Mendocino County Today: Monday, Jan. 22, 2024

Showers Likely | Pinto Horse | Not Dead | Observer Hacked | Sulphur Shelf | County Notes | Willits Hills | Ed Notes | Clare's Cafe | Redwood Summer | Playing Dumb | Dementia Film | Get Real | Grange News | Rabbit-Hutch Housing | 63 Years | Edie 116 | Yesterday's Catch | Palestine March | Assembly Race | Post Game | Painful Victory | TV News | Beautiful Beach | Buddy Guy | Fascism | Outrageous Cost | Pleasant Drunk | Inequality | Presidential Immunity | Aunt Sam

RAINFALL (past 24 hours): Yorkville 2.04" - Boonville 1.30" - Hopland 1.26" - Willits 0.90" - Ukiah 0.84" - Leggett 0.84" - Laytonville 0.78" - Covelo 0.68"

SHOWERS and isolated thunderstorms are forecast today through this evening. A lull is expected on Tuesday, before the next front brings more wet and unsettled weather on Wednesday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A cloudy 55F on the coast this Monday morning with .62" more rainfall. Once again the BIG storm forecast for last night under performed. Thankfully. Scattered showers for today, clear Tuesday, rain Wednesday, clear Thursday. And so on. KTVU's Steve Paulson said February is looking wet.

CORRECTION: Patrick Ford was mistakenly listed in “Valley Deaths” for 2023 in our January 7 edition. However, local military veteran Patrick Ford called last week to inform us that he is quite alive and well and living in Yorkville. Our apologies to Mr. Ford.

JIM SHIELDS:

We [the Laytonville-based Mendocino Observer weekly newspaper] were hacked by some unknown jackass who succeeded in obtaining our email password and commandeered our email system and generally shut us down for several days. Fortunately, IT Guru Extraordinaire Joseph Feigon was able to de-fang the jerk and get us up and running again. The hacker also gained access to one of my financial accounts (it had the same password as the email account) but it appears it got locked down before anything calamitous occurred, I believe. I want to thank Joe for moving so quickly and getting this potential disaster sorted out. If you ever find yourself in similar straits, I cannot recommend anyone with higher capabilities and savvy super smarts than Joe. The Laytonville Water District and numerous other businesses and organizations utilize Joe's services. You can reach Joe at 707/984-4400 and help@mendocomputerguy.com. 

THIS is by far the biggest chicken of the woods (mushroom) fruiting I have ever seen, heard or found in one spot. 

Top to bottom the whole tree was covered in it, for reference I am 6 ft tall. This fruiting gave me over 25 pounds of prime COTW and has left me with many meals over the fall and winter.

COUNTY NOTES

by Mark Scaramella

ITEM 3m on Tuesday’s Supervisors Consent Calendar Agenda is:

“Approval of Agreement with Liebert Cassidy Whitmore in the Amount of $100,000 to Provide Legal Services, Effective Upon Full Execution through June 30, 2025.” 

Summary of Request: “County Counsel is requesting the Board approve the agreement with Liebert Cassidy Whitmore in the amount of $100,000. This agreement will provide legal services for the litigation matter of Chamise Cubbison v. Mendocino County, et al., Case No. 23CV01231.”

Buried in the attached “description of services” we find:

“Contractor shall provide the following services:

“A. Provide legal representation to Mendocino County for the case: Chamise Cubbison v. Mendocino County, et al., Mendocino County Superior Court Case No. 23CV01231.

“B. Provide timely status reporting to County, in the manner deemed required by the Risk Manager, the Senior Risk Analyst and/or their designee(s), for Chamise Cubbison v. Mendocino County, et al. by the fifteenth (15) of every month. Status reports need not contain any details or analysis which would require a breach of attorney-client confidentiality.”

“Fiscal Details:

source of funding: 0713-863320

current f/y cost: $50,000

budget clarification: n/a

annual recurring cost: $50,000”

Note the anticipated duration of this contract: “through June 30, 2025.”

We cannot find any on-line reference to or explanation of the very UNtransparent source of funding called “0713-863320.”

* * *

Mendo’s New (Interim) County Counsel:

Tuesday Agenda Item 5a)

“Discussion and Possible Action Including Approval of Retroactive Agreement with Renne Public Law Group LLP in the Amount of $210,000 to Provide Interim County Counsel Services, Effective January 8, 2024, through June 30, 2024; Pursuant to Section 27641.1 of the Government Code, Waive the Residency Requirement Contained in Section 24001 of the Government Code; Appointment of James R. Ross as Interim County Counsel in Accordance with the Terms of the Agreement.”

“Retroactive Agreement”? Were the Supervisors even kept out of the loop in hiring their own County Counsel?

Mendo’s Interim County Counsel (for six months) will cost $210k, or $420k for a year. 

According to Renne’s website:

“Jim Ross has been providing high-quality legal advice to public entities for over 30 years. Jim is a practical and effective lawyer with extensive experience in public agency law. He has served in county counsel offices for over 26 years. In 2023, Jim was recognized for his outstanding service by the County Counsel Association of California. During his career, Jim served as County Counsel, Assistant County Counsel, and Deputy County Counsel. Prior to years of working with counties, Jim served as a City Attorney and a Deputy City Attorney as well as providing legal advice to special districts. During his career, Jim has advised governing bodies and departments on the full range of legal issues faced by local government agencies.

“Jim Ross’s practice focuses on advising public agencies in multiple areas of public law including general government agency advice, affirmative litigation, land use, public works, elections, and litigation oversight and management. He also has experience advising law enforcement agencies including correctional facilities.

“Prior to joining Renne Public Law Group, Jim served in multiple roles in the Shasta County Counsel’s Office including serving as the County Counsel [for just four months; see below]. …”

According to a Renne Press Release late last year, Mr. Ross has been employed by Renne since October of 2023.

According to a website called redding.com, Mr. Ross retired from (or “left”) his position as Shasta County County Counsel in July of 2023 just four months after being promoted to the position in April of 2023 from Assistant County Counsel where he was paid about $170k per year plus benefits.

There’s a colorful account of recent political developments and its impact on the County Counsel’s office in a Shasta County on-line news site. 

“Rumors Swirl as Hard-right Board Majority Foments Secrets, Lies, and a Legacy of Banished County Counsels”…

According to that story, Mr. Ross is one of several attorneys who have been “banished” by a recently elected “hard right” Shasta County Board of Supervisors majority.

Escaping the political turmoil in Shasta County, Mr. Ross seems to have landed on his feet in Mendocino County, at least for the time being, benefitting both himself in his highly-paid new position, as well as the Renne Public Law Group who will rake off a nice share of Mendo’s County Counsel payments for Mr. Ross.

