Off the Record 8/13/2024

A READER WRITES: With regard to the Williams recall, I find it interesting that Jill Ales is a high-ranking Behavioral Health manager who has spoken out at least twice during Board of Supervisors open session meetings in favor of Jenine Miller's contractual raise and promotion to the combined Mental Health/Public Health Directorship. This is important information for public consideration. Is this an attempt by the Schraeders to keep rubber stamping their contracts?

THE LATE LINDA THOMPSON, former Mendocino County Public Defender, never won a jury trial. According to the late DA Norm Vroman: “[Former Sheriff] Tony Craver called me once and said, ‘You oughtta put her on your payroll because she gets better sentences for her clients than you do’!”

‘THE PIRATES and the Mouse: Disney’s War Against the CounterCulture,’ by Bob Levin, Fantagraphics Books. Cloth, 270pp. $24. In 1963 the San Francisco Chronicle made 21-year old Dan O’Neill the youngest syndicated cartoonist in American newspaper history. As O’Neill delved deeper into the emerging counterculture, his strip, Odd Bodkins, became stranger and stranger and more and more provocative, until the papers in the syndicate dropped it and the Chronicle let him go. The lesson that O’Neill drew from this was that what America most needed was The Destruction of Walt Disney. O’Neill assembled a band of rogue cartoonists, called The Air Pirates, after a group of villains who had bedeviled Mickey Mouse in comic books and cartoons. They lived communally in a San Francisco warehouse owned by Francis Ford Coppola and put out a comic book, Air Pirates Funnies, that featured Disney characters participating in very un-Disneylike behavior, provoking a mammoth lawsuit for copyright and trademark infringements and seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. Disney was represented by one of San Francisco’s top corporate law firms and the Pirates by the cream of the counterculture bar. The lawsuit raged for ten years, from the trial court to the US Supreme Court and back again — changing lives, setting legal precedent, and making clear the boundaries in a still unfolding cultural war. Novelist and essayist Bob Levin recounts this rollicking saga with humor, intelligence and skill, bringing alive the times, issues, absurdities, personalities and the changes wrought within them and us all.

WHENEVER I SEE lists of favorite books, I can't resist passing along my faves.

Phillip Roth said the ranks of serious readers are thinning and not being replaced because of the competition from visuals, music, the internet, radio, and the general absence of the time and the solitude books require, even if a book reader, or potential book reader, somehow eludes all these other distractions. Roth was right, and the evidence of the loss is everywhere, from the kid who has no ironic sense to the middle aged “activist” whose decoding skills are so poor he or she believes whatever their preferred famous person tells them. Hell, half of Mendo thinks Bush was behind 911 and Trump faked the attempt on his life. But I always knew there were lots of book dinosaurs among the AVA readers of our paper-paper because only a book reader would tolerate the paper’s 9-point type.

(1) ‘The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones,’ by Jesse Hill Ford. A strong novel about race relations in the South in the 1940s and 50s by a white writer who became a tragic figure himself after his one big book. Should be read along with Ralph Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man’ and Richard Wright’s ‘Native Son’ and ‘Black Boy.’

(2) ‘Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades’ by Oakley Hall. A fictional but historically accurate look at the SF Bay Area circa the end of the 19th century with a lot of interesting bio about the great Bierce thrown in.

(3) ‘David Copperfield’ by Charles Dickens

(4) ‘As I Lay Dying’ and ‘The Reivers’ by William Faulkner. The former is pretty tough going — I had to read it three or four times as a 20-something to really get it, I thought, but when I read it again at age 40 or so, I realized what I’d gotten was maybe the narrative and some of the prose razzle, but it’s one of those rare, difficult books that causes you to thank yourself for working hard to understand it. (Pynchon’s ‘Mason & Dixon’ is a difficult book that’s not particularly rewarding, even if you can get past the ye olde language reconstructions.) ‘The Reivers’ is a very funny book, Faulkner’s only funny book.

(5) ‘Sentimental Education’ and ‘Madam Bovary’ by Gus Flaubert.

(6) Anton Chekhov’s short stories

(7) The Short Stories of Isacc Babel, just out in a new translation that critics say is awful but seemed fine to me, however my opinion might translate as an assessment of my abilities as a reader. So the translations aren’t perfect to native speakers, but if they don’t change meaning in a story changing way…

(8) ‘The Western Shore,’ by Clarkson Crane. Of interest as a portrait of student life in Berkeley and Berkeley itself in the 1920s.

(9) ‘Poor White’ and ‘Winesburg, Ohio’ by Sherwood Anderson. Rural life among struggling people in the middle west in the first quarter of the 20th century.

