Mendocino County Today: Friday 4/12/24

Cooling | Bill Bradd | Sunset | Cubbison Case | Shelter Cove | Haschak Report | Lone Poppy | Shields Report | Great Section | Ed Notes | Caspar Pond | Library Events | Planning Commission | Youth Summit | Duo Concert | Good Fire | Yesterday's Catch | Wants Money | Art & Beauty | Caffrey Plank | Candidate Peskin | Idiots | The Logger | Mr Piggy | Wine Shorts | Homelessness Spending | Portland HS | Salmon Closure | Bikers | Costco Gold | Nader Views | Cave Woman | RFK Policy | Organ Grinder | Hedges Interview | Bronco Hearse | Postal Agenda | 11am | Civil War | Fulfilled | Flip-Flops | Billy Mills | Drawn | NYC | Pekar Issue

THE COOL-DOWN IS UNDERWAY starting today and into the weekend as amplified upper level trough with the prominent closed low diving south within the base of the trough influencing our weather for the next few days. Light snow is also expected generally above 3000 feet mainly Saturday night into Sunday morning. A warming trend with generally drier conditions is expected for the next work week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): I have mostly clear skies & 48F at 4:30am this Friday morning on the coast but clouds are increasing ahead of the next rain maker. We have a chance of showers later today, bigger rain chances for Saturday, then lingering showers Sunday morning. Next week is looking dry so far.

BILL BRADD: POET LAUREATE OF TEN MILE RIVER PASSES ON

William John Bradd was born on May 1, 1935, in Toronto, Canada, to Jerry and Elinore Bradd. Jerry was a professional hockey player and Elinore was a Mohawk Indian who passed away when Bill was a toddler. Because his father was often away for hockey games. Bill lived with his grandparents and uncles and learned early to be independent. Living on the Precambrian Shield and in rural Northern Ontario shaped much of his early writing.

By the age of 22 he found himself in Toronto working at the Goodyear Tire Company factory. As comfortable as he was in a working-class environment where he learned to love dancing and carousing, he also felt drawn to writing and began auditing classes at the University of Toronto. Two years later he moved to New York City and began a lifelong activity — organizing and giving poetry readings.

In 1965 he moved to Big Sur where he joined with followers of Gurdjieff, continued writing poetry, and winning a Canada Council grant for his work. He supported himself as a bartender. By 1972 he had moved to the Mendocino Coast where he created a literary and interview program called “Collage” on a local radio station. It was through this that he met a young radio assistant, Judy Sperling, who became his life companion for the next 47 years.

Bill continued to organize poetry readings and read in venues from Canada and New York, to San Francisco and throughout Northern California. His reading was extremely powerful, entertaining and impactful. He produced three iterations of North Coast “Poetry on the Radio” programs. His work with California Poets in the Schools inspired a generation of Northern California poets. Many poetry magazines published his work. Bill was an editor of the Mendocino Review and a co-founder and editor of the Ten Mile River Press which received a National Endowment for the Arts grant.

Bill's excellence as a raconteur and storyteller is captured in three spoken word CDs. He published seven books of poetry including: Snuffling Sound, A Kingdom of Old Men, Dialogue of a Three-Cornered Hat and Continent of Ghosts. His memoir/novel Notebooks from the Emerald Triangle describes a slice of unique local history.

Through all his work, his love of the spoken word, and his irreverent, non-judgmental, and creative experimentation (e.g., “Avenue of Madness”), Bill was an inspiration for and companion to countless poets, artists and musicians in Canada and the United States. He was an ace card player, a lifelong horse racing enthusiast and a lover of his own and others’ dogs. 

He reveled in his life along the Ten Mile River, canoeing and watching the wildlife. 

He is survived by ex-wife, Victoria, daughter Michelle Ryan and the love of his life, Judy Sperling. His spirit survives in the rural Ontario farmland, in California coastal hills, valleys, bars and dance halls, in the Mendocino sunshine and fog and wherever the spoken word has importance in the human heart. Bill passed into the realm of the spirit on April 9, 2024. May he Rest in Peace, Love, and Beauty. 

LEGAL MANEUVERS DELAYING CUBBISON CASE AS COSTS RISE

by Mike Geniella

Intricate and costly legal maneuvers delay proceedings in the high-stakes criminal case Mendocino County District Attorney David Eyster filed last Fall against a fellow elected official, county Auditor Chamise Cubbison.

Because of a new Eyster-triggered delay, Cubbison’s preliminary hearing, initially scheduled for this week, has been pushed to mid-May.

The latest setback stems from Superior Court Judge Victoria Shanahan’s voluntary decision on Tuesday to formally recuse herself because of her personal and professional ties to a special prosecutor Eyster hired in March to try the Cubbison case.

In a formal filing on Tuesday, Shanahan cited a state code for removing herself as the trial judge. A court spokeswoman declined to offer any specifics on Thursday. 

Cubbison’s attorney, Chris Andrian, who knows all the parties involved, said the latest delay is disappointing, but “Judge Shanahan did the right thing.” 

“The judge and the DA’s choice for special prosecutor know each other and have worked together in Sonoma County,” said Andrian. “Judge Shanahan acted in an abundance of caution. I do not quarrel with her decision.”

Judge Ann Moorman will now oversee the Cubbison case, which has been moving slowly in the legal system for six months.

The DA’s decision to engage Santa Rosa attorney Traci Carrillo as a special prosecutor is blamed for this latest delay in the Cubbison case and it has raised concerns about the financial burden being placed on Mendocino County taxpayers. If the case proceeds to trial as anticipated, the bill could reach tens of thousands of dollars, with Carrillo charging $400 per hour. A $10,000 retainer has already been authorized.

Eyster claims to be short-staffed, and the County’s former Assistant District Attorney Dale Trigg left on March 1 for a prosecutor post in Sonoma County.

Eyster did not respond to a written request for comment on his decision to abandon his plans to prosecute Cubbison personally and to hire a special prosecutor in a case that has rocked Mendocino County politics and embroiled Eyster in the most serious political crisis of his 13-year tenure.

Eyster’s decision to turn to an outside prosecutor in the Cubbison case contrasts sharply with his stance three months ago, when he publicly resisted defense moves to recuse him from the politically charged case. After being challenged for waging a political vendetta against Cubbison because of her questioning of DA office expenses, Eyster received the support of the state Attorney General’s Office and eventually Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder, who ruled on Jan. 12 that there was “insufficient evidence” to remove the DA. 

However, the case took another twist when Judge Faulder, a month later, was recused from the Cubbison case on a preemptory challenge afforded to the auditor’s co-defendant, former county Payroll Manager Paula June Kennedy. Public Defender Mary LeClair, who represents Kennedy, did not have to offer a reason under court rules.

Cubbison and Kennedy, veteran county employees, each face a felony charge of misappropriating public funds, stemming from an estimated $68,000 in extra pay to Kennedy over three years during the Covid pandemic. Cubbison said former Auditor Lloyd Weer authorized the extra pay before she was elected Auditor. Weer and Kennedy claim it was Cubbison who told them to use an obscure payroll code to make the unauthorized extra salary payments, according to Eyster.

As the case bogged down in early legal challenges, Shanahan stepped in as trial judge after Faulder was recused.

But then, another challenge. 

