Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2022

Cloudy | Jerry Parks | Afternoon Light | Back Roading | 128 Hairpin | Willis Tucker | Birthday Bob | Ed Notes | Boonville Hotel | Ukiah Tales | Boonville Lodge | Grip | Marmon Dream | Board Meeting | Yesterday's Catch | Marijuana Water | Estadio Azteca | Rep. Boebert | Benbow Family | Neighborhood Games | Gun Laws | Buffalo Snow | Old Smokers | Bacon Chapter | YouTube Disinformation | Welterweight Bonus | Solemn Stillness | Sloth Draw | Unhealthy Relationships | Last Emperor | Ukraine | Golden Pheasant

SEASONABLE WEATHER will continue today with some possible drizzle along the coast north of Trinidad head. Cloudy skies today will give way to another period of clear, dry weather late in the week. Interior valleys will reach near 70 in the afternoon with chilly nights along the coast. (NWS)

GERALD EUGENE PARKS, 1933-2022

Gerald Eugene Parks (Jerry/Gramp) gained his angel wings on November 1st, 2022. After struggling with kidney disease and prostate issues, he passed away peacefully in his sleep surrounded by his daughter and two Granddaughters.

Jerry was born on August 8th, 1933 in Ohio to his Mom Edith Parks, and from a very young age he was also raised by his Dad Delmar Parks. Jerry grew up on a farm milking cows, taking care of his horses, and eating his mom's delicious homemade food. Many of his wonderful stories were about the farm and the food. As a teenager, Jerry met his Wife Patricia (Patty) Parks and they had three children - Dale, Brenda and Tracy. In 1966 Jerry and his family moved to Ukiah, California.

In 1978 Jerry and his family unfortunately ended up in Guyana, South America and were held hostage in Jonestown for 8 months, which is where his wife Patricia lost her life. Jerry was a true hero for standing up to Jim Jones and demanding his and his families freedom. Jerry and his children came back to Ukiah and he got a job as a produce manager at Safeway where he eventually retired from. During retirement Jerry devoted his life to his family. He helped raise his two granddaughters and his life was filled with so much love when he became a great-grandpa to six girls. His family was his everything and he made sure to always put them first. Jerry loved wood-working, playing the piano, riding his bicycle and watching old shows/movies on TV Land.

Jerry was reunited in heaven with his wife Patty Parks, Mom Edith Parks, Dad Delmar Parks, daughter Brenda Parks, grandson Jay Warren Parks, niece Dena Parks and his grandparents. Jerry is survived by his son Dale Parks, daughter Tracy Diaz, granddaughters Ashley (Arreguin) Flores and Alicia Arreguin, great-granddaughters Aalahnii, Harmony, Lily, Gigi, Jazi and Camilla as well as several other family members and friends who adored him. He will be missed more than words can describe. Please contact Tracy at 707-671-3998 for details on his celebration of life.

EXPLORING LAKE COUNTY BACK ROADS

by Katy Tahja

As we enjoy driving deserted roads in the middle of no place my husband and I have a list. We call it the “One of these days we ought to drive down that road and see where it goes…” list. After 47 years in Comptche we crossed lots of roads off the list with Sunday drives and mini-expeditions but a dozen still remain.

Take the Berryessa Knoxville Road in eastern Lake County…where does it go?…why is it there?…and what’s out there? Even better yet, the map said it’s paved, and that’s nothing short of miraculous given some of the places we’ve explored. So on a bright sunny day between November rainstorms we took off in out trusty Subaru.

The road begins on the south-east corner of Clear Lake in Lower Lake. Starting as Morgan Valley Road population thins out but the road remains good to the now vanished former mining area called Knoxville. This site later became the Homestead Gold Mine in the mid-1980’s. More on that mine in a moment, but let’s say that the road goes to hell beyond the Mine almost all the way to Lake Berryessa. Yes, it is one lane and paved, but with hillocks, slip-outs, pot holes with traffic cones stuck in them and cracks, it is worthy of the road signs saying “Low Cars Not Recommended” and “Impassable During High Water.”

A feature of the Berryessa Knoxville Road I hadn’t seen in years were concrete fords, not culverts and bridges, along the road. This allowed creek waters to gush over the road surface and cascade down into the creekbeds, and they must work because there were lots of them. Even in a 4-WD pick-up crossing these fords must be challenging in rain storms.

So why have this road at all? Well, the first half was to service the mine. Beyond that hunters, ranchers, folks on their way to the lake, and backroads explorers can be grateful it is still there with its woebegone pavement.

Now, about that gold mine. Before there was a gold mine there were quicksilver mercury mines. In northern Napa County there is recorded history pdf 50 of them. Turns out Knoxville had the third biggest mercury deposit in the state behind New Idria in San Benito County and New Almaden in Santa Clara County. Quicksilver cinnabar ore was processed into liquid mercury to process gold ore and in great demand during the Gold Rush and afterwards.

When Homestake Mine started mining microscopic gold flakes here the ore was invisible to the human eye. In the mid-1980’s Knoxville entered a new phase of resource extraction with modern science behind it. For once this rural area lucked out as Homestake wanted to demonstrate new improved mining processes for the 20th century.

The surface workings of this mine covered 8,900 acres with an open pit a mile long and 750’ deep. It was reported 3.4 million ounces of gold was unearthed with a value over $4 billion. The mine owners knew there were limited resources and the mine would be short-lived and by 2002 it was closing.

Planning on doing an exemplary job the mine won national awards in the late 1990’s for its operations and by 1993 had research and teaching facilities on site and was working with universities on reclamation plans.

Today it is impossible to see any remains of the Homestake Mine from the road. You might catch a quick glimpse of stair stepped groomed hills of orange colored rock, or ponds, but what you do see are very smooth contoured hills with sparse vegetation, which I assume is the mine waste tailings covering thousands of acres remediated into protected lands.

