Mendocino County Today: Tuesday 4/23/24

Cloudy | Eel River | Reckless Driving | Gardening Group | Apple Blossoms | Armed Robbery | Giants Raffle | School Fights | War Protesting | Park Improvement | Hanes Chat | Guitar Night | Mattress Recycling | Coast View | Ed Notes | Coral Root | Water Solutions | Civil War | Hitting Deer | Sunset | Phone Limits | Farewell Print | Yesterday's Catch | Zinnias | Gender Proclamations | Caitlin Jerseys | Family Love | Absolute Power | Adult Status | Fedoras | Bad Faith | Flaming Hoop | Passover Protests | Good Americans | Palestinian Others | Worcestershire UK

SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS are forecast for the interior this afternoon, mainly in Trinity county. A cooling trend will start today with additional cooling Wednesday. Drastically cooler interior temperatures, rain and high mountain snow will return Thursday through Friday. Additional showers and below normal temperatures are expected through the weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A foggy 53F on the coast this Tuesday morning. It's a big fog bank, will we get some clearing later? Our forecast calls for morning fog & cool temps thru tomorrow then we still have a chance of showers on Thursday & Friday. As always, we'll see?

WYNNE NORD: Scary experience yesterday - we were driving out of Boonville and turning left at Mountain View Road. We noticed two cars coming towards us going pretty fast. One of the cars was in our lane and the other car was right next to him. We quickly moved into the right lane. If we hadn’t, he would have hit us head on. I didn’t have the impression the cars were racing. The driver looked young to me. He had dark curly hair. It was a burgundy/red SUV with a lot of bumper stickers - including a Keep Tahoe Blue one. I don’t know if this was a local or a visitor.

INTERESTED IN A GARDENING GROUP?

A new member, Bill Harper, is interested in starting a gardening group, where you take turns helping each other with your gardens. Let me know if you are interested and I will pass on your info to him and he can coordinate with you.

Anica Williams, Anderson Valley Village Coordinator (part-time)
Cell: 707-684-9829, Email: andersonvalleyvillage@gmail.com

ARMED ROBBERY AT CHANDELIER DRIVE-THRU TREE IN LEGGETT SATURDAY

An armed robbery occurred at the Chandelier Drive-Thru Tree in Leggett this Saturday at approximately 5:30 p.m. The victim was the 18-year-old girl at the toll booth.

We spoke to one of the employees, Lee Ann St. Clair, who told us that the robbery occurred soon after her shift ended. She said she first learned about it when she received call from her daughter another employee who had heard what happened from the victim. “My daughter told me a man with a gun had just robbed the tollbooth,” St. Clair said. She rushed to the scene but the assailant had already fled.

The tollbooth attendant, 18-year-old Jenny, was confronted by the armed man who threatened her directly, St. Clair told us. “He put the gun in her face and cocked it…Jenny did the exact right thing…She put her hands up…She just opened up the drawer and gave him the money.”

After taking the cash, the robber escaped–probably on an ATV he had hidden behind the attraction near Highway 271. Soon afterward, what people thought were gunshots were heard but it was later believed it was the suspect’s ATV backfiring as he sped towards south Leggett.

In response to the call from her daughter, St. Clair instructed Penny, also 18, to get the money out of the registers at the nearby gift shop and lock the doors. St. Clair said Penny alerted the tourists inside about the danger telling them to either leave or join her while she barricaded herself in until law enforcement arrived. The tourists chose to leave.

Law enforcement took about an hour to arrive, St. Clair said.

The suspect, who was recorded by surveillance cameras at both the toll booth and the Leggett grocery store, wore a mask during the robbery but was previously seen unmasked in the same outfit. “He wore the same red shirt, pair of jeans, and the same shoes,” St. Clair told us. She also said that footage from the store showed the suspect purchasing beer shortly before the robbery.

We’ve reached out to the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department and will update when we have more information. Anyone with any information should contact the Mendocino Sheriff’s Dispatch Center at (707) 463-4086.

(KymKemp.com)

UKIAH HIGH SCHOOL BRAWL

Ten teenagers were arrested last week after multiple fights broke out at Ukiah High School, the Ukiah Police Department reported.

According to the UPD, officers responded to the school on Low Gap Road at 12 p.m. April 15 for a report of a fight in the parking lot possibly involving a knife.

During the initial investigation, the UPD reports that no knife was located and school “administrators initially believed that the incident could be handled internally.” However, when a video of the fight surfaced, “the true severity of the altercation was learned.”

The UPD describes the video showing “two Ukiah High School students fighting against one male that was initially unknown to authorities and not believed to be a Ukiah High School student. As the three juveniles engaged in a fistfight, another male could clearly be seen drawing a folding knife from his pocket, opening the blade, and confronting a juvenile with the knife lowered at his side.”

While checking the campus for weapons, campus officials reportedly found “a black satchel … hidden in a trashcan in the immediate vicinity of the fight. Inside the satchel, campus officials found a loaded .40 caliber handgun and what they believed to be crystal methamphetamine,” and the UPD began investigating “the black satchel, its possessor, and how and why it had been brought onto school grounds.

The UPD also reports that “the two juveniles that had been fighting against the solo male were immediately suspended, and one of them was placed under arrest for fighting on school grounds. The other juvenile refused to turn himself in, and the case will be reviewed by the Mendocino County Juvenile Probation Department for charges against him. Both juveniles, who were students at Ukiah High School are believed by UPD gang experts to be active gang members based on prior knowledge of the juveniles, their clothing, and gang signs being exhibited during the fight.”

The male reportedly seen brandishing a knife was identified by the UPD as Braiden Marshall, 18, of Ukiah, who was placed under arrest for allegedly “threatening with the intent to terrorize, bringing a weapon onto school grounds, and brandishing a weapon other than a firearm.”