DA Eyster’s decision to hire attorney Carrillo forced Judge Shanahan to declare her possible conflict because of past personal and professional ties with Carrillo. The two attorneys worked together in the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office, and are friends.

Shanahan, a native of Willits, was a deputy district attorney in Sonoma County from 2007 to 2014. Before that, she served five years as chief deputy district attorney in Mendocino County under the late District Attorney Norm Vroman.

Since taking office in 2011, DA Eyster has clashed with three auditors, including Cubbison, over his use of asset forfeiture funds, including paying for staff dinners at a local steak house around the holidays. Office parties are officially banned under county policies. Eyster labeled them “training sessions” even though spouses and partners of staff members were guests.

In August of 2021 Eyster publicly denounced Cubbison before the Board of Supervisors, succeeding in blocking her interim appointment as County Auditor when Weer retired early. The board, backed by Eyster, went ahead with a controversial plan to consolidate the county Auditor/Controller office with the Treasure/Tax Collector. A few months later, Cubbison was elected by county voters to lead the consolidated departments despite the opposition of the board and the DA.

Cubbison, in addition to denying any criminal wrongdoing, has filed a civil lawsuit against the Board of Supervisors, declaring she was suspended without hearing and lost pay and benefits because of Eyster’s criminal filing in mid-October. That lawsuit is pending.

Carrillo is well known in Sonoma County for her roles as a prosecutor, criminal defense attorney, and civil litigator. 

This Saturday, Carrillo is helping women who say former Windsor Mayor Dominic Foppoli sexually assaulted them hold a press conference in the wake of a state Attorney General’s Office's decision not to file criminal charges in that case.

The AG’s Office said it doesn’t have enough evidence to file charges. At least three civil cases against Foppoli are still active, including one that seven women joined in April 2022.

Carrillo told The Press Democrat that she is engaged in planning Saturday’s press conference at the Sonoma County Civil Courthouse on Cleveland Avenue in Santa Rosa because "It is important to provide a platform for these brave women to know their voices will be heard.”

Carrillo was a deputy district attorney in Riverside County before taking a similar position in Sonoma County in 2008. Until leaving the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office in 2015, Carrillo was a senior trial prosecutor managing high-profile and complex trials, including a four-defendant gang murder case.

In 2017 Carrillo left the Sonoma County DA’s Office and opened a private practice before joining the Santa Rosa law firm of Perry, Johnson, Anderson, Miller, and Moskowitz.

THIRD DISTRICT SUPERVISOR’S REPORT

by Supervisor John Haschak

Working to create efficiencies in County systems is challenging. We pay taxes and expect to maximize the benefits. In balancing the budget, the low hanging fruit has been picked which is projected to bring in $5 million in savings. How do we get to a balanced budget for the rest of the deficit?

Cuts will be made. When I was a teacher, the mantra was always keep cuts as far away from the classroom as possible. Where in the County do cuts come from that won’t affect our safety or wellbeing or the wellbeing of our neighbors? It is often said that we will make things more efficient. We make things more efficient by listening to better ideas and acting.

This means changing policies that are outdated or overly bureaucratic and procedures that maximize how people work. There is no silver bullet that will solve the budget problems with one stroke.

I have attended Planning and Building Services and Environmental Health stakeholder meetings. In those meetings, definitions were discussed, processes explained, and suggestions were heard. In follow up discussions with the department heads, the ideas shared by constituents are being incorporated where and when possible.

In talking with constituents and employees, ideas on how to make things better abound. People bring their solutions to me in various ways. Why can’t a partial tax be paid when a person shows up at the tax collector’s office with a check? How do we most efficiently lower our energy consumption, transition the County’s fleet to electric vehicles, and install solar panels over structures or parking lots with little capital outlay? We are working on these endeavors.

Efficiencies are happening. A year ago, the cannabis department was a mess. It was incredibly poorly run. With new leadership and issues and policies being dealt with in the General Government Committee, the staff has flourished, people are getting their state licenses, and costs are down. I used to field several complaints about the department every day. Now I might go a month without issues and when they do arise, the department communicates clearly with constituents and the Board.

There will be a Talk with the Supervisor Thursday, April 11 at 10:00 at Brickhouse Coffee in Willits. I am available by email haschakj@mendocinocounty.gov or phone 707-972-4214.

JAYMA SHIELDS: 

Jayma here on behalf of my dad. He had a positive visit with a pulmonologist this week - great news!

We are using our new email address: observer@laytonville.org

Eventually, we will ask that you update your address books with this new email, right now we are in transition phase, so it will be a while before the change is ultimate.

Thank you for your support and checking in to make sure the emails you received were legit.

Dad's column this week ‘Everybody's Broke’ particularly hits home in my line of work. I can confirm that more Laytonville families and residents are struggling; our Food Bank has tripled in numbers served since December 2020 when my organization took it on. It's rough out there for many.

Thank you,

Jayma Shields

for Jim Shields/ The Observer PO Box 490 Laytonville, CA 95454

* * *

EVERYBODY’S BROKE

by Jim Shields

I’m gradually returning to work at both the Observer and the Water District. I don’t put in anything close to full days at either place, but incrementally my stamina and strength is bit by bit increasing. I never thought I’d get exhausted sitting at a keyboard at the newspaper. I mean I’d get a little tired doing outdoor water district work before this lung malady struck, but I’ve always been in top physical condition, so I was always fine. Believe me this is a brand-new experience for me.

Quick Weather Report

Good news all the way around if you want to talk water. Here in the Laytonville area things couldn’t be better as we near the end of the precipitation year on June 30. This past week .89 inches of rain fell to lift the season total to 61.13 inches. Total precip for last year was 63.36 inches. The historical annual rainfall average is 66.69 inches, so we are in fabulous shape. Our Long Valley aquifer, which is the source of the Laytonville Water District’s drinking water, was recharged several months ago.

Last week the Department of Water Resources (DWR) conducted the all-important April snow survey, the fourth measurement of the season at Phillips Station. The manual survey recorded 64 inches of snow depth and a snow water equivalent of 27.5 inches, which is 113 percent of average for this location. The snow water equivalent measures the amount of water contained in the snowpack and is a key component of DWR’s water supply forecast. The April measurement is critical for water managers as it’s considered the peak snowpack for the season and marks the transition to spring snowmelt into the state’s rivers and reservoirs. DWR’s electronic readings from 130 stations placed throughout the state indicate that the statewide snowpack’s snow water equivalent is 28.6 inches, or 110 percent of the April 1 average, a significant improvement from just 28 percent of average on January 1.

The focus now shifts to forecasting spring snowmelt runoff and capturing as much of that water as possible for future use.

According to DWR, on average, the Sierra snowpack supplies about 30 percent of California’s water needs. Its natural ability to store water is why the Sierra snowpack is often referred to as California’s “frozen reservoir.” Data from these snow surveys and forecasts produced by DWR’s Snow Surveys and Water Supply Forecasting Unit are important factors in determining how DWR provides water to two-thirds (27 million) of Californians. 

* * *

County Still Broke

At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting (April 9), the main topic was the budget. The Board was briefed by the County Executive Office to report.

