Mendocino County Today: Saturday 4/6/24

Cold Start | East Ukiah | Jamie Lee? | Stolen Lexus | RV Water | Ukiah Construction | AV Farm Supply | Route 162 | Usal Road | Feathers Case | BOS Bug | Hrbac Sentenced | Turkey Vulture | Grassi Concert | May Near | Dung Shirt | Anderson Interview | MV Mendocino | Mendo Map | Candidate Pinches | Yesterday's Catch | Recidivism Rate | Dirty Dog | Two Years | Huffman Treats | Marco Radio | Butterfly Years | Golden Milk | Fairfax Merchants | Easter Bunting | Webb Yeah! | Opening Day | Joe Adcock | Stateless A's | Stadium Way | Buying Power | Rocky Marciano | Purdy Good | Hero Herod | Summer 77 | Caitlin Training | Jake LaMotta | Old Taboos | Sisterhood | Dangerous Vector | Fern Butterflies | Demographic Winter | Anita Hemmings | Front Page | Vincent's Bedroom

AFTER A COLD START to the day for the interior, a shortwavetrough will bring showers to the region that will linger into Sunday. Temperatures will then begin moderating, with significant warming looking likely into mid to late next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): On the coast this Saturday morning I have 38F under clear skies. Increasing clouds today leading to a chance of showers tonight. Clearing tomorrow & all dry next week. Is winter over now?

JIM SHIELDS (Laytonville): On Thursday we had snow mixed with intermittent rain in Laytonville. Total precip to-date is 60.24 in. which is almost exactly the historical average for this date (61.04 in.) The precip year ends on June 30 so we're real close to the annual historical average of 61.04 in. Not that we need any more rain than we've had already.

A READER WONDERS:

I got news that Jamie Lee — who used to write a few things for the paper before he went flat Earth — passed away at his place on Nash Mill in Philo — but haven't been able to confirm.

OUTTA THE LEXUS, LADIES

On Tuesday, April 2, 2024, at approximately 2:18 pm, Ukiah Police Department (UPD) Officers were notified by the FLOCK automated license plate recognition technology that a stolen vehicle was traveling southbound on North State Street in the direction of downtown Ukiah. UPD Officers were able to coordinate and position ample resources in the area, including the positioning of multiple patrol vehicles behind the stolen vehicle as it traveled southbound. UPD Dispatch was able to inform the UPD Officers that the stolen vehicle, a White 1999 Lexus ES300 was reported stolen to the Napa County branch of the California Highway Patrol and the stolen vehicle appeared to be occupied by multiple subjects. 

Due to the inherent danger associated with the recovery of stolen vehicles, a high-risk stop was conducted at the intersection of South State Street and East Stephenson Street. The four occupants of the vehicle, three females and one male were detained without incident.

Hailey Riley was identified as the driver of the stolen Lexus. A records check on Riley revealed that there were multiple felony warrants for Riley’s arrest out of Lake County. 

Elisabeth Shoemaker, a passenger in the vehicle also had a warrant for her arrest out of Mendocino County. Through the course of the investigation the other two occupants were determined not to have committed any crime, and were released from the scene with no charges.

Riley was arrested for being in possession of a stolen vehicle (496d(a) PC) and the three outstanding warrants for her arrest. Shoemaker was also arrested for the outstanding warrant for her arrest. Both females were booked into the Mendocino County Jail, and the stolen vehicle was towed and safely secured so that it could be returned to the registered owner. 

As always, UPD’s mission is to make Ukiah as safe a place as possible. If you would like to know more about crime in your neighborhood, you can sign up for telephone, cellphone, and email notifications by clicking the Nixle button on our website; http://www.ukiahpolice.com.

REDWOOD VALLEY WATER DISTRICT Confronts Windstorm Damage, Water Supply Issues, and Strategic Planning

by Monica Huettl

During their recent meeting on March 21, 2024, the Redwood Valley County Water District tackled various important issues. They discussed repairing damage from a windstorm, managing water supplies at Lake Mendocino, deciding on water diversion methods, and addressing unsuccessful well drilling attempts. Additionally, they explored consolidation agreements with neighboring districts and discussed annexation possibilities. The meeting also covered updates on groundwater sustainability efforts.…

mendofever.com/2024/04/05/redwood-valley-water-district-confronts-windstorm-damage-water-supply-issues-and-strategic-planning/

UKIAH CONSTRUCTION UPDATES FOR THE WEEK OF APRIL 8 

With some clearer weather in the forecast, we’ll see the mobilization of all of the construction teams, including concrete, utility and landscaping teams. On the south side of the project, between Gobbi and Cherry, concrete crews will begin patching the sections where utility work was done. Additionally, connections to the new water line will occur in this same section, which will require some temporary interruptions to service. 48-hour advance notice will be provided to affected properties, and as much work as possible will be done at night to minimize impacts. This will most likely occur on Thursday, and work hours may be from about 8:00 pm to 1:00 am. There will be some construction noise associated with this activity.

Joint trench work will continue between Mill and Gobbi, moving to the east side of the street, starting near Mill and moving south toward Gobbi. There will be temporary impacts to some driveways, but crews will provide advance notification and will work to place steel plates across the driveways as quickly as possible. And finally, demolition of sidewalks is occurring on both sides.

On the north side (Norton to Henry), installation of the brick band along the edge of the sidewalks will begin and work will occur at the intersection of Scott and State, including curb rams on the replacement of the traffic signal at Scott Street. Remember—the signal at Norton and State will not be replaced, so drivers should be aware of changing conditions in the near future.

Work on the joint trench for electrical and communication lines between Mill and Gobbi continues, along with water connections between Gobbi and Cherry and sidewalk demolition on the west side; on the north side, installation of the brick band in the sidewalk and work at Scott/State intersection.

Construction hours will be Monday-Friday, 7 a.m. - 6 p.m., depending on the weather. Additionally, there will be night work one night, likely Thursday.

There will be some noise associated with the south section; not much dust.

On the south side, on-street parking in the construction zone will be closed; however, on-street parking on the north side of the project is open in most areas (see above). Pedestrian access to businesses will be maintained at all times. Through traffic on State Street will be allowed in both directions. Traffic signals at Gobbi/State and Mill/State will remain on flash.

Shannon Riley

Deputy City Manager

ANDERSON VALLEY FARM SUPPLY’S YARD SALE & STORE SALE

Saturday (4/6) & Sunday (4/7)

- Yard Sale - 

Cash Only

Items as little as $1

In our parking lot!

- Store Sale - 

Up to 20% off tons of items!

And Blue Collar Rescue will be here with puppies tomorrow!

PATRICIA SMYTH: BEWARE THE USAL ROAD

Yesterday we took a day trip to Usal, knowing the road would be in pretty bad shape, but it is HORRID!! Never seen it this bad. There are a few places with red clay that have huge ruts and are barely passable with a large 4x4 truck, and after this rain it will be worse. Kinda like the Grand Canyon. Down by the bridge where the big puddles were, a clump of redwood trees slipped down into the road, splintered trees, root wad and all. The road is blocked here. 

I called the county road department, but who knows how long it will take them to get to fixing it. In the meantime, please do not use the Usal Road. It is dangerous and your vehicle will hate you. No joke!Hi Friends

Yesterday we took a day trip to Usal, knowing the road would be in pretty bad shape, but it is HORRID!! Never seen it this bad. There are a few places with red clay that have huge ruts and are barely passable with a large 4x4 truck, and after this rain it will be worse. Kinda like the Grand Canyon. Down by the bridge where the big puddles were, a clump of redwood trees slipped down into the road, splintered trees, root wad and all. The road is blocked here. 

I called the county road department, but who knows how long it will take them to get to fixing it. In the meantime, please do not use the Usal Road. It is dangerous and your vehicle will hate you. No joke.

TODDLERS SPENT HOURS ALONE IN UKIAH BEFORE ANOTHER FOUND DEAD, TESTIMONY SHOWS

Edward Two Feathers Steele is charged with second-degree murder and child cruelty. He’s accused of leaving two toddlers near railroad tracks in Ukiah, where one of them died.

by Colin Atagi

Two toddler brothers, who prosecutors say were abandoned two years ago by the man dating their mother, spent hours alone near the railroad tracks in Ukiah, where one of them was later found dead, an officer testified in court Friday.

