Mendocino County Today: Saturday 3/30/24

Showers Ending | Mendocino Skyline | Shields Back | Parental Abduction | AVUSD Update | Dr. Alvarez | Water Project | Arcade 1963 | Gas Station | Streetwalker | Moving On | Kitchen Question | Ed Notes | Ballers | Bad Foot | Public Discourse | Jury Deadlocked | Microplastic Madness | Jesus | Happy Easter | Six Felonies | Biter Mike | Boonville Hotel | Sophie 1985 | Board Insights | Yesterday's Catch | Marco Radio | Second Fave | Drug Demand | Wight Lineup | Wrigley West | Aerial View | Mental Jellyfish | Bible Salesman | National Gun | Foldable Drone

PERIODIC RAIN SHOWERS will continue today, primarily in southern Mendocino and Lake Counties. Isolated thunderstorms are possible in the interior this afternoon. Calmer and dryer weather will build in Sunday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): On the coast this Saturday morning I have 44F under partly cloudy skies. We might see a stray shower this morning otherwise we are looking dry for a while. I have .31" today, 10.04" for the month & 47.45" season to date.

JIM SHIELDS:

Hello All,

I'm back to work on a limited basis but I'm getting all the important stuff done, at least that's my story. It's going to be a while before I'm back to normal, but it beats the alternative. I just started my daily exercise workout tonight but I can't do anything strenuous like weight lifting, situps, etc. Just stretching, easy isometrics and the like. I'm also on supplemental oxygen because the right lung still continues with the fluid problem. But everything is better after six weeks when it all started. Thanks again to everybody who has sent emails, texts, and messages. I will be getting back to all of you once I'm in a little better shape.

BTW, I reported at our monthly town council meeting that Geiger's Grocery will be re-opening in the near future under the new ownership. I'll report on that in next week's Observer.

Hasta Luego,

Jim Shields, Editor

Mendocino County Observer, Laytonville

FAITH’S FORGERY

The Willits Police Department is asking for the public’s help in the matter of a kidnapping by parental abduction that occurred today at Baechtel Grove Middle School in Willits.

Brian Bakewell, age 12, was taken from the school by his biological, noncustodial mother who presented the school with what now appears to be falsified court documents naming her as the custodial parent. This occurred at approx 08:15 this morning and CHP cameras recorded the suspect vehicle eastbound on Hwy 20 in Lake County at 08:45.

The suspect, Faith Galloway, age 38, currently transient in Lake County, has a history of residence and activity in Mendocino County and Willits also.

The suspect vehicle is a dark green 2003 Ford Expedition with a license plate of 5NXW316 / CA

The missing child and suspect were last sighted on foot in the city of Lucerne.

An Amber Alert is being created by state police at this time.

If you have knowledge of the location of the missing child, the suspect or the involved vehicle, please contact the Willits Police Department at 707-459-6122.

CHP has taken mom and son into custody.

---

ON-LINE COMMENT: Everyone who is rah-rahing for the mother are full of merde. None of you know the background on this story. This case could involve incredible neglect or abuse, not just homelessness. CPS doesn’t take kids just for fun, nor do the courts grant sole custody unless the record of the noncustodial parent demands it as the vast majority of child custody cases due to divorce end in joint custody arrangements. The fact that this woman presented forged documents to school officials in order to have the boy released to her indicates criminal behavior. A good mother wouldn’t do such a thing. A good mother would do everything required of her to stabilize her life and have her child returned to her legally. I’m just happy to see that the boy is safe and hopefully, won’t have much more trauma inflicted from this incident. God knows he’s got enough on his plate without Mom piling more shit on it.

AVUSD WEEKLY UPDATE

Dear Anderson Valley Community,

It is hard to believe that March is coming to a close and we are galloping towards the end of the year.  At both sites this is a busy, busy time of year.  We have our Spanish  3 and 4 class, under the direction of Ms. Cook and chaperones, off to Puerto Rico for experiential learning this week!  Soon to follow is a trip led by Mr. Folz to the Ashland Shakespeare Festival.  We thank the many donors and the Anderson Valley Education Foundation for their contributions to these incredible experiences.   

The elementary corridors are exploding with Spring art and the TK/Kindergarten garden is growing almost as fast as the kids!  Both sites will have new signage installed on Friday to spark a little more “Panther Pride”.

Spring also brings Statewide testing for math, language arts, and science.  These tests are IMPORTANT.  We do not use them for grading or class groupings, but here is why they matter:

The test monitors progress.
We use the data to:
• Inform teacher  instruction and determine gaps in our instruction.

• Ensure that all demographic groups are making progress.

• Analyze trends in our instruction and reevaluate instruction if necessary.

• Use the data as a measurement to determine if students have mastery of the content.


Your support in making sure your student has had a good night’s sleep, a good breakfast, and is on-time at school is greatly appreciated.  We do our best to make this as low-stress as possible and encourage students to give a great effort, even when it is a little challenging.  We appreciate your support.  Parents/Guardians will receive a copy of the results when they are posted by the State.

Congratulations to the Elementary Students of the Month and the Junior Senior High Honor Roll students.  Always great to celebrate outstanding citizenship and achievement!

A huge shout out to all of the local organizations that picked up the scholarship applications and are considering students for their local awards.  We are deeply grateful and invite the donors to our first-ever Senior Awards Dinner on April 22 at 5:30 p.m. to mark the awards and celebrate the achievements!

I hope you and your family have a wonderful Spring Break.

Sincerely yours,

Louise Simson
Superintendent

DOCTOR ALVAREZ!

Ms. Swehla so is pleased to introduce Dr. Aaron Alvarez, PhD!

Dr. Alvarez is a AVHS Class of 2015 graduate and former AV FFA member. He graduated from Chico State in 2019. 

Dr. Alvarez earned his PhD, in Horticulture and Agronomy, from UC Davis. He completed research in Weed Science at UC Davis. 

He has accepted a position with Oregon State University Extension to do research in vegetables and specialty seed crops.

Congratulations Dr. Alvarez, PhD!

RECYCLED WATER PROJECT CONSTRUCTION MOVES TO BRUSH STREET

Ukiah, CA. March 28, 2024. - Construction for Phase Four of the Recycled Water Project is moving to Brush Street. Starting the week of April 1, Ghilotti Construction will begin installing recycled water pipelines on Brush Street near Mazzoni. Work will progress to the east, ultimately going underneath Highway 101 to connect with the first three phases of the project.

This portion of the project is expected to take about two weeks, and will require traffic control during construction hours (7am - 5pm) along Brush Street. When possible, one-way traffic will be allowed westbound only; full closures may need to be done intermittently. Residents should plan to use Ford or Clara streets when possible. Traffic from the fairgrounds will be allowed to exit only on Mazzoni, and may proceed to State Street from Brush.

Nearly all of the utility work related to this project is complete on Low Gap Road, Bush Street, and around Vinewood Park. However, near the end of April, concrete crews will be onsite to reconstruct sidewalks and curb ramps on Low Gap, and finally, after school is out, the section between State and Bush will get much-needed new pavement.

The portion of this project that has impacted streets will be wrapping up in June; however, work at the Water and Wastewater Treatment plants will continue well into the summer. At these facilities, infrastructure is being upgraded, storage tanks and ponds are being added, and more.

This phase of the project was made possible by a $53.7 million grant from the California State Water Resources Control Board, and completes Ukiah's Recycled Water Project. Phases 1-3 were built with $34 million in funding from the State Water Resources Control Board, including grants and a low-interest loan. With this project, the City of Ukiah's water capacity is strengthened by 50%.

Community Benefits from the Project: Almost 90% of the water used by Ukiah is replenished back into the water basin. Reduces demand on Russian River from 3,000 AFY to 300 AFY. Supports production of 1,000 AFY by the recycled water facility - enough for more than 2,500 families. Phases 1-3 support the needs of over 700 acres of ag land, increasing capacity to 1,000 acres with Phase 4.

Infrastructure Expansions Completed through Phases 1-3: 8 miles of pipeline constructed 66 million gallons of storage.

