Mendocino County Today: Thursday, May 4, 2023

Scattered Showers | Cloudscape | Wildflower Show | High Tea | Mobile CRV | Redwood Valley | Bookshop Hiring | Realtor Allman | Pillsbury Reduction | Holcomb Talk | Seaweed Jobs | Stages Meet | FEMA Assistance | Time Bomb | Apple Blossoms | Ed Notes | Marmon Bound | Train Wreck | Yesterday's Catch | Other Dimension | Red Dot | Dos Rios | Hello Consumer | Radioactive Vapor | Feinstein Finale | Eureka Video | Necessary Drugs | Naming Haystacks | Tax Rich | Many Bananas | Release Julian | Proceed | Handling Losses | Ukraine | Comedy Museum | Dumbest Thing | Aldous Huxley

SCATTERED SHOWERS today will increase in rate by the afternoon, particularly in the northern half of the forecast area. Isolated thunderstorm activity in Trinity and Lake county will ease late tonight. (NWS)

WEDNESDAY'S weather matinee, a study in cloud cover, was emphasized with a bracing thunder clap at 5:20pm in Boonville.

WILDFLOWER SHOW 2023: WILDLY SUCCESSFUL

Dear Editor,

We would like to thank everyone who made the 2023 Wildflower Show such a success. We dedicated this Show to Sue Hopkins, who single-handedly ran the Wildflower Show for 12 or so years, with utmost grace and style. We miss her. 

This year’s displays were enhanced by provision of tree cuttings from Scott Hulbert and wild grasses from Bill Harper and Kathy Bailey. We thank our botanists, Jade Paget-Seekins and Heather Morrison, for helping to identify so many of the wildflowers our members collected over the course of three days prior. An invasive plant table with specimens, pictures, and information provided a necessary counterpoint.

Another component for the show was a Lyme disease exhibit presented this year by Beverly Dutra, and in prior years by Sue Davies, a longtime member of Unity Club who recently passed away. We honored Sue with a display and with special plant collections she grew, donated to us by her partner, Bob Karol. 

Our returning vendor, The Sanhedrin Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, was there with books and posters to offer and was busier than ever sharing their knowledge with so many people. Susan Macedo was a new vendor for us this year. Her display and sale of all crafts “wildflower” was very popular. Another new vendor, Cindy Morrey, displayed her lovely wildflower photos on Sunday. Lasty, the Galbreath Wildlands Preserve provided an informative poster and brochures about their mission. 

Thank you to Anderson Valley High School’s art department, whose students produced paintings and sculpture for display at the show. The Garden Section of the Club voted on the art and photos and the top three winners received $50 each. 

A big thank you to Deleh Mayne and the Teen Center for the delicious food served in the tearoom. Also, Linnea Totten and Evette LaPaille worked to arrange the students’ visit Monday morning.

Heartfelt thanks to the businesses and people who donated auction gifts. This year we raised more than ever towards scholarships, and other recipients of our charity. 

So, we say a very big and special ‘Thank You!’ to the following, for their support of our community: Anderson Valley Brewing Company, Bee Hunter Wine, Boonville General Store, Dancing Dragonfly, Farmhouse Mercantile, Goldeneye Winery, Gowan's Fruit Stand, Greenwood Ridge Vineyards, Husch Vineyards, LAB - Lauren's at the Buckhorn, Lemon's Market, Lichen Estate, Navarro Vineyards & Winery, Pennyroyal Farm, Roederer Estate, Rossi's Hardware, Sun & Cricket Shop, Wildflower Beading.

Thank you to Becky and the Fairgrounds staff for all their help. Thanks to Robert Rosen, the Anderson Valley Brewing Company, and the AV Methodist Church for allowing us to place our banners, advertising our event, on their respective fences.

Finally, we wish to thank the following people who helped our club members with collections, plant donations, set-up, and/or cleanup: Lynn Halpern, Heather Zischka, Hans Hickenlooper, Rick Bonner, Tom Shaver, Anita Soost, Angela Dewitt, Tom Shaver, Scott Morgan and Tone Taylor. 

We are extending an invitation to community members to join us in next year’s wildflower adventure. We would love additional plant propagators, collectors, and especially those interested in identifying plants. Contributors with new ideas can only help to improve this special event. We want more of our community members to be an integral part, and to help make this show even better. Interested? Please contact Jean at (707) 272-8243.

Anderson Valley Unity Club Garden Section

Jean Condon

Boonville

MOBILE CRV REDEMPTION TO BEGIN In Caspar And Mendocino

During the week of May 14th, 2023, Redwood Waste Solutions (RWS) will begin operating a new Mobile CRV Redemption Facility. This pilot project is 1 of 10 allotted in the state of California. Alongside the mobile operation, the search for a permanent location for CRV Redemption in the Fort Bragg area will continue. RWS will also be looking to expand the operational days and locations of the mobile service soon.

Listed below are the details on the initial mobile CRV redemption locations:

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Please keep in mind this is a new mobile service, which may affect wait times. Redwood Waste Solutions appreciates your patience as they bring this service back to the coast.

BOOK HELP WANTED ON THE COAST

Gallery Bookshop is looking for one wonderful person to work hard and often for a bunch of years. Does that sound like you? Come see us in person!

P.S. If you pepper us with questions by phone, email, social media comments, notes left under the door, carrier pigeon, owl, etc., we will regretfully blacklist you from employment and curse your family line. So come see us in person, okay? We want this to work out. 

We’re accepting applications through May 17th. Feel free to help spread the word.

WOULD YOU BUY A USED HOUSE FROM THIS MAN?

It is an honor and a privilege to announce our newest Associate Licensee, Tom Allman. 

