Mendocino County Today: Monday 3/11/24

More Rain | Reynolds Highway | Plane Crash | Thumbs Up | Fatal Crash | Steve Rubin | Mo Meeting | Unprocessed Ballots | Steamship Fare | Regulatory Discrepancies | Eldervision | Nominated Students | Clear Creek Station | Ed Notes | Vineyard Heaven | Long Branch Saloon | Rock Autopsy | Yesterday's Catch | Culture Collapse | Hooded Monks | SF Coyotes | Meloni Nuzzling | Redacting Kissinger | Donald Show | Flush Twice | Dark Films | Reformists | Lady Godiva | Collateral Damage | RR Tracks

ADDITIONAL RAIN, gusty winds and mountain snow will impact the area this afternoon through early Tuesday morning. Scattered showers will wind down through early Wednesday as high pressure builds into the PNW. Dry, warm and clear conditions are expected late week into the weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): The LAST thing my septic field needed was ANOTHER 1.03" of new rainfall but alas. 5.04" this month. 1 more system later today & tonight then an extended dry spell, finally. 41F under clear skies this Monday morning on the coast. There are no beach advisories in place but the ocean sure sounds big to the west.

AIRPLANE PARACHUTES INTO NORTHCOAST TREES; OCCUPANTS SURVIVE

On Friday, March 8, 2024 at around 1:15 PM, Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Deputies were dispatched to a possible airplane crash in the area of Usal Road in Whitethorn.

Deputies from the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office, the California Highway Patrol, CalFire, Southern Humboldt Tech Rescue, and members of the Whale Gulch, Shelter Cover, and Whitethorn Fire Departments responded to assist.

Upon locating the crash site, the three occupants from the airplane were found to have only suffered minor cuts and scratches. The three occupants of the airplane were identified as a 38-year-old male, 38-year-old female, and 2-year-old female all from Santa Rosa.

During the investigation, Sheriff's Deputies learned the airplane's engine lost power about five minutes after taking off. The pilot began to troubleshoot why the airplane lost engine power, but had noticed the plane's altitude was too low for recovery.

At this point, the pilot deployed the airplane's Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS) which slowed the airplane's decent. The parachute carried the airplane until it ultimately crashed into trees in a heavily wooded area of Yellow Road in Whitethorn.

Deputies initiated the Aircraft Accident protocols and contacted the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), who have the primary responsibility for investigating accidents involving civilian aircrafts.

The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office would like to thank the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office, California Highway Patrol, CalFire, Southern Humboldt Tech Rescue, and members of the Whale Gulch, Shelter Cover, and Whitethorn Fire Departments who quickly responded to assist with this incident.

BACK IN THE HOSPITAL AGAIN (Sunday night)

FATAL CRASH REPORTED ON MENDOCINO COAST

A van was found Saturday morning on its side off Highway 1 near Westport

by Mary Callahan

The Mendocino County Coroner’s Unit was called to a fatal crash Saturday on the northern Mendocino Coast after a van was found overturned on its side off Highway 1 just north of Westport, according to the CHP’s Traffic Incident Information Page.

The vehicle was reported around 10:13 a.m. south of Branscomb Road, between the coastal highway and a tree but still visible from the roadway, according to the CHP’s log entry.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

LONG-TIME KZYX MUSIC PROGRAMMER STEVE RUBIN OF BOONVILLE HAS DIED. We await an obituary. 

JENNIFER POOLE:

California Secretary of State says only a third of Mendo ballots reported.

Here's a tidbit for you, a CA Secretary of State report posted March 8 says only one-third of Mendo ballots have been reported. The “Estimated Unprocessed Ballots” report for Mendocino County shows the same 7,418 ballots already reported in that 2024 “Final Election Night Report,” plus an estimated 15,258 ballots still to process. Not confirmed by local office at present. 

Usually we get about half in that “Final Election Night Report” and about half “still to count.” 

If the numbers hold — 7,418, plus 15,258 still to count, plus maybe 500 provisional ballots — that'll be around 23,176 voters. 

In 2020, the final primary turnout was 29,527 votres. Lots of votes in the local Democrat primary that year, including 8,591 for Bernie Sanders, who won the local primary.

