Mendocino County Today: Sunday, June 11, 2023

Shower Chance | Horses | AV Events | Redemption Day | Dog Bites | Mosswood Cafe | Summer Place | Lavatera | Bragg Demographics | Gamble Sentenced | Grassy Mound | Ed Notes | Ha Saga | Pet Tango | Old Guy | Yesterday's Catch | Young Entrepreneurs | Protecting Fishers | Rotary Park | B2 Crew | First Flight | Baseball Trivia | Marin Champs | Marco Radio | Party Music | Connor Novel | Recurring Dream | Expedient God | Good Times | Page & Storm | Civil War | Amber Alert | Record Abuse | Apache Nations | Ukraine | Dancer

ISOLATED TO SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS are expected each afternoon and evening across the interior through Monday. Drier conditions are expected later next week. Climatologically normal temperatures are forecast through early next week, followed by a period of above normal inland temperatures from mid to late next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 53F under more stratus quo this Sunday morning on the coast. The NWS has brought a 20% of afternoon showers back into the forecast today as inland thunder might make it's way back to the coast. We'll see. Our forecast for next week is for more of the same.

ANDERSON VALLEY EVENTS TODAY

• Free Entry To Hendy Woods State Park For Local Residents
• AV Grange Pancake And Egg Breakfast
• The Anderson Valley Museum Open
• Community Sing

(via AV Village)

REDEMPTION DAY

There will be a ONE DAY Pop-Up Collection event for CRV Redemption at 32400 Airport Road in Fort Bragg! This is a drive-thru location! The hours of operation are 8:30AM-5:00PM, closed 12:00-12:30 for lunch. 

Reminder: There is a daily load limit that is set by CalRecycle for all CRV Redemption Centers. The maximum weights are 100 pounds of aluminum, 100 pounds of Plastic, and 1000 pounds of glass. Customers that arrive with more than the daily load limit must be turned away. We also ask that moving forward that customers do not crush their cans.

THE DAY A BIG DOG BIT A WORKER IN THE VILLAGE OF MENDOCINO (Coast Chatline)

KEN: Yesterday about 5:30 pm, a VERY large dog, dark color with an orange collar, possibly a King Corsi or Lab, came onto our property and bit one of our employees. This was an unprovoked attack. The dog then left our property on Little Lake, went towards Friendship Park and past the dog park. We are trying to locate the owner of the dog to verify shots. If you know the dog's owner, please ask them to contact me off list.

PAULINE JONES: Unprovoked? Highly unlikely. May I suggest you not promote yet another animal being harmed. It is not so simple. I once got bit by a cat here on the coast and you would think the cat and owners were on trial for murder. Be civil and neighborly. Accidents do happen. I am betting on the big dog being agonized by your worker. Your whole statement is full of blame.

JIM HEID: Wow, you couldn’t be more offbase, Pauline. I was with a group of friends at the dog park just after the attack when the bite victim’s husband came to the park in the hope of locating the dog so he could verify it had its rabies vaccination. His demeanor was one of worry, not blame. Sure, accidents happen. And when they do, those who suffer from them try to recover, in this case, in part by verifying vaccination. You might take your own advice on civility to heart. Your whole email is full of blame.

DAVID GURNEY: The after-the-fact rabies vaccination series of shots are not fun. It doesn't matter who's at fault, dog or workers. What matters is whether or not the dog had its rabies shot. The owner needs to come forward.

DANEY DAWSON: Why are you blaming the human? The dog bit the human, not the other way around. Why would any sane person provoke a very large dog running loose? Nobody is proposing harming a dog, but dogs that harm humans don't have a lot of rights. Sorry.

KEN: Accidents do happen. Assumptions should not. In case others want to know more facts, here they are: The hospital said we need to find the owner so as to prevent a person from needing rabies shots. A dog loving human, inside a house, had a dog appear at their door and opened it to say hello. They were immediately growled at and bitten from behind as they tried to get back inside. There was no other interaction or leash on this dog. Yeah, the owner is to blame for this behavior and lack of responsibility. This is not the dog's fault. I'm trying to prevent it a) from happening again, b) from turning into a bunch of rabies shots and c) bring awareness to the village to be careful. Even the group of people at the dog park were afraid of this dog and cancelled their group walk.

DANEY DAWSON: The owner is responsible. I agree. Good luck.

JEAN: In some states, a human being (in the place of the dog) could be shot dead for less, not that that is right in any way. (And I love dogs and we have two.) The owner of the dog is at fault; the dog needs to be found so the human can have peace of mind and/or avoid the shots.

LIZ HELENCHILD: Agreed, all of y'all who acknowledge owner responsibility for training & controlling their naturally territorial, protective, & weaponized critter. I was attacked & bitten by a loose dog & had to take the whole series of rabies shots---bearable but not fun. Much empathy for the latest local victim.

