Mendocino County Today: Saturday 5/11/24

A PACIFIC RIDGE OF HIGH PRESSURE will continue to bring warm and dry conditions through today with cooler temperatures at the coast; however, still expected to be above average. A cooling trend is expected for Sunday and Monday with warmer temperatures returning for the middle of next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 49F with clear skies this Saturday morning on the coast. We were forecast to be cloudy this morning? Some clouds - fog is out there & the forecast calls for some patches of it visiting us the next few days. Otherwise cooling temps is about all the changes in sight.

Giant Hogweed, Greenwood Beach (Jeff Goll)

THREE INJURED IN ATV CRASH OFF HIGHWAY 128

by Lisa Music

Emergency personnel from multiple agencies are en route to a property off in the 29000 block of State Route 128 east of Yorkville after a 911 caller stated a side-by-side vehicle crashed over a cliff.

Just before 2:45 p.m. on May 10, dispatch requested several emergency agencies respond to the scene for two patients reported to be injured at the scene of the ATV crash at the Antioch Ranch.

According to scanner traffic, the incident commander requested two air ambulances out of an abundance of caution before arriving on the scene. Once at scene, the incident commander relayed that there were actually three patients: one with moderate injuries, one with major injuries, and one "walking wounded."

The two air ambulances were advised to continue to the designated landing zones.

Scanner transmission indicates that access to the crash scene is limited and located behind "the main residence." Emergency personnel stated that the patients are down a steep hill from the access site.

Emergency personnel are staging below the crash access site as the incident commander advises that additional "manpower" is needed.

NORTHERN LIGHTS IN BOONVILLE

12:30 am at the Boonville Airport. Though we could only see about 1/2 of what the camera picked up, it still really cool to see the Northern Lights this far down. (Jeff Burroughs)

TEENAGE TERRORIST THREAT

On Friday, May 10, 2024 at 7:39 AM, The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office received communications from a citizen of Ukiah who had concerns about some social media posts his child had received. The posts were shared from one child to another and shown to the parent. The post disclosed the potential of a violent attack involving firearms at Grace Hudson Elementary School on today's date. This threat caused an immediate and visible law enforcement response to the Grace Hudson Elementary School.

The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Patrol personnel as well as Detectives coordinated with administrators from the Grace Hudson Elementary School and Ukiah Unified School District. The Sheriff's Office maintained a visible presence at Grace Hudson School while Sheriff's Detectives began investigating who was responsible for the threats made on a popular social media platform. While this was occurring, numerous parents responded to the school and removed their children for precautionary measures, indicating the effect these threats have on our community.

In approximately one and a half hours, Sheriff's Office Detectives determined the possible identity of the person responsible for the threats by working with the security division of the social media company. Sheriff's Detectives used the information obtained from the social media company along with assistance from the Ukiah Unified School District to identify the user name from the online post, the phone number used to make the post, and ultimately the person responsible for publishing the threatening message online through social media.

The offender was identified as a male juvenile who attends Pomolita Middle School. The juvenile was arrested by Mendocino County Sheriff's Detectives for making Criminal Threats. The juvenile was transported to the Mendocino County Juvenile Hall where he was booked. Additional follow-up investigation was conducted to include interviews with the parents of the juvenile and a search warrant of the juvenile's residence for firearms or weapons.

The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office wishes to ensure the community that these threats are investigated seriously and immediately. Any threat to schools will be investigated fully regardless of the intent of the person making the threat. The fact that this incident resulted in a measurable amount of terror and concern for parents, students, and school staff alike is a stark reminder of the seriousness of these types of offenses.

The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office would like to thank the Ukiah Unified School District staff, Grace Hudson Elementary School Staff, and the Ukiah Police Department for their assistance during this investigation. Anyone with additional information related to this matter or any other threats to schools, are encouraged to reach out to the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office by contacting the Dispatch Center at 707-463-4086. Information can also be provided anonymously by calling the Sheriff's Office non-emergency tip line at 707-234-2100.

AV UNIFIED NEWS: A WIN FOR WYNNE

Dear Anderson Valley Community,

Another week of school zooms by and the warmer weather certainly is reminding us that graduation is around the corner. Please mark your calendars for these important dates.

Preschool District Office Lawn–May 22

The following events are all at the high school gym:

6th Grade Promotion–Tuesday, June 4

8th Grade–Wednesday, June 5

High School Graduation–Thursday, June 6

Measure M GroundBreaking–High School Oval–Thursday, June 6 at 12 noon

The big news of the week was the gargantuan task that technology manager Wynne Crisman accomplished, by himself, replacing all of the district phone hardware and software systems.

When Wynne first approached me about the idea a few months ago, which was definitely needed as often people could not reach the sites due to glitches in the decades old technology, I thought it was going to be a messy task. It was further compounded with the phone service carrier that said they could only perform the critical switch during a specific, not ideal time of 8:00 a.m., on a weekday morning! I was worried, we would be in a big old mess with a telephone company thousands of miles away unable to support our remote location. However, much to my delight and relief thanks to Wynne’s efforts, it went off without a hitch. I am super grateful to Wynne for his dedication and expertise in getting this done. One of the new features of the system is if a call is received on an extension and it is not picked up, the voicemail that is left can be sent to the person's computer. We also have a recorded message in English and Spanish for families to report absences on the absence line to ensure that parents can report a message without being required to call back.

Panthers were on the move this week! Many of the sixth graders were on their field trip to the Mendocino Woodlands with Ms. Cruz, and some high school students journeyed up to the Ashland Shakespeare Festival with Mr. Folz and Mr. Ballentine. They are enjoying two plays and several workshops. The big FFA plant sale is tomorrow. So be sure to stop by and get your starter plants!

Both sites have completed their State testing and we are appreciate Ms. Sweet and Ms. Ewing getting that done. Spring was definitely in the air with the chicks hatching in Ms. Mayne’s room and the beautiful bulb planters sprouting and growing rapidly in Ms. Soto’s room! Colorful art is hanging in the hallways and it is always great to see a student’s face light up when they realize you are looking at their creation!

Speaking of pride in work–be sure to visit the Elementary Open House on May 21 at 5:30 p.m. and the High School Exhibition from 3:30-6:00.

We thank you for your partnership as you continue to ensure your students attend school on time and ready to learn. We are in the home stretch, but we still have a “whole lotta learning to do!”

I would like to close with deepest gratitude to the staff for their on-going work and care for kids. We are celebrating staff appreciation next week, and while celebrating for one week everyone’s contribution is terrific, I want to recognize and express my deepest gratitude for the on-going commitment, energy, and investment our staff gives every day.

Sincerely yours,

Louise Simson, Superintendent

AV Unified School District

EXCAVATOR DUI

A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned from its deliberations Wednesday to announce it had found the trial defendant guilty of all charges.

Defendant Antonio Lopez, Jr., age 36, of Cloverdale, was found guilty of:

Resisting an Executive Officer by Unlawful Threats of Violence, a felony;

Unlawful Theft of a Motor Vehicle (an excavator) of a Value Greater Than $950, also a felony;

Driving a Motor Vehicle (the excavator) Under The Influence of Alcohol, a misdemeanor, and

Hit-and-Run Driving (swinging the bucket of the excavator erratically and knocking down fencing), also a misdemeanor.

The jury also found true special allegations included in the charging document alleging the defendant suffered a prior DUI conviction in 2019 in Mendocino County; and that he refused to submit to a chemical test on demand of the investigating CHP officer.

Following a court trial Thursday morning on circumstances in aggravation, the defendant’s case was referred to the Adult Probation Department for a background study and sentencing recommendation.

Imposition of sentence is now calendared to take place on June 6, 2024 at 9 o’clock in the morning in Department A of the Ukiah courthouse.

The law enforcement agencies that gathered the evidence necessary to secure Wednesday’s convictions were the California Highway Patrol and the Department of Justice crime laboratory.

The prosecutor who presented the People's evidence to the jury was Deputy District Attorney Jamie Pearl.

Special thanks are extended to the civilian witnesses who appeared and testified before the jury as to what they had observed last January in Hopland prior to the arrival of the CHP.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder presided over the three-day jury trial.

MENDOCINO COUNTY SHERIFF MATT KENDALL: A huge thank you to The Forks Cafe for their continued support of local public safety. Today The Forks Cafe supported the Corrections Division (MCSO & Naphcare) day/night shifts by providing some food for our annual Corrections/Nurses Week BBQ held at the Mendocino County Jail. We are all very thankful for the support and appreciation!

KENNY ROGERS SCREWED AGAIN

Supported in his release effort by the Secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), a former Westport man convicted of attempting to have a political opponent murdered in 2005 failed in the Mendocino County Superior Court Wednesday morning in his attempt to have his 25 years-to-life sentence recalled and reduced.

Kenneth Allen Rogers, more commonly known in the day as Kenny Rogers, now age 66 and housed at San Quentin, appeared by video at the Department B court hearing with his local court-appointed attorney.

The People were represented by District Attorney David Eyster. Appearing also by video was Rogers’ attempted murder victim. The original prosecutor, Tim Stoen, also appeared, listening intently from the courtroom gallery.

