Mendocino County Today: Tuesday 9/3/2024

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CRAIG STEHR has disappeared. The AVA's favorite mystic had to leave Ukiah's Royal Motel on Sunday morning when his shelter voucher expired, and has not replied to e-mail requests for a report on his current situation. If anyone sees Craig, tell him to call home.

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TEMPERATURES across interior portions of northwest California will steadily warm through Thursday. Moderate to locally major heat risk is expected across the interior valleys, with tempertures expected to peak on Thursday. Strong subsidence and nocturnal offshore east-northeasterly winds will promote clearer conditions at the coast today through Wednesday, with stratus returning on Thursday. Temperatures will begin to "cool" down Friday into the weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 49F under clear skies this Tuesday morning on the coast. Clear skies are forecast this week this then fog returning for the weekend. Speaking of weekends, last weekends lovely weather was brought to you by the good folks at Dunlap Roofing.

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TWO NEW DEPUTIES IN TRAINING

The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office sponsored two local residents to attend the basic police academy at the Santa Rosa Junior College, who graduated on Friday 8/23/2024.

Jace Kroh and Jacob Stewart attended the 20-week training course and will begin their assignments and training at the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.

There were 28 graduates who comprised the 214th Class at the Santa Rosa Junior College, Public Safety Training Center campus in Windsor.

Please join us in congratulating Jace Kroh and Jacob Stewart in their accomplishment of graduating the police academy and their commitment to serving Mendocino County.

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A READER WRITES: The Fort Bragg Labor Day Parade was a disappointment. Too spread out and slow. But also, a lousy showing of the Labor movement (not even one sign) and for Kamala Harris. One little Prius with signs, no marchers, whereas the Repugs showed up in force. Good showing by the sports teams and cheerleaders, at least. Think I'll skip next year.

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Dobie Dolphin: I was in the parade with the Noyo Center and the parade was stopped several times by the Skunk Train passing, which slowed everything down. Sorry you didn't enjoy the parade.

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Frank Hartzell: My favorite was the Vaquero trick riders who were excellent this year, lots of riders and doing more tricks than usual. Lots more from the right than left. I enjoyed the parade. Big crowd! Perfect weather! Tough to get photos with the sun so bright and where it was, no clouds!

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A QUICK FIX

Editor:

It doesn’t have to be “hard and expensive” to “shed this odious name” as suggested by a recent Letter to the Editor. Simply employ a city government sanctioned bit of tagging and draw a red line through the second “g” in “Bragg.” Then the city would have bragging rights to resolving a prickly historic problem without the soaring costs of covering it up.

Brent Eric Anderson

Windsor

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MESSAGE TO CRAIG STEHR from Supervisor Maureen Mulheren’s facebook page:

CDC Voucher announcement.

This window is only open for a limited time so make sure you get your name on the list. If you have a friend or family member that struggles with paperwork and feels overwhelmed (this is a common occurrence when I talk to people, especially on the street or living in motels) please reach out to them and let them know that this is coming up so they can gather their info in to be on the lists.

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ZIGGY DANIELS (on Supervisor Maureen Mulheren’s facebook page):

Does the addiction recovery program that they (Adventist Health) are doing allow people to do walk in at the E.R who can not wait for a appointment ? How do people (on MediCal/Partnership actually get into treatment around here ? Do you have to be a client with a local agency ? Also we really need a larger awareness event open to the public in Ukiah - with a free Narcan give away, etc. Some place other than at one of the local agencies…fairground? Conference center?

Supervisor Mulheren:

Almost every event has Narcan available the next one should be PumpkinFest and the County and MCAVHN will have it. They also have it at AH, MCAVHN, New Life, Hillside and the Conference Center. If anyone wants treatment through Adventist yes they should go to the ER or make an appt directly with the program. You can also go to County Health Services and they will help you get enrolled in a residential or outpatient treatment program; also we have many NA and AA programs that are available.

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MENDOCINO POETRY EVENTS, September 2024

https://theresawhitehill.com/events

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ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2024

Welcome to Anderson Valley Village. We are a locally inspired and managed non-profit organization. Our mission is to help older adults remain active, connected, and independent in the place they call home while enhancing the quality of life in our community.

AV Village Update: We currently have 68 members and 51 trained volunteers ready to lend our members a hand! We rely solely on membership dues and some donations to operate, and we really could not do it without your support. Thank you.

Happy Birthday to our wonderful members and volunteers: Wallen Summers, Sophie Otis, Deborah Cahn, Jesse Espinoza, Helen Papke, Deanna Apfel, Margaret Bishop, Bill Harper…

https://mailchi.mp/fe85e1f301d8/anderson-valley-village-newsletter-august-5719448?e=358077c1c9

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BILL KIMBERLIN

I have always collected art, sometimes folk art. This I found locally and it looks to be what's left of a wheel barrel with a painting added. I don't know whether one would hang it or mount it.

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ANCIENT LANDSCAPES, MODERN VISIONS:

Ray Strong exhibit illustrates century-spanning career

Grace Hudson Museum's new exhibit opens for September First Friday:

Earth Portraiture: Ray Strong’s Northern California Landscapes

Guest curator Mark Humpal joins with former Museum curator Karen Holmes to show 50 works by this overlooked Western landscape artist, along with samplings of comparative works by Grace Hudson

by Roberta Werdinger

Grace Hudson Museum's new exhibit, Earth Portraiture: Ray Strong’s Northern California Landscapes opens the first weekend of September with two special events. An opening reception takes place on First Friday, Sept. 6th, from 5 to 8 p.m.; guest co-curators Mark Humpal and Karen Holmes will be present, and bassist Pierre Archain will provide live music. On Saturday, Sept. 7th, at 2 p.m., guest curator Humpal will give an illustrated talk titled "The Man Behind the Brush: Landscape Artist Ray Stanford Strong."

Born and raised in small-town Oregon, Ray Strong (1905-2006) was a landscape painter, museum diorama artist, educator, art supply store proprietor, arts organizer and administrator, husband, and father. Affable and outgoing, he possessed an almost uncanny ability to read his times and inhabit them comfortably. He started painting at the age of nine and was still at it at the age of ninety-nine when Portland, Oregon-based gallerist Mark Humpal met up with him in Santa Barbara, where Strong had lived and taught for 40 years. Originally intending to write a book on Oregon Impressionist painters, Humpal was so taken by the elderly man's vivacity and continuing dedication to art that he rearranged his agenda so that he could spend more time with Strong. He ended up researching and writing the painter's biography. (More on this below.)

"Painting every day for him was like eating and breathing," Humpal says. "It was an urge that never waned." The third of six children, the young Ray was encouraged in his calling early and given watercolor lessons. Tragedy struck when Ray, whose family ran a large berry farm, went hiking with his older brother in an area called the Devil's Punchbowl on Eagle Creek in the Columbia Gorge. Intent on taking a photo of a porcupine, his brother Hillman fell into a waterfall and died, while Ray looked on helplessly. Strong revisited this traumatic experience in his work for years to come.

In the mid-1920s Strong came to San Francisco to study at the California School of Fine Arts, later the San Francisco Art Institute. While he made many friends and connections, he became frustrated with the school's director, Lee Randolph, who pushed the students toward modernism. Artists were eager to break with history and tradition after the ravages of World War I; abstraction eclipsed realism as a prevailing style. Strong "didn't want to be compelled toward a certain philosophy," Humpal comments.

Strong crossed the country and soon joined the Art Students League in New York, attending in the late 20s and early 30s. He came under the influence of the teacher and painter Frank Vincent DuMond, who encouraged Strong to piece together different styles. DuMond loved his little Oregon paintings but commented, "Your foregrounds are like mush." He then gave Strong pointers to produce "punch" in the foregrounds, employing very definite brushstrokes in the post-Impressionistic vein of Van Gogh. The remarkable result, where each blade of grass seems to be vibrating with an innate life force, is clearly viewed in paintings such as "Morning Shadows" and "Mendocino City."

