Mendocino County Today: Saturday 7/6/2024

By AVA News Service on July 6, 2024

YESTERDAY'S HIGHS: Laytonville 112°, Ukiah 111°, Covelo 110°, Yorkville 105°, Boonville 102°, Fort Bragg 73°, Point Arena 68°, Mendocino 67°

TODAY is expected to be the hottest day for many areas in NW California. Cooling is expected to be limited in Trinity and Lake counties on Sunday while areas closer to the coast start to see some cooling. Enhanced fire weather risk continues with westerly diurnal winds, especially in trinity and Lake counties. Temperatures will ease slightly but remain above average through much of next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 55F under clear skies this Saturday morning on the coast. Our fireworks forecast has scattered fog later tonight, I think the show will be clear this year. Think. Temps will slowly come down into next week but not a lot. A couple hints of fog are mentioned in the forecast.

Gull and Sunset, Pomo Bluffs (Jeff Goll)

YORKVILLE COOLING CENTER, EXTRA DAY

Oh baby! It is HOT outside! Try the Yorkville Cooling Center. With this week's record high temperatures, the YCBA would like to offer you a cooling solution. From 1:00-4:00 July 6 the Community Room (next to the Post Office) will be open and the AC turned on. We have WiFi and water, tables and chairs, come play cards, work or just chill for a couple of hours. Let us know if you think this is a good idea for the YCBA to continue on with this summer: news@theYCBA.org

RPS: I'm writing because this thug threatened me twice this week in Fort Bragg, Ca. Saying: I will break you in half, you punk ass white boy.

recentlybooked.com/CA/Mendocino/COLBY-HUSTON~1199_2024-00002191

MR. SHAWN COLEMAN is a brother of Michael Coleman accused of the murder last week of 77-year-old Roberta Woods of Willits. He posted this statement on Kym Kemp’s website a few days ago, after the murder. His brother Chris Coleman was the (then juvenile 15-year old) killer of Joan LeFeat in cold blood in her small Brooktrails general store back in 2001.

I am Shawn Coleman.

Michael and Christopher are my younger brothers.

I don’t have Facebook so please consider this my statement.

I have never committed a violent crime in my life. My last ticket was before my 1st child was born, over 15 years ago so please, for the sake of myself and my children, drop this “bad blood” nonsense. My older sister is also a veteran, and has never had any kind of blemish on her record. She is actually a Hospice Nurse who loves her job and cares deeply for the people she tends to.

We unilaterally condemn the actions of both of our brothers and we seek to impose swift and righteous justice for this heinous crime. Please understand this. We stand with you all.

I know firsthand the violent events a tragedy like this can incite against the family of the criminal. I’m so concerned I now have children in this community who may face unjust repercussions for something they didn’t do by someone they literally have zero connection to, other than blood. I fear I will need to yet again face the stares and whispers when walking through Safeway or the shoulder bumps as I try to shoot pool at John’s.

I have worked hard to contribute to our community through various charitable efforts over the last 30 years to try to at least give something back to a community that looked unfavorably upon me because of my last name. I have also tried hard for years to distance myself from both of my brothers.

My family and I have known Roberta and her late husband for over 30 years and when this tragic news broke earlier, I have been in a constant state of heartbreak, anger, frustration, deja vu, and the utmost sadness.

I cannot overstate how much I grieve for her. How heavy my heart truly is for her family and the entire community. She made such an impact at Brookside school that I know word of her passing is sure to spread long into the future and the manner in which she passed will haunt those lives she touched for much longer.

I have had my life threatened by Mike too many times to count and as his brother, my efforts to get him help were thwarted by mental health “activists” posing as “advocates” within the West Coast Regional Center, specifically his advocate, “Jan” who misconstrued our pleas for help as “attacking the mentally ill” and getting him off with a slap on the wrist and a new prescription he’d stop taking after his monitoring was stopped. It was a vicious and disheartening cycle.

Most Spring Creek residents [outside Willits] know of the email thread that was created to document and track Michael’s activities. But when I attempted to delegate these neighbors with the unfair (to them) task of always recording their interactions with him, I was written off as they felt it was incumbent upon us, his family, to document and prosecute his illegal activities. I have the receipts. That’s not to place blame on anyone, let that be clear. They tried too, but we were all hamstrung. Being told that California is a dual-consent state, and his mental deficiencies, recorded death threats were never admissible.

We have pleaded with the court after the many 5150s, the thefts, video-recorded death threats, personal property damages; all rejected by the Mendocino County Judicial system on some bs technicality. We, as a family, tried. The Sheriff’s department tried after he attacked a deputy 20 years ago and got off. You get what you vote for.

How many of you voted in favor of a mental health facility on the old Howard Hospital grounds? Or in Ukiah? Sure, we want them to get help but not if it’s, “in our backyard.”

That comment also is not to place blame. But come on, every time we get an issue on the ballot, it’s shot down. These mentally ill people act with impunity.

This is a tragedy. This is going to affect us all in so many ways and though I can’t speak for his actions, understand I will always support the community in seeking justice, and as hard as it is to publicly say this; the community and the World at large will be a better place when my brother is denied the opportunity to be free.

I have lost so many precious hours of my life worrying I would be the one in his sights when he lost it. I knew it was going to be me and if I didn’t move to an undisclosed location; I know I would have. I have performed under a stage name under the fear that he would try to kill me onstage. Now instead of worrying, I wish I was because Roberta was a sweet woman and I would have at least stood a slight chance. She didn’t deserve this. You all don’t deserve this. No one does and I wish the right people would have put inclusivity and feelings aside, and put safety and logic first. I’m so sorry another one of my family members did this…. again.

That’s all I care to say at this moment.

We tried so many times to get Mike and the community help, but the system not only failed us, it blamed us for not doing enough while throwing him pills and barely monitoring him until he finally snapped and a sweet defenseless woman lost her life.

SHERIFF KENDALL:

My sources disagree with the governors statement “there wasn’t enough time.”

Whispers around the State Capitol are telling a different story.

The progressives were upset a law which would increase penalties was being pushed forward. The moderates we upset a competing initiative was being brought forward in hopes of defeating the DA’s bill. Many of the state’s residents had already signed off on when they had to collect signatures to get it on the ballot.

A straw headcount was quietly conducted and it came up short for the votes to move it forward. I was also told the legislation was thrown together in a mad dash which made it shoddy and lacking in several areas.

Thats what I’m hearing and it may not be the gospel however it makes sense.

From the governor side, there are NGOs and a full-blown industry of supportive services that are being funded because of the closures of several state prison. Personally I think that’s great if they are working. If they aren’t working, not so great.

NGOs often don’t accomplish what they set out to do or they would be done and have to pack up the car and head home, or have to keep moving the goal post further ahead. If they don’t everyone stops getting a paycheck.

A recent report in CalMatters detailed the fact our state had “lost track” of over a billion dollars in funding which was handed out to programs working on homelessness and drug addiction. There isn’t much over site or transparency when money goes to things which are popular.

The other side if the coin is we have to find a balancing point of funding public safety and supportive services., we can’t get out of this without both. I think we will get there and I’m hopeful we will get our arms around the fentanyl crisis. We had another suspected overdose yesterday in Ukiah.

NORM THURSTON:

As an auditor in the Auditor-Controllers Office, I performed the annual audit of the retirement system (MCERA) for 1 or 2 years. Later, I served on the Retirement Board for 6 years, and was Chairman for a time. Accounting can be difficult for many, actuarial science even more so, and finance can be just about anything someone wants to sell. Retirement funds are similar to Social Security in that, when employee numbers are growing, wages are rising, and investments are doing well, there are virtually no worries about liquidity.

Actuaries compare their best estimate of the present value of all future pension payment due, compare that to the current value of pension assets, and the shortfall is known as the unfunded pension liability. During good times, the unfunded liability can become larger without threatening the liquidity of the plan. But transitioning into leaner times with a relatively large unfunded liability is challenging.

Pension obligation bonds were promoted by comparing the stated interest rates on the bonds with the actuarially determined long-term interest rate used to make actuarial estimates, and sometimes to determine the interest rate that would be allocated annually to active employee retirement accounts. The inaccurate assumption that any bond rate which was less than the actuarial rate would produce a savings for the County. The actual substance of pension obligation bonds was that it was a speculative investment that depended on earnings from the bond proceeds to exceed the interest paid on the debt. It would be like you or me borrowing money long-term to invest in stocks and bonds. But prior to the bonds, all of the County’s pension contributions were going to MCERA. Following the sale of bonds, large amounts were going to outside to bond holders to pay principal and interest. Had the County just increased its contributions to MCERA, they would have probably been better off.

The County would do well to take the $6 million they will no longer be paying on the bonds, and contribute that directly to MCERA. That would constitute a good-faith effort to fulfill their legal and fiduciary duty to the thousands of retirees and employees. Any plan that substitutes some kind of grand bargain to take away legally and contractually earned benefits will not survive the legal challenges that would result.

I understand citizens’ concerns about the cost of retirement benefits. All I can say is to get involved with County government, closely evaluate and monitor any proposed changes to the retirement system, and demand that the BOS appoint knowledgable representatives to the MCERA Board of Directors.

Uncle Sam Inflatable, Willits 4th of July Parade (Jeff Goll)

END FORT BRAGG FIREWORKS

Editor:

Happy July 5. It is my intention that last night’s 4th of July fireworks here in Fort Bragg be the last one. To me it is unconscionable that we traumatize our wild animal relatives for a “celebration.”

I’ve lived in a couple of different places above the Noyo Harbor the last few years; and one of the side benefits from my stroke is that I have the time, So I often go to the coastal trail, or the river , and just sit and watch. It is a real gift to have this sort of time, and I get to know the various animals well. So these last few years as the explosions flash and the booms boom, I imagine the animal parents trying to keep their family calm. There are numerous studies that document the trauma inflicted and numerous cities have already stopped the practice. One can also imagine war veterans, victims of gun violence, etc, having their PTSD triggered.

So it is my intention to assemble a coalition of concerned citizens, wildlife advocates, etc to lobby the Fort Bragg City Council to end it.

If you'd like to be part of that effort or just kept in the loop, email me at hawkwork@mcn.org. We have a year to make this happen. Thank you!

Chris Skyhawk

Fort Bragg

UKIAH CONSTRUCTION UPDATES FOR THE WEEK OF JULY 8TH:

How nice is it to have new pavement throughout the entire downtown?? Construction crews worked through two nights to get the job done with minimal impacts to the community. They finished a day early, which also helped keep them out of this heat.

Next week, work to program and activate the traffic signals is scheduled to occur between July 9th-11th. Depending on the status of the UCRT project on Gobbi, the signal at Gobbi and State may need to remain on flash for a short time longer.

Speaking of signals, please note that there is one LESS signal in the downtown—the signal at Norton and Main has been removed. Norton traffic has a stop sign, but State does NOT. Please be extra cautious in this area while people adjust to the changed conditions.

