Mendocino County Today: Saturday 8/3/2024

Hills | Hot Interior | FFA Showing | Spring Grant | Ukiah Construction | Plum Paradise | Ed Notes | Local Events | Catsylvania | Gulch | Milligan Art | Night Out | Jim Jones | Rena Lynn | Grand Jury | Mycue CV | Yesterday's Catch | Ants | Thistle Bees | Marco Radio | Marin CCC | Give Me Something | Marina Safeway | Apocalympics | Wild Horses | Such Mush | CA Unemployment | Disgraceful Bout | No Kids | Rental Library | Good Thing | Turbulence Ahead | Anytime Anywhere | Kamala Time | Great Novelist | Pre-Crime Enforcement | Prairie Sky

---

---

ISOLATED SHOWERS or thunderstorms are possible in the interior today. Otherwise, hot and dry weather is expected in the interior for the next 7 days. Temperatures are expected to peak Wednesday before slowly diminishing later in the week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 55F with a lot of high clouds & fog on the coast this Saturday morning. Drizzle & cloudy this weekend with maybe some clearing? More fog & clouds than sun for next week.

---

BOONVILLE/AV FUTURE FARMERS OF AMERICA

Day 1 at the Redwood Empire Fair was all about rabbits and chickens. We showed from morning until after dark. We had lots of successes and a disappointment. It was a terrific day overall.

Rabbit Market Show - Lupe’s rabbit meat pen places 5th and Viri’s placed 4th. Sadly, Jennifer’s was DQ because of an imperfection that went unnoticed.

Poultry Meat Show was awesome!

Nayely earned Champion FFA Meat Pen. Jaciel earned Reserve Champion FFA Meat Pen! They both have worked so hard and have made a great team!

The FFA members also participated in showmanship and the bred shows.

The intensity of FFA Novice Swine Showmanship.

Great job Samantha! Second place!

---

LARRY SPRING MUSEUM AWARDED GRANT TO RE-EXAMINE HISTORICAL TIMELINE

---

UKIAH CONSTRUCTION UPDATES FOR THE WEEK OF AUGUST 5:

We’re so close! The striping is nearly done as of the writing of this email. Landscapers are onsite, and next week, the trees, plants, benches, and more will be installed.

On Monday, we anticipate that crews will be drilling new holes in the sidewalks for the American flags that are displayed on some holidays.

Street signs are being installed in the next couple of weeks. When the parking time limit signs are installed, that will trigger the restart of parking enforcement on State Street (in the construction zones).

And finally, AT&T is still onsite removing their telephone lines and the poles.

Transformation nearly complete!

Have a great weekend—

Shannon Riley, Deputy City Manager

---

---

ED NOTES

HEADLINE in Friday's Chron: Mayor London Breed orders S.F. homeless people will be offered bus tickets out of town before shelter or housing.

WHICH is what Fort Bragg has been doing for some time now, hence the absence of unattended transients in the town's public places, one of several strategies Fort Bragg deploys to prevent it from becoming Ukiah.

THE OVERALL homeless problem, as it occurs everywhere in our dying land, is the lack of housing, especially affordable housing, with a much larger dilemma posed by damaged people who need to be housed, and maybe even made whole again, which can only be done in the state hospitals we used to have in this country.

LOCALLY, in Ukiah, our battered county seat, where the free range homeless, many of them deranged and occasionally dangerous, are subsidized by well-meaning give-away programs and an array of helping agencies who don't help unless they can be reimbursed for their humanity.

EVERY DAY, the ava presents the people who have been booked into the County Jail over the past 24 hours. Many of these people are repeat arrestees, and every single one of them is unable or unwilling to care for him or herself because of severe mental illness or substance dependence. Or both.

HOMELESSNESS is a political problem unlikely to be meaningfully addressed by Republicans or Democrats. The former sees the unsheltered as a police problem, which it is because the police have to devote a large share of every work day dealing with impossible people, but which it isn't because jails and prisons, where many mentally ill people wind up, only make the crazy crazier.

BESIDES WHICH, as we see in Mendocino County, the walking wounded, many of them dangerous to themselves and others, are arrested and quickly released because there is no alternative to the present stasis, the perfect pitch of entropy we've achieved in this country. (Entropy n. disorder unto death.)

DEMOCRATS, who dominate Mendocino County's helping professions, also comprise the county's incompetent board of supervisors and Ukiah's seemingly oblivious city council. And Democrats dominate elected office throughout the state and certainly on the Northcoast, which is gerrymandered for Democrats forever.

WITH THE NATIONAL presidential election heating up, one might assume there would be specific proposals from both sides about how to make life better for US citizens. Nope. The Democrats say they'll make things work by tiny tax raises on the rich, defined as people making a half-mil a year and up. (Any ava readers in that tax bracket?)

THE CULT-CAPTURED Republicans, via the wind machine they worship, promise to toss the regs and give the rich even bigger tax breaks.

AND HERE we are, sliding into chaos, and maybe on into civil war, with nobody even talking about the problems in a way that might point the way out of the morass. And nobody among the four candidates capable, let alone willing, of telling the truth.

---

LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)

---

PURR-FECT PLACE TO SHOP FOR PLANTS

by Tom Hine

As we all know, the way things begin is not always the way they finish, and what may seem like a modest little molehill can quickly mushroom into a thousand moles running around your backyard.

