Mendocino County Today: Sunday 5/12/24

Mother's Day | Cooling | Lake Mendocino | Boontling Footrace | Pacific Sun | AV Today | Birdhouse Auction | Poetry Reading | Park Day | Max Schlienger | Pet Rip | Tri-Tip Dinner | Project RV | Ed Notes | Trail/Butterflies | Jerry & Dawg | Bottom-Lining | Mendocino Headlands | Marco Radio | Yesterday's Catch | Under God | Indian Marathon | PG&E Poppycock | Tarzan 1934 | Tug-o-War | Inside Body | Auto Race | Stormy & Donnie | Cheating | Bending Over | Mrs McGregor | Gender Reveal | Weak Jesus | Fleeing Rafah | Peace Offering | Kidnapped | Pop Music | Showing Off | Tall & Small

A COOLING TREND IS UNDERWAY as the previous ridge is pushed east by an upper level trough. A weak front will continue to bring overnight status to coastal areas and river valleys with showers over higher terrain in inland locations. Another high pressure system will set up late Monday into Tuesday bringing more warm and dry weather to Northwest California. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): After lingering just off shore most of the day yesterday the fog rolled in about dinner time last night. A foggy 51F on the coast this Sunday morning. I assume some clearing today as the fog appears to be barely along the coast, not much over land. Off & on clouds is all the forecast offers for next week.

BOONVILLE CLASSIC: GREAT SUCCESS!

Hi everybody!

Thank you all so much for attending this year's 39th Annual Boontling Classic 5k Footrace. I've attached to this email the results from the race. It was a great success, with over 165 runners and walkers from all over California in attendance. We managed to raise approximately $1500 for the AV Food Bank due to your participation and generous donations. I hope to see you all next year!

Zane Colfax, Race Director

ANDERSON VALLEY TODAY

Free Entry to Hendy Woods State Park for local residents
Sun 05 / 12 / 2024 at 8:00 AM
Where: Hendy Woods State Park
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/3665)

AV GRANGE PANCAKE and Egg BREAKFAST
Sun 05 / 12 / 2024 at 8:30 AM
Where: Anderson Valley Grange , 9800 CA-128, Philo, CA 95466
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/3890)

The Anderson Valley Museum Open
Sun 05 / 12 / 2024 at 1:00 PM
Where: The Anderson Valley Museum , 12340 Highway 128, Boonville , CA 95415
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/3974)

CUTE BIRDHOUSES made by the AV Elementary 3rd grade class out of recycled barn wood. Raising funds for 4th grade school trip!! Only one left! Will go to highest offer, starting at $25. (Bidding ends Sat, May 25)

POETRY AT THE COBALT, May 12, 2024, 5-7 pm

This Is An Invitation To All Poets, Writers, Readers, And Lovers Of Literature, Young, Old, In Between, Known, Unknown, Submerged, Emerged And Emerging: Rhyming, free verse, expensive or expansive verse, reverses, metered, learned, unlearned, experimental—all varieties, styles and non-styles are welcome.

The reading series, Poetry At The Cobalt, formerly Poetry On The River, has relocated to the beautiful Cobalt Gallery on Main Street in downtown Fort Bragg, thanks to Button Quinn, artist and gallery owner who has graciously made the space available to us. The readings are now the 2nd Sunday of the month, 5–7 pm. The next reading at the Cobalt Gallery will be Sunday, May 12, featured poets (TBA) will read in the first hour, followed by open mic readings. The featured readers read for 15–20 minutes, and the open mic poets have 5 minutes each (or more depending on how many readers show up!). Please get this around far and wide, as we’d like to reach all over Mendocino County and beyond. Any suggestions or ideas you have, including other people to invite, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, and looking forward to seeing you Sunday, May 12, 5–7 pm, at the Cobalt Gallery.

Pegasus Soars No Matter What,
Larry Felson & and Joe Smith
510-684-8270

ELIZABETH JENSEN

That’s a wrap! *THANK YOU* to ALL the volunteers! : Misha & Charlie & Family - Nat & Noor & Family - Kathleen - Georgette & Family - Jill - Ginny & Wade & Family - Travis & Family - Jersey & Family - Brittany & Family - Nate - Amanda & Family - Libby & Family - Christina & Saturo & Family …& ALL the volunteers that came out today! 

An extra *THANK YOU* to our local sponsors for the delicious lunch! : Boontberry Salad - Mosswood Empanadas - Lemons Deli Spread - AV Market Snacks - General Store Cookies …& ALL the refreshments to revive us in the end.

Stay tuned for the next *LOVE YOUR PARK DAY* this October.

It Takes A Valley!

MAX SCHLIENGER

Max Peter Schlienger passed from this earth on May 4, 2024 at the age of 96. He was born in McKees Rocks Pennsylvania on April 12, 1928 to Swiss immigrants Max A. and Luggi M. Schlienger. His siblings were sisters Ruthie and Helen. He joined the Navy as soon as he was of legal age, and served at the end of World War II and then again during the Korean war. After his time in the Navy he received a Bachelors Degree in Industrial Engineering from Penn State University. With his degree in hand, Max took a job at TMCA (Titanium Metals Corporation of America) in Henderson, Nevada. While in Henderson (as a sideline) Max opened up the first television shop in town, DoMax TV. 

It was also in Henderson where Max met his future wife Joan Miller. Max met Joan at Lake Mead where Joan was a lifeguard. He would swim just beyond the buoys that bounded the swimming area forcing Joan to paddle out on a surf board and explain the rules. On one such occasion he asked her out, and the rest, as they say, is history. Max and Joan were married and moved to Pittsburgh when Max got a Job with Universal Cyclops Steel, a company that was just entering into the production of titanium. 

While in Pittsburgh they had three children, Eric, Dana and Daryl. Soon after Daryl’s birth Max received an offer from Stauffer Chemical Corporation in Richmond CA to be Plant Manager and help them develop their titanium processing capabilities. Max, Joan and the kids moved to San Rafael California and settled in. 

When Fansteel Corporation bought the Titanium Division of Stauffer Chemical and chose to consolidate operations in Muskogee Oaklahoma, Max and Joan decided they did not want to relocate and consequently founded Schlienger Engineering Company. Schlienger Engineering’s primary focus was on the design and production of equipment for the refining and processing of titanium. Being early in the use of titanium, titanium processing work was sometimes scarce and Max found other ways to use his many talents by creating and manufacturing such diverse items as: game tables for Bool, a game he invented, Instant Hot Water Heaters, Automatic Shoe Shine Machines and equipment for turning the original Golden Gate Bridge cable into coffee table memorabilia. 

During this time Max developed and patented equipment that allowed clean processing (and reprocessing) of aerospace grade titanium. When the aerospace industry thought that the largely titanium SST (Super Sonic Transport, aka the “Concorde”) was to be the aircraft of the future, (and titanium production looked to be headed for explosive growth) he became the target of a hostile patent action by a large multi-national corporation. 

Instead of capitulating, Max sold the majority ownership of Schlienger Engineering to Corning Glass Works (who were looking to expand into the titanium market) and the legal action evaporated. While Max was working under the Corning umbrella, he decided that he wished to return to being his own boss. 

He and Joan nearly bought a winery, but instead they purchased Al Thrasher Equipment Corp in Ukiah Ca, renaming the company Retech. As Max was turning towards the production of Sawmill equipment (and plate flanges) the sonic boom of the Concorde caused it to be banned by congress with ultimately only three US airports allowing the aircraft. The sudden lack of demand for the Concorde resulted in huge change in the outlook for titanium and subsequently Corning offered to sell Schlienger Engineering back to Max and Joan on favorable terms. 

Retech and Schlienger Engineering were consolidated in Ukiah under the Retech name and Max and Joan lived in Ukiah for the rest of their lives. 

