Valley People (May 9, 2024)

AARON WELLINGTON: It is with great sorrow that I come here today to announce that my grandmother, Carolyn Wellington, passed away peacefully in her sleep Friday, May 3rd. 

JOHN ROBERT SHANDEL passed away, surrounded by his family, on December 20, 2023, after a courageous 16-year battle with kidney cancer. He was born on January 27, 1943, to Fred and Vera Shandel, and was raised on Middle Ridge, only a few miles from where he spent the rest of his life in Albion. His high school years were spent at San Rafael where he attended and graduated from San Rafael Military Academy. After high school John went to San Jose State College. While there he met his loving wife and best friend of 62 years, Bettie Fisher. Soon after their marriage John went into the Army. He served 13 months stationed at Camp Stanley in the DMZ in Korea, followed by 14 months at Fort Lee, Virginia. The rest of his life he spent in Albion where everyone will remember him as a logger and contractor with a huge smile who genuinely enjoyed his work – always willing to lend a helping hand to friends and neighbors in need. He served on the Mendocino Unified School District School Board for several terms, and many years as a volunteer firefighter, Fire Chief and EMT in the Albion-Little River Volunteer Fire Department.

John is survived by his brother, Rolf, and sisters, Judy Schlafer and Myrna Sharp, wife, Bettie, and sons Eric (Trudy), Gregory (Vicki), and Steven (Stephanie). Grandchildren Nicholas Shandel, Jason Shandel, Shiloh Tillery, and Great Grandson Andrew Shandel. Granddaughters Emma and Abbie Shandel. Grandsons Michael Morgan and Travis Pitkin.

Celebration of his life and barbeque will be held on July 20, at Albion-Little River Fire Department Little River Picnic Area at 1 PM. Please come with memories to share with all. RSVP message or text to 707-489-4371 by July 6.

AV UNIFIED NEWS

The Anderson Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees is delighted to announce the appointment of Jeff McFarland as Principal of the Anderson Valley Elementary School for the 2024/25 school year commencing on July 1, 2024. 

Mr. McFarland brings deep rural school district experience to his new assignment including having served as a Superintendent/Principal and Teacher of Horicon Elementary School for the past 11 years.

Prior to that assignment, he served as the Lead Teacher at Kashia Elementary School, a unique K-8 inclusive one room schoolhouse.

Mr. McFarland holds a Multiple Subject teaching credential, a Single Subject Social Science Credential, and an Administrative Credential. Superintendent Louise Simson noted that Mr. McFarlands’ excellent references related that he brings great enthusiasm towards fostering a positive environment for all students and staff and intends to maintain a setting devoted to each student’s learning and well-being.

Mr. McFarland related, “I have an abiding belief that all students can excel and achieve and a personal motto to cherish those who hold you up and pay forward the lessons you have learned.” He has expressed his earnest commitment to continue to build the team and collaborate going forward.

Superintendent Louise Simson noted, “We are delighted to welcome Jeff to the AVUSD team and I know that current Principal Cymbre Thomas- Swett will coordinate discussions with Mr. McFarland to ensure a smooth transition of the site leadership.”

* * *

Some news about phones. Please remember the phone system for the entire district is being changed on monday. Wynne Chrisman has worked really hard, but this is a complicated system and there are bound to be glitches. If you have an emergency, call me at 707-684-1017 or email a staff member in the office.

Also, the district has purchased three satellite phones for the buses and/or field trips when cell service is spotty. This is to ensure if we have an emergency, medical or fire life safety can respond no matter where we are at. A good investment!

Lots of fun happenings this week with a beautiful Day of the Child picnic and event at the Peachland Preschool. Thank you Anita and Lupita! The elementary school also celebrated Students of the Month and enjoyed popsicles too! FFA brought the farm to the elementary school on Friday for a fun learning show and tell experience for the elementary kids. Great fun!

The high school is busy with year-end academics and packing, packing, packing in preparation for the big remodel starting June 10. You will notice that things are coming down to be stored. We are a small but mighty staff, and we need to do that a bit at a time to make sure we are good to go. The rooms affected include Rooms 1, 2, Library and both science wings. If you would like to join us for a groundbreaking ceremony on Thursday, June 6 at 12:00 noon, we would love to see you.