SAKINA BUSH: Once I was walking up to the garden at the middles school. (Posted - no dogs on property) From across the field s stocky black dog came racing towards me, growling ferociously. I kept walking calmly to the garden gate hoping I could get to it before the dog got to me. It was snarling and growling in the most threatening manner, like it would tear me to pieces. I have never been so scared in my life. It got me backed up against the gate and the owner finally got there . I was not bitten, only terrified. I did absolutely nothing to provoke this dog. Another time I was walking on Lincoln st from my front door down the sidewalk past the neighbor's house. Their small dog barked at me with full on hostility all the way down the sidewalk, eventually biting me on my foot. Fortunately a small dog. Your assumption that all dogs are nice unless provoked is simply your assumption. Some dogs have problems.

MOSSWOOD MARKET AND CAFE has celebrated its 13th anniversary under the evanescent Pilar Eccheveria. Tourists may rave about Mosswood, and they do, but for us locals Mosswood is absolutely essential, an early morning oasis of perfect coffee and pastries, including the cafe's now famous empanadas, the work of the remarkable baker, Noella Sanchez.

A SUMMER PLACE

There's a summer place

Where it may rain or storm

Yet I'm safe and warm

For within that summer place

Your arms reach out to me

And my heart is free from all care

For it knows

There are no gloomy skies

When seen through the eyes

Of those who are blessed with love

And the sweet secret of

A summer place

Is that it's anywhere

When two people share

All their hopes

All their dreams

All their love

There's a summer place

Where it may rain or storm

Yet I'm safe and warm

In your arms, in your arms

In your arms, in your arms

In your arms, in your arms

— Mack Discant and Max Steiner

MARIA GILARDIN

I stole a branch from the Lavatera bush that grew along the sidewalk of a house on SF’s Potrero Hill and it had such desire to live that it rooted. I planted it in front of my house in Mendo County and now it is taller than I.

Last I looked at the location of my theft the mother bush was gone and the ground had been filled with cement.

MICHAEL BLAISDELL

Community Demographics And Fort Bragg

There seems to be general agreement with the idea that fort bragg has changed significantly over the past 20 years. The lumbering industry is practically done, the fishing industry has been sharply reduced. The large fires in recent years that wiped out large numbers of houses elsewhere in the state has brought a large number of new residents. The pandemic had profound effects; the number of remote workers in the tech and other industries who found that they could live and work here has gone way up. What have those changes done to the demographics of the area?

Here are some questions that I'd like to have answered. What others can you think of?

Residing within the larger 95437 zip code area:

* how many adults are there; 18 years or older?

* Of those, how many live within the city limits of the town of fort bragg?

* How many are registered voters? (I've been told about 2,400)

* Of the adults, what percentage were born here? What percentage have lived here for 5 years or less?

* Of the adults, what percentage are from families who have lived here for 3 generations or more?

* Of the adults, what percentage have graduated from HS, have college degrees, post-grad degrees?

* What percentage by year of the graduating class of FB high school leave the area to go to college or to seek better employment opportunities? How has that changed, if it has?

* What percentage of FBHS grads return here after graduating from college or working elsewhere for a time?

* What are the age cohorts in the area and in the city? What percentage are young adults, established (married, raising families), older adult, retirees?

The answers to the above and others touch on many areas of the community, not only the question of changing the name of the town. I'm curious to know how many have answers.

WILLITS MAN WHO MURDERED TWO MARIJUANA LABORERS WILL SPEND SIXTY-SIX YEARS IN STATE PRISON

Defendant Christopher Wayne Gamble, age 48, of Willits, returned to the Mendocino County Superior Court Thursday afternoon to hear the sentence he will be serving as punishment for murdering two men by means of death by firearm.

The defendant was convicted by jury in early May of the murders of both Ulises Andrade Ayala and Anwar Ayala Rodriguez at a marijuana site the defendant was operating on Sherwood Road.

Even if he were so inclined, the law afforded the sentencing judge, Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder, very little discretion as to the ultimate outcome and final sentence that could be ordered.

For the murder in the second degree of Mr. Andrade Ayala, defendant Gamble was sentenced to 15 years to life in state prison, the only sentencing option allowed by law for this crime.

Because the defendant personally and intentionally discharged a firearm to cause Mr. Andrade Ayala’s death, an additional 25 years to life was imposed, to run consecutive to the 15 years to life for the murder.

For the murder in the first degree of Mr. Ayala Rodriguez, the law required an LWOP sentence, meaning life in state prison without the possibility of parole.

The jury had found true a special circumstance in May alleging that defendant Gamble committed at least two murders, with at least one of the two being murder of the first degree. This finding requires an LWOP sentence.

Again, because the defendant personally and intentionally discharged a firearm to cause Mr. Ayala Rodriguez’s death, an additional 25 years to life was added to the defendant’s overall sentencing ledger.

Finally, the defendant was sentenced to the low term of 16 months — consecutive to the murder sentences — for his conviction for felony animal abuse involving hurting and killing roosters.