While Rogers had long ago failed in all of his avenues of appeal, this latest 2024 round of litigation was authorized by Sacramento with the passage of Assembly Bill 600 wherein the Legislature enacted Penal Code § 1172.1, effective January 1, 2024.

In essence, this new law grants judges the authority to recall previously ordered prison sentences and re-sentence an inmate to a lower sentence, if not outright release, no matter the crime if the original sentence no longer aligns with the current legislative changes to the state of California law.

As in Rogers’ case, if the request for sentence recall and reduction is initiated by certain authorities, including the Secretary of CDCR who is a Governor’s appointee, the burden falls on the local District Attorneys to rebut a legislative presumption in favor of recalling the original sentence by making a showing that the inmate still poses “an unreasonable risk of danger to public safety,” as that phrase has also been restrictively defined by the Legislature.

The CDCR Secretary based his recommendation on a referral from the San Quentin warden, who had reported the “exceptional conduct” of inmate Rogers, in that Rogers has purportedly demonstrated a “sustained compliance with departmental rules and regulations, as well as prolonged participation in rehabilitative programming.”

However, the same letter also noted instances where it has been necessary to “counsel” Rogers for (1) attempting three times to intimidate a correctional officer into removing negative information from his prison file; (2) attempting to “manipulate” prison staff when Rogers had been denied a medical appointment he was seeking; (3) being scheduled for a medical appointment but Rogers opting to go to the gym instead of the appointment; and (4) participating in a work stoppage after being counseled.

In anticipation of Wednesday’s hearing, DA Eyster had witnesses ready to address the Court to explain that Rogers still poses an unreasonable risk of danger to public safety and the reasons why they hold that belief. Many letters were submitted in support of Rogers and even more in opposition to the sentence recall and possible re-sentencing of Rogers.

When all was said and done, Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Victoria Shanahan determined that – in light of the charges that Rogers stands convicted of and the 25-to-lfe sentence previously imposed – the Court did not have the discretion to grant a recall and to re-sentence Rogers in this case.

Judge Shanahan also noted that even if she had discretion to change the sentence, for example, to grant probation instead of prison, she still would not be willing to re-sentence Rogers to a grant of probation.

In talking to interested attendees outside of the courtroom after the hearing, DA Eyster cautioned that Rogers – surprisingly with the assistance of prison staff and others who seek to reduce state prison inmate populations – continues to build a resume to present to the Board of Prison Terms panel at his first parole hearing, now advanced by parole authorities to happen sometime in February 2027.

DA Eyster expressed his belief that the CDCR Secretary’s letter will be given great weight by the panel of commissioners, and the issue of future “dangerousness,” the danger Rogers poses to those who opposed him back in the Westport days and who continue to join together to oppose his release through the present, will be given short shrift.

DA Eyster finally noted that it will again take a concerted letter-writing effort by concerned citizens in 2027 if there is to be any hope at forestalling Rogers’ release.

For those unfamiliar with the background behind this investigation and successful prosecution of Kenneth Allen Rogers, the following is a paraphrased summary of facts taken from the Court of Appeal’s appellate opinion:

Kenneth Allen Rogers was the chairperson of the Westport Water Board and the assistant chief of the Westport Volunteer Fire Department. He was active in the local Republican Party and believed he had a future in Sacramento. The victim moved to Westport in 2002.

Rogers was not universally popular in local politics. In 2004, a petition circulated to recall him from the water board. The victim signed the petition and became the only candidate to run against Rogers. Rogers visited the victim at his house and asked him to remove his name from the recall petition, but the victim refused. In an election held August 31, 2004, Rogers was recalled from office on a vote of 29 to 19, and the victim replaced him.

In December 2004, Rogers called the victim and said that if he did not put 50,000 gallons of water in the water storage tank by the next morning, Rogers “was going to hang” him. Knowing that Rogers was angry about losing the recall election, the victim construed this as a serious threat on his life and reported it to law enforcement.

On January 19, 2005, the water board, led by the victim, voted to replace the chief of the volunteer fire department and Rogers, the assistant chief. Rogers said this was a “terrible day for Westport” and filed a lawsuit challenging his termination.

In March 2005, Richard Peacock was released from prison. Rogers knew Peacock and gave him a job at his auto detailing business in Sacramento. Peacock told his parole officer that he “loved” Rogers because of their friendship and “would do anything for him.”

By May of 2005, the victim had decided to move from Westport and put his home up for sale. Also in May 2005, Rogers told a woman who was notarizing loan documents for him that he felt incensed and persecuted over his removal from the water board and fire department.

On June 17, 2005, Richard Peacock travelled to Westport in a white convertible Miata. He was stopped by a police officer in the town of Williams for driving with expired registration and said that he was traveling to Mendocino County with his parole officer’s permission. In fact, he did not have his parole officer’s permission.

At about 10:30 that night, Richard Peacock knocked on the front door of the victim’s house in Westport, aggressively demanding to speak to “Kathy.” The victim, who was alone inside, told the man he had the wrong house and called 911. While still on the phone with the dispatcher, the victim opened his door and saw a man leaning against a white sports car with front end damage. Peacock walked back toward the victim, saying, “Hey, man, I don’t want any trouble,” and then pulled out a gun and fired it at the victim, grazing his head.

The victim stepped back inside, closed his front door, and dropped to the floor inside his house. Peacock fired several more shots through the door and injured the victim’s right wrist. Police who investigated the scene eventually found eight expended .22 caliber shell casings on the victim’s front lawn and nine bullet holes in his front door.

Law enforcement officers spotted Peacock driving the white Miata near Westport the following day. When they attempted to stop him, he accelerated and threw a white plastic bag out the window. Peacock eventually stopped the car and was arrested; the bag was recovered and contained a Ruger .22 caliber semiautomatic handgun containing only one of ten rounds. Ballistics tests revealed that the Ruger was the gun used in the victim’s shooting.

The gun was previously owned by Velma Bowen, who had allowed Rogers and his family to stay in her home in 1999. During the visit, Rogers had stored some guns that he owned under Bowen’s bed, near a box where she stored her .22 Ruger. After Rogers and his family moved out, Bowen discovered the Ruger was missing. She asked Rogers whether he had taken her gun, but he said no, he had his own Ruger.

According to Rogers’ wife, however, she and Rogers later found Bowen’s gun in a toolbox and assumed it had been taken inadvertently during their move out of Bowen’s home.

Rogers was interviewed about the victim’s shooting by Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department Detective Alvarado [now, in 2024, the DA’s chief investigator]. Rogers acknowledged that he had issues with the victim (describing him as “an asshole,” “rude,” and “a jerk” but denied having anything to do with the shooting. He admitted telling the victim he wanted to “hang” him politically.

Rogers told Alvarado that Richard Peacock and his brother Michael Peacock were convicts, that he had known Richard Peacock for 12 to 15 years, and that he had given Richard Peacock a job in his auto body business because he liked to help people. Rogers said he had also employed Michael Peacock as a groundskeeper of some property he owned near the Jack of Hearts Creek, where he grew marijuana.

Rogers was concerned about publicity regarding the marijuana because it was “not really the best thing for a Republican representative to have.”

Rogers acknowledged that Richard Peacock had come to the Jack of Hearts property about a week earlier in a white convertible. He told Detective Alvarado that he “hoped to God” Richard Peacock was not involved in the victim’s shooting, and commented, “I think [the victim] would set up shit like this.” When Alvarado said that seemed unlikely given the victim’s injuries, Rogers suggested that the shooter could have been the husband of one of the women the victim had been “sleeping around with.”

Rogers complained about the lack of respect shown to him by the “new blood” in Westport and about the victim’s public ridicule of him. Rogers continued to deny his involvement in the shooting in a subsequent interview.

On June 26, 2005, Richard Peacock called Rogers from the Mendocino County jail and complained about the charges against him. Rogers told him, “[T]hey’re trying to pull me into this whole thing, too.” Rogers promised to “be there” for Peacock and to “take care of every bit of business on the outside that I have to … until you’re out and free and released from this garbage.” Peacock told Rogers he was “sorry that all this came to your doorstep.”

On June 28, 2005, the authorities searched Rogers’ Jack of Hearts property and seized 120 to 130 marijuana plants and processed marijuana. Also seized was a digital camera which contained a photo of the victim’s home, taken from the inside of a vehicle sometime after March 11, 2005.

Rogers was arrested and on June 29, 2005, made a telephone call from jail to his wife in which they spoke about the evidence against Rogers being a “convict story.” Rogers called his auto detailing business on the same day and told the person who answered to “make sure everything’s all cleaned up.” He complained that “Michael and Richard are pulling some bullshit, I don’t know what … my bail is like half a million dollars.”

Meanwhile, Richard Peacock received a letter while in jail that read, “Dear Richard. [¶] Hope all is going okay for you. I heard about Michael[‘]s B.S. and can’t believe he could be related to you. Anyway, I will get the “Red Dog” to your kid with some school clothes, money, and will keep an eye out for her. Hope to see you soon, but it’s tough. I’m sending … $40 for your books, more to come. [¶] Your friend, Kate. [¶] P.S. Who’s this Keith guy calling for Michael? I’m not returning his calls. I think he has $ for?” The letter had a Yuba City postmark but no address; Richard Peacock did not know any “Kate” from Yuba City, and thought Rogers’ wife had sent the letter.

Rogers was called as a witness at Richard Peacock’s preliminary hearing on August 4, 2005, and winked at Peacock as he left the stand. Later in the day, Rogers’ then-attorney Donald Masuda gave Peacock’s attorney a message to the effect that Rogers wanted Peacock to know that Rogers’ wife would be looking after or taking care of Peacock’s daughter.

When this message was relayed to Peacock, he became extremely upset and angry and said that the message was a threat to harm Peacock’s daughter. Peacock explained that the “Red Dog” mentioned in the letter from “Kate” was a gun that had a red handle or an emblem of a red dog on the handle.

Richard Peacock did not testify, but Mendocino County Deputy District Attorney Tim Stoen offered his statements about the threat and the “Red Dog” letter under the spontaneous statement exception to the hearsay rule, based on his demeanor upon receiving the message.

In addition to the evidence described above, the prosecution called Michael Peacock as a witness at Rogers’ trial. He testified that he had a lengthy criminal record and had spent time in prison. In 2003, Rogers and Michael Peacock had several conversations about a Black man in Westport, and Rogers was “wishing somebody [would] hurt him, beat him up ….” Michael Peacock thought Rogers had offered him money and/or marijuana to beat the man up. He helped Rogers grow marijuana on his property and saw guns on that property, including one that looked like the gun used in the attack against the victim.

Keith Grier, a Westport resident who attended meetings of the water board, was asked to be a candidate against Rogers in the recall election, but declined. Grier is African American.

According to Michael Peacock, he and his brother Richard had a conversation in Sacramento either the day of or the day before the victim’s shooting. Richard told Michael he had plans to visit Westport and that Rogers had asked him to “severely hurt” the guy who had got Rogers “kicked off the water board.”

Michael had told police that Richard said he had been offered three to four pounds of marijuana by Rogers to carry out the attack. Richard was looking for a “piece” and asked Michael where he could get one, though he did not say he was going to use a gun on the victim.

To rebut the evidence that Rogers had threatened Richard Peacock’s daughter with a gun known as the “Red Dog,” Rogers’ wife, Christine Rogers, testified that she had helped Richard Peacock’s wife and his daughter financially, and that appellant had promised Richard he would give his daughter a large stuffed animal – Clifford, the Big Red Dog – that he had won at the Marine World theme park. Alva Haught, who knew Rogers and Richard Peacock, testified that in early 2005, he had seen the stuffed dog in Rogers’ auto body shop and asked if he could have it to give to his daughter.

Eric Beren, who knew both Rogers and Richard Peacock, testified that Peacock was scary, violent and “institutionalized.” Peacock did not have a lot of friends, and Beren believed he was so loyal to the friends he did have that he would take violent action against anyone who gave them problems. Beren also claimed that he and his wife had been interested in buying property in Westport and that Rogers would sometimes show them pictures of houses for sale in that area on his digital camera.

The police officers who searched Rogers’ home and his property on Jack of Hearts Creek did not find a gun with a red handle or a picture of a red dog on the grip.

(DA Presser)

* * *

ED NOTE: If you read the above carefully you will note that there is no evidence linking Rogers to Peacock the shooter. Why the Eyster Gang, automatically of course supported by the usual clubby judge, is so intent on keeping this guy in prison, is a mystery. Here's what I think happened: Rogers had helped ex-cons, including the Peacock brothers, by giving them jobs. Out of loyalty to Rogers, Richard Peacock shot up the front door of Rogers' Westport political enemy, inadvertently but slightly injuring him. Rogers, 66, has a perfect record in prison, hence prison officials' recommendation he be freed, and who better to make that judgement than them? BTW, around the County Courthouse, certain lawyers and judges have snickered that Rogers got an “immaculate conviction.” He also got an incompetent defense that bankrupted him. In all my years in Mendocino County, the Rogers case is as unfounded (and sleazy) as DA Eyster's own manufactured, evidence-free persecution of Chamise Cubbison, an elected official our cowardly board of supervisors removed from office on Eyster's say-so.

* * *

MARK SCARAMELLA ADDS: Prosecutor Tim Stoen told me at the time of the first trial that his case was a “guilt by association” case. So Stoen went to great lengths to have the Peacock brothers testify. Even though their testimony did not help the case against Roger, their criminal appearance made Rogers look guilty “by association.” I also happened to have attended several days of the Rogers trial. Rogers’ attorney (who later went on to be appointed a Lake County judge) failed to ask obvious questions time and time again causing myself and then-AVA reporter Tim Stelloh to wonder about his competence or if he was really acting on Rogers’ behalf. Prior to the trial, then-DA Meredith Lintott had offered Rogers a year and a half deal minus time-served plea bargain citing “lack of evidence.” But when the plea bargain came before the late judge Ron Brown, Brown said that given what Rogers was admitting to in the plea bargain he (Brown) couldn’t accept it. The case then went to the “guilt by association” trial with Rogers defended by an incompetent attorney.

UKIAH CONSTRUCTION UPDATES FOR THE WEEK OF MAY 13:

On the south side of the project, concrete crews are working the complete the formation of new sidewalks and driveways. Additionally, old streetlights are being removed to make room for new. Please use extra caution while driving in this area, as it will be a little darker than usual. There will be temporary impacts to some driveways, but crews will provide advance notification and mitigate impacts to the best of our ability.

On the north side (Norton to Henry), there will be some miscellaneous finish work occurring. However, beginning on May 20^th, removal of the west side of the existing street will begin. Much of this part of State Street was constructed out of 8” thick concrete (back when it was Highway 101), which makes the process a little more difficult, and probably a little noisier. For the entire week, only northbound traffic will be allowed on State Street; southbound traffic will be detoured to the east (Clara to Mason to Perkins). As quickly as possible, the street will be backfilled with gravel to maintain access to driveways, but driveways will be obstructed for roughly one day when the work is in front of them. Work will begin at Norton and progress to the south. The following week, demolition of the other side will occur, and only southbound traffic will be allowed.

On Main Street, as part of the “Urban Core” project (www.cityofukiah.com/ucrt), replacement of the underground sewer lines will begin at Marshall and work toward the south. For the duration of the week (May 13-17) Main Street will be closed to through traffic between Gobbi and Mill Streets.

Work on sidewalks and driveways between Mill and Gobbi continues, along with electric infrastructure and irrigation; on the north side, miscellaneous finish work will occur.

Construction hours will be Monday-Friday, 7 a.m. - 6 p.m., depending on the weather.

There will be some noise associated with the south section; not much dust.

On the south side, on-street parking in the construction zone will be closed; however, on-street parking on the north side of the project is open in most areas (see above). Pedestrian access to businesses will be maintained at all times. Through traffic on State Street will be allowed in both directions. Traffic signals at Gobbi/State and Mill/State and Scott/State will remain on flash.

Have a great weekend!

Shannon Riley

Deputy City Manager

PETIT TETON FARM is open Mon-Sat 9-4:30, Sun 12-4:30. Along with the large inventory of jams, pickles, soups, hot sauces, apple sauces, and drink mixers made from everything we grow, we sell frozen USDA beef and pork from our perfectly raised pigs and cows, and stewing hens and eggs. Squab is also available at times. Contact us for what's in stock at 707.684.4146 or farmer@petitteton.com. (Nikki and Steve)

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

URCHIN DIVER POTLUCK

For all those who participated in the Red Sea Urchin industry in the 80's, 90's and 2000's, and others involved with the urchin diving community, this is an invitation to come together to share memories and friendships from those epic times.

The potluck is on Sunday May 12, from 4:00 pm till 6:00 pm, at the Caspar Community Center in Caspar, CA.

The Community Center will be open from 12:00 pm on* for people, kids and dogs to use the playground, and for folks to just hang out and tell story. *(The kitchen, refrigeration units, microwave & professional cooking stoves will be available to stash & prepare food while enjoying the afternoon, prior to the actual potluck.)

There will be a microphone and PA system for people to share dive stories, shark stories, or any other story from this amazing, adventurous and colorful industry.

Music TBA.

This is an alcohol-free, science-free & politics-free event.

MaryJane friendly.

Bring a dish, bring a story, bring Mom and the family, and come for good food, good company and a good time.

(David Gurney)

FRIENDS OF THE FORT BRAGG LIBRARY BOOK SALE: Books, CDs, DVDs & much more! Sales held in the Community Room at the Library. Saturday and Sunday, May 31 & Jun 1, 2023, 10am-4pm (Members only sale, Friday, May 30, 3-6 pm). Contact: Friends of the Fort Bragg Library, ffblnews@gmail.com

SUPERVISOR WILLIAMS: Starting July 1, under SB478, California restaurants will no longer be able to charge service fees — which have become an increasingly common tool to sustain higher wages for workers as food businesses move away from tips — and must instead fold them into menu prices, the attorney general’s office said.

