Mendocino County Today: Sunday 3/17/24

Sunny Warm | Wake Robin | Staffing Crisis | AVUSD News | Ridgewood Ranch | Skunk Response | Logging Locomotive | Earth Day | Earth Tongues | Shields Report | Roper Trucking | Louise Letter | Kleiser House | Looking Forward | Passenger Ramp | Ed Notes | Hop Festival | Killer Horses | Yesterday's Catch | Killer Recipes | Wild Rumpus | Perfect Morning | Invasion Break | Collective Unconscious | Jump Realization | Marco Radio | Inactivated Subs | Censorious Friends | Motor Maid | Ultimate Trust | Peasants | Gleaners

DRY, UNSEASONABLY WARM temperatures will continue across the interior through Tuesday, while coastal areas experience nightly stratus development followed by afternoon clearing. Unsettled weather and cooler temperatures return late in the week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A foggy 47F on the coast this Sunday morning. Looks we are in a morning fog - clearing pattern for a while. Rain returns on Friday they say.

THE LOOMING MENTAL HEALTH STAFFING CRISIS

by Mark Scaramella

Sheriff Kendall told the ‘Like It Or Not’ podcast dudes in Ukiah recently that he will need an additional ten uniformed officers (and probably a few more non-uniformed) to staff the new “Mental Health Wing” of the jail when it opens. This would bring authorized uniformed jail staff up from 55 now to 65 with the new wing. (Frankly, the 65 sounds a little low to us since jails require 24/7 staffing, but we hope we’re wrong about that.) 

Presumably the new jail wing will open next year now that the hugely overrunning project is funded and a contractor has been chosen. With the new higher salaries and pensions the Board gave to law enforcement last year, that’s probably at least $2 million a year more to staff the jail. Being new, the jail expansion should require fewer corrections officers per inmate than the dilapidated old jail, except that Kendall said that the mental health inmates (as well as the drug-addled, Kendall also noted) are harder cases to handle in jail and thus would require more staff per inmate.

Assuming there are no more construction cost increases at the jail (we live in hope), the Board will have to somehow find a couple million more dollars for fiscal year after next’s budget (and every year following) to staff the new jail wing on top of finding a way to pay back the $8 million they “borrowed” from Measure B (without a payback plan).

If history is any guide, since the Board is not likely to find $2 mil a year lying around unallocated, the Board will probably be forced to use the remaining Measure B sales tax revenues (1/8 cent in perpetuity) for the additional jail staff, claiming that the new jail wing is for “mental health.” And therefore the 1/8 cent proceeds will not be used for the mental health services mandated by Measure B.

The Sheriff also hinted on the podcast that he’s gathering signatures for a local ballot measure for the November ballot that will require more incarceration for property crimes. While that’s probably a good idea, it would mean that jail population numbers would not go down and the old jail will continue to require full if not increased staffing.

Yet neither the Supervisors nor the Measure B committee have asked the Sheriff for a staffing plan or budget forecast for the new wing of the jail. Nor have they requested a payback plan for to pay back the money borrowed from Measure B. 

The Psychiatric Health Facility at Whitmore Lane is also on a fast-track because there are state mandated deadlines that accompany the promised $9 million state grant they hope to use to cover part of the $20 mil or so that the overdesigned PHF will cost. The PHF will also require substantial round the clock staffing putting greater demand on specialized staffers in Ukiah. (Most of whom at present work for the Schraeder monopoly.)

Add in the likely (narrow) approval of Governor Newsom’s Proposition 1 and you’re talking about some serious financial and staffing demands on a mental health and drug treatment system that is already hard to staff and finance. 

The Supervisors should be trying to get ahead of this situation by at least asking questions about how this is all supposed to work, how it will be staffed, and how much it will cost. But we doubt they will. Despite their recent $150k “Strategic Plan” given lip-service at every Board meeting, the Supervisors don’t give much forethought to anything, preferring to bemoan their self-inflicted or easily foreseen “crises” after they arise.

AV DISTRICT WEEKLY UPDATE

Dear Anderson Valley Community,

It feels like Spring has suddenly come to the Valley. Nothing is more beautiful than a rainbow over the mountain tops framed by little lambs grazing the grass. You almost feel like you’re looking at a postcard. The warmth and sunshine brought a smile to everybody.

A big thank you to the students of the Service Learning Team for their beautiful expression of gratitude to the Board of Trustees for the transfer of the land for the skatepark for one dollar.  The artwork will hang in the library. It was a very thoughtful and kind gesture and much appreciated.  The students are actively seeking funding partnerships to continue the progress on their dream.  They are well underway.

The big news at the high school was the College and Career Fair on Wednesday night. We had some really great presentations from vendors such as the AV Fire Department, Fish and Wildlife, Caltrans, CalFire, and the AV Health Center along with numerous other organizations with information from Mendocino College and Sonoma State. We are so grateful to these organizations that continue to partner with us even though we are a small school.

Mark your calendar for the Family Art Night this Thursday at the elementary school. Please make a reservation by emailing brhoades@avpanthers.org.   This is a terrific evening of fun and art with your school community. Don’t miss this free event!

The next elementary Saturday Camp is also coming up quickly next week. Sign your student up for next Saturday at the elementary school. This is a fun day of learning and activities and helps us meet the 30-day requirement for additional days of school.

Just a reminder that there is no summer school for incoming seventh, eighth, and ninth grade. We will be holding the elementary program and credit recovery for high school students. Both of those programs will be at the elementary site. The high school students will be in an out building. It is very important that if you receive a letter that your student needs to attend high school summer school either to recover A-G eligibility for college or to make up required credits for high school that you enroll them and have them attend.  Trying to make up credits when you’re a Junior is often too late. Summer school is just half a day and only four weeks. Put your foot down and tell your kids they have to go.  Sometimes, we have to take the long view as parents because our kids aren’t yet able to do it for themselves. Don’t risk your student’s high school diploma due to credit loss or see your student not being able to go to a four-year college because  they didn’t make a grade.  Sign them up please!

You are going to start noticing some significant packing at the high school. We will try to minimize any disruption to student learning, but we have to get a jump on this so we are ready for construction in June. We are very excited about the transformation that is to come.

We also learned some information about low cost Internet from Further Reach and we wanted to pass the information on to you.  Ms. Cook’s class will translate the information and instructions and we will send it out.  We know that Internet service is a challenge for many of our families and I just wanted to share that information.  We will distribute it soon.

We hope you have a happy and safe Sunday!

Sincerely yours,

Louise Simson
Superintendent

SKUNK RESPONDS TO COASTAL COMMISSION

Editor-

On March 14, the California Coastal Commission (“Commission”) held a meeting in Sacramento, California, during which it discussed plans to object to the Federal Railroad Administration’s (“FRA”) loan of $21.9 million to Mendocino Railway (“MRY”) to allow MRY to repair its collapsed tunnel, make other line improvements, and resume providing through-freight and passenger service to the people and businesses of Fort Bragg and Willits, California. Not only would this loan create new jobs and business opportunities, but it would improve the environment and safety by allowing freight to be shipped by rail rather than by less safe and more polluting trucks via narrow mountainous roads.

