- Don’t Take It Personal
- Emerald Dust
- AT&T's Trickery
- Still In Elk
- Ukiah Overdose Spots
- No Vaccine, No Insurance
- Mississippi 1964
- When They Knew How To Design & Build
- Ceasefire Now!
- Someone Out There Remember?
- Giant Bummers
- Rubberstamping PG&E Incompetence
- Moving On, But…
- Happy Easter
- Giants Adrift
- Supply Side Drugs
- No More Delays
- Get The Flocks Outtahere
DON’T TAKE IT PERSONAL
Editor,
I was beyond bummed to read of your cancer diagnosis, not to mention an end to the print edition of AVA, though I'd trade that for your health in a blink. I'm not the guy to tell you to kick ass on cancer. My wife developed breast cancer at 32 and again at 49, though a different tumor type. She was one of the “founding mothers” of the Humboldt County Breast Health group, that now includes ob/gyn cancers as well. She worked with the group counseling women navigating breast cancer for almost 15 years, and the approach they found most helpful was to learn to dance with it. After almost 30 years of ostensible remission her first tumor, a few cells of which had apparently gotten loose in her lymph system and was held in check by her immune system, returned— but as we age the machine breaks down, and by the time she realized her cancer had recurred, it was systemic. She was diagnosed on Halloween of 2016 and died on December 6, 36 days later. I have no wisdom to offer on dealing with cancer, from kicking its ass to dancing it's ass into the ground. But I will say, after an old timber feller I gambled with for years named Pissfir Willie:
“Don't matter shit
where, when, or how
you die.
Important this is
don't take it personal.”
Jim Dodge
Manila
EMERALD DUST
Editor,
Went home to Ferndale on Friday. The Victorian Village is turning into Mendocino village: gone are any memories of the artists and craftspeople who actually made things. It’s all kitsch and imported junk. No more Blacksmith Joe or Bennetts Ironworks or Hobarts Art. Instead there’s a store dedicated to dogs for those folks who push around their canines in strollers.
Fortuna’s evolution is much scarier. The meth seems to be taking over. I was waiting for the zombies to pop out at any moment.
Heading south you see that Rio Dell has two weed dispensaries. Just like the word cannabis, I have come to despise the word dispensary. There’s a new one in Eureka on Broadway. It looks like a bad tattoo on some tacky hunk of flesh.
Drifting down 101 I flew past Redway. Spring is beautiful, particularly in these ultra wet years. A DJ on KMUD strung together a set of wonderful songs by Iris Dement and Greg Brown. The song ‘Wasteland of the Free’ by Ms. Dement really hit home as I drove past the empty storefront of Geiger’s Market in Laytonville.
The dust is settling behind the Emerald Curtain. The old hippies can’t chop their own firewood anymore and their children can’t fly to Costa Rica every six months now that all their properties are being foreclosed on.
Where do we go from here? Your guess is as good as mine.
Kirk Vodopals
Navarro
AT&T'S TRICKERY
Editor:
AT&T’s proposal to abandon traditional landline telephone service concerns Californians for good reasons. Yes, copper wire technology has gone the way of the dinosaurs. Yet in many regions there are no other options. It’s unconscionable to isolate Californians from the rest of the world simply because a for-profit company decides it’s not profitable enough to maintain an in-place system.
Do the rest of us want to help pay the costs for people in outlying and remote areas of the state? Yes, for everyone’s benefit. Besides, we’ve been doing it for years. Anyone who pays for AT&T cellphone service is already paying for the landline system. Built into our sky-high rates are the costs of construction and maintenance of both systems, plus extra to assure the business generates profits. It’s certainly not going to shut AT&T down if they maintain the landline system for safety and well-being in rural areas.
Be prepared, though. There’s a devious plan here. Soon we’ll see an additional charge itemized on phone bills for landline support. AT&T won’t have to pay for the system after all. Each one of us will continue to subsidize it, but at a higher cost, which was probably the plan all along. They don’t hire the best lawyers for nothing.