Infrastructure Expansion Included in Phase 4: 3 additional miles of pipeline. Addition of 5 million gallon Production Augmentation Unit (PAU).

More information about this project can be found at www.ukiahrecycledwater.com

THAT REDWOOD VALLEY GAS STATION PROPOSAL

by Mark Scaramella

There were some oddly ignored remarks made last Tuesday morning when the Supervisors considered the appeal of the Planning Commission’s denial of a ten-pump gas station/convenience store off Highway 101 in Redwood Valley.

According to the agenda item the applicant, Mr. Mahmoud Alam of the Faizan Corporation in Ukiah wants to build a fairly large fuel facility with ten pumps under two large, well-lit freeway style canopies with 28 parking spaces and associated underground tanks and plumbing. The project is proposed at the site of the old Mrs. Denson’s cookie factory.

Former Sheriff Tom Allman was among the supporters of the station saying that more gas stations contributes to public safety by providing another location for fuel during an emergency. Others defended the project for the jobs it would create and the potential economic revitalization of the area. Alam’s attorney, Brian Momsen of the Ukiah law firm Vanucci Momsen & Morrow, told the Board that the project should be approved because it is within the site’s zoning rules and it is therefore applicant’s automatic right to build. 

Opponents cited Mr. Mahmoud’s recent $500k settlement with the Sonoma County DA for not following state environmental rules at several other gas station locations. They also said the project was too big and would create hazardous traffic conditions at the on/off ramp to/from Highway 101. (The addition of a side road to allow traffic to more safely enter and exit was estimated to cost an extra $2 million.) Opponents also say there are already plenty of places to get gas in the area. 

At the outset of the appeal hearing Mr. Momsen said his client had new traffic data which showed that the station would not generate anywhere near the applicant’s previous estimate of over 5,000 vehicle trips per day. Momsen said they now estimate that it would be less than 1,000 vehicles per day. Therefore, Momsen said, the project should be re-evaluated based on this new data.

Supervisor Ted Williams who was obviously categorically opposed to the project, said, basically, too late; the applicant should have submitted the correct estimate with the original application, adding that he can re-submit and go through the process anew. Supervisor Glenn McGourty basically agreed saying he supported the sentiments of his Redwood Valley constituents who oppose the project by a large majority.

Supervisors Dan Gjerde and John Haschak wanted to give the applicant a chance for re-evaluation as long as the County didn’t have to pay for it. Supervisor/Chair Mulheren thought that the hearing might as well go on anyway since they were all there. 

One project opponent complained that the project would undermine the business at the Coyote Valley gas station across the highway, as if the County should block the proposed station as a favor to the Indians. Mr. Alam pointed out that the Coyote Valley station was a commercial franchise and paid the Rancheria for a lease, not a percentage of gasoline sales.

The private consultant who was paid by Mr. Alam, a woman from Sonoma County calling herself W-Trans to prepare the original traffic estimate said she based it on standard station planning factors from the 1980s, explaining that such estimates do not account for 21st century conditions with electric vehicles, higher gas mileage, and other trip reduction factors. Therefore, in the last few days, she had revised her estimate to less than 1,000 trips per day, less than a fifth of the previous number. This, of course, begs the question of why the high estimate was even used or submitted. But no one asked.

The most interesting remark was when a caller pointed out that if the project was now estimated to generate only 1,000 trips per day, why did they need ten pumps round the clock? No one picked up on this question either, not even the applicant. 

Why would the consultant use outdated planning factors? Why didn’t the applicant notice this? Why did the applicant base his project plans on inflated traffic data? (The project was has been in the pipeline for years having been first proposed years ago.) Why didn’t the planning staff ask about the relevance of 1980s factors? What does this say about Mendo’s planning process?

All this professional paperwork and processing and delay and cost and yet nobody asked these key questions.

For the time being, although Williams and McGourty seem staunchly against the application, the Board reluctantly decided to let the Planning Team take a new look at the project in light of the lower traffic estimate and bring it back to the Board next month. 

MOVING ON, BUT…

Dear AVA crew,

It’s 2024, the very fabric of the universe is unraveling, so it should come as no surprise that the AVA is ending its print edition. Just another little sad thing to add to the pile, and here comes a letter to say how much it will be missed.

We’ve been getting the AVA since sometime in the 90s, and it’s been an entertaining and enlightening part of our lives all these years. I understand why you would stop the print edition, and I’m glad you’ll continue the internet edition, but it just won't be the same. There is something about sitting down with the paper edition, folding back the pages, having it laid out there on the desk as I read, a pleasant habit I’ve had for a Jong time. Certainly not the end of the world, but another bit of empty space where something nice used to be. Sitting at the computer to look at the digital edition just won’t be the same. But, so be it! I do understand. As Stephen King put it in the Dark Tower series, the world has moved on.

So let me just send a giant thank you out to Bruce and Mark and all the AVA crew. One of the most valuable things I’ve picked up from reading the AVA comes from Mark Scaramella’s coverage of the county government in action. Or, inaction. It shows me that all government is fractal, it’s all repeated endlessly on every level, neighborhood association, city, county, state, federal, whathaveyou.

The kind of inaction and grifting that goes on at the Mendo Co Board of Supes is repeated all the way up to the feds, all the way up to international governing bodies. This kind of corruption and mismanagement on every level is why we’ve reached the state of political insanity we see today. Don’t know how you’ve been able to stand covering this shitshow all these years, Mark, but thanks for a crazy kind of entertainment. It’s really been valuable, and I thank you for expanding my cynicism.

Bruce, I hope you recover and have many more years of making trouble ahead of you! We’re all getting older, and I find I really hate this time of life. It’s the constant loss of things and people that’s the worst. Plus realizing that all those projects you haven’t finished are never going to get finished; they just aren’t, you don’t have the time or the energy any more. I hate this, and now the AVA is stopping the print edition. Figures.

Anyhow, I guess this is the last actual letter on paper I’ll ever send to the AVA. It’s all email from now on! So, once again I’ll just say: Thanks for everything over all the years. See you on the website.

Indeed, the world has moved on.

Sheri Calkins

La Honda

ED NOTES

CAN EYSTER BE STOPPED? Our lead law enforcement officer, presenting zero evidence of wrongdoing, removes our elected Auditor, Ms. Chamise Cubbison, from office, getting a big assist from our insensate supervisors who couldn't even manage to ask why Cubbison was being removed. “Golly gee, DA Dave, if you say so.”

THIS IN-HOUSE COUP by Eyster could not have happened without the spine-free supervisors, and the always passive offices of the CEO and County Counsel.

EYSTER ORIGINALLY SAID he'd prosecute the case himself, although he still hasn't revealed what his case is against Cubbison and her collateral clerical damage, the unfortunate Ms. Kennedy, a grandmother of retirement age. “Thank you for your service, Ms. Kennedy, and here's a subpoena to warm your golden years with.”

ALL THIS has already cost Mendo's hard-pressed taxpayers a lot of public money and public time, not counting Ms. Cubbison's slam dunk case against the County for her breathtakingly illegal removal from office. And almost a year in, we haven't even got to a preliminary hearing where the DA would have to reveal his case. It was two weeks away, but now…

BUT NOW, with the news that Eyster has hired a Sonoma County lawyer to take over his prosecution of Cubbison, the new lawyer will need “to get up to speed” at $450 an hour, give or take a few public bucks, so the prelim will again be delayed for however long it takes the SoCo legal speed reader “get up to speed,” i.e., improvise more or less plausible charges against Cubbison and Kennedy, which is obviously going to take some fancy conjuring.

FOR THOSE OF US looking on aghast at all this it seems that DA Eyster, gone full autocrat in office, has a blank draw on Mendo's empty public purse. Where does he get the authority to appointment an expensive, outside special counsel? Of course there's a whole office full of County lawyers out on Low Gap, but uh, well, you see, all they can do is sign off on whatever DA Dave wants.

AS THE COSTS for this unending fiasco mount, it's more and more obvious that it's beyond Mendo's tenuous authority — never more tenuous than it is today — to undo, let alone halt.