In 1995 Max was awarded the honor of National Small Businessperson of the Year and until that time was the only recipient to have been nominated by his employees. In 1996 Max was also appointed by Governor Pete Wilson to the California Regional Water Quality Control Board. Under Max’s leadership, the talented team at Retech developed: Single Crystal Casting Furnaces for aircraft turbine components, Plasma Melting Furnaces for melting and refining titanium and other high temperature alloys, Arc Saw for the rapid cutting of metals, VAR furnaces, Melt Spinning Furnaces for the production of material for NdFeB magnets and many others. 

Through the course of his career, Max’s name appeared on 38 US patents. He was elected an ASM Fellow and received the 2012 Lifetime Achievement award from the International Titanium Association. Max served on the Advisory Board of The Leonard Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Education and endowed the Max and Joan Schlienger Graduate Scholarship in Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. 

Max spent his retirement enjoying the company of family and friends, growing grapes and developing his concept for a modern day atmospheric railway system. Max is survived by his three children Eric Schlienger, Dana Thelen and Daryl Henzl, 11 grandchildren and 6 great grandchildren. He will be forever missed. 

The family wishes to express our heartfelt love and gratitude to Masi Valentine who cared for both Max and Joan. Masi’s loving heart and ever cheerful demeanor provided both Max and Joan with the ability to remain within the home they built together until their ultimate passings. A private memorial is planned; in lieu of flowers the family requests that donations be sent to Hospice of Ukiah. 

Arrangements are under the direction of the Eversole Mortuary.

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Our wonderful volunteers love all the shelter’s guests--but sometimes they find a special dog or cat. So it is with Rip and volunteer Angela: "Rip is my favorite dog at the shelter, and the more time I spend with him, the more I learn about him, and get to see his wonderful self. I took Rip to the lake and he loved watching the ducks swim and geese fly by. There were people and dogs of all ages passing by and he didn’t seem to be bothered by any of them. People were commenting on him how happy he looked and they loved his markings. Of course I told them he’s available for adoption! He rode well in a crate in my car, we did lots of hiking and walking around, and then sat watching the water, giving him some quiet and peaceful time. It did him good. I hope someone considers meeting him. Those that aren't are missing out a really good dog." Rip is a year old and 55-ish handsome pounds. 

Check out his webpage for LOTS more. To see all of our canine and feline guests, and for information about our services, programs, and events, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com. Take a dog on a Fido Field Trip--see information on our website! Join us every first Saturday of the month for our Meet The Dogs Adoption Event at the shelter. We're on Facebook. For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

ANDERSON VALLEY FFA DRIVE THRU DINNER

Please complete the form to order your Tri tip Dinner(s). Dinner(s) will be ready to pick up at Anderson Valley High School between 3:30 PM and 5:30 PM on Thursday, May 16th 2024. All proceeds to benefit the Anderson Valley FFA and Agricultural Education Program. Checks, cash and credit cards will be accepted. Please make your check out to Anderson Valley Agriculture Institute (AVAI). We will accept payment when you pick up your dinner. Payment will be expected for all dinners not picked up. Thank you for your support!

Meals will include a whole Tri tip, Baked Potatoes, Coleslaw, Rolls and Watermelon.

MIRANDA MABERY: Free! Need gone asap I don’t know much about it! Definitely a project motor home. Ran when parked there. Might start right up. I don’t know. Don’t have time or want to mess with it. it’s in bad shape in the inside. Message me (on facebook) if you want to check it out. Thanks

ED NOTES

IS IT anti-Semitic to be against circumcision? The Old Testament said circumcision was an inviolable contract between God and Jewish males, but when the Christian revisionists came along to bland down the message in anticipation of drive-thru Sunday services, their New Testament simply asked Christians to circumcise their hearts by worshipping Jesus. Me dear old mum, a registered nurse, explained that circumcision was simply a hygiene measure, no foreskin, no penile probs.

NOTHING WISHY-WASHY about this fascist politician: Congressman Brian Mast was confronted by peace protesters led by Medea Benjamin who asked the Army veteran, who lost both his legs to an IED in Afghanistan, if he agreed there should be a ceasefire in Gaza. Mast replied, “I think Israel should go in there and kick the shit out of them, just absolutely destroy them, their infrastructure, level anything they touch. Clear enough?”

KINDA RECOMMENDED. The Netflix series “A Man In Full,” a kinda comedy, is kinda vulgar, kinda witless, kinda full of grafted on sub-plots of the tiresomely righteous type, still manages to be kinda watchable. Jeff Daniels, who's always good, plays a kinda psycho business man who’s dead as the movie begins but still manages to ask, “When you die, will people notice?” Which is a question that assumes you're not dead enough not to care. 

THE FIRST MOVIE I ever saw was at the Lark Theater in Marin. It was called Bill and Koo and featured talking parakeets. The full house of mostly adults laughed throughout. I may have wondered what was wrong with me, but I remember for sure wondering why people were laughing.

CHARLIE’S BRASHNESS remains on full display as the story flashes back to 10 days prior, at his 60th birthday party. He confidently — arrogantly — makes the rounds, asking his ex-wife’s best friend Joyce (Lucy Liu) if she’s had cosmetic work done and forcefully greeting a banker, Raymond Peepgrass (Tom Pelphrey), with a hand tightly (and uncomfortably) clasped around the back of his collar — a moment that foreshadows the final scene, where Charlie’s hand once again finds its way around Raymond’s neck. But how exactly does Charlie’s hubris lead to his downfall? It’s time to dive into the many moving parts of ‘A Man in Full,’ starting with its origin.

PIG HUNTERS are invited to try this one from the Chron’s great outdoors writer, Tom Stienstra: “Anybody do the math? It takes a wild pig sow 121 days to have a litter, and then 21 days later they are back in season. In each litter, they average 4.5 piglets that survive. Of these, figure half are female. So over the course of five years, one sow can produce how many related offspring?”

THE LATE Ukiah City councilman Phil Baldwin, a man who cared, used to bring “quality of life issues” to public attention, by which he meant the ongoing war against ever increasing numbers of slobs. Fresh off his defeat to get leaf blowers banned from within the Ukiah City limits — anywhere else a slam dunk — the irrepressible Baldwin attempted to rouse Caltrans, aka the State of California, to get litter off Highway 101 where the heavily-traveled highway bi-sects the Ukiah Valley. Baldwin pointed out that most of the litter strewn everywhere along the highway’s margins came from Ukiah’s nearby fast food parlors as he lamented the passing of the very last generation of non-slobs. “Fifteen to 20 years ago there were many more courteous people alive,” Baldwin said at a meeting of the council. “The courteous people are dying off. Many times the younger generation is not concerned with anything beyond themselves.”

I DISAGREED. I think we’re talking cross-generational slob-ism here, perhaps even genetic slob-ism. A young slob, or a slob-in-training, doesn’t instinctively toss dirty pampers and Chicken MacDeath wrappers out the windows of moving vehicles, someone taught him. I think we’re talking fourth and fifth generation slobism in a society that no longer assumes public responsibility.

MENDOCINO LAND TRUST

MLT Completes Peter Douglas Trail Extension In Shady Dell

This beautiful trail just got better and will be open to the public come Memorial Day weekend!

MLT has completed a multi-year-effort to connect trails in Shady Dell, making it easier to enjoy longer and more satisfying hikes.

Projects such as this take time, but patience and partnerships pay off for everyone.

This land is owned by the Save the Redwoods League (SRL), and it is adjacent to the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park at Usal. MLT designed and built the first trail at Shady Dell, the Peter Douglas Trail, which is an extension of the Lost Coast Trail.

The Peter Douglas trail was completed in 2016.

After the completion of that trail, Director of Stewardship Nicolet Houtz worked with SRL to come up with the idea of a trail that would loop around the property connecting to the Peter Douglas trail. Houtz wrote a grant application to the State Coastal Conservancy for the planning, design, and permitting of two new trails, the Ridgeline Trail and Creekside Trail. Funding was awarded for this project in 2018.

The Ridgeline Trail was a difficult alignment to figure out, given the steep terrain, a spider web of logging roads, and constraints imposed by the property's boundaries. Once this alignment was determined, the required California Environmental Quality Act surveys were completed and a coastal development permit obtained; Houtz wrote a second grant for the construction of the trail

So, here we are years later. Good things are worth the wait! And we're proud to invite you to a hike where you can see for yourself the fruits of this project.

