Mendocino County Today: Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024

Cloudy | Ten Mile | Navarro Watch | Dubliners | AVUSD News | Mystery Beach | AV Events | AQMD Questions | Best Heaven | Reckless BOS | Mouth Corners | Ed Notes | Pup Dozen | Grange News | Trash-Talkers | Old 253 | Ralph Kent | Yesterday's Catch | Peace Fridays | Ceasefire Resolution | Marco Radio | Confused Monkeys | Cold Firing | Jean Cione | Arrow Store | Freeing Klamath | Sinatra Fans | Snow Job | Genocide Evidence | Israel Move | Skin Deep | Climate Denial | Smoking Newsies

RAINFALL (past 24 hours): Leggett 5.56" - Laytonville 3.47" - Willits 3.43" - Covelo 2.49" - Ukiah 1.65" - Yorkville 1.44" - Hopland 1.37" - Boonville 1.36"

LINGERING SPOTTY SHOWERS tapered off quickly this morning, giving a way a drier weather through Monday. A shortwave trough and associated frontal system may bring a chance of precipitation and gusty southerly winds Tuesday, but looks weaker than the Saturday system. After another period of dry weather Wednesday and Thursday, a stronger upper level trough is expected to approach late next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): As advertised (for a change) a healthy 1.97" of rainfall in the last 24 hours. A cloudy 51F this Sunday morning on the coast. Mostly cloudy but dry skies today then partly sunny tomorrow. Rain returns for Tuesday then the off & on rain pattern continues. Next weekend is looking very wet.

RAINFALL IN LITTLE RIVER; NAVARRO RIVER

My rain gauge just passed 3.0" and is now at 3.13" since midnight. Yesterday up to midnight was 0.07". So the storm total to now is 3.20" and still rising. Due to the flood warnings I stayed home from my daily round trip to Ukiah to visit my wife, who is recuperating in a nursing home there.

Navarro River observations: NWS forecasts a Navarro River crest of 14.4 ft at 6 AM Sunday morning, up from 5.24 ft. Saturday morning. The river mouth remains open as of Friday morning on my way to Ukiah. The outlet channel through the sandbar takes a sharp turn to the south and runs parallel to the beach for 1/3 the length of the beach before finally reaching the sea.

Over the past week of near daily observations I saw the estuary level rise high enough to completely flood the marsh on the south side, then fall low enough that none of it was flooded by Friday morning. The rise was mostly due to restricted outflow due to the length of the shallow channel paralleling the beach. When that channel was shortened by surf action, the flow rate increased, resulting in the estuary level falling. The surge of water coming down the river from the current storm will surely open a straight channel through the sandbar.

In my opinion 128 will not be closed in the immediate future due to flooding.

Hope you're staying home warm and dry.

Nick Wilson

AV UNIFIED NEWS

Dear Anderson Valley Community,

It was fantastic to welcome your students back to school. I think we all enjoyed the holiday break, but I know that the staff was excited to get back in the swing of the routine with your students. Thank you to everyone that is making an effort to be on time for daily attendance. This is really going to be a push for us in the coming year as we stabilize the budget. The state is changing requirements that may allow us to require Saturday school to make up attendance, so please get your student to school daily.

How fun was it to host Point Arena last night for basketball! Thank you to everyone that attended and for the staff members that chaperoned. A huge shout out to Marcia Martinez for gifting the decades old Point Arena cheerleading bullhorn to the Point Arena cheer squad in a thoughtful exchange coordinated with cheer coach Yesenia Pena. What fun! I'm always so full of Panther Pride when I see our coaches on the sidelines in their shirts and ties combined with those special touches where we really welcome our visitors. The Snack Shack was in full swing and it was great to see a crowd. A huge shout out to our coaches Luis Espinoza, Belma and Justin Rhoades, Yesenia Penia, and Shauna Espinoza in the Snack Shack.

I apologize that the Honor Roll ceremony was also scheduled for the same night. We had scheduled that out and advertised the date long before Winter break, and I was afraid changing the date would create more confusion than holding it. We will make sure all students get their certificates and awards. Thank you to Ms. Cook and Ms. Ewing for presenting. So great to have our students and parents that weren’t involved in the game able to attend and be celebrated. Speaking of celebrating, we are excited about the 41 students qualifying for CSF last semester. That is an achievement honor for grades 9th-12th and we were up from 21 students last Spring!

I would like to give a note of thanks to our school board members. They volunteer their time with monthly meetings and their leadership is integral to the progress the district has been making. If you haven’t had a chance to do so next time you see Dick Browning, Linnea Totten, Saoirse Byrne, Erika Gatlin, and Justin Rhoades, please express your thanks for their time and energy.

Math pilots are underway at the elementary school! You may have your students talking about math in a different way or sharing about the new materials. Pretty cool! Ms. Thomas-Swett and Ms. Pantaja have also been working on a Rural Math Collaborative coaching model with team teaching and mentoring opportunities with our staff. Very Good Stuff and the staff is really excited too!

If you have an upper grade student seeking a letter of recommendation for internship or scholarship applications please remind them to request it early. I know our staff is always delighted to support these requests, but it takes a little time to create the letters. Just check in with your student on this process. They are almost adults, but they haven’t been through this before and they might need some help or nudging. Of course. If you have any questions about program requirements, don’t hesitate to reach out to Chris Howard.

