Valley People (December 1, 2023)

BILL ALLEN & FAMILY OF UPPER GREENWOOD ROAD, AN UPDATE

Bill is still in the hospital in Alameda. I am still staying in Berkeley with an old friend, and am with him every day except for 2 times a month when I go home for a day and a half. Olivia comes up as often as she can. (Please see below for more concerning her) I have not wanted to give reports on Bill because his progress has been so up and down- one day so encouraging, the next discouraging. But the last 10 days have been pretty consistently good- we are really working to wean him of the trache tube, so that he can have it removed and be breathing through his nose (or mouth) instead of through his throat; that is supposed to allow the brain to engage more with the body, as well as, of course, be natural, and feel much better! He is doing an excellent job breathing through his nose; just working on managing the secretions he coughs up, by swallowing them. We are hoping that the tube will be able to be safely removed by the end of the year, and we can move him to a facility in the Santa Rosa area where he can get more rehab. We are working w/ a wonderful brain specialist now, thanks to Zoom, who is very helpful. Oh, by the way... we love getting cards with words of love and encouragement! They can be sent to Bill Allen, PO Box 602. Philo, CA 95466

AS FOR OLIVIA, Lily Perez writes, “Anyone who has had the pleasure to share a moment with Olivia knows she sparks up any conversation and lights up whatever room she enters with her joyful personality. She is a kind, selfless, and amazing friend to many people. Now it is our turn to embody a fraction of those characteristics we all admire in her and lend a hand to our friend in need.

“OLIVIA’S DAD, Bill, and mom, Nancy, were in a bad car accident in December, 2022, during which Bill suffered a traumatic brain injury. He has been hospitalized and is currently in a subacute ward hoping to move to a skilled nursing facility as healing continues. Life can completely change in just a moment, without any control. It could happen to any one of us. As fate would have it, it happened to the Allen family. The toll that an unexpected accident like this can have is not only emotional, in the world we live in, its impacts are financial as well. Crowdfunding has been done throughout the year to help with the medical expenses not covered by Bill's insurance- these funds have been very helpful to Olivia's family, but are reserved for direct medical expenses for Bill. Olivia has been traveling between Southern California and the Bay Area regularly to be with her dad during his recovery process and provide support to her mom, who rarely leaves her dad's side. Unfortunately, after so many trips, Olivia's car decided it could hang on no longer and is in need of major repairs so it can drive again. All of this means that Olivia has not been able to work as much as before, yet her expenses remain the same, if not greater. Nobody wants to imagine themselves or their families in this situation, but empathy can be a powerful way to make a meaningful difference in someone's life. This is why I invite you all, to consider making a donation, no matter how small, to help support Olivia during this time. Even $5 could buy Olivia coffee on her six plus hour drive to her dads or back to her home. $10 could buy her lunch. $20 could help with groceries. $50 could be a tank of gas, and $100 could help with a bill. Words of encouragement are also needed and appreciated! Any bit helps. Thank you for your consideration!” 

It's easiest to go to facebook to donate- my facebook is Nancy MacLeod (Philo)

AV VILLAGE EVENTS AND BEYOND for the next 2 weeks! Our events are open to Everyone, pre-registration may be needed – see individual events for more info.

NOTE: We try to maintain this calendar as events change, especially AV Village events. Other events listed here are subject to change without notice so contact the particular organization/ venue for the latest information. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us: Anica Williams 707-684-9829, andersonvalleyvillage@gmail.com

AV UNIFIED CANNED FOOD DRIVE

Grade Level Competition Food Drive Begins Monday!

If you can, please take a moment to bring a can of food for the community. The grade level baskets will be up in the breezeway. All donations go to the food bank. I thank the Leadership class for their coordination of this important community event. Louise Simson, Superintendent

Also, last chance to make your reservation for free pozole dinner in the cafeteria and student artwork exhibition on Tuesday at 5:00! We also have the ELAC dinner on Thursday at 5:00 at the high school library. Please call the school office at 707-895-3496 to sign up for these free events!

Take care, Louise Simson

AV Unified Superintendent

DEBORAH SILVA ON REAL ID’S: 

I am a woman who was adopted and has been divorced. I had no problem following the instructions and gathering the required paperwork. I got my Real ID on the first try. Adoption has nothing to do with not being able to get the Real ID. An adopted person is issued an amended birth certificate and the initial birth certificate is sealed upon completion of the adoption. DMV does not need to see every marriage license or divorce document. They know the progression of the married names if the person has updated their name each time they were married and did a name change. One problem I can see with a birth certificate is if the person’s mother remarried and informally changed their child’s last name to the new step-father’s last name. This happened a lot pre-80s before babies were required to get a social security number at birth. Children would go through school, get a driver’s license and in some cases enter the military using the step-father’s last name, without having to show their birth certificate. I know of three men who, when it came time to apply to receive social security benefits, were not able to easily do so because their last name on their birth certificate did not match their other records including their driver’s license. That is not the fault of DMV, nor a conspiracy by the government but rather an error made by a misguided mother wanting her family to all have the same last name.

