Mendocino County Today: Sunday 4/7/24

Clearing | Museum Opening | AV Events | Benefit Turnout | Structurally Sound | Pet Wooly | VFP Gathering | Foodbank Driver | Reboont Berry | 1950 Opener | Soccer All-Stars | Ed Notes | Kate Coleman | Yesterday's Catch | Managing Pedophiles | Eureka Theater | No More | Zero Sense | Marco Radio | Hitchcock & Caen | Turf War | Muck Heap | Starving Children | Henri Matisse | RFK Jr | Nash Airflyte | Insatiable Bloodlust | Another World | Lower Deserts | Skeleton Spectre

LIGHT RAIN SHOWERS will linger today as a trough exits the region. As tempertures moderate, there will be a lingering threat for frost in Lake County and interior Mendocino County tonight. An expansive ridge of high pressure will then bring dry and much warmer conditions most of next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): On the coast this Sunday morning I have 44F under clear skies. It will be windy again today & tomorrow. Other than a hint of a shower Friday morning dry skies are forecast for this week.

ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE List of Events

RENEE WYANT LEE: Thank you, Anderson Valley, for showing Megan and kids how we can love our own! Tyler would be so proud and appreciative! What a stellar night! Nichole, you are a force to reckon with! Cheers to you and everyone else that made tonight happen—far too many to mention! After all was said and done, I am even more grateful for Goober and Ginger making sure I got home safely home by giving me a jump. Feeling so much Valley love this weekend!

MERRY KINION POOL: I am so impressed by the turnout tonight for Megan & her children. I don’t think there’s anywhere else that would show such love. Nicole Wyant, Terri Rhoades, Wanda Johnson, Renee Wyant Lee, Palma Toohey & so many others that rocked & showed true AV spirit. All the people who showed up to support was overwhelmingly amazing. So proud to be from such a beautiful place

THE PALACE HOTEL WAS OFFICIALLY DECLARED STRUCTURALLY SOUND ONLY SIX YEARS AGO

by Mike Geniella

For decades “tear it down” has been a popular local mantra surrounding the Palace Hotel, Ukiah's most significant historic landmark. 

Community naysayers say it is time to level the 19th-century structure, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, even if it means using $6.6 million in taxpayer money to raze it to make way for private development. Advocates seem to have no issue with a scheme by the Guidiville Rancheria and a group of local investors to tap into a special $250 million state program to demolish the landmark under the guise of conducting contamination studies, cleanup, and site preparation for private development. Whether a state oversight agency says demolition is not necessary doesn't matter.

However, in yet another twist to the Palace saga, a little-known fact is the landmark Palace Hotel was deemed as recently as 2018 to be structurally sound and suitable for seismic retrofit and a potential transformation into a restored downtown showcase. City building inspectors had accepted a structural engineering firm’s plans and were prepared to issue permits.

It was heralded as “good news” by a court-appointed receiver who had assumed management of the Palace’s fate on behalf of the City of Ukiah.

ZFA, a renowned structural engineering firm in Northern California, developed the detailed plans for the Palace retrofit. The firm has examined the Palace thrice since 2011, confirming its structural soundness and suitability for renovation. Other experts in the preservation of historic buildings share this opinion despite a prevailing local sentiment that the Palace should be dismantled brick by brick at taxpayers’ expense.

ZFA’s retrofit plans would have been costly to implement in 2018, but no more than the taxpayer money the Guidiville group wants to spend now to tear it down.

The detailed ZFA plans languished in the city’s Building Department, unknown to most local citizens, who have fiercely debated the structural integrity of the iconic 1891 building at the corner of State and Smith streets for thirty years. City Hall formally accepted and approved the ZFA plans, but they expired six months later because of inaction.

Jitu Ishwar, who became the Palace owner soon after the ZFA retrofit plans were filed with the city, was aware of them and was provided copies. However, despite the clear path laid out by these studies, Ishwar never followed up on any preventive maintenance or restoration efforts.

Ishwar instead let the Palace conditions worsen after having snapped up the building and prime downtown location in January 2019 for $972,000 in a non-judicial foreclosure. The amount included loans totaling $577,00 that Ishwar provided to the court receivership. 

The city of Ukiah orchestrated the receivership after declaring for the first time in 2011 that the Palace was a public health and safety hazard. A second declaration was made last November. Any city enforcement action has been put on hold, however, pending the outcome of the Guidiville group’s disputed state grant application.

City Hall six years ago never publicly announced the filing of the ZFA retrofit plans, their approval, or Ishwar’s takeover of the town’s most visible historic landmark a short time later.

Deputy City Manager Shannon Riley said this past week, “We don’t announce the approval of private development plans.” The general public only learned in 2022 that Ishwar had become the Palace’s owner after he entered into escrow for its sale to an experienced financier, a newcomer to Ukiah. That deal collapsed, and Ishwar quickly signed a pending sales agreement with the Guidiville group.

The ZFA plans expired after gathering dust at City Hall, and the Palace, once a symbol of local grandeur, slid into deeper disrepair. A recommended $400,000 roof structure was never constructed to protect the historic 50,000-square-foot building’s interior. The return of wet winters has allowed rainstorms to batter what remains.

“There’s not much left inside that can be saved,” Kevin Zucco, principal at ZFA, said in an interview last week. 

Zucco said, however, that the massive three-story high exterior brick walls wrapping around much of the Palace are unique and beautiful and can be shored up while a new interior is redesigned. 

“You can’t replicate what is already there,” said Zucco.

 Zucco’s firm has examined the Palace more than any other, beginning in 2011, again in 2018, and as recently as 2023.

Zucco’s father, Gregory Zucco, founded ZFA in 1974 in Santa Rosa. ZFA now has offices in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Sacramento, and, most recently, Napa. ZFA employs more than 50 structural and professional engineers specializing in historic renovations, seismic evaluations, and retrofits.

Despite the Palace’s continuing slide, Zucco believes the building can still be salvaged and transformed into a new downtown centerpiece despite escalating costs cited in a 2018 court receiver’s report. 

 “It is worth saving. Some people think it’s too expensive now to do that, but buildings like the Palace are irreplaceable. They have character. It will never get cheaper to save it,” said Zucco.

Owner Ishwar has rebuffed two serious buyers since ZFA submitted its retrofit plans in what former court receiver Mark Adams, a Santa Monica attorney, calls a “real estate play.”

Merely six years after ZFA turned over detailed retrofit plans to the city, the iconic structure is now the center of a heated community debate over its future.

A crucial state decision, expected this month, could seal the fate of the Palace, either preserving it as a testament to Mendocino County’s past or wiping it from the local landscape.

A state Department of Toxic Substances Control representative said the agency is still on schedule to decide this month how much money it might award to the Guidiville rancheria under a special program earmarked for tribes, nonprofits, and poor communities. However, a state oversight agency is opposed to funding the demolition of the Palace under the pretext of contamination studies and site cleanup.

Despite that opposition and outcry from preservationists locally and statewide, the Guidiville group persists in pursuing public funds to tear down the Palace and clear the way for constructing a six-story hotel/restaurant/retail complex in the prime downtown location.

Guidiville and a group of undisclosed investors, led by downtown restauranteur Matt Talbert, are continuing their lobbying efforts. While tribal leaders remain quiet about plans publicly, Talbert and tribal consultant Michael Derry have enlisted supporters to counter concerns. They have lobbied City Hall to stay out of the conflict and unsuccessfully attempted to block news stories about their plans from being published, which are only available through information gleaned from public documents.

Deputy City Manager Riley has repeatedly contended that the City Council’s formal declaration last Fall that the Palace is now a public health and safety hazard is “coincidental” to Guidiville filing its state application only three weeks before. 

According to Riley, so was the city's decision to waive the environmental review of the Palace under California’s Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and its declaration that effectively precluded the state Office of Historic Preservation from conducting a review.

For weeks, Riley, who acts as the public information officer for City Manager Sage Sangiacomo, has insisted the city has only a “narrow path” in what she characterizes as essentially a private property deal outside of city influence. 

Riley declined to address mounting public concerns that the city quietly supports the Guidiville plan, hoping it will finally eliminate a community “eyesore” that has dogged city administrators since the Palace was shuttered in 1995. 

Meanwhile, the state Department of Toxic Substances Control continues to ponder what’s next. The agency awarded a grant in March but labeled it “To Be Determined” after questions were raised about public funds being used to tear down a historic structure under the guise of contamination studies. 