Our Healthy Kids Staff, Student, and Parent Climate Survey will go out in mid-February. This is a check in about the school/district climate. It is anonymous and measures all kinds of things related to connectedness, bullying, safety, satisfaction etc… If you do not want your student to participate in grades 7th-12th, please just drop an email to mbenitez@avpanthers.org. We use this information, as we evaluate our strengths and weaknesses and plan for changes in the program.

Also, I wanted to let you know that two of our ambitious seniors are trying to create a drug and alcohol awareness assembly loosely modeled after the Every 15 Minutes program that tries to show in a safe and supported environment the impacts on a community related to substance use and death. This is a structured simulation and any students involved in the storyline will have a permission slip approved by a parent/guardian. Other students will be part of the “crowd” and participate in a post-event assembly. Again, all of these activities occur on site, but if you have any questions or concerns about your student’s participation, please let me know.

At the elementary school, the kitchen remodel is in for the first stage of DSA permit review. That’s always like running the medieval gauntlet to get through that process but our architect Don Alameida does a great job. We will keep you posted on that one. We also have received prices for new flooring in the corridors. The updated color scheme will be introduced throughout the interior in sections as Miguel works his way through the property.

Saturday School on January 21 IS CANCELED. We are accepting sign up for February 10. This is a fun-filled Saturday that your students shouldn’t miss. This is for grades TK through six. Please sign up in the elementary school office. Please remember if you sign up to make sure that your child attends. A huge shout out to Charlotte and staff for this program.

Over the next couple of weeks we will be holding a safety meeting at each site. Through a collaboration with the county office our plan has been updated. We had some preliminary meetings related to the plan, but we need to have a final review of the draft before it goes to the board. The high school meeting is scheduled January 18 at 2:15. Please join us.

We have been working diligently on the paperwork for the Caltrans track and field. Soils and survey work is underway. The Junior/Senior high school remodel contract has been returned and we are pricing out some additional upgrades for the new lockers in the corridors and flooring as well as new windows on the front of the property.

We are looking for one more parent to serve on the bond oversight committee. This committee meets approximately twice a year to review the bond expenses. A parent from either site is most welcome. It cannot be an employee. Please contact me at lsimson@avpanthers.org if you have any interest. 

Please remember no school this Monday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Be safe and thank you for all you do to partner with us for your kids!

Louise Simson

Superintendent

NAME THIS SITE…

AV TODAY

Free Entry to Hendy Woods State Park for local residents
Sun 01 / 14 / 2024 at 8:00 AM
Where: Hendy Woods State Park
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/3661)

AV Grange Pancake and Egg Breakfast
Sun 01 / 14 / 2024 at 8:30 AM
Where: Anderson Valley Grange , 9800 CA-128, Philo, CA 95466
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/3751)

SARAH KENNEDY OWEN: Re the abandoning of the Veterans to make way for Air Quality Management District: two questions: (1) how is the (current Veteran’s office on Observatory necessary for AQMD to meet? There are currently 4 members. Question (2): How and/or why is AQMD “losing” their current building which is directly next door to Redwood Quality Management, which is, I gather connected to Jeanine Miller, who made the decision to kick the veterans out of the building now being claimed by AQMD?

TIME FOR CHANGE IN MENDO

Letter to the Editor

As the upcoming election nears, I would like to share my thoughts. I retired nearly two years ago after serving 15 years as Mendocino County Treasurer-Tax Collector, so my views come from inside and outside public service.

As I stated two years ago, I believe most of the current members of the Board of Supervisors were ill-equipped to comprehend the financial and budgetary complexities inherent with the operation of the county, I believe that is still the case today. When the Board moved forward with their reckless non-plan to consolidate the offices of the Auditor-Controller and the Treasurer-Tax Collector, they managed to destabilize the entire financial engine of the county. Regardless of comments from various supervisors, this has set the county on a negative path going forward.

We deserve a Board that concentrates on the difficult problems at hand and does not create new ones that do not exist. For example, a quality-of-life issue on which this Board needs to concentrate is the homeless situation that is deteriorating in our community, particularly our downtowns. Millions of dollars are spent annually, and the problem is only getting worse. Our downtowns will never economically thrive in the current environment.

The Supervisor in the district where I reside, Maureen Mulheren, was recently quoted as saying the homeless situation has improved. 

IT HAS NOT. 

Drive through the streets of her district alone and it is evident. The Board of Supervisors and the City Councils throughout this county need to work together to minimize the homeless impact on our citizens. Ms. Mulheren has had the opportunity now for years as she served on both the Ukiah City Council and the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors.

IT IS TIME FOR CHANGE, as members of the public we DESERVE better leadership than what we are currently receiving. We need bold and competent leaders that are not afraid to deal with the difficult issues at hand. At this time, we have three seats on the Board of Supervisors that are up for re-election. 

On a positive note, we will definitely have two new supervisors in the First and Fourth Districts. It is imperative we also have a new supervisor in the Second District. Please join me in voting for JACOB BROWN for Second District Supervisor. He is the positive change we need now!

Shari Schapmire 

Ukiah

ED NOTES

I FIND JUDGE FAULDER'S ruling that there isn't enough evidence that DA Eyster is biased against Chamise Cubbison in defiance of the obvious. The defiance of the obvious, unsurprisingly, is echoed by the per diem hustlers at the state's Attorney General's office, all of it your basic standing of reality on its head. I'll spare you the re-hash, but anybody following the case via Mike Geniella's scrupulous reporting knows that Eyster has been after Cubbison since the very day she challenged his reimburseables.

BESIDE THE POINT, but doesn't it frost you that highly paid civil servants like Eyster chisel small amounts of public money for stuff they should be paying for out of their own comfortable incomes? You want to buy your County pals, all of them also nicely compensated, steak dinners and drinks at the Broiler Steak House and call it a “training” that the taxpayers should reimburse you for? When Ms. Cubbison says No, you then use your position as Mendo's top law enforcement officer to get Ms. Cubbison unanimously fired by the five cringing incompetents dysfunctioning as supervisors, her ruination occurring outside even the pretense of due process and no charges having been filed against her. Where the hell are we, Ecuador?

ODD that Eyster, who has always been an effective, honest DA in that he's generally fair and proportional in who he prosecutes, by which I mean he doesn't overcharge the defenseless, and except for this Cubbison departure from an otherwise rational and honorable career, the guy suddenly veers off into a totally irrational vendetta he's not only going to lose but a vendetta that's going to cost our broke ass county a ton of money.

I'VE HOPED from the beginning of this fiasco that Cubbison would sue the supervisors as individuals. Without their craven capitulation to Eyster's irrational wrath, Cubbison would at least have had the protection of that vaunted American guarantee, the presumption of innocence.

A CALIFORNIA democratic socialist has been slammed for pushing a wealth tax that could even apply to those who choose to leave the state. 

ANYTHING that makes the Trumpers crazier deserves high marks, so when a Bay Area assemblyman, Alex Lee, proposed a one percent yearly tax rate on individuals with a net worth of more than $50 million, and a 1.5 percent rate on Californians with a net worth of over $1 billion, a great keening went up from the media defenders of billionaires who, collectively, own America's legislative bodies up to and including Congress. “My god! 1.5 percent? We'll be selling apples on the street.” You'd have thought Lenin himself had just appeared in Sacramento. Assemblyman Lee deserves major attaboys from the millions out there living paycheck to paycheck. (Our alleged reps, McGuire and Wood, are probably still hiding under their beds.)

THE ANNOUNCEMENT that the Mateel Community Center will revive Reggae on the River this summer of 2024 inspired this comment:

“Naloxone-On-The-River”, the most remarkable little money grab festival on the North Coast, where you can do drugs for nearly a solid week while listening to anachronistic music while located nearly in the center of absolute nowhere but close to a deceased town-like place that has a great pharmacy, a moribund hospital and even an Ambulance or two…

Whatever you do, remember that somebody stole the proceeds a few years ago, and the crime was never solved, so don’t pay the Mateel in cash!

It IS a fundraiser, I suppose, but all around it’s just a leftover, a previous part of a colorful time in history…

Do Gen Z’rs like Reggae? Does anyone?

10,000 COVID deaths last month. $299 for a ticket?

Go down to Dolores Park, any sunny weekend, and see a better show…

It’s pretty difficult to believe that the Mateel can revive the Frankenstein Festival at all, or get the permits…

THE GALLUP POLL claimed earlier this year that “96% of Americans say they believe in God.” Seems high to me even given the willingness of most people to say whatever they think will please the pollster. I loved the defiant remarks of Charlie Orr, 85, at the recent national convention of American Atheists Inc. at the San Francisco Airport Hotel in Millbrae: “I’ll show ‘em how a real atheist dies,” Orr said. “I’ll look the Grim Reaper in the eye and spit in his face. I’m not going to hell, because there is no hell.”

AMERICAN ATHEISTS INC. aren't against other people practicing whatever religion they like, the Atheists just don’t want to pay for it. Churches are already tax exempt, schools are beginning to teach the wildly implausible myths of creationism, the Ten Commandments are going up on the wall in schools all over the place, and the federal government is funneling public money to alleged church charities, portions of which are used to proselytize. 

THE FAITH in the efficacy in the Ten Commandments is especially baffling, given the social and economic organization of this country. If killing were outlawed the Pentagon would be out of business, and if usury were banned business would be out of business. The rest of the strictures are mostly practiced by most of us anyway because if we didn’t practice them we’d all have to do our grocery shopping in Humvees.

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WHENEVER we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.

— Thomas Paine

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ALL RELIGIONS issue Bibles against Satan, and say the most injurious things against him, but we never hear his side.

— Mark Twain

UKIAH SHELTER PETS OF THE WEEK

Puppies! Puppies! Puppies! We're loaded with puppies. These cuties are from a litter of twelve recently brought to the shelter. They are 2 months old and weigh 6-8-ish pounds. All these puppies are friendly and playful, and looking for their forever homes. Puppies are wonderful, but they take a lot of work. We always remind potential adopters they will need to spend lots of time, energy and TLC to ensure their adorable bundle of fluff will mature into a well behaved and loved member of the family. We expect these pups to be medium-sized adults.

To see all of our puppies, plus our adult dogs and cats, head to mendoanimalshelter.com 

For information about adoptions, call 707-467-6453. 

Check out our Facebook Page and please share our posts!

A NEW YEARS MESSAGE FROM CAPTAIN RAINBOW!

It's a new year and the light is coming a bit earlier and staying a bit longer, and the AV Grange is planning for a new year.

Our ever popular monthly AV Grange Pancake Breakfast comes the 2nd Sunday of every month. This month it's Sunday January 14th, 8:30-11:00. You can count on our crack crew to whip up delicious pancakes from our secret Grange recipe, gluten free if you ask. Bacon, eggs, orange juice, coffee and tea along with an array of toppings round out our offerings. Almost always there is tasteful,(pun intended), live music provided by the beloved Los Panquelleros who play for pancakes. The well experienced crew could use an occasional break every once in a while so anyone who would like to volunteer and get a free pancake breakfast should call Bill or Gail Meyer at 895-2318.

The 31st “annual” AV Grange Variety Show is back to it's traditional date of the beginning of March. This year it's Friday March 8 and Saturday March 9. Put it on your calendars now because we want you to think up, create, practice, polish and be prepared for the tech rehearsals the weekend before the show.

If you don't know about the Vshow you've either just moved here or live under a rock. Ask somebody who's been, they'll fill you in. Big fun and a time for all the Valley to come together and enjoy each others real, live company. There are no tryouts, everyone's a winner in this deal. We especially like skits, acts of skill or craft, and of course the animal acts! Call Captain Rainbow at 472-9189 or 895-3807 with your act, even if it's just an idea perhaps we can help you get it onstage. Operators are standing by…

KIRK VODOPALS:

I get the impression that all the other towns think that Mendo is full of urbanite, affluent snobs… or something similar. I think that stereotype might hold true in some cases, but, in general, knowing these kids and families (including mine), we’re all just hard-working folks making a go of it on the coast.

Regardless of impressions, the behavior of the adults at some of these sporting events is downright despicable. And I should know, I grew up in Ferndale.

It’s lame and pathetic cuz the kids reflect that behavior on the courts and fields.

I’m obviously biased, but I think the teams I help coach tend to be less trash-talking.

And it’s pretty rewarding to beat those teams and towns who seem to have the worst behavior.

PICTURED is California State Route 253 between Ukiah and Boonville as it was featured in the July/August 1966 California Highways & Public Works. The subject of California State Route 253 on Boonville-Ukiah Road is addressed in said volume. 

The history of Boonville-Ukiah Road is stated in the article to have begun in 1851 when it was known as the Anderson Valley Trail. In 1868 John Gschwend successfully petitioned the State Legislature to upgrade the existing Anderson Valley Trail to a franchise toll road. The Gschwend Toll Road was primarily used to transport lumber and eventually was incorporated into Mendocino County’s public road system no later than 1896. The Gschwend Toll Road became Boonville-Ukiah Road and was upgraded to a 10 foot width during 1896. Boonville-Ukiah Road was further modernized beginning in 1952 under the Federal Aid Secondary program. The Boonville-Ukiah Road formally became California State Route 253 upon the completion of the final improvement contract during March 1963.

ON THIS DAY IN MENDOCINO COAST HISTORY…

January 13, 1908 - Tragedy struck the Kent family on their 270-acre ranch in Little River. About 6am, 16-year-old Ralph Kent, second oldest son of rancher Nathaniel W. Kent, went into the family barn to complete his morning chores. A few minutes later, his father found Ralph unconscious on the barn floor, due to an electrical shock.

A transformer on a nearby pole had malfunctioned, causing a large power surge through the barn’s electrical line. When Ralph entered the barn, he found the electric light globe lying on the floor. The cord that ran to the light had been suspended from a rafter by a loop of baling rope. The heat generated by the surge burned through the rope, and the fixture fell to the ground. As Ralph picked up the globe, he touched a live wire. Dr. Peirsol was summoned immediately but could not revive him.

Ralph was a sophomore at Mendocino High School, where he played on the baseball team and was known as a smart and friendly student. He was an editor of the high school year book, assistant editor of the high school literary society's journal, and won several prizes for essay-writing. His most recent essay had won second prize on the topic of “What will most rapidly advance the material interests of Mendocino?”

Funeral services were held at the Mendocino Presbyterian Church two days after his death. "Rev. Hough, the pastor, officiated, assisted by Rev. Fisk. One of the largest concourses in the town’s history assembled to pay respect to the boy’s memory. The high school and faculty marched to the church in a body. The students and friends furnished some beautiful floral pieces. Six young men of the high school acted as pallbearers.” Ralph was buried in the Kent family plot in Evergreen Cemetery.

Front Row (l-r): Arthur Nicholson, Frank Guptill, Ralph Kent, Jim Pritchard, Fred (Bun) Pritchard, Harry White.

Middle Row: Ella Gordon, Carrie Guptill, Zella Ledford, Eveline Wallace, Dolly Smith.

Back Row: Albert Anderson, Dwight Kent, Charles Perkins, Palle Anderson, Emma Barton Coombs, teacher, Fred Hansen, Tom Wallace, Chester White, Herb Guptill.

(www.kelleyhousemuseum.org)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, January 13, 2024

DYLAN DIXON, Fort Bragg. Loaded firearm in public, contributing to delinquency of minor.

JUSTIN LOUDERMILK, Clearlake/Ukiah. Controlled substance, false personation of another.

DEMETER MCFADIN, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, trespassing.

MIREYA MELLO-GARCIA, Fort Bragg. Contributing to delinquency of minor. 

ROBERT MOYER, Willits. DUI causing bodily injury.

MICHAEL PHILLIPS, Tehachapi/Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, county parole violation.

THOMAS THORSON, Nice/Ukiah. County parole violation.

BEN WADE, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs. 

WORLDWIDE MEDITATION FOR PEACE

Every Friday, 11:30-noon, California Time. Spread the word!

(American Veterans For Peace, via Katy Tahja, for Korean War Vet Neil ‘Eric’ Erickson, former Mendocino Coast Resident. Eric sends greetings to friends in the County and offers this way to work towards world peace.)

MEMO OF THE AIR: Keeper of the purple twilight.

”Human intelligent agency depends more on the intricate sphere of ideas and the cultural intellect that we have grown over thousands of years than on the quirks of our biological brains. The minds of modern humans have more in common with ChatGPT than with humans 10,000 years ago.” -Joscha Bach (via Cliff Pickover)

Here's the recording of last night's (Friday 2024-01-12) eight-hour-long Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org (and, for the first hour, also 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino): http://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0575

I'd like to read your writing on the radio. Just email it to me. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there. But if people in your story swear like a muleteer I have to wait till after 10pm local time to read it, to protect other people's children from getting their mouths washed out with soap. That is literally the FCC's rationale for the Safe Harbor Rule.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

Rolling Stones – Play With Fire (remixed, remastered, clear as a bell) (1965). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S71msF1p5XI

Most of this is pure negligence and excessive speed. Some is sleep-driving. Much of this trouble could have been avoided or made less traumatic/expensive by drivers just leaving more space around themselves; of course that can't protect you from someone running a light and ramming you, but so? None of these are the self-driving cars techno-Luddites have been bitching about lately, which aren't even a ten-thousandth of the problem. From this video I take that, in America, the common thing to say when you see someone crash is, "Oh, my God!" Or, like the guy at 19:40, "Oh, [muted swear]! Oh, my God! OH, my God! OH, my God! Oh my God oh my God ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod ohmygawwd. HOLY [muted swear]!" In Russia it's different; they're rarely shocked, much less horrified, but rather gently, ruefully amused. A smiling-sad gruff vocal-fry grumbled bozhe moi, oy yayoi is on the other end of the scale from a shrieked WTF! Shit! Oh, my Gawd! Look up Russian dashcam crashes, you'll see. https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-crash-cam-videos-of-2023.html

And lovely AI-designed KitchenAide mixers. (Arrow through the set of eight.) https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=3665063487147193&set=pcb.1459365404759951

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

WOMAN RECORDS ‘SLAP IN THE FACE’ FIRING By San Francisco Tech Company

by Stephen Council

On Wednesday, a frustrated tech worker gave TikTok front-row seats to her cold, corporate firing.

Brittany Pietsch, who started a sales job at the San Francisco tech company Cloudflare in August, recorded a video of herself being told she was fired — and getting little other information about the decision. Rather than provide any specific reasoning to Pietsch, the two Cloudflare employees on the other end of a call ran through trite buzzwords and corporate platitudes.

They opened the call by telling Pietsch she hadn’t met the company’s performance expectations in 2023, and she would be let go. Pietsch stopped them seconds into their speech, replying that she’d finished a three-month onboarding period before the holiday season and that she’d received nothing but praise from her manager.

Over the course of the nine-minute video, Pietsch repeatedly asked for details about her performance that might warrant a firing. The Cloudflare employees, a human resources representative named Rosie and a man she called Dom, appear not to have any — the most specific they got is telling her that the firing is part of a “collective calibration for Cloudflare.”

“I have really given my whole energy and life over the last four months to this job, and to be let go, for no reason, is like a huge slap in the face — from a company that I really wanted to believe in,” Pietsch told them.

The video ends with the Cloudflare employees finally wearing the young woman down.

“It just doesn’t make any sense that you guys still have not been able to give me a reason why I’m being let go,” Pietsch said.

“Just, from a process perspective, your questions are valid, this isn’t going to be the forum and the situation where we’re able to go into the detail that you’re looking for,” Dom responded.

“But then, when?” Pietsch interrupted. “If it’s not as I’m getting fired, it’s certainly not going to be after, when I’m no longer part of the company.”

After a pause, Rosie, the human resources rep, said that she was taking notes and feedback and that they’d “circle back.” She then pointed out, “It’s not going to change the outcome of the meeting,” and pushed the conversation toward the next steps for Pietsch, saying, “I think it’s clear that you have questions that we cannot give answers to.”

Pietsch’s video and repost of the exchange had been viewed more than 300,000 times on TikTok as of Friday afternoon. In a follow-up post on LinkedIn, Pietsch wrote that the call felt like she was “in the twilight zone,” and that she’d never be able to wrap her mind around the many “cold, unexplainable” firings she’d learned about since.

The video even reached Cloudflare’s CEO, Matthew Prince, who responded on X. He wrote the company had fired about 40 people out of 1,500 in its “go-to-market org” — corporate language for its customer-facing workers — and defended the decision to fire Pietsch. He wrote the company’s mistake was not being “more kind and humane” as they did it.

“Sadly, we don’t hire perfectly,” Prince wrote. “We try to fire perfectly. In this case, clearly we were far from perfect. The video is painful for me to watch. Managers should always be involved. HR should be involved, but it shouldn’t be outsourced to them, No employee should ever actually be surprised they weren’t performing.”

Prince also threw in an odd metaphor, in which he likened Cloudflare to the never-won-a-championship Phoenix Suns and Pietsch to a future hall-of-fame point guard.

“Importantly, just because we fire someone doesn’t mean they’re a bad employee,” he wrote. “It doesn’t mean [they] won’t be really, really great somewhere else. Chris Paul was a bad fit for the Suns, but he’s undoubtedly a great basketball player.”

Hopefully Pietsch also continues her career at a superior organization.

(SFgate.com)

Although most people familiar with Jean Cione knew her as a longtime professor of sports medicine and director of women’s athletics at Eastern Michigan University, she also had an earlier career as a standout player in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). Cione primarily pitched and played first base for five teams between 1945 and 1954. For three seasons, she played for the Rockford Peaches...

NATION’S LARGEST DAM REMOVAL MARKS MILESTONE: THE FREEING OF A MAJOR CALIFORNIA RIVER

by Kurtis Alexander

The nation’s largest dam-removal project is reaching a major milestone this month as work crews release the water behind three dams on the Klamath River, leaving the storied waterway in Northern California and southern Oregon to flow freely for the first time in a century.

The drawdown of the reservoirs and the unleashing of the river, which began Thursday at the 189-foot-high Iron Gate Dam, is a necessary — and hugely transformative — step before the three hydroelectric facilities in the remote Siskiyou Mountains are fully removed. Last fall, workers took out a smaller, fourth dam on the river.

The deconstruction effort, about a six-hour drive from San Francisco, is the culmination of a decades-long push by Native Americans, environmentalists and fishermen to bring the 250-mile Klamath River back to its natural state. Most fundamentally, advocates want to see more salmon return to the pristine waters born in Oregon’s high desert and emptying on the California coast where the power project has blocked fish passage since the early 1900s.

“We’re now pulling the plug and throwing it away,” said Frankie Myers, vice chair of the Yurok Tribe, one of the indigenous groups supporting dam removal and celebrating this month’s drawdowns. “Not to get too mushy about it but being able to look at the river flow for the first time in more than 100 years, it’s incredibly important to us. It’s what we’ve been fighting for: to see the river for itself.”

The remaining two reservoirs upstream of Iron Gate Dam are scheduled to start draining over the next three weeks, at which time the waterway will be unshackled.

Still, even after the Klamath resumes its historical course and the dams are dismantled, which is planned for later this year, the work will not be done.

Attention will soon turn to a colossal effort to restore the natural habitat along the river. The restoration, continuing through at least the end of the decade, focuses primarily on revegetating 2,200 acres of land that will be newly exposed when the reservoirs are empty.

More than 17 billion seeds are slated for planting, alongside a quarter-million trees and shrubs. At least 1,000 additional trees will be flown in by helicopter and dropped into the river to create pools that might have existed in the absence of the dams, for bugs to gather and fish to feed.

This week, planting crews were already preparing to descend on the shores of the retreating waters of Iron Gate Reservoir, above Iron Gate Dam, to scatter acorns in the still-soggy lake bottom.

“The river needs rehabilitation. It needs restoration,” Myers said. “When you think about how long these dams have been in place, they’ve been doing a lot of environmental damage for some time, and it’s going to take time to repair that.”

The dam removal, including the restoration, is being managed by the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, a nonprofit set up to represent the states of California and Oregon, tribes and other groups vested in the undertaking.

The hydroelectric facilities had been operated by PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy, but the power company decided upgrades to the aging infrastructure weren’t worth the electricity being generated.

At the urging of the public, predominantly indigenous communities, and after years of negotiation, PacifiCorp agreed to relinquish the dams to the Renewal Corporation and the two states and front $200 million for their demolition. California bond money is covering the remainder of the project’s nearly half-billion cost.

“We all worked our tails off to get this done,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said during a budget briefing this week. “I think that’s pretty exciting, and it’s happening in your state.”

Transforming A Reservoir

Water flows down the Klamath River as it is released from Iron Gate Dam in Siskiyou County on Thursday. Iron Gate Reservoir is the first of the major Klamath River reservoirs to be drained in the run-up to dam removal.

In the weeks before the drawdown of the reservoirs, 18-wheel semi trucks began rumbling up quiet Copco Road in Siskiyou County, off Interstate 5 north of Yreka, with dozens of pallets of seeds for planting.

The seeds, many of which had been collected near the dams and sent to nurseries in three states for cleaning, storage and making more seed, are the product of five years of planning for the river restoration by Resource Environmental Solutions, LLC, or RES.

RES, a subcontractor of the Renewal Corporation, is leading the Klamath’s post-dam recovery. Under the company’s direction, crews will work to blanket the riverbanks with 97 species of often colorful native grasses, forbs, shrubs and trees, each slated for specific areas where the plants have historically grown.

Lands around Iron Gate, the lowest-elevation dam, will be sowed with seeds, and later shrubs and seedlings, to help establish hardy oak woodlands and wildflower-dotted grasslands while hills at the higher-elevation J.C. Boyle Dam in Oregon will be primed for fragrant conifer forests.

Along the entire course of the newly freed Klamath River, RES managers hope pockets of willow and cottonwood will emerge. Upslope, such plants as biscuitroot, yampah and blazingstar are expected, each a dietary or medicinal staple of the native communities.

“Over time, you will start to see a blending of the reservoir footprints with the surrounding landscape,” said Dave Coffman, a geoscientist and director at RES who is overseeing the work.

The restoration, which will continue intermittently through at least 2030, accounts for about a quarter of the project’s total budget.

One of the biggest challenges, Coffman and others say, will be giving the new vegetation a foothold before non-native plants can invade. Hard-to-stop weeds, including cheatgrass, yellowstar thistle and Medusahead, threaten to outcompete the new growth.

“If we get the native plants down and they soak up the available real estate, there’s no room for the invasive species to get in,” Coffman said.

Many of those on the front lines of the restoration are members of the Yurok Tribe, who view the work as intensely personal.

“This river is a home, it’s an identity,” said the Yurok’s Richard Green, who has spent much of the past two years working on a RES-contracted revegetation crew made up of tribal members. Green is also a forestry student, taking classes remotely at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt. “This (project) is too important for me not to be here.”

The Yurok’s cultural and spiritual ties to the Klamath are rooted in their historical reliance on salmon. As many as a million chinook salmon once swam from the ocean up the Klamath each year to spawn. But the annual migration now counts less than 10% of what it was, in part because of the dams. Tribal members hope rewilding the waterway will bring back enough salmon to reinvigorate their fishing tradition and shore up their bond with the river.

Green’s crew, before dispersing any of the billions of seeds, has focused largely on clearing invasive plants to better accommodate the restored landscape they’ll help create.

The work isn’t easy. Crew members have spent week after week pulling weeds in rocky, volcanic soils, sometimes in triple digit temperatures or near-freezing cold. On a typical day, a single worker removes about 100 pounds of vegetation, which is bagged and hauled off on flat-bed trucks.

The crew also has assisted with seed collection, tromping hillsides in search of hard-to-find flowering plants, often hand-picking specimens that are sticky or feel like “fiberglass.”

“This (restoration) has all been kind of theoretical so far,” Green said, taking a break from mixing seeds for planting. “But it’s very quickly turning into the vision we wanted it to be.”

A Wild River Once More

The drawdown of the 59,000-acre-foot Iron Gate Reservoir, about the size of San Francisco’s Crystal Springs Reservoir, began Thursday morning when work crews widened the opening of the gates of a seldom used tunnel at the base of the dam.

Reservoir water, which was already trickling through the shaft, accelerated into the river channel below. Flows were expected to proceed at a rate of about 2,000 cubic feet per second, double what the reservoir’s controlled releases have typically been this time of year.

Residents downstream were warned not only of higher and swifter water but of greater turbidity with the surging river. Fish below the dam were also of concern. RES employees worked with members of the Karuk Tribe to relocate coho salmon, which are even less numerous than chinook on the Klamath, so they wouldn’t get buried by debris.

With the drawdown, as much as 7 million cubic yards of sediment, or about a half million dump trucks full, is expected to wash out of the three remaining reservoirs, where rocks, clay and dead algae have collected for decades. The sediment load is likely to peak shortly after the reservoirs drain, but project managers say murky water could linger for two years.

Work crews Thursday wielded fire hoses and hand tools to help dislodge debris behind Iron Gate Dam.

“This accumulation of sediment from the past 100 years is not natural, so the idea is to move as much of it out during the first push,” said Mark Bransom, CEO of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation. “This is the time of year when the river sees the least biological activity. We don’t have to worry about (fish) runs moving up the river.”

Iron Gate Reservoir is expected to be nearly empty of water in about two to three weeks, with water levels dropping at least 5 feet a day.

Next week, work crews plan to similarly pull the plug of the 3,500 acre-foot reservoir behind J.C. Boyle Dam in Oregon, about 35 miles to the northeast. The following week, they’ll do the same at the 34,000 acre-foot reservoir behind Copco No. 1 Dam back in California, about 15 miles north of Iron Gate.

Copco No. 1 could be the trickiest. Instead of using an existing outlet to release the water, like at Iron Gate, crews plan to set off explosives to blast a small hole through the 230-foot-high concrete dam.

The drawdown of the three reservoirs sets the stage for taking out the dams, which is planned for after the wet season.

Project managers are waiting, likely until late spring, because they want to be sure river levels remain low when the heavy machinery moves in. That said, they don’t want to wait too long because they’re hoping to remove the dams before chinook salmon migrate up the river come fall.

“We don’t want to be working in the river in September and October,” Bransom said. “If need be, we’ll add crews, equipment.”

Two dams farther upstream on the Klamath are not part of the deconstruction effort and will remain in place. Each is equipped with fish ladders for salmon passage.

While some lament the teardown of the dams, citing concerns about losing power production, recreational activities on the reservoirs and lakeside real estate, the dams have limited value, and hence limited support. The water impounded by the facilities is not used to irrigate farmland nor to supply cities and towns, and the dams do not provide flood control.

“Some people are going to lose something that’s important to them, but for the broader community this is the best possible outcome,” said Ann Willis, California regional director for the environmental group American Rivers.

Willis said the project is serving as a model for what can be done at other rivers where thousands of mostly smaller dams are unnecessary or obsolete.

“It’s incredible what’s happening today,” she said after visiting the drawdown at Iron Gate. “Visually we can see the river changing, and emotionally you can feel people embracing and acknowledging what a milestone this really is.”

(SF Chronicle)

HERE COMES TRUMP, THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN

by Maureen Dowd

It’s the latest hot TV genre: a woman in a frigid outpost, bundled in puffy outerwear, trying to uncover truths buried in ice.

In the new season of HBO’s “True Detective,” Jodie Foster is a cop trudging through snow trying to solve a murder in a remote Alaska town, described as “the end of the world.” On FX’s “A Murder at the End of the World,” Emma Corrin is an amateur sleuth trudging through snow trying to solve a murder in an isolated retreat in Iceland.

And now I find myself in puffy outerwear, trudging through snow in glacial Iowa, trying to uncover truths buried in the ice.

I don’t have as much of a mystery to unravel as the TV detectives. The only thing the horde of reporters here is trying to figure out is if Donald Trump will win the caucuses on Monday with a plurality or if he can pull off a majority. No one is expecting a Jimmy Carter/Barack Obama-style upset.

A blizzard on Friday froze the action. Drivers skidded all over Des Moines, with cars abandoned on highways. Candidates canceled events and scrambled to do telephone town halls. CNN’s Jeff Zeleny donned fleece earmuffs for live reports. Journalists planning to arrive this weekend faced canceled flights. With Trump and the others scrapping in-person rallies, reporters were left jaw-jawing with one another in the lobbies of the Hotel Fort Des Moines and the downtown Marriott.

On Friday evening, Trump posted a video, accusingly telling Iowa, “You have the worst weather, I guess, in recorded history.” Maybe he should have gotten here earlier instead of haranguing the judge in his New York fraud trial on Thursday.

Candidates’ surrogates resorted to extreme measures. Kari Lake, stumping for Trump in a yellow sweater — a Hawkeye color for her alma mater — joked that they would use “the ancient strategy” of the telephone to reach voters.

Campaign aides to Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley were desperately calculating if the weather could give them an advantage: Maybe some of Trump’s older voters in rural areas who have to drive a long way to caucus would not show up on Monday, which could be the coldest day in caucus history, with wind chills potentially hitting 40 below.

But the Trump crew here — including Donald Trump Jr. and Jason Miller — roamed around looking sanguine. “We’re confident, not cocky,” Miller told me.

Compared with the poor ground game Trump Sr. had in 2016, when he came in second to “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz, as he called him, MAGA world is a model of organization. And that should frighten Democrats.

“If you didn’t know any better, you’d think that our grass-roots guys had all been media trained,” Miller said. “Some of these people, because they watch everything the president does, they know any question. It doesn’t matter about whether it be the economy, Biden, witch hunt, Austin.” As in Lloyd. And “the president” Miller refers to is Trump.

With a snow day here, I had time to contemplate the real mystery of Iowa: What has happened to America?

In January 2008, the Democratic caucuses offered a thrilling contest. In overwhelmingly white Iowa, Barack Obama showed that Americans could propel a Black candidate into the Oval Office. Race was, remarkably, not a big factor in the contest.

When I saw Obama at his first event in New Hampshire after his Iowa win, I was still stunned at the result. “Wow,” I said to him. “You really did it.”

He looked solemn and a bit blank, recalling the scene in “The Candidate” when Robert Redford, the young, charismatic pol, pulls off an upset over his more seasoned, status quo opponent and murmurs, “What do we do now?”

It felt then as if we were embracing modernity and inclusion, moving away from the image of John Wayne’s America.

How could we have gone from such a hopeful moment to such a discordant one?

Of course, every time there’s a movement, there’s a countermovement, where people feel that their place in the world is threatened and they want to turn back the clock. Trump has played on that resentment, trying to drag us into the past, curtailing women’s rights, inflaming voters to “take back America” and, as he said on Jan. 6, exhorting his base to “fight like hell” or “you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Trump is a master at exploiting voters’ fears. I’m puzzled about why his devoted fans don’t mind his mean streak. He can gleefully, cruelly, brazenly make fun of disabilities in a way that had never been done in politics — President Biden’s stutter, John McCain’s injuries from being tortured, a Times reporter’s disability — and loyal Trump fans laugh. He calls Haley “Birdbrain.” Trump is 77, yet he sees himself as a spring chicken. On Thursday, he put out a video on Truth Social mocking the “White House senior living” center, featuring pictures of the 81-year-old Biden looking helpless and out of it.

Obama’s triumph in Iowa was about having faith in humanity. If Trump wins here, it will be about tearing down faith in humanity.

That it’s happening in a blizzard is fitting. Trump’s whole life has been a snow job.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

You think Israel should relocate? Maybe so, but it’s really too late, from their perspective, I think. I believe their outlook is and will be: “This is our ship; we go down with it or stay afloat.” And, I think it's at least an understandable position. It’s nearly a 100-year investment in that place now, and the world now has 8 billion people, not the 2B of 1945. There are no great geographical alternatives for them.

I’M TIRED of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin deep. That’s deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?

— Jean Kerr

ON THE FAR RIGHT, you see this aggressive defense of fossil fuels that verges on a desire for destruction, which is part of Freud’s latent theory of the two categories of drives: eros and thanatos. Another category in the psychic dimension is denial. Denial is as central to the development of the climate crisis as the greenhouse effect.

— Andreas Malm