Mendocino County Today: Friday 5/17/24

Cooling | Palace Corner | Filed PRA | Palace Intrigue | Patti Guarachi | Remembering Carolyn | AVUSD News | Agenda Notes | Antle/Angle | Highway Trim | Public Health | BHAB Meeting | Ed Notes | Fog Bank | Chapman Arraigned | Sweet Irony | Wanda Lee Brewer | Cyber AVA | Garden Beds | Truckin' | Garden Walks | Peg Leg | Book Sale | Beacon Light | Local Hermits | Soda Fountain | Yesterday's Catch | Little Leaguers | Social Security | iAddict | Delta Tunnel | Cruel World | Helping Others | Jimi Tats | Esther Shorts | Lunch Exam | Rest Disparity | Never Worked | NYC Past | Picasso 1955 | Some Attention | Struck Out | Catholic Pride | Debate Requests | Operation Rafah | William Burroughs | Dehumanizing Palestinians | Prairie Sky

TEMPERATURES WILL CONTINUE TO COOL into the weekend with gusty north wind pushing onshore each afternoon. Coastal stratus and fog will most likely weaken into the weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): The stratus quo continues with a foggy 50F this Friday morning on the coast. I see less fog & more sun in the forecast starting on Sunday. We'll see?

MIKE GENIELLA: On behalf of local news media, I have taken the liberty of formally filing a Public Records Act request with Sage Sangiacomo and Shannon Riley today after being informed they had no intention of voluntarily providing a copy.

“I ask again what government code provision you are using to delay the release of this document. What benefit is it to the City of Ukiah to choose this course of action regarding a high-profile subject of community interest? You repeatedly claim it is a private property matter, but when you issued the public safety order last November, it became a significant public issue. Please respond accordingly.”

TOM MCFADDEN: Why in the world did the Ukiah City Council decide NOT to include discussion of the Palace on the agenda? Do they think that public interest in the Palace, or even the Palace itself will go away if they do not talk about it? Maybe they forgot that they had drawn a line in the sand?

Maybe they have an agenda that they are not disclosing to the public.

PATTI GUARACHI

Patrice Guarachi, lovingly known as Patti, peacefully passed away on January 1, 2024, after a 2-1/2 year battle with an insidious disease while at home in Des Moines, Washington.

She was born on January 14, 1952, in San Gabriel, California to William and June Ahrens. Patti was preceded in death by her parents and her brother, Wayne Ahrens of Anderson Valley. Also a niece, Erika Ann Ahrens, who died tragically in a car accident at a young age. Patti is survived by her son, Marcel Guarachi, and her grandchildren, Julian and Kiana Norman-Guarachi, all residing in Fort Bragg, California. She is also survived by her loving, dedicated husband, Parker Jones, of Des Moines, Washington. And her sister, Cynthia Hollinger, of Anderson Valley.

She had quite a few friends in Anderson Valley and Fort Bragg. Everyone who knew her in Mendocino County loved her.

Growing up in California, Patti had a deep appreciation for art, music and creativity. She attended Hillsdale High School in San Mateo and graduated Woodside High School in Woodside, California. Patti continued her education at Ca¤ada College in Redwood City, where she studied painting and design. She further honed her artistic skills at the College of the Redwoods in Fort Bragg. She enjoyed playing piano, accordion and ukelele, both at home, and with The Bettys on the North Coast of California. (Betty Will, Betty Can’t, and Betty Won’t)

Patti had a fulfilling career as a Special Education Teacher for Mendocino County Schools. Her dedication to her students and passion for teaching left a lasting impact on the community. Additionally, she pursued her artistic endeavors, becoming a renowned local artist in Mendocino and Fort Bragg.

As an artist, Patti drew inspiration from the natural beauty of Northern California. The ocean’s splendor and the majestic redwood trees with creatures therein captured her heart. Her artwork reflected her love for vibrant colors and a touch of humor. Patti’s talent and creativity shone through her various mediums, including murals, signs, paintings, music and more. Beyond her professional pursuits, Patti cherished her role as a mother and grandmother. She adored spending time with her family, creating lasting memories and sharing her artistic passion with them.

A Celebration of Life will be planned for later this spring to honor Patti’s remarkable life and the joy she brought to those around her. In memory of Patti Guarachi, may her artistic spirit continue to inspire and bring happiness to all who encounter her work.

THE ANDERSON VALLEY SENIOR CENTER would like to send out our condolences to the entire Wellington family regarding Carolyn's passing.

She was a such a pillar in the community and invaluable at the senior center for many years. She will be sorely missed. She is pictured here (left if you didn't have the privilege of knowing her) with Marti Titus and Sandra Knight at their retirement party last year.

We will be remembering Carolyn at lunch on June 4, 2024. Meat loaf is on the menu that day, one of her favorites. Please join us and share your favorite Carolyn story.

AV UNIFIED NEWS

Dear Anderson Valley Community,

This is an important message if your child is playing any sports or participating in the sport of cheer for the coming year:

If it has been close to a year or the sports physical is due before or during the Fall sports season, please schedule the exam with the clinic or your doctor in the summer.

Students that do not have a current sports physical may not practice or play.

Appointments in the Fall are often hard to get. Please call your clinic now to make an appointment for the summer!

We want our kids to play, but they must have a current physical on file. Help them be ready by scheduling your appointment!

Sincerely yours,

Louise Simson, Superintendent

Anderson Valley Unified School District

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AV HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS AWARDS CEREMONY

All Sports, all seasons. Monday, 6pm at the Panther Gym in Boonville.

ANOTHER AG COMMISSIONER

Item 4b on next Tuesday’s Supervisors Agenda:

“Discussion and Possible Action Including Appointment of and Approval of Employment Agreement Between the County of Mendocino and Angela Godwin to Serve as Mendocino County Agricultural Commissioner/Sealer of Weights and Measures for the Term of June 23, 2024, through June 22, 2028, with Compensation for the Period Commencing June 23, 2024, with Annual Total Compensation of $258,516.96”

Ms. Godwin was the Assistant Ag Commissioner in Ventura County.

Angela Godwin on the road to Santa Barbara, Calif. for a weekend with the ladies at Babes Ride Out.

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THE TWICE WITHDRAWN proposed appointment of CEO Darcie Antle’s boyfriend Dr. Theron Chan as County Health Officer is back on Tuesday’s agenda. Just last week Supervisor Mulheren highlighted this opening as a wonderful job opportunity that was accepting applications for the vacancy. Now here’s Dr. Chan on the agenda again. Perhaps Dr. Chan is being considered for only four months as Interim Health Officer pending a longer-term appointment.

Item 4d) “Discussion and Possible Action Including Approval of Agreement with Theron Chan, M.D. in the Amount of $45,000, to Provide Medical Oversight, Direction, and Guidance for the Public Health Department as the Interim County Health Officer, Effective Upon Signature through July 31, 2024”

According to the attached contract Dr, Chan would be paid $107.17 per hour for up to 20 hours per week which translates to a little over $2100 per week, which translates to $45,000 / $2100 or around 21 weeks of service, or around four months. That’s an annual rate of around $135k/year.

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SURPRISINGLY (or is it?) there’s nothing about the County budget on next Tuesday’s agenda despite the deadline for finishing and approving the budget being due next month.

(Mark Scaramella)

A READER WRITES:

Darcie Antle began her Mendocino work life as a receptionist. Then Adventist Health financial person. Wine bar owner. She lacks the qualifications to be CEO, and she is abusing her position by hiring toadies and friends, surrounding herself with sycophants, and getting rid of anyone who questions her. For example, her buddy Angle Slater was hired as Extra Help during COVID. Slater is a nurse, but had zero experience in government or Public Health, yet she suddenly turns up in a position of authority in Public Health. Slater admitted to everyone that she had no prior experience, yet she reports directly to the CEO which is very unusual. Why? Darcie is protecting her, despite several examples of Angle’s behavior that would have gotten any other employee marched out the door. Promoting her buddy Madeline Cline at work. Asking employees to sign a “loyality oath” so Jenine Miller could get a promotion and a raise. Employees are afraid to speak out, because they fear retaliation and need the job.