Despite the local clamor for demolition, professional structural engineers, contractors, and historic building preservation experts all agree that the Palace, despite a deepening decline, can still be stabilized and recycled into a viable commercial center in the core of Ukiah. 

Former court receiver Adams, in 2018, advised the Mendocino County Superior Court that the city of Ukiah had “approved our basic architectural and engineering plans, so the predevelopment work is essentially complete.”

Adams, however, expressed dismay that a consulting contractor had dashed hopes for an affordable seismic retrofit of the 50,000-square-foot Palace. The estimated cost had risen from $2-$3 million to “the upper $6 million or low $7 million mark,” double what Adams said he had expected.

The contractor, GCCI Inc. of Santa Rosa, who was hired by former Palace owner, Marin County real estate agent Eladia Laines, cited, among significant reasons, the following:

• The addition of new roofing to the project.
• The discovery of significant voids under the building slabs that must be refilled.
• Repointing of all the masonry in the brick walls.
• Significant increase in steel and lumber costs (over double for steel and nearly double for lumber.)

Adams obtained a second opinion from a contractor, lowering retrofit costs to $4.5 million. 

Eventually, the receiver decided to sell the Palace to Ishwar, who held a $577,000 lien and was threatening to foreclose.

“It’s a very disappointing outcome because I was led to believe Mr. Ishwar was a serious hotelier and would do something with the building,” Adams said in an interview last Fall.

Ishwar, his attorney Stephen Johnson, Guidiville tribal consultant Michael Derry, Matt Talbert, and attorney Attila Panczel, who reportedly represents other potential Guidiville investors, have repeatedly declined to respond to written requests for comment on their plans or questions raised by the state agency, preservation advocates, or structural engineers.

They have, however, made it clear to community leaders that they favor the “tear it down” mantra, and they have encouraged displays of public support.

Structural Engineer Zucco and other professionals who have studied the Palace disagree that the landmark's time has come.

“They had the chance to do it right in 2018, and they let the opportunity pass,” said Zucco. “It can still be done. It is not too late.”

Tom Carter, a Lake County contractor known for his work on historic buildings in the Bay Area, neighboring Sonoma County, and Lake County, including the Tallman House and Blue Wing Saloon, agrees.

Carter is one of the proposed buyers Ishwar rebuffed a few years ago but remains interested in the Palace’s fate. He has inspected the Palace from top to bottom.

“I walked around the Palace a few weeks ago and took another close look. I still believe we can save that building and, with the help of investors, transform it into a showcase that would make Ukiah proud,” said Carter. “You can’t do it for the quick buck. You got to do it for the long term and the community.”

Carolyn Kiernat is a principal at Page & Turnbull, one of California's preeminent historic preservation firms. She and a team prepared a plan in 2023 for Ukiah investor Minal Shankar; another prospective buyer turned away by Ishwar because she wouldn’t pay the amount he wanted after five years of letting the Palace slide further into disrepair.

Kiernat, too, believes the Palace can be saved and transformed. She recently published an opinion piece in local newspapers and The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa urging the community and city leaders to resist the push to demolish it.

“I have received some emails from folks interested in the property,” said Kiernat. One was from an architect interested in a mixed-use project utilizing state and federal tax credits to preserve historic buildings and provide affordable housing.

“It’s not too late. There are better options than tearing down the Palace and building a faux version,” said Kiernat.

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Meet Wooly—our Mystery Breed canine guest! This fluff-meister is a shy boy who needs time to understand that you just might be his best friend! Once he figures that out, his fun, playful personality comes to the fore! Wooly walks politely on leash and enjoys getting out in the wild blue yonder. He’s also just fine chillin’ in the office with us. This dude is seriously adorable. We’re bewildered over Wooly’s breed, but he’s a sweet guy no matter what’s in his DNA. Wooly is 2 years old and 73 pounds.

To see all of our canine and feline guests, and for information about our services, programs, and events, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com. 

Join us every first Saturday of the month for our Meet The Dogs Adoption Event at the shelter. 

We're on Facebook.

For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

UKIAH HOSTS VETERANS FOR PEACE: Bridging Coasts with Hybrid Gathering

Veterans for Peace (VFP) is set to host its first West Coast regional gathering since 2019 in Ukiah, California on Friday, April 12, 2024. The hybrid conference, accessible via Zoom from anywhere in the country, will host a diverse lineup of speakers and opportunities for members to connect.

Scheduled to take place this month, the event will feature prominent figures including Norman Solomon, Marcy Winograd, Mike Wong, Vince Dijanich, Therese Mughannam-Walruth, Sam Tuttleman, and VFP National Director Mike Ferner.

“All VFP members are welcome,” said organizers. They also announced logistical support for in-person attendees, including airport shuttles, carpooling, and room-sharing arrangements.

In-person attendance comes at a cost of $60, which includes meals, while participation via Zoom is priced at $20. Organizers encourage interested individuals to access full information on the event’s website.

For those unable to attend in person, the virtual option ensures accessibility, allowing members from across the nation to participate and contribute to the discussions.

For further details and registration, visit the event’s official website.

(mendofever.com)

FORT BRAGG FOOD BANK: Staff shout out! 

THE REBOOT OF BOONT BERRY May 2024 With Burt, Celia, Kevin

by Gregory Sims

Just because I'm authoring this narrative, please don't expect I will tell you what the Reboot (found in the subject line above) is all about. It is not to be found here. I have no idea, but previously when I said to the group at Boont Berry store in Boonville that I was thinking of doing an article about Burt and others at Boont Berry; as there is a general interest in how this quiet repository of healthy foods and people manifests. 

Then someone said it would be timely to do so as they were planning a “May (next month) Reboot of Boont Berry.” That phrase, when it was spoken, came with much energy and that's where we left it. So if this article generates more excitement among others contemplating a ReBoot) I will join you in finding interesting answers.

The people who come to Boont Berry form an interesting mix. The students and some teachers come from the high school; others left over from the 60s. (Those of us who were supposed to form a “new age.”) And a general potpourri of townspeople and tourists passing through.

Answers that reflect or perhaps open one to reflections upon what Boont Berry, its staff and customers (comingled as a group) have in common is not actively hidden. But there is perhaps a little known coherence regarding aspects of this gathering that results in a comfort zone — a personal other quiet unspoken acceptance. Perhaps it is not entirely unlike what the four little hamlets of Anderson Valley share (Yorkville, Boonville, Philo, and Navarro) in that we have a commonality of nature’s beauty surrounding us having enjoyed an abundant outpouring of water with the warm sun now becoming more evident.

Boont Berry is primarily but not entirely Anderson Valley's quiet version of a Green Grocery with readymade or to be made components for a creative cook's needs. Uptown the Boonville Hotel, Lauren's Restaurant and a few blocks more including Mosswood, The Farm Mercantile House, Rossi's Hardware, the Fairgrounds, the Vets Building and Senior Citizens eatery (to name a few) all provide a visibility that is easy to see when you walk by or walk in. 

Presencing at Boont Berry is more of a discovery, not immediately to be seen as to what it's about, as there are ephemeral qualities found there. The other places (like the Post Office) the presence offered is evident before walking in. And as I spend many hours at Mosswood the atmosphere is bright and airy with many pleasant exchanges sometimes simultaneously occurring. There are also quiet times which offer the opportunity to prepare for the next gaggle of folks coming in.

Personally, there are times, “What's Next” (as taken from the title of this writing series) changes as frequently as do trips to town. And at Boont Berry, somehow examining the little packets of chocolate, fruits and nuts or sitting for a spell off in a corner with something to eat, drink or read brings me back to a blending flow and helps me find what I call the caring nature of presence (whether in conversations or not) with those mentioned above in the subject line.

More about the little bags filled with various fruits, nuts just mentioned and seen when you walk into Boont Berry. They draw my interest which really does require a bit of introspection like: if I take this home how will I use it or like green grocers elsewhere what healing energies does this offer? Then the people mentioned above and other browsers examining the commodities who might or might not invite a brief exchange bring the word duration to my heartmind, as used in the I Ching (32)- “union as an enduring condition.” 

Perhaps that describes Burt as fully as it describes Boont Berry. He is always busy and open to providing information and willing to participate in brief conversations which helps to maintain a quiet unity.

For years Burt provided us with a Valley New Year's Party but as my grandmother said countless times “circumstances alter cases.” Perhaps for this new year's eve it will happen. Some of us helped a lot or a little to make it happen. 

