Mendocino County Today: Friday 6/28/24

Hay Field | Clearing | Elizabeth Dockins | Ed Notes | Larry Fuente | CPR Training | Local Events | Heat Watch | Boonville Fourth | Coastal Trail | Hospital Comments | Local Athlete | Unordinary Life | Farm Stands | Birthday Jones | Redwood Valley Parade | Goshawk | Circle Dance | Garden Art | Art Talks | Free Food | Bert Interview | Touch Trucks | Clean Fourth | Covelo Memories | Yesterday's Catch | Ice Soup | Wine Shorts | Hot Dogging | Disenfranchised Voters | Smart Story | Debate Perceptions | Milkman | NYT Stories | Zuck & Assange | Cat Research | Women Aging | Arresting People | Big Trucks | Gay Weed | Zap Comics

---

---

COASTAL STRATUS and patchy drizzle will scour out with increasing NW winds. Slightly elevated daytime RHs expected as a shortwave moves through the region on Saturday, enhancing marine influence inland. Warming and drying trend expected to intensity early next week - fire weather and heat risk have potential to become increasingly critical heading into the July 4th holiday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Clear skies & 49F this Friday morning on the coast. We should have another lovely day while the fog is currently offshore. It looks like clear skies & windy this weekend.

---

ELIZABETH DOCKINS FOUND DEAD near Ackerman Creek in Ukiah.

On Wednesday, Jun 26, 2024 at approximately 12:55 P.M., Deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office were in the area of Ackerman Creek (east of the 2200 block of North State Street) in Ukiah conducting an investigation regarding the theft of a bicycle from a nearby home.

During their investigation, Deputies attempted to speak with a female who appeared to be sleeping in a tent. When the female did not respond to them, the Deputies investigated further and found the female to be deceased.

Based on evidence located at the scene, the cause of death is suspected to be the result of a drug overdose. The final cause and manner of death is pending an autopsy and toxicology reports.

The decedent was identified as 35-year-old Elizabeth Dockins who was believed to be a transient from the Ukiah area. As a part of this coroner's investigation, the legal next-of-kin for Dockins was notified.

---

ED NOTES

THE DEBATE. Impressions. Only a sadist could not feel pity for Joe Biden. Only a fool could think that a guy who talks about how far he can hit a golf ball should be president. Biden was incoherent, Trump pedaled fear of "the millions of criminals coming across the border." The moderators were fair, but failed to check Trump when he ignored their questions. All-in-all, a scary night for America.

BIDEN FAN and life-long Democrat Van Jones said on CNN after the debate that as much as he likes Biden, it’s time for Biden to step aside, but he’s probably too stubborn to do it. (—ms)

---

LARRY FUENTE

Long-time Comptche resident and well-known artist, Larry Fuente, has died.

ONE MORE LARRY FUENTE MEMORY occurred to me: I'm not a bar person; it's just too kinetically social for me, but Juanita used to like to go to the Caspar Inn to dance when it was free to get in, and she won a contest and got to go to cover-charge shows there for free for a month, or maybe it was just Peter Lit being nice. You remember that big tiki-totem-pole wood sculpture thing they had by the north wall? One night Juanita was a few feet away from that, talking with Norton Buffalo, and Larry Fuente climbed up on top of it and it tipped over, bashed Juanita in the back of the head and knocked her flat. No real damage, just a bump and a headache and a funny story. Young people are made out of rubber. (Marco McClean)

---

SARA RYAN (facebook): Hey there AV! I am offering a first aid/CPR training at my preschool on Saturday July 6th from 9-5 (with a lunch break). A Red Cross instructor is coming from Sonoma county. The cost will be approximately $100 depending on what type of training you need. Some folks will just be getting basic first aid, and CPR, and some folks will be also including pediatric first aid and CPR. I have a few spots open if anyone would like to join! Private message me to sign up.

---

LOCAL EVENTS (through the weekend)

---

EXCESSIVE HEAT WATCH

California is gearing up for what could be the most intense heat wave of 2024, just in time for Fourth of July celebrations. 

This long-duration event is set to last into next weekend. The peak heat is expected between Tuesday and Saturday, with Independence Day looking to be the hottest of the days.

The National Weather Service in Sacramento has already issued an excessive heat watch for the entire Central Valley from Monday through Friday next week, with temperatures expected to soar between 105 and 115 degrees. Inland valley locations around the Bay Area will likely see triple-digit temperatures, while the Peninsula and East Bay could experience highs in the 80s and 90s.

On Monday, a large and strong ridge of high pressure will start to build off the coast of California, expanding eastward and strengthening as the week progresses. This high-pressure ridge will result in several very hot days and warm nights, especially for California’s interior. But uncertainties still remain in the forecast.

— Greg Porter, SF Chron

---

4TH OF JULY AT THE BOONVILLE FAIRGROUNDS

Don't miss The Olde Time 4th of July event at the fairground on 7/4 from 12 - 4:00 that is coming up soon! This delightful community gathering has a parade for young children, games, food, a chicken clucking contest, a cake auction with cakes from the best bakers in the valley and so much more!! And we need volunteers to help sell food, take tickets, paint faces, and assist with the parade! Please call Donna 707 684-0325 if you can help!

---

---

GRAND JURY: MENDOCINO COAST HEALTH CARE DISTRICT – SICK. BUT RETURNING TO HEALTH

On Line comments:

[1] Crippled by Unions, this organization was Bankrupt by 2012, but their CEO was stealing resources, and chaos was in charge for some time…

They never really recovered, but I did work there for a minute in 2015, and found what I call “a big old mess”, which they finally sloughed off on Adventist Health, the crookedest gang in Healthcare…

Good luck, and you don’t want to work there, or at Howard in Willits…

---

[2] And this is what I call being cited by the government, big time…

The document is ponderous, but the “findings” and the “recommendations” are revealing…

I like the continuing threat of “closing the facility” (which will never happen), but I also like the point where they state that “Board Members are elected but need no experience in this field”…

Not having hospitals run by Healthcare Professionals is a major mistake, but the main point of interest here is that Board Members are Fiduciaries, and are legally required to act in the interests of the taxpayers and citizens…

These feckless Boards are not the only cause of the complaints which caused this investigation, but in my world, incompetence sometimes gets noticed to the point that the dominos start to fall over…

So many District Hospitals are unsuccessful, and many of them are facing the 2030 deadline…

Locals seldom have the abilities and experience to operate a business at all, much less a healthcare business, which is buried under legislation and regulation…

Being on a Board is an unpaid nightmare, that I myself, who has run a healthcare business, would not be the volunteer, for any reason…

This report is quite a slap on the wrist, but the Corrective Action will likely fall short, and another District Hospital Failure is likely, joining Tulare and Colusa…

---

LOCAL ATHLETE GETS MULTIPLE D-1 OFFERS GOING INTO HIS JUNIOR YEAR

Born and raised in Ukiah, Elias Obenyah has always shown promise in his Basketball skills. Elias attends Salesian College Preparatory High School, in Richmond where he is a shooting combo guard for Salesian Pride along with carrying a 4.17 GPA. Salesian is one of the top ranked teams in the state recently playing the state championships at Golden 1 Center Sacramento. During summer break, Obenyah shoots hoops coast to coast with Team Lillard.

6 foot 4 inch Obenyah began accepting college offers at the end of his Sophomore year and to date has received D-1 Offers from UC San Diego Tritons, Montana Grizzlies, UNLV Rebels, and Layola Marymount Lions. The impressive list of schools that have contacted him include University of New Mexico, Colgate University, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Xavier, St. Mary’s, University of San Francisco, St Louis University, Washington University and University of Colorado. This comes as Obenyah will be heading to Roseville this weekend to play at NCAA event Boys California Live with over 100 College Coaches in attendance.

