Mendocino County Today: Monday 6/3/24

Sunlight | Showers | Spring Ranch | Ukiah Shame | Climbing Rose | Un-Happen Merge | Palace Shadows | Complicit Negligence | Ranch Art | Driftwood Removal | Recruit Pacheco | Ed Notes | Kimberlin Sermon | Native Dissent | Windblown Grasses | Half Right | Yesterday's Catch | Mantle Offseason | Teacher Quits | Young Musselwhite | Pre Legacy | Collapse Remnant | Capital Punishment | Revenge Money | Moral Issue | Two Guys | Money Issue | Honky Visit | Overtime | Old Hippies | Biden Claim | Dylan Thomas | Unique Moment | Doctor West | Fairfax Bends | Neighborhood Bar | Woman President | Mountain Lion

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POST-FRONTAL SHOWERS taper off this morning. Hot, dry weather will rapidly build back in mid week with high heat risk for many interior valleys, especially Lake County, Wednesday and Thursday. Breezy north-northwesterly winds return Wednesday and Thursday, with gusty winds over the coastal headland and exposed ridges. There is a potential for late afternoon and evening thunderstorms on Thursday in northern Trinity. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A balmy 58F with light rain this Monday morning on the coast. Light rain this morning will give way to clearing skies later today. Clear skies & light winds are forecast for the rest of the week.

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ASSIGNMENT: UKIAH: LOCAL BOSSES 17, HISTORIC BUILDINGS 0

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

For many years city administrators have worked, if only by doing nothing, to destroy Ukiah’s history and its most treasured buildings.

There may be other, more sanitary explanations for how it has come to be that one landmark building after another is doomed to abandonment, then on to neglect and deterioration before succumbing to the twin pressures of rot and indifference. I’d like to hear those explanations.

For now, it is enough to know they’ve succeeded again, working silently and with apparent indifference to the demise of the Palace Hotel. At many instances along the 40-plus year journey to demolition the city of Ukiah could have intervened and made a positive difference.

Now the hotel gets added to Ukiah’s sorry Hall of Shame list of architecturally significant castaways.

1) Our beautiful Carnegie Library was donated by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie along with hundreds more libraries (and church organs) built across the nation. They brought beauty and civic improvement. Ukiah’s stately library building, now a real estate office at South State and Clay Streets, was abandoned in the 1960s in favor of a cheap, schlocky pile at Main and East Perkins. Ever since, Ukiah’s library looks like Rite-Aid Jr.

2) The U.S. Post Office has sat empty while surrounded by chainlink fence 10 or more years. If we wait long enough it will crumble. Ukiah’s new post office out near Highway 101 would embarrass a Motel 6.

3) All Ukiah’s old school buildings were prettier and the source of more pride than any of the pre-fab replacements. Many classrooms are trailers, originally promised as temporary, but 30 years later those promises are revealed as just more lies.

4) Though a minor piece of civic and historic significance, a tiny tin shed at Perkins and Main Streets illustrates city administrators exercising a brutal display of power. If doubt remains that Ukiah leaders are hostile to the old in favor of the shiny and new, consider this: In order to demolish a significant piece of local architectural history, officials were willing to violate their own published guidelines about what qualifies as “historical significant,” then suggested those destroying the town’s last tin building were delusional.

That’s hardball.

5) In 1980 the magnificent grounds ..and structures known as Mendocino State Hospital were offered to county officials at a price of $1. The new / old campus would have immediately been recognized as one of the most beautiful in all of California. But county administrators decided to keep that dollar, in the event an even better real estate offer came along.

Many many millions of (taxpayer) dollars later, Mendocino College was thrown together out north of town. It’s an anonymous collection of chintzy buildings that looks like a State Farm Insurance complex from San Jose.

6) Our downtown courthouse is a patched-together mismatch of incongruent styles and eras; it could reasonably be described as a mess, especially when compared to its predecessors.

But wait til we see the replacement courthouse Ukiah’s administrators are eager to welcome. It will look like a State Farm Insurance complex in San Jose.

The future of the present courthouse? Cue dark and foreboding music; the rugged old pile will no doubt meet the same fate as every other piece of worthy architecture in Ukiah.

What will happen to downtown Ukiah? Fret not.

Our streets will thrive with numberless vape shops, smoke shops, CBD shops, pot dispensaries, rehab clinics, tattoo joints and six or eight Asian Massage Parlors. And our beloved Redwood Rail Trail will draw dozens of visitor per year when completed circa 2050.

Yes, Ukiah will be even uglier in another decade, but will have plenty of community-based resources to help foster community within our community.

Be there.

STOP MAKING SENSE

Official gobbledygook has been with us too many years to think it will ever fix itself and return to a time when businesses or government issue statements that make sense.

Add nonprofits to the list of relentless, meaningless non-communications; in fact, put nonprofits at the top of that list.

A Ukiah Daily Journal front pager last week about a grant for the rehab-type enterprise over on Clara Street was a prizewinner. I didn’t read it, but this is what it said:

“Through the use of communication strategies and by working together to form grassroots input to affect marginalized groups while focusing on proven goals strengthening potential factors in realizing a shared vision of interpersonal development and recognizing growth as a nurturing experience and a lifelong journey, we hope to attract more money from more agencies that already have more money than they need so they’ll even give us even more, within the program’s sustainable framework of inclusiveness and self-awareness evolving in a community of progressive progress.”

(Tom Hine, who writes this column, has never typed a more ugly, less meaningful paragraph in more than 50 years of random keystrokes. TWK says, “The drinking will continue until the economy improves.”)

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PUBLIC HEALTH MERGER PROBLEM NEEDS TO UN-HAPPEN

by Jim Shields

While I’m pleased to report that I was successful in resolving the Brown Act mess relative to a confusing proposed administrative merger of Public Health and Behavioral Health (formally Mental Health) under a single Director, this issue needs careful reflection before implementation.

So the Supes’ unanimous decision at their May 21 meeting to do what should have been done in the first place, i.e., discuss and take action in open session where the public will be allowed to participate in the process, is obviously a huge step in the right direction. Presumably, this corrective action will occur at the June 4, 2024 meeting where the issue(s) will be posted on the regular, open session agenda.

Ultimately, the record speaks for itself and I’ll just leave it at that. Mulheren’s revelation and apology at the Supervisors meeting were the right thing for her to do given the circumstances surrounding this thorny matter.

On the substantive side of this issue, recently retired Julie Beardsley, who served in government for over 30 years, and was the Mendocino County Senior Public Health Analyst (acting as the Epidemiologist) for eight years, did an excellent job of summarizing this puzzling proposal:

“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. Our Mendocino County Public Health does not run hospitals like some larger counties do. Public Health does provide some treatment modalities, for example, treating tuberculosis 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.”

