Mendocino County Today: Sunday 4/21/24

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DRY WEATHER with above normal temperatures are expected to continue through Monday. Breezy northerly winds will developed for coastal areas today as high pressure builds into the region. Marine stratus is expected to return early Tuesday as the northerly winds subside. Temperatures will begin a cooling trend on Tuesday. Moist and unsettled weather conditions return mid to late next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): The fog tried to move in yesterday but the sun won out. I do not see any fog out at sea today so far, maybe some in the valley? On the coast this Sunday morning I have clear skies & 47F. Clear skies prevail in the forecast thru Wednesday but now rain chances for later in the week have increased.

GUIDIVILLE APPEALS NO DEMOLITION FUNDING, BUT STATE OVERSIGHT AGENCY STANDS FIRM

by Mike Geniella

Despite intense lobbying efforts at the state level, an oversight agency is standing firm in its declaration that the demolition of Ukiah’s historic Palace Hotel is unnecessary to conduct possible ground contamination studies or remedial work.

Newly released documents show the Guidiville Rancheria early this month appealed a state funding agency’s decision to “disallow” $5.3 million in taxpayer money under a special program aimed at tribes, nonprofits, and poor municipalities. Guidiville and a group of proposed local investors wanted to use public funds to raze the three-story brick landmark, clean up the site, and proceed with private, for-profit development of a boutique hotel, restaurant, event center, and retail shops.

A final decision by the state Department of Toxic Substance Control has dragged on for weeks, deepening a divisive community debate about the fate of an iconic structure listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Palace has been located at the corner of State and Smith streets since 1891 and, for a century, served as a social and commercial centerpiece of downtown.

Famed SF restaurateur Pat Kuleto refurbished the Palace restaurant and bar in the 1970s, but within a decade, the hotel was faltering. It closed in the 1990s and, for nearly three decades, has slid into steep decline under two private ownerships. City officials have twice declared it a public safety and health hazard since 2011. 

Now, a bid to have the public finance a teardown so proposed buyers can move ahead with their still secretive plans to develop the site has created a local uproar.

For the second time, however, a state regulatory oversight agency publicly maintains that preliminary reports provided by the Guidiville Rancheria, its tribal consultant, and an investment partnership to support the demolition scheme do not support any measures beyond “standard investigation techniques” that can be used around the perimeter of the landmark building.

Heidi Bauer, senior engineering geologist at the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, stated unequivocally in a formal response this week to the Guidiville appeal: “If contamination exists beneath the actual building, it likely will be from a very old release and unlikely to be still volatile enough to cause vapors to intrude into the building.”

“Even if this condition did exist, this typically can be reassessed prior to reoccupation of the building and mitigations (i.e. HVAC systems) put in place to mitigate this risk without requiring the demolition of the building,” said Bauer.

In her strong rebuttal to the tribe’s reconsideration request, Bauer discounted the tribe’s list of potential petroleum and related contaminants due to historical underground heating and fuel storage tanks that Guidiville and investors claim to be located at or around the Palace site.

“We have not seen information that leads us to believe that the environmental investigation performed to assess the risk to human health and water quality cannot be achieved using standard investigation techniques that can be employed around the perimeter of the building,” said Bauer.

The state Department of Toxic Substance Control, the state agency handing out $250 million earmarked for tribes, nonprofits, and poor municipalities, asked the North Coast Water Board to review Guidiville Tribal Chairman Donald Duncan’s April 1 request that a state decision to include no grant funding for demolition be reconsidered.

The firm response from Bauer, chief of the oversight agency’s clean-up unit, casts doubt on whether Guidiville can secure state funding for anything other than standard investigative work to determine the level of contamination, if any, at the Palace site.

It is unclear whether the lack of state funding for demolition is enough to push Guidiville and its partnership to consider recycling the Palace Hotel, which structural engineering and historic preservation experts contend is a viable alternative and could create a draw for the downtown area.

Tribal representatives, including Duncan and consultant Michael Derry, did not respond to written requests for comment on the regulatory agency’s renewed stance, nor did the attorney representing a list of potential investors, which includes downtown restaurant owner Matt Talbert and three local cannabis entrepreneurs.

In the meantime, current Palace owner Jitu Ishwar faces a new city order demanding that he contract with a certified structural engineer to evaluate the decrepit landmark and seek permits for either stabilization or demolition.

Ishwar missed the first deadline this week, and city representatives scrambled to assure the Ukiah City Council and the public that the “hard deadline” for the new city demands is May 14.

In a report to the City Council this past Wednesday, Deputy City Manager Shannon Riley said about the structural engineering and permit demands for stabilization or demolition, “Again, we’re not mandating one or the other; we’re simply stating that something has to be done.”

According to a transcript of her comments, Riley told council members, “We’re setting hard deadlines. There are penalties for failures to meet those deadlines.” Under code provisions, Ishwar could face escalating fines and possibly jail time if he does not comply.

Riley said Ishwar’s failure to meet this week’s deadline to produce a contract with a structural engineering firm was serious but not as grave as the approaching May 14 demand.

“We have some confidence, I will say, that they are working to meet the deadlines, and we will continue to keep the council and the public posted,” said Riley.

Ishwar, an investor in hotel/motel operations in the region, and his attorney, Stephen Johnson of the firm of Mannon, King, Johnson & Wipf, did not respond to written requests for comment.

GUALALA ATTEMPTED MURDERER DIES IN PRISON

A former Anchor Bay resident convicted in 2019 of shooting his neighbor over repairs being undertaken by the neighbor and his wife on a shared driveway (i.e., filling potholes and spreading gravel) has passed away while serving his sentence.

Harry William Miller died of natural causes accompanying old age in his state prison cell on April 6, 2024, according to state parole officials. Miller was 75 years of age at the time of his death. The victims have been notified of the passing by Mendo DA David Eyster and state prison authorities.

Miller was convicted by plea days before his jury trial was scheduled to get underway in June of 2019.

To avoid a trial on attempted murder charges, Miller entered guilty pleas to the attempted voluntary manslaughter without legal provocation of Desiree Palestrini by use of a firearm, as well as assault with a firearm without legal provocation on Paul Palestrini.