Supervisor Dan Gjerde asked CEO Darcy Antle if it was “remotely possible the budget we adopt in June can possibly be balanced?” Antle’s terse reply said it all: “Preliminary, right now, no. Your revenues are way short of expenditures … Preliminary look at our revenues are about $10 million short and short $3 million from last year. So we’re already starting in the hole from our revenues.”

* * *

Laytonville Water District Broke Too

I can also say the same thing about our Water District’s finances. Through no fault of our own, we’ve lost about one-third of our revenues because of the County’s complete bungling and nearly criminal mishandling of the utterly failed, unworkable Cannabis Ordinance.

One-third of our revenues were derived from the sale of water to folks who lived outside district boundaries. Those funds subsidized our residential and commercial water rates in the water district. That’s why our customers have not experienced a rate increase in over a decade. Laytonville Water District voters will very soon be asked to approve a water rate increase, as we are out of money, and out of options.

GREAT REDWOOD TRAIL SNEAK PREVIEW

Photo taken on the planned section of the Great Redwood Trail somewhere between Burke Hill overpass and Henry Station Road.

Andrew Lutsky

ED NOTES (free association)

AN OLD, OLD TIMER told me that his father told him that Indians always opened the mouths of Mendocino County's silted up streams to free them for migrating fish. If Indians liberated the streams that means the practice went way back — that the Indians knew when the rivers needed dry year help.

OJ. I still say his jury made the correct Not Guilty decision based on the case presented to them, the case they heard and saw while the rest of us — the white population anyway — saw and heard OJ's guilt solidified day by tv day. 

YOU MAY ALSO recall that the prosecution was too often incoherent and Judge Ito star struck and half-cracked. 

THE RACIAL breakdown of the OJ jury: 9 African-Americans, 1 Hispanic, 2 Gringos. Breakdown by gender: 10 women, 2 men. 

THE VERDICT reflected the built-in split in American society between black and white people, and the understandable historical mistrust of black people for police which, in the OJ case, was reinforced by the casual investigative practices by the LA cops. 

MENDOCINO COUNTY PUBLIC POLICY is determinedly retro, as is public policy in most of the rest of the country, whether we're governed by the unelected cadre propping up Biden or the Magas who increasingly dominate the national legislature. 

MENDO is a tough place for people who have to work for their living but who don't have public jobs. Public jobs, of which there are over a thousand presided over by Mendo's supervisors not counting the major contractors like those in the employ of Camille Schrader — paid almost three times the pay of an employed Mendo person — are the jobs to get in Mendocino County because they are stable, although they don't reward the lower-echelon workers anything close to a living wage. 

MENDO'S private sector jobs pay an average of about $30,000 a year and come with no benefits. Public jobs average about $45,000 and they come with a full load of bennies. 

SOCIAL POLICY in “liberal” Mendocino County ranges from cruel indifference to incompetent to non-existent. Social policy does, however, employ a lot of really nice people at good public wages. They hire each other, of course, and talk a lot of liberal talk while walking a strictly me first, conservative walk. (cf the streets of Ukiah)

ENVIRONMENTALLY, Mendocino County has no planning to speak of, as is obvious from unincorporated Fort Bragg's unchecked sprawl north and south of town, metastasizing Gualala, the squalid and polluted Ukiah Valley, the even more squalid and polluted Little Lake Valley, a needlessly expensive garbage disposal system, no coherent water policy in a time of a tapped out resource, no transportation planning other than that imposed on us by Caltrans and, here in the great bastion of national consciousness, the Berkeley of the Outback, mental health services are mostly provided by the Mendocino County Sheriff's Department. (Which is actually a plus because most cops are smarter, more sensible and much more humane than the County’s college-trained “helping professionals.”)

FORT BRAGG LIBRARY Calendar of Events

PLANS? WE GOT A BUNCH

Agenda & Staff Report for Planning Commission 4-18-24

The Staff Report(s) and Agenda for the April 18, 2024, Planning Commission meeting is now available on the department website at: mendocinocounty.org/government/planning-building-services/meeting-agendas/planning-commission

Please contact staff if there are any questions,

Thank you

MENDOLIB, THE NEXT GENERATION (These People Are Not On Your Side, Kid)

CAYANAN DUO ENSEMBLE THIS SUNDAY

Opus Chamber Music presents the Cayanan Duo Ensemble on Sunday April 21st, 3 PM at Preston Hall, Mendocino. Long time friends and chamber partners Alison Lee, piano, and William Cayanan, cello, from the Bay Area, but both with national and international repute, will present a program of “B’s and Beyond”, playing works by L. van Beethoven, J. Brahms, W. Bolcom, and more. The duo is excited to perform pieces spanning the long partnership of cello and piano chamber music. Tickets online at symphonyoftheredwoods.org, in person at Out of this World in Mendocino and at Harvest Market in Fort Bragg. Coffee, tea and cookies will be available 30 minutes before the event and during intermission. More info at symphonyoftheredwoods.org

GOOD FIRE SERIES 2024

SSU’s Center for Environmental Inquiry presents Rx Burn Permits and Process virtually on Monday, April 29 from 5:30 - 7:00 pm. Supported by a grant from the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council, this program will address many aspects of conducting a prescribed burn, or good fire, on your land. Once you decide if fire would help you meet your land management objectives, then what? Can you do it safely? Can you do it responsibly? Who do you need to notify? What plans need to be drawn up? What permits, from whom, have to be obtained? What professionals need to be consulted? 

To hear the answers to these and more questions, attend this meeting led by Mike Jones, forestry advisor for Mendocino, Lake and Sonoma counties at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, and chair of the Mendocino County Prescribed Burn Association.

For more information and to register, go to cei.sonoma.edu/Rx-burn-3.

The event is free of charge and registration is required.

For more information, contact Margot Rawlins, program coordinator, Galbreath Wildlands Preserve, Center for Environmental Inquiry, Sonoma State University, 650-996-8322, rawlinsm@sonoma.edu.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, April 11, 2024

BRETT ADAME, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, failure to appear.

JULES CARRILLO, El Dorado Hills/Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, resisting.

TIMOTHY COLECK, San Luis Obispo/Piercy. Failure to obey lawful order from law enforcement.

SHAWN FENTON, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

SARA JUDICE, Redwood Valley. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

CAMEO LIMA, Ukiah. Toluene or similar substance.

MICHAEL LUCAS, Ukiah. County parole violation, resisting.

JESSE MARTINEZ, Caspar. Probation revocation.

MARTIN MARTINEZ-SIERRA SR., Willits. DUI over 0.15% blood-alcohol.

KRISTOPHER MATSCH, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

ADAM VASQUEZ, Hopland. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, failure to appear.

CHIRSTOPHER WOOD JR., Mendocino. Destructive device in public place, failure to appear.

SLEEPS 'TIL NOON, WANTS MONEY…

Take 2: Ukiah California UPDATE April 11th 2024 A.D. @ 2:59 PM

Awoke at noon at Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center on South State Street in sunny Ukiah, CA. Morning ablutions over, will make the bed, remembering to put the OM meditation shawl on top. Ambling over to the Express Mart to check LOTTO tix, then on to the Ukiah Co-op for a nosh and coffee. Furthur we go to the Ukiah Public Library to peruse the New York Times to stay current on the implosion of this world. Not identified with the body nor the mind, Immortal Self I am! Peaceout y’all, and may the force be with you. ;-))

WHAT THE DEMOCRATS SHOULD STAND FOR

(Andy Caffrey)

1) Healthcare for All 

2) Free College and Loan Forgiveness

3) Guaranteed Basic Income

4) Housing for All 

5) Localized Economic & Ecological Security (aka decentralizing the economic Infrastructure to provide all essential material needs, eg food, clothing housing transportation, etc., from as close to home as possible.