TWO KINDS OF HEALTH

Editor,

The Board of Supervisors is debating once again whether to combine Public Health and Behavioral Health into one department. Having a “Health Department” may make sense in our small community and could save money. But as things stand now, Behavioral Health staff are running Public Health, despite the fact that they have no expertise or knowledge of how a Public Health department should function.

Let’s examine what each department does.

Behavioral Health and Recovery Services (BHRS) in Mendocino County mainly acts as a pass-through for dollars that are given to local contractors, such as Redwood Community Services. These contractors are the entity that provides services for mental health treatment. BHRS monitors some grant funding such as Measure B, and it does Medi-Cal audits. BHRS does do some court-ordered substance abuse treatment, but the program is very small. BHRS took over the Safe Rx program that was formerly in Public Health where it originated, and the funding that went with it. The Safe Rx program passes out and encourages the use of Narcan for overdoses and encourages people to lock up prescription narcotics. BHRS is focused on treatment for mental health and substance abuse issues. Treatment, and not prevention.

Public Health has a completely different focus. Public Health encompasses the entirety of human health – including the social determinants of health, such as poverty, adequate housing, access to health care, safe schools, a healthy environment, in short everything a human being needs to be healthy. The job of a good Public Health department is to go “upstream,” improve the lives of people and put BHRS and Social Services out of business! This umbrella includes mental health. The implementation of Public Health functions are guided by scientific principles that are taught to students of Public Health.

Functions of Public Health include:

• Systematically collecting data about the population, monitoring their health and making information available about the community’s health;
• Identifying and addressing major risk factors and their causes, and addressing health inequities;
• Occupational safety;
• Strong engagement with the political process to stimulate policy development, agenda setting, decision making, implementation and evaluation;
• Mobilizing and leveraging community partnerships to promote public health;
• Making sure sustained funding is available to ensure public health services are available for the next health threat;
• Improving and innovating public health functions through ongoing evaluation, research and continuous quality improvement;
• Communicating effectively, Informing and educating the public about the health needs;
• Enabling equitable access to health services.

Our Mendocino County Public Health does not run hospitals like some larger counties do. Public Health does provide some treatment modalities, for example, treating tuberculous patients. They run vaccine clinics at times. Public Health Nursing provides home visiting for families at risk for child abuse or neglect. It provides education and information about oral health, tobacco use, and nutrition. The Women’s Infant’s and Children’s (WIC) program and Environmental Health are also a part of Public Health. Public Health also monitors children in foster care and children with special needs.

The decision to create a “Health Department” is fine and may be appropriate for our county. But to have BHRS overseeing Public Health is not appropriate. BHRS staff are not trained in the science of Public Health modalities or its functions. Trying to force BHRS policies and procedures on Public Health department functioning is not appropriate and is counter-productive to the functioning of the Public Health department. Combining the two departments may be an okay idea, but the tail should not wag the dog. BHRS should be under Public Health, and not the other way around. There may be someone who could manage both departments, but honestly, it is not Jenine Miller and her staff. They lack the training and knowledge necessary to fulfill the core functions of a Public Health department.

I urge the Supervisors to look for someone who has the qualifications to oversee both departments, OR to resist the temptation to act suddenly without a real plan.

I have served in government for over 30 years, and was the Mendocino County Senior Public Health Analyst (acting as the Epidemiologist) for 8 years. I know what I’m talking about.

Julie Beardsley, MPH

Ukiah

ED NOTES

LAST TIME I CHECKED, Ukiah City Manager Sage Sangiacomo was raking in $246,000 in salary and benefits. He also has Shannon Riley as an assistant at something like $160,000. Sangiacomo sends Riley out on those rare occasions when someone from the pesky public asks a question. This management team's work product? A small town of 16,000 people that looks like a back street in a semi-abandoned industrial area of L.A.

WILLITS, FORT BRAGG, tiny Point Arena, Mendocino County's other incorporated towns, have their probs, but they are well-managed with effective councils and city managers, all of whom regularly discuss the state of their towns and how to improve their civic functioning.

NOT UKIAH. Its management takes more public money relative to its size while the town's public areas look like open air drug and alcohol festivals, and what other town could screw-up an offer from a person with the means and the ability to re-birth the Palace Hotel as a civic jewel? And continue to screw up the Palace while keeping the present status of the property hidden from the public?

UKIAH'S OTHER ARCHITECTURAL TRIUMPH is its silent approval of a new County Courthouse three long blocks east of the present County Courthouse.

THIS LURKING FIASCO has its origins in the mysterious acquisition of the railroad property near the foot of West Perkins by the Democratic Party of the Northcoast, former congressman Doug Bosco proprietor. It pains me to say it because I liked the guy, the late Dave Nelson was the point man for the Ukiah end of this murkey deal, with an assist from local pol, John McCowen.

THE NEW COUNTY COURTHOUSE is designed to house only the judges and their gofers, the whole slo-mo fiasco unchallenged by Ukiah, although it will deal yet another blow to what's left of downtown Ukiah.

THERE IS no planning for the County Courthouse transition, no planning for the present County Courthouse when it's mostly abandoned except, har de har, for the DA's office, a nest of Magas, while the judges' new courthouse rises adjacent to Perkins and 101, already a hellish, unplanned nexus of service stations and fast food emporiums.

MIKE GENIELLA has had to file a freedom of information act request to find out what is happening with the Palace Hotel, an ongoing fiasco Sangiacomo has presided over his entire tenure in office — we won't mention the millions paid out to citizens abused by the Ukiah Police Department — all the while Sangiacomo is smiled upon and given regular raises by a series of city councils staffed by irresponsible people, one of whom has been elevated to the board of supervisors where she has contributed mightily to screwing up the entire county.

SANGIACOMO should be sent down the road. He's probably a millionaire off the saps of Ukiah who don't demand that the government they pay mightily for can't make their town presentable, and safe from the ever increasing number of free-range psychotics upon whom the county's non-profit gentry feeds on, which isn't exactly the City of Ukiah's fault but one would think Sangiacomo and his captive city council might at least occasionally ask, "What the hell?"

EX-49ER AVOIDS CHARGES IN ATTEMPTED LEGGETT ROBBERY, Accomplice Charged

by Matt LaFever

Gregory Mark Cox, the former San Francisco 49er arrested in connection with an alleged bungled robbery and attempted murder in Leggett, will not be criminally charged, a spokesperson for the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department confirmed. 

Earlier, MCSO alleged that on Friday, May 10, 2024, Cox and a woman named Amanda Chapman attempted a robbery on a property near Leggett. Chapman allegedly brandished a gun at the homeowner in Leggett during the attempted robbery. When the homeowner tried to disarm her, she fired the gun, injuring his hand. The pair were subsequently apprehended in Willits the next morning after being traced to a downtown residence by authorities. Both Cox and Chapman were booked into the Mendocino County jail on Saturday, May 11, 2024. 

Their paths diverged on Tuesday, May 14, 2024, when the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office formally filed a criminal complaint against Chapman while they declined to charge Cox allowing him to walk free that day. 

Chapman was arraigned on Wednesday, May 15, 2024, in front of Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Patrick Pekin. She stands accused of felony attempted second-degree robbery with an enhancement because of her alleged discharge of a Jimenz Arms 9mm pistol and subsequent injury. She also faces a second felony of assault with a semi-automatic firearm also enhanced because of her use of a firearm.

The day after we published our story on Cox’s life as a former NFL player, we were contacted by a family member who informed us he had been released and charges had not been filed. 

This was confirmed by Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Captain Quincy Cromer who said there was “no criminal filing on Cox by the District Attorney and he was released from custody on 5/14/2024.”

Hoping to understand why they declined to file charges against Cox, we reached out to the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office via email. We have not heard back as of publication. 

Cox’s family member is making arrangements for us to interview him in the coming days about the recent incident and his experience in the Mendocino County justice system. 

(mendofever.com)

LAKE COUNTY SKELETAL REMAINS IDENTIFIED

On September 18, 1979, a couple was hunting in the area of Hwy 175 between the Lake and Mendocino county lines when they stumbled upon skeletal remains.

