Mendocino County Today: Thursday 8/22/2024

By AVA News Service on August 22, 2024

Coastal Tide Ponds (photo by Cat Spydell)

AN UNSEASONABLY COLD upper low will bring cool temperatures and measurable precipitation to the area Thursday through Saturday. Temperatures expected to warm again late this weekend into next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 52F with clear skies (at the moment) as our rain maker approaches from the northwest. Increasing clouds leading to a chance of rain mostly tomorrow afternoon & night. The system is now forecast to not drop as far south as thought earlier so less rain is forecast. Clearing skies on Saturday.

Cormorants and a Few Gulls, Mendocino Headlands (Jeff Goll)

UKIAH MUSICIAN DIES DURING EUROPEAN TOUR

by Sarah Stierch

The world lost a bright musical star and beloved son of Ukiah when it was announced on August 11 that Chon Travis died. Travis, a bassist and singer, was a member of the internationally renowned punk band Love Equals Death, which was touring Europe this month. According to a post on the band’s Facebook page, Travis was found unresponsive in his hotel room in Stafford, England on August 11, hours before the band’s concert was to start. “He did not use drugs and was in very good spirits for this entire tour,” the band posted, expressing shock about his death. The cause of his death has yet to be released.…

https://mendovoice.com/2024/08/ukiah-musician-chon-travis-dies-during-european-tour/

UKIAH ARSONIST NABBED

On Tuesday, August 20, 2024 at approximately 11:04 P.M., a Sergeant with the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office overheard radio traffic of firefighting personnel being dispatched to the area of McClure Subdivision Road in Ukiah, for a reported vegetation fire in the area. Upon the Sergeant's arrival, the fire was an estimated to be 10 by 20 feet in size and was burning in grass and vegetation along the roadway. Fire personnel quickly suppressed the fire and stopped the fire from spreading to nearby structures.

The Sergeant and fire personnel from the Ukiah Valley Fire Authority began an investigation into the cause of the fire. A male subject was contacted in the area who was observed watching the fire upon the arrival of law enforcement and fire personnel. The subject was identified as Edward Charles Vikart, who is a 63-year-old male from Ukiah.

Vikart was questioned regarding the fire and as a result of the combined investigation and evidence obtained, probable cause was developed to believe Vikart was responsible for starting the fire. As a result of the investigation, Vikart was subsequently placed under arrest for arson, possession of a controlled substance, and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Vikart was transported and booked into the Mendocino County Jail for the above listed charges where he was to be held in lieu of $50,000 bail.

SHERIFF KENDALL:

It is another great day for the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office. Monday morning, Sheriff Kendall swore in three new corrections deputies in Ukiah, at the Sheriff’s Office Training Center. Juan Ayala, Daniel Buschbacher and Kevin Aguilar swore in and recited the Peace Officer’s Code of Ethics in the presence of their families, as well as Sheriff’s Office staff members in attendance for the ceremony. Please help us wish Juan, Daniel and Kevin well as they start their careers of service to our community with honor and excellence.

CLOVERDALE BANK ROBBED, SUSPECT STILL AT-LARGE

by Madison Smalstig

A man who on Tuesday robbed a Cloverdale bank, implying to a teller he had a gun, is still at-large, police said.

The man, dressed in baggy clothes and wearing a face covering, approached an employee at the Chase Bank at 103 S. Cloverdale Blvd. just before 3:50 p.m. and “demanded” money, the Cloverdale police said in a news release.

The man got an undisclosed amount of money and ran. He never showed a gun, police said.

Police searched downtown Cloverdale but did not find the man.

The Cloverdale Police Department is asking that anyone with information on the robbery or the whereabouts of the suspect call Officer Nunes at 707-894-2150.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

CAN THIS RELATIONSHIP BE SAVED?

On Tuesday, August 20, 2024 at approximately 8:34 A.M., deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office were dispatched to contact the victim of a possible theft in the Potter Valley area.

Deputies responded to the area and contacted the 46-year-old female victim. Deputies learned the female was involved in a domestic argument with her boyfriend, who was identified as 55-year-old Mark Edward Anastasiou.

During the argument, Anastasiou stole the female's loaded firearm and pointed it at her face. Anastasiou then stole numerous items belonging to the female, including the firearm and a cellphone, all while continuing to point the loaded firearm at her.

Deputies searched the area and located a vehicle matching the description of Anastasiou's vehicle parked along the Eel River. Deputies contacted Anastasiou while he was seated in the vehicle and observed a glass methamphetamine smoking pipe in plain view.

A search of the vehicle was conducted, which resulted in locating the stolen loaded firearm and stolen cellphone belonging to the female.

Anastasiou was determined to be prohibited from possessing firearms or ammunition.

Anastasiou was ultimately placed under arrest for Assault with a Firearm, Robbery, Grand Theft of a Firearm, Carrying a Loaded Firearm while not the Registered Owner, Felon in Possession of a Firearm, Felon in Possession of Ammunition, and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia.

Anastasiou was subsequently booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held in lieu of $150,000 bail.

LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)

GREAT DAY IN ELK

The 48th annual Great Day in Elk will be held on Saturday, August 24, from noon until dusk. The noontime parade will travel through downtown Elk to the Greenwood Community Center for the day’s festivities.

All afternoon there will be game booths with prizes and do-it-yourself crafts projects for children, plus a greased pole with a $100 bill at the top. Watermelon-eating contests, sack races, and an egg toss will be held throughout the day.

This year’s live entertainment features music by Mama Grows Funk. There will also be a silent auction, a cake auction and a raffle.

Lunch options include tamales and Caesar salad (with or without chicken), hot dogs and focaccia with Moroccan lentil soup, and the Civic Club’s ice cream sundaes topped with fresh berry sauce. Drinks include fresh-pressed Greenwood Ridge apple cider, Elk’s famous margaritas, soft drinks, beer and wine.

Dinner will be served from 4 to 7. This year the theme is Greek: Chicken and Veggie Kabobs, salad, tzatziki, and roasted lemon potatoes.

So, come to the little coastal village of Elk and enjoy a fun-filled family day, while supporting the Greenwood Community Center, five miles south of Highway 128 on Highway 1. Please leave dogs at home.

For more information email Mea Bloyd at meabloyd@gmail.com or visit the Elk community website: www.elkweb.org.

ALBION RIVER BRIDGE PROJECT: PUBLIC COMMENT WORKSHOP

5:30 to 8 pm, Tuesday, August 27

Mendocino Community Center, Mendocino

presented by Albion Bridge Stewards

Concerned about Caltrans' plans to replace the historic Albion River Bridge?

Let Caltrans know!

Attend our informal workshop, where you can sign a petition and write your own comments. We'll have letter and email templates that will help you get started.

The meeting begins at 5:30 pm with a short presentation, but drop in any time between 5:30 and 8. Refreshments will be served.

Learn more at www.savehighway1.org.

SARAH CENENO

I ran into Ray at the Feather Rose. I got to thank him for his weekly deliveries to Signature. That it was a highlight to read his article and do the crossword each week and that it'll be missed. I asked him if he was online. That I had snooped and couldn't find him. He laughed and said no, that he doesn't even own a computer. He writes the article at the Independent's office on their computer. What a legend. Ray Oakes, the Marajuana Man.

THE LITTLE STATION THAT SURVIVED

by Dina Polkinghorne, KZYX Interim General Manager

Nothing brings home the point that we need to move like the July 25 Grange Fire, which came within a few hundred feet of the Philo Studio and station headquarters and damaged essential equipment.

For an hour or two, we were sure the building was gone. Operations Director Rich Culbertson and I had big lumps in our throats when we checked in, thinking the worst had happened. But miraculously, the station building was left unscathed. The woods and brush opposite the driveway at our location on Highway 128 burned, but the fire did not jump across the narrow road to us, as it had a mere 200 feet to the south of us. By chance, no staff were on-site that day because they were working remotely due to a Covid exposure.

When the fire started, Rich immediately went to Fort Bragg to broadcast from the satellite studio there, with Public Affairs Director Victor Palomino phoning in information and updates in English and Spanish.

Later, when the power was lost in Philo and the generator did not kick in, we again assumed the worst: a burned-up generator. There seemed no other reason for the new and regularly tested generator not to kick in when the power went out. Besides leaving the station without power or backup, the defunct generator raised fears that it and the station had burned.

Without power, KZYX was totally off-air for about an hour, and our friends at KMUD kindly allowed us to make emergency announcements over their airwaves. Meanwhile, I was making a flurry of calls to try and get a status update on the studio itself. I finally located a neighbor in Philo who was able to check and confirm that it had survived.

Hours later, once the evacuation order was lifted and Highway 128 reopened, Rich drove to the station to get things sorted. He determined that when the power came back on, the surge had fried some essential studio equipment and caused the internet to work only intermittently (resulting in intermittent streaming). Rich is still diagnosing why the generator failed.

We announced at about 7:30 pm that the building was still standing, but KZYX could not broadcast live from any of its studios without power at the main Philo station. We got the word out over social media, a press release, and our website that the station would only broadcast recorded shows through the weekend while staff worked on solutions.

After replacing destroyed equipment and getting back on our feet, our staff is now back in the main Philo studio, and KZYX is back on the air, live. The staff and board are so grateful for all the love, encouragement, and support weâ’ve received from the community.

Our community depends on KZYX for vital information during emergencies. This close fire and its impacts undermined the station's mission and reason for being—live broadcasting—and dramatized the fragility of its present location. KZYX has grown steadily over its 35 years, thanks to the vision and support of its listener/members, programmers, board, and staff. Operating at our current level and growing sustainably require stable equipment and power and a safe location.

We've known for years that KZYX needs to get out of the woods and away from the trees that increasingly block its signal. The new Ukiah headquarters is gradually becoming a reality. The Grange Fire increases our sense of urgency to accomplish the move to Ukiah as soon as possible.

Moving Forward at the New Ukiah Studio

While it may not be apparent to passers-by, there has been a lot of progress in transforming the mid-century-modern buildings at 390 West Clay Street in Ukiah into KZYX’s new home and main studio. Our team has completed initial design work, permitting, extensive demolition and waste removal, early work on the grounds and trees, ADA-mandated retrofitting, electrical and plumbing upgrades, and painting of the office wing on the east side of the property.

Soon, builders will replace the roof, repair the front wall, and install exterior windows—all part of readying the “shell” of the west wing. Then work can begin on the interior, the future home of three KZYX broadcast studios, including one for our own “tiny desk” shows. More funds are needed before developing the complex communication infrastructure that will finally enable the station to broadcast and stream from the new main studio.