The UPD also reports learning that “the third male involved in the fight had brought the satchel and
firearm on to campus, and the bag had been discarded after the fight. The juvenile, a 17-year-old resident of Ukiah but not a Ukiah High School student, was identified based on witness statements and past school records, and was subsequently placed under arrest for being in possession of a loaded firearm and a controlled substance, being a minor in possession of a handgun, possession of a firearm on school grounds and possessing a weapon on school grounds.

Two days later on April 17, officers responded to the school again around 11:45 a.m. for “a physical fight between three juveniles. While investigating this fight, a second fight occurred involving two other male juveniles. While investigating the second fight, a third fight broke out between two other female juveniles.”

The UPD reports that the three fights on April 17 “were not associated or connected with (the fight on April 15) in any way. As a result of these three fights, six juveniles were taken into custody for battery on school grounds, and one of the six, a female juvenile had an additional charge of possession of a box cutter on school grounds. All six juveniles were booked at the Mendocino County Juvenile Detention Center.

(UDJ)

FROM CAMPUS TO COURTHOUSE: PRO-PALESTINIAN PROTESTERS DEMAND RELEASE OF ACTIVISTS AFTER CLASHES AT CAL POLY HUMBOLDT

by Kym Kemp

A small group of Pro Palestinian protesters, approximately 20 in number, splintered from a demonstration of several hundred students on the Cal Poly Humboldt campus late yesterday evening and headed to the Humboldt County Courthouse and Correctional Facility in Eureka. This move came after an evening filled with protests and the occupation at Siemens Hall that ended in celebrations by hundreds of students when law enforcement withdrew from campus.

The protesters’ demonstrations—both on campus and in front of the courthouse—underscore a growing movement across U.S. college campuses, pushing for significant changes in response to the ongoing Israel/Hamas war.

Early yesterday evening, tensions had escalated inside Siemens Hall, where around 60 protesters had taken over, prompting the university to cancel classes and close the building. Protesters had set up tents and spread out sleeping bags as they planned to settle in for what appeared to be a long occupation.…

kymkemp.com/2024/04/23/from-campus-to-courthouse-pro-palestinian-protesters-demand-release-of-activists-after-clashes-at-cal-poly-humboldt

LOVE YOUR PARK 

Clean Up Day! We plan to address several Boonville Community park improvement needs including trash clean up, a dump run, weeding, new gravel and wood chips, replacing shade cloths, repairing play area borders, and more. How much we get done will depend on how many volunteers we can gather and what resources we can bring.

If you have any resources you think may be helpful (weedwacker, shovel, rake, wheel barrow, rototiller, redwood lumber, etc.) or if you'd like to help coordinate lunch for the volunteers, please let me know. 

Please consider the dates below and COMMENT BELOW which work best for you & your family. (Even if you can only commit to 1-2 hours, anything would be helpful.) It Takes A Valley!

Saturday, April 27 : 9am-1pm

Sunday, April 28 : 9am-1pm

Saturday, May 4 : 9am-1pm

Sunday, May 5 : 9am-1pm

email: elizabeth.martha.jensen@gmail.com

THE HANES RANCH: An AV Historical Society Event

The AV Historical Society presents another Valley Chat featuring John Hanes sharing The History of the Hanes Family & Ranch (including the famous shootout). 

Sunday May 5 2024 2p@ the Little Red Schoolhouse Museum. Refreshments served. Admission is free

(Sheri Hansen)

A new affiliate of the Mendocino College Foundation has been waiting quietly in the wings to make itself known. On Saturday, April 27, Grammy-nominated guitarist and Mendocino College guitar instructor Alex de Grassi is presenting a “Guitar Night” fundraiser for the Friends of the Mendocino College Music Program

SUPERVISOR MULHEREN:

This Earth Day, we are pleased to offer you easy opportunities to love our planet. One simple way to divert waste from landfills is through the Mattress Recycling Council’s Bye Bye Mattress program. 

This program, whenever possible, leverages the existing solid waste infrastructure. For many Californians, this means your mattress is being diverted from waste to recycling whether your retailer takes it back with your new purchase, your city or a waste hauler picks it up at curbside or you drop it off at a participating location.

More than 75% of a mattress can be recycled. The steel, foam, fibers and wood are turned into everyday products like carpet padding, industrial filters, construction rebar and garden mulch.

MRC’s program recycles foam and innerspring mattresses, futon mattresses that can separate from the futon frame or base, as well as box springs. At collection locations, unit limits vary by location and residency restrictions may apply. We recommend contacting the location prior to drop-off.

This Earth Day, we hope you will visit https://byebyemattress.com/california/ to learn how to recycle your mattress or share this information with a friend or family member.

ED NOTES

THE AVA ASKED Matt LaFever of MendoFever.com why he didn’t post the Ukiah Police Presser about the gang incident at Ukiah High. 

LaFever replied: “The named student was in my class. My primary role in the community is a teacher. I didn’t want to compromise other students’ trust by publishing. Sorry for the late reply. I just came down from Mount Shasta. (LaFever@Shasta)

UKIAH'S ENDLESS bungling of the Palace Hotel is not surprising given that the town elects pom-pom girls, male and female, to city and county positions, persons unequipped to run anything more complicated than a homecoming celebration. What other town anywhere of 16,000 people would fail to ensure that a young woman of means, a young woman with specific plans drawn up by first-rate architects and engineers and builders to not only restore the long abandoned Palace but expand it? Minal Shankar, the young woman of means, is probably still shaking her head that Ukiah somehow allowed a small group of windy Ukiah hustlers to sabotage what would have been the greatest gift to the town since Grace Hudson? 

I WAS HAPPY that the Chronicle gave Kate Coleman the honorable send-off she deserved for her long life of brave reporting. She was maligned by all the right people, from the criminal thugs who came to dominate the Black Panther Party — “The Party's Over” — to the cash and carry figures dominant at Earth First! during the years it was dominated by Judi Bari. 

