Mendocino County Today: Monday 4/29/24

Sun & Wind | Raven Aloft | Country Lane | Stunning Pendants | Fishy Developer | Table Setting | Not Credible | Ukiah Denny's | Ed Notes | AV Village Newsletter | Additional Seating | Allaman Appearance | Rhododendron Show | Yesterday's Catch | Huffman's Pal | Projunior & Honeybunch | Wolf Kill | Threshold of Eternity | What's Important | Guinness Cheers

STRATUS and low cloud cover will continue to clear out through the morning. Mild pleasant weather is expected today with colder temperatures expected overnight into Tuesday. Offshore flow and high pressure will promote warming and drying for the interior, late in the week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A breezy 49F under clear skies this Monday morning on the coast. Wind is the weather word this week & mostly clear skies. We now see see a chance of rain this weekend, we'll see.

ON THE MOUNTAIN HOUSE ROAD AGAIN

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

During my last stretch home in Ukiah I promised myself a leisurely trip out Mountain House Road. I cashed that promise in and left Hopland, heading south. 

I’ve lived 40 years in Ukiah, and like everyone I’ve been hemmed in by highways and concrete laid down in their cooly efficient manner. It’s made me appreciate the barely travelled remote, narrow country lanes that meander off from approximately nowhere to somewhere a little further out, maybe around that big bend you come to when you cross the one-lane bridge. 

It’s the prettiest inland road we have. Give yourself time to roll among the valleys and aromas, the fence lines, clouds and birds, and you’ll be well rewarded. 

Mountain House Road offers a blink of a vision of the formation of the Earth itself, a small fraction leading to this speck of time, and me standing in it. Boulders and rocks have been shoved through surfaces of dirt as though from planet-shaking underground explosions gone massively right. 

Big stones are nestled among soft yellow waves, with rows and clumps of greenery at the edges all ‘round what my limited imagination can perceive as the only natural, obvious, harmonious locations, i.e., the view as it is exists right now, right here. 

Where I stand might have, and could have, looked jagged and hostile following eons of earthquakes, tsunamis, tectonic upheavals and glaciers roaming to and fro, all operating with their own independent agendas to produce a chaotic and inhospitable landscape. But no. That’s not what we see. 

Instead it’s a tame and orderly panorama of undulating hills, rolling meadows punctuated by comely trees in lines and groups, with ranches and roads, pastures and skies all laced together in a lovely landscape of unintentional order and understated beauty. 

Mendo County residents are blessed with visual splendors, here in a land of understandable fencing, winding roads generously sneaking past, over and around small hillocks, valleys and probably more barns, hopefully surrounded and improved by dogs, chickens, deer and sheep. Buzzards also welcome. 

On the more travelled Hwy 253 to Boonville are vast vistas and gape-worthy sceneries probably looking the same as 50 years ago, or 500 or 50,000. Deep ravines waiting in stony silence (how else?) for the next earthquake or glacier or comet to visit that will upend, rearrange and defeat what now exists, then resume the long wait for another geological age. 

Or rains that last a century (a wink of an eye, geologically) to wash it all away and replace it with tidal waves that bring another reality. 

Or a car pitching over the edge, rolling and tumbling a thousand feet to a bottom from which it will never return. And the driver too. 

But I’m happily mired in 2024 and find my stonescape perfectly staggering and agreeable. There’s nowhere I’d rather be standing, nothing I’d rather be viewing.

Medical Miracle Update 

It’s been legal a long time and yet we continue to get no word of recent breakthroughs in medical marijuana. But when Big Weed was promoting legalization it seemed to churn out never-ending stories of pot being the next great curative. 

By the early 1990s marijuana was credited with curing glaucoma, cancer, hair loss and roof leaks. Now that doctors and researchers are free to run tests and experiments, pot prediction prevaricators have gone silent.

Car Talk

Why do I think supervisor Ted Williams is so loud in opposing a gas station north of town? Because it gives him a chance to shake his fist and stamp his feet and let the world know he’s taking a bold stand against Big Oil. 

Ho hum, Teddy Boy. Pipe down. Do what’s best for the County. 

Meanwhile back in Ukiah, city council hacks are putting on a big show, starring themselves, promoting electric cars. First they want taxpayers to install charging stations so Elon Musk doesn’t have to spend his own money. 

