Mendocino County Today: Saturday 4/27/24

Sunny | Barn | Contested Station | Trash Boat | Author Talk | ABC Suspension | Grazing | The Observer | Songbird Busking | Celebrating Irv | Groundwater Study | Wildlife Discussion | Streetscape Forum | Grange Rental | Seabiscuit Statue | Ed Notes | Plant Sale | Palatial Bummer | Tribal Health | Useful Exercise | Rogue PG&E | Exit Date | Cautionary Tale | Throwing Money | Relapse Happens | SNWMF 2024 | Feeding Hummingbirds | Inner Jim | Yesterday's Catch | No Leaders | Think Tank | Marco Radio | Misfits | Mausoleum Marilyn | Mitt History | Social Slavery | Prefontaine Ran | Sunday Baseball | Forbidden Passion | Oppenheimer Omission | Rather Eat | Summer Fun | Fried Oreo | Not Antisemitic | Expensive Dames | Rushdie Interview | Smoky Lady

LIGHT RAIN in the northern half of the forecast area is expected this morning through Sunday. Cold temperatures could cause frost at lower elevations as cold air advection sets in. Drier weather is expected early next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 48F under mostly clear skies this Saturday morning on the coast. Generally clear skies & some wind this weekend then a bit more windy for the work week. There are some high clouds heading our way to keep an eye on. The rain that was forecast for later in the week is not in the forecast now. I'll keep watching of course.

CONSULTANTS SHARPLY REDUCE PREDICTED TRAFFIC VOLUME AT DISPUTED REDWOOD VALLEY GAS STATION PROJECT.

by Mike Geniella

A developer’s new traffic impact study for a hotly debated gasoline station/convenience store project along Highway 101 in Redwood Valley claims the peak traffic will likely be only one-quarter of earlier estimates.

The analysis, released Friday, and Caltrans’ demands for a right turn lane off the freeway are sure to be significant points of contention at a County Board of Supervisors hearing on May 7 regarding a use permit for the 10-pump station project. The project has widespread opposition in Redwood Valley, leading to developer calls for at least one sympathetic board member to recuse himself after publicly questioning the proposal.

In a new twist, Haji Alam, the president of the station proponent Faizan Corp. of Ukiah, declared Friday that if the county board denies a use permit, he will consider selling the site to a local tribe that has expressed interest in the freeway frontage property. 

“Neighbors will have no say in what the tribe can build, and there will be no sales tax dollars or property tax for the county,” warned Alam. 

Christine Boyd, a member of the Redwood Valley Municipal Advisory Council, said Friday that she was not surprised by Alam’s threat.

“It’s either his way or the highway,” said Boyd. 

Boyd said Redwood Valley residents are undeterred. “Our opposition is loud and clear, and we are prepared to show that to the board at the upcoming hearing,” vowed Boyd. 

The project site is on a commercial strip along the east side of the Highway 101 freeway and below the valley floor. It is a mixed cluster of businesses with a history of struggling economically. Alam and his supporters argue that the new station will serve as an “anchor” for the strip development. 

Boyd, however, said Redwood Valley residents fear noise from traffic and big rigs will disrupt the lifestyles of nearby residents. “This is an urban-style project he wants to plop in a country setting,” said Boyd. 

Alam’s headquarters is in Ukiah, but his Faizan Corp. owns gas station/market operations in Mendocino, Lake, Sonoma, Marin, Alameda, Contra Costa, and Yolo counties. Last year, Faizan was ordered to pay $500,000 for 64 environmental and business practice violations in seven counties, including Mendocino. Alam has been quoted as saying the fines were “100 percent housekeeping stuff.”

The proposed project has been under public scrutiny since the county Planning Commission denied Alam’s use permit application on Jan. 5. The decision was appealed on March 26 to the Board of Supervisors, who then decided to continue its review pending an analysis of a traffic study which disputed Caltrans’ belief that the new station could generate 5,300 daily trips.

Comments and questions raised at the March hearing by Coast Supervisor Ted Williams led to Alam’s attorney demanding that the supervisor recuse himself from the upcoming May 7 hearing, where he is seen as a possible swing vote.

Attorney Brian Momsen ripped Williams’ public comments at the March hearing, contending that they were outside the “quasi-judicial role” board members are to assume in deciding land use issues. He blasted the supervisor for his “half-baked conclusions” and “outrageous comments.”

Williams then defended his remarks, contending that he attended the March 26 hearing with an “open mind.” 

Williams could not be reached on Friday for comment on whether he intended to recuse himself or the results of the revised traffic analysis prepared by W-Trans, a traffic engineering consulting firm with offices in Santa Rosa and Oakland.

The report, paid for by Alam, was based on traffic studies conducted at a Chevron station/convenience store the developer owns at Lake Mendocino Drive near Highway 101 freeway and an Arco station on Talmage Avenue.

The revised study does not include data from a nearby tribal-operated Coyote Valley fuel and convenience store north of the disputed site, as the Board of Supervisors specifically sought because W-Trans representatives said they could not obtain permission to install data collection devices.

“The two sites chosen for the analysis were the Chevron station at 50 W. Lake Mendocino Drive and the Arco at 615 Talmage Ave.,” said company representatives William Andrews, assistant engineer, and Dalene Whitlock, senior principal.

Andrews and Whitlock concurred that based on the lower and “more realistic trip generation,” a disputed right turn lane is not warranted despite state concerns.

According to traffic consultants, the significant difference in estimated traffic volume is due to old data that doesn’t reflect current vehicle fuel efficiency, remote work, and online shopping. As a result, Andrews and Whitlock said the earlier trip estimation “substantially overstated the potential effects of the proposed project.”

ENVIRONMENTAL EYESORE/NUISANCE REMEDIED

While out on a separate investigation Thursday morning, the DA and his Chief Investigator came upon a dump site on Talmage Road just east of Babcock Lane. 

An abandoned boat and trailer – the boat loaded to its gunwales with full plastic garbage bags and other debris, with more garbage, engine parts, petroleum products, and debris spread on the ground around the boat -- was observed and photographed. 

A nearby creek that runs east to the Russian River was of special concern. 

California Fish and Game Code section 5652 makes it a crime to abandon, dispose of, or throw away within 150 feet of the high-water mark of creeks and rivers any cans, bottles, garbage, motor vehicle or parts thereof, rubbish, litter, refuse, waste, or other debris. 

The garbage-filled boat had full motor oil containers on the ground around it, along with empty cans, bottles, miscellaneous garbage and disassembled engine parts all within feet of the nearby creek.

DA Investigator Robert Simas, a retired CHP officer now working at the DA’s Office, was assigned to further investigate the abandonment and environmental issues. 

In short order Investigator Simas had documented the situation, obtained more pictures, and completed paperwork necessary to begin the abatement of what the DA deemed both a public and environmental nuisance. 

No responsible party has yet been identified. The trailer had Texas registration tabs that expired in May of 2017 so it could not be legally on the road. The hull identification plate on the transom had been obscured and painted over. 

Rather than refer the matter to the County vehicle abatement program, the DA authorized the use of environmental penalty fees on account with his office to have the site immediately remediated by a local business. 

As of the close of business Thursday, the boat, its contents of garbage, and all the garbage and other debris surrounding it has been gathered, towed away, and readied for proper disposal.

The DA’s Chief Investigator Andy Alvarado commented, “This is just another example of environmental clean-up that the DA and my investigators have initiated and been involved with over the years. 

"In criminology, there is the “broken windows theory” that theorizes that visible signs of crime, antisocial behavior, and civil disorder create an environment that encourages further crime and disorder, including serious crimes. This dump site was one of those broken windows that needed an immediate fix to keep this particular dump site from expanding.”

(DA Presser)

JOIN THE FORT BRAGG LIBRARY BRANCH FOR AN AUTHOR TALK on Mendocino Refuge by Dot Brovarney on Saturday, April 27, at 2 pm. At this event, you’ll hear all about this wild place on California’s North Coast, seen through the eyes of its human inhabitants and the plants and animals who share it.