The Donald and Sylvia McLaughlin Nature Reserve now occupies the mine lands along with the Knoxville State Wildlife area. The access to the Reserve is by advance contact. Deer hunting is not permitted judging by signs.

“Exploring the Berryessa Region-A Geology, Nature and History Tour” by Eldridge and Judith Moores and others, is a great guide to the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument. Efforts are under way to link public lands from the Snow Mountain Wilderness in northern Lake County to Lake Berryessa in Napa County. I found this little jewel of at book at Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino and it inspired this back road exploration.

The book provides a road tour with designated stops marked and information about the geology, nature and history of that spot. There are tons of maps and photos and all the great road cuts and their geology is explained. It covers the area from the top of the lake to the Central Valley. 

Probably the most notable feature to the non-scientific viewer is the effects of repeated wildfires scorching the land as far as the eye can see. Sometimes there were tree skeletons, sometimes trees making admirable efforts at regeneration, and sometimes sprouting stumps. Charred black tree trunks minus limbs looked like licorice sticks stuck in the ground. In another area every standing dead tree was cut off 10’ from the ground and it looked like a forest of popsicle sticks.

Along the scenic road one thing I’d never seen before were “Wing Barrels.” Seems quail hunting is permissible and the state biologists were asking for donations of a wing from a bird killed. Seems they can glean valuable scientific information from that item. There was a form to fill out and a secure place to put it and the barrel was critter proof and sunk in concrete to protect it.

The closer we got to the lake the more settled the landscape became. A one lane concrete bridge built in 1920 had a historic plaque and telephone lines began to appear. We knew we were back in civilization when the yellow line appeared in the middle of the road. In the two hours of wandering and exploring on this road we only passed four cars. That was great. We drove the west shore of the lake, then looped through Chiles and Pope Valley and took Butts Canyon Road back to Middletown.

The day ended with a great steak dinner at Broiler Steak House In Redwood Valley. If a good solid meal for carnivores fits your personal diet this is the place to go. Portions were so large the leftovers taken home provided another entire dinner. Highly recommended.

POSTCARD PHOTOGRAPH of the hairpin turn on Highway 128 leaving Oat Valley west of Cloverdale, circa 1930. (via Marshall Newman)

WILLIS TUCKER, WAR HERO 

Editor, 

When I first drove up Brad Wiley's road from Highway 128 to his pretty flat land I felt like I was riding a beautiful wave. Willis Tucker did a reconnaissance as the lay of the land from the highway to the flatland above and concluded it was perhaps one quarter of a mile in length. In logging country at the time, I think that house would be a work of art in Anderson Valley. 

It should be noted that Mr. Tucker was my first neighbor at the Foschee Mill and a war hero who was shot in the chest in Saipan, came back to this platoon, and was nearly blown up on Iwo Jima. He lived in that house built at Foschee's for eight years. I am also grateful to him for persuading me to go to Fort Miley in San Francisco. It has long been the best Veterans Administration Hospital in the United States. 

Ken Hurst 

Philo

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOB SITES!

ED NOTES

MONDAY MORNING, we posted this cryptic report directly from the National Weather Service: “Dry weather will continue for at least much of next week. Temperatures will continue to moderate this week, with warming to above values by late in the week.” What do “moderate” and “warming to above values” mean in this context, or any weather context?

WE DON’T BELIEVE IT, BUT according to a recent Mendocino sales tax revenue report by HDL Associates (the County’s go-to on sales tax revenues and predictions), the business with the most sales tax revenues for July-September of 2022 in the unincorporated area of the County was the 101 Market & Deli on South Srtate street in Ukiah. 

A LOCAL COMMENTS: “So we really don't have an enforceable noise ordinance in the unincorporated areas? A neighbor a half mile away is playing music so loud that I can literally feel it and there's nothing to stop it? He started at six and it'll go until 2am. I live several miles outside of Boonville and all parcels nearby are zoned either residential or timber.”

THE FROST FANS zapped an enforceable noise ordinance years ago when our bend-over Superior Court ruled noise didn't apply to the wine industry, and frost fans disturb a couple thousand residents of the Anderson Valley for hours at a time — midnight to daylight — for years now. Loud music, a weapon of localized aggression wielded by our growing population of angry idiots, merely disturb people in the immediate neighborhood. The resident deputies of yesteryear responded so quickly to noise complaints that the idiocracy seldom even tried it. The noise offenders, the ones I know anyway, are also involved, I'm sure, in criminal conduct, especially dope sales. A resident deputy would suppress them and their moronic “music.”

A COUPLE of weeks ago, the Press Democrat posted a story headlined, “SoCo leaders travel to rep North bay at UN Climate conference.” The posting aroused such an immediate deluge of negative comment the wusses at the PD took it down. The following was representative: “I wonder if they are using vacation time or are we paying them for this junket? Why are they flying jets, and in Nancy Pelosi's case one very big jet, to Egypt when they can Zoom the conference? While their cities have increasing crime, a drug-bum explosion, side shows, poor general maintenance, rough roads, high taxes and many of their constituents are living paycheck to paycheck they are on an extravagant vacation to Egypt ostensibly to save us all from an imaginary armageddon. They are selfish opportunists posturing as noble public servants.”