So turnout will be down for 2024, but not as far down as some think. 

https://electionresults.sos.ca.gov/unprocessed-ballots-status

STATE AGENCY SAYS ‘REGULATORY DISCREPANCIES’ IDENTIFIED IN PALACE GRANT APPLICATION

by Mike Geniella

A state agency says it has identified “regulatory discrepancies” in a $6.6 million grant application by the Guidiville Rancheria to tear down the historic Palace Hotel, so studies for possible ground contamination can be conducted.

After initial acceptance of Guidiville’s application, “further consideration” is required, according to the state Department of Toxic Substances Control.

Late Friday, a department spokesman declined to provide any specifics, or how the issues in question might be resolved before funds are released under a special $250 million state environmental cleanup program benefiting tribes, non-profits, and municipalities in poor areas.

“At this stage, we cannot provide detailed information about potential changes to the application or grant specifics but expect to have more clarity by April,” said Devin Hutchings, who provided a follow up statement from the department.

On March 1, the agency announced it had approved in general the Guidiville application but declared that a specific grant amount “remains to be determined.”

The state announcement raised immediate questions because it clearly identified special grants totaling $41 million for 17 applicants statewide, but left Guidiville at the bottom of its list and the only one without a dollar amount specified. “To Be Determined” was the state notation on the list of Equitable Community Revitalization Grants awarded.

At that time, Hutchings said the plan outlined by Guidiville, and supported by tribal consultant Michael Derry and a group of local investors led by restaurateur Matt Talbert, was the focus of an “ongoing review of the proposed site investigation by necessary regulatory authorities.” 

In the follow up to questions raised about its announcement, the state agency issued a statement late Friday afternoon: 

“We plan to meet with the applicant to explore options that will ensure compliance with all necessary regulations while also aligning with the (program’s) commitments to environmental protection and community resilience. The grant’s specifics, including its duration and financial allocations, will be determined after we’ve agreed on a path forward that meets these requirements. Our goal is to manage these adjustments collaboratively, reinforcing our dedication to impactful community projects.”

On March 1, the state agency specifically stated that its tentative grant award to Guidiville “…requires that the proposed project and plans adhere to the requirements of all appropriate regulatory bodies, including those with jurisdiction over site cleanups and historic preservation.”

Guidiville’s scheme to use taxpayer dollars to pay for demolition of the Palace, a downtown landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has been questioned by local preservation advocates, and the state agency charged with oversight of any ground contamination studies. 

In February, senior staff at the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board in Santa Rosa made clear that they did not see demolition of the Palace building as necessary to do on-site contamination studies.

“We have never required demolition of a building to do any investigation for ground contamination,” said Heidi Bauer, senior engineering geologist for the regional water board.

In its application Guidiville specifically sought $5.3 million for demolition, contending earlier court-accepted studies were inaccurate and claiming that tearing down the sprawling three-story brick structure was the only way to make a final determination about what if any contamination exists beneath the Palace. Guidiville claimed its own studies show six possible sites of underground fuel storage tanks beneath the Palace. State agencies said, however, that they did not receive copies of the private consulting studies that Guidiville cited in its state application.

Public funding to tear the Palace down and prepare the site for new development is key to a proposal by Guidiville and its private investors to buy the building from current owner Jitu Ishwar and his wife, Paru. The state grant application outlines their intent to demolish the structure, cleanup the site, and construct a new six-story complex housing a boutique hotel, event center, underground parking, apartments, and restaurant, bar, and retail shops.

Before entering into an agreement with Guidiville, Ishwar spurned two earlier proposals to reconstruct the Palace rather than demolish and create a similar complex because he could not get full reimbursement for what he paid for the building and site in 2019 despite not taking any measures to stem the historic building’s deterioration.

How the state’s delayed grant decision affects the escrow agreement between Ishwar and Guidiville, and the city of Ukiah’s months-old “emergency” declaration that the Palace is in imminent danger of collapse is unclear.

Neither Ishwar nor his attorney Stephen Johnson of Mannon, King, Johnson & Wipf responded to requests for comment. Nor did Guidiville tribal consultant Michael Derry or tribal administrator Bunny Tarin.

Deputy Ukiah City Manager Shannon Riley did not respond to a written request seeking city reaction to the new state announcement.

Normally, the state Office of Historic Preservation would weigh in on any planned demolition of a structure listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

But the Ukiah City Council preempted the state office from any oversight when it declared on November 2 that the Palace had deteriorated to such an extent that “it is no longer stable and poses an imminent risk of damage to persons or property due to its instability.”