Republican-Democratic bipartisanism is the root of all American political evil. It guarantees we get as little of what we need and want as possible.

Another Democratic party truism: The first job of any Democratic Party official is to get their Democratic voters to be satisfied with getting as little of what they want as possible.

DAVID TALBOT:

Take Back San Francisco -- It's official. Aaron Peskin -- the best person to run our city, the mayoral candidate whom every thinking progressive wanted desperately to run -- has entered the race. 

At his kickoff rally today in San Francisco Chinatown's Portsmouth Square, Peskin gave a lusty speech attacking the tech and real estate billionaires who've taken over the city and given us nothing but an obscene wealth gap, vacant storefronts, more homelessness, drug addiction and other misery. And now they promise that AI will fix everything.

If you believe that, there some shares in Sam Bankman-Fried's cryptocurrency company I'd like to sell you.

As Peskin predicted, the billionaires will try to tear him apart. In fact, there was a gaggle of obnoxious and loud anti-Aaron protesters today on the fringes of Portsmouth Square, trying to drown out Peskin's speech. The raucous protesters were apparently paid by tech mogul Garry Tan, who issued death threats against both Peskin, who is president of the Board of Supervisors, and Dean Preston, another progressive board member (who was also at the rally today with Supervisor Connie Chan and former mayor Art Agnos, the last progressive to occupy City Hall's Room 200).

The anti-Aaron protesters carried signs that weirdly compared Peskin to Donald Trump, his political opposite, and called for him to be squashed like an insect. Tech billionaires like Tan have injected a poisonous rhetoric into the city.

In contrast, Peskin's speech was upbeat and positive. He wants to make San Francisco affordable again. He wants to make the city a beacon once again for teachers and nurses and social workers and firefighters -- and also for the creative dreamers who put the city on the map. The writers, poets, artists, musicians and other cultural renegades who made San Francisco great.

"We won't destroy the city to save it," Peskin pledged today. "Let's save our city without sacrificing our values."

That's the inclusive, inspiring vision I wanted to hear in the San Francisco mayor's race, which has been dominated until now by corporate sock puppets, including incumbent London Breed.

I'll be honest. I was one of those urging Aaron to run. So I'm very excited today. We have a good chance to take back the city we love. The city that came to mean so much to us during the Season of the Witch era that I chronicled. 

But it takes a lot of courage to run for public office these days. And money -- lots of it. 

“I have no doubt that this is going to be a difficult campaign; most of my opponents have at least one billionaire on their side, if not more,” Peskin said today. “This handful of billionaires pouring millions of dollars of dark money into ugly smear campaigns threatens to destroy what makes this a unique, vibrant and magical city. And while I thankfully don’t have any billionaires on my side, I have you. 

"We'll run a grassroots campaign" in every district, in every neighborhood, Peskin vowed -- "just like Art (Agnos) did" in his winning mayoral campaign in 1987.

I can understand why Aaron thought long and hard before entering the race. Politics, especially here in San Francisco, has become a dirty and expensive game.

But now Aaron is finally in, we need to support him. Please go to his website and donate your time or money or both.

https://vote.aaron2024.com/donate

Let's take back San Francisco.

THE LOGGER

by Ernie Pardini

A logger's life is rugged

And the pay is pretty poor

But it's in his blood and he can't stop

Until he's just too old and sore

The day that he can't do the work

Is the day he starts to die

He'll sit all day on his front porch

And watch the logging trucks roll by

He's in the cafe on rainy days

Drinking coffee with his old crew

Secretly hoping to hear of a job

That someone his age could do

The youngest loggers would tease him

Call him a useless old fool

They tell him he's not fit for a job

He couldn't even carry their tools

But they were too young to remember

This old man in his prime

Logging was a different ballgame

It was a hell of a lot tougher time

The saw that he carried with him

Weighed at least fifty pounds

And he could walk with it a mile uphill

Without ever setting it down

He also carried a twenty pound jack

And his wedges were made of steel

His gas, his oil and axe

And a springboard with a curved metal heel

When he wasn't falling big timber

He worked with the rigging crew

Calk boots, suspenders, a flannel shirt

And in his pocket a can of chew

There was cable back then as big as your arm

With square nubbins and big iron bells

To him it seemed just an honest day's work

The loggers who teased him would think it was hell

ESTHER MOBLEY

Here’s what’s come across my desk recently: 

A new law in Ireland will require alcoholic beverage labels to carry a cancer and liver disease warning, writes Ted Alcorn in the New York Times. As you might expect, the alcohol industry is not thrilled.

Boisson, the retail chain specializing in nonalcoholic wine and spirits (which has a location in San Francisco), has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Ferron Salniker reports in Brewbound.

There’s another self-driving tractor making its way into California vineyards, this one called the Doosan Bobcat. (We’ve previously reported on the Monarch, a self-driving tractor that’s generated quite a bit of buzz in the wine industry.) In Fast Company, Rob Pegoraro profiles this autonomous machine.

(SFgate.com)

STATE, CITIES FAIL TO TRACK BILLIONS IN HOMELESSNESS SPENDING, AUDIT FINDS

A new state audit has found a lack of transparency and accountability in homelessness spending by the state of California and two major cities.…

https://w.californiacitynews.org/2024/04/state-cities-fail-track-billions-homelessness-spending-audit-finds.html

(CalMatters)

IT'S OFFICIAL: CALIFORNIA SALMON FISHING CLOSED AGAIN THIS YEAR!

by Dan Bacher

On April 10, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) voted unanimously for a complete closure of recreational and commercial salmon seasons on the California Coast for the second year in a row, based on a CDFW recommendation.

The closure is due to the collapse of Sacramento River fall-run Chinook and Klamath River fall-run Chinook salmon populations for the second year in a row.

“At its March 2024 meeting, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) voted on and approved public review of three alternatives for salmon fisheries along the California coast,” wrote Chuck Bonham, CDFW Director, in a letter to the PFMC. “The first two alternatives offered opportunities for limited commercial and recreational fishing while the third alternative calls for a complete closure of salmon fisheries off California.”

“The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) recommends the Council to close ocean salmon fisheries along the California coast and otherwise constrain salmon fishing in Council managed areas to minimize impacts to Sacramento and Klamath origin Chinook salmon stocks,” urged Bonham.

The CDFW also recommended a complete in-river closures statewide, but that won't be official until the California Fish and Game Commission approves it in May.

The state blames the salmon collapse on the “drought and climate disruption,” while fishing groups, Tribes and environmentalists point to the government’s complicity in the collapse.

“At this point we can’t put the blame solely on drought when Governor Newsom’s water policies are devastating to thousands of families that rely on salmon to pay their rent and mortgages, put food on the table and keep their businesses going,” said Scott Artis, executive director of the Golden State Salmon Association (GSSA). “It’s simple: when the state’s water policies kill off all of the baby salmon, 2 to 3 years later you don’t get many returning adults in the rivers. This is Governor Newsom’s legacy.”

