Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, July 11, 2023

SEASONABLE WEATHER conditions will trend toward very hot and dry this weekend across interior valleys, with afternoon temperatures ranging from 100 to 110 across much of Trinity, Lake, and interior Mendocino County. Elsewhere, periods of stratus will continue to impact the coast, though afternoon clearing will be possible on a daily basis. Otherwise, no rain is forecast to occur during the next seven days. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): It's "quo no mo" finally. How about a cooler 47F under clear skies this Tuesday morning on the coast? Lots of fog still out there but it has moved out to sea for now. Our forecast is for generally clear skies & warming into the weekend. We'll see as always...

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THE WAR ON STAR THISTLES (We’re losing)

Navarro Point Preserve thistle removing this Thursday, 10am-noon Hello. Mendocino Land Trust staffer Ed Welter and I invite you to join us and other volunteers as we remove the ever-dwindling stock of thistles at beautiful Navarro Point this Thursday, 7/13, from 10am til noon. We hope to see you there! 

Tom Wodetzki <tw@mcn.org> 

Navarro Point Stewards 

Navarro Point Preserve, 1 & 3/4 miles south of Albion village on Hwy 1, is owned and managed by Mendocino Land Trust. We rely on volunteer stewardship workdays to maintain our network of public access trails and beaches. Volunteers spend 2 hours removing invasive plant species, picking up trash, maintaining the trail, and taking in the beautiful scenery. Stewardship workdays are scheduled for the 2nd Thursday of each month and are open to all ages and experience levels. Bring a spade and hand clippers if you can. 

mendocinolandtrust.org/trails/central-coastal-trails/navarro-point-trail/

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VIRGINIA SHARKEY: In a few days I’ll replace my paint brushes with a bow and start rehearsing for the Prokoviev 5th in this tent. First rehearsal Friday at 2. Come on in — rehearsals are free. Concert Sunday evening. 

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CONTROLLING RUNOFF

The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board is inviting public comment on a draft order that proposes new requirements for vineyards to safeguard water quality. The requirements, which could be modified after public comments are received and reviewed, will be considered for adoption by the North Coast Water Board later this year.

The Proposed General Order for Waste Discharge Requirements for Commercial Vineyards, or draft vineyard order, the first of its kind for the region, is the result of collaboration among the North Coast Water Board, vineyard owners and stakeholders committed to sustainable practices that protect the environment. The draft order was developed through a series of stakeholder efforts that culminated in the formation of a technical advisory group in the summer of 2022 to address components of the program. Under the draft order, vineyard owners would be required to implement certain management practices, such as placing ground cover around their vines during winter to mitigate potential water quality impacts associated with agricultural activities. Vineyard owners would also be required to establish or maintain setbacks to riparian areas, which help maintain cool temperatures in streams.

“This draft order has been a truly collaborative effort that, if adopted, will ensure vineyards are doing everything possible to preserve and enhance water quality,” said Valerie Quinto, executive officer of the North Coast. “Without appropriate controls, cultivation of wine grapes can result in the discharge of sediment and agricultural chemicals and, by removing trees near streams and the subsequent shade they provide, increase the water temperature to levels that threaten the health and survival of aquatic life.”

Through widespread enrollment in voluntary sustainability programs such as Fish Friendly Farming, California Certified Sustainable, LODI RULES, and Sustainability in Practice (SIP), more than 80% of North Coast vineyards are already implementing conservation practices. Surface and groundwater monitoring required by the proposed Order would verify that these practices are protective of water quality.

Of the 65,000 acres of vineyards in the North Coast Region, 95% are within the Navarro and Russian River watersheds, which provide habitat for threatened and endangered salmon species but are considered impaired for sediment and temperature.

The public is encouraged to provide comments during the 45-day public comment period, which will end on August 14 at 5 p.m. The board will host a public workshop during its board meeting on Aug. 3 or Aug. 4 at 9 a.m. Following the close of the public comment period, staff will revise the draft order and draft report with a projected Board adoption hearing scheduled for December.

(North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board)

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HIGH OCCUPANCY IN DOG KENNELS

Animal Shelters & Animal Rescues throughout the country are experiencing unprecedented times. The majority of the Animal Shelters & Animal Rescues are filled up with animals and have very little available space for other stray animals to come into their facilities. Hundreds of Animal Shelters are now facing the reality to having to euthanize animals for space. 

Mendocino County Animal Shelter dog kennels have been at almost 100% occupancy for many months and this is the new norm. Dogs are staying here longer, not being reclaimed by their owners and not being adopted. When this bottle necking affect occurs and dogs are not leaving it places the Animal Shelter in the difficult position of euthanizing healthy dogs to make room for the other free roaming stray dogs to come into the Animal Shelter. 

What makes the situation worse is when citizens opt to embellish, lie or deceive on the circumstances of the stray dog in order to get the dog picked up by Animal Protection or impounded at the Animal Shelter as a drop off. As an example we had a couple come to the Animal Shelter this past week and state they found this “stray” dog. When Animal Shelter staff scanned the dog for a microchip the microchip came back registered to the couple. 

If you find a stray dog please be prepared to hold the dog for several days if the Animal Shelter is full with dogs. With your assistance we can upload a picture of the dog on our Lost & Found” webpage in an effort to get the dog reconnected with their owner. When kennel space becomes available we will contact you to bring the dog to the Animal Shelter. If you are adamant that we take the stray dog, other shelter dogs are subject to be euthanized for space to accommodate the stray dog.

When judging or criticizing the Animal Shelter if euthanasia for space has to take place please remember the decision is not an easy one, we have exhausted all our available options and your fellow county residents that have failed these animals are responsible for the unfortunate outcome. 