(10) ‘Miss Lonely Hearts’ and ‘Day of the Locust’ by Nathanial West. A nihilistic satire about the futility of individual attempts to alleviate human suffering, the second a nihilistic novel about Hollywood, both as applicable today as they were yesterday (1933 or so).

(11) ‘The Magic Christian’ by Terry Southern. Another satire, kinder than Lonely Hearts, and on the theme of Every Man Has His Price. Very funny.

(12) ‘Joe the Engineer’ by Chuck Wachtel A realistic novel about a contemporary American blue collar worker.

(13) ‘American Pastoral’ by Phillip Roth. (Particularly relevant to the Northcoast.) The over-indulged daughter of a prosperous American family is dragged down by the lunacies of the 1960s. This wonderful novel includes a fascinating mini-history of glove making among its many profitable diversions.

(14) ‘Pale Fire’ by Vladimir Nabokov. A very funny novel about a 999-line poem written by a deceased nutty American academic whose even nuttier neighbor devotes the rest of his life to explicating and promoting.

(15) ‘Executioner’s Song’ by Norman Mailer, “A true life novel” based on the real life of a petty crook and killer named Gary Gilmore.

(16) ‘Ethan Fromm’ by Edith Wharton.

(17) ‘Going Away’ by Clancy Sigal. A disillusioned leftist hits the road and half pints of White Horse, thinking about what went wrong. (Hint. It’s still going wrong.)

(18) ‘Johnny Got His Gun’ by Dalton Trumbo. If I’d read this book before I went into the Marines I’d never have gone. The single most subversive book in American literature. Told in the first person by a kid who went off to World War One and came back as a permanently mummified cripple, the boy eloquently argues that wars have nothing to do with the people who do the fighting and dying, which was certainly true of World War One but not true, unfortunately, of World War Two.

(19) ‘The USA Trilogy’ by John dos Passos. The true history of industrializing America in novel form. Like most of us, I tuned history out about the 10th grade when the teacher, primarily a football coach, and usually only a page ahead of the class, got to the Louisiana Purchase. I’d barely stayed awake for the Boston Tea Party. “No taxation without representation!” Ho hum. How about no taxation with or without representation? History was taught as a series of abstract events carried off by very grand Americans in a world peopled by much less grand populations who needed the grand figures to handle things for them. History these days is made more interesting to captive high school students, I’ve heard, but, from what I can gather is just as misleading, in that American history is presented as 400 years of serial atrocities, and the Klan remains poised to ride out as soon Maya Angelou and Howard Zinn aren’t looking. But when I read ‘USA’ as a kid I read with my eyes hanging out, feeling something like Born Agains must feel when God Himself first reaches out and touches them. USA is the best People’s History of America there is.

(20) ‘Daisy Miller’ by Henry James. This is the only James I could ever read without falling asleep, although I got all the way through ‘The Bostonians’ once and more or less profited from the journey, narcoleptic though it was. ‘Daisy Miller’ is the simpleton’s James but highly recommended as both literature and as representative of one of his primary themes — new money vs. old money, old aristos vs. the new American ones.

(21) ‘The Pistol’ by James Jones. America’s best novelist of World War Two, and The Pistol, along with The Thin Red Line, is the best combat fiction about the war.

(22) The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway.

(23) John Updike’s Rabbit trilogy. The life’s trajectory of Rabbit Angstrom, from his early 1950s incarnation as high school basketball star from the wrong side of the tracks to his moving up marriage to the daughter of a prosperous but primitive car dealer, and on through Rabbit’s estranged, trapped, mostly bewildered journey through the 1960s and on into premature cardiac care — a kind of white guy everyman, circa 1935-1980.

(24) ‘An American Tragedy’ by Theodore Dreiser.

(25) ‘Moby Dick’ by Herman Melville One of the few books you can read again and again and learn something every time.

(26) ‘Dubliners’ by James Joyce. The most perfect short stories in the language.

(27) ‘You Can’t Go Home Again’ by Thomas Wolfe. Lots of good stuff but always sneered at by the lions of the faculty lounge.

(28) ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ by Erich Remarque. In the trenches with German soldiers of World War One.

(29.) ‘I Was Looking for a Street’ and ‘Something about a Soldier ‘by Charles Willeford (if you can find them). The fascinating autobiographies of a master of tough guy detective fiction. Willeford was an Army lifer who was trained as a cavalryman in America’s last cavalry, went on to become a decorated tank commander in WW Two, and wound up his military tour with the post-War army in the Philippines.