While the final touches are being put on the Streetscape project, the reconstruction of Low Gap will get underway. Removal of the existing pavement between State and Bush will begin on July 8th. This work will be noisy and dusty, but is expected to be complete in about a week.

Have a safe weekend. Stay out of the heat if you can!

Shannon Riley, Deputy City Manager

SAN FRANCISCO MIME TROUPE PERFORMS July 11, 6:30 PM at Ukiah High School Cafetorium

LINDA BAILEY (Ukiah attorney and former Mendocino County Water Agency Manager):

How did Sonoma County Water Agency gain control of Coyote Dam and the lion’s share of the water supply? Short answer: Geography and politics. Longer, still simplified, answer (which does not deal with Potter Valley Irrigation District nor PG&E) follows.

State law established the Sonoma County Flood Control and Water Conservation District and Mendocino County Flood Control and Water Conservation District (both morphed into County Water Agencies) to provide the local funding and management of the water supply pool of the Project. The state assigned to each all its rights in the first stage of Coyote Dam Project.

This was fine with Sonoma County as most of the county is in the Russian River watershed. But it became clear that the residents of Mendocino County who were not in the Russian River watershed had no interest in paying for a water project that would not benefit them. This necessitated an amendment to the Mendocino County District that enabled the establishment of an improvement district governed by its own Board of Directors–the Russian River Flood Control and Water Conservation Improvement District–which would pay for and manage Mendocino’s share of the water. Redwood Valley residents, happy with dry farming, petitioned the Board of Supervisors to be excluded from the Improvement District. Their wish was granted.

But this took time. So, Sonoma County voters approved a bond that covered all the required local participation monies. The proceeds of the Improvement District’s bond were used to reimburse Sonoma County for the district’s share. Clearly, there were interim negotiations that determined what that share would be as it was enshrined in State Water Board’s decision.

Sonoma County chose to sell its water. The Russian River Improvement District (aka Russian River Flood Control) for many years chose not to, reasoning that property owners were paying for the water through bond assessments. It had a small property tax base that it used to fund its accounting responsibilities.

Because Sonoma paid the entire local share upfront, the Army Corps of Engineers pays all Operation and Maintenance costs and regards Sonoma Water Agency as the local participant.

A side note re: Warm Springs Dam.

Readers may have noticed in a recent AVA issue reference to the testimony of Mendocino County Supervisors in DC supporting the construction of Warm Springs Dam. Why were they there? At that time the no-growth/slow growth Sonoma County Supervisors would not support the dam. So, I’ve heard, Mendocino County was approached with the deal that, if it would lobby for the dam, once Sonoma had that additional water supply it would let Mendocino have more of Coyote water. A gentleman’s agreement; nothing put to paper. Years later, another Sonoma BOS decided it would keep all it was entitled to.

But the deal with the Army Corps of Engineers is that the water supply pool of Warm Springs Dam would be divided into thirds. Sonoma would have to pay Operation and Management costs according to how many thirds they were using. It is in Sonoma’s economic interest to keep Lake Sonoma as full as possible. Hence, the happy water skiers.

WOMEN WHO SAVED THE REDWOODS: A Celebration in Art and Music at the Mendocino County Museum

On Saturday July 13 at 2:00 p.m., Mendocino County Museum will host a special program that weaves together fine art, history, and music. Local historian Dot Brovarney will provide a presentation on her recently published book Mendocino Refuge: Lake Leonard & Reeves Canyon, an exploration of the lives of redwoods, wildlife, and human inhabitants in an upper Russian River watershed just south of Willits. The reading and discussion will highlight efforts by several women who, over generations, were responsible for saving old growth in the canyon and at the lake.

The program will also feature painter Linda MacDonald who will discuss her long creative engagement with redwoods. A collection of her paintings will be on exhibit in the Museum’s Long Gallery. The acapella group, Trillium, will fill the gallery with music. Lisa Bregger, Madge Strong, and Mary Buckley will perform multiple songs including songwriter Mary Buckley’s “Trees Speak,” featured in Mendocino Refuge.

The Book Juggler will be selling copies of Mendocino Refuge at the museum at the conclusion of the event. More information about the book is available at http://www.mendocinorefuge.com.

About the Author: Dot Brovarney is a 35-year resident of Mendocino County, where she works as a historian and author. She holds an M.A. degree in History from the University of California, Santa Barbara (1998). Dot’s background as a professional curator at the County and Hudson Museums informs her continuing projects as an independent public historian and writer. Through her business, Landcestry, she has developed exhibits, walking tours, and books. Besides researching and writing her latest publication, Mendocino Refuge: Lake Leonard & Reeves Canyon (2022), she served as contributing editor and publisher of The Sweet Life: Cherry Stories from Butler Ranch (2016), and co-authored Remember Your Relations, a book about Pomo basket weavers co-published in 1996 by the Grace Hudson Museum, the Oakland Museum of California, and Heyday Books.

For more information please visit http://www.mendocinocounty.org/museum or contact the Mendocino County Museum at museum@mendocinocounty.gov or 707-234-6365.

PSSST, KID. WRITE IT LIKE WE TELL IT AND YOU'LL PICK UP AN EASY FIVE GRAND

2024 High School Change Our Name Essay Contest Winner Published

by Philip Zwerling

Change Our Name, a local 501c3 non-profit distributed a check for $2000 to Fort Bragg High School senior Darwin Marroguin on Wednesday, June 26.

The annual essay contest invited students at FBHS to write on the prompt of their choosing, either: (a) The name of Fort Bragg High School should be changed or (b) The name of Fort Bragg High School should not be changed. The contest kicked off in February 2024. Darwin Marroquin’s winning essay:

When we have institutions — not just schools — named after Confederate leaders, or those who perpetuated racism and lynchings and hate, that exacerbates feelings of race in this country,” says State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. It is clear that our townspeople are divided on the topic of whether our town’s name should be changed or not, however, it must be clear to all that our town is named after a racist Confederate general. It is important to understand the true story and meaning behind our town’s name as well as how it affects its residents. As we seek to move into a more equal, inclusive, and loving environment, our town’s name must be changed to reflect that. Until that happens, it is imperative that we at the very least, change the name of our schools.

For those who do not already know, our small town is named after Confederate general Braxton Bragg, who was born in Warrenton, North Carolina. Braxton Bragg served in the Second Seminole War and later in the Mexican-American War where he received nation-wide fame for his leadership and victory over the Mexican forces in the Battle of Buena Vista. Bragg went on to receive full command of over 10,000 troops in the Confederate Army that treacherously fought against the United States government and its ideals of liberty. Not to mention that history remembers him as the worst Confederate general, a total loser (American History Central). Five years before the start of the Civil War, Bragg resigned from his position in the Union Army and purchased a plantation in Louisiana and a little more than 100 slaves (American Battlefield Trust). In the summer of 1857, Lieutenant Horatio Gibson was sent to establish a military fort along the Noyo River to “protect” the new settlers from the Pomo natives that inhabited the land, which he named after his Mexican-American War commander, Braxton Bragg (City of Fort Bragg). Although the fort was named four years before the Civil War started and he never set foot on it, General Bragg participated in and led the largest racially-driven wars in United States history against Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and African Americans, for which he is remembered to this day. No doubt, some of our townspeople want to change our name and I know many students at Fort Bragg High School and Fort Bragg Middle School would rather not attend an educational institution named for a person such as Braxton Bragg.

In the last decade, there has been a movement across the country to rename institutions, cities, towns, schools, and even highways named after racist historical figures (Ed Source). Most people have heard of the other place across the country in North Carolina, Braxton Bragg’s home state, by the name of “Fort Bragg.” One year ago, the United States Army renamed the nation’s largest military base to “Fort Liberty,” because as they said: “the name was nothing to brag about” (NPR). Woodrow Wilson Elementary in San Leandro, California was recently renamed on the basis that during Wilson’s presidency racist and segregationist acts were practiced (KRON4). According to Education Week, California has a total of two schools named after a Confederate leader; Fort Bragg Middle School and Fort Bragg High School. If schools named after former presidents are being renamed, why can’t we rename our school which is named after a horrible person who fought to uphold white supremacy? Furthermore, there is no reason why the children of our beloved town should involuntarily have to attend schools emblazoned with the name of a racist person and be proud of it. I guess we can also say that “our town’s name is also nothing to brag about.”

Will changing our town’s name affect or erase its history? In simple words, not at all. To start off, our town’s history begins with the displacement of the Pomo Native Americans that had inhabited the land approximately 10,000 years before the arrival of white settlers. In 1865, just eight years after the fort was established, the last Pomo Natives were forcibly marched by army units from the Mendocino Indian Reservation onto a reservation in Round Valley (City of Fort Bragg). It is very important to acknowledge who this land originally belonged to and honor them in an appropriate manner. Regarding our town’s rich history, it is not going anywhere and rather than losing that history we can enhance it by changing its name to something that represents us all as a whole. So, just how important is a name? According to Springer Link, “When they are descriptive, they emphasize spatial characteristics that are important for a community — they reflect in this way the interests of a given community and are condensed narratives on the cultural disposition of human communities in history and today.” There is no way that the name “Bragg” reflects the interest of our town in the past or the present, nor is it a condensed narrative of our local culture. Or as another article explains it, “renaming landmarks ensures that more community members feel seen and respected. This process helps dismantle the legacy of racism and oppression in the United States” (Care Harder). Our town might not be the most diverse place in the country, however, we have people of Native American, African American, and most definitely Mexican American descent that might feel offended and/or uncomfortable that their hometown carries the name of a person whose goal in his lifetime was to get rid of them.

Our town and our schools can no longer bear a name that perpetuates racism and hate because that is not what our town or schools are about, so the names must be changed in order to achieve a community that celebrates its locals instead of a racist Confederate general and the abuse of people of color. It is time to look around and see the problem our town is facing today and take the first step towards the solution. That is why our neighbors and townspeople need to support changing the name of our schools and eventually our town so that we can all be represented by a name that we take pride in as a community.

The three judges for this second annual contest, all educators and/or writers themselves and unaffiliated with Change Our Name, were:

Susan Lundgren is the immediate past President of the Writers of the Mendocino Coast and a well published author

Esmeralda Plasencia is the Latino Outdoors North Coast Chapter Program Coordinator for California State Parks and a graduate of Fort Bragg High School

Margaret Reiter a retired lawyer, formerly worked in the Consumer Protection Division of the Office of the California Attorney General.

Change Our Name is dedicated to educating residents to the need to change the name of the city of Fort Bragg since the present name, adopted in 1889, includes both an homage to the military Fort which helped wage genocide against the local indigenous population and Braxton Bragg, who enslaved 105 men, women and children on his Louisiana sugar plantation and later served as a General in the Confederate Army where he waged war against our country.

Change Our Name plans to continue this essay contest each each year until the name of the high school and our city have been changed. Fort Bragg Middle School and Fort Bragg High School remain the only public schools in the state of California honoring a traitor and enslaver, and a genocide. The city of Fort Bragg now stands as the only locality named for Braxton Bragg. Fort Bragg, North Carolina was renamed Fort Liberty on June 2, 2023 by order of Congress.

You can learn more about Change Our Name at: changeournamefortbragg.com

THE BARTENDER FROM COLOMBIA

After closing the SBMC account and taking 27 benjamins to Chase for deposit, I thought that I would celebrate, and dropped into the Ukiah Brewing Company. The bartender from Columbia informed me that, according to him, my last visit was "very bad". He informed me that he refused to serve me, and that if another bartender wished to do so, that would be alright. I responded by explaining that the last time that I was there, the place was packed, and that those at the bar said that I could niche in with them. The bartender from Columbia said that it would be a problem, so I returned the chair to the table area and peacefully left. After reminding him of what actually took place, I informed him that we have very different perspectives about the situation. I then walked out.

— Craig Louis Stehr

POETRY EVENTS FOR MENDOCINO COUNTY FOR JULY

compiled by Theresa Whitehill

https://theresawhitehill.com/events

ED NOTE

CONFIRMING suspicions he's out of it, President Biden failed Friday night to stem growing pessimism about his political future in a rambling 22-minute interview with ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos — during which many of the same issues that self-sabbed his debate performance last week resurfaced. Biden, 81, gave multiple excuses for his shocking performance at the first presidential showdown against Trump, saying that he was “exhausted” and “sick” with a “bad cold” before saying that he let Trump’s remarks “distract me.” He said he couldn't remember if he'd watched the footage of his debate meltdown. “Look," the obviously impaired Biden told Stephanopoulos, "I have a cognitive test every single day. Every day, I’ve had tests. Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning, I’m running the world. And that’s not — it sounds like hyperbole, but we are the central nation of the world.” Always difficult to understand — thank goodness for subtitles — and slurring his words as always, Biden was marginally more coherent but clearly not reality based, dismissing unanimous opinion from big shot donors and Democrats that he'll lose to Trump as unfounded.

THEN & NOW: ELIZA'S SUNNY CORNER

Morning sunlight warms the northeast corner of the historic Kelley House in these two photographs, taken 115 years apart. Located at 45007 Albion Street, the house was one of the earliest built in Mendocino on a prime spot overlooking the ocean.

Eliza Kelley in her Garden, 1909. (Gift of Margaret Kelley Campbell)

In the black and white photograph from 1909, Eliza Kelley, then 84 years old and Mendocino's oldest living pioneer, reads a book in a sunny spot in her garden. The rustic charm of her surroundings, with shrubs and climbing roses, frames her serene spot on a slat bench. The doorway to the right leads to her back porch and the rear entrance to her home. The high fence alongside Albion Street offers a barrier from the bustling livery stable located just across the way.

Eliza arrived in Mendocino in 1855, the bride of William H. Kelley. The previous year, Kelley had purchased William Kasten’s extensive real estate holdings, which included the land north of Main Street and west of Lansing. The Kelley family initially settled in Kasten’s house at the corner of Albion and Kasten Streets, now part of the Mendocino Hotel Garden Suites, where their first child, Emma “Daisy,” was born. In 1861, they moved to their newly constructed home further east down Albion Street, where Eliza lived until her death in 1914.

Kelley House Museum Garden, 2024. (Photographer: Robert Dominy)

The color photograph of the Kelley House Museum, taken over a century later, shows that roses and other flowers still adorn the garden. The rose seen behind Eliza in the earlier photo could be the same double pink, fragrant Madame Lombard rose that grows beside the museum today. The high solid fence has been replaced with a charming picket fence, and the back porch now serves as the main entrance to both the museum and the research office.

Daisy Kelley MacCallum also left a significant mark on the Kelley House garden, though she lived across the street in the MacCallum House. She was an enthusiastic horticulturist, planting over 200 varieties of roses in her own garden and sharing her passion with the community. Many of the heritage roses that still bloom throughout Mendocino were planted by her, including those on her mother's property.

Daisy was one of the first members of the newly founded American Rose Society, and the Kelley House Museum archives include some of her plant catalogs and gardening books, marked with her notes, offering insight into the flowers that interested her.

When Robert O. Peterson, founder of the Jack-in-the-Box fast food chain and owner of the Mendocino Hotel, donated the Kelley House to Mendocino Historical Research, Inc. in 1975, the garden was in dire need of restoration. Three dedicated gardeners took on the task, and under the thick tangle of blackberry vines and long overgrown shrubs, they discovered old walkways, towering camellia bushes, and long-forgotten rose bushes with branches ten feet long. Their efforts gradually revealed a garden that once thrived under the loving care of past inhabitants.

Today, the Kelley House stands as a testament to the enduring spirit of Mendocino's pioneers. The morning sunlight that once warmed Eliza Kelley in her tranquil garden continues to shine on a cherished piece of local history, connecting the past with the present through the simple beauty of a well-tended garden.

(kelleyhousemuseum.org)

THE JUNE RANCH

by Jeff Burroughs

Sometimes, when I’m alone and I'm able to escape the daily drone of people and machines that drive us all a little closer to the edge of insanity, I close my eyes and I drift off to where I can visit my oldest memories.

In those moments I often find myself thinking about the many days of my youth that I spent on the ranch that my family once owned. I guess it wasn't really a ranch, it was just some land that we owned, but everyone in the family always referred to it as “The Ranch,” more specifically, “The June Ranch.” It was a sizable spread, 940 acres of open grasslands and mountainous redwood forests. The property was obtained over a number of years, by my great-grandfather, Harwood June.

At one time the land was not a 940-acre property, it was split up into individual 30- and 40-acre parcels, owned by a host of characters who, for one reason or another, would eventually sell to my great-grandfather Harwood June.

One parcel was once owned by a Mr. Daniel Jeans, a black man who was well known around Anderson Valley to be an escaped slave from the post-Civil War South. How he ended up in the mountains above Anderson Valley is, to this day, a mystery, and a narrative long ago lost to history.

What little is known about Mr. Jeans is that he lived on that stretch of land as far back as the late 1870s until the late 1890s or possibly into the early 1900s. He made his living in the laborious task of cutting and selling firewood as well as maintaining a small fruit orchard he planted, and a fruit dryer that he built himself as well. We also know that at some point he married a Native American woman who may have been from one of the local bands of Native Americans known as Pomo. Together the couple raised two sons, Albert and George Jeans.

Evidence supporting the family's existence on the land can be found in the meager remains of the fruit dryer and the trees of the small fruit orchard. Almost all of the fruit trees are still standing to this day like monuments to his behalf. Remarkably most of them still bear a decent amount of fruit. The cabin that they lived in was located very near the fruit orchard, but the original structure collapsed from the weight of time.

The old cabin was haphazardly put back together in the late 1950s by a logging crew that happened to be working in the woods nearby. Sadly that resurrection has collapsed as well, leaving very little for the eye to recognize as ever being a cabin.

There was also a huge barn that stood just east of the cabin. It most likely was used for the manufacturing of the dried fruit as well as boarding any livestock they may have kept on the property.

Unfortunately that big barn no longer exists. It was accidentally set afire in the late 1940s by a couple of young boys from the valley who were out there hunting deer one evening and decided to make their camp inside the barn. Their campfire got away from them and in the span of just a few minutes a fiery inferno engulfed the barn. It was completely destroyed. If you know where to look you can still find a few of the old burned timbers hiding in the tall grass.

John Jeans doesn't show up in any census data but his sons do, but not until the early 1900s, where they were both listed as living down in the Anderson Valley. This isn’t surprising as the census taker would not usually travel far up into the hills searching for people.

It can be surmised that when their father, Daniel Jeans, passed away, the boys sold the property to my great-grandfather and then moved down into the valley where the census taker would have found them.

All the history of Daniel Jeans and his family up in those hills, those now abandoned hills, is something I always showed great interest in, though I never went the extra mile to properly investigate the property for artifacts.

Now the property, the whole June Ranch for that matter, has been sold to a large timber speculator from Sonoma County, whom I imagine has little to no interest in the history of the property. Having to ask someone I don't know for permission to go up there now, just feels wrong. There’s the strong possibility of being turned away which keeps me from asking at all.

Sometimes a person just has to let go of the past. But damn it, this one is a hard pill to swallow. That ranch was a focal point of my youth. Numerous memories of pre-teen camping trips with my cousin and our crew of buddies leave me with grand images that never seem to fade with age.

In our childhood my cousin, Eric June, and I would build secret forts in the poison oak thickets that grew in great numbers on the bottom half of the property, and no one ever found them. Once we decided to set up some kind of communication device that would run from Fort to Fort by way of two tin cans and about 50 yards of 50-pound monofilament fishing line that we absconded with from my father's old tackle box. Our voices were muffled but when we yelled loud enough we could make out the words. Thinking back on it now though, its success was most likely due to the fact that we were only 50 yards away from each other and it was our loud screaming that we were actually hearing, not the tin cans.

ACTIVIST WANTS CHARGES FILED FOR ANDERSON VALLEY ADVERTISER'S MOCK REQUEST

by Ucilia Wang (The Press Democrat, December 5, 2002)

A well-known environmentalist is asking Mendocino County authorities to file charges against the editor of the Anderson Valley Advertiser for publishing a photograph that he said may endanger his life.

Darryl Cherney, an Earth First activist, said Editor Bruce Anderson threatened his safety when he printed a picture of Cherney and the caption "Shoot to Kill (No Reward)" in the Advertiser last week.

"This is as if Bruce Anderson is the Ayatollah of Boonville, and he is issuing a death warrant on the Salman Rushdie of Garberville," Cherney said.

Cherney said he is worried that readers of Anderson's weekly newspaper will take the editor's suggestion seriously.

"Bruce is working with the nut-case crowd," Cherney said. "It's like trying to reason with members of the Mad Hatter's tea party." Sheriff Tony Craver said he will investigate Cherney's complaint.

"He has asked for an investigation. We will not brush it off," Craver said. Craver said he will have detectives interview Anderson and Cherney and determine whether the case should be referred to the district attorney. Making threats that could result in physical harm can be prosecuted as either a felony or a misdemeanor. It is punishable by up to one year in county jail or a term in state prison.

Anderson scoffed at Cherney's claim, saying the photograph and caption would not "inspire the dispatch of rural hit teams." Anderson said he simply published the photo to make his readers laugh.

"The mere sight of Cherney among real environmentalists inspires a range of reactions from snickers to drop-fall guffaws," said Anderson, who declined to be interviewed but issued a written statement.

"A photo of him in full flea-circus regalia inscribed 'Shoot to Kill' is regarded in my immediate circles as hilarious," Anderson added.

Anderson said he intends to publish Cherney's photos every week for a while and asks readers for caption ideas.

Cherney said he is not amused, particularly because he has been a victim of a car bombing and other death threats.

Cherney and fellow Earth First activist Judi Bari were injured after a pipe bomb exploded in Bari's car in 1990. [ed note, a bomb placed by Bari's ex-husband, Mike Sweeney.]

The subsequent arrest and search of Cherney and Bari by the FBI and the Oakland police formed the basis of a civil suit against the authorities, whom the activists said falsely accused them of transporting the explosive device.

A federal jury in June awarded Cherney and Bari $4.4 million in the case. Bari died five years ago, but her heirs pressed the case.

Senseless Stunt: Editor Showed Poor Judgment In Running 'Shoot To Kill' Photo

December 6, 2002, Press Democrat Editorial

In general, newspapers tend to take themselves far too seriously. So we usually find it refreshing when editors are willing to risk a little levity on their pages.

But when a newspaper runs a photo of a local resident with the caption "Shoot to Kill (No Reward)," it's anything but humorous. When the subject of the photo happens to be Darryl Cherney, the target of death threats who survived a 1990 car bombing along with fellow Earth First activist Judi Bari, the stunt shows remarkably poor taste.

The editor of the small Anderson Valley Advertiser says he was just having fun in publishing the photo last week, and he plans to continue running it. He and many of those close to him, he said, regards the photo as "hilarious."

Hmmm. Makes you wonder what else he considers comedy. Snuff films?

Thanks to the First Amendment, anybody can start and operate a newspaper. But papers of all size still have an obligation to act responsibly. This one is missing the mark.

Editor Anderson fired off the following letter to the PD's editor:

Bad judgment? Perhaps. But who's to say? You? The newspaper that runs horoscopes, teen pages, lethal doses of chloroform as editorials, and feature-length stories on show biz mega-pervs like Michael Jackson?

Given the choice between bad judgment and bad taste, I'll take bad judgment. And given the choice between no judgment and no taste, I'll take the Anderson Valley Advertiser, America's last real newspaper.

Onward!

Bruce Anderson, Boonville

Shoot To Kill: A Sociology of Response to Artistic Provocation

Shoot To Kill Caption Contest. 1st Prize: Steak Knives. 2nd Prize: Tweezers. 3rd Prize: Annie Esposito. 4th Prize: KMUD.

KZYX Community News, Tuesday, December 3, 2002.

Esposito: The long-standing campaign of the Anderson Valley Advertiser against Earth First escalated with the November 27th edition when publisher Bruce Anderson ran a photograph of Darryl Cherney with the caption “Shoot To Kill (No reward.)” Darryl Cherney, who receives death threats on a regular basis, is taking the matter seriously.

Cherney: I take any death threats seriously. Uh, having received quite a number of them in the past and having actually been at the wrong end of two assassination attempts in the past, if not three, any time somebody puts out a call to kill me and broadcasts it over thousands and thousands of papers, uh, I think it’s something to be taken very seriously. I think at the very least it’s important to leave a paper trail with the Sheriff and the Mendocino County District Attorney.

Esposito: You’ve been literally targeted. What kind of recourse do you have?

Cherney: There’s been different kinds of targeting over the years. The targeting by the Anderson Valley Advertiser has been in the past mostly irrelevant because very few people have believed what Bruce Anderson has to say about our lawsuit and, hell, we won that lawsuit in front of a jury of relatively conservative people, and so all the lies and, uh, misinformation that Bruce Anderson has put out about Judi Bari and myself and our case have pretty much been batted down and disproven over and over again. But not having drawn enough attention to himself, apparently, Bruce has decided to get into the death threat business. And this is where he crosses a line. Uh, there’s a big difference between telling a lie about somebody and issuing a call to kill somebody.

Esposito: I gather you’ve gotten death threats before for your environmental work. What do you think? Is this going to exacerbate the problem?

Cherney: Well, I certainly hope it doesn’t, and after talking to the District Attorney’s office, there is a certain criterion that needs to be met, un, in order for, uh, this to be a criminal act, and one of them is it actually fosters an immediate threat. I have received one harassing phone call already, but I certainly hope that it does not, and I personally don’t want to see a protracted, uh, case against Bruce Anderson and a trial against him, uh, necessarily, because, uh, this is in some ways just what he wants. On the other hand, if he is, uh, actually in the death threat business and really wants to start to, uh, you know, issuing contracts on people through, uh, issuing thousands of copies of his newspaper around the country, then I think he needs to be taken to task.

Esposito: Meanwhile, do you want to talk about some of the things that you’re involved in, some of the positive things that you’re working on right now?

Cherney: The irony of all this is, uh, on a day to day basis, uh, I’m involved in forest protection and civil rights activism. This Sunday, up in Humboldt County, in Freshwater, I’m organizing a rally and winter protection ceremony for Wren, who has been sitting in a redwood for 200 days, uh, right next to Remedy. Uh, and, uh, there will be a lot of speakers and a big rally and then that evening we’re having a benefit concert down in Southern Humboldt County and, at Beginnings in Briceland with Sherri Glaser and Melissa Crabtree and I’ve been issuing press releases trying to promote some of the forest protection activities that have gone on around here, and then on a day to day basis I’m involved in the ongoing lawsuit against the FBI. We won our lawsuit by a jury trial, but we still have to go through all the post-trial motions and get ready for the appeals process. I’m a pretty busy bee. I’m also involved in recording a new album of music and getting ready to write a book on the history of the Headwaters Forest Campaign. So I wake up in the morning and think about what it is I can do to make this world a better place and don’t really appreciate it when newspaper editors decide to issue death threats on myself as if I was some, you know, Humboldt County version of Salman Rushdie, which I guess makes Bruce Anderson the, uh, the Ayatollah of Boonvile.

Esposito: Earth Firster Darryl Cherney, responding to a call to have him killed, published, presumably, as some sort of joke in the November 27th Anderson Valley Advertiser. Editor Bruce Anderson did not return our phone call by news time.

Woman Caller, Thursday, Dec. 5: It seems that Darryl can dish it out but he can’t take it. Last November, about a week and a half before Thanksgiving, he went on the air and did the same thing, he put out, that he uses some group of people. He put out a lot of lies about Lorene Timorado (sp?) and then he incited people, basically put out this death threat to harm her. (illeg.) She’s honest at least because, illeg. wouldn’t supply a tape of it, and neither will the station. They protected him. It was illegal what he did. And slanderous, and um…

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, July 5, 2024

KELISHA ALVAREZ, Ukiah. Trespassing, county parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

NATALY CARRILLO-ZAMORA, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, child neglect, resisting.

CARRIE CORDOVA-DALSON, Covelo. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ELIOT HOWLETT, Ukiah. DUI.

ADOLFO NOVAK, Windsor/Ukiah. DUI.

RAQUEL PUENTES-GARCIA, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY’S 7 TIPS FOR WRITING:

1: To get started, write one true sentence.

“Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now’.”

2: Always stop for the day while you still know what will happen next.

“The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck.”

3: Never think about the story when you’re not working.

“I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”

4: When it’s time to work again, always start by reading what you’ve written so far.

“When it gets so long that you can’t do this every day read back two or three chapters each day; then each week read it all from the start.”

5: Don’t describe an emotion—make it.

“In writing for a newspaper you told what happened and, with one trick and another, you communicated the emotion aided by the element of timeliness which gives a certain emotion to any account of something that has happened on that day; but the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or in ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always, was beyond me…”

6: Use a pencil.

“If you write with a pencil you get three different sights at it to see if the reader is getting what you want him to. First when you read it over; then when it is typed you get another chance to improve it, and again in the proof.”

7: Be Brief.

“It wasn’t by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.”

OLIGOPOLY

Editor:

Joseph Robinette Biden is too old and impaired to be President; Donald John Trump is not qualified in any way for the Presidency.

Let us remember that Democratic party controllers gave us Genocide Joe after The Donald because they were desperate to return to "stability." Hillary Rodham Clinton controlled the Democratic Party during her egotistic run for office. Her party is still in control and still blind to reality. But for Hillary Clinton's sabotage, we could have had Bernie Sanders. Mr. Trump rose at a time of great disenchantment in America. He was/is popular because people are unhappy with the status quo, not because he is a good leader. Things are not good in America. Our middle class is shrinking, homeless line the streets, children go hungry, education is substandard, the minimum wage is a joke. Tax decreases hurt society as a whole by reducing funds for services, as does spending on foreign wars, while enriching a small, powerful elite. President Biden passed some good legislation. He has also enabled a genocide in a Israel, promises another in Lebanon, facilitated a slaughter in Ukraine and Russia, and brought us closer to WW3.

Where is our Pacifist candidate? Where is our (gasp) Democratic Socialist candidate? Let us demand a competent leader who will serve all Americans, not continue the rabid capitalist imperialism of our oligarchy.

We have a senile mass murderer leading our country now. If the Dems want to lose to Trump again, stay the course.

Joan Vivaldo

Novato

INTERVENTION PARTY

Editor,

I figured out what to do about my birthday, I’m going to have an Intervention Party, which makes sense as I like to judge people, encourage them to change, and tell them what they should do. As you come in you put your name in the hat and if yours is drawn then time to get intervened upon! (Crazy Mati was the inspiration for this as I always wanted to tie her to the wall of the barn, slap her around, and say, “Why do you lie all the time, Mati?”)

Actually I was thinking of rigging it, put only one name on every slip of paper and intervene into someone I know who has a drinking problem, wouldn’t that be interesting for them? But really, is it a problem if you’re just maybe hurting yourself, and not others? Can we really fault anyone for taking up whatever substances they’ve decided eases the boredom of life, or whichever reasons we use them? At least he might like the attention, right? (Will anyone want to come if they have to randomly face their demons, with cake? And what to do if someone has a boring issue, horrors!)

The money shot for this type of pondering is usually a confession of my own addictions and issues, which I could lay out here except my name hasn’t been drawn yet, and which brings us to the question: Who will lead the interventions? The booze-lover mentioned above would be a good one, with his wit and humor he’d be perfect to preside over the ceremonies, as we explore and resolve your problems. (Goal: reduce you to a blubbering pile of tears.)

So who will be brave enough to let this opportunity of life-enhancing personal growth grab you by the ass? Are you ready to confront your issues with cake and ice cream? (We could have an intervention every night for a week for The Problem Child, who has multiple issues and is one of those people about whom we’re always wondering, “Are they just lying to me…or lying to themselves as well?”)

No, this probably won’t work, but why not? People are too defensive to admit they have issues and addictions? I have multiples and wouldn’t mind confronting them with the “group mind” offering suggestions and advice, at least as a way of getting attention.

What a great idea, now I won’t have to deal with any pesky guests, because no one will want to come to my Intervention Party.

Naked Massage: Whenever I'm driving to a big Gulch gathering, memories of scenes out there over the years come flooding back in a pleasant wave of nostalgia. When heading to Beginnings for Nancy Peregrine’s big 70th birthday party I remembered a massage class that Joan Shirle lead back in the seventies: Upon arriving at the Tower House I was surprised to walk in and see about ten people sitting around naked, hmm interesting, and what could I do but strip down to my birthday suit as well? (Ah, the old hippie daze.)