PERMANENT FUNDING FOR A SUPERFLUOUS ENTITY

Petition To Form The Mendocino County Tourism Marketing District

I hope this message finds you well. I’m reaching out to inform you about an important development that directly impacts the lodging businesses in Mendocino County. As you may know, the Mendocino County Lodging Business Improvement District (MCBID) was formed in 2006 to enhance the county’s tourism and lodging industry. Previously, Visit Mendocino County was funded through a 1% Business Improvement District assessment, with the County of Mendocino providing a 50¢ match for every dollar assessed. However, since the County of Mendocino can no longer provide financial support, we now rely solely on the 1% Business Improvement District assessment.

To continue supporting and growing our industry, we are proposing an update to this initiative. The most significant change is increasing the assessment rate from 1% to 2%.

The Mendocino County Tourism Marketing District (MCTMD) has been developed by local lodging businesses in collaboration with the Mendocino County Tourism Commission, operating as Visit Mendocino County. The MCTMD is a new assessment district aimed at providing tangible benefits to assessed lodging businesses by funding targeted marketing and sales promotion efforts. This is a proven approach, successfully used in destinations nationwide, to increase room night sales and promote the area as a prime destination for leisure, meetings, and events.

Complete Petition and email to ramon@visitmendocino.com

Key Points:

Services: The primary objective is to boost demand for room nights by enhancing the visibility and appeal of lodging businesses in the region through focused marketing and sales promotions.

Location: The MCTMD will cover all current and future lodging businesses within Fort Bragg, Point Arena, Ukiah, Willits, and the unincorporated areas of Mendocino County.

Budget: The anticipated annual budget for the MCTMD is approximately $2,300,000, which is expected to remain consistent over the districtâ’s initial five-year term.

Cost: The annual assessment rate will be 2% of gross short-term room rental revenue for all lodging businesses. In year three, the assessment rate may be recommended to be increased by the MCTMD Committee, subject to final approval by the Ownerâ’s Association Board and Board of Supervisors, by 0.5% to a total rate of 2.5% of gross short-term sleeping room rental revenue.

Duration: The district is set to operate for five years, starting January 1, 2025, with the possibility of renewal if the programs prove beneficial and have the support of the business owners.

Management: Visit Mendocino County will serve as the MCTMD’s Owners’ Association, responsible for managing funds, implementing programs and must provide annual reports to the Board of Supervisors.

This initiative represents a significant opportunity to enhance our local tourism economy, drive more business to your establishment, and ensure Mendocino County remains a top destination for travelers. Your support is crucial to the success of this effort.

I encourage you to review the details and consider the benefits that the MCTMD will bring to your business and the community as a whole. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or would like to discuss this further.

Alison de Grassi alisondegrassi@gmail.com

THE AV SENIOR CENTER BUS will be taking a group of people to the CV Starr Center in Fort Bragg on Wednesday, September 4th. Limited space. The sign up sheet is at AV Senior Center or call Renée at 707-895-3609.

SAN FRANCISCO HOMELESS PEOPLE WERE BUSSED TO THESE STATES:

For those Mendo homies worried about San Francisco’s new homeless “rerouting” program, see this report from the San Francisco Standard:

https://sfstandard.com/2024/08/06/journey-home-data

(via Betsy Cawn)

ED NOTES

HOMELESSNESS. We once had a homeless program in America. It was called The State Hospital. Persons unable or unwilling to care for themselves were sequestered and helped back to sanity and/or sobriety. There were, of course, some spectacular abuses in the back wards housing the criminally insane, but they were a minority of the hospital population. And abuses occurred because of incompetent and/or indifferent administration. (A Mendo DA once sued the superintendent at the Talmage hospital for general dereliction.)

MENDOCINO COUNTY also once funded a “county farm” on Low Gap Road west of Ukiah where habitual drunks and miscellaneous incompetents were housed in simple, safe but firmly supervised conditions where they helped feed themselves by raising what they ate. When the State Hospital at Talmage was established in 1889, the County Farm was abandoned and, I suppose, the local incorrigibles were transferred to the hospital.

THE OLD STATE HOSPITAL, grounds and buildings, was a minor architectural masterpiece, as we can see today in its latest incarnation as a Buddhist center of learning.

THE MENDOCINO COUNTY Sheriff’s Department now acts as county psych techs of first and last resort, housing the mentally ill who typically rotate through custody while making their homes on the streets of Ukiah or on the banks of the Russian River or Gibson Creek where former Supervisor John McCowen functions as volunteer monitor and janitor.

THE TASK of caring for the halt and the lame being completely beyond the abilities of Mendocino County’s battalion of well-funded helping professionals, the Sheriff is the county's chief therapist. Which, ironically, is a good thing because he and his staff are more experienced and certainly more humane in working with disturbed persons than… Uh… Well… You know… the paradigm people.

PERSONS assigned to the old County Farm helped pay for their dependence, which was always presumed to be temporary, by laboring on a small farm whose produce was partly consumed by them and partly sold to fund the farm. So why not revive it? If quonset huts and tent camps are good enough for the Marines, why aren’t they good enough for today’s permanent homeless population?

A COUNTY FARM for Mendocino County’s relatively small population of homegrown bush drunks, drug addicts and professional mooches, would be much less expensive and undoubtedly much more effective than incompetent therapists whose solution to all social problems is increasing doses of bullshit and heavy medication. And why not revive “The State Hospital” for dangerously crazy people instead of locking them up in county jails and state and federal prisons, which is the current practice?

THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE to clarity on the subject of homelessness, let alone doing something about it, is the people who make their livings off public misery, i.e., the aforementioned helping professionals. The aggregate number of well-paid helping pros has grown as fast or faster than America’s population of dopers, drunks, nuts, and the more ubiquitous transients, formerly bums.

ARE THERE 300 homeless and/or intractable outpatients in greater Ukiah? Figures vary. But there are at least that many well-paid helping professionals based in Ukiah, and that’s without factoring in clerical staff and the rest of their support apparatuses. We find a much smaller population of homeless persons on the Mendocino Coast because Fort Bragg, as civic policy, addresses each one and refuses to allow any and all to live out of doors, much less engage in publicly aberrant behavior.

UKIAH? Our county seat, unfortunately, has no coherent homeless policy, other than the unstated one to keep “undesirables” out of the Westside where its lushly compensated headquarters is located.

THE HOMELESS have got to be compelled to help themselves. They’ve got to be put in one or more central locations they can’t depart until they’re able to cope. The helping pros should come to the homeless, not the homeless to the helping pros in their warm, waterproof offices festooned with shelves of huggy bears and death-gray pots of dying ivy.

UNDER A REVIVED County Farm Plan the drunks go to one village of quonsets; the dopers to another; intact families, at least those whose parent or parents are more or less capable, to another; bums to another, the vulnerably incompetent to another. The whole place would be fenced, a kind of gated community, if you prefer. And these being sensitive times, and no one being more sensitive than your average helping pro, and to avoid any possible insult to anybody’s self-esteem, we wouldn’t have to call the mandatory sequestration of the walking wounded, The County Farm, we could call it “Paradigm Pines.”

MENDOCINO STATE HOSPITAL: WHERE MYSTERIES ABOUND

by Jasmin Blanc

The Mendocino State Asylum for the Insane, later named the Mendocino State Hospital, was the birth place of many ominous tales surrounding not only the mentally ill but also the criminally insane, in addition to a slew of unexplained deaths, rumored experiments, dramatic escapes and tragic suicides. A host of mysteries surrounds the Mendocino State Hospital.

The Mendocino State Asylum for the Insane was established in 1889. Programs offered at the site over time included treatment for the criminally insane, alcohol and drug abuse rehabilitation, and a psychiatric residency program, according to state archives (OAC). The first patients, all male, were initially transferred from state mental institutions in Stockton and Napa but the Hospital eventually began accepting Female patients in 1894. Following the stock market crash in the late 1920s, patient population increased rapidly, hitting a high in 1955 at over 3,000 patients and 700 employees (OAC). In February 1905, the first appointed Medical

Superintendent Dr. Edward Warren King composed a letter to the Honorable W. D. L. Held in Sacramento imploring him to turn his attention to the matter of a proposed bill that, if passed, would transform the Hospital from the treatment of mental disease, to a Hospital for the treatment of the insane criminals and convicts of the state. King’s concern was that merging these “unfortunates” with the criminally insane and convicts would be a “dastardly outrage” (MCHS). King believed that combining and cohabitating the mentally ill with criminals would not only infuriate the friends and family of mentally ill patients but the combination would interfere with the recovery of said patients (ARCHIVES). It is curious to see the varied degrees of what was considered mentally ill in the early 1900s and how little we have come to gaining better understanding over the course of nearly 100 years.

Ultimately, the bill was passed and the stage was set for some of the most outrageous, fantastic and scandalous cases and stories in the history of Mendocino County. One case was that of the infamous Erwin Walker — few dared call him “Machine Gun” to his face — who was known for sitting on a gray wooden bench in a far corner of the criminal ward’s exercise yard, with his back against the cement wall of a ward building, the visor of a high-crowned denim cap shadowing his narrow, pale face. Walker was invariably alone, and in-variably reading, usually a chemistry textbook. He’d look up occasionally from his book to adjust his thick horn-rimmed glasses and glance contemptuously down the bench .

Some of the other patients in the yard paced up and down with what would have been military precision save for the odd flapping of their heavy work shoes and occasional need to hitch up their denim pants. They were denied the potential weapons of shoe laces and belts. Walker was the hero-villain of countless stories passed around the yard, many stemming from a popular 1948 semi-documentary feature film, “He Walked by Night,” which was loosely based on Walker’s crime spree that began in 1945.

He had been a brilliant student at the California Institute of Technology, a radio dispatcher for the police department in his native Glendale and a World War II veteran. But Walker returned from overseas duty deeply disturbed. So disturbed, in fact, that while still on active duty, he stole six submachine guns and a dozen pistols from an Army warehouse in Los Angeles and set out on a spree of more than a dozen holdups and burglaries — the purpose was to raise money, Walker said, for construction of a “death ray machine” that somehow would make another war impossible.

Following a tumultuous trial where he was found sane, placed on Death Row, then reevaluated and determined insane, Walker’s execution was postponed indefinitely. Bound in chains he was once again taken before a jury that declared him insane, and was then committed to the state hospital at Talmage. He spent 12 years at MSH and beyond that in other prison hospitals, during the course of which Walker underwent electroshock therapy and other treatments designed to make him fit for execution.

Through a series of legal loopholes and filing petitions in several counties, Walker was granted parole in 1974 and released from Vacaville and lived out the rest of his days as a chemist.