And another social note: Kevin regularly performs at our variety shows. A final note regarding Boont Berry, the state of being at ease is what describes all who work at BoontBerry; and most of all with us who are its customers.

Perhaps the above narrative may seem somewhat meditative, but that doesn't say it. It seems as though Burt and Kevin have been there ever since we arrived in the valley some 50 years ago But that can't be right. Duration is not simply a linear unfolding of the essence of time. There is a subtle enduring quality of wholeness which is quite comforting.

So as I mentioned before, I can't imagine “Rebooting Boont Berry.” Perhaps everything I've written may be reflective of past decades of past living, as a history of Boont Berry. So the month of May will soon be upon us and as Rumi noted, “What will be will be,” or more currently we will find the new manifestations of Boont Berry.

TOP SENIORS FACING OFF FOR FINAL TIME AT KIWANIS ALL-STAR GAME

by Gus Morris

The top seniors from high schools around the area will face off in one final high school match Friday at the Santa Rosa Kiwanis All-Star Soccer Game.

The doubleheader at Maria Carrillo High School is scheduled to start with the girls game at 6 p.m. with the boys game to follow at 8 p.m.

Here are the full rosters and the coaches for each team.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

ED NOTES

IS GEORGE ROSE still with us? A cherubic little fellow whose devotion to the wine industry occasionally caused him to go all the way off on the people and forces George regarded as hostile to the grape. George was also a gifted photographer of serene local vistas. Years ago, he got off a splenetic masterpiece that still makes me laugh. 

GEORGE THUNDERED that if the hippies and the rednecks would get out of the way, or at least out of the viewsheds of high-end tourists, Mendocino County's wine industry could achieve the grand eminence that George claimed Napa's wine industry enjoys. 

AS HE RHETORICALLY sent the hippies, rednecks and other undesirables scurrying for cover, George said he also wanted the Boonville Hotel to take it up a radicchio or two, too, bringing it up to whatever culinary standards he imagined existed in Napa and Sonoma County.

SUMMING UP, George wrote: "The real world image of Mendocino County is that of simmering timber and pot wars, populated by a handful of noisy environmentalists, a grab bag of slightly-to-the-left hill people (hippies), a few leftover rednecks from the cow and horse glory days, many grateful Southern California refugees, numerous thrift shops, a raft of humdrum eateries and fast-food joints, a nice selection of homespun quality wines, majestic redwoods, rolling oak studded hills and overpriced coastal lodging and real estate. Does anyone really want to change this image?"

NO. I've always wanted more rednecks, more hippies, more thrift shops, fewer urban refugees with their demands for pavement and services they've allegedly fled, more drum-humming in restaurants, and oaks on the hills instead of metal grape stakes.

WE LOST, grape stakes won, and the last hippie disappeared years ago. A few rednecks hang on. Bless them. Without the residual 'necks the Anderson Valley would have even less of a discernible personality than it now does.

KATE COLEMAN, Who Documented the Bay Area Counterculture, Dies at 81

She wrote about politics and the patriarchy as a left-wing writer, then alienated her compatriots with exposés critical of the Black Panthers and the environmental movement.

Kate Coleman, an iconoclastic Bay Area journalist who began her career as a left-wing radical, writing about the patriarchy, politics and polyamory, then made enemies among her erstwhile comrades when her reporting cast a harsh light on the Black Panthers and the environmental movement, died on Tuesday in Oakland, Calif. She was 81.

Carol Pogash, a close friend, said her death, in a memory-care facility, was caused by complications of dementia.

For decades Ms. Coleman operated at the center of a fervid community of journalists and activists in and around Berkeley. Like her, most of them had attended the University of California in the 1960s, helping to define the campus as a hotbed of political and social activism.

Her subsequent writing career, most of it as a freelancer for anti-establishment publications like Ramparts and The Berkeley Barb as well as national outlets like Newsweek and The Los Angeles Times, tracked the transit of the American left through its many phases, from early idealism through violent extremism to late-stage disenchantment.

Like Eve Babitz and Joan Didion, she positioned herself as a young female writer who was both immersed in the moment and able to stand outside it, casting a gimlet eye on the ironies and excesses of America’s “left coast.”

As an undergraduate at Berkeley, Ms. Coleman was an early participant in the university’s Free Speech Movement and was among the hundreds of students arrested in December 1964 for occupying Sproul Hall, a campus administration building.

After graduating in 1965, she spent three years at Newsweek, in its New York headquarters, where she was among the few young women allowed to write occasionally for the magazine. (A few years after she left, in 1968, a group of female employees successfully challenged Newsweek’s discriminatory policies.)

Ms. Coleman succeeded at Newsweek by offering something different: Where most of the staff came from buttoned-up East Coast colleges, she arrived bearing news from the free-spirited West.

“She was the resident hippie, the resident Berkeley radical, and she was proud of it,” Harriet Huber, who worked with Ms. Coleman at Newsweek, said in a phone interview.

Returning to the Bay Area, Ms. Coleman established herself as a freelance writer and radio producer. Among other gigs, she wrote a column for The Berkeley Barb, a scrappy magazine that was required reading among the region’s counterculture.

She used the column to cover a gamut of topics that occupied the minds of the young and hip in the late 1960s and early ’70s: Watergate, second-wave feminism, free love, radical politics, venereal disease.

She wrote in a casual tone, tinged with but not drenched in the hippie vernacular of the time — profanity, but not too much; a single “ain’t” in a column of otherwise Strunkian grammatical precision.

She was also willing to go further than most reporters. In 1969, Ms. Coleman was at a racetrack east of San Francisco covering the Altamont Speedway Free Festival, where members of the Hells Angels biker gang were hired as security (and where one of the bikers stabbed a man to death). While backstage waiting for the Rolling Stones to come on, she saw a biker beating a concertgoer. When she intervened, he grabbed her and slammed her repeatedly into a Volkswagen van.

For a 1971 article on prostitution for Ramparts, she not only embedded herself in a brothel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side but also turned a trick herself.

“You couldn’t be in Kate’s presence without being impressed by her brashness,” Steve Wasserman, the publisher of Heyday Books in Berkeley, said by phone. “But it would also get her in trouble with her dogmatic comrades.”

In 1977, the Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit newsroom, commissioned Ms. Coleman and another reporter, Paul Avery, to examine the unsolved murder of Betty Van Patter, a former bookkeeper for the Black Panthers.

After nine months of reporting, their 1978 article, “The Party’s Over,” published in New Times magazine, concluded that the Panther leadership, in particular Huey P. Newton, one of the party’s founders, had most likely ordered Ms. Van Patter’s killing because she was about to reveal corruption within the organization.

Ms. Coleman received death threats and went into hiding for several months. She bought a handgun and bars for her windows — then submitted them as expenses.

She made a new set of antagonists in 2005 with her book “The Secret Wars of Judi Bari: A Car Bomb, the Fight for the Redwoods, and the End of Earth First!”

Judi Bari, until her death from cancer in 1997, had been one of the most revered figures in the radical wing of the environmental movement. But in Ms. Coleman’s telling, she was a “tyrannical diva,” paranoid and obsessed with her own martyrdom.

The book drew protests from Ms. Bari’s defenders, some of whom would interrupt Ms. Coleman during stops on her book tour. At least one store canceled her appearance. “Is the Biographer of Activist Judi Bari a Tool of the Right — or Just a Skeptical Liberal?” asked a headline in The San Francisco Chronicle.

“Why not focus her energies on problems of the right?” the author of the article, Edward Guthmann, wrote.

Ms. Coleman responded: “The right has too many problems for me to even begin to start covering. I don’t want to research that. It’s not what I knew intimately. It’s what I know from afar.”

Kate Ann Coleman was born on Dec. 7, 1942, in Rutherford, N.J. Her father, Robert, was an engineer for a machine-tools company. Her mother, Lilian (Anson) Coleman, went blind after surgery when Kate was 3 and was largely confined to their home.

Ms. Coleman leaves no immediate survivors.

Kate’s parents divorced when she was 10. Soon after, she moved with her mother and her older sister, Susan, to Encino, Calif., to be near her mother’s wealthy brother.

Her political awakening came in early 1960, soon after she arrived at Berkeley. The House Committee on Un-American Activities had come to San Francisco for a field hearing into allegations of Communist subversion in the Bay Area. Hundreds showed up in protest, which ended with the police turning fire hoses on the crowd without warning.

Ms. Coleman joined Slate, a progressive campus political party, and eventually the Free Speech Movement, which was led in part by Mario Savio. She graduated in 1965 with a degree in English literature.

