Mendocino County Today: Saturday, August 19, 2023

Hazy | Mendo Fog | First Week | Bye-Bye Mattress | Ed Notes | Lake Cleone | Gualala History | Kelley House | Tent Issue | Little River Museum | McEwen's Hawk | $17 Million | Dressage | Dishonored Name | Casino Strategy | Honorable Bragg | Your Request | Ukiah Construction | Willits Mural | Greenwood Locomotive | Marco Radio | Yesterday's Catch | Bad Cops | 1958 Prices | Downward People | Living Earth | Hurricane Hilary | Acting Class | Lahaina Losses | Little Sailor | My Letter | Drinking Beer | Ukraine | Two Companies | Bumpy Ride | Four Indictments | Hero Making | Interesting Client | Beautiful Wave | Crumb Cover

INTERIOR TEMPERATURES will remain slightly above normal through the weekend, then cool below normal early next week. The threat of thunderstorms across mostly the interior will persist today through Monday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 58F & foggy on the coast this Saturday morning. Looking at the local satellite the fog bank appears to be much thinner. The NWS is calling for mostly clear skies but smoky - hazy skies all weekend. I do not recall where the nearby fires are currently? Of course weather eyes are watching now Cat 4 Hilary as she takes aim at So Cal tomorrow night. The bulk of the system looks to be headed east of the Tahoe Basin into Nevada.

AV UNIFIED UPDATE

Dear Anderson Valley Community,

We had a wonderful first week.

At the high school, I thank everyone for their cooperation with the phone pouching. I know it is strange for the students, but we actually have some students expressing by the end of the week that it is really nice that people are talking to each other again and they don’t feel so stressed and distracted. Staff are saying interactions with students are much more positive and not negative, as teachers are not put in the position of having to constantly issue redirects to stop using the phone. The library as an intervention center is working. Kids survived the hot weather. We had a couple of our AC units go down but the company responded quickly.

At both the elementary and high school, our music partnership with Gabriella Frank’s organization has begun. At the elementary site this will include after school elective options for music. At the high school, it is pushing into existing classes in collaboration with Sarah Crisman and a culture and music language partnership with Ali Cook.

It is great to see the sports teams in full practice and wonderful to have some of our six graders participating in our girls volleyball Junior Varsity team. That early exposure to practice and play creates great depth. The Varsity girls volleyball team had a spectacular win last Tuesday against Lower Lake, and more importantly, displayed excellent sportsmanship as well. Remember games are free at our gym, so stop over and catch part or all of one and bring the family.

Construction continues on the elementary septic. Massive amounts of dirt have been coming in to level the field. This will make it safer for play. The classroom pipe replacement to restore water to all classrooms has been completed.

Please note, you should be receiving text notifications if your student is absent or cuts class. This is just part of our way to keep our parents/guardians informed and in partnership with us. For your convenience on the website, we have an absence reporting form that can be used and will be verified by the offices. The website will translate into Spanish, if you click the button at the left-hand side. Please take a look at the website, as it is loaded with information including handbooks, course outlines, learning planners, contact information etc. Please let us know any suggestions for improvement. www.avpanthers.org

We have a huge State visit on Thursday. Numerous people from the California Department of Education are coming to look first-hand at our deep facility needs. We appreciate their taking the time to support our efforts to revitalize the campuses. That afternoon we have the Bond Oversight Committee beginning at 4:30 p.m. in the High School Library.

I hope you have a restful and relaxing weekend.

Sincerely yours,

Louise Simson, Superintendent

Anderson Valley Unified School District

ED NOTES

THE MAUI DISASTER: 

Maui authorities are dramatically underplaying the number of people known to have died in the inferno that ripped through Lahaina last week — with locals telling DailyMail.com that the actual death toll is at least 480 and that morgues had run out of body bags. The figure is quadruple that of the official number of 111 — and some of the relatives of the victims have been left to uncover the remains of their loved ones themselves due to the glacial progress of the search and recovery operation. On Tuesday, Maui mayor Richard Bissen said just 25% of the stricken town had been searched, although he expected that figure to increase to 85% by Saturday. But DailyMail.com photos taken on Wednesday showed hundreds of cars and vehicles still unsearched — with just a handful marked with an orange X to show they'd been looked at. Local Allisen Medina, 24, says the slow recovery process has led to family members being left to find the charred corpses of their loved ones themselves, including a friend of hers who lost four family members.