I PERIODICALLY GET STEROID SHOTS in my arthritic knees. I say “steroid,” but for all I know the substance they shoot in there could be Super Glue. Whatever it is, it works, and I can walk and hike without discomfort. Of course nothing's simple these days. When I called the burgeoning Boonville Health Center — it's just added a whole new wing and employs a small army of people — I was told “A nurse will call you back.” Shots to the knees take about ten minutes, including travel time from my place a mile away. The last time I got shots in Boonville the doctor, sweating and shaking, managed to place the shots in the wrong place to zero salubrious effect on my knees. Thinking about it later I was relieved he didn't shoot me up in the forehead. At 1:12pm got this automated response from Center boss lady, Chloe Guazzone: 

“I WILL BE OUT of the office during the week of November 21^st through the Thanksgiving holiday. As a reminder, AVHC is closed Thursday and Friday 11/24 and 11/25 in observance of the holiday. I will have limited access to email but can be reached on my cell phone for emergencies. Please contact Fabi Cornejo for all other urgent matters. fcornejo@avhc.org.”

I THEN E-MAILED Ms. Cornejo to ask her, basically, que pasa? She soon replied, “Hello Bruce, I understand your questioning why we would need to have a nurse call you back. Given that we are entering the holidays, we are a bit short staffed and closed on some days. This means that our appointment availability is tight. We sent your request for a nurse to give you a call back (triage) to see if she can get you in sooner than what our open schedule has. Please feel free to reach back out if you still have any other questions. Best, Fabiola”

INCLUDING drive time from my office and the shots when I get there, we're talking twenty minutes, max, round trip. I'm waiting for the summons from the Boonville medical gods. 

AND I waited until 5pm with no call back, so I went off to watch the Niners play the Cardinals in Mexico City.

WHICH led to the following exchange between me and my colleague, The Major, who'd overheard my futile call to the Health Center.

ME: When I conk out, load me into a car and drive me straight to St. Mary's Hospital in the city.

HIM: I don't think I can lift you. I'm old, too, you know.

ME: Okay, call an Uber and get Rod and Taylor Balson over here and they can shovel me into the Uber. Bill the County.

HIM: We have Uber in Boonville?

ME: I think so. I met the kid who does Uber at one of the Art Walk sites last year.

HIM: Why not just call Anderson Valley's ambulance? You don't trust them either?

ME: I trust Angela but she'd have to drive me over the hill where the Adventists would finish me off. Protocols, dude, rule all.

DARNED if Nurse Michelle didn't call at 4:40pm to explain that they're real busy and the feds require that a few spots have to be left open for emergencies — Anderson Valley is teeming with malingerers and hypos — and the guy who can do the shots is off Wednesday but if I call Michelle at 9am Tuesday maybe “something will open up.” 

THIS HOLIDAY SEASON give a gift certificate from the Boonville Hotel and we'll sweeten the deal and add extra 10% (applies to certificates purchased between Thanksgiving Day 2022 and New Year's Day 2023).

THE ADVENTURES OF OAKY JOE: Taco Bell, Ukiah

by Joe Munson

Don't tell my wife that I took my two kids to Taco Bell to get junk food. We went in and ordered our food then went to a table to wait. We found a table but we were short one chair. I told my daughter Millie (10 years old at the time) to go ask the very large Harley-Davidson lady if she could borrow a chair. Millie went over and said, “May I take one of those chairs?” The lady said, “Five bucks, little girl.” So Millie laughed at her and grabbed a chair.

About that time the lady's husband was headed back to their table with their order. So I send my son Milo (six years old at the time) over with a message. Milo told the six-foot-six close to 300-pound man, “I have a 50 and I will smoke you.” That man laughed so hard he almost dropped his tray full of food.

It is a good thing those Norcal Harley riders have a good sense of humor. It could have gotten ugly!

One day Derrick and I were driving around and hanging out in the Pines near Ukiah when I saw Keith Faulder in his Mercedes. I said, “Watch this, Derrick,” and I beeped my car horn. When Faulder looked our way flipped him off with both hands. It took Faulder a second to realize that it was just me. You should have seen the look on his face for just an instant. Derrick's reaction was even funnier because he had no idea who it was or why I flipped off a suit in a new Mercedes. When I told him it was Judge Faulder he was dumbfounded!

So I stopped and talked to Faulder and introduced him to Derrick and then Derrick and I went and got super stoned on his water bong that he usually carries around with him. I will bet money that Derrick can take a bigger bomb hit than you or anyone else. After Derrick got over the shock and saw that he was not going to jail he calmed down and we laughed our asses off.

Sorry Keith, just having a little fun, Your Honor!

Your friend, Oaky Joe Munson

GRIP

.

.

— Gordon Black

SCHOOL BOARD MEETING, December 2nd, 1985

by Bruce Anderson

The meeting convened promptly at 7:00 p.m. as the two new trustees, Cheryl Schrader and Martha Bradford, vowed not to overthrow either the state or federal governments. All five trustees and Superintendent Jim Johnson then disappeared down the grim, unadornded hall of the high school for a brief executive session. There were no announcements out of the closed eight-minute conclave.

The consent agenda contained nothing of interest other than a pair of contradictory board policy statements on AIDS, one saying it would be district policy to exclude a child stricken with the disease, the other maintaining that there is no danger to children from AIDS victims. The trustees seemed inclined not to exclude an afflicted child, but their final decision will not be known until the next meeting when the policies are read the second time and then one or the other adopted. It can be assumed that school authorities have already taken steps to discourage unprotected sex on both campuses. 

Indicative of the district’s concern for the health of its revenue generators, “the kids,” is a sign the high school has posted on one wall of the library depicting an elderly gentleman with a cigarette dangling from his mouth above “Smoking Is Very Sophisticated.” The poster seems aimed at inspiring contempt for an old man with a lived-in face who would seem more than entitled to whatever minor vice he indulges in. 

There was a description by the Superintendent of something called a Joint Powers Agreement which would be drawn up between Covelo and Anderson Valley. At first mention, it occurred to more than one person in the audience that perhaps Anderson Valley was teaming up with Covelo for an attack on Potter Valley or Laytonville. As it developed, Covelo schools are sitting on a surplus of funds which they are magnanimously prepared to share with us at rates of interest well below those extorted by the banks. The trustees voted unanimously to endorse the joint powers agreement.