The details were disclosed in the preliminary hearing of Edward Two Feathers Steele, who is charged with second-degree murder in the 13-month-old boy’s death on Aug. 3, 2022.

Testimony was presented in Mendocino County Superior Court before Judge Victoria Shanahan, who will rule whether there’s sufficient evidence for Steele to stand trial.

Proceedings concluded Friday without a decision. The matter is scheduled to be revisited this upcoming Wednesday afternoon, when Shanahan might decide which charges, if any, are appropriate.

Steele is also charged with two counts of child cruelty. He pleaded not guilty in September 2022 — one month after investigators found the boy and his 2-year-old brother in the 300 block of Brush Street.

They were identified in court as Kekoa and Uriah, respectively. Their mother, Sally Arellano, previously told The Press Democrat they lived in Covelo.

A coroner’s investigation ruled exposure to the environment, heat, abandonment, neglect and a viral infection played a role in Kekoa’s death, according to court testimony.

Investigators said Steele was dating Arellano and, during a night out, they had an argument early Aug. 2 in the 1700 block of North State Street in Ukiah.

Deputies arrested Arellano on suspicion of domestic violence and battery, and Steele retrieved the children from a babysitter at a Motel 6 on North Street.

Just before 8 a.m. on Aug. 3, surveillance footage from a storage facility showed the boys and Steele walking near railroad tracks that run north and south between businesses west of Highway 101.

Steele was last seen at 8:04 a.m., and the children appeared on camera throughout the day, said Redding Police Officer Ryan Murdaugh, a former Mendocino County sheriff’s deputy who investigated the 2022 case.

“They’re doing the same thing for hours. They’re just kind of there,” Murdaugh testified.

Just before 4 p.m. on Aug. 3, a passerby found the older child, who was taken to Adventist Health Ukiah Valley Hospital for life-threatening injuries.

Mendocino County Sheriff’s Lt. James Elmore testified the child was slumped over a rock under an oak tree. “He appeared very exhausted, dehydrated,” Elmore said.

Authorities searched the area before the younger sibling was found about 100 yards north of where his brother was located. The younger boy was pronounced dead at the scene.

Steele was identified as a person of interest, and members of the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians reported on Aug. 4 that he’d been spotted on the Hopland Rancheria.

Mendocino County Sheriff’s Det. Samuel Logan testified Friday Steele claimed he went east to the Russian River and stayed there for hours after leaving the boys.

“He said something to the effect of ‘I felt like I was burning up and I went there to cool off,’” Logan said.

The detective testified Steele claimed he next visited a convenience store for snacks before going to a friend’s home and then to Hopland Rancheria.

According to the detective, Steele said he left the boys with water but later retracted that statement, but maintained he believed the children would be fine.

Steele’s defense attorney, Joseph Stogner, emphasized Friday surveillance footage never showed him engaging in inappropriate behavior with the boys. He also maintained Steele believed the boys would have been fine and expressed shock and remorse when he learned what happened.

“Mr. Steele told you he would have traded his life for the children’s lives, correct?” Stogner asked Logan.

“Correct,” Logan replied.

Court proceedings have progressed slowly since Steele’s arrest.

Early on, officials said he refused to leave his cell at the Mendocino County jail to participate in hearings. Steele’s defense attorney at the time also presented concerns that he was not mentally competent to stand trial.

In March 2023, Shanahan ruled he was competent enough to support his defense.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

FOR SOME REASON, this bizarre passage from Raymond Chandler’s novel “Farewell My Lovely” (featuring detective Philip Marlowe) reminded me of Mendo’s Board of Supervisors on several levels:

“A shiny black bug with a pink head and pink spots on it crawled slowly along the polished top of Lt. Randall's desk and waved a couple of feelers around, as if testing the breeze for a takeoff. It wobbled a little as it crawled, like an old woman carrying too many parcels. A nameless dick sat at another desk and kept talking into an old-fashioned hushaphone telephone mouthpiece, so that his voice sounded like someone whispering in a tunnel. He talked with his eyes half closed, a big scarred hand on the desk in front of him holding a burning cigarette between the knuckles of the first and second fingers. The bug reached the end of Randall's desk and marched straight off into the air. It fell on its back on the floor, waved a few thin worn legs in the air feebly and then played dead. Nobody cared, so it began waving the legs again and finally struggled over on its face. It trundled slowly off into a corner towards nothing, going nowhere. … The pink bug reached a corner of the room and put feelers out for a good spot to take off from. It seemed a little discouraged. It went along the baseboard towards another corner. I lit a cigarette and the dick at the hushaphone abruptly got up and went out of the office. … ‘Look,’ I said. ‘This room is eighteen floors above ground. And this little bug climbs all the way up here just to make a friend. Me. My good luck piece.’ I folded the bug carefully into the soft part of my handkerchief and tucked the handkerchief into my pocket. Randall was pie-eyed. His mouth moved, but nothing came out of it.”

(Mark Scaramella)

CHOMO MAXED

Defendant Robert Stanley Hrbac, age 45, of Fort Bragg, was back in court in Ukiah for formal sentencing Thursday morning.

Defendant Hrbac was convicted by jury back on February 23rd of this year of the Continuous Sexual Abuse of Child Under The Age of 14 Years.

A conviction for the continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14 years is authorized by law when the prosecution proves beyond a reasonable doubt that three or more instances of substantial sexual conduct have been perpetrated on a child under the age of 14 years during a time period of no less than three months by a perpetrator who has recurring access to the victim.

Known as Penal Code section 288.5, this statute aims to protect minors from repeated sexual exploitation and holds perpetrators accountable for their actions by further authorizing longer terms in prison.

Defendant Hrbac was also convicted by the same jury of participating in a Conspiracy to Prevent or Dissuade the Child Victim from cooperating with the Sheriff Office’s investigation and the District Attorney’s prosecution of the defendant.

The defendant was previously convicted in 2006 of Lewd and Lascivious Acts on a Child Under the Age of 14 years, said conviction having been plead and proven at trial as a Strike conviction, within the meaning of California’s voter-modified Three Strikes law, as well as a separate sentence enhancement.

Thursday morning — after hearing arguments by the DA and defense attorney — Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder moved forward with pronouncing sentence by explaining his reasoning for (1) denying the defense motion to strike the prior Strike conviction and sentencing enhancement, and (2) for imposing the maximum sentence allowed by law.

When all was said and done, defendant Hrbac was sentenced to 43 years in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).

Because the Continuous Sexual Abuse conviction is deemed a violent felony by the Legislature, the defendant should be required to serve 85 percent of his 43 year sentence behind bars, assuming that the CDCR follows the current state of the law in regards to “early release” credits.

The prosecutor who argued at today’s hearing that justice demanded nothing less than a maximum sentence was District Attorney David Eyster.

THE REAL SARAHS & ALEX DE GRASSI ALBUM RELEASE CONCERT

The Friends of the Mendocino College Music Program (FMCMP), the newest affiliate of the Mendocino College Foundation, is excited to announce a concert with internationally acclaimed guitarist Alex de Grassi and friends. The concert, which will benefit the Mendocino College Music Program, is scheduled for Saturday, April 27 at 7pm in the Little Theater on the Ukiah campus of Mendocino College, 1000 Hensley Creek Road, Ukiah. Tickets are available online at brownpapertickets.com/event/6270196 and at the Mendocino Book Company in Ukiah and Mazahar in Willits.

In 2021 Alex de Grassi took on the position of guitar instructor at the Mendocino College Ukiah campus. He has since developed the guitar program from a single “all-comers” course into to two classes: the first geared primarily towards beginning students who are learning to play chords and simple arrangements, and the other course designed for intermediate and more advanced players with an emphasis on honing technical and performance skills. For this concert, Alex will be joined by music faculty member and Ukiah Symphony director Maestro Phillip Lenberg (also a fine guitarist), some TBA special guests, as well as some of the guitar program students to present a mix of solo, duo, and ensemble performances.