Or 25 cats.

Kristine Hill for example, once had a neighbor lady with two cats. Ho hum.

Is there anyone who doesn’t have a neighbor lady with two cats? Please raise your hand if you’ve never lived near a lady with two cats. Or even three.

Also, please raise your hand if you don’t know what happens if a neighbor has two cats but does not bother with the spay-and-neuter stuff. And then the crazy cat lady (sorry, but really) keeps not spaying and neutering her dozens of cats for many years.

Welcome to Whispering Winds Nursery down on South State Street and within easy walking distance of the nutty old neighbor lady who, when county animal control officers finally stopped by to have a look, had 60 to 80 cats, population growing. By the week.

And since the cats lived in close proximity (that’s what neighbors are, after all) some of those cats came a-wandering over to Whispering Winds Nursery. Uh-oh.

“The first cats we saw were kind of feral-ish,” recalls Hill. There were maybe five or six of them coming from that trailer park over there. I rounded them up, got them spayed and neutered, but they just kept coming.

“I kept getting them fixed but it just got out of hand. Completely out of hand.” Hill said that about a year ago the county began taking care of the pregnancy problem(s) and a few months later the lady running the cat farm died. That’s when an official cat count was made, and 60 to 80 was the estimated number.

So at least county help was on its way, although Hill’s work was just getting started.

“The cats just kept coming,” she said. “Some of them had medical problems and some were pregnant. I took the mama cats home to have their kittens, and then I found homes for all the kittens, because I knew no one wanted to adopt a feral cat.”

Also, offering room and board to a couple dozen cats can get expensive in a hurry. Not that Hill is complaining, but still: 50 meals a day??

Right now she is CAO of her own cat garden, lounge, parlour, cafeteria and taxi service. The taxiing begins every morning with whoever arrives at the front gate. First, open car door to unlock gate, leave car door open for 15 seconds to close gate. Then drive a dozen or more cats down the hill to see what’s for breakfast.

“They rush over and hop in the car,” she said, usually into her Honda, then get ferried about 100 feet each morning. This kind of attention to stray animals suggests there are people on the planet that, when surrounded by 25 cats, are far more patient and generous than you or I.

And one of those generous, patient people, says Hill, is Julie Knudsen, who has a Cat Rescue organization dedicated to exactly what you think. Hill says Knudsen not only rescues cats, but is known to stay up all night long bottle feeding kittens by hand.

So it’s all good down at the nursery, where visitors never have to go far to encounter a friendly, happy cat that would like to be scratched behind the ears or have a tummy patted. Cat biscuits also welcome. Adoption is a possibility, although what cat would leave the leafy, jungle-like splendor of the Whispering Winds Nursery to go live with you or me? (Plus, Hill is reluctant to let any of them go.)

Overall she thinks the addition of a couple dozen cats has been a great experience, and even good for business. People love bringing kids to the kitty cat zoo, which has become as big a destination point as the best place to buy flowers, herbs and trees.

So go on down and see for yourself. Whispering Winds is right across South State from the old Water Trough bar, and when you arrive a golden tiger boy named “Tri” (rhymes with Try, and is short for Triangle in honor of his white nose patch) will meow Hello and welcome you in.

“Tri is our Walmart greeter,” said Kristine. “He loves everybody and is always first cat in line to say Hi.”

And it probably wouldn’t hurt to bring in a nice big bag of cat chow or kitty treats as a gift. I know 25 residents and one human who will purr big thanks.

---

---

BEYOND THEM THE OCEAN by Kevin Milligan

In observance of the Kelley House Museum’s current exhibition, “Paint the Town: The Art of Kevin Milligan,” we reprint here an excerpt from his, Mendocino: A Painted Pictorial. The book features many of his paintings along with history of the subject in each one. Copies of the book are available for purchase at the Kelley House Museum.

When I was a child my mother Jacquelyn Milligan encouraged me to draw whenever I had a spare moment. I observed my father Guy Milligan paint, and his paintings showed me how to see composition in nature. Wilbur Niewald provided exceptional painting and drawing instruction while I studied at the Kansas City Art Institute. His lessons centered on how to perceive color in nature. His training on working with oils has been instrumental in my development as a painter.

In June of 1997, I made my first trip to Mendocino. Situated on a tiny peninsula jutting into the Pacific Ocean, it is bounded by Agate Cove to the north and Big River flowing into Mendocino Bay on the South. The land is nearly flat where the headlands drop into the sea. The bluffs reveal coves, natural bridges, sea caves and secluded beaches—each with different aspects depending on the height of the tide and waves. During the winter months, fierce storms batter the cliffs while 20-foot waves thunder into the caves beneath. The terrain gradually rises into the hills as one moves east. Beautiful panoramas open up from the higher elevations: rooftops of quaint New England-style buildings, iconic water towers, and beyond them the ocean. The setting was suited to my art.

After making numerous paintings of Mendocino (more than 80 in two years), it became apparent that they could serve as a pictorial documentation of the place. Structures built in the 19th century were still standing on the threshold of the 21st-first, but most of them were showing signs of age. Many wooden water towers were leaning, houses had holes in their roofs and walls, and all needed major repair. My paintings of the weathered buildings could document the old look before restoration took place.

