Mendocino County Today: Tuesday 4/2/24

Warm Day | Footbridge | Caitlin Bunger | Big Hammer | Jury Service | Economic Cannibalism | Coast Daffodils | Ed Notes | Storm Clouds | Journalistic Virtues | Party Proposition | Social Isolation | Noyo Shipwright | Surf Fishing | Yesterday's Catch | Reliable Landline | My Antidepressant | Unhoused People | Bobo Drunk | Costly Potholes | Firearm Safety | Mask Divorce | Synthetic State | Coats Meet | Elegant Writing | Jewish Woman | All Cults | Easter Visuals | Bomber Biden | Lifelong Battle

ABOVE NORMAL TEMPERATURES are forecast for the interior today. For coastal areas, stratus will increase through the day. Below normal temperatures, blustery northwest winds and a chance for light precipitation will return on Wednesday and continue for the remainder week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 45F under clear skies this Tuesday morning on the coast. I hear there is a large fog bank out there but I do not see it myself? I also have dueling forecasts regarding possible rain Thursday thru Sunday? I'll leave it at a chance for light rain during that time period for now. Conditions will get windy & cloudy tomorrow to get started.

SHERIFF’S OFFICE IDENTIFIES WOMAN’S BODY FOUND DEAD IN RUSSIAN RIVER

Original Press Release:

On Sunday, March 24,2024 at about 04:30 PM, a kayaker on the Russian River called the Ukiah Police Department (UPD) to report they had possibly observed a human body in the river. UPD notified the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office of the incident as the location was in the County jurisdiction. Sheriff's Office personnel along with numerous fire agencies responded to the area of Morrison Creek and Old River Road and began searching the area for the possible body.

Fire personnel utilized an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to search the river area. At about 5:35 PM, Fire personnel located a deceased subject in the river. Fire personnel trained in swift water rescue entered the fast-moving water and were able to safely remove the decedent from the waterway.

Sheriff's Office Deputies were on scene and began a Coroner's Investigation. The female adult decedent was in a state of advanced decomposition which made it impossible to identify the subject. It appeared the decedent had been in the water for some time, and no obvious signs of external trauma were observed.

* * *

Updated Press Release (April 1, 2024)

On Wednesday, March 27, 2024, a post-mortem examination was conducted as a part of this coroner's investigation. Sheriff's Office personnel researched recent missing person investigations and identified a subject who was a possible match to the physical characteristics of the decedent from this case. During the post-mortem examination, medical records for the subject reported as missing were compared to the decedent from this investigation. From examining these medical records, the decedent from this investigation was identified as Caitlin Bunger, a 37-year-old female who was reportedly a transient in the Ukiah area.

As a part of this continuing investigation, representatives from the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Coroner's Unit contacted the legal next-of-kin for Bunger and notified them of her death. According to Bunger's family, she had moved to California approximately 5-6 months prior to this investigation. From researching Sheriff's Office Records, Bunger had been reported as a missing person to the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office in October of 2023 and again in March of 2024. During previous investigations, it was reported that Bunger was homeless and frequented the Perkins Street Bridge area in Ukiah.

The cause and manner of Bunger's death are still being investigated and there are no preliminary findings that can be released at this time from the post-mortem examination.

Anyone with information related to this investigation is requested to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office at 707-463-4086. Information can also be provided anonymously by calling the Sheriff's Office non-emergency tip line at 707-234-2100.

JURY SERVICE

Seems like no one responds to emails or phone call messages left for the Jury Services group anymore. They used to transfer jury service to the Ten Mile Court for those living on the coast, but reportedly no longer honor such requests. This results in an over 2-hour 80-mile drive to downtown Ukiah, a rundown, seedy location. Even this planned Courthouse is in a congested, vagrant-populated location.

— Walt Watson

BIGBOXIZATION

Editor,

I would like to add a comment to last week’s front page story “Hemorrhaging Jobs, we Limp on,” which lamented the sorry economic situation in Ukiah.

City officials indeed deserve most of the blame; they blissfully ignore what economists call “economic cannibalism”: cities and counties depend too much on sales taxes, a situation that big corporations exploit by playing cities and counties or regions against each other, locating where government officials kiss their feet and fork over millions for infrastructure improvement or other perks. 

The latest example in Ukiah: Costco. Of course, Costco can underbid and starve existing small and big stores, eventually forcing them out — which means loss of jobs and loss of sales taxes. Nobody wins, except the biggest big stores.

Consumers, however, also share in the blame for our hemorrhaging local economies. The convenience of online shopping and big-box underbidding steers complacent consumers to the cheapest gas and goodies (which often means driving more and consuming more than needed; those really in need to save despite working two jobs are the victims of the wage depression over the past 50 years, and that's another story).

