Mendocino County Today: Friday 5/10/24

Warm | Little Lake | John Mark | Iris | Nolan Memorial | Braught Worst | Circumcision Protest | Boil Water | Gardner Violations | McGourty Responds | Farm Supply | Haschak Report | Coastal Trail | BOS Complaint | Swimming Lessons | Ed Notes | Trumplosion | Wildflower Show | Electrician | Mother's Day | Adult School | Name Teach-in | Correct Date | Paul Stone | Skunk Notes | Bastille Day | Documentary Support | Yesterday's Catch | Dead Creek | Minor Issues | Ava Gardner | City Folk | Big Man | Cryptorchidism | Always Here | Monthly Charge | Can Do | Sites Reservoir | Rammers | French Paradox | TV Dinners | Disappeared Gringos | Buying Time | Courtroom Coverage | Car Phone | Cop Agitators | TV Murder | War Culture | Camille Monfort | Run America | Bullitt | Nation's Conscience | Smogville | Culture War | Empty Threat | Lamott Interview | Trailer Park

GENERAL OFFSHORE FLOW influenced by a Pacific ridge of high pressure will continue to bring warm and dry conditions through Saturday. Unseasonably warm and possibly record high temperatures could occur along the coast today. Saturday will most likely see a return to more seasonable temperatures along the coast. A cooling trend is expected for Sunday and Monday with warmer temperatures returning for the middle of the week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): If you liked yesterday, you'll love today along the coast. It reached 75F yesterday. 50F with clear skies this Friday morning. Other than some clouds overnight & Saturday morning our forecast does not offer much. Temps will back off for the weekend.

JOHN MARK

We deeply mourn the passing of John Mark, a long time resident of Yorkville, California. John died suddenly on Wednesday, April 24, 2024.

John was born in Chicago, Illinois on November 10, 1946 to mother Virginia (Schnittmann) Mark and father John Mark Sr. He attended Steinmetz High School in Chicago. He moved to California in the late 1960’s after traveling across the country in a remodeled school bus and settled in Mendocino County.

He is survived by his first life partner, Julie Beardsley of Ukiah, CA and son Joshua Mark of Scott Bar and Ukiah, CA. He was preceded in death by his second life partner, Narda Vincent. John and Narda have two surviving sons, Bodhi Mark of Yorkville and San Francisco; Mabin Mark of Portland, Oregon; and Narda’s first son James Symkla, of North Carolina. Extended family include niece and nephew Dorian Vincent DePaul of Willits, Aeolian DePaul of Willits, brother-in-law Joseph Vincent of Korea, and Lena Orlando of Montara CA, sister to Joshua Mark, as well as numerous cousins.

John was a member of the Anderson Valley Grange #669 and was active in local community events. He raised sheep for many years and worked with many local ranchers up and down Highway 128 shearing each year. John was one of the first licensed cannabis farmers in Mendocino County. He was a licensed contractor, wine maker, and an avid pickleball player. John’s observations on life were often very funny, and he was always there to help his neighbors. His life was long and full of adventures. He will be deeply missed by all who knew him.

RICHARD NOLAN MEMORIAL this Saturday, May 11, 18381 Old Coast Hwy, at one o'clock in Fort Bragg for Richard Nolan. Look for American flags. Call Sarah if you have any questions, 707-813-0211.

FORMER GEIGER'S OWNER Michael Braught needs to do the right thing and allow the new owners to re-open the place. He's made his money, plus some, so time to halt the screwing of 3,500 people and turn the operation over to the buyers. He apparently defaulted on the operating lease ($25K per month) long ago, so he doesn't have a legal leg to stand on and will get clobbered in court. I've always said and still believe that problems just don’t happen, people make them happen. It's way past time for Braught to quit creating problems, otherwise people might think he's a jerk.

— Jim Shields

BLOOD STAINED MEN PROTEST CIRCUMCISION IN UKIAH, Opposing a Controversial Practice

by Matt LaFever

Yesterday afternoon a niche contingent of protestors gathered on a busy corner in Ukiah to voice their opposition to circumcision, a long-practiced procedure in which the foreskin is removed from a penis. Our reporter Monica Huettl happened upon the demonstration and inquired about their cause.…

mendofever.com/2024/05/10/blood-stained-men-protest-circumcision-in-ukiah-opposing-a-controversial-practice

SUSPICIONS CONFIRMED

On 05/08/2024, at approximately 8:20 p.m., Ukiah Police Department (UPD) Officers contacted a suspicious vehicle in the 1100 block of Airport Park Boulevard in Ukiah. The driver of the vehicle was identified as, Robert Gardner. 

UPD Officers during their investigation observed a controlled substance in plain view. A search of the vehicle was conducted, and a loaded, Charter Arms .38 special revolver was located under Gardner’s driver seat. UPD Officers also located drug paraphernalia and a digital scale inside the vehicle.  

Gardner was determined to be a convicted felon (prior conviction for violation of 11378 H&S) and unable to possess a firearm and/or ammunition. 

Gardner was placed under arrest for the above-mentioned violations and transported to the Mendocino County Jail. 

As always, UPD’s mission is to make Ukiah as safe a place as possible. If you would like to know more about  crime in your neighborhood, you can sign up for telephone, cellphone, and email notifications by clicking the  Nixle button on our website; http://www.ukiahpolice.com

SUPERVISOR MCGOURTY DENIES ALLEGATION OF IMPROPRIETY

To Whom it may Concern, 

This letter is being shared to shed light on some inappropriate behavior by an Elected Official in Mendocino County. First District Board Member Glenn McGourty abused his power to get special treatment for a family member through County services and threatened staff. As a witness to these events and the impact on the staff directly involved, I was appalled at the behavior and abuse of power. 

In 2022, a family member of Mr. McGourty required County services. Mr. McGourty and his wife demanded special treatment for their family member and expected special privileges given Mr. McGourty's political position. When County staff attempted to intervene in this inappropriate demand, they were threatened by Mr. McGourty and his wife, who reminded staff of Mr. McGourty's position of power within the County implying there would be consequences for not bending to their will. 

A few things stand out from these events: 

1) The County has a fiduciary responsibility to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent appropriately; 2) Each citizen of Mendocino County should be treated equally in terms of County services provided, regardless of economic status or political position held; and 3) Mr. McGourty and his wife expected special treatment for his family member and threatened County staff who attempted to do the right thing. 

Mr. McGourty needs to be held accountable for his actions and should resign from the Board of Supervisors. 

* * *

SUPERVISOR MCGOURTY RESPONDS:

Dear AVA:

The anonymous correspondence that you received is factually incorrect. This accusation occurred in a closed Board of Supervisors Session whose proceedings under the Brown Act are confidential. Additionally, medical records are confidential under the HIPAA laws, and cannot be discussed without consent of the person being treated.

Sincerely:

Glenn McGourty

AV FARM SUPPLY: Happy Mother’s Day Weekend! We have lots of beautiful flowers to choose from! Roses, Azaleas, Alstroemeria, Hydrangeas and more!

THIRD DISTRICT SUPERVISOR REPORT

by John Haschak

Spring is my favorite time of year. Gradients of green on the hillsides, wildflowers of all shapes, sizes, and colors, temperatures that allow one to breathe freely, and creeks and rivers that are still flowing. With summer right around the corner, a shout out to those working to make our communities safer when the heat cranks up, the grasses are dry, and fire is on our minds.

Sherwood Firewise Communities had their annual meeting last Saturday during the rainstorm. CalFire, Mendocino County Office of Emergency Services, Mendocino County Fire Safe Communities, Brooktrails Fire Department, and I presented information regarding the upcoming fire season. This is a perfect example of building stronger communities by working together, educating each other, and getting to know your neighbor. These are valuable components of successfully preparing for emergencies.

The County is about to run a special assessment election for the Sherwood Road Emergency Access Routes. This is a pilot program. Everyone involved has learned a lot about the process, procedures, and the many challenges that have arisen. If this is replicated in other areas of the County, it will be a smoother process. Parcel owners in the Sherwood Road area will be asked if they want to assess themselves (less than $31 annually) to maintain two emergency access routes in that area.

If approved by the Board of Supervisors, ballots will be sent out in early June and people will have 45 days to vote. More information is available at mendocinocounty.gov/government/economic-development. The engineer who came up with the numbers and I will be presenting at the Brooktrails Community Services District meeting on May 28.

The budget will be balanced in June but it won’t be pretty. Supervisor Gjerde and I worked with staff to create a retirement incentive. It has already saved $520,000. 

Property taxes have gone up 4% annually over the last 5 years and cannabis taxes are up yet sales taxes and Transient Occupancy Taxes are down. The County is still in negotiations with In Home Support Service workers. These are the people who provide critical services to keep seniors and others in their homes instead of a hospital or nursing home.

We need to be collecting all the property taxes and short-term rental taxes. I have proposed increasing the Transient Occupancy Tax, subject to voter approval, which could provide direct benefits to our communities.

Funding critical services (law enforcement, roads) and tourism infrastructure projects (park enhancements, signage, and bathrooms) will enhance everyone’s experience in Mendocino County. 

At this point, cuts to programs are going to be increasingly hurtful.

There will be a Talk with the Supervisor Thursday, May 9 at 10:00 at Brickhouse Coffee in Willits. I am available by email at haschakj@mendocinocounty.gov or phone 707-972-4214.

REPRIMANDS CALLED FOR

Editor,

I just drafted and emailed this complaint about how item 4i was handled at Tuesday’s board of supervisors meeting. It was sent to the Executive Office, Human Resources, and all five supervisors.

To the Board of Supervisors and Executive Office,

After watching the May 7th Board of Supervisors meeting, I was appalled at how item 4i was handled.

I feel it was highly inappropriate for the board chair to abuse her position as chair to reopen an agenda item that had already been heard and voted on to allow for additional comments from County staff that were disgruntled that their director did not receive a new position classification with accompanying raise in salary as they had so hoped.

I also find it highly unethical that a high-level manager(s) abused their position(s) to forcefully coerce their subordinates into signing a petition in support of a pay raise for a person who has control over their livelihood and career, then to take that petition to the board in an attempt to sway policy decisions.

I am requesting that the County initiate an outside investigation into this matter. Any and all managers or supervisors who participated in this effort should be interviewed and reprimanded appropriately.

I am also requesting a public response regarding the County’s plan of how they will be responding to this situation and how it will be avoided in the future.

Adam Gaska

Redwood Valley resident

WYNNE NORD: We have three spots left for our summer swimming lessons. Please read the attached to make sure your child qualifies. We have one opening in group A and two openings in group C. These lessons are for beginning swimmers.

ED NOTES

I THINK it's more likely that the present board of supervisors instinctively, all five of them, instantly assume the prone position before authority, which accounts for their collusion with DA Eyster in his malicious pursuit of our elected auditor, Chamise Cubbison, a pursuit guaranteed to cost local taxpayers millions of dollars when Ms. Cubbison cashes in her lawsuit against the county. Too bad that everyone involved can't be held personally liable, but as it is none of them will be, and none of them will ever express personal remorse for lending themselves to such a crummy series of events. Or even aware that they are ethically, morally defective.

YOU KNOW what the problem is? With everything? Tell us, O Sage of Boonville. Ready? Write this down: Everything's too big. Plato said when political units — towns, cities, get over five thousand people, 5,040 to be exact, the individual is unlikely to be either represented or have an effective say in the affairs of his community while everything goes to hell. (cf Ukiah)

WHILE THE SAGE is passing out his statements of the obvious today, the root cause of homelessness, as it has evolved to its present intractability, and apart from its context as a society organized to promote despairing mental illness, is the cash-flush bureaucracies ostensibly working to get capitalism's casualties indoors. The helping pros' first allegiance is to their own cush jobs while the homeless function as mere funding units for them, hence the State of California's expenditure of $24 billion to get the homeless housed, an expenditure of public moeney whose net effect is more homelessness than ever. 

LOCALS won't forget that the County of Mendo spent $60 grand on a homeless consultant named Robert Marbut, who reported back on how to radically reduce homelessness in Mendocino County only to have our supervisors ignore the advice they'd paid mightily for. The County's helping professionals were panicked that Marbut had implied that the local helping pros were an obstacle to getting the house-less indoors, and they quickly convened a mass meeting in the basement tomb of the Ukiah Convention Center where they decried Marbut's cruelty, his lack of humanity! And right there we had the perfect mass statement of why central Ukiah has become an outdoor asylum and is likely to stay that way.

ABOUT TIME. The MCN chatline is finally being moderated after years of a handful of demented Coasties bombarding each other with insults all day every day, “If you would like to flag an offending post for moderation, send a message to mlp@mcn.org.” It seems the worst offenders have already been 86'd from MCN, a couple of them predictably complaining that they've been stripped of their 1st Amendment rights to free speech.

THE SF CHRONICLE did away with its comment lines recently because it probably took someone or several someones to edit out the dementia, which ran into money for a newspaper already on the fiscal ropes.

SIGNS OF THE APOCALYPSE: Donald Trump's lawyer asked Daniels about making porn films. “You have a lot of experience of making phony stories about sex appear to be real?” Necheles said. Daniels countered, “Wow, that's not how I'd put it.” She said “the sex in the films is very much real.” She added “just like what happened to me in that room,” referencing her alleged encounter with Trump in 2006. Daniels was asked about a supposedly fake story about having sex with Trump. She responded: “If that story was untrue, I would have written it to be a lot better.”

