Mendocino County Today: Sunday 7/28/2024

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BELOW NORMAL TEMPERATURES in the interior this weekend, followed by slow warming early to mid next week. Coastal areas will remain cooler with occasional to persistent low clouds and periods patchy, coastal drizzle. There is a chance of interior mountain thunderstorm development late next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A foggy 52F on the coast this Sunday morning. Our forecast is for mostly sunny today but you know how that goes. A mix of fog & sun is our forecast going into the week.

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"COUSIN, HELP ME"

by Matt LaFever

The family of 44-year-old Manuel Alvarado is worried. On July 22, 2024, they received an alarming text message from their loved one indicating he had intention to take his life informing them his body could be found in the mountains above Covelo, California.

Desperate to intervene, his cousin called him repeatedly and got through after night had fallen making the last known contact with him. Alvarado picked up, sounded exhausted, and was able to send out a GPS pin of his location in the rugged hills of the Mendocino National Forest before his cellphone went dead.

Now, five days later and after multiple search and rescue deployments, Manuel Alvarado is still missing and his family awaits answers.

Jessica Espinoza, Alvarado’s cousin based in Dallas, Texas, has not seen her cousin since their childhood in Mexico but remembers his happiness.

On July 22, 2024, she was contacted by her aunt (Manuel’s mother) upset after receiving a foreboding text message via WhatsApp:

“Mother, I want to tell you that a very great injustice has been committed against me, I want to tell you that I love you and one day we will see each other, I couldn't help you, I apologize for that, I love you, say goodbye to my brothers, tell them that I love them. Look for my body in the mountains in a town called Covelo, California.”

Espinoza set to work reaching out to local authorities and desperately trying to call Alvarado. Initially, her calls were not going through and would go straight to voicemail as if the phone was off. Then, Espinoza told us, at 10:32 p.m. her call got through and Alvarado picked up the phone and said, “Cousin, help me. I’m here.”

Espinoza said she spoke with Alvarado for two minutes. He sounded fatigued and worried. His phone was running out of battery and he was able to send her a GPS pin of his location moments before his phone died. The last words she heard her cousin say were “Did you get it? Did you get it?” referring to the GPS location.

Alvarado's last known location is east of Covelo within the boundaries of the Mendocino National Forest. The GPS pin is in a drainage south of Forest Highway 7 near the junction of Twin Rocks Creek and Jumpoff Creek.

The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Captain Quincy Cromer confirmed his agency was alerted to the disappearance of Manuel Alvarado on Monday, July 22, 2024, by an out-of-state family member who had received alarming messages from Alvarado. He explained, "The family member informed us that Alvarado mentioned leaving a property on Mendocino Pass Road where he was working and staying, and he indicated he needed to be rescued. The family member provided us with Alvarado's location, including his GPS coordinates."

Efforts to locate Alvarado commenced immediately. "Mendocino County Sheriff's Office personnel and officers from the California Highway Patrol responded to the area that night and continued their search into the next morning," said Captain Cromer. However, the search proved challenging. "Despite our efforts, we were unable to locate Alvarado. Exigency pings on his cell phone suggested it was either turned off, had lost power, or had traveled outside of the service area."

The search operation intensified over the following days. "CHP helicopters were deployed on Tuesday, July 23, 2024, and Wednesday, July 24, 2024, along with representatives from the Sheriff's Office and Search and Rescue," Captain Cromer recounted. "Unfortunately, our searchers were unable to locate Alvarado or find any additional clues regarding his current whereabouts."

Given the difficult terrain, the search strategy is under review. "The area where Alvarado was last known to be is extremely steep and mountainous," explained Captain Cromer. "We are evaluating further search efforts in that region." The Sheriff's Office continues to investigate. "Our personnel have persisted in checking and searching the area and the property where Alvarado was working and staying, but so far, we have been unable to locate him."

Espinoza said her cousin stands between 5’8” and 5’10” and weighs around 210 lbs describing him as muscular. His hair is black and his eyes are brown.

When we spoke with Espinoza, she became emotional imagining her cousin alone in the wilderness of the Mendocino National Forest and asked that if anyone has information please come forward.

Anyone with information regarding Alvarado’s whereabouts is requested to call the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Dispatch Center at 707-463-4086.

(MendoFever.com)

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KATRINA BARTOLOMIE: CALLING ALL CANDIDATES

If you are interested in serving on one of the County’s Elected Special District, School District or **Municipal boards, please call the Elections office at (707) 234-6819. You can be sent an Application For Candidacy, once we receive your completed application we can send you paperwork that can be completed outside the office. Candidates need to bring their completed paperwork into our office and complete the final step. The actual Declaration of Candidacy form must be completed in our office, we must administer an oath to the candidate. If all other forms are completed when you arrive, your time in our office is about 10 minutes.

Municipal boards: please contact the City Clerk in the particular City for filing information.

Candidate filing ends August 9, unless an incumbent fails to file, then the filing for that seat is extended through August 14 for non-incumbents.

Call the Elections office if you have any questions at (707) 234-6819 M-F; 8am-5pm

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ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE: List of Events

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KIRK VODOPALS: Anyone get to see the parade of Porsche buttholes rallying through the valley today? One annoyed motorist got out and started yelling at them as they passed her on Mtn View road in front of the high school. Total bag of dildos. I wish them nothing but gridlock in the afterlife.

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KZYX - Mendocino County Public Broadcasting is back on the air, but suffered catastrophic damage to major pieces of equipment, apparently from a power surge. Replacements are on the way but they won't be able to broadcast live shows until sometime Monday afternoon. Right now they cannot access the archives nor receive downloads of recorded shows, so it's possible there will not be an Oak and Thorn show this Sunday. Staff are working on it but right now there is apparently nothing I can do to help.

The good news is the staff were safely evacuated and the building did not get burned. But this is going to hit the bank account pretty hard.

