Mendocino County Today: Sunday 8/18/2024

Clearing | Gene Herr | Blue Supermoon | AV Events | Seal | Fire Safe | Frankfurters | Disaster Prep | Pet Ruddick | Adult Classes | Wickson Restaurant | Big Balls | Ed Notes | Bigfoot | Abhayagiri Monastery | Angelica | Tidal Power | Whom | Fair History | Yesterday's Catch | Completely Relaxed | Bone Spurs | Marco Radio | Frank & Nat | Corporate Dems | Dem Hustle | Kittle Corner | Contentious Splash | Third Eye | Boo Google | Roy & Dale | Kittens | Marichal Kick | Bidenworld Feelings | Campaign Season | Not Talking | Young Punks | Your Kind | Important Election | Belinsky Suspension | Walking Away | Figs | Ferlinghetti | Beautiful Place | Another Drink

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THE UPPER LEVEL TROUGH that brought rain and thunderstorms to Northwest California has moved off to the north. Today and into early next week, a relatively dry and high temperatures slightly warmer than yesterday will prevail into the new week. However, temperatures will still remain slightly under seasonal averages for the interior. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A very warm 60F & foggy on the coast this Sunday morning. I got .06" of heavy drizzle yesterday. The NWS says another chance of rain this Friday but other stations are not reporting that? The patchy fog routine continues into the new week although the satellite does not much fog offshore?

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IN MEMORY OF EUGENIA ‘GENE’ HERR

Dear Family and Friends,

Our mother, Gene Herr, passed away peacefully early Friday morning in San Anselmo, with Serena by her side. While we are filled with the deepest sadness by her passing, we can take comfort in the knowledge that the final days of our Mom's rich and productive life were spent in her beloved hometown, in a beautiful garden room with her favorite view of Bald Hill, Mount Tamalpais, trees and sky.

Thanks very much to all of you who were able to visit, sing songs, bring flowers, leave phone messages or send emails and cards to our Mom over the past couple of weeks. Your caring well wishes were all very much appreciated by our Mom, and helped greatly to comfortably transition her to her next journey.

Take care,

John Herr & Serena Fox

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BLUE MOON, YOU SAW ME STANDING ALONE...

A blue supermoon will soon cast its light over California. According to Space.com, the rare celestial event will occur at 11:26 a.m. Monday. The full moon will be both a supermoon and a blue moon, NASA said on its website.

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ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE List Of Events

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FIRE SAFE CLARIFICATION

AVA,

Thanks so much for helping us spread the word about Sarah Reith’s great podcast/blog, the call for Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) public input, and Mendocino County Fire Safe Council’s work. Yay Andres Avila for forwarding that to you! However, the CWPP input hyperlink at the end doesn’t work, and it doesn’t say how to access Sarah’s future podcast/blogs.

Sarah Reith’s podcast/blogposts about wildfire safety will appear in upcoming monthly newsletters of the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council. You can subscribe to the free newsletter at https://firesafemendocino.org/subscribe-to-our-newsletter or by emailing admin@firesafemendocino.org.

To submit your project proposal for the update of the County Community Wildfire Protection Plan, you can find CWPP information and the Input Form link at https://firesafemendocino.org/mccwpp/?mc_cid=36606f490d

Thanks,

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A READER WRITES:

Disaster prep for Anderson Valley: Someone needs to contact the Social Services Director, work with the current Disaster Cooridnator there and request a shelter trailer to be stored either at the Fairgrounds or Fire Department. Contact the Red Cross in Santa Rosa and request shelter training and have members of the community volunteer to take it and be ready to report to the designated shelter site to set up and run a shelter until the County or Red Cross can respond.

School sites with gyms are a good option in a community wide disaster as well.

AV disaster prep should contact other small communities for advice, the South Coast FD had a great system in place and Jayma Shields in Laytonville was working on getting a community plan in place as well. Learn from them.

Also, just like Laytonville, AV has a ton of tourists passing through at any given time. That’s another whole group of victims to consider when disaster planning. What to do with them? They will have nothing unless they are towing an RV. Food for thought.

Preparation is key, congrats on everything you are doing. It will pay huge dividends in any future disasters.

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UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Ruddick is a very social, young dog who enjoys meeting new people and canine friends. He walks nicely on leash and loves to play with toys. We think Ruddick will make a great family dog. He has a good start on basic training and knows sit and shake. German Shepherd Dogs are very smart and excel at many dog activities, such as obedience, agility, and flyball. First bred to be herding dogs, their temperament is intelligent, loyal and energetic. These wonderful dogs need consistent and loving training, and will reward their guardians with a lifetime of love. Our shelter Adoption Coordinator says Ruddick is the best dog ever--high praise from someone who’s met thousands of dogs! Ruddick is a year old and 80 handsome pounds. To see all of our canine and feline guests, and for information about our services, programs, and events, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com.

Join us every first Saturday of the month for our Meet The Dogs Adoption Event at the shelter.

We're on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter

For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

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ANDERSON VALLEY ADULT SCHOOL

Our fall 2024 class schedule is here!

We’ve partnered with Mendocino College to offer a lot of options, including Creative Writing, Conversational Spanish (3 levels!), Citizenship, English as a Second Language, Basic Computers, Child Development (in Spanish), Literacy for Spanish speakers, Singing, Watercolors, and Aikido.

Prices range from free- $60/semester.

Please spread the word! Most classes start the week of September 2nd.

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JIM ROBERTS

We are going to keep the fire burning…

Wickson Restaurant, like so many small businesses is continuing to pivot and evolve. We want to wish Jenny Ann all the best in her next chapter ahead as we move towards the fall with some directional changes. Jenny had really stepped up to the plate at a difficult time and for that we are so grateful.

Having a restaurant in a hospitality property, located in a remote area, after a global pandemic, has had it’s challenges to say the least. After much discussion and recommendations from others, we are steering away from a format of regular high priced prefixed menus which would probably make the most sense for a restaurant like Wickson. Instead, we want to continue to serve not only the visitors to our neck of the woods, but our friends and neighbors also. I will be perfectly honest, it has been a challenge to do both. Expect a thoughtful transition and a working team approach to provide good food and service. With a little 30 seat restaurant, rockstar chefs are not going to be in our immediate future, but we will lean on our local talent and community. (We are so fortunate that all of the restaurant staff wants to continue with the transition….such a solid team!!)

All of us at The Madrones want to share our enthusiasm and support for the new and reinvented dining options that we are so lucky to have in Philo and Boonville. As so many businesses have closed, we feel so grateful to have new or reimagined ones open. The Madrones will continue to support our local small businesses, be kind to their brave efforts and continue shore up a vibrant community.

More to come for Wickson Restaurant. We have a few private events coming up, but our new hours will be Thursday- Saturday dinner and Saturday and Sunday lunch (brunch coming in September)

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ED NOTES

THE SANTA ROSA PRESS DEMOCRAT often runs tributes to Jack London, the famed Sonoma socialist who, to put it mildly, would not have approved today's Valley of the Moon (scaped). London probably would have approved of his posthumous association with Vichy Springs, the old brothel east of Ukiah that once offered its male-only guests a restorative regimen that began with whisky, continued with whisky and women, and ended with a dip in the ancient hot springs out back. Vichy Springs, I daresay, is much less invigorating today.

