Mendocino County Today: Thursday, Sept. 14, 2023

Warm | Kite Flying | Moores Hearing | Health Fair | Drivers Needed | Gualala Totems | Service Exodus | Revitalizing Noyo | Roederer Tour | Boonquiz | Willits Barn | Ed Notes | Soroptimist Meeting | Estrangement | Rosebud | Boontling Event | Telehealth Therapist | Craft Marketplace | Scaramella Assist | Yesterday's Catch | Lake Mendo | Oil Addiction | Hazard Club | Collective Ennui | Autocorrect HQ | Ancient Animus | Payphone | Ukraine | LaMotta/Dauthuille | Dangerous Desire | Sobriety Check | Remember Allende | Poet Compensation | Atlas Defecated | Snarf | When Old | Sharecropper

WARM INTERIOR valley temperatures are expected this afternoon and again Friday. Otherwise, isolated showers and thunderstorms will be possible this weekend, followed by another period of dry weather next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): I have clear skies at 4am & 52F but the fog looms large nearby so it may move in by the time you get up (like yesterday). Our forecast is for more of the same going into next week.

MOORES HEARING TODAY

LOCAL SPORTS DRIVERS NEEDED

Dear Anderson Valley Community,

I understand there was deep disappointment today that the soccer away game had to be canceled. We had a driver out sick. We need parents, family and community members to follow the process to help drive. This small staff simply can not get students to all of the sporting events alone.

Again, if you would like to help, please contact Sara Hayward at shayward@avpathers.org.

We hope that this will not occur in the future but we need to have people registered in advance to be ready to drive when needed.

Take care,

Louise Simson, Superintendent, AV Unified School District

PS: Ninth graders in Coach Toohey’s class received a hands-on lesson from Anderson Valley Fire Department today in CPR. Additional skills in first aid will be taught as part of the health curriculum within the ninth grade block. We are grateful to the fire department for this partnership.

WHAT'S HAPPENING TO FORT BRAGG?  The straw that has now BROKEN the camel's back!!!

City Health, an immediate care facility, that has an actual primary care provider with an extensive medical background to address our immediate medical needs in a prompt fashion, is CLOSING effective September 23rd.  Many patients have still not been advised of this. And, those who have are in a panic because now they have to go back to the facility they left.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!  Guys, we have to stand up and speak out!! We cannot continue to be deprived of the services weve come to expect and demand.  WE NEED TO BAND TOGETHER AND MAKE OUR VOICES HEARD!!  We need you to call the CEO of City Health, Sean Parkin and tell him NO CLOSURE!  He can be reached at  (415)671-9615 or (707)941-0971.

The community officially now has what can be considered a pattern of behavior.  (THANK YOU FB CITY COUNCIL)  Services that previously existed are now being denied/withdrawn from us on a consistent and regular basis.  It started with...

...College of the Redwoods leaving Fort Bragg, resulting in another community college promising to provide the level of service provided by CR.  When I started CR in 1990 it was a vibrant institution of higher learning.  NOW?  Sadly, it has the air of a ghost town.  

Next, was the withdrawal of emergency veterinary care after hours on the Coast. And, it gets better!  Today, hundreds of Coast residents have to travel to Willits, Santa Rosa, Petaluma to get urgently needed veterinary care, not only after hours, but during vet hours, as well.  And, if you dont have the ability to travel over the hill...you get to watch your pet suffer and/or die.

Then, and even more importantly, a new hospital medical provider took over the Mendocino Coast District Hospital which, as of this writing, has proven that they are failing to provide adequate medical care to this community.  They've eliminated the opportunity for women to give birth here on the Coast.  They are unable to provide primary care providers, as well as, any specialists to meet our medical needs.  They opened an immediate care center that was supposed to treat illness' that needed prompt attention.  Now, you need to make an appointment!  And, have you ever tried calling the office to make one?

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!! 

Rosemary Mangino

THE NOYO OCEAN COLLECTIVE was introduced at Tuesday's BOS meeting: https://noyooceancollective.org

The Noyo Ocean Collective was founded to address the most important economic and environmental issues affecting our way of life here on the North Coast, particularly in the area in and around Fort Bragg.

The Plan will offer a roadmap for Noyo Harbor revitalization, a crucial component for transitioning our region to be more sustainable and economically vibrant, while maintaining the heritage and culture we’ve known for generations.

FUTURE FARMERS TOUR ROEDERER: Wine grape harvest is underway in Anderson Valley! Roederer Estate is one of the earliest wineries to start picking grapes for making sparkling wine. The Ag Chemistry and Soils class had a special field trip to Roederer Estate Winery today. Winemaker Arnaud Weyrich gave the class an awesome tour. They saw the bins of grapes ready to go into the grape press. Fabiola, the head lab technician told the students about how she became interested in viticulture and winemaking. In the lab they also were able to taste the Chardonnay and Pinot noir grape juice that was just pressed. The grape juice was VERY sweet! 

On the tour the students learned how the climate and the soils in Anderson Valley are perfect for growing wine grapes. They learned how grapes go from the vineyard to a bottle of sparkling wine. They also learned about the many careers available in the viticulture industry.

Thank you Arnaud Weyrich and Roederer Estate!

THE NEXT BIG BOONVILLE QUIZ is next Thursday, the third Thursday, the evening of September 21st. You will get an opportunity to exercise your brains before they have to endure three days of corn dogs and beer at the County Fair. Hope to see you there. (The Quiz, not necessarily the Fair.) Cheers, Steve Sparks, The Quizmaster.

ED NOTES

COULDN'T HELP but noting this startling lede over a para by Jade Tippett of Fort Bragg (I think.) “Health Care District Vice-President Advocates Closing Coast Hospital.” Tippett continues: “Had a conversation over the weekend with Mendocino Coast Health Care District Vice-President Paul Katzeff, in which Katzeff advocated closing what is now Adventist Health Mendocino Coast Hospital as a strategy for preserving the character of the Mendocino Coast. It gets worse. According to Katzeff, the climate crisis will result in an influx of ‘millionaires’ on the coast who will drive the local people out. According to Katzeff, closing the hospital would make the Mendocino Coast less attractive to rich people, preserving the existing character of the Coast. When I pointed out that closing the hospital would make expendable people on the Coast who could least afford it, and result in unnecessary deaths of people who need immediate surgical intervention in trauma cases, Katzeff suggested that 100 unnecessary deaths — his number! — would be an acceptable cost to prevent people from being driven out by an influx of the rich. I pointed out that even if they were driven out, they would still be alive. A point he conceded. My final response to Katzeff was that we have a moral responsibility to not make other people's lives expendable.”