The Friends of the Mendocino College Music Program is a non-profit affiliate of the Mendocino College Foundation dedicated to creating additional opportunities for Mendocino College music students to learn and participate in musical events. Funds raised for the program can be used to bring guest musicians and lecturers into classes to share their expertise and expose students to a wider variety of musical experiences, to provide musical equipment and resources, and to create extra-curricular performance opportunities for students. The FMCMP affiliate’s board is comprised of some faculty members in addition to working musicians and members of the community with experience in music education.

Alex de Grassi has been a unique voice in the world of acoustic guitar for the past 40-plus years and his solo steel-string guitar recordings have influenced a generation of younger players. He has performed in concert venues and festivals around the world including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Montreux Jazz Festival, Belfast International Festival and the Bath Guitar Festival. Employing a broad palette of techniques and timbre to create a highly orchestrated sound, he has become known equally for his evocative compositions and arrangements as well as for his sheer virtuosity. His debut 1978 recording, Turning: Turning Back (cited by Acoustic Guitar magazine among their top ten essential fingerstyle recordings), and the subsequent recordings Slow Circle (1979) and Southern Exposure (1984), and his Grammy nominated recording The Water Garden (1998) are considered classics of the solo guitar genre. In addition, he has received commissions from the New York Guitar Festival to score for silent film as well as from String Letter Publishing to collaborate with violinist Jeremy Cohen (Quartet San Francisco) in an original work for guitar, string quartet and string orchestra. A Bay Area native, Alex currently lives in Mendocino County, dividing his time between Ukiah and Albion.

Advance tickets can be purchased online or at the Mendocino Book Company and Mazahar for $30. Tickets at the door will be $35 (cash or check only). All proceeds from the event will go to the Friends of the Mendocino College Music Program.

COMMUNITY SERVICES DISTRICT BOARD MEETINGS used to be more lively than they are these days. Back in the early 2000s a local man attending a Board meeting for the first time complained that he didn’t like looking at then-Board member and Firehouse Construction Manager Anne Bennett’s t-shirt for the entire meeting because, he said, it would be distracting. Director Bennett’s t-shirt had the name of her Boonville-based vacation rental business in large letters: “SHEEP DUNG.” Then-Board Chair Judy Long suggested that the simplest solution would be for Ms. Bennett to take the offending shirt off. “No, you can’t do that,” replied fellow Board member Tex Sawyer. “That would distract me!” 

(Mark Scaramella)

WHEN BARRY VOGEL INTERVIEWED BRUCE ANDERSON (2007)

radiocurious.org/2024/04/04/bruce-anderson-the-reporter-interviewed-2/

THE CHRISTENING OF THE MV MENDOCINO

by Hugh Scaramella (September 2001)

Things were about as exciting as they get in Mendoland on Friday, July 20th, 2001, when the MV Mendocino was officially christened at Noyo Harbor in Fort Bragg. A band played, people cheered, Mendo poobahs excoriated, and a champagne magnum finally shattered after repeated failed attempts to break it on the bow of northern California’s latest addition to the Golden Gate Bridge District’s commuter ferry fleet.

I had taken a few hours off from my Social Services job nearby and arrived at Jim Cumming’s Dock in Noyo Harbor where a large crowd was greeted by a huge banner on the Noyo Bridge which advertised Fetzer-brand alcoholic beverages. Numerous speakers without much to say spoke — and spoke, and spoke, and spoke… Mrs. Delbar, the apparent wife of then-Second District Supervisor Michael Delbar, spoke at length of the glories and bounty of eastern Mendocino County. An unidentified representative of State Senator Wesley Chesbro described her recent trip to Lisbon, Portugal, and a bridge there which, she gleefully noted, was similar to the Golden Gate Bridge! Who knew?! 

The owner of the shipyard where the MV Mendocino was built described all the teamwork that went into the construction of the large catamaran-style high-speed ferry. The manager of the Golden Gate Transit Fleet Division introduced various employees. Hal Brown, President of the Golden Gate Transit Authority Board kept his remarks mercifully short, noting that “every elected official between Fort Bragg and Reno” had said it all already. So true.

Making matters worse, the tedious speechifying was elongated by countless “flourishes” served up by the five-piece band situated on the top deck of the MV Mendocino. Almost at random, it seemed, the band would erupt with a salutatory tah-ta-ta-tah-ta-ta-TAHHHH! before, during and after each elocution. Almost every momentary pause by a speaker invariably produced another jolting flourish. 

There appeared to be hundreds of important people in attendance who were allowed to sit in white chairs up front with white name tags. Other notables in attendance were Fourth District Supervisor Patti Campbell, Sheriff Tony Craver, and former Third District Supervisor Jim Eddie. Eddie was credited with engineering the naming of the boat after the County of Mendocino — part of the cush job he got as Mendocino County’s appointed member of the Golden Gate Bridge District after he retired from the Board of Supervisors. Why tiny Del Norte County got a ferry named in its honor before Mendocino County remains a curiosity. Napa County thus became the only Golden Gate Bridge District member county to be without a ferry namesake. (This embarrassing oversight was later corrected when the MV Snohomish was renamed the MV Napa.)

After the speechifying, a delegation of poobahs made its way on to the vessel to do the actual christening. For some reason known only to the poobahs, the delegation stopped at midship — a photo op? — where there appeared to be a gangway opening, at which time a large red and black banner was unfurled which looked very much like the United Farm Workers’ flag. A large antique two-handed woodsaw magically appeared and several poobahs pantomimed sawing the banner in half. Fortunately, the banner had been pre-perforated so it easily split in half as planned before anyone could get a good look at it. 

The poobah delegation then marched to the bow of the ship and a large magnum of bubbly was produced. 

It never ceases to amaze in this day and age that public officials insist on christening things by shattering a perfectly good bottle of booze and sending several pounds of broken glass into the poor, overburdened and polluted environment. Are these people supposed to be our role models, condoning the continued pollution of Noyo Harbor with more piles of glass shards? Arrgh.

In any event, the comely mistress of ceremonies was designated as Official Christener. She gamely whacked the magnum against the MV Mendocino’s front guardrail several times to no avail. The stout magnum refused to shatter. The scene was reminiscent of Bess Truman’s first public event as First Lady when she tried in vain to christen a World War II Navy vessel, but the stubborn bottle would not shatter.

And so it was Bess Truman Revisited, Mendo style, as our lovely mistress of ceremonies banged the bottle on the guardrail time and time again to shatter the magnum. No luck. 

After several frustrating minutes, the Golden Gate Transit Fleet Manager, looking both embarrassed and irritated, snatched the magnum from the mistress of ceremonies and hauled off and bashed the magnum on the guardrail himself. Hard. Success! Pounds of glass shards and a few ounces of bubbly finally made their way into the Noyo. As far as I could tell, no one was hurt.

After this halting accomplishment, the poohbah delegation made its way back to the aft of the ship where Supervisor Campbell took it upon herself to personally greet the hundreds of fellow boarders entering the new ship to inspect it. 

The band began playing what at first seemed to be an unfamiliar tune, until I realized that they were doing their own special version of the 70s tune, ‘Mendocino.’ I always thought of it more as a keyboard tune.

And there it was, the sun shining, the band playing ‘Mendocino,’ and the glistening catamaran proudly resting in Noyo Harbor just before making its way south to San Francisco Bay. The new boat proudly tooted its horn and two Fort Bragg Volunteer Fire Department representative engines chimed in with their noisy honking. Log trucks up on Noyo Bridge added to the cacophony as they drove overhead. 

It was a fun event, but next time I’d try simply cutting a ribbon. Less pollution. More probability of success. 

(Ed note: Although it needed a major overhaul a few years after it was christened when it was discovered that the MV Mendocino was built with substandard materials, the MV Mendocino is still in service to this day shuttling passengers from Larkspur to San Francisco and back every day.)

A DETAIL CROPPED from a far larger map published in San Francisco in 1877. There wasn't much in Mendocino County at this point, and hardly any railroads . . . just a lot of open land, timber and some rising (but cautious) optimism. 