After being shot, Paul Palestrini was rushed to the medical clinic in Gualala by his wife (after the shooter was disabled by a head blow with a shovel), stabilized and then flown out by helicopter to Santa Rosa. Paul Palestrini succumbed to his injuries on the operating table but was brought back to life by skilled surgeons and operating room personnel.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge John Behnke sentenced Miller in August 2019 to 142 months in state prison for the violent attack on the neighbors.

Harry Miller unsuccessfully appealed his felony convictions.

An interesting aside to the concluding chapter of this story is that Susan Mary Miller, the deceased’s then-wife, was convicted by jury verdict of being an accessory to her husband’s attempted murder of the neighbors.

It was proven by DA Eyster at her trial that Susan Miller was present at the time of the shootings and had stood by filming her husband repeatedly shooting at both neighbors at close range.

When questioned by the personnel from the Sheriff’s Office, Susan Miller did not mention this information. Instead, she gave a false accounting of what had happened, saying that the neighbors had suddenly attacked her husband, that he just happened to have a loaded handgun in his pocket, and that he had pulled out the firearm only after being attacked and thus fired in self-defense.

Susan Miller later deleted her recording — or least attempted to delete the recording — of the shooting from her digital camera, a deletion that was later recovered by DA investigators after the camera was found by Sheriff investigators hidden in Susan Miller’s automobile in Santa Rosa.

The recovered recording completely contradicted Susan Miller’s statements and was damning evidence used against her at trial, evidence that was also going to be used against Harry Miller.

Susan Miller was sentenced by Judge Behnke to supervised probation in 2019 and ordered to serve 300 days in the county jail. She is no longer on probation and her whereabouts and status are unknown, except to say that she is no longer living on Mendocino’s South Coast.

Susan Miller unsuccessfully appealed her felony conviction.

(DA Presser)

* * *

Background: "Anchor Bay Elderly Get State Prison" by Bruce McEwen, August 7, 2019

AV COMMUNITY PARK

Thank You to Robbie Lane for repairing the damaged post and providing additional supports for one of our pergolas at the park. With an assist from Nat Corey-Moran, they were able to address the issue swiftly. … WANT TO HELP? Do YOU have skills or resources that could help support regular maintenance and future improvements for our local park? Please, reach out and let us know. It Takes A Valley!

ANDERSON VALLEY TODAY

The Anderson Valley Museum Open
Sun 04 / 21 / 2024 at 1:00 PM
Where: The Anderson Valley Museum , 12340 Highway 128, Boonville , CA 95415
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/3971)

Chat with Victor Presley, owner of Daily Blooms
Sun 04 / 21 / 2024 at 3:30 PM
Where: Anderson Valley Senior Center , 14470 Highway 128, Boonville, CA 95415
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/3930)

AV Village Monthly Gathering: Local Writers Showcase
Sun 04 / 21 / 2024 at 4:00 PM
Where: Anderson Valley Senior Center , 14470 Highway 128, Boonville, CA 95415
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/3858)

ED NOTES

DOPE DAY, APRIL 20TH (from the AVA of 2013): Biked over to Hippie Hill Sunday afternoon to watch the 4-20 festivities. From what I’ve only recently learned, April 20 at 4:20pm America’s stoners all light up at once in mass celebration of the love drug. I expected something like a few hundred ancient flower children with maybe Wavy Gravy gumming some peace and love platitudes, but what I found was, well, put it this way — the hippies of ‘67 look positively wholesome put alongside this crew. If it had been advertised as Thug Fest 2013 we would have had truth in advertising. Lots of gangsters and very few hippies of the traditional tie-dyed type, only acres of tough guys and aged young women very unlike the ones who married dear old dad. The entire area between Hippie Hill and the Children’s Playground was wall-to-wall criminal intent. A cloud of pot and grill smoke hung over the park. No cops anywhere. Every other person seemed to have an apparatus that boomed out End Times raps heavy on mayhem. “You lost, Pops?” a kid asked me, and it belatedly occurred to me that in my khakis and button down blue shirt I was definitely odd man out. The scene, for me, was kinda nightmarish, truth to tell, and when I saw a large white guy, maybe 40, shirtless, obviously a veteran of many hours on a prison weight pile, his skin festooned with jail tats and a big White Pride announcement across his back, when I saw this guy, a maniacal grin on his face, wade into the multi-ethnic gang-banging mopes I knew bad things were about to happen in Golden Gate Park, the City’s sylvan retreat, its urban respite of forest and meadow, its natural world solace amidst the din and clamor of city life, I made my way to my bike and pedaled home. Two days later, the Chron’s comment line was mostly a lot of huffing and puffing about “hippies” having left The City with a huge clean-up bill for a trashed park, "and it’s just like the hypocrites to talk about how much they love Mother Earth then leave tons of trash in the trampled park." This thing was not a hippie event, and Marx himself never could have foreseen how many and how fearsome the lumpen have become. 

IRONIC that the only interesting Kennedy since JFK and RFK is being shunned by his family in favor of the wholly implausible Biden and shunned by a contemporary Democratic Party that is fundamentally a me-too version of the Republicans. Sure, RFK Jr. has crank tendencies, and he's also in love with the monstrous current iteration of the Israeli government, but when's the last time a Democrat candidate for president talked like this?

RFK JR: “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?

”This 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.”

* * * 

THE GREAT REDWOOD....

Editor: 

How ironic that exactly seven days after The Press Democrat ran a front-page story about the Redwood Trail master plan (“Project hits milestone in years-long journey,” April 5), there was a picture in the paper of Sen. Mike McGuire urging his Senate colleagues to approve a bill to reduce the state budget deficit. While the senator is pushing the Coastal Commission (why are they involved?) to support a plan by the trail group to formally abandon the out-of-service rail line north of Cloverdale, he is admitting there will be no funding for his multibillion-dollar dream. I recommend that instead of wasting time and limited funds filing to abandon an existing greenhouse-gas-reducing transportation pathway, the Great Redwood Trail look at how SMART has successfully and in parallel built a trail and operated freight and passenger rail.

Richard C. Brand

Santa Rosa

ED NOTE: SMART is heavily subsidized and lightly patronized, unfortunately, because it doesn't serve the population centers it runs through. A basic question about the Great Redwood Trail is this: How did the Democratic Party of the Northcoast come to own the track from Marin north to Eureka? How is it that former Congressman Bosco now owns a lucrative stretch of the line in the Petaluma area? IMO, The Great Redwood Trail is simply the latest iteration of The Great Redwood Scam that began when Bosco and a handful of Democrat hustlers magically assumed ownership of the defunct Northwestern Pacific Railroad. A side note, or mini-scam, occurred in Ukiah when the new County Courthouse nobody but the judges wants was located on the Democrat-owned former rail station site at Ukiah, not that the new courthouse has begun construction.