The future is bright for the 16 year old. According to ESPN, Obenyah is a 4 star, ranks 17th in the state and has a Scout Grade of 82. His parents, Aaron and Christina Obenyah have encouraged their son to have faith in God, follow his dreams but stay grounded and humble. Obenyah’s high GPA attests to his focused study hard and play hard attitude. Evaluator Britt Wright wrote: “He’s a d1 prospect. He showed his ball handling with strong drives, and footwork to finish around the rim, he had vision looking to move the ball up court and around the perimeter. We’re seeing improvement in the 3pt shot, and off the dribble mid-range jumpers. His length allows him to defend multiple positions, and haul in rebounds.” Prep Hoops posted recently: "It was a good day to show California, and college coaches court side what we in NorCal already knew. Obenyah is a rising prospect regardless of his 2026 class status. The long arm Obenyah has a good set of skills that will only get better. He delivered key buckets during a stretch when the Pride was struggling. He was fouled, converted the bucket and made his free throw late to retake the lead 51-49. He had 15 point, 4 rebounds.”

With lots of prospects for his future, Elias Obenyah’s career will be an exciting one to watch. In addition to his basketball accolades, Obenyah is the recipient of The (CIF) California Interscholastic Federation Perusing Victory with Honor Award. Trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship. His prospects are strong, and he shows that dedication and hard work can pay off in big ways!

---

Yes, these are both me, one being endorsed by the SEIU for County Supervisor; then 2 months later me in rehab (post stroke); the belt around my chest is a gait belt; I could barely stand but someone would have to hold the belt to steady me, they had to use a Hoyer lift to get me out of bed, b/c I couldn’t do it on my own; yesterday was the 6 year anniversary of my stroke and my visit to the spirit world this humorous thought has been coming to me “apparently, I’m incapable of living an ordinary life!”

---

LOCAL FARM STANDS

Brock Farms (Boonville)

M-T-W closed

TH-F-Sat-Sun open 10-6

Right now, I have potatoes, onions, some tomatoes, basil, cabbage, shishito peppers, and cabbage.

---

Petit Teton Farm

Petit Teton Farm is open Mon-Sat 9-4:30, Sun 12-4:30. Right now we have stewing rabbits and beautiful sweet Candy spring onions $3.50lb.

Along with the large inventory of jams, pickles, soups, hot sauces, apple sauces, and drink mixers made from everything we grow, we sell frozen USDA beef and pork from our perfectly raised pigs and cows, as well as stewing hens and eggs. Squab is also available at times. Contact us for what's in stock at 707.684.4146 or farmer@petitteton.com. Nikki and Steve

---

Velma's Farm Stand at Filigreen Farm

Friday 2-5pm and Saturday 11-4pm

For fresh produce this week: blueberries, first peaches (limited!), summer squash, little gem lettuce, sprouting broccoli, romanesco, green cabbage, garlic scapes, fennel, kohlrabi, beets, carrots, kale, chard, and fresh herbs and flowers. We will also have dried fruit, tea blends, olive oil, frozen blueberries, tomato sauce, everlasting bouquets and wreaths available. Plus some delicious flavors of Wilder Kombucha!

All produce is certified biodynamic and organic. Follow us on Instagram for updates @filigreenfarm or email annie@filigreenfarm.com with any questions. We accept cash, credit card, check, and EBT/SNAP (with Market Match)!

---

HAPPY 60TH TO CHRIS 'CJ' JONES (now living in Oregon)

---

REDWOOD VALLEY - BLACK BART PARADE

Join in for the fun and excitement of the 63rd Redwood Riders Black Bart Parade in Redwood Valley this Saturday, June 29. There is no fee to enter. Participants will include horse owners and non-horse owners; decorate your ride, and come have fun!

The parade line-up starts at 10 a.m. at the Redwood Riders Arena, 8300 East Road, Redwood Valley. For more information, contact Jessica Taaning at 707-485-0487 or Bev Klee at 707-272-4336.

Registration begins at 9 a.m. at the Jameson Arena, 8300 East Road Redwood Valley. The lineup starts at 10 a.m. and the parade starts at 11 a.m. Judging is in front of the fire station, and there will be cash awards for best Black Bart and Baby Black Bart, among other awards.

Immediately following the parade will be BBQ/Awards/Live Music at the Redwood Riders Arena Grounds. Don’t miss “the best in the West and most talked about in the East” BBQ, made possible through community business donations, Redwood Valley Riders volunteers, your donations and the culinary skills of Jessica Taaning, and others.

The Black Bart Parade was started on June 29, 1961 by the founding members of the Redwood Riders. The parade was started to provide the Redwood Valley residents their own community parade and raise awareness of cancer.

The date for the Redwood Riders Parade is always the Saturday before the Willits Fourth of July Parade. Many Redwood Valley and Willits residents have participated in and enjoyed each other’s parades. What better way to celebrate the birth of our nation, the Redwood Valley community and keep the memories of the Old West and Black Bart alive.

In 1992, it looked like the Black Bart parade would be canceled. Jessica Taaning, a fifth-generation Redwood Valley resident, was a pre-tween when she participated in the first Black Bart Parade. She remembers what it means, as a child, to be embraced by a club and the importance of having a “whole family” event that brings the community together. With her leadership the parade took place that year and continues on to today.

Most of the cash prizes are for the Black Bart costumes. Who is Black Bart? Black Bart is the nickname for Charles Boles, born in Norfolk England on Feb. 28, 1888. He and his brothers came to America with their parents to the East Coast, and started farming. Later, Charles and his brothers traveled to the West Coast for the Gold Rush and returned to the East for a few years of peace before Charles enlisted in the Army, Company B, 116th Illinois Regiment.

He returned home to his family for a few years after the Civil War then on to Montana and Idaho to search for gold. He had an unpleasant encounter with some Wells Fargo & Company agents and vowed to exact revenge. He adopted the nickname “Black Bart” and robbed at least 28 Wells Fargo stagecoaches across northern California and Oregon.

He was afraid of horses and made his robberies on foot. It is also reported that he never once fired a weapon during his years as an outlaw; he was polite and used no foul language (except in his poems). A long linen duster coat, a bowler hat, a flour sack with holes cut for his eyes, and a shotgun was his signature trademark look.

Wells Fargo pressed charges when he was caught on the final robbery. Black Bart was sentenced to San Quentin Prison for six years. He was released and there are different accounts as to how he spent his last days.

Black Bart left two poetic verses that have been authenticated. This one is from the Aug. 3, 1877 holdup of a stage traveling from Point Arena to Duncan Mills, California:

I’ve labored long and hard for bread,

For honor, and for riches,

But on my corns too long you’ve tread,

You fine-haired sons of B*ches

And the other poem was left at the site of his July 28, 1878 holdup of a stage traveling from Quincy to Oroville, California:

Here I lay me down to sleep

To wait the coming morrow,

Perhaps success, perhaps defeat,

And everlasting sorrow.

Let come what will, I’ll try it on,

My condition can’t be worse;

And if there’s money in that box

‘Tis munny in my purse.

If you are a movie buff or looking for some parade costume ideas, there is a silent 1917 film called “A Romance of the Redwoods,” directed by Cecil B. DeMille starring Mary Pickford, where the leading male character is a highwayman named “Black” Brown and largely parallels Black Bart’s life.

Dan Duryea starred as Black Bart in a 1948 film produced by Universal Studios titled “Black Bart.” In 1954, Arthur Space played Black Bart in the episode of Jim Davis’s syndicated western television series, “Stories of the Century.”