One problem that is likely to arise during Mr. Ross’s “interim” tenure will be what to do about his employer, the Renne Public Law Group, which the County has been using for a variety of legal services in recent years, including the $240k worth of wasted “arbitration services” in the aftermath of the grossly overpriced and unnecessary dispute the Board initiated with the Sheriff over control of his computer system and ordinary budget overruns, as well as the tens of thousands of dollars having Renne respond to our Brown Act complaint after former County Counsel Christian Curtis’s mishandled his own pay raise. Will Mr. Ross continue to steer county legal contracts to Renne? Or will Renne be excluded based on possible conflict of interest grounds?

* * *

This Month’s CEO Report Is Out.

From the minutes of the June 20, 2023 Board meeting:

“Board Directive: General Consensus of the Board to direct staff to publish a progress indicator on how many parcels have been assessed, total dollar amount assessed, and staffing levels of appraisers in each Edition of the CEO Report with a goal of closing the gap and reaching 85 percent (currently at or around 70 percent) over the next 24 months.”

Last month’s CEO Report belatedly acknowledged that June’s directive that “each edition” of the CEO Report include some Assessment statistics, some six months after the “directive,” even going so far as to quote it.

For six months the CEO and the Assessor totally ignored this directive. An oral report in December didn’t provide any information, saying only that “No information or data was provided from the department.” The CEO added: “The Executive Office has contacted the Assessor-Clerk-Recorder-Registrar of Voters to request an update. The Assessor-Clerk-Recorder-Registrar of Voters will provide a verbal update during the Board of Supervisors meeting.” The Assessor’s “verbal update” wasn’t much of an update, but simply a restatement of what she had said the prior month. No “progress indicators” have ever been provided, no account of parcels assessed, and only a casual mention of the value of the supplemental assessments that were issued instead of the “total dollar amount assessed.” The “verbal update” did mention the staffing status in the Assessor’s office which seems to be all anyone knows about the overall assessment status.

This month’s CEO Report (for January) reverts back to last month and does not even mention the seemingly important directive. 

Why do we keep harping about this? Because every month the County leaves millions of dollars of taxes due uncollected while claiming to be in a budget crisis. If they can’t even get their CEO and Assessor to provide the partial status info which they “directed” to be included in “each edition” of the CEO report back in June, what does that say about the County’s ability to collect all the taxes due: back/delinquent taxes, under-assessed property improvements, new ownerships, delinquencies, etc.?

* * *

The CEO Report did at least provide some random out-of-context “Behavioral Health Accomplishments [sic] for 2023”:

• Completed the implementation of CalAIM documentation and billing and payment reform. 

• Handed out 2,325 (two dose) boxes of Narcan to the community.

• Became authorized by DHCS [a state office] to request larger batches of Narcan from the DHCS Narcan
Distribution Project.

• Participated in 38 community events for program awareness and distribution of
program materials and prevention materials. 

• Visible attitude change around Narcan distribution from the public (shift from “I don’t
need that” to “That is so great that you provide this.”).

• Implemented Health Information Exchange connection. 

• Post-COVID resumption of jail groups for both sentenced and un-sentenced.

• Increased BHRS staff bilingual capacity.

• Active Mentored Internship Program.

• Applied for and were awarded grants.

• Continued to expand Mobile Crisis to meet the new mandated mobile crisis response
that became effective 1/1/2024.
[This is the first we have heard of a “mandated mobile crisis response.”]

• Reduction in the percent of individuals being detained in Mobile Crisis (approximately
41% detained in June 2022 to approximately 11% in November 2023.

• Implemented Jail data collection within the BHRS E.H.R. [?] that allows tracking of
individuals that are arrested but also are in the Behavioral Health system. 

• Implemented Microsoft Projects.

• Streamlined many of the fiscal processes. 

* * *

The Narcan handouts sound like an “accomplishment,” albeit minor, but the rest of these alleged “accomplishments” for the entire year of 2023 are just ordinary office activity being hyped as something much greater and in some cases an acknowledgement of things long-overdue finally being done. 

ED NOTES

CRIME & PATRIMONY, TWO SAD STORIES

WILLIAM ALTON “BILL” VARGAS pled guilty to first degree murder back in 2000. Vargas admitted he used a gun to murder Fort Bragg businessman Jim Cummings, but Vargas also pled not guilty by reason of insanity, which was found to be true, and Bill has been locked away at the state hospital in Napa ever since. 

ABOUT MIDNIGHT one July evening in 1997, Vargas, now in his early seventies if he's still alive, was a familiar face in Fort Bragg when he tossed a cherry bomb up on the porch of Cummings' home in Noyo Harbor. Cummings, 77, and never one to shrink from the action, came running out his front door with a gun, and Vargas shot him in the head with a fancy .40 caliber pistol complete with scope. Vargas also lived in Noyo Harbor and had worked for Cummings as an odd job man.

THE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT would describe Cummings’ killer, the hapless Bill Vargas, as “highly educated” because, in a stormy court case with his former wife, Vargas had deployed the word, “uxorious” to describe himself. 

CUMMINGS was worth many millions at the time of his death. His trustees brought in a Brinks truck to haul all his booty out of his house as two accountants stood by keeping track of thousands in cash, antique guns and swords, gold coins, a veritable pirate's treasure. 

A GRUFF, tough talking man with a soft spot for marginal persons, Cummings often hired marginals to perform simple tasks at one or another of his many Coast enterprises. While he could be charitable, Cummings was a ruthless businessman and repeat wife beater who enjoyed a convenient exemption from the laws applying to less well-connected citizens. His treatment of his former wife, Aura Johanson, was notoriously brutal. In one truly awful episode Cummings beat Aura with a flashlight, breaking her nose. Deputies responding to her call for help did not arrest Cummings. During the couple’s divorce, bailiffs were required to be present whenever Mr. and Mrs. Cummings met to negotiate an end to their marriage because Cummings constantly threatened his wife with violence even in the presence of law enforcement. Aura Johanson was much younger than her husband, having moved in with Cummings while she was still a student at Fort Bragg High School. 

A GENTLE SOUL unable to protect herself against the bullying “King of Noyo,” and of course aware that her husband enjoyed an exemption from the law the wealthy have historically enjoyed in Fort Bragg and Mendocino County, Mrs. Aura Cummings, saw no alternative to her brutal husband, but finally screwed up her courage to leave him. 

MS. JOHANSEN and her two children with Cummings made the national news a few years after Cummings’ death when the former Mrs. Cummings, a recovering drug addict, was arrested by the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department and charged with possession of “black tar heroin.” The black tar heroin turned out to be a batch of scorched popcorn balls, prompting much merriment that police officers couldn't distinguish dope from dopes. 

MOM had been videotaped by her son allegedly in the act of doing drugs. The son went to the police with the claim that his surveillance proved that his mother was supplying drugs to her young daughter and the wider community, all of which turned out to be untrue but provided much grist for the national talk show moralists. 

