Mendocino County Today: Friday, Dec. 22, 2023

Clearing | 101 Suicide | Robins/Berries | AG Complaint | Winter Solstice | John Shandel | Willits Sky | Union Contract | Floodgate Puffery | Painful Watching | Gualala Confluence | AVHC Report | Seed Exchange | BHAB Appointee | Solutions | Listserv Blues | Santa Rocks | Brother David | Demented Yule | Dams & Fish | Yesterday's Catch | Doing Nothing | Storytime | Big Lie | Hungry Mailbox | Musselwhite Shows | S&H | Bracero Again | Headhunters | Dynamite Ship | New Mexico | Bill Nowlin | Jewish Humor | The Stooges | Mom Stirring | Christmas Ghost | Ukrainian Tree | Small Man | Village Snow

CALM WEATHER will persist through the Holiday weekend with drizzle and fog through today giving way to clearer conditions. More unsettled weather is expected mid next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A foggy - cloudy 52F on the coast this Friday morning. Plan on cloudy & dry today with some wind kicking up. Clearing is forecast for later on. A dry weekend is at hand then rain returns next week.

CHP: SUSPECT SHOOTS HIMSELF on Highway 101 in Ukiah Thursday

by  Justine Frederiksen

Southbound Highway 101 was shut down in Ukiah Thursday afternoon when a man shot himself after being stopped by law enforcement officers, the California Highway Patrol reported.

Ukiah CHP Commander Randy England said that local law enforcement officers were advised of a wanted suspect in the area, and that a Ukiah Police Department officer had spotted the vehicle he was reported to be driving on Hwy. 101 outside Ukiah.

The vehicle, a gray full-size Ford pickup truck, was then stopped on Hwy. 101 between Perkins and Gobbi streets at 1:39 p.m. Dec. 21, by both a UPD officer and a CHP officer.

Before the officers could make contact with the driver, however, England said that the man got out of the vehicle and shot himself. The man, identified only as an adult from the South Bay, died at the scene of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

England said the deceased man was “wanted in connection with a possible murder,” and that more details on the incident, which is still being investigated by the CHP, would be disclosed when possible.

Around 3:30 p.m. Thursday, southbound Hwy. 101 was still closed as a tow truck arrived to help clear the scene, and England said he expected the highway to be closed for another hour.

(ukiahdailyjournal.com)

---

POLICE: PACIFICA HOMICIDE SUSPECT SHOOTS SELF IN UKIAH, freeway closed over 4 hours

Southbound lanes were closed between Perkins and Gobbi streets. They were reopened shortly after 6 p.m.

by Colin Atagi

A Pacifica homicide suspect was identified by police as the driver who shot himself Thursday during a traffic stop in Ukiah and forced the closure of Highway 101 for more than 4 hours.

Jason Gillenwater, 46, was pronounced dead after shooting himself with a gun he got out of Colusa County, according to the Pacifica Police Department.

He was suspected of stabbing a man and woman at about 7:45 a.m. Thursday inside a home in the 200 block of Naomi Avenue in Pacifica. The man died at the scene and the woman was treated at an area hospital.

Gillenwater fled and authorities issued a “Be on the lookout” alert.

Officers with the California Highway Patrol and Ukiah Police Department stopped Gillenwater at about 1:40 p.m. along southbound Highway 101.

At some point during the traffic stop, Gillenwater, who drove a newer-model Ford pickup, shot himself, CHP Officer Alex Kimball told The Press Democrat.

“We didn’t fire any rounds,” he said. “Law enforcement didn’t fire any rounds.”

Kimball added that officials closed the freeway between Perkins and Gobbi streets, while their investigation was underway.

Gillenwater died at the scene, officials said, adding that no law enforcement personnel were injured.

Southbound lanes were closed and traffic was detoured onto North State Street.

Caltrans reported heavy congestion in the southbound lanes but northbound lanes appeared unaffected.

Mendocino County Sheriff’s deputies were assisting at the scene and lanes reopened by about 6 p.m.

Gillenwater was reportedly a Colma firefighter and paramedic.

Pacifica police investigated him following a domestic violence incident involving the female victim at the home on Naomi Avenue about 9 p.m. Dec. 14.

He was arrested and booked into the San Mateo County jail before posting bail.

Police say they obtained an emergency protective order and confiscated guns and ammunition at the home. Gillenwater was prohibited from contacting the victim and going within 100 yards of the home.

In a statement, Pacifica police Chief Maria Sarasua said, “We are deeply saddened by this tragedy and keeping the family members and Pacifica community close in our hearts as they cope with this profound loss.

“I am grateful to the San Mateo County allied agencies, the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office, and the California Highway Patrol for their assistance during this investigation,” she added.

(pressdemocrat.com)

EYSTER, THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND THE MEDIA 

To: AGPressOffice <agpressoffice@doj.ca.gov>

Please consider this a formal complaint about the handling of media requests regarding the attempted criminal prosecution of the Mendocino County Auditor/Controller/Treasurer/Tax Collector by District Attorney David Eyster.

In short, the lack of a face or telephone number to discuss the serious issues involved with someone in the press office is appalling. I am a veteran North Coast journalist, with 40 years of experience covering political and environmental-related news for The Press Democrat newspaper in Santa Rosa, and now as a media consultant and contributor to the Ukiah Daily Journal and Anderson Valley Advertiser.

I have never experienced in all those years the ongoing situation with the AG's Office.

In 2022, the AG issued an opinion dismissing conflict concerns involving DA Eyster, and the sudden firing of the Ukiah Police Chief. DA Eyster had been involved earlier in a domestic violence case involving the former police chief.

Now we have the DA filing a single felony misappropriation of public funds against a duly elected county Auditor, who he has publicly quarreled with over the use of asset forfeiture funds for staff dinners, and questionable travel reimbursements. DA Eyster has been engaged in running disputes with the Auditor's Office since he took office in 2011.

Now, we have a civil writ demand for reinstatement of the Auditor Chamise Cubbison based on the lack of hearing and due process by the county Board of Supervisors, and DA Eyster plays a large role in that scenario. He is a possible witness in the civil action.

These are local issues of serious concern. 

Yet inquiries at the AG's levels are met with anonymous responses and no contact mechanism. 

Adding further insult is the fact the latest AG opinion about DA Eyster was issued with no notification, or copy provided until after the fact.

It is disappointing, and troubling. The public deserves an impartial assessment of the current situation. 

WINTER SOLSTICE: Today is a holiday that has been celebrated for 30,000 years. The solstice marks the death and rebirth of the sun. People have recorded this from time immemorial in both physical monuments and the myths of their gods. Tonight is the longest night of the year and tomorrow the days start to grow. Many blessings to all in the new year. (Dick Whetstone)

JOHN SHANDEL OF ALBION

Sam Gitchell: There is a huge void in the universe. Albion Icon and the world's best neighbor has passed away at home. Rest in Peace Dear Man. Goodbye John Shandel. He will be dearly missed by many. Praying for his wife Betty and the entire Shandel family in this time of great loss

Gary Moraga: I'm feeling the void of John Shandel's passing all the way to Mexico. John was my favorite “redneck” by far and hopefully myself his favorite “Hippy.” We became fast friends through our mutual time in the Albion Little River Fire Dept. and time very well spent.

John was instrumental in getting my custom milling work off the ground and he was my favorite client. Always more than fair and always a gentleman.

John Shandel and Betty: I salute you with all I have.