THE ZIONISTS indeed learnt well from the Nazis. So well that it seems that their morally repugnant treatment of the Palestinians, and their attempts to destroy Palestinian society within Israel and the occupied territories, reveals them as basically Nazis with beards and black hats. — Norman Finkelstein

A READER WONDERS: “Do we really need the new Mendocino County Court Commissioner to be the wife of presiding Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder, no matter her qualifications?”

MS. SAXBY is a lawyer and the wife of Judge Faulder. As Court Commissioner she will make $187,500 a year. Her duties include judicial housekeeping of the traffic, small claims, restraining order type. Ms. Saxby's husband makes more as a Superior Court Judge.

MAYBE it's Nepotism Week in Ukiah, or is it simply Spring and love is in the air? First, County CEO Antle appoints her love interest to the easy-over sinecure of County Health Director, and now Judge Faulder appoints his love interest to the easy-over sinecure of Court Commissioner. (It's Mendo, Jake.) 

JUDGE FAULDER: “32 years ago we shared a small office with our desks facing each other as defense attorneys in San Diego. Over the years we have worked together in the Public Defender’s Office, the District Attorney’s Office and in private practice. Now, we share two daughters, one granddaughter, three dogs, one cat, four granddogs and - once again - a courthouse! Congratulations Jona! I’m super proud of you!”

THE ANDERSON VALLEY SCHOOL BOARD is interviewing superintendent candidates to replace our irreplaceable Superintendent Louise Simson who is leaving to pursue an advanced degree. We all hope the School Board's perspicacity in hiring Ms. Simson still holds as they select our new school leader, a thankless, perhaps hopeless job in a time when the decadent popular culture, combined with a wobbling family structure, unloads overwhelming numbers of feral children on the public schools.

FROM BOONVILLE'S International Affairs desk far, far from the bombs, we can still hear a lot of dangerously stupid slogans being chanted on allegedly elite college campuses, slogans like “from the river to the sea,” (the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea) implying that Israel will be disappeared. Is the slogan anti-Semitic? Obviously. 

HOW ABOUT, “Death to America”? Now there's one likely to garner mass support in favor of Palestinians. With friends like these, Palestine is even more screwed than it is.

AND “FRIENDS” like the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition? Which is not a “coalition” but a Stalinist cult led by a Frisco character called Richard Becker who thinks North Korea is the kind of society we ought to be aiming for. I wonder if the college kid demonstrators, genuinely shocked, as we all are or should be, by the Israeli assault on Gaza, understand where all the ANSWER placards come from that are most visible in their otherwise honest protests?

IT'S HOPELESSLY ROMANTIC to hold out for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, but it's the only humane option in what is clearly now an intractable struggle between two fanatic entities, the Likud government of Netanyahu and the Islamic fanatics fighting as Hamas.

NOT THAT THE BIDEN government will ever muster the courage to pull the plug on Netanyahu, but so long as the U.S.'s bipartisan support for Israel continues, the wholesale murders of Gazans will continue, and Hamas's murderous grip on Gaza will tighten. As the whole show threatens to devolve into a wider war in the Middle East and perhaps nuclear fallout on the rest of us.

HERE'S how ANSWER falsely bills itself: “Founded just three days after the September 11, 2001 attacks, ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) initiated the massive U.S. antiwar movement opposing the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the months prior to March 19, 2003.”

HARDLY. ANSWER pre-dates 2003 and was only one small presence in the antiwar movement. 

I'M A LITTLE WORRIED about Ukiah's wandering Hindu mystic, Craig Stehr, a man well into his golden years. Craig is a resident of the South State homeless shelter called Building Bridges. His fellow residents include several standard issue unsavory characters, one of whom seems to be harassing Craig by watering down his bed and loading it with trash. Craig returns to the shelter from his usual leisurely day spreading good vibes around downtown to find his berth literally trashed, unsleepable. The guy's too old for this, too old for a homeless shelter. He needs a secure place of his own, although he has turned down one which he claimed was too far from town, an indication that he can be something of an ingrate. Craig has a social security income. He could pay a small amount in rent. I've met him casually over the years. I wouldn't figure him as a burden for anybody out there who might have a place for him. If you have something, call or write the AVA.

A YOUNG WOMAN wrote in to ask us to remove her booking photo. "I noticed I appear in your paper in a line up along with some shady looking characters and it makes me look super terrible."

WE REMOVE booking photos upon request. Usually. Requests to remove from frequent fliers are ignored.

ORDINARILY a fast man with a press release, MendoFever did not post the Ukiah Police Department's presser describing an ominous armed gang confrontation in Ukiah High School's parking lot. No reply when I asked Matt LeFever, a teacher at the school and proprietor of the MendoFever website, why he ignored it.

FORT BRAGG keeps a close watch on the gang yobbos. When John Naulty was chief a self-certified tough guy threatened me. Me, a senior citizen and thereby threat proof. I happened to mention the threat in passing to Naulty, and darned if the chief didn't immediately phone the guy to remind him he was on parole, and…

AND THE UKIAH PD used to have a kind of gang war room, a whole wall of photos of gang bangers and their female auxiliaries complete with home addresses. It's not like the gangs don't have a foothold here, but it's not that they're anonymous either.

TERRY RYDER-SITES:

I’ve been thinking how much it would cheer people to know clearly that the electronic version of the AVA will have the features they know and love like Valley People etc. in a format somewhat similar to what they are used to in the paper-paper. Mark says this has already been relayed in a Q & A piece you did. I think a column in both of the last paper papers with a headline like- “What the New online AVA will look like” or some such and then reassuring text stating that features expected and beloved in the paper-paper will be available in the online AVA and subscription info. I think alot of readers will need this hand-holding to stay onboard. 

Terry Ryder

Yorkville

ED REPLY. I hope hard copy readers will follow us through the cyber-door where we will continue to bring readers all the local news that fits — check that — there are no space limits in cyber-space, sooooooooo that means we can promise a daily read equivalent to a week’s worth of a paper-paper. I think the on-line ava will grow as Mendocino County’s go-to newspaper.