The statements by Cassidy Teufel, the Commission’s Deputy Director, revealed that the Commission failed to carefully review the information provided by the FRA, does not understand the scope of MRY’s project (or even the specific location of MRY’s railroad line), and belligerently refuses to respect federal limitations on its authority as a state agency to regulate the operations of federal railroads. These errors could have easily been avoided had the Commission engaged with MRY in good faith discussions instead of ignoring MRY and acting based upon misunderstandings and in an effort to illegally expand its jurisdiction.

The Commission’s discussion revealed that its true goal is not to protect our state’s coastline but to help State Senator Mike McGuire with his vanity project of tearing out Mendocino County’s last link to our national railroad network in favor of a hiking trail that even his Great Redwood Trail Agency (“GRTA”) estimates as likely to be used by as few as 50 people per day. A hiking trail will not benefit the people and businesses of Mendocino County. Nor will tearing out our County’s last link to our national railroad network. The only people who stand to benefit from McGuire’s efforts are his wealthy contributors in Sonoma and Marin County who will have fewer freight train passing their mansions. It is no coincidence that McGuire’s GRTA, and the Commission, have the same Chair: Caryl Hart, one of the wealthy residents of Sonoma County.

In pursuit of these goals, the Commission and its supporters have done their best to falsely portray MRY as nothing but a tourist train. But not only does the Commission’s portrayal ignore MRY’s freight and non-tourist passenger services, and MRY’s longstanding status as a federally regulated common carrier railroad, but it ignores the multi-year effort by the Commission, the GRTA, and their mutual supporters to prevent MRY from repairing its line and resuming providing through- freight and passenger services to the people and businesses of Mendocino County.

In reliance on these many misrepresentations—and despite its receipt of hundreds of letters opposing the Commission’s plans—the Commission voted on March 14 to proceed with its objections to the FRA, thereby aiding Caryl Hart’s and Senator McGuire’s efforts to shut down MRY’s operations and prevent MRY from reopening its tunnel, repair its line, and restore through- freight and passenger service to its community. It should come as no surprise that the GRTA— which as noted is also chaired by Caryl Hart—that same day notified MRY that it is filing a federal application with the United States Surface Transportation Board (“STB”) to compel the abandonment of MRY’s railroad, trying to force an end to almost 140 years of railroad service to the people and businesses of Mendocino County.

These actions and misrepresentations require MRY to clarify four things for the record:

First, the Commission ignores the fact that MRY’s line has provided freight and passenger services in Mendocino County for well over a century, long before the creation of the Commission or even of the Coastal Act. The Commission also ignores the fact that MRY has for two decades been a rail carrier subject to the STB’s exclusive regulatory jurisdiction. Deputy Director Teufel has also falsely suggested in both the Commission’s staff report, and at its hearing, that MRY seeks by its project to expand its railroad operations, when MRY is actually just seeking to restore through- freight and passenger service.

Second, the Commission’s discussion clearly showed that the Commission has not even tried to understand railroad maintenance. Replacing railroad ties does not require digging; rather, a tie exchanger is driven over the tracks and pulls up ties, akin to using a staple remover to remove staples from paper, which are then properly disposed of. None of that activity impacts any coastal resources. What the Commission envisions as foreseeable environmental impacts are based on the Commission’s egregious misunderstanding of routine railroad maintenance, not on how maintenance is actually performed.

Third, as the Commission knows, the FRA fulfilled its NEPA obligations as to MRY’s project by consulting with other federal agencies (such as the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the U.S. Coast Guard, etc.), and with relevant state and local agencies including the Commission. As the lead agency with the sole authority and responsibility for determining whether MRY’s project risks adversely impacting the environment, the FRA analyzed the gathered information and made a federal determination as to any potential impacts and mitigation measures. After complying with these obligations, the FRA determined that MRY’s project would have “no effect” on California’s coastal resources.

Fourth, as the Commission also knows, the federal Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act of 1995, Pub. L. No. 104-88, 109 Stat. 803 (“ICCTA”), vested the STB with exclusive jurisdiction over federally regulated railroad operations, prohibiting state and local government entities—such as the Commission—from trying to assert their own jurisdiction over the same operations. The Commission is thus prohibited from taking or imposing any actions, restrictions, or remedies that could have an effect on the management or governance of railroad operations. Though the Commission knows this, it does not care; the Commission’s statements establish that that is exactly what the Commission is trying to do. It is deeply troubling that Caryl Hart and the Commission she chairs are trying to misuse the FRA’s NEPA review to indirectly accomplish exactly what federal law prohibits them, and the GRTA, from doing.

If you are as outraged as we are by the Commission’s illegal overreach, by the efforts of Senator McGuire, Caryl Hart, and their GRTA to shut down our railroad and to tear out Mendocino County’s only connection to our nation’s railroad network in favor of a trail likely to be used only by local vagrants and a handful of tourists, by the Fort Bragg City Council’s pretended public support for MRY’s reopening of its tunnel and the resumption of providing through-freight and passenger service (while privately and in closed session doing its best to prevent both), and by the many local jobs that will be lost, and the many local businesses that will suffer, if these groups succeed in shutting MRY down and not only prevent MRY from resuming through-freight and passenger service but also prevent MRY from continuing to bring over 100,000 visitors each year to our region to spend their money with local hotels, shops, grocers, and restaurants, then now is the time to speak up. If you want MRY to remain in operation to serve our community, we urge you to make your voice heard by speaking up at these groups’ meetings and sending your concerns to them at the following addresses:

• California Coastal Commission: Kate.Huckelbridge@coastal.ca.gov; Caryl.Hart@coastal.ca.gov
• Great Redwood Trail Agency: Elaine@thegreatredwoodtrail.org; carylo@me.com
• Fort Bragg City Council: bnorvell2@fortbragg.com; JGodeke@fortbragg.com; talbinsmith@fortbragg.com; lpeters2@fortbragg.com; mrafanan@fortbragg.com
• Senator Mike McGuire: senator.mcguire@senate.ca.gov
• Congressman Jared Huffman: Jenny.Callaway@mail.house.gov
• Mendocino County Board of Supervisors: bos@mendocinocounty.org

— Robert Jason Pinoli, President & CEO – Mendocino Railway, Fort Bragg

CITY OF UKIAH TO HOST "EARTH DAY UKIAH" on Saturday, April 20th at Todd Grove Park 

The City of Ukiah Community Service Department announces Earth Day Ukiah, a free community event, on Saturday, April 20th from 10 am - 2 pm at Todd Grove Park. At the same time and location, the Ukiah Community Yard Sale will also occur. 

Earth Day Ukiah was created to be a day of celebration, education, and showcase of sustainable programs, projects, and services from the Ukiah Valley. This event will feature educational booths, arts and crafts, musical performances from the Instilling Goodness School, and an Electric Vehicle Showcase organized by Climate Action Mendocino. 

The City of Ukiah invites public agencies, non-profit organizations, schools and businesses that provide green services or products to participate in this event. 

For more information about the event or becoming a vendor, please contact Marianne Aranda at maranda@cityofukiah.com or (707) 467-5723 or visit www.cityofukiah.com/earthday

This event is sponsored by Ukiah Waste Solutions and the Russian River Watershed Association. 