Students will soon be heading off to Ashland, Oregon for the world-famous Shakespeare Festival. Thank you amazing AV Education Foundation!

Mark your calendars for the following events:

Preschool Graduation May 27 5:30 p.m. (Elementary front grass oval)

6th Grade Promotion June 4 6:00 p.m. (High School Gym)

8th Grade Promotion June 5 6:00 p.m. (High School Gym)

High School Graduation June 6 7:00 p.m. (High School Gym)

Please join us! Seating is first-come, first-served.

Construction is moving. Cupples Construction starts on the high school on June 10. We rebid the site work for the temporary classrooms and received a $100,000 savings! The elementary kitchen and staff bathroom should come out of DSA soon, the track and field should be out of round one comments in DSA in about six weeks, the Domes are in comment stage for seismic eligibility, and the high school gym is in Phase 2 for Seismic eligibility. Woohoo! 

Sincerely yours,

Louise Simson, Superintendent, AV Unified School District

YORKVILLE JEEP CREEP

Hi everyone! 

Here is your once-a-year event with the Yorkville History Group. We are doing a "jeep creep” on Eric and Barbara Carlson’s ranch - the old Stanley Johnson ranch (more recently the Acorn Ranch). 

We will assemble Sunday June 23, at 9:30 for a 10 AM start time. You are responsible for bringing your own: all wheel drive vehicle or a spot in one, lunch/drink, lawn chair. We will be including a stop at the old Gaskill school at the bottom of Haehl grade. At lunch time we will be encouraging story telling - so if you have any information about the Gaskill school or the old Johnson Ranch and Stanley, we would appreciate hearing about it. We will be taping the old-timers’ stories - so please come and share.

We are staying on graded roads, but all-wheel is still required.

You will receive a reminder a few days before with parking instructions. 

Please don’t worry about responding with an RSVP - I don’t keep track. Just show up June 23 at 9:30! 

Rain cancels…. 

Val Hanelt

Yorkville

OLIVIA ALLEN: Ahhhhhhh, it sure is bittersweet! I love the AVA despite all its quirks, Mark and Bruce are such gems. I first became acquainted with Bruce after he wrote a little editorial cheering Jack and I on for streaking in 2009, and it forged an enduring friendship. The AVA will forever be a cornerstone of our small-town uniqueness, and it will be sorely missed! I actually didn't know Renee Lee was the one putting it together the last decade. That's amazing; thank you Renee!

AN ANNOTATED READER WRITES, and excuse me if you find my medical travails tiresome but some people may find the information herein helpful. I have — had, I hope — thyroid cancer. To get it out the surgeons built me a new throat via what is called a double tracheostomy, preceded by a single trach creating a hole in my throat through which I now breathe. Dr. Ryan, and you'll be fortunate indeed to have this guy work on you, was confident I was strong enough to undergo the operations despite my age because I had no other medical conditions. My new throat is a plastic tube about an inch and a half long attached to my new orifice which, incidentally, resembles close up, the entrance to a foreboding cave or some extra-terrestrial black hole. (Irrelevant note: I may be mis-remembering but I thought I saw a guy at a carnival years ago who was blowing smoke rings through his trach. If I smoked, I might have passed amusing recuperative hours learning that very impressive trick.) My cancer was lodged against my thyroid, and I'll always wonder how long I walked around with it as it grew into a pale white slug-like thing of several inches lodged in my jaw. The chief surgeon, the aforementioned wizard Dr. Ryan — there was a team of them over nearly 7 hours — said he got all but a few nodules which are going to be eliminated, I'm assured, by a single shot of iodine radiation the middle of May. Surgeries one and two cost me all my strength but no bed time. I was from the first able to shuffle room-to-room before working up to resuming outdoor rambles. I walk at least a couple of miles a day and am about to resume restorative upper body push-ups. A lot of people undergo a lot tougher ordeals. I'd prefer mine over, say, open heart surgery. The worst part of my experience was all the hospital time immobilized, infantilized and wholly dependent on shifts of saintly nurses.

READER: You sure have been through a lot and I'm sure the pain has been awful. The throat is such a tender area. At least the great ordeal didn't do a drive-by on your brain.

PATIENT: There wasn't any pain to speak of, but there were, and are, many, many irritations and discomforts. I've also been voiceless since going under the knife, a silence seemingly welcomed by my sig others, but I will soon begin to learn how to talk again at a nearby speech clinic. The functioning of my brain has always been contested.

READER: Mark (the patient's colleague) said you lost a lot of weight. Do you eat by swallowing or do you have a feeding tube?

PATIENT: I lost about twenty pounds from 210 pounds of coiled steel pre-op to about 190 bone bag now. I eat through my new throat but through the same old mouth. At first I was only able to down soft stuff and Ensure; now I can eat whatever after thorough chewing. Swallowing is still pretty much a work in progress and my sense of taste is gone.

READER: Mark tells me that Ling (my wife) is your main caregiver. I hope she will consent to having some help come in to give her a break. Caregivers need a pause to recoup and refresh themselves.

PATIENT: There were emergency breathing probs in the middle of the night for a couple of weeks during which my dear, dear wife had to rescue me, and chose to (hah!), but during all of this my daughter has often filled in, as have visiting nurses funded through Medi-care, along with several back-up relatives. I am able to vacuum my throat and replace the breathing plugs that protect the hole in my neck, which is the extent of my in-home maintenance at this point. Ling is off the hook. I can't imagine a person undergoing all this alone and have always considered Ling a miracle gift I in no way deserve. She's active in a mahjong group and gets away often with my daughter and my sister.

READER: If and when your situation becomes tedious and unbearable, or if the cancer spreads somewhere else, or if there's any other ifs that crop up, there is a humane, easy way off this planet. It's called Aid In Dying, also known as the doctor's cocktail. It's all legal. I've known two women who used it and their departures were smooth, graceful and effortless for them and those at their bedsides.

PATIENT: As a guy already past his pull date, I nevertheless feel like I'm probably going to stumble on for a few more years, so I haven't thought about exit strategies beyond the vague desire to have my remains placed whole on a tall scaffold deep in the Boonville hills for natural recycling like certain Native American tribes used to do.

SPORTS TALK, an on-line exchange:

(1) Have you ever watched college-level softball? It is a women-only sport in the same way that college baseball is a men-only sport. The games appear similar but everything in softball is on a smaller scale. The distance from home plate to the right, left and center field walls are much shorter than the distances in baseball. Same with the distances between the bases. I could enumerate many other differences.

Softball games are 7 innings, not nine, assuming the game doesn’t go into extra innings. The biggest difference is that women pitchers pitch underhand. The speed of the pitches is surprisingly fast, typically in the mid-60s mph and thrown with surprising control.

I think it is inevitable that a trans woman will come along one of these days and be throwing pitches at more than 80 mph. We’ll know the tranny when we see a lump in the crotch of their uniform and if the game is being played late in the day the pitcher may have a five o’clock shadow. It will raise the same dilemma as trans women swimmers.

What will athletic directors do about this? Probably nothing. They will be trapped in the same web of liberal absurdity as any other sport where men are passing themselves off as women.

 (2) Speaking of baseball, what’s up with all the spitting? Is there any other sport where the players spit incessantly? I am not aware of one.

(3) When I played, we all chewed tobacco. Hence all the spitting. Some hockey players chew tobacco and spit on the ice, as well. I don’t think it really works in most other sports.

(4) Yeah, some big bruiser who was second string on the varsity baseball team shaves his legs, puts a bow in his hair, claims he is now female, and walks onto the women’s softball team. He laces live drives every at bat and breaks the NCAA homerun record. At ESPN they’ll report with a straight face how fantastic this new softball phenom is.

FROST PARANOIA AND HEEDLESSNESS leads to another spring of audio assaults on Anderson Valley. 

For the last few mornings, the window rattling wind fans of the local wine grape growers have again come on around midnight and continued into the daylight hours, disturbing the sleep of the entire valley because many grape growers turn on their noise machines when it isn’t even close to 32 degrees in mortal fear of a little bud damage. The level of disturbance varies depending on how close you are to the machines and what kind of machine is used. (Three bladed fans are not as rumbling as the standard old-fashioned two-bladed machines that most grape growers use.) But everyone is affected. The old time Italian grape growers grew their grapes in the hills where the temps don’t get as low, and when it did they simply pruned off the damage and accepted the product as it was. Not now. Today’s grape growers plant their grapes in the coldest areas of the Valley thinking they produce tastier grapes. Not only must every single grape be coddled like a newborn baby, but the infernal machines must be turned on when there’s nothing but a nip in the air. And who cares what they do to the public at large? As Ted Bennett famously said when the wind-fans were first installed, “My grapes are more important than your sleep.” The County of Mendocino could at least do what the industry itself said was being done at the time (but wasn’t) by requiring permits for wind fans that address “noise, placement and need.” But Official Mendo is joined at the hip with the wine industry so they would never bring that up, much less enforce their own noise restrictions. We sued the County and our neighboring nuisances back in 2015. At the one and only court hearing we had, Judge Henderson opened the hearing by announcing that he assumed that most of the audience was on hand because they were bothered by the noise. Then-Supervisor and wine industry representative Carre Brown was in the courtroom with several dozen members of her wine mob and they all shouted “NOOOOOOOOO” in unison like cows in heat in response. (Mark Scaramella)

FIRE SEASON BEGINS: Burn Permits Required

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) Mendocino Unit has announced effective Wednesday, May 1, 2024, at 12:01 AM, all hazard reduction burning in the SRA (State Responsibility Area) will require a permit in Mendocino County. Bum permits must now be obtained online at https://burnpermit.fire.ca.gov/. Applicants can access the website to obtain a bum permit which involves watching a short educational video and submitting an application. The process provides the necessary information needed to conduct the bum safely, while minimizing the chance for fire escape. Permits must be in possession either by printed copy or digitally. Permits are valid beginning May 1st of each year and require annual renewal. Permits are issued free of charge. Property owners conducting hazard reduction burning are responsible for checking the burn day status. Burn day status is regulated by Mendocino County Air Quality Management District Burn Day Information Line: (707)-463-4391 Mendocino County Air Quality Management District: (707) 463-4354 Hazard Reduction Guidelines are listed on the permit and must be followed at all times.

(CalFire Mendo Unit Presser)

BOONT TRIBE COMMUNITY SCHOOL

We’re putting on a play! We’re starting to build our set and need about 6 or 7 appliance boxes. Really really big boxes. Like the ones that come on new refridgerators and ovens…anyone gotten a new appliance recently? We can pick up! Thank you!!!!

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!

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.

SO YOU'RE 90: WHAT'S NEXT? THE BOONVILLE 5K CLASSIC

by Gregory Sims

So much is happening/not happening. But on Sunday Morning a tremendous overflow of energy from infants in buggies, toddlers running around to hundreds of school age kids, well behaved and very engaged, anxiously awaiting the opportunity to run, run, run. Then there were the middle-agers also eager to get going. Finally there were the oldsters, 50s to 70s, a few in their early 80s, and one 90-year old. Me.

I’ve been watching my stomach protrude and feeling a real need to move my body, but somehow not doing it. It seems the docs have been keeping me alive, sort of, but that’s not how I feel after the wonderful event full of enthusiasm, raffles, instructions and patience with the very orderly unfolding of The legendary Anderson Valley 5K Classic!

But, thinking of the stern remonstrance of his staff, and rather serious medical information delivered by the pleasant encouragement of my Cardiologist. I thought: Gregory you don’t want to cause a scene by collapsing in the middle of this very pleasant event.

So I signed up, paid my fee and agreed with myself to do a modulated 2.5K walk to the fruit stand and back with a pause in the middle and again now and then.

So, the race began and everyone, everyone passed me up. It wasn’t too long, even before arriving near the fruit stand, that I met folks coming back. But there was a break in the foot traffic and I was near enough to the fruit stand that I followed in my pursuit of the 2.5K. More than a stroll but still with an occasional stop. And when I arrived at the starting/ending line it said 41 minutes and a few odd seconds. People cheered for everyone coming back.

I was actually quite tired, but my body felt so much better and I told the staff that I did a 2+K and they all said that was fine. So I thought we should advertise the event as a 5K (+-) event as some people did the whole course twice and others with their strollers and infants were also part of the scene.

The next part of the event was awards, plus gifts of juice or wine for all participants. So when the awards started with the very young, through all boys, girls, women, and men, they arrived at the 80 and beyond for some recognition. Then someone realized they had added a 90+ category. I happily walked away with my bottle of Handley Cellar’s Anderson Valley Chardonnay Wine and a blue ribbon for First (the only one) Place.