(Dina Polkinghorne)

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RECOMMENDED READING: JUDITH AUBERJONOIS, an “olding” writer living in Boonville, has a recent blog on substack — “Diary of Olding” — that will certainly be of interest to people of a certain age — and others. Most locals probably already know that Ms. Auberjonois is the widow of the late well-known actor René Auberjonois. She lives in Boonville in the house they built some 25 years ago,

“The words you will be reading are the words of a writer observing herself getting towards eighty, fielding the inevitable curve balls. It is a Diary of Olding.”

https://judithauberjonois.substack.com

Her thoughtful remembrance of her husband René can be found at:

https://judithauberjonois.substack.com/p/tribute-to-my-husband

We can’t forget when René Auberjonois and actress Michael Learned performed a dramatic reading of A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters” at the Grange back in January of 2006 as a fundraiser for the local Education Foundation which was described by anyone who attended as “rare and wonderful.” That description also applies to Judith Auberjonois’ blog.

(Mark Scaramella)

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GMRS RADIO TUTORIAL AT THE POINT ARENA COVE

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ADAM GASKA:

RE: Shackman’s Bumbling Burglaries

Ms. Shackman is fifty shades of fucked up between mental illness, meth, and street living. When I showed up to the house to assess the damage caused by the break-in, I found her talking to my boss who was repairing the door. She was telling him how the homeowner had drove her there, dropping her off and saying she could live at the house if she took care of the place. I stepped away to call the sheriff. My boss kept chatting her up until the sheriff came and arrested her. Looking around the property, we also found a bunch of stolen items she had squirreled away into the garage. Phones, laptops, and mail.

I researched her on the internet. She has a FB profile, LinkedIn. Looks like she had it together and was renting a place on Boonville Road until 2021-2022. Then she went off the rails. She drove off the road and into the bushes on Norgard Lane 2022. September 2023, she was shoplifting at Questmart in Ukiah. When confronted by the shop owner, she assaulted them. Now this.

I did reach out to and connected with a friend of hers from her facebook page. Sounds like she has suffered from mental illness that requires medication for quite awhile. Covid and losing a few people close to her sent her off the rails and to abusing drugs. Her friend appreciated to hear about her whereabouts as she had been trying to connect with her for the last two years. She doesn’t have much in the way of family or friends to support her and the friend I talked to lives out of state.

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Mazie Malone

Adam;

Out of curiosity how do you know it is meth? Could be any drug or none! Nice of you to contact her friend. ..

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Adam Gaska:

I have a lot of first hand experience with meth and it’s effects short and long term. As they say, looks like a duck, quacks like a duck…

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Mazie Malone

Interesting and I usually agree with the duck sentiment. However. Serious Mental Illness such as Schizophrenia/Bipolar states of psychosis symptoms can look like person is on meth but it may not be; could be booze, or Cannabis or shrooms or even… Oh no…. coffee and cigarettes…

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Adam Gaska

I have a lot of experience with BP/PS as well. Many members of my mom’s side of the family suffer from it. The amount of things she had stolen point to drug abuse. It wasn’t random items or things for survival. It was mostly high value items, likely that she would try to sell for money. Her friend had mentioned that she had drug abuse issues when they were in contact years ago and things would get worse when she stopped taking her prescribed medication.

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UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Reese is a velcro dog who loves to walk and be by your side—always. We think he could be a great emotional support animal! Reese also loves the couch and seems to be house trained. Reese is an all-around great dog, and why he's still at the shelter is a mystery. Reese takes a little bit of time to warm up with other dogs, so a meet and greet at the shelter with a potential doggie house-mate will be a must before he heads to his new home. Reese is a 1-ish year old Cattle dog mix and weighs in at a very svelte and handsome 60 pounds. Come on down to the Ukiah Shelter--298 Plant Road--and take this sweet guy out for a walk.

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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SECOND TRIAL OF HOPKINS FIRE SUSPECT UNDERWAY

by Justine Frederiksen

The second trial of a man charged with aggravated arson for allegedly setting a fire that burned about 50 structures and evacuated hundreds of residents from an area just north of Ukiah in September of 2021 began this week in Marin County Superior Court.

The first trial of Devin Lamar Johnson, 23, ended in a mistrial May 30 because of a hung jury, which was deadlocked after the prosecution’s case was presented by Mendocino County Deputy District Attorney Heidi Larson.

When the second trial began July 24, District Attorney David Eyster was at the helm, and at least one person in the audience was moved by his opening remarks.

“Eyster began by saying that a miracle occurred on Sept. 19, 2021 — a miracle because no one was injured or killed when 30 homes were destroyed,” recalled Ukiah resident Erin Gardiner, who has attended both trials because her husband, freelance photographer Peter Armstrong, has been called to testify each time about the photo he took the day of the fire that is believed to show Johnson standing on the Moore Street Bridge watching the fire he is accused of setting rage through Calpella.

And while the flames may not have caused any deaths or physical injuries, many of the victims suffered devastating losses that they are still struggling to recover from.

“Nothing can replace what I lost that day,” wrote Steve Schwartz in an email after the first jury deadlocked. “I lost 50 years of my life because I had stuff from when I was born and it will never be replaced, (though) I am thankful that I am still alive and that everyone else is alive, too, (even though the fire) destroyed 50 to 60 families’ hard-earned lives.”

UVFA Battalion Chief Justin Buckingham, who investigated the cause of the fire and testified at the first trial in May, said Friday afternoon that he was “still in the middle of my testimony and the defense hasn’t started their case yet,” so he did not expect the case to be given to the jury until at least mid-week next week.

The case was moved to Marin County after a trial briefly began in Mendocino County last year, but soon after jury selection began in January of 2023, Judge Keith Faulder approved a change of venue for Johnson’s trial.

Johnson was arrested two days after allegedly starting the Hopkins Fire on Sept. 19, 2021, after investigators from multiple agencies, including the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, Cal Fire and the Ukiah Valley Fire Authority, had obtained surveillance footage from a nearby business that showed an adult man starting the fire on Hopkins Street near the Moore Street Bridge in Calpella.

According to the MCSO, Johnson was on “active, felony probation for an attempted robbery charge” at the time of his arson arrest, and was booked into Mendocino County Jail on suspicion of “three separate charges of arson: aggravated arson (multiple structures), arson of an inhabited structure, and arson during a state of emergency.”

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

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FORT BRAGG CHOMO FACING LIFE IN PRISON

While the DA remains out of county conducting a separate jury trial in Marin County, a Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned from its deliberations this past Wednesday afternoon, July 24th, to announce it had found the trial defendant guilty of all six felony counts of sexual misconduct.

Defendant Tomas Yah Pool, age 56, of Fort Bragg, was found guilty of six separate felony counts of Lewd and Lascivious Acts upon a Child under the age of Fourteen Years.

The sexual misconduct addressed by these charges occurred between the years 2004 to 2020. The age of the separate victims ranged from 3 years of age to 6 years of age during the time period of their respective sexual abuse.

The jury also found true sentencing enhancements alleging that the defendant committed sexual crimes against more than one child victim; and that the defendant personally inflicted great bodily injury on a child victim under the age of 5 years.

The law enforcement agencies that investigated the case, interviewed the victims and witnesses, and diligently gathered the other evidence used at trial to convict the defendant were the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office and the DA’s own in-house Bureau of Investigations.

Additional pretrial and trial support was provided by the advocates in the District Attorney’s Victim/Witness Unit, caring individuals who worked tirelessly to support the victims and their families over the three years it took to bring the case to it conclusion by means of Wednesday’s verdicts.

The prosecutor who organized and presented the People's evidence at trial was Managing Deputy District Attorney Eloise Kelsey, Mendocino County’s senior coastal deputy prosecutor.

DDA Kelsey extends her heartfelt thank you to each victim and their families for not only the courage to see the lengthy case through, but to have the bravery to come forward in the first place. She hopes all involved will find some measure of closure -- as well as solace -- in knowing this predator will never again have the opportunity to prey on other child victims.

Additional special thanks are extended to expert witness, Dr. James Crawford-Jakubiak (the Medical Director of the Benioff Children's Hospital in Oakland) for his medical expertise and testimony presented at trial; as well as to Clinical Psychologist Mindy Mechanic, who also testified as an expert witness at trial.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Victoria Shanahan presided over the three-week trial.

The defendant’s case has now been referred to the Mendocino County Adult Probation Department for a background study of the defendant and a written sentencing recommendation.

The defendant’s formal sentencing hearing has been calendared for August 30th at 9 o’clock in the morning in Department B in the Ukiah downtown courthouse.

Due to the nature of the convictions, defendant Pool faces potential sentencing of an indeterminate state prison commitment of 25 years to life. He may also be sentenced to a consecutive determinate state prison sentence of over 40 years.

Should defendant Pool ever be deemed eligible for release on parole down the road, he will be required to register as a sex offender annually for life with local law enforcement in any place he may be allowed to live.

However, should the Board of Parole Hearings ever deem defendant Pool eligible for parole consideration, he will also become eligible for civil commitment consideration (before parole may be granted) as a sexually violent predator (SVP).

California’s SVP statute is unique in that this law allows for an additional indeterminate civil psychiatric commitment of a sex offender after their state prison penal commitment has been served.

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COUNTY NOTES

by Mark Scaramella

While most Board watchers were understandably grumbling about the Supervisors giving themselves big raises last Tuesday, there were two Items on Tuesday’s closed session agenda that caught our attention:

6a: “Pursuant to Government Code Section 54957 - Public Employee Performance Evaluation - Chief Executive Officer.”

Among the many provisions of that particular section of the Brown Act, according to the First Amendment Coalition: “the legislative body may hold a closed session during a regular or special meeting to consider the appointment, employment, evaluation of performance, discipline, or dismissal of a public employee.”

So, although the agenda item specifically says “evaluation,” there are other possibilities that could come into the closed session discussion.

Remember, it was just one month ago (June 25) that the Board decided to extend CEO Antle’s contract to July 11, 2026 and give her an accompanying raise “with Compensation for the Period Commencing March 12, 2024, through the First Full Pay Period Following Ms. Antle’s Performance Evaluation in June 2025, being $225,000 Per Year With a Total Annual Compensation of $382,000, Including Benefits; … If Certain Conditions Are Met, Ms. Antle’s Compensation Commencing the First Full Pay Period Following the June 2025 Performance Evaluation through the End of the Agreement Shall Be Increased to $250,000 Per Year With a Total Annual Compensation of $425,000, Including Benefits.”

The public was not told what those “certain conditions” were.

Yet here we are in July of 2024 and the Board is conducting a “performance evaluation” just one month after giving CEO Antle a raise and contract extension.

Makes one wonder if Tuesday’s closed session discussion really was a “performance evaluation.” But since it was in closed session, the public will never know.

While we think Charlotte Scott, recently promoted to County Counsel is an improvement over her predecessor, the stuttering Christian Curtis, Ms. Scott has missed several opportunities to remind the Board of their Brown Act obligations. Curtis with his faults was at least quick to interrupt the Board’s rambling to tell them they were off topic. So we are worried that closed session restrictions are not strictly observed.

Our contacts with County employees tell us that CEO Antle and the Supervisors are not held in high regard, to put it gently. Not only is there a general contempt for the Board, exacerbated by their giving themselves a much bigger raise than most employees, but we have heard that the most ardent complaints were related to Supervisor Glenn McGourty’s whining in public about not being compensated while he was campaigning! Lots of employees were paying attention to that extremely self-serving remark.