ACCORDING TO THE NYT, the total number of Ukrainian and Russian troops killed or wounded since the war in Ukraine began 18 months ago is nearing 500,000. Casualty figures remain difficult to estimate because Moscow is believed to routinely undercount its war dead and injured, and Kyiv does not disclose official figures. 

AN unencouraging article in a recent New Yorker described the Russian's heavy recruitment in Russian prisons. You survive service at the front, your crime is forgiven and you go home. So many lifers did not survive that word soon got around among convicts that they were being fed into a meat grinder that they stopped signing up for almost certain death, as the Russians used the prisoners in human wave attacks on nearly impregnable Ukrainian fortifications. If any of the doomed lifers hesitated to charge Ukrainian positions, the Russians shot them.

“…A bullet ripped into Yevgeny’s eye, and, for the next half hour, Alexei listened to him moan as he bled to death. Wagner continued to send waves of convict fighters, about ten at a time, a tactic that became known as a “myasnoi shturm,” or “meat storm.” After six hours, the woods grew quiet. Wagner had taken the bunker. The group’s commander rewarded their men by letting them wash themselves in a nearby banya.”

— ‘The Making of a Mutiny,’ New Yorker, Aug 7, 2023, by Joshua Yaffa

UKRAINE'S vaunted spring offensive has not sprung. Biden, or more accurately his puppeteers, should demand a negotiated peace of Ukraine or cut off U.S. military aid to them.

ONE of the few things I agreed with Trump on was his desire to get US out of NATO, which we created and which we largely fund as a hedge against the Russians. 

YEAH, PUTIN is an evil bastard, but if formal hostilities stopped tomorrow he'd find it very difficult to occupy Ukraine's vastness as Ukraine mounted a guerrilla war against the Russians rather than depend on the US-funded, endless trench warfare Biden's handlers are funding as, of course, our country's deterioration continues. Military aid to Ukraine might, in theory, pay for a lot of aid to America's ever larger cohort of walking wounded.

THE BOONVILLE CONNECTION: Jason Page, formerly a teacher at AVHS and an AVHS graduate, now teaches at Ukiah High School where his son Jaxon stars on the Ukiah High School football team, just as his dad did back in the day as a Boonville Panther. Ukiah football is coached by Ryan Parrish, also a former star at AVHS and an outstanding semi-pro footballer. Ryan's son Shay Parrish is also a starter on dad's Ukiah High team 

GUALALA HISTORY

Who is J.C. Field?

At the upcoming September Membership Meeting in Gualala, one of the many people we will be learning about James Curtis Field, a Civil War Veteran who served in the Army of the Potomac. Along with his wife, whose burial in the cemetery was not previously known, James migrated to the west coast after the war from Keene, New Hampshire. He worked at the Gualala Mill, as well as in the mill at Whitesboro.

Join us, for a self-guided tour of the Gualala Cemetery. At every plot, you'll be able to pull up biographical information for the decedents in the cemetery, see photos of them and their families, and learn more about the pioneers that established the town of Gualala.

After the cemetery tours, we will reconvene at the Del Mar Center at Sea Ranch for our membership meeting and enjoy a presentation on the history of Mill Bend and learn more about the restoration process from the team that is leading the efforts.

I look forward to seeing you in Gualala.

(RSVP For The Gualala Meeting)

Until next week,

Tim Buckner

Executive Director, Historical Society of Mendocino County

(www.mendocinocountyhistory.org)

INTENTS & PURPOSES

The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors will hear the tent issue early on the 12th of September; meeting starts at 9 AM at Saint Anthony's church. We Tentanistas are hoping for a big turnout of community support!

Meredith Smith, merrie@mcn.org

LITTLE RIVER MUSEUM is open Saturdays and Sundays 11 to 4. Our feature exhibit this summer is Antique Toys and Trains. Museum is free and has a variety of exhibits about Little River, Albion Bridge and the coast. See and handle the native wildlife exhibit, 1930 Flapper Girls dress exhibit, Free Pomo map of local trails, find relatives or tour the Little River Pioneer Cemetery using our map and genealogy information. Discover the Good Templar secret the modest exterior hides. We are in the little white cottage just north of Van Damme beach, 8185 Highway One. Parking in front or across the street.

