Mendocino County Today: Sunday 7/21/2024

Cool | Noyo Sunset | Ridge Fire | Statice | Smoke Drift | Heat Relief | Supe Salaries | Grocery Recovery | Local Events | John Shandel | Luxembourg Lion | Health & Finance | Mustang Sally | Mendo Roads | Abductees Wanted | Teepee Burner | AV Events | Dirty Cello | All Guitars | Further Behind | Bragg Benches | Found Dead | Homo Hunt | Yesterday's Catch | Catholic Mass | Irritating Gentleman | Scottish Lighthouse | Trumpless | Marco Radio | York Table | Water Evaporated | Trump Voters | Rick & Willie | Kaline Catch | Homeless Sweeps | Young Family | Distressed Democrat | Conspiracy Stretch | Lead Stories | Deadwood | Execrable Nick | Strip Club | You Rascal | Harlem Nightclubs | PCH | Dog Map

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INTERIOR TEMPERATURES cool a bit today, warm back up Monday through Wednesday, then cool again late this week. Diurnal coastal stratus continues. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): While it did get breezy yesterday we sure did not see much sun. The forecast is the same today for clear skies & breezy but it an overcast 55F at 5am this Sunday morning on the coast. Mostly clear to start the week then patchy fog (our old friend) by mid week.

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LAKE COUNTY FIRE SPREADING RAPIDLY, EVACUATIONS ORDERED

The Ridge Fire is newly estimated to be 192 acres instead of 300, according to Cal Fire official, and burning in the area of Walker Ridge Road and Highway 20, in terrain that is largely brush.

by Jeremy Hay

Firefighters are battling a vegetation fire in Lake County that is spreading rapidly, authorities said.

“We’ve got a response going, and significant augmentation, which means we’re adding a lot of resources,” said Cal Fire spokesperson Jason Clay.

The blaze, dubbed the Ridge Fire and being driven by winds, was burning in the area of Walker Ridge Road and Highway 20, in terrain that is largely brush, east of Clearlake Oaks. The fire is on the eastern edge of Lake County pushing into Colusa County.

A massive plume of smoke was visible for miles.

Clay said details about what firefighting resources were on the scene were not immediately available. Initially, six air tankers, 10 additional engines and four helicopters had been requested. At 5:30, Clay said they had requested four additional air tankers and four helicopters.

Early reports had the fire at 300 acres, but at 5:05 p.m. it was reestimated to be at 192 acres, according to Clay.

At 4:48 p.m. mandatory evacuations were issued for the area of the Wilbur Hot Springs and also Walker Ridge, according to the Watch Duty app, which said that according to incident command the wildfire has a potential for 1,000 acres.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

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AV FIRE DEPARTMENT:

We've received a few concerned calls regarding the smoke that's coming down from the north into AV. No fires have been reported in Anderson Valley at this time, although there are a few large fires burning up north with significant smoke drift.

If you see a smoke column building or if you see fire, make sure you're in a safe place and call 911.

We encourage you to use the information resources on our website, such as the smoke camera network:

https://cameras.alertcalifornia.org/

Thanks for staying alert!

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REPORT FROM A SMALL FARM IN BOONVILLE

We survived! And if you are in our neighborhood or under a heat dome of your own, we hope you did as well.

Two weeks of temps over 100, 109 being the hottest, is debilitating to say the least. Exhaustion and fuzzy brain are symptoms and sleep doesn't erase either one. Our concrete block house has no air conditioning and will hold the night time cool for several days, but after that it heats up. The fan helps, the moving air giving an illusion of cool. Our plants have suffered as much as we. The great berry sets we were excited to see have been torched in places, even under shade cloth.

And though most of our crops are under shade cloth we may have to increase the density. The two crops that actually thrived are okra and capers! The okra was looking weak before the heat arrived, but is now, less than a week later, setting fruit.

The high temps have moderated and we're relieved for the moment. We know they will return. There's really no point in complaining since we've done it to ourselves, though I do wish my animals had had a voice in the choices made. The dogs and cat spend the days splotched on the cement in the breezeway; the chickens find shade and stand with wings spread, panting; the pigs flop on the shady cement and love a water spray off; the ducks tussle in their water tubs; and the yaks, covered in heavy black hair, native to high country and cold climates, they're sprawled on the dry grass in their field in full sun!

Whatever your method of keeping cool, we hope it works well for you. Take care, eat well and enjoy.

Nikki Auschnitt and Steve Krieg

Boonville

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CHRIS SKYHAWK:

While our county is under state audit BOS wants bigger salaries

Alert From Megan Wolf: Hey all, please mark your calendar to attend this week’s Board of Supervisors meeting Tues July 23 9am The BOS is proposing a $15,000 increase in their salaries while they have repeated told county workers the county doesn’t have money for our COLAs 50% of library workers make less than $20 an hour Please call in, attend and/or write an e comment on item 4c

No Raises For Supervisors Until Living Wages For County Employees

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FORT BRAGG FOOD BANK

Did you know your local food banks offer grocery recovery? Shout out to Harvest Market, Safeway, and all our grocery recovery donors who give us all this awesome food that they can't sell but is good to eat!

If you own a grocery, restaurant, or event venue and would like to participate in grocery recovery, email Rachelle@Mendofood.org!

We'll pick up leftovers, produce with slight imperfections, shelf stable or frozen food past the sell by date, etc. And not to worry, if we determine any food donations are not safe for human consumption, we donate it to local farmers to feed livestock or use as compost!

Individuals are welcome to participate too! Any food you have that would otherwise end up in your trash can, simply drop off at your local food bank in Fort Bragg, Willits, or Ukiah.

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LOCAL EVENTS

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JOHN SHANDEL

Today, this afternoon approx. 250 of John's family and friends came to Little River for one last goodbye for a man we loved and respected.

Many kind, funny, insightful and loving words were spoken for a great man, now physically gone from Albion Ridge except for his ashes.

Happy Trails John,

John Shandel was my friend and favorite Redneck and I may be one of his best Hippies.

He taught me how to sharpen a saw, cut and split shakebolts, where to sell them and steer clear of the law.

When I first arrived here his old schoolhouse was filled with longhairs and I was one of them. Instead of being angry about it he filled up my old pickup with firewood so these mostly unskilled folks could keep warm.

As the years passed by I took my turn as a volunteer and became an EMT under Bettie's guidance and John right there.

As more years did pass along I bought a sawmill and there again John came through with many logs to mill and customers too.

John was always passing along his knowledge and leading by example. He taught me, "how to become a better man".

That was and forever will be our one and only, John Shandel.

Gary Moraga

Albion Ridge

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MENTAL HEALTH & COUNTY FINANCES

by Jim Shields

In the past couple of weeks I’ve written columns dealing with the county’s (and the state’s) 50 years of failed mental health practices, programs, and policies. I’ve also shared with you my opinions and analysis of the county’s appalling financial fiasco.

Summarizing my thoughts on the mental health issue, I said: The Lanterman–Petris–Short Act (LPS Act) a so-called “bill of rights” for those with mental health problems passed the Democratic-controlled Assembly 77-1. The Senate approved it by similar margins.

It was co-authored by California State Assemblyman Frank Lanterman, a Republican, and California State Senators Nicholas C. Petris and Alan Short, both Democrats. LPS went into full effect on July 1, 1972.

I recently read a piece by Vern Pierson (El Dorado County District Attorney), and learned something I was not aware of: The movement of the “de-institutionalization” of the mentally ill started in the 1960’s. This movement, started in Europe, was supported by President John Kennedy and ultimately was complicated by a U.S. Supreme Court opinion and civil liberty concerns over forced treatment. Pierson has my respect, he’s one well-rounded D.A.

Anyway, the California bi-partisan law came about because of concerns about the involuntary civil commitment to mental health institutions in California. At the time, the act was thought by many to be a progressive blueprint for modern mental health commitment procedures, not only in California, but in the United States.

The LPS Act emptied out the state’s mental hospitals but resulted in an explosion of homelessness. Legislators never provided enough money for community- based programs to provide treatment and shelter.

Lanterman later expressed regret at the way the law was carried out. “I wanted the law to help the mentally ill,” he said. “I never meant for it to prevent those who need care from receiving it.”