SHIELDS REPORT

Hi Everybody,

Nothing worse than somebody talking about their health, so I'm going to keep this short.

It's going to be a while before I'm back to old routines and work. Fortunately, I'm a life-long physical fitness addict. My dad was a P.E. teacher, coach, and history teacher, so we were taught at early ages about the body being the temple of the soul and all that. That's the reason I'm alive right now. I was in remarkable physical condition, even the medical people commented on it. But it's going to take a while for the doctors to continue working on me which sometimes calls for hospitalization.

Anyway, at some point I'll be fixed. But until then I can't do much, it's even difficult handling emails. So please be patient, I will respond to everybody who has sent emails, texts, cards, voicemails, etc. Your words and thoughts of encouragement truly are helping me progress towards recovery.

Once again, I want to thank all my water district co-workers (Tracey, Steve, Jay, Kary, Board members) for stepping up and doing all you're doing, it's so appreciated. And of course, my family (Jayma, Rolo, Jimmy, Maria, John, Nasrin; along with my extended family here in Mendocino County, and all the fans I've heard from everywhere.) It's all unbelievable. Thank You. You're the best.

Jim Shields

LIFE’S A CRAP SHOOT

Editor,

I hope by now you are feeling better. I bet the Trumpists who read your paper, if there are any, are delighting in your throat issues saying it's just punishment for all your espousing of liberal, commie opinions all these years.

I say, life is a crap shoot, who gets what and when is anybody’s guess, and you got dealt a bad hand. I’ve always thought that the “best” kind of cancer to get would be bowel — just cut out the diseased portions and stitch the two ends together, providing you've caught it in time. As for you, you got a triple whammy, a cancer that affects speech, breathing and swallowing. You are a national treasure, Mr. Editor, and I hope the doctors can cure you and give you many more years,

About the headline in the March 6 AVA, Mr. Geniella used the word “suspended” which I’ve thought to mean a temporary cessation or interruption, accent on the word temporary. Does this mean there's a possibility that someone else might assume management of the paper? I know you'll publish “on line” but that won't help me get my weekly dose of news and fine, entertaining writing since I don’t have a computer in my house, it takes me usually two hours to read thru the AVA and I don’t intend to sit at a library monitor to do so, like so many, I lament the passing of so much print media.

And now I'd like to pose some questions that perhaps your readers might answer. First, what will happen to all those trillions of tons of concrete and rubble in Gaza? Where will it go? Eventually, Gaza will be re-built, by whom? And for what purpose? A seaside resort, or more land for Isreal to call home? 

Now onto name changing. The birders want to change the names of 150 North American birds, reflecting the birds’ physical characteristics rather than the people who discovered them, they would dispense with Allen, Steller, Wilson and the like, shedding those honorific names for speckled, ruffled, white-winged, etc. So what about America? Our continent, north and south, is named for Amerigo Vespucci, can someone dig up dirt on him? Should we re-name ourselves LaLaland?

Lastly, I’m enclosing a lengthy quote from “origins” by Richard Leakey. It’s all about war and why we do it and why we cannot say it’s in our genes, therefore inevitable. 

My thoughts are with you, Bruce, while you face this challenge. You have many friends and well-wishers. I am one of them,

Sincerely,

Louise Mariana

Albion

ALTOGETHER, then, the notion that humans are inherently aggressive is simply not tenable. We cannot deny that twentieth-century humans dispiay a good deal of aggression, but we cannot point to our evolutionary past either to explain its origins, or to excuse it. For that is what the equating of territorial aggressiveness in the animal domain with waging war in the human one often amounts to — an excuse. The fallacy of thus adducing our animal origins should now be evident. Wars are planned and organized by leaders intent on increasing their power. And they are fought usually by people not driven by an innate aggression against an enemy they often do not see. In war men are more like sheep than wolves: they may be led to manufacture munitions at home, to release bombs from far away, or to fire long-range guns and rockets — all as part of one great cooperative effort. It is not insignificant that those soldiers who engage in fierce and bioody hand-to-hand fighting are subjected to an intense process of desensitization before they can do it. 

War is a battle for power over people and for resources such as land and minerals, neither of which are relevant in hunting and gathering societies. With the growth of agriculture and of materially-based societies, warfare has increased steadily in both ferocity and duration, culminating in our current capability to destroy even the planet: powerful leaders have found more and more to fight about, and increasingly effective ways of achieving their ends. We should not look to our genes for the seeds of war; those seeds were planted when, ten thousand years ago, our ancestors for the first time planted crops and began to be farmers. The transition from the nomadic hunting way of life to the sedentary one of farmers and industrialists made war possible and potentially profitable. 

Possible, but not inevitable. For what has transformed the possible into reality is the same factor that has made human beings special in the biological kingdom: culture. Because of our seemingly limitless inventiveness and our vast capacity for learning, there is an endiess potential for difference among human cultures, as indeed may be witnessed throughout the world. An essential element of culture, however, consists in those central values that make up an ideology. It is social and political ideologies, and the tolerance or lack of it between them, that bring human nations to bloody conflict. Those who argue that war is in our genes not only are wrong, but they also commit the crime of diverting attention from the real cause of war. 

— R. Leakey, ‘Origins’ 

ED NOTE: Thank you, Louise. I can tell you your colleagues in nursing at Mission Bay and Marin General are right up to the gold standard you set at Coast Hospital.

JAMES KLEISER HOUSE is an 1858 Gothic Revival residence in Arcata, Humboldt County, built by merchant James Kleiser, consisting of a thick frame of overlapping redwood planks, finished with 1 inch thick horizontal plank siding. Unlike most of the surviving homes from this era in the city of Arcata, Kleiser added Gothic Revival exterior trim and interior decorations imported from New York City, marking a turning point from the vernacular buildings early settlements to the high Victorian styles in the newly established city. Kleiser only lived briefly in the house; from 1861 to 1971, the house was the home of the Nixon family, who purchased the home from its previous owners with 500 sacks of potatoes from the Nixon farm in lieu of cash. (Kym Kemp)

LOOKING FORWARD

Editor, 

I hope you are doing well and the worst of the ordeal is behind you. Kick cancer's ass!

Looking Forward to switching to AVA online! I’m trying to be upbeat because the AVA print edition has been one of the constants in my 27 years so far in The City!

Thanx for being the Editor since 1984! Healing energy to you and Happy St. Patrick’s Day! 

David Svehla

San Francisco

ED NOTES

I'm humbled, awash in a virtual tsunami of good wishes for my return to health, and guilty that in my present depleted state I can't thank all of you individually.

It’s Saturday and I've just gotten home from an excruciating eight days confined to Marin General Hospital, whose medical staff, in kindness and curative skills are the equal of Mission Bay. So much time and energy into one old worn out man. 

There was one particularly awful day of no food and water in preparation for late afternoon testing where I felt like I was crawling across the Mojave on a 130 degree day. By 2pm I could barely restrain myself from lunging for the water jug, Toughest physical day ever for me, and I've had a few.