Her writing was not entirely political. Like most freelance journalists, she wrote whatever came her way: celebrity profiles, personal essays, restaurant reviews, even accounts of her rather active sex life, which she discussed in terms too explicit for a family newspaper.

For a time she also worked once a week as a host at Chez Panisse, the famed Berkeley restaurant founded by Alice Waters.

And she was a later-life convert to open-water swimming, mostly in the San Francisco Bay. She routinely won races in her age group, and once a year she swam from Alcatraz, in the middle of the bay, to San Francisco.

She would dive in wearing just a swimsuit. Wet suits, she said, were for wimps.

(nytimes.com)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, April 6, 2024

BRETT ADAME, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, paraphernalia.

JOSHUA BONNET, Leggett. Leaving scene of accident with property damage, suspended license for DUI, evasion-reckless and wrong-way driving, resisting.

ALVARO GONZALEZ JR., Gualala. Criminal threats.

LAMONT JONES JR., Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, county parole violation.

CLEMENCIO MARTINEZ, Redwood Valley. Grand theft, theft from elder by caretaker, getting credit with another’s ID.

AGUSTIN RODRIGUEZ-HERNANDEZ, Philo. DUI, domestic abuse, suspended license for refusing chemical DUI test.

MELISSIA TURNEY, Ukiah. Vandalism, controlled substance, protective order violation, failure to appear.

PORFIRIO VIZCAINO-BAUTISTA, Covelo. DUI.

NORMAN WHITE, Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, controlled substance, no license, refusal to take DUI test, failure to appear, probation revocation.

EMMETT WILLIAMS, Fort Bragg. Fireworks without permit, projectile tear gas weapon, felon with stun gun.

CHOMOS, an on-line comment: I once asked a doctor friend, now departed, who had been a family practitioner and was herself a survivor of horrendous sexual abuse as a very young child, why there was such an increase in pedophilia and sexual crimes against children. What were her thoughts, I wanted to know. She answered, “Because in the old days, the families of the victims just took those people out. The cops turned their heads while the fathers, brothers and uncles took matters into their own hands. They could never harm another child. Now they are allowed to live, and others like them no longer fear to act.”

PROTEST: DO NOT COOPERATE WITH THE WAR MACHINE

AVA,

My late partner, James Houle, maintained that in order to be a President, one must be a psychopath. I did not believe him. I began to believe during Clinton's bombing of Kosovo, done to bring peace. Next was George W. Bush and his administration. Clearly, others' lives had no importance for them. They were determined to kill and destroy for the American Empire, and truth was immaterial. In Obama's time, our President hunched over his Oval Office desk deciding on a weekly, illegal kill list. When Genocide Joe appeared with his ice cream cone and his hope, it was crystal clear. Our elected leaders - and we are limited to whom we can elect - are psychopaths. Biden and his band of murderers are determination to facilitate the Palestinian genocide - by bomb AND NOW STARVATION.

Sadly, men are not alone in their slaughter. Please note Victoria Neuland, architect of the Maidan uprising, which morphed into the present Ukraine/Russia war, Madeleine Albright, "half a million dead children are worth it," and Hillary Clinton, destroyer of Libya and cackler: "We came, we saw, he died."

For decades after WWII, The world pilloried the German people for not stopping Hitler and his genocide. They said they didn't know. Hitler intended to take over Europe. The US intends to take over the world, and to that end has destroyed country after country, regime after regime. And we know; we see it every day on TV.

Protest our psychopath MIC/Congress/President/Administration. Do not cooperate in the quest for world domination which benefits our greedy elite, not the rest of us, and certainly not our victims. Write your representatives, write our President, support anti-war efforts, scream from your windows: NO MORE WAR, NO MORE GENOCIDE.

Joan Vivaldo

San Francisco 

MEMO OF THE AIR: Good-bye to the fruits.

"I met a guy online and we saw a movie on our first date. At the end of the night when acting like he was going in for a kiss he put his whole mouth over my nose and blew into it. Laughing, he said he does this to his dogs and calls it a puppy trumpet." -Danielle Snook

Here's the recording of last night's (Friday 2024-04-05) 8-hour Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org (and, for the first hour, also 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino): https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0587

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

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

Pretty much everything you ever wanted to know about solar eclipses. https://laughingsquid.com/history-of-solar-eclipses/

The solar eclipse story from someone who was home-schooled. In Bizarro World. https://twitter.com/i/status/1773749782055399728

Trailer for Antigone. Could do with an umlaut or two in the title, to suit the metal parts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0QK-YixdcA

The influences of Ark of the Fun God and other similar filmic enjoyments, such as En Busca del IDOLO PERDIDO. (60 min.) (via b3ta) This gets more and more interesting as you watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdozOvPgHzo

Is Mr. Coffee Nerves wrecking your marriage? Postum can solve that, except you can’t buy it anymore, since they stopped selling it in 2007. It tasted like tea made of breadcrumbs, with a drop of molasses. I use green tea from the dollar store; it’s like a penny per teabag, and it’s not great but it’s not bad. Green tea has some caffeine in it, but even less than other kinds of tea. Unlike coffee, it doesn’t make me nervous or cranky, or keep me awake, nor does it give me a headache if I forget to have it one day, or ever. There’s an old saying, “The elf in tea is gentler than the elf in coffee.” https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/mr_coffee_nerves

John Barth died this week. Here are three of his stories, including Good-bye to the Fruits. Click on the text and scroll down. https://www.conjunctions.com/print/article/john-barth-c22

And Ashley Campbell – 50 Ways. I like the scene layout and historical singing poses as much as the music. Especially the art-deco/high-frontier sideways-Egyptian ta-dah! one at the end. Dinner dishes with this sort of thing printed on them would sell in any era when people have money to buy dishes anywhere but the dollar store, speaking of the dollar store. https://laughingsquid.com/new-orleans-50-ways-to-leave-your-lover/

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

HOW A SECRETIVE FBI PROBE AND MYSTERIOUS SUICIDE EXPOSED TOXIC NAPA VALLEY TURF WAR - As 'Eco-Mob Extremists' Tell Owners Of America's World-Famous Wineries They Want Their Vineyards To Burn

by Miles Dilworth

There is a mystery among the vines in Napa Valley.

“None of us know what the hell is going on,” says Stu Smith, owner of Smith-Madrone Vineyards & Winery.

In December, the FBI subpoenaed Napa County requesting records relating to as many 40 high-profile vintners and their wineries, including a former co-owner of the Dallas Cowboys and an ex-US ambassador.

It also demanded the county's Farm Bureau, a fierce champion of the local wine industry, hand over documents to the US Department of Justice.

A month later, its CEO, Ryan Klobas, was found dead next to his car in the tree-studded hillsides of Orinda.

Officers who arrived at the scene identified a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The 45-year-old's death was later pronounced a probable suicide. Investigations are ongoing.

Those named in the FBI probe say they are “baffled” as to its nature.

But the tangled vines are beginning to unravel.

At least seven vintners ordered to hand over documents have contributed to the Farm Bureau's PAC, the Fund to Protect Napa Valley Agriculture. 

And more than half have made campaign donations to a controversial local political figure, Alfredo Pedroza, who has previously been accused of impropriety in his dealings with the wine industry.

His home was raided a week before Christmas. 

Officials remain tight-lipped over the reasons for their investigation. But locals say they may have inadvertently stepped into an escalating turf war over some of America's most sought-after soil.

Belying its idyllic appearance, Napa Valley has been embroiled in an ugly struggle between vintners and environmentalists, with both sides alleging foul play.

On the one side, green warriors argue the continued expansion of vineyards is a threat to ecological diversity.

On the other, winegrowers accuse the woke “mob” of intimidating local officials into blocking projects over spurious environmental concerns.

As one Napa insider told DailyMail.com, things have got “really quite nasty.”

Some vintners claim they have been the victims of “hate speech” and “personal attacks” from the eco-mob, while others have already upped sticks to escape a “toxic” culture war. 

Dark clouds are gathering over the green hillsides of the Golden State. 

And those who created America's wine-making Eden fear it could soon become a paradise lost.

Grapes of Wrath 

Chuck Wagner was “mad as hell” that his name appeared among the subpoenas issued by the FBI.

“They shouldn't be naming individuals - unless I've done something wrong that I don't know about,” the owner of Caymus Vineyards told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Robin Baggett, former general counsel for the Golden State Warriors and owner of Omega Winery, dismissed the probe as a “fishing expedition” and a “big waste of time,” suggesting it could even be a “political witch hunt.”