He can be reached on his direct line at 

(707) 272-4924

CA DRE LIC. NO. 02208752

(Pamela Hudson Realty, Mendocino)

PG&E PLANS TO REDUCE LAKE PILLSBURY BY TEN FEET To Reduce Earthquake And Flood Risks

by Monica Huettl

On April 27, 2023, PG&E presented a webinar hosted by Ron Richardson, North Coast Regional Vice President, to discuss PG&E’s plans to reduce the lake level 10 feet by leaving the spill gates open at Scott Dam.… 

By leaving the gates open at Scott Dam, there will be approximately 25% less water stored in Lake Pillsbury, reducing pressure on the dam, lowering seismic risk, and reducing the risk of catastrophic failure.…

mendofever.com/2023/05/03/pge-plans-to-reduce-lake-pillsbury-by-10-to-reduce-earthquake-and-flood-risks/

SEASONAL SEAWEED WORKERS WANTED!

Our Seaweed Harvest Season is in full swing and we’re looking for A Few Good Workers with flexible schedules who would enjoy wholesome outdoor work.

Rising Tide Harvesting & Drying Synopsis: This year Rising Tide’s Harvest Season started April 20th and will end around August 5th. That's about 3and a half months. The rough schedule is 5 to 6 days of harvesting and drying starting on the New and Full moon low tide cycles. That translates to about 11 days a month. We supply Calendars to employees for easy reference. Harvesting happens at many locations from Elk to Cleone. Drying work and Take In/Prep is done at our Drying Facility on Simpson Lane south of Fort Bragg. Harvesting: each day 3 to 4 people go out approximately 4 to 5 hours during the early morning (5:30am or so depending various factors). We're usually done harvesting by 10 to 10:30.The pay for harvesting is $23 an hour. There is also a Harvester Loyalty Bonus given at the end of the season for Primary Harvesters who work consistently to the end of the Season. Harvesting is a total body workout. A harvester must be in good physical shape with good stamina and be able to lift 50lbs easily.

Drying: We dry our seaweed the same day it is harvested. This takes 3.5 to 5 hours depending on the species usually starting around 9:30 am. Drying work is generally done by a crew of 2 to 3 people. The pay is $20 an hour for the basic drying position. Drying is pleasant outdoor work that is moderately physically demanding. Dryers must be able to lift 40lbs easily. Sometimes Harvesters like to dry after a harvest. There is also a Dryer Loyalty Bonus given at the end of the season for Primary Dryers who work consistently to the end of the Season.

Take In/ Prep: Take In usually starts at 5:30 pm and ends around 7:30, sometimes as late as 8:30. One person consolidates the seaweed that has been spread outside to dry that day, moves it into the drying room, then they help with Harvest Prep for the next day’s harvest by helping get gear and supplies in the truck. Must be able to lift 40lbs. The pay for the basic Take In and Prep is $20 an hour. There is also a Loyalty Bonus given at the end of the season for Take In and Prep folks who work consistently to the end of the Season.

Drying (roughly 3.5 to 5 hours) can be combined with Take in/ Prep (roughly 3 hours) to give one person around a 7 hour work day with a break of a few hours between Drying and Take In/ Prep.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Email or call Larry Knowles, owner Rising Tide Sea Vegetables, lknowles@mcn.org, 707-964-5507

THE GREENWOOD STAGE meets the Cloverdale stage at the Philo store, these days, Lemons Market.

FEMA APPROVES INDIVIDUAL ASSISTANCE FOR FEBRUARY-MARCH STORM 

As of May 2, 2023, the County of Mendocino has been added to the major disaster declaration and approved for Individual Assistance to support recovery efforts related to damages from the February-March storms. The disaster number is FEMA-4699-DR.

County staff is working closely with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (CalOES) to set up Disaster Recovery Centers for residents affected by the February-March storms to sign up for disaster assistance. As more recovery resources become available, we will publish the updates on the county’s social media below. 

Mendocino County Facebook page and Twitter feed

CARMEL ANGELO’S BIGGEST TIME BOMB

by Mark Scaramella

Mendocino County bought the abandoned nursing home on Whitmore Lane south of Ukiah in 2020 using federal covid money in the early stages of the pandemic to use as a quarantine building for people who had no other place to be quarantined. It was good enough for that purpose and saw limited use for a few people accompanied by a rent-a-cop to report if people left without permission.

In June of 2021, desperate to do something — anything at all really — to get moving on the voter-approved Measure B Psychiatric Health Facility (PHF), the unthinking Supervisors rubberstamped Mendocino’s Mental Health Director Dr. Jenine Miller proposal that the entire Whitmore Lane structure be destroyed to build a gold-plated 16-bed PHF. At that time, Miller estimated the cost to be between $20 and $25 million. 

The grossly overpriced project was turned over to former CEO Carmel Angelo’s friends at the white-shoe Sacramento architect/consulting outfit Nacht & Lewis who proceeded to lard up the project with every conceivable costly requirement, knowing that they had a blank draw on Mendo’s Measure B taxpayer money at hundreds of dollars an hour. Measure B text required that at least a quarter of the sales tax revenues were supposed to go to mental health services, but none will (not that anybody seems to care) because nearly all the Measure B money is being gobbled up by the gold-plated Crisis Residential Facility on Orchard Avenue and the now seriously underway gold-plated PHF.

In a typical ho-hum/whenever Mendo-timeframe, it has taken Nacht & Lewis two highly profitable years to “design” the demolition of the old nursing home, complete with detailed architectural plans and drawings and extensive instructions. Locals who have toured the existing facility recently have told us that although the roof certainly needs to be replaced, major parts of the facility including the kitchen and administrative areas are in good condition and should be re-purposed for the PHF. But no, Dr. Miller, General Services head Janelle Rau, and Nacht & Lewis have unilaterally decided that such frugality is quaint and won’t cost enough. Better to tear it all down to bare ground and start over.

