Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024

Navarro Point | Showers Fading | Baby Mila | Turkey Line | No Fireworks | Questionable Stropharia | Ed Notes | Foodbank Hours | Animal Control | Emily's Spillway | Orr Springs History | AVA Terroir | Carson Mansion | Old Age | Inflation Indicators | Gift Idea | Abortion Pill | 2023 Sez | Kenneth Patchen | Malden Reads | Crazy Town | Israel Cannot | Woody Resolutions | Texting Help | Making Changes | 2024

LIGHT RAIN and interior snow showers will gradually wind down today. Quieter weather with light rain will briefly build in late week before a moderate, cold storm system this weekend set to bring snow as low as 2000 feet. (NWS)

RAINFALL (past 24 hours): Laytonville 1.60" - Leggett 1.56" - Willits 1.29" - Yorkville 1.12" - Boonville 1.04" - Covelo 0.86" - Hopland 0.68"

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A sprinkely 48F this Wednesday morning with another 1.65" of rainfall collected. A few early morning showers should give way to sunnier skies today & most of tomorrow. More chances of rain Thursday night & Saturday. Temps will get much colder going into next week.

ADVENTIST HOSPITAL, UKIAH, DELIVERS FIRST BABY OF '24

While the rest of the community was waiting for the ball to drop and welcome the new year, first-time mother Shel­­­by McGlothlin was waiting for her water to break. A few hours after the New Year, Mendocino County’s first baby for 2024 made her entrance and Baby Mila was born on Jan. 1, 2024, at 3:56 a.m. Proud first-time parents Shelby McGlothlin and Dylan Fraser Gilbert, welcomed Baby Mila who was almost 7 pounds and 19 inches tall with a full head of hair.

Mom says they’ve been at Adventist Health Ukiah Valley’s Family Birth Center for a few days and Baby Mila was in fact, nine days late. It turns out she was just waiting for the perfect moment to make her arrival. And it was perfect in every way! “Her arriving on New Year’s Day just made it even more memorable and special,” shares McGlothlin.

As for her name, Mila was a way to honor mom, says Fraser-Gilbert. “Shelby’s name was originally supposed to be Mia, but her parents changed their minds. I wanted to name our baby Mia, but it didn’t sound right. So as a compromise, we came up with Mila. And I think it’s perfect for her.”

Mom and Dad said they had the best experience at our Family Birth Center. “I didn’t really know what to expect. It was more difficult and painful than I imagined childbirth to be. But everyone was amazing and really took care of us. We’ve spent a lot of days here and they were so helpful and caring the entire time,” shares mom.

They are now looking forward to the “new normal” and enjoying everything that parenthood brings and learning together as first-time parents. While nothing can ever prepare one for parenthood, they shared that the staff at the Family Birth Center, along with attending birthing classes offered at the hospital, helped prepare them for the adventure ahead.

As is tradition, the first baby of the year was also showered with not just love but also lots of presents by our Family Birth Center team. They received a special “First Baby Basket” stuffed with receiving blankets, toys, goodies and gifts for the new parents and baby, including a handmade giant stocking for the holidays lovingly crafted by the nurses.

Taff Cheneweth, Labor and Delivery manager, says starting the new year with a little bundle of joy is an inspiring way to ring in 2024. “Our team sees it as a privilege to be able to share in the joy of growing their families. We thank all the moms and dads for trusting us with their most precious arrival.”

The arrival of the New Year’s baby is a much-anticipated event at the Family Birth Center, explains Cheneweth. “Our team works very hard to make their experience meaningful. They spend many months putting together the quilt and other handmade items, so our families know how much we appreciate their trust.”

Adventist Health Ukiah Valley’s Family Birth Center delivers over 800 babies every year. To learn more, visit adventisthealth.org/ukiah-valley/services/family-birth-center/

DEREK'S NEW YEAR

Greetings and Happy New Year!

The New Year’s vigil was successful again, with four other hardy souls who joined me in the empty lot at Redwood and Franklin streets to bring in the New Year.

I brought my collapsible chair dressed in colored Xmas lights, and some hot tea to break the chill, but it wasn't too cold, only the high 40's and no wind, so quite tolerable.

Downtown was a bit quieter this year than the last six years I've been doing this, except for at our local treasure, the KNYO-LPFM radio studio across Franklin street, which had live music and snacks available, so thanks to Bob Young the station manger and those who helped put that party on.