Superintendent Johnson then extracted permission from his trustees to put up for bid several pieces of surplus machinery lying around the shops. He said that no one is sure who owns the stuff. Johnson also had words of praise for the revitalized auto shop classes that he said may expand to offer adult and student training in diesel mechanics.

Since the Lions Club of Anderson Valley has decided not to provide insurance coverage for the Junior Panther Basketball Program, the Veteran’s are being approached to insure the popular youth activity. If insurance coverage is not forthcoming from one or another service club, Johnson suggested to the board that the Junior Panthers might become purely a school function. Keith and Debbie Squires were announced as this year’s directors of the wildly popular basketball sessions for the small fry.

The meeting moved right along with a minimum of the aimless chatter characteristic of the Phil Wobbling Eagle Crawford years. The present board and administration is exactly the reverse of the babblers who dominated the board a year or two ago and sent parents reeling from school meetings either depressed or enraged.

School secretary, Vicki Czapky, prepared a brief, understandable report on the state of the budget. Her handout vastly simplifies and clarifies what is always a period of general befuddlement as everyone present struggles to make sense of what seem, to the uninitiated, random numbers. In these times, demonstrations of competence are so rare, Czapky should probably be awarded a commendation of some kind for her work.

The Superintendent revealed he had met with a committee of local persons to discuss disaster preparedness. He reported that Wes Smoot of CalTrans was especially helpful in making suggestions as to how best to shelter school children from a variety of catastrophes. Johnson mentioned in passing that CalTrans had assured him that transportation of dangerous chemicals occurs only in the midnight hours so as not to endanger children traveling back and forth to school along 128. What chemicals and who moves them through the Valley was not mentioned.

The Superintendent said our district cannot expect money to restore buildings. Many other schools have priority for plant refurbishing. Priority is determined by the age of the facility. Our buildings are relatively young.

Linda Brennan was awarded the mentor teacher position at the elementary school. Trustee Altaras asked how the mentor teacher’s program was being monitored. Elementary School principal Thomas responded that former Superintendent, W. Eagle, had monitored the program according to standards he had devised but had not shared with anyone else. Thomas said he would monitor his mentor teacher and that he assumed high school principal Brian Buckley would monitor his and report back to the board.

As per long custom, there was no discussion of education. The meeting was over by 8:30. The next one is scheduled for Tuesday, the 14th of January, 1986, in the high school library beginning at 7:00 p.m.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, November 21, 2022

ADRIAN AGUILAR-LOPEZ, Ukiah. DUI, no license, evasion, resisting.

MELISSA CAMPBELL, Willits. Domestic battery.

NICHOLAS HALVORSEN, Fort Bragg. County parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

ROBERT MCCOY, Ukiah. Domestic battery. 

TONY MCELROY, Ukiah. Petty theft, resisting, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

MIGUEL MENDOZA, Willits. DUI, suspended license for DUI, failure to appear.

MICHAEL MUELLER, Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, paraphernalia.

ERIK SMITH, Potter Valley. Carjacking by force or fear, elder abuse resulting in great bodily harm or death, failure to appear.

EDGAR VAZQUEZ, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

ASSESSING AG IMPACTS

Editor: 

I attach no stigma to marijuana cultivation and seeing that the value of the crop in Sonoma County is approaching that of wine raises only one concern for me. In our time of drought and climate crisis, how much water does growing marijuana require? I did a little research online and could only find on cannabis industry sites rafts of confusing numbers. Apparently, a plant in our environment needs about two liters of water a day, but this (according to the marijuana sites) is less than wine grapes require and far less than cows.

Sadly, UC Davis has not, to my knowledge, done any studies that I would find more trustworthy. In reporting on the economic statistics of Sonoma County agriculture, I would like to see information about the environmental impacts of these valuable crops.

Charles Little

Petaluma

BASKING IN MEXICAN FANS’ ADORATION, 49ERS HAVE A BLAST AND BREAK THROUGH

by Ann Killion

MEXICO CITY — The San Francisco 49ers only spent about 30 hours in this country, arriving late Sunday night to find their hotel surrounded by a cheering mob of fans, leaving for the game Monday afternoon to the same frenzied scene, witnessing 49ers fans all along the traffic-choked streets to the game and arriving at one of the world’s most venerable stadiums to find it totally overtaken by 49ers fans.

“I love San Francisco,” Kyle Shanahan said. “But if we couldn’t be there, I’d love to be here. This was one of the coolest events I’ve ever been a part of. It was one of my favorite games.”

This was, for all purposes except technically, a 49ers home game played 2,180 miles south of Santa Clara. And though they didn’t spend much time here, flying home late Monday night, the 49ers brought a souvenir back from Mexico: this was where they found their swagger.

In Estadio Azteca, where Tommie Smith and Lee Evans raised their gloved fists in protest at the 1968 Olympics, where the greatest futbol player in history — Pele — won a World Cup in 1970, the 49ers made a statement.

They are the team to beat in the NFC West.

Their 38-10 romp over the Cardinals gave them a three-game winning streak for the first time this season. At 6-4, they are back in first place in NFC West, holding the tie breaker over the 6-4 Seahawks. The defense was ferocious and shut the Cardinals out in the second half. The 49ers looked every bit the balanced, explosive team we’ve been expecting.

“We’re definitely ready to go on a run,” said George Kittle, who pranced into the postgame press conference in a 49er-themed luchador mask. “We’re playing good football.”