POTTER VALLEY CORNER STORE SUSPENDED FROM SELLING ALCOHOL FOR 20 DAYS AFTER SERVING MINORS INVOLVED IN DEADLY CRASH

The California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) has suspended the license of Hopper’s Corner Saloon in Potter Valley after an employee furnished alcohol to a group of underage persons who were subsequently involved in a deadly car crash on December 26, 2022. Alcohol sales are prohibited until the suspension period ends.

ABC opened a TRACE (Target Responsibility for Alcohol Connected Emergencies) investigation immediately after the crash to determine the source of the alcohol the underage driver consumed. ABC agents determined that Hopper’s Corner Saloon server Fabio Serra furnished the alcoholic beverages. After leaving the bar, 18-year-old Samuel Caldwell drove his vehicle under the influence of alcohol and crashed. The car crash killed one passenger and injured two other passengers.

“Preventing underage drinking is a public safety priority,” said ABC Director Joseph McCullough. “We want to remind licensees and employees to check IDs carefully and help keep Californians safe.”

ABC sought disciplinary action against Hopper’s Corner Saloon’s alcoholic beverage license for furnishing alcohol to a minor and furnishing alcoholic beverages to a minor causing great bodily injury or death. In response to the accusations, the licensee signed a settlement agreement. Under the agreement, the license is suspended for 20 days.

The TRACE program is made possible by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The grant provides funding for ABC investigations of alcohol-related incidents that involve a person under the age of 21 causing great bodily injury or death, or anyone charged with vehicular manslaughter that was under the influence of alcohol regardless of their age.

(Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control Presser)

OBSERVATIONS FROM THE OBSERVER

Hello Observer Readers,

Thank you to Bruce and Mark of the AVA for letting their readers know the Observer will remain printing a paper-paper and for directing lovers of their newspaper to us.

Our costs are $30/year for in-county subscription and $32 for out of county and $35 for out of state. $2/year discount for senior citizens. $15/year to receive the PDF version of the paper.

Dad is still doing well and improving. He appeared at the LAMAC meeting this Wednesday and a meeting I held last night at Healthy Start on economic development opportunities. There's some good news coming down the pike for potential business development in Laytonville. I'm sure he will keep the public up to date.

For now, check out the recent developments on Geiger's Market below.

Take care & Happy Friday!

Jayma Shields

* * *

Hello Folks,

There’s a reason why Grandma used to warn us, “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.”

I believe that saying comes from an Aesop’s fable, so Grandma must have known what she was talking about.

Anyway, my update on the anticipated re-opening of the former Geiger’s Long Valley Market evidently is not quite hatched yet.

The day after I wrote my column, I called Haji Alam, the CEO of Faizan Corp., to follow up on my letter inviting him to appear at an upcoming Laytonville Municipal Advisory Council meeting to share his re-opening plans with us.

He told me that he certainly would like do so but it will be delayed because a legal dispute has arisen over the former owner(s) allegedly defaulting on the store’s 10-year operating lease. For those of you who listen to my Saturday show on KPFN 105.1, are aware that I have long been wary of that operating lease and suspect it’s the main reason the former owner(s) closed the store on November 1, 2023.

Realistically, at this juncture, none of us know whether the former owner(s) failed to comply with any of the terms or conditions of the sales agreement. The fault could all be on the buyer and not the seller. Evidently, who’s right and who’s wrong is going to be a job for the courts to sort out.

One of the things I learned when I was negotiating contracts in my union days, is that sometimes you end up with a really bad agreement when you have too many clever people making the deal.

I’ll keep you advised on any developments.

Jim Shields/ The Observer

PO Box 490

Laytonville, CA 95454

observer@laytonville.org

(707) 984-6223

SARA SONGBIRD: Jon Tyson and I will be busking in Golden Gate Park again this Saturday. You can catch us at the underpass across from the Conservatory Of Flowers from 11-1. We’ll be playing my original tunes and lots of fun sing-alongs. Come request a tune and enjoy the park with us.

HONORING CHAIRMAN IRV SUTLEY

A Zoom gathering celebrating the life of Chairman Irv Sutley will be held on Sunday, April 28, starting at 11am Pacific time. Here is a new link to the Zoom meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84953582433

A gathering for Irv's friends and comrades will be held on Saturday, May 18, at Finley Community Park, 2060 West College Avenue, Santa Rosa, from 1 to 4 pm. A map is available at the legacy site under events for Irv (link below), where you can also see photos, read an obituary written by Toni Novak, and post stories and photos. https://everloved.com/life-of/irv-sutley

HOW WELL IS YOUR WELL

Coastal Groundwater Study: Second Call for Volunteers 

In 2021-2022 numerous wells along the Mendocino coast stopped producing water because of low water levels. Is your well at risk? Mendocino County is initiating a study of groundwater conditions in the coastal part of Mendocino County to better understand where, when and why wells go dry. This will support strategies for managing land use and permitting new wells to reduce the risk that anyone’s well will go dry during droughts. To be successful, the study needs water level information from many wells all along the coast. The County is seeking volunteer well owners who are willing to measure the depth to water in their well monthly for about a year. We will provide simple equipment and instructions. To respect your privacy, unique location identifiers will not be shown in the project report. We have over 20 volunteers already, but would like to improve our coverage of outlying areas. If you would like to participate, please e-mail your name and contact information to Julia Krog, Director of Planning and Building Services, at krogj@mendocinocounty.gov.

The water-level data collection program will be managed by Todd Groundwater, a consulting firm under contract to the County. The contact person there is senior hydrologist Gus Yates, and he will follow up with you to provide tools and instructions. Thank you very much for participating. This study will benefit all residents of the coastal area, and we are relying on you to help create good results. If you have friends or neighbors who might not see this announcement, please forward it to them

CITY OF UKIAH ANNOUNCES COMMUNITY FORUM FOR DOWNTOWN STREETSCAPE PROJECT, PHASE III, ‘CLOSING THE GAP,’ ON WEDNESDAY, MAY 8th, 2024, FROM 5:30-6:30 P.M.

The City of Ukiah is preparing a grant application to complete the final stretch of the streetscape project between Norton Street and Low Gap Road. The community is invited to discuss, view current designs, and provide input at a community workshop on Wednesday, May 8, 2024, from 5:30-6:30 p.m. at the Ukiah Valley Conference Center, 200 South School Street.

Over the last five years, the City of Ukiah's downtown corridor has undergone a major transformation with the construction of the Downtown Ukiah Streetscape Project, creating a safer, more accessible, and beautified space for patrons and businesses. The City is now seeking funding for the third and final phase of the project, which will 'close the gap' in improved sections on State Street between Norton Street and Low Gap Road. With this next phase, the City will realize the complete build-out of a project that was conceptualized over a decade ago to revitalize downtown by transforming State Street from its legacy as a four-lane highway to an aesthetically pleasing modern urban corridor with safe facilities for walking, biking, and motorized transportation.

The project will extend certain streetscape features to the north by reconfiguring travel lanes to improve safety features for pedestrians, bicyclists, and vehicular traffic, while enhancing the northern end of State Street with landscaped medians, street trees, and bioretention planters to create an inviting gateway entry into the heart of downtown. The project's conceptual design is the result of numerous community workshops, extensive studies by traffic engineers, and input from stakeholders. The project's final phase will improve the appearance and functionality of the northern extent of Ukiah's most prominent corridor.

To learn more about this project you can visit http:www.UkiahStreetscape.com

IF YOU WISH TO INQUIRE ABOUT USING THE GRANGE FACILITIES, please call the phone number posted on our Face Book site (707 684-9340), or the front of the building. There is a message as to who to call for more information, as sometimes it changes. Or you can email inquires to infoavgrange@gmail.com

Rental rates vary upon the type of use, day of the week. Discounts are available for non-profits and members.

Thank you for using the Anderson Valley Grange #669 it's how we keep the doors open and lights on.