WHEN VARGAS put the final period on Cummings’ life, Mrs. Cummings had already been excluded as a beneficiary of the bounty she’d helped her husband create. Not a penny from Cummings vast holdings went to the mother of his children. What a guy.

CUMMINGS' SON, Jim Jr., turned out a lot like his old man. At the time of his father's death, Jim Jr. was 17, and soon was alleging that his father's trust was being looted by its trustees. Junior spent several unhappy years in litigation with the managers of his late father’s bequest, finally settling with them. 

THE CUMMINGS TRUST MANAGERS had indeed hired past and present girlfriends to perform nebulous to non-existent tasks, enjoyed expensive meals on the trust's tab and so on. Junior wasn't wrong that he and his sister were being robbed, and he took his big cash-out to Texas with his wife, the former Amber Brown, also of Fort Bragg. They subsequently moved to Bangor, Maine. 

IN 2009, Cummings Jr., 29, was shot to death by Amber, then 31, in the couple's home in Bangor, Maine; the couple's 9-year-old home-schooled daughter was present. Police attributed the shooting to “domestic violence,” implying that Mrs. Cummings was defending herself when she shot her husband. She was described by neighbors and acquaintances as a “quiet” and “very pleasant lady.” Jim Jr. was described as “a fat loud mouth with a Napoleon complex.”

CUMMINGS JR., before his wife finished him off, had earlier come to national attention when he was arrested in Bangor for possessing bomb-making materials, and threatening to blow up President Obama's inauguration.

THE BANGOR DAILY NEWS, in an account by Walter Griffin, said that Cummings bullied Amber, that she “cowered” in his presence. “It didn’t shock me at all when I heard about it,” said Mike Robbins, who spent a month painting and roofing the Cummings home the previous summer. “He was a very angry person and was verbally abusive to his wife all the time.” Robbins described Cummings as a heavyset man who liked to walk around his house wearing a cowboy hat and an ankle-length black leather coat. He said Cummings would often sit outside on a lawn chair and watch him work and make disparaging comments. Robbins said Cummings also spoke about how he “really liked the Nazis” and claimed to have a large collection of Nazi memorabilia, including pieces of Hitler’s silverware and place settings. The overwhelming Bangor consensus was that Amber had done the community a large favor.

BACK TO VARGAS. Vargas used to write long, lucid letters to the Boonville weekly, so lucid that I wondered, “This guy doesn't write nuts. How crazy is he, really?” Most nuts, incarcerated or free range, write crazy.

AS IT HAPPENS, assuming both Bill Vargas and Joe Mannix, the latter from Boonville, are still alive, Mannix is also confined to the state hospital at Napa where he's been kept in a drug fog for years. Joe was the son of Homer Mannix, second owner of the AVA and the paper's long-time publisher in the 1960s and 1970s. He also functioned as judge of the Anderson Valley Justice Court, chairman of the CSD board, president of the school board, volunteer fire chief and emergency responder and, in his last years, manager of the Boonville transfer station where his nephew, Mike, now presides. A modest, soft spoken man, and a closet liberal who told me once, “Nixon? I voted for McGovern,” Homer Mannix was at a loss of what to do about his errant son Joe.

JOE MANNIX got into drugs early, which probably accounts for his mental illness. Prior to drugs, Joe was a solid student at the Boonville high school where he also learned to fly in the school's excellent, nationally unique flight program, which turned out to be Joe's downfall as a young adult when he stole small planes and flew them in spectacularly dangerous ways, once deliberately flying into San Bruno Mountain in an apparent suicide attempt. He often threatened to dive bomb the Boonville gym and, in a truly amazing aerial feat, landed a stolen Cessna on a precipitous outcropping on the side of the mountain directly overlooking Boonville. The stranded plane became a local landmark while the authorities pondered how to remove it.

AND that was it for Joe. He's been locked up ever since at Napa where, according to his fellow inmate, Vargas, Joe spends his dwindling days shuffling aimlessly around the grounds, permanently beyond the beyond, unvisited, forgotten by all except his old high school classmates. 

BILL KIMBERLIN: This is an ad or flyer for the Cafe in Philo when it was called “Clare's Cafe.” It is probably a match book ad because it took me some time to make it readable. Imagine, cocktails before, “The Last Resort”?

MIKE WILLIAMS:

I was more interested in Greg King’s history of the redwood region. The early consolidation of vast private redwood holdings was unknown to me as well as the previously hidden motives of the founders of the Save the Redwoods League. I know from having been at the Calpella, Somoa, and Fort Bragg protests that there were some shady characters involved in Redwood Summer, especially surrounding the Bari/Cherney faction. King does take Cherney to task for his arrogance in his media relations. He also does a pretty good job in connecting the players involved in the final outcome of Headwaters. As a general history of the exploitation of north coast redwoods and their role in industrial expansion I think King hits the nail squarely on the head.

ED NOTE:

I was emcee at Samoa and Fort Bragg, and was among the mob at Calpella. You may recall that guy revving his chainsaw in King’s face, then hitting King as King delivered a nifty counterpunch that stopped the guy, (seemingly tweeked to the max) and off chainsaw man went to his truck and away. Samoa was the most perfect demo I’ve ever been a part of. Fort Bragg was tense but we drew as many people as the LP-sponsored counter-demo yellow ribboners did, and I remember Duane Potter, a well known FB tough guy, shutting up the hecklers because they knew they might have to deal with him later. Duane’s speech from the flatbed truck platform telling the yellow ribbons that GP and LP had not only cashed in the forests but the jobs that went with them was the rhetorical highlight of the day. I also can’t forget being called a M-Fer by a kid I’d coached in Boonville Little League! Give Judi Bari major credit for setting Redwood Summer in motion. She was a genius organizer for sure.

BETSY CAWN WONDERS:

Re: Mendocino and Lake County Boards of Supervisors

I have spent more than a quarter of a century studying the County of Lake and, to a lesser extent the County of Mendocino, and cannot today answer this question: Are the elected officials truly stupid or are they “playing dumb”?

AN UPLIFTING LOOK AT THE TOPIC OF DEMENTIA

This Tuesday, January 23, 2 - 4:15 pm

Watch it at the AV Senior Center or at home ON ZOOM

Ashby Village is excited to sponsor a screening of this hopeful and inspiring film that aims to shift the narrative of fear and hopelessness about Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.

After the film, Film Director Cynthia Stone and Film Producer Caroline Prioleau of the Global Brain Health Institute will answer audience questions.

Read more and register for your Zoom link to watch it at home (no need to register if you are going to watch it with us at the Senior Center) here.

