Mendocino County Today: Tuesday 4/30/24

Chilly | Apple Blossoms | Body ID | Flying Peacock | Boontling Classic | Ukiah Bliss | Museum Friday | Ed Notes | Noyo Harbor | Print Edition | Trillium Miracle | Mendo Pride | Spring Gala | The Children | Hellsgate Dam | Yesterday's Catch | Arcata Protest | Octopus Sculpture | CalRx Naloxone | 1967 Warriors | CA Budget | Indian Pipe | Going Medieval | Damn Movie | Aesthetic Criteria | Not Antisemitic | Mister Natural | Four-Letter Words | Cromford Mill

MINIMAL AMOUNTS OF CLOUD COVER this morning, other than high altitude cirrus, give way to cool morning temperatures in the 30's. Mild pleasant weather is expected today with colder temperatures expected overnight into Wednesday. Offshore flow and high pressure will promote warming and drying for the interior, late in the week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A clear & windy 47F on the coast this Tuesday morning. Really windy again today & tomorrow then less windy on Thursday. Good buddy Steve at KTVU says we will now get a lot of rain this weekend but the NWS says about half of a lot. Next week is also looking undecided?

DARSHAN MAYGINESS (Potter Valley): The beginning of a new Apple season, with the Jonathan in bloom. The black oaks are finally leafing out on the top of Mid.

OFFICIALS WORKING TO ID WOMAN’S BODY found in ocean near Fort Bragg; Time will be needed to identify the body due to its condition, according to authorities.

by Amy Moore

A body was found Friday off the coast south of Fort Bragg, officials said.

Multiple agencies coordinated in efforts to retrieve the body from the ocean. State Parks rescue swimmers reached the body and directed it to a rescue boat that transported the body to Noyo Harbor.

Mendocino County sheriff’s deputies found the body was female, but the absence of a wallet, identifying marks or characteristics made identification impossible.

Because the recovered body did not match any Mendocino County Missing Person’s cases, the Sheriff’s Office has expanded its search to neighboring counties, Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Quincy Cromer said Monday.

The Coroner’s Division will need more time to identify the body due to its condition, using DNA and dental records, Cromer said.

The cause or manner of death will not be released until a full autopsy is complete, including toxicology reports.

“All of those searches take time,” Cromer said.

Once the body is identified, the office will notify family members before releasing the individual’s name to the public.

Agencies that responded included the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, California State Parks and the Mendocino Volunteer Fire Department.

Anyone with information about the body may call the Mendocino Sheriff’s Office at 707-463-4086. Information can also be provided anonymously through the non-emergency tip line at 707-234-2100.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

BOONVILLE CLASSIC THIS SUNDAY

Less than a week until the 39th Annual Boontling Classic 5k Footrace! Come join us for a beautiful morning in Boonville! All ages welcome and encouraged to attend. Local t-shirts printed by the Anderson Valley AV SkateparkProject and lots of wonderful raffle prizes, courtesy of our generous Anderson Valley businesses! Register online at the link below or starting at 8:30 am on the morning of the race. Can't wait to see you there!

BLISSED OUT IN UKIAH

Warmest spiritual greetings,

The Ukiah haiku poetry festival on Sunday at the civic center was fantastic!  The readings were followed by a performance by a ukulele band, with free cookies and lemonade.  Meandered over to Alex R. Thomas Jr. plaza, which was full of locals having a very good time.  This spurred me on to the Ukiah Brewing Company for a couple of pints of Noyo Harbor IPA and a shot o' Green Dot.  Later, visited Villa Del Mar on South State Street for a delicious chile relleno and cheese enchilada combination plate.  

I am presently doing nothing of any particular importance in the Golden State.  I am available for frontline radical environmental and related peace&justice direct action.  Or, I could just be enlightened, knowing my true nature is bliss, while keeping track of the imploding world and its insane politics by reading newspapers, and eventually go back to Godhead.  You are welcome to contact me at any time.  For real.

Craig Louis Stehr, craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

FIRST FRIDAY AT GRACE HUDSON--MAY 3

This Friday, May 3rd, Grace Hudson Museum will once again be open from 5 to 8 p.m. Visitors can treat themselves to the newest special exhibition, "Deep Roots, Spreading Branches: Fine Woodworking of the Krenov School." The show focuses on the over 40-year history of this world-renowned school in Ft. Bragg, and features craft furniture and woodwork by founder and guiding spirit James Krenov, current and former instructors, and a number of talented students.

Visitors will also be treated to musical entertainment by the Jazz Dudes (Pierre Archain and Barney McClure) accompanied by singer Roseanne Wetzel. All the galleries will be open too, so that visitors can get acquainted or reacquainted with Grace Hudson’s artwork, fine Pomo basketry, and Hudson-Carpenter family history. Plus, Ziggy will be leading tours of the Wild Gardens, which are in bloom with spring colors.

Admission is free to all and modest refreshments will be available. The Grace Hudson Museum is at 431 S. Main St. in Ukiah. For more information please go to www.gracehudsonmuseum.org or call (707) 467-2836.

ED NOTES

A COAST RESIDENT COMPLAINS, “Mendocino, the Scotch Broom is out of control, is anything going to be done about this?”

PROBABLY NOT. Knowledgeable people have told me that Round-Up is the only sure kill for the hardy, proliferating plant, as hardy and resilient as the people of its native land. But what right-minded person wants to resort to Round-up to exterminate it? 

PAMPAS GRASS, to my mind, presents worse visuals, and is also nearly impossible to eradicate. The sole vista-destroyer on the Lost Coast Trail are the occasional clumps of Pampas Grass, which surely can't have been deliberately introduced into an otherwise paradisiacal wilderness.