Redwood Riders invite everyone to “Come have fun, enjoy an inexpensive event for the whole family and experience community spirit. No alcohol allowed before or during the parade, on arena grounds, or along the parade route. Stallions must be handled by participant over 18 years of age only.”

Recognized the name and face right off. Borderline frequent flyer. Arrests going back to 2019. Petty thefts, robbery, forgery, bad checks, DUI, under influence, paraphernalia, controlled substance, vandalism, multiple probation revocations.

---

---

CIRCLE UP, MENDO!

Circle Dance this Sunday in Mendocino: All welcome, no previous experience or partners necessary!

Join us this Sunday (6/30), 3-to-5pm at the Mendocino Community Center for our monthly circle-dancing. No previous experience or partners necessary! All dances are taught before each one. $5 donation is encouraged.

Re Covid safety, please don’t come if you are not feeling well or have been exposed. We actively support at-risk individuals or persons caring for at-risk people to wear masks if they would like. However, masks are not required.

Dance is one of the oldest ways in which people celebrate community and togetherness, and the circle is the oldest dance formation. Circle Dance mixes traditional folk dances with new choreography's set to a variety of music both ancient and modern. Dances can be slow and meditative or lively and energetic.

Circle Dance groups are a grass roots phenomenon, with hundreds of dance circles in the US, England, and throughout the world. The Mendocino group has been dancing every month for over 30 years. As one dancer put it, “We are doing what people have been doing for millennia, on beaches, in forest glens, around campfires-- dancing together in circles to express joy, passion, solidarity, pain and faith.”

For more information on Sacred Circle Dance go to "http://www.CircleDancing.com

For local info contact Devora Rossman at drossman@mcn.org or 937-1077.

Tom Wodetzki

---

---

ART TALKS": AN EXPLORATION OF POST-IMPRESSIONISM JULY 12 AT 6:30 PM

The Willits Center for the Arts is excited to announce this month's "Art Talks" presentation, focusing on the fascinating art movement of Post-Impressionism. This enlightening event will delve into the works and influence of prominent Post-Impressionist artists such as Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, and Paul Gauguin. The presentation will take place on July 12 at 6:30 PM at the Willits Center for the Arts, located at 71 East Commercial Street, next to the Noyo Theater.

Post-Impressionism emerged in the late 19th century as artists sought to move beyond the limitations of Impressionism. This movement, characterized by its emphasis on emotional depth and symbolic content, encompasses a variety of styles and techniques. Paul Cezanne's methodical approach to color and form, Vincent van Gogh's expressive brushwork and vibrant hues, Georges Seurat's meticulous pointillism, and Paul Gauguin's bold use of color and exotic motifs collectively illustrate the diverse and innovative nature of Post-Impressionism.

Event Details:

Date: July 12 Time: 6:30 PM Location: Willits Center for the Arts, 71 East Commercial Street, Willits, CA 95490

Admission: Free

This presentation is a wonderful opportunity for art enthusiasts and the local community to gain a deeper understanding of Post-Impressionism and its significant impact on the evolution of modern art. Attendees will explore how these pioneering artists broke away from traditional techniques to forge new artistic paths that continue to inspire and influence contemporary art.

We invite everyone to join us for an evening of insightful discussion and appreciation of Post-Impressionist masterpieces. For more information, please get in touch with Gary Martin, at gtm1950@gmail.com or the Willits Center for the Arts at 707-972-3326

---

---

FROM THE ARCHIVE

Bert Cohen Talks About Boont Berry and Anderson Valley

Interviewed by Briana Burns (October, 2002)

Bert: I feel so lucky about doing what I’ve been doing here for the last 20 years because I’ve gotten to meet almost everybody in the Valley and have a really good relationship with people I never would have met in any other way. I think that a lot of people with businesses in town experience the same thing, It gives you a very different perspective on what goes on around here. I feel really, really lucky that I’m able to do this. I don’t know what else I would do if I stopped doing this.

B: Did you plan to do this?

It was the last thing I ever imagined doing! (chuckles) I wanted to be a farmer and have an organic farm in the country. Steve McKay and I bought our property in 1975. Amazingly enough, we bought our property while we were still in school. We didn’t have jobs, we didn’t know what we were going to do! We knew that we wanted to have a farm somewhere in California and were driving all over the state looking at different places. Nothing was exactly what we wanted. Somebody had told us to look in Ukiah. We looked there and thought, “Huh! We don‘t want to live here!” We were going to camp out on the coast and we drove through Anderson Valley in the beginning of April. It was so beautiful, I said, “This is the kind of place I want to live.”

On the way back we stopped at a real estate agent’s office and we told him what we were looking for. He said “I have just the place for you.” And he did! Without looking at anything else, we bought our property. With no money! I think I just borrowed some money from my father for a while.

B: What had the property been before and why was it for sale?

It was whole ranch that was divided up right when we came. The Goodells had just bought property, Betty Campbell was there, three women who were teachers in the city had bought property on the hillside, Clarence and Darlene Furtado bought the bottom part, and we bought all the flat part in the front.

Steve tried to get a teaching job here but he didn’t get it the first year so we came and farmed on the weekends. We both got jobs in the city. He got a teaching job and I got a job at a nursery. I only did that a year and then I moved here. I got a job with the school district in Ukiah and he kept trying to get a job here and eventually, three years later, he got it.

I worked at night and farmed during the day and Steve came up on the weekends and all his holidays and vacations.

B: What did you do with your product back then?

We didn’t have any product! We were building fences, we planted fruit trees, and 25,000 strawberry plants! We had U-pick strawberries. That’s how we started to meet everybody. It was really fun. We just put a little sign on the road. This was probably 1978, ‘79. We did that for three or four years. That was pretty fun.

B: That sounds like a huge operation!

Yeah, but we were pretty young. We were twenty two when we moved here. We both had degrees in agriculture. It was what we wanted to do.

B: So how did the store get started?

Steve’s mother bought the building planning to move up here in six or seven years when she retired. In the meantime it was just vacant and Steve said “Why don’t we just sell our produce there in the summer?” I didn’t want to do it! We both had full time jobs, we both were working on the farm, we’d just built a 30,000 square foot greenhouse,…

B: You had incredible energy!

Seems like it now! (Laughter) I don’t know how we did it. We were growing tomatoes in the green house, and then we built two more greenhouses. So we had a lot of stuff to sell. We had been taking it to the city, selling it to Veritable Vegetable when they were just starting up. It’s an organic women’s collective wholesaler, the biggest in the state now, and it was great because we became friends with them. That’s where we buy our produce for the store now.

We had a booth at the fair and sold things there. Mostly we gave things away. We realized there was no apple-tasting at the Fair. All those apples in the ag room but you couldn’t taste them! So we had a little booth and gave samples of all the apples we were growing and other people’s apples as well. John Dach was growing organic apples then, too, so we had a bunch of organic apples we were letting people sample.

We realized there were a lot of people around here who wanted to buy organic produce. That was why Steve thought we should use his mother’s building to sell our produce in the summer.

B: She bought this building thinking she’d live in it?

No, she was going to open a gift shop as a retirement business.

So we fixed up the building and started selling produce and all of a sudden all these people were saying, “Why don’t you sell this, and why don’t you sell that!” Before we knew it, it was a store! We still had our jobs, we still had the farm, we still had the green houses, and now we had a store! (Laughter) Luckily, we were able to do the store in a way that we didn’t have to worry about it making money, so we really were able to get a lot of these things that people felt weren’t available that they really wanted, things we were willing to sell because they were the kind of things that we ate.

B: What do you mean, you were able to do the business. Are you a non-profit? Did you incorporate in some special way?

