ISOLATED SHOWERS or thunderstorms are possible over the interior Friday night and Saturday. Otherwise, hot and dry weather is expected in the interior for the next 7 days. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): On the coast this Friday morning more fog & 56F. The word "sunny" is the Monday forecast, we'll see? A mix of clouds & clear until then.
PACIFIC INTERNET’S SCALED DOWN email service continues to be spotty and problematic. We went without email all morning on Thursday. At least they called back with a partial workaround after we left a message. Full functioning was restored mid-afternoon. We have been loyal customers going all the way back to the early 90s when Jim Persky first established Pacific Internet as an email and web hosting service. The problems are mystifying. All they have to do is keep a basic email service working, and we’d continue to pay and not bother them. But every time there’s a hiccup, friends from other email services tell us, again, that we should jump ship. We don’t want to, but if this keeps up… (Mark Scaramella)
DAY 2 AT THE REDWOOD EMPIRE FAIR
Samantha showed her 248 lb market hog. What a great day for this first time show woman! Sam placed first in her weight class.
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the Fort Bragg Planning Commission will conduct a public hearing on Use Permit 6-24 (UP 6-24), Design Review 20-22 (DR 20-22), Variance (VAR 3-24) and Sign Permit 13-24 (SP 13-24) to construct a new restaurant at a regularly scheduled meeting on Wednesday, August 14, 2024 at 6:00 PM or as soon thereafter as the matter may be heard at Town Hall, at the corner of Main and Laurel Streets (363 North Main Street), Fort Bragg, California.
DEVIN JOHNSON CONVICTED OF ARSON; FACES 21 YEARS IN PRISON
by Colin Atagi
A Mendocino County man was convicted Thursday of starting the Hopkins Fire that charred 257 acres and destroyed 30 homes in the town of Calpella on Sept. 12, 2021.
Devin Lamar Johnson, 23, showed no emotion after the verdict was read in Marin County Superior Court, where proceedings were moved to alleviate concerns about whether his case would be heard by an impartial jury.
Johnson remained seated while other court attendees stood as the jury of six men and six women entered and left Judge Kelly Simmons’ courtroom.
Jurors received the case late Wednesday afternoon. They deliberated about two hours before convicting Johnson of one count of felony arson and acquitting him of one count of felony aggravated arson.
Mendocino County District Attorney David Eyster on Thursday said the latter charge required more insight into Johnson’s intent and frame of mind. The former count was an “ace in the hole,” he told The Press Democrat.
“It’s a fair outcome,” Eyster said. “This was something we anticipated could happen.”
Johnson could be ordered to serve a maximum 21 years in prison when he returns Sept. 16 for sentencing.
He testified in his own defense on Tuesday that the blaze began accidentally after he dropped a cigarette in dry vegetation.
His attorney with the Mendocino County Public Defender’s Office, Dana Liberatore, said during closing arguments Wednesday that Johnson had no motive to start a fire just 900 feet from his home in Calpella.
Liberatore told The Press Democrat Thursday he had not decided whether he would appeal the verdict and had no further comment.
Following Thursday’s verdict, several jurors would only tell The Press Democrat that evidence and testimony in the case had been properly provided and that discussions among jurors during their deliberations went smoothly.
Fueled by light wind and temperatures in the 90s, the Hopkins Fire raged through Calpella before it finally reached a hillside bordering the Russian River and Lake Mendocino.
Flames quickly spread up a 1,000-foot ridge and down to the western shore of Lake Mendocino after destroying 30 homes and other structures.
About 200 people were evacuated from the area. No injuries were reported.
Novato resident Linda Karinen, 68, was present during Thursday’s hearing and told The Press Democrat she watched, the day of the blaze, as flames from the Hopkins Fire destroyed her daughter’s home on East Calpella Road.
“It was the most frightening thing I experienced in my entire life,” she said.
Following the blaze, she said, her daughter and grandson lived in a motel and later an apartment before finding a permanent home in Ukiah.
Karinen said her daughter prefers living in a rural environment, but moved to the city in order to avoid fleeing from fires.
Her daughter didn’t immediately respond after Karinen texted her about Thursday’s verdict. Karinen, though, said she’s glad Johnson was convicted.
After the fire was deemed suspicious and was determined to be arson, Johnson was identified as a suspect after he appeared in surveillance footage from a business near where the fire started, investigators said.
The footage from McFarland Trucking, which prosecutors played in court, showed Johnson coming and going from a wooded trail before smoke appeared, investigators said.
Also factoring into Johnson’s arrest, officials said, was an area photographer’s photo that showed Johnson watching the fire from Calpella’s Moore Street Bridge.
Questions about Johnson’s mental competency arose during pretrial proceedings, which were stalled for a time while he received medical treatment to restore him to competency so he could help in his own defense.
The Public Defender’s Office later argued for a change in venue after raising concerns that most Mendocino County residents were familiar with the fire and had formed opinions about what happened. Because of this, the office contended, Johnson would not be able to have a fair trial close to home.
A Mendocino County judge agreed and ruled proceedings would instead take place in Marin County after Colusa County also was considered.
Johnson’s criminal trial commenced in May. The jury in that trial, though, failed to reach a verdict after hearing four days of testimony.
His second trial began last Wednesday. Eyster handled the case instead of Deputy District Attorney Heidi Larson, who led the prosecution in May.
That aside, Eyster said Thursday, the second jury got the same testimony and evidence as the first jury and he didn’t know what led to May’s outcome.
(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)
FRESH OFF his token “no” vote on the Supervisors’ self-raise, Supervisor Ted Williams told Independent Coast Observer reporter Susan Wolbarst last week, “It’s a common misconception that the five Supervisors coordinate the agenda, but in reality, only the Chair has access to the upcoming agenda content.”
No one had accused the Supervisors of colluding on the agenda. When it comes to things like giving themselves a raise, they usually think alike, so they don’t need to “collude” on the agenda. But what’s this about the Board Chair being the only Supervisor with access to the upcoming agenda? The agenda is usually posted on Thursday afternoon and everybody has “access” to it (although there’s very little indication that many people pay attention to it, larded up as it is with bureaucratic filler and jargon and extremely untransparent obfuscation). There’s plenty of time to prepare or study or discuss or object to any agenda item if the overpaid Supervisors were worthy of their exorbitant pay. In addition, Supervisors can single-handedly postpone (or “continue”) any expenditure item for a week by simply requesting a continuance (per their own board rules) to get more time if they need it. Supervisor Williams demonstrates again that he and his board members deserve a pay CUT, not a raise.
Williams also told Wolbarst: “While I wouldn’t have recommended this action [the self-raise] at this time, I understand my colleagues’ reasoning and recognize the importance of maintaining good working relationships to gain support for future proposals.”
Their “reasoning” was, “We want more money because other people got more money, and we want more than they got.” Apart from his silly “not at this time” remark, Williams is admitting that he votes on the basis of staying on the good side of his overpaid colleagues instead of on the merits of any given item. And we are sure his fellow board members feel the same way. Independence? Non-partisan? Pros & Cons? Public input?… Nope. Not important. The most important factor to these people is “maintaining good working relationships to gain support for future proposals.” Bargaining away your vote is not only bad politics, but we have not seen a single item that Williams (or any other board member) has promoted that was supported by or swapped with his colleagues because of a prior supporting vote for that other Supervisor. This is the kind of low-rent crap that they think should be rewarded by a pay raise.
And finally, Williams told Wolbarst, “Just because other counties fail to pay living wages doesn’t mean Mendocino should treat the market rate as a cap. We need to ensure public servants can afford the local cost of living, or we risk having unfilled positions.”
Mendo has hundreds of unfilled positions and Williams is one of the most vocal advocates of keeping positions unfilled as a budget balancing tactic. Remember when he told Dave Brooksher of the Mendocino Voice that the public wouldn't notice if line staff went on strike? (Never retracted or apologized for.) The subject Ms. Wolbarst had asked about was the Board’s own self-raise, not the pay of “public servants” in general which Williams talks nice about, but never delivers. Williams blithely includes himself as a “public servant” who not only should be paid above the “market cap,” but denies the same to line employees. And all of this at a time when Williams frequently bemoans the county’s fiscal condition, even suggesting bankruptcy and/or receivership by the state as the only possible way to keep the ship afloat.
(Mark Scaramella)
FARMHOUSE INN, 11 miles north of Laytonville, at the Bell Springs Road Junction. away.)
Excellent related article: kymkemp.com/2020/06/12/odd-old-news-from-cloverdale-to-eureka-by-stage/
ALETHEA PATTON:
Curious to know what the editor’s stance on the Kelseyville name change is since he is so against the Fort Bragg name change. There are places in Lake county that feel haunted to me from all the settler violence. I can feel the past violence that occurred there in my bones. The last time I was passing through Kelseyville, I happened upon the little cemmetary where the Kelsey brothers are buried. It was spring time and the graveyard was covered with native wild flowers – Warrior’s Plume, Mule’s Ear, Shooting Stars, Ithuriel’s Spear. There was something very uplifting and cleansing to see how the earth had transformed the flesh and bones of such evil people into pure beauty. I’m okay with the name change myself.
LAZARUS (Willits):
I was amazed at how many words were needed to convey the Kelseyville situation. Kind of. It lost me about halfway through…which is of no surprise, I suspect. Have a nice day…
ED NOTE:
I think place names, however unhappy their origins, serve as a perpetual reminder of our bloody country’s bloody origins, that changing them amounts to editing out history, an ongoing temptation in a country that mass-buys Tidy Bowl and regularly suffers mass delusions. The Kelsey bros were, as you say, evil. I doubt even the drooling-est Magat denies that, but the Fort Bragg case is different. The FB name changers not only want to erase history, they are falsifying the known facts claiming, for instance, that soldiers were sent north to expedite the slaughter of Indians. Not true. Soldiers were sent north to try to protect Indians AND settlers The worst slaughters of Indians were inland, the Eel River Basin. Honest Abe sent soldiers there, too, but there was little they could do in the vastness of the territory. Worse, the FB posse, ten or so desperately virtue signaling, tightly-wrapped newcomers, are bribing high school kids to write essays containing a false version of Fort Bragg’s origins.