It took a long journey to get to this point, literally, but to the delight of 78,427 almost entirely pro-49ers fans, the 49ers appeared to have found their identity south of the border. For the first time since Christian McCaffrey arrived the 49ers resembled what all had imagined their offense could be: a dazzling display of McCaffrey, Kittle, Deebo Samuel, Kittle, Brandon Aiyuk and Elijah Mitchell with Jimmy Garoppolo almost flawless in his execution.

Garoppolo was 20-for-29 and 228 yards, with four touchdowns and zero interceptions. He ended the game on the sidelines while Brock Purdy executed the final plays. When the game was over, Garoppolo — like a soccer player at game’s end — turned around and applauded the fans.

“It was electric,” Garoppolo said of the atmosphere. “The fans were nuts. It seemed like a soccer game with the passion they brought.”

Beating Arizona has been one of Shanahan’s bugaboos. Aside from the 2019 season when everything seemed to go right, he was 1-7 against the Cardinals coming into Monday’s game. But his team looked superior in every way and got some revenge for one of last year’s low points, by beating backup Colt McCoy.

The crowd at Azteca was far more knowledgeable than the much larger (by about 25,000) one that filled the stadium in 2005 before its remodeling. Back then the fans were enthusiastic to be at an American football game but mostly cheered the punts and field goals. Plenty of fans had traveled here for Monday night’s game from the Bay Area and other parts of the United States, but the fans in Mexico were the ones that made the difference: they have learned the game and become passionate about it.

As some Mexican fans had predicted, they knew how to force McCoy to go to a silent count on offense, even though the set-up for the stadium was to honor the Cardinals as the “home” team. But the piped-in chants of “De-fense” and the scoreboard urging the crowd to make noise when the 49ers had the ball couldn’t persuade the fans to disrupt their beloved 49ers.

“They knew exactly what to do,” Shanahan said. “They cheered at the right time.”

The hardest thing for the 49ers about the game wasn’t the opponent but the altitude. Even with several days in Colorado Springs they still felt it. They weren’t thrilled with the freezing environment in Colorado but it did the trick: owner John York got the game ball for spending the money to acclimate his team.

And unlike when they emerged from a week away in West Virginia completely flat in the Atlanta game, the 49ers looked energized from the moment they stepped on the field at Azteca, dancing in warmups and soaking up the adoration of the crowd. During early warmups, the fans in the stands booed inactive Kyler Murray and cheered wildly for Garoppolo, Kittle and Nick Bosa when their faces appeared on the Jumbotron.

Perhaps the most amusing moment was in the middle of the Star-Spangled Banner when Garoppolo’s face was shown on the big screen and the screams drowned out the anthem.

Again, it was the fans that made a difference. The energy started when the team arrived at its hotel.

“That was awesome,” Bosa said. “We were extremely tired but that brought our spirits up.”

At game time, Fred Warner, Alfredo Gutierrez and Alex Barrett, all with Mexican roots, led the team onto the field carrying Mexican flags. Warner played in cleats that said, “Yo Soy Federico.” Arizona, as the home team, also entered with a Mexican flag — it didn’t matter. They were still booed loudly.

“It was amazing to hear the cheers for us and the boos for them,” Bosa said.

Usually, at Azteca, such passion is reserved for the national soccer team. But, on the night before El Tri was to play in the World Cup in Qatar, the fans poured similar adoration into the 49ers. When the Mexican national anthem was played before the game, the enormous building was filled with the proud singing of almost every fan.

Warner, whose grandfather was Mexican, came to the post-game podium wearing a green Mexican national team jersey.

“This is something I’ll remember forever, running that flag out,” he said. “It felt like a playoff atmosphere.

“I get goosebumps just even thinking about it.”

(sfchronicle.com)

GOD SAVE THE REPUBLIC (from this)

BENBOW FAMILY

Part history lesson, part tourism tv, Bartell’s Backroads has taken viewers to the treasures of California for a decade. Yesterday, the show focused on SoHum’s beautiful Benbow Inn. The show featured info that not everyone may know. According to the show, “The Benbow Inn was built by nine of the Benbow family’s talented brothers and sisters in 1926. Despite the building’s elegant architecture and upscale accommodation, the Benbow family was far from wealthy.”

(kymkemp.com)

COLORADO SPRINGS MASS SHOOTING

Editor, 

The nation has just surpassed 600 mass shootings this year with another month and a week to go. Amongst advanced countries of the world, the United States still has the most lax gun laws. It is still unclear how Lee Aldrich, the 22-year-old who walked into Club Q, the LGBTQ night spot in Colorado Springs last weekend shooting a semi-automatic long rifle, obtained the weapons he used. Five innocent victims died within the first four minutes. Up to 25 others were wounded in this horrific, heinous act. 

Pray for the friends, associates, business partners, coworkers and family members close to those five poor completely innocent men and women whose lives were taken away so cruelly and unnecessarily. 

Will Congress ever do its duty and pass a gun law with teeth making assault weapons illegal? You may have heard the one that goes something like this, “There are pros and there are cons. Then there is progress which is the opposite of Congress.” When, if ever, will such mass shootings stop in our beloved country? 

Frank Baumgardner

Santa Rosa

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

When I was a kid, and this was in the 70s, both of my pediatricians were smokers. It was common for them to come into the room to do my check up with a lit cig in their mouths. Lol… I ran into one of them about ten years ago. He was well into his 80s and still smoking. On the whole he seemed quite healthy. No indication of dementia either. Patients used to smoke in their hospital beds. I once heard of a patient who smoked inside an oxygen tent. When the nurse no-no’d him, he noted that he had been wondering why the cigarettes only lasted two pulls.