No, I just mean we had jobs that supported us already, so we didn’t really need to make any money from the store. Of course it is a problem now. (Laughs) We set up a business that’s very labor-intensive, it has a really low markup generally, in a place where there’s very low volume. These kinds of business really need much larger volume to sustain themselves.

B: Do you have any regrets about having started this business?

The only regret I have is that I don’t get to spend enough time working the soil any more. I did some till about ten years ago and then when Steve moved away, it was just impossible to do it by myself. I still mowed it. I have a lot of farm equipment, tried to prune what I could, tried to keep up the irrigation system as best as I could, which wasn’t very good! (Laughs) Over the ten years, things deteriorated.

Nowadays Bernie, from Pomo Tierra, picks a lot of my apples, he prunes some of my trees, he’s helped me a whole lot. He buys the apples and resells them.

Now I’ve met Jonathan and Nastasia. have They had a small garden on Regina’s property but wanted to do more. I said, “I have all this room and I’m not doing anything; you’re welcome to use it.” So they have a vegetable garden there, they take care of the trees somewhat, if they stay over time they’ll probably repair the whole rest of the orchard.

B: Do you have a good water supply there?

Fairly good. I get 35 gallons a minute. It’s all fenced. I have around a thousand fruit trees still.

B: Do you want to talk about the changes you’ve seen in the Valley in the years you’ve been here?

Well the most incredible thing about this valley for so long was, the people who lived here, lived here because it was beautiful! This is a valley full of people who appreciated a beautiful place and that was where they wanted to be. That was most important to them.

B: I think the newcomers feel that way, too, but the difference is, they have money!

Now there are a lot of people coming thinking that they’re going to make money, that’s what different. When the price of grapes went up, that’s what made the value of property so high; all of a sudden people could make money on it. Whereas before it wasn’t really valuable except as something that was beautiful. Now it’s beautiful and profitable. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, I’m just saying that it’s different. Things change. Now there are people who enjoy or expect that there are going to be certain services available to them, because they can afford it and they’re used to it.

B: What services are you referring to?

Boonville is a small community with limited businesses and things that are available to people in all different ways. The idea of urbanizing Boonville, or all of Anderson Valley, that life isn’t good enough without this or that… Everybody has different values. It’s just interesting to watch.

For example, look at this change. Michael Shapiro tried to subdivide some property back here that he owns. He had divided it into four parcels and the County told him it wasn’t enough! When we were trying to get new zoning laws 25 years ago, to slow the process of subdividing, all of a sudden now there’s like a mandate in the county to create more housing here! They want him to subdivide it into more parcels! Instead of making 20 acres into four 5-acre parcels, they want it to be six parcels, smaller parcels with more houses! He says there’s a mandate to create more housing in the Valley. But how can they override the zoning plan we did 20 years ago? This was ag land, so it’s getting an exemption from ag land.

Environmental studies was what I majored in in college, and land use planning was a big part of that. That’s when there were like five people in Environmental Studies. (Laughs)

B: Where did you go to school?

I went to undergraduate school in New York and graduate school in Davis. And then I moved here and became a farmer!

B: When I interviewed Darius and Julie and Marie, Marie made the comment that she was amazed at how you cobbled together a business doing a little bit of everything to make ends meet.

I didn’t do it to make ends meet, I did it because people kept saying, “Why don’t you do this, why don’t you do that?” It just became what it is. I just responded to people’s requests, and most of it was fun.”

B: And is it catering that’s a large part of your business?

We have a wholesale business. We sell our deli food to other natural food stores in the county. This makes it possible to make things in larger quantities, so we can make things for our deli case that we couldn’t afford to offer if we were just making one dish for the ten people that are going to buy it. We can make it for thirty people.

B: And how did that come about? Was it your idea or somebody else’s?

I used to go to the Redwood Health Club when I worked in Ukiah and their food was so awful (laughs). I started talking to them and they said, “Why don’t we buy some of your food?” They were actually our first customer. The same thing happened with somebody who worked at Corners of the Mouth, they used to come in here, so we started selling things to them. The Veritable Vegetable truck would deliver their food to them. Then I started talking to the Coop in Ukiah because I’d been a member of the Coop since it was in a garage! So they were all my friends. That’s how it all started and it just kind of expanded from there. When Bruce Bread started making bread, they had a delivery route and we went along with them.

B: Tell me more about your jobs in Ukiah.

I worked for the Ukiah School District and then for the county, as an ESL teacher at the Buddhist Temple. The Buddhists had a program to take in refugees who could stay there for four months at a time and County Schools provided teachers for them. It was a great job, one of the most fun things I’ve ever done!

B: And you just quit that five years ago?

Probably more like eight or nine years ago.

B: And for these years Boont Berry has been your entire source of support?

Right.

B: What percent of the whole business is the wholesale business?

It changes every year. But probably 25 to 30%. Pretty significant. If we weren’t doing that, we probably wouldn’t be in business at all. Or our business would be really different! (Laughs)

I think it became what it is because we all came at the same time and became friends before we were business partners. We were all trying to help each other stay in business. We were all interested in the same thing. We were growing organic produce when people had no idea what organic meant and laughed at us. So we were reaching out to each other, trying to figure out what to do. Mary Elke just the other day reminded me of a trip she and Steve and I took to Apple Hill in maybe 1980. It’s a place near Placerville where there are a lot of apple orchards and they got together and formed a coop. They had a lot of different events and attracted a lot of tourists but of course they had the whole Bay Area and Sacramento closer to them. We went up there to see how possible it would be to do something like that here. To get all the people who were trying to grow organic apples or whatever kind of organic produce--John Dach had just started growing some organic stuff--and form our own little coop and juice our own apples--it sounded like fun. Nut it didn’t happen. People who moved here were still into doing their own thing. Mary and Steve and I juiced apples together for a while, however, and that was fun. Mary got a press and we pressed all the apples we had between us and sold it as Mary Elke Apple Juice.

B: How many gallons a year are you talking about?

I have no idea; no memory whatsoever! I’d completely forgotten about the whole thing until she reminded me recently! “Oh, yeah, that was really fun!”

When we opened the store, we imagined that all these other people who were growing would want to sell their produce but that never happened.

B: Why not?

I think because the wholesale price of produce is so low, it just doesn’t seem worth it to the grower to sell it at wholesale instead of getting the retail price at a farmer’s market.

B: So all these years you’ve been getting produce wholesale from the women’s coop?

Pretty much. We do buy locally when people want to sell it to us. We sell apples from the Apple Farm. But there isn’t that much organic produce around. Vicki Brock didn’t really have a garden back then. Nowadays we buy squash and some other produce from her. But she can get a lot more money at the farmer’s market. And it’s probably fun for her to be there, just like it’s fun for me to be here.

B: But going to farmer’s markets can lead to burnout!

That’s why we opened the store! Because we were doing the same thing, we were driving to Berkeley to sell our tomatoes…it seemed crazy! When we opened the store, before Veritable Vegetable came up here, we drove to the city twice a week at 1:00 in the morning to buy produce and come back. Then Steve would go to school right afterwards and I would go to work!

B: Is Steve still involved in the business or did you buy him out?

No, he’s not. He gave me his quarter-interest.

B: What about his mother’s owning half the building?

Regina bought out Jim and Jeannie’s share. So now Regina owns half and I own half.

B: I know farmers have to show a profit at least some years to call themselves farmers, does that apply to businesses?

Well I make enough to pay the mortgage! I feel pretty rich! I can’t imagine any other life!

B: That raises a good question, Where do you see the business or yourself being ten or twenty years from now?