To do research on each structure, I was introduced to the Kelley House Museum archives. I am eternally grateful to Mendocino Historical Research, Inc.—especially to the [former] museum directors, first Majorie Eseppi and then Charlie West—for providing invaluable assistance and access to important documents. My work could not have been completed without MHR, Inc., which continues to serve anyone interested in the history and genealogy of the region. I wish Dorothy Bayer and Beth Stebbins were still around so I could thank them personally for beginning the organized collection and preservation of Mendocino’s history.

(“Paint the Town: The Art of Kevin Milligan,” will be on display at the Kelley House Museum from May 30 to Sep 30, 2024.)

---

---

DEB SILVA TRACKS DOWN JIM JONES IN UKIAH

I looked at more than 200 hits mentioning Jim Jones in the archived UDJ. Most were ads for services at the "church" in Redwood Valley. There were a number of articles praising Jones through about 1976. The articles that started to show a different side to Jones began in 1977. At first the articles were from the syndicates, UPI, AP. Then came the articles that were written by the UJD but there was no byline. There were less than a handful of those articles.

On Feb. 27, 1978 Kathy Hunter wrote an article about Jones that went into depth about Tim Stoen, his wife Grace, and their child John who was in the custody of Jones in Guyana. They were trying to get their son back.

Kathy Hunter was the wife of the UDJ's editor George Hunter. She had a background in journalism. She was the only female that had a byline in articles about Jones and there was only the one article. I suspect that she wrote the other negative articles that did not carry a byline.

I clipped one article from 1977 that was one of those "Days Gone By" things. Ten years prior Jim Jones was the Grand Jury foreman who presided over the Grand Jury when they indicted Thomas Braun and Leonard Maine for the murder of Timothy Luce and the gravely injured Susan Bartolomei. My, how the tables turned.

---

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

---

ATTENTION GEORGE DORNER

---

WHAT? NO MORE AVAs?

Dear Editor,

I went by Bound Together Books on Haight Street near Masonic this afternoon where I go when I'm the neighborhood where I lived in the 1970s, and go to Coffee to the People and then around the corner to get copies of the AVA. But none were there after April (I got 4 April issues) and learned you and AVA had ceased print publication. But the fellow didn't or couldn't tell why. You and I are old. I having been the Ghana 1 contingent of 50 peace corps volunteers in August 1961. And I had learned you are a returned PC volunteer.

I am sorry to lose the Anderson Valley Advertiser

Sincerely,

Edward Mycue

San Francisco

PS. PLUG, CAN, WEDGE, A HUNK WHERE YOU ARE

A plug of Danish butter with my tea,

Thursday edition of the Denver Post,

can of sardines in tomato sauce,

a smooth perfect almost large Granny Smith apple

a lighter green with a sharp paring knife

would seem a poetry festival to me today while

the ice grapes (as the song says*) “still cling to the vine” —

all of these plus a wedge of lime

to squeeze into my vegetable and chicken soup

with an avocado hunk:

that would wrap-up the mystery

of the mother, mine and yours too maybe,

on your soft afternoon swimming,

half-sunny in an afternoon where ever you are.

PPS. CV Mycue, Edward -- CV July 8, 2024 San Francisco.

Graduated with an A.S. in May or June 1957 and went then to North Texas for my B.A. in January 1959 continuing with graduate study in Government and English and then went to Boston Univ as a Lowell Fellow in Cooperative Broadcasting, recipient and working 3 days a week at WGBH-TV then in Cambridge on the M.I.T. campus on Massachusetts Avenue just over the Charles River Bridge from Boston (over a former roller rink on the 2nd floor).

Then I went into the Peace Corps, first group to go abroad and at 1961 August's end was off to Ghana to teach (the new secondary school in Acherensua in the Brong-Ahafo state or district within the old Kumasi kingdom.

Then my dad died and I came home and got a job for the regional office of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare's division of State Merit Systems travelling to 5 Southwestern States for the first 3 years and the next 3 in Washington, D. C. in the Office of the Secretary's Office of State Merit Systems.

After that I was off for 2 and a half years to Europe working at various jobs including the harvests in Southern France (the grape wine harvest), Rotterdam on changing ships to containers during the time the Red Sea was blocked, and other jobs.

When I returned to the USA it was to San Francisco I came since my now late sister Margo Mycue and cousin Michael O'Connor had a room for me.

Then after arriving June 1, 1970 I would work for the New Shakespeare Company-San Francisco.

Then for Panjandrum Press (that published my first book of poems ‘Damage Within The Community’ in 1963, and following that in the various Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco bookstores (which led to working in others including the Graduate Theological Center UC-Berkeley and Stacey's in San Francisco (which closed in 2009 after 85 years in business) and have continued as a free-lance writer of Poetry mostly and still at it today at age 87 in San Francisco where I am sharing my life since 1971 with Richard Steger a painter and with whom have had many volumes of his art and my poetry published included in is the current publication ‘I am a Fact Not a Fiction,’ published by Wordrunner Press, October 1923).