LAST CHANCE

Sitting in the common room at Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center in rain soaked Ukiah, California tonight, identifying with the Immortal Atman (the spiritual glow which lives in the savarupa, or center of the chest), reading about how completely insane the United States of America has become politically, how this lost “experiment with freedom and democracy” has tragically become. And then there is the bottomless abyss of homelessness. I’ll take a fully wired fully subsidized central Ukiah living situation, to destroy the demonic, and I don’t even care if it returns this world to righteousness. This is your opportunity to get real with me.

Craig Louis Stehr 

AV GRANGE NEWS 

by Captain Rainbow

Februaries 2nd Sunday of the month PANCAKE BREAKFAST is Sunday February 11th 8:30-11:00. A great deal, delicious griddle cakes, eggs and bacon with all the fixin's, great musical accompaniment by Los Panceleros, and great company with your friends and neighbors, more and more families are showing up and it's great to see the kids running amuck, (maybe the maple syrup effect). 

Get ready all you Grangers, Friends of the Grange and supporters of your community hall. It's time to do a little sprucing up of the building before the March Variety Show. A wide range of skills will be needed, electrical, carpentry plumbing but also deep cleaning, scrubbing, washing etc. etc. We are planning a few work days maybe late January but probably early February and when we have a schedule of tasks we'll be contacting folks on our various lists, but feel free to call Andy at 895-3020. 

Speaking of the Variety Show:

UKIAH OPTS FOR RABBIT-HUTCH HOUSING 

by Tommy Wayne Kramer 

If Ukiah isn’t careful, and in recent years Ukiah has not been careful, her housing future will be bland boxes of anonymous buildings in big complexes where you’d never want to live. 

All over town big housing projects have erupted, to the point that as many citizens now live in crackerbox “affordable housing” units as live in the kind of traditional single-family houses Ukiahans have previously called home: Modest homes, ample yard space and assorted neighbors. 

These houses carpet the town, from the trendy west side to the more affordable but still quite appealing homes that run many blocks in lots of neighborhoods down north and south sides of the city. 

Across the freeway are fine houses on well-kept blocks and streets, plus a smattering of apartments. 

Being installed now are massive projects that dwarf all others. Go north on State Street and look to the west behind the Jensen Truck Stop at an alarming development none of us remember approving or even knowing about. 

Turn back and go east onto Brush Street (west is Low Gap Road) and gaze in amazement, if that’s the right word, at another new pile squatting on the north side of the road. The old familiar ag land separating North State Street and Highway 101 is gone, and this new vista will startle those who’ve not travelled Brush Street in a while. 

Today the city is overseeing another overwhelming housing addition, this one on East Gobbi, already home to big projects wedged among similar cramped buildings. These are massive Ukiah-backed developments no city administrator would ever stoop to inhabit. 

The first question: Why East Gobbi? If East Gobbi isn’t the most heavily trafficked artery into Ukiah then I must have counted my cars wrong. It’s a two lane strip more than sufficiently choked with vehicles, traffic lights, pedestrians and shops. This being Ukiah, of course, a lot of those shops are dark and empty. At least they aren’t contributing to the nonstop flow limping west until breaking free and dispersing north and south on State Streets. 

Will the new project have a positive or negative impact on traffic flow? 

I drove through State Street’s cone maze last week to take a look, parked nearby and walked around the partially completed “Village Circle” complex. What occurred to me is how little these three-story container ships nesting among each other reminded me of a “village,” never mind the circle part. 

A southbound street leads in, goes around then comes back. Where does Village Circle end? It doesn’t, exactly. It just metastasizes until it merges with another Legoland development called “Summer Creek Village.” In less than a quarter-mile you can turn around and head back out. Bring a lunch. 

Summer Creek Village is an already completed series of two-story gray units, numerous carports, a swimming pool a bit bigger than a pool table, and a single sad, droopy basketball hoop standing on a small graveled patch. All is surrounded by sturdy cyclone fencing alongside dead railroad tracks, and just beyond, the Homeless Highway. 

Village Circle and Summer Creek will eventually absorb one another, creating a housing entity that will dwarf those puny units down on Laws Avenue. 

Where will we get water for these big new projects (Brush Street, Jensen’s Truck Stop, East Gobbi Street)? Think we’ll need more cops? Will increased traffic be noticeable? 

Remember, all this wild, semi-controlled big building binge has been going on (and on) at the same time Ukiah and everywhere else in California has been prevented from building single family homes. Partly it’s a result of Not-in-My-Backyardism, and mostly due to state clampdowns on new housing, no matter that most Californians would rather live in their own homes than in dormitories. 

It’s also, I believe, a major part of the state planned housing shortage/homeless explosion that have run side-by-side the last 30 years. It isn’t as if Mendocino County, with a steady population of about 95,000 through the past decades, doesn’t have room to grow. 

Wouldn’t most of us prefer well-designed neighborhoods of a hundred homes each, up north of Mendo College or east of Redwood Valley, than thousands of rabbit hutches in dozens of boxes, each the size of Walmart? 

Too late. 

EDIE CECCARELLI’S 116TH BIRTHDAY in Willits

by Justine Frederiksen

It’s perhaps the biggest birthday party in the country and everyone is invited: Willits resident Edith “Edie” Ceccarelli, who as of Friday was the oldest living person in the United States, will turn 116 on Feb. 5, 2024.

Since her actual birthday falls on a Monday this year, the annual celebration will be held on Sunday, Feb. 4, and again feature a parade of well-wishers driving by her residential home at 414 Grove St. in Willits.

Everyone is invited to participate in this year’s festivities, scheduled to be held from 1 to 1:30 p.m. If you do drive by her home, organizers ask that you “drive by with a decorated car (signs, streamers, balloons, flags) and wave as you pass her house to wish her a happy birthday!”

Born on Feb. 5, 1908 in Willits, Ceccarelli is now the oldest-known living person in the United States and the second oldest in the world. According to Wikipedia, Maria Branyas Morera, who will be 117 next month (born March 4, 1907), is an American-born Spanish woman who has been the world’s oldest verified living person since the death of Lucile Randon (1904–2023) on Jan.17, 2023.

Delivered at home, Ceccarelli was the first of seven children born to Italian immigrants Agostino and Maria Recagno in a house on Flower Street that was built by her father and had neither electricity nor running water.

She graduated from Willits Union High School in ’27, married Elmer “Brick” Keenan in ’33 and moved to Santa Rosa where they adopted a daughter. They returned to Willits when Brick retired in ’71. After Brick’s death in ‘84, she married Charles Ceccarelli. He died in ‘90.

At 108 she attributed her longevity to not smoking or drinking, except for a glass of wine with dinner, staying out of squabbles, being honest, working hard and appreciating the little things.

And for most of her extraordinarily long life, nothing could keep Ceccarelli from dancing. Instead of finally deciding to sit out the music at age 104 when she lost her longtime partner of 20 years, She lived independently until she was 107, after which she moved into a senior living facility, and over the past few years her cognitive faculties have diminished due to dementia.