WILDFLOWER SHOW THANK YOU

Dear Editor,

We would like to thank everyone who made the 2024 Wildflower Show such a success. 

Many members volunteered to help collect, sort and bottle hundreds of wildflower specimens from around Anderson Valley, over the course of three days. We also received valuable assistance from outside the Club whom we would especially like to thank: Lisa Nunes, Scott Morgan, Anita Soost, Rick Bonner, Heather Morrison, and Jade Paget-Seekins. These spry helpers climbed up cliffs and down trenches, braved swamp and poison oak, to collect things we couldn’t have gotten otherwise! Jade and Heather were also our official Botanists, helping to identify all the specimens.

Each year our collection is enhanced by provision of tree cuttings from Scott Hulbert and wild grasses from Bill Harper and Kathy Bailey. An invasive plant table with specimens, pictures, and information provides a counterpoint.

Our vendors are selected to enhance the Show, and indeed they did so, once again! The Sanhedrin Chapter of the California Native Plant Society was there with books and posters to offer, and was busier than ever sharing their knowledge with so many people. Suzanna Macedo’s display and sale of all crafts ‘wildflower’ was very popular. The Galbreath Wildlands Preserve provided an informative poster and brochures about their mission. Finally, Lisa Nunes donated her lovely wildflower photo cards for us to sell at the check-in area. 

Thank you to th4 AVHS art department, whose students produced paintings for display at the show. The Club volunteers voted on the art and gave the top three artists $50 each. 

A big thank you to 6^th grade teachers Kelsey Pearl and Yuri Cruz, and to Deleh Mayne with the Teen Center, for the delicious food served in the tearoom on Saturday and Sunday, respectively. Also, Linnea Totten and Evette LaPaille worked to arrange the students’ educational visit Monday morning.

A special thank you to the businesses and people who donated auction gifts. Their generosity in the few years we’ve had a Silent Auction has enabled us to DOUBLE our scholarships! So, a very big and special ‘Thank You!’ goes to the following for their support of our community: 

Anderson Valley Brewing Company, Bee Hunter Wine, Boont Berry Farm, Boonville General Store, Boonville Hotel, Brashley Vineyards, California Native Plant Society, Dancing Dragonfly, Disco Ranch, Farmhouse Mercantile, Foursite Wines, Goldeneye Winery, Gowan's Heirloom Cider, Gowan's Oak Tree, Greenwood Ridge Vineyards, Husch Vineyards, John Hanes Gallery, Long Meadow Ranch, Maggie Hawk Wines, Mendo Mindset, Mosswood Market, Navarro Vineyards & Winery, Offspring Pizza, Pennyroyal Farm, Philo Ridge Vineyards, Roederer Estate, Rossi's Hardware, Sun & Cricket Shop, The French Press, Toulouse Vineyards, Twomey, Weatherborne Wine Corp., Wickson Restaurant, and Witching Stick Wines. 

A heartfelt thanks goes to Becky and the Fairgrounds staff for all their help. Thanks to Robert Rosen, the Anderson Valley Brewing Company, and the AV Methodist Church for allowing us to place our banners on their respective fences.

Finally, we wish to thank the following people who helped our club members with plant donations, set- up, and/or cleanup: Lynn Halpern, Hans Hickenlooper, Tom Condon and Rick Bonner. 

We are extending an invitation to community members to join us in next year’s wildflower adventure. We would love additional plant propagators, collectors, and especially those interested in identifying plants. Contributors with new ideas can only help to improve this special event. We want more of our community members to be an integral part, and to help make this show even better. Interested? Please contact Jean at (707) 272-8243.

Anderson Valley Unity Club Garden Section

Jean Condon

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

Editor,

We dedicate one day a year to Mothers a Tribute and beautiful sentiment of love, recognition and celebration of Mothers and their selfless contributions to raising their children. Mothers like me who have adult children with Mental Illness, they are often unrecognized and abandoned on Mother's Day, by those same children they brought into the world with love and care. Mental Illness has the capability to destroy all that is good in one single instant, including the celebrations most people enjoy with those most important in their lives. For the rest of us, the warriors of terror and 1,000 deaths it is a day often wrought with pain and agony, we hole up and hide hoping that the wrath of Mental Illness stays calm and does not appear. It is so painful for us to witness the joyful appreciation of Mothers on TV and social media while we suffer in silence, alone and wonder where we went wrong?

Painful, Mother's Day is just that painful, not fun, not joyous just full of misery. I myself always try to go to the beach where I can calm my nervous system and regroup. It really does help to get out and it is so important to know you are not alone and it does and can get better, but it is a long arduous road that you must not drive off, you may run into the ditch but must pull yourself out and get back on the road. Why? Why even bother it is so freaking hard, but the truth is because you are MOM, the mother the bearer of life! Most people will not experience our burdens, the level of trauma and disregard we face when our children have a Serious Mental Illness. If people understood what we endure when our children, whether adult or not are sick with a Serious Mental Illness is catastrophic. Financially, legally, personally and on all fronts, we are devalued in any capacity to help them on a daily basis. Then that one day a year comes around every Spring celebrating the Joy of being a mother, we are bombarded with images and stories of happy healthy loving relationships. It is hard to witness and not feel, shame, guilt and disgust at all the loving displays of appreciation for Moms of healthy well-functioning adult children. We did not win the grand prize! We were awarded the booby trap by default!

To all of my friends and fellow Moms who love an Adult Child with a Serious Mental Illness, I wish you peace, support and Love on this Mother's Day! Although we may not be acknowledged by our loved ones, or the system, I salute you! I honor you for your love and dedication to your children and their well-being! You are the gift to your loved one, do not give up!

Happy Mother's Day!

Mazie Malone

Ukiah

FORT BRAGG TREMBLES IN ANTICIPATION…

Change Our Name’s next Monthly teach-in will be Friday, May 17, at 7 p.m. at Town Hall in Fort Bragg at 363 N. Main Street.

Envisioned as a program to educate attendees about the issues involved in the name change and to hear neighbors’ ideas, the teach-in will last about one hour and will feature two speakers and a question and answer/discussion period.

This Teach-in will focus on: A chat about the past and present so we can move forward together

Speakers:

Tanda Blubear of the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians at the Stewarts Point Rancheria, a Federally Recognized Tribe located in Sonoma County. She is the founder of Women with Bows, a group of Indigenous women traveling turtle island to bring mutual aid and hope to impoverished reservations and surroundings areas.

U’ilani Wesley will introduce Tanda and speak about how we heal from inside out.

Discussing controversial topics requires civility and respect for the opinions of others. This program is free and open to all.

For further information: changeournamefortbragg@gmail.com

A local grass roots non-profit, Change Our Name Fort Bragg is dedicated to an educational process that leads to changing the name of Fort Bragg so that it no longer honors a military Fort that dispossessed Indigenous people or Braxton Bragg, an enslaver and Confederate General. who waged war against our country.

CORRECTED

Historian corrects mistake...

Sometimes when reading handwritten accounts of history figuring out handwriting can be a challenge. Reader Carol Eastwood pointed out that in my recent story on shipwrecks I gave the wrong year for the “Pacific Enterprise” crashing just north of Point Arena. The correct date was 1949 for the wreck. Any serious historian welcomes feedback and new information about a mis-statement, including me.

Katy M. Tahja

Comptche

SKUNK NOTES

(Mendocino Railway Presser)

Mendocino Railway, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sierra Railroad Company proudly announces a significant moment in its history as it celebrates its 20th anniversary on May 1, 2024, marking two decades since it revived the California Western Railroad / Skunk Train (CWR) from bankruptcy. Mendocino Railway is also embarking on an historic infrastructure project, putting its recently awarded Railroad Rehabilitation & Improvement Financing (RRIF) loan funds to work, starting on May 28th, at Tunnel #1’s east portal along the Noyo River.

The journey to this point has been one of revival, resilience, and commitment. In 2004, Mendocino Railway acquired the CWR, reviving it and preserving freight and passenger service for the community. This acquisition marked the beginning of a $30 million transformation of the line.

Mendocino Railway now stands at the threshold of a new chapter, having secured a $21 million RRIF loan from the Build America Bureau (BAB), a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). The RRIF loan program exists to further the DOT’s policy of ensuring that communities—especially rural and underserved communities—will continue to benefit from freight and non-excursion rail service, providing funds to restore and rehabilitate railroad infrastructure. The DOT granted its RRIF loan to Mendocino Railway for those precise purposes. The loan will be instrumental in allowing Mendocino Railway to make necessary line improvements, including restoring Tunnel #1.

Mendocino Railway’s President, Robert Jason Pinoli, stated, “This is an exciting time as 2024 marks my 32nd year of railroading. The CWR holds a special place in my heart and this RRIF loan brings our combined investment in the line to more than $50 million. It’s a crucial step towards ensuring that the CWR remains capable of providing passenger and freight rail service to our communities for years to come.”

The objectives of Mendocino Railway’s project include rehabilitating Tunnel #1, replacing rails and ties, making siding improvements, and improving 27 bridges. These enhancements will rejuvenate a vital transportation corridor and help bring economic opportunities to Mendocino County’s people and businesses.

Securing this loan is a testament to Mendocino Railway’s perseverance and dedication, as the process began nearly four years ago, in May/June 2020, when Mendocino Railway submitted its initial interest letter for RRIF and the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) credit assistance. The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) initiated its review of the environmental, legal, and engineering aspects of the project in August 2020, as required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Despite challenges—including delays caused by the City of Fort Bragg and the California Coastal Commission (“CCC”)—Mendocino Railway remained steadfast in its commitment and the FRA completed a thorough environmental review, culminating in the issuance of a Categorical Exclusion in July 2022. In response to CCC concerns, the FRA conducted additional review before affirming its initial determination. Mendocino Railway emphasizes its commitment to environmental stewardship and assures the public that the FRA conducted a comprehensive review of the project, fulfilling its NEPA responsibility.

This monumental achievement reflects upon the CWR’s profound transformation since 2004: from the brink of closure to record-breaking milestones, this journey symbolizes the strength of Mendocino Railway’s vision and the unwavering support of its staff, visitors, and supporters. This journey would not have been successful without the added support of the DOT and BAB, for which Mendocino Railway is grateful.

Marking the 20th anniversary of the CWR’s revival, Mendocino Railway’s President, Robert Jason Pinoli, reflects, “The transformation of this iconic railway stands as a testament to perseverance and dedication. It’s a journey that showcases the remarkable spirit of our team and the enduring legacy of the railroad. We are pleased to be able to improve our infrastructure so as to maintain our rail services to the community.”

As Mendocino Railway marks this milestone and embarks on this historic endeavor, it extends its heartfelt gratitude to all who have been a part of this extraordinary journey, especially the FRA and BAB. Mendocino Railway looks forward to together ushering in a new era of transportation excellence, ensuring the CWR remains an integral part of our community for years to come.

California Western Railroad / Skunk Train, located in the redwood forests of Northern California’s Mendocino County, is a heritage railroad that has offered and provided freight and passenger service since 1885. Initially used to move redwood logs from the rugged backcountry to coastal sawmills, the Skunk Train has become a beloved institution touted as one of the “10 Best Rail Tours in the Country” (USA Today) and a “Top 10 Family Activity in California” (National Geographic Traveler). The Skunk Train journey covers 40 miles of scenic delights, 30 bridges, and an 840-foot tunnel, while retaining its original charm—minus the pungent aroma that historically preceded its arrival. Operating year-round, this multigenerational experience welcomes passengers to bring their families, friends, and even dogs, ensuring a memorable and inclusive adventure. For tickets and more information, visit www.skunktrain.com or call (707) 964-6371. But the railroad’s operations are not limited to its Skunk Train. Mendocino Railway also offers non-tourist and common carrier rail freight services in the Ft. Bragg to Willits corridor, something the line has offered since 1885. Mendocino Railway is vigorously pursuing infrastructure improvements using RRIF loan funding to improve its existing freight services and will be instituting new transload and other rail services to take polluting trucks off community roads and put that freight on rail.

Sierra Railroad Company, is a pioneer in the energy, freight, and passenger rail industries. With Sierra Energy, Sierra Northern Railway, Mendocino’s California Western Railroad / Skunk Train, Sacramento’s River Fox Train, and Ventura’s Sunburst Train, we embody the essential spirit of California, our home since the 1800s; bridging history with sustainability, connectivity, innovation, and growth while providing valuable services to California’s businesses and residents and helping craft memorable experiences for visitors. For more information, visit www.sierrarailroad.com.

* * *

ON-LINE COMMENTS

I think the Rail Road wants that Georgia Pacific property… as do other er… ‘entities’.

— web stuff

The Skunk Train used eminent domain to take over almost 300 acres of prime property in Fort Bragg, but the city is contesting the railway’s authority to take the land.

As far as ‘reality’ goes, there is no reason to have an ‘industrial’ rail service to Fort Bragg.

With the end of (most) sawmills, end of the Salmon fishing industry, the only thing keeping Fort Bragg alive is (what’s left of) the San Francisco tourist industry. CARB, with gas prices going to $10 might kill that one too.

Only thing the er… ‘loan’ does is to give the RR a leg up (using an old obscure domain law) on getting that property. (The law requires a ‘commercially viable’ railroad.)

Unfortunately, the Skunk Railroad is a tourist attraction.

Nothing is going to change that fact. Guess they will load up a few containers of groceries (or something), haul them to FB.

Then there is nothing to go on the return trip.

Bummer.

* * *

The wineries in the Anderson Valley could ship their product via train along with both Anderson Valley Brewery and North Coast Brewing Co. There could be a lot of outbound shipping from Fort Bragg.

* * *

So much blowing in this puff piece. The CCC and the City of Fort Bragg are fighting in court to get Mendocino Railway to abide by state and local environmental codes when it develops a giant swath of FB, which they refuse to do cuz they think they’re freakin Amtrak. Scooped up the whole GP site behind the city’s back through eminent domain and got it for a song.

* * *

This is a giant puff piece with few specifics. And this company wanted to Disneyfy Fort Bragg by claiming it owned the entire rail corridor and conrolled all future development – All under the guise of rail service.

* * *

IIRC, they want to turn the GP site into a railroad theme park or something. GP won because they don’t have to clean up their brownfield, and the Skunk Train wants to be a real boy railroad so they don’t have to clean it up either, or at least won’t have to pay for it. I also remember they tried to pull the eminent domain crap on a property owner in Willits so the owner sued; that didn’t go their way because they’re not a real boy railroad. To be a real railroad their spur has to connect to a national rail line and they can’t just do tourist excursions, they have to haul stuff.

My concern is that they want several miles of the main line in an area that would be very difficult to route the Great Redwood Trail around.

MENDOCINO WOMEN’S BUSINESS CENTER ANNOUNCES

Support of "Show Her the Money" at Mendocino Film Festival Screening June 1st, 2024 @ 1pm

MENDOCINO, Calif - May 9, 2024 - The Mendocino Women's Business Center at West Center is thrilled to announce its sponsorship of the impactful documentary film Show Her the Money at this year's Mendocino Film Festival. As an organization deeply committed to raising awareness around the lack of financial investment in socially and economically disadvantaged entrepreneurs, particularly in rural regions, the Mendocino Women's Business Center proudly aligns with this film's mission and message.

Show Her the Money chronicles the journeys of four visionary women entrepreneurs who have defied adversity to bring their groundbreaking ideas to life. Despite the challenges they face, these women harness extraordinary determination, resourcefulness, and resilience, supported by the critical backing of their angel investors. Their compelling stories stand as a testament to the vital importance of access to financial resources for women to achieve true equality in entrepreneurship.

"We're honored to support Show Her the Money at the Mendocino Film Festival this year," said Mary Anne Petrillo, CEO of the West Business Development Center. "This film embodies our mission to empower women in business and underscores the urgency of closing the funding gap for underrepresented entrepreneurs."

The Mendocino Film Festival, now in its 17th year, is widely recognized for its exceptional programming, which explores significant social, economic, and environmental challenges. The festival, set in the picturesque Village of Mendocino, provides a unique opportunity for individuals from across California to engage in meaningful conversations about important issues. This year's festival will take place from May 30 to June 2.

The screening of Show Her the Money will occur on Saturday, June 1, at 1 pm, followed by a panel conversation with local women entrepreneurs and representatives of the Mendocino Women's Business Center on the challenges faced by rural entrepreneurs.

To secure your tickets for Show Her the Money, and learn more about the Mendocino Film Festival visit https://mendofilm.org/films

If you require additional information or want to learn more about the Mendocino Women's Business Center and its support for rural small business owners, please contact Laurs Brooks, WBC Director at 707-964-7571 or visit www.westcenter.org 

CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, May 9, 2024

JAMIE COLLINS, Lakeport/Ukiah. Under influence, parole violation, resisting.

ROBERT GARDNER II, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, loaded handgun-not registered owner, felon/addict with firearm, ammo possession by prohibited person.

BRADEN LIONETTI, Ukiah. Domestic battery, robbery. 

JENNIFER WILKINSON, Laytonville. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent. 

MINOR ISSUES

“It's not what it looks like.”

The latest Cat and Girl comic, timely, considering things around here: https://catandgirl.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2024-05-07-cgwhale.gif

Some other minor issues in my life: 

1. They raised Juanita's rent again, and I just got email from the rental agency requiring that she buy renters insurance and send them the policy number, because it's in the lease. I don't remember that being in the lease; she's been there for 14 years. I looked it up; depending on who you buy the insurance from, it's like ten to thirty dollars a month, depending on the company. It's not a lot more money, but these things add up, especially on top of three rent raises in three years after no rent raises the whole time before. Also the deductible is like $2,500, and who has $2,500 worth of stuff in their little apartment? So, jeez, what a racket.

2. I got home last night and someone (?) had left an eight-foot aluminum ladder standing next to a tree in my remote-area driveway*. Immediately I thought: My employer left me an email task list yesterday that included "you have to get up on a letter [to reach that particular task]", clearly dictated into the email program and meaning ladder. He goes to bed at like 6 or 7pm, so he didn't go up the street and put a ladder there. It's not any of the ladders from work. It shouldn't be creepy but it feels creepy. And the day before yesterday I saw Kay at my mother's house. She brought a fish. She offered to drive me home if I wanted to stay after dark, you know, to eat the dinner they were making, and I declined. I need my car with me, where I am. Thirty years ago Kay gave me an old ladder. Is this like that? Is it a symbolic message? That sort of thing.

3. Also, I find that it still bugs me when people write certain things, like /yea/ when clearly what they mean is /yay/, or even /yeah/. Those are three very different words and it's obvious which is which. And when they sign off with "Cheers" after they say something childish and Fox-News-stupid that they think is a clever zing. They can do what they want to; I'm not going to correct them or criticize them; that's their style; that's who they are, and it's fine, it takes all kinds to make a world. It just bugs me, that's all. Tell me what bugs you at that level of triviality. I'm interested.

*Right behind the mysterious ladder is a big orange two-person fiberglass kayak that I haven't put in the water since like 1996. It's just lying there. Do you want it? $50 and you can have the paddles too, if I can find them. It's bare; you'd have to get some ground-level fireworks-watching seats and screw them down, or use deck-chair pillows. That kayak was expertly patched by none other than Tom Cahill, Justice Crusader, who just died in France not too long ago, so this is your chance to own a piece of social-justice history.

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org

STARLET Ava Gardner, 1941, When Louis B. Mayer saw her screen test he famously said, “She can’t sing, she can’t act, she can’t talk - she’s terrific!”

Ava coming from North Carolina had a heavy accent, so MGM’s first order of business was to get her a speech coach to remove it. As for the way she looked, they didn’t want to change it too much, though I have read at least one account where they were tempted to “fix” her cleft chin by disguising it with putty or morticians wax, but in the end, decided she looked good just the way she was. Her MGM publicist said, “Do the hair - clean it, but don’t touch the face. Everybody and every camera is drawn to that face. The town is jammed with pretty, but not like that - the eyes, the mouth, are from another world.”

R.D. BEACON

Wake up city folks, how prepared are you, for living in the countryside, as your life transitions from having all of the services available, at your former residents, you move to the countryside was anxious anticipation, getting away from crime and the noise, and hustle and bustle of the big city, but how prepared are you from Wes really here, many of you people, is intelligent as you may be, are not even prepared in any way shape or form, for what you may have to have, or may have to do, while living in the countryside, if you move here with children they will have to transition, from having all the luxuries, they had before, in giving up most of their creature comforts, remember if you live in Irish beach, somewhere along the coast, there is no food delivery, of taxicabs, and getting things repaired, like your dishwasher, washing machine, is more like replacing weathered in getting pinched, although there's other problems you will have, if the gas company doesn't want to drive up, your muddy road, you may run out of liquid petroleum still, depending on where you live, how far out of the brush you move, will depend on the things, that you will have to do, to make your living here comfortable, here are some of the roadblocks you'll find, along the way, if you build a new house, the county won't let you fireplace it, they said pollutes, it will mandate the type of heating you'll have and they will force you into, their way of thinking, if you put solar panels on your house, make sure the company that doesn't, will come out and fine-tuned it every once in a while, if you have an electric vehicle, you must go by a small generator, for those times when the power goes out, remember what your solar system breaks down, the power goes out, that generator, will be only can keep your deep-freeze, frozen, so let's look at the worst-case scenario, you move to the country in your comfy home, and we have an earthquake, all the bridges falling down there is no electricity from the grid, the solar system is failed, and you can't pump water from your well, you do for you is that I have to clean it out as well as the refrigerator, feet almost up to the critters outside, and if you're not smart enough to own a gun, you will not be able to hunt and go feed yourself, most city people don't want firearms, but let me tell you, if you don't have one, you're not going to have dinner tonight, worst-case scenario of major floods a lot of rain, maybe an earthquake or two, road slide into the canyon below, all kinds of things you don't want, but it has happened in, way too often, if you don't already know how to ride a horse, rode a bicycle, best not moved here, if you don't know how to dress out of animal in Gilead you best not moved here, let me remind you, even in the best of highway conditions the nearest hospital, is 30 miles away, and they are not prepared to do major surgery, ensure you signed up for the helicopter service, we all have, but they don't come out in the rain, they don't fly when there's lightning and thunder, they don't fly in the fog, the only fly a nice clear users starlight nights, sunny days, so it may not do you any good, but there's always more problems, we have spiders that can hurt you, if you're far enough back and occasional rattlesnake will come out of the woodwork, we have bear, and if they get unhappy they will attack you, we have coyotes, they're a bit hard on your chickens and other critters, and they think nothing of action away a small child, there are weasels and Fox's, mountain lions that have no problem taking a teenage child away into the brush, when you moved to the countryside, you're basically putting yourself that harms way, you may be out tending the flowers mowing the grass, there are critters here, that look at you is dinner, if you look about how the history you'll find that my outlines of, walked the streets in Fort Bragg California, in the twilight picked up dogs and cats off the street, I have one friend of mine like came up on his porch, in town and grabbed a small dog, the predators are relentless, people who moved to the countryside, failed to realize that when you get away for the crime of the city, then you must deal with the crime of the countryside, your no safer here, and you were when you came in from wherever you came from, the only difference your local policeman will show up in 15 minutes, maybe an Oakland, but you may wait for hours here, none of the services here or anywhere close to what you had, when you lived in a big city, but the folks that live in the countryside born and raised here, most adapted to the surroundings, most of us remember when we had no electricity, and had kerosene lamps, and I remember the days, my father would drive talent, and get blocks of ice for our old icebox, I remember the days when the Greenwood Road was made of dirt, and was difficult in the winter, and I remember the days of the ration stamps, during the second world war, and I also remember the dates, when we had to go to town sometimes, it was saddle up the horses to get there, and I also remember the days, when going fishing was not for sport but food for the table.

IN 1988, ISRAEL KAMAKAWIWO'OLE called the recording studio at 3 a.m. and said he had to record a song right away. 15 minutes later, Israel arrived at the studio. The studio owner, Milan Bertosa said, "And in walks the largest human being I had seen in my life."

A security guard gave the 500-pound man a large steel chair to sit on. Milan said, "Then I put up some microphones, do a quick sound check, roll tape, and the first thing he does is 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow.' He played and sang, one take, and it was over."

Today, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's version, is the most requested one of this classic song.

ASK THE VET: CRYPTORCHIDISM IN PETS

by Clare Bartholomew

As a shelter veterinarian, I spend the bulk of my time at work performing spay and neuter surgeries. While the vast majority of these surgeries are routine with no major variations in anatomy and no surgical complications, there are occasional outliers. One of the abnormalities I sometimes encounter is known as cryptorchidism. 

In puppies, we expect to be able to feel both testicles in the scrotum by about 8 weeks of age, while up to 16 weeks is normal for kittens. When one or both testicles have not descended into the scrotum by that time, it is known as cryptorchidism. Many pet owners are unfamiliar with this developmental phenomenon and the potential genetic and health issues surrounding it.

In utero, the testicles of a male fetus are located near the kidneys but will make their way into the scrotum shortly after birth. This process is made possible by the gubernaculum, a structure connecting each testicle to the scrotum. When the gubernaculum does not develop properly, the testicle fails to reach its intended destination and instead ends up inside the abdomen or in the inguinal (groin) region. Cryptorchidism can be unilateral (affecting only one testicle) or bilateral (affecting both testicles). Bilaterally cryptorchid animals are often sterile because sperm production is inhibited by the higher temperature inside the body. They still have typical male behaviors, however, because sex hormone production is unaffected. 

Neutering (surgically removing the testicles) is a bit more complicated in cases of cryptorchidism, as the undescended testicle(s) can be difficult to locate and often require extra surgical incisions. However, surgical removal is the onlytreatment for the condition and is highly recommended in all cases of cryptorchidism for a few reasons. First, undescended testicles are roughly 10 times more likely to develop cancer than normal descended testicles. Secondly, an undescended testicle in the abdomen is more prone to torsion (twisting),which cuts off blood supply to the affected testicle and can result in severe abdominal pain and shock. Finally, cryptorchidism is considered to have a genetic basis, so breeding affected animals is not recommended even if they are capable of reproducing. 

Certain breeds of cats and dogs are more prone to cryptorchidism than others. Cryptorchidism is less common in cats than dogs, but Persian cats are overrepresented among those affected. The dog breeds more likely to be cryptorchid include all brachycephalic breeds, Yorkshire terriers, Siberian huskies, Chihuahuas, and German shepherds. If you have a dog or cat you suspect may be cryptorchid, consult with your veterinarian for further evaluation and recommendations. The prognosis is generally excellent when a cryptorchid pet is neutered early, before any problems occur in the undescended testicle(s).

“Ask the Vet” is a monthly column written by local veterinarians, including Colin Chaves of Covington Creek Veterinary, Karen Novak of Mendocino Village Veterinary, and Kendall Willson of Mendocino Equine and Livestock. Past articles can be found on the Advocate-News and Beacon websites by searching “Ask the Vet.”

CALIFORNIA REGULATORS OK CHANGE OF HOW POWER BILLS ARE CALCULATED

People who use a lot of energy will likely see lower monthly bills; the rest of you suckers…

by Adam Bean

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California regulators on Thursday voted to make it cheaper for people to charge electric cars and cool their homes in the summer, a decision heralded as part of the state's transition to clean energy but derided by others who warn it will raise prices for people who don't use as much energy.

The California Public Utilities Commission voted to let the state's big investor-owned utilities — including Pacific Gas & Electric — add a fixed charge to people's power bills each month to pay for installing and maintaining the equipment necessary to transmit electricity to homes.

For most people, the charge will be $24.15 per month and will take effect starting late next year. Others with lower incomes who are enrolled in one of two discount programs will pay less, either $6 or $12 per month.

In exchange for the new charge, the price of electricity will drop by between 5 cents and 7 cents per kilowatt hour. One kilowatt hour is how much power it takes to use a 1,000-watt appliance — a coffee maker or vacuum cleaner, for instance — for one hour.

California now gets most of its energy from things like solar panels and wind turbines as opposed to burning coal and other fossil fuels that pollute the atmosphere. As a result, California's leaders have been asking residents to use more electricity than ever before.

In 2022, California accounted for 37% of the nation’s light-duty electric vehicles, or about six times more than Florida, the state in second place, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The state has also pushed policies to encourage people to electrify their homes, like installing electric heat pumps and stoves.

“We’re at a time now when our climate goals are not met by necessarily using less electricity. We need to start using more electricity overall,” said Alice Reynolds, president of the California Public Utilities Commission.

For people who use a lot of energy each month, the proposal approved on Thursday will likely lower their monthly bills. People who own electric cars and have electrified their homes will save an average of between $28 and $44 per month, according to the commission. That's because the savings they get from the price drop on electricity will be more than the amount they pay for the new fixed charge.

It will also benefit people who live in areas where it gets really hot. People in Fresno — where temperatures can often exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius) — would save about $33 running their air conditioners during the summer, according to the commission.

Using more electricity has strained the state's supply. In the summer of 2020, demand for electricity was so high that the officials had to order rolling blackouts to make sure the state didn't run out of energy.

State officials have urged people to conserve energy during peak hours, between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. when energy from solar is less abundant. Opponents worry this proposal, by lowering the price for electricity, will discourage people from doing that.

“If you wanted to design a policy instrument that would send the signal that conservation doesn’t count, this would be it,” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group.

Commissioner John Reynolds noted utility companies are already allowed to increase their rates during peak hours to act as an incentive to conserve.

“The idea that this fixed charge proposal will undermine the motivation to conserve is, quite frankly, laughable,” he said. "It’s a simplistic way to view this decision, and we all know that our energy situation and rate design are anything but simple."

For people who don’t use as much energy, the new fixed charge could increase their bill each month. This includes people who live in smaller apartments or who live in cooler areas and don’t use air conditioning as much. That’s because for them, the decrease in the price of electricity would not be enough to offset the amount of the new monthly charge.

Most states already have fixed monthly charges on utility bills to pay for maintenance and infrastructure of the electric grid. But in California — where electric rates are among the highest in the nation — any move that could increase prices for anyone raises alarms among consumers and elected officials.

A bill amended in the state Legislature on Wednesday would limit any increase in the new fixed charge to not more than the increase in inflation. It would also cap the amount of the fixed charge to a maximum of $10 beginning in 2028.

“We must do more to rein in the ever-growing cost of living in our state, not find new ways to add to it,” Republicans in the California Senate wrote in a letter urging the commission to reject the fixed charge.

(AP)

GIANT NEW CALIF. RESERVOIR PLAN WOULD BRING WATER TO 24 MILLION PEOPLE

by Farley Elliott

California’s reservoirs are not only vital to the state’s complex water systems, providing millions of people and the state’s agricultural economy with needed access to water; they’re also important gauges for how healthy the state is overall. This year’s at-capacity reservoirs have been a boon for a region besieged by drought over much of the past decade, but more work is needed to help ensure a plentiful and water-wise future for the most populous state in America.

Enter Sites Reservoir, a long-in-the-works project that aims to be the biggest reservoir development in nearly half a century. It’s been a massive dream for decades, an idea first worked up by landowners and water districts northwest of Sacramento. Thanks to a new infusion of federal cash, the proposal is closer than ever to actually happening — but not without a very real cost.

As the Mercury News reported earlier this year, Sites Reservoir has received nearly a quarter-billion dollars in new federal funding from Congress, inching it ever closer to becoming a reality. In total, the Colusa County project is slated to cost more than $4 billion, with an opening timeline pushed out to 2032.

That may seem far off but not when considering the state’s last big reservoir project way back in 1979. If completed, Sites Reservoir would become one of the 10 largest reservoirs in the state, encompassing more than a million acre-feet of water fed in by “winter runoff from uncontrolled streams below the existing reservoirs in the Sacramento Valley,” according to Sites project facilitators. When full, the reservoir would span 4 miles across and reach 13 miles north to south, with the water mostly being piped to the Central Valley and Southern California. In total, water from the reservoir could reach roughly 24 million people.

Building the project is a herculean feat, requiring multiple dams, support structures, and infrastructure for selling off and moving all that water. The reservoir would take the shape of a large Colusa County valley near Maxwell, and filling it would mean the removal of homes and ranches. While a relatively sparsely populated area, the county is still home to tens of thousands of people.

Most of the funding is now in place for the reservoir, much of it coming from 2014’s Proposition 1 water bond and federal loans from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture. The project has been supported by Gov. Gavin Newsom and a slew of statewide water boards but has faced litigation from environmental groups like the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the River.

(SF Chronicle)

ONE TV EPISODE CONVINCED AMERICA TO DRINK WINE. What Happened To The French Paradox?

by Esther Mobley

A single episode of television in 1991 transformed America’s relationship with wine.

The show was “60 Minutes,” and the subject of the segment was the French Paradox — the idea that a typical French diet reduced the risk of heart disease. The diet’s key components were cheese, fatty meat and, of course, red wine, which “has a flushing effect” on the arteries, researchers at the time claimed.

Today, it’s impossible to imagine a few minutes of TV having such a large impact on an entire nation’s daily habits. But the French Paradox episode drove an explosion in wine consumption throughout the U.S., marking the beginning of what would become a 25-year surge for the wine industry.

I’d known about the French Paradox, but it wasn’t until reporting my most recent story that I came to understand just how consequential this “60 Minutes” segment was. On Wednesday, I published a deep examination of the California wine industry’s current troubles. The wine market is experiencing an unprecedented downturn right now, so severe that many insiders told me they foresee a significant number of wineries going out of business this year. 1991 was the beginning of a period of furious growth for wine in the U.S., and it looks as if 2024 might mark the end of it.

Nearly every winemaker, executive or market analyst I interviewed for the story cited “60 Minutes” as the major catalyst for that boom era. Paul Roberts, the former CEO of Colgin Cellars in Napa Valley, recalled that he saw wine in his mother’s fridge for the first time ever in 1991. “She said she saw it on ‘60 Minutes,’” Roberts said. His mother wasn’t alone: According to Wine Spectator, red wine sales climbed 40% year-over-year in 1992.

Over the next two decades, many more scientific studies would bolster the evidence of red wine’s salubrious benefits. This effectively gave America, a nation that’s always had a strong Puritanical streak, permission to develop a wine culture. Enjoying a glass of wine with dinner became normal, even sophisticated, rather than a sign of overindulgence or vice.

But just as the wine industry’s growth was fueled in part by health concerns, so is its present decline. Last year, the World Health Organization sent a very clear message: Alcohol is bad for you, full stop. Leading institutions like these, it seems, have debunked the French Paradox. That message is landing. As my colleague Jess Lander has reported, the kids on TikTok believe alcohol is “literally poison.”

The wine industry is deeply disturbed by what many are calling a neo-Prohibitionist or neo-temperance movement, yet “the industry has done a terrible job of fighting back on those reports,” said Michael Honig, president of Honig Vineyard & Winery in Napa Valley.

Unlike in 1991, when there were three major broadcast networks and pretty much everyone watched “60 Minutes” on Sunday evenings, our attention today is divided. “It is so much harder to communicate a contra message,” said wine industry analyst Jon Moramarco, editor of the Gomberg Fredrikson report. Industry groups seeking to squash the anti-alcohol rhetoric circulating online would have to “play Whack-a-Mole,” Moramarco said, if they wanted to counter every report of alcohol’s harmful effects.

Admittedly, people who sell alcohol are in an awkward spot. It’s illegal for a winery to market its products using misleading health claims (and who gets to decide what counts as “misleading”?). And legalities aside, it’s just a bad look to chastise someone choosing to cut back on drinking for health reasons.

Watching the “60 Minutes” segment now, even I, a professional drinker, found some of the claims shocking. “A number of American doctors, none of whom would go on the record, told me that if it was up to them, they would get rid of milk in school lunch rooms and exchange it for watered wine,” the narrator announces. Footage then rolls of a young child at a restaurant toasting a glass of wine with their mother.

Is it any wonder that a theory that supported giving wine to kids for the cardiovascular benefits would fall out of favor?

The health question is merely one component of what’s happening to the wine industry right now. Demographic shifts, a complicated COVID hangover and competition from other products are also contributing to the sharp drop in wine drinking. I hope you’ll read more about it all in the story I published this week. 

But to the extent that health concerns are driving the decline, this anti-alcohol, debunked-French-Paradox moment may have been inevitable. 

Public opinion in America has always volleyed back and forth between drunkenness and sobriety, as I’ve written before, starting with the moment that the Mayflower touched down at Plymouth Rock. In the last century, we went from the roaring ’20s to Prohibition, then from the “Mad Men”-esque three-martini lunch to the backlash of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. 

In other words, we were due for a pendulum shift. Today’s neo-temperance movement was right on schedule. We may never get another French Paradox, but trust me, the American masses will only abstain from drinking for so long. 

As for the diluted wine in the school lunches — I think we can agree to leave that idea in the ’90s.

(SF Chronicle)

WHERE 3 DEAD TOURISTS WERE FOUND FAST, THOUSANDS REMAIN MISSING

In Mexico, where tens of thousands of people have disappeared, the robust operation to quickly find the remains of three foreigners, from Australia and the United States, felt like a rare exception.

by Emiliano Rodriguez Mega

When two Australian brothers drove down to Mexico’s northwest coast from San Diego last week with their American friend, they were looking to catch the crisp waves that make Baja California a popular destination among travelers from across the world.

But soon after arriving to the Mexican city of Ensenada, Callum Robinson’s Instagram posts of his surf adventure ceased. The group stopped answering calls and texts.

He and his brother Jake never showed up at an Airbnb they had booked, their mother said in a social media post, pleading for help from anyone who had seen her two sons.

On Sunday, Mexican authorities announced that the bodies of the three tourists, found at the bottom of a well with gunshot wounds to their heads, had been identified by their families.

The men had been killed in a carjacking gone wrong, the authorities said, and suspects had been detained within days of the men’s disappearance. More people are being investigated.

It was a tragic yet somewhat fast resolution to a case that had drawn international attention.

For many local Mexicans, however, the quick response from the authorities to locate the Robinson siblings and Jack Carter Rhoad, the American, and make arrests seemed to be an exception in a country where tens of thousands of missing-person cases have sat for years without ever being solved.

The government said in March that about 100,000 people are missing in Mexico, though the United Nations says that could be an undercount.

“It is very difficult, except for high-profile cases like the one that just happened, for the authorities to immediately trigger the search,” said Adriana Jaén, a sociologist based in Ensenada who provides legal, emotional and logistical support to people searching for their missing loved ones.

Federal and state officials in Mexico tend to claim that violence levels have dropped even as official data contradicts them. The local authorities have themselves been involved in disappearances — in Baja California, municipal police officers from Ensenada were recently accused in the disappearance of one man. And then there’s also a lack of resources to investigate.

So it’s noticeable when a case appears to receive special attention.

“The message those of us who work on these issues get is that there are lives that matter,” Ms. Jaén added, “and there are others that don’t.”

There are more than 17,300 active disappearance investigations in Baja California state, according to government data provided to Elementa DDHH, a human rights group that has studied the disappearances in the state.

In many instances, it’s unclear whether the missing person was found; if they were the victim of a crime; and, if so, whether anyone was arrested. Some cases even lack even basic information for beginning a search, a government recount of the disappeared found last year.

“We don’t know exactly how many people are missing and how many have been located,” said Renata Demichelis, the Mexico director of Elementa DDHH. “The authorities don’t tell us.”

The available data, however, offer a hint of the problem’s magnitude.

In 2017, state prosecutors opened about 760 disappearance investigations in Baja California. In five years, the number jumped more than threefold, according to Elementa DDHH.

“This is an ongoing phenomenon, and it’s increasing exponentially,” said Ms. Demichelis, adding that several factors are contributing to the worsening disappearance crisis in Baja California, such as drug trafficking, internal displacement, migration and gender violence.

The state’s attorney general, María Elena Andrade Ramírez, said in an interview that prosecutors have so far ruled out the possibility that the killing of the Robinson brothers and Mr. Rhoad was linked to organized crime groups.

Those responsible had tried to seize the tourists’ pickup truck, she said. When they resisted, a man took out a gun and killed them.

“This aggression seems to have occurred in an unforeseen, circumstantial manner,” Ms. Andrade Ramírez said. “They took advantage when they saw the vehicle out in the open, in that remote location, where they knew that there were no witnesses.”

In a news conference this weekend, a reporter asked Ms. Andrade Ramírez if one needs to be a foreigner in Baja California to have state authorities act as swiftly as they did in the case of the missing tourists.

“Every investigation has its own process,” the attorney general answered. “And there are times when we have to take care of every detail, which takes a certain amount of time, to achieve a good result.”

On Sunday, after the victims’ families identified the bodies in the morgue, Adriana Moreno, a local resident, said she felt conflicting emotions.

“I’m so glad they found them so quickly. That’s my joy, my satisfaction,” said Ms. Moreno, 60. She has been looking for her son, Víctor Adrián Rodríguez Moreno, since 2009, when he and two of his co-workers — employees of an import business — were abducted in the northern state of Coahuila.

“But 15 years after the disappearance of my boy, there’s nothing,” Ms. Moreno said. “They make me feel like missing people come in levels of importance.”

(NY Times)

OPEN UP

Editor,

We are living in a country where democracy is on trial. Yet New York’s restrictions on cameras in the courtroom deprive the public of live video coverage of Donald Trump’s hush money trial.

The public has to rely on details described by reporters, some sequestered in a different room with a video feed, others in the courtroom. Meanwhile, nuances like facial expressions, body language, interactions with legal teams and verbal outbursts are left to courtroom sketches shared with the public through the media.

While juror anonymity must be protected, there should be live audio-visual coverage. Mr. Trump’s trials are more critically important than any other in U.S. history. With a presidential election looming, citizens should be able to witness the courtroom activity through their own lens. It is not just Mr. Trump’s freedom at stake.

Cynthia Gardner Bruml

Cleveland

COPS ON CAMPUS ARE THE REAL OUTSIDE AGITATORS

by Jonah Raskin

Nothing agitates a campus as dramatically as the arrival of the cops. Indeed, the cops have been the only real outside agitators on campuses across the country this Spring. They have brought upheaval and disorder by breaking up peaceful protests by disciplined students with a cause and ideals. And, of course, the administrators are responsible for calling in the cops. It’s the administrators who up the ante and invite confrontations and clashes. Blaming outsiders for rebellions and revolutions is one of the oldest and nastiest ruses in the world. And one of the newest, too. But it’s not working.

New Yorkers and others aren’t buying the Columbia administration’s story that outside agitators are to blame for the protests that have taken place on the campus. As though Columbia students are too blind or too stupid to see the terrors inflicted on the people of Gaza by the Israeli military with weapons supplied by the USA. At UCLA some masked men with clubs attacked pro-Palestinian demonstrators. The cops aren’t the only culprits now much as they weren’t in ‘68.

Columbia President Shafik must take us for idiots who haven’t learned the lessons of the past and can see what’s happening in front of our own eyes. I mean the abuses of state power in Gaza and to a lesser degree on college campuses from New York to California. I know loads about the cry that outside agitators are to blame for protest movements and rebellions. I’ve heard it before. I have been called one.

I graduated from Columbia College with a B.A. in 1963 and from Columbia University with an M.A. in 1964. By 1967 I was an assistant professor at the State University at Stony Brook. Along with more than 700 or so other protesters, including Abbie Hoffman and Tom Hayden – who coined the slogan “Create two, three, many Columbias” – I was arrested on the Columbia campus in ‘68 and went to jail briefly. I suppose in some respects I could have rightly been called an “outside agitator.” I had graduated from Columbia College five years before students occupied and liberated buildings where classes had been held, though I mostly relinquished the agitating on campus to the Black students who kicked off the 1968 rebellion soon after MLK was shot and killed. Now, that was an incitement to riot.

In ‘68 I didn’t think of myself as an outside agitator. I still reject that label. In the world today insurgents are both insiders and outsiders, localists and internationalists who reject political boundaries and borders. Imperialism respects no national boundaries and neither do anti-imperialists. The line that supposedly divides insiders from outsiders and domestic from imported agitators is far more blurry than it might seem to the casual eye. In ‘68 I felt that I had as much right to sit in as any of the undergraduates. I paid my dues. I had been miseducated and misinformed when I was a student.

I was arrested twice in ’68. The second time I went on trial in a courtroom after I declined to apologize to the Columbia administration when I was asked to do so by a representative of the university. “You are a Columbia graduate and a scholar and gentleman and as such ought to say you’re sorry for your actions,” I was told by Professor Quentin Anderson. In the eyes of the university I would not be an outside agitator if I kissed its academic ass. That I would not do.

I still feel like a member of the extended family of Columbia insurgents. I identify with the students who protested the invasion and occupation of Gaza this spring and who have been arrested.

As an undergraduate at Columbia in the early 1960s, when I marched against segregation and nuclear testing, my mentors and role models were off-campus radical intellectuals such as Carl Marzini and Paul Sweezy, civil rights activists like MLK and Rosa Parks and further afield Che Guevara, the continental revolutionary who was born in Argentina, joined Fidel Castro in Mexico, fought on the side of the guerrillas in Cuba and later against imperialism in the Congo and Bolivia.

When we referred to the Cuban revolutionaries by their first names as though we were brothers-in-arms, our Cold War profs – who saw Moscow gold behind all insurrections – were shocked. Like Che, only far more modest than he, American agitators belong to the world and to the legacy of homegrown anti-slavery men and women like Harriet Tubman and John Brown. Slavers didn’t respect boundaries and neither did abolitionists. Nightstick-wielding cops on campuses are “pigs.” I haven’t used that word, which I learned from the Black Panthers, for decades. But it’s as timely now as it was in ’68.

(Jonah Raskin is the author of Beat Blues, San Francisco, 1955.)

WAR CULTURE HATES THE ETHICAL PASSION OF THE YOUNG; In the Thrall of a Dominant Death Culture

by Norman Solomon

Persisting in his support for an unpopular war, the Democrat in the White House has helped spark a rebellion close to home. Young people — least inclined to deference, most inclined to moral outrage — are leading public opposition to the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. The campus upheaval is a clash between accepting and resisting, while elites insist on doing maintenance work for the war machine.

I wrote the above words recently, but I could have written very similar ones in the spring of 1968. (In fact, I did.) Joe Biden hasn’t sent U.S. troops to kill in Gaza, as President Lyndon Johnson did in Vietnam, but the current president has done all he can to provide massive quantities of weapons and ammunition to Israel — literally making the carnage in Gaza possible.

A familiar saying — “the more things change, the more they stay the same” — is both false and true. During the last several decades, the consolidation of corporate power and the rise of digital tech have brought about huge changes in politics and communications. Yet humans are still humans and certain crucial dynamics remain. Militarism demands conformity — and sometimes fails to get it.

When Columbia University and many other colleges erupted in antiwar protests during the late 1960s, the moral awakening was a human connection with people suffering horrifically in Vietnam. During recent weeks, the same has been true with people in Gaza. Both eras saw crackdowns by college administrators and the police — as well as much negativity toward protesters in the mainstream media — all reflecting key biases in this country’s power structure.

“What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic,” Martin Luther King, Jr., said in 1967. “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”

* * *

Disrupting a Culture of Death

This spring, as students have risked arrest and jeopardized their college careers under banners like “Ceasefire Now,” “Free Palestine,” and “Divest from Israel,” they’ve rejected some key unwritten rules of a death culture. From Congress to the White House, war (and the military-industrial complex that goes with it) is crucial for the political business model. Meanwhile, college trustees and alumni megadonors often have investment ties to Wall Street and Silicon Valley, where war is a multibillion-dollar enterprise. Along the way, weapons sales to Israel and many other countries bring in gigantic profits.

The new campus uprisings are a shock to the war system. Managers of that system, constantly oiling its machinery, have no column for moral revulsion on their balance sheets. And the refusal of appreciable numbers of students to go along to get along doesn’t compute. For the economic and political establishment, it’s a control issue, potentially writ large.

As the killing, maiming, devastation, and increasing starvation in Gaza have continued, month after month, the U.S. role has become incomprehensible — without, at least, attributing to the president and the vast majority of Congressional representatives a level of immorality that had previously seemed unimaginable to most college students. Like many others in the United States, protesting students are now struggling with the realization that the people in control of the executive and legislative branches are directly supporting mass murder and genocide.

In late April, when overwhelming bipartisan votes in Congress approved — and President Biden eagerly signed — a bill sending $17 billion in military aid to Israel, the only way to miss the utter depravity of those atop the government was to not really look, or to remain in the thrall of a dominant death culture.

During his final years in office, with the Vietnam War going full tilt, President Lyndon Johnson was greeted with the chant: “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Such a chant could be directed at President Biden now. The number of Palestinian children killed so far by the U.S.-armed Israeli military is estimated to be almost 15,000, not counting the unknown number still buried in the rubble of Gaza. No wonder high-ranking Biden administration officials now risk being loudly denounced whenever they speak in venues open to the public.

Mirroring the Vietnam War era in another way, members of Congress continue to rubberstamp huge amounts of funding for mass killing. On April 20th, only 17% of House Democrats and only 9% of House Republicans voted against the new military aid package for Israel.

Higher learning is supposed to connect the theoretical with the actual, striving to understand our world as it truly is. However, a death culture — promoting college tranquility as well as mass murder in Gaza — thrives on disconnects. All the platitudes and pretenses of academia can divert attention from where U.S. weapons actually go and what they do.

Sadly, precepts readily cited as vital ideals prove all too easy to kick to the curb lest they squeeze big toes uncomfortably. So, when students take the humanities seriously enough to set up a protest encampment on campus and then billionaire donors demand that a college president put a stop to such disruption, a police raid is likely to follow.

* * *

A World of Doublethink and Tone Deafness

George Orwell’s explanation of “doublethink” in his famed novel 1984 is a good fit when it comes to the purported logic of so many commentators deploring the student protesters as they demand an end to complicity in the slaughter still underway in Gaza: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it.”

Laying claim to morality, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has, for instance, been busy firing media salvos at the student protesters. That organization’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, is on record flatly declaring that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism” — no matter how many Jews declare themselves to be “anti-Zionist.” Four months ago, ADL issued a report categorizing pro-Palestinian rallies with “anti-Zionist chants and slogans” as antisemitic events. In late April, ADL used the “antisemitic” label to condemn protests by students at Columbia and elsewhere.

“We have a major, major, major generational problem,” Greenblatt warned in a leaked ADL strategy phone call last November. He added: “The issue in the United States’ support for Israel is not left and right; it is young and old… We really have a TikTok problem, a Gen-Z problem… The real game is the next generation.”

Along with thinly veiled condescension toward students, a frequent approach is to treat the mass killing of Palestinians as of minimal importance. And so, when New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote in late April about students protesting at Columbia, he merely described the Israeli government’s actions as “failings.” Perhaps if a government was bombing and killing Douthat’s loved ones, he would have used a different word.

A similar mentality, as I well remember, infused media coverage of the Vietnam War. For mainline news outlets, what was happening to Vietnamese people ranked far below so many other concerns, often to the point of invisibility. As media accounts gradually began bemoaning the “quagmire” of that war, the focus was on how the U.S. government’s leadership had gotten itself so stuck. Acknowledging that the American war effort amounted to a massive crime against humanity was rare. Then, as now, the moral bankruptcies of the political and media establishments fueled each other.

As a barometer of the prevailing political climate among elites, the editorial stances of daily newspapers indicate priorities in times of war. In early 1968, the Boston Globe conducted a survey of 39 major U.S. newspapers and found that not a single one had editorialized in favor of an American withdrawal from Vietnam. By then, tens of millions of Americans were in favor of such a pullout.

This spring, when the New York Times editorial board finally called for making U.S. arms shipments to Israel conditional — six months after the carnage began in Gaza — the editorial was tepid and displayed a deep ethnocentric bias. It declared that “the Hamas attack of October 7 was an atrocity,” but no word coming anywhere near “atrocity” was applied to the Israeli attacks occurring ever since.

The Times editorial lamented that “Mr. Netanyahu and the hard-liners in his government” had broken a “bond of trust” between the United States and Israel, adding that the Israeli prime minister “has been deaf to repeated demands from Mr. Biden and his national security team to do more to protect civilians in Gaza from being harmed by [American] armaments.” The Times editorial board was remarkably prone to understatement, as if someone overseeing the mass killing of civilians every day for six months was merely not doing enough “to protect civilians.”

* * *

Learning by Doing

The thousands of student protesters encountering the edicts of college administrations and the violence of the police have gotten a real education in the true priorities of American power structures. Of course, the authorities (on and off campuses) have wanted a return to the usual peaceful campus atmosphere. As military strategist Carl von Clausewitz long ago commented with irony, “A conqueror is always a lover of peace.”

Supporters of Israel are fed up with the campus protests. The Washington Post recently featured an essay by Paul Berman that deplored what has become of his alma mater, Columbia. After a brief mention of Israel’s killing of Gazan civilians and the imposition of famine, Berman declared that “ultimately the central issue in the war is Hamas and its goal… the eradication of the Israeli state.” The central issue. Consider it a way of saying that, while unfortunate, the ongoing slaughter of tens of thousands of children and other Palestinian civilians doesn’t matter nearly as much as the fear that nuclear-armed Israel, with one of the most powerful air forces in the world, is in danger of “eradication.”