But that’s exactly what has happened for the past five decades

As I’m always saying, problems just don’t happen, people make them happen. But the history of mental health practice and policy in this state is one of abject failure caused by well-intentioned reformers back in the late 60s-early 70s who unknowingly unleashed something that no one envisioned or wanted.

The primary action to cure this ill has always been right in front of us. But it’s been blocked from both view and implementation by a brick wall of political correctness combined with government capitulation to the Homeless-Mental Health Industrial Complex.

Here in Mendocino County think “Schraeders” and you’ll know everything you need to know about what I’m saying.

The solution?

You have to re-introduce a meaningful, no-nonsense, balanced level of compulsion into the system so that we are not, as Assemblyman Lanterman so aptly put it many years ago, “preventing those who need care from receiving it.”

Absent that action, you’re left with what we have now: Decades of chaotic failure where the only success found is on the bottom-lines of the balance sheets of the Homeless- Mental Health Industrial Complex. Now that is true craziness.

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County Finances

Here’s a summary of my thoughts on county finances, one of the main arguments I’ve made for the past two years:

So what appears to be high on the County’s lists of concerns?

One item for sure is the creation of a Department of Finance. Everyone is familiar with the background on this non-issue, issue, so I’m not going to re-flog it. Two years ago, by a 4-1 vote (Haschak no), the BOS consolidated the previously independent elected offices of Auditor-Controller and Treasurer-Tax Collector, thus structurally weakening essential internal financial controls.

There’s two bottom lines to this “concern.”

• There’s no indication that this idea has any traction at all with the public. It’s been cut out of whole cloth by the Board of Supervisors (Haschak excepted).
• There’s every indication to believe that the overwhelming majority of citizens would never entrust the responsibility of financial control to the Board of Supervisors, or any creature office or department under its influence. If this proposal would ever go to the ballot, it would a wipeout.

As I’ve suggested, as well as Supe Haschak and I believe Supe Gjerde also, the Board should call in former officials responsible for fiscal matters (Treasurer-Tax Collector, Auditor- Controller, Assessor, and CEO) and interview/question and, hopefully, learn from them how they did their jobs. This is critical information the BOS admits it is lacking.

This process would include but is not limited to such things as assessments of their responsibilities and how they performed their duties, how they exercised fiscal oversight and the identification of internal financial controls, systems that were utilized (manual vs. electronic/software, etc.), staffing levels (classifications and job descriptions) narrative descriptions of interdepartmental and third-party (ex.: outside, independent audit) working relationships detailing scope of work and information disclosed and received.

Since no one has explanations or answers to what caused the ongoing, untenable fiscal mess the county is in, you need to conduct an inquiry and start finding answers to all of the current unknowns prior to launching a substantially, momentous alteration to your organizational structure with this idea of a Department of Finance.

As you are aware, at a recent Board of Supervisors meeting you asked County Counsel Curtis, “Can you assure us we have accurate (financial) information now, that we can trust this data we have now?”

Curtis succinctly responded, “No, that’s something the Board will have to take up.”

Well, it appears that one of the things the “Board will have to take up” is finding out how you got from where the County once was to where it is now.

As Supervisor Glenn McGourty has aptly noted several times recently, “It’s difficult to do business when you don’t know how much money you have in the bank.”

By the way, when the suggestion was made at that meeting to open an inquiry by calling in former county financial officials to provide this much-needed information, it was cut off by Supervisor Mulheren, who complained, “We shouldn’t take another elected official to task, that’s something for the Grand Jury.”

That’s utter nonsense. Mulheren apparently disagrees with County Counsel’s advice that straightening out the financial disorder is “something the Board will have to take up.”

By the way, if the Board does decide to hold an inquiry, it won’t be necessary for former officials to attend in-person. That’s the beauty of zoom meetings.

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UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Beautiful Mustang Sally is such a sweetheart. The report from our volunteers is that Ms. Sally walks well on leash and she’s learning basic obedience. She already sits automatically for treats, so we bet she will be a quick study when she finds her forever home! Sally can be a bit shy meeting people for the first time, but she warms up quickly. She has lovely indoor manners and likes to entertain herself with stuffy toys, especially the ones with squeakers. Because she can be nervous meeting new dogs, we want Mustang Sally to meet any potential canine housemates before being adopted. We’re recommending kids in Sally’s new home be old enough to understand her shyness. Ms. Mustang is 3 years old and a delightful 45 pounds.

To see all of our canine and feline guests, and for information about our services, programs, and events, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com.

Join us every first Saturday of the month for our Meet The Dogs Adoption Event at the shelter.

We're on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter/

For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

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MENDOCINO TOWN’S BAD ROADS

Emily Strachan: What department is responsible for the condition of our roads in town? It's an embarrassment. It does not leave one with a good impression of our town. Whether good or bad, tourism is the main industry here and the road conditions are not inviting.

Robert Cimmiyotti: I agree the condition of the roads in the town of Mendocino are unacceptable and in dire need of repair. I believe that Mendocino County Department of Transportation is responsible for maintaining and repairing the roads and Howard Dashiell is the person in charge of that department.

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HOW ABOUT THIS AD from the Ukiah Daily Journal of February 27th:

“Movie producer seeks real-life victims of alien abduction. Looking to talk to victims of alien abduction and/or conspiracy theorists and other intelligent people ‘in the know’ on topics such as secret societies, reptilian aliens, The Illuminati, disinformation, alien mythology, the matrix, and the New World Order, for documentary film. Some pay. Call toll free…”

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ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE List of Events

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DIRTY CELLO CONCERT

A pop-up show from Dirty Cello at Valerie Mendocino.

July 27, 7:30 - 9 pm

Tickets: $20

The band Dirty Cello plays all over the world from Iceland to Singapore and they love the Mendocino coast. Join this world traveling band for a special pop-up show at Valerie Mendocino - an event space, a shop, a gallery and a whole lot more.

On July 27, at 7:30, Dirty Cello will perform a concert of wild rock and roll, soulful blues and irreverent originals performed with high energy abandon. The group has been described by the L.A. Times as, “The group seamlessly careens from blues to bluegrass and rock in a way that really shouldn't make sense but somehow does.”

This unique pop-up show will be presented at Valerie, a multi-use space in downtown Mendocino. Recently the Dirty Cello band was passing through the area and stopped off at Valerie and discovered a space that was both beautiful and welcoming.

Here’s what they sound like: https://youtu.be/xSR0g3-2iy4?si=0XUq3adZUSfECn2q

There will be seats at the show and it will last about 1.5 hours.

Tickets are available at the door, but pre-bought tickets preferred.

Tickets at Dirtycello.com

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OFF-LINE, FALLING BEHIND

Editor,

I write because I have no long distance service on my phone line. I can only call 459 or 456 numbers. Everyone I know, it seems, has unlimited long distance. Years ago Ma Bell wanted me to pay $12.50 a month for the privilege of paying 17¢ a minute. Probably more now! So I send post cards and people call me three or four days later.

As I have no long distance, I also have no email, web, net, password, log-on or ID or computer or the knowledge of what to do with such if I did have it. That’s why I don’t call your 895-exchange or sign up for your website.

On Feb. 10, 2024 I sent a check for $92 for 24 month of print issues, but only received three months. I figure that leaves about $80 refund due for 93 issues. I would settle for $50 and put the rest towards a bottle of Maker’s Mark if health allows.

Time keeps marching on while I fall further behind.

Best wishes to all.

Casey Pryor

Willits

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FROM THE MARCH 28th, 1903 edition of the Fort Bragg Advocate-News, as gleaned by Debbie Holmer:

“On Monday last week, Bob Stokes and his wife were found dead on the floor of their cabin by James Stokes, a brother of the murdered man. The dead man and woman owned a claim about four miles from Boonville, where they lived; the brother was the only neighbor within a couple of miles. Since putting the above in type we learn that James Stokes has been arrested for the killing of the above couple. The gun with which Stokes and his wife were killed was the property of the brother."

IF THE HILLS of this lovely valley could speak of what they've seen, what an unending tale of travail and woe would we hear.

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THE GREAT HOMO HUNT OF 1998

by Bruce Anderson

Official Mendocino County is awfully slow to adjust to contemporary realities, as the startling ordeal of a gay Ukiah man named Marc Tosca illustrates.