My body and spirits thus lifted, I went off to share good energies with friends and finally with you. I hope this makes it into the on line version of the AVA as the instructions Mark offered were beyond my ability to successfully implement.

I’ve allowed myself to feel a deep sadness because of the many disturbances and wars which deserve our attention. But if I say to myself “please forgive me, I seem incapable of realizing that becoming anxious is my body asking that I meditate for a spell like the one minute meditations KZYX offers us. I listen to them and it helps. There’s no reason I can’t do it by myself, so I will.

And at the risk of repeating myself: The Anderson Valley 5k Event was uplifting and healthy. Thanks to everyone who made it happen. 

WHY I LIVE BOONVILLE

by Bill Kimberlin

I asked a real estate agent once why Boonville wasn’t more popular with the Napa Valley set. She lowered her voice and said, almost conspiratorially, “It’s the name”.

Boonville…it is a hick name. But then Sagaponack, in The Hamptons , where all the swells summer, doesn’t exactly slip grandly off the tongue either. No, its more than the name. Outwardly, there is nothing to do here. No golf courses, no Wine Train, no Steinbeck connection, nothing to register on the quaint meter.

Most travelers slow down to gaze at Boonville and then speed off after having completed the survey. Some poor folks even park and walk around expectantly, but their hopes soon fade, and they drive off quickly.

The Valley kids will tell you in an instant what the problem is, “There’s nothing to do here”. It’s a lament that I’m quite familiar with, having heard it all through Anderson Valley High from my fellow scholars during the 1960's.

It’s true, there is nothing to do here. But it is also true that some people can find something, in “nothing”. Young children can do it. They find plenty to do here, and always have. It’s when they get a little older and more worldly that they first discover the problem. This used to happen at about the age of thirteen. Now I suspect that it happens even earlier.

On a recent trip to France I noticed that this was not just a Valley phenomenon. The college kids I met in French villages were plainly disinterested in the ancient ruins, art museums and the other charms of life I was reveling in. “There’s nothing to do here,” was the gist of what they said. Many were dreaming of the wonderful life they would have if only they could get to Los Angeles.

Of course, this is exactly as it should be. We go away so that we can come home again, each place letting us reflect back on what we had at the other. The Valley kids will surely do this. They will go away, but they will also come back, if only in their minds, to what they had here.

To walk along Clow Ridge, or down the Navarro River, or into the cathedral of Hendy Woods, I would argue, is about as profound an adventure as any you are likely to experience, even if it doesn’t seem like much is happening.

I’ve been chasing the faint charms of this little rural town for some time now and am still hard pressed to describe them. My brother says they are just an illusion. Yet, if so, it’s still one that enchants. I am reminded of the painter who is forever trying to capture the look of sunlight falling on nature. He knows that he will never quite achieve it, but he also knows that there is a gift in trying.

For instance, I once stopped by the organic farm of Vicki and Mike Brock. Usually, I just scan the vegetables set out for sale and count out my change from the little self-serve cash box. But this day, Vicki approached asking, “Would you like some corn?”

What a question, I thought. Would I like to walk with her into the corn fields with her tiny daughter, Julia, trailing behind us in her birthday suit, to pull ears of young fresh corn from the stalk; corn which I would be eating at my dinner table within the hour? As calmly as I could, I said, “Yes, I would like some corn.”

So we headed out into the fields in the warm sun of a late summer afternoon, first stopping to admire the giant pumpkin crop that Mike was growing for the contests he enters.

Little Julia marched right up to one behemoth that was approaching 900 pounds and pulled back the netting that shaded this carefully nurtured specimen. “Daddy’s pumpkin”, she announced triumphantly. This pumpkin would later win him a prize, once he had figured out how to move it.

As I looked around this idyllic farm with its original 13 star American Flag flying high atop a pole securely planted amongst the organic crops, I thought of the imprint this simple ritual of going into the fields on the Valley floor, surrounded by Redwood forests on the one side and rolling grassy hills on the other, would make on this little girl, just as it did on me so many years before her.

If there is an illusion to this place it was present that day, watching Julia’s own senses drinking it all in, as she stumbled over dirt clods trailing Mommy to the corn patch at golden hour in Boonville.

(Some of this is excerpted from my book, “Inside The Stars Empire: A Memoir.)