Bruni Kobbe

Ukiah

ED NOTES (Medical Adventures)

How is it that a worn out old man gets a team of world class surgeons to prolong his life while much younger people have no chance of anything but bankrupting medical attention, if that? Medicare. Us old folks have it, you don't until you're old. Everyone should have it but…

I knew I was in trouble when Dr. Lee of Novato ran a camera through my nose down into my gullet, soon appearing before me looking unprofessionally stricken. “You must get this removed very soon,” she said. “This” was an off-white, fairly luminescent, slug-like thing lying in ambush among the otherwise healthy pinks of my throat in the vicinity of my voice box (since removed.)

For an insane moment I thought of asking the operating doctors to preserve the killer tumor in a small bottle of formaldehyde, which I could brandish before my grandchildren as a macabre warning that life's crap shoot can bring sudden disasters despite the most religiously wholesome efforts to prevent them.

I smoked for a year when I was young and traveling in the jungles of Borneo where time and distance was measured in cigarettes. “How far to the next long house?” Tiga batang roco, sir. Three cigarettes.

Drink? Something of a binger for many years, and I think now maybe I paid for it in the late-in-life tumor. But all my days I've exercised fairly vigorously every day, fully conscious, if naively, that I was offsetting the booze.

Or maybe I got sick because I was old, and we're all carried off by one thing or another, but I'm still perplexed that my exit would come via cancer, me, an adherent of Mailer's theory that by avoiding bad food, bad architecture, bad materials, bad vibes — American life, in other words — that cancer wouldn't get me.

Since the middle of February I've spent three solid weeks in hospitals, a week in Marin, two non-successive weeks at Mission Bay in San Francisco. After my surgical stay ended last week, my doctors said I was so healthy and recovering so well that I could go home after five days post-surgery, and I've never been more relieved to be free of intense medical attention, mostly because during two of those last five days attached to the IV pole I felt menaced by a male night nurse.

And right here I should explain that maybe the menace I felt was an hallucinatory after effect of my surgery which, after all, was an intensive all-day affair under heavy sedation, so heavy I'd lost a day when I came to.

Recovery nurses are kept frantically busy looking after 3-4 patients, but the nurse who creeped me all the way out seemed omni-present in my room for two straight nights. Every time I was conscious, which is every few minutes in a hospital as blood takings, temp takings, oxygen takings, pulse takings, and taking takings are constant, this guy was staring down at me, and when he wasn't staring down at me he was hovering inches from my neck wound fairly chanting at me in a strained, incantatory whisper as he fussed with the apparatuses I was wired to. I found myself wondering, deep into my second night at the mercy of this odd medico, if I had enough strength left to clip him one if he made a lethal move on me. By slugging him maybe the disturbance would bring rescue.

But as I said, maybe it was all me, maybe the guy was merely selflessly attentive. But all the other nurses, a parade of saints I tell you!, were also selflessly attentive, getting their tasks done before bustling off to attend to their next semi-comatose patient, sparing me so much as a hint of weirdness.

I don't miss my voice all that much. I scribble messages, but my mute state is hard on visitors who can only talk at me while I occasionally reply in writing.

At-home care? My wife has amazed the medical people with how fast she's learned the procedures that keep me among the living. I'm not surprised. I knew from the day I met her sixty years ago that she was the smartest, most reliable person I would ever know. And so it's turned out. 

JOURNALISTIC VIRTUES

Dear Editor,

I am happy that you are back at home and once again at the helm of your computer keyboard. One of the books I am currently making my way through is “George Bernard Shaw: His Life and Personality,” which was initially published in 1942.

For many years, Shaw made a living as a journalist, much of it devoted to music and theater criticism. (A couple examples of the former: “There is nothing that soothes me more after a long and maddening course of pianoforte recitals than to sit and have my teeth drilled by a finely skilled hand”; “By simply assassinating less than a dozen men, I could leave London without a single orchestral wind instrument player of the first rank.”) The biography’s author, Hesketh Pearson, writes of Shaw: “He had the four chief virtues of a great journalistic critic: readability, irreverence, individuality and courage.”

It occurs to me the same may be said of the AVA’s late Alexander Cockburn and, in the present tense, Bruce Anderson.

Doug Loranger

Walnut Creek

A GOODBYE PAPER-PAPER PARTY & MORE

Dear AVA,

As you may know I have collated all my AVA articles into a book, and it was my goal and intention to come to Boonville when the project was completed to have a book party in commemoration. Now that the AVA is transitioning this month can we have a book opening slash AVA farewell party combined, one last hurrah, have a minor superspreader event, and call it good?

Do you think we could yank enough local writers out of their Saturday or Sunday afternoon bingo games (or weekend internet porn sessions, I’m not judging) from the senior centers to have a quorum? Maybe we could all bring sleeping bags and crash on the floor of the AVA with the printing press humming nearby, running off the last paper-paper, EMT standing by of course? No, better have a high noon event so we out-of-towners can get in and out, have our cake and tea (or wine), drink to the mighty AVA, and get home to bed by nine.