THE CAMPUS DEMONSTRATIONS seem harmless from here, the International Desk at the Anderson Valley Advertiser. Other than a few scuffles, there hasn't been any real violence. Some Jewish students feel threatened, while many other Jewish students are with the demonstrators, but feelings are hardly grounds for college administration to call the cops, although I have to admit I did get a laugh at a young woman, a Columbia student presumably, and undoubtedly cosseted all her young life, being hauled gently off for trespassing as she screamed, “I'm being seriously violated.” As any veteran of the 60s demonstrations in San Francisco can tell you, being truly seriously violated was then part of the arrest process.

I'VE TOLD this story before — I've probably told all my stories before — but I'll make it quick for you newcomers to these cyber-pages while I have you trapped. It was a cool night in, I dunno, '68 I think, when my brother and I joined a protest against Field Marshall Ky, one of the thugs briefly atop the stooged Vietnamese government who was staying at the then-most expensive hotel in the city, the Fairmont, all expenses paid by the American taxpayer. 

AS ALWAYS wary of Frisco's tactical squad, all big guys wielding fungo-bat length billy clubs, we stayed to the rear of the phalanx of protesters arrayed across the street from the hotel where the Tac Squad lined the sidewalk at the grand entrance as if the protest might bullrush the place. We knew it was only a matter of time before the big boys charged the protest because clashes were part of the choreography of the time. We knew we'd have to be ready to hop the fence at the Pacific Union Club to make our escape when the cops kicked off the inevitable mayhem. 

THIS VIOLENT OCCASION may have been the very last time a left-lib male dared shout, “Chicks up front!” And perhaps also the very last time a dozen of so “chicks” got up front and sat down, the strategy pegged to the utterly naive notion that the Tac Squad would not attack women, that the women would serve as a barrier to the wuss-wamps standing safely, they thought, behind their wives and love interests. 

NO SOONER had the chicks assumed the seated position, someone from our ranks threw a balloon full of red paint up against the wall of the venerable Fairmont, and here came the fungo boys charging across the street clubbing everyone in sight. 

BRO and I hopped the fence and beat feet past the rear of that ruling class bastion, the most exclusive club in the city, where a cook, chef's hat and checkered kitchen trousers, yelled, “Hey! You can't run through here.” One of us straight-armed him into a garbage can (I don't recall doing it) and kept running, veering back over to California Street and continuing west. 

DOUBLING back an hour or so later because we lived in Chinatown on the Bay side of the Fairmont and had to get around it to get home without a long, hilly detour downtown, the Tac Squad was still chasing likely individuals up and down the street, assaulting, I read the next day, a tourist couple who'd wandered out of the Mark Hopkins for a look at the excitement.

UNLIKELY that the forces of law and order will manhandle today's student demonstrators, what with all the cameras on hand, besides which the cops, like everyone else, are ruled by accountants and liability lawyers, not the primitive unwitessed passions of yesteryear.

NOT RED ANYMORE

Editor,

Thank you guys for your work in putting out the print edition over the years. I've had a subscription since the 90s, probably when I first picked up a copy at City Lights. I can read it online, but I'm of an age that still appreciates scanning a paper. I'll miss the obscure quotes in the margins.

This reminds me of the surprisingly pointed joke made at the 2012 White House Correspondent's Dinner by Jimmy Kimmel to a gathering of media elites: "What's black and white and red all over? Nothing, anymore."

Good Health and Thanks Again,

Michael Rosentreter

Vancouver, Washington

YOU SHOULD NEVER PICK A TRILLIUM. 

Here's why: 

1. It takes 9 years after germination for a trillium to flower. 

2. Each flower yields only ONE seed pod each year. 

3. Each plant can live up to 25 years, and gains all of its nourishment for the remainder of the year during the spring when its leaves are present. 

4. Trillium are propagated by ANTS. Not bees, the wind, or birds. The seeds are covered by a sweet coating which entices the ants to carry seeds underground into their colonies. After eating the coating, the seed germinates in the perfect subterranean environment. 

Every trillium in the forest is essentially a little miracle.

MENDO PRIDE HOPLAND: Celebrating Love and Inclusion in Mendocino County

After last year’s joyful success, Hopland is excited to announce the return of Mendo Pride, a family-friendly event celebrating love and inclusivity in Mendocino County. The event will take place on Saturday, May 18th from 1-5 pm in Hopland, CA., followed by a drag show at 6pm at the Hopland Taphouse.

Mendo Pride is a collaborative effort of community members and organizations that are committed to promoting LGBTQ+ rights and acceptance. We are proud to work alongside our partners ACLC, Hopland Tap, Hopland VISION, Ranchomatic Studios, The Hoplander, KZYX Radio, Concrete Pete, Dancing Crow Vineyards and Pride Radio, who share our vision of creating an inclusive space for Everyone!

The event will feature music by Pride Radio, beer and wine, food, art vendors, and other fun activities. This will be a great opportunity for the queer community and allies to come together and celebrate the progress we have made towards a more inclusive society, while recognizing that there is still work to be done.

In addition, all proceeds from the event will go to La Familia Sana, a non-profit organization that assists underserved people with food and support services. This is an opportunity for the community to come together and support a great cause while having a great time.

"We are thrilled to host Mendo Pride again this year and showcase the diverse and vibrant LGBTQ+ community in Mendocino County," said Joan Norry. "Our hope is that this event will continue to build bridges of understanding and acceptance, and that we can all work together towards a future where everyone feels safe and welcomed."