KATZEFF in triage mode? I suspect Mr. Tippett may have taken Katzeff too literally, which wouldn't be unusual in these irony-challenged times. I remember once joking in print that I might get a tough guy of my acquaintance to do a drive-by in Elk, which sent Elk's purple population into a collective tiz, the lesson being that joking in print without a warning in big block red letters — BEWARE JOKE NEXT PARAGRAPH is guaranteed to alarm the reading-reality handicapped. 

THE FORT BRAGG coffee mogul is a nice guy, a benign guy, a humane guy who has always been on the side of the community's best interests. I can't imagine him blithely wanting to knock off anybody in the interests of down-sized medical care.

BUT TIPPETT INSISTS: “On reflection, my first reaction to Katzeff's assertion was to simply be stunned. Closing the hospital to preserve the Coastal community seems so contradictory that it borders on lunacy. Given Katzeff's faith and given the history of the Shoah, I am still horrified that he would advocate for — and put an “acceptable” number on — the unnecessary deaths that would be caused by his proposal. In hindsight, I now understand Katzeff's harassment and demands that I stop performing the duties of Treasurer while I was on the Board: paying bills, filing reports, investigating and reporting to the Board the financial complexities the District is facing, etc. Katzeff clearly wanted — still wants? — the District to collapse and the hospital to follow.”

HMMM. Close textual analysis not required. Tippett is personally angry with Katzeff, soooo…

I STILL feel some mild guilt over a call from my colleague's mother, Mary Scaramella years ago. “Hold on, please, Mrs. Scaramella, let me see if he's sober enough to come to the phone.” I could hear her gasp. “My god, he hasn't been drinking, has he?” The Major had quite a time reassuring Mom that he was sober. And Mom never quite forgave me.

BIDEN IMPEACHMENT? My function here is to peel back the layers encasing the big issues of the day, as I pretend to know more about them than you do, and probably less in most cases. The issue with Poor Old Joe and his scapegrace son, Hunter, boils down to this: In all sonny boy's lucrative dealings with foreign governments did Poor Old Joe get a cut? It wouldn't surprise me given the old grifter's history, but unless the Maga-brains have the evidence that POJ was getting his share of Hunter's cash-in of the noble Biden name, they've got nothing on the old boy. Biden's wayward son obviously managed to parlay the Biden brand into long layovers with crack pipes and exciting women, but unless Pop was in on Hunter's shakedowns of that Ukraine power company and some Chinese crooks, Pop is in the clear.

POJ is also kinda in the clear on runaway inflation. Biden wouldn't dare roll back then freeze escalating fuel prices, the primary driver of the inflation that's really, really, really hurting working people, most of whom are barely getting by without the inflation of the last year. But even if he or any of the Magas had the welfare of everyday Americans as first priority, because the U.S. is largely dependent for fuel on furriners, the furriners would likely cut US off entirely in retaliation for any interruption in their vast profit-taking.

ESTRANGEMENT

Editor,

One of the very complicated issues with adults and Serious Mental Illness, is estrangement from family. It is not something that we really talk about with others, unless you are in the club, a parent whose adult child has made you a villain & removed themselves from any relationship with you. Unfortunately, it is an all-too-common occurrence that families endure, and it is an isolating and painful experience. I myself have been estranged from both of my adult children, currently just the older one. Regardless as a parent the grief that comes with estrangement is horrendous.

It is interesting to note that estrangement is something that can be passed down through our families, and definitely a common story in mine. I was abandoned by my own mother for most of my life, I literally did not know her, she deserted her kids when we were young. She also had been rejected by her own mother for a time. I am estranged from 2 of my brothers and I recall my dad many times getting mad at his parents and siblings and not talking to them for long periods of time, but always getting over it at some point. Not a very good track record or example for communicating and working through relationships. Our well-being is directly connected to our relationships and how we communicate within them, with truth and honesty. Estrangement is avoidance of dealing with any uncomfortable feelings and ideas that the person has built up in their head, rather than communicating to understand another, it is easier to stick to a false or delusional belief. If there is no communication the delusional belief stays fixed in place with little chance of it releasing its grip.

As the recipient of many rejections in my life, the most tragic was being shunned by my own children. It is easy to understand a person who has chosen no-contact with a parent if they were victims of neglect and abuse by said parent. When a parent that has never caused harm becomes the victim of hatred and false beliefs because of Serious Mental Illness it is a whole different level of hell and grief. In recent times I have seen a multitude of so called "therapists" and whomever wants to put their dumb ass 2 cents in via social networking videos, make declarations about people "choosing" to be estranged from their families. In essence blaming the parents for causing harm and trauma to these individuals who have decided to retreat from their family unit. It is of course quite generalized, but this kind of peddled crap is harmful to us all. The fact is Serious Mental Illness is a key contributor to family estrangement and there are not any solutions until or if the estrangee decides to reconcile. And they may never come back, or they can cycle in and out of connection and deprivation.

So, what can we do/what should we do? The most important thing to do is allow yourself to feel sad & cry, to be mad, to cuss at it and get it out from the inside. Even with that conscious effort the pain will not completely go away, grief is the gift that keeps on coming. Of course, it always returns when you least expect it, but it's ok, let it out. Recognize that you are not at fault, that there is an issue in the other persons thinking and processing that has nothing to do with you. Love and appreciate yourself for the good parent you were, acknowledge the imperfections they were teachers. Please allow space between you and the other person, I had to learn this the hard way, because I wanted to fix it and make it right because it was so wrong. My need to correct it consumed me, until I realized I was making it worse for myself. I had to step back and allow the distance to take hold and it has remained there for 7 years. Creating that space has not been easy but it's a necessary component to surviving the harrowing grief of being disowned by your adult child. Absolutely seek out therapy if you need professional counseling to process all the emotions that come with estrangement and grief.

Always remember you are not alone!

Mazie Malone

Ukiah

AV MUSEUM FRIENDLY CHAT SERIES: BOONTLING!

Come enjoy a chat with Rod Dewitt and Wes Smoot, aka Deekin and “harp” some Boont! This month's AV Village Gathering/Valley Chat is a collaboration between the AV Historical Society and AV Village! Everyone is welcome.

At the Anderson Valley Museum (Little Red School house), Sunday, September 17 from 4 to 5:30 pm. Refreshments served.

The Village recommends staying current on your vaccinations. Thank you!

More info & to RSVP:
Anderson Valley Village: (707) 684-9829, andersonvalleyvillage@gmail.com
www.andersonvalleyvillage.org

Or the Anderson Valley History Society:
707-272-7248, andersonvalley.history@gmail.com
www.andersonvalleymuseum.org

MCHC WELCOMES BILINGUAL BEHAVIORAL HEALTH PROVIDER JANI BENITEZ

MCHC Health Centers is pleased to expand access to care with the arrival of its newest telehealth therapist: Jani Benitez, a bilingual licensed clinical social worker. Benitez will provide telehealth to patients in both Lake and Mendocino Counties while continuing to reside in her home state of Maryland.

Having grown up as part of an immigrant family from El Salvador, Benitez understands the cultural barriers people face when seeking treatment for mental health challenges. Not only does social stigma prevent people from reaching out for support, but the idea of trying to explain complicated, emotional issues in a second language can be daunting for many.

About a quarter of Lake and Mendocino County residents identify as Hispanic or Latino, and many of them speak Spanish as their primary language. Benitez explains how challenging it is to have a limited vocabulary when trying to explain thoughts and feelings that would be difficult enough to discuss in one’s primary language.

“When patients know they can express complex feelings in their own language, it is so powerful,” she said.

Benitez has provided case management and advocacy as well as direct counseling and therapy. She worked for an emergency shelter helping victims of domestic violence and in a primary care setting helping patients learn to manage their depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, insomnia, and other behavioral health challenges.

When the pandemic hit, she was working as a behavioral health advocate rather than a therapist. She noted an enormous increase in the need for therapy and a significant lack of services in Spanish, so she began looking for an opportunity to get back into direct care. This is when she discovered the opportunity at MCHC Health Centers.

Working in a setting where she can work as part of a care team appeals to Benitez. She explained that working with a clinical team can provide a more complete picture of what is affecting a patient’s health and more tools to help the patient improve.

“If someone is having trouble sleeping because of their anxiety, this can make their diabetes symptoms worse, for example. So, the medical team can monitor a patient’s physical health and educate them on nutritional needs, while I focus on helping the patient with healthy sleep habits. There is definitely a mind-body connection. Medical and behavioral health go hand-in-hand,” she explained. She also noted the importance of working in partnership with a staff psychiatrist for patients who need psychiatric medication.

When she read about the job opportunity at MCHC, MCHC’s approach to care sounded familiar and welcome. Once she met the Behavioral Health team, and Department Director Ben Anderson, she knew she had found a good match.

She says she likes the fact that many of the providers have worked together for years, and that she will be part of a team committed to providing excellent care. She also wants to continually grow her own skills and believes she can learn from Anderson and others.

Benitez encourages anyone struggling with mental health issues to reach out for help if the issues are interfering with daily life.

“I’ve had plenty of calls where a patient says, ‘I’ve been sad. I’m not myself.’ or ‘I’m so irritable.’ or ‘I’m not well. This isn’t who I am.’ Those are all good reasons to consider therapy,” she said.

As a telehealth provider, Benitez will be able to provide care remotely. Appointments can occur via video chat or phone, which can lower barriers to care for those who cannot travel to a health center.

“This is your time to say whatever you want to say. I am here to support you, never to judge,” Benitez said. “I remind people, ‘You have survived. You are capable.’ I show them they can do this. They have been able to overcome adversities. We focus on strengths, and build good coping skills. I tell them, ‘You are more than your trauma. You deserve to live a healthy happy life.”

MCHC Health Centers includes Hillside Health Center and Dora Street Health Center in Ukiah, Little Lake Health Center in Willits, and Lakeview Health Center in Lakeport. It is a community-based and patient-directed organization that provides comprehensive primary healthcare services as well as supportive services such as education and translation that promote access to healthcare.

THE PRAISE for the late Richard Wilson of Round Valley is well deserved, of course. One of the big things Wilson is credited with doing is stopping the damming of the Middle Fork of the Eel thus turning Round Valley into a giant lake. Which he mostly did. A lot of people don’t know the behind the scenes assistance Wilson got from my late Uncle Joe Scaramella as recounted in Ted Simon’s fascinating book “The River Stops Here: How One Man’s Battle to Save His Valley Changed the Fate of California.” Joe Scaramella was Board chair of the Supervisors at the time and opposed the Dos Rios dam project for his own unique reasons, different from the reasons Wilson presented. But of course, the reasons for the opposition to the dam — which were many — didn’t matter. The dam had to be stopped. Joe Scaramella always put the County’s interests first and in this case, the County’s interest was financial. If Round Valley was flooded, thousands and thousands of acres of productive — and taxable — ag and timber land would be taken off the County’s tax rolls just at a time when the state was imposing more and more tasks on counties for which funding would be needed. Soon after being elected in the early 1950s, Joe Scaramella had written the County’s first board rules, most of which are still in place to this day, so he knew them better than anyone else. In the case of the Dos Rios dam, Joe Scaramella used a variety of savvy procedural delaying tactics to slow down the local dam process and give Wilson time to organize his opposition, which ultimately worked. It happened over a period of years, not just the semi-mythical version that Wilson simply had a nice chat with his friend then-Governor Ronald Reagan and Reagan promptly nixed the idea. Without Joe Scaramella’s slow-walking the process, there’s a good chance that Wilson wouldn’t have had the time necessary to put together a compelling political and environmental coalition to get the projected halted. Joe Scaramella’s never expected or received the kind of praise that Wilson justifiably got for his quiet maneuvering. But without Joe Scaramella’s support, Wilson’s “One Man Battle” would have been lost before it got rolling and the beautiful Round Valley would be a lake and its dam would be defended by whatever interests would have come to depend on it to this day.

(Mark Scaramella)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, September 13, 2023

MICHELLE CHANDLER, Ukiah. DUI, cruelty to child-infliction of injury.

BRITTANY KOHLMANN, Ukiah. Disobeying court order, failure to appear.

PAUL LEO, Mendocino. Disorderly conduct-under influence.

JUAN LOPEZ, Ukiah. County parole violation.

BRADLEY LUCIDO, Ukiah. Domestic battery, cruelty to child-infliction of injury.

RAESHELE MAYFIELD, Redwood Valley. Failure to appear.

LATISHA MCCLOUD, Stewart’s Point/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JUSTICE SULLIVAN, Willits. Vandalism.

KIMBERLEE THOMPSON, Ukiah. DUI, disorderly conduct-drugs&alcohol, recklessly causing fire to structure or forestland, assault with deadly weapon not a gun, resisting, probation revocation.

NORMAN WHITE, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

BIG OIL IS EATING US ALIVE

Editor: 

Money is a symbol, nothing more. It gains value from trading objects made of the planet’s resources. Money doesn’t sustain, nurture or maintain any organism. Nothing will survive by eating, drinking or breathing it. And yet we value the dollar more than the resources that sustain our economy and ecosystem.

The almighty buck is a construct of an ideology, but the capitalist reaction to it replicates a pattern of addiction. More wealth equates to greater gratification, regardless of the consequences.

When climatologists concluded fossil fuel is destroying the planet, the oil and auto companies spontaneously denied years of meticulous research.

Americans believe capitalism is an ally of democracy, but it isn’t. Democracy promises independence. Capitalism thrives on control. Though capitalists aren’t a political party, they have unelected delegates (lobbyists) bidding to protect their practices at the expense of voters.

When the pandemic hit, oil companies lobbied to protect their prices. After the quarantine, oil companies raised prices as if they were recovering from a recession. Since oil prices affect every area of the economy, the cost of living skyrocketed. Yet their stock reports shamelessly bragged record profits. So beforehand, taxpayers protected oil profits, and now consumers are feeding the addicts with their drug of choice.

Tom Fantulin

Fort Bragg

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

The problem is that no one seems to care enough to gather the momentum to do anything about anything. As long as there are still cheese doodles in the store, porn to stream online, NFL games to watch on Sundays, then people are not going to stand up and do anything about the plight in the world.

For all the technology and interconnectedness we have today, I think getting people to stand together for a common cause now is harder than ever. I think back to the early founding of this country, people had a common cause to rally around, they could stand on a soap box in the public square, and post bills on the fences, all which had a profound impact on public discourse. Nowadays people are all squirreled away in their private tunnels doing and thinking exactly as “they” please, not as would please overall “society”.

I would love it if people collectively said: “You know what, prices at McDonald’s are way too high for what you get, I am no longer eating their chemically processed meat fat”. No, instead they suck it up and just hand over the credit card for more garbage.

I purposely refuse to buy certain things and do business with particular companies purely on principle. Now I am only one small fish in a very large multi-national pond, so unless more people are with me then the effect is minimal. But at least I am doing what I personally feel is right.

MITCH CLOGG: 

A Day Late And A Dollar Short

On 9/11/01, I was shocked but not surprised at the death and destruction in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Western-Bloc nations had been plundering the middle east for generations, paying lip service to the accomplishments of Arabs and Muslims of old while putting everything movable into the British Museum, the Louvre and the countless museums of the West, while renewing the ancient animus between Christianity and the religions of the Levant and treating the people of those desert countries with scorn. 

The 9/11 terrorists, the hands-on ones who had learned sufficiently to be pilots and assassins, were and remain heroes, martyrs and victors in Saudi Arabia and her Arab neighbors, however immaterial they were made by their acts. The Judeo-Christian god's criminals were Allah's saints. It didn't compute; still does not. God and Allah are sort've the same guy, right? 

On 9/11, seeing big planes enter buildings at full speed, watching the World Trade Center smash its way to the ground, I did not know who or why. I said, out loud, “I don’t know what this means, but I know the world will never be the same.” Angry people were flying airplanes into New York’s tallest buildings, then into the Pentagon, headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, then a random spot in Pennsylvania. What kind of spell would make people vaporize themselves and thousands of others?

Western-Bloc nations had been plundering the middle east for generations, giving lip service to the accomplishments of the Arabs and the Muslims of old while stashing everything movable into the British Museum, the Louvre and the countless other museums of the West, while renewing the ancient animus between Christianity and the religions of the Levant and treating the people of the desert countries with scorn. The 9/11 terrorists of New York, PA and Washington were heroes, martyrs and victors in Saudi Arabia, murderers in America. 

There are cases to be made for both views. They cannot be resolved. The opposing sides are irreconcilable. They can be minimized, shrunk until they hardly matter. Before the old Muslim division of Sunni and Shia was violently renewed in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the two sects shared the same blocks, buildings and beds in Baghdad. Secular harmony was dictated, on pain of death, by Saddam Hussein and enjoyed by the modern, progressive citizens of Baghdad and Iraq's other urbane places. Sunnis and Shia married and raised healthy families. 

Then Osama bin Laden, of Saudi Arabia, caused a terrible storm to come to America on September 11, 2001. Then George W. Bush, the incumbent president, invented a false narrative that, in short order, destroyed the complacency, the relative tranquility and the established order in Iraq, then regarded as the most progressive country in the Middle East.

New York City and the United States were inundated by expressions of sorrow and sympathy from all corners. Nations who officially despised us--Cuba, Iran, Libya, Pakistan and North Korea, to name just a few of them--sent heartfelt condolences. As we eventually did with the world's gratitude after World War Two, we instantly squandered the world's goodwill--squandered and curdled it with the ignorance, avarice, mendacity and bombast of the Bush Syndicate (the Bush family community of interest, the elites and wannabes, in all sectors of society), for the purpose of setting up the biggest heist in human history: Iraq's giant, untapped oil reserves (still mostly unmeasured), her peerless antiquities (remember "Cradle of Civilization"?), the U.S.-impounded billions of private and commercial Iraqi wealth, and taxes on the American people somewhere north of $3 trillion--TRILLION--dollars, according to economist Joseph Stiglitz. 

George W. Bush, using the presidency as his burglar's tools, distributed among his associates and the stockholders of their businesses the cream of the war profits. Typical of Bush & Co., this mega-theft was committed in plain sight. Starting in the spring of 2003, cash money was flown, in shrink-wrapped packets of hundreds, stacked on and strapped to wooden pallets, to airports in Iraq. Soldiers with rifles walked among these piles of money, but none of it was tracked, as people, respectable-looking people of all ethnicities, came to get some. 

Crimes of this magnitude tend to shut down analytical efforts. Iraq became a free-for-all as soon as the first bursts of "Shock and Awe," the initial bombing of Baghdad, began.

So who are the victims in our middle-eastern conflicts; who are the perpetrators? It is right to mourn the loss of American lives, security and property, but, given the decades of east-west relations, the exploitation of those antiquated societies by sophisticated ones, how can a historian, much less an ordinary citizen, discover the truth or examine the tragedy of recent years?

UKRAINE, WEDNESDAY, 13TH SEPTEMBER

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin met at a Russian space center Wednesday. US officials have warned Putin could use the summit to seek arms for his invasion of Ukraine. For his part, Putin signaled he could help Kim's space program.

The Ukraine war has left Putin internationally isolated and in need of fresh ammunition and shells after 18 months of war. Kim said he would "always be standing with Russia."

Ukrainian forces launched an extensive attack overnight on a ship repair facility in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, which is a major base for the Russian Black Sea fleet. Russian officials said at least 24 people were injured and two ships damaged.

The attack appears to have been the most ambitious yet launched on the port by Ukrainian forces. There have been previous drone attacks on Sevastopol, as well as attempts to penetrate the harbor with maritime drones. 

IN A BLAZING FINISH that thrilled 11,424 fans at Olympia in Detroit, Jake LaMotta pulled victory from the jaws of defeat #OnThisDay in 1950 and retained his world middleweight title with 13 seconds left against Laurent Dauthuille.

After a left hook hurt Dauthuille, then with a fusillade of punches LaMotta battered his rival down, and out.

The ‘Bronx Bull' and French contender Dauthuille fought once before in 1949. Dauthuille outboxed and countered his way to a unanimous decision victory over 10 rounds. But this time, it wasn’t over until it was over.

A GAME OF DANGEROUS DESIRE: BACH & TENNIS

by David Yearsley

Lawn tennis was born as a bucolic game of Victorian garden parties. As the ongoing U.S. Open relentlessly shows, the modern game has mostly paved things over and made them loud. The Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York City is a sonically raucous affair often conducted at high decibels: the hecklers; the grunts and war cries of the players; the hubbub of massed crowds in the arenas (Arthur Ashe Stadium Court holds nearly 25,000 people); that outbreak of “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles” sung jeeringly at German player Alexander Zverev. Thankfully for tennis fans, though not for residents of Queens, the jets taking off incessantly from nearby LaGuardia airport are redirected, as air traffic and safety allow, away from the courts during the two weeks of the tournament.

Then there is the canned music blasted during the changeover pauses of matches. This year there’s been plenty of play for Harry Styles’s number 1 hit of 2022, “As It Was.” The pretty Brit sings first of gravity holding him back. At Flushing Meadows the line serves as polymorphous metaphor for the explosive rise of tennis’s popularity, for the Olympian ascent of U. S. Open defending champion Carlos Alcaraz, and for the flight paths of those ear-splitting LaGuardia jets.

Johann Sebastian Bach never played tennis. In his day it was a pursuit for princes not organists. Still, he must have known of its existence, if not its rules and rituals.

German potentates from the powerful to the petty took up the game across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in emulation of the French, whose language they often adopted at their courts—and on their tennis courts too. Long before the Victorians ushered the game outside, it was played indoors. The Saxon Electors, from whom Bach sought and ultimately gained professional favor, had a royal “ball house” (Ballhaus) in their glittering capital city Dresden. Bach played many famous organ recitals and often went to the opera there. A new royal church was dedicated in Dresden in 1751, the year after Bach died. The old chapel, which had previously been the opera house, was again repurposed, this time into an up-to-date tennis court for the Saxon rulers, who were also Kings of Poland and played the game at their palace in Warsaw.

One such blue-blooded racquets enthusiast was Wilhelm, Count of Schaumburg-Lippe-Bückeburg. He hired the youngest of J. S. Bach’s sons, Johann Christoph Friedrich, as his orchestra’s harpsichordist in 1749.

Just eighteen years old when he took up the post in 1750, J. C. F. Bach would spend his entire 45-year-career in this bucolic setting in the Westphalian hills. The Bückeburg Castle had a Ballhaus, and Wilhelm’s grandfather Friedrich Christian had died at the age of 72 after a strenuous match on his home court in 1728. Better to breathe one’s last after a good game of tennis than on the battlefield. The young Bach’s boss, Count Wilhelm, is best remembered today not for his tennis skill but for his claim, argued in a polemical treatise surprisingly not referred to these days by Zelensky, Biden and Blinken, that “only defensive wars are justified.” Wilhelm had been born in London and spent several youthful years there. King Georg I of Britain (also Duke of nearby Hanover) was his other grandfather. George II was his uncle. Neither subscribed to their Bückeburg kinsman’s theories of warfare.

Wilhelm inherited Bückeburg castle and its tennis court in 1748. J. S. Bach wrote a letter to the Count (addressing him in French) the next year thanking him for the gift of a “precious memento.” Also passed on to the Count had been a love for the game of kings, one that had ended his grandfather’s life and, later, that, of his second cousin, Frederick, Prince of Wales who died, probably from a pulmonary embolism, after being hit by a tennis ball in 1751.

Soon after Frederick’s death, Wilhelm commissioned the celebrated Italian painter, Giambattista Tiepolo to produce what appears to be a tribute to his beloved cousin: The Death of Hyacinthus, restored within the last decade and now on view in the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum in Madrid.

The story depicted by Tiepolo is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The Apollo and his lover Hyacinthus decided to engage in their own friendly, even amorous, contest of discus-throwing. Apollo threw first and Hyacinthus went running too eagerly after the toss. The discus rebounded off the ground and hit his head, killing him.

That mortal bounce could have been what allowed Count Wilhelm and Tiepolo to update the sport to tennis. Unlike the indoor game of the kings and princes of London and Bückeburg, Tiepolo sets the players of antiquity outside on a grassy surface, though one hardly as neatly manicured as Wimbledon’s. Propped on his elbow and gazing up at the heavy-hitting god, Hyacinth has not yet expired. The bruise on his cheekbone really doesn’t look so bad, and certainly hasn’t disfigured the youth’s beauty. Yet Apollo, the back of his hand raised to his own brow in the classic pose of astonished fear, knows that the boy is done for. The buffy Greek God of Music, Dance and Archery has not seen the blow inflicted from afar as in the original tale’s discus debacle, but has himself hit a smash at close quarters into his partner’s face. This shot may not have attained the velocity of young American hopeful Ben Shelton’s serve, clocked this week at 149mph, but it had achieved lethal speed nonetheless. Many are the YouTube highlight reels, mostly good-humored, of tennis players getting hit by balls, but this antique on-court incident is no laughing matter.

During the point Hyacinth had been at the net just a few feet behind where he now lies and visible between the legs of an onlooking guard who wields a halberd. Now there’s a weapon that U.S. Open officials might want to re-introduce in order enforce discipline among unruly players and fans, and the likes of the three climate protesters who so deftly stopped last night’s first women’s semi-final for a full hour.

Apollo has rushed to his lover’s assistance, trampling the net on his way. Hyacinth has dropped his racquet and the two balls he had been holding. The third, deadly projectile has rolled nearly out of the frame. The flower created by Apollo in memory of his lover and named after him already grows next to the boy’s racquet.

When he received the commission from Bückeburg, Tiepolo was at work on the epic frescoes still to be seen in the Prince-Bishop’s Palace in Würzburg, Germany. The painter and his large studio, one that included his two sons, still found time to produce the immense canvas nearly ten feet high and nine feet wide for Count Wilhelm.

This magnificent painting would certainly have been seen over many years by the Bach son. It is possible that the new Bückeburg harpsichordist could have brought with him (as his older half-brother C. P. E. Bach had to Berlin and Hamburg) a copy of their father’s depiction of the death of Hyacinth in the cantata known as Der Streit Zwischen Phoebus und Pan (The Contest Between Phoebus).

The cantata comes from around 1729, the year that Johann Sebastian Bach took up his post as head of a Leipzig Collegium musicum, an ensemble made up mostly of university students. Bach had recently run afoul of his municipal overseers and was keen to expand his activities beyond the church and into secular music-making. Vocal works such as this one, which might even have marked his debut as director of the Collegium musicum, enlivened the group’s performances in a fashionable Leipzig coffee house and that establishment’s summer garden.

The cantata’s libretto stages a musical contest between the gods Apollo (Phoebus) and Pan, the former representing high art (and therefore Bach’s attitude towards his profession), the latter serving up the rustic fare of the woods and fields.

Both gods are called on to demonstrate the full extent of their skill. Bach gives Apollo a rich lament on the death of his lover, Hyacinth—the long aria, “Mit Verlangen”:

With desire

I press your tender cheeks,

Charming fair Hyacinth.

And I love kissing your eyes,

For they are my morning stars

And the sun of my soul.

That Bach so powerfully evokes the grief-stricken love of one man for another has occasioned various levels of discomfort from later commentators or, more often, simply a refusal to acknowledge the content of the lyric and its musical representation. Yet it is undeniable that the supposedly austere Lutheran composer fully embraces the grieving homoeroticism of the scene.

Bach stokes Apollo’s longing through diverse and delicate means: with the upward yearning opening interval in the quavering flute and then the voice; with the caressing ornaments; with the fluttering triplets in the muted violins; with the long-held notes high in the bass voices’ range on the word Verlangen (desire/longing). The composer introduces tender, tactile dissonances when Apollo presses the cheek of Hyacinth. The kisses are made with subtle, sibilant trill in the instruments. Long melismas heartbreakingly trace the soul’s escape from the fallen body. These turbulent emotions are cast in a courtly minuet whose poise only makes the poignance of the music all the more devastating. The exertions of sport have collapsed into elegant agony and been contained musically within an ornate gilded frame like that of Tiepolo’s painting.

One can imagine an eighteenth-century performance of the cantata led by the Bückeburg Bach in front of Tiepolo’s painting—or today in Madrid gallery where it now hangs. At the time J. S. Bach wrote his thank-you note to Count Wilhelm in 1749 he had returned to the cantata, performing it in the latest round of the perpetual polemical battles between proponents and detractors of music’s educational value. Count Wilhelm would have been on Bach’s side of the net for that dispute. Could the Count’s gift to Bach have been to thank him for a piece of music—even a copy of the cantata in question?

The pulsing melancholy of Bach’s strains and the drama of Tiepolo’s tragic picture provide a different backdrop to the sweaty embraces in Queens after those five-set man-to-man tennis battles. That’s not Harry Styles I hear, but Bach’s “With Desire.”

These players don’t just want to win. They want to be loved.

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest book is Sex, Death, and Minuets: Anna Magdalena Bach and Her Musical Notebooks. He can be reached at dgyearsley@gmail.com.)

I WATCHED A DEMOCRACY DIE. I don’t want to do it again.

by Ariel Dorfman

For 50 years, I have been mourning the death of President Salvador Allende of Chile, who was overthrown in a coup the morning of Sept. 11, 1973. For 50 years, I have mourned his death and the many deaths that followed: the execution and disappearance of my friends and so many more unknown women and men whom I marched with through the streets of Santiago in defense of Mr. Allende and his unprecedented attempt to build a socialist society without bloodshed.

I can pinpoint the moment I realized that our peaceful revolution had failed. It was early on the morning of the coup in the nation’s capital, when I heard the announcement that a junta led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet was now in control of Chile. Later that night, huddling in a safe house, already being hunted by Chile’s new rulers, I listened to a radio broadcast that Mr. Allende had been found dead at La Moneda, the presidential palace and seat of government, after the armed forces bombed it and assaulted it with tanks and troops.

My first reaction was dread. Dread of what could happen to me, to my family and friends, dread at what was about to happen to my country. And then I was overcome by a sorrow that has never quite lifted from my heart. We had been given a unique, luminous chance to change history — a left-wing, democratically elected government in Latin America that was set to be an inspiration to the world. And then we had blown it.

Not only did General Pinochet end our dreams; he ushered in an era of brutal human rights violations. During his military rule, from 1973 to 1990, more than 40,000 people were subjected to physical and psychological torture. Hundreds of thousands of Chileans — political opponents, independent critics or innocent civilians suspected of having links to them — were jailed, murdered, persecuted or exiled. More than a thousand men and women are still among the desaparecidos, the disappeared, with no funerals and no graves.

How our nation remembers, 50 years later, the historical trauma of our common past could not be more important than it is now, when the temptation of authoritarian rule is once again on the rise among Chileans, as it is, of course, across the world. Many conservatives in Chile today argue that the 1973 coup was a necessary correction. Behind their justification lurks a dangerous nostalgia for a strongman who supposedly will deal with the problems of our time by imposing order, crushing dissent and restoring some sort of mythical national identity.

Today, when around 70 percent of the population had not even been born at the time of the military takeover, it is critical for people both in Chile and the rest of the world to remember the dire consequences of resorting to violence to resolve our dilemmas and indulging in division rather than striving for solidarity, dialogue and compassion.

Fifty years ago, as soon as I heard the name Augusto Pinochet, I knew we were doomed. Mr. Allende had trusted General Pinochet, the head of the Chilean Army, as the one officer we could count on to support the Constitution and stop any putsch. I spoke to the general briefly just a week earlier. I was working at La Moneda as the media and cultural adviser to Mr. Allende’s chief of staff. I often answered the phones, and I happened to pick up when General Pinochet called, saying in his gruff, nasal voice that would soon bark out the orders to destroy the democracy he had sworn to uphold.

Chile had entranced me ever since I arrived in the country as a 12-year-old, born in Argentina and raised in the United States. As I grew older, what became central to my love for the country was the thrill of living in a nation with a longstanding democracy and a national liberation movement born of the struggles of generations of workers and intellectuals, with the charismatic figure of Mr. Allende leading the way to a future that did not rely on the exploitation of the many by the few.

That wasn’t just a dream. When our leader won the national elections in 1970, his coalition of left-wing parties put in effect a series of policies that began to release Chile from its reliance on foreign corporations and the local oligarchy. It is hard to describe the joy, both personal and collective, that accompanied this certainty that ordinary people were the protagonists of history, that we did not have to accept the world as we had found it.

But what was a radiant opportunity for us had felt like a threat to a number of our compatriots who saw our revolution as an arrogant assault on their deepest identities and traditions. This was especially true for those who considered their property and privileges as part of a natural and eternal order. These longstanding owners of Chile’s wealth, with the support of President Richard Nixon’s White House and the C.I.A., conspired to sabotage Mr. Allende’s government.

There was no mourning among the rich and powerful that night of Sept. 11. They were celebrating that Chile had been saved from what they feared would become another Cuba, a totalitarian state that would erase them from the country they claimed as their fief. The abyss that opened that day between the victims and the beneficiaries of the coup persists, many years after democracy was restored in 1990.

There has been some progress since then in creating a national consensus that the atrocities of the dictatorship must never again — nunca más — be tolerated. But today Chile’s radical right and more than a third of Chileans have expressed approval of the Pinochet regime.

No consensus, therefore, has been reached about the coup itself, despite the efforts of Chile’s current president, Gabriel Boric. Mr. Boric, who is just 37 and an admirer of Mr. Allende, tried to have all political parties sign a joint statement that declared that under no circumstances can a military takeover ever be justified. Last week, the right-wing parties declined to sign the statement.

The right-wing leader José Antonio Kast, a sort of Trump of the Andes who is favored to win the presidency in 2025, is an outspoken supporter of the dictator’s legacy. He refuses, like an alarming number of his devotees, to condemn what happened on Sept. 11, 1973. They insist on the thesis that, regrettable as the resulting abuses may have been, the armed forces had no alternative but to rise up in order to save Chile from socialism.

Perhaps many young Chileans will shrug and think of this as just another political feud that has little impact on the long list of troubles they face today: crime and migration into the country; an economic and climate crisis; inadequate health care, education and pensions; a revolt by Indigenous communities in the south of the country. But we need to find a way to forge a shared understanding of our past so we can start creating a shared vision of Chile for the many tomorrows that await us.

At this time of confusion and polarization, what sort of guidance can I, a Chilean who lived through this history, offer the younger generations as they grapple with how to remember this day? How can we encourage them to continue to work toward a future when it will be possible for all Chileans — or almost all — to fervently say, “Nunca más”?

I offer one word: seguimos. We go on.

We go on. We do not flag. We will not be discouraged.

It is one of Mr. Boric’s favorite words. It’s also an attitude that Mr. Allende immortalized in his last speech from La Moneda as he prepared to die. He told the people of Chile that soon “the calm metal of my voice will not reach you. It does not matter. You will continue to hear me. I will always be beside you.”

Seguimos, so that Chile, despite all it has suffered, perhaps because of what it has suffered, can persevere on the road toward justice and dignity for all. And seguimos, so young Chileans today do not spend the rest of their lives in mourning, lamenting what might have been.

(CounterPunch.org)

OVERNOURISHED

by Arianne Shahvisi

In Atlas Shrugged, a woman is admitted to hospital with a jaw fracture following a slap from a “total stranger, who had heard her ordering her five-year-old son to give his best toy to the children of neighbors.” The fictional blow is Ayn Rand’s revenge against her mother, who once told her she’d pack away some of her toys temporarily, but instead donated them to an orphanage. Fifty years later, Rand was still sore about losing her cherished “painted mechanical wind-up chicken.” One biographer presents the incident as a possible genesis of Rand’s rancorous politics.

The conceptual if not the literal ancestors of most of Britain’s chickens were smuggled into the country disguised as Easter eggs. Their bootlegger was Antony Fisher, a former RAF pilot who had been advised by Friedrich Hayek to make his mark not by getting into politics but by nudging public opinion from the helm of a research institute. Fisher went in search of funds. On a trip to the US, he saw 15,000 supersized chickens packed into a single poultry house. He wrapped two dozen fertilized eggs in foil and stashed them in his hand luggage for the return trip.

The UK is now home to a billion factory-farmed chickens. Breeds like Fisher’s have been further honed into freakishly productive “Frankenchicken” broilers that grow much faster than they did in 1950, reaching their kill weight in just over a month. Each bird lives in an area around the size of an legal sized sheet of paper (free-range hens need have only twice this space) and has the tip of its beak burned to bluntness in infancy to minimize the effects of the panicked pecking and cannibalism that result from such cramped occupancy. The birds wade ankle-deep in bedding sodden with damp feces, which causes footpad dermatitis – a sort of avian trench foot, which can progress to ulcerative lesions. According to the charity Open Cages, more than a million chickens die each week in the UK from cardiac arrest as their hearts fail under the strain of accelerated growth, but the loss is part of the model, and the carcasses of weaker birds can be minced into high protein fodder for their hardier peers.

Around 2,000 broilers are slaughtered in the UK every minute. Most are spared the additional stress of being individually handled, and are gassed in their transport crates using an anoxic mix of argon, nitrogen and carbon dioxide, which causes suffocation within three minutes. The Humane Slaughter Association recommends that the gas chamber have a viewing window, or that workers are vigilant to other cues: “the cessation of vocalization and wing flapping sounds can be heard from outside the container.” Some flocks are still electrocuted. Each bird is pegged to a conveyor belt by its feet, dipped into an electrical waterbath for four seconds and shuttled into a blade that severs the major vessels in the neck.

Those who are unmoved by the fear and pain of the animals might think of the workers who peer into the gas chambers or clip each pair of ulcerated feet to the electrocution line. It’s worse than other “3D” work: it isn’t only dirty, dangerous and demanding, but also necessarily distressing. Workers wholly absorb the violence of the industry, offering consumers only the denuded meat: value added, nastiness removed. Slaughterhouse workers have elevated rates of depression and anxiety, and aggression levels similar to those in incarcerated populations.

In recent years, the poultry death count has been higher still, as nearly four million chickens have died or been culled in response to the latest H5N1 avian influenza outbreak. Once symptoms are observed – respiratory distress, runny eyes, swollen heads, diarrhea, blueish combs and wattles – birds drop dead within 24 hours. Mammal-to-mammal transmission occurred for the first time in 2022, and 292 people in England have contracted the virus since October 2021. Public health experts are getting nervous. Overcrowded sheds of immunocompromised birds are a reservoir for the evolution of dangerous viruses, and their proximity to human handlers significantly raises the pandemic risk.

Over the last 80 years, the mass production of chicken has driven down prices and conjured vast new markets. Chicken is now the world’s most heavily consumed animal protein, and accounts for half of all meat eaten in the UK. It is sometimes seen as the friendly end of meat consumption, a sort of almost vegetarianism, a product so synonymous with the antiseptically virtuous term “lean protein” that the animal is forgotten entirely. But we do not need all this chicken. Diets in industrialized nations are so high in protein that our urine is disrupting marine ecosystems with excess nitrogen. We are overnourished, and so is our soil and water.

Poultry guano is one of the most nutritious organic fertilizers, and spreading it on farmland is the cheapest way to dispose of the droppings of a billion birds. But the soils around intensive poultry units are already saturated. More than twenty million chickens are farmed in the drainage basin of the River Wye, whose waters are now rancid and muculent with algal blooms. Nitrogen and phosphorous from poultry farm run-off act as a macrophytic protein shake, beefing up marine plants whose growth blocks light and whose death turns waters hypoxic as putrefying bacteria guzzle the dissolved oxygen, choking out everything else.

If the seizure of Rand’s mechanical chicken set off her repugnance at altruism and sowed her acerbic and influential philosophy of greed, Fisher’s flesh and blood chickens were even more pivotal to his legacy. The profits of his poultry gambit funded the Institute of Economic Affairs, which proselytizes for free-market thinking and lobbies for deregulation. He exported the model into a global organization of copycat think tanks, known as the Atlas Network (apparently not named after Rand’s book, but rooted in a similar affinity for the harried Titan). In a tribute after Fisher’s death in 1988, Oliver Letwin wrote: “Without Fisher, no IEA; without the IEA and its clones, no Thatcher and quite possibly no Reagan.” Margaret Thatcher herself noted that the IEA “created the climate of opinion which made our victory possible.”

This week, the IEA praised the government’s decision to end the “nutrient neutrality” regulations that required house builders to mitigate the excess wastewater and sewage from new homes, noting that “the key culprit in river pollution is intensive farming” while “housing and sewage make a relatively small contribution.” That’s a funny way of phrasing the facts: agriculture causes 40% of river pollution and sewage accounts for 35%; regardless of the exact contribution of any industry, rivers are not theirs to wreck. In the world made by Fisher, Rand, Thatcher and Reagan, we are asked to suspend not only our most basic and irrefragable conception of responsibility – that chickens come home to roost – but also our most intuitive notions of property. Water companies, developers and poultry farmers siphon away their returns while the rest of the biosphere – our collective asset – shoulders the costs and risks, which can’t be shrugged off: animals live and die in agony, workers are brutalized, new pathogens brew and rivers go dark.

(London Review of Books)

WHEN I AM OLD

When I am old...

I will wear soft gray sweatshirts...

and a bandana over my silver hair...

and I will spend my social security checks on my dogs.

I will sit in my house on my well-worn chair

and listen to my dogs breathing.

I will sneak out in the middle of a warm summer night

and take my dogs for a run, if my old bones will allow...

When people come to call, I will smile and nod

as I show them my dogs...

and talk of them and about them...

...the ones so beloved of the past

and the ones so beloved of today...

I will still work hard cleaning after them,

mopping and feeding them and whispering their names

in a soft loving way.

I will wear the gleaming sweat on my throat,

like a jewel, and I will be an embarrassment to all...

especially my family...

who have not yet found the peace in being free

to have dogs as your best friends...

These friends who always wait, at any hour, for your footfall...

and eagerly jump to their feet out of a sound sleep,

to greet you as if you are a God,

with warm eyes full of adoring love and hope

that you will always stay,

I'll hug their big strong necks...

I'll kiss their dear sweet heads...

and whisper in their very special company....

I look in the mirror... and see I am getting old....

this is the kind of person I am...

and have always been.

Loving dogs is easy, they are part of me.

Please accept me for who I am.

My dogs appreciate my presence in their lives...

they love my presence in their lives...

When I am old this will be important to me...

you will understand when you are old,

if you have dogs to love too.

-Author Unknown