Feel free to check out their website and support them if you feel so inclined, as they are a non-profit and donation driven local radio station: http://www.knyo.org/

This year there were more folks walking between KNYO, the Golden West, the Welcome Inn and the newest alcohol purveyor, the Tall Man Brewery, located in the former Sears building.

Everyone walking by was friendly and cheerful, nobody appeared "too" intoxicated which was really nice, and there was a noticeable lack of police presence, as usually an officer or two would drive by and wave or say "hello", so perhaps they were busy on actual police calls.

I was joined by fellow MCN Announce List subscribers, Laura, Eric, Janelle, and Fred, we chatted away until Midnight, and then folks came outside the bars, and we all celebrated in a mostly subdued way, save for Laura who gave us a hearty New Years scream.

Sadly, no illicit fireworks this year, but there were several loud bangs and a couple of colorful mortar bursts in the sky elsewhere in town.

After Midnight we all hung around chatting again, solving the worlds problems until about 12:35 when we all decided it was cold and headed home to our warm beds.

Since there was no fireworks display, here's a link to a 40 second video of fireworks that I took last New Years at the same location: derekhoyle.net/NewYears2023/fireworks.html

And thanks to all who emailed me privately wishing us well because they couldn't make it down there to celebrate with us, and know that You were All there in Spirit with us!

This was the seventh year I've sat for this vigil, and likely the last one, as I'm leaving the area later this year, but it's possible I'll return to do this again next New Years Eve, so watch the Announce List.

Warmest regards,

Derek

Fort Bragg

ED NOTES

A READER asks: “It looks to me like you always take the names of friends of yours out of the Catch of the Day. And since your friends are in there all the time, how come?” 

BECAUSE some of them are dangerous, that’s how come. Besides which a lot of them are friends of mine, and partially at least I’m with E.M. Forester who said he’d give up his country before he’d give up his friend, which I’ve modified to: I’d give up my friend if my country gave me San Francisco, Alderpoint and a free American Express Gold Card. 

LAKE COUNTY has never been considered anything like a center of forward-looking public policy, but Lake officials long ago instituted EIRs for large-scale vineyards Lake described as “a focused environmental impact report.” The Press Democrat editorially sneered at Lake’s new policy, claiming against all the visible evidence that vineyards don’t really need EIRs because there aren’t that many of them and they aren’t all that intrusive. 

IN ANDERSON VALLEY, where destructive wine businesses have reorganized the landscape, there is no real control on what landowners can do to not only their own fouled acres but to nearby streams and their chemically-captive neighbors as well. Regulation of the wine industry remains off Mendocino County’s official agenda as great swathes of Anderson Valley’s and Mendocino County’s natural world are destroyed by the booze biz. 

“WATCH IT, MAJOR!” I warned my administrative assistant who, as usual, was unaware the very real hazard posed by exclamatory incoming. “Exclamation marks are flying at us from all directions like telephone poles in a Kansas twister! Quick Get into your post office box.!” 

AS WE TOOK COVER, violent punctuation pounded the outside glass, The Major said wistfully, “You know, boss, I might want to volunteer to teach reading at the Elementary School. I was a kid once.” 

THE SCHOOLS, where exclamatory punctuation has always been comfortable, had advertised for reading tutors. Reluctantly, I agreed to give the would-be volunteer 45 minutes a week off the clock if he wanted to serve his community, but warned the old warrior not to get his hopes up. “Hate to break it to ya, Maj, but they’d put Richard Allen Davis on as a volunteer down there before they’d let you sit down with a kid and a book.” 

THE MAJOR SIGHED, looking up at me with real hurt in his eyes, “They hate us that much, boss?” 

TIMES a thousand, Maj. Whether or not the little savages can master a few simple texts or not is not the purpose of the enterprise; the purpose of the enterprise is secure employment for college grads, big salaries for people who should not be running schools, contracts for the blind architects who design the classrooms. Jobs! Major! Jobs and exclamation points! That’s the point of it all! (This episode of thwarted volunteerism happened prior to the present administration. Present admin would gladly welcome reading tutors, I'm sure.) 