(29) ‘The Bad Communist’ by Max Crawford. Will the circle be unbroken?! An insider’s novel about the Stanford-based 1960s cult left and the murderously wacky politics that inspired a posse of English Department-led, under-grad Maoists to commit several murders. Ukiah-area book clubs failed to invite then-local guy Mike Sweeney of the Mendocino Solid Waste Management Authority to explicate this odd but lively rendition of a uniquely berserk chapter in American (pseudo) radical history. Sweeney belonged to that Stanford-based terrorist club and, years later, as an archetypal lone nut, blew up an airport hangar in Santa Rosa, and then his ex-wife, Judi Bari, crimes he has not yet been indicted for because he’s been sheltered from accountability by the FBI, local media, much of Mendolib, and the idiot sectors of the Bay Area and Northcoast left. Sweeney has since emigrated to New Zealand.

FRED GARDNER

I had two brief encounters with Charles Schulz in 1984, the year that “home video” became the rage. A Healdsburg winery for whom I’d previously written a brochure said they’d decided on a video instead. I said, “We have that capability,” and bought a video camera on my way home. My nascent video production business soon found a great client: Russ Egbert, the pro who gave golf lessons at Oakmont, a community for well-to-do retirees built around a golf course. I would tape Russ giving a lesson, and the client would buy the tape and take it home to watch while practicing his or her grip and swing and follow-through. Mrs. Schulz was one of Russ’s clients, and I taped her twice. Each time her husband arrived to watch the last few minutes of her lesson and then to drive a few balls himself. He was tall –maybe 6’4– in fine shape, and his swing was perfect, as in could-have-been-a-pro. He was obviously a superb athlete, and gracious and affable in our brief exchanges.

AS LONG AS I LIVE under the capitalistic system I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation.

— William Faulkner resigning his job with the Post Office.

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.

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)

FRED GARDNER:

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!’

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.

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.

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.

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.

CHUCK ROSS:

I'm fleshing out my history of the Greenwood Ranch, now the property of R.D. Beacon and I've hit a point someone on this page might be able to help with.

The ranch started out as simply the L.E. White Lumber Company ranch but when Goodyear bought out White, one of the first things they did was lease about fifteen thousand acres of mixed grassland and logged-over lands to Ed and Ira Ordway of the northern part of the county. In addition to having their own ranch and slaughterhouse, Ed seems to have run the ULCO ranch out on the Noyo.

1. Do they still have descendants in the area?
2. Ed died in Petaluma in 1919 but the newspapers at least twice reported that it was Ira who had died. Anyone shed any light on that?
3. It looks like they sold to Leland Milliken in 1919. Margaret Millikin can you tell us anything about that?
4. Anyone offer information on this photo which includes the Ordway brothers?

BERNIE NORVELL:

Yes, the city does bus folks out of town. We however use a more diplomatic and humane approach. Unlike SF’s scorched earth approach, we require confirmation of a family member or social service worker on the other end. This prevents just moving the problem to another city. The Greyhound therapy Mayor Breed is talking about is selfish and short sighted. Having for years refusing to deal with the problem she is now in a situation where she feels she can send the situation she helped create to other cities and towns. Bussing folks is not our first move, for example, we have placed more people into rehab than we have relocated. I think I’ll write her a letter requesting she reevaluate her decision and if not please don’t send them our way.

NOTICED a comment the other day from, I think, Ernie Branscomb, about sound advice his father gave him. The only advice I remember from my father was (1) aim your fly swatter behind the fly because they take off backwards (2) learn to drink your coffee black; you'll save yourself a lot of frustration because you'll go to lots of places where they might have sugar but no cream and vice versa. (3) if you want a job where you don't have to do anything and nobody gets fired, get a government job. Thus armed, I strode out into an unwelcoming world, drinking my coffee black.

CONFIRMATION that Jim Jones had indeed been foreman of the Mendo Grand Jury, but in '67, not in the middle 70s, is early evidence of the county's social-political porousness. The reverend had only been here a couple of years. Judge Winslow had appointed Jones to the GJ. He was quite the radical for that place in that time and lost re-election, I believe. Mendo was still not adjusted to hippies, unaware that the hippies would soon be driving the Mendo bus.

DID I HEAR an advertisement on Mendocino County Public Radio that said something like this? “Brought to you by the progressive Democrats of Mendocino County.” Name one.

A READER WRITES: “Speaking of bumper stickers, I saw a really dumb one on an SUV in Santa Rosa: ‘I’ll Fight For Freedom!’ How does one do that while driving around Santa Rosa?” Unless the driver is burning Press Democrat news stands I don’t know.

