Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, May 17, 2023

Warm | Roses | Christa Brodsky | FFA Dinner | Boonquiz | May Students | Shoes | Serial Meeting | Suspicious Tobias | Murray Deal | Dog Poop | Back-To-Lander Art | Kerouac | KZYX History | Obesity | Open Studios | Qigong | Money Trail | Letts Lake | P&F Party | Solve It | Xerxes Wagon | Yesterday's Catch | Housekeeping | Wavy 87 | Violent Place | Aunt Drucilla | Oakland Chaos | Organized Crime | Emotionally Warped | Be Aware | Biden Speech | Fertility Map | Durham Report | White Wolf | Rory Raccoon | Ukraine | Muscle Boys

A WEAK HIGH PRESSURE SYSTEM in the Northeast Pacific continues to affect Northwest California. Northerly winds are expected with dry conditions. Seasonal temperatures are forecast at the coast and slightly above average temperatures for inland areas. (NWS)

UKIAH WOMAN WHO DIED AFTER VEHICLE STRUCK TREE NEAR NAVARRO IN MENDOCINO COUNTY ID’D

California Highway Patrol did not have an updated status on the driver, who had been taken to a hospital for major injuries after the collision.

by Madison Smalstig

A Ukiah woman who was killed last week in a single-vehicle crash in Mendocino County that also hospitalized the driver was identified Tuesday by authorities.

Christa Brodsky, 41, was the sole passenger in a Isuzu box truck headed east on State Route 128 about 12:50 a.m. Thursday when it traveled off the roadway and struck a tree near Navarro.

She was pronounced dead at the scene.

The driver, Timothy Marino, 43, suffered major injuries and was taken to Providence Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital.

California Highway Patrol did not have an updated status on Marino as of Tuesday afternoon, CHP officer Alex Kimball said.

The cause of the collision is still under investigation.

(Press Democrat)

THE BOONVILLE General Knowledge and Trivia Quiz Extravaganza at Lauren’s at The Buckhorn is on the 1st and 3rd Thursday of every month. So this being the third Thursday means it’s quiz time at 7pm. Hope to see you there. Cheers, Steve Sparks, The Quizmaster.

AV STUDENTS OF THE MONTH!

Congratulations to the May Students of the Month at AV Jr./Sr. High nominated by staff! We have a double header with Fatima Cruz! Everyone will receive a $6 Mosswood Gift card. Well done!

• Robert Irvin, nominated by David Ballantine
• Mario Lara-Evans, nominated by Bublitz
• Natalie Lopez-Mendoza, nominated by Ms. Burger
• Fatima Cruz, nominated by Kim Jenderseck
• Ashley Osornio-Vargas, nominated by Kim Jenderseck
• Emilia Bennett, nominated by Sarah Farber
• Alan Mendoza (9th), nominated by Ali Cook
• Zoe Bennett, nominated by Julie Honegger
• Joaquin Bucio, nominated by Keevan Labowitz
• Fatima Cruz, nominated by Arthur Folz
• Lisset Ochoa, nominated by Howard

Take care,

Louise Simson, Superintendent, Anderson Valley Unified

SUPERVISOR TED WILLIAMS (writing on facebook) regarding the AVA’s Brown Act Violation Notice:

“Individual endorsements are a Supervisor's individual right to free speech. I didn't talk to any of them, but irrespective, it's not action that would come before the county… AVA's Brown Act Violation argument is laughable, but it puts their overall reporting in context of not understanding the basics…”

Supervisor WIlliams justifies the Board’s simultaneous unanimous endorsement of a clearly unqualified Supervisor candidate with no experience or record of anything in Mendocino County even before the filing deadline on the same day is ok because it’s “free speech.” 

Aside from the question of how improper this is, all the official on-line definitions of a serial meeting are make it clear that…

“When a person [i.e., Trevor Mockel] acts as the hub of a wheel and communicates individually with the various spokes, a serial meeting has occurred.” 

Or, “A Serial meeting is a series of meetings conducted through direct communications, intermediaries or technological devices to develop a concurrence as to action to be taken.”

Or, “A majority of the members of a legislative body shall not, outside a meeting…use a series of communications of any kind, directly or through intermediaries, to discuss, deliberate, or take action on any item of business that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the legislative body.”

Or, “The Brown Act prohibits serial meetings – a series of communications between individual members of the body, including through intermediaries or other means (i.e., email), that result in a majority of the members discussing, deliberating, or taking action on a matter of agency business.”

In other words no “action” needs to be taken (although in this case the action was the uanimous endorsement of one candidate). Simply a majority discussing it is prohibited. As far as Williams’ claim that the “action” didn’t come before the legislative body in their sphere of authority: Since when is attempting to influence a supervisor’s race as a group not attempting to steer public policy in the County the Supervisors are in? 

PS. Note that again, Williams makes no attempt to defend the endorsement other than claiming that it’s his free speech right. 

(Mark Scaramella)

WHAT WAS TOBIAS WOOD UP TO?

On Monday, May 15, 2023, at approximately 0930 hours, a UPD Officer contacted a suspicious vehicle parked in a parking lot of several businesses on South State Street. The vehicle was occupied by a male identified as 29-year-old, Ukiah transient, Tobias Wood. Upon contact, the Officer began conducting an investigation as Wood appeared to be acting suspicious and appeared under the influence of drugs. 

After a conversation with Wood, the Officer noticed Wood had picked up a piece of tin foil which contained suspected fentanyl inside of it. Wood was detained and the investigation lead to a search of his person and 26 more grams of suspected fentanyl was located on his person. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid and is a major factor in the drug overdose epidemic in the United States. 

The Officer continued investigating further and located a Winchester .22 long rifle in the back seat of the vehicle along with a Police style ballistic vest that had bullet proof panels inside of it. 

