Mendocino County Today: Monday 3/4/24

Showers | Snow | Artemio Reyes | Barn Sale | Albion Food | Ag Bonus | Free Piano | Goodbye Print | Rabbit Minder | Career Fair | A Team | Skatepark Project | Chapel Re-Opening | Help Brian | Variety Show | Remembering Dave | Skunk Train | Property Dispute | Young Madeline | Egg Hunt | Vet Void | Punkfest Hopefuls | Trudy's Aneurysm | Peters/Garvey | Academy Awards | Election Follies | Picnic Tables | Dodge Critique | Yesterday's Catch | Curious George | American Vanity | Progress | Potholes | PG&E Profit | Lights On | SF View | Texas Burning | 87 Kids | Nobody's Business | Nuclear Arsenal | Loudoun County | YouTwitFace | Journalism | Cupid | Purity Moment | Shooting Unarmed | Political Machinery | Galloway Interview | One Duke | Guenica

SHOWER ACTIVITY continues to wane this morning. Another system approaches today, which should rapidly stabilize the atmosphere this morning then bring mostly rain this afternoon, along with snow in Trinity county this afternoon and Tuesday. Snow levels rise late Tuesday while precipitation continues into Tuesday night and Wednesday as a closed low drifts toward southern California. Drier weather is forecast for the second half of the week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 41F under cloudy skies this Monday morning on the coast, .21" more rainfall. I got half the rain total I was expecting for this last system. Thankfully. Showers for the next few days then 2 dry days Thur & Fri. More rain to follow but nothing hairy is in sight.

BELL VALLEY, near Boonville. Snow 02/28/2023 (photo by Jeff Burroughs)

FENTANYL OVERDOSES AT THE JAIL UPDATE

On 03-02-2024 the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Corrections Division was notified the deceased male inmate's next of kin had been located and notified of the inmate's death.

The inmate who died is identified as being Artemio Ortega Reyes a 40-year-old male from Ukiah.

Ortega Reyes was booked into the Mendocino County Jail on 02-16-2023 after being arrested by the Ukiah Police Department on open charges and active arrest warrants.

Ortega Reyes was subsequently sentenced and began serving his imprisonment at the Mendocino County Jail on 03-29-2023 with a scheduled release date of 01-04-2025.

The Sheriff's Office Coroner's Unit is conducting a coroner's investigation into the cause and classification of Ortega Reyes' death.

The Sheriff's Office would like to thank all the public safety agencies who responded to the Mendocino County Jail on 03-01-2024 for this mass medical aid incident. A future press release thanking those specific agencies will be disseminated once all those public safety agencies are identified for press release purposes.

BOONVILLE BARN SALE

Spring is upon us and so is the next Barn Sale.

We will begin accepting donations again on Mondays, 10 am to 1 pm beginning March 4th. The next Barn Sale will be Saturday and Sunday, April 6 & 7 from 10 am to 3 pm.

As you prepare your donations please keep in mind that we do not accept baby furniture, mattresses, large appliances or sofas.

Clothing should not have stains, rips or frayed edges and ideally be washed before donating.

For large furniture items please check with me before bringing to the barn as we have limited space. We may not be able to accept everything depending on our current inventory. Message me or call 707-895-3053.

MENDOCINO COUNTY’S AG DEPARTMENT STRUGGLES Without Commissioner Since 2022—Board Approves $40K Bonus in Bid to Fill Key Role

The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on February 27 to offer a hiring bonus to entice an Ag Commissioner to head up the ag department. The county has been without an ag commissioner since 2022. This puts farmers and customers of any business that uses scales or other measuring devices at a disadvantage, because the Ag Commissioner also serves as the sealer of weights and measures.…

mendofever.com/2024/03/04/mendocino-countys-ag-department-struggles-without-commissioner-since-2022-board-approves-40k-bonus-in-bid-to-fill-key-role/

ANDERSON VALLEY SENIOR CENTER is hoping to find a new home for a FREE player piano. Hamilton Player Piano and more than 100 music rolls. Aside from being a little out of tune, the piano plays nicely. The player part has never been used, and probably needs its hoses cleaned and aligned. It is FREE and 100+ music rolls. You move it. 7079725620

AVA SUSPENDING PUBLICATION OF PRINT EDITION

by Mike Geniella

Mendocino County’s Anderson Valley Advertiser newspaper, long a maverick in the nation’s media world, is suspending its weekly print edition, choosing to rely only on a daily online version to get the word out.

“We’re old and ailing and no longer able to meet the physical and bureaucratic demands presented by the production of a weekly newspaper,” said Editor Bruce Anderson, 84, in an announcement.

Besides age and ailments, the AVA’s print shutdown is in step with what is going on in the local news industry nationwide. More than 2,600 weekly newspapers have folded across the U.S. in the last 15 years, creating ‘news deserts’ especially in rural regions, according to studies.

Daily newspapers have been hit hard too, with circulation of print editions plummeting. At the Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, once the North Coast’s largest newspaper, daily circulation has slid to 20,000 from a high of nearly 100,000 paid subscribers, for example.