KATE'S journalo-exposures of these figures earned her constant denunciations on the pseudo-left audio outpost at KPFA, which then and now bills itself as “free speech radio,” which, I suppose, it is so long as that speech doesn't contradict the cultish political catechism the station is synonymous with. (I hasten to say there's still lots of good stuff on KPFA, but when it came to the Panthers and the rolling Bari scam, KPFA lost its way.)

THE CHRON'S piece by Sam Whiting was titled, “Kate Coleman 1942-2024. Free Speech Veteran Wrote Courageous Exposes.” She sure did. Her break-through reporting on the Panthers could have gotten her killed, and as tough and fearless as Kate was she had to put up bars on her windows and keep a gun handy, but she never left her Berkeley home.

KATE'S second big sin was her book on Judi Bari of Earth First! — “The Secret Wars of Judi Bari” — written from a skeptical perspective, which is inevitable to anybody who looks at the known facts of Bari's Mendo-based tenure and her slow death from the car bomb attack on her. Kate thought, and wrote, the obvious — that the attack on Bari was an inside job almost certainly mounted by her ex-husband, Mike Sweeney, himself a graduate of the violent cult left of the late 1960s.

WHEN KATE APPEARED at the Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino, she was beset by a gaggle of screeching hags who tried, unsuccessfully, to shout her down. Her low opinion of Bari's cult status, pretty much confined to Mendo, was only confirmed. As a veteran of the Berkeley left, Kate was angry, but not surprised by her Mendo experience.

IRV SUTLEY has died. Like Coleman, Irv was also a victim of the Bari cult's vilification because as a leftist and a gun guy, Irv made the mistake of posing Bari and her dim male doppelganger, Darryl Cherney — at their request — with an Uzi. They wanted to use the photo as the cover for their music called “They Sure Don't Make Hippies Like They Used To.” 

Irv thus became the bomber, or a facsimile thereof convenient to Bari. Anybody, anything to divert attention from her ex. After the car bomb that nearly killed her and Cherney, Bari claimed she had always been committed to non-violence.

ANY DISCUSSION of the Bari interlude from a skeptical perspective is, of course, and always has been forbidden at free speech KPFA, KMUD, KZYX.

FROM WIKIPEDIA, ANNOTATED BY ME WHO KNEW ALL THE PLAYERS BETTER THAN HE WISHES NOW HE HAD KNOWN THEM:

“In l990, a car bomb in Oakland almost killed radical Earth First! leader Judi Bari and her passenger, a co-leader and onetime lover, Darryl Cherney. The FBI accused the pair of transporting the explosive device knowingly as part of a violent campaign of "ecotage." [The feds and the Oakland Police Department ignored the obvious physical evidence of the bomb blast that proved the bomb was hidden beneath the seat of Bari's Subaru, not in plain view from behind as these half-assed sleuths claimed.] From her hospital bed, Bari charged that the timber interests of Northern California and the FBI had tried to kill her. [If the federal government and corporate timber are going to try to kill you, you are going to be killed.] The car bomb and the competing conspiracy theories about who was responsible made Bari a national figure; but she had long been a legendary figure among California activists. A veteran of the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s who moved to militant feminism and environmentalism after the war ended, Bari was involved in the radical eco-organization Earth First! by the mid-1980s and leading the fight against the logging companies on the Northern California coast. [Actually, Bari hijacked Earth First! from founder Dave Foreman. Foreman wanted EF! to remain an eco-based movement not, as he said, “an umbrella social movement.” As it happens, I was present in Sebastopol when Bari met Foreman and had to apologize to him for accusing him of male chauvinism etc.] Not long before the attempt on her life, she had summoned young people from all over the country to join her in a crusade to save the remaining redwood forests of the Pacific Coast in a ‘Redwood Summer’ based on the Mississippi Summer of the civil rights movement a quarter-century earlier. ‘The Secret Wars of Judi Bari’ traces Bari's rise from college activist to a would-be Mother Jones of the Redwoods. Drawing on extensive interviews with Bari's friends, comrades and critics, Kate Coleman describes Bari's long struggle for selfhood against her communist parents [respectable, prosperous people who once belonged to the CPUSA] and her husband, himself a former member of violent political groups; against those in her movement who felt that she was not radical enough; and ultimately against the FBI and the State of California. [“Not radical enough?” Never heard that one. Sweeney belonged to a Stanford-based Maoist group led by an English professor. This group, called Venceremos, killed a police officer and planted bombs in public buildings all over the Bay Area.] Judi Bari's wars continued until her death from cancer seven years after the explosion that changed her life forever. [The bomb killed her in slow motion.] In creating a dramatic portrait of a unique American life, Coleman takes the reader inside the radical politics that outlived the 1960s, and into the Earth First! movement and the back-to-nature counterculture of the North Coast of California. This is a world that Coleman has lived in herself and spent her career documenting as a writer. In ‘The Secret Wars of Judi Bari’ she has produced a book that is at once a crime story, a social history, and a compelling biography of a woman at war with her world.”

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS neatly summed up the difference between them and us. Unfortunately, in Mendo, them includes a slug of people who think they're us but are, by their behavior, them:

“I have drawn a line between everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual and the defense of free expression.”

DIVERSION WON'T GUARANTEE A HEALTHY RUSSIAN RIVER

Editor,

When PG&E announced that it would remove Scott and Cape Horn dams on the Eel River as part of the Potter Valley hydroelectric project decommissioning, it put a continuing water diversion to the Russian River in question.