Gretchen Thompson
Sonoma
STILL IN ELK
Editor,
A couple of things: Rosie Radiator (Bess Bair) came to the Caspar Inn several times to perform with her troupe; I believe that is how she first gained knowledge of the AVA; she was a relentless publicist. I think that is why she bought and gave you a book of my poetry, she was quite a fan. At one time I dearly loved that woman and imagined a life with her.
In terms of being a "back to the lander", I moved a mile east of Mendocino from SF in 1969 to a home purchased the year before but disliked being in the “burbs” and bought an undeveloped parcel on the Greenwood Road in Elk. I started building a self-designed house, digging trenches, pouring concrete, driving nails, plumbing, electrical etc. (with a building permit to get electricity to the site) in 1971. I got divorced, more or less finished the house, planted 15 or 20 fruit trees, a large vegetable garden (semi-commercial, flock of chickens, pigs (see poem ‘Pork Chop’), goats, geese, etc. Grew pot. Cut a few trees, milled lumber, worked restoring houses, developing real estate. Odd jobs at Esalen, doorman for local bands and clubs, bought the Caspar Inn and remodeled it, then operated it until retirement.
I still live in the same house I built in 1971 although they have changed the name of the road twice and my street address once. Call me what you will, I lived here and cut my own firewood until Caspar Inn and old age claimed my hips and back.
Hope you recover soon and well. Sorry the newsprint is going; I dislike reading on the computer, but the AVA is a necessity.
Peter Lit
Elk
UKIAH OVERDOSE SPOTS
Editor,
Overdoses happen mostly outside of the Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center property. Regardless, there is no input at all regarding “fear, trauma, and grief”. Most overdosed individuals deny that there is anything wrong with them, while the emergency responders attempt to revive them. And then the next week, the fentanyl-methamphetamine-cocaine-oxycontin-marijuana-tobacco chain smoking individuals die, and are found on a bus bench at dawn. The old car wash on Talmage Road was the gathering spot for heroin users. The heavier fentanyl users dropped dead in the parking lot of Sunny Donuts. As always, the premier gathering spot remains on Observatory Way above South State Street. It is the most pitiable place possible.
News update at ten.
Craig Stehr
Ukiah
NO VACCINE, NO INSURANCE
Editor:
Regarding the resurgence of measles, it appears that anti-vaxxers are winning, but eventually evolution will take care of this lunacy. Until then, this misguided view will wreak havoc on the rest of us. People are allowed to have mistaken views, but the rest of us do not have to pay for them. I have a way to possibly urge these folks along: If anyone falls ill to a disease that has a readily available vaccine and the patient is not vaccinated or medically exempt, no insurance or public funds should be used for treatment. The person should be 100% responsible, and the debt should not be eligible for discharge in bankruptcy. While natural selection is slow, maybe the specter of financial ruin will speed things along.
Steve Haeffele
Santa Rosa
MISSISSIPPI 1964
Editor,
I hope you are recovering well from your recent cancer treatment. Mission Bay is indeed superlative, having had some cancer treatments there. Of course, as a white, male, physician it’s easy for me to get great care. If only it was available to everyone.
Thanks for the shout out for Mississippi 1964. I was one of several hundred college students who participated in Freedom Summer, spending the Summer and Fall in Panola County, Mississippi. This is the 60th anniversary of Freedom Summer, so I think about it a bit. Perhaps you want to do a story about us locals some 60 years later?
All the best, Bruce.
Buz Graham
PS. This pic is from Stanley Nelson’s documentary “Freedom Summer.”
WHEN THEY KNEW HOW TO DESIGN & BUILD
Editor,
You've got to look in awe and wonderment at the picture of the Ukiah Courthouse from the 1860s. The mentality of quality of construction and pride of place is now replaced with CoastLibs who flippantly brush off their constituency on matters of concern. How California has changed.