When there is posting on our website indicating that the dog kennels are full, we need immediate assistance with owners reclaiming their stray dogs asap or we are running an adoption special to free up kennels space. Please note that if there is minimal response from the community then healthy dogs will be euthanized for space to free up dog kennels in order for us to take in more stray dogs. In the past we were able to work with other Animal Shelters & Animal Rescues in transferring dogs to them but due to their facilities also having a high occupancy rate this is not option. 

This posting is to make the citizens aware that we are doing the best that we can but there are many variables causing this situation and unfortunately there are not a lot of answers thus we need the community's assistance. 

Thank you.

Animal Care Services

(County Presser)

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ED NOTES

RECOMMENDED VIEWING: “Waco: The Rules of Engagement” which makes an irrefutable case that the ATF and the FBI deliberately shot and incinerated the Branch Davidians at their church compound in retaliation for the deaths of four ATF agents. The ATF agents were shot by the Davidians, you will recall, as they stormed the church rather than serve the church’s leader, David Koresh, with a warrant when he was off the premises, as per normal procedures. From the beginning of the grisly and totally indefensible episode, the film make it clear that the feds were determined to deploy lethal force against a harmless religious sect. Why? Perhaps as a warning to other non-conforming groups that if you stray too far from the great two-party consensus, it will get you. Complete with footage of the tax-paid cowboys astride tanks in full Rambo fantasy — the troops at Waco mooned the women and children inside the compound and shouted obscenities at the Davidians before they murdered them. Waco is a step-by-step case description of our government’s murder of 86 innocent men, women and children. Not surprisingly, during the post-slaughter cover-up, the most aggressive defenders of the ATF and the FBI’s indefensible performances were Senator Joe Biden, and representatives Lantos and Shumer, generally considered liberals. 

THE ALL-TIME EXAMPLE of what’s wrong with journalism schools and, by extension, much of contemporary American journalism, appeared years ago in the Sunday Chronicle. It was written by Orville Schell, then-dean of Cal Berkley’s graduate school of journalism and called, “A Conversation on the State of the Media.” 

SCHELL BEGAN, “If one searches the media landscape for islands of unalloyed intelligence and integrity, few come more quickly to mind than the daily NPR interview program, ‘Fresh Air.’ What makes Terry Gross stand out so starkly from most other broadcasters in the American media is her dedication to doing programming that answers not market surveys which help to propitiate ratings gods, but to her own sense of what is intrinsically interesting and worthwhile.” 

IT GETS WORSE. “Lamentable as it may be to observe, Gross’s dedication to journalistic excellence has made her something of an oddity — an ‘anchor’ (even the word sounds off key in her case!) who, instead of pandering to the lowest common denominator of demand, seeks to create a demand for intelligent programming by adopting the novel strategy of simply doing intelligent programming. In this sense, Terry Gross and ‘Fresh Air’ are truly national treasures.” 

THESE PROSE SLIVERS having been driven under the nails of both my hands, Schell went for my toe nails. “Because her views are rarely predictable and her mental and political honesty is always on guard against muddled thinking, sophistry and cant, there is no one in America with whom I would rather have the kind of public ‘conversation’ we will have on the state of the media.” 

TERRY GROSS is the audio version of People Magazine. I’ve never once heard her ask a hard question. So far as I’m aware, Ms. Gross has never ever interviewed a single dissenter with the exception of an interview I heard her stumble through with an indulgent Norman Mailer. Among other irrelevant questions, she asked Mailer why his books were so long. And I heard her ask Salman Rushdie who was then in hiding from the famous fatwa issued by Iran’s senile ayatollah in the wake of Rushdie’s unreadable book, ‘Midnight’s Children’: “Were you lonely? Did you gain weight?” 

TALKING BACK TO GIUSTI, who somehow got it into his head that I'm for the Fort Bragg name change. Focus, Giusti, focus! I'm opposed to a name change for Fort Bragg. In fact, the Name Changers are arranging a debate with me against them during which I will argue against the name change in an event sorta like a rhetorical version of midget wrestling. As for General Bragg, so incompetent his fellow Confederate traitors removed him from their command structure, there's no defense, although he was a product of his time and place, and aren't we all? I think the Name Change issue goes beyond Fort Bragg because it represents a re-write or erasure of historical fact, and re-writes of historical fact are assaults on truth, at least the search for truth. Back to Bragg for a sec: Fort Bragg became Fort Bragg when that junior officer, the guy in charge of establishing the fort, attempted to ingratiate himself with Bragg, then his senior officer, by naming the remote, insignificant American army presence way to hell and gone up in the NorCal wilderness, by naming the fort after Bragg. All this happened long before the Civil War. And the fort was established to bring order to a situation where white settlers were murdering Indians and Indians, as best they could without horses and guns, were knocking off settlers, although the body count was way in favor of the settlers, among them lots of single male criminals on the lam from other areas of the country. Mendo, in 1850, was a free fire zone. No law, no order with Indians suffering the most. 

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AGING FACILITIES

Editor,

Lake Sonoma and Lake Mendocino offer local examples of a nationwide problem concerning aging and failing infrastructure at outdoor recreation facilities.

Visitation to parks has exploded since the pandemic, but facilities managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at Lake Sonoma face particular degradation due to exclusionary authorities who could have helped with funding repairs — like the plumbing and electrical upgrades required at Liberty Glen.

A coalition of outdoor recreation industry and nonprofit partners, including the Corps Foundation, is supporting legislation to include the Corps of Engineers in fee retention authority that has benefited the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management for years.

The bipartisan LAKES Act, for Lake Access Keeping Economies Strong, would allow the Corps of Engineers to retain up to 80% of recreation use fees. These funds could be reinvested to projects where the fees were collected, giving local project managers the flexibility to repair infrastructure and complete maintenance with funds already paid by the visiting public.