“We knew the day would come, and it has,” lamented Editor Anderson about the demise of a weekly newspaper that once sold more copies outside of the county than in.

The AVA for years was scooped up by eager readers in the Bay Area and across the nation, who were taken by the contentious weekly’s no-holds barred coverage of people, places, and events. The AVA’s masthead during that era proclaimed, “Fanning the Flames of Discontent.”

Mainstream journalists railed at the AVA’s antics, and publicly questioned whether Editor Anderson, his associate Mark Scaramella, and regular contributors could claim to be “legitimate” journalists. No matter to Anderson, who has owned and published the AVA since 1984. He liked to quote Joseph Pulitzer, the man who established journalism’s most prestigious prize: “Newspapers should have no friends.”

Anderson on Sunday said the AVA has long paid for itself despite a softening circulation from an era when 1,000 or more copies were sold from Santa Rosa to Eureka, and another 400 or so a week in the Bay Area. In addition, after garnering national attention in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and other urban newspapers, the AVA sold about 500 copies outside of California.

“We even sold a dozen copies every week in Europe to, I suppose, expatriates,” recalled Anderson. “My dear friend the late Alexander Cockburn talked up the AVA wherever he spoke, generating subscriptions along the way,” said Anderson.

Anderson said the decision to suspend AVA’s print edition was not easy but necessary given recent health concerns, and the demands of newspaper publication.

Anderson said the AVA will cease print production at the end of April.

“But we will live on with our online edition,” said Anderson. 

It is, said the editor, “a severe comedown for all of us who grew up with newspapers.” 

The harsh reality for the print media is that the decline of local news in the U.S. is speeding up despite attention paid to the issue, according to David Bauder of the Associated Press.

Bauder in a story published Nov. 16, 2023, said the nation has lost one-third of its newspapers and two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005.

An average of 2.5 newspapers closed each week in 2023 compared to two a week the previous year, a reflection of an ever-worsening advertising climate, according to a Northwestern University study, according to Bauder. Most are weekly publications, in areas with few or no other sources for news, he wrote.

The outlook is bleak, according to media experts quoted in Bauder’s story.

“My concern is that the acceleration that we’re seeing is only going to worsen,” said Tim Franklin, who heads the local news initiative at Northwestern’s Medill journalism school.

At its current pace, the country will hit 3,000 newspapers closed in two decades sometime next year, with just under 6,000 remaining, the report said. At the same time, 43,000 newspaper journalists lost jobs, most of them at daily publications, with the advertising market collapsing.

Here is a link to Bauder’s story: https://apnews.com/article/local-newspapers-closing-jobs-3ad83659a6ee070ae3f39144dd840c1b

BETH SWEHLA, AV Ag Teacher sends:

SIGN UP FOR DINNER FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY

College and Career Fair At AV High School

Free Dinner!

Wednesday, March 13 

Dinner from 4:50 and presentations on-going.

Make your reservation at the office or by calling 895-3497.

Students can learn about careers and college information from speakers representing the following:

• Hotel/Hospitality--Boonville Hotel
• Electrical Union
• ATS
• Mendo College
• Navy
• CalTrans
• Mendo Redwood
• AVHS Health Center
• AV Fire
• Fish and Game
• Mendo Dual Enrollment
• A-G college requirements
• How to build a resume for Financial Aid and More!

Students can pick four and each session is 15 minutes. Join us!

Louise Simson, Superintendent

Anderson Valley Unified School District

ANDERSON VALLEY ATHLETICS: Our A team off to Crescent City for the Jaycee invitational!

SKATEPARK TEAM REGROUPS

Dear AVA,

Thank you so much for supporting the AV Skatepark Project by graciously publishing information and updates about the project! It means so much that you are supporting our community mission in this significant way. AV youth need safe, public spaces to nurture connections, and more opportunities for free recreation. A skatepark will go a long way towards filling those needs, and your support brings us closer to making that dream a reality. Thank you!

As you know, we didn’t receive the $2.2 million CalTrans grant we applied for to cover construction of the skatepark, a community pavilion and other AV Community Park improvements. But we are not giving up! There is so much momentum behind this project, and we have accomplished so much already:

• Acquisition of the skatepark site.

• More than $310,000 raised.

• Completion of a custom skatepark design, architectural drawings and engineering surveys.

• Publication of the AV Community Park Initiative Development Plan.

We have regrouped and are charging full steam ahead to reach our fundraising objectives. Our current goal is to fully fund Phase I! (Skatepark Basics: $950,000) by December 2024, in time for skatepark construction to be completed before our top student leaders graduate in June 2026.

Please stay tuned for updates! If you’re not already subscribed to our e-newsletter, you can sign up by scrolling to the bottom of our website (avskatepark.org), and/or follow us on Facebook or Instagram!