Jeff Goll
Willits
CEASEFIRE NOW!
AVA:
I include the latest edition of my Let Gaza Live flyer.
Thanks!
Steve Elliott
Bridgewater, Massachussetts
Attached:
Permanent Ceasefire Now!
Stop The Killing And Suffering In Gaza!
Israel has killed more than 25,000 civilians in Gaza, some 13,000 of them children. Uncounted numbers are buried under rubble.
Gazans suffer hunger, thirst, exposure, disease, and death on an epic scale. Israel has destroyed the infrastructure of Gaza, and left some two million people homeless and without medical care or sanitation.
The U.S. government supports & participates in this slaughter, but not with the approval of most of the people. Israel laughs at Biden’s hypocritical pleas to protect civilians.
Israel has already killed more than 25 times the number of civilians who were killed on October 7. It has destroyed hospitals, schools, universities, mosques, churches, olive trees, even cemeteries.
Resources:
Code Pink: Against Our Better Judgement, by Alison Weir
If Americns Knew: Assault on the Liberty, by James Ennes
CounterPunch: The Holocaust Industry, by Norman Finkelstein
Chris Hedges Report: Dishonest Broker, by Nasser Aruri
Washing Report on Midesat Affairs: The 100 Years War on Palestine, by Rashid Khalidi
Jewish Voice for Peace: Reel Bad Arabs, by Jack Shaheen
Electronic Intifada: The Israel Lobby, by J. Mearsheimer & S. Walt
www.jonathan-cook.net: Palestine, by Joe Sacco
SOMEONE OUT THERE REMEMBER?
Editor,
I'm wondering if you know or have an easy way to find out about dialing direct in Boonville ca. 1950-55.
I found a record of the exchange from 1951 (259) but not whether the exchange was known by letters or, most importantly, whether it needed to be dialed at all to reach a local number (say if you were calling between two businesses on the main drag).
Maybe you have some old listing from the early fifties showing a local number to call?
If it's a pain to dig up I'll try a reference librarian here in SF.
Thanks!
Nathaniel (Stookey)
San Francisco
GIANT BUMMERS
Editor:
I grew up in Southern California in a family of rabid Dodger and Laker fans. Yet since I was old enough to play sports, I was obsessed with the Giants (Willie Mays) and the Warriors (Rick Barry). I recently got home from an extended road trip to learn that the Giants got rid of Renel Brooks-Moon, the stadium public address announcer, without any reasonable explanation or farewell ceremony. She was an absolute gem of an announcer. They also refused to allow Brandon Crawford to stay even though he was willing to make compromises in his playing time. The absolute deal breaker for me is finding out that the owner of the Giants is a mega supporter of Donald Trump. So, no, I will never root for the Dodgers, but as far as the Giants this season, I plan to play a lot more golf.
Bruce Robb
Sebastopol
RUBBERSTAMPING PG&E INCOMPETENCE
Dear Editor,
Once again the PG&E contractor circus is in town. They arrive with lots of brand new tree trimming equipment and act like an occupying army of ill equipped and unsupervised goofballs. As I drove up Little Valley Road yesterday there was a crew of three California Tree Solutions employees sitting on the bed of a $200K boom truck playing cards at 2pm.
When they actually work, the trimming seems haphazard, cutting the low to the ground brush but leaving the rotten white firs that have been marked for removal for many years which are towering over the 12,000 volt distribution lines and are ready to fall at any moment. Where is PG&E to check up on their contractors? And why does PG&E not do this work in house like they used to?
What is in place, at present, seems to be a system designed for maximum inefficiency and therefore maximum cost for the ratepayers. By the way the name of the latest flavor of PG&E contractor is California Tree Solutions from the San Jose area. It’s hard to keep track of the parade of different names over the years, what the heck is going on here and why is the tree work being done during the wettest time of the year?
The ground is saturated and the heavy trucks do damage to the local gravel roads in the rural areas. PG&E do you have any answers to these questions?