Deputy Powers, who is currently still employed and working on a part-time basis for the Sheriff’s Office, responded to the area and began a homicide investigation.

Unfortunately, the case went cold, and the skeletal remains could not be identified.

Throughout the years, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) followed up with the California Department of Justice (CA DOJ) to use emerging technology to identify this Jane Doe.

In March 2023, a representative from the CA DOJ suggested that Sgt. Frace, the coroner sergeant, contact a private DNA lab, Othram, to find out if their state-of-the-art procedures could help identify Jane Doe.

In January 2024, a potential match for a living relative of the decedent was identified. Sgt. Frace was able to contact this individual and gather information; however, he was still unable to make a positive identification.

In March 2024, a second match was found, and Sgt. Frace was also able to contact this living relative. During this interview, the relative told Sgt. Frace that their grandmother had two sisters, one of whom disappeared in the 1970s. Using information from the first interview and the new details from the second, Sgt. Frace was able to find additional information about other possible living relatives.

After multiple interviews and additional DNA testing, in April 2024, it was determined that Jane Doe was Wanda Lee Brewer from Carson, California.

This investigation is still ongoing. With the new information about the victim's identity, detectives are hoping to find new leads. This is an old, cold case; however, anyone with information is asked to come forward. Please reach out to Sgt. Mora at Jeffrey.mora@lakecountyca.gov

A READER WRITES: Current cyber AVA has the only sane, rational, accurate, historically relevant analysis of the Israeli/Palestinian tragedy that's worsening by the day. How do you 'splain that?

RAISED AND IN-GROUND BEDS AVAILABLE AT THE AV COMMUNITY GARDEN. There are five garden beds available now: 2 raised beds (5' X 20') and 3 in-ground beds (5' X 20'). Two of the in-ground beds are contiguous and can be combined into one 10' X 20' bed. Compost and irrigation are provided. There is a small annual fee.

The garden is located on Hwy 128 between the AV Elder Home and the Senior Center.

If interested, please contact Jill at avehcommunitygarden@gmail.com.

COAST BOTANICAL GARDENS

Join us this Saturday, May 18 at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens to explore, observe, and engage in our unique garden ecosystem. We will have 3 guided walks (free with admission) in the morning and 3 in the afternoon! Space is filling up quickly so register ASAP!

Mushrooms, Lichen, and More with special guest Damon Tighe, Educator, Naturalist with Mycology focus, Photographer, and top 5 contributor on iNaturalist.org out of 2+ million users worldwide!

From Natural Landscapes to Gardenscapes with Natasha Lekach

Planting for Pollinators with Mishele Stettenbenz

Birdwatching with David Jensen

Native Plants with Alison Gardner

All walks are free with regular Gardens admission and just plain free for members. Register for walks in the morning from 10AM - 12PM, the afternoon session 1PM - 3PM, or both! Limited availability, advanced registration is required.

There will be many ways for you to participate as a MCBG Naturalist that day. In addition to the guided walks, there will be tutorials on how to use iNaturalist and practice your skills as a citizen scientist and info tables featuring our leading local ecological organizations – Fort Bragg Garden Club, GrassRoots Institute of Mendocino County, Mendocino Coast Audubon Society, Noyo Center for Marine Science, Pacific Environmental Education Center, Xa Kako Dile.

This will be a day for everybody to enjoy Nature’s wonders. Learn more at gardenbythesea.org

BOOK SALE AT THE KELLEY HOUSE

by Katy Tahja

Save the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend for a visit to the Historic Book Sale at the Kelley House Museum in Mendocino. From 10:00 am to 3:00 pm on May 26th a great display of books will be available on the east porch. The museum will offer beautiful art and history books received as a donation, plus a number of century-old books we have been given.

Leather-bound volumes on Mexico’s history written by H. Bancroft in the 1880s are among the treasures. For California history fans, we have two large volumes containing histories of all the coastal counties in California in 1904. In addition to the histories, there are biographical items on prominent local citizens in each county with an etching of their images. Also not to be missed on the history table is the century-old three-volume chronicle of freemasonry.

People who enjoy food will gravitate toward the set of Culinary Arts Institute’s “cookbooklets.” Twenty cover everything from anchovies to zucchini. If something flew in the sky, walked on earth, swam in the sea, or grew from dirt, there is a recipe for how to cook it. Can’t wait for someone to make Prune Ice Cream!

Love architecture? A slipcovered two-volume set on the plan of St. Gall from the University of California Press scrupulously reproduces the medieval architectural drawing of a monastic compound in Switzerland dating from 820–830 CE. It depicts an entire Benedictine monastic compound, including church, houses, stables, kitchens, workshops, brewery, infirmary, and a special building for bloodletting. The complex was meant to house about 110 monks, 115 lay visitors, and 150 craftsmen and agricultural workers. Though it was never built, the original drawings survived for 12 centuries.

Also on offer at the sale will be beautiful editions of "The Book of Kells", the "Tres Riches Heures du Duke de Barry" first printed in 1410, volumes of Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings, and a volume on the history of stained glass.

"Orbit" contains photos taken from space by NASA astronauts and published by National Geographic. Donated binders of “First Day Covers” will interest readers of postmarks and stamp collectors. The focus of the sale is history, biography, fine arts, travel, philosophy, nature, and cooking. Visitors will not find much fiction, but since I am a retired librarian, I couldn’t help slipping in some historical fiction.

If you have books in the categories mentioned above that you would like to donate, it’s not too late. To do that, or for more information, please contact Katy Tahja at 707-937-5854 or ktahja@mcn.org

R.D. BEACON

Cocktail lounge business has been a bit slow, some are saying because I have a cropped like on the ranch's cattle guard, those might be the people that are not interested in freedom of speech, although there are no political signs as such in the bar, quite yet, I've had people come to me and actually say they don't care, while I've had a few locals, complain about the flag, but most of these people not only were not born in elk, but aren't even natives of California, transplants the, come into the state, for the freebies that our government is offered, maybe people are slowing down, on their alcohol consumption, while accounting Mendocino, is overflowing with people, and many of the B&Bs, and little inn, seem to be doing well many of them, give away free alcohol with the room, they just added in the charges ultimately you pay, many of them will not recommend, to their customers, to go out anywhere and drink, hoping that I will get desperate enough, to sell off my liquor license, not going to happen, I have had an ongoing, conversation, with somebody in the Valley, they would pay the $2 million, the liquor license and inventory, which would mean, if I were tired the license would leave the coast, never to return, which would leave the town of elk, high and dry, but I'm not planning for retirement anytime soon, and more than likely, many of these businesses in the village, will disappear into the dust, because of the high prices, the hotel owners, on the Mendocino Coast failed to realize, that being in the hotel business, should be, to serve families as well as, individuals, something that's not happening now, that cost-effectively no one can afford, to stay on the coast if you're a big family, especially if you have a large dog or other pet, the bulk of the hotel, and visitor services businesses, are run by people not from, Mendocino County, and/or even California, let alone being a citizen of the United States, there is only one hotel facility, on the coast near the town a little river, it is family-owned, and even they have at, outside influence raising prices, and trimming down, the portions of food, in the restaurant the dynamics, of the industry has changed, not for the better, many outside influences, have been buying up local restaurants, only to, become a large corporate, energy, but the research has fallen short, of their expectation of business, where up here on the Hill year in and year out, it pretty well stays the same, we sell alcohol, no food, although we have entertained the idea, of having someone come in, with a food truck, and sell food in the parking lot, for customers to enjoy, for the two days a week we are open, and might even be open a third day, if it went well, but it is currently only in planning stages, we are looking for feedback, or encouragement at least, very few places stand the test, of time, but, in comparison to the prices for drinks at the city, we are relatively, more cost-effective, with a much better view, than any place in Mendocino County.

ANYONE HEARD of the Hendy Hermit? He lived on the edge of Hendy Woods State Park for about 18 years until his death in 1981 and his “hut” still remains in the park. The old wooden sign with newspapers clippings on it had to be removed for safety reasons. We have put a temporary sign there until we get a more permanent replacement. Hike the Hermit hut trail and learn more about him and check out the display at the visitor center when it opens this summer.