JACK LONDON had cursed tourists almost since the day in 1910 he bought the property that is now Jack London State Park. Day trippers were forever dropping by while Jack was trying to work. A ferry boat that ran from San Francisco to the sloughs near St. Helena made it easier to get to Sonoma a hundred years ago than it is now. The great Ambrose Bierce was also a regular commuter from SF to his unhappy home in St. Helena.

BUT DOES ANYBODY outside the Press Democrat’s fortified bunker in downtown Santa Rosa consider Sonoma County rural today? SoCo hasn’t been rural since 1950, was already suburban by 1960, urban by 1980, and post-modern bizarre by 2000, and hellish today.

AND THEN THERE’S LUTHER BURBANK, botanical genius and eugenicist whose modest home and gardens are lost in the sea of pavement and cancer-causing building that is the Rose City today. Burbank, incidentally, was a frequent visitor to the Anderson Valley where he visited a Philo botanical experimenter at what is today called Nash Mill. The old boy, like London, who also passed through Boonville, is sanitized today as one more tourist hook among the booze emporiums that are Sonoma County's primary draw.

BURBANK said that the world had had 13 Christs and he was most likely the 14th. He often said he was certain that the human mind, especially his, could influence plants. Burbank claimed he could heal by laying on his hands and, just before he passed on to the great grafting workshop beyond, declared that he wanted no part of a god who sent people to a burning hell.

WHAT DOES any of this have to do with anything? Nobody’s perfect, although the great figures of history are routinely sanitized to cash in on them by latter day chambers of commerce.

MARK TWAIN is easily the most misrepresented literary figure we’ve produced, being portrayed as a kind of Senior Center yarn spinner as his radical political views are ignored while his fiction is deliberately misunderstood by the professional multi-culturalists and damned by illiterate school boards who ban Huckleberry Finn, America's seminal literary work of art. As Hemingway put it: “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.”

BUT A COUPLE of big lies annoy me more than the others in the daily deluge of bullshit. Socialism, as applied to someone like Jack London, is viewed as, well, ha ha, idiosyncratic in an otherwise sound man because, to most media people, even the ones who know better — especially the ones who know better — socialists are the same as communists and both, along with harmless liberals like, say, our Congressman and Name Change Fort Bragg, are routinely described as “the left,” and often as “the extreme left.”

THE EXTREME RIGHT has always been strong in America, and not since Lindbergh have they had a powerful leader such as they have in Trump, an ignorant gasbag whose allure eludes half of US, but there he is and there they are, the red white and blue menace.

THERE'S certainly no “hard left” or “extreme left” the propagandists on the Fox Network rave about round the clock, but an updated socialism of the New Deal type — the government as employer of last resort, for instance — is the only way this country is going to save itself from capitalism.

AS THE MOTHER OF ALL RIOTS kicks off Monday in Chicago with the undemocratic Democrats, as the many thousands of patriotic young people outraged by the Biden Administration's funding and arming of the Israeli massacres of trapped Gazans make themselves heard, they'll be portrayed as “far left pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic terrorists” and versions thereof.

MARK SCARAMELLA ADDS: Albert Einstein was a socialist. Helen Keller was a socialist. Steven J. Gould was a socialist. James Baldwin was a socialist. Harry Belafonte was a socialist. Saul Bellow was a socialist. W.E.B. Du Bois was a socialist. Mia Farrow was a socialist. Yip Harburg (lyricist for the Wizard of Oz music, among others). Dorothy Parker was a socialist. Kurt Vonnegut was a socialist. John Steinbeck was a socialist. …

Einstein, 1929: “I honor Lenin as a man who completely sacrificed himself and devoted all his energy to the realization of social justice. I do not consider his methods practical, but one thing is certain: men of his type are the guardians and restorers of the conscience of humanity.”

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THAT WAS COOL: FINDING PEACE IN REDWOOD VALLEY

by Justine Frederiksen

The paths that helped me heal after a horrible loss…

The morning after my cat Sasquatch died, a friend suggested we walk at the Abhayagiri Monastery in Redwood Valley.

That was cool

Because I can’t think of a better place to heal after that horrific night, which wasn’t the first time I lost a pet, but it was the first time one keeled over from a heart attack right in front of me and died howling on the kitchen floor.

And I was especially heartsick that Sasquatch, the most forgiving soul I’ve ever lived with, spent his last moments in such agony, his sweet face forever frozen in a scream.

But I was soon grateful for two things: First and foremost, that his pain ended very quickly; second, that my pain was eased as soon as I stepped onto the paths at the monastery.

And while I find all trails lined with trees, flowers and water to be restorative potions, the monastery’s mix of nature was a particularly potent brew, with the warm hug offered at Sun Meadow, the soothing waterfalls at Hawaii, and, my favorite, the Cool Oaks, which did what I thought would be impossible that day: made me smile and even laugh a little.

Another blessing about that walk was how it filled me with curiosity about the place I had just fallen in love with: Who made these awesome trails? Who named that lush corner Hawaii? And, most urgent: Did the Cool Oaks earn their name because the trail is much cooler under them, or because they’re, you know, just really cool?!

Fortunately, a kind person named Ajahn Nyaniko, one of the senior monks at Abhayagiri Monastery, answered all of my questions, explaining patiently via emails that “the trails were built by the monastic community over many years, with help from both hired workers and volunteers, and we maintain them ourselves as part of our monastic lifestyle. Also, it gives people the opportunity to experience how monks of the Thai Forest Tradition live in secluded dwelling places in wilderness abodes.”

As for the Cool Oaks, that spot “got its name because in the summer it would be about 20-degrees cooler there, with its year-round stream, and it has some very large oak trees.”

“Hawaii got its name because my parents lived in Hawaii for 15 years, and the two streams coming together with the moss reminded me of some places in Hawaii. Also, my dad was a wood sculptor and made a face of our teacher, Ajahn Chah, which we placed in a small shrine at Hawaii.”

Coolest of all, though, is how Nyaniko told me that while the trails “are entirely on our (private property), about 10 years ago we decided to allow people to come and walk on the trails, to enjoy the beautiful nature and wildlife within the monastery boundary.”

And I could not be more grateful for that. Because now whenever I think of Sasquatch again, I can picture those Cool Oaks above me and smile. And yes, I like to think that makes Squatchy smile, too.

More On The Trails

Unfortunately, Nyaniko also told me that due to a lot of canine visitors not being leashed on the trails, “we recently have made access to our trails more limited. We require that dogs be leashed on our 2.5 mile loop trail so that they don’t chase the animals. Our monastery is a wildlife sanctuary for deer, bears and mountain lions, (and) unleashed dogs tend to chase and kill the squirrels as well as keep the deer from their natural habitats, and the dogs are in very real danger from mountain lions if they are unleashed. For the time being, people who would like to walk on the trails will need to come into our main area and ask for permission.”