With Gratitude,

Noor Dawood, AV Skatepark Project Manager and AV Service Learning Team Teacher.

ndawood@avpanthers.org

TED WILLIAMS:

Brian Lewis is a Volunteer Firefighter serving Mendocino County for 5 years in Leggett. On the night of March 1st, Brian was responding to a fire call after hearing the town post office was on fire after a large redwood tree had been struck by lightning. Brian was on his way to respond in the storm when his vehicle hydroplaned resulting in a rollover. He was uninjured but his only vehicle was badly damaged. Immediately after the accident he got a ride and continued to assist the volunteer fire department at the scene of the fire, helping to keep the fire and electrical lines form continuing to burn the surrounding homes and buildings.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/brian-lewis-vehicle-replacement-fund

VARIETY SHOW PRODUCERS: Big shout out to the AV Variety Show tech rehearsal volunteers and also to Burt @ Boontberry for feeding us all weekend! Get your tickets for next week’s show at Lemon’s & AV Markets!

REMEMBERING DAVE NELSON

I was sorry to read about Dave Nelson’s passing. He was my attorney some years ago.

I was arrested for a crime I did not commit, but it did not look good and the DA was not friendly. A mutual friend suggested I contact Mr. Nelson, at the time a criminal defense attorney, who agreed to meet with me. We talked for maybe 20 minutes, and he agreed to take the case. He said cases like mine were difficult. His fee was $1,000 up front (a lot of money back then), and more, much more, if it went to trial.

I don’t know what magic Mr. Nelson worked on my behalf, but he contacted me about three weeks later to say that the charges had been dropped. He wished me well and hoped life would work out better for me. I could tell that he didn’t believe everything I told him, but he took me at my word and was a true professional.

That was my first and only experience with the criminal end of the legal system. I learned that being found guilty or not guilty, or even being arrested in the first place, often has little to do with whether you committed a crime or not. How you react when facing hostile law enforcement officers at 4 in the morning, and how the DA feels about the kind of crime you are accused of — for that matter, which attorney in the DA’s office handles the case — can seal your fate, unless you are fortunate enough to have the money to hire someone experienced and competent like Dave Nelson. Without Mr. Nelson, I likely would have gone to jail for a long time.

I remember an old folk song that Joan Baez used to sing, “And there but for fortune go you and I.” I used to think the word fortune referred to luck. I now know it is the other definition of the word.

Name Withheld 

Ukiah

INJUSTICE IN COVELO

Mr. Anderson,

My name is Rosento Cordova. Cora Lee Simmons was my mother. She lived on heirship land handed down to her by her father here in Covelo. When she passed the land was willed to my older sister and I, my sister Rosalie passed in 2021 leaving me as the surviving heir and therefore all of my mom’s interest reverted to me.

Not knowing how much you know about heirship property the parcel can be divided depending on the amount of survivors into hundreds of people. Last Year I was served a Cease and Desist order by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, even though I am an heir to this property I still need to obtain a residential lease agreement by obtaining consent of .50 of the other hires to “legally” reside here.

Around September a group of heirs filed a civil suit in Tribal Court to enforce the BIA order. As we had an initial hearing where I petitioned the court to dismiss the case due to lack of jurisdiction and improper service of the case (a technicality that should have thrown the case out).

At this hearing some testimony was given, outright lies were told with zero evidence to support the claims of the filing parties against me.

My motion to dismiss was never ruled on, however on Friday without any further hearings since January 16th the corrupt judge issued an order snubbing his nose at the federal entity of the BIA, and ruled to enforce his own Cease and Desist order.

I need help in fighting this injustice. I know my mom spoke highly of you. I am turning to you for any help you can provide even if it just shedding light on this issue with an article that could reach the right person out there in your readership.

I have included a picture of the ruling. I am free to speak with all day tomorrow and then I have a conference in San Francisco Tuesday through Thursday but can talk after 5 on any of those days if you’d like more information.

I appreciate your time and hope to speak to you soon.

Respectfully

Rosento Cordova

Covelo

JULIE BEARDSLEY, MPH

Once again I ask myself, why would the deep pockets of Mendo County be backing Madeline Cline? Born in 1998, (I may have canned food older than that around here), her “experience” consists of 2-4 years of a fellowship along with a couple of brief lobbying jobs. She did a semester of policy study at Sonoma State that got her some kind of certificate, and she got her Bachelor’s degree.

WHERE is her experience actually working in government or running a business or managing employees? We know she’s raised more money than the other candidates combined, and what do these deep pockets think they’re going to get for these donations? She’s being hand-fed op-ed quips by her campaign manager, Angle Slater, who works for the Executive Office. If you want more of the same happy horse poop that has gotten this county in the mess we’re in, then vote for Madeline. Enthusiasm does not equal experience.

If you want strong leadership, real experience and responsible, intelligent government vote for Adam Gaske, 1st district, Jacob Brown. 2nd district, and Bernie Norvell, 4th district.