No, I’m not kidding, I really want to do this, or at least try, I’ll bring the cake, wine, tea, and signed copies of my monumentally unnecessary hundred articles, and toast the AVA goodbye. (Face it, the real last goodbye may come before we know it. Online edition? Doesn’t do much for me.)

Who can I work with to help make this happen, pending Bruce and Mark’s approval? Terry Sites seems like a good prospect, all the Anderson Valley denizens who ever wrote anything in the AVA would be welcome, and maybe I could even see what a 90-year-old man looks like. (Do I need to wear my eclipse goggles? Jeez, who among us will still be as articulate as Gregory Sims when we reach that milestone?)

What the hell, this is a celebration for Bruce Anderson, who made it all possible, who made it happen, so everyone had the opportunity to express themselves, lo these last four decades.

Paul Modic

Redway

ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE: NEWSLETTER APRIL 2024

Social Isolation: The Problems with it and Solutions to it!

At our last Monthly Gathering on March 17 the Anderson Valley Village hosted Dr Leah Queen, who gave an intriguing and hopeful presentation on social isolation. Isolation and loneliness are now considered an epidemic in this country! In addition to the mental health impacts of this epidemic there are increased, often deadly, physical health impacts, including heart disease, stroke and dementia (see list below). Living in a rural area we have an extra challenge when it comes to connecting with each other, including being physically isolated and as we age throw in mobility and cognitive issues that can lead to not being able to drive (see list of “causes of social isolation” below).

I argue that being in a rural area, also gives us a unique opportunity to combat this epidemic because we have known each other (or of each other) for decades – making reaching out and establish or reestablish those connections easier. See list below for the way to combat social isolation. The main strength of the AV Village, thanks to the AV Senior Center, is that we are creating opportunities for social interactions – with our weekly activities, monthly gatherings and the important work of our volunteers supporting our members. We can help each other by reaching out and making those vital connections. Even just a small gesture can mean a lot!…

mailchi.mp/8fa9d31e285b/anderson-valley-village-newsletter-august-5476907

NOYO SHIPWRIGHT KEEPS FLEET AFLOAT

by Bob Norberg (2010)

In a cavernous redwood warehouse in Noyo Harbor, the scent of fresh-cut wood mixes with the smell of sea water and the sound of barking seals.

Fort Bragg's Noyo River laps at the base of a cement and wooden ramp leading into a haul-out bay, where cradles on railroad tracks bring boats into dry dock.

Soft-spoken Howard Makela grew up hanging around this shop, where his father, Fred Makela, and uncle, Nick Makela, built and repaired wooden boats as the Makela Brothers partnership for 40 years.

"They launched their first one here at Noyo in 1941, then they got drafted," Makela said. "Out of this shop, they launched their first in 1949."

It was only natural that he followed in their sawdust-outlined footsteps as a shipwright, a painstaking craft that still relies on hand tools and a practiced eye, although now supplemented by power tools.

"It has been around for thousands of years," said Ed Von der Porten of San Francisco, a maritime historian. "Ships from plans as we know them today only go back a couple hundred years. It takes remarkable skill with wood and metal and no matter what you do you do it by eye."

But if his craft is not dying, it's at least fading. Makela is the only shipwright between Sausalito and Eureka and is sought out to keep the fishing fleet of mostly wood boats afloat.

He works alone and speaks thoughtfully, unhurried, allowing that being a shipwright and a one-time fisherman may be in his genes.

His grandfather, Att Makela, immigrated from Finland to the North Coast a century ago to work in the woods, buying the bare land alongside the Noyo River where the Makela Brothers shop was built.

"The Fins came here to work in the woods and fish and they were shipbuilders in Finland too," Makela said. "They gravitated to the water."

The schooners that hauled lumber from the North Coast to San Francisco in the 1800s and 1900s were dubbed the Scandinavian Navy, sailing into the many tiny "dog hole ports" that dotted the coast.

A board on the wall lists the 14 fishing boats launched by the Makela Brothers, from the 44-foot Condor in 1941 to the 56-foot Debbie Marie in 1976.

"Some people are just traditional," he said of the preference for wood boats. "But they ride better, they are quieter," Makela said. "I think the only nostalgia is that wood was first."

Makela, 54, has built three boats of his own, all sailboats from 26 to 41 feet that are in San Francisco, San Diego and the Puget Sound. Now his skills are used almost exclusively for repairs.

"Every major port has a shipwright, but if you don't have a haul-out facility, you spend a lot of time on the road," said Makela.

Chris Iversen, a Fort Bragg fisherman, said, "I'll have him come over, he taps on it to make sure the nails are good. We found a worm in the keel last time," he said.

Makela said the work is steady and it provides a good middle-class income.

