beer, a shot of Woodford Reserve, and played all of the blues on the juke box. Lively conversation ensued! Moved on to Miss Saigon restaurant for an equally necessary and well-deserved lobster & steak meal. This sufficiently ameliorates the impossible situation of being, for no particular reason, in Mendocino county living on less than $800 monthly social security, sleeping at Building Bridges homeless shelter (which is an alright place, well-staffed, safe, and appreciated), and being unable to answer any of the mundane questions such as 1. Why am I here on earth?, 2. What does the immediate future hold?, and 3. When am I leaving this world to return to my true spiritual home forever?

I am not identified with the body nor the mind. This includes the ego, which is one of the 8 aspects of the mind. I am identified with that which is prior to consciousness. I am available for spiritually focused direct action on this planet of confusion and conflict. I would like to hook up with others who are similarly here on the planet earth, as soon as possible. Thank you most sincerely.

Craig Louis Stehr, craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

BUNNYRABBITS, SATAN, CHEESE AND MILK. CHEESE AND MILK.

"Verba volant, scripta manent."

Here's the recording of last night's (2022-10-14) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA): https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0510

Thanks to Hank Sims for all kinds of tech help, as well as for his fine news site: https://LostCoastOutpost.com

Thanks to the Anderson Valley Advertiser for providing about an hour of the show's most locally relevant material, as usual, without asking for anything in return. Just $25 a year for full access to all articles and features (TheAVA.com). And find the big red donate-now heart at KNYO.org and put twenty or more toward sorely needed replacement equipment. Or don't. I don't wanta put any pressure on you to do the right thing and have you get all panicky and sprain your clicking finger. Take a breath. You're okay.

Last night's show had and has new features that you'll discover, as well as the poetry of Louis C.K. and Caitlin Johnstone and my mother Evelina, stories by Paul Modic of Laytonville, Bruce Anderson, Sebastian Iturralde, Ted Chiang, Chelsea Manning, Ezekiel Krahlin; two chapters of both No More My Echoing Song by Clifford Allen Sanders and Kent Wallace's new book, a work in progress: Mister Westerner. Speaking of whom, Kent Wallace called to talk about the importance of pronunciation, and about the ongoing Vietnamese diaspora, an ancient Greek word for breathing out, and then breathing its young population back in again with a little money saved up, which makes a sound in both directions, like a giant harmonica, from the Latin: harmonicus. Rounded to a close with the earliest surviving recording of the Green Hornet 1940s radio series, in all its barking and shouting and seminal radio karate chop sound effects, not to mention the roar of the Black Beauty, safe at speeds beyond any normal automobile, partly because of Kato's driving skill but also its enormous power. The engine is fully two-thirds of the car. Kato has to sit on a telephone book to see over it. I'll play some more from the original radio serial in future shows.

Besides All That, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not necessarily radio-useful but nonetheless worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together. Such as:

This website uses A.I. to generate a title, a plot, and an impressive poster for a brand-new imaginary movie every time you refresh it. And you can save the posters and synopses as links.

https://thismoviedoesnotexist.org

Play Kung Fu Chess online, a game engineered by the polymath writer/artist of Existential Comics.

https://www.kungfuchess.org/

I like the way Mickey Rooney looks at the flexible girl not with coarse lust but with calm admiration and respect, including of course the healthy young man's /that's for me!/ component. Just a small motion of his head as his imagination goes to work on what he's seeing and what it implies. He is us. He is the viewer beholding a marvel. (via Everlasting Blort)

https://twitter.com/historyinmemes/status/1579412957938978816

And zero to 62mph (100kmph) in less than 1.5 seconds. You can't even fall 40 feet in that time. If you fall for 1.5 seconds you're only going 30 miles an hour at the end. This is that much faster than the acceleration of gravity. Vehicle tech is leaps and bounds beyond our ability to think and steer anymore. I remember a science-fiction story set in a future where it's a capital offense to take over from your car and drive it yourself, because you can't anymore. They catch two boys who went out joyriding in a car with the car's driving brain disconnected, and they have a five-minute court trial, execute them and recycle their reckless and foolhardy remains.

https://newatlas.com/automotive/stuttgart-greenteam-1-5-second-ev-record/

P.S. Email me your work on any subject and I'll read it on the radio next Friday night. If it's full of swears I have to wait till after 10pm to read it, that's all.