Incidentally PG&E closed down their office here in Fort Bragg a couple of years ago so there’s no one to talk to to get any answers. If you call the phone number they provide for vegetation management, you get a prerecorded message.
There has to be a better way of powering the grid than relying on PG&E because they seem to be a lost cause. CPUC, are you listening? Stop rubber stamping rate increases until things improve.
Sincerely,
Tim McClure
Fort Bragg
MOVING ON, BUT…
Dear AVA crew,
It’s 2024, the very fabric of the universe is unraveling, S0 it should come as no surprise that the AVA is ending its print edition. Just another little sad thing to add to the pile, and here comes a letter to say how much it will be missed.
We’ve been getting the AVA since sometime in the 90s, and it’s been an entertaining and enlightening part of our lives all these years. I understand why you would stop the print edition, and I’m glad you’ll continue the internet edition, but it just won't be the same. There is something about sitting down with the paper edition, folding back the pages, having it laid out there on the desk as I read, a pleasant habit I’ve had for a Jong time. Certainly not the end of the world, but another bit of empty space where something nice used to be. Sitting at the computer to look at the digital edition just won’t be the same. But, so be it! I do understand. As Stephen King put it in the Dark Tower series, the world has moved on.
So let me just send a giant thank you out to Bruce and Mark and all the AVA crew. One of the most valuable things I’ve picked up from reading the AVA comes from Mark Scaramella’s coverage of the county government in action. Or, inaction. It shows me that all government is fractal, it’s all repeated endlessly on every level, neighborhood association, city, county, state, federal, whathaveyou.
The kind of inaction and grifting that goes on at the Mendo Co Board of Supes is repeated all the way up to the feds, all the way up to international governing bodies. This kind of corruption and mismanagement on every level is why we’ve reached the state of political insanity we see today. Don’t know how you’ve been able to stand covering this shitshow all these years, Mark, but thanks for a crazy kind of entertainment. It’s really been valuable, and I thank you for expanding my cynicism.
Bruce, I hope you recover and have many more years of making trouble ahead of you! We’re all getting older, and I find I really hate this time of life. It’s the constant loss of things and people that’s the worst. Plus realizing that all those projects you haven’t finished are never going to get finished; they just aren’t, you don’t have the time or the energy any more. I hate this, and now the AVA is stopping the print edition. Figures.
Anyhow, I guess this is the last actual letter on paper I’ll ever send to the AVA. It’s all email from now on! So, once again I’ll just say: Thanks for everything over all the years. See you on the website.
Indeed, the world has moved on.
Sheri Calkins
La Honda
HAPPY EASTER
AVA,
Easter
Your five page tribute to Jesus Christ warmed my heart. At this time in our country it takes guts to publish a positive Christian piece.
Thank you Robert Forest. Thank you AVA. Thank you, thank you.
Cordially,
Jeannie Coulson
Ukiah
GIANTS ADRIFT
Editor:
I grew up in Southern California in a family of rabid Dodger and Laker fans. Yet since I was old enough to play sports, I was obsessed with the Giants (Willie Mays) and the Warriors (Rick Barry). I recently got home from an extended road trip to learn that the Giants got rid of Renel Brooks-Moon, the stadium public address announcer, without any reasonable explanation or farewell ceremony. She was an absolute gem of an announcer. They also refused to allow Brandon Crawford to stay even though he was willing to make compromises in his playing time. The absolute deal breaker for me is finding out that the owner of the Giants is a mega supporter of Donald Trump. So, no, I will never root for the Dodgers, but as far as the Giants this season, I plan to play a lot more golf.
Bruce Robb
Sebastopol
SUPPLY SIDE DRUGS
Editor:
In our war against some drugs, we don’t seem to ask basic economic questions — supply and demand. Why aren’t we looking into demand, rather than the supply? As long as there is demand — for almost anything — supply will keep up. This is simple economics.