ED NOTES

IF A MARINE is ill, he's sent to sick bay; a marine who checks into the hospital suspiciously often is called a sick bay commando.

THAT'S ME LATELY, a constant round of doctors as I recover from an operation that ripped my throat out and built a new one an inch from the old one.

I MUCH PREFERRED the old throat with its taste buds, olfactory pipe to my nose and my voice box. Of the three, only a voice box of sorts can be constructed via a thing called a prothesis, although I've found some significant advantages to being mute, primarily the one of being spared frivolous conversations.

TASTE AND SMELL are gone. I've begun lessons in how to talk, but I'm afraid I'm a poor student, so far managing only an eerie whisper, although my two speech therapists are professionally and, seemingly, genuinely optimistic that even this old boy will someday speak again.

IT'S ALL been a learning experience, with a whole new vocabulary applied to the hole in my throat. I've got a box of HME's, an ingenious filter about the size of an eucalyptus acorn that fits into a lary tube, a brief length of plastic, and it all goes into the hole in my throat, through which I depend for life's breath and which keeps the hole open while it heals. The hole is called a stoma, which sounds nicer, I guess, than hole in the throat.

THE HME is basically a filtered plug that keeps my new throat clear of debris and prevents casual observers from recoiling in horror at what otherwise looks like a bullet wound. “Mommy, mommy! That old man has a hole in his neck!”

I'VE GOT everyday plugs, night time plugs and exercise plugs. I prefer the exercise plugs because they get me more air. I've had to regularly unplug to vacuum phlegm build-up out of my new throat but seldom at night any more. The vacuuming is accomplished via a little desktop generator to which is attached a long plastic tube which I plunge into my stoma to suck out the accumulated phlegm.

(PHLEGM NOTE. When my nephew, the redoubtable Robert Mailer Anderson, was a freshman in high school he often clashed with an excitable principal over prose “appropriateness,” and appropriateness generally. One day the principal grabbed nephew’s essay to demand, “What's this here fleg-um you wrote here?,” apparently suspecting that nephew was trying to sneak by a new wrinkle in obscenity. That principal, this being Mendocino County, quite naturally went on to become superintendent of all the county's schools at the Mendocino County Office of Education.)

I'VE ALSO GOT a lary tube, an inch of plastic pipe to which is attached the HME plug and, hidden within the recesses of the hole in my throat, aka my stoma, is a tiny piece of whatever, plastic I guess. It's called a prosthesis as mentioned above. This thing will give me voice, what quality of voice remains to be heard because so far I haven't managed an intelligible sound.

MY MARTYRED WIFE is called upon once a day to don a miner's headlamp, peer deep into the hole in my throat as she wields a tiny brush to keep the prosthesis clear of debris. This prosthesis thing that will get me talking again is so small it is not visible to me and barely visible to my poor wife even with her big time illumination via a head lamp.

IF I COME OUT sounding like R2D2 I'd rather remain mute, but I'm assured I'll eventually have an actual voice of some recognizable human timbre.

SO THE OTHER DAY, one of the two unfortunate speech therapists assigned to me by UCSF, both of them specialists in my condition, skyped me with my second voice lesson, during which she asked me to “occlude your stoma.” For a panicked moment I had no idea what she was asking me to do. I couldn't recall ever hearing “occlude” said aloud, and had only a hazy recollection that it meant something like disguise or obscure, as in the recent eclipse that occluded the sun.

NOR DID I at first recognize “stoma.” My cognitive delay didn't faze the therapist. She waited patiently while I figured out she was telling me to plug the HME plug in the hole in my throat with my finger, take a deep breath and see if I could exhale an intelligible sound, make my prosthesis sing! I couldn't, but promised I'd work on it on my own. And that was that. For now.

* * *

MARK SCARAMELLA: The Editor’s reference to the grammar-challenged School Superintendant in Ed Notes reminded me of this classic from 2010 by Bruce McEwen: Boaz V. The Untutored & Malicious

PS. A few years later Mr. Barrett went on to run for County School Superintendent but lost by a very small margin to Michelle Hutchins who later lost a close election to Barrett’s female protégé at Ukiah Unified, Nicole Glentzer. Readers may recall that the nutty complaint against Mr. Boaz was prepared by the District’s tax-paid attorney and signed by almost all Mendocino County School superintendents, including County Superintendet Paul Tichinin. (Notably, Ukiah Unified Superintendent Lois Nash, in whose name the complaint was filed, did not sign.) Judge Leonard LaCasse ultimately ruled that the District’s stupid letter insulting Boaz was “an opinion and not actionable under the law.” LaCasse added, “the court is distressed that there appears to be a need for adult supervision at the District office.”

Group of men posed outside the Hardy Creek Saloon (c. 1904), many of them raising glasses of beer in salute to the camera. A second saloon, Olson's, is in the background. Located near the waterfront, both establishments had rough-and-tumble reputations and fist-fights were common. (Joe Heiser Collection, Westport Village Society) kelleyhousemuseum.org

SIXTEEN & COUNTING

Editor,

From my senior residence in Fort Myers, Florida I read today that you were discontinuing the print publication of your Anderson Valley Advertiser.

Sadly it was inevitable and joins about 3,000 weekly newspapers that have been shut down in the US.

The AVA’s strength was your ability to “dig in” to issues and events of importance to your community and the abundance of good writers you attracted over the years.

I loved the publication and thank you for providing this service that so many people looked forward to.

Over the last ten years or so you published sixteen (I checked) of my articles. For this 1960s small college English major who abandoned what he loved, writing, to make a living in the electronic media business, being published in such an intelligent weekly magazine was a meaningful and joyous personal experience. I was proud to show friends and family “America's Last Newspaper” and on occasion to send them an article found in the paper.

Knowing a bit about the economics of newspaper printing — I was once CEO of a company, Multimedia, located in Greenville, South Carolina, that owned 30 some weeklies and a dozen dailies in the south — and have been following the transition all media are having to make (streaming video content and now digital in print), I believe you can make an all digital version financially viable. Seems many people, particularly the young, are increasingly consuming content from computer and phone screens. Even this oldie is reading books on Kindle.

Bruce Anderson, a standing ovation for what you achieved over so many years. You touched and enlightened many lives in a way few could by providing meaningful and relevant information and entertainment to all your readers.

Thank you.

Good luck.

Sincerely,

John William Grimes (previously resident of Ross, CA,) and now a resident of Fort Myers Florida

SKUNK-IVERSARY

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 a 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.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, May 10, 2024

IAN ANDERSON, Fort Bragg. Probation violation.

PEDRO ANTONIO-PEREZ, Salinas/Ukiah. DUI.

AMY CARDOZA, Redway/Ukiah. Controlled substance, organic drug for sale.

MANDI EDER, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.

ROBERT HAYES JR., Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

KYLE JOHNSON, Union City/Ukiah. DUI, marijuana for sale, probation revocation.

BRITTANY KOHLMANN, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

MICHAEL MENKE, Ukiah. Disobeying court order.

MALISSA WARNER, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

BRANDON WHITMAN, Lynwood/Ukiah. Suspended license, no license, probation revocation.

LEGITS ONLY

Editor:

A family member is disabled so we depend on and need available disabled parking spaces. I see vehicles parked in these spaces without proper plates or a current placard hanging on their rearview mirror. This can make our life more difficult as we need to find another open handicap space near our destination with room for the wheelchair lift. It makes me angry that some people have total disregard for these important parking space and the people they help serve. Do violators not care or are they just mean spirited? My hope is that everyone will understand the importance of these handicap parking spaces and do the right thing.

Jim Barnes

Santa Rosa

MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio show all night tonight on KNYO, live from Albion.

Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is 6pm or so. If you can't make that, that's okay, send it whenever it's done and I'll read it on the radio next week. (Also sometimes during the show, when I put music on for a break, I might look quickly at email, so if your work is in the body text of the email and not an attachment, that works too, and we don't need no steenking deadlines. But try anyway, under the deadline, because it's easier for me and a little more sure.)

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am PST on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KNYO.org. The first hour of the show is simulcast on KAKX 89.3fm Mendocino.

You can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night I'll put up the recording of tonight's show. Also there you'll find an assortment of educational amusements to occupy you until showtime, or any time, such as:

An example of modal mixture common tone enharmonic double chromatic mediant modulation. In other words, a simple chronosynclastic infundibulum. Any English schoolboy could catch it. Achoo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENG6ZbTkcu0

My mother told me once, "Your grandmother was a flapper." They look like they were enjoying themselves. https://www.vintag.es/2024/05/1920s-flappers.html

If Rage Against the Machine's song Killing In The Name Of was recorded in the 1920s. https://laughingsquid.com/killing-in-the-name-1926

And how we get I-beams. I scream, you scream, we all scream. This video is from a country that still has a steel industry. And decent old-age pensions. And real Medicare For All. https://theawesomer.com/making-steel-i-beams-from-scrap-metal/739198

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

COYOTES IN SF

Editor,

When I moved to San Francisco 50 years ago, no coyotes were living in the city. Now coyotes are everywhere and their population is increasing.

The other day I saw a cat that a coyote had shredded along the bay. A month ago I encountered a raccoon along Buena Vista West that a coyote eviscerated.

Last spring I had the misfortune of running into a coyote in Golden Gate Park that must have been protecting pups because she stared me down and followed me as I backed away. It was scary.

After that incident I called San Francisco Animal Care and Control and was told that coyotes had as much right to be in the city as I had.

Is it going to take an attack on a child before anything is done about their growing presence in San Francisco?

Coyotes do not belong in the city.

They need to be trapped, tranquilized and relocated to an area where they can thrive.

Gloria Judd

San Francisco

S.F. PROGRAM GIVES HOMELESS PEOPLE FREE BOOZE. CITY SAYS IT’S HELPFUL

by St. John Barned-Smith & Maggie Angst

For a small slice of San Francisco’s homeless population that struggles with severe alcohol addiction, nurses offer treatment not in a pill, but in a shot of vodka or a glass of beer.

It may sound counterintuitive, experts say, but it helps keep people off the streets and out of emergency rooms, jails — or the morgue.

San Francisco set up a “managed alcohol program” four years ago as a way to care for vulnerable homeless people who drank excessive amounts of alcohol and were among the city’s highest users of emergency services.

Since its creation, the program, which started out with 10 beds, has served 55 clients, according to officials from the Department of Public Health. The now 20-bed program, which costs about $5 million per year, operates out of a former hotel in the heart of the Tenderloin. Nurses dispense regimented doses of vodka and beer to participants at certain times of day based on care plans.

Such programs don’t focus on sobriety, experts say, but rather on improving participants’ overall health while decreasing hospital stays and calls to police.

But the city’s efforts came under scrutiny this week, after the chair of the board of a local nonprofit that pushes abstinence shared posts on social media accusing the city of wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on a program that gives booze to homeless people struggling with alcohol addiction.

Adam Nathan, the CEO of an AI company and chair of the Salvation Army San Francisco's advisory board, said on X that “providing free drugs to drug addicts doesn't solve their problems. It just stretches them out. Where's the recovery in all of this?”

The social media skirmish was the latest flare-up in an increasingly tense debate about San Francisco’s use of harm reduction, which focuses on cutting negative health effects of alcohol and drug use rather than requiring people to stop using. As homelessness and overdose deaths have continued to plague the city, critics have excoriated San Francisco’s attempts at harm reduction, saying they only enable addiction and despair.

Abstinence-groups such as the Salvation Army have ridiculed the city for spending public funds on initiatives that provide drug users with overdose-reversing drugs, clean needles and foil for methamphetamine and fentanyl consumption.

Even Mayor London Breed in February said that harm reduction was “not reducing the harm” but “making things far worse.” That stance puts her at odds with her own public health department, which staunchly stands by harm reduction as an integral part of the agency’s system of care. Breed recently tried to open abstinence-only housing for formerly homeless people near Chinatown but scrapped the proposal amid neighborhood backlash.

“Are we just going to manage people’s addictions with our taxpayer dollars in perpetuity forever? It seems like that’s basically what we’re saying,” said Tom Wolf, who is in recovery for heroin addiction. “... I think we should be spending that money on detox and recovery.”

But Shannon Smith-Bernardin, a professor at the UCSF School of Nursing who helped create the managed alcohol programs in San Francisco and Alameda County, explained that the goal is to stabilize participants’ alcohol use “so they're not binge drinking or stopping drinking and having seizures and then … start figuring out what's next.”

The program also offers participants medications and therapy to reduce alcohol cravings.

The controversy erupted Tuesday night after Nathan claimed on X that he stumbled upon an “old hotel in SOMA” where kegs were set up to give out “free beer to the homeless.” Nathan continued that it was “set up so people in the program just walk in and grab a beer, and then another one.”

Officials from Salvation Army San Francisco referred questions to Nathan, who told the Chronicle Thursday that he felt the lack of public knowledge about the program reflected the fact that San Francisco’s public health department is worried about how “the program will be perceived by the public and that to me was validated by the reaction to what I tweeted.” His initial post garnered more than 3,000 likes and more than 13,000 people took part in a poll asking whether they supported such a program. More than 80% of X users who responded to the poll indicated they were opposed.

Public health officials countered that the claims made in Nathan’s posts misrepresented the program and misled the public.

Alcohol is dispensed by a nurse and unhoused people who aren’t in the program may not walk into the facility to get free alcohol, according to a statement from the public health department. The program is run out of a former Tenderloin tourist hotel that has a bar, but the on-site taps are “inoperable and unused,” the statement continued.

Nathan also criticized the use of millions of city dollars to fund the program.

The Salvation Army has itself been accused of wasting taxpayer money. BART paid the nonprofit $350,000 for a program to tackle surging homelessness on trains, but only one person received services, according to a scathing report from the transit agency's inspector general.

But San Francisco public health officials found that the city saved $1.7 million over six months from the managed alcohol program in reduced calls to emergency services, including emergency room visits and other hospital stays. In the six months after clients entered the managed alcohol program, public health officials said visits to the city’s sobering center dropped 92%, emergency room visits dropped more than 70%, and EMS calls and hospital visits were both cut in half.

Previously, the city reported that just five residents who struggled with alcohol use disorder had cost more than $4 million in ambulance transports over a five year period, with as many as 2,000 ambulance transports over that time.

The San Francisco Fire Department said in a statement that the managed alcohol program has “has proven to be an incredibly impactful intervention” at reducing emergency service use for a “small but highly vulnerable population.”

The city's public health department is working to get some of the program costs reimbursed through MediCal, according to a spokesperson.

San Francisco public health officials launched the managed alcohol program during the early days of the pandemic, as the city worked quickly to get homeless residents — more than half of whom struggle with a drug or alcohol addiction — into hotel and motel rooms.

Public health officials were concerned that the isolation and quarantine mandates would prevent access to alcohol — leading to potential withdrawal. Detoxing from alcohol is particularly dangerous and can cause hallucinations and seizures that turn fatal.

“We were trying to figure out how to keep people who are homeless alive during COVID,” recalled Smith-Bernardin, “but also work with them around their medical needs.”.

In an October presentation, public health staff pointed to one story of a 38-year-old man suffering from addiction and psychotic disorder. He reportedly had more than 36 ER visits over nine months with high blood alcohol content. In the nine months after joining the program, that number fell to just six ER visits.

Program officials said that nurses assess patients and typically dispense the equivalent of 1-2 drinks 3-4 times per day — doling out either 1.7 ounces of vodka or liquor, 5 ounces of wine, or 12 ounces of beer.

In addition to offering medication and therapy, the program provides cultural outings and life skills classes, according to the public health department’s presentation.

The department of public health said that some participants have been discharged from the program for a higher level of care, other housing or a recovery program. Officials said several participants died after voluntarily leaving the program as a result of their end stage alcoholism.

While such programs are rare in the United States, they are more common in other countries, including Canada, Portugal and the U.K. And experts say such programs provide stability and support to homeless people who cycle from the streets to emergency rooms and jail.

In Canada, where managed alcohol programs have operated for more than a decade, more than 40 programs are currently in place, according to the University of Victoria’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research.

A 2022 study of Canada’s managed alcohol programs found that participation reduced the risk of death and resulted in fewer hospital stays for individuals with unstable housing and severe alcohol addiction.

“It’s a better way to spend our money than someone being in a jail or hospital where they are not getting care for their health needs,” said Dr. Bernie Pauly, a leading medical researcher who has pioneered much of Canada’s programs.

St. John "Sinjin" Barned-Smith joined The San Francisco Chronicle in 2022 and covers City Hall. He previously worked at The Houston Chronicle, where he covered law enforcement. Barned-Smith started his career at the Philadelphia Daily News, served in the Peace Corps, in Paraguay, and worked at the Montgomery Gazette, in Maryland, before joining Hearst Newspapers in 2014. His coverage of floods, mass shootings and police misconduct and other topics has been honored with several state and national awards.

(St. John Barned-Smith lives in San Francisco, with his newshound, Scoop. Maggie Angst covers homelessness, addiction and mental health for the San Francisco Chronicle's city hall team. SF Chronicle)

CALCARE, NOT GREEDCARE

Editor,

No networks, no premiums, no deductibles and no co-payments. That’s what you get with CalCare, the proposal for a universal single-payer health care system before the California legislature.

Payments would come from taxes, which won’t be cheap but will be less than the $13,493 that the average American and the $31,065 spent by the average family of four last year.

Legislation for CalCare, AB2200, is far from approval. In addition to political resistance, it will face pushback from powerful profit-seeking corporations that will not be disgorged of their billions without a fight.

You will be deluged with disinformation and hear cries of Creeping Socialism. That would be false because every aspect of care delivery will remain in private hands. You will also hear about the Slippery Slope, but we’ve been on that slope for almost a hundred years and haven’t slipped yet.

Please ask many questions and make yourself an informed health care consumer.

Dr. Gilbert Simon, Professor, California NorthState University, College of Medicine.

Fair Oaks, Sacramento County

THIS IS ‘LURID’?