MENDO CANNABIS REGULATORS GET $17 MIL

Grants will help county process applications for growers seeking permits

by Susan Wood

Returning to its Ukiah offices, Mendocino County has enlisted some high-level assistance to help process a large demand from prospective pot growers seeking permits.

Come Sept. 1, the county Cannabis Department will be back in its Ukiah offices on Bush Street, following a 10-month relocation to the Willits Justice Center to accommodate “staffing needs,” county officials said. The cannabis department will share the Ukiah office counter with the planning and building departments.

Meantime, the California Department of Cannabis Control has agreed to earmark $17 million in grants to assist in processing the backlog of more than 600 permit applications from the Northern California county, which is located within a region known as the Emerald Triangle. The applications on the temporary provisionals must be transitioned into annual licenses no later than Jan. 1, 2025, according to the state.

“The cannabis permitting process has been evolving. A portion of this grant will help process these applications,” said Mendocino County Deputy CEO and interim Cannabis Director Steve Dunnicliff.

A major stumbling block for most applicants hoping to use the land to harvest cannabis revolves around the time, money and effort it takes to meet California Environmental Quality Act guidelines, commonly known as CEQA.

The state plans to evaluate and create a model environmental impact report for future licensed commercial cannabis cultivation operations on behalf of the county and its applicants. Public review of the impact report ends Aug. 31. A virtual public meeting has been slated at 10 a.m. Aug. 22 through a county conference call.

“Certainly, any resources we can get will help,” county planner Danielle Phipps said.

The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors has enacted policies designed to streamline cannabis regulations within the local jurisdiction’s codes. The state has stepped in as the lead agency for “site-specific” environmental reviews, processes the county would have been forced to spend hours overseeing.

“We are excited to continue serving the community and look forward to strengthening our relationships with stakeholders,” senior planner Matt Goines said.

(North Bay Business Journal)

CHANGE FORT BRAGG'S UGLY NAME

To the Editor:

It is immoral to continue using the dishonored name Fort Bragg for our fair city. Why not embrace wokeness and proudly virtue-signal with a new benign name that it was always immoral for the City of Fort Bragg to remember and honor in its name a despised traitor to the United States?

In the Seminole Wars from which Braxton Bragg emerged a hero commanding U.S. forces, less than 2000 Seminole warriors used hit-and-run guerilla tactics and knowledge of their land to evade and frustrate a combined U.S. Army and Marine force that grew to over 30,000 seeking to displace the Seminoles. American commanders eventually changed strategy and focused on seeking out and destroying hidden Seminole villages and crops, putting increasing pressure on resisters to surrender or starve with their families. (Wikipedia)

Long before the city of Fort Bragg was legally created and his name officially attached in 1885, Braxton Bragg had become a traitor to the United States. He led attacks on U.S. forces and sought to overthrow the U.S. Constitution by military force. After the Civil War, Bragg was despised as a weak and failed Confederate general who had mistreated his men.

James Larson

A Timberwolf who loves the town but not the ugliness of its name nor some of the rhetoric of its name defenders.

Fort Bragg

CON CON

Editor,

Braxton Bragg was a United States (USA) soldier who helped the United States win the Mexican-American War. On winning the war, Mexico ceded (turned over), Texas, Utah, parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon and California. One of the largest land sales since the Louisiana Purchase.

Bragg’s win in this war was pivotal to the United States and the U. S. acquisition of the current lands in the western United States. For these efforts Bragg was honored and commended throughout the United States and celebrated for his victory.

At the time, Bragg was a United States soldier who worked for the United States of America government. Afterwords he decided to change his affiliations and he became a confederate soldier.

General Sherman, of the Union Army, who Bragg knew, made his “March to the sea” killing and murdering thousands of innocent babies, children, men and women and also black African American men, women, children, and babies and Native American Indians.

Sherman’s “March” was extremely brutal and atrocious. He slaughtered thousands of innocent people and destroyed their lands and businesses.