Find out more at corpsfoundation.org. Isn’t it time that your recreation fees stayed local and helped maintain the facilities you enjoy?

Nancy Rogers, Board member, the Corps Foundation

Petaluma

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EARTHQUAKES are an inevitable part of California living, a threat that always exists in the back of the mind. Even though we haven’t experienced a major shaker in decades, quakes are an ever-present risk that comes with living in a region where two tectonic plates meet.

Anyone who lived through the 1989 Loma Prieta quake in the Bay Area and Santa Cruz will tell you it was a life-changing experience. After 15 violent seconds, damage from the magnitude 6.9 quake was widespread — cataclysmic, in some places. There were aftershocks. Roads and bridges were down, power and communication were out.

Each year, a quake of magnitude 8 or higher — stronger than the 1906 S.F. quake, estimated at 7.9 — is expected to strike somewhere on Earth. And the Bay Area, underlaid by multiple fault lines, is target rich. Experts predict, and history suggests, that we are overdue for a major quake, particularly along the Hayward Fault in the East Bay.…

sfchronicle.com/projects/2023/bay-area-earthquake

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RON PATTON, Fort Bragg History & Photographs:

Most people are aware of the interment of the West Coast Japanese when the US entered WW ii but I wonder how many know a Fort Bragg resident was one of those people. Her name was Hannah Piggott (1885 -1949) and she and her husband Harry (1885 -1934), who was Caucasian lived next door to my immigrant grandparents and were good friends. Most of the information here is from stories my Mom and aunts told us and verified in her obituary, there is also some conjecture by me.

She was sex trafficked to the US according to her in a trunk. She and Harry met at some point in Seattle and located to Fort Bragg around 1917. Harry owned/worked at a livery stable and had formerly been a jockey. Unfortunately at some point he became an opium addict and Hannah would go to the Chinese temple formerly located on the NW corner of Redwood and Mcpherson.

Hannah would watch the kids at times and also share wine with my Grandfather. She could get a little out there but explained saying she had been shot at some point and the bullet was still in her head. My mother described her as a "courtesan".

When she was interred it was in a desolate SE corner of Colorado. This was probably quite lonely as she had no family or friends and my family didn't know where she had been sent. I doubt she was able to write in English as we have no letters from her and my Mother saved all correspondence. Following the wars end she showed up at the door not knowing what was next. Fortunately her landlords who I believe was the Filosi family (and if not whoever it was deserve a shout out for their compassion) had simply locked up the house and it was waiting for her upon her return. Sadly my Mother described her as "broken" upon her return. A sad tale of one of Fort Bragg's past residents.

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THE GLORY DAYS

by Mike Geniella

When I read that the New York Times was disbanding its sport department, I gulped.

One more nail in the coffin of conventional news media. So long newspapers. Hello web. Hard to believe the world of journalism has been upended in such a short period of time.

When the New York Times bought the Santa Rosa Press Democrat in 1985, the celebration was on.

The mighty Times was the PD’s mothership for 26 years, providing excellent sports and news coverage, top notch guidance in journalism practices, and big $$$ for local journalists to provide the kind of in-depth coverage that had only been the topic of barroom talk until then. The Times’ purchase of the PD was a recognition of the respected regional newspaper it had become under a century of ownership by the Finley family.

Personally, I enjoyed being in the center of things when Times’ management expanded coverage in Mendocino, Lake, and Humboldt counties, and transformed a closet-like Ukiah office into a real News Bureau. Seldom were there questions raised about the costs of coverage of North Coast issues, including an intense clash between timber corporations and environmental activists that led to a still unsolved car bombing. The glorious old Eureka Inn became a second home for me during that tumultuous era.

My only brush with sports coverage under the Times ownership came when noted PD photographer Kent Porter and I traveled to Cuba in the summer of 2000 with a championship Little League team from the hippie enclave of Whitethorn in rural Humboldt County.

The relentless American embargo was still in force but then Cuban president Fidel Castro, a huge baseball fan, had invited the California boys to play in hot, humid Havana with teams there because earlier the Eureka guys had gathered up old mitts, bats and balls and donated them to hard scrabble teams in Cuba under a ‘Pastors for Peace’ program.

A group of Vietnam veterans helped the Whitethorn team by selling ‘Baseball Diplomacy’ tee shirts and hats. A dinner dance was held at the Mateel with music by Tubesteak Jones and Frida’s Circus to raise a total of nearly $25,000 to pay for airfare for the team and its managers. There was more. Sports stores in Fortuna and Eureka collected more used baseball equipment for the kids to take with them.

Once there, we learned the Cuban teams played ball year round and didn’t think twice about tropical heat. The Whitethorn team, their managers, and handful of supporters wilted. The North Coast boys got a shellacking over three days of play.

To ease the discomfort, I recall the PD on one of the last days of the trek hosting a pool party for the North Coast kids at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, where they gobbled down hot dogs, and cooled off by hanging in the water most of the afternoon. No questions asked by the bean counters for the Times.

Yes, I know change is inevitable. But I can’t help but think of Bruce Springsteen’s great song, ‘Glory Days.’

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COYOTE MYTHBUSTING

MYTH: A coyote stalked me!

FACT: Coyotes are naturally curious animals and often engage in a behavior called "escorting".

Has a coyote ever "followed" you or your dog while you were out on a walk? If so, you may have felt afraid, thought the coyote was stalking you, or believed an attack was imminent. The truth is, you were likely being “escorted”!

Coyotes are naturally curious animals and often engage in this behavior called "escorting." Escorting is when a coyote, sometimes with their mate, follows nearby to ensure that you leave their territory. This behavior is most often seen from early March to late April when coyote parents are protecting their offspring. Escorting usually happens in the early morning or evening and is frequently observed by dog walkers because coyotes may see dogs as a threat to their babies.

