MOUNTAIN VIEW ROAD CLOSURE
Beginning Monday, August 5, 2024, there will be road construction on Mountain View Road outside of Boonville. Traffic may be delayed up to five hours due to the size and limited mobility of the equipment. Construction will begin each morning at 7:00 am and stop between 12:00 pm to 12:30 pm to allow traffic through. Construction will cease at 5:30 pm each day, However, work may be required on the weekend and after 6:00 pm. Please check the website regularly for further updates.
https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/departments/transportation/road-closures-and-delays
Once road construction begins, the website will be updated daily with specific locations/mileposts of the next day’s closure limits.
AV SPORTS DIRECTOR JOHN TOOHEY:
AV Soccer and Volleyball start August 12
Football starts July 29
ANDERSON VALLEY CASUAL GRAD GATHERING
DATE: Saturday 9/14/24
TIME: 11am
LOCATION: Mosswood Cafe
14111 CA-128
Boonville
COST: $20 per person-cash at the door.
MENU: Breakfast Panini, Pastry, Fruit, Coffee
RSVP: 8/12/24
Please confirm your attendance and the number in your party by sending me a message on FB messenger.
If you don’t make the deadline you can always stop by to say hi we will be in the back. The cafe is open until 3:00pm.
If you have questions please reach out. Panthers Rule
VALERIE HANELT, AV Community Services District Board Chair:
The Caltrans project manager contacted me this morning to let me know that, due to the concerns over construction sequencing conflicts with he AVCSD planned Water/Wastewater projects, they have decided to re-schedule the sidewalk/bikelane/repaving project through Boonville until the summer of 2029. They will hold a meeting in Boonville for public input about sidewalk treatments, bike lanes and parking concerns during the summer of 2028.
BILL KIMBERLIN
It is finally far enough into summer that I can stop at this wonderful organic Brock Farm, which is the first place on the dirt road to my place in Boonville. Fresh corn, early girl tomatoes, peaches and lots more other goodies.
BOONVILLE OPERA PREMIER
The opera set in Boonville is finally opening next month. Festival link below.
Wes Smoot and Sharon Gowan have been a big help and I hope we've managed to paint a picture that, without being as accurate as a local's view, nonetheless pays homage to your very special little town.
If you or anyone in the community have any interest in attending, please let me know and I will see what I can do about arranging for tickets.
With my thanks and best wishes,
Nathaniel Stookey
P.S. I love your paper!
https://www.westedgeopera.org/festival-bulrusher
BOONVILLE'S legendary resident lawman, Deputy Squires, used to tell me that petty crooks resident in the Anderson Valley that he steered back to Mexico via the INS “are back in a month, coupla weeks in some cases. I think they just bus 'em down to Fresno and drop 'em off.”
ERNIE PARDINI
I live on a property in Philo that borders the once pristine Navarro River. I am disgusted with the condition it's been in since Anderson Valley became a desirable for growing grapes by the wine industry. A lot of the blame for it's low water levels in recent years has been cast to illegal diversions by pot farmers. But since the legalization of Marijuana in California and the accompanying price drop,, it is no longer profitable for guerilla growers and illegal grows have all but disappeared. That leaves only one other possibility for blame and that is the wine industry. Two summers ago on the heels of about five years of drought conditions the flow was good until the winter rains started and we were able to swim clear into October. Last year after near record rainfall the flow by the middle of August had all but stopped and the algae bloom was off the charts and we could no longer swim. This year, after another year of nearly double the rainfall of what is considered our average, the river is low and the algae bloom has started. We'll be lucky to be able to swim for another week or two. The only possible reason that I can come up with is that the vineyards have seen high rainfall totals as an opportunity to pump like crazy an fill all their reservoirs. If any of you reading this can think of another reason, please let me know. Our county board of supervisors have whored themselves to the wine industry for the revenues they provide with no regard to the sustainability of our beautiful ecosystem that is being destroyed by their indifference to the damage they are doing
LAUREN’S AT THE BUCKHORN TO BECOME BOONVILLE DISTILLERY
We express our deepest gratitude to all those who have stood by us during these transformative times. We have navigated uncharted waters by embracing change and adapting our plans.
Lauren’s was established in 1996, we love the amazing food, community, and fun times it has brought to Anderson Valley! Now we are holding on to the best parts of it as we are reborn as The Boonville Distillery.
We have been making our own liquor since 2022 and opened our tasting room a few months ago. It was so well received we have decided to expand it to the entirety of Lauren’s at the Buckhorn Building.
We have a new menu, with some old favorites available now, and others coming back soon as specials. We are OPEN for dining and tastings of our distilled liquor Friday & Saturday 12:00 to 8:30 and Sunday & Monday 12:00 to 8:00!
We have yet another exciting announcement! We have all been missing Libby’s and her amazing cuisine! Well she is back!! Combing with us…LIBBY’S at The Boonville Distillery Tuesday (you know Taco Tuesday?!?) Wednesday & Thursday 4:00 to 8:00!!!
We cannot wait to see you there!
I PICKED UP THE PHONE to hear a peremptory male voice ask, “Is this the yellow journalist?”
No, I replied, this is the pink one. Who’s calling, please?
“You don’t have to know because you’ll yellow journalism me if I tell you, but you called me ‘widely inept’ in your rag when you yellow journalism-ed Mendocino’s schools last week.”