Edward Mycue born in Niagara Falls NY March 21, 1937 and from age eleven in 1948 raised in Dallas TX where I attended Our Lady of Perpetual Help elementary school and then N.R.Crozier Technical High School 1951-5, and after that first to Arlington (now the U. Of Texas at Arlington) 1955-1957; then to North Texas State-Denton TX where I taught during graduate study in the government department in 1959 the required beginning courses in Federal, State, and local government for students needed to graduate for a degree.

Then I went to Boston University on a grant from the Lowell Institute for Cooperative Broadcasting (a consortium of various colleges and universities in the New England area—with Boston University, Tufts, Northeastern, Harvard, M.I.T.)

---

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, August 2, 2024

ROBERT AVERY II, Nice/Ukiah. Community supervision violation.

BARBARA BARRIELLE, Ukiah. DUI.

MICHAEL CRAIG, Fort Bragg. Domestic abuse.

JAVIER GARCIA, Willits. Under influence, county parole violation.

STEPHEN HOAG, Willits. Failure to register with felony sex offender prior conviction.

JUSTIN LOUDERMILK, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

BRIAN MOODY, Redwood Valley. Probation revocation.

JEFFREY MURRAY, Ukiah. Attempt to keep stolen property.

SHEILA OWENS, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

DARIC PARDO, Covelo. Under influence, county parole violation.

CHRISTINA SIMMONS, Ukiah. Narcotics for sale, marijuana for sale, probation revocation.

ISABELLA VANNUCCI, Ukiah. DUI.

AIMEE YOUNKIN, Arcata/Ukiah. Arson of property during state of insurrection, controlled substance.

---

CHRIS SKYHAWK

Ant

The evolution of my relationship with ants as the year moves along

Spring/early summer when I see the first 1 or 2: “Oh, hello little fella; how you been?”

Later when the weather warms and they start to show up in my sink; and I can’t ALWAYS avoid harming them esp. with only one functioning hand:, my standing apology is: “If I accidentally harm any of you today, my apologies, and I pray you have a sweet journey to the spirit world.”

Late summer, when I left my lunch sandwich on the counter, returned to eat it , and found it swarming with ants, then rinsed them all down the drain: “Die MFers and burn in hell!”

---

---

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

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

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

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

Popular Scientific Recreations (1883). Fun science things boys and girls can make out of stuff just lying around the farm. Click through the book. You'll see something to try. (But maybe avoid the projects that involve rat poison, acid or a fire prank.) https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/popular-scientific-recreations/

Olympic gymnastics commentary (via Kottke.org). You might have to click the sound on. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C968G-tM1Mg/

And a six-minute trailer for Secret Life of Walter Mitty, an inspirational and realistic film about a man I and you and plenty of people we know and care about totally identify with, though the office environment depicted is out of style and real magazines full of people with real jobs there don't exist anymore. /I love this movie. I watched it over and over back when the library got the DVD. I'm crying like squeezing a sponge just looking at the trailer, remembering./ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp_cxxqOaPM

*If you want to do a radio show of your own from KNYO's place on Franklin Street, everything you need is there, ready. It's easy and fun. Bob Young will get you started. Contact him: bobb@poetworld.net. If you'd like to set up your own remote studio to do radio live on KNYO from your location, and/or to record your live music or other project, I can advise you. It's not too late. The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago, but the next best time is right now.

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

---

DAVID EYSTER:

While I have made professional appearances in courthouses in 32 of the 58 California counties in my legal career, I had never appeared in the Marin County Civic Center until this recent trial.

Built in 1957, the complex is pretty cool and manifests the ahead-of-its-time forward-thinking and mid-century vibe of architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

The long horizontal building was designed to link by spanning the crowns of three separate hills. The connected jail is all but hidden, built into the northern most hill and out of sight.

These pictures are of the top floor area where, after the work was done and the waiting had begun, we located ourselves. We didn't have to wait very long.

We did, though, have time to watch on Thursday morning a happy couple and their friends perform a marriage ceremony. We were told that weddings are regularly performed in the very pretty and photogenic area where we had situated.

We were also told that docents lead a 90-minute group tour of the building and explain its history every Friday, leaving from the top floor cafeteria at 10:30 a.m. Tickets cost $12 per adult. We were not there on Fridays. Otherwise, time-allowing, a tour would have been fun and interesting.

---

HEY POSTMODERN AMERICA, PICK UP THE PHONE!

Warmest spiritual greetings,

Please know that the final dental appointment was this afternoon, concluding a process beginning last February. $2,000 paid for by Partnership of California resulting in a beautiful crown replacement, upper left side.

The social security money is in. Slightly over $3,000 in the checking account. The Social Security Administration notified that SSI will be reduced next month; but I am not playing the game anymore, not even checking mail any further at Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center.

I am available for anything spiritually based. I can go where I need to go and do what I need to do. Accepting the basics, such as basic housing, for example. Just give me something and we can realistically proceed. I'm just non-attached in Ukiah, California, ready to make a move.

Craig Louis Stehr

---

---

APOCALY-MPICS

Editor,

Gee, the Ol’ Greek Games are looking sort of tattered! Men punching out Women and calling it “Boxing”! When “He” had his outty parts removed (we assume…) and replaced with inny parts, thus becoming a “She,” did they ALSO remove his innate superior male upper body strength? No, I thought not.