Next, go get yourself a Prius so you can start saving the planet, or better yet buy two and save it twice as fast. What Mari Rodin and Susan Sher tell you is all about saving fuel. 

What they don’t tell you is that if you live somewhere that gets hot, or cold, your battery mobile is great until you turn on the air conditioner or heater. Mileage drops drastically when juice is diverted to nonessential uses like trying to stay warm going over Donner Pass in December. 

Also, when your electro-car winds down and leaves you stranded 40 miles outside Provo, will you hike back to a charging station and get a bucket of fresh electricity?

JESSE DELUCA: New hot inventory: Gorgeous stunningly made pendants from Utah at Moon Honey Tea Co. in the John Hanes Gallery in Boonville across from the Boonville Hotel.

TRIBAL ABUSE

Editor:

Re: Gas Station developer’s recently reduced traffic numbers and his threat to sell his Redwood Valley property to the Coyote Valley Tribe.

Well – this looks fishy to me.

First: Because the applicant/developer has suddenly come up with a new, lower volume, traffic study after running into local opposition. The lower number also would seem to make an expensive 101 right turn lane lane unnecessary. Why, suddenly, would the numbers change?

Second and more important: The applicant/developer has reportedly threatened to sell the location to the Indians – making local control or objections useless – if the developer does not get his way. I do not know that this proposed sale is possible, or if it will have the effect that the applicant threatens, but this looks to me like blackmail.

I also see this as yet another attempt by a developer trying to use, in the worst sense of the term, America’s Native peoples to advance the developer’s interests. I am thinking that developers are trying to use the Guidiville tribe in their Palace Hotel scheme in this same way.

I am white, my ancestors are European, and to my dismay my people have taken everything that the Native People had. I do not want the Native People to be further used.

Thirdly; This developer wants a County Supervisor to recuse himself because he has expressed an opinion on this matter – what a crock! We elect our Supervisors largely based on their opinions and we expect them to speak up.

Tom McFadden

Boonville

REDWOOD VALLEY RESIDENT CONDEMNS ‘SELF-SERVING’ ACTIONS OF GAS STATION DEVELOPER

Dear Editor-

1. Faizon Corporation presented the West Trans traffic study dated March 25, which purports that there is really less traffic than Caltrans has stated in their studies and reports. This is not credible as they compared the project to their other gas station, which is 3 turns off the freeway.      

Any person who is not comatose would see that a corporation’s self-serving report likely holds less truth than an outside objective study such as CalTrans.

2. CalTrans holds that should the service station go forward; the center median of Hwy 101 at North State St and Uva Drive will need to be closed and acceleration and deceleration lanes will be required for northbound traffic. 

Even if Faizon Corporation agrees to comply and pay the estimated $2 million for this requirement, which they do not want to pay for, then Redwood Valley citizens still do not want this gas station. The project would decrease local quality of life, and the cutoff of east-west traffic would constrain neighbors’ free movement along with slowing firefighting access in times of disaster.

3. Mr. Tom Rawles, a neighbor, has a right-of-way that would be infringed upon and he has not been made whole in this regard should the project go forward. The right of the local public who enjoy the current tenant, Thai Tasty restaurant, would lose this gem to an unwanted and unneeded “convenience store.
4. This project is detrimental to quality of life, as expressed in the County General Plan, which holds weight. Consider the applicant’s past record of pollution, the noise, increased traffic, and bright lights. The Planning Commission earlier stated this discretionary minor use permit would constitute a nuisance or be detrimental to the health, safety, peace, morals, comfort, or general welfare of persons residing or working in or passing through the neighborhood of the proposed use, and would be detrimental or injurious to property and improvements in the neighborhood.

Dolly Riley, Chair, Redwood Valley Municipal Advisory Committee

(mendofever.com)

UKIAH'S DENNY'S HAS CLOSED, and with its closing many fond memories, such as this one by Mike Mcphee, a Boonville student in the 1970s: “So many memories there. Our bus stopped there nearly every away game before heading over the hill to Boonville, all us kids would go to McDonald's, all the Adults across the street to Denny's.”