Further, on November 6 the Ukiah city council declared the Palace statutorily exempt from demolition review under the CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act. 

In the same week, the city gave notice to Ishwar and his Twin Investments LLC to submit within 30 days a plan for stabilization of the building or its demolition. 

However, as has been the city’s practice for more than three decades about the Palace’s decline, the City has done nothing since.

Riley acknowledged in recent weeks that city enforcement action was put on hold pending outcome of the Guidiville grant application, and its proposed purchase from Ishwar. 

Guidiville and tribal consultant Derry are no strangers to development struggles with municipalities. 

Two decades ago, a developer and the Guidiville Rancheria announced plans to build a controversial billion-dollar casino and hotel on a former Naval depot at Point Molate on San Francisco Bay. At the time the casino project was supported by the city of Richmond. The Guidiville tribe, historically located in Mendocino County, claimed it once had fishing rights at Point Molate, according to contemporaneous news accounts. Local voters in 2010 turned down the necessary zoning and permits, however, triggering a legal battle costing millions of dollars, a substitute plan to develop high end housing which later was abandoned, and now a proposal for an East Bay Regional Park development. The Guidiville rancheria as part of a settlement secured an interest in the government surplus land, and may receive a share of $36 million in state money earmarked in 2022 for development of a regional park at Point Molate.

AV STUDENTS OF THE MONTH

Congratulations To Our Junior/Senior High Students Of The Month! Students are nominated by teachers for kindness, respect, improvement, collaboration or another attribute to recognize their effort in a particular class! Well done!

Take care,

Louise Simson, Superintendent

AV Unified School District

ED NOTES:

REMEMBER THE 50s? I used to be reminded of that awful decade on a daily basis. I happened to have owned a six-chair dinette set that was so uniquely, soul-destroyingly ugly that I sprinted past it every day on the way into my office. Covered in a plastic faux flower print of deliberately faded browns, yellows and greens that was clearly the work of a person so far removed from life's natural colors as to be mentally ill — in other words a conscious, eager tool of the 50s aesthetic — this kind of furniture is, however, indestructible. It is so sturdily built, it will inspire suicidal feelings in you and yours for generations to come. I'd rather not say how I came into possession of this particular abomination, but I wanted it out of here. I was prepared to pay someone $50 to take it away, but my supervisor insisted on selling it for $25, even after I thought I had her convinced that selling furniture this ugly amounted to a crime against nature. She got the $25 for it at a garage sale. I hope they put it out behind their garden where nobody could be useful while it deteriorates and nature takes it back into its welcoming arms.

THE LIBERAL CONSCIENCE IN ACTION: “Honestly, I don’t know if I can in good conscience vote for Jill Stein or Cornel West. Sure they’re against genocide, which is good, as far as it goes, but do they have a position on the marginal tax rate or price supports for winter wheat?”

I’VE NEVER quite understood why tourists from the more prosperous end of the market are so drawn to wine growing areas. They wouldn’t presumably, want to go and see cotton before it became L.L. Bean slacks, or caviar being gutted from sturgeon, but give them a backdrop of vines and they appear to think they have found heaven. 

— Bill Bryson, “In a Sunburned Country”

ROCK ’N’ ROLL, THE AUTOPSY

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

Rock ’n’ Roll is dead, buried, gone and no one even showed up to mourn at its graveside. Or attend the Celebration of Death.

It was once promised that “Rock ’n’ Roll Will Never Die,” but anyone with an AM radio knows that by the late 1980s rock music was past its expiration date. Only corporate life support kept it propped up in front of stadium crowds too young and stupid to realize they were cheering the stuff rock originally, and even lately, was sneering at.

Rage Against the Machine at Madison Square Garden? I laugh.

Now R&R’s gone and I think we an all agree the world is a better place without it. 

Show of hands, please? Show of hands? Raise your hand if you miss rock ’n’ roll music. Anyone?

Well, there you have it. It’s gone, unlamented, and ripe for an autopsy. Please hold your applause until the end.

Rock music was brought to being by a recording industry that sniffed a trend and, tentatively at first, breathed life into it by honing in on its target audience: Teenagers in the 1950s.

This demographic, once convinced it was a separate, special generational segment, was coaxed into a faux rebel identity costumed in black jackets, tight trousers, a motorcycle if your parents would buy you one, greasy hair and rock n roll music.