"Our hearts are breaking for the Tribal, recreational and commercial fishermen of California," said Regina Chichizola from Save California Salmon, which works on both the Klamath and Sacramento Rivers. "This man-made disaster is the direct result of decisions by the Biden and Newsom administrations to support Trump era water plans which prioritize water for agriculture over salmon, cities and communities

“California claims to be environmental leaders, and to be focused on truth and healing for Tribes, but always chooses industrial agriculture over salmon and the communities that depend on them,” Chichizola concluded.

“While incredibly painful to fishing families and fishing communities, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations supports the closure,” said George Bradshaw, president of PCFFA. “We all need to be doing everything we can to give California’s salmon a chance to recover. It has to be an all hands-on deck effort to ensure survival for our Central Valley and Klamath salmon runs.”

Following today’s actions, CDFW said it will work to expedite a request for federal fishery resource disaster determination for the State of California 2024 Sacramento River Fall Chinook and Klamath River Fall Chinook ocean salmon fisheries. Governor Newsom made a similar request in response to the closure in 2023, which was approved.

The Department is currently seeking comments on the 2023 spend plan for the $20,625,729 that has been allocated by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration for the disaster. Comments may be provided via email through 5 p.m., April 19, 2024, at SalmonDisaster@wildlife.ca.gov

CUSTOMERS FLOCK TO COSTCO TO BUY GOLD BARS

Costco may be selling up to $200 million worth of the bars each month, according to a Wells Fargo analysis. The bars sell out quickly, and customers are trading advice online about how to get them.

by Rebecca Carballo

Alongside its $1.50 hot dog and soda combo, gallon tubs of mayonnaise and value packs of socks, Costco, the warehouse retailer, has been selling gold bars since October.

Now Costco is selling up to $200 million worth of gold and silver each month, according to an analysis from Wells Fargo.

Online forums and Reddit threads have cropped up where customers give one another advice on how to purchase the bars before they sell out.

“I’ve gotten a couple of calls that people have seen online that we’ve been selling one-ounce gold bars, yes, but when we load them on the site, they’re typically gone within a few hours,” Richard Galanti, Costco’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, said in an earnings call in September.

Costco started selling gold bars in October.

Costco is now selling one-ounce, 24-karat gold bars, according to its online store. The bars can be purchased only by members, and the price varies based on market rates. As of Thursday, the bars were sold out for members online, but The Wall Street Journal reported that shoppers purchased them for around $2,000 in December.

Costco has also been selling silver coins, advertised as 99.9 percent pure silver, since January, according to an analyst report from Wells Fargo.…

nytimes.com/2024/04/11/business/costco-gold-bars.html

RALPH NADER’S VIEWS ON BIDEN v. TRUMP 2024

The political firebrand, long estranged from Democrats, fears fascism will be on the ballot in 2024 and it must be defeated

by Michael Scherer

The liberal activist Ralph Nader still remembers nearly the exact words Joe Biden used to banish him from the U.S. Senate 23 years ago, after Nader’s Green Party presidential bid in 2000 won 97,000 votes in Florida.

“Ralph Nader is not going to be welcome anywhere near the corridors,” then-senator Biden had declared, blaming the consumer advocate for Democrat Al Gore’s defeat to Republican George W. Bush.…

washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/26/ralph-nader-joe-biden-election

PEOPLE WHO WORK HARD SHOULD BE ABLE TO AFFORD A DECENT LIFE.

That is the guiding principle of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s economic policies.

It’s hard to believe that once upon a time, a blue-collar worker with a high school education could support a family, take vacations, and even save for retirement. Technology has made our productivity many times higher — so why is life poorer, not richer, than in the 1960s? Why do people just accept that life will get slowly worse?

Kennedy does not accept it. We can restore the American middle class by reversing the missteps of the last 50 years. A massive military machine has nearly bankrupted this country. Rampant corruption in Washington has put corporations in charge, enriching the wealthiest as working people have dropped out of the middle class. Official unemployment is low — but most of the new jobs are in the low-pay service sector. Wealth inequality in the country is at a 100-year high. More than 60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, with no savings for an emergency. Take-home pay after inflation and taxes has fallen 9% since Biden took office.

Under the Biden administration, the price of an average home has risen from $250,000 to around $400,000, and mortgage rates have more than doubled. Rents have followed the trend, putting more and more people on the edge of catastrophe.

But we can turn it around. Being able to afford a decent life doesn’t mean working more hours. It means higher pay and lower bills.

What Kennedy will do to make that a reality:

1. Raise the minimum wage to $15, which is the equivalent to its 1967 level.

2. Prosecute union-busting corporations so that labor can organize and negotiate fair wages.

3. Expand free childcare to millions of families with programs like that pioneered by the state of New Mexico.

4. Drop housing costs by $1000 per family and make home ownership affordable by backing 3% home mortgages with tax-free bonds. 

5. Cut energy prices by restricting natural gas exports.

6. Support small businesses by redirecting regulatory scrutiny onto large corporations.

7. Secure the border and bring illegal immigration to a halt, so that undocumented migrants won’t undercut wages.

8. Negotiate trade deals that prevent low-wage countries from competing with American workers in a “race to the bottom.” 

9. Rein in military spending and use the resources to fund infrastructure, health care, higher education, child care, and domestic prosperity.

10. Reverse the chronic disease epidemic that is a $3.7 trillion drag on families and the American economy. 

11. Clean out the corruption in Washington, D.C., which funnels so much of our nation’s wealth to giant corporations and billionaires.

12. Establish addiction healing centers on organic farms across the country.

13. Make student debt dischargeable in bankruptcy and cut interest rates on student loans to zero.

14. Cut drug costs by half to bring them in line with other nations. 

People always ask, “How are we going to pay for all this?” The answer is simple. First is to end the military adventures and regime-change wars, like the one in Ukraine. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya already cost us over $8 trillion. That’s $90,000 per family of four. That’s enough to pay off all medical debt, all credit card debt, provide free childcare, feed every hungry child, repair our infrastructure, and make college tuition free — with money left over. That’s enough to make social security solvent for another 30 years. 

Second is to end the corruption in Washington, the corporate giveaways, the boondoggles, the bailouts of the too-big-to-fail that leave the little guy at the mercy of the market. Corporations right now are sitting on $8 trillion in cash. Their contribution to tax revenues was 33% in the 1950s — it is 10% today. It’s high time they paid their fair share. 

Other Presidents have tinkered on the edges, but Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will make the deep changes necessary to put the economy on a sound footing. The broad prosperity of the Eisenhower and JFK era can be ours again. It is just a shift of priorities away.

CHRIS HEDGES ON ‘WALL STREET'S WAR ON WORKERS’

by Matt Taibbi

America: The Farewell Tour is Chris Hedges’ latest book. 

City journalists now barely visit the rest of America, but when they do, they’re no longer conscious of the difference between visiting a place and living there. If you live somewhere long enough to see the former “downtown” disappear and be replaced by a Wal-Mart or Costco two miles away, or watch the plant that was the county’s main employer shutter, rust, and grow over with weeds, or if you can remember when the pill-popping streetwalker who works casinos in Biloxi on weekends was your science teacher or chair of the PTA, you’ll feel different emotions than someone merely told those facts.