Last month the County published the detailed Nacht & Lewis bid package titled, “Demolition Of Existing Structure For Future Psychiatric Health Facility (PHF)” which calls for the “Complete Demolition And Removal Of Buildings, Site Paving/Concrete, and Utilities To Connection Points,” at the Whitmore Lane site.

In their highly engineered, detailed plans that took two years to complete, Nacht & Lewis even requires that the “existing sewer lateral shall be abandoned and shall be plugged with concrete. This shall apply to both existing sewer laterals where they are being cut off near the sewer main and at the property line.”

There’s a footnote that says, “The owner reserves the option to retain or salvage existing fixtures and materials. Contractor to coordinate prior to commencement of work.”

Although there’s lots of details about what is to be demolished, there’s nothing in the plans listing any of the usable items to be retained or salvaged, much less any indication that that was even considered.

The prospective demolition contractor will be required to:

“Remove and dispose of all plumbing fixtures.

Remove and dispose of all electrical fixtures, wiring and conduit.

Remove and dispose of all wall framing, finish materials and structural materials.

Remove and dispose of all roof framing, finish materials and structural materials.

Remove and dispose of all floor framing, finish materials and structural materials including foundation and footings.

And even “remove and dispose of concrete slab, underlayment & drainage piping.”

Despite the millions of dollars Nacht & Lewis is getting to “design” the “complete demolition,” of the Whitmore Lane building and the subsequent PHF: “the general contractor shall be responsible for assuring that all necessary permits and approvals with the city, county and/or other authorities with jurisdiction on the project, are obtained and paid for prior to beginning work or ordering materials.”

In other words, Nacht & Lewis didn’t even run their demolition plans by the Planning and Building department before going out to bid! That’s on you, Mr. Local Contractor.

Given the County’s experience with the grotesque over-run on the new Jail Annex facility project (also designed by Nacht & Lewis), the Crisis Residential facility (also designed by Nacht & Lewis) that cost over $5 million for a $1 million house, and the Nacht & Lewis spare-no-expense PHF project Mendo has signed on to, the PHF project is shaping up to be a giant money pit that will force Mendo to dip into its general fund for whatever Nacht & Lewis tells them they’ll need as the project slowly plods its way forward. And no one will be able to object, not that anyone would. 

When Mendo first contracted the well-respected mental health consultant Lee Kemper for a needs assessment back in 2017, Kemper recommended an eight-bed facility at a cost of about $7 million (at the time) because that would be more than enough to handle Mendo’s 5150s in the years Kemper looked at. Since then, Mendo has instituted the long-overdue crisis van which has reduced that number, and Fort Bragg has their own community care van program which has further reduced that number. 

No matter, according to Ms. Miller Mendo needs a 16-bed facility because that’s just how the numbers work out best for staffing. The empty PHF beds can be filled by importing mental cases from elsewhere and Mendo can be reimbursed for them. 

However, that’s entirely theoretical and far off in the future, and doesn’t account for the open-ended, gold-plated construction project that the Whitmore Lane facility is about to become well before any hoped for bed reimbursements might accrue. 

Don’t forget that the PHF, similar to the jail project that is currently at least $10 million over budget that Mendo had to borrow to cover (doubling the cost), has to be built to demanding state-imposed hospital-style “OSHPOD” standards, standards which Nacht & Lewis will throw into the face of any Supervisor who might dare to question the mounting costs. Standards which County Counsel Christian Curtis will tell the Supervisors must be adhered to in every respect down to the materials that the commodes are made out of.

Dare we even mention how much state and federal money is also being wasted on this project? Mendo spent almost $3 million in state money for the abandoned property, and now they’re going to spend another mil or two just to get rid of the building they bought only to raze it to bare ground so they can begin the process anew some six years after Measure B was passed.

Where’s the Measure B “oversight” committee on all this? Who knows? Nobody, including the committee members, seems to care. They’ve reduced themselves into a running joke, a random collection of bumbling, irrelevant bystanders. 

What started out as a well-intentioned mental health measure promoted by then-Sheriff Tom Allman has been turned into a bureaucratic cash cow for Nacht & Lewis engineered by former CEO Carmel Angelo and her grandiose attitude toward public projects. Once it gets going, future boards of Supervisors will be powerless to derail it or rein it in. Of the many expensive time-bombs planted by former CEO Angelo before she retired last year, the PHF is set to become the biggest of them all.

ED NOTES

JUST IN: Angela Pinches has been located.

HOOPS: “I thought Jordan did a really good job,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “I have the timeout stuff, I saw them double-teaming Steph at half court, so I knew somebody was going to be wide-open if we could just get the ball out, and Steph did a great job. He got the ball out of the trap and Jordan was wide-open, and pretty good look, and you know, that’s a shot he can hit.”

NOT to contradict a great coach, but Poole had ten more seconds to launch that shot, so why not wait a bit to get a better look. And a couple of minutes before that last heave he'd thrown up a weird, off balance left hand job that seemed to occur because he'd left his feet only to find Anthony Davis waiting for him in the hole. Part of Kerr's genius as a coach is his ability to buck up his players even when they seem to warrant stern criticism. Poole makes me nervous. He's either all the way on, or all the way off. I want to see Kuminga get a shot at taking away some of the size advantage the Lakers have. Game One was great, though, the whole way.

“I know everyone’s talking about the last three that he missed,” Green said on the May 3 edition of “The Draymond Green Show.” “Quite frankly, I liked the shot. Obviously, you tell ’em to eat up the space and take the three a little bit closer [to the basket]… but Jordan can shoot the ball and he got a good look at it. Yes, you want him to take a couple of steps in and get an even closer three. Jordan taking that three is not why we lost that game… I know everyone is going to point at that one play and say he should have never shot that three. Prior to that three, he was 6-for-10. You got a guy 6-for-10 that you know can shoot the piss out of the ball and you get an open three, you live with it.”