Mark Scaramella, of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, explained the messy Public Health-Behavioral Health blow-up this way:

“If you want to understand the turmoil in the County’s Public Health and Behavioral Health departments, you won’t get far listening to comments at Supervisors meetings. On the one hand you have the line employees Union president demanding an investigation into a culture of fear, retaliation and intimidation in Public Health involving whoever may have pressured some employees to sign a hurry-up letter in support of the appointment of Dr. Jenine Miller as Health Director two weeks ago which would have made official an arrangement that has been informally in place since late last year. On the other hand a number of current public health staffers, most of them saying they worked in finance and administration, came to the podium on Tuesday in support of the consolidation of the two departments headed by Dr. Miller. One of them, a youngish woman who spoke so quickly that it was hard to understand what she was saying as she nervously sped through a letter she had written, said that somebody had been ‘falsely accused’ of something and perhaps been a victim of ‘gender discrimination.’ She demanded to know which supervisor ‘leaked’ the letter in support of Dr. Miller signed by over 40 of Dr. Miller’s staffers to ‘Julie Beardsley and the AVA,’ concluding, ‘Who do we turn to when our leaders are constantly attacked?’”

This is just another example of why this county is seemingly in a perpetual mode of governing dysfunction.

I keep saying the answer to this dilemma is right in front of everybody:

Problems just don’t happen, people make them happen.

It’s time for the people making problems happen, to reverse fields and make the problems un-happen.

(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, observer@pacific.net, the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org.)

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A BIT TOO HASTY

To the Editor:

I feel Tom McFadden wrote a very well written letter to the editor recently about the destruction of the 133 year old Palace Hotel. It seems the decision by the City is a little too casual, particularly since they played a key role in the deterioration of the historic structure over time. They have to be considered complicit in the negligence of the last two owners since they did not enforce their own decisions to make certain changes to the Palace Hotel, or else. During that period, they allowed the time to lapse with no consequences.

How could the City possibly deem the historic building must be torn down without first reviewing a current licensed structural engineering formal assessment? Even the prior structural engineer assessments were seemingly ignored for reasons unknown to the public due to their secrecy. And recently, the City removed the requirement for the current owner to produce an updated structural assessment before they ruled on the action plan for the hotel.

Some of us do feel the City was a bit too hasty in their endorsement to demolish the Palace Hotel, which was made public on May 24. The City and the Palace Hotel owners need to step up.

Special thanks should be given to Mike Geniella, Dennis Crean and Tom McFadden for keeping the tax-paying citizens informed on this important topic.

John Moon

Ukiah

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DRIFTWOOD REMOVAL AT NOYO BEACH

In preparation for this year’s Fireworks event, the City is authorizing individuals to hand remove driftwood washed ashore at Noyo Beach. In years past, wood has been removed through a variety of ways including removal by City Public Works Crews, controlled burns by Parlin Forks or the Volunteer Fire Department, and by individuals who obtained permits to remove wood debris from the beach.

Beach wood removal will be allowed between the date of this notice and Friday, June 28, 2024 by persons who abide by the following conditions:

Wood removal from the beach may take place during daylight hours. 


Persons removing wood shall follow all park rules displayed on beach property signage 
at all times. 


Persons removing wood shall be respectful and cautious of all citizens on the Noyo 
Beach and shall use safe work practices at all times, especially near citizens and pets. 


Persons removing wood shall do a site cleanup at the end of each day to ensure that 
any litter or debris gets removed from the site. 


This notice does not permit any closures of the beach or give persons removing wood 
any more right to any area of the beach or trails than other citizens using the beach and 
trails. 


No person shall drive any motorized vehicle beyond the limits of the paved parking 
areas regularly accessible by private vehicles. 
Any persons wishing to collect wood in any manner beyond those conditions listed above shall submit a Noyo Beach Access Permit application and provide proof of liability insurance to the City of Fort Bragg to receive authorization from the Public Works Department prior to commencing any activity not described herein. 


Questions regarding this information should be directed to Chantell O’Neal, Assistant Director; Engineering, at (707) 961-2823 ext. 133. 


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ED NOTES

TONY CRAVER was the first Mendo sheriff to understand that the county demographic had radically changed to include a large segment, if not a slight majority, of hippie-liberal-commies. Craver not only understood that the times had done changed in reluctant-to-change Mendocino County, he treated the enemy as full citizens. He was a professional who went about his work impartially.

PREVIOUS top cops, Tim Shea especially, would practically hyperventilate at the mere mention of “those nuts,” nevermind invite them in for a chat.

I SUSPECTED that Craver was faking his big tent embrace of the previously untouchable, many of them, I confess, I would have liked to club myself, but his masterful peacekeeping missions when confrontations between large groups of eco-demonstrators and large groups of irate loggers threatened to leave bodies on the forest floor, Craver not only kept the peace he miraculously accomplished his peacekeeping mission without seriously outraging either side.

I ONCE ASKED CRAVER when we could expect to see the Mendo Sheriff's Department on COPS. He laughed. “Are you kidding? Never. I can't believe some the stuff those guys put on national television.”

HEADLINE from the Sunday Chron: “California kids are disappearing from school and the workforce. No one knows where they are.” I could have sworn I saw one yesterday, but it's hardly news that parents everywhere in the state are homeschooling or, if they can afford it, dispatching their heirs and assignees to private schools because lots of public schools are not safe, as an ugly episode in Marin County's Novato illustrated, Marin County! Marvellous Marin, where bad things are not supposed to happen. Seven junior high school kids were arrested for beating up a single girl while a large chorus of their hyena classmates, filming the sadistic attack, cheered on the assault. Teachers were quick to break it up but they were unable to stop the pubescent stampede that kicked it off.

I WASN'T SURPRISED when a large number of Boonville parents complained that our intrepid school superintendent Louise Simson decreed no cell phones during school hours, as if the superintendent was not only being unreasonable, she was imperiling the safety of the budding unemployable. “Gosh, what if there's an emergency and…”

IMAGINE trying to instill the fundamentals of learning in the young savages while they're simultaneously watching socially undesirable antics on their cell phones?

WE were very lucky to have Ms. Simson in charge of the Boonville schools for the past three years. She was too good to last, especially in the context of imploding standards, academic and social. When you add up her many accomplishments, begin with the major improvements to the physical plants of the schools that she managed to find funding for while she radically improved the functioning of the schools themselves, establishing standards and an atmosphere of book-seriousness which, after all, is supposed to be the point of the enterprise.

ADD CANDOR to Superintendent Simson's long list of virtues. I asked her how Boonville kids were doing on state tests: “For last year, they are still overall very low, but every cohort made growth, which is what we look at. English language learner improvement is strong at the elementary when we moved to phonics. We’re making good progress in ELA. Math scores across the state and county are terrible. We have adopted new math curriculum to address that. The scores for this year should be available sometime in September.”

IT'S UNLIKELY to happen again, but some of you will remember the huge uproar at Mendocino High School's graduation when two grads, including one of the speakers, mooned the audience. The school's faculty hustled up a pious letter-to-the-editor in the Mendocino Beacon denouncing the mooners without saying what they'd done, as if bared buttocks were too horrible to specify. I thought maybe the miscreants had done something seriously bad, like delivering speeches pointing out that they were happy to be heading out from a place they held in contempt with a precise list of whys, perhaps a learning experience for their elders to at least consider.