ED NOTES

THE BAIL SCHEDULE at the Mendocino County Jail is set by judges. Bail schedules are a pretty good indication of how seriously judges view crime. A person driving drunk who kills someone, as a Fort Bragg woman did when she drove into a kid on the other side of the road while she was drunk, can get out the next day on bail as low as ten thousand dollars, the bond for which can be had for a thousand. Bail for murder can be as low as $100,000. If you're guilty of murder there's certainly plenty of incentive to put up the ten and catch the next bus to Outtahere. There are counties in this state that require woman beaters to put up $250,000 bail, thus ensuring that macho man does at least a month or so in the sweat box while awaiting trial. High bail isn't prejudicial; it's really a clear message that the judges of the county are serious about epidemics of dangerous social behavior.

FROM THE AVA of 2001 when marijuana was king: 

“AS MENDOCINO COUNTY'S number one ag export is trimmed, bagged and shipped south where it fetches an average of $4,500-$6000 per pound, Sgt. Rusty Noe of the County of Mendocino Marijuana Eradication Team, known informally as the Cannabis Price Support Unit, has released the final figures for this year's pot hunt: 136,478 plants weighing 95,951 pounds were uprooted from 387 sites. 53 persons were arrested, 54 weapons seized.”

I ALMOST DROPPED my coffee cup this morning when I heard a guy on KZYX say he was going to talk about “McCarthyism and the Media.” Come again? KZYX is a public radio station where dissenting opinion on a whole range of local subjects is not permitted, but local libs come roaring out to boldly kick around events far, far away, and, of course, faithfully vote for reactionary national Democrats presently in support of the Gazan genocide.

YEARS AGO, I underwent what the Marines then called “Cold Weather Training” at a place called Pickle Meadows in the Eastern Sierra near Bridgeport, a stunningly beautiful area I'd always hoped to re-visit but never did. I saw a newspaper piece the other day describing how Marines had trained up there for Afghanistan. Way back, “Cold Weather Training” was more oriented to surviving in winter mountains than it was fighting in them. The cold weather training at Pickle Meadows was interesting and lots of fun. All Marine training was quite good, at least I thought it was; I can remember how to do lots of stuff I learned as a lean, mean fighting machine, some of it, I fantasized, relevant if Americans took to fighting each other. Then I got old, too old for Mitty-ish fantasies.

A READER COMMENTS: “Yesterday, when a woman on national radio was asked what she thinks about Taliban, she said, 'I don't use deodorant’.”

YEARS AGO a pollster asked me, “Do you support President Bush's war on terrorism?” I said I didn't want strangers hitting my two sisters with sticks in the streets of America. My sister's discipline is my responsibility, I said. Long pause on the other end of the phone. “Shall I put you down as Yes or No?”

I READ SOMEWHERE that Islam's “divine law” says a wife does not have the right to refuse her husband's sexual demands. And he can have four wives, too, if he can support them. Moreover, in some interpretations of Islam — and men do all the interpreting — a man can enter into “temporary” marriage contracts ranging from one hour to ninety-nine years. Hmmm. Not a bad idea, especially given American divorce rates. 

THE LATE MAURICE TINDALL, a Boonville sheepman and former Anderson Valley Justice Court judge, told me once that he was hunting bear up on Signal Ridge the morning in 1906 when the Big One hit Northern California, wiping out much of San Francisco, Santa Rosa, Point Arena, and Fort Bragg. He said he looked out over Anderson Valley as the great swathes of giant redwood still prevalent swayed back and forth as if it were a vast undersea forest.

NOT THAT ANYBODY can quantify the reasons why the fish-free Navarro River is dying, but it seems obvious that upstream diversions make the river much sicker in late summer than it need be. And the same upstream diversions into the wine industry’s explosion of lake-size ponds certainly divert winter runoff that might otherwise blast much of the silt accumulated in the lower Navarro. Old timers recall the Navarro drying up, but old timers don’t recall the levels of silt in the river that there is now. That silt has largely been deposited by the hillside developments, road building, and heedless vineyard plantings of the last 25 years. Logging? Not even in it in relation to the cumulative impact of these other factors. But without the pre-diversion, pre-development winter flush the Navarro used to get, the battered Navarro is going to continue to deteriorate.

PALATIAL BUMMER

by John Arteaga

My god, what a bummer! I was gobsmacked by the article I saw in the other day’s Daily Journal regarding the city’s incomprehensible new demand on the Palace Hotel’s hapless owner (for the moment), Jitu Ishwar. I mean, have we really been plunged into a real-life Groundhog’s Day?

Year after year, decade upon decade, those whose job it is to deal with the real world of buildings, infrastructure etc., keep on demonstrating a shocking level of ignorance or reticence to make the hard decisions that their leadership positions demand of them! It makes me want to hunt down whatever petifogging bureaucrat came up with the brilliant idea of this latest demand of Mr. Ishwar, that he squander even more money than he has already to pay some structural engineering contractor to waste their and their employee’s time doing studies and calculations (for the third time over the years!), on the rotting corpse of the old Palace Hotel, and demand to know how he or she arrived at this foolish idea, and what possible public service they think might be accomplished by such a foolish waste of time, creating something that will have absolutely no value to anyone once the economic reality of the situation finally seeps through to even the most adamant preservationists. Likewise, what kind of professional malpractice would it be for a reputable engineering contracting outfit to take on such a pointless project?! 

What, will they miraculously find that, despite the last five or six years of saturated building materials rotting within this scenic brickwork compost bin, that golly gee! The building has somehow magically become even more rehabilitatable then it was five or six years ago?! I don’t think so! 

Something that always gives me a chuckle as I drive by the ill-fated corner is the fact that someone is paying to regularly go around inside the building and staple up plastic over the old window openings. Really?! What exactly do they think they are preserving from the ravages of weather at this point?! UNBELIEVABLE! 

I remember years ago when an earlier City Council, apparently just as reticent to take executive action as the present one, punted the stalled project then owned by Eladia Laines of Marin County to the courts, where a judge who may or may not have had any idea about buildings and city planning, appointed this ‘public receiver’, who hailed from some far distant part of the state, to ‘take over the rehabilitation of The Palace’. Eladia Laines, despite spending a lot to do the public service of asbestos removal, was basically zeroed out and lost all the money she had invested in the project by judicial fiat. 

This was the whole idea’s original sin; that rehabilitation is even in the cards. IT’S NOT! It was clearly not economically feasible 30 years ago, when, despite that fact, The Palace became the recipient of generous federal makework subsidies which made possible the brief heyday many of us enjoyed. However, with each passing year the impossible dream became that much further from economic feasibility. 

The Journal article makes much of the fact that whatever state agency is involved with groundwater pollution chooses not to go on the record in favor of razing the old structure (only old by California standards, in much of the world it would not even be considered old or historic), giving some mealymouthed verbiage about never having required the demolition of the building to assess possible groundwater contamination underneath it. It makes me wonder if this kind of noncommittal butt-covering answer was elicited by the fact that their interlocutor/reporter happened to be one of the most strident opponents of any option other than the impossible one of propping up the existing crumbling megatons of brickwork before anything can be done there. 

Think about it; can anyone tell me how it might be possible to adequately address the likely existence of a large concrete fuel oil tank believed to exist within the building’s footprint without removing the thousands of tons of rotting garbage on top of it? 

I’ll never forget my dismay years ago when at long last it had dawned on that City Council that Eladia Laines simply did not have the wherewithal to do anything beyond stripping the beautiful ivy off of the north wall and removing the asbestos from the building, and finally chose to have this highly touted “public receiver” take over; I couldn’t believe it when I read that this receiver would, “be authorized to borrow against the equity in the property to pursue the rehabilitation”. Excuse me, equity? The previous owner had just lost all the money she had spent on it. WHAT EQUITY?! I felt sure that no one would be foolish enough to lend a nickel on such a bottomless money pit, but I didn’t figure on the hapless Mr. Ishwar, whose redevelopment bona fides are amply demonstrated by the stalled Economy Inn remodel a couple of blocks south of The Palace. Apparently his business skills are on a similar par; if he had done the slightest bit of due diligence before squandering .9 mil on that public receiver’s pointless seismic retrofit design, he might have realized that, like Ms. Laines, it was likely that he would lose all his investment, rather than making a tidy profit on the deal. 