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

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Writer N. Scott Momaday holds the Colt 1877 Thunderer he believes was once owned by Billy the Kid. The outlaw was carrying a Thunderer when he was killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in July 1881.

Read "Momaday's Billy the Kid Pistola" at truewestmagazine.com/article/momadays-billy-the-kid-pistola/

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Solutions: 

Clothes Dryer: put them on a line to dry instead.

Dishwasher: wash dishes by hand or use disposable.

Indoor climate control: Don’t get that Nest thermostat!

Trash/garbage disposal: Burn it in the backyard or take to a public park for dumping. (Redact all names and wear that trusty face mask when you do this.)

Kitchen gadgets: Use a manual whisk, a hand blender, etc.

Water heater: Simply do without hot water, or boil a basic over your backyard fire.

Automobiles: buy something pre-1995 with less electronics, stable a horse or mule, best yet ride a bike (manual powered, not battery).

Lawn mowers: Let it grow longer, weeds be damned, or get goats to keep it cropped; better yet get a manual push mower with the spinning blade that lops off the top, no oil or gas necessary.

On this date 156 years ago in Yuba County history (October 15, 1866) Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) presented a lecture in Marysville on the Sandwich Islands. From the book Mark Twain and the Colonel about the start of a lecture tour in the Bay Area, “The trouble begins at 8:00 the handbills read; and soon after eight on Tuesday evening Mark Twain emerged on stage at the Academy of Music looking bewildered at the audience as though uncertain of why he was there. He lit a cigar. Later he insisted that for the first full minute he was terrified, so much so that it cured him ever after of stage fright. Be he need not have worried. The lecture was a smashing success. Before Mark Twain even opened his mouth – just standing on stage puffing the cigar and looking confused – his audience broke into laughter and wild applause; and he did start speaking in that dry, drawling way of his, with never a hint that he knew he was funny, his listeners’ enjoyment was uncontained. He gazed in puzzlement. Next day the San Francisco papers trumpeted his triumph: “one of the most interesting and amusing lectures ever given in this city:’ “valuable information and eloquent description;” “side-splitting similes, grotesque imagery and fearfully ludicrous stories:” in short, “a hit, a great hit.” Suddenly Mark Twain the journalist was also Mark Twain the lecturer, setting off on a profitable five-week lecture tour to Marysville, Grass Valley, Red Dog, You Bet, Gold Hill. And everywhere he went he brought laughter with him.” Mark Twain would return to Marysville April 18, 1868 to present “Pilgrim Life.”

UKRAINE, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15TH

Elon Musk backtracks, saying his company will continue to fund internet service in Ukraine. Internet service provided by Musk’s company, SpaceX, has been crucial for the Ukrainian army’s communication as it advances into territory occupied by Russia and defends against continued Russian attacks.

An orchestra conductor has been killed after refusing to cooperate with Russian occupiers, Ukrainian officials say.

France pledges to train up to 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers and offers air defense missile system.

Power is restored at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.

Russia’s proxies set up a hotline to help civilians flee a Ukrainian offensive in Kherson.

Stuck between the Russian and Ukrainian lines in the south, a family hangs on.

Amid sporadic strikes in parts of the country, Kyiv cautiously returns to daily life.

APOCALYPSE SOON

by Paul Kingsnorth

The numbers were in, and everybody could see what was coming: at least ten billion human souls by the end of the century. All of us clamouring for food, water, space and the triumphant benefits of the all-conquering “global economy”, which the Western powers had been cajoling, threatening or enticing the rest of the world into since the dawn of the age of empires. Now this economy encompassed everything, everywhere and everyone on Earth. There was no escape, even on the highest peaks or in the deepest forests, from its products, its worldview or its 15G connectivity. The entire planet, from mahogany trees to office workers, was now a ‘resource’, to be eyed and totted up for the necessary and beneficial growth of the global machine.

That growth, of course, came with a few side-effects: a changing climate, collapsing ice sheets, mass destruction of ecosystems, the razing of forests and the highest extinction rate in sixty million years; not to mention growing social polarisation and massive economic inequality. Everybody had known about this since the late twentieth century, but they had all presumed, or hoped, that somebody else would sort it out. The World Economic Forum was on the case, after all, and Bono and that Swedish girl, and those weirdos who dressed up as dinosaurs or whatever and chained themselves to bridges. This sort of thing had been part of the furniture for so long that people barely noticed it anymore.

