Mendocino County Today: Monday 9/9/2024

Steam Train | Warm Inland | Potter Valley | AVUSD News | Fairground Map | Boyles Fire | Steam Engine | Unregulated Camping | Spiny Thrift | SoCo Homeless | Curvy Donna | Deboarding | Ed Notes | Albion Bridge | Give It Away | Yesterday's Catch | Johnson's Beach | Sailing | Nowhere Left | Road Roller | Bad Direction | Chad & Jimmy | Violent Night | Desmond Doss | Deathbed Confession | Empire Decline | Dem Truck | Miles 65 | Jeepers! | Assassinated Men | Mentally Ill | Unbearably Sad | Cruise Ship

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TODAY, shallow stratus and fog will remain its coastal presence under a strong inversion while inland temperatures will be above climatological norms. An approaching upper trough will then drive inland temperatures much cooler and bring chances for light rain and breezy conditions Wednesday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A cooler 48F with clear skies this Monday morning on the coast. Some high clouds passing by but the fog looks to have backed well off the coast. Fog & drizzle is in our forecast thru Tuesday, then clearing the rest of the week. Or so they say.

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AMERICA'S MOST BEAUTIFUL HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL FIELD

Potter Valley, California

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AV UNIFIED NEWS

The third week of school has been fun and busy and we are very excited as we move toward the 100th Annual Mendocino County Fair and Apple Show at the end of this coming week. Fall is in the air!

California Community Schools Partnership Program - Planning Grant

Fabulous teacher, Nat Correy-Moran is currently working as Teacher on Special Assignment, coordinating this important planning grant. This grant program supports schools’ efforts to partner with community agencies and local government to align community resources with a focus on academics, health and social services, youth and community development, and community engagement. An additional aim is to lift up the voices of students and families as we plan together to find new ways to enrich and add to AVUSD’s exceptional programs and services for students.

Mr. Corey-Moran has been working on many things already, including:

Gathering input from students, staff, and community members to guide us in future district initiatives and work

Working with district personnel to improve parent access to Parent Square, a communication tool, through which parents can receive emails and/or text messages about important school events

Coordinating with local agencies and organizations to strengthen and improve our services to students. So far, Mr. Correy-Moran has collaborated with the following:

AV Land Trust

Mendocino County Outdoor Education Program

Anderson Valley Health Center

Mendocino County Office of Education

The county’s naturalist program (outdoor education)

Career and College Readiness Program

Career and Technical Education

Mr. Corey-Moran is busy! You will be hearing more from him about great things to come for the students and community of Anderson Valley Unified School District!

‘Fair Friday’

As a reminder, Fair Friday is coming this week! Students and staff are brimming with excitement, and the new principals and I can’t wait to join in the fun.

We would like to remind students that when they are at the fair, they are representing Anderson Valley Unified School District as well. We thank them in advance for their exemplary behavior and for making their parents and educators proud.

As usual, Fair Friday (September 13) will be a minimum school day.

AV Elementary

Students will be dismissed at 12:45 p.m.

Students are to be picked up by parents at the school or will be taken to their regular drop-off locations by the bus.

Students will not be dropped off at the fair this year for safety reasons.

Jr/Sr High School

Students will be dismissed at 1:00 p.m.

Students who take the bus will be dropped off aht their regular drop-off locations. (Students will not be dropped off at the fair this year.)

Some groups will be working at the fair; stay tuned and you will be hearing details from Mr. McNerney and/or class and club advisors

Senior class representatives will be helping with parking and baked potatoes. Thank you, Seniors, Mr. Folz, and other staff, for upholding this fun tradition!

Monday, September 16th, will be a day off for students. Teachers will be doing “In Service” workshops, working together to make our schools even better in the coming months!

We look forward to seeing students and families at the fair!

We are hiring!

Are you interested in being a part of the AVUSD team? We have a fantastic team, a fun working environment, and we make an impact on children’s lives. Consider joining us! Our job openings are posted on the Edjoin.org website and are linked here. Open positions include:

Special Education Teacher, Mild/Moderate, at AVES

Special Education Instructional Assistant/Driver (split shift)

After School Program Tutor Jr/Sr High

Elementary School After School Program Tutor

Please reach out to me anytime if you have questions, concerns, or ideas for making our schools even better!

