Mendocino County Today: Tuesday 5/7/24

Sunny/Breezy | Oak Tree | Bragg Fire | Health Fair | Housing Negotiations | Cry for Help | Waiting Vets | Kid Sitters | Community Center | RR Tracks | Cycling Race | Ed Notes | Indigestible Pizza | Partners Exhibition | Colege Grad | Big Band | Planning Reports | Elk Rummage | CASA Benefits | Yesterday's Catch | Birthday Mays | Bob Avellini | Brimstone | Facebook Blues | Teacher Salary | Notorious Bolsheviks | Security Cameras | Desperate Blob | UFOs | Student Demonstrations | Rich Media | Disingenuous Scaremongering | Candlestick Park | UCLA Jumbotron | Marx Birthday | Unprincipled Man | Not Fight | USA 1776 | Visiting Truckee | Wilt's Class | Blues Rules | Rape Field

A SIGNIFICANT PATTERN CHANGE from the cool, wet, winter-like conditions is currently underway. A building expansive Pacific ridge of high pressure will bring quickly warming temperatures and strengthening N to NE winds. This combination of elements will allow for unseasonably warm temperatures closer to the coast. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Clear skies & 47F this Tuesday morning on the coast. Windy today, less windy tomorrow, then calm into the weekend. Our next chance of rain looks like about the 21st according to Steve Paulson at KTVU.

FORT BRAGG FIRE DISPLACES TENANTS IN EARLY MORNING BLAZE

by Matt LaFever

An early morning structure fire in the Mendocino Coastal town of Fort Bragg was quickly knocked down but unfortunately scorched the living quarters of two tenants.

Fort Bragg Fire Department Chief Steve Orsi told us the fire began around 5:30 this morning on the 32000 block of Airport Road on the property of a local towing company. He described the structure as a large garage with one end of it converted into a housing area occupied by a man and woman.

The fire originated in the housing area and Chief Orsi said at this point the fire seems to be electrical in origin.…

mendofever.com/2024/05/06/fort-bragg-fire-displaces-tenants-in-early-morning-blaze

CRAIG STEHR: Shut Up, Mendocino County!!!

Following a morning meeting at Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center, in which we all went over the crazy situation here, I went to the Ukiah Co-op for a nosh and coffee. Much later, I dropped into the Ukiah Brewing Company for beer, a shot of Johnny Walker Red Label, and the steak medium rare. Following a brief stop at Safeway for yoghurt, I returned to the Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center.

Upon entering, I expressed my displeasure that the federal housing voucher expired, and there has been no rational explanation why. Please note that I am expected to leave here peacefully on June 12th at noon. I have been offered a letter of explanation to give to law enforcement stating that I have no other option than to camp outside. Since I did raise my voice lightly in my exchange with the Building Bridges Homeless Resource staffpersons, I was invited by the staffpersons at Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center to go outside and "take a walk for two hours."

Craig Louis Stehr

c/o 1045 South State Street, Ukiah, CA 95482

Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

ED NOTE: Given that this man is in his 70s, surely the County of Mendo will not permit him to live out his days on the street.

SUPERVISOR MAUREEN MULHEREN (facebook): “Took a drive to Leggett Monday morning to attend the American Legion meeting. Even in the pouring down rain I’m always grateful for the beauty of our County. Air Quality is working through a lease with a private property owner and the team at the County and I hope to have a date for the relocation of the Veterans Service Office back to Observatory very soon. Just thought you should know.”

YOU SHOULD ALSO KNOW that the Veterans Service Office staff were unceremoniously evicted from their office cottage on Observatory Avenue in a matter of days back in January and plopped down in the very unsuitable Public Health building nearby the next day. The Board quickly cranked out a press release saying that the move was badly handled, but defended the move if a few minor changes were made. After weeks of sustained outcry from local veterans and their supporters, the Board decided to move the Veterans Service Office back to their Observatory Cottage on February 28. At that meeting Supervisor John Haschak, who had co-written the original press release saying the move was mishandled but that problems were being worked on, belatedly realized that the move was a political liability, first saying that “everyone’s invited to see the progress that’s been made” on making some alleged cosmetic improvements. After having listened to the Vets complain at every meeting since the move, and again on February 28, Haschak suddenly reversed course mid-meeting and said, “If the Veterans want to stay in Observatory then they should. We’ve spent lots of staff time for these moves. But if the vets don’t like it then I’m all for giving them what would best serve their needs.” 

A few days later in his Supervisors Report Haschak added:

“The Board decided to move the Veterans Services Office back to the Observatory Ave. location. Kudos to the persistence of the veterans who returned time and again to the Board chambers to voice their disapproval of this move. I worked with staff and veterans to make the move as good as possible but the base issues were unresolved. I appreciate that the veterans said that they would help with the move back to Observatory. When the time comes to move, we will be calling on them and they will show up.”

Now here we are four months later and counting and nothing has changed and Chairperson of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors thinks you should know that she “hopes” to have “a date” “very soon” for the Air Quality staff to move to a leased building (the cost for the move/lease is not mentioned), but avoids saying how long after that the Vets Office will move back where they belong. 

(Mark Scaramella)

HELLO VALLEY! 

The Boonville Hotel often gets asked for babysitters especially during event season - which we are at the beginning of now! It's generally Fridays/Saturdays and often evening hours. 

If anyone is interested in being on our list as a baby/kid sitter, please email: melinda@boonvillehotel.com and events@boonvillehotel.com with your resume or prior qualifications...

Thank you!

REDWOOD VALLEY SCHOOL CAMPUS GAINS MOMENTUM FOR COMMUNITY CENTER INITIATIVE

by Monica Huettl

On April 23, 2024, a group of citizens who want to convert the Redwood Valley School campus into a community center held a meeting at the Redwood Valley Grange. The effort is spearheaded by retired Eagle Peak School teacher and Municipal Advisory Council Alternate Member Marybeth Kelly, and Dr. Marvin Trotter, who was instrumental in forming the Alex Rorabaugh Recreation Center in Ukiah. Kelly, Trotter, Rosemary Eddy, Sandra Khankhanian, and others have been meeting every other Monday at the Testa Coffee Shop.…

mendofever.com/2024/05/06/redwood-valley-school-campus-gains-momentum-for-community-center-initiative

UKIAH-MENDO CYCLING RACE MAY 9-11

World Class Competition, Community Involvement and Innovative partnerships: Ukiah-mendo Hopper delivers it all!

[Ukiah, California, May 6, 2024] – With over 500 participants expected, the 2024 Ukiah-Mendo Hopper mixed-terrain cycling race on Saturday, May 11 and related events leading up to the race on May 9-10, 2024, are guaranteed to bring excitement and attention to the City of Ukiah and Mendocino County. The event is the fourth and final stop in the 2024 Grasshopper Series and is also part of the Gravel Earth Series, which spans twenty events across thirteen countries.