What do you do if you're "escorted" by a coyote? Don't panic; the coyote is much more afraid of you! If you don't have your dog leashed (which you should in coyote country), immediately leash up and keep your pup by your side. Calmly keep walking as normal. Soon enough, you'll be out of the coyote's home and they will stop escorting you! On the off chance that the escorting coyote starts to approach too closely, shout and wave your hands to frighten them away.

As humans develop more and more natural habitats, coyote coexistence has become even more essential. We simply must learn to understand their behavior.

Sheryl Hester

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, July 10, 2023

ARTURO CONTRERAS, Ukiah. Criminal threats, witness intimidation.

RICHARD MENESES-GUERRERO, Willits. DUI.

SAMUEL PANAMENO, Fort Bragg/Ukiah. DUI, under influence, loaded concealed handgun-not registered owner, large capacity magazine.

HARVEY ROGERS, Ukiah. DUI causing bodily injury with great bodily injury to a person over 70 years of age enhanced for multiple victims with bodily injury or death, cotrolled substance, paraphernalia 

NATHANIEL SECKER, Fort Bragg. Tear gas, probation revocation.

MARKAUS VINING, Clearlake/Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-drugs&alcohol.

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PLAY BALL IN A DYSTOPIAN HELLSCAPE

by Steve Heilig

Saturday, July 8 — It was “Hello Kitty” day at the bayfront ballpark. The meaning of that seemed unclear to most attendees other than some very cute little kids with cat ears on. It was a clear blue sky day, most welcome after too much Summer fog and wind. Just a few clouds out over the water. Constant inane marketing and musical noise blasted from the loudspeakers; silence as scary, or at least not monetizeable. Semi-psychedelic cartoon kitty videos recurring on the big screen, recalling flashing images from late-night raver dance clubs; “I’m glad I’m not on acid” said one companion, an addiction doctor, while cracking open expensive but mandatory salty peanuts. Everybody around us was having a great time.

Great game too, lots of hitting and sharp fielding and a home team win. We sat in the shaded press box amidst empty seats, but the rest of the sunny ballpark was fairly full. The Giants beat the Rockies 5-3, after some tense late-game moments, but the home team’s reliever came in for the ninth and shut things down very efficiently, 1-2-3, like a machine. Big cheers; it looked like unlike usual practice nobody had left before the game’s ending, as it was just too nice a day and too good a game to hurry to be anywhere else.

Out front it was a bit of a crush to get onto the Muni trains, but it was a short wait in the nice sun and everyone was exceedingly polite about it. No pushing, just orderly boarding. Once on the crowded car, multiple riders of all ages and ethnicities looked up from their fascinating phones and kindly offered up their seats to my older companion, who was leaning on me as he needs a new knee. I idly wondered how many on board might have benefited in their lives from the mass movement for free or at least accessible health care my famed friend and mentor had ignited while just out of medical school in the 1960s (a couple of folks in the ballpark had recognized him, but unlike at a concert in Golden Gate Park, this time nobody volunteered “Hey doc, you treated me for VD in the 1970s, man!”). 

The N-Judah train largely emptied out downtown as most scattered for other routes home. “Bye y’all, see ya next time, go Giants!” a visibly pregnant young woman yelled upon disembarking. We stayed on, heading west under Market Street, rumbling under the barren financial district, then along under about a mile of relative misery by the Tenderloin and “mid-market” and Civic Center, the most troubled areas in the city, surfacing next to breezy sunny Duboce Park where the doggies scampered about, then into the tunnel through the granite hill my own home sits atop. On very quiet dawns in our place one can even hear the trains rumbling a couple hundred feet below. 

Emerging in Cole Valley, the re-branded slightly more genteel sector of the fabled infamous Haight-Ashbury, where people now sat outside in front of eateries and cafes enjoying the sun and “craft” beverages, we got off for the brief walk homeward. I was tempted to stay onboard for the fast and slightly downhill ride a couple miles out to Ocean Beach on such a fine afternoon, but duties called. Onetime neighborhood denizen William Saroyan once wrote in the 1940s or 1950s that his favorite ritual was walking all the way out to the beach via Golden Gate Park’s lushly green roads and paths, catching the sunset dipping into the Pacific, and riding the N Judah back up home in time for cocktail hour. It’s a practice I emulate whenever I can and when the fog has backed off. This early evening, tired, I skipped most of it.

Sunday morning, even though it was a day game with plenty of time before deadline, there’s not one word about it in the sadly anorexic Sunday Chronicle. But of course the struggling paper did feature numerous reports of numerous problems bedeviling our world-famous city; “same as it ever was,” as the saying goes, only worsened now post-pandemic and with fentanyl, methamphetamine, and the mainstay of alcohol ruining too many local lives. The city struggles to confront it, and does a lot, but our hospital emergency departments are in chronic overcrowded crisis and the health department expects we’ll set another sad record for overdose deaths this year. The silly recall of a district attorney and talk of ramped-up law enforcement have yet to show much if any impact. Smarter approaches take time. In fact my companion and I, with another colleague, had just published a medical journal article arguing for a somewhat more aggressive yet still compassionate approach to helping some of our worst-off homeless mentally ill and/or addicted neighbors get off the streets and into treatment instead of “dying with their rights on,” as was written in another medical journal exactly half a century ago. We’ll see how that goes, if it does at all. At least informed opinion, and some funding, seems to favor some better tactics.

