Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2024

Showers | Mossy | Arson Suspected | Whitesboro Breakfast | County Notes | Problem Angel | Stormcrow Latham | Trash Pickers | Fentanyl Force | Silent Readers | Ed Notes | Redwood Run | Butterfly Bucks | CPR Class | Navarro Rental | Tree Hugger | Heick Photo | Boonville Hotel | Yesterday's Catch | AB 587 | The Limeliters | Trumpnoceros | Lunch Counter | Yesterday's MCT | Cloud Formations | Lead Belly | Frog Talk | Purdy Candle | Darling Lions | Cutie | Funding Israel | Attempted Murder | Trunk Opener | Liz Renay | Hell Yeah | Monsters | California Natives | Tax Us | Walden

PRECIPITATION today is forecast to diminish on Thursday. More wet weather is expected to arrive Thursday night with off and on rain into Saturday. Heaviest rain is expected to occur in Del Norte County and portions of Humboldt County. Mild weather expected for Sunday and perhaps early next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A rainy 51F on the coast this Humpday morning with .44" more rainfall collected. Rain should fizzle out thru the day leading to a dry Thursday. More rain Friday & Saturday then a dry & warm Sunday.

ARSON SUSPECTED AT GUALALA BOATHOUSE/TRAILER FIRES

On Saturday, January 20, 2024 at approximately 2259 hours, Deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office were summoned to the scene of a reported structure fire in the 40400 block of Old Stage Road in Gualala. South Coast Fire Protection District personnel reported an outbuilding on the property that appeared to have been intentionally lit. Deputies assisted fire personnel with securing the scene while firefighters extinguished the fire. An outbuilding and a half of a double wide modular home were burned. The modular home structure was still sitting on axles from being moved onto the property. There were no subjects contacted at the location, and only one subject was believed to still be squatting on the property off and on. The property had numerous broken-down vehicles, miscellaneous trash, a large fishing/sailing vessel, and several old travel trailers and RV’s. The owner of the property had not been contacted.

On Sunday, January 21, 2024 at approximately 2035 hours, Sheriff’s Office Deputies were again summoned to another structure fire at the same property in the 40400 block of Old Stage Road in Gualala. The second fire was reported to be a travel trailer that was fully involved in fire. The travel trailer was a large fiberglass fifth-wheel style trailer that was completely burned. Again, no persons were contacted or located on or around the property. South Coast Fire Protection District personnel requested an arson investigator to investigate the scene. Sheriff’s Office personnel arrived and assisted fire personnel with traffic control until the fire was extinguished. Sheriff’s Office Deputies then provided extra patrol in the Gualala area throughout the night.

On Sunday, January 21, 2024 at approximately 2324 hours, Sheriff’s Office Deputies received another call for assistance at the same property on Old Stage Road for another report of a fire being set at the same address in the 40400 block of Old Stage Road in Gualala. The third fire was reported to be another modular-home style structure that was parked on the property near where the RV had burned. An additional RV motorhome was also completely burned during this incident. Sheriff’s Office Deputies were close by in the area and again responded to assist South Coast Fire Protection District personnel. Another call was placed to summon a fire/arson investigator to investigate the incident. There was no fire/arson investigator available to respond to the incident at that time. After the third fire was extinguished and fire personnel departed the scene, Sheriff’s Office Deputies continued patrolling the Gualala/South Coast area. There were no persons located or contacted in connection to the incident.

On Monday, January 22, 2024 at approximately 0213 hours, Sheriff’s Office Deputies received another report of fire at the same address in the 40400 block of Old Stage Road in Gualala. The fourth fire was reported to be a large fishing/sailing vessel parked on a trailer next to the second modular home that had burned. An additional Sheriff’s Office Deputy was requested to stay at the location as fire personnel extinguished the fishing/sailing vessel and complete their mop-up of the fire. An arson/fire investigator was reached later in the morning and responded to the location to investigate. Several items of evidence were collected by an Arson Investigator with the Ukiah Valley Fire Authority which were believed to contain evidence of an accelerant.

All of these incidents are believed to be related due to the timing, location and manner in which the fires were reported and occurring on the same property. Anyone with information that may assist investigators are urged to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Dispatch Center by calling 707-463-4086. Information can also be reported anonymously by calling the Sheriff's Office non-emergency tip line at 707-234-2100.

COUNTY NOTES

by Mark Scaramella

TUESDAY MORNING’S Supervisors meeting got off to a disturbing start when newly seated Board Chair Maureen Mulheren tried to keep Supervisor Dan Gjerde from responding to a public comment about animal care and control. Gjerde refused to be squelched and went on with his simple comment. But Mulheren had successfully signaled that she doesn’t want the Board responding to the public, at all.

THE BIG ANTI-CLIMAX of the Day came when, after an hour or so of bookkeeping chatter, the outside Auditor and recently appointed Auditor-Controller Treasurer Tax Collector (ACTTC) Sara Pierce said told Supervisor Haschak that they don’t know what the carry-forward was from a year and a half ago. After months of browbeating former ACTTC Chamise Cubbison on this subject (which Ms. Cubbison answered months ago, albeit with a preliminary estimate), the Board still doesn’t know precisely how much money was left over from the 2021-2022 budget year. The Supervisors had hoped that their hand-picked ACTTC replacement would at least be able to answer the carry-forward question which, they said, hampered their ability to compile next year’s budget and negotiate with their employees. (Neither of which appears to have been true.) But Ms. Pierce said she’d “have to get back” to the Board on the carry-forward question. The outside auditor suggested a few improvements to the County’s “internal controls” and shifted some payments from one account to another, but none of the kinds of larger financial problems that the Board had wanted to blame on Cubbison in the last two years were highlighted. 