ED NOTES

THE ANDERSON VALLEY ADVERTISER, 1952-2024

A READER ASKED, “Are you sad the print ava is over?” More resigned and nostalgic than sad when I think of the crucial people who truly got it done every week all these years, which excludes me. I fired off a few hundred often ill-chosen, unnecessarily combative words every week, and I could be trusted to deliver the paper the length of the Anderson Valley every Thursday morning. And I also served as front man and flak catcher, but it was Mark Scaramella, Renee Lee and my martyred wife, the former Esther Mowe of East Malaysia, who did the unending work-work of production. Without them the Boonville weekly would have faded years ago.

REGRETS? I never believe old people who say they have none. I have lots, not that I'm going to share them because I don't want to give my many enemies any additional ammo, but there have been instances, provocations, quite a few of them, I wish I would have ignored, and people I wish I'd never met. But overall, the ava has, I think, accurately reflected the times and place it appeared in for forty years. Check that: Early on I produced an issue that I thought was so bad, so dumb, so utterly without interest that I promised myself I'd quit if I couldn't do better. There have been some weak AVAs since but I can't remember any but that one that was as utterly hopeless, as cringe-inducing.

LEGACY? Who cares? I think people who think (and worry) about future opinions of them are laughable. I'd be reluctant to go if I thought opinions weren't a true mix of seething hatred for me personally and my newspaper, and grudging respect for simply staying at it for so many years. But, but, but..... but don't you want to be remembered and loved? Only by my heirs and assignees. Beyond  them, indifference, much as I am fond of many of you. 

WHEN I bought the Boonville weekly 40 years ago, I published the promise below on the front page of my first issue. Bold as it reads, bold is not how I felt. I didn't know if I could make a go of it, by which I meant sell enough papers to at least pay the print bill. Almost all the advertisers fled the first month, and the local authorities had to be hounded to send me legal ads rightfully belonging to Anderson Valley’s “newspaper of record.” The first of many ensuing libel threats appeared. Our downtown office was vandalized. My vehicles were destroyed. But the paper grew, and if it has never exactly prospered, it has survived for four decades. Why? Because right from the start, really good writers sent us really good writing, as lively a weekly collection as any publication in the country, and within a year or two the Boonville weekly was perhaps the best known small town paper in all the USofA, not that that specious fame brought in much hard currency, but it did bring in even more good writers. As all of you know, print has been swallowed by telephones, and lively prose of the type appearing here is less valued, and we're old and unable to continue the hard slog of weekly print production. I thank all of you who made this adventure the wild ride it has been, and I hope you'll stay with us in our cyber-form.

SCARAMELLA REMINDS ME: “I think we should give some recognition to the named and nameless individuals, many of them in local government, over the years who took the opportunity presented by the AVA to speak to us on or ‘off the record’ about scandals and insider deals without whom we would not have been able to produce some of our best stories.”

CERTAINLY TRUE. If it weren't for people alerting us to events that would otherwise remain unrevealed, our paper would have been majorly deficient. I can also say we never, ever revealed a source who requested anonymity.

* * *

Intents and Purposes (AVA, January 4, 1984 Vol. 32, Issue #1)

This newspaper stands against wealth, privilege and all branches of local, state and federal government. These positions are subject to change should the management of the Advertiser become either wealthy or privileged. Since there isn't any wealth to speak of around here, and less privilege, government, especially local government, will be the focus of much attention. 

We will print the stories that go untold in Mendocino County because of the timidity and allegiances of the existing press.

We are neither liberal nor conservative, believing that ideology is for idiots and dictators. We are enemies of dogma and rigidity for which we will roll out the big guns. 

We will attempt to publish articles and features of interest to all segments of our diverse community, something for everyone. 

We will present lengthy features on such subjects as the likely impact of the Roederer Corporation on Anderson Valley; what it is like to be an illegal Mexican worker in Mendocino County; items of historical interest; the economics and problems of: sheep ranching; licensed children’s homes; the Mendocino County Schools operations in Anderson Valley; the local schools: interviews with local movers and shakers; and lots of gossip, the life's blood of the small community.

lf there are stories you'd like to see, let us know: If we become shrill, boring or humorless, let us know. When we’re dumb or dishonest, let us know. Better yet, sue us.

But make no mistake about it, we fully intend to do as we please, mollifying no one, least of all our advertisers and subscribers.

Bruce Anderson, Editor

* * *

MOST MEDIA describes the college demonstrations as “pro Palestinian,” implying that the demonstrations are anti-Israel unto anti-Semitism. I daresay most of the young people demonstrating are simply shocked, as millions of Americans are shocked, at the Netanyahu government's deliberate slaughter of Gazans and, secondarily, shocked that our government is funding much of this mass murder.