An effort such as this takes time and teamwork. MLT had seven trail crews (California Conservation Corps and American Conservation Experience) help build the trail, along with contractors, MLT staff and interns. The loop trail, a combination of the Peter Douglas trail and the Ridgeline trail is approximately 7 miles. The Creekside trail, a shorter trail along Shady Dell Creek, is 0.5 miles.

Join us, if you can, on June 15, 2024 at 10 a.m. for an MLT staff-led show and tell hike on the new trail. Information will be available on social media and our website.

* * *

Monarch Butterflies - A Comeback Story

by Michael Heine

The western monarchs (Danaus plexippus plexippus) are currently dispersing inland, seeking out milkweed to lay eggs and complete another generation cycle on their endless migration.

While not genetically distinct from the monarchs that inhabit east of the Rocky Mountains (a natural if somewhat permeable population boundary), western monarchs are unique in that instead of overwintering in the upland forests of central Mexico, they do it right here in California. Each year, one generation of monarchs will hunker down in groves of trees within two miles of the ocean to wait out the worst of the winter until spring when they can set sail once again.

They prefer cypresses, pines, and even the invasive eucalyptus tree to shield them from the winds and rains, and the humid ocean air provides a buffer against freezing temperatures and desiccation. These congregations are amazing displays where it seems that the very leaves themselves are replaced by butterflies.

Once this cohort sets off, a three- to four-generational process begins anew. The monarchs fly inland seeking their only host plant, milkweed, to lay their eggs, and then they die. While the larvae only eat milkweeds, adults can feast on a variety of nectar plants to keep their strength up for the journey. This new generation will feed on the milkweed until it’s time for them to set off, repeating the cycle until the autumn generation goes back to the coast to find those groves once again.

In recent years, we have nearly lost this incredible species due to a combination of habitat loss, pesticides, and climate change. Where once the skies were clouded with millions of monarchs in the 1980s, a low of 2,000 adults were recorded in 2020. Fortunately, in 2022 they rebounded to over 300,000, a 22-year high!

The current total for 2024 stands at about 233,000, lower than the historic populations but cause for celebration and action to preserve these incredible butterflies for future generations.

mendocinolandtrust.org

APPOINTMENT WITH DENTISTRY

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.

MEMO OF THE AIR: Regarding the colonized worlds.

"The watch argument. A man finds a watch and it is so wonderful that he concludes that it must have had a maker. He finds the maker and he is so much more wonderful than the watch that he says he must have had a maker. Then he finds God, the maker of the man, and he is so much more wonderful than the man that he could not have had a maker. This is what lawyers call a departure in pleading." -Robert G. Ingersoll, 1896 (via Futility Closet)

Here's the recording of last night's (Friday 2024-05-10) 7.5-hour Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org (and, for the first hour, also 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino): https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0592

Coming shows can feature your story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or whatever. Just email it to me. Or include it in a reply to this post. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there and read it on the air.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not-necessarily-radio-useful but worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

What I Like About You. I hesitate to mention this, but usually when I notice something about myself, other people speak up to say they get that too. Here: I love this music, and while the video is playing I can smell the nylons. https://theawesomer.com/what-i-like-about-you-motown-edition/738803

The original ending of the 1986 version of Little Shop of Horrors, where the plants destroy the world, that the studio's focus group hated. They spent a fortune making this part, but snipped it out and threw it away, and the movie succeeded without it. I still think the Gloriana Opera Company stage version in Cotton Auditorium was definitive. And Ellen Greene was great in the film, but Sandy Glickfeld's Audry was incandescent. No electronic sound reinforcement, just comic talent and pure vocal power.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RjFvcw6ToQ

And Sugarland and Sara Bareilles cover of Come On Eileen. So fun. That reminds me of the story where a man has been arrested for public indecency. He's talking with his lawyer. The lawyer says, "Tell me about it." Man says, "I have a disorder where I'm compelled to do what music says. The radio plays Do The Twist, I do the twist. If they play a waltz, I waltz." Lawyer says, "I see. What brought the cops?" Man says, "Come On Eileen." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMDqkBjvdMg

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

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, May 11, 2024

KELISHA ALVAREZ, Ukiah. Trespassing, county parole violation, resisting. (Frequent flyer.)

MARKUS BRATCHER, Carnesville, Georgia/Ukiah. Violation of domestic violence court order, resisting.

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

AMANDA CHAPMAN, Ukiah. Attempted murder, attempted robbery, armed with firearm in commission of felony, conspiracy.

ADAM CHAVIRA, Redwood Valley. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

EVAN FEEN, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-under influence.

THOMAS HOFF, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

LARKIN KINGSLEY, Albion. Failure to appear.

JUSTIN LOUDERMILK, Ukiah. Controlled substance, probation revocation.

DEVYN MILLER, Redwood Valley. DUI, no license.

TONY NELSON, Ukiah. Domestic battery. 

CODY RYDEN, Upper Lake/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

CHANGE IT BACK

Editor: 

Recently there have been some letters to the editor suggesting that the Pledge of Allegiance be changed. Some of the suggested versions seem too long for people to remember. My suggestion is to return the pledge to its pre-1954 version, eliminating “under God”: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.” This says it all.

Our country was settled by Europeans seeking freedom to worship in the faith of their choice, or not to worship. Our country is supposed to have a separation of church and state. Americans are entitled to their personal choice of faith or no religion at all. The belief in God isn’t a requirement for being a good American. But the recognition of freedom of religion and the separation of church and state are.

Edward F. Gowen

Cotati

PG&E CEO DEFENDS RISING UTILITY BILLS AS EARNINGS INCREASE

by Julie Johnson

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. defended the company’s electricity rate hikes, despite widespread outrage from Californians shocked by soaring monthly utility bill charges.

In a call with investors Thursday, PG&E announced that its earnings rose to $732 million in the first quarter of 2024, up from $569 million a year earlier — translating to earnings per share of $0.34, compared with $0.27 a year earlier.

At the same time, average residential customer bills increased by an estimated $34.50 each month starting Jan. 1, an unprecedented bill increase hitting millions of Californians. That was just the first, albeit the largest, rate increase reaching customers this year. 

Patti Poppe, PG&E’s chief executive officer, said the rate increases were necessary to help the company continue spending on wildfire prevention, curbing the company’s role in catastrophic wildfires and modernizing its electric grid. She said PG&E is committed to keeping future annual bill increases between 2% and 4%.

“It’s been difficult for some of our customers, and I look forward to the day when we can announce that customers’ prices are coming down,” Poppe said. “At the same time, we stand by the need for the near-term increases.”

Profits rose to $2.63 billion in 2023 for the Oakland-based investor-owned utility in 2023, up from $2.34 billion in 2022. PG&E has said the company used 99% of those proceeds to invest in the company, reserving only 1% for shareholders. 

In an interview after the earnings call, Poppe told the Chronicle that customers could start seeing bills come down in the next few years. The company is looking for ways to lower its operational costs, pulling back expensive programs such as tree trimming and finding other costs that “could come out of the bill,” Poppe said. 

 “I want customers to know we’re rethinking every kind of work we’re doing across the company,” Poppe said. “We’re fundamentally reducing the structural costs.”

PG&E’s latest budget included an unprecedented 13% increase in revenue for the company to spend reducing the risk of wildfire and other problems along PG&E’s sprawling electric and gas systems. That translates into more than $400 more annually for typical households, which use about 500 kilowatt-hours of electricity each month.

The California Public Utilities Commission approved the boost despite strong opposition. Commissioners then approved another increase effective in April, adding an estimated $4.68 monthly 12-month boost for typical households, and are considering other rate rises, such as a request from PG&E to recoup costs from last winter’s storms. 

All told, typical residential bills could be at least $53 higher per month compared with 2023 by the end of the year. 

A significant cost behind this year’s rate hike is the company’s effort to remove about 1,000 miles of overhead power lines by 2027 in areas where the risk for wildfire is high and place them underground. On Thursday, the company reported energizing 15 miles of underground power lines so far in 2024. 