JUDY VALADAO: I'm not bitching here (well maybe just a little). Actually, I'm trying to understand how a City the size of Fort Bragg can have no emergency services for animals. I certainly don't expect any of our Vets to work day and night but there has to be a solution to this. It's horrible for the animals to have to travel over the crooked roads and then for many more miles when they are ill or injured because we have no services here. Yes, there may be a couple who would come in for their own client's, but most have a recording to call Santa Rosa after hours. It's very frustrating trying to do the best thing for an animal you love but there is no help unless you travel many miles. Just wondering if anyone has any ideas on this subject. I spent a few dollars short of $1000 yesterday going to Lake Co. to get help for Luna and would have loved to have spent that money locally. BUT…

HEY, WE’RE THIRTY AUT SICKS, a punk band from Boonville, California!

We are interested in playing the Redwood Punkfest this year. I hope we can make the cut!

TRUDY SMITH, PHILO: 

I recently went to the hospital for bad stomach pains, thinking I might have an intestinal blockage. After numerous tests and Xrays, and even an MRI were done, they found no blockage! What happened was I hadn’t eaten for three days. This made me feel very hungry, so I ate too much causing everything to back up in my stomach! There was no blockage!

A tube was pushed down my throat, and everything was pumped out. When all the results were in, they informed me that I have a Thoracic Aortic Aneurysm, which is a bulge in an artery that supplies blood from the heart to the rest of the body. This condition is very life threatening and should be treated immediately.

I was feeling great after everything was removed from my stomach, so they released me to come home. They told me to immediately sign up for the yearly life support chopper, which is $79. They said this aneurysm could rupture at any time! You have five years to live from the moment the rupture happens. The rupture I have is big and close to rupturing. It has been there for three or more years by the size of it.

I also found out that it was caused from my smoking. although I had stopped back in 1994, the damage was done!

They set me up with appointments to get it taken care of.

I have a 50/50% chance of surviving this, I say 100%!

That’s where I’m at with this situation so far.

ADD LOOK-ALIKES: Lindy Peters and Steve Garvey

RED CARPET PARTY IN PINT ARENA

Next Sunday, March 10th, Arena Theater will bring back our Red Carpet party! We will be live-streaming the 96th Academy Awards ceremony. Our doors will open at 3:30 and the festivities will continue until it is over (7/7:30/8pm). We are rolling out the red carpet for you so dress up like the movie stars and be photographed by the amazing David Torres or come as you are! Bring sweet or savory fingerfoods for our potluck tables if you have something delicious you wish to share with us. We will have a bar set up next to the pot luck where you can buy champagne, beer, red, white or rose wine. Steve McLaughlin will entertain us during the commercials. Concessions will be open with all of our usual offerings. Asking for a donation of $5 to $20 to help cover the costs of opening up the theater and paying for our wonderful staff members. Come out and play with us while you have fun guessing and watching everyone win their Oscars.

ELECTION FOLLIES: THEY HAD ONE JOB

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

It’s hard to know what to think about the compost bucket mess of a scandal at county elections, but I’m having fun trying.

How about a Netflix series about a zany batch of incompetent government employees forever busy avoiding getting anything done, plus a pervasive aroma of incompetence from weasels running the office, with no one capable of covering up the latest mistake(s) except by revealing bigger mistakes to follow.

It’s difficult to grasp, but it’s clear to see the Mendocino County Elections Office has manufactured more blunders, and far more dangerous blunders, than the Anderson Valley Advertiser has committed in the past 70 years. Please note that the AVA published 52 newspapers a year.

Meanwhile, the county is required to stage one (1) election every two or four years. 

We’ve been holding elections (using less sophisticated tools) for many decades. How could an office in 2024 with just one task to perform commit such astonishing mistakes? Was every employee, every day, face-down drunk?

Something none of us outsiders (aka “citizens”) realized was that Mendo’s election crew has multiple teams of experienced outside consultants, overseers, agencies, coordinators and offices that appear to do the actual work that we all thought the elections department did.

So now the strategy is to use those outside consultants and ballot preparation teams as scapegoats, suggesting the blame lies with them. The reason for all county voters getting Republican party ballots, according to Katrina Bartolomei, Clerk-Recorder and Registrar of Voters: “The initial belief is that the 2021 redistricting may not have been correctly imputed into the voter files.” 

Oh. 

Watery stuff, Ms Bartolomei. The buck stops with the person in charge, and the person in charge should have monitored the process every step.

If the boss wasn’t on top of the job she’s inept; if she kept a close eye on everything and missed it, she’s incompetent. There were problems from three years ago she didn’t know about?

Look, dear friends, the County elections department is no whirlwind of activity. A few times a day someone comes to the sleepy office to register to vote. A clerk goes to the counter, takes down names and addresses, then puts all of them in a drawer marked “Republican.” 

That’s the busiest she’d been all week, and wonders if she should put in for overtime. She returns to her desk to play more Wordle.

A few months ago I tiptoed into the elections department out there on Low Gap Road. It was hushed and serene, like being in church but without the pretty windows.

