Mendocino County Today: Saturday, Jan. 20, 2024

Showers | Bobcats | Hike Postponed | Museum Tour | VSO Follies | Office Space | Troubled Angel | Boats | Neighborhood Commerce | Mendo T | Emerald Triangle | Marijuana Issues | AVA Oxford | Ukiah Construction | Cliff House | Permitting Process | Wife Parking | Cancellation Notice | A Catch | Farm Report | That Feeling | Petroglyph Hunt | Yesterday's Catch | Book Notes | Lust Sleepers | Marco Radio | Safest Countries | Home Disadvantage | Grateful Again | Ron DeAbsence | Big Cafes | Susan Sontag | Your Pockets | Sharecropping | Mass Murder | Core Beliefs | US Empire | Grammy Ursula | So Dramatic | Slap Stickers | Hup 1

FLOOD WATCH remains in effect through this evening.

LOW PRESSURE approaching the coast has brought southeast winds gusting in excess of 45 mph that will continue to impact the coast though the early afternoon. Periods of moderate rain showers will build behind the wind with the heaviest rain rates and risk of urban and small stream flooding through this afternoon. Wet weather will continue through at least Monday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): It is a dark & stormy morning on the coast. Windy, raining, .44" of rain collected & a warm 55F. You can expect rain & wind in general into Monday. We have a flood watch in effect until 10pm tonight. Off & on showers continue into next week.

RAINFALL (past 24 hours): Yorkville 1.32" - Hopland 1.25" - Willits 1.03" - Ukiah 0.79" - Boonville 0.71" - Laytonville 0.57" - Covelo 0.35" - Leggett 0.32"

BOBCATS IN BOONVILLE (photo by Paul Moore)

HIKE POSTPONED DUE TO EXPECTED RAIN

Our Pelican Bluffs hike is canceled until further notice due to heavy rains in the forecast this weekend. We will choose another date soon and post the details on our website & social media pages.

Stay warm.

But, while you wait, you can still buy a T-shirt online with this link: https://bit.ly/PelicanBluffsT-Shirt

AV HISTORICAL SOCIETY MUSEUM TOUR

The Anderson Valley Historical Society is hosting a Tours and Treats event on Saturday, February 3 from 1:30-4:00pm. “We are ready for company. The cobwebs are removed, the displays dusted and the cookies in the oven.”

Tour on your own or tag along with a local historian.

(Sheri Hansen)

CARRIE SHATTUCK:

Veterans Service Office…

Once again the Board of. Supervisors dangled the carrot out in front of the public that there was an agenda item coming back to the Board regarding the eviction of the Veterans from their house. There is no such item on the agenda for Tuesday.

What do the Supervisors do at the Low Gap Admin Center besides show up for their meetings that are prepared by the Clerk of the Board/CEO? Do they come to their offices and work? Well, considering Supervisor Williams and Mulheren no longer have offices in the Admin Center I would say no. Recently both Supervisors bragged about giving up their offices so that others in the Executive Office would have space. You really can’t make this stuff up.

I toured the new small cramped room that is now the VSO. If this isn’t an obvious blatant lack of respect for our veterans I don’t know what is. Michelle, the VSO representative will have to remove the visitor chairs into the hallway to accommodate someone in a wheelchair and be able to close the door. The bins holding homeless Veterans supplies, clothing, toiletries, , etc. is stacked to the ceiling. This hospital setting will not invite most of the Veterans seeking services.

Entering through double doors, past the WIC office (Women, Infants, Children), to a glassed off reception area, that had no receptionist when I was there, just a sign to go to room 310 for services, down a hallway where privacy screens are staggered, such as you’d find with gurneys behind them, to the VSO door.

Anyone with any decency could see that this new office doesn’t even compare to the house. It still smells like a hospital. I inquired to Michelle about parking. There are no handicapped spaces near the entrance or any that I saw for that matter.

This whole thing stinks! Again, what happened to integrity?

OFFICE SPACE FOR RENT IN BOONVILLE. 

Full train car next door to Boontberry. $700/month, plus security deposit. Credit and reference checks required. This is not living space. Call NCRE for more information or to see it. 707-895-3762.

DOWNTOWN UKIAH - TEENS CHASED BY SEX OFFENDER - RESIDENTS URGE CITY TO TAKE ACTION

by Justine Frederiksen

Several frustrated Ukiah residents and business owners urged the Ukiah City Council Wednesday to address what they described as “out of control” conditions downtown after a man reportedly chased three teen-aged girls there Monday afternoon.

Tracy Vogel Thieriot, who co-owns Crossfit Firefly, said “three young women” were walking on School Street toward her business around 3:45 p.m. Monday when “one of them, taking in her surroundings, made eye contact with a known felon, sex offender and attempted kidnapper who was loitering on School Street (who) made the choice to chase and threaten them.” 

Thieriot identified the man as Angel Miller, and said that “local businesses” helped the teens and called the Ukiah Police Department. “At the time, the families were told there was no crime. It’s not a crime to chase someone, until you catch them. It’s not a crime to terrify young women, only until you hurt them. It’s not a crime to harass, threaten or otherwise behave unfavorably in the public commons and make them inhospitable to our businesses, citizens and our visitors until you hurt someone or deface public property.” 

According to the UPD press logs, officers were dispatched to the 100 block of South School Street around 3:44 p.m. Jan. 15 for a report of a man “screaming and chasing people.” At 3:53 p.m., Angel Miller, 35, was arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct and of violating his parole. 

UPD Chief Cedric Crook confirmed Thursday that Miller is a registered sex offender currently on state parole, describing him as “one of three sex offenders I believed are at the most high-risk” of committing more crimes. He described the girls who were chased as not young women but, “very young teens.” 

In 2015, Miller was arrested for allegedly grabbing a 17-year-old Ukiah girl while she was jogging in the 200 block of South Highland Avenue one evening in early November. The victim said she fought off her attacker and ran away from him. 

The following day, officers contacted Miller, described as a 27-year-old transient, in the “pocket park” at 300 E. Perkins St., and the victim identified him as her attacker. Miller was arrested on suspicion of felony assault with attempt to rape and felony attempted kidnapping and booked into the Mendocino County Jail. 