LEANERS & SKEWERS

Editor, 

I know you’re into a mix of viewpoints in your paper, but lately it seems to me that the balance has been skewing rightward. The comment section in particular. The future storm troopers have found a place that they feel comfortable spewing their authoritarian talking points taken right off of Putin’s and Orban’s greatest hits. I’ve been reading Joe Klein’s columns lately, and although I don’t agree with everything he says, he hits a balance that is refreshing in this time of extreme viewpoints. Might be somebody to put up to balance out the right wing firebrands you print that turn my stomach and pretty much force me to skip over their blather. Glad to hear you’re on the mend. I’m 74 and trying to hang in there too.

https://open.substack.com/pub/josephklein/p/the-rise-of-toxic-naivete

Jurgen Stoll

Fortuna

ED NOTE:

My opinions (and life) are on the left, but I get tired of the piety from the lib-left and like to throw a hard right provocation at AVA readers, most of them libs, simply to remind them who else is out there. And the consternation caused by Kunstler, for example, is lots of fun. While I have you, a perfect example of the absurd present is the presidential race between Biden and Trump, the former obviously senile, the latter a special ed case with fascist instincts who would have been laughed out of the room not so long ago. But millions of people on the “left” are pretending Biden is fully capable while millions of misinformed, deluded romantics think a blustering degenerate can take America back to 1955. How did we get here? Lockstep thinking encouraged by a biased, lockstep media. I say, let a million flowers bloom!

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Jenny is a party animal and loves to play—with tennis balls, squeaky toys, and yes, humans! This young dog will do best in a home where she can get daily exercise. Basic training will be very beneficial for our little antenna-eared girl; she’s already learned SIT and DOWN, and being treat-motivated, you can expect lots more with training! Jenny would love a canine friend in her new home, but she’ll be fine as the only dog. Either way, Jenny’s going to bring you hours of fun with her entertaining and lively personality. Jenny is a mixed breed girl, 10 months old and an delightful 48 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 at: facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter

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

MIKE GENIELLA:

Dinosaurs in the local print news business face extinction, no doubt. Some of us keep plodding, hoping our contributions to online versions will keep information flowing to the public. There was a time when salaried reporters were covering cops, city hall, the courts, and the county Board of Supervisors. If you were lucky in the business, and I was, you could make a living, support a family, and have decent medical care and a pension, thanks, in my case, to the San Francisco Newspaper Guild. The Press Democrat, my employer for nearly three decades, operated the News Bureau in Ukiah and had paid correspondents in Fort Bragg and Lake County. What happened? First, the advertising dollars vanished, gobbled up by online sites. Subscribers fled to free or low-cost online news sites. The Press Democrat once had 100,000 daily subscribers on Sunday. Today, the paid circulation is about 20,000. Those numbers tell the story.

I applaud Bruce Anderson, Mark Scaramella, and everyone connected to the AVA and its readers. The AVA’s online presence is strong and likely to become even stronger. Yet, holding that weekly print newspaper in hand, turning the pages, and either laughing out loud or grimacing with raised eyebrows will be seriously missed.

Lastly, here’s part of the current news problem: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/12/google-search-blocking-california-news

ANOTHER NIGHT AT THE LODGE

Drunken tears and a room full of smoke

A guy in the corner telling last years joke

The juke box playing a sad, sad song

A guy sleeping at the bar who's been here too long

Someone playing pool lets out a yell

He tried to make the seven but the eight ball fell

A couple slow dancing in the back of the room

The swamper waiting patiently, leaning on his broom

A couple old geezers rolling the dice

Ordering drinks and bitching about the price

Some guy staggered and leaned against the wall

The barkeep flicked the lights and yelled last call

Just then a guy gets a call on the phone

His wife says she'll leave him if don't get home

No matter where you live, no matter where you are

I'll bet this reminds you of your own local bar

— Ernie Pardini

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, April 20, 2024

DYLAN DIXON, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance, contempt of court, resisting, offenses while on bail.

MARCOS LOPEZ-RUIZ, Redwood Valley. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

TONY MAPLES, Ukiah. County parole violation.

JUDY MOLINA, Redwood Valley. DUI, no license. 

CRISTINA MUNOZ, Branscomb. Vandalism, protective order violation, contempt of court.

MICHAEL NEWBOLDS, Ukiah. Controlled substance for sale, county parole violation.

JUAN NUNEZ-MORENO, Willits. DUI-alcohol&drugs, controlled substance, paraphernalia, no license.

COLE PARKIN, Ukiah. County parole violation.

NATHANIEL QUADRIO, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

SARAH SCHMITZ, Willits. Disorderly conduct-probation violation. 

JACOB SHIPMAN, Willits. Shoplifting. 

HUGO SILVA-AYALA, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

TURIYA, COME IN PLEASE

Awoke at noon at Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center, and following morning ablutions, picked up all of the litter in front of the building. Proceeded to the trash & recycling containment area. and sorted out the recycling from the garbage so that there is sufficient room in the trash container until Monday morning’s pick up. And then went to the Express Mart across the street to check LOTTO tix, before ambling on to the co-op for a nosh and coffee. Eventually left, and walked to the public library. Here now on computer #4, tap tap tappng away. Contact me if you ever wish to do anything of any importance. Accepting money and subsidized housing. Not identified with the body nor the mind, but with Turiya, or the fourth dimension.

Craig Louis Stehr

BILL KIMBERLIN: I am starting to go on a book tour and this review popped up on Amazon. This is a Canadian film director's review of my book. 

Saul Pincus

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling and truthful – for all the reasons you'd expect, and more.

Reviewed in Canada on February 14, 2021

"I bought this book because it promised details about a hugely underreported discipline in visual effects. What I got was better: a compellingly-constructed, honest, insightful tale about the journey of a talented filmmaker who wound up at Industrial Light and Magic at just the right, legendary time. Inside The Star Wars Empire: A Memoir delivers the goods handily while also being unexpected, spirited, and truthful about life, dreams and business."

MEMO OF THE AIR: Rendezvous with entropy.