Bizarre treatments, unusual therapies, and clandestine experiments are littered throughout the hospital’s history. There are some who believe that the isolated hospital site was specifically chosen to keep classified experiments somewhat covert. Massive doses of LSD were given to alcoholic patients as part of what was thought to be mind-control experiments. Involuntary sterilizations were administered in a campaign to eliminate “feeblemindedness,” poverty, “lunacy,” crime and other conditions considered to be social problems. Among these claims, whether they be legitimately medical with scientific backing or abhorrently true as some conspiracy theorists would maintain, some of the most shocking stories surround the psychiatric attendants.

A college baseball player employed during a summer work program gives some insight as to what it was like being a technician at MSH. In a fortress-like, supposedly escape-proof structure that was set apart from the rest of the hospital, escorts led employees and visitors alike into Ward 12, first by opening a heavy iron gate in a corner of a high electrified fence topped with barbed wire, then, 50 yards away, passed through a tall wooden door three inches thick. The dirty apple green walls and ceiling engulfed all who entered. The heavy smell of disinfectant was everywhere. Up on the second floor, barred cells lined halls that reached as far as the eye could see. On the first floor, men were kept behind locked wooden doors, but only at night. There was the constant sound of shuffling as men paced the corridors. The uniformed psychiatric technicians — white dress shirts, white duck pants, black bow ties — stood distinctively apart from the patients.

The patients wore blue — blue denim shirts, blue denim jeans, even slippers made in part of denim. Men who might be robots walked the exercise yard in short, halting steps, staring straight ahead in silence. They were lobotomy patients, men who had raged in their cells, shouting and kicking walls, until “they cut into their brains to calm ‘em down”. Their faces were drained of color, and there were black circles like smears of charcoal beneath their sunken eyes.

Technicians were not allowed to carry weapons, but were allowed blackjacks, or leather saps filled with buckshot, that were made by a local shoe repairman. For only five dollars, one could knock one of the, “Animals cold with one hit!” as one technician used to exclaim. These psychiatric attendants were essentially guards, regardless of their job title, and were put in charge of controlling the ward by administrators who made it clear that they preferred patients to be as docile as possible. What little treatment psychiatrists and their aides did give seemed to be aimed almost entirely at keeping the patients under control rather than curing them.

There were the lobotomies, the dispensing of much medication also designed to calm, and extensive use of shock therapy, that frightening and highly questionable procedure which sends jolts of supposedly healing electricity through the brain. With virtually no medical training, technicians assisted in pressing electrodes against the subject patients’ temples, holding them down as they flailed about in great and obvious pain. Many technicians happily accepted their role as enforcers, keeping the “animals” in line by treating them as prisoners rather than patients, and the hospital’s administrators seemed unconcerned that some of their employees thought it enjoyable to use a blackjack to keep “inmates” under control.

These atrocities came to a halt after several psychiatric technicians were formally charged with brutality on the basis of evidence provided by agents from the State Department of Justice who had posed as technicians. One such charge became known among locals as “The Case of the Talking Reindeer,” which was one the most outlandish cases to take place in the Mendocino Courthouse; not for the case itself that tragically resulted in the death of an elderly patient in 1950 in which the attendant went to trial for murder, but for the spectacle that transpired in the courtroom as the two key witnesses were patients at MSH.

The opening scene in what was to result in California’s weirdest law case at the time took place in the early morning hours of September 20, 1950 within the gloomy confines of the Hospital. Thomas Simmons was a 70-year-old patient at the institution and had been described by Dr. Olga Miller — the physician in charge of his ward — as a “stooped old man, hardly able to lift his feet off the floor, who wandered aimlessly about the ward as if he were looking for something.”

Simmons was indeed a little old man weighing 138 pounds, with gray eyes and white hair. He arrived at MSH only three weeks before his vicious death. The attendant being charged with manslaughter for the death of Simmons was 43-year old Samuel A. Leech, a large man with graying hair and steel-rimmed glasses. He was an experienced mental institution attendant or, in the vernacular, a “bughouser.” He was married, had two children and made his home in the little town of Redwood Valley north of Ukiah. When questioned, Leech included in his testimony: I pushed him in the [chair] and he fell backward on the tile floor. Simmons did this several times and each time I pushed him and he fell on the floor. The patient made me pretty angry and I probably pushed him down pretty hard. Simmons did not have a weapon of any kind nor did I.

Dr. Max Frank, the hospital surgeon who performed the autopsy on Simmons’ body, testified that besides the seven broken ribs, the patient had sustained a 3 1/2-inch wound on the left lobe of the liver, and that the lower surface of the liver showed an open, crater-like wound with torn edges the size of a child’s palm. At the request of the District Attorney’s office, a second autopsy had been performed by Dr. J.B. Massengill. “Just falling to the floor, or over a chair or bed, wouldn’t produce such an injury to the liver,” Dr. Massengill stated.

The setting for the legal drama that followed was the newly completed county courthouse in Ukiah. The People vs. Samuel Leech was the first case to be heard in the new courtroom. The State called the two witnesses who had purportedly seen the "fight." They were William Wilkes and Edward Jones, mental patients at the hospital. It had been determined that both patients were capable of the normal ability to recall and relate, meaning that they were fit to testify.

It was at this point that the trial entered into the realm of the fantastic. Wilkes, as a man who suffered from delusions of grandeur, claimed to have seen both Leech and Dink Beaver, another attendant, kick the old man. He said that all the attendants carried blackjacks and clubs and that they, “Beat up all the patients all the time."

The second to take the stand was Edward Jones, a normally jovial and smiling man of color who for reasons of his own preferred to be addressed at all times by the name “Alice.” He testified that he saw Leech drag Simmons from a side room to the ward, then go on to kick and “stomp” on the old man as he lay on the floor. Every time he attempted to describe the condition of Simmons before his death a shudder went through his body and he covered his face with his hands. To the jury, there was little doubt that he had seen something horrifying.

But it was not long before Jones’s credibility as a witness became shaken. Jones told the jury that he was Alice, a cousin of Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer. Jones continued to gleefully identify characters portrayed in a milk advertisement as his mother and father. When the crowded courtroom broke into laughter at his testimony, Jones laughed too. Jones proved to be a vulnerable witness and repeatedly contradicted himself on small matters and became confused as to details. However, Jones was adamant on the subject of what he had seen on the morning of Sept. 20. “I know what I see with my eyes,” he said over and over. When asked finally, point-blank by the defense, “Are you absolutely sure you saw what you described?” Jones answered equally point-blank. “Yes,” he said, “just as sure as I’m sitting her as a reindeer."

During the course of the trial, Leech had maintained a stoic attitude, hardly ever changing expression except on the occasions that he nodded or winked to friends in the courtroom. “It was,” said defendant Leech, speaking of the ward, “a frequent occurrence for patients to fight and injure each other.” He continued that the incident with Simmons was “just routine on the ward, not a fight.”

After hours of deliberation, the jury was hopelessly deadlocked and in the end Leech went free. Both he and Dink Beaver resigned from their positions at the hospital. The only non- controversial fact the trial had determined was that Thomas Simmons was savagely and brutally beaten which conclusively resulted in his death. Moreover, the only lasting impression made throughout the trial was one of that of Edward Jones — the object of ridicule and laughter throughout the proceedings.

Perplexing as this case was, there were certainly cases of legitimate patient violence and on many accounts, successful escapes. In December of 1913, two attendants and a trustee were viciously beaten by three inmates plotting their escape. On a stormy Friday evening, Robert McIntosh, who had been committed from San Quentin, Frank Peoples, a deserter from the marines, who had been committed from the naval prison, and Bert Zavits, a dangerous lunatic from the coast, made their attack. McIntosh obtained possession of an iron bar from one of the beds in the dormitory.

On the evening of the break McIntosh waited until two of the attendants on the ward were at supper and then slipped up behind psych tech Walter Droage and struck him over the head with the bar, which McIntosh had concealed in his sleeve. Droege went down and psych tech Bob Gilley ran up to take a hand in the brawl. While he was wrestling with McIntosh for the possession of the bar Peoples seized Gilley from behind and McIntosh thereupon dealt him a heavy blow. Gilley ran into the lavatory and attempted to hold the door, but Davits forced it open and dragged him out and McIntosh beat him into insensibility.

Meanwhile, a worker simply identified as “Getz” had gone to the aid of Droege and Gilley but he was no match for the three patients and McIntosh soon had him stretched out insensible with the other two victims. The three patients then took the keys of the ward and slipped out of the building by a rear stairway. The alarm was given by a patient and a search was made in the vicinity of the hospital but as the night was dark and stormy no trace could be found of the escaped men. All were shoeless, with only stockings on their feet and had little clothing and as the night was inclement it was thought that they could not get very far. Sure enough, all were located the following day and taken into custody.

In 1962, California’s mental hospitals were immortalized by Ken Kesey in his first book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. By the end of that decade, a reform movement was gaining strength, arguing against large-scale institutionalization of the mentally ill in favor of community-based housing and treatment. By then, however, the number of mental patients had already declined dramatically from its peak in the mid-1950s, when the first effective psychiatric drug, Thorazine, became widely available. In the early 1970s, then-California Governor Ronald Reagan closed many of the state’s mental hospitals, including Mendocino State Hospital.

In January of 1972, Bob Tuttle, the president of Chapter 22 of California State Employees Association (CSEA), launched a probe after it was determined that the Department of Mental Hygiene planned to close the formidable hospital following the abuse claims from ex patients. The 18-page report claimed the standards of care and treatment for mental patients released from MSH and or other state hospitals have slid back to the “dark ages”…..

Defenders argued that the claims of abuse were exaggerated. "The people of Mendocino County should be very proud of the fact that they have an institution of this magnitude and character located here which has become a credit to this locality and which also affords a source of great financial support to the industrial and commercial life of the community."

CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, August 21, 2024

KELISHA ALVAREZ, Ukiah. Unspecified offense. (O.G. Frequent flyer)

ALLISON FULLBRIGHT, Fort Bragg. Disobeying court order, failure to appear.

RYAN GOMES, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

FORTUNATA IANNETTA, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

HUGO MUNIZ, Ukiah. DUI, suspended license for DUI, no license, evasion, probation violation.

JALAHN TRAVIS, Ukiah. Vandalism, probation violation, resisting. (Frequent flyer.)

EDWARD VIKART, Ukiah. Arson, controlled substance, paraphernalia.

HISTORY, an on-line comment: Marijuana was the surprise ingredient added to the economy of the backwoods in the mid-seventies, and made a lot of twenty-something dirty hippies, slackers, and university-educated back-to-the-landers rich overnight, when awareness of sinsemilla arrived. (The high was instant like snorting coke, but without the nasty hundred dollar bills or grimy straws, and the need to have more right away. It was also an aphrodisiac, often leading to dancing, and was creatively inspiring, although those stoned ideas rarely seemed so brilliant the next morning.)