THE MAJOR ADDS: When I was living in San Jose in the 1980s I volunteered with a reading tutoring group associated with a local library for several years. They mostly handled high-school dropouts and a few high school grads who were either illiterate or functionally illiterate but who wanted to be able to read mainly for job purposes. I was assigned to a dozen or so mostly young Mexican men who had signed up for the tutoring. The organization required all tutors to go through several weekends of (silly) training using their materials. Unlike the training, the materials were pretty good. (Particularly useful was their 300 most used words list which they said constituted about 80% of all reading in English.) All of the tutees, being self-selected, really wanted to learn to read so there wasn’t any problem with motivation. I also spent several years as a part-time instructor teaching computers and major software applications at Evergreen Valley Junior College in San Jose with a specially developed “temporary” teaching credential they jiggered up for me. I’ve tutored a few local kids privately since arriving in the Valley as well. I’d be glad to do it again if the scheduling could be worked out. It’s shocking how ill-prepared most students are even though they have completed various coursework — on paper. I now have a unique set of skills and techniques which mainly revolve around finding out what the student is interested in and pursuing it in creative ways. It’s very rewarding watching it dawn on kids that what they think is difficult isn’t, if they just put their minds to it.

UNDERAPPRECIATED ANIMAL CONTROL

Dear AVA and readers, 

Happy New Year 2024. We made it! 

Here I am and I got to reflect upon a vehicle that just drove by headed northbound toward Willits. To me this service(s) is the most harsh next to funeral(s) and neglect where the innocence of man’s best friends suffer a silent genocide of lethal injection. I would be a (tiny) bit happier if these services workers got more: (a) benefits, (b) economic recognition, as well as therapy for the terrible jobs they perform daily. Please send a note to our special elected persons to recognize this unappreciated service. 

Sincerely yours,

Greg Crawford

Fort Bragg

HISTORY TIDBITS OF ORR HOT SPRINGS

by Katy Tahja

As a docent at Mendocino’s Kelley House Museum researching a book on the Orr Hot Springs area last year I had amassed more information than I could ever possibly use in what I planned to be a small publication on the subject. While the who, what, when, where, why and how facts get arranged into chronological order, it’s the odd, poorly documented tidbits of information that keep distracting me.

For those who may not know of this place, Orr Hot Springs was a popular resort and stage station on the road between Ukiah and Mendocino, along the main fork of Big River, which here flows in a deep, wide canyon. A hotel and cottages furnished accommodations for guests, and tents were erected during the summer when needed. Five springs rise near the hotel, ranging in temperature from about 70° to 104°. One of the springs rises in a small swimming plunge, and the others supplied tub and plunge baths.

The resort is still in existence, although not the same place as it was in the late 1800s and twentieth century.

How about Orr Springs and methane gas production? Somewhere, sometime long ago in my mental inventory I heard or read that the resort collected the gases bubbling up with the spring water. In a 1915 photo I recently found, there is a six-foot high and round cement dome attached to the side of the outdoor plunge pool. Another comment I have buried in my research materials said the resort collected enough methane to heat a mangle, which is a commercial ironing machine.

Who taught the owners of the springs how to capture natural gas and use it to run machinery? These were not highly educated folks, although Samuel Orr, the founder, did serve as Mendocino County Treasurer from 1865 to1867. They were fourteen miles west of Ukiah over Low Gap Road. Did a guest tell them about the possibilities of natural gas use? Did they create their own equipment? Did they ever use the gas for lighting the resort?

A link to another history mystery may be connected to methane. Under a current structure is a cast iron relic stamped “Cyclops Iron Works San Francisco.” It was housed in the 1938 hotel that burned down, and it probably fell through the floor during the fire. Cyclops Iron Works produced commercial refrigeration equipment units that possibly had their own generators. How was this unit powered? Could it have been the collected methane gas? While old photos of the resort show the hotels, guests and amenities, the nuts-and-bolts side of resort operation was seldom photographed.

Then there’s the 1901 Ukiah newspaper display advertisement proclaiming “Oil!-A New Enterprise In Mendocino County.” Gas was issuing from rock crevices and if you put a match to it a steady flame burned. There was oily scum on rocks and UC Berkeley Professor Le Conte said these were all high-grade oil indicators. The owners of the springs were looking for $200,000 in investments at $1.00 a share to begin drilling an oil well.

“This investment opportunity could not be surpassed!” The offering must have been a total flop as nary a word was ever seen in print again about this scheme.

How about a proposal to put a railroad in the Orr Springs area? 

In a 1935 Ukiah newspaper the headline read, “Narrow Gauge Railroad Will Run Mile And A Half In The Hills.” The tracks would run from the Whipple Mill, west of the resort area, south to the county road. It was impossible to haul lumber downhill from the mill during severe weather. The railroad would traverse the side of the canyon. To see this proposal in the midst of the Great Depression was unusual, but the mill claimed a payroll of $5,000 a month being paid out and wanted to keep everyone fully employed in winter. Again, nothing was ever seen again in print about this proposal.

A history mystery I came closer to solving was a photo taken at the resort of an unidentified Chinese man dressed like a cook holding a white child.

Orr Hot Springs employed Chinese cooks into the mid-20th century. It took delving into census records to find out who was living in this “household.” The Orr and Weger families managed the resort and yes, they were listed, but also everyone who boarded there. These included cooks, hostlers, carpenters, housekeepers, laborers and others. In the 1910 census, Lim Chum, age 45, a cook, is listed living there. In the 1940 census Jim Sook was a cook, along with a man named Dea, listed as Chinese.

So, part of my writing a short history of a place is focusing on tidbits, so methane gas and Cyclops engines and a railroad a few miles away will make it into the book along with the Chinese cooks.

PS. Author Tahja would be happy to give a brief talk about Orr’s Hot Springs to civic clubs and groups in the County if anyone is interested. Contact her through the Kelley House Museum.

PPS. Author Katy Tahja reports this publication is complete and ready for readers. It’s available at local bookstores and museums including Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino which would be happy to mail a copy to interested folks. Readers can discover if the author found answers to all her questions.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, January 2, 2024

ROBERTO CARNES, Lincoln/Fort Bragg. Domestic abuse, false imprisonment, criminal threats, resisting.

RAYMOND CAVINO, Willits. Domestic battery, criminal threats.

FRANKLIN PATTY, Ukiah. Burglary, vandalism, failure to appear.

ANDREW RIFFLE, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-loitering on private property.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ, Ukiah. Disobeying court order.

RUSSELL VILLALPANDO, Fort Bragg. Under influence, failure to appear.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Dear AVA,

Thank you for the AVA! Whether one loves it, hates it, or is in between, they have to admit it is unique and loaded with terroir! 

David Svehla

San Francisco

MITCH CLOGG:

Let’s get this straight. When I’m on about my maladies and the woes of octoism, it’s not for your sympathy or concern. It’s because most of the stuff around old age isn’t talked about until it hits you like a wrecking ball. Have you ever EVER read or heard the question Have you any idea what size spot on your pants, pajamas, robe or bedsheet a half teaspoon of liquid makes? You damn well know at eighty-five. I’m not kidding when I say I mention this stuff as a service to people younger than me. I’ll make it funny or poetic whenever I’m inspired, but the intention behind it is dead serious.

Much more, maybe later today or tonight.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Amazing when the price of everything else is still through the roof!

Three bags of groceries yesterday cost me $150 dollars in Virginia of all places.

Two packages of ground turkey and no other meat and enough peanut butter to last a couple of days.

Happy Meal is still Up up Up Up from a couple of years ago and has not settled with the lowering of gas prices; why is that?

What was the price in 2000 $1.99? Now up to $8 bucks.

Diesel is still crazy expensive for it being the least processed form of fuel we put in a car.

Why do they keep changing the metrics for what they consider inflation indicators?

Inflation just 3%? We all know that is rubbish. Just simply go out and start buying anything.

THE SUPREME COURT’S ABORTION PILL CASE (New York Times, January 1, 2024)

To the Editor:

Re “Supreme Court Plans to Hear Challenge to Abortion Pill Access” (news article, Dec. 14):

It is scientifically and ethically absurd that our highest court will even consider that an “abortion pill” was not sufficiently evaluated. Over 30 years ago, I was part of the team that first brought this medication to the United States from Europe, where it had already been shown to be safe and effective. The American Medical Association agreed, with a policy statement I drafted. It still took the F.D.A. over four years to approve it — hardly a hasty process.

Since then, vast research and clinical experience have confirmed its judgment. Our courts are supposed to be above politics and to honor our constitutional separation of church and state.

Most of the anti-choice activists challenging this medication are avowedly “Christian.” That any court, let alone the Supreme one, will even entertain their blatant disregard for medical science, women’s reproductive needs, our Constitution and strong American majority opinion is a national embarrassment.

Steve Heilig
San Francisco

POETRY… the magic of… I could name at least 100 poets that I've read and loved in my life...my life since poetry discovered me as a student at Fresno State College (now CSU Fresno) in 1967/68. Of this 100, the one that stands out the loudest, in my face, in my heart...

Kenneth Patchen! (1911 – 1972)

“Kenneth Patchen was a major American poet and novelist, Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972) influenced by Dadaism and Surrealism. He experimented with different forms of writing and incorporated painting, drawing, and jazz music into his works, which have been compared with those of William Blake and Walt Whitman.”

(Credit for some post quotes and photos/illustrations goes to: Vitro Nasu - Iconoclastic Incubator)

Let us have madness openly.

O men Of my generation.

Let us follow

The footsteps of this slaughtered age:

See it trail across Time's dim land

Into the closed house of eternity

With the noise that dying has,

With the face that dead things wear--

nor ever say

We wanted more; we looked to find

An open door, an utter deed of love,

Transforming day's evil darkness;

but We found extended hell and fog Upon the earth,

and within the head

A rotting bog of lean huge graves.

LET’S SEE WHAT HERB HAS TO SAY TODAY

Gee, What A Crazy Town

by Herb Caen

Historic parks being sold down the drain for a mess of parkage, bearded beatniks seeking peace of mind by chewing Zen-Zen, grown men fighting like kids over a multimillion-dollar stadium dedicated to a child’s game. Gray Line buses hauling gray-faced tourists through the gray city on a gray day, a City crew washing the Broadway Tunnel as the rain splahses outside, Chinese selling Japanese trinkets to South Americans carrying German cameras...Gee what a grazy town.

* * *

Police cars bearing “No Riders” stickers prowling around in search of somebaddy to pick up, a splendid example of Greek Revival architecture ( the Old Mind)being used for little more than a pigeon roost, Tom Sawyerish kids washing a fire engine while the coffee sipping firemen lounge against a wall, derelict bildings being town down along Skid Road to leave the cold and homeless even colder and more homeless, fur-clad women huddling under umbrellas to peeer at resort clothes in the downtown shop windows ...Golly, what a mixed-up place.

* * *

Two hundred people standing in a row at the Zoo to watch four Teddy-bears from Down Under chew dully on eucalyptus leaves, a cable car waiting in a lot at the foot of Hyde like a windup toy whose key has been lost, an $ 85,000-a -year baseball star searching in vain for an apartment to rent at any price, $7,5000 cars parked outside all night because their owners’ $500-a-month apartments have everything but garages, Coit Tower going dark at midnight because that’s late enough now in the city that once stayed up all night...Jeepers, where do we go from here and what do we do next?

* * *

Crippled newsboys cheerily shouting the headlines of tragedies less poignant than their, bay-windowed beauties of the Western Addition disappearing to make room for concrete blockhouses that will solve the population explosion in explosions of monotony. Symphony musicians standing around the rear of the Opera House after a concert like kids with no place to go when school’s out, at 6 p.m. the flowers hanging their heads in the sidewalk stands as though they know it’s time to call it a day... Wow, so many bits and piecees of nothing and everything adding up to the whole which is equal to the sum of the encircled squares.

* * *

Jobless men killing time by watching afternoon shows designed for women in the window in the window of a Market St. TV shop, a blind man humming a tune as he taps his way along Montgomery with a transistor radio plugged into his ear, a dear old lady ( bedridden) living all alone in a 14-room Fairmont penthouse across the street from a mansonn that was once her home, the world’s greatest disc jockey doing his bit for culture by promoting a Haiku poetry contest whose winner will get a trip to Japan, ships from the seven seas neatly filed away for the night along the Embarcadero—-their deck lights on as though afraid of the dark...Endless odds and ends of the endlessly odd wetropolis under the rainy skies of Drabuary.

* * *

Stone cold new Hall of Justice standing bare and square against the freeway running wild with lawbreakers, little old Chinese land teetering up the California St. hill on one-bound feet to feed bread crusts to the boundless seagulls, Sterling Hayden’s romantic schooner lying tethered to the shores of Sausalito like a free soul brought back to earth, the sea lions back from their mating at last and sprawled in brown blobs on Seal Rocks—every now and then slithering into the icy water to escape the warm tourist stares from the Cliff House...Animal, vegetable, mineral in the soaring city built on stone and dredged-up dreams. 

* * *

Well-clipped poodles walking, well-polished chauffeurs along the well-manicured pathways of Lafayette Square, Beniamino Bufano doodling a pat of butter into a tiny masterpiece of a statue while lunching at Veneto’s, enchanted natives gazing with ah-struck eyes through the windows of Top o’the Mark while the visitors they’ve brought along glare around for a waiter, the Zellerbach building looking as delicately flimsy as a house of glass cards as it teeters on its stilts against its concretely staid neighbors, the old men of Union Sauare sitting rain-soaked on their benches with soggy newspapers over their heads and soggy squabs at their feet... Ah, Baghdad-bu-the-Bay, where the living is easy for pigeons who get their Square meals from Union men.

* * *

A bored cashier yawning a gum-sticky yawn in the lobby of a Market St. movie palace festooned with photos of nude ladies who look even more bored, a Filipino barber on kearny sawing away on his fiddle in the window as though to lure in a customer for a trimming,a few cars parked forlornly on the lot that once held the Montgomery Block’s thousand priceless memories, dead seagulls strewn in nightmare profusion along Candlestick Saway while their more fortunate mates hover in a ravenous cloud over the dumps lining the way to the magic city whose towers shine in the distance... look away, look awy from the death and debris—look ahead to the gate of Paradise.

* * *

The timelessly San Francisco smell—-clean and right—of wet eucalyptus in the presidio that guards the past, two jet fighters climbing fast into the murky sky to guard the present that is always tense, midnight lights burning high in the downtown skyscrapers as yesterday’s trash is cleared away in readiness for the future that will soon rise out of the East Bay Hills...What a town. Gee, what a crazy town.

WOODY GUTHRIE’S “NEW YEARS RULIN’S” FROM 1943

I made a few New Year’s resolutions this week — not for me, but as self-improvement ideas for some of the people running our country. No need for them to thank me — happy to help.

I drafted one for the GOP’s whole ultra-rightist gaggle of lawmakers who keep blocking passage of health coverage for poor people. “Resolved: We will forego the gold-plated socialized health care we now take from taxpayers, because it’s only right that we be in the same leaky boat as our constituents.”

Then there are America’s 735 narcissistic billionaires who obviously need to find a moral compass. They’re so self-absorbed they keep wasting their money and “genius” on phantasmagoric plutocratic schemes to separate their fortunes from the well-being of the rest of us. Then they wonder why they are not beloved. So, rich ones, let me help. Resolve in 2024 to demonstrate a little less hubris/a little more humanity, less strut/more sharing. Practice in front of a mirror — try seeing beyond you to the Common Good. It’s a beautiful and deeply rewarding place if you can find it.

And I didn’t overlook you Washington operatives and Big Money donors of the Democratic Party. Please resolve to camp out in grassroots America this year — where everyday little-d democrats want and need your attention and support. Not just in safe Blue districts, but especially in rural, purple, and even in red areas. You’ve abandoned them in recent years, but they still yearn to build a progressive governing majority for America’s future.

Of course, the problem with New Year’s resolutions is keeping them, and my honorees can’t be counted on. So, we have to keep pushing them to do what’s right.

NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS

by Paul Modic

How much of a joke are New Years resolutions, actually there’re not really funny, have been thoroughly discredited, and exposed as a silly ritual which brings almost zero success or change to anyone, in other words you’re hopeless.

And yet, change is possible, and maybe declaring or writing down a regret or goal can actually contribute, or at least “get you in the flow” of positive change. 

For example, my “2021 Year in Review” essay just popped up and mentioned my remorse that I didn’t have it together to eradicate the invasive bamboo I’d dumbly planted as needless camo years ago, and why hadn’t I replaced the falling down deck? Though not exactly a resolution, three months later the bamboo was cut down and uprooted and six months later I had a new deck! A little “public shaming” can sometimes go a long way. (Update I went back to the bamboo site a year later and it took about an hour to pickaxe out the new shoots and root clumps.) 

Yes, change is possible, though mostly whatever we’re doing now is where we’re spozed to be, even if that means being stuck in web of procrastination: addicted, broke, without hope, or any other variety of reality.

I know this only from my own example, that even at the ripe old age of sixty-nine (gee, “the kid” is old!) I was extremely motivated to make some changes last year, mainly the behavior adjustments necessary in my battle with insomnia, one which it feels like I’m winning today, though maybe not manana.

So if you have a New Years resolution, very similar to a piece of dog turd, here’s what you do: tell me what it is and I will berate you, shame you, guilt-trip you, and encourage you to accomplish your goal. (If you make it three months I will expect a one-time payment of breakfast at the Woodrose.)

That’s the only way this will work, if you don’t have a minder slapping you around, if you just want to be yourself, then you’re going to just sit there procrastinating with all your problems. (Can I have a minder? I’ll buy you breakfast!)