Several employees told us that they still remember Supervisor Ted Williams’ insulting remark to Mendo Voice reporter Dave Brooksher during contract negotiations last year that precipitated the union’s strike vote.

Brooksher wrote: “The Voice reached out to Mendocino County CEO Darcie Antle, as well as the Board of Supervisors, regarding how the union strike might affect county business. Fifth District Supervisor Ted Williams said the strike would likely go unnoticed by the public.”

That one still rankles.

In a pointed press release at that time in 2023 the union complained, “the County has insisted that its employees pay more for their healthcare and retirement — an overall pay cut. This effective pay cut will only exacerbate the current staffing crisis by pushing even more County workers to opt for better-paid positions in neighboring counties, cities, and the private sector. ‘Our members are frustrated with the lack of leadership from this administration,” said SEIU 1021 Mendocino County Chapter President Julie Beardsley, a senior public health analyst for the county. ‘Mendocino County has amazing people, natural resources, and the spirit to move forward. This strike authorization is a clear indication that things need to change’.”

But nothing has changed; in fact “things” are worse. The union accepted a modest 1% raise, compared to the 12% raise the Board gave themselves, a slap in the face to their workers — and the public. And now the increase in employee health care contributions is back on the table.

Overall, a culture of fear and intimidation keeps employees (or at least the ones that have not already quit) from complaining publicly. While there was plenty of criticism of the Board for their recent self-raise, there has been no public comment about CEO Antle and her recent contract extension and raise. Given the emptiness of the reasons the Board offered for their own raise, we expect that the CEO’s raise was similarly hollow. There was no press release offering any justification for Antle’s new contract and raise.

Then we have closed session item 6b: “Pursuant to Government Code Section 54956.9(d)(2) - Conference with Legal Counsel - Anticipated Litigation: Significant Exposure to Litigation Arising from Complaints Against Two County Officials: One Case.”

Again, we are not told what complaints were made about which two County Officials that have lead to “significant exposure to litigation.” (By calling it that, an obviously subjective phrase, they can avoid discussing the complaints in open session.)

Nevertheless, the Supervisors spent over three hours in closed session on Tuesday after the regular meeting. After that time, Supervisor/Board Chair Maureen Mulheren reported that “no reportable action was taken.”

It’s understandable that the Brown Act requires that “personnel matters” be handled in closed session for employees. But the CEO is not an employee; she is a contractor and the County’s top official and her duties and objectives are a legitimate subject for public discussion. It’s similar to that Supreme Court ruling that corporations are people and deserve to have the same bill of rights protections as ordinary citizens. Public administration rules and the Brown Act “personnel matter” exemptions to open discussion were meant to protect the rights of workers and employees, not underperforming contracted executives. Yet here they are hiding behind employee protection rules as if the CEO is just another county staffer.

PS. The supervisors are taking another self-awarded extended vacation (on top of their already light every-two-weeks meeting schedule) and will not meet again until September 10, 2024. Having successfully completed their main task of giving their CEO a raise and then rewarding themselves for giving their CEO a raise by raising their own salaries, they are taking seven weeks off. Nice Work If You Get It.

PPS. Speaking of that great Gershwin tune, here’s the opening lines of the verse:

“The man who only lives for making money

Lives a life that isn't necessarily sunny;

Likewise the man who works for fame —

There's no guarantee that time won't erase his name…”

PPPS. Typical of County employee sentiment is this on-line comment:

“I haven’t heard of a single County employee who thinks the BOS deserve the raise they voted themselves. The BOS defended it by saying every employee got a raise. Well, they are somewhat right if you want to consider a 1% COLA a raise, which is what many County employees got. The employee retirement contribution just increased which, by the way, no one bothered to tell employees. It just showed up on their pay stubs this week. And now the County is trying to increase the health insurance premiums. People are tired of abuse at the hands of County administration. Many employees are either quitting, looking for other work, or trying to stick it out until they can retire. The BOS claims they care about the employees, but none of us are buying it.”

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AN ON LINE COMMENT re: the Supervisors’ self-raise: “Maybe it’s time to recall the bunch of them. This is the worst bunch of supervisors in my lifetime (80+ years) in Mendocino County. Where are Williams, Shoemaker, and John Pinches?”

Another Commenter: “Maybe Williams did this because if you read the Thursday UDJ he had been served with recall papers.”

We re-read the UDJ on Thursday and did not see any reference to anyone being served with recall papers.

By our calculation it would take a minimum of 900 signatures of registered voters in the Fifth District (more than that to make sure there are enough verifiable registered voters) to put a recall on the ballot. We are not aware of any signature gathering efforts so far.

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COVELO MAN WANTS TO WITHDRAW GUILTY PLEA IN GIRLFRIEND’S KILLING

Johnathan Draughan pleaded guilty last month to killing Brandy Kay Mathieson in March. He was scheduled to be sentenced Friday in Mendocino County Superior Court.

by Colin Atagi

A Covelo man is trying to withdraw his guilty plea in the fatal shooting of his girlfriend, who was killed in March while on the phone with 911 dispatchers.

Johnathan Draughan, 43, was set to be sentenced Friday in Mendocino County Superior Court after pleading guilty June 21 to killing Brandy Kay Mathieson, 35.

Proceedings instead focused on the withdrawal of his plea and Mendocino County Judge Patrick Pekin assigned Draughan an attorney to discuss his concerns.

In a handwritten letter to the court dated July 15, Draughan wrote there was a “horrible article misrepresenting me in The Press Democrat” and he wants “a new venue, a new lawyer, a new DA and a new judge.”

“I was lied to about my sentencing and had information withheld concerning my plea,” Draughan wrote.

He had been represented by an attorney with the Mendocino County Public Defender’s Office.

The matter will be revisited Aug. 27 to determine if Draughan will file a motion to withdraw his plea or maintain his guilty plea.