They never stop, having learnt humans are too dangerous. (Steve Heilig)

SEEKING

Seeking Others to Support Washington D.C. Peace Vigil

Warmest spiritual greetings,

As I sit here in front of the computer in the comfort of a motel room in Ukiah, California, it is clear that I have to leave and go elsewhere and act in a more profound effective manner once again, on this imploding planet earth with its every social aspect disintegrating. And I am not being overly dramatic!

I am looking for others to go to the Washington, D.C. Peace Vigil, located since 1982 24/7 365 in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House. Are you willing to drive from the west coast? Or, I am looking for others who will finance my transportation to Washington, D.C. >>> Paypal.me/craiglouisstehr <<< Or, I am looking for others of sufficient spiritual advancement who will form an independent direct action team. We will go where we need to go and do what we need to do. Regardless, it is necessary for me to make a move, for reasons which any serious individual may easily appreciate.

Craig Louis Stehr, craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

AL ATTLES, Warriors’ 1975 championship coach and ‘Destroyer’ on court, dies

by Ron Kroichick

Al Attles, who coached the Golden State Warriors to the 1975 NBA championship and became one of the most enduring and dignified figures in Bay Area sports, died Tuesday while surrounded by family at his East Bay home, the team announced. He was 87.

Attles spent more than 60 years with the Warriors, dating to his selection in the 1960 NBA draft, two years before the franchise moved west from Philadelphia. That launched a long odyssey as a player, coach, general manager and community ambassador.

His run of 13-plus years as Warriors head coach still counts as the longest in club history. Attles, known for his deep voice and gentlemanly manner, coached 1,075 regular-season games and compiled a 557-518 record, guiding the Warriors to six playoff appearances and two division titles.

The Hall of Famer is one of only six players in franchise history to have his jersey retired (No. 16), joining Wilt Chamberlain (13), Tom Meschery (14), Chris Mullin (17), Rick Barry (24) and Nate Thurmond (42).

“My heart is heavy today with the loss of my mentor and friend,” Barry said in a statement. “Al was my roommate during my rookie season in the league. He taught me valuable lessons on being a professional that couldn’t be learned on the court. Later, as our coach during the 1975 championship season, he exemplified leadership, togetherness and a keen strategic ability that enabled us to succeed at the highest level. We shared so many wonderful and memorable moments together. My thoughts and prayers go out to his wife, Wilhelmina, and his entire family. He will be dearly missed.”

Attles practically embodied the Warriors. And, yes, there were long stretches of lean times before Stephen Curry and Co. stormed to the NBA title in June 2015, launching a dynasty.

“I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly,” Attles once said of his Warriors tenure.

Attles played in one of the most famous games ever, filling a supporting role on Chamberlain’s landmark 100-point night in Hershey, Pa., on March 2, 1962. Attles quietly put together a perfect shooting performance, making all eight of his attempts from the field and his only free throw. As he playfully boasted at times over the years, “Wilt and I combined for 117.”

The Warriors selected Attles in the fifth round of the ’60 draft, from tiny North Carolina A&T. He arrived at training camp expecting to last one week, only to soon find himself sitting in then-owner Eddie Gottlieb’s office negotiating his first pro contract (for $5,500).

Four more Warriors ownership groups followed, from Franklin Mieuli and Jim Fitzgerald/Dan Finnane to Chris Cohan and Joe Lacob/Peter Guber. Attles worked for all of them in some capacity.

Alvin Austin Attles Jr. was born Nov. 7, 1936, in Newark, N.J. He was known as a rugged defensive player, though his skills were difficult to quantify: The NBA didn’t begin tracking steals and blocks until three years after he retired, and the league didn’t name an All-Defensive team for most of his career.

Attles averaged 8.9 points, 3.5 rebounds and 3.5 assists for his 11-year pro career. He played in 711 games, eighth-most in Warriors history behind Curry, Draymond Green, Mullin, Klay Thompson, Thurmond, Jeff Mullins and Paul Arizin.

Attles traced the origin of his menacing nickname, “The Destroyer,” to a game during his second NBA season, when he, teammate Tom Gola and Syracuse Nationals forward Dolph Schayes all collided while chasing a loose ball. Attles corralled the ball and Schayes suffered a broken jaw, ending his games-played streak and prompting Syracuse players to agree afterward, “That guy was a destroyer.”

The moniker stuck because of moments like the one in New York when Attles picked up 6-foot-9 Bob Ferry during a scrape, tossed him through the air and jumped on him. The next day’s New York Post ran a full-page photo of Attles “looking like a crazy man,” he said.

“It took a long time for my temper to go, but once it went I was berserk,” Attles said in a 2004 interview with the Chronicle. “And I knew that. I used to always try to stay away from stuff, but sometimes your macho side gets you and you’re reluctant to walk away.”

Or as Thurmond, a longtime teammate and friend, once said, “I never saw Al start a fight, but I never saw a fight we had that he didn’t try to finish.”

Attles replaced George Lee as Warriors head coach during the 1969-70 season, spending the final 30 games as player-coach. He kept the dual responsibilities for the 1970-71 season and then retired as a player to focus on coaching.

He was the third African American head coach (following Bill Russell and Lenny Wilkens) in a sport that would later move far ahead of baseball and football in coaching diversity.

Attles succeeded as a coach, in part, because his machismo came without ego. That helps explain why he brought in Menlo College coach Bud Pressley to preach defense to the Warriors during training camp before the 1974-75 season.

“That was Al’s best coaching move during the championship year,” Barry said in October 2018, when the Warriors honored the ’75 title team before a game in Oakland. “It set a tone that made us one of the best defensive teams in the league.”

Attles sometimes strayed beyond conventional logic — leaning on Pressley, playing rail-thin rookie Jamaal Wilkes at power forward and regularly using a 10-man rotation.

Those Warriors were not overpowering. They featured Barry, a high-scoring Hall of Fame forward, and a group of complementary players who knew their roles and took defense seriously.

“That’s really where the team took on Al’s personality,” Wilkes said. “We were quick, we were tough and we challenged people.”

Wilkes elaborated about Attles’ influence at the event in 2018.

“We all genuinely liked him,” Wilkes said. “He was hard — he ran tough practices. He’d drop that deep voice and you’d go, ‘Oh my God, who is that? ’ But he was very special.

“Al allowed our veterans to have input, and that was an integral part of our success. I was very impressed by that. He wasn’t threatened.”

The Warriors came back from a 3-2 deficit to beat a strong Chicago Bulls team in the Western Conference finals, winning 83-79 in Game 7. Golden State then swept the heavily favored Washington Bullets in the NBA Finals, winning four games by a total margin of 16 points (including two one-point victories).

Attles memorably missed most of the clinching game. One of Washington’s players, Mike Riordan, tried to goad Barry into a confrontation in the opening minute, prompting Attles to rush onto the court to make sure Barry didn’t get hurt or ejected.

Instead, Attles was thrown out. So on the most triumphant night of his coaching career, he anxiously walked around the locker room, alone, as the Warriors won 96-95 to secure the title.

They would not hoist the trophy again for another 40 years.

The Warriors had a great chance to repeat in 1975-76, when Attles guided them to the league’s best regular-season record at 59-23. But this time they squandered a 3-2 series lead in the West finals, falling to Phoenix by one point in Game 6 and by eight in Game 7.

Attles completed his coaching run in 1982-83 and became the Warriors’ general manager for three years before sliding into various front-office roles.

“This is a difficult day for me,” Mullin said in a statement. “Alvin Attles had a huge, positive influence on me and my career, not just drafting me in 1985 and bringing me to the Bay Area but guiding me through my journey as a player and a young man, both in good and difficult times. He was a dear friend, mentor and role model and someone I admired tremendously and tried to emulate. He set the standard for all of us when it comes to integrity and humility and was truly a champion both on and off the court. There will never be another Alvin Attles.”

Attles was inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame in 1993. The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame honored Attles with a lifetime achievement award in 2014, and he was inducted into the Hall as a contributor in 2019.

Beyond his deep well of basketball knowledge, he was known for his generous spirit. The Warriors annually give the Alvin Attles Volunteer Award to the employee who goes above and beyond in the team’s volunteer program.

(SF Chronicle)

FEDS POISED TO KILL THOUSANDS OF INVASIVE OWLS IN ORDER TO SAVE NATIVE CALIFORNIA SPECIES

by Julie Johnson

Jack Dumbacher recalled the somber silence after the shot.

The wildlife geneticist had called out into the dark of the Klamath National Forest, mimicking the hoots of a barred owl, and lured a bird out of the shadows and into his colleague’s flashlight beams. Dumbacher took aim and fired.

On that night 15 years ago, Dumbacher was testing a theory that is now the basis for a controversial plan, expected to be finalized in the coming days or weeks, to protect the threatened northern spotted owl. The goal: reducing the population of its primary, and invasive, competitor.

“I remember watching the owl drop to the ground,” said Dumbacher, who is curator of ornithology at the California Academy of Sciences. “It’s terrible to have to do this, but it’s also terrible to do nothing.”

Barred owls have expanded into West Coast forests over the last four decades from their native range in the northeastern United States. But where barred owls appear, the iconic and native northern spotted owl disappears.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to allow licensed professionals to kill, at most, 450,000 barred owls over 30 years in California, Oregon and Washington to protect not just the northern spotted owl but also the forest ecosystems where the threatened bird evolved.

Kessina Lee, a state supervisor with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife in Oregon, which developed the plan, said her agency expects far fewer barred owls to actually be culled through the program. And that eye-popping number still only represents less than half of a percent of the global barred owl population.

The program is voluntary for landowners, such as public land agencies, tribal governments and timber companies, and there is no associated funding.

A spokesperson for Sierra Pacific Industries, the largest private landowner in California, said the company oversees 1.5 million acres of commercial timberland in the state in which it is required to protect both California and northern spotted owl habitat. The company’s wildlife biologists have been studying the impacts of barred owl removal in collaboration with the service for several years “to help determine the appropriate level of barred owl management needed to conserve spotted owl populations in the long-term,” the spokesperson said.

Lee said that the service’s objective is to create sanctuaries where spotted owls can thrive without competition from the more aggressive and successful barred owl. Many barred owls will likely be left unharmed.

“We’re really at a crossroads,” Lee said. “If we don’t act now, we will only have barred owls on the landscape.”

Barred owls are more aggressive and eat a broader range of prey, including rodents, salamanders, frogs and smaller owls. The northern spotted owl only eats rodents, primarily flying squirrels and wood rats.