FRED GARDNER:
I thought I had sent a comment apologizing to Deb Silva, but I see my gratuitous crack got repeated today. Please cut the first Graf or the whole comment . (Oakmont looked pretty classy to me 40 years ago but I don’t wanna argue.)
Strongly agree with you about USA. What happened to Dos Passos? Spain, I guess. I once had an interesting book about his split with Hemingway, but it didn’t survive the move from Alameda to the Hellish Wine Country.
I thought highly of ‘American Pastoral’ but with a serious caveat. Roth’s girl is a stutterer and overweight. The few Weather-types I knew showed no such overt signs of disorder… ‘I Married a Communist was flawless!’
LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)
THE ANNUAL WESTPORT VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT FUNDRAISING BARBECUE
The Westport Volunteer Fire Department is hosting its Annual Fundraising Barbecue on Saturday, August 17, 2024 from noon to dusk. Enjoy an afternoon of fun and live music on the spectacular Westport Headlands while helping support the Westport Volunteer Fire Department. Admission is free.
Live music will be provided by Steven Bates, Erin and Riley, Sue Sisk and Friend, Erin Brazill and the Brazillionaires, Moon Rabbit, West of Nowhere, and the Steven Bates Band.
Barbecue chicken, ribs and a vegetarian option will be for sale. Local craft beer, wine, coffee, sweets and non-alcoholic beverages can also be purchased.
There will be plenty of fun activities for the whole family, including a Disc Golf Tournament, face painting and a bouncy house. Craft merchants will have their wares for sale, and there will also be a silent auction of some very special items. A helicopter from Reach/CalStar may pay us a visit if weather and availability cooperate. (Sorry, no dogs.)
The Westport Volunteer Fire Department provides year-round initial 911 emergency response service 24/7 for medical emergencies, motor vehicle accidents, traumatic injuries and fires on the Northern Mendocino Coast. Our response area now covers roughly 190 square miles.
RANDY BURKE (Gualala)
Lord have mercy!
I voted for Cubbison. The BOS took that vote away. I have no angst toward Eyster nor the board, but now due process is hing up around 176,000 emails. What's next? Pumping out Cubbison's septic tank? It’s time for Ann Moorman to move this as a priority. One, we voted her in, and two, she has not been given due process. It seems all Mendocino BULLSHIT at this point, and if you were to ask me, I'm living here on both sides of the fence, where I can reinvent myself daily, but those days merge to where I can only say I support her, and if exonerated, Run from Mendo.
PS. Thanks for the Odd Bodkins review. I need to apologize for my errant postings. I don't proof before I send. Sorry. Watch out for Perro.
A POSTCARD of J.T. Farrer's store in Boonville, circa 1948. Plus an unusual note on the reverse. Poor focus, but the only such view I've seen.
“Deady” was J.D. Farrer, J.T.’s son.
— Marshall Newman
ED NOTES
THERE ARE LOTS OF BOOKS, or at least monographs, waiting to be written about Mendocino County history, the infamous Jim Jones' life in Mendocino County among them. Of all the books on the berserk pastor, I haven't read one that went into detail about Jones in Mendo. He got to be foreman of our grand jury when he hadn't lived here for five years, for instance. An explication of that appointment would be interesting.
JONES got his job as a teacher at Boonville's elementary school by agreeing to enroll his high school-age parishioners in Boonville's high school when his fellow Hoosier, Bob Mathias, was district superintendent. Jones' kids represented a nice hunk of state attendance money and Jones, who was strapped for income, needed a job.
OF COURSE the reverend wasn't nuts at the time of his days in Mendocino County — devious, manipulative, scheming, megalomaniacal, yes, but not certifiable, and not unlike other public figures of the time except in the size of his ambition.
AND A SCHOLARLY book remains to be written about the Fort Bragg Fires of 1987. How was it possible for a handful of crooks, all of whose names were known to law enforcement soon after the spectacular event, and who included a bank manager, an accountant, a developer, and a restaurateur, to burn the heart of the venerable town right out of it and get away with it?
IN ONE NIGHT, in one hour, the Fort Bragg library, the adjacent Ten Mile Court, and the downtown landmark Piedmont Hotel went up in flames. The Fort Bragg cops soon knew the names of the young men who set the fires, and they knew that a 400-pound night janitor, cum cocaine dealer, named Peter Durigan functioned as logistics man for the torches. Durigan delivered the gasoline that night to the cocaine cowboys who lit the matches. Durigan had moved north from the Bay Area where he and colleagues had been caught robbing the corpses that San Mateo County coroner had dispatched them to pick up from their homes. No questions asked, this character soon had the keys to the Mendocino Coast's key institutions, among them the local banks he, or rather his worker bees, cleaned late at night.
SOON, FBI and ATF agents were striding around town in their identifying jackets and, much to the amusement of locals, the FBI hired as secretary the girlfriend of one of the crooks behind the arsons. At the end of her work day, lover girl dutifully trotted over to lover boy to give him the roster of people the feds had interviewed that day.
ONE OF THE YOUNG GUYS who'd set the fires conveniently committed suicide the day before he was scheduled to talk to a federal grand jury in San Francisco, and the other arson sub-contractors went into deep hiding, but not far, since they were locals born and bred.
TO THIS DAY, people involved in these crimes even tangentially, are terrified to be associated with them. The suicide was Kenny Ricks, who did it by cradling a shotgun between his legs and pulling the trigger with his toe, although he owned at least one handgun. I think the kid knew that if he talked to that federal grand jury he would be killed when he got home, so…
AND DARNED if the statute of limitations didn’t run before DA Susan Massini could get around to prosecuting the case which had been nailed down and then some. She investigated, then investigated some more, and then she claimed there was jurisdictional confusion, implying that the state and perhaps the feds had responsibility for bringing a quartet of crude outback arsonists to justice. Then time ran out and that was that.
THE YOUNG MEN who had been hired by the big shots to set the fires, and to set other successful, but less spectacular, fires, and several unsuccessful attempted fires prior to the big night they leveled the Fort Bragg library, Ten Mile Court and the Piedmont Hotel, could have been arrested, sequestered and protected so they could safely implicate the men who had hired them, but it all just went away, and in a perfectly Mendo denouement, the many boxes containing the Fire investigations, all those interviews, all went missing, and remains missing, nevermind that they were public property and supposedly in the ironclad custody of Mendocino County's lead law enforcement officer, the district attorney.
GETTING BACK to Pastor Jones, he'd headed west from Indiana because he’d read an apocalyptic piece in Esquire that said Mendocino County was relatively safe from nuclear fallout because the wind currents were favorable. Or the vibes. Whatever. The pastor gathered his tiny flock and headed west.
JONES first alighted at the home of Sea Biscuit, latterly the Golden Rule church on the Willits Grade, before he settled in Redwood Valley. He was broke, so broke he had to find work himself, so he made a deal with the Boonville superintendent of schools (also a Hoosier) where he got a job teaching the fifth grade; in return Boonville Unified got a dozen or so additional students who lived with Jones in Redwood Valley, and the attendance money that came with them.
MEANWHILE, Mrs. Jones, a nurse-social worker who doesn't seem to have been aware she was married to a lunatic, got herself a state job at the old Mendocino State Hospital at Talmage, from which she could funnel dependent persons to the People’s Temple in Redwood Valley. She and the pastor soon increased the pastor’s flock by importing dependent families from around the country, but primarily from Oakland and San Francisco, all of whom qualified for various forms of cash government support.
ALONG WITH THE WELFARE PLUNDER came young white idealists committed to harmonious intra-racial living. These white dreamers became Jones' inner-circle, and not a black or brown face among them. Jones helped himself to all the government checks flowing to his parishioners and, quickly amassing a formidable treasury to go with the several hundred captive votes he had settled in Redwood Valley, he was on his way, and soon too big for Mendocino County.
OFFICIAL Mendocino County had immediately assumed the prone position at Jones' feet, as Jones became foreman of the county grand jury and a kind of ecumenical icon among the local libs. Jones also got a bunch of his parishioners hired on by the Mendocino County Department of Social Services, then run by a Uriah Heepish character called Dennis Denny.
PEOPLE’S TEMPLE welfare workers shoveled the full array of locally available welfare benefits out to Redwood Valley whether or not the recipients qualified for them.
WHEN THE PASTOR murdered his flock in Guyana, official Mendo went to the mattresses. Welfare boss Denny claimed he'd been working “undercover” on the People’s Temple staffers in his department. Denny said he'd become “suspicious” of them, but before his sleuthing could bear welfare fraud, Jones had moved south to San Francisco.
JONES' Redwood Valley compound featured a gun tower because Jones claimed “rednecks” were threatening him and his parishioners with drive-bys. Sunday services were by invitation only.
HAVING AMASSED a lot of public money and naive followers and support from the credulous in Mendocino County, Jones moved on south where he easily seduced the city’s Democratic Party bigwigs.
JONES, in my non-professional opinion, was a standard issue narcissist with megalomaniacal tendencies who started out good but was sucked down into amphetamine-fueled psychosis.
ME AND MY MISSUS, an inter-racial couple then sharing our home with black delinquents, were once invited to People’s Temple services by Maria Katsaris who became Jones’ “mistress” and died at Jonestown. She’d accused her father, a Greek Orthodox priest who ran Trinity School in Ukiah, of molesting her, a Jones’ inspired lie of the type often resorted to by the sexually ambiguous Jones. Sex charges and accusations of racism were the pastor's stock responses to his few critics. And violence. He maintained a goon squad of young guys who’d muscle inconvenient Ukiah-area people for him.
JONES had learned from the fake left of the 1960s how to put people on the defensive via sex and race. “What kinda church is it that you need an invitation and a sponsor to attend?” I’d asked Miss Katsaris, deploying my characteristic skepticism before Miss Katsaris and her delegation. (Which is a joke I hope you get but which I make on myself because like most of us dull normals I’ve often been beguiled by false prophets and errant thinking. Who hasn’t?)
INVOKING the mythical peril presented by inland “rednecks,” Miss Katsaris replied, “We have to be careful about who gets in because a lot of people around here don’t like black people. But you and your family would like Pastor Jones; his sermons are amazing.” One of the flock visiting us in Boonville that day added that Jones could go on for hours.
HAVING JUST MOVED to Mendocino County from San Francisco where I knew people who could talk for days so long as they had plenty of speed, I said we weren’t church going people, thanks all the same.