They made Athletes swim in the absolutely filthy Seine; I’d rather swim in the Chicago River, and people don’t swim in the Chicago River: Corpses float in it, maybe. This even after we reversed it from sewage flowing in to Lake Michigan to sewage flowing out to the Mississippi. Where it’s converted into Budweiser Beer.

Then there’s the vegan food by Martial Law, sex-proof furniture, abolishing bourgeois air conditioning… OOH LA LA! Get me some tranquilizers, the Complete Works of Jerry Lewis, and take me away to Marseilles!

David Svehla

San Francisco

---

WILD HORSES ARE ROMPING ALL OVER CALIFORNIA’S MASSIVE DAM-REMOVAL PROJECT

by Kurtis Alexander

The massive dam-removal project on the Klamath River, near the California-Oregon border, has faced all sorts of challenges. The newest one may be the most unexpected: wild horses.

In recent months, more than 100 free-roaming horses have descended on the dam sites, eating and crushing the new grasses and shrubs being planted in areas where the dams once held reservoirs. The plants are intended to help revegetate the formerly submerged lands and prevent soil from slipping into the newly flowing river.

While the horses possess a distinct rugged beauty and are cherished by some, managers of the dam removal say the equines could undermine the vast replanting effort that’s vital to the project. As the dismantling of four dams nears completion, the revegetation of 2,200 acres of reservoir footprints with billions of seeds and thousands of shrubs and trees, costing tens of millions of dollars, remains the last step before the Klamath is completely restored. The river’s rewilding is a longtime goal of tribes, environmentalists and fishing groups.

“We are seeing a growing number of feral horses, and horses of uncertain ownership, degrading the restoration sites,” said Dave Meurer, director of community affairs for the Resource Environmental Solutions LLC, or RES, which is doing the revegetation work. “The horses eat what we have planted and their hooves trample the plants.”

Additionally, Meurer said, the animals are bringing in non-native seeds, both on their hooves and in their feces, which introduce weeds to places where crews have been working to get rid of them.

In spite of these issues, though, only so much can be done.

Officials in Siskiyou County say the horses have every right to roam and graze freely on public and private property as part of the county’s “open range” policy.

“The issues with the replanting fall squarely on the replanters or the owners of the property to fence (the animals) out,” Jim Smith, the county’s agricultural commissioner, told the Chronicle.

The person who the county recognizes as the owner of the horses says the animals are actually benefiting the landscape, not hurting it.

William Simpson, who has a ranch in the area and runs a nonprofit horse advocacy called the Wild Horse Fire Brigade, describes the animals as a “heritage herd of wild horses,” some with a long history on the land and all of them with a knack for clearing overgrown, combustible vegetation and reducing wildfire danger.

“Of course, the animals are going down into the (reservoir) footprint because that’s where the water is,” Simpson said.

On any given day, as many as 130 horses turn up at the former Iron Gate Reservoir. It’s the southernmost of the reservoirs that have been drained to facilitate dam removal and allow the river to return to its historic channel. Horses also have been spotted where nearby Copco Lake was emptied.

Simpson said he expected managers of the dam removal to put fences around the reservoirs last year, before they were drained. After the drawdown, the reservoir footprints became muddy bogs where animals, including deer, got stuck and even died. With fences, Simpson said, he expected project managers to ensure animals had access to water.

While the origins of the horses are disputed, Charlie Schelz, a retired ecologist for the nearby Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, said some may have lineages dating to early European settlement, when domestic horses famously strayed into the wild. Most of the horses in the area, though, were let go more recently by local landowners or are descendents of those released animals, he said.

Schelz said the horses do not benefit the region.

“They are just reproducing really fast out there,” he said. “They’re just stomping and chomping all sorts of things. It’s disheartening. If there’s any way we could get rid of them it would be fantastic for the ecology of the area.”

RES has begun moving forward with what officials hope will be 18 miles of fence around the former Iron Gate Reservoir, to try to keep the horses out. The company, which is getting help with the fencing from the conservation group Trout Unlimited, also plans to put up four miles of fence at the former Copco Lake, on the side where horses generally approach.

Areas that have been trampled by horses will be replanted this fall, company officials say. Another round of planting had already been scheduled. The company is contracted to manage the revegetation until at least 2030.

Since January, when the draining of the reservoirs began, 66,000 pounds of seeds have been spread, 27,000 acorns have been planted and 78,000 trees and shrubs have been put in the ground, according to RES. The aim is to restore the grasslands, oak woodlands and conifer forests that existed before dam construction.

The revegetation work represents about a quarter of the dam-removal project’s $500 million budget.

The dam demolition area, about a six-hour drive north of San Francisco, is the result of a decades-long push to reclaim the 250-mile Klamath River, largely for fish and wildlife, notably salmon. The dams were built between 1911 and 1962 for power generation, but the owner, Portland, Ore.-based PacifiCorp, decided they weren’t cost effective.

In a deal negotiated with the states of California and Oregon as well as area tribes, environmental organizations and fishing groups, PacifiCorp agreed to hand over the facilities. The Klamath River Renewal Corp. was established to manage the dam removal. RES is a subcontractor.

Funding for the project is being provided by PacifiCorp and California voter-approved bonds. The bulk of the dam removal is expected to wrap up by early September.