Don’t know. I think about it. We’re planning on building a new kitchen, thanks to Regina. The building itself is in really bad shape! It’s a really old building that wasn’t made to have this kind of use. It was a barn, or some kind of agricultural shed! We’re going to build a new addition off the back, a much nicer kitchen, easier to clean, more efficient to use, it’ll be a much nicer working environment because we’re really pretty busy in the kitchen.

B: What’s the total number of customers you have for the wholesale end of the business?

Maybe ten customers. It could be more if we had the facility and a way to deliver. But I don’t know if we want it to be way more. That’s like a whole ‘nother dimension of working. Or we could increase the catering part of the business. Presently catering’s pretty booked. There are some groups we do regularly. And there’s a job we do every summer for a week, that’s pretty fun.

B: You say you wanted to be a farmer, but it sounds like you really like being a chef!

I like food!

B: You’re one of the few caterers I know who isn’t overweight! How come?

I’ve been very conscious of health and nutrition from a really young age.

B: I saw Kevin snacking on a piece of avocado just now, but none of your employees are overweight!

The people who shop at natural food stores tend not to be overweight because they care about their health. The only overweight person who works in the store, one of the cooks, is losing weight. I think she’s becoming more conscious of what she eats, because we talk about the fat content of things when we make it, and we talk about why we do what we do! It’s food! The idea that there’s a “health food” section in a supermarket--is that crazy or what! A little section that’s “health food”! What’s the rest of it!

B: Have you read the statistics that are coming out in the press on obesity and childhood obesity and diabetes?

I’ve spent the last forty years reading stuff like that and I don’t want to know any more! I started reading that stuff when I was really young and then in college I had an organic chemistry teacher who used to work for the FDA. This was in 1970, and he quit because there were all these horrible things going on. He talked about hydrogenated oils, trans-fatty acids, synthetic vitamins, toxins in peanut butter, all these things that nobody talked about until thirty years later! So I stopped eating all that stuff a long time ago.

I grew up with a father who ate wheat germ, rice cakes, and non-fat yogurt for breakfast and as much as I hated that, somehow it sank in. My father exercised all the time. This was in the fifties. It was pretty unusual. I’m sorry that my father’s not alive now. He died not that long ago in a car accident, not of ill health. Now that I’m really conscious of what I’m doing, and comparing it to what he was doing; it would have been nice to be able to talk to him! I kind of talk to him anyhow…

The bottom line is I feel blessed, that I’ve gotten to do what I do, and that I live here and have met all these incredible people! The store is an incredible place to be all the time! I spend all day with my friends having a good time selling the kinds of things that I myself would buy and like to eat and feel good about selling! I get to play in the kitchen whenever I want to…

It’s kind of funny. I’m really happy. I live in this incredibly beautiful place. I eat great food all the time.(Laughs) I might drive the same car I’ve been driving for the last twenty years, but …I’m pretty happy! I’m really happy!

B: Thank you very much, Bert!

---

---

GOOD CLEAN FUN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY

by Anne Cooper

The June 6, 1914 edition of the Mendocino Beacon announced that Mendocino would celebrate the Fourth of July for the first time since 1908. Those interested in contributing to the town’s plans were invited to attend a meeting that Wednesday at the Bank of Commerce (today’s Out of This World), on the corner of Main and Kasten Streets. Subsequent Beacons published plans for a two-day “clean” Fourth of July celebration: an “old time” [their words!] party to which all would be invited and in which all could participate.

What they meant by “clean” no doubt had much to do with the fact that in 1909 Mendocino had voted (narrowly) to “go dry.” Previous to that, ever since the U.S. Congress made Independence Day a federal holiday in 1870, Mendocino’s celebrations had hewed more to the grand Yankee Doodle Dandy tradition of eating, drinking, parading, and blowing things up.

The new “clean” (and presumably sober) festivities started with a Ball on Friday, July 3, followed by a midnight chicken supper. The next day a picnic featuring roasted meat, potatoes and hot coffee would sustain the populace. Dancing on a newly built platform would begin after the pie and ice cream eating contests. The band featured throughout the two-day celebration was the apparently well-known “N.S.G.W. Band.” Its musicians were, we assume, members of the Native Sons of the Golden West, the fraternal organization founded in 1875 to preserve and document California’s historic places and structures. That some members had musical talents is not well-known, but not surprising.

Sporting events and contests would occupy the morning of the big day. Many of the races were held on Main Street opposite the fire engine house (originally on the south side of the street). These included a 50-yard dash for boys age 15 and under, with the same for girls; a 100-yard dash “free for all”; another for a distance of 220 yards; an obstacle race, sack race, centipede race, three-legged race, egg race for girls, fat men’s race, wheelbarrow race, and relay race. Contestants had to bring their own wheelbarrows for the wheelbarrow race.

Nothing was written to indicate the criteria for entering the fat men’s race, so apparently that was a personal decision. The nature of the centipede race was revealed in a later issue of the paper, when the names of team members taking 1st and 2nd place wins were printed: there were five on a team. Of course, there was a greased pig contest, with the 75-pound pig supplied by Mr. Chris Ottoson of Comptche. The pig was raised on acorns and said to be “a lively critter.”

There was to be no parade, but rather, everyone would follow the N.S.G.W. Band up from “the lot” at Main and Howard Streets (probably the east side of what is now Rotary Park) to the area cleared for the picnic and dance. This would be after the morning’s baseball game between the Albion Tigers and players recruited from Mendocino.

The outdoor dance took place in what later became Grindle Park, donated to the town as a public space by Joshua Grindle. The land was located in the Hills Tract. The dance required a floor so work on the platform began June 28. Perley Maxwell, Frank Mathews and John Triguerio took on the responsibility for its construction. The resulting dance floor measured 40 by 80 feet.

The night would be capped off with a confetti battle. Participants were advised, “Be sure and load yourselves up with confetti and serpentine to fill the air with bright colors.” Originally, dry-compounded gun powder was known as "Serpentine" and was used, among other things, as a propellant in pyrotechnics, a grand Fourth of July tradition. They were further urged to “Turn yourselves loose and have a good time. Go to it!” (Gunpowder is classified as a low explosive, but still one wonders at “Go to it!”)

(KelleyHouseMuseum.org)

---

COVELO, BACK IN THE DAY

I joined this group out of nostalgia and the chance to reconnect with childhood friends. My family moved to Covelo in 1971. My mom & step dad purchased three acres with a partially converted barn on it on the west side of the valley for $3000. They made a down payment of $500 with a $50/month mortgage. We lived there for three years without electricity or running water. My parents were not just considered hippies but "oakey" hippies. I guess that had something to do with the 1945 Dodge pickup we arrived in. I remember experiencing a lot of prejudice & bullying from both Native American kids and the children of the white, multigenerational ranching families. That being said, I eventually reached a level of acceptance that made life there enjoyable. I have a lot of fond memories of Covelo as well and consider it to have been a great place to live during my formative years. I still remember my first crush (Stacy Brumley), my first fight (Lloyd Brown), summers cruising the valley on bicycle with other kids or heading up to swim in the Eel river by the ranger station on the east side of the valley. I could go on but you get the picture. I don't believe I ever had the appropriate respect for how unique Covelo is till I turned 16 and we moved to southern California. Anyway, I just wanted to say hello and invite any folks who remember me (fondly, I hope) to reach out. Take care all.

(Jonathan Smith)

---

CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, June 27, 2024

SOLAMON ACOSTA, Ukiah. Probation violation.

KENNETH DEWITT JR., Ukiah. Transient failure to register, parole violation.

MICHAEL DONAHE SR., Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting.

ALDAR FRAGOSO, Redwood Valley. Vandalism.

DARIN HAMMOND, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, public nuisance, probation violation.