THERE WAS A LADY REPORTER at the Ukiah Daily Journal whose name I can’t recall who got on Jones’ case pretty good before he moved to The City, but she was pretty much ignored and Jones’ goons got away with threatening her life and, ultimately, got her fired, I think. Local media otherwise loved the guy. (Deb Silva, white courtesy phone, please. What was the reporter's name?)
IF THE REV were with us today, given his commitment to cash and carry multiculturalism and all-round ethnic grooviness, at a minimum he’d have a talk show on KZYX, drooling testimonials from the Press Democrat, and the keys to Ukiah.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, August 1, 2024
FERMIN BARRALES-GONZALEZ, Ukiah. DUI, suspended license.
JONATHAN CAMARGO, Ukiah. Petty theft, paraphernalia.
JEFFREY COGBURN, Dos Rios. Loaded firearm in public, failure to appear.
ANTHONY DEGARMO, Ukiah. Petty theft, controlled substance.
OSAYANDE KOKAYI, Sacramento/Leggett. DUI causing bodily injury, suspended license, failure to appear, unspecified offense.
GEORGE MALAMPHY, San Francisco/Ukiah. DUI with prior, addict driving a vehicle.
FRANKLIN OLIVER, Covelo. Reckless evasion opposite traffic, offenses while on bail.
CHRISTOPHER PERALTA, Oxnard/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
NICHOLAS POLLARD, Fort Bragg. DUI-alcohol&drugs, taking vehicle without owner’s consent, addict driving a vehicle, controlled substance, bringing controlled substance into jail.
JARED TITUS, Ukiah. Controlled substance, probation revocation.
CODY WILLIAMS, Ukiah. Disobeying court order, probation revocation.
SALVADOR ZAPIEN-SUAREZ, Modesto//Ukiah. More than six marijuana plants, marijuana for sale, unspecified offenses.
TRUTH & CONSEQUENCES
Editor:
Mind boggling as it is, we hold professional athletes to higher standards than politicians. Pete Rose is the quintessential example of our need for honesty and integrity in public affairs, even if it’s just sports. After being busted for illegally gambling on baseball games and other crimes more than 35 years ago, Rose has yet to be forgiven by Major League Baseball and fans alike. This is in part due to his narcissistic refusal to take full responsibility for his actions. Denied honors for his on-field achievements and banned from pro baseball, Rose was banished from his public life. If only we held our past presidents to similar standards of character and consequence.
Claude Rosenthal
Santa Rosa
WAKE UP, JARED
Dear Editor.
On July 22, The Press Democrat published Ms Bettina O’Brien's great letter, “Ban assault weapons,” suggesting Congress pass “the Donald Trump Bullets Protection Act, or the ‘DTBP Act.’ Amen, Ms O'Brien! Rep. Jared Huffman, wake up Man. Our kids are being shot and killed.
What are you doing to stop it?
Frank H. Baumgardner
Santa Rosa
A ONCE-THRIVING CALIFORNIA WINE COMPANY IS IN SHAMBLES. HERE’S WHAT IT MEANS FOR OTHER WINERIES
by Esther Mobley
The wine industry is reeling from news last week that one of its largest companies, Vintage Wine Estates, has filed for bankruptcy, will lay off of its entire California workforce and plans to delist from the stock market just three years after going public.
Given the fact that the U.S. wine market is experiencing a major downturn, many observers have interpreted the implosion of Vintage, which owns brands like Layer Cake and Cameron Hughes, as a harbinger of things to come — a sign that other large wine companies could also fall.
But that’s the wrong way to look at it. While the industry’s broader struggles undoubtedly exacerbated the situation, many of the factors that led to its demise were unique to Vintage.
Wineries and Wall Street have never been easy bedfellows. A wine company’s assets are slow to appreciate: Product sits in a wooden barrel for years before it can be sold. That’s difficult to square with a public company’s need to demonstrate consistent quarterly earnings. And rising interest rates surely didn’t help. But those factors alone can’t explain the plight of Vintage.
The problems may have begun with the way that Vintage went public in 2021. Instead of the conventional mechanism — an initial public offering — Vintage instead merged with an already-public special purpose acquisition corporation, known as a SPAC. (Back in 2021, SPACs were all the rage.) Sometimes called blank-check companies, SPACs are companies formed just for the purpose of taking another company public through a merger.
The SPAC process does not require the same level of rigorous financial reporting as an IPO would, and it may have also put some time pressure on Vintage. “This one SPAC had just a few months to deploy that capital or else they’d have to return it to the original stakeholders,” said Rob McMillan, executive vice president of Silicon Valley Bank’s wine division.
Possibly due to that rushed timeline, Vintage ended up having some issues with its financial statements — all-important for a publicly traded company. Shareholders sued, alleging violations of securities laws related to reporting errors. In February 2023, Vintage announced it would have to reissue some of its financial reports, acknowledging that it had misclassified some of its assets. That same month, founder Pat Roney resigned as CEO.
To the outside, those two events looked like a clear sign that the business was in turmoil. And that was a surprise, because to those who were paying attention, Vintage had appeared poised for extraordinary success. In the decade before it went public, the company had seen a compounded average annual growth rate of 20%, Roney told me at the time. By going public, he could finance even more growth; he said he expected to buy three or four new wineries per year. Although the move did generate $600 million, Vintage never met that acquisition goal.
“Quite frankly, it was very impressive,” said Covenant Winery owner Jeff Morgan, who was never involved with Vintage but who shared a business partner — the late Leslie Rudd — with Roney. “In two decades, Pat built this enormous wine machine.”
And for a company of its size — producing two million cases last year, according to Wine Business — it sold an unusually large 30% share of its bottles directly to consumers, rather than through distribution, which meant much higher margins, according to Silicon Valley Bank’s McMillan. “That’s a really healthy model. I don’t know of any companies that are quite that large (whose direct sales are) that much a percentage of the revenue.”
Then again, some of those high-margin tasting rooms may have been in direct competition with each other, argued wine industry consultant Dale Stratton of Napa’s Azur Associates. He pointed to Clos Pegase and Girard, two Vintage-owned wineries that are similar in price and style. They’re literally across the street from each other in Calistoga. Ditto Kunde and B.R. Cohn in Sonoma Valley.
Stratton and McMillan cautioned against projecting Vintage’s fate onto other publicly traded wine companies, like Duckhorn, which also went public in 2021.
But there is one domino effect that the wine industry should expect to see now: a major disruption to its natural merger-and-acquisition cycle. Vintage has said it is pursuing “the sale of all or substantially all of the Company’s assets.” That means that about 1,800 acres of vineyard land and 11 physical wineries are now on the market, likely at a discount. Expect that to affect the price that other wineries and vineyards can command. “People who thought they’d want to sell their winery in 2025 — that’s going to be harder right now,” said Stratton.
Ironically, those are exactly the types of wineries that Roney probably would have loved to snatch up during Vintage’s heyday. “Pat had really great business acumen and the ability to see opportunity,” said Morgan, “especially in terms of seeing value in properties that were in decline.”
What I'm Reading
Is Gallo divesting from California’s Central Coast? It has closed the tasting room for Edna Valley Vineyard, a popular winery in San Luis Obispo, Karson Wells reports in KSBY. Gallo also sold Wild Horse Winery in nearby Paso Robles earlier this year.
New research from the Wine Market Council confirms what I’ve been noticing (certainly in my own household!) for some time now: White wine is more popular than red. Sarah Brown explains the data in Wine Business.
Chronicle urban design critic John King considers the legacy of architect Howard Backen, the “Frank Lloyd Wright” of Napa Valley, who died last week. “Backen’s best wineries tapped into a vernacular language of barns and modest materials,” King writes. “They often are tucked behind gated roads that lead up into the valley’s hills, unassuming at first glance but resonant with a sense of place.”
The national beer market may be experiencing its own decline, but one segment in the Bay Area appears to be booming: craft brewery taprooms. The Chronicle’s Mario Cortez reports on the trend.
SHOULDA CALLED SECURITY ON HIM
To the Editor:
What did the heads of the National Association of Black Journalists expect when they invited Donald Trump to speak at their conference? A normal conversation? A polite guest? No. They got the usual bloviating liar who ginned up more division, hate and destructive innuendos about Black people, and specifically about Kamala Harris.
Why did they give him a platform to spew this trash? He insulted them. He insinuated that Ms. Harris had rejected her Black identity. He said she didn’t pass her bar exam (she didn’t on her first try but did later). He used the group to rev up his base. That was disgraceful.
What the journalists should have done, once they realized his agenda, was to call security and have him ushered off the stage.
Myrna Lueck
Ypsilanti, Mich.
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
That is a totally invented outrage.
“Cat lady” has been a thing for years. I have seen endless memes about cat ladies. I have friends who are proud of being cat ladies.
But now they are going to turn it into an insult? That’s the power of propaganda.
It reminds me of when Timothy VcVeigh referred to the dead people in the OK federal building as “collateral damage”.
The talking heads went nuts. “How dare he refer to human beings as collateral damage!!! He is pure evil!”
But that had been a military term for years. How could they not know that?
They had to know. They were manufacturing outrage, just like they are doing with ”cat ladies”.
WHY TOURISTS ARE FLYING ACROSS THE WORLD TO COMMIT BIZARRE CRIME IN CALIFORNIA FORESTS
by Emma Richter
A group of 11 tourists from the United Kingdom traveled across the globe to climb the tallest tree and allegedly committed a crime while they did so.
In May 2022, a group of men with the Canopy Climbing Collective, a social tree-climbing club, scaled the top of Hyperion, a 380-foot tree in Redwoods National Park.
Simeon Balsam, the then-'leader' of the group and man behind the camera filming his buddies' controversial hobby, documented the alleged illegal act in an hour-long youtube video that was made 'to inspire and ignite love for the mighty old growth forests of California.'
It was later found that the tree climbing group did not obtain required permits to ascend the massive tree located in an ecologically sensitive habitat, according to park officials and court documents, obtained by SFgate.
Simeon told DailyMail.com: 'Unfortunately I'm not willing to speak about the climb, apart from I'm no longer a filmer for the group and have moved on to more meaningful projects.'
The group allegedly climbed during the breeding season of marbled murrelets, an endangered bird species that rely on the redwoods to nest and store their young.
The club has also been accused of climbing six redwood trees in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, and ziplining over a river bed, the outlet reported.
Balsam was issued a citation for 'plant disturbance — climbing in redwoods,' while the group's local guide, Michael Oxman, was issued a misdemeanor citation from a State Parks officer for 'endangering the safety of persons, property, resources,' according to State Parks records.
Balsam's citation required him to pay $130, but he has yet to do so, the Central Violations Bureau told the outlet.
'People want to climb the biggest trees out there. You’ll never stop people from wanting to venture into these canopies,' Balsam told SFgate.
"I have certain mixed emotions on decisions I made a few years back not being properly informed,' he added.
After watching Balsam's film, which amassed more than 58,000 views, Redwood National Park Deputy Superintendent Leonel Arguello was left terrified.
'It’s really shocking and unfortunate that they don’t understand the impact that they’re having,' he said.
Arguello said that Balsam and his crew's antics were 'the straw that broke the camel’s back,' as park officials now have to determine if they should close the area around Hyperion to visitors.
Balsam and his crew are members of LC Tree Care which is made up of a 'team of professional tree surgeons' that take care of trees in commercial and home gardens in the Hertfordshire area, according to the website.
Also known as 'tree poachers' or arborists, groups like this one have, in recent years, used their skills and equipment for recreational climbs.
The group of male climbers are not the only ones to embark on a climb in the sacred Redwoods, officials told SFGATE.
Stephen Troy, a National Park chief ranger, told the outlet that arborists have left trash and gear behind and damaged the trees in the process.
Officials have since tried to get ahead of the criminal acts by enforcing new restrictions and violations, including a $5,000 fine and six months in jail for those that break the rules.
In 2010, a traveler from the Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum at the University of Oxford acquired a permit to collect seeds in the ancient forest.
In addition to collecting seeds, the man decided to climb Hyperion, posting videos of his illegal activity online.
'That’s when I first realized there was going to be a problem,' Arguello told SFgate.
Although legal action was not taken against the man who traveled back to the UK, officials did ban him from the parks and informed the Oxford Botanic Gardens and Arboretum of what happened, Arguello said.
After that incident, the parks stopped giving permits to seed collectors from that organization.
Tim Kovar, who runs the world’s only legal redwood climbing operation, offers one redwood climb for nine days every year.
As his fame grew, Kovar started to get bombarded with calls and emails about people interested in climbing the redwoods.
'It got to the point where we would see ‘"redwood climbing" in the subject line and just go "delete, delete, delete,"' Kovar said.
'We didn’t want to promote climbing redwood trees, because of the delicate situation out there.'
The Redwood National and State Parks are composed of three California state parks - Redwood National Park, Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park.
The parks, located in Humboldt and Del Norte counties, are not just known to house the tallest trees on earth but also the oldest.
The forest initially spanned across more than two million acres of land in the Golden State.
(DailyMailUK)
THE SMEARING OF CORI BUSH FOR BEING TRUTHFUL ABOUT THE GAZA WAR
by Norman Solomon
Soon after the Gaza war began 10 months ago, a prominent newspaper columnist denounced Congresswoman Cori Bush under a headline declaring that “anti-Israel comments make her unfit for reelection.” The piece appeared in the newspaper with the second-largest readership in Missouri, the Kansas City Star. Multimillion-dollar attacks on Bush followed.
Bush’s opponent, county prosecutor Wesley Bell, “is now the number-one recipient of AIPAC cash this election cycle,” according to Justice Democrats. “Almost two-thirds of all his donations came from the anti-Palestinian, far-right megadonor-funded lobby group.” The Intercept reports that “AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, has gone on to spend a total of $7 million so far to oust Bush” in the Aug. 6 Democratic primary in her St. Louis area district.
“The $2.1 million in ads spent for her campaign is up against $12.2 million spent to attack her or support Bell,” The American Prospect points out. AIPAC “is trying to pull voters away from her without ever saying the words ‘Israel’ or ‘Palestine.’ Instead, their advertising against Bush centers around her record on infrastructure legislation, in a manner that lacks context.”
It's easy to see why AIPAC and allied forces are so eager to defeat Bush. She courageously introduced a ceasefire resolution in the House nine days after the bloodshed began on Oct. 7, calling for “an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine.”
The Kansas City Star article, published shortly after Bush introduced the resolution, was written by former New York Times reporter Melinda Henneberger, now a member of the Star’s editorial board. “A military attack in response to the massacre of civilians by a group committed in writing to ‘carnage, displacement and terror’ for Jews is not my idea of ‘ethnic cleansing,’” she wrote in early November. “But it is Missouri Rep. Cori Bush’s, which is why she deserves to lose her congressional race next year.”
Bush supposedly became unfit to keep her seat in Congress because, after three weeks of methodical killing in Gaza, she tweeted: “We can’t be silent about Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign. Babies, dead. Pregnant women, dead. Elderly, dead. Generations of families, dead. Millions of people in Gaza with nowhere to go being slaughtered. The U.S. must stop funding these atrocities against Palestinians.”
Henneberger’s response was hit-and-run. She wrote a hit piece. And then she ran.
Ever since late April, I’ve been asking Henneberger just one question, over and over. Every few weeks, I have sent another email directly to her. I also wrote to her care of an editor at the newspaper. And I even mailed a certified letter, which the post office delivered to her office in June.
No reply.
Henneberger’s column had flatly declared that Bush’s tweet was a “projectile spewing of antisemitic comments and disinformation” because it said that Israel was engaged in ethnic cleansing.
So, my question, which Henneberger has been refusing to answer for more than three months, is a logical one: “Do you contend that the Israeli government has not engaged in ethnic cleansing?”
If Henneberger were to answer no, the entire premise of her column smearing Bush would collapse.
If Henneberger were to answer yes, her reply would be untenable.
No wonder she has chosen not to answer at all.
What Israel has been doing in Gaza clearly qualifies as “ethnic cleansing” -- which a UN Commission of Experts defined as “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”
But denial about Israel’s massive and ongoing crimes against Palestinian people is pervasive -- and often used to attack principled progressives in election campaigns. And so, two months ago, in the St. Louis area, 35 rabbis supporting Bell against Bush issued a statement that alleged the congresswoman “continually fanned the flames with the most outrageous smears of Israel, accusing the Jewish state of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide’ as it has fought to defeat the terrorists.”
The electoral forces against human rights for Palestinians have been armed with huge amounts of cash. AIPAC dumped $15 million into successfully defeating progressive New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman early this summer. While the spending amount set a record, the approach was far from unprecedented.
In 2022, AIPAC beat Michigan Congressman Andy Levin, who had expressed support for Palestinian rights. “I’m really Jewish,” Levin said in an interview days before losing the Democratic primary, “but AIPAC can’t stand the idea that I am the clearest, strongest Jewish voice in Congress standing for a simple proposition: that there is no way to have a secure, democratic homeland for the Jewish people unless we achieve the political and human rights of the Palestinian people.”
AIPAC excels at strategic lobbying on Capitol Hill, relentlessly prodding or threatening lawmakers and their staffs to stay on the right side of a Zionist hardline, always brandishing the proven capacity to launch fierce attacks -- while conflating even understated criticism of Israel with antisemitism. The basic formulas are simple: Israel = Judaism. Opposition to Israel’s lethal violence = antisemitism.
Such formulaic manipulation has long been fundamental to claims that the Israeli government represents “the Jewish people” and criticisms of its actions are “antisemitic.”
That’s what the heroic Congresswoman Cori Bush is up against.
(Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including War Made Easy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in 2023 by The New Press.)
WAS IT A FAIR EXCHANGE?
Russia Got One Murderer And Seven Terrorists, Spies And Cyber Criminals Back. America? We Got Hostages Back. Innocent Civilians.
by John Sakowicz
Russians released as part of the deal:
- Vadim Krasikov, 58
Krasikov, a former high-ranking FSB colonel serving a life sentence in a German prison, was on the top of Moscow’s list of Russian prisoners it wanted to exchange.
Krasikov was convicted of the 2019 murder of the former Chechen fighter Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili in Berlin’s Kleiner Tiergarten.
The German court that convicted Krasikov in 2021 said he acted on behalf of the Russian state, shooting Khangoshvili “execution style” in broad daylight.
Khangoshvili fought against Russian forces during the Chechen wars and later relocated to Georgia, where he survived several assassination attempts. Wanted in Russia on terror charges, he was a particular thorn in the side of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader and close ally of Putin.
The Kremlin has made no secret of its desire to get Krasikov back to Russia, asking for him to be released in 2022 alongside Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer who was serving a 25-year sentence in the US, in exchange for Whelan and the WNBA star Brittney Griner.
When the US couldn’t get Krasikov released, Moscow refused to let Whelan go, even though the Biden administration offered several other people instead.
Earlier this year, a top aide to Alexey Navalny said the Russian opposition leader was just days away from being exchanged for Krasikov before he died mysteriously in a Russian penal colony. CNN was unable to independently confirm the plans.
- Vadim Konoshchenok, 48
Extradited to the US from Estonia earlier this month, Konoshchenok was facing charges of conspiracy over his role in a global procurement and money laundering network on behalf of the Russian government, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.
The US Attorney’s Office said in a statement that Konoshchenok is a Russian citizen with alleged ties to the FSB, the Russian intelligence agency. He is accused of being part of a scheme to provide sensitive, American-made electronics and ammunition to Russia, violating US export controls, economic sanctions and other criminal statutes.
- Vladislav Klyushin, 43
A Russian businessman, Klyushin was sentenced in Boston last year to nine years in prison for his role in what the US authorities called “an elaborate hack-to-trade scheme that netted approximately $93 million through securities trades based on confidential corporate information stolen from US computer networks.”
Klyushin was arrested in Sion, Switzerland, in March 2021 and extradited to the United States in December 2021. On top of his prison sentence, he was also ordered to forfeit more than $34 million and pay restitutions.
- Roman Seleznev, 40
Roman Seleznev is a convicted hacker and credit card fraudster who was serving a 27-year sentence in the US. Russian officials had previously asked for Seleznev – known as Track2, Bulba and Ncux 3 – to be part of the Griner and Bout exchange in 2022. The US agreed to that, but the deal fell apart when it was unable to offer Krasikov as well.
Seleznev was arrested in the Maldives in 2014. He was extradited to the US and sentenced in April 2017 for hacking into point-of-sale computers to steal and sell credit card numbers to the criminal underworld.
In November that year, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison for his role in a $50 million cyberfraud ring and for defrauding banks of $9 million through a hacking scheme. The two sentences were running concurrently.
- Artem Dultsev (age unknown)
Artem Dultsev is a Russian spy who was living undercover in Slovenia, posing as an IT businessman named Ludvig Gish.
He pleaded guilty to espionage at a court in Ljubljana on Wednesday and was sentenced to more than a year and half in prison, which the court said was equivalent to time spent. According to a statement from the court, he was set to be deported to Russia and was banned from entering Slovenia for five years.
- Anna Dultseva (age unknown)
Anna Dultseva, pleaded guilty to espionage alongside Dultsev on Wednesday. Also a Russian spy, she posed as an art dealer and gallery owner and is thought to be married to Dultsev. She went by the name Maria Rosa Mayer Munos. Like Dultsev, she was sentenced to time served and deportation.
- Mikhail Mikushin (age unknown)
Mikushin is a Russian spy arrested in Norway in 2022. He was working at the University of Tromsø in the Arctic Circle, pretending to be a Brazilian researcher.
- Pavel Rubtsov (age unknown)
A Russian spy who was living in Poland under the false pretense of being a Spanish journalist called Pablo Gonzales. He was arrested in February 2022, according to the Polish state news agency PAP.
John Sakowicz
cohost and coproducer
Heroes and Patriots Radio on KMUD
https://heroespatriots.org/
THE HARD ZONE
by Andrew O’Hagan
There was lightning in the sky over Chicago, and I was waiting at the airport. An announcement echoed across the departure gate: there was going to be a delay. I hadn’t looked at the book in front of me in more than 30 years – Norman Mailer’s ‘Miami and the Siege of Chicago,’ his two convention pieces from 1968 – and just as my phone began to buzz my eye landed on a sentence: “The reporter was a literary man – symbol had the power to push him into actions more heroic than himself.”
I picked up. “Are you safe?” my 20-year-old said.
“There’s none of us safe in the world.”
“No, I’m serious. Trump’s been shot or something.”
I got up CNN on my phone. “Loud bangs heard at rally; Trump whisked away with blood on face,” the headline said. It was all symbols. The red cap that said “Make America Great Again.” The tight little fist raised in defiance. The Stars and Stripes fluttering at the edge of the photograph. One of Trump’s favorite phrases is to say that a person or a thing is from central casting. And now he was: that bloodied face, the hero’s grimace, the whole thing like a campaign advert directed by John Ford.
In Milwaukee, I bumped into Robert Auth, a member of the New Jersey General Assembly, who began telling me and a Swedish journalist that the Republican Party had always been all about surviving and staying on course. “We’re shocked,” he said, “but we’ll go about our business.” He was wearing a blue cap that said: “Trump. 45th President.” He then spoke to CBS. “Someone else died – we’re horrified at that. But this is not going to stop Republicans from participating in the democratic process.”
“What about security?”
“I think Biden should also give a security detail to Robert Kennedy Jr.”
Since 1968, the number of “active shooter incidents” has grown steadily in America, almost tripling since 2015, with such events now seeming part of American normality. Some shootings scarcely make the news. The numbers – so much higher than Canada, so much lower than Guatemala – are deployed by people at either end of the argument, and the whole discussion is politicized, as if American reality must always be a matter of opinion and prejudice. It took only a few minutes for the attempt on Trump’s life to become the dark center of competing conspiracies, which is what very often passes for news and analysis in contemporary America. The talk shows lit up with hymns to carnage and theories about which “deep state” forces were behind the shooting.
J.D. Vance, author of the dads-and-crawdads memoir ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ and favorite at the start of the convention to be Trump’s pick for vice president, quickly issued a piercing dog-whistle. “Today is not just some isolated incident,” he posted on X. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to Trump’s attempted assassination.”
“Trump was just elected today, folks,” one supporter said. “He’s a martyr.” America loves a clear-cut victim just as much as it hates a generalized one. What it loves most is a hero. A survivor. The digital sphere was soon crowded with shocked obsequies from political leaders. “It was a movie,” a Turkish man told me when I arrived in the center of Milwaukee. “We have seen that before. He wants to get the firmer support of his followers. Because I can assure you, if someone from the other party shot him, he wouldn’t have missed.”
“Do you think President Trump would be bad for America?”
“Very,” he said, “because America will not exist anymore. He will be the ultimate judge and the ultimate policeman. We have seen all these scenarios before. All the extreme white supremacists will take to the streets, I guess.”
In the rush to recognize Trump’s new victim status, nobody seemed to be thinking about his own invocations of brutality. Before he was banned from Twitter, he had been warned for “glorifying violence.” He said Mexicans trying to cross the border illegally should be shot in the leg. At the time of the Black Lives Matter protests relating to the murder of George Floyd, he tweeted: “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” In July 2017, he advised police officers not to be “too nice” when handling suspects. He praised someone for body-slamming a reporter and encouraged supporters at a rally before the Iowa caucus in 2016 to “knock the crap out of” protesters, saying he would pay their legal fees. He has a history of inciting crowds: he awaits trial on an accusation of inciting the riot in the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. In Louisville, Kentucky in 2016, when confronted by protesters, he told his supporters to “Get ’em out of here.” Trump has always understood that violence is comprehended by one portion of his base and relished by another. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose voters, OK?” he said at one campaign rally. “It’s, like, incredible.” He has made his rallies places where the threat of violence might now and then be justified.
Milwaukee’s mayoralty was held on and off by socialists from 1910 until 1960. The city had German and Scandinavian immigrant roots, and was defined for a hundred years by its progressive and anti-slavery views. It was famous for what was sometimes called “sewer socialism” – Milwaukee’s socialists sometimes boasted about the local public sanitation system – but Emil Seidel, an early mayor, had higher ambitions. “We wanted a chance for every human being to be strong and live a life of happiness,” he said. “And we wanted everything that was necessary to give them that: playgrounds, parks, lakes, beaches, clean creeks and rivers, swimming and wading pools, social centers, reading rooms, clean fun, music, dance, song and joy for all. That was our Milwaukee Social Democratic movement.” This view of life flourished and then faltered, after a sequence of events that included the introduction in the 1930s of redlining (a sort of credit rationing where “good housing” in “good areas” could only be insured by white people, concentrating and racializing poverty in specific neighborhoods), then there was the devastating effect of the closing of local industries, followed by prolonged attacks on public sector unions and the denuding of local universities through huge budget cuts. The city was horribly gerrymandered in the 2010s. Paul Ryan, former Speaker of the House of Representatives and a native of Janesville, Wisconsin, acted as a wrecking ball on social care in the area and was a friend to people who believe that tax cuts are evidence of enlightenment. The Democrats had grown complacent (Hillary Clinton was so sure she would win Wisconsin in 2016 she scarcely visited). The sport of working-class people voting against their own interests has become a dependable spectacle in 21st-century America. Milwaukee remains one of the country’s most segregated cities, and Wisconsin is a battleground state that was won by Trump in 2016.
In Milwaukee, the mayor had received $75 million to host the RNC – “all gone in expenses,” an official told me, “we didn’t make a dime” – and it was hoped the uplift to the local economy would be considerable. The area around the convention center was called the Hard Zone by the security people. With assault weapons, batons, stun guns and, for all I knew, lasers, every entry was a Checkpoint Charlie. The surrounding streets were empty, filled with the vivid estrangement you experience at Disneyworld – the same stranded sense of jollity, bunting and junk food, at the still point where wonder meets commerce – all of it made stranger yet by the military paranoia that held it together.
Inside the Hard Zone, everybody had credentials, and security consciousness was a cult religion, with those who wanted to be safe accepting they were chained to a higher power. For the delegates, Christian faith is a form of specialness – the backbone of the “American exceptionalism” we would hear about all week – and its lessons seemed clear. It meant that God would protect them, as he protected Trump from the wicked shooter. God was very much in evidence, if never in actual attendance, in the Hard Zone, the cartoon world of the kettled Elect, alone together in this embattled world, cheek by jowl with the merchandise. “WANTED,” it said on many drinking vessels, with the police mugshot of former President Trump. There were gold lamé boots with a huge “T.” A mountain of teddies. Shot glasses. There were baseball caps for $30 and “Never Surrender” T-shirts in Republican red. “I’m Voting for the Felon 2024,” another T-shirt said, next to one giving parenting advice to Trumpian couples: “Raise Lions Not Sheep.”
“How much?” I asked.
“Fifty dollars for two,” he said. (Apparently nobody wants just one.)
There were bumper stickers. “Rigged 2020” was said to be very popular, along with “Mean Tweets 2024.”
“It’s got this beautiful soft brown cover on it,” a woman said of the Trump-endorsed Bible she got for $75 plus tax. “I love it,” she added. “It shows how much our future president is leaning into his faith.”
I spotted a man who was selling ‘The Collected Poems of Donald J. Trump.’ “It’s a breakthrough in literary development,” he said, “and it’s fun to have out when people come over.” I pondered on this. Maybe I needed new friends. The man was from Nashville and said I could have Volume One for $45. (Volume Two was coming soon, and, if Trump got elected, there would be a third volume provisionally titled ‘The Return of the King.’) “I think he’s the greatest poet of our generation,” the man said.
“Why?” I asked.
“I think he has done more to call attention to the use of the English language than anybody else in our time and he has been more creative with the usage.”
“Is he a modernist, a romantic?”
“One of the things that defines him is that he defies all boundaries. And he is constantly reinventing himself – a bit like Picasso.”
“As a politician?”
“The politics are kind of secondary for us. We’re here for the art.”
“I know you’ll say he’s incomparable,” I said. “But if you had to compare him with another artist, who would it be?”
“It would be Picasso,” he said. “Or Shakespeare, who’s a bit of a poet. People who defined a new movement in their time.”
The New York Times ended a few days of self-suppression with a summation of the Trump lobby’s atmospherics. “For Donald J. Trump’s most ardent supporters,” it said, the assassination attempt on Saturday was the climax and confirmation of a story that Mr. Trump has been telling for years. It is the story of a fearless leader surrounded by shadowy forces and intrigue, of grand conspiracies to thwart the will of the people who elected him. A narrative in which Mr. Trump, even before a gunman tried to take his life, was already a martyr.
History often starts with a photo. The transfer from digital capture to T-shirt might take less than an hour. And there it was on the morning the convention opened, the latest instalment in the commercialization of savagery. Interestingly, the violent culture Trump promoted is now beatifying him as its most famous victim. He had mouthed “Fight! Fight!” as he was pulled off the stage and thereby brought his own bullet-points into company with their resounding dénouement, a bullet that clipped its mark. The iconography of his fist-pump and bloodied face immediately became the image he had waited for all his life, as – on the floor, with mad bravery and media savvy beyond the bounds of reason – he prepared for the photo-op. “Let me get my shoes. Wait. Wait,” he said. In a country where a combined $2.7 billion will be spent on presidential campaign ads, Trump knew by instinct that he was about to have a priceless advert that would play for ever on the networks and define him as the hero of his own hour. The real heroes, of course, were his security detail, who threw their bodies over his, and whose lives he risked by breaking cover and presenting himself to the cameras. “Fight” was the word he used to the agitators on January 6, 2021, when he encouraged them to defend democracy and go to the Capitol, a journey that led to five deaths (nine if you include the suicides of four police officers). The blood this time was not on his hands, it was on his face, a fact that served to reverse engineer all his warnings, making him seem like an American savior who took a bullet for his own people.
The shooter, Thomas Crooks, was wearing a T-shirt for a YouTube channel called DemolitionRanch, which has 11.7 million subscribers. He was a registered Republican who donated $15 to ActBlue, a register-to-vote pressure group. He was killed instantly by Secret Service snipers who had failed to see him climbing onto a neighboring rooftop with an AR-15. A person familiar with local gun laws told me it wasn’t unusual to see people at Trump rallies or in adjacent car parks and towns carrying rifles. “Crooks hadn’t actually done anything illegal,” he said, “until he climbed up on that roof.”
I couldn’t help but see all of this as the ultimate political fiction of the modern era. I kept imagining it as a short novel, in which a nominee, desperate to achieve completion and electability, stages his own attempted assassination, drawing on all his reality TV expertise, all his dark arts, surrounded by willing performers, even a willing shooter, who is “shot” at the scene by pretend shooters, and taken away, as the candidate is, while the world’s media covers its mouth in disbelief. This fantasia, a fiction inside a fiction inside a reality, had the vital energy of seeming more plausible than the truth. And that is our world. Conspiracy nowadays may be as fleet as thought, and theories of fiction gather around every true event. “Theories emerged that Trump had engineered the shooting himself for votes,” Fiona Hamilton wrote in the Times, or the opposite narrative that it had been carried out by the “deep state,” got hundreds of thousands of engagements within hours. Experts warned that up to 50% of accounts spreading key false narratives were themselves fake. Imran Ahmed, managing director of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, told the Times that “we saw a vast proliferation of false and speculative narratives. It’s almost inevitable that when an event of such seismic magnitude occurs, people are trying to reconcile what they know with what they already believe and feel,” he said.
Hashtags like #stagedshooting got tens of millions of views.
At the dead center of the Hard Zone, in the Fiserv Forum, the balloons were inflated and netted aloft, ready to be released in a few days’ time. Making my way through the delegates, I heard the news that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had been given Secret Service protection. Trump said on Truth Social that this was the right thing to do, “given the history of the Kennedy family.” There was extra buzz around the iconic lookalike (actually lunatic anti-vaxxer) because of the shooting, but also because his son, the punitively named Robert Kennedy III (a “writer-director-actor”) had released a recording on X of his father and Trump having a bonkers conversation about the vaccine. Kennedy isn’t going away.
I was told that Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old tech billionaire who dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination in January after finishing fourth in the Iowa caucuses, had considered the relentless RFK Jr as his running mate. In his bid to become president, Ramaswamy also suggested that he would pardon Trump, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, and that he intended to fire 75% of federal employees. Anyone who thinks that Project 2025 – the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page document about what should happen in Trump’s second term, advocating the transformation of institutions and the replacement of 50,000 government employees with Trump loyalists – does not reflect the deeper wishes of Trump’s younger circle should watch Ramaswamy as closely as they watch J.D. Vance. For these guys, RFK Jr. is closer to the mainstream than he’s imagined to be by the party faithful, who are yet to be persuaded by the more frightening ideas of Trump’s anti-globalist youth movement. (They will be. And some.) I was surprised by all the fuss about RFK Jr. – a man who thinks that if children drink tap water it will make them transgender.
Before going into the convention hall, I encountered Ramaswamy and held up my recorder as he expounded on unity. It takes a truly intelligent man to be so stupid. He wanted to oppose “the fake astroturf version of unity” and go for something real, he said, but he didn’t acknowledge for a second how divisive Trump is. He believes “the deep enemy is the void at the heart of our country.” A former libertarian, Ramaswamy had the shaped eyebrows and the tailored trousers of the Millennial puritan, the sort of self-discovered American who loves the idea of the future and is obsessed with evil. His parents are “legal” immigrants from India, and his own story of success in making multi-millions has convinced him that everywhere is set fair for brown and black people in modern America. (He fools himself in the same way as every one of the black politicians who were happy to mount the podium for Trump, men made stupid by their own good fortune, who claim there is no prejudice in Trump’s heart.) Ramaswamy wanted to be suavely philosophical about the shooting: it was a lesson, not an opportunity. “This is an occasion for all Americans to step back and ask ourselves ‘Who are we?’” he said. “Do we actually care about this country and preserving one nation under God?”
It had been 20 years since I last wandered the blaring halls of a Republican National Convention, but this time it was extra-jubilant, no doubt because the God who appeared to lift the room had actually shown himself, if you go in for that sort of thing, in a concatenation of luck for Trump that defies belief. In a few short weeks, his opponent, President Biden, had made a catastrophic showing at their first TV debate, then Trump had survived a volley of bullets from a young lone-wolf member of his own party, and then, on the first day of the convention, a judge in Florida had dismissed the federal criminal case against him for hoarding classified government documents at his Palm Beach estate. He has other cases to face, but the sun was certainly shining on Trump.
Within days, he had transformed all of his follies into glories, all of his previous convictions into conquests, all of his party enemies into loyalists, and all of his personal, egotistic weaknesses, abundant and profound, into a show of strength that would baffle political science. To the ordinary mind, Trump’s return may represent the victory of shamelessness over accountability. Reality is no longer a thing to agree on, but a battle you’ve almost certainly lost.
The notion of Trump’s heroism did not diminish at the convention: it was raised beyond the roof, with senators calling him “America’s Braveheart.” (I took more than ordinary exception to that one, but never mind.) The lies and distortions in Trumpian politics are so wild and continuous it’s impossible to tame them, and no reckoning with their own deep violence was ever likely to occur. Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson of North Carolina was due to speak that first day, a black man deeply committed to the happy fiction that Donald Trump and his followers are not at all racist. But Robinson goes the extra mile. He’s a prince of violent talk who opposes violence when it touches the dispenser of his political privilege. “Some folks need killing,” he said in a sermon on June 30 at the Lake Church in Bladen County. But from the podium in Milwaukee he thanked his God and Savior, before telling the audience about his former poverty, how he lost two jobs, a car and a house, before being saved so that he could tell the story. “There is hope and I am proof,” he said. The audience hollered as if the truth was as clear as spring water. There were few black people in the hall, but the ones who were up on stage had nothing to say about that, repeating instead that America would only be safe in the hands of Donald Trump.
I had breakfast with a guy I won’t name. He came from outside the world where outsiders make a living in American politics. He had the facts. “Listen,” he said, “there are racists among the Democrats too. You can be against slavery without being against racism.” This seemed almost Hemingwayesque in its clarity. “A lot of urban Republicans might vote for Trump, but they don’t want to,” he said. “Outside the city it’s Trump signs and ‘Fuck Biden’ signs, just remember that.” At the convention center, the people were bussed in from places that don’t have TV studios. “The problem is the Trump-curious, but I have to tell you I’m stunned and terrified that he even has a chance.”
“I want to kiss his poor ear,” one of the delegates from Kentucky said. She and her friend were cozying up to a giant Trump poster in the foyer of the forum. I was shattered all over again by the blunt-force orangeness of the man, and it didn’t help – given my native Catholic hopes about the beauty of the saints – that, despite his personal unbecomingness, he had lovingly been raised to a condition of latter-day martyrdom. Down on the floor, Governor Tate Reeves was describing his state, Mississippi, as “home to B.B. King, Elvis, Faulkner and the best catfish in the entire world.” Surrounded by blonde women, Reeves stood in the glory of his self-belief, his pink cheeks swelling. (“Dreams have only one owner at a time,” Faulkner wrote. “That’s why dreamers are lonely.”)
In my worst nightmares, people are pink and full of acclamation and they sleepwalk into theocracy, just like this. Yet humor lurked in quiet corners. The delegation from New Jersey barked on cue and were, to the roots of their hair and the silk of their ties, like a bunch of strip-joint habitués, a side contingent from the Bada Bing. “I want you to want me,” sang the band, a collection of brainwashed hipsters from 1973, drilling for sound so far down the middle of the road that it was coming out in Australia.
I sat down for a while and considered the matter of Gerald Ford. “The political lesson of Watergate is this,” he once said. “Never again must America allow an arrogant, elite guard of political adolescents to bypass the regular party organization and dictate the terms of a national election.” But the delegates from Texas were not listening to my thoughts; they were waving their cowboy hats. Well into the first evening the speeches tumbled forth: the poor ones flowed together, and nearly all of them were poor, a tam-tam of unspeakable prejudices masquerading as public policy. Take it from me that they abused the word “Again” and always gave it a capital “A.” Make America Great Again – or “Once Again,” as if to underscore the implausible redux – was repeated so often that one began to wish for the tepid days before nations had to be great. I say that, of course, as a person from Great Britain, who wishes for a life less excessive (Again).
