Mendocino County Today: Monday, June 26, 2023

Coastal Clouds | Savannah Logan | Mustard Bloom | Blowing Public Money | Dragonfly | Save Pillsbury | Frontier Days | Ed Notes | Leaves | Bragg Compensation | Arena Meeting | PA Lighthouse | IRS Notice | Yesterday's Catch | Quit Drinking | Eternal Question | Three Shots | Selflessness | Y U | LatinX | Gav's Veto | Thank Jesus | West Candidacy | Just Asking | Ukraine | Hitchhikers | Russia | Freaks | Chet Baker | Black Oystercatchers

COASTAL CLOUDS will persist through much of the week. Across the interior, isolated to scattered thunderstorms occurring today will decrease in coverage going into mid week. Otherwise, temperatures along the coast will remain slightly below normal, while across the interior, much warmer weather is expected during mid to late next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): The stratus quo continues with another foggy start & 52F on the coast this Monday morning. The fog bank looks thinner today, maybe we'll see some sun finally? I'm thinking we will see increasing sun this week, no really.

SAVANNAH AIMEE LOGAN, age 27, passed away tragically on June 17th, 2023. She was born on July 25th 1995 to Jason Logan and Sarah Summit. She instantly became the center of their universe and that of her entire family as well. To say “She lit up a room” would be an extreme understatement. From a very young age, Savannah was extremely inquisitive, intelligent and entertaining! Her smile was contagious and her humor was sensational. To know her was to love her, she always had a way of making things better.

Savannah grew up in Ukiah, California, graduating from Ukiah High School in 2013.

She is survived by her children, Everley Ann Grider and Easton Jay Grider; her father, Jason Logan; stepmother Alicia Logan; mother Sarah Summit; and siblings, Emma Bechtol, Tinley Logan and Pyper and Tayt Halstad.

Savannah was just getting started in her nursing career, and it was a job so well suited for such a kind and loving soul. 

Savannah was a free spirit and every person in the world to her was just a friend she hadn’t met yet. 

The world is a lot less bright without her in it. We will miss her every minute of every day until we see her sweet smile again. 

Her celebration of life will take place at 1:00 on Saturday, July 1st at Barra Winery in Redwood Valley.

SUPERVISOR TED WILLIAMS told MendoFever’s Sarah Reith on Friday that he “did not receive the petition” signed by most of the County Library staffers complaining about County Cultural Affairs Director Deborah Fader-Samson, adding that the formal complaint that the Employees Union filed with the state’s Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) was “the first he had ever heard of worker dissatisfaction at the library.” Williams also told Reith that workers can’t strike over the lack of a COLA, and that he believed that the union was using the library issue as a “wedge.” Williams wrote in a text message that, “Deb [Fader-Samson] was following legal advice, which is her duty, and the legal advice contained a typo. ‘Is’ vs ‘is not’.” Williams “clarified” that the mistaken legal advice came from County Counsel’s office, but not from Christian Curtis himself. Williams said he was “keeping an open mind” about the complaint, and that he “would like a fair process,” including education for everyone about the First Amendment. “Now we have this PERB charge,” he said; “and we’ll have to blow a bunch of public money.”

WILLIAMS also told Dave Brooksher of the Mendocino Voice that “I don’t find it to be much of a story.”

WILLIAMS made a big deal last Tuesday about how outraged the public would be if they knew what he knew about County management and how hard it is to terminate substandard managers.

TO SUMMARIZE: SUPERVISOR WILLIAMS had not seen the complaint with its laundry list of issues the employees had with Ms. Fader-Samson — much more than just their questioning her bad legal advice. But that didn’t stop him from arrogantly dismissing the issue and from blurting out unsubstantiated and contradictory denials, claims, dubious labor law opinions, and lame excuses to the local media, concluding by saying that in his view the library employees exercising their right to complain about the problems they had with Ms. Fader-Samson amounted a waste of taxpayer money. 

MS. REITH tactfully declined to mention that Supervisor Williams approves the “blowing of public money” on a monthly basis as he picks costly pointless fights with the Sheriff, rubberstamps wasteful Supes Chamber upgrades and no-bid contract extensions and add-ons to Camille Schrader’s mental health monopoly, unquestioningly approves raises for senior staffers including County Counsel, allows the Teeter Plan to run a deficit of over $1 million, defends the single-industry tourism subsidy, approves hundreds of thousands in outside lawyer fees, etc.

(Mark Scaramella)

SAVE LAKE PILLSBURY

To the Editor:

Lake Pillsbury from just my observation, in person, at various times in my life, is a savior to many many species of wildlife and waterfoul. Are they even being studied or considered, in the demolition of the dam?

Bald Eagles, beavers, bears, deer and other miraculous creatures live and survive, because of the lakes exsistance. I also want salmon to thrive …but at what expense, to the animals, birds and other fish species now living in the large lake and using the shores as home?

Has an environmental study been done for the many many creatures that have lived and survived until now, because the lake doesn’t go completely dry at the summer months end? We just suffered a 6 year continual drought. How is it possible for the county or state to remove water storage? Not just for us, but for the forest and lake inhabitants that have somehow survived fires and droughts? I’ve seen bears drinking the water and surrounding the lake. Seen Bald Eagles pearched in the dead fire trees. Osprey abound and dive for fish. Beavers, swim the shores and play along the lakes pristine shoreline. What about trout? Best trout in this county is at the Lake.

So take out one of our most unpolluted lakes that still exist, in this state? Please I beg, regard all wildlife and waterfoul, fish and our majestic bald eagles, in any decisions made about a beautiful and precious water sanctuary, like Lake Pillsbury. Anyone knows lakes provide a much larger food source and shore bank habitats, than a river, that bleeds dry of life giving water, in late summer months. Find another solution for the salmon…like zero tolerance of weed grows with water diverson anywhere? And maybe holding water pools, off to the side, further down the river, that keep baby salmon, viable through hot drought years. The salmon go up by instincts….let’s give them many good spots to stop before the dam. A new fish hatchery if possible? Always look for alternatives and save wildlife.

Catherine Lair

Ukiah

ED NOTES

An Afternoon At The Caspar Marketplace

I stood watch at the Change Our Name Fort Bragg booth at the Caspar event this afternoon, and was pleasantly surprised at the scene. Most of the people who stopped by (in my view) to chat were generally in favor of the change, and they represented a wide range of ages and backgrounds. Under 30's, 40-somethings, older people; some were newcomers to the area while others had been here for many decades.

There were a few dedicated FBF'ers (FortBraggForever adherents) who briefly stopped to sneer or to be rude, but they were quick to run away when asked about their reasoning. Most visitors, however, were interested in listening and asking questions. The majority knew nothing about the true history of the area. They definitely didn't know that the "fort" here was not a typical army base for defending the country, it was a concentration camp for incarcerating the Indian tribes in order to ethnically cleanse the coast and to use the inmates for slave labor.

One man engaged me briefly in conversation, expressing how he was uncomfortable with “erasing” history. “The only way to erase history is to never talk about it, never question it, and to make sure that it is never taught to young people,” I replied. I then gave him a question: “If the majority of the locals were fully aware of all of the history of what was done here, do you think that the old name would be continued?” He went away in silence, but came back later, clearly struggling with the meaning of the likely answer.

And that's what the work of the Change Our Name Fort Bragg group is all about. Education. Not “erasing” history, but spreading it, acknowledging it, and its relevance to who we are today as a community and to where we are going in the future.

Mikael Blaisdell of Change Our Name Fort Bragg

ED NOTE: As it happens Mikael Blaisdell, just yesterday I extended an offer to Lindy Peters of the Fort Bragg City Council to debate the Name Change issue, preferably with your pied piper, Professor Z, but I'll settle for you. My thinking is we can charge a buck or two, with the proceeds going to a worthy Fort Bragg cause. Preliminarily, I'll say that I consider the Name Change effort dangerous to the truth of the genesis of the naming of Fort Bragg, and dangerous generally to historical truth. Let me or Lindy know if you or the prof are up for it. 

POTTER VALLEY READER: Whoever was hitting mailboxes Saturday night/Sunday morning was in a white, extra cab, older style, Toyota pickup with a stereo system. It was between 3:45 and 4:30 am. We have them on camera and I saw them myself sitting in the middle of the road with someone in the back of the truck. I didn't realize that they were hitting mailboxes until this morning. Hopefully someone will recognize who it is and they will do the right thing.

ED NOTE: It's called “baseball,” at least that's what it was called in Boonville when drunken kids, all male of course but occasionally with little Debbie shrieking encouragement, would lean out of their speeding vehicles and whack a mailbox with a baseball bat. Vics who got baseballed more than once encased their mailboxes in concrete or otherwise made them baseball proof.

POSTMARK: BOONVILLE

Boonville is the largest of four tiny settlements in the twenty-mile-long Anderson Valley. It has two contradictory things going for it: it’s very beautiful and it’s only a couple of hours north of the Bay Area. The urban escape hatch has turned out to be something of a curse because the Valley’s hills soon filled up with people, most of them wealthy because it takes a lot of money to buy a twenty or a forty-acre parcel and build a house on it.

Fifty years ago the few people who lived in the hills eked out a living from the land. Now the land screams, “Eek! Here come more of them.” The people on the Valley floor had been here for a long time. They worked sheep, timber and apples.

People Magazine came through around ’85 or so to do a piece on Anderson Valley, remarking on how much national attention the place seemed to get for a population of less than 3,000 people (“If you chased everyone out of the bushes,” as the local wags say.) 

Boonville had an uncanny way of attracting the scattered national attentions, usually for the wrong reason. The Manson Family lived here. Jim Jones of Jonestown fame taught fifth grade in Boonville for a couple of years before he moved on to bigger things. Leonard Lake and Charles Ng functioned as volunteer firemen here in the valley before they were caught cutting up women in an underground bunker in the Sierra foothills. A character named Tree Frog Johnson was another national-class perv. And there was the infamous cho-mo, Kenneth Parnell. 

The Valley was also often featured on national television talk shows when a couple of old timers who spoke an in-house lingo called Boontling, developed by locals when Anderson Valley was much more off the path than it is now. Carefully edited for national consumption, un-edited Boontling is about half ethnic slurs and sexual innuendo, perfectly reflecting the attitudes of the early 20th century American outback. But you could hardly go on the Johnny Carson show and talk about “boar kikes” and the vaginas of black women feeling like “cut cabbage,” so Boontling was sanitized for export. To get the full vocabulary, you have to go to the original research by professor Adams of Chico State. He explains at book length how an insular bunch of isolated farmers tapped their collective ingenuity to devise a fascinating language all their own.

More wholesomely, a Boonville family by the name of Colfax educated their four sons at home and sent three of them straight out of the hills to Harvard. The fourth one got married, perhaps the most difficult course of study of all.

For many years, the area has been marketed as “The Next Napa Valley,” as if that ruinous fate is somehow desirable. Wineries are everywhere now, even high in the hills. Fortunately for the wine industry, people are hurting in Mexico, so a desperate labor force found its way here to do all the wine work. 

Also tucked away here and there in the Anderson Valley are high end resorts for well-heeled sex maniacs to tune up their orgasms and visualize world peace, all of it reinforced by a local public radio station that serves up a sort of audio High Tea.

I knew things had changed when I felt I had to attend school board meetings because my children were enrolled in a system run by Superintendent Wobbling Eagle and his henchman, Mr. Burble Gurble. A woman magically sitting as a trustee told me one night, “Sit down, Bruce, you’re becoming irrational.” Not that her assessment of my presentation was necessarily inaccurate, but I remember her rolling around nude with her goat-like mate in the dust of a hippie fair at Albion. And here was this lunatic in charge of my kids’ schooling! The humiliation, the indignity my friends, still stings.

The secure parts of the middle-class were still playing naked grab-ass in those days, but when the hippie fad ended, the former dropouts re-entered “straight” society with a vengeance, occupying most of the power slots in Mendocino County’s justice, educational, social service, and health apparatuses. 

Back a ways there were lots of wild people around — interesting wild people whose humor ran a little heavy but there was nothing like it. Before it burned down a few years ago, down at the Boonville Lodge, a squat, brick bunker perhaps unconsciously designed to confine the mayhem common within, there were head-butting contests and energetic hijinks of all kinds, and lots of fights. Strangers entered the Lodge at their own risk, especially long-haired strangers. 

When the NPR brigades took over, Boonville’s wild people were basically priced outta here, and the Anderson Valley became Wineville. 

FORMER Harvard swimmer, Abby Carr, slammed the Biden administration for using the debate over transgender athletes as "their civil rights moment" at the expense of female athletes. Ms. Carr said the Biden forces think this bogus activism is going to save transgender sports, but argues that the administration is "doing that by discriminating against women." Ms. Carr competed and lost to trans swimmer Lia Thomas last year. 

WE ALL MISS Elk's Queenie's Roadhouse, and will go on missing it, but on the same premises a new eatery will eventually appear called Between Wind and Water, the work of Elyse Hopps, co-owner of Point Arena's popular, Izakaya Gama. 'Between Wind and Water,' a perfectly poetic name for the site, too.

A RECENTLY DIVORCED woman was walking on the Mendocino Headlands when she spotted a jug out of which arose a genie. “I can help you get over the pain of your divorce,” promised the genie. “I’ll grant you three wishes, but I caution you, everything you get your ex-husband gets twice.” The woman thought it over, sighed, and said, “Oh well, give me ten million dollars.” The genie immediately handed her the cash in big denomination bills, saying, “Your ex gets $20 million.” The woman groaned but asked, “Too bad that bastard’s rich now, but what the hell, give me a 50-room home with an ocean view.” The genie, handing her the keys, said, “He gets a 100-room castle next door to yours. Are you sure you want your third wish?” The woman paused, then demanded, “Beat me half to death!”

WHO MAKES HOW MUCH IN THE CITY OF FORT BRAGG

cityfortbragg.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12113968&GUID=EA5605EA-8364-4C68-A484-9505FE993F93

KEEPING TRACK

2023-24 Point Arena City Budget Meeting

Point Arena City Council

Mayor Barbara Burkey ~ Vice Mayor Anna Dobbins, Jim Koogle, Jeff Hansen, Dan Doyle

Agenda - June 28, 2023

Budget Workshop - 6:00 pm

Council Chambers, 451 School Street 

Zoom: cityofpointarena.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c164a8c82a2a5af8db4de85b1&id=93f25357a0&e=d0e3cdc057

JANET LOXLEY sends along timely advice on IRS edicts some of you may have received: 

Taxpayers who owe money to the IRS for 2022 taxes might receive a notice from the IRS (CP-14) saying they have 21 days to pay their taxes. However, taxpayers who live in Mendocino and Sonoma county are subject to a different deadline because these counties were declared disaster areas by FEMA after the January storms. Taxpayers who live in those counties actually have until October 16, 2023 to file their 2022 tax return and to pay any money they owe to the IRS. The IRS says that sending out this CP-14 notice is “standard”. The notice offers the taxpayer the option of just sending in money, going online to check their status or phoning the IRS. AARP TaxAide, a free tax preparation program for seniors and people with lower incomes, is aware of this situation and has been in contact with the IRS.

If you receive the IRS notice CP-14 and live in Mendocino or Sonoma counties, do not panic. You can simply abide by the current rule and pay by the October 16, 2023 deadline, check the website or you can call the phone number listed on the notice. If you phone, be prepared for some questioning by a computer voice and for some long waits. They may offer you the opportunity for them to call you back when it is “your turn”. One of the AARP tax preparers received the notice and decided to call to see what they would say. After saying “I’m confused why I got this notice. I live in a FEMA-declared disaster area and was told my due date was October 16, 2023”, the IRS person said “Let me put you on a 3-5 minute hold while I check your zip code.” When he came back, he said “Yes, you live in a disaster area.” The AARP volunteer said “So my due date is October 16, 2023?” After a long pause, he said “Yes.” When asked why the notice was even sent out, he said “We just don’t have the staff or resources to check this ahead of time. It’s the law that we send out a notice.”

Bottom line: It is always upsetting to receive a letter from the IRS asking for you to pay and giving you a deadline. In this case, the deadline is not accurate. If you receive this CP-14 notice asking you to pay your 2022 taxes within 21 days, feel free to ignore it and wait to pay until October 16, 2023 or, if it would make you more comfortable, give them a call at the phone number on the letter you received.

The official statement from the IRS Website: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-statement-on-california-mailing-of-balance-due-notices

The IRS reassures California taxpayers that they continue to have an automatic extension until later this year to file and pay their taxes for those covered by disaster declarations in the state. The current mailings being received by some taxpayers, the IRS Notice CP-14, are for taxpayers who have a balance due, and they are sent out as a legal requirement. While the notice received by taxpayers says they need to pay in 21 days, most California taxpayers have until later this year to pay under the disaster declaration. These letters include a special insert that notes the payment date listed in the letter does not apply to those covered by a disaster declaration, and the disaster dates remain in effect. 

“The IRS apologizes to taxpayers and tax professionals for any confusion as we continue to review the situation. Taxpayers receiving these letters do not need to call the IRS or their tax professional.”

CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, June 25, 2023

MATTHEW ANLIKER, Redwood Valley. Misdemeanor hit&run with property damage, suspended license for refusing a DUI chem test.

PAUL GOLYER, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

BOYD HALVORSEN JR., Covelo. Hit&Run resulting in permanent injury or death.

TIMOTHY HARRIS, Laytonville. Pot possession for sale, felon-addict with firearm, serious felony with prior, probation denied due to two or more prior felony convictions.

MARTIN HENEBURY, Redwood Valley. Contempt of court.

JORGE HERNANDEZ, Ukiah. DUI, no license.

KATHERINE KNIGHT, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

IVO LOPEZ, Covelo. More than an ounce of pot, providing pot to someone over 18, pot sale.

HERNANDEZ SALAZAR, Santa Barbara/Ukiah. DUI.

AARON SCHLEICH, Healdsburg/Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, mandatory supervision violation.

LUIS VELASCO-DEJESUS, Ukiah. DUI.

BLANCA VILLAGRANA, Ukiah. Child custody order violation, disobeying court order.

DAREK ZIEBA, Willits. Protective order violation.

‘THINK I’LL QUIT HAVING TUMORS’

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

Quit drinking the other day, but knowing me, it won’t be long before I hit the bottle again. It’s my pattern. 

That means I’ll soon be drinking again. Hallelujah. 

I started in college and have never stopped except for when I stop. I’ll drink a few years then quit. It’s several weeks here, six months there, always knowing I wasn’t done drinking, just giving my liver a well-deserved rest after years of abusing the poor but sturdy fella. 

So that’s my drinking pattern: Mostly I drink, sometimes I don’t. 

Which makes me wonder about those tales of the wrenching horror of a poor drunk trying to stop drinking. You know: The tremors, the shakes, the vomiting, the pink elephants and the snakes in the sanitarium. 

Or the Alcoholic Anonymous club where everyone gathers in a church basement to brag about what a hot success they were in life until those demon strawberry coolers brought them low. Lost everything, even the yacht and the Bentley. 

AA is the place for those who can’t stop drinking without consulting a “higher power” to run interference. Works for everyone, providing they submit. I never said it was a cult. 

My favorites are the people, and there are millions, who insist steady drinkers are gravely ill, wasting away and suffering from a horrible disease. 

Call Hospice! Call an ambulance! Call a priest! 

The guy at the Forest Club calls for another round. 

My dad drank to the point he lived inside a vodka bottle. One day my brother and I lied to him, got him in a car, drove to the Cleveland Clinic and shoved him through the front doors. 

He walked out 30 days later saying he wished he’d quit drinking 15 years earlier. He should have locked himself in the basement for a month. 

What disease can be controlled by volition? Name another illness the patient can decide not to have. 

Years later I watched dad rot from the inside-out with throat and brain cancer, and there was no simple-headed “I think I’ll quit metastasizing tumors” road back to pink-cheeked good health. 

We can opt not to use drugs, but tell me how to opt out of cystic fibrosis. You can stop drinking by deciding to not buy the next bottle, but tell me what someone with Alzheimer’s can decide not to do. 

The nation’s vast rehab industry that runs the engines that cure the diseases that target the drunks has little use for free will, preferring powerlessness and blind submission from its captives. 

There are men and women all around us, and all through history, whose lives have been enhanced, not diminished, by tankards of mead, jugs of corn liquor, tinctures and quarts and fifths of whisky, barrels of rum and hip flasks of Southern Comfort. Inspiration and good cheer can be sparked with a 40 ouncer of Schlitz Malt Liquor. 

But AA franchises and their subsidiaries would deny it. With the endless meetings, the doctrinaire conversions, the submitting of one’s destiny into the hands of a worldwide committee of lackluster leaders whose only triumph in life is Sobriety is as lopsided an exchange as I’ve ever heard. 

Rehab is a big business. It’s imperative to convince some dolt with his third hangover in six months that he needs help and can’t do it alone. And insurance will pick up the tab. And you’ll get full pay for 28 days missing work. 

Emerging sober after a therapeutic setting in a healthy environment he’ll have accumulated beads and badges, armloads of important certificates, and proud delusions he’s courageously overcome a crippling illness. Whee. 

One more thing: He must never let alcohol touch his lips again or he’ll immediately be flung back into the pit, helpless and remorseful. 

Twaddle and bunk. 

Consuming strong drink is not without peril. I might die of cirrhosis tomorrow, but you might die of boredom. And let’s be real: at this point in life my drinking is pale, thin stuff. 

No more heroic battles with cheap tequila, no more long cozy summertime affairs with vodka. A bracing Martini as prequel to a nice dinner out is as crazy as it gets these days. 

At my age it’s two, maybe three beers a day. I used to drink more than that in my morning shower. 

But at least I’m free from the shackles of the bottle, no longer slave to the cravings that haunt those seeking the illusory comforts of drink. I’m alive! I’m sober! 

But if I’m strolling down State Street later today and if I imagine getting lightly marinated in the soft golden glow of an ice cold Coors, I’ll waltz into the Forest Club and have one. Maybe you’ll be there and we’ll each have a couple. 

Then it’s back to the sidewalk, walk on home, and quit drinking some more for the next month or two.

(Tom Hine authors this weekly outburst of paragraphs but gives credit to his stage name, the invisible chap named TWK.)

AN IRISHMAN pops into a Dublin pub and orders three shots of Jameson. He then solemnly
downs each shot, pays the barman, and leaves. And every time he comes in after that, he repeats the same routine. The publican eventually asks him why he always drinks exactly three shots.

“Well, it’s one for me and one for both of my brothers,” he tells the bartender. “Pat is in America and Mike is in Australia, and we all do this to feel like we’re still drinking together.”

But a month later he sits down and orders two shots. “Oh no,” says the barman. “I’m sorry for your loss. Was it the one in America or Australia?”

“Jesus no, it’s nuttin’ like dat” he replies. “It’s just that I’ve decided to stop drinkin’.”

I THINK LIFE has gotten much more brutish. As religion’s sanction for selflessness fades, I think people are hard-pressed to think of reasons to be selfless, and the sense of life as a struggle permeates. It’s something I’ve noticed in my own children and stepchildren, as opposed to my own generation. It was fairly easy in the 1950s to buy a house and a car, and one spent time with one’s family, one had a job and one went home. Now no one seems able to afford anything and yet they work all the time.

— John Updike

LATIN X, THREE COMMENTS:

[1] “LatinX” is racial patronage, primarily used by white progressives to express their guilt for subconsciously perceiving other ethnicities as below them. You don’t need to care-take Latinos.

[2] Ah! Who to hate more? The casual racist or the casual racist commenting on the casual racist?

[3] “Latinx” butchers the beautiful Spanish language for the purpose of virtue signaling. I have a lot of Latino and Latina friends, including my daughter in law, and I’ve never seen any of them refer to themselves as “Latinx.”

GAV'S VETO

Editor: 

Gov. Gavin Newsom championed the seizure of large amounts of fentanyl by the CHP in San Francisco. However, deaths from fentanyl overdoses continue to spiral upward. After losing my son to an opiate overdose, I am indignant at Newsom’s recent veto of the safe consumption site bill. The worsening mortality crisis demands much more than trying to arrest our way out of it.

There is only one way that Newsom can resuscitate my support. That would be if he actively promotes a similar bill, adding the improvements he claims the vetoed legislation needed. Otherwise, I will sadly assume that he put his political aspirations well ahead of those who have died, their loved ones and those who elected and supported him.

Dr. Wal Maack

Healdsburg

WHY CORNEL WEST IS RUNNING

But it's precisely because Democrats refuse to take seriously the most dire and urgent needs of the people and the planet that a candidate like Dr. Cornel West has decided to run a presidential campaign at all. And because he represents the needs of the poor, the working-class, the most vulnerable, and the planet, he represents an existential threat to the ruling class. And in their eyes, his candidacy must be immediately eliminated, lest he do what he intends to do: build a broad, working-class coalition across political lines that overthrows the corrupt duopoly once and for all.

If we want to learn from US history, instead of blaming progressive third-party candidates for Democratic Party failures, what we should have learned from the Florida election nightmare of 2000 is that we need more democracy, not less; more transparency and accountability, not less; and more enfranchised voters, not fewer. But today’s corporate Democrats want fewer options, no debates, less transparency, and revisionist history when it comes to understanding why Democrats have lost key elections in the past.

And that is why we’re seeing all of these corporate media hit pieces against Dr. Cornel West – one of America’s most soulful, powerful, wise and disciplined activists, professors, philosophers and public intellectuals. This is a man who has spent his entire life and public career dedicated toward defending the nation’s poor and most vulnerable, while criticizing US imperialism, war crimes and environmental destruction. And I would argue that the degree to which a West candidacy has room to breathe and grow in the United States, today, is the yardstick by which we can measure the existence of US democracy. 

— Carol Mattessich

UKRAINE, SUNDAY, 25TH JUNE

The rebellious Russian mercenary commander who ordered his troops to march on Moscow said he was responding to an attack on his camps in Ukraine on Friday by rival forces from the Russian military.

The U.S. had intelligence, however, that Yevgeny Prigozhin was building up his Wagner forces near the border with Russia for some time. Officials briefed congressional leaders known as the Gang of Eight on the buildup earlier in the week, a person familiar with the matter said. The person was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. The U.S. intelligence briefing was first reported by CNN.

The military preparations raise questions about Prigozhin’s explanation for why he seemingly spontaneously sent his forces into Russia and whether he had instead long been planning a challenge to Russia’s military leadership.

Wagner troops have played a crucial role in the Ukraine war, capturing the eastern city of Bakhmut, an area where the bloodiest and longest battles have taken place. But Prigozhin has increasingly criticized the military brass, accusing it of incompetence and of starving his troops of munitions.

Russian media reported late Saturday that several helicopters and a military communications plane were downed by Wagner troops during the short-lived uprising. Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin previously said his forces had taken control of the military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, as well as other military facilities in the city without any deaths or even “a single gunshot.”

The Kremlin referred the question about the losses to the Defense Ministry, which has kept mum.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

One thing for sure it takes a hardass to rule Russia. It’s all that landmass & the brutal climate, 1/6 of the earth’s surface, much of it arctic and subarctic. Czar Nicholas and his successor Kerensky couldn’t cut it. Too soft, too many humanitarian instincts. Now Lenin, there was a lad who wasn’t afraid to break balls. He knew what was necessary. When he died it was between Trotsky & Stalin, Trotsky the Menshevik theoretician dreamer & Stalin the Bolshevik asskicker. We see who came out on top, who had to come out on top. In our own time under Yeltsin Russia was coming apart at the seams until Putin stepped up and restored order. Imagine a Gandhi type, or a Justin Thoreaux, as President of Russia lol. Some posters on this board are calling for the removal of Putin, the assassination of Putin, regime change in Moscow etc. I submit if that happens Putin’s replacement will most likely be someone we don’t even know about, someone like a Napoleon emerging after the French Revolution, a revanchist army officer, a nationalistic Russian patriot, with a keen hatred for NATO, the EU, and the USA, hell-bent on restoring the Russian empire, and not averse to deploying nuclear weapons. In fact eager to deploy nuclear weapons. Rest assured then if Putin is deposed his replacement won’t be a Jeffersonian Democrat with a thorough knowledge of the US Bill of Rights. Don’t forget when the French army closed on Moscow in 1812, the Russians abandoned the city, then burned it to the ground. 210 years ago yes, but Russia remains Russia.

AS THOUGH I HAD WINGS

by Chet Baker

By the time I was 16 I had been playing around with the trumpet for about three years. My dad had brought home a trombone one day when I was 13 years old. I played it for a couple of weeks without much success. Being small for my age, I just couldn’t reach the bottom positions very well, and the mouthpiece was too big for my lips. After a couple of weeks the trombone disappeared and was replaced by a trumpet. It was much more my size, and I was able to get a sound (of sorts) right away. I began to take an instrument course at school, but I had a lot of difficulty learning to read music. My problem was that I depended entirely on my ear, which caused no end of problems with the bandleader, Mr. Kay. I played in the marching band, where I learned all the Sousa marches by ear, and also played in the school dance band. My dad initially wanted me to play trombone because he was a great admirer of Jack Teagarden, but his disappointment diminished little by little as he watched my progress on the trumpet — see, he liked Bix Beiderbecke too.

By the time I returned to California after my Army discharge my folks had been able to buy a clean little two-bedroom home at 1011 16th Street in Hermosa Beach, up on the hill above Highway 101. This was the first home they had ever been able to own. In 1949 I decided to take advantage of being eligible for GI benefits so I enrolled in El Camino Junior College in Lawndale. My major would be music and my minor English. At school I kept running into the same old problem: my ear. El Camino, at that time, wasn’t really like a real college; the classes were held in what looked suspiciously to me like old Army barracks.

It was while attending El Camino that I became acquainted with Andy Lambert; he had a brother, Jack, who was beginning his career as a movie-actor heavy. Andy played bass in a trio in Hermosa Beach at a joint called the High Seas. He was in his 30s and had been in the Navy, where he had lost a leg. He now got around nicely on a wooden peg. We became friends, and he invited me to come into the club and sit in with his band.

Andy was also the first person to turn me on to grass, bless him; I loved it, and continued to smoke grass for the next eight years, until I began chipping and finally got strung out on stuff. I enjoyed heroin very much, and used it almost continually, in one form or another, for the next 20 years (if you include methadone, which does not provide a feeling of euphoria at all, unless you’re clean).

So I did sit in at the Seas, and got good vibes from Andy and the guitarist, Gene Sergeant, but the leader of the band, the piano player (who played well), seemed to resent me. Actually, he appeared to be the type who would resent anyone who might push into his spotlight. Gene and Andy liked my playing though, and through them I met Jimmy Rowles, who at that time was pianist for Peggy Lee at Ciro’s on Sunset Boulevard. Gene paid my union dues, lying and saying that the group was supposed to go to Bombay, of all places, and that he needed me to go along. Kane, the jealous piano player, nixed the deal; I figured he would.

After that, as often as I could, I would show up at Jimmy Rowles’s pad between noon and one o’clock — sometimes he’d even be asleep when I arrived — but he was always great to me, and would always invite me in. I’d wait for him to eat breakfast and then I’d ask him to play some tunes for me. It seemed like he knew more damn songs than anybody had ever known. All the good ones, anyway. I learned a lot about keeping things simple, and about not getting too busy on my horn from him.

It seems to me that most people are impressed with just three things: how fast you can play, how high you can play, and how loud you can play. I find this a little exasperating, but I’m a lot more experienced now, and understand that probably less than 2% of the public can really hear. When I say hear, I mean follow a horn player through his ideas, and be able to understand those ideas in relation to the changes, if the changes are completely modern. Dixieland is different — it’s easier to follow, and rock is even simpler than Dixieland, except for the music of a few really fine rock musicians (or variations thereof) like Herbie Hancock, John Scofield, Mike and Randy Brecker, and a few others.

During this period I made it to many sessions around LA, as there was somewhere to play almost every night. Each Sunday there was a session from 2pm till 2am that Howard Rumsey — don’t ask me how — was the leader of. And because of this fact, the only time it would swing was when another bass player sat in. Howard Rumsey was the only bass player I knew of (professional) who played right in the middle of the beat. If you tried to do it on purpose, it would be very difficult, but for Howard it was apparently no problem. In spite of this drawback, I learned a lot from the good musicians who would occasionally come and sit in. People like Shelly Manne, Shorty Rogers, Hampton Hawes, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Clark, Frank Morgan, Stan Levey, Lawrence Marable, Bill Holman, Art Pepper, Bob Whitlock, Monty Budwig and many others.

At this time, however, the best sessions were out in the Valley. I’m sure some Californians remember the “Showtime” out on Sepulveda Boulevard. Well, the first few times I went out there I was not allowed to play, but then finally I was allowed to sit in one time, on just one set — you see, it was rather cliquey. Herbie Harper ran the gig, and the rhythm section was usually Joe Mondragon, Shelly, and maybe Lou Levy or Jimmy Rowles. After a while I finally got to play a whole set; then two sets, and eventually it became my gig and everyone had to ask me if they could get in. Dave Pell was around then, and so was Steve White, Joe Maine, Herb Geller, Frank Rosalino, a trumpet player named Kenny Bright who just seemed to disappear, and Conte Candoli and Jack Sheldon. There were so many wonderful guys, Al Porcino and Claude and Stu Williamson, Dexter Gordon, Lonnie Miehause, Jack Montrose, Bob Gordon, Red Mitchell, Harry Babason, Oscar Pettiford, Lawrence Marable, Sonny Criss, Frank Morgan, and Russ Freeman. I even went up to Santa Barbara a couple of times to a session and met Bill Perkins there.

Sometimes I’d go down to Manhattan Beach to a place called Esther’s where the great Matt Dennis worked. He was a hell of a nice guy, and I’d always ask him to do his tune “Everything Happens to Me.” He’d let me sit in sometimes. They eventually started having regular sessions there, and after a few weeks I met the second (Cisella being the first) of what turned out to be a long list of very lovely ladies.