In 1933, Strong and his wife, Betty, whom he had married in 1928, went back to live in San Francisco. They lived on Russian Hill and opened an art supply shop which Humpal calls "the grand central station of art stores." Strong also started an art school, and invited Western landscape painter Maynard Dixon to teach there. Dixon became Strong's next great mentor, encouraging him to reduce clutter and stylize forms in his compositions to achieve greater visual impact in his work. Dixon employed a style called Precisionism, which involves breaking a field of vision into clean lines and painting flat planes of color. Strong's "Tungsten Canyon" (1969), painted near Bishop on the east side of the Sierra, shows a jumble of craggy, irregular peaks surrounding a mysterious black gap in the mountains, creating a sense of dynamic movement amid a parched, deserted landscape.

Earth Portraiture came into existence when Museum director David Burton became acquainted with Humpal's book named Ray Stanford Strong: West Coast Landscape Painter, and suggested Humpal create an exhibit on Strong's work, which had not been widely recognized. Humpal had published the book in 2017; it had then gone on to win a gold medal at the Independent Publisher Book Awards. At the time Humpal, the owner and proprietor of the Mark Humpal Fine Art Gallery in Portland, was co-curating an exhibit named Artful Liaisons at the Grace Hudson with then-Museum Curator Karen Holmes. Along with Grace's earlier work, Artful Liaisons featured the paintings of artists Edward Espey and Grafton Tyler Brown, both of whom lived and painted in Oregon as well as California. This led Holmes to realize a link with Ray Strong, "another important Oregon artist with California ties." Once Humpal was secured to guest curate, Holmes signed on to organize the art checklist, assist with label copy, and spearhead the exhibit design. Given her vast knowledge of the Museum's collections, she also curated a section of several small Grace Hudson landscapes that supplement Strong's larger and bolder pieces. Similarities between the two artists are striking. Both Hudson and Strong attended the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco (known as the California School of Design in Grace's era). Both were strong-minded and independent artists who resisted the dominant trends of their time to forge their own sensibilities, which included paintings of Western landscapes that were as intimate as portraits.

Burton comments: "Ray Strong is a very compelling figure. He was enormously talented and skilled as a landscape painter, had a deep affection for nature and land conservation, and was also a passionate educator… I hope our exhibition at the Grace Hudson Museum will shine a light on and create newfound interest in a significant artist who has become largely unknown and definitely under-appreciated.”

Earth Portraiture: Ray Strong’s Northern California Landscapes will be on exhibit until Jan. 19, 2025. In addition to Humpal's presentation on Sept. 7th, several other events are planned: an "Intro to Plein Air with Gouache" workshop with Sergio Lopez on Oct. 5th; "Below and Above the Earth," an illustrated talk by Tim Buckner on the natural forces that shape the Northern California landscapes that Strong painted, on Nov. 16; and a screening of the 1948 film Johnny Belinda, which was filmed on the Mendocino Coast. Strong's watercolor of the movie's farmhouse is featured in the exhibition.

The Grace Hudson Museum is at 431 S. Main St. in Ukiah. The Museum is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 4:30 p.m. Contact the Museum for current admission fees. The Museum is free to all on the first Friday of the month; and always free to Museum members, Native Americans, and active-duty military personnel. For more information please go to www.gracehudsonmuseum.org or call (707) 467-2836.

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ED NOTES

PROP 13 is among the biggest swindles in state history. What Prop 13 did back in 1978 was to lock in property taxes at 1 percent of assessed value for both corporations and homeowners while simultaneously freezing annual property valuations at increases of no more than 2 percent. Best of all for big and small property owners, especially big property owners, assessments were freeze-dried in place in '78. Local government could only raise money based on this 1978 formula. Although Prop 13 was sold as homeowner relief, in living fact it was a huge give away to corporate and private wealth at the cost of public services. The Prop 13 loophole that more than half of a property has to be sold in a single transaction means that corporations can buy and sell their property a half at a time over two years or more and their assessment doesn’t go up. Attempts to close this loophole by state proposition have failed in the past because corporate advertising convinced voters that closing it was a tax on them.

GIVEN that about a third of the one million (!) California persons locked away for non-violent crimes, a huge savings could be accomplished by releasing those prisoners admin deems harmless. It costs the state between $30,000 and $40,000 per inmate per year to keep non-violent offenders behind the walls.

SOME OF YOU may remember the late prison writer and novelist, Dannie Martin, a frequent contributor to the Boonville weekly. Martin, an unsuccessful bank robber, had spent many years locked up, and came away from the experience with firm ideas about incarceration. He recommended shorter sentences but much harder time, by which he meant no tv, limited access to phones, limited family visits, but unlimited access to prison libraries. Another prison veteran told me he thought about 20% of the prison population should never get out because they're violently incorrigible. I thought twenty percent was kinda high, but my informant said twenty percent was the consensus opinion of prison staff and inmates.

IT WAS MARSHA WHARFF and her all-female crew of Mendocino County Clerks who established for all time the reliability of the late Votomatic machine. They presided over the famous one-vote 4th District supervisor’s punch card election of 1992 between Liz Henry and Heather Drum without inspiring so much as a single beef over so much as a single dangling chad. Liz won by a single punch in a single card, overcoming by that one tiny tear in that one little Votomatic-tabulated card both liberal treachery and conservative nastiness to win a second term in office. An honest, intelligent, all-round good person, the most capable woman by far to function as a Mendo supervisor, Liz took such an emotional beating in and out of office during the eight long years she occupied the seat that she sold her house and moved away. Her experience is a textbook example of why we’re perennially short of competent people in local elected office these days.

MARSHA and Co. had the vote unofficially totaled and posted by 1am, a mere five hours after the polls closed.

THE SF CHRON’S sports writer Scott Ostler on Greens: “The Green Party insists it is encouraged by its 1% share of the vote. Now the party hopes to expand beyond its main demographic — Marin County hitchhikers.”

AS OF 2020, the latest data we can find, 79% of Mendocino County’s eligible population is registered to vote. Of those registered, about 49% are Democrats; about 21% Republican; about 24% declined to state; and about 6% “other,” mostly American Independent and Green with a few Natural Law meditators, and a sprinkling of Peace and Freedom Party dinosaurs up from La Brea for one more tilt at the political windmills.

WITH THE WEST NILE VIRUS back in the news, I remember when the county passed out free mosquito fish to the worry worts, the idea being that the fish would eat the mosquitoes that were expected to carry the West Nile to the Northcoast, cautioning citizens “not to introduce them to rivers, stock ponds, lakes or creeks.”

MOSQUITO FISH, we learned, are not only omnivorous, they’re sexually ravenous, only pausing from their perpetual meals to reproduce at something like double the rate of goldfish. I’ve maintained a horse trough of maybe 10 goldfish for several years and all they do is eat. Not a single repro. I thought about picking up a few free mosquito fish to see if they lived up to their voracious billing but never got around to making the trek over the hill. West Nile must have scared someone in the Health Department given the potential harm to what’s left of the fish in Northcoast rivers and streams. Never heard more about it.

QUESTION for AVA sophisticates: Have you ever heard the term “consciousness” uttered un-ironically?

MARK SCARAMELLA REPLIES: Only by Greg Sims and Craig Stehr.

A UKIAH reader of mysteries reports that B.J. Bock’s latest, called ‘Savage Run,’ begins, “On the third day of their honeymoon, infamous environmental activist Dewey Woods and his new bride Annabelle Billotti were spiking trees in the forest when a cow exploded and blew them up. Until then their marriage had been happy.” B.J. Bock has obviously spent time on the Northcoast.

