Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2023

Rain Begins | Warning | Tough Loss | Native Celebration | Candidate Packets | Driftwood Tree | Two Dinners | Yellow Chanterelle | Thanksgiving Pies | Ed Notes | AG Request | Locals Night | Benefit Dinner | Soccer Lucinda | Marco 65 | Yesterday's Catch | Gaza Poster | Fueling Sympathy | Not War | Ukraine | AIPAC Corrupts | Darkening Days | Conspiracy Kit | Wicked Answer | Abusive Context | Long Shadow | Pencils Ready | Mommy High | Super Meth | El Capitan

MOISTURE will travel into our area from the southeasterly flow around the stalled low pressure system off the coast of California. This will bring more rain showers to the region. Tonight these showers will diminish, although periods of light rain will continue through the week as this low slowly moves east through California. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Some sprinkles, lots of clouds & 54F this Tuesday morning on the coast. I'm going with a light to moderate amount of with rain for today. We have a chance of rain for everyday thru Sunday, good luck trying to forecast how much & when exactly?

AV PANTHER COACH JOHN TOOHEY on a tough playoff loss to John Swett: 

It was tough - we were stuck in traffic and only had about 30 minutes to change and warmup and it showed - we were only able to manage scoring on a safety in the first half. We found ourselves down 28 to 2. In the second half we made it a game, coming within a possession twice, but weren't able to close the gap. We had a couple of turnovers fall through our grasp that would have given us the opportunity to take a lead in the second half but it just wasn't written in the stars for us Friday night. 

They had some tough players, an incredibly fast and shifty running quarterback that gave us trouble in space, two active defensive tackles and a Division 1 commit inside linebacker.

Lining up and running power against them like we've done to everyone this year was challenging and inconsistent, but we were able to dig into our bag of tricks in the second half and formation them in ways that made their structure vulnerable and made sure that Gus Spacek was the one dealing with their star linebacker. Once we had that secured, the ball started moving and we started our comeback run.

Defensively we adjusted by slowing our rush and squeezing the pocket with our ends to try and contain their backs. This forced them to play football instead of live off of playground athletics, and we were able to force them into some mistakes that gave us extra possessions. We just came up a little short in the end falling 37 to 29, a one possession game after a miserable first half. 

It's been quite a season, a season that's really taken three years to build. This group does not have the experience of the 2011 team, or the talent and sheer dominance of the 2015-16 squads that Kuny coached. But given the makeup of the league, having to compete with the likes of charter/private schools, and schools in the Bay Area talent pool, I think this team has earned the right to be spoken of in similar regard to those squads. We were undefeated against our Mendocino County cousins, in three games outscoring our NCL-3 legacy teams 163-50. 

I am beyond proud of this group of athletes for how they grew up over the last seven months. They have all become better young men over the course of this season. I am encouraged about each and every one of them as individuals and where they might go from here.

Now we look to the future. Unfortunately we are left with only five returning players and a local culture of resistance to the physical dangers of playing football. I don't know what kind of future this game will have in Boonville beyond this school year, but if there is one thing this season has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt in my mind, is that the transformational potential of the game of football, and the amount of consistency, accountability, communication, respect and sheer work it takes to be successful playing this game, not only outweighs its dangers, it is the dangers themselves that are integral to the teaching of these invaluable lessons - and while I will continue to coach a brand of football that is as safe as possible, I will aslo fervently defend the game as an important and vital educational tool for the development of young men of a certain demeanor. 

CANDIDATE INFORMATION FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY ELECTION, MARCH 5, 2024

Candidate information packets for individuals wishing to file for the Federal, State or Local offices of: US President; US Senator; US Representative in Congress, 2^nd District; Member of the Assembly, 2^nd District; County Supervisor 1^st District; County Supervisor 2^nd District; County Supervisor 4^th District; the Superior Court Judges who have already submitted their Judicial Notice of Intents by November 8, 2023 for Superior Court Judge, Department 4; Superior Court Judge, Department 6; and the applicable Mendocino County Central Committees are now available at our office or on our website (listed below). The candidate filing period begins November 13, 2023; the last day to file for these offices is Friday, December 8, 2023 at 5 p.m., unless the incumbent fails to file, the last day for non-incumbents is extended to December 13, 2023. 

Please go to our website at http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/acr/candidateinfo.htm to read our Candidate Packet to find the qualifications required to become a candidate for local races. Please go to the Secretary of State’s website at https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/upcoming-elections/pres-prim-march-2024/qualifications to find the qualifications required to be a candidate for the State and Federal races.

You may call the Mendocino County Elections office at (707) 234-6819, or come by the Elections office at 501 Low Gap Road, Room 1020 in Ukiah to obtain printed information.

(County Elections Office Presser)

TWO DINNERS

Dear Anderson Valley Community,

Mark your calendars and make a reservation to have your family join us for a FREE Pozole Dinner on Tuesday, November 28 from 5:00-7:00 to kick off our “Who is Anderson Valley” exhibition.  Ms. Terri Rhoades is cooking the soup in the cafeteria and will serve from 5:00-6:00 while supplies last.  Then wander the cafeteria and the high school hallway and view the student work. Most importantly enjoy some conversation and fellowship with your school family.  The event is FREE but reservations are required.

Then, on Thursday, November 30 at the High School Library we have our ELAC dinner at 5:00 p.m. This is a very important engagement meeting to get your ideas and thoughts for the future and celebrate our students who are reclassified.  THIS IS ALSO FREE but reservations are required.

FOR BOTH EVENTS, please call Miss Celeste or Miss Maribel at (707) 895-3496 TODAY!  THIS IS A DISTRICT-WIDE EVENT.

Start the holidays with your school  community and join our school family dinners!  Call today for your reservations!

Sincerely yours

Louise Simson

Superintendent

THANKSGIVING PIES

Thanksgiving Pies made to order

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, so if you are thinking you'd like some pies for the special day, or anytime between now and then, I've got a few options, all made fresh to order.

Simpler Pies $28

• Apple
• Pumpkin
• Mixed Berry
• Apple Berry

Specialty Pies $35

• Chocolate Mousse
• Bannoffee (Banana, caramel and cream in a ginger crust)
• Pecan
• Caramel Apple Pecan
• Dark Chocolate Coconut Custard
• Raspberry Cream Cheese (limited supply)
• Loganberry Dark Chocolate Ganache
• Pumpkin with walnut topping

Mostly organic ingredients. Local seasonal fruit. Gluten-free options on all and vegan on some items.

https://www.facebook.com/CobaltCatering/

ED NOTES

MS. GEORGINA AVILA-GORMAN has announced she will run for 4th District supervisor. She works as a realtor, and is opposed by mayor of Fort Bragg, Bernie Norvell.

WHEN OUR NINE (COUNT ‘EM) Superior Court judges were promoted from Mendo’s far flung justice courts to full-time Superior Court status, they no longer made the bulk of their annual pay sitting in as bullpen judges around the state. Where we used to have 8 part-time justices, who didn't have to be lawyers, we now have 9 full-time Superior Court judges for an adult population of about 90,000. But as a person who used to spend a lot of time in court as both observer and defendant, I'd say the fortunate 9 typically render just and proportionate sentences. There aren’t any mad dog magas among them. 

WHICH is as it should be given that the large majority of defendants are half-crazed, or otherwise incompetent, or have been run over by life so many times they should get free meals and ball game tickets for the rest of their days. In most of the matters before them judges can either add to misery's burden or lighten it a little. Our judges are merciful, although I’d suppose if, say, it was your life or their life-time sinecures, you’re for certain going to get the midnight needle. 

ONE of the victories achieved by Boonville's beloved weekly I'm most proud of is having produced the stories that lead directly to the conversion of the Courthouse Law Library from a sort of back room afterthought to the accessible, competently-staffed, comprehensively useful public service it is today.These days, one can walk right in to the library upstairs in the Courthouse and be met by Dan Helsel or Ashley Ashford whose legal assistance one can tap at no cost but would pay mightily for at the law offices on nearby School Street. (And which would probably be not only costly but wrong, craven, compromising, or lead directly to long periods of incarceration.) Where one used to have to search out a judge and, beg him for the key to the library door, and once through the door plow through volumes of mystifying, mis-filed legal bafflegab on one's own, there is now a friendly welcome and efficient help. 

IN ITS PREVIOUS incarnation, the law library operated almost completely outside its enabling legislation, not that that fact seemed to disturb the legal eagles who theoretically oversaw it. Today, in its own description, “the Law Library is a public library that gives all Mendocino County residents access to legal research materials” with extended services to the Mendocino Coast at the Fort Bragg Library via computer hook-up which “has quick links to state and federal cases, laws, regulation, courts, and agencies.” 

LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL football coach, John Toohey, has done a remarkable job in molding a group of rookies into a fiercely competitive team that this season made it all the way into the small school playoffs. John was a formidable athlete himself who went on from Boonville to play at the college level. This comment of his resonated with me: “…I don't know what kind of future this game will have in Boonville beyond this school year, but if there is one thing this season has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt in my mind, is that the transformational potential of the game of football, and the amount of consistency, accountability, communication, respect and sheer work it takes to be successful playing this game, not only outweighs its dangers, it is the dangers themselves that are integral to the teaching of these invaluable lessons. And while I will continue to coach a brand of football that is as safe as possible, I will also fervently defend the game as an important and vital educational tool for the development of young men of a certain demeanor.”

I AGREE. Young men of that “certain demeanor” are the many young men whose naturally combative physicality can be productively worked off by sports, especially football. 

MUCH of my excess testosterone-fueled aggression was worked off playing sports in high school. I played football and baseball in high school, but not basketball because I detested the basketball coach, and he, me. As a high school kid I was tall, skinny and slow. I didn't fit on a football field. They put me at receiver where I could catch but was too slow to do more than catch the ball. They put me at center where I regularly got creamed by big fat guys. They even put me at quarterback for desperation pass plays because I could heave the ball downfield to a little fast guy named Freddy Thomas. We never connected. In the fifties, coaching was poor, weight training unknown, conditioning was, “Do twenty push-ups and take a lap around the field.” Practices were torture sessions of meat grinders and gauntlets, but the Friday night lights were pure ecstasy.

A READER WRITES: Craig Stehr has been located. He's in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) at St. Helena’s (Heart) Adventist Hospital. You may call 707-963-3611.

ATTORNEY GENERAL: INVESTIGATE THE CUBBISON SUSPENSION

RE: Mendocino County District Attorney; Mendocino County Board of Supervisors

November 13, 2023

Dear Attorney General,

I am running for 1st District Supervisor in Mendocino County. I am concerned about a chain of events that is currently happening in Mendocino County. Our District Attorney, David Eyster, has been mis-using asset forfeiture funds and restitution funds in our County. He has targeted three of our previous Auditor-Controllers over their inquiries and concerns about the use of these funds for office expenses, etc., as well as submitting reimbursement for office parties and calling them training sessions.

On October 13, 2023, DA Eyster filed a felony criminal complaint for mis-use of public funds charges against our current Auditor/Controller/Treasurer/Tax Collector, Chamise Cubbison, an elected official, for an employment agreement with employee Payroll Manager Paula Kennedy for payroll services performed ($68,000.) in 2019-2020, during Covid. This was an agreement initiated by previous Auditor/Controller Lloyd Weer. Subsequently, Cubbison found the agreement was not approved correctly and employee Kennedy was placed on leave and ultimately fired.

Ms. Cubbison officially started her four-year elected, recently combined Auditor/Controller/Treasurer/Tax Collector office in January 2023. She was previously the Acting Auditor/Controller for 16 months fulfilling the term of Mr. Weer, who retired early. Therefore, she initially had no control or authority over the contract that was entered into with Mr. Weer and Ms. Kennedy.

The DA, previous to Ms. Cubbison’s arrest for felony mis-use of funds, offered a deal of a misdemeanor charge if she resigned from her elected position. She refused.

Following the filing of these charges, the Board of Supervisors, without proper notice to Cubbison, has suspended her, without pay or benefits, from her office, before she has entered a plea. Ms. Cubbison, as of today, has still not been arraigned. The next arraignment date is set for November 29th, 2023, in Ukiah.

My concerns for contacting your office are:

DA Eyster mis-using forfeiture funds and having a vendetta against Auditors who question the legality of use and reimbursement.

DA Eyster not recusing himself from this case due to a conflict of interest.

DA Eyster not charging former Auditor/Controller Lloyd Weer who initially entered into the contract with Ms. Kennedy.

The Board of Supervisors suspending an elected official without due process and possibly not having the authority to remove an elected official from office without a felony conviction, which is defrauding the voters of an independent Auditor. The Board of Supervisors cited Government Code section 27120 when placing the current Acting Auditor/Controller/ Treasurer/Tax Collector, Sara Pierce into office, which applies to a Treasurer, not the combined Auditor/Controller/Treasurer/Tax Collector structure that our County currently has.

I know this is a lot of background information to absorb and I've tried to simplify it as much as possible. I am very concerned about the mis-use of funds in the District Attorney’s office, as well as, the Board of Supervisors having received incorrect legal advice as to the suspension of an elected official.

I would truly appreciate your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

NOYO FOOD FOREST ‘DINNER IN THE GROVE’ DECEMBER 2ND

Tickets are on sale now for Noyo Food Forest’s Annual Benefit Dinner: Dinner in the Grove. Join us at Mendocino Grove December 2, 5-9 pm, for a delicious evening featuring:

- Farm-to-table dinner

- Wreath-making with Golden Coast Florals

- Wine, beer

- Cider cocktails from The Farm

- Live auction including amazing packages of local experiences and adventures, and more.

Tickets are $85. Details and tickets are available at NoyoFoodForest.org.

We’re also offering a limited number of glamping tents for guests who wish to stay the night or weekend. Sleep in style while supporting Noyo Food Forest! Contact us: admin@noyofoodforest.org

LUCINDA ANDERSON of Boonville and San Francisco led Brown University to a 3-0 victory over Quinnipiac in the national women's college soccer playoffs. 

Lucinda and Company, ranked third in the country, play at Stanford this Friday. Brown has never advanced this far in the nationals. To get to Stanford, the Brown women defeated nationally ranked Harvard and Princeton. 

MARCO MCCLEAN'S BIRTHDAY

Last night I attended a small gathering to recognize Marco McClean's birthday. He's sixty-five! He was the youngest person in the room. Juanita, his wife and lady of many intriguing parts was not present; she's at the Dickens Faire, doing electrical work, a demanding job, lighting a place so it looks like a pre-electricity event in holiday-season London in the eighteenth century. I'd like to see how she does it

Marco is a person with a mind that's inaccessible to such as I, so quick, original and retentive it is. He has a radio show that's got a signal of a few miles and ought to be heard by the world, so blazingly unlike all others and uncategorizable it is. He talks and reads things and plays astounding music and old radio favorites. All of it is underlain by his unique view, which penetrates to the innards of things in a constantly startling way. I don't know what the unbroken number of shows he's done is. It's well up in the hundreds. Marco realizes--he would not say this; he's modest about his gifts--that his genius comes with the responsibility to share it, and for a long time he published a newspaper with the same ferocious reliability: whatever was happening in the world or in his own often-fraught life, the paper came out as usual.

Marco's mother, Evelina, was busy in the kitchen, making and serving the tastiest mushroom soup I've ever had, then a salmon platter--fresh-caught wild fish, baked with other stuff that agreed so well I can't remember what it was, fresh salad, and a lovely birthday cake with tall, crooked candles. Ev's ninety-five, but you wouldn't guess that. She barely touched her chair at the table, so invested was she in the kitchen slavery and the table presentation that she produces with such cheer. Ev's a whiz. You can tell she's where Marco came from. They both maintain an attitude of faux and oftimes real impatience with each other.

I was with Ellie, known in literary circles and her native region in Connecticut as Eleanor Cooney, author of half a dozen published books, one of them previewed with an extensive folio in Harper's Magazine, renowned wit and daunting reader, with whom the common question "Didja ever read...?" always gets a yes. Ellie sparks parties. Latenight Liz was there, a radio personality without peer. It's hard to say which is finer: her choice of music or her own voice and style when she talks. Helen Van Gelder called her voice "buttery," along with other well-chosen descriptors. Liz Helenchild is from some southern place, I think Texas. Whichever place it is, it is a place that honors English by making it lovely.

Liz was with her longtime mate Frank (I do not know his last name) who lives a fur piece from here up Highway One. Frank's an electrician, too, strictly amateur, does it cuz he likes puzzles. He's an ex-fisherman, who fished in the tricky and dangerous waters around Cape Mendocino and caught many a fine finny dinner. I think his stretch as fisherman probably followed his time as a teacher--anyway, he's a man of the world and another reader of renown, something like Ellie. I'm a plodding reader, three hundred words per minute on a good day. I try to keep up with what's stirring the intelligentsia, eliciting their comments and praise, but it ain't easy when you read slow and your damn memory's a sieve. I was there, too. 

(Mitch Clogg)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, November 13, 2023

JENNIFER CHELONIS, North Highlands/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

BENJAMIN CLARK, Potter Valley. DUI, evasion, resisting, probation revocation.

JOE GARCIA, Ukiah. Suspended license.

DEVLIN GARDNER, Madera/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

DEVIN KESTER-TYLER, Ukiah. Shoplifting, county parole violation.

FREDY REYES-RUBIO, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

JOHN REDDING: File this under "Anti-Semites Among Us." The poster was on a telephone pole next to the public library in Fort Bragg. I did not tear it down.

JEFF BLANKFORT: This headline? Zionist hasbara! 14,000 Palestinians dead and what does the Zionist NYT headline, approved by its editors say to its readers, a large percentage of whom are Jews? That the problem with Israel's genocidal attacks on Gaza is not the number of Palestinian dead but that their numbers have been fueling sympathy for the Palestinians which is bad. It is also, I would guess, that it is fueling a broader understanding of what impelled the response by Hamas to the Nakba and three-quarters of a century of experience with oppression and imprisonment.

P.S. And I should emphasize the sadism, the degree of which I have witnessed among no other peoples where I have traveled in my long life.

UKRAINE, MONDAY, 13TH NOVEMBER

Two Russian state news agencies published alerts on Monday saying Moscow was moving troops to “more favorable positions” east of the Dnipro River in Ukraine, only to withdraw the information minutes later.

The highly unusual incident suggested disarray in Russia’s military establishment and state media over how to report the battlefield situation in southern Ukraine.

In other news, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the country must brace itself for more attacks on national infrastructure as winter approaches.

We are almost halfway through November and we must be prepared for the possibility that the enemy may increase the number of drone or missile strikes against our infrastructure,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Sunday.

Russia pummelled Ukrainian energy infrastructure last winter, putting pressure on much of the civilian population by depriving them of heating and power. The Kyiv School of Economics estimated last January that damage to the country’s energy sector had already totaled $6.8 billion.

* * *

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Calls For Increased Aid And Eu Accession Talks

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister on Monday called for an increase in military aid, faster work on a 12th package of sanctions against Russia, and for a decision to be made next month on the start of negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the European Union.

In a statement on the foreign ministry’s website, Dmytro Kuleba welcomed the European Commission’s recommendation last week that formal talks should begin with Ukraine on joining the bloc. However, he appeared to criticize the EU’s failure to discuss new sanctions on Russia, as was previously planned.

“Thanks to the positive recommendation of the European Commission, Ukrainians felt that our struggle was not in vain, that our efforts were recognized. We count on the unanimous support of your leaders in December, when the European Council will meet to approve the decision to open negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU,” he said, according to a Google translation.

LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

by James Kunstler

“I hope you realize the ideological brain worms possessing group narcissists preclude condemnation of anything done in the name of the cause no matter how evil. The ends justify the means — no matter how depraved. This is why you can’t reason with them. Ideology binds and blinds.” — Aimee Therese on X

The sun is low on the horizon all day long now, and darkness creeps in like a home invasion of your mind. Demons descend through a red and black sky and no help is on the way. Our country is so mentally hog-tied trying to unravel the twisted events of just a few years past that it has no mojo left for rationally anticipating the events of just a few years ahead. Have you ever felt more alone?

This is the end-process that we’ve been softened up for: the inability to think and plan. The gigantic “intel community” evolved from something intended to act as sensitized antennae for detecting threats against our republic into what is now a remorseless mind-fucking operation against our republic. That word, by the way, derives from the Latin res publica: the public thing, a society that literally belongs to the people, who decide its affairs. Now, so much is mysteriously decided for us, and not in any good way.

It’s no wonder more than half the country can’t think straight, and it’s a whopping irony that this group comprises most of our country’s thinking class — the bureaucratic managers, the professors, the curators, the editors, the reporters lost in mis-reporting. This group used to play a critical role in the res publica: to earnestly determine what is true and what is real, and to present us with a way of understanding all that so we can think and plan. They appear to be captured by malign forces. The scribes are hard at work defending every act of official malice. The dishonesty at work is epic. You need a decoder ring to keep your mind right.

You are probably desperate to understand why this is happening — how, for instance, a blatantly corrupt and ignorant attorney general in New York state can get away with bringing a politically-motivated nonsense case against the leading presidential candidate in a courtroom ruled by a judge who acts like a jester in a Shakespeare play. New York AG Letitia James gets away with it because the flagship organ of the thinking class, The New York Times, is in on the gambit. But why?

We struggle to sort this out. One explanation is that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has infiltrated the management of our country at every level so as to eventually conquer our territory for its resources while eliminating or enslaving the population? Surely, the CCP has made significant inroads, starting with the successful bribery and compromise of “Joe Biden,” probably other elected officials, too, in placing many CCP agents in the vast array of university research departments, NGOs, PACs, and lobbying gangs, and extending to the purchase of vital businesses and farmland to prepare the gameboard for eventual takeover. My opinion is they’ve accomplished a good bit of this, but it’s not the answer you’re seeking.

Another popular idea out there is that a sinister cartel or cabal composed of the World Economic Forum, the WHO, the EU, and a claque of super-rich megalomaniacs (e.g., Bill Gates, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg) trying to usher in the so-called “transhumanist” next chapter of human history. This scheme is so full of preposterous contradictions that it remains hard to take seriously. The main one is that their engineered collapse of techno-industrial civilization would destroy the very network of complex systems that might support their supposed cyborg nirvana, especially a reliable electric grid. Secondarily, collapse would result not in centralizing power but just the opposite, re-localizing power away from the center, negating the possibility of global rule.

A third theory is that the USA has somehow gone “communist.” The universities have, for sure, but in a most half-assed way imaginable that presents more as a case of collective mental illness than a true political ideology. Higher education has lately enjoyed stupendous subsidies and revenues that funnel down to the miserable cat-ladies who have taken over the faculty department chairs, plus the deans and president’s offices. The Niagara of grants and lavish salaries has funded the dissemination of incoherent cat-lady ideas, such as the foundational notion that all men are hopelessly defective except the ones who pretend to be women or vice-versa. Such postulations lead to ridiculous actions like the drag queen story hour, or men competing in women’s swim competitions. These actions-and-effects are “communistic” only insofar as the induce some Marxist-Gramscian overthrow of normality (i.e., a coherent cultural consensus) in order to usher in the utopia of perfect social equity, where nobody is allowed to do better than anybody else — that is, a society of cat-ladies (plus men pretending to be cat-ladies), all equally miserable.

Are the editors and reporters of The New York Times all bought off by the CCP, Soros, Gates? I doubt it. That’s not what’s going on here. And the same goes for the Intel Community, much of the rest of the executive branch of the US government, the various “blue” state and blue city governments, and the great social media companies. Are all the employees of these vast bureaucracies dedicated communists? Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha….

What’s going on is that all these players are now desperate to evade the blame for and consequences of their many crimes. Hundreds of top bureaucrats and elected officials will be liable for prosecution for monstrous acts of perfidy and treason against our republic and its citizens. The New York Times and other compliant news outlets that lied about everything from Russian collusion to election fraud to the safety of Covid-19 vaccines to protect their fumbling allies in power are desperate to save their reputations — though that will be impossible as the truth eventually unfolds, and it will. Their knowing lies did real and lasting harm to the public thing.

Take heart in these darkening days. The light will not be extinguished. It will return, as everything does in this universe of endless cycles. A nation turned upside down will find its feet again. The wicked will answer. The counter-revolution has begun. You are not alone.

(kunstler.com)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

“The wicked will answer.”

Maybe, but what will be the question?

“Sir, would you like another bottle of Chianti, another lobster, and a bowl of 10-count shrimp?”

(The wicked): “Yeah…”

Well if we’re having Chianti, I’ll have the liver with a side of fava beans.

YOUNG PEOPLE are less psychologically invested in society as it has been. They are less likely to shun difficult information, or cling to their existing identity and worldview. So opinion polls consistently tell us that young people assess the future to be more difficult than what older people do. The response from adults can be to gaslight them, by claiming their attitude or mental health is the problem, rather than the state of the world. I find it odd that the sustainability professional is no longer focused on the so-called business case for action, but is obliging us to believe business can save the planet or we are seen to be at fault for when they don’t. History is full of anxious elites being similarly strange. Young people need something else, just like we all do. What we all need is to find new ways to live positively without fairy tales that someone or something is going to fix it all. That would not be a stubborn optimism, but a stoic certainty about living with reality in a positive way, come what may. Krishnamurti is often quoted as saying that “it is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” That reminds us the problem with our mental health is less about individuals than the culture and systems that abuse us all.

— Jem Bendell

KEEP THOSE PENCILS READY

by Inigo Thomas

The cover of the British Library’s annual report for 2022-23 features an actor dressed as an elf, who wears an element from an ornate picture frame as a mask and stands before the slate facade of the library’s main building at St. Pancras. Creativity and openness appear to be the photograph’s two themes, and they are themes the report wishes to emphasize. The British Library is not an elite institution but is open to everyone: researchers, students, tourists, the resident of the nearby Somers Town housing estate. The desks in the library’s corridors are invariably packed with schoolchildren and students, and you don’t need a reader’s pass to use them. There’s a film club for the homeless. Only the bewildering prices in the library’s cafés aren’t in keeping with its radiating egalitarian spirit.

And there’s to be an expansion: a new building to be constructed just to the north of the library will include 100,000 square feet for a library gallery as well as more desk space for students. In Leeds, the BL is developing its northern branch in a former flax mill, the Temple Works building.

The largest transformation of the last 25 years has been digitalization – of newspapers, archives, and the library’s colossal catalog. But in the last week of October the digital dimension of the entire British Library vanished. Just like that. No catalog, no internet, no way to buy a pencil at the gift shop by card. An early tweet reported “technical issues”; a few days later the library said it had been subject to a cyber attack.

It’s no small event when one of the central repositories of the nation’s knowledge is shut down. You couldn’t fairly say that the British Library has been a casualty of its own success, making itself more open, therefore more vulnerable. Whoever wanted to attack the library, whether they wished to prove a point or to hold the institution hostage, would surely have found their way in regardless. Was it a coincidence that the home of the Alan Turing Institute was attacked while Rishi Sunak was holding an AI summit at Bletchley Park? Who’s to say, but the incident is a reminder of how easy it is to take digital networks for granted, and how fragile they are.

Toronto Public Library was also attacked last month. “In Canada and around the world right now,” an expert from Toronto Metropolitan University told CBC, “cyber attacks are a multi-billion dollar criminal industry that is highly resourced, it’s highly innovative, and is, unfortunately, highly profitable for the ransomware gangs that launch these attacks. It is not a question of if an institution like the public library or other public sector institutions are going to be attacked, it’s a question of when.” So keep those pencils ready.

Among the archives and papers at the British Library is the first collection of recipes written in English, The Forme of Cury (from the Old French for “cookery”). It’s one of several copies of the manuscript – the original doesn’t exist – and the recipes were written by Richard II’s cooks in the late 14th century. For cabbage soup:

“Take Caboches and quarter hem and seeth hem in gode broth with Oynouns y mynced and the whyte of Lekes y slyt and corue [cut] smale and do per to safroun an salt and force it with powdour douce.”

These recipes were written soon after the Black Death. Cooks were no less susceptible than anyone else to the plague, and the cooks at court often fed huge numbers of people – thousands, according to Alan Borg in his History of the Worshipful Company of Cooks. Kitchens were central and of enormous importance: if the cooks were to die there’d be no one to make the cabbage soup, unless the recipe were written down.

With the digital blackout, you can’t order the British Library’s manuscript of The Forme of Cury itself, but you can turn to various printed versions of the recipes. Look up the shelf mark in the printed catalogue for books published before 1979, write its details on a paper request slip and hand that to one of the librarians. All you’ll need is a pencil.

(London Review of Books)

‘A MONSTER’: SUPER METH AND OTHER DRUGS PUSH CRISIS BEYOND OPIOIDS

by Jan Hoffman

Dr. Nic Helmstetter crab-walked down a steep, rain-slicked trail into a grove of maple and cottonwood trees to his destination: a dozen tents in a clearing by the Kalamazoo River, surrounded by the detritus of lives perpetually on the move. Discarded red plastic cups. A wet sock flung over a bush. A carpet square. And scattered across the forest floor: orange vial caps and used syringes.

Kalamazoo, a small city in Western Michigan, is a way station along the drug trafficking corridor between Chicago and Detroit. In its parks, under railroad overpasses and here in the woods, people ensnared by drugs scramble to survive. Dr. Helmstetter, who makes weekly primary care rounds with a program called Street Medicine Kalamazoo, carried medications to reverse overdoses, blunt cravings and ease withdrawal-induced nausea.

But increasingly, the utility of these therapies, developed to address the decades-old opioid crisis, is diminishing. They work to counteract the most devastating effects of fentanyl and heroin, but most users now routinely test positive for other substances too, predominantly stimulants such as cocaine and methamphetamine, for which there are no approved medications.

Rachel, 35, her hair dyed a silvery lavender, ran to greet Dr. Helmstetter. She takes the medicine buprenorphine, which acts to dull her body’s yearning for opioids, but she was not ready to let go of meth.

“I prefer both, actually,” she said. “I like to be up and down at the same time.”

The United States is in a new and perilous period in its battle against illicit drugs. The scourge is not only opioids, such as fentanyl, but a rapidly growing practice that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention labels “polysubstance use.”

Over the last three years, studies of people addicted to opioids (a population estimated to be in the millions) have consistently shown that between 70 and 80 percent also take other illicit substances, a shift that is stymieing treatment efforts and confounding state, local and federal policies.

“It’s no longer an opioid epidemic,” said Dr. Cara Poland, an associate professor at the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. “This is an addiction crisis.”

The non-opioid drugs include those relatively new to the street, like the animal tranquilizer xylazine, which can char human flesh, anti-anxiety medications like Valium and Klonopin and older recreational stimulants like cocaine and meth. Dealers sell these drugs, plus counterfeit Percocet and Xanax pills, often mixed with fentanyl.

The incursion of meth has been particularly problematic. Not only is there is no approved medical treatment for meth addiction, but meth can also undercut the effectiveness of opioid addiction therapies. Meth explodes the pleasure receptors, but also induces paranoia and hallucinations, works like a slow acid on teeth and heart valves and can inflict long-lasting brain changes.

The Biden administration has been pouring billions into opioid interventions and policing traffickers, but has otherwise lagged in keeping pace with the evolution of drug use. There has been comparatively little discussion about meth and cocaine, despite the fact that during the 12-month period ending in May 2023, over 34,000 deaths were attributed to methamphetamine and 28,000 to cocaine, according to provisional federal data.

Just last month, the Food and Drug Administration issued draft guidelines for the development of therapies for stimulant-use disorders “critically needed to address treatment gaps.”

In the Street Medicine van up the road from the tents, Dr. Sravani Alluri, the program’s director and a family medicine physician, gave Rachel an injection of antipsychotic medicine and then sorted through lab results showing the chilling omnipresence of numerous substances.

Patient No. 1: positive for fentanyl, methamphetamine and xylazine.

Patient No. 2: positive for amphetamine, methamphetamine, cocaine, THC and gabapentin, a prescription painkiller whose misuse is on the rise.

Patient No. 3: positive for fentanyl, methamphetamine, THC and xylazine.

The Spread Of Super Meth

“Treating someone for opiates is relatively easy,” said Dr. Paul Trowbridge, the addiction medicine specialist at the Trinity Health Recovery Medicine clinic in Grand Rapids, an hour north of Kalamazoo. That’s largely because of buprenorphine and methadone, federally approved medications with years of evidence attesting to their effectiveness in subduing opioid cravings, and Narcan, an over-the-counter nasal spray that reverses opioid overdoses.

But meth, he said, “is a monster.”

His patients typically have either Medicaid or private health insurance and a roof over their heads, even if it’s a shelter. Many have steady jobs — dental hygienists, construction workers, tech sales people.

Still, the challenges of helping them are daunting.

Their use of multiple drugs is not always voluntary. Dealers can be sloppy, Dr. Trowbridge said, or intentionally salt one drug with another, to bind customers to the new mix.

“It’s really unpredictable what people are buying, which makes it so dangerous for them,” he said. “It’s a killing field out there.”

Some opioid users seek the fireworks of meth and other stimulants to offset the warm, sleepy embrace of opioids. Some use meth to stay awake to ward off thieves and rapists.

Medications like methadone can safely replace more destructive opioids and satiate the brain’s opioid receptors. But subduing the urge for stimulants, which set off the release of stratospheric levels of the brain chemicals dopamine and serotonin, is more complex, involving many unknowns. And Narcan, which has saved at least hundreds of thousands who overdosed on opioids, has no effect on stimulants.

Moreover, depending on whether the user routinely turns to cocaine, meth or prescription amphetamine, side effects, responses and behavior patterns vary greatly.

“The truth is, we really don’t have a good answer at this point as to why it’s so challenging to develop these treatments,” said Marta Sokolowska, the deputy director for substance use and behavioral health at the F.D.A.’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

Last year, according to preliminary federal data, stimulants were present in 42 percent of overdose deaths that involved opioids.

Like opioids, which originally came from the poppy, meth started out as a plant-based product, derived from the herb ephedra. Now, both drugs can be produced in bulk synthetically and cheaply. They each pack a potentially lethal, addictive wallop far stronger than their precursors.

In recent decades, opioids grew so dominant that meth and its stimulant cousins proliferated in the shadows.

A decade or so ago, Mexican drug lords figured out how to mass-produce a synthetic “super meth.” It has provoked what some researchers are calling a second meth epidemic.

Popular up and down the West Coast, super meth from Mexican and American labs has been marching East and South and into parts of the Midwest, including Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo.

Users inject, snort or ingest meth, often seeking to prolong its euphoria with binges that can last for days. Meth can also trigger violence and psychosis that emergency doctors can mistake for schizophrenia. Its long-term effects include anhedonia and memory loss.

To help patients cut back on meth, some doctors prescribe Adderall, a drug for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder that is also a stimulant. But that avenue is narrowing, because of the drug’s nationwide shortage.

People addicted to multiple substances are far more resistant to going into treatment than single-substance users, addiction medicine experts say.

Dr. Trowbridge said some opioid patients can become stable enough to progress to monthly injectable buprenorphine. But if they are also using meth, that treatment plan often collapses.

The paranoia and hallucinations caused by meth disorient them, he said. One patient threw himself in a river to escape nonexistent people who were chasing him. Others insisted that dumpsters were talking to them, that color-coded cars were sending them messages.

So they skip appointments, returning only “when they start to hit withdrawal and realize their opioid injection is wearing off,” he said.

At the clinic that day, at least four patients were no-shows.

“We’re just trying to not have them have a heroin habit,” Dr. Trowbridge said. “But then they’re off on a meth run.”

Meth, Opioids And Pregnancy

Sami, 30, who is addicted to meth and heroin, is pregnant with her third child, due in December.

This is her second pregnancy with the Great Moms clinic, a Grand Rapids program through Corewell Health that supports pregnant women who struggle with drug use. Citing privacy concerns in not sharing her full name, Sami, who has long, dark hair and a life-hardened jawline, had been fastidious about keeping her appointments. She is trying to get it right this time.

Three years ago, the clinic prescribed buprenorphine to help Sami contain heroin urges during her second pregnancy.

But options for meth, especially for a pregnant patient, are almost nil. Dr. Cara Poland, the clinic’s addiction medicine specialist, could rely only on gentle persuasion wrapped around an unflinching truth: that meth use during pregnancy increases the risk of having a smaller baby and of the placenta separating from the uterus, threatening the life of both mother and fetus.

Back then, Sami was living in a shelter, hungry for meth. She loved being a mom. Having to share custody of her first child with her ex was painful enough, but she knew she was in no shape to care for this second baby. Grieving, she placed the infant girl for adoption.

“It still eats at me,” she said.

Like many patients who use multiple substances, Sami has mental disabilities, including attention deficit disorder and bipolar disorder. According to federal data, more than one in four adults with serious mental disorders turns to illicit drugs. A.D.H.D. that has been poorly managed or undiagnosed is particularly common in meth patients.

“It’s almost more notable if they don’t have a disorder,” Dr. Poland said. “But sometimes the substance use itself results in mental illness — we call those ‘substance-induced depression’ or ‘substance-induced anxiety.’”

Other risk factors include a history of trauma, a genetic predisposition to addiction or a childhood among relatives dependent on alcohol or drugs. At 3, Sami, who grew up in a one-stoplight town, was in a car accident that left her mother permanently institutionalized with a brain injury. Her father drank heavily, she says; Sami’s descent into addiction began in adolescence with alcohol.

Three years ago, feeling overcome with guilt and shame after placing her daughter for adoption, she slid back into numbing her pain with heroin. And whenever her bipolar disorder medications weren’t balanced and she was feeling depressed, she reached for meth.

By last April, she had enough. “I was in a really, really nasty relationship and my mental health was bad,” she said. “I was so stuck in addiction. I needed help.” During screening for detox and rehab, she discovered she was again pregnant.

She now lives in an apartment that a Grand Rapids nonprofit helped her find, and works as a hotel receptionist. She wants to take this baby home so badly. That goal has helped her avoid meth.

“I won’t even talk to anybody that’s been using,” she said. “I’ve been really diligent, even if that means being lonely sometimes.”

Offering Sterile Syringes And Clean Pipes

Twice a week, workers from Kalamazoo Harm Reduction lug a red wagon along rutted trails to the wooded encampments. Pausing to pick up discarded syringes along the paths, they travel from tent to tent, offering free, sterile drug equipment.

They are part of the growing “harm reduction” movement that aims to save lives by preventing overdoses and serious infections.

But the prevalence of so many different drugs has complicated their efforts. The wagon typically holds:

— Packages of 10 short needles, for people still able to hit a fresh vein. Packs of 10 long ones, for those who have to dig around. (Better to use new needles than share used ones.)

— Sterile water for diluting injectable drugs. (Safer than water from the river or a public toilet.)

— Bubbles, the glass stem pipes with bowls for smoking meth. (Better to smoke from your own pipe than take hits from the pipe of someone with cracked, bleeding lips.)

The Street Medicine doctors and harm reduction workers regularly encounter people who swear their meth use is under control but could maybe use help dialing back the fentanyl. And unapologetic meth users, who insist their supply couldn’t possibly contain fentanyl.

“Finding that moment when someone says they’re ready for treatment is hard in all addiction, but meth is making this so much harder,” said Luca, a harm reduction worker who asked to be identified by only a first name because clients are often evading law enforcement. “We had a client who kept missing us on our Monday visits and he finally said, ‘I haven’t known what day it was in so long.’”

So Luca suggested: Maybe after being awake on a four-day meth binge, try a 30-minute nap? “Or we can get you a watch? So while you’re out living your life, you can look down and sort of keep track of where the rest of the world is — and when to meet up with us?”

It is so hard to beat back a beast that is always growing new tentacles. In Western Michigan, as the nights lengthen and temperatures drop, it is becoming harder still, both for people living outdoors, addicted to so many drugs, and those who minister to them.

Soon, the red wagon won’t be able to budge on snow-covered trails. On those days, the Kalamazoo Harm Reduction workers will instead load their safe supplies onto sleds, and set out for the woods.

(NY Times)