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

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TIDAL POWER & THE ALBION MILL

Editor,

I heard anecdotally that the first Albion Mill was run on tidal power but never found any information about it. I reached out to the Kelley House and received this reply:

“Your query about the first Albion Water Mill has been forwarded to me. I work with the Research Team here at the Kelley House Museum and I'm happy to help you with your request. Below you will find two descriptions of the water mill and the source for that information, which is placed within parentheses. Hope this is helpful to you. Please let us know if you need any further information

*Regarding Francisco Faria (Portagee Frank): A brief article about Faria while he was still alive, published in The Mendocino Beacon (May 6, 1899) says: “It may be of interest to some to know that Frank [Francisco Faria] came to this coast nearly fifty years ago. His first work was done at the Albion, where he aided in the construction of the old water mill.” The mill referred to is probably that built for William Richardson's Rancho Albion. Sullenberger says: “Richardson quickly realized the value of the timber on his land. In 1852, he contracted with a man simply identified as Scarf [J. Scharf?], to build a water-powered sawmill on the Albion.” Estaban Richardson's testimony of October 1853 as quoted by Sullenberger states: “a mill was begun on the Albion River for sawing timber which is now about finished…” (Navarro-by-the-Sea website

http://www.navarro-by-the-sea-center.org/longhistory2.html

This mill ran on tidal power for a few months. A water wheel (probably an undershot wheel) at a tide gate ran in one direction while the tide came in, and in the other when it ran out. Changing a belt kept the machinery running in one direction. A secondary reservoir on a tributary was released during the tide change. When the tide was low, this filled reservoir ran the mill. When the tide came back in it was refilled. Built by George Hagenmeyer and J. Scharf. All of this was destroyed in the first winter flooding." (Mills of Mendocino County; a Record of the Lumber Industry 1852 - 1996. Holmes, Alice, editor and Wilbur Lawson. Book. Mendocino County Historical Society, 1996, p. 32)

Of course the Albion River was much wider and deeper back then. Some of the schooners that carried lumber to San Francisco were built up the Albion.

Cheers,

Dobie Dolphin

Albion

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THE BOONVILLE FAIR: A HISTORY

by Mike Pardee

An “old time country fair — country style” will welcome visitors to fruitful Anderson Valley next month.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 13, 14, 15 are the dates posted on the big red apple painted on the right hand side of the giant 24-sheet wooden sign at the fairgrounds here.

The same dates are marked down on hundreds of household calendars in all part of Northern California by devotees of the great American form of rural entertainment — the country fair. “We get ’em from all parts of the country,” smiled Harwood J. June, the late friendly, blue-eyed, pipe-smoking justice of the peace in Anderson Valley for 25 years. June was still Fair Manager as late as 1984. One of the originators of the fair, he was its manager since 1937 when the tiny “Apple Show,” housed in a single 100 by 60 foot redwood building, officially became the Mendocino County Fair.

Once a show window for fruitful Anderson Valley, one of the earliest areas in Northern California to commercially produce apples and home of what boosters modestly assert are the “sweetest grapes grown in all the Redwood Empire,” the fair has become the show window for all of Mendocino County's agricultural and industrial wealth.

It has grown. But it has lost none of its spontaneous charm, its warm-hearted appeal and its neighborliness that marked its beginning.

The three-day fun festival was The People's Fair — when it was originated in 1926 as an outgrowth of an idea from a young Anderson Valley resident after he visited the Cloverdale Citrus Fair. It was The People's Fair when it was renamed the Mendocino County Fair combined with the Anderson Valley Apple Show — and it has remained The People's Fair through succeeding years.

The event offers one of the widest ranges of agricultural, horticultural, livestock, floriculture and industrial classes of any fair in California other than the California State Fair and the Pomona County Fair. (That's what the state said officially in an audit report in 1949, anyway.) And it is still The People’s Fair.

“That's the policy — has been the policy right on through the years,” said Judge June. “It's the show window of the county for the farmers and we like to keep it that way. I think if anyone asked any Grange or Farm Center in the county their opinion of the fair, they'd say it's their fair. They all take pride in it. We're guided by their suggestions — we make it strictly a cooperative deal.”

Certainly that's the case in Anderson Valley. From Yorkville, site of an early day stage stop on the eastern edge of the Valley where the photogenic McDonalds-To-The-Sea highway (State Route No. 128) enters, to the mouth of the Navarro River, valley folks, whether their homes are in Yorkville, Boonville, Philo or Navarro, or any of the area in between, are fair boosters — and workers.

Since its inception back in 1937, the fair has traditionally been the final event of the long list of fine agricultural expositions in the Redwood Empire that traditionally open each year with the Cloverdale Citrus Fair in February.

In many respects there's a similarity between the two.

They're both large scale neighborhood parties. Both are results of a whole hearted pioneer spirit of pitching in and helping on the part of folks living in the Fair communities.

They're even closer — for the Cloverdale Citrus Fair, one of the oldest community events in the area, is the “daddy” of the Mendocino County Fair.

It happened, Judge June, one of the “ringleaders,” recalls, like this:

A large group of Anderson Valley folks went neighboring to the Cloverdale fair in 1926. It wasn't their first visit to their Sonoma County neighbors. It had become a sort of a custom in the valley for the folks to drive down to Cloverdale, look over the exhibits and meet old friends from all parts of the north coast area there. More than just an exhibit of oranges artistically displayed in feature booths sponsored by organizations, schools and individuals — it was a chance for a good old fashioned get-together — a time and a place to talk over old times, to discuss crops, and to find out that their friends were just as puzzled and worried over rising taxes and “how they're running the country back in Washington” as they themselves were.

One of the party was a young man named Chester Estell.

He was struck by the Cloverdale fair. He saw it as a show window of the area's finest products and saw the value of getting folks together to talk over conditions and to interchange ideas.

He kept talking about the value of a co-ordinated celebration of some kind for his own community. Why not a Fourth of July celebration? A bang-up affair with razzle-dazzle fireworks, maybe shoot off a few anvils (an early-day form of noisemaking that the younger generation probably never heard of. It consisted of turning one anvil on its face, bottom up, and filling the square anchor hole with black powder and attaching a fuse. Then the second anvil was overturned on top of the first one. When the powder was ignited there was a satisfying boom).

“Well, sir,” Judge June said, “the idea sort of took hold. Several more of the fellows got to talking about the idea. Then they remembered that at an earlier meeting of the Anderson Valley Farm Center some of the members who had been to Cloverdale wondered if the same thing couldn't be done with apples — like they had done over Sebastopol way.”

The upshot of the matter was that at the next Farm Center meeting the idea was again discussed. By that time it had been reduced to a concise plan and presented.

Members liked the idea. They discussed pro and con.

At height of the discussion one of the members rose to his feet.

“Heck,” he said, “any place can have a Fourth of July celebration — not that there's any discredit intended on Fourth of July celebrations, but they can be put on without much imagination — or much originality. All you need is a politician for a speech, and they're a dime a dozen, a band, some flags and some firecrackers. But not every place can put on an apple show. They don't all have apples — not apples like we raise in Anderson Valley anyway. We’ve got ’em — let's have an apple show.”