FROM the April 18th, 1954 edition of the Fort Bragg Advocate: “Timberwolves amaze baseball world by holding Humboldt State College nine to 7-inning, 1 to 1 deadlock.”

MAYBE AN OLD TIMER will know if Anderson Valley was ever seriously prospected for gold. I walked up on an old mine about six miles east of Boonville, not far off the Ukiah Road. It would seem to have been an exploratory gold mine, but… The always informative column in the Sunday edition of the Ukiah Daily Journal by Jodie Martinez tells us that in 1904 a fellow called William Van Allen “worked on gold bearing ledges on the mountain three miles west of Ukiah… Mr. Van Allen has run three tunnels into the hill, the longest being 200 feet. Three ledges are laid bare. Mr. Van Allen says that the ore assays show from $3.65 to $26 per ton in gold. The ore can be worked by the cyanide process. There are also oil indications on the land.”

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JADE TIPPETT: Climate Migration Impacts North Coast

This seminar is focused on Coastal Mendocino County, but inland and farther folks would be wise to check it out. Some demographers estimate that Mendocino's population will double with climate refugees in next ten to twenty years.

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Demographers & Climatologists agree that for every degree Celsius increase in planet temperature a billion people will relocate because of climate change. The world science community confirms that average temperatures have already increased by 1.5 degrees Celsius and we are on tract to increase by over 3 degrees by the end of this century.

Attached is a new study recently released by the Federal Reserve Bank confirming climate change is causing a massive human migration from hard hit climate disaster prone areas to more stable and temperate regions. The first wave of climate migrants are wealthy well educated migrants purchasing homes and moving businesses to northern regions.

A study released by the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank (a link to the report is below) found Americans are responding to climate change by moving to rural areas in cooler regions, reversing decades old migration trends in the US. Mendocino County’s stable temperate climate in the face of severe heat related climate disasters makes us a “reverse snow bird” destination for wealthy educated climate migrants. Housing construction on the north coast has not kept pace with demand and as a result housing prices have skyrocketed in the region.

Mark your calendar for Thursday, September 19th from 3 pm to 5pm and plan to participate in a zoom discussion on how we prepare Mendocino County to receive thousands of climate refugees as climate disasters displaces 50 million Americans over the next thirty years.

The GrassRoots Institute’s, Mendocino Vision Workgroup will hold its 9th in a series of zoom sessions intended to engage the public in efforts by local and state officials to update Mendocino’s planning and land use management programs, policies and procedures.

At the beginning of the session, New America, a Washington DC based non profit, will make a presentation regarding their recent research (Climate Migration’s Impact on Housing Security in the United States: Recommendations for Receiving Communities) and the policy implications at the Federal, State and local levels. Supervisors Dan Gjerde and Ted Williams will lead a discussion regarding climate migration on how we respond to climate migration. In addition, State and local agencies will update the public on current and planned initiatives to update coastal planning and oversight programs.

The Institute is still in the process of firming up the agenda for this public discussion. We will be sending a follow up email with a final agenda and information about accessing the zoom session shortly. The general public is invited to participate so alert your friends. If you have questions, contact information is included below.

In the meantime, use the links included in this email to review the new research by the Federal Reserve and New America so that you’re prepared to engage in planning Mendocino County’s future.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, September 2, 2024

NELSON ACKERMAN, Honolulu/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

SCOTT BRITTON, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

CARIE FRITZCHE, Fort Bragg. Domestic abuse.

ANTHONY KROPACZEWSKI, Ukiah. Indecent exposure, vandalism, criminal threats, battery on peace officer, resisting.

STEVEN PETE JR., Elk Creek/Ukiah. Coninuous sexual abuse of child, domestic abuse.

KEVIN QUIJADA, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

JOSEPH REDLION, Fort Bragg. Burglary, vandalism.

MARK SILVA, Hopland. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, controlled substance, paraphernalia.

MIGUEL SIMON-CRUZ, Ukiah. Controlled substance, failure to appear.

CHRISTINA TORRES, Ukiah. Domestic battery, probation revocation.

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SAKO RECOMMENDS:

My two favorite international "Got Talent" auditions

These two performers are so unexpectedly, shockingly good, it's like they are reincarnated souls…It's like they're "possessed" by genius.

One performer is a fat, sweaty, balding Dutch teenage boy who is regularly bullied in his high school.

The other performer is a little Norwegian girl who looks a little like a witch in her long wispy black hair, white dress and bare feet. She's so young, she doesn't even have a full mouth of teeth.

And yet, both performers are… Well, just listen.

Nick Nicolai verplettert jury met talent (English subtitles) - HOLLAND'S GOT TALENT (youtube.com)

Angelina Jordan (7) - Gloomy Sunday (Norways Got Talent 2014) (youtube.com)

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WAS FIGHTING A GUNMAN THE BEST OPTION FOR 49ERS’ RICKY PEARSALL? ‘You need to go with your gut’

by Rachel Swan

Police investigating the attack on San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Ricky Pearsall believe he fought back against a gunman — a move that defies the advice often given by law enforcement to submit to an armed person’s demands.

But some public safety experts who spoke with the Chronicle said it’s difficult to second-guess Pearsall’s actions in a complicated, fast-moving situation. 

“You need to go with your gut,” said former Oakland and San Mateo Police Chief Susan Manheimer. 

A teenage boy allegedly tried to rob the star athlete Saturday afternoon outside luxury stores in busy Union Square, apparently targeting him for an expensive watch. The teen, whom police identified as a 17-year-old from Tracy, confronted Pearsall as he carried shopping bags to a car. In the ensuing scuffle Pearsall was shot in the chest, while the boy was shot and wounded by his own handgun before police arrived and arrested him. 

Both the NFL player and the boy were treated at San Francisco General Hospital, from which Pearsall was released Sunday. A bullet had entered and exited his body without harming vital organs, according to his mother.

How the exchange unfolded, and escalated so quickly, remains unclear. Many agree it could have ended much worse. 

While police gather evidence, some observers have already praised Pearsall for reacting quickly in a moment of intense stress. Others try to be circumspect — if all a person wants is a watch, it’s better to cooperate and emerge peacefully, public safety officials say.

“If it’s about a Rolex, then forget it — don’t risk your life over a piece of property,” Manheimer said. “But we don’t know what Pearsall felt the threat was, or what was going through his mind in that moment. Maybe he thought he was going to get shot even after giving up (the watch). Maybe the suspect was nervous. Maybe a big crowd was forming. These things go sideways and south all the time.”

Pearsall, a “trained professional tackler,” was “probably doing what he does in practice every day,” Manheimer added: “defending himself and getting away.”

Manheimer was also once the victim of a robbery, by a man who held a knife to her then-2-year-old daughter’s neck and demanded money, she said. Like Pearsall, she had to act in a split-second — by throwing $1 bills on the ground to distract the perpetrator, so that she could grab her daughter and flee.

“There’s so much information that your brain is processing in a millisecond,” said Lt. Tracy McCray, president of the San Francisco Police Officers’ Association. McCray and others noted that victims of surprise attacks may not be aware of all the calculations they are making, assessing their surroundings and the attacker’s demeanor. Tiny details matter.

“Normally if someone has a gun, you say, ‘Yes, take my wallet,’” said Don Cameron, a Martinez police trainer in use of force. “But maybe the guy looks hinky and the gun is shaking back and forth. Then you have to make a snap decision.”

Retired San Francisco police Capt. Croce Casciato echoed that point.