About 90% of the city looks basically unchanged from years ago, the neighborhoods seemingly thriving, the parks and streets sparkling, if not befogged. The waterfront we strolled to the ballpark is beautiful. The downtown economic front does look challenging, along with the public health one; violent crime is still way down from when I showed up here 40 years back and I actually saw more bodies lying in the South of Market or Tenderloin streets back then than I do now, but thanks to the internet and intentionally divisive politicized rhetoric from too many corners, people are scared, and/or angry, and some think things are worse than ever in our “dystopian hellscape” where real estate values ironically remain among the highest on the planet. And alas, for too many, “perception is reality,” even if, or maybe especially if, they can’t offer any realistically workable improvements. It seems carping and complaining is a way of life for some people.

But the Giants play on, and win a lot too. The famed Willie Mays statue out front of the stadium remains some sort of beacon of hope, even when the fog slams back as it did on Sunday morning. One can dream.

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WHY WE SING THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER BEFORE BALL GAMES ...

Back on September 7, 1918, the Red Sox and Chicago Cubs played the first game of the 1918 World Series at Comiskey Park in Chicago. The United States had just fully entered World War I and patriotic fever ran wild throughout the country. 

Fred Thomas, the Sox young third baseman had enlisted but got permission from his commander to play in the Series. During the seventh inning break, on a whim, in a patriotic move, a brass band struck up ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’ 

Fred Thomas took off his cap, stood at attention and saluted. The other players followed his example and then all the fans stood, saluted, and began to sing. And thus, a time-honored tradition was born at baseball games forever after. 

www.fenwayparkdiaries.com

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BIG FIGHT

by Paul Modic

Back home in the racist flatlands of Northern Indiana to visit my old man I decided to not hassle him for one day, twenty-four hours of no judgements, accusations, or advice. 

By day two I had lots of advice: “Get your shit together Pop! Don’t be depressed. Learn to cook. Spend some of your money on yourself. Figure out what to do. Get some sleep!” Telling a hungry, lonely, ill, depressed insomniac to “get it together man” is like shouting louder when someone doesn’t understand a foreign language. He’s made himself and now he’s going to have to live with it.

Before I went back to the midwest I consulted my therapist who advised me not to get caught up in my father’s negative vortex. I stayed pretty cool for a couple of months but can take just so much of a miserable suicidal person complaining until I snap, which is what happened, and this is how it happened:

Forty years ago a soon-to-be famous artist, Roy Lichtenstein, gave our family a couple of paintings, he and my father had both been professors at Oswego State on Lake Ontario. Roy went into New York where one of the paintings was hanging on the wall in a bank, took it out of the frame, rolled it up, and brought it back across the river to New Jersey for us to take to the new job at Ball State in Muncie, Indiana. Roy was a very nice human being, often gave his paintings out as “permanent loans,” and after decades of having these pre-pop paintings gracing our homes we considered them our own. Forty years later the six foot by four foot painting “The Kiss” Roy took from the bank was still tacked up on the wall unframed. 

After the divorce one painting was to go to my mother and one to my father. It was their brilliant idea not to agree on which painting each would get, they couldn’t decide. For many years while my younger sisters were in the old brick farmhouse on the hill in Fort Wayne my mother had both. When she remarried and left town I rented a U-Haul for sixty bucks, laid the unframed painting flat on the bed, drove it across town to my father’s house, tacked it up on a wall once again, and then he had both paintings.

After a month in town I was leaving for Vermont to visit my mother, suggested to him that I could take the smaller painting to her in my pickup truck, and he offered reasons why that shouldn’t happen.

“She’s not really settled over there,” he said. “She’s renting, it should be up to the estate when I die.”

I wasn’t having it. “Look Pop,” I said. “One of those is hers and she just told me on the phone that she’d like me to bring one over to Vermont.”

“No, no!” he said. “Why are you starting on this now?”

That was a good question. I should have known that anything, any change was going to disturb him, but after listening to him say he was going to kill himself for the last week I think I was probably trying to give him a heart attack.

“So you won’t give Mom one of the paintings?” I said. “Well, then you’re immoral, a crook, a con-man, and a thief. This was a morality test and you failed miserably!” 

He was very upset and got on the phone to my sister telling her I’d accused him of being immoral and a crook. Then he said, “Okay, I’m calling your mother.”

They talked for an hour, longer than they had in the previous twenty-six years since the divorce, refreshing each others’ memories with the story about how they got the paintings. After a while I left to walk to the store thinking, “I can do no wrong, I’ve got them talking again after all these years!” When I got back to the house everything had calmed down.

“Pop,” I said. “Jessie wants me to bring back her music cabinet.”

“What?” He replied. “Now you’re starting with that?” Before I left California my sister had asked me to bring back the beautiful antique which had been my great, great grandmother’s.

“She never mentioned anything about it when she was here last summer,” he said.

“Why should she?” I said. “She flew here, there was no way she was going to take it back then, she was dealing with reality.”

“Reality,” he said. “Don’t give me that ‘reality’ crap.”

“Okay, look, I’ll call her up and she can tell you for herself that she wants it.” I called California, was told that she would call back the next day, and continued doing my Indiana thing, ie reading the New York Times ad nauseam.

Later Pop came down the stairs muttering some insults at me and that was it. I told him I was leaving right then instead of waiting till the morning as planned. I started hauling my stuff downstairs and packing it up. He came down, saw my bags, and said, “I want you to take the music cabinet.”

“No,” I said. “Its best to leave it here, I’m not taking it.” He began to frantically empty the drawers, where he had stored some personal papers, out into boxes. 

“I’m not taking it Pop!” I started to call one of my sisters on the cordless phone, he tried to take it from me, and we struggled for it until I finally gave it up. He was like a coup leader, a dictator, who immediately upon seizing power takes over the national radio station, and he was seizing the communications apparatus! No longer could I follow him around threatening to call 911, the mental hospital, or my sisters, though I could still use the rotary phone on the wall but it just wasn’t the same.