In its 28th consecutive season, the Grasshopper events are legendary and considered “must do” events for many of the world’s top cyclists. Activities begin on Thursday, May 9 with a course recon ride and another ride and tech demo from event supporter Enduro Bearings on Friday, May 10. In partnership with the City of Ukiah, registration will occur 5-8 pm at the Ukiah Welcome Center Friday evening with numerous local Ukiah restaurants offering a portion of their proceeds from the evening to the Moriah Wilson Foundation, the event’s beneficiary. The schedule is:

Thursday, May 9

* 10:00 AM - Coffee Ride W/ Hopper Adventures: Join the Hopper Crew for some coffee at Black Oak Cafe in Ukiah and course recon up Low Gap Rd. Meet: 476 N State St, Ukiah, CA 95482

Friday, May 10

* 10:00 AM – Coffee Ride W/ Enduro Bearings: Join Enduro Bearings and the Hopper crew for coffee and a shakeout ride starting at Black Oak Cafe in Ukiah. Tech talk, and giveaways included! Hopper photos from Brian Tucker Photography on display and for sale as well. Meet: 476 N State St, Ukiah, CA 95482

* 5:00 – 8:00 PM - Packet Pickup and Dine Out for Moriah Wilson Foundation: Join us at the Ukiah Welcome Center for packet pickup and then dine out in downtown Ukiah in support of the Moriah Wilson Foundation.

Saturday, May 11

* 5:30 – 8:00 AM - Registration: Registered rider packet pick-up at the Golf Club House at Todd Grove Park. Hot coffee and pastries provided!

* 8:00 AM - Neutral Start: Staging on Live Oak Ave

* 11:30 AM - After Party and Celebration: Post race after party and celebration with lunch, beer, fun activities, podiums, and a Specialized bike raffle!

Thanks to Mendocino Redwood Company and the City of Ukiah, Saturday’s race participants will be treated to a choice of two course options; a 40-mile/3,200 foot ascent or the “epic” 75-mile/8,500 foot ascent route. With a City of Ukiah Police neutral roll-out from Todd Grove Park in downtown Ukiah, both courses will climb Low Gap Road past Ukiah High School to Masonite Road, which is being used courtesy of Mendocino Redwood Company. All riders will follow a mix of gravel, chunky pavement, and packed dirt as they make their way across a combination of private logging road though the majestic redwood, fir, and oak forests of western Mendocino County. The longer course riders will push all the way out to Hwy 128 and up Flynn Creek Road to Comptche and then back Comptche-Ukiah Road to Low Gap where they will then proceed onto Low Gap Road to Miller Ridge and the Masonite Road down to the finish. Short course riders will stay a bit closer to Ukiah before finishing at the same location as the longer course riders. Both routes will test rider’s endurance and equipment and will undoubtedly produce memories. “We are happy to be able to participate in this rare opportunity to combine public recreation in our working sustainable forests through our required permit process. Grasshopper Adventures has been a great, responsible partner to create a model for future opportunities,” stated John W. Kuhry, Asset Manager for Mendocino Redwood Company.

A portion of the total sales at Cultivo and Ukiah Brewing Company the evening of May 10 will go to supporting the Moriah Wilson Foundation in addition to a portion of each racer’s registration. Moriah was an inspiration to everyone in the NorCal cycling scene and her senseless killing in 2022 has her family and friends to sustain her legacy and impact in our community. Specifically, the Foundation’s hope is to help with Moriah’s vision to strengthen communities and love and live deeply. In Moriah’s words “When you love something to the point where you’re fully committed, the risk becomes irrelevant. Because if you fail, it will have been worth it. The process and all that comes along with it is more important, in the end.”

All the details and registration info: https://grasshopperadventureseries.com

ED NOTES

THE WORLD is holding its breath as Israeli tanks are entering Rafah after rocket strikes were launched on the city in Gaza just hours after a ceasefire deal with Hamas was dismissed as “a ruse.”

“ISRAEL stepped up attacks Monday on the southern city of Rafah hours after Hamas laid out new terms for a cease-fire that its leaders said they would accept. The Israeli prime minister’s office said that while the new proposal failed to meet Israel’s demands, the country would still send a working-level delegation to talks in hopes of reaching an acceptable deal.”

PERPLEXED IN BOONVILLE: Coupla months ago the Israelis told the North Gazans to head south where they'd be safe. Now the North Gazans who'd fled south to Rafah are told simply to get out of the way, here we come. Bear in mind that Gaza is roughly the dimensions of the Anderson Valley, smaller in fact, and Gazans cannot leave Gaza and aid can't get in. Does their situation add up to “genocide”? If it doesn't it's certainly getting there.

CINCO DE GRINGO has come and gone, so we can all put away our sombreros and salsa as this obscure 19th century victory of Mexico over Napoleon the third (?) is celebrated in lieu of the genuinely triumphant Mexican Revolution begun in 1910 and culminating in a democratic constitution in 1917. Celebrating Cinco de Mayo is like the U.S. celebrating the Battle of New Orleans.

TRUMP'S JUDGE in the Stormy Daniels matter has now threatened Orange Man with jail if he violates his gag order again. Will the judge do it? He'd better or his gag order is a joke, but jailing Orange Man will only give his campaign another big boost.

IT WASN'T that long ago that every time a big county job opened up we'd get an announcement that “a national search for excellence” had been launched, and darned if the excellency didn't turn out to have been in Ukiah all along. A genuine search for excellence? Won't happen here, but there are lots of smart, capable people in-county who could function effectively as County CEO if competence were the primary consideration. The young guy who runs Ukiah Safeway could do the job with time left over to manage the produce section. Ditto for the CostCo manager. I'd say Sheriff Kendall or Boonville school superintendent Louise Simon could steer the county away from the rocks when you consider that present CEO Darcy Antle was installed in the CEO job by her wine buddy, previous CEO Carmel Angelo, who operated strictly on the buddy hiring plan, with gender as the deciding factor. (Antle does seem to be learning on the job without the thuggery that characterized the Angelo regime. Angelo's bona fides? She was a nurse. Antle's cv? Wine shop manager. The Safeway manager? Boonville's school superintendent? Sheriff Kendall? Years of verified, successful management.

MARK SCARAMELLA ADDS: Over our frequent objections, the late three-term Fifth District Supervisor J. David Colfax campaigned for years to raise the Supervisors salary on the grounds that doing so would attract the best candidates. We’ve had a few good candidates lately, but I did not get the impression that they were running for the pay and very generous perks. In fact, one of them campaigned on a platform that included taking a 50% pay cut. If he were alive today, we’d bet that even Colfax would admit that this current set of incumbents is not what he envisioned. 

THE FOLLOWING PRESSER REMINDS ME of that wonderful mile footrace in Ukiah featuring world class athletes zipping along South State Street to the finish line down around where K-Mart used to be. Several thousand Mendo people lined the streets for that one, including me, thrilled at the sight of famous runners magically appearing in, of all places, Ukiah. I managed to confuse Sebastian Coe with Steve Ovett, but the true facts follow this: 

"With over 500 participants expected, the 2024 Ukiah-Mendo Hopper mixed-terrain cycling race on Saturday, May 11 and related events leading up to the race on May 9-10, 2024, are guaranteed to bring excitement and attention to the City of Ukiah and Mendocino County. The event is the fourth and final stop in the 2024 Grasshopper Series and is also part of the Gravel Earth Series, which spans twenty events across thirteen countries."