We paired off and first I was massaging the beautiful Star, who was lying on her back, although I was having trouble focusing on her neck, necks can throw me. Next I was massaging Don Edwards, and after a while he said, “Will you stop dripping sweat on me?!” (Oh damn, I thought I was doing pretty well just avoiding the large bullet hole in his side, and that is a story for another day.)

(Rest In Peace: Nancy, Star, Joan, and Don.)

Paul Modic

Redway

DREAM TICKET?

Dear Editor,

US President…

Jamie Raskin or Gretchen Whitmer, either one would make short work of Donald Trump. The two of them on the same ticket (in any order) would be unbeatable.

Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin has established himself as a luminary in opposition to Trump via his role in the Jan. 6th investigation while Michigan governor Whitmer has demonstrated star quality as one of the country's leading politicians.

Let's hope Joe Biden comes to his senses and opens the election up to a new generation of powerful and talented newcomers.

Douglas George

Eureka

September 22, 1953, Ebbets Field, only 2,365 fans see Jackie Robinson’s only career appearance at shortstop, at his request (1st SS start since Negro Leagues). Jackie had 3 assists and 2 putouts (Photo: snaring liner in 5th off the bat of Danny O’Connell) as Brooklyn wrapped up a 60-17 home record in ‘53 with a 5-4 win over Pittsburgh Pirates. Robinson, walked in all four plate appearances, scored a run, and stole a base.

BUYER BEWARE

Editor,

This is a follow-up to a New York Times report with the headline, “Obesity drugs expose gaps in access.”

The obesity rate in the U.S. is 33.5%. Thus, 114 million Americans are obese. Obesity drugs cost around $1,000 a month or more. So, the yearly cost of treating U.S. obesity could be as high as $1.4 trillion. That represents one third of total U.S. health care spending at $4.5 trillion (17% of the Gross Domestic Product). The $1.4 trillion to treat obesity is over 40% greater than the cost of Medicare ($944 billion). Given that, obesity treatment is clearly unaffordable at scale. “Gaps in access” are inevitable.

So, what are the solutions to this issue? There are probably many. One of them is better U.S. drug price controls through regulation and/or negotiation. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a monthly dose of Ozempic costs $936 in the U.S., $169 in Japan, $147 in Canada, $103 in Germany, $93 in the UK, $87 in Australia and $83 in France. There is no reason why Americans should pay over six times as much as Canadians and around 10 times as much as Europeans or Australians.

The leading producer of these drugs is Novo Nordisk, a Danish company with a market capitalization of $646 billion. And this huge market cap is very much subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. It does not make any sense for Americans to overpay that much for a drug that profits a foreign Big Pharma.

Gaetan Lion

Mill Valley

ON THE 2024 BRITISH ELECTION

by Jonah Raskin

Yeah, yeah, I know the Tories are out, Labour won big time and Keir Starmer is the new PM and at home at 10 Downing Street. Starmer called for “Change.” That’s what voters clearly wanted after years of disastrous Conservative Party rule that saw a widening gap between haves and have nots and an economic crisis that might be beyond repair unless something decisive is done and done quickly.

Yes, change is in the air, but don’t expect anything revolutionary. England hasn't had a real revolution since the 17th century, when King Charles I was beheaded and Oliver Cromwell became the “Lord Protector” who did everything but protect the Irish, the Catholics, the Royalists, and supporters of the Crown.

I arrived in England in 1964 to begin a three-year course of study at the redbrick University of Manchester, in a working class town where as one English woman explained to me, “Where there’s muck there’s brass.” (Where there are poor people there are rich people).

In the fall of 1964, when Harold Wilson became the Labour Party PM some of my new-found friends predicted a revolution. That was wishful thinking. England is an evolutionary kind of place, where change happens slowly and over the course of centuries. No wonder Charles Darwin, with his theory of evolution, was English.

In the three years I lived in Manchester, heated my digs with coal, learned to live with rain, rain, rain, and learned to love fish and chips there was no revolution and nothing remotely resembling anything revolutionary, though there was Carnaby Street in London, Mary Quant fashion and the beginnings of the rock ‘n’ roll rebellion that would roil the US. The boys in the bands were very effective at cultural approbation; stealing from and recycling the blues.

In England in the mid-1960s,there was racism and there were racists. Black babies were described by whites as “pickaninnies,” brown thread, English sales girls said, was “nigger brown” and Robertson’s Jams offered a “Golly” or “gollywog”—a stereotypical Black cartoon figure— on all jars that sold in stores. “Paki Bashing”– attacks on Pakistan immigrants — was a favorite pastime of rowdy racist youth, and workers in some Manchester unions went on strike to protest against Pakistani immigrants who wanted to join the unions. In movie theaters when “God Save the Queen” played on loudspeakers, audience members stood at attention. I was not so inclined.

“Reform U.K.,” the insurgent anti-immigration party, which just won more than four million votes, is nothing new in English politics. Brit racism goes back centuries and is deep seated. Hell, the Brits even look down at the French and the Italians, though they’ll vacation on the French Riviera and on Italian beaches.

As a Yank in England from 1964 to 1967, I didn't expect a revolution and might not have joined it either, though on holiday in Italy I joined demonstrations against the War in Vietnam and paid a call on the Cuban Embassy in Rome to wish the Cubans a Happy Anniversary on their revolution and to smoke cigars and drink rum. I had to cross the channel to celebrate anything that smelled as sweet as Cuban tobacco.

I was happy to return to England where I could enjoy a “proper” breakfast which meant eggs, bacon, beans, toast and tea and not the skimpy continental breakfasts of café au lait and a buttered tartine. I’ve been back to England again and again over the last several decades, You can take the boy out of England but not England out of the boy. Still, I’ll never love the Tories and I’ll never learn to love the British Crown.

Labour may not be what the British working class needs and really wants, but Labour is better than the Conservatives any day or night of the week, including Guy Fawkes Night, when lads and lassies build bonfires and celebrate the Gunpowder Plot when Guy Fawkes and his comrades planned and failed to blow up the House of Lords. For three years running, I never failed to attend.

MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio show all night tonight on KNYO!

Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is 6pm or so. If you can't make that, that's okay, send it whenever it's done and I'll read it on the radio next week.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am PST on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KNYO.org. The first hour of the show is simulcast on KAKX 89.3fm Mendocino.

Plus you can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night I'll put up the recording of tonight's show. Also there you'll find an assortment of cultural-educational amusements to occupy you until showtime, or any time, such as:

The Mission Temple Fireworks Stand. (via Everlasting Blort) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIsDzRCO5yM

Ze Frank on eels. https://www.neatorama.com/2024/06/30/Eels-Can-Be-Very-Freaky

And-- Frigidaire front-load washing machine screaming-noisy? Replace Rear Tub/Bearing #131525500. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugBzlqTJt6s

If you want to do a radio show of your own devising from KNYO's place on Franklin Street, everything you need is there. It's easy and fun. Bob Young will get you started. Contact him: bobb@poetworld.net. If you'd like to set up your own remote studio to do radio live on KNYO from your kitchen or back porch or any event space, or to record your real-life, non-A.I. music, or whatever, I can advise you. It's cheap, and you already have most of what you need, maybe all. I'll be doing my show tonight from Albion, for example.

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

*Elvis Presley and his cousin, Junior Smith on the Southern Railroad* (1956) by Alfred Wertheimer

On one of our last days in Los Angeles, with filming completed, Elvis and I took a drive through Beverly Hills. (He's the only star I've ever known who really liked to be at the wheel of his own limo.) We were talking about what we might do back in Memphis, when we passed a little old lady in a beat-up beach chair who was selling maps to the stars' homes. We'd seen her almost every day on the way to the studio, but this time Elvis pulled the car over and said, "You know, she looks a little like my mother." He got out of the car, walked over to her, talked with her for a bit, and then bought every one of her maps. That's one of the little moments I love to remember, because it reminds me of the generosity and compassion that were such a part of Elvis's spirit. Memphis friends, a studio barber, a little old lady in a beach chair: Elvis was willing to share some of that spirit with all of us.

At the end of June, Elvis and the rest of us boarded a train to head back to Memphis. The group now also included Gene Smith's brother Junior, who'd come out for a week's vacation at the end of the movie shoot. Junior was an ornery guy who was fighting off some demons — he'd served in the Korean War, had come home with what they used to call shell shock, and was now a heavy drinker and a chain-smoker who had trouble holding down a job. When he was drunk he was mean and belligerent, but when sober he was a pretty sharp and funny guy, and I'll always remember one of the great lines he delivered up in our hotel suite. When we were all just sitting around one night, Junior announced to Elvis, "Cuz, I ain't no queer, but you're a good-looking son of a bitch." This was especially funny to us because gossip rags of the day such as Confidential magazine were constantly going back and forth between claiming that we were a group of sex maniacs taking advantage of young girls and claiming that we were a group of rowdy Southern homosexuals.

— Jack Kerouac

US 101, INTERSTATE 15 MAKE TOP 10 DEADLIEST ROADS IN CALIFORNIA

by Greta Reich

California drivers are notorious for bad driving, whether it’s on traffic-choked lanes in Southern California or windy stretches of the Central Valley. Now, new data has revealed exactly which freeways in the state are the most dangerous.

Interstate 15 in San Bernardino County was found to be the deadliest segment of road in California based on annual fatal crashes, according to an analysis by Consumer Affairs. That stretch of the busy interstate not only winds through heavy traffic near the city of San Bernardino, it also shuffles Southern California drivers out to Las Vegas and beyond via more than 200 miles of open-desert driving.

Using data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Fatality Analysis Reporting System between 2018 and 2022, Consumer Affairs split the data by county to find which California county had the most fatalities by road.

It found that Interstate 5, the densely driven freeway that links Southern and Northern California, was the deadliest overall road in 2022, while San Bernardino — east of Los Angeles in the Inland Empire — was the deadliest county for drivers “among California’s 10 most populous counties.” The number of fatalities on I-15 in San Bernardino was the highest in the past five years at 48 deaths, a marked increase from 2018’s 33 fatalities.

This is reflective of a trend in nine out of the top 10 deadliest roads in California. The only section of road where fatalities went down was Interstate 10 in Los Angeles County.

The state’s two deadliest sections of road — Interstate 15 in San Bernardino and Interstate 10 in Riverside — are major arterials for the Inland Empire area of Southern California. Significant population growth in San Bernardino, Riverside and Kern counties (which also appears on this list) over the past half-decade has driven up home prices and congestion, increasing the number of people on roads and making it hard for infrastructure and safety measures to keep up with the demand.

Three Bay Area counties also made the top 10 list: Interstate 880 in Alameda County at No. 6, state Route 4 in Contra Costa County at No. 7 and U.S. 101 in Santa Clara County at No. 10. Highway 101 tops the list when taking drunk driving into account, “with nearly 31% of fatalities involving a driver with a positive blood alcohol test,” according to the analysis.