But it wasn’t working: everything had been going in the wrong direction since the Limits to Growth report had correctly predicted, back in 1972, what was on the way. By the 2020s it was uncomfortably obvious that the report’s predictions — mocked or ignored at the time by the great and the good — had turned out to be startlingly accurate. Spiralling global consumption had led to rising demand for resources, which were becoming exhausted as landbases and ecosystems were degraded by human use, leading to increasing prices, social and political strife, ecosystem breakdown and looming civilisational collapse. Limits to Growth had identified the period between 2008 and 2030 as the point at which the collapse would begin to bite, with stalling growth, climatic instability, rising death rates and social turmoil as evidence of overshoot. So it had proven.

Even the most committed apostles of Progress and Development could see the writing on the wall. Something radical would have to be done. The old-school greens who, in response to Limits To Growth, had preached about pie-in-the-sky stuff like ‘de-growth’, simple living, organic farming or foraging for nettle tops, didn’t have a sellable message in a world of demand, with Westernised consumers all insisting on their right to low-cost WiFi connectivity. Everyone was sick of being nagged by people like that, anyway. The more grown-up environmentalists — the kind who wore business suits and wrote policy papers about the regrettable but realistic need for nuclear power and geoengineering — knew this very well. Solutions had to be big, brave and global.

In the end, as the wildfires, droughts, ice melt and supply chain collapses mounted, a stark choice presented itself: an ambitious plan to Save The Earth, or a collapse into barbarism. That was how the media sold it, anyway, and since it had been long anticipated, nobody really minded much. We were all locked into the machine by now, after all: all reliant on its largesse to eat, sleep and work. The worse things got — and they were getting worse fast — the more appetite there was for bold, assertive, planetary-scale action. And since the Covid-19 pandemic, everyone had got used to obeying the authorities and submitting to behavioural monitoring, in order to prevent mass disaster.

And so, the global empire arrived, largely on schedule. Corporations, well-heeled NGOs, states and regional blocs, trailing a bevy of media and intellectual lapdogs in their wake, consolidated their Green New Reset, or whatever they were calling it today, with impeccable ease. The new world would be progressive, inclusive, open, sustainable, gender-neutral and, above all, intensely profitable. The ongoing assimilation of any ecosystems, cultures, perspectives and lifestyles that conflicted with progress would be implemented in a manner which ensured carbon neutrality. The sustainable global machine — smart, interconnected, perpetually monitored, always-on — would encompass everything and everyone, producing cascading benefits for all. The long-held Western dream would finally be achieved: the world would become one. One market, one set of values, one way of living, one way of seeing.

By the time some of the environmentalists realised who they had sold their soul to, it was too late. But what, in any case, had the alternative been? The small-is-beautiful crowd, with their patchouli-scented jumpers and their 1970s talk about limits and sovereignty, had been cancelled as eco-fascists long ago, exiled to distant smallholdings and housing co-ops with their well-thumbed copies of Tools for Conviviality and other yellowing tomes by dead white men. Now that an actual eco-fascism was on the horizon — a global merger of state and corporate power in pursuit of progress that would have made Mussolini weep like a proud grandfather — there was nothing to stand in its way.

Unlike previous empires, this one knew how to present itself: with wind farms rather than dreadnoughts, pictures of smiling children rather than squares of redcoats. It used eco-friendly, inclusive language as it enclosed land, funnelled wealth upwards and coated wild landscapes in renewable technologies made from rare earth metals (a regrettable necessity, but a temporary one: sustainable asteroid mining was well on the way). But it was curious how the wealth and power seemed to stay in mainly the same hands; odd too that the rolling eco-crisis never seemed to actually go away, however many billionaires and NGOs attempted bright new techno-fixes. In fact, the tighter the empire gripped, the more everything seemed to slip away from its grasp. It was almost as if the techno-fixes themselves were the problem.