FROM THE AVA OF JULY 25, 2012

MENDO SPORTS HISTORY. A reader writes: “After reading the AVA for 20 years I finally found a mistake. (sic) Seb Coe never set foot in Mendocino Co. It was his arch rival, Steve Ovett. They are commonly associated as they are both English, were the two best milers in the world, each won Olympic gold medals in 1980 (Ovett 800 meters, Coe 1500 meters) and exchanged world records in the mile and 1500 meters over the early 80's. I was there and saw Ovett put on his racing shoes while sitting against the side of a barn (long gone) on Orchard Ave. This was the only year that there was a mile race (run basically around the Pear Tree shopping center). The field included 8-9 guys who were four minute milers. Ovett won in 3:55-3:56. A couple days later my son, a college kid who worked at Penny's, sold Ovett a suitcase. The traditional Penofin race was a 10K (6.2 miles) which started at the Penofin offices on Lake Mendocino Drive, turned south onto State and finished at the Seventh Day Adventist School 200 yards west of the end of State Street. The winner would get $5-$7K (unsure of the amount) and there was money for the top ten. This attracted top quality runners, many from Africa. They would come in 4-5 days before the race. I lived on Standley on the west side and from my front porch would see skinny black guys on training runs, their feet not touching the ground. The Ovett race was on Saturday. He ran in the 10K the following day, but jogged it as a light workout, finishing 30th or 40th.”

AND THIS COUNTY'S PREMIER Senior runner, Jim Gibbons, fresh off yet another triumph, age 68, but finishing fourth overall in the 9th Annual 5k Redwood Run in Ukiah, elaborates: “Your mention of the '86 Penofin race last week, which made me look it up and realize Seb Coe did NOT run the Sub 4 Invitational Mile. In fact, there was NO mile in '86, just the 10K. The Sub4 Mile was the year before, when Steve Ovett outkicked five others who all finished under 4 minutes! A first for California! Coe was there, but only as a rep for Nike, he didn't run, though he did hold the world record in both the mile and the 800 meters.”

PARTNERS GALLERY SILVER ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION

May 9 to June 3, 2024

Second Saturday Meet the Artist May 11, 5-7pm

Partners Gallery is very proud to celebrate twenty-five years of fine contemporary art on the Mendocino Coast. Twelve members committed to presenting high quality art first opened in Little River at Glendeven Inn, moving to Franklin Street in downtown Fort Bragg and most recently to the historic Beacon Building in Mendocino. Some of the membership has changed over the years but Partners has long supported its members as they explore new directions and media.

The gallery also brings in new visions and techniques by exhibiting artists from the North Coast community and beyond. Members work cooperatively to run the gallery and make decisions by consensus.

This exhibition is showing a variety of works by members, including references to silver.

There is a special Second Saturday Reception May 11 from 5 — 7pm with catered appetizers to celebrate this Silver Anniversary exhibition.

The show runs from May 9 to June 3

Gallery hours are Thursday through Monday, 11-5pm

The gallery is located at 45062 Ukiah St in Mendocino.

www.partnersgallery.com

BIG BAND DANCE IN FORT BRAGG, MAY 11TH

This Saturday night, May 11th, Bob Ayres famous 17 piece Boonville Big Band will be playing at Tall Guy Brewing, 362 N. Franklin Street, Fort Bragg. No cover. Show starts at 6:30. Come for the music, dancing, and great beer.

PLANS A-PLENTY

Planning Commission Agenda & Staff Reports for 5-16-24

The Staff Report(s) and Agenda for the May 16, 2024, Planning Commission meeting is now available on the department website at: mendocinocounty.org/government/planning-building-services/meeting-agendas/planning-commission

Please contact staff if there are any questions,

Thank you

James Feenan, Commission Services Supervisor

County of Mendocino Department of Planning & Building Services

feenanj@mendocinocounty.gov

100+ WOMEN STRONG PRESENTS CHECK TO CASA

CASA is winner of latest 100+ Women Strong Inland Mendocino gathering

Another successful 100+ Women Strong for Inland Mendocino County event took place at Dancing Crow Vineyards in Hopland. CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) was the winner of ten thousand dollars. The other two nonprofits, the Mendocino County Historical Society and Mendocino County Spay-Neuter Assistance Program (SNAP) received half of the rest of the event’s proceeds, amounting to at least fifteen hundred dollars each. 

CASA is a program consisting of volunteers who are screened and trained to look out for the best interests of abused and neglected children of the community who are in the court system. The program has been in effect since 1994 and has served hundreds of children with continued care and attention until their case is concluded. 

“We are excited and will use the funding for our Children's Side Account as well as updating our 247 Help Resource APP because of new mandates by the government,” said CASA’s Executive Director Sheryn Hildebrand. “The APP is meant to support families needing resources in our little neck of the woods and also supports our law enforcement and medical community in providing resources to homeless families and families during law enforcement call out. Our Children's Side Account is used to support things for our youth whereby other funding is limited. For example, we have a pregnant teen who we will support with needed items for her new arrival in June.”

To find out more about CASA visit https://mendocinocasa.org/our-story.

Everyone at the Gathering was feted to a buffet of organic appetizers provided by Caring Kitchen of Mendocino sponsored by Visit Mendocino County. Dancing Crow wines were available in the Mediterranean style winery. 

100+ Women Strong Inland Mendocino County, an inclusive all-volunteer group, has distributed more than $201,000 since its founding in 2019. 

Anyone interested in attending the next Gathering on October 3 and hearing from three nonprofits doing indispensable work in our community is welcome. To register, each attendee pledges a hundred dollars on the 100+ Mendocino Women website via the Community Foundation of Mendocino County https://communityfound.org/community/leadership-projects/100-women-strong-inland-mendocino/. Click the “Donate” button. All previous donors to 100 Women Strong of Inland Mendocino County, who have not done so already, must redo their contribution information on the Community Foundation link. Or call Karen Christopherson, 707-272-5570. 

(Heidi Dickerson)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, May 6, 2024

RAMON ALCAZAR, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

LAISHA ALTAMIRANO, Upper Lake/Ukiah. DUI.

THOMAS COOK, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

THOMAS GUYETTE, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, concentrated cannabis, failure to appear.

BRANDON LANGENDERFER, Laytonville. Assault with deadly weapon with great bodily injury, burglary, failure to appear.

ALEJANDRO LOPEZ, Lakeport/Ukiah. Grand theft.

RAMON MACIEL, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, failure to appear. (Frequent flyer.)

ARRON MADDEN, Eureka/Ukiah. Controlled substance for sale, narcotics for sale.

RONNIE PASCHAL, Willits. Failure to appear.

KENNETH PETERSON, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

JONNIE RADFORD JR., Oakland/Ukiah. Parole violation.