“You’ve got to take it now,” he said. The drawers were all out and he was dragging it toward the front door. “If you leave now and Jessie calls in the morning you’ll have trumped me.”

He wanted to drag the antique outside where it was misting and wet and I went over to try to stop him from moving it out the door. He was sobbing now. “Take it! Take it! Just take it!”

“No! I’m not taking it. I told you I wasn’t.”

“You gotta take it now!”

“No!” He was pissing me off so much I screamed as loud as I could, “Fuck you asshole!!!” and the windows shook.

Now he was really mad and he looked around. Not the golf clubs I thought. Yes, the golf clubs. He reached into the bag, pulled out an iron, and came at me. I had anticipated it, picked up a chair to block the swinging metal, and easily knocked the club out of his hand. I muscled him over to a chair and pushed him down into it.

“Just settle down,” I said. He kept getting up so I kept pushing him back down, about seven times, until the chair broke. He grabbed one of the shelves from the music cabinet and hit it harmlessly against my leg.

“Be cool.” I said.

“Take the cabinet,” he whimpered. He was crying now. “Just take the cabinet.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll take the cabinet,” I said and he calmed down.

I took one of the paintings to my mother in Vermont and came back a week later on my way back west. I felt my work wasn’t done, researched for a couple hours, and found an art restorer who could frame the other painting, as well as an appraiser for insurance purposes.

“Look Pop,” I said. “I know you’re not into it and probably nothing’s going to happen but I’ve contacted a conservator and an appraiser and it could be done.”

“No, no,” he said. “I don’t need to do anything. Roy always said we didn’t need to frame it.”

“But don’t you think the paintings should at least be insured?” I asked.

“No,” he responded.

I couldn’t help it. “Then I guess you’re an idiot.” 

“Just leave now; I never want to see you again. You don’t care if I live or I die. You just want my money!”

This was too much and I started to cry. “How can you say that?” 

“Oh, I didn’t mean it. I’m just kidding,” he replied.

I drove out to the store to buy a bunch of Amish chicken to cook and freeze. “If I don’t care if he lives or dies then why am I making him all this food?” I thought. I made so many chicken breast dinners that I realized he’d probably die of boredom if he ate them all, since I’m a lousy cook it was a labor of love.

A few days later I went into the garage, took his rope down off the rafter, flung it into the corner, and kicked his chair down. 

Then I hit the road.

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THE MEGAN RAPINOE ERA ONLY ENDS WHEN WE STOP FIGHTING BACK

by Dave Zirin

Megan Rapinoe, the most important US soccer player of the last 20 years, is retiring. The 38-year-old with a goal-scoring flair as striking as her kaleidoscopic coif announced that she will be saying goodbye after the 2023 World Cup. In telling the world now, Rapinoe has created the possibility of a dramatic sendoff, driving even more interest in what will be a rollicking tournament.

Rapinoe’s two-decade career is nearly peerless. Her 199 career games with the US national team, her 63 international goals—many of them scored in unbearably tense moments—will be remembered for as long as people take the pitch. Her 2019 was particularly epic. That year, she won the Ballon d’Or as the FIFA women’s player of the year, scored six goals at the World Cup, and won the Golden Boot as the tournament’s top scorer and the Golden Ball for top player.

But Rapinoe became widely known as far more than a soccer player in 2016 when she became the first white athlete to take a knee during the national anthem in solidarity with the protests against racism and police violence staged by Colin Kaepernick. Drawing fire away from the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, Rapinoe explained why she felt the need to act: “Being a gay American, I know what it means to look at the flag and not have it protect all of your liberties. It was something small that I could do and something that I plan to keep doing in the future and hopefully spark some meaningful conversation around it. It’s important to have white people stand in support of people of color on this. We don’t need to be the leading voice, of course, but standing in support of them is something that’s really powerful.”

In 2020, I asked Rapinoe about why she took that knee, and she told me, "I don’t think I was debating it in my mind that much. That 2016 summer was wild, horrific [with the viral videos of the police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile]. We get past the Olympics, come home and very quickly Colin starts kneeling. I was listening to everything that he was saying, and then everything that everyone else was saying in response. Very quickly it was clear that nobody in power was wanting to hear what Colin was saying. That’s why they’re saying all this stuff, conflating patriotism, military, and the flag. I was thinking that we all have a part to play. I feel like I’ve stood up for my own rights, but I’ve also asked people to stand up for my rights. It was my turn."

Rapinoe also spoke to me about why it’s important for white people to approach anti-racist work with humility and intentionality. “If somebody’s getting arrested, you should get arrested too. That’s your gauge,” she said. "If somebody’s getting beat up, you should be right there getting beat up, too. I think that our role in this is tremendous, because we benefit so much, and we have benefited so much, and there’s yet to be a true national reckoning and acknowledgement and admission to what we did in the past and what we continue to do. Until we have that—and I don’t think we get that without white people being very involved and committing to that—we’re going to have unrest."

Speaking during the summer of struggle after the police murder of George Floyd, she finished her interview with me by saying simply, “This is the uprising that we need.”

Two months after Kaepernick—and then Rapinoe—first took a knee, Donald Trump was sent to the White House. Instead of retreating into despair, Rapinoe became what she later called, “a walking protest” against the president. She called him “sexist,” “misogynistic,” and “racist.” Amid the 2019 World Cup, when the US women captured the imagination of the country with ratings that squashed every sport save NFL football, Rapinoe was asked about her team visiting Trump after the tournament, and she replied with a hint of annoyance, “I’m not going to the fucking White House.”

Her comment sent Trump into a social-media tantrum, but what could have been an ugly distraction inspired several of her teammates to have her back and also refuse any possible White House invite. And Rapinoe responded to Trump by scoring goals and striking a pose both defiant and joyful. Rapinoe is one of those radicals who remind me of Howard Zinn’s description of Eugene Debs: “Fierce in his convictions, kind and compassionate in his personal relations.”