In a wave of enthusiastic applause that greeted his remarks, the Anderson Valley Apple Show was born.

The Anderson Valley Farm Center was three years old that year. Its members had been looking around for something to get their teeth in — some project for community betterment. This was it — the Apple Show.

Judge June was Farm Center chairman at the time. The farm organization represented the whole ten-mile sweep of valley — Yorkville, Boonville, Philo and Navarro and all the farm and timberland in between.

He and other Center directors got together and appointed the late Donald McIntosh as first fair manager — to serve without pay.

Then, with the stage all set for a show — officers named, and plenty of apples assured, for the bloom that year gave promise of the same kind of bumper crop that Anderson Valley folks just naturally take for granted — an important question was raised:

“Where’ll we hold it?” someone asked.

That caused a pause — a very brief pause — in the rush of plans,

Someone else recalled that “Doc” Caldwell owned a sizable piece of land right in town.

The very next day the committee got together with “Doc” and sounded him out on the prospects of buying an acre and a half of his farm. They were in a position to buy it, they assured him — if he were willing to wait for his money until such time as the first fair was over and the finances counted.

He was an Anderson Valley booster, too. His reaction was typical. He said: “Sure, go ahead.”

Then came a campaign to raise money. An exhibit pavilion would be needed if they were going to show apples, and grapes, and big vegetables, and flowers from the women folk's gardens.

That didn't take long, either. In jig time they bad raised $650 and posted a call for volunteer workers to help put up the building.

“Everyone donated either cash or time — or both,” Judge June continued. “Everyone was willing. The word got spread around the Valley that if a man didn't donate, well, he just didn't belong here — that's all.”

Nobody had to move from the stress of public opinion. More enthusiastic men showed up with tools than there was lumber for them to work on. Their wives came along with baskets of lunch. Someone started a fire and got the big picnic-sized coffee pot boiling — and almost before they knew it they had an exhibit pavilion.

There wasn't anything fancy about it. It was just a square-cornered, quarter-pitch roofed building 100 feet long by 60 feet wide. And about half of it, a space 50 by 40 feet, was railed off as a dance floor.

But it was a substantial building. It was built of honest Mendocino County Redwood — “the finest we could get” — and the roof was heavy gauge corrugated iron. A small stage was built on one end.

With the building finished, committee members scoured the countryside to get the biggest pumpkins, the tallest corn, the huskiest heads of cabbage and the finest, most brilliantly colored and most highly perfumed apples earmarked for the first show.

Still others started rounding up awards.

“We couldn't offer any cash awards — no cash,” Judge June said. “But we managed to prevail on some of the businesses that we traded with to set up prizes.”

He still has one — a silver cup donated by the Montgomery Ward firm which did a big catalogue business in the valley — as the first award for the “most artistic and original design and arrangement of booth.”

It was won by the main feature booth of the fair — an old-time farmhouse kitchen scene, complete with red brick fireplace, an old muzzle-loading gun hanging over the mantle, and rawhide bottomed chair and a corncob stoppered demijohn sitting on the hearth. Around it were arranged the finest fruits and vegetables that could be found on the farms of Judge June, and the late S.T. McAbee and J. Fenton, who jointly sponsored the exhibit.

“I guess the reason we won was there weren't very many in competition. I forget how many feature booths there were that year — but there couldn't have been very many, for by the time you take a 40 by 50 dance floor out of a building 60 by 100 feet, there isn't too much room left.”

But all available space was filled. The Farm Center had an exhibit. So did the Grange. Big “set pieces” were arranged around the walls. The spicy apples that formed most of the backgrounds of the artistic displays filled the air with their fragrance.

The entertainment program on the stage was a huge success while the nightly dances made a hit with the 1926 version of the bobby soxer set.

Because building the pavilion and rounding up all the features for the show took so much time, the opening of the fair was later than the boosters had at first hoped. All the other fairs and community shows in the Empire were past. The Anderson Valley Apple Show was the windup of the series.

But rather than being a deterrent, the later date proved to help. It was popular — so popular that it has remained from that time on the final event on the Empire's events and celebrations calendar.

“The late date makes the exhibits all the better,” Judge June said. “We can show a little of everything we grow here.”

For many years the apple displays of the late August Gossman were a major highlight of the fair.

An apple hobbyist, August spent must of his time collecting apple varieties to bud or graft to trees in his little orchard. Each year he showed around 50 varieties. The tradition of showing the Gossman products continued, however, after his passing, and apples from his favorite trees were still on plate displays in the big hall into the 1980s.

As the Anderson Valley Apple Fair — customarily called the “Boonville Apple Show” by its fans — the annual event grew year by year.

Occupying the entire east side in the rear wing of the big wooden building, the floral show centers on a woodland theme.

Towering redwoods, sprawling liveoaks and dense masses of ferns made a wooded setting typical of the woodland area of Mendocino County to serve as a foil for the displays of autumn flowers that made up the feature part of the display.

Redwood products, particularly redwood novelties, called attention to the importance of the lumbering industry in the area.

Lumbering in the area dates to the early 1860s when John Gschwend's water-powered mill on the Navarro River west of Boonville launched the inland redwood lumbering industry in the area.

Unlike some of the areas, lumbering didn't “die out” during the period of slump in production of the sturdy, time, decay and fire-resistant building material that first attracted the attention of early day Empire builders.

“We've always had some mill activity around the valley,” Judge June said.

There were over 20 mills, large and small, operating in the area, adding their output to the economy of the county in an industry that intensified in the years following World War II days.

The Fair continued as the strictly community event until 1937 when, thanks to the aid given by Judge Lilburn Gibson of the Mendocino County Superior Court, then District Attorney, who “ironed out the legal wrinkles,” it gained the official designation as the Mendocino County Fair and Apple Show.

From the little pavilion and the acre and half of land bought “by jawbone” back in 1926, the fair's facilities grew to a modern fair plant comprising 25 acres — three additional acres were added in 1984 by purchase. It’s compact and well laid out — unlike fairgrounds in any other community of the area — and it’s located on the main street of the town.

The main exhibit hall, a large white painted redwood building that has grown up around the old original structure, is located directly in the town, across the street from the stores and cafes that make up much of the business life of the little community of Boonville.

The new land bought in 1984 was used for moving the stock farms to a new location. It was bought from Russell Tolman, and adjoins the fairgrounds on the north.

In addition to the main exhibit hall, the facilities include five stock barns, wooden framed, metal roofed shelters, a Butler-type metal building 70 by 200 built in 1983 as a machinery building, but which is houses over-flow agricultural exhibits from the main hall, as well as the Unity Club’s Garden Section, 4-H and FFA exhibits and the commercial department.

There's a separate Poultry Building that houses a big display of local poultry — chickens of various types, turkeys, rabbits and pigeons.

There are two horse barns, each with 30 box stalls for the rodeo stock.

There’s the big 1,400 capacity grandstand, dedicated in 1983, and in 1984, portable bleachers were added at either side of it, accommodating 250 more to handle the overflow crowd, Judge June said.

There's a large sanitary building equipped with showers for exhibitors.

There’s also a big traveling carnival with a variety of popular rides and games.

On the infield of the track that fronts the grandstand there are permanently constructed rodeo chutes at one end, and at the other a full scale baseball diamond — for the fairgrounds at Boonville aren't fairgrounds that are used once a year only to lay idle the balance of the 12-month period between fairs.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, August 17, 2024

KATHERINE LEON, Willits. DUI.

CHRISTIAN LOPEZ-MALDONADO, Fort Bragg. DUI.

RICHARD LORMER, Sonoma/Ukiah. Corporal injury to spouse.

MICHAEL LUCAS, Ukiah. Vandalism, criminal threats, probation revocation, resisting.

DENA MORRIS, Ukiah. Parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

KENNETH PARTRIDGE, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance for sale, paraphernalia, concealed dirk-dagger, probation violation.

LYDELL WILLIAMS, Ukiah. Concealed dirk-dagger, probation revocation.

TROY THORNTON, Willits. Failure to appear.

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DAO WILL DO IT

Being Here Now!

Just sitting here at the Ukiah library, having perused the Saturday New York Times, and after digesting “all the news that’s fit to print”, am completely relaxed, letting the Dao work through the body-mind instrument without interference. No yesterday, no tomorrow, no today. ;-))

Craig Louis Stehr

PS, Have returned from a most enjoyable evening at The Forest Club, and at Villa Del Mar after that ,and then got a taxi ride back to the Royal Motel. Listening to extraordinary videos on YouTube at Midnight. This is enjoyable beyond compare!  Check it out >>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR5ufJo-j-c

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MEMO OF THE AIR: Zanzibar.

Here's the recording of last night's (Friday 2024-08-16) 8-hour Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org (and, for the first hour, also 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino): https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0605

Coming shows can feature your story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or whatever. Just email it to me. Or include it in a reply to this post. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there and read it on the air. That's what I'm here for.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

The carved and painted wood and wire automata of Amedeo Capelli. https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2024/08/hand-carved-automata.html

Hand puppet dance. You might have to click the sound on. https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2024/08/every-time-you-walking.html

About Christian Nationalism. (via Juanita) https://www.facebook.com/504635278/videos/876031034421393

And /The Fifth Element/ in 1950s Super Panavision. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlEByKfcNmk

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

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CHRIS SKYHAWK:

I certainly understand that Project 2025 might be a Thing, but does anyone else notice its ascendancy after the real Joe Biden was revealed in that “debate,” when the entire world saw what his corporate handlers had been hiding? The Dems never give us an affirmative reason to vote for them, they strangle every progressive baby in its crib; they always want us to vote for them out of fear. Also suspicious is that we avoid the neocons’ Project for a new American Century, which corporate Dems seem to have zero problem with although its arguably much worse than 2025! But if the rapidly declining War whore Genocide Joe, is supposed to be some kind of buffer, and the appointed not elected Kamala is the nominee then the corporate captured Dems have surely F-d us.

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DEMOCRAT HUSTLE

Editor:

I have heard a lot of frantic talk here about the threat to democracy represented by Donald Trump’s run for the presidency. But the facts don’t fit that narrative. In Sonoma County alone, 84,700 people voted for Joe Biden. You’ll note that the ballot did not read “Biden/Harris” but just “Joseph R. Biden Jr.” The Democratic National Committee has ignored the wishes of all those Sonoma County voters and moved all the delegates over to Kamala Harris. Harris has never gone through a selection process that is based on the will of the voters. She dropped out of the 2020 race before the first primary in Iowa. But she has been pushed to the forefront by Democratic power brokers. So, who’s the real threat to democracy?

Joe Gaffney

Rohnert Park

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BELOVED SF GIANTS FAN GETS VILIFIED BY BRAVES AFTER GRAND SLAM SPLASH HIT

by Alex Simon

Dave Edlund has been a beloved member of the San Francisco Giants fan base for a few decades now. But the latest home run snag for “McCovey Cove Dave” is earning him scorn from a different MLB team’s fans and reporters.

Edlund has been at the center of a minor controversy with Atlanta Braves supporters after he didn’t return a ball Braves outfielder Michael Harris II hit into McCovey Cove for a grand slam Wednesday night. According to multiple reporters covering the Braves, Edlund asked for a job with the Giants in exchange for the baseball.

When SFGate spoke to Edlund on the phone Friday, the 68-year-old denied that he asked for a job. Instead, Edlund told SFGate he requested a deal from both teams that would allow him to park his vehicle in the Giants’ lot at Pier 30/32 at the discounted rate the team charges employees. With that request denied, he’s keeping the ball — and feeling “kind of bitter.”

“I wish I had never talked to the Braves,” Edlund told SFGate.

Edlund was one of a few kayakers out on the water in the top of the first inning when Braves player Michael Harris II hit the grand slam into the cove. The ball landed just near Edlund’s kayak, making it a relatively easy and clean retrieval. According to the Giants, it’s the first time a visiting player has hit a grand slam to McCovey Cove and just the fourth grand slam splash hit ever, period. (The other three: Barry Bonds in 2000, Michael Tucker in 2005 and Mike Yastrzemski in 2021.)

While Edlund has grabbed 38 splash hits and 55 balls from McCovey Cove in his 20-plus years (and 700-plus games) in the water, he hadn’t retrieved any of the prior three grand slam balls, adding major personal significance to this ball for him.

But it was also Harris’ first grand slam and splash hit, leading the Braves to attempt to collect the ball from Edlund and offer him a signed baseball and bat in return — a common offer for home run exchanges. But as a lifelong Giants fan, Edlund said he had no interest in the Braves’ memorabilia, so he declined the offer, and the Braves told the media covering their team, leading multiple reporters to chide him on social media Wednesday night.

The parking idea came to him later as an exchange for the ball, Edlund said. The lot at Pier 30/32 is primarily used by Giants employees and media members, who are charged a significantly reduced rate compared with what the public pays — frequently $60 or more for non-season-ticket holders.

Edlund goes to at least 50 games a year but is not a season ticket holder (you don’t need a ticket to go to McCovey Cove, after all). As a cost-conscious retiree, he frequently chooses to commute from his Oakland Hills home on BART to downtown San Francisco and then walks the rest of the way to the ballpark. In his eyes, parking in the lot at Pier 30/32 would make it easier to attend more games. So he put the proposal before a few Giants officials he’s gotten to know through his years of kayaking in the cove and mentioned it vaguely on Instagram Thursday (though he’s since deleted these comments).

That mention brought officials from both teams back out to the cove before Thursday’s day game. At that point, according to Edlund, the Braves official offered the same items as before and “threatened to make a bad name of me on social media” before walking away.

The Braves did not immediately respond to an SFGate request for comment about Edlund’s claims.

The Braves seemingly revealed more information about Edlund’s request before Thursday’s day game to reporters who cover the team, leading to another round of tweets and a report on the team’s Bally Sports South pregame show from reporter Hanna Yates.