“A lot of self-defense classes will talk about fighting back in the appropriate circumstances,” he said. Casciato noted, however, that in a fight-or-flight scenario, victims don’t have time to think about whether they can physically overpower an attacker.

“It’s just instinctive,” he said.

Emotions play in as well, said McCray, who has seen people respond angrily when they are robbed.

“Definitely, the norm has changed,” McCray said. “It used to be, ‘Give up your stuff, live to see another day.’ Now it’s more, ‘How dare you?’”

(sfchronicle.com)

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CALIFORNIA’S WATER WORKFORCE IS AGING. PROMOTING THE NEXT GENERATION OF WORKERS IS ESSENTIAL

by Travis Hinkle

A career building and maintaining California’s water and wastewater treatment systems may be unglamorous, failing to spring to mind — at least it did for me — when young people contemplate their future careers.

However, the state faces a looming shortage of workers in these critical roles. It is imperative to support local, state and federal policies that help fill them.

Some 17 million workers will be retiring from infrastructure jobs during the next 10 years, taking their skills and institutional knowledge with them, as the workforce ages. According to a US Water Alliance report, approximately one-third of water utility operators are eligible to retire during the next decade. In 2018, Brookings projected that water utilities must fill 9,200 water treatment positions annually.

While President Biden and Congress agreed to spend $1 trillion on thousands of infrastructure projects, including $50 billion alone on water resilience projects in the West, California needs to ensure that there are enough workers equipped with the know-how and sweat equity to build and operate these projects.

These are jobs that get your hands dirty. It’s work that makes a difference. It typically requires less formal education than many other jobs, but can offer a lifelong career, good pay and solid opportunities for advancement. Infrastructure work pays 30% more to lower-income workers and those just starting their careers, relative to all jobs nationally.

I got my own start after high school by joining my brother’s remodeling business — kitchens, bathrooms and the like — in San Jose, where I grew up. But a friend in Sacramento stumbled into wastewater collections for Sacramento County and encouraged me to visit his plant. There I discovered the range of jobs available: electricians, control technicians and treatment and distribution operators.

Even though I pursued online specialty courses, it took a few years for my first job in the water industry to come together.

My work requires lots of on-the-job training, but all of it is teachable and learnable. Once hired, workers can bid through labor unions for other available positions they’re qualified for. Even if they decide to go elsewhere, they’ll leave the department knowing how a water distribution system works.

I have noticed that more attention is being paid these days to proactively recruit water industry workers, helping them understand the training and skills needed to grow in the industry. Last fall, I even told my story to a joint session of the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Workforce Development Board, as the state seeks to widen doors to infrastructure jobs, especially for disadvantaged workers.

When I entered this field, serendipity was my guide. Today, there are resources such as the EPA report “Making Water a Career of Choice,” with case studies of utility-worker pathways to encourage more people to consider working in water systems. In the years ahead, tens of thousands more workers will be needed to meet California’s water delivery and other infrastructure needs, and more effort required to attract new talent into this crucial industry.

While work in the water industry may seem obscure, it is rewarding, meaningful and essential for the wellbeing of communities throughout our state. Promoting community college, state university, private sector and state and federal programs designed to inspire and train the next generation of water infrastructure leaders is vital for California’s future.

Encouraging more young people to enter this career field will not only help California meet its mushrooming needs, but will provide important, well-paying work for those who don’t mind rolling up their sleeves to keep California’s water pipelines flowing.

(CalMatters.org)

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IS KAMALA VERY VERY AFRAID?

by James Kunstler

“On many subjects important to public life today, vast numbers of people know the truth, and yet the official channels of information sharing are reluctant to admit it.” — Jeffrey Tucker

You might wonder, as I do, whether Kamala Harris can even stay in the race until November 5. Based on her grim appearance in last week’s “interview” with Dana Bash, slumped at the table of a crummy Georgia café under poor lighting, her trademark cackle suppressed, she looked psychologically wilted. Don’t be surprised if late this week she “catches Covid” and asks to “postpone” the September 10 debate with Mr. Trump.

Consider the depressing reality of her situation, lately cloaked by the farcical “joy” motif put out by her party’s campaign spin doctors: First, the cabal running the White House bum-rushed “Joe Biden” out of the campaign, just hooked him offstage like a broke-down vaudevillian annoying the audience with his tired antics. Then, the same gang buffaloed Kamala onto center stage by some mystical process that disregarded her lack of preparation, her proven unpopularity in the 2020 primaries, and her near-invisibility in 3.5 years as veep.

For a couple of weeks her head must have been spinning with sheer intoxication at the amazing turn of events. Who wouldn’t be amazed to find him or herself unexpectedly selected to run for president? But now, post the artificial hoopla of the convention, the dread steals in. If she was previously used to self-medicating with chardonnay during the irksome veep years, imagine the pressure now on those campaign bus trips.

She has a lot to be afraid of. She’s not nimble of mind in the spotlight, and she knows it. When she tries to riff on anything off-the-cuff, all that comes out are laughable tautologies. She really doesn’t know much about the world, even about simple geography, certainly not the complex interplay of national interests. Her economic notions are a kind of Frappuccino® of processed Marxian sludge from the Berkeley cafés. If exposed regularly to even friendly reporters, she’d ignite howling embarrassment for herself (and the party). And, after all, there’s her record, including hundreds of videos on the Internet showing plainly the crazy policies she supports and now has to pretend to dissociate from.

Lurking behind her is not only the American intel blob of dark forces and sinister figures, but an international blob made up of malevolent groups within and throughout Western Civ, clearly working to bring it down — the Eurocrats wrecking their own countries’ agriculture and their industrial economies while jailing their opponents for thought crimes; the WEFers pushing the demented climate change agenda and ruinous migrant invasions; the bankers looking to seize the “collateral” (property, chattels, investment portfolios) of a billion everyday citizens when the bond Ponzi scheme blows up, as it must; the WHO steered by Bill Gates seeking to inject unsafe vaccines into everybody in order to greatly and quickly reduce the population; the Soros NGO legions working to subvert the public interest here, there, and everywhere; the NATO warmongers trying like hell to start World War Three. . . . Kamala Harris surely understands — if she understands anything — that she has become their chosen pawn, and is at their mercy (they have none).

She should be afraid especially of the American blob. That combine of higher-ups in the CIA, the DOD, the FBI, the DHS, the State Department, and Gawd knows how many lesser-known agencies and “black op” back offices, knows that it is in great danger if Mr. Trump happens to get elected (despite their best efforts to rig things). After all the trips laid on him, all the way up to attempted assassination, you can be sure that Mr. Trump will be coming after the cabal for committing real and serious crimes. They are running scared now. Despite all the power seemingly at their command, nothing has availed so far — not lawfare, not bullets — to stop Mr. Trump’s implacable march back into the Oval Office, where he could possibly succeed in turning the USA back into a functioning republic

Poor Kamala Harris is the blob’s wholly inadequate instrument to fend off this fate. If she continues to perform badly, the blob might not hesitate to try getting rid of her. That may be the blob’s last chance of stopping the election from happening altogether. The nation has never been in the predicament of having the head of a ticket resign or die in the homestretch of an election campaign. There is no provision in the Constitution for it because there are no provisions in the Constitution for political parties per se. It would all be a kind of improv.

And then, of course, America would be stuck with the unfit and incapable “Joe Biden,” heading the government, at least until something else can be worked out. Maybe that working out would just be the final stage of the coup that has been in motion, really, since 2016 when John Brennan, Barack Obama, and James Comey attempted to oust Mr. Trump with RussiaGate. Some kind of “interim commission” might be formed to “solve” the problem of the cancelled election. They’ll look for someone with “proven ability” to serve as provisional president — maybe, someone who has already been president. . . say, Mr. Obama. Voila and fait accompli! If he finds himself appointed rather than elected, he would not be in defiance of the 22nd Amendment. Okay, now try re-thinking how scared Kamala Harris must be.