The cautious optimism was due to the remains of the Great Panic of 1871-77, one of those serial financial meltdowns that wrecked some weaker banks, put a stranglehold on financing and the availability of cash and coin. That kept business and hopes for settlement and development of land and natural resources from getting a decent foothold. Much of that growth had to wait for the mid-1880s to get rolling.

The San Francisco & North Pacific Railroad, owned by Peter Donahue of San Francisco, was still stuck with a Cloverdale railhead. Plans to push north to "Ukiah City" were only on paper. Likewise the pie-in-the-sky dreams of getting Humboldt and Eureka an outside railroad connection. Railroads to the North Coast were not happening, short of those scant few tiny early logging operations that would remain isolated, acting like conveyor belts to get logs to the railroad owner's sawmills and nothing more. To go anywhere meant stagecoaches and saddle-horses, or on foot, or by sea.

Yale University - Beinecke Library digital collections (online)

WHEN COWBOY JOHN PINCHES RE-RAN FOR SUPERVISOR

by Jim Shields (July 2001)

The big news on the political front is that John Pinches has thrown his cowboy hat into the ring.

After months of mulling it over, the Laytonville rancher decided a couple of days ago to seek the 3rd District Supe seat he once held during the mid-1990s.

For some time family, friends and political supporters have been urging him to declare for the race, but Pinches said the deciding factor came from other — rather unexpected — quarters.

“Quite a few people have stopped me out in the street or in stores and told me they want me run for supervisor even though they didn’t vote for me when I ran the first time,” Pinches said.

“I was in Willits one day and this guy comes up to me on the street,” Pinches related. “He introduced himself by telling me, ‘I didn’t vote for you the last time (in the 1994 supervisor election), but you’ve got my vote now because they sure don’t want you back in Ukiah. That tells me they don’t want anybody down there who knows what they’re up to’.”

The man was referring to several issues involving Pinches and the Board. Earlier in the year the Supes — with the exception of David Colfax and Tom Lucier — refused to even consider Pinches for the then-vacant position of Director of the Department of Transportation. Lucier, who is the incumbent 3rd District Supervisor, said at the meeting where the DOT vacancy was discussed, that Pinches was the best person for the job, someone with a long track record and the knowledge to match in the transportation area. But Pinches made it clear that DOT would be in for a shakeup because he felt that repairing the County’s dilapidated road system, especially in the rural areas, had become a low priority. The Supes didn’t take kindly to that insinuation, notwithstanding the fact that it’s, well, a fact. In fact — don’t you love it when I give you the facts —at this Tuesday’s Supes’ meeting, a plain ol’ citizen named James Madlock addressed the Board on the very same subject. Mr. Madlock urged the Supes to “prioritize” fixing the roads in upcoming budget sessions.

Looking directly at all five Supes, Mr. Madlock said, “I just want to let you know that every time a constituent hits a pothole, they think of you.”

The blunt-speaking Pinches also ran afoul of the Supes when he spoke at a budget session last year. He criticized the Board for the controversial “Slavin Study” raises, calling it “a cloud over your heads.”

He faulted the Supes for approving Slavin raises which allow “some department heads to receive 40% salary increases.” He told the Board that rather than raising department heads’ salaries, “you should be holding them accountable” for poor job performance.

Pinches also says it was a big mistake for the county to issue nearly $24 million in bonds to finance $14 million-plus in new building construction. He also alleges, but County officials deny the charge, that the remainder of the bond issuance was used to pay for the Slavin Study payroll increases.

“When you start treating borrowed money (the $24 million bond) as income, this county is heading for disaster,” Pinches says. “I guess the Board has forgotten that it wasn’t too long ago that the Courthouse was encumbered to a bank in Japan (when the County was near bankruptcy). I don’t want to see that happen again. I can’t believe that this County would encumber another $24 million in debt.”

Pinches argues that given the problem of budget deficits at both the local and state levels, the Supes should be exercising fiscal restraint — particularly with the new construction projects. 

“New buildings in Ukiah and Willits aren’t going to do people much good if the County doesn’t have the revenues to pay for the services,” Pinches commented. “What’s more important, getting the services out to the people who need them, or spending the money constructing new buildings with ongoing overhead when the county is trying to balance a deficit budget…? I don’t think you have much choice other than to defer the building projects until you’ve got the revenue to pay for them.”

He’s also disturbed that the Board “appears not to be listening to the Sheriff, the District Attorney, the judges, and everybody else who is begging them to keep the PHF (Psychiatric Health Facility) open.”

The PHF, located at the Low Gap Road County complex, provides acute psychiatric care and other inpatient services to the seriously mentally ill, including those charged with crimes or being treated against their will (so-called “5150” cases from the penal code section of the same number). The Board is considering a Mental Health Department proposal to shut down the PHF and contract those services out-of-county.

“I think at some point you have to make a decision that is best for the majority of the people,” Pinches said. “With the exception of the Mental Health Department, just about everybody else who is directly affected by the PHF is saying it must be kept open because we need it operating here locally. I think the Board really needs to pay attention to what Sheriff Craver and the others are saying. Also, I just can’t imagine that people who need that kind of care are going to be better off by closing the PHF and sending them outside the county.”

One thing’s for certain — with Pinches back in politics as a candidate, neither the voters or the press need worry about a boring campaign. They’ll both run out of issues to raise and questions to ask long before the Laytonville cowboy runs out of something to say. 

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, April 5, 2024

RICHARD BRATTON, Clayton/Ukiah. Controlled substance, failure to appear, probation revocation.

RACHEL DALTON, Palo Alto/Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun.

TONYA ENGEL, Willits. DUI, leaving scene of accident with property damage.

DOMINIC FABER, Ukiah. Controlled substance, parole violation.

DANIELA FAVILA, Ukiah. Resisting.

ALDEN LARVIE, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, probation revocation.

JEREMY LOPRESTI, Ukiah. Controlled substance, probation revocation.

JACOB SHIPMAN, Willits. Failure to appear.

DANIEL VANHORN, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance, probation revocation.

SUPERVISOR MAUREEN MULHEREN:

A lot of times when people ask What they can do to help? It reminds me of a conversation that I had with someone that was recently released from jail and heard “You’ll be back, its only a matter of time.” He said what if that wasn’t what I heard, what if I heard “You’ve got it, I know you can stay out this time.” 

Our recidivism rate is anywhere between 65%-85% most months at our County jail. It’s the same people cycling through. 

What if this time is different? 

What if you can help make a difference? 

Are you a second chance employer? 

Do you have housing available? 

Are you a non-profit or advocate? 

Can you provide legal services? 

Are you a Public Safety Professional that wants to send a message that there is hope and you want these folks to be successful? 

Are you a religious or social organization? 

Formerly incarcerated or justice involved youth or adult, or a member of their family? 

Living a successful life in sobriety? 

Can you sponsor raffle prizes, have a donation?

Please come and support our community at this Re-Entry Resource Fair. Contact Buffey Bourassa at bourassab@mendocinosheriff.org if you have questions or want to see if there is booth space left.

UKIAH AS LEARNING EXPERIENCE

Spiritually Anchored in a Lost Earthly Civilization

Warmest spiritual greetings, 

Sitting here at the Ukiah Public Library on computer #1 at 3:21 PM, non-attached to the insane irritating crap which constitutes American politics, nor the meaninglessness of consumerism, two years have gone by at the Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center. The seriously bizarre incidents resulting from illicit drug overdoses, plus more humorous mishaps due to alcohol intoxication, have broken up the tedium of waiting for nearly non-existent housing. Going through the motions of social living has filled the hours. This includes eating at Plowshares free of charge, or at the Ukiah Co-op and paying, and later, shopping at Safeway for evening food (mostly purchased at a manager's 50% discount). The homeless resource center offers free showers, laundry machines, and a computer and phones are available. Staff is always there to assist. Stay sane, do not take illicit drugs, be realistic when consuming alcoholic beverages, and you will go where you need to go and do what you need to do. More importantly, never identify with the body nor the mind. Do identify with the Immortal Divine Absolute which works through the body and the mind. This is what has been confirmed during the past two years in Ukiah, California. Peaceout.