“Then, he started responding to fans with a selfie with that ball on his social media accounts saying, ‘Well, small gesture, there is one thing’,” Yates said on the broadcast. “And so the Braves said, ‘What is that?’ And he said, ‘Well, I want to be a Giants team employee.’ So, not necessarily a small gesture there. But Michael Harris says, ‘Well, sounds like I am just going to have to hit another grand slam’.”

Braves play-by-play broadcaster Brandon Gaudin followed up Yates’ report by saying, “So, Dave is not making many friends in the Atlanta clubhouse or in the Atlanta area.” Analyst CJ Nitkowski added, “Boo to Dave.”

The report from Braves media members has led the story to be picked up across the internet, with many vilifying Edlund for his decision. Still, a strong chorus of people has also come to Edlund’s defense, noting how often he’s seen out on the bay.

Home run exchanges have led to some heated and contentious moments in the past, both for the Giants and for other MLB teams. There was an intense, several-month saga surrounding the baseball Barry Bonds hit to become baseball’s all-time home run leader. Bonds’ 756th home run ball was eventually displayed at the Hall of Fame with an asterisk on it, in a reference to Bonds’ alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Earlier this year, a controversy emerged in Los Angeles after Shohei Ohtani’s first homer as a Dodger. The fan who caught Ohtani’s first homer said the Dodgers pressured her into making a hasty trade for a ball that the Los Angeles Times said could have been worth $100,000 or more. The Dodgers and the fan worked out a resolution later that month.

Edlund is a collector at heart and told SFGate he likes to keep many of the splash hits he’s retrieved. But he’s also given many back and has helped facilitate other exchanges, too. He said he returned Carlos Beltrán’s 300th career homer and Charlie Blackmon’s 200th career homer while also helping get LaMonte Wade Jr.’s first splash hit back to him (even though Edlund didn’t catch it himself). Edlund also said he would give the ball back to any player who hit his first career homer to the cove — without wanting anything in return.

Still, this specific grand slam splash hit has sentimental value to Edlund, especially since he feels like an unofficial ambassador for the kayakers on McCovey Cove. Grabbing a grand slam in the cove has been something he’s wanted for a long time — but now that he’s achieved it, it’s come with quite the headache.

“I love chasing a home run and competing against fellow fans in a friendly way,” Edlund said. “[But] some fans, particularly Braves fans, are going to be mad knowing I still have the ball.”

(SFgate.com)

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THE CALIFORNIA JOURNALISM PRESERVATION ACT

Google was once the company with the motto “Don’t be evil.”

Well, those days are gone.

Last week, a federal judge ruled that the Silicon Valley company is a monopolist that uses its market advantage to stifle search engine competition.

In another case, the federal government and eight states, including California, allege Google has “corrupted legitimate competition” in the technology that drives online advertising.

Local news organizations are victims of these monopolistic practices. Google not only curtails our ability to generate advertising dollars, but it also uses our news content to drive web traffic to its search site.

Essentially, they’re putting the work product of our journalists on their site and selling advertising with it. And reaping the profits. Google made more than $300 billion last year, most of it from advertising it sells using content it did not create or pay for.

Meanwhile, local journalism is struggling to survive. California alone has lost over 100 newspapers in the last decade, cutting off a flow of information critical for the survival of local democracy. Fortunately, state lawmakers are trying to at least partially correct this imbalance.

Two bills are working their way through the Legislature this month. The most promising, AB 886, authored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, would require online platforms such as Google and Facebook to share the money they make off local news organizations’ articles.

The bill would require the journalism organizations to spend at least 70% of funds through the California Journalism Preservation Act on journalists and support staff. In other words, Google would have to stop undermining local journalism and start helping fund it.

It’s not a new idea. Similar laws have been passed in Canada and Australia, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars of investments in newsrooms.

Of course, the devil is in the details, and the biggest detail remains how much Google would be required to compensate news organizations for the privilege of using their content. The amount is currently under negotiation between legislative leaders and Google. The big question is whether the company will strike a deal, like they have in other countries, or roll the dice and go to arbitration.

Meanwhile, the bill, now in its second year in the Legislature, has passed the Assembly, but must still pass a key Senate Appropriations Committee this week. Before the end of the month, it must pass the full Senate and go back to the Assembly for concurrence in amendments.

Another bill, SB 1327, by state Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda, takes a different approach to the same problem. It would tax large tech firms on the user data they collect for advertising purposes, and then use the tax revenues to support news publications.

Clearly change is needed. Clearly Google has long ago abandoned its motto of altruism. Only action by lawmakers can curb this behavior. We’re in the final month of the legislative session. Now is the time to get this done.

— Bay Area News Group Op-Ed/Ukiah Daily Journal

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LOTS OF LOVE

Where is this world located

That we don’t have time

Or Space

For all kittens?

.

Private Beaches and Villas

Are so stressful to a kitten

.

Really People

How important are luxuries

Amongst one another no less

Like War and Invasion and Intelligence

.

When all the momenta

To bond with a temporarily dependent

Stranger provides itself?

.

It’s confusing

I’m not a child anymore

.

I go really slow

To see the systems of kitten abuse

Rampant and deranged

.

I hope you find a little kitten soon,

.

That calls your heart into action.

.

Otherwise, just eat it.

— Quincy Steele

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AFTER BIDEN BLOODLETTING, DEMS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN!

by Maureen Dowd

We head to Chicago on a wave of euphoria, exuberance, exultation, excitement and even, you might say, ecstasy.

It’s going to be a glorious coronation — except that everyone’s mad at one another.

Top Democrats are bristling with resentments even as they are about to try to put on a united front at the United Center in the Windy City.

A coterie of powerful Democrats maneuvered behind the scenes to push an incumbent president out of the race.

It wasn’t exactly “Julius Caesar” in Rehoboth Beach. But it was a tectonic shift and, of course, there were going to be serious reverberations. Even though it was the right thing to do, because Joe Biden was not going to be able to campaign, much less serve as president for another four years, in a fully vital way, it was a jaw-dropping putsch.

But at some point, when the polls cratered, Democratic mandarins decided to put the welfare of the party — and the country — ahead of the president’s ego, and stop catering to his self-regarding fantasy that he was the only one who could beat Donald Trump. Also, they all could know that Biden was slowing faster than he and his family and his inner circle were acknowledging.

Biden went from looking “forward to getting back on the campaign trail” to gone in one weekend, with the handprints of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries on the president’s back. And when Kamala Harris deftly cemented her position as the nominee, the party erupted in a dizzying sense of possibility.

How could Biden not be hurt that the Democratic convention went from four days of “sitting shiva,” as James Carville put it, to a joyful romp with Kamala atop the ticket?

Democrat after Democrat who had been close to Biden before conspiring to push him out had to confess to cable anchors that they had not been able to talk to the president, who was sulking in his tent.

Party leaders whitewashed the coup by ornately extolling Biden.

James Clyburn told CNN that Biden had a record “that no president of the United States could ever match.” Pelosi proposed on CBS’s “Sunday Morning” that Biden’s face should be carved onto Mount Rushmore. “You have Teddy Roosevelt up there,” she said. “And he’s wonderful. I don’t say take him down. But you could add Biden.”