Draughan had been convicted of one count of second-degree murder in the killing of Mathieson, the mother of his 2-year-old son.

Court records show Draughan and Mathieson had a volatile history leading up to the killing, and Mathieson filed for a domestic violence restraining order against Draughan on Jan. 30.

The filing references years of abuse, and court records show Draughan was arrested in November on suspicion of using tear gas on Mathieson. That case was dismissed due to insufficient evidence, records show.

The court issued a five-year protection order about a month later but Draughan had not been served as of Feb. 28.

The March 20 shooting happened in front of the child at Mathieson’s Covelo home in the 25600 block of Mendocino Pass Road, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office reported in March.

Mathieson called dispatchers about 5:30 a.m. March 20 and reported Draughan was armed with a shotgun and had assaulted her at the home.

The dispatcher heard multiple gunshots and Mathieson stopped talking, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

Draughan picked up the phone and told the dispatcher he shot Mathieson and would wait for authorities.

Sheriff’s deputies arrived and Mathieson was pronounced dead at the scene.

They recovered a shotgun at the home and took the child to a hospital for an evaluation.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

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ED NOTES

LOCAL ETHNOGRAPHERS will want to know that in 1981 there were 13 Hispanic students enrolled in the Boonville schools, 165 Anglo students and 4 Other students. By 2002, Hispanic students numbered 140, Anglos were counted at 108, and Others totaled 21. Incidentally, Others had their best year in 1991 when there were 23 of them. 2024? 80 percent Hispanic, two African-Americans. 18 percent Anglo. No Others.

SENSITIVE SOUL that I am, I could only take a few minutes of the Olympics opening last night. From all accounts, it only got more grotesque as the evening wore on. And what exactly does Snoop Dog have to do with the Games? And exactly why is this guy celebrated? Oh, I remember now. As Gore Vidal put it, “Lack of talent is no longer enough.” The End of Days seem to be picking up momentum.

A CERTAIN RELATIVE, who will not be identified in the interest of family harmony, said of the French off his one visit to Paris, “I hate those bastards. They all pretend not to speak English, and you ask directions from one of them, and he will deliberately send you in the wrong direction.”

THE ONLY EVENTS I'm interested in are the running contests, men's and women's, with maybe the last few minutes of whoever the Americanos are playing in basketball, and delighted that we can no longer blow out the rest of the world in the game invented here. South Sudan (huh?) almost knocked US off the other day. It took LeBron to singlehandedly pull it out.

MICHAEL WEIST: Hello, I’m surprised you didn’t mention China Mieville’s excellent book - ‘October.’ I believe you bought this book soon after it was published, as did I. I sort of remember that we discussed it. PS Mieville published an annotated edition of the Manifesto last summer, but I haven’t read it yet.

TOTALLY AGREE, Mr. Weist. ‘October’ is right up there with Reed's ‘Ten Days,’ better actually, because it's more accessible to the everyday reader with no particular interest in the subject. I haven't read his annotated ‘Manifesto’ but have it on my list. At the mo, I'm in the middle of ‘The Wide, Wide Sea — Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook’ by Hampton Sides. The title of this absolutely enthralling account of the famous explorer and his 18th century times sounds kind off-puttingly academic, but it kept me up very late turning the pages. All I'd known about Cook was that he'd met his end in Hawaii and, by all accounts, had it coming after provoking the natives. Cook's voyages — he undertook three — were not that long ago by our speeded up standards — when half the world was still unknown to European explorers. George the Third had just dispatched an armada to put down George Washington and the boys in upstart America when Cook set forth. The Cook team was the very definition of intrepid. Imagine sailing out in turbulent seas in a 90-foot wooden boat with a single remit — find the mythical Northwest Passage. If you read one book this year, make it this one.

ODD ENCOUNTER: I'm sitting solo by my mute self in a public place watching the passing parade when I glance up at a man of about sixty trailing a tiny white fluffy dog he has on a leash. Call me a dog bigot if you must, but I find tiny white fluff dogs mildly irritating, writing them off as one more sign of today's surround-sound decadence. This guy didn't look particularly effete but I estimated him at probably ten degrees off because he was not dress-appropriate, by which I mean he was togged out in teen duds — Duke sweatshirt, Giants ball cap, Bermuda shorts, running shoes. As he walked past he said, “Don't worry. I'm not going to talk to you.” Whew. I wonder if my displeasure at him and his dog was that evident?

REMINDS ME of my late friend Frank Cieciorka’s encounter at the Alderpoint Store. Frank and his wife, Karen Horn, owned a pair of large poodles. Frank told me he had the dogs with him one day when he encountered a drunk Wylacki on the steps of the store who said, “If I had a dog like that I'd fuckin' commit suicide.”

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Frank Cieciorka, Designer for the Left, Is Dead at 69

by Steven Heller

Frank Cieciorka, a graphic artist, art director and watercolorist whose woodcut rendering of a clenched-fist salute was a model for the New Left’s most ubiquitous emblem, died on Monday at his home in Alderpoint, Calif. He was 69.

The cause was emphysema, said his wife, Karen Horn.

In 1959 Mr. Cieciorka (pronounced che-CHOR-ka), then a college student, was an opponent of American military intervention in the Dominican Republic and Vietnam and joined the Socialist Party. In 1964 he volunteered as an organizer during the Freedom Summer drive to register black voters in Mississippi and became a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which initiated many integration and voting-rights campaigns. (Ed note: Frank functioned as armed bodyguard to Stokely Carmichael.)

It was “certainly one of the most profound experiences in my life,” he is quoted as saying on The Rag Blog (theragblog.blogspot.com), “and helped shape my political consciousness to this day.”

Mr. Cieciorka had seen the clenched-fist salute when he participated in a Socialist rally in San Francisco. When he returned from Mississippi, “the fist was a natural for the first woodcut in a series of cheap prints,” he noted in an interview with Lincoln Cushing, a political art archivist and historian. “It wasn’t until we made it into a button and tossed thousands of them into crowds at rallies and demonstrations that it really became popular,” he continued.

He recalled later visiting a “lefty button maker in Berkeley” who showed him that dozens of organizations had incorporated the woodcut into their logos or used it in some fashion to promote a social cause or issue.

His fist for the 1967 Stop the Draft Week became what Mr. Cushing considers “the iconic New Left fist — very stylized and easy to reproduce, picked up almost immediately by Students for a Democratic Society and others.”

Another, more detailed woodcut fist (which Mr. Cieciorka titled “hand”) was also often copied, usually without credit to the artist. Although the Black Panther Party used a bold, streamlined Panther designed by Emory Douglas as its primary logo, versions of Mr. Cieciorka’s so-called power salute appeared in its publications as well.

Frank Cieciorka was born on April 26, 1939, and grew up in Johnson City in upstate New York. In 1957 he enrolled in the fine arts program at San José State College, in California, where his passion for civil rights was triggered.

In addition to helping organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, an alternative to the official Democratic Party, in 1965 he wrote and illustrated “Negroes in American History: A Freedom Primer,” which was then used in “freedom schools” throughout the South. The cover shows five hands reaching toward the sky, one of them a fist. Mr. Cieciorka speculated that this might have been the first time the fist was used in relation to the civil-rights movement. He also created posters for labor movements, including the United Farm Workers, was the art director for The Movement, a newspaper for activist organizers, and contributed to the Peoples Press Collective.

In the early 1970s he became an avid watercolor painter, with a special interest in landscapes of his rural California home, in the countryside of southern Humboldt County.

In addition to his wife, also a watercolorist, Mr. Cieciorka is survived by a stepdaughter, Zena Goldman Hunt, and a brother, James. (Ed note: Karen Horn is also a talented artist whose painting sell for big money in fancy galleries.)

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, July 27, 2024

KYL AYERS, Domestic violence court order violation.

JESSE CHAVEZ, Ukiah. Domestic battery, vandalism, concealed dirk-dagger, probation revocation.

ROSEARIE PADILLA, Gilroy/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

KIRSTYN SMALL, Ukiah. DUI causing bodily injury, cruelty to child-infliction of injury.

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JEFF BLANKFORT WRITES:

Good morning,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you but wanted to included the photo of you, your daughter and grand daughter I took in San Rafael in January, but I am a neophyte when it comes to sending images from my phone once they've been downloaded and that explains why six months have gone by since I took it, and so much has happened with you and the AVA. At least, and it’s probably not that much of a consolation that you've beat the endless heat culminated by the fire in Philo.

Loved that image re AIPAC if the “I” stood for Italian and it's true. It is what I have been saying for years. The Israel Lobby, with its scores of organizations and thousands of their members dedicated to what they believe is best for Israel, is nothing less than a fifth column designed to undermine what little is left of American democracy, all of which is irrelevant to them if Israel appears to benefit and what is more, they are largely operating in plain sight. AIPAC, relatively recently, to the dismay of its old guard, has become its most visible player but there are scores of other organizations across the country doing their part.

One of the most far sighted individuals who ever lived. and who, merits at least a T-shirt with his comment re Jews and Judaism, was the French official, Clermont-Tonnerre, who, in 1789, following the revolution, wrote and spoke the following:

"But, they say to me, the Jews have their own judges and laws. I respond that is your fault and you should not allow it. We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation and accord everything to Jews as individuals. We must withdraw recognition from their judges; they should only have our judges. We must refuse legal protection to the maintenance of the so-called laws of their Judaic organization; they should not be allowed to form in the state either a political body or an order. They must be citizens individually. But, some will say to me, they do not want to be citizens. Well then! If they do not want to be citizens, they should say so, and then, we should banish them. It is repugnant to have in the state an association of non-citizens, and a nation within the nation… In short, Sirs, the presumed status of every man resident in a country is to be a citizen."

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MEMO OF THE AIR: Russell's teapot.

"Reading a book is just looking at symbols in ink and hallucinating."

Here's the recording of last night's (Friday 2024-07-26) 7-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-0602

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:

Stanley Pickle, a clockwork romance. https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2024/07/stanley-pickle.html

Nine moves. These are some of the best chess players in the world. Imagine how the boy felt just at the moment he realized, too late, what he had done. I mean, imagine what his entire body felt like. The shock and humiliation. He's in his twenties. For the rest of his long life he will think back on this and feel that all over again. It was just a mistake. Sooner or later we all make a mistake. One time when I first went to work for my employer Tim, who I'm still with, I had finished fixing a priceless nearly-one-of-a-kind hand-made computer of late-1970s vintage that was the communication system for a severely crippled woman who could not speak and could only move one hand, a little, like a paw. She could choose letters and words from menus on a screen, and send a completed phrase to a printer, or to a text-to-speech device, to express herself. It had an S-100 bus and many big cards full of chips. Memory, a CPU card, a display card, etc. The power supply of it used a transformer the size of a melon with exposed taps. When I was putting it all together again, putting the covers on, I left it plugged in. I thought it was safe because the power switch was off. But the power switch was /after the transformer/. So when I moved a bundle of wires, a single wire that was attached to the card cage power bus popped loose from its 5 or 12-volt supply, flipped around, and the end touched a line-voltage input pole of the power transformer. Every part on every card in the whole computer snapped, crackled, emitted smoke, and was ruined. Many decades later, when I think of that moment, my testicles retract into my abdomen and a vise clamps down on my head. That's how this chess player feels. He's let everyone down. His life is ruined. It's the end of the world, except it isn't, it's worse. https://27thstreet.me/2024/07/21/double-rook-sacrifice-wins-in-9-moves/

Rerun: Bobby Fingers' documentary of producing an art diorama of the event where Michael Jackson's hair caught on fire while shooting a Pepsi commercial. https://kottke.org/23/03/a-diorama-of-michael-jackson-on-fire

And an interactive U.S. traffic deaths map. Navigate, zoom in, click on the dots. (via BoingBoing) https://roadway.report/beta

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

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HIM, TOO

Editor:

Stepping aside…

One elderly presidential candidate, who has sometimes struggled to communicate his (mostly coherent) thoughts about policy, cares about the country enough that he has made way for someone younger and more vigorous. I thank him for that. Isn’t it time for his elderly erstwhile opponent, who speaks mostly in gibberish, to also step aside for the good of the country? Maybe he will. He donated $6,000 to Kamala Harris’ 2014 campaign for California attorney general, so clearly he knows she’s worth supporting.