Scientists believe that the proliferation of barred owls threatens to knock western forest ecosystems further out of balance. “They’re out there hoovering up everything in the forest,” Lee said.

In experiments conducted over the last decades, scientists found that spotted owls returned to habitats when barred owls were removed.

Opponents of the plan have argued it’s cruel. In a July letter, animal rights organizations Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy said the service was “turning from protector to persecutor of American wildlife.”

“Every sensible person wants to save spotted owls from extinction, but strategies that kill a half-million look-alike forest owls must be taken off the table in violating our norms about proper treatment of any native owl species in North America,” Animal Wellness Action President Wayne Pacelle wrote.

But many environmental groups support the proposal.

Tom Wheeler, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center, a nonprofit conservation group in Eureka, said that ensuring the northern spotted owl survives helps to safeguard forest ecosystems that have already been severely harmed by human activity, including logging and development.

“We humans caused this problem, so we have an enhanced moral obligation to try to prevent the extinction of the northern spotted owl,” Wheeler said.

The northern spotted owl has been nearly lost from forests in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon — pushed toward extinction by the widespread logging of old growth forests — pushed toward extinction by the widespread logging of old growth forests. Their populations have also severely dwindled in its Northern California range spreading north of San Francisco. Marin County is a last bastion for spotted owls because barred owls have yet to proliferate there. Preventing further incursion is crucial, Dumbacher said.

The plan also aims to protect the California spotted owl, a close cousin native to the Sierra Nevada.

Opponents of the plan have said authorities risk killing the wrong animal because spotted and barred owls are visually similar.

Robin Bown, who is leading the service’s barred owl management program, said even novice birders could quickly learn to tell the birds apart. The permit will allow only trained and licensed professionals to hunt the owls. They will have to take certain measures to confirm owl species, by listening for the barred owls’ unique calls and confirming certain visual features. They will be required to take photographs and measurements of the owl, and then bury it near the area where it was found.

Barred owls are light gray in color with vertical brown stripes and a white face. Barred owls have a distinctive series of hoots, often described as sounding like: “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?”

Northern spotted owls are a deep chocolate brown with horizontal white spots and have a brown face with a distinct white X around their eyes. Their calls include two or three short barking hoots followed by a louder sound like “hooo-ah.”

“If they can’t be sure, they are to walk away,” Bown said of the hunters.

If the Fish and Wildlife Service moves forward with the plan, the agency also must acquire a permit under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act to cull barred owls. Even then, the service must renew the program every three years to ensure the plan is working.

As for Dumbacher, he said he understands those who are against killing one animal to save another. But he became convinced after seeing consistent data showing spotted owls returned to places where barred owls had been removed.

“At what point is the health of an individual more important than the health of an ecosystem?” he said.

(SF Chronicle)

I SO AFFIRM

by Fred Gardner

That's what freethinkers say when asked to swear to God, as I was asked in a Chicago courtroom in December 1969.

I testified that Tom Hayden told me one night during the 1968 Democratic Convention that, according to the police, the federal government was planning an incitement-to-riot case against him.

I could truthfully affirm that I'd never seen Hayden and Abbie Hoffman et al conspire in the months preceding the convention to incite a riot (as opposed to a demonstration). I did see them plotting to lure “the kids” (Rennie Davis's contemptuous term) to Chicago with false promises of Credence Clearwater Revival. But the prosecution didn't ask about that.

According to a Chicago Tribune story, “The witness said he was in Chicago for ‘Ramparts’ magazine to print a daily convention newspaper called the Wallposter. He said defendant Tom Hayden, after being bailed out of jail on an arrest for deflating a police car tire, came to the newspaper's office on August 27, 1968.

“Hayden said he was ‘going underground’ because policemen assigned to follow him ‘had threatened to kill him,’ Gardner testified.

“Hayden called himself ‘a marked man,’ Gardner said.

“Gardner also said defendant Abbie Hoffman told him Aug. 22 of ‘threats agaiunst his life.’

“The session was interrupted twice by angry defense protests that US district judge Julius J. Hoffman was treating defense witnesses differently from government witnesses. Judge Hoffman, who has threatened attorneys with contempt-of-court rulings several times, warned defense attorney Leonard Weinglass at one point, ‘Be careful. Be careful.’

“Weinglass maintained that ‘two rules apply’ during the trial.

“Attorney William M. Kunstler also protested the judge's ‘lectures to defense witnesses.’

“Gardner said at one point, ‘I do feel ill at ease here, your honor.’

“‘Don't be critical of me,’ Judge Hoffman said. ‘I didn't bring you here. You don't have to testify if you don't want to.’

“Gardner also told of seeing policemen swinging clubs when he went to the Grant Park bandshell August 28 to distribute handbills asking for sympathy by the police and the National Guard. He said he saw defendant Rennie Davis lying on the ground and bleeding from a head wound. He read the police handbill to the jury: ‘Our argument in Chicago is not with you but with the rich men in power,’ it said.”

I made a little sketch of Judge Hoffman while I was on the stand.

The defense had paid my fare and I'd flown into O’Hare, arriving on the afternoon before I was supposed to testify. They put me up at an apartment on the South Side where Hayden and members of the defense legal team were staying for the duration of the trial. The pad had been put at their disposal by a University of Chicago grad student named Bill Zimmerman, whom Larry Bensky described as “Tom’s gofer.”

That evening Hayden and Zimmerman were going out to a meeting. Zimmerman handed me a phone number on a slip of paper and said, in reference to a lawyer on the defense team, “If Kinoy’s wife calls from New Jersey, tell her he's just gone down for a quart of milk.” Then I was supposed to phone Art Kinoy at his girlfriend’s, so he could call his wife in New Jersey.

I wasn't about to participate in the betrayal of Mrs. Kinoy. I told them I was tired and wouldn't answer the phone. I should have said, “Why do you think I would lie for Kinoy, or you, or anybody?” But I had not yet split with the fake left.

My only “Kodachrome” memory from the cross examination is of Abbie Hoffman cupping his mouth with his hands and offering a word of silent advice: “Lie.”

Allen Ginsberg and Phil Ochs testified at that session, too. We were in a large, dark room waiting to be called. Ginsberg asked Ochs where he was staying. Ochs told him, a friend's place or another defense pad, I can't recall. Ginsberg asked if there was any room for him. Ochs said there wasn’t. Are you sure? Yes, said Ochs. Ginsberg asked if he could share Ochs’s bed. Ochs laughed it off. Ginsberg asked again. Ochs said no. Ginsberg asked again and again and again and again. Ochs was obviously embarrassed and so was I. I assumed Ochs was straight, but what did it matter, no means no, and Ginsberg’s come-on was relentless and creepy.

The federal conspiracy charge was absurd upfront, but Tom was crazed in Chicago and would have incited a terrible riot if a McCarthy staffer had gone along with the idea of broadcasting a tape recording from the Hilton (where delegates were staying) to the massed protesters across Michigan Avenue, in which Tom asserted that he had made it into the hotel and that everyone “owed it to the Vietnamese people” to charge across the police line! He was completely out of perspective. The murder of Bobby Kennedy had blown away his deep, sincere hope that we could change this country by electoral politics. (A hope he would regain in a few years.)

The Kennedy family invited two peace-movement organizers to Bobby's funeral – me and Tom. I was in SF. I called my folks to say I might be flying in. My father said, “They know who to kill.”

DRINKS, SUSHI AND THE KILLERS: INSIDE THE DNC BASH TO ‘SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT’ ON SAN FRANCISCO

by Joe Garofoli

Donald Trump won’t stop pulling San Francisco into the center of the presidential campaign, trying to tie Kamala Harris to the city’s doom loop narrative that plays in heavy rotation on his home screen, Fox News.

So San Francisco pushed back Tuesday night. Not with hate, but with a flex showing what it does best: reminding America how cool it is.

Mayor London Breed hosted a party at the Tao restaurant and club, funded by her friend and donor, cryptocurrency billionaire Chris Larsen.

It was a counterpunch to Pacific Heights billionaire and recent Trump convert David Sacks slamming San Francisco at the Republican National Convention last month as “a cesspool of crime, homeless encampments and open drug use.”

“We all know Trump is going to try to use the ‘San Francisco dystopian doom loop, poop-all-over-the-streets’ nonsense, right?” Larsen told me. “So we think this is even more important now. It’s good for Kamala’s campaigns, good for San Francisco and kind of a continuation of trying to set the record straight.”

Larsen said he probably wouldn’t have thrown the party had Biden remained the nominee, but now that Trump is dragging San Francisco again, “we’re not going to put up with that bulls--. And we’re going to say it just like that: We’re not going to put up with the bulls--.”

Game on!

Pulled together in three weeks, after Harris became the presumptive nominee, Larsen spared no expense, from the open bar featuring San Francisco-themed Japanese whiskey drinks dubbed the “Golden Gate” (actually a rebranded Paper Plane cocktail) and Prosecco to an endless parade of sushi, sashimi and tuna tartare passed among the 500-person capacity crowd.

The evening’s entertainment: the Killers — fresh off headlining Outside Lands — and comedian Sebastian Maniscalco, who thought he was playing a crypto corporate gig instead of a San Francisco image rehab show. Maybe his jokes mocking Venmo would have gone over better. He never mentioned the city.

Meanwhile, Tuesday represented serious business to Breed.

She’s in the middle of a close reelection campaign, and fronting a hot-ticket party was a chance to push back against the doom loop narrative that inspired four top challengers to take her on.

The party was called “San Francisco Speaks: A Night of Technology and Truth,” a title that screams “Wednesday morning seminar that I’m going to blow off if I’m hung over” rather than “fun party.”

But a warning on the invitation hinted that the evening would have cachet: “Invite only. Strictly confidential. Invite non-transferable.”

Damn, does that mean Kamala is going to stop by for selfies?

It didn’t. It meant something more critical to San Francisco: the dual opportunity to pitch a captive audience of Democrats from around the country — most of whom are inclined to be San Francisco-friendly anyway — and to charm the national media, a dorkocracy that struggles to resist free drinks and sushi. And the Killers.

It worked: The party became one of the hot tickets of night two of the Democratic National Convention, along with one thrown by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, also a billionaire. It sold out at its 500-person capacity.

The evening wasn’t all about fun. There was educating to do.

After Maniscalco’s set, Breed took the stage and reminded the audience the first order of business was to rally behind Harris, who was born in Oakland, raised in Berkeley and served as San Francisco’s district attorney.

Oh, and while we’re all here, can we talk for a few minutes about San Francisco? You know, the people buying the sashimi? Don’t believe the national media hype.