In December of 1990, Tosca and his late partner, Harry Kirkpatrick, bought the 527-acre Eagle Springs Ranch west of the county seat. Upon purchasing the ranch, one of the couple's first acts was to hang their framed “Domestic Partner Certificate” on the wall of their livingroom. As Mr. Tosca has since pointed out, “Should anyone for whatever reason have a problem with same, that is certainly their right and they can simply elect not to work at Eagle Springs. One would think that indeed it would end there.”

One would think. But this is Mendocino County where the thinking is often after the fact.

The “it” couldn't have been made any more evident. Short of a billboard announcement at the ranch gate, and of the many people who worked for Mr. Tosca over the years, only one career criminal attempted to convert “it” to cash; an attempt so wildly implausible one staggers at the official stupidity that acted on it.

On the afternoon of September 24, 1998, Mr. Tosca arrived at the gate to his property west of Ukiah. He was unaware that the man in the car with him was an undercover cop posing as a prospective ranch hand. As Mr. Tosca emerged from his car to open the gate to his home, a stentorian male voice boomingly demanded, “Sheriff's Department, hold it right there, hold it right there, hold it right there! Put your hands in the air! Right now!”

Mr. Tosca, who is disabled and elderly, was then loudly directed to “Get down on the ground, right now, on your knees, on your knees! Let's go! Don't fuck around! Don't you reach in your pocket!”

The Sheriff's Department, with the District Attorney's office all the way on board, was carrying out one of the most bizarre and bizarrely flawed arrests in local history.

With the old man immobilized on his knees, not reaching in his pockets and not fucking around as per shouted instructions, DA investigators Christy Stefani and Tim Kiely, guns drawn, hustled up to Mr. Tosca and, placing their mini-cannon hand guns inches from his head, informed Mr. Tosca that he was “under arrest for oral copulation.”

Oral Copulation? Oral copulation! You need guns to arrest an old man for oral copulation? You need a task force complete with undercover agent to grab one property-owning, non-criminal senior citizen for one bogus charge of oral copulation?

Mr. Tosca, it seems, was regarded by local law enforcement as the Saddam Hussein of le turlute, the Osama bin Laden of the fumer le cigar, the Hamas of el chupas, the al Qaeda of the blow job!

Deputy Cash had pretended to be looking for a job at Eagle Ranch. Mr. Tosca had graciously driven to Ukiah to meet Cash and drive him out to the property to show him around and inform of his duties. As secret agent Cash joined the main body of the jubilant arrest team, Mr. Tosca was handcuffed and placed behind the wire cage in the backseat of a Sheriff's vehicle; he would remain there for three humiliating hours while officers Smallcomb, DeMarco, Stefani, Kiely, Poma, and Cash “searched plaintiff's home, removing items of personal property, including but not limited to, personal papers, microcassette tape recorder, and audio tapes.”

Informant James Mallo had set this expensive farce in motion.

An athletic young man in his early 30s, Mallo, your standard issue sociopath, had convinced local law enforcement that the creaky senior citizen detained in the police wagon had forced the unwilling Mallo to participate in an oral-genital event!

The allegation was absurd on the face of it, and absurd to the point of insanity coming from a low-rent punk like Mallo.

Unable to find zero evidence of proscribed blow jobs other than the one alleged by Mendocino County's most unreliable snitch, the intrepid guardians of heterosexuality charged Mr. Tosca with “the unlawful recording of telephone calls,” an improvised charge to justify the lunatic raid.

Having anticipated discovery of a cache of audio-visual scrapbooks memorializing decades of illegal blow jobs, and fully empowered by a search warrant signed by Judge Conrad Cox, Mendocino County's sex warriors retreated.

James Mallo had racked up dozens of convictions for many different kinds of crimes all the way back to when he was a feral 13-year-old in Humboldt County. By the time he was an infantile but dangerous 30-year-old of the predator type, Mallo was a poster child for Three Strikes laws but, thanks to Mendocino County's porous justice system, Mallo had gotten something like 40 strikes.

How Mallo came to be regarded by County law enforcement as a guy a task force sex raid might be built on remains a mystery. The guy is even regarded with utter contempt by Mendocino County's criminal community several of whom, we understand from friends in that community, want to kill him.

During his many stays at the County Jail in between rapes, robberies, assaults on women, drug possession, and other crimes for which he should have been put permanently away years prior, Mallo always had to be placed in protective custody, beyond the reach of his many serious enemies.

Marc Tosca fought back. He went to federal court in 2001, charging that the officers involved in his arrest, and the three-hour ransacking of his house, and the County of Mendocino County employing those officers, had violated his civil rights. In the fall of 2002, all parties named in Mr. Tosca's civil rights violation suit agreed to settle it; Mendocino County would pay no damages and Mr. Tosca would pay his own considerable legal fees. But Mendoland would have to say it was sorry, its raid team would have to take tolerance lessons, and the County would have to grade Tosca’s ranch road driveway on Mr. Tosca's ranch.

Officers Smallcomb, Stefani, DeMarco, and Kiely, in a formal letter to Tosca dated October 31st, 2002, wrote: “Dear Mr. Tosca: We, the undersigned, truly regret the inconvenience and unpleasantness you experienced as a result of our investigation, your arrest, and the search of your property.”

Mr. Tosca, however, was unmollified. He also remained skeptical of DA Norm Vroman who, Mr. Tosca suspects, harbors lingering animosity for Tosca because of an unhappy real estate transaction between Tosca and Vroman some years back. Mr. Tosca also said that the boyfriend of his neighbor, Annie Taylor, had urged Ms. Taylor to sever her friendship with Tosca, referring to Tosca as “that faggot.” Ms. Taylor's boyfriend, William Rutler, contributed an aerial surveillance of Mr. Tosca's property to The Blow Job That Wasn't.

PS. The County never did grade Tosca’s road. And the courts never pursued the settlement agreement requirement.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, July 20, 2024

SANDRA ANGULO-GUZMAN, Willits. DUI.

JONATHAN HENDERSON, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

BRITTANY KOHLMANN, Ukiah. Trespassing, probation violation.

DIEGO LOPEZ-AGUILERA, Sacramento/Ukiah. DUI.

ABAD PELAEZ-GUERRERO, Windsor/Leggett. DUI, controlled substance, no license.

COLIN ROACH, Gualala. Shoplifting, probation revocation.

MELANIE SIMMONS, Stockton/Ukiah. Controlled substance, shoplifting, false ID.

ERIK STARK, Ukiah. Domestic battery, child endangerment.

JALAHN TRAVIS, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, probation violation.

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CRAIG'S RETURN TO HIS MOTHER CHURCH

Just returned to the motel room from attending Catholic Mass at Saint Mary of the Angels, which is three blocks away. The visiting bishop (a red hat) is from India, and the pastor is also Indian. Considering my own association with the spirituality of the subcontinent, it was ecumenical and global to say the least to see them celebrating the mass in Ukiah. And it was good to receive communion again…the spiritual energy and significance is most welcome at the moment. A good sheet anchor is required in the present maelstrom of life on the planet earth. Am otherwise relaxed and enjoying a yerba mate over ice in the air conditioned motel room.

Craig Louis Stehr

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THE IRRITATING GENTLEMAN, 1890 (oil on canvas) by Berthold Woltze.

Based on her emotional eyes and black attire, the woman in the painting is most likely in mourning. To make matters worse, she has an individual with a full on neckbeard and fedora, breathing down her neck.

During this time period in Europe, the act of mourning and funerals were fairly elaborate affairs. Her double lock carpet bag seems to suggest that she's traveling lightly, either heading to a funeral or returning from one. Society dictated that mourners wear all black and forgo jewelry unless they were also black. Her hairstyle, the way it's pulled back with a headband and braided, suggests that she's young, possibly just a teenager. The white handkerchief underneath her left hand points to the evidence that she's been crying for some time.

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BRUCE MCEWEN:

Unparalleled Tranquillity

Lighthouse buildings on remote Scottish island on market for just £80k.