In total, defendant Gamble was sentenced to LWOP plus just a few months over 66 years in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The law enforcement agencies that developed the evidence supporting the jury verdicts and findings entered in May were the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, the Mendocino Major Crimes Task Force, the Department of Justice crime laboratory, and the District Attorney’s own Bureau of Investigation.

Special thanks are again extended to the Department of Anthropology at Chico State for their forensic assistance in the investigation, as well as to the Ukiah Valley Fire Authority for their fire investigation assistance.

The prosecutor who prepared the People’s case against defendant Gamble and represented the District Attorney at today’s sentencing hearing was Senior Deputy District Attorney Scott McMenomey.

ED NOTES

THE ‘UNABOMBER’' HAS DIED IN PRISON, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons said Saturday. Theodore 'Ted' Kaczynski was found dead around 8 a.m. at a federal prison in North Carolina. A cause of death was not immediately announced. Kaczynski was serving life without the possibility of parole following his 1996 arrest at the primitive cabin where he was living in western Montana. He pleaded guilty to setting 16 explosions that killed three people and injured 23 others in various parts of the country between 1978 and 1995. He had been moved to the federal prison medical facility in North Carolina after spending two decades in a federal Supermax prison in Colorado.

I'VE ADDED to the endless list of things I didn't know about the Anderson Valley this revelation from Pete Boudoures that “Cliff Ridge Road, which runs through Beacons, was the county road before Greenwood went in.”

A FACEBOOKER WRITES: “This bear has been hanging around our house in Philo. It’s been making a mess wherever it goes. Any tips to deter it from coming every night? Not sure if electric fence is a good idea considering we have a toddler. Thanks”

A SECOND FACEBOOKER SUGGESTS: “Get rid of any compost outdoors, and secure your garbage cans if they are outside. If the bear doesn't find any goodies it'll move on. Also a motion sensor light could be a big help. When I come across bears at night I usually shine my phone flashlight in their eyes and speak in a stern but steady voice until they leave. Also, could get an air horn or something else that makes a loud noise and surprise it. They are pretty timid animals.”

BACK A WAYS, a bear took up residence in the carport of a home just below the old Boonville Dump which, at the time, was a literal dump where all of Boonville and a big slug of Philo simply heaved whatever over the side, leaving the mounds of whatever to burn and smoke and fester day and night. This shocking situation, especially shocking given modern disposal methods in most places, lasted well into the 1980s until an elderly woman tumbled over the side, her elderly companion in a rescue attempt with her. The rather haphazardly planned pavement and bins we have now were installed in the aftermath. 

THE BEAR? I believe Deputy Squires, always a gifted problem solver, dispatched the bear to bear heaven. Bears got so outtahand at the Willits Dump a few years ago that the dump attendant hid out in his truck between customers. Those bears were relocated to the deep Yolly Bollys. And then there was the elderly Laytonville woman, a zealous anthromorph even more zealous than Jon Spitz, fed a whole bunch of bears at her home in the hills, not only fed them but shared her home with them. Relatives finally rescued her.

LAS VEGAS MAN FOUND GUILTY OF TAKING PART IN AN AMBUSH OF CANNABIS CASH COURIERS ON COVELO ROAD

Prolonged court proceedings due in part to the pandemic notwithstanding, a Las Vegas-area defendant who slipped into Mendocino County in September 2020 disguised with others as law enforcement officers to ambush two Southern California marijuana money couriers on Covelo Road resolved his case In May and appeared this past Wednesday, June 7th, for sentencing, the day before his 30th birthday.

Defendant Roy Ha, of Las Vegas, Nevada, stands convicted of attempted murder and robbery in the second degree. Ha also admitted a sentencing enhancement that he personally and intentionally discharged a firearm during the commission of the attempted murder.

To make his then fast-approaching May trial go away, the defendant accepted a state prison sentence of thirty (30) years, the stipulated sentence that was imposed on Wednesday by Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Victoria Shanahan.

As part of the negotiated disposition, defendant Ha also waived his appellate rights and all pre-sentence good time/work time credits that he normally would have “earned” from sitting in jail from the 2020 date of his arrest up to the date of sentencing, meaning just over three years’ worth of credits.

Because the defendant’s crimes are characterized as violent in the California Penal Code, the early release credits defendant Ha may attempt to earn moving forward while he is serving his time in state prison is capped by current state law at no more than 15 percent of the overall sentence, meaning he should be required by prison authorities to serve 25 ½ years of his 30-year sentence, absent deductions made by prison authorities, if any, due to in-custody violations of prison rules.

The law enforcement and other agencies that assisted in the initial response and follow-on investigation were the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, the California Highway Patrol, Cal Fire, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, the Ukiah Police Department, MedStar Ambulance, the Potter Valley Fire Department, the Las Vegas Police Department, the FBI, and the District Attorney’s own Bureau of Investigation.

The attorney who has been handling the prosecution of this defendant from 2020 to the present is District Attorney David Eyster.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Victoria Shanahan accepted in May the defendant’s negotiated guilty pleas and admissions. Judge Shanahan presided over what turned out to be a very brief sentencing hearing this past week.