GLAD TO SEE CUPPLES CONSTRUCTION going to work on a major rehab of the high school’s classrooms, the first, as Superintendent Simson has pointed out, “since the Eisenhower administration.” Rick Cupples is a graduate of AVHS and, in his time, a better-than-average hoopster, a starter on one of the best basketball teams ever out of Boonville, a team that included Charlie Hiatt, Gene Waggoner, and Leroy Perry among others.

WINSTON CHURCHILL was so charmed by Willits he spent the night there in 1929, a little known fact of Mendocino County history confirmed in California History, the magazine of the California Historical Society.

FROM THE FORT BRAGG Advocate-News of May 31st, 1902, as compiled by Debbie Holmer: “A band of Gypsies came to town last week and are camping on the south side of Pudding Creek.” Gypsies in 1902 Mendocino County? One wonders if any more is known about them. What did they do here besides, poison wells, steal babies, cast spells, and tell fortunes?

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BILL KIMBERLIN: They are building a new church in the Valley and I stopped by to see how they were doing. Over the last year or so every time I think they are going to add walls, they don't.

It would be kind of cool to leave it just like this and I might even attend if they would let me speak about what I think about religion. Tens of thousands of people die every month over religious wars somewhere and that has been going on at least since the Crusades in the 11th Century.

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‘LEAVE THE WILD…YOU ALREADY TOOK ENOUGH LAND’: Native Voices Challenge the Great Redwood Trail

by Serenity Wood

On May 19th, Michelle Merrifield, Nikcole Whipple, and other Pomo, Wailaki, Nomlacki, and Yuki Eel River tribal descendants, along with local allies, met at the Southern Humboldt Community Park as part of the Kinest’e Community Coalition. They argued that the planned trail, which passes through the rugged wilderness of the Eel River Canyon, hasn’t adequately consulted with them or addressed their concerns about land access for Native people, tribal control of ancestral homelands, sacred site security, and cultural resource protection.…

mendofever.com/2024/06/02/leave-the-wildyou-already-took-enough-land-native-voices-challenge-the-great-redwood-trail

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OFF THE TOP (September 24, 1997)

AS IT HAPPENED, I was plowing my way through Road Rage when I read a paragraph from the Bay Guardian about how the FBI and some other overfunded, underworked federal agencies staffed by the kind of fantasists who avoided Vietnam but would like to shoot somebody, were holding maneuvers in San Francisco based on a fantasy scenario that has an American band of enviros kidnapping officials in outrage at environmental atrocity. Alicia Bales, aka Alicia Little Tree, was quoted in the item as saying that the maneuvers were just another tax-supported slander of the environmental movement which, as we’re reminded practically on an hourly basis, is “committed to Gandhian non-violence.” Miss Bales implied that Judi Bari had been bombed by the FBI because they’d held a “bomb school” on L-P property in Humboldt County just before the bombing itself, which accounted for the FBI’s failure to find out who did it.


HALF RIGHT. The FBI never conducted a real investigation of the 1990 attack on Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney. But for years the FBI has held classes on explosives at College of the Redwoods for NorCal cops. And for some time they’ve played with explosives on L-P land as the field work part of these classes, which may be a sinister coincidence or, as is more likely, simply the usual confluence of corporate and cop. According to COR, a number of NorCal cops attended the 1990 bomb class on L-P property which would broaden a conspiracy to bomb Earth First! to include somewhere around thirty small-town police officers. In this country, conspiracies involving more than two persons seldom go undetected. In my opinion, the reason the FBI never investigated the Bari bombing is because (1) it has never been bothered by attacks on radicals and (2) a real investigation would have revealed FBI informants working Earth First! at the time. (3) her ex was an FBI informant and the likely suspect. The case will eventually be settled, I’ve predicted for a long time, on the condition that all parties to it keep their mouths shut. The most preferred suspects in the bombing, preferred by the Bari-ites — include a crank-ridden Humboldt County gyppo family with Old Testament pretensions and criminal associations, for instance —  and perhaps even certain creeps within the environmental movement itself who came out of the lunatic parts of the 60’s fake left, for another instance — were ignored by the FBI and are still being ignored as today’s fake left hammers on the more palatable PC target, the FBI.


BARI’S so-called friends don’t do her memory any good by diverting attention from the likely suspects to the FBI. The FBI may well have known that someone was trying to kill her and, as per its well-documented historical behavior, simply stepped aside and let the plot against JB proceed. The historical fact is, though, that the FBI has always gotten someone else to do its killing of unpopular persons. It’s also a fact that from 1989 on through Redwood Summer, the Northcoast was crawling with so-called “activists” who have since disappeared. I thought at the time and still think that several of these people were federal cops of one kind or another and several others were creeps associated with the “left.” Moreover, by the last Redwood Summer rally in Fortuna of 1990, Redwood Summer, in my opinion, was entirely a federal operation calculated to repulse public opinion. Which, by Fortuna, it had, most spectacularly in the calculatedly counter-productive Fortuna affair. Fortuna and the phoney baloney “base camp” at Honeydew (a straight-up cop operation complete with a military field kitchen staffed by Camel smokers and whiskey drinkers passing themselves off as Seeds of Peace flower children) was “organized” by people previously not known in this area nor seen since. Judi Bari, herself a newcomer to the wonderful world of Northcoast activism,  got something going that scared a lot of very bad people — the timber corporations and their legion of Northcoast scabs primarily, but also some extremely dubious so-called leftists as well, and some force or other tried to kill her, with the FBI standing aside as the death bull rushed on by.


THE LONG and the short of it is that two semi-famous persons were blown up in their car by a small bomb in the middle of a major American city without anybody among the wide variety of possible perps being seriously investigated and the fake left still postures falsely away, mosquitoes on the vast buttocks of the corporo-cop-scab nexus.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, June 2, 2024

DAVID AGUIRRE-VALLES, Fort Bragg. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

AURORA CAMPAGNOLA, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

RAYMOND CAVINO, Willits. Battery with serious injury.

ULALI FABER-CASTILLO, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ANGELINA GUTIERREZ, Redwood Valley. DUI-alcohol&drugs, open container in vehicle, pot possession while driving, controlled substance, probation revocation.

JODI HODGES, Ukiah. Under influence, paraphernalia, parole violation.

JACKSON MATTHEIS, Ukiah. DUI.

AARON MATTHEWS, Mendocino. Probation revocation.

URSULA PIGFORD, Ukiah. Grand theft.

AMAYA WATSON, Ukiah. DUI.

TRISTIN WILEY, Willits. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

JAMES YOAST, Redwood Valley. Robbery, controlled substance, disobeying court order.

HEATHER ZEISSLER, Durham/Ukiah. Stolen property.