Crook, who said he was a detective sergeant at the time of the 2015 arrest, described that incident as “very disturbing and concerning.” 

Crook said his officers did not have contact with Miller for at least three years after that arrest, then in November of 2020, Miller was arrested on suspicion of false imprisonment and of violating his parole after a female employee at Black Oak Coffee Roasters on North State Street reported that Miller “cornered her in the restroom.” 

Crook said his officers did not have contact with Miller again for two years following the 2020 arrest, but starting in 2022, have had multiple contacts with Miller regarding parole violations. When asked for the current status of Miller on Thursday afternoon, Crook said he was “in custody at the Mendocino County Jail on a no-bail hold.” 

“The question is, what does it take?” Ferdinand Thieriot, co-owner of Crossfit Firefly, asked the City Council Wednesday. “Does it take one of your family members to get assaulted or killed on the street before action happens? The town is going downhill, and something needs to change. Because it’s our choice, as taxpayers, whether we want to pay taxes in this town or not. And whether we want to run businesses here and live here. And who we vote for. This isn’t a big city — it shouldn’t be that hard to keep it under control.” 

“I want to be clear, this is not an issue of homelessness — this is an issue of crime, an issue of what is right, and what is wrong. And an issue that our town and our leadership are losing control and influence over,” said Tracy Thieriot, urging the City Council members to either “enforce or create no-loitering laws, not just for parks and outdoor recreation facilities, but for commercial districts and places of business and so that shop owners can remain open and operate in safety. It is time to allocate resources to a dedicated beat or bicycle cop, and a community services walking patrol whose sole responsibility is to be present in our community and to establish and strengthen relationships with our downtown businesses and residents to keep them safe. Make change now, before another citizen is harmed.” 

When asked to respond to that suggestion, Crook said the UPD would be making downtown “more of a priority and implementing new strategies, including foot patrols.” 

Two women who introduced themselves as the mothers of the girls involved in the incident also addressed the council Wednesday and asked for conditions to be addressed. 

“Is the bar so low that we’re just happy that our daughters got away from a sex offender?” said Kerry McMullen, a Ukiah native who said her husband owns a business here, adding that she agreed with Ferdinand Thieriot in that the situation was “out of control and is going to end with violence. That was violence the other day against our girls. The shopkeepers have a routine — they lock their doors, and they hide. Is that the goal here? Is that what we want for our town? Are we proud of that?”

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

WE DID NOT ASK FOR POT IN OUR NEIGHBORHOODS

To the Editor: 

Redwood Valley and Willits citizens’ attempts to form Cannabis Prohibition Zones denied by Board of Supervisors — against the will of the people. Part 1 of 3 

A large group of Concerned Redwood Valley Citizens, in an attempt to form a Cannabis Prohibition District close to downtown Redwood Valley, met with the Mendocino County Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors in May and July of 2023. We paid a filing fee of $5,804 and spent over two years waiting to be scheduled on the agendas to be heard in order to defend our right to form this District under Mendocino County’s Cannabis Ordinance 20.119.020. At the Planning hearing, it was reported that all minimum criteria established by the BOS to form this District had been met. 

At both meetings, numerous long-time Redwood Valley residents and vineyard owners spoke on how the influx of new large cannabis grows are negatively impacting our quality of life in the Valley and our concerns, first and foremost, of the strain on our local water supplies. Many other concerns were cited via 33 submitted letters. Our application was denied by a 3-2 vote. In favor were our 1st District Supervisor Glenn McGourty and 4th District Supervisor Dan Gjerde. Dissenting were Supervisors Hashack, Mulheren and Williams. 

A second request to form a Prohibition District from a Willits neighborhood was also denied by the Board of Supervisors a month after ours. They also paid a filing fee. 

Our concerns with this process and the ultimate outcome are many. Despite our repeated emphasis that our concerns were over water, safety and the environment, the BOS reduced our concerns to basically one of smell only. 

Numerous parties spoke on behalf of the growers, yet we are hard pressed to find one who lives in this neighborhood. The three Supervisors who voted against us do not live in Redwood Valley. The two property owners and one manager of the grow sites operating within our proposed Prohibition district do not live in this neighborhood. Two allegedly are from Sonoma County. We guess those of us who reside here do not know what is in our own best interest and it doesn’t matter that we bought our properties with the desire to enjoy peaceful lives in a beautiful rural area, free from “Commercial” industry. We question why commercial industry endeavors are not made to be located and run in commercial or industrial zones? 

Why were local residents who have lived here and paid property taxes for decades not given notice or a voice regarding proposed changes to our beautiful area? What we are going through here in Mendocino County is sadly happening in many other Counties throughout California. 

It is all a huge failure that is profiting few and damaging our beautiful State and its resources. For local Redwood Valley residents, many of whom have lived here for decades, this denial was a slap in the face and far from a democratic process we expected and hoped for going in. We felt largely dismissed. 

While Supervisors Gjerde and McGourty supported our request, they were outvoted by Supervisors Hashack, Mulheren and Williams, again none of whom live in Redwood Valley. The main outcomes of our hard work to gather signatures, raise funds and submit these applications were three-fold. 

First, the Board basically asked the Cannabis Department if the permits for the grows in question could be fast-tracked for approval. This despite one having been busted for growing illegally resulting in numerous SUVs and a helicopter swooping into the neighborhood unannounced, definitely a nuisance. Next, the Board ordered Code Enforcement to go out and inspect all our residential properties for illegal grows based on an aerial map the growers submitted. 

It was asserted by the BOS and the attorneys for the growers that it is presumably all the other small grows that are causing the problems. This despite testimony and letters provided to the contrary; that it is the two new big grows which are causing the most concern to nearby neighbors, and were specifically the impetus for us to request a Prohibition District. Finally, the BOS is now talking about amending the Opt-Out chapter of the Cannabis Ordinance to do away with citizens being able to collect signatures and submit an application on our own behalf directly to the Planning Department. A request would first have to go to a Supervisor who would then determine whether it should be considered. 

Why? It wasn’t too long ago that the BOS passed an ordinance that expanded the allowable size of cultivation sites to 10 percent of a parcel’s size. This action was repealed by the BOS after a grass roots referendum by concerned citizens collected approximately 6,000 signatures against it. 