Rapinoe distinguished herself in recent months by standing proudly with the transgender community in the face of efforts to have them banned from sports and erased from public life. There is a great deal of pressure on cisgender women athletes—from a coterie of very prominent cisgender women in the sports world—to call for the exclusion of trans athletes from organized athletics. Rapinoe says the opposite. “I’m 100 percent supportive of trans inclusion,” she told Time. "We’re talking about kids. We’re talking about people’s lives. [Kids] are committing suicide, because they are being told that they’re gross and different and evil and sinful and they can’t play sports with their friends that they grew up with. Not to mention trying to take away health care. I think it’s monstrous. I would also encourage everyone out there who is afraid someone’s going to have an unfair advantage over their kid to really take a step back and think what are we actually talking about here. We’re talking about people’s lives. I’m sorry, your kid’s high school volleyball team just isn’t that important. It’s not more important than any one kid’s life."

But the crown jewel of what I am calling the Rapinoe Era is the victory for equal pay in soccer, which women athletes had long fought for. While Rapinoe should be seen as a link in the chain, she was an especially strong one. After her World Cup heroics, she used her newly gained cultural capital as one of the five original plaintiffs in their legal battle. After the victory, Rapinoe told ESPN, “There’s no real justice in this other than this never happening again. With the settlement of the working conditions and this settlement, which is contingent upon a CBA that will have equal pay going forward, there’s no other way to look at it than just a monumental win for women’s sports and women’s soccer, in particular.” Winning equal pay on such a high-profile stage was historic and was embraced not merely by the soccer world but by the broader labor movement.

Rapinoe, of course, isn’t going anywhere. At 38 years old, her journey, in many respects, is just beginning. Thankfully, she brings to that journey a love for life and a passion for social and economic justice. The Rapinoe superpower is that she is restless unless she is turning anger into action. I can’t predict the future, but I suspect it will involve people inspiring Rapinoe, and then she will, again, return the favor—inspiring many more to be brave and fearless in the face of injustice.

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

It is staggeringly amazing to me that the formerly most wealthy and technologically advanced Country takes weeks, if not months, to count an election.

I can solve the problem right now and I can do it for free. No experts, just an ordinary guy living in the Rocky Mountains of Utah. It’s simple.

1. Voter arrives and shows ID.

2. They are given a paper ballot.

3. They dip their finger in ink (once finger is dipped they cannot vote again).

4. They enter a booth and put a check mark in ink next to the candidate of their choice.

5. Exit ballot and put ballot in a slotted, locked, wooden box.

6. Box is taken every hour to a big room where chubby white haired democrat ladies in librarian glasses count the ballots.

7. Ballots are then taken to another room where chubby white haired Republican ladies in librarian glasses count the ballots.

8. Vote counts are added to the tallies.

9. Voting places close at the appropriate time.

10. Counted ballots are sent to the County where they are added to precinct counts.

11. County declares final counts. In Utah that would 29 counties with results to add together using a calculator.

12. Winner declared.

This isn’t rocket science. Unfortunately, we are too arrogant and too prideful to admit that our current system is broken and doesn’t work and the more we tinker the worse it gets. We really need to go back to the basics.

Will never happen with the hucksters running everything. They love the complicated mess they’ve created. Too easy to cheat.

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SUGGESTIONS FOR PROGRESSIVES TO BECOME STRONGER

by Ralph Nader

Though reluctant to admit it publicly, for the sake of morale and status, progressive citizen group leaders taking on the corporate supremacists and their political lackeys are in hard times. With few exceptions, they are neither adjusting with bolder strategies and tactics nor growing fast enough to spin off new divisions and groups. On the other hand, corporatists, driven by profits, have constant motivation and measurable yardsticks for defining their success. Corporatists, with their monetized minds, are not seized by internal worries and debates about how to address climate catastrophes, addicted customers (tobacco) and patients (Opioids). They are corrupting governments or becoming tax dodgers, all while demanding government handouts.

Against that background, I offer some suggestions. Progressives should:

1. Not succumb to the satiety of exposing and denouncing, without moving to action. Their reports gather dust. Be like law professor and leading child advocate Robert Fellmeth (See, Children’s Advocacy Institute). He has exposed wrongdoing, proposed reforms and taken them all the way through the California legislature to the governor’s signature.

2. Avoid being overly turf-conscious which weakens your group and rejects the reality that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In 1972, we produced magazine-size profiles of all the members of Congress running for re-election. This was never done before or since. We asked Common Cause – similarly committed to accountable, responsive lawmakers – to notice these profiles to their membership. They politely declined. Our groups, under my watch, always publicize the good works of other groups.

3. Understand that the affliction of aliteracy – knowing how to read but not reading – is widespread among progressives – outside of their narrow specialties. Trying to get progressive advocates or researchers just to read our new Capitol Hill Citizen newspaper (https://www.capitolhillcitizen.com/) and use its special contents to press their own causes is no easy feat. It is very difficult to break through the addiction of screens and unending voicemails. So, why not have communal non-fiction book clubs within the groups like Public Citizen, Common Cause, People for the American Way, Greenpeace, Sierra Club Et al. to bring people up-to-date on the crushing new swarms of corporate controls? Readers Think and Thinkers Read. Both motivate action.

4. It is too difficult to dislodge honest but ineffectual leaders of the larger citizen groups and their subdivisions. As baseball coach Leo Durocher used to say “Nice guys finish last.” To overcome normal sentimental feelings, think of all those people, families and children out there who are not being served, protected and encouraged due to weak, unimaginative or burned-out heads of civil rights/civil liberties, labor, consumer and environmental groups. They should realize their own limitations in their present positions and move on to tasks for which they are more suited, letting fresh leaders succeed them.