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BIOLOGY TEACHER, 35, QUITS IN DESPAIR AFTER DESPERATELY TRYING TO GET STUDENTS TO STOP USING THEIR PHONES IN CLASS

Teachers are so burned out by spending hours trying to get kids to put down their phones that they are quitting in droves.

Mitchell Rutherford, a biology teacher at Sahuaro High School in Tucson, Arizona, finally gave up after 11 years, feeling drained and frustrated.

He tried everything - a “phone jail” basket that few students used, teaching lessons on social media addiction and meditation, and taking kids on nature walks.

But none of it worked. Students were unmotivated and openly said they didn't care about their grades, with half failing their classes.

Instead of learning, they put their headphones on in class and tuned out, saying it helped with their “anxiety.”

“I was employing all the tools in the tool belt, and more than half the class didn't seem to be trying at all,” Rutherford told the the Wall Street Journal.

Problems began when school reopened after the pandemic, and have only got worse since then, with this year being the last straw.

Rutherford, 35, said at the start it was behavioral problems as students re-learned how to socialize among their peers in school.

“Students who are distracted are always the least happy, either in the moment, or later,” he wrote on Twitter in 2022 alongside one of many hand-drawn motivational posters he sticks up around his classroom.

“But focusing takes practice and work! Focusing on anything strengthens the muscle, and noticing the distractions helps too!”

This year students seemed better behaved. But it soon became clear the issues were still there, just under the surface.

“There was this low-energy apathy and isolation,” he told WSJ, recalling how it made him depressed and anxious until he realized phones were the problem.

Phones in class, where school policy says they shouldn't be out, were always something teachers had to stay on top of, but kids usually went along with it.

“Now, you can ask them, bug them, beg them, remind them and try to punish them and still nothing works,” Rutherford said.

Rutherford likened their constant phone use to an addiction, and tried to help them understand the apps they were hooked on were designed to keep them scrolling.

He recalled how kids would clutch their phone tightly when he asked them to hand it over in class.

“That's what an alcoholic would do if you tried to take away their bottle,” he told them.

Rutherford and his fellow Sahuaro teachers compared notes on the strategies they used, and eventually found some that worked.

But he said they were exhausting as the second he relaxed on enforcing them, the students would immediately “backslide” into doom-scrolling.

By February, he'd had enough and told the school this year would be his last. But he tried one more thing on his way out that seemed to finally get through.

He challenged his students to a “digital detox” where they kept track of their phone use and tried to cut it and spend more time in the real world.

They would then write a paper about the experience and receive a lab credit.

The results surprised him, as students who didn't care about their grades managed to change their screen use dramatically.

Isabel Richey, one of his AP biology students, said she used to scroll TikTok for six hours a day and never study for more than 10 minutes without opening it.

“I would go on my phone at the beginning of every class and never get off,” she said.

The detox challenge got her down to one hour a day. She read nine novels, and feels less stressed and generally in a better mood.

The success gave him some regret about leaving, like he was abandoning his students. But he felt consumed and drained and couldn't keep living like that.

Instead, he hoped to teach at an online college-prep school or a vocational program for high-school students, both of which would have kids who were more motivated and able to put their phones away.

(Daily Mail)

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CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE:

“The blues don’t make you feel bad. The blues lift you up. The blues help get rid of that bad feeling. Life can be hard, but in the meantime, let’s party.”

“At first, I was going to all of the clubs just as a blues fan, and I wasn’t asking to sit in. I didn’t tell anybody I played. I was happy just to be there. These guys - like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson - just thought of me as a fan, because I’d request tunes, but one night in this club called Pepper’s Lounge, Muddy’s home club, this waitress I’d gotten to know real well told Muddy, ‘You oughta hear Charlie play harmonica.’ That changed everything. He insisted I sit in. A lot of musicians hung out at Pepper’s, and they heard me playing with Muddy, and they started offering me gigs. I was about 18.”

— Dan Taylor, Santa Rosa Press Democrat

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AT THE 1972 OLYMPIC TEAM TRIALS - Track & Field, arguably one of America’s greatest distance races of all time was sculpted. Steve Prefontaine not only won the 5,000m in 13:22.8 to shatter his own American record, but to qualify for his first and only Olympic team before his passing.

After his 24th consecutive victory, Pre slipped on one of the iconic “Stop Pre” shirts for his victory lap while over 16,000 fans at Hayward Field applauded his performance. This was a moment that cemented the legacy of Pre that continues to inspire us today.

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I don’t think that a person should bury his head in the sand. On the other hand, you have to realize that we are living through the collapse of a civilization/empire. You can’t any more fix this than some guy living in Rome in the year one, AD, could have rooted out the corruption and restored Rome to its republican days of glory.

All you can really do in the present case is to try to secure some measure of safety and prosperity for yourself and your loved ones, and work to preserve your culture, values, religion, and the related intellectual and artistic attainments. The best you can hope for is to be among the remnant, and the first step to that is to figure out some way to remain.

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A WOMAN is held captive in a wooden crate and left to die of starvation in a remote desert in Mongolia, 1913.

It was capital punishment for committing adultery. Stéphane Passet was touring Mongolia and taking pictures in 1913, when he came across the Mongolian woman in a box. In the photograph you can see two bowls on the ground for water and food. She was given food and water not on a daily basis but in a way to prolong her suffering. In order not to alter the balance of local laws and civilizations of Mongolia, or in another words get himself in trouble, Stéphane Passet left the woman in the box.

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‘MORAL ISSUE OF OUR TIME’

Editor:

Award-wining journalist Max Blumenthal recently said, “This Gaza issue is the moral issue of our time, this is the Trail of Tears of our time, this is the Middle Passage of our time.” We need to take heed.

Many of our children, young students and some of their teachers worldwide are taking heed and showing us how to stand up for this moral issue of our time. It is a beautiful thing to behold. They are risking their safety, their careers, their future to teach us what it takes to live in a moral and free world, moral and free for everyone. It is time for all of us, especially those in power, to take heed.

What is happening in Gaza today is a continuation of an ideology that has been going on in Palestine for a hundred years. One people is better, more deserving than another. One people can subjugate, kill, drive out another people and take their land. This is the core of the issue. It is not complicated. There is room for everyone in Palestine/Israel who wants to be there. I pray that all who want to live in Palestine/Israel can be equal and free.