A Press Democrat editorial praised Eel and Russian River stakeholders coming together to endorse the possibility of a new fish friendly diversion from the Eel River ("Progress toward water security," March 27), and we at Russian Riverkeeper concur. However, a continued diversion from the Eel River is not a solution in and of itself when it comes to ensuring long-term water reliability in the upper Russian River watershed. A continued diversion will not solve all the region's water issues. 

Russian Riverkeeper, a Healdsburg-based nonprofit organization founded in 1993 to ensure that river water is drinkable, swimmable, fishable and equitably shared, is supportive of the effort to create a wintertime diversion that allows salmon and Pacific lamprey in the Eel River maximum recovery potential, while still making surplus flows available to the Russian. 

At the same time, we don't advocate putting all our eggs in one basket by solely relying on a diversion from another river. 

There are many risks involved in a continued diversion, including the fact that the tunnel sending water from the Eel to the Russian is more than 100 years old and could collapse in an earthquake. Someone could throw an unnecessary legal monkey wrench in the process, and while stakeholders might agree on an initial plan, securing funds for design, permits, construction and updating water rights will be difficult. 

In the face of a changing climate and new climate extremes, Russian Riverkeeper strongly supports a diverse portfolio of solutions within the Russian River watershed; not only as a backstop if issues rise with an Eel diversion, but as a critical necessity to protect the river and water users against the unknown. 

To start, climates in the Eel and Russian rivers are very similar. This means both watersheds will likely be experiencing drought and rainy seasons at the same time. Thus, when summertime supplies are low and demands are high in the Russian River, it is unlikely any diversion will be available to help support those needs. 

On the flip side, Lake Mendocino will likely be full with limited space for storing diverted waters when diversions are highest and water needs low. This means that alternative storage solutions will be needed to hold winter diversions for use when summer water needs spike. 

With so many unknowns, it is important that a variety of solutions are pursued to ensure water supplies are resilient to climate change. The cheapest and easiest solutions are improving water-use efficiency and conservation measures. Every gallon saved increases the water available for dry periods or carry over to the next year. 

Groundwater recharge is a cost-effective option that involves pulling water from the Russian River during high flow periods and putting it into recharge basins or spreading it over farms where it can sink into the ground. This would help increase available groundwater for local use in dry periods, while indirectly benefiting the river's ecosystem with water slowly seeping back into the river to augment flows and reduce temperatures in interconnected areas. 

Another often-discussed option is raising Coyote Dam to increase the storage capacity of Lake Mendocino. But local tribes with ancestral homelands in the surrounding area must be an integral part of that process and support any proposal before it can be successful. Other available solutions include increasing farm storage ponds, installing rainwater capture systems, improving water data collection, expanding the reach of technology and using practices that increase soil moisture retention and reduce evaporation. 

No matter what array of solutions is ultimately pursued, the most important factor is that we begin implementing multiple solutions today. 

Just like saving for retirement or investing, diversified solutions help reduce risk. By pursuing multiple solutions within the Russian River watershed simultaneously we can support the recovery of the Eel River salmon and lamprey populations, while ensuring our community and river thrive. 

Don McEnhill, Executive Director, Russian Riverkeeper. 

Ed Burdett, Chairs Russian Riverkeeper Board of Directors. 

Santa Rosa

ROAD KILL

Dead Deer On The Road

Marius Constantin (Coast Chatline): Good morning neighbors, I think we should do more in terms of making drivers aware of the high danger of hitting a deer, especially at dusk. Over the past week I have seen at least 4 deer laying on the side of Hwy 1 on the stretch from Caspar to Little River. This is a segment without a lot of bends so cars can go real fast.

* * *

Marco here. I drove for almost forty years in deer-saturated areas and never hit a deer. Then for ten years I hit one every couple of years. I let someone talk me into sticking deer whistles all over the front. I don't think they do anything. The speed limit on the sign is the /maximum/ safe speed limit. In different conditions, in different light, with older (or younger) or just more distracted drivers, it's actually slower than what it says on the sign. I remember long ago asking someone in the know about traffic laws how you can tell what the safe speed is, and he said, If you crash, that was too fast. It's gambling, where you can't win but only lose. It's like when the instructions on a plumbing part say, Do not over tighten. How do you know when to stop tightening? When it breaks. So you get experience. If you're not very bright, and apparently that describes me, you take ten years to learn: Keep it under the (safe) speed limit and you'll never hit a deer. Clearly the various deer I hit, I was going too fast, even if by the number I was okay. The last one I hit, in 2018, I think, it was night, a little foggy, on 128, and I had been living with glasses that didn't work perfectly anymore but driving anyway, in short, bad conditions inside and out. But I was going the posted speed limit. That was too fast. An earlier one, a couple of years before that, was at the turns going west, a few miles uphill from Cloverdale. It was a very small deer, practically a baby. The speed limit there was, I think, 20 or 25. Conditions were perfect. I thought it was safe, even tight around a turn with bushes blocking the view. I don't know how fast I was going. 25? 30? 35? BANG! If I had time to slam on the brakes, which I didn't, I would have crossed into the oncoming lane.

There were plenty of deer I didn't hit. One time I was coming home to Albion from KNYO early in the morning. It was clear, good visibility, and there were deer all over Main Street, at least ten, from the Company Store to past Rhoads NAPA auto parts. They were all just standing there, each on facing a different direction, like a fleamarket painting. That was before I had a phone with a camera in it; too bad, it was really odd. It reminded me of Gregg Stevens' truck-driving story about how the deer and other animals have suicide-church meditation meetings, where they meet to think about which ones need to do it, to sacrifice themself for the group, and when this one or that one is gonna jump right down out of the shrubs up the side of the road right in front of your truck.

One time I was just coming up the hill, past the creek at Van Damme, going south, and there were two big deer with big racks of antlers standing in the road facing each other from about four feet apart. I drove near, stopped, waited. They didn't care about me. I rolled down my window, said, "Hey. Can I go, here?" Nothing. I honked the horn. They each turned slowly around, walked away from each other, and I drove between them.