That was the stage, the rebel attitude was the wallpaper, and rock ’n’ roll was the soundtrack, with crappy movies (Blackboard Jungle, Rebel Without a Cause, Easy Rider) providing all three manufactured images for teens to emulate.

These attitudinal cues are mostly gone today, but during their forgivably brief era they helped poison families (children and parents at war with each other) and communities by fostering a sense of alienation from (of all things!) a society so free and open it welcomed, indulged and help nurture their bitter complaints. 

Most of the protests and whining had to do with middle class values, not being allowed to smoke marijuana, hating cops, America and anyone over 30 years old. During extended stretches of being unemployed, our childish intellectuals demanded to roam around their rotten country in VW vans, all in a sweat to get back to the land, minus occasional stops at Woodstock, Taos, Big Sur and Ukiah.

“Back to the Land.” As if. Like they were all potato farmers who’d spent the past 20 years harvesting french fries in Idaho. 

The music evolved, or at least accommodated its aging teen audience with programming more suitable for 20-year-old college graduates who were tuning out, turning on, and dropping in at welfare offices to pick up food stamps. Rock music showed the way, instructing the traveling lemmings to take a lot of drugs, do their own thing and eat brown rice. 

Everything was electric by this point, with ex-folkie preacher/protest singer Bob Dylan serving as both lightning rod and ground wire. His fanatic followers wanted to know Where It’s At, Man, and demanded answers to the Cosmic Riddle. Pop music went far out and into heavy metal; Bob went to Nashville. 

He recorded a semi-folkie Christian album called John Wesley Harding, and a dozen years later explained his hard-earned truth: The answer(s) were found in Biblical Scripture, and three Born Again albums hammered it home. 

His dwindling fan base stamped its feet, shook tiny clenched fists and made potty in their Depends.

The lemmings then had seizures and demanded answers from astrological acid-drenched cosmic Pink Floydiotics. (They’re still waiting.) Bob demurred.

We lurched onward, though not as Christian Soldiers, but into rock mutations spawning country rock, glitter rock, Disco, punk rock and New Wave, before finally collapsing over a cliff to the tune of (c)rap, hip hop, techno pop and industrial noise.

Along the way Jimi, Janis, Jim and Keith died from drugs; Elvis died from being Elvis, and Paul died barefoot. Mick the Corpse kept singing Satisfaction, the music died, the Beatles committed suicide and Wayne Kramer finally caught a dose of rigor mortis. Next, subtract in ‘We Will We Will Rock You,’ Milli Vanilli, ‘We Are the World’ and Billy Joel. Whew! Then smoke machines, Rolling Stone magazine, silly onstage costumes, and creative exhaustion.

Cause of Death: Long overdue maturation of elderly teenage audience.

(Tom Hine, who writes this stuff under the TWK byline, has no room to scold; he went to Woodstock. If that’s not enough, two weeks ago he went to see an Elvis impersonator, live and on stage!)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, March 10, 2024

BRETT ADAME, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

KELISHA ALVAREZ, Ukiah. County parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

ODEN BURTON, Santa Barbara/Ukiah. DUI-drugs with priors.

CODY CALDWELL, Willits. Controlled substance, false personation of another, failure to appear.

SERENITY GRAVLEE, Ukiah. DUI causing bodily injury, child endangerment.

VICTORIA LADD, Clearlake/Ukiah. Under influence, county parole violation.

MICHAEL OLVERA-CAMPOS, Ukiah. Under influence, parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

SIERRA RATEKIN, Point Arena. Domestic battery.

AARON STILL, Fort Bragg. Mandatory supervisor violation.

DONALD WILLETT JR., Willits. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, loaded concealed weapon, suspended license, no insurance in accident.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

We are a nation of ugly, ignorant, overweight, tattooed clowns who have no idea about civics, financial responsibility, respect, nor logic. Our culture has collapsed and our society is right behind it.

WHAT FRISCO'S COYOTES ARE EATING

by Amanda Bartlett

Dew clung to the greenery, and save for a couple of red-tailed hawks soaring through the sky, there wasn’t a soul in sight. Armed with Google Maps and a fanny pack, the UC Davis Ph.D. student zoomed along the fairway until she found a thicket of bushes. She put the cart in park, stepped out and knelt down in the wet grass, scrutinizing the lumpy brown object that lay before her. It was exactly what she had been looking for: coyote poop.