AND TO THINK it all started when Ms. Cubbison, conscientiously going about her duties as County bean counter and protector of the County's public purse, challenged Eyster's spending several thousand public dollars for a big staff Christmas party at the Broiler Steak House, which he disguised as a “training.”

SAN FRANCISCO is as beautifully serene as it’s always been except for the weird criminal set aside in forty blocks or so of downtown, an area that's always been seedy but before now strictly policed. For the past 30 years or so, crooks of all kinds, dope dealers, the flagrantly mentally ill, and the mopes drawn to all of the above, have discovered they can do whatever they want so long as they confine themselves to The City's downtown free-fire zone. 

LOTS OF CITIES, all the way down to rural-retro municipalities like Ukiah, maintain these criminal set asides. (In Ukiah the set aside consists of the entire length of State Street. Stray one inch west into the Westside and here come the cops.)

HOW DID THIS sanctioned lawlessness happen? Philosophically, it began with fake liberalism, cash and carry liberalism, where we pretend to be very, very concerned and very, very compassionate but, hell, there's serious money to be made here.

SO THE FAKE LIBERAL political class sublets the care and feeding of the walking wounded to their pals in Non-Profit Land whose administrators rake off big salaries while enjoying little to no fiscal or moral accountability. This way, the lib politicos and the non-profits can say, with zero plausibility to most of us, “We're doing everything we can for these poor unfortunates.” (You'll never hear any of these grotesquely self-interested fakes even hint that all this human misery is fed by the brutal fact of unchecked capitalism, but let’s keep it simple here, and let’s go on pretending that nothing more can be done than what is now being done.)

THE ABSURD FRISCO SITUATION described below neatly sums up the nothing can be done position more than what us kind, caring, concerned officeholders and non-profit royalty are already doing. Send us more money and we'll do even better. 

(ALSO SEE Mr. and Mrs. Schraeder of Ukiah, as typical of the non-profit obstacles to all hope for the ghostly hordes of lost Americans aimlessly shuffling up and down State Street. How much do the Schraeders make for all the good they do? Sorry, bub, we're a private business so we don't have tell you how we spend the annual millions of public dollars we “administer.”)

HOW FRISCO DOES IT: “Located midway between the Giants’ stadium and the Chase Center, HomeRise at Mission Bay is a 141-unit, four-story housing project run by the nonprofit HomeRise. It opened in late 2022 to great fanfare, touted as an example of a modern facility in a new, mixed-income neighborhood away from the Tenderloin, the location of most housing projects for the formerly homeless.”

THE COPS spend an inordinate amount of time maintaining order at this insane model aimed, ostensibly, at getting the homeless off the streets. Stuff a whole building with disturbed persons? Great idea, but the non-profit in charge pays their politically connected administrators a pretty penny to pretend the site is a model of “helping professionalism.”

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE? Zero tolerance for lawlessness and all other forms of aberrant public behavior should be the operating assumption. Ten thousand dope heads and criminals should not be able to paralyze whole city blocks of San Francisco. 

THE SELF-INTERESTED SAY, “Well, hell, we can't arrest our way outta these problems.” Is it cruelly maga-fascist to permit human misery in its present form everywhere in the land? It's cruel, period, by any objective reckoning.

BUT WHERE'S the candidate who says, “I won't permit it. I will end this sanctioned open-air asylum as a fact of American urban/suburban life, and I will do it by beginning with arrests and the placement of all dependent persons in a revived hospital system like the one we had before America lost its way. And the wealthy will fund the great clean-up.” (Which will be a helluva day, won't it?) 

MITCH CLOGG

F.B. Frenz, think not that I have left This Veil and gone to my fated end. No. I live. 

Hello! I've had surgery at Stanford University Hospital, lived in a great room there, and been transported for constant wound care and observation to a nursing home, convalescent home; officially, a skilled nursing facility, a SNF, "sniff," to insiders, and hell to most residents of most SNFs.

This one's different! Believe me when I say it's good. The food is palatable, the staff angelic, I kid you not, as Johnny Carson usta say, and the work to keep me well and make me better is unceasing. The long and agonizingly detailed state and federal regulations for nursing homes, observed throughout the country in literally 99% of nursing homes minimally, sullenly, insultingly and all but uselessly are here embraced joyously. I kid you not. 

By amazing coincidence, I used to inspect these places for California and federal health agencies. For the first time ever in this state (he said, bragging) I applied the skills of investigative journalism to the work and closed them suckers down. They totally hated me. 

But this is Linda Mar Care Center in Pacifica, and it is worker-owned. 

Let that sink in. The money it makes from state and federal health plans, from private ones, from all sources, goes back into the facility and into the pockets of this angelic staff. Not one goddamn dime goes to corporate stockholders. By iron law, this place is non-profit, and that, F.B. Frenz, is that. 

And finally, the bad foot that caused all this gets better every day. The foot the federal government and a handful of separate health facilities ordered amputated is enjoying full recovery.

How about that?

JOHNNY SCHMITT: I will miss the proper paper for sure, but glad to see the Editor leave on his own terms. The AVA is one of the things that brought us up here, our family used to sit in Yountville and read the paper together before we made the move up. Bruce Anderson has never been anything but a gentleman to me, and his forum for public discourse, though at times unnerving, was what helped create such a “unique” community. Thanks to his whole family, and the Major of course, for years of hard work, dedication and the occasional shitstorms that went with it, lol! The last of a breed for sure…

JURORS UNABLE TO REACH VERDICT; NEW TRIAL PLUS ONE TO BE SET.

A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned from its deliberations Thursday morning to announce it was hopelessly deadlocked on whether the trial defendant had been driving his truck in the Willits area while under the influence of marijuana and methamphetamine, a declaration that caused a mistrial. 

Defendant Nicholas Kent Tow, age 36, of Willits and Ukiah, had been charged with three crimes -- transporting black market marijuana for the purpose of sales, driving a motor vehicle while under the influence of one or more drugs, and driving a motor vehicle without a valid driver’s license, all as misdemeanors. 

However, unbeknownst to the jurors, the defendant entered no contest pleas to two of the three charges -- transporting marijuana for purposes of unlawful sales and driving a motor vehicle without a valid driver’s license – the day before the jury was empaneled. 

The defense strategy behind these admissions was to keep the jury from hearing – and the prosecution from presenting – certain evidence discovered by law enforcement during the CHP's on-scene investigation. 

Sentencing on the two admitted charges is being held in abeyance pending resolution of the unresolved DUI charge.

After the “hung” jury was excused, it was further determined by the trial judge that the defendant was in violation of the terms in an earlier judicial diversion case in which defendant Tow is charged with stealing from Home Depot and driving a motor vehicle on a suspended license with a prior conviction. 

The DUI charge and the now-reinvigorated theft/suspended license case will both be back in court on April 10th for setting the retrial of the DUI charge before a new jury and for setting the petty theft/suspended driver’s license case for a separate trial.

The law enforcement agencies that provided personnel to testify at this week’s DUI trial were the California Highway Patrol and the Department of Justice toxicology laboratory in Sacramento. 

The prosecutor who presented the People’s evidence at trial was District Attorney David Eyster.

Retired Mendocino County Superior Court Judge John Behnke, sitting on assignment by the Judicial Council, presided over the three-day trial.

MICROPLASTIC MADNESS FREE FILM SHOWING APRIL 13!

The Noyo Center for Marine Science & GrassRoots Institute and its Climate Crisis Workgroup will be partnering to show the film Microplastic Madness 

At the Coast Cinemas on Saturday, April 13th at 11:00 am. It Is FREE!

The Theater is at the corner of Madrone St. and Franklin St. in Fort Bragg.

Microplastic Madness is the story of 56 fifth graders from Public School. 15, Brooklyn - living on the frontline of the climate crisis - whose actions on plastic pollution morph into extraordinary leadership and scalable victories.

With stop-motion animation, heartfelt kid commentary, and interviews of experts and renowned scientists who are engaged in the most cutting-edge research on the harmful effects of microplastics, this alarming, yet charming narrative, conveys an urgent message in user-friendly terms.

There will be a discussion after the film. Kids are encouraged to attend.