(SFgate)

*People’s Drug store lunch counter on G Street N.W. at noon* (1942) photographed in Washington, D.C. by Marjory Collins

In July 1942, the People's Drug store lunch counter on G Street N.W. in Washington, D.C., was a hub of midday activity. As the clock struck noon, the counter filled with a diverse mix of patrons, from office workers to locals seeking a quick and affordable meal. The lunch counter, with its swivel stools and formica countertops, was a quintessential American scene of the era. Men in suits and ties, women in dresses, and servicemen in uniform sat side by side, engaging in conversations or quietly reading newspapers. This was during World War II, and the atmosphere was marked by a mix of urgency and camaraderie. The menu likely featured classic American fare such as sandwiches, soups, and sodas. Despite the wartime backdrop, the People's Drug store lunch counter provided a slice of normalcy and comfort to its patrons, serving as a microcosm of American society during a pivotal moment in history.

SATURDAY'S LEAD STORIES, NYT

Crisis? What Crisis? President Biden Rejects Democratic Pessimism.

During the interview, President Biden said only the “Lord Almighty” could drive him from the race.

If President Biden decided to step aside, these obscure Democrats would determine who would lead the ticket.

George Stephanopoulos pressed President Biden on the questions Americans had asked themselves over the past week.

Many Democrats signaled that the interview did little to shift their stances on whether President Biden should exit the race.

Reformist Candidate Wins Iran’s Presidential Election

ON-LINE COMMENTER: The Democrats simply imploded between 1963 and 1988, and the Republicans, the party of the wealthy, simply reinvented themselves a little, picked up the pieces, and harvested disaffected Democrats.

Both parties are complicit. If one thinks America in 2024 is great, then both parties are great…

I’ve voted in 10 Presidential elections–70% 3rd party, Trump 2x, and Bush Jr in 2000 (the only vote I regret).

I always encourage disaffected people to vote for 3rd party–ANY 3rd party, even if there is none that mostly agree with.

I hope you and all the other disaffected people here vote for a 3rd party–any one of them. I’m not even sure of who I will vote for–but I will vote and register my dissatisfaction.

Jackson Pollock in his studio barn, 1949.

THE LIES CONTINUE, AS A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE

The Biden debacle should have been a game-changer, but the Big Lie has become a cause all its own, more important than retaining audience or winning elections

by Matt Taibbi

Vox ran a piece by, of all people, Brian Stelter. “Did the media botch the Biden age story?” read the headline, followed by a sub-head: “Asleep at the wheel? Complicit in a cover-up? The real story is far more complicated — and more interesting:”

It’s not complicated, and your “Did we really screw up?” think piece is by itself an insult. Audiences know the answer: Yes. You’ve been screwing up for five years. Also, it isn’t a “Biden age” story, but a “Biden dementia” story. There are octogenarians who are competent to be president. Biden isn’t one. Audiences have known this since 2019, and the only people you’re impressing by saying otherwise are other media nitwits.

A flood of these Stelter-style “Whither us?” features asking “if the press missed” the Biden-incapacity story has arrived, and I feel like screaming: YOU ARE ONLY TALKING TO EACH OTHER. Even as Biden on a minute-to-minute basis babbles about things like being the first black female president, officially reducing him to 1977-Elvis levels of incoherence, the excuses keep coming. They’re mind-blowing…

racket.news/p/the-lies-continue-as-a-matter-of

Angie Dickinson and Ricky Nelson behind the scenes of Rio Bravo (1959) in Old Tucson.

WHO TURNED OFF THE GASLIGHT?

by James Kunstler

Things were bad, and they knew things were bad, and they knew others must also know things were bad, and yet they would need to pretend, outwardly, that things were fine. The president was fine. The election would be fine. —Olivia Nuzzi, NY Magazine

There’s a reason that the fable of The Emperor’s New Clothes is so potent: it describes a mentally ill society that retreats into abject unreality, to avoid contending with truth. Alas, this archetypal human quandary shoves such a society towards nemesis: downfall and punishment. And that is exactly the consequence of our news media’s craven, dishonorable, degenerate behavior the past decade.

They have disordered our nation’s consensus about reality with peremptory lying about everything, in service to a political party that lies to its citizens about everything. The big question is: who or what recruited them into serving the Party of Chaos, and why did they go along?

You can explain the media’s initial repugnance to Donald Trump going back to his 2015 debut in politics. Much about him had a low-class odor, despite all the gold-plating — his origins in tawdry Queens, his career as a builder in Manhattan where the trades are mob-controlled, the Atlantic City casino debacle, bankruptcy, ditching Ivana and his mid-life playboy reputation, the tacky TV show, the increasingly mystifying hair-doo, his rough, jumbly manner of speech. Everything about him repelled the Ivy Leaguers who increasingly filled the ranks of national-level journalism.

Despite all that, Mr. Trump raised five kids successfully. The grown ones had careers and they all visibly loved him. With that and his overt masculinity, he assumed the lineaments of the archetypal Daddy, which enflamed the enormous cohort of feminists who had taken over the Democratic Party behind their avatar Hillary Clinton. And when he squeaked out an electoral victory over her in 2016, they were sure it was a cheat. The menace of Daddy in da (White) house pushed them over the edge psychologically.

Daddy was all about setting boundaries, which was the antithesis to the “progressive” (and transgressive) agenda of the Dems, and was probably the reason that his talk of “building the wall” along the Mexican border drove them nuts. It signaled patriarchal control of a whole lot of other things, too. Boundaries galore!

Now, it happened that the Democratic Party was also the favored party of the DC permanent bureaucracy, which had been growing and growing for decades and had become overtly politicized during the eight years of Barack Obama. Mr. Trump threatened to downsize this leviathan government, meaning many patronage jobs might be lost. (Boundaries would be imposed!) The warrior branch of this Deep State was the Intel community. The FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, the State Dept, and elements of the military were commissioned by the Democratic Party to destroy Mr. Trump.

They used the machinery of the law to lay one trip after another on the president and effectively hog-tied him — RussiaGate, the Ukraine phone call impeachment, the George Floyd anarchy — and when those operations failed to oust him, they ran the Covid-19 caper (with enormous collateral damage to the people and their economy), which enabled rigging the 2020 election with mail-in ballots. Once Mr. Trump was squeezed out-of-office, the FBI turned the J-6 protest at the Capitol into a riot, which Nancy Pelosi then converted into an “insurrection” using the House J-6 committee. The J-6 incident, they dearly hoped, would rid them of Mr. Trump once and for all.

The news media went along with every bit of that, year after year, converting each mendacious act of the party and the bureaucracy into consumable narrative, and lying either overtly about all the ops, or just omitting to report on the dark truth behind it all. Any reality-based thread that happened to leak into public view from independent alt-news reporters was branded by CNN, The New York Times, the WashPo, and many others as “misinformation” — a newish concept produced by a cadre of language Stasi skilled at inverting the meaning of anything to bamboozle the public. It appears that the news media became so invested psychologically in its own dishonest product that it began to believe its own bullshit.

Or, at least, they wanted to pretend to believe it. One of the big problems was that absolutely everything they labeled “misinformation” or “conspiracy theory” turned out to be truthful, and that was becoming an inescapable embarrassment. And then the biggest blunder they made was going along with the Deep State’s selection of “Joe Biden” in the very sketchy Super Tuesday primary of 2020. The old grifter had next-to-zero support in all the preceding preliminaries and somehow (abracadabra !) he swept the field.

By then, the Democratic Party, and its public relations arm in the mainstream media, had descended into florid mental illness. Everything they stood for post-World War Two flipped to its opposite. Suddenly, they were against free speech. They weren’t coy about it. They just made-up some new bullshit about free speech being “hate speech.” Similarly, they were against a free press. They went along with all the misinfo / disinfo bullshit the government cooked up and supported its role in suppressing the news. They were no longer anti-war, the party-of-peace. They were now pro-segregation and pro-discrimination (white people need not apply) according to Critical Race Theory (a childishly sketchy doctrine). Most of all, they were no longer skeptical of anything that the leviathan establishment wanted to do, including abridging the liberties of American citizens.

Then there was the campaign to use the most powerful human instinct, sexuality, as a weapon to disorder the minds of American children, leading even to the mutilation of their bodies — a program that unmistakably tipped toward genuine evil, suggesting that actual psychosis lay behind the Cluster-B crypto-Marxism used to justify it.

“Joe Biden” was fine with all of that, and the news media was fine with “Joe Biden” and whoever was using him as a front. Of course, it was evident during the 2020 campaign that “Joe Biden” was not up to a job as demanding as Chief Executive of the US government — and that was even apart from the dense criminal web of influence peddling discovered around him and his family, which the news media ignominiously ignored. But now the years have gone by and there’s no hiding “Joe Biden’s” rather gravely diminished mental abilities.

Last week’s debate gave away the game. It had the effect of finally turning off the gaslight that the news media has been shining over the republic lo these many years. They can no longer pretend that this president is anything close to okay in body and mind. They can’t annul the gaslighted public’s delayed realization that they’ve been subject to a concerted program of deliberate lying for a long long time.

So now, inveterate pretenders and liars, such as Jake Tapper of CNN and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times — and many others — have to pretend that they were innocently duped into supporting all the turpitudes of the Democratic Party / Deep State axis-of-evil. It is really hard to imagine that they can successfully rehabilitate their reputations. They have done immense harm to our country. It’s hard to see how the Democratic Party might survive, too, no matter who they finally put up for election this year. Of course, there’s still plenty of time left for them to destroy the country altogether. Just keep giving American missiles to Ukraine to fire into Russia and see what happens.

(kunstler.com)

ON THE ROAD WRITES:

I just spent a week driving cross-county, and enjoyed beer with the locals in taverns in Wyoming, Nebraska and Illinois. Generally speaking “middle America” has some very valid gripes about the pace at which the Democrats are pushing change on our society. Sadly, however, they have bought into Der Trumpster’s lies that he is going to “fix” this, when in reality all he is going to do is pleasure himself.

I’m reminded of a lyric from an old Charlie Daniels song:

Well the eagle's been flyin' slow
And the flag's been flyin' low
And a lotta people sayin' that America's fixin' to fall
Well speakin' just for me
And some people from Tennessee
We've got a thing or two to tell you all
This lady may have stumbled
But she aint never fell.
And if the Russians don't believe that
They can all go straight to hell
We're gonna put her feet back
On the path of righteousness and then
God bless America again

MORE THAN EVER, TRUMP’S MOST EFFECTIVE CAMPAIGN ALLY IS JOE BIDEN

by Norman Solomon and Jell Cohen

When Joe Biden’s ABC News interview aired on Friday night, it made clear that he should not be running for re-election. Rather than reduce the concerns sparked by his abysmal debate performance eight days earlier, the interview underscored that the president is in denial about his current political standing and unable to offer reassurance that his mental capacities are unimpaired.

Notably, Biden kept dodging and refusing to reply in the affirmative when journalist George Stephanopoulos asked whether he has had “a full neurological and cognitive evaluation” and if he would “be willing to have the independent medical evaluation.”