Wood had a long history of arrests and had prior felony convictions that made him a prohibited person from possessing firearms and body armor. Wood was booked into the Mendocino County Jail for the above-listed charges. 

As always, our mission at UPD is to make Ukiah as safe a place as possible. If you would like to know more about crime in your neighborhood, you can sign up for telephone, cellphone, and email notifications by clicking the Nixle button on our website ukiahpolice.com

LOOKING AT THE MURRAY PLEA DEAL from the outside, it’s clear that Ukiah police Sgt. Kevin Murray got off light, considering the charges and the known evidence. Your ordinary perp in a similar situation would be facing jail or prison time and probably be requited to register as a sex offender. Whether you call it a “sweetheart deal,” a “slap on the wrist,” or just a light sentence, most defendants without Sonoma County’s top team of Andrean and Co. for the defense would not get such a deal. We doubt there was any “conspiracy” involved. What we don’t know is what went on during discussions between the DA’s office and the defense attorneys. (“Attorney-client privilege doesn’t apply to the DA, does it?) In general, prosecutors don’t like to go to trial with problematic cases because the defense might be able to use motions and delays to exclude or minimize certain evidence and testimony thereby jeopardizing a conviction. If the DA doesn’t get a conviction at trial on at least some of the charges, they don’t get to come back later with more evidence. But it looks bad when the DA doesn’t explain how an obvious light sentence came about, especially in a high-profile case where the defendant is a (former) law enforcement officer. To this day we don’t understand why the plea deal didn’t at least include some jail time and sex registration for Murray. The DA’s credibility is undermined when such deals are unexplained and the public is left to assume that bad (former) cops get lighter treatment than bad civilians. It looks to us like the DA concluded that a conviction wasn’t certain enough and just wanted the case to go away. 

(Mark Scaramella)

SOMETHING'S HAPPENING HERE: New exhibit opens at Grace Hudson

"Back to the garden": Artwork by Mendocino County back-to-landers subject of new exhibit

by Roberta Werdinger

On May 19, from 5 to 7:30 p.m., the Grace Hudson Museum will hold an opening reception for its new exhibit, Something's Happening Here: Artistic Reflections on the Back to the Land Movement. Refreshments will be served, and Will Siegel and Friends with Les Boek, Steve Baird, and Ellie Siegel will play music. Featuring artwork in diverse mediums by 35 Mendocino County residents who migrated here as part of the movement, the exhibit showcases the enormous creativity expressed by each individual in a time when "do your own thing" was a popular slogan, as well as their profound collective impact on the culture, beliefs, and lifestyles of Mendocino County at large. The reception is free and open to the public.

When Alyssa Boge, Grace Hudson Museum Curator, and David Burton, the Museum's Director, set out to visit and interview Mendocino County artists and craftspeople who had been back-to-landers in order to form this exhibit, they saw a collection of individuals, not people who had signed up for a movement. "I was surprised at how non-homogenous they were," Boge says. While they all shared a value of living simply and close to nature, their other choices could differ widely. Some believed in living communally; others were fierce individualists. Some used psychedelics and grew marijuana; others wouldn't go near the stuff. Some engaged in political protest, including actions against clearcutting of redwood forests; others preferred to go within and shift consciousness. What they all had in common, though, was the creativity that suffused their daily lives. Burton notes that the very act of choosing to go back to the land was a creative one. Traditional crafts, such as weaving and woodworking, were revived and renewed. Thus the exhibit includes a plethora of mediums: furniture, clothing, instruments, masks, watercolors, mixed media, posters, and pottery.

"Every single back-to-lander we met was creative in one way or another," Burton says. It was not so much art for art's sake, as that a person had to be creative if they were to live out on the land. Anyone trying to install a water system or raise a herd of goats had to learn how to do it or figure out how to jury-rig a solution. Self-reliance is a close cousin of creativity. "If they practiced or never practiced any of the fine arts, their life on the land was itself a work of art," Burton concludes.

Something's Happening Here: Artistic Reflections on the Back to the Land Movement will be on display until Oct. 15, 2023. Several events, including a summer solstice celebration and a back-to-the-land artists panel, are planned.

The Grace Hudson Museum is at 431 S. Main St. in Ukiah. The Museum is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 4:30 p.m. For more information please go to www.gracehudsonmuseum.org or call (707) 467-2836.

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GRACE HUDSON MUSEUM - SUN HOUSE & WILD GARDENS

Join us Friday, May 19th, from 5 to 7:30 pm for the opening of our newest exhibition! Enjoy refreshments and live music from Will Siegel and Friends with Les Boek, Steve Baird, and Ellie Siegel as you explore the back to the land movement in Mendocino County through art.

The exhibition features over 30 artists including Ada B. Fine, Leslie Campbell, Doug Browe, John Chamberlin, Nancy McHone, Bob Comings, Linda MacDonald, Julie Beardsley, Dan Roberts, Robin Rule, Jacquie Lolich, Jerri-Jo Idarius, Laura Fogg, Jo Britton, Adriane Nicolaisen, Tigerlily Jones, Eagle Rose, Yoli Rose, Ann Maglinte, Judy Hope, Doug Volz, Carmen Goodyear, James Dahl, David Dart, Don Rodriques, Tom McFadden, John Cunnan, Kat Emerson, Kathy Shearn, Cassie Gibson, Leona Walden, Steve Caravello, Jan Hoyman, Robert Ross, and Christopher Crookedstitch.

KZYX

Nonprofits are vital to a thriving Mendocino County, and support for these critical organizations is at the heart of the Community Foundation’s mission. We have partnered with a local writer, Susan Baird Kanaan, to pen a series of nonprofit feature articles, including this two-part series on KZYX. Since 2001, KZYX has received $151,245 in grants thanks to the following funds: Community Endowment Fund, Community Resiliency and Preparedness Fund, Environmental Education and Conservation Fund, J-Olivanti Fund, Michael and Leslie Lebeau Philanthropic Fund, Pearson Family Fund, and the Pratt Family Trust. 