* * *

BACKGROUND: FAMILY FEUDS

by Mark Scaramella (October 7, 2020)

Bail for Jesus Vargas, 41, and Roy Ha, the two men arrested for leading a ninja style armed robbery and kidnapping in the Dos Rios area on September 27, have had their bail set at an almost unheard of $2.5 million each, even though no one was killed and neither of them have an arrest record.

Mr. Ha has been appointed the Public Defender’s office and Jesus Vargas has been appointed an alternate Public Defender. 

According to witnesses, three or four men armed with assault weapon style rifles and dressed in military style body armor were seen fleeing the robbery southbond on Highway 101 that Tuesday in a black Chevrolet Tahoe and gray Toyota Tacoma.

Spotted by law enforcement on Highway 1010 the Tahoe lead police on a high speed chase down Highway 101 and on to Highway 20 and then onto a dirt road when the chase was terminated.

At around the same time a deputy conducted a traffic stop on the Tacoma and arrested the driver, Jesus Vargas, one of the accused robbers. 

“A short time later a few gunshots were heard and then a person was heard screaming,” according to the Sheriff’s presser. “Sometime thereafter, law enforcement personnel on the search perimeter were contacted by two adult males. Deputies learned the adult males had been kidnapped during the armed robbery and had been bound by zip-ties and their heads covered by some type material. They reported the Chevrolet Tahoe had become disabled on the dirt road and one of the adult male victims was shot in the back while trying to escape. The adult victims reported the two suspects fled on foot, were armed with assault style rifles and clothed in body armor. The adult male victim with the gunshot wound to the back of his shoulder was transported by air ambulance to an out of county hospital for medical treatment.”

As the helicopter tracked one of the suspects in the wooded terrain uphill from the disabled Chevrolet Tahoe, that suspect, later identified as Roy Ha, of Las Vegas, disarmed himself and surrendered to the SWAT team. 

“Sometime thereafter, several gunshots were heard which were attributed to the second suspect and the helicopter continued observations.”

During this time the helicopter radioed the SWAT team that a third suspect, later identified as Nathan Vargas, of Las Vegas, had possibly suffered a self inflicted gunshot wound but was still alive and possibly armed and dangerous.

But he wasn’t armed or dangerous. When the SWAT team got to him they saw that he had shot himself in the head. But the shot did not kill him. He was helicoptered out of County for treatment where it was discovered that he had put the gun under his chin and fired upward in a failed suicide attempt, destroying his chin, nose and face and blinding him, but not killing him. Nathan Vargas is reportedly still alive but his prognosis is said to be poor. 

Not surprisingly, given the location and the circumstances, Deputies soon flatly declared, “It appears the robbery and kidnapping were connected to a marijuana sale/purchase transaction between the involved individuals.”

Jesus Vargas, 41 of the Riverside area in Southern California booked on charges of robbery, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy Roy Ha of Las Vegas was booked on charges of attempted murder (the shooting of the kidnapped robbery victim found near the Tahoe off Highway 20), kidnapping and criminal conspiracy. 

Bail for both men was set at $2.5 million.

Further investigation has revealed that Nathan Vargas, the man who shot himself in the face, was the brother-in-law of a Mr. Cabral and the two were engaged in a large scale pot grow and commercial sales operation with another Covelo area man named Flores. For reasons as yet unknown, Nathan Vargas got in an argument with his brother-in-law, Cabral, and was evicted from the big pot operation. 

Possessing detailed information about the Cabral-Flores pot operation, Nathan Vargas decided that he wasn’t going to walk away peacefully. Especially since he knew, among other things, that Cabral had about $700,000 in cash — possilby proceeds, possibly not — from the pot operation.

Nathan Vargas, a Nevada-licensed private investigator, is listed on line as the owner of a business in Las Vegas called Tactical Security. 

So, using equipment and gear from his Security business, Nathan Vargas contacted his brother Jesus and his employee Roy Ha and convinced them to join him in a raid on his brother-in-law and former pot business partner and that $700k in cash. Mr. Ha may have enlisted to participate because Nathan Vargas expected that his brother-in-law would probably have recognized his voice during the raid. 

Investigators are continuing to look into the large scale pot operation to determine the source or “owner” of the $700k and then follow leads to a possible larger, even interstate, marijuana network. And perhaps why Nathan Vargas tried to kill himself rather than face the aftermath of his ill-fated attempt at revenge.

Meanwhile Jesus Vargas and Roy Ha are scheduled to be arraigned on October 14. If they try to hire private attorneys they may be subject to scrutiny about the legitimacy of the money they might want to use for their defense.

This complicated pot case is on top of two other high profile incidents/investigations in September: the pot-related Laytonville Home Invasion — whose alleged ringleader Louis Bagliere, 73, of San Jose is still at large —and the cold-blooded murder and attempted murder of two Ukiah gay men on September 23 by 68 year old Thomas Jones, the murdered man’s stepfather. This case is being treated as a family property dispute gone bad, not a hate crime or marijuana transation.