5. Wake up! There exists a truly irritating strain among both progressive lawmakers, staff and outside advocates, of prejudging their own defeat, of scrapping bolder or new initiatives for change or reform with the cry “It just ain’t gonna happen.”

Imagine if Newt Gingrich, a junior Republican from Georgia, had that attitude in 1991. He bullied his way to the top, and evicted two Democratic Speakers of the House of Representatives to become Speaker himself in 1995 and then started the GOP wreckage of the country.

Let’s face it, messianic right-wing ideologues have more energy and “We’re going to make it happen” fervor than many of their laid-back counterparts in Congress. Compare the sheer moxie and determination of the so-called House Freedom Caucus (eventually driving out their Speaker John Boehner) and taking no quarter from present Speaker Kevin McCarthy, with the years-long anemia of the much larger Progressive Caucus – just recently stirring itself a bit, but not enough to prevail on issues contrary to the corporatist leadership of the Democratic Party.

Justice Louis Brandeis was relating well-known history when he wrote: “Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.”

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“FIGHTING IS ALL I EVER KNEW. I started out at seven, fighting in the street, fighting to give a few bucks to my father to help pay the rent. You fight to get what you want.”

— Jake LaMotta

On this day in 1922, middleweight world champion and International Boxing Hall of Fame inductee, Jake 'The Bronx Bull' LaMotta was born.

Happy Heavenly Birthday Champ. Rest in Peace.

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UKRAINE, MONDAY, 10TH JULY

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin days after his short-lived mutiny last month, the government said, amid ongoing widespread speculation about his whereabouts.

US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak agreed to maintain support for Ukraine in a meeting Monday ahead of this week’s critical NATO summit. Ukraine is expected to be top of the agenda at the summit, as it continues to push for membership in the alliance and more ammunition.

Ukraine’s foreign minister said NATO has agreed to speed Kyiv’s application process in the alliance, but Biden has stressed the war must end before NATO considers Ukraine. Meanwhile, Turkey’s president has said his country’s path into EU membership should be cleared before Sweden’s NATO candidacy.

Back in Ukraine, the military claimed it has liberated 169 square kilometers (more than 65 square miles) of territory in the south since mid-May, as Russian forces continue their assault in the east.

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BIDEN KEEPS LYING About The US “Not Trying To Surround” China

by Caitlin Johnstone

President Biden had a recent interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria during which he defended his controversial decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine and suggested that the US can continually support Ukraine the way it supports Israel rather than adding it to the NATO alliance.

About halfway through the interview Biden said something about China that’s worth flagging, because the claim he makes is self-evidently false, and it’s not the first time he’s made it.

Describing the conversations he’s been having with China’s President Xi Jinping, Biden said the following:

“We’re going to put together the Quad which is India, Australia, the United States and Japan. I got a call from him [Xi] on that. He said why are you doing that. I said we’re not doing that to surround you, we’re doing that to maintain stability in the Indian Ocean and in the South China Sea. Because we believe the rules of the road about what constitutes international air space, international space and the water should be maintained.”

Biden uttered this same bogus talking point about not trying to surround China last month at the private fundraising event where he made headlines by calling Xi a “dictator”:

“But what he was really upset about was that I insisted that we — we reunite the Qu- — so-called Quad. He called me and told me not to do that because it was putting him in a bind. I said, All we’re doing — we’re not trying to surround you, we’re just trying to make sure the international rules with air and sea lanes remain open.”

Biden is lying. The US is deliberately surrounding China with war machinery and has been for years, and has rapidly escalated its efforts to do so during Biden’s term. There are currently no fewer than 313 US military bases in East Asia by the Pentagon’s own admission, with the Biden administration adding four new ones in the Philippines. Biden’s war machine has been busy instituting the AUKUS alliance which is specifically set up to menace China, moving nuclear-capable bombers to Indonesia, signing a military deal with Papua New Guinea, working to station missile-armed marines at Japan’s Okinawa islands, staging provocations in Taiwan, and getting into increasingly confrontational encounters with Chinese military vessels and aircraft off China’s coast as part of its dramatically increased military presence in the area.

So of course the US is trying to surround China, as evidenced by the mountains of US war machinery that are being moved into areas surrounding China. Biden can babble all he wants about wanting to secure sea lanes and protect international waters, but only a drooling idiot would believe the world’s most powerful empire is militarily surrounding its top geopolitical rival as an act of defense.

And Beijing is under no illusions about this. Xi said in a speech earlier this year that “Western countries — led by the U.S. — have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression against us, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to our country’s development.”

So Biden isn’t trying to fool the Chinese government with his “We’re not trying to surround you” schtick — he’s trying to fool you. He’s trying to fool the western public and the allies of the United States, who would get spooked if the US president openly admitted to a deliberate campaign of militarily encirclement against an economic superpower they all trade with extensively.

You simply cannot understand the geopolitics and major conflicts of the 2020s without understanding that the US empire has been actively amassing military threats in the immediate surroundings of its top two rivals — China and Russia — that it would never tolerate anyone else amassing anywhere near the United States. The single dumbest thing the US empire asks us to believe nowadays is that surrounding its two biggest foes with war machinery is a defensive action, rather than an act of extreme aggression.

The best advice I can offer about US-China tensions is to ignore the words and watch the actions. Ignore what officials say about wanting peace and not trying to surround China and supporting the One China policy etc, and just watch all the US war machinery that’s being rapidly added to that region. The US empire is better at international narrative manipulation than any power structure that has ever existed in human history, but what they can’t spin away is the concrete maneuverings of solid pieces of war machinery, because they are physical realities and not narratives.

(caitlinjohnstone.com)

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