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

The country is teetering, and with it, the world.

The main reason is that virtually no one cares – all is fine, you see. They all just got back from the lake cabin with a golfing side-trip.

The secondary reason is that we have let ourselves be backed into an inescapable corner (by today’s standards of “polite society”) by “elected leaders” who are no smarter than a part-time 7-Eleven clerk. We know this because most of our neighbors don’t care, and are often morons. With that polity pulling the voting levers, see what you get.

Maybe we need to revive the agoge. Purpose and accountability has lost its place. And hey – there’s a new season of Squid Game coming out, after all, so we’re busy.

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A NEW CIVIL WAR? Lessons of Kristallnacht, “Civil War,” and Mass Deportation

by Zoltan Grossman

On a recent trip to Germany, I sought to better understand how the Nazi Party rose to power, and carried out the Holocaust, in which most of my Hungarian Jewish relatives perished. I gained some new insights, and learned several lessons that may be useful in the polarized United States today, with the election looming and far-right agitation growing.

I visited the Nuremberg rally grounds, and stood on the rostrum where Hitler instilled his poisonous views in German minds in the mid-1930s. I saw German synagogues that were attacked on Kristallnacht in 1938, and toured Auschwitz in southern Poland, where most of my relatives were sent in 1944, as well as the Nuremberg courtroom where some Nazi war criminals were put on trial in 1945-46.

The Nazi Party took power in 1933, and in 1935 instituted the Nuremberg Laws that stripped  German Jews of their citizenship and many of their basic rights. In August 1938, Berlin ordered the mass deportation of all Jews with foreign citizenship, even if they had been born in Germany.

In October 1938, according to Hannah Arendt, 12,000 Polish Jews (including many born in Germany) were forcibly expelled by Germans shouting “Juden Raus! Auf Nach Palästina!” (“Jews Out! Go to Palestine!”), but Poland would not take them in. (At the same time, Germans were playing a board game called “Juden Raus” to simulate such a mass deportation.)…

counterpunch.org/2024/09/02/lessons-of-kristallnacht-civil-war-and-mass-deportation

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THE GREATEST RADICAL JOURNALIST OF HIS AGE

by Alexander Cockburn

Monday, April 12, 2004, was the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Claud Cockburn, father of other Cockburns — the brothers Alexander, Andrew and Patrick — familiar to readers of the AVA and the CounterPunch website and newsletter.

Claud was the greatest radical journalist of his age, an inspiring influence not only on CounterPunch, but on many other seditious journalistic enterprises, such as England’s ‘Private Eye,’ the fortnightly at whose helm he stood at a crucial moment in the early 1960s or the ‘National Guardian’ founded by Cedric Belfrage, James Aronson and John McManus.

Claud was a child of empire, born in the British legation in Peking, son of Harry Cockburn, the British minister there during the Boxer rising, who had spent 20 years in Chungking and was on friendly terms with the Empress Dowager of the Middle Kingdom. Claud grew up mostly in Budapest, went to Berkhamsted school, run by his friend Graham Greene’s father. Just young enough to escape slaughter in the Great War, he went to Oxford, lived in Paris, wrote for Ezra Pound’s ‘Dial,’ worked for the London Times in Berlin, saw the rise of Hitler, went to New York to describe the Crash of ’29.

He turned left, quit The Times, joined the Daily Worker, paper of the British Communist Party, founded his famous antifascist newsletter ‘The Week,’ fought for the Republic in the Spanish civil war, joining the Republic militia before the International Brigades were formed. His superiors ordered him back from the front lines to assume the propaganda duties alluded to in the piece below. In 1947 he quit The Worker and the CP, moved to Ireland and started a whole new life as a novelist and freelance commentator. His first book, ‘Beat the Devil,’ written under the name James Helvick was turned into John Huston’s well-known film of the same name. He wrote other novels, three volumes of masterly memoirs, collected in the Penguin edition of ‘I, Claud.’

He wrote fast, with a beautifully easy style. His prose could be light, ironic, also savage. He was learned but never overbearing, cultivated but never patronizing. He respected and enjoyed people at all social levels and ages. He loved dogs.

Under the force of his example, who could resist the lure of journalism and none of his sons did, to the initial gloom of our mother, Patricia, who knew first hand that freelance journalism doesn’t always bring home regular slabs of bacon.

His body simply wore out when he was 77 though his mind stayed sharp till his last breath. The day before he died in St. Finbarr’s hospital in Cork he dictated a column for the Irish Times to Patricia. He never soured on his ideals, never lost faith in humanity’s nobler instincts, never failed to see the humor in life.

Shortly before Claud died, amid one of the periodic uproars about upper class British spies, our friend Ben Sonnenberg asked him to write a piece for Ben’s literary quarterly ‘Grand Street.’ Claud turned in a masterly essay, full of astute observations about Guy Burgess and spy mania, but also with a wonderfully tragic-comic memoir about the strange death of Basil Murray in Valencia. On the hundredth anniversary of his arrival in this world, we offered his essay, ‘Spies and Two Deaths in Spain’ as a bow to one of the greatest of the 20th Century’s journalistic agitators.

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Spies and Two Deaths in Spain

by Claud Cockburn

Before he was revealed as a central figure — perhaps the mastermind — of the Burgess-Maclean-Philby spy scandal, the rapscallion Guy Burgess used sometimes to join me at a table in one of the bars of the House of Commons and, in the course of conversation, proclaim himself an agent of the Soviet Government. This would come out in a drink-slurred roar, clearly audible to, for example, Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary, towering massively at the bar, as well as to any other politician or newspaperman in the place.

Somewhere in the talk, he would usually make another emphatic assertion. This was to the effect that he was the illegitimate son of the then-Lady Rothschild. It was, he implied, a fact which accounted for his expert knowledge of international finance.

The claim about his illegitimacy was entirely false and quite a number of people who ought to have known better believed it. And his claim to be an agent of the KGB was true and no one believed it. It was a crude and entirely successful example of the double bluff. If anyone — and I suppose there were some such in British counter-intelligence — were to report a suspicion about Burgess's role, his superior was likely to reply with weary contempt, “I know, I know, he keeps saying so himself.”

The ploy about Lady Rothschild appealed to people as a fairly titillating piece of gossip. It was useful to Burgess and he employed it for the same reason that his contemporary Brendan Bracken, Britain's Information Minister throughout the war and an immensely successful political and financial pirate, used to claim that he was the illegitimate son of Winston Churchill. Reading the excitingly simplistic accounts of successive spy scandals in British publications, I find it useful to recall these facts about Burgess, which indicate in their own simple way how complex the detection of spies in our midst can be. We have had spy scares every few years, and I have no doubt will have more of them. In the same way, scares about terrorism — together with more or less fraudulent analyses of the supposed activities and motivations of terrorists — will certainly proliferate as the nervous system of the general public increasingly demands sedation in the face of horrifying phenomena.

The public nervous system may be soothed by false explanations. But unless people are encouraged to look rather more coolly and deeply into these same phenomena of espionage and terrorism, they will make no progress towards any genuine self-defense against either.

At this point, it may be wise to remember that there are those whose hysteria on these subjects leads them to believe that any cool analysis amounts almost to a condonation. Such hysteria is of obvious help to spies and terrorists. Let us also note that nobody in any country can truly and totally evaluate the harm an enemy's spies may have done. The real experts in anti-espionage are a great deal more ready to admit this than the horrified public. Even the outstanding Russian dissident, Andrei Sakharov, “father” of their hydrogen bomb, is reported as saying that the secrets betrayed by Klaus Fuchs were of minimal importance in the development of the weapons in the Soviet Union.