It was interesting talking with the nurses, all of whom are so young they could be my great-grandchildren. One said she'd received a great blessing in Boonville. Now Boonville is a wonderful place chock full of truly good people, but the dispensing of benedictions was a gift I'd assumed was beyond the power of our community. “I got the animal love of my life at Bee Hunter Winery,” she said, referring to the wine outfit at the old Live Oak building which Anne Fashauer now owns. And out came her camera with an archive of photos of a fetching little black and white canine.

Another nurse said she'd been a tiny hippie in Navarro on property owned ever since by Doug Johnson, the Anderson Valley's gifted Deep End potter. The nurse explained that her parents had been back-to-the-landers and had bought the property in anticipation of years of movin' and groovin', but Mom and Dan had resumed life in the Great Outside, but the nurse daughter said, “I stop in to buy pottery from Doug every time I travel up your way. I love the man.” 

A doctor said he'd enjoyed Boonville Beer, but other than the doc's suds memory, those of the two lady nurses were the extent of Anderson Valley encounters, and both of those specific and interesting. Pretty good site recognition, though, for our Anderson Valley.

I've asked my two colleagues, Mark and Mike, to comb the archives for stuff I've written in the past to flesh out Off The Record and Valley People, wincing as I go because I won't be able to edit them. But due to my present depleted state that will have to do, until, I hope, some time late in April. And you will have noted my blithe assumption that these items will be of interest. I hope they hold up well enough.

---

FOR YOUR FRIENDLY FASCISM files: What's with these extorted introductions at public meetings? You know, “First, if everyone will introduce him or herself beginning with you, Mr. Anderson, you negative son of a bitch, and why the hell are you here anyway?” Then, for the next 20 minutes or so everyone present is compelled to somehow identify themselves. And there's always at least one major chronophage who stupefies everyone in the room with a total bio: “And after I won MVP in the South Valley Little League, I started junior high school in Willits because my dad liked the NA meetings up there better…” There seems to be a floating cadre of professional Mendo meeting-goers who are so boring their only opportunity for a social life are the no-exit venues provided by the county's multitudinous public agencies. The Mendo meeting people live for intro time.

I THINK these mandatory introductions are a management tool to cool out dissent. Requiring these slow rounds of verbal kissy face at meetings whose true purpose is the divvying up of public money makes it just that much harder for the occasional skeptic to lob the necessary turd into the happy face's punch bowl. “Oh, gawd. I can't believe that man said that to all of us Nice People gathered here to do good.” That's the prevailing vibe. And seeing as how more and more of the public's business is conducted during work hours out of view of the public by people paid to be present, the mandatory intros are doubly offensive.

WAFTING IN from cyberspace is this perennially apt question: “Why is it that teachers get Cesar Chavez Day off but farmworkers don't?”

PRIOR TO WW II, people in official places seemed generally aware that the Founding Fathers had taken specific constitutional steps to keep the many varieties of the American Taliban out of government, recognizing that if our Taliban weren't kept on a short political leash, we'd suffer no end of Old World trouble. At the time of the American Revolution the country already had an ominous array of fanatic sects that our aristocratic organizers knew had to be kept religiously (sic) in check, if for no other reason than to protect the hegemony of rich white boys like themselves who had arranged things so only they would run the show. The FF's also knew that if the more primitive types got their onanistic hands on government, it would be that much harder to get a drink and spend evenings out with the babes. The nuts could worship however they wished, the thinking went, so long as they didn't try to force the rest of us to believe that the Angel Moroni had buried golden tablets with the key to the hereafter out in the woods near Wazoo, Illinois and kindred implausibilities. The FF's were smart guys, and their ideas on religion were prescient, weren't they? What's odd about today's influence of the American Taliban is that only a minority of Americans attend church, and an even smaller minority attend regularly. Not that church attendance necessarily correlates with belief systems, and majority of us are still too intimidated by the jihad lobby to admit we think the very notion of a sky god is a lot of bushwah, but very few people will take the Taliban on. 

NOT THAT AMERICA has ever been particularly tolerant of different-ness; I'd say lock-step thinking of all kinds has never been more prevalent than it is now, especially among so-called liberals, the people who once could be counted upon to take up the pivotal beefs of the type we once heard about in Rohnert Park City Council chambers when they wanted to put up a sign about how they loved the Lord. Look around. Are you telling me that there's more of a commitment to freedom from superstition and freedom for all points of view among, say, KZYX employees and supporters, than there is among the Rohnert Park City Council? The Taliban rules everywhere these days, left, right and center.

YES, TIME'S WINGED CHARIOT does seem to pick up speed on the mortuary side of 80, doesn't it? I remember when Rachael Birch, whom I last recalled jousting with at school board meetings when she was in high school, about to graduate from UC Santa Cruz with a diploma in anthropology. Asked what a young person with a diploma in anthropology does with it in the way of gainful employment, Rachael merrily replied, “Wait tables.” For now, anyway. Rachael says she is going on to graduate school at UCSF. According to linked in Rachael Birch is now Chief Operations Officer for Contra Costa County’s Public Health Department.

THERE ARE CERTAIN young people one encounters that prompt one to think to oneself, “This one has something special.” Our intern years ago, Khalilah Ford always affected me that way. When I met Khalilah's mom, Sherri, at AV market years ago, I wasn't in the least surprised to learn that Khalilah had graduated with top honors from Georgia Tech and had been commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps. Khalilah is now retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel Khalilah Ford-Thomas teaching English at Southern Louisiana Community College in Lafayette, Louisiana.

I RECALL once having to elude careening blackbirds who had gotten themselves drunk on berries and had decided to make avian frontal assaults on passersby, and I've had to dash from marauding geese a couple of times, but other than some unfriendly encounters with dogs and the more-or-less human morons allegedly responsible for them, I've enjoyed pretty good relations with the critter world. But if crows began hurling themselves at my front door, I think I'd be downright unnerved.

THE RED CROSS blood bank used to hold blood drives at the high school. A bunch of us who showed up were regulars who were personally invited because the Blood Bank feared they might lack enough donors to justify the expedition north from their Santa Rosa headquarters. The stage at the north end of the gym was converted to a sort of mini-hospital. When I arrived to contribute a pint of Anderson blue, I was encouraged to find people I knew prepared to roll up their sleeves in the interest of restoring the emergency blood supply to something above its present state of dangerous depletion. I was even more encouraged by the sight of several high school kids who were becoming donors for the first time. Too bad the whole student body couldn't simply be compelled to give blood, thus getting into the habit of it young. But then compulsory anything as applied to the young is long out of fashion, unfortunately. The Blood Bank's screening questions seem a little bit more intrusive than they used to be — necessarily, of course, I guess, the indiscriminate boffing millions of Americans got into back in '67 having resulted in the inevitable plagues. “Have you engaged in risky sex for money with a person who is also engaged in intravenous drug use, Mr. Anderson?” I'd certainly consider it if the money was right, I replied, momentarily confusing the pleasant young woman who was conducting the interrogation. “Excuse me?” she laughed. Just kidding, I said, suddenly aware that I was just another old crank who hadn't quite adjusted to the times.

SHALL the circle be unbroken! We ran this filler a few years ago: “A long time ago, I learned that if I don't take a drink before breakfast I can eat only one pancake. If I take a drink, I can eat two pancakes, and I got a feeling this is gonna be a two-pancake day.” That was Bill Hustead, a long-gone cattle rancher in the Badlands of South Dakota, who said that, and lots of other quotable things as well. It turns out that Bill Hustead, Jean Duvigneaud tells me, was Jean's great uncle, about whom Jean wrote so engagingly in the AVA years ago just before the old boy's famous two-pancake-day remark appeared in the same publication.

KILLER HORSES

by Malcolm Macdonald

Before his birth, Ed Sniece's mother galloped her steed down the cinder traces of the old railroad bed parallel to the river. Her favorite bonnet usually dislodged no farther west than the Macdonald ranch. Like as not on her return she'd find it atop a fence post, the Macdonald brothers polite, yet too shy of her or the stallion to remain in sight.

She died young but the ancient equine, now past the remarkable age of fifty, grazed in Ed's gated pasture, surrounded by apple trees. Rhode Island Greenings, Maiden Blush, and Northern Spy pruned so that most of the lowest branches rose above the horse's head... most.

Of a late afternoon, like as not, Ed stepped out through the screen door to the roofed back porch, gathered an armload of foot-long redwood, from logs whose grain was not true enough to split into posts or pickets but straight enough for kindling. He sat himself on the porch steps alongside a pair of stacked chunks of oak that served as a two-tiered chopping block.

It might be mid-summer, autumn, or a false spring, no matter, splitting kindling ran its ritual course. Soon as the hatchet cut through wood a time or two, his wife might call from inside the kitchen, “How much kindling do we need.” It wasn't a question, just her part of the ritual. “There's a trunk full already.”

“Well, let's fill the rest of the elephant,” Ed replied. She'd heard it enough not to laugh or even giggle.

With his gloved left hand and right bare around the hatchet handle, Ed slivered the redwood. His goal: foot long strips narrow as a matchstick; a frown whenever a skinny sliver broke into a stub. The rise and fall of the hatchet blade fell into a rhythm at times, a rhythm so pronounced Ed's thoughts split as easily as the wood. 

At times like these Ed recalled how the big horse grew so gentle that he could toddle and crawl between the pasture's fir rails then nap in the shade of the steed's grand belly. The huge equine stood stock still for minutes, eventually sidestepping away when an alarmed adult discovered the scene... Did he truly remember or had he been told so many times it felt like a real memory?

Ed slivered two dozen toothpick-thin pieces of kindling, added them to his pile on the porch step with his gloved hand, then embarked on another chunk of redwood, splitting it into quarters, eighths, sixteenths, and so on. “You know, not all horses are as nice as Ma's.” He often engaged in these outdoor-indoor conversations with his wife. Sometimes she participated, sometimes she ignored him.

“That hunting trip in Modoc when Uncle John's false teeth froze in the cup he soaked them in overnight, he told about a racehorse who started nipping his stable boys then took bites out of their forearms.”

Ed stopped talking but continued splitting. One never knew what would spark her attention. Though he heard her in the kitchen, the Mrs. did not speak.

“He was a California horse.” Ed went on. “Won a big stakes race down around Los Angle-ese in the nineteen-oughts.”

“Kercheval,” rang out through the kitchen screen door. “I was on that trip too, if you remember. Who do you think defrosted that cup and those teeth over the campfire.”

Of course, John wasn't uncle to either of them, but a Great Uncle to Ed, though no one ever referred to him beyond the first floor in the family tree house. “That's right, Kercheval,” Ed said, “After a while, the critter got so bad he bit off a lady's bonnet, most of her hair piled under it, and a good deal of her scalp to boot.”

Ed turned from his kindling long enough to ask over his shoulder, “Did they hang him?”

Nothing sizzled but Ed could smell supper on the stove. The Mrs. spoke up. “I believe they had electrocutions by then.”

“He had a full court hearing,” Ed said. “Twelve good men and true.”

“Would've fared better with a dozen horse jury,” the Mrs. responded.

It remained unsaid, yet obvious, between the two of them that Uncle John had shot and killed a man on the trail to Little Lake, and his father's horse took the blame. Unlike Kercheval, Grandfather Robertson's horse was found not guilty by a jury of humans. And, of course, “Grandfather Robertson” was Ed's Great-grandfather, but no one of their generation bothered with the extra grand.

Ed gathered an armload of kindling, stood, and walked to the far end of the porch where an old cracker barrel rested. It doubled as one of the many repositories for his kindling. The Mrs. called out, “You suppose it was the color of the bonnet that prompted Kercheval to chomp the woman half to death?”

“No, I do not.”

“Better feed Hercules his 'falfa.”

Ed walked to the barn. A panoply of ivy armored the structure's side wall, expanding its kingdom to forge cracks in the shingled roof. High above, thrush sang their evening hymn from conifer pews.

He tugged a sheet of alfalfa and an extra half of hay then made his way to the pasture fence while wrens heralded the end of day in tune.

Hercules hadn't galloped in years, but the ancient equine maintained his stately gait in a short prance to meet the man. Ed tore off clumps of hay first, holding back the alfalfa as dessert. For a moment he wondered who would win the bird song. Was it a competition or an avian round?

Hercules nibbled and chewed, as was his wont, though he seldom, if ever, inadvertently bit. Ed pondered, as was his wont.

His father had told him once, during a lull at Uncle John's fishing hole, about two fellows who sailed their boat, day by day, with the intent of circumnavigating Clear Lake. They fished near locales like Rattlesnake Island then camped along the shore. And so they made their way from spot to spot until one day at dusk, they steered their craft near Long Tulle Point. Still some distance from shore, a noise shriller than a wicked wind stood the hairs up on their respective necks. The crack of breaking branches mingled with blood-curdling screams. Then the sound of hooves, a dozen or more maddening their way through willows. Out of the shore shrubs, panting and spitting froth and blood, a lone mare sprinted into the lake's shallows, shrieking for help from God or man. Then the herd, pounding the grasses into sand, leaped after the mare into the water. They kicked hooves at her head from every angle. Knocking her sideways, some of them bit at her neck, her flank, and when she flailed they bit at her legs and chomped her neck until they pushed her under.

The two sailors tacked their boat, trying to get to the mare, but by the time they reached her, the blood on the surface of the lake felt more alive than the floating corpse. The killer herd, having rendered judgment and execution, waded ashore, trampled more willows, and snorted triumphant whistles as they disappeared into shadowy thickets of brush.

“1936,” Ed said aloud. Hercules nudged him gently for the rest of the alfalfa.

He stroked the beast's forehead then both sides of his silver neck. The horse was one of the last tangible connections to his mother. “Maybe tomorrow, we'll take a walk along the river road. No saddle, just the two of us. See if you can break a sweat.”

Ed patted Hercules once more. “Are you coming in, or should I start without you.” Her voice seemed sharp. Or was it shrill?

Striding toward the house he remembered the men in the sail boat. Strangers, one stemmed from Colusa his father had said. They never knew if that herd ran wild or escaped from a ranch on a mission to mete out their brand of justice... Brand... They should have looked for brands.

“Are you comin', sweet fool. I might just start in on your piece of pie before my greens.”

Often he would bring the hatchet down hard into the chopping block to signify the end of the chore, or to let off steam. This particular evening, he laid it quietly on its side.

In two strides he was up the porch steps with a hand on the screen door handle. He noticed he still had the weathered work glove on his left hand. Once it had been cowhide tan. Now it had turned dirt-streaked brown and yellow. He pulled the door open, smiled, and called her by name. “Whatever became of that old bonnet?” 

• Kercheval wins the Burns Handicap, see numerous publications including the San Francisco Examiner, January 27, 1907, page 29.

• Kercheval's attacks on humans and trial recounted in the Dade County Times, August 27, 1936

• Robertson “shooting horse” from Mendocino History Exposed, pages 50-52.

• Killer horses of Clear Lake noted in the Ukiah Republican Press, April 15, 1936, page 1.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, March 16, 2024

OSVALDO ARROYO-TORRESS, Ukiah. DUI.

CURTIS BETTENCOURT, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

ALISSA BLANTON, Fort Bragg. Trespassing and cutting down wood.

TUCKER CHESTER, Fort Bragg. Under influence, controlled substance for sale, paraphernalia, ammo possession by prohibited person, contempt of court.

DYLAN DIXON, Fort Bragg. Assault weapon, controlled substance while armed with loaded firearm, possession of firearm while subject of restraining order, pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of a weapon, fabrication of firearm from parts, contempt of court, offenses while on bail.

BRUCE EDWARDS, Willits. Embezzlement by employee.

CHARLES EDWARDS, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

CARLOS GARCIA-ARENAS, Fort Bragg. DUI, no license, suspended license for DUI, probation revocation.

ROBERT HARRES-CHOU, Willits. DUI.

ALLEN MCKEE, Ukiah. Tampering with vehicle ID. 

CYNTHIA PHILLIBER, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

ANDREW RIFFLE, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, unauthorized entry into dwelling, probation revocation.

LASELLE SPENCE, Willits. Domestic battery, false imprisonment.

TIFFINY WARE, Willits. Fighting in public.

DEB SILVA: I’m guessing we shouldn’t tell William J Hughes of Sacramento about Dorothea Puente’s cookbook.

ANOTHER GLORIOUS DAY!

Perfect Morning in Ukiah, California

Having a perfect morning in Ukiah! Slept past noon, and then ambled to the shower area at Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center. Following morning ablutions, will walk to the co-op for a delicious nosh and coffee. Later, will proceed to the Ukiah Public Library, to watch videos in regard to Self-realization, which emphasize the truth, which is that we are not these bodies and we are not these minds, but rather, these bodies and minds are the instruments for use by the Divine Absolute. Everything else is false, because God alone is real. Good luck everybody, and may the force be with you.

Craig Louis Stehr
1045 South State Street, Ukiah, CA 95482
Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

PS. Targeted By A Bogus Los Angeles Collection Agency

Received a piece of mail last night from a collection agency in Los Angeles. Apparently, they are attempting to get me to send in over $300 as my part of a payment to Adventist Health-Ukiah Valley. The only problem is that I do not have a co-pay arrangement with Adventist Health-Ukiah Valley. United Healthcare-Medicare Advantage pays all of the bills and then sends me a statement. I showed the piece of mail to a staff person at Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center, who used to work in the billing department at Adventist Health-Ukiah Valley. She instructed me to take it to the ER and show it to them this morning, which I did. I was walked to the billing dept. and we found that it was closed today due to “an emergency”, so we submitted it to the window across from the billing dept. door. Following sufficient explanation to make it all make sense, I suggested turning it over to the FBI. The response was that I ought to do that. My response to the response is that Adventist Health-Ukiah Valley 1.needs to be aware of the situation, and 2.if further action is deemed necessary, then the hospital needs to take action. As they continued to try to get me to take back the document and agree to take action, which I am not going to do, I bade all goodbye and exited the building. Hopefully, the billing department will be shown the document when they return tomorrow.

* * *

BOB ABELES: Sadly, Craig, you have been misinformed. UHC Medicare Advantage is a private insurance offering that specializes in denying care and underpaying providers to make obscene profits from what in a just world would be a purely public program. Given the amount of medical attention you’ve required, it’s likely that the $300 is just the tip of the iceberg. Considering your age and lack of income, I’m surprised that you were not enrolled in Medi-Cal. Someone along the line has done you a grave disservice.

TRANSDUCTION & ANEURAL PATTERNS LIKE A CANDY STORE

by Gregory Sims

When I began finding my way around Stanford which in those days had departmental libraries through which to access books and periodicals with my new Stanford I.D. the libraries seemed like the candy store of my elementary school years. I particularly liked the biology library which had intriguing titles such as: Transduction in Aneural Organisms (Colombetti, et.al.) I liked being in the midst of what seemed like miles of stacks in the Green Library and even was given a study desk to be among the overwhelming confluence of written materials. I have a hard covers (co-authored with others) resting there among the noteworthy of academia.

So it took years during which the concept of transduction in aneural organisms would return again and again to my mind until I spent some time with it. Aneural organisms are (as the title suggests) capable of getting along without nervous systems. The cells’ outer layer makes contact with other cells and (perhaps) stores information in the cell nuclei. Then I realized what I was sensing: Humans have several nervous systems and a-neural unattached cells as well; could it be our personal and collective unconscious mind(s) reside amongst the aneural cells that spark decision like action which our fully neurological network would never initiate? For example desmosomes are cell like strands that find themselves in places like space between cells and are flexible in effecting the various nervous systems as well as having the capacity for a-neural communication.

Carl Jung was deeply involved in his investigations of the personal and collective unconscious mind: “In the collective unconscious of the individual, history prepares itself; and when the archetypes are activated in a number of individuals and come to the surface, we are in the midst of history…The archetypal image which the moment requires, gets into life, and everybody is seized by it…the powerful factor, the factor which changes our whole life, which changes the surface of our known world, which makes history is collective psychology, and collective psychology moves according to laws entirely different from those of our consciousness…the archetypal images decide the fate of [mankind]….It is a power that fascinates people from within…it is the collective unconscious which is activated, it is an archetype [and] it has historical aspects…[Thus] a wave went over them [us and what Trump perhaps hopes will work for him] and just washed their reason away” P.183-4. (The Tavistock Lectures, (1968). While Jung thought of WWII in Germany, I thought of the Counter Cultural Revolution in the Sixties and Seventies of which I was a part (again a wave went over us and just washed our reason away” (paraphrased from above) and perhaps it will be the Trumpers or Israel that push us over the edge again.

But there we were viewing a comical version of how I and many local and around the world folks lived for years. So Lynda McClure, Macha McClure, Judy Basehore, Barbara Lamb, Jenny Burnstad and Dave Baas brought us back to the sixties-seventies using Roy Zimmerman’s music and words and did a very stoned version of how I once lived. 