While insisting that his behavior during the debate was “no indication of any serious condition,” Biden evaded key questions while resorting to snippets of stump speeches emphasizing purported foreign-policy “successes.” The interview transcript makes for ominous reading. If Joe Biden is the candidate standing between America and a second Trump presidency, the nation is in extremely dire straits.

Four years after the Democratic Party and grassroots activists propelled Biden into the presidency, he is now adamant that he’ll stay the course as the 2024 nominee -- in effect, greatly boosting the Republican Party’s prospects for winning control of the White House and Congress.

It was widely reported that Joe Biden told more than 20 Democratic governors on Wednesday that he needs more sleep and that events should not be scheduled for him after 8 pm . Democrats have reason to question whether Biden is capable of mounting a vigorous presidential campaign; swing voters may wonder if he can run the White House.

It's all too tempting to lapse into spectator mode as developments in the current Biden psychodrama unfold. But progressives and others who understand the imperative of preventing a second Trump term should be determined to help shape history rather than just watching it in real time.

In recent days, it has become clear that only direct intervention by Democrats in Congress, propelled by grassroots pressure, can avert a Biden 2024 train wreck. It’s time to pull the emergency cord. And that means constituents should deluge every congressional Democrat with demands that they insist on Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race.

This telling exchange occurred near the end of the interview:

STEPHANOPOULOS: “If you are told reliably from your allies, from your friends and supporters in the Democratic Party in the House and the Senate that they're concerned you're gonna lose the House and the Senate if you stay in, what will you do?”

BIDEN: “I'm not gonna answer that question. It's not gonna happen.”

Proving Biden wrong on that point will be essential.

Nothing in Biden’s interview will in the slightest mitigate the urgency of the Step Aside Joe campaign (which we help lead). On the contrary, Biden’s frequent dalliance with magical thinking rather than realism makes him the most powerful de facto ally that Donald Trump has in his quest to regain the White House.

For progressives, the task should be clear: Join with other political forces to insist that Biden voluntarily become a one-term president.

ALL EYES TURN TO KAMALA HARRIS AS CONCERNS OVER JOE BIDEN’S CANDIDACY GROW

by Shira Stein & Joe Garofoli

As the cacophony of concerns about President Joe Biden’s electability reaches its peak, some Democrats are looking to their best alternative: Vice President Kamala Harris.

After three years of facing negative polling, initially poor reviews of her effectiveness in office and a maelstrom of social media heckling, Harris is emerging as Democrats’ best option to keep the presidency. Harris has reportedly spoken to Biden several times since his stumbling debate performance. The two had lunch Wednesday at the White House, and Harris joined a meeting between Biden and Democratic governors Wednesday evening.

Conversations about who could replace Biden initially circled around Democratic governors including Gavin Newsom of California and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. Support now, however, appears to be coalescing around Harris, the former California senator and attorney general. Newsom and Whitmer attended the governors meeting, where Newsom said he stood with the president.

Despite this flurry of generally positive attention from Democrats, Harris has been pushing back on any speculation about her future and has repeatedly expressed her support for Biden.

“Look, Joe Biden is our nominee,” she told CBS News on Tuesday after appearing at a fundraiser in San Francisco. “We beat Trump once, and we’re going to beat him again, period.”

Harris has stayed loyal to Biden in private as well, news outlet NOTUS reported Wednesday. Her staff was told not to fuel any chatter about her potentially replacing him at the top of the ticket, and she reportedly defended him to several high-profile Black celebrities in Los Angeles over the weekend, NOTUS reported.

“There’s a world where she could have sat quietly. It wasn’t a given that she was going to respond in this way,” Rachel Palermo, Harris’ former deputy communications director, told the Chronicle. “This was an intentional response and shows how she views her role and how strongly she defends the president.”

Harris’ polling has been as bad as Biden’s or worse since she took office. But support for her has shown signs of ticking up in recent days as concerns about Biden have mushroomed.

She will make a high-profile appearance Saturday in New Orleans at what is expected to be a friendly audience at the Essence Festival of Culture, hoping to boost enthusiasm among people of color — a part of the electorate whose enthusiasm for Biden has dropped. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll last month shows that while Black voters overwhelmingly back Biden, only 62% say they are absolutely certain to vote in November, compared with 74% reporting the same thing four years ago.

The growing interest in Harris is rooted in the belief that she would be more competitive against former President Donald Trump, which is backed by some recent post-debate polling.

A CNN/SSRS poll recorded after the debate found that Harris was in a statistical dead heat with Donald Trump among registered voters (Trump 47% to Harris 45%). That’s slightly better than Biden is faring against Trump (Trump 49% vs. Biden 43%), a margin that hasn’t changed since CNN last polled in April.

The difference for Harris over Biden: She performs better among independent voters and women. And she also is closer to Trump in the polls than three Democrats frequently mentioned as Biden replacements: Newsom, Whitmer and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, all of whom are largely performing about as well as Biden.

Part of the reason is that the poll also found that most respondents didn’t know who those three are, with 48% saying they had “no opinion” of Newsom, 50% feeling the same way about Buttieg and a whopping 69% not having an opinion on Whitmer.

In another survey taken in the days after the debate, 40% of the respondents who backed Biden four years ago said he should end his run. The survey, which was carried out by OpenLabs, a progressive nonprofit that conducts polling for several Democratic groups, found that Harris and the others mentioned above all fared better than Biden against Trump in battleground states.

The bad news for Harris is that only 38% of Americans approve of her while nearly half don’t, according to an amalgamation of polling by fivethirtyeight.com.

But Harris has advantages that other would-be Biden replacements wouldn’t.

She could access the tens of millions in the Biden-Harris campaign war chest. Campaign finance experts told NBC News that if Biden were to drop out and Harris became the new nominee, she would control much of that money. If someone else was chosen as the presidential candidate, however, they wouldn’t be able to.

Biden has made no indication he will step down.

Because primary elections are over, it would be difficult, though not impossible, for him to do so at this point. If he did, the Democratic Party could theoretically choose a different candidate through its official nominating process this summer. That typically takes place at the Democratic National Convention, though the party has planned to do a virtual nominating process in early August ahead of the convention to ensure that Biden makes it onto the Ohio ballot, which has an early deadline. The Democratic National Convention is scheduled for Aug. 19-22 in Chicago.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said it is “absolutely false” that Biden is considering whether to stay in the race.

“One of the reasons why he picked the vice president, Vice President Kamala Harris, is because she is indeed the future of the party. And he’s very proud to have partnered with her and continue to partner with her,” Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday.

One of Biden’s most important allies, Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, told MSNBC on Tuesday that he would support Harris “if (Biden) were to step aside.”

Former Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, called for Harris to be the party’s presidential nominee in a Newsweek opinion piece. “Witnessing Joe Biden struggle was heartbreaking. And we must forge a new path forward. After deep reflection over these past few days, I strongly believe that our best path forward is Kamala Harris,” Ryan wrote Monday.

Her closest allies, however, pushed back against speculation that she could replace Biden.

“All of the chatter that’s going on, these are all hypotheticals. As it stands today, President Biden is running again, and Vice President Harris will be on the ticket as vice president,” Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, told the Chronicle. “I’ve known her for many years, and she’s well prepared, she’s smart for any office. But I think to speculate — and she even said that she’s running for vice president. I mean, this is the Biden-Harris ticket until — if the president decides otherwise.”

If Harris becomes her party’s nominee, she could run on the administration’s popular policy record, including her forceful efforts to protect abortion rights and her ability to push back against the right’s fixation on race.

“This is who the vice president has always been. She has always been a strong leader, and we have seen that throughout her time in the administration, be it how she’s been leading on abortion for the party, what she has done meeting with over 100 foreign leaders,” said A’shanti Gholar, the president of Emerge, a national organization dedicated to recruiting and training Democratic women to run for office.

This new burst of positive attention “does not surprise me, but unfortunately, a lot of people are waking up to that because there’s been so much negative coverage of her,” Gholar said.

Part of that negative coverage is rooted in how Harris was handed a portfolio of difficult issues to tackle, from taking on the root causes of illegal immigration to bolstering voting rights. She made little headway on either.

Gholar, who has served as the director of African American Engagement for the Democratic National Committee, said part of that negative coverage is rooted in Harris being the first woman and the first woman of color in that role, adding that expectations for her were elevated.

“It is what women have to deal with if they’re the vice president, if they’re in Congress, if they are the mayor,” Gholar said. “The rules change, and the expectations are higher, and unfortunately for some people, you’re never going to meet their expectations.”

But halfway through her term, she found her voice in her former hometown of San Francisco, taking the administration’s lead on talking about abortion rights after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Even the social media response to Harris has taken a slightly positive turn after years of mocking. In the past few days, memes have been flying around based on Harris quoting her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan, in a 2023 appearance, where Gopalan chided her daughters for thinking too parochially and not considering the world around them.

“You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” Harris said, quoting her mother, who was a pioneering cancer researcher in the East Bay. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

The clip is one of many that are now being reconsidered as examples of Harris being personable — and another sign of how public opinion is softening toward her as the reality that she might become the Democratic Party’s nominee is growing.

(SF Chronicle)

Martha Jane Canary. 1852-1903. Calamity Jane, was an American frontierswoman. She worked as a dance hall girl and prostitute before becoming a professional scout. She appeared in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. She was known for wearing men's clothes and being a daredevil.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

The gaslighting hasn’t been shut down, the pretend shock that Biden acted senile is still gaslighting. During Biden’s first year as president he came to the city where I lived and people who saw him at an event described him as totally gone. Everyone around him must have known.

THE IMPROBABLE RISE AND SAVAGE FALL OF SIEGFRIED & ROY

At the peak of their particular and possibly extinct brand of celebrity, Siegfried & Roy were arguably the most famous magicians since Houdini. They were without question the most famous German magicians performing with a large collection of apex predators. Depending on when you enter and exit their story, it’s either triumphant or tragic, surprising or inevitable. It can serve as a testament to the power of lies, including the ones we tell ourselves, or a cautionary tale about fiction’s limits, especially when fact takes the form of a fed-up tiger. Now it’s about to reach its sad, instructive conclusion, the way so many modern fables end: with a corporate takeover.…

theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/11/siegfried-roy-fame-rise-and-fall/671528

32 Comments

Mazie Malone July 6, 2024

….Mr. Coleman…

“We tried so many times to get Mike and the community help, but the system not only failed us, it blamed us for not doing enough while throwing him pills and barely monitoring him until he finally snapped and a sweet defenseless woman lost her life.”

So many tragedies due to systemic failure of the Mental Health System. It is a very sad and lonely place when you try to get help and intervention for an unraveling mind and there is none, no one to make a decision that would change the outcome, no one with foresight enough to prevent the suffering we are dealt. Failure to act on behalf of another human life because we believe that freedom and autonomy holds greater importance than safety of human life including those experiencing these illnesses and conditions. If we cannot intervene and act to prevent these horrible crimes before they happen, then wtf are we doing? Why? Oh, right freedom………….freedom to choose no matter how unhinged a mind is until a tragedy is committed and now, we all suffer. But none of us did a fucking thing to prevent it.