Dear Editor,

It is dumbfounding to me that the media has almost uniformly reported that Stormy Daniels related “lurid” details in court about her sexual encounter with Trump. Lurid means “gruesome, horrible, revolting,” according to the dictionary.

I rummaged through a spate of articles in national media sources and could find only these not particularly graphic details: When she came out of the bathroom, Trump was reclining on the bed in his boxers and a T-shirt; Trump asked her if she had been tested for STDs; Daniels was reluctant to have sex, but did it anyway after spanking him with a magazine; Trump did not wear a condom; Daniels stared at the ceiling during missionary position sex; her hands were shaking when she gathered up her things afterward.

Wow, some half century after pornography was first legalized in America, media decided to call this sort of description “lurid”? Maybe at a Puritan church service in 1640, but today?

Was this reflexive exaggeration necessary to satisfy the supposed ethical or religious gentility of male media executives? I can just hear them chirping, “We would never speak of such vivid things in a public setting.”

Yeah, sure.

Kimball Shinkoskey

Woods Cross, Utah

800 years ago at All Saints Church in Hereford, England, a skillful carpenter carved this gentleman high up in the dark roof where nobody could see him.

BLAME CANADA? Justin Trudeau Creates Blueprint for Dystopia in Horrific Speech Bill

by Matt Taibbi

On February 21st, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave a press conference in Edmonton, announcing his government’s decision to introduce the Online Harms Act, or Bill C-63. It was described in Canadian media as a “bill to protect kids” that would stop the “exploitation of children,” and Trudeau’s curt speech focused solely on minors. The scarf-clad PM angrily dismissed criticisms the bill might have a broader focus. “I look forward to putting forward that Online Harms bill, which people will see is very, very specifically focused on protecting kids, and not on censoring the Internet,” he said sharply. “I think everyone, wherever they are in the political spectrum, can agree that protecting kids is something governments should be focused on doing.”

Soon after, on February 26th, Trudeau’s government introduced the bill. Canada’s stable of retreating, credulous on-air personalities announced its rollout like the arrival of penicillin. “Tonight, Web of Harm,” gushed CTV’s Omar Sachedina. “Tackling online dangers and safeguarding children. The long-awaited framework for protecting the vulnerableâ¦” There was little initial uproar. What could be wrong with increasing child safety, or “protecting the vulnerable”?

Then people read the bill.

“If you look at the purpose of this law, it’s actually quite noble and most lawyers would agree with it,” says Canadian attorney Dan Freiheit. “Online safety, protecting children’s physical and mental health.”

But the actual text?

“It’s wild,” Freheit says.

Trudeau was lying when he said C-63 was “very, very specifically focused on correcting kids.” The purview of the Online Harms Act extends far beyond speech, reimagining society as a mandated social engineering project, creating transformational new procedures that would: enlist Canada’s citizens in an ambitious social monitoring system, with rewards of up to $20,000 for anonymous “informants” of hateful behavior, with the guilty paying penalties up to $50,000, creating a self-funded national spying system; introduce extraordinary criminal penalties, including life in prison not just for existing crimes like “advocating genocide,” but for any “offence motivated by hatred,” in theory any non-criminal offense, as tiny as littering, committed with hateful intent; punish Minority Report pre-crime, where if an informant convinces a judge you “will commit” a hate offense, you can be jailed up to a year, put under house arrest, have firearms seized, or be forced into drug/alcohol testing, all for things you haven’t done; penalize past statements. The law gets around prohibitions against “retroactive” punishment by calling the offense “continuous communication” of hate, i.e. the crime is your failure to take down bad speech; force corporate Internet platforms to remove “harmful content” virtually on demand (within 24 hours in some cases), the hammer being fines of “up to 6% of gross global revenue.”

Things you’re saying, things you’ve already said, things an administrative judge thinks you might say, all barred, with neighbors deputized as enforcers? Good times. Leave it to Trudeau, a frequent trailblazer in new forms of illiberalism in the digital age, to come up with this quantum leap downward on the rights front. C-63 is a Frankenstein’s Monster combining the worst censorship ideas already deployed by supposed ally government-in-laws like Europe’s Digital Services Act, Australia’s updated Australian Communications and Media Authority Act (ACMA), and Scotland’s Hate Crime and Public Order Act, which saw 7,152 complaints in its first week when the law took effect last month. Trudeau’s creation is a turbo-charged social surveillance law aimed first at forcing big platforms like Facebook and Twitter to “self-police,” but secondarily targeting individuals and doling out civil and criminal penalties for speech and thought on a scale not seen anywhere. What constitutes hateful conduct? While the bill newly defines hate speech as “likely to foment detestation or vilification” of Canada’s growing list of protected groups and individuals, Canadian lawyers interviewed were generally unsure of what the standard might look like in practice.

“It’s impossible to know what exactly it’s going to mean,” says Bruce Pardy, Executive Director of Rights Probe. ”So you’re going to have to rely upon the court in a criminal prosecution, or the human rights tribunal in a human rights proceeding, to put their own interpretation on that, and figure out where the line is.” Despite being split on how serious the immediate impact might be (“We’re not looking at prisons full of people doing life for misgendering” said one), most attorneys seemed to agree C-63 will be a game-changer if passed, aimed beyond speech at the very concept of individual rights, chipping away at ideas like the presumption of innocence and the right to face one’s accuser, and using traditionally dubious tools like ex post facto laws.

On one level, it’s not surprising, given Canada’s historically diffident attitude toward rights — the first section in the country’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, ironically introduced when Trudeau’s father Pierre was Prime Minister, is essentially a giant loophole — but this Prime Minister appears determined to swap out Canada’s reputation for brotherhood, humor, and generosity for a new one based on rigidity and collective paranoia.

There’s a long backstory of important recent laws and Supreme Court cases that helped push Canada down a path toward C-63, but this bill still stands apart as a unique problem, and only a few domestic media outlets have been willing or able to criticize it. One of those is Rebel News, whose founder Ezra Levant says Canadians could really use America’s help in sounding the alarm. “Canadians need to fight for our own freedom, but the Canadian political and media establishment are obsessed by what U.S. journalists and politicians have to say about us,” Levant says. “So any attention Americans can bring to this civil liberties bonfire really makes a difference. Frankly, we need your help.”

JUANA MARIA (died October 19, 1853), better known to history as the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island (her Native American name is unknown), was a Native Californian woman who was the last surviving member of her tribe, the Nicoleño. She lived alone on San Nicolas Island off the coast of Alta California from 1835 until her removal from the island in 1853. Scott O'Dell's award-winning children's novel Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960) was inspired by her story. She was the last native speaker of the Nicoleño language.

Background

The Channel Islands have long been inhabited by humans, with Native American colonization occurring 10,000 years ago or earlier. At the time of European contact, two distinct ethnic groups occupied the archipelago: the Chumash lived on the Northern Channel Islands and the Tongva on the Southern Islands. (Juana Maria's tribe, the Nicoleño, were believed to be closely related to the Tongva.) In the early 1540s, Spanish (or Portuguese, according to some accounts) conquistador Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo explored the California coast, claiming it on behalf of Spain.

Arrival of the fur trappers (Aleuts)

In 1814, the brig Il’mena brought a party of Native Alaskan otter hunters working for the Russian-American Company (RAC), who massacred most of the islanders after accusing them of killing a Native Alaskan hunter.

Although there was speculation that the Franciscan padres of the California missions requested that the remaining Nicoleños be removed from the island, there is no documentary evidence to back that claim. The missions were undergoing secularization in the 1830s and there was no Franciscan priest at Mission San Gabriel from mid-1835 through spring of 1836 to receive any Nicoleños brought to the mainland.

In late November 1835, the schooner Peor es Nada ("Nothing is Worse"), commanded by Charles Hubbard, left southern California to remove the remaining people living on San Nicolas. Upon arriving at the island, Hubbard's party, which included Isaac Sparks, gathered the islanders on the beach and brought them aboard. Juana Maria, however, was not among them by the time a strong storm arose, and the Peor es Nada's crew, realizing the imminent danger of being wrecked by the surf and rocks, panicked and sailed toward the mainland, leaving her behind.

A more romantic version tells of Juana Maria diving overboard after realizing her younger brother had been left behind, although archaeologist Steven J. Schwartz notes, "The story of her jumping overboard does not show up until the 1880s ... By then the Victorian era is well underway, and literature takes on a flowery, even romantic flavor." This version is recorded by Juana Maria's eventual rescuer, George Nidever, who heard it from a hunter who had been on the Peor es Nada; however, Nidever makes it clear he may be misremembering what he heard.

MEDICIDE IN GAZA: THE KILLING OF DR. ADNAN AL-BURSH

by Jeffrey St. Clair

More than two weeks after Israel announced his death, it still has not released the body of one of Gaza’s most celebrated doctors, Adnan al-Bursh. Israel hasn’t said how this 50-year-old man in good health died, even though he died in one of its darkest places, Ofer Prison, a place where very bad things are done at the hands of Israeli prison guards and Shin Bet interrogators. It hasn’t explained why al-Bursh was detained in December, then stripped, bound and carried away from the hospital where he was treating the sick and wounded. And it hasn’t offered any reason for why he was held for four months without any contact with his family or a lawyer.