ERNIE BRANSCOMB COMMENTS: When I was a kid we would often see Henry Shaw, Fort Bragg’s Hermit. The story is that he wore skins, which maybe so, but when I saw him he was always dressed in gunny sacks that appeared to be fashioned by himself. I always laughed at him because it seemed strange to see a man wearing a dress. He also had long hair. I guess he would fit in nicely today. To me, he looked like an old woman with a beard. I think he lived in one of the many abandoned buildings that were around there as the mill camp workers were able to afford better houses and abandoned their mill shacks.

LIFE ON THE NAVARRO

by Bill Kimberlin

The air still cuts and the wind is ringing every tree leaf in The Valley, but before you know it, we will all be back at our favorite swimming holes, looking for shade trees.

My favorite place to swim, as a kid, was what we called, the "Tie Chute". At one time, this was a place on the Navarro where railroad ties were skidded down a steep bank (or chute) to the river, and then floated out to the ocean.

It was really just a small natural pool of deep water next to a huge rock outcropping. This swimming hole was on my Aunt's Summer Resort and could be accessed by a foot path that ran right by an old Indian camp where we sometimes found arrow heads.

After swimming, in the late afternoon, we would race to "the hot sands" to warm up. This little patch of sand was slightly higher than the rest of the little beach, and for some reason, the rich white sand here became much warmer than the rest.

Our skinny wet bodies raced for this warm dune, in hope of smothering our shivers. Soon, we were dulled by the heat and barely able to move. But now an even more fundamental craving struck us: sodas.

How could we possibly obtain sodas down here on the beach? Except for the main house kitchen, the resort relied exclusively on ice chipped from blocks in a big wooden ice house that sat under a huge oak tree. A portable ice chest was unthinkable, a distant luxury unfamiliar to us.

It may not seem like much now, but this quandary grew in our minds to exaggerated proportions. Should we stay here in this heavenly place, half anesthetized by the hot sands, or leave for what we knew were the riches of an open soda fountain, filled with every imaginable treat?

There was case upon case of Coca Cola, root beer, cream soda, Squirt, and Orange Crush cooling in a huge commercial refrigerator up at the Resort, but that was ten minutes away, up a hot steep path. This had to be carefully considered.

There was also an ice cream refrigerator up there with six black lids. Each exposed a five gallon tub of vanilla, chocolate, rocky road, or strawberry (the only flavors we knew).

But it didn't end there. There were restaurant sized carafes of chocolate, raspberry, or strawberry syrup and a whole gallon jar of walnut halves with a grinding mill for making sundae toppings.

Then there was the three-stem milk shake machine. Scoop in all the ice cream the silver chalice would hold… add syrup and milk… mount your concoction… and grind to order.

All of this was free to us, and we considered it our birthright, the spoils of having a summer resort in the family.

After much deliberation, we always made the same decision, and headed up to the big resort kitchen to claim our prize. We almost never returned to the beach until the next day. Instinctively, we must have felt that these two great pleasures were not meant to be combined. Still, we always pondered what it might be like to have sodas, at the beach.

I still swim there from time to time, but that soda fountain? It's gone forever.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, May 16, 2024

FIDEL BARRALES, Ukiah. Concealed dirk-dagger, failure to appear, probation revocation.

JAMES BELDEN III, Ukiah. Controlled substance, failure to appear, probation revocation.

RONNIE COOPER, Richmond/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

TERANCE ESTEP, Caspar. Arson of property.

BENJAMIN HOFF, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon with great bodily injury.

MICHAEL LUCAS, Ukiah. County parole violation, resisting.

FREDERICK PEERY, Ukiah. DUI.

ROHAN PRASAD, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

SIXTO RAMOS-O’CONNELL, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, resisting.

CARLOS ROMERO-GUTIERREZ, American Canyon/Ukiah. DUI.

JACOB SHIPMAN, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

NORMAN WHITE, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

ROBERT WURSTER, Willits. DUI.

A SOCIAL SECURITY FIX

Editor:

One of the foundations of the postwar, middle-class American dream is a financially secure retirement. For most of us, this foundation is Social Security.

For some reason, the press pretty much parrots “the sky is falling, the sky is falling” Chicken Little screeches that Social Security will run out of money, or benefits will be cut to 83% in 2035. Fear creators claim Social Security is adding to the national debt. By law, it cannot do this.

Beginning in 1984, Social Security ran large surpluses that it loaned to the federal government and in return received interest-bearing treasury securities. In times of short-term deficits, Social Security redeemed these securities for cash, with the federal general fund paying back what it borrowed.

Current legislators don’t want to pay back this debt. Rather than high income earners paying their share of both income taxes and Social Security payroll taxes, wage earners fund lower taxes for the wealthy.

The simplest fix that wouldn’t hurt current or future Social Security recipients would be to raise the payroll tax cap from $168,600 to $400,000, as President Joe Biden has suggested.

We are idiots if we continue to let legislators get away with proposing policy that hurts, or will hurt, most Americans. The sky is not falling.

Jeffrey J. Olson

Clearlake Oaks

DWR ANALYSIS CLAIMS 'BENEFITS' OF DELTA TUNNEL WILL OUTWEIGH COSTS; CRITICS STRONGLY DISAGREE

by Dan Bacher

The Department of Water Resources (DWR) today released a controversial benefit-cost analysis for the Delta Conveyance Project, AKA Delta Tunnel, that claims the embattled project would create billions of dollars in benefits for California communities.

The Delta Conveyance Project (DCP) will cost a total of $20.1 billion for a single tunnel, according to the analysis. “For every $1 spent, $2.20 in benefits would be generated,” DWR said.

DWR cited “reliable water supplies, climate change adaptation, earthquake preparedness and improved water quality” among the “benefits.”

“The Delta Conveyance Project passes the benefit-cost test readily, with benefits that are more than double the cost,” said Dr. David Sunding, Emeritus Professor, UC Berkeley, who led the benefit-cost analysis, in a statement.

“The project enables ongoing demands to be satisfied and water supply reliability to be maintained,” he said, adding “the benefits clearly justify the costs.”

The analysis also claimed that as climate change and regulatory constraints cause water supplies to diminish over time, the “reliability of the State Water Project infrastructure is in jeopardy, putting 27 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland at risk,” DWR explained.

“Twenty-seven million people rely on these surface water supplies that support a $2.3 trillion economy in California.” said Karla Nemeth, Director of the California Department of Water Resources. “There is a very real cost to do nothing. It is vastly more efficient and economical to avoid declining supplies.

Delta Tunnel project critics weren’t impressed by DWR’s analysis.

Restore the Delta noted that with annual inflation costs for construction rising to 10.7% since 2020, costs will continue to rise significantly during the extended permitting period prior to DCP construction, “making the $20.1 billion figure obsolete before construction begins.”

“Moreover, the DCP would transport less water when compared to the previous California WaterFix twin tunnel project tunnel project that was projected to cost $16.7 billion. The DCP plan currently lacks signed agreements by water districts indicating their willingness to fund the project,” the group wrote.

“DWR’s release is nothing more than an elaborate public relations stunt,” said Restore the Delta’s Executive Director Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla in a statement. “ The benefit-costs analysis is one-sided and incomplete since it only looks at benefits and costs for State Water Project customers.”

“DWR must also analyze and include the impacts to California tribes, Delta communities and economies, the fishing community, and environmental and public safety concerns. Instead of foisting the costs of this boondoggle project onto Californians, the state should invest in sustainable water solutions that promise to restore the Delta ecosystem, not destroy it,” she stated.

For more expert views of the benefit-cost analysis, Professor Jeff Michaels from the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law offers his thoughts here.

In his column, he asks DWR a number of questions, including the following:

“This report is being released over five years after Governor Newsom directed DWR to switch to a single-tunnel plan, and nearly two years after DWR released the details of its preferred project design in the Draft EIR,” said Dr. Michaels. “The Final EIR was released last year.”