It’s no surprise that Bragg would soon change his military affiliation.

He became a confederate soldier.

The town of Fort Bragg was named by an associate who had fought with Bragg during the Mexican-American War. If Bragg was such a hated man, why would one of his closest associates name a town after him in his honor?

“Bragg Bashing” has become a tool that the woke group CON is using to gain their political leverage.

Bragg was never celebrated in the town of Fort Bragg. Bragg never set foot in the town not even once. The people of the area adopted the Fort Bragg name and went about making it a prosperous logging and fishing town embracing people and cultures from around the world into the towns population.

Bragg was still a United States soldier (USA) at the time the town of Fort Bragg was named.

Bragg later passed away as a civilian in Galveston Texas.

His achievements and use of artillery helped win the Mexican-American War saving the military from a long and drawn out war where more lives would have been lost. He spared the lives of those soldiers. As a result of winning this war, Mexico ceded an enormous amount of territory to the United States, including the state of California.

The CON members live on stolen Native indigenous lands. It’s a hypocrisy! The CON (changeourname) feel that they can argue a history that occurred over 160 years ago and they in fact live to this day on the stolen lands of these indigenous peoples.

Instead CON could be taking this time helping the homeless and disenfranchised people of Fort Bragg and helping the town grow its economy by creating jobs and industry and focusing efforts on the well being of the town and its people not tearing people down.

I wish you the best in this ‘debate.’ I believe that this is another platform that CON wants so that they can spin their political agenda and get attention from both the press and the few people that will listen to their indoctrination via their incessant propaganda ministering.

John S. Lushenko

UKIAH CONSTRUCTION UPDATES FOR THE WEEK OF AUGUST 21ST:

On the south side (Mill to Cherry), “potholing” will begin. This is the process of drilling small holes into the pavement to pinpoint the location of underground utilities. It will sound like a jackhammer, and small sections of the street will be blocked off in the immediate area of the work, but traffic will remain open in both directions and the disruption should be minimal. The “real” work that will involve trenching and utility replacement is not expected to begin until about September.

On the north side (Norton to Henry), work continues to install the new water lines. When the final connections are made, there will be disruptions to water service for up to a full day. A minimum of 72 hours advance notice (on a flyer or doorknob hanger at your location) will be provided to individual properties before that occurs. The bulk of these shutoffs will occur during the week of August 28. 

CHUCK ROSS: 

Happy Birthday "Saucelito" you are 150 years old today, where ever you are.

On this date in 1873 construction began on engine #3495 at Baldwin Locomotive Works, Broad Street plant in Philadelphia. She would be completed by November but not delivered to her buyer until June 15th 1874. It is unclear how she was delivered to the West Coast, but the length of time suggests that it was by sea and around The Horn. She arrived at the wharf at Sausalito and was steamed up and rolled to that railroad's shops under her own power. She served her original owner, the North Pacific Coast RR only a short time. In 1875 they sent her to Prescott & Scott iron works in San Francisco to convert her from an 8-16D to an 8-16C which might not mean anything to us, but in short, the single pair of pilot wheels up front were replaced with a truck of four small wheels, and one pair of drivers was removed and the remaining two relocated. If you speak Whyte Classification system, she went from being a 2-6-0 to being the 4-4-0 we see in every picture of her known to exist. 

The NPCRR seems to have sold her then to the L.E. White Lumber Co. at Salmon Creek where the oldest known photo of her was taken. When he started the big show at Greenwood she was brought down by sea and worked out the rest of her life on Greenwood Creek, Elk Creek and Alder Creek, where she is rumored to rest to this day.

MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio show is on all night Friday night!

Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is 6 or 7pm. If you can't make that, send it whenever it's done and I'll read it on the radio next week.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am PST on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg as well as via KNYO.org. Also the schedule is there for KNYO's many other terrific shows.