Adnan al-Bursh was one of Gaza’s leading surgeons. More than that he was one of the Strip’s leading humanitarians, who had repeatedly sacrificed his own safety to provide life-saving medical treatment to people under bombardment. As the head of the head of orthopedics at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, al-Bursh helped pioneer the limb reconstruction unit, which opened after the 2014 Israeli military attacks on Gaza. But in December he’d gone at great personal risk to treat patients at Al-Awda Hospital in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

By the time al-Bursh arrived at Al-Awda in early December, the hospital had already come under repeated attacks by the IDF. Less than a week after the Hamas attacks of October 7, the Israelis ordered the evacuation of all hospitals in northern Gaza, including Al-Awda, which has the largest maternity ward in the district. The World Health Organization warned any raid on Al-Awda would be a death sentence for the hospital’s sick and wounded.

On November 10, an Israeli airstrike hit an ambulance on route to the hospital. Ten days later, two doctors from Médecins Sans Frontières were killed in an Israeli airstrike at the Al-Adwa. On December 1, the hospital was again hit and damaged by Israeli bombs.

By December 12, the hospital was effectively under siege, surrounded by Israeli troops and tanks and under nearly constant gunfire from snipers. At least one pregnant woman had been shot at and one nurse had been shot through a hospital window and killed by an Israel sniper, while she tended patients on the fourth floor of the building. Supplies of fresh water had been cut off and people inside the hospital, including patients, were being nourished by only one meal of bread or rice each day.

It was into this slaughter zone that Adnan al-Bursh rushed to help the flood of wounded civilians being admitted to the understaffed hospital. Al-Bursh, one of Gaza’s most acclaimed surgeons, had received his medical training in Romania and later in England. In a sense, al-Bursh was coming home. He’d been born and raised in the Jalabia refugee camp on the northern end of the Gaza Strip and got his early education there.

Al-Bursh fully understood the kind of dire situation he was entering. In November, Al-Shifa Hospital came under Israeli attack and he was stranded inside along with his nephew, Abdallah al Bursh, for 10 days. When Israeli troops entered the hospital, they told Al-Bursh to move to the South. He refused and stayed to treat his patients until being forced out.

“After the Israeli forces besieged us at Al Shifa Hospital for 10 days and asked us to move to the south [of the Gaza Strip], they refused to allow food and drink to enter the hospital,” said Abdallah. “They forced us to relocate to the south, but Dr Adnan refused to comply and decided to take the risk by moving to the north to continue serving people at the Indonesian Hospital.”

Adnan’s wife and six children also refused to go south, instead they sought shelter at an UNRWA school in the northern section of the Gaza Strip. Al-Bursh had argued that Palestinians who fled south would never be able to return to their homes in the north.

For many Palestinians, al-Bursh is revered for his efforts during the Great March of Return in 2018-19, when he performed over 28 surgeries in one day on Palestinians injured by Israeli fire, after joining a non-violent march to the apartheid fence separating Israel from northern Gaza. Al-Bursh grew up during the First Intifada and recounted the suffering his family and neighbors endured from the violent Israeli response.

Al-Bursh wanted to pursue the cause of Palestinian rights by becoming a lawyer, but he said his family convinced him to pursue a medical education.

“Children always affect me the most,” al-Bursh said. “When I treat them, I feel like they could be my own children. When I see a child crying, it feels like it’s my own child that cries. Our children don’t have a normal childhood as I saw abroad, outside of Gaza.”

On November 20, the Indonesian Hospital in Bait Lahia, where Dr. al-Bursh was now performing multiple surgeries a day, came under a fierce attack that lasted four days. al-Bursh was injured by Israeli fire while in the operating room. The hospital itself was badly damaged by Israeli tank fire. More than 500 patients and several thousand displaced people were inside the Indonesian hospital when it was struck. At least 12 people were killed in the initial attack, when Israeli tank and artillery fire hit the hospital’s post-operative care unit on the second floor late at night, where dozens of patients and refugees were sleeping.

“There was chaos, darkness and fire in the department, which made it very difficult to evacuate the dead and wounded,” a nurse named Mohamad, told the BBC. With good reason, Mohamad said he didn’t want his full name made public because he feared for his safety.

“On the fourth day, Israeli forces entered the hospital and inquired about my uncle, my father, Dr. Mirwan al Barsh, and other doctors,” Abdallah recalled. “Fortunately, the next day there was a truce, so they were not taken away.” But the hospital had lost power and water, forcing the staff to evacuate 200 patients by bus to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. The International Red Cross arranged the evacuation of 400 other patients. The displaced people were largely left to fend for themselves.

The siege was harshly condemned by the Indonesian government which had financed the construction of the hospital, which opened in 2016. By December the Indonesia Hospital had been turned into an IDF military base and Adnan al-Bursh was applying his healing arts in Al-Adwa Hospital a few miles away.

“Health workers and civilians should never have to be exposed to such horror, especially while inside a hospital,” wrote WHO head Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Before the war, Gaza had 36 hospitals. Eight months later only 11 are even partially functional. Two of the largest hospitals, Al-Shifa and Nasser, have not only been effectively destroyed, but they have also been revealed to be the sites of mass graves of more than 500 Palestinians killed by Israelis, including many health care workers. “Some of the deceased were allegedly elderly, women and wounded individuals—with some found with their hands tied and stripped of their clothes,” said Bob Kitchen the International Rescue Committee’s vice president of emergencies.

The hospitals that remain are short of medical supplies, medicine, water and power. “These health care facilities are not built for mass casualty. And in fact, no hospital in the world is built for this kind of sustained severity of mass casualty, nor could any be able to sustain it,” said Dr. Seema Jilani, a surgeon with IRC’s emergency medical team who worked at Al Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza. There have been more than 400 Israeli attacks on Gazan healthcare facilities, ambulances and workers since October 7, 2023.

As it faces airstrikes and a military invasion, there are only three functioning hospitals left in Rafah, but one of these, Al-Najjar Hospital, “which provides dialysis services for more than 100 patients,” is located in the area that Israel has ordered residents to evacuate, so, according to the WHO, “patients are afraid to seek services.”

Around 500 medical workers in Gaza have been killed by Israel since the start of the war. At least another 1,500 have been wounded and 310 detained. In theory, at least, medical facilities and workers are protected under international law. But there’s little question that what we are witnessing in Gaza is a form of “medicide,” the systematic destruction of a population’s medical infrastructure: hospitals, clinics, medical supplies and health care workers. (By comparison, around 1000 US medics were killed during the Vietnam War.)

After the truce at Indonesian Hospital, al Bursh decided to return to his old community in Jadalya refugee camp, continuing his life-saving work at Al Awda Hospital. Jabalia refugee camp was created during the Nakba in 1948, when Palestinians were forcibly evacuated from their homes in Israel. Until its destruction by Israel in the current war, it was the largest refugee camp in the Palestinian territories, where more than 100,000 residents were crammed into less than a half-square mile of land. Here is where the First Intifada erupted in 1987, after an Israeli truck driven rammed into a car at the Erez Crossing near the camp, killing five Palestinians. Al-Bursh was 14 and the uprising and its violent suppression left an indelible mark on him.

During the 2014 war, Jabalia came under repeated attack by the IDF, including an infamous strike on an UNWRA school which killed 15 Palestinian civilians, several of them children, as they slept on the floor of a classroom that had been designated as a UN shelter. Now one of Gaza’s best surgeons, al-Bursh helped treat many of the wounded from the airstrikes that pulverized his home camp.

Ironically. Jabalia had been one of the major sites of the protests that sprang up in the summer of 2023 over the deteriorating economic conditions in Gaza, including rising anger toward Hamas over mismanagement and corruption. This disquiet with Hamas didn’t spare Jabalia from taking the initial brunt of Israel’s retaliatory attacks after October 7, when the camp was targeted by hundreds of airstrikes and an armed invasion, which left thousands dead and wounded and the entire camp effectively destroyed. After the IDF finally pulled out in February, a former resident described Jabalia to Al Jazeera as not containing “a single habitable house.”

This was the horrorscape into which Adnan al-Bursh returned in early December for two weeks, where he performed surgeries by the light of cellphones and without anesthesia, until Israeli troops entered the hospital, detained all of the medical personnel, checked their IDs, singled out 10 of them, including al-Bursh, for arrest, stripped them, cuffed them and hauled them away to Ofer prison. Once he and his colleagues entered the darkness of Ofer, there was no word about his condition, until the abrupt and callous announcement of his death. There is still no news regarding his colleagues.

Ofer prison, originally known as Incarceration Facility 385, is an Israeli black site, constructed in Palestinian land on the West Bank, between Ramallah and the illegal Israeli settlement of Giv’at Ze’ev. We don’t know exactly what happened to Dr. al-Bursh when he arrived at Ofer. But we know the kind of abuse that others have endured, treatment that closely parallels and often exceeds the kind of torture the CIA doled out at its black sites in Poland, Afghanistan, Morocco, Thailand and Cuba. Even before the latest assault on Gaza, Ofer Prison, which was constructed in 1988 to confine Palestinians detained during the First Intifada, had a notorious reputation for the abuse of prisoners. In 2010, a team of British lawyers who visited the prison reported seeing children with their hands cuffed behind their backs and restrained by iron shackles.