KZYX: The County Connector by Susan Baird Kanaan

What are your favorite programs on KZYX? Do you associate them with specific days and times in your week, or seek them out on Jukebox? Is your car radio set to KZYX? Do you listen on the Internet? Do you turn to KZYX for real-time information on fires and other emergencies? This first of a two-part article focuses on the origins and development of KZYX, its rich program content, and a few of the 100-plus programmers who create it. Watch for part II on May 26, 2023.

Sean Donovan, a prime mover in the creation of KZYX, has many stories to tell. In a recent conversation, he pointed out that “Mendocino County Public Broadcasting isn’t just a name; it’s an idea—a big one.” In 1984, when he and a few other Anderson Valley residents started imagining a public radio station for Mendocino County, no medium existed to enable residents across the county to talk and listen to each other and access the same information. Given the geographic and economic challenges, the dream of a sustainable, listener-supported radio station for Mendocino County was highly ambitious; some said it was impossible. It took five years from that first glimmer of an idea for KZYX to become a reality. 

As a first step, the founders held a public meeting in September 1984 to assess interest and elicit support from the handful of attendees. Thus encouraged, they formed a board, and Mendocino County Public Broadcasting was incorporated on January 12, 1985. 

Amazingly, over time Sean and others raised nearly a million dollars in seed money from local and federal sources. Finally, KZYX went on the air from its new Philo studio on October 15, 1989. The hard work of fundraising, relationship-building, satisfying governmental requirements and securing a broadcast license, finding a site, building a studio, and erecting a tower had just begun; in many ways, it still continues. 

Nearly 40 years after the idea first arose, it’s clear that the creators and sustainers of KZYX are beating the odds. Around the clock, the station broadcasts and streams news, public affairs, music, emergency bulletins, and more, some in Spanish, from local and national sources. A growing percentage of its 2000 members (reflecting an estimated listening audience of 20,000 a month) are sustaining members.

About 110 talented volunteer programmers curate 77 unique shows every month, with $90,000 in annual underwriting from local businesses. A bilingual reporter-cum-Public Affairs Director has joined the increasingly professional news staff. And the station’s new home base in Ukiah is coming into being. 

Community Foundation of Mendocino County <info@communityfound.org>

ARTISTS OF ANDERSON VALLEY OPEN STUDIOS TOUR

Memorial Day Weekend, May 27 - 29, 2023

by Marvin Schenck

Spring has sprung, the skies are blue, the weather warm, and for the first time in three years the free Anderson Valley Open Studios tour event has returned to the Memorial Day Weekend, Saturday – Monday, 11 am to 5 pm. So why not plan a day trip exploring the art and studios of some of Anderson Valley’s best artists while taking in the pleasing pastoral scenery of vinyards, pastures, orchards, and redwoods in our special valley. 

This year sixteen artists are represented at ten studios from Boonville to Navarro. Just about every art or craft media is represented, from painting, photography, collage, and printmaking to jewelry, ceramics, textile cordage, furniture, and boat building. Coming from the south on Hwy. 128, or the east on Hwy. 253, start by exploring the Boonville locations on Ornbaun Road and Anderson Valley Way. Then procede along Hwy. 128 to the north of Philo and finally on to Navarro. If coming from the coast on Hwy. 128 simply reverse the order. Our colorful orange and blue A-frame signs along the highway will guide the way. Visit our website, artistsofandersonvalley.org, for a tour map and to learn more about the artists. Additional maps available at the artist’s studios and some galleries, wineries, and museums.

The artists and studio locations featured this year in Boonville on Ornbaum Road are: (1) Kate McEwen, printmaking, (2) Martha Crawford, mixed media collage, (3) Jack Schumacher, Shaker furniture maker and boat builder, (4) Candida Sanlorenzo, woodworker. North on Anderson Valley Way are: (5) Jan Dawson, photography and painting, (6) Antoinette von Grone, painting and photography, and (7) Saoirse Byrne, cordage textile. In the Philo - Navarro area the artists and studio locations are: (8) Wax & Bing, (Jan Wax & Chris Bing), clay and porcelain pottery, (9) Beat Gallery (Michael Wilson & Susan Spencer), assemblage, painting and collage. Both studios are on Holmes Ranch Road. Across Hwy. 128 on Clark Road, sharing one studio are: (10) Marvin Schenck, painting, printmaking, and collage, (11) Colleen Schenck, jewelry and collage, and (12) Nadia Berrigan, photography and painting. Further north on Hwy. 128 is (13) Doug Johnson’s Pepperwood Pottery, ceramics. Finally, continue Northwest to Flynn Creek Rd. and signage to (14) Rachel Lahn, abstract relief constructions.

For the artists, opening their studios is an opportunity to showcase their creativity and share the studio spaces lovingly developed to foster their creation of art. Hopefully, you will take some of that creative energy home with special new treasures found on the journey.

EXAGGERATED STATISTICS FOR AN IMAGINARY PROJECT

(from a Press Release from State Senator Mike McGuire)

Just when you thought that the Great Redwood Trail rhetoric had already gone way to far, in March State Senator Mike McGuire issued a new press release going further, claiming that:

“The Great Redwood Trail will be a transformational economic engine in Northern California.