It seemed more like a flashback than a memory and t’was very well done….with the deeper message I am invoking perhaps to be found in the hilarious costumes. “it was a power that fascinated [us] us from within and many of us were seemingly powerless to resist it. Fortunately for me I was in graduate school at the time held on by my fingernails graduated and ended up with my partner and infant child in our hills of Mendoland nearly fifty years ago.

If we accept Jung’s assertions and the possibility that a-neural organic formulations factor into the irrationalities of past and present events we would do well to determine (and what to do) if a-neural organic and not central nervous systems and brain are not participants while the non-neurological is influencing what is commonly called the visceral brain. I would like it to be possible for us to take reasonable and measured steps as well as creative allusions that can offer measurable benefit to our personal and collective lot in life. 

So I was able to talk with Linda and asked her how true the skit was for her during those days. She said they weren’t, she was busy raising a family. But she agreed it was interesting that she chose to put this together with others, and she has other creative activities with Roy Zimmerman. But did she see the unconscious mind was like what drove the people into the WWII perdition? Seemingly not. The above named folks were having a good time doing it and I was too. But if we were in our explorations to have unearthed something that deserves more attention let’s look at it. Meanwhile I’ll make sure to include valley folks in these narrative as long as they last.

We’ve been doubly blessed with the AVA and KZYX. I’m told my musings will be be found on line…not the same.

Thank you Bruce, Ling and Mark.

MEMO OF THE AIR: Bajor for Bajorans.

“Kirchhoff used five cans of Rustoleum Tub and Tile epoxy paint (they were working on two bathrooms at the same time), which cost around $250 total. Even though there's paint in the name, it's not like the version you'd apply to your walls. Kirchhoff says to follow the instructions very carefully and, ideally, use it during warmer months so you can open a window and clear little ones out of the house as it stinks really, really bad, they say.”

Here's the recording of last night's (Friday 2024-03-15) 7-plus-hour Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org (and, for the first hour, also 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino): https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0584

Coming shows can feature your story or dream or poem or kvetch or whatever. Just email it to me. Or include it in a reply to this post. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there and read it on the air.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not-necessarily-radio-useful but worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

Busby Berkeley, 1943. Didn't Carmen Miranda have Jadzia Dax eyes. I just noticed that. (via b3ta) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJHfApfdWW0

Sharpest tool in the shed: lower right. As seen in /U-Turn/, starring Sean Penn. Whenever I use that kind of pipe cutter for PVC pipe I have the -- I'm not sure it's the right term for it, but the instrusive thought of putting a thumb or a finger in it. Of course I never do it, but I imagine it and flinch. I remember being little, five, maybe, and playing with regular pliers, squeezing my hand or the skin of my arm until it hurt, then backing off a little and wondering about how hurt works. One time not long after that I was playing with pliers and the faucet outside the kitchen wall in the driveway, really bearing down on the pliers, and they slipped, so the back of the handle pinched my belly hard. My reaction was to look all around and make sure nobody had seen it happen. I never yelped or cried out in pain when I was a child. Things hurt and surprised me, but I would way more rather be physically hurt than have someone think I was stupid for doing whatever it was that hurt me. People were always telling me how smart I was, but I never felt smart, nor particularly solid, compared to others. It took my entire long life to grow out of that. You should hear me now when I hurt myself. (via Fark) https://live.staticflickr.com/8167/7696682190_b13b14405a_b.jpg

The 1936 Stout Scarab. It had a regular Ford engine in it, back to front, in the rear. (via Everlasting Blort) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSVaBXkYges&t=358s

And a nested catalog of /catalogs/ of wonders. https://satyrs.eu/linkroll/

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

THE OMINOUS MOVE ON TIK TOK

by Matt Taibbi & Walter Kirn

“A Circle of Censorious Friends”

We are remarkably chipper this morning when maybe we shouldn’t be because something really bad has just happened. It’s something we’ve been talking about, and it just suddenly happened with no warning. It’s a huge story, poorly understood, and it’s the story that I think we even might’ve predicted this at some point last year. Basically, the bill to ban TikTok has passed in the House, but the scary part is that it’s very likely to pass in the Senate, and then Joe Biden is going to sign it, and then it is going to become law. And everything that we’ve been talking about, opposing censorship, will become moot, including perhaps next week’s landmark Supreme Court case, the Missouri v. Biden, which oral arguments start on Monday. Walter, when did you hear about this story?

Walter Kirn: Well, strangely, last night I heard about it from a young person whose identity I will keep secret because of some of the things he said to me, which I won’t keep secret. Hey, can you believe they’re going to ban TikTok? I’ve got all these friends who work at TikTok, they’re terrified. But more than that, the young people of America love this thing and it’s going to be the pretext for perhaps banning any website or service that’s deemed a threat. And this young person who is not at all involved in these issues, Matt, not at all, has shown no awareness of them, suddenly was shocked and quite informed as to the implications and angry. And this is a Democrat I spoke to. Somebody who presumably would’ve voted for Biden. This upset them enough that they would reconsider that.

Matt Taibbi: Wow, really?

Walter Kirn: Yes.

Matt Taibbi: It’s that bad?

Walter Kirn: Yes.

Matt Taibbi: Okay.

Walter Kirn: See, I don’t like to consider, I’m not a boomer, I’m a Gen X-er. I defend that title against any accusations, but I got to say, people in their 20s and 30s are on TikTok, and they love it. And I, when these bans started being talked about, investigated it somewhat because I thought it was some sort of Chinese brainwashing scheme, and oh, they’re getting all the data. Surprise, surprise, America’s getting all the data from every other app. And I am sure we have a way of getting this data, but in any case, it’s got a pretty tight algorithm that sort of feeds back to people what they’re already interested in and so on.

It was not, from what I saw, something that is shoving anything, shoving propaganda down people’s throat. There are subtleties to how everything operates, and you can get yourself in a bubble and maybe be nudged, and that’s how all of them work. But after looking at it, I said, this is less of the Frankenstein monster I thought it might’ve been. And from talking to people, including my own children who use it, I softened on the thing. It’s fairly creative. It’s heterodox, full of views and experiences and everything. It’s not some kind of monologue from CCP. But in any case, I don’t want to have to defend the TikTok user experience or the TikTok algorithm in order to be very concerned by this bill. I mean, as concerned as I’ve been about any bill for a long time, because this seems to be the opening for almost dictatorial information direction from the top.

Matt Taibbi: So let’s first talk about what’s in the bill, and then we should talk about the unique political situation that brought about this problem, right? Because the problem here is that this is a bipartisan effort, a massively bipartisan effort. The bill passed in the House 352 to 65, is going to go to the Senate, where it almost assuredly will pass, and then it will go to Joe Biden, who will sign it, right? So we had a flirtation with a similar bill last year called the Restrict Act, and you and I talked about that bill at the time, and there was kerfuffle and a brouhaha about it. Republicans balked this thing was never going to pass in the House, and then something happened. Gaza happened basically, right? And now the National Security State has a way of arguing for speech controls that Republicans will support.