Furthermore, you can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night I'll put up the recording of tonight's show. And you'll find plenty of things to ponder until showtime, or any time, such as:

This emotive harmonica guy. www.theawesomer.com/will-wilde-rock-solos-on-harmonica/691586/

Rerun: The hot violinist. The oblivious Ren Faire crowd. www.youtube.com/watch?v=13asCgNaQqA

And turning a giant wooden bowl. www.theawesomer.com/woodturning-a-giant-bowl/634347/

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, www.MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, August 18, 2023

ERICA ALLEN, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

JENNYLYNN ARDENYI, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

BHAKTI DILLENBECK, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

FERNANDO FABIAN, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

MAWELL GILLETTE, Whitehorn/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

KIMBERLY JONES, Ukiah. Trespassing. 

ARIC LEON, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, contributing.

DANYEL LOEHR, Willits. Failure to appear.

JOSHUA MCKENZIE, Redwood Valley, DUI.

TIMOTHY MCNEILL, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, failure to appear, probation revocation.

JUSTIN POTTER, Eureka/Ukiah. Disobeying court order, failure to appear

NICHOLAS REA Sacramento/Ukiah. Controlled substance while armed with loaded firearm, felon-addict with firearm.

RICHARD STRAZI, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.

FBI CHARGES ANTIOCH AND PITTSBURG COPS IN VAST CONSPIRACY

The current and former officers were arrested in early morning FBI raids Thursday

Federal authorities Thursday charged 10 current and former Antioch and Pittsburg police officers in a set of sweeping indictments alleging offenses ranging from cheating on training classes to savage violations of civil rights in one of California’s biggest criminal cases of police corruption.

The most serious and disturbing charges — civil rights violations to “injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate citizens of Antioch” — were filed against two current and one former officer from that city’s police department, where residents have long complained of excessive force and where dozens of officers have been placed on leave amid a scandal over their racist text messages.…

mercurynews.com/2023/08/17/antioch-pittsburg-cops-rounded-up-in-early-morning-fbi-raid-following-grand-jury-indictment/

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Actually, I am doing quite well and my standard of living is much better than it was when I was a youngster. Life is like a game of snakes and ladders. Some people move up and others move down. Lately, it seems that a lot more people are moving down and fewer are moving up.

OUTSIDE WEATHER REPORT

Dear Readers: 

Our new national weather correspondent, Ms Mitchell, lives in Seattle. She lived in Mendocino from 1968-1974 and in Fort Bragg from 2007-11. She watched Canadian television until 2 am last night, sent me a report on the Canadian wildfires, and quit trying to report the weather. She will continue filing a daily report, but refers readers to the weather app Living Earth. She says that one weather report every twelve hours no longer cuts it. Living Earth has real time visuals and information 24 hours a day for the whole globe. Everyone should have it on their phones. Remember that the hurricane that "hit" Hawaii and destroyed Maui was 500 miles away and wasn't considered a threat. I looked at the opening screen of Living Earth and made a screen shot of Boonville. Here's my screenshot and Ms Mitchell's report. The blue dot in the middle is Boonville.

HURRICANE HILARY will weaken dramatically on approach, but will bring major and even historic impacts in some parts of Southern California

by Daniel Swain

I’ll waste no time in this introduction except to say: the possibility of “interesting weather” from the remnants of tropical storms I mentioned in the last post is certainly coming to pass, and in rather dramatic fashion! Hurricane Hilary is now churning over the far eastern Pacific Ocean southwest of Baja California–currently a Category 4 storm with sustained winds of 130 mph or greater. It rapidly intensified yesterday into a major hurricane, and is likely peaking in intensity as of this writing. Beginning later tonight or certainly by tomorrow morning, Hilary will begin a rapid weakening trend as it starts to accelerate north/northwestward–essentially paralleling the coast and making a bee line for Southern California. As the storm moves away from warm tropical waters and into an ambient atmosphere that is rather hostile to warm core (tropical) cyclones, Hilary should drop below major hurricane status and below hurricane status (defined as having sustained winds of at least 75 mph) by Sunday afternoon.