(SF Chronicle)

---

---

WHILE NEWSOM BRAGS ABOUT CALIFORNIA’S ECONOMY, UNEMPLOYMENT DATA TELLS A DIFFERENT STORY

by Dan Walters

Gov. Gavin Newsom tirelessly touts the size and strength of California’s economy, often contrasting it with those of other states.

When, for example, the monthly employment report was issued in June, Newsom bragged on X, formerly Twitter, that “California continues to lead the nation’s economy & create good jobs throughout the state. Just this year, the state created over 107,000 jobs — more than doubling … the same time period last year.”

Actually the report, based on May data, was not that positive.

While the state’s 5.2% unemployment rate was slightly lower than April’s rate, it was still the highest of any state. In June it was still unchanged and remains the nation’s highest, albeit tied with Nevada. It also was markedly higher than the jobless rates in Florida (3.3%) and Texas (4%), two red states that Newsom often disparages.

The recent reports on California’s job picture are nothing new. California has consistently had unemployment rates at or near the nation’s highest ever since the COVID-19 pandemic faded away.

About 3 million Californians lost their jobs during the pandemic, thanks largely to Newsom’s orders to shut down businesses. The state’s recovery has been sluggish vis-a-vis those of other states. There are still more than a million California workers without jobs.

California’s mediocre economic recovery has had many effects, one being an immense budget deficit. The Newsom administration’s 2022 projection of a fast recovery and a cornucopia of state revenues turned out to be wildly inaccurate, leading to a wide gap between income and outgo.

Another impact is the truly sorry condition of the unemployment insurance fund, which provides support payments to jobless workers.

When the pandemic hit and unemployment soared, the unemployment insurance fund quickly exhausted its slender reserves and the state borrowed some $20 billion from the federal government to maintain payments.

Not only has California not repaid the loans, but it is one of only two states that have failed to do so (New York still owes about $6 billion). And the unemployment insurance fund’s deficit is growing because the state is still not taking in enough money from payroll taxes to cover its current payments.

Thanks to California’s stubbornly high unemployment rate, the Employment Development Department expects the unemployment insurance fund to receive $4.8 billion in payroll taxes this year but to pay out $6.8 billion in benefits, meaning the fund’s deficit, including federal loans, will reach $21.7 billion by the end of this year and $22 billion in 2025.

The underlying problem predates Newsom’s governorship. Nearly a quarter-century ago, the Legislature and then-Gov. Gray Davis enacted a 50% increase in unemployment insurance benefits, counting on what was then a healthy fund reserve to finance them.

However, when recession struck shortly thereafter, the fund was drained to pay benefits and had only barely regained solvency when the Great Recession hammered the state a half-decade later. The state borrowed about $10 billion to keep benefits flowing, and the feds increased payroll taxes on California employers to repay the debt.

The pandemic hit just after that loan was repaid, and employers are again being taxed to repay the even larger debt incurred. However, it’s not enough to prevent the fund’s deficit from increasing.

The effects of relatively high unemployment are compounded by a decades-long political stalemate over how to make the unemployment insurance fund healthy again, pitting employers against unions over whether payroll taxes should be increased or benefits should be curtailed.

Newsom’s bragging about California’s economy in the face of such negative data not only undermines his credibility but ill-serves the state. The ever-growing unemployment insurance fund deficit is a crisis that should demand political attention, not be ignored.

(CalMatters.org)

---

‘THIS ISN'T SPORT…’

JK Rowling condemns ‘bullying cheat’ Imane Khelif and ‘disgraceful’ Olympic chiefs after female boxer is forced to quit after 46 seconds

by Sam Greenhill & Claire Duffin

A fuming JK Rowling last night slammed an Olympic boxing match as “a man beating a women in public for entertainment” after a female boxer once disqualified for failing a gender test forced out an Italian opponent.

A global backlash, led by Italy's prime minister and the Harry Potter author, ensued after Angela Carini quit to “save my life” just 46 seconds into her bout against Algerian opponent Imane Khelif, claiming she had been hit so hard that she “couldn't breathe.”

Rowling called Khelif a “bullying cheat” and hit out at Olympic bosses who she branded “disgraceful” for allowing the bout to go ahead.

Women's rights campaigner Ms. Rowling tweeted a video of the fight and wrote: “Watch this, then explain why you're OK with a man beating a woman in public for your entertainment. This isn't sport. From the bullying cheat in red all the way up to the organizers who allowed this to happen, this is men revelling in their power over women.”

Olympic bosses, however, quickly defended Khelif, slamming the “aggression” and “discrimination” from the public.

Khelif shared the statement on social media and wrote: “Praise be to God. Divine justice.”

Giorgia Meloni protested after her nation's Olympic hopeful was left sobbing on her knees in the ring following the contentious match against a rival previously banned for having an “unfair advantage.”

Ms. Meloni added: “I was emotional yesterday when she wrote ‘I will fight’ because the dedication, the head, the character, surely also play a role in these things. But then it also matters to be able to compete on equal grounds and, from my point of view, it was not an even contest.”

The Italian premier was joined by Ms Rowling, former British PM Liz Truss and Sir Andy Murray's mother, Judy, as well as female sports stars, in condemning the scenes.

The fight between the two 25-year-olds ended after Carini was rocked by two punches and said later the savage force of the blows had made it “impossible to continue.” Carini, a police officer, fell to her knees and burst into tears as she conceded the match, shouting: “This is unjust.”