She jotted down the information in her field notebook: where she had found the scat and what time of day it was. Then, she slid on a pair of white rubber gloves and retrieved a little tube filled with ethanol from her fanny pack, taking off a piece of the scat and shoving it into the tube with a wooden applicator stick to help preserve the DNA. She labeled and sealed it, and set off to find more. 

Caspi’s notes from that day spare no detail. Some of the found samples were “full of cherry plum pits and berries” while others were “twisted in shape and full of hair.” One had just been deposited by a coyote she saw darting across the course and was mottled with tiny bones. There were traces of orange peel and aluminum foil, and one in particular was overflowing with peanuts. 

Caspi has spent two years of her mornings like this, traversing over 621 miles throughout San Francisco — crisscrossing popular neighborhoods, scouring cemeteries and soccer fields, even breaking her foot during one hike up Bernal Hill — on her quest to find out what urban coyotes living in the city are actually eating.

“I feel like there’s not a park, not a trail that I haven’t been on,” Caspi told SFgate. “I have them all memorized like the back of my hand at this point. And I can tell you, truly every green space that you can think of in the city has coyotes. San Francisco is totally saturated.” 

The animals are native to California, and after years of no sightings, they recolonized San Francisco in the early 2000s, when they began building dens again after police ended the practice of killing them as they crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and into the city. Since then, their numbers have grown considerably. San Francisco Animal Care and Control estimates that there are about 100 individuals living in the city, with each mating pair establishing their own 1-to-2-square-mile territory, ranging from the Presidio and Golden Gate Park to Lands End, Coit Tower and McLaren Park. Some even took up residence at a solar panel project in the Sunset. “These are really adaptable creatures,” Caspi said. 

Yet, as more and more sightings of coyotes were reported, concerns rose surrounding the animals and the potential threat they posed for young children and pets. Caspi, whose primary interest was in studying how people and urban wildlife coexist, happened to be in the right place at the right time when she reached out to the Presidio Trust and the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department regarding possible research for her Ph.D. in 2019.

“They were like, ‘Oh, we’ve been waiting for you,’” Caspi said. “‘We have growing issues with coyotes in the city.’ They had some data, but no one had the time or funds or ability to really analyze it.” 

With help from Janet Kessler — also known as the “Coyote Lady,” who has been documenting the city’s coyote population for the last 16 years — she made it her mission to raise awareness about the often-misunderstood animals, studying their behavior and social dynamics but also learning more about their eating habits: how they vary by location and are influenced by an urban environment, as well as how those habits change for each individual animal over the course of its life. 

Caspi’s been able to figure this out by not only gathering stool samples from live coyotes, but also collecting the tips of whiskers from roadkill specimens and sending them off to a lab for further analysis. More information regarding the precise breakdown won’t be available until later this year. But the findings she’s discovered so far are groundbreaking, and could even change the way people think about coyotes. 

One of the most surprising takeaways? The canines are scarfing down much more human food than previously thought. 

“I’ve found a whole bunch of weird stuff,” Caspi said. “I’ve found chocolate. I’ve found mango. I’ve found grapes. But the biggest, most frequent offender is chicken.” 

It’s worth noting the coyotes’ taste for poultry could be coming from a lot of different sources, like dog kibble, or discarded McNuggets that they’re fishing out of people’s garbage. The DNA metabarcoding process Caspi uses can only determine the type of food or prey remains that are present, not necessarily where they’re coming from. However, human handouts are a worsening issue that SFACC has been attempting to mitigate for years, and Caspi herself has witnessed people leaving out entire rotisserie chickens, tortillas and several pounds of ground meat for coyotes.

The motivation for this is unclear. When coyotes shed their coats in the summer, they can take on a scraggly appearance, causing many people to think they’re malnourished. Others want to “befriend” or take photos of them, and some even seem to hope that if they give them food, the coyotes won’t go after their pets, Deb Campbell, a spokesperson for SFACC, told SFGate. You should never feed a coyote: It’s illegal and punishable by jail time or a fine of up to $1,000, and people are encouraged to call SFACC at 415-554-9400 if they see someone doing it, she said. It’s a problem that hurts everyone, especially the naturally skittish coyotes, which start to lose their fear of humans, become more emboldened to approach them and regularly visit neighborhoods they come to associate with treats. 