Pieces similar to Douthat’s and Berman’s have proliferated in the media. But they don’t come to grips with what Senator Bernie Sanders recently made clear in a public message to the Israeli prime minister: “Mr. Netanyahu, antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to millions. Do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government.”

College protesters have shown that they will not be distracted. They continue to insist — not flawlessly, but wonderfully — that all people’s lives matter. For decades, and since October in a particularly deadly fashion, the U.S.-Israel alliance has proceeded to treat Palestinian lives as expendable. And that is exactly what the protests are opposing.

Of course, protests can flicker and die out. Hundreds of U.S. campuses shut down in the spring of 1970 amid protests against the Vietnam War and the American invasion of Cambodia, only to become largely quiescent by the fall term. But for countless individuals, the sparks lit a fire for social justice that would never be quenched.

One of them, Michael Albert, a cofounder of the groundbreaking Z Magazine, has continued with activist work since the mid-1960s. “A lot of people are comparing now to 1968,” he wrote in April. “That year was tumultuous. We were inspired. We were hot. But here comes this year and it is moving faster, no less. That year the left that I and so many others lived and breathed was mighty. We were courageous, but we also had too little understanding of how to win. Don’t emulate us. Transcend us.”

He then added:

“The emerging mass uprisings must persist and diversify and broaden in focus and reach. And hey, on your campuses, again do better than us. Fight to divest but also fight to structurally change them so their decision makers — which should be you — never again invest in genocide, war, and indeed suppression and oppression of any kind. Tomorrow is the first day of a long, long potentially incredibly liberating future. But one day is but one day. Persist.”

Persistence will be truly essential. The gears of pro-Israel forces are fully meshed with the U.S. war machinery. The movement to stop Israel’s murderous oppression of Palestinians is up against the entire military-industrial-congressional complex.

The United States spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined (and most of them are allies), while maintaining 750 military bases overseas, vastly more than all of its official adversaries put together. The U.S. continues to lead the nuclear arms race toward oblivion. And the economic costs are stunning. The Institute for Policy Studies reported last year that 62% of the federal discretionary budget went to “militarized programs” of one sort or another.

In 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr., described this country’s spending for war as a “demonic, destructive suction tube,” siphoning tremendous resources away from human needs.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

With transcendent wisdom, this spring’s student uprising has rejected conformity as a lethal anesthetic while the horrors continue in Gaza. Leaders of the most powerful American institutions want to continue as usual, as if official participation in genocide were no particular cause for alarm.

Instead, young people have dared to lead the way, insisting that such a culture of death is repugnant and completely unacceptable.

(Norman Solomon, is author of War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine. This article first appeared on TomDispatch.com.)

IN 1896, BELÉM (a port city in Brazil) bloomed with wealth through the sale of Amazonian rubber worldwide, transforming farmers into overnight millionaires who erected opulent mansions using European materials. Meanwhile, their wives and daughters sent their garments for laundering across the old continent and imported mineral water from London for their baths. The "Theatro da Paz" flourished as the epicenter of Amazonian cultural life, hosting concerts featuring European artists. Notably, the enchanting French opera singer Camille Monfort (1869-1896) captivated audiences, inciting intense desire among affluent gentlemen and profound jealousy among their spouses due to her striking beauty.

Camille Monfort further scandalized society with her unconstrained behavior, flouting the social norms of her era. Legend has it that she was sighted half-clad, dancing in Belém's streets to cool herself in afternoon rains. Her solitary nocturnal strolls also piqued interest as she wandered in long, black, ethereal dresses beneath the full moon along the banks of the Guajará River toward the Igarapé das Almas.

Rumors swiftly circulated about her, spawning malicious gossip. Some claimed she was the paramour of Francisco Bolonha (1872-1938), who had imported her from Europe, alleging he bathed her in costly imported champagnes in his mansion's tub. Whispers also suggested she had fallen victim to vampirism in London, evident in her pallor and sickly appearance. It was rumored she harbored a mysterious craving for human blood, purportedly hypnotizing young women with her voice during concerts, luring them to slumber in her dressing room to sate her desires. Interestingly, this coincided with reports of fainting spells in the theater during her performances, ostensibly attributed to the intense emotions evoked by her music.

Furthermore, tales circulated of her alleged ability to commune with the deceased, manifesting their spirits in ectoplasmic mists expelled from her body during séances. These occurrences marked the early emergence of spiritualism in the Amazon, clandestinely practiced in Belém's palatial enclaves, such as the Palacete Pinho.

By the year's end, a devastating cholera epidemic swept through Belém, claiming Camille Monfort as one of its victims. She was interred in the Cemetery of Solitude, where her tomb remains shrouded in slime, moss, and dry foliage beneath the canopy of a towering mango tree, casting her resting place into shadow pierced only by occasional sunbeams filtering through the verdant leaves. Her neoclassical mausoleum bears a door sealed by an aged, rusted lock, revealing a marble bust of a woman atop the neglected sepulcher's broad lid, with a framed image of a veiled woman affixed to the wall.

The tombstone bears the inscription: "Here lies Camila María Monfort (1869-1896) The voice that captivated the world." Despite this, whispers persist to this day, suggesting her tomb is empty, alleging her demise and burial were mere ruses to conceal her vampiric affliction. Some claim Camille Monfort yet lives in Europe, purportedly aged 154.

JEFF BLANKFORT

Let there be no doubt about it. The Jewish Political Establishment wants everyone to know, they are running America on Israel's behalf and any one who challenges their control will be smashed by their "Benjamins,"

Which reminds me of what Ariel Sharon said in reply to Shimon Peres in 2002 when Peres was worrying what Americans would think about the Zionist pogrom in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank:

Not to worry, said Sharon. "We, the Jews, run America, and the Americans know it," he reportedly said on Israeli Army Radio.

The question has always been, what are Americans going to do about it?

Well, at least on the college campuses, they may have started.

THE NATION’S CONSCIENCE

The courageous stance of students across the country in defiance of genocide is accompanied by a near total blackout of their voices. Their words are the ones we most need to hear.

by Chris Hedges

NEW YORK CITY: I am sitting on a fire escape across the street from Columbia University with three organizers of the Columbia University Gaza protest. It is night. New York City Police, stationed inside and outside the gates of the campus, have placed the campus on lockdown. There are barricades blocking streets. No one, unless they live in a residence hall on campus, is allowed to enter. The siege means that students cannot go to class. Students cannot go to the library. Students cannot enter the labs. Students cannot visit the university health services. Students cannot get to studios to practice. Students cannot attend lectures. Students cannot walk across the campus lawns. The university, as during the Covid pandemic, has retreated into the world of screens where students are isolated in their rooms.

The university buildings are largely vacant. The campus pathways deserted. Columbia is a Potemkin university, a playground for corporate administrators. The president of the university — a British-Egyptian baroness who built her career at institutions such as the Bank of England, World Bank and International Monetary Fund — called in police in riot gear, with guns drawn, to clear the school’s encampment, forcibly evict students who occupied a campus hall and beat and arrest over 100 of them. They were arrested for “criminal trespassing” on their own campus. 

These administrators demand, like all who manage corporate systems of power, total obedience. Dissent. Freedom of expression. Critical thought. Moral outrage. These have no place in our corporate-indentured universities.

All systems of totalitarianism, including corporate totalitarianism, deform education into vocational training where students are taught what to think, not how to think. Only the skills and expertise demanded by the corporate state are valued. The withering away of the humanities and transformation of major research universities into corporate and Defense Department vocational schools with their outsized emphasis on science, technology, engineering and math, illustrate this shift. The students who disrupt the Potemkin university, who dare to think for themselves, face beatings, suspension, arrest and expulsion.

The mandarins who run Columbia and other universities, corporatists who make salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, oversee academic plantations. They treat their poorly paid adjunct faculty, who often lack health insurance and benefits, like serfs. They slavishly serve the interests of wealthy donors and corporations. They are protected by private security. They despise students, forced into onerous debt peonage for their education, who are non-conformists, who defy their fiefdoms and call out their complicity in genocide.

Columbia University, with an endowment of $13.64 billion, charges students nearly $90,000 a year to attend. But students are not allowed to object when their tax and tuition money funds genocide, or when their tuition payments are used to see them, along with faculty supporters, assaulted and sent to jail. They are, as Joe Biden put it, members of “hate groups.” They are — as Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer said of those who occupied Hamilton Hall at Columbia renaming it Hind Hall, in honor of a six-year-old Palestinian girl, Hind Rajab, who was murdered by Israeli forces after spending 12 days trapped in a car with her six dead relatives — engaged in “lawlessness”. 

During the assault by dozens of police on the occupied hall, one student was knocked unconscious, several were beaten and sent to hospital and a shot was fired by a police officer inside the hall. The excess use of force is justified with the lie that there are outside infiltrators and agitators directing the protest. As the protests continue, and they will continue, this use of force will become more draconian.

“The university is a place of capital accumulation,” says Sara Wexler, a doctoral student in philosophy, seated with two other students on the fire escape. “We have billion dollar endowments that are connected to Israel and defense companies. We are being forced to confront the fact that universities aren’t democratic. You have a board of trustees and investors that are actually making the decisions. Even if students have votes saying they want divestment and the faculty want divestment, we actually don’t have any power because they can call in the NYPD.”

There is an iron determination by the ruling institutions, including the media, to shift the narrative away from the genocide in Gaza, to threats against Jewish students and antisemitism. The anger the protesters feel for journalists, especially at news organizations such as CNN and The New York Times, is intense and justified.

“I’m a German-Polish Jew,” says Wexler. “My last name is Wexler. It’s Yiddish for money-maker, money-exchanger. No matter how many times I tell people I’m Jewish, I’m still labeled antisemitic. It’s infuriating. We are told that we need a state that is based on ethnicity in the 21st century and that’s the only way Jewish people can be safe. But it is really for Britain and America and other imperialist states to have a presence in the Middle East. I’ve no idea why people still believe this narrative. It makes no sense to have a place for Jewish people that requires other people to suffer and die.”

I have seen this assault on universities and freedom of expression before. I saw it in Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, the military dictatorship in El Salvador, Guatemala under Rios Montt, and during my coverage of the military regimes in Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, Syria, Iraq and Algeria.

Columbia University, with its locked gates, lines of police cruisers, rows of metal barricades three and four deep, swarms of uniformed police and private security, looks no different. It looks no different because it is no different. 

Welcome to our corporate dictatorship.

The cacophony of the streets of New York City punctuates our conversation. These students know what they are risking. They know what they are up against. 

Student activists waited months before setting up encampments. They tried repeatedly to have their voices heard and their concerns addressed. But they were rebuffed, ignored and harassed. In November, the students presented a petition to the university calling for divestment from Israeli corporations that facilitate the genocide. No one bothered to respond. 

The protesters endure constant abuse. On April 25, during Columbia’s senior boat cruise, Muslim students and those identified as supporting the protests had alcohol poured on their heads and clothes by jeering Zionists. In January, former Israeli soldiers studying at Columbia used skunk spray to assault students on the steps of Lowe Library. The university, under heavy pressure once the attackers were identified, said they had banned the former soldiers from campus, but other students reported seeing one of the men on campus recently. When Jewish students in the encampment attempted to prepare their meals in the kosher kitchen at the Jewish Theological Seminary, they were insulted by Zionists who were in the building. Zionist counter demonstrators have been joined on campus by the founder of the white supremist Proud Boys organization. Students have had their personal information posted on the Canary Mission and found their faces on the sides of trucks circling the campus, denouncing them as antisemites. 

These attacks are replicated at other universities, including UCLA, where masked Zionists released rats and tossed fireworks into the encampment and broadcast the sound of crying children – something the Israeli army does to lure Palestinians in Gaza out of hiding to kill them. The Zionist mob, armed with pepper and bear spray, violently attacked the protesters, as police and campus security watched passively and refused to make arrests.

“At the General Studies gala, which is one of the undergraduate schools that has a large population of former IDF soldiers, at least eight students wearing keffiyehs were physically and verbally harassed by students identified as ex-IDF and Israelis,” Cameron Jones, a sophomore majoring in urban studies and who is Jewish, tells me. “Students were called ‘bitch’ and ‘whore’ in Hebrew. Some were called terrorists and told to go back to Gaza. Many of the students harassed were Arabs, some having their keffiyehs ripped off and thrown to the ground. Several students in keffiyehs were grabbed and pushed. A Jewish student wearing a keffiyeh was cursed at in Hebrew and later punched in the face. Another student was kicked. The event ended after dozens of students sang the Israeli national anthem, some of them flipping off students wearing keffiyehs. I have been followed around campus by individuals and been cursed and had obscenities yelled at me.”

The university has refused to reprimand those who disrupted the gala, even though the individuals who carried out the assaults have been identified. 

Universities have hired people such as Cas Halloway, currently the chief operating officer at Columbia, who was the deputy mayor for operations under Michael Bloomberg. Holloway reportedly oversaw the police clearance of the Occupy encampment at Zuccotti Park. This is the kind of expertise universities covet. 

At Columbia, student organizers, following the mass arrests and evictions from their encampment and Hind Hall, called for university-wide strikes by faculty, staff and students. Columbia has canceled its university wide commencement.

I am on the campus of Princeton University. It is after evening prayers and 17 students who have mounted a hunger strike sit together, many wrapped in blankets. 