JESSIE JOHNSTON, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-under influence.

MICHAEL MCGEE, Ukiah. Grand theft, stolen property, controlled substance.

SAMANTHA MILLER, Willits. Domestic battery.

MATTHEW NELSON, Laytonville. Failure to appear.

JOSE PACHECO JR., Ukiah. DUI, probation revocation.

SHAUN WAY, Potter Valley. Controlled substance, community supervision violation.

ASHLEE WILSON, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

---

---

ESTHER MOBLEY: What I'm Reading —

A former employee has filed a lawsuit against V. Sattui Winery in Napa Valley, alleging that he and more than 50 colleagues were victims of wage violations, reports Donovan Growney in the Napa Valley Register.

A four-pack of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti wines in stock at the Mountain View Costco became a hot topic on Reddit last week, and SFgate confirmed that the bottles are indeed for sale there — for $40,000.

The Wall Street Journal’s Kristina Peterson and Julie Wernau check in on the brewing debate over the revision of federal dietary guidelines, which may include some very bad news for the alcohol industry.

---

---

STATISTICALLY DOESN'T HAPPEN

Editor:

Disenfranchising Voters…

In the U.S., actual voter fraud is extremely rare. After the 2022 midterm elections, the Associated Press reviewed every potentially fraudulent vote in the six states with the closest margins and found just 475 cases. That’s 475 out of more than 25 million, fewer than one questionable vote out of every 52,000 legitimate votes.

If you don’t trust the AP, how about the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation? They’ve amassed a database of 1,384 proven cases of voter fraud since 1979. That’s 1,384 cases out of more than 2 billion votes during those years, less than one fraudulent vote per million legitimate ones.

Claims like Donald Trump’s of millions of fraudulent votes are, to say the least, divorced from reality.

The real fraud is the use of such claims to stir up fear and doubt and to justify voting laws and practices that disenfranchise minorities and young people, plus massive, targeted purges of registered voters, often without notification. As just one of many examples, as Georgia’s secretary of state, Brian Kemp struck 107,000 voters from the rolls, then went on to win the race for governor by fewer than 55,000 votes. Nationwide, purges like this disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters.

Robert Adler

Santa Rosa

---

---

A FUMBLING PERFORMANCE, AND A PANICKING PARTY

President Biden’s shaky, halting debate performance has Democrats talking about replacing him on the ticket.

by Peter Baker

President Biden hoped to build fresh momentum for his re-election bid by agreeing to debate nearly two months before he is to be formally nominated. Instead, his halting and disjointed performance on Thursday night prompted a wave of panic among Democrats and reopened discussion of whether he should be the nominee at all.

Over the course of 90 minutes, a raspy-voiced Mr. Biden struggled to deliver his lines and counter a sharp though deeply dishonest former President Donald J. Trump, raising doubts about the incumbent president’s ability to wage a vigorous and competitive campaign four months before the election. Rather than dispel concerns about his age, Mr. Biden, 81, made it the central issue.

Democrats who have defended the president for months against his doubters — including members of his own administration — traded frenzied phone calls and text messages within minutes of the start of the debate as it became clear that Mr. Biden was not at his sharpest. Practically in despair, some took to social media to express shock, while others privately discussed among themselves whether it was too late to persuade the president to step aside in favor of a younger candidate.

“Biden is about to face a crescendo of calls to step aside,” said a veteran Democratic strategist who has staunchly backed Mr. Biden publicly. “Joe had a deep well of affection among Democrats. It has run dry.”

(nytimes.com)

---

BIDEN’S DEBATE PERFORMANCE SENDS DEMOCRATS INTO PANIC

by Rachel Leingang

Democratic operatives and officials have reacted with panic and dismay after Joe Biden’s stumbling performance in the presidential debate refocused attention on his age and sharpness.

David Plouffe, a Democratic strategist and former Obama campaign official, called the debate “kind of a Defcon 1 moment”.

“The biggest thing in this election is voters’ concerns – and it’s both swing voters and base voters – with his age, and those were compounded tonight,” Plouffe said.

The vice-president, Kamala Harris, appeared on CNN and MSNBC after the debate to reiterate the reasons voters should side with Biden, but even she acknowledged his poor performance. “It was a slow start, there’s no question about that, but I thought it was a strong finish,” the she said.

Maria Shriver, the former first lady of California, said she loves Biden and knows he’s a good man, but the evening was “heartbreaking in many ways”.

“This is a big political moment. There’s panic in the Democratic party. It’s going to be a long night.”

Nicholas Kristof, the leftwing political columnist, said on social media that he hopes Biden reflects on the debate and decides to withdraw from the race, letting the convention decide who should be the nominee. He suggested someone like Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Ohio senator Sherrod Brown or commerce secretary Gina Raimondo.

Former Missouri senator Claire McCaskill said on MSNBC that Biden had one job, and he didn’t do it: He needed to “reassure America that he was up to the job at his age, and he failed”. Democrats are doing more than hand-wringing in private and wondering why the Biden surrogates, who were performing well to counter the Biden debate performance, aren’t the ones at the top of the ticket, she said.

“I know how this felt tonight: it felt like a gut punch,” McCaskill said.

Cable commentators were left wondering whether there could be a contested Democratic convention and, if so, how Biden might be replaced – an option some say is not possible even while others were talking about little else.

On the liberal network MSNBC, anchor Nicole Wallace laid out how a candidate could release their delegates, while fellow journalist Joy Reid said someone sent her the rules for doing so.

“No one is saying it’s going to happen, it’s very unlikely,” Reid said, but added that the atmosphere among Democrats was “approaching panic” .

From the start, Biden faltered in the debate, the first of the 2024 presidential election. He was hard to hear, mumbling and muffling his lines, some of which – were they delivered with the intended force – could have landed successfully. He said Donald Trump has “the morals of an alley cat”, but even that one-liner was difficult to discern.

Biden had challenged the former president to a debate, set earlier in the election cycle than normal, to shift the momentum of the race. He had delivered a strong State of the Union address in which he appeared sharp and energetic, and his campaign appeared to calculate that a debate could give his approval ratings some lift at a time when he is polling behind Trump.

Instead of a victory march, or even the more common volleying over who won the debate, it was clear that Democrats saw Biden’s performance as a liability.

Both Harris and Gavin Newsom, the California governor and Biden surrogate, appeared on various TV networks later in the evening to talk about how Trump lied and deflected throughout the debate – and sought to remind voters what a Trump presidency was like and could be again.

“It was a slow start, there’s no question about that, but I thought it was a strong finish,” the vice-president said on MSNBC before launching into a list of Biden’s accomplishments, saying Biden fights for the people while Trump fights for himself.

Newsom, on MSNBC, called the questions “unhelpful” and “unnecessary”. The conversations are “rabbit holes” that detract from Biden’s record and hinder democracy and the country’s fate.

“We’ve got to have the back of this president,” Newsom said. “You don’t turn your back because of one performance. What kind of party does that?”

Some Democrats laid out ways the Biden camp could turn the moment back toward him and get his performance out of voters’ minds: send out his surrogates to support him, put strong speakers like Harris or Newsom on the morning shows, or announce an initiative or endorsement or big idea in order to change the narrative.

(TheGuardian.com)

---

LAST NIGHT was not American democracy's finest hour.

Not when one candidate accuses the other (Trump) of having the 'morals of an ally cat'. Or when the other implies his opponent (Biden) is too gaga to know what he's saying.

Both points, of course, might well be true.

But perhaps the lowest point was when both started arguing over who has the better golf handicap. That must have had America's many enemies across the world scratching their heads and asking: is the USA really that bereft of credible leadership these days?

To which the honest answer for now is: sadly, yes.