SOCIAL JUSTICE WRITING AND PHOTOGRAPHY

A chapter in The Routledge Handbook of the Anthropology of Labor by David Bacon and John W. McKerley

Abstract: As a non-anthropologist, I’ve spent many years doing social documentary work that is very similar to that of anthropologists, recording and editing oral histories and taking photographs. The purpose of this work is to help document social reality as a participant in movements for social change. In this article, I describe the reasons for beginning this work, and the cooperative relationships developed with social movement organizations, from unions to migrant rights organizations. As I do this work I try to balance a commitment to the work itself – the aesthetics of photographs and the faithfulness and emotional power of narratives – and a commitment to producing work that has the power to move people and participate in using it to those ends. The article, therefore, describes the personal journey of one person doing this work, in a way that may be relevant to the experience of others.

taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003158448-31/social-justice-writing-photography-david-bacon-john-mckerley

YOUTUBE CENSORS REALITY, BOOSTS DISINFORMATION: Part 1

YouTube censored this site for accuracy, yet new news today underscores that they continue to hype fake news.

by Matt Taibbi

As readers by now are aware, I’m very upset about YouTube’s recent decision to censor a factually accurate video about “rigged election” comments produced for this site by Matt Orfalea. The company has given Matt a strike and labeled his/our work “misinformation,” an insult I’ve decided not to take lying down. I’m going to search for new ways to embarrass the company until they reverse their decision. As it happens, today offers an excellent opportunity. 

CBS This Morning today came out with a story claiming they obtained a copy of Hunter Biden’s laptop, sent for an “independent forensic review,” and determined it “appears genuine.” This follows up confirmation from The New York Times back on March 16th, and more importantly, the exhaustive earlier work of Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger confirming key emails in his book, The Bidens. 

Matt did an exceptional job back in March in the video above, compiling clips of people who went on air and with absolute certainty proclaimed the laptop “a lie,” “altered or fake,” “pure distractions,” and of course, “RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION.” 

Whether or not you thought the actual content of the story was important, the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop affair was a crossroads moment in the history of modern censorship. YouTube played a major role in this event. 

This was a case in which major news media — including CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and countless other outlets — actively embraced disinformation, in the form of a group letter from 50-plus former intelligence officials saying the laptop story (they referred to a “laptop op”) had the “classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” All the aforementioned news agencies fell for this, as did Twitter (which blocked access to it, in what then-CEO Jack Dorsey later admitted was a “total mistake“) and Facebook (whose increasingly adrift founder Mark Zuckerberg later told Joe Rogan the story was throttled down at the suggestion of the FBI). 

YouTube also pushed this disinformation campaign. It still does. Despite the total absence of evidence ever existing that the laptop was either fake or part of a Russian “information operation” and a growing pile of evidence that the laptop is real, YouTube continues to leave unmolested on its site countless videos promoting the conspiracy theory — that’s what it is, let’s be clear — that the laptop story is both bunk and an intelligence op. 

Here’s a brief sample of materials they still have up, unmarked as “misinformation” or “disinformation”:

Are Trump allies peddling Russian disinformation about the Bidens? PBSOctober 16, 2020 Judy Woodruff: “Today we learned more about concerns expressed by the President’s most senior advisors, that the President’s personal attorney was peddling Russian disinformation.” Nick Schifrin: “The bottom line is we cannot confirm the story, Judy, but… the Biden campaign says that this is Russian disinformation, and disinformation experts I talk to tell me that pro-Russian actors have been packaging their disinformation next to apparently legitimate information.” The irony, of course, is that PBS and YouTube were the ones pushing disinformation here. 

Hunter Biden tabloid story raises disinformation campaign fears, CBS October 15, 2020 ”Experts say it has all the hallmarks of information laundering…,” said correspondent Norah O’Donnell, before quoting former FBI agent Eric O’Neil saying, “This looks like your classic disinformation campaign.”

US investigating if emails connected to Russia disinformation against Biden, CNN October 16, 2020 This is a beauty. Wolf Blitzer introduces correspondent Alex Marquardt by talking about how there are “fears that [the laptop story] could actually be part of Russia’s latest and very massive disinformation campaign in the US presidential election.” To which Marquardt answers, “Massive indeed Wolf,” before going on to “report” that “we are being told by two people who’ve been briefed on what the FBI is doing, that they’re looking into whether these unverified emails about Hunter Biden that were published earlier this week by the New York Post… are part of this bigger Russian disinformation effort in the 2020 election.” We have no proof this campaign existed, no proof this story was connected to it, and no proof of it being “bigger” than any other campaign. Unflagged by YouTube. 

Bash On Pushing Of Disinformation On Biden: This Looks, Walks, & Talks Like Russian Intelligence, MSNBC October 19.2020 This piece is extraordinary because it’s almost exactly the same message as the one written by the 50 “former” intelligence officers. Nicolle Wallace starts off humorously, scoffing at the idea that someone is “suggesting somehow that Joe Biden is a corrupt politician — one of the most vetted politicians in this country.” Jeremy Bash, a former CIA chief of staff now posing as a media figure, concurs. “This looks like Russian intelligence. This walks like Russian intelligence,” adding that the laptop story “looks like a classic Russian playbook, disinformation campaign.” If you go back and look, you will find countless instances of reporters using words like classic, hallmarks, earmarks, and disinformation campaign. 

Joe Biden on 60 Minutes, CBS. October 26, 2020 Remember, CBS just did a story contradicting their own earlier 60 Minutes piece in which Lesley Stahl berated then-President Trump that the laptop story “can’t be verified.” Indeed, CBS just by doing its new story proved that its previous position — that verification was impossible — was a lark. In their other 60 Minutes interview from that season, they soft-balled Joe Biden on the laptop story. CBS: “Do you believe [Hunter's laptop] is part of a Russian disinformation campaign?” BIDEN: “It’s just what it is. It’s a smear campaign.”

There are plenty more of these. If you want to widen the criticism to Google, these “Russian disinformation” stories still pop up high in searches. YouTube and Google now become exhibit A in the ultimate truth about any attempt to “moderate” content at scale. If you make even a good-faith effort to weed out “disinformation,” relying on official bodies to help, what you’ll be left with is… official disinformation. 

But this isn’t a good-faith effort to weed out untruths. YouTube has become a place that censors true content but traffics in official and quasi-official deceptions. It’s become indistinguishable from a state censorship bureau. If they feel they’re right about their decisions, they should be happy to explain themselves to people me. Until then, they can expect more love letters from this address. 

Readers should know I don’t believe in letting things like this go, but I also don’t believe in annoying faithful readers. In the future, if there are similar entries in this campaign, I’ll make them public but won’t clog your email with notices. The idea is to be a pain in Google’s backside, not yours.

THE SOLEMN STILLNESS BEFORE WINTER

by James Kunstler

Here in New England now, the landscape is putting itself to bed, preparing for winter’s long sleep. The grass in the cow pastures never looks greener than in contrast to the barren trees, but that lingering color, too, will soon fade. We did not get smacked here by the deep snows of far-off Buffalo, not a flake, so a sweetly solemn stillness settles over these tender hills as we give vague thanks at Thursday’s gala of gluttony, certain to induce terrors of indigestion in the restless night to come.

I am thankful to still be here after all these years — more than that, grateful! And with the prospect of seeing what comes next: the beginning of a great correction for a country gone off the rails in greed, bad faith, and treachery. Everything rooted in lies and fakery is primed to blow down in the political storms ahead.

It’s fitting that the last straw on this beast’s back was the phoniest scam of all, and saturated with every known sort of millennial Woke posturing: the FTX swindle. Its avatar, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), proved to be a special species of villain, the idiot-savant slob, clever enough to somehow winkle a physics degree out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but not very good with the basic math of money — for instance, the equation that margin must equal collateral — and really really bad at covering his oafish tracks.

In the dramatic demise of FTX, the self-styled crypto-currency-exchange, all the nefarious connections between the great ills of our time stand out starkly in a sudden, glaring light, namely: the dubious Covid-19 pandemic and all the punitive measures cooked up by officialdom, with help from FTX’s money, to supposedly combat the virus, especially the deadly mRNA “vaccines” still being pushed on a credulous public; the sinister operations of so-called hedge funds and their role in magically levitating the financial markets of an economy foundering on necrotizing malinvestments and debt that can never be paid; and the Satanic endeavors of a political faction, the Democratic Party of Chaos, in subverting every institution from sea to shining sea from schools, to courts, to elections while shoving the US into a land war in Europe.

A few weeks after the FTX breakdown, and the extrinsic cascading failures around the crypto-currency netherworld, spreading wildly through pension funds, banks, and insurance companies, the great stillness of November also blankets the regulatory apparatus supposedly guarding the public from financial fraud — most conspicuously the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, a Dutch uncle in the Bankman-Fried extended clan.

The FBI is too busy chasing down evangelicals and Attorney General Merrick Garland remains fixated on nailing former president Trump on any kind of confected felony, despite six years of fervent investigations from the US Attorney’s Southern District of New York, to New York’s AG Letitia James — who ran for office promising to persecute citizen D.J. Trump — to Robert Mueller’s two-year intimidation campaign that came up with exactly nothing.

Now Mr. Garland has activated one particular federal attorney, Jack Smith, with a long record as a partisan attack dog, as special counsel to finally get the job done against Mr. Trump, the proverbial indictment-worthy ham sandwich awaiting a DC District grand jury. Any cockamamie charge will do as long as it’s a felony. Mr. Garland’s strategy is two-fold: 1) to negate Mr. Trump’s remaining political career; and 2) set up a situation that will permit all DOJ attorneys and FBI officers to demur from questioning before Republican majority congressional committees about everything-under-the-sun on the grounds that the questions are germane to “ongoing investigations” that can’t be compromised. That’s the game.

By the time that game kicks-off, early January 2023, the country is liable to be punch-drunk and stumbling from a financial market crash that signals the start of an economic depression more consequential than the calamity of the 1930s. Meanwhile, Russia’s cleanup of the US-instigated mess in Ukraine will be nearly complete, to the ignominy of “Joe Biden,” at the same time that the putative president’s crimes of bribery and treason — should he still be among the living — get aired in Congress without any help required from Mr. Garland’s Justice Department — the evidence from Hunter’s laptop having already been well-perused and catalogued by an army of outside independent investigators. FTX will be in that mix somewhere.

This will all occur against the background of the now-unraveled Covid-19 story. By early 2023 the evidence of excess all-causes deaths and disabilities resulting from Pfizer and Moderna shots will be overwhelming and the nation will know it got played by a scheme between the corrupt public health authorities, the pharma companies, and the corporate medical establishment, including its discredited journals. Nobody in America will ever trust a doctor again.

We’ll also probably know a good deal more about the dark and dirty deeds around the 2022 midterm election as the FTX scandal spools out and the probably hundreds of millions of FTX investor’s dollars that were express-delivered into Democratic Party coffers for ballot harvesting operations are revealed, along with the exact methods used to accomplish the mega-fraud.

So, enjoy the still moments of this Thanksgiving before the cacophony of mid-winter commences to roar and rage across this hapless land. Say a prayer for the heroes-in-waiting aiming to rescue the republic from the depredations of the vicious Woke-Jacobin Left. And, along with your other preps, lay in some sodium bicarbonate for the awful heartburn to follow.

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page.)

THE UK’S DESTRUCTIVE IMITATION GAME WITH AMERICA

by Patrick Cockburn

The US media is presenting the outcome of the midterm elections as a political version of the Battle of Gettysburg, a decisive turning point for Donald Trump after his forces were repelled with heavy casualties all along the line. Moreover, it was supposedly Trump’s culpable ineptitude as Republican commander-in-chief that turned a potential victory into a smashing defeat.