I surveyed the room closely. No employee appeared severely intoxicated, so I was wrong about that. My bad. (If I make a thousand more mistakes this week I’ll be tied with our election officials for worst score ever.) 

We all find government services frustrating, whether at DMV, the welfare office, county health or the CIA. When it’s multiplied a thousand times we are at least rewarded with a laugh-a-minute scandal like the one ricocheting through the elections office right now.

* * *

THEY’RE COMING FOR US ALL 

First they came for our whitewall tires but I was young and didn’t own a car. So I said nothing.

Then they came for our manual transmissions, but I was silent because I did not understand how to operate one.

Next they came for our full size spare tire, and after that they came for all our spare tires. Our trunks were left empty. I said nothing. 

Then they came for our CB radios, but I kept quiet because I did not drive an 18-wheeler, nor did I wear a cowboy hat. 

Then they came for our sound systems, first taking eight-track tape decks and soon thereafter cassette decks and CD players. I said nothing.

And then domestic automakers took away our sedans, leaving us with only the lumpy SUVs to pick from. Though it wounded me deeply, I said nothing. 

Now they’ve come to strip the AM radios from our vehicles, and finally I shout “No! This shall not pass! We defy you!”

But I find I am alone.

CUSTOM PICNIC TABLES

Top-end redwood tables with seating. Top is 8’ x 30”. Built to order. Smaller sizes available. Delivered in Anderson Valley. Adirondack Chairs available soon.

TWEEKERS & TWEAKERS

Editor,

In response to Jim Dodge’s vicious takedown in the December 27 AVA of my humble attempt to describe the emotional turmoil of my recent home invasion, he criticizes my spelling (and the Editor and the AVA as well) of the word tweekers (vs tweakers), one more example of the intellectual elite of “Manila,” if there really is such a place, piling on the hillbillies of the Sohum outback, as if I don’t have enough problems cleaning up after the tweekers.

Mr Dodge, to be perfectly clear, when I wrote the essay I looked up the spelling and found that either was acceptable, and also looked all over the internet and found no mention of your “Society of Language,” making me wonder if you are also a fictional character fronting for Tinaski, Pynchon, or other reclusive authors of our generation.

Mr Dodge doubts my knee-jerk argument that the invaders were tweakers, an assertion I made solely upon the discovery of bags of bolts, screws, candles, and a large variety of other items they assembled in a few bags and drawers around the room. I would call that obvious evidence of tweakerism, unless the miscreants were double-fake comedians seeking to deceive? (Yes, I was not feeling very charitable at the moment and my judgments came fast and loose.)

Mr. Dodge also offers the possibility that an open tequila bottle was evidence among the bolts and screws that it was booze-lovers and not meth heads, but what he didn’t know was that thirteen bottles of red wine in the cupboard were untouched.

And furthermore… Okay, cut the crap, who am I kidding? I’m burying the lede: Jim Dodge read my essay, commented on it, and named me five times?! Sure, nothing he said was remotely positive but that doesn’t matter, freaking Jim Dodge read my story! 

(Granted, his letter was five times better than my piece, and twice as long, but that’s not the point: I loved his novels Not Fade Away and Stone Junction, though never read Fup, I guess I have an aversion to talking ducks, and also ghosts, which is why I haven’t read Louise Erdrich’s latest, though greedily lapped up all her others.) 

Jim Dodge?! I should just quit now and really retire, but just today I’ve started a weekly column in the Humboldt Independent (available at the Eureka and Arcata Co-op and all over Southern Humboldt), so please read it and see if you can eviscerate those dreams as well.

Thank you

Paul Modic

Redway

CATCH OF THE DAY: Sunday, March 3, 2024

ILEANA AMRULL, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JAMIE COLLINS, Tehachapi/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

RYAN CRANFORD, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

BRIAN FOLEY, Crescent City/Ukiah. Community supervision violation.

SHAWN FORD JR., Lakeport/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

KIMBERLY JONES, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation.

DUSTIN JORDAN, Willits. Domestic battery, false imprisonment.

SHAYNA MCCORVEY, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

MIRANDA OLIDE, Potter Valley. DUI, suspended license for DUI, probation revocation.

WILLIAM PARKER, Ukiah. Probation revocation. 

OWEN PORTER, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

PETER ROSE JR., Point Arena. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

A STRANGER who injures American vanity, no matter how justly, must make up his mind to be a martyr.

— Alexis de Tocqueville

YOU KNOW, you white guys come down here and you don't see anything. Then you write your articles about how poor we are. Well, let me tell you, we're not poor. We’re rich people without any money, that's all. You say we ought to set up industries and factories. Well, we just don't want them. How’'re you going to grow potatoes and sweet corn on concrete? You call that progress? To me progress is a dirty word.