— Andrew Neil

---

I know a lot of you don’t remember back in the 50s and 60s when the milkman would deliver milk to your front door, whole milk or chocolate milk or orange juice!! Glass bottles!! That’s back when life was simple and people were so nice back then, this lady is giving him a piece of homemade pie for his Delivery..!

---

FRIDAY'S LEAD STORIES FROM THE NYT

Six Takeaways From the First Presidential Debate

Schools Police Chief Indicted in Uvalde Shooting Response

Oklahoma’s State Superintendent Requires Public Schools to Teach the Bible 

After a Testy Campaign in Tense Times, Iranians Vote for President

Bronny James Selected by Lakers with No. 55 Pick in NBA Draft, Joining LeBron

---

---

FELINE SCIENTIST EXPLAINS WHY YOUR CAT MIGHT ACTUALLY LIKE YOU

Cats are more social than they are often given credit for. Can you help yours access its inner dog?

by Emily Anthes

Over the last two decades, a flurry of scientific studies have demonstrated, over and over again, that dogs are social savants, highly attuned to human cues.

But even as canine cognitive science flourished, few researchers bothered to probe the social skills of cats. After all, dogs were descended from the social gray wolf and had been intentionally engineered to perform specific roles alongside humans. Cats, on the other hand, were descended from the solitary African wildcat and had not been under the same selective pressure from people. They were viewed as antisocial and also, for good measure, uncooperative, making them unappealing research subjects.

In recent years, however, a handful of undeterred scientists have produced a small body of research suggesting that we have underestimated cats’ social skills, and that interest is growing. “I see more and more papers each year,” said Kristyn Vitale, an animal behavior scientist at Unity Environmental University in Maine. “We’ve just got a lot of catching up to do.”

Dr. Vitale, who has three cats of her own, often collaborates with Monique Udell, the director of the human-animal interaction lab at Oregon State University. Dr. Vitale spoke to The New York Times about their research — and about her dream study of cat cognition.

What do people tend to get wrong about cats?

The biggest thing that I see is people stating that cats are not social creatures, or that social interaction isn’t important for cats. Cats are really flexible with their social behavior. So it’s highly individual, and based off the cat and their personal experiences.

Cats have to experience socialization with humans within a key time period of their lives in order for healthy social behavior toward people to develop. So if you have a cat that has never encountered a person before, especially early on as a kitten, they’re going to grow up fearing humans, because they never learned that humans were something that could be a source of good things.

When given the right experiences, we do see that companion cats can definitely form bonds with their owners, these bonds can be strong, and they can be stable over time.

You’ve taught kitten training classes. What does that entail?

Very much like a dog class, we did things like sit, come when called, go to mat, walk on harness and leash. For the final class, people would teach a trick that they wanted to do with their cat. So I had people teaching jump through a hoop. I think the most advanced behavior was sit and stay while going out on a kayak on a lake.

We had over 50 kittens and their owners. Kittens, 3 to 8 months old, were able to come to this environment, do training, do socialization, and we never had a fight break out. A lot of it is managing the situation, watching cats’ behavior. When a cat starts showing signs of stress, it’s time to end it and send them home.

What are you working on now?

We’re collecting data on cat-assisted interventions for children with developmental differences. So children bring their pet cats into our location at Oregon State University and learn how to train their cats, how to read their body language and behavior. We’re looking at whether there are potentially benefits for the child in terms of their physical activity or their social well-being, and then also, on the flip side, if there are any benefits to the cat. Is there a deeper bond that’s formed between the cat and child? Are there differences in social behavior or their ability to read social cues?

What’s your dream study?

We’ve just started exploring the social cognition of pet and shelter cats, but we haven’t really done it with these cats living outdoors. There are the cats that live in Rome, in the Colosseum. In Japan, there are cat islands, which I have visited, where you just have huge groupings of cats living together. I think that would be interesting to look at: How socially intelligent are these cats living outdoors?

What would you like cat owners to know?

We had a research project come out that showed that when you pay attention to cats, cats spend more time with you. I think people all too often get a cat and let it sit in the house and don’t do anything with it. It’s really just about exploring that bond and what they prefer and what you can do together.

---

Women have another option. They can aspire to be wise, not merely nice; to be competent, not merely helpful; to be strong, not merely graceful; to be ambitious for themselves, not merely for themselves in relation to men and children. They can let themselves age naturally and without embarrassment, actively protesting and disobeying the conventions that stem from this society’s double standard about aging. Instead of being girls, girls as long as possible, who then age humiliatingly into middle-aged women, they can become women much earlier – and remain active adults, enjoying the long, erotic career of which women are capable, far longer. Women should allow their faces to show the lives they have lived. Women should tell the truth.

— Susan Sontag - The Double Standard of Aging (1972)

---

RESISTING ARREST

You're given this position of authority, you're supposed to enforce the laws, you're supposed to protect the public, and now you’re in this situation where you have to arrest someone because you have probable cause to believe they committed a crime. They don't want to be arrested, and now they resist you. How much force can you use? Is a punch in the mouth OK? Can you hit him on the head with the nightstick? Can you just jab him in the belly? Everything you do is going to look brutal to someone watching. You have to use a minimum amount of force. But what is a minimum? Do you have to use so little force that he gets the best of you, and gets your gun away from you and kills you? I'm not talking about Abner Louima, or the Rodney King case — gratuitous violence against people. I'm talking about people who have to do their jobs. Some rookies nowadays even have trouble giving clear, authoritative orders, even after training. It's not a pleasant thing. Not everyone is cut out for it.

— Detective Andy Rosensweig, from ‘A Cold Case’ by Philip Gourevitch

---

---

SF'S GAY COMMUNITY LAUNCHED THE MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR WEED INDUSTRY

by Lester Black

San Francisco has been a mecca for gay people for nearly a century thanks to its relatively welcoming culture. Michael Koehn was a 24-year-old living in Wisconsin when he decided in 1970 to set out for San Francisco, because it was “the place you wanted to be if you were gay … you could be free … you could build a family, you could build a life,” he recently told SFGATE.

He settled into San Francisco’s vibrant cultural life and found a steady job working for the city. But then the 1980s came and the HIV/AIDS epidemic began. The signs of the crisis were all around the city. He saw people with telltale skin blotches of Kaposi sarcoma in the Castro. Friends were dying. And then the crisis came directly into his own life: He and his boyfriend George Manierre were diagnosed with HIV in 1985.

Like many others, Koehn and Manierre turned to cannabis for relief. Koehn recently told SFGATE it helped ease the pain of the disease and allowed him to keep working. News of marijuana’s benefits quickly spread in San Francisco and a tight-knit community formed to supply the medicine (including a grandmotherly brownie baker) and fight for its legalization.

This was during the deepest depths of pot prohibition in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was president and reefer madness was at its peak, but these activists fought for cannabis reform and quietly forged a path that millions of Americans are walking every day as they enjoy access to legal and medicinal pot.

And without the local San Francisco activists who risked their lives for it, today’s legal cannabis market might never have come to be.

HIV Hits America

The first signs of America’s HIV epidemic came as a frightening mystery in the spring of 1981. Medical reports began circulating of otherwise healthy men in Los Angeles and New York who suddenly came down with fatal lung infections, pneumonia and a skin cancer called Kaposi sarcoma, according to HIV.gov.

Researchers had no idea what was happening, but they were seeing the first signs of the coming epidemic and the unique effects of HIV. HIV, or human immunodeficiency viruses, is a name for two different viruses that attack our immune system and weaken our ability to fight off other infections. If left untreated, an HIV infection will eventually progress to AIDS, or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, when the virus has weakened the victim’s immune system so much that they cannot fight off other infections.