Also, Bob Dylan will be on stage in Edinburgh the night of the election. As “the only saint white people have,” Dylan’s timing and lyrics will no doubt have some providential ramifications…

Best wishes to AVA, staff and readers alike, but the McEwens—forced to emigrate during the Highland Clearances—are coming home to Scotland.

https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/homes-and-gardens/the-lighthouse-keepers-cottage-for-sale-for-just-ps80000-with-two-helipads-on-a-remote-scottish-island-4708960

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MEMO OF THE AIR: The Parallax View.

“You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some aquatic tart threw a sword at you. Strange women lying in ponds, distributing swords, is no basis for a system of government.”

Here's the recording of last night's (Friday 2024-07-19) 8-hour Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org (and, for the first hour, also 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino): https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0601

Coming shows can feature your story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or whatever. Just email it to me. Or include it in a reply to this post. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there and read it on the air. That's what I'm here for.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

You already know that I'm a huge fan of the Marvel /Daredevil/ teevee series. This makes me think of that. https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2024/07/echo.html

I'm your heat pump, baby, yeah, when you want it hot I'm hot for you. (via This Isn't Happiness) https://www.hotmike.com/heat-pump.html

This is everyone. Children should be shown this in school. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg

The Parallax View. Assassination choreography always reminds me of this thrilling 1974 film starring Warren Beatty and Paula Prentiss. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzRS4yhbIYE

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

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CALIFORNIA RESERVOIR LEVELS DROPPED BY BILLIONS OF GALLONS IN JULY

by Jack Lee

California’s scorching July heat not only shattered temperature records, it also removed billions of gallons of water from the state’s largest reservoirs.

From July 1-18, about 4.1 billion gallons of water evaporated from California’s biggest reservoir, Shasta Lake. This loss highlights challenges water managers face not just this summer, but in a hotter, drier future with a thirstier atmosphere.

“If we have less coming in and more going out, we’re going to be struggling to manage the system moving forward if there’s more demand,” said Christopher Pearson, an associate research hydrologist with the Desert Research Institute. “The system gets out of whack, just like your checkbook does.”

Hundreds of millions of gallons — equivalent to several hundred acre-feet — evaporated each day from Shasta Lake during the historic July heat wave. Temperatures in nearby Redding reached at least 110 for six days in a row in early July. The reservoir, which has a total capacity of 4.55 million acre-feet, is the centerpiece of the federally managed Central Valley Project.

During hotter days, the air is less humid above, Pearson explained, while there’s increasing humidity at the surface as a reservoir heats up. This produces a gradient that drives upward flux of water vapor. Wind can further increase flux, leading to even more evaporation.

Another factor is the amount of water in a reservoir, since it determines the surface area exposed to air.

“The bigger the lake, the more evaporation you have,” said Don Bader, area manager for Shasta Dam, working for the Bureau of Reclamation. “Last year we started out full. This year we started out full. … Previous years the lake was not near as full, and the evaporation then was a lot less.”

During the same July time period in 2023, about 4 billion gallons of water evaporated from Shasta Lake. By comparison, in 2022, just 2 billion gallons evaporated.

The amount of evaporation this July corresponds with about 3% to 4% of the water that flows through Shasta Dam.

“If you don’t account for it, you’re going to be short,” Bader said. That’s why the Bureau of Reclamation factors evaporation into operational and allocation plans.

Billions of gallons of water have also evaporated at other major water supply reservoirs across California, including Lake Oroville, the state’s second-largest reservoir at 3.42 million acre-feet.

“For a reservoir of Lake Oroville’s size and surface area, higher evaporation amounts during heat waves are expected,” said Tracy Hinojosa, the Department of Water Resources’ State Water Project water operations manager, by email. “But evaporation amounts remain a small portion of the reservoir’s overall storage.”

For example, an estimated 551 acre-feet of water — about 180 million gallons — evaporated from Lake Oroville on July 12, which corresponds with just 0.018% of the reservoir’s 3.07 million acre-foot storage that day, Hinojosa explained.

More water evaporated from Trinity Lake and New Melones Lake this July than during the same period in the previous five years: 1.6 billion gallons and 1.8 billion gallons, respectively.

San Luis Reservoir bucked the trend, with 2.4 billion gallons of evaporation in July this year compared with 3 billion gallons in 2023. The reason likely comes down to volume: in 2023, the reservoir was very full, while construction this year has limited the amount of water being stored, Bader explained.

There are limitations to the data. Evaporation at reservoirs like Shasta Lake isn’t measured directly from the entire reservoir. Instead, staff measure the amount of water that evaporates from a pan that’s about two feet wide and extrapolate to what’s happening across the lake.

This standard approach doesn’t fully represent the behavior of a deep, dynamic reservoir, said Pearson with the Desert Research Institute. Scientists are developing methods, such as using modeling techniques, for tracking evaporation rates more accurately.

Major reservoir levels are currently at 116% of average, according to the Department of Water Resources, but other signs have indicated a return of drought conditions to California.

Despite the healthy levels, Pearson said all the heat stored in Shasta Lake during the prolonged stretch of high temperatures could have long-lasting effects: “Even though the early July estimates for Shasta don’t look that extreme, one concern is that the early July heat wave may lead to increased evaporation throughout the rest of summer due to increased water temperatures.”

(SF Chronicle)

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WARRIORS’ RICK BARRY RAN ONTO THE FIELD TO MEET WILLIE MAYS. A FRIENDSHIP WAS BORN.

by Daniel Brown

Daly City, Calif. — Rick Barry visited the Bay Area last week and savored a chance to recall some of basketball’s most famous names. The NBA All-Star Game returns to the San Francisco side of the bay in February for the first time since 1967 when Barry captured game MVP honors with 38 points.

Barry, at 80, can still rattle off the legends from that box score in rapid succession: Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Nate Thurmond, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson …

But on this day, the Hall of Famer player who really got Barry rolling was one enshrined in Cooperstown, not Springfield.

“You don’t know my Willie Mays story?” he asked.

Just like that, Barry was off — back to his childhood, back to the Polo Grounds, back to the day he played hooky for a chance to meet his boyhood hero.

Mays died June 18 at age 93, news that hit Barry hard. He wore No. 24 during his Hall of Fame basketball career as a tribute to Mays, the wondrous center fielder widely regarded as the best all-around player in baseball history.

The two became friendly during their overlapping careers in the Bay Area in the 1960s and early 1970s, when Barry was with the Warriors and Mays was with the Giants.

But their connection began long before that, and in cinematic fashion. Barry grew up as a New York Giants fan in Roselle Park, N.J. His father was a terrific softball player who taught his son how to catch fly balls stylishly by turning the glove palm up at waist level.

During this interview, Barry repeatedly pounded his imaginary glove while catching invisible fly balls to demonstrate his technique.

“It’s the basket catch that Willie Mays made famous,” Barry said. Barry famously shot his free throws underhanded, too, so this was kind of his comfort zone. He was 7 when Mays reached the majors in 1951 and began making basket catches with flair. A kinship was born.

“The Giants get him; everyone says, ‘Who’s this rookie doing this?’” Barry said. “I said, ‘Well, that’s my guy.’ That’s how it worked.”

Barry, an outfielder as a youth league player, became so enamored of Mays that he concocted an audacious plan to meet him. It was “Field of Dreams” meets “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

Barry was attending a parochial school in New Jersey but ditched that day to crash a Police Activities League trip to the Polo Grounds that welcomed PAL kids from public schools.

Hopping onto that bus was just the beginning of Barry’s plot. He knew that, after the game, Giants would head back to the clubhouse through center field rather than going back through the dugout. Barry counted down the outs.

“The game is over, and the Giants won. So after the last out, I dropped down the wall in left field and sprinted to try to shake Willie’s hand before he got to the stairs to go up to the clubhouse,” Barry said. “And I got to shake his hand.

“I ran back to my friends, and they were ready. And fortunately, the security didn’t get me. I got back on the bus to get home.”

His plan went off without a hitch … almost.

When Barry got home, his brother, Dennis, was there and asked how the game was. Rick denied it several times until his brother went full “CSI: Polo Grounds.”

“I saw you on TV,” Dennis told him, according to Rick. “At the end of the game, they zoomed in on this kid that jumped over the wall and sprinted out, and they zoomed in, and it was you shaking Willie Mays’ hand.”

Busted.

“Oh, God, don’t tell mom or dad, will you?” Barry replied. “And so he didn’t. Thank God for that.”