NEWLY CONTRACTED County Counsel James Ross introduced himself to the Board Tuesday morning, but Assistant County Counsel Charlotte Scott was sitting in the County Counsel’s chair advising the Board during the formal board session. 

However, just before the Board came out of closed session later in the afternoon, Mr. Ross was seen exiting the board chambers and returning to his seat in the audience just before Board Chair Mulheren blandly announced, after the closed session, that “direction was given to staff.”

PLANNING DIRECTOR JULIA KROG told the Board that her department didn’t have staff to work on a Water Extraction regs that Supervisor Haschak had been pushing for starting back during the height of the drought. Krog also recommended “deferring” any attempt to regulate inland short term rentals for at least a year. She recommended deferring a Board proposal to double the allowable number of residential structures on parcels in the inland zoning. Krog recommended delaying several other board ideas including the a Redwood Valley Municipal Advisory Council procedure that everyone seems to like, and some new or streamlined pot regs. Apparently, Ms. Krog’s staff is too busy with state-mandated planning paperwork to deal with the local Board directives which she insists are very time consuming both for her department as well as for the County Counsel’s office. In the end, the Board agreed that what the local stuff they want done can be endlessly delayed while the planners waste their time on state-mandated filings.

BUT despite minor grumbling from a couple of the Supervisors who had originally proposed these now-low priority items, the Board rambled on and on endlessly about whether to “defer” or “rescind” (a distinction without a difference) their own Board proposals and directives. 

PS. Mendo’s latest buzzword for 2024 is “wheelhouse,” as in, “that’s not in my wheelhouse,” yet another serious-sounding euphemism for doing nothing. “Wheelhouse” now gets tossed on to the ever-growing scrap-heap of heavy-hitting Board cliches like “robust” (a specialty of former CEO Carmel Angelo), “deep dive,” “working very very very hard” (a McGourty favorite), and “strategic.”

MAZIE MALONE:

Re, Frightening Incident…. [Sex Offender chasing teenage girls in Ukiah…]

I am sure I have seen that dude [Angel Miller] multiple times around town. 

Not sure how that kind of behavior does not warrant a proper evaluation i.e., mental status for a 5150 hold and psych eval. I see as far as law enforcement is concerned there was no crime, so nothing they feel they can do. Except it was a physical threat, attempted assault/kidnapping! So say it was drugs, no problem, they can do something about that easy peasy: arrest! Mental Illness not their forte, nor their job, so they say. But then we question why the Mental Health Complex does not do their job? Sheriff Kendall knows; he has asked me this exact question! A fucking systemic flaw. But as a previous commenter said and it is so very true keep people homeless, sick, deprived and you have a nice cush cash cow, i.e., non-profit! Then the Sheriff and law enforcement bear the brunt of these circumstances that they do not want to deal with and do so the only way they know how because they are stubborn in their way of thinking. Sorry, I love law enforcement, but it’s true. Notice the only person transparent about these issues is law enforcement. Although guarded, they are not hiding anything. So those statistics making mobile crisis look good… A bullshit fallacy. You see, if the police could not arrest the dude or take him to emergency room for evaluation they should have by all means initiated a mobile crisis intervention! Also fuck the Marbut report. That was seven years ago. It is not about following his recommendations, it is just more of the same internal repetitive loop.

A READER: So sorry to see notice at the P.O. Re Stormcrow Latham’s death. Condolences to the Latham family. Besides his many other talents, Stormcrow was the go-to guy to rescue your cat from a tree, however high. He retrieved our cat Sueno a few years ago when he was chased up a tree and refused to come down. Stormcrow had a successful method and was amazing to watch. May his memory be a blessing.

FORT BRAGG COMMUNITY TASK FORCE ON FENTANYL 

In light of the ongoing opioid and fentanyl crisis affecting the nation and Mendocino County, the Fort Bragg Police Department’s Project Right Now will be forming a Community Task Force on Fentanyl. The initial mission of the Fort Bragg Community Task Force on Fentanyl is to bring together community representatives and those impacted by fentanyl to collaborate on potential solutions tailored to our local community. This Task Force will be led by the Fort Bragg Police Department’s Project Right Now team with the initial goals of: 

1. Compiling potential solutions and approaches to the fentanyl crisis from different perspectives, which can be implemented, by the police department, local organizations and the community. 

2. Explore the potential effectiveness of combating the fentanyl crisis through quarterly task force meetings. 

3. Reducing the stigma associated with opioid substance abuse disorder through education and increasing community awareness. 

A tentative outline for the first four months of the Task Force on Fentanyl includes: 

February: Initial Task Force meeting to begin compiling information. 

March: Project Right Now reports the results of the Task Force meeting back to the community and potential partner organizations. 

May: Second Task Force meeting where Project Right Now reports on progress from previous meeting. 