Here’s the recording of last night’s (Friday 2024-04-19) 7.5-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-0589

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:

Onboard the Nautilus things were not as they seemed. “I knew Nemo. Nemo was my friend. You’re no Captain Nemo.” https://kottke.org/24/04/the-1931-voyage-of-the-submarine-nautilus

You can read the first two volumes of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen online free, including some of Nemo’s history, here (scroll down to Issues). Register, to use the bookmark feature. https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/The-League-of-Extraordinary-Gentlemen-1999

I read about how the dairy industry wants everyone to shut up about cows getting bird flu now, because the bad publicity and measures to mitigate it before it becomes the next pandemic will cost them so much money. Pigs too are getting it. And, naturally, chickens get it because they’re birds. Before, we didn’t have to worry about people getting it, because it didn’t affect mammals, but that was then. This reminded me that a long time ago I saw something about cows eating chickens. Here’s an example of that from 13 years ago, though it’s an odd East Indian deer-like sort of cow. And I don’t think it meant to eat the chicken. The chicken was so small it might have seemed like a tuft of grass wiggling in the breeze. Meanwhile, from an article about the composition of livestock feed: “In farming communities, a variety of protein sources were readily available, from soybeans or peanuts or cottonseed. Or from chicken feces, poultry feathers, cow blood or other parts of pigs, horses, fish, cattle and just about any animal part unfit for human consumption.” I forget about this kind of thing until I get a bag of frozen mystery-meatballs that taste bad enough for even me to notice. Even so, they cost more than the consistently good kind (Johnsonville) used to cost just a year or two ago. Do they cost more because they aren’t allowed to feed cattle pulverized chickens and feathers and other factory-farm waste anymore? Is that it? And I don’t see Johnsonville meatballs anywhere I go for groceries anymore. They always tasted good, and they were red all the way through, like real meat.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXhSyzWxmjc

A Thousand Suns. A new science-fiction series in short bursts. https://theawesomer.com/a-thousand-suns/737104

And the shapes of different atoms as revealed in the clairvoyant visions of Annie Besant, P.T.S. and Charles W. Leadbeater in 1908. “Based on a Yoga principle that one can reduce one’s self-conception to minute proportions so that very small objects appear large. The observer then simply draws what he sees and his commentary may be taken down by a stenographer.” “The atoms were duly grouped according to overall shapes: spikes, dumbbell, tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, crossed bases, and star. Thus, boron, nitrogen, and vanadium, for example – elements with little in common chemically – all “have six funnels opening on the six faces of a cube.” Six! That’s a lot of funnels. https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/occult-chemistry

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

Williams is an American artist best known for his MAD Magazine paintings and contributions. He is a modern artist with a lot of talent.

S.F.’S 4/20 CANNABIS CELEBRATION BLAZES FORWARD DESPITE OFFICIAL CANCELLATION

by Christian Leonard

San Francisco’s official 4/20 event at Golden Gate Park may have been canceled this year, but cannabis celebrants blazed forward Saturday, with the city and neighborhood groups stepping in to provide toilets and medical staff.

Officials announced last month that the city-sanctioned 4/20 event — which usually features live entertainment and street vendors — was canceled due to budget constraints. But celebrants were expected to roll up to the park even if organizers didn’t, especially because 4/20 falls on a weekend this year. Local groups expressed concern that a crowd of that size could overwhelm the neighborhood and the services, such as portable toilets and medical staff, event organizers previously provided.

Up to 20,000 people attended San Francisco’s 4/20 event in previous years, according to the city’s estimates.

But Robin Williams Meadow had a much smaller crowd Saturday afternoon, with the bulk of the field sectioned off for a volleyball and kickball tournament co-organized by the city. Hippie Hill, traditionally the center of San Francisco’s 4/20 festivities, was designated a “spectator area,” though few visitors seemed to be interested in the games. Some instead danced in the drum circle at the base of the hill or rolled out towels in nearby areas of the park.

Nick Corbin, a San Franciscan who said he’s been celebrating 4/20 at Hippie Hill for years, said the pandemic hit the cannabis community hard, but now people are more willing to attend events.

“There’s always one spot (for) people who like to congregate and chill,” Corbin said as he turned his gaze toward Hippie Hill. “For me, it’s always been about picking up that good vibe.”

Unlike some previous 4/20 events, there seemed to be few immediate issues related to restrooms or trash. San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department set up about a dozen portable toilets in Robin Williams Meadow, and the Haight Ashbury Merchants Association funded an additional 22 toilets near Alvord Lake, Rec and Park spokesperson Tamara Aparton said. Medics from the San Francisco Fire Department were on call to respond to medical emergencies, while park rangers and police officers patrolled the park on bikes.

Other organizations also provided support. The Church of Ambrosia, a Bay Area religious organization that uses cannabis and psychedelic mushrooms in its ceremonies, organized volunteers to distribute water bottles. Harm reduction organizations DanceSafe and Micah’s Hugs distributed naloxone and fentanyl testing strips to guard against opioid overdoses.

Scott Struyk, who sat on Hippie Hill with his vape and his dog, Pappy, said this was his first time celebrating 4/20 there. He pointed out that the sports games took up a lot of space, but said he still felt there was plenty of room for cannabis celebrants.

Struyk said he came “just to see what happens when (an official event) isn’t happening, and I knew something would happen.”

The city had encouraged people to congregate elsewhere, with several other 4/20 events planned in San Francisco and other parts of the Bay Area.

The date is believed to have originated at San Rafael High School in the early 1970s, when a group of friends known as “the Waldos” gathered at 4:20 p.m. after classes and football practice to partake of weed around the school’s statue of chemist Louis Pasteur. Their private lexicon — “420 Louis” and later just “420” — caught on nationally. 

Even before California voters legalized recreational cannabis use in 2016, San Francisco residents and out-of-towners flocked to Hippie Hill every year on 4/20. But the city’s first officially sanctioned event wasn’t until 2017. Before then, thousands of attendees had to share just a handful of park bathrooms, and neighbors regularly complained about the tons of trash left behind, costing the city tens of thousands of dollars to remove.

(SF Chronicle)

THE REAL REASON PG&E RATES ARE SKYROCKETING IN CALIFORNIA

by Loretta Lynch

California now holds the ignominious prize for the highest electricity rates in the nation, except Hawaii. How did we get into this predicament? 

Because the California Public Utilities Commission — the five-member agency appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that regulates the prices, service and reliability of private energy utilities — has failed to do its job.