One time I was going north just past Mendocino, at that little bridge. And there was a live-but-not-for-long suffering deer on its side in the road, probably struck just a minute ago. It was broken, there was blood. I didn't have a gun. I had tire iron, thought about it, but no, not doing that. I drove a couple of times over its head and neck to kill it, determined that it was done, pulled it off the road and continued on.

I think that when it comes to rural roads and highways, the deer are tricked by their own instincts. A clear smooth bare area should be safe for them. They can hear and see a predator coming from a long way away and run away in plenty of time. But cars go so much faster and run so much farther than any predator but a cheetah and we never had those, and there have only been cars in the world for a little while. Animals have no natural instincts for it. It's up to us. If you have to be somewhere on time, leave a little earlier and go a little slower and enjoy the music or sing or think your thoughts. And if somebody comes up behind you who wants to go faster, pull over where it's safe and let them hit the deer, or get the ticket, or slide off the road and screw up their car or get killed. You can honk and smile and wave when you go past them. Just keep your eyes on the road. And keep your glasses up to date. And as you get older, the first time you catch yourself putting a hand up to block the lights from oncoming traffic because they wash out your field of vision, that's your wake-up call to stop driving at night, no matter how good your glasses are.

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org

NO PHONE ZONES

Editor: 

It's a rare thing when I agree so wholeheartedly with George F. Will, but his recent column (“For smarter kids, ban smartphones in school”) echoes my thoughts exactly. I work as a therapist in a local high school, and I daily see the effects these devices have on students. Anxiety is higher than I have ever seen. Although the isolation brought on by the pandemic accounts for part of it, in-person social reacclimation has been absolutely hampered by students absorbed in their phones. I do not blame the students. Adults need to step in and place clear limits on when and how these things are used with constant checks of the browsing history, and schools should absolutely be "no phone zones" for students. 

Richard Durr 

Santa Rosa 

A READER WRITES: I mourn the end of your newspaper in my life, but I also rejoice at its presence in my life for the more than 40 years I lived in Anderson Valley with my beloved husband. Farewell print warriors.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, April 22, 2024

ILEANA AMRULL, Ukiah. Under influence.

CHARLES ANDERSON, Ukiah. Protective order violation.

JASMINE BAILEY, Ukiah. Under influence, controlled substance, failure to appear.

LOURDES BAILON, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

CHRISTOPHER KEYES, Ukiah. Public nuisance, indecent exposure. (Frequent flyer.)

CHAD MCCALLUM, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

DEMETER MCFADIN, Ukiah. Under influence, disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting.

HEATHER MICHAEL, Ukiah. Dumping in commercial quantities.

DARRELL PIKE JR., Hopland. Paraphernalia, resisting, county parole violation.

KEVIN ROGERS, Laytonville. Paraphernalia, false ID, probation revocation.

JALAHN TRAVIS, Ukiah. Shoplifting, petty theft.

MELISSIA TURNEY, Ukiah. Controlled substance, vandalism, protective order violation.

ZINNIAS are a popular plant for annual gardens due to how easy they are to grow and how quickly they can grow, both from seed and as transplants. The vast range of growing habits also leads to their popularity as they can be anywhere from short and bushy to tall with a singular stalk. And, no matter what the growing habit is, Zinnias are prolific bloomers. They are a member of the aster family and are native to Mexico and Central America and perform very well throughout Midwest summers. 

The Victorian meaning of zinnia are thoughts of an absent friend or a friend you haven’t seen in a while. Zinnias also symbolize a “joyous endurance.” They are happy to bloom in the steaming heat of summer and really any other trials it encounters, such as drought and bugs, yet they never fail to produce vibrant, beautiful blooms!

Zinnias have no fragrance, but they do grow in a huge range of colors! The zinnia is named after Johann Gottfried Zinn, a German botany professor who discovered them and brought them back to Europe back in the 1700s.

Hummingbirds love zinnias, bringing their iridescent beauty to your garden while keeping the white fly population down.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Dead serious. Have you heard a woman proclaim that men should lose the right to vote? Have you heard any woman proclaim anything should be denied men? Hell, I haven’t even heard a woman object to men deciding they are women. Of course, we are rather busy trying to hold the rest of the world together, starting with dishes and laundry.

WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Jonah Raskin

When I was about 40 I complained to my mother that neither she nor my father had ever said, during my infancy and teen years, “I love you” or “We love you.” Their generation rarely used the four-letter word, “love.” She nodded and said, “but we put a roof over your head and made sure you had food to eat and clothes to wear.” She had grown up during the Depression of the 1930s; food, shelter and a warm winter coat meant more to her than the words, “I love you.” Indeed, they have been so abused and overused in the US and elsewhere over the last two hundred years to sell products and services that I often feel like echoing Tina Turner who sang “what’s love got to do with it?,” and called it “a second hand emotion.”

Frederick Engels, Marx’s comrade-in-arms, pointed out in 1884 that the “The more civilization advances, the more it is compelled to cover the evils it necessarily creates with the cloak of love.” He added that civilization “introduced conventional hypocrisy.”

The Brits used the word love and the concept behind it to sell products like chocolate. They also hooked the Chinese on opium. They wrapped what they thought of as “civilization” in the cloak of hypocrisy. Still, I sign off on emails to friends with the words, “I love you” and mean it. I have noticed that many of them don’t reply, “We love you.” I feel a tad cheated and assume they’re uptight but I don’t take them to task. The main thing is not whether they say the words, but rather if they treat me in a loving way, which can mean feeding me, offering me a bed for a night or two, and making sure I’m warm, which could mean lending me a coat or sweater. My own mother would approve of their generosity and not reprimand them for swallowing the much abused words “I love you.”