Over time, the inevitable happened: the age-old progress trap closed in like a Venus Flytrap patiently digesting its victims. The genetic modifications and the nanotech “solutions” went awry, as Earth’s inscrutable systems refused to behave the way the computer models had predicted. The mass dumping of iron filings into the ocean did not sequester as much carbon as hoped, but it did lead to an unexpected collapse in whale numbers. The Bill Gates-funded sun-dimming technologies had succeeded in lowering the planet’s temperature, but the feedback loops that kicked in lowered it much more than expected, leading to mass crop collapse and famine, which in turn caused riots across the world. The early 2040s saw half of Africa subsisting for several months on locust swarms while Silicon Valley’s finest dined on sustainable insect burgers in their New Zealand redoubts.

Tower farms, superpigs, eco-drones, cloud seeding, space reflectors: everything was tried, but the trajectory didn’t change. Earth’s limits refused to budge. To the Faustian West, “saving the world” had been just another means of trying to control it, but Gaia, like God, would not be not mocked. Life went on, but civilisation, increasingly, didn’t. Cities fell, waters rose, deserts spread. Jeff, Mark, Richard and Elon went into low Earth orbit on separate rockets, all claiming to have got there first, but their head-freezing facility in the Sonoran desert suffered a tragic thawing episode when the solar farm formerly known as Kansas was knocked out by a freak solar flare.

By the late 21st century the oil wells were slowly bottoming out, the rare earth metals were exhausted, and the boundless renewable future of electric cars and limitless green energy had been filed away and forgotten like an embarrassing teenage crush. The asteroid mines never got off the drawing board. The population peaked and started falling, along with the sperm counts. The suburbs and the oceans slowly emptied, and the stuttering Internet became so poisonous that even Mumsnet came with a trigger warning. Everyone told themselves that progress would be happening properly if only those people weren’t in charge.

Most of all, a great disappointment seemed to spread like an ink stain through the remnants of the West, as it dawned on everyone that there was to be no spectacular denouement. There was no revolution and no restoration; no Star Trek, but no Matrix either. There were no robot soldiers to fight and nobody was building a Death Star. The best anyone could manage at this point in industrial capitalism’s downward curve was a weedy little spaceship built by a glorified bookshop manager, which could stay up in space for all of three minutes. The end of the world, it turned out, was less like Terminator and more like a Star Wars prequel: you wait for years in anticipation, and then it’s just a let-down.

In other words, it was history-as-usual, as the latest grandiose human project faced a long, grinding decline. The apocalypse, in the end, had turned out to be… boring. But maybe this shouldn’t have been surprising. The word Apokalypsis, in the original Greek, simply meant unveiling, or revelation. In an apocalypse, something is exposed that we all need to see, but are refusing to look at. What we saw, as our delusions crumbled, was that we had never really been in control at all. We had misunderstood the world, and our place in it. We had come to it as conquerors, boors, abusers, rather than lovers or friends — so obsessed with orbiting Earth that we had forgotten to look at what we were orbiting.

Modern humanity had turned on both creator and creation but our rebellion, as long predicted, had failed. Now the post-apocalyptic skyline belonged to those who had always known that: to the monks, the hermits, the anchoresses and the forest tribes; to the workers on the margins, steadily improving lives human and non-human with no desire to shout about it. To the small nations and the edge-dwellers, the quiet and the unambitious. To the earthworms and the shy hedgehogs, the suckering plants and the ever-flocking birds, foraging in the ruins of the latest fallen empire. To those who had seceded, and who had generated rather than draining the finite pool of life.

By the 23rd century, some of those who still remembered quite what had happened (it was hard to piece the facts together, since everything of value had been stored on the now-obsolete “Internet”) noted with some irony that the society which had grown out of the rubble of the machine age looked curiously like the one proposed by those early eco-fanatics: land-based, low-tech, community-centred, cored around a religious story, and highly suspicious of any grandiose claims. Much of England now looked like the fourteenth century, only with CB radios and better dental work. Over in America, the Amish had bought up most of what had once been New York state, and the remnants of the self-build hippie culture of the Pacific Northwest had begun restoring the deserts created by the megacities of the 2070s. The blades of giant wind turbines were bent into ploughshares. The meek had — after a very long detour — finally inherited the Earth.

(paulkingsnorth.net)

BRUCE MCEWEN: This may fit w/ yesterday’s video on sea level rise reaching a hundred feet pretty soon ["Goodbye Miami" by Jay Leonhart, written and performed back in 1983]: