Mendocino County Today: June 4, 2013

SUPERVISOR HAMBURG has filed a damages claim against the County of Mendocino. The Supervisor and his attorney aren't talking, and County Counsel Tom Parker will only confirm that the claim has been filed, but won't reveal its particulars. Since it's clearly public domain, the public has a right to know what the claim is for. We should know by tomorrow, but preliminarily we think it's probably to get the County to pay Hamburg's legal bills. By the time this thing is settled, the supervisor's lawyer fees could be considerable.

PARKER MUST KNOW that the law is very clear on what he can sequester and what he can't. “Claims against public entities under the Tort Claims Act (Gov’t Code Section 910 et. al.) have long been considered non-exempt public records under the Public Records Act. See Poway Unified School District v. Superior Court, 62 Cal. App. 4th 1496 (1998) (rejecting agencies denial of access to unsolved claims and holding that claims are public records not exempt from the mandatory disclosure provisions of the Public Records Act). The County Counsel’s Office may not control the timing of the release of a claim once it has been filed.”

NEXT STEP? The claim goes to the Supervisors where presumably, it will be denied.

HAMBURG'S ATTORNEY, Barry Vogel, filed suit in Superior Court Monday, citing, among other things, the state's health and safety code, which says: “If the certificate of death is properly executed and complete, the local registrar of births and deaths shall issue a permit for disposition, that in all cases, shall specify any one of the following: (1) The name of the cemetery where the remains shall be interred; (2) Burial at sea (3) The address or description of the place where remains shall be buried or scattered (4) The address of the location where the cremated remains will be kept.”

SECTION (3) seems to suggest home burial can be permitted with proper registration and, as attorney Vogel's suit filed Monday points out, there is indeed at least one strong precedent case in recent Mendocino County history, that of Jay Baker, a prominent South Coast man who is buried in a corner of Baker Town, his shopping complex in Gualala. Judge Vince Lechowick, then functioning as a Superior Court judge out of Point Arena, signed off on Baker's last wish in 2001.

THE GIST of the suit Vogel filed for Hamburg, as stated in his introduction, is … “The facts and legal issues herein concern the right of an individual to be buried on privately owned real property where the public is not invited, welcome or expected. No public health or safety interest is at risk and no member of the public is harmed. No compelling governmental interest exists to abridge these rights and all legitimate governmental record keeping interests are protected.” Etc.

GIVEN THE BAKER PRECEDENT, and Vogel's fundamental argument as stated above, I'd say Hamburg has a pretty strong case.

ALL OF THIS arose last month when it was revealed that Supervisor Hamburg had buried his wife on the Hamburg family property southwest of Ukiah. California law prohibits home burials.

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RECOMMENDED VIEWING: “We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks.” This fine documentary film told me more than I needed to know about the personal lives of these two great heroes of global transparency, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange, the two men who have brought down governments simply by revealing the crimes of these governments against their own people. And nothing they revealed about the murderous imperialism of our own government and our allies came as any surprise to most of us lib-labs, and most of us loath the subsequent persecution of both men, especially that of Manning who was held for nearly a year incommunicado in a Marine Corps brig and whose trial for treason began this week. He'll never get out, and might even be executed if the psychos in our government have their way. Assange, the film tells us, has had major fallings out with several of his closest associates, by whom he feels betrayed, but whose betrayals Assange is unable to articulate. Those associates complain that he's become impossibly secretive, thus negating his entire life's purpose, which has been No Secrets. For me, the most interesting moments of the film, which seemed to me to dwell a little too much on Manning's sexual confusion, were the interviews with the two women who have famously accused Assange of sexually violating them. They have been universally reviled as everything from prostitutes to CIA lures, and their lives have been repeatedly threatened. But they aren't undercover doxies. Or even doxies. They are everyday liberal women who admired Assange and his work and genuinely liked him. But Assange apparently forced one into unprotected sex and with the other he seems to have deliberately torn the prophylactic. The film says he has four children stashed around the world, implying that Assange may have some weird compulsion to reproduce beyond the usual bourgie 2.2 children. Neither woman felt much like pursuing the guy but word got out, the Swedish police demanded statements from them, the media went crazy and, of course, the Building 7 brigades screamed “Frame-up” while the Fox News yobbos had already been demanding straight-up assassination of both Manning and Assange. The lives of the two women were destroyed as the tabloids printed their photos and even their home addresses. The film is by Alex Gibney who made the great “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.” He's done an honest job in “We Steal Secrets” but, of course, he's already being reviled from every political direction and the film has only been out for a week. The audience I saw it with last Saturday at the Embarcadero Theater in San Francisco seemed more nonplussed than anything. I'm sure we'd all arrived with preconceived ideas about Manning and Assange, and the venue being Frisco those ideas would be overwhelmingly favorable. Nothing I learned at all diminished my admiration for them as political martyrs, but Assange comes across as pretty creepy.

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MELANIE HARGIS, 30, of Dos Rios, was arrested last week (apparently for the third time) for cultivation along with a fellow called Jedidiah Jones, 33 (also for the third time). Ms. Hargis is easily the most glamorous marijuana cultivator ever arrested in Mendocino County, and perhaps the most glamorous woman to appear in Dos Rios in our time.

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THIRD PARTIES SAY OPEN PRIMARY SYSTEM HARMFUL TO THEM — by Katie Orr, Capital Public Radio News

The Green, Libertarian and Peace and Freedom Parties have released an analysis showing California’s new open primary system is detrimental to the state’s smaller political parties. Under the new system the top two vote getters in the primary move on to the general election. The analysis finds smaller parties are finding it difficult to collect enough signatures to place a candidate on a ballot and don’t have enough money to pay filing fees in lieu of signatures. The parties argue they can’t attract new members if they don’t have candidates on the ballot. Their analysis found, in 2012, 72 percent fewer small party candidates ran for state office and 68 percent fewer ran for Congress compared to 2008, before the open primary was put in place.

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ON MAY 29, 2013 at 9:31pm the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office received a call from a family member of Erik Lamberg of Sherwood Road, outside Willits. The family member stated Erik was experiencing difficulties with his vehicle when she last spoke to him on May 26, 2013 around 11:30pm. At that time Erik had his vehicle, a silver 2004 Honda Odyssey, towed to Laytonville when it broke down in Leggett. He had the vehicle repaired and stayed two nights at a local hotel in Laytonville at which time he phoned his family and said he was “fine.” The family has not seen or heard from Erik since. A missing persons case was taken and a "be on the lookout" (BOLO) issued to all northern California law enforcement agencies. Deputies later confirmed Erik's vehicle was repaired by a local mechanic and he had stayed in the motel for two nights, but had checked out on May 28, 2013. On June 1, 2013 the Sheriff's Office received a report of an abandoned vehicle approximately 20 miles west of Willits on Sherwood Road. Deputies responded and located Erik's vehicle. It appeared the vehicle had gotten stuck in a ditch in the road and was abandoned. Search efforts around the vehicle were conducted but Erik was not located. The vehicle was towed to clear the road. The missing person is described as being 51 years old, 6'05" tall, weighing approximately 200 pounds, having "sandy" blond hair and blue eyes. It is unknown what clothing he had on when he went missing. The family related that Erik may be experiencing mental health issues but has shown no violent tendencies in the past. The Sheriff's Office is requesting anyone who has information or who might have seen Erik to contact the Sheriff's Dispatch Center at (707)463-4086. (Sheriff’s Press Release)

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CATCHING UP WITH CRAIG — Dear postmodern Californians, I just spent a relaxing afternoon at San Francisco's Ocean Beach, and then visited the meditation room at Love of Ganesh (owned by friends of India's hugging saint Amma) on Haight Street, and then it was off to City Lights Bookstore. Ambled back down Grant Street through Chinatown on a sunny afternoon, to get to the BART train to return to Berkeley, and then a bus ride to return to Harrison House, a long term homeless shelter. Tomorrow night at 5PM, I have agreed to meet with a caseworker, to discuss my staying here longer and giving BOSS/Harrison House a percentage of my $359 social security retirement check. I do not want an entry level or temporary job in postmodern California, because that would be ridiculous for me due to extreme overqualification. Also, I do not want a hyper-inflated rental in the San Francisco bay area, because I do not value living here that much anymore, and I am not willing to pay an absurd amount of money for basic housing. I want cooperation to leave postmodern California! That is what I am asking for. Of course you must already know that I am willing to return to Washington D.C. for continued frontline radical environmental and peace & justice action...particularly I would like to work with documentary film makers now. What is NOT going to work out, is my being ignored. It is unlikely that I am going to just drop dead, so why don't we all behave as though we are living in a spiritually mature society, and let's get me out of the shelter, and then out of postmodern California, and relocated where I may be effective in opposition to the raw idiocy of digitalized consumerism, and its increasingly negative psychological effects on society. I recommend cultivating a spiritual life instead. That is what I am for! I want you to telephone Harrison House in Berkeley at 510-525- 4469 and tell my prospective caseworker Tonette Woodsen that we are all going to act in a spiritually intelligent manner together, so that my presence here in America is not wasted in a pointless continuance of residency in postmodern California. Hey, circumstances change, okay? I do not want to be "stuck in stupid" here. I am asking for your cooperation to insure that I am well- positioned in order to be valuable. Thank you very much, Craig Louis Stehr, craigstehr@hushmail.com. Mailing address: c/o NOSCW, P.O. Box 11406, Berkeley, CA 94712-2406. Blog: http://craiglstehr.blogspot.com

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ACOUSTIC KITCHEN on Friday, June 21 at Community Center of Mendocino — Four women of music will be featured at “Acoustic Kitchen, part 6” when Mendocino Stories and Music Series hosts Sarah Wagner, Juliet Strong, and “Sweet Moments of Confusion”. Music starts at 7:30PM on Friday, June 21 at Community Center of Mendocino, 998 School St Mendocino. Sarah Wagner, a veteran of operas and musical theatre, fell in love with the sweet sound of a ukulele. She enjoys playing covers of every genre of music and has begun to write her own. As “Sweet Moments of Confusion”, cellist Myra Joy and accordionist Diana Strong perform original instrumental compositions inspired by folk traditions from many corners of the world, particularly Northern and Eastern Europe. With a voice like butter and an array of original, bluesy melodies, Juliet Strong touches audiences with her depth of sound, unparalleled musicality, and lilting lyrics. Juliet's high-energy fusion of folk and soul, accompanied by rhythmic piano and ukulele, provides a unique, and infectiously uplifting musical experience. Acoustic Kitchen is presented by Community Center of Mendocino in cooperation with Mendocino Stories and Music Series. Founded in 2012, CCM is a community-based nonprofit dedicated to cultivating a sustainable, vibrant, and inclusive community center by strengthening community input and encouraging broad participation by all age groups. A complete listing of current programs and rental opportunities is available at www.ccmendo.org. All ages welcome. Doors open at 7PM for snacks and beverages. $10 at the door, $5 for students. For more info on this event call Pattie at 937-1732 or visit www.mendocinostories.com/events_info.html Mendocino Stories & Music Series on June 22

MIXED NUTS. With a collection of swing, as well as Latin, calypso, jazz, and popular tunes, The Mixed Nuts will be featured in the Mendocino Stories and Music Series on Saturday June 22. As a special offering, Sunshine Taylor and Glenn Rude, dancers extraordinaire and dance instructors, will teach a beginning swing dance class at 7:30PM followed by dance music at 8PM. This fun event will be held at the Hill House Inn of Mendocino. The Mixed Nuts, an off-shoot of Kevin and the Coconuts, was originally the brainchild of Dan Albrecht who, in this group, plays piano and sings. He is joined by Steve Paul on trumpet, vocals, steel pan, banjo and accordion; Paul Schulman on congas; Daney Dawson on acoustic upright bass; and Tom Rickard on drums and percussion. All ages and levels of interest are encouraged. Doors open at 6PM with dinner menu and full bar. $20 for reserved seating, $15 at the door - includes dance lesson. For more info on this event call Pattie at 937-1732 or visit www.mendocinostories.com/events_info.html

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ED REINHART & THE BURNING SENSATIONS to Perform 1st Parducci's Acoustic Café — Saturday June 15th, Parducci Winery's Acoustic Café series will begin their highly popular concert series with Ed Reinhart & The Burning Sensations making the audience Boogie Till You Drop. The festivities start around 7:00 with gates opening at 6:00. General Admission is $14 and tickets are available at Parducci Wine Cellars tasting room, on 501 Parducci Rd. in Ukiah, by calling 463-5357, or online at parducci.com/Wine-Store/Event-Tickets. Food will be available throughout the summer from The Potter Valley Café and North State Street Café with part of the drink proceeds benefiting the Alex Rorabaugh Center (The ARC). Seating fills quickly so be sure to show up early enough to get a seat at 6.

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ANTICIPATION FOR WINESONG 2013 GROWS AS AUCTION LOTS AND ARTIST OF THE YEAR PAINTING ARE REVEALED. ALL THAT PLUS AWARD-WINNING WINE, SPECTACULARFOOD AND CHARITABLE GIVING AND YOU HAVE A STELLER EVENT! A BENEFIT FOR THE MENDOCINO COAST HOSPITAL, HELD ON THE BREATHTAKING MENDOCINO COAST

September 6th & 7th, 2013

Visit www.winesong.org for details

FORT BRAGG, CA. (June 3, 2013) - Winesong 2013 (www.winesong.org) continues to be the Crown Jewel of Northern California charitable events. First, the 29th Annual Winesong will offer guests the opportunity to get an insider's view of Anderson Valley Pinot Noir on Friday, September 6th as Winesong and AVWA (Anderson Valley Winegrowers Association) present "An Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Celebration" hosted by the Little River Inn. On Saturday, September 7th, guests can stroll through the enchanting Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens enjoying a spectacular array of wine and food from 100 highly acclaimed wineries and 50 top-notch Northern California restaurants. The spectacular wine celebration continues on into the Auction Tents for the always-entertaining Live and Silent Charity Auctions. Last years event raised $450,000 for the Mendocino Coast Hospital. "Wine, food, art and music lovers are helping position Mendocino County wines and our event with the top regions and events in California wine country," noted Executive Director Jeri Erickson. Winesong celebrity chef, Bradley Ogden (who is back for a second year), is in the final phase of menu planning for this year's world-class Live Auction Lunch with the help of local catering company, Karina's Catering. The fabulous menu will be paired with award-winning Mendocino County wines. This prestigious event is sure to sell out as it is a unique opportunity to attend a weekend like no other. A celebration of wine, food, art, and music in a captivating setting! Winesong is also pleased to unveil Laura Pope, 2013 Artist of the Year's painting created for Winesong 2013. Pope has worked as a woodworker, a silversmith, a painter, and used techniques from the three mediums in mixed-media sculpture pieces. She continually delights in exploring and inventing techniques while working with different materials. For 20 years she has participated in the Laguna Sawdust Festival and Laguna Festival of Arts with jewelry and painting. Her work has been in numerous galleries and museums in Southern California and Texas. In Mendocino, her work has been seen in North Coast Artists Gallery, Oddfellows Hall, the Mendocino Art Center, Highlight Gallery, Mendocino Jewelry Studio, the Miasa - Sister City Show, and other venues. There will be lively bidding for over 200 lots featuring spectacular wines from the most prestigious wine producers, rare and hard-to-find vintages, and special vertical and horizontal collections. Original paintings and art from highly acclaimed artists, vacation packages, and custom-made international wine getaway packages share the auction limelight. 