— Chief Corbett Sundown, Tonawanda Seneca Reservation

NEWSOM & PG&E PROFITS

Editor: 

I read that PG&E’s profits are climbing, up 24% in 2023 over 2022 (“PG&E profits climb on electricity, gas revenue,” Feb. 23). The solar industry is laying off workers, and the industry is shrinking. Gov. Gavin Newsom appoints members of the California Public Utilities Commission. These commissioners are the ones who have approved PG&E’s rate increases and the rules on solar buyback. Shouldn’t our governor work to stop climate change and have electricity rates that encourage buying electric vehicles?

Graham Hutt

McKinleyville

HOW ARE PG&E and the Titanic different? The Titanic went down with the lights on. 

— Rob Morse

THE FIRES SWEEPING ACROSS TEXAS OFFER A TERRIFYING WARNING

by John Vaillant

On Thursday, as flames from the Smokehouse Creek Fire raced eastward across the Texas Panhandle for the fourth straight day at speeds faster than a person can run, a cold front, driving a snow squall, swept southward over the Great Plains. In an elemental collision, the fire and snow met east of Amarillo, the swirling flakes joining, and then melting, into the smoke and ash of the colossal prairie fire.

The snowstorm has passed, but the fire — one among several major blazes active in Texas — keeps burning. As of Friday, the Smokehouse Creek Fire had affected more than a million acres, making it the largest wildfire in Texas history, and one of the biggest in the history of the country. Still only 15 percent contained, it has crossed into Oklahoma, leaving in its wake herds of dead cattle and dozens of burned homes. At least two people have died. The forecast is for what people in the firefighting business call “fire weather” — hot, dry and windy. Under these conditions, the dozen fires in the region could, theoretically, keep burning indefinitely.

Texans know that fires aren’t uncommon in the Panhandle this time of year, and neither is snow. But huge, lethal fires like Smokehouse Creek represent something different. Winter fires on this scale signal a much larger disruption to climate stability that will distort not only our concept of seasons, but everything we do and care about.

Two weeks before the Smokehouse Fire broke out, I flew to Seattle from Cincinnati over a landscape I know well. But some 30,000 feet below my window seat lay a country I barely recognized: From the Ohio River to the Rockies, there was virtually no snow; the lakes and rivers were ice free. I’m a northerner, and I know what February is supposed to look like, but what season was this?

For weeks now, red flag warnings from the National Weather Service indicating elevated wildfire risk have been popping up all across the United States — from the Mexican border to the Great Lakes and the Florida panhandle. Similar warnings are appearing north of the Canadian border. On Feb. 20, the province of Alberta, the Texas-size petro-state above Montana, declared the official start to fire season. This was nearly two weeks earlier than last year, and six weeks earlier than a couple of decades ago. Alberta is in the heart of Canada, a famously cold and snowy place, and yet some 50 wildfires are burning across that province. In neighboring British Columbia, where I live, there are nearly 100 active fires, a number of which carried over from last year’s legendary fire season (the worst in Canadian history) linked to low snowpack and above average winter temperatures.

It is alarming to see these fires and warnings in what is supposed to be the dead of winter, but fire, as distracting and dangerous as it is, is merely one symptom. What is happening in North America is not a regional aberration; it’s part of a global departure — what climate scientists call a phase shift. The past year has seen virtually every metric of planetary distress lurch into uncharted territory: sea surface temperature, air temperature, polar ice loss, fire intensity — you name it, it is off the charts. It was 72 degrees Fahrenheit in Wisconsin on Tuesday, and 110 degrees Fahrenheit in Paraguay; large portions of the North Pacific and the South Atlantic are running more than five degrees Fahrenheit above normal.

Thomas Smith, an environmental geographer at the London School of Economics, summed it up this way for the BBC in July, “I’m not aware of a similar period when allparts of the climate system were in record-breaking or abnormal territory.” And with these extremes comes lethality: More than 130 souls perished last month in wildfires outside Valparaiso, Chile — more than the number of dead in the Maui fire last August or the Paradise, Calif., fire in 2018 — making them the world’s deadliest since Australia’s Black Saturday fires in 2009.

Historically, it has been humans who have outpaced the natural world. From arrowheads to artificial intelligence, our species has progressed steadily faster than geologic time. But now, geologic time — specifically, atmospheric time and ocean time — is moving as fast, in some cases faster, than we are — faster than technology, faster than history. The world we thought we knew is changing under our feet because we changed it.

Exxon’s own scientists foresaw these fossil fuel-driven anthropogenic changes about a half- century ago, but we’re still not ready for them, and neither are most of our fellow creatures. If I learned one thing from writing about wildfires, it is that this hotter, less stable world is not the “new normal.” We are entering clima incognita — the “unknown climate.” Here be dragons, and some of them are fires 20 miles wide.

My earnest advice is to listen to climate scientists, to meteorologists, to fire officials. They are trying to save your lives. And if you see fire on the horizon, don’t fixate on the flames, pay attention to the wind: If it’s blowing toward you, the embers are, too, and you better get ready to go.

(John Vaillant is a journalist and an author whose latest book, “Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World,” won Britain’s Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction in 2023 and was a finalist for the National Book Award.)