“Tonight is really a time to talk about not just Kamala Harris, but to talk about everything that San Francisco represents,” Breed told the audience. “It is so critical that we talk about the truth about San Francisco, because the Republicans are trying to turn San Francisco into something it is not. They’re trying to turn San Francisco into a bad word.”

Breed said Republicans and other city haters should remember that when “they pull out their iPhone produced in the Bay Area and introduced in San Francisco to call their Uber or Lyft — companies based in San Francisco. And while they’re riding to their Airbnb, a company in San Francisco, they’re tweeting bad things about our city in a company that, until recently, was based in San Francisco,” Breed said, pausing a beat to allow the audience to conjure a mental image of Elon Musk before quipping, “Well, that’s OK.”

She went on to talk up how crime is down and how San Francisco is experiencing a “renaissance,” particularly with artificial intelligence. “We’re the AI capital of the world — because I said so,” Breed joked. “So don’t let somebody else tell the story of San Francisco. We’re here tonight to fight for not just our city, but to fight for Kamala Harris to be president of the United States.”

Larsen, who did not address the audience but mingled with guests almost until last call, envisioned the evening as an educational tool.

In the back of the multistory club were two big-screen TV monitors that endlessly played a gauzy reel of San Francisco’s iconic neighborhoods and sights that would make most rational humans pull out their phone and book a trip.

But the reel also featured an odd juxtaposition: flashing over images of the Golden Gate Bridge, Chinatown, the Castro and cable cars were factoids aimed at reminding viewers that the city is not as bad as they might have heard.

They said, “Homicide rates are one of the lowest of any major city in the country.” “Violent and property crime, burglary and robberies are all down.” “San Francisco is providing more shelter than at any time in its history with nearly 4,000 shelter beds.” “S.F. police received voter approval to use innovative tools to fight crime, to pursue suspects in vehicles, use drones, license plate readers and surveillance cameras.”

I didn’t see anybody looking at the monitors.

“Oh, I’m just noticing them, now that you mention it,” said Gil Soffer, a Chicagoan who lived in San Francisco in the early 1990s and returns regularly. Yeah, some parts of the city have gotten a lot worse since then, “but it’s looking a lot better lately.”

Maybe he’ll tell a friend.

Larsen and Breed both told me they felt the party was a success. Even if people didn’t watch the video screens.

“Part of the point of this is to enjoy the party so you think, ‘Wow, this is what San Francisco does. This is how San Francisco rolls,’” Breed said.

Larsen was also smiling at the end of the night. So how much did this cost?

“I didn’t look,” Larsen said.

That’s OK. Rediscovering San Francisco is priceless.

THE WORM TURNS: House, Senate Investigate TSA Surveillance of Tulsi Gabbard

by Matt Taibbi

Two weeks ago, former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard found out she’d been placed on the TSA’s “Quiet Skies” watch list, and put under “Special Mission Coverage” surveillance by Federal Air Marshals. A Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserves who enlisted and served in Iraq after 9/11, Gabbard was almost speechless at reports of her placement on a terror list. She felt “the deepest sense of betrayal,” she said, adding: “It cuts to the core.”

Since then, multiple Air Marshals came forward as whistleblowers and their firm, Empower Oversight, sent letters to eight House and Senate Committees of jurisdiction. Each was asked to “get to the bottom” of why Gabbard was surveilled and look into Quiet Skies more generally. Today, Racket learned members of at least three of those Committees decided to investigate, giving deadlines to Transportation Security Administrator David Pekoske to answer a range of queries, and not just about Gabbard.

Gabbard herself also just heard from the Department of Homeland Security in response to a Traveler Redress Inquiry Program (TRIP) report she completed back on July 31st. The letter doesn’t confirm or deny that Gabbard was ever on a list, but does say “corrections” were made that may assist in avoiding “misidentification” errors in the future. As the Department wrote:

DHS TRIP can neither confirm nor deny any information about you which may be within federal watchlists… However, we have made any corrections to records that our inquiries determined were necessary, including, as appropriate, notations that may assist in avoiding incidents of misidentification.

As for congress, at least one House Committee chair and two influential Senators reached out to the TSA in search of information about how programs like Quiet Skies work, how many whistleblower complaints have been filed, who’s been surveilled and why, and what agencies partner with TSA in making watch list designations.

Ohio congressman and House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan’s Weaponization of Government Committee gave Pekoske until 5:00 pm on September 4th to answer a series of requests, demanding production of:

All documents and communications between and among TSA or other executive branch agencies or officials referring or relating to surveillance of former Representative Tulsi Gabbard or other federal elected or appointed officials for the period January 20, 2021, to the present.

As the ranking member of the Senate’s Transportation Security Committee, Kentucky’s Rand Paul also sent a letter out today to Pekoske with a detailed list of requests. Notably, Paul is seeking:

“All documentation and internal communications related to the process for determining whether an individual is designated as a ‘domestic terrorist’ or subjected to [Special Mission Coverage] under the Quiet Skies program”;

“All documentation, internal communications, and records related to the inclusion of former U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard in the Quiet Skies program, including the criteria used to justify her surveillance”;

“Comprehensive data on the number of individuals placed on each TSA-managed list, including the Quiet Skies program,” and;

“Detailed accounts of any incidents where TSA or [Federal Air Marshal Service] resources were diverted from high-risk international missions… to conduct surveillance on individuals wrongfully classified as ‘domestic terrorists’.”

Lastly, Iowa Senator and Ranking Member of the Homeland Security Committee Chuck Grassley sent a letter of his own, demanding Pekoske “name all TSA employees who were provided information obtained through surveillance of Lt. Col. Gabbard” while explaining if “that information shared outside TSA” and “if so, which agencies?”

Grassley also asked why a decision was “made to include Lt. Col. Gabbard’s congressional portrait in the TSA database,” rather than her passport photo or other government ID as usual. Grassley also asked for a broad explanation for the use of resources given an apparent total lack of investigative results:

TSA must explain why it’s using taxpayer resources in this manner at a time when the FBI has stated that threats from international terrorism, domestic terrorism, and state-sponsored terrorism are all simultaneously elevated… The [Air Marshal National Council] has also disclosed that the TSA is, “improperly classifying innocent Americans as ‘Domestic Terrorists’ on internal TSA/FAMS databases and watchlists,” and that, “[m]ost of these classifications occur in the absence of any investigation or even any follow up….”

The story of Gabbard’s surveillance was first broken by Uncover DC on August 4th. When multiple Air Marshals signed up as clients of the high-profile firm Empower Oversight, more details came out. Over the weekend, Empower president Tristan Leavitt tweeted a screenshot from the internal TSA system, appearing to show Gabbard was placed under surveillance by virtue of her inclusion in the Quiet Skies program, which is listed as the “requestor” of Special Mission Coverage.

The TSA has gone mostly uninvestigated since 2018, but the miserable accident of a Quiet Skies designation for a prominent national politician with a history of criticism of the Biden/Harris administration provided incentive for Congress to take an interest. For those in and around the Air Marshal Service who’ve long been waiting for a thorough outside investigation of the TSA, this misfortune can mean a rare opportunity. Readers can help by continuing to share details of the bizarre surveillance tale as far and wide as possible. “They may only screw up this badly once,” is how one former Marshal put it to me last week.

More to come, as congressional inquiries are answered.

WITH THEIR PINK shirts and green shirts and blue shirts, and square white rotting bodies, and striped shorts, eyeless eyes and mouthless mouths, they walked along, very colorful, as if color might wake up death and turn it into life. They were a carnival of American decay on parade and they had no idea of the atrocity that they had inflicted upon themselves.

— Charles Bukowski

BE NICE

Editor:

For the upcoming debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, one rule of civility must be in place: no derogatory name-calling. And as soon as it happens, the debate ends. Each candidate must also answer each moderator’s question without ignoring it or launching into some other topic.

Steven Gray

Mendocino

WHEN A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE closed in 1949, after a run of two years, I spent three months in Europe, mostly in Paris, picking up a little French and having a wonderful time.

I was one of the wild boys of Paris. I did everything, slept with a lot of women, had no sense of time and slept until two P.M. every day. Anything that was imaginable, I did in Paris.”

— Marlon Brando

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Night 2 of the DNC was interesting. The true believers were in their element. I started watching PBS at about 9:45. Top impressions were these: Bernie Sanders and his free stuff rant. 60% of Americans live pay check to paycheck with no savings. So…. free stuff paid for by government is the answer. Government can work well….how? Don’t know if that was explained. But you have to hand it to Bernie, at least he’s consistent. That was about all that passed for any economic policy on the Dems part. No mention about anything so substantive as our 2 trillion $$$ yearly deficits. That would be such a downer!

In fact there really wasn’t any substance anywhere the whole night. But feelings? That there was lots of. Conveyed very passionately and skillfully by the Obama’s. In fact so much so that one of the PBS commentators broke down in tears at the end of the night. Saying he had felt “seen”. I would list all the commentators in the True Believer camp. We live in a very emotional age not tempered by much reason or reality. This is what the Democratic party is. Reasoned statements of reality will have no effect on them, in fact will be perceived as attacks and lies. Michelle prepared them for this exposure. Will this work for the Dems? Very possibly so, at least till November.

Trump is going to have to up his game to win. He too is a man of not too much reasoned discourse, which is probably for the good these days. Barack said Trump’s name calling and rhetoric were stale. Have to admit that resonated with me a little bit. Worked in 2016 when it was a novelty and gave hope that there would be what…. ? Justice? Comeuppance? But that’s just so mean. They’re pulling off Kamala as something shiny and new. God help us.

THE BEST AND WORST MOMENTS FROM NIGHT 3 OF THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION

by New York Times Opinion

Welcome to Opinion’s commentary for Night 3 of the Democratic National Convention. In this special feature, Times Opinion writers rate the evening on a scale of 0 to 10: 0 means the night was a disaster for Kamala Harris; 10 means it could lead to a big polling bump. Here’s what our columnists and contributors thought of the event, which included speeches by Oprah Winfrey, Josh Shapiro, Bill Clinton and Tim Walz.

Best Moment

Kristen Soltis Anderson, contributing Opinion writer Younger voters may not realize how powerful Oprah Winfrey is as a voice. I wrote about this in May, and her speech tonight targeted precisely the voters both sides hope to persuade this year.

Binyamin Appelbaum, member of the editorial board Oprah.

Charles M. Blow, Times columnist Tim Walz’s intense, locker-room-pep-talk-style acceptance speech.

David Brooks, Times columnist First, the tone of lavish American patriotism that permeated the evening. But my favorite quirky moment was when Gus Walz burst into tears after his dad gave him a shout-out, telling his neighbors, “That’s my dad!” Walz is one relatable American.