Her prime minister, who was visiting the Olympic Village yesterday, said: “This, from my point of view, was not a competition on equal terms. It is a fact that with the levels of testosterone present in the blood of the Algerian athlete the race at the start does not seem fair.”

Carini was pictured in floods of tears after the match and said she was unable to continue for her health, adding: “I have never felt a punch like this.” Ms. Murray wrote on X: “This should never have been allowed to happen.”

James Guy, a five-time Olympic medallist member of the British swimming team tweeted: “Not fair!”

Former tennis star Martina Navratilova wrote it was “a travesty and makes a mockery of all Olympic sports.” Speaking out after her loss, Carini explained: “It could be the match of my life but, in that moment, I had to safeguard my life, too.”

After the match was stopped, the referee raised Khelif's hand in the air. But a visibly furious Carini yanked her own hand away from the fight official and walked off.

Carini's coach Emanuele Renzini reportedly said after the fight: “I don't know if her nose is broken. But many people in Italy tried to call and tell her: ‘Don't go please: It's a man, it's dangerous for you’.”

The United Nations' Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, backed Carini saying she “rightly followed her instincts and prioritized her physical safety, but she and other female athletes should not have been exposed to this physical and psychological violence based on their sex.”

And Labour MP and feminist campaigner Rosie Duffield told the Mail: “For days, we have been highlighting the potential danger of this specific event to the IOC [International Olympic Committee] who chose to go ahead and ignore us.”

Former Prime Minister Liz Truss also said: “When will this madness stop?” However, Labour's two equalities ministers were, despite requests for comment, both silent. As the furor was raging, one of them, Anneliese Dodds, did find time to tweet about “cycling to work day.”

But Khelif was backed by her country's Olympic committee which “strongly condemns the unethical targeting and maligning of our esteemed athlete.”

The IOC said all boxers in Paris “comply with the competition's eligibility and entry regulations.”

Khelif was allowed to fight at the Olympics despite being disqualified from the women's world championships last year for failing testosterone and gender eligibility tests.

These were organized by the International Boxing Association (IBA), a Russia-led body which has since been stripped of its status. But ex-world champion Amy Broadhurst tweeted: “Personally I don't think she has done anything to ‘cheat.’ I thinks it's the way she was born & that's out of her control.”

The IOC blamed the IBA's “arbitrary” decision for the row, with a spokesman adding: “This is not a transgender issue. I should make this absolutely clear.”

Khelif was thrown out of last year's world championships after failing tests carried out to establish gender qualification.

She previously came fifth at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.

Olympics officials at Paris 2024 have accepted her as a female and state so in her official games biography.

Another female boxer, Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan, was also disqualified from the 2023 women's boxing world championships for failing a gender eligibility test.

An IOC spokesperson said: “All athletes participating in the boxing tournament comply with the competition's eligibility and entry regulations, as well as all applicable medical regulations, in accordance with the Paris 2024 Boxing Unit.”

They also defended Khelif and Yu-ting against the backlash.

“They (Khelif and Yu-ting) were suddenly disqualified without any due process,” the 557-word statement read before adding that, in line with previous Olympics, “the gender and age of the athletes are based on their passport.”

“Every person has the right to practice sport without discrimination,” the IOC said, before highlighting that its rules were based on the rules the IBA had in place before its forced withdrawal in 2023.

It also attacked “misleading information about two female athletes,” adding that the pair “have been competing in international boxing competitions for many years in the women's category.”

The statement highlighted “aggression” against the boxers which it said was “based entirely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure.”

It concluded: “Such an approach is contrary to good governance. Eligibility rules should not be changed during ongoing competition, and any rule change must follow appropriate processes and should be based on scientific evidence…The IOC is saddened by the abuse that the two athletes are currently receiving.”

---

---

"I WAS VERY SHY when I first went into the bookshop and I did not have enough money on me to join the rental library. She (Sylvia Beach) told me I could pay the deposit any time I had the money and made me out a card and said I could take as many books as I wished. There was no reason for her to trust me. She did not know me and the address I had given her, 74 rue Cardinal Lemoine, could not have been a poorer one."

-- A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway

---

“I HAVE SEEN FIRSTHAND that things can turn on a dime. Tremendously awful, evil things happen to nice people all the time. I have seen people, again and again, relentlessly grinding under the wheel of poverty or oppression. At the same time, I see random acts of kindness and pride in the most outrageous and most unexpected circumstances. I am grateful. I understand that I am very privileged to see what I am seeing, even when it hurts.

I think that people, particularly Americans, need to be more inspired to travel and be adventurous with the things they eat. And if they are curious about the world and willing to walk in somebody else's shoes—that is surely a good thing.”

— Anthony Bourdain

---

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Essays suggesting ANY real difference between the 2 sock-puppet political parties (or, “Duopoly”, or “Uniparty”) kinda lose me. I can’t even imagine voting for any member of the current administration but am I alone in recalling the disaster of Georgie W’s 8 year reign? Did I imagine that DJT, claiming to “drain the swamp” hired, 3 crud-encrusted swamp slimes, Pompeo, Haley, and psychopathic John Bolton? And DJT has already announced Haley’s re-hire? So much for “he’s learned from his experience”. If we even make it to the election I’ll be surprised. In October bond payments for all those empty office buildings comes due, just as the BRICS launch their “Unit”, an alternative to the Petro-dollar. And crazy Nutty-yahoo knows he’s toast if he can’t con America into a war (& which democratic “choice”/”Option” opposes that?) Fasten your seat belts please, we’re heading into turbulence, I think.