For more information on Mendo Pride and how to get involved, please share our event: facebook.com/events/402400762486546

‘THE CHILDREN’

A post-production commentary

by Marylyn Motherbear Scott 

Author — Lucy Kirkwood,

Director — Ann Woodhead

Produced by Mendocino Theater Company

Cast — 

HAZEL - Pamela W. Allen; 

ROSE - Torri Truss; 

ROBIN - Charlie Herman 

A great wave rose up covering all that is, all that breathes, all that exchanges breath upon the earth, 

The church bells sounded from beneath the sea

Time ceased

There is a long expanse 

A coastline of wind and water —

She, and We, of Conscience, ask Why? 

Why a nuclear power plant creating an unstable core that can destroy all life upon earth?

The Children both name and focus of this play, are never seen; but referred to frequently.

Not just their children, not just ours; it is the children of the world, the young ones called upon to resolve the criticle issue of nuclear devastation.

As the wave recedes, Three survivors are revealed — Hazel and Robin, a couple, living outside the exclusionary zone; and Rose, a surprise visitor and colleague.

All are retired nuclear physicists. These characters, these“actors” regarding the nuclear issue, have become aware of their part.

Hazel, Robin and Rose, so named metaphorically, represent the flora and fauna of earth. 

Hazel — the deep rooted, long growing hazelnut tree. Hazel nuts are known to improve a person’s health and protect against cell damage. The hazelnut supports the heart, even improves sperm count.

HAZEL, Thr character, ia mother of four children. She would support all attempts to outlive the devastation of the nuclear meltdown that has occurred.

Robin — the herald of springtime and fertility; brings a certain sweetness and faith in earth’s ability to renew. Robin the character, leaves each day to tend the cows. Grassseating cows are the symbol of nurturance and motherhood, an abundant provider of milk and meat for the world. 

ROBIN, with Hazel, is father of four. Along with the cowa he tends,, he represents love and protection.

Rose — the beautiful blood-red flower, albeit with thorns in its stem, is a symbol of a higher love. Calm and comforting, its scent is uplifting. The red rose symbolizes the passion of Christ and the blood of the martyrs. The rose is associated also with the purity of Aphrodite, the Virgin Mary and with Our Lady of Guadalupe, the miraculous presence of roses in mid-winter. 

ROSE, the character, is a thorn in Hazel’s side and an upbeat in Robin’s heart.

Hazel and Robin are married. While Robin is out tending the cows, Hazel is surprised by an unannounced visit, after 38 years, from their colleague, Rose. Hazel heard that Rose had died; but here she is. The thin veil between the living and dead is established here, at the beginning of the play, with many reveals throughout.

This veil lifts and falls throughout the play, as the triangle of colleagues — friends and lovers — review their history, fidelities and betrayals. Complicity hangs in the balance. It is the real reason Rose has returned to the scene of the Great Wave. She wants to put together a team of retired nuclear physicists to work on resolving the meltdown. Knowledgeable and experienced, Hazel and Robin would complete the team.

Rose wants to set things right, to weigh in on the moral side of the dilemma, hopefully to take “the children”— young adults presently at work — out of the danger zone. A noble sacrifice.

Hazel, the long, living tree of life, wants to live out her years, cries out in resistance,

I am not old. 

Robin is present and not so present Like the springtime bird itself, here to remind us that love is what binds us; and, winteer will come. 

As the play ends, Robin has packed his bags.

Hazel takes up her yoga practice. 

Shortly after Rose joins in. 

Robin gets a mop and attempts to clean up the seepage coming from under the bathroom door. A literal metaphor for cleaning up the messes we make..

Once again the Great Wave is rising. The sea-blue-green walls of the cabin now make sense. We hear the sounding of the church bells from under the sea. We can almost feel the water gather round our ankles. 

The Children a cautionary tale. It is courageously written by the young award-winning playwright, Lucy Kirkwood, soon to opening a new play in New York 

While kept within the back-and-forth banter of the once-upon-a-time close companions, the backdrop of the play recalls the disaster of the Fukushima meltdown off the coast and of Japan in 2011. Despite its seriousness, the play has its fair share of humor,, offering the audience a way to open to the truth of the matter.

Mendocino Theatre Company’s production of The Children is well-crafted on every level. The stagecrafters all as good as ever. 

Ann Woodhead’s direction is excellent; the masks are removed. 

Pamela Allen”s Hazel is played to the height of constrained hysteria, her caring nature the compass.

Torri Truss’s Rose offers an open heart and hidden agenda, masked martyrdom.

Charlie Herman”s Robin has a childish playfulness while burying the truth.

Each have secrets; trying to keep the lid on.

None of us really want to face such daunting truth, none want to face our own level of complicity. However, in order for us to think about what we bring to the table, our legacy, we must look into the dark mirror hoping to find a beam of light to share with the world one that gives hope to the children.

* * *

For information regarding upcoming productions, (707) 937-4477 --- www.mendocinotheatre.org

KELLY HOUSE MUSEUM: On this day in Mendocino history…

April 29, 1950 - The Mendocino Beacon reported that the Union Lumber Company had demolished Hellsgate Dam on the Southfork of Big River. This dam, which was used for logging operations from 1913 until 1937, was located about 40 miles upstream from Mendocino.

In his 1991 book, “Big River Was Dammed,” W. Francis Jackson documented 27 dams that operated on Big River. Remote logging camps used the water collected behind these dams to transport their harvested trees down the river to the Mendocino Mill. When the water behind the dams was released, man-made flash floods drove the logs downstream.