Despite the grandiose flattery, Joe, Jill and Hunter were not fooled or appeased.

Even if the Democrats wanted to put their bad blood in the past, the Nasty Man at the top of the G.O.P. ticket won’t let them forget.

“Kamala wants NOTHING TO DO WITH CROOKED JOE BIDEN,” Trump ranted on Truth Social Thursday. “They are throwing him out on the Monday Night Stage, known as Death Valley. He now HATES Obama and Crazy Nancy more than he hates me! He is an angry man, as he should be. They stole the Presidency from him — ‘It was a Coup!’”

As much as she cared for the president, Pelosi would never choose helping the House of Biden over helping her beloved House of Representatives. Their alienation of affection was clear in interviews she did to promote her new book, “The Art of Power.”

One of the most ruthless and successful tacticians in congressional history seemed sheepish about knifing her pal, and conflicted over whether to take credit. Et tu, Nancy? Biden must have thought.

When David Remnick asked Pelosi if her long relationship with Biden could survive, she replied: “I hope so. I pray so. I cry so.” She added, “I lose sleep on it, yeah.”

There was no kumbaya. Biden didn’t care about the “three generations of love” Pelosi told Jen Psaki that her family had for him.

The president already resented Obama for shoving him aside for Hillary, and he resented Hillary for squandering that opportunity and losing to Trump. Even though Obama tried to do everything quietly to protect his saintly status, Joe was furious that Obama was sidelining him twice.

Michelle Obama’s relationship with Biden soured when his family ostracized Hunter’s first wife, Michelle’s friend Kathleen; that’s one reason the popular Michelle wasn’t on the campaign trail for Biden.

Kamala can’t be thrilled that Obama, Pelosi and Schumer hesitated to endorse her because they wanted more moderate rivals to compete in an open mini-primary. And Biden and Harris staffs are also tetchy, as Kamala layers on her own people.

Biden still thinks he could have taken Trump, so how could he reconcile being shoved off the sled? On Wednesday, Ron Klain, Biden’s longtime adviser, expressed to Anderson Cooper Bidenworld’s feelings about the Jacquerie heard round the world.

“I think it was unfortunate because I think that the president had won the nomination fair and square,” Klain said. “Fourteen million people had voted for him and the vice president as vice president.” He added: “I do think, you know, the president was pushed by public calls from elected officials for him to drop out, from donors calling for him to drop out. And I think that was wrong.”

Those who pushed out Biden should be proud. They saved him and their party from a likely crushing defeat, letting Trump snake back in and soil democracy.

That would keep Biden off Rushmore.

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TAIBBI AND KIRN

Matt Taibbi: Every eight seconds of this campaign has a new theme to it. The one we’re currently in is this idea that the candidate, either the vice president or a candidate for the presidency does not have to talk to the media. And that would be interesting if it came from politicians, but it’s coming sort of from the media. Slowly. We should point that out, that there are some holdouts still on some of these Japanese islands.

Walter Kirn: Who still believe that the activities that are the foundation of their employment should continue.

Matt Taibbi: But the movement has started. It’s already afoot. Let’s listen to Lawrence O’Donnell since he’s sort of… He was one of the people who helped start this.

Lawrence O’Donnell: “One of the Harris-Walz campaign slogans now is, we’re not going back. But we just went back today. We went back nine years in the press coverage of the campaign, the media coverage. Donald Trump gets credit from the people he lied to today for lying to them. They appreciate it. Reporters understandably and incorrectly believe that the most important thing a candidate can do is answer their questions, but they don’t know what an answer actually is. Words spoken after their question marks are not necessarily answers and are never answers when they come from Donald Trump.

“There are rumblings in the news media now about Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate not doing what Donald Trump did today, stand up in front of reporters and take their questions, and some of the tinier minds in the news media continue to give credit to Donald Trump for standing up and lying in response to every single question they ask. A lie is not an answer. Donald Trump never answers reporters’ questions. Never. Anyone in the news media who tells you that Donald Trump has answered reporters’ questions and Kamala-”

Matt Taibbi: Okay. We get it. We know where he’s coming from. Let’s listen to Michael Steele, the former RNC chairman who essentially says that are reporter interviews really needed?

Michael Steele: “I want to shift gears a little bit on this one because what has struck me since Donald Trump’s press conference is the highbrow nature of the press coming at Kamala Harris saying, well, she… In my view, whining, that she doesn’t talk to us. She hasn’t done a sit down with us. She hasn’t done interviews with us. And I watched that press conference and I go, “Well, when you start actually asking real questions of Donald Trump and pressing him, then that sort of creates a space of balance.”

“But then I look at polling. You have the New York Times CNN poll showing Harris versus Trump in battleground states, Michigan she’s up by four, 50, 46, Pennsylvania up by four, 50, 46, and in Wisconsin up by four, 50, 46. All of that’s within the margin of error. So at one point you say strategically, “Why do I need to talk to you right now? I’m talking to the American people and we’re having a conversation. You’re happy to follow it and to report on it.” How do you think the campaign balance is going forward? And you know she’s going to sit down at some point, but right now, is there a real need for her to sort of get the imprimatur of the press on her campaign-”

Matt Taibbi: Okay. All right. Yeah, I think we get that. And so this is how these things start. Somebody sort of raises the question, “Hey, do we really need to ask candidates questions?” Then we had POLITICO. You can see this POLITICO headline, Why Harris Isn’t Taking Questions, and it’s POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, and it starts off with a reference to the movie Bull Durham, where it’s talking about Crash Davis giving the advice to Nuke LaLoosh, who was played brilliantly by Tim Robbins, that you never mess with a streak. There’s a different word in there. And then later on there’s another scene. We might as well just show it because it’s an iconic movie scene where Crash Davis, the catcher, is explaining to Susan Sarandon in the movie that you never mess with a streak.

Video:

“You are full of shit.

Because Nuke’s chastity was your idea.

I know. I’m telling you-

I never-

… just keep your hands out is what I’m telling-

I never told him to stay out of your bed.

Oh yes, you did. You most certainly did.

I never told him to stay out of your bed.

Yes, you did.

I told him that a player on a streak has to respect the streak.

Oh, fine.

You know why? Because they don’t happen very often.

Right.

Do you believe he’s playing well, because you’re getting laid or-”

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Matt Taibbi: All right. All right. So this is the metaphor. She’s in the holes. She’s up in the polls and because of that, she’s on a streak. Don’t mess with a streak. So the metaphor is make sure you’re using the same bat, turn your hat backwards the same way you did before practice yesterday and keep the same routine and don’t talk to the media because you just don’t mess with a streak. What do you think about that, Walter?

Walter Kirn: Well, may I dissect this frog? First of all, the confession of self-loathing by the press is welcome development. They know they’re shit and now they’re happily confessing it as an excuse for their favorite candidate not to speak to them. That’s, like I say, candor. But how does Lawrence O’Donnell think it makes sense that if Trump lies to the press, there’s no reason for Harris, who would presumably tell the truth, to talk to them. I don’t get that. He implied that reporters are too stupid to know when they’re being lied to by Trump at least, but would they not be refreshingly happy to find Harris, the truth teller, in their interview seat?