AIN'T NOBODY'S BUSINESS IF I DO

There ain't nothin' I can do or nothin' I can say
That folks don't criticize me but I'm going to do
Just as I want to anyway
And don't care just what people say

If I should take a notion, to jump into the ocean
Ain't nobody's business if I do
If I go to church on Sunday, then cabaret all day Monday
Ain't nobody's business if I do

If my man ain't got no money and I say, "Take all of mine, honey"
Ain't nobody's business if I do
If I give him my last nickel and it leaves me in a pickle
Ain't nobody's business if I do

Well, I'd rather my man would hit me
Than follow him to jump up and quit me
Ain't nobody's business if I do
I swear I won't call no copper, if I'm beat up by my papa
Ain't nobody's business if I do, nobody's business
Ain't nobody's business, nobody's business if I do

— Porter Grainger and Everett Robbins

PRIMARY COVERAGE IN LOUDOUN COUNTY, VIRGINIA

In advance of Super Tuesday, returning to an electoral hot spot

by Matt Taibbi

In the fall of 2021, Loudoun County, Virginia became ground zero of the American culture war, thanks to an election surprise. One of the richest regions of the country, Loudoun in 2020 voted for Biden by an overwhelming 24-point margin, 61-37. A year later, in the wake of a complex school controversy, Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe won there by just ten points over Republican Glenn Youngkin, who gained 15 points over Trump and ended up carrying the rest of the state. 

I visited Loudoun before and after the vote and found the on-the-ground reality was so different from what had been reported, it was disorienting. I ended up writing a four-part series in an effort to describe even a summary version of what actually happened. Loudoun was fascinating, so I decided to come back and do some re-interviewing in advance of the primary on Super Tuesday. If you live in the area and have time for a coffee to help update things, please note in the comments or write to taibbi@substack.com, I’d love to hear. 

After 2021, what happened in Loudoun was pitched as a racist revolt. “It’s about white supremacy,” declared Jeffrey “Zoomin’” Toobin on CNN, echoing the near-universal consensus of national media that the onetime “hotbed of Confederate resistance,” as the Washington Post dubbed Loudoun, suddenly awoke, zombie-like, to reassert its separatist leanings. Echoing a messaging tactic usually seen in the wake of anti-police protests, local leaders and pundits also claimed unrest about local school policies was an import, the product of a “loud, out-of-county minority” and a conservative media “scaremongering” campaign.

Again, I found something a lot more interesting and idiosyncratic, nearly opposite to what papers like the Post were saying. I’m curious to see what if anything has changed since. Watch this space for Super Tuesday coverage, and hope to see you soon.

WHY I STILL ENCOURAGE MY STUDENTS TO PURSUE JOURNALISM, EVEN IN THE FACE OF MASS LAYOFFS

by Edward Wasserman

I got a call from a reporter the other day who wondered, amid the cascade of bad news about the news media, what I tell students who are considering a future as journalists.

For a journalism teacher, who’s committed both to the profession and to doing right by his students, it’s an awkward question. The situation is grim, with the Los Angeles Times, the country’s biggest paper west of the Mississippi, laying off 20 percent of its newsroom, joining the Washington Post, NBC News, ABC News, NPR, Vice, Vox, BuzzFeed and even the New Yorker in cutbacks over the past year. Pew Research reported in 2021 that newsroom employment was down by more than a quarter from 2008. From 2005 to 2024 roughly 3,000 newspapers were shuttered and 40,000 staffers lost their jobs, and layoffs industrywide were nearly 50% higher last year than the year before.

I used to offer the same advice I’d give somebody who was considering a career in theater: “Do it if you must.” I still believe love trumps the pragmatic when it comes to life choices, and the people who make their passion pay off are outnumbered only by those who take the apparently sensible course and end up wishing they hadn’t.

But I’ve got other arguments now, some of them stronger. Here are eight:

First, look at the context: The demise of job security isn’t unique to journalism; it’s everywhere. Even the mammoth companies atop the bloated tech sector shed workers regularly and without warning. Change is unabating. There’s no telling which flowering boomtown will wither when the next interstate is built. Outside the public sector, job instability has become a routine misery for all the toiling masses, not just for journalists. Second, although the journalism workforce has shrunk, there are jobs, with strong and committed institutions. Leading news organizations — Bloomberg, Reuters, the New York Times, the Associated Press, Dow Jones, CNN, Fox News — are making do and making plans. Plus, a constellation of digital startups, offering coverage of specific places or specific audiences, continues to grow. If you’re good at what you do, you’ve still got a shot, especially with journalism now creating new businesses via audio, video and social media channels.

Third, the appetite for what journalists do is vast, as the population with the hand-held capacity to seek and consume news has never been greater. And people do want honest reporting — that promise has real power as a marketing pitch because it recognizes a genuine wish. The challenge now is to help audiences distinguish truthful journalism, whatever its political leanings, from the work of fabricators, hucksters and paid influencers, so that this promise is kept.