At this point one has to be blind to the facts to believe that holding out for preserving and remodeling the existing shell of this ruin is anything but demanding that nothing be done there, ever. The cost of doing so is such that only some gigantic state or federal make-work “redevelopment” waste of the taxpayer’s money boondoggle would ever even think of taking it on. 

SUCH a disappointment to those of us who were finally given hope recently that something useful might eventually happen there when the city demanded that the building be either stabilized or demolished! Like Groundhog’s Day, are we condemned to go over this exercise in futility endlessly? 

(John Arteaga is a Ukiah resident.)

LEW CHICHESTER

I certainly don’t know how the county keeps track of all the various sources of income and expense, with lots of departments, etc., but I do imagine there must be some parallels with the “budget to actuals” exercise our local school district goes through a few times a year, tracking what seems to be really happening compared with the projection from a previous period. Our school district has multiple budget categories and funding comes from all kinds of places, some of it not showing up with any regularity, but the process of “budget to actuals” is not a cash flow report. It is keeping the trustees and the administration informed as to trends and what to expect in both the short term (rest of the year) and longer term (next year, and the year after that). It is useful exercise, and I don’t know how we could keep the money trip together without these reports. How does the county plan for anything without regular financial updates, reporting on consistently the same categories of income and expenses, tracking departments, etc?

PG&E: ABOVE THE LAW?

Editor,

Tina Moody’s letter reflects my own concerns with PGE cutting down trees on private property. It seems to me this is a violation of private property rights. In other words, our Constitutional rights are being violated. Also, it cannot be overlooked that PG&E has a conflict of interest in cutting down trees, as less tree shade causes homes to be hotter, as well as the environment to further get hotter. That means more air conditioning and therefore more business for PG&E, even if solar is used, since people so far are still being unfairly compensated for their contribution of power back to PG&E. A rogue company, for sure. Remember the price gouging and Enron? Again, PG&E. Maybe our California government officials in charge of overseeing this sort of thing need to be called out on this, and an investigation initiated. I think PG&E better watch out because compensation for all these mature trees could be pretty ruinous, as well as the legal fees and penalties. I can see trimming trees but there is also the question of why the lines can’t go underground. Other states have done it but PG&E seems immune. Why is that, especially in a fire prone state? Also, more fire danger causes insurance to go up or even become unavailable. This could be another problem further exacerbated by removing trees. Not only does it cause problems for homeowners, it also affects the economy by making real estate unattainable due to insurance troubles. Cutting down trees and causing further warming will make it worse. Where is the regulation? Are we back to square one, i.e. the bad old days of Enron?

Sarah Kennedy Owen

Ukiah

EXIT DAY

Good morning postmodern America,

Awoke at 4AM to a quiet dorm area, with no dogs barking, no incoming ambulances, nobody turning purple from smoking fentanyl, no cursing in the women's dorm area, no fire alarms going off due to smoking in a bathroom, and no police presence (particularly probation violation officers).  

I have been informed that my exit date is June 9th at noon.  As of this typing, there is no housing on the horizon, and no opportunity of any kind has presented itself in spite of two years of constant networking.  P.S. It would be fine with me if hospital staffpersons, and various social service workers, stopped asking me if I have thoughts about harming myself.  

Craig Louis Stehr

c/o Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center

A READER WRITES:

Isn’t it funny and sad that the guy living in the Building Bridges Facility has to tell us, it’s not working. Mr. Stehr is exactly right, throwing money at the problem doesn’t fix it.

It actually makes it worse, you see the when our government gets involved it creates a business out of homelessness. The Camillie Schraeder’s of the world see opportunity. Camille’s group will never solve the issue, if they do, then the money goes away along with all the jobs. 17 million dollars per year and the problem is worse. And if you believe Photo-OP Mo, that it’s down, 23%. I’ve got an ocean front property in Arizona with a bridge to sell.

In order to solve it, you’re going to have ignore all your liberal instincts. Families first, if they need help we provide it. Mental Illness needs a facility and news flash, it’s not the streets. Addiction, one trip through rehab. After that jail. No frivolous handouts that are unaccounted for. If you’re not from this county, Greyhound bus ticket back home, no questions asked.

I believe Mr. Stehr is trying to do it right. He is not sleeping out on the streets and committing crimes that come with the unhoused. Our Judges need to wake up and sentenced habitual offenders.

BERNIE NORVELL:

One trip through rehab is optimistic. A few years ago I would have agreed, one trip then jail. Today, I have the understanding that relapse happens and has to be considered as part of the process. The idea is suppose to be to bring people up so they can function in and contribute to society, Thus getting them off the books. That is not to say that some people based on their crime do need to go to jail. Hopefully with the new jail wing those folks will get the help they need while incarcerated. The other truth is some will forever be in the system.

There is in my opinion no doubt that the system in place does not produce any kind of real results. That is why we made the decision to go in a different direction. I’m hopeful that with the boards decision to look into reshaping the county’s way of doing things will move forward. The plan we are using will have to be modified some to be successsful county wide. At this point there seems to be enough interest to at least get it done. It feels like the biggest hurdle will be to keep the conversation moving forward.

SIERRA NEVADA WORLD MUSIC FESTIVAL

Friday-Sunday — June 21- 23, 2024

Mendocino County Fairgrounds, Boonville, CA

Summer Solstice, Peace Celebration and Full Moon Gathering

Top Reggae and World Music Artists Perform in a Relaxed, Family-Friendly Atmosphere with Camping, Vendors, Workshops, Kidzone and More

Featuring: Steel Pulse, Third World, Beres Hammond, Koffee, Busy Signal, Barrington Levy, David Rodigan and many others!

Boonville, Ca - The long-running Sierra Nevada World Music Festival (SNWMF) will take place June 21st - 23rd at the Mendocino County Fairgrounds in Boonville, California. The reggae and world music festival features live music on two stages, a late-night dancehall, a wide selection of food and drink booths and an international marketplace. Camping is available onsite with easy access to the festival grounds and a quick walk to downtown Boonville.

SNWMF is family-friendly and features a dedicated "KidZone" filled with creative and interactive programming. Kids 12 and older are free when accompanied by a ticketed adult.

The Mendocino County Fairgrounds is an Oak-and-Redwood-filled venue that is situated in the Anderson Valley, an idyllic, picturesque enclave located less than three hours north of San Francisco. 

Three-day tickets and camping passes are now available. Limited single-day tickets will be released closer to the event. Payment plans are available for tickets and camping.

More Info and Tickets: www.snwmf.com

The 2024 lineup features top names in reggae and world music: Beres Hammond, Koffee, Busy Signal, Steel Pulse Barrington Levy, David Rodigan, Third World, Stonebwoy, Leroy Sibbles, Half Pint, The Tennors, Eric Monty Morris, Natu Camara, Channel One Soundsystem, Rassarella, Warrior Sound International, Reemah, Blvk H3ro, Link & Chain, Terry Linen, and the Reggae Rajahs, with more artists still to be announced.

HUMMINGBIRDS 

Alan haack wrote (Coast Chatline): Hummigbirds are extremely sensitive to the many toxins and poisons that lazy Americans rely on and casually use all the time, so you yourselves have poisoned them and made them disappear by your addiction to herbicides, pesticides and insecticides... You can't have it both ways. Your addiction to poisons in the garden has killed the hummingbirds. Congratulations, clueless ones.

Marco McClean:

Also honey, I read. Even dilute honey in a hummingbird feeder poisons them. The best thing for a hummingbird feeder is regular table sugar in water.

"Never use honey in a hummingbird feeder! Honey can cause a fatal fungus infection on the tongue. Change the solution every four or five days and thoroughly rinse your feeder with hot water each time you do it. Use soap only when necessary, and rinse well so no residue remains."

JAMES K. LARSEN 

February 13, 1937-June 20, 2014

When you met Jim Larsen, chef/owner of The Restaurant, for the first time, he wrapped you in his generous spirit and made you feel special. His big meaty paw took your little hand and you were his.