Therese Mughannam-Walrath

Santa Rosa

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WOODROW WILSON was re-elected president of the United States in 1916 largely based on his campaign slogan, “He kept us out of war.” But in 1917 Wilson reversed himself in a speech to Congress claiming that entering the war in Europe was a virtuous, honorable and patriotic necessity, especially in light of Germany’s submarine attacks on US ships. Wilson, however, did not share with the public information that would have revealed less righteous sounding motives in going to war. A month before his speech to Congress announcing his decision to send General Pershing and his troops to Europe, Wilson’s ambassador to London had telegraphed to Washington a warning that if the United States did not enter the conflict, not only might the allies collapse, but with them any chance that Americans and American bankers who had bought British and French war bonds would ever get their money back. By this point Britain alone owed the United States more than $2.7 billion. As a percentage of US Gross Domestic Product this would be equal to over $1 trillion a century later. In Europe, the ambassador reported, conditions were “most aligned to the American industrial outlook.” But Britain and France were running out of cash and gold to pay for the American supplies and ammunitions they bought, risking almost a complete cessation of Trans-Atlantic trade. “This will of course cause a panic and a recession in the United States,” said the Ambassador. “Huge new credits from Washington to the allies would be required to avert this. But unless we go to war with Germany, our government will of course be unable to provide such a large, direct grant of credit. Perhaps our going to war is the only way in which our present pre-eminent trade position can be maintained and a panic averted.”

— Adam Hochschild, “American Midnight”

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OVERTIME

Hey there, darling, won't you love me down?
I'm 51 miles out in interstate town
I just decided I ain't keeping quiet, and I'm free

I lost my family to a bad disease
I got a mean, mean gene in my family tree
That grows in grandfather, and his daughters, and me, ya see

And I wanna stay humble, I wanna stay hungry
I wanna hear my father say that he loves me
I never gave a shit about being arrogant anyway

So hold on tight
'Cause I'll be working overtime
They told me that I couldn't, and I shouldn't even try
Ever since I was child, been working for a while, overtime

They said I's a wanna-be cowboy from a cut throat town
With tattooed skin and nobody around
Your songs sound the same, you'll never make a name for yourself

But I been scraping by my whole damn life
And granddaddy worked a double 'til the day he died
Said, "Never let this worlds earthly pride get you down."

No matter who you know, no matter what you do
I'll become what I deserve when it's all through
And you'll be there asking yourself why

So hold on tight
'Cause I'll be working overtime
They told me that I couldn't, and I shouldn't even try
Ever since I was child, been working for a while, overtime

— Zach Bryan

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A READER WRITES: “This reminds me of Republicans celebrating when they impeached Bill Clinton,” he said of Democratic glee over Trump’s conviction, predicting that the “farce,” as he called it, would give Trump a bump, as the G.O.P.’s pursuit of Clinton did for him. “Given Trump's start of this race ahead of every other GOP wanna be and his continuous immunity from lawfare attacks, your brother made a simple observation. Will a 34 count conviction end Trump or end any chance of beating Trump? Are there any examples from recent history? And for those cheering the ‘Convicted Felon,’ cheer on. There could be a day when everyone says, ‘President Biden, father of a convicted felon…’ It is no secret, every Democrat wishes there was a better candidate to vote ‘for.’ Who wants to wake up on November 6th and read above the fold, ‘Convicted Felon Defeats Biden!’? Maybe the debate will be the ticket that gets Biden to finish his journey, across the bridge to the future. Maybe not. But, I will bet, before the election Biden will claim he is the one that brought Trump down and saved America. I know, he shouldn't say that. I think he will. He can file that with ‘My uncle was eaten by cannibals’ and ‘Roger Staubach beat me in the Annapolis football tryouts’.”

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One: I am a Welshman; two: I am a drunkard; three: I am a lover of the human race, especially of women.

— Dylan Thomas

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FLAUBERT to Mme. Roger es Genettes: "You are right; we must speak with respect of Lucretius; I see no one who can compare with him except Byron, and Byron has not his gravity nor the sincerity of his sadness. The melancholy of the ancients seems to me more profound than that of the moderns, who all more or less presuppose immortality on the yonder side of the black hole. But for the ancients, this black hole was the infinite itself; the procession of their dreams is imaged against a background of immutable ebony. The gods being no more and Christ being not yet, there was between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius a unique moment in which man stood alone. Nowhere else do I find this grandeur; but what renders Lucretius intolerable is his physics, which he gives as if positive. If he is weak, it is because he did not doubt enough; he wished to explain, to arrive at a conclusion!"

In Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life

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‘I URGE FAIRFAX NOT TO TAKE A STAND THAT'S CONTRARY TO THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.’

1. Fairfax Council Bends to JCRC against the wishes of its constituents; 2. Peter Byrne's Huffman Close-Up; 3. Fourth Inmate Death in Marin County Jail; 4. People v. Margoliash Update

by Eva Chrysanthe/Marin County Confidential

Last Wednesday night, Fairfax Mayor Coler was tired and impatient, and who could blame her? There had been five Fairfax Town Council meetings in May – four of which were "special meetings". There were recalls against several council members over rent stabilization, and lawsuits over the housing element — with some of the more litigious residents having the gall to complain about the town's mounting legal bills.

As if that were not enough, there was the matter of local demand for a ceasefire resolution to be placed on the agenda. Reportedly, the majority of the small town, known for its hippie vibe (and as the longtime haunt of "Lazlo Letters" author Don Novello, aka Father Guido Sarducci), was in support of a ceasefire resolution. But this had been delayed for months, by rumor under some pressure from the local branch of the ADL, headed by former Assemblyman Marc Levine. More obvious was pressure from the SF JCRC (San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council) and its sub-group BANJO (Bay Area Network of Jewish Officials), another pro-Israel group with cash to spend – something local peace activists lack.

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‘You've Seen The Emails’:

Perhaps that pressure explains the unusual late-night move that Mayor Coler and Council Member Bruce Ackerman chose to pull, with no public dissent from the Town Attorney or Town Manager. Although the matter of the ceasefire resolution (since reduced to a "peace proclamation") was expected to be agendized for the following week's meeting, Ackerman was allowed to muscle the matter (with no notice and after most listeners had assumed the meeting was largely over) into a last-minute "Future Agenda Items". Ackerman used this time to declare that public opinion had somehow become less favorable toward a ceasefire resolution. Without providing any details, he told the Council in a portentous tone, "you've seen the emails." But had we?

And then came public comment, which, per multiple residents who attend and monitor FTC meetings, had never been provided for the "future agendas" item in the history of FTC meetings. This public comment was dominated by some familiar, if not properly identified, speakers linked to SF JCRC. This included Tiburon ex-mayor Holli Thier, whose media consulting firm touts her JCRC Board position. (Last November, Thier had gone on local TV news to hyperventilate that Richmond Mayor Eduardo Martinez was "the most antisemitic mayor ever" because he and his council had successfully passed the nation's first ceasefire resolution. Undeterred, the Richmond City Council voted on May 2 to divest from all stocks and mutual funds that include companies with ties to Israel.)

At least two of the JCRC-linked speakers were permitted by the Mayor and Council to denigrate and fear-monger about "Islamism" – capably demonstrating that the Council's "United Against Hate" resolution was always tacitly designed to exclude protection for Muslims. The JCRC-linked speakers claimed that any ceasefire resolution would somehow be a threat to the safety of Jewish people. But that claim is belied by the fact that some of the most active ceasefire proponents in the US are Jewish, including Medea Benjamin of Code Pink; David Klion and Peter Beinart of Jewish Currents; and Masha Gessen of The New Yorker Magazine. They are among many Jewish writers and activists who have raised concerns about antisemitism stemming from Israel's ongoing war crimes, and cautioned against conflating Judaism with Israel.