“Total annual benefits from the Trail: $102,568,000

“New recreational, tourism and retail economic benefits: $61,693,000

“Average trip on the Trail will generate: $64 in food/meals, $60 in retail, $93 in lodging

“New annual tax revenue coming to our communities: $5,490,000 

“Total new walking/hiking trips per year: 5.3 to 7.9 million

“Total estimated new bike trips per year: 900,000 to 1.3 million

“Annual trips generated by local residents: 4.1 to 6.1 million

“Annual trips generated by visitors: 2.1 to 3.1 million

“The above figures do not include local hiring, construction, materials, and maintenance of the Trail, and represent only the portions of the Trail in Mendocino, Trinity, and Humboldt counties. The southern portion of the Great Redwood Trail, in Marin and Sonoma counties, is being built by the SMART Train and will have significant additional economic benefits for the entire region.”

If you believe that, you’re either Ukiah mayor Mari Rodin or Second District Supervisors Maureen Mulheren.

PS. According to McGuire: “A copy of the full Economic Benefit Assessment can be found here: greatredwoodtrailplan.org/#documents

BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY

by Bruce Anderson

I was a delegate representing San Francisco’s Noe Valley to the 1968 founding convention of the Peace and Freedom Party. I lived with my young family at 24th and Dolores in an apartment that cost $75 a month. For the three days that uniquely odd collection of leftwing radicals met in the Richmond Auditorium to organize opposition from the left to the liberal’s war on Vietnam, I commuted from the city to the convention with a black man named George, so light skinned that without his Afro he would have been assumed to be at one with the white oppressors.

George had no last name. Or no last name he cared to share. We’d pick him up on Broadway and we’d drop him off on Broadway. He was always very pleasant, funny even, on the trips back and forth over the Bay Bridge. But one day, as a kind of warm-up act for Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers, George was transformed. Literally spitting into the mike, my fellow commuter said he hoped to see “every single one of you white motherfuckers strangled in your motherfucking sleep.” Then he said he wanted to cut our motherfucking throats and thin-slice our mothers, fathers, grandparents, and children unto the tenth generation. As an organizing tool, a rallying cry, George’s position would be a tough sell out in the world, but George received a standing ovation from the people he’d just said he hoped to murder.

I was so dumb I hadn’t even realized the guy was black. I’d thought he was one of those guilt-ridden white guys who’d spent a lot of time organizing his hair into an afro in solidarity with the black struggle. On the ride back to the city that night I made sure I was the first guy into the back seat. No way George was getting the drop on me.

I still wonder if George told us his name was George to test us, to see if any of his fellow commuters, all of us white, knew that “George” was the old time racist shorthand for black men working as porters on trains. If that’s what George was doing, we flunked the test, not that he was likely to have spared any of us even if we’d passed.

I never saw George after the convention, but I thought about him a few years later when the Zebra killers began snatching random white people off Frisco’s streets and murdering them so the murderers could qualify as Killer Angels for the Black Muslims. The Zodiac killer was also doing his part to keep up the Bay Area’s body count, and Big Z, ironically, said he, too, was racking up white slaves for the next life.

It was an unhappy time, children, and don’t you think it wasn’t just because your grandfather still tells stories about how groovy the music was.

Back at the Richmond Auditorium and the formation of the Peace and Freedom Party, Seale, the star attraction that day, announced for openers that he hated us all “as the white liberal racist dog-pigs” that we obviously were. He went on to say that although we were racist dog-pigs and a hopeless bunch of crackers, we must, nevertheless, “free Huey [Newton] by any means necessary.” Seale then asked, “What’s wrong with picking up the gun?”

Well, for one motherfucking thing the white racist dog-pigs on the motherfucking government side have a lot more motherfucking guns, big ones, too, and they outnumber lunatics like us about 500,000 to motherfucking one. Seale closed by assuring us that he had “hate in his heart.” He, too, received a standing ovation from the suicidal throng.

Eldridge Cleaver was next. The Black Panther “Minister of Information” also wanted Huey freed by any means necessary. “You’re either for us or against us,” Cleaver said, adding, “And we don’t care if you’re with us or not.”

The Roberts Rules of Order Boys, representing various com-cults, quickly introduced a couple of clarifying resolutions. One was simply to free Huey, the other was to free Huey by any means necessary. Oddly, the convention was very well organized right down to each of us being issued a laminated name tag. I still have mine.

Mario Savio got up to point out that “by any means necessary” could be interpreted as burning down Oakland to free one man. A couple of hundred maniacs leaped to their feet to cheer Savio’s reading of the resolution.

Robert Avakian, aka Chairman Bob, of the Revolutionary Communist Party, said Huey had to be freed, and whatever it took was fine with him. Chairman Bob compared Huey to a man being held by a lynch mob, and you wouldn’t stop at killing a lynch mob to free an innocent man, would you?

Yes, as it turned out.

The by any means necessary resolution lost 227-223, but when it was amended to read, “Free Huey Newton by any means necessary which would further the black liberation movement,” it passed by a 3-1 margin. The motherfucking white liberal dog-pigs had prevailed!

I was still pondering what I could do to free Huey which would also advance the black liberation movement when Huey was freed to await a new trial on cop-hunting charges. The liberals that the Panthers said they wanted to garrote had put up the $50,000 bond to get Huey out of jail. Then I read that Huey was living in socialist luxury overlooking Lake Merritt, had hired a bodyguard, and had beaten up his elderly tailor. The great revolutionary went on to murder a black prostitute and, strung out on crack, was finally shot to death by a drug dealer. The whole pathetic show, romanticized to this day by the amnesiacs at places like KPFA, was added confirmation that the decision of thousands of rad-lib hippies to move to the country was the right one.