Although we’ve only experienced a quarter of the fiscal year as of September 30, artificially low law enforcement overtime budget allocations in both the Sheriff’s office and the DA’s investigators are probably already busted. And these cases alone will require weeks if not months of further investigation.

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Tango is a cheerful, energetic, and spirited young dog.

He sure enjoys playing with toys, and appears playful with other dogs. We think Tango would enjoy a canine housemate who's as happy and lively as he is, in his new home.

For more about Tango, head to mendoanimalshelter.com. You can fill out the Adoption Application and begin the adoption process on our website.

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

A THOUGHT FOR DON AND LAURA SHANLEY from one poet to another 

An old guy sits in an old guy's yard With a cat that' s an old guy also.

The wheel-barrow has had a flat tire for sometime now. 

An old guy sits and lets his mind wander with the shadows of the wild birds, passing,

Two paintbrushes are stuck together under the back porch. 

An old guy rests on a chair made of reeds that was given to him by Mabel or her mother 

An old guy sits and he thinks what he thinks and wonders, if he left the tether, dangling. He always wanted a trail-horse, he could keep him in a corral where the garage used to be. 

An old guy sees what an old guy sees

But the sun makes him squint in the morning and 

An old guy sits in an old guy's yard, where the grasses and the bushes rush for freedom. 

Love, Bill Bradd

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, June 10, 2023

IAN BROWN, Petaluma/Ukiah. Concealed dirk-dagger.

MELISSA BROWN, Willits. DUI.

DANIEL CARASCO-MUNOZ, Ukiah. Marijuana cultivation, resisting.

NATALI CARRASCO-SANTANA, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, domestic abuse.

DANIEL HEMANN, Fort Bragg. Domestic abuse, elder abuse with great bodily injury or death, criminal threats, witness intimidation.

AMY HOLLAND, Willits. Failure to appear.

LAMONT JONES JR., Ukiah. DUI, county parole violation.

JOHN ROLEN, Caspar. Disorderly conduct-drugs&alcohol.

SAMUEL SANCHEZ, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-drugs&alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

JOSEPH SCHRUM, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-drugs&alcohol.

ERROL WASSON, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-drugs&alcohol.

SAVE THE WEST COAST FISHER! (Thought I saw one once up in the west hills of Boonville, but don't know for sure)

In a legal victory, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today agreed to reconsider whether West Coast fishers in northern California and southern Oregon warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act. 

Fishers are relatives of mink, otters and wolverines, and live in old-growth forests. The Service has until Aug. 21, 2025, to decide whether to protect them. 

“It’s great news that the Service is reconsidering its refusal to protect the elusive Pacific fisher, but waiting more than two decades to provide these protections is indefensible,” said Brian Segee, endangered species legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. 

“These fierce, plush-furred forest weasels have few natural predators, but they’re no match for people logging and poisoning their old-growth habitat. Protecting them under the Endangered Species Act is more important now than ever.” 

Organizations first petitioned the Service to grant West Coast fishers endangered species protection in 2000, leading to a 2004 determination by the agency that the fisher should be listed as threatened throughout its West Coast range. But rather than provide this protection the Service delayed, arguing there was a lack of resources. 

The agency annually reaffirmed the fisher’s imperilment for more than a decade until 2016, when it abruptly reversed course and denied protection. After the groups successfully challenged that decision, in 2020 the Service granted protections to fishers in the southern Sierra Nevada but nowhere else. The current lawsuit challenges the denial of protections in the rest of the fisher’s habitat. 

“This is our last, best chance to prevent extinction,” said George Sexton of Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center. “The combination of logging, rodenticides and fires have pushed fishers to the brink.” 

West Coast Fishers once roamed forests from British Columbia to Southern California but now their U.S. range is limited to two native populations in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains, plus another in Northern California and southwestern Oregon. There are also small, reintroduced populations in the central Sierra Nevada, in the southern Oregon Cascades, and in the Olympic Peninsula, Mt. Rainier and the North Cascades in Washington state. The Northern California-Southwestern Oregon population — centered in the biodiverse Klamath-Siskiyou Mountains region — is the largest remaining one but is severely threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation caused by logging, high-severity fire and post-fire salvage logging. 

“For over 20 years, we have fought for the West Coast fisher and its imperiled ecosystems. Our organizations won’t stop until the species is afforded the full legal protection that it deserves,” said Tom Wheeler, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center.