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Progressive Town Council Forgets To Clue in Progressive Activists:

In the days after the Fairfax meeting, pro-ceasefire activists reported they’d been blindsided because they had not been given advance notice of Ackerman’s stealth item. But it was clear that the anti-ceasefire, pro-Israel JCRC team had been given notice.

"Unusual" was the restrained term that former Mayor Frank Egger used to describe Ackerman's late insertion of the issue.

An attorney who watched the recordings commented that the Council had violated the Brown Act, and noted apparently deceptive intent indicated by Ackerman's comment after the anti-ceasefire speakers had been allowed to dominate. Ackerman had publicly stated: "it would be much more difficult if it were agendized and if we had a room full of people with all that range of opinions on it…"

Ceasefire Now Marin petition organizer Joe McGarry analyzed it as "a calculated choice to use the 'future agendas' title rather than calling it what is was" in order to hide it from ceasefire proponents – while privately communicating the opportunity to speak to the anti-ceasefire group.

"Ackerman would adhere to their request to make a surprise attempt to dissuade the subcommittee from moving foward," McGarry said. In his view, it amounted to a coordinated effort between Ackerman, Coler, and the Town Manager "to ambush the other three council members and the public."

Even for those unfamiliar with Fairfax procedures, something seemed “off” during the meeting, with the JCRC-linked speakers trying to insert their anti-ceasefire comments earlier (during consent items.) This exasperated Coler, who apparently wasn't keen on having them speak that early – possibly because the early attempts threatened to give the game away.

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Council Meetings Don't Happen In A Vacuum:

For context, this unusual Council move occurred days after Israel dropped multiple 2,000-lb “bunker-buster” bombs and other US-made munitions on a tent encampment of sleeping Palestinian refugees in Rafah. It occurred a week after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. And it occurred the day after Israel's 972 Magazine, together with The Guardian newspaper, released an exposé showing that Israel's Mossad had waged a nine-year-long program of spying and threats against the ICC in an effort to evade prosecution.

On the same day as the Fairfax Town Council meeting, it was reported that Meta/Facebook had to remove hundreds of fake pro-Israel accounts linked to STOIC, a "political marketing and business intelligence firm" based in Israel. The accounts posed as "Jewish students, African Americans and 'concerned citizens'," and they were used to praise the IDF's murderous actions, and criticize both the pro-Palestinian college protest movement, and UNRWA. These accounts were also active on X and YouTube, although they do not appear to have been removed from those sites. Some of the sentiments expressed by the pro-Israel, AI-generated bot accounts were remarkably in sync with statements made by the ADL and JCRC, which also matched the comments from the pro-Israel crowd that spoke at Fairfax Town Council on Wednesday night.

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The Honorable Vocal Fry:

The comments of the first speaker, Gina DeAngelis, an attorney and administrative law judge for California's Public Utilities Commission, were typical of the group. Despite her legal background, DeAngelis made absolutely zero reference to the ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant. Instead, DeAngelis opened with "I spend all my disposable income at Good Earth, so I hope you can consider me an honorary resident." Sure, why not? But DeAngelis' subsequent statements were less reasonable; she claimed that ceasefire resolutions or anything resembling ceasefire resolutions "can bring violence to people, it can bring harassment, it can bring, um, people like me are scared to have mezuzah's on their front door."

But there is no indication that any of that is true. Claims by the ADL that antisemitic hate crimes have dramatically spiked are undercut by the ADL's insistence that anyone merely wearing a keffiyeh, holding a Palestinian flag, or saying "from the river to the sea" could be engaged in an anti-semitic act.

In reality, actual physical attacks on Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians in the US have significantly increased since October 7, as have retaliatory firings of workers who express any support for the plight of Palestinian civilians. These anti-Arab and anti-Muslim attacks follow the last two decades of US law enforcement agencies targeting Arab and Muslim Americans, detaining them without rights, and, in clearly documented cases, torturing and killing them. It is inconceivable that an administrative law judge in the employ of the State of California is somehow unaware of that.

But DeAngelis' subsequent statement, replete with vocal fry, was even more concerning.

"At this point in time, I think we can all agree that the President of our country, the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Austin? Of the military? Our Secretary of State? Blinken? All strongly support what Israel is doing and doesn't support a ceasefire resolution, I mean, that kind of concept. We're in a horrible situation and we're dealing with a terrorist organization that's governing a group of people."

We're in a horrible situation and we're dealing with a terrorist organization that's governing a group of people: It was unclear which side Judge DeAngelis was referring to in this statement. Did she mean Hamas? Or did she mean the state of Israel, which had recklessly killed Israeli hostages in its assaults, and had only just days before had bombed sleeping Palestinian civilians taking refuge in mere tents? A bunker-buster bombing that had created the very thing that Israel falsely accused Palestinians of: Babies burned alive and babies decapitated.

DeAngelis continued: "We, we can't, I urge Fairfax not to take a stand that's contrary to the United States government."

But, why not? Individual local governments take issue with US policy frequently, it is an essential part of our admittedly tattered democratic process. How does a judge, even a mere administrative law judge at the dysfunctional CPUC, not understand that? How does a judge fail to include at least an acknowledgement that a significant legal body, the International Criminal Court, had been forced to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, and that it was the US that was defying a court recognized by almost every civilized nation in the world except the US and Israel?

Apparently the only actual Fairfax resident in Wednesday's anti-ceasefire speaker group was Cindy Ross, who had, in 2006, written a dismissive article for Jweekly (a publication that had shared funding sources with Israeli spying operation Canary Mission) about local Palestinian activists. During Wednesday night's meeting, Ross claimed that Islam wants to "deconstruct" Israel as part of a larger attack on "the West." This was an extraordinary claim given that the most vicious military attacks of the last two decades were launched by “the West” against Muslim and Arab countries.

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Fairfax Is ‘United Against Hate’ — Unless You're Muslim:

There were only two who pushed back on the anti-ceasefire commenters. And out of the entire public comment period, only one commenter was cut off by the mayor, a young Jewish woman who lives in Fairfax and who expressed disdain for what she called the Zionist project. Two takeaways from the video recording seem noteworthy: 1. the young anti-zionist Jewish resident was cut off immediately after she had correctly stated that, in the onslaught of Israel’s bombing, "the hostages are being massacred by Netanyahu, too"; and 2. it is clear from the video that the call to cut her off comes not from Ackerman or Coler, but from the "progressive" Cutrano and Blash, who were visibly angered and started gesticulating for Coler to cut the caller off.

Similarly, neither Blash nor Cutrano nor anyone else on Fairfax Town Council had objected when an anti-ceasefire commenter claimed that "the murder of Jews is an Islamist purpose" or when Cindy Ross had claimed that Islam's desire to "deconstruct Israel" posed a larger threat to "the West." (It would have been simple enough for any “progressive” council member to add the context that the worst slaughter of Jewish people, the Holocaust, had, in fact, been enacted by "the West", and not by any Arab or Muslim people.)