Others named include billionaire and former part owner of the Dallas Cowboys, Craig Hall, and his wife, Kathryn Walt Hall, the one time U.S. ambassador to Austria, along with their winery, Hall Hundred Acre.

Also in the spotlight is Napa's exclusive Meritage Resort and Spa; Dave Phinney, the entrepreneur who created the wine brand Prisoner; and Grant Long Jr. and his wineries Aonair and Reverie II.

The FBI has not accused anyone of wrongdoing. Its subpoena to Napa County, first obtained by the Napa Valley Register through a public records request, seeks records on wineries and their owners.

It is dated December 14, 2023 and filed under the name of Patrick Robbins, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California.

The subpoena also names FBI agent Katherine Ferrato, who specializes in complex financial crimes.

The agency has not publicly commented on the nature of their probe, but word on the grapevine is that Pedroza is likely a person of interest.

The Napa County Supervisor has become a hate figure for environmentalists due to his staunch support for the wine industry, the expansion of which they blame for an array of ecological woes, from soil erosion to the destruction of natural habitats.

Though he has not been listed or charged, the subpoenas include the names of people and companies involved in a controversial land deal that sparked accusations of impropriety against him.

Specifically, Craig and Kathryn Hall, and Pedroza's father-in-law, Esteban Llamas.

The Halls purchased Walt Ranch, a piece of undeveloped land in Napa Valley's Atlas Peak, for $8 million in 2005, with designs to build a 208-acre vineyard.

The project was met with fierce opposition from environmentalists who said it would endanger oak trees, habitats and water supplies.

After more than a decade of regulatory and legal wrangling, the development was tentatively approved by the Board of Supervisors in late 2021.

But if the Halls hoped this was the end of the matter, they were sadly mistaken.

The following year, local activist and filmmaker Beth Nelson discovered that Pedroza's father-in-law had acquired a stake in an adjacent property.

Critics said Walt Ranch would undoubtedly raise surrounding land values. They slammed Pedroza for voting in favor of the development without disclosing his father-in-law's purchase.

The San Francisco Chronicle then revealed that Pedroza and his wife had helped secure a loan for Llamas, using their Napa home as collateral.

The supervisor denied he had a financial interest in Walt Ranch, but recused himself from future votes.

In the end, it was all too much bother, and the Halls gave up on their vineyard dream.

Notably, the subpoena seeks documents, including correspondence, permits, plans and contracts, dating back to 2016 — the year Pedroza was first elected to Napa County’s Board of Supervisors and the board initially approved the Walt Ranch project. 

'What on earth is going on?' 

Regardless, the row was seen as a watershed moment for Napa Valley that went to the core of its identity.

Ross Middlemiss, staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) in Oakland, which has led opposition to winery expansion in Napa Valley, said the project was “a massive conversion of otherwise undeveloped, intact, heterogenous ecosystems into a monocrop.”

The guiding argument appears to be: don't we already have enough vineyards?

The same battlegrounds were drawn again shortly after.

David and Kathleen DiCesaris spent several years and $2 million on clearing a stringent environmental check, known as an erosion control plan (ECP), for their project to clear about 30 acres to build a new vineyard in Howell Mountain.

Napa County approved the development in March last year, but the decision was appealed by the Center for Biological Diversity, who argued it was a threat to wildlife and biodiversity.

In August, the Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to uphold the appeal, the first time it had vetoed a project that had an approved ECP. There have been 673.

Pedroza was one of the two dissenting votes, while Ryan Klobas and the Farm Bureau accused the three other supervisors of failing to understand agriculture.

In the wake of the vote, signs appeared at some locations accusing those supervisors of being anti-farming and, in at least one case, corrupt.

David DiCesaris told DailyMail.com that he had been caught in the midst of a “political firestorm” and that the decision marked a “turning of the tide” against Napa wineries.

He claimed he had been “personally attacked” over the project, with threatening notes slipped under his doorstep telling him, in no uncertain terms, that he and his vineyard were not welcome.

When he tried to explain the fire mitigation benefits of his proposed winery, he says a neighbor told him: “I would rather see your property burn than see a vineyard on it.”

Some eco-extremists even drove around his property on a dirt bike, churning up his turf, he alleged.

“It was all kinds of nasty stuff,” he said. “All I wanted to do was put a vineyard on agricultural land.

“Me and my wife have been here for 30 years. The Napa Valley we know is a kinder, gentler place.”

Michelle Benvenuto, executive director at Winegrowers of Napa County, said she had also been personally attacked for her support of the industry.

She told DailyMail.com that environmentalists had “spewed hate speech” against her on the neighborhood app Nextdoor after she spoke out in support of a winery.

These activists are part of what Smith describes as “the mob.”

He claims they now effectively run the county, accusing the newly-elected Board of Supervisors of being too cowardly to stand up to them.

“There are a few who are so vocal, so hostile to any project, that the board has been intimidated by them,” he said.

“When the Howell Mountain approval was overturned, those of us in the wine industry were going, ‘pardon me, what the f*** is going on here?’”

A ‘huge black eye’ for Napa Valley

The Center for Biological Diversity did not want to provide comment for this article.

But Smith, Benvenuto and DiCesaris all believe their actions pose a threat to the future of the wine industry in Napa Valley itself, and by extension the community as a whole.

Estimates of the sector's annual economic contribution to the region have not been updated since 2012, when it was set at $13 billion. 

Yet wineries here are already being tied in knots by red tape. Napa County has the strictest environmental checks for vineyards of any in California – and that is in a state notorious for heavy regulation.

It has added to the sense of bemusement among local winegrowers, who have long prided themselves on their eco-credentials. 

“We are the environmentalists,” said Benvenuto.

Frustration has boiled over into legal action.

In 2022, Jayson Woodbridge, of the Hundred Acre vineyard, sued the county for “administrative overreach” after it demanded he cease replanting trees that had been burnt down during the catastrophic Glass Fire of 2020.

The county said Woodbridge had not applied for a permit.

But the former Canadian infantryman and banker hit back, accusing officials in court filings of creating “mountainous red tape and endless bureaucratic obstacles” for him and other vineyard owners.

On March 21, he lost round one of the case, in which he had asked a judge to set aside an earlier ruling that prevents Hundred Acre from further developing its hillside vineyard as the lawsuit progresses.

Woodbridge and Hundred Acre were also one of the 40 wineries subpoenaed by the FBI.

He did not respond to a request to comment from DailyMail.com.

Faced with costly and cumbersome bureaucracy, and shouted down by angry environmentalists, Smith wonders who will be able to continue to thrive in Napa Valley, other than the “very highest net worth individuals.”

“We're competing with one arm tied behind our backs,” he warned.

DiCesaris agrees, envisioning a future in which smaller wineries are bought out by conglomerates, pushing up the price of a Napa bottle so that elites can afford them.

“People think that the wine industry in Napa County is too big to fail,” Benvenuto said. “But it's death by a thousand cuts.”

Some of her members are already looking at expanding their businesses elsewhere, with one relocating to Fredericksburg, Texas, the second-most visited wine region in the US but one with a considerably more business-friendly environment.

It is in this context, with Napa wine already wobbling, that the FBI probe has them worried.

Amid the fevered speculation, Pedroza has already announced he will be stepping down from the Board of Supervisors later this year, depriving the wineries of their greatest ally.

“It is all utter speculation,” Smith says. “But we are very concerned for Alfredo [Pedroza]. He's a very good guy and I worry for him because he's been a terrific supporter of Napa County.”

Worse still, Benvenuto fears the whole case could be weaponized by the eco-mob, who will seek to capitalize on any misstep or sniff of corruption linked to the industry.

“It is mysterious,” she said of the investigation. “We don't support any type of corruption and, if someone is breaking the rules, they should pay the price.

“But it would be a huge black eye. I'm hoping there's no meat behind all of this.”

(DailyMail.com)

“Recognize! What is there to recognize? All my lousy life I’ve crawled about in the mud! And you talk to me about scenery! Look at this muck heap! I’ve never stirred from it!”

—Samuel Beckett

SANDERS CALLS FOR AID HALT AS US ARMS FUEL ISRAEL’S BLOCKADE

"The U.S. cannot partner with a country that is starving children."

by Alexis Sterling

A grave warning from a senior Biden administration official has cast a light on the looming threat of famine in Gaza, marking a potential humanitarian catastrophe that would stand as only the third of its kind this century. This alarming revelation coincides with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’ emphatic call to halt further financial aid to Israel, spotlighting the ethical dilemma faced by the U.S. as its military support continues amidst escalating humanitarian concerns.