“Should benefit-cost analysis be conducted before or after an alternative is selected?” he asked.

As more reactions to the DWR analysis come in, I will post them here.

Background: CA salmon, Delta fish populations are in worst-ever crisis as pumps keep exporting water to Big Ag

Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations are in their worst-ever crisis ever as California Governor Newsom forges ahead with the Delta Tunnel and Sites Reservoir projects and the Big Ag voluntary agreements while fish populations get closer and closer to extinction.

California salmon fishing was closed in 2023 and will be closed this year also. The 2024 stock abundance forecast for Sacramento River Fall Chinook, often the most abundant stock in the ocean fishery, is only 213,600 adults. The return to Coleman Fish Hatchery was an absolute disaster. Meanwhile, abundance of Klamath River Fall Chinook is forecast at 180,700 adults.

Endangered Sacramento River spring and winter-run Chinook also continue their march towards extinction. The spawning escapement of Sacramento River Spring Chinooks (SRSC) in 2023 totaled 1,479 fish (jacks and adults), with an estimated return of 106 to upper Sacramento River tributaries and the remaining 1,391 fish returning to the Feather River Hatchery: www.pcouncil.org/…

The return to Butte Creek of just 100 fish was the lowest ever. In 2021, an estimated 19,773 out of the more than 21,580 fish total that returned to spawn in the Butte County stream perished before spawning.

Nor did the winter run, listed under the state and federal Endangered Species Act, do well. Spawner escapement of endangered Sacramento River Winter Chinook (SRWC) in 2023 was estimated to be 2,447 adults and 54 jacks, according to PFMC data.

A group of us, including the late conservationist and Fish Sniffer magazine publisher Hal Bonslett, successfully pushed the state and federal governments to list the winter run under the state and federal Endangered Species Acts starting in 1990-91 because we were so alarmed that the fish population had crashed to 2,000 fish.

Then in 1992 the run declined to less than 200 fish. Even after Shasta Dam was built, the winter run escapement to the Sacramento River was 117,000 in 1969!

Now we are back to approximately the same low number of winter-run Chinooks that spurred us to push for the listing of the fish as endangered under state and federal law over 30 years ago.

The State Water Project (SWP) and Central Valley Project (CVP) Delta “death pumps” have been the biggest killers of salmon, steelhead, Sacramento splittail and other fish species in California for many decades, as I have documented in hundreds of articles in an array of publications.

In the latest episode in this outrageous saga, a coalition of fishing and conservation groups, including the Golden Gate Salmon Association, San Francisco Baykeeper and Bay Institute, urged the state and federal water agencies to “take immediate action” to stop the unauthorized killing of thousands of Chinook Salmon and Steelhead at the State and Federal water export pumps in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta: www.dailykos.com/…

Both winter-run Chinook salmon and Central Valley steelhead are protected under the Federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). Central Valley winter-run Chinook Salmon is also protected under the California Endangered Species Act (CESA).

The coalition reported that this is the second time in 2024 the coalition has responded to an increase in killing of legally protected fish at the pumps of the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project (Projects or Water Projects).

While the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has called for significant reductions in the Projects’ Delta water pumping, the California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the federal Bureau of Reclamation that own and operate the Projects ignored these recommendations and continued to export water at rates that killed thousands of imperiled fishes, the groups said.

“Indeed, over the past week, DWR and Reclamation further increased pumping – as a result, significantly increasing take of winter-run Chinook Salmon at the pumps,” the groups said in a statement. “As a result, the Water Projects have exceeded the legal limits for killing both Central Valley Steelhead and winter-run Chinook Salmon established under the ESA by NMFS.”

State Water Project pumping accounts for 80% of the water exported from the Delta at this time, according to the groups.

The annual ESA take limit for winter-run Chinook Salmon is 1,776 fish. As of March 25, 2024, an estimated 3,030 winter-run had been killed at the pumps – not counting the much larger number of fish that likely died after being drawn by pumping into inhospitable parts of the Delta, the groups said.

Since December 1, 2023, an estimated 2,919 naturally spawned Central Valley Steelhead have also been killed by the Water Projects. The maximum allowable ESA Steelhead take is 1,571 as a three-year rolling average or 2,760 in any single year. The numbers show that the Water Projects are in violation of both limits.

Now we turn to Delta Smelt. Unfortunately, the mainstream media, for the most part, either refuses to report on the Delta smelt or report inaccurately on the Delta Smelt when it does report. This is from an article in the LA Times in February 2024: “Recent surveys have found decreasing numbers of Delta smelt in the wild.”

Are you kidding? Actually, for the sixth year in a row, ZERO Delta Smelt were collected in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Fall Midwater Trawl (FMWT) Survey in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta from September through December 2023.

Once the most abundant species in the entire estuary, the Delta Smelt has declined to the point that it has become functionally extinct in the wild. The 2 to 3 inch fish, found only in the Delta, is an “indicator species” that shows the relative health of the San Francisco Bay/Delta ecosystem.

Meanwhile, the other pelagic species collected in the survey — striped bass, Longfin Smelt, Sacramento Splittail and threadfin shad — continued their dramatic decline since 1967 when the State Water Project went into effect. Only the American shad shows a less precipitous decline.

Between 1967 and 2020, the state’s Fall Midwater Trawl abundance indices for striped bass, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, American shad, splittail and threadfin shad have declined by 99.7, 100, 99.96, 67.9, 100, and 95%, respectively, according to the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I have a motto: Never, ever let the world do you in emotionally. Of course there’s ups and downs. We’re all human. But stay strong. Just the fact you’re talking about it is a good sign.

It’s very nice to feel happy. But you know what? The world doesn’t owe us any happiness. Therefore it’s up to ourselves. You don’t believe in God? No problem. God won’t hold that against you if you’re a good person. Just think of the upside. You die and wake up In another environment. What a pleasant surprise!

Of course, we can’t prove it. That’s why we’ve been blessed with the ability to have faith.

It’s not all about us. Those who’ve had the most rewarding lives are those who’ve helped others.

When I say this, I can’t help thinking about Jimmy Carter. He made a lousy president. But he grew in spirit. After his presidency he devoted his life helping others. He’s not a perfect man, but he’s done a lot of good.

WHAT ESTHER MOBLEY IS READING

Here’s what’s come across my desk recently:

• LeBron James kept a bottle of Opus One under his courtside seat at Monday night’s Celtics-Cavaliers game, reports Andy Nesbitt in Sports Illustrated. The best part is that he just had the bottle, cork reinserted, on the ground next to some water bottles and a coffee cup.
• A nonprofit wondered if anyone actually read the fine print in a privacy policy. So amid the fine print, it hid a special offer for a free bottle of wine. It took three months for anyone to spot it and claim it, reports Cat McGowan in BBC News.
• Anyone familiar with personal injury attorney Anh Phoong’s ubiquitous billboards throughout the Bay Area will delight at this story by Cydney Hayes in 48 Hills. The celebrity lawyer graced the reopening party of a San Francisco queer bar with her presence. Fun fact about Phoong: “She also has braces, which is iconic.”

THE NFL HAS ONCE AGAIN SCREWED THE 49ERS

San Francisco will face four teams coming off a bye this season, most in the league

by Grant Marek

For the second straight year, the San Francisco 49ers got hosed by the NFL’s schedule makers.

Last year, no team in the league had a greater net rest disparity compared to their opponents (-20) than the Niners, who were also the only team to play a game with a -8 rest disparity: a Week 8 game against the Bengals where the Niners were coming off a Monday night game and the Bengals were coming off a bye. San Francisco lost that contest 31-17.

This year, the Niners will face four teams coming off byes — the Chiefs, Cowboys, Bills and Seahawks — most in the league. The Colts are the only other team that will face more than two teams coming off byes.

Twelve teams, meanwhile, won’t face a single team coming off a bye: the Vikings, Packers, Bengals, Ravens, Panthers, Falcons, Titans, Jaguars, Bills, Patriots, Eagles and San Francisco’s Week 1 opponent the New York Jets.