These days, Edie is far less active and engaged, sitting calmly for last year’s neighborhood birthday celebration. Family member Evelyn Persico said dementia has now shrouded much of the vibrant woman’s personality, but there are still moments when she comes dancing back.

“Suddenly she’ll say, ‘It’s Feb. 5. It’s my birthday!’” Persico said.

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, January 21, 2024

BJORN ALBRIGHT, Forestville/Willits. DUI-alcohol&drugs, child endangerment, resisting, threatening a public officer.

SHANNON ARNOLD, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs. (Frequent Flyer)

JOEL BERKOWITZ, Willits. Hit&run with property damage.

JACOB KIER, Ukiah. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15% with priors.

JALAHN TRAVIS, Ukiah. Petty theft, probation violation.

REBECCA VARGAS, Ukiah. DUI.

RYAN WALBORN, Fortuna. Nitrous oxide.

ELIZABETH WOLFE, Ukiah. Battery on peace officer. (The booking entry says that the 21-year old Wolfe is 5 feet 5 and tips the scale at 250 pounds. “Their” gender is listed as “non-binary,” which may be the first (declared) “non-binary” person in Mendo’s jail. We assume Wolfe was momentarily housed in the female part of the jail. “They” were booked and released with no bail. But who knows? No wonder Mendo needs a new jail. The non-binaries can be housed in their own wing.)

JAIME ZEPEDA-DIAZ, Potter Valley. DUI.

AT 12PM on Saturday, January 27th, Marin DSA will be sponsoring a mass action outside of Representative Jared Huffman's Office at 1002 4th Street and City Plaza in San Rafael. 

There will be speakers and a march down 4th Street as we demand an immediate ceasefire, an end to US aid to Israel, and an end to the occupation of Palestine. Please join us if you can, and bring signs. From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!

THE RACE FOR AN OPEN NORTH COAST ASSEMBLY SEAT IS SET TO BECOME HIGHLY COMPETITIVE AHEAD OF MARCH PRIMARY

Six Democrats and one Republican are running to replace Assemblymember Jim Wood, who has represented the North Coast in Sacramento since 2014

by Andrew Graham

The race to replace Assemblymember Jim Wood, who has represented the North Coast in Sacramento since 2014, was always going to be competitive.

An empty statehouse seat with no incumbent is rare, even with term limits, and Northern California politicians had been eyeing 2026, when Wood and North Bay Sen. Mike McGuire would be at the end of their legislative tenures.

Then came Wood’s announcement Nov. 10 that he would not run for reelection in 2024 to spend more time with his elderly mother. Within weeks, six Democrats and one Republican had filed to run for his seat.

A combination of factors — namely the district’s demographics, which include a considerable chunk of Republican voters, and California’s 2020 switch to an early primary contest for presidential election years — has set up a fast-paced, high-dollar sprint for votes in the March 5 primary.

Of the six Democrats, four are raising considerable cash and lining up endorsements: Santa Rosa Councilman Chris Rogers, Yurok tribal Vice Chairman Frankie Myers, Healdsburg Councilwoman Ariel Kelley and Rusty Hicks, chairman of the California Democratic Party.

Mendocino County Supervisor Ted Williams and Cynthia Click, a former community radio host from Willits, are the other two Democrats. The lone Republican candidate is Del Norte school board trustee Michael Greer, of Crescent City.

The contest has been quiet so far but is expected to unleash a flurry of ad spending, and at least some of those ads could go negative as Democrats who are aligned on most issues seek to distinguish themselves.

The top two vote earners will advance to the general election in November. However, the conventional political wisdom of the district, and the belief of all four leading Democrats, is that only one of those spots will go to a Democrat.

So with just about seven weeks left until Election Day, the race comes down to several key questions:

Can Myers, an unprecedented candidate as leader of one of the region’s largest tribes, turn out Native American voters in decisive numbers? Can Rogers, who served on the Santa Rosa council through the deadly 2017 firestorms and subsequent rebuild, leverage his political connections and reputation in the district’s biggest population center? Will Kelley follow the path of McGuire and Wood as the next Healdsburg mayor to become North Coast lawmaker?

Can she or Hicks, who have both demonstrated access to considerable campaign funds and expressed the willingness to invest heavily, spend enough to sway voters? And can Hicks’ overcome being a newcomer — the party leader moved to Arcata in 2021 — and convince voters his statewide connections and experience are an asset to the North Coast?

These questions will play out in one of California’s largest Assembly districts, geographically speaking, in the state. Assembly District 2 stretches from Highway 12 in Santa Rosa, up the coast to the Oregon border.

Historically, Republican voters in the northern counties of Del Norte, Trinity and Humboldt have accounted for around 30% of the vote in primary elections — giving the Republican Greer a potential steppingstone into the general election.

But while that block of Republican voters has a significant impact on the primary, it’s an underwhelming force in the general election. Meaning that whichever Democrat secures the second seat out of the primary — if past voting trends hold true — has a very good chance of being elected in November.

Money Flows Into Race

With a compressed time frame for candidates to travel the sprawling district, money for print, television, radio and social media ads will be critical. At this point, the public has limited insight into the race’s campaign financing.

Candidates have only had to report donations over $1,000, and independent expenditures are only beginning to trickle in.

Hicks is showing financial strength early. He has raised more than $486,000 in large donations, $300,000 more than the next closest candidate, which is Kelley.

In a Jan. 10 meeting with The Press Democrat editorial board, Hicks said he would report $518,000 in money raised. And he intends to raise $727,000 for the primary campaign — the spending limit candidates agree to in order to have a personal statement printed on the ballot in March.

“My intent is to raise and spend every last penny,” Hicks said.

The vast majority of the money he’s raised so far came from outside the district. With the exception of donations from his wife and a Sebastopol vintner, many of Hicks’ donors are statewide labor organizations. Before being elected chair of the Democratic party, he was head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, and he has deep ties to the state’s unions.

Other donations come from political consultants, strategists and lobbyists, many clustered in Los Angeles and Sacramento.

Hicks’ opponents are already criticizing his out-of-district fundraising, which feeds into the idea that he is a political “carpet bagger” who moved into the district knowing there were statehouse seats coming open.

“It is really easy to ask constituents in the district: ‘Why should you think that your voice is going to matter if it didn't matter in electing him?’” Rogers said during his own Jan. 12 meeting with the editorial board.

When a Press Democrat reporter asked Hicks to respond to some version of that question, he had a ready answer. “There is not a lot of money in the district broadly speaking for political activity,” Hicks said, noting that both Wood and McGuire often raised most of their campaign cash outside the North Coast. (Though McGuire has never been considered a prolific fundraiser).