GLORIA RAMIREZ, Manchester. Probation revocation.

JOSE RUIZ-DIAZ, Victorville/Ukiah. DUI, no license.

PEDRO SALDANA-SALDANA, Boonville. Probation revocation.

MARK SMITH, Ukiah. Concealed dirk-dagger.

DEATH OF A BEAR, CYBER-EDITION 

AVA,

Looking good! You can really see the drug sores on the faces of “Catch Of The Day” people!

Former Chicago Bears QB Bob Avellini - possibly the most derided athlete in Chicago Pro Sports History. Passed away the other day from cancer @the age of 70.

David Svehla

San Francisco

FACE BOOKERS ARE GETTING HACKED

Editor: 

Facebook users around the world are getting hacked, and there’s nothing we can do about it. It happened to me. Thieves gained control of my page and access to my friends. Then they tried to scam them by using my name to rip them off.

I immediately started working to get my page back, thinking this must happen to Facebook users all the time. In fact, it does. Some, those who run businesses through Facebook especially, are losing thousands of dollars without any hope of getting the money back. It turns out there is nothing we can do to restore our pages. I tried Facebook’s online help center, which gives us hope that we can restore our pages but just runs us around in circles. There is no customer support. You are on your own.

I feel violated, like my house has been broken into and robbed. And I’m worried sick about my friends getting scammed.

More than 2 billion people use Facebook or one of its other services — Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger — daily. And despite a rising number of privacy scandals and public backlash, Facebook is still growing, reporting $39 billion net profit in 2023.

There ought to be a law.

Molly Martin

Santa Rosa

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I see references to the MSM Press and the Democratic Party as being “the Left”…yikes! The Press in America is owned by 5 groups of Billionaires (notorious Bolsheviks). Further, the 5 are Comcast and 4 Right wing families (Murdochs, Luces, Disneys and Redstones). Every war since WW2 has started with a US government Lie, which the press amplified, disseminated, but, most importantly, made sure all public discussion (editorial pages, TV political discussions [e.g. “Face the Nation”]) of the lie’s truth or relevance would be tightly controlled: Only a known stable of sychophantic catamites of the Rich are allowed to participate. This “liberal press” also famously buried Bernie Sanders” 2016 campaign! But alluding to the DNC as “the Left” is, possibly, worse! A group of insider-trading millionaires, sending Billions of taxpayer dollars to a pair of fascist nations, funding Genocide, killing all attempts at Health Care reform, over-funding the War Department (sorry, “defense”…ha!)…howTF is this, in any way, “Left”? The terms come from the 1780’s French Senate…the only issue was income, high Gini coefficient or more equality… no Gun Control, Abortion access or gender confusion. Oh yeah…”communism” has a real meaning, too!

PRISONERS OF THEMSELVES

by James Kunstler

“Ok, let’s be clear. If the intelligence community led by the CIA is not the “deep state,” what is?” — Jeffrey Tucker

You realize, don’t you, that the gross misconduct of government officials from RussiaGate on down to the courtroom of Judge Juan Merchan has amounted to one continuous operation against the American people? If it were ever honestly adjudicated, many hundreds of them might go to prison, or worse. Each successive seditious and treasonous action they attempt against their arch-nemesis, Mr. Trump, only compounds their criminal liability — the Steele Dossier, CIA agent Eric Ciaramella’s 2019 impeachment prank, the Covid-19 caper, the George Floyd-BLM hustle, the 2020 election hijinks, the J-6 op and the House J-6 Committee conjured up to spin it, the present battery of farcical court cases — and yet the Golden Golem of Greatness not only remains defiantly at large, but seems to amass ever more electoral mojo.

The epic failure of these mighty efforts, and the humiliation entailed, has lately driven this vast bureaucratic cabal — collectively styled as “the blob” — to a stage of abject desperation that looks a lot like insanity. They fear for their lives, their fortunes, their chattels, and their families, and they seem ready to wreck the republic to save themselves. They have so far pretty much wrecked American justice with their lawfare tactics — a degenerate campaign to use the vested authority of prosecutors and judges to twist and cheat the law at the cost of the law’s legitimacy. Merrick Garland, Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Mary McCord, Lisa Monaco, Marc Elias, Christopher Wray, Letitia James, Fani Willis, Alvin Bragg have made law the enemy of the people.

All this becomes more obvious each day, for instance events of the past week in Judge Aileen Cannon’s federal courtroom in Florida where the Mar-a-Lago documents case proceeds. Turns out that Special Counsel Jack Smith has deliberately messed with the evidence, which is patently felonious. Also, turns out that sometime between the “Joe Biden” inauguration and the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago in August, 2022, boxes of presidential documents stored by the US General Services Administration were “delivered” to Mr. Trump’s mansion without any proper accounting for what might have been in them. A set-up you suppose? Why not? After everything else the FBI and the DOJ have attempted since 2015?

Christopher Wray in particular might have wanted some surefire probable cause to get his agents into Mar-a-Lago where, rumor has it, Mr. Trump kept his own dossier of evidence against the FBI and DOJ officials who concocted the “Crossfire Hurricane” chapter of RussiaGate. Even if you assume that Mr. Trump had multiple copies of the thing, FBI Director Wray — in position since 2017 throughout most of RussiaGate — surely wanted to see what Mr. Trump was holding if it would become necessary for current and former FBI / DOJ officials to defend themselves in court against very serious charges.

You see the desperation, don’t you? And how stupendously amateurish these machinations have been? Planting evidence and then fiddling around with it? I’m waiting for the moment when Judge Cannon summons Jack Smith and announces to his face that she is tossing the case for prosecutorial misconduct. Will she add a criminal referral to that? How will that affect the other case (attempting to overturn the 2020 election) brought against Mr. Trump in Judge Tanya Chutkan’s DC federal district court? Who will prosecute it if Jack Smith can no longer function as Special Counsel? And since the case was contrived in his name — even if Eisen, McCord, Weissmann, and others are really the authors — does that case blow up, too?

Letitia James’s real estate case under Judge Arthur Engoron was so idiotic it can’t possibly survive an ultimate appeal, and the Alvin Bragg confection under Judge Merchan is playing out like something that usually only happens in places like Honduras or Liberia. Yet the American Left, the “progressive” Democratic Party, is staking everything on it. It’s all they have left Lawfare-wise, at least for now. Which brings us to the question: Why do the non-governmental elites of this land, the managerial and thinking classes, the college presidents, the cable news producers, the corporate execs, the movie directors, the whole arts establishment. . . why do they feel compelled, for nearly a decade now, to hitch their identity and their self-respect to this fantastic train of Kafka-esque corruption, tyranny, and abuse? How did they get owned by the blob?

We may never find out, and they may never know either, even after they snap out of the mass formation they’ve been in thrall to. But they have made themselves ridiculous — figures like Sam Harris, Stephen Colbert, and Rob Reiner — yelling about “saving our democracy” while the blob they worship systematically disassembles the US Constitution, and makes American law a global laughingstock.

Most of my old ex-friends are riding the same ideological bus. You have to wonder: how did the likes of “Joe Biden,” Merrick Garland, Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, Christopher Wray, Fani Willis, Anthony Fauci, Klaus Schwab, and Bill Gates become their heroes? Did the Covid vaccines destroy their minds? Are they really avid for central bank digital money and surveillance of their every move? Do they want to be told how to live by the WHO? Things are going south fast now in our country. If these people ever cherished the idea of being free to think their own thoughts and live their own lives, it’s getting late in the game. They will end up prisoners of themselves.

STANDING UP FOR PRINCIPLES

Editor,

Last Friday, according to tv’s NPR’s Newroom, 2,300 students were arrested across the nation of various college and university campuses have been arrested. Every one of these students deserves a sort of public service award for standing up for Gaza and against the disproportional murdering ongoing war carried on by the Israeli military. It is, of course, also true that about 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered generally by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

This is where this game of any equaling the numbers of casualties comes to an end, because in the approximately seven months since Hamas led its deadly attack on Israeli civilians, the Israeli military, aided by hundreds of bombs supplied to them by the US has killed nearly 24,000 civilians, most of whom were Gazans. It is about to kill more.

The students, some of whom face expulsions from their colleges, deserve to be recognized for standing up for the consciences of the real people of the United States, not necessarily the government. The prophet Moses in the Torah, or Old Testament, laid down God’s 6th Amendment: “Thou shalt not kill or murder.”

Frank H. Baumgardner, III

Santa Rosa

‘FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA,’ THE RIGHT WING DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN

by Stephen Zunes

The wave of pro-Palestinian protests sweeping American campuses was triggered by Columbia University President Minouche Shafik’s order to forcibly clear a peaceful encampment on April 18. Her decision came as a direct result of her grilling the previous day before a House committee in Washington investigating alleged antisemitism on U.S. campuses: At the hearing, she pledged to take action against protesters.

A major focus of the interrogation was the slogan, popular among pro-Palestinian protesters, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York), in reference to a resolution passed by the House three days earlier, pressed Shafik to acknowledge that “377 members out of 435 members of Congress, condemns “from the river to the sea” as antisemitic.” Shafik said she agreed with the statement, that she had made clear that the slogan was unacceptable, and that “we have some disciplinary cases ongoing around that language.”

In the last few weeks, that slogan has been used to discredit the nationwide protests, primarily focused on demands that campuses divest stockholdings in corporations supporting the Israeli occupation and genocide in Gaza. Members of Congress have insisted that student protesters who use the slogan are expressing support for the mass killing of Jews, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has issued an executive order declaring the slogan inherently and self-evidently antisemitic and promising that students using it will face disciplinary action.

The House resolution referenced in the Shafik hearing, passed on April 16, declared that the phrase is “antisemitic,” “perpetuates hatred” against Jews and constitutes a call “for the removal of the Jewish people from their ancestral homeland.”

For the vast majority of Americans who use that slogan, however, “river to the sea” has a very different meaning.

The phrase originally came from secular Palestinian nationalists in the 1960s calling for a democratic secular state within the boundaries of what was the British Mandate for Palestine, encompassing Israel, the then-Jordanian controlled West Bank and the then-Egyptian administered Gaza Strip — that is, the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) adopted it soon after Israel conquered the remaining parts of Palestine in 1967, though they subsequently recognized Israeli control over 78 percent of the territory.

There are no indications that any more than a tiny minority using the slogan support the killing or ethnic cleansing of Jews from what is now Israel. The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, signed by hundreds of scholars of antisemitism and widely acknowledged as one of the definitive definitions of antisemitism, particularly in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, explicitly states that the phrase is not antisemitic.

Since so many American Jews have been manipulated into thinking that calls for a free Palestine from the river to the sea really are calls for genocide, some pro-Palestinian activists have urged the broader movement for Palestinian liberation to consider alterations to the slogan to help push back against the rampant disinformation about it. It’s true that something along the lines of “from the river to the sea, we want full equality!” could be harder for the right to spread disinformation about than “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” But given the slogan’s deep historical roots, it is unlikely that the entire Palestine solidarity movement will suddenly decide to drop it in order to ward off right-wing disinformation campaigns.

The main sponsors of the House resolution and the harshest interrogators in the committee hearings were Republicans whose apparent goal is to drive a wedge between elements of the Jewish community and progressives, and to distract attention from the real antisemitism coming out of the Trump wing of the party. These white conservative Christians are trying to frighten Jews into thinking that people expressing solidarity with Palestine aren’t demanding equality but are instead trying to kill them. They are essentially trying to convince Jews, many of whom have been in the forefront of movements for equality for centuries, that demands for equality are somehow a threat.

These disingenuous and misleading efforts to equate advocacy for a democratic system of “one person, one vote” in all of Palestine with advocacy for the killing of Jews are reminiscent of the similarly ludicrous claims made in 1980s by proponents of South African apartheid who insisted that the similar “one person, one vote” demands made by the anti-apartheid movement actually were a call for the killing of white South Africans. In both cases, what these critics are actually opposing is the concept of equality. The Republican sponsors of the current “antisemitism” resolution are well-known anti-Arab bigots who are cynically manipulating Jewish fears for their right-wing agenda.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of House Democrats appear to be in on this effort as well — only 44 of 213 Democratic House members voted no.

The wording of the House resolution, moreover, makes clear that its intention was not to defend Jews against a supposedly antisemitic slogan, but to promote a right-wing narrative about Israel and Palestine. It contains a series of extraneous clauses having nothing to do with the slogan, including the long-discredited claim that Hamas “beheaded dozens of babies,” as well as the false charge that Hamas intentionally located “its military weapons supply depots and intelligence outposts directly under” the Al-Shifa Hospital.

The principal author of the resolution, Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-New York), has referred to Democrats who support conditioning military aid to Netanyahu as “pro-Hamas.” The fact that 162 out of 213 House Democrats would take his word about what has transpired in Israel and Gaza over independent investigations and believe his interpretation of what pro-Palestinian demonstrators mean over what they themselves — the majority of whom presumably vote Democratic — actually say is indicative of just how far to the right the Democratic Party has gone under Biden.

Back in November, the House of Representatives passed a rare motion of censure against Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) for using the phrase. Written by Georgia Republican Rich McCormick, it claimed that the phrase “river to the sea” was “a genocidal call to violence to destroy the state of Israel and its people.” The resolution condemned what they claimed was her “falsely describing “from the river to the sea” as “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence” despite it clearly entailing Israel’s destruction.” It seems that in Congress — like everywhere else — older white men are quick to believe that young women of color don’t really know what they are saying, so it’s up to them to explain to the world what young women of color really mean.

By contrast, there have been no motions of censure against Rep. Andy Ogles(R-Tennessee) who, in response to an activist’s concerns about Israel killing Palestinian children replied, “I think we should kill ’em all,” or Rep. Brian Mast (R-Florida) for saying “there are very few innocent Palestinian civilians,” or Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) calling on Israel to “level the place” as Israel initiated its bombing campaign of Gaza or Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Michigan) for saying, in reference to Gaza, “It should be like Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Get it over quick.” For Congress, such genocidal calls are not as problematic as the call for a democratic binational state.