Jane Coaston, contributing Opinion writer Thousands of people chanting “Bring them home,” as the parents of one of the hostages in Gaza stood before them.

Michelle Cottle, political writer for Opinion O-prah! O-prah! O-prah! Damn, she’s good.

Liam Donovan, Republican strategist Walz was on brand, and Oprah brought the star power, but the methodical buildup of Kamala Harris’s record as a tough border-state prosecutor is a reminder of what this race will boil down to when the speeches fade.

Michelle Goldberg, Times columnist Walz made me wish I understood football metaphors.

Matt Labash, author of the newsletter Slack Tide Tonight’s bell ringer wasn’t produced by Democrats, but Republicans — the Jan. 6 lowlights reel — complete with Capitol Police getting viciously attacked. A keen reminder that Harris’s most appealing quality is that she’s not Donald Trump, and this election isn’t just about “joy,” but also betrayal: of morality, of democracy, of us.

Worst Moment

Anderson I applaud Walz for speaking about his family’s infertility journey, and I am even willing to grant some latitude about being imprecise on the specifics of your own treatment. But since Walz did not use I.V.F. but a different fertility treatment, I.U.I., it hits a sour note with me to falsely imply many Republicans want to ban something they very much do not want to ban.

Appelbaum When Kenan Thompson of “Saturday Night Live” had an Ordinary American zoom into the convention hall during his riff about Project 2025. The guy was talking, but he was on mute. Relatable.

Blow Lateefah Simon, an activist running for the U.S. House in California’s 12th district, crossed the line from passion to theatrics in her speech.

Brooks The Democrats are not making a mistake by talking about abortion, obviously, but Democrats are making a big mistake by not talking more about how to create a growing economy, which is the No. 1 issue on voters’ minds. This was another night when they seemed to have nothing to say about it.

Coaston In some ways the intense celebrity at the Democratic convention can feel distracting (though if Trump could have gotten Oprah to speak at the Republican convention, he would have had her give his closing address).

Cottle Enough already with the “Lock him up!” chants.

Donovan An uneven night where Democrats tried some ambitious things that didn’t always land, which doubles as a good descriptor of Bill Clinton’s speech. He may still be (barely) younger than Trump, but his garrulous style hits differently now that the oratory fastball is long gone.

Goldberg My mom texted me sleepy emojis and the words, “Clinton needs to get off the stage.” But he kept going.

Labash Audience reaction seemed very muted for the introduction of Clinton, once a conquering hero. Crowd cutaways showed many not applauding at all. They seemed to feel conflicted about his legacy. Welcome to the club.

What Else Caught Your Eye?

Anderson It’s probably not worth belaboring at this point, but putting the keynote speakers onstage past prime time no longer seems to be accidental. Democratic officials must just assume that this convention will be consumed via clips after the fact.

Appelbaum Amanda Gorman may have been the only speaker billed as a poet, but there were plenty of verbal pyrotechnics — quite a contrast with a Republican convention whose most iconic moment came when a muscle man ripped his shirt in half and started growling.

Blow He is clearly growing frailer, but Clinton is still the dean of “putting the hay down where the goats can get it,” of explaining the complex in common parlance.

Brooks On Tuesday night, Angela Alsobrooks, a U.S. Senate candidate in Maryland, mentioned that Trump has had us trapped since 2015. He’s even trapped our imaginations, she said, and it has created a tense, constricted emotional tone among many Democrats. It’s amazing to me how much that weight has been lifted from this party, night after night. We’ll see if it matches the tone of the country.

Coaston Never in my life did I think that the Democratic convention would attempt to claim “freedom, faith and football.” Nor did I think it would actually be fairly successful.

Cottle It was hard not to be charmed by the gaggle of middle-aged guys in high school football jerseys who piled onto the stage to pay tribute to their former coach turned V.P. pick. Doing goofy dads everywhere proud. Go Scarlets!

Donovan Just put the franchise tag on Maryland’s governor, Wes Moore, right now. One way or another, the man will be on the next open Democratic ticket.

Goldberg A whole generation of ambitious Democratic men have learned to speak like Barack Obama, but Josh Shapiro takes it too far.

Labash I know he’s a legend — it says so right in his name. But is John Legend contractually obligated to play every single Democratic gathering? Also, poor Prince has been dead since 2016. They didn’t need to bring Legend back to murder him with a wedding-singer impression.

David Brooks, Charles M. Blow and Michelle Goldberg are Times columnists.

Kristen Soltis Anderson is a contributing Opinion writer, a Republican pollster and the author of “The Selfie Vote.”

Binyamin Appelbaum is a member of the editorial board.

Jane Coaston is a contributing Opinion writer.

Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for Opinion and is a host of the podcast “Matter of Opinion.

Liam Donovan is a senior political strategist at Bracewell who previously worked for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He is also a host of “The Lobby Shop” podcast.

Matt Labash, formerly a national correspondent at The Weekly Standard, is the author of “Fly Fishing With Darth Vader” and writes the newsletter Slack Tide.

NO ONE DARES ADMIT THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT MATTHEW PERRY'S KETAMINE DEATH, and the darkness inside him that he indulged every step of the way

by Maureen Callahan

Matthew Perry was nobody's victim.

We're learning a lot about how he died, all of it sordid: The doctors who prosecutors say illegally supplied him with hardcore opiates; the live-in personal assistant who often injected him with drugs; the near-death experience that did nothing to deter his dealers, enablers, or Perry himself.

“Shoot me up with a big one.”

That was Perry's final instruction to his assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, on the day he died — having already received two ketamine shots, one at 8.30am and another around 12.30pm that same day.

The third shot, the “big one” at Perry's demand, was injected by Iwamasa just 40 minutes later. Iwamasa then left to run errands.

Perry, high and alone, climbed into his hot tub.

All of which leads me to wonder: Perhaps he wanted to die?

To be clear: If guilty, those who are charged with supplying Perry with black-market ketamine, Dr. Salvador Plasencia and Dr. Mark Chavez especially, should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. They exhibited craven greed at the expense of a very sick man.

At one point, Plasencia — who has pleaded not guilty and was known as “Dr. P” — gloated about aggressively overcharging Perry, texting Chavez: “I wonder how much this moron will pay.”

But Matthew Perry was hardly a moron. He knew exactly what he was doing.

It was Perry who demanded the ketamine, at whatever price — an eye-popping $55,000 to Plasencia in a single month.

And it was Perry who found another source of supply, street-dealer Erik Fleming, who allegedly connected the actor and his assistant with Jasveen Sangha — the so-called “Ketamine Queen of LA.”

In the weeks leading to his death, Perry was shot up in the back seat of a car parked outside an aquarium in Long Beach, California.

Days later, he froze up, unable to move or speak, after a home injection by Plascencia — hours after Perry had taken a supervised dose of ketamine at a medical facility.

He was getting injected by Iwamasa six to eight times per day and was found unconscious at least twice.

Matthew Perry felt the rules just didn't apply to him.

“I think about all the doctors and nurses at the UCLA Medical Center for saving my life,” he wrote in his 2022 memoir. “I am no longer welcome in that hospital for getting caught smoking in there one last time.”

This is the same guy who crashed his Porsche into someone's living room and walked away with no arrest, no criminal charges.

Why wouldn't he feel entitled? He was rarely, if ever, held to account.

He allegedly threw a coffee table at his fiancée, Molly Hurwitz, when she confronted him about cheating with a 19-year-old on Raya and broke off their engagement. He also reportedly shoved his sober companion into a wall, then onto a bed.

It's quite possible he wanted to die young, or at least knew he would, leaving before doing more harm — to others, maybe, but also to himself, and his legacy.

He never seemed to have grown beyond ‘Chandler,’ beyond ‘Friends,’ beyond envisioning himself as Batman — “Mattman” was his preferred nickname.

He never outgrew his teenage longing for wealth and celebrity as the ultimate drug.

“I was pretty sure that fame would change everything,” he wrote, “and I yearned for it more than any other person on the face of the planet. I needed it. It was the only thing that would fix me. I was certain of it.”

Fame, and Perry's attendant wealth, were probably the worst things that could have ever happened to him.

It's how he got away with being a drunk, drug-addled wreck on ‘Friends’ – admitting to downing at least 16 drinks a day while on set – only sober, by his claim, for one season.

Co-star Jennifer Aniston, per his memoir, confronted him about it.

“We can smell it,” she told him. He was so unintelligible during one table read that the whole cast forced an intervention. But ‘Friends’ was such a cash cow that it's easy to imagine network executives being unwilling to remove Perry from filming, even temporarily.

“I would show up blindly hungover,” Perry told Diane Sawyer in 2022. “Like shaking and crazy hungover.”

But the show must go on, right?

After ‘Friends,’ Perry found another show to perform: That of a finally clean, chastened megastar who was just here to help.

He claimed to have been 18 months sober while promoting his memoir, selling a lie that was, perhaps, his last and greatest high.

(DailyMail.uk)

*The Violinist*, *Venice, Italy*, *1947* (Tony Vaccaro)

30 Comments

Eli Maddock August 22, 2024

Online comment of the day nomination:
“If quonset huts and tent camps are good enough for the Marines, why aren’t they good enough for today’s permanent homeless population?”

Reply
- Craig Stehr August 22, 2024
  
  The problem is that local government won’t approve the installation of such structures in public areas, except in emergency situations. The “permanent homeless population” would be happy to move in immediately. The homeless are never the problem. The government and the people who are selfish and stupid are the problem. As Chairman Mao Tse-Tung told the Communist Party Central Committee in regard to the Chinese people: “Beware the sleeping dragon!”
  
  Reply
George Hollister August 22, 2024

““We humans caused this problem, so we have an enhanced moral obligation to try to prevent the extinction of the northern spotted owl,” Wheeler said.

The northern spotted owl has been nearly lost from forests in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon — pushed toward extinction by the widespread logging of old growth forests — pushed toward extinction by the widespread logging of old growth forests. Their populations have also severely dwindled in its Northern California range spreading north of San Francisco. Marin County is a last bastion for spotted owls because barred owls have yet to proliferate there. Preventing further incursion is crucial, Dumbacher said.”

Untrue. Northern Spotted Owls do better in younger forests than in old growth forests because there is more and better food for them in younger forests. They are not “old growth dependent”. The incursion of Barred Owls into the Northern Spotted Owl range can not be tied to human enterprise, either. The US Fish And Wildlife Service has been permanently stuck with the “old growth dependence” narrative for political reasons. To admit they were wrong would mean they were wrong in shutting down the US National Forest timber sale program. The false Northern Spotted Owl narrative will have to wait for at least another generation to be corrected, when all its advocates are either retired, or dead.