(SFgate)

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

YOU'RE TOO OLD AND GENTLEMANLY FOR BUILDING BRIDGES, CRAIG

Insane Postmodernism and the Implosion of the American Social Experiment

Warmest spiritual greetings, Following an evening at Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center in Ukiah, California, which featured the usual weekend assemblage of junkies and their drug dealers, hardcore vodka bingers, and the fentanyl freaks bragging that they had the "good shit" that did not contain xylazine (an animal tranquilizer), all of whom congregated in the middle of South State Street at Observatory Avenue, screaming obscenities at one another while arguing with the one staff person on the B2 Crew who went out there to request that they get away from the building's open windows, since those inside on shelter beds were wishing to sleep at 4 in the morning, I performed morning ablutions, and then dressed, heading out to check Lotto tix and then enjoy a morning repast at the Ukiah Food Co-op. This led to a relaxed amble to the Ukiah Public Library, wherein I am presently on computer #1 tap, tap tapping away. Aside from the stupidity and general insanity of my present situation in the failed American experiment with freedom and democracy, there is still a dental cleaning upcoming on June 16th, and the switch out of the Medtronic Pacemaker for an ICD at Adventist Health in St. Helena in July. The doctor there is away for the month of June, but will telephone an appointment time. Tomorrow and Monday the Ukiah Public Library is closed. I have nothing to do. Unless something intelligent happens, it will be another two days of pointlessly walking around the Mendocino County seat, waiting for Tuesday when the library reopens. I am contactable at 1045 South State Street, Ukiah, CA 95482. The B2 Crew accepts telephone calls for me at (707) 234-3270. Email is craiglouisstehr@gmail.com. Send money to: PayPal.me/craiglouisstehr.

Yours for Self Realization, Craig Louis Stehr Saturday June Tenth

MIKE KALANTARIAN NOTES: Baseball trivia — Did you know that a pitcher can also DH while pitching? I didn't, until I noticed Ohtani did it on Friday. I find it interesting, as the player is playing two positions at the same time.

WEST MARIN CHAMPS

MEMO OF THE AIR: Who put the bomp?

“Is it possible that, after all, history has no sense, that it teaches us nothing, and that the immense past was only the weary rehearsal of mistakes that the future is destined to make on an ever larger stage and scale?” —Ariel Durant

Here's the recording of last night's (2023-06-09) eight-hour-long Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org: https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0544

Email your written work on any subject and I'll read it on the very next Memo of the Air.

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

Davide (say da-VEE'd) Milani - Who put the bomp?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqaI4WTAQFM

Show me a car anywhere now with the pizazz of this 1954 Buick Wildcat.

https://www.vintag.es/2023/06/1954-buick-wildcat-ii.html

W.C. Fields' juggling talents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAen5WFCFcs

And food of the past. (via Neatorama)

https://www.boredpanda.com/weird-old-food-pics/

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

OH GOD, THE SUN GOES: David Connor’s Mind-Expanding Novel

by Jonah Raskin

“I was definitely messing with readers a bit. I like stories that disorient you and force you to find your own road map home.”

– novelist David Connor

The contemporary experimental American novel takes readers to strange places, though that’s what experimental novels have done ever since the genre was invented in Europe in the pages of Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe. David Connor’s new work of fiction, Oh God, the Sun Goes (Melville House; $17.99), begins: “It’s as simple as it goes, the sun is missing.” For the next 200 or so pages—with the sun a fugitive from its appointed place in the sky—the novel reads like an acid trip into surreal territory with familiar place names such as Phoenix, Arizona.

Novelist Jonathan Lethem, the author of The Fortress of Solitude, says that Oh God, the Sun Goes, is “a debut announcing a writer who’ll seemingly follow his intuitions anywhere, with blazing results.”

During a phone interview, Connor told me, “I was definitely messing with readers a bit.” He added, “I like stories that disorient you and force you to find your own road map home.”

While I threw out most of the questions during the interview, Connor asked me, “What do you think about Cornel West, the philosopher and public intellectual, running for president?” We agreed that West won’t win, but that he could raise critical issues. “He might push the Democratic platform to the Left,” Connor said. “And he’s an amazing speaker.”

Connor wrote most of his novel in California, where he studied at Pomona College and the California Institute of the Arts. Some of the characters in Oh God appeared first in a short story with the same title as the novel, which might be called science fiction of the kind that pushes readers to the edge of consciousness and beyond.

Does the narrative have a happy ending? That depends on how much or how little sun you crave.

Melville House has made a name for itself by publishing experimental fiction, such as Jinwoo Chong’s kinetic first novel, Flux. Now, the house has done it again with Oh God.

Connor’s novel is often funny with quirky characters like the man who goes to sleep with an egg on his head and fries it after he wakes in the morning. Given the novel’s mind games, it’s somehow satisfying to read on the book’s back cover that the author, David Connor, works as a research assistant at Montreal’s Lady Davis Institute where topics such as aging, memory and psychedelics are explored. “As the resident writer I help scientists find words for their ideas,” Connor told me.

Predictably, inserts his protagonist in a real world laboratory and performs experiments on his mind and body. “He’s fucked up in all kinds of ways,” Connor said. “If I were a doctor analyzing him I might say he has broken through semantic associations and that his life doesn’t make the kind of sense it once did.”