"There is just one job after another, there is not a lot of downtime between jobs," Makela said. "There's enough work to keep me busy."

The oddest job may have been last year, when he took the 50-foot Gayle, built by his father and uncle in 1971, cut it in half and added five feet to make it a more functional crab boat.

Tied up in the river behind the shop last week was the fishing trawler Sharon, on which Makela is replacing the forward deck in a very traditional way.

"Generally this was how it was built," Makela said. "But I'm making it stronger, the decking is closer together. It was rotten and all the fasteners had rusted out."

Makela uses a chop saw, power planer, chisel and wood mallet to coax the new Douglas fir planks into place.

"The real enemy is freshwater. It promotes rot and that's how fungus lives," Makela said. "If a fishing boat is worked, it may look bad, but the salt is a preservative, it slows the rot down."

Makela also appreciates somewhat wistfully that he will be the last of the family shipwrights, a craft that can be duplicated by others in a new shop with modern tools for boats made of new materials, but not replace the Makela Boatworks.

"You'd be in a metal shop with a cement floor and the roof wouldn't be sagging," Makela said. "It wouldn't have the same feel."

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

SURF FISHING OFF THE MENDO COAST

by Anne Cooper Kelley

Everett Racine took this photograph which documents surf fishing. After doing a little research, it appears that these fishermen are after Surf smelt. These fish represent a critical link in the food chain and have many predators, including seabirds, sea bass and humans.

Long ago, Native Americans observed that these fish, spawning in the shallow waters and moving with the tides, could be caught in nets. The A-frame shaped nets visible in the photograph were modeled after those they developed.

There are three species of smelt in the “Guide to Central California Beach Fishing,” published by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife: Jacksmelt (Atherinopsis californiensis), Surf smelt (Hypomesus pretiosus) and Night smelt (Spirinchus starksi). The Guide recommends fishing for Surf or Night smelt “in the daytime and evening, respectively, on a falling high tide. Both species usually spawn on coarse-grained sandy beaches when the surf is mild.”

Peak months for Jack smelt are April to August and for Night or Surf Smelt from February to August.

There are useful websites addressing this topic: the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, StripersOnline.com and Seaforager.com. The most informative, because it included firsthand information, came from a post made in 2011 by a member of StripersOnline.com. The person who posted was a “senior member” at the time and used the name “Surfsmelt408” (to read the full post visit stripersonline.com/surftalk/topic/436609-surf-smelt-behavior).

Surfsmelt408 (who had been catching smelt for over 35 years) mentioned that Bodega Bay and Fort Bragg area beaches met the criteria for coarse-grained sand. The post began with the recollection that the 1960s and ’70s saw huge numbers of smelt on the beaches. Their numbers were so great that their bodies would darken the surf zone.

Birds were a good indicator of when and where the schools of fish were coming in with the high tide, and that their activity was predictable. The 2011 post also mentioned that the smelt in those decades were not particularly skittish about being approached by humans. A change in this behavior was noted as the years progressed.

Whether due to overfishing, a change in water temperatures or a change in the type and distribution of sand on the beaches, the decades of the 1980s and ’90s witnessed changes in the schools of smelt. The predictability of their arrival in the surf seemed to have vanished, along with the great numbers of fish.

The fish had also apparently gained some wisdom about practicing the avoidance of fishermen with nets, as well. As fellow organisms on the planet, we know about safety in numbers, and as their numbers fell the fish may have instinctively become more cautious.

People speculated that seasons of El Niño events caused the changes in beach sand. As a fish species that is relatively low in the food chain and supports larger predators, the smelt might be seen as an indicator of environmental pressures, similar to the proverbial canary in a coal mine.

For whatever reasons, conditions seemed to improve somewhat in more recent decades. As noted by Surfsmelt408: “Around 2003-2004 . . . the surf smelt returned in greater numbers at the local beaches. However their patterns were way different from the patterns of the decades before. Instead of the usual high tide, they would show up many times during the low tide. We would see a lot of male fish, and very few females. The schools we came across weren’t giant schools, they were big but the fish were spread out and they were spooked very easily. There were times where we had to work for the fish.”

Working for the fish was probably not the case at the time this photograph was taken during the 1930s, when Fort Bragg resident Everett Racine did much of his photography. The location for the photograph’s subject is uncertain. Everett Racine purchased his father Napoleon Job “Paul” Racine’s store where, according to articles written by daughter Dot Johnson (The Mendonesian 1996 and Real Estate Magazine 2002), fishing licenses and tackle could be purchased in the early years.

(If you have photographs and memoires of fishing on the Mendocino Coast whether in the surf, from a pier, or on a boat, please contact the Kelley House Museum at 707 937-5791 or curator@kelleyhousemuseum.org.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, April 1, 2024

WILLIAM AADLAND-BREEN, Ukiah. Suspended license, failure to appear, probation revocation.

