Mendocino County Today: Friday 6/21/24

By AVA News Service on June 21, 2024

DRY WEATHER is expected for the foreseeable future. Interior heat will build this weekend, before decreasing steadily to normal conditions by the end next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A foggy 48F on the coast this Friday morning. Our forecast is calling for increasing amounts of sunshine breaking thru the fog daily leading up to a sunny Sunday. Next week is looking mostly sunny so far. Meanwhile that is a large fog bank out there.

HOT WEEKEND forecast (inland)

DOBIE DOLPHIN writes: Beat the Heat. Cool off on the coast at the Noyo Center Music in the Redwoods fundraiser, Saturday, June 22, 3-8 pm. Dance to The Steve Bates Band and Boonfire. Food and drinks available. Beautiful site, awesome silent auction items. Good vibes. noyocenter.org/music-in-the-redwoods

LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)

HOME AGAIN, THANKS TO AV AMBULANCE CREW

Thank You!

My wife, Laura, & I want to thank the AVFD Ambulance for their speedy, professional and caring response to my medical emergency by dispatching me to “Reach Team—Williams/helicopter at Boonville International for 7 minute first class dash to Ukiah Adventist Hospital. After days of tests — no stroke! Good news — I’m home and wobbling along on my walker! We are so fortunate to have such volunteer professionals in our Valley to intervene on our worst days! Again, Thank You (apologies for not knowing your names)

Don Shanley

Elk

STUDENTS IN SMALL DISTRICTS DESERVE BETTER THAN DECAYING, OUTDATED SCHOOLS

by Louise Simson

This high school wood shop, built in 1954, will not qualify for modernization funding until the district brings an outside entranceway added in the 1970s up to code – an additional expense that Anderson Valley cannot afford, according to Superintendent Louise Simson.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature are wrestling over how to dole out facilities funding for the projected November ballot bond initiative, and my fear is that when all is said and done, small rural school districts will not get their fair funding share at the table. The result will be that students attending schools that have the least political power and the highest facility needs will be, once again, left behind. And more often than not, those are students who are socio-economically disadvantaged and of color. Sadly, the quality of a student’s educational facilities experience in California has become defined by a student’s ZIP code.

Too often, our small rural school systems, which are facing extreme enrollment decline and a lack of bonding capacity, lag far behind nearby more populated school districts. It is unfathomable to me why a student 45 minutes away can receive one educational experience, while students in a small rural district receive another.

During my superintendency at Anderson Valley Unified School District, a 70-year-old school system in rural Mendocino County, I was faced with facilities that were in an extreme state of deterioration. An unincorporated town of just 1,650 people had passed a bond measure back in 2012; but the $8 million they were able to get out was nowhere near enough to remediate the aging infrastructure.

When I arrived in 2021, the community stepped up again, passing an additional $13 million bond with an overwhelming 71% of the vote. With assessed valuations so low and with no real estate development on the horizon due to a lack of a municipal water and sewer system infrastructure, we were only able to pull out $6 million. Throw in on top of that two failed septic systems requiring replacement that topped $1 million with the indignity of students and staff using porta-potties for four months; a plethora of classrooms that hadn’t been touched since Dwight Eisenhower was president; and buildings that were out of compliance with mold and seismic codes, and you have the picture of instructional facilities inequity that just made the instructional divide even greater. And we are not alone. Similar conditions are common for those that don’t have a powerful voice in the Legislature and the lobbying community.

Small, rural districts like mine are run by a district office of three or four people. We are just trying to keep up with the tsunami of reports that the California Department of Education expects us to produce and, in our spare time, do what is best for kids. Wealthier districts exacerbate the disparity with their massive education foundations that create endowment programs that provide even more opportunity for those that need it the least.

It is time for the governor and the Legislature to give students in these crumbling school systems their fair share and create some educational equity on the facilities side. The bureaucracy of the hardship application process is not doable for small rural school systems to navigate by themselves. Small districts end up taking what little money they have for facilities and spending it on expensive consultants that know their stuff but cost the equivalent of a monthly teacher’s salary, to move the applications through the process.

Governor, if you want educational equity, this is how you create it:

I don’t need technical assistance. I need money to navigate the process. Allocate a funding stream for small rural schools systems to contract with architects and consultants to move applications through the facilities-hardship process outside my existing budget.
The California Department of Education should make an inventory of rural school systems of fewer than 2,500 students and have strike teams visit the campus with Division of the State Architect and Office of Public School Construction partners and walk through to identify potential areas of eligibility for funding.
If a facility is more than 50 years old and hasn’t been remodeled, let’s use some common sense and engage in a different process. I shouldn’t have to demonstrate mold, seismic or structural hazards. This building is not an equitable learning environment for kids. Let’s get it done and stop the busy work.

I hope that the governor and legislative partners hear the plea of our rural students and leaders and don’t leave us behind again. What has gone on in the disproportionality of school facility funding for decades and decades will eventually be tested in the court systems, if something doesn’t change, and the poor condition of the deteriorating rural sites will attest to a judgment that will prevail.

Education in California should be based on equal opportunity to access quality programs and facilities, no matter where you live or whether your parents pick crops or work in tech. Something has got to change on the funding and facilities side if we want to talk about real equity for all kids.

(Louise Simson is superintendent of Anderson Valley Unified School District.)

POLLY GIRVIN: Juneteenth at the Mendocino Environmental Center really rocked. One woman who grew up in Ukiah said she was delighted to see so many allies for growing up here as one of the very few black families had been hard.

PROP 47: THE PLOTTING THICKENS

Editor.

The plot has thickened just a little more (regarding reforming the Proposition 47 relaxation of penalties for “minor” crimes). Emails regarding the negotiations between the governor’s office and the coalition moving the (reform) ballot initiative forward were leaked to the press. In these emails the Governor’s office advised they will support a ballot initiative, but not until 2026. Basically they will agree to let the voters speak at the end of the Governor’s term.

PS. Mental Health is a portion of the problem. But the thefts we are seeing are becoming completely out of control with no ability to have any meaningful consequences.

The pathway to recovery and programs that truly worked used to be through our magistrates (ie) drug court. I don’t know if I have ever seen better outcomes for everyone involved than drug court.

I know a lot of people who are living good lives today because they were given the options and had consequences if they continued in crime.

We need to have meaningful consequences if we don’t we will see people taking these issues into their own hands.

Look up the shooting in Oakland last week where an elder shot and killed a burglar in his home. As of last night the home owner was still in custody in the Alameda county jail.

This is what we see when the laws are based on politics and not people.

Sheriff Matt Kendall

Ukiah

Big 'Ole Rock in Punta Arena, CA (Falcon)

COUNTY AGENDA NOTES

by Mark Scaramella

SUPERVISOR MULHEREN PROPOSES PAY RAISE FOR CEO ANTLE

(Item 4e, Supervisors Agenda, June 25, 2024)

“Discussion and Possible Action Including Approval of an Employment Agreement Between the County of Mendocino and Darcie Antle to Serve as Mendocino County’s Chief Executive Officer for the Term of March 12, 2024, through July 11, 2026, with Compensation for the Period Commencing March 12, 2024, through the First Full Pay Period Following Ms. Antle’s Performance Evaluation in June 2025, being Two Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand Dollars ($225,000) Per Year With a Total Annual Compensation of Three Hundred and Eighty-Two and Thousand Dollars ($382,000), Including Benefits; As Specified in the Employment Agreement, if Certain Conditions Are Met, Ms. Antle’s Compensation Commencing the First Full Pay Period Following the June 2025 Performance Evaluation through the End of the Agreement Shall Be Increased to Two Hundred Fifty Thousand Dollars ($250,000) Per Year With a Total Annual Compensation of Four Hundred and Twenty-Five Thousand Dollars ($425,000), Including Benefits

(Sponsor: Chair Mulheren)”

MENDO’S NEW PUBLIC DEFENDER

(Item 4f,

“Discussion and Possible Action Including Appointment of and Approval of Employment Agreement Between the County of Mendocino and Michael F. Hill to Serve as Mendocino County Public Defender in the Amount of Two Hundred Thousand Dollars ($200,000) Per Year with a Total Annual Compensation of Three Hundred and Forty Thousand Dollars ($340,000 Includes Salary and Benefits), Commencing July 21, 2024  (Sponsor: Chair Mulheren)”

According to an attachment to Item 4f, the new Public Defender has set some high goals for himself in his new position:

“Goals for Mendocino Public Defender

Ensure high quality representation to our clients  

Evaluate the office and institute policies and procedures to maximize efficiency.  

Provide training opportunities to the attorneys so that they can improve their litigation skills and competency.  

Regularly meet with attorneys and staff so that they can raise issues with me and develop solutions to problems that they have identified.

Work with other county agencies to implement policies and programs to deal with recidivism and mental health issues in the community.  

Make myself available to employees of the Public Defenders Office so that they feel comfortable coming to me with issues that affect their ability to represent our clients.”

CHARLOTTE SCOTT, former Assistant County Counsel under Christian Curtis and current Acting County Counsel James Ross, to take over as County Counsel.