“I think a voter who gets a piece of mail or (an ad) is not connected to whether the check came from the Central Valley or came from Sacramento or whatever. It's the ability to communicate a message,” Hicks said. “So yeah, I've got a statewide network. And I'm putting that statewide network to good use to raise the resources to communicate a message.”

An outside committee supporting Hicks has also filed to participate in the campaign, showing a $50,000 contribution from education and health care labor unions.

For Hicks, that’s all part of his pitch. “I have something that is worthy of consideration by the voters of this part of the state,” he said, “based upon the experiences that I have, based upon the leadership that I've carried out.”

Behind Hicks in fundraising — for now — is Kelley. The Healdsburg council member has disclosed around $166,000 in large donations so far but told The Press Democrat her campaign is willing and able to compete with Hicks by spending to the limit. Kelley, an attorney, said her history as a nonprofit director, both with Corazón Healdsburg, which she founded, and more recently leading a nonprofit that distributed millions to small businesses in the Pacific Northwest, has given her fundraising prowess.

Kelley distinguished her fundraising from Hicks by saying the vast majority of her donations come from within the district.

“They're all people who have seen the work that I've done and are ecstatic about wanting to elect me to do this on a higher level,” she said. Beyond that, Kelley is also backed by her family, and her financial disclosures as an elected official show she has resources to tap into should she choose to.

An independent committee to support her has disclosed $125,000 so far. The first $100,000 came from Kelley’s sister, Shoshana Ungerleider, who is a physician and producer of TED Health. Another $25,000 came from Bay Area financier Chris Hansen, founder of Valiant Capital. Hansen gave $5 million to begin Pillar, the economic development nonprofit Kelley led from early 2021 until it finished distributing all of its funds in mid-2023.

Rogers has disclosed $125,000 in donations so far. Much of it comes from labor organizations or individuals. The Press Democrat found no evidence of an outside committee supporting Rogers, but one could materialize in the weeks to come.

Myers has disclosed $95,500 so far. He counts donations from eight tribes, the Yurok included. The Press Democrat found no evidence of an outside committee supporting Myers yet either.

If Myers is elected, he noted in an interview with The Press Democrat, he would be one of just two Native Americans in the California Legislature, joining Assemblymember James Ramos, a Democrat and member of the Serrano Cahuilla tribe who took office in 2018 representing San Bernardino and parts of the surrounding county. Ramos donated $5,500 to Myers’ campaign.

Myers touts his experience working in a tribal government that has broken new ground with criminal justice, economic and environmental initiatives, including a successful high-profile push to remove dams from the Klamath River.

“What is different for me is my perspective and where I come from,” he said. “How we have addressed homelessness, how we have addressed environmental protection, how we have addressed health care, mental health, (missing and murdered indigenous people) is different because I come from a different perspective.”

With the money he raised, Myers hopes to introduce himself to the large population of voters in Sonoma County, he said. But he also hopes to drive significant tribal voter turnout throughout the district — awakening a political force that hasn’t fully expressed itself in statehouse elections. By his campaign’s calculations, there’s 15,000 to 18,000 Native American votes in the district which he believes could put him over the top in the primary.

“If all things are equal and the Republicans vote the way they do,” Myers said, “if our tribal community stepped forward for the first time in this district, possibly the first time in the state, it will be the tribal community who decides our next representative.”

Though the voting block remains significant, Myers’ calculation is based on around 100,000 people voting in the primary, with around 30,000 of those voters going Republican. Recent history suggests that his turnout estimate is low. Hicks suggested his campaign is estimating turnout more around 150,000 voters.

As of April 2022, the California Secretary of State reported 313,173 registered voters in Assembly District 2, with 159,173 registered Democrat.

While primary turnout is lower than general elections, the district’s most recent primaries have seen larger voter turnouts than Myers’ estimate. In the hotly contested presidential election of 2020, for example, 159,278 people voted in the primary, according to Ballotpedia, with Wood getting around 71% of the vote and a Republican candidate taking the rest.

As incumbent, Wood did not face any significant Democrat competition that year. Same as in the 2022 primary, when 130,047 people voted, with more than 37,000 going for the Republican candidate.

Viewed one way, the race could be seen as a contest that has two strong Democratic candidates representing the top half of the district, and two strong candidates coming from Sonoma County, which holds 52% of the registered voters. Through that lens, Myers and Hicks could be seen as drawing from each other’s base while Kelley and Rogers square off for Sonoma County’s votes.

But in interviews and editorial board meetings, the four candidates all expressed that they were on the move and campaigning in the district writ large, not focusing on one area or the other.

Kelley seeks to distinguish herself as someone who has succeeded both in local government and in the private and nonprofit sectors. She is also one of two women in the race and the mother of an 8-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter. And she also says her time governing in Healdsburg, a smaller city, gives her an experience that will connect with many of the small communities that dot the district.

“They're small cities, a lot of rural unincorporated areas, agricultural communities, environmental challenges, and those are things that are all my wheelhouse,” she said.

Rogers is describing his campaign as a grassroots effort, and he believes his long tenure governing the district’s most populous city demonstrates his quality.

“Our calculus was on a shortened timeline, where people perhaps don't know the candidates, but at least can be reminded of my track record and the issues that I've worked on in the most populous area of the district,” Rogers said. “That would set us up with a hard base that in a short amount of time it's hard for somebody who doesn't have those credentials to break into.”

He also says he got to know the district during his time working for McGuire, the popular state senator known for his continuous travel from the Oregon border to Golden Gate Bridge. Rogers is vocally promoting his endorsement by McGuire, who takes over leadership of the state Senate next month.

Wood has endorsed Hicks. The assemblyman, who also moved into a leadership position last fall as Speaker pro Tempore, told The Press Democrat he has known and worked with Hicks for years in the candidate’s capacity as party leader. He has been impressed by Hicks’ work ethic and pursuit of consensus and is not perturbed by his short time living in Assembly District 2, he said.

“I don’t know that there’s some sort of a litmus test for how long you need to be here,” Wood said. If Hicks had moved solely to run for statehouse, Wood added, “you wouldn’t pick this one because it is so big and so diverse.”

Click, the former radio host, said she entered the race when she thought Wood was running as an incumbent, disliking the idea of the Democrat going unchallenged and undebated. She has pitched herself as a progressive candidate.

Williams, the Mendocino County supervisor, says he’s running to ensure the issues of his county are heard during the race. He conceded in a meeting with the editorial board that he has little chance of winning in such a difficult field. But “stranger things have happened,” he said.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

49ERS SURVIVED PLAYING NOT TO LOSE VS. PACKERS, BUT THAT HAS TO CHANGE

by Michael Silver

In the end, even when the San Francisco 49ers had finally overcome their sloppy play and postseason nerves and seemingly clinched a game it looked like they had no business winning, there was still another sideline freakout to endure.