Jack Ziegler

Santa Rosa

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ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Olympics used to be watching kids, amateurs matched against each other as the products of their countries. When you saw a kid that worked for hours on end fulfill their dreams with a medal, it was heartwarming.

Today, no kids hardly, professionals, political agendas, protests, arson, way overdone ceremonies, decaying venues when done.

Nah, I am not watching any of it. Not entertaining at all.

Recommendation, went and saw Twisters, good story, excellent special effects. A guy actually runs his truck into a tornado and anchors himself into the ground.

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OPENING CEREMONY MISSES THE BOAT

The Paris Games began with a new look and sparkled with Celine Dion. But the show suffered from bloat similar to TV’s other spectacles.

by Mike Hale

About six hours before Celine Dion gutted out the final number of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, the streaming service Peacock emailed a promo for its coverage with the headline, “We’ll all be crying by the end of this.” So maybe they knew more than they were letting on.

The homestretch of the marathon four-hour broadcast, when the celebrating athletes and dance extravaganzas and speeches were out of the way, had some starkly lovely images and moving moments: the speedboat carrying former champions up the Seine in the dark (like a real-life echo of Leos Carax’s great water-skiing scene in “Les Amants du Pont-Neuf”). The grand scale and dramatic lighting of the Louvre as the torch was carried, like a firefly’s flame, through its courtyards. The torch coming to the hand of a 100-year-old French cyclist, steady in his wheelchair, and Dion defying her illness to belt out “Hymne à l’Amour” on the Eiffel Tower.

But it took endurance to get there — for the athletes, performers and spectators drenched by the summer rain, and for the viewers at home watching the ceremony as it was conceived by the French organizers and packaged by NBC and Peacock.

The decision to abandon the event’s traditional format — the long, formal parade of athletes marching into a stadium — for a waterborne procession along the Seine intercut with performances had a twofold effect. It turned the ceremony into something bigger, more various and more intermittently entertaining. But it also turned it into something more ordinary — just another bloated made-for-TV spectacle, like a halftime show or awards show or holiday parade that exists to promote and perpetuate itself.

Those spectacles can be fun, of course, and the traditional Olympics opening ceremony could feel dull and interminable. But it was not quite like anything else, and it played a key part in making the Games feel special.

As the boats ferrying the athletes moved along the Seine, what stood out was what was missing. The great mass of athletes in one place, moving in a continuous tide. The chaotic palette of national costumes, the different marching styles, the proud flag bearers. Few events more effectively combined the monumental and the individual.

Everything about Friday’s ceremony and broadcast worked to diminish the athletes. Sitting in cheering clumps, sometimes three and four countries together, they looked like passengers on party boats competing to make the most noise, to signal that their country was having the most fun.

And in the ceremony’s new format, they had to share screen time. The athletes’ parade disappeared for long stretches, or was reduced to a split-screen box, while the entertainment portion took over. In taped segments and on stages along the river, a great number of talented musicians and dancers took part in a presentation that was, in a certain sense, quintessentially French: titillating, hermetic, light on humor and heavy on pretense. Daring you not to find it dull.

The scale of the ceremony, three and a half miles from end to end, with much of its action taking place on or beside a wide river, made it a natural TV event. Spectators could only see what was in front of them, and that not very well; when we saw them cheering, they were most likely reacting to images on a nearby monitor.

But neither was there the sense that the TV viewer had the best vantage. The athletes on their boats still looked far away; the production numbers were not inventively staged for the cameras. Time and again, you got the feeling that what you were watching would be more exciting and moving if you were seeing it live, as it passed by. Juliette Armanet’s rendition of “Imagine,” performed on a barge, with a blazing piano, through a rain-spotted lens, had an element of high camp onscreen; seen from the Trocadéro, it was probably spine-tingling.

(NY Times)

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HOUSING, an on-line comment:

When building permits alone run $30k plus, not to mention all the studies etc., just permits and studies often run 25% of a project yet those fees go where? Inspectors are still not inspecting fields where their experience lies. Hell, one building inspector had a degree in abstract art but had to have us explain what we did and why; not even sure he understood what we told him from the lost look on his face as he signed the work off. It is the red tape that runs costs way up. It is the new green building codes that adds tens of thousands of dollars per unit. Cost overruns happen all the time in part due to the extreme amounts of time that passes between the bidding and the work as material prices change at such rapid rates, not to even mention material requirements, i.e., HVAC. Starting the first of the year puran is changing meaning that if you have a HVAC system to install if you bid it now but don’t get to do the work till after the first of the year, well you just lost all if not even more than your profit. Labor keeps climbing as well. Can’t tell someone with skills and tools that you are paying the same as the fast food peeps when all they have to do is show up stoned and ask if you want fries with that? Insurance keeps increasing as well as fuel costs then there are things like PG&E requiring and charging for engineering studies to ensure that increased load can be handled by its grid. And boy, howdy, look the f out if it can’t because your project will be without service until you pay to upgrade their grid at your expense on their time table. Just to add 4 feet to a riser was going to run $10k for their studies and such, just so that a man could park an RV in his driveway without having to worry about the overhead lines.”