Poppe, who received $17 million in pay and other forms of compensation in 2023, gave investors an optimistic view into the company’s future. She said it has begun a concerted effort to make the company more efficient by streamlining operations, a weak spot historically for the company. 

PG&E boosted its core earnings forecast for 2024 to $1.33 to $1.37 per share, up from a previous range of $1.31 to $1.35 per share. 

(SF Chronicle)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I did not know there was a strategy in tug-o-war. I was in exactly one tug-o-war game as an adult (yes, there was alcohol involved).

Both sides were mostly fit, athletic young men, and I somehow ended up at the head of the line on my side. I’m quite small.

At first I thought, how am I ever going to pull any of these strapping guys over the line?

Then I realized it wasn’t my job to do that, my job was to not step one foot over the line myself.

I could do that.

We won.

There’s some kind of metaphor in that.

THURSDAY, 115 years ago, was a historic day in California auto racing history. 

On May 9, 1909, Ben Noonan of Santa Rosa won the California Grand Prize Race. The 52-mile race ran from Santa Rosa to Geyserville and back, for a big trophy and a $500 prize. This was the fist cross country race ever held in the Bay Area, so it was a huge attraction. Thousands came from San Francisco and beyond.

The race began on Mendocino Avenue in Santa Rosa. The 12 racing cars were lined up, and took off at one minute intervals. Every car had a passenger-mechanic.

Ben Noonan was a young man whose family owned the Noonan Meat Co. in Santa Rosa. Ben had never competed in an auto race before, but he was well known for his remarkable speeds on a bicycle. The car Noonan drove in the race was one of two Stoddard-Daytons entered by the J. W. Leavitt auto dealership of San Francisco.

Crowds cheered for the racers all along the route. Healdsburg residents flocked downtown to watch the cars round the Plaza. One magazine reporter commented, “One of the most interesting points along the road was at the Healdsburg bridge, at the end of which the cars had to make a turn at right angles. This meant a complete shutdown and the shots of the motor due to the surplus gas suggested an artillery duel.”

Only half of the cars that started finished the race. One car didn’t make it out of the starting line, another only made it as far as Healdsburg before its frame cracked, and another hit a rock so large that it bent the tire rim. Several had flat tires. One driver had to stop on Dry Creek Road to tie up a broken rod with rope, which wouldn’t hold and caused him to stop three more times. The most astonishing tale, however, belongs to “plucky driver” Fay Sheets, who lost the tire off his left front wheel around Windsor on the way back – yet still finished the race.

Ben Noonan won the prize, with a time of about 1:05. These photos from the Healdsburg Museum collection, taken by Mervyn Silberstein and Mrs. V. Sioli, transport us back to the great race 115 years ago today.

Research thanks to Gaye Le Baron, Santa Rosa A 20th Century Town and Jeff Elliot, santarosahistory.com

DONNIE AFTER DARK

by Maureen Dowd

Stormy was working blue, and the judge was seeing red.

Justice Juan Merchan chided Donald Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheles, saying he didn’t understand why she hadn’t objected to seamy details about the President and the Porn Star spilling out.

“Why on earth she wouldn’t object to the mention of a condom I don’t understand,” Merchan complained about Necheles.

But I wanted to hear about the condom — or lack thereof. The New York trial involves an abstruse legal strategy and illusory crime. It’s the weakest of the cases against Trump. It’s certainly not putting him on trial for the attempted coup d’état he incited or for treating top secret documents as dinner conversation fodder at his golf clubs. But it now seems almost certain that none of the other cases will be resolved before the election.

So we’re left with a two-bit case that has devolved into dirty bits, filled with salacious details — a spanking, a missionary position and ping-ponging insults like “horse face” and “orange turd.”

Yet, even if it plays like a cheesy old Cinemax “After Dark” show, it’s still illuminating. The case doesn’t hinge on Stormy Daniels’s story about her liaison with Trump, or even if the former president is lying when he says they didn’t have sex. (He would say that, wouldn’t he?)

It’s instructive about the moral values — or lack thereof — of our once and perhaps future president.

We know that Trump is a louche operator. But, given that he is leading in crucial swing states, it doesn’t hurt to be reminded of just how louche.

To paraphrase Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman, every word Trump utters is a lie, including “and” and “the.”

Trump’s legal team seems to be hoping that Hope Hicks and Madeleine Westerhout, his former aides who tearily testified for the prosecution, gave the impression that he didn’t want the Stormy story to come out on the eve of the 2016 election because he was tenderly concerned about how it would affect Melania, rather than selfishly concerned about his presidential aspirations.

Asked about Trump’s intentions, Stormy offered a shrug to the jury, saying, “I wouldn’t know what he wanted to protect.”

In her telling, Trump wasn’t concerned about his wife, with a new baby at home. He told Stormy not to worry about Melania.

Stormy said he was more focused on her resemblance to his daughter Ivanka and a possible threesome with another blond porn star, Alana Evans, of “It’s Okay! She’s My Mother in Law 13” and “Dirty Little Sex Brats 9.”

When Necheles tried to make Stormy seem tawdry on cross-examination, the mistress of exotica flipped the script. Sure, she was an opportunist and a finagler and a marketer of tacky products, she conceded in essence, but if it was OK for a man who ascended to the highest office in the land, wasn’t it OK for her?

Stormy made mincemeat of Necheles’s tone-deaf attempt to paint her as a shabby self-promoter with one response: “Not unlike Mr. Trump.”

As The Times noted, Stormy and Donnie were like twins: “He wrote more than a dozen self-aggrandizing books; she wrote a tell-all memoir. He mocked her appearance on social media; she fired back with a scatological insult. He peddled a $59.99 Bible; she hawked a $40 ‘Stormy, saint of indictments’ candle, that carried her image draped in a Christlike robe.”

Trump may have undermined his own case, falling prey to his own capacious and quivering ego. He clearly wanted his lawyers to push his unconvincing tale that — even though he paid $130,000 to keep Stormy from talking and even though she described what’s in his dopp kit and the details of his anatomy — the 2006 Lake Tahoe rendezvous was a figment of her imagination.

Necheles doggedly pursued this fruitless tack with Stormy, to her own and Trump’s detriment.

“You made all this up, right?” the lawyer pressed.

“No,” Stormy replied.

When Necheles kept pecking, noting that the actress, director and producer had starred in porn films with “phony stories about sex,” Stormy leveled her by slyly replying that if she had made up the story about her encounter with Trump, “I would have written it to be a lot better.” She also schooled Trump’s lawyer on the fact that “The sex is very real. That’s why it’s pornography and not a B movie.”

Trump came across as a loser in her account — a narcissist, cheater, sad Hugh Hefner wannabe, trading his satin pajamas for a dress shirt and trousers (and, later, boxers) as soon as Stormy mocked him. The man who was the likely source of the “Best Sex I Ever Had” tabloid headline, attributed to Marla Maples at the time, no doubt loathes Stormy for having described their batrachian grappling, as Aldous Huxley called sex, as “textbook generic.”

Like a legal dominatrix, Stormy continued to emasculate the former president after her testimony, tweeting: “Real men respond to testimony by being sworn in and taking the stand in court. Oh … wait. Nevermind.”

The compelling part of this case is not whether Trump did something wrong with business papers. The compelling part is how it shows, in a vivid way, that he’s the wrong man for the job.

WATER IS WET

Taibbi & Kirn

Walter, you obviously heard about Executive Editor Joe Kahn’s outbursts. This is the executive editor of the New York Times who gave an interview to Ben Smith, famous media reporter at Semafor, and he just let everybody have it all at once. And whether he means it or not, it was beautiful.

Walter, how did you feel when you heard this thing?

Walter Kirn: Well, yeah. It was like hearing the coach of your losing high school football team suddenly say, “We’re going to go back to fundamentals. It’s all about blocking, tackling and running the ball.” And in this case, the fundamentals are a somewhat adversarial relationship with the political party that’s in power at the moment, or any political party or government that might be in power. This new revelation that the speaking truth to power business actually involves sometimes saying things that they don’t want you to or haven’t already approved. And it came as so revolutionary given the last few years because there had been an almost stated policy, sadly at the time, starting around Trump time, that, I don’t know, the news had a protective promotional function for the good people of the world.