Individuals interested in participating in the Task Force will need to submit an application no later than February 9, 2023. Applications may be obtained by emailing Captain Thomas O’Neal at toneal@fortbragg.com. All submitted applications will go through a selection process and those selected will be notified by February 13, 2024. Applicants must agree to attend the February and May meetings. The February meeting will be a luncheon to be held sometime between February 19, 2024 and March 1, 2024. 

Ideal applicants for this task force include: 

-School staff at the Middle School or High School level 

-Business owners and community leaders 

-Individuals in the medical field (i.e. EMT’s, nurses, physicians etc.) 

-High School students impacted by the fentanyl crisis 

-Parents of children impacted by the fentanyl crisis 

-Elected officials with the ability to make policy decisions related to the fentanyl crisis 

The Task Force will be limited to fifteen individuals. 

Questions regarding the Task Force may be sent to Capt. O’Neal of the Fort Bragg Police Department at (707) 961-2800 Ext 204. 

This information is being released by Chief Neil Cervenka. All media inquiries should contact him at ncervenka@fortbragg.com. 

FIRST WEDNESDAY OF THE MONTH AT LAUREN’S

ED NOTES

TODAY'S MAIL: “My name is Julie Reyes and I work with Cold Case CA, which is a non-profit organization that works as a liaison between families affected by unsolved homicide, and local law enforcement. I am reaching out to you because I would love to get some attention on a specific case. 

In 1968, Nancy Warren and Clyda Dulaney were beaten and strangled to death outside of their Ukiah home. Clyda Dulaney was nine months pregnant at the time of her death. The women’s bodies were found by Clyda's oldest son, seven-year old Johnny. 

I have been working on this case for five years, trying to get the case reinvestigated by the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office. I was recently informed that Sheriff Kendall will no longer be putting staff on this cold case, as it is so old. Clyda’s three surviving children are all still living, as is Nancy Warren's daughter. They were devastated to learn that the case, which had been assigned a new investigator in 2021, is being dropped and will never be solved. 

I would love to talk to you about the case and its intricacies. (There are many interesting facts/characters involved; including the Manson Family.) If you're interested...."

DEFINITELY INTERESTED, MS. REYES. We've written about the Dulaney case here at the Boonville weekly. We suspect… Well, Officer Dulaney's alibis were suspect, but we'll leave that to you to suss out.

This Mendo cold case still bothers the people who remember it, and certainly bothers the descendents of the victims. Unfortunately, the books closed on it years ago. No one is working on it. Most of the people who remember the murders remember them only in the bizarre context of the Manson Family because it's mentioned in the books on Manson, and it's mentioned in these books because the Manson Family was in the area at the time with their cozy home at Navarro in the Anderson Valley at the time. 

On the rainy morning of October 14th, 1968, six miles south of Ukiah, a seven-year-old boy, getting ready for the school bus, ran out of his trailer home to find his mother dead on the wet ground outside the front door. The boy ran for his grandmother's trailer nearby. She was dead too, garotted like the boy's mother, with a pair of long leather boot laces.

The dead women were Nancy Warren, 64, and her granddaughter, Clyda Jean Dulaney, 24, wife of a Ukiah-based CHP officer, Don Delaney.

Clyda was more than eight months pregnant.

The seven-year-old was Johnny Ussery whose younger brothers Lane, 5, and Brett, 4, were still asleep. The three boys were from Clyda's first marriage to a logger named John Ussery of Eugene, Oregon. Clyda had left Ussery for Officer Don Dulaney, twice her age. She was pregnant with Dulaney's child when she was murdered.

Clyda's former husband was quickly eliminated as a suspect when it was verified that he'd been in Medford, Oregon, at the time of the murders.

Finding his mother and his grandmother dead, Johnny had calmly returned to his trailer to get his younger brothers dressed for school, then, his two younger boys in tow, the three boys trudged south to the home of Don Torell where Johnny told Mr. and Mrs. Torrell that “Mommy and Grandma are dead.”

A swarm of deputies led by Sheriff Reno Bartolomie was soon on the scene.

The sole witness to the previous night's mayhem, which occurred in a driving rain that obliterated the footprints deputies assumed had surrounded Clyda Dulaney's body. The only witness to the mayhem was Mrs. Warren's miniature dachshund.

The two dead women were fully clothed. They'd both been brutally beaten about the face before they'd been strangled with brand new hightop leather boot laces, two turns of which had been pulled tight around the neck of both victims before the laces were knotted in back.

Mrs. Warren operated Nancy’s Antique Sales on Highway 101 south of Burke Hill on the two-lane portion of the highway about where the strawberry fields and sales stand are today. 

Clyda Dulaney was a graduate of Ukiah High School who, only months before, had left her husband for officer Dulaney, 49, a man several years older than her father.

Clyda's former husband had since been engaged in a bitter custody dispute with Clyda for the couple's three boys. Mr. Ussery said Clyda had deserted him and his sons for Dulaney, evidence, he insisted, that Clyda was unstable and therefore not a fit mother.

Robbery was the apparent motive. 

Or was it? A metal cash box had been rifled and left on a table, although a plastic box and glass jar containing approximately $300 in cash rested in plain sight in a closet of the older woman’s trailer.

Officer Dulaney lived in Ukiah with a teenage daughter from his previous marriage, while Clyda and her children lived on her grandmother's property at the south end of Burke Hill, across the highway from the old Retech plant. Dulaney said he and his teen bride apart while he looked for a house in the Ukiah area that would accommodate him, his pregnant new wife Clyda, her three boys and his daughter. When Clyda gave birth to their child, Dulaney would be supporting a family of seven, a burden he is suspected of being unwilling to shoulder.