CHRISTOL CHILES, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

KARINA FLORES-OSORIO, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Check kiting, offenses while on bail, probation revocation.

FRANCISCO GOMEZ JR., Vallejo/Ukiah. Domestic abuse, disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, concealed dirk-dagger, probation revocation, resisting.

SARAH GRAVEL, Willits. Domestic abuse.

VIKTORIA LADD, Clearlake/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, county parole violation.

MICHAEL MCBRIDE, Willits. Domestic battery.

DONNA MYERS, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, resisting.

MIGUEL RAMIREZ, Ukiah. DUI causing bodily injury, resisting.

LANCE ROBLES, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.

SAMUEL SANCHEZ, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, protective order violation. (Frequent flyer.)

“AT&T’S TRICKERY”–SAME ISSUES BACK EAST

To the Editor:

My wife and I are on the high side of 65, and we pay for a landline only as a lifeline as we deal with the never-ending onslaught of power outages wrought by National Grid in Massachusetts, some as long as 10 days in our years here.

We also live in a mobile phone dead zone. So our mobile phones must depend on internet Wi-Fi for all calls. When the electricity goes out, so does the internet, hence our lifeline to the outside world in times of crisis.

We plug in two touch-tone phones to replace cordless phones when there is no juice from National Grid. Whether AT&T, Verizon and others like it or not, plain old telephone service (POTS) is as close to 100 percent reliable as you can get. But now they want to tear out the copper, forcing us to unreliable telephone service.

Ben Myers

Harvard, Massachussets

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

Dear West Marin Little League Community,

On behalf of the WMLL Board, I want to address a very important issue that affects our beloved Central Field in Fairfax. As many of you are aware, a small encampment of unhoused people near the field developed during our 2023 season. Since that time, the size of the encampment has grown and abuts the outfield fence of Central. 

Our foremost concern is always the safety and security of our players. At the same time, we understand and respect the right of everyone to live in our community with dignity. Unfortunately, there have been instances at the field that raise concern and have required police intervention. One such incident occurred at a game on March 26th, when a person believed to either be a resident of the encampment or affiliated with a resident of the encampment made inappropriate comments about our players in front of parents and others in the stands. He was asked to leave by a parent and did. The incident has been reported to the police and the Town Manager. The WMLL Board is also exploring other measures to prevent the individual from being at the field again. 

To be clear, we have been in discussions with the Town since the encampment developed, to address these safety concerns and others. The Town’s response has consistently been that they cannot relocate the encampment. We disagree with the Town’s position and continue to work to address this issue. To that end, the issue is on the agenda of the next Town Council meeting on April 3rd at 6:30 p.m. at the Fairfax Women’s Club (46 Park Road), and we plan to attend. If this topic is important to you, we encourage you to attend as well.

We appreciate the effort so many in our community have taken to keep everyone safe. If at any time you witness illegal, suspicious, or inappropriate behavior, please immediately report it to the police and notify a coach or board member. We will continue to keep you updated. 

Jamie Williams

President, West Marin Little League

CALIFORNIANS PAY HIGH GAS PRICES AND HIGH GAS TAXES YET STILL DRIVE ON BAD HIGHWAYS

by Dan Waters

To state the obvious, California motorists are experiencing one of the state’s periodic spikes in gasoline prices.

California’s average price for regular grade gas has again topped $5 a gallon, according to the most recent American Automobile Association report. It’s more than $6 in some areas. The average is up about 20 cents from a year ago and is about $1.50 higher than the national figure.

I can attest to the differential, having spent part of March driving some 3,000 miles through four western states, mostly to visit national parks, and buying about 200 gallons of fuel along the way. All of my fill-ups were under $3.50 a gallon, with the lowest price being $2.99 in Wyoming.

The difference between California prices and those in other states raises, for the umpteenth time, is the question of why it exists.

A couple of years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom spent months vilifying oil companies as price-gouging enemies of the people and demanded that the Legislature punish them with taxes on excess profits. He couldn’t win approval the tax proposal, switched to seeking civil penalties, and ultimately had to settle for relatively toothless legislation directing the state Energy Commission to gather data, establish a reasonable profit level and assess penalties for exceeding it.

“Finally, we’re in a position to look our constituents in the eye and say we now have a better understanding of why you’re being taken advantage of,” Newsom said a year ago as he signed the bill. “There’s a new sheriff in town in California, where we brought Big Oil to their knees. And I’m proud of this state.”

We have heard virtually nothing from officialdom about gas prices since, and Newsom apparently didn’t bring Big Oil to its knees.

The vast majority of the differential in gas prices between California and other states can be attributed to differing policies.

Severin Borenstein, a UC Berkeley economist regarded as the state’s leading expert on the issue, parsed the differential in a 2023 paper, pointing out that California’s direct and indirect taxes on fuel amount to nearly $1 per gallon – 70 cents higher than the national average in such taxes – and the state’s unique fuel blend to battle smog adds another dime.