WE GROW OLD and our human frame of reference begins to fade. Just in the past few months I've lost Gordon Black and Bill Bradd, two Coast poets who wrote better the older they got. Gordon, or Gordy as I called him, was an old sparring mate who never failed to come back for more, which he seemed to enjoy as much as I did. When his meticulously composed, Zen-like letters arrived denouncing us a great cheer went up in our office. “Another Gordy!” Thinking about him now and our many exchanges I still smile. And Rosie Radiator, aka Bess Bair, is gone. A wonderful dancer and all-round entertainer, Rosie was for years a fixture of nighttime Frisco's venues. Her roots, though, were on the Northcoast. Rosie grew up in Southern Humboldt at Richardson Grove, owned by her family, and for years maintained a summer cabin at Dos Rios.

INDUSTRIAL GRAPE GROWING has its downside, a downside so large it obscures whatever upside it may have, not that an upside comes to mind. Thirty years ago, Peggy Miniclier, then a nurse practitioner at the Anderson Valley Health Center, and a resident of the Holmes Ranch, said that she was treating an increasing number of farmworkers suffering from pesticide poisoning, and that the workers she was seeing were only a small fraction of the actual number of workers imperiled by unregulated vineyard applications of hazardous chemicals. Nurse Miniclier said she filled out state forms about the exposures but, she said, the reporting was only used for statistical exercises; no investigations or follow-ups were conducted. Miniclier said that most worker pesticide poisonings go unreported because workers are afraid they’ll lose their jobs or jeopardize their immigration status if they reported exposures. Thirty years later? Same-same.

ABOUT the same time as the nurse expressed her frustration, the wine industry was demanding state help to wipe out the glassy-winged sharpshooter, the much-maligned insect that destroys grapevines. The wine industry claimed it would be devastated if the half-inch long leaf hopper took hold north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Which it never did.

AV VILLAGE UPDATE

We currently have 69 members (52 memberships) and 51 trained volunteers ready to lend our members a hand! We rely solely on membership dues and some donations to operate and we really could not do it without your support – Thank you!

Welcome New Members: Robyn and Bill Harper, Wynne & Dennis Nord

Happy Birthday to our wonderful members and volunteers: Judy Basehore, Susan Bridge-Mount, Franois Christen, Pippa Thomas, Anjes De Ryck, Rob Goodell

Welcome Patty Liddy, our new wonderful AV Village Coordinator! Patty worked at the Anderson Valley Community Services District for the past ten years and is excited to be involved with the AV Village. Please reach out to her for any little thing.

So, we were on KZYX’s Wildoak Living radio show on April 4th (9 to 10 am) check us out in the archives: https://jukebox.kzyx.org/ And For past Valley Chats at the AV Museum check out the AV historical society YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@AndersonValleyMuseum

What’s up at the AV Village?

Here’s a photo from our last gathering. We showcased eight local writers. The stories were hilarious and poignant. We usually showcase a writers event once a year.

Thank you Victor Presley for a tour of the Scharffenberger gardens! This tour was announced at his talk prior to the April Gathering.

(from the May 2024 Newsletter)

SO YOU’RE 90; WHAT’S NEXT: Potpourri, Boont Berry Expanding, & More...

by Gregory Sims

Something is happening, no longer happening, maybe something different. I'm told that part of Rebooting Boont Berry is their plans to expand their seating areas so more of us can spend time there, just as I sat down with Steve Derwinski and we talked a long time. Then David Severn came along, Barbara Llewelyn came along and more folks came along and I lost the ability to say I was leaving at the end of summer. Instead I repeated what I said at the Senior Citizens Village. That is: The folks that came some fifty years ago, and stayed are in their seventies, some pushing eighty or more and some like me are 90 or more. Some of them held forth at the Little Red School House Museum. And there's something different about them that I find with folks who are closer to my age. 

Long ago I joined them and plugged into what was happening with their music, art, clothing and as the psychedelic relics reminded us they remain amongst us. It was then I realized that although our print addition of the AVA will no longer occupy hours of my slow reading back and forth from page two to page eleven, with the inside dropping on the floor and pagination repair then required, we will move online hopefully with Bruce and Mark at the helm. And if accepted into the inner sanctum (I'm told my stuff is already going there) I'll start picking the brains and whatnots of folks like Derwinski who keeps sending me his well-published-like bound booklets of Haiku telling me “to open the door that separates now from forever.” My theory is if any are to save us from the Boogey Man, it will be the Octogenarians colluding with the young along with the 90s+ hanging on or trying to direct them as a choir of cats still searching for the now of be here fame.