Matt Taibbi: Right. You had to be not just true, but true to history’s judgment.

Walter Kirn: Right, true to history’s judgment and just sort of doing a good thing, and boy scout helping along our democracy. Whereas the press that I loved, which is supposed to rattle people with stories they didn’t want to hear and confront them with statistics that they’ve been suppressing and so on, has been gone for so long that I thought maybe it had vanished. And to see it come back, like I say, it was like watching a migration of birds that you thought had gone extinct, come flying back in the spring. Oh my God-

Matt Taibbi: You’re in the beach and the coelacanth comes past, right?

Walter Kirn: Yeah, yeah. Or the geese. “The geese are back, honey. They didn’t die in South America.”

Matt Taibbi: Oh man. No, it was great on multiple levels and I want to stress out, I got excited about it. I put a headline that was like, Is Journalism Back, of course wildly overstating what this is.

What it really is, is the Biden administration has been making unreasonable demands of the New York Times for five years now. And the Times, really to its discredit, has done a lot of bending over backwards or bending over forwards depending on which image you want to use.

And there was recently a story that was leaked in Politico that was designed to kind of twist the Times one more time. And Kahn, I think he just had it. He had enough. And this interview that he gave to Smith, the thing that aroused the most anger among the press community was this incredibly simple statement, and maybe it might be even worth looking at this on the page just because it’s just so amazing that this is what they would get angry about.

He had been criticized by Dan Pfeiffer, who is a podcaster like us. He used to be the White House Communications Director under Barack Obama, I believe. Now he’s on Pod Save America. And he was complaining actually in a substack that he has that the New York Times didn’t see their job as saving democracy or stopping an authoritarian for taking power. Now, I don’t know what he was looking at at the time.

So Ben Smith is forced to ask the question, “Why don’t you see your job as we’ve got to stop Trump? What about your job doesn’t let you think that way?” And Kahn answers, “Good media is the fourth estate. It’s another pillar of democracy. One of the absolute necessities of democracy is having a free and fair open election where people can compete for votes. And the role of the news media is not to skew your coverage towards one candidate or another, but just to provide very good, hard-hitting, well-rounded coverage of both candidates and informing voters. If you believe in democracy, I don’t see how we get past the essential role of quality media in informing people about their choice in a presidential election.”

And then he goes on to say, “It’s also true that Trump could win this election in a popular vote, and there’s a very good chance based on our polling that he will win the election. So there are people out there in the world who may decide based on their democratic rights to elect Donald Trump as president. It is not the job of the news media to prevent that from happening. It is the job of Biden and the people around Biden to prevent that from happening.”

Water is wet. Right? I mean, the media reports and politicians compete for votes and somebody wins, and we’ve got to live with that. These are obvious things. The fact that the editor of the New York Times who is not exactly a hot-blooded shoot from the hip type of personality, if you’ve ever seen Joe Kahn speak, the fact that he had to come out and say this and then be denounced by all of these journalism professors and media critics, it was kind of amazing to watch. They just do not believe that it’s true that it’s not the New York Times’ job to get Joe Biden elected.

Walter Kirn: So I’m in Las Vegas right now, and this was like watching a casino boss burst out onto the floor where the blackjack tables are and say, “You know what? Our job is to show people a good time and win and lose money, not feed the poor.” And everybody goes, “You’re darn right.”

I mean, as valuable as our democracy is and as important it is for many to defeat Trump, it was never their job. And to see them have to assert that their job is their job versus somebody who literally was asking them to make an on the record statement that the New York Times was going to devote its many decades old business to defeating a particular presidential candidate.

WHAT IRISH BOXER "CONOR MCGREGOR" SAYS ABOUT HIS WIFE!

"We have been together for 8 years and we lived in Ireland, 30 miles from Dublin, in a rented apartment without work.

I didn't work because I spent all my time training. It's always been my dream to be a hero. She believed in me and despite the lack of money, I made an effort to take care of my diet, and I had to eat athlete's food and respectable food. She always took care of me and encouraged me.

When I came home from an intense training, without energy and tired, she always said to me, “Conor McGregor, I know you can do this and it will work."

And now I make millions of dollars fighting in matches with between 50 and 70,000 spectators. Now I can buy any car, any clothes, any house and yet she didn't ask me for anything, but she deserves the best in this world.

She is always by my side and tells me that I can do anything! I got to this place thanks to her, she never let me down and she never left me alone. "

WE WERE going to have a gender reveal party for our new kid. But then we decided we’d wait until it’s 21 years old just to be sure.

— Jimmy Carr

ISRAEL STEPS UP ATTACKS; 300,000 GAZANS ON THE MOVE

Many say there is nowhere to go, and even the “humanitarian zone” recommended by Israel is neither safe nor equipped to handle all of them, the U.N. says.

by Raja Abdulrahim and Aaron Boxerman reporting from Jerusalem, Bilal Shbair from Khan Younis, Gaza, and Ben Shpigel from New York.

Around 300,000 Palestinians in southern and northern Gaza are being forced to flee once again, the United Nations says, as Israel issued new and expanded evacuation orders on Saturday. But many are unsure where to find secure shelter in a place devastated by war.

The expanded evacuation orders apply to the city of Rafah at Gaza’s southernmost tip, where more than a million Gazans have gathered after fleeing Israeli bombardment elsewhere over the past seven months. They have deepened fears that the Israeli military is set to proceed with an invasion of Rafah, which Israeli leaders have long promised, a prospect that international aid groups and many countries have condemned.

Some 150,000 people have already fled Rafah over the past six days, according to UNRWA, the United Nations agency that aids Palestinians.

“It’s such a difficult situation — the number of people displaced is very high, and none of them know where to go, but they leave and try to get as far away as possible,” said Mohammad al-Masri, a 31-year-old accountant who is sheltering with his family in a tent in Rafah. “Fear, confusion, oppression, anxiety is eating away at people.”

Charles Michel, president of the European Council, criticized the expanded evacuation order on Saturday on social media, saying, “Evacuation orders for civilians trapped in Rafah to unsafe zones are unacceptable.”

Israel seized control of the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Monday in what it called a “limited operation,” and stepped-up bombardment and fighting have continued in and around the city since then.

The Israeli military has said it is carrying out “precise operations in specific areas of eastern Rafah” targeting Hamas. But the majority of the more than 34,000 Palestinians reported killed in Gaza have been women and children, according to local health officials. Dozens have been killed by Israeli strikes in Rafah since Monday, health officials say.

Most of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents have been forced to leave their homes, often multiple times throughout the war, with many now living in ramshackle tents, classrooms or overcrowded apartments.

On Saturday, the Israeli military said in a statement that it “called on the population from additional areas in eastern Rafah to temporarily evacuate to the expanded humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi,” a coastal area north of Rafah.

 “So far,” the military added, “approximately 300,000 Gazans have moved toward the humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi.”

Although Israel has characterized Al-Mawasi as a humanitarian zone, the United Nations has stressed that the area is neither safe nor equipped to receive the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians already displaced by the war.

About 150,000 people fled from Rafah in recent days, the U.N. says.

“Everywhere you look now in west #Rafah this morning, families are packing up,” Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for UNRWA, wrote on social media on Saturday. “Streets are significantly emptier.”

Even as Israeli forces bombarded Rafah, they have also in recent weeks repeatedly returned to areas of northern Gaza, including the town of Beit Hanoun and the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, to deal with renewed militant activity. On Saturday the Israeli military ordered an evacuation of the northern city of Jabaliya in advance of a planned operation.

Israel’s ground invasion began at the end of October in northern Gaza, in response to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel. Large swaths of the area were left devastated by months of Israeli airstrikes and shelling, leaving a lawless wasteland dominated by street gangs. The Israeli military has said it killed many of Hamas’s key commanders in the area while driving out the group’s fighters.

Four Israeli soldiers were killed on Friday in northern Gaza by an explosive device, the military said. On Saturday, it said in a statement that Hamas was trying “to reassemble its terrorist infrastructure and operatives” around Jabaliya, which the Israeli military considers a Hamas stronghold and base for operations.

Fatma Edaama, 36, a resident of Jabaliya, said Saturday that she hoped the latest fighting would be limited enough to allow her family to stay. “Our lives already ended in 2006,” when Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections, leading Israel to begin tightening restrictions on Gaza, she said, adding, “There’s no safe place for us to go.”

Israeli military analysts called Hamas’s apparent resurgence in northern Gaza the result of Israel’s failure to establish any alternative form of government there, leaving behind a vacuum that is an ideal breeding ground for an insurgency. Even though Israeli forces sweep through areas, when they inevitably retreat Hamas reasserts its control, whether directly or through allies, said Michael Milshtein, a former senior Israeli intelligence official.

“Hamas still rules,” Mr. Milshtein said. “Their forces have been badly damaged, but they still have capabilities. There’s still no alternative to them in Gaza, and every alternative we tried to establish failed.”

Earlier in the week, Razan al-Sa’eedi, an 18-year-old university student studying accounting, prepared with her family to leave the UNRWA school in Rafah where they had been living for months. But as they waited for the driver they had arranged to transport them to another city, they learned that his vehicle — a tractor pulling a large cart — had been struck by an Israeli missile, Ms. al-Sa’eedi said. One man was killed, she said.

In a panic, they called local emergency responders, who told them that no help was available. Instead, Ms. al-Sa’eedi said, the family members left behind most of their belongings and set out on foot, with each person carrying only a backpack.

As they waited outside the school entrance for Ms. al-Sa’eedi’s father and brother, they saw them running with blood streaked on their faces.

“We saw a drone firing around them,” she said. “We held our backpacks and ran away from that whole dangerous area.”

As they fled, Ms. al-Sa’eedi said, they occasionally stopped to try to flag down passing taxis, but again and again found them full.

After a nearly two-day trek that involved hours of walking and then — finally — a taxi ride, she said, they arrived at Al Aqsa University, in the southern city of Khan Younis. Inside a building at the university the walls of classrooms were scrawled with messages.

One message said, “This floor is booked,” she said, while another read, “Please do not take any room, otherwise we will kick you out.”

Only a small closet once used to store generators was empty. That would have to do.

“We only have three blankets to use as curtains,” Ms. al-Sa’eedi said. “We don’t have any alternative to this small room.”

KIDNAPPED IN MEXICO

In June 2020 I was kidnapped by armed men and held for ransom. Unlike thousands of other Mexicans who have been taken, I survived. This is my story, and the story of how violence has destroyed families, lives and my country. 

by Manuel Bayo Gisbert 

It was almost midnight when were turned to the highway where we had been kidnapped by a drug cartel. In Mexico we say that when you see or experience something painful it can make you sick with horror. Your soul leaves your body. It waits, for something to purify the space so it can come back to you. 

I thought that if I found the place where that happened to me I would find my spirit wandering outside my body. As we were being tortured I heard the voices of those who had also been taken. Those voices led me to people who are still searching for their missing relatives. 

My partner at the time and I were on a highway on the outskirts of Mexico City shooting an experimental film when a group of armed men approached us. Our mistake: using a camera in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

We were abducted near Parres, a town where poverty and corruption have created a haven for criminal gangs. The men took us to a cliff, where we were tortured and sexually abused, all while our families heard us scream in pain and beg for our lives from the other end of the phone line.

Fourteen hours later, after our families paid a $1,500 ransom, we were released.

Once home, I became a prisoner again — this time of my own fears. I became paranoid that the armed men might return to take us or our families. To get my life back, I needed to understand what had happened to me and why.

I searched for answers in the stories of those who were also taken but, unlike me, never returned. I turned to the families of the missing people of Mexico.

Ivonne’s brother was taken in Chilpancingo in 2013. Her mother died without seeing her son again.

Hilda and Cheli’s brother Rafael was unlawfully arrested by the Mexican Army in 1976 in the state of Guerrero. He is still missing.

Miguel Ángel has seven brothers. Four are missing. For more than 10 years, Miguel Ángel has dedicated his life to looking for clandestine mass graves where his brothers might be buried.

Justina’s husband, Abelardo, was the relative and right hand of a guerrilla leader named Lucio Cabañas. Abelardo was unlawfully arrested by the government and vanished from El Conchero in 1974.

In the 1970s, soldiers broke into Quirina’s home in El Ticuí and threatened her family. They took her brother Cirino, who has been missing ever since.

A Long History of Disappearances

A touchstone in my country’s history: In 1965, a group of rural teachers and farmers attacked a military barracks in Ciudad Madera, a small city in the state of Chihuahua. Demanding the fair distribution of farmland — the great unfulfilled promise of the Mexican Revolution — the protesters-turned-guerrillas were killed. “They want land, so give them soil until they can’t take it anymore,” Chihuahua’s governor, Práxedes Giner Durán, said when he gave orders to bury the bodies in a mass grave.

This story was repeated in the decade that followed, when farmers from the mountains of Atoyac de Álvarez, led by a teacher, Lucio Cabañas, took up arms, once again asking for equality. The response: about 500 people were taken from Atoyac and its surroundings by the army and the Mexican national security services. Their relatives continue searching for them in the jungles of Guerrero.

In the years that followed, savage acts of counterinsurgency and government-sponsored abuse left thousands of families and communities scarred and incomplete.

In the northern city of Ciudad Juarez, on the Texas border, hundreds of women were raped, killed or disappeared between 1993 and 2003, many at the hands of drug smugglers. The brutalization of these women — known as las muertas de Juárez, the dead women of Juárez — was a turning point for Mexico. Soon after, in 2006, the new president, Felipe Calderón, declared a war on drugs, a military-led campaign supposedly intended to eradicate violence. Instead, it resulted in a huge increase in disappearances and killings. Massacres ensued; tortured corpses surfaced all over the country.

The violence continued to grow. At the end of President Calderón's term in 2012 there were over 25,000 missing people; today, the official number has crossed 116,000. But many disappearances are never reported. The true number may be as high as 500,000.

I have interviewed and photographed over 200 survivors and families of the disappeared. The details vary but much of their stories echoes one another.

My daughter disappeared on June 28, 2018 … My husband disappeared on Sept. 29, 2021 … My sister disappeared on the 29th of … Today, she’s now been missing for five years, seven months … My dad has been missing for 49 years. They took him in … They say they wanted a ransom, because they had him … They tortured them, they kidnapped them … We found him dead in the forensic morgue in Pachuca … It’s not fair. The law isn’t fair … The feelings of missing him, thinking about him. But I see hope … They don’t care about the pain of a mother of the missing …

A Land Polluted by Violence

In the months after I was kidnapped I joined the National Search Brigade for the Disappeared, a group that bridges the hundreds of search collectives scattered throughout Mexico. In 2021 that work took me to the state of Veracruz, on the Gulf of Mexico.

For more than 10 years, Veracruz has been besieged by violence among rival cartels. A group of families looking for their missing loved ones there discovered sites where cartels take their victims to be “cooked.” During one of the searches, I found what seemed to be small black rocks in the soil that crumbled to the touch; what I was holding were actually charred human remains.

Residents described regularly seeing fires burning through the night as the cartels incinerated corpses. Without fail, they said to us, the following morning the navy would come to clean up the scene. No bodies, no evidence, no crime. (The Mexican government did not respond to these allegations, nor to others accusing the military forces or the police of participating in forced disappearances.)

The “cooking” sites of Veracruz are one in a long list of initiatives allegedly sponsored by the government to cover up cartel crimes. Across the country, criminal groups set strict curfews and threaten to murder or kidnap anyone who breaks them, which local law enforcement silently blesses. Dozens of people are killed on average every day by paramilitary and criminal groups, with mutilated corpses found inside freezers, buried in mass graves or left in broad daylight in plazas and parks.