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“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”

― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

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A striking publicity photo of Babe Ruth from 1928 captures the baseball legend during the 'Ruth-Gehrig Home Run Tour.' The tour, which featured Ruth and his Yankees teammate Lou Gehrig, was a promotional event showcasing their impressive home run-hitting prowess. Ruth, known for his charismatic presence and powerful swing, is seen here in a classic pose, embodying the spirit of the era and the grandeur of his career. The tour was a major event, emphasizing Ruth's role not just as a player but as a cultural icon.

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JOHNY COSTA, the invisible piano man behind Mister Rogers Neighborhood, readers may be surprised to learn, was a virtuoso pianist in his own right:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is66RTxBugY

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m80yOeOx1Tw

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TAIBBI & KIRN

Matt Taibbi: All right. Welcome to America This Week. I’m Matt Taibbi.

Walter Kirn: And I’m Walter Kirn.

Matt Taibbi: Walter, this is weird. We’re having a… It’s like a regular show. We haven’t done one of these in a while.

Walter Kirn: No, I know. I mean, to not be in the absolute stream of events is a little odd to sit above them like this. I can’t believe it’s a week since we were watching Trump speak in Milwaukee.

Matt Taibbi: I mean, we’re in dog year territory at this point. I think we’re all… My worry is that we’re aging at the same pace, too, but it’s been absolutely crazy since we were last on the air. Biden stepped down. We did a live hit after that, after he drank the Hemlock on Sunday. And then I guess what’s happened since he did a speech last night, which we should probably go over, and then there has been this outpouring of propaganda and support for Kamala Harris, which has also been remarkable on multiple levels. I guess we should probably start with his speech, though. Should we watch some video of that? What’s your feeling on…

Walter Kirn: Sure. Sure.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. Okay. All right, so let’s just go and check out how Joe Biden sounded. He gave a speech at 8:00 PM Eastern Time and I think a lot of people had the same reaction, which was kind of a sense of unease listening to this, but here’s about a minute of it.

President Joe Biden: In just a few months, the American people will choose the course of America’s future. I made my choice. I’ve made my views known. I would like to thank our great Vice President Kamala Harris. She’s experienced, she’s tough, she’s capable. She’s been an incredible partner to me and a leader for our country. Now, the choice is up to you, the American people. When you make that choice, remember the words of Benjamin Franklin, who’s hanging on my wall here in the Oval Office-

Matt Taibbi: He’s hanging.

President Joe Biden: … alongside the bust of Dr. King and Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez. When Ben Franklin was asked as he emerged from the convention going on, whether the founders have given America a monarchy or a republic, Franklin’s response was, “A republic, if you can keep it. A republic, if you can keep it.”

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. And then he goes on. There are some other notable moments in those speeches, but what did you think of that whole thing, first of all, Walter? It was very strange. Actually, why don’t we listen also to some other unnerving moments? This one caught the attention of a lot of folks. It was not clear exactly what he was saying here.

President Joe Biden: We’ve come so far since my inauguration. On that day, I told you as I stood in that winter… We were stood in a winter of peril and winter of possibilities, peril and possibilities.

Matt Taibbi: All right. Winter of peril and possibilities. To some people, it sounded like winter apparel. It was winter of peril, but he had a lot of these moments where he’s now progressed from having trouble talking to people to not being able to read off a teleprompter terribly well or coherently. He was sort of breaking the cardinal rule of reading, which is don’t stop to wonder what it means, just read the words, right?

Walter Kirn: Mm-hmm.

Matt Taibbi: But he looked like a hostage to me in that video. He looked upset. It did not look to me like something he wanted to be doing and a lot of the sentiments he conveyed did not feel like his. I don’t know. What did you think, Walter?

Walter Kirn: Well, pictures of the family sitting there next to him that were released showed them looking fit to be tied. They didn’t seem happy at all. He seemed angry throughout the speech. That was a strange comment when he said, “I made my views known,” as though he was recapitulating the negotiations that forced him out. I think the subtext was clear. “I didn’t want to go. I feel like I’ve done a good job, but the party comes first.” Now, it didn’t explain why he’s leaving other than the party seems to feel he should. He didn’t reference his health at all and he wasn’t explicit about the power struggle that appears to have gone on.

Walter Kirn: He was in ghastly shape, just ghastly, I thought. And it did not bode well for the next six months in which he has apparently a very ambitious agenda to reform the Supreme Court, help cure cancer, and other things. I was not reassured if that was the intention of the speech. Also, it seemed a little bit like a campaign speech. He was urging Americans to vote a certain way, which didn’t accord with an address from the Oval Office, I thought. The stuff about a republic, if you could keep it, was a clear allusion to the notion that Donald Trump will somehow end the democracy of the last couple of hundred years. So it was just jarring in every way to me from the fact that it didn’t explain the situation to his emotional comportment, to his apparently terrible health. And it left me wondering, “What’s going on,” even more than I had wondered before that.

Matt Taibbi: So he imported… Or I’m sorry, he imparted a couple of important pieces of information in that speech, which, as you say, was mostly a campaign speech. When it came time to explain what he was doing, as you say, he didn’t come out right out and say exactly why he was leaving. The quote is, “I revere this office, but I love my country more. It’s been the honor of my life to serve as your president, but in the defense of democracy, which is at stake, I think it’s more important than any title.”

Matt Taibbi: So he’s saying, “I can’t win and stepping aside is our best chance of winning.” That is strange because the furor over the last month or so has been about his ability to continue serving as president, but they’re in this really odd place where they can’t claim he is incapacitated because of the other thing that he said, the other important piece of information that he put in the speech, which was that, “Over the next six months, I will be focused on doing my job as president.”…

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