I thought of America: The Farewell Tour when I read White Rural Rage because Hedges did what authors Paul Waldman and Thomas Schaller did not: sit in diners with people like Christine Pagano after their AA meetings and just listen. Pagano went from being a new mom working in a diner and getting a cosmetology certificate to becoming hooked first on Oxy, then heroin, then moving to prostitution, then robbing johns with her boyfriend, being raped at least twenty times (including by cops), and finally ending up as, in her words, “no longer anything”: She sent her son to live with her mother, a teacher. She moved in for a while with Baby in Jersey City. She eventually became homeless, sleeping in an abandoned flower shop. Her drug use soared. She would be awake for six or seven days at a time. She had as many as twenty clients a day. Pagano’s story obviously isn’t typical, but isn’t atypical, either.

You can go almost anywhere in America and find serious social wreckage. What downstream effect that might have on partisan political choices is hard to compute, but that’s not the first or even the third or fourth question I’d think to ask people in certain places, be they inner city projects or dead factory towns. Ideally you’d want to do a lot of listening before you ask anything at all, which is what Chris did. I asked him about the impact of these caricatures of the “white working class,” and he didn’t hold back...

open.substack.com/pub/taibbi/p/interview-chris-hedges-discusses

WHY ARE WE LETTING GREEDHEADS AND IDEOLOGUES KILL OUR POST OFFICE?

by Jim Hightower

Before there was a USA — before our Constitution was adopted, and even before our 1776 Declaration of Independence — one of America’s best democratic institutions was already delivering for the people: The Post Office.

But it’s important to realize that, for 250 years, this invaluable public service has delivered more than mail. It was — and is — a core element of our national unity. Its network of local employees go door-to-door, coast-to-coast, six days a week in every zip code, physically linking America’s widely dispersed, wildly diverse people into one country. It is a universally-popular and essential government service that works!

Yet — as we’ve seen with such other valued public assets as our schools and parks — no flower is so beneficial to the Common Good that selfish corporate opportunists won’t try to pluck it for their private gain. So for years, corporate profiteers and laissez-faire ideologues have been plucking apart the budget, staff, branches, and historic mission of the Post Office.

Their scheme is to shrivel service, foment public dissatisfaction with the agency, demand evermore cuts in staff and branches — then push for a corporate takeover and downsizing of this universal, nationwide delivery network. It’s not just a piece of government they’re trying to eliminate, it’s the core idea of America itself, namely our people’s can-do democratic spirit and commitment to the Common Good.

Rather than meekly accepting this corporate retreat from our egalitarian ideals, let’s reassert our rebellious spirit. For starters, we can help the feisty American Postal Workers Union push a “People’s Postal Agenda.”

It outlines ways to reinvent and expand the public services that this grassroots network of employees and local branches is uniquely able to provide. For info and action go to apwu.org

THE NEW MOVIE ‘CIVIL WAR’ MATTERS FOR REASONS DIFFERENT THAN YOU THINK

by Steven Marche

“Not one man in America wanted the Civil War, or expected or intended it,” Henry Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams, declared at the beginning of the 20th century. What may seem inevitable to us in hindsight — the horrifying consequences of a country in political turmoil, given to violence and rived by slavery — came as a shock to many of the people living through it. Even those who anticipated it hardly seemed prepared for its violent magnitude. In this respect at least, the current division that afflicts the United States seems different from the Civil War. If there ever is a second civil war, it won’t be for lack of imagining it.

The most prominent example arrives this week in the form of an action blockbuster titled “Civil War.” The film, written and directed by Alex Garland, presents a scenario in which the government is at war with breakaway states and the president has been, in the eyes of part of the country, delegitimized. Some critics have denounced the project, arguing that releasing the film in this particular election year is downright dangerous. They assume that even just talking about a future national conflict could make it a reality, and that the film risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is wrong.

Not only does this criticism vastly overrate the power of the written word or the moving image, but it looks past the real forces sending the United States toward ever-deeper division: inequality; a hyperpartisan duopoly; and an antiquated and increasingly dysfunctional Constitution. Mere stories are not powerful enough to change those realities. But these stories can wake us up to the threats we are facing. The greatest political danger in America isn’t fascism, and it isn’t wokeness. It’s inertia. America needs a warning.

The reason for a surge in anxiety over a civil war is obvious. The Republican National Committee, now under the control of the presumptive nominee, has asked job candidates if they believe the 2020 election was stolen — an obvious litmus test. Extremism has migrated into mainstream politics, and certain fanciful fictions have migrated with it. In 1997, a group of Texas separatists were largely considered terrorist thugs and their movement, if it deserved that title, fizzled out after a weeklong standoff with the police. Just a few months ago, Texas took the federal government to court over control of the border. Armed militias have camped out along the border. That’s not a movie trailer. That’s happening.

But politicians, pundits and many voters seem not to be taking the risk of violence seriously enough. There is an ingrained assumption, resulting from the country’s recent history of global dominance coupled with a kind of organic national optimism, that in the United States everything ultimately works out. While right-wing journalists and fiction writers have been predicting a violent end to the Republic for generations — one of the foundational documents of neo-Nazism and white supremacy is “The Turner Diaries” from 1978, a novel that imagines an American revolution that leads to a race war — their writings seem more like wish fulfillment than like warnings.

When I attended prepper conventions as research for my book, I found their visions of a collapsed American Republic suspiciously attractive: It’s a world where everybody grows his own food, gathers with family by candlelight, defends his property against various unpredictable threats and relies on his wits. Their preferred scenario resembled, more than anything, a sort of postapocalyptic “Little House on the Prairie.”

We’ve seen more recent attempts to grapple with the possibility of domestic conflict in the form of sober-minded political analysis. Now the vision of a civil war has come to movie screens. We’re no longer just contemplating a political collapse, we’re seeing its consequences unfold in IMAX.

“Civil War” doesn’t dwell on the causes of the schism. Its central characters are journalists and the plot dramatizes the reality of the conflict they’re covering: the fear, violence and instability that a civil war would inflict on the lives of everyday Americans.

That’s a good thing. Early on when I was promoting my book, I remember an interviewer asking me whether a civil war wouldn’t be that terrible an option; whether it would help clear the air. The naïveté was shocking and, to me, sickening. America lost roughly 2 percent of its population in the Civil War. Contemplating the horrors of a civil war — whether as a thought experiment or in a theatrical blockbuster — helps counteract a reflexive sense of American exceptionalism. It can happen here. In fact, it already has.

One of the first people to predict the collapse of the Republic was none other than George Washington. “I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations,” he warned in his Farewell Address. “This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature.” This founder of the country devoted much of one of his most important addresses, at the apex of his popularity, to warning about the exact situation the United States today finds itself in: a hyper-partisanship that puts party over country and risks political collapse. Washington knew what civil war looked like.

For those Americans of the 1850s who couldn’t imagine a protracted, bloody civil war, the reason is simple enough: They couldn’t bear to. They refused to see the future they were part of building. The future came anyway.

The Americans of 2024 can easily imagine a civil war. The populace faces a different question and a different crisis: Can we forestall the future we have foreseen? No matter the likelihood of that future, the first step in its prevention is imagining how it might come to pass, and agreeing that it would be a catastrophe.

(Stephen Marche is the author of “The Next Civil War.”)