In 2014, 43 students from Ayotzinapa disappeared at the hands of a local cartel in collusion with the police and the army. An inquiry into their whereabouts by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ended with investigators complaining of repeated lies and obstruction by the armed forces.

A former defense minister who was indicted in the U.S. for allegedly taking bribes to protect cartel leaders was released to Mexico, reportedly after pressure from the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. (Upon his return, the former minister was cleared after Mexico’s attorney general found no evidence of wrongdoing.)

President López Obrador, who was elected on the promise of bringing an end to state-sponsored violence, has instead greatly expanded military control, and has presided over the highest homicide rates in Mexico’s recent history.

Our own land keeps the secrets.

In Mexico, We Harvest Pain and Death

On Aug. 19, 2023, three years after I was kidnapped, my uncle Fernando Bayo was taken by four armed men in Acapulco. Seven hours later he was found strangled by a wire. I felt relieved that the body was found. At the very least, thanks to the efforts of members of the National Search Brigade, we knew what had happened to him.

Mexico is a society that has been taught to keep moving, not to remember. Yet some of us continue to resist, each in our own way: defending our own territories against the gangs, tracking down clandestine graves, reporting on the many stories of the shattered families and communities.

In 2022, some families of the missing renamed a traffic circle in Mexico City as the Glorieta de las y los Desaparecidos, or Roundabout of the Disappeared, in an attempt to turn the space, a dead tree at its center, into a memorial. In response, the government fenced off the area with metal barricades, which the families then painted and covered with the faces of their missing loved ones. The roundabout stands today as a constant reminder that the missing existed.

We need to reclaim what the current of violence has dragged away from us, however far we must look for it.

Sometimes, I am convinced that being dead is easier than having to live with the pain that people touched by violence bear — whether they were the victims, witnesses or perpetrators themselves. Every time I see someone digging in jungles and vacant lots in the hope of finding their children, and closure, I think how violence has turned them into the harvesters of Mexico: They glean pain and death. What else can a country reap when all it sows are corpses?

Manuel Bayo Gisbert is a Mexican photographer. Since July 2020, he has worked in 10 states of Mexico, photographing and documenting more than 200 families affected by violence.

(NY Times)

SHOWING OFF

by Laleh Khalili

According to a gushing photo-essay published in Life magazine in 1969, Prince Karim Aga Khan was an “outrageously wealthy young man, written off by many as a mere playboy,” who had proved his critics wrong with a display of business acumen – a vast real-estate venture in Sardinia. Sailing across the Mediterranean on one of his yachts, the Aga Khan had fallen in love with its wind-eroded granite shorelines, pink sandy coves and velvety green waters. He and a few investor friends bought 38 miles of coast and 13,000 hectares of land from the daughters of peasants in the area (the sons inherited the more fertile inland plots), hired five architects and built a resort town, Porto Cervo, more easily reached by sea than by road. They called it Costa Smeralda, or the Emerald Coast.

The first building erected in the town of Porto Cervo was the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda, which later moved to a marina behind a purpose-built breakwater. The Aga Khan, now 87, is still president of the board and oversees annual regattas at the yacht club sponsored by Rolex, Armani and other luxury brands. He owns several superyachts himself, all named after his favorite racehorses. 

The pride of the fleet is Alamshar, which is estimated to have cost $250 million to build. Powered by six gas turbine engines, it was intended to have a top speed of 65 knots, though the tabloids have relished the fact that engineering difficulties led to its being capped at “only” 45 knots – which is still twice as fast as commercial freighters. The Aga Khan’s yachts are moored discreetly on various continents and are much featured in yachting magazines, often with the name of their owner omitted. Information about ownership can, however, be found in the pages of Tatler or on the message boards of Ismaili Muslims unhappy about their tithes being used to pay for the extravagant lifestyle of a man who is both their religious imam and the descendant of an aristocrat ennobled by both the Iranian and British monarchies.

The Aga Khan favors motor yachts, but another board member of the yacht club in Sardinia, a Sicilian lawyer by the name of Salvatore Trifirò, owns a glorious 33-meter sailing yacht called Ribelle (this might no longer be the case: the yacht was listed for sale last August at $18,000,000). Its carbon fiber and titanium hull was designed in the UK and built in a Dutch shipyard (Vitters), with a teak and copper interior styled in Paris. Intended to be equally suited to cruising and racing, it won the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup regatta, along with multiple awards for both interior and exterior design. Unusually, photographs of it abound online. Most superyacht owners aren’t keen on giving photographers access to their living quarters, so we have to rely on snapshots of sweeping staircases, Louis XV furniture and marble fittings. Multibillionaires don’t tend to have great taste.

In a half-facetious account of social class in the United States in the early Reagan era, Paul Fussell – better known for his cultural histories of the First and Second World Wars – mapped yacht ownership onto position on the social ladder. “Because it’s the most expensive, yachting beats all other recreations as a theater for upper-status exhibition. But certain inviolable principles apply. Sail is still far superior to power, partly because you can’t do it simply by turning an ignition key and steering – you have to be sort of to the manner [sic] born.” For boats to be considered yachts, Fussell thought they should be at least 35 feet (or ten meters) long, and built in traditional fashion with wooden hulls and canvas sails.

Fussell wouldn’t have known what to make of the Aga Khan. He is firmly ensconced in the upper reaches of British aristocracy, but when it comes to yachts, he’s only interested in speed. The ten biggest yachts in the world are all motor yachts, all of them owned by Gulf royals or Russian oligarchs. In the Euro-snob stakes, both these groups are parvenus, so perhaps there is something to Fussell’s interpretation of sail as a signifier of true class.

The very biggest of these yachts, Azzam, commissioned in 2009 for more than half a billion dollars by the then president of the UAE, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, is 180 meters long. That’s as long as the Gherkin skyscraper in London is tall, and longer than a Royal Navy destroyer. 

The owners of these behemoths compete to fit them out with the most fantastical amenities. In addition to the de rigueur cinema, swimming pool and gym, Azzam has a “golf training room.” The late Omani sultan’s 155-meter Al Said has a concert hall with room for a 50-piece orchestra. Sheikh Muhammad al-Maktoum’s eponymous Dubai (162 meters) accommodates a disco and a squash court. At 134 meters, Serene, the yacht owned by the Saudi enfant terrible, Mohammed bin Salman, is only the 24th largest in the world, but like Dilbar, owned by the Uzbek-Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov, it has two helipads. It also has a room where snow machines produce four inches of the white stuff on demand. It’s not clear what you’re supposed to do with such a room. (Bin Salman is reported to have kept Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi on the yacht while he was deciding what to do with it.)

Dilbar is among dozens of multimillion-pound yachts owned by Russian plutocrats loyal to Vladimir Putin that were targeted by the US Justice Department’s KleptoCapture task force, formed in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A great many of these Russian billionaires had wined and dined European and American leaders and officials. Peter Mandelson, then the EU trade commissioner, and George Osborne, the future chancellor, spent some time on the aluminum mogul Oleg Deripaska’s yacht Queen K off the coast of Corfu in 2008. Queen K, later renamed Clio and now renamed Altair, was in the Maldives when the sanctions arrangements began, and is currently safely harbored off the Turkish coast, where the US authorities can’t touch it. Roman Abramovich, who was forced to sell the Chelsea Football Club after the war began, still owns the $600 million Eclipse, once the largest yacht in the world, also now safe in Marmaris. Deripaska’s former associate Len Blavatnik – who has a department at Oxford named after him and was knighted in 2017 – has recently upgraded from the $80 million Odessa II to the $350 million Shackleton. Shackleton is also safe – since, as Blavatnik’s representatives point out, he is both a British and a US citizen and so can’t be subject to sanctions, however he made his money.

The US did succeed in seizing superyachts owned by a number of Russian oligarchs, including Andrey Melnichenko, Andrey Guryev, Igor Sechin and Viktor Vekselberg. Many were stripped of their registry by the countries whose flag they fly – usually a Caribbean island with lax tax and regulatory regimes. 