“There’s a big misconception people have that if they see them wandering around the city, they must be starving and need our help,” Caspi said. “But they don’t — and trust me, they’re definitely not starving.” 

Swaths of San Francisco residents are unintentionally catering to coyotes by feeding their pets outside and not removing uneaten traces of food, forgetting to secure their trash and recycling and not cleaning up the seed around bird feeders or fallen fruit from trees in their front yards, Campbell said. 

And it shows in Caspi’s research, which has demonstrated that coyotes’ diets are rich in other foods like pork, fish and soybeans easily scavenged from a dense urban landscape. That’s not to say they’re not very capable hunters — coyotes also frequently seek out natural prey like squirrels, gophers and raccoons. Data collected by Caspi has also proven the animals are even willing to venture out to the coastline for a good meal, as was the case when several of them feasted upon a stranded fin whale that washed up on Fort Funston in 2021. 

So far, Caspi has been the most taken aback by the sheer variation in each coyote’s diet. Much like humans, the carnivores have different tastes and preferences, and don’t always eat the same things at the same time. Interestingly enough, Caspi’s research also seems to debunk another common myth: that coyotes are regularly going after people’s pets for their next meal. “I looked for domestic cat DNA in the scats, and I did find it, but not very frequently,” she said. “It is not at all a big part of their diets in San Francisco. Out of around 700 scats, I had a few. A handful.”

It’s worth noting she can’t tell whether the cats that showed up in her research were pets, or strays that were part of a feral colony. Her data also comes with the caveat that she’s unable to turn up any results for domestic dogs because their DNA is too closely related to coyotes’. Yet, Caspi hopes her ongoing research can walk back any misconceptions San Francisco residents have, and said the best way for people to protect their cats is to keep them indoors. It’s better for the environment, she said — cats kill billions of birds and small mammals every year, and can contract toxoplasmosis that transfers to waterways when they defecate outside, infecting other organisms like sea otters. 

 “If people are really concerned about their cats, at least from the standpoint of cat welfare, indoor cats live longer,” she said. “They’re healthier. It’s a great option.” 

Meanwhile, interactions between coyotes and small dogs can still occasionally happen, Caspi said. She recommends keeping dogs on leashes and avoiding den areas, especially during pupping season, which kicks off in late March and continues through the fall, resulting in many hiking trail closures throughout the city. Coyotes are most active at dawn and dusk and at night, and she advised that people avoid taking their furry friends out during those times of day, particularly in the spring, when many fully grown pups are likely to be dispersing. 

It’s during this period that people might notice urban coyotes scampering along city streets, or popping up in other unexpected places — notably, observations of this nature skyrocketed when Caspi was doing fieldwork during the onset of the pandemic. But they don’t necessarily mean “nature is healing,” that coyotes are getting pushed out of natural spaces or are taking over the city, she said. They’re just seeking out a new home. 

“A coyote can cross the entire city in a night,” she said. “Yearlings or pups get pushed out and need to find their own territories, and they can become transient for a period of time.”

The animals are known to make use of city streets and even railroads, but they won’t stay for long. I told Caspi that I had recently seen a video shared by a friend of mine on Instagram showing a coyote crossing Valencia Street in broad daylight, being narrowly missed by a Muni bus. These types of sightings are common, she said, and can mean a couple of different things: One, that the individual has territory near that area and might have just been roaming around, or two, that it was a transient individual searching for a place to go, or trying to more firmly establish its territory.

“You’ll notice they’re not usually stopping and rolling around and sunning themselves,” she said. “It’s a temporary state. Coyotes need natural spaces, and when they venture into populated areas, it’s because they’re on the move.” 

Another theory Caspi frequently hears is that San Francisco’s coyote population is booming. Undoubtedly, there has been some kind of uptick over the last 20 years; individuals die and more pups are born. But the city is more or less full, she said, and because of their territorial nature, there are limits to how much space coyotes will share, limiting the possibility of continuous growth. She suspects this belief came about during the pandemic, as lots of people turned to natural spaces when there wasn’t much else to do. 

“I was out collecting data during all of 2020 and those parks were completely full,” said Caspi. “There were people there at times of day they probably weren’t out there before. If anything, I think there was an increase in the proportion of sightings that were reported because of a dramatic shift in human behavior.” 