* * *

ADDENDA

By 1967, as every other journalist in the country knows, the most intimidating effects of the Cold War were over. No radical gave the FBI a second thought except to sneer at them. The Peace and Freedom Party, at whose founding convention in Richmond yours truly functioned as a delegate from Frisco’s Noe Valley, all kinds of commie groups were jockeying for power. John Ross was constantly at the mike on behalf of a Maoist group called Progressive Labor, the Camejo Bros were doing their thing on behalf of the Trots and the goddess only knows who else from whatever other splinter group was up front. The CPUSA, “the ultimate liberals,” in the apt phrase of Fred Gardner, were always the most conservative lefties around, and about as “radical” as the Democratic Party of Mendocino County. In fact, the CP’s remnants, now organized as a letter-writing club, twice endorsed Clinton for President! 

WILL THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN! Meanwhile, who should pop up on the front page of the Press Democrat but the jolly mugs of Irv Sutley and his ex-wife, Toni Novak. The pair illustrated a piece by the paper’s uncomprehending political writer, James W. Sweeney, on the death of the Peace and Freedom Party as a qualified ballot presence in California. Sutley and Novak were among the party’s founders. (Me too. I still have my little plastic-covered name tag from the founding convention at the Richmond Auditorium. “Bruce Anderson, Noe Valley.” That event may have seen the greatest collection of loose cannons ever assembled in one place in the Golden State — everyone from Black Panthers to the commie cults. I vividly remember John Ross, later a writer for the AVA, representing Progressive Labor, constantly leaping to his feet to amend the constitution. It was quite a show. Those were the days.) Thirty years later, and much, much sadder if not wiser, here’s the Press Democrat’s lame brain Sweeney saying, “An outgrowth of the anti-war and civil rights movements, the Peace and Freedom Party never ducked labels like socialist — or even Bolshevik — even as political fashions changed and the larger mainstream parties grabbed for middle of the spectrum.” Huh? Three errors of fact and two completely erroneous surmises in one paragraph. James W. Sweeney was having a good day. First off, P&F always ran from the socialist tag, and not because its goals were basically left Democrat, but because it never knew exactly what it stood for as is evident from its wimpy, flower child-like name. Second, in all the years I was at least a nominal member of P&F I never once heard a single P&Fer utter the term “Bolshevik” except in reference to Russian history or as a little joke. And Sutley piped up to say, “We’ve had a good run.” Well, kinda. P&F’s Darlene Commingore knocked Bosco out of Congress and yours truly threw a big shock into Dan Hauser one election, but we never accomplished much except to scare Democrats, which is always worth doing.

LIKE EVERYONE I TALKED TO, without exception, I am euphoric about the creation of the Mendocino Greens. The first organizational meetings have been conducted with an absolute absence of the rancor and factionalism characteristic of action meetings in the sixties. It seems as if we have all learned something, or as a friend put it, “We’re all ten or fifteen years older, too, which helps.” Any “activist” from the Bay Area recalls how difficult it was to achieve consensus for any unified action against the Vietnam War. I remember vividly the meetings leading up to the formation of the Peace and Freedom Party and I remember even more vividly the founding convention held in the Richmond Auditorium. Chaos, fist fights, bitter disagreements, and constant hamstringing of general sessions by nuts who had mastered Roberts Rules of Order. Not that they were nuts necessarily, but the organized communist groups were the most disruptive, especially the Trotskyites, or Trots as they were called. The instant something didn’t go their way, they’d begin to disrupt the larger meeting.

* * *

We seem to be past all that, thank god. In a burst of premature optimism, I wrote that in ’84. The Mendo Greens were co-opted by soft Democrats of the Dan Hamburg variety and, internally, obnoxious nut cases soon dominated meetings, driving people away.

KELLEY HOUSE MUSEUM: On this day in Mendocino history…

May 16, 1903 - The wagon of traveling salesman Xerxes A. Phillips was broken into while it was parked in front of Switzer & Boyd’s stable, which was located on the northwest corner of Albion and Lansing Streets. According to the Beacon, “A box containing about seventy-five ladies’ shirt waists [blouses] was taken and about a dozen pairs of shoes were missing.”

A few days later, “the shirt waists were found in the clump of blackberry bushes near the foot of the incline by Joe Pacheco. The goods had evidently been thrown away by the robber after he discovered their character. The shoe boxes were picked up in another part of town, but none of the shoes was found. There is no clue to the robber.”

The theft didn’t deter Phillips from selling his wares. The Beacon announced his return to town about once a month during the remainder of that summer, and the following February he opened a dry goods store in Crescent City.

Photo: Peddler and Wagon on Howard Street, 1903. Photograph of traveling salesman Xerxes A. Phillips and Mrs. Adaline Chambers standing on the street near her home on Howard Street in Mendocino with four children. She is shopping from a four-wheeled caravan drawn by two horses. (Photographer: Martin Mason Hazeltine)

According to Laing Chambers, the children in the picture are Laing with the little dog, her sister Gladys wearing a cap, and the other two children are the Hazeltine children whose father was a photographer and had his shop across the street from the Chambers' home, which was on the northwest corner of Howard and Ukiah Streets (later the home of Dora Doolittle).

The corner of the house porch seen on the right belongs to the Perry-Hazeltine House, built by Ira C. Perry in 1882, and located on the east side of Howard Street just south of Pine Street. The empty area to the left became the site of the Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Building on the southeast corner of Howard and Pine Streets. In the background is a one-story house with a porch, now numbered 44920 Pine Street.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, May 16, 2023

ADRIAN BRITO, Redding/Willits. DUI.

EVAN CASTER, Fort Bragg. Paraphernalia.

CHRISTOPHER COWAN, Ukiah. Controlled substance, failure to appear.

NINA DUNCAN, Manila/Ukiah. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent, disobeying court order.

RANDY GIBNEY, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

CYNTHIA HUGHES, Fort Bragg. Battery, vandalism.

LAMONT JONES JR., Ukiah. Evasion.

JAKE LEWISKOOY, Ukiah. Petty theft.

ABIMAEL LOPEZ-LOPEZ, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Disobeying court order.