FLIP-FLOPS

by Selma Dabbagh

Last December, the Israeli actress and TV presenter Tzufit Grant described Palestinians in Gaza as “disgusting, stinky losers, walking with flip-flops. Repulsive people.” Flip-flops and other cheap footwear undoubtedly exist in Gaza – a friend of mine who travelled there with a team of volunteer doctors from the UK told me he had met men in Rafah who were out looking for food supplies and “wearing slippers”; many of them spoke excellent English; some had worked as university professors until last October – but as with previous genocides, Grant’s language is part of a dehumanizing discourse that helps to make killing at such a scale, and in such a visible way, possible.

The political economy of the Gazan flip-flop is calculated in its root causes. Sara Roy’s work has demonstrated how Gaza’s economy has been stifled since the time of the British Mandate, a process exacerbated by first Egypt’s and then Israel’s occupation. The nail in the coffin was the land, sea and air blockade that Israel imposed in 2007, placing Gaza under siege, severing its economic links with Israel and strong ties to the West Bank, turning it into an isolated enclave where the free movement of labor, material or expertise was impossible. The process of debilitation was deliberate, Roy argues. Even before the destruction of the last six months, the water was undrinkable, the sewage was becoming untreatable and building materials almost impossible to replace.

Prior to the current onslaught, 70% of Gaza’s population were refugees or the descendants of refugees. Approximately half of all Palestinian refugees are stateless. Sixteen years ago, Atif Kubursi, an economist at McMaster University, estimated that the total Palestinian property losses from the 1948 Nakba amounted to nearly $300 billion in 2008 values.

As I’ve heard Avi Shlaim point out on numerous panels, citing Sara Roy, the reason Gaza is poor is not that Palestinians are lazy. According to Unicef, “a full 86% of Palestinian children – and an impressive 94% of Palestinian young women – complete basic education by age twenty,” although no children in Gaza have been able to attend school since November. (Last week, an Israeli officer mocked the destruction of one of the two hundred schools that has suffered a direct hit in Gaza: “everything is destroyed. There’s no school this week in Al-Amal, Khan Younis. There’s no school!”)

There’s no shortage of innovation among Palestinians in Gaza either. The demand to rebuild following the 2008-9 bombardment was immense but the supply of cement was cut, so a Gazan engineer developed an alternative and built his own factory. “We examined various types of soil in Gaza and found a suitable type rich in natural welding materials,” he told the New Civil Engineer. “The strong cohesion begins after it is used and continues to solidify for hundreds of years.”

Problems with sanitation and organic waste, as well as shortages of electricity and cooking fuel after the bombing of Gaza’s power plant in 2009, led to the development of partial solutions based on biogas. Innovation in the West Bank, where geothermal technologies are being developed to reduce the cost of energy (among the highest in the Middle East and North Africa), is being stifled by Israel’s refusing entry to Palestinian expertise from the diaspora.

There was also innovation in forms of non-violent resistance. In 2011, 12,000 kites were flown in one day in Gaza, setting a world record. In 2018, the Great March of Return began, with unarmed Palestinians walking towards their ancestral homes, demanding an end to the blockade, only to be cut down by heavy Israeli sniper fire from the border fences.

“From the kind of ammunition used and the body areas that were targeted,” according to Ghassan Abu Sitta, a surgeon who treated some of the wounded, “the aim was to maim, to produce the kinds of injuries that would both incapacitate the health system and turn the able bodies of these young men into burdens on their families.” Despite the tens of thousands of injuries and more than 200 deaths, at least 10,000 people continued to march to the border every Friday for nearly two years.

Since last October, at least 33,000 people have been killed in Gaza, including more than 13,800 children. The boy who was filmed lying on his parents’ grave, which he returns to daily, stroking the mounds of sand that cover their remains, is one of at least 17,000 unaccompanied Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip.

According to ReliefWeb, more than 1500 Palestinians have been killed, injured or are reported missing as a result of the massacre at al-Shifa Hospital last month: “Euro-Med Monitor is able to confirm from its initial investigation and testimonies that hundreds of dead bodies, including some burned, and others with their heads and limbs severed, have been discovered.” Among the dead may be the people who wrote on the walls of the hospital: “By God, mother, I am exhausted. But praise be to Allah anyway, by God’s will, we will get out”; “Oh mother, I long for you to wipe away the tears gathering on my cheeks”; “If the pain I am feeling befell a mountain, by God, it would crumble.”

“For the sake of humanity,” the UN secretary general, António Guterres, has pleaded since the beginning of the onslaught, an appeal which the US and the UK only now appear to be hearing at all. Though many of the killers are not human at all, but artificial intelligence mechanisms: according to an investigation by +972 magazine, programs with names such as “Lavender” and “Where’s Daddy?” have been used to produce kill lists and track targets. “The IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option,” an Israeli intelligence officer told the reporters. “It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”

“You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people,” another intelligence officer said. You can save money by dropping cheaper bombs that obliterate entire buildings and kill families and neighbors as “collateral damage”: “unimportant people”; “stinky losers” in flip-flops.

No matter how sophisticated an army may be, it’s a stinky business killing people. The smell of decomposing bodies was commented on by World Health Organisation staff entering al-Shifa, which they described as “an empty shell with human graves.” Two American surgeons who arrived in Gaza on 25 March wrote that they were “immediately overwhelmed by the overflowing sewage and the distinct smell of gunpowder in the air.” Speaking of treating children with no surviving family members, they write:

“We have not had the heart to tell these children how their families died: burnt until they resembled blistered hotdogs more than human beings, shredded to pieces such that they can only be buried in mass graves, or simply entombed in their former apartment buildings to die slowly of asphyxia and sepsis.”

“During this time of year, I was supposed to be finishing up my third year of college. Instead, I just lived through six months of genocide,” the young journalist Hossam Shabat wrote on 7 April.

“What skills did I learn during those six months? I learned how to cook and bake over fire and wood, I learned to make meals with just tomato sauce and water, I learned the smell of decomposed bodies, how to maximize space to bury too many bodies.

Last November, I mentioned a friend who was trapped in Gaza City with her daughters. They managed to leave in mid-November, walking for ten hours to get to the Rafah crossing, past burnt out buildings and dead bodies. She returned to Gaza last month as a humanitarian aid worker. (According to the Aid Worker Security Database, Israel has killed over 200 aid workers in Gaza in the past six months, more than the total killed worldwide in any year since the AWSD started counting in 1997.) She has left her daughters with their father in a neighboring Arab country where they struggle with bureaucracy to find school places.

(London Review of Books)

BILLY MILLS (born in 1938, a Native American ) won what sports writers called the most sensational race ever run in Olympic history. A relative unknown, he came from behind to beat world champion runners in the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. Mills later became one of the most noted of motivational speakers.

Mills was born on June 30, 1938 on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The young Native American ran like the wind over the prairies and hills near his Lakota Sioux Reservation home. His mother, who was one quarter Sioux, died when Mills was seven year old. His father, who was three quarters Sioux, died five years later. Native Americans considered him to be of mixed blood. The white world called him a Native American. Mills claimed that running helped him to find his identity and to blunt the pain of rejection.