According to ESPN senior analytics specialist Brian Burke, the 49ers have two of the seven worst net rest differentials in the past 22 years — last year and this year, which is the third-worst in that time.

In 2023, the 49ers faced four teams coming off byes, but we’ll throw out the Jaguars since the Niners were also coming off a bye that week. In those other three games, San Francisco went 1-2, with losses to the aforementioned Bengals and the Cleveland Browns. Their only win was against the hapless Arizona Cardinals.

The 49ers kick off their 2024 campaign at home on Monday Night Football on Sept. 9. Kickoff is slated for 5:15 p.m.

FOUR DAYS IN NEW YORK: MEMORIES OF A LIVING PAST

by Jonah Raskin

In New York City recently at an outdoor memorial for Robert Reilly, a former apartment mate and friend who died at the age of 94 — and among other friends I had not seen for many years — I thought of William Faulkner’s often quoted comment: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” I had flown to JFK from California where I have lived for the past 50 years, more than half my lifetime. When Faulkner wrote his memorable words about the past, which appear in the novel, Requiem for a Nun, he must have been thinking of himself and probably about the American South which adheres to its memories as much if not more than any other region of the US. Some of them along with the myth of the “lost cause” ought to be forgotten.

I can still remember the all-Black campus at Winston Salem State University in North Carolina and the classroom where I taught composition, and two survey courses, one on British lit and the other on American lit. I especially remember chauffeuring Jerome Jones, a Black professor of American history, and his white girlfriend who sat in the back seat and cuddled; a reversal of sorts. That cheeky past is alive and well. I traveled to North Carolina on a Greyhound bus and experienced culture shock when I arrived.

Faulkner wrote about the past in novels such as The Sound and the Fury, Light in August and Absalom Absalom, which I first read and that blew me away when I was an undergraduate at Columbia College in New York in the late 1950s and the early 1960s. New York was the best thing about Columbia. Some of that past came back to me with a vengeance during the few days and nights I spent in New York in May 2024 when Columbia students and students elsewhere were protesting against the war in Gaza and were arrested by the police.

Some things rarely if ever change. I did not try to enter the Columbia campus. With cops everywhere that would have been impossible. I remembered the streets where I protested against the war in Vietnam and where I was arrested, but I didn’t go back to see them, either. My memories are enough.

I don’t agree with Karl Marx who said, “History repeats itself; first as tragedy, second as farce.” The arrest of over 700 students in 1968 seemed tragic at that time and still does, and the arrests of protesting students in 2024 also seems tragic. In ’68 I was arrested along with more than 700 other protesters; a few of those students, including my ex wife Eleanor, were in the crowd at the memorial for Robert Reilly. None of them seemed to have any regrets about the past; no big regrets anyway. It was a no regrets crowd. I asked around and didn’t hear any wishful thinking about what they might have done, or could or should have done. Regrets are a dead end.

Eleanor and I had plenty of time to reminisce and share and compare memories. I had forgotten that she was arrested in ‘68 and that the police dragged her down a gravel pathway to a paddy wagon and that by the time she arrived her knees were bloody. Not long after the Columbia bust we went separate ways, she underground where she took the alias Rita and me to Mexico City. After her days in the underground she became a lawyer and then a judge. She’s married and has two grown boys.

Bob’s widow, Barbara Schneider Reilly, was born and raised in Germany in the late 1930s and 1940s. She greeted me and other friends at the memorial. A blown up picture of Bob with a smile and a beard made me feel at home. I reminded Barbara of the stories she told me about her father, a German soldier, who was a prisoner of war in France during World War II, and who walked away from a detention center and all the way home. I have memories inside memories and memories of memories. There were speeches and reminiscences at the memorial and there was wine, cheese, crackers and table grapes. Nothing fancy.

In December 1969, Bob tried to stop the police who were beating me on East 51 Street in Manhattan. They beat him and arrested him, too. In the 19th precinct he tried to stop the cops from beating us again; no go. Our ACLU lawyer, Paul Chevigny, said that what the police did to Reilly and I was the worst case of police brutality he had ever seen in two decades. My photo appeared on the front page of the Village Voice and in a story that appeared in The New York Times. It was my ten minutes of fame.

After the memorial I went back to Brooklyn, the borough where I was born. That evening, Paul, Dana and I ate at a packed, noisy Italian Restaurant on Court Street. Then we walked back to their apartment and binge watched their favorite series, Nordic Murders which entertained and captured me instantly. The series has characters and scenes you’d never see on Netflix: a man sitting on a toilet taking a shit. There are few activities I like better than sitting on a comfortable sofa and watching TV with friends. We also watched the evening news and followed the latest about Donald Trump and the testimony of Stormy Daniels. New York made Trump and Trump, with money from investors and with connections, made much of New York. Now perhaps the trial in New York would be his downfall.

I met Dana in 1968 at Columbia; Paul more recently. He’s an architect who deals with the city’s bureaucracy; Dana is a retired lawyer who worked for New York City and later New York State, trying to enforce the laws about smoking and battling lawyers for the tobacco companies. I can’t think about the past without thinking about her. In 1969, after that beating by the police in Manhattan — five days after two Black Panthers, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, were murdered by law enforcement officers in Chicago — Dana nurtured me and helped me heal. The cops cracked my skull and I needed 50 stitches. They also broke four of my fingers which have never healed properly; they’re a daily reminder of the beating I received.

Years later, when I was recovering from a bout of depression and suicidal ideation, and after ten days as a patient in a psychiatric hospital, Dana nurtured me at a summer cottage she was renting in the Massachusetts woods. It’s hard for me not to idealize her. I have thought of her as a real life Jane Eyre from Charlotte Bronte’s 1847 Gothic novel that features Bertha, a mad woman in an attic, and her Byronic husband, Mr. Rochester who is blinded by a fire that burns down Thornfield Hall, his ancestral home. Jane Eyre to the rescue.

I lived in Manhattan from 1959 to 1964 when I was a student, and again from 1967 to 1974 when I was a college teacher and an editor for a newspaper called University Review. And I also lived in Brooklyn in 1990, during the crack epidemic when thousands of people lived in the streets and New York seemed a city on the ropes. I was researching my biography of Abbie Hoffman, who became instantly famous when he and his friends tossed dollar bills from the gallery to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in 1967.

Going back to New York feels like going home. I know the neighborhoods, the subway stops and routes, the museums, the police precincts and the streets where I rioted and was arrested. In some ways the city never changes. At the memorial for Bob, my ex and I mostly avoided discussion of the 1960s and 1970s, which might have prompted an argument. Instead, we shared our memories of growing up in lefty families during the era of McCarthyism when our parents were persecuted for their political beliefs.

The further back we went in time the less volatile the memories; the closer we came to the present the more volatile they became. Faulkner was right. The past is never dead. It isn’t even past. It was alive and well at the Manhattan memorial for Bob Reilly and in Brooklyn with Dana and Paul. I arrived at JFK in NY on a Thursday and I departed on a Monday from JFK which is in the midst of humongous expansion and development. Four days in NY was enough. Perhaps on another trip I might not recognize it. New York never does stand still.

COLLAGE OR PERISH

by Paul Modic

Attention:

Almost everything we do, or I do, after basic human needs, is looking striving hoping for attention. Anything I write is looking for someone to read it. I get very little attention from what I write though sometimes I do get some. When I stare at the computer screen for hours it works opposite—I am spending my time reading stories, both political and personal, attentively watching the screen.

I don't get much attention hence I don't deserve much attention, or I'm not trying hard enough to get attention. Some people have busy lives giving bosses and co-workers attention, giving children attention, and therefore welcome a break from all the attention, which counters the theory that no matter how much attention you get you always want more.

There are many kinds of attention and often people are lacking intimate attention. That is what divides the winners from the losers, in my opinion.

A sexy woman walking down the street might enjoy the attention or maybe not. Yesterday I saw a woman in the post office and I was too mature, reserved, or scared to say, “Oh god your ass is so beautiful!” A good response from her might have been, “I know. Tell me something I don't know, creepy geezer.”