Jake Sullivan, National Security Adviser, briefed Israeli officials on the distressing possibility of a famine declaration in Gaza by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). The IPC’s findings already indicate famine conditions “with reasonable evidence” in two of Gaza’s five governorates.

“No more money for Netanyahu,” declared Senator Bernie Sanders, responding to the dire warnings and emphasizing the moral imperative for the U.S. to reconsider its financial support to Israel in light of the unfolding crisis.

Individuals in northern Gaza are subsisting on a mere 245 calories per day, a fraction of the necessary intake to prevent malnutrition, reports Oxfam.

For the 2.2 million residents of Gaza, the limited food deliveries have only covered 41% of the daily caloric needs per person.

“The U.S. cannot partner with a country that is starving children,” Sanders articulated.

Despite the humanitarian crisis, the U.S. has proceeded with significant arms deals to Israel, including the approval of a sale encompassing 50 F-15 fighter jets and a multitude of bombs. This military support starkly contrasts with the critical needs of the Gazan population and raises questions about the ethical dimensions of U.S. foreign policy.

Reports confirm the targeting of aid convoys by Israeli forces, further exacerbating the humanitarian situation in Gaza. The killing of seven international aid workers by Israeli strikes has ignited international outrage, yet U.S. military support to Israel remains steadfast.

Investigative reports by Al Jazeera and CNN suggest that the targeting of aid convoys by Israeli forces was no accident. The systematic nature of these attacks raises profound questions about the ethics of military engagement and the collateral impact on civilian populations.

“The U.S. cannot partner with a country that is starving children,” Sanders’ insists.

Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet, called for early elections, ramping up pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing growing domestic protests against his government and an international backlash as the conflict in Gaza rages.

Gantz, who has seen his popularity among Israeli voters surge as that of Netanyahu has dived, said polls should take place in September instead of as scheduled in 2026.

An early vote’s needed to “overcome the challenges ahead,” Gantz, who heads the National Unity party, said at a press conference in Tel Aviv late on Wednesday. “The Israeli public needs to know that we will soon ask for their trust.”

Netanyahu’s Likud party criticized the comments and said elections in the near future would “lead to paralysis, division” and “fatal damage to the chances of a hostage deal.”

Gantz argued that an agreement on an election date wouldn’t dent Israel’s war effort against Hamas in Gaza and would “prevent the rift in the nation.”

Even if Gantz pulls out of the war cabinet, Netanyahu’s government won’t necessarily fall because Likud and the several ultra-Orthodox and nationalist parties in its coalition will maintain a narrow majority in the parliament.

Nonetheless, a Gantz exit would weaken Netanyahu’s position.

The conflict is creating deep political fractures within Israel as well as straining the country’s relations with key allies, including the US. Last month, Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish official in the US Congress, tore into Netanyahu, saying the prime minister had “lost his way” and Israel needed to hold elections to decide its future.

Gaza, Iran Strikes Show Limits of Biden’s Influence on Israel

Israeli stocks slumped 1.8% by 12:10 p.m. in Tel Aviv, though they’re still up around 4% this year. Aside from local politics, markets have been unnerved by rising tensions between Israel and Iran, especially after a deadly missile strike on Tehran’s consulate in Damascus on Monday. The Islamic Republic blamed Israel and vowed to take revenge.

Navigational signals were scrambled over the Tel Aviv metropolitan area on Thursday as Israel braced for a potential Iranian attack on the country’s economic center.

Protests Against Netanyahu

Netanyahu, who was released from hospital on Tuesday following a hernia operation, has been the target of increasingly large protests over the past few days. Tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets in Jerusalem, blaming him for failing to secure the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. They also called for elections and several people were arrested.

Netanyahu, 74, is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister and heads the most right-wing coalition in its history. Gantz is a leading opposition figure but joined a five-man, emergency cabinet soon after Hamas fighters attacked southern Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and abducting around 250.

Israel’s retaliatory air and ground offensive on Gaza has killed more than 32,000 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Gantz, 64, is a former head of the Israeli military and an ex-defense minister. His politics are more centrist than those of Netanyahu, though both men agree on the need to continue the war until Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the US, is destroyed.

They also both say Israeli forces must be sent into the city of Rafah because several thousand Hamas fighters and leaders of the Iran-backed group are there. Israel’s allies are trying to convince it to scrap those plans, saying an offensive would be devastating for the more than one million civilians seeking refuge from the war.

The prime minister’s facing a showdown with some coalition members over a Supreme Court ruling last week that cut funding for ultra-Orthodox seminaries unless their students serve in the military. Netanyahu promised he’d prevent such a move when his government was formed in late 2022. Gantz and other opposition politicians back the court, arguing Israel can no longer afford to exempt any sections of the Jewish population from the draft.

Netanyahu has said he will find a way to keep both sides happy.

International pressure on Israel has grown significantly after its army struck a World Central Kitchen aid convoy on Monday, killing seven workers. US President Joe Biden said he was “outraged.”

Netanyahu’s office said that Biden and Netanyahu are scheduled to speak on Thursday.

The call between the two leaders comes as cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas stall again, according to Israeli officials.

Israel Says Large Gaps Remain With Hamas Over Gaza Cease-Fire

Large gaps remain between the sides over hostages, prisoners and the future of Gaza, with Hamas wanting to stay in power even after fighting ends.

A delegation of Israeli negotiators returned late Tuesday from two days of talks in Cairo and reported that Hamas is insisting on an immediate end to the war and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the officials said. Those conditions are unacceptable to Israel, they said.

HENRI MATISSE didn’t let anything stop him from making art. During the last decade of his life he created art with white paper and gouache called the Cut-Outs. It’s no surprise that my funky florals have been inspired by him. I have long admired his still life painting compositions and his collages. Now I’m obsessed with his goldfish!

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

The US is like the stereotypical high school athlete who still thinks he’s all that 30 years later, long after his strength and agility has dwindled.

There he sits, in a bar, guzzling intoxicants, with his beer belly hanging low, thinking he’s hot stuff, trash talking the quiet guys in the corner, insulting their mothers, and threatening their daughters.

Like Biden trash talking Trump, “I’ll take him out back of the gym and kick his butt.”

But even the most stereotyped asshole beyond his prime doesn’t suddenly ask the quiet guys in the corner to buy him and his buddies a round of beer.

That takes a special kind of asshole, the kind who rises to the top in today’s USA.

It is downright embarrassing to be an American today, and have the world think that we actually elected these fools.

RFK Jr.: Listen, I can make the argument that President Biden is a much worse threat to democracy. And the reason for that is Biden is the first president in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech, so as to censor his opponent. I can say that because I just won a case in the Federal Court of Appeals, and now before the Supreme Court, that shows that he started censoring not just me for 37 hours after he took the oath of office, he was censoring me. No president in the country has ever done that.

The greatest threat to democracy is not somebody who questions election returns, but a President of the United States will use the power of his office to force the social media companies, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter to open a portal and give the access to that portal to the FBI, to the CIA, to the IRS, to CISA, to NIH, to censor his political critics. President Biden, the first president in history to use his power over the Secret Service to deny Secret Service protection to one of his political opponents for political reasons. He’s weaponizing the federal agencies.

…

The polarization, the division of Americans is the most toxic it has been since the American Civil War. There’s a whole group of people in this country, the American middle class, 57% of Americans who can’t put their hands on a thousand dollars if there’s an emergency in their family. For those people, if the engine light comes on in their car, it’s the apocalypse. They’re going to lose their car, lose their job. They’re feeling forgotten by the Democratic Party that used to represent the interest of the middle class. They’re feeling forgotten by the entire political establishment.

Donald Trump came in in 2016 and said to those people, “Yeah, the whole thing is fixed.” And that’s what they wanted to hear. Populist movements can either be harnessed by demagogues for dark reasons and by using all the alchemies of demagoguery, or they can be captured by idealistic leaders and idealistic reasons. My father captured most of the white vote in Maryland, Delaware and the Eastern states just before his death in 1968. 4 years later, those same people voted for George Wallace. Why is that? They were populists. My father captured that energy with the powers and the cause of idealism.

DONALD TRUMP’S INSATIABLE BLOODLUST

by Maureen Dowd

An earthquake. An eclipse. A bridge collapse. A freak blizzard. A biblical flood. Donald Trump leading in battleground states.