Dulaney said he was in Sacramento for a special CHP training course when his new wife and her grandmother were found dead. The investigative assumption from the beginning was that the two women were murdered after he was either in Sacramento or on the road there.

The CHP officer told the Sheriff’s office that he'd dropped his wife and step-children at Nancy’s Antique Shop at 9:30 the previous night with the intention of continuing on to Sacramento. But, he said, he'd forgotten his uniform, so he returned to his Ukiah apartment, picked up the uniform and continued on to Sacramento via Highway 20 east. He signed in at the Academy at 1:45am.

A neighbor said she saw a blue pickup truck leaving an orchard near the antique shop about 8:15 the morning the women were found. She said five persons "wearing hippie-type clothing" were in the vehicle. (In '68, hippies were blamed for everything awry in America.)

Dulaney, then 49, was described as genuinely distraught by investigators when he returned to Ukiah.

“The only information I had was what I had read in the newspapers," Dulaney told the Ukiah Daily Journal. He said he and his expanded family had been watching The Wonderful World of Disney at Dulaney’s Ukiah apartment before he, Clyda and the boys headed south for Clyda Dulaney's trailer six miles to the south. The family had left Ukiah about 8:45. Dulaney said he dropped his wife and the three boys off at their temporary home and headed for Sacramento where he was scheduled to begin a CHP refresher course the next day, Monday morning. 

Dulaney said that he had reached Highway 20 before remembering that he had failed to bring his uniform. He had then returned to Ukiah pick up his uniform and had resumed his trip to Sacramento where he logged in at 1:45am.

Dulaney hired Timothy O’Brien, a Ukiah attorney who often represented law enforcement people. O'Brien, who soon afterwards became a superior court judge, said that Dulaney had been “deeply concerned over any false impression which might have been gained regarding his cooperation with the Sheriff’s Department following the death of his wife and child.”

O'Brien helped Dulaney with his statement for the police.

“When the statement was completed, I signed it,” Dulaney said. “There was no lack of consideration.”

Sheriff Bartolomie said he interviewed 35 suspects, referring in one newspaper account to “the hamstrings of Warren Court” which, the Sheriff suggested, had prevented him from detaining a trio of roaming purse snatchers who'd robbed a Ukiah matron in the days prior to the Burke Hill murders. The Sheriff thought the three transients could well have murdered the two women, but, lacking evidence to hold them, sent them on their itinerant way.

A year later, in 1969, following the gruesome killings of Sharon Tate and friends in Los Angeles, Bartolomie said he thought the Manson Family may have been responsible for the unsolved murders of Clyda Dulaney and Mrs. Warren. The Sheriff said both the Tate murders and the two murders south of Ukiah were “in the senseless category.”

The Manson Family had been in Mendocino County at the time of the Dulaney and Warren murders.

Seven persons belonging to the soon-to-be infamous nomadic cult were arrested on drug charges in Navarro in the Anderson Valley on June 22, 1968. Susan Denise Atkins, 19, aka Sadie Mae Glutz, was among those arrested. Additionally, “Several Mansonites were guests of a Ukiah man at his home off Boonville Road,” reported the Ukiah Daily Journal.

But there was never any hard evidence linking the Manson Family or Dulaney or Clyda Dulaney's former husband to the crime.

Someone or someones came in off 101 in the night, took the money they could see, strangled the two women they found there, and continued their journey to whatever unlucky destination called them. 

(Research by Deborah Silva)

BUTTERFLIES ARE NOT FREE

A small butterfly just got a big break.

Mendocino Land Trust will begin work this month as it coordinates a team of experts to bolster the population of the Behren’s Silverspot butterfly, a federally endangered species. In December, the Wildlife Conservation Board awarded MLT a $1.5 million dollar grant to work with State Parks, the Bureau of Land Management, the Laguna Foundation, the Sequoia Park Zoo, and Wynn Coastal Planning & Biology. This joint, team-effort will oversee a multi-stage, four-year plan to help this butterfly, once a common sight on the Northern California coast.

The restoration will collectively cover 53 acres. 

MLT’s Stewardship Project Manager, Anna Bride, spearheaded the grant-writing process. Executive Director Conrad Kramer acknowledged the importance and magnitude of this grand-award.

“With the staunch support of hundreds of biophile MLT donors, we were able to dedicate the staff time to work with our partners to secure the funding to allow us to restore habitat for this tiny beautiful creature,” Kramer said.

The first phase of this project entails habitat restoration. Paid staff and volunteers from these agencies will remove invasive plant species in three different North Coast locations, and then plant more than 35,000 native plants reared in nurseries. These native species will include a mix of native grasses, early blue violets, and other nectar species.

The focus of this effort is in multiple sites. The number of native species to be replanted varies from site-to-site and includes planting seeds at some locations as well as using controlled grazing to eliminate invasive plants in others.

This plant-restoration effort will continue for several years.

Read more about this on our website at this link, and also in a recent article in the SF Gate.

(Mendocino Land Trust Presser)

COTTAGE FOR RENT IN NAVARRO

800sq ft studio. Rent includes water, garbage, and Internet. The rent is $1,100.00 per month with $1000.00 deposit. Great place for a couple or individual. Small pets allowed with an additional deposit.