I think it was Ken, Bruce's now departed brother, who directed Grapevine, telling me of Fern Hill School here in The Valley. So I think I came by unannounced and happened upon some of the residents who were happy to have another set of ears to listen to their unhappy stories. So I dutifully listened and said I would make some suggestions for improvement to Mr. Anderson, who was not pleased with an unauthorized person holding forth in his territory. 

That was some fifty years ago, but I remember trying to figure out how to clean up my errors. Somehow we got past my gaff and for many years I was his Psychologist for Fern Hill, getting to know and appreciate Ling and the successes of his and Ling's now adult sons and daughter. Over the years we've remained friendly toward each other, and more recently he and Mark have accepted me as one of the Anderson Valley Advertiser's writers. I'm hoping as his health improves and I manage to continue on we can sit together for a spell.

Often when I drive by where he and his family lived I'm inclined to think of the summers where it would be possible to have groups and case conferences outside. Carolyn Eigenman lived just down the street and I had her do administrative stuff for me, then take some time for friendship chats. Her memorial is May 18th and I plan to attend. 

One final thought: our Boonville Classic walk/run is coming up. I think there are quite a few runners who prepare for the event, keep track of their time and use the event to encourage their exercise program. In a sense I do some of that, though my trips to the health club are not very often. Though I realize by writing more and exercising less, I am less likely to live as long as I might if I can manage to at least keep up a modicum of physical involvement. And as I write this I've not been feeling as on top of things.

So tomorrow (it's midnight now) I will do enough exercise so when people ask how I am, I'll be able to say “I'm good” instead of saying, “well, so so.”

R.D. BEACON

Last night at Beacon light by the sea, we had a rare treat, an old friend dropped by, Eric Allaman, an American original, composer and concert pianist, filled my room next to the bar, with beautiful music, world renowned, and famous individual took time from his busy schedule to come and see me, and play little music, it was a grand evening, a true professional in every sense of the word, it is always a great joy when, Eric Allaman, comes to visit with a few of his friends, I've met over the years several people it could play the piano, but never without having sheet music, help them along what we had last night was not scheduled, and no sheet music this man has everything rolled up, within between his ears and recalls it like it's in front of it, not faltering even for a second making my piano, sound like when it was built to do, certainly not what I tried to do with it, we can always hope that he will come back so he did leave me to CDs, so we can listen to them on occasion in the bar.

THE LARGEST RHODODENDRON SHOW IN CALIFORNIA

45th Annual Rhododendron Show - May 4 and 5, on the Mendocino Coast

Each year, the Noyo Chapter of the American Rhododendron Society partners with Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens to showcase some of the best rhododendron specimens on the West Coast. The 45th annual John Druecker Memorial Rhododendron Show will be held at the Gardens on Saturday, May 4 and Sunday, May 5. This juried show is the largest in California with a typical show displaying more than 800 entries, filling the exhibition tent with cascades of colors and fragrance.

Everyone is welcome to enter their rhododendrons and azaleas in the show! You may have noticed that rhododendrons have a stunning growth habit featuring a cluster of flowers at the end of a branch, this bouquet-like gathering of flowers that is called a truss. We want you to bring your best trusses to the big tent to the south end of the Gardens’ main parking lot on Thursday, May 2 between 3PM - 7PM and Friday, May 3, between 9AM - 12PM. Ribbons and trophies will be awarded to top entries in a wide range of categories. We are excited to announce that this year marks the inaugural year for two new trophies! Announcing the Noyo Chapter Youth Trophy for entrants ages 18 and under in hopes we can foster some young rhodie lovers. The Ted Steinhardt Memorial Trophy honors a beloved member of the Noyo ARS and gives you a chance to compete for "Best Foliage". Check www.noyochapterars.org for more information on entering.

The Rhododendron Show is free to view and open to the public from 9AM to 5PM on Saturday and 10AM to 4PM on Sunday. A large selection of rhododendrons and other plants will be available for purchase. Local growers and Noyo Chapter ARS members will be on hand to answer questions and discuss the best plants for your garden.

Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens will also be open to visitors during the Rhododendron Show, regular admission rates apply. The Gardens is home to one of the nation’s largest collections of rhododendrons—many hybridized on the Mendocino Coast—and they promise to fill the formal gardens and woodlands with riotous color. The Gardens’ Rhododendron Collection includes over 124 species and 315 taxa. More than 1,000 rhododendrons can be seen blooming throughout the Gardens from early spring until June!

Join us at the Gardens as we celebrate spring and the annual Rhododendron Show. Please visit www.gardenbythesea.org for more information.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, April 28, 2024

ISIDRO BARAJAS, Geyserville/Ukiah. Petty theft-merchandise.

CARLOS BUDAR-MORALES, Ukiah. DUI, leaving scene of accident with property damage.

TYLER CALES, Willits. Domestic battery, parole violation.

JULIO DELCAMPO-VELAZQUEZ, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

WILLIAM HOAGLIN, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Stolen vehicle.

IAN SMYTH, Potter Valley. DUI causing bodily injury.

OLEN SOWERS, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

VICTOR TINAJERO, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

HUFFMAN'S PAL

As a taxpaying American, don’t you love it when Washington D.C. politicians use your tax dollars to do favors for their friends and colleagues?

I’m assuming you do, because that’s exactly what Jared Huffman is doing, and 75% of you voted for him.

Meet Ciara Emery. Ciara is RWE’s “Local Government and Stakeholder Engagement Manager.” That’s a fancy way of saying, she’s a lobbyist. Now why would this European based company pick Ciara Emery as their lobbyist here in Humboldt County? Because she previously worked for Jared Huffman of course!

Yes that’s right, the nearly half billion dollar wind farm that is headed our way courtesy of Congressman Jared Huffman is really nothing more than a Federally Funded handout to one of his good friends and former employees.

Sure we’ll get actual jobs eventually. Sure we’ll have (some) energy produced eventually. But Ciara is the person who is benefiting right NOW, and she is one of the people who will continue to benefit throughout this project.

So how do you feel about this clear conflict of interest with Jared Huffman and his employee-turned-lobbyist friend Ciara Emery? Does this change how you view the legitimacy of the project? I think we are all seeing the red flags now as select local individuals are preparing for lavish vacations (“planning trips”) at taxpayer expense. I think every intelligent person at this point has to really take the time to ask, if Jared Huffman is willing to do favors for Ciara Emery, what else is he willing to do, and what is the true value of this project? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not about bringing jobs or clean energy to Humboldt County. It’s about money…

There will be a meeting Monday, April 29th from 5-7 p.m. at Cal Poly Humboldt, BSS, Room 166 if you wish to make your voice heard.

Have a great night everyone!

Jason Brisendine

Eureka

HOW TO KILL A WOLF IN SOCIETY

by Jeffrey St. Clair

There are many ways to kill a wolf in America. But most of them are mundane and prosaic. They’re not likely to bring you acclaim and notoriety. Few will hear about your feat if you simply gun down a wolf from a helicopter, kill a wolf with an M-80 cyanide bomb, pour gas into a wolf den filled with pups and strike a match, put out a contract on a wolf with a hired killer from the government, track down a wolf with a drone and shoot it with a long-range rifle and telescopic scope, inject rat poison in an elk carcass and wait for wolves (and whoever else) to feed on it and die an agonizing death, run one over with your cybertruck or, like the current Governor of Montana, catch a wolf in a trap and then after it has struggled to free itself for a few painful days heroically shoot it.

But if you want to get your name in the papers and your drunken face on cable TV, you’ve got to be more creative. You can’t just be a routine sadist anymore, you’ve got to go the extra mile. You’ve got to bring your wolf torture to the people. Consider this: since wolves lost their protection under the Endangered Species Act more than 1,000 wolves are killed in the US each year, either by hunters, poachers or government wolf killers. They’re killed quietly, remorselessly, anonymously. Hardly anyone notices.