That backdrop made it all the more surreal as Barry and Mays got to know each other during their Bay Area days. Barry’s first game with the San Francisco Warriors, as they were called then, was in 1965. That was the year Mays, age 34, won his second MVP award by batting .317 with 52 homers, 112 RBIs and a 1.043 OPS.

“I come to San Francisco, and I get to be friends with my boyhood hero,” Barry said. “Pretty cool.”

Over time, Barry and Mays became forever bonded, in part because the 12-time Gold Glove winner loved the story of one of the NBA’s 50 Greatest Players trespassing in his honor. Barry finished his career with the Houston Rockets, where Moses Malone wore jersey No. 24, so Barry took to wearing 2 for home games and 4 on the road.

When Mays turned 70 in May 2001, there was a lavish birthday celebration at Bally’s Casino in Atlantic City, N.J.

“Willie’s guy calls me up and says, ‘Rick, Willie wants you to come to the celebration for his birthday,’” Barry said.

Barry was touched, but there was, appropriately, a catch.

“He wants you to be one of the speakers,” Mays’ rep continued. “And he wants you to be first. And he wants you to tell the story of how you first met him.”

Barry, not known for his shyness, was nonetheless unnerved about being on the dais amid 3,000 mostly baseball people.

He defused pressure by opening his speech with: “I know exactly what every one of you right now is thinking. ‘What the hell is he doing here?!?’

“And then I said, ‘I’m thinking the same thing!’”

Barry told the story, and the audience roared its approval. It was the perfect way to celebrate an unlikely friendship between a player known for making basket catches and a player known for making baskets.

“I’m sorry he’s gone,” Barry said.

(The Atlantic)

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On June 16, 1963, at Yankee Stadium, Al Kaline, a ten-time Gold Glove Award-winning right fielder for the Detroit Tigers, made an incredible leap and robbed New York Yankees slugger Roger Maris of a home run in the fourth inning.

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I’VE COVERED HOMELESS SWEEPS IN CALIFORNIA FOR 40 YEARS. WE’RE RIGHT BACK WHERE WE STARTED.

by Kevin Fagan

‘Ping-ponging’ was the tactic of choice to deal with the homeless even before the term ‘homeless’ sprang into use in the early 1980s. It never went away.

The first homeless camp sweep I covered was in winter 1981, after the grape harvests concluded in the San Joaquin Valley. As a police reporter, I watched cops roust a farmworkers’ spread of lean-tos and tarps outside Lodi. The pickers weren’t needed anymore — they knew it, the cops knew it. No arguments. They just left.

“We’ll be back next season,” I remember one of the farmworkers — most of them were up from Mexico — casually saying.

“We know,” one of the officers replied with a laugh.

Fast forward to Oakland and Contra Costa County in the late 1980s and the 1990s, when I went with homeless activists to cover encampment sweeps in streets and fields. This time there were arguments. But the laws were clear. Move or be cited, maybe arrested.

The same dynamic held in 2003 when I spent six months on the streets of San Francisco with Chronicle photographer Brant Ward. The five-day series we produced, “Shame of the City,” concluded that radically improving street counseling and wraparound supportive housing could make a huge dent in the homelessness crisis (that’s still true).

But we also found the same ol,’ same ol,’ when it came to kicking sidewalk eyesores down the road. Whenever street cleaning trucks showed up, sometimes with a cop or a street counselor, whatever camp we were in had no choice — everyone scattered.

Scattering homeless people was the norm pretty much everywhere in California until 2018. That’s when the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a decade-old lawsuit challenging anti-camping laws in Boise, Idaho, saying sweeps couldn’t be done unless campers were offered shelter. Until that ruling, there was little to constrain governments from chasing homeless people away using anti-camping and loitering laws. The only efforts to move campers into shelters were voluntary. And even after 2018, most places found workarounds.

So, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Boise decision on June 28, ruling that cities again have a freer hand in clearing homeless settlements, it mostly reset everyone back to what used to be normal.

Homeless camps can be genuinely disruptive to businesses and residential neighborhoods, which then pressure cities to clear them out. And most homeless people don’t really want to sleep in the dirt. The problems that put them there and keep them there are dizzyingly complex, and the best thing is to bring them inside. But despite some terrific efforts throughout the country, including those in San Francisco, nobody has yet created a system to enduringly shelter and counsel every person on our streets and keep them housed.

It’s been like this for a long time.

For most of my four decades covering homelessness, there weren’t big tent clusters like today. Homeless folks called sweeps “ping-ponging.” I remember Peg, a guy with a titanium leg in a little camp near San Francisco City Hall, shrugging in 2003 when I asked him about being rousted.

“The cops ping-pong us from block to block every few days or, if we’re lucky, weeks,” Peg said. “As long as you don’t fight and just move on, it’s all right. The cops don’t really want to hassle you, but they have to move things around or the people who live here start complaining a lot. Who the hell wants to move, but what can you do?”

His answer back then wouldn’t be that much different today, with the caveat that now sweeps are accompanied by teams that offer services — which most campers refuse, because they’re either too stuck in street life or unhappy with congregate shelters.

And actually, “ping-ponging” was the tactic of choice even before the term “homeless” sprang into use in the early ’80s. People were called winos, bums.

I know because I lived it.

I’ve been on my own since I was very young, and for the first year or so that I was at San Jose State University in the mid-1970s, I lived in my car during semester breaks. The neighborhood was rough, and cops didn’t take kindly to a skinny youngster curled up in a Volkswagen bug. I’d get a rap on the window.

“Move on, bum,” they’d say. I had no choice. I’d drive a few blocks away and go back to sleep.

Columbia University professor Dale Maharidge has written about sweeps since 1980, when he drove to California from Cleveland and slept in his truck until he got a Sacramento Bee reporting job. He’s traveled across America many times to chronicle the homeless and working poor, winning a Pulitzer Prize along the way. After decades of watching camps crop up and get batted down, he tells me he hasn’t seen “any real curb on sweeps” except for a brief pause during the pandemic because it was safer to not disrupt people.

He and I marveled that the problem really hasn’t changed since we were youngsters sleeping in our vehicles.

“We need some kind of national policy to really fix this,” Dale said. “But there is no policy. We’re not a society. I don’t know what we are, but not a society.”

Thankfully, cities and counties, especially in the Bay Area, are not as hardball with sweeps as they were even 20 years ago. And though homelessness has mushroomed, along with public exasperation over the street scene, so have resources.

In 2002, San Francisco officials counted 8,600 homeless people on its streets in a one-night tally, and it spent about $150 million a year on homeless services. This year, the one-night count was 8,323, and the city spends around $680 million addressing homelessness. San Francisco today has around 4,000 shelter beds; in 2002 it had only 1,300.

But it’s still not enough.

Four people are hitting the streets for each one who gets housed. Most homelessness workers I talk to say San Francisco needs to create at least 2,000 more shelter beds to get ahead.

In the meantime, city leaders say they’ll continue to offer shelter and housing when they do sweeps. What will that mean in practice? Almost certainly more of the same: pushing people from neighborhood to neighborhood. Yes, often trying to help them — but pushing. With no quick end in sight.

(SF Chronicle)

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JOE'S GOTTA GO

Editor:

I am writing to protest in the strongest possible terms the efforts on the part of high-level members of President Joe Biden‘s campaign to deceive voters about his deteriorating physical and mental condition. His debate with former President Donald Trump finally revealed convincingly to anyone willing to admit the truth of what they saw that Biden does not have what it takes to lead the country for another four years. And I strongly resent the fact that his campaign is trying to tell me that my own eyes are lying to me. It distresses me beyond words to have to say this because I am a liberal Democrat who has voted for Democrats in every presidential election since the Kennedy-Nixon contest of 1960.

Roy Hagar

Pope Valley

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ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

As is par for the course in a major event such as the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, there are people on the Internet, and not just the Trump Derangement Syndrome crowd, saying that Trump’s injury was faked and everything we saw was stage-magic as Trump and the Deep State colluded with one another to contrive a hoax assassination attempt. What makes this theory appealing is that the lapses of the people who were responsible for security at that Trump rally were so glaring, that it makes cynical people such as myself wonder if the whole thing was just a show staged for the benefit of the gullible masses as the Deep State selects Donald Trump for its new front man.