The straightforward name, The Restaurant, says a lot about the man. A man whose simple pleasures sustained him for decades: golf, his dogs, women, dancing at the Caspar Inn, the Giants, cooking daily for the multitudes. He could stand at the grill for hours turning out perfectly seasoned and sautéed steaks, salmon, chicken — you name it — and then retire upstairs with a few Miller Lite beers and a bucket of salted peanuts, or overly buttered popcorn.

Women adored him, men were inspired by him. He was both loved and envied for his boundless energy, irrepressible nature, off-color jokes, and unfettered sense of humor. On more than one occasion he took a whole salmon into the dining room to show to a customer who asked if the fish was fresh. He could be grumpy or irritable when necessary, but never with those closest to him. Unpretentious in work and play, he favored the same style of clothes for years on end, to the dismay of his wives and children.

His decades-long friendship with artist Olaf Palm was legendary. Dozens of Palm’s paintings hang in The Restaurant, and Jim supported the career of Palm in untold ways. A painting titled “Jim Slays the Devil, Daily” is Olaf’s view of the realities of the restaurant business and the tenacity and strength of Jim. In the foreground The Devil’s head is on a plate with a shot to the forehead. Jim is seated, with his 22 rifle, on the alert, ready for the next challenge.

Known as the “Traffic Czar” for an incident that resulted in his arrest, it was midnight when he spray-painted ”cross here” and “don’t cross here” at Main and Laurel. Eight police cars converged at the scene and he was taken away in handcuffs and booked. ”Free Jim Larsen” became a rallying cry, and a large, unruly crowd assembled at the courthouse. Naturally, he was found not guilty. The safe, updated intersection, known locally as “Larsen’s Crossing”, is a testament to his perseverance.

His civic pride was a natural part of his soul — if you see something that needs to be done, just do it. He took responsibility for keeping the entire Glass Beach Road free of litter, and wore out three weed-trimmers edging the sidewalk along the field where he ran the dogs; he badgered the city and State Parks to install a toilet and proper trash bins at Glass Beach. He carried home bags full of trash from the area on busy weekends.

He left us so suddenly on a sunny June afternoon, with only the faithful dogs attending the departure. The night before he died he was in full “Jim” mode: He entertained a group of Japanese tourists in the dining room, singing something from his massive repertoire and reportedly showing them his rippling abs; he showed a guy around the whole building, up and downstairs; and then later in the evening he danced with his granddaughter Ella.

Before he left us for the great gleaming kitchen in the sky, he made sure we were all well trained and ready to continue the 41-year legacy of The Restaurant, which we are doing. Donations can be made to your favorite organization but you could honor him in another way: channel your “Inner Jim” and go out and pick up some trash.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, April 26, 2024

MICHAEL BROWN-SEALS, Ukiah. Parole violation.

DARIN HAMMOND, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, probation revocation.

SCOTTY WILLIS, Ukiah. Brandishing, contempt of court. (Frequent flyer.)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

My faith in the divine has waned of late. But then again, perhaps the divine have looked at us and said “to hell with them, they created this mess for themselves, let them deal with the consequences.”

Who knows. My point really is there is nobody there to resolve these problems. We have no leadership. There are no statesmen anymore. Judges are corrupt assholes with fake degrees. Lawyers are nothing more than money grubbers. Police are frightened. There are no leaders. The time has come to rely upon ourselves and prepare for the worst.

MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio show all night tonight on KNYO!

Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is 6:30 or so. If you can't make that, that's okay, send it whenever it's done and I'll read it on the radio next week. There's no pressure. There's always another week.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am PST on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KNYO.org. The first hour of the show is simulcast on KAKX 89.3fm Mendocino.

Speaking of which, you can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night I'll put up the recording of tonight's show. Also there you'll find an assortment of educational amusements to occupy you until showtime, or any time, such as:

An assortment of world fire gods to choose from, to suit your particular scourging or merely soothing or cooking spiritual fire needs. (via NagOnTheLake) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fire_gods

Popular operating systems 1985-2024, a market-percentage horse-race-style timeline. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tjc-qrjzRcU

And Robyn Adele Anderson of the Vintage Jukebox project sings Sunshine Of Your Love, wiggles fetchingly. https://laughingsquid.com/robyn-adele-anderson-latin-sunshine-of-your-love

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

GENTLE AUTHORS PREFER BLONDES

by William J. Hughes

Not long ago the AVA published a piece of mine entitled ‘Norma Gee,’ a telling of my young self catching glimpses of Marilyn Monroe's most famous nude calendar photo that hung in a nearby firehouse. 

For all the presumed Marilyn fans, I'd like to add a bit more about her. First off, for me, she was of course just general knowledge. Our, “The It” girl. Always the body but with the soul missing. I guess I thought of her that way until I started to grow, realizing her talents. I've come real close to James Dean over the years, from the crash site on A 46 and 41 to his Indiana home, small town farm and all, which put me closer to the also ill-fated Marilyn Monroe. 

I've been going to Los Angeles for the Oscars for years but she never came up. I saw a lot of ladies tryin’ to match up but never considered visiting her home or grave. But this year a friend coaxed us into going to her home and grave. Macabre, maybe. But read Joyce Carol Oates’ ‘Blonde’ and you'll get a full-throated look at her life. So, for me some respect for her work was, is, due. 

I knew the neighborhood, Brentwood off Sunset Boulevard. You are already in Hollywood’s deep, lovely neighborhoods of lush landscaping, somewhat overblown but almost every-day normal, Spanish Colonial like “the” California style. I looked up her house and address. Her nearly every-day normal Spanish Colonial with teardrop pool was nearby after we'd visited Will Rogers’ home (talk about celebrity and tragic death). 

Pokin’ around with the aid of my friend’s ultra-phone we found the address and yes it matches all the info. But wait a minute, wait another minute. As we drove in on Helena and back out, no modest Spanish Colonial. Some dark invader of enormous cold stone castle-keep has taken the property. Sure seems, screams that. I'm not saying they can't build or haven't taken into account its historic nature. But... But maybe for the best? Would you like to reside in her former home and have folks like us stoppin' by? So maybe. But it was such a charming home. Did you have to destroy it? You did, didn't you! Oh, well; we did our best. On to the next. 

As we headed to Westwood along Sunset Boulevard Beverly Hills, I got to thinking on them (a short story I recently finished), Dean and Monroe, alive, getting ready to work together in her great movie ‘Bus Stop.’ Oh, well — picture Dean in ‘Easy Rider’ — could have been. 

I’ve been in Westwood Plaza UCLA years ago. It is comfortable to say the most but now tall buildings frown down on the still green burial lawn of the Westwood cemetery nearby. 

Once upon a time it was truly sublime, as it should be. Anyway, we asked a dapper fella if it was all right to visit Marilyn's grave. (She's now in a mausoleum.) 

“Of course, of course.” He pointed out where and in pink. Hmm, that sort of stinks right off. 

The green, green, neon green grass, from all the rain, with headstones laid flat on the green, green grass. Solemn and yet less so because of no standing headstones. 

Oh no, oh no. Her grave is marked in pink stone in a mausoleum wall among others. Oh, no, the other next to her is Hugh Hefner. Oh, no. Not next to that skin pimp. (Not so as a younger man seeing Playboy centerfolds.) Come on, give the girl a break. Even in death they give her body and still no soul. 

Joe Dimaggio and Arthur Miller would weep for her. They must have. I know Joe buried her (how she came to be in the mausoleum I don’t know) and how she overwhelmed both Joe and Arthur Mill and the kennedy brothers killed her. You decide.

We decided she should be laid to “final rest” next to the likes of Natalie Wood or Kirk Douglas or any of the other superstars laid to rest here, including next to Mahasti Dadehbala. A most famous Iranian songstress, an American Iranian couple willing to share their tales of her and their pre-revolution lives. To show their respect for her, the same type of respect, heartfelt, that Marilyn Monroe earned through her hard work. 

(For further Marilyn there is a fine cable documentary on her and there is the fine film ‘My Week With Marilyn.’)

THE WAY IT IS

You work 8 hours to live 4.

You work 5 days to enjoy 2.