Craig Louis Stehr

HUFFMAN’S 2024 COMMUNITY PROJECTS

As part of the Fiscal Year 2024 package, Rep. Huffman secured more than $10.2 million in Community Project Funding for Northwest California.

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 an assortment of educational amusements to occupy you until showtime, or any time, such as:

Here's why it is a federal felony to bring even the tiniest quantity of elemental mercury anywhere near an airplane. https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2024/04/tweet-of-day.html

"Wake up outta your sleep, I command you in the name of Jesus. Wake up, wake up, wake up." https://laughingsquid.com/wake-up-preacher-heavy-metal-alarm/

And northern lights plus volcano. Volcano. Volcano. Volcano. Iceland. https://theawesomer.com/volcano-northern-lights/735611/

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

BACK IN THE LATE 1990’s Julia Hill climbed a 1500-year-old redwood tree named Luna and she didn’t come down for another 738 days. From December 1997 to December 1999, she lived in the canopy of a giant 1500 year old redwood tree named Luna. She ended her revolutionary action when an agreement was made with Pacific Lumber Company to spare the tree and a 200 foot buffer zone surrounding the tree.

Once up the tree, she vowed not to come down until she had made a difference. Clinging to her mattress through violent storms, supported with food and necessities by a ground crew, she stayed two years and eight days.

GOLDEN MILK

Editor,

You better save up. A horn of Zeese in Healdsburg nowadays could really set you back around here.

We have a new place in town -- vegan -- and you can get a hot morning drink for $7.50. It is really terrible tasting, but they say it's good for you. It's pale yellow, called a Golden Milk. Oat milk, turmeric, ginger — sounds good so far. But then comes maca, cordy seps, mucuna, topped off with pepper and maldon salt.

I dare anyone to guzzle it. I go once a week and choke it down by the spoonful, going with the notion and hope that it's good for me. I would bring one to you door dash style but I don't think reviving it in the microwave does it any good. The vegan place is called Little Saint.

I've been here for 40 years. My husband bought our house in 1969. As I mentioned, we relished the arrival of the AVA at Levin & Co. years ago each week. Then we moved away and something happened to our brains. We forgot about it. You can't imagine our surprise to find you hadn't lost one iota in all these years — maybe 15! How this miracle occurred is that I had a bolt of lightning thought about the AVA and I googled it. There you were — not at all diminished by everything that could have happened to a paper.

Today as I sat in the vitreoRetinal "consultant's" office waiting for my eye injection, I pulled out my AVA, full spread out newspaper, and the entire packed waiting room was in envy as they pecked away on their phones.

Get better soon! I've had many friends come back stronger than ever from the damnedist ailments. I had a brain aneurysm myself. My Irish luck: the aneurysm occured while at a doctor's office. Sutter pulled me back from the brink. No problemo!

Best wishes,

Mary Olson Welch

Healdsburg

PS. I like to write letters. I am a good penpal type.

AN EASTER POEM

Editor,

Here is my poem, "Easter Bunting" — opening day, the holy of holies.

Easter Bunting

Opening Day —

No rock

to roll away.

Just an 

umpire's 

Cry: Play!

Williiam J. Hughes

Sacramento

GIANTS’ SEASON OF CHANGE gives fans a strange brew of old and new on Opening Day

by Ann Killion

Before the San Francisco Giants’ home opener began, a grainy video of a very young man speaking in a high voice appeared on the center field board.

It took a minute to realize it was 24-year-old Bob Melvin, from his first year as a catcher with the Giants in 1986 — a clip in an homage to the Giants new manager.

Fast-forward 38 years and there was Melvin trotting out on the field and receiving one of the loudest rounds of applause in pregame introductions from the sellout crowd of 40,645.

The Giants new manager represents both a throughline to the past and a reset for a team that badly needed one.

Melvin acknowledged that those long-ago Opening Days at Candlestick Park were on his mind Friday.

“The nerves of Opening Day and being here again and in this uniform,” he said. “It was a pretty cool feeling.

“I didn’t expect that thing on the scoreboard.” he added. “It was a little much. I appreciate it, but it went on a little too long for me.”

Melvin was happy the game didn’t go on too long. Thairo Estrada doubled to drive in the winning run in the bottom of the ninth, giving the Giants a 3-2 win and snapping their four-game losing streak.

Friday was an official homecoming, not only for Melvin but other members of the Giants baseball family. Matt Williams and Pat Burrell were on the field as coaches on Melvin’s staff. Dusty Baker was back as a special adviser.

Even those who have been around the Giants in recent years noted there is a more welcoming feel to the team now, under Melvin’s leadership. That their expertise and knowledge are appreciated.

Barry Bonds leaned on the backstop during batting practice and then sprinted down to the cage for more pregame work with batters. A friend noted that Bonds is so happy to feel that his presence is valued — and his work with Michael Conforto is clearly paying dividends. Conforto went 3-for-4 with an RBI.

Will Clark has been a special assistant to the Giants for a while but also feels his insight is more welcome now than it was under former manager Gabe Kapler.

“A thousand percent,” Clark said. “I can see the change in attitude.”

Part of the change is how information is imparted and processed.

“Instead of having so much information bombarded on you, there’s a different way of communicating,” Clark said, noting that players are treated individually, “instead of making it be like a cookie cutter.”

Those are new and good things this season. What else is new and good with the Giants?

Alyssa Nakken is a brand-new mom and showed off pictures of her 2-month-old daughter Austyn. The first MLB coach to ever take maternity leave received maybe the second biggest cheer — after Melvin — in introductions.

Jung Hoo Lee has brought a new element to the ballpark: several members of the Korean media. Lee speaks with them in the clubhouse before every game, a respectful thing to do for people who have uprooted their lives to cover him.

Blake Snell will make his debut with the Giants on Monday night and his former Rays teammate Alex Cobb predicts fans will love him.

“He’s a lefty from Seattle,” Cobb said. “He’s exactly what you’d expect.”

What’s new and weird at the ballpark? Nick Ahmed was assigned Brandon Crawford’s spare shoe locker. The Public House, a lovely name for a drinking establishment, has been rebranded as 58 Social, which not only sounds like an app but an online search for it produces links to a former president’s personal social media brand.

What about the things that are new and not so great? Yeah, there are things on that list, too.

The ballpark sounded different on Friday. No, not the new upgraded sound system which, honestly, sounded exactly the same. The change was that there was no Renel Brooks-Moon, and her absence was obvious. Friday’s PA announcer was CJ Silas, who announces baseball at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. The Giants have said they will rotate the job until they find a replacement for Brooks-Moon, whose voice was the backdrop of the ballpark at Third and King.

Jon Miller announced the on-field lineups, something Brooks-Moon had done in the past. Brooks-Moon’s departure from the team — which those close to her have said was not an ending of her choosing — remains awkward. It’s strange that the Giants couldn’t find a way for her to return for a final and 25th season.

Also new and not so great: the lack of tiles at the McCovey Cove park on the other side of the Lefty O’Doul Bridge. In perhaps the most baffling move by an organization that has made a boatload of weird decisions recently, the Giants allowed 6,000 tiles that fans bought two decades ago to be destroyed during the park’s reconstruction in recent years.

The announcement last week that the tiles could not be salvaged and would, instead, be displayed digitally, was met with howls of outrage from those who spent $95 or $225 for tiles inscribed with their own names or the names of loved ones. The Giants backtracked and said they will come up with a different plan, though they did not provide details — if they have the digital images, how hard would it be to re-create the tiles? The revamped park, by the way, has plenty of room to display the tiles.

Also in the new and not great category, the Giants will soon be a monopoly in the Bay Area. This week’s news that the Oakland A’s will depart for the Giants’ own Triple-A ballpark next season was met with sadness and a measure of disbelief.

“I feel bad for Oakland,” said Baker.

“It’s not good for Bay Area sports,” said Clark.

But the Giants are culpable in the move, having blocked the A’s path to San Jose years ago (though many of us are still skeptical that John Fisher would have achieved a ballpark there), voting for the move to Las Vegas last November, and cooperating with the A’s jump to Sacramento.

When an entity has a monopoly on the market it doesn’t have to try as hard to please the captive customer. That can’t bode well for Giants fans.

But on a sunny Opening Day at Third and King, there were plenty of much-needed changes and lots of reason for optimism.

(sfchronicle.com)

OAKLAND HAS TWO NEW BASEBALL HEROES—AND A BILLIONAIRE OWNER RUINING EVERYTHING

by Dave Zirin

There are few sports more institutionally conservative than Major League Baseball. Team owners expect their employees to shut up and hit; players are allowed to be quirky—not political. Over the 150 years of the sport, there aren’t many who have earned the right to be called rebels.

That changed in Oakland this past week. Two Oakland A’s players decided to show solidarity with their hometown fans who are outraged by the team’s planned 2028 move to Las Vegas. Outfielders Esteury Ruiz and Brent Rooker wore wrist bands from an organization called Last Dive Bar, which has been organizing protests at A’s games against the move. As an alleged result, Ruiz was sent down to the minor leagues despite a .429 batting average, and Rooker was shown the bench even though he was the A’s lone all-star a year ago. The same A’s organization that banished catcher Bruce Maxwell to the minor leagues when he took a knee during the anthem is once again apparently punishing players for choosing to use their minds. (The Nation contacted the players’ union, the Major League Baseball Players Association, about whether it would be investigating, and they issued a “no comment.”)

The alleged crackdown on dissent now makes even more sense. The team’s owner John Fisher, a petty authoritarian and Gap clothing heir, announced on Thursday that until the 2028 move to Vegas, he will be moving the team out of the Oakland Coliseum and to West Sacramento where they will play in a minor league ballpark called Sutter Health Park. For their three years in Sacramento, they will be known only as the A’s. No Oakland. No Sacramento. Just the stateless A’s. Sutter Health Park seats 10,000 people, but the numbers can swell as high as 14,000 when accounting for lawn seating. This is where Fisher, who has been gutting the team for years despite inheriting most of his net worth of $3.3 billion, will perch until 2028, when a $1.5 billion monument to Las Vegas greed awaits him in the form of a new stadium. Until that ballpark opens, it’s Sacramento (though we won’t say Sacramento).

This is a disgrace: a Major League all-timer up there with Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park and the day in 1976 when the Chicago White Sox all wore shorts as a publicity stunt. Fisher, an aggrieved baby, would rather be a national punchline than spend one more moment in Oakland. Meanwhile the people of Oakland, just a few years after losing the NFL’s Oakland Raiders, are faced with another defection. It’s painful to anyone who cares about baseball history and one of the best fan bases in the sport. This is the team of Rickey Henderson, Rollie Fingers, and Vida Blue. This is the team of Reggie Jackson of the Bash Brothers of Moneyball. To see Fisher humiliate this franchise and the city of Oakland on his way out the door demands a rebuke.

One may imagine that strong words would be coming from Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred. One would be wrong. All Manfred has done was to issue congratulations to the people of Sacramento. Not a word of endearment for Oakland’s baseball history. As I’ve written before, it staggers me how much Manfred apparently hates baseball: its fans, its players, and the best of its traditions. Oakland losing the A’s is an indictment of Manfred, Fisher, and all the billionaires trying to tell us that we should be paying for their stadiums. The people of Oakland stood up to this logic, and now they are being punished. This isn’t about baseball. It’s about capital flight from our cities. It’s about the subjugation of our history. It’s about the 1 percent picking the meat off the bones of our cities. 

But Las Vegas residents aren’t patsies. Currently there is a citizen’s movement being funded by the Nevada Education Association to get the question of whether to fund the stadium on the ballot. They are appearing before a judge on April 9 to see if they can put whether to spend $380 million in public funds for a ballpark up for a vote. The name of the case? Schools Over Stadiums v. Thompson. Let’s go Schools.

WHAT DOES $100 REALLY BUY YOU AT THE GROCERY STORE? 

Fascinating data shows how inflation has eroded shoppers' buying power by a third since 2019

by Helina Kelly

Inflation has eroded around a third of the buying power of $100 at the grocery store in five years, new analysis has found.

In 2019, the sum would have bought shoppers a healthy 32-item bag complete with milk, eggs, cereal, dish soap and more.

However today customers would have to take at least 10 of those products out of their basket to maintain the same budget.

The figures, collated by market insights firm NielsenIQ, lay bare just how stretched household finances have become in the face of red-hot inflation. 

The rate of annual inflation rose slightly to 3.2 percent in February, the latest data available. 

It marks a decline from a 40-year-high of 9.1 percent in June 2022 but remains well above the Federal Reserve's 2 percent target. 

According to NielsenIQ's figures - seen by DailyMail.com - a grocery shop filled with peanut butter, jam, milk, chocolate, lunch meats, flour, crackers and toilet roll among other items would reach a total of $100.30.

But today shoppers would have to remove items such as bananas, oat milk, soda, chocolate and crackers to whittle the bill down to $100.02. 

The products to have seen the biggest price rises include laundry detergent which has increased by $2.83 to $10.66 on average.

Toilet roll has similarly increased $2.67 to $9.75 while eggs - once seen as the poster child for inflation - were up by $1.48 to $3.84. 

The cost of peanut butter has also risen $1.04 while jam has shot up $1.12. 

Nielsen's data looked at the average unit price for products in the 52 weeks ending March 23 compared with prices in the 52 weeks ending March 28, 2020.

In real terms, prices for hundreds of grocery staples have increased more than 50 percent since 2019. 

It comes after a host of budget retailers have been forced to raise the prices on some of their products. 

DailyMail.com analysis shows how much each item has increased in price since 2019

Trader Joe's recently upped the price of a single banana from 19 to 23 cents - a 21 percent increase in costs. 

Even value store Dollar Tree said it will up the price cap at its stores - where once everything was $1 or less - to $7. 

The average American household now spends $1,080 per month at the grocery store as two years of rampant inflation takes its toll on household budgets.

Analysis of US Census data in January showed shopping costs vary by as much as $304 per month state-by-state.

The findings, from HelpAdvisor, show grocery spending is highest in California where the average household splashes out $297.72 per week - or around $1,190 per month.

It was followed by Nevada, Mississippi and Washington where weekly spending amounts to $294.76, $290.64 and $287.67 respectively.

By contrast, households in Wisconsin spend the least on groceries, with their weekly shop totaling $221.46 - or $885.84 per month.

After the Badger State, Iowa and Nebraska came in as the cheapest places to shop where families weekly grocery spend is $227.32 and $235.12 respectively.

(DailyMail.com)

JOSH DOBBS (QB-2) praises Brock Purdy and reveals why he signed with the 49ers:

“We played him in Arizona, and that’s why I respected him so much… Now, he does have a great cast, but at the end of the day, he has to be the decision-maker and the driving force of the offense, and the way he makes good decisions, takes care of the football and plays just efficient, clean football. He might not go out there and make the 'wow' play all the time, but he’s going to go out there and put his team in a great position to be successful. And that’s what you have to do, especially in the Shanahan offense, especially when you have some really good weapons around you.

And so that’s why I’ve respected seeing how he’s been able to quickly do that from the first year, getting thrown into the fire, because I know what that feels like. And then being able to go to the NFC Championship game, be one injury away from going to the Super Bowl, and then go to the Super Bowl the next year in the midst of, obviously, all the people trying to say he’s a game manager, yada, yada, yada…

At the end of the day, he wins football games and he plays efficient football. That’s all you can ask for. So that’s what I’m most excited about, just being able to obviously provide my perspective on what I’ve learned throughout the league and be able to assume whatever role that looks like this upcoming year. But to be around that and that coaching and that type of player and that type of room and that consistency, I think it’d be really good for me, and I’m excited to see what I'll be able to add and help the team with for this upcoming year.”

via: Adam Schefter Podcast

AT THIS POINT IN MY LIFE I would rather be dead than married. Occasionally in my naive youth, I thought it would be nice to be married so I could have regular sex without a lot of distraction and bother, but as time went on, it began to dawn on me that marriage was the least efficient source of what I wanted. As for not having children, let's put it this way: My hero is Good King Herod. I have never understood child molestation because in order to molest a child, you have to be in the same room with a child, and I don't know how perverts stand it.

— Florence King

THE SECRET TO CAITLIN CLARK’S SHOOTING POWER

The University of Iowa basketball star has made one “logo” shot after another. Her coach and other fitness experts say it’s all in the physical and mental training.

by Talya Minsberg

When Caitlin Clark, the 22-year-old University of Iowa point guard, lines up against the University of Connecticut team on Friday night, she will most likely shoot the ball from far past the 3-point line. Then, against all odds and all coaching philosophies, she is likely to do so again, and again, and again. Whoever is unlucky enough to try to defend her is left to do little but shrug.

How does she do it, beyond having a once-in-a-generation type of talent? She trains aggressively, and for endurance. Her muscles must be able to withstand quick bursts of speed and agility and have the power needed to propel her skyward for her signature logo, or close to half-court, shots. They also need to be strong enough to sustain those quick motions for the entirety of a high-stress game without growing too fatigued to function. And she needs mental resilience to maintain that level of play without losing confidence or focus when things aren’t going smoothly.

Many of those skills are built in the gym with Lindsay Alexander, the associate strength and conditioning coach for Iowa’s women’s basketball team. Ms. Alexander is focused on a single question: “How do we make a more durable athlete?”

The answer is a combination of conditioning, aerobic work and plyometrics, a group of exercises that use rapid movements to build muscle power. Players do squats and deadlifts, and use a bench press to improve their upper-body and core strength. Ms. Alexander focuses particularly on strengthening players’ legs, which are especially important for shooting.

She also works with Ms. Clark and other players to enhance their cardiovascular health by doing drills known as intervals or tempo runs: Players run at hard paces and then take short breaks to recover. Over time, this kind of training makes it easier for their bodies to recover quickly from high-intensity activity.

“You’ve got to practice how you play,” Ms. Alexander said. “We practice up-tempo, fast-paced, hard basketball, so that’s how I view the weight room and the conditioning piece. I use that space to make them ready for practice, ready to be able to do it over and over again.”

Last summer, a clip of Ms. Clark training in the off-season went viral. Her regimen included 300 shots: one hundred three-pointers, one hundred free throws and one hundred from midrange. Ms. Alexander recalled watching the footage and texting Ms. Clark: “I don’t think you were running fast enough.”

In an interview with ESPN, Clark said she had entered college with a long and lean physique, like “a little twig.”

“The strength and conditioning program was a big help for me,” she said. Her body “started coming into its own” during her sophomore year, she added, and her leg strength has helped propel those 3-pointers.

In training, Ms. Alexander has focused on the explosive fast-twitch muscle fibers that players use over and over again to sprint and jump. When those muscles are used for extended periods of time, like during a competitive basketball game, lactic acid can begin to build up, tiring the muscles out. Strengthening the muscles through varying types of squats in the gym can help players sustain that speed for longer.

Improving recovery time is also essential, Ms. Alexander said. When a timeout is called or there is a break between quarters, players need to be able to get themselves back to their base-line heart rate — calming their respiratory and nervous systems and flushing the lactic acid out of their legs — before being able to quickly hit the court again and play at their highest level.

In training, Ms. Alexander also regularly measures how players are jumping and loading their weight on their feet using force plate testing, which involves a machine that tests leg strength and fatigue. She may adapt individual training programs based on that data — for example, having a player work with a coach on leg strengthening exercises if it’s clear they are tiring out too quickly from shooting.

The combination of those training elements is critical for a player like Ms. Clark, said Toby Edwards, an exercise scientist who works with the Australian cycling team and who co-authored a 2018 study on fatigue and basketball. The study found that by monitoring and tracking both workload and fatigue, coaches can better prescribe workloads that make the most of training and decrease fatigue, allowing athletes to perform at a higher level.

All of these efforts also help build the confidence and mental resilience of the players. They know their bodies are conditioned for the physicality of high-level play, because they have exceeded those levels of exhaustion in practice, Ms. Alexander said: “Our practices are way harder than our games.”

I was always a loner. I've been a loner for a long, long time. I wasn't into being friendly. I fought all the black guys that the other white guys wouldn't fight. That's how come I got so many fights - 1943, I beat four undefeated middleweights in six weeks, and the last one was Sugar Ray [Robinson], the first loss of his career. Three weeks later I fought him again and he beat me. I was ranked number one for five years and I couldn't get a title shot. I had to throw a fight to get that shot.

— Jake LaMotta

HOW DIFFICULT IT IS, in these days when you can discuss orgasms over the soup and flagellation with the ice cream, how extraordinarily difficult it is to remember the strength of the old taboos, the depth of silence by which they were surrounded!

— Aldous Huxley

VECTORING DANGEROUSLY

by James Kunstler

“Strategic ambiguity requires strategic capabilities. Otherwise, it’s just make-believe.” — Lee Slusher on “X”

If your situational awareness is well-tuned, you can put together a political weather report from the swirl of events that otherwise seem to confound the degenerate simps who pretend to report the news. Events are tending in the direction of self-reinforcing, ramifying chaos, and the people running the show are obviously insane as they do everything possible to hurry chaos along.

Case in point: Antony Blinken, our Secretary of State, who announced yesterday that Ukraine will get rushed into NATO ASAP. Do you understand that would mean a direct, automatic, peremptory declaration of war against Russia, requiring all of NATO — that is, their combined militaries — to go kinetic inside Ukraine and theoretically inside Russia, too, (a move that has not worked out well for anyone in all of history), because Article Five of the NATO charter states that an armed attack against one is an attack against all, and must be answered with counter-attack? Thus, you see, Mr. Blinken just announced World War Three.

You might also consider that NATO does not have the capacity to fight that war. The European members don’t have sufficient troops and equipment, or financial reserves for that matter. And there is, of course, America’s under-recruited DEI army of transsexuals and video-gamers, with equipment that has already proven inadequate on-the-ground in Ukraine, and a logistical route for delivery of all that which runs 5,000 miles across an ocean and then another continent. . . whereas our opponent (Russia) is right next door to the battlefield and churning out munitions like there is no tomorrow (which there might well not be for all concerned). Even Adolf Hitler, the last fool to attempt a conquest of Russia, wouldn’t like those odds.

And why would Russia desist from firing hypersonic missiles at Berlin, Paris, London, New York and. . . ? You get the idea. In which case the USA, backstopping NATO, would lob swarms of our nuclear missiles into Russia. . . and the whole shootin’ match ends up twenty minutes later a smoldering, civilization-ending mess. Smooth move, Tony Blinken. In political weather terms, this is like an arctic shear cutting across the northern hemisphere.

At the same time, you might notice a financial la Nina forming out over the salty sea. Gold chugged up above $2,300-an-ounce the past ten days, a record. That’s a coded message from Reality Central. My de-coder ring says it means the bond market is about to fall on its ass, taking the dollar down with it, which would swiftly domino into the way-overpriced equity markets, and Gawd knows what kind of maelstrom all the derivatives flotsam would get sucked into. Notice, too that Bitcoin goes up $3,000 one day and down $2,000 the next. Kind of sketchy. But that’s just my take. If you have one, I’d like to hear it. In any case, it looks like stormy financial weather which, if nothing else, is not exactly an advantageous accompaniment to a world war. In fact, it could beat a path quickly to something like empty supermarket shelves — and you know what they say about a population being a few missed meals away from anarchy.

Then there’s the immense cluster of twisters moving ominously across the planet in the form of the Covid vaccination dysregulated immunity fiasco I wrote about in last Friday’s blog (This Is Not an April Fool’s Gag), as predicted by virologist Dr. Vanden Bossche. Translation: a lot of people getting sick and dying because their mRNA shots and boosters have so screwed-up their immune systems that they are sitting ducks for an emergent variant of Covid gestating in the vaxxed population. By the way, there is apparently a gross breakdown in medical services world-wide now, especially a shortage of doctors and nurses. Now you’re starting to see some serious stormy weather: a war, a financial train wreck, and a global public health disaster all at once.

While all that is churning things up, the next round of Trump trials are set to kick off in Alvin Bragg’s New York and Fani Willis’s Fulton County (Atlanta), GA. Both cases have publicly wrecked themselves. In the New York case, you have the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan, Loren Merchan, 37, a Democratic Party consultant who has multi-million-dollar contracts with Rep. Adam Schiff, the nation’s leading RussiaGate hoaxer, and working partner of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, a chief witness in the matter of a hush-money payment made to porn-star Stormy Daniels (hush money, you might note, not being illegal). Any political motivation to see in that cast of characters? And that is apart from the sheer bullshit nature of the case, as packaged for Mr. Bragg by US Attorney Matthew Colangelo, who was swapped out of the Main DOJ HQ in Blobville to the office of Soros-connected DA Bragg in Manhattan specifically to engineer a political prosecution.

The Fani Willis case down south, another political prosecution by a loudmouth “Get Trump” DA, now goes forward with a compromised government attorney who has demonstrably committed enough offenses against the law to merit disbarment. Her lover and, until recently, “special prosecutor,” Nathan Wade, on top of probably perjuring himself about his financial entanglements with DA Willis, was just cited for contempt in his own divorce case (failure to pay child support). Note, too, that the idiotic substance of the case — a racketeering charge for conspiring to voice opinions about the veracity of the 2020 election — was likewise constructed by Lawfare ninjas in Washington DC (my guess, by Mary McCord, Lisa Monaco, and Norm Eisen), and mentored to Willis & Wade in a series of meetings held in the White House office of Veep Kamala Harris (with Lawfare ninjas improperly not logged-in — also my guess).

If the blob’s desired outcome, a conviction, comes to pass, and Mr. Trump is hauled off to Riker’s Island, say, to mingle with X-hundred homicidal mutts, and, say, for some reason he does not come out of there alive. . . well, say hello to an extra-especially bad set-up for civil disorder in the home of the brave — while we do World War Three, financial pandemonium, and Vaccine death. It’s a lot to take in, I know. But it’s all really right out there, and it’s all vectoring right at us. Just so you know.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

There are too many people. Can’t go anywhere now without having to fight other people for space. I am an avid back packer and even in the deep back country I always encounter other human beings. National parks are overrun. Cities are turning into “megalopolises” where it can no longer be determined where one city ends and another begins. Even out here in Utah, driving on a dirt road in the middle of an assumed nowhere, there is inevitably always someone tailgating me.

Honestly, I had hoped that covid would have culled more than it did.

I think the culling is coming in the form of a demographic winter. Many countries are losing population because their people have become too addicted to social media that they no longer want to have sex and create posterity. Men aren’t interested in women. Women aren’t interested in men. Men want to be women and sterilize themselves. Women want to be men and have their womb’s removed.

Humans are part of nature and humans are stupid, greedy and prideful. Nature is flexing her muscle in that humans are systematically destroying themselves.

ANITA HEMMINGS attended preparation school at Girls’ High School in Boston. She matriculated from Vassar. The school was not aware of her race until her graduation. She graduated A.B. (Vassar College) in 1897. Later, rumors circulated that she should have been valedictorian, but they were false. Some considered Anita the most attractive woman in her class; it was whispered that she had 'Indian blood' which accounted for her dark-hued complexion and straight black hair. She sang soprano in the glee club and was the featured soloist at the local churches in Poughkeepsie. In 1997, Vassar African-American studies students petitioned college president to recognize Anita Hemmings at that year’s centennial celebration. Writing about it in Vassar Quarterly, Olivia Mancini, a local journalist, argued: "It brought [Hemmings’] graduation and presence to a level of honor that it should have had a hundred years ago." Vassar has acknowledged Anita Hemmings as the first African American to graduate the college, but for almost all of her college career, she ‘passed’ as white.

FRONT PAGE NEWS

by Des Freedman

The Israeli army’s targeted hit on an aid convoy in Gaza that killed seven World Central Kitchen workers featured on the front page of every UK national newspaper (apart from the Daily Star) on April 3. It was the first time that Gaza had dominated all the front pages since the weeks immediately following Hamas’s attack on October 7, and it took the murder of mostly white people to focus the papers’ attention.

Only one, the i, showed a photograph of the Palestinian killed in the attack, Saif Abutaha, a 25-year-old relief worker from Rafah. The Times, Telegraph, Express and Mirror all focused on the three British victims, members of WCK’s security team, whose images and biographies were prominently displayed. More than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the start of this year, but none of them have had their photographs on the front pages of those newspapers.

An examination of the more than 200 Gaza-related photographs that have appeared on the front pages of the British papers since October 7, 2023 reveals a systematic asymmetry in their treatment of Israelis and Palestinians. This reinforces the findings of other studies of media bias, which have identified serious flaws in the language and contextual framing of both broadcast and newspaper coverage.

Even though twenty times as many Palestinians as Israelis have been killed since October 7, Israeli hostages, their families and IDF soldiers have appeared in more front-page photos than the Palestinian victims of air strikes and ethnic cleansing. Pictures of Israeli hostages and their families are also captioned with biographical information while the vast majority of photographs of Palestinians are accompanied by no such details.

Across the entire sample of front-page images since October 8, I found only a handful of examples in which dead Palestinians were named. The first was a Guardian story on October 27, 2023 about an Israeli air strike that killed the family of Wael al-Dahdouh, an al-Jazeera journalist, in central Gaza (al-Dahdouh himself was later injured in an Israeli drone strike). The second, on February 11, was a Sunday Times report on the murder of six-year-old Hind Rajab. The Guardian carried the story on its front page but ran with an image of the Liverpool manager, Jurgen Klopp, who had just announced his decision to leave the club. On February 23, the Guardian led with an illustrated story about a 16-year-old Palestinian boy, Nihal Abu Ayash, who was shot dead in the West Bank by Israeli forces.

On October 23 the Guardian ran a piece identifying the “names and stories” of some of the Palestinians killed in Gaza, along with their photographs. It appeared on page six of the print edition; the cover photograph was of football fans paying tribute to the late Bobby Charlton.

Most of the images of Palestinians that have appeared on the Guardian’s front page are of anonymous children and families. The images are often very powerful and moving, but they reinforce a sense that Palestinians, when they are not being described in other contexts as ‘rock throwers’ or ‘terrorists’, are helpless, nameless and voiceless, unlike their Israeli counterparts.

It’s also revealing to see which events warrant a front-page photograph and which do not. The provisional ruling on genocide by the International Court of Justice did not earn a single lead photograph in any of the national titles on January 27 (and only four lead stories). The release or rescue of Israeli hostages has been more widely covered and illustrated. On October 31, the same image of Ori Megidish and her family was published in the Times, Guardian, Telegraph, i and Financial Times. While the deaths of seven aid workers on April 1 have (rightly) preoccupied British newspapers, the deaths of seven hundred Palestinians on December 2 did not merit a single front-page photograph or story.

The Guardian and Financial Times – which between them account for one-third of all the front-page photos of the conflict so far – have illustrated at least some of the atrocities perpetrated against Palestinians, yet their visual presentation continues to deny agency to Palestinian subjects. The Times meanwhile has this year featured nine front-page images of either Israeli soldiers or hostages and none of Palestinians. The Telegraph’s Gaza-related front-page photos have also tended to focus on Israeli soldiers or hostages to the virtual exclusion of Palestinians.

Palestinians and Israelis are depicted in such different ways because the story for all the UK’s national newspapers is about Israel’s fundamental right to defend itself, despite growing criticism of its tactics. Newspapers still have a powerful influence on broadcast, online and political agendas, and their visual coverage of the assault on Gaza serves British foreign policy more than it does their readers. Most people in the UK support both a ceasefire and a ban on weapons sales to Israel, and believe that Israel’s actions in Gaza are “violating human rights.” Not for the first time, the public are well to the left of the billionaire newspaper proprietors and, not for the first time, it feels like this is an unsustainable position.