The big hole in this theory is that Trump went to a hospital for that injury to his ear and had it treated there. A big part of this “alternative” theory I have laid out here rests on an assumption that Trump was sporting a fake injury. But for that to be the case, the hospital staff would have to be in on the conspiracy, and that is just too much of a stretch for me, and, I would hope, reasonable people in general.

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SUNDAY'S LEAD STORIES, NYT

• For Biden, a Decision to Step Aside Would Raise Another Question

• Trump’s Conviction and Biden’s Poor Debate Sent Big Money Into the Race
• At a campaign event on Saturday, Donald Trump left unity behind and returned to insults and election denial.
• President Biden’s fate hangs over Democrats in Congress as voters question his fitness.

• The Billionaire Criminal Who Secretly Profited Off Jack Ma’s Deals

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Deadwood was a bustling mining town in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The discovery of gold had brought a rush of prospectors and entrepreneurs to the area, and the town had proliferated. The streets were lined with saloons, hotels, and stores, and the population was a mix of miners, gamblers, and adventurers from all walks of life. Notable figures of the time included Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, and Seth Bullock, all of whom left their mark on the town's history.

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J.D. VANCE’S WIFE, Usha Chilukuri, clerked for both Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts. Usha was born in San Diego to parents who’d recently moved to the states from the Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh, India. Usha is a practicing Hindu. Her interfaith marriage to JD was blessed by a Hindu priest. All this came as bracing news to many hardcore MAGA-trons, including the execrable Nick Fuentes who said on his white nationalist podcast: “Who is this guy, really? Do we really expect that the guy who has an Indian wife and named their kid Vivek is going to support white identity?”

(Jeffrey St. Clair)

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STRIP CLUB, NEW ORLEANS, 1943

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I’LL BE GLAD WHEN YOU’RE DEAD, YOU RASCAL YOU

by Louis Armstrong

Now I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal, you, uh-huh

I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal, you, oh yeah

Well, I let you into my home; you gonna leave my woman alone

I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal, you

Now I'll be glad when you die, you rascal, you, uh-huh

I'll be glad, oh, I'll be tickled to death when you leave this earth--it's true, oh yeah

When you're lyin' down six feet deep, no more fried chicken will you eat

I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal, you, oh yeah

Ah, you just ain't no good, oh, you dog

Now listen here: I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal, you, uh-huh

I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal, you, oh yeah

I'll be standin' on the corner high when they drag your body by

I'll be glad when you're dead; you know I'm gonna be so happy when you're gone, you dog

I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal, you.

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P SEE H: THE PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY

by William J. Hughes

The PCH, Pacific Coast Highway. Been down before but a friend who has friends, one specific friend having never been on the PCH. So it was decided without too much colliding into each other with our own ideas and suggestions. Travelers coming in from Connecticut, Pennsylvania, up from Los Angeles, and me, waiting for my steady traveling partner Rick to come into Sacramento from PA.

Hey, here we go again, so many roads together. I could hardly cover here, so just a mention: Sacajawea way out West, Monticello in Virginia, Yellowstone… and I'll stop at Yellowstone. That's enough.

So we cut the distance to San Francisco, where we are to meet our two lady companions, to Pinole, Cali and a Motel 6 that sucks on my end — noise, noise. We've had us some Motel 6's along our ways. You get what you budget for.

Starbucks simple breakfast, sun in and out, cool, beautiful SF Bay, beautiful Bay Bridge to usual Bay Bridge, SF city calm and covered in homeless. I can no longer, too bad, too sad on 101 South to some section of spread out San Francisco to some hotel/motel to pick up Jane & Lissa. As we go along, dear reader, I'll leave it to you to discern age and appearance.

Got us an Altima sedan, fit for four with enough trunk space for all our provisions.

We introduce fine. We go 101 South all stuffed with stuff and then we turn onto 92 West, rural ruled by all that grows, all so green from current rains we all have to exclaim, almost as openly as our newbie, Jane.

Half Moon Bay, still with its 60s Steinbeck, Jack London coastal, fishery vibe and history, surely more dense and growing, but with a short go-by and a left turn onto “the” PCH. it retains, remains.

Before you can say Jack Sprout, Jack Kerouac, turn outs, turn outs, spectacular sights, the mighty Pacific, pounding, pulsing, embracing the rocky coastline, rocks of ancient castles, surfacing submarines, Viking armor, Jane & Lissa cell phone photos as attached as speaking, selfies and groupies, tourists who know it with the eyes, a new set of. I dislike the term but O.K.: Awesome!

Monterey is where we'll stay night one March 3 in the good year of 2024, alive for many Americas and now this, Cali vegetables and sand dunes, Monterey Bay with its whale tales and Sir Steinbeck and golf and wealth and Cannery Row and wealth.

Our Motel 6 is swell. Told ya, wealth.

Silent night, Spanish night, with the historic Spanish Customs House smack on the walk to the Crab House on carnival Cannery Row, fish and crab and all catches of the sea, smells of it, fishing boats of it, whale watching, Crab House fine, not exactly authentic but more than enough perfect, all of us still in moods perfect for our road ahead, stars and gray clouds overhead.

The sun of no real winter California. I know, I know, foothills and mountain snow. But come on, it's wonderful. Cool. Cooler. Breakfast in Carmel By the Sea. Wow. We appreciate the hell out of it, simple, vegetating, landscaping, luxury but still a Cali/Spanish reality, the rest of us trying to keep up with Jane's celebrating. Photos galore.

The road becomes Big Sur, salt white waves and rocks like the first earth, turn-outs like pages in nature's book. And we are now booked at the Sierra Mars, Valhalla, Xanadu, Olympus restaurant, perched above the vast, vast, vaster Pacific out the broad windows from our somewhat exclusive table. Fixed luncheon menu. $100 for each, succulent beef and chicken, mushrooms, veggies and dessert like the pride of pudding. We swoon. We pay. We are humbled. Cell phones like six-shooters of photos and info.

Just cruisin' and I'm forgetting Robertson Jeffers home, poet, playwright, et al. His Castle Keep perched above the Pacific, stone tower and stone home, now surrounded by well-to-do bullshit that ruins Jeffers unique, again, proud of our destination kept.

On down the "Sir," that fling span of a PCH WPA bridge that's been filmed and filmed, an arch in its shape and natural in form across we go, wondering if up ahead any kind of slide of mud or stone that closes the road… And please excuse my "duh" from all the remembering and all the Cali legal Rick and me have consumed/reviewed and approved. I forgot to tell of our first stop back up the road: Pigeon Point Lighthouse and Ana Nuevo State Park, the lighthouse a tall white Eiffel Tower of a lighthouse, perched where it could do the most good, sailor's light, delight, being restored, with museum, with hostel in its wooden out buildings, a treasure of almost pirate's chest. “Yo-ho-ho,” and on we go.

Ana Nuevo for elephant seal sanctuary. No go. The wicked-witch park ranger at the entrance says we need a tour but her attitude and it's a two-hour tour, gets us on down the turn-outs, turn-outs, maybe whales, maybe seals and orcas, grandeur for sure.

Pie. We can't find a coffee shop, so we settle for a Pie Shop on the PCH. An old red barn like New England for cider, with a young hipster asshole who sort of goes about giving us service. Hey, bearded, long haired hippie/hipster, we created you. Regardless of attitude we enjoy the hell out of our unique stop.

PCH Closed, some slide. So we have to turn back and pick up 101 through veggie valley until we can return to PCH.

O.K.? Now on down to San Simeon as the sun sets on that vast Pacific and our day, days, daze of leisures.

Great setting for the Sea Breeze Motel. Not exactly on but near enough to hear the Pacific's incoming waves.

Everything closes at 8:00 PM. so we have to hustle to a nearby Mexican restaurant. We eat, we celebrate our ongoing good fortune and friendship. Next day in Hearst Castle. Why 8:00 PM? Just guessing: Covid still?

Breakfast in Cambria with its still 60ish, small town Main Street vibrations, good vibrations, good local cafes for our continuing sumptuous breakfast feasting. Best meal of the day, culinary sinful excess. The French may have given us cuisine but we Americans gave the world breakfeast like this, these, big and brash.