You work 8 hours to eat in 15 minutes.

You work 8 hours to sleep 6

You work all year just to take a week or two vacation.

You work all your life to retire in old age.

And watch only your last breaths.

Eventually, you realize that life is nothing but a parody of yourself practicing your own oblivion.

We have become so accustomed to material and social slavery that we no longer see the chains.

Life is a short trip,

Live it up.

(Cr: Dwayne Smith)

55 YEARS AGO TODAY: Steve Prefontaine ran 8:41.5 for 2-miles at the Corvallis Invitational to break the national high school record of 8:48.4.

COMMONS KNOWLEDGE

Editor,

Before the economist and sociologist John R. Commons settled in at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the early 1900s, in the 1890s he was a professor at Syracuse University. Local Protestants organized a campaign to outlaw Sunday baseball in the city of Syracuse and the President of the university tasked Commons to research the issue and present his findings at a public meeting.

Commons visited the local parks in Syracuse where the Sunday baseball games took place. He reported to the assembly convened to debate the topic that most of the participants in the baseball games were local factory workers whose only day off from the assembly lines was Sunday. Commons suggested that as long as money was not charged to attend the games, they should be allowed to proceed.

In response to Commons's testimony, enraged Protestants threatened to withdraw their children from Syracuse University. The President was informed that money would no longer be forthcoming from the school's wealthy alumni and benefactors. When Commons's professorship came up for review at the end of the school year, it was not renewed.

The French have a saying: Plus ca change, plus la meme chose -- the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Doug Loranger

Walnut Creek

THE OPPENHEIMER OMISSION

by Gray Brechin

University of California administration swelled with pride after producer Christopher Nolan shot scenes for his Academy Award-winning blockbuster Oppenheimer on the Berkeley campus, but that was not always the case. In doing so Nolan gave the campus star billing in the epochal drive to build the atomic bomb before the film’s main action moved on to Los Alamos.

As an undergraduate at UC in the late 60s, I wondered why the name of one of the world’s greatest physicists who had worked there was absent, whereas that of his colleague, Ernest O. Lawrence, had been affixed to the sprawling Lawrence Radiation Laboratory and the Lawrence Hall of Science on the hill above campus as well as to the Lawrence National Laboratory in Livermore south of Berkeley. A prestigious award and endowed lectureship also bore his name which features prominently in The Centennial Record of the University of California in contrast with that of Oppenheimer who gets scant mention. My U.C. dissertation and book, Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin, suggests that the omission of Oppenheimer was not accidental, for the “Father of the Atomic Bomb” was once an embarrassment to a university so intimately tied to its production and promotion as well as to subsequent generations of omnicidal weapons.

Nordically tall, blond, and Midwestern, Ernest Lawrence (played in the movie by Josh Hartnett) won the University’s first Nobel Prize for his co-invention with graduate student M. Stanley Livingston of the cyclotron which would lead to the Bomb. Unlike his leftish and cerebral Jewish colleague Oppenheimer — whom the brilliant physicist Hans Bethe said could make anyone, including himself, feel a fool — Lawrence put at ease the Regents and wealthy businessmen whom he needed to finance his and Livingston’s ever-larger atom-smashers. After his early death in 1958, the Regents commissioned a hagiography of Lawrence titled An American Genius and raised funds for the namesake Hall of Science adjacent to his 184-inch cyclotron where Lawrence’s team began the separation of Uranium-235 needed for “The Gadget.” When the hall was completed, curators placed the illuminated portraits of twenty-six Great Men of Science near the entrance that began with Hippocrates and culminated with Berkeley’s Nobel Laureate.

The absence of Oppenheimer from the Gallery of Greats and the shrine-like Memorial Hall once at its center was only one of several holes in the building’s historical record, for Lawrence’s work on the atomic bomb was given little

mention and none was given to his enthusiasm for the hydrogen bomb for which the national laboratory at Livermore was built, while Oppenheimer appeared with him in only one photograph. Such omissions were likely not accidental, for the university’s close involvement with superweapons gave it adverse publicity at a time when indiscriminate fallout from nuclear tests and the prospect of fiery annihilation tarnished its reputation for disinterested research.

Lawrence’s declassified papers reveal that a top-secret Committee on Planning for Army and Navy Research met more than a year before the first atomic explosion to plan the university’s continued involvement in weapons work. After years of stringency, Dr. Lawrence was keenly interested in finding ways by which nuclear research and the funding necessary for it could continue after the war. His friend Dr. Merle Tuve submitted notes on how to assure that funding. Those present at the meeting understood that an appearance of civilian control would have to be given to the program to deflect public criticism of “Big Navy” or “Big Army,” so good public relations was essential. Tuve wrote that “If the attitudes are right, the funds will be forthcoming with little difficulty. The continuity of funds for research is far more important than the magnitude of the funds” A gusher, however, would not be unwelcome.

When the Atomic Energy Commission’s first chairman, David E. Lilienthal wrote that “The doors of the treasury swung open and the money poured out,” he foresaw what President Eisenhower would later call the Military-Industrial Complex, but Eisenhower neglected to add academia to the Complex for its eager acceptance of available funds. Those on the ground floor and with the inside track stood to profit handsomely as a little-known archipelago of mining, research, and production sites devoted to nuclear weapons development sprang up across the nation and beyond. Professor Lawrence himself advised or sat on the boards of corporations heavily invested in weapons and reactor production while advising top government officials about the nation’s needs. Having known him well, Lilienthal was unimpressed by the objectivity of U.C.’s star physicist. He called Lawrence “the salesman” or “Madison Avenue-type” of scientist in his diary and bemoaned the institutionalized legacy of his promotional skills.

The Brookings Institution in 1998 attempted for the first time to determine how much the nuclear arms race had cost U.S. taxpayers. Its Atomic Audit estimated the 70,000 nuclear weapons manufactured to that point had cost more than $5 trillion of which only a small fraction was ever made public. The biological and psychic cost of the bombs was incalculable as were the public benefits that had to be sacrificed to its voracious demands. Proud as the University of California may now be of Oppenheimer’s presence on the Berkeley campus thanks to Nolan’s film, its official history should be amended to explain its own role in the aftermath of the work that he and Lawrence once did here.

Gray Brechin, Ph.D, is a geographer and the author of Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin (University of California Press 1999 and 2006.) The audiobook is now available.

EMERGENCY-O-RAMA

by James Kunstler

“We’ll certainly never forget the dark days of June 6 – January 6th, excuse me.” — President “Joe Biden”

The plum blossoms are ready to pop here. You can feel your blood rising. The evening sun lingers a little longer every day. Normally you’d celebrate, but not this year of roaring portents and evil juju. History doesn’t stop to catch its breath for a moment. The tiny glowing diode deep in “Joe Biden’s” brain dims a bit more each day (pause) while low men and women in high places trifle with the fate of the nation. Everyone dreads what’s coming.

Which, judging by events of the week just past, looks like a worse summer of civil chaos than 2020 was. Some entity — say, the checkbook of George and Alex Soros, maybe? — has funded the spring mustering of student mobs in support of Hamas seeking to drive wicked Israel into the choppy Mediterranean. What you’re seeing, though, is probably not what you think you are seeing in all that. The kids are mere digits in a cultural algorithm playing out as New Age dumbshow.

I doubt that three-quarters of them actually give a flying fugazy about the Palestinians, and even fewer could find Gaza on a map if you water-boarded them. They affect to be intersectional victims of the universal oppressor, but in so far as many of the rioters are girls of the Ivy League, or comparable redoubts of privilege — little blue-eyed, blonde-haired muffins raised on pony club, Hermes, and artisan granola — there must be something else going on. That something else is probably sex, which is so problematical now in any traditional frame of a man getting it on with a woman that the American birth-rate is going to zero.

How does a young woman get it on with so many collegiate men vying for gay brownie points these days, or going for the grand prize in transitioning? Why, it’s a non-starter. So, instead, you go slumming among the savages, those hairy, dumb brutes on twerk-alert, dripping testosterone — illegal aliens, student third-worlders, BLM alumni, hardcore hoodlums. They don’t know nuthin ‘bout no pony club, but they will rut like Bilberry rams until the ladies fall away crosseyed. Affecting to be a lesbian only makes the game more piquant. And if you forgot your birth control, for some reason, there’s always the abortionist.

Any time there are brownie points at stake, you know the game is actually for status, and where status is the game, fashion is the currency. Thus, the dress-up in Arab keffiyehs, the charming head-scarf denoting allyship with Hamas. Beats the heck out of those flitty N-95 masks from the 2020 Covid nights of roistering in the Seattle CHOP and trying to burn down the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse in Portland.

Rioting gives young men of the toxic persuasion opportunities to flaunt their moxie in acts of derring-do, brawling with the cops, dancing on top of cars, ripping down chain-link fences, flinging gasoline bombs. So much the better for getting the ladies’ attention. Look what I can do! And the keffiyeh accessorizes well with black bloc riot garb. For the muffins, wearing it is great practice for the utopia-to-come when they must don burkas under submission to Sharia. Will Hermes put out a burka?

So far, the spring rioting has mostly been fun for the rioters. Unlike the J-6-21 “paraders,” locked up in the putrid DC jail for years pending trial, the Hamas frolickers are at near-zilch risk of any serious consequences. Few will even be suspended from school. They are doing exactly what the schools trained them up for: destroying Western Civ, one acanthus leaf at a time. According to the shadowy stage-managers behind “Joe Biden,” this will save our democracy.

That and stuffing Donald Trump in jail for the rest of his natural life. Alas, the lawfare cases cooked up toward that end appear defective to a spectacular degree. It really says something about the true authors of these beauties brought by Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Fani Willis, and Jack Smith. I speak of the behind-the-scene blob lawfare ninjas Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Matt Colangelo, and Mary McCord, who wrote the scripts for all four of this year’s big elephant trap cases against the former president. You have to wonder how that bunch made it through their law boards. The current extravaganza in Manhattan that centers on alleged book-keeping errors in furtherance of an unstated federal offense is due to go on a few more weeks. The howling errors of both the prosecution and Judge Juan Merchan are so extravagant that the proceeding looks like it was cribbed from the pages of Lewis Carroll.

Yet, there is near unanimous sentiment that the Trump-deranged New Yawk jury will convict, no matter how much more idiotic the case turns out to be. By then, we will be verging on summer. The college campuses will be shuttered and the youth-in-revolt action will necessarily move to the regular streets. Whichever way the verdict goes in the Alvin Bragg case, epic looting and rioting will commence.

Sometime this summer, I predict, the Mar-a-Lago documents case will get tossed on something like malicious prosecution. Jack Smith’s DC case, kneecapped by SCOTUS, won’t start before the November election (or maybe ever) and ditto the Fani Willis fiasco in Atlanta. George and Alex Soros will pour millions into box lunches for the kids burning down what’s left of the cities and the demure gals of the Ivy League Left will find plenty of love in the ruins.

The two major party conventions in July (Republican) and August (Democrat) are sure to out-do the 1968 lollapalooza in Chicago (I was there) in mayhem and property damage. “Joe Biden” — really the blob behind him — will ache to declare a national emergency, perhaps even a second emergency after the recently unveiled “climate emergency” supposedly pending any day. The USA will be in an historic horror movie you could call Emergency-O-Rama. If you think the financial system, and the US economy that has become the tail on the finance dog, can survive all this, you will be disappointed. The army may have to step in and put an end to these shenanigans. Don’t think it can’t happen.

NO, MR. NETANYAHU, IT’S NOT ANTI-SEMITIC TO CRITICIZE THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT’S WAR

by Bernie Sanders

No, Mr. Netanyahu. It is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months your extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000 people — seventy percent of whom are women and children.

It is not antisemitic to point out that your bombing has completely destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving more than one million people homeless — almost half the population.

It is not antisemitic to realize that your government has annihilated Gaza’s health care system, knocking 26 hospitals out of service and killing more than 400 health care workers.

It is not antisemitic to condemn your government’s destruction of all of Gaza’s 12 universities and 56 of its schools, with hundreds more damaged, leaving 625,000 students with no education.

It is not antisemitic to note that your government has obliterated Gaza’s civilian infrastructure — electricity, water, and sewage.

It is not antisemitic to agree with virtually every humanitarian organization in saying that your government, in violation of American law, has unreasonably blocked humanitarian aid coming into Gaza, creating the conditions in which hundreds of thousands of children face malnutrition and famine.

Mr. Netanyahu, antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people. But, please, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government. Do not use antisemitism to deflect attention from the criminal indictment you are facing in the Israeli courts. It is not antisemitic to hold you accountable for your policies.

Bernie Sanders is a US Senator, and the ranking member of the Senate budget committee. He represents the state of Vermont, and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress.

“Listen. I don’t want to be one of these champions who fights once a year. I need to fight. Dames are expensive.”

— Max Baer

FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH SALMAN RUSHDIE BY EZRA KLEIN

I’m going to try something a little tricky here. I don’t, in any way, want to trivialize the violence, the terror you’ve lived through.

I was struck with the thought that, for decades now, you have lived the most extreme possible version of a very modern condition, in which little scraps of yourself — scraps of things you’ve written or echoes of interpretations of things you’ve written — ricochet around an internet or a world and create this other version of you that people begin to believe in.

This happens in a very small and much less terrorizing way to people all the time on TikTok, on Facebook, on X. They say something, and soon a version of them emerges that is more real to other people than they are. Do you think this is a more common thing?

I agree entirely with how you describe the creation of false selves by this new weapon of social media. I’ve often thought that if these things had existed in 1989, I would have been in far more danger because the speed with which material can be transmitted is so much greater and the way in which groupthink can be created and mobs can be created would have enormously escalated the danger.

At that time, the most sophisticated method of transmission was the fax machine, and that kept the lid on it to some degree — until Khomeini blew the lid off.

I know that there are two or three graphics containing absolutely false quotes from me — things I’ve never even come close to saying — which keep cropping up. People keep retweeting them and repeating them. And even though I have once or twice said, “Look, I never said this,” that doesn’t stop it. It just keeps going. So there are quotes ascribed to me, you know, views ascribed to me, which I don’t hold, which are actually antithetical to things that I think. But they’re out there.

I think, to some degree, it’s always been the case, before social media, that there’s a disconnect between the private self of the writer and the way in which they’re publicly perceived. Various writers — Günter Grass, Jorge Luis Borges, Graham Greene — they all had this sense of there being a public self, which wasn’t quite them but which was how they were seen. And I had a kind of magnified version of that, and social media certainly helps to magnify it.

I know people who have gone through public scandal who didn’t deserve it, who hadn’t done the thing or there really was no thing.

One thing I’ve noticed is many of them go through a period — sometimes don’t even get out of the period — of believing they must somehow deserve it. They almost have to believe they did something deserving of it for their reality to make sense to them. Did that happen to you?

Yeah, right at the beginning, I began to believe two things. First of all, there was a kind of category mistake about “The Satanic Verses,” which was being treated as a work of polemical fact, whereas actually it’s a work of imagination and fiction. If I could just explain that this is not fact, this is fiction, people would say, “Oh, yeah, we get it now.” And that was kind of foolish. And then I thought if I can just explain in interviews and essays and so on who I am and what I thought I was doing and why I believe it to be completely legitimate, the people would again go, “Oh, gosh, we made a terrible mistake.”

About a year or a year and a half into the story, when I was very, very depressed and didn’t see how it would ever end, I thought maybe what I have to do is to reach out to the Muslim community and try and apologize. And I did, and it rebounded very hard in my face.

And actually, my sister, whom I love and is closer to me than anybody else in the world, called me when she heard me making these apologias. She said, “What the hell are you doing? Have you lost your mind?” And I thought, you know, “Yes, I have. I’m behaving in a deranged way.” And that felt to me like hitting rock bottom.

I hate that this is true about culture right now. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it be the case that apologizing — whether the person did something or did not do something — helps. Because what apologizing seems to me to do now is it gives people the license to believe that it was all justified in the first place.