After a three-hour anxiety dream partly of his own making, head coach Kyle Shanahan experienced an additional 18 seconds of agony Saturday night as a game-sealing interception turned into a Looney Tunes chase scene. Of course he did. Seldom before has “That’s all, folks” been so excruciatingly delayed.

The 49ers’ 24-21 divisional-round playoff victory over the Green Bay Packers at rain-soaked Levi’s Stadium required a lot of pluck — and just as much luck — and nothing about it, not even their crowning moment, was remotely close to easy.

“That,” Shanahan said as he walked through the locker room, speaking broadly about the Niners’ playoff opener, “was as hard as it gets.”

It could be argued that Shanahan contributed to the struggle, both in terms of specific strategic decisions — such as a stubbornly conservative approach in the final minutes of the first half — and overall preparedness: The top-seeded Niners, 9½-point favorites against the seventh-seeded Packers, were the tighter, less fluid team for most of the night.

None of that will necessarily stop the Niners from winning a Super Bowl — they’ll host the winner of Sunday’s game between the third-seeded Detroit Lions and fourth-seeded Tampa Bay Buccaneers next Sunday with a conference title on the line, their fourth NFC Championship Game appearance in the past five seasons.

Yet if the 71,824 fans at Levi’s were looking for validation of the home team’s championship credentials, they’d have to do some serious mental gymnastics on the ride home to convince themselves that Saturday’s performance came anywhere close to sticking the landing.

Let’s start with the ending, during which Shanahan had every right to hyperventilate. Brock Purdy, after a mostly shaky effort, had driven the Niners 69 yards for a go-ahead touchdown, punctuated by Christian McCaffrey’s 6-yard run with 1:07 remaining. The Packers were about 25 yards from field-goal range when their young quarterback, Jordan Love, launched a first-down throw across his body that linebacker Dre Greenlaw dove to the ground to secure.

It was Greenlaw’s second interception of the game, and it should have ended the remaining suspense immediately. It was over — until it wasn’t. Suddenly, Greenlaw was up and running, and cutting back across the field, and refusing to go down as desperate Packers tried to pry the ball from his grasp.

The clock ticked and ticked, an 18-second play that felt like a kid’s entire childhood. Then again, that’s how the entire game felt to Peggy Shanahan, the coach’s mother, who spent most of its climatic moments hiding out in the bathroom of a luxury suite, too tense to watch, praying for the roar of the crowd to signal salvation.

She wasn’t the only interested party who didn’t witness Greenlaw’s impersonation of Paul Crewe on the climatic play of “The Longest Yard” in real time. Purdy missed a good chunk of it, too.

“When you picked it off I started to go back to get my helmet, cause I thought you were down,” Purdy told Greenlaw in the locker room after the game. “Then I go back to go on the field (for the game-ending kneeldown) and I look up and you’re still running.”

Replied Greenlaw, laughing, “Just trying to kill that time for you.”

What Greenlaw really was doing was trying to score, which is why he said he ignored the “Go Down!” exhortations from coaches and teammates. As the final sequence played out, it was a near-miracle that Kyle Shanahan — the man who had the most to lose — didn’t completely lose his cool.

It had been a struggle from the start. The Packers won the coin toss, elected to receive the opening kickoff and went on a 14-play, 58-yard drive that ended with Anders Carlson’s 29-yard field goal. From that point forward, the tension on the Niners’ sideline ratcheted up.

“It was stressful,” Greenlaw said. “Blood pressure was high.”

That was a stark contrast to the mood on the opposite side of the field. Matt LaFleur, a former Shanahan protege who guided the young and unheralded Packers to an unlikely playoff berth in the first season after first-ballot Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers’ departure from Titletown, called a bold and unbothered game that had his team poised for a massive upset.

“That’s how I coached all year,” LaFleur said as he walked to the Packers’ team buses long after the game, still gutted by the sudden end to Green Bay’s season. “And I’ll never not coach that way again.”

Shanahan, meanwhile, seemed to be coaching not to lose. The absence of wide receiver Deebo Samuel — who went out with a head injury, was cleared to return and then left for good after suffering a shoulder injury in the second quarter — seemed to impact his play-calling approach, as did Purdy’s uncharacteristic penchant for sailing throws and failing to see open receivers.

Maybe the rain bothered Purdy; maybe the Packers’ defense threw him off. In any event, he was exceptionally fortunate that his first quarter throw over the middle was flat-out dropped by charging Green Bay safety Darnell Savage, who seemed to have a clear path for a pick-six that would have given the Packers a 10-0 lead.

“Oh my gosh,” Purdy said afterward. “So bad.”

The Niners also benefited from a pair of dubious officials’ spots at the start of the second quarter, the second of which gave them a 4th-and-1 stop of Love’s quarterback sneak at the San Francisco 14. Carlson’s missed 41-yard field-goal attempt with 6:18 remaining in the game, which could have increased the Packers’ lead to 24-17, was another break for the home team.

Meanwhile, the 49ers made uncharacteristic mistakes, from blown coverages to dropped passes, and looked very much like a team that hadn’t played a meaningful game since the final day of 2023.

It was painful, at times, for their fired-up fans — especially the torturous sequence that played out in the final minutes of the first half.

The Niners, with a 7-6 lead thanks to Purdy’s 32-yard scoring strike to tight end George Kittle, took over at their own 25 with 4:09 left in the second quarter. The 49ers would receive the second-half kickoff and Shanahan, whose obsession with football’s version of a “2-for-1” rivals that of any NBA coach, was intent on closing the half with the ball in San Francisco’s possession.

So the 49ers proceeded at the pace of a car trying to fight its way down Great America Parkway to the stadium parking lot a couple of hours before the game. With 1:19 remaining, McCaffrey gained 3 yards on a run up the middle, setting up a 3rd-and-2 from the Packers’ 43. Shanahan let the clock run down to 34 seconds before calling his first timeout. Rather than taking a shot to the end zone, the 49ers’ coach settled for rookie Jake Moody’s 48-yard field goal attempt, which was blocked, and likely would have missed anyway.

When the Niners went three-and-out to open the second half, the 2-for-1 had become a big, fat zero.

Afterward, I asked Shanahan in his news conference if he regretted having played it so safe. He did not seem eager to second-guess his approach.

“I like that they didn’t score,” he said. “I like that we won at the end of the day. So, we did try to score.”

He explained that a pass play that could have gotten the 49ers inside the Green Bay 10, with Brandon Aiyuk as the target, didn’t work out because the Packers were playing so deep, and Purdy instead threw a check-down route. “But that’s how it works out,” he said. “We make sure they don’t get another chance, but it’s not like we were just playing for a field goal.”