A constant element among the facts and fiction about espionage is what we may call “Belief in the Spy as Superman.” All intelligence agencies have a vested interest in convincing the world of their machinelike efficiency. Particularly in wartime, but at other times too, the notion of the spy successfully uprooting our secrets, like a pig uprooting truffles, is alarming in itself, and also because it fits and extends the idea which almost everybody has, that the enemy is not only wickeder but also cleverer than we are. Malcolm Muggeridge once told me how, while working for MI6 during the war, he became for a time profoundly depressed by what appeared to him the ineptitude and even clownish folly of some of our intelligence procedures. His gloom lifted when, after the Allied landings in Italy, his German opposite numbers scampered out of Naples without even burning their vital documents. To his relief he saw from them that the Germans had been proceeding with an ineptitude and folly at least equal to our own.

A frequent element in spy-alarm, notably in Britain and France, is the belief that spies belong to, and are protected by, a higher social and financial class than the common citizenry of the country on which they are spying. An awkward bit of this last element is that it often chances to be true, as is apparent to students of the relationships between certain members of the German and British nobility not only before the outbreak of World War II, but in the intrigues directed particularly against Churchill during the autumn and winter of 1939-1940.

The most insidious of the bases for fear of spies is subtler than the others, yet quite as dangerous. It is rarely formulated but runs roughly, and often subconsciously, like this: if some of our best educated citizens who have had every advantage our society can offer are nonetheless prepared to dedicate themselves to an ideology destructive to that society, may it not be just possible that there is something dangerously wrong with our own philosophy of life?

It is exactly this element that accounts for the extraordinary outburst of outraged surprise with which the British public greeted the exposure of Anthony Blunt as a KGB agent. As in the case of Philby and Maclean, here was a young man of good family who had enjoyed to the full the educational, cultural, and social advantages of a reasonably affluent student at one of Britain's two senior universities. He was as far from deprivation as anyone could get. There was no visible cause for him to turn against society. The thought that, despite all this, some extraordinary power of attraction in Communism's alien and hostile doctrines had seduced him was terrifying. To judge by the tone of many British commentators, it was as alarming as a discovery that a witch-doctor had been secretly at large, exercising black-magical powers over the citizenry.

Such thoughts paralyze the capacity to see and deal rationally with the problem. The true explanation is a great deal simpler. Blunt and the other young men concerned were at Cambridge during the Great Depression. About three million were unemployed, and at that time to be on the dole or in low-paid employment in Britain meant poverty that was often near the starvation line.

John Gunther, in his book ‘Inside Britain,’ notes the astonishment of American visitors at the docility of the British working class under such conditions and the absence of revolutionary outbursts. In this desert of misery, Cambridge was an ostentatious oasis of civilized comfort. It is not at all surprising that Blunt and others should have, with some deep feelings of guilt, questioned the justification for such a state of affairs.

On the contrary, it would have been surprising had any sensitive and informed young man coolly accepted his position as though by divine right. The Communists did not require secret recruiting sergeants; the economics of the time were doing the job quite well enough.

By contrast, only a few years earlier at Oxford, when the economic situation was less spectacularly dire, the majority of the student population was almost entirely apolitical. If, as some recent publications have suggested, there were Soviet recruiters at the Oxford of that day, they should have been fired for incompetence. Politics was in the main a replay, more or less histrionic, of the Liberal-Conservative struggles of the years before the First World War, with Labour adding no more than flavoring to a familiar stew.

Some who delve needlessly deep into the motivations of international spies, and double and triple agents, have made much of the fact that many of what may be called “The Cambridge Group” of distinguished Soviet agents can be shown to have been homosexual or to have had homosexual connections. But let us note that at Oxford in the mid-twenties, homosexuality was as fashionable and obtrusive as Communism was not. From the London press, which liked to paint lurid pictures of goings-on at the university, you could have gathered that the undergraduates were about evenly divided between flaunting and artistically outre homosexuals and sturdy British “hearties” upholding the values for which the preceding generation had died in the war.

Such nonsense apart, it is certainly true that in the most flamboyant and “trend-setting” intellectual circles homosexuality was in some cases so nearly de rigueur that aspiring writers, artists, and above all actors, actually felt compelled to pretend to be homosexual. The slang word for it was “so.” In reply to the greeting “How are you?” a common reply was: “So so, but not quite so so as sometimes.” A friend of mine who had the most “normal” sexual tastes started a literary magazine which, it was immediately suggested, should have been called Just So Stories. When an undergraduate was actually sent down for homosexual practices, astounded observers held competitions to suggest what amazingly spectacular misbehavior he must have indulged in to merit this extraordinary action by the authorities.

Another odd fact is that at that time “womanizer” was a term of abuse. I knew a normally lusty American Rhodes Scholar who could hardly believe that even among those who vigorously deplored the existence of homosexuality, “womanizing” was worse than immoral; it was unspeakably vulgar. This must have had its historical roots in the long ages when Oxford was so successfully isolated by lack of transport from the outside world that prostitutes were the only women available during term time to all but the richest students who could afford gigs and other horse-drawn vehicles to get them at least as far as Reading. By my day the majority of heterosexual people were able to find ways and means of satisfaction, even in term-time, but always under the still somewhat inhibiting fear of being dubbed “womanizers.”

It is a pity that so many who write of Oxford and Cambridge in the relevant years are so crassly ignorant of the prevailing atmosphere. They remind me of Mr. Vladimir, the Imperial Russian diplomat in Conrad's ‘The Secret Agent,’ as he lectures the title character:

“And Mr. Vladimir developed his idea from on high, with scorn and condescension, displaying at the same time an amount of ignorance as to the real aims, thoughts, and methods of the revolutionary world which filled the silent Mr. Verloc with inward consternation. He confounded causes with effects more than was excusable; the most distinguished propagandists with impulsive bomb throwers; assumed organization where in the nature of things it could not exist; spoke of the social revolutionary party one moment as of a perfectly disciplined army, where the word of chiefs was supreme, and at another as if it had been the loosest association of desperate brigands that ever camped in a mountain gorge.”

We find a Mr. Vladimir at every corner today, spouting his confident but dangerously misleading lectures.

Still, in the areas of spying and terrorism, even the best are inclined to leave out from their sapient and (so far as they go) truthful analyses the factor of unpredictability. Or nonsense, if you prefer. Brooding on this situation, I constantly keep in mind my own experience in the field of espionage, or rather, counterespionage.

Early in the Spanish Civil War I was what, if one were inclined to pomposity, might be called a section leader of the counterespionage department of the Spanish Republican Government dealing with Anglo-Saxon personalities. My job was principally to vet applications by British and Americans for visas to enter Republican Spain.

It was, as I realized rather late, a “no win” situation for me. Either I allowed in some supposed friend of the Republic who turned out to be a secret enemy, in which case I could very well be shot as a saboteur. Or, overcautiously avoiding this risk, I might exclude some character suspect to me who would later turn out to be a loyal friend of the Republic and a potentially powerful propagandist in its cause. Saboteur again.

It was under these circumstances that I had to consider the application for a visa for Basil Murray, son of Professor Gilbert Murray, whose family and connections were luminaries of the British liberal academic and political world. I was astonished, and more than a little suspicious, when Basil, in making his application, explained that having hitherto lived the life of a roustabout at Oxford and layabout in London, he had suddenly seen the light and wished to dedicate himself to the cause of the Republic. Specifically, he wanted to give radio talks from Valencia, where the government was now established.