“We tried to get any news about my uncle from inside the Israeli prison,” al Bursh’s nephew Abdallah said. “The prisoners who were released told us that the doctor was facing a difficult situation and he was subjected to torture.”

What was this torture like? According to reports by human rights groups and the United Nations, Palestinian detainees have been kept bound in cages, deprived of water and food, beaten with metal bars, kicked, hit with gun butts, attacked by military dogs, anally raped with electric probes, urinated on, kept shackled so long arms and legs had to be amputated. Some were fed through straws. Others were made to wear diapers and kept blindfolded for days. Prisoners have had their families threatened with targeted airstrikes, forced to urinate and defecate in their cells, which were kept uncleaned for days. Both male and female prisoners have had their genitals beaten and groped. According to the Israeli military’s own tally, at least 27 Palestinians have died in their custody since October 7, 2023.

Al-Bursh’s family has hired a lawyer who used to work for the ICC to demand the return of his body and an explanation for his death from Israeli authorities. But what explanation can there be other than the obvious one, that he was tortured to death? Here was a doctor who was bombed from one hospital to the next, who, at each stop refused to leave his patients behind, and instead of heading south to the relative safety of the evacuation zones, went north, into the eye of the storm, where his skills and care were most needed, where the maimed and shattered bodies of his people were being pulled out of bomb craters and the rubble of ruined buildings by the hour. It’s hard to imagine a more heroic figure in our depraved and dispiriting era, which is, of course, why his example had to be erased.

Adnan Al-Bursh was intelligent, humane, and committed. He could speak multiple languages. He saw and could explain the ravages of the occupation and the horrors of the war. He was exactly the kind of person, like the still imprisoned Marwan Barghouti, Israel has always feared might become a leader of the Palestinian people. For that reason, he was also exactly the kind of person Israel has been targeting for elimination under the cover of its bombardment and invasion of Gaza.

(Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His most recent book is An Orgy of Thieves: Neoliberalism and Its Discontents (with Alexander Cockburn). He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net or on Twitter @JeffreyStClair3. CounterPunch.org)

HEROES IN HISTORY: THE SHE-ROES OF MOTHERS’ DAY

by Jim Hightower

Gather ‘round, friends, and let us learn a little bit Mother’s Day, or rather Mothers’ Day (plural possessive, that is).

Today’s lesson is not just a lesson in history — it’s also a lesson in feminism. Women have often pulled together to help each other, through times of war, oppression, and frankly, basic survival. They are the glue that has held many important social movements together. Julia Ward Howe, a writer, poet, and activist, understood this notion. She saw Mothers’ Day as unifying force for peace to reunite families torn apart by the Civil War and to appeal to pacifists globally to stop support for the Franco-Prussian War happening outside our borders.

This is how they make sun-dried tomatoes in southern Italy. There are screens under them, and when they are laid out they are covered with a screen to prevent pests. No spray, no chemicals, No sulfur, just sun.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Something big is about to happen, just not sure what yet. It seems like it has been quietly boiling under the surface here lately, just as we are starting to get nice weather. If nothing else, the DNC convention in Chicago this summer will provide the ultimate shit-show.

THE MESCALERO APACHES were a semi-nomadic people who once roamed the area of New Mexico, West Texas, and Chihuahua. The word "Apache" means "enemy" in the Zuñi language, as they were feared by the pueblo tribes of northern New Mexico as well by the Spanish. The Gila and Chiricahua Apaches were to the west and the Lipan Apaches to the east, but the Mescaleros were once the largest and most powerful Apache nation among them.

The Mescaleros are documented archeologically in our region as early as the thirteenth century. They began raiding local Spanish settlements and traveling caravans starting in the 1680s. Between 1778 and 1825 there was a large band of Mescaleros encamped on the future site of Duranguito and Downtown El Paso, peaking at about one thousand men, women and children in the 1790s.

The Spanish, Mexicans and Americans all waged wars of extermination against this proud and fierce people. Today the remaining Mescaleros possess a small reservation in southern New Mexico.

14 Comments

George Hollister May 11, 2024

Gloria Judd, the coyotes of San Francisco are thriving, that’s why they are there. San Francisco has lots of easy to get good food, secluded locations to have their pups, and no larger predators preying on them. The Comptche coyotes would be envious.

Stephen Rosenthal May 11, 2024

Gloria Judd: Maybe it’s you who doesn’t belong in The City of St. Francis Assisi.

Marshall Newman May 11, 2024

RE: “High Water.” Definitely the 1964 marker. The markers for earlier year high waters used to be on a blackened stump nearby.

Jim Armstrong May 11, 2024

All in the Family
I think the lines should be switched. Edith usually knew better.

There is no war in Gaza, only a scorched earth, genocidal invasion, planned and incited for decades.

- MAGA Marmon May 11, 2024
  
  Israel should follow America’s lead and just nuke the place like we did Japan. That’s how you stop war.
  
  MAGA Marmon
  
  - Chuck Dunbar May 11, 2024
    
    Thinking while on drugs again, James. The most stupid comment I’ve seen so far on Israel-Palestinian issues.
    
  - Lazarus May 11, 2024
    
    James, that kind of talk is, or should be, out of the equation. The power modern nuclear weapons have now make the two dropped on Japan look like firecrackers. One could change our world forever…
    Be well,
    Laz
    
    - Chuck Dunbar May 11, 2024
      
      James is just trolling us, but got me on this one– not funny, dangerous stuff, as you rightly say.
      
      - Lazarus May 11, 2024
        
        What’s odd about James’s comment is Donald Trump has said numerous times how horrifically destructive the new generations of nukes are.
        Be well,
        Laz
        
gary smith May 11, 2024

“Giant hogweed is an invasive and poisonous exotic plant. It is a health and environmental risk. In humans, contact with giant hogweed sap, together with exposure to light (natural or artificial ultraviolet rays), causes skin lesions similar to burns.”

“The combination of sap on the skin and exposure to sunlight can produce painful, burning blisters within 48 hours. Contact with the plant sap can also result in purple or black scars. There are some reports that eye exposure could result in irritation and possible blindness.”

–ny.gov

- George Hollister May 11, 2024
  
  The description makes the sap from Giant Hogweed sound like Poison Oak sap.
  
Craig Stehr May 11, 2024

Warmest spiritual greetings,
Broke the upper left tooth yesterday morning while brushing, which necessitated contacting the dentist in Windsor ( whom I’ve not heard from since she put in a request with Partnership of California to pay for a root canal for that tooth, in early March). The dental clinic staff will review my phone call messages and emails, and determine when they can get me in for an appointment, since this is now a more serious situation. Dropped by the Adventist Health ER and a doctor gave me a prescription for more antibiotics and an oral rinse. Meanwhile, the review of my application for an extension at Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center is on Monday. If rejected, I could be given a letter addressed to the Ukiah Police Department stating that I have no option other than to camp outside, which would deter my being arrested. Also, the housing navigator is putting in more applications with senior housing. At present, my exit date is June 9th at noon. The good news is that following two years of voluntarily bottom-lining trash and recycling at Building Bridges, we have reached a point where it is working well. Much innovation and a lot of persistence is the reason. No matter what happens, I will eventually leave there feeling excellent that this was accomplished. In conversation with my appointed staff person this morning, I was once again able to state clearly that this body and mind are only the instruments for use by the spiritual absolute reality. Nota Bene: It is only possible to have a satisfactory relationship with me if this fact is appreciated! I do not have to live here, or then again, I could. Thank you for your attentiveness. Peace be with you always.
Craig Louis Stehr
c/o Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center
1045 South State Street, Ukiah, CA 95482
Telephone Messages: (707) 234-3270
Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com
May 11, 2024 Anno Domini

Mike J May 13, 2024

There are some indications that the UAP Disclosure Act (as an amendment) may be reintroduced for the next National Defense Authorization Act. Co authored by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Mike Rounds R-SD.
They reference retrieval of “Non-Human intelligence” craft and bodies. Interview update here with former Obama state dept guy who accompanied Obama on recent visit to Europe….
https://youtu.be/LIKXKhZKG1k?si=ieztYietebFxbh9g

MAGA Marmon May 13, 2024

The changing of sunlight to moonlight
Reflections of my life
Oh, how they fill my eyes

The greetings of people in trouble
Reflections of my life
Oh, how they fill my eyes

Oh, my sorrows
Sad tomorrows
Take me back to my own home

Oh, my crying (oh, my crying)
Feel I’m dying, dying
Take me back to my own home

I’m changing, arranging
I’m changing
I’m changing everything
Everything around me

The world is
A bad place
A bad place
A terrible place to live
Oh, but I don’t want to die

Oh, my sorrows
Sad tomorrows
Take me back to my own home

Oh, my crying (oh, my crying)
Feel I’m dying, dying
Take me back to my own home

Oh, my sorrows
Sad tomorrows
Take me back to my own home

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Thomas McAleese / William Campbell Jnr

MAGA Marmon

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