Big monied growers, some from other Counties have been allowed in, paying cash for large local Ag parcels and have been allowed to grow with the County’s blessing while their permits have not been approved but only “under review”. This has been happening since approximately 2017. They are using resources and causing nuisances with little to no regard to the impact they are having on nearby long-time local residents. 

Our applications and the combined $11,608 filings fees paid to the County was a Win-Win for these new growers who again do not reside in this area. We are very concerned about where Mendocino County is headed with regards to Cannabis and how certain Supervisors are attempting to squelch the voices of we, the people. We encourage anyone who would like to learn more about how Cannabis in this County is not working, to google Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall’s interview with the Epoch Times. It speaks volumes as to the pitfalls and perils of promoting this type of “Commercial” industry. We did not ask for it in our neighborhoods and we do not want it. Part 2 to follow… 

Concerned Redwood Valley Citizens (CRVC) Christine Boyd, Cynthia Grant, Star Gilley, Frances Owen, Richard Sagan, Cyndi Barra Woskow, Michael Woskow and others.

DOPE, an on-line comment by Mendocino Mama: Consumers with large amounts of money have been coming to the Emerald Triangle for decades upon decades. Oftentimes with stars and diamonds in their eyes. Oftentimes busted on the way out of town, ripped off once they got home, or did not take care of the product well and it disintegrated before they could sell it. The illicit market feeding of the media hype and frenzy of the “culture”. It is still pretty cultury although a few days back in one esteemed establishment the music was mildly offensive…”Bitch u bedda up your strips if the cops pull us over better bite your lip…” come on. Sub n dabs are a standard. A little regulation by the regulators might help to clean it up a bit.

MAZIE MALONE:

Re… Pot.

“Nothing personal, puffers,” 

With the advent of commercialized cannabis production and hybrid high potency THC… there is a direct correlation to the onset of psychosis spectrum disorders. … We are going to pay for it dearly… more young people very mentally ill…..guess in that sense the new mental health wing of the jail will be well put to use…..

My dog became very unwell from ingesting some sort of cannabis infused snack he gobbled up at the park, probably a cookie. He was high as a kite. so stoned he could not move, could not get up and walk and he would flinch if I tried to put my hand near him to pet him. I had no clue what was wrong, I thought he had a stroke, I had to pick him up and carry him to my car. Apparently a common occurrence around these parts, dogs getting fried from people getting high, lol. Seriously though many dogs have died from ingesting marijuana it is very toxic to them and unfortunately people are careless.

* * *

SHERIFF KENDALL:

This is becoming terrible and it gets worse. Assembly Bill 2188 and Senate Bill 700 are bills which won’t allow employers to ask about marijuana use while hiring and specifically marijuana use while off the job.

We asked for a carve out specifically allowing police agencies to be exempt from these laws for several reasons however the legislature didn’t listen. They thought it was discriminatory and a violation of FEHA. [Fair Employment & Housing Act]

This makes no sense because legislation mandates my deputies to list their gender and racial identity every day when they come to work which IS a violation of FEHA.

With the new studies showing marijuana use being directly linked to some pretty serious mental health issues combined with the stressful nature of law enforcement I think we will have a disaster coming.

Like Mazzie says, Nothing personal, but I don’t want deputies using marijuana and I want our people healthy enough to serve.

How do these things happen???

THE AVA AT OXFORD (photo by Daniel Handler)

UKIAH CONSTRUCTION UPDATES FOR THE WEEK OF JANUARY 22

On the south side (Mill to Cherry), crews will continue replacing sewer laterals between Gobbi and Cherry, beginning at the south end and progressing north. Travel lanes will continue to be open in both directions. This work is anticipated to be complete within about two weeks, weather depending. Then, work in this area will pause until weather is conducive to repaving. Joint trench work will continue between Mill and Gobbi, which will run along the west side of the street and contain underground electric communication lines.

On the north side (Norton to Henry), crews continue concrete work, weather permitting. In most parts of this section, on-street parking has been restored. The on-street parking is not very intuitive, because the orange delineators (cone-thingies) must remain in place to keep vehicles traveling in a single lane. However, it IS okay, unless there are barricades in place that state otherwise, to park inside (to the right of) those delineators.

It’s going to be a wet weekend out there…please drive slowly and carefully!

MENDOCINO COUNTY PERMITTING PROCESS INLAND COMMUNITY STAKEHOLDER MEETING

The Mendocino County Division of Environmental Health and Planning and Building Services are excited to invite all stakeholders to meet on February 13, 2024. The Departments value your input and collaboration, and this meeting will focus on discussing and improving the permitting process in our departments.

Agenda Highlights:

• Overview of the current permitting process

• Discussion of recent updates and proposed changes

• Opportunities for community feedback and suggestions

• Collaborative brainstorming for a more efficient and accessible process

The public may also participate digitally in the February 13th, 2024, meeting by sending comments to pbs@mendocinocounty.gov in lieu of personal attendance. County staff from each department will be available to answer questions. Your insights and feedback are crucial in helping us streamline and enhance the permitting process to better serve the needs of our community. We look forward to a productive and engaging discussion that will benefit us all.

Tuesday, February 13, 2024 8 Am – 10 am

Conference Room C at the County Administration Complex

501 Low Gap Road

Ukiah, CA 95482

Follow the link to join the webinar: https://mendocinocounty.zoom.us/j/88169347865

Or one tap mobile: +16699009128,,88169347865# us (San Jose)+16694449171,,88169347865# us

Webinar id: 881 6934 7865

You can also contact the Mendocino County Department of Planning and Building Services via telephone at 707-234-6650 for more information.

READ ALL ABOUT IT!

The cancelation notice for the February 1, 2024, Planning Commission meeting is now available on the department website at:

https://www.mendocinocounty.org/government/planning-building-services/meeting-agendas/planning-commission

Please contact staff if there are any questions.

Thank you

REPORT FROM A SMALL FARM IN BOONVILLE

Petit Teton Monthly Farm Report

Here we are, already more than half way through January of 2024. Where did it all go?

We had a wonderful holiday season both from a business and personal perspective, and hope you did too. But since the chaos in the world continues unabated, of which I'm sure you're well aware, I'll focus close to home on our flourishing farmland. So close, that I'll stick to the dirt...ah, soil.