You’re narrowly inept? I asked.
The deranged never hear what the other party is saying, so I wasn’t surprised when this one talked right on over me in a kind of prozac monotone, stringing out the insults. “You’re a joke, a joke to the profession,” the man continued. “I mentioned your article to three teachers in the faculty room and they told me to consider the source.”
Were they sober? I asked.
He heard that one. “That’s what I mean,” he said, “you don’t care who you hurt.”
I laughed.
“See,” he said, “you’re laughing that you hurt people.”
No, I explained, I wasn’t laughing at what you said about your zany colleagues, I was laughing because a child on crutches just slipped and fell outside my office window.
He was briefly silent, perhaps gaging the depths of my Heathcliff-quality cruelty.
To get the frothing instructor of youth talking again, I asked him if he habitually made crank calls on the school telephones while he was supposed to be working. “No, I’m not a weirdo like you,” came back the witty response.
I asked him for his name again.
“Are you kidding?” he answered, incredulous. “So you can yellow journalism me in your so-called newspaper? I called up because I wanted to hear a yellow journalist actually speaking to me.”
The nut pie rambled abusively on, unimaginatively abusively on. I listened for a while before breaking in just after he’d said something about me not being able to “carry” his “jock.”
Why would I want to carry your jock, you pervert? I demanded.
“Unlike some people, he said, irrelevantly, “I have work to do.”
He was still spluttering lame insults as I hung up.
I called Mendo Unified on the off chance I could find out who’d called me. For all I knew the guy was an impostor, maybe one of Mendocino’s many wandering outpatients who’d managed to get to one of the school’s phones.
The lady who answered my call didn’t know who the man might be, but she put the phone down and went off to find out. Many seconds later she said, “His name is Harbough; Bob Harbough, Interim Dean of Students, Athletic Director.”
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!
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.
DOGS WHO LOVE TOO MUCH. I've never been an animal person; not out of hostility for animals but out of their absence from most of my life. But having come into possession of my nephew's dog because his street behavior in SF was, uh, inappropriate, I became a pet owner.
MY NEW FRIEND, however, presented certain unanticipated (by me) problems, the lesser of which was not really a problem but it was his omni-presence. He trailed me everywhere inside and outside the house. Even when I wasn't ambulatory, I'd look up and he'd be standing a few feet away, staring at me and wagging his tail. As a newspaper guy, I was unaccustomed to such intense approval. Suddenly, there was this creature beaming at me my every waking minute.
ONE DAY, early on in our mostly one-way relationship, I was walking my lovestruck buddy in San Francisco when a lady stopped me to talk to me about Pero. “Have you noticed how pitbulls make eye contact?” she asked. I hadn't because when he stood transfixed before me, rapt at the splendor only he could see, it hadn't occurred to me to even try to make eye contact with him. Why would I want to, especially given his already eerie preoccupation with me? If I made eye contact he might want to plunk down his 60 pound salivating self in my lap! I wondered if this kind of preoccupation with its owner was normal dog behavior? The lady who stopped me to talk dogs said it was.
PERO, Spanish for dog, was only part pit bull, although he looked a lot like a Pit and had the big bark of the species. He tended to hurl himself at people, including my colleague, The Major, who wasn't able to establish a non-violent relationship with my best friend even after months of daily interfaces, but the major (sic) prob in a multi-ethnic society was that Pero habitually lunged at males of color. He ignored females of color, which added up to a racist dog but not a sexist dog. My prob was that I was on the other end of the leash, me a white liberal of boundless goodwill for all humankind.
PERO'S racist behavior was especially embarrassing in the multi-cultural context of San Francisco. We'd be trucking along, me distracted by the sights and sounds of the city, when suddenly Pero would lunge, in full-throated, man-eating growl, at a male pedestrian of color. The male pedestrian of color would understandably frown at me, surely thinking, “Another paranoid white psycho race man and his psycho race dog.”
I WOULD APOLOGIZE to these random strangers for my dog's bigoted behavior, but in Boonville when he went off on my Mexican or Black friends they understood it was him, not me, and I was believed. But in the city, if I tried to apologize every time Pero behaved inappropriately, I'd have to recite my impeccably clean race record to disbelieving strangers, while Pero, the one creature on earth head over paws in love with me, stood by putting the lie to my protestations.
HAVING ACHIEVED full geezerhood, and then some, I'm surprised at how trivial hassles of yesteryear still flit across my mind screen. Like this one: A young man was leaned on by his wife and his wife's employer not to contribute to my paper. The guy's wife was a school counselor. Her scared hubby told me he feared for his wife's job if he wrote for me. I felt like saying if you're this fearful as a young man you'll be a cringing mound of jello by the time you hit middle-age, and it wasn't as if the paper lacked contributors, and it's not as if I knew the guy well enough to get seriously on his case. I wanted to tell him that if I were him I'd dump the wife, the job, the school mice, all the world if the choice was the one he seemed compelled to make which, not to be too grand about it, was the choice between self-respect or a life worrying about the wife's job at an outback high school.
THE YOUNG MAN had written an amusing little story about — of all things — kids playing marbles!
HE had traces of writing talent but no testosterone to go with it. And ever afterwards he would give me death glares whenever I saw him around town, as if his pathetic dependence and the school's fascism was my fault. I had tried to help him past the dwarfs, the editor said with a martyred sigh.
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