Elephant seal preserve just up the coast. These elephants also never forget, the same rocky beaches, the same breeding grounds, big bucks, smaller ladies, smaller pups, in their natural setting, rocks and waves, seals on the rocks, sand bathing seals, gulls, clear as a bell, great white sharks just out there awaiting the return of the seals to the ocean. We celebrate our good fortune.

Fortune on top of fortune. William Randolph Hearst. Hearst Castle. I would never, but one of our group has it on her bucket list. I should mention here that “bucket” list doesn't fit. So important it should be “Chalice” list or something more suitable than “bucket.” So we must.

It's remarkable of course but also stupid and almost evil with all its overdone European style worldly splendor, wondering how much was purchased or stolen. And he, Hearst, helped instigate the Spanish/American War and the total takeovers to get him an almost exclusive publishing empire. The opening movie a soft approach, leaving out the rot, which I guess has to be for the normal visitor. The rooms ridiculous, the Romanesque pool beautiful, with hint of Laurence Olivier and his short Roman scene from Spartacus., All in all for me, interesting in a bloated Citizen Kane ‘Rose Bud’ setting; 82,000 acres of a view. And zebras! Don't ask. Phew. We did it.

Moonstruck, Moonlight, Moonglow something restaurant right on the coast, minimal bites which turns into an almost dinner, eating, eating becomes very, very familiar. I left $340 bucks behind but it all returned fine.

Familiar Cambria for another mound of breakfast, feeling like locals, James Dean. Always feeling his presence, and the folks are willing to drive to his accident. It's Paso Robles and wine, wine, vineyards, vineyards until you reach the untilled rolling green hills to a detour we finally find that takes us down off the road work to a new-side road to the defunct Jack Ranch Cafe to the Seita Ohnishi Silver Tribute to James Dean. All my memories of which sent me into Dean's world, from Fairmount, Indiana, his home, to Marfa, Texas, his “Giant” to so much more. My comrades are glad to hear more of, stopping down at the intersection of 46 and 41 where it all came to an end, the silver memorial back up the road, wrapped around an oak tree like an embrace, in need of restoration work. Will write to the Hearst Foundation (their land) to see about a clean-up detail. It, he, deserves the attention.

We deserve some wine. Lissa has friends who own a nearby winery, Paso Robles Winery, where next door at another winery the nearby vines are refined. We patio some fine whites. We are refreshed, surrounded on all sides by vines and the young Mexicans who attend them. And speaking of Mexicans attending, every restaurant of any ethnic take is all Mexican staffed. “Not that there’s…” But as I've noticed and mentioned before, it's an unusual, somewhat unsettling normal. "Not that there’s…”

Staying in Solvang at the Andersen Inn of once Andersen Pea Soup — no pea soup but one lousy Italian dinner in a sort of high school pizza joint atmosphere. Can't win 'em all.

All Scandinavian, the whole town of Solvang, all the architecture to insure a Nordic take. Feels like Disney Nordic. A Viking Museum that wants five bucks. We peek in at not much, the dragon boat hordes reduced to a theme village with another big breakfast with a Scandinavian take on eggs and pancakes. Nice fake. Friend of Lissa's tells us it's all red politics here. Eric the Red, MAGA Red.

Blue, blue, deep blue, Santa Barbara, offshore oil wells appear as we smooth our way into limousine/liberal land to our Oasis Motel, our mission being the Santa Barbara Mission and way well-to-do Montecito up above the well-to-do below, but I must mention I had friends here, he a post office employee and she a mid-wife so normal also.

The Yankee Stadium of Spanish missions stands proud on its hill looking out over the blessed land below, still old, no longer general public open, but for tours. So we treat Jane to a tour while we, me and Rick (having left Lissa at the almost adobe train station, with its age old banyan tree all spread out all over its place) as we sit in the sun. I go back to Solvang and our first legal dispensary, another legal jewelry store of marijuana. Ahhh, legal. And here's Jane come from the interior tabernacle, she and me former Catholics. So the stuff still sticks, the Spanish version all serious and conquest of the native tribes, church is state, and if I may here, look back at Hearst the house, the church, the guest cottages, the hillside villages, the pool, the Roman ruins. Almost ruins here, the old wash the clothes outdoors basin where I'm sure the almost captive natives toiled.

Chinese Dinner, after a few sips in a local wine bar, ocean breezes, yes, wafting through the open doors.

Chinese to-live-for in a sumptuous almost restaurant, China Pavilion, not near enough to the ocean but the food is very fine; Montecito large homes with no center we could find.

In the morning we find our way to Los Angeles by way of the PCH, with Jane's and our constant compliments to California's flora back at our journey to Solvang, the beautiful valleys ripe for the picking, ripe for the blooming, the sprouting, the feeding of a nation.

Coastline becomes beaches without boulders, surf riders, breakfast at the Paradise Cove Cafe Malibu, Jane addicted to all of it, Malibu of all places, Paradise Cove just that, restaurant on the sand, a Beach Boys song with a beautiful blonde Swiss server, surfer girl. What a world we've let in, falling apart my ass. Up your ass cable TV with all your serious addictions to the ills of America, left & right. We met folks from Pakistan and everywhere who are here to stay because of coffee and eggs and omelettes beside the ocean with no anger or confusion about America's greatness. Of course, our problems. But nobody has noticed from S.F. to Malibu, to L.A. At the Malibu Creek Preserve a marsh of birds and brush and tides. We honor our pal, Sal, gone, but two joints to remember him.

On to the rope twirler who knew America's greatness along with its problems: Will Rogers State Park. I always. It was where I first discovered Los Angeles, beyond just its beaches, into its history, its celebrity, always taking folks there.

And here is where he was, the guy who said he “never met a man he didn't like…” I’ll get to that later, but in this setting, the eucalyptus almost waving from the nearby breezing Pacific, Pacific Palisades, ranch, polo field covered in those celebrities from Fairbanks up to Sly Stone, a stroll on a gorgeous day, far from the freeways, mountains, hills, hiking trails, picnic lawns, on a bench just above the Polo Field, both my companions brand new, the usual proud for me. Been to OK, Will's home. But enough of me and my friend who was an interpretive type here.

The Visitor Center, still in wood the rope twirler built. Fine movie of Will rope twirler. Mark Twain, Dick Cavett, Bill Maher lite, Will's “Awh shucks…” Tip of his Stetson was the “Everyman” of the world.

We don't exactly appreciate tours so we just look in on Will's western et al, and his wife's separate reality quarters. “The sun was a shinin'! Folks was enjoying’…” Storytellin' as we rockin' chair it on Will's front porch. Maybe even Will would say "Awh, shucks, duh, with a capital duh…” As we look out on the Spencer Tracy polo field I am "Duh," reminding myself that we had stopped at Pebble Beach.

Golf, golf, breath-giving beauty, down we go onto 17-mile drive, mansion alley, vegetation and landscaping so rich, so real, so stop using the word “surreal” to describe a “real” reality. Up a bit to the Lodge, the glowing green fairways and greens, the ocean, pure, parked, into the Lodge, bar windows of the 18th green above the ocean, worthy of a curtains up, splendor, wealth, comfort, public if you got it. We kinda don't but we get it. Standing beside the 18th green and fairway, empty, golfers in the distance, tales of our own golf. We find it hard to take ourselves away. Due at other destinations.

From Will's to Marilyn’s. Marilyn Monroe that is. Her home, her grave. I always wanted to, so with Jane's attention to, we do. Off of Sunset in Brentwood, up-scale and almost normal, beautiful then not. We found her address but no house, just a mega-mound house on what should have been her almost normal Spanish Colonial. But, nahh. Some bigger is always better and a lot of local and state officials let it go. We're only speculating but it sure seems like not a memorial to her, but just a residence that fit, long before this blob.

Her grave, Westwood Memorial, UCLA and Westwood neighborhood, tall, tall buildings casting frowns down on the neighborhood and the green grass cemetery, headstones flat on the green grass, mausoleum stacks, and there she is, Marilyn Monroe dead at 36, much too bad, and still much too sad. She still can't shake it. She's next to Hugh Hefner, a disgrace to all her talents, again, all body and no talent up next to that skin merchant (“not that there’s…” as a youth or young adult) but give her a break. How about next to Natalie Wood or Kirk Douglas or anyone of the other heavy celebrities buried or enshrined here, or next to the Queen of Iranian songstresses, a couple we don't interrupt because we think they are mourning a family member. But no, somehow we learn of this great, great songstress how she got out before the holy shit men took over. Here she lies among the other greats. Her name doesn't escape me, it let’s you participate in our surprise at finding out. Hear, Hear! for Marilyn Monroe. What if Dean & she…?