The preferred inoculation that day was “Make America Wealthy Once Again,” and it felt rich – richest – to close your ears. But I’m a professional man. I watched with all the curdled hope of a reality-poacher, the ruined ambition of a fact-checker, and I felt refrigerated up in the bleachers as the hours burned. At 3.52, the band went south, and “Let’s Build America First” came out all hillbilly, a companion to J.D. Vance as he made his way into the hall, having been picked as Trump’s running mate. Vance, aged 39, the bumpkin latest of a Scots-Irish tribe and the son of a former junkie who once tried to crash her car, with him in it, into a tree, is the first Millennial to present as White House material and brings an amazing combination of brutality and evangelical survival narrative to the table. He ended up at Yale Law School, having escaped from a house, God bless him, in which his grandmother liked to keep nineteen loaded handguns, just in case. Now isn’t that the sort of person whose twitching fingers you want to have on the nuclear codes?
“J.D. Vance! J.D. Vance!” the forum chanted.
I’ll take that as a yes.
Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin senator, complained about “biological males competing against girls.” I suspect he will never know how sinister he sounds speaking about “girls,” but his transphobic contortions were entertainingly undercut by the public address system, which erupted into “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People, an anthem so queer it almost sashayed away with the whole afternoon. Trump himself, the Nijinsky of dad dancing, was up on the big screen working his elbows and murdering the tune. I was about to ask the woman beside me, from the good state of Kentucky, which member of the Village People she would most like to have sex with if the opportunity arose, but then she started cheering for Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right representative of Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, who was telling the hall that Joe Biden “gave us Trans Visibility Day instead of Easter Sunday.” Then Greene closed her theater of hate and headed for the exit in her glittery gold stilettos.
Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota took to the podium to praise Trump and say that nobody had endured as much as he had. “They’ve attacked his reputation, they impeached him, they tried to bankrupt him and they unjustly prosecuted him. But even in the most perilous moment this week, his instinct was to stand and to fight.”
“Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”
“Amen,” a man from New Mexico said. We both knew the word “fight” was now owned by Donald Trump.
Eventually, like a dark knight returning – or a dark night everlasting – Trump appeared on the screen from the bowels of the building. Like a prize wrestler, he was followed by lights and camera into the arena, buoyed, guarded, pimped by his attendants, the music blaring and his face a rictus of childish defiance. It was his first public appearance since the shooting, and hilarity arrived, as it always will, in the shape of a Lilliputian white pillow fastened to the side of Trump’s head, over the injured ear. Swift himself might have enjoyed the drama over the Distressed Lobe.
Former congressman Gary Franks of Connecticut told me the tone of the convention was going to be “muted.” They were doing well in the polls, and it was good politics to avoid all the fire and brimstone. “The Democrats are wounded,” he said, “so let them bleed out.”
Trump had reached his enclosure. He shook hands with the doom-slinging former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, then patted Vance on the arm.
“Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!” the delegates chanted, punching the air. The crowd was delirious and ready for action.
“Now it feels like a convention,” Franks said.
On July 16, at the convention perimeter, a 43-year-old homeless black man called Samuel Sharpe Jr. was shot dead by five police officers from Ohio, who were in Milwaukee to help with the security effort around the RNC. The victim was living in a tent with his dog and was said to have produced two knives and threatened another man living in the same encampment. Alderman Robert Bauman, who represents the area, said that the killing would not have happened if the police officers had been local. They “would have known … this is King Park, this is a known area for homeless to camp out, folks with mental disabilities in here – tread carefully, de-escalate.” The visiting police wouldn’t know King Park from Central Park.
“Make America Safe Once Again” was in full swing at the convention. Nobody mentioned guns or police violence. Nobody mentioned nuclear deterrence. Nobody mentioned the climate crisis or pesticides or protecting women’s abortion rights.
“Safe,” at the RNC, means safe from illegal immigrants, and speaker after speaker spoke of an “invasion.” Tom Homan, a sort of minister for deportation, a man from New York who seems proud of his own coarseness, drew tremendous approval from the delegates, particularly the Southern ones, by speaking about “a record number of known and suspected terrorists sneaking across the border.” Whom would he classify as a terrorist? Someone seeking humanitarian protection? Like so much else that was said to great applause, to shouts of “Amen,” Homan shied away from the available facts, provided by the US Customs and Border Protection Service itself, that “encounters of watchlisted individuals at our borders are very uncommon.”
After a whole day of criminals sneaking across the border – rapists, murderers, Fentanyl suppliers “killing our children” – I wanted to ask a question. Is America itself, along with the Republican nominee for president, living out a fantasy of persecution, ignoring the fact that America has always been a place where vulnerable people could seek a life, as the families of Marco Rubio, Vivek Ramaswamy, Ron DeSantis and Ted Cruz did? “Stop Biden’s border bloodbath,” screamed the placards presented to Cruz when he mounted the podium, from which he spoke of Americans “murdered, assaulted, raped by illegal immigrants that the Democrats have released.” These politicians, with Trump as their puppet-master, are forever talking about America as the “greatest nation that ever existed,” yet the irony is that they make it sound like a place of perpetual darkness. When speaking of safety, not one of them spoke about foreign alliances or accords, nor did they mention NATO or Russia. None of them mentioned the Middle East, except to raise a salute to Israel, and none discussed AI. I’ve been to conventions before, but this was the most intellectually empty.
“Send them back! Send them back.”
On the third evening, the stage went quiet for a few minutes and a small man emerged from the wings wearing full military uniform. His name was William Pekrul. He was 98 years old and the father of eleven children. Pekrul had served in Normandy, and he spoke with zeal and punched the air in support of the American ideal. Everybody stood, just as they had for the “Gold Star Families” who lost serving family members during the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and though many of the delegates delighted in Sergeant Pekrul and were moved to tears to think of the Greatest Generation, all the leading speakers made it clear that, in Trump’s world, there would be no standing up to fascist dictators. Vance, the new kid on the block, may wring his heart out over the great defenders of freedom, but he won’t be one himself.
America First. America last. Trump’s march to the podium, baroque Band Aid in place, was encouraged by younger men who already see a life after him. Their eyes are already on 2028. To Vance and the Trump boys and their wives, as well as the young intake who adore Trump’s “courage,” earlier Republican presidents had a fatal interest in allies and globalism. The biggest lesson of the 2024 convention in Milwaukee was about “economic nationalism,” an America where borders can be shut down and foreign treaties ripped up, to be replaced with tariffs, self-protection, and the art of the deal, with “the working man” a compliant army. Trump’s great gift to the next generation was to teach them that you can say anything. Nothing need be true. You can say what you like and believe what you like, and if you say it with a straight face, other people will say and believe it too. In such a world, the Iraq War can be blamed on Biden, America can boast about being energy dominant (“Drill, baby, drill!”) and Vance can describe Britain under Labour as the “first truly Islamist state” with nuclear weapons. Allies can be insulted. Dictators fêted. And the convention audience, struck by the “ordinariness” of this rich, soap-operatic family, find they can ignore all the little things and make space for those feelings that move them to tears. “I went to prison so as you don’t have to!” said Peter Navarro, another Trump ally who broke the law. It isn’t true, but it’s nice to have someone who thinks about you like that.
Trump’s second chief of staff, John Kelly, used to refer to his boss’s White House as “Crazytown.” According to The Divider, Susan Glasser and Peter Baker’s riveting account of Trump’s presidency, Kelly, who thought Trump was the most flawed person he’d ever met, bought a copy of a book called ‘The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump’ (written by 27 mental health professionals) to help him deal with the erratic president. It occurred to me during the week of the convention that if you want to identify a father’s mania, it’s sensible to look at his sons. Donald Trump Jr. bestrode the stage like a colossus of nothing, with the self-regard that stands for something with people who believe that wealth is a talent. With the Trumps, having no historical imagination is a defense mechanism. Now is the only place that matters, now is the only currency and now is a narcissist’s bunker. Beneath a helmet of gelled hair, the younger Donald smirked at the TV cameras. The assassination attempt, he said, was an event that had “once seemed unimaginable.”
“Er, no,” I said to the woman beside me, a delegate from California. “It’s exactly imaginable, if you know about Lincoln, Kennedy or Ronald Reagan.”
“Detail,” she said.
“The truth is that my father is a malignant presence, a bully and a liar. This is the day his reign ends. He’s a fucking beast. Maybe the poison drips through. I don’t wanna be you. I can’t forgive you. There are times to be someone. I’m a good guy. Fuck the weather, we’re changing the cultural climate. I’m the eldest boy!”
That’s what was going through my mind, not Trump Jr.’s anodyne nonsense but the ravings of that other daddy-obsessed, spoiled dickwad, ‘Succession’s’ Kendall Roy. At one point in his speech, Trump Jr. acted as if he cared about the price of groceries. He cared about democracy. “All hell has broken loose in America,” he said. But only one thing is certain: Donald Trump Jr. knows as much about the price of groceries, or about democracy, as his father does, and the masochism of his empty days involves repeating for a living the old man’s lies. “Who’s running things?” he asked, slick and over-groomed under the lights.
“Obama!” the Florida delegation shouted.
“The cartel,” Arizona shouted.
On the final night, the audience looked as if the life had been squeezed out of it by the ferocious bear-hug, the repetition of the same dozen phrases that stood in for policy, vision and hope. Tucker Carlson mounted the stage without notes or teleprompter to offer a portrait of his good friend Donald Trump. Like all of them, he found it hard to see the assassination attempt for what it was: a terrible action by a young man who was a registered Republican, and a lucky escape by a politician whose advocacy of violent behavior should now give him pause. No: the shooter was somehow the latest form of Democratic “persecution,” and “the president” a hero, a leader of nations and the bravest man ever to have lived, for putting on his shoes and raising his fist amid a thicket of far braver guardians.
Hulk Hogan, a retired wrestler with a moustache as drooping as his morals (he was caught on a sex tape using the N-word and has been accused of homophobia), suddenly stormed onto the stage. Wrestling is to sport what Republican politics is to morality, falsification in the interests of entertainment. Trump’s politics is like the madder branch of wrestling, a brutal comedy of insults, but the lack of respect for reality means that all the gains are phony. The only limitations being tested are the limitations of showbusiness. Trump appeared on the stage amid a whiteout of theatrical lighting. He mumbled and preened for the better part of two hours, a toe-curling paragon of fake humility, giving voice to incendiary ideas and untruths that can be disproved in seconds. The day he was shot, there was “blood all over the place,” not the trickle we could see in the image above him. “Venezuela is sending its murderers to the United States of America … The invasion into our country [is] killing hundreds of thousands of people a year.” Then he boasted of things he had never done and made promises he can never keep. He has the warped mind, we already know, of a not especially bright 15-year-old who watches too many horror films and takes part in too many apocalyptic combat games. “Depression,” “despair,” “disaster,” “danger,” “corruption” and “insanity” – these are the words he used to conjure his American nightmare, a picture of violence in which he himself is deeply etched.