MARCIE QUESTIONI, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

MORNINGSTAR WARD, Highlands/Ukiah. DUI.

LARRY WOLFE JR., Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, county parole violation, resisting.

CRAIG IS PAID UP!

UPDATE May 16th, '23 Ukiah, California

Meanwhile, my annual auto-payment for $25 has gone to the Anderson Valley Advertiser. The zoom meeting to go over the housing voucher is tomorrow at 2PM. The head of the Adventist Health cardiovascular dept. ordered that the pacemaker be replaced in July with a more comprehensive one to better assist heart functioning. Am sitting here in front of computer #5 at the Ukiah Public Library tap, tap tapping away. Not identified with the body, not identified with the mind, Immortal Self I am!

Craig Louis Stehr

HAPPY 87th Birthday to Wavy Gravy! 

Hugh Nanton Romney, Jr. was born May 15, 1936 in East Greenbush, NY, and was first called Wavy Gravy by B.B. King at the Texas International Pop Festival in 1969. 

He has founded or co-founded several organizations, including the activist commune, the Hog Farm, and later, as Wavy Gravy, Camp Winnarainbow and the Seva Foundation. He founded the Phurst Church of Phun in the 1960s, a secret society of comics and clowns that aimed to support ending of the Vietnam War through political theater, and has adopted a clown persona in support of his political activism, and more generally as a form of entertainment work, including as the official clown of the Grateful Dead. 

As Wavy Gravy, he has had two radio shows on Sirius Satellite Radio's Jam On station. A documentary film based on his life, Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie, was released in late 2010 to generally positive reviews. Romney was awarded the Kate Wolf Memorial Award by the World Folk Music Association in 1992. 

AMERICA’S VIOLENT HISTORY

Letter to the Editor

Why are there so many shooting deaths in the U.S.?, AVA readers may wonder.

One possible cause is the fact that the U.S. has been one of the most violent countries in the world since WWII.

The U.S. sent troops into 12 countries — Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Panama, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Bolivia and Haiti.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) intervened in numerous countries causing regime change and dictatorships.

“It was a time in the 70s when the worst imaginable horrors were going on in Latin America — Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Guatemala, El Salvador — they were military dictatorships with death squads, all with the backing of the CIA and the U.S. government,” said former CIA agent Philip Agee in an interview.

The CIA formed terrorist Contras in Nicaragua. They sold crack cocaine in Los Angeles, according to Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series in the San Jose Mercury News.

Violence is the method to deal with adverse situations in too many U.S. movies.

In 2017, about 393.3 million guns were privately owned in the U.S. with a population less than 326.5 million, many obtained without background checks.

A recipe for multiple mass killings?

Ed Oberweiser

Fort Bragg

BILL KIMBERLIN: “Drucilla Barner was one of the first women to ride the Western States 100 Mile One-Day Ride and in 1961, she became the first woman to win the Ride.”

Drucilla was my aunt and is seen here on one of her many horses. She rode Arabians for the race on what was an old Pony Express route. She was 47 when she beat all the men and everyone else. Every time I meet a horse person they say something like, "She was your aunt? Oh my god."

DAVE SVEHLA: The Oakland Athletics went thru multiple stadium designs - some of them fantastic - and years of dealing with “Community Activists” (my phrase, italics), many of them Virtue-Signalling Grifters, and they STILL are moving! I guess chaos and flux at Oakland City Hall was the final straw! 

TOLERATING ORGANIZED CRIME promotes the cheap philosophy that everything is a racket. It promotes cynicism among adults. It contributes to the confusion of the young and to the increase of juvenile delinquency.

— Robert Kennedy

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I don’t get you people. Isn’t it obvious that ANYONE running for office is emotionally warped? This is one reason I don’t vote. I remember reading a science fiction story where no one could run for election. Instead, a computer picked out a citizen who would be president. That person, whether an office worker, an electrician, or a truck driver going about their business had to serve as president for 4 years, whether they wanted to or not. In real life, this concept probably wouldn’t work, but the story made a point. Trump, DeSantis or RFK, Jr. – the choices make me sick.

THE SPEECH THAT BIDEN SHOULD GIVE: ‘I’ve Changed My Mind’

by Norman Solomon

My fellow Americans:

I’ve changed my mind. With a heavy heart, I am announcing that I will not seek or accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 2024.

The poll numbers indicate that I would be a burden on the party’s national ticket next year and would also have problematic effects on many down-ballot races. It’s time to face grim political realities -- however unfortunate they may be.

While I appreciate the loyalty of so many Democrats in Congress who would like to run for the 2024 presidential nomination but would not consider running against me, I now realize that my insistence on seeking re-election has had important negative effects. And the longer I delay in announcing a change of course, the less time they’ll have to build their own national campaigns.

The specter of a second Donald Trump presidency is just too cataclysmic to allow any personal political ambition on my part to serve as an enabler to that fascistic demagogue.

I must acknowledge the fact that my capacities to defeat Trump are greatly diminished -- perhaps first and foremost because, seeking re-election, I would be representing a status quo that so many Americans are now telling pollsters they believe is on the wrong track. I have come to question the claims of my friends and boosters that I’m best positioned to defeat Trump in 2024 because I did so in 2020. To be frank, that’s malarky.

I won in 2020 largely due to big turnouts from African Americans and young people, voting for me in lopsided numbers. But, sadly, since then my support among black voters has dropped, and more than 90 percent of young Democrats told pollsters last summer that they wanted a Democratic nominee other than me.

In recent months, three of my administration’s decisions -- for oil drilling in the Arctic, a hefty boost for liquified natural gas exports, and extensive oil leasing in the Gulf of Mexico -- have further eroded my standing among environmentally minded voters and young voters in particular. I’ve been told that these decisions have disappointed many Democratic activists and seemed to show a cavalier attitude toward the climate crisis that I have repeatedly labeled as “existential.”