HAPPY EASTER

AVA,

Easter

Your five page tribute to Jesus Christ warmed my heart. At this time in our country it takes guts to publish a positive Christian piece.

Thank you Robert Forest. Thank you AVA. Thank you, thank you.

Cordially, 

Jeannie Coulson

Ukiah

CHOMO CONVICTED

A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned from its deliberations before the noon hour Friday morning to announce it had found the trial defendant guilty of six felony charges.

Defendant Rufino Lopez Vazquez, age 42, of Willits, was found guilty of committing the following crimes in Mendocino County:

Forcible Rape of a Child 14 Years of Age or Older, said crime occurring on or between January 1, 2023 and March 31, 2023;

Attempted Forcible Rape of a Child 14 Years of Age or Older (same timeframe; separate act/crime);

Attempted Forcible Rape of a Child 14 Years of Age or Older (same timeframe; separate act/crime);

Offering to Distribute Harmful Matter (Pornography) to a Minor Child on or between September 1, 2023 and September 22, 2023;

Offering to Distribute Harmful Matter (Pornography) to a Minor Child on or between September 1, 2023 and September 22, 2023 (same timeframe; separate act/crime); and

Contacting a Minor Child on or between September 1, 2023 and September 22, 2023 With The Specific Intent of Committing a Sexual Offense Against Said Minor.

After the jurors were excused, the defendant's case was referred to the Adult Probation Department for a background investigation of the defendant and for the preparation of a written sentencing recommendation.

The defendant was ordered brought from the Sheriff's Low Gap jail facility to Department A in the Ukiah Courthouse on April 25, 2024 at 9 o’clock in the morning for the formal sentencing hearing.

The law enforcement agency that investigated and developed the evidence relied on at trial to secure the convictions was the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.

Additional trial preparation and support was provided by the District Attorney’s Bureau of Investigations.

A special thank you is extended to Professor Mindy Mechanic, a clinical psychologist who was called to testify during this week’s trial as an expert witness on trauma and victimization and how children react to same in the context of a sexual assault case. Dr. Mechanic regularly testifies in courts of law on issues of counterintuitive victim behavior involving sexual assault, domestic violence, and stalking.

The prosecutor who presented the People’s evidence to the jury was Senior Deputy District Attorney Eloise Kelsey.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder presided over the five-day trial. Judge Faulder will be the sentencing judge on April 25th.

THE BOONVILLE HOTEL & RESTAURANT

Lilacs, forsythia, borage, forget-me-nots, dogwood, snowballs… Oh spring!! We are bursting around here with spring flowers. hese gorgeous bouquets are created weekly with care by Rita and Misha...gems of humans. The flowers are grown at Philo Apple Farm & here at the hotel. One of the precious delights of April.

* * *

Come Join us for a Winemaker Dinner with our good friends @ Wentworth Vineyards Sunday, April 21, 6pm

We'll be serving a 5 course meal along with Mark's wine pairings. 

You will get a chance to learn about all his beautiful work and projects. Mark and Katie + their littles; hold a big place in our hearts. Reserve your seat here Offspring @ the Farrer Building

Oh goodness, this is too much fun. The guys went to Italy to eat pasta and came back with buckets of inspiration. Come eat the goods that Perry, Ben and John are putting on the table… it will not disappoint!

Open Tuesday-Friday 5-8pm

Saturdays noon-3pm + 5-8pm

* * *

We have some beautiful new drinks from our bar on nights the restaurant is open, along with Friday & Saturday evenings 4-6 we are offering a simple bar menu perfect for a light meal.

We're serving our prix fixe menu thursdays thru Mondays during the warmer months. Perry posts the menu online Wednesday afternoons for the upcoming weekends.

We've been here 35 years, and are planning for another 35 

Thank you for being part of it all. It really is something.

Hope to see you soon!

OH SHUT UP

A Climate Resilient Future

Community Foundation of Mendocino County

Insights from our Board Retreat — A Climate Resilient Future The Round Valley Feather Dancers opened the retreat with a prayer song ceremony. Insights from our Board Retreat The Community Foundation Board of Directors embarked on a transformative journey during our annual retreat. With a shared commitment to a vibrant, thriving, and equitable Mendocino County, we dedicated this year’s gathering to climate resilience. The retreat brought together esteemed Native leaders and local changemakers, including representatives from the Eel River Wailaki tribe, the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians, the Cahto Tribe of Laytonville Rancheria, Climate Action, Grassroots Institute, Redwood Forest Foundation, Inc., Noyo Center for Marine Science, the Round Valley Feather Dancers and Xa Kako Dile:. Our panel of speakers provided a rich framework for the exploration and laid bare the risks of inaction. Sheila Semans of Noyo Marine Science Center highlighted the human-made impacts threatening the biodiversity beneath the waves. With a 95% reduction in the bull kelp forest, sea star waste, starving abalone, and rocketing sea urchin populations, our oceans desperately need help. “Nature is giving us a 911 call right now,” stated U’ilani Moore-Wesley of Xa Kako Dile:, “Our survival depends on listening and responding." Amidst the stark warnings was a collective hope, inspiration, and call to action. The panelists shared innovative initiatives throughout the county to co-manage, steward, and restore sacred lands and forests, preserve ocean biodiversity and spark a "blue" economy, and nurture and celebrate traditional ecological knowledge. Jason Franklin, Eel River Wailaki, spoke to the intrinsic link between cultural preservation and environmental stewardship. “We have a roadmap to resilience in the culture, songs, and traditions of our people." From regenerative agriculture practices to traditional forest management techniques, indigenous approaches offer valuable lessons for building climate-resilient communities. Collectively, the panelists emphasized the need for reciprocal connection and conversation, proactive funding mechanisms, and collaborative approaches that transcend boundaries and foster solidarity among diverse stakeholders. “These lands deserve us back in the ecosystem,” shared Vernon “Woods” Wilson, Cahto Tribe of Laytonville Rancheria, “The land deserves the kind of people who are in this room, and it’s not just a Native thing, it’s a human thing.” The Community Foundation Board and staff are deeply grateful to each of our retreat presenters and honor their commitment of time and expertise. As we return to our respective roles with renewed passion and purpose, we carry the invaluable lessons and wisdom of our community. 

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, March 29, 2024

AMANDA ANDERSON, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

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

ADOLFO CASTANEDA, Redwood Valley. DUI, concentrated cannabis, no license.

VERONICA CASTILLO, Kelseyville/Ukiah. DUI.

VANESSA ELIZABETH, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drug intoxication. (Frequent flyer.)

FAITH GALLOWAY, Lakeport/Willits. Kidnapping, child abduction, contributing, forgery, failure to appear.

JAMES HOFFMAN SR., Ukiah. Paraphernalia, parole violation.

ROHAN PRASAN, Ukiah. Domestic battery. 

JONAS ROWE, Boonville. Resisting.

ROGELIO SANCHEZ-GALLEGOS, Willits. False personation of another, unspecified offense.

SALVADOR YANEZ, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

MEMO OF THE AIR: GOOD NIGHT RADIO SHOW ALL NIGHT TONIGHT!

Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is 6:30 or so. If you can't make that, that's okay, send it whenever it's done and I'll read it on the radio next week.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am PST on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KNYO.org. The first hour of the show is simulcast on KAKX 89.3fm Mendocino.

You can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night I'll put up the recording of tonight's show. Also there you'll find plenty of other things to read and enjoy and learn about until showtime, or any time, such as:

Hundreds of free documentary films to watch. https://www.documentarystorm.com/

Bonnie Franklin teaches you to tapdance in a mere 126 minutes. I just found out she died ten years ago. She was so pretty and smart and funny. And she could tapdance. Rosie Radiator died last week; that's why I'm thinking about tapdancing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azMHMEs2g5o

And nine of the weirdest penises in the animal kingdom. Not even the top nine, just nine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/nine-weirdest-penises-animal-kingdom-180976274/

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, www.MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

SUPPLY SIDE DRUGS

Editor: 

In our war against some drugs, we don’t seem to ask basic economic questions — supply and demand. Why aren’t we looking into demand, rather than the supply? As long as there is demand — for almost anything — supply will keep up. This is simple economics.