Other Russians who appeared on the sanctions list, like Deripaska, succeeded in moving their boats to friendlier shores. Seychelles, the Maldives and Dubai have all become safe havens for yachts designated by the US as “blocked property’. This means that they can’t use US-owned maintenance businesses, employ US crews or conduct their business in dollars.

Impounding superyachts has caused the US some headaches. In February, Reuters reported that the Amadea, a seized yacht allegedly belonging to Suleiman Kerimov, owner of Russia’s biggest gold-mining company, Polyus, costs $7 million a year to maintain. The Justice Department’s plan to auction it off is being challenged in the courts by Eduard Khudainatov, ex-CEO of Rosneft and not on the sanctions list, who claims that he in fact owns the boat. The Italian media have suggested that Khudainatov may technically also be the owner of the 140-meter, $700 million Scheherazade, impounded in May 2022 by port authorities in Tuscany. Scheherazade is also sometimes referred to as “Putin’s boat’, or (according to the FBI) as “linked to Putin” – the assumption being that Khudainatov or whoever has his name on its papers is a “straw owner.” When reporters from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty recently tried to film the yacht up close, the crew, still on board, sent a surveillance drone after them. The legal status of Amadea and Scheherazade is difficult to ascertain, thanks to the complex offshore shell companies that hide beneficial ownership. In other words, the offshore corporate registration system encouraged by global capital is doing what it was designed to do: protecting the assets of billionaires.

The number and size of yachts is a crude measure of inequality in the world. Even now, 24% of the world’s superyachts – defined as a pleasure craft more than 30 meters long – are owned by citizens of the United States. The more money the owner has, the more likely they are to get authorities to do their bidding. In his book, Superyachts, Grégory Salle tells the story that the Labour mayor of Rotterdam contemplated partially disassembling the historic De Hef bridge to allow Jeff Bezos’s $500 million sailing yacht Koru to travel from an upstream shipyard out to sea. Only the public outcry put a stop to the plan. Instead, the 127-meter boat was carried on a barge from Zwijndrecht to just downstream of the bridge, where the masts, the tallest of which is estimated to be 85 meters high, were stepped (installed into the hull). The sails are so vast that there was no room for a helipad. So, like a number of other large sailing yachts, Koru has a support vessel, the 75-meter Abeona, which has its own helipad and helicopter hangar, and can accommodate 45 crew members and guests. Having a shadow vessel also means you have, in the words of Boat International, “the world’s largest floating toybox.” The support vessel follows Koru around the world carrying jet skis, speedboats, waterslides, mini-submarines and other items of maritime entertainment, while the sailing yacht – as Fussell recommended – maintains a pristine pretence of sporting prowess.

Superyacht sales increased by 46% in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, as the very rich looked to escape lockdown at sea. Two years ago the New York Times reported that shipyards were “struggling to keep up: the order book for superyachts is full until 2025” – you would now be looking at a date closer to the end of the decade. Most of the American plutocrats who own yachts accumulated their billions in familiar business sectors: logistics, finance, real estate, technology, entertainment and pharmaceuticals. Bezos is the king of logistics and technology; the queen of logistics, the Walmart heiress Ann Walton, owns the largest US-built motor yacht since the 1930s, Aquila. 

Yacht-owners on the East Coast include hedge fund managers and real estate tycoons and berth their boats in Miami, close to the Caribbean yachting destinations where many also discreetly own private islands. On the West Coast, the yacht-owning Hollywood moguls David Geffen and Steven Spielberg are joined by tech billionaires including Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Alphabet’s Sergey Brin and his former colleague Eric Schmidt. Microsoft’s Paul Allen owned one, as does Charles Simonyi. The tech-bros have grown their businesses courtesy of handsome government contracts and lavish state subsidies, so their superyachts are paid for not just by the labor of those who work in the sector, but also by the average taxpayer.

Billionaires have always been keen to escape from the hoi polloi: to heavily securitized compounds, private islands, exclusive ranches and hunting grounds, ski chalets and beach houses, offshore havens, on private jets or superyachts. As long ago as 1919, Nikolai Bukharin diagnosed this tendency as caused by “the fear of impending social catastrophes.” Peter Thiel of Palantir provided seed capital for the Seasteading Institute, founded by Milton Friedman’s grandson, which aims to establish seaborne “communities” in international waters, outside the reach of national laws. The institute’s tagline is “opening humanity’s next frontier.” Billionaires experiment with escaping from regulation, taxes and scrutiny, but also from the everyday – yachts are only the beginning. 

Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to colonize Mars, though, as with much that Musk promises, this may largely be bluster intended to bilk investors and treasuries of money. In July 2021 two pilots flew Richard Branson and a few of his employees on a Virgin Galactic spacecraft towards the Kármán Line, considered to be the edge of space. Virgin Galactic plans to sell seats on its spacecraft for $450,000. A few days after Branson’s trip, Bezos flew ten miles higher on a rocket launched by his commercial space travel company, Blue Origin. Accompanying him was the teenage son of the head of a Dutch private equity fund, who paid millions for the seat.

The other playground is deep under the ocean. Last year, Stockton Rush took his submersible Titan down to the wreck of the Titanic, more than two miles below the surface of the North Atlantic. Rush was practically American aristocracy, with two ancestors who had signed the Declaration of Independence and a grandfather who had been a director of Standard Oil of California when it hit oil in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia in the 1930s. Rush founded his company OceanGate to take the super-rich on underwater adventures, often to shipwrecks: the Titanic was the big prize. This time, the submersible, which had suffered material fatigue at its seams, imploded. Among the final voyagers, along with Rush, was one of Pakistan’s richest men and his 19-year-old son.

At the height of the Gilded Age, Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class described expensive sports – epitomes of conspicuous consumption – as “activities deliberately entered upon with a view to gaining repute for prowess.” Sports with high capital outlays educate sportsmen with “arrested spiritual development” in the virtues of economic value. Veblen names bullfighting, shooting and yachting as models for capitalist conquest, based as they are on the competitive planting of flags. One can imagine nerdy crypto billionaires reveling in the unfamiliar machismo their yachts allow them to display. But yachting as a metaphysics of affluence is also much more mundane. These sleek machines still produce emissions and rubbish. And lives below deck mirror the class politics of the much less glamorous service industry on land.

Very few crew members are employed directly by the yacht owners whose boats they maintain. Often only the yacht’s captain is a long-term employee of the billionaire, a bit like an estate manager at sea. The other crew members face short contracts and precarious employment without any benefits. Since the yachts winter in the Caribbean and summer in the Mediterranean, recruitment agencies hire people to sail the boats across the Atlantic while the owners fly over in their private jets. Just as on a cruise ship, the majority of crew members aren’t in charge of navigation or maintenance but are hospitality workers, preparing and serving food, dispensing massages, spa treatments and entertainment, cleaning and housekeeping. The old/new money divide – or the European/American chasm – that distinguishes types of owners has its own effect on the crew. The New York Times quoted a former yachtie on the difference: “The Europeans don’t know your name. You’re just there to serve them. Americans want to be your friend, they want to know where you went to college and they want to buy you drinks. Then they want you to work 18 hours a day and tend to their six kids.’

A hundred years ago, D.H. Lawrence called the stretch of land that runs along the eastern coast of Sardinia “forsaken, forgotten, not included.” The difference between the extravagant lives of the yachting class and the people who serve them in the hotels, restaurants and clubs of Porto Cervo – and Korčula and Valletta and Eleuthera and Dubai and Mustique and St. Barts and Keppel Bay – remains stark. In a 1964 interview with Sports Illustrated, the Aga Khan saw Porto Cervo as a place of escape: “Eventually Porto Cervo will be one of the finest ports in the world, and civilized, too. I mean, nobody will throw tomatoes at the boats, anchor lines won’t get tangled and a yachtsman will not feel he is an animal in a zoo.” But perhaps Derek Walcott’s description of these places is more apt: “new plantations/by the sea; a slavery without chains, with no blood spilt –/ just chain-link fences and signs, the new degradations.”

(London Review of Books)