However, because of Hilary’s fast forward speed and its presently great intensity, the storm will not have time to completely “spin down” before it reaches Southern California. In fact, it may retain tropical storm strength and characteristics as far north as San Diego or even Los Angeles–meaning that there is a substantial possibility (at or above 50%) that California will experience its first landfalling tropical storm since such a storm made landfall near Long Beach in 1939. In a notable historic first, the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center have jointly issued a Tropical Storm Watch for much of Southern California, including the entire coastline from San Diego up through Ventura County as well as some additional mountainous regions. (The service as it existed back in the 1930s did not issue such warnings.) The only other known tropical cyclone to actually make coastal landfall in California was the 1858 San Diego Hurricane. There have been other tropical cyclone remnant events (as recently as Kay last year in 2022, and memorably for some folks Kathleen in 1976) that have brought major summer storm and flood-related impacts over the decades, but in terms of actual tropical cyclone landfalls, Hilary would be only the third in California since the mid 1800s and the first in the era of SoCal’s massive population growth.

(weatherwest.com)

LAHAINA: SITE OF NATIVE HAWAIIAN IMPORTANCE, REELS FROM CULTURAL LOSSES

by Claire Wang

Aweek after wildfires ripped through western Maui and killed at least 99 people, residents and historians are still processing the full scope of destruction in Lahaina, an 18th-century coastal town that was, for a time, the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

Designated a national historic landmark in 1962, Lahaina is a place of incalculable importance for Native Hawaiians. In 1810, King Kamehameha I unified all the Hawaiian islands and made the town his royal residence for the next three decades.

Following the fires, thousands of homes, businesses and cultural treasures lay in ruins, including a church where royals were buried and a 150-year-old banyan tree believed to be the largest in the US.

The cost to rebuild Lahaina is expected to exceed $5.5bn, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“Lahaina was one of the few locations in Hawaii that has been truly important throughout every era,” said Kimberly Flook, deputy executive director of the Lahaina Restoration Foundation, which restores and maintains more than a dozen historic landmarks in the area.

Flook said a handful of historic sites the foundation maintains had sustained severe fire damage, including the Baldwin Home, a missionary compound built in 1834 that is now a museum; the Wo Hing Museum, a wooden temple that functioned as a gathering space and cook house for Chinese expats; and the Lahaina Old Courthouse, built in 1858. The first lighthouse on the Pacific coast, built in 1840, seemed to have been spared. The status of other landmarks remained unclear from social media footage, first responder accounts and satellite images, Flook said.

While the scale of human and cultural loss is unimaginable, Flook said she remained hopeful that the town could be restored with time and resources.

“This is absolutely shattering,” she said, “but we don’t find it impossible to rebuild.”

Davianna Pomaikai McGregor, a founding member of the ethnic studies program at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and a historian of Hawaii and the Pacific, said Lahaina served as a “very active political, economic and intellectual heart” during the 19th century.

Lahaina was the royal capital from 1820 to 1845, when it was replaced by Honolulu. During those decades, it grew into a global trading hub with the arrival of whaling ships. Royalty and chiefs were educated at Lahainaluna high school, the oldest school west of the Rocky Mountains; kings and queens were buried at Waiola church, the first Christian church on Maui. In 1840, King Kamehameha III drafted the Hawaiian Kingdom’s first constitution at the high school. Both buildings, established about 200 years ago, were damaged in the fire.

“Lahaina represents the transformations that Hawaii has undergone over the centuries,” McGregor said. “Layers of history are reflected through its landscape and architecture.”

The Maui wildfire was the deadliest in the US in more than a century, surpassing the toll of the 2018 Camp fire in Paradise, California, which left 85 dead. The disaster has exacerbated a burgeoning housing crisis: more than 2,200 buildings were destroyed, nearly all of them residential. As many as 4,500 people are in need of shelter, county officials said on Facebook on Saturday. (Lahaina has a population of roughly 13,000 people.)

In modern times, travel companies and media outlets have come to market Lahaina primarily as a resort paradise with immaculate surf breaks and snorkeling sites.

But the framing of Lahaina as a “tourist destination” buries both the rich history of the town and ecological devastation that colonialism has wrought on the island, said Kaniela Ing, national director of the Green New Deal Network and a seventh-generation Native Hawaiian who was born and raised in Maui.

The cause of the fires is still under investigation, though experts say they were fueled by dry vegetation, low humidity and hot, strong winds from Hurricane Dora. But the climate crisis is not the only cause of the tragedy, Ing said. Decades of sugarcane and pineapple farming uprooted native trees and browned the rain-soaked slopes of the West Maui Mountains.