Apocalyptic vibes are stirred by Trump’s violent rhetoric and talk of blood baths.

If he’s not elected, he bellowed in Ohio, there will be a blood bath in the auto industry. At his Michigan rally on Tuesday, he said there would be a blood bath at the border, speaking from a podium with a banner reading, “Stop Biden’s border blood bath.” He has warned that, without him in the Oval, there will be an “Oppenheimer”-like doomsday; we will lose World War III and America will be devastated by “weapons, the likes of which nobody has ever seen before.”

“And the only thing standing between you and its obliteration is me,” Trump has said.

An unspoken Trump threat is that there will be a blood bath again in Washington, like Jan. 6, if he doesn’t win.

That is why he calls the criminals who stormed the Capitol “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots.” He starts some rallies with a dystopian remix of the national anthem, sung by the “J6 Prison Choir,” and his own reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance.

The bloody-minded Trump luxuriates in the language of tyrants.

In “Macbeth,” Shakespeare uses blood imagery to chart the creation of a tyrant. Those words echo in Washington as Ralph Fiennes stars in a thrilling Simon Godwin production of “MacBeth” for the Shakespeare Theater Company, opening Tuesday.

“The raw power grab that excites Lady Macbeth and incites her husband to regicide feels especially pertinent now, when the dangers of autocracy loom over political discussions,” Peter Marks wrote in The Washington Post about the production with Fiennes and Indira Varma (the lead sand snake in “Game of Thrones.”)

Trump’s raw power grab after his 2020 loss may have failed, but he’s inflaming his base with language straight out of Macbeth’s trip to hell.

“Blood will have blood,” as Macbeth says. One of the witches, the weird sisters, urges him, “Be bloody, bold and resolute.”

Another weird sister, Marjorie Taylor Greene, is predicting end times. “God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent,” she tweeted on Friday. “Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things to come. I pray that our country listens.”

Like Macbeth, Trump crossed a line and won’t turn back. The Irish say, “You may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.” Macbeth killed his king, then said: “I am in blood. Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey reported that since Trump put his daughter-in-law in charge of the Republican National Committee, prospective employees are asked if they think the election was stolen. Republicans once burbled on about patriotism and defending America. Now denying democracy is a litmus test for employment in the Formerly Grand Old Party.

My Irish immigrant father lived through the cruel “No Irish Need Apply” era. I’m distraught that our mosaic may shatter.

But Trump embraces Hitleresque phrases to stir racial hatred. He has talked about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country.” Last month, he called migrants “animals,” saying, “I don’t know if you call them ‘people,’ in some cases. They’re not people, in my opinion.”

Trump’s obsession with bloodlines was instilled by his father, the son of a German immigrant. He thinks there is good blood and bad blood, superior blood and inferior blood. Fred Trump taught his son that their family’s success was genetic, reminiscent of Hitler’s creepy faith in eugenics.

“The family subscribes to a racehorse theory of human development,” the Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio told PBS. “They believe that there are superior people and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get a superior offspring.”

Trump has been talking about this as far back as an “Oprah” show in 1988. The “gene believer” brought it up in a 2020 speech in Minnesota denouncing refugees.

“A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe?” he told the crowd about their pioneer lineage, adding: “The racehorse theory, you think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.”

As Stephen Greenblatt writes in “Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics,” usurpers don’t ascend to the throne without complicity. Republican enablers do all they can to cozy up to their would-be dictator, even introducing a bill to rename Dulles airport for Trump. Democrats responded by introducing a bill to name a prison in Florida for Trump.

“Why, in some circumstances, does evidence of mendacity, crudeness or cruelty serve not as a fatal disadvantage but as an allure, attracting ardent followers?” Greenblatt asked. “Why do otherwise proud and self-respecting people submit to the sheer effrontery of the tyrant, his sense that he can get away with saying and doing anything he likes, his spectacular indecency?”

(NY Times)

“There is another world, but it is in this one.”

― William Butler Yeats

IN THE LOWER DESERTS

by Alexander Cockburn (August 2001)

Cactus Smuggling and Other Adventures…

I stood alongside two Mexican tourists looking through a chainlink fence at an enormous hole in the ground. Somewhere near the New Mexico/Arizona line it was maybe half a mile across and easily as deep, though the clarity of the air could have been deceiving and the whole void could have been a cubic mile. There’s nothing like an open-pit mine to remind you of what man, in this instance the Phelps Dodge Company, will do in the great cause of making a buck, and though there was no sign of active digging in progress, I’ve no doubt that some twitch in the price of copper or whatever else it was Phelps Dodge had been gouging out of that hole could have sent the big cutting machines into action once more.

We could see the geology in cross section, layered green, dark blue, red and sandy white as, somewhere back in ur-time, the various strata had heaved and settled themselves in a arrangement that half a billion years later proved most satisfactory to the stockholders of Phelps Dodge, a company of infamous repute, not least for its curt command to that despicable invertebrate known as Bruce Babbitt to bring out the State Troopers to break a strike.

Only a few days earlier, back in Alabama, I’d been reading a terrifying story in the Wall Street Journal, a truly brilliant and important piece of historical research by a WSJ reporter called Douglas Blackmon, into the way US companies, including units of U.S. Steel, had contracted with the state of Alabama to recruit cheap prison labor to dig coal, notably at the Pratt mining complex outside Birmingham. The total number of those sent into the mines over the 60-year span of the system probably far exceeded 100,000.

The reporter had the temerity to note that in June a $4.5 billion fund set up by German corporations began making payments last month to the victims of Nazi slave-labor programs during the 1930s and 1940s and that Japanese manufacturers now face demands for compensation for their alleged use of forced labor during the same period. Maybe the profiteers from mines in Shelby County, Alabama, should face some questions too and victims or their offspring be vindicated. “In the US, many companies — real-estate agents that helped maintain rigid housing segregation, insurers and other financial-services companies that red-lined minority areas as off-limits, employers of all stripes that discriminated in hiring — helped maintain traditions of segregation for a century after the end of the Civil War. But in the US, recurrent calls for reparations to the descendants of pre-Civil War slaves have made little headway. And there has been scant debate over compensating victims of 20th century racial abuses involving businesses.”

Most of the convicts condemned to the coal mines in Shelby County were charged with minor offenses or violations of “Black Code” statutes passed to reassert white control in the aftermath of the Civil War. “Subjected to squalid living conditions, poor medical treatment, scant food and frequent floggings, thousands died. Entries on a typical page from a 1918 state report on causes of death among leased convicts include: ”Killed by Convict, Asphyxia from Explosion, Tuberculosis, Burned by Gas Explosion, Pneumonia, Shot by Foreman, Gangrenous Appendicitis, Paralysis.”

The system was simplicity itself. The sheriffs and guards made their living off commissions on supplying the black convict labor, also by pocketing the difference between the food money they were allocated and the slops they actually dished out to the convicts. The pretexts for arrests were trivial or non-existent, such as being rowdy, riding the rails, looking at a white woman (unless the glance was of a quality that required a lynching). Fines were imposed and since the blacks had no money, the men were sent to the coal mines instead, with years added on to cover “court costs.” What followed was most often a prolonged death sentence, by dint of overwork, starvation and then sickness, unless the process was speeded up by being beaten to death with a pickax handle by one of the guards.

Some Alabama officials in the late nineteenth century were horrified. At the Pratt Mines an observer for a special Alabama legislative committee in 1897 wrote a report describing 1,117 convicts, many “wholly unfit for the work,” at labor in the shaft. The men worked standing in pools of putrid water. Gas from the miners' headlamps and smoke from blasts of dynamite and gun powder choked the mine. The convict board's death registers show that in the final decade of the 19th century, large numbers of men died when diarrhea and dysentery periodically swept through the Pratt Mines. Citing inadequate food, beatings of miners and unsanitary conditions, state inspectors periodically issued reports criticizing the mine's operators, initially Pratt Coal & Coke Co. and later Tennessee Coal, which acquired Pratt Coal in the late 1800s.

Men were priced depending on their health and their ability to dig coal. Under state rules adopted in 1901, a “first class” prisoner had to cut and load into mine cars four tons of coal a day to avoid being whipped. That’s 8,000 pounds, maybe three or four times the weight of a Volkswagen. As revenue from the lease system rose, companies took over nearly all the penal functions of the state. Since they had to pay a penalty to the state of Alabama if any prisoner escaped, company guards were empowered and had ample incentive to shoot prisoners attempting to flee and, well into the 20th century, to strip disobedient convicts naked and whip them.

“The demand for labor and fees has become so great that most of them now go to the mines where many of them are unfit for such labor; consequently it is not long before they pass from this earth,” wrote Shirley Bragg, president of the Board of Inspectors of Convicts, in a September 1906 report to Alabama's governor. “Is it not the duty of the State to see that proper treatment is accorded these poor defenseless creatures, many of whom ought never have been arrested and tried at all?” Such protests notwithstanding, the system continued.

U.S. Steel bought Tennessee Coal in 1907. U.S. Steel Chairman Elbert H. Gary, after whom the Indiana steel town is named, was a man of progressive reputation. He commanded his subordinates that association of U.S. Steel or its subsidiaries with the penal system of Alabama should cease. It didn’t. That same year 50 black convicts set fire to the mine in an attempt to escape and many were suffocated or roasted alive. One executive noted that U.S. Steel's “chief inducement for the hiring of convicts was the certainty of a supply of coal for our manufacturing operations in the contingency of labor troubles.”

Any governor of Arizona has as one of his prime functions the provision of cheap water, transported at public expense, for the big real estate and agricultural interests of the state. That night, ensconced in my Days Inn in the little south-eastern Arizona town of Safford, I was able to gaze at the great cotton fields surrounding the town as they have for decades now, with the abundant water sloshing through the ditches. Over on the south-east horizon was Mount Graham, sacred to the Apache and sanctuary to the endangered red squirrel, both of which attributes are being swiftly destroyed by the mighty telescopes installed with the vehement support of Senator John McCain, also the Vatican which endorsed the telescopes as vital for the search of the cosmos for further possible converts to Christendom.

Along state highway 70 I rolled next day through Globe and on Route 60, its nearby satellite of Miami, where one is afforded a definitive vignette of the role on environmental regulation, in the form of a vast, truly awful mine, like a cross between something out of Caspar Friedrich and a Fritz Lang nightmare; a mountain of shale, its base oozing green puss, topped by a mining building, the whole thing a thousand feet high, and right at the bottom, next to the highway a tiny shack labeled “Environmental Compliance” and next to this the cryptic sign, “Zero and Beyond.”

Then came more mines and astounding red rock, sandstone formations and then, ten minutes later, the other side of the range, a sign for the Boyce Thompson arboretum. I rolled right past it and then, always a sucker for gardens and arboreta, made a U and went in. So glad I did, since these 1,075 acres of the Sonoran desert nestling at the base of Picketpost mountain now comprise one of the premier horticultural attractions of the country, for which we can thank William Boyce Thompson and, no doubt, Mrs. Thompson.

He was a mining engineer from Montana, who made his pile figuring out where to dig some of the big holes I had been gazing at a few minutes earlier. Flush with income from the Inspiration Consolidated Copper Company at Globe-Miami, Thompson won his honorary title of “colonel” by leading a Red Cross expedition to Russia in 1917. As he marched across the arid Asian steppes towards St. Petersburg the colonel became mightily impressed not only by the extreme hunger he witnessed on all sides but also by the fact that what little food the locals had often came from plants. All foods, the colonel suddenly appreciated, comes originally from plants. Back in Arizona he swiftly laid plans for an arid land arboretum where plants from the world’s deserts could be brought together, their uses assayed and their seeds distributed. Work began in 1923 and by 1929 it was up and running as a joint project of the Arboretum, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Civilian Conservation Corps. These days there are over 3000 different plants flourishing at Boyce Thompson and among the beneficiaries of the Colonel are sperm whales, a substitute for whose oil is the oil pressed from seeds of the desert jojoba bush, now planted on a large scale in Arizona.

I wandered about in the 105 degree heat and soon saw in the distance the tapering trunk, some 35 feet high, of Idria columnaris, otherwise known as the Boojum, whose erroneous identification proved so fatal to the baker in Lewis Carroll’s heimlich masterpiece, ‘The Hunting of the Snark.’ All around were marvelous cacti and kindred succulents such as euphorbias and agaves.

A few years ago I tried to collect orchids and swiftly realized that the cost and effort involved is kindred to living with a series of petulant film stars. Orchids are never happy, are always complaining. This year I shifted to cacti and have been a happy man. Water and feed them every four weeks or so and they repay you with an attractive presence, plus wonderful blooms once or twice a year. If they suffer, it’s a silent, and at least in the short term, invisible pain.

The arboretum, which must be a particular miracle to visit in the spring when the desert is in bloom, has many interesting cacti for sale and I loaded up the ’62 Plymouth station wagon, which was already freighted with cacti and a Madagascar Palm I’d bought in Truth or Consequences.

I headed west through Phoenix, then onto Interstate 10 towards Blythe, California. Beside the highway ran the power lines and I thought of that great son of the desert, Edward Abbey, and his malediction in the Monkey Wrench Gang: “All this fantastic effort — giant machines, road networks, strip mines, conveyor belt, pipelines, slurry lines, loading towers, railway and electric trains, hundred-million-dollar coal-burning power plant; ten thousand miles of high-tension towers and high-voltage power lines; the devastation of the landscape, the destruction of Indian homes and Indian grazing lands, Indian shrines and Indian burial grounds; the poisoning of the last big clean-air reservoir in the forty-eight contiguous United States, the exhaustion of precious water supplies — all that ball-breaking labor and all that back-breaking expense and all the heartbreaking insult to land and sky and human heart, for what? All for what? Why, to light the lamps of Phoenix suburbs not yet built, to run the air conditioners of San Diego and Los Angeles, to illuminate shopping-center parking lots at two in the morning, to power aluminum plants, magnesium plants, vinyl-chloride factories, and copper smelters, to charge the neon-tubing that makes the meaning (all the meaning there is) of Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Tucson, Salt Lake City, the amalgamated metropoli of southern California, to keep alive that phosphorescent petrifying glory (all the glory there is left) called Down Town, Night Time, Wonderville, U.S.A.”

A few yards after the Colorado river there was a checkpoint staffed by the California Department of Agriculture. A tough looking fellow took one glance through the window of my station wagon at the cacti within and demanded proof of origin and purchase. Fortunately I managed to find a tag from the Arboretum, but he wasn’t entirely satisfied, pointing at the Madagascar palm and saying it looked as though I’d dug it up myself. Finally he let me through and I went off down the interstate wondering whether the big cactus smugglers used geezers in old station wagons as mules to shift product.

The next day I remarked on the fierce inspection to young Rick, who runs an excellent little roadside cactus store at Four Corners, where 58 crosses 395 and he told me that all cacti in the US are protected, and indeed gangs do dig them up in the desert for later sale. A substantial saguaro can cost hundreds of dollars. When the Arizona highways department has to move a cactus the road crews will tag it, sell it to a dealer who can then legally put it up for sale. He told me I was lucky to have got my plants through, even though their papers were basically in order.

Then he started cursing as, from behind a trailer in the Arco station down the road, a helicopter rose noisily. Four Corners consists of about six gas stations and apparently the local county bureaucracy agreed with the complaint of the Arco man that Rick’s cactus store constitutes an eyesore, since it has green, living things for sale. He’s having to move round the corner where the truckers and tourists racing along 58 towards Tehachapi and Bakersfield won’t be distracted by offensive flora.

Drive through interior California and you drive past prisons. In Adelanto the mother and daughter who ran the local Days Inn told me that they already had two in town, one state and one federal, and were scheduled for three more, probably private. Higher up Interstate 5 you pass Avenal and Coalinga, with others over the horizon. In San Jose the headlines spoke of further implosion in the e-markets. Hewlett Packard was set to lay off thousands worldwide. I chugged up through the wine country and into Humboldt County and in mid-afternoon, 4,000 miles, and ten days after I left Landrum, South Carolina, having needed only one quart of oil and having established an average of 17 mpg, the ’62 Plymouth Belvedere swung into my yard. Five minutes later two F-14s, or maybe F-18s, flew down the tiny Mattole valley 500 feet up, amid a deafening roar. “The sound of freedom,” they used to call it. These were pilots being assholes. I watched my horses jump about four feet in the air. A mile down river, Margie Smith’s old horse jumped too, wounded itself on a fence post and bled to death. 

THE WITCH & THE SKELETON

Dear Esteemed Editor,

For your consideration, “Takiyasha the Witch and the Skeleton Spectre” or “Mitsukuni Defying the Skeleton Spectre Invoked by Princess Takiyash” by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, c. 1844. Woodblock print triptych.

Bob Abeles

Boonville