Years ago, I read a curious book by John Howard Lawson—one of the infamous Hollywood Ten— titled The Hidden Heritage. Lawson argues that romantic love was an invention of the Middle Ages and was suitable for knights and ladies. I have mulled over his idea, which still sounds subversive and have not been convinced by his argument. I assume that Chinese mothers and fathers and Indian mothers and fathers have loved their children, but I also assume they haven’t proclaimed it with anything like the words, “we love you,” unless western civilization has corrupted them. I’m now reminded also of the words by the German poet and playwright, Bertoldt Brecht, who said, “First feed the face. Then talk right and wrong.” That means, I think, don’t moralize and sermonize folks and tell them “God loves you,” until you make sure that they have enough to eat, and don’t go to sleep and wake up hungry as my father and many others did during the Depression of the 1930s. But my father also used memories of his hunger as an excuse or rationalization to overeat.

Before cancer took his life at the age of 67, he told me, “respect your mother.” He didn’t say “love your mother.” Respecting her was harder to do than loving her, especially when she kicked me out of the house after I’d cared for my father during the last four months of his life and as he was dying. I never told him “I love you,” but I did say “you were a good dad.” He took those words with him to the grave. I know he loved me, perhaps too much. He gave me the love he never received from his immigrant parents who expressed their affection by giving him all the food he wanted to eat, though he didn’t need it. These days I tell my two brothers what I never told them when we were boys, “I love you,” and they return the sentiment. I’m not stingy with four-letter words. Brotherly love means more to me now than ever before.

“If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.”

― Mikhail Bakunin

AMERICA'S ‘ADULTS IN THE ROOM’ ARE REVOLTING

After betraying voters to lead a weekend wipeout in Congress for the war-and-spying crowd, Mike Johnson was granted honorary "adult" status by adoring pundits

by Matt Taibbi

Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I think the theme for last week was the return of adult supervision…

So begins “The Conversation” between faux-conservative columnist Bret Stephens and faux-liberal columnist Gail Collins in the New York Times this morning. The op-ed title, over a portrait of House Speaker Mike Johnson: “Some of the ‘Adults in the Room’ Aren’t Who We Thought They Would Be.”

The header is a callback to the famed Times editorial by a then-anoymous Trump staffer (we now know it was Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor) pledging himself to “The Resistance” and assuring America there were “adults in the room” in Trump’s administration. In 2018 as now, the word adult had no ideological significance, beyond orientation to the Orange Napoleon. The Times is conferring adult status to Johnson for defying “MAGA folk” in his party to help pass two huge bills, one expanding surveillance, another funding aid for Israel and Ukraine.

Adult supervision! It takes guts, and a certain irrational certainty of not being guillotined, to publicly describe your tribe as adults, and everyone else as children needing guidance. I’d be afraid to go there, but not the Antoinettes at the Times. After the weekend’s big wins for war and spying the paper leaned into its theme, adding a guest essay by the quintessential adult, Liz Cheney, who argues for a speedier start of Trump’s J6 trial. No one’s more “adult” than a former Republican officeholder booted from office and entirely lacking a voter base, yet still loyal to the system. Speaker Johnson isn’t voted out yet, but got an advance on his adult club card, his establishment Bar Mitzvah if you will, via this weekend’s ceremonial ass-lick in the Times and other outlets...

racket.news/p/americas-adults-in-the-room-are-revolting

THE BAD FAITH OLYMPICS

by James Kunstler

“This is the weirdest era in human history. By far. Nothing else even comes close. Billionaires trying to kill everyone. Civil society unable to form a coherent thought. Institutions lie in smoldering ruins. Poisons handed out like candy. We are Neanderthals with iPhones.” — Dr. Toby Rogers

Did it warm your heart to see all those blue and yellow Ukrainian flags waved by our elected officials in Congress Saturday night with the passage of the $60-plus-billion aid bill to the Palookaville of Europe? You realize, don’t you, that the tiny fraction of that hypothetical “money” — from our country’s empty treasury — that ever reaches Ukraine will rebound on the instant into Mr. Zelensky’s Cayman Islands bank account. The rest of the dough enters the recursive shell-game between US weapons-makers and the very hometown folks in Congress waving those blue and yellow flags, who will receive great greasy gobs of fresh “campaign donations” from the grateful bomb and missile producers. No wonder they’re cheering.

What the $60-plus-billion won’t do is provide any fresh arms and equipment to Ukraine’s sad-sack army soon enough to prevent Russia from bringing this cruel, stupid, and unnecessary war, which we started, to a close. Yes, we started it, not Russia, in 2014 with our Intel blob overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych in the so-called “Maidan Revolution of Dignity” (what Wikipedia calls it). And for what reason? To jam Ukraine into NATO as a prelude to “weakening” Russia sufficient to bust it up and gain control over Russian oil, ores, and grain.

Yes, that was actually the neocon’s game, equal parts megalomania and hubris, a fiasco as strategically ill-fated as Hitler’s push to gain control of Russia’s oil fields via Stalingrad in 1942-3. With failure and humiliation looming in Ukraine, the blob’s objective for now, in theory, is the vain hope of prolonging the hostilities just long enough to get its hologram president, “Joe Biden” re-elected, so that said blob can continue its amoebic digestion of what’s left uneaten by it in our sore-beset republic. You’ve got to wonder, of course, what this blob thinks will remain to rule over when it’s done gobbling up everything and jailing everyone from sea to shining sea who objects.