I LIKE THIS ONE spotted in Ukiah: “Partnership For An Idiot-Free America.” Never happen. There’s too many of us.

WAS THIS ONE ever sorted out? The University of California somehow got title to two valuable pieces of Mendocino real estate that the late Dr. Russell W. Preston left to Mendocino’s 4-H Club back in 1953. Last I heard, U.C. has possession of both, The Lark in the Morning building and the William Zimmer Gallery structure, both bequeathed by Dr. Preston to 4-H. 4-H is long gone in Mendocino Village but there are chapters here and there in the county.

UNDESERVED RAISES for public employees are hardly news. One that still annoys me was handed to then-Mendocino County Superintendent of Schools Paul Tichinin who once got a $5k raise to bring his annual base pay to $105,310, plua lush fringe benefits for him and his family not included. That was a lot more money then than it is now. The raise was not only unanimously approved by his five supine trustees, it was suggested by them! Of course the trustees are also on the edu-gravy train, garnering $150 per meeting, full health and insurance benefits for themselves and their families, plus incidental freebies like paid free travel to the endless conferences that “educators” are constantly treating themselves to at public expense. So what’s $5k more per year for the top guy?

PUT A VIDEO CAMERA on Tichinin’s, or any of the Supervisors' work day and what you’d find is a reprise of Andy Warhol’s famous film of the Empire State Building — hours of the structure during which only the light on it changes.

THERE’S NO REASON for the County Office of Education to exist, let alone squander thousands of dollars that should be going directly to classrooms. MCOE is a 19th century anachronism. A hundred years ago the County’s teachers were hired by a man sitting in Ukiah then dispatched on horseback to the county’s far flung schools. When this hiring hall function was no longer needed, MCOE began doing what it does to this day — taking a percentage of the education money that comes to Mendocino County from the state and federal government, then passing along what’s left to the individual school districts from Covelo to Point Arena. The money should all go directly to the individual school districts in one big hunk for those individual districts to spend as per their individual student needs. But it doesn’t.

TICHININ, a Gumpish figure who once publicly denounced the word “niggardly” as a racist slur, defended his raise this way: “It’s hard when I am at $100,000 a year and Gary Brawley (Ukiah Unified School District Superintendent) is making $107,000 a year and the VP at the College of the Redwoods makes more than I do now.”

TICHININ is a burble-gurble guy. There’s lots of them in edu-admin. Tichinin’s got burble-gurble double down. Looking earnestly out at the two or three people in the audience, he’ll declare, “I’m for it because it’s for the kids!” Members of his school board will beam approvingly, the love bombed audience will either stifle their rising nausea or, if they need a job with MCOE or already work there, lob the boss’s love grenades back up front. The Superintendent also has the advantage of holding elected office in a county where no one outside the edu-bloc — and few inside it — has the faintest idea what MCOE does.

LOU CHICHESTER

Thanks to the AVA for publishing sheriff Kendall’s information regarding illegal marijuana grows and Covelo. I live in Round Valley, north of the “town” of Covelo, and have been here for over 50 years now. What’s become a bit different for the illegal grows are the complexities and confusions of being on an Indian Reservation. What’s private property, what’s Tribal, what’s in Federal Trust, what might be an “heirship” and not really “owned” by anyone is all up for speculation and exploitation. A lot of the ten acre allotments within the Reservation boundaries now have low budget, trashy, lit up all night, generators cranking, and Spanish speaking workers. Those of us not directly involved in the operations suppose that these are “cartel” connections, but I suspect that is a tenuous connection. Illegal, somewhat organized crime connections, yes. It’s all a big mess. A few people are making money I suppose, but it sure is ugly, brings in a lot of bad people and certainly doesn’t do the kids, or the rest of us, any good at all. Thanks Matt, doing what you can.

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SHERIFF KENDALL

You’re welcome Lew!

The problems seem to be settling down across most of the County except for around Round Valley. The violence associated with the illegal grows has remained out of hand. Round Valley has roughly 4% of the county’s population, however about 50% of our murders are being committed in and around Round Valley. Also for the past several years nearly 50% of our homicides have been in illegal grows. Think about it from that perspective and it’s pretty telling where the problems are.

PAM PARTEE:

What I feel is sadness for what this lawsuit has done to Ms. Kennedy. Ms. Kennedy was paid $68k for 2300 hours, or about 57.5 regular workweeks over her regular hours, for skilled work that needed to be done to get employees paid. And I bet she didn’t get paid for any of the work she did before she was offered compensation. I would also bet the county was in a bind, underemployed during the pandemic shutdown, and needed this work done. Of course she deserved extra pay for the extraordinarily heavy burden that was put on her, far beyond her management responsibilities, and one she donned as a dedicated employee knowing it had to be done . Ms. Kennedy should have her case diverted and eventually dismissed, and her honor restored.