Also, Lawrence O’Donnell should be glad that Trump lies or he’d have nothing to hit them over the head with. I mean, even lies in an interview are information and useful information, especially if they can be proved to be lies. This is like fishermen sending a warning out to salmon not to look at hooks if they see them in the water. It’s the most self-defeating and strange sophistry I’ve ever heard.

Matt Taibbi: Well, yeah, there’s a little bit of pushback. We have seen press people like Margaret Sullivan wrote an article in The Washington Post saying, “Yes, Kamala should talk to the media.” Columbia Journalism Review did a big thing on it saying, “Yes, we have considered it, and we do think that the candidate should probably talk to the media.”

Walter Kirn: Can you believe the things we seriously debate now that previously we’d laugh at? I mean, the Columbia Journalism Review, the organ of the great journalistic school or-

Matt Taibbi: The conscience of the-

Walter Kirn: … nation, the conscience of the profession has to do a think piece on whether politicians should talk to the press. I mean…

Matt Taibbi: This is our reality now, right? So I’ve gone for years without using the term Overton window, but there’s no way to avoid it in this situation. The first time I realized this was really a thing was when an attorney who worked in war on terror cases asked, “Would you have been able to have a debate in 1993 about whether or not torture is a good idea?” And really, we wouldn’t have. It wouldn’t have come up. The person who would’ve been the advocate for that would not have been listened to and certainly wouldn’t have won an election. But we’re continually shifting the boundaries on what we think is an acceptable idea or a good idea. And for the press to stand up and announce that its own function is maybe counterproductive is… unthinkable.

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JAMES KUNSTLER:

Some interesting hate mail I received today from one B Quinn (qbeing1964@hotmail.com).

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Dear Mr. Kunstler,

No matter how many times you and your kind type it, the People aren’t buying your “Hamas mob” tripe. The People know the protestors are protesting, rightfully and morally so, the genocidal ass-raping Judeo-Nazi baby killers occupying all of Palestine. You and your kind are riding an existential train to oblivion in this life and the next. The People have awoken to the genocidal project of the Crime of 1948 and are responding accordingly. It will only get worse for you and your arrogant kind. There is no arrogance like Judeo-Nazi arrogance. The German Nazis tried to hide their crimes against humanity, indicating a residual morality, but the Judeo-Nazis celebrate and advocate their genocide and ass-raping culture. Your people will NEVER recover from this episode of history. Your people can no longer draw sympathy from the Hollowcost well, which has run completely dry.

You and your kind never learn from history which is why your kind have been exiled from over 100 countries down through history. Your kind keep repeating the same cultural subterfuge over and over and over. Thanks to independent media, the majority Jew-owned lying legacy media no longer controls the “antisemitism” narrative. Antisemitism has been drained of all its former sting. And, besides, for the record, you and your kind aren’t Semites. You are mostly Polish and Russian Jewish converts. Your kind have nothing in common with the Israelites of old except for your hatred for God and His covenant.

Do not bother responding for your email has been blocked. The curse of God upon you and your kind.

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THE BELINSKY SUSPENSION

Aug. 14, 1964 - Bo Belinsky of the Los Angeles Angels was suspended indefinitely by the club today after an early morning fracas in which he knocked out sportswriter Braven Dyer.

Belinsky, contending he was only defending himself and that Dyer came to his Washington hotel room and tried to attack him, said he was going to see his lawyer.

“Just what right do the Angels have to suspend me without pay?” he asked.

The controversial southpaw, who had been a headline grabber since he had pitched a no-hitter as a rookie, said he was leaving for Los Angeles immediately to see his lawyer, Paul Caruso.

“I knew it was bad when Dyer came to my room in the early morning hours after an argument over the phone about a story he had written in the Los Angeles Times,” Belinsky said.

“Here I was, a 27-year-old ballplayer with a 64-year-old man, and the first thing that occurred to me was to push him away.”

Belinsky said when he opened the door, Dyer came at him, fists clenched, calling him “gutless.”

Dyer said: “I knocked on the door. We started talking, and that’s all I remember.”

“I pushed him with the heel of my hand, and he fell against the wall,” Belinsky said.

Dyer was knocked unconscious. He required six stitches for a cut under his left ear and had a black right eye.

Dyer, who covers the team for the Times, said he had questioned Belinsky in the hotel lobby about an A.P. story which said that the 27-year-old pitcher planned to quit baseball. Belinsky frequently has said he plans to quit baseball for something that pays more money.

Dyer said Belinsky told him he had been misquoted in the A.P. story and gave the writer a quote, which Dyer went to his room to telephone to his newspaper.

“I had already undressed and gone to bed when Belinsky called me,” Dyer said. “He said he had read the A.P. story and he hadn’t been misquoted. I told him it was too late to call my paper.”

Belinsky then complained about mistreatment by newspaper, and ended by saying: “You come down here, and I’ll stick your f*g head under the shower.”

Dyer, once a star college football player, said: “A writer can’t let a player get away with a threat like that. I dressed and went down to his room.”

When he got there, Dyer said, “I knocked on the door. We started talking, and that’s all I remember.”

Dyer said he regained consciousness with manager Bill Rigney and the team trainer working over him.

“It looks like I’m going to be all right,” Dyer said, “except right now I’ve got a little double vision. There is no sign of concussion.”

Rigney would say only that Belinsky was suspended indefinitely for “socking sportswriter Braven Dyer.”

(Support this project at patreon.com/realtime1960s)

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FIGS: NOT FRUIT

Did You Know?

A fig is not just an ordinary fruit, in fact, it's not even a fruit.

Strictly speaking, figs are inverted flowers.

Figs don’t bloom in the same way as other fruit trees like almonds or cherries.

Figs have a very curious history.

First of all, they're technically not a fruit, but an infruity (a set of fruits).

And secondly, they need a slaughtered wasp to breed, an insect that dies inside the fig.

In a nutshell, figs are a kind of inverted flowers that bloom inside this large, dark, red-hued bud we know as figs.

Each flower produces a single nut and a single seed called an "aquarium".

The fig is made up of several branches, which give it this characteristic crunchy texture.

Therefore, when we eat one fig, we are eating hundreds of fruits.

But the most amazing thing, it’s the special pollination process that fig flowers need to reproduce.

They can’t depend on whether, the wind or the bees bring pollen as other fruits, so they need a species known as the fig wasps.

These insects transport their genetic material and allow it to reproduce.

For their part, wasps couldn’t live without figs, as they deposit their larvae inside the fruit.

This relationship is known as symbiosis or mutualism.

Currently, the vast majority of producers of this fruit no longer need the work of wasps.

Most fig varieties for human consumption are part non-genetic.

This means they always bear fruit in the absence of a pollinator.

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THE WORLD IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don't sing
all the time

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you

Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen
and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to

Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
'living it up'
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1955)

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