BIG EXCITING NEWS!

Anderson Valley High School and Agriculture Dept. is adding a second agriculture teacher!

Mr. Bautista will be joining our agriculture dept. in January after Winter Break!

Welcome Mr. Bautista.

THE AV HOUSING ASSOCIATION’S WINTER FUNDRAISER for their Tiny Home Project is Saturday, February 3, 2023 at Weatherborne Winery in Philo (8750 Philo School Rd) from 6-9pm. RSVP online: https://www.andersonvalleyhousing.org/events/winter-fundraiser, or by phone at 707/895-3525.

ED NOTE: First I've heard of it. How many of them? Where will they go? I have a nice spot for one. The Housing Association might consider lobbying the 5th District supervisor to limit transient rentals in The Valley. 

BAD LARGE PRIVATE LOGGING JOB ON MILL CREEK 

This is off Nash Mill road off 128. This really needs addressing due to many herbicides and chemicals as well as many other problems and needs to be on the KZYX environment show as they have been slipping a long involved legalese hiding what they are doing and there is a time element to stop this. My friend Keith Haycock has just told us about it. I am hopeful you know the environment show person and this can be addressed on KZYX. Cherrie Christianson <chrisarn@mcn.org>

CATFISH JACK CHAUVIN'S HEALING JOURNEY

(Update: November 22nd, 2023)

Some perspective - Jack was diagnosed with rectal cancer in February of 2023, and began radiation treatment in March which kicked his butt - so to speak! His series of chemo treatments will be complete by early December. The decision on whether an operation is necessary will come in January after scans are done to see how the tumor has been impacted by the treatments. Best case is, no operation, no colostomy. All to be determined.

We do know that, either way that goes, Jack's healing will take many more months and his ability to work is still very far off. The incredibly generous donations he has received over this year has allowed him to supplement disability for his monthly expenses and afford the many extra expenses incurred from his illness.

He will receive disability through March, 2023; they give you a year. His health insurance through work has ended, he is on COBRA until he is eligible for MediCal in January. We figure he will need something like another $16-20,000 to get him through until he can work again - that is with August as a possibility but even that is kind of a big guess.

So, thank you for all the love and support and prayers, and love, and notes, and connections and money and music and love that you have poured on Jack this year. It has kept him fueled through this difficult year.

Anything (more) you can donate will be so appreciated and well-used.

with love,

Margaret et. al.

WE WERE DETACHED from the global village Friday early afternoon. Bob Abeles explains: “AT&T broadband is down in Boonville, too. Could it be a backbone fiber optic cable cut somewhere in NorCal? AT&T says that service is to be restored by 9PM tonight. (Which it was.) Internet, voice, 911, and cell, it’s all just ATM (Asynchronous Transport Mode) packets running over the same fiber transport. In heavily populated areas, there are many fiber paths an ATM packet can follow. That’s redundancy. But here in the boonies, there are few if any redundant paths. Run a backhoe through the wrong fiber and many, many things go down. Some of them are essential, like 911. I believe our emergency communications here in NorCal are extremely fragile. I also think that few or none of the people in a position to do something about it have an understanding of how fragile they are.”

REMEMBER WHEN there were reminders like this one? “Register for this year’s Holiday Decorating contest by December 10th. The only way to get your business or residential holiday decorations considered for the AV Chamber of Commerce/AV Brewing Company’s Holiday Decorating Contest is to register at Leslie Montgomery’s All That Good Stuff in downtown Boonville. 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in both commercial and residential categories will receive cash prizes from $50 to $150. All entries will get a special gift. Judging will take place on December 15th & 16th so don’t lollygag. (Where's the community gone?)

DON’T SEE many little kids “risking back injury” these days from toting their books around in backpacks. I remember parents writing in to complain that carrying five or six books 50 feet to the school bus stop put their kids at risk. When I suggested putting a few bricks in with their books the kids could work off all the sugar they consume every day, parents were not amused.

THE MAJOR, to put the textbook burden in historical context, says he recalls a strict textbook-toting protocol at his old high school in Fresno. The Major was a straight-A student who’d grown up watching Ask Mr. Wizard, so we’re talking about a guy who has toted his share of textbooks. “Boys,” he recalls, “had to carry their books under their arm off to one side, no matter how many or how heavy they were. Under one arm, I emphasize. And not only in the halls of the high school but all the way home. Girls were permitted to carry their books to the front and with both arms. Any male spotted in the act of transporting books in any way other than under one arm was..... well, it just wasn’t done.”

I CAN’T remember carrying any books anywhere until I was about twenty and trying to ingratiate myself with the more bookish females, all of them as half-cracked as I was. As for textbooks, I don’t remember reading a textbook the entire time I was in high school let alone carrying one anywhere. The only books I can remember from high school were those kept in a locked library cabinet that students had to have a note from a parent to read. These were books the school authorities considered “subversive.” Then as now school people were not book readers. If they were, there would be no such thing as textbooks. Textbooks destroy the intellectual curiosity of millions of America’s young people every year. These days they deliver a sort of purplish multicultural prose fog which, in its way, is as mind numbing and untrue as the false tomes I was force fed.

ANYWAY, the dangerous books at my high school were kept in a big, locked cabinet behind the librarian’s desk. Naturally, because they were sequestered, there was a large demand from students to read them. I read all of them on the safe assumption that any book deemed dangerous by school people had to be worth reading. But almost all of the forbidden lit consisted of pacifist and vegetarian tracts and fiction like ‘Peyton Place,’ a book that was readily available out in the world anyway, and which I’d read when I was about twelve simply because I’d been told not to read it. But there was one truly subversive book in the big glass case — ‘Johnny Got His Gun’ by Dalton Trumbo. It was later banned entirely in the United States along with Wilhelm Reich’s ‘The Mass Psychology of Fascism.’ American fascists didn’t trust Americans to read either one, although now I wonder why a high school would have had a heavy read like ol’ Wilhelm. (Years ago I had odd arguments with readers who thought Reich’s orgone boxes were psychologically helpful!)

’JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN,’ since converted to an awful movie that manages to eliminate entirely the powerful effect of the novel, is told from the point of view of a kid vegetable-ized in a war fought for no reason that he can discern. The book had a powerful effect on me as a 15-year-old because I’d never read anything that strong. It was exactly the kind of book a young person should read, but in class we were wading through five feet of Longfellow and the rest of the official canon. I thought ‘Johnny Got His Gun’ was some kind of publishing fluke. I’d had no idea “literature” could be so exciting.

APART from the collapse of one’s body, the worst part of growing old is the deaths of everyone you knew, including, of course, some you were actually fond of. My cohort has mostly gone, and the Anderson Valley seems teeming with ghosts, vivid ghosts, among them the late Larry Parsons, the famous blind winemaker, perhaps the least sympathetic handicapped person in all of Mendocino County.

BUT TO THOSE of us who possess what might be called a high tolerance for aberrant behavior, the guy was the source of endless amusement. I thought he was fascinating. A totally out of control blind man who did and said stuff a sighted person couldn’t possibly get away with. I remember encountering Larry one night at the bar of the Boonville Hotel where he was allowed exactly one drink before he was lead across the street to the Lodge before he could launch into Totally Inappropriate Mode. He clarified a macabre incident involving him earlier in the week. The Lodge was a veritable refuge of toleration. 

THE DEATH of a blind friend of Parsons was in the news and still under investigation by the Sheriff’s Department. “What really happened, Larry?” 

A COUPLE of Parsons’ blind pals were visiting him from the Bay Area where they and Parsons maintained lucrative blind man concessions in federal buildings. Larry said the three blind guys “were like the three blind mice that night. We got drunk and drove around The Valley getting drunker.”

UH, excuse me, blind guys driving around drunk? Yes, Larry also did a lot of quail hunting up on the Holmes Ranch where his winery was located. His son directed fire. “To your left, Pop.” Ka-boom!

SO, one the three blind guys finally had had enough and asked to be driven to the place on Anderson Creek where he was staying. To get there you had to drive across an ancient redwood bridge some 60 or so feet above the stream bed. The bridge itself seemed to defy the laws of both physics and gravity; it was hard to tell what was holding it up. 

AT THE BOONVILLE end of the bridge the homeward bound blind guy asked Larry to stop the car so he could relieve himself. Larry was at the wheel, although even at high noon on a cloudless day he could barely make out shadows of objects around him. “I heard him yell, and I heard the thud when he landed,” Larry said. The blind man had stepped off the bridge to his death. 

“HEH-HEH,” Parsons chuckled. “I told him to watch that first step.” 

HOLIDAY ARTS & CRAFTS FAIR 12/2 IN ELK

The Greenwood Community Church foundation will hold its 23rd annual Holiday Arts and Crafts Fair this coming Saturday December 2nd from 10am to 4pm at the Greenwood Community Center in downtown Elk. Several new artists as well as perennial favorites will be participating. Delicious homemade baked goods and hot lunch prepared by the Elk School Parents and teachers will be available. So skip the trip to the mall and keep it local this holiday season.

For more information contact moclapperton@hotmail.com