With the almost constant rain/drizzle we've had since December, the ground is alive and starting to grow green. All the garlic is up; the beets are just breaking through; the onions left from last year's picking have started to transform into spring onions; bulbs of all kinds of iris are sticking their triangular noses up through last year's debris; the paper whites and narcissus already have flowers atop greens almost a foot tall; Ixia hasn't bloomed yet but the greens are the tallest; mustard, spicy purple and frilly green, is flourishing everywhere; fava beans, pea, and oat cover crops have all emerged; I'm cutting mustard, French sorrel, dandelion, kale, chard, arugula, radicchio, and broccolini for our dinners (none of which I planted this season); and fungi is popping up in all beds, not to be eaten but an indicator of soil health. What a joy it is to watch the earth come alive. It is one of my greatest pleasures, harvesting as I wander the land, then preparing for dinner what I've gathered.

We celebrate our 20th year here in May and the reward for all our hard work is to see the life in the ground and in the food produced. It is our belief that if everyone had at least a tiny piece of dirt to cultivate, our "civilization" and its drivers, power and money, would transform into something more humanitarian and communal. Unbeknownst to many of us it seems, Mother Nature is in the process of forcing us to do just that.

We wish you all health and happiness and at the very least, a thriving planter box of food.

Nikki Auschnitt & Steve Krieg

PINCHES & THE PICTOGRAPHS 

by Bruce Anderson 

There are people who have lived all their lives in Mendocino County who don’t know where Island Mountain is and have never been to Covelo. This County is a big place with secrets and mysteries and whole worlds of hidden attractions and wild beauty in every part of its vastness. Consider yourself lucky if you’ve got a reliable guide who knows this place. 

It was a warm summer day some years ago when five of us got lucky. We'd responded to an invitation from former supervisor John Pinches to visit his ranch an hour and a half north and east off Highway 101’s comforting pavement, up and into the deep Mendo outback. Not that Mendocino County’s northeastern corner is uninhabited. There are people back there, but they aren’t what you would call “joiners.” There are outlaws and cowboys and combat vets who never got all the way back from Vietnam — four wheel-drive country in which it is wise to stick to the well-worn paths. If you go busting off the trail like the young dudes do in those off road Toyota ads you could run into intersecting fields of fire, or off a precipice never to be found. 

On a previous visit to the Pinches ranch, the Supervisor had mentioned that there were some interesting Indian “artifacts,” or “pre-historic rock drawings” on a huge stone on the middle fork of the Eel not far from his ranch house. 

Pinches’ place is far up on a ridge overlooking the river in a setting so splendidly isolated, so ruggedly beautiful that if I lived there I would spend most of my daylight hours looking out the windows, east to Yolly Bollys, north to Mount Shasta, south to Hull Mountain. 

But the purpose of the visit was the mystery stone, not the views. The site we’d come to see wasn’t what you’d call easily accessed; it was a long way down from Pinches’ ridgetop ranch, and then a good hike north along the collapsing rail line of the totally collapsed Northwestern Pacific Railroad, which runs alongside the Eel, deep in the Eel River Canyon. 

The former supervisor is not only a generous and gracious host, he’s a walking encyclopedia on the history of a fascinating region of the county — its wildest region. He's also an astute evaluator of local events and personalities, making him about as lively a companion and tour guide as one could possibly hope for. As a supervisor, Pinches was a rare combination of candor and commitment to the wider interests of the people who live with the consequences of what seemed like an endless succession of bad local decisions. He quickly got into trouble with the Ukiah-based bureaucracies. 

Elected officials come and go. The bureaucrats stay. They don’t like the occasional maverick who gets elected but won’t sit around with them in endless meetings talking about “robust interfaces” and “new paradigms.” An elected person who asks for a look at the books and asks where the money goes? Cordon that person off, and keep them cordoned off. Pinches was the best supervisor we had in many a new moon, but made a run for the state senate where he got buried in an avalanche of special interest money. 

“I’ve driven cattle by horseback over every inch of this country,” he says, seeming to toss off an anecdote about every topographical oddity his sharp eye lights upon. 

We’d rendezvoused at the foot of Bell Springs Road early that morning: Joe and Karen Pfaff, Don Morris, Alexander Cockburn, and me. Morris, who spends a lot of time backpacking in the Yolly Bollys himself is a distant second to Pinches in knowledge of the area. The rest of us might be said to be eager students. 

Pinches led the long trek up to his ranch. By the time we got all the way up the hill, it was lunch time. We broke out our provisions and spread them out on his kitchen table. After lunch, Pinches led us down into the canyon on a long and precipitously harrowing old skid trail. Half way down John stopped at an otherwise forgettable jumble of cliff-dwelling trees and volcanic rock. “Right here is where Mendocino, Trinity and Humboldt counties meet,” declared. “They all come together right here.” 

At the foot of the ridge, and now on the west bank of the Eel, we regrouped on the railroad tracks. We were some 14 miles into the Eel River Canyon from Dos Rios on Highway 162, the road that links 101 to Covelo. 

There were once certain professional officeholders we will call Mike Thompson, Wes Chesbro and Virginia Strom-Martin who were telling the public that the rail line we were standing on was vital to the ongoing commercial viability of Mendocino and Humboldt counties; that products off-loaded at Eureka’s deep-water port would reach markets to the south by ecologically sound rail rather than by the polluting fossil fuel trucks on Highway 101; that America's bounty would be hauled north by this very rail from the Bay Area to Eureka and on out to the burgeoning markets of Asia; that Asia would return-ship vast loads of products into Eureka’s deep water port for distribution south by rail; and that all this magnificent enterprise depended on three-quarters of a billion dollars Tom Strom-Boro would get from Al Gore to invest in 60 miles of troublesome track in the Eel River Canyon. 

The problem was that the track was collapsed in many area between Dos Rios and Alderpoint, and where it wasn't collapsed it was covered with landslides that just keep on sliding as they have for many previous thousands of years. Three-quarters of a trillion dollars wouldn’t make the line permanently passable for the demands these cynical fantasists would make on it. 

Another problem was conceptual: Even if there were a deep water port in Eureka capable of processing Asia’s bounty, why would entrepreneurs ship stuff in and out of Eureka when they’ve got Frisco (more or less), Oakland (fer sure) and San Pedro (for a fact)? Anybody who says trains can run regularly through the Eel River Canyon hasn’t taken a walk along its tracks. 

Pinches shook his head at the folly of spending another dime on the line that bordered his property. “They talk about how it will cost more money to close it than get it going again? It’s not costing anybody anything as it is. Look at it. Think a train’s coming through here any time soon?” 

Cowboy John was for letting nature reclaim its own and said he thought the focus of the ongoing state and federal bailout ought to be on getting the train running between Willits and Marin County, “which is doable.” He said if the government did anything at all in the Eel River Canyon it should convert the track to a trail for the enjoyment of hikers, bikers and recreational vehicles. And what a magnificent trail it would be. A trail from, say, Dos Rios to Alderpoint, or all the way up to Eureka, would draw thousands of people to enjoy the splendors few now ever see. 

We stood looking north along the undulating and occasionally disappeared track. Pinches pointed north where he said we would find the archeological site we had come to see. “You go on up the tracks two or three miles till you come to a big open meadow-like space. Across the river you’ll see two big rocks. Three or four years ago we put a winter stock fence in there and some of it should still be there. That’s where it is.” 

John leapfrogged us two at a time up the track a ways on his four-wheeler, informing us that Dean Witter himself owned “everything on the other side of the river.” John said Witter had his own excursion car on the old Northwestern Pacific, “and naturally he was all for keeping the train going up here.” Witter would halt the train not far from where we stood, be ferried across the river by a ranch hand, and then driven on up to his ranch house not far off the Mina Road east of the Eel. 

“I’m going back up to the ranch,” Pinches said. “The keys are in my truck. If you don’t show up by nightfall, I’ll come lookin’ for ya.” 

It then occurred to me that Cowboy John might have spent the day setting us up for a kind of liberal snipe hunt. I imagined him at Boomer’s down in Laytonville regaling the bar crowd with an account of the day’s outing. “Ol’ Anderson’s been after me for years to show him the Indian rocks. ‘When ya gonna take me to see the rock, John?’ he asks every time I see him. So I take him and four other of these liberal types up to the ranch and down to the river. I tell ‘em, ‘Just keep walking until you see the big rock and the little rock. Far as I know they’re still walkin’ north. Must be up around Fort Seward ’bout now.” 

Apologies to our host. I was the only one to whom this totally unwarranted suspicion occurred. 

The five of us hiked on up the track, alert to topography featuring open spaces and the Mutt and Jeff rocks. It was hot, but not oppressively hot. Much of the footing was by railroad tie and, as anyone who’s done it, walking for any distance on railroad ties is awfully tedious because one has got to carefully watch each step instead of the scenery. 

I'd seen what people call “spirit rocks” at two other places — one not far from the Russian River in Sonoma County and one deep in the hills between Yorkville and Hopland. They sit in areas astride what are said to be ancient Indian trails from east to west. To borrow a word from Dude-Bro Land, these spirit rocks are “awesome,” thousands of years of messages engraved in the stone by people who lived out their Edenic lives in absolute harmony with the land that sustained them. 

I wasn’t quite sure we were looking for a spirit rock or cave drawings or ancient pottery shards; Pinches had referred to the site variously as a cave, hieroglyphics and artifacts. After a couple hours of serious track-trudging, Don Morris yelled that he’d spotted what we were looking for on the other side of the Eel. 

Cockburn was first down the bank and out of his clothes, fording the river waist high with his belongings held over his head. Morris and I were next across. The water was warm, and near the banks stringy mosses had begun to coagulate in the flow. The middle branch of the Eel is pretty but it also seems sickly — it’s too warm, too lifeless, its flow too lethargic. It reminded me of a sort of aquatic version of one of those doomed tubercular patients in Russian novels. 

The rock formation containing its two lines of markings — mostly sequences of circles with horizontal lines through them — was above the water line. The pictograms, if that’s what they were, had been chiseled into the stone outcropping above a recess that might serve as a cave but ran back into the rock only ten feet or so. The markings numbered less than 20. Pinches said archeologists who have visited the site have also been mystified by the signs. They apparently pre-date the earliest Indian pictographs found on the spirit rocks. Pinches said that these mysterious symbols were once the subject of a Chronicle story. 

I pulled myself up above the clump of volcanic stone displaying the engravings hoping to find more, but despite what seemed to me much more likely slates on which our ancient ancestors might have carved out whatever message they’d carved out than the unlikely stone I’d just seen below, there were no more drawings. Looking around, none of it seemed a likely spot for a village or an ancient transit stop, but then I’m hardly an expert in these matters and the goddess only knows how many times the terrain has been shuffled in the great geologic upheavals since time began. 

We all re-forded the river, trudged back down the track and climbed into our host’s pick-up truck. I didn’t look forward to piloting my comrades back up the precarious hill, and made the mistake of telling them, “There’s a blind area in my bifocals of about 20 feet. Let me know if I get too close to the cliff.” I also mentioned that I’d never driven a four-wheel-drive vehicle before. There was perfect silence in the truck as my passengers prepared themselves for catastrophe. With Karen Pfaff in the passenger seat emitting terrified yelps, and the three boys in the back seat mutely reconciled to catastrophe, I steered Pinches’ modern marvel of traction upwards. 

Karen suddenly screamed and punched my arm. “Sorry,” she said, “but you were real close to the edge.” I looked to my right. “No!” she gasped, as I understood she much preferred I keep my eyes on the rutted upward path ahead. “You’re fine now,” she said in the voice of a person who knows in her bones the peril is extreme. The silence of the crypt reigned in the rear passenger seat. Cockburn still had six stitches in his forehead he'd sustained when the brakes on his old car went out on a steep Petrolia grade, forcing him to steer into the bank or take a premature step into the abyss. Here the poor guy was in his second near-death drama in a month. 

But we made it, and from the ranch we even made it back out onto 101 just about dusk, even though I’d destroyed the oil pan of my decrepit vehicle on the road in, and the impressive late-afternoon attempts to patch the thing failed. Cockburn had slid beneath my van as if he did it for a living, laboring for a half hour to patch the leak with an impromptu gasket fashioned by Pinches. On the long drive out to the highway, Morris and I poured oil into the crankcase, and continued to pour oil into the crankcase all the way to Willits where the kid who came to tow the van to the shop complimented Cockburn’s repair attempt. “Whoever tried to fix this did a pretty good job, but it musta broke open again when you hit another rock.” 

My wife retrieved me at the Willits Safeway. “Was it worth it?” she asked. “Yup, and then some,” I said. 

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, January 19, 2024

JULIE BOND, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

AMANDA DUMAN, Ukiah. Stolen vehicle.

ELIANA GUTIERREZ, Ukiah. Disobeying court order, county parole violation.

TYLER KELLER, Ukiah. County parole violation.

ROBERT MCCOY, Ukiah. Hit&run with property damage, failure to appear.

JOSHUA MOORE, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, parole violation.

AARON NORBURY, Redwood Valley. DUI causing bodily injury, evasion, reckless driving, suspended license.

ERIC OLIJNYK, San Diego/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JUAN SANCHEZ-MONTIEL, Ukiah. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent, resisting, failure to obey lawful order from peace officer.

KARLA SELVESTER, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, vandalism.

BIANCA WELTON, Eureka. Controlled substance for sale, false personation of another, conspiracy.

DENIS ROUSE, A BOOK NOTE: 

Paul Theroux's accounts in “Dark Star Safari” of the French poet's years in Yemen (hello current events) and East Africa where he quit his art and became a trader hooked me to read Paul Schmidt's “Arthur Rimbaud Complete Works” which is a fascinating bio as well, painful too as his letters to his sister describe in horrific detail his last days dying (at 37) of cancer in a hospital in Marseille. I know you like bios; this one's a gut punch!

MEMO OF THE AIR: Live on KNYO from Franklin St. all night Friday night!

Marco here. Deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is 5:30. Or, if the time comes and goes, send it whenever it's done and I'll read it on the radio next week.

I'm in town for this one. I'll be in the cluttered but well-lighted back room of KNYO's 325 N. Franklin studio. If you want to come in and show off, that's fine if you're in fine health. (I am.) Just waltz in and say hi. To call and read your work in your own voice on the air, the number is 707-962-3022.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg as well as anywhere else via KNYO.org. Also the schedule is there for KNYO's many other terrific shows. Just the first hour of the show is also on KAKX 89.3fm Student Powered Radio in Mendocino now and for the foreseeable future.

As always, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find amusements and educational bon mots to flick this way and that with your Minority Report VR gloves until showtime, or any time, such as:

I feel like I saw this before, not too long ago, but if so here it is again, it's so great. The man travels the world, getting people on the street to teach him their dance move. Some of these actually seem possible, not too hard on the knees. Make some space around you so you don't knock a lamp over, and try them. https://www.neatorama.com/2024/01/18/Everyones-Favorite-Dance-Moves/

Journalism in real-life idiocracy. https://boingboing.net/2024/01/17/tom-the-dancing-bug-chagrin-falls-diner-journalism.html

And Groucho Marx, very old here, nearly dead, in fact, but still spry, tells stories and sings /Lydia the Tattooed Lady/ on the Dick Cavett show. Dick Cavett; now, he was a fellow who'd have trouble catching on in the present day. Calm, bright, thoughtful, well-informed, brave, a sense of humor about himself, not a mean bone in his body. (Skip to 3:12 for /Lydia/.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE3_KnJiXaw

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

BILL SIMMONS SAYS 49ERS PLAY IN A DOME, THEIR STADIUM DOESN'T HAVE 'INTIMIDATING ATMOSPHERE'

by Gabe Fernandez

The atmosphere at the 49ers’ home, Levi’s Stadium, does not pass the smell test for podcaster Bill Simmons.

As he previewed the upcoming divisional round games on his eponymous podcast published Friday, Simmons continued to hint at ways the Packers could get one over on the 49ers this Saturday. While he ultimately concluded San Francisco would come out victorious, he cited a toothless Niners home stadium as something going in Green Bay’s favor.

Even worse is that he referred to Levi’s as a “dome.”

“Like you’ve been to San Francisco, you’ve been in that dome,” Simmons said, speaking with NFL writer Peter Schrager. “I wouldn’t say it’s like an amazing home-field advantage, it’s like an average football stadium. … It’s weird. It’s not like going into that freaking Lions stadium.”

Schrager added perhaps the most understandable critique among local fans with “it’s not Candlestick,” referring to the former 49ers stadium in Hunters Point, and took a shot at the area around Levi’s.

“There’s the wine-and-cheese crowd feel to it because it’s in Santa Clara, Palo Alto like that whole thing,” Schrager said.

Simmons punctuated the brief discussion with, “It’s not an intimidating atmosphere.”

It’d be easy for a Niners fan to discount this take because Simmons called Levi’s a “dome” — although perhaps it was a slip of the tongue since the Lions’ stadium, which is a dome, was on his mind. But putting that flub aside, he might not have been too far off with his opinion given the stadium’s history.

Since Levi’s Stadium opened in 2014, the 49ers are tied for 27th in regular season wins at their home stadium — they’re 40-38 at Levi’s, a .513 winning percentage. It’s two counties away from the Niners’ actual home, and is a prime example of what happens when sports interests try to take over local government. The team also kicked beloved PA voice Bob Sarlatte to the curb.

Of course, the new stadium era began with some bad seasons under one-year coaches Jim Tomsula, Chip Kelly and the final season of Jim Harbaugh, who all won 15 games combined. Niners fans, begrudgingly or otherwise, have gotten used to calling the place home, the team has done more to make the fan experience less of a drag, more team legends show up to games than ever before and, since Shanahan arrived in 2017, things have gone much differently. They made a Super Bowl, have had multiple solid playoff campaigns, and their winning percentage has bumped up to .574 (31-23) at Levi’s. The Niners have also won all four playoff games they’ve played in Santa Clara so far.

It might not put them on par with the likes of Kansas City, Green Bay, Dallas or Buffalo — the only teams that have at least 40 home wins since 2017 — but home games aren’t the cakewalk they used to be. Besides, while the Niners only officially play half of their games at home, they unofficially have a few extra home games due to the fan base thoroughly taking over opposing stadiums.

Levi’s might not have the intimidating aura that Simmons is looking for, but the traveling fan base’s ability to turn anywhere the Niners are playing into a second home is just as good, if not better. Given that their next stop is a playoff game at home, it’s safe to say Levi’s will look a lot more like a fan fortress on Saturday than it ever did in its first few years of life.

(SFgate)

BEFORE RON DESANTIS ran an ad or ate a corndog in Iowa he was polling at 30%. He finished with 21%, which lends weight to my political theory that the less voters hear and see from you the better they feel about your campaign. 

— Jeffrey St. Clair

“THE PEOPLE that I liked and had not met went to the big cafes because they were lost in them and no one noticed them and they could be alone in them and be together. The big cafes were cheap then too, and all had good beer and the aperitif cost reasonable prices that were clearly marked on the saucers that were served with them.”

— A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway

SUSAN SONTAG, born in New York City (1933) was an intellectual even as a child, buying the Paris Review and reading Trilling, Rosenberg, and Arendt. 

She graduated from high school at age 15 and became a serial academic. She took classes at Berkeley, then earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of Chicago after only two years of classes. She earned two master's degrees from Harvard, studied at Oxford and the University of Paris, and then, in 1959, moved with her son to New York City. During the course of her studies she had married, had a child with, and divorced Philip Rieff, who had been one of her professors at the University of Chicago.

Susan Sontag said that she preferred to think of herself as a novelist. Her first novel, The Benefactor, was published in 1963. Her most popular, The Volcano Lover, came out in 2002. But it is her essays that made her famous.

In her early essays, Sontag wrote criticism of art and culture. Other critical essays of the early '60s were dry and academic — hers were not. Her essay "Notes on Camp" was first published in the Partisan Review in 1964. The essay had a huge impact on the New York intellectual world, and Susan Sontag became a sort of spokesperson for the American avant-garde.

Susan Sontag's son, David Rieff, said his mother had "an unslakable kind of curiosity, of interest in the world. She is someone who can go to an opera, meet someone at two in the morning to go to the Ritz and listen to some neo-Nazi punk synthesizer band and then get up the next morning to see two Crimean dissidents."

THE STATE OF THE NATION, an on-line comment: The wealth of the 5 richest men in America has DOUBLED in the last 4 years. The money they have accrued came out of YOUR POCKETS. Your rent increased. The price of fuel increased. The interest rate on your debt doubled. Your homeowners insurance vanished.

I could go on.

SOUTH CAROLINA, 1937...

HOW THE GAZA WAR CAN BE BIG NEWS AND INVISIBLE AT THE SAME TIME

by Norman Solomon

Zen wisdom tells us that the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. Yet it’s easy to fall into the illusion that when we see news about the Gaza war, we’re really seeing the war.

We are not.

What we do routinely see is reporting that’s as different from the actual war as a pointed finger is from the moon.

The media words and images reach us light years away from what it’s actually like to be in a war zone. The experience of consuming news from afar could hardly be more different. And beliefs or unconscious notions that media outlets convey war’s realities end up obscuring those realities all the more.

Inherent limitations on what journalism can convey are compounded by media biases. In-depth content analysis by The Intercept found that coverage of the Gaza war by the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times “showed a consistent bias against Palestinians.” Those highly influential papers “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict” and “used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians.”

What is most profoundly important about war in Gaza — what actually happens to people being terrorized, massacred, maimed and traumatized — has remained close to invisible for the U.S. public. Extensive surface coverage seems repetitious and increasingly normal, as death numbers keep rising and Gaza becomes a routine topic in news media. And yet, what’s going on now in Gaza is “the most transparent genocide in human history.”

With enormous help from U.S. media and political power structures, the ongoing mass murder — by any other name — has become normalized, mainly reduced to standard buzz phrases, weaselly diplomat-speak and euphemistic rhetoric about the Gaza war. Which is exactly what the top leadership of Israel’s government wants.

Extraordinary determination to keep killing civilians and destroying what little is left of Palestinian infrastructure in Gaza has caused extremes of hunger, displacement, destruction of medical facilities, and expanding outbreaks of lethal diseases, all obviously calculated and sought by Israeli leaders. Thinly reported by U.S. media outlets while cravenly dodged by President Biden and the overwhelming majority of Congress, the calamity for 2.2 million Palestinian people worsens by the day.

“Gazans now make up 80 per cent of all people facing famine or catastrophic hunger worldwide, marking an unparalleled humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s continued bombardment and siege,” the United Nations declared this week. The UN statement quoted experts who said: “Currently every single person in Gaza is hungry, a quarter of the population are starving and struggling to find food and drinkable water, and famine is imminent.”

Israel is waging a war toward extermination. But for the vast majority of Americans, no matter how much mainstream media they consume, the war that actually exists — in contrast to the war reporting by news outlets — remains virtually invisible.

Of course, Hamas’s Oct. 7 murderous attack on civilians and its taking of hostages should be unequivocally condemned as crimes against humanity. Such condemnation is fully appropriate, and easy in the United States.

“Deploring the crimes of others often gives us a nice warm feeling: we are good people, so different from those bad people,” Noam Chomsky has observed. “That is particularly true when there is nothing much we can do about the crimes of others, so that we can strike impressive poses without cost to ourselves. Looking at our own crimes is much harder, and for those willing to do it, often carries costs.”

With the U.S.-backed war on Gaza now in its fourth month, “looking at our own crimes” can lead to clearly depicting and challenging the role of the U.S. government in the ongoing huge crimes against humanity in Gaza. But such depicting and challenging is distinctly unpopular if not taboo in the halls of government power — even though, and especially because, the U.S. role of massively arming and supporting Israel is pivotal for the war.

“For the narcissist, everything that happens to them is a huge deal, while nothing that happens to you matters,” scholar Sophia McClennen wrote last week. “When that logic translates to geopolitics, the disproportionate damage only magnifies. This is why Israel is not held to any standards, while those who question that logic are told to shut up. And if they don’t shut up, they are punished or threatened.”

Further normalizing the slaughter are the actions and inaction of Congress. On Tuesday evening, only 11 senators voted to support a resolution that would have required the Biden administration to report on Israel’s human-rights record in the Gaza war. The sinking of that measure reflects just how depraved the executive and legislative branches are as enablers of Israel.

The horrors in Gaza are being propelled by the U.S. war machine. But you wouldn’t know it from the standard U.S. media, pointing to the moon and scarcely hinting at the utter coldness of its dark side.

(Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, is published by The New Press.)

“EVERY WAR the US involves itself in is always facilitated by lies promulgated in one voice by the official government in Washington and by the “independent” “free” press (actually propaganda services) of the western world. They deceived the world about Ukraine. They deceived the world about Yemen. They deceived the world about Syria, Libya and Iraq. There are always, always lies, obfuscations and manipulations involved in marketing a new war to the public, or in hiding its involvement in foreign wars from public attention.

All of this manipulation and deceit is necessary to hide the fact that the US-centralized empire is the most tyrannical power structure on this planet. And make no mistake, it is an empire. Washington serves as the hub of an undeclared empire comprised of alliances, partnerships, assets, public deals and secret agreements which knit a large number of nations together into what functions as a single power structure with regard to international affairs.”

— Caitlin Johnston

THE GODDESS OF THE WEF

by James Kunstler

“What has been the number one theme of the World Economic Forum this year? It’s not climate change, it’s not Ukraine. It is censorship of the internet. They are painting a target directly on @ElonMusk’s forehead and they’re labeling it ‘X'” — Jack Posobeic

Tell me: is there a fairer grandmotherly face than this in all of Western Civ? Does it not seem to radiate eons of aggregate wisdom, maternal kindness, bountiful nurture, caring, and healing, and even a hint of fun in the nursery. . . the rectified essence of Teutonic beauty, fertility, vitality, and virtue. . . the loving smile of the life-giver caressing humanity like a spring zephyr wafting through the piney Schwarzwald on a June morning?

That is exactly why Ursula von der Leyen was (s)elected President of the European Commission, and why she was sent out to front the World Economic Forum (WEF) this week in her keynote speech to the assembled global grandees of Davos in the dead chill of January. It’s one thing when a cadaverous goblin such as Yuval Noah Harari tells you to eat bugs, and quite another thing when Oma Ursula tells you Keine Sorge, Kinder. Alles ist gut.

Ursula did offer us children-of-the-world one wee note of caution, though, as every good “grammy” might give to the global kindergarten: watch out for misinformation and disinformation on the internet! Like the evil imps of the Germanic Märchen, these wicked forces lurk and propagate on the internet — waiting to dash all of the WEF’s benevolent plans for our utopian future. That’s why, she explained, the European Commission has drawn up the Digital Services Act — because misinfo and disinfo can fluoresce into hate speech, the most dangerous thing in the world. It must be stomped out! Ground into the dirt under a boot heel!

Misinfo and disinfo about what, exactly? Ursula omitted to specify, but we can guess, can’t we? For instance, about how more and more every year the WEF seems to operate like a global racketeering operation, seeking the levers of control in all the naughtiest sovereign nations of the earth overpopulated with “useless eaters” who are remorselessly busy wrecking the climate to enjoy, say, in the case of the USA, their loathsome motor-sports, mega-churches, gun shows, hot-tubs, and Golden Corral All-You-Can-Eat buffets! The WEF, a racket? A cabal of haughty control freaks? What a hateful thing to say, after everything kindly onkel Schwabenklaus has done for mankind! It hurts our feelings to hear this!

Yet, why do scores of billionaires flock to the yearly Davos meet-up and coordinate their funding streams into countless NGOs and shadowy activist organizations aimed at manipulating the activities of governments around the world? I assure you it’s hardly for the fabulous hors d’oeuvre platters or the even more fabulous on-call hookers. (The nabobs of finance must be satisfied with the services of their personal chefs and masseuses.) Ursula says the WEF notables meet annually “because our democracies and our businesses have interests that align: creating prosperity, wealth and security for people, creating a stable environment to unlock innovation and investment, and creating equal opportunity and freedom.”

I have some disappointing news for you: grandmother Ursula is lying (alas, we live in time of epic disappointments). If the WEF wanted “stability” you would not see Alex (and papa George) Soros pouring money into every county DA election from Maine to California to make sure that looting, car-jacking, and mayhem go unpunished. . . or that men of military age from every failed state on the planet get flown across the oceans to NGO-supported waystations in Central America so that the cartels of Mexico can take over the final leg of their illegal entry into the USA. . . or ditto the boats ferrying Africans and Arabs across the Mediterranean to overwhelm the societies of Europe — including especially Grammy Ursula’s Germany.

The last thing the WEF she fronts for cares about is this airy-fairy freedom thing. Ditto equal opportunity. They want all the goodies for themselves and they want the rest of us to quit cluttering up their world. And they mean to get you out of here, for-real. The Covid-19 operation, so advantageous to their Great Reset plan, has resulted in billions of people subjected to very sketchy “vaccines.” The record indicates a shocking, abnormal, sustained rise, since 2021, when the “vaccines” were introduced, of all-causes deaths. That was just the overture of the Next Big Thing.

This week, the WEF and its subaltern org, the WHO, amped up warnings about the coming “Disease X.” This, they say, will be much worse than the namby-pamby Covid-19, which mostly led to people’s deaths by iatrogenic medical maltreatment with respirators, remdesivir, and opiates — and the relentless suppression of actual effective treatments. (All talk of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine on the Internet was deemed “disinfo.”)

If such a thing as “Disease X” does arise in the weeks and months ahead, this is what it will actually be: a cover-story for all the previously mRNA-vaccinated people with damaged immune systems getting fatally ill from a new mutation of Covid. Eminent virologists are predicting exactly this. (Misinformation, you think?) Wait for it and find out.

(kunstler.com)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Seems to me that if *they* continue to throttle the digital space then we will naturally decline to participate much. It happens (for a recent example look at the failure of Instagram Threads).

I remember a time when ‘zines, radical newspapers and newsletters were common. That’s how I used to get my “alternative” information.

While I don’t condone or like graffiti there is quite a large “slap sticker” movement here. Unlike the graffiti, which is often about the style, many stickers carry a message. Many are very subversive and are put in areas to be seen.