Here we sit in Westwood Plaza, sipping our home brews from a bank, a temple, a mosque gone to patio cafe, UCLA young life all around.

Neon night L.A. coming on as we head to Canter's big deli on Fairfax, CBS and Jewish, my co-driver Rick eatin' L.A. traffic like a Reuben sandwich, which we will certainly order in Canter's own parking (first born then look for parking) with a hero, Sandy Koufax, front and pitching on the Wall of Jews mural. Home field of a sort, no computer screens up, noise of humans, smells of delis and bakeries, night before Passover? Sure. Booths and other booths. Real, cheesy comfortable, softball of matzah ball soup, Reubens and brisket beef do not disappoint, nor the pickles, the onion rings, the potato salad and chips, and the all-around busy business. Pastry exit counter. No, no, already cheesecake. Sleep, Lincoln Inn, Venice, California. Pounds of fresh.

Fresh sun, fresh places to be done. Book Soup Books, Frank Lloyd, Scenic State Park, breakfast IHOP, like a return to the sock hop. Reloaded we talk on and defeat the surface streets, big billboard L.A. now. Book Soup like a book-shop, wooden and books, no franchise, no bullshit, thinkin' the three alive Doors performed here for the 50th of them. And since, I have a novel, “Yellowstone,” on Amazon. Not in here but you play with the guy with the ball. We all browse and sip at a local pub, Sunset Boulevard doin' its best sports cars and Mercedes dark, up the blocks to Highland to Hollywood & Vine, where the Oscars are, road still open, Jane out on the Walk of Fame, photo-shootin' the famous names.

Don't get more famous than Frank Lloyd Wright, his Hollyhock House at the end of Hollywood Blvd. Little Armenia, up on its hill, Aztec, Mayan, with a lawn and a view of the Hollywood sign and Griffith Observatory. A special view among all Los Angeles views. The house open to view. Me Japanese, Japanese, Mayan, wooden, real, natural, inside out, outside in. We sit and savor the privilege before we head to the hills, Baldwin Hills, the Tetons of L.A. If you haven't you better. You'll never find a better 360-degree view.

As we drive up from the pronounced “black” neighborhood, I haven't forgotten some more Will Rogers. He never met a man he didn't like. Well, lots of men in OK, Ku Klux Klan types, didn't like him campaigning for Catholic Al Smith in OK. At a whistle stop in OK Will wasn't "awhh shucks,” More like “Awhh shit."

Awhh, holy shit! The view from up here is clear, mountains and coastal, homes and spectacular, neither one of my companions, gawking and glad, filled to our brims and then some. Then some rooftop bar drinks in Venice, the ocean and the sands in cinemascope. Fill up for dinner at In & Out Burger in Venice, lots of food money coming out of our wallets, so a break in the over-budget action, the place absolutely packed, cars and customers, a bus station with burgers. Yumm!

Breakfast where we find it near Griffith Park and its Observatory, through the WPA tunnels that say Pasadena, the L.A. cement river with some trees and some rocks, Mulholland statue, water as miracle. Miracle phone finds us Los Feliz Cafe, smack up against a par 3 nine-hole, all deep green and a common course for the common golfer, hacker. We have a green side table. Good fortune and the warm sun have smiled on us. Rain. Somewhere along our travels, but just a touch, a rinse, a shower, praying all for more with all its drought implications and mudslides and floods, along with tales of wild Topanga Canyon around Malibu from a lady at another table, even a mountain lion video, a Cali somewhat untouched with the little golf course still just enough untouched.

Touch the real stars. The Griffith Observatory WPA like space ship, space command, commanding the top of Griffith Park, Commanding view of the Hollywood sign above the bust head of James Dean, his ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ all over the Griffith lot.

Lots of folks from all over the world on a sun-soaked Sunday in March.

The cosmos, the planetarium's heavenly show, the motions and the telescope, the knowledge and the wonder, galaxies and asteroids, planets and astrologers, all above your lean back head, in a masterful display and depiction, one of the finest presentations I've ever seen. We sit in the cafe and gift shop and gather our thoughts on the big bang, the big journey of ours through the Milky Way, ways, of California. Enough. McDonald's, because we're too done-in and up for anything but.

One last stop before we take the free bus back down to the free parking. James Dean my must, around the corner of the Observatory, where Rebel's knife fight was filmed. Real action location. Our cause for coming complete.

Not quite complete yet.

Cannabis Cafe on La Brea, West Hollywood. Legal weed cafe. Been once before but now with Sacajawea and Yellowstone Rick, to share and share a-like. Who would have ever thought. Legal wolves in Yellowstone and legal weed where you can eat and drink in its comfortable, wooden and vegetation and order ahhh pot, we sit at an almost wooden bar counter and gaze out on the eatery, patrons smoking joints and bongs and meals, big overhead vents the color and metal of a gold rush, taking the hefty air and cleaning it up before it hits the neighborhood. Legal eagles.

We order a ten-pack at $32, slim doobs in a sleek package, no single rolls at this time, sun going in, folks coming in, servers young and lovely and tattooed of course. We sip and toke the world, our fill of lobster, at ease with our time in life when we can look back at our 60s and, Voila! Legal reality. Get the Feds out of it and complete liberty.

As you've read I've been at complete liberty to go back and forth a bit. So, as I sit in the scented glow of legal smoke (do employees get second-hand highs?) let us wonder back a bit. “I can see for miles and miles and miles…””

Coastal Redwoods of Santa Cruz. An avenue, an all roads led to the surrounding giants, silence, ancient, the earth ripe with moisture, hallowed earth ripe with moisture. hallowed earth, humbled us slowly making our way beneath the cathedral roof. You can't whoop your good fortune. You can only whisper in the earth's given Cathedral. And somewhere we saw a brand new, gold union, Russian Orthodox wooden church. Russian seal hunters and fur trappers. The Redwoods knew them. Knew about the “Santa Cruz Banana Slugs”? I'm not sure. But Santa Cruz and the University campus sure to remember and retain the surfer 60s town, village and sensuous campus. We stop for a “Slug” T-shirt.

We also stopped in Morro Bay for the great Gibraltar Rock, cathedral itself, a loaf of former lava, a big bold Buddha you can just about walk up to. We keep a respectful distance from “The Night on Bald Rock.”

We rocked some Irish coffee, martinis and other selections here and there in as local as we could get.

As local as it gets. “Pink’s” on La Brea of L.A. Famous? You bet. Jay Leno says yes, as do a host other celebs. It's Coney Island on a corner, a good line (always) formed up. We join the line at the almost sea-side shack of it, a list of dogs as long as two dachshunds, the staff bustin' ass, progress, progress, a Carl Reiner for each of us: Kraut and mustard Coney Island dog where we are from. Sit in the sun and breathe in and shake our heads and our hands in a certain wonder that we did all we came to do.

Time to go, home. IHOP one last sausage and eggs and French toast load.

LAX to fly home. I'll drive rental back to Sacramento on the quicker 99 North, my eyes only on the road, visions of all we'd done like those scented clouds surrounding my head.

Hold my thoughts.

Hold on. The Polo Lounge, Beverly Hills Hotel after the Oscar telecast which was compact, just one real disappointment: Robbie Robertson for music for “Killers of the Flower Moon” which got shut out surprisingly.

The Polo Lounge all swank and welcome to all with no net-worth check, the hotel its own palace up on its own short hill, elegance, comfortable, martinis in the lounge, no celebs to speak of, or see of, just some wealth on the deep carpeted, flower arranged lounge, the three of us dressed up just enough.

Not enough yet, the Santa Monica Pier by night, carnival on the ocean, almost cotton candy, festive, reaching out into the Pacific. Terrific. All of it, even this last remembered bit. 154 (?) from Solvang to Santa Barbara, two-lanes of splendor, mountain sides and valleys and meadows glowing deep green, some deer, sumptuous, natural, twisting and turning, gazing, in wonder. Done. I promise.

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