We don’t seem to think beyond certain tropes — homeless people, people addicted to opiates through chronic pain, the old saw about mothers needing or using meth to do housework — most of which seem to have been put to bed.
How much fentanyl has been taken off the streets recently? Seventy-five pounds here, 32 pounds there. Surely that’s enough to kill every homeless person in the country, not just the county.
So the demand, not to mention the cash, must be coming from elsewhere. I suspect many more people are using drugs, not necessarily fentanyl, for reasons we don’t yet understand. If they are using fentanyl, regardless of how they get it, or if a ruse is used to get them to try it, they are often too quickly dead for us to ask. I suggest we need to start asking different questions and making different efforts.
Jack Jackson
Sebastopol
NO MORE DELAYS
Editor,
After reading Mike Geniella's recent articles about the Palace Hotel, where he seems to be attempting to create bureaucratic stumbling blocks in the way of anyone finally being able to do something productive with that property, which, after so many decades of advancing ruin FINALLY seemed to have some possibility of being transformed from the toxic black mold eyesore that it has been for so many years, into something that might serve human utility. How frustrating, after, at long last, the city had given its hapless new owner 30 days to either stabilize the structure (impossible) or apply for a demolition permit, to now have these creative new hurdles to any progress there. It made me want to smack myself in the forehead!
Thank god for the excellent reportage of Karen Rifkin in last Sunday's Daily Journal; complete with pictures of the spray-painted lines on the sidewalk where ground penetrating radar indicates buried fuel tanks and an old advertising picture of the first floor service station that once occupied the Palace's ground floor along school Street, it makes Geneilla's claim that there is no evidence of buried fuel tanks ring hollow; remember, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
It turns out that research that has been done so far indicates that there are several long-forgotten buried fuel tanks, including one ginormous concrete tank that is within the building’s footprint. Apparently and amazingly, some or all of them still have old fuel or oil in them that has miraculously not yet leaked out into the aquifer. Obviously, the highest priority should be given to accessing and draining these toxic liquids from those antique tanks, which are probably right on the verge of rupture.
No doubt this could be done without demolishing the building if money were no object, but that’s not the case. None of the arguments put forth by those infamous couple of knee-jerk preservationists who have given their unconditional devotion to the mythical rehabilitation of this long-lost ruin address the plain economics of their dreamed-of rehab; an interesting related fact is the bid that was given for seismic retrofit of the building in 1980, when the building was in the infinitely more salvageable condition. $8.5 million! That would probably translate to 25 million in today’s dollars. Is there really a serious entrepreneur who can imagine any use of the property that could pay the note on such an investment?! I don’t think so, least of all the strident preservationists (I count 2 or 3) who certainly aren’t going to have anything to do with borrowing the enormous sums of money that would be needed to fulfill their fever dream.
In my opinion it is a matter of criminal negligence for the city to entertain any further delays in the demolition and cleanup of the Poison Palace. If the inevitable had been done decades ago we might have a much nicer downtown today, but better late than never!
For this and other blogposts, see https://inarationalworld2.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-palace-hotels-problems.html
John Arteaga
Ukiah
GET THE FLOCKS OUTTAHERE
Editor:
It’s Women’s History Month, an international celebration that has its origins here in Sonoma County. We have long honored the contributions of women and fought for equality for all. Given this, it’s disconcerting to see the continued glorification of this county’s factory egg industry.
Today’s egg industry is built on the exploitation of the female reproductive system. Hens in factory farms have been genetically manipulated to lay about 20 times more eggs than they would naturally to maximize profit. This causes painful health complications.
When hens no longer lay enough eggs to be considered valuable, around 1½ years old, the flock is “depopulated,” usually by gassing or having their necks broken by hand. This is standard practice, even on free range or organic farms.
There are about a dozen factory egg farms in Sonoma County. This year, we will have a chance to vote to phase them out. I urge readers to extend their fight for equality to include nonhuman animals and vote yes.
Sarah Van Mantgem
Windsor
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