As universities escalate their crackdowns, the protesters escalate their response. Students at Princeton held rallies and walk-outs throughout October and November, which culminated in a protest at the Council of the Princeton University Community, made up of administrators, students, staff, deans and the president. They were met at each protest with a wall of silence.

Princeton students decided, following the example at Columbia, to set up a tent encampment on April 25 and issued a set of demands calling on the university to “divest and disassociate from Israel.” But when they arrived early in the morning at their staging areas, as well as the site in front of Firestone Library which they hoped to use for an encampment, they were met with dozens of campus police and Princeton town police who had been tipped off. The students hastily occupied another location on campus, McCosh Courtyard. Two students were immediately arrested, evicted from their student housing and banned from campus. The police forced the remaining students to take down their tents. 

Protesters at the encampment have been sleeping in the open, including when it rains. 

In an irony not lost on the students, dotted around Princeton’s campus are massive tents set up for reunion weekend where alumni down copious amounts of alcohol and dress up in garish outfits with the school colors of orange and black. The protesters are barred from entering them. 

Thirteen students at Princeton occupied Clio Hall on April 29. They, like their counterparts at Columbia, were arrested and are now barred from campus. Some 200 students surrounded Clio Hall in solidarity as the occupying students were led away by police. As they were being processed by the police, the arrested students sang the Black spiritual Roll Jordan Roll, altering the words to “Well some say John was a baptist, some say John was a Palestinian, But I say John was a preacher of God and my bible says so too.” 

The hunger strikers, who began their liquid-only diet on May 3, issued this statement:

The Princeton Gaza Solidarity Encampment announces the initiation of a hunger strike in solidarity with the millions of Palestinians in Gaza suffering under the ongoing siege by the state of Israel. The Israeli occupation has deliberately blocked access to basic necessities to engineer a dire famine for the two million residents of Gaza. Since the announcement on October 9 by the Israeli Defense Minister prohibiting the entry of food, fuel and electricity into the Gaza Strip, Israel has systematically obstructed and limited access to vital aid for Palestinians in Gaza, even intentionally destroying existing cropland. On March 18, the U.N. Secretary General declared that “This is the highest number of people facing catastrophic hunger ever recorded by the integrated food security classification system.” To make bread, Gazans have been forced to use animal feed as flour. To break their fasts in Ramadan, Gazans have been forced to prepare meals of grass. 97% of Gaza’s water has been deemed undrinkable since October 2021 and they have been forced to drink dirty salt water to survive. The consequences of this unprecedented famine created and maintained by Israel will devastate Gaza’s children for generations to come and cannot be tolerated any longer. We have begun our hunger strike to stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza. We are drawing from the tradition of Palestinian political prisoners going on salt-water-only hunger strikes in Israeli prisons since 1968. Our hunger strike is a response to the administration’s refusal to engage with our demands for disassociation and divestment from Israel. We refuse to be silenced by the university administration’s intimidation and repression tactics. We struggle together in solidarity with the people of Palestine. We commit our bodies to their liberation. Participants in the hunger strikes will abstain from all food or drink except water until the following demands are met:

• Meet with students to discuss demands for disclosure, divestment and a full academic and cultural boycott of Israel.

• Grant complete amnesty from all criminal and disciplinary charges for participants of the peaceful sit-in.

• Reverse all campus bans and evictions of students. 

The university and the world must recognize that we refuse to be complicit in genocide and will take every necessary action to change this reality. Our hunger strike, though small in comparison to the enduring suffering of the Palestinian people, symbolizes our unwavering commitment to justice and solidarity.

University President Christopher Eisgruber met with the hunger strikers – the first meeting by school administrators with protesters since Oct. 7 – but dismissed their demands.

“This is probably the most important thing I’ve done here,” says Areeq Hasan, a senior who is going to do a PhD in applied physics next year at Stanford, who is also part of the hunger strike. “If we’re on a scale of one to 10, this is a 10. Since the start of encampment, I have tried to become a better person. We have pillars of faith. One of them is sunnah, which is prayer. That’s a place where you train yourself to become a better person. It is linked to spirituality. That’s something I’ve been emphasizing more during my time at Princeton. There’s another aspect of faith. Zakat. It means charity, but you can read it more generally as justice…economic justice and social justice. I’m training myself, but to what end? This encampment is not just about trying to cultivate, to purify my heart to try to become a better person, but about trying to stand for justice and actively use these skills that I’m learning to command what I feel to be right and to forbid what I believe to be wrong, to stand up for oppressed people around the world.”

Anha Khan, a Princeton student on hunger strike whose family is from Bangladesh, sits with her knees tucked up in front of her. She is wearing blue sweatpants that say Looney Tunes and has an engagement ring that every so often glints in the light. She sees in Bangladesh’s history of colonialism, dispossession and genocide, the experience of Palestinians.

“So much was taken from my people,” she says. “We haven’t had the time or the resources to recuperate from the terrible times we’ve gone through. Not only did my people go through a genocide in 1971, but we were also victims of the partition that happened in 1947 and then civil disputes between West and East Pakistan throughout the forties, the fifties and the sixties. It makes me angry. If we weren’t colonized by the British throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century, and if we weren’t occupied, we would have had time to develop and create a more prosperous society. Now we’re staggering because so much was taken from us. It’s not fair.”

The hostility of the university has radicalized the students, who see university administrators attempting to placate external pressures from wealthy donors, the weapons manufacturers and the Israel lobby, rather than deal with the internal realities of the non-violent protests and the genocide. 

“The administration doesn’t care about the well being, health or safety of their students,” Khan tells me. “We have tried to get at least tents out at night. Since we are on a 24-hour liquid fast, not eating anything, our bodies are working overtime to stay resilient. Our immune systems are not as strong. Yet the university tells us we can’t pitch up tents to keep ourselves safe at night from the cold and the winds. It’s abhorrent for me. I feel a lot more physical weakness. My headaches are worse. There is an inability to even climb up stairs now. It made me realize that for the past seven months what Gazans have been facing is a million times worse. You can’t understand their plight unless you experience that kind of starvation that they’re experiencing, although I’m not experiencing the atrocities they’re experiencing.”

The hunger strikers, while getting a lot of support on social media, have also been the targets of death threats and hateful messages from conservative influencers. “I give them 10 hours before they call DoorDash,” someone posted on X. “Why won’t they give up water, don’t they care about Palestine? Come on, give up water!” another post read. “Can they hold their breath too? Asking for a friend,” another read. “OK so I hear there’s going to be a bunch of barbecues at Princeton this weekend, let’s bring out a bunch of pork products too to show these Muslims!” someone posted.

On campus the tiny groups of counter protesters, many from the ultra orthodox Chabad House, jeer at the protesters, shouting “Jihadists!” or “I like your terrorist headscarf!”

“It is horrifying to see thousands upon thousands of people wish for our deaths and hope that we starve and die,” Khan says softly. “In the press release video, I wore a mask. One of the funnier comments I got was, ‘Wow, I bet that chick on the right has buck-teeth behind that mask.’ It’s ridiculous. Another read, ‘I bet that chick on the right used her Dyson Supersonic before coming to the press release.’ The Dyson Supersonic is a really expensive hair dryer. Honestly, the only thing I got from that was that my hair looked good, so thank you!”

David Chmielewski, a senior whose parents are Polish and who had family interned in the Nazi death camps, is a Muslim convert. His visits to the concentration camps in Poland, including Auschwitz, made him acutely aware of the capacity for human evil. He sees this evil in the genocide in Gaza. He sees the same indifference and support that characterized Nazi Germany. “Never again,” he says, means never again for everyone.

“Since the genocide, the university has failed to reach out to Arab students, to Muslim students and to Palestinian students to offer support,” he tells me. “The university claims it is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion, but we don’t feel we belong here.”

“We’re told in our Islamic tradition by our prophets that when one part of the ummah, the nation of believers, feels pain, then we all feel pain,” he says. “That has to be an important motivation for us. But the second part is that Islam gives us an obligation to strive for justice regardless of who we’re striving on behalf of. There are plenty of Palestinians who aren’t Muslim, but we’re fighting for the liberation of all Palestinians. Muslims stand up for issues that aren’t specifically Muslim issues. There were Muslims who were involved in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. There were Muslims involved in the civil rights movement. We draw inspiration from them.”

“This is a beautiful interfaith struggle,” he says. “Yesterday, we set up a tarp where we were praying. We had people doing group Quran recitations. On the same tarp, Jewish students had their Shabbat service. On Sunday, we had Christian services at the encampment. We are trying to give a vision of the world that we want to build, a world after apartheid. We’re not just responding to Israeli apartheid, we’re trying to build our own vision of what a society would look like. That’s what you see when you have people doing Quran recitations or reading Shabbat services on the same tarp, that’s the kind of world we want to build.”

“We’ve been portrayed as causing people to feel unsafe,” he says. “We’ve been perceived as presenting a threat. Part of the motivation for the hunger strike is making clear that we’re not the people making anyone unsafe. The university is making us unsafe. They’re unwilling to meet with us and we’re willing to starve ourselves. Who’s causing the un-safety? There is a hypocrisy about how we’re being portrayed. We’re being portrayed as violent when it’s the universities who are calling police on peaceful protesters. We’re being portrayed as disrupting everything around us, but what we’re drawing on are traditions fundamental to American political culture. We’re drawing on traditions of sit-ins, hunger strikes and peaceful encampments. Palestinian political prisoners have carried out hunger strikes for decades. The hunger strike goes back to de-colonial struggles before that, to India, to Ireland, to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.”

“Palestinian liberation is the cause of human liberation,” he goes on. “Palestine is the most obvious example in the world today, other than the United States, of settler-colonialism. The struggle against Zionist occupation is viewed accurately by Zionists both within the United States and Israel, as sort of the last dying gasp of imperialism. They’re trying to hold onto it. That’s why it’s scary. The liberation of Palestine would mean a radically different world, a world that moves past exploitation and injustice. That’s why so many people who aren’t Palestinian and aren’t Arab and aren’t Muslim are so invested in this struggle. They see its significance.”

“In quantum mechanics there’s the idea of non-locality,” says Hasan. “Even though I’m miles and miles away from the people in Palestine, I feel deeply entangled with them in the same way that the electrons that I work with in my lab are entangled. As David said, this idea that the community of believers is one body and if one part of the body is in pain, all of it pains, it is our responsibility to strive to alleviate that pain. If we take a step back and look at this composite system, it’s evolving in perfect unitary, even though we don’t understand it because we only have access to one small piece of it. There is deep underlying justice that maybe we don’t recognize, but that exists when we look at the plight of the Palestinian people.”

“There’s a tradition associated with the prophet,” he says. “When you’ve seen an injustice occur you should try to change it with your hands. If you can’t change it with your hands then you should try to adjust it with your tongue. You should speak out about it. If you can’t do that, you should at least feel the injustice in your heart. This hunger strike, this encampment, everything we’re doing here as students, is my way of trying to realize that, trying to implement that in my life.”

Spend time with the students in the protests and you hear stories of revelations, epiphanies. In the lexicon of Christianity, these are called moments of grace. These experiences, these moments of grace, are the unseen engine of the protest movements.

When Oscar Lloyd, a junior at Columbia studying cognitive science and philosophy, was about eight-years-old, he and his family visited the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

“I saw the vast distinction between the huge memorial at the Battle of the Little Bighorn compared to the small wooden sign at the massacre at Wounded Knee,” he says, comparing the numerous monuments celebrating the 1876 defeat of the U.S. 7th Cavalry at the Little Big Horn to the massacre of 250 to 300 Native Americans, half of whom were women and children, in 1890 at Wounded Knee. “I was shocked that there can be two sides to history, that one side can be told and the other can be completely forgotten. This is the story of Palestine.”

Sara Ryave, a graduate student at Princeton, spent a year in Israel studying at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, a non-denominational yeshiva. She came face to face with apartheid. She is banned from campus after occupying Clio Hall.

“It was during that year that I saw things that I will never forget,” she said. “I spent time in the West Bank and with communities in the south Hebron Hills. I saw the daily realities of apartheid. If you don’t look for them, you don’t notice them. But once you do, if you want to, it’s clear. That predisposed me to this. I saw people living under police and IDF military threats every single day, whose lives are made unbearable by settlers.”

When Hasan was in fourth grade, he remembers his mother weeping uncontrollably on the 27^th night during Ramadan, an especially holy day known as The Night of Power. On this night, prayers are traditionally answered.

“I have a very vivid memory of standing in prayer at night next to my mother,” he says. “My mother was weeping. I’d never seen her cry so much in my life. I remember that so vividly. I asked her why she was crying. She told me that she was crying because of all of the people that were suffering around the world. And among them, I can imagine she was bringing to heart the people in Palestine. At that point in my life, I didn’t understand systems of oppression. But what I did understand was that I’d never seen my mother in such pain before. I didn’t want her to be in that kind of pain. My sister and I, seeing our mother in so much pain, started crying too. The emotions were so strong that night. I don’t think I’ve ever cried like that in my life. That was the first time I had a consciousness of suffering in the world, specifically systems of oppression, though I didn’t really understand the various dimensions of it until much later on. That’s when my heart established a connection to the plight of the Palestinian people.”

Helen Wainaina, a doctoral student in English who occupied Clio Hall at Princeton and is barred from campus, was born in South Africa. She lived in Tanzania until she was 10-years-old and then moved with her family to Houston.