---

---

INTO THE WEIRD!

by James Kunstler

“What we are witnessing is nothing less than the failure of the greatest propaganda apparatus in history.” — Mattias Desmet

Have you noticed yet? — the weird thing about Veep Kamala Harris is how weirdly brisk her transfiguration was from a sit-com character to Wonder Woman, overnight in the reality-optional news media. In a party burdened with complex ideology, she was known only for tautology: “The significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time,” she repeated solemnly on a tour of a Louisiana library in 2022. “So, when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time.” Yes, ma’am. You nailed that ol’ coonskin to the wall, all righty!

Suddenly her time has come! Everything is Kamala Kamala Kamala. Lights! Camera! Action! But, as you have already been informed, time does not stand still. If it did, then everything would happen at once, which would be a great inconvenience to all. In what seems like a magically extended moment since someone told “Joe Biden” to go dangle, Kamala acquired a lance and halo and rode forth to save our democracy.

Yet, it’s a long way to the grand meet-up of Democratic Party delegates in Chicago, August 19, and that journey is cluttered up with long moments like the one we’re in now, moments when delegates are liable to stew, and maybe even think about more moments to come when the magic of the current moment has passed — because that, after all, is the significance of the passage of time! Here today, gone tomorrow! Hope and change! Go through enough passages of time and things can happen, or even un-happen, such as, perhaps, the rise and fall of the Veep as the champion of this figment known as our democracy. It’s kind of like what they used to say sixty years ago in Vietnam about having to destroy the village in order to save it. Only this time around, it’s democracy in America.

At the convention in Chicago, apropos of whoever selected Kamala Harris, someone might blurt out: “Say, who elected you boss of this outfit?” The answer, of course: nobody. Delegates may share their gnawing doubts in the hallways and state caucus breakout rooms. Metaphysical conundrums will arise. All that sub rosa chatter might even coalesce into. . . a movement! In the name of democracy, someone screeches, a public roll-call vote must be taken! Say, what? We thought that was settled two weeks ago when the virtual roll call happened. Nuh-uh, nah, no way, more delegates chime in. Here is your teachable moment: the virtual is not an adequate substitute for the authentic.

Meanwhile, riots in the streets outside the convention center. Antifa! Black Lives Matter! From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! The police, successfully defunded, stand aside and let youth go apeshit. Inside the hall, pandemonium! And so, the momentous roll-call is induced to happen right there on the convention floor with all those colorful hats bobbing amongst the standards of the fifty states — plus a bunch of territories — swaying to rhythm of Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop (Thinkin’ About Tomorrow)”.

Things grow complicated. There is the matter of the superdelegates, bought and paid for ages ago by. . . the Clinton Foundation! The passage of time goes from elongated to compressed. As good ol’ V. Lenin used to say: There are years when nothing happens and moments when decades happen — or something like that. Also, somebody recalls, it takes a village to . . . what. . . ? Why, to nominate a candidate.

And thus, ever so democratically, does Hillary seize the moment and the convention, and swoop to the podium on her great leathery wings crying “caw caw caw abortion!” The news media will go into super-overdrive shaping the narrative about the Democratic Party rank-and-file marshaling democracy to save democracy. The story will make the marginalized weep and the lame leap for joy. She-Whose-Turn-It-Is will not be denied! The pussy-hats come out again. The patriarchy runs for its life. . . .

At least that’s the dream. In the passage of time from August through September and October, something else happens. Reality creeps back onto the scene after a long sojourn in the nether regions of human vicissitude. The economy goes to shit, the markets tank, and war breaks out. A new consensus congeals through what’s left of the nation: thank you Democrats for wrecking America. Now, go dangle! Mr. Trump, having survived three more attempts on his life, gets elected and inaugurated. A great sorting of the mentally ill and the just plain criminal happens. Weirdly, we move forward into the weird. Wait for it. (Things take time.) That is the significance of the passage of time, after all.

(kunstler.com)

---

---

SIR KEIR STARMER'S PRE-CRIME CLARION CALL

by Matt Taibbi

Early Monday morning in Southport, England, three young girls were killed and eight more were injured in a knife attack at a “Taylor Swift-themed dance and yoga event.” Rumors circulated that the minor attacker was foreign, triggering anti-Muslim riots Tuesday evening that left 50 police officers injured, with officials blaming “thugs” who traveled from out of town “for their political purposes.”

This succession of awful events led Britain’s new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, to deliver a press conference yesterday that was shocking even by current neo-Orwellian standards. Calling the riots an “assault on the rule of law,” he laid out as aggressive a vision of pre-crime enforcement as we’ve heard from a prominent Western politician. Starmer wrote a textbook on human rights law earlier in his career, but came out yesterday sounding like a starched cross of Dick Cheney and Justin Trudeau, pledging to use “shared intelligence” and “facial recognition technology” to capture wrongdoers “before they even board a train.”…

racket.news/p/sir-keir-starmers-pre-crime-clarion

---