This cottage is a remodeled old logging cabin. Back in the early 1900’s, it was built on top of an old growth sled that could be dragged by horse or oxen to flatbed train cars. Then, it would be delivered to the logging camps for residence or utility. 

Nestled in the redwoods if The Deep End, it is conveniently located on Hwy 128 just across from the Navarro Store. 

Amenities include both Electric and Propane Heat, AC/Dehumidifier, Electric Stove(small) and water heater, full tub and shower, laundry facilities and Jacuzzi(seasonal) on premises. Water, Garbage, and Internet provided. Tenant is responsible for Propane, Electricity, and Yard Maintenance.

Owner lives in home on adjoining lot.

Call Marty at (510) 432-6196.

ON THIS DAY IN MENDOCINO HISTORY…

January 23, 1948 - A group of photographers from the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco (now the San Francisco Art Institute) visited Mendocino on a field trip. The nineteen art school students, 3 of them women, spent four days taking photos of Mendocino residents, buildings, and business interiors.

The group stayed at the Lazy Eye Auto Court south of Little River (today’s Inn at Schoolhouse Creek). Most of them were former World War II service members who were using their G. I. Bill education benefits to study for their chosen profession. They were accompanied by their instructor Minor White. White had joined the faculty in 1946, and under his leadership, the school created the first fine art photography department in the US.

Photos from this trip were exhibited at the San Francisco Art Museum. In July, a portion of the exhibit was put on display in Mendocino at the Remedy Store on Main Street, where they received a lot of attention from the locals.

The Kelley House Archives houses over a dozen of the photos taken on this trip by William Heick. Heick served as a naval intelligence photographer in the Pacific during World War II. His career spanned seven decades, he produced over 200 films and tens of thousands of photographs, and his fine art photography was exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, DeYoung Museum, Seattle Museum of Art, and Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology at U.C. Berkeley.

THE NEW BOONVILLE HOTEL

The stillness around here is delicious

Come enjoy the quiet and celebrate love in all its forms on Valentine's Day Wednesday, February 14th with a beautiful prix fixe dinner we'll serve you a romantic dinner, and give you a chance to sit by the fire and whisper sweet nothings to your honey by candlelight.

And while the garden sleeps we are preparing for, Offspring @ the Farrer Building, wood fire pizza, pasta and oysters; reopening Thursday February 8th! 

We'll be offering an expanded menu & table service Tuesday-Saturdays. We'll keep you all updated in social media land + website.

You should know… Sunday evenings now thru the end of march join us for dinner and get a room that night @ half price. (holidays excluded) + we have some beautiful new drinks from our bar on nights the restaurant is open, along with friday & saturday evenings 4-6 we are offering a simple bar menu perfect for a light meal.

We're serving our Prix Fixe Menu Fridays thru Mondays during the cooler months. Perry posts the menu online Wednesday afternoons for the upcoming weekends.

Save your table

We've been here 35 years, and are planning for another 35 - thank you for being part of it all. hope to see you soon

The Boonville Hotel and Restaurant — “it's about people, food, drink, and a well made bed.”

The Boonville Hotel and Restaurant 14050 california highway 128, 707.895.2210, PO Box 326, Boonville, CA 95415 

boonvillehotel.com

CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, January 23, 2024

WILLIAM BLETHEN, Fort Bragg. DUI with priors, child cruelty-infliction of injury, ammo possession by prohibited person, suspended license.

JESSE DAVENPORT, Willits. Failure to appear.

MANDI EDER, Fort Bragg. Under influence, controlled substance, paraphernalia, contempt of court.

DILLON FAAHS-STEWART, Redwood Valley. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, domestic abuse.

GORDON HANOVER, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JEREMIAH MCOSKER, Ukiah. Vehicle tampering, petty theft, stolen property, paraphernalia.

WILLIAM OWENS, Ukiah. Parole violation.

ANGEL TEPALE-RAMIREZ, Ukiah. DUI-drugs with priors, suspended license.

JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, shoplifting.

ICHELLE VOLLMER, Fort Bragg. Under influence, probation revocation.

COMPELLING CENSORSHIP

Editor: 

A new California law, AB 587, requires social media companies to publish information about how they moderate content. AB 587 specifically requires:

 “(3) A statement of whether the current version of the terms of service defines each of the following categories of content, and, if so, the definitions of those categories, including any subcategories: (A) Hate speech or racism. (B) Extremism or radicalization. (C) Disinformation or misinformation. (D) Harassment. (E) Foreign political interference.”

To comply each company has to establish a large unit to collect, analyze and produce extremely detailed information, then report the number of transgressions by category and moderation — preventive actions — taken on each. When you read the law’s requirements, it’s obvious that it compels censorship.

How is it decided which items fit each category and the moderation required? Hate speech? At Harvard, shouting “intifada” at a Jewish student isn’t, inviting a conservative speaker is. Harassment? Using the wrong pronoun is abuse, and “fatphobia” and “cisheterosexism” are violence.

Cities and counties can share civil penalties generated up to $15,000 per violation per day, which will produce another big payday for lawyers at public expense while providing politicians a censorship platform.