So while it is fair to suggest the possibility that Blash, Hellman and Cutrano were blindsided by Coler and Ackerman's actions, the troubling reality is that they did absolutely nothing to contest it during the actual meeting, nor did they challenge any of the Islamophobic statements by the pro-Israel commenters.

Fairfax Nixes Ceasefire Resolution, Proposes Word Salad:

The agenda for the next meeting, June 5, does not include the "ceasefire resolution" requested by so many residents. It does contain a meandering, soggy-eyed "proclamation for peace" penned by Hellman and Cutrano.

I understand the desire of local activists to declare victory and move forward onto more urgent actions on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza. What is a ceasefire resolution compared to a demand for divestment? What is a series of letters compared to peacefully occupying a building? It is a broader range of actions that activists are now considering and engaging in, in part because their local, state, and federal representatives have been so resistant to mere ceasefire resolutions.

But I admit I was still shocked by the sheer cowardice of the Fairfax "proclamation". To read it in comparison to the muscular statement in defense of Palestinians produced by the multi-racial city council in Richmond, California over six months ago (when the Palestinian civilian death toll was a fraction of what it is now), is sobering. That is not to say, "why bother demanding such things?" but rather to caution against entrenching the current double standard wielded against Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims by endorsing a "proclamation" that tries to both-sides a genocide, especially when it is done after the ICC warrants had been issued.

Cutrano and Hellman’s proposed proclamation:

1. refers to "ongoing conflict" but refuses to acknowledge the ICJ case currently being heard against Israel; the ICC arrest warrants; or the words "war crime" or "famine conditions";
2. refers to "conflict that has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions of civilians and children" but politely sidesteps the matter of "who were the tens of thousands killed? And by whom?"
3. identifies Hamas as an Islamist militant movement that contributes to "ongoing instability and conflict in the region", but declines to note that Hamas is a relatively recent development and that it is actually Israel and the US that have, for decades, contributed to massive instability and conflict in "the region";
4. refuses to acknowledge Israel's serial bombing of hospitals, universities, refugee camps in Gaza;
5. refers to "hostages" but refuses to acknowledge the thousands of Palestinian hostages that Israel has held for decades in its abusive prisons, many being juveniles held without charges, and many sexually and physically abused;
6. refuses to acknowledge the extreme depravity recorded, flaunted, and publicly shared to social media by IDF soldiers themselves – not just a record of war crimes, but a self-celebration war crimes;
7. refuses to acknowledge that the US itself, through its provision of military aid, military equipment, and munitions is deeply complicit in the genocide of Palestinians;
8. refuses to identify that the US itself is in open defiance of the ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant (and will be hosting Netanyahu in Congress this week)

…and so on.

On nearly every point, the proposed proclamation is grotesque. It's like a statement that says: "We express sympathy for the Vietnamese peasants massacred and raped at My Lai and, by golly, equally bad for the US soldiers who followed Army instructions to massacre and rape them." Remember the pointless "land acknowledgement" that Fairfax starts every meeting with? This is basically the same thing, but with a whole new gallery of victims.

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Timing Is Everything, or, at least, A Lot Of Things

In late October 2023, multi-racial Richmond City Council passed an actual ceasefire resolution, specifically pledging solidarity with Gaza. In January, the City of Hayward took it a step further, and divested $1.6 milion from companies with ties to Israel (Hayward is majority non-white, and both its mayor and mayor pro tem are Latino.) In March, the City Council of Fremont, which is majority Asian American, issued a succinct six-paragraph letter that diplomatically shames neither side but is notable for its timing and its language. It refers to "the Palestine region" and, long before the head of the UN World Food Program got around to declaring Northern Gaza to be in "full-blown famine", the Fremont letter stated clearly:

"We have a humanitarian obligation as people, to speak out against actions that endanger those who are innocent, and above all, we must call for the safety of children by ensuring adequate supplies of food and water."

Note the use of the collective: “we.” And the imperative: “must call.” That was on March 20, 2024. It's June and Fairfax Town Council has only now placed a "peace proclamation" on the agenda for Wednesday. I would have thought that an all-white town council in wealthy Marin would have had more latitude to move on this issue, and faster, than workingclass, multi-racial councils in the Bay Area. The fact that Fairfax declined to do so raiaes some obvious questions about racial bias, even on a “progressive” council.

2. Everything You Needed to Know About Jared Huffman, But Were Afraid To Ask:

Investigative reporter Peter Byrne just wrote a banger of an article on Congressman Jared Huffman, published in Counterpunch, it is worth a year's worth of articles in the Pacific Sun. Print it out, read it, put it in your pocket and read it to your friends at the bar or the beach.

3. Fourth inmate death in less than a year at the Marin County Jail occurred in May. It took the Pacific Sun until 2024 to report on the County's recent spate of jail deaths. But neither the Pacific Sun nor the Marin Independent Journal have touched the underlying abusive conditions within the jail, nor identified how members of the County's shoddy “AB 1185 Sheriff Civilian Oversight Working Group” whitewashed jail conditions. Nor has either publication investigated the correlation between the inception of the County’s “involuntary psych med program" and the uptick in jail deaths. These issues have been addressed in detail on this substack and I am grateful for your ongoing interest in these difficult subjects, and for your input.
4. Latest Margoliash Hearing: David J. Margoliash, who allegedly attacked the Islamic Center of North Marin on the first night of Ramadan 2024, appeared for a May 31, 2024 hearing regarding mental health diversion. This, too, is a developing story, and I will be adding articles to the substack about the prosecution; about the Schwarzenegger-appointed Judge Kelly Simmons; and about the larger environment of race and privilege currently playing out in Marin County Superior Court. There are many moving parts — I appreciate your inquiries about the case and your patience as I continue to gather information.

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CLAUDIA SHEINBAUM MAKES HISTORY A FIRST WOMAN ELECTED TO LEAD MEXICO

A climate scientist and former mayor, Ms. Sheinbaum became the first woman and Jewish person elected as president of the country.

by Natalie Kitroeff, Simon Romero and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega

Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, won her nation’s elections on Sunday in a landslide victory that brought a double milestone: She became the first woman, and the first Jewish person, to be elected president of Mexico.

Early results indicated that Ms. Sheinbaum, 61, prevailed in what the authorities called the largest election in Mexico’s history, with the highest number of voters taking part and the most seats up for grabs.

It was a landmark vote that saw not one, but two, women vying to lead one of the hemisphere’s biggest nations. And it will put a Jewish leader at the helm of one of the world’s largest predominantly Catholic countries.

Ms. Sheinbaum, a leftist, campaigned on a vow to continue the legacy of Mexico’s current president and her mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which delighted their party’s base — and raised alarm among detractors. The election was seen by many as a referendum on his leadership, and her victory was a clear vote of confidence in Mr. López Obrador and the party he started.