“The fire is an exclamation point, but it’s not the only injustice,” said Ing. “When you look at Lahaina’s path from royalty to whaling to pineapple tourism to luxury, the fire is just the terminal point.”

Last June, mandatory water restrictions were leveled on west Maui residents in response to a historic drought. While residents were fined $500 for using water for non-essential activities, such as washing cars, the tourism industry faced no such penalties, despite being responsible for nearly half of Hawaii’s water consumption.

“While Front Street is laden with racist tiki bars and tacky shops, the people who live there are some of the most rooted Native people in the world,” Ing said. “They’re keepers of knowledge that will get us out of the trajectory of ecological collapse.”

As a former state lawmaker, Ing said he had consulted Indigenous fishermen about marine issues, like an invasive species of coral that elected officials had sought to label as endangered. With ancient farming practices, Maui’s Indigenous farmers have been restoring the depleted food forests that fed their ancestors.

Ing said rebuilding Maui required not only direct relief but also a long-term plan to pivot from an extractive economy to a regenerative one. The first step was putting an indefinite halt on tourism to preserve resources for Native Hawaiians.

“We need time to grieve and heal,” he said, “and we want to organize the ‘Rebuild Maui’ campaign before disaster capitalists do.”

THANKS!

Dear Editors,

Thanks so much to the Press Democrat for including my letter on our supply of weapons to Ukraine and the shortcomings thereof, "Shortchanging Ukraine," and also to my friends in Boonville for printing the same. While I'm no expert for sure when it comes to this subject, and while the president deserves great credit for his support for this unfairly attacked ally, there is little doubt that there is more the Biden Administration should be doing to aid their cause.

Also, I love your cartoon today! You and the cartoonist nailed the problem of EV vehicles-keeping 'em charged enough to get from point A to point B.

God bless you and "Let The Public Speak!"

All The Best,

Frank Baumgardner

Santa Rosa

UKRAINE, Friday, August 18, 2023

An alleged drone strike attempt on Moscow forced authorities to suspend traffic to four major airports in the Russian capital on Friday, according to the country’s civil aviation authority.

Meanwhile, Russia's Defense Ministry said it repelled a Ukrainian attack with an unmanned gunboat in the Black Sea.

The US has committed to approving the transfer of F-16 fighter jets for Ukraine as soon as training is complete, a US official said. It's unclear when training will begin.

President Alexander Lukashenko said Belarus would be willing to use the nuclear weapons given by close ally Russia in the face of foreign "aggression."

A BUMPY RIDE

by James Kunstler

“This voter is not convinced by virtues or statistics. He is convinced by dreams, visions, stories and jokes.” — Curtis Yarvin

Draw back from the scene and understand that the sheer heaping-up of procedural legal bullshit in the various sham court cases against candidate Donald Trump is largely an attempt to confound, mystify, and preoccupy the public while the great scaffold of our national life collapses. The news — both legacy and alt — will be dominated day after day by analyses of every move and counter-move through endless thickets of courtroom minutiae while the US economy crashes and burns, residual wealth is confiscated, and the American social order turns into something like fiery goo.

By November of 2024, somebody will be elected president, or no one will be. At this point, it is probably down to an election that more than half the country won’t believe in, or no election at all due to civil chaos so extreme it will make the 1861 weeks of secession look as tame as a middle school fire drill. Beyond the hamstringing and hog-tying of their chief adversary, the Democratic Party lawfare necromancers have set up the gameboard with surpassing precision so that their opponents will never be able to win another election. Yet, they are so self-satisfied as to apparently think no one noticed. (We’ll be coming for you, eventually, Marc Elias.)

As to the parsing out of all those bogus charges against Mr. Trump, consider that we now live in a culture of no truth, only battling portfolios of narrative spin, at least according to the Marxian wokesters who have seized the machinery of law, so, there, with a snap of your fingers goes jurisprudence — as in: I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, blah blah…. The joke is on you. There is no truth, anymore, so stop insisting that there is anything like it to determine, except whatever outcome the Party of Chaos seeks.