In late 1912, the Mendocino Lumber Company hired John Norberry, the head machinist for the Glen Blair Mill Company, to build a dam near a logging camp that had been operating in the Hells Gate area for three years. Norberry employed men from the camp to help with construction, which took four months. By Jackson’s count, Hellsgate was the 22nd dam built on Big River but only the third built with the aid of machinery. A small pile driver was used to build the base.

Hellsgate Dam was 33 feet high and 200 feet wide at the top. It backed water up for nearly two miles and took almost five hours to drain. In January 1913, the dam was used for the first time. Although construction was not completely finished, Woods Superintendent Ed Boyle went out to the dam and tripped the gates, washing 6,000 logs into the main river where they floated downstream to the mill.

After the Mendocino Mill shut down for the last time in 1938, the Hellsgate Dam was no longer needed and prevented fish from swimming upstream. The Beacon reported that “it was destroyed to make Big River an even better fishing stream for the hordes of fishermen who visit this coast each year.”

(kelleyhousemuseum.org)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, April 29, 2024

ANDRES AYALA-ORTIZ, Ukiah. Battery with serious injury, elder abuse, conspiracy.

LUIS AYALA-ORTIZ, Ukiah. Battery with serious injury, elder abuse, conspiracy, probation revocation.

CESAR DELCAMPO-VELASQUEZ, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ROBERT JAMES SR., Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, suspended license.

KATHRYN JONES, Clearlake/Ukiah. Petty theft, conspiracy.

CORTEZ LITTLE, Arcata/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JEREMY UNDERWOOD, Palo Alto/Ukiah. Parole violation.

DANIEL VANHORN, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

BENJAMIN ZAHNISER, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Petty theft, conspiracy.

A SMALL CAMPUS IN THE REDWOODS HAS THE NATION’S MOST ENTRENCHED PROTEST

Pro-Palestinian protesters have occupied the administration building at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, for the past week and forced a campus closure until May 10.

by Jonathan Wolfe, reporting from Arcata, Calif.

When university administrators across the nation worry about the potential fallout from campus protests, they may have Siemens Hall in mind.

The building at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, includes the campus president’s office and has been occupied for a week by pro-Palestinian protesters who barricaded themselves inside and fought off an early attempt by the police to remove them. Protesters have since tagged walls and renamed it “Intifada Hall” by ripping off most of the signage on the brick exterior.

Inside, they painted graffiti messages like “Time 2 Free Gaza,” “Pigs Not Allowed,” and “Land Back,” according to a video posted by the local news site Redheaded Blackbelt. They occupied and defaced the office of the president, Tom Jackson Jr., spraying “Blood On Your Hands” across one framed wall hanging and “I Will Live Free or Die Trying” on his door.

The school, situated more than 275 miles north of San Francisco among the ancient coastal redwoods that drip with fog mist, is the site of the nation’s most entrenched campus protest. It has gone well beyond the encampments seen on many college quads elsewhere; at Cal Poly Humboldt, protesters took over the power center of the campus and have rejected increasingly desperate entreaties from officials for them to vacate the premises.

The university has shut down the entire campus, first for a couple days, then a week and now through May 10, one day before its scheduled commencement. After the Siemens Hall takeover, protesters set up dozens of tents on patches of grass around the hall, and demonstrators took over a second building to use its bathrooms and hold meetings. University officials estimate the damage to be in the millions of dollars.

To those outside Northern California, the show of force at Cal Poly Humboldt, in the college town of Arcata, has been a surprising turn in a region more typically associated with a hippie pacifism and marijuana farms. But beneath the good-vibes image, locals say, a culture of protest and resentment toward authority has percolated at the 6,000-student campus.

“Because of the long history of activism, we recognize that putting a tent out in front of the building may not be as effective of a statement for a student protest,” said Anthony Silvaggio, who is a professor and the chair of the school’s sociology department and was a student at the university in the 1990s. 

The majestic redwoods in the region draw tourists from across the world; nearby, visitors can drive through a tree with a 21-foot diameter. The forests also have satisfied the thirst for lumber in the growing West as far back as the early Gold Rush days when San Francisco became a boomtown.

The natural beauty and the timber industry have long been at odds, however.The region was an early battleground in the “timber wars,” in which environmentalists fought against logging companies to prevent the destruction of old growth forests across the Pacific Northwest in the 1980s and 1990s. Perhaps the most famous protest of that era occurred in Humboldt County, where the activist Julia Butterfly Hill lived for 738 days in a California redwood that she named Luna.

Cal Poly Humboldt had modest beginnings, opening in 1914 as the Humboldt State Normal School to educate schoolteachers, starting with a graduating class of 15 women. Its academic mission expanded over the next century to offer a breadth of subjects, including forestry. (The school mascot is the Lumberjacks).

The campus is isolated from most of California, requiring at least a five-hour drive to reach San Francisco or Sacramento. Only 2 percent of undergraduates are Jewish, according to Hillel International, and the campus does not seem to have an active Jewish organization.

Pro-Palestinian protesters have made several demands since taking over Siemens Hall on April 22, including that the school disclose its holdings with Israel, divest from companies profiting from military action in Gaza, cut ties with Israeli universities and that charges against three students who were arrested the first night be dropped. They also want the university to call for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Cal Poly Humboldt leaders replied point by point, disclosing the school’s holdings and collaborations with Israel in an attempt “to make a good faith effort to respond.” By Friday, however, administrators had seemingly had enough. They told building occupiers that they had a brief “opportunity to leave with a guarantee of no immediate arrest.” A spokeswoman for the university said several protesters left the building, but protesters disputed that there had been any desertion in their ranks.

On Sunday night, the president’s team again asked them to “leave the campus peacefully now,” but this time with no offer of immunity.

The university said in a statement that the protest had “nothing to do with free speech or freedom of inquiry” and called the protests “lawless behavior” that harmed students, damaged the school’s reputation and “drained resources from the accomplishment of our core educational purpose.”

Demonstrators see it differently.

“The graffiti, the destruction of property, all of that is a poetic symbolism to me, because the ultimate overall point is that people are more valuable than property,” said Cozy Hunter, 32, a graduate student in social psychology academic research.

In 2019, Mr. Jackson became the president at Humboldt after having served the same role at Black Hills State University in South Dakota. Mr. Jackson, a veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve, was instrumental in transforming the campus into a polytechnic university, one of three in California, that places an added emphasis on STEM disciplines. The revamp came with $458 million from the state, a welcome infusion of cash at a school that was at risk of closure as enrollment declined over the years.

“I’m an engineer, so when he brought in the money and turned this into a Cal Poly, that was really cool because we had done cuts for years,” Jim Graham, a professor of geospatial science, said.

While previous campus presidents engaged with student protesters and generally allowed sit-ins, Mr. Jackson was more distant and took a harder-line approach, Mr. Graham said. 

In November, after the university discovered that some students were living in their vehicles on campus because they could not afford housing, the school ordered them to move out or face disciplinary action. In 2022, Mr. Jackson apologized for comments he made during a welcome address that some saw as an attempt to hide reports of sexual assault in the campus community.

“That was sort of the beginning of him totally disappearing,” said Cindy Moyer, the chair of the university’s Department of Dance, Music and Theater. “He does not appear to take controversy well.”

Mr. Jackson was unavailable for comment, according to a spokeswoman. But last Friday, he told the local Times-Standard newspaper that the protesters were “criminals” and did not rule out sending in police at some point. “Everything is on the table,” he said.

Bob Ornelas, who is a former mayor of Arcata and a graduate of the university, said that the response to the protest in the community, which is largely liberal, has been “a really mixed bag.” Mr. Ornelas, 70, said many residents are sympathetic but also anxious about the effects on local business and concerned about potential divisiveness in the community.

Since the protests started, the 32-room Hotel Arcata has lost about $1,000 per day to cancellations, whether for special events or rooms for the families of graduates, said Sherrie Potter, 55, the hotel’s general manager. The university has not canceled commencement, though many wonder how it will still take place.

“I understand where they’re coming from, I do,” Ms. Potter said of the protesters. “But I’m torn. I also see how this is hurting the college and the businesses around it, including our own.”

Protesters said they initially wanted to stage a sit-in and bring their concerns directly to administrators. When the local police showed up in riot gear, they feared for their safety, and began barricading themselves inside, they said. Most refused to give their names because they feared retribution from the university and said they did not want to be doxxed.

“The rate of acceleration, and the escalation, was so shockingly high,” said Rouhollah Aghasaleh, an assistant professor in education who has tried to facilitate communication between protesters and the university. 

Over the weekend, as the likelihood of a police incursion increased, protesters beefed up the barricades that blocked off their encampment with chain-link fences, rows of chairs and large sheets of glass. In a nod to the past environmental protests in the area, they installed a “tree sit” about 60 feet up in a redwood near the quad, with a wooden platform that had the phrases “Free Gaza” and “End Empire.” The protester manning the perch — who would not give a name, other than “Ripples” — settled in with a mattress pad, sleeping bag and crank radio.

“A tree sitter actually indicates that there’s a desire for a much longer occupation,” Ms. Hunter, the graduate student, said. “Because a tree sitter — especially in this region after Julia Butterfly Hill — is just like, ‘Oh, I’m down to sit for Palestine until there is complete U.S. divestment.’ That’s essentially what that move means.”

(nytimes.com)

CALIFORNIA WILL SOON HAVE ITS OWN OPIOID REVERSAL DRUG — FOR A FRACTION OF THE PRICE

by Sophia Bollag

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday that California will soon purchase opioid overdose-reversal drug naloxone below the current market rate through the state’s prescription drug label, CalRx.

“California is disrupting the drug industry with CalRx,” Newsom said in a statement. “The state is now set to purchase life-saving naloxone for almost half of the current market price — maximizing taxpayer dollars and saving more lives with this miracle drug.”

California is contracting with Amneal Pharmaceuticals, which last week secured federal approval for its over-the-counter naloxone nasal spray, a generic version of the brand-name drug Narcan. California will pay $24 for a two-pack of the spray, 40% below the current price, according to Newsom’s office.

The $24 price includes shipping and handling, but does not include sales tax, according to a copy of the contract.

California will begin purchasing the new, less expensive naloxone next month, said Rodger Butler, a spokesperson for the California Health and Human Services Agency.

Dr. Mark Ghaly, who leads the agency, said that unlike a typical contract to buy a drug already being produced by a pharmaceutical company, California pursued the agreement through CalRx while the drug was still in development. That allowed the state to use its huge purchasing power as the home to nearly 40 million Americans to negotiate a lower price and secure a significant supply up front. Ghaly said that California’s early commitment to purchase a large quantity of Amneal’s naloxone may have helped bring the drug to market sooner.

“We’ve enabled, through CalRx, the manufacturing of a low-cost (over-the-counter) naloxone option that without us may not have come to market this quickly or at this volume,” he told reporters on a call Monday morning.

State purchasing records show that California state agencies have contracted with Narcan manufacturer Emergent BioSolutions Inc. to purchase more than $238 million worth of the drug since 2018.

Newsom and lawmakers previously approved more than $150 million through 2027 to distribute naloxone to police, community organizations and county agencies to combat the state’s opioid overdose crisis. That money comes from the state’s Opioid Settlements Fund, which consists of money paid to the state by drugmakers and distributors accused of perpetuating the opioid addiction crisis.

Last year, California’s Department of Health Care Services spent $75 million in state opioid funds on Narcan, according to state purchasing records. The department paid $41 per unit of Narcan, meaning the state received about 2 million units of the drug.

In the state budget passed last year, Newsom and lawmakers agreed to spend another $35.8 million on naloxone in the 2024-25 fiscal year from the Opioid Settlements Fund. Newsom and lawmakers are still hammering out details of next year’s state budget, including how to deal with a huge deficit, meaning the precise amount of money that will be spent on naloxone could change.

Newsom announced his plans to have the state contract with a pharmaceutical company to manufacture naloxone a little more than a year ago. Because Amneal Pharmaceuticals already secured approval from the federal Food and Drug Administration, California is on track to have CalRx-branded naloxone available before CalRx-branded insulin, the first medication Newsom announced the state would work to produce in January 2020.

Newsom signed the state law authorizing CalRx in September 2020, which directed the state’s Health and Human Services Agency to partner with drugmakers that could produce cheaper generic alternatives to existing drugs that are no longer protected by patents. Newsom has approved $100 million in state funding for the project.

The Newsom administration is working on a way for people outside of state government to purchase CalRx-branded naloxone, but that option isn’t yet available, Butler said. 

(SF Chronicle)

IN THE FACE OF DEFICITS, GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM AND LAWMAKERS HAVE LARGELY RELIED ON ACCOUNTING GIMMICKS TO KEEP FINANCES AFLOAT. THAT WON’T WORK MUCH LONGER.

by Emily Hoeven

In a few weeks, Gov. Gavin Newsom will unveil his updated budget plan for the fiscal year that begins July 1. 

Pray for the best but expect the worst.

After several years of unprecedented budget surpluses — buoyed by federal stimulus funds and a stock market on steroids — California’s financial outlook has turned grim. This may seem counterintuitive: the stock market recently soared to record highs. But California is suffering from a unique combination of factors. It significantly overestimated its revenues last year — largely because the Internal Revenue Service pushed back by seven months the deadline for most Californians to file their 2022 tax returns due to intense winter storms — and now has to course-correct. And it’s still reeling from high interest rates, which depressed investment in the tech industry and start-up companies on which California’s economy heavily depends. 

When Newsom presented his budget draft in January, his administration estimated the state faced a $38 billion shortfall. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, which advises state lawmakers on financial issues, projected a deficit of $73 billion. The actual shortfall will largely depend on how much revenue California collected last week when personal income taxes were due. 

Although receipts are still being tallied, the state appears to be on track to reach Newsom’s estimate for April personal income tax revenue — but corporate tax revenue is lagging behind projections. Newsom and lawmakers need to proceed with caution and fiscal restraint. 

California’s budget problem is big — and it isn’t going away anytime soon. 

The Newsom administration and the Legislative Analyst’s Office project that California will face deficits in the tens of billions of dollars for at least the next few fiscal years. The state has the nation’s highest unemployment rate, at 5.3%, and is struggling to pay off its growing debt to the federal government, from which it borrowed tens of billions of dollars to pay jobless claims during the pandemic. And significant economic uncertainty looms, not least from the upcoming presidential election. 

Yet there are significant political incentives for Newsom and lawmakers to minimize the risk of these threats. 

Cutting funding for programs is never popular, but it’s especially contentious in a high-stakes election year. 

Longtime Sacramento lobbyist Chris Micheli described to me an ongoing “insatiable appetite to spend” among the state’s interest groups. Just this week state lawmakers advanced legislation to create a single-payer health care system, which analysts estimate could cost as much as $391 billion annually — about $100 billion more than the entire state budget in Newsom’s January plan. They also faced demands from the mayors of some of California’s biggest cities to establish an ongoing source of state funding for homelessness programs. Ironically, that ask came just days after a scathing state audit found that California failed to measure the effectiveness of the $24 billion it spent on housing and homelessness programs over the past five fiscal years. 

And the steps Newsom and lawmakers have taken to address California’s budget woes largely amount to moving deck chairs around on a sinking ship. 

For example, a grab bag of mostly one-time tricks reduced the deficit by $17 billion. On top of some cuts, this includes borrowing money internally from special state accounts, shifting $1.6 billion in state employee wages to the next fiscal year by postponing payroll by one day and delaying billions in payments, most of which were approved during the recent budget bonanzas but haven’t yet actually gone out the door. 

Such accounting maneuvers may help close the budget gap on paper, but many are gimmicks, not long-term solutions.

H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for Newsom’s Department of Finance, acknowledged this criticism but asked, “If you choose not to do that … where would you reduce spending?” 

It’s a question the state can’t afford to put off any longer. 

Luckily, California is better positioned to weather this economic downturn than it was during the Great Recession, when it had basically no money in its reserves and was forced to make devastating cuts to critical safety-net programs. In 2014, voters approved a ballot measure that, among other things, increased the maximum size of the state’s reserves and required it to pay down debts faster. 

The state now has more than $20 billion in its main reserve account. One big question facing Newsom and lawmakers is whether to tap into these savings to close the deficit — and, if so, how much. In January, Newsom proposed using about half the reserve funds, but he hasn’t yet reached a consensus with legislators. 