With the polarization of the sexes it is completely unacceptable and an act of war to tell that woman what you really think. The attention received from that observation could be annoyance. However if a woman said to me, “Oh god your ass is beautiful!” I would not be bothered at all. A likely response in that case might be, “Thanks. No one has ever said that. So do you need glasses or are you just a liar? Or both?”

These are my thoughts on this cool morning in paradise with harvest upon us.

---

Gimme Just a Little More Time:

I see why my mother is against going into assisted living. Besides the fact that it's not in her culture (she and her sister took care of her mother into her 90's) it's a life sentence without parole, she will never get out of there. Her apartment is also a death sentence but it's like one of those Mexican prisons where you can bring in girls, have meals cooked to your liking, and still run your drug empire. Granted my mother's dope-selling operation has gone from smack to tweak to just a few high-schoolers buying joints from her back door, but still it helps with the income and she feels useful delivering stoney weed to developing minds.

It's all about her, it's all about me, and it's all about now. Now she wants to be home and if she dies, better there than institutionalized. It's gonna cost $7500 a month for twenty-four hour care at home. My mom has nothing, except one painting by a famous artist and it's on the next flight to New York: ever heard of Andy Warhol? That might buy her a year or two.

Then what?

---

Fight Time:

Sometimes with fights we couldn't even remember why it started. (Probably I had looked at another woman or said something insensitive or provocative.) I learned that the hurtful things we said during the fight became the new issue, what the fight evolved into, worse than what it was originally about.

Sometimes she would get angry and I would not engage or react. That was the best solution. In an hour or a day or two days she would get over it.

I discovered it was not wise to have a king size bed. During or after a fight she could scurry away, far away to the other distant side of the bed, but then like a magnet she would soon be drawn back, seeking the warmth.

CHIEFS’ HARRISON BUTKER’S BENEDICTINE COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT SPEECH: WIVES SHOULD STAY AT HOME

by Chuck Schilkin

Harrison Butker is a three-time Super Bowl champion and one of the most accurate field goal kickers in NFL history.

As such, the Kansas City Chiefs kicker was given a platform to express his views as the commencement speaker at Benedictine College.

The devout Christian used the opportunity to give some radical thoughts and controversial opinions during a 20-minute speech delivered at the ceremony honoring the 485 students graduating from the Catholic private liberal arts school in Atchison, Kan., on Saturday.

Butker, 28, told the male graduates to “be unapologetic in your masculinity.”

He congratulated the female graduates on their “amazing accomplishment” before telling them, “I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”

Butker then told those women that “my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother. I’m on this stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation.”

He then started getting choked up.

“I’m beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me,” Butker said, “but it cannot be overstated that all my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.”

That statement was met with 18 seconds of enthusiastic cheers and applause. Butker continued praising his wife and her role in their family.

“She’s the primary educator to our children. She’s the one who ensures I never let football or my business become a distraction from that of a husband and a father. She is the person that knows me best at my core and it is through our marriage that, Lord willing, we both will attain salvation.”

During his opening remarks, Butker stated that “things like abortion, in vitro fertilization, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for the degenerate cultural values and media, all stem from the pervasiveness of disorder.”

He also said that President Biden “has been so vocal in his support for the murder of innocent babies that I’m sure to many people it appears you can be both Catholic and pro-choice.”

At one point, Butker mentioned the word “pride” — then clarified that he wasn’t talking about “the deadly sins sort of Pride that has an entire month dedicated to it, but the true God-centered pride that is cooperating with the Holy Ghost to glorify Him.”

The comment, a jab at the LGBTQ+ community that celebrates Pride Month every June, received a few chuckles from the audience.

When Butker finished his address, the crowd rose for an ovation. A video of the speech posted on the college’s YouTube channel fades before it is clear whether anyone refrained from standing.

Butker has not commented publicly since the address. His previous social media posts are being used by people leaving comments both blasting and supporting his remarks. Heavy.com reports that all images of Isabelle Butker have been removed from her husband’s X and Instagram feeds in recent days.

Benedictine College has not publicly addressed Butker’s controversial statements and did not immediately respond to multiple messages from The Times. The college’s social media feeds have been flooded with angry comments regarding Butker’s speech, and the comment section for the YouTube video of it has been disabled.

An article on Benedictine College’s website about the commencement ceremony had initially referred to Butker’s speech as “inspiring.” The uncredited piece includes a reworked version of Butker’s “homemaker” quote that does not include that word, with no indication that the quote had been altered.

The Chiefs did not respond to a request for comment from The Times.

Last year, Butker gave the commencement address at his alma mater, Georgia Tech, advising the graduates to “get married and start a family.”

(LA Times)

ISRAEL PUSHES DEEPER INTO RAFAH

by Natan Odenheimer & Adam Rasgon

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, said on Thursday that the Israeli army would send more troops to Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, which has become the focal point in the war between Israel and Hamas.

The announcement signaled that Israel intended to press deeper into Rafah despite international concerns about its ground invasion of the city, where more than a million displaced people had been sheltering.

“Hundreds of targets have already been attacked,” Mr. Gallant said after meeting with commanders in the Rafah area. “This operation will continue.”

Hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled the city in recent days, many of whom have had to move repeatedly over seven months of an unrelenting war, U.N. officials say.

Until now, Israeli troops and tanks have made only a limited incursion into eastern Rafah, and on May 7 they seized the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, a vital entry point for aid. The crossing remains shuttered, leaving wounded and ill people who need treatment abroad with no way out, and hundreds of aid trucks piling up in Egypt.

Diplomats and Palestinian officials have said the army’s operations in and around the crossing and nearby clashes between soldiers and Hamas fighters have created a dangerous environment for humanitarian workers.

Mr. Gallant, a member of Israel’s war cabinet, also said Israeli troops had destroyed tunnels in Rafah. Two Israeli officials said a key objective of the operation was to demolish tunnels between Egypt and Gaza that have allowed Hamas to replenish its weapons supply over the years.

Egypt and Israel maintain a decades-old peace treaty and close security cooperation, but Israel’s invasion of Rafah has tested the sensitive relationship.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly spoken of the need to destroy Hamas’s battalions in Rafah. In recent days, some Hamas militants have fled the city, according to four Israeli officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.

The fighters have headed northward alongside civilians, the officials said. While it was unclear how many militants escaped, their flight underscored that at least some would be left unscathed by Israel’s invasion of the city.

Outside a United Nations-run school in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, on Thursday, a few trucks carrying humanitarian aid drove down the street while children tried to grab whatever they could, some making off with bags of sugar.

Inside the school’s courtyard, Ra’fat Abu Tueima, 62, sat in a tent with his wife, their young son and eight children from his late first wife. The family took up residence there last week after being displaced for the sixth time since the war in Gaza began. They had been sheltering in Rafah, near the enclave’s border with Egypt, when Israel launched an offensive, forcing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee.

Mr. Abu Tueima, a taxi driver before the war, said that being displaced so many times had left them exhausted and without support. Aside from what the occasional aid truck can bring, few relief supplies, including food or tents, have been made available to the thousands of Palestinians who have fled to Khan Younis over the past week and a half, since the Rafah operation began.

“No one here helped us with anything,” Mr. Abu Tueima said, beginning to break down in tears.

“Life here is not fair at all for us; we want to live in peace like others,” he said. “In Rafah, people and charities offered us a little money, but here, not one single person asked about us. No one even cares about all of those children and women here.”

Israel’s offensive in Rafah has stopped nearly all aid from getting through the two main border crossings in southern Gaza. The United Nations’ World Food Program warned on Wednesday that its food and fuel stocks would run out in a matter of days, saying in a statement that “the threat of famine in Gaza never loomed larger.”

The agency also said it had difficulty reaching its main warehouse in Rafah because of the Israeli offensive and fighting in the area.

Fuel in Gaza has been in short supply ever since Israel announced a “complete siege” of the territory on Oct. 9, two days after the Hamas-led attack. The lack of fuel has threatened the operation of trucks, hospitals, generators, sewage pumping plants, desalination systems and other basic services for 2.2 million people.