The suspended animation of August with its sand castles, lobster rolls, and care-free cocktail cruises will soon yield to the season of hurricanes, financial fiascos, momentous military movements, and reversals of political fortune. What, for instance, becomes of “Joe Biden,” the fictitious president, and that claque of grift-bedizened relatives around him? I’ll tell you one thing: no way is this fellow running for reelection, and the mighty pretense around that hallucination makes idiots of everyone on cable TV news. Somebody has already slipped Ol’ “Joe” the black spot. Dr. Jill has crawled into a bottle. The “Big Guy” is just sulking now, drowning his sorrows in ice cream — but his fate hangs there above the Rehoboth dunes like an ominous black sea-bird suspended on an ill wind, mocking him. You have finally screwed the pooch, Joey, it cries… caw caw caw….

We are thus close to the moment when impeachment can no longer be dodged. The reams of Biden family bank records that Mr. Comer of Kentucky has unearthed hither and yon, plus deal memoranda, video and audio recordings of dark confabs, and hundreds of tell-tale emails are of a different evidentiary nature than the roster of hypothetical thought crimes confabulated by Jack Smith, Alvin Bragg, and Fani T. Willis. Personally, I would like, at least, to see impeachment hearings where all that hard evidence of Biden family bribery is methodically laid out for The New York Times and CNN to ignore. It will look like a game of chicken for a few days, but then the party honchos will “sadly” order Ol’ Joe to step aside before that grim spectacle goes too far.

The Ukraine War will then be Kamala Harris’s to lose — depend on it — though nobody will care. I have a feeling that Barack Obama will not be able to… how shall we say… work with her. All that cackling must conceal an inner vacancy so vast that Judge Crater, DB Cooper, and the brigantine Mary Celeste might be roaming around in there, along with Amelia Earhart, Jimmy Hoffa, and the Lost Colony of Roanoke. And I cringe to imagine the meetings with Kamala where Susan Rice, Lisa Monaco, and Torie Nuland try to tell the poor simp what to do. It will look like one of those girlie beat-downs on an Oakland street-corner.

Anyway, by that time the stock markets will be all a’crumble, all those Vanguard retirement funds will wash-up like so many writhing grunions on Cabrillo Beach, and your local bank will cap withdrawals at $500 a few weeks before executing the long-rumored bail-ins. At that magic moment, the Democratic Party will have everything it has wished for.

Of course, I can’t say the melodrama will play out exactly like that, in that sequence. But expect trouble in September. Expect disorder like you’ve never imagined. Think about retrieving whatever cash you have in the bank. Consider arming yourself for safety’s sake, if you live in a part of the country that allows it. Or maybe even if you live in the other parts. Lay in some beans and rice and some batteries. Buckle your mental seat belt. When August is over, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

(kunstler.com)

REINALDO FERREIRA

Recipe for Making a Hero

Take a man,

Made from nothing, like us,

And life-size.

Soak his flesh,,

Slowly,

With a sharp, irrational certainty,

Intense like hate or hunger.

Then, near the end,

Wave a flag

And blow a bugle.

(Trans. by Bill Hatch)

THE LAST EXCITING EVENT OF THE YEAR was the Democratic National Convention in August of 1968. It came complete with tear gas, helicopters, thousands of demonstrators near our downtown office chanting “the whole world is watching”.  I was one of a group of volunteer lawyers who helped people who had been arrested. One of my most interesting clients was a guy from Alabama who had climbed to the top of General Logan’s equestrian statue across from the Hilton Hotel during one of the big demonstrations. A Viet Cong flag was passed up to him as he sat on the shoulders of the statue, and he waived it lustily to the cheers of the crowd until the police encircled the statue and threatened to pull him down. As he was dismounting the statue along the rider’s left side, his right arm got caught in the hilt of the figure’s sheathed sword and when the police grabbed his legs to yank him down, he was stuck and unable to come until his arm actually broke. To offset any police brutality charge, he was charged with feloniously hitting an officer. Luckily, we were able to get the outtakes of the TV coverage of the event to show that he never hit the police. This entire experience got me a good, behind the scenes look at Cook County Jail as well as the way the police and justice system worked if you were on the other side.

— Jack Hoeschler, thehoeschlers.com/bio

“STRANGE MEMORIES on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

"…There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. … You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.

"And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…

"So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

— Hunter S. Thompson, ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’

RELEASED AUGUST 12, 1968: