Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2023

Autumnal | Steve Tylicki | Boonvista | AVUSD News | Luck Shack | Wicked Ways | Three Authors | Ed Notes | GRT Diary | New FNP | Mendo Headlands | Grove Celebration | Chain Memory | Yesterday's Catch | SF Eateries | Oak Woodland | Salmon Industry | Eel Overhead | Pigeon Patrol | Evangelical Christianity | Political Ads | Creme Crumb | Age Maximum | Endless Oil | Deep Throat | Chaos Party | Cycle Wear | Don Sophistry | Public Space | Ukraine | Puppeteer | Vietnam Truth | Frozen Pizza | September 17 | Modoc War | Dogs Meat | Be-bop-a-lula | Satellite Shack | Dementia Cafe | Highway 128

DRY, COOLER, AND LOCALLY BREEZY conditions are expected through Thursday. A wetter pattern will develop late in the weekend and into next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A balmy 59F in the fog this Tuesday morning on the coast. We are forecast to get some haze today & tomorrow with a mix of fog & clear skies. It did get very sunny yesterday. It looks like we could see some rain early next week, of course I am watching closely.

STEVE TYLICKI

Stephen Alan Tylicki passed away in Cloverdale at age 74 on September 14 after a long illness. 

Steve was the son of Alice and Philip Tylicki, elder brother to Jim, and father of Sara. Steve loved his adopted state of California, and Mendocino County in particular. Steve spent nearly 50 years in the wine industry. He was a passionate proponent of wine, olive oil, good food, and the San Francisco 49ers. Steve was an amazing cook, and Julia Child once complimented the prosciutto he had produced. Steve asked to be remembered as someone who tried to help others. He served on the board of multiple organizations in Anderson Valley. 

Daughter Sara and family friend Joyce Hill sat vigil together at his bedside during his final days. Steve will be held in loving memory by his many friends, and Sara and her husband Peter Hewitt. 

A celebration of life will be held at a later date. 

Memorial gifts may be sent to the Anderson Valley Housing Association Capital Campaign: 1411 CA-128, Boonville CA 95415. 

May Steve forever be at peace. “I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end…”

AV UNIFIED NEWS

Dear Anderson Valley Community,

We just posted first quarter progress grades. I track and color code all students with a D or F. The results are a huge improvement. Less than half of the reports of Fall last year, plus 13 straight A reports. 

As I reflect on “the why”, I think it is combination of things:

• Lots of sports participation with a weekly no-F policy creating ineligibility and incentive to “fix it.”
• No phones on campus—huge.
• Intervention available throughout the day in the library with Ms. Tere Malfavoon. 
• Increased afternoon tutoring support in math.

So proud of the kids and the staff!

Take care,

Louise Simson, Superintendent, AV Unified School District

A FORMER COUNTY EMPLOYEE WRITES: Under CEO Angelo’s reign, many employees participated in leadership trainings. Many of them at County expense. Most were really good. But none of us were allowed to use that knowledge to realistically change things for the better. Some of us tried within our spheres of influence and we had some great successes. But when the top leader, the creator and sustainer of the bad, abusive culture continued her wicked ways….well any attempts for positive change were met with making yourself a target and most targets were shot and buried, never to be heard of again. There is a very long list of victims over the years. And no one in charge cares. Business as usual. There are more souls to use, discourage and toss. Next!

MARK SCARAMELLA REPLIES: Thanks. I meant to mention that regarding Ms. Johnson’s statement that they “share” information from the anniversary and exit interviews with department heads and the CEO/Board. Obviously, no one is going to say anything negative if their remarks are going to be “shared” with this management crew. Even the “exit” interviews are unlikely to be critical since nobody wants to jeopardize their references. 

THREE AUTHORS AT GALLERY BOOKSHOP

Author Paul McHugh, Mendocino resident in the mid '70s-early '80s, author of several novels (Came a Horseman, Dead Lines, The Blind Pool, etc), adventure journalist, & former longtime SF Chronicle Outdoors reporter, will join an Authors Showcase at The Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino on Thursday, September 28, at 6 p.m. He will read from his newest novel, “Splinter,” a World War II adventure/romance set in Norway.

Attend in person to buy signed copies, or view this event via Facebook Live on the Gallery page. Also on the program: authors Mary Kerr and Carol Wilder.

ED NOTES

WANDERING AROUND Santa Rosa's upgraded Catholic premises after an insultingly stupid memorial service presided over by an idiot priest who talked about everything except the deceased — “Oh yeah, I ran track for Saint Ignatius.” After the pusillanimous papist finally stopped talking about himself, I walked from the auditorium into the adjacent church where I watched a guy crawl, sobbing, to the altar. Now there's a man who takes his religion seriously, I thought. I've always wondered what he was atoning for, what great sins had he committed to throw his supplicating self at the feet of the bloody Christ on the cross?

A FRIEND just returned from a Buddhist “retreat,” from which she emerged with two expensively rendered pamphlets titled, ‘Quotes,’ but not revealing quotes from whom, all the quotes maybe a stutter step ahead of Basic Fortune Cookie. “Eventually you need to learn to see pleasure and pain as equally interesting. This is the real challenge: to rise above pleasure and pain, success and failure.” Etc.

TRANSLATION: There's no diff between an ice cold beer on a hot day and a kick in the nuts.

A LOCAL WARNS: Be careful out there. It is that time of year when we are all getting our firewood in. I have reached the point in life where I just can’t cut, haul and split my firewood. After doing it for 45 years the body just can't handle it anymore. I ordered wood from a well known local who has been delivering firewood for years. I ordered 5 cords and he was Johnny-on-the-spot with the first load which he said was 3 cords. I paid him and we discussed at length exactly how much was a cord which is 128 cubic feet of wood. I paid him before stacking the wood. While awaiting the other 3 cords and when it was all nicely stacked, it turned out to be only 1-1/2 cords. Called him to let him know. A few days later he brought another load. I figured that was to make up the initial 3 cords. I accepted the load and paid him in advance for the outstanding 2 cords. When the second load was stacked along with the first load I ended up with a total of exactly 3 cords. I called to inquire about the other 2 cords but got no response. I tried texting, calling and email several times and no response. I have tried unsuccessfully for over 2 months to either bring me the wood I had paid for or to refund my money. I have had no response from him at this time after multiple attempts. I am not going to name the individual at this time. If there is no response with either wood or a refund in the near future, I WILL post his name. Hopefully he will see this post and make things right. Just be careful. A cord of wood is a stack 4 x 4 x 8 feet, or 128 cubic feet. There is a tolerance of 10% for the gaps between the wood which is stacked. Just because someone dumps a load of wood out of his truck and/or trailer and says it is a cord, you never really know until it is stacked.

A READER RECOMMENDS, 'MY LIFE' by Golda Meir: I think it would be impossible to have a discussion, or an informed opinion, about the Israel/Palestine issue (issue? Ongoing tragedy is more like it) without having read this remarkable woman's wonderful book. What's clear throughout 460 pages of clear, beautiful writing is her heart was as big as her brain, and had she lived longer, and been more in control of events, reality over there might have been a lot better than it is currently. Urge you, if you haven't, to give it a read. I have a feeling Martha Gellhorn read it, and there we have at least some understanding why she felt the way she did on the subject. 

THE STATE declared the Navarro’s silted-up, fish-rare, summer-scabrous waters fully appropriated more than twenty years ago, but does anybody in the multiple non-profits allegedly monitoring the Navarro actually walk it and its feeder streams to ensure that water thieves and chemical runoff isn't at work against the embattled river's health and well-being?

ANOTHER SODDEN THOUGHT: If the Eel is made dam free in the presumed interest of fish, will the fish return given the factors of deteriorated ocean conditions and streamside polluters? But right here I'll relate my hoary anecdote about seeing a good-sized fish thrashing in a cool, late summer pool at the headwaters of Jimmy Creek six miles east of Boonville, as I assumed that piscine marvel had somehow made it all the way up there from a year or two in the ocean. It began thrashing only at our approach. If that fish, with all the odds stacked against its survival, can somehow find its way up Jimmy Creek from the sea, maybe the Navarro isn't as dead as it seems to be.

THE RECONQUESTA. Years back, during the political turbulence of what seems now to have been the last mass push-back by the political left against the built-in crimes of capitalism, a friend of mine, Victor Martinez, was a principal in a movement to re-take California as a lost province of Mexico, returning the golden state to its rightful owners. Vic was a little hazy on how exactly he and his comrades could bring off their grand dream, but that agitation was prior to the arrival of millions of Mexicans who have since made their permanent homes here to the huge benefit of their adopted country. (Mendocino County would come to a screeching economic halt without Mexicans.) But apart from some occasional displays of Mexico's flag, not a nationalistic word about taking the state back, as in, “Hey! There's millions of us here. Let's take this sucker back from the gabachos and run it right!”

GREAT REDWOOD TRAIL DIARY

by Andrew Lutsky

Pedaling my bicycle along the Great Redwood Trail last week I could not believe some of the things I saw …

I noticed several individuals sitting together on the ground smoking dope next to a baby stroller filled with their belongings. One of them held a guitar (stolen, probably).

I noticed a fly lustily feeding on a dog excrement like it was a tapas bar before nearly landing on me. Yuck.

I noticed a meticulously coiffed Shih Tzu pause to investigate the deposit and heard her disheveled owner sternly reprimand her for showing interest.

I noticed tall clusters of wild fennel in full flower proudly antagonizing me. Has anyone heard of a weed wacker?

I noticed a small wooden house full of books. What the f—? are books doing on display in tiny wood houses? Bird huggers need to wake up: We’re tired of the city wasting scarce public resources to educate birds who obviously know enough already.

I noticed a colorful landscape painted on a utility shed … Is that supposed to make us feel better? I like pretty pictures as much as the next guy, but please don’t shove works of obvious beauty and inspiration in my face!

I noticed small oaks and manzanitas poking up here and there. What is this, a pygmy forest?

I noticed an obese couple in sweats walking briskly with a pair of well-fed kids weaving along on bicycles behind them. Guess Mom and Dad chose to invest in snacks instead of the gym membership.

I noticed the narrow scenic corridor between the big metal buildings in the industrial area on the north side of town and kept noticing the view all the way down along the tracks to Ukiah’s sewage treatment plant and back. Oak woodland in a river valley ringed by green mountains …

Meh. I’d be tempted to call it unscenic if that were a real word.

As I rolled along my thoughts wandered westward to the Orr Creek hiking trail in Low Gap Park which passes through the former city dump. Who were the geniuses who thought a garbage dump could be transformed into a park?, I wondered. Those dummies sure must regret their previous optimism and vision.

One thing I didn’t notice was: motor vehicles. You know, the devices that so generously share carbon particulates and soothing white noise under the direction of highly skilled if angry, distracted, and often intoxicated freedom lovers with hair-trigger tempers and which are involved in more than 100 fatalities per day in the U.S. Whoever built this trail obviously hates freedom.

I also didn’t notice any lemonade stands. Wtf? Whose horn does a bicyclist have to blow to get some lemonade around here?

MCHC WELCOMES EXPERIENCED MEDICAL PROVIDER, JACQUELINE DOTSON

In light of the nationwide shortage of primary care providers, MCHC Health Centers is pleased to announce it has expanded access to medical care in the community by welcoming its newest advanced practice provider, family nurse practitioner Jacque Dotson.

Dotson is no stranger to rural medicine. She grew up in a small Utah town of 1,500 people, where her grandmother served as a nurse at the town’s sole medical facility — a combination critical access hospital and nursing home.

“From the time I was five, I would go with my grandma and help feed the residents. And my cousin and I would do piano recitals and dance for them,” she said.

At 15, Dotson became a certified nursing assistant. She cared for nursing home residents and hospital patients, taking vitals, drawing blood, doing x-rays, and helping with daily bedside care. After high school, she became a registered nurse.

“Where I lived, our hospital had one nurse, one doctor, and a couple of aides on duty to take care of the town,” she said. “When I was 23, my grandfather came in in full cardiac arrest. Our hospital saw maybe two of these a year. I had taken advanced cardiac life support (ACLS), but I hadn’t had a chance to practice much. Our town was split by a railroad and the doctor got caught on the other side of the tracks. I had to take care of my own family member; I was the only [clinician] in the building. He didn’t make it and I thought it was my fault.”

Dotson later understood that no one could have saved her grandfather. But the experience catalyzed her desire to learn emergency medicine, which she quickly came to love. She spent 20 years working as a trauma nurse in hospitals and as a member of a life flight crew on fixed and rotor wing air ambulances.

In 2016, she began considering the sustainability of her current schedule. She had grown accustomed to the independence of trauma nursing and didn’t think she’d enjoy returning to the bedside, so she went back to school to become a nurse practitioner. She is now board-certified as a family nurse practitioner and an emergency nurse practitioner and says she is excited to bring her love of medicine to Lake and Mendocino Counties.

“This is my passion. Medicine is about taking care of people — treating every patient as though they are your family. Every patient is someone’s mom, dad, brother, sister, spouse — somebody’s person. I want to take care of each patient like I would take care of my person,” she explained.

She chose MCHC Health Centers because, having worked most recently in a large, multi-state hospital system, she wanted to return to a locally managed health center where employees care deeply about their work and their community.

“When my husband and I came to visit MCHC, every person I talked to loved their job and they were all so friendly. I was like, ‘Is someone paying you to say all these nice things?’” she quipped.

She ran into one MCHC provider who had previously worked as a traveler (going from health center to health center to fill in on a short-term basis). After serving as a traveler for MCHC, he told Dotson MCHC was the best place he had ever worked and he gave up being a traveler to become a full-time MCHC employee.

Dotson said she looks forward to working with the diverse team of MCHC providers and learning about the community resources available for patients so she can provide the best possible care.

“I am honored and excited to be part of this team. I love the focus on treating the whole person, not just the disease. I can’t wait to contribute to and learn from the team,” she said.

Dotson characterizes her approach to medicine as one of honesty, education, and respect for each patient’s right to make their own decisions.

“I will tell you your problem and support you through it. I will tell you the consequences of your actions — and I believe in your right to choose your own treatment (or no treatment). If you are overweight, for example, I might tell you how it could endanger your health, put you at risk for high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes. I might talk with you about diet and how to change your lifestyle to improve your health. But if you choose to continue to eat poorly and not to make alterations, that’s your call. Next time I see you, I will not dismiss you or make you feel guilty. I will work with you to figure out where we go from here,” she said.

She encourages patients to ask questions, and if she does not have the answer she says she will find it. She wants patients to be open with her about their beliefs and attitudes toward medicine and healing, and that she is open to researching alternatives.

“Some people say they don’t like traditional medicine or that they don’t want to take medication for their condition. That’s fine. Some herbal remedies have been proven effective. I’m open. If a treatment plan doesn’t work for the patient, it’s useless. A plan has to be based around the patient’s goals, not mine,” she said.

MCHC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Matt Swain said Dotson’s experience and approach to patient care make her a wonderful fit for the MCHC team. Dotson will be seeing patients for same-day appointments at MCHC facilities.

* * *

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.

RICHARDSON GROVE WILL CELEBRATE 100 YRS WITH A COMMUNITY CELEBRATION

Garberville, Calif.— California State Parks North Coast Redwoods District, in collaboration with Humboldt Redwoods Interpretive Association, Save the Redwoods League, and several local community partners, will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Richardson Grove State Park on Saturday, September 30th from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.. 

Festivities for this Centennial celebration will include performances by Object Heavy, a favorite local Humboldt band. Food will be available from southern Humboldt food trucks Little Bits and El Cora. The celebration will also include the reveal of a new permanent exhibit for the Richardson Grove State Park Visitor Center, created and gifted by local artist Jennifer Amidi. This event will be held under the towering old growth redwoods of Richardson Grove, and next to this historic CCC era Richardson Grove Visitor Center. In addition to a fun kid’s area, there will also be state park staff and several community partners on hand to provide information about the local area. 

One hundred years ago, several community groups and organizations came together to help protect what remained of the north coast old growth redwoods after decades of clear-cut logging practices. Since then, these trees have been celebrated and enjoyed by generations of local families and visitors from around the world. The Richardson Grove Centennial Celebration will provide an opportunity to reflect on the importance of these protected redwood groves, and all of the benefits their protection has provided both to the environment, and to all of us. Together, will be able to envision the next 100 years of protection and connection to this special park. We invite the local community and visitors to attend this celebration, and all day-use fees will be waived for attendees. 

CHRIS SKYHAWK:

Well I met this very fine young man at our Earth First basecamp; where we had a long talk by the campfire just a few days before he was murdered by a Maxxam logger who “accidentally” fell a tree on him; In reflecting on the depth of our conversation I later realized that his soul knew his time on earth was done; I don’t remember the specifics but I do remember he had gleaned an important truth; although he was young at the time of his murder I do believe he accomplished in this life what his soul had come to do; I was later able to share the conversation with his grieving mother when she came up from Texas; she wept cleansing tears; even though he probably lived a completed path, his death remains richly emblematic of a planetary corporate culture; that cares nothing for life cares nothing for Old Growth forests; and cares nothing for human beings, either and the great folk singer Jim Page nails it....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBbGeyFDmNQ

CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, September 18, 2023

KELIE ADAMS-PENROD, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery.

CAREY DEBACA, Windsor/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

ANGEL GOMEZ, San Jose/Ukiah. DUI, failure to appear.

CHRISTOPHER LELOUP, Ukiah. Parole violation.

CRISTINA MUNOZ, Laytonville. Protective order violation, resisting.

DYLAN OUGH, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, disobeying court order.

FRANCISCO SANCHEZ-ARMAS, Covelo. DUI, more than an ounce of pot, no license.

ROBERT SORIA, Wilmington (CA)/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

ANNE STANDARD, Fort Bragg. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent, unspecified offense.

TORREY THURMAN, Willits. Parole violation.

JALAHN TRAVIS, Ukiah. Protective order violation, probation revocation.

CODY WILLIAMS, Covelo. Failure to appear.

A READER WRITES: Good News on Clement Street in San Francisco! The much-missed CHINA FIRST’s replacement - “Dumpling Bistro”- is open for business! Completely remodeled, natch. No sign of the old place, which was old in every sense of the word. Onward and upward... maybe they’d make egg fu yung if I asked them... Neighborhood oasis and Jack of all trades cafe BLUE DANUBE has its’ storefront window-wall open, this in addition to regular sidewalk tables/ parklet! All the better to let in the admittedly scintillating September Monday afternoon! Here where the end of the earth ocean is nearly in view.

‘UNPRECEDENTED TIMES’ THREATEN TO BRING DOWN HISTORIC CALIFORNIA INDUSTRY

by Tara Duggan

On summer days in Half Moon Bay’s Pillar Point Harbor, people usually line up to buy king salmon direct from the source. But with the California salmon fishing season closed for the first time since 2009, the only kind for sale on Thursday was frozen, from Alaska. 

“Once you eat the wild salmon, you stop buying them from the supermarket because the taste is totally different,” said customer Valeria Fedotova of Pacifica, who is a regular during the salmon season but comes only occasionally now that nothing local is available.

The salmon season that usually runs from May to October was closed because of a cascade of issues starting with the drought, which impacted this year’s fish when they were babies three years ago. The closure also follows several limited seasons for Dungeness crab fishing, another mainstay that historically took place from November to June, which could potentially be shortened again in the upcoming months.

California’s $200 million commercial fishing industry could become the state’s first big casualty of climate change, along with related businesses like charter boat companies and fish processors. Drought is a constant strain on salmon populations, and the crab fishing fleet has been hit hard as ocean warming has caused whales to swim closer to shore, putting the marine mammals at risk of entanglement with fishing gear. That has resulted in the crab season opening late four years in a row, depriving fishermen of the lucrative holiday market.

“With fisheries across the board it’s harder and harder to hold on,” said Dan Snell, a second-generation salmon troller at Pillar Point whose income is down 90%. “I would say we’re in unprecedented times.”

Local fishermen have been foretelling the end of their profession for years, but some of their predictions are starting to look like reality. Even though many seafood stocks in California are plentiful — such as Dungeness crab and others with less of a market draw — regulations and changing environmental patterns have already resulted in a demise of local catch in stores and restaurants.

“I’m selling farm-raised king salmon for the first time in my life,” said Shane Lucas, co-owner of Fishetarian Fish Market, a restaurant and market at a fishing dock in Bodega Bay. The business is doing well, he said, though the lack of local salmon has resulted in $50,000 to $60,000 in lost revenue.

Rick Powers, a charter boat captain in Bodega Bay and president of Golden Gate Fisherman’s Association, which represents businesses like his, said it’s the slowest year since he started fishing in 1969. 

“I really can’t remember a year when we’ve faced so many obstacles and restrictions,” said Powers, whose Bodega Bay restaurant, the Boat House, is also suffering. 

Fishery managers closed the season because of low projected numbers of adult king, or chinook, salmon in the Pacific Ocean. (Fishermen say the model used for projections is outdated.) In a press release, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife attributed the low numbers to “prolonged drought, severe wildfires and associated impacts to spawning and rearing habitat, harmful algal blooms and ocean forage shifts.” 

After the closure was announced, Gov. Gavin Newsom requested that the U.S. Department of Commerce declare a federal fishery disaster, which could provide financial relief to the industry and fishing communities. Approval — which can take a long time — is still pending.

The overall amount of seafood caught in California has dropped since 2014, following severe droughts and a marine heat wave, conditions that scientists say are becoming more frequent with climate change. In 2014, 360 million pounds of seafood was landed, or brought on boats to California docks, compared to 185 million pounds in 2022 (with fluctuations in between), according to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. 

When it comes to king salmon, 2.3 million pounds were landed in 2022, compared to 3.8 million in 2013, according to Fish and Wildlife. But numbers dipped even lower in 2016 and 2017, due to drought.

The Dungeness crab fishing industry suffered at least $71 million in losses between 2015 and 2020 following the marine heat wave that led to restrictions to protect whales, according to the authors of a study from UC Santa Barbara and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

“That actually was a bigger impact than the loss of the salmon season,” said Pillar Point fisherman Rick Hauschel.

Commercial fishers may still catch other types of fish this summer, but prices have collapsed, with black cod only commanding 50 cents a pound, while fuel prices are high. Black cod, spotted shrimp, halibut, albacore and rockfish somehow lack the draw of coral-red, omega-3 rich king salmon, they say. 

“These are delicious fish, they’re local, they’re in season, sustainably caught, well managed — all the things that people in San Francisco should be excited about,” said Sarah Bates, a salmon fisher in San Francisco. “And we can’t sell it.”

Even with the closure, fishermen still have to make payments on their boats and permits and have other fixed costs. And because they have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in their equipment, they can’t give up until there is absolutely no hope left. 

“Nobody’s looking to buy a salmon boat right now,” said Bates.

(SF Chronicle)

PROTECTING US FROM THE PIGEONS 

by Doug Holland

It's a lovely day at Seattle’s ominous urban transit center, where drunks loiter and preachers preach; where litter blows in the wind, last week's vomit lies dried on the concrete until the rains come, and three Transit Security guards oversee everything from their vantage point, leaning on their “squad car” smoking cigaerttes.

Today there's a little black boy, perhaps five years old, chasing pigeons and sometimes shouting, but not in English. “Areeum,” it sounds like. His mom watches from a bench, a slight smile on her face, but this is his playground and she's given him all of it except the bus driveways.

The kid's adorable, honestly. He runs at the pigeons and cyclones his arms, and the pigeons scatter into the air. Whee, there he goes again, breaking up a crowd of birds.

A shy blonde girl joins him. She's about the same age and wants to help, but she's not as brazen as the boy. She follows him into the birds, never takes the lead. C'mon, kid, haven't you heard of women's lib? You can scatter the pigeons as well as he can, if you try!

The girl's father sits and watches from a bench, far from the boy's mother watching from another bench in the other direction, but when their eyes meet, they both smile.

Always at the transit center, there are more pigeons than can be counted. Some roost under the overhang above us, or at the parking ramp across the asphalt, and always dozens are on the concrete floor space between the passengers waiting for a bus.

Not this afternoon, though. The kids won't let the pigeons take even an inch of the concrete, not in our part of the waiting area. Now the boy screams something in his foreign language as he frightens more birds and they fly off, and the girl repeats whatever he's shouted. “Areeum!”

Through ten minutes of this while waiting for my bus, there are pigeons on the concrete only intermittently and very briefly, because here come the children. Often no pigeons can touch down at all, an unprecedented event.

When my bus pulls up, the boy runs in front of me pursuing birds. He's close enough to hear, so I say loudly, “Thank you for protecting us from the pigeons.”

He doesn't hear me, though, or doesn't understand, and only keeps running. The girl runs after him and laughs, but she's been laughing the whole time so it wasn't at me.

(www.itsdougholland.com)

BILL HATCH: Great news for mainstream media corporations like LA Times but very bad news for democracy:

Brace For Skyrocketing Political Ads, Californians

Close to $1.2 billion in political ads will be aimed at California voters... 

by David Lauter

Washington — Fourteen months ahead of the next presidential election, the political ad wars already have begun — an unusually early start to what’s shaping up as a record-setting barrage.

The amount of political advertising in the U.S. seemed intense back in 2012 when President Obama and Mitt Romney each broke the $1-billion mark.

Four years later, total advertising by all candidates topped $2.6 billion, according to figures compiled by AdImpact, the leading firm that tracks ad spending. (Spending figures cover the total for an election cycle, which covers the election year and the preceding year.)

Those figures now seem quaintly small. In the 2018 cycle, a nonpresidential election, advertising hit $4 billion. In 2020, spending leaped to $9 billion — more than tripling the 2016 figure, AdImpact reports.

For 2024, AdImpact projects spending to top $10 billion.

California once again will lead the way. Even though the state won’t see much spending on the presidential race — it hasn’t been competitive for Republicans in 30 years — AdImpact projects close to $1.2 billion in political ads will beam at the state’s voters.

That spending will be driven by the race for the U.S. Senate seat that Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein is vacating, a half-dozen highly competitive House seats and the state’s usual profusion of high-dollar ballot initiatives.

California is on track to have more contested House races in 2024 than any other state. Those contests will go a long way toward determining which party holds the House majority. The high stakes combined with the cost of advertising in the state’s major media markets could yield record spending.

Elsewhere in the country, much of the spending will land in the handful of states that will be battlegrounds in the presidential race.

Seldom have so many spent so much to persuade so few.

The number of voters in the U.S. who truly swing back and forth between parties has shrunk in this age of intense political polarization. Among those who voted in both the 2020 presidential election and last year’s midterms, for example, just 6% crossed from one side to the other, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found in its detailed study of who voted.

The larger target for political campaigns is to motivate people to vote at all — shifts in turnout typically matter more than switches in party. But the pool of voters needing mobilization appears to have shrunk too as turnout has hit record levels.

So why has ad spending increased so much?

Three factors account for the growth: the much greater array of platforms on which campaigns can advertise, a huge increase in spending on so-called down-ballot races, and the simple fact that campaigns have far more money to spend than ever before.

Not so many years ago, campaign advertising largely meant spots on local television stations. In hotly contested elections, stations could run out of available slots for ads, limiting how much campaigns could in effect spend. Now, however, supply limits have largely disappeared.

Broadcast television will still receive the largest share of the money in 2024, AdImpact projects — about half the total. That comes as other forms of advertising have declined, meaning that for companies that own TV stations in hotly contested markets like Atlanta, Las Vegas and Phoenix, politics will once again be very important.

Advertising on Spanish-language television also probably will grow — AdImpact projects a 9% increase — largely because of highly contested races in states with large Latino populations, including Arizona, Nevada and Texas.

Cable TV is projected to get the second-largest amount, $1.9 billion, but is receiving a declining share of the total. Digital ads on platforms like Facebook and Google are also projected to be relatively stagnant, although at more than $1 billion.

The big growth has come in what the advertising business calls “connected TV”: ads delivered through a streaming service to smart TVs or connected devices such as a Fire stick or Roku. AdImpact projects campaigns to spend $1.3 billion on CTV advertising in the current campaign cycle.

Connected TV allows all advertisers — political campaigns included — to know much more about who is watching than they do with broadcast television. Much as with digital ads, they can aim messages at specific demographic groups, emphasizing issues they believe will motivate a particular voter.

Campaigns use CTV for “precise targeting based on geography, demographics, viewer interests and behaviors,” said John Link, AdImpact’s vice president for data, while broadcast remains the preferred tool for “maximized reach,” hitting the biggest possible audience with a broad message.

Maximum reach is what President Biden’s campaign has been looking for with its ads, which have been on the air in key swing states for weeks.

The spending comes much earlier than previous presidential campaigns. That reflects Democratic uneasiness with Biden’s weakness in polls, but also the party’s confidence that it’ll have ample money to keep spending throughout the campaign year.

The ads from Biden’s campaign and its allied super PAC, Future Forward USA Action, have focused heavily on touting his record on the economy — an effort to turn around voters’ current dim view. The effort has included ads during NFL games, a costly approach, but one that can reach a large audience of voters who aren’t currently paying much attention to politics.

Unless you live in one of a handful of highly competitive swing states, however, you may not see many of those spots.

Biden and his allies have focused on seven states: Arizona and Nevada in the West, Georgia and North Carolina in the Southeast, and Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in the Northern industrial belt. Those seven are expected to account for a lion’s share of presidential advertising from both sides as the campaign proceeds.

The concentration of presidential ads in a few states doesn’t mean, however, that TV viewers elsewhere are home free. While the presidential race gets the most attention, the biggest growth in campaign advertising has come on so-called down-ballot races — contests below the level of president, House, Senate and governor.

AdImpact expects campaigns to spend $3.3 billion on down-ballot contests this time around — exceeding the $2.7 billion projected for the presidential contest.

Some of that comes from ballot initiatives, as California-style big-dollar campaigns have spread to other states.

Ohio, for example, has already seen more than $30 million spent on abortion-related ballot measures in 2023, with more to come this fall.

State legislative contests have also seen explosive growth in spending as those races have increasingly been taken over by national issues. In 2022, 12 states exceeded $10 million spent on advertising for legislative elections, AdImpact reports.

Voters, of course, dislike political ads. Ask people what they hate about politics, and it won’t take long to hear about “special-interest money” paying for partisan attacks on TV.

Ironically, however, it’s voters who have helped make the expansion of the campaign air wars possible. From 2006 to 2020, the number of small donors to campaigns rocketed from roughly 50,000 to nearly 12 million, according to work done by the National Bureau of Economic Research. That’s not the only reason campaigns have more money — large-dollar contributions have increased too — but small donors play a big role.

In this as in other aspects of politics, the old comic strip line applies: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

MAXXED OUT

Editor: 

As a 76-year-old who occasionally enters his garage and wonders why, can’t find the car after shopping sometimes or remember names, I ponder why America reelects politicians in their 70s. If the minimum age to be president is 35, why are vacuous geezers wandering the halls of Congress in their 80s? How about a maximum age?

Nineteen members of Congress are over 80, and nearly 25% are over 70. Kira Marie Peter-Hansen was recently elected to Parliament in Denmark at age 21, and most EU politicians are under 66 and less experienced, but their parliaments function.

With America’s government unable to pass social needs legislation and balance the budget, it is time to vote in younger talent who will be tasked in surviving these mismanaged affairs and more. They are our future.

Dave Heventhal

Windsor

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Back in the old days when peak oil was a more popular topic I’d share my concerns and views about what happens when the oil runs out. I discovered to my dismay that most people didn’t have the capacity to grasp such a concept. They’d get angry and think I was some weird leftist greenie weenie. The idea that we’d collectively be stupid enough to base an entire civilization on a non-renewable resource was something that simply could not compute in their minds. My guess is that when resource depletion ends our way of life they’ll be blaming their distress on the evil people out there that somehow took their oil away from them. People think the planet is a giant oil filled candy bar with that creamy nougat of endless oil in the center of it. Somehow evil men have taken their candy away.

BOLDLY INTO CHAOS

by James Kunstler

“When you give power over law to people who see law only as a weapon with which to get enemies, you destroy the rule of law. That’s what the dumbshit white liberals have done.” — Paul Craig Roberts

Everybody I talk to feels a gnawing tingle of dread in their livers and lights as our world tilts into the season of darkness. The Party of Chaos rules solely on the basis of insults to its citizens. They are certainly trying to provoke something like civil war, something they can label “white supremacy,” as if that would justify declaring a state of siege — an emergency suspension of rights to speak, to move, to assemble, to resist the sticky pseudopods of the malevolent Blob that Washington has become.

These insults are all obvious untruths, and behind them, you can be sure, lurk great crimes. Crimes, of course, call for adjudication and payment. That has been the American way. So, naturally, the Party of Chaos, stolidly based against the American way, has hijacked the law to prevent it from being applied to them. They have spoiled and dishonored every authority in this land and disgracing the law is their ultimate prize.

It’s hard to say which of their insults is the worst, they are all so gross and arrant, but the untruths around the Covid-19 vaccine operation seem the most conspicuously sinister. CDC director Mandy K. Cohen is still pushing these shots for all Americans down to six-month-old babies, despite a freight train of evidence that they are useless for preventing the disease and blatantly harmful, especially for children. She is either very stupid, dangerously wicked, or insane. 

Last autumn, the “uptake” on Covid boosters was 17 percent. That number should not induce a whole lot of confidence this time around among the CDC officials and their masters from Pfizer Inc. Papers are now circulating that say all the Covid variants coming out of the woodwork are lab-made pathogens. The CDC and its sister public health agencies lied extravagantly about the original virus, of course, and now everybody knows it. Who is left to fool in our country? If they move to surreptitiously release something with a much higher fatality rate — to reignite fear in the population — they could easily put their own lives in jeopardy, since its unlikely their labs might as quickly develop a vaccine they could protect themselves with.

Calling for more lockdowns and school closures won’t go over so well this time either, and federal enforcement efforts will be laughed at in the states where a majority is not insane. Working people know they’ll be ruined financially again if the schools are not available for babysitting. Even the states under the sway of mass formation psychosis, such as my New York, will be deeply divided. New Yorkers are sick of the vile automaton Kathy Hochul, even down in New Woke City.

The Ukraine war caper has pretty clearly lost its appeal as a supposed crusade for “democracy.” The yellow and blue flags vanished from the front porches and car bumpers months ago. It was a lie from the get-go that we have any national interest in that sad sack country. Our own government engineered the fiasco, and from every angle it has been a dead loss for all parties on our side. Ukraine has been reduced to a failed state in-waiting; Euroland has sacrificed its industrial economy for nothing; and the USA has squandered its last bits of prestige among other nations in this ignominious game of Lets You and Him Fight. Also, Americans have begun to notice that the billions funneled into Mr. Zelensky’s cadre of neo-Nazis and kleptocrats is money that is not going to places like East Palestine, Ohio, Lahaina, Maui, and the towns along our tortured southern border from Matamoros to Tijuana. Even the people who supposedly elected “Joe Biden” are becoming a little concerned about blundering into World War Three over the mess created by Victoria Nuland & Company.

How did we come to the point that it is now illegal to question the veracity of elections in America? And to charge a former president of the US for doing it? Much as the deck is stacked against Mr. Trump, his enemies have stupidly stuffed that deck full of jokers that are liable to shriek and giggle their way out of court when turned face-up. Judge Tanya Chutkan of the DC District Court is one of the jokers, having already branded Mr. Trump a seditious insurrectionist in the trails of many J-6 demonstrators she sent to jail on longer sentences than the prosecutors even asked for. DA Fani Willis of Fulton County, Ga, is another joker who constructed a career-ending booby-trap for herself, and DA Alvin Bragg of New York County (Manhattan) will not be the one laughing when he’s finally bum-rushed out of his law license.

An interesting fate awaits “Joe Biden” in the months ahead as the revenue stream of the Biden family foreign consulting firm gets audited in a House impeachment Inquiry. And an interesting-er fate awaits the Party of Chaos when it finally has to admit that it doesn’t have a candidate for the 2024 presidential election — at least a candidate anyone has ever heard of. The “president” stands (shakily) bestride a dilemma. He can gracefully bow out of office and avoid the historic humiliation of being unmasked as the crookedest chief executive ever — but if he does that, he loses the ability to pardon the son he so loves in any upcoming indictments, or pardon himself as CEO of Biden Consulting Inc.

Or, just maybe, the Blob will steal into the White House residence some gloomy pre-dawn morn, and settle its quivering, gelatinous endoplasm over “JB’s” face until his struggles with Congress and everything else on this plane of existence come mercifully (for us) to their end.

(kunstler.com)

THE DISRUPTER

Dear Editor,

Donald Trump is trying to disrupt the hallowed processes of the legal system by filing frivolous motions. He is asking the judicial branch it to shoot itself in the foot, render itself unfit for public use, turn it into a vehicle for his own private use.

For example, Trump legal “scholar” Alan Dershowitz fervently argues that Judge Tanya Chutkin must delay a trial because it is not in the interest of the government to guarantee a speedy trial. (Newsweek, 9-8-23)

This argument turns the U.S. Constitution on its head, suggesting that the American people and their government officials have no interest in obtaining speedy “justice for all,” but only slow justice for one.

A recent opinion piece suggests Mr. Trump is using ridiculous philosophy to undermine American democracy, just like ancient Greek sophists used conveniently invented theories to subvert democracy in Athens. (San Francisco Chronicle, 9-11-23) For example, he wants to “make vice look like virtue, right appear wrong, and just acts seem unjust.”

One of Mr. Trump’s recent sophistries is a motion asking Judge Tanya S. Chutkin to recuse herself from the same trial, because she previously knew about Mr. Trump’s January 6th shenanigans and did not approve of them, so she is biased. This would require recusal of every judge in America it would seem.

Kimball Shinkoskey

Woods Cross, Utah

LIFE LIVED IN PUBLIC - Mexico City Streets

Photographs by David Bacon

In most of the world people live much of their lives outdoors, in the street. Mexico City is no different. A lot happens in the street here. Public life means not so much events for public consumption, but more life lived in the public space.

Walking through the old centro historico the first thing you see are people working. Two men break through the asphalt for a street repair project. People carry things - an anonymous bundle clutched to the chest, tacos being delivered for someone's lunch. A woman in a bright red dress balances a tray of pan dulce on her head, striding down the sidewalk past the Alameda, the legs of the folded stand she'll use to set up her stall hanging from her arm. …

davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2023/08/life-lived-in-public-mexico-city-streets.html

UKRAINE, MONDAY, 18TH SEPTEMBER

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will address the UN General Assembly in New York this week to appeal for more support for Kyiv. He is also expected to meet with US President Joe Biden in Washington Thursday.

Ukrainian forces have liberated 300 square kilometers (115 square miles) of territory from Russia since the start of its counteroffensive, a senior official told CNN. Zelensky said Ukraine has recaptured the key village of Klishchiivka in the eastern Donetsk region.

Seven top Ukrainian officials have been dismissed as part of a major shakeup of the country's defense ministry.

Two elderly people were killed by Russian shelling in Kherson while Odesa's civilian infrastructure came under a “massive” aerial attack, Ukrainian officials said Monday.

BIDEN LATEST PRESIDENT TO TOUT THE VIETNAM WAR AS PROUD HISTORY

by Norman Solomon

You might think that—after killing such a vast number of people in a war of aggression based on continuous deceptions—some humility and even penance would be in order.

When Joe Biden flew out of Hanoi last week, he was leaving a country where U.S. warfare caused roughly 3.8 million Vietnamese deaths. But, like every other president since the Vietnam War, he gave no sign of remorse. In fact, Biden led up to his visit by presiding over a White House ceremony that glorified the war as a noble effort.

Presenting the Medal of Honor to former Army pilot Larry L. Taylor for bravery during combat, Biden praised the veteran with effusive accolades for risking his life in Vietnam to rescue fellow soldiers from “the enemy.” But that heroism was 55 years ago. Why present the medal on national television just days before traveling to Vietnam?

The timing reaffirmed the shameless pride in the U.S. war on Vietnam that one president after another has tried to render as history. You might think that—after killing such a vast number of people in a war of aggression based on continuous deceptions—some humility and even penance would be in order.

But no. As George Orwell put it, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” And a government that intends to continue its might-makes-right use of military power needs leaders who do their best to distort history with foggy rhetoric and purposeful omissions. Lies and evasions about past wars are prefigurative for future wars.

And so, at a press conference in Hanoi, the closest Biden came to acknowledging the slaughter and devastation inflicted on Vietnam by the U.S. military was this sentence: “I’m incredibly proud of how our nations and our people have built trust and understanding over the decades and worked to repair the painful legacy the war left on both our nations.”

In the process, Biden was pretending an equivalency of suffering and culpability for both countries—a popular pretense for commanders in chief ever since the first new one after the Vietnam War ended.

Two months into his presidency in early 1977, Jimmy Carter was asked at a news conference if he felt “any moral obligation to help rebuild that country.” Carter replied firmly: “Well, the destruction was mutual. You know, we went to Vietnam without any desire to capture territory or to impose American will on other people. We went there to defend the freedom of the South Vietnamese. And I don’t feel that we ought to apologize or to castigate ourselves or to assume the status of culpability.”

And, Carter added, “I don’t feel that we owe a debt, nor that we should be forced to pay reparations at all.”

In other words, no matter how many lies it tells or how many people it kills, being the United States government means never having to say you’re sorry.

When President George H.W. Bush celebrated the U.S. victory in the 1991 Gulf War, he proclaimed: “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.” Bush meant that the triumphant killing of Iraqi people—estimated at 100,000 in six weeks—had ushered in American euphoria about military action that promised to wipe away hesitation to launch future wars.

From Carter to Biden, presidents have never come anywhere near providing an honest account of the Vietnam War. None could imagine engaging in the kind of candor that Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg provided when he said: “It wasn’t that we were on the wrong side. We were the wrong side.”

Mainstream political discourse has paid scant attention to the deaths and injuries of Vietnamese people. Likewise the horrendous ecological damage and effects of poisons from the Pentagon’s arsenal have gotten very short shrift in U.S. media and politics.

Does such history really matter now? Absolutely. Efforts to portray the U.S. government’s military actions as well-meaning and virtuous are incessant. The pretenses that falsify the past are foreshadowing excuses for future warfare.

Telling central truths about the Vietnam War is a basic threat to the U.S. war machine. No wonder the leaders of the warfare state would rather keep pretending.

(Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His most recent book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in June 2023 by The New Press.)

SEPTEMBER SEVENTEENTH

Yesterday's date worth noting. In 1787, delegates to the Constitutional Convention, seemingly done with their work, signed off on it. Seventy-five years later, 9/17/1862, the blessed new nation killed 23,000 of its young men. It was the deadliest day of the Civil War, Antietam, brother against brother, shooting each other because--why?--SLAVERY!

Slaves have always been expensive. Most people, throughout time, don't own any. George Washington, “Father of the Country,” owned, literally, hundreds. Looking back, he referred to his, his family's and friends' slaveholding as “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret.” See the 2019 book by Mary V. Thompson by that title.

This happened in my native state of Maryland. Being a border state, Maryland was profoundly hurt by the wholesale murder of citizen by fellow citizen. It was brother against brother in households everywhere.

I was not told about this in school. How could they have left it out? Why?

It took until 1781 before the reluctant citizens of the new country gave up their resistance--buckled under pressure--of the then-media, then as now owned by members of the Establishment.

Antietam, Maryland, September 17, 1862. Try to see this photograph with fresh eyes.

— Mitch Clogg

CALIFORNIA’S LAST INDIAN WAR

Book Review by Mark Scaramella

‘Hell With The Fire Out: A History of the Modoc War,’ by Arthur Quinn, Faber and Faber, 200pp, 1997.

California’s last and perhaps most well known Indian war was fought in Modoc County on the Oregon border in the 1870s. Modoc County is named after after the Modoc Indian tribe who thrived in the high desert prior to the arrival of you know who. The tiny Modoc County town of Canby is named after the US Army General who was killed during the prolonged effort by settlers to grab Modoc land. As far as we know, no one has proposed renaming the town, so far.

As in other areas of the newly settled United States, some of the Indians didn’t go quietly. They resisted displacement, they distrusted settlers, the most exploitive of whom were robbed and killed by the Modocs. Only a few Indians spoke intelligible English so the Indians’ version of events never made it into the area’s newspapers which, in any case, functioned mainly as the public relations arm of westward expansion. Imagine your local criminal element roaming unchecked over a vast, sparsely settled territory: the Indians had real grievances.

One famous incident the Modocs always cited to explain their extreme distrust of the settlers was what became known as “The Ben Wright incident.” A tribe of Indian leaders accepted an invitation to what they were told was a peace conference where they were then poisoned and killed by a relentless Indian killer in the area named Ben Wright.

Although the Indians of the Northwest were ultimately on the losing and end of a decades-long war, the Indians’ counterattacks were always portrayed by settlers as unjustified attacks by wild bands of marauding Indians who had to be forcibly removed or exterminated. But the Indians’ side of the story, usually involving even-more horrendous prior attacks on the Indians and their families, almost never came out or got reported, even though there were a few noble white settlers who occasionally verified the Indians’ version of events. 

Arthur Quinn has finally produced what could be called a “balanced” account of the Modoc War of the early 1870s, 130 years after the last shot was fired.

The Modocs, by 1870, were reduced to a small band of perhaps 50-60 warriors and about as many women and children.The government had forced this tribal remnant onto a reservation just over the border in Oregon with a rival tribe of Klamath Indians. The Modocs refused to stay on the reservation where they said they were constantly harassed by the rival Indians and hostile whites. So they departed for a new life in the dramatically inhospitable volcanic lava beds — “Hell With the Fire Out” in the words of one soldier on the scene — of their beloved Modoc County. The lava beds are now a national monument and part of the Modoc National Forest. 

In the build up to what became the Modoc War, the Modocs made a series of reasonable proposals for accommodation with white settlers, adoption of which which could have easily and effectively ended the bloodshed, but the government, with the area’s newspapers beating the war drums, demanded outright elimination of the Modocs and their “consolidation” of survivors. (A version of which can be found now in Round Valley.)

Quinn’s research and documentation shows that atrocities alleged by settlers to have been committed against whites by the Modocs were largely discounted by members of a Peace Commission and even by the Army. 

Captain Jack, the Modoc Chief, opposed war as a way to resist resettlement, but as events unfolded and government treachery and duplicity increased, the members of his small tribe increasingly had no choice but war and persuaded Captain Jack to armed resistance.

Historian Quinn presents the war as “Modocs vs. Americans” not Indians vs whites, because the Modocs were a legally recognized nation with nation status derived from earlier treaties. A number of Klamath Indians eagerly joined the settler effort to wipe out their southern cousins. Captain Jack and the Modocs were seriously outnumbered and outgunned.

Further complicating matters, there were a number of settlers who were friendly to the Modocs, hiring them for farm work, helping them with supplies and materials, and taking their side, when possible, in negotiations with the government and the Army. (The Mendocino Environment Center of yesteryear, I suppose you might call these stalwart liberals.)

Although a Peace Commission was formed to try to settle the Modocs’ dispute with the Army and the settlers, it was put under the control of the US Army, at the time headed by General William T. Sherman (fresh from successfully destroying a huge swath of the Confederacy) whose own personal policy towards Indians was, as he said, “utter extermination.” The Peace Commission ended up suffering a humiliating end when the Indians found out that peace wasn’t exactly its objective.

Quinn describes the events leading up to the war as well as the war itself which was fought on the gruesomely difficult terrain of the lava beds. The descriptions of events are based on Quinn’s exhaustive research, which uncovered a surprisingly extensive historical record, much of which survived in the writings of those directly involved, many in letters home.

One literate soldier described the lava bed war scene in a letter to his relatives as “a wilderness of billowy upheavals, of furious whirlpools, of miniature mountains rent asunder, of gnarled and knotted, wrinkled and twisted masses of blackness… all stricken dead and cold in the instant of its maddest rioting — fettered, paralyzed and left to glower at heaven in impotent rage for evermore.” 

Imagine trying to drag your draft horses and Civil War era canons into this territory. Imagine the bad weather. Imagine night time. Imagine finding a place to sleep…

The Modoc War was conducted on the American side by mostly incompetent officers, resulting not only in unfair and unsuccessful handling of Indian and peacekeeper proposals but in many unnecessary deaths and desertions of both soldiers and their Klamath Indian auxiliary.

The Modocs had the advantage of fighting on their own home turf — the intricate and inhospitable lava beds whose twisted shapes and caves were not only familiar territory to them, but which formed an almost impenetrable fortress which the post-Civil War Army couldn’t figure how to penetrate. At one point early in the skirmishes a soldier crawling to avoid distant gunfire and get into a better position was shot in the stomach as he crawled over a small crevice by an Indian hiding in a subterranean lava cave.

The story unfolds dramatically as Quinn reconstructs much dialogue using the first-hand writings of those who were there. Although one critic of “Hell with the Fire Out,” complained that some of the dialogue “sounds like byplay between the Lone Ranger and Tonto,” Quinn explains the reason for the Tonto-like lingo in the book’s introduction. “I decided to accept as accurate any recorded conversation that is neither inherently implausible nor contradicted by better sources,” he says. “Anyone who regards this handling of the record as irresponsible for a historian should simply read and judge [the book] as historical fiction, with my blessing.”

Quinn wraps up his extensive annotated bibliography where he comments on the accuracy, value and usefulness of each of his sources — a feature all historians should employ — with, “Newspaper articles from the New York Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Evening Bulletin, Yreka Journal and Yreka Union have been consulted — but have contributed surprisingly little. Also consulted were surviving issues of Thomas’s ‘The California Christian Advocate’ (most of the 1872 issues did not survive) and the anonymous articles on the Modoc War published in Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization.”

The Modoc War is over; the settlers obviously won. 

Although few descendants of California’s original natives survive, the conflicts continue to reverberate and the basic issues remain largely unresolved. “Hell with the Fire Out” brings drama, understanding and fairness to what is still a contentious subject. 

BE BOP A LULA

Well, be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe

Be-bop-a-lula
She's my baby doll, my baby doll, my baby doll

Well she's the girl in the red blue jeans
She's the queen of all the teens
She's the one woman that I know
She's the woman that loves me so

Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula
She's my baby doll, my baby doll, my baby doll
Let's rock!

Well now she's the one that's got that beat
She's the one with the flyin' feet
She's the one that bops around the store
She's the one that gives more more more more

Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula
She's my baby doll, my baby doll, my baby doll
Let's rock again now!

Well, be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe

Be-bop-a-lula
She's my baby doll, my baby doll, my baby doll

AT JAPAN’S DEMENTIA CAFES, Forgotten Orders Are All Part Of The Service

by Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Julia Mio Inuma

TOKYO — The 85-year-old server was eager to kick off his shift, welcoming customers into the restaurant with a hearty greeting: “Irasshaimase!” or “Welcome!” But when it came time to take their orders, things got a little complicated.

He walked up to a table but forgot his clipboard of order forms. He gingerly delivered a piece of cake to the wrong table. One customer waited 16 minutes for a cup of water after being seated.

But no one complained or made a fuss about it. Each time, patrons embraced his mix-ups and chuckled along with him. That’s the way it goes at the Orange Day Sengawa, also known as the Cafe of Mistaken Orders.

This 12-seat cafe in Sengawa, a suburb in western Tokyo, hires elderly people with dementia to work as servers once a month. A former owner of the cafe has a parent with dementia, and the new owner agreed to let them rent out the space each month as a “dementia cafe.” The organizers now work with the local government to get connected to dementia patients in the area.

It’s a safe space where they can interact with new people, be productive and feel needed — key to slowing down the progression of dementia, a neurodegenerative disease that has no cure.

“It’s so much fun here. I feel like I’m getting younger just being here,” said Toshio Morita, the server, who began showing symptoms of dementia two years ago.

A disease of unending indignities and financial burdens, dementia is a global phenomenon that every society is confronting. But in Japan, the world’s oldest society, dementia is a pressing national health challenge.

About 30 percent of the Japanese population of about 125.7 million is over 65. More than 6 million Japanese people are estimated to have dementia, and the number is expected to grow as high as 7.3 million — or 1 in 5 people over the age of 65 — by 2025, according to the Health Ministry.

Japan’s chronic lack of caregivers and the soaring costs of elderly care mean it needs to find creative ways to empower these dementia patients so that they can be mentally and physically active for as long as possible, rather than isolated at home or at a hospital.

“Dementia cafes” are a way to fill that gap. The concept was introduced in Japan in 2017 through pop-up events, but more permanent efforts are now cropping up throughout the country.

In June, Japan passed legislation to enact a slew of new programs and services to help those with dementia, which Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has identified as an urgent national project. The Japanese Health Ministry estimates that new counseling and research efforts for dementia will cost about $96 million in 2024 alone.

Kazuhiko, a 65-year-old diagnosed with dementia five years ago, has been working at the cafe every month. His wife wanted to find him a place where he can interact with people aside from those he sees at his day care. Kazuhiko’s family asked that he be identified by his first name for the family’s privacy.

At one point, Kazuhiko was heading to a table with an order but became distracted when the construction crew outside made a loud noise. He proceeded to leave the cafe and move toward the sound, and the staff rushed to bring him back in.

“How long have you been working here?” asked one visitor. “Is today your first time?”

“Yes,” answered Kazuhiko, except it wasn’t his first time.

Kazuhiko rarely talks or shows emotion anymore. He usually doesn’t make eye contact with customers until he sees them multiple times. But that day, he showed a smile.

The smile was directed at Tomomi Arikawa, 48, and her 16-year-old daughter, Sayaka, who visited around noon for a piece of chiffon cake and a citrus jelly dessert. Sayaka is working on a summer research project at school and chose as her topic dementia, in memory of her grandfather, who suffered from the illness for four years before he died this spring.

Kazuhiko brought them their orders. Sayaka thanked him and smiled, and he smiled back. “It felt really special,” she said.

“There are always a lot of difficult things for both sides [the patients and their families] … but there are these moments where you know a real connection has been made,” Arikawa said.

“When we saw him smile after our ‘thank you’ earlier, it reminded us of those moments we had [with my father], which nearly brought me to tears,” she said.

Since April, the Cafe of Mistaken Orders has opened once a month around lunchtime. One dementia patient works as a server per hour, wearing an apron that is bright orange, the color associated with dementia care. There is a chair set aside for them near the kitchen so they can rest in between orders.

Younger volunteers help the elderly servers as they mark customers’ orders on the order forms, which are simple and color-coded.

Table numbers were difficult for the elderly to remember, so staff switched them out for a centerpiece with a single flower, a different color for each table.

The cafe’s administrators wanted to help the community see that dementia patients can prolong their active years, with a little bit of understanding and patience from those who interact with them.

“A lot of elderly people are either in nursing homes or are just sort of shut away in their homes, so I hope that our initiative will give people with dementia something to look forward to,” said Yui Iwata, who helps run the cafe. “If people get a deeper understanding, it would become easier for people with dementia to go out, as well.”

Morita, the 85-year-old, can’t stop chatting with customers, and it’s no surprise that he was an insurance salesman and longtime chairman of his neighborhood association. But two years ago, he suddenly couldn’t remember names of his neighbors. He wanted to keep working but didn’t know where.

The morning of his shift, Morita asked his wife every 10 minutes when they were scheduled to leave in case they might be late, his wife said. He kept forgetting their departure time, but his enthusiasm was uninterrupted. He doesn’t remember directions to the cafe, so his wife brings him there and has a piece of cake while he works.

As soon as he arrived, he greeted the young staff and spread out his arms. They put on his orange apron and fastened his bandanna.

“He’s always so excited about coming here and says that once a month isn’t enough,” said Masako, 80, his wife.

(washingtonpost.com)