I now believe that an open contested primary is the best path forward for Democrats as we look toward the 2024 election. I will no longer stand in the way -- which should encourage Democratic aspirants to step forward and help assure a truly open presidential primary process. Such a process of debate, and then party unity, helped us to defeat Trump in 2020. Such a process can and should do the same in 2024.

I am known for being verbose to the point of becoming stumbly and sometimes even unfathomable, so I’ll leave it there. More than a year and a half remains in my presidential term. During that time, I will concentrate on doing the best job as president that I can.

It has been reported by many journalists that I am a great believer in fate. I will not deny it. But I have come to realize that fate should not be understood as fatalism or passivity. The Democratic Party will be running against an extreme MAGA Republican Party next year. It is time to discard illusions and get on with that monumental task.

EIGHT TAKEAWAYS FROM THE DURHAM REPORT

by Susan Schmidt

Special Counsel John Durham’s “Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns” trickled out yesterday afternoon, hitting journalist inboxes just after 3:00 p.m. A quick read revealed the following key takeaways:

1. There was no valid predicate for the investigation, and the FBI knew it.

From the report:

It is the Office's assessment that the FBI discounted or willfully ignored material information that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship between Trump and Russia. Similarly, the FBI Inspection Division Report says that the investigators “repeatedly ignore[d] or explain[ed] away evidence contrary to the theory the Trump campaign... had conspired with Russia... It appeared... there was a pattern of assuming nefarious intent.” An objective and honest assessment of these strands of information should have caused the FBI to question not only the predication for Crossfire Hurricane, but also to reflect on whether the FBI was being manipulated for political or other purposes. Unfortunately, it did not.

The entirety of the evidence the FBI used to launch its investigation of the Trump campaign is contained in what came to be known as “Paragraph Five,” because it ended up in that spot in a FISA warrant application on Trump volunteer Carter Page. The information in Paragraph Five came from Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, and was derived from an interaction he had at a London wine bar with young Trump foreign policy volunteer George Papadopoulos, ostensibly concerning Russia.

Australian diplomats told Durham that the impetus for passing the Paragraph Five info to the U.S. government in late July 2016 was the release of hacked DNC emails by Wikileaks. The entire case came down to an abstract of a diplomatic cable, quoted here in full:

Mr. Papadopoulos was, unsurprisingly, confident that Mr. Trump could win the election. He commented that the Clintons had “a lot of baggage” and suggested the Trump team had plenty of material to use in its campaign. He also suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs. Clinton and President Obama. It was unclear whether he or the Russians were referring to material acquired publicly of sic through other means. It was also unclear how Mr. Trump's team reacted to the offer.

On the strength of that tiny bit of information, the FBI opened full investigations into four Trump presidential campaign aides, seeking to determine whether they were “witting or and/or coordinating activities with the government of Russia.”

2. “There’s nothing to this, but we have to run it to ground.”

As soon as the FBI received Paragraph Five, Counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok and a supervisory agent rushed to London, where they met with an FBI legal attaché (UKALAT) and interviewed diplomats at the Australian High Commission. In a taxi on the way to the interviews, Strzok reportedly said, “There’s nothing to this, but we have to run it to ground,” as the attaché later told the FBI’s inspection division.

One of the Australian diplomats told the FBI team that “the Paragraph Five information was written in an intentionally vague way because of what Papadopoulos did and did not say,” and, because of their uncertainty about what to make of it. The report says Downer told the FBI that Papadopoulos “simply stated, ‘The Russians have information…’ He made no mention of Clinton emails, dirt or any specific approach by the Russian government to the Trump campaign team with an offer or suggestion of providing assistance.”

British intelligence officials, the FBI attaché said, “could not believe the Papadopoulos bar conversation was all there was.” 

3. “It’s thin”; “There’s nothing to this.”

A message exchange on August 11, 2016 between the attaché and the supervisory agent shows the Americans were as skeptical as the British.

UKALAT-1: Dude, are we telling them [British Intelligence Service-I] everything we know, or is there more to this?

Supervisory Special Agent-1: That’s all we have. 

Supervisory Special Agent-I: not holding anything back 

UKALAT-1: Damn that’s thin

Supervisory Special Agent-I: I know

Supervisory Special Agent-I: it sucks

4. The Trump campaign investigation was premised on “raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence,” and U.S. intel agencies possessed no “actual evidence of collusion” when the probe began

According to Durham, the senior FBI officials who ordered the probe did not look at the Bureau’s intelligence databases, or consult its experienced Russia analysts, who could have told them they had seen no information about Donald Trump being involved with Russian leadership officials. 

Nor did they seek such information about Trump and Russia from the CIA, the NSA or the State Department. 

“Neither US law enforcement nor the intelligence community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion” when the investigation began, the report said. 

Further, the FBI opened a full-scale investigation “without ever having spoken to the persons who provided the information.”

5. Sensational stories published in the New York Times in February and March 2017 claiming Trump associates were in contact with Russian intelligence agents were false.

Declassified FBI documents from the period surrounding publication of two influential New York Times articles include Strzok’s annotated refutations of the Times stories, which cited as sources “four unnamed current and former U.S. intelligence officials.” Strzok wrote that there was no information “indicating that at any time during the campaign anyone in the Trump campaign had been in contact with Russian intelligence officials.”

Durham’s report disputed the Times accounts that saying US law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted communications of Trump associates and campaign officials showing repeated contacts with “senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election”; that the intercepted communications had been captured by the NSA; and that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had been heard on intercepted calls. The Times has repeatedly said it stands by those stories, including as recently as February of this year when former Times reporter Jeff Gerth wrote about Strzok’s rebuttal of that reporting in the Columbia Journalism Review.