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Dunlap Roofing, Mendocino Coast)

Sadly, California is among the most red tape states in the country - the insurance industry alone is suffocating now - really hard to get anything past local officials, Mendocino County is a wasteland of slow Planning Dept timing & high Building Dept permit fees.

DAVE KAUCNIK

Useless, tanked up, drunks, speeding up Highway 1 killed this fox. If you can’t see something the size of a fox in the road, you don’t belong behind the wheel. Report drunk and impaired drivers! This could have been your pet and the human garbage that drove over it didn’t even care enough to kick its dead body into the ditch.

PIPE BOMB INVESTIGATION IN UKIAH

On Saturday, August 3, 2024 at approximately 11:05 A.M., the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office was contacted regarding a suspicious item found inside of a residential, roadside mailbox located in the 4600 block of Burke Hill Drive in Ukiah. The reporting party described the item as a possible bomb.

Sheriff's Office personnel, including Deputy Thong and his K-9 partner, ‘Jet,’ responded to the location. Deputy Thong and Jet are certified in explosives detection. Deputy Thong visually examined the item and believed it was a dangerous explosive, commonly referred to as a pipe bomb. K-9 Jet was deployed and alerted on the item, indicating the presence of explosive materials.

The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office Bomb Squad was requested to assist with safe disposal of the device. Personnel from the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office Bomb Squad responded and were successful in rendering the device safe. Remnants of the device were collected as evidence for identification via DNA of the person/s responsible for making and placing the device.

MCSO extends a big "Thank You" to SCSO Bomb Squad for the quick response and willingness to assist with keeping our community safe.

At this time, there is no evidence the device was placed with intent to harm a specific person or property for any specific reason. This investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information regarding this incident is requested to call the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Dispatch Center at 707-463-4086.

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UKIAH'S MAILBOX PIPE BOMB INCIDENT, THREE COMMENTS

“At this time, there is no evidence the device was placed with intent to harm a specific person or property for any specific reason.” (Sheriff’s Presser)

[1] Say what…???

Really?

That’s a cop out if I’ve ever heard one.

The device itself is evidence enough that, “the device was placed to harm a specific person or PROPERTY” regardless of whether or not it “was placed with intent to harm,” “for any specific reason.”

That mailbox was someone’s property.

If the mailbox contained US Mail at the time, I believe it would be, or should be, considered a federal offense.

If that was my mailbox, I would NOT be amused, and I would not appreciate the MCSO just poo-pooing it, to avoid the effort involved in doing a proper investigation.

That pipebomb looks to have sufficient potential to have done unsuspecting somebody some great bodily harm or worse.

Catch and cage the wacko, whoever they may be, before they can pull this kind of stupid stunt again.

First, the MCSO has to catch the suspect, and question them, before the MCSO can decisively determine with certainty the specific reason he planted the pipebomb in someone’s mailbox.

Even if it was done randomly, that doesn’t really make it less of a concern, or less of an imperative to prevent it’s recurrence, does it?

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[2] I just noticed the remnant of lit cigarette fuse delay that had gone out.

It wasn’t just a pipebomb.

It was a lit pipebomb, albeit, thankfully, a pipebomb that was lit unsuccessfully, and went out.

That cigarette fuse delay would have made it very possible for an unsuspecting mail delivery person or a mail recipient to have been injured or worse by this destructive pipebomb.

Find the suspect.

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[3] Local low level law enforcement make a lot of snap judgments, sadly so. They knee jerk react and do not leave the investigating for the investigators. Will tell folks it’s a civil crime and not charge folks. HELLO. That’s for the investigators and judges. They (hopefully) take more time. DNA Labs take more time. Out in the field you really can not say what came down; it takes investigating. That is a major flaw in the equation bias, snap judgment and lacking full non-biased response. First responding deputies are for response.

SHERIFF KENDALL:

“On Thursday, Ms. Breed directed city officials to offer bus tickets to homeless people before providing them a shelter bed or other services” This is what we in the policing business refer to as a “Clue” of things to come.

I had heard this was coming, having serious concerns we were just a couple counties North and an easy drop spot for Greyhound, I attempted to set a meeting with the mayor. After several emails back and forth, and a whole lot of wrangling I was advised she was too busy to meet with anyone, too busy for a simple phone call. Feeling quite frustrated I called it a day and moved on.