Ironically, it is Israel — not the PLO, the Palestinian Authority or the majority of American solidarity activists — which is calling for the supremacy of one people over the other from the river to the sea. The platform of Likud, the party of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the largest party in the ruling coalition, explicitly states that “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” And, on January 18, Netanyahu reiterated that there would be no Palestinian state, “And therefore I clarify that in any other arrangement, in the future, the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea.”

In his speech before the UN General Assembly in September, Netanyahu held up a map that showed Israel controlling all the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

The overwhelming majority of the House resolution’s cosponsors agree with the Israeli government that there should be a Jewish Israeli state in all of historic Palestine and have expressed their opposition to even a Palestinian mini-state in the West Bank. So, in an Orwellian attempt to cover up their own bigotry, they claim that those who want equal rights from the river to the sea are actually the bigots.

Indeed, there have been no congressional resolutions condemning calls for Israeli Jewish supremacy to reign “from the river to the sea,” only condemnation of the phrase in the context of equal rights for all.

Support for a democratic secular state in all of Palestine is not a radical position. A recent poll showed that about three-quarters of Americans, including 80 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans, would support a democratic state for all peoples should a two-state solution prove impossible (which is looking increasingly likely.) Only a small minority would support the status quo of Israeli Jewish domination throughout the entire territory.

Antisemitic extremists who want to kill or expel Jews do of course exist in this world. Indeed, some of the most powerful antisemitic forces in the world are Christian Zionists who actively want Jews to continue colonizing Palestine, in pursuit of bringing about an Armageddon which neither Jews nor Muslims would survive.

However, the efforts to criminalize “from the river to the sea” do not come out of a genuine concern about such instances of actual antisemitism worldwide but out of an effort to discredit legitimate protests.

As a result, it is critically important to push back against such disingenuous scaremongering.

(truthout.org)

UNDER UCLA’S JUMBOTRON

by Anahid Nersessian

On April 25, a large group of students at the University of California, Los Angeles, set up an encampment on the main quadrangle of their campus. Flanked on all sides by plywood barricades, the Palestine Solidarity Encampment included smaller tents for sleeping as well as larger enclosures for food, first aid, electronics (phone chargers, batteries), musical instruments and art supplies. There was also a library, which a paper sign taped to a tree designated the Refaat Alareer Memorial Library, in honor of the Palestinian writer and teacher who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in December 2023.

Alareer wrote his doctoral dissertation on John Donne. On YouTube, you can find him lecturing, in English, to his students at the Islamic University of Gaza. One lecture begins with a discussion of Horace’s Ars Poetica and the idea that a work of art must delight as well as instruct. “The term ‘metaphysical’,” he explains a bit later, “means nothing,” because it was foisted on poets like Donne by his critics, among them John Dryden and Samuel Johnson, whose assessments Alareer projects onto the whiteboard. The lecture builds to an analysis of Donne’s poem “The Bait,” which, Alareer explains, is a parody of Christopher Marlowe’s poem generally known as “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love.” When you parody something, Alareer says, “you try to offer the readers another possibility, of another worldview, a different world view, telling the people: hey, this isn’t the only thing … there is something else.”

After his death, Alareer became widely known as the author of the poem “If I Must Die,” which asks its reader to build a kite in his memory and to fly it before a child whose father has been incinerated by a bomb, so that the child might imagine “an angel is there/bringing back love.” The day after the students set up their encampment at UCLA, it was announced that Alareer’s daughter Shymaa had been killed in an airstrike along with her husband and three-month-old son.

Among other things, the camp was a rebuke to the notion of doing business as usual when such brutality is being perpetrated on an enormous scale against human beings whose displacement, torture, unlawful detention and murder is bankrolled by the United States. Because they often invest their funds in weapons manufacturers whose missiles are falling on Gaza, or in companies with factories in the occupied West Bank, American universities are perceived as supporting Israel’s objective, which appears to be the wholesale extermination of the Palestinian people.

Students protesting against the war on Gaza on campuses across the US, from Columbia, where the encampments began, to California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, have been clear that their primary aims are to pressure the US government to secure an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and to pressure their universities and colleges to divest from any financial holdings with links to Israel. When it comes to divestment, they are drawing from a playbook established in the 1980s, when students convinced their schools to cut ties with companies operating in apartheid South Africa. As an antiwar campaign, the encampments recall protests against the Vietnam War, including the Student Strike of 1970, which grew significantly after the murder of four students at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard.

The encampments are also a parody, in Alareer’s sense: emerging from within the university, they offer another possibility for what the university might be. One of the more potent images circulating from the encampments has been of a student holding a sign that reads “Columbia, Why Require Me to Read Prof. Edward Said If You Don’t Want Me To Use It?” The protests have revealed that the American university, which operates more and more as a high-cost degree factory where humanities departments squirm on the chopping block, is still a place where people can learn what is true, and act on their knowledge. You cannot, in other words, expect young people to memorize and regurgitate history, economics, political science, moral philosophy and so on for their exams while prohibiting them from taking their education on the road.

Over the weekend, following the formation of the encampment, a large group of counter-protesters, few to none of whom appeared to be UCLA students, arrived on campus. They screamed, hurled racial slurs and sexual threats (“I hope you get raped”) at the students, and opened a sack full of live mice – swollen, seemingly injected with some substance – on the ground near the camp. When the counter-protesters dispersed, they left behind a Jumbotron – a massive flat-screen TV, about ten feet high – in the middle of campus facing the encampment and surrounded by metal barriers. Paid security guards remained inside the barriers to protect the screen. For the next five days, the Jumbotron played, on a loop, footage of the 7 October attacks along with audio clips describing rape and sexual violence in explicit terms. Mixed in among the clips were speeches by Joe Biden vowing unconditional support for Israel and “Meni Mamtera,” a maddeningly repetitive children’s song that went viral earlier this year when IDF soldiers posted a video of themselves using it as a form of noise torture on captive Palestinians.

When I arrived on campus on Tuesday morning, to lead a class on Byron’s Don Juan, the sound from the Jumbotron was so loud it was impossible to hear myself think, let alone teach. I walked over with a colleague to take footage of the footage. You couldn’t ask for a better allegory: on one side, the encampment, full of young people risking their degrees, their future employment prospects and their physical and mental health to draw attention to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza; on the other, a costly media machine, financed by D-list celebrities (who proudly posted their contributions on Instagram), unmanned except for a trio of hired guards who, when questioned, admitted they had nothing to do with the Zionist cause.

My colleague and I contacted the Title IX office, which is responsible for fielding complaints of sexual harassment. Dozens of faculty did the same, but there was no response, and the Jumbotron remained until Thursday, May 2. “I have to put a trigger warning in my syllabus when I teach Margaret Atwood,” another colleague said, “or the university will discipline me. But we all have to listen to this for days?” 