6. FBI Director James Comey pushed heavily for an investigation of Carter Page, starting in April 2016 when Page was a government witness in an espionage investigation of Russian diplomats in New York.

Getting a bead on Page was “a top priority for the director,” one intelligence agent said. The attorney who prepared the first of four FISA applications on Page “recalled being constantly pressured to move forward by FBI management.” The report cites Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report in stating that McCabe and Comey were agitating for lawyers to complete the Page FISA. McCabe told interviewers that, “Comey repeatedly asked him ‘Where is the FISA, where is the FISA? What’s the status… with the Page FISA?” 

The FISA was found by the IG to be deeply flawed, riddled with false information and errors. Comey declined to be interviewed by the Durham team.

7. At the direction of the FBI, confidential human source Stefan Halper recorded lengthy conversations with Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, in which each denied the campaign had any involvement with Russian officials.

These tapes were in the possession of Crossfire Hurricane investigators, who discounted their denials and ignored exculpatory information they provided in seeking FISA warrants. From the report:

The FBI chose to adopt an interpretation of Papadopoulos's denials of any knowledge of the Trump campaign's involvement with the Russians in connection with the DNC computer intrusion and subsequent publication of certain DNC emails as being “weird,” “rote,” “canned,” and “rehearsed.” 

The Bureau ignored assertions by Papadopoulos that assistance from the Russians would be “illegal,” and that “espionage is treason.” Agents were so determined to elicit incriminating comments from Papadopoulos that they pressed one of his friends into making 23 separate recordings of him, challenging him with “approximately 200 prompts or baited statements which elicited approximately 174 clearly exculpatory statements.” None of this information ever reached either the FISA court or the news media. 

8. Durham was highly critical of the FBI’s “startling and inexplicable failure” to investigate the so-called “Clinton Intelligence Plan.”

In late July, 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies “obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis” alleging Hillary Clinton approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against Trump, by “tying him to Putin and the Russians' hacking of the Democratic National Committee.”

Then-CIA Director John Brennan thought the information was important enough to brief the President, Vice President, Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI director  and other senior officials. On September 7, 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to Comey and Peter Strzok, but the two have said they don’t recall hearing about it. Numerous others at FBI were informed about it, the report said.

The report concludes the FBI:

Failed to act on what should have been—when combined with other incontrovertible facts—a clear warning sign that the FBI might then be the target of an effort to manipulate or influence the law enforcement process for political purposes during the 2016 presidential election.

The report notes in detail how false information intended to damage Trump – the Steele Dossier and the Alfa Bank claims – was provided to the FBI by people tied to the Clinton campaign. Had the FBI investigated what Durham termed the “Clinton intelligence plan” as it pursued its “Crossfire Hurricane” probe, it “would have increased the likelihood of alternative analytical hypotheses and reduced the risk of reputational damage both to the targets of the investigation as well as, ultimately, to the FBI.”

Durham added that if the FBI looked into the “Intelligence Plan,” it might at least have cast a critical eye on the phony evidence it was gathering in Crossfire Hurricane, and/or questioned whether it was “part of a political effort to smear a political opponent and to use the resources of the federal government's law enforcement and intelligence agencies in support of a political objective.”

Both Clinton campaign Chairperson, John Podesta and Senior Policy Advisor Jake Sullivan called the information “ridiculous,” but the failure to investigate it in real time had a lasting impact.

(https://www.racket.news/p/damn-thats-thin-i-know-it-sucks-the)

FOR MANY YEARS the white wolf in this picture destroyed large numbers of livestock in the Judith Basin. 

Al Close, who killed the wolf in May 1930, is shown here holding the carcass. His dogs are with him. Close was a rancher in the Willow Creek area near Stanford, Montana. 

The Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame writes that:

"Stockmen across the Basin swore the wolf possessed a 'superior intelligence.' He was wise to the smell of steel, they said, and could figure out whether or not a trap was cocked. “He’d come within 30 feet of a set trap, but he’d never get any closer, even if it were buried in the snow or dirt,” explained Al Close, a rancher and a trapper. “He’d walk right up to one that was sprung and use it for a fireplug.”

When the men gathered in bars, they swapped yarns about the wolf and wagered on how long he would last. ... Elva Wineman, the librarian in Stanford, wrote articles about the Basin’s “wolf war” for The Denver Post and Great Falls Tribune. The Associated Press picked up Elva’s stories, and news of the marauding wolf went national.

"Professional hunters and trappers showed up. On horseback and on snowshoes, with airplanes and with dogs, they pursued the wolf. He outwitted them all."

Read more about the white wolf at https://rb.gy/b616t

Photo courtesy of the Judith Basin Historical Society.

UKRAINE, TUESDAY, 16 MAY

Ukrainian officials have lauded Kyiv’s “unbelievable success” in reportedly downing all of the missiles launched by Russia in a major airstrike overnight.

Russia fired at least 18 missiles and nine drones on Ukraine’s capital overnight from nearly all directions in a high-intensity blitz, top Ukrainian military officials confirmed. All missiles were shot down by Ukraine’s active air defences. The missiles, including six Kinzhal hypersonic missiles fired from MiD-31K aircraft, nine Kalibr cruise missiles positioned and fired from ships in Black Sea and three S-400 Iskander land-based missiles, were fired by Russian forces from north, south and east direction in the early hours today, said Valery Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces.

“It was exceptional in its density — the maximum number of attack missiles in the shortest period of time,” said Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s city military administration.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko confirmed there were explosions in Kyiv. “A few — in the Solomyan district. And in Shevchenkivskyi, on the territory of the zoo, rocket debris fell,” he said.

Posting to Twitter, defence minister Oleksii Reznikov said: ‘[R]ussian terrorists have no chance of prevailing over Ukraine. Their weapons can and should be countered by Western ones.”