We don’t seem to think beyond certain tropes — homeless people, people addicted to opiates through chronic pain, the old saw about mothers needing or using meth to do housework — most of which seem to have been put to bed.

How much fentanyl has been taken off the streets recently? Seventy-five pounds here, 32 pounds there. Surely that’s enough to kill every homeless person in the country, not just the county.

So the demand, not to mention the cash, must be coming from elsewhere. I suspect many more people are using drugs, not necessarily fentanyl, for reasons we don’t yet understand. If they are using fentanyl, regardless of how they get it, or if a ruse is used to get them to try it, they are often too quickly dead for us to ask. I suggest we need to start asking different questions and making different efforts.

Jack Jackson

Sebastopol

BASEBALL'S FIRST WRIGLEY FIELD WASN'T IN CHICAGO. IT WAS IN CALIFORNIA.

by Farley Elliott

The 1925 baseball season went along like many others of the era. Everyday men crowded into shady second-story bleachers, eager to see stars like aging local hero Wally Hood, while the wealthier folks took up key real estate down below along the base paths. Hood notched nearly 250 hits that season, including 27 home runs and 13 triples.

The cooling fall weather that year helped make for an idyllic day at the ballpark, thanks especially to William Wrigley Jr., the chewing gum magnate and team owner. Wrigley had just built his “Million Dollar Palace,” a grand ode to baseball as America’s true leisure time activity. The new stadium had everything: great sight lines, a contending hometown team, tens of thousands of adoring fans and a prime location in the heart of ... Los Angeles.

That’s right, LA. It may now be a Dodger town, but for a long time the Southern California coast belonged to the man from Chicago.

First of its name

Wrigley Field — that is to say the current one, in Chicago — is about as famous as anything in baseball these days (not including the stratospheric Shohei Ohtani). Everyone knows the name. The park, home to the Chicago Cubs, has enjoyed a century-plus legacy as a home to some of the sport’s biggest celebrations and defeats. Even the ivy on the left-field wall is notorious.

But that Wrigley Field wasn’t the first Wrigley Field.

At 41st Place and San Pedro, deep in South LA, all that remains of America’s original Wrigley Field is a small copper plaque that nods, in one paragraph, to the importance of the site. There’s a city park there now, plus a community center. The plaque itself is easily missed; it’s right by the Little League backstop, just up from the mariscos truck.

It doesn’t take much online digging, however, to uncover the complicated history behind this land — and Los Angeles baseball in general.

For decades, California was seen nationally as a state on the come up, but not quite ready for the big time. The Pacific Coast League, a regional minor league outfit, was the star baseball attraction of the day, with double-A teams stretching from Seattle to Los Angeles. Luminaries like Joe DiMaggio came out of the PCL. It was a real, legitimate place to play quality baseball in front of thousands of fans (and still is today), but in the early 1900s, it was seen as a step down from the East Coast major leagues.

The Los Angeles Angels were among the six charter franchises of the Pacific Coast League, which was founded in San Francisco in 1903. In 1921, the team was purchased by Candy Hall of Famer William Wrigley Jr., who already owned the major league Cubs and saw the Angels as a minor league feeder for his Chicago team. He was familiar with the area too, having owned all of Catalina Island, where his Cubs held spring training.

Wrigley, by then a true American baron with staggering wealth spread across several industries, quickly began scrapping with the city of Los Angeles over needed improvements to the Angels’ then-stadium, Washington Park. Eventually, he decided to simply build his own facility, money be damned.

And he had just the man to do it.

Zachary Taylor Davis was no slouch in the world of sports architecture. He’d previously designed both of Chicago’s landmark stadiums, Comiskey Park and the Cubs’ home field — still known then as Weeghman Park, named after the team’s former owner. In Los Angeles, Wrigley secured the land at 41st Place and San Pedro Street, in what was then the suburbs, putting up enough cash — a staggering $1.5 million according to some estimates, making it one of the most expensive parks in America at the time — to push construction to a breakneck pace. 

The 22,000-seat stadium, complete with a 12-story office and clock tower, opened to a near-capacity crowd on Sept. 29, 1925. It drew rave early reviews: The local Press-Telegram called it the “finest in the West,” but the Sporting News did one better, saying simply: “Wrigley has erected the finest baseball edifice in the United States.”

Signs everywhere, from the scoreboard to the bleachers, were painted with the name of the man whose checkbook had made the stadium possible.

An LA legacy

For decades, Southern California’s Wrigley Field sat at the center of baseball in the region. Not only did the stadium see plenty of wins — the Los Angeles Angels took home the pennant in their first full season at the park — but it also hosted boxing matches, football games, television shows, films and rallies.

Weeghman Park in Chicago wasn’t renamed to become the Wrigley Field we know today until late 1926, well after LA’s Wrigley Field had gained national attention.

In 1927, Babe Ruth would use California’s Wrigley Field as the backdrop to his silent film “Babe Comes Home.” By 1930, the stadium had become a central part of baseball life in Los Angeles. That year, the Angels finished second in the Pacific Coast League minor league championship, and stadium ownership erected floodlights for night games (something Chicago wouldn’t get for another 58 years). Eventually, the West Coast’s Wrigley Field even got its very own ivy on the left-field wall.

The NFL’s debut Pro Bowl was played at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles in 1938. In 1939, world champion boxer Joe Louis needed only two minutes and 20 seconds to defeat Jack Roper in front of a stunned crowd of 25,000 people.

All told, LA’s Wrigley Field hosted more than 35 years of baseball and enjoyed even more time as a TV and film production site and community gathering place. The televised contest show “Home Run Derby,” which ran from 1959 to 1961, was broadcast from there and featured baseball titans like Hank Aaron and Mickey Mantle. In May 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. drew almost 40,000 people to the stadium for a freedom rally.

It’s a staggering assemblage of anecdotes and moments for one address — and all the more shocking today that the place is gone completely, knocked down to make room for the community center and park in 1969.

Region of change

What ultimately did in LA’s Wrigley Field is what usually kills places and projects like these: money, and the changing forces of power.

Back east, Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley had for much of the 1950s sought a new stadium for Dem Bums, as the team had lovingly been known. Unable to secure key real estate in New York, O’Malley turned west to Los Angeles, brokering a deal with the Wrigley family to buy Wrigley Field, the minor league Los Angeles Angels, and other assets for $3 million. The purchase came with an important addendum: O’Malley, owner of the Dodgers, would also receive exclusive rights to operate a major league baseball team in the region.

Just 10 years before, in 1947, the Angels had set an attendance record with more than 650,000 fans crowding into Wrigley Field in a single season. But now LA had a new major league outfit in town, and the minor league Angels didn’t feel like much of a draw.

Still, new Angels owner O’Malley didn’t want any baseball competition around that could take away from his high-flying Dodgers. He unceremoniously shipped the Angels off to Spokane, Washington, to play in a much smaller market, and under a new name. Just like that, the Los Angeles Angels were dead.

As part of the deal to move the Dodgers, O’Malley also secured a land exchange with the city of Los Angeles. He got officials to agree to swap 10-acre Wrigley Field for 300-acre Chavez Ravine, the future site of Dodger Stadium. 

With the Angels out of the picture and Dodger Stadium in the offing, LA’s historic South LA ballpark suddenly had no home team tenant and little civic support. 

The park sputtered on for another decade, trying its hand at soccer — it hosted an England-United States friendly in 1959, and star European club Manchester United in 1960 — but the soul of Wrigley Field had been ripped out and turned away. The land was unceremoniously razed 11 years later in favor of the community center, with Los Angeles Times writer John Hall saying in 1969: “It’s always a little sad when time marches on and the good old days are coldly brushed aside. But save Wrigley Field? That’s got to be a little silly. Something much more important is taking its place.”

Meanwhile, in handing over Chavez Ravine to O’Malley and the Dodgers as part of the Wrigley Field land swap, the city disenfranchised an entire community of mostly Mexican American families. Police officers were dispatched to forcibly remove residents from their homes in what is still considered one of the darker moments in local politics. To this day, conversations about possible reparations for the approximately 1,800 displaced families continue in the halls of state government.