There are other government entities that hand out cookies to energy companies without a care for who pays the bill. But the buck stops at the Public Utilities Commission to protect utility customers. 

When a private utility like PG&E decides it needs to build new infrastructure — say, to protect against wildfires — it’s the commission that determines if the infrastructure is necessary, if the utility’s proposed costs for that infrastructure are fair, and if better and cheaper alternatives exist.

The commission enjoys limited scrutiny by the courts. Decisions made by other state agencies can be appealed to Superior Court. But only an appellate court can hear commission appeals, and taking that case is discretionary. This limited judicial review means that the Public Utilities Commission essentially answers to the governor alone.

As a former commission president, I know what keeping energy prices down requires: a sharp pencil to control relentless spending requests from utilities that allow them to generate more profits, adherence to legal mandates that require it to protect ratepayers and allow only “just and reasonable” costs and the backbone to just say no to the utilities’ unceasing demands that customers pay for programs that are ineffective or unnecessarily expensive.

None of this is happening, and Californians should be outraged.

Last November, the commission authorized a historic rate increase — more than $2.56 billion for PG&E’s 2023-2026 general rate case spending estimates. PG&E applied to the commission to charge its customers for the costs of running its gas and electricity businesses, including new infrastructure, system maintenance, and employee and management salaries.

That rate increase hits in stages. The commission let PG&E charge its customers immediately for the first $1.3 billion, painfully hitting in January’s bills. But that’s not the end to commission-permitted rate increases: The utility will collect $716 million more in 2024, $359 million in 2025 and $204 million in 2026. 

The commission allowed these increases despite its administrative law judge’s initial decision finding that PG&E’s evidence justified a much smaller rate hike. (The commission employs administrative judges to independently vet whether or not utilities have proved that they are entitled to charge their customers for their costs.)

The administrative law judge’s decision hinged on whether PG&E’s spending was “just and reasonable” — the legal prerequisite for approving any utility cost. Instead, politically appointed commissioners overruled the judge and gave PG&E the vast bulk of what it wanted despite what the facts support.

Before the ink on PG&E’s unprecedented 2023 rate increase was dry, the utility came back, asking the commission to order its customers to pay over $4 billion more for Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant costs, power purchases from electricity generators and infrastructure upgrades for “energization” efforts.

PG&E wants $691 million of that upfront — paid now — before the Public Utilities Commission even evaluates whether those costs are just and reasonable.

Adding insult to injury, in its March 12 decision, the commission handed PG&E yet another increase of $516 million — to take effect immediately. This time the commission dispensed with pesky legal requirements for evidentiary hearings, testimony or proof of PG&E’s asserted costs. By not even attempting to evaluate the reasonableness of the utility’s demands, commissioners set a new low in disregarding the law, which allows the commission to increase rates only after it holds a hearing that includes testimony under oath and cross-examination of PG&E’s witnesses.

In its decision, the commission admitted that granting PG&E half a billion up front, based only on PG&E’s word, “departs from the general requirement to raise rates only after the costs are determined reasonable.” Despite PG&E’s admission that its original $5.7 billion expense estimate actually only totaled $2.7 billion, commissioners approved the increase anyway, only timidly admonishing that “PG&E should be more transparent at the outset to assist with decision-making.”

What should have occurred?

Formal hearings, with PG&E’s witnesses testifying under oath about the true amounts of their asserted costs. The commission should have followed the law that requires PG&E to prove that its costs are “just and reasonable” — before forcing its customers to pay more. The law requires public, rules-based fact determinations about what money is really needed to provide safe and reliable service versus what constitutes frivolous, unnecessary or profit-plumping projects.

The commission blithely maintains that it will review PG&E’s actual costs later — years from now. If unreasonable costs are found, it will order refunds of the money PG&E took from its customers.

But PG&E will almost certainly fight such refunds by scaring future commissioners into inaction, claiming that “the markets” have expected them to keep the money so it can’t be taken away.

Kowtowing to PG&E despite the evidence and the facts — or in this latest case, raising rates without any evidence or facts — shows the Public Utilities Commission’s utter indifference to the hardships these rate increases impose on California’s families and businesses.

Now, a new commission scheme is set to create a “fixed charge” on top of current pay-as-you-use prices, which would be marginally reduced, only for residential customers, under the plan.

On March 27, an administrative law judge published a proposed decision that, if approved in May, will impose a new fixed $24.18 monthly charge on residential customers not eligible for low-income discounts. The commission touts this proposal as a win because it set the charge significantly lower than the $70-$90 the utilities initially proposed. But the new charge still exceeds twice the national average for similar charges.

Fixed fees are the start, not the end, of more rate increases because the commission doesn’t prohibit the fixed charge from increasing whenever PG&E wants. The plan lacks safeguards against utility double-dipping, so it will be hard to tell whether the costs embedded in this new fixed charge are duplicated in other cost-recovery requests. Even PG&E’s low-income customers are not protected — they already pay more than the average customer in the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.

The Public Utilities Commission’s rubberstamping of unproven, unwarranted, unjust electricity costs must stop. It is up to the state Legislature to inject sanity into the regulatory system and protect California families and businesses from ruinous, undeserved rate increases.

Thankfully, legislators have introduced AB1999 to stop this increase and cap any fixed charge at $5 for low-income customers and $10 for other customers. AB2054 would stop the revolving door of former commissioners moving to jobs with utilities and scrutinize utility funds, and SB938 would stop ratepayers from paying for utility lobbying and advertising, among other reforms.

Passing these bills would be important first steps to reining in California’s rogue Public Utilities Commission and halting runaway energy rates.

More robust oversight by the Legislature is needed. Without it, you can expect your energy bills to continue to skyrocket.

(Loretta Lynch is a former president of the California Public Utilities Commission and an attorney in San Francisco.)

THE LOST COAST IN FIVE HOURS, OR, HOW TO TAKE THE FUN OUT OF IT?

Ultrarunner Sets Speed Record On California’s Lost Coast Trail

by Gregory Thomas

Each year, thousands of backpackers gear up to hike the remote, undeveloped shoreline in California’s far north that is the famous Lost Coast.

The most popular segment is a scenic 25-mile stretch where hikers pass a harbor seal colony, maneuver over slick boulders in two perilous intertidal zones, labor across a mileslong black-sand beach and cross more than a dozen knee-high streams. Most set aside three days and two nights to make the trip safely and enjoyably.