The protagonist, who also serves as the narrator, calls himself “Mr. Blue.” Soon after the sun disappears, he goes on the road alone and without a companion—no Sancho Panza to Don Quixote and no Dean Moriarity to Sal Paradise. His journey takes him across the kind of desert that Hunter S. Thompson explores in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. None of the chapters seem to take place in Vegas, but the setting isn’t far away from Vegas. Mr. Blue stops in Tempe and Phoenix, Arizona “a city that asks you to forget it,” Connor writes. That’s for sure. Mr. Blue also ventures into an environment where he moves “into the tactile geometry of emotional space.” It’s spooky.

At Ocean Beach in San Francisco where I live, the sun has disappeared, except for rare moments over the last four months. One might suspect it has vanished for good, or that it has taken an extended vacation. With global climate change breathing down our collective neck anything is possible, including the prolonged absence of the sun.

Mr. Blue travels to a place called “Sun City,” which promotes itself as “The Original Fun City!” He soon learns that there are over one hundred Sun cities in California and the West. It’s a world that mass produces and reproduces itself ad infinitum.

Oh God challenges readers to make sense of a narrator who says he has “forgotten most things.” Indeed, he says he no longer understands words, a condition which might be explored at Lady Davis Institute in Montreal.

In the chapter titled “Phoenix, Arizona,” one of the characters tells Mr. Blue that white settlers built the city on the ruins of the indigenous Hohoham civilization. The author clearly cares about the past and wants readers to remember the Hohoham. He also wants readers to remember Del Webb, a mega contractor and a crazy settler colonialist, who tells Blue, “Who needs the sun when you have Sun City?” Surprisingly, Del Webb is a real person. Google him and see.

Webb wants to build a city on the sun itself, a project that Elon Musk might like to undertake. (The quintessential imperialist, Cecil Rhodes, said he wanted to “annex the planets.”) Near the end of the novel, Blue wonders, “might a new order emerge?” He sounds hopeful. In a diner in Tempe, Arizona, he sits down in a booth, drinks coffee and prepares himself to eat a normal American breakfast of eggs, bacon and potatoes with ketchup toast, honey and jam.

He seems to be back in a known and familiar universe. Characters who appear at the start reappear at the end and provide a sense of continuity. But the novel pivots toward the strange again. Readers might be wiser at the end of the road than at the start, or maybe they’ll still be without a firm footing.

If the sun has gone, does that mean God is dead? The novel doesn’t answer that question explicitly. Indeed, it poses more questions than one can answer in a work of fiction. “Oh God is meant to be expansive, not reductive,” Connor says. “It’s about the ineffable.”

If you enjoy literary fiction that bends genres and undermines conventional plots, Connor’s novel is probably for you.

“IT IS EXPEDIENT that gods should exist, and as it is expedient let us deem that gods exist. 

— Ovid

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I think that the display in CA of parents busting up a PRIDE event to protect kids shows that a return of vigilantism is just around the corner. Also, people who are sick to death of being robbed and police unable to do anything about it.

There are going to be battles on the streets and in the school board rooms and local municipalities soon, that is for sure. 

Meanwhile, the younger generation is becoming literally retarded. That’s going to really help.

BETTY PAGE & TEMPEST STORM

MAGAS THREATENING CIVIL WAR 

Trump's Supporters are Threatening Civil War

’We Need to Start Killing’: Trump's Far-Right Supporters Are Threatening Civil War

by David Gilbert

Within minutes of Trump’s indictment, supporters lit up social media platforms with violent threats and calls for civil war.

In what is becoming a now all-too-familiar trend, former President Donald Trump’s far-right supporters have threatened civil war after news broke Thursday that the former president was indicted for allegedly taking classified documents from the White House without permission.

“We need to start killing these traitorous fuckstains,” wrote one Trump supporter on The Donald, a rabidly pro-Trump message board that played a key role in planning the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Another user added: “It's not gonna stop until bodies start stacking up. We are not civilly represented anymore and they'll come for us next. Some of us, they already have.”

Trump has been indicted on seven counts following an investigation by special counsel Jack Smith into classified documents taken by Trump from the White House in 2021. The indictments have not been released, but Trump’s attorney Jim Trusty told CNN that his client is facing a charge under the Espionage Act, as well as “charges of obstruction of justice, destruction or falsification of records, conspiracy and false statements.”

Trump announced the news himself on Truth Social, writing that he had been indicted in the “Boxes Hoax” case, as he put it, and said he would be arraigned on Tuesday at Florida Southern District Courthouse in Miami. Within minutes, his supporters lit up social media platforms with violent threats and calls for civil war, according to research from VICE News and Advance Democracy, a nonpartisan think tank that tracks online extremism.

Trump supporters are making specific threats too. In one post on The Donald titled, “A little bit about Merrick Garland, his wife, his daughters,” a user shared a link to an article about the attorney general’s children.

Under the post, another user replied: “His children are fair game as far as I’m concerned.”