The Dodgers won the 1959 World Series at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum just up the street, with their forthcoming stadium at Chavez Ravine still under construction. They defeated that other Chicagoland team, the White Sox, four games to two, in front of crowds of more than 90,000 people.

Their new stadium north of downtown, built on the back of a deal that doomed LA’s Wrigley Field forever, opened in 1962. The Los Angeles Angels did manage to make a Southern California comeback as a major league expansion team with a new owner, actor Gene Autry, but they relocated to Orange County so as not to compete directly with O’Malley’s Dodgers.

Today, Dodger Stadium is recognized as an icon in its own right. It’s the third oldest ballpark in Major League Baseball. The only facilities with more history are Boston’s Fenway Park, and Chicago’s former Weeghman Park, aka Wrigley Field.

(sfgate.com)

MAINTAIN YOUR BRAIN

Matt Taibbi

Racket readers may have noticed a frantic edge to the site’s strategy in the last year. After a self-inflicted wound led to Twitter/X stepping on my personal account, I started to worry over what looked like the removal of multiple lanes from the Information Superhighway. Wikipedia rules tightened. Google search results seemed like the digital equivalent of a magician forcing cards on consumers. In my case, content would often not even reach people who’d registered as social media followers just to receive those alerts.

I was convinced the issue was political. There was clear evidence of damage to the left and right independents from companies like NewsGuard, or the ideologically-driven algorithms behind Google or Amazon ad programs, to deduce the game was rigged to give unearned market advantages to corporate players. The story I couldn’t shake involved video shooter Jon Farina, whose footage was on seemingly every cable channel after J6, but which he himself was barred from monetizing.

Now I think differently. After spending months talking to people in tech, I realize the problem is broader and more unnerving. On top of the political chicanery, sites like Twitter and TikTok don’t want you leaving. They want you scrolling endlessly, so you’ll see ads, ads, and more ads. The scariest speech I heard came from a tech developer describing how TikTok reduced the online experience to a binary mental state: you’re either watching or deciding, Next. That’s it: your brain is just a switch. Forget following links or connecting with other users. Four seconds of cat attacking vet, next, five ticks on Taylor Ferber’s boobs, next, fifteen on the guy who called two Chinese restaurants at once and held the phones up to each other, next, etc.

Generations ago it wasn’t uncommon for educated people to memorize chunks of The Iliad, building up their minds by forcing them to do all the rewarding work associated with real reading: assembling images, keeping track of plot and character structure, juggling themes and challenging ideas even as you carried the story along. Then came mass media. Newspapers shortened attention span, movies arrived and did visual assembly for you, TV mastered mental junk food, MTV replaced story with montages of interesting nonsensical images, then finally the Internet came and made it possible to endlessly follow your own random impulses instead of anyone else’s schedule or plot.

I’m not a believer in “eat your vegetables” media. People who want to reform the press often feel the solution involves convincing people that just should read 6,000-word ProPublica investigations about farm prices instead of visiting porn sites or watching awesome YouTube compilations of crane crashes. It can’t work. The only way is to compete with spirit: make articles interesting or funny enough that audiences will swallow the “important” parts, although even that’s the wrong motive. Rolling Stone taught me that the lad-mag geniuses that company brought in in the nineties, who were convinced Americans wouldn’t read anything longer than 400 words in big type, were wrong. In fact, if you treat people like grownups, they tend to like a challenge, especially if the writer conveys his or her own excitement at discovery. The world is a great and hilarious mystery and if you don’t have confidence you can make the story of it fun, you shouldn’t be in media. But there is one problem.

Inventions like TikTok, which I’m on record saying shouldn’t be banned, are designed to create mentally helpless users, like H addicts. If you stand there scrolling and thinking Next! enough, your head will sooner or later be fully hollowed out. You’ll lose the ability to remember, focus, and decide for yourself. There’s a political benefit in this for leaders, but more importantly there’s a huge commercial boon. The mental jellyfish is more susceptible to advertising (which of course allows firms to charge more) and will show less and less will over time to walk out of the Internet’s various brain-eating chambers.

A cross of Jimmy Page and Akira Kurosawa probably couldn’t invent long-form content to lure away the boobs-and-cat-video addicts these sites are making. The loss of capacity for memory or real experience is what makes people susceptible to the work of cartoon pseudo-intellectuals like Yuval Noah Harari, who seem really to think nothing good or interesting happened until last week. The profound negativity of these WEF-style technocrats about all human experience until now reminds me of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, whose dystopian characters feared books because “They show the pores of the face of life.”

We’re entering a stage of history where, like the underground resistance in Bradbury’s book, we’ll have to build some consciousness as a movement to save the human mind. Because thinking for oneself has already been denounced as a forbidden or transgressive activity in so many different places (from campuses to newsrooms and beyond), it’s probably already true that membership in certain heterodox online communities is enough to put a person on lists of undesirables. And look, I’m not going to lie, Substack is probably one of those places. But whether it’s here or in some more extreme retreat in the future (I keep thinking of Russian WWII movies in which partisans were forced to live in forest hideouts in Belarus), we’ll eventually want to get to know each other a little more, be a little more interactive. I’ve noticed this site is building readerships for fiction and other complex media products, so hopefully this is more of a haven from the brain-eating virus than its opposite. Who knows, but I hope.

I’m adding a couple of unobtrusive new features to Racket. “Nailed “ is a reader comment of the week, complete with a quote and a little information about that person. You don’t have to look at it if you don’t want: it’ll just live on the site on the Racket face page if you feel like clicking. We’re also doing Q&As with other Substack writers, and unlike the last time we tried this, this won’t depend on my overworked self doing the interviews; site manager Emily Bivens is doing the heavy lifting. This week we’ve got author Matthew Crawford. A couple of other small things are coming.

Read it, don’t, no worries, but it’s been a while since this site’s initial mission statement, and I just wanted to put these thoughts down and offer one small update to the original concept: I think this is about a little bit more than independent journalism now. We need to be worried about saving brain cells, period. Ideas are welcome, and thanks for hanging in.

GIVE YOUR MOM A GUN

by Geoff Mann

More than 43,000 people were killed with guns in the United States in 2023. That’s around one death every twelve minutes. More than half of those deaths were suicides or accidents, almost 19,000 were homicides, and guns were among the leading causes of death among children and teenagers. According to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident resulting in the death or injury of four or more people, there were 656 mass shootings in the US last year. The previous year, there were nearly 48,000 gun deaths and 647 mass shootings. 

In just two of these incidents – separated by ten days in May 2022, one at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, the other at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas – a total of 31 people died, among them 19 children. In both cases the gunman used an AR-15-style rifle firing .223 caliber rounds.

In February 2023, Barry Moore, a Republican congressman from Alabama, introduced a bill in the US House of Representatives to “declare an AR-15-style rifle chambered in a .223 Remington round or a 5.56 x 45mm NATO round to be the National Gun of the United States.” The resolution was co-sponsored by three other Republicans: Lauren Boebert of Colorado, George Santos of New York (already disgraced) and Andrew Clyde, a multi-millionaire gun dealer from Georgia who had made the news by distributing AR-15 lapel pins to his colleagues in Congress. (Moore, who missed the giveaway, tweeted: “Save a pin for me!”) 

The US has never had a “National Gun,” and since Moore’s bill died on the floor it still doesn’t. But why would such an idea even be suggested, and why the AR-15, “chambered in a .223 Remington round or a 5.56 x 45mm NATO round”? How can it be that the assault weapon used in many of the deadliest mass shootings in America has been proposed, in all seriousness, as an official symbol of the United States?

Thirty-two per cent of Americans own guns, and one-fifth of gun-owners own at least one AR-15. In 2020, almost a quarter of the firearms manufactured in the US were AR-15s, and more than 20,000,000, perhaps as many as 30,000,000, were in private hands. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll in 2022 found that 81% of AR-15 owners were male and 74% were white, though aggressive marketing may be broadening the consumer base, especially among white women. The average AR-15 owner is a middle-aged red-state suburbanite with a higher than average income, four times as likely to identify as Republican than Democrat (though, overall, gun ownership is split more evenly between supporters of the two parties). 