That left what he calls the “mystery gasoline surcharge,” or MGS, of about 43 cents a gallon that cannot be directly attributed to oil prices or California’s taxes and other official factors. It may be a mystery, but at least some of it can be logically attributed to the relatively high costs of doing any kind of business in California – rents, electricity and other utilities, wages and regulatory overhead, for example.

Even if the MGS could be eliminated from the equation, California’s gas prices would still be at least $1 higher than those in other states.

This month’s sojourn through other western states underscored another aspect of the gas-price conundrum. Despite paying direct and indirect taxes on fuel that are three times the national average, California’s motorists are driving on highways that are subpar vis-à-vis those in other states.

Driving back into California from other states can be a jarring experience, and data from the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics back up that observation. As of 2020, California had the fourth-worst roadway conditions of any state with just 67% of its 26,406 miles of pavement in “acceptable” condition.

The national average was 81%, and all four states I visited had much higher scores than California: Wyoming 94.3%, Nevada 85.7%, Utah 80% and Colorado 78.1%.

We are paying the most in gas taxes and getting almost the least in roadway quality.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

When I was told to vaccinate for a “disease” that has a 99.76% survival rate and kills the elderly and obese, I declined.

My now ex-wife told the divorce judge that one of the reasons she insisted on divorce was that I refused to wear a mask.

I was habitually the only guy in the grocery store without a mask, intentionally going against the arrows on the floor and giving them the finger when they came over the intercom with their “Remember shoppers, we’re all in this together so be sure to wear your masks!”

When threatened with the loss of my job if I didn’t vaccinate, I held firm and insisted they fire me. They didn’t – until a few days ago. The hospital for whom I worked purged all the non-vaxxers in a “cost cutting” measure.

I still have not caught the non-existent virus. I take vitamin C, zinc and quinine every day.

Commence slings and arrows.

ISRAEL is a synthetic, artificially created state. It did not arise organically from the naturally existing conditions of the land and its people; it was unnaturally forced into existence by outside powers. It is more synthetic than meth. It is more synthetic than Pete Buttigieg.

— Caitlin Johnstone

ELEGANT WRITING FIRST

Book Review by Erik S. McMahon (2001)

I wasn’t sure I wanted to read Facing the Wind, knowing that it concerned the impact “imperfect” children can have on families into which they’re born, and more specifically, a man who slaughtered his disabled son, two “normal” siblings, and his wife with a baseball bat. On occasion, I’ve been accused of preferring explorations spotlighting sinister aspects of the human species. Some couldn’t see, for example, how I’d gotten through an excruciatingly detailed account of the genocide in Rwanda. Answer: grotesque, appalling subject matter, but elegant writing.

The same can be said about Facing the Wind by Julie Salamon. I first noticed her byline when she turned out film criticism for The Wall Street Journal. (She later had a television column in The New York Times). 

Then, I read 1991’s The Devil’s Candy, an impeccably researched, compellingly written dissection of the movie industry. No matter how grim the current tale, I knew I’d be in the hands of a masterful journalist. 

Salamon didn’t initially intend to cover this territory. She started out sniffing around support groups for parents of handicapped kids, including the Industrial Home for the Blind in Brooklyn. There, she was told the story of Mary and Robert Rowe.

Their second son, Christopher, had multiple congenital disabilities, including blindness. Salamon suggests such a birth can induce a similar sequence of emotions as those following death of a loved one “shock, disappointment, grief, sorrow, and remorse” and finally, with any luck, acceptance.

The author tersely describes in the Foreword the announcement of Mary Rowe’s murder (and her children). “The killer was her husband, and he had always been an exemplary father, a lawyer, a man the women knew and admired. Robert Rowe was declared not guilty by reason of insanity in 1978, spent two and a half years in mental hospitals before being released, and then tried to resume normal life.” 

As Salamon astutely notes, “The country would eventually overdose on support group intimacy as special interests multiplied in number and kind and as revelation, no matter how gross or outrageous or insipid, became a staple of television talk shows.” In the early 1970s, however, these beleaguered mothers found it “astonishing to be able to talk openly about the grief and guilt that terrorized them.” 

Bob Rowe was a popular, charismatic speaker when he appeared before the group, viewed as an “unusually engaged” father. The Rowes, though they had joined late, began to emerge as role models.

And then… well, the title of Chapter 10 sums it up: “Unraveling.” Bob was 45 and experiencing career crises, but those were the least of his problems. He called a neighbor with a bizarre request.

“Tie me up, Murray,” he demanded desperately. “Before I do something terrible.” 

Three weeks prior to pleading for restraint from Murray, Bob had had a vision.

“He woke up in the middle of the night,” Salamon reports, “and saw the face of his mother, who had died two years earlier. He heard her whisper, ‘Kill your family’.” 