Item 4g: “Discussion and Possible Action Including Appointment of and Approval of Employment Agreement Between the County of Mendocino and Charlotte E. Scott to Serve as Mendocino County’s County Counsel Pursuant to Government Code 27641, for the Term of July 7, 2024, through July 6, 2028, in the Amount of Two Hundred Thousand Dollars ($200,000) Per Year with a Total Annual Compensation of Three Hundred and Forty Thousand Dollars ($340,000, Includes Salary and Benefits)  (Sponsor: Chair Mulheren)”

THE MENTAL HEALTH GAME

By Jim Shields

Several weeks ago, a reader sent me an email: “Thank you so much for the very thorough article (“Who Closed Mental Health Hospitals In California?”) about the history of mental health issues in California. I am wondering if you might offer another follow up article on possible real life solutions to the issues?”

While I definitely have a few potential solutions to the mental health crisis in our state and right here in Mendocino County, I’d first like to briefly review over the next couple of weeks a bit of the relevant history surrounding the issue.

What follows are excerpts from pieces I wrote back in the early 2000s when certain irreversible decisions were made regarding the direction and scope of mental health services in Mendocino County. This is a rudimentary timeline tracing the beginnings of big trouble in Mendocino County Mental Health policy, or the absence thereof.

Early November 1999 — Colfax Doesn’t Buy Mental Health “Crisis”

It was literally a tear-jerker at the Supes weekly conclave (Tuesday, Nov. 2).

County Mental Health Director Kristy Kelly broke down in the midst of informing the Supes that it’s a full-scale crisis at the Psychiatric Health Facility (PHF). Attempting to regain control, Kelly apologized for crying but was told by a choked-up Patti Campbell, “You never have to apologize to me for tears …” Campbell has been known to shed a tear or two herself during her BOS tenure, including occasions when general assistance payments have been at issue, as well as those times when recovering-addict single mothers have testified to the merits of the Drug Court. While Richard Shoemaker offered Kelly a box of tissues, 5th District Supe David Colfax appeared unmoved by the waterworks display and more concerned with probing the cause of the “crisis.” Here’s the story.

Colfax wasn’t buying the crisis argument. He prefaced his remarks by referring to the Ukiah Police Department’s killing of DMH patient Marvin Noble, plus two other recent jail suicides of DMH clients. “Given the history of the agency you’re responsible for” he said, “and all the potential impacts on other departments, like the Sheriff, Jail, DA, Courts and Public Defender, I want something in writing, on paper, from all those affected by this (closing the PHF) before we make a decision.”

Early January 2001 — Psychiatric Unit Still Closed

Since we’re on the subject of how government treats humans, the situation with the County’s Psychiatric Health Facility is truly criminal. The PHF (pronounced “puff”) unit has been shut down since last December. The PHF unit deals with the very, very mentally ill, some of whom are violent, suicidal and/or criminal offenders. Oftentimes they are dually diagnosed as mentally ill and addicted to alcohol and/or drugs. These folks require 24-hour attention in the special facility. The County Jail is neither equipped nor does it have the qualified staff to care for people who are charged with crimes but are also mentally ill. Likewise, harmless but mentally ill folks who wander the streets getting into mischief don’t belong in jail. They need care and treatment. But when the county’s Mental Health Department closes the only facility that offers specialized treatment, there are no good alternatives.

According to MH Director Kristy Kelley, her PHF staff is burned out and can’t handle the stress of their jobs. One has to presume they went into their chosen profession with their eyes wide open. If they no longer can perform their jobs, they need to get off the County’s payroll and find something else to do. At Tuesday’s BOS meeting, Kelley spoke as if the PHF unit would not be reopening anytime soon, if at all. County Administrative Officer Jim Anderson, to his credit, told the Supes it was “premature” to be exploring such a drastic option.

Needless to say, there are serious questions about Kelley’s performance as head of one of the County’s most critical services. Granted, her staff may be stressed out, but closing the PHF is no solution. Her five bosses on the Board of Supervisors need to take decisive action — this dire situation has been allowed to fester far too long. Cops have a hard enough time dealing with the run-of-the-mill, garden-variety types of criminals and assorted low-lifes who operate in Mendoland. Mentally ill folks need to be cared for by professionals. When there’s no place to put them, the cops are forced to deal with them. This requires deputies to hold them pending finding a suitable, oftentimes out-of-county mental facility to house them. This breakdown in mental health services is both a burden on law enforcement and an extra expense to taxpayers. It’s also unfair to people who aren’t lawbreakers but just sick mentally.

Late January 2001 — Time For MH Director To Be “Relieved”

A couple of weeks ago, I reported to you that the Supes — with the exception of Mike Delbar — caved in to Mental Health Director Kristy Kelley’s demand to permanently shut down the county’s Psychiatric Health Facility (PHF). I’ve said time and time again, the Board just doesn’t have the political will to tell the Mental Health Department to do its job: Provide acute psychiatric care for folks — some of whom are also caught up in the criminal justice system. The Supes swallowed hook, line and sinker, Kelley’s pitch that the Board could utilize $900,000 in purported savings from the PHF’s closure “towards the development of a comprehensive and effective mental health system of care.”

How’s that new system working?

Several days ago, mental health “providers” locked a troubled soul in a DMH vehicle for three hours on a sweltering day. The abandoned troubled soul kicked out the car’s window in order to relieve himself. It’s also way past time for the Supes to relieve Kelley — permanently — from her post.

August 2001 — White Flag Hoisted

It was painful to witness, but at Tuesday’s Supes’ confab, the criminal justice types reluctantly threw in the towel. We’re speaking of the Board’s decision to permanently close the county’s Psychiatric Health Facility. You can’t blame the Sheriff, Public Defender, Probation Department, DA, or the Courts for running up the white flag. They all saw the handwriting on the wall months ago. With the exception of Mike Delbar, who voted against locking the doors of the PHF unit, the rest of Board just didn’t have the political will to tell the Mental Health Department to do its job: Provide acute psychiatric care for folks caught up in the criminal justice system, many of whom are also dually diagnosed with substance abuse problems and mental health illness.

Instead, the county will utilize $900,000 in purported savings from the PHF’s closure “towards the development of a comprehensive and effective mental health system of care.” Why must the PHF unit be closed in order to attain that lofty goal? Isn’t that what the Mental Health Department has been doing all along?

Anyway, these new, enhanced services don’t include local critical care for those whose severe mental health problems lead them into conflicts with the law or who pose a threat to themselves, as in suicidal tendencies. As a recent letter-writer opined, Mendocino County is becoming something of a haven for those who want to end it all, but that’s a subject best left closed, just like the PHF unit.

The problem with most of these folks is there’s no place to care for them in a Mendocino County sans a PHF. So, as has been the case since last year (when the PHF’s doors were “temporarily” closed), those individuals will be transported to out-of-county mental health hospitals. As you can imagine, that situation makes things a bit difficult for an already short-staffed Sheriff’s Office, which provides the out-of-county transportation for mentally ill inmates from the hospital to the courts. Likewise, defense attorneys are burdened with literally going the extra mile to meet with clients who may be in an Alameda County or San Mateo County facility. Needless to say, family and friends of the mentally ill encounter the same sorts of difficulties.

But those are the prices that everybody pays when the county is working “towards the development of a comprehensive and effective mental health system of care.” Any bets on when that will occur?

When you think about it, closing the PHF is somewhat similar to the Supes’ decision to close all of the county’s landfills. Back then the Supes didn’t have the political will to deal with the dump issue on a local basis: There’s got to be a county site where a modern, regulatory-compliant landfill can be located. I’ve always said the problem with garbage is everybody wants you to pick it up but nobody wants you to put it down. Now, we just ship the garbage out-of-here, out-of-sight, out-of-mind — it’s somebody else’s problem.

Now we’re doing the very same thing with Mental Health patients.

Oh well, garbage in, garbage out.

(To be continued.)

(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 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org)

ED NOTES

ARE THESE THE ORIGINALS? They seem watered down. Where's the Old Testament thunder? Don't tell me that even the Bible has been dumbed down. I thought it read, “Thou” shall not do this and that, and I thought it was Thou shall not bear false witness period, not just against your neighbor. And wasn't the covet stricture about not coveting your neighbor's wife? Usury. What happened to that one? Was it tossed because our country runs on it? Knowing Louisiana they've probably got it all screwed up, having turned to a committee of illiterate fundies for a re-write consistent with their primitive belief systems.

FRANKLY, numbers five through ten wouldn't harm young psyches and might even add to their vocabularies. “Covet.” How many adults these days know what that means, let alone the average kid who is absorbing brain rot through his telephone all day every day and pure idiocy from his television set?

LOUISIANA will be slam dunked on this cretinous ploy by the fundies to violate the Constitution. As we're all supposed to know, the founding aristocrats organized US to specifically keep religion out, the idea being strict separation of church and state. They'd seen what religious conflict had done to Europe and wanted to keep religious zealotry outta here. By ordering the Ten Commandments to be prominently displayed in classrooms is so blatant a violation of separation of church and state you've got to wonder if the governor has himself read the Constitution.

WHEN I WAS A KID — please don't groan so, so, so audibly — we kicked off every school day with the Pledge of Allegiance and a chorus of America the Beautiful, and this pledge was before the zealots inserted “under God” in it and on our money. We also celebrated Spring with a maypole ceremony. I think I was about 30 before I read about the pole’s phallic implications in the Golden Bough. Life is pretty much serial disillusions, isn't it?

THE DEMOCRAT'S and their captive media — CNN, MSNBC and probably the NYT, are claiming that the Republicans are faking film of Biden's deep senescence, which is one more grand insult to the millions of people who see it plainly. His looming “debate” next Thursday with the equivalently incoherent rhetorical Trump will neatly summarize the true state of our doomed nation, a nation where half the people will vote for a corpse because the cadaver isn't the other guy, a bloviating buffoon. Of all the brilliant, honest people in this country we get these two?

RECOMMENDED VIEWING on Netflix: “Emily the Criminal.” Best movie I've seen in a long, long time. The starring actress is way beyond good, and when's the last time you saw a realistic and sympathetic portrait of a prole?

OBVIOUS, AIN'T IT, that we have too many lawyers? When they start advertising on buses and on television you can almost feel the snakes writhing at your feet. My fave is Legal Help with Gina and Rob. “How much money can you get for your accident?” Gina and Rob are posed against a backdrop of about 30 people, lawyers presumably, one of whom looks like Obama, all of them busy answering the phones from the harmed and the humiliated. Gina and Rob will negotiate a settlement with an insurance company and give you, the vic, maybe a third. There are a lot of these law school grads advertising their alleged services on television, including two leather-clad yobbos specializing in motorcycle accidents.

HERE IN MENDO, lawyers haven't yet begun advertising on the backs of MTA buses because almost all of them draw regular pay via the Mendo court system, an easy gig for a few minutes “work” playing “Let's Make A Deal” with one of the hacks from the over-staffed DA's office. How often does a complicated case make it all the way to a jury? The DA's own non-case is the first in years, and it hasn't even made it to the prelim yet as the expense to the public approaches, I'd suppose, half a mil, if not more.

REGARDING THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, I always enjoyed Mark Twain’s “Letter from Earth,” his long-suppressed deconstruction of organized religion, especially the old testament.

For example: ““Thou shalt not kill.”

Twain: “It is plain He cannot keep His own commandments.” … “And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses; and they slew all the males. And they slew the kings of Midian … Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him… And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword. … But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth.”

Or: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

Twain: “By temperament, which is the real law of God, men are goats and can’t help committing adultery when they get a chance; whereas there are numbers of men who by temperament can keep their purity and let an opportunity go by if the woman lacks in attractiveness. But the Bible doesn’t allow adultery at all, whether a person can help it or not. It allows no distinction between goats and tortoises — the excitable goat, the emotional goat, that has to have some adultery every day or fade and die; and the tortoise, that cold calm puritan that takes a treat only once in two years and then goes to sleep in the midst of it and doesn’t wake up for 60 days. No lady goat is safe from criminal assault, even on the Sabbath Day, when there is a gentleman goat within three miles to leeward of her and nothing in the way but a fence 14 feet high.” … “Poor old wrecks, they couldn’t disobey the commandment prohibiting adultery if they tried. And think — because they holily refrain from adulterating each other, they get praise for it! Which is nonsense, for even the Bible knows enough to know that if the oldest veteran there was could get his lost heyday back again for an hour he would cast that commandment to the winds and ruin the first woman he came across, even though she were an entire stranger.”

And so on…

(Mark Scaramella)

COAST NATURE WALK

Join MCBG Horticulturist Paul Ruiz-Lopez for our monthly nature walks on the 4th Saturday! These guided tours will lead you through the horticultural and natural areas of the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens. The main focus of the walk will vary from month to month but this Saturday's walk will focus on Riparian Forests.

Activity: Observance and discussion of riparian forest flora

Terrain: Small windy trails with some hills

What to bring: Journal, pencil, waterproof boots, and your smartphone with iNaturalist app

These tours are free with the cost of regular Gardens admission (paid upon registration) and just plain free for current MCBG members (verify your membership to receive a discount). The Museums for All and Member Guest discounts must be paid for in person at the Gardens' gift shop. Availability for each tour is limited, advanced registration is recommended to secure your spot. Come explore the Gardens' natural history and learn to think like a naturalist!

Learn more and register: gardenbythesea.org/calendar/nature-walks

Foliage Infested Structure, Fort Bragg (Jeff Goll)

CHRIS SKYHAWK IS REWIRING HIS BRAIN, AND HE THINKS THE REST OF US SHOULD DO IT, TOO

by Marty Durlin

Three years ago, community activist and counselor Chris Skyhawk was facing a runoff with Ted Williams for the District 5 supervisor seat. Then, suddenly, he faced a life-changing event in the form of a stroke, which forced him to drop out of the race and enter a lengthy period of rehabilitation. He's still recovering. In this interview, he talks about his progress, why he feels lucky to be able to rewire his brain -- and why the rest of us need to rewire as well.

BRIBING THE KIDS WINNER

Change Our Name’s Monthly teach-in will be Wednesday, June 26, at 7 p.m. at the Harbor Lite Lodge first floor conference room at 120 N Harbor Dr., Fort Bragg.

Envisioned as a program to educate attendees about the issues involved in the name change and to hear neighbors’ ideas, the teach-in will last about one hour and will feature a speaker and a question and answer/discussion period.

Our Speaker will be Lori Laiwa Thomas, a full time tenure track instructor at Mendocino College where she teaches in the Ethnic Studies department. She was raised in Point among her father's people, the Boyas of Pdahau (also known as Point Arena) and is an enrolled citizen of her mother's people the Shanelos of Shoqowa (Hopland).

The title for her talk is Local Indigenous History and Why it Matters Today?

In addition, the winner of this year’s Change Or Name essay contest, FBHS Senior Darwin Marroquin will read his essay responding to the question “Should The Name of Fort Bragg High School be Changed?” Marroquin will accept the winner’s check for $2,000.

Discussing controversial topics requires civility and respect for the opinions of others. This program is free and open to all.

For further information: changeournamefortbragg@gmail.com

A local grass roots non-profit, Change Our Name Fort Bragg is dedicated to an educational process that leads to changing the name of Fort Bragg so that it no longer honors a military Fort that dispossessed Indigenous people or Braxton Bragg, an enslaver and Confederate General, who waged war against our country.

Philip Zwerling, Ph.D.

http://www.philipzwerling.com

Change Our Name Fort Bragg

www.changeournamefortbragg.com

MARSHALL NEWMAN

Another Anderson Valley artifact from e-bay.

The scene I know, but I don't recall the hay barn in previous versions.

THE MENDOCINO FIRE OF 1870

by Molly Dwyer

This is a slightly condensed version of an article originally printed in the Mendocino Beacon on March 7, 2013.

On October 17, 1870, a fire broke out in Mendocino on the corner of Main and Kasten. It started about 3 a.m. in the Saint Nicholas Hotel, which stood where Gallery Books is today. Mendocino’s newspaper at the time, the Independent Dispatch, reported that the fire “spread west to Heeser Street with the help of an east wind,” and consumed most of the business portion of town, 25 structures in all.

Many of the buildings now associated with Mendocino were erected after the fire, though the Masonic Temple and Presbyterian Church are exceptions, as are the homes of the founding families: the Kelleys, the Fords, the Lansings, and the Heesers. Their homes lay east of the inferno’s reach.

The Mendocino Lumber Company’s cookhouse and lumber yard were located on the headlands and survived the fire, but not without a struggle. The night the fire broke out, every effort was made to save all the milled lumber that was stockpiled on the headlands; Heeser’s general store at the west end of Main Street was razed to the ground to create a fire break. Since Mendocino had no fire department at the time, its citizenry fought the blaze with buckets. The water came from the water towers dotting the town, or perhaps from the Kelley pond.

Mendocino Historical Research Inc. printed a map in 1987 that helps establish which buildings were destroyed by the fire. It places four saloons along the stretch of Main that burned; three hotels, at least one with a livery; six miscellaneous retailers; Mendocino’s original post office and Odd Fellows Hall; Murray’s pharmacy; Heeser’s general store; at least one bank; perhaps a butcher; and the Independent Dispatch. The building housing the press and machine shop suffered severe damage.

West Main Street Before the Fire, c. 1866. Carlson’s City Hotel is on the left with a tall flag pole in front of it. Left of the hotel is William Heeser’s store. The land, buildings, and stacks on the south side of the street were owned by the Mendocino Lumber Company. (Photographer: Martin Mason Hazeltine)

William Heeser and William Kelley owned much of the commercial property that burned. Both men were landlords when the fire broke out. Heeser ran his general store and had just founded the Bank of Mendocino, which probably sat next door to the post office, flanked on the other side by Padden’s Saloon. A few doors east of Padden’s, John Murray ran a pharmacy on property that Kelley probably owned. It had an upstairs hall with a piano, making it a popular gathering place. Murray hosted dances and theater along with community meetings and even jury trials.

The City Hotel, owned by John Carlson, burned that night. The three-story stage stop at the west end of Main Street had a livery, and one report suggests the horses stabled there found shelter from the flames in Heeser’s orchard, which stretched north behind his house. Carlson had no insurance, but he rebuilt his hotel, making it bigger and more modern. It was dismantled in 1917 and the wood was used to build the cookhouse at Boyle’s Camp on Big River. All that’s left today is its water tower, the oldest in Mendocino.

(The Kelley House Museum is open from 11am to 3pm Thursday through Monday. Schedule a Walking tour at https://www.kelleyhousemuseum.org/events/month/)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, June 20

GERARDO AGUILAR-ARROYO, Ukiah. DUI.

KELISHA ALVAREZ, Ukiah. County parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

BASILIO ANGUIANO, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

BENJAMIN COBB, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JOSE DIAZ JR., Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

BRIAN FONSEN, Potter Valley. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, vandalism.

JEREMY GULICK, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery.

ANDRES HERNANDEZ, Willits. DUI, suspended license for DUI.

LEVI LEON, Willits. Probation revocation.

DAVID LITTLE, San Francisco/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting.

JESSICA MABERY, Willits. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

SAMANTHA MILLER, Willits. Domestic battery.

JOSE PLASCENCIA, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

ESPERANZA SANCHEZ, Ukiah. Grand theft, disobeying court order.

JALAHN TRAVIS, Ukiah. Petty theft, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

SAD DAY BY THE BAY

by Lindy Peters

Willie Mays. Was there ever a better name for a ball player? Willie Mays. Just the mention of his name brings a smile to all, even Dodger fans. Willie Mays.

I grew-up in SoCal in the small beach town of Solana Beach near San Diego. I began playing baseball in our neighborhood at age 6 and knew most of the stars and even their stats due to my new hobby of collecting baseball cards. My favorite player was Mickey Mantle because my grandpa had told me he was best the player at the time. This would have been 1957 or 1958. About that time our next door neighbor Mr. Taylor moved and gave me a radio. My very own radio!

Remember, TV was relatively new and most sets were black and white. I learned rather quickly that after my parents thought I was in bed sleeping, I could gingerly tune in Dodger games and quietly listen to them instead of going to sleep. Every summer from 1960-62 I was there at the game with Vin Scully while my folks thought I was asleep. Vinnie introduced me to all the National League stars at the time. Remember, there was no inter-league play back then except the All-Star game and the World Series. Henry Aaron (he never called him Hank), Roberto Clemente, Stan Musial, Ernie Banks and Frank Robinson. But when it came to Willie Mays you could tell even then, as a 7 year old kid, that Vin Scully thought Willie was in a class by himself. It didn’t matter that he played for the Giants. He was that good.

But in August of 1962, my Father took a job with the State Department of Education in Sacramento and the family upped and moved to Davis. I was devastated at that age to leave all my friends behind. But I brought my baseball card collection and found other kids in school that September who also collected cards and we instantly had a bond and were eager to share and show each other what we had. I soon discovered that this Willie Mays was EVERYONE’S favorite player up here.

Though still a Mantle fan, I began to take notice. Now I was listening to Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons (still my all-time favorite announcer with Hank Greenwald 2nd.) every night and soon began to follow the Giants. And you know what? This Willie Mays is the real deal!! I became a Giants fan.

My greatest memory of Willie was not a home run or a great catch or a fantastic throw. It was a single. And though this is strictly by memory, I don’t think it even left the infield. It was game 3 of the National League playoffs. Winner goes to World Series. Loser goes home. We were waiting for our house to be finished and were living in a rental house with no TV so a neighbor kid who I had just met invited me to watch the game at his house. There were lots of kids and his parents in the living room. Everyone a Giants fan.

Dodger Stadium. 9th inning. Giants trail 4-2 as I recall. Tension in the room. The Giants load the bases. Up comes Willie Mays. The tension turns to a happy confidence. Willie scorches a liner right over the pitcher. He manages to knock it down (I forget who he was) but by the time he retrieved the ball everyone was safe. Though they were still trailing, the bases were still loaded and the momentum had clearly shifted. Three more runs would score on a walk, a sac fly and an error but it was Willie Mays who started the rally. And that rally carried them to victory.

I remember leaving my new friend’s house through the front screen door feeling giddy with excitement that my two favorite players would be in the World Series together. The sky was an eerie orange due to a wildfire in Southern Oregon and I thought it might be an omen as I walked back home.

But unfortunately Bobby Richardson had other ideas.

So it was appropriate late Tuesday afternoon as I sat watching the Giants vs. Cubs game that I would get the news actually watching the Giants on TV. I was watching with the sound off because unless it’s Kruk and Keip I’d rather just watch. While the game was going my smart watch buzzed with a tone specific to a Giants highlight. I’m thinking, “Nothing just happened in the game, I wonder what the Giants app is alerting me for.” I looked down and can still see it. Willie Mays dies at 93. I turned the sound on. No mention. Must not have announced it yet. Sarah is out watering the plants. I go outside to tell her and I find I can’t even say it. She stops what she is doing and looks up. As I say the words, and even now as I type them, the tears begin to flow. Willie Mays is dead.

Willie Mays. Was there ever a better name for a ball player?

Willie Mays. Was there ever a better ball player?

Lindy Peters

Fort Bragg

CAFFEINE

Meredith Smith (Coast Chatline): Is all caffeine the same in our bodies in terms of alkaline/acidity? Does a cup of Organic Chai Tea (3 on the caffeinated scale) equate to a cuppa Joe Anyone?

Marco here. "The elf in tea is gentler than the elf in coffee." Green tea generally has half the caffeine of black tea, and black tea has half the caffeine of coffee. Also people react differently to other parts of what's in the drink. Try a new thing for a week or two and see if it's a problem. If it's not, and you like it, that's for you.

Even with green tea, if I forget or otherwise skip my daily mason jar of one teabag, I don't get a headache like you do when you skip coffee you're used to, but I feel less likely to push through and finish things, and more likely to sit down and read something between tasks and maybe fall asleep with my head down on the desk.

Whatever amount of caffeine you're used to, if you change it it takes a week or two before you're used to the new way. Caffeine doesn't act to give you energy. It blocks you feeling weary, and your brain comes to need that. It's a little addiction, just like everything else. But there are all kinds of benefits of drinking a big glass of water, and coffee smells so good, way better than it tastes if you don't put a bunch of other stuff in it to make it taste good, milk and sugar and so on. But your brain anticipates the effect and it starts to smell better to you, so you end up liking black coffee, the way people come to like the smell of cigarets, or alcohol, which are vile. Bleagh.

Most other things taste about as good as they smell just the way they are. Bacon tastes better than it smells And with syrup, because of the pancakes next to it, yum. Also, here's a sure-fire million dollar idea: glazed doughnuts with bacon in them.

Marco McClean

FRED GARDNER

I see Ellen Taylor's lovely picture of Alex's headstone, and call with one of him preparing to photograph the headstone of EB Schnaubelt.

Sorry about the quality. My only print is shellacked onto a file cabinet. We were at the graveyard in Trinidad, on our way to or from the Redwood Summer protest in Samoa.

Schanubelt’s widow had put up a stone that said

“E.B.Schnaubelt

Born April 5, 1855, Died May 22, 1913

Murdered by Capitalism”

Alex had heard about Schnaubelt's headstone and wanted to pay homage. He later wrote (in ‘The Golden Age is in Us’), “E.B. had set up a lumber mill as a workers’ co-op but then the big companies cheated him out of the land where the mill stood, though he still owned the plant. One night Schnaubelt, living nearby, thought he heard someone messing with his machinery. He went to investigate and a watchman hired by the companies shot him dead. His widow put up the stone and moved away.”

Alex himself may have been murdered by Capitalism (in which case Capitalism could claim self-defense). We’re all being massively bombarded by radiation and exposed to carcinogens in the air, the water, the food, the upholstery, the receipt at the gas station… And it’s all in the pursuit of profit. America’s “war on cancer” does not mean identifying and eliminating the causes of cancer but a “search for the cure.” The corporados don’t want to stop the plague by closing their nuclear power plants and eliminating cancer-causing chemicals in their production processes. That would cut into profits. They want to fight the war on cancer inside our bodies. That generates profits.

ALL ABOUT PROFIT

Editor,

Regarding “My father-in-law is fighting for his life with cancer. He shouldn’t have to fight insurance companies, too” I had an identical experience, on behalf of one of my dental patients with a different health insurance company that I spent 3½ years wrestling with.

Fortunately, my case only involved payment, not treatment, because dentistry does not require “authorization” like medicine does.

An attorney who investigated my case said the firm “just lost that is identical to yours — the nonresponsiveness, the delays, the lies, etc., in which the court awarded the patient $14 million, half of which was for punitive damages.”

Punitive damages are hard to come by — the malfeasance must be intentional. At one point, the attorney said, “$14 million might sound like a lot — it isn’t!”

Now I see why he said that: $14 million is barely two-thirds of the Anthem CEO’s annual compensation and a tiny fraction of Anthem’s $6 billion annual profit.

Insurance companies have an effective business model as long as all they care about is making money, with absolutely no regard for the welfare of patients.

Richard E. Leeds

San Francisco

SF RESTAURANTS (MOSTLY) SUCK

by Jonah Raskin

I grew up with restaurants and in restaurants and luxuriated in the romance of restaurants in New York, London, Mexico City and elsewhere. My lawyer father had clients who owned restaurants and so we ate for free. When I arrived in San Francisco at the end of the pandemic I didn’t know any restaurants, except the ones that had folded like Ton Kiang which served excellent dim sum and congee, a rice porridge, and bok choy stir fried in a wok. Mostly after I arrived, I shopped in an organic worker owned and operated grocery and cooked and ate at home. Then, about two months ago I began to eat in restaurants with a reputation and on the lists of restaurant reviewers. I’m about ready to go back to home cooked meals, save money and use the machine to wash dishes which I ordinarily washed by hand.

This piece is not a restaurant review and I’m not here to suggest where or where not to eat, though I will mention the names of some restaurants not to boast but as a way to offer my credentials. Find your own restaurants , explore and experiment. I think that many San Franciscans, myself included, go to restaurants so that they’re not eating at home, but with friends, family members and even strangers, who can offer cold company and kindness. There is good restaurant food in San Francisco, though it doesn’t leap out and say “Eat Here.” You have to hunt for good food, and try it, and even then you might go home disappointed although stuffed.

Two nights ago I ate in a huge restaurant with a gigantic bar on Mission Street near the Ferry Building, The kitchen served an eight course meal that started with ceviche, and ended with Mexican churros, and with duck, beef, fish, vegetables, rice and beans in between the first and last plates. The dinner, which cost $90 including tip, also offered tequila cocktails with grapefruit juice, four different tequilas to sip and swag to take home. The $90 included the tip. The kitchen couldn’t keep up with the three hundred or so folks who sat at long tables and ate and drank and talked and flirted. I drank more than usual and went home on the street car buzzed. I would not go back. Not worth it. Service was too slow. Room too noisy. The same sauce disguised the taste of the duck and the beef.

I would go back to the small Chinese restaurant on Folsom not far from Civic Center where I had an early supper with my pal J. who knows where to eat and can eat far more than I can eat. He’ll eat everything on his plate and everything I haven’t eaten on my plate. We met one another at a French café in the Financial District that makes tasty pastries, savory pates and croissants with smoked salmon. At the café, the piece de resistance that night was Beef Wellington. J sat alone at a table. I invited him to join me, which he did. Later that month we ate authentic Moroccan food (at Aziza) and delicious Italian food (at Delfina) and fresh sushi at Ebisu. Mostly, though, I ate at home. I’ll never be able to eat in every restaurant in San Francisco; there are dozens of them on Irving, Clement, Valencia, Ninth Avenue and elsewhere. I wouldn’t want to eat in every one., though eating in restaurants gives me ideas for food to make at home. So does The New York Times.

I was a restaurant reviewer for years and learned that much of restaurant reviewing is as corrupt as any other kind of reviewing. Reviewers aren't always honest. Stars, my favorite SF restaurant, is long gone.

Many of the articles in The San Francisco Chronicle are about food, restaurants, their closures and openings and chefs. To judge from The Chronicle, San Franciscans want news about food more than they want news about Gaza. At the huge restaurant near the Ferry Building, which is co-owned by Stephan Curry’s wife, the crowd seemed to thrive on the ambiance alone. I watched folks eat and thought of the Romans before the barbarians came down from the North and sacked the imperial city. Perhaps food and eating provide a distraction from the wars that are raging globally and the folks without homes on the streets of cities like San Francisco where the campers go hungry or eat stuff in tin cans left by the philanthropic.

I have had the privilege of eating in restaurants that might be called gourmet but restaurants are not my favorite institutions. Owners exploit workers at the front of the house and the back of the house, patrons abuse wait people, dishes often have too much salt and are cooked in too much fat. The one thing that takes me out of my house again and again is pizza, usually from Arizmendi, which has no indoor seating. I buy a slice and eat it outdoors or take half a partially baked pie home and bake it in the oven for 10 minutes. Open six days a week, Arizmendi offers a different pie on every one of those days. If you’re planning to come to the city, and want to eat, then walk up and down Ninth Ave, between Irving and Judah, look inside the Japanese, Italian, Chinese, Thai and Indian restaurants clustered next to one another, go inside, read the menu, talk to a server and try something you haven’t tried before. I can’t live with most restaurants as they are currently configured and as prices go, and I can’t live without them either, because they offer spectacle, adventures in dining and cultural rewards.

WHAT ESTHER MOBLEY'S READING

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

In the New Wine Review, Jason Wilson calls for a shift in the paradigm of wine education. “In every other realm of culture, the canon has been questioned and often blown up,” Wilson writes, yet most wine courses still focus on the same set of traditional grapes, regions and styles. It’s a provocative piece!

The owners of Chateau Montrose, the famous second growth Bordeaux estate, have acquired RdV Vineyards in Virginia, reports Dave McIntyre in the Washington Post. They’ll be renaming the winery Lost Mountain and will fold it into a newly formed company, Eutopia Estates, which also includes the Montrose owners’ other French winery holdings: Clos Rougeard in the Loire Valley, Domaine Henri Rebourseau in Burgundy and Chateau Tronquoy in Bordeaux.

As federal agencies prepare to update the U.S. Dietary Guidelines in 2025, the wine industry remains concerned that the new guidance may discourage all alcohol consumption. Now, reports Cyril Penn in Wine Business, the heads of those agencies have received a couple of letters outlining those concerns — one letter from 15 alcohol trade associations, and another from members of Congress’ House Committee on Agriculture.

CPUC VOTES THURSDAY ON PROPOSED DECISION TO DENY AT&T APPLICATION

AT&T must continue offering landline service in California, regulators rule

by Aidin Vaziri

AT&T must continue offering landline telephone service in California, state regulators decided Thursday.

The California Public Utilities Commission rejected AT&T’s March 2023 request to be relieved of its duty as the state’s “carrier of last resort,” a decision welcomed by local officials who said it would have affected millions of households.

“This is a victory for some of the most vulnerable residents in our county whose telephones are their lifeline,” said Ray Mueller, a San Mateo County supervisor who led the effort against the telecommunications giant’s bid.

AT&T took on the role of the “carrier of last resort” because of its past monopoly and state laws ensuring voice communication services for everyone.

However, AT&T argued that the outdated obligation forces it to maintain both an old narrowband network and a modern fiber and wireless broadband network. The company proposed transitioning the “few remaining consumers with traditional copper-based phone service” to newer technologies or providers.

AT&T’s plan would also have ended free access to 911 and telephone relay services for people with speech or hearing issues.

Mueller, whose district includes rural areas, stressed the importance of landline service during power outages and emergencies.

Despite the unanimous vote by the commission, landline service remains at risk, as AT&T could still retire copper facilities.

There is also a measure, Assembly bill 2797, in the California Assembly that aims to simplify the process for companies like AT&T to withdraw from their "carrier of last resort" obligations under certain conditions.

Mueller plans to present a resolution to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to oppose AB2797.

Rep. Anna Eshoo, a Democrat representing parts of Silicon Valley, said, “The CPUC made the right decision to hold AT&T to its promise and obligation to provide phone service to our constituents in areas with unreliable cell service. These lines of communication are lifelines to residents in rural areas, especially during public emergencies like fires, earthquakes, floods and landslides. Cost saving must never trump public safety.”

(SF Chronicle)

'DON'T DO THAT AGAIN': NEW REPORT SAYS 49ERS REPRIMANDED GEORGE KITTLE FOR OFFSEASON FUN

by Alex Simon

It’s no secret that San Francisco 49ers star George Kittle is a massive professional wrestling fan. But it’s safe to say the 49ers aren’t thrilled with Kittle becoming a growing presence around the ring.

Last year, Kittle got involved in a match at Wrestlemania 39, the World Wrestling Entertainment’s annual showcase event. Sitting in the front, Kittle was seen taunting WWE wrestler The Miz during his match with former NFL punter (and now infamous ESPN star) Pat McAfee. The Miz then shoved Kittle in the stands, leading Kittle to hop into the ringside area, knock the The Miz down with a clothesline and help McAfee with a stunt jump.

According to a story from ESPN’s Marc Raimondi, 49ers general manager John Lynch sent Kittle a text after Wrestlemania with a stern rebuke of his involvement.

“Hope you had fun,” Lynch reportedly texted Kittle. “Don’t do that again.”

The Kittle-Wrestlemania anecdote is part of a broader story from Raimondi about what NFL players aren’t allowed to do in the offseason. For most NFL players, their contracts have clauses stipulating they could lose out on bonus money if they get hurt doing non-football things, with prohibited activities ranging from basketball, skiing and rock climbing to riding on smaller vehicles deemed dangerous, like jet skis, all-terrain vehicles and motorcycles.

In Bay Area sports history, in fact, two athletes have infamously tried to cover up injuries they suffered while driving a smaller vehicle that was prohibited in their contracts. In 2002, Giants star Jeff Kent broke his wrist during spring training and claimed he did it while washing his car. That claim turned out to be bogus — it was actually from a motorcycle crash.

Then, in 2008, Warriors guard Monta Ellis tore a ligament in his ankle and initially told the Warriors it was from a pickup basketball game. Months later, a San Francisco Chronicle investigation revealed Ellis suffered the injury while riding a moped, leading the Warriors to suspend him for 30 games.

As for Kittle, he seems fully aware of the risks involved, with the ESPN story saying he could lose a $100,000 workout bonus if he got hurt during any wrestling stunts. Kittle being Kittle, though, he told ESPN he would have considered doing something at this year’s Wrestlemania if he weren’t recovering from core muscle surgery.

“I honestly am one of probably the safest guys,” Kittle said. “I don’t do anything. I might occasionally be in a wrestling ring, but I’m not doing too much. I’m very aware football is everything, and so I don’t even try to go skiing and stuff like that. That’s not even on my mind.”

(SF Chronicle)

UNAUTHORIZED EVENT TO DRAW THOUSANDS TO CALIFORNIA FOREST NEXT MONTH

The Rainbow Family Gathering is coming to the Plumas National Forest

by Sam Mauhay-Moore

Local officials and tribal organizations near Northern California's Plumas National Forest are preparing for the worst as thousands ramp up to attend a large gathering held by what the U.S. Forest Service refers to as a "loose-knit group of people." The Rainbow Family Gathering, an unauthorized event that draws thousands of people to a different American national forest every year, will take place in the Plumas National Forest during the first week of July, the forest service announced on Tuesday.

To some, the event serves as a yearly festival where new-age and hippie-aligned people can gather en masse to celebrate community, spirituality and a connection to the earth. To others — including tribal members of the Susanville Indian Rancheria, whose ancestral lands include where this year's Rainbow Gathering will take place — the event is an unwelcome nuisance at best and a source of irreversible destruction at worst.

"Where the gathering is happening is still within our ancestral footprint," said Scott Dixon, the Susanville Rancheria's emergency services coordinator.

Representatives from the Rainbow Gathering met with tribal members earlier this week to discuss their plans, Dixon added, but tribal council still isn't convinced that the land will be left unharmed once the event is through.

"They said they're going to be light on the land, but we all know that with thousands of people, that's not going to be light," Dixon said. "They're going to leave a footprint, and it's going to take a while for the land to come back from that and be natural again." He added that his biggest concerns include attendees damaging the headwaters that flow into Antelope Lake and disturbing areas where the Maidu tribe hold their annual Bear Dance.

The Susanville Rancheria went so far as to send a letter to the gathering's organizers imploring them to reconsider their decision.

"We are recommending that the proposed 2024 Rainbow Gathering take place outside of SIR's ancestral lands due to the egregious damage and irreparable harm that would result to our places of traditional cultural and religious importance," the letter reads. Despite this pushback, Dixon said, the "Rainbow Family" won't budge.

Earlier this month, a similar letter was sent to the Rainbow Gathering from the Pit River Tribe, whose ancestral lands include a location in the Modoc National Forest where the group had previously planned to hold their event. The gathering's organizers then decided to move this year's location to its current planned spot in Plumas National Forest, to the disdain of the Susanville Rancheria. The rancheria's members consist of people of the Maidu, Paiute, Washoe and Pit River tribes, whose ancestral lands cover what are now known as Lassen, Modoc and Plumas counties.

The Susanville Rancheria isn't the only group wary of the gathering: The U.S. Forest Service is also bracing for the event, and is well accustomed to everything it entails after handling its impacts since the gathering first started in 1972.

"It's a challenge for us," said Hilary Markin, spokesperson for the forest service's national incident management team. "The Rainbow Family, unfortunately, has consistently refused to comply with our permit process during these national gatherings."

The group claims they have no one person who can speak for the gathering or apply for permits on its behalf, Markin added. As a result, the event has historically been unpermitted, and typically results in hundreds of violations being handed out to its participants.

At last year's gathering, which was held in the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire, law enforcement recorded six arrests, 116 violation notices and 270 written warnings, Markin said. Violations ranged from alcohol and drug-related acts to charges related to damaging natural resources and interfering with law enforcement activities. Last year's gathering drew about 2,200 attendees, Markin added; this year, the forest service expects over 10,000.

Each year, the gathering impacts the soil and water quality of the land it takes place on, Markin said. Other concerns include the incorrect disposal of garbage, threats to endangered species in the area and, of course, the risk of someone or something at the event sparking a wildfire.

Another concern on Markin's radar is the impact that tens of thousands of the gathering's attendees will have on Janesville, the closest town to where the event will take place. As of 2022, the town has a population of only 2,641.

"That has an impact on their community, to have 10,000 people arrive to use the resources in the stores, and that sort of thing," Markin said. She added that the forest service has set up a public information line to help answer any questions that local residents might have about the event. Along with the info line, the forest service's incident management team works with local organizations and law enforcement agencies to try and mitigate any potential damage caused by the gathering and prepare residents for the throngs of colorfully clad hippies that will soon descend on their region.

The Rainbow Family did not respond to SFGATE's request for comment by publication time. As of Thursday, a voice message left on the group's information line detailed intricate directions to the gathering's location, which is a 17-mile drive into the forest from Janesville south of Highway 395.

Dixon said that the Susanville Rancheria's tribal council will be convening later this month to discuss how it plans on addressing the issue.

"We're not happy with them being in the area, but they're going to do what they're going to do," Dixon said.

(sfgate.com)

CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT PULLS TAX MEASURE FROM NOVEMBER BALLOT

by Bob Egelko

A business-sponsored initiative that would have required voter approval for any increase in state or local taxes or fees must be removed from the November ballot because it is so far-reaching that it would be a “revision” of the state Constitution, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday.

“The measure would fundamentally restructure the most basic of governmental powers,” the power of state and local lawmakers to raise taxes to fund the government, Justice Goodwin Liu wrote in the 7-0 ruling.

The court granted a request by Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic legislators to remove the measure from the ballot.

Current law allows the Legislature to increase state taxes by a two-thirds majority vote. The initiative, a proposed amendment to the state Constitution, would keep that standard but would also require a majority of California voters to approve the increase before it could take effect.

It would also require local voters to approve any increases approved by city or county governments in their taxes or licensing fees, with a two-thirds majority required to raise funds for specific programs. And it would apply retroactively to all taxes and fees that have been raised since the start of 2022, canceling them unless approved within 12 months by the lawmakers and voters designated in the ballot measure.

Newsom and legislative Democrats, joined by many local government leaders and by former Gov. Jerry Brown, contended the ballot measure was so-far reaching that it would be a “revision” of the state Constitution, and not merely an amendment. A revision cannot be placed on the ballot by initiative and instead requires approval by two-thirds of the Assembly and Senate before being submitted to the voters.

This proposal is “unlike any measure that has ever gone before the voters with respect to the sweeping changes it would make to California’s fundamental governmental structure,” lawyers for Newsom and the legislators told the court in an emergency petition in September. “Administrative agencies would lose the power to do much of the work they do today under legislatively delegated authority.”

The court agreed Thursday, rejecting arguments that it should allow voters to decide on the measure before ruling on its legality. The justices did not decide whether the ballot proposal would violate state laws or constitutional standards, concluding only that it was too far-reaching to qualify as an initiative.

“Whether the proposed changes will in fact promote transparency or accountability, and how such interests might be balanced against considerations of agency expertise, administrative efficiency, or practicality are not for us to say,” Liu wrote. But he said the measure “would substantially alter our basic plan of government,” since “from the state’s founding, the Legislature has had broad authority to levy taxes.”

It would “strip the Legislature of authority to promptly raise revenues” in response to financial emergencies or natural disasters, he said. And at the local level, Liu said, the ballot measure “would transform an overdue library book fine or an expired parking meter fine into a 'tax' subject to voter approval” if it had not been approved by the City Council with standards that allowed appeals.

The court rarely removes initiatives from the ballot after they have received enough signatures, preferring to let voters consider a disputed measure before ruling on its legality. But in 2018 the justices removed an initiative that proposed to divide California into three states, without deciding whether it was within the voters’ power to approve. The measure’s sponsor, venture capitalist Tim Draper, later withdrew it.

Sponsors of the tax-cut ballot measure could ask state lawmakers to approve it for a future ballot but would have little prospect of success in the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

Jonathan Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and an attorney for sponsors of the proposed November ballot measure, said they could draft narrower tax-cut initiatives for the 2026 ballot that would accomplish some of the same goals as the now-rejected initiative. The late Howard Jarvis was the sponsor of Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that slashed property taxes statewide and required a two-thirds legislative vote to increase state taxes. Prop. 13 was upheld by the state Supreme Court, and it has been followed by business-backed initiatives further limiting taxes.

But “I’m not sure the court will allow anything now that’s pro-taxpayer,” Coupal said after Thursday’s ruling. “I think the California Supreme Court has abandoned any pretense of impartiality.”

Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, called the ruling “an outrageous abuse of power.”

But state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, said the court had blocked a ballot measure “designed to tear down state and local government and make it impossible to fund basic services like police, fire, and education.”

Lorena Gonzalez, leader of the California Labor Federation, said in a posting on X that the ruling was “a victory for working people & all California.” And Omar Rodriguez, a spokesperson for Newsom, said the governor was “grateful the California Supreme Court unanimously removed this unconstitutional measure from the ballot.”

The case is Legislature v. Weber, S281977.

(SF Chronicle)

“A GREAT AND POWERFUL AND TIMELY FILM, filled with the dread this moment engenders; the cynical misuse of religion to advance aims diametrically the opposite of Christianity’s mission.” - Ken Burns

“The most important documentary I’ve narrated” - Peter Coyote

JEFF BLANKFORT: Tonight I watched Trump's entire speech before an adoring crowd and it was clearly a triumph of demagogy as well as a call to arms, if necessary, against those who challenge his and their vision of US supremacism. He spent considerable time attacking Joe Biden but perhaps his most effective moment in doing that was recounting Biden's massive plagiarizing of Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock's speech when running for president in 1988 which forced Biden to drop out of that presidential race and should have barred him from ever being a Democrat Party candidate again if, for no other reason that doing so was indefensible and became an Achilles Heel that any opponent not in the tank like all of his leading Democrat opposition must have known about and failed to mention.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Let’s celebrate the first day of summer. The operative word here is yet. It is now about four hours old, and as of this moment, there’s no nukes exploding anywhere, the US hasn’t broken up, Biden hasn’t publicly shit his pants, the temps around sunny Boston will be in the nineties, no mass murders, no illegals running amok, and the financial markets haven’t crashed.

What a day!

WHEN US GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS SHOW YOU WHO THEY ARE, BELIEVE THEM

by Norman Solomon

With carnage persisting in Gaza, it's easy enough to say that Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown us who he is. But so has President Biden, and so have the most powerful Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

"When someone shows you who they are,” Maya Angelou said, “believe them the first time."

That should apply to foreign-policy elites who show you who they are, time after time.

Officials running the Pentagon and State Department have been in overdrive for more than 250 days in support of Israel’s ongoing slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Supposedly dedicated to defense and diplomacy, those officials have worked to implement and disguise Washington’s war policies, which have taken more lives than any other government in this century.

Among the weapons of war, cluster munitions are especially horrific. That’s why 67 Democrats and an equal number of Republicans in the House of Representatives voted last week to prevent the U.S. government from continuing to send those weapons to armies overseas.

But more than twice as many House members voted the other way. They defeated a Pentagon funding amendment that would have prohibited the transfer of cluster munitions to other countries. The lawmakers ensured that the U.S. can keep supplying those weapons to the military forces of Ukraine and Israel.

As of now, 124 nations have signed onto a treaty banning cluster munitions, which often wreck the bodies of civilians. The “bomblets” from cluster munitions “are particularly attractive to children because they resemble a bell with a loop of ribbon at the end,” the Just Security organization explains.

But no member of Congress need worry that one of their own children might pick up such a bomblet someday, perhaps mistaking it for a toy, only to be instantly killed or maimed with shrapnel.

The Biden administration correctly responded to indications (later proven accurate) that Russia was using cluster munitions in Ukraine. On Feb. 28, 2022, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told journalists that if the reports of Russian use of those weapons turned out to be true, “it would potentially be a war crime.”

Back then, the front page of the New York Timesdescribed “internationally banned cluster munitions” as “a variety of weapons—rockets, bombs, missiles and artillery projectiles—that disperse lethal bomblets in midair over a wide area, hitting military targets and civilians alike.”

Days later, the Times reported that NATO officials “accused Russia of using cluster bombs in its invasion,” and the newspaper added that “anti-personnel cluster bombs . . . kill so indiscriminately they are banned under international law.”

But when the Ukrainian military forces ran low on ammunition last year, the U.S. administration decided to start shipping cluster munitions to them.

“All countries should condemn the use of these weapons under any circumstances,” Human Rights Watch has declared.

BBC correspondent John Simpson summed up a quarter-century ago: “Used against human beings, cluster bombs are some of the most savage weapons of modern warfare.”

As the Congressional Research Service reported this spring, cluster munitions “disperse large numbers of submunitions imprecisely over an extended area.” They “frequently fail to detonate and are difficult to detect,” and “can remain explosive hazards for decades.”

The CRS report added: “Civilian casualties are primarily caused by munitions being fired into areas where soldiers and civilians are intermixed, inaccurate cluster munitions landing in populated areas, or civilians traversing areas where cluster munitions have been employed but failed to explode.”

The horrible immediate effects are just the beginning. “It’s been over five decades since the U.S. dropped cluster bombs on Laos, the most bombed country in the world per capita,” Human Rights Watch points out. “The contamination from cluster munitions remnants and other unexploded ordnance is so vast that fewer than 10 percent of affected areas have been cleared. An estimated 80 million submunitions still pose a danger, especially to curious children.”

The members of Congress who just greenlighted more cluster munitions are dodging grisly realities. The basic approach is to proceed as though such human realities don’t matter if an ally is using those weapons (or if the United States uses them, as happened in Southeast Asia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen).

Overall, with carnage persisting in Gaza, it's easy enough to say that Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown us who he is. But so has President Biden, and so have the most powerful Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

While the U.S. has been supplying a large majority of the weapons and ammunition imported by Israel, a similar approach from official Washington (with ineffectual grumbling) has enabled Israel to lethally constrict food going into Gaza.

During his State of the Union address in early March, Biden announced plans for the U.S. to build a port on the Gaza coast to bring in food and other vital aid. But his speech didn’t mention the Pentagon’s expectation that such a seaport could take 60 days to become operational.

At the time, a Common Dreams headline summed up the hollowness of the gambit: “Biden Aid Port Plan Rebuked as ‘Pathetic’ PR Effort as Israel Starves Gazans.” Even at full tilt, the envisioned port would not come anywhere near compensating for Israel’s methodical blockage of aid trucks—by far the best way to get food to 2.2 million people facing starvation. “We are talking about a population that is starving now,” said Ziad Issa, the head of humanitarian policy for ActionAid. “We have already seen children dying of hunger.”

An official at Save the Children offered a reality check: “Children in Gaza cannot wait to eat. They are already dying from malnutrition, and saving their lives is a matter of hours or days—not weeks.” The Nation described “the tragic absurdity of Biden’s Gaza policies: the U.S. government is making elaborate plans to ameliorate a humanitarian catastrophe that would not exist without its own bombs.”

And this week—more than three months after the ballyhooed drumroll about plans for a port on the Gaza coast—news broke that the whole thing is a colossal failure even on its own terms.

“The $230 million temporary pier that the U.S. military built on short notice to rush humanitarian aid to Gaza has largely failed in its mission, aid organizations say, and will probably end operations weeks earlier than originally expected,” the New York Timesreported on June 18. “In the month since it was attached to the shoreline, the pier has been in service only about 10 days. The rest of the time, it was being repaired after rough seas broke it apart, detached to avoid further damage or paused because of security concerns.”

As Israel’s crucial military patron, the U.S. government could insist on an end to the continual massacre of civilians in Gaza and demand a complete halt to interference with aid deliveries. Instead, Israel continues to inflict “unconscionable death and suffering” while mass starvation is closing in.

Maya Angelou’s advice certainly applies. When the president and a big congressional majority show that they are willing accomplices to mass murder, believe them.

It’s fitting that Angelou, a renowned poet and writer, gave her voice to words from Rachel Corrie, who was crushed to death one day in 2003 while standing in front of an Israeli army bulldozer as it moved to demolish a Palestinian family’s home in Gaza.

A few years after Corrie died, Angelou recorded a video while reading from an email that the young activist sent: “We are all born and someday we’ll all die. Most likely to some degree alone. What if our aloneness isn’t a tragedy? What if our aloneness is what allows us to speak the truth without being afraid? What if our aloneness is what allows us to adventure—to experience the world as a dynamic presence—as a changeable, interactive thing?”

(Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His new book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in June 2023 by The New Press.)

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“There’s a lot of things wrong with this country, but one of the few things still right with it is that a man can steer clear of the organized bullshit if he really wants to. It’s a goddamned luxury, and if I were you, I’d take advantage of it while you can.”

— Hunter S Thompson

PUT LABOR DAY TO WORK FOR WORKERS AND DEMOCRACY

by Jim Hightower

What if Labor Day was not about giving working families one measly Monday off to sleep in, rush to the beach, do some 12-oz elbow bends — then report back first thing Tuesday to start another 364 days of pulling the corporate plow? Instead, imagine if working stiffs themselves took hold of this day, putting it to work rallying and reinvigorating a rebellious labor movement to achieve economic fairness and social justice for all in America. This was, after all, the purpose of the original Labor Day, held in 1882. Thousands of bricklayers, machinists, piano makers, longshoremen, and other unionized workers in the New York City area defied corporate bosses to declare their own day off. They were not taking a vacation, but making “a public show of organized strength,” energizing labor’s demand for an end to the tyranny of 12-hour days, 6-day weeks, and $2 a day in pay.

Instead, imagine if working stiffs themselves took hold of this day, putting it to work rallying and reinvigorating a rebellious labor movement to achieve economic fairness and social justice for all in America. This was, after all, the purpose of the original Labor Day, held in 1882.

Thousands of bricklayers, machinists, piano makers, longshoremen, and other unionized workers in the New York City area defied corporate bosses to declare their own day off. They were not taking a vacation, but making “a public show of organized strength,” energizing labor’s demand for an end to the tyranny of 12-hour days, 6-day weeks, and $2 a day in pay.

In an audacious affront to the plutocracy, a miles-long parade of common workers marched six abreast, accompanied by union floats, and boisterous bands. They pointedly traversed right in front of the gilded mansions of robber barons living along Fifth Avenue, the most ostentatious corridor of wealth and power in America. The day culminated in a sprawling picnic and festival, with 25,000 union celebrants enjoying food, beer, dancing, each other, and a shared sense that the working class was on the move.

Why not again? Auto workers, flight attendants, fast-food workers, and others are clearly on the move, so why not make a new “public show of organized strength,” directly confronting the corporate greedheads and political boneheads who’re stealing our democracy. Ralph Nader called for this two years ago — to see his ideas for “A Workers Action Day,” go to: nader.org

25 Comments

Kathy June 21, 2024

In the case of Legislature v. Weber, S281977, The Ca. supreme Court’s majority opinion: https://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S281977.PDF.

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Mazie Malone June 21, 2024

Re; Jim Shields….Thank you again for the rundown 💕

“But those are the prices that everybody pays when the county is working “towards the development of a comprehensive and effective mental health system of care.” Any bets on when that will occur?”…………………….

Seemingly still working away and accomplishing very little for the magnitude of the issues.

Jahlan Travis again…. he is looking quite unwell. Sure, hope Jake Kooy whom we have not seen in sometime is not dead and that he is hopefully in treatment somewhere.

mm 💕

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Craig Stehr June 21, 2024

Awoke early in the air conditioned Royal Motel room in sunny Ukiah, California. Read through the AVA online, paying attention to interesting news items like the Rainbow Family again assembling in the area. Attended the gathering in the 80s near Likely, CA in the Modoc…that was incredible for sheer maximum partying! Numbly read through the usual items about county administrative positions paying hundreds of thousands of dollars. So how come it is impossible for me to get subsidized housing here? Why isn’t the dwindling population (reduced in size following the COVID-19 pandemic to a size “more manageable”) at Building Bridges actually receiving critical social services? Meanwhile, noticed that I missed the summer solstice which was yesterday. Who cares? Not the body not the mind Immortal Self I am!! Watching the mental factory churn out thoughts, and not interfering with the Divine Absolute working through this body-mind instrument. That is all. Nota bene: Memo to offline emailers who ask “What are you going to do after your motel stay is over August 5th?” Answer: I don’t have any idea what I am going to do after my motel stay is over August 5th. I am detached and not identifying with the American experiment in freedom and democracy. Craig Louis Stehr Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

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Chuck Dunbar June 21, 2024

OUR EDITOR

Thank you, Bruce, for yesterday’s update on your health and progress. It’s been a hard go of it for sure, but you are a tough guy and you still have an important mission–The Mighty AVA!

This part is the best news:

“STAMINA seems to be returning. I’m walking a couple of miles every morning but am still unable to do more than ten push-ups, which I find frustrating. But the last five months have been depleting for sure. I lost all my stamina. I still can’t go places unless I carry a bag of emergency gear, but overall I’m optimistic that I’m getting stronger. ..”

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Sonya Nesch June 21, 2024

Jim Shields, how would you have resolved:
1. County inability to meet CA laws for minimum PHF staffing levels?
2. Tony Craver’s PHF pipeline for people in orange jump suits with armed guards, frightening other patients and staff?
3. County pay offer for RNs of around $21,000 annually when they could get $36,00 elsewhere?
Sonya Nesch
Comptche

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Mazie Malone June 21, 2024

On another note…. sort of…

There has been no reporting of the dead homeless guy on sidewalk last week across from the shelter by the gas station? ………

mm 💕

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- Bob A. June 21, 2024
  
  Only a Hobo
  
  As I was out walking on a corner one day
  I spied an old hobo, in a doorway he lay
  His face was all grounded in the cold sidewalk floor
  And I guess he’d been there for the whole night or more
  
  Only a hobo, but one more is gone
  Leavin’ nobody to sing his sad song
  Leavin’ nobody to carry him home
  Only a hobo, but one more is gone
  
  A blanket of newspaper covered his head
  As the curb was his pillow, the street was his bed
  One look at his face showed the hard road he’d come
  And a fistful of coins showed the money he bummed
  
  Only a hobo, but one more is gone
  Leavin’ nobody to sing his sad song
  Leavin’ nobody to carry him home
  Only a hobo, but one more is gone
  
  Does it take much of a man to see his whole life go down
  To look up on the world from a hole in the ground
  To wait for your future like a horse that’s gone lame
  To lie in the gutter and die with no name?
  
  Only a hobo, but one more is gone
  Leavin’ nobody to sing his sad song
  Leavin’ nobody to carry him home
  Only a hobo, but one more is gone
  
  –Bob Dylan
  
  Reply
  - Mazie Malone June 21, 2024
    
    Not really a Dylan fan …lol…
    Our humanity as a deep as a puddle of mud…..and just as filthy……………….ugghhh
    
    mm 💕
    
    Reply
    - Lazarus June 21, 2024
      
      I am, or once was a fan of Bob Dylan. However, I agree with your comment on humanity.
      Have a nice day…
      Laz
      
      Reply
      - Mazie Malone June 21, 2024
        
        Hi Laz…. you sir have a great day also… 💕
        
        mm 💕
        
        Reply
    - Matt Kendall June 21, 2024
      
      Puddle of mud was a pretty good band! I liked some of their stuff.
      
      Reply
      - Mazie Malone June 21, 2024
        
        Hahaha…..Touche’……………….Awesome Band…………….way better than that I have a tear in my beer and my lady left me and stole my horsie…….🤣🤣. How about some Tesla or Queensryche and the amazing Ronnie James Dio?……………..listen to any of those?…Metallica? Maybe you are a headbanger?…..lol…🤣🤣💕💕💕
        
        All in good fun …Thank God it’s Friday………..
        
        Stay safe Sheriff………………….
        
        mm 💕
        
        Reply
        
        Matt Kendall June 21, 2024
        
        I was the only guy arriving at the rodeo with a 2 horse trailer and Metallica booming in 1987.
        Sliding into the 1990s G&R, the Cowboy Junkies, and Jayne’s Addiction will always bring back memories. All time favorite would be Stone Temple Pilots with Interstate Love Song. Dont get me wrong love the old country but it wasn’t my thing back then.
        
        Reply
        
        Mazie Malone June 21, 2024
        
        Rockin out… 🤘🤘
        
        mm 💕
        
        Reply
Call It As I See It June 21, 2024

So where is our friend Bowtie Ted?
We need his assessment on why it’s okay that our glorious cheerleader Mo suggests to give CEO Antle a raise.

Isn’t the County on the brink of bankruptcy?

This BOS talks out of both sides of their mouth. Just confirms how stupid they really are. What should we expect, the budget issues are self induced. Everyone of them should be recalled.

You would never run a private business like this. You would fire Antle, and show the Stupidvisors the door also.

C’mon Bowtie, get on the AVA and shower us with more wisdom.

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Me June 21, 2024

Oh by all means, lets give Antle a raise. Good Lord.

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- Chuck Dunbar June 21, 2024
  
  +1. Dear God.
  
  Reply
Harvey Reading June 21, 2024

“The initiative, a proposed amendment to the state Constitution, would keep that standard but would also require a majority of California voters to approve the increase before it could take effect.”

Standard? Since when is minority rule a “standard”? Two-thirds majority means one third plus one of the voters rule.

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mark donegan June 21, 2024

Well Sheriff, you and I agree wholeheartedly on legislation being an issue causing us a lot of problems sorting out the criminal and the mental health cases. I’ve always trusted your judgement in those and most things. I’m hoping the new behavioral health wing will be staffed with behavioral health people.
Looking forward to seeing those opportunities to ease your load.
Second time Antle has been up for a raise which was denied. I don’t believe she’s had one since taking over the executive office. That is a lead position, one of our three arms. Board, CC. and the CEO. I vocally opposed it the first time. Knowing the import of the position and that she took over during turbulent times, from my perspective she always does an outstanding job with whatever she is tasked. I tried to mention improperly she does get annoyed when certain supervisors can’t keep up.
Along that same vein. If it is true Charlotte Scott is going lead CC, I’m overly thrilled. I said in the past she has a sharp mind and I believe she will re-invigorate that office and possibly save us a lot of lawsuits. Good on you Charlotte Scott, you are brave.

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Harvey Reading June 21, 2024

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Apparently Trump poops his pants regularly when stressed (like during his trial), according to a recent AVA article.

Reply
- MAGA Marmon June 21, 2024
  
  You can’t believe anything written in the AVA.
  
  MAGA Marmon
  
  Reply
  - Harvey Reading June 21, 2024
    
    I’ll be the one to be the judge of that, thank you.
    
    Reply
Chuck Dunbar June 21, 2024

Willie Mays—“The Catch”

“Everyone has seen it. In slightly decayed black-and-white footage, a center fielder, wearing the number 24, turns his back on a well-struck baseball and, apparently without looking and using some weirdly powerful, instinctive positional guidance, races at top speed toward the stadium wall—and then reaches out in front of his body, back still turned, still running hard, and catches the ball. (Then, in one fluid action, he spins and throws.) It is Willie Mays, of the New York Giants, in Game One of the 1954 World Series, hauling in a shot by the Cleveland Indians’ Vic Wertz. Thousands of plays have happened since, catches as magnificent and many more meaningful, and yet there it is, the one and only…

‘Oh, the unruffled nonchalance of that game,’ was (Philip) Roth’s concluding remark about New York baseball in the forties and fifties. If we feel that nonchalance today when we watch Mays, it’s because it models the possibility of being at once urgent and at ease, racing as hard as humanly possible to make the play, with the secret knowledge that you will, indeed, make it. That double pursuit, outwardly hard-charging and inwardly serene, is the epitome of grace in every human endeavor. .. This is what makes sports matter. To borrow an image from (baseball writer Roger) Angell: all the rest of us do in life is run down uncatchable balls, drop them, and then pretend we haven’t. That’s why seeing one perfectly caught is so satisfying that we’ll never stop watching it, even after the catcher has left center field for good.”

Adam Gopnik

THE NEW YORKER (digital edition, 6/21/24)

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MAGA Marmon June 21, 2024

Chuck, did you ever see Willie play in person, I did several times.

MAGA Marmon

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- Chuck Dunbar June 21, 2024
  
  No, never got the chance, wish I had and good that you got to see him. I did, once, get to see Ted Williams when he played in Kansas City. We were young boys on a baseball team and went by train from central Kansas to the city, a big, fun deal. Willie was the best of the best, wasn’t he….
  
  Reply

Mendocino County Today: Friday 6/21/24

25 Comments

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