Michael B. Combs

Gualala

BENJAMIN WITTES, From His Dog Shirt Daily, Jan 22, 2024

I read Eugene Ionesco’s play “Rhinoceros” over the weekend—or maybe I reread it. I am told I saw it once many years ago. If so, my memory of it was dim.

I picked up the play because of a conversation I had on the Bulwark Podcast with the estimable Charlie Sykes a couple of weeks ago in which the subject of Ionesco’s play came up.

It is astonishing how good a metaphor the play is for the allure of Trumpism to apparently sensible people.

The play was written in 1959 as a meditation on how people succumb to propaganda—turning suddenly to fascism or communism. In it, people in a small French provincial town start spontaneously turning into rhinoceroses. The main character watches as one after another of his friends and colleagues—people who were moments earlier fiercely opposed to the rhino transformation trend—suddenly morph.

It’s kind of a high-brow, absurdist theater version of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” the American sci-fi horror film which came out a few years earlier (1956). And it actually follows a similar narrative arc.

But the play nails a few key aspects of the experience of the modern attraction to Trumpist authoritarianism in a fashion that warrants particular attention.

The first is that while the rhinoceros is crude and beastly, there is something alluringly wild to the untransformed about becoming one. This is unlike the body snatchers, who are not appealing at all. They reproduce your body while you sleep. By contrast, those still left as human feel an active attraction to the crudeness and simplicity of the rhino life. The rhinoceroses trumpet wildly and stampede about, and the humans feel a certain call. At one point, the rhinoceroses take over the radio stations (think Fox News) and start broadcasting their trumpeting into people’s houses. And people feel a genuine urge to join them.

It is a keen insight, I think, into the way people feel a certain liberated thrill from the uncivil aspects of Trumpism; its crudeness, particularly when directed at the unconverted, involves a kind of thrill.

The second is the almost relentless instinct for the capillaries of the unconverted. They argue about whether the rhinoceroses are Asian or African rhinos, about whether they have one horn or two. They are remarkably unable to focus on the big picture—which is that they are being routed and they need to do something about it. And as they are focused on the unimportant details, they, one by one, succumb to the allure. Remind you of anything?

The third is the play’s keen noticing of a certain transitional phase—the phase in which the human has not morphed into a rhinoceros but has begun to see things from the rhinoceros point of view. They are harmless if left alone. We have to learn to live with them. They are natural. To become one is a choice we must respect. These are what my friends at the Bulwark call the anti-antis, the people who disclaim support for Trump but spend all their time explaining the reasonableness of Trump supporters and attacking those who oppose him.

In the end—spoiler alert—the whole town converts, save the play’s protagonist. As in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” even his love, who only pages earlier is pledging unyielding resistance with him, abandons him for the herd.

The play’s defiant statement is similar to Sykes’s mantra: “We are not the crazy ones.”

But here’s where the play also captures something important: in the end, the protagonist is both lonely and utterly exhausted.

That’s where we have work to do. There has to be community in this refusal to morph into something ugly and crude. If there is a call to us from the ugliness, there needs also to be something attractive, not merely something nobly futile, about retaining our humanity and decency.

THE STENCH OF VICTORY

AVA,

Tuesday’s Mendocino County Today: Lots of Trump concern, the Dems should have somebody to rally behind. Strong napalm revelations. ‘Apocalypse Now’ should have had a scene of a soldier reading that as a letter home while Robert Duvall was declaring the smell of napalm in the morning is the smell of victory. 

Jeff Goll

Willits

CLOUD STORAGE

Editor,

We should prepare ourselves for the advent of a technology that will preserve sublime cloud formations — in three dimensions, full-size, palpably and not “virtually” — for it will present an international crisis over where to store them. 

I invite you to meditate on the other ramifications.

Malgré tout,

Volt-Voort

Rome, New York

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO HUDDIE “LEAD BELLY” LEDBETTER (1888-1949), one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century, the King of the Twelve-String Guitar, an encyclopedia of American music. 

His spellbinding songbook captures the many sides of life and the humanity that is somewhere in all of us.

Lead Belly was an important figure in the development of Folkways Records and recorded dozens of sides on acetate discs with founder Moses Asch in the 1940s. Listen and learn more: folkways.si.edu/leadbelly

WHY FROGS?

Editor,

I know you are shaking your head: why is this guy communicating about frogs? I was in an okay place and this (android) who was not complaining that my car exhaust was bothering him. So here I am outside the city limits and there are so many frogs. I can tell there are vibrations or some thing of that kind that wants me to hear it this way. Even though I’ve said this so many times, that which has an intention to do it to others without their permission needs to be educated. 

Sincerely yours,

Greg Crawford

Fort Bragg 

TO ALL OUR LATINO FRIENDS: 

Which one of these do I need to light to keep Purdy healthy through the whole playoffs? 

Answer: All of them.

THE NATIONAL MEDIA IS ROOTING HARD AGAINST THE SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS

by Gabe Lehman

The San Francisco 49ers eliminated “America’s Team” twice this decade, taking out the Dallas Cowboys in 2022 and 2023. But they’ll have to pull off the same feat again to reach the Super Bowl, this time against a different “America’s Team.”

With their talk of biting kneecaps, generous use of the word “grit” and decades of futility, the Detroit Lions have become national media darlings this season. Since beating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to reach the NFC Championship Game, many are saying the Lions have replaced the Cowboys as “America’s Team.”

