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Valley People (May 22, 2024)

Gloria Abbott

GLORIA ABBOTT

It is with a heavy heart that I announce the passing of Gloria Faye Abbott (Ornbaun). Gloria passed away peacefully in her sleep on Monday, May 13th, after a long battle of Dementia. There will be no service at this time. Condolences can be sent to Shirley Hulbert at P.O. Box 521, Boonville, CA 95415.

A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE OF CAROLYN EIGENMAN will be held Saturday, May 18 from 1-4pm at the little red school house in Boonville.

SPORTS AWARDS NIGHT
Athletic Director John Toohey and his ever-energetic mother, Palma, created a night to remember for our student athletes during the reinstituted Sports Awards night. Athletes of all sports in high school were recognized by their coaches for participation and extraordinary achievement in an evening ceremony that featured a dessert bar, individual participation awards, and coaches awards. Panther pride filled the house and it was great to see so many parents and students in attendance. A huge thank you to Coach Toohey and Palma for the pride and effort, they give to each and every sport and every student, every day!

AV FIRE CHIEF Andres Avila:
The winter burning season is coming to an end and fire season is beginning, meaning that any burn permits will have to be issued through CalFire. The CalFire station is also open and staffed which is helpful.

AV HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS AWARDS CEREMONY
All Sports, all seasons. Monday, 6pm at the Panther Gym in Boonville.

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.

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.

BILL KIMBERLIN:

I am quite fond of these rocks which the local Indians called, "Grandfather Rocks". One time I came up and they looked like they had moved. But since that wasn't possible I ignored it. However, another time they had clearly moved. "What the hell". Earthquake? Took awhile to figure it out but I did. It was wild pigs pushing them around searching for truffles. With these oak trees at a certain time of year there are quite a few truffles growing.

BOONT TRIBE COMMUNITY SCHOOL:

We are so excited to announce that we are putting on a play! The students came up with the story, we wrote the script and they are now busily gathering costumes, building the set, and learning their lines! Come join in the fun and candy chaos!!

Our one and only community performance will be on Saturday June 8th at 2pm! This will be a fundraising event for our scholarship program! Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for kids 12 and under. There will also be an intermission with snacks and drinks! Tickets are available at the door.
This is a very kid friendly event, but there will be a couple seconds of flashing lights and 2 balloons popping.

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, a large swathe of the Anderson Valley community convened The Mother Of All Boonville Drug Meetings. Everyone agreed that methamphetamine use was on the rise, most alarmingly among young people in their early teens. Today? Hard drugs are available, as they are everywhere, but addiction doesn't seem as prevalent as it once was.

THE DRUG MEETING of yesteryear was “facilitated” by a windy ex-police chief who nearly facilitated the audience right out the door. But by the end of the evening — the rambling discussion didn’t wind down until 9:30 — and despite the chief’s obfuscating “facilitation,” agreement had been reached on who would do what to ensure that the event was productive. The formidably on-task duo of Donna Pierson-Pugh and Marti Bradford emerged as Operation Combat Crank’s lead tacticians.

“IT’S DEFINITELY A GO,” Mrs. Pugh said later. “We have three sub-committees meeting this next Saturday to plan it; we don’t want to just have a big educational meeting without any specific follow-up on addressing the problem,” added the bustling former elementary school principal. “We definitely want young people to be part of this,” and she said she was just as optimistic at the appearance of several young people at the meeting.

ONE OF THOSE young people was a recent graduate of Anderson Valley High School. He said that just because groups of young people are often seen standing around in the Fairgrounds parking lot or in front of Pic ‘N Pay [since burned down] at night doesn’t mean they are buying, selling or using drugs. He said he was “trying to go to school to get out of this place,” adding that the problem was a combination of no work and nothing for young people to do in Boonville, adding this rhetorical zinger: “How can you get a community together to stop drugs when half the people make their living in drugs?”

WHICH GOT us to a big part of the prob. In a famously drug tolerant county, drug use by the young shouldn’t surprise anybody.

ATTENDEES included a fairly representative cross-section of Anderson Valley’s wildly diverse population, but did not include many business people, wine and vineyard people, or retired people. If, as they say, it takes a village to raise a child, there are lots of orphans in this place. Seeing as how our village, then and now, consists more of unrelated, mutually incompatible grouplets than it does a coherent community in any known sense of the term, and seeing as how even our disparate interest groups are strung out, so to speak, along 20 miles of semi-rural state highway, mobilization of Anderson Valley’s village was always tenuous.

THE METHAMPHETAMINE sold throughout the county (and the state and country), is mostly manufactured out of easily available industrial solvents, which are not ordinarily considered healthy human additives. And lots come across the porous border with Mexico.

SEVERAL PEOPLE referred to a 14-year-old girl arrested at the high school for possession of methamphetamine as the latest sad example of the drug’s prevalence. She’d already given two young female classmates some of the drug “to lose weight” before her quantity was confiscated. A youngish father said he was apprehensive at the “belligerence” the drug inspires in users.

DEPUTY SQUIRES, Anderson Valley’s widely admired long-time resident cop, now in happy retirement in Windsor, and the valley’s most knowledgeable person on the subject of local illegal drug production and use, said crank was available to anybody of whatever age who wants it. “But kids aren’t walking around openly selling it,” the deputy said. “A buyer has to make it known he or she wants it, and it takes a day or two to get it. At the level of kids, they’ll get it from someone using it at home. There are kids at the high school who have relatives who are big time dope dealers — people who grow a lot of marijuana usually have crank around, too. They get it at home and then bring it to their friends. Most adult users stay home and use it.”

THE POPULAR LAWMAN said he was “definitely” worried about “the meth problem,” remarking that he hoped the county’s drug task force would “get seriously active over here.” (Never did, and has since been disbanded.) Squires said he didn't want “something real bad to happen to get people to act.”

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS LATER? Meth is still out there but the most dangerous drug available in the county now is fentanyl, and too many young people vape and otherwise ingest very strong marijuana, Always missing from the drug conversation is Why? Why do so many people succumb?

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