But earlier this month, a mountain runner from Oregon crossed that northern segment in just under 5½ hours — a pace of about 4.5 mph, or 13 minutes per mile — and set a fastest known time on one of Northern California’s most famous trails. Emily Keddie came away with a speed record, but also a brutal case of poison oak and a nighttime encounter with a large mountain lion that she called “terrifying.”

Endurance athletes have set several speed records on the trail in the past six years and posted their results on FastestKnownTime.com, the unofficial record-keeper of such feats worldwide.

Most people familiar with the trail know the relatively flat northern section that extends from Mattole Beach south, never straying far from the ocean, to the town of Shelter Cove — a route so popular that the Bureau of Land Management limits permits to access it between spring and fall. But the Lost Coast Trail in fact continues south about 30 miles more through the rugged King Range where it morphs into a leg-quaking mountain trek up and down a series of steep peaks.

“People underestimate it because they don’t realize there’s tough terrain and real elevation out there,” said Allison Mercer, manager of FastestKnownTime.com. “I know people who have had trouble with the tides or navigation and had to abandon” their Lost Coast speed record attempts.

Keddie, 37, is taking a break from her child psychology practice to push her limits in ultrarunning and has logged 22 FKTs in the past four years, mostly for quick jaunts on trails in Oregon, with a few California stops along the way. In 2022, she set the speed record on the Lost Coast’s mountainous southern section (7 hours, 21 minutes, 38 seconds) then followed that with a 1-hour, 45-minute dash across 10-mile Big Rock Ridge in Marin County.

She had initially hoped to claim two longer speed records on the Lost Coast — one for completing the entire 57.6-mile trail, end to end, and another for turning around and “yo-yo-ing” the whole thing in a 115-mile out-and-back, which she anticipated doing in about 36 hours.

Just after sunrise on April 1, Keddie shouldered a pack with calorie-rich snacks, some personal electronics and two headlamps and left Mattole Beach, padding south in light wind, passing lounging harbor seals at the Punta Gorda Lighthouse and wading carefully through stream outflows bursting with fresh rainfall. She timed her trip so she would hit the trail’s two major intertidal zones at low tide — absolutely necessary to avoid being swept out to sea, the trail’s primary danger, which has killed hikers in the past.

She swiftly reached Shelter Cove, the end of the popular northern section. But in the mountains south of town, it quickly became apparent that the trail through the more secluded southern section was impassable, having suffered damage from heavy winter storms last year, cutting her trip short.

It was a bummer, Keddie said. But after checking her trail time she realized she had incidentally set a record for the fastest unsupported female run of the northern section — by four minutes.

 “It was a delightful surprise and a silver lining given that I wouldn’t be able to go for either of the (longer) records,” Keddie said.

She resolved to hike back to her car the same day, 30 miles back the way she had come, a shift in plans that would mean navigating the beachy trail at night.

After sunset, Keddie trekked north by the light of her headlamp. Deer are a frequent sight on the trail, and at night she spotted them from a distance by the sharp glow of their eyes reflecting her lamp’s beam.

Then, while passing through one of the intertidal zones hazy with fog, a pair of glimmering animal eyes poked around a rock outcropping and looked right at her. She knew immediately they weren’t the eyes of deer or elk; they glowed a different hue of orange and were placed front and center on the creature’s head.

The tide zones effectively trap a hiker in a narrow, rocky corridor between 20-foot bluffs and the churning surf. Instinctively, Keddie paused in her tracks and roared as loud as she could, hoping her voice would carry over the pounding waves.

The next instant, her lamp’s beam caught the profile of a large muscled body rounding the outcropping toward her on four legs then bounding up the crumbling bluffs in two striding leaps. From the ledge above Keddie, the big cat peered down at her.

“It was super creepy, but also impressive,” she said.

Worried the animal might pounce on her, Keddie made her way forward slowly, picking over the rocks and swiveling back every few steps to yell up toward the bluffs and keep the creature at bay. She continued looking over her shoulder the rest of the hike and arrived at Mattole Beach at about 11:20 p.m.

“It was really unnerving and I was relieved to get back to my car,” she said.

Keddie said she came away from her trip with a renewed appreciation for the unpredictability of wild places and the crews of workers who maintain trails and access to them. She’s thinking about going back to the Lost Coast to see if she can shave the record down even more.

“I bet I can get (the record) down by another half an hour,” she said.

(SF Chronicle)

NPR CIRCLES THE WAGONS

Matt Taibbi: I’m just curious about your reaction to how NPR handled the criticism that they got. Because just having covered all those police brutality stories, it reminded me so much of the way police departments behave when somebody accuses somebody on the force of a brutality complaint or something like that. There was a blue wall at NPR and they just attacked him. They defended the integrity of the institution and said it was his fault and didn’t appear to take any criticism, that seemed to me.

Walter Kirn: Right. Right. Well, you could say they closed ranks, but their ranks were already a solid ice wall, so they didn’t close them more than they already were. Instead of addressing his criticism as we went into last week, which was really about the coverage and the content of NPR, they suggested that besides being a traitor and a snitch in some way, he didn’t like the composition of the place or that somehow he was rejecting their diversity requirements and goals, which wasn’t the aim of his essay. But in any case-

Matt Taibbi: Not at all, I didn’t think.

Walter Kirn: No, he was made into an abominable ingrate and someone who was trying to take down a revered American institution. They got very patriotic about NPR in a way that they’re not patriotic about a lot of things and kicked him out, showing that the ingroup is absolutely inviolable and will not be questioned, will not be challenged. I think they’re on a course for some kind of... All the people who might boycott them don’t listen to them anyway, so that won’t happen. The question is whether there’s some 5% of listeners who still are forming their opinions about life and the world and who might be a little distressed by their closed-mindedness, but in any case, they’ve gotten rid of the dissidents.

Matt Taibbi: The wrong thinker.

Walter Kirn: The wrong thinker. They’ve demonstrated for all of America what happens to you if you’re in one of these institutions and you raise your hand with an objection and now they’ll carry on. They’ll carry on under the leadership of this woman who has been now raked over the coals, to some extent, for many days. Not only was she the object of Twitter fame for one day, she’s really been so solidly for almost a week.