The lack of aggressiveness looked worse after the Packers took leads of 13-7 and 21-14, thanks to a pair of Love touchdown passes in the third quarter. The Niners closed to within 21-17 when Moody made a 52-yard field goal on the first play of the fourth quarter. San Francisco punted on its next drive but, after Carlson’s missed field goal, got another chance to launch a go-ahead scoring drive.

This time, Purdy made it happen. However, nothing about that drive — or this game — seemed especially smooth.

“It kind of reminded me of our (2021 playoff game) there,” Shanahan said, referring to the Niners’ 13-10 divisional-round upset of Green Bay on the strength of a blocked field goal and blocked-punt touchdown. “Only not as cold.”

Perhaps we can put a heartwarming spin on this ugly victory: Sometimes, on the way to a championship, even the most talented teams must survive a game that feels like a struggle before collectively elevating. If the 49ers win next Sunday and make it to the Super Bowl — and then capture their sixth Lombardi Trophy, and first in 29 years — the anxiety experienced on a water-logged Saturday night in Santa Clara will become a footnote, and everyone can look back and laugh about it as confetti falls on Market Street 44 miles to the north.

On this night, however, the stress was still fresh in everyone’s psyche. Peggy Shanahan has watched a lot of football over many decades — including the back-to-back Super Bowls her husband, Mike, captured as the Denver Broncos’ coach in the ’90s — and it’s safe to say that the Niners’ great escape on Saturday was one of her least restful experiences.

As she left the stadium after the game, Peggy was still shaken, having made about 10 trips to the bathroom to seclude herself in solitude and, even when seated in the main area of her suite, having turned her back to the action during some of the game’s pivotal sequences.

“I wasn’t looking,” she said. “I just listened. It’s a weird thing I do; I’ve done it all my life.

“But it’s worse when it’s your child.”

For Peggy’s only son, Saturday’s victory was as hard as it gets. That he and his players survived to fight another day was the only thing that made it better.

(SF Chronicle)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

God’s creations are beautiful. The most beautiful beach I ever visited was in northern Maine. There was no sand, only black, jagged rock. It was cold and foggy, and you could see the yellow glow of a light house in the distance. It was a misty 50 degree day and we hopped from rock to rock watching the sea spray off the rugged shore. I can do with that kind of ocean. What I don’t like is some sweltering mess of sand and direct sun, with ten million morons elbowing each other for the best spot. I once saw a picture of Hilton Head Island before it was “improved.” The jungle went right up to the shore line. That would be fine with me.

BUDDY GUY

“I remember growing up with people who I won’t name, and we’d be sitting there eating a hot dog together as friends,” he says. “Then they got a hit song, and it was like they had no idea who I was. I’d go up to them, and it was like we were strangers. I didn’t know success could do that, but I swore I’d never do that. 

“So I’m still the same Buddy Guy who used to pick cotton and hang out. I ain’t never gonna be someone different. But people sometimes look at me and say, ‘Are you Mr. Guy?’ And I say, ‘No, I’m not Mr. Guy. You can call me Buddy.’ Man, look – I’m just a guitar player who taught himself to play long ago. I never wanted to be treated no better than you or anybody else. I ain’t gonna start now.” 

THE WORD ‘FASCISM’ has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable.” The words ‘democracy,’ ‘socialism,’ ‘freedom,’ ‘patriotic,’ ‘realistic,’ ‘justice,’ have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like ‘democracy,’ not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: Consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his or her own private definition, but allows his or her hearer to think he/she means something quite different. Statements like ‘Marshal Pétain was a true patriot.’ … ‘The Soviet Press is the freest in the world.’ … ‘The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution…’ are almost always made with the intent to deceive. Others words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: ‘class,’ ‘totalitarian,’ ‘science,’ ‘progressive,’ ‘reactionary,’ ‘bourgeois,’ ‘equality’…

— George Orwell

THE COLD

Matt Taibbi: Every year there’s a raft of, I can’t believe I used that term, there’s a slew of stories about guys who go out ice fishing, get hammered, and then forget that they’re on an ice floe and then freeze to death. But there’s also always stories about men who curl up on benches on the way to the subway station, or they go out to the kiosk to get more vodka and they just never make it home. So it’s sort of like you’re training to be a grown man and the former Soviet Union, you have to learn. You have to know your measure, as Graham Greene would say, to be not so completely hammered that you forget to actually duck inside a doorway before you lie down. Although it doesn’t work in the summer, that’s for sure. It looks like Appomattox outside most beer bars. At least it did when I was there.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. Well, that’s interesting. I haven’t had a drink since I was 30 years old. Had to stop.

Matt Taibbi: Really?

Walter Kirn: Yeah. But I always maintained that vigilance that you’re talking about. I practiced walking straight lines even when I was sober so that I could do it drunk. I had all kinds of boundaries then on my drinking that caused me never to get a DUI or get in a bad fight or anything. And I did think that was the height of responsibility to be able to be really, really drunk and yet still live and not be in jail.

Matt Taibbi: Right, right. Yeah. And that’s a sure sign that probably you’re drinking too much, is when you’ve got-

Walter Kirn: There were many sure signs. One was that I would go into bars where local bands were playing and promised that I could get them a record contract in LA. I was a expansive, grandiose drinker who believed-

Matt Taibbi: Uh-oh.

Walter Kirn: Yeah, I wasn’t mean. I was so nice. And then I’d come back to the same bar and the band would be playing the next night and they’d said, “Did you call the Eagles manager and get us that contract?” And I’d say, “What the hell are you talking about?”

Matt Taibbi: That’s one of those things where you wake up in the morning and it’s like, who’s that director who makes Inception? Christopher Nolan? You get those extreme reverse zoom shots where suddenly everything flashes back to you about all the horrible stupid shit that you said the night before.

Walter Kirn: But here was the thing, I didn’t threaten people, I over-promised.

Matt Taibbi: Right.

Walter Kirn: And actually people will get angrier at you for over-promising than calling them a name. So no drinking to get me through the existential cold.

TRUMP CITES HIROSHIMA, NAGASAKI BOMBINGS IN CALL FOR PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY

Former US President Donald Trump has cited President Harry Truman's decision to drop atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 in his bid to secure presidential immunity from criminal prosecution. Trump, the leading Republican contender in this year's presidential election, was speaking at a campaign rally in New Hampshire on Saturday, ahead of the eastern state's Republican primary. Trump said President Truman wouldn't have dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki if he knew he would be indicted by his opponents. He went on to say, “You have to give a president full and total immunity.” He also argued that what Truman did was “not exactly a nice act, but it did end the Second World War.” The former US president has been indicted for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election among other charges in a trial over the storming of the Capitol by his supporters. Trump has been claiming immunity, saying former presidents cannot face criminal charges for conduct related to their official responsibilities. The case is now being deliberated at a federal appeals court. 

(NHK World-Japan News)