Since the federal ban on assault weapons that was in place between 1994 and 2004 expired, sales have grown inexorably, explosively in times of crisis – natural disaster, civil unrest, pandemics – or when anything threatens to increase the likelihood of gun control legislation, such as mass shootings or a federal election. Obama’s victory in 2008 prompted what the industry called the “Barack Boom.” The only significant dip since then was the “Trump Slump,” when demand dwindled after Hillary Clinton failed to win the 2016 election.

The AR-15 is the rifle that has been used by the US military since Vietnam, and is familiar to most of us from news programs, movies and video games. It was designed to be maneuverable and easy to shoot for foot soldiers, and is shorter and much lighter than a standard hunting rifle. Almost all AR-15s fire .223 caliber ammunition: a cartridge containing a bullet 0.223 inches in diameter (Moore’s “NATO round” is almost identical in size). That’s relatively small for a rifle, which means that a soldier can carry many more rounds than if they were equipped with larger caliber firearms. It has a pistol grip, a large, curved magazine to hold the ammunition, and its stock (the triangular end of the rifle which rests against the shoulder) is often adjustable, to accommodate a range of firing positions or armor and other gear.

The AR-15 was designed to be modular, readily disassembled in the field for cleaning and maintenance. This has inadvertently made it a marketer’s dream: there is always a new accessory to add, a feature to improve, a detail to tweak. Many of its fans don’t call it a “rifle” but a “platform” on which you can build your own design (this is the reason Moore’s resolution mentions an “AR-15-style rifle”). Owners can modify virtually anything: the barrel, the stock, the grip, even the receiver (the part of the rifle that holds the loading, feeding and firing mechanisms), and accessorize with optics for aiming, perforated metal “shrouds” that protect the barrel, attachments for flashlights and other accoutrements. Originally, the AR-15 was black – hence its Vietnam-era nickname, “black rifle” – but now it comes in a variety of colors and designs, from “polished lime” to Stars-and-Stripes to Hello Kitty. It has been called the “Barbie doll of guns.” An important difference between military models like the M16 – the name the US armed forces gave the AR-15 when they started using it in the 1960s – and the versions sold over the counter is that the latter are not “select-fire” weapons, meaning they have no “automatic” setting. Unless it is illegally modified after purchase, the AR-15 will not operate like a machine gun in a movie. Instead, the trigger must be pulled for each shot, as with a conventional semi-automatic rifle.

The AR-15’s fans have a set of “gotcha” questions intended to show that the people who want to outlaw “assault weapons” like the AR-15 don’t, as one industry YouTuber put it, “even remotely comprehend” what they hope to ban. Clips of politicians misidentifying parts of the gun or stumbling over ill-prepared scripts describing its features circulate endlessly online. The most common of the gotchas is simply what the letters “AR” stand for. The answer isn’t “assault rifle” but “Armalite Rifle” or “Armalite Research,” after the small firearms firm in southern California where Eugene Stoner invented the AR-15 in the 1950s – the rifle was version 15 in Armalite’s product line-up.

Stoner is the reluctant protagonist of Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson’s American Gun, a history of the AR-15. In their account, he comes across as the personification of America’s understanding of its postwar legacy: an unreflective armed individualism which, run through the meat grinder of 70 years of imperial wars and domestic discontent, somehow still sees itself as well-intentioned – surprised, in its arrogance, at the devastation all around it.

I am not sure this is what McWhirter and Elinson intended. American Gun chronicles Stoner’s life as if he was someone who lived the American dream, or came pretty close, if only the AR-15 hadn’t got away from men like him, straying into an increasingly destructive life of its own. 

The book quotes Stoner’s daughter saying that in the 1950s, when he was a young father busy inventing guns in his garage in California, the future had seemed “wide open” to him. While his children were at school learning what to do if the Soviets attacked, Stoner “was working to build a gun to help America defeat those communists. Stoner knew his gun could help US troops counter the durable AK-47s used by insurgents around the globe.” He thought his work was “engaging but also noble.” His life story has a very American quality, a by-his-own-bootstraps tale of pluck, dedication, creativity and unorthodox thinking that eventually won over the country’s military leadership despite bureaucratic inertia and the best efforts of well-connected interests. Having overcome all these obstacles, the quiet man with a bow-tie who lived in the suburbs and never went to college died a millionaire and a hero, at least to some in the military and arms industry. As McWhirter and Elinson see it, the tragedy of Stoner’s story is that his virtues are no longer common in the nation to which he introduced the AR-15: “He wanted to protect the country he loved. But now, his invention is more well-known as a tool to kill innocent Americans.”

Gun reportage always seems to focus on individuals. The mind of the shooter, the terror of his victims, the anguish of those left behind, the incapable or obstructive legislators. Most books on guns in America today begin with the harrowing story of a shooting, breathlessly narrated as if it had taken place in a movie. In American Gun, this story is about the man who, on October 1, 2017, fired more than a thousand rounds into a crowd of concert-goers from the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas hotel, killing sixty people. In American Gun McWhirter and Elinson treat the AR-15 – which they frequently call ‘Stoner’s gun’ – as an extension of its creator, even though Colt purchased the rights to it in 1959. (After the patent expired in 1977 other firms started production, and in the 2000s a private equity firm in New York bought up the majority of its manufacturing base.) 

Whether it’s a frustrated gun control advocate, a devastated parent, or a committed supporter of the National Rifle Association, every aspect of American Gun is explored through a specific character, whose function is to dramatize “liberal” frustration, “tragic” grief or “libertarian” suspicion. This narrative strategy is appealing, with its flawed heroes, big personalities, side plots, cameos, victims and survivors, but it also imposes severe limits on McWhirter and Elinson’s account. Telling the story this way presents certain material realities of modern American life as the characteristics of individuals, rather than tendencies or structures that exist within the complex politics and culture of the contemporary United States. But you can’t make sense of the AR-15 in America through individual stories alone.

Despite McWhirter and Elinson’s suggestion, the “core issue” here is more than the question “how do we as a society keep this weapon out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have such a gun?” or the injunction that “every gun designer has a responsibility to think about what the hell they’re creating” (the words of Stoner’s long-time colleague Jim Sullivan, with which the book closes). The problem isn’t just “the criminal and the careless and the insane,” as Lyndon Johnson put it when signing the Gun Control Act of 1968. 

“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” the NRA insists. But, more precisely, American men with guns kill people. “What the hell’s the matter with us?” Sullivan said when asked about the AR-15’s legacy in America. “There’s something wrong here.”

Guns are central to America’s mythology. In the patriotic version of its history, from an imaginary “revolution” to westward conquest to cops keeping the streets safe, guns are the tools of America’s self-creation. “This country was born with a rifle in its hand,” Philip Sharpe wrote in The Rifle in America (1938). “As a matter of fact, the rifle brought about the birth of these United States. The United States and the rifle are inseparable.” They remain inseparable, and today that rifle is a high-tech, “polished lime” semi-automatic killing machine kept in a suburban garage. That is not what Sharpe had in mind.

Andrew McKevitt’s excellent Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture and Control in Cold War America provides a better account of the situation. McKevitt insists on an often neglected fact: guns are a commodity. Guns in the US, more than anywhere else in the world, are goods circulating in a mass-production, mass-consumption market. A powerful and profitable “gun capitalism” was born at the end of the Second World War, when a glut of cheap surplus guns coincided with rising consumerism, anti-communist hysteria and racialized tension, especially in cities. In this perspective, the problem ultimately isn’t the guns, but the social formation in which they appeared in such numbers.

McKevitt provides some of the context that is needed to make sense of the individual stories in American Gun, in particular the way that they are embedded in the market-oriented “freedom” of American gun capitalism. 