While he spoke, and the energy drained from the hall, people out there in the world of facts were checking everything he said. My favorite correction came from Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers. “Trump is a scab and a billionaire and that’s who he represents. We know which side we’re on. Not his.” Stick that in your “hard-working man” hillbilly piety, J.D. Vance. In fact, as the speech made clearer than ever, Vance just about got it right – eight years before accepting his place on the ticket – when he said that Trump has the makings of “an American Hitler.” His intellectual cousins, if such a thing can be said without laughter, are not Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, who were globalists in their own damaged way – no, Trump’s tradition of white Christian nationalism, as well as his middle-finger politics and his “America First” ranting, comes from David Duke, the former grand wizard of the KKK; from George Wallace, the segregationist governor and former presidential nominee; from Joe McCarthy, who thought America was being overrun by aliens; and from lynch-happy Pat Buchanan, protector of the rights of the white, property-owning elite.
I listened to the words and stared for an hour at the netted balloons. High over the arena they waited to drop into all this chaos, all this celebratory prejudice. The man who denied the results of the election, who raised a desperate army, who incited hatred, violence and dismay all around him, who stole documents, who paid people off, who exhibited gangsterism and was convicted for concealing the truth, who was ordered to pay $83 million to a woman he defamed and who accused him of rape, this man – this candidate – was lecturing the people and promising to save America from those who opposed him. I looked at him one last time. Just as he was praising the Hungarian mobster and press-hater Viktor Orbán – to a round of applause – my mind began to wander to that children’s film about the red balloon that drifts above the streets of Paris and is loosed into a universe of hope. Outside, the evening was fresh, and people were gathering to rejoin the city and get away from all this. A balloon popped, and I turned like everybody else to make sure it wasn’t a gun.
(London Review of Books)
Jim Jones…
Mr. AVA,
The only woman journalist I remember calling Jim Jones out on what he was, was Rena Lynn who wrote for The Willits News.
Jones threatened Ms. Lynn to the point that the local police kept an eye on the office on South Main in Willits.
I was friends with Ms. Lynn’s son who became her private security guard during that episode. Fortunately, her son knew his way around trouble.
Nothing ever came of the threats, but things were a little dicey for a while.
And Ms. Lynn was never fired. She eventually married a Chicago millionaire and walked off into the sunset.
Be well,
Laz
Thanks Laz, I was having trouble finding anything at the UDJ and the Willits newspaper isn’t archived where I have a subscription.
Interesting story of a brave journalist– and a happy ending for sure, off to Chicago and rich to boot. Thanks much for the post.
Thank you, Chuck,
The man had moved from Chicago to be near family in Willits. However, he had recently sold a textile company, which at the time, was one of the few companies that rented Cap and Gowns to graduates across the Country. $$$!
He built her a fabulous house in the east hills and they lived many happy years together.
Have a good day,
Laz
Olympics Boxing?
Yesterday I witnessed a man claiming to be a woman in a boxing ring with a woman win the match by default.
After a knockdown, the real woman wisely and maturely withdrew from the match.
This venue of the Paris Olympics is shameful and ignorant.
The Biden Administration is expanding Title Nine, passed decades ago, to protect women’s sports.
The Biden Administration ignores men competing as women in college sports, and now this, from the IOC.
All the Women’s Boxing Teams at the Olympics should withdraw from their competitions that allow men, in protest!
Where the hell is the outrage?
Have a nice day…
Laz
The media is claiming this fighter is a woman. Her opponent seems to think otherwise. Regardless, there won’t be any pushback because the democrat media doesn’t want to alienate a portion of their voting base. Inclusion and womans rights are their campaign highlights but they happen to be fighting each other.
https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/imane-khelif-boxing-gender-controversy-olympics-amy-broadhurst-b2590060.html
This publication is based in Great Britain, it’s not a “democrat media”. Nor does this have anything to do with the Biden administration or Title IX. The two boxers at the center of this controversy have fought against and lost to women for many years. Their disqualifications and bans seem to be the result of extremely sketchy and arbitrary test procedures that the IBC has refused to release. The IOC administers completely different and far more extensive tests. Not that it will change either of your minds.
And btw, I’m against allowing men who merely identify as women to participate in women’s sports. But I’m open-minded if they go through the entire sex change procedure.
If she was born female it’s fair game. If she was banned because of synthetic testosterone then she isn’t allowed to fight at any level. My question is, why did the IBA ban her?
“My question is, why did the IBA ban her?”
Along with their test results/procedures, that’s the question the IBA refuses to answer.
To be obvious ” You know it when you see it.” However, there is that XY chromosome issue the two guys have.
It is what it is…
Laz
Add reading recommendation: “Already Dead” (1997) by the late great Denis Johnson. Mendo coast dark noir. Johnson, a National Book Awardee, moved to the coast to “research” the novel and liked it so much he was at his Sea Ranch house when he died in 2017.
ALETHEA PATTON, Lazarus, and others may find the history of Lake County and the entire region’s indigenous inhabitants helpful to understand the extent to which “European Settlers” overran the populations of interior and coastal Pomo Indians, as documented by the county’s notable archaeologist, Dr. John Parker. The most significant incidents of brutality, torture, enslavement, and murder established through Dr. Parker’s rigorous historical research can be found in records published here: https://wolfcreekarcheology.com.
Contemporary efforts to restore the original lands of Lake County’s “East Lake” tribe (a.k.a. Elem Indian Colony, Elem Pomo Tribe, Sulphur Banks Indian Rancheria) are described on the website created by the tribe’s elder James Browneagle on this website: https://eastlaketribe.com. Browneagle’s unsuccessful run for County Supervisor in 2014 — and the county’s “basis in legalized theft” — were noted by one of the AVA’s most respected journalists, Will Parrish, on August 2, 2014: https://theava.com/archives/31989.
Thank you Betsy.
Re: the What Gives cartoon showing ET commentary on our bad polluting habits:
That’s actually a sentiment conveyed by various ET visitors interacting with humans.
Available and vetted data from close encounters cases:
https://www.et-cultures.com/post/a-briefing-glimpses-of-uap-related-non-human-intelligences-and-their-activities
By the way, where’s that report on trade talks between ET and the spacey US guvamint? As far as I am concerned, there have been NO interactions with humans and ET, just a bunch of human nonsense and wishful thinking. ETs, if they’re smart (or dumb) enough to travel vast distances and have encounters with other beings, would not waste time with a plundered, gutted planet like earth with its stupid top monkeys. To me their “visits” are sort of like the phenomenon of never getting a clear picture of a Yeti, in the age of autofocus. Enjoy your dream world and let’s see that damned report!
Native Americans in this area are sometimes viewed as defenseless victims, but they were actually the bustling center of a well-defined culture that spread all over the west. People in Mendocino County and probably Lake County, too, were well off in that they had many assets to trade with other tribes. Wampum was made here, out of the plentiful shell resources, and of course, dried salmon was a popular item. Basketry was obviously a strong point, as was salt, which could be obtained at the coast and brought back to the Ukiah valley, (along with various delicious sea foods that could be dried and traded) The Ukiah valley was a trading hub. There was also quite an acorn harvest and this may also have been a desirable item to people from areas that were not so blessed with the mighty oaks.The Pomos had strong laws regarding outside “visitors” which, when clearly understood, simply meant making sure you has permission to step over the tribal boundary, otherwise the penalty could be death. Everyone Native American apparently understood this and performed accordingly. However, ignorant white people thought they could tear up Pomo laws and civilization. We paid the price, and the results are all around us. Crime, pollution, unemployment, and on and on, it being pretty circular. Native Americans have suffered too, but they seem to be making inroads back, thanks to their innately matriarchal society, and the tribal wisdom of the chiefs. There is still much to be done to mend our mistakes, and learn from each other.
Well stated.
Thank you! Unable to sleep last night (due to Covid) I studied the Native Americans on the east coast, especially Canada. They also had a matriarchal society. They had a central government that brought together five tribes, early on probably the 1450’s, or even earlier. Then one more tribe joined in the 1700’s making this unified group called the “Six Nations”. According to what I read (pretty basic) the Mohawks believed in equality and adopted captives taken during warfare., who were completely folded into the tribe, even white people (this was actually fairly common, thus the Mohawks are not as “Native” looking as people might think, having mixed with other races for so many generations). The male captives could become chiefs and the women could marry into chief’s families. I don’t know how the Pomos handled such cases, but assume they had few of them, since, because of their strict rules, there was little to no warfare.
You might be interested in the First Nations Experience Channel, FNX, which is an over-the-air–channel here in Wyoming–(and probably satellite/cable). It originates from Southern California It’s not bad, and it airs Democracy Now! at seven PM on weekdays here, followed by news from Indian Country. It’s affiliated with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and apparently is headquartered around San Bernardino. It’s kinda nice to watch programming from a native perspective.
In 1990, as preparation for service on the Grand Jury, I read 30 years of back GJ reports. I never found Jim Jones listed as a foreman. The actuality was more distressing. He served as chairman of the 1971 Law Enforcement sub-committee.
I was sure he was foreman in ’74 or ’75. Thank you for the correction.
Jim Jones was the Grand Jury foreman in 1967 when Thomas Braun and Leonard Maine were indicted for the murder of Timothy Luce and the attempted murder of Susan Bartolomei.
Jim Jones was indeed Chairman of the 1967 Mendo County Grand Jury. There is a photo-cap story in the Feb. 13, 1967 Ukiah Daily Journal. Jones was selected as foreman by Judge Robert Winslow. I’ve emailed Bruce a copy of the photo and caption.
’67? Amazing, much earlier than I’d thought. The guy had only been in the county for a couple of years. A rather spectacular example of how politically porous this place is.
Give up the ghost on Pacific Internet already. It’s so 20th century i.e. unreliable (obviously). I hope you’re not running the whole website through Pacific Internet!