JEFF GOLL: Bruce, AVA, I did get good news from the mechanic today and now I'll rustle up a ride to Kelseyville to resume my mobile activity.  Nice remembrance of The Eel River Now and Then.  Pat Higgins of the Eel River Recovery Project told me that back in 1985-86 he would swim in the Eel at the Rt 162 bridge accompanied by hundreds of salmon.  I've seen one in Redwood Creek that flows into the South branch of the Eel river up by Branscomb Rd. Yesterday's sunset popped alive with color and here's a photo of it:

DESPITE DYSFUNCTIONAL BOARD & CHALLENGING CIRCUMSTANCES, Mendocino County Workers Move Forward to Ratify Union Contract

Tuesday, December 19th, 2023 — 700 Mendocino County workers — including road crews, public health nurses, and children’s social workers — voted to ratify a union contract with a 77% “yes” vote. 

Hard-fought over nine months, this agreement will bring all classifications’ pay up to market rate. This agreement will also have Mendocino County pick up a higher percentage of the cost of employees’ healthcare. Ultimately, these improvements will begin to address the long-standing staffing issues that are harming Mendocino County’s children, seniors, and families.

With the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors talking about bankruptcy and layoffs, the determination and unity of Mendocino County workers have moved the County forward.

What has become clear is that the County’s leadership is suffering from profound levels of dysfunction — from lawsuits, audits, and a tragicomic misunderstanding of its own budget. 

In addition to addressing this dysfunction, Mendocino County workers will continue to focus their efforts on pushing the County to be more open about its finances. They will continue to push the County to collect its uncollected revenues. More broadly, Mendocino County workers will continue to engage with the County’s issues with housing and economic development — essential issues for the County to thrive.

While disappointed by the County's failure to engage and work with its employees through the negotiating process, the SEIU 1021 bargaining team looks forward to continuing to fight for a Mendocino County that works for all its residents.

“Bringing all classifications’ pay up to market rate is a significant first step toward making sure we can attract enough staff to provide the public services that Mendocino families rely on,” said SEIU 1021 Chapter President A'Kesh Eidi, a program administrator for the county. “Despite challenging circumstances, we are going to continue to fight for a better, more equitable Mendocino.”

(SEIU Local 1021 represents nearly 60,000 employees in local governments, non-profit agencies, health care programs, and schools throughout Northern California, including seven private colleges and numerous community colleges. SEIU Local 1021 is a diverse, member-driven organization with members who work to make our cities, schools, colleges, counties, and special districts safe and healthy places to live and raise our families.)

In solidarity,

Welcome! We are so excited to announce the future opening of our retail store and more! This project is just getting started and we will be posting updates as they come! Thanks for stopping by!

PAINFUL WATCHING

by Mark Scaramella

CEO Darcie Antle placed the following item on the Board’s Tuesday agenda:

“4e) Discussion and Possible Action Including Review of Board of Supervisor's Directives Requiring Follow Through from County Staff and/or Other Agencies; and Deletion of Outdated Directives as Determined by the Board of Supervisors (Sponsor: Executive Office)”

County Counsel Christian Curtis added a companion item:

“4f) Discussion and Possible Action Regarding Board of Supervisors Standing Committee(s) Including 2023 Final Reports Out of Committee; Approval to Clear Referrals from Committee; and Formation of an Ad Hoc Committee to Further Review Any Matters Previously Referred to a Standing Committee if Necessary. (Sponsors: Clerk of the Board and County Counsel.)”

At first we thought these items were a little joke the CEO and County Counsel were playing on the Board. Surely, they must know that such items are catnip to these Masters of Inaction who are constantly looking for new ways to waste meeting time. They can’t resist talking about talking and talking about meetings and talking about themselves — anything but the real workings of the County.

On the other hand, CEO Antle and Counsel Curtis may have simply been looking for a way to divert the Board from actually looking at any county financing or operations. 

Either way, it worked wonderfully. The Board spent almost three hours on these two items with nothing to show for it.

Supervisor Maureen Mulheren at first seemed to see through the joke, if that’s what it was, when, about halfway through the interminable blather session, she commented: “I really don't want a presentation. I think we spend so much time having these conversations over and over again and you look at the directives and you look at what was highlighted and it's the same thing multiple times, sometimes month over month. It's our job as supervisors to pay attention and for us to track what's happening and to not continue to provide directives for the same thing over and over. I think it's clear that we should be working with our department heads and the CEO's office to make sure that we are using appropriate workflows. I have not heard anybody say, No we don't want to use a better system, or, No we just love Excel files. So I think that it's clear that we are going to use a tracking system and it only makes sense to use these.”

Board Chair Glenn McGourty, seeing that Mulheren was drifting toward ending the blather, quickly brought the discussion back to their usual nonsense: “It sounds like you are agreeing with Supervisor Williams that we need a tracking system.”

Mulheren took the bait: “I am letting you know that we have tracking systems and we just — some staff are using them, some team members can get better at it, they understand and we can move forward without a presentation.”

McGourty: “So you don't want a presentation, but you want a tracking system?”

Supervisor Ted Williams, of course, didn’t let Mulheren answer. He interrupted to take the opportunity to veer even further off track into techno-speak: “I think Mo is asking that staff use the tool that we are paying for and we all use the same tool. If we use four different tools we cannot do dependency analysis and we’re stuck.”

“Dependency analysis”? Oh yes, the Board is poised to get deep into the techno-jargon to figure out that problems in one department can affect other departments (as if the Board cares), if only they had the right gol-darn “tool.”

Supervisor Dan Gjerde went even further down the rabbit hole: “I agree that we need a presentation on what this unified tool is. We don't want to rehash the content in the tracking report, we just want to see, this is how you access it and this is how everybody's using it now.”

Williams: “I want to mandate that everybody in the organization use a tool and I don't care which tool although the one we are paying for is probably a good starting point.…”

They tooled around like this for literal hours, getting nowhere, deciding nothing. 

Finally, it came time for public comment from the only masochist besides us who seems to be paying attention to this waste of time.

First District Supervisor Candidate: Carrie Shattuck 

(with her subsequent introduction and following comments):

Tuesday’s Board meeting agenda item 4e, Discussion and Possible action including review of Board of Supervisor’s directives requiring follow through from County staff and/or other agencies; and deletion of outdated directives as determined by the Board of Supervisors.

This item lasted over 2 hours and absolutely nothing was done.

Directives Review. (Starts at time stamp 1:11:08 in the on-line meeting video.)

My public comments (time stamp 3:09:44)

“I would just like to say that this agenda item has been extremely painful watching. Thank you Supervisor Mulheren for bringing it up. I think that this subject has gone in every direction. Ok, there’s 40 total directives on these lists. 12 directives state: Discussion and possible direction to staff regarding a presentation on the Mendocino County preliminary fiscal year 2023-24 budget. We’ve already approved the budget, there’s 12 directives, poof, gone! Ok, there’s 12 that are planning and building. She’s sitting right here; you could address those 12. That leaves 16. Some of them are, Space needs assessment, short term rental ordinance, like for like re-roofing… We could have had the entire discussion of every single directive. Instead we’re veering off in time tracking and all these different directions. The actual agenda item states: Review of Board of Supervisors directives requiring follow through from County staff and/or other agencies; and deletion of outdated directives as determined by the Board of Supervisors. You guys are talking about tracking time, and money and JPAs… Just discuss the directives and let’s move on. I mean some of these agenda items go on and on and on and we’re taking up precious hours of the Board’s time when we could just be resolving the issues.”