The last few years of mealy-mouthed catering both to student sensitivities and to reactive right-wing hysteria has led us to a situation in which criticism of Israel is considered antisemitic because it offends Zionists. The truth is that the university does not care about protecting students, or about combating antisemitism or any other kind of hatred, as much as it cares about its donors. It does not want to lose money, and it does not want to get sued.

At 11 p.m. on 30 April, a large group of men, mostly middle-aged, many wearing Halloween masks, arrived at the encampment carrying knives, bats, wooden planks, pepper spray and bear mace, which they used to attack the unarmed students. They shot fireworks into the camp and used its plywood barricades to crush students into the ground. Footage from ABC News shows half a dozen “counter-protesters” punching and kicking a student. Videos from independent journalists and people on the ground captured calls for a “second Nakba.”

On the ABC newsreel you can hear a reporter shouting in disbelief: “Where are the police? Where is security? Where is authority here?” 

The answer to the first two questions is clear: the police, as well as campus security forces, were there, but they did not intervene. Rather, for roughly five hours, they stood at a comfortable distance, laughing and occasionally chatting amicably with the mob, which was made up not only of self-professed former IDF soldiers but also several white nationalists, including members of the far-right Proud Boys, whose former leader was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in the January 6 attacks on the US Capitol. Since white nationalists are, as a rule, hostile to Jews, it is worth asking why their assault on the encampment – which included a large number of Jewish students – has yet to be ruled antisemitic by the university administration.

When dawn came, several students had been taken to hospital but the encampment was still standing. Classes were cancelled as the administration scrambled to explain why it threw its community to the wolves without intervention. Fingers were pointed at the chancellor, Gene Block, who sends regular emails decrying antisemitism but has neither mentioned Gaza in his communiqués nor had a word to say about horrific attacks on Muslims in the US, such as the shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont in November. 

Hours before the attack on the encampment, Block had sent out a mass email calling it “unauthorized.” The encampment, he went on, “makes people in our community feel bullied, threatened and afraid.” This has since been interpreted as a dog whistle to outsiders to come and dismantle it.

In the end, UCLA decided to follow the lead of Columbia and bring in riot police to clear the encampment and arrest two hundred of its students and faculty. For roughly eight hours – from the evening of May 1 to the early morning of May 2 – students and faculty defended the encampment with shields made from plastic garbage bins and cardboard, twice repelling the police incursion by the sheer force of their numbers and courage. 

The police, by contrast, came armed with stun grenades and rubber bullets, those “less lethal” (as the advertising copy goes) weapons that can break bones, blind eyes and, in fact, kill when fired at close range. Footage shown on Fox 11, which is part of the Murdoch-owned Fox Corporation and hardly sympathetic to either college students or Palestine, shows three helmet-clad special-operations officers firing rubber bullets into the faces of students standing directly in front of them. At least 25 ended up in the hospital.

Most disturbing, however, are images that circulated on X (formerly Twitter) of snipers on the roof of Royce Hall, the building next to the encampment. The superintendent of the Indiana State Police confirmed that a sniper was called in for a pro-Palestine protest at Indiana University, and the New York Police Department has confirmed that an officer fired a gun – with real bullets – inside Haines Hall at Columbia University during its raid on the building, which students had renamed Hind’s Hall in honor of six-year-old Hind Rajab, murdered by the Israeli military in early January. 

The general sentiment on campuses across the US is that it is only a matter of time before a student is killed, as at Kent State in 1970. This is a price that both the students and their universities, for very different reasons, seem prepared to pay.

The students, as they will tell you, are there for Gaza, where 90 per cent of schools, and all universities, have been destroyed. The university, meanwhile, is forced to confront the moral vacuity of its policies, which have in the end protected no one except extremists willing to join forces with neo-Nazis to safeguard Israel from criticism. It has no principles and no plan; it has ceded its authority to the mob. The students, along with the staff who have supported their cause, are now in a position to direct the future of an institution whose stewards have abandoned it.

Over the weekend, Block announced the formation of a new Office of Campus Safety, to oversee the Office of Emergency Management and campus police department. As I write, its officers are detaining 44 people – including students, reporters and legal observers – in the lot where, on teaching days, I park my car.

(London Review of Books)

ON MAY 5, 1818, CARL HENRY MARX WAS BORN (him. Karl Heinrich Marx. Trir, Rhine province, Prussia-German philosopher, sociologist, economist, writer, poet, political journalist, linguist, public figure, historian. The most famous works are the "manifesto of the Communist party" (1848 year in co-authorship with Friedrich Engels) and "capital. Criticism of political economy" (1867-1883). Marx's political and philosophical thought had a huge impact on the subsequent intellectual, economic and political history. Marx proved that human society at each stage is developing as a result of a class struggle caused by contradictions in the interests of various public classes. The core is the conflict between the owners of the means of production and mercenary workers selling their Labour force in exchange for wages. At the same time each of the epoch is historically, that is, emerging, and disappearing over time under certain conditions. Capitalism, like other socio-economic systems, contains internal contradictions that will lead it through the proletarian revolution to replace the new system — class Communist society. Based on the works of Marx appeared the following directions:

In philosophy — dialectical materialism (materialistic interpretation of Hegel philosophy).

In social and humanitarian Sciences — historical materialism (materialistic understanding of world history).

In the economy — addition of labor theory of cost of ideas on goods labor force and surplus value.

In social practice and modern social and humanitarian Sciences — scientific socialism, theory of class struggle].

Many political parties worldwide have modified or adapted Marx's ideas.

SO IT HAD COME TO THIS. The Navy would not say it did not want war, suggesting there was no need to articulate its unwillingness when the Army seemed to fully comprehend the Navy’s hesitations. The Army, which would bear the bulk of public humiliation of troop withdrawal [from China] in the case of diplomatic settlement, was accusing the Navy of not clearly stating its opposition to the new war so that the Army, too, would have to admit to weakness by saying it could not fight.

— Japan 1941, by Eri Hotta

DONNER, PARTY OF 81, ER 45.

by Alexander Cockburn

In December of 2001 my dog Jasper the Wonderdog and I were walking up a street called Slalom, approximately 6,500 feet above sea level in the Sierra, on the outskirts of the town of Truckee. We walked past some 30 houses, each of them selling for over $1 million. All but three were vacant, their owners either preferring their third homes in Hawaii, or discussing the beauties of Chapter 11 in some bankruptcy court. If the famished Donner party had staggered out of their graves and into those stately homes on Slalom, they probably would have found as little provender as they did on the snowbound shores of Truckee Lake in the winter of 1846/7.

Later that day we all had Christmas lunch overlooking that same Mountain Lake, renamed Donner Lake in honor of the mostly doomed party of midwesterners who tried to survive one of the worst winters in the history of the Sierra on its eastern shore.

They got to the lake at the very end of October, 1846, realized they couldn’t make it over the pass which was already covered with four feet of snow, and made camp. As they ate their pack animals and the situation worsened, some men did manage to make it to Fort Sutter to sound the alarm. One of these returned, later to perish. In late December another group of 15, later known as “the Party of Forlorn Hope,” set out for the pass on crude snow shoes. Eight men died, while two men and five women reached safety.