Now’s the time we should brace ourselves for an influx of folks whom likely suffer from several problems including addictions and mental health disorders. Also, we will likely see folks who were allowed to engage in some fairly anti-social behaviors arriving in our communities which simply aren’t staffed or funded to handle these issues. The genie has been let out of the bottle under the guise of compassion in San Francisco (which honestly didn’t seem compassionate to me at all). As they begin their “bussing to happiness program”, I am afraid several less affluent counties are going to struggle while attempting to get that genie back into the bottle.

THE APOCALYPSE got off to a good start Monday with a widening war in the Middle East, a particularly destructive hurricane in the South, a stock market semi-crash, fires up and down the state, and crucial 49er tackle Trent Williams still unsigned.

RE the stock market — the global Ponzi is collapsing because the American job market figures are down? Please. Here at Boonville's International Desk, it looks to me like the smart money is mass-bailing because there isn't enough real wampum in all the world to pay all the bills coming due.

SPENT THE WEEKEND binge-watching Season 4 of Babylon Berlin, the truly great German television series set in Weimar Germany where, incidentally, fascism seems to be making a comeback, this time with the scapegoating of recent immigrants.

GERMANY'S Weimar period, the cliche goes, parallels current American political realities — the rightwing drift built around Trump, for one similarity, although Hitler and his crew were a lot smarter than the golden idiot child and the moronic crackpots comprising his inner circle. Another similarity is the prevalent corruption of so many American institutions — the two political parties, obviously — which, writ small, kinda resemble what we see here in Liliput with our supervisors, the DA, the cash and carry courts, the way the helping professionals feast on the walking wounded, our degraded national popular entertainment, and social decadence generally. Germany's Weimar was positively wholesome put aside what we have going in this country. (One caveat: the narrative too often drifted into implausibility, but the acting, as with the first three seasons, was beyond excellent, so good even the implausible sections were wonderful to watch.)

LEARN ABOUT THE ALBION RIVER BRIDGE PROJECT

The Albion River Bridge on SR 1, approximately 15 miles south of Fort Bragg, California, has served the Mendocino Coast’s transportation needs since 1944. However, today, the bridge is in poor and deteriorating condition, has a low load rating, and is not appropriate for the harsh marine environment in which it is located. It has multiple functional, safety, and structural deficiencies and is proposed for replacement.

Please watch the Caltrans District 1 video (on our facebook page) to learn about several proposed bridge alternatives, broader lanes for cyclists, and a separated pedestrian walkway that will ensure a safe and reliable alternative to the existing wood truss bridge.

Visit the project's website to take a survey. We welcome your perspective on the proposed designs.

CHUCK DUNBAR:

This is critical feedback to the County on this issue–don’t know who the author is–

“Subject: transient camping on all residential tracts in Mendo County:

I am writing in regard to proposed changes to the Mendocino County General Plan. I am stunned at the proposal to allow Transient Habitation—Low Intensity Camping on nearly every residentially zoned property in the county. While the proposal limits the number of campsites for RV, trailers and/or tents to 10, this plan would result in ~30 campers per day on an approved parcel. Based on a quick read of the planning material, it appears there are no limits regarding these operations being located on private roads (other than notifying others who use the road), ground water use, protections of sensitive habitat, requirements for proximity to police and fire protection, road conditions (steep, narrow), and the like. This poorly considered plan would be a disaster for our county and I strongly oppose inclusion of this code amendment to sites which support single family residential use: R1, R2, R5, R10, UR20, UR 40, Rangeland, TPZ and Forestland.

It may be true that most potential users of the Low Intensity Camping opportunity might be judicious, but it will only to take one destructive or careless camper to bring about catastrophe. Picture the camper who decides the rules against open flames can be ignored, or the one who thinks surface disposal of RV effluent is ok because they won’t be around to deal with the consequences. Has the intense draw down of ground water when 30 people take their daily showers been considered?

Thirty campers per day driving large RV’s, big trucks pulling long trailers will negatively impact nearby parcels with dust, noise and road damage. Neighboring property owners will live in fear of transient campers who could might make an irreversible error in judgement re: fire, effluent disposal or trespass. As written, there are virtually no protections or recourse for neighboring land owners, which will leave neighbors at odds with no options to oppose and no compensation if the worst happens.

Is the Sheriff’s Office, CalFire and/or rural volunteer fire departments ready for the added burden of supervision/protection this proposed “low intensity camping” will create? I understand the Sheriff’s Office is severely short-staffed with few deputies to cover outlying portions of the county. Local fire agencies (mostly volunteer operations) likely aren’t ready for this greatly increased risk of fire or possible vehicular issues. County infrastructure is not ready for this level of intense use which will bring perilous consequences to rural regions with limited resources and protections.