As a youngster, Mills admired the great war chief, Crazy Horse. This spiritual leader of the Lakota challenged him to follow his dreams, reach for goals, and succeed in life. Crazy Horse was a warrior, who led his life through responsibility, humility, the power of giving, and spirituality. Mills tried to live by the knowledge, the wisdom, and the integrity of Crazy Horse. After breaking many high school track records on the reservation, Mills received a scholarship to attend Kansas University. He then became an officer in United States Marine Corps.

As a young Marine lieutenant, Mills had been allowed to train for the 1964 Olympics, held in Tokyo, Japan. He qualified for the team in both the 10,000-meter race and the marathon, but was not expected to win either race. No American had ever won the 10,000-meter race in the Olympics. But Mills had always lived according to the teachings of his father, who had challenged him to live his life as a warrior and assume responsibility for himself.

Australia's Ron Clarke was world famous as a runner in the 10,000-meter event and was the odds-on favorite to win a gold medal. Mohamed Gammoudi, a Tunisian runner, was expected to finish in second place for the silver medal. Any of the other runners were capable of taking a third place bronze medal, according to the experts. It was thought that none of the other runners could win.

Mills, a believer in visualization or "imagery," did not permit a negative thought to enter his head as he worked toward the biggest race of his life. He had for some time before been visualizing a young Native American boy winning the 10,000-meter event at the 1964 Olympics. He created that picture in his mind over and over again. If a thought about not winning came into his mind, he would spend hours erasing the negativity. There could be only one result!

As Mills lined up, there was only one thing on his mind, and that was to win. The gun cracked and the field broke away from the starting grid. As expected, Clarke and Gammoudi fell into first and second place. Mid-pack jostling and shoving allowed the leaders to pull away and Mills dropped back. It appeared he was out of contention and few paid any attention to the sleek Native American who was well back in the field. If they had looked, they would have seen him running as smoothly as the wind, without effort, in perfect control. Near the end of the race, Clarke and Gammoudi remained in the lead. The Japanese crowd cheered politely at what they had known all along was going to happen.

But suddenly the smooth running Mills stepped up his pace. He was closing on the leaders. The crowd fell silent. Mills increased his smooth, even pace, and drew closer to the leaders. With the three runners speeding down the last home-stretch, Mills made a spectacular, totally unexpected move. He surged in front of Clarke, who was still running in second place, then Gammoudi, who was leading. At the tape, it was Mills, Gammoudi and Clarke. Mills had beaten Gammoudi by three yards and Clarke by a full second. He had completed the race in a new Olympic record time of 28:24.4, a full 46 seconds better than his best previous time.

The crowd went wild with cheering, for they had seen the impossible happen. They had seen an underdog, an unknown, a runner who wasn't given a chance to win, beat the favorite. They had witnessed one of the greatest upsets in Olympic history. After his great running victory at Tokyo, Mills was honored with the warrior name of 'Makata Taka Hela' by the Lakota Nation. It means "love your country" and "respects the earth."

Although he was never sent to Vietnam because of his rigorous training schedule in the Marines, Mills was deeply affected by the many combat deaths of men from his unit. He felt that he could not participate in a sport when people were being killed in Vietnam. Mills finished his Marine Corps tour of duty as a captain, then reentered civilian life as an official of the Department of the Interior. He followed this with a very successful career as an insurance salesman. Mills retired from his insurance business in 1994 and became a motivational speaker.

Mills, who was elected to the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1984, moved with his wife, Pat, and their three daughters, Christy, Lisa, and Billie JoAnne, to Fair Oaks, a Sacramento, California, suburb. He devoted all of his time to speaking to Native American youths and raising money for charities, such as Christian Relief Services.

MY CITY IN RUINS 

by Erik S. McMahon (October 2001)

“My City in Ruins.” That was the melancholy song Springsteen composed last month for a benefit show — and he's from Jersey. You never revoke your NYC citizenship, which makes this even more personal. 

I'll see the wreckage soon, and know that'll shake me again. New York is still my town, after all. It was to the hospital where I was born that most of the wounded were transported. 

Last December, for the first time, my mother and I took the Circle Line cruise around Manhattan. Standing on deck, in the 20-degree air and savage wind, I reflected on how many structures were stamped into my consciousness — Brooklyn Bridge, Yankee Stadium, Ellis Island, United Nations, Grant's Tomb. There's a fine moment when the craft veers to port, and you brace for the transition from the placid Harlem River to the mighty Hudson. 

Symbols clearly aren't insignificant. Architecture, and edifices, very potently prove that. We're schooled early on to recognize wonders of the Ancient and Modern Worlds (as a rule, manmade). Iconography pervades our political palaces and cathedrals of commerce. 

We missed the final tour of Babylon's Hanging Gardens, never sailed beneath the Colossus of Rhodes. Had to take note, however, as the last century's skyscraper records were eclipsed: from Empire State to Twin Towers, and thence Chicago, Toronto, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai. 

Each post-Bauhaus elevation champ appeared more brutalist. It was not always so. From 1913 to 1930, the Woolworth Building, an eccentric exercise in Gothic excess, was the mad emperor. There was no shame in its being deposed by the nearly universally beloved Chrysler concoction, Deco’s definitive declaration. 

A gaudy, gargoyled spire, East of Grand Central on 42nd, it held the title for only a matter of months, until the Empire State was completed. Incredibly, that stepped-back Fifth Avenue monolith reigned supreme for 40 years. 

Then, suddenly, like present-day home-run statistics, the numbers soared. A pair of 110-story, 1,350-footers recast Lower Manhattan in 1971. Just two years later, Chicago retaliated: a message sent from Sears. 

Structures better than a quarter-mile high won more praise for their conquering of engineering challenges (wind, soil, stress, and so forth) than their design innovations. Like Chicago's monsters, and Canada’s syringe, the Towers were sleek and dramatic, but didn’t invite affection. The Trade Center complex was initially seen as incongruous and intrusive by many New Yorkers, especially those who worked downtown. 

Of course, they concurred with the implicit statement being made (“we're the biggest and the best”). 

The long-suffering ones were inconvenienced by even more crowded subways and sidewalks, but still, everyone had to go to the top, whether they were playing host to tourists or not. For some, that venture, from ear-popping elevators to swaying observation platform, was terrifying. 

I've never been afflicted with vertigo; in fact, I find great heights exhilarating. Yet I recall loitering in a corner aerie, atop one of the Towers, soon after their public opening, gazing down at vast stretches of the various boroughs, through narrow windows that went floor to ceiling, feeling unmoored and vulnerable. You want a waist-high barrier, even if it's an artificial one, confirming you're not going to fall. 

Jaded or not, you viewed a meal or reception at Windows on the World as an event, not a kitsch experience like lurching through lunch at Seattle's Space Needle, or cocktails in the Carnelian Room. The Towers were austere and unlovely (even to their designer, it's said). They integrated rapidly with the city's muscular skyline, faster than the Transamerica Pyramid did in SF. Now, inconceivably, they have ceased to exist. Our visceral focus is on the horror and heartbreak surrounding lunatic theft of human lives. For expatriated New Yorkers, there are additional twinges. 

Ordinarily, we'd deride it as bush league, lame, to gawk at a celebrity in a restaurant, or rubberneck at the scene of a disaster. This is entirely different, and the desire of locals to visit the site, if only to confirm it hasn't all been some berserk nightmare, seems understandable.