You tell me what conceivable way Ukraine can prevail in this proxy war now without just tripping off the civilization-ending nuke exchange? America does not have enough tactical missiles and artillery shells at hand to send over there. What we did have is gone. NATO never had much to begin with. Ukraine has run out of available cannon-fodder to conscript from its dwindling population. Despite Mr. Macron’s recent bluster, NATO can’t raise a credible army, or even agree on which country would send what. Nobody is riding to the rescue. Instead, Russia is fortifying its home-grown armaments industry and its military while systematically turning off the electricity all over Ukraine by blowing up the power stations. Very soon, Ukraine will be reduced to medieval living conditions — no lights, no phones, no Internet, no shopping, no ability to conduct modern warfare. End. . . of. . . story.

This is apt to play out much faster than America’s blob-controlled news media will be able to lie about. I’d guess it can be functionally over before mid-summer. The result will be yet another humiliation on the “Joe Biden” scorecard. When it’s over, you can be sure the Russians will abstain from an end-zone dance so as not to provoke America’s genius-losers into some final petty grand act of requital. Russia will just soberly declare what is self-evident: that for centuries Ukraine has been in its sphere-of-influence, as Mexico is in ours, and that they have reestablished the natural order of things in that corner of the world.

After that, America and the rest of Western Civ can get on with the collapse of their financial system and very likely a period of profound political and economic chaos in which governments fall, nations change boundaries and shapes, and their populations suffer dramatically from an imploded standard of living. That process may actually play out somewhat slower than the end of the Ukraine war over the coming years. It will look like a combined game of musical chairs and hot potato, with the opportunities to get a seat steadily fading, and the losers left holding things they can’t handle.

In the meantime, our country — remember it, the USA, when it had its once-enviable mojo working? — is busy being insane and finding sixty ways to Sunday to commit suicide. How do you suppose the Democratic Party will actually pretend to put up “Joe Biden” for re-election when the Ukraine failure is completed? Answer: they can’t. This dumbshow of the old gaffer hiding at his beach house and avoiding direct engagement with reality is also drawing to a close. Instead of calling “a lid” on “JB’s” activities, some humid morning in the swamp his handlers will call in “a medical alert” instead, and that will be the last we see of that dreadful apparition.

It’s also looking more and more as though the Republican Party faces its own civil war, especially after Speaker Mike Johnson’s perplexing flipperooski on the Ukraine aid vote. You recall, just weeks ago he said no dice to such a deal without a stop to the invasion coming across our Mexican border. Then, the intel blob boys lured him into a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) where they showed him . . . something. . . ! Everyone’s dying to know what. A secret signed agreement making Ukraine our 51st State? Photographs of Mike engaged in unwholesome recreations with Gawd knows who or what? Or did they just have a little talk with him about how stuff is supposed to work? Whatever it was has made Mike Johnson untenable in his position. And he has explained nothing. He’s got to go.

At the other end of all that stands — or, rather, sits at a defense table — Donald Trump, the seemingly inevitable leader of a party seeking to cough him up like a hairball stuck in its craw. And yet, every week that passes, the various lawfare traps set up to snare him look more amateurish and gauche — while the Golden Golem of Greatness somehow manages to power through all that adversity. A big faction of the party he leads is in on that nefarious game. The wild card is the increasingly inflamed mood of the American people, in whose name the game is supposedly being played. With absolutely everyone lying to them about everything, it’s turned into some kind of bad faith olympics.

A NIGHT DIFFERENT FROM OTHERS AS CAMPUS PROTESTS BREAK FOR SEDER

Pro-Palestinian protesters, many of whom are Jewish, prepared Seder dinners at college protest encampments, even as other Jewish students sought community in more traditional settings.

by Sharon Otterman, Eliza Fawcett and Liset Cruz

On the first night of Passover, the singsong of the Four Questions echoed from Jewish homes and gatherings around the world, including from unlikely, contested spaces: the center of pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia and other universities where demonstrations are taking place.

As evening fell over Columbia’s tent encampment on Monday, about 100 students and faculty gathered in a circle around a blue tarp heaped with boxes of matzo and food they had prepared in a kosher kitchen. Some students wore kaffiyehs, the traditional Palestinian scarf, while others wore Jewish skullcaps. They distributed handmade Haggadahs — prayer books for the Passover holiday — and read prayers in Hebrew, keeping to the traditional order.

But there were also changes and additions, like a watermelon on the Seder plate to represent the flag of Palestine. There were repeated references to the suffering of the Palestinian people and the need to ensure their liberation. There was grape juice instead of wine to respect the alcohol-free encampment, which was started last Wednesday and, despite a police crackdown last week, was stretching into its sixth day.

The question asked each year — Why is this night different from all other nights? — echoed with new meaning.

At other pro-Palestinian encampments and protests that have cropped up this week, similar scenes played out. Some protest organizers and participants are anti-Zionist Jewish students, and at Columbia, roughly 15 of the students who have been suspended for their involvement in the encampment are Jewish, organizers said.

At Yale University, just before 6 p.m., hundreds of students gathered on Cross Campus, the main university quad, to sit around a sheet painted to symbolize a Seder table. The action was organized by groups including Jews for Ceasefire, a Yale group, and the New Haven chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace.

There, the Seder marked the end of a day that began with the early-morning arrests of 47 students at a tent encampment on Beinecke Plaza. Then, for nine hours, students had occupied a local intersection, calling for Yale to divest from weapons manufacturers.

Surrounding the Seder, students held banners that read, “Our Seder plates are empty stop starving Gaza” and “Another Jew for a free Palestine.” References to suffering in Gaza and pro-Palestinian student activism were woven into the ritual.

“Tonight, we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, not in spite of our Judaism, but because of it,” Miriam Levine, a 22-year-old Yale student who helped organize the Seder, told the crowd through a microphone. “Tonight we proclaim that our liberation is intertwined.”

Discussing the 10 plagues, Ms. Levine asked participants to identify “what is plaguing our university.” Answers came from throughout the crowd: “the confinement of free speech,” “the policing of New Haven,” “apathy, “misinformation,” “ignorance,” “capitalism.”