But this also delays a reckoning with the inevitable.

“Our estimates imply that it’s more likely than not that they won’t have enough funding to pay for all of the current obligations that are planned,” Brian Uhler, a deputy legislative analyst at the Legislative Analyst’s Office, told me. 

Indeed, the office found that California would need to bring in roughly $50 billion more per year in tax revenue than forecasted by the Newsom administration to sustain current proposed spending levels. 

This leaves Newsom and lawmakers with two difficult and politically unappealing options: cut spending or increase revenues. And as Newsom has vowed not to raise taxes, that means the state needs to reduce expenditures. 

“The more hard choices we make this year, the less hard it’ll be this year and the following year,” state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, who leads the Senate Budget Committee, told me. 

Legislators have until June 15 to pass a balanced budget, and Newsom must sign it before July 1. As negotiations continue, Newsom and lawmakers need to be honest with themselves — and with us — about the state’s financial situation. Delaying pain for too long will only hurt worse later. 

(SF Chronicle)

INDIAN PIPE

This fascinating plant (Monotropa uniflora) is definitely one of nature’s weird wonders. Because it has no chlorophyll and doesn’t depend on photosynthesis, this ghostly white plant is able to grow in the darkest of forests. Many people refer to this strange plant as Indian pipe fungus, but it is not a fungus at all – it just looks like one. It is actually a flowering plant, and believe it or not, it is a member of the blueberry family.

PEP TALK ON A DARK DAY

by James Kunstler

“We live in an age of full spectrum deception.” — Edward Dowd

You realize, don’t you, that what’s going on in our country is the collapse not just of an empire, or an economy, but a comprehensive paradigm of human progress. The hallmark of post-war life in Western Civ was supposed to be a return to sanity after the mid-twentieth century fugue of mass psychotic violence. The wish for just and rational order was not entirely pretense. But that was then. Now that we are going medieval on ourselves, the not-so-ironic result will be our literally going medieval, sinking back into a pre-modern existence of darkness, superstition, and penury, grubbing for a mere subsistence in the shadow of scuffling hobgoblins, our achievements lost and forgotten.

What’s most appalling is that our governing apparatus is visibly willing that to happen. When Barack Obama warned America to not underestimate Joe Biden’s ability to fuck things up, was that some kind of joke? After all, it was Mr. Obama and his fellow blobsters — the cabal of Intel spooks, covert Marxist bureaucrats, lawfare ninjas, globalist megalomaniacs, post-liberal think tankers, weapons grifters, degenerate billionaires, and assorted mentally-ill camp followers — who inflicted Joe Biden on the body politic. And then ran him on the country like some demon algorithm designed to wreck the USA as fast as possible.

The source of anguish in all that is the struggle to understand why they would want that to happen. What debauched sense of history would drive anyone to such lunatic desperation? It’s a cliché now to say that the Democratic Party has turned its traditional moral scaffold upside down and inside out. It acts against the kitchen table interests of the working and middle classes. It’s against civil liberties. It demands mental obedience to patently insane policy. It’s avid for war, no matter how cruelly pointless. It’s deliberately stirring up racial hatred. It despises personal privacy. It feeds a rogue bureaucracy that has become a veritable Moloch, an all-devouring malevolent deity. And now, rather suddenly, it aligns itself with a faction that seeks to exterminate the Jews.

And how did the opposition to that epic divergence into bad faith turn so flabby? How did the Republican Party roll over and wheeze so feebly while the FBI ran amok swatting grandmothers in dawn raids, and the US attorney general made justice a whore, and a Republican Congress allowed the Frankenstein agency of Homeland Security to flood the country with its enemies and give them gobs of operational cash? If Mr. Trump was unappetizing to them as a leader, why were they unable to produce an alternative figure of standing and stature at least equally resolute? They look like traitors and cowards.

For the moment, the country lies mired, inert, and demoralized in the face of in those terrible mysteries. But events are still tending and the hidden hand of emergence still operates backstage, preparing surprises for us. You are necessarily aware that the center did not hold. It’s even hard to locate where the center used to be with the action so heavy on the far-out margins. You’re watching drag queens importune young children to shove all the Jews into the sea. And the kids are sitting next to their mommies. What happened to the mommies’ brains that permits them to think this spectacle is okay? How will the mommies ever get their minds right?

In some quarters, a great rage is building. Not a few resent the overthrow of common sense, common law, and common decency. You better believe they will be aiming to do something about it. They will stand up for their dignity, their culture, their history. Virtue isn’t dead; it’s just broke down on a lonely highway waiting to hitch a ride back to where the lights are still on. Don’t forget that this really is the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Meanwhile, prepare for action. It’s obvious that the enemies of the people don’t intend to rest. They are going to try to play out this string to the last move because otherwise a lot of them will be going to jail, or might even hang for their wickedness. Once they turned criminal, there was no turning back. They have dishonored themselves and they’re trying to dishonor their country.

It’s true nonetheless that we’re moving into a new disposition of the human project. It’s going to be smaller and leaner, and not nearly as complex as the tottering Rube Goldberg apparatus we’re currently trapped in. We don’t know yet what the shape and texture of that America is going to be. As the sage Yogi Berra observed, our whole future is ahead of us. If you’re not among the insane, have faith. We’ll get there and everything is going to be all right.

BILL KIMBERLIN:

Screening Room D, Industrial Light and Magic.,1982. I am sitting just to the right, and behind George Lucas. You can see the storyboards of "Star Wars" on the back wall. We are trying to figure out how to make this damn movie.