In a post about the special counsel conducting the probe, one user on The Donald wrote: “Jack Smith should be arrested the minute he steps foot in the red state of Florida.”

In addition to threats of violence against lawmakers and politicians, many were also calling for a civil war.

“Perhaps it’s time for that Civil War that the damn DemoKKKrats have been trying to start for years now,” a member of The Donald wrote. Another, referencing former President Barack Obama and former secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said: “FACT: OUR FOREFATHERS WOULD HAVE HUNG THESE TWO FOR TREASON.”

Others on similar social media platforms made general calls for an armed uprising. “The entire Republican Party should flood the courthouse and demand real justice here,” one supporter wrote on Truth Social. It wasn’t just anonymous users saying this, however: Right-wing talk show host Charlie Kirk called on all Trump supporters to descend on Miami on Tuesday to protest the indictment.

“This is the JFK assassinaton all over again,” right-wing personality and Pizzagate promoter Michael Cernovich wrote, claiming that the “deep state” had killed JFK and were now using the Justice Department to take down Trump.

Other right-wing lawmakers and commentators also pushed the idea that this was a politically-motivated prosecution ordered by Joe Biden. Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy echoed Trump’s own words, calling Thursday “a dark day for the United States of America.” In a statement, he also claimed that Biden was directly behind the indictment of Trump in a bid to remove the leading GOP candidate for the 2024 election.

On right-wing media, hosts echoed the messages posted on social media, boosting the same baseless claims while using war-related language and providing no evidence to back up their allegations.

Fox News host Sean Hannity, for example, told his viewers that the U.S. justice system has “been weaponized beyond belief” and that the country is “in serious trouble,” while former Trump aide Stephen Miller appeared on Fox News and said he hoped the “whole of the Republican party, the whole of the conservative movement, the whole of the country that cares about the rule of law coalesces around President Trump.”

Later, one of Trump’s own lawyers Alina Habba appeared on Fox News and said she was “embarrassed to be a lawyer at this moment. Honestly, I'm ashamed to be a lawyer.”

And just like Trump’s last indictment in April, many of his supporters said they believed that these indictments would actually be a benefit to Trump’s campaign.

“It's the biggest campaign contribution ever, thanks Dims,” one user wrote on The Donald. “This will actually help Trump get re-elected by a wide margin. Then he will go on a rampage. These communists don't know when to quit,” another wrote.

Alternatively, some even believed that the latest indictments were the result of Trump’s failure to get January 6 prisoners released from jail while they awaited their trial, something the former president has no power over.

"Karma is a bitch isn't it, you rich fuck asshole,” a 4chan user wrote. “Leaving innocent people to be abused in the DC jail then catch hard time for supporting you on Jan 6th 2021, has consequences.”

(Vice.com)

TRUMP: “Every time I fly over a blue state I get a subpoena. The ridiculous and baseless indictment of me by Biden's government with the corrupt and weaponized DOJ will go down as one the worst abuses of power on record.” 

THE APACHE are a group of culturally related Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, which include the Chiricahua, Jicarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Mimbreño, Ndendahe (Bedonkohe or Mogollon and Nednhi or Carrizaleño and Janero), Salinero, Plains (Kataka or Semat or "Kiowa-Apache") and Western Apache (Aravaipa, Pinaleño, Coyotero, Tonto). Distant cousins of the Apache are the Navajo, with whom they share the Southern Athabaskan languages. 

There are Apache communities in Oklahoma and Texas, and reservations in Arizona and New Mexico. Apache people have moved throughout the United States and elsewhere, including urban centers. The Apache Nations are politically autonomous, speak several different languages, and have distinct cultures.

Historically, the Apache homelands have consisted of high mountains, sheltered and watered valleys, deep canyons, deserts, and the southern Great Plains, including areas in what is now Eastern Arizona, Northern Mexico (Sonora and Chihuahua) and New Mexico, West Texas, and Southern Colorado. These areas are collectively known as Apacheria.

The Apache tribes fought the invading Spanish and Mexican peoples for centuries. The first Apache raids on Sonora appear to have taken place during the late 17th century. In 19th-century confrontations during the American-Indian wars, the U.S. Army found the Apache to be fierce warriors and skillful strategists.

UKRAINE, SATURDAY, 10TH JUNE

More than 2,600 people have been rescued from areas flooded after the collapse of a major dam earlier this week, according to Ukrainian officials. Water levels are receding, but Ukraine says threats from Russian shelling and environmental concerns remain. 

Russia's President Vladimir Putin claimed Ukraine's much-anticipated counteroffensive is underway, without success. But Ukraine has not characterized its actions as such, and a commander rejected that Kyiv had begun its big push to recapture territory.

Three people were killed after Russia attacked the southern Odesa region in the early hours of Saturday with missiles and drones, according to local officials.

Russia transferred Ukrainian prisoners of war to Hungary on Thursday through the mediation of the Russian Orthodox Church. Ukraine said it only found out the news through the media.