These are the Board’s own directives and they didn’t delete a single one, in TWO HOURS!!! There was no leadership, as usual, on this item to stay on task and get something accomplished. This Board puts all the responsibility for their jobs on everyone but themselves. It’s really not that difficult to follow-up with departments heads or the CEO on these items, on an on-going basis. These are their directives. Do your jobs!

PS. Not one First District candidate has attended an entire board meeting. Second district candidate, Jacob Brown, was there for the entirety of Tuesday’s meeting.

These other First District candidates are silent. It shows me that they agree with the current direction, or lack thereof, of the Board. Why aren’t they involved now? The outgoing supervisors have one more year left on their terms. My perspective is, that if you are wanting to make it better, you have to know how it is, or isn’t, working now. Otherwise it’s going to be more of same, which our County cannot afford.

Dedicated, Driven, Determined

Carrie Shattuck

* * *

A belated comment on an item that arose back at the December 5 Supervisors meeting.

Supervisor Glenn McGourty said in his “Supervisors Report” that “we” — whoever that may be, certainly not Mendocino County — “will have a new JPA in place that could take over the Potter Valley Project by the end of this year.”

Oh, sure. A Joint Powers Authority to take over the Potter Valley Project by the end of 2023. Right, Glenn. What other jokes have you got up your sleeve? Even if Mendo had competent people involved they couldn’t get a Joint Powers Authority in place for anything for years. They’ve been working on a JPA for county-wide ambulance services — a much more pressing and important subject — for years and are still only in the discussion phase. It unlikely they’ll ever get there. (PS. A JPA for ambulances is an awful idea in the first place, but…)

McGourty went on: “It will take four years after 2025 for the Federal Energy Commission to review PG&E’s decommissioning plan and nine to ten years before anything will happen. Until then, the diversion will continue.”

Does McGourty even listen to what he’s saying? 

Obviously, there will be no JPA this year or even in the next year or two, if ever. 

If the Potter Valley diversion is going to continue in some form for at least nine or ten years, why are McGourty and his Potter Valley Project bunch so worried about something happening in the near future and trying to rush things? At a previous meeting, McGourty declared that “things are moving pretty fast” on the Potter Valley Project. Apparently to McGourty nothing happening in nine or ten years is “pretty fast.”

Of course there are others in the loop with different opinions and proposals for who or what might end up with some kind of control of the Potter Valley Project and when. McGourty, who pretends to be some kind of authority on the subject, seems to have no idea what he’s talking about. At one meeting he says things are moving fast, at the next he says things are a decade off. Maybe he’s retiring after one four-year term because he’s no longer capable of being the Cheap Water Mafia’s Board rep and he’s lost their support.

AV HEALTH CENTER REPORT & FUNDRAISER

Dear Community, 

Things feel like they are getting slightly back to “normal.” What is normal for us at the Health Center? Focusing on improving the care we provide to you every day. Our building is built, our parking lot is new and has a solar array and seven electric car chargers. We are nearly 100% solar powered and we have a whole new area dedicated to the medication dispensary. 

Most importantly, we are fully staffed with the exception of one dentist. This is quite a feat for rural healthcare these days. We are grateful to have 47 amazing people working at the Health Center. Our board recently completed an update to the Health Center's strategic plan, and the focus over the next two years is you. 

We hear how hard the last few years have been on many of you. We are hoping to find new ways to expand our services. You will see more of us at community events promoting things like the new Medi-Cal expansion. 

You may see our new Community Healthcare Worker who is out and about promoting overdose awareness through Narcan training, preventative healthcare visits and connecting people with our services. 

Anderson Valley’s aging adults are unique and their care should also be unique. We are looking at how we can provide supportive services for aging in place, spaces for community groups and palliative and end-of-life care. 

Our teen clinic is back up and running and we are working closely with the schools to have teen center representatives on campus. Our Health Center is a place to learn. From High School volunteers, AV Education Foundation interns, Adventist Health MD residents and UCSF Nurse Practitioners we have a variety of students learning what being a health professional in a small rural community is all about. 

Our aim is to provide our community with whole-person care whether through our main departments (Medical, Dental, Acupuncture or Behavioral Health) or through our supportive services like outreach and case management. We're in your healthcare journey together. 

We ask you to consider supporting Anderson Valley Health Center's work. Caring for this community is our life's work and we are proud to serve you. 

Happy Holidays, 

AN INDEPENDENT ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER

Dear AVA,

Been a long frickin time! I'm still alive and only sometimes not wanting to still be in this broken body of mine. I was just reading Mark Scaramella's comments about the budget report and was really educated. I knew those numbers were out before they relieved Chamise, she had gone up and said so in chambers, on the record. It's there if anyone goes back and looks. She told them explicitly how to go find the numbers they wanted. I couldn't believe we were using public time to educate our supervisors how to be an auditor controller. 

I kind of know now myself just by paying attention. Sara Pierce blows in and puts those numbers in pretty charts and graphs and they got all excited like little kids, then did nothing with it as you said. Poor thing has the look of a frozen deer in the headlights. Like the third person on the hanging platform asking the others if it was their first time.

Don't know if you have seen me moving around but I was recently appointed by Mo Mulheren to the Behavioral Health Advisory Board. I kind of earned it by throwing in my two cents as I have for a while now after a preacher friend of mine set me straight about where to put my remaining Energy. 

That daughter we wrote about is 37 now and I have a grandson from her, and 5 more from my other two whom I finally got to meet over the past few years. My back is still crumbling and I'm still teaching, mostly not getting paid as usual. Keeps it clean for sure. Like that I'm only a volunteer on the BHAB board, I have threatened to throw it back a few times already. That board, it seems to be the thing to do, leave. 

Measure B overrides everyone it seems. Sure rejected my, and our board's recommendation to fund Ford St. and let the Jail find other ways to back up their grand plans for the jail which I agree need to happen. Just not the bells and whistles parts for them at first, just the jail please, we need more street de-tox to prevent them from needing it in custody. 

Seems a lot of what happens is ego driven but I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. I myself am having a ball messing with them. Life doesn't hold anything for me anymore other than teaching bodywork and public service. And the public service part is not my monkey, so I figure as long I keep that attitude, I just might do some good. Instead of going to all these meetings, I should have just signed up for a subscription to the AVA a long time ago. Good to cross paths, hope to see you in the future.

Sincerely,

Mark Donegan

Ukiah

MCN LISTSERV BLUES
 
Xeno writes, re: the MCN Listservs: "Seems everyone wants what we have now or better, but it can be better, since there is now zero gatekeeping. The need is clear and is so strong that MCN is giving up the list."

---

MCN, and even more so its beneficiary the Mendocino Unified School District, are acting out a classic case of "throwing out the baby with the bathwater." The Lists were once MCN's pride and joy, drew in a lot of customers for MCN's internet service (& revenue for the School District), and are an important part of the modern fabric of the Coast community (for those "online" that is.)
 
In the meantime, the School District has recently received a legal opinion from their lawyer (Nov. 16, 2023) about the guidelines in State and Federal law for "moderation" of a public forum like the Announce and Discussion lists. For some unbeknownst reason, and despite two FOIA requests, Superintendent Jason Morse has declined to turn over this legal document (paid for by us taxpayers) - nor to even summarize the stated legalities of moderating the MCN lists outlined in that document. He cited attorney/client privilege for denying this information to the public (who paid for that lawyer and opinion with their own hard-earned tax dollars).
 