On Monday, The New York Post declared it so on the cover of its sports section. In writer Mark Cannizzaro’s ode to the Lions, he heaped praise on the team, head coach Dan Campbell and especially quarterback Jared Goff. 

“Goff is the perfect fit as the leader of this blue-collar Detroit outfit that truly represents the real ‘America’s Team’ — move aside, Dallas Cowboys,” wrote Cannizzaro. Never mind that Goff grew up in Marin County, deep in the heart of Niners country and quite possibly the least “blue-collar” place imaginable. 

Cannizzaro continued: “The Lions are a relatable, star-less band of second-chance players and castoffs led by a head coach in Dan Campbell, with whom everyone in America wants to belly up to a bar and knock back beers.”

This is also misleading. The Lions may not boast the 49ers’ Avengers-esque band of playmakers, but to say they’re “star-less” is patently false. Detroit wideout Amon-Ra St. Brown finished his first-team All-Pro season third in receiving yards and fourth in wide receiver touchdowns; rookie Sam LaPorta led all tight ends in touchdowns; tackle Penei Sewell earned first-team All-Pro honors; and pass rusher Aidan Hutchinson is likely to finish in the top 10 in Defensive Player of the Year voting.

But it’s not just the New York Post. The Lion’s hometown newspaper, the Detroit Free Press, also called them “America’s Team.” So did Slate, Axios, USA Today and The Ringer.

The Niners, who could also credibly claim the “America’s Team” title, are left looking like the wet blankets of the NFC.

“Does anybody outside the San Francisco Bay Area and or people that like, have parents that were 49ers fans like the 49ers, like, that’s not a team I feel like people like,” said The Ringer’s Danny Kelly when discussing the topic.

Fans on social media seem to agree. A map of America showing every state but California rooting for the Lions went viral on Tuesday, amassing over 106,000 likes on X, formerly known as Twitter. Meanwhile a social media analysis by Bet Online showed that over half of the country was behind the Lions. And that was before four teams were eliminated last weekend.

The Lions have never won the Super Bowl. They’ve never even played in one. Yet, they find themselves just two wins away from throwing the first-ever Super Bowl parade in Detroit.

But unfortunately for the Lions’ countrywide bandwagon of fans, the 49ers have decades of experience raining on America’s Team’s parade.

(SF Chronicle)

BERNIE SANDERS: Biden Must Stop Israel Aid After Netanyahu Vow to Nix Palestinian State

Netanyahu “has made his position clear: He will never allow a Palestinian state, ever,” Sanders emphasized.

by Sharon Zhang

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has reiterated his call for the U.S. to stop providing military assistance to Israel in the wake of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s comment last week that Israel should seize all control of what currently encompasses Palestine — seemingly an open call for the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians.

“In any future arrangement … Israel needs security control over all territory west of the Jordan,” Netanyahu said. “I told this truth to our friends, the Americans, and I also blocked the attempt to impose a reality that would harm Israel’s security,” he continued, according to a New York Times translation. “The prime minister needs to be able to say no, even to our best friends.”

In a statement released Saturday, Sanders said the comments were a clear show of Netanyahu’s goals as Israeli forces massacre and starve Palestinians in Gaza.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu is right — we do need to be able to say NO to our friends,” Sanders said. “He has made his position clear: He will never allow a Palestinian state, ever. He will continue his devastating war against innocent Palestinian men, women, and children. He will block the food, water, and medical supplies needed to prevent mass starvation and sickness.”

He went on to say that it’s time for President Joe Biden to reverse his staunch support of Israel’s genocidal assault, and called for Congress to reject any additional military funding.

“Despite the illegal and inhumane actions of Netanyahu’s government, President Biden has thus far offered unconditional support to Israel. That must change. President Biden must now loudly and clearly say NO to the policies of Netanyahu’s right-wing extremist government,” Sanders said. “If Netanyahu continues down the path of military domination, he must do so alone. The United States cannot be complicit.”

Indeed, Netanyahu continued to double down on Israel’s genocide in Gaza on Sunday when he rejected another deal for all of the Israeli hostages to be released in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, saying that “we won’t be able to guarantee the safety of our citizens” if they accepted the deal — brushing aside the safety of the citizens being held captive who are currently being endangered by Israel’s relentless and indiscriminate bombing campaign in Gaza.

Historically, Israeli officials’ statements about supposedly guaranteeing the safety of Israel have been coded attempts to justify Israeli forces’ efforts to ethnically cleanseand violently oppress the Palestinian population, as advocates for Palestinian rights have pointed out.

But the Biden administration hasn’t budged on its position. Though Netanyahu was clear about Israel’s ultimate goal in its brutal campaign in Gaza and escalating violence in the West Bank, the White House said that it will still support Israel, even as U.S. officials back a two-state solution — a proposal that Israeli officials have rejected time and again in the past.

Sanders has been calling for fellow lawmakers to reject additional funding for Israel’s assault for months, and last week forced a vote in the Senate on a resolution that would have required the State Department to prepare a report on whether or not Israel has been committing war crimes in its massacre. The resolution was rejected 72 to 11, with the Senate rejecting even the notion that Congress and the public should be aware of whether Israel is committing human rights violations.

(Truthout.org)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I just heard a woman complain today to her husband that he didn’t buy a car with an automatic trunk opener. And you think people under the gun to survive will co-operate on who gets to fill their bellies before others?