2013 Honorary Auction Chairs Monty & Sara Preiser have created some exciting auction lots for Winesong. Here are some Hot Lot highlights: · Beverly Hills Magic: 2 nights at the Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills, Dinner at AMMO Restaurant in Hollywood with Promise Wines owner and former President of ABC Entertainment, Steve McPherson, 6 Liter bottle of Promise wine, Tickets to Jimmy Kimmel Live accompanied by Steve McPherson, Photo-op and meeting Jimmy Kimmel, $750 cash to be used for air and airport transportation. · Be a Celebrity: A rare invitation for 2 people to sit with the judges of the American Fine Wine Competition in Miami for 2 days and taste the stunning wines that have been invited www.americanfinewinecompetition, 2 lunches and dinners with the judges, Dinner at an excellent restaurant and 3 nights lodging. 3 nights in a top New York Hotel, 1 Broadway show, 3 dinners with each including a special bottle of wine, Guest of CBS with VIP seats for the David Letterman Show, join announcer Alan Kalter for a personal tour of the set and have your photo taken at David's desk in front of the New York skyline, along with a personalized song from Composer Paul Williams. January 16-21, 2014. Advanced purchase round trip airfare from any Continental US city to New York and Florida. An Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Celebration: Meet the Winemakers Friday, September 6, 2013 | 1 to 4pm This exclusive event features Pinot Noir from Anderson Valley and tastes of Little River's finest culinary offerings. The focus of this celebration is to provide an exclusive opportunity to talk wine with the winemakers themselves in an intimate setting. Evaluate new wines and learn how classic Pinot Noir improves with age. Savor these lush and elegant wines while you meet and mingle with the winemakers at a seaside setting overlooking the spectacular Pacific Coast. Wine & Food Tasting in the Gardens Saturday, September 7, 2013 | 11am to 2pm Each year, in order to offer a wide array of wines, Winesong invites 100 highly acclaimed world-class wineries to preview their new vintages. With producers coming from such diverse regions as Mendocino, Napa, Sonoma, the Central Coast, Sierra Foothills, Oregon, Washington State, Italy, Chile and South Africa, the tasting is truly world-class and unprecedented in its sheer diversity. A wonderful variety of culinary fare is provided by more than 50 fine restaurants and food purveyors from Northern California. Wine & food enthusiasts can stroll through the botanical garden paths along the bluffs overlooking the majestic Mendocino Coast while sampling this bountiful fare and enjoying performances of musical ensembles throughout the gardens playing a variety of styles including jazz, folk, classical, zydeco and more! Silent & Live Auctions Saturday, September 7, 2013 | Silent: 11am to 4pm Live: 2pm-5pm There will be lively bidding on over 200 lots featuring spectacular wines and rare hard-to-find vintages from the most prestigious wine producers, original art from highly acclaimed artists, extravagant vacation packages, and custom-made international wine getaway packages. Bay Area celebrity Narsai David will serve as Master of Ceremonies. Chef Ogden will be creating the lunch for VIP ticket holders with the help of local catering company, Karina's Catering. o VIP tickets with reserved seating at auction and Celebrity Chef Lunch, and access to wine and food tasting: $200.00 o General Admission Tickets with festival seating at auction and access to wine and food tasting: $100.00 o General AdmissionTickets for Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Celebration: Meet the Winemakers: $50.00 Winesong is produced by Mendocino Coast Hospital Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to raising funds for the Mendocino Coast Hospital. Its mission is to help the small rural Hospital provide the best possible medical care to residents as well as the many visitors to the Mendocino Coast. The Hospital Foundation has raised over $4.5 million in Winesong generated funds which has enabled the Hospital to purchase essential medical equipment and improve services. For more information and to purchase tickets visit www.winesong.org or call (707) 961-4688. # # # # Media contacts: Michael Coats (707) 935-6203 or michael@coatspr.com Paisly Marechal (707) 935-6203 or paisly@coatspr.com Winesong Contact: Susan Kelley (707) 961-4994 or susan@winesong.org