ADD to the history I should have known both as a Californian and an Americano is the true origins of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the real thing lost in the gringo-inspired irrelevance of Cinco de Mayo, an annual reinforcement of absurd stereotypes which, if they annoy me, must outrage Mexicans who know their true history. But until I read Kelly Hernandez's excellent ‘Bad Mexicans,’ all I knew about that period was the enmity our government at the time, in league with the utterly corrupt Diaz government, had for the handful of Mexican revolutionaries who did the spade work for the eventual reform governments that followed the uprising. Not surprising that Diaz, having gifted the great American imperialists of the time — Rockefeller, Hearst et al — huge swathes of Mexico and crucial Mexican industries, got together with Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevlt to hunt down and murder the Mexican anarchists and socialists whose agitation made the revolution possible. I had no idea that these ‘Bad Mexicans’ — magonistas after the Magon brothers — moved throughout the United States and the towns along the Mexico-U.S. border, encouraging armed rebellion and against all odds, managing to regularly publish their crucial newspaper Regeneracion, and managing to publish it on the run. 

WE COULD USE a latter day version of the Magon Brothers here in our doomed country where 6 in 10 workers have to go back to class to stay competitive as whole industries are upended by automation, artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. A staggering 83 million jobs will be nixed globally in the next five years as bank and postal clerks, cashiers, secretaries and other roles are pushed out by new technology, analysts predict. At the same time, say the propagandists of capital, 69 million jobs will be created in “emerging industries,” such as artificial intelligence, sustainability, and robotics. Still, that's a net loss of 14 million jobs, or 2 percent of the current global workforce. 

YOU CAN DONATE your discarded glasses to the Anderson Valley Lions Club. Old cell phones too. They donate this stuff to shelters for battered women.

SPEAKING of discarded glasses, does anybody else remember Dr. Gerber (?), the used-to-be Cloverdale optometrist? She was an absolute delight, peering through her own coke-bottle lenses as she had me read an eye chart neither one of us could see. I remember the doctor motioning me to a big bin in the corner of her office. “Rummage around in there for a while. You can probably find an old pair that will do you for now.” And darned if I didn't find an old pair of horn rims that did me just fine. I've got a pair now from CostCo that are ok for reading, but no good at all for seeing beyond a computer screen and a printed page. I can see my fellow citizens and the glorious vistas of Mendocino County better without my CostCo eyes.

HEADED FOR MARMON'S HOUSE IN CLEARLAKE

CONDUCTOR HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR HEAD-ON CRASH (Healdsburg Tribune, March 1, 1929)

Tracks Cleared, Ukiah Train Arrives One Hour Late

Frank Donohue, conductor on the Eureka express, according to numerous reports among railroad officials, is blamed for the head-on collision with the extra 184 south freight, which occurred four miles above Hopland Thursday, killing Geo. F. Bradley, the passenger engineer, and R. Landree, fireman on the freight. It has been reported in the same rumors that on Donohue’s person after the wreck were found instructions to stop his train on the Largo siding and wait for the freight. 

Several passengers were cut by flying glass and suffered more serious hurts as the two locomotives crashed head-on with terrific impact. Twenty-eight passengers out of 100 riding on the express were injured. The Northwestern Pacific tracks were cleared of the wreckage at 12:30 o’clock today and the Ukiah passenger train was able to come through, arriving in Healdsburg at 2:15, more than an hour and a quarter late. 

Passengers from Eureka this morning were taken to Ukiah and transferred by bus to Hopland, where they again boarded a train, arriving here at 10:15, instead of on schedule at 6 a. m. G. W. Cunard, engineer on the freight, who was seriously injured, was removed from the Ukiah hospital today to the St. Francis hospital in San Francisco. Hope for his recovery was held, out he was suffering extreme pain from a crushed shoulder and hand and severe bruises. 

The freight engine is the same which telescoped the rear of another freight train on the Northwestern Pacific tracks at Chiquita, north of Healdsburg, several months ago. Several Healdsburg people went to the scene of the most recent wreck Thursday night and upon their return report the head-on collision a far greater mass of ruins than the former wreck in this section. 

The engines of the trains were still on the tracks at a late hour Thursday night, just as they appeared after the crash, telescoped and in such a tangled heap that it could scarcely be told whether there was one or two locomotives. The accident happened on a double turn and at a slight grade, the freight coming down the incline. 

Both trains were traveling on schedule and the passenger was making good time. Under direction of General Superintendent William Neff, a railroad board of inquiry was to begin an investigation of the accident at Ukiah sometime today. Seven of the injured were hurt so severely as to have to remain in the hospital Thursday night, others being able to continue to their homes. Those still in the hospital were Frank Donohue of Sausalito, passenger conductor, his ear almost torn off; George McLeod, mail clerk, suffering from back injuries and a possible fracture, his condition serious, but not thought dangerous; K. M. Forbes, San Francisco; Wiley S. Francis, Eureka; Mrs. Jessie Lee, Eureka, and Mrs. Minnie Luke, Willits. 

Railroad physicians from Cloverdale, Healdsburg, Ukiah and Santa Rosa were hurried to the scene of the collision. An ambulance with nurses and medical supplies accompanied Drs. S. S. Bogle and Paul Quarry from Santa Rosa. Superintendent Neff immediately after being notified at Sausalito of the collision, went north and assumed personal charge of the investigation. It was reported that he would remain all night in Ukiah and today would open and officiate at the formal railroad board of inquiry which will fix the blame for the collision. 

Paul Bradley, brother of the passenger engineer, was conductor of the freight. He escaped with slight injuries. Word from the bedside of Mrs. A. E. Burnham of Healdsburg, one of the injured passengers, stated this morning that she was suffering considerable pain from her hurts. She suffered a wrenched back, a bruised head and body and a laceration of the head. She was rushed with others to the Ukiah hospital and was later removed to the home of her son, A. E. Burnham Jr., in Ukiah, where she is under care. Her daughter, Mrs. L. P. Enzenauer, left this morning for the Mendocino county town. Bradley, who resided in Willits, is survived by a wife and two children. Landree lived in Sausalito and leaves a wife. 