And so now we have a bipartisan national security consensus that is going to pass this thing overwhelmingly, and let’s be clear about what’s in this bill, all right? Now, if you’ve read the reporting about the TikTok ban, you’ve probably been told that the company has been given a deadline by which it must divest itself, a certain percentage of its ownership. The bill itself is called, let’s see, it’s called Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. And I think it’s 180 days is the deadline by which they have to divest. And it’s being pitched as we have a problem with a foreign adversary nation collecting personal information about our citizens, which, by the way, does suck. It is horrible, right? It is a problem. However, most people have read the entire bill, and they don’t understand the implications of it. And so we should show people an example of what’s in this thing.

This is down, I guess, entry number three in the bill. Foreign adversary controlled application. Here’s where they define what a company that may be regulated under this bill is. The term “foreign adversary controlled applications” means a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that is operated directly or indirectly, including through a parent company, subsidiary, or website, by any of, and now it lists the specific villains that have been pitched in the media; ByteDance, TikTok, a subsidiary or a successor to an entity identified in clause one or two, blah, blah, blah. But then there’s the second part, all right? So the foreign adversary-controlled application is a website, app, or immersive technology application that is either owned by TikTok, or a covered company that, one, is controlled by a foreign adversary, and two, that is determined by the president to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States following the issuance of a public notice. In other words, they have a-

Walter Kirn: TikTok or anything we want.

Matt Taibbi: TikTok or anything we want, right? And the designation is controlled by the president. So basically, the president is going to be able to strike or kill any platform, app or website that is deemed a national security threat, right? Now, when you get into the weeds of this thing, you’ll find that they, as always, they have loosely defined what it means to be controlled by a foreign adversary. And so this thing is-

Walter Kirn: Controlled doesn’t mean owned.

Matt Taibbi: Right, exactly. And I’ve seen it described as also influenced by. Now the text says controlled. There was a Montana bill that was very similar that was overturned, but used language that was even fuzzier, but was interpreted in an even fuzzier way for the brief moment that it was law, right? But Walter, this is the ultimate nightmare situation. We lived through this whole thing where, for years, culminating in the Twitter files where there was this huge national controversy about censorship, and my God, at least the Republicans are balking on this. But then came the Israel conflict. And apparently, one of the moments where things crossed the Rubicon was when the Bin Laden fatwa went viral. And the Washington Post did a big story about this. 

* * *

Walter Kirn: Okay. So here I am in Silicon Valley, at the very heart of America’s brain, and in Palo Alto, I get to the San Francisco airport. Hertz has this system by which you just choose your own car, right? You go out, and there are a bunch of cars parked in the lot that corresponds to your level of membership in Hertz, and you can take any one. And there are four horrible hatchbacks that look like they’ve been run over rough roads and a brand new Tesla. Now, I’ve never driven a Tesla, but my eyes like sort of Bugs Bunny go ka-ching. It’s either a Mazda or a Tesla. So I’m thinking that Tesla must be drivable by any guy who just wanders in to Hertz’s garage. I get in it, and I get out of the garage, and I realize something that you probably don’t know, and people who don’t drive Teslas don’t know. They don’t really have mirrors, Matt. Did you know that?

Matt Taibbi: No. Well, who needs that?

Walter Kirn: On either side of the car are these small rearview mirrors that are poorly adjusted. They’re basically facing down in this case, and they’re about the size of the bottom of a coffee cup. Also, the rearview mirror in the windshield is tiny and shows you the view through a quite tiny back mirror, back window of the Tesla. How do I adjust the mirrors? I wonder as I am about to enter freeway traffic.

Matt Taibbi: I love that.

Walter Kirn: I have no idea because the Tesla dashboard doesn’t exist. It’s just a giant tablet computer screen with all of these icons on it, none of which look like rearview mirror adjustments. Since they’re so small anyway, I figure they won’t help much. And if I can crouch down in my seat, I can sort of see into them at an angle that will show me the traffic behind me. I’ve given up completely on navigating the tablet, like hunting around, trying to find out what the icons mean while I’m going 60, no, because by now I am going 60. It’s then that I discover, once I get into traffic, that the way you navigate a Tesla is by watching a video of yourself with the cars that are actually around you represented as shapes. Did you understand that?

Matt Taibbi: I mean, I understand the concept, but it’s horrifying. But go ahead.

Walter Kirn: Dude, so you drive a Tesla by basically playing a video game that involves representations of cars rather than looking into your mirrors and seeing them. You can basically confirm that they’re there with the mirrors, but you can’t really get a flow going unless you just watch this computer and keep your car in its lane vis-à-vis the other computerized cars. And this is a difficult lesson to learn on a San Francisco freeway at 5:30 P.M. on a weekday.

Matt Taibbi: That is horrifying and perfectly expresses a whole lot of things. I mean, remember there was that moment when suddenly cars became impossible for an ordinary person to fix in any way? So they made things that didn’t need to be electronic or computerized, electronic or computerized. For instance, illuminating the window that you could actually roll down. I’m not sure that was an improvement, right? It’s more convenient, but you would like to have actually full control over that whole thing. The transmission, things like that. That was just more, okay, now whenever anything breaks, you got to bring it to the garage, and you’re going to pay more because this is inaccessible to you. But what you’re describing actually makes driving far more dangerous.

Walter Kirn: I may as well have been, for all practical purposes, in a sealed room driving down a road, inferring from a screen what was around me, okay? And various graphics show how close you are to the other cars. Sometimes a yellow line will appear that shows you’re getting close, and so on. But at one point, a guy on a motorcycle came weaving between traffic going right down the middle of the freeway, and it showed up perfectly on the screen. But I went, I am now, my life now hangs on the functionality of this screen and its ability to, I don’t know, pick up moving objects. And that’s a strange feeling that you’re no longer connected by your own senses, but by this extra step because the mirror isn’t going to become unreliable suddenly. But my sense of computers is that they can get unreliable. And when they’re representing other cars that might hit me at 70 miles an hour, I really hope they stay functional.

Matt Taibbi: Just think of the contrast. When we were first taught to drive even mirrors, we were told to check first visually, right?

Walter Kirn: Right.

Matt Taibbi: Like, okay, the mirrors are there, you can use them, but before you change lanes, you should actually look first, and you should be feeling the road through the steering wheel. You should try to be as sensually in touch with the driving experience as possible because your life is on the line every second. This is crazy.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Trust is the basis of every human relationship, it is step one of every relationship development.

It is simple too, when you say you are going to do something to or with someone, you move heaven and earth to fulfill your commitment. Ultimate trust is when you care more for someone else than yourself, one of Jesus’ prime messages.

So little of this is in evidence today, everything is ME-ME-ME.

MOST OF THE PEOPLE who have lived on this planet since the invention of agriculture have been peasants. The word “human” is related to the Latin “humus,” meaning earth or soil. And yet the full humanity of those who survive by working the land has been routinely denied.

The cultivators, it is often assumed, are dreadfully uncultivated. And this alleged lack of sophistication has made them fair game for every kind of depredation. The food they produce has been expropriated by their overlords, by marauding armies and by totalitarian states. They have been conscripted as cannon fodder; entangled in debt and dependency as sharecroppers and serfs; starved, sometimes deliberately, in famines and prisons; forcibly converted to their masters’ religions; herded onto collective farms and slaughtered mercilessly when they revolt.

— Fintan O’Toole