That’s why there’s a crazed power to people like Donald Trump, who exist in a world without, I think, personal shame. Because they don’t apologize, they’re able to keep the instability of the different realities coherent: I never lost the election. I never did anything wrong. I never did any of it.

So there never needs to be a moment where the people who are on their side have to reconcile the sort of admission of wrongdoing. Whereas the people who try to come out and be decent people about it suffer.

Shamelessness is the great public weapon of our time. If you really have it — and yes, of course, he does in spades — you can do what he’s done, which is to spend a lifetime getting away with it. I mean, not just since he’s been in politics, but way before then. I mean, getting away with it is his great skill.

And the tool that he uses is absolute lack of shame. And I mean, I would put, in a miniature way, ex-British prime minister Boris Johnson in the same bag. Absolute, I mean, total liar in everything he says and does and totally shameless about it and gets away with it. Until he didn’t.

We live in this age where you have an algorithmic global community. And communities discipline through shaming each other and eliciting shame in each other. That’s a supercharged dynamic in modern life. So if you happen to be immune to it, it’s a superpower.

This is maybe a function of being almost 77 years old, but I really go less and less toward social media. I barely use it, and every time I go there, I kind of wish I hadn’t. So I think maybe I’ll just, whatever years are left to me, manage to do it without being a part of the modern world.

Let’s go quite a bit forward in time. It’s 2022, before the Chautauqua event where the attack happens. At this point, who are you to yourself? And who do you think you are at that point to the public?

I genuinely thought that the risk was in the past. I had 22 years of evidence for that, so it wasn’t unreasonable to believe that. But at this point, I had more or less completely regained, let’s say, the life of a writer, where I was doing everything that writers get asked to do. I was doing book tours and literary festivals and lectures and readings and all of that. Especially after near sequestration, it was very pleasant to be back in the world.

Where are you on Aug. 12, and what happens?

I was in New York City. On Aug. 11, I had flown up to do an event at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York. My friend Henry Reese had been running an asylum program in Pittsburgh. He had a whole little street of houses which he made available to writers from various countries who needed a safe place. Chautauqua had invited Henry to come and talk about that, and he asked me if I would come and have the conversation with him.

We had just come out onstage. The Chautauqua Amphitheater is a very large space. And there were probably something like 1,500 people there. Henry and I came out and were introduced by someone from the institution. We were sitting in chairs on the stage. Almost the moment the introduction was over, I saw this man approaching rapidly from my right. He came sprinting up the steps and attacked me.

You write, “This is as close to understanding my inaction as I’ve been able to get: The targets of violence experience a crisis in their understanding of the real.” What do you mean?

I mean that we all live in a picture of the real. We all have a sense of how things are, and that sense of how things are is our reality. And then when something calamitous happens, somebody arrives in a picture of school with an assault rifle.

Somebody arrives in a church with a gun or in a shopping mall, you know. Everybody in those locations has a picture of what they’re doing. If you’re in a church, you’re there for reasons of belief and worship. If you’re in a shopping mall, you’re there to shop. If you’re in a school, you’re there to be at school.

And that’s how you see the world. And the explosion of violence into that picture destroys that reality. And then you literally don’t know the shape of the world. And very often, I think, people are paralyzed and don’t know what to do. How do you act in a moment when the thing that’s happened isn’t a part of the narrative you think you’re in?

And that’s what happened to me. I thought I was frozen.

The attack was a knife attack. And you write that “a gunshot is action at a distance but a knife attack is a kind of intimacy.” What’s intimate about it?

There wasn’t even an inch of space between him and me. He’s not shooting from a distance. He’s right up in my face, sticking a knife in me. And then, of course, I fell down, and he was on top of me.

So that’s about as intimate as you can get, to be underneath somebody who’s on top of you. I mean, there are other occasions when that happens, and those are more pleasurable.

Some of the book is about trying to understand the attacker. What do you know about him?

I know very little. There have been just a couple of newspaper reports on which I base my knowledge of him. What seems to be the story, as far as I can piece it together, is that his parents were of Lebanese origin. They moved to the United States, and he was born and raised in Jersey. His parents separated. His father went back to Lebanon. His mother stayed in New Jersey with himself and his sisters.

Until he was approximately 19 years old, he was a kid growing up in Jersey and had no criminal record. And then at about that time, he chooses to go to Lebanon to visit his father. His father lives in a village which is very near the Israeli border and is a very strongly Hezbollah village with billboards of Hezbollah heroes around the streets. His mother says that when he first got there, he really didn’t like it, he wanted to come home right away. But he stayed.

He came back a month later and, according to his mother, had completely transformed, was a different person and was now angry with her for not having taught him properly about religion. His mother’s house in Fairview has a basement, and he went and sequestered himself in the basement, lived separately from everyone else, playing video games and watching YouTube videos.

Essentially, he lived a pretty solitary life for something like four years, between his visit to Lebanon and his decision to attack me. And somehow, in that period of time, he becomes the kind of person who can commit murder.

At a certain point, he sees something on Twitter from the Chautauqua Institution, announcing their program of events, and he saw that I was listed on the program and decided to make his plan.

The idea that he could become someone who could murder seems, in some ways, less improbable than that you could end up as his target. This is somebody born after “The Satanic Verses.” And you’re just not there anymore. There’s a lot that has happened — the war on terrorism, the invasion of Iraq. How does he end up focusing on you?

This is what I don’t know. I can guess that while he was with his father in this very Hezbollah-dominated village that somebody might have mentioned my name as a bad guy, anti-Muslim, and it maybe was triggered by his seeing something on social media about my upcoming talk. But I don’t really know.

I remember saying to my editor at Random House that if I was to write a story in which somebody, by his own admission, had read only two pages of somebody’s writing and seen a couple of YouTube videos and then would to decide to murder that person, my editor would say to me, that’s not convincing. It’s not enough motivation.

You say in the book that your attempted murder seemed undermotivated, which is one of the funnier — I mean, darkly funny — lines I’ve read in a while.

I was thinking about Iago and Othello, that the only thing that happens to Iago is that he’s passed over for a promotion. That’s it. That’s his beef. And because of that, he decides to destroy the lives of two people, Othello and Desdemona.

And I often wondered, “Is there such a thing as a person who is simply evil, just a bad guy, doesn’t need much of a motive?” And the reason that doesn’t quite work in this case is because, prior to his visit to Lebanon, he was a perfectly nice person. The transformation is what’s interesting.

There’s a way in which he’s trying to kill some other version of you. He doesn’t actually know anything about you.

No, he didn’t do any research. He seemed, in a way, very uninterested. I guess he’d heard from people he was influenced by that I was some kind of demonic figure. There is a very effective degree of demonization that has taken place across the Islamic world, in which there’s a lot of people who grow up thinking that I’m a kind of boogeyman. On the other hand, his own family were not like that. They were not fanatics. They were perfectly secularized American citizens. So I don’t know where he got it from.

The core of the book is this imagined dialogue between the two of you. And one thing you say to him in this imagined dialogue is, “I know that it is possible to construct an image of a man, a second self, that bears very little resemblance to the first self, but the second self gains credibility because it is repeated over and over again, until it begins to feel real, more real than the first self.”

You imagine saying this to him, almost as a way of helping him understand what he was doing. You’re creating his shadow self — a version of him that is now more real in the world than he is. Tell me about that.

I included this anecdote about Samuel Beckett being the victim of a knife attack, and he almost died. In his case, he actually did go to confront his attacker in court and said to him, “Why do you do it?” And all the man was able to say was, “I don’t know, sir. I’m sorry.”

And I thought, “That’s useless.” Even if I was permitted by his lawyer to have a meeting, I probably wouldn’t get an apology, because there’s no indication of any remorse. I would get some form of sloganized answer, which wouldn’t answer this hole in my understanding of him. But how can somebody with so little knowledge of a person agree to murder them?

So I thought, maybe the best way to do this is to use my skill of imagination and storytelling to try and get inside his head and at least create a character that I can believe might do something like this. Whether it’s his real character or not actually becomes secondary.