The term HIV wouldn’t be coined for years, but these first signs of the epidemic in 1981 were evidence of people infected with HIV who had extremely weakened immune systems that were susceptible to various diseases and cancers.

HIV has never been a gay person’s disease — it has always affected people of all sexual orientations — but by the end of 1981 it was becoming clear that the disease was spreading quickly among gay and bisexual men. San Francisco’s gay community was quickly hit by the disease. The UCSF Medical Center was home to one of the first clinics to treat the disease and some of the earliest advocates for treating HIV and AIDS.

In a complete coincidence, San Francisco in the 1980s was also at the forefront of the burgeoning American cannabis industry. Before long, these two worlds would collide.

‘It Got Worse And Worse’

Koehn and Manierre’s battles with HIV began four years after the beginning of the epidemic, but there were still barely any medications to help fight HIV. It wasn’t until 1996 that there was an effective treatment for slowing HIV’s progression into AIDS. So people infected with the virus were desperate for any medicine that would help. Koehn remembers people going to traditional markets in Chinatown looking for herbal options and even in desperation turning to implausible remedies like licorice in the hopes it would provide relief. But cannabis, which was already common in San Francisco, quickly became the go-to drug for many AIDS patients.

Cannabis couldn’t cure AIDS, but it was a salve for many of the disease’s symptoms, including increasing appetite, reducing pain, easing nausea and reducing anxiety. Cannabis also helped treat the side effects of the early antiviral drugs that were being prescribed by the late 1980s that could cause extreme nausea, headaches and insomnia.

Koehn said cannabis helped him cope with the virus and continue to work, and it helped his partner as well. But the disease overtook his boyfriend George quickly, and he died just six months after his diagnosis.

Koehn was heartbroken and saw the loss he felt rippling across his entire community in San Francisco.

“It was a very solemn time,” Koehn recently told SFGATE. “People were dying and then it got worse and worse. People’s friends and lovers, their very important people, were just dropping dead.”

‘They Can Go F—K Themselves In Macy’s Window’

The misery of the AIDS crisis was compounded by the American government’s nearly complete negligence to fight the surging epidemic. The Reagan administration publicly laughed at the disease when reporters started asking questions in 1982 about the government’s response. A lack of federal funding delayed fighting the disease, and people continued to die, with more than 40,000 AIDS patients dying in 1995 alone.

These overlapping dynamics surrounding the epidemic — the deadly misery of the disease, the government’s inaction and the benefits of medical marijuana — swirled together in San Francisco and eventually formed into America’s new medical marijuana movement.

The emerging marijuana reform movement was led by two colorful characters: Dennis Peron, a fearless cannabis advocate willing to face off with any police or politician, and Mary Jane Rathbun, a grandmotherly figure who became an unlikely face of marijuana in America.

Rathbun was a waitress selling cannabis brownies in the Castro when the AIDS crisis hit, and she soon became known as “Brownie Mary” after she started distributing thousands of weed brownies to AIDS patients around the city. Rathbun’s flagrant distribution of pot made her a target for the authorities and she was arrested multiple times, yet she refused to give in.

David Goldman, Koehn’s husband today, was living on Noe Street in the 1980s, working as a teacher and an advocate for AIDS patients, and remembers Rathbun as a “salty” woman when it came to the authorities. He recently told SFGATE that he remembers her saying that “if those narcs think they’re going to take away the medicine from my kids … they can go f—k themselves in Macy’s window.”

Rathbun’s multiple arrests made a picture-perfect image for the ridiculousness of the existing marijuana laws, with a woman who looks like a grandmother being arrested for giving medicine to patients who were suffering from a terrible disease.

While Rathbun hit the streets distributing brownies across San Francisco, Peron worked inside San Francisco City Hall and the state Legislature to change the actual laws. Peron had been selling cannabis in San Francisco since the 1970s, but his work took on a new importance when the AIDS crisis hit in the 1980s and his own partner, Jonathan West, was diagnosed with the disease.

The police raided Peron’s house in 1990 and arrested him for possession. Peron’s partner, who at this point was weeks away from dying, took the stand saying the pot was for his own use. The court eventually freed Peron.

Peron and Rathbun worked together to change the laws. Rathbun testified at City Hall, and the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution in 1992 calling on the local police to deprioritize medical marijuana enforcement. And then Peron opened his Cannabis Buyers Club at Church and 14th Street in 1994, running the country’s first medical marijuana dispensary in broad daylight.

In 1996, Peron took his fight to a statewide ballot initiative, writing Proposition 215 which allowed anyone in California to grow and use cannabis if they had a doctor’s recommendation. Voters approved the measure handily, and from that moment, the little movement that started in the Castro had officially blown up into something much larger.

‘Everybody Was Dying’

Californians didn’t invent medical marijuana. It’s one of the oldest medicines in human history. And San Francisco wasn’t even the first place in America to use medical marijuana. Cannabis tinctures were a common medicine in 19th-century America.

But that entire history was forgotten by the 1980s, when the depths of America’s War on Drugs had turned marijuana into a highly illegal and deeply stigmatized drug. Almost no Americans saw pot as a legitimate medicine. In 1985, 73% of people thought marijuana should be illegal (today the situation is reversed, with 70% of people believing marijuana should be legal).

AIDS patients using cannabis and the people providing the drug were risking their freedom, but the clear benefits it was providing steeled their resolve to continue fighting for the drug.

Terrance Alan was willing to take risks when he was working to supply marijuana to AIDS patients in the 1980s and 1990s. He was also HIV-positive, his own partner died in 1993 from HIV six months after he was raided for growing cannabis in the city. So Alan developed a dispersed growing technique by setting up small grow operations in the spare rooms of AIDS patients’ homes. That way the patient, who often was too sick to work, would have their own medicine and Alan would pay their rent and utilities. And Alan would have a place to grow cannabis. Eventually, he had 16 of these dispersed grow houses set up across the city.

“There were moments the lawyers would tell us that we should be careful but, you know, I looked around and everybody was dying,” Alan said. “I was mad. … I was just so pissed off that I don’t think [being] scared was part of it.”

Alan now owns the Flore Dispensary in the Castro, named after the cafe where Peron and Rathbun first smoked a joint together.

This fearlessness in San Francisco eventually led to a national and global movement. California’s legalization of medical cannabis in 1996 was followed by dozens of other states. Eventually, the momentum moved beyond California itself, as other states moved to legalize adult-use cannabis before California had taken that step. The marijuana reform train also took turns that the original advocates didn’t even favor — Peron eventually became a vocal opponent to recreational legalization before he died in 2018, arguing that legalization would hurt small farmers in favor of big businesses (in some ways, he was right).

But San Francisco’s gay community is still widely recognized as the birthplace of marijuana legalization. Those early medical marijuana activists left a clear imprint on the cannabis laws we have today, according to Jonathan Caulkins, a public policy professor at Carnegie Mellon University. They pushed cannabis reform forward, even as that reform took the shape of voter initiatives instead of legislative laws, which Caulkins sees as a detriment to improving policy.

“Deciding what drugs work by popular vote or acclaim is a seriously flawed approach vulnerable to all sorts of quackery and industry manipulation,” Caulkins said in an email to SFGATE. “So I see the legacy as checkered, but the importance and influence are indeed very large.”

Regardless of your opinion on where marijuana laws have ended up in America, it’s clear that the gay community in San Francisco was where this latest movement started. The next time you buy a pre-rolled joint or fancy edible, remember that the reason you’re able to buy it and safely enjoy it without fear of the police is largely because of the efforts of some fearless AIDS patients and their friends in San Francisco three decades ago.

(SFgate.com)

---