Fourth, dislike of the press isn’t the problem. For all the talk about mistrust of the media, the public has always been deeply ambivalent about the press. I personally find people respectful and interested when they learn what I do; in our culture, journalists are significant. What is powering the news media’s death spiral isn’t audience distaste, it’s the simple fact the advertisers they relied on got a better offer.

But the future? Nobody sees around corners. News media may be starving now, but the genius of markets is their ingenuity in finding ways to marry supply with demand, to get money for things that people value. A generation ago the music industry was a moldering corpse, the victim of digital cunning; now it has embraced the new media and ascended to the cloud, with every online ditty and musical punctuation mark generating micro-royalty payments, and the industry reportedly more profitable than ever. 

Fifth, the communicative skills journalists are trained in are hugely important and increasingly scarce. A generation has been encouraged to believe that anything worth knowing is available through Google and that explanations can stop with 140 characters. People who know better are ever more valuable, in fields throughout the economy. ChatGPT and its generative artificial intelligence cousins are a challenge, with their staggering reach and fluency, but nobody has yet shown that editorial vision can be synthesized.

Sixth, journalism has always had a dual identity, as a job and a calling. This is a proud tradition. Alongside the work of professionals, correspondents with day jobs have long enabled newspapers serving thinly populated states to cover far-flung communities. Stringers attend the town council meetings and sit at their kitchen tables to type up their stories, working for a pittance — essentially donating their time. For the news industry today, finding new sources of financial subsidy remains a huge challenge, but that labor subsidy may well be part of journalism’s reinvention: Reporting by skilled people who keep an eye on their communities as part of their duty as citizens, an irreplaceable service easier than ever to perform thanks to social media and more indispensable than ever with the collapse of the salaried local press.

Seventh, journalism is more than a skill set, it’s a mode of engagement with the world we live in. You pass a hobby shop that’s shutting down after many years and instead of wondering how come and walking on, you are schooled to go inside, ask for the owner and find out. It’s an utterly unique social practice that values learning what’s happening around you and telling others about it so they will know and can respond accordingly. And that is a good thing, as a moral and civic matter.

Finally, it’s also fun. Journalism is fast-moving and demanding. It thrives on the creative collaboration of smart, caring people. It invites you to use the expressive power of language and images to high purpose. True, it demands care and it takes a toll on its practitioners, but it offers an opportunity to apply your brains and sensibilities in ways that, now and again, actually do some good. Such is the case I’d make to the young people who are considering journalism. A lot is at stake, and the rest of us should hope that they find the case persuasive.

(Edward Wasserman is a media ethicist and professor at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he is a former dean.)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I saw something that to me was a rare moment of purity, which I wish to remark on.

There is a bridge between Indiana and Kentucky (I think) that goes over the Ohio River.

An unlucky truck driver went over the side of the bridge and the cab was dangling above the river.

It was the Clark Memorial Bridge, and the entire rescue operation was on live television.

I watched a video of part of the rescue afterward, and I couldn’t help thinking to myself about how this was government at its finest.

I suppose the guy in the truck could have maybe phoned his wife and asked her if she could get a few volunteers to come and get him; this person had plenty to worry about, but one thing he didn’t have to worry about was whether there were people on the way who were going to do whatever was humanly possible to get him out of that situation.

Government at its finest, purest state. Doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves, but really needed doing.

Then there was the journalism. We’ve all seen what our Fourth Estate has become.

Here we saw what it was always supposed to be. Honest reporting, to the best of their ability. Finding out who, what, when, where so we’d understand what was happening.

Television in its highest best use as well. Just plain letting us see for ourselves.

I SAW IN THEM, the wheels that move the meanest perversions of virtuous Political Machinery that the worst tools ever wrought. Despicable trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with public officers; cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers; shameful trucklings to mercenary knaves, in a word, Dishonest Faction in its most depraved and unblushing form, stared out from every corner of the crowded hall.

— Charles Dickens, describing the US Congress in 1842: “American Notes"

THE GREAT GEORGE GALLOWAY, And Don't We Wish We Had One Here

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3_3cJ9tbvc/?igsh=NmJiYWZiY2E0Mg==

THE POPE finally shuffles off. When he arrives at the Pearly Gate, he’s met by St. Peter, who checks out his credentials. “Cmon in Pope-man,” Peter says. “I'll show you the pad.” It's a very spacious, very comfortable three-bedroom situation. Big airy kitchen, library, plenty of toilets, den with nice entertainment center, large wet bar, etc. etc. The Pope inspects it, nodding appreciatively. Look out the window The Holy See sees a really spectacular place on the highest ridge. “Well,” the Pope says, “this is plenty nice; but what about that place?” “Oh,” Peter says, “that's Duke Ellington's pad.” The Pope's impressed but a little disappointed. “I don't mean to sound ungrateful, Pete,” he says, “but, hey, aren’t I the Pope?” “Yeah, of course you’re the Pope,” Peter says. "But we’ve got hundreds of popes up here. … However, there's only one Duke Ellington.”