At least 600,000 people have fled Rafah in just the last week, according to the main U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, known as UNRWA. Another 100,000 have been displaced from their homes and shelters in northern Gaza amid renewed evacuation orders from the Israeli military, which said it was engaged in intense fighting with Hamas fighters who had returned to the area.

In Khan Younis, “no one is distributing anything, no one is helping, nothing enters to help the people,” said Mohammed Aborjela, who arrived from Rafah days ago. The few goods arriving in the city on commercial trucks are being sold at high prices, he said.

The 27-year-old, a project coordinator with a development organization, said that Palestinians fleeing Rafah and other areas were paying hundreds of dollars for transportation on the backs of trucks and donkey carts, leaving them little money to pay for food or tents, which sell for at least 1,000 shekels (about $270) and as much as twice that.

“People don’t have this money,” he said. “People are sleeping in the streets waiting for aid groups to come and help them build a tent.”

The Tueima family fled Rafah a week ago and managed to bring only blankets and clothes. They had to pay 250 shekels for a van to transport them from the embattled city to the U.N. school in Khan Younis where they are now sheltering.

His wife, Najah Abu Tueima, 42, miscarried with twins days into the war after the family was forced under bombardment to flee its home near the Israeli border.

“We are here on our own,” Ms. Abu Tueima said. “I’m fed up and over-exhausted with the repeated evacuation journeys and suffering.”

Israeli forces appear to be pushing closer to the center of the city of Rafah, according to satellite imagery, which shows military vehicles and widespread destruction of neighborhoods more than two and a half miles into Gaza from the Israeli border, as well as Palestinians fleeing the city even outside of areas the Israeli military has said to evacuate.

Israeli troops are still on the eastern side of the city in southern Gaza, according to the imagery, captured on Wednesday by the commercial satellite company Planet Labs. But they have continued to move toward central Rafah in recent days, passing the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and Salah al-Din road, Gaza’s main artery.

I WAS SHOT IN VERMONT. WHAT IF IT HAD BEEN IN THE WEST BANK?

by Hisham Awartani

That frigid autumn night in Burlington, Vt., was not the first time I had stared down the barrel of a gun. It was not even the first time I had been fired at. Half a world away, in the West Bank, it had happened before.

On a hot day in May 2021, a classmate and I, both of us 17 at the time, were protesting near a checkpoint in Ramallah. Bullets, both rubber and metal, were flying into the crowd, even though we were unarmed. I was hit with one of the former; my classmate, the latter. Before, we had been students cramming for our chemistry final; then, on the other side of Israeli rifles, we were a mass of terrorists, disqualified from humanity.

So that night in November, when my two friends and I were shot while we were walking on North Prospect Street, I was not particularly surprised to find myself lying on the lawn of a white house and blood splattered across the screen of my phone. Back home in Ramallah, I knew that I was one wrong move away from bleeding out; Israeli soldiers have been known to prevent or hinder paramedics from tending to injured Palestinians. But I had never expected to feel this on a quiet street in Vermont, on a stroll before Thanksgiving dinner.

The shooting of three Palestinian Americans in Burlington has received more sustained coverage than any single act of violence against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank since Oct. 7. Why did reporters and news channels interview our mothers and take our portraits when young men my age have been shot at by snipers, detained indefinitely without trial and treated as a statistic?

It’s a question that has eaten away at me these past months. Was it the shock of such a violent crime in peaceful Vermont? Was it that my friends and I went to well-known American colleges? Did the timing of our shooting during a holiday weekend play a role? I’m sure it did, but to me, the determining factor is the reframing of the crime: Instead of settlements, the Oslo Accords or the intifada, the conversation around our shooting involved terms such as “gun violence,” “hate crimes” and “right-wing extremism.” Instead of being maimed in Arab streets, we were shot in small-town America. Instead of being seen as Palestinians, for once, we were seen as people.

Death and dehumanization are status quo for Palestinians. We grow used to being funneled through checkpoints and strip-searched, assault rifles trained on us all the while. The result is a constant existential calculus: If an unarmed autistic man, an 8-year-old boy and a journalist wearing a vest emblazoned “Press” could be perceived to be such a threat that they were shot dead, then I must accept that by existing as a Palestinian, I am a legitimate target.

This dynamic was so ubiquitous to me that I could not quite put it into words until I left the West Bank to attend college in the United States. My classes gave me the vocabulary to understand dehumanization, the portrayal of the colonized as a violent primitive. I realized that the infrastructure of the occupation — the checkpoints, the detentions, the armed settlers encroaching — is built around the violence I am assumed to be capable of, not who I am.

This system of othering — Israeli-only roads, fenced-off settlements, the “security” wall — is an inherent part of the Israeli state psyche. Yet far from ensuring Israelis’ safety, it instead inflicts mass humiliation on Palestinians. Close to half of the Palestinians alive today were born after the violence of the second intifada, and have interacted with Israelis only in the confines of the security apparatus built in its wake. The military apparatus in my home in the West Bank is a judge, jury and executioner. While settlers in the West Bank are subject to Israeli civilian law, Palestinians are subject to military law. It is as if we are all already combatants.

The dehumanization we face is twofold: Beyond the day-to-day aspects of our lives, it permeates the media coverage of what we experience. In the news, our militancy is presumed, our killers unnamed, and our deaths repackaged into statistics. Somehow, we die without being killed. The very veracity of our deaths is called into question. The extent of the civilian death toll in Gaza should not come as a surprise when Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, can speak unchecked of “human animals.”

My story is one drop in the ocean of suffering faced by Palestinians, and compared to the immense and indescribable suffering of the people of Gaza, frankly trivial. As I wheeled myself down the smooth corridors of the hospital where I received care after the shooting, I thought of those in wheelchairs in Gaza, struggling to navigate the rubble-strewn streets as they fled their homes. I thought of the reports about a woman being shot dead as she held her grandson’s hand while he clutched a white flag. I thought of a 17-year-old shot in the back by settlers in the West Bank. The pain of knowing their fates is fathomless, and it has yet to cease.

I think back to the circumstances in which I was shot with my two friends, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Aliahmad, and imagine them instead in the context of the West Bank. A Hisham, Kinnan and Tahseen shot there could have been left to die. Our names would circulate for a day or two in pro-Palestinian circles, but in the end, we would be commemorated only on a poster in the streets of Ramallah, our faces eventually worn down with time like the countless others I’ve walked past in the streets of my home. If that scenario does not stir the same feelings in you as my shooting, if your first instinct when a Palestinian is shot, maimed or left handicapped is to find excuses, then I do not want your support.

When I was still in the hospital, my family and I were visited by a friend who had just recently made it out of Gaza. He recounted how he saw the beginning of the Israeli bombing from his balcony, and soon after showered and left his house with a prepacked bag. He told me of tents, of hunger, of explosions, but there is one thing that really stood out for me as he recounted his ordeal.

He explained how the only way for him to survive in Gaza was to accept that he had already died. Only after he had come to terms with the realization that his life as he knew it was over could he enjoy a puff of a cigarette and a sip of coffee in the morning. This acceptance is the goal of the Israeli dehumanization complex. To be Palestinian today is to accept this fate.

I have been back on campus since February, and the adjustment has been tough. The man who is accused of shooting me has pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempted second-degree murder. But my mind is elsewhere. Every morning when I wake up, I check for one number. It has exceeded 35,000. It’s difficult for me to come to terms with the reality of so much loss.

In class, between Mesopotamian myths and commutative algebra, a few thoughts play on a loop in my mind: How can we come back from so much grief? How could we let this happen? What are we supposed to make of the world when Palestinian deaths are excused by talking points, repeated again and again on the news? I yearn to return to my home, to my olive trees, my cats and my family.

I realize, though, that when I cross the King Hussein Bridge from Jordan into the West Bank, I will return to my designation as a potential terrorist. I cease to be a junior at Brown University, a student of archaeology and mathematics, a San Francisco Giants fan, a Balkan history nerd. My entire identity will be reduced to my capacity for violence, not as a human being, but as a Palestinian.

(Hisham Awartani is a Palestinian American student at Brown University studying mathematics and archaeology. He grew up in Ramallah, West Bank.)