“I think of my parents and their journeys in Africa and eventually leaving the African continent,” she says. “I’m conflicted that they ended up in the U.S. If things had turned out differently during the post-colonial movements, they would not have moved. We would have been able to live, grow up and study where we were. I’ve always felt that that was a profound injustice. I’m grateful that my parents did everything they could to get us here, but I remember when I got my citizenship, I was very angry. I had no say. I wish the world was oriented differently, that we didn’t need to come here, that the post-colonial dreams of people who worked on those movements actually materialized.”

The protest movements - which have spread around the globe - are not built around the single issue of the apartheid state in Israel or its genocide against Palestinians. They are built around the awareness that the old world order, the one of settler colonialism, western imperialism and militarism used by the countries in the Global North to dominate the Global South, must end. They decry the hoarding of natural resources and wealth by industrial nations in a world of diminishing returns. These protests are built around a vision of a world of equality, dignity and independence. This vision, and the commitment to it, will make this movement not only hard to defeat, but presages a wider struggle beyond the genocide in Gaza. 

The genocide has awakened a sleeping giant. Let us pray the giant prevails.

CULTURE WAR STUPIDITY PLUNGES INTO ABSURDITY

by Jim Hightower

Right-wing culture warriors have been relentlessly attacking people’s personal liberties — running hellish crusades to deny our freedom to vote, to read what we want, to form labor unions, to make our own reproductive decisions, etc.

Now, apparently having run out of freedoms to ban, here they come with a twisted attempt to politicize another of our inalienable rights: *The pursuit of happiness*! They’ve launched a campaign of psycho-babble, preaching that those who embrace progressive ideas and causes are doomed to a life of perpetual unhappiness. “Don’t go there!” they squawk.

This babbaloney is even being advanced by such self-proclaimed “serious” conservatives as New York Times pundit, Ross Douthat. He recently opined that “The left-wing temperament is, by nature, unhappier than the moderate and conservative alternatives.” Yes, Douthat insists that we progressives are hampered by “a refusal of contentment,” unlike the joyful serenity enjoyed by right-wingers.

Golly, Ross, how could we have missed the conservative blissfulness inherent in Donald Trump’s perpetual glower and nastiness? And that snarling, right-wing gaggle of quacks, prima donnas, and haters in Congress sure offers a fine public example of intrinsic conservative conviviality.

But Douthat plunges deeper into his dark rabbit hole, theorizing that “youth unhappiness” increases “the further left you go.” Not sure how many progressive youngsters he’s actually met, but I’ve been lucky to meet and work regularly with young champions of environmental justice, union organizing, women’s rights, etc. They have continuously lifted my spirits with their optimism, sense of fun, and jubilant camaraderie.

And, by the way, young progressives don’t need me — much less an aloof, dour conservative — speaking for them. They have their own voice and are on the way up — laughing at the likes of Douthat.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Is Biden’s empty threat to withhold a few bombs from Israel anti-Semitic?

ANNE LAMOTT ON LOVE, SOBRIETY AND REACHING 70: ‘All I’ve Learned, I’ve Learned Because The Abyss Swallowed Me’

The American author’s 20th book reads as a series of parables on grace. In an interview, she reflects on a life she thought she wouldn’t get to live

When I speak with Anne Lamott, she is in a “hotel-motel” in Ypsilanti, Michigan, halfway through a cross-country book tour, flaunting sparkly pink nails. The manicure was part of a coping strategy initiated in response to a bad review – “seriously the worst review” of her life, said Lamott. No matter that Somehow: Thoughts on Love, her 20th book, is cresting the New York Times’ bestseller list – a dig by a prominent critic can still capsize her day.

But this is Anne Lamott, known for her preternatural ability to uncover grace in all her trials, from the trivial to the existentially unmooring. Lamott has found Christ-like qualities in a colicky baby, self-love in the abyss of addiction, and even ways to shepherd her own neuroses when they arrive at the writing desk like damaged relatives “with their weird coppery breath”.

In this latest book, which reads as a collection of parables, themes of love and grace are often interchangeable. Lamott recalls, for instance, a friend who found a small frog in the shower, which she picked up and carried to its rightful place in the grass outside. The frog, panicking en route to safety, was insensible to the murmured comforts of its carrier. “I think this is one of the best examples of how love operates when we are most afraid and doomed,” writes Lamott, “carrying us to a safer place while we pound against cupped hands.”

The idea that we can entrust ourselves to such tender devotion – no matter how ill-fated our lives might seem – is a central thesis of Somehow. Through anecdotes about marriage, illness, best intentions, and penance for a misfired transphobic tweet in 2015, Lamott presents love variously as a vessel, a shelter, a meditation – and “our only hope”.

And now, in the face of a bad review, Lamott is trying to exercise the wisdom she extols. She’s leaning on her loved ones back home in Marin county, and drawing strength from the outpouring on social media, where fans remind her to shake it off. “And then they said really horrible things about the reviewer and the review. And that, of course, was the best thing of all.”

I spoke with Lamott over Zoom. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Your book launched last month and the next day you celebrated your 70th birthday. Does that number carry any particular significance for you?

Anne Lamott:It certainly sounds old. When I was younger, I really loved drugs and alcohol, and I didn’t think I’d see 18. And then I didn’t think I’d see 21. Then I didn’t think I’d see 30.

Then I got sober when I was 32 – almost 38 years ago – and I thought, oh, I’ve reached the mountaintop. Then I had a kid and felt this urgency to try to stay alive, which I hadn’t felt for a long time. Then I saw 50.

But I loved my 60s. I felt at the height of my mental and spiritual and psychological wellness. As you get older, you just start throwing this stupid stuff off your airplane that kept you flying so low for so long. You just think, I don’t have the time. I don’t care any more. I don’t care what my butt looks like.

By my age, you’ve seen so many people die, many of them younger. And so you get serious about understanding we’re all on borrowed time, and that you’ve got to make a decision about how you’re going to live this one short, precious life.

How does that realization change the stakes when it comes to love?

Over the years, I have picked some really terrible but charming and well-known men. Sometimes attractive and sometimes not. Sometimes they were just good company and the world loved them. But I always secretly knew that if they were a woman, they wouldn’t be my best girlfriend. They wouldn’t even be a close girlfriend.

And then when I was 62 I met this guy, Neal Allen. And just after one coffee with him, I realized that if he were a woman, he would be my best girlfriend. That’s the value I held out for and that’s what I encourage people who still long to find a soulmate to hold out for: it should be a person who you want to talk to for the rest of your life. A person whose commitment is to kindness and who has read every single book you’ve ever read and loved and vice versa.

In December, you wrote in the Washington Post about the slow descent of “the creaking elevators of age”. Apart from death, what awaits you at the end of your ride?

I imagine I will be surrounded by my husband and son and two friends. And they will have called hospice because we all do now. And the hospice is the calvary. They will come in with their syringes full of morphine, so I know I won’t have any pain and I won’t have any fear.

I’m a Sunday school teacher. I teach my kids that death is a pretty significant change of address. And I do believe that the soul is immortal. I don’t know what that will translate into. [The spiritual teacher] Ram Dass said it’s like taking off a pair of really tight shoes. I think I agree with that.

There is so much money and attention being spent on longevity these days, which, I think, entails a certain denial of death. I was chatting a while back with people who work in end-of-life care, and their view was that our fear of death detracts from our ability to live a good life.

There’s an American way of forward thrust: you must always be moving and you must be moving higher in terms of recognition or acclaim or stature. I developed that toxic self-consciousness. It kept me from being here, breathing it all in and observing with a small degree of amusement and wonder and tenderness, because I was so fixated on what I looked like and how I was coming across and how I was doing.

The forward thrust has to do with the fear of death, because if you keep moving very quickly, then you’re going to outrun the abyss. The abyss isn’t going to open at your feet and swallow you up. But everything I’ve learned that’s of any importance, I’ve learned because the abyss opened up and swallowed me. Christians call it the dark night of the soul; an alcoholic will call it a bottom. And when you hit that bottom and you have to be in it for a little while, boy, you find out who you really are.

Your parents were atheists. How did you come to Christianity?

Well, it was really an accident, believe me. I’d always studied God and different religious traditions and believed that there was something that heard me if I said hello quietly in the middle of the night. But I avoided Christianity like the plague. I feel about Christians the way everybody feels about Christians. I love what Gandhi said, that he loved Christ, but it was Christians he had a problem with, and that’s totally how I feel about it.

And then at the end of my drinking, there was this flea market near this tiny house where I was living. And I’d go over there because when you’re really hungover you want greasy food and strong coffee. And I could hear music wafting out of this ramshackle, cruddy looking church with a Charlie Brown Christmas tree outside of it. It was the music of the Weavers and Joan Baez and Pete Seeger that my parents had been very fond of. So I just started going over there because I loved the music.

For me, one definition of grace is just running out of any more good ideas. So I get my greasy food and my strong coffee. I was bulimic at the time. I was hungover every single day, and I just went and sat down, and they didn’t hassle me. They didn’t try to get me to join them or to figure out anything or to take Bibles. They just got me water. They could see I was a really sad, damaged person.

I always left before the sermon because it was just too ridiculous for words. And then one day I didn’t, and I experienced saying to Jesus, kind of bitterly: “OK, fine, you can come in.” And I just tried that out, and it was really sweet.

What role did that new faith play in your sobriety?

I converted a year before I got sober. So I had a kind of gap year at church, where I was very smelly and weird and arrogant all at the same time. I had terrible self-esteem because of the way I was living and then I was very arrogant because I’ve been raised to think that the Lamotts were better and more educated.

I stayed there for a year and then I got sober. Church did not get me sober, but my deterioration did and I finally had no place to go. I would have died, I think. And so I just gave recovery a shot.

You mentioned that you married your now husband Neal in your 60s. You’ve had your share of loves and opportunities – what made you ready for Neal to enter your life?

I was raised in the 1950s and early 1960s to understand that women take care of everybody else and that your value comes from being a flight attendant to everybody in the world. I also have a really warm and open heart and I like to take care of people, but my life force was entirely spent on my son and his little baby and the baby’s mother and everybody around me. I was depleted.

And one day, my older brother, who’s a fundamentalist Christian, was staying with me and I said, “I’m just so isolated. I just am so empty right now. I’m all used up.” And he said some sort of happy Christian horseshit. I adore him, but it was like a bumper sticker and I was just furious.

I got in the car and started driving and crying and pounding the steering wheel and telling my son and grandson and the baby mama and my parents and my brothers how much I hated and resented that they sucked me dry and how sad I was.

Later, I came back to town and I called my mentor of 38 years, Horrible Bonnie (she’s horrible because I can’t get her to not love me). And I said, “I’m nobody’s priority.” And she said, “Oh, Annie, this is what we paid for.” She said, “You’re not anybody’s priority because you’re not your own. You’re going to need to take a few months off to have to have a love affair with yourself. You’re going to start with getting the overpriced tamales at the health food store and some flowers. And you’re going to have to do that every day.”

And I was like, no, no, it’s too California. I’m not going to do that. But when all else fails, follow instructions. So I did it. And about three months later, I met Neal. There’s a site called OurTime that’s an offshoot of Match for older people. I met him and we had coffee and we’ve never been apart.

You’ve talked about your own experience with addiction, and you’ve been sober now for almost 38 years. But you also watched your son go through his own battles with addiction. What happened during that time?

Oh, God, it was so awful. He’s got almost 14 years clean and sober now, by the grace of God, but at about age 14, he started to get drunk and stoned a lot of the time. He got into meth and anything he could get his hands on and it was just terrifying.

And I did what you do if you’re a mother. I tried everything. I sent him off to the highest peak of the Allegheny mountains for three months, and then to an organic tofu farm. And when he came home he was dealing the next day. He got his girlfriend pregnant at 19, and they had the baby, and he just got worse and worse.

Nothing I tried worked. Eventually, I left him in jail. The bail bondsman said, “Oh, my God, Ms Lamott, you’re the first mother in my 20 year history as a bail bondsman who left her child in jail.” And, you know, I’m not positive he’d still be alive if I hadn’t.

And then I said, “You can’t come over. You can’t be on the property wasted.” And he stomped off. I didn’t know when we’d ever talk again. But then about 10 days later, he called to say that he had a week clean and sober.

I imagine so many families in similar positions of watching their loved ones suffer would not be able to make those 10 days. They would capitulate to wanting to help. If you were to offer advice to those of us who are watching loved ones suffer, what would you say?

I would say that help is the sunny side of control.

There are these little acronyms in the recovery movement, and one of them is the five M’s: We try to manage others. We martyr ourselves, we manipulate them, and we mother them and the entire world. And the fifth one is so awful: we monitor them, like I’m an android or something, where I can monitor people’s behavior and the number of drinks they’re having or whether I can smell pot on them.

I just learned to release him. Horrible Bonnie taught me this tool, which was to close my eyes and picture the person there and to push them away into the arms of their own destiny.

I had to make peace with the fact that maybe I would lose [my son]. It wasn’t anything but a nightmare. Either he would die driving drunk, or he’d commit suicide or he’d overdose. And I just had to release him.

Somehow is your 20th book. At this point, is there anything that you feel you still urgently need to say?

Not really. I wrote every single thing I know about writing, motherhood, grandmotherhood, mercy, faith, hope.

My dream is not to publish any more. I hate publishing. I hate book tours. I’m exhausted. I’m a homebody. I like to be on the couch with the dog and the New Yorker or People magazine – either one will do.

 In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

(theguardian.com)