One of the stories has to do with the court deposition of a representative of Freedom Group, the private equity firm that controlled Bushmaster, which manufactured the AR-15 used to massacre twenty children and seven adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in December 2012 (the rifle was advertised with the tagline “Consider Your Man Card Reissued”). Asked why Bushmaster expanded production after the shooting, Freedom Group pointed out that it was “one of our higher margin products”: “It was an awful horrific huge tragedy, but its impact on the long-term capital decisions of the business ... were not a factor. We were in the business of legally making guns to legally sell to legal gun owners. So there is no other thing to do than wake up and make guns on Monday morning.” Gun capitalism is capitalism cooked down like stock to a concentrate.

There are 70,000,000 more privately held guns in the US – around 400,000,000 of them – than there are people. AR-15s comprise about 5% of the total, but it is currently the best-selling rifle in the country. “AR folks” are the “heart and soul of the NRA membership,” a former NRA executive told the Washington Post, and the organization has made what it calls “America’s Gun” its “number one priority.” That the rifle is now closely associated not only with mass shootings but with far-right and white supremacist movements and militias like the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers does not trouble the NRA. Its core mission is the snarling, well-armed and heavily bankrolled defense of those groups’ most cherished political commitment, an “absolutist” interpretation of the Second Amendment, which reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” 

The AR-15 has become the most potent symbol of that commitment (in the words of Kathleen Belew, an expert on the far right, it is “the emblematic cultural weapon”), and this is the reason politicians like Moore, Boebert and Clyde – who have each received an “A” grade and considerable campaign support from the NRA – want to wear those lapel pins.

Many of those involved in the Capitol Hill “insurrection” of January 6, 2021 had flags carrying images of the AR-15 and the motto “Come and Take It,” or “Molon Labe,” a Greek phrase meaning “Come! Take!” which King Leonidas is supposed to have uttered when Xerxes demanded that the Spartans lay down their arms. 

We have now reached a point at which, even if someone could somehow pass gun control legislation in the US, and even if it only restricted assault weapons like the AR-15, implementing it seems likely to result in widespread violence. But the likelihood that any such legislation will be passed is very slim, no matter how many children die. 

In 1989, the Second Amendment scholar Sanford Levinson remarked that it was “almost impossible to imagine that the judiciary would strike down a determination by Congress that the possession of assault weapons should be denied to private citizens.” Today, it isn’t at all impossible to imagine. The US Supreme Court, which would ultimately decide the legitimacy of any new gun law, effectively endorsed a central pillar of the NRA’s interpretation of the Second Amendment when, in District of Columbia v. Heller, it determined that the constitution does indeed grant individuals, not just “the people” or members of a “well-regulated militia,” the right to “keep and bear arms.” That was in 2008; since then, the court has only moved further right.

For these and other reasons – including the difficulty of controlling the millions of AR-15s already in circulation, let alone the hundreds of millions of other guns – McKevitt, like many others, has given up on traditional gun control measures: “There is simply no practical way to reduce the nationwide private firearms arsenal to levels that could make a significant impact on annual gun violence death rates,” he writes. He differs from others, though, in his view that the point of no return passed decades ago, long before the AR-15 became “the preferred rifle of the American consumer-citizen playacting as a citizen-soldier.” The 1960s, he argues, not the 1990s, 2000s or 2010s, was the decade that forged America’s gun culture, and in which the chance to reverse course was irretrievably lost. 

The 1968 Gun Control Act, passed in the wake of mass uprisings in Watts, Detroit and elsewhere, imposed some minor inconveniences, ending the sale of guns to minors and “mental defectives” and making it harder for gun dealers to get licenses or skimp on their record-keeping. But its central policy – limiting imports of the cheap handguns that were flowing into the US in the hundreds of thousands each year – did little to reduce supply, because it did nothing to stop the import of gun parts, or to limit domestic production. The main effect of the Act was to ignite the gun rights lobby. After that, McKevitt says, “there was no turning back.” The “emergence of the gun control movement prompted the hardline turn of the gun rights movement – and not the other way around.” By 1980, a radicalized NRA was ready to make its first presidential endorsement, for Ronald Reagan. In 1986, the Firearms Owners Protection Act was passed, repealing or neutralizing even the mild measures in the 1968 law.

American Gun leaves no stone unturned in the story of the AR-15, but does everything it can to avoid taking a political stance. Gun Country, by contrast, doesn’t shy away from politics, and ends with some proposals that McKevitt admits are a “pie-in-the-sky wish list”: a retreat from extremist interpretations of the Second Amendment and “the abolition of state violence,” including “the disarmament of police forces.” It is difficult to reconcile such hopes with his analysis. Abolition alone is so radical a proposal that, based on the logic of McKevitt’s own historical account, it would elicit an even more extreme reaction.

According to the Washington Post-Ipsos poll, the most commonly cited reason for owning an AR-15 today is “defense” of home and family. (The second is target-shooting; the third is “because I can.” As one NRA board member put it, no small part of the rifle’s appeal is that merely owning one is an “f-you to the left.”) Much of the advertising, and a lot of online content by or about gun advocates, focuses on a sense of being besieged, “on your own,” physically and socially vulnerable at moments of crisis. A video produced by the United States Concealed Carry Association featuring Colion Noir, a prominent Black gun rights activist, lists “Five Reasons to Own an AR-15 (Especially Now)”: “to defend against break-ins with multiple suspects who are trying to kill you”; “to defend yourself during civil unrest”; “to protect yourself during a natural disaster or a shit-hits-the-fan scenario”; “because everyone else has them, including criminals”; and “because you don’t trust the government.” As Isaac Botkin, an evangelical Christian and designer at T.Rex Arms (a “Sixth Commandment/Second Amendment company” in Tennessee) says in “Why Everyone Needs an AR-15,” a thirty-minute video that has been watched more than 3.4 million times, the “AR-15 can be a weapon of war and the very best platform for civilian use, at the same time”: “if you own a firearm, which you should, it should be an AR-15, and if you end up needing to use that firearm, which hopefully you won’t, you will want it to be an AR-15.”

It is ironic that the masculinity the AR-15 affirms for so many gun-owners seems to be accompanied by a rather unmanly vulnerability to the world. But then the AR-15’s world is saturated in a sense of foreboding. There is ceaseless talk about “the way the world is these days” or “the direction that society is going,” emergencies – even civil wars – are always-maybe just around the corner. 

As the Washington Post reports of interviews with militia members, “they believe that something dangerous is bubbling within American society, that a conflagration is coming, even if the battle lines aren’t quite clear yet. That’s what brings them back to the woods with their rifles.” From the perspective of the besieged or soon to be besieged, like Botkin, opponents of the AR-15 want you “significantly disadvantaged” and “utterly dependent on somebody else.” He stresses that he’s not exaggerating at all when he says that everyone needs an AR-15: “I’m not just talking about military age males… I am talking about everyone, I’m talking about people who are smaller, younger, older, disabled; specifically people who may be weaker than others, I’m talking about people who need more protection. I’m talking about my mom.”

This shouldn’t be written off as a confected justification for something that can’t be justified. There is of course a masculine, often but not always white (and sometimes supremacist) version of these arguments that is cited by the likes of the Three Percenters as the basis for their “right” to armed hatred, or in support of what the philosopher Chad Kautzer calls “militia-of-one vigilantism.” But, just as important, the emphasis on “defense” and vulnerability to the vagaries of an uncertain world shows that for many, “gun rights are civil rights,” as militia members told the Washington Post. 

An AR-15 “gives you your voice.” Gun politics in the US are now identity politics, and the AR-15, more than any other firearm, has become a symbol not only of consumer freedom, but of freedom of expression or even faith. “It will make people treat you differently if you are armed with an AR-15,” a militia member told the Washington Post. Those who feel diminished by the political economy of American liberalism see the rifle as enabling them to be more than someone to whom history happens. This is what makes the idea of a shit-hits-the-fan moment so appealing. The AR-15 seems to provide a way to attain the independence and freedom the national mythology promises but reality denies: the chance to leave a mark on the world.

(American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15, by Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson. Farrar, Straus, 473 pp., September 2023; Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture and Control in Cold War America, by Andrew C. McKevitt. North Carolina, 319 pp., November 2023. London Review of Books.)