Not long afterward, Rowe began consulting a therapist, and was prescribed antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs. Ultimately, it was determined he should seek more intensive treatment at a psychiatric hospital. 

Though diagnosed by one doctor as “grossly psychotic,” he was nonetheless discharged by the institution. He found it “harder and harder to distinguish himself from his damaged son. Both of them were cripples.” 

Rowe’s fantasies involved “fixing things” for Mary and their unimpaired children by killing himself and Christopher. As we know, Bob’s solution went hideously farther than that.

Salamon goes on to present a lucid explanation of the insanity defense, which resulted in Rowe’s not guilty verdict, and a fascinating chronology of his incarceration, interspersed with contemporary notes by ward workers.

The final third of Rowe’s journey is not a violent one, but many will find it the most shocking and perverse.

Facing the Wind tackles a range of critical, disturbing issues. It reveals the fragility inherent in familial relationships, and can certainly be seen as an indictment, exposing this country’s woeful medical, psychiatric and judicial systems.

Those who say they read books, or watch movies, strictly for entertainment, should avoid this tale. Those willing to absorb harrowing scenes as part of a search for understanding won’t soon forget it.

Salamon scrupulously shuns sensationalism, but her style is by no means bland. Facing the Wind does exactly what great journalism is meant to do: lay out the facts, and challenge the reader to reexamine perceptions, assumptions and beliefs. 

(Facing the Wind: A True Story of Tragedy and Reconciliation, by Julie Salamon. Random House; 306 pp.; $24.95)

GAZA AND THE THREE CULTS

(Philip Munger on Daily Kos last year…)

Watching the world come closer to spinning out of control hour by hour is worse than watching it spin out of control week by week.

I have a few friends who are atheists.

I have many, many, many friends who are Christians. Although baptized and confirmed as a Lutheran, I'm not even close to Christianity anymore. 

I came to a point where I couldn't recite the Apostles' Creed or Nicene Creed anymore, because they are false statements. Jesus did not rise from the dead. There's no such thing as the father, son and Holy Ghost, literally or figuratively.

I have many friends who are Jewish. I'm not even close.

I have several friends who are Muslim. I'm not even close.

I regard all your faiths as cults, pure and simple.

That was okay until your hatreds toward one another spiraled into what we are now witnessing. Your superstitions and weird rituals might have once served to advance civilization. The Aztecs and Mayans also built monuments as awesome as the Notre Dame Cathedral, but they were built as platforms to cut out human hearts.

I call Judaism, Christianity and Islam "The three interconnected Abrahamic Vengeful Male Sky God Cults."

The basis of these cults are myths with no more substance in reality than Jason and the Golden Fleece or King Arthur. King David is a myth, yet every day of the week Christians and Jews venerate him as an epochal empire builder. They call the hymns known as Psalms the Psalms of David, yet nobody has ever shown that to be factual. 

Abraham, the interconnecting tissue of these superstitions, is a myth. However, his supposed home, Hebron, is a bedeviled city of warped hatreds between two cults fighting over what that myth means.

Like the Aztecs of 1500, the Christians of 1500 sacrificed people, mostly women who were midwives or healers. Unlike the Aztecs who quickly killed their victims, the Catholic and Protestant executioners watched their victims slowly roast as they screamed. Like the Aztecs, this was all done in front of large crowds to warn them.

Imagine living in Gaza right now. It has been an open air prison since Hamas took over 17 years ago. Not that it was much less of a prison before that. Hamas, which has become a boil on the flesh of every person in that prison, has picked this particular time to put a collective suicide vest on every person living in that hellhole.

And so another branch of the vengeful male sky god cult (Judaism) has convinced the third branch of the cult (Christianity) to accept what's going to happen over the next several weeks live on TV to warn us all.

I'm not blaming one of these cults more than the other. You are all, if you believe these dangerous superstitions, responsible for enabling this, either by rooting for one of the cults or by idly standing by as thousands of kids die without even understanding why they are offered up on the altar of Moloch.

The reality is that your superstitions are keeping us from preventing the entire planet from becoming unlivable. Own it!

(District5Diary.com)

ED NOTE: 

CAN IT GET any more absurd? 

Easter morning's visual news began with President and Mrs. Biden, the president sporting his usual death's head grin, walking out onto a White House balcony accompanied by a pair of giant Easter Bunnies, as Biden proceeds to announce Transgender Visibility Day.

BOMBER BIDEN DOESN’T WAGE PEACE, SAVE CIVILIANS OR LISTEN TO AMERICAN ANTIWAR CRIMES ADVOCATES

by Ralph Nader

Joe Biden has long had a problem with PEACE – as in “ceasefires,” “serious peace negotiations,” and conditioning the transfer or sale of major weapons systems as required by five U.S. criminal statutes. From one side of his mouth, Biden urges futilely Israeli compliance with international law while on the other side he supports the daily shipment of weapons of mass destruction to the Israeli government. These weapons are being used in the genocidal killing of Palestinians in Gaza.