The first question that comes to mind is - what are they hiding? Is it that the MCN lists could have been legally moderated all along, but the District and MCN failed to do so out of their own negligence and ineptitude? Or is it some other reason? Whatever the reason is for not divulging this legal opinion on Listserv moderation, it is both mysterious and wrong. The Public has a right to know.

---

Obviously you can't yell "FIRE!" in a crowded movie theater. But you also can't threaten, harass, stalk, abuse, bully, slander, or violate Restraining Orders against people in real life. So why would this behavior be tolerated online?
 
The truth is, I am the last one to advocate for any kind of censorship, in any way shape or form. I'm a free speech All-American through and through on the First Amendment. But this isn't about free speech. It's about acceptable behavior that doesn't include bullying, stalking, doxxing, threatening, libeling or harassing people for the sheer thrill of sadistic bullying and trolling.
 
The bottom line is: you can say anything you dam-well please - just don't direct your animosity, belligerence and hate (if that's your thing) directly and specifically towards another everyday person, and if you do, you'll be suspended, and if necessary banned. As far as I know, that's the ONLY thing that should be moderated.
 
I totally understand that moderation could easily backfire and turn into censorship. Let's hope "we the people" have the clarity and wisdom to do it right, that the Mendo School District has the backbone to be more transparent (honest), and that they keep the MCN Listservs in the public sphere, where they belong.

— David Gurney

RE: BROTHER DAVID

I was sitting in my office in Mendocino when the phone rang. It was a representative of someone named Brother David. He explained that Brother David was interested in buying a house I had listed owned by my client and friend, Don Bruce. If it was ok with Mr. Bruce he would arrive by helicopter. His security team would arrive early and would not speak, but would let us know that they were there.

At the appointed time the security team arrived and then the helicopter descended. Out of the copter appeared Brother David with a female companion and another male all in white flowing robes. We slowly walked around the property and through the house and then Brother David said he would like to sit down with the owner.

Don Bruce, as his friends know, was a straight-shooting man who at times could use “colorful” language. I had advised him earlier that Brother David was a religious man and to be on his best behavior. Brother David explained that he would like to buy the property but that he was selling other properties that would not close for a while. So, he would like to offer a one year lease option with a $50,000 option payment. Don asked if that meant that he had to move out for $50k.

Brother David answered that yes he would have to move out. Don Bruce looked him square in the eye and said, “Are you f-ing shitting me?” End of story. Don Bruce 1, Brother David 0. 

Don had a great bullshit meter. Brother David then went on to open his car repair business in Fort Bragg.

Scott Deitz

Mendocino

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

When Jim Eddie ran for re-election to the Supervisors I ran against him. One of the reasons was the destruction of the Eel River. No one knows more about this river than me — period. The bastards we have running our county have all but destroyed it. With the public epithet “We have to take a stand” the power plants and dams at Lake Pillsbury need to come out. The Eel can never return at all without water. The problem is the Farm Bureau. They’re a bunch of so-called farmers who beg all day for government subsidies. I ain’t met a farmer in Mendoland that has made a dime of profit farming — unless they’re growing pot or grapes. Yet the so-called “agriculture” runs Mendocino County. If those farmers had to pay for what they use they’d all leave. In Idaho, a real agribusiness area, the government dammed up 1,000 miles of the Snake River for power and agriculture. But Clinton has a billion-dollar bailout on the table today. The little farmer don’t get none of this money though. The corporation-farmers get it. The salmon and steelhead are no longer in the rivers in Idaho either. Just like the Eel system. Dams and fish don’t mix. Fish need the water when they come to spawn, not when the dam man turns the dam water loose. Way back when life began, we knew better, but we continue to do wrong. 

— Barney ‘BJ’ Rowland

CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, December 21, 2023

JOSEPH DENBO, Ukiah. DUI.

ROBERT JAMES SR., Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JOSHUA MEDINA, Fort Bragg. Protective order violation, parole violation.

MIGUEL NEVAREZ, San Francisco/Willits. DUI, harboring wanted felon, battery on peace officer, resisting, evasion, conspiracy, “lynching punishment.”

JOHN NORTON, Ukiah. DUI.

SHANNON SEITZ, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. DUI.

BRIAN WETHERN, Fort Bragg. Resisting.

TOBIAS WOOD, Ukiah. Controlled substance for sale, felon-addict with firearm, paraphernalia, switchblade, disobeying court order, smuggling controlled substance into jail.

A WEE BIT LONGER

On the Spiritual Platform in America

By now it is obvious that the postmodern global situation has plunged down an abyss that is endless. I mean, are you seriously believing that it is only cyclical, and if you hang in there and vote for the lesser of the two visionless major American political parties, and somehow keep the body and mind alive just a wee bit longer, that the clouds will open up and the sun will come shining through? You will win the lottery. You will effortlessly float up to the heaven of your choice. Bliss alone remains. 

On the other hand, how about we right now stop identifying with the body and the mind. Instead, let us all identify with the eternal witness of the body and the mind. Let us all organize and perform spiritually sourced direct action to destroy the demonic and return this world to righteousness. And then, go back to Godhead. 

Am doing nothing of any great importance in Ukiah, California right now, except digesting my peppermint espresso shake and listening to Krishna bhajans on a public computer at the Ukiah Public Library...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4czUBKsQ44 

Happy Holidays.

Craig Louis Stehr

HANG SANTA 

by Wendy Doniger

If love, as one cynic defined it, is giving something you don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it, Christmas really is the season of love.

Above all, however, it is the season of lies. We didn’t need Lévi-Strauss to tell us that we lie to our children at this time of year: “Do you (still) believe in Santa Claus?” is the touchstone for childish innocence, and we often justify our own unhappiness at this time by arguing that “it’s all for the sake of the children.” But we do not usually know, or at least acknowledge, that we lie to ourselves. Denial of the sadness of Christmas continues on the national scale. When someone suggested that “Christmas was a time at which family values should be reaffirmed,” was it denial? Or was it what the philosopher J.L. Austin would have called a performative speech act? 

On the other hand, if Christmas is a game, we can, sometimes, win it. The real miracle of Christmas is the fact that the big lie — the lie that we are happy and love our families — sometimes comes true. Like Method actors, we can sometimes make ourselves genuinely experience the emotions we are faking.

‘MISSISSIPPI SON’ BRINGS IN THE NEW YEAR IN BERKELEY

Former Geyserville resident Charlie Musselwhite continues his blues odyssey

by Dave Gil de Rubio 

In an age of performers making their name as Instagram influencers and TikTok flavors-of-the-month, Charlie Musselwhite is the equivalent of a land line—steady, reliable and a link to the past. Born in Mississippi and raised in Memphis, the 78-year-old musician has spent a career dating back to his 1967 debut, Stand Back! Here Comes Charley Musselwhite’s Southside Band, being a blues standard-bearer.

His journey continues on the recently released Mississippi Son, a stripped-down collection of 14 songs featuring the harmonica player singing and picking up a guitar to present a mix of originals and nuggets originally recorded by an array of storied names including Yank Rachell, the Stanley Brothers and Charley Patton.

It’s Musselwhite’s first solo outing since moving back to Clarksdale, Mississippi, about a year and a half ago from the tiny Northern California community of Geyserville. (He released 100 Years of the Blues with old friend Elvin Bishop back in 2020.). Climate change prompted the harp player and his wife/manager Henrietta Musselwhite to pull up stakes and move back to the Delta.

“We were having the fires [in California] every year,” he said in a recent phone interview. “The last time, we could see it coming. If the wind hadn’t changed, we might have gotten burned out. We figured it was inevitable that we would at some point, so why wait for that?

“It was really horrible. You have to be evacuated and everything in the freezer was rotten because the electricity was turned off. It was horrible. I remember walking out my front door and the ash was just falling like snow. It ain’t gonna go away. It’s going to get worse.”

With the pandemic forcing Musselwhite to stay in one place, he started hanging out at friend Gary Vincent’s nearby studio, noodling around on guitar. Before long, Vincent was hitting record, drummer Ricky Martin and upright bassist Barry Bays were recruited, and Mississippi Son was the result.  

 “We started recording some of these tunes that I’d been doing for a long time, and at some point we realized that it could be an album,” Musselwhite said. “It was kind of an accident. Then we invited [Martin and Bays] to play on a few tunes. It just evolved on its own and took on its own momentum.”

The slow-as-molasses tempo on the album is languid and made all the more so by Musselwhite’s laconic vocal phrasing, which is goosed along by his equally loose strumming and harp blowing. The record doesn’t so much rock out as much as it oozes along from the self-penned opener “Blues Up the River” (whose couplets like “I’ll drink muddy water until I’ve had enough” bring to mind images of the mighty Mississippi River) to a reading of Guy Clark’s “The Dark.” The song’s stark tempo is reminiscent of Musselwhite’s old friend and mentor John Lee Hooker, who is immortalized by a version of “Crawling King Snake” perfectly arranged as a loose shuffle.

Fans can expect to hear songs from Mississippi Son and more now that Musselwhite will be back out on tour fronting a guitar, bass and drums trio. He plays Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage on both Dec. 30 and 31 to welcome the New Year.

“I do some tunes that people request and I have some new songs they haven’t heard before,” he said. “I might even play guitar, who knows? It depends on the situation and how much time I have.

“A lot of people don’t even know that I play guitar, so that’s a departure. I didn’t even know how people would react to [my playing on Mississippi Son], but it’s just been overwhelming. People are just loving it. I’m happily surprised—it’s a nice thing.”

Musselwhite’s love of the blues can be traced to a childhood spent listening to music being sung by local laborers out in the country.

 “I remember as a little kid we lived on a street and then there were woods and in it there was a creek,” he said. “On the other side of the creek there were fields where people would work in them. Down on the shady side of the creek was the coolest place I could find.

“I remember as a little kid, laying on the shady side of the creek, cooling off and listening to people singing work songs in the field. And that was blues. I remember listening to those songs and while I liked a lot of different kinds of music, this music sounded like how I felt. It really pulled me into it.”

In the 1950s a teen-aged Musselwhite moved to Memphis, where he furthered his education in the blues and set in motion what is now a five-decade career that shows no signs of slowing down.

“I remember going around Memphis looking for old blues records in junk stores,” Musselwhite said. “I found the first Sonny Boy [Williamson] record and other players. I really liked the way the harmonica sounded. At some point, I remember thinking that since I had my own harmonica, I decided to start playing my own [music].

“I started going out into the woods where I thought nobody could hear me play and just experimented. I was already familiar with it. I just started playing my own blues and making it up.”

(healdsburgtribune.com)

BIDEN IS PAYING GROWERS TO REPLACE FARMWORKERS WITH BRACERO CONTRACT LABOR

by David Bacon

On September 22, 2023, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced it would begin paying growers to use the notorious H-2A contract foreign labor (or guestworker) program. Tapping into $65 million from the American Rescue Act, the USDA will pay between $25,000 and $2 million per application to defray the expenses of recruiting migrant workers from three Central American countries - Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador - transporting them to the U.S., housing and feeding them while they're here, and even subsidizing part of their wages. Labor contractors, who compete with each other to sell migrant farm labor to growers at low wages, will be eligible as well as growers themselves.

The H-2A program is the modern version of the old bracero scheme, under which growers brought Mexicans to work in U.S. fields from 1942 to 1964. Workers had to pay bribes to come, were kept separate from the local workforce, and deported if they protested or went on strike. Because of widespread abuse of the workers who came through the program, and growers' use of bracero labor to prevent farmworkers from organizing, the program was abolished - one of the main achievements of the Chicano civil rights movement. But even at its height, the U.S. government never actually paid growers to bring in workers. Now, the Biden administration is doing just that.

The H-2A program allows growers to recruit workers, who today mostly come from Mexico. They can and do discriminate, hiring almost entirely young men and then pressuring them with production quotas to work as fast as possible. Workers have an H-2A visa, which allows them to stay only for the length of their contract - less than a year - and they cannot legally work for anyone other than the grower or labor contractor who recruits them. They can be fired for any reason, from protesting to working too slowly, and once they are terminated, they lose their visa and must leave the country. Recruiters maintain blacklists of workers fired for those reasons, and especially for striking and organizing, refusing to rehire them in future seasons.

Although the bracero program had ended in 1965, the H-2A visa category reestablished a contract labor program, in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. The program remained relatively small until it began to mushroom during the Bush and Obama administrations. The Biden administration is now expanding it even further by subsidizing growers who use it.

The Biden administration's purpose for its subsidy program, called the Farm Labor Stabilization and Protection Pilot Program (FLSPPP), is political. In announcing it, the USDA lists three goals. The first, "addressing current labor shortages in agriculture," means not just giving growers a government-sponsored labor recruitment system, but even paying them to use it. While growers complain about labor shortages, unemployment in farmworker communities is higher than in urban areas. Agribusiness has been intent, however, on keeping wages extremely low. Many growers were Donald Trump supporters, and the rural areas of California and Washington State are still littered with old Trump signs from the 2020 campaign. But hope dies hard. The Biden campaign would welcome whatever support it can get from agribusiness in the tight 2024 election to come.

Samantha Power, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, held a meeting with growers at the USDA in September 2022. She thanked them for working with the administration on "a critical priority - expanding the pool of H-2A farmworkers from Central America, specifically from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras." "We have got your back," she promised them. "We are committed to helping maintain a strong pipeline of experienced farmworkers to support you."

The second stated goal of the pilot program is to "reduce irregular migration from Northern Central America through the expansion of regular pathways." As Republicans attack the president for being "soft" on immigration, the Biden administration hopes to forestall caravans arriving at the border by channeling thousands of potential migrants into work visa programs. The FLSPPP does nothing to change the conditions that produce migration, nor does it allow migrants to access the asylum system and become U.S. residents. In fact, it is no coincidence that a work visa program is being unveiled as Biden negotiates with Republicans over measures to make the asylum process basically unavailable to those same migrants fleeing poverty and repression.

The third goal, "improving the working conditions for all farmworkers," is political theater. Applicants for subsidies under the pilot program are required to provide H-2A workers with living wages, overtime pay, workers' rights training, health and safety protections, and no retaliation if they try to organize a union. These protections and benefits - in many cases, simply the base legal requirement - don't even exist on paper for almost all farmworkers who are already living in the U.S. And because, according to the National Agricultural Workers Survey, about 44 percent of all farmworkers are undocumented, it's difficult for them to use what legal protections exist. However, instead of pushing for immigration reform that would provide them with legal status, the Biden administration is helping growers bring in H-2A workers to replace them.

With weak enforcement on the ground, it's unlikely that H-2A workers would get these benefits either. Violations of the rights and minimum standards for both H-2A and resident farmworkers are endemic in U.S. agriculture. The program contains no funding for even a minimal increase in Department of Labor (DoL) investigations of existing violations, much less those to come.

The proposal shocked many farmworker advocates and organizers. A number of them sent a letter of protest to the Biden administration, which I also signed as a fellow of the Oakland Institute. "As farmers, farmworkers, and their advocates, we are writing to express our indignation that USDA is committing $65 million of public money to pay farm employers, including Farm Labor Contractors, to raise wages, improve housing or other adjustments for H-2A workers before making any significant changes in the conditions of the millions of farmworkers already in this country," the letter read.

Documentation of worker abuse in the H-2A program goes back decades, and many farmworker advocates and unions doubt it can be reformed. "Because of its record of abuse of both H-2A workers and local farmworkers," the protest letter stated, "we have called for the abolition of the H-2A program for many years." Sarait Martinez, director of the Binational Center for Oaxacan Indigenous Development, which organizes farmworkers against wage theft and other abuse, told Truthout, "This program pits resident farmworkers against contract workers recruited by growers, and makes it impossible to end the poverty in farmworker communities, treating it as normal and unalterable."

At the same time that USDA is handing out subsidies, the enforcement system that should protect farmworkers from wage theft, illegal wages, and other violations of workplace standards and rights is in freefall. A 2023 study by the Economic Policy Institute found that investigations by the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division (WHD) have plummeted by over 60 percent - from a high of 2,431 in 2000 to only 879 in 2022. The department has only 810 investigators for the nation's 164.3 million workers, or one inspector per 202,824 workers. As a result, the DoL only investigates fewer than 1 out of every 100 agricultural employers each year, although, notes the study, "when WHD does investigate an agricultural employer, 70 percent of the time, WHD detects wage and hour violations."

From 2000 to 2022, violations of the H-2A visa program accounted for roughly half of the few cases in which employers were forced to pay back wages and civil penalties, rising to nearly three-fourths during the Biden administration. Because enforcement is weak, cases of employers and labor contractors using H-2A workers to replace local workers, and cheating those H-2A workers, are multiplying. 

One example of cheating occurred with notorious labor violator Sierra del Tigre Farms in Santa Maria, California. In September 2023, more than 100 workers were terminated before their work contracts had ended and told to go back to Mexico. The company then refused to pay them the legally required wages they would have earned. Its alter ego, Savino Farms, had already been fined for the same violation four years earlier, an indication that the profits of labor violations outweigh the small penalties.

One worker, Felipe Ramos, was owed more than $2,600. "It was very hard," he remembers. "I have a wife and baby girl, and they survive because I send money home every week. Everyone else was like that too. The company had problems finding buyers, and too many workers." In fall 2023, Rancho Nuevo Harvesting, Inc., another labor contractor, was forced by the Department of Labor to pay $1 million in penalties and back wages to workers it had cheated in a similar case. The frequency and seriousness of these cases in one relatively small valley alone indicate that the problems with the program are fundamental, structural and widespread.

As the USDA "pilot" subsidy program is being rolled out, the U.S. Department of Labor has proposed a set of reforms it says may reduce the long-documented abuse of H-2A farmworkers. Yet even in the published text of the proposed reforms, the DoL staff who drafted it summarize the structural reasons that make the impact of reforms so doubtful:

Over the past decade, use of the H-2A program has grown dramatically while overall agricultural employment in the United States has remained stable, meaning that fewer domestic workers are employed as farmworkers. ... Some of the characteristics of the H-2A program, including the temporary nature of the work, frequent geographic isolation of the workers, and dependency on a single employer, create a vulnerable population of workers for whom it is uniquely difficult to advocate or organize to seek better working conditions. ... This lack of sufficient protections adversely affects the ability of domestic workers to advocate for acceptable working conditions, leading to reduced worker bargaining power and, ultimately, deterioration of working conditions in agricultural employment.

The existing local farmworker workforce suffers from the conditions the Department of Labor describes. In another wage theft claim in July 2023, a group of resident workers charged that high-end winery J. Lohr conspired with a group of labor contractors to pay less than the minimum wage, while hiding records of the violation. The Binational Center for Indigenous Community Development, which brought the suit, has fought five similar cases in the last year.

Instead of spending its limited resources to protect and advance the wages and job rights of the farmworkers who live and work in the U.S. (68 percent of whom are immigrants themselves), the Biden administration is making it more attractive for growers to bring in guest workers to replace them. This gives growers a workforce that is easier to control, and who leave the country when the work is done. It continues a policy that extends back through the Trump, Obama, Bush and Clinton presidencies.

About 2 million workers labor in U.S. fields. Last year, the Department of Labor gave growers permission to bring 371,619 H-2A workers - or about a sixth of the entire U.S. farm labor workforce - an increase from 98,813 in 2012. Employing such a large quantity of H-2A labor cannot be done, as the DoL admits, without displacing domestic workers, who continue to endure extensive wage theft and an average family income of $20,000 per year.

Employers who hire local workers are ineligible for the pilot program subsidies unless they recruit H-2A workers - essentially bribing them to use H-2A workers to replace residents. There is no requirement from the USDA that employers of local workers implement any of the pilot program's conditions, and no additional resources are destined for defending the existing farmworker workforce. This will directly hit farmworker families and communities across the country.

The Biden administration's political calculations could prove disastrous as well. By doubling down on the program, it is essentially telling farmworkers and their advocates, in an election year, that the administration is solely concerned with the welfare of growers. Yet almost all farmworker unions and communities campaigned heavily against Trump in 2020. They were often Biden's main support in rural areas where growers were solidly in the Republican camp.

"By implementing this pilot program, the Department of Agriculture has failed miserably to engage with us or hear our arguments," the protest letter concluded. "We call upon USDA to cancel it and redirect the $65 million to a campaign to rebuild the domestic farm labor force."

(davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com)

THE LONGEST TIME I ever passed upon the waves was 18 days in 1944, crossing the Atlantic on a dynamite ship. The ship was manned by Norwegians, 45 of them, the Captain and the First Mate had a working command of English, talk was basic. The deck cargo was small amphibious personnel carriers, which left hardly any space to stretch the legs. The hold was filled with high explosives. There were no lifeboats. I was the only passenger. Smoking was forbidden though by special permission of the Captain I could smoke in my cabin with a big bowlful of water as ashtray. The food was terrible and we had nothing to drink.

Though we didn’t know it, this enormous convoy was part of the enormous final build-up for D-Day, eleven days after we reached Liverpool. It was freezing cold and the diversions were icebergs, a morning of splendidly snafu maneuvers, evasive action against submarines, the air rent by curses, and gunnery practice, nice and noisy. Fog shrouded us most of the way. The Captain was worried about day and night fog, his cargo and the risk of collision with Liberty ships which he regarded as more dangerous than submarines, saying angrily, “They try to handle them like a taxi.” I didn’t understand enough to be worried about anything and thought it a pleasant interesting trip though not a barrel of fun, rather lacking in excitement. I kept skimpy notes, the last one is: “The voyage has been a fine rest cure.”

I wouldn’t willingly spend eighteen days afloat ever again but if the choice was between a cruise ship and a dynamite ship I’d have no trouble in choosing.

— Martha Gellhorn

WILLIAM SPENCER NOWLIN

1854 born to William Nowlin and Elizabeth Virginia Murphy in Missouri. Supposedly a drummer boy in the Civil War. Traveled with his mom & sister Susan Forster (died at 9 years old from a rattlesnake bite while driving a herding of sheep to the pen), the trio made it to Covelo. Eventually Bill Nowlin settled on a piece of property by himself for a while. 

But a big rancher put out a hit on him. Wild Bill was faster on the draw and killed Newt Irvin. He was imprisoned for a couple years until it was learned he was set up. A common tactic used by these ambitious ranchers - his father in law was accused of that very thing in Trinity County. 

He married my great grandmother Annie Matilda Akesson and took her off to Harris. There he had a Blacksmith shop. Then it was off to a place near Covelo with 5 girls and a boy. I read in the Willits news that once some guy was cheating my great grandmother out if timber money. So he drank some whiskey and went after the guy. The Sheriff had to calm him down. I think he was shooting the town up. He became abusive so my great grandmother loaded up the wagon and left him. 

I also understand he was a bear hunter and fought them too. 

He became an eccentric character as he loved strawberries and built a mile long trough to water them with. My grandmother didn't like him though cared for him during a sickness. He was mean and told her that her food wasn't fit for the dogs. So he got the boot.

*I understand he knew he was on a hit list and would feed his dogs first - in case of poison (another tactic in those days). Another tale was he got into with his father in law Ben Arthur of Briceland. Wild Bill was gonna do him in and Ben Arthur was just as tough, waited up all night for him. I don't know if or how it was settled or if was but both lived out their years. 

** some of this is Genocide and Vendetta. The articles are from the Ukiah Republican. In the photo I think he's the one with the dog. So he wandered those Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity County mountains quite often. Probably cussing his mule.

THE JEW AND THE JOKE

by Anthony Burgess

No Jew would have the chutzpah to assert that the Jews actually invented humor, but, on the evidence of the names of the great modern comedians, they seem to have been preparing for several millennia to claim a monopoly of it. look at some of these names: the Marx Brothers, Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Shelly Berman, Danny Kaye, Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Phil Silvers, Peter Sellers, Jerry Lewis, Mel Brooks, Bud Flanagan, Marty Feldman, Woody Allen. There are grounds for supposing that the great Gentiles — Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd — were funnier, but they were funny in a way that puts comparison out of order. For these were silent stars, not men of the word. When sound broke into the cinema, the first words — “You ain’t heard nothing yet” — were entrusted to a Jew named Al Jolson. This was appropriate. The Jews are verbal to the point of being verbose.

The Jews wrote the best book of all time, still more of a best-seller than the Koran or the Book of Mormon, to say nothing of John le Carré’s latest piece of overpraised nonsense. Not even the most ridently labile of its readers would claim that it is a funny book, but it is not always serious. It cannot resist wordplay, its rollcall of characters reads like the dramatis personae of a stage farce — Slitnose (Harumph), Weasel (Hulda), Flea (Parosh), Mouth (Puah), Bent (Toah) — and it is crammed with irony. Hebrews loved puns, and the paranomastic tradition of the Old Testament sometimes gets into the New, though the more rigid Greek tries to fight it. The Church was founded on a pun. The greatest joke in all Christian history was the destruction of Jerusalem so that the Church could found its headquarters in the capital of paganism. It was a black and bitter joke, not untypical of Jehovah, who refuses to become a God of fair play despite all our deistic rationalism.

An American-Jewish musical based on Plautus, starring the late Zero Mostel, was called “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” We are still waiting for a Broadway success called “A Funny Thing Happened on Mount Sinai.” We will probably never get an extravaganza about the funny thing that has happened since, belatedly, the Jews settled in their national home. Humor has disappeared from the Hebrew language. Israeli writers are not funny, whether they are writing novels, plays, or film scripts. The language, waving a national flag, takes itself seriously and also reminds its speakers that it is too holy to be messed about with. And the circumstances of Israeli daily life are so hilarious — meaning you have to laugh so as not to cry — that they upstage the art of the comedian. 

The following story is not, I think, meant to be funny: A contractor showed his friend a house he was erecting in Tel Aviv. “Do you know,” he said proudly, “I’ve already let the third floor.” The friend said, “But you haven’t even finished building the second.” To which the reply was: “I know, but it’s the rental for the third which is paying for that.”

Real Jewish humor belongs to the diaspora generically to the Ashkenazim, specifically to the shtetl and the shtat, the little poverty-stricken towns and villages of Poland and Russia. Its language is not Hebrew but Yiddish. With the Russian, Polish, and German pogroms and the mass emigrations to America — die golderneh medineh, later renamed die goyische medineh — the humor of Yiddish, found at its best in the work of Sholom Aleichem, traveled to New York, but Yiddish itself began to disappear. You can go to expensive schools in Manhattan to learn Yiddish as you learn Spanish, but English, the pale Galilean, has become the tongue of the prospering Jews. Yet English is always eager to be raped by other languages, and it has welcomed an incestuous coupling with Yiddish, incestuous because Yiddish, being a dialect of Low German, is a cousin of English and has the same family face and the same habits. The great humor of our day is the work of speakers, or writers, of Yidglish.

The humor is laconic and depends on stress and inversion. “My son-in-law he wants to be” is not meant to be funny, far from it, nor is “So go fight City Hall,” but such Yidglish tropes reveal what was always latent in English and cause a shock of surprised recognition expressed in laughter. But the humor is not just a matter of language. It is mostly ironic, born of long tribulation, and its capacity for paradox and nonsense has, as Joseph Heller recognizes in his “God Knows,” deep roots. Heller has Moses saying that some of God’s commands don’t make sense.

“Whoever said I was going to make sense?” answered God. “Show me where it says I have to make sense. I never promised sense. Sense, he wants yet. I’ll give milk. I’ll give honey. Not sense. Oh, Moses, Moses, why talk of sense? Your name is Greek and there hasn’t even been a Greece yet. And you want sense. If you want to have sense, you can’t have a religion.”

“We don’t have a religion.”

“I’ll give you one.”

There is a story of a lady on a bus in Tel Aviv scolding her son in Yiddish. “Why don’t you talk Hebrew to him?,” says a fellow-passenger. “I talk to him in Yiddish,” says the lady, “so he won’t forget he’s a Jew.” Though Jewishness can get through, even (though with some difficulty) in French, it is happiest with Yiddish or, failing that, Yidglish. But Yidglish has to be fed not merely with irritable stress and disdainful inversion; it has to be a home for the Yiddish untranslatables, of which already about 500 have settled comfortably on the host-tongue. Erica Jong has one of her heroines suggesting to a reluctant boyfriend that they make love in a ship’s synagogue, saying: “Anyone who stumbles in will think we’re davining.” That word, derived from Hebrew, means praying, but praying does not have the right connotation. Gentile prayer is usually bland, quiet, and essentially private. Jewish davining can be noisy, disruptive, orgiastic. It can be rather like the act of sex.

We expect our comedians, Jewish or Gentile, to be male. But while God, tolerating Abraham’s laughter, was not too happy about Sarah’s, it is Jewish women, not gayische ones, who have asserted the right to challenge the male comedians on their own ground. Italian readers will be aware of the wit of the New Yorker writer Dorothy Parker, who called her pet canary Onan because he spilled his seed on the ground. Her true name was Rothschild. She was writing in an age not favorable to the disclosure of Jewishness (Herbert Gold was asked to change his name to Gould when he offered his first book to a publisher, but he refused). 

Then there was Fanny Brice, née Borach, reincarnated by Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl, and there was, though nobody was too happy about her, Joan Rivers, a comedienne who indulged in stomach-turning obscenity far worse than the well-mannered filth of the late Lenny Bruce.

And how, apart from the endowment which enables Erica Jong to speak of “the rubber yarmulke of the diaphragm,” are these ladies Jewish? In possessing chutzpah, a pioneering spirit, and a capacity for excess. There could have been, if Miriam had not been so grave an example to the Israelite women, a lot of comediennes to lighten the pain of the exodus. Nevertheless Miriam sang a good song, in belting Streisand style, on the safe side of the Nile.

Italians who want to master New York English had better learn the tropes and tricks of Yiddish. They should try expressions like “I need that like a loch in die kop” (a hole in the head), or Gewalt! — the uttermost expression of disaster (obstetricians will ignore the screams of expectant Jewish mothers: it is only when they shout “Gewalt!” that they will leap into action). Most of all they should learn the curious Yiddish trick of duplication, whereby Chianti is despised by being turned into “Chianti-schmianti — I prefer whisky.” The best illustration of the usage is to be found in the response of the Jewish matron who was told by a psychiatrist that her son had an Oedipus complex. Her comment was, “Oedipus Schmoedipus — what’s it matter what he has as long as he loves his mother?” 

Larry Fine was a devil may care off set, he lived lavishly in hotels with his wife Mabel and played the ponies and gin rummy, spending money as fast as he could make it. A great friend, he also supported a lot of friends with a lot of loans. Supposedly, he developed a callus on the side of his head from Moe slapping him there.

Moe Howard actually was a soft spoken and affable personality in deference to his on screen personality. He was a loving family man and, against popular rumor, was actually pretty rich because he invested heavily in real estate and several successful businesses and avoided the common pitfalls of those possessing money in Hollywood. He continued to appear well into his 70's on late night talk show circuits.

Curly Howard was Moes youngest brother and had no formal acting training. Often his takes were completely improvised and he was simply let go to do his own thing. Jules White said that if they had a gap in their short, they simply pointed the camera at him and said go. Contrary to his crazy on screen personality, Jerome "Curly" Howard was extremely shy and would only act out when he drank or was in front of a camera. He was a huge dog lover, finding and taking in strays as he toured. He did love the ladies and was known as being a pushover when it came to women, often to the chagrin of his brother who urged him to settle down. A series of debilitating strokes caused him to retire and eventually die at 48.

— Typhoid Timmy

HARDY’S CHRISTMAS GHOST

by Angelique Richardson

Thomas Hardy’s poem ‘A Christmas Ghost-Story’ was published in the England’s Westminster Gazette in December 1899, two months after the start of the Second Anglo-Boer War. The ghost is that of a soldier, and the poem emphasizes his unknown nationality:

South of the Line, inland from far Durban,

There lies – be he or not your countryman –

A fellow-mortal. Riddled are his bones,

But ’mid the breeze his puzzled phantom moans…

When the Daily Chronicle accused Hardy of peddling pacifism, he spent much of Christmas Day writing a riposte to the editor, reminding him that the soldier’s ghost in his story now had “no physical frame”; ‘his views are no longer local, nations are all one to him; his country is not bounded by seas, but is co-extensive with the globe itself.” He concluded:

“Thus I venture to think that the phantom of a slain soldier, neither British nor Boer, but a composite, typical phantom, may consistently be made to regret on or about Christmas Eve (when even the beasts of the field kneel, according to a tradition of my childhood) the battles of his life and war in general.”

As a child, I thought that the unknown soldier’s country was also unknown, and considered it extraordinarily wonderful that a stateless subject was commemorated in Westminster Abbey.

Hardy and his wife both strongly opposed the imperial war in South Africa. “The Boers fight for homes & liberties,” Emma Hardy wrote. “We fight for the Transvaal Funds, diamonds, & gold!” The British confined more than a hundred thousand Boers, mostly women and children, and more than a hundred thousand Black Africans in racially segregated concentration camps. Nearly 28,000 people died in the Boer camps; more than 22,000 of them were children under sixteen. The record-keeping was less precise in the Black concentration camps but estimates exceed 20,000, of whom more than 80% were children.

In November 1902, six months after the war ended with the Boers’ defeat, Harper’s Weekly published Hardy’s poem ‘The Man He Killed’: “I shot him dead because –/Because he was my foe.” Repeating “because” as the speaker stumbles to find rhyme or reason, a neat “just so” follows, the singsong nursery rhyme belying both the brutality and meaninglessness of the killing: “Just so: my foe of course he was.” But the matter-of-fact disavowal shores up the reverse. In any other circumstance the speaker would have sat down for a drink with the man he killed.

On the brink of the First World War, the speaker of Hardy’s poem “His Country” (1913) journeys from Wessex to the other side of the world and beyond, till he has “traced the whole terrestrial round/Homing the other side.” At the end he asks:

“Whom have I to fight,

And whom have I to dare,

And whom to weaken, crush, and blight?”

He has earlier perceived that “all the men I looked upon/Had heart strings fellow-made.” The image contrasts starkly with Theresa May’s remark at the Tory Party Conference in 2016, that “if you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.”

Hardy’s radical universalism punctuates his work. In 1917 he wrote to the secretary of the Royal Society of Literature:

“That nothing effectual will be accomplished in the cause of Peace till the sentiment of Patriotism be freed from the narrow meaning attaching to it in the past (still upheld by Junkers and Jingoists) and be extended to the whole globe.

“On the other hand, that the sentiment of Foreignness – if the sense of a contrast be really rhetorically necessary – attach only to other planets and their inhabitants, if any.

“I may add that I have been writing in advocacy of those views for the last twenty years.”

Hardy’s friend Siegfried Sassoon – his father was of Jewish and Iraqi Indian descent and his mother was an Anglo-Catholic Germanophile who gave him his German name – had good reason to reject the idea that conflict was inevitable or desirable. He began writing to Hardy in January 1916, a few months before the Battle of the Somme. Wounded in 1917, he sent his famous statement of protest first to Hardy. Published by Sylvia Pankhurst in her newspaper, The Workers’ Dreadnought, on 28 July; it was read out in the House of Commons by a Labour MP two days later and printed in the Times the next day.

“I am a soldier,” Sassoon wrote, “convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defense and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest.” He was sent to Craiglockhart, a military psychiatric hospital in Edinburgh, in lieu of being court-martialled. After the war, Sassoon joined the Labour Party and lectured on pacifism, becoming literary editor of the Daily Herald, “the new labour paper,” as he referred to it in a letter to Hardy. In February 1922 Florence Hardy told Sassoon that she had heard Hardy say, “in a loud & clear voice”: “I wrote my poems for men like Siegfried Sassoon.” Sassoon selected his poem ‘The Dug-Out’ for the tribute book from a younger generation of poets that he presented to Hardy in October 1919.

“And There Was a Great Calm,” Hardy’s poem “On the Signing of the Armistice, 11 Nov. 1918,” refuses any vainglorious end to the war, which for the traumatized continued long after the fighting was over: “There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky;/Some could, some could not, shake off misery.” And the “pensive Spirit of Pity” still has no answer to its “whispered,” repeated question: “Why?”

Refaat Alareer taught English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza. He was also a poet and editor. We were going to work together on the Hardy’s Correspondents project: the last time I heard from him he had been discussing ‘The Oxen’ (“If someone said on Christmas Eve,/Come; see the oxen kneel”) with his students. 

He was killed in an Israeli airstrike on December 7, 2023.

(London Review of Books)

THE SMALL MAN

Builds cages for everyone

He knows.

While the sage,

Who has to duck his head

When the moon is low,

Keeps dropping keys all night long

For the

Beautiful

Rowdy

Prisoners.

— Hafez