Two of the 48 cars in the freight were reduced to splinters and two others were badly damaged. The passenger train had five coaches, three of which were derailed. One passenger coach and two baggage coaches were the ones wrecked. By 11 o’clock Thursday night the passenger cars had all been moved to the Largo spur, but the freight cars were piled up in a heap on the main line with the engines. Two wrecking outfits worked all night and today. 

The injured have been listed as follows: Mrs. A. E. Burnham, Healdsburg; wrenched back. C. R. McLeod, San Rafael, mail clerk on express; internal injuries, possible fracture of the skull; condition serious; in hospital. K. M. Forbes, 281 G Sacramento street, San Francisco; injured about in hospital. Mrs. C. Bernheini, 2440 Sutter street, San Francisco; injured about head and body. Joseph Frates, Sausalito, news agent on express; bruised head and side. George Cunard, Sausalito, fireman of express, critically injured, one hand so badly crushed that it may have to be amputated; in hospital. Thomas Flattery, Hopland; bruised knee. Mrs. Jessie Lee, Eureka; shoulder broken; in hospital. Walter Pence, Santa Rosa; cuts and bruises. Charles Larsen, Fort Bragg; broken nose. Mrs. W. Larson, Fort Bragg; left leg bruised and hip lacerated. Mrs. J. R. Crank, Fortuna; bruised chin and leg. Frank Ciafroni, 1017 J street, Sacramento; lacerations of forehead and right leg. Mrs. Loeb Max, address unknown; bruised about head and mouth. Charles Sairgord, Hearst, Calif.: bruised about legs and head. Roy Johnson, Santa Rosa; left knee bruised. Francis Alkire, Santa Rosa; right arm injured. Mrs. J. F. Easlick, San Jose; bruised left leg and nose. Lloyd Johnson, Santa Rosa; bruised face. H. Eversole, Ukiah; lacerated shoulder. Mrs. T. Tillabaca, Fort Bragg; cut and bruised. Mrs. Minnie Luke, Willits; body bruises; in hospital. Mrs. A. Graham, Willits; nose and left arm hurt. Wiley S. Francis, Eureka; right knee wrenched, head bruised; in hospital. Mrs. J. F. Kesley, San Francisco; broken left arm. Walter Princy, Sebastopol; face bruised. Paul Bradley, Willits, conductor in charge of freight; cut and bruised. 

CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, May 3, 2023

RAMON ALCAZAR, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

GARY BALMAIN JR., Willits. Probation revocation.

BRAYAN BUENROSTRO-CORONA, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

HOWARD COATS, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

KELLY COOK, Fort Bragg. Burglary.

MARTIN CRUZ-TORRES, Modesto/Laytonville. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

JOHNNY DELGADO, Fort Bragg. Evasion, resisting, County parole violation.

PATRICK GUZZARDI, Redwood Valley. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent.

SHANEL HARDAMAN, Eureka/Ukiah. Hit & run by runaway vehicle with property damage, petty theft, narcotics for sale, false ID, resisting.

DAVID HAYDEN II, Covelo. Burglary, conspiracy, parole violation.

TRAVIS HOFIUS, Cloverdale. DUI.

TIMOTHY HURT, Covelo. DUI, loaded firearm in public, resisting.

MARCUS SLOAN, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

ALWOOD SMITH, Ukiah. County parole violation.

PATRICIA TREPPA, Redwood Valley. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, battery on peace officer, resisting.

BRADY VANHOUSEN, Ukiah. Stolen vehicle.

DAVID WOOTEN, Fort Bragg. Petty theft with priors. 

NAVIGATING IN SOME OTHER DIMENSION

Sitting here at the Ukiah Public Library on computer #5, tap, tap tapping away. Spent the evening in hell after diving into trays of donated cooked food; the discomfort did not subside, in spite of the medicine for overindulgence, until 5PM today. Feels like I am navigating in some other dimension. Maybe it was the two shots o’ Maker’s Mark the previous evening, but I doubt it. Joking aside, something is very wrong here, but I’ve no idea at all what it is. Divine intervention is coming up short! Meanwhile, have an assessment meeting at Adventist Health on May 15th. The zoom meeting to go over particulars about the housing voucher is on May 17th at Building Bridges. In essence, the body-mind complex feels terrible; very weak and spacy. However, the show must go on. Or does it? I leave you with that for your further reflection.

— Craig Louis Stehr

WHY REAGAN NIXED THE DOS RIOS DAM

by Marc Reisner

In December of 1964, California was hit by floods that were even wilder than the great floods of 1955. In three days, from December 21 to 24, Blue Canyon on the American River recorded 20 inches of rain. All the rivers were roaring, from Big Sur to the Oregon border and beyond. But the river that rampaged most was the Eel. 

The Eel rose 72 feet from its bed. It snapped bridges with surgical precision; it uprooted three-hundred-foot redwoods; it swept 50 million board feet of timber out to sea — driftwood which, for the most part, is still piled along California’s beaches. At Scotia, near its mouth, the Eel was carrying the Mississippi River in a garment bag; 765,000 cubic feet of water were going by each second. Every town along the river was damaged — some were never seen again. The high-water mark can still be seen along the Avenue of the Giants, displayed on a number of redwood trees. It is about three stories above the road.

The Christmas flood — the second “hundred-year" flood in just nine years — had Governor Pat Brown and his staff, and the Army Corps of Engineers issuing statements expressing profound dismay while they privately rubbed their hands with glee. Within months, the Corps, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the Department of Water Resources had locked arms as the State-Federal Interagency Task Force, ready, once and for all, to choke California’s untamed rivers into submission. Every river on the North Coast, except the Smith and the Klamath, was to get at least one big dam; the various forks of the Eel were to get eight. But the Bureau and the Corps kept getting into scraps over who was to build what first, and Pat Brown’s term was running out, so, one by one, the dams fell into obscurity. By 1966, when Ronald Reagan became governor, the only dam in which strong interest was still being expressed was the largest, Dos Rios, on the Middle Fork of the Eel. With twice the storage capacity of Shasta Lake, Dos Rios was the ideal addition to the State Water Project; it could deliver another 900,000 acre-feet, almost enough to bring the total yield, in normal years, up to the 4,230,000 acre-feet the state had promised to deliver. The site was reasonably close to the Central Valley; all one had to do was dig a twenty-one-mile tunnel through the Yolla Bolly Mountains and dump the water into Stony Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento.

Dos Rios had three things going against it, though the Eel had acquired such a black reputation at that point that none seemed likely to prevent its being built. One was the fact that it would do nothing to control the Eel. During the Christmas flood, more than 500,000 cubic feet per second had poured out of the South and North forks and the main Eel, which would all remain undammed. What did it matter if one’s house was under twelve feet of water or eleven feet four inches? Those eight inches at Scotia were the sum total of the flood crest that Dos Rios would contain. A Round Valley rancher, Richard Wilson, who had a degree in agricultural engineering from Dartmouth, proved it, and the Corps could only wish him wrong.

Another drawback was that the reservoir would drown a large Indian reservation and the town of Covelo — population about two thousand at the time — but that sort of thing had been done many times before. (The Corps had included the flooding of the reservation in its benefit-cost analysis, but had it down as a benefit because the Indians would get a “nicer” town somewhere else.) The third drawback was that the new governor of California, Ronald Reagan, wasn’t particularly interested.

Reagan, as a westerner, should have been a friend of dams, but he was growing more conservative by the hour, and true conservatives tend to dislike great public works. He also distrusted the Corps of Engineers — a feeling which the Corps, if anything, seemed to reinforce. Reagan's resources secretary, Norman Livermore, remembers asking the Corps to do two cost-benefit analyses — one using the 3.25% interest rate which the Corps planned to use, the other using the 6.5% rate that reflected economic reality. “When they gave it to me,” remembers Livermore, “I looked at the two columns, and the bottom line was exactly the same. I took it into a cabinet meeting and really got a laugh.”

For four and a half years, Reagan stalled on Dos Rios while the water lobby was practically battering down his door. The head of his Department of Water Resources, Bill Gianelli, a short, square man with a Vince Lombardi temperament and an American flag perpetually stuck in his lapel, was, according to Richard Wilson — who was the leader of the ragtag opposition — an “absolute zealot” in favor of building the dam. 

So was Don Clausen, the Republican Congressman representing the North Coast. But Wilson was a friend of Norman Livermore’s, and Livermore had Reagan’s ear. According to Wilson, when the governor realized he finally had to say yes or no, he asked Livermore to give him every argument he could think of against the dam. When Livermore was finished, he emerged from Reagan’s office and almost fell into the arms of Don Clausen, who was waiting to give Reagan his arguments for the dam. Clausen was a voluble and persuasive man, but later he confided to his intimates what had really happened during the meeting. Halfway through it, Clausen said dispiritedly, the governor had fallen asleep.

Wilson insists he got the story from Livermore himself, though Livermore, still a Reagan loyalist in 1984, said he “couldn’t remember” it. Whatever the case, in 1969, Reagan finally announced that he would not support Dos Rios Dam. In the press release explaining his reasoning, he talked about costs, poor economics, the frailty of the flood-control rationale. Privately, though, Reagan was upset about flooding the Round Valley reservation. “We've broken enough treaties with the Indians already,” the old cowboy actor is reported to have said.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

With all of the Sturm und Drang swirling around about what/which pronouns are to be used, I’ve decided to address everybody else as “consumer”... “excuse me consumer, can I get by you please”? They look puzzled.

RADIOACTIVE VAPOR CAVES at the Steam Geysers, near Cloverdale

CALLING FOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN’S RETIREMENT Is Stating The Obvious, Not Ageism Or Sexism

The California senator Dianne Feinstein is losing her capacity to engage in basic Senate business, yet she refuses to step down. It’s a disgraceful finale to Feinstein’s career, which has been spent faithfully serving the rich.

by Liza Featherstone

You’ve probably heard that California senator Dianne Feinstein, eighty-nine, has been too ill to show up to the Senate yet hasn’t resigned. As a result of her absence, the Senate on Thursday voted to overturn a critical Biden administration effort to control truck emissions. Feinstein has been in the hospital with shingles, has missed 75 percent of the Senate votes this session, and has not indicated when (if ever) she plans to return.

Shingles aside, there are serious questions about whether she is up for this job, cognitively and physically. The vote on truck emissions was fifty to forty-nine, with Joe Manchin, coal baron and ally of the death-drive faction of US politics, joining the Republicans, who said the Biden regulations were too “burdensome” on the trucking industry.…

jacobin.com/2023/04/dianne-feinstein-retirement-ageism-sexism-billionaire-class-emissions-legislation

DO NOT GO GENTLE… (on-line comment re senior medical care)

Senior Citizens are treated like scum by pharmacies like CVS and Wal-Mart since California passed so many restrictions on Schedule II, III, and IV drugs!

McKesson, CVS and Wal-Mart paid BILLIONS in fines for over-dispensing, and now they don’t like “addicts”…

Pharmacists spend half their time “counseling” patients who should just be handed their pills, and getting a prescription entails a ream of extra paperwork, verification, getting out your ID, and the lack of refills, transferability, paper scripts and phone orders…

Your provider now is forced to keep detailed records for each prescription, and a massive amount of time spent in record-keeping…

The Federal Government keeps track of every controlled substance dispensed, and any provider has access to this database! Without your permission!

Our Government spends nearly all its time thinking of ways to restrict our access to healthcare and making it more expensive…

Meanwhile, we are about 100,000 doctors short!

It’s a great time to be a Senior Citizen, let’s see, no providers, get treated like an addict if you get a tooth pulled and ask for a Vicodin, a system of expensive “Part D” “benefits” dispensed by contractors and insurance companies, and ever increasing costs…

My “Social Security” (oxymorons again) went up 8% and my Insurance, both “Secondary” and Medicare B went up for more than the SS “benefit”…

DON’T get old and have a “drug problem,” because it’s getting harder and harder!

I went to Inpatient Rehab for 28 Days to kick my “pain management drugs” over 10 years ago, and now I just live with the pain…

BTW, anyone stupid enough to inject “Street Drugs” should not be surprised to wake up dead…

Hard drug addiction is about wanting to die, so let’s not kid ourselves…

All drugs should be legal, cheap, and pure, and easily available. There’s just no other way to reduce harm, control crime, and lower costs for society and the people who feel drugs are necessary…

I asked a Doctor, once, “are drugs good, or are drugs bad?”

He replied “neither one”, “Drugs are necessary”.

NAMING HAYSTACKS

Vince McMahon Sr was the man who provided William Calhoun was his nickname.

Calhoun walked into McMahon's office, who marvelled at his size and remarked, "You're as big as a haystack! No. Make that two haystacks!"

When McMahon typed out the program inserts listing the matches for that upcoming card, he wrote "Haystacks" Calhoun.

THEN AND NOW

Editor: 

It’s irresponsible for Republicans to not to pay the interest on the national debt that they helped create. Forty years ago, Republicans championed the idea that if you cut taxes on the “makers,” everyone would benefit.

In 1980, the top marginal tax rate for a married couple filing jointly was 70% on income over $215,000. Today it’s 37% on income above $622,000. The capital gains and deprecation rates were also lowered. Before these changes, 60% of the American population was in the middle class, now it’s 51%. Then there were 13 billionaires. Today, there are 614.

In that same time span, the accumulated debt exploded from just under $1 trillion to $31 trillion. Under Bill Clinton, we were paying down the debt, then George W. Bush was elected. He cut taxes again, 9/11 happened, $8.3 trillion got spent invading the wrong country, the banks collapsed and, later, COVID.

Democrats are not above reproach, but Republican plans to balance the budget on the backs of the poor and middle class are cruel, disingenuous and impossible. There is just not enough money there. Increasing revenue from the wealthy has got to be part of the solution.

Tom Pareto

Petaluma

CALLING FOR THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF JULIAN ASSANGE on World Press Freedom Day

by Chris Hedges

The detention and persecution of Julian Assange eviscerates all pretense of the rule of law and the rights of a free press. The illegalities, embraced by the Ecuadorian, British, Swedish and U.S. governments are ominous. They presage a world where the internal workings, abuses, corruption, lies and crimes, especially war crimes, carried out by corporate states and the global ruling elite, will be masked from the public. They presage a world where those with the courage and integrity to expose the misuse of power will be hunted down, tortured, subjected to sham trials and given lifetime prison terms in solitary confinement. They presage an Orwellian dystopia where news is replaced with propaganda, trivia and entertainment. The legal lynching of Julian, I fear, marks the official beginning of the corporate totalitarianism that will define our lives.

Under what law did Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno capriciously terminate Julian’s rights of asylum as a political refugee? Under what law did Moreno authorize British police to enter the Ecuadorian Embassy — diplomatically sanctioned sovereign territory — to arrest a naturalized citizen of Ecuador? Under what law did Donald Trump criminalize journalism and demand the extradition of Julian, who is not a U.S. citizen and whose news organization is not based in the United States? Under what law did the CIA violate attorney-client privilege, surveil and record all of Julian’s conversations both digital and verbal with his lawyers and plot to kidnap him from the Embassy and assassinate him?

The corporate state eviscerates enshrined rights by judicial fiat. This is how we have the right to privacy, with no privacy. This is how we have “free” elections funded by corporate money, covered by a compliant corporate media and under iron corporate control. This is how we have a legislative process in which corporate lobbyists write the legislation and corporate-indentured politicians vote it into law. This is how we have the right to due process with no due process. This is how we have a government — whose fundamental responsibility is to protect citizens — that orders and carries out the assassination of its own citizens, such as the Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son. This is how we have a press which is legally permitted to publish classified information and our generation’s most important publisher sitting in solitary confinement in a high security prison awaiting extradition to the United States.

The psychological torture of Julian — documented by the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer — mirrors the breaking of the dissident Winston Smith in George Orwell’s novel “1984.” The Gestapo broke bones. The East German Stasi broke souls. We, too, have refined the cruder forms of torture to destroy souls as well as bodies. It is more effective. This is what they are doing to Julian, steadily degrading his physical and psychological health. It is a slow-motion execution. This is by design. Julian has spent much of his time in isolation, is often heavily sedated and has been denied medical treatment for a variety of physical ailments. He is routinely denied access to his lawyers. He has lost a lot of weight, suffered a minor stroke, spent time in the prison hospital wing — which prisoners call the hell wing — because he is suicidal, been placed in prolonged solitary confinement, observed banging his head against the wall and hallucinating. Our version of Orwell’s dreaded Room 101.

Julian was marked for elimination by the CIA once he and WikiLeaks published the documents known as Vault 7, which exposed the CIA’s  cyber warfare arsenal which includes dozens of viruses, trojans and malware remote control systems designed to exploit a wide range of U.S. and European company products, including Apple's iPhone, Google's Android, Microsoft's Windows and even Samsung’s Smart TVs, which can be turned into covert microphones even when they appear to be switched off.

I spent two decades as a foreign correspondent. I saw how the brutal tools of repression are tested on those Frantz Fanon called “the wretched of the earth.”  From its inception, the CIA carried out assassinations, coups, torture, black propaganda campaigns, blackmail and illegal spying and abuse, including of U.S. citizens, activities exposed in 1975 by the Church Committee hearings in the Senate and the Pike Committee hearings in the House. All these crimes, especially after the attacks of 9/11, have returned with a vengeance. The CIA has its own armed units and drone program, death squads and a vast archipelago of global black sites where kidnapped victims are tortured and disappeared. 

The U.S. allocates a secret black budget of about $50 billion a year to hide multiple types of clandestine projects carried out by the National Security Agency, the CIA and other intelligence agencies, usually beyond the scrutiny of Congress. The CIA has a well-oiled apparatus, which is why, since it had already set up a system of 24-hour video surveillance of Julian in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, it quite naturally discussed kidnapping and assassinating Julian. That is its business. Sen. Frank Church— after examining the heavily redacted CIA documents released to his committee — defined the CIA's “covert activity” as “a semantic disguise for murder, coercion, blackmail, bribery, the spreading of lies and consorting with known torturers and international terrorists.”

Fear the puppet masters, not the puppets. They are the enemy within. 

This is a fight for Julian, who I know and admire. It is a fight for his family, who are working tirelessly for his release. It is a fight for the rule of law. It is a fight for the freedom of the press. It is a fight to save what is left of our diminishing democracy. And it is a fight we must not lose.

(chrishedges.substack.com)

RANDY BURKE in England: "You may proceed now…"

IN THE LAST 15 years she had lost a lot, beginning with her virginity. She had lost two husbands, countless girlfriends, passports, bankbooks, wallets, one apartment, plants, a car, a dog, valuable jewelry; there were so many things. This was nothing new, only slightly different. She had lost so much it was just something else to mourn over for a bit. She took it in stride. There is a great art to handling losses with nonchalance.

— Cookie Mueller

UKRAINE, WEDNESDAY, 3RD MAY

Russia claimed Ukraine attempted to assassinate President Vladimir Putin when it flew two drones toward the Kremlin last night. Russia said Putin was not in the building at the time of the attack. Ukraine denied any involvement and accused Moscow of a "trick." 

Meanwhile, Russian state media said a drone strike caused a large fire at an oil storage facility in southwestern Russia near a bridge to annexed Crimea.

The alleged drones in Russia come as Moscow launched a new wave of attacks across Ukraine on Wednesday, including Kyiv. No casualties have been reported.

Zelensky is in Finland for a meeting with Finnish and other Nordic counterparts. Finland, which shares a border with Russia, became NATO's 31st member in April.

— CNN

THE SINGLE DUMBEST THING The Empire Asks Us To Believe

by Caitlin Johnstone

The single dumbest thing the US-centralized empire asks us to believe is that the military encirclement of its top two geopolitical rivals is a defensive action, rather than an act of extreme aggression.

We’re asked to believe many extremely stupid narratives by the manipulators who rule over us, but I really think this one might take the cake. The idea that the US militarily encircling Russia and China is an act of defense rather than aggression is so in-your-face transparently idiotic that anyone who thinks critically enough about it will immediately dismiss it for the foam-brained nonsense that it is, yet it’s the mainstream narrative in the western world, and millions of people accept it as true. Because that’s the power of US propaganda.

It gets more and more absurd the more you think about it. Their argument is basically, “No no you don’t understand, the US has been hurriedly surrounding its primary geopolitical competitors with war machinery because it wants to prevent them from doing something aggressive.” They’re like, “We can’t just have nations exerting military aggression willy nilly, that’s why we needed to move all this war machinery to the other side of the planet onto the borders of our primary strategic rivals.”

Can you think of anything more insane than that? Than all of the most powerful and influential figures in politics, government and media simultaneously claiming that a nation amassing heavily-armed proxy forces on the borders of their enemies is something that should be regarded as an action designed to prevent aggression, rather than an incendiary act of extreme aggression in and of itself?

I recently had someone tell me that the US has every right to expand its immense military presence near China, and to illustrate their point they said that if China set up a base in Mexico the US would have no business telling them not to. But that argument actually illustrates my point, not theirs: only the most propaganda-addled of minds would believe that the US would allow China to set up a military base in Mexico for even one second. There’d be kinetic warfare long before the foundations were even poured.

What this undeniably means is that the US is the aggressor in these conflicts. It was the aggressor when it expanded NATO and began turning Ukraine into a de facto NATO member, and it is the aggressor as it accelerates its encirclement of China and prepares to open the floodgates of weapons into Taiwan. If it is doing things on the borders of its geopolitical rivals that it would never permit those rivals to do to it, then it is the aggressor, and anything its rivals do is a defensive response to those aggressions.

This is how the US-centralized empire always acts. It continually attacks, starves and menaces nations which disobey the decrees it issues in its self-appointed role as the leader of the so-called “rules-based international order”, then as soon as its aggressions receive the slightest bit of pushback its spinmeisters feign Bambi-eyed innocence and pretend they’re just passive witnesses to unprovoked aggression by the disobedient nations.

But the empire is not passive, it is not innocent, and it is primarily responsible for the extremely dangerous current and emerging conflicts we are seeing on the world stage. The US empire is imperiling us all with its last-ditch frantic scramble to secure unipolar planetary hegemony before multipolarity takes over, engaging in freakishly aggressive actions on the borders of the nuclear-armed nations who challenge its power.

And I just think that’s worth reiterating from time to time. If we don’t keep reminding ourselves what’s true, these bastards will drive us all nuts.

(caitlinjohnstone.com)