A majority in Congress is even more hawkish and lets Biden do whatever he wants in making war abroad. The cornerstone of our Constitution – the separation of powers – has been demolished in area after area. (See, our open letter of November 28, 2023, to the members of the U.S. Congress).

By contrast, American public opinion has turned against U.S. arms shipments to Israel and the annihilation of Palestinian civilians from infants to the elderly. Whole extended families are being wiped out by American-made bombs and missiles. The homeless survivors are injured, starving and suffering from untold illnesses.

The Israeli state terror is producing a Palestinian Holocaust. Netanyahu’s violent anti-semitism against the Arabs of Palestine is out of control. Many courageous Israeli human rights groups protest, to no avail, (See, the December 13, 2023, open letter to Biden that appeared in the New York Times) as Netanyahu and his extremist coalition reveal their long-time objective of driving millions of Palestinians out of what is left of their Palestine.

As for the Hamas raid on October 7th, and the total collapse of the highly touted Israeli border security, a World War II Holocaust survivor told the New York Times, “It should never have happened…” Yet, Netanyahu has blocked an official investigation of this unexplained multi-tiered technological and human intelligence debacle.

Meanwhile, public dissatisfaction with the dictatorial decision-making by the White House and the absence of Congressional action is growing rapidly. More and more labor unions are now opposing Biden’s bombings, Jewish Americans working with Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now are brilliantly organizing demonstrations. Veterans for Peace’s 27 chapters around the country are in the streets peacefully demanding a ceasefire, cessation of weapons shipments and major increases in humanitarian aid. They are mostly ignored by the corporate media, NPR and PBS.

Religious groups are beseechingly calling for peace. This week in the latest public letter, 140 Global Christian Leaders, organized by Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) called on President Biden “…to have the moral courage to end U.S. complicity in the ongoing violence and, instead, do everything in [his] power to…” stop the “death and destruction” in Palestine.

The CMEP receives little or no coverage by the mainstream media even though this organization represents millions of people.

But then look who is not taking a pro-peace stand, staying silent or actively backing the Israeli war machine. The American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars are on the sidelines. The AFL-CIO Labor Federation finally came out tepidly for a ceasefire but has exerted very little of its muscle on Capitol Hill.

AIPAC, the “pro-Israeli government can do no wrong lobby” has been cultivating relationships with these U.S. organizations and others like them for decades.

The worst abdications have come from the legal profession in the form of State Bar Associations and the American Bar Association (ABA) – the largest organization of lawyers in the world. These lawyers are all “officers of the court” instructed to stand for the rule of law. Except for a brief time in 2005-2006 (https://nader.org/2013/04/19/aba-white-papers/ ) the ABA has idled while Presidents regularly have violated our Constitution and all kinds of laws – domestic and international – with impunity, facilitated by a supine Congress.

Bruce Fein and I have asked 50 State Bar Associations to be first responders in challenging the ongoing breakdown of the rule of law due to their professional duties and knowledge. None have responded.

As for the healthcare professionals watching Israel raining death and destruction directly on Gaza’s hospitals and health clinics, inundated with desperate patients, their endangered physicians and assistants without the means to devote their care, the response is overwhelmingly silent. The American Public Health Association and the American Medical Student Association are among the few to have condemned Israel’s atrocities.

Yet, the desperate pleas by their wounded professional colleagues have failed to register with the likes of the American Medical Association, the American College of Surgeons, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma and many others. (See the letter of March 1, 2024, which has gone unanswered).

What can turn our country around? An organized citizenry of less than one percent of the voters in Congressional Districts, giving voice to the voiceless majority, can free Congress from its captivity imposed by the forces of greed, power and violent Empire, draining resources from our dire domestic needs.

As I wrote in the Capitol Hill Citizen (February/March 2024 issue), Congress has become a weapon of mass destruction with multiple warheads. Only the people can recover their sovereign power, under the Constitution, now delegated to a Congress that sells out to the highest corporatist bidders.

On the Israeli slaughter of Gaza’s people, a small but growing number of Democrats in Congress are standing tall. They need your active backing to expand their numbers. (See, Ceasefire Tracker: https://workingfamilies.org/ceasefire-tracker/).

As for the cruel, vicious, genocidal, maniacal Republicans, they remain disgraced in their full-throttled support for Netanyahu, who is fighting for his job, trying to escape Israeli prosecutors and is hugely unpopular in Israel.

The GOP position was expressed by Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton – a lawyer no less – who said last October, for posterity’s eternal damnation: “As far as I’m concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza.” This is exactly what the massacring Israeli juggernauts have done with the weapons, taxpayers’ money and diplomatic cover enabled by corrupt outlaws like Tom Cotton.