Reply
- Kirk Vodopals August 22, 2024
  
  The Northern Spotted should now be considered more of a zoo animal of industrial forest lands. They are so well trained to be hand fed by young biologists trying to track and record their location and fecundity that they will literally follow the white trucks around the woods and swoop down once they hear the engine shut off and the door slam shut.
  Shooting down their larger, more aggressive cousins just adds to the zoo animal characterization.
  It’s a philosophical paradox of the modern age: nothing can be considered wild once Homo sapiens gets involved. We’re curating our spoiled nest. BLAMMO!
  
  Reply
  - George Hollister August 22, 2024
    
    True. “Wild” is a European 17th century creation. To Indians, there was no wilderness, and humans were a part of nature, the most important part. The American Indian view is more scientifically, and philosophically correct. Humans are a super keystone species, and for humans to think humans are the most important species is to be expected. I have to provide an admission, I did not canvass all American Indian tribes, and all tribes do/did not think alike.
    
    Reply
- Harvey Reading August 22, 2024
  
  I suggest doing further research on your own rather than taking anything that the commenter peddles as gospel. He appears to me to know even less about science than my dog. Maybe it should be called logger science…
  
  Reply
  - Kirk Vodopals August 22, 2024
    
    Everyone “does their own research “ these days…
    Mine was done hooting for owls for a brief stint a few jobs back
    
    Reply
    - George Hollister August 23, 2024
      
      Yes, and what was learned? Lots of Spotted Owls, until Barred Owls showed up. Mendocino County, and Northern California had a higher population concentration of Spotted Owls than was found in the Spotted Owl’s supposed ideal old growth habitat. Spotted Owls were thriving in the logged forests where they were not even supposed to be. The US Fish Wildlife Service gaslighted by declaring 30 years of Spotted Owl surveys overseen by licensed wildlife biologists were “anecdotal”, and scientifically invalid.
      
      I have done Spotted Owl surveys on my own property for the last 30 years. My experience mirrors what others have experienced. I currently have lots of Barred Owls, where there were once Spotted Owls.
      
      Reply
      - Harvey Reading August 23, 2024
        
        Just more of your logger/farmer “science”.
        
        Reply
        
        George Hollister August 23, 2024
        
        Harv, you are so human. Join the club. Find the science that supports your faith, and if all else fails, us a logical fallacy. Your are a monkey, too?
        
        Reply
        
        Harvey Reading August 23, 2024
        
        As I recall, both species prefer similar habitat but the barred owl tends to be more aggressive. As monkey activity, primarily logging, reduced the area of suitable habitat for both, the more aggressive species tended to displace the less aggressive species, namely spotted owls.
        
        Also, look at Mr. Owen’s comment farther down, Doctor Logger Scientist!
        
        Reply
Casey Hartlip August 22, 2024

I have two comments about the state hospital in Talmage.
1. I’ve been told that the grounds of the hospital had very fertile soil. I’m told that they operated a huge vegetable farm there and had a canning facility. Apparently they provided a very high percentage of the foods that were served at many of the other state hospitals.
2. Theft. A buddy of mine father worked at Talmage hospital. He said that everyone who worked there stole everything that wasn’t nailed down…….cleaning supplies, food items, small tools and other equipment. Apparently, if you didn’t steal like the rest of the workers you were ostracized.

Reply
- Ron43 August 22, 2024
  
  You suggesting employees stole everything is absolutely wrong. There were bad actors but few and far between. Why would we? The hospital supplied everything we needed at a very reasonable price. My rent was $18 a month for a studio apartment including all utilities! 30 full meal tickets cost $15 and the meals were enormous! Main course steaks, chops, roast, fruit and fresh vegetables from the farm all the milk you could drink and icecream. Free laundry services for bedding and uniforms. Free movies twice a week, usually before the Ukiah theater had them. You are ill informed.
  Ronald Parker
  Psychiatric Technician 1962 – 1967
  
  Reply
Koepf August 22, 2024

Map of 1794. Actually all claimed by Spain, a European power, and much of it conceded to France in 1800 and later purchased by the USA under Thomas Jefferson as the Louisiana Territory. Of course, hundreds of native American tribes inhabitant these lands, which they considered their own as they fought with each other to keep it.

Reply
- Kirk Vodopals August 22, 2024
  
  Map are funny….most of that area at that time was dominated by the Commanche, particularly after they became expert warriors on horses from Europe.
  
  Reply
Jac Box August 22, 2024

Homeless

MCFADDEN FAMILY VINEYARD AND FARM – an iconic Mendocino County organic farming operation since 1970 is on the market.

I’ve written to Bobby Kennedy…

Reply
George Hollister August 22, 2024

I believe Maureen Callahan is mostly correct about Mathew Perry, a celebrity new to me until much was made about his death. A WSJ article on the subject supports Maureen Callahan opinion. Mr. Perry for a long time was seeking a cure to his addictions that would only require a formula that would take away all cravings and impulses to use and abuse drugs. No personal commitment required, no hardship. He got away with his drug abuse because he could afford it. Because of that, he gained the right to abuse himself to death. Don’t blame the cynical doctors, or his paid for co-dependents.

Reply
Whyte Owen August 22, 2024

The western barred owl was not introduced but rather is a native species that is expanding at the cost of the spotted owl, with which it is closely related and hybridizes.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8120011/

Reply
Harvey Reading August 22, 2024

UKIAH ARSONIST NABBED

From the photo, he makes me think of a Wyoming settler/colonialist.

Reply
- Bruce Anderson August 22, 2024
  
  The guy is obviously one more walking beat down of a system organized to destroy about a third of its population. “Nabbed” my ass.
  
  Reply
  - Lazarus August 22, 2024
    
    “The guy is obviously one more walking beat down of a system organized to destroy about a third of its population. “Nabbed” my ass.”
    BA
    
    Edward Charles Vikart was once from Willits. His parents Anna and Ted Vikart escaped communist-ruled Czechoslovakia, made their way to Australia, immigrated, became successful, and finally were allowed to immigrate to the United States and became more successful. I became acquainted with them in the early 90s when they moved to Willits. Their son Edward was a problem then. He was using hard drugs and had been for a while. His aged parents did everything they could to save him. They eventually died, left him the house and property, and that was the last I knew of him.
    From what Ted and Anna said, he was a child of privilege and had many opportunities to succeed. It is what it is…
    Be well,
    Laz
    
    Reply
    - George Hollister August 23, 2024
      
      Classic. The financially successful too often use money as a substitute for parenting, or don’t want their children to experience hardship as they did, or both. We see the results. I see this everywhere, and in my own family.
      
      Reply
Call It As I See It August 22, 2024

Hell has frozen over! Pigs are flying! I agree 120% with our esteemed editor. He probably is grabbing at his chest reading this.
A very good idea put in writing, I would hope our political leaders would read his opinion. Two guys from opposite sides of the fence (Bruce and I) agree on his take of the homeless. It just goes to show that this issue is not political.

Reply
Malcolm Macdonald August 22, 2024

Ken Kesey worked at a veteran’s hospital, not a state hospital.
There are some interesting aspects to the story above, but too much jumping around in time (from a brutal attack in 1913 to somewhat subjective takes on state hospitals during the 1960s in the next paragraph). As the son of a UC Berkeley educated, psychiatric social worker who worked at the Talmage State Hospital in the 1960s, I can say from first hand observation that this article needs to dig deeper. The snake pit realities of the 1940s in mental institutions was dramatically changed for the better by the 1960s, if not the late 1950s. More is needed here to provide a thorough examination.

Reply
Craig Stehr August 22, 2024

Just sitting here on computer #7 at the Ukiah public library, following the daily reading of the New York Times, watching the American presidential election news reportage on the major networks, and of course perusing the AVA online edition. The postmodern human situation on earth is like that of worms in the fecal matter of pigs! And you may quote me. Signed, Craig Louis Stehr

Reply
Zanzibar to Andalusia August 22, 2024

Deebo has switched from #19 to #1 this year…. forcing me to buy a new jersey hmph.

The Tenderloin, clips of which Fox and others recycle endlessly as if that what all of SF looks like, has been The Tenderloin for 175 years. Despite being the poorest neighborhood in The City in the 1950s, it was passed over for redevelopment because it was 85% white. Fox – and most everyone else it seems – fails to mention that Neoliberalism and the tech influx of the 90s is what created the current situation.

San Francisco remains the most beautiful city in the nation.

Reply
Kimberlin August 22, 2024

“Brooks The Democrats are not making a mistake by talking about abortion, obviously, but Democrats are making a big mistake by not talking more about how to create a growing economy, which is the No. 1 issue on voters’ minds. This was another night when they seemed to have nothing to say about it.”

If the Democrats grow the economy anymore we will have a higher stock market, higher real estate prices, higher inflation, more jobs, more tax revenue, etc. The fed will go nuts with out of control growth that they have been trying to stop for the last two years or so. Growth is not the problem, not sharing in the growth is the problem.

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Jim Armstrong August 22, 2024

“ARE THERE 300 homeless and/or intractable outpatients in greater Ukiah? Figures vary. But there are at least that many well-paid helping professionals based in Ukiah, and that’s without factoring in clerical staff and the rest of their support apparatuses.”
I come late (after Kamala) to today’s fray.
Those numbers seem pretty high to me. Where do they come from?
300 well-paid professionals (or unprofessionals for that matter) would make a nice economic sector.

Reply
Doug Holland August 23, 2024

Hey Mr Bruce

Homelessness is a longtime issue for me, having been close enough to know a lot of them and several times come close to joining the ranks.

Big problem with a county house is the money, of course, so it needs to be either federally funded or federally required of every county. Give these folks decent shelter with counseling and/or humane care and some semblance of dignity, and make sure the people running the place aren’t monsters, and we’re well on the way to a solution.

There’s about half a dozen more paragraphs I could type, but it’s pointless, since homelessness is a problem that would cost money to solve, and nobody’s willing to spend the money except bleeding hearts like me and you.

Explaining the obvious steps, like you did, gets kinda sad when the people in charge would rather have homeless people, drug addicts, misdemeanor mavens, and out-and-out criminals on the street than spend the money it would take to get them off the street. It’s all pie in the sky when nobody really wants a solution, so make my slice blueberry please. :)

Reply
MAGA Marmon August 23, 2024

Robert F. Kennedy’s Jr.’s voters could help Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris in November’s presidential election, according to an exclusive poll for http://DailyMail.com. It shows that his supporters lean towards Trump over Harris by a margin of two to one.

MAGA Marmon

Reply

Mendocino County Today: Thursday 8/22/2024

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