Matt Taibbi: But that’s only because of a rather unique quality to her situation, which is that normally when somebody gets stuck in the middle of a Twitter maelstrom, it’s because of one thing that they said. And if you don’t give the fire oxygen, which is interesting because we’re going to come back to that when we talk about our story today, but normally if you don’t feed the controversy, it doesn’t go on for more than a day. The problem with her is that there’s this gigantic reservoir of stuff in her tweeting history that became central to the entire controversy, and there’s a gigantic quantity of it. So people haven’t even finished going through it, and it’s germane to a real controversy because among other things, when Berliner finally resigned, he referenced these divisive views that I mentioned in my article.

They continue to be on display, and we might as well just give people a little flavor of what that is. There’s a level of this story which is just kind of funny.

— Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn

* * *

THE NEW AGGRIEVED

— Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn

But this is this new religious belief that through confession or self-criticism, you can exempt yourself from the crimes of your class and your race and so on. I mean, at some point in history, if the history keeps getting written by people rather than AI or wiki processes, we’re going to look back and say, how interesting was it that the greatest foes of whiteness were the whitest among us? How interesting is it that the people who wanted to see justice for the oppressed were the most privileged of all, and all they had to do was mouth some words and use a certain kind of rhetoric and verbiage, and they were exempted from all the implications of these group identities. And then not only that, they entitled themselves as prosecutors of others for the crimes that they’re exempt from. So no, in the day that Katherine Maher spends every day where she goes around experiencing microaggressions and seeing injustice and so on, she’s never the perpetrator.

She’s always somehow the symbolic victim merely by adopting this vocabulary when in fact, sometimes I want to say to my friends who are big revolutionaries and social justice people, look at the folks who are sponsoring you and attack them because they’re the enemy. The people who are funding you and sending you out and heading the NGOs that support you are the actual enemy, and you’re being trained on the wrong victims. And I’m sorry to say that if Katherine Maher wants to make an issue of whiteness, an issue of privilege and an issue of race, then it’s almost too funny that she is the paragon of all that she pretends to critique.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, if you were to draw a geographical map of whiteness, the capital would probably be Wilton, Connecticut. Maybe Westport, I don’t know. But Wilton’s pretty close.

Walter Kirn: Exactly, and this-

MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Call it the Tortured Audience Response. A global marketplace carpet-bombed by Taylor Swift must now endure another album, another promotional cycle, another round of score-settling with ex-lovers and a level of navel-gazing that makes J.Lo seem modest. Then again, Swift never has had a sense of humor about herself, has she? So here we are, weary of the Eras tour and movie, the Taylor and Travis show, Taylor on the cover of Time as 2023's Person of the Year, the re-release of two older records last year, Taylor at the 2024 Golden Globes - expressing grave displeasure after a joke about her overexposure - and Taylor at the Grammys, a mere two months ago, appearing to snub terminally ill legend Celine Dion in her haste to grab that trophy and promote her next project.

LEAFLETS NOT BOMBS

To the Editor:

Re “Israel Strikes Iran, but Scope of Attack Appears Limited”:

If Israel has to send drones into Iran again, it should drop leaflets saying, in Persian, English and Hebrew:

“Israel stands with the people of Iran! Overthrow your authoritarian government, stop funding Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Houthi terrorism, and rejoin the community of nations as our partners in peace.”

Stephen A. Silver

San Francisco

HOUSE APPROVES $95 BILLION AID BILL FOR UKRAINE, ISRAEL AND TAIWAN

After months of delay at the hands of a bloc of ultraconservative Republicans, the package drew overwhelming bipartisan support, reflecting broad consensus.

by Catie Edmondson

The House voted resoundingly on Saturday to approve $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as Speaker Mike Johnson put his job on the line to advance the long-stalled aid package by marshaling support from mainstream Republicans and Democrats.

In four back-to-back votes, overwhelming bipartisan coalitions of lawmakers approved fresh rounds of funding for the three U.S. allies, as well as another bill meant to sweeten the deal for conservatives that could result in a nationwide ban of TikTok.

The scene on the House floor reflected both the broad support in Congress for continuing to help the Ukrainian military beat back Russia, and the extraordinary political risk taken by Mr. Johnson to defy the anti-interventionist wing of his party who had sought to thwart the measure. Minutes before the vote on assistance for Kyiv, Democrats began to wave small Ukrainian flags on the House floor, as hard-right Republicans jeered.

The legislation includes $60 billion for Kyiv; $26 billion for Israel and humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza; and $8 billion for the Indo-Pacific region. It would direct the president to seek repayment from the Ukrainian government of $10 billion in economic assistance, a concept supported by former President Donald J. Trump, who had pushed for any aid to Kyiv to be in the form of a loan. But it also would allow the president to forgive those loans starting in 2026.

FOREIGN AID PACKAGE, SPEAKER JOHNSON’S COURAGE

Dear Editor,

Yesterday it became clear that Speaker of the House Michael Johnson had made a crucial decision; something really big - like Julius Caesar’s decision to risk his career by crossing the Rubican. Johnson risked his own future denying Magga Republicans by advancing four (4) foreign aid bills, totalling $91 billion to be voted on today, Saturday, April 20, 2024.

As I awoke today, it occurred to me what might have given Speaker Johnson the stroke of courage to do what he did. Perhaps he, or someone else on his staff, may have been strolling through a Capital cloakroom one day when they saw a pair of shoes up on the shelf. They might have first belonged to former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill. If they were on Speaker Johnson’s feet, perhaps it explains what gave him his new hope. Like that first day you put on that pair of “Big Boy Shoes,” and you took another step toward manhood.

Today the House passed all four bills. They didn’t ask for it but suddenly a lot of American soldiers may not have to get shot at.

Frank H. Bauamgardner, III

Santa Rosa

“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.”

~ Jack Kerouac, “On The Road”

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

My best days are when I accidentally “forget” my phone. I’m free. Nobody can contact me and if they really need to reach me they have to work hard at it to do so. No texts. No pings. No notifications. If it weren’t for my job and my children I’d never carry the cursed thing around. I, afterall, was one of the lucky ones who grew up without a cell phone. I said good bye to my mother in the morning, went out and raised hell, and came home for dinner before going out again to raise more hell. I had a great childhood. I wish my children experienced youth the way that I did.