As time goes on, the city’s perception of coyotes continues to be polarizing. There are the residents who love them and want to see them protected, sometimes to their detriment, and those who perceive them as pests at best and a danger to society at worst. But regardless of how people feel about them, they’re here to stay. 

 “At this point in San Francisco, we’re on to many generations of urban-born individuals,” Caspi said. “The combination of urban expansion and eradication of wolves across the U.S. is kind of what allowed them to expand their historical ranges. They’re opportunists and we’ve created conditions that really, really work for them.” 

Essentially, their role as one of the only city-dwelling apex predators with such an expansive diet makes them controversial. But Caspi said it’s important to understand the benefits and ecological services they provide, such as controlling rodent populations, increasing biodiversity and dispersing native plant seeds.

Even so, she frequently encounters residents who argue that they pay taxes and coyotes don’t; that the city is for people. They express a desire for agencies like the California Department of Fish and Wildlife or SFACC to do away with the city’s coyote population by killing them or simply dumping them all in another location.

“They think that will work and it won’t,” she said. “Not only is it prohibitively expensive and, in my opinion, unethical, but also, they’ll come back. They can actually respond to declines in their population by making bigger litters. They will replace themselves.”

The only option people have is to learn how to live with them, Caspi said. And if her research can provide residents with the tools they need to understand what the coyotes in their backyards are doing and eating, she believes the city will be better for it.

“We have to function alongside them, not on top of them,” she said. “San Francisco is a cohesive ecosystem and the coyote is part of it.”

HERE’S BIDEN, our presidential trichophiliac, nuzzling the hair of the Italian fascist Giorgia Meloni… 

— Jeff St. Clair

IF YOU LOOK at those Chilean documents describing Kissinger’s deep involvement in the overthrow of Allende that we now do have and look at what they admit to, and then you look at the blacked-out bits, you think, “Well, boy, given what they've owned up to in the unredacted parts, what the hell could that be?”

— Christopher Hitchens

THE DONALD SHOW: THE WAY I SEE IT

by Jonah Raskin

The way I see it is this: The Donald is in jail and he has also been elected president of the US. He’s the first president who is also a felon. The divisions in the country widen; Putin sends Russian troops to break Trump out of a federal prison in California. Governor Newsom calls out the National Guard and they engage in combat with the Russians and with heavy casualties on both sides. Thousands of Mexicans go back to Mexico which remains fairly stable and with narcos running the country. Other Latinos return to their countries of origin; anything but the USA. Trump broadcasts from his prison cell; the Supreme Court defends his freedom of speech, though his broadcasts lead to rioting and chaos. Wall Street soars; the Stock Market has never done better. Meanwhile, Biden refuses to leave the White House, claims that the election has been stolen and points to irregularities in Texas where the governor seized ballots in Austin and dumped them in the Rio Grande. Robert F. Kennedy offers to negotiate with the Russians and to obtain a cease fire. He is shot and killed in Dallas in a motorcade. A lone assassin is arrested and then he is shot and killed by a refugee from Gaza whose cause is freedom for the Jews who he insists have been held captive by Zionists and the State of Israel. Trump goes on a hunger strike, leads an insurrection of the inmates, breaks out of jail and is inaugurated president, welcomes Putin, gives the Russians the State of California which is renamed Ukraine, opens the door to the Russian Orthodox Church and makes all the Indians of the Golden State honorary Russians. Nude aliens from outer space invade Earth and using a drug they mass produce put everyone under a spell and turn the whole planet into a sanctuary for criminals from a distant galaxie who arrive and turn all earthlings into vegans. Trump and Biden kiss and make up. Happy Ending.

I’M OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE. For example, I can watch John Cassavetes’s films over and over again. When I used to date women much younger than me, I would put them through training periods—”This is Ingmar Bergman week,” “This is Stanley Kubrick week.” It was very controlling, because they had to enjoy what I enjoyed. I see now how foolish and crazy and narcissistic it was. I like dark films. There’s a French film called The Mother and the Whore [1973]. It came out about a year after Last Tango in Paris [1972], which blew my mind and frightened me because it’s all about fear of intimacy. When I watch Marlon Brando in that movie now and I realize that I’m so much older now than he was when he was in it . . . Even though I got married, I still have . . . you know, those shadows followed me, those intimacy problems. The Mother and the Whore, though, was directed by Jean Eustache. He was this guy who came after the French New Wave and who wound up committing suicide. Jean-Pierre Léaud, who was one of my favorite actors, is in the movie. So I come home one night and I’m watching this film and I’m saying, “God, it looks like a [Bernardo] Bertolucci movie. It’s so dark. But I’ve never seen Jean-Pierre in a movie like this.” And it went on and on. It’s a masterpiece. It’s the greatest film I’ve ever seen on the Madonna-whore complex. So I do obsess over these films—I watch them over and over because, I guess, I sort of feel less alone and less crazy when I see some of these works of darkness. 