Toward the end of the Seder, students draped their arms across each other’s shoulders and swayed, singing, “If we build this world from love, then God will build this world from love.”

PALESTINIANS AS ‘THE OTHERS’

by Ralph Nader

Throughout history, military empires have reduced their victims, their subjugated, and their abducted to a state of “The Others.” The political and mass media institutions usually follow suit by supporting their empire’s predatory policies with slanted coverage.

Such is the case with the U.S. global and the Israeli regional empires. The U.S. federal government and the mainstream media often move in lockstep.

For example, take the word “terrorism.” The New York Times regularly refers the Hamas regime as “terrorists,” while describing the far more extensive Israeli acts of state terrorism as “military operations.” Since October 7^th, the Israeli military superpower has killed over 500 times more children than Hamas killed in their raid through a still uninvestigated collapse of Israel’s vaunted multi-tiered border security.

Apart from a massively greater overall civilian toll inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza – the vast undercount stands at 34,000 Palestinian deaths compared to the deaths of 1,139 Israeli civilians, soldiers, and foreign workers. This staggering ratio – over 14,000 Palestinian children (with many thousands under the rubble) compared to 30 Israeli children – escapes proper reporting. “The Others” don’t get accurate coverage as was also the case with huge Iraqi losses during the Bush/Cheney criminal war. (See, the March 5, 2024, column: Stop the Worsening UNDERCOUNT of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza).

Take the use of the term “hostage.” Hamas seized over 240 Israelis hostages on October 7^th. Since then, the Israeli army has seized about 9000 Palestinians, including women and children, and taken them without charges, along with many more thousands languishing in these prison camps also without charges for years (it’s called Israel’s “administrative detention”). Many of the imprisoned Palestinians are being tortured. Who has gotten the far greater attention? Aren’t these Palestinian hostages also? Again “The Others.”

How about the application of the right to self-defense? Every state has the right to self-defense. Count the many times you have heard, “Israel has a right to defend itself” compared to “Palestine has a right to defend itself.” Members of Congress who bellow the former declaration daily can not get themselves to say the latter. It is a forbidden phrase. Yet, who is the violently occupying, colonizing, land, and water-stealing party? Israel. For over fifty years, more than 400 times more innocent Palestinians have been killed and injured compared to innocent Israeli civilians. Where is the detailed coverage of the loss of life from enforced destitution and denial of life-saving medicines, equipment, and emergency transport to health facilities? Again, it is “The Others.”

“The Others” are always described with less charitable words. In a meticulous content analysis by The Intercept of the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post between October 7 and November 24, the use of the words “slaughtered,” “horrific” and “massacre” in relation to Israeli and Palestinians killed was 218 to 9!

The Intercept said Israel’s war on Gaza is “perhaps the deadliest war for children – almost entirely Palestinian – in modern history.” There is scant mention of the word “children” and related terms in the headlines of articles in that span of time.

(Note, reporters from these papers are like the rest of the mainstream Western media reports, including Israeli journalists, who have been long banned by the Israeli government from freely reporting from inside Gaza, but have managed to write some exceptionally graphic stories from a distance.)

Palestinian Arabs are denied the description of armed-force anti-semitism by the Israeli war machine. Arabs are Semites and have long been the victims of violent racist, hate-filled anti-semitism by brutal Israeli leaders. (See the “Anti-Semitism Against Arab and Jewish Americans” speech by Jim Zogby and DebatingTaboos.org).

The Intercept reported that the three newspapers mentioned anti-semitism against Jews in the U.S. 549 times compared to 79 mentions of Islamophobia, notwithstanding, far more frequent, and violent assaults on Muslims and Arabs.

Western medical doctors spending a few weeks in bombed Gaza hospitals are personal witnesses of scenes beyond any level of deliberate slaughter they have ever experienced in their courageous service in troubled areas around the world. Ambulances, hospitals, and thousands of families – adults, children, women, and babies alike – huddling in areas outside these facilities are routinely bombed, and shelled by Israeli planes and tanks, and targeted by Israeli snipers. Courageous Israeli human rights groups and refuseniks will detail more of the mayhem over time.

Biden’s chosen humanitarian aid emissary David Satterfield did not mince words in his remarks during a virtual event hosted by the American Jewish Committee, “there is an imminent risk of famine for the majority, if not all, the 2.2. million population of Gaza.” According to Satterfield, “This is not a point in debate. It is an established fact, which the United States, its experts, the international community, its experts assess and believe is real…”

Still, the duplicitous Netanyahu twirling the hapless Joe Biden around his bloody fingers continues to obstruct the entry of hundreds of trucks with critical food, water, and medicine, sometimes paid for by U.S. taxpayers that are lined up daily at the borders of Gaza. Netanyahu continues to enforce, whenever he can, the genocidal orders by his barbaric ministers on October 8 – “No electricity, no food, no fuel, no water. …We are fighting animals and will act accordingly.”

To the White House and the Netanyahu-dominated U.S. Congress, violating numerous federal laws, (See the April 19, 2024, Letter to President Joe Biden), the response is to make the American taxpayers continue to pay billions of dollars to unconditionally weaponize further the Israeli death machine in Gaza, right down to 2000-pound bombs that destroy entire civilian neighborhoods. After all, Gazans are “The Others.”

The streets of America have come alive with valiant Jewish, Muslim, and Christian protestors joining together and showing up wherever Biden and other callous politicians speak such as Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) who said, “As far as I’m concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza.”

After 76 years of Congress blocking testimony by leading Israeli and Palestinian peace advocates, more lawmakers are starting to listen. But many more in Congress –– are still mired in their clenched-jaw obeisance to the AIPAC lobby. It is time to stop the rubble “bouncing” over decomposing bodies in the besieged tiny Gaza Strip.

RANDY BURKE photos from Worcestershire, England