“Whenever I want you, all I have to do is Drea–ea–ea-ea-eam, dream dream dream.”

THE MEN SAT in the next booth at the Brown Derby. My back was to them. Suddenly I perked up as I heard my name.

“Liz Renay,” one of them said. “There’s a girl who had some tough breaks.”

“She brought it on herself,” the other voice said. 

“Still … it’s kind of sad. She wasn’t just another one of those French pastries who come to Hollywood to look for fame. She had it. She has one of the most beautiful faces I ever saw. You know, she just missed being great.” 

I turned to get a look at the man who had just spoken. I recognized him as William Ornstein, a reporter for Hollywood Reporter.

Ornstein spoke again: “Yeah, that Renay really could have made it big. She was on the way to becoming a superstar. Add a few good breaks and subtract a few of the bad ones and you know, she could have been Marilyn Monroe.”

(From My Face for the World to See (1971) by Liz Renay)

Died on this day in Las Vegas: the vivacious Liz Renay (née Pearl Elizabeth Dobbins, 14 April 1926 - 22 January 2007) – b-movie actress / burlesque queen / convicted felon / naive outsider painter / gangster Mickey Cohen’s moll / “Streaking Grandmother” / authoress of multiple volumes of sordid memoirs / all-round kitsch icon and the woman hailed by John Waters as “my idea of total glamour.” For Waters’ fans, Renay is eternally venerated for her performance as Muffy St. Jacques in punk masterpiece Desperate Living (1977) - especially for her acidic delivery of lines like, "I was having an erotic dream!" and "I sleep in the room next door - naked!" She’s also memorable in the 1964 exploitation shocker The Thrill Killers. 

(Pictured: portrait of Renay by Greg Gorman.)

MONSTERS

I have seen people grovel to folk of great wealth,

They would have originally preferred just being treated like a friend.

However, many people become sycophants

Cow-towing to the rich and famous

Groveling to pleas an unappeasable master.

Soon the wealthy start believing

They are above all.

Then they become bored and look into the dark Arts.

These are the people

Jeffrey Epstein catered to.

They believe they are above the rules of decency.

They will steal snd call it a lark

They will treat everyone as servants.

And still they are empty, lonely and compelled to get more wealth.

The Golems who rule the world

Simply because most people accept their behavior.

— Emjay Wilson

MORE THAN 250 BILLIONAIRES AND MILLIONAIRES TELL WORLD LEADERS: 'TAX US'

“Our request is simple: tax us, the very richest in society," they write in an open letter.

by Gabriela Riccardi

As world leaders gather in Davos to debate economic issues between nibbles of Swiss chocolates, the super-rich are sending them a message: Take our money.

More than 250 billionaires and millionaires have signed on to an open letter calling for wealth taxes to pay for public services around the world.

“If elected representatives of the world’s leading economies do not take steps to address the dramatic rise of economic inequality, the consequences will continue to be catastrophic,” the letter writes. “Our request is simple: we ask you to tax us, the very richest in society. This will not fundamentally alter our standard of living, nor deprive our children, nor harm our nations’ economic growth. But it will turn extreme and unproductive private wealth into an investment for our common democratic future.”

Among the letter’s signatories: Valerie Rockefeller, heir to the American oil and industry dynasty; actor Brian Cox, best known for playing billionaire businessman Logan Roy on HBO’s Succession; and filmmaker Abigail Disney, who’s long leaned on her last name to publicly campaign for wealth reform.

“I could be a billionaire if I wanted to be a billionaire, and I’m not because I don’t want to be a billionaire,” Disney told New York Magazine’s The Cut in 2019. “That’s an insane amount of money. But it’s the easiest thing in the world to make money if you start with money.”

Even the (ultra)wealthy support wealth taxes

It comes as no surprise that the wider public would like to see wealth taxes imposed on people with billion dollar-deep pockets. But surveys suggest that plenty of the super-rich support them, too.

A new poll released by advocacy group Patriotic Millionaires finds that 75% of the uber-wealthy support a 2% wealth tax on billionaires. Plenty are willing to apply that standard to their own bank accounts, too: 66% of respondents agreed that they would support higher taxes on themselves if the revenue would be used to provide better public services and a more stable economy. More than half (54%) agree that the concentration of extreme wealth is a threat to democracy.

The report surveyed 2,385 people living in G20 countries who hold more than $1 million in investable assets, excluding their housing. Patriotic Millionaires is also one of the groups behind the open letter.

The campaign comes as the ultra-rich watch their capital climb. A new report from the UK-based charity organization Oxfam (which is also backing the letter) finds that the globe’s richest men doubled their collective wealth since 2020; the group estimates that the world’s first trillionaire will emerge within a decade.

In countries like the US, the chasm between the rich and the poor continues to widen. One long-term analysis found that over three decades, the net worth of the top 1% of Americans swelled by $21 trillion, while that of the bottom 50% dropped by $900 billion. Today, the bottom 50% of American households own just 2% of the nation’s wealth.

Imposing a 2% tax on the world’s billionaires alone would raise almost $250 billion annually, according to a recent report by the EU Tax Observatory.

“The true measure of a society can be found not just in how it treats its most vulnerable, but in what it asks of its wealthiest members,” the letter writes. “Our future is one of tax pride, or economic shame. That’s the choice.”

(qz.com)