— Richard Lewis

CAUTIOUS, CAREFUL PEOPLE, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.

— Susan B. Anthony, 1860

MY GRANDFATHER WAS COLLATERAL DAMAGE FROM OPPENHEIMER’S GENIUS

by Victoria Kelly

“Oppenheimer” is a front-runner for best picture Sunday at the Academy Awards, earning 13 nominations. 

The movie is a masterpiece, from Cillian Murphy’s acting to its hauntingly beautiful score. But while it explores the ethics of building the atomic bomb, it glosses over the aftermath of the bombings.

The second atomic bomb exploded over Nagasaki at 11:02 a.m. on Aug. 9, 1945. U.S. occupation troops arrived in the city about 45 days after that. My grandfather, Carmine Gerardi, was one of them. 

Carmine was 23 years old at the time. The son of two Italian immigrants, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy at the start of the war, like most of his friends in Brooklyn. He was part of the Hospital Corps, serving as a medic aboard warships in the Pacific. In late 1945, he was sent to Japan to aid in the recovery efforts with the Marines. 

I’ll never know exactly what he saw there, because according to my mother, he never talked about it. What I do know is that it killed him. He suffered from severe post-traumatic stress disorder and died in 1964 from alcohol poisoning at the age of 42.

More than half of Nagasaki’s doctors were killed or wounded in the blast, so medics from the U.S. forces were tasked with taking care of the injured survivors. My grandfather probably knew nothing, or very little, about radiation poisoning when he arrived there. After the bombings, U.S. officials — worried about being labeled war criminals for using chemical weapons — attempted to suppress information about radioactivity. Biopsies and other pieces of evidence were confiscated by U.S. occupation authorities and kept classified for years. 

I imagine my grandfather must have arrived in Nagasaki expecting to find injuries similar to what he’d encountered during the war. Instead, he must have been horrified to find people bleeding from their gums, children suffering from severe and disabling burns, limbs amputated. Japanese doctors were only just figuring out the effects of radiation. And virtually the entire Japanese population was starving. 

Here’s what else he must have seen: the utterly blackened landscape, hospitals destroyed and human shadows etched into stone. By then, about 60,000 people had died, some completely vaporized by the explosion, others lost to the agony of radiation sickness — which peaked right around the time my grandfather arrived. 

On Aug. 6, 1946, my grandfather was discharged from the U.S. Navy and sent home to marry my grandmother. He brought her a kimono — and that was the last time he ever talked about Japan. Over the next 18 years before he died, I know he must have seen the news that slowly leaked out, about the leukemia, tumors and birth defects. He may have learned that while the U.S. government claimed to have dropped warning leaflets over Japanese cities ahead of the bombing, the vagueness of the warnings made it nearly impossible for civilians to know where to safely evacuate. 

I wonder if, when each of his healthy children was born with thick, dark Italian hair, he thought about all the children he must have treated who had lost their hair from the radiation.

After my grandfather died, my grandmother went back to work as a chemist until she retired. Even though she spent most of her days around men, she never remarried. Her marriage, and its two-decade disintegration, had been the ultimate disappointment of her life. 

“Oppenheimer” could have talked about any of these things in its 1950s scenes — the cover-ups, the wives who smiled through their own trauma, the physical and psychological toll of those involved. Instead, it focused on the “drama” of J. Robert Oppenheimer losing his security status. 

I’m not arguing that the bomb itself was a mistake; as the wife of a Marine veteran, I understand the way winning the war changed the course of history and all the freedoms it brought. And in so many ways, Christopher Nolan got the movie right. But in this respect, he got it wrong. 

Oppenheimer’s legacy echoes through generations. The hundreds of thousands of people who died instantly in the blasts are part of it. The slow deaths of so many others, including my grandfather, are part of it, too.

(Victoria Kelly is a novelist and the author of “Homefront” and “When the Men Go Off to War.”)