There are calls for Ron DeSantis, fresh from an effortless re-election as Governor of Florida, to replace Trump as the Republican standard bearer. Absurdly, the Democrats are doing victory laps despite losing control of the House of Representatives and barely holding the line elsewhere.

Normally, it is election losers who minimise their failure and point to dubious silver linings. On this occasion, however, it is the Republican leadership talking up defeats in order to blame them on Trump and discredit him as a vote loser. Former Trump acolytes shamelessly turn their coats overnight and denounce him as a political liability.

They are not entirely wrong, but the negative spin is excessive and misleading: the decisive issue of the midterms was not Trump and his wrongdoings, but the Supreme Court decision on abortion in June reversing Roe v Wade.

Young Unmarried Women A Crucial Game Changer

Some 27 per cent of voters said that abortion was the most important issue for them and 76 per cent of these voted Democrat according to the exit polls. Many pundits said at the time that the decision would transform the election and they were correct – despite the current spin that everybody expected a “red wave” or “red tsunami”. Young unmarried women voting overwhelmingly for the Democrats was a crucial game changer come election day on 8 November.

The Trump agenda is in reality the same as the Republican agenda on all the main issues: crime, inflation, gun control, abortion and immigration. When announcing his candidacy for the presidency in 2024 on Tuesday, he repeated his old dirge about American decline, speaking of “the blood-soaked streets” that are “cesspools of violent crime”. Nonsense though this is, since violent crime has fallen sharply in America since the 1990s, it was a main feature of Republican campaign advertisements aimed at frightening voters by pretending there is a crime wave and proposing more policing and incarceration as the solution.

Encouragingly, talking up crime did not work as well as Republicans had hoped, aside from in New York where it was relentlessly promoted by the Murdoch-owned media. Yet here, as with most other issues, Trump’s lies were just the same as Republican Party lies and Trump’s failures were the same as Republican Party failures. Though he is being blamed for backing unelectable crackpots, these candidates were all the choice of Republican voters in the primaries.

Impossible For Republican Leaders To Defenestrate Trump

Trump was always more of a symptom than a cause of what is wrong with American politics and society. Demonising him as the source of all evil is a gross oversimplification and not a good way of understanding the Republican problem. Less popular than he used to be, he still has an estimated 30 to 40 per cent core support in the Republican Party, making it impossible for Republican leaders to defenestrate him, as much as they would like to do so.

Probably, his political appeal was always overstated and his one great victory in the 2016 presidential race would not have been won without Hillary Clinton’s dysfunctional campaign handing him the race. But he still attracts millions of voters as well as repelling millions of others, something the Republicans cannot ignore.

When Trump announced his candidacy this week, he guaranteed the next presidential election will be watched with obsessive, if baffled, interest by the rest of the world. Governments will try to calculate what would be the impact of a second Trump presidency on the war in Ukraine and relations with China. They will sigh with relief every time his campaign falters or pundits declare that he cannot survive the latest scandal or court case. Public attention will be riveted, as it was in 2016 and 2020, on the ups and downs of the world’s greatest celebrity.

Britain’s Unhealthy Relationship With America

Nowhere is this foreign attention to be more intense than in Britain, which enjoys a peculiar and at times unhealthy relationship with America. I do not mean the close political and military alliance between the two countries, which has existed since 1940 and is a matter of sensible realpolitik.

I want to make a different point, which is often overlooked: it is frequently claimed that Britain has been held back by nostalgia for a lost empire, but I doubt if that is really the case. The British gave up their empire far more easily than the French.

The danger is rather that Britain behaves as if it was a mini-America. Political and cultural trends over there are replicated enthusiastically here and, on rare occasions. vice-versa. We had Margaret Thatcher and they had Ronald Reagan. They had Donald Trump and we had Boris Johnson. But lost in these parallels is the simple fact that the two countries are very distinct. What works in the US may not work in the UK and may do it serious damage instead.

US Culture Wars Have Little Relevance Here 

Sophisticated discussion of the US-UK relationship often passes over the point that one country is much bigger than the other. Had Britain’s population and economy been five times larger than they are, then Brexit might have made sense. In the event, it meant that Britain always has the weaker hand when dealing with the EU.

Even the calamitous mini-Budget of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, inspired by crude US-derived neoliberal ideology, might have worked if Britain had the size and strength of the US. Those speaking glibly of Britain as a Singapore-on-Thames failed to notice that Singapore is a small country and will inevitably be pushed around by bigger and more powerful ones.

The Conservative Party has in many respects become an English nationalist party, yet it pursues culture wars that originated in the US and have little relevance here. “Woke-ism”, for example, is mainly to do with American racial and cultural divisions, and the conflict over statues in the US is fuelled by the fact that they are often of heroes of the Civil War whose legacy is enduring.

Paradoxically, the prospect of Trump returning to the White House and the Truss debacle may do Britain some good if they put an end to its self-destructive imitation game with America.

(counterpunch.org)

UKRAINE, MONDAY, 21ST NOVEMBER

The official civilian death toll from the Russian invasion of Ukraine has risen to nearly 6,900, with civilian injuries topping 10,000, the United Nations said.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said fierce battles are continuing along the front line, with the most intense in Donetsk, but wintry weather is prompting a change in Russia’s tactics.

While the number of ground offensives has declined as the weather worsens, “the number of Russian shelling occasions remains, unfortunately, extremely high,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Sunday.

In Luhansk, the region next to Donetsk, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces are advancing “little by little,” but added there have been almost 400 instances of shelling in the eastern region on Sunday alone. Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Monday it believes an area of Luhansk “is likely now a more vulnerable operational flank of the Russian force.” 

—CNBC