Mr. López Obrador has completely reshaped Mexican politics. During his tenure, millions of Mexicans were lifted out of poverty and the minimum wage doubled. But he has also been a deeply polarizing president, criticized for failing to control rampant cartel violence, for hobbling the nation’s health system and for persistently undercutting democratic institutions.

Still, Mr. López Obrador remains widely popular and his enduring appeal propelled his chosen successor. And for all the challenges facing the country, the opposition was unable to persuade Mexicans that their candidate was a better option.

“We love her, we want her to work like Obrador,” Gloria Maria Rodríguez, 78, from Tabasco, said of Ms. Sheinbaum. “We want a president like Obrador.”

Ms. Sheinbaum won with at least 58.3 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results, while her closest competitor, Xóchitl Gálvez, an entrepreneur and former senator on a ticket with a coalition of opposition parties, had at least 26.6 percent.

If early returns hold, Ms. Sheinbaum will have captured a broader share of the vote than any candidate in decades.

Speaking to supporters early Monday, Ms. Sheinbaum vowed to work on behalf of all Mexicans, reaffirmed her party’s commitment to democracy and celebrated her groundbreaking ascension to the nation’s highest office.

“For the first time in 200 years of the republic, I will become the first female president of Mexico,” she said. “And as I have said on other occasions, I do not arrive alone. We all arrived, with our heroines who gave us our homeland, with our ancestors, our mothers, our daughters and our granddaughters.”

Ms. Sheinbaum said she received calls from Ms. Gálvez and the third-place candidate, Jorge Álvarez Máynez, to congratulate her on the victory. Shortly after Ms. Sheinbaum’s speech, Ms. Gálvez told supporters that the early returns were “not favorable to my candidacy,” and “irreversible,” noting that she had just communicated with Ms. Sheinbaum.

Ms. Gálvez had said in an interview days before the vote on Sunday that “an anti-system vote” against Mr. López Obrador could help propel her to victory. In reality, it appeared that many Mexicans still associate the parties backing her with a system they see as inept and corrupt.

“Xóchitl Gálvez has been unable to represent change because the parties backing her embody the establishment,” said Carlos Bravo Regidor, a political analyst based in Mexico City. “Most Mexicans want a continuity of the change brought by López Obrador.”

Many voters seemed to endorse Ms. Sheinbaum as an agent of institutionalizing the changes brought about by her mentor. “We need to bring about more change to the country,” said Evelyn Román, 21, a chemical engineering student in Mexico City who supports Ms. Sheinbaum. “We did notice the progress in these six years.”

Ms. Sheinbaum’s experience is ample: She has a Ph.D in energy engineering, participated in a United Nations panel of climate scientists awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and governed the capital, one of the largest cities in the hemisphere.

Known as a demanding boss with a reserved demeanor, Ms. Sheinbaum has risen through the ranks by aligning herself completely with Mr. López Obrador, who built an entire political party around his outsize personality. During the campaign, she backed many of his most contentious policies, including a slate of constitutional changes that critics say would severely undermine democratic checks and balances.

As a result, the president-elect battled the perception among many Mexicans that she will be little more than a pawn of her mentor.

“There’s this idea, because a lot of columnists say it, that I don’t have a personality,” Ms. Sheinbaum complained to reporters earlier this year. “That President Andrés Manuel López Obrador tells me what to do, that when I get to the presidency, he’s going to be calling me on the phone every day.”

Even with the broad mandate voters granted her, she faces significant challenges when she takes office in October.

Mr. López Obrador benefited “from the invincible popularity that comes from being a very charismatic leader — something that Claudia is not,” said Paula Sofía Vásquez, a political analyst based in Mexico City.

Cartel violence continues to torment the country, displacing people en masse and fueling one of the deadliest campaign cycles in recent Mexican history, with more than 36 people vying for public office killed since last summer.

Carlos Ortiz, 57, a municipal official working for the Iztapalapa borough in Mexico City, said that such bloodshed compelled him to vote against Ms. Sheinbaum.

“I want everything to change,” Mr. Ortiz said, recalling the dozens of aspirants for public office killed in recent months. “I don’t want a country on fire anymore.”

Mr. López Obrador has directed government attention to addressing the drivers of crime instead of waging war on the criminal groups, a strategy he called “hugs not bullets.” Homicides declined modestly but remain near record levels, and reports of missing people have spiked. Insecurity was a top concern for voters.

Ms. Sheinbaum has said she would continue his focus on social causes of the violence, while also working to lower rates of impunity and building up the national guard.

On the economy, the opportunities are clear: Mexico is now the largest trading partner of the United States, benefiting from a recent shift in manufacturing away from China. The currency is so strong it’s been labeled the “super peso.”

But there are also problems simmering. The federal deficit ballooned to around 6 percent this year, and Pemex, the national oil company, is operating under a mountain of debt, straining public finances.

“The fiscal risk we’re facing at the moment is something we haven’t seen for decades,” said Mariana Campos, director of Mexico Evaluates, a public policy research group.

It’s unclear how Ms. Sheinbaum would make good on a range of campaign promises — from building public schools and new health clinics to expanding social welfare programs — given the current state of public finances.

“The problem I see is that a lot of proposals are oriented toward spending and there is nowhere to get the money from,” said Ms. Vásquez, the political analyst.

Another challenge involves the broad new responsibilities granted to the armed forces, which have been tasked with running ports and airports, running an airline, and building a railroad through the Mayan jungle. Ms. Sheinbaum has said “there is no militarization” of the country, while suggesting she’s open to re-evaluating the military’s involvement in public enterprises.

Beyond the domestic strains, Ms. Sheinbaum’s destiny will be intertwined with the outcome of the presidential election in the United States.

A re-election victory for President Biden would provide continuity, but a return of Donald J. Trump to the White House would likely be far less predictable. Mr. Trump’s plans to round up undocumented people on a vast scale and deport them to their home countries could target millions of Mexicans living in the United States. He has already threatened to slap 100 percent tariffs on Chinese cars made in Mexico.

Then there’s the festering issue of fentanyl, which cartels produce in Mexico using chemicals imported from China, the U.S. government says. Mr. Trump has suggested taking military action to combat the fentanyl trade.

Ms. Sheinbaum has said Mexico would have “good relations” with either Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden as president, and her campaign team has said it will continue to work to contain flows of migrants.

But handling such pressure from Washington, even in the form of incendiary campaign rhetoric, could prove complicated.

Voters expressed faith in Ms. Sheinbaum’s ability to deal with such challenges. Daniela Mendoza, 40, a psychologist who lives in Villahermosa, in Tabasco state, said she had long supported Mr. López Obrador, including during his previously unsuccessful bids to win the presidency.

Pleased with his social welfare programs, Ms. Mendoza voted for Ms. Sheinbaum.

“Claudia follows that line, perhaps with better ideas,” Ms. Mendoza said. “And having the first woman president in the country is an accomplishment.”

(nytimes.com)

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