Knowing and liking Basil, but still not quite convinced of the strength of his new resolutions, I discussed his application with the Foreign Minister, who thought that I was mad even to consider rejecting the son of so distinguished a figure in Britain who was as well the cousin of the British Foreign Secretary. (This last was untrue, a detail invented by Basil to help in obtaining his visa.)

Basil came to Valencia, and with much sweat and dedication produced several excellent broadcasts. Then he suddenly fell in love with a girl of whom one may say that had she had the words “I am a Nazi spy” printed on her hat, that could hardly have made her position clearer than it was. I reasoned with Basil, but found him besotted with love and convinced that, in some bigoted way, I was deliberately thinking ill of this splendid creature.

Just as my arguments ran finally into a blind alley, the girl herself suddenly quit the Republic for Berlin in the company of a high-ranking officer of the International Brigade who proved also to be an agent of the enemy. Although I was naturally careful not to belabor Basil with I-told-you-sos, he fell into a deep melancholy both at the loss of the loved one and the disclosure of her political vileness.

Soon after, wandering bitterly disconsolate along the quays of Valencia's harbor, he saw a tiny street menagerie of the kind that in those days was a common form of popular entertainment in Spain. The little group included an ape. And this ape, Basil said, was the first living creature that — since the defection of the Nazi agent — had looked at him with friendly sympathy. He bought the ape and took it with him to the Victoria Hotel, which was the hotel housing all visiting VIPs.

The next I knew, I received a call from the management of the Victoria, who said furiously that they had already strained themselves to the limit by putting up all the foreign visitors I had recommended, and that now, by God, my latest protégé was demanding a room for an ape. After I had pointed out that there were apes enough already living in the hotel, so that one more would hardly be noticed, it was agreed that Basil be moved to a room with a large bathroom, in which the ape might be accommodated.

This arrangement worked well enough for a matter of 48 hours. Then Basil, still disconsolate despite the friendly eyes of the ape, drank heavily and fell asleep naked on his bed in the fierce humid heat of a Valencia afternoon. He had locked the ape in the bathroom, but the ingenious and friendly animal became bored with this isolation and longed for the company of its new master. Somehow it picked or jimmied the lock of the bathroom door and came into the bedroom looking for a game or frolic. Finding the new master disappointingly unresponsive, the ape made vigorous efforts to rouse him, biting him over and over again and finally in frustration biting through his jugular vein.

Apart from my personal regret at the loss of my old acquaintance, I was compelled to see that the situation would be politically damaging. One could surmise at once what a hostile British press would make of the news that a brilliant young Englishman of distinguished family had sought to work for the Red Republic, and had, within a very short time, been bitten to death by an ape. It was possible quickly to announce that Basil had died of pneumonia as a result of the treacherous Valencia climate.

It was also arranged that the British Government should send a light cruiser or frigate from its Mediterranean fleet for the purpose of carrying Basil back to Britain. A small cortege of suitable officials from the Republican Foreign Office accompanied the remains to the quayside. It was only when the remains were being moved to the cutter for transfer onto the frigate that a member of the cortege noticed that they had been joined by the ape. It sprang into the stern sheets of the cutter.

Faithfully, it followed Basil up the companionway. It appeared on the spotless deck and there, in a gesture suitable for solemn occasions (learned, no doubt, from the owner of the menagerie), it raised its fist in the Red Front salute.

A British warrant officer — having doubtless been warned of the dangerous and even bestial character of the Reds and of the necessity for vigilance while the ship was in a Red harbor — reacted swiftly, drew a pistol and shot the ape dead. Its body fell overboard and disappeared into the Mediterranean. Basil, I believe, had a fine funeral in England, and the episode was closed.

But not really. For weeks afterwards I was pestered by the menagerie owner demanding compensation and heart-balm for his grief at the demise of the ape. He said that when he had sold it to Basil he had not at all envisaged the possibility that the creature would be brutally murdered by the forces of British imperialism, shooting down that helpless animal as ruthlessly as they had shot down innumerable people throughout the then-Empire.

In addition, the British diplomatic mission to Republican Spain immediately spread the story that we, the Republicans, meaning in this case me, had murdered Basil — poison in the wine, one of them said. Anarchists and others suspicious of the coalition government somehow spread a story that through the government's carelessness or connivance, a British agent had been introduced, and then killed when on the verge of damaging exposure. Enemies of the Murray family, and those disgusted that Basil should have worked for the Republic, spread in England the story that Basil had had improper relations with the ape. They even, I found later, substituted a bear.

As late as the 1950s a close and loving relative of Basil's was delighted to hear from me the true story, which confirmed the genuineness of Basil's determination to do something constructive with his life — however grotesque the actual outcome.

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THE LETTER OF COLUMBUS to Luis De Sant Angel Announcing His Discovery (1493)

As I know you will be rejoiced at the glorious success that our Lord has given me in my voyage, I write this to tell you how in thirty-three days I sailed to the Indies with the fleet that the illustrious King and Queen, our Sovereigns, gave me, where I discovered a great many islands, inhabited by numberless people; and of all I have taken possession for their Highnesses by proclamation and display of the Royal Standard without opposition. To the first island I discovered I gave the name of San Salvador, in commemoration of His Divine Majesty, who has wonderfully granted all this. The Indians call it Guanaham. The second I named the Island of Santa Maria de Concepcion; the third, Fernandina; the fourth, Isabella; the fifth, Juana; and thus to each one I gave a new name. When I came to Juana, I followed the coast of that isle toward the west, and found it so extensive that I thought it might be the mainland, the province of Cathay; and as I found no towns nor villages on the sea-coast, except a few small settlements, where it was impossible to speak to the people, because they fled at once, I continued the said route, thinking I could not fail to see some great cities or towns; and finding at the end of many leagues that nothing new appeared, and that the coast led northward, contrary to my wish, because the winter had already set in, I decided to make for the south, and as the wind also was against my proceeding, I determined not to wait there longer, and turned back to a certain harbor whence I sent two men to find out whether there was any king or large city. They explored for three days, and found countless small communities and people, without number, but with no kind of government, so they returned.

I heard from other Indians I had already taken that this land was an island, and thus followed the eastern coast for one hundred and seven leagues, until I came to the end of it. From that point I saw another isle to the eastward, at eighteen leagues' distance, to which I gave the name of Hispaniola. I went thither and followed its northern coast to the east, as I had done in Juana, one hundred and seventy-eight leagues eastward, as in Juana. This island, like all the others, is most extensive. It has many ports along the sea-coast excelling any in Christendom — and many fine, large, flowing rivers. The land there is elevated, with many mountains and peaks incomparably higher than in the centre isle. They are most beautiful, of a thousand varied forms, accessible, and full of trees of endless varieties, so high that they seem to touch the sky, and I have been told that they never lose their foliage. I saw them as green and lovely as trees are in Spain in the month of May. Some of them were covered with blossoms, some with fruit, and some in other conditions, according to their kind. The nightingale and other small birds of a thousand kinds were singing in the month of November when I was there. There were palm trees of six or eight varieties, the graceful peculiarities of each one of them being worthy of admiration as are the other trees, fruits and grasses. There are wonderful pine woods, and very extensive ranges of meadow land. There is honey, and there are many kinds of birds, and a great variety of fruits. Inland there are numerous mines of metals and innumerable people. Hispaniola is a marvel. Its hills and mountains, fine plains and open country, are rich and fertile for planting and for pasturage, and for building towns and villages. The seaports there are incredibly fine, as also the magnificent rivers, most of which bear gold. The trees, fruits and grasses differ widely from those in Juana. There are many spices and vast mines of gold and other metals in this island. They have no iron, nor steel, nor weapons, nor are they fit for them, because although they are well-made men of commanding stature, they appear extraordinarily timid. The only arms they have are sticks of cane, cut when in seed, with a sharpened stick at the end, and they are afraid to use these. Often I have sent two or three men ashore to some town to converse with them, and the natives came out in great numbers, and as soon as they saw our men arrive, fled without a moment's delay although I protected them from all injury.