It is frightening to watch someone’s mind slide into a psychotic delusional paranoid state, so scary and there is no one there, no matter who you call for help, no one tells you what to do, what it is or how to help. We all sit back and watch and wait until tragedy strikes. I feel so bad for this family it is wrong and unfair and disgusting to be disregarded and abandoned by the “system” this woman did not have to die, when will we begin to understand we are doing this wrong it is not about freedom it is about prevention and intervention.

mm 💕

Reply
- Call It As I See It July 6, 2024
  
  Liberal policies have created these types of incidents. They enable the mentally ill person with laws that are designed to keep them out of jail or mental facilities. All in the name rights and that they care.
  
  The reality is, they don’t care and usually money is the real reason and the mentally ill person ends up in the place they tried to keep them out of, jail. And it carries a heavy price, death.
  
  They allow the mentally ill to become offenders. Instead of laws that would conserve the individual and force them into help, they argue on the side of compassion. Real compassion is to force help on the individual. There are many similarities when it comes to homelessness.
  
  The answer might be, take the money that the County hands to the Schrader’s and open a mental health facility and rewrite laws that don’t enable the mentally ill.
  
  Reply
  - Stephen Rosenthal July 6, 2024
    
    Who was it that closed the mental hospitals in California and gutted funding for mental illness nationally? Ronald Reagan. As I recall, he was a conservative Republican. Liberal politics have created its share of issues, but stop blaming it for everything that you are against.
    
    Reply
    - Norm Thurston July 6, 2024
      
      Agreed.
      
      Reply
    - MAGA Marmon July 6, 2024
      
      The Observer: Who closed mental health hospitals in California? Three guesses, it wasn’t Reagan
      
      There is a longstanding belief that when Ronald Ragan was governor in the 1960s, he “closed down” the state’s mental hospitals, thus leading to today’s epic mental health crisis that includes a large component of the mentally ill who wander homeless in our cities and rural areas.
      
      So-called mental health care professionals to this day scapegoat Reagan for the abysmal failure of a system that has never experienced any kind of success. But one thing Reagan didn’t do was “close down” the state’s mental health hospitals located in all of the 58 counties. He didn’t close a single hospital. He never even closed a single room in a single hospital.
      
      So who closed the hospitals?
      
      The patients in the hospitals did by exercising their new freedoms under a landmark California law enacted 50 years ago that created a “Mental Health Patient’s Bill Of Rights” that became the model for many other states in this country. You could say mental health patients after the law was passed, voted with their feet: They left their rooms and walked out the hospital’s front doors, never to return.
      
      Two legislative forces actually determined the fate of mental health care in this state. You might call them acts with unintended consequences. Here’s the history:
      
      https://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/2023/08/19/the-observer-who-closed-mental-health-hospitals-in-california-three-guesses-it-wasnt-reagan/
      
      MAGA Marmon
      
      Reply
      - MAGA Marmon July 6, 2024
        
        I left Mental Health as a specialist because of these laws, LPS and the Patient’s Bill of Rights. I had to wait until my client’s killed themselves or someone else. By then it was too late.
        
        MAGA Marmon, MSW
        
        Reply
      - Harvey Reading July 6, 2024
        
        From the AVA:
        
        “One Comment
        
        Donald Cruser August 29, 2023
        I am not ready to pretend Reagan played no part in shutting down the mental hospitals. After all he signed the legislation into law. Governors have the power to veto laws they don’t agree with and it happens frequently. Bills are often written in collusion with the governor to assure their signature. The fact that there was no follow up funding for new approaches to mental health is solely Reagon’s failure. The governor is responsible for creating the state budget. Moreover, this bill fits perfectly into Reagon’s mode of operation: “cut government spending on services to the powerless needy in order to save money”. His most famous quote is “government is the enemy”. Later as president he destroyed the middle class. In the 50’s through the 70’s the pride of US was that we had the largest middle class in the world. Now, thanks to the way Reagon and the Repugs rewrote the rules of our economy, we have one of the smallest middle classes among industrialized countries. It was done so the wealth of the nation would funnel up to the top. A great book that details how this happened is “America, What Went Wrong?” Reagon’s running of the federal government also exemplifies his mo. During his campaign he promised to push for a constitutional amendment to require a balanced federal budget. Then, as president, he ran the biggest deficit in the history of the USA up to that time. This record was later surpassed by Bush 1 and then Bush 2. Note that this is a special skill of Republican presidents. Bill Clinton handed Bush 2 a 750 billion dollar surplus and 8 years later Shrub handed Obama a trillion dollar deficit. How do these counterfeit conservatives manage this? It is easy: They cut taxes on the rich. I am not about to let Reagon off the hook for shutting down the mental hospitals, He signed the legislation, failed to budget any replacement, and it is congruent with everything else he did while in office. I have encouraged many people to drive out to the East end of Talmage Road and give themselves a tour of the the old hospital. They see enough dormitory rooms to house all the homeless in Lake and Mendocino counties. Outdoor tennis and basketball courts. Magnificent beauty with large expanses of manicured lawns and giant oak trees. The Buddhists now own it and their restaurant is a delight. I find it hard to believe that a good social worker couldn’t convince a large portion of our homeless to take a room, have a bathroom, get regular healthy meals, and get some medical help. After all the commonly overlooked solution to the homeless problem is to provide them with a home."
        
        Nice try, MAGAt.
        
        Reply
      - MAGA Marmon July 6, 2024
        
        What people don’t realize is the hospitals were left half empty. They had to close.
        
        MAGA Marmon, MSW
        
        Reply
      - Stephen Rosenthal July 6, 2024
        
        And who was the Governor who signed it into law?
        
        Reply
        
        MAGA Marmon July 6, 2024
        
        It was passed by the citizens of California.
        
        MAGA Marmon
        
        Reply
        
        MAGA Marmon July 6, 2024
        
        Your buddy Jim Jones did a good job of draining Talmadge, and bringing them into our community.
        
        MAGA Marmon
        
        Reply
        
        Stephen Rosenthal July 6, 2024
        
        My buddy?
        
        It was passed by the Legislature and signed into law by then Governor Reagan.
        
        Btw, I’ve been meaning to ask, did you have your first kid when you were 15? The one who died of cerebral palsy?
        
        Reply
        
        MAGA Marmon July 6, 2024
        
        Cystic Fibrosis, yes I was only 15. I also lied my age to go to work at Cloverdale Lumber. In three years I worked all the way up to a saw filer. No one ever knew my age until I turned 18. What got me through this, is I could grow a beard.
        
        MAGA Marmon
        
        Reply
        
        MAGA Marmon July 6, 2024
        
        I won’t deny that I fell apart after that.
        
        MAGA Marmon
        
        Reply
    - George Hollister July 6, 2024
      
      Jim Shields has a different view on this, but what difference does it make? Just because something was legislated 50 years ago, and it didn’t work, does that mean we can’t change the law to something else that works?
      
      Reply
      - Eli Maddock July 6, 2024
        
        Pivotal moments
        In history we observe
        Approaching apex
        
        Reply
    - Call It As I See It July 6, 2024
      
      Wrong, Pat Brown. Moonbeam’s dad. He signed the order and it came to fruition during Reagan’s term. One of the biggest lies liberals have ever told. That is until Trump came along.
      
      Reply
      - Stephen Rosenthal July 6, 2024
        
        Whatever you say, Todd.
        
        Reply
- Me July 6, 2024
  
  When monetary gain is removed from the equation. But that won’t happen, will it.
  My heart goes out to Shawn Coleman and his family, twice hit with this kind of tragedy. Also to everyone who knew the victim, Roberta and everyone who also experienced the failure of the systems in place surrounding this horrible situation.
  This situation is repeated a million times every day I’m sure across the country. I’ve experienced it, it is just absolutely horrifying and then to be let down by those that are suppose to help, is just a tragedy on top of another. Just so sad and disappointing.
  
  Reply
  - Mazie Malone July 6, 2024
    
    Absolutely !!!. …………disgusting and tragic
    
    mm 💕
    
    Reply
- Lazarus July 6, 2024
  
  I know people who live in the area of the murder. They say they made many calls to the police for help. The people say the cops wanted more evidence etc, etc.
  Everyone up there knew this guy was dangerous, and now there’s a dead woman.
  Unfortunately, the beat goes on. Will the mental health mess ever change? I think not, follow the money.
  Have a nice day,
  Laz
  
  Reply
  - Mazie Malone July 6, 2024
    
    Laz,
    Yes police come when there is a crime not before although you would think someone would have the balls to intervene since we have all these programs. Known Mental Illness requires an appropriate interventive measure via the supposed Dual Crisis Response. Why if police could or would not respond to those calls did, they do not get an intervention through this service that was brought to fruition for these exact reasons. So irresponsible and ignorant.
    
    mm 💕
    
    Reply
    - MAGA Marmon July 6, 2024
      
      I believe Shawn stated that his brother was a Regional Center client (Retarded). That means he’s probably on Medicare, not Medical. That would render him a non-billable for the Schraeder cabal. The same goes for Kalisha who is featured in today catch. How come no one ever slams the Regional Center for not doing their job.
      
      MAGA Marmon
      
      Reply
      - Mazie Malone July 6, 2024
        
        James,
        Developmentally Disabled would be the term not retarded, regardless which entity you receive services does not matter it is systemic dysfunction and inability to act. Sounds like dual diagnosis to me and he probably has both insurances. And no matter the Medi-Cal or Medicare issue how much money have we put into the preventive measures that are not billable to Medical because the County pays for the service.
        
        mm 💕
        
        Reply
Harvey Reading July 6, 2024

Calamity Jane

Is the firearm she’s balancing on its butt an early version of today’s “assault weapon” imitations that MAGAts so dearly love?

Reply
D. Merit July 6, 2024

“People don’t realize
How hard it is
To speak the truth,
To a World
Full of people
Who do not realize
They are living a lie”
Edward Snowden

Reply
Merit July 6, 2024

I agree with George, let’s move forward.

I think we need more Investigators in Law Enforcement, urgently.

Reply
- Merit July 6, 2024
  
  I would like to see Investigators meeting with people, talking with people, responding to people, at length.
  
  In other words, open an investigation, immediately, when a citizen calls for help.
  
  Reply
Merit July 6, 2024

168%
of Denmark’s GDP is put aside to pay for citizens’ future retirement

5 years in a row, the Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index has ranked the Danish pensions system the best in the world

Reply
Jim Armstrong July 6, 2024

What do you suppose that carousel looking thing is at the upper left of the 1942 restaurant photo?

Reply
- Bob A. July 6, 2024
  
  It appears to be an electric ceiling fan viewed from above. You can see some blurring from the rotating blades. The camera was elevated well above the heads of the people in this shot.
  
  Reply
  - Jim Armstrong July 7, 2024
    
    I wondered about the blurring, too, but didn’t put them together. Great pic.
    Thanks.
    
    Reply

Mendocino County Today: Saturday 7/6/2024

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