Who will pay for a massive wild fire started by an irresponsible camper? Fire, noise, odors, dust, road damage, trespass all these concerns will be extant when you open up all R1, R2, R5, R10, UR20, UR 40, Rangeland, TPZ and Forestland parcels to permitted Transient Habitation- Low Intensity Camping. Has anyone considered the additional burden placed on home owners if insurance companies see these nearby camping facilities in aerial reviews of policy holder’s homesite? Insurance companies can access up-to-the minute aerial views of subject properties and nearby conditions. A neighboring campground could negatively impact risk assessment resulting in policy cancellation or cost increases.

Low intensity camping should be implemented in commercial or rural village zoning. Camping facilities would work for those areas since they are near emergency infrastructure; not miles out single, lane gravel roads and in areas of extreme fire danger. The Transient Habitation—Low Intensity Camping concept, if executed as written, puts all county residents at risk of fire loss, possible damage to sensitive habitat and the permanent loss of the quiet enjoyment of their homes.”

JIM SHIELDS

While Sheriff Kendall is rightfully miffed at the refusal of SF Mayor Breed to even take a call from him over her outta-here-one-way homeless bus plan, he needn’t fret over her insulting behavior. She doesn’t even talk to her own sheriff.

Breed has been on a four-year kamikaze mission to de-fund law enforcement in San Francisco. She calls it “reform” which is nonsense unless you consider open-air drug dealing, soaring crime rates, and citizen insecurity to be reform. She’s a spineless, PC ideologue incapable of tackling complex issues, such as homelessness, and the larger struggle between providing life-saving care and services for homeless people (who oftentimes refuse help) while balancing that reality with the other reality of the need and sworn obligation for maintaining public safety.

If you haven’t had the opportunity, read my latest piece in a series on the homeless and mental health crises in this state and county (“The Real Deal On The Homeless Mess, In Case You Want To Know”).

People need to wake up and realize why all these programs and the billions upon billions of dollars spent on them, have resulted in complete failure. The answer has always been right in front of us, but most people seem content for some reason to just talk these issues to death.

Case in point, look at this county where for years the Board of Supervisors and their staff responsible for homeless and mental health services, hold public meeting meetings discussing those issues, which are always over-larded with charts, graphs, eye-blurring reams of data, and staff presentations and non-report-reports.

Over the years, what have we learned? We’ve learned the official, local government view, which is most everything is working with mostly successful outcomes. The few things that are not quite working are retarded due to lack of funding. Other than that, things are spot-on, thank you.

SUPES TAKE SEVEN WEEKS OFF, CALL IT AN ‘AUGUST RECESS’ AND OFFER BACK-TO-SCHOOL ADVICE

Mendocino County Board of Supervisors August Recess and Back-to-School Tips

Board of Supervisors Recess

The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors will observe its annual August Recess from August 1, 2024, to August 30, 2024. During this period, the Board will not hold Regular Board Meetings. This annual recess, implemented in 2022, allows Clerk of the Board staff to focus on essential behind-the-scenes tasks, including records filing, completion of annually required duties, and preparation for the upcoming year.

While there are no Regular Board Meetings in August, the Members of the Board of Supervisors continue to hold/attend their other regularly scheduled committee and public meetings during the August Recess.

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Back-to-School Month

As August transitions from summer to the school year, parents and guardians should actively prepare their children for the upcoming academic year. This is a great time to:

Visit Schools: Tour schools, colleges, and universities to help children feel comfortable in their new environment.

Update Vaccines: Ensure your child’s vaccinations are up to date before school starts. Many schools require immunization records, and staying current helps protect your child’s health and the health of their peers.

Establish Routines: Adjust bedtimes, wake-up times, and mealtimes to align with the school schedule for a smoother transition.

Prepare for Changes: Discuss upcoming changes with children, especially if they’re moving to new schools or levels, to reduce anxiety and build resilience.

By taking these proactive steps, parents and guardians can help their children approach the new school year with confidence and enthusiasm. The efforts made during August to prepare and support students can contribute significantly to their academic success and personal growth throughout the year.

(County Presser)

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Mark Scaramella Notes:

“August Recess”? Their last meeting was July 23. Their next meeting is September 10. That’s not only stretching the recess, it’s stretching the truth.

The Board clerk will “focus” on “…records filing, completion of annually required duties, and preparation for the upcoming year.”