As Joanne Mescherry writes in her vivid book “Truckee,” being given away free in the local Safeway, “these survivors could not have pushed through if they hadn’t resorted to cannibalism.” Clearly, the age of chivalry was alive and well that winter in the Californian Sierra. The weaker sex were mostly spared. Then again, maybe the women were simply better negotiators in the Survivor parleys before the bludgeon took its toll and another haunch of human was readied for the picnic table.

The first relief party from Sutter’s Fort reached the lake on February 19, 1847. Little Virginia Reed, 13 years old, heard them come, crawled from a snowbound cabin, and greeted them with the words, “Are you men from California, or do you come from heaven?” Of the 81 who had arrived at the lake in October, 45 survived by dint of cannibalism, of whom 32 were children.

Their travails had been observed by Paiute or Washo Indians who’d fled into the mountains to escape the whites. Sarah Winnemucca later recalled, “All the Indian tribes had gone into the mountains to save their lives… There was a fearful story told us children. Our mothers told us that the whites were killing everybody and eating them. These were the last white men that came along that fall… We could have saved them, only my people were afraid of them.” As I recall, there’s a fine description of the Washo viewing the white cannibals at the start of Thomas Sanchez’s novel “Rabbit Boss.’

There’s not too much to recommend the town of Truckee, whose past is freighted not only with cannibalism but also bloody eviction of the Chinese who had come to the mountains to build the transcontinental railroad. Of the peak Chinese work force of 10,000, some 1,000 remained in Truckee once the job was done. By the 1870s a national depression was fueling racism and the stage was set for one of California’s most terrible chapters.

“The Chinks must go” was the cry in the saloons, not to mention salons of Truckee, and a “Caucasian League” began to burn down Chinese dwellings. The Chinese fought back gamely, but were finally burned out in 1880. According to Alexander Saxon, author of “The Indispensable Enemy,” Truckee set the pace for anti-Chinese activities throughout the west. These activities included a law criminalizing the smoking of opium, a habit favored by the Chinese, though consumption of opium in liquid form (Laudanum, a mixture of alcohol & opium powder), as practiced by the genteel classes, was not similarly penalized.

You either like snow or you don’t, and these days I’m of the latter persuasion, having spent too many winters of my adolescence at a fierce Scottish school where early morning runs in one’s underclothes through snow were mandatory. Our party, Jasper excepted, did make its way on Christmas Eve to Squaw Valley, south along Highway 68 from Truckee. We were carried to the summit in a cable car ($58 per head for an all day ticket) filled with so many families of visibly middle eastern origin that I wondered whether, aside from the profuse Iranian families, some were detachments of the Al Qaeda forces which had successfully made their escape from Tora Bora and were now enjoying a much deserved spell of R&R.

Though we were suspended several hundred feet above the valley floor, sitting ducks for terrorist attack, a spirit of interracial harmony prevailed I’m glad to say, without so much as a downward glance at ski boot or snow shoe to see if any detonation was imminent. The entire carload of 100 or so listened cheerfully as a couple of Middle Eastern brothers on a bus excursion with their girlfriends from Reno, described their gambling misfortunes the previous night. It was one of those moments when one feels that the human race, or at least that section of it roosting on these shores, has a fighting chance of vindicating one’s most foolishly optimistic hopes. These weren’t notably rich or stylish folk, just crowds of genial holiday makers clutching their boards or their skis, having a good time and well disposed towards everyone else slithering and tumbling down the slopes.

BLUES RULES

1. Most Blues begin, “Woke up this morning…”

2. “I got a good woman” is a bad way to begin the Blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line like, “I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town.”

3. The Blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes... sort of: “Got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Yes, I got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Got teeth like Margaret Thatcher, and she weigh 500 pound.”

4. The Blues is not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch, ain't no way out.

5. Blues cars: Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs and broken-down trucks. Blues don't travel in Volvos, BMWs, or Sport Utility Vehicles. Most Blues transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Jet aircraft and company motor pools ain't even in the running. Walkin’ plays a major part in the blues lifestyle. So does fixin’ to die.

6. Teenagers can't sing the Blues. They ain't fixin’ to die yet. Adults sing the Blues. In Blues, “adulthood” means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis.

7. Blues can take place in New York City but not in Hawaii or any place in Canada. Hard times in Minneapolis or Seattle is probably just clinical depression. Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City are still the best places to have the Blues. You cannot have the blues in any place that don't get no rain.

8. A man with male pattern baldness ain't the blues. A woman with male pattern baldness is. Breaking your leg cause you were skiing is not the blues. Breaking your leg “cause a alligator be chompin’” on it is.

9. You can't have no Blues in a office or a shopping mall. The lighting is wrong. Go outside to the parking lot or better yet sit by the dumpster.

10. Good places for the Blues:

a. Highway

b. Jailhouse

c. An empty bed

d. Bottom of a whiskey glass

11. Bad places for the Blues:

a. Nordstrom's

b. Gallery openings

c. Ivy league institutions

d. Golf courses

e. Movie Premiers

12. No one will believe it's the Blues if you wear a suit, ’less you happen to be a old ethnic person, it’s worn out, and you slept in it.

13. You have the right to sing the Blues if:

a. You older than dirt

b. You blind

c. You shot a man in Memphis

d. You can't be satisfied

14. You don't have the right to sing the Blues if:

a. You have all your teeth

b. You were once blind but now can see

c. The man in Memphis lived

d. You have a pension fund

15. Blues is not a matter of color. It's a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the blues. Sonny Liston could. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the blues.

16. If you ask for water and your darlin’ give you gasoline, it’s the Blues

17. Other acceptable Blues beverages are:

a. Cheap wine

b. Whiskey or bourbon

c. Muddy water

d. Nasty black coffee

18. The following are NOT Blues beverages:

a. Perrier

b. Chardonnay

c. Snapple

d. Slim Fast

19. If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, that’s a Blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another Blues way to die. So is the electric chair, substance abuse and dying lonely on a broke-down cot. You can't have a Blues death if you die during a tennis match or while getting liposuction.

20. Some Blues names for women:

a. Sadie

b. Big Mama

c. Bessie

d. Fat River Dumpling

e. Crystal (but only if she’s drunk or high)

21. Some Blues names for men:

a. Joe

b. Willie

c. Little Willie

d. Big Willie

22. Persons with names like Michelle, Amber, Debbie, and Heather can't sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis.

23. Make your own Blues name Starter Kit: a. name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, Broke, etc.) b. first name (see above) plus name of fruit (Lemon, Lime, Melon, Kiwi, etc.) c. last name of President (Washington, Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.) For example: Blind Lime Jefferson, Jackleg Lemon Johnson or Cripple Kiwi Fillmore, etc. (Well, maybe not “Kiwi.”)

24. I don't care how tragic your life: if you own even one computer, you cannot sing the blues.