“IF YOU CRUSH A COCKROACH, you're a hero. If you crush a beautiful butterfly, you're a villain. Morals have aesthetic criteria.”

— Nietzsche

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I believe the Israeli government is committing genocide in Gaza and that we are complicit by providing the weapons and money to achieve it. It is not antisemitism to express that. It is also not antisemitism to note that Israel and Jewish groups in America (e.g., AIPAC) have an undue influence on our government. It’s time to get our independence back before Israel drags us into attacking Iran and creating a regional conflict or worse. As for the students on the college campuses, they have the right to express their opinions without being labeled antisemitic. I say that with the knowledge that in any large group on protesters, there will be a few who say hateful things. I respect the Israeli people, but some of their politicians have said very hateful things about the Gazans.

FOUR-LETTER WORDS

by Kingsley Amis

I’m concerned with words rather than ideas in this discussion, although I know well enough that there is a connection between the two. So if I think that present day writers make more fuss about physical sex than I care to do, or describe it in more detail than I find comfortable, that difference must await full treatment elsewhere. Suffice it for the moment that the change in what may be said has gone closely with how it may be said. 

Both these things, all these things, have changed a certain amount since I wrote my first novel, Lucky Jim, more than 40 years ago. No doubt with no more intention than to be friendly, to make intelligible the character of a hero, James Dixon, more recent critics have described him as a womanizing young man. Dixon could have wished no more flattering label for himself. But in fact his womanizing, what there is of it, is virtually limited to his imagination. All he actually does, briefly set out, is throw some sort of physical pass at one girl, and lay his hands on a clothed breast on another — the sort of womanizing that a modern hero would outdo in an opening paragraph. 

Incidentally, I was conscious of no unnatural restriction on me at the time, or later. 

By 1955, the world had moved on. In my second novel the hero is stated — not shown — to go to bed with a female, not his wife, and at another point a minor character is made to say of another, “I feel sorry for that poor bugger.” My publisher, Victor Galanz, telephoned to warn me that if I insisted on that six-letter word I might lose the 2,000 (I think) copies I would otherwise dispose of to (I think) Booth’s Book Lover’s Library. I considered briefly… “What about ‘bloody fool’?” I asked. “Perfectly acceptable,” said Victor. So it proved. I’ve never felt entirely easy about the change because “bugger” in such a context does not count as swearing. It is, or was, a friendly synonym for “chap” or “customer” in South Wales, the setting of the story. Whereas “bloody fool” does, or did, count there as swearing, as well as being inappropriate to speaker and situation. 

What a long time ago that all seems. 

As the reader must know the 1960s and their aftermath brought matters up to date. I’ve forgotten when I first said or made a character say “fuck” in print. But no one seemed to notice or care, any more than they did when my son Martin used the word several dozen times in one page in a novel published in 1978. Nor does it probably signify anything. 

All the same, I appear to have given myself a good chance to state and stress how much in the realm of bad language has changed over those years, not all of it for the better. 

Before, to utter or to write a swear word, as they were called, counted as a small act of revolt. The breaking out of a miniature Jolly Roger. Parents, grandparents, teachers, men in dog collars, married men, and subscribers to Booth’s Book Lover’s Library, were dead against anything of the sort. So, for instance, when you let fall a swear word in front of a contemporary you were, among other things, revealing yourself as a diminutive dissident, and inviting your hero to make a recognition signal. And when Philip Larkin used such words in letters to contemporaries he was not being misanthropic or foul mouthed, but being very mildly subversive and, like a good letter writer, encouraging the recipient to feel he was a member of the same secret army as the sender. 

And what I was principally doing by including in a letter to him a whole page of scurrility directed at our common publisher was trying to entertain a friend. One would not even attempt such a thing these days — not by such means. 

These days, to resume whence I had digressed, that particular conflict is over. Four-letter words are less in use conversationally than they were. And, with the exception of one denoting the female parts, with less impact. 

Their appearance on TV also seems reduced, now that people no longer utter them out of a boyish desire to show off. 

One taboo perhaps remains: As far as I know nobody has yet said “fuck” to a senior member of the royal family. 

On the whole, the thinning out of spoken ribaldry is a loss. An entire way of being funny, an entire range of humorous affects has been impoverished, except probably on the lower deck of our society. At first sight the case for the printed four-letter word is different. Though here I detect a similarly unwelcome drift toward serious, aesthetic purpose. A bit of that can be seen in one of the last and least big “fuck novels” — the winner of the 1994 Booker Prize. The doggedness with which its author keeps on trotting out the great word and its various derivatives already has something old fashioned about it. 

Time for a change. 

Naturally, someone in my position has had to devise some rough rules governing the use of such words. My own set of rules I now put in writing for the first time. In what follows, “they” and “them” stand for what were once obscenities. 

1. Use them sparingly and as classicists used to say, for special effect only. 

2. Even in low farce never use any of them in its original or basic meaning unless perhaps to indicate that a character is some kind of pompous buffoon or other undesirable. Even straightforward excretory ones are tricky. 

3. They may be used in dialog, though remember rule 1. An attempt at humor will often justify their appearance. The power of making one male character say to another, “She’s a fucking nut case,” is not one to be lightly surrendered. 

4. If in doubt, strike it out. Taking “it” here as one of “them.” If one of them is not involved, my rule for myself is leave it in especially for the first time around. I doubt if many writers get more ideas than they know what to do with. 

RANDY BURKE in Derbyshire, UK: "What a tour. This truly was the cradle of the industrial revolution. Richard Arkwright's Cromford Mill."