At every point where I landed, and succeeded in talking to them, I gave them some of everything I had — cloth and many other things — without receiving anything in return, but they are a hopelessly timid people. It is true that since they have gained more confidence and are losing this fear, they are so unsuspicious and so generous with what they possess, that no one who had not seen it would believe it. They never refuse anything that is asked for. They even offer it themselves, and show so much love that they would give their very hearts. Whether it be anything of great or small value, with any trifle of whatever kind, they are satisfied. I forbade worthless things being given to them, such as bits of broken bowls, pieces of glass, and old straps, although they were as much pleased to get them as if they were the finest jewels in the world. One sailor was found to have got for a leathern strap, gold of the weight of two and a half castellanos, and others for even more worthless things much more; while for a new blancas they would give all they had, were it two or three castellanos of pure gold or an arroba or two of spun cotton. Even bits of the broken hoops of wine casks they accepted, and gave in return what they had, like fools, and it seemed wrong to me. I forbade it, and gave a thousand good and pretty things that I had to win their love, and to induce them to become Christians, and to love and serve their Highnesses and the whole Castilian nation, and help to get for us things they have in abundance, which are necessary to us. They have no religion, nor idolatry, except that they all believe power and goodness to be in heaven. They firmly believed that I, with my ships and men, came from heaven, and with this idea I have been received everywhere, since they lost fear of me. They are, however, far from being ignorant. They are most ingenious men, and navigate these seas in a wonderful way, and describe everything well, but they never before saw people wearing clothes, nor vessels like ours. Directly I reached the Indies in the first isle I discovered, I took by force some of the natives, that from them we might gain some information of what there was in these parts; and so it was that we immediately understood each other, either by words or signs. They are still with me and still believe that I come from heaven. They were the first to declare this wherever I went, and the others ran from house to house, and to the towns around, crying out, "Come ! come! and see the man from heaven!" Then all, both men and women, as soon as they were reassured about us, came, both small and great, all bringing something to eat and to drink, which they presented with marvellous kindness. In these isles there are a great many canoes, something like rowing boats, of all sizes, and most of them are larger than an eighteen-oared galley. They are not so broad, as they are made of a single plank, but a galley could not keep up with them in rowing, because they go with incredible speed, and with these they row about among all these islands, which are innumerable, and carry on their commerce. I have seen some of these canoes with seventy and eighty men in them, and each had an oar. In all the islands I observed little difference in the appearance of the people, or in their habits and language, except that they understand each other, which is remarkable. Therefore I hope that their Highnesses will decide upon the conversion of these people to our holy faith, to which they seem much inclined. I have already stated how I sailed one hundred and seven leagues along the sea-coast of Juana, in a straight line from west to east. I can therefore assert that this island is larger than England and Scotland together, since beyond these one hundred and seven leagues there remained at the west point two provinces where I did not go, one of which they call Avan, the home of men with tails. These provinces are computed to be fifty or sixty leagues in length, as far as can be gathered from the Indians with me, who are acquainted with all these islands. This other, Hispaniola, is larger in circumference than all Spain from Catalonia to Fuentarabia in Biscay, since upon one of its four sides I sailed one hundred and eighty-eight leagues from west to east. This is worth having, and must on no account be given up. I have taken possession of all these islands, for their Highnesses, and all may be more extensive than I know, or can say, and I hold them for their Highnesses, who can command them as absolutely as the kingdoms of Castile. In Hispaniola, in the most convenient place, most accessible for the gold mines and all commerce with the mainland on this side or with that of the great Khan, on the other, with which there would be great trade and profit, I have taken possession of a large town, which I have named the City of Navidad. I began fortifications there which should be completed by this time, and I have left in it men enough to hold it, with arms, artillery, and provisions for more than a year; and a boat with a master seaman skilled in the arts necessary to make others; I am so friendly with the king of that country that he was proud to call me his brother and hold me as such. Even should he change his mind and wish to quarrel with my men, neither he nor his subjects know what arms are, nor wear clothes, as I have said. They are the most timid people in the world, so that only the men remaining there could destroy the whole region, and run no risk if they know how to behave themselves properly. In all these islands the men seem to be satisfied with one wife except they allow as many as twenty to their chief or men. The women appear to me to work harder than the men, and so far as I can hear they have nothing of their own, for I think I perceived that what one had others shared, especially food. In the islands so far, I have found no monsters, as some expected, but, on the contrary, they are people of very handsome appearance. They are not black as in Guinea, though their hair is straight and coarse, as it does not grow where the sun's rays are too ardent. And in truth the sun has extreme power here, since it is within twenty-six degrees of the equinoctial line. In these islands there are mountains where the cold this winter was very severe, but the people endure it from habit, and with the aid of the meat they eat with very hot spices.

As for monsters, I have found not trace of them except at the point in the second isle as one enters the Indies, which is inhabited by a people considered in all the isles as most ferocious, who eat human flesh. They possess many canoes, with which they overrun all the isles of India, stealing and seizing all they can. They are not worse looking than the others, except that they wear their hair long like women, and use bows and arrows of the same cane, with a sharp stick at the end for want of iron, of which they have none. They are ferocious compared to these other races, who are extremely cowardly; but I only hear this from the others. They are said to make treaties of marriage with the women in the first isle to be met with coming from Spain to the Indies, where there are no men. These women have no feminine occupation, but use bows and arrows of cane like those before mentioned, and cover and arm themselves with plates of copper, of which they have a great quantity. Another island, I am told, is larger than Hispaniola, where the natives have no hair, and where there is countless gold; and from them all I bring Indians to testify to this. To speak, in conclusion, only of what has been done during this hurried voyage, their Highnesses will see that I can give them as much gold as they desire, if they will give me a little assistance, spices, cotton, as much as their Highnesses may command to be shipped, and mastic as much as their Highnesses choose to send for, which until now has only been found in Greece, in the isle of Chios, and the Signoria can get its own price for it; as much lign-aloe as they command to be shipped, and as many slaves as they choose to send for, all heathens. I think I have found rhubarb and cinnamon. Many other things of value will be discovered by the men I left behind me, as I stayed nowhere when the wind allowed me to pursue my voyage, except in the City of Navidad, which I left fortified and safe. Indeed, I might have accomplished much more, had the crews served me as they ought to have done. The eternal and almighty God, our Lord, it is Who gives to all who walk in His way, victory over things apparently impossible, and in this case signally so, because although these lands had been imagined and talked of before they were seen, most men listened incredulously to what was thought to be but an idle tale. But our Redeemer has given victory to our most illustrious King and Queen, and to their kingdoms rendered famous by this glorious event, at which all Christendom should rejoice, celebrating it with great festivities and solemn Thanksgivings to the Holy Trinity, with fervent prayers for the high distinction that will accrue to them from turning so many peoples to our holy faith; and also from the temporal benefits that not only Spain but all Christian nations will obtain. Thus I record what has happened in a brief note written on board the Caravel, off the Canary Isles, on the 15th of February, 1493.

Yours to command,
THE ADMIRAL

[Postscript within the letter]
Since writing the above, being in the Sea of Castile, so much wind arose south southeast, that I was forced to lighten the vessels, to run into this port of Lisbon to-day which was the most extraordinary thing in the world, from whence I resolved to write to their Highnesses. In all the Indies I always found the temperature like that of May. Where I went in thirty-three days I returned in twenty-eight, except that these gales have detained me fourteen days, knocking about in this sea, Here all seamen say that there has never been so rough a winter, nor so many vessels lost. Done the 14th day of March.

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