What “upcoming year” would that be? The board meets every two weeks, does minimal minutes and still the clerk doesn’t have time to do “records filing”?

No “other” regularly scheduled committee meetings” are on the Board’s master calendar for the seven-week “August recess.” There may be some other agency meetings that the board will “attend” but that hardly qualifies as official duty.

And what’s the Board of Supervisors doing giving “back to school tips”? What’s next, shopping tips? Travel tips? Favorite Movies? Dietary advice? “Best places for the taxpayers to buy our free lunch”?

No sooner did they give themselves a fat pay raise, they take almost two months off and demonstrate again that they didn’t deserve raises with their own press release.

DOES CALIFORNIA still have a recommended exit exam for high school graduates? I remember five sample questions from the California Standards Test which had especially irritated me.

“THE TEST measures students’ knowledge of skills the state Board of Education wants them to know.” The sample question for grades 9-11 and the sample for grade 11 were knowledge questions, not skill questions, and I’d say they were also unfairly obscure knowledge questions, which don’t measure anything but their creator’s sadism.

GRADES 9-11: BIOLOGY. “In some seaweeds, iodine can be found in concentrations a thousand times higher than that of seawater. This concentration is most likely maintained by the action of the: A. Golgi apparatus B. nucleus C. cell membrane D. lysomes.”

I GOT AN A in biology in college, albeit in a class for jocks in which, as I recall, we spent a lot of time coloring the different functions of a tree, from its bark inward to its whatchamacallit. If you could color inside the lines, you could count on at least a C.

GOLGI APPARATUS? Lysomes? News to me. I’ve got a handle on “nucleus” and, I think, “cell membrane,” but a typical high school kid is supposed to know that the correct answer is “cell membrane” to get a high school diploma? Please. Maybe an advanced placement student interested in biology might know the answer, but the rest of the herd?

GRADE 11: History/Social Science. “During the early 1920s, the United States attempted to reduce the threat of future wars by inviting other world powers to Washington conferences aimed at: A. stopping the naval arms race, B. strengthening the League of Nations, C. settling World War I war debts, D. liberalizing international trade.”

THIS ONE, IN ITS WAY, is even more obscure than the biology question, and even more unfair because the correct answer, “stopping the naval arms race,” is not correct, or correct only in a minor way. because it's not nearly as significant, historically considered, as Woodrow Wilson’s broaching the idea of the League of Nations at the conclusion of WWI in 1918, or the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 in which Germany got so thoroughly screwed the stage was set for World War Two.

A REASONABLE general knowledge question about the decade after WWI might be, “What was the United Nations called before there was the United Nations? Or what event in the life of the young Hitler caused him to commit the rest of his life to mass revenge?”

IF THESE questions were representative of what high school kids are supposed to know to get a diploma, the test should be tossed.

ON-LINE COMMENTA OF THE WEEK

[1] 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”.

[2] 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.

[3] A typical August week in Chicago at least 150 people get shot; that’s just the baseline youre working off when predicting the level of mayhem and bloodshed at the Dem National Convention. This isn’t Mayor Daly’s CPD of 1968. Every disaffected group in N America will be in the streets, full of rage and hate for the system, and eager to burn it all down. Who knows, with the depleted numbers of Chicago cops and a weak Mayor who himself sympathizes with the causes espoused by the mob … maybe they will burn it all down.

[4] The miracle of life. The fertilized egg has the information in it that will form a full grown human being in 21 years, where every cell will be placed, how every cell is specialized, what the basic personality traits will be, a basic setup for a language in the brain, what sex it will be.

And we just treat this miracle like a piece of trash, to be discarded at someone’s convenience.

I used to be pro-choice long ago, That was before I considered abortion murder in the first degree.

[5] And the lines at Disneyland are still long. Flights to Hawaii are still booked. Hotels in Cancun are full. I still get stuck behind brand new Ford F350s pulling fifth wheels and toy haulers equipped with two, not one, TWO side by side UTVs. People are still lining up to buy the latest I-phone version. Porn is still a multi-billion dollar industry. People are still spending thousands to tattoo and pierce themselves into unrecognition. Deadpool and Wolverine have made more than $200 million. Most people I see are fat so they are getting plenty to shove into their pie holes. Restaurant parking lots are always packed. People are still buying $850,000.00 homes at 6% interest rates. I don’t see many old junker cars on the road but I see plenty of new Honda, Lexus, Audi and Infiniti SUVs.

Need I go on?

When these things start to suffer then will I believe all of the “bad economy” hype I keep reading about. Until then, I believe, it’s all political.