A Wyoming hombre named Cody Roberts set out to change all that. Roberts runs a trucking company in Daniel, Wyoming, a small town in the Green River valley southeast of Jackson. He’s a grown man who likes to post photos of himself on Facebook with animals that he’s killed: pheasants, elk, deer and a mountain lion. But merely posing with slaughtered wildlife didn’t get him that much acclaim. Then one day in late February, Roberts was out on his snowmobile, when he spotted a wolf, hit the throttle and began to chase it. All in good fun, you know. Ultimately, Roberts caught up with the terrified, exhausted animal and ran over it–twice, for good measure. He could have run over it a third time and no one would have given a damn. Like 85 percent of Wyoming, this section of the Green River Valley, cleaving between the Gros Ventre and Wind River Mountains, is a predator kill zone, which means you can kill pretty much any wolf you see, however you want to kill it and nobody will pay much attention, certainly not the government or CNN. Chasing down a wolf with your snowmobile and running over it repeatedly is a perfectly legal thing to do in Wyoming. Some even call it sport.

Then Roberts got the idea that would make him famous. Rather than put the injured wolf out of its misery (or, god forbid, find a vet to treat its wounds), why not take it back to town and show off his captive in society? So Roberts duct-taped the wolf’s mouth shut and hauled it all the way home to Daniel, population 158, where he took selfies of himself and his prize. In one photo, the grinning Roberts is holding a beer, as he squats next to the distressed animal, which biologists later estimated was little more than a pup, probably only nine months old. But in Wyoming, even pups are fair game. You can shoot them, trap them, cudgel them, poison them, burn them, and use them as jumps for your snowmobile. Nothing wrong with any of that, legally speaking.

Here’s where Roberts crossed the line that made his name. That evening, Cody took his prize to the oldest building in town, the Green River Bar. Ever a prankster, he walked into the saloon announcing that he’d found a “lost cattle dog.” The bartender, who knew something was up, said, “Cody, you better not bring in a fucking lion!”

It wasn’t a lion (this time, anyway). It was an angular, trembling, gravely injured wolf pup with a light gray coat–a wolf that could barely move. The wolf was now muzzled and had two collars strapped around its neck, a tracking collar and a shock collar. Roberts pulled the wolf around on a leash, showing off his mangled catch to the 30 or so patrons in the Green River Bar, many of them apparently his relatives. After a couple of hours of drinking and boasting, Roberts dragged the wolf out of this venerable establishment and shot it. Shot it dead.

Word of this inspiring spectacle soon spread, ultimately reaching the offices of Wyoming’s Game and Fish Department. An investigation was launched. Not into the wolf’s torture and death, which from the state of Wyoming’s point of view was a thing to be desired, but into how the wolf went social, how it got into town, into a bar, spending hours with humans without killing or even biting anyone, some of the patrons even petting and sympathizing with this wild canid of legendary ferocity. This was the line that must not be crossed. This was the act that must be punished. So Roberts was given a citation for the offense of illegally possessing warm-blooded wildlife. He was fined all of $250, a penalty Roberts gladly paid. One local told WyoFile that Roberts has “been going around town telling people it was worth it. $250? That’s a round for the bar.” It’s the price of fame…or infamy. The two are pretty much inseparable in American society these days.

* * *

Speaking of wolves: For the first time in 16 years, Oregon’s wolf population did not grow last year, but held steady at 178 wolves. The number of wolf packs declined from 24 in 2022 to 22 in 2023, while the number of successful breeding pairs fell from 17 to 15. Meanwhile, there were 36 recorded wolf deaths, 33 of the wolves killed by humans. At least 44 wolves illegally killed in Oregon since 2012. Meanwhile, 16 wolves were killed in response to “kill orders” issued by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife for 10 different packs, the most ever. The total number of wolves killed based on government orders is twice as many as the previous high of 8. Four other wolves died in vehicle strikes, two died natural deaths and one was shot, allegedly in self-defense. Oregon lost another 10 wolves, which were captured in the state and shipped for release in Colorado. Oregon’s wolf population had been expected to grow by 30% per year since reintroduction began in 2008. Instead, the growth rate for the past 8 years has been an anemic 6.3%.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I have long believed that Americans have long had it too good for far too long. If they were more worried about the origins of their next meal or shelter they’d be less inclined to be worried about Palestinians or Ukranians in awful nations they have never been to or didn’t even know where they were. If they had to worry about their next meal they’d be less inclined to worry so much about their gender of the day, their next orgasm or spend hundreds and thousands on tattoos and facial piercings.

We have had it good for far too long. We need a good economic collapse or war to shake things up again and remind people of what is important and what is not. I believe those times are coming and coming soon.