With respect,

Kristin Larson Balliet

Superintendent, Anderson Valley Unified School District

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BOYLES FIRE BURNS 30 STRUCTURES, reaches 90 acres, forces residents to flee flames (Sunday Night)

A fire, dubbed the Boyles Fire, is over 90 acres and threatening structures in Clearlake. Officials say more than 4,000 people have been displaced from the evacuation zones and an evacuation center has been set up at the Twin Pines Casino in Middletown

by Alana Minkler & Madison Smalstig

Sen. Mike McGuire on Sunday said the state has submitted to the federal government a Federal Management Grant to secure funding to cover the cost of fire response. McGuire said the fire burned and continues to burn in what’s called a Local Responsibility Area.

“The city of Clearlake would have to cover 100% of the cost of response,” he said, adding that the federal grant, if awarded, would cover that cost.

McGuire said he expects FEMA officials to respond sometime this evening.

“This is devastating on so many fronts,” he said. “There is no other county in the state that has been hit as hard as Lake County by repeated fires.”

Some 60% of Lake County’s “land mass” has been scorched by multiple wildfires since 2015, when the Valley Fire ravaged much of Cobb, Whispering Pines and Middletown.

7:20 p.m.: Fire officials hold press conference

Fire officials are scheduled to hold a news briefing at the Incident Command center in Clearlake at about 7:30 p.m.

7:10 p.m.: Crews mop up hot spots as residents process damage

Crews are beginning the tedious process of mopping up homes as more crews arrive from out of county, including the Sonoma County Fire Protection District, the Santa Rosa Fire Department, Graton Fire and the Schell-Vista Fire Protection District.

Salvador Ruano, 36, stood in the ruins of his aunt’s home in the 15000 block of 18th Avenue. He ran his fingers over his chin as he watched the smoke bubble up from where his aunt’s kitchen used to be, where the 10 chickens she had were kept.

He doesn’t know where most of them are now.

One lone chicken in the area squawked, seemingly in confusion over where to walk.

“Can you believe a couple hours ago, everything is fine? And now it is different?” said Ruano, who has lived in the area all his life.

His aunt, who has lived there for 27 years, was just able to grab her wallet before she left.

“Everything is burnt up,” he said.

7 p.m.: Evacuation center available for evacuees

At the evacuation center at Twin Pines Casino, set up Sunday evening by the American Red Cross, 12 cots and 13 tables sat mostly empty. Some evacuees with their pets stood outside the entrance.

“I’m very grateful that this is here and set up so quickly,” said Marcia Tierney, assistant principal at Lower Lake High School and volunteer.

Officials arranged to have evacuees transported to Middletown by Knocti Unified School District buses.

6:14 p.m.: Resident shares story fleeing flames, leaving behind home

Neka Kirtley, 44, lives at the intersection of 18th Street and Eureka Avenue.

She was at a friend’s house out of town with her kids when she heard about the flames and ran back. She got back to her home around 3 p.m.

“And we just started throwing everything, like ripping stuff off the wall, like pictures and grabbing kids’ stuffed animals and special stuff,” Kirtley said.

She also grabbed the “green folder” containing important medical records, a nebulizar, which is a drug delivery device for her and her 13-year-old son’s asthma, a plaque memorializing her grandma and clothes still on the hangers.

5:50 p.m.: Dry, moderately windy and hot conditions to drop off

Clearlake temperatures were in the low 90s with afternoon wind gusts up to 15 mph, said Danny Schmiegel, a National Weather Service meteorologist, Sunday evening.

Relative humidity was in the mid-60% range.

“I would say it’s summer in California, so there’s always a chance for something to get sparked, especially with afternoon wind blowing through the valleys, especially in this area of Clearlake,” Schmiegel said.

“It’s not the worst-case scenario but it’s definitely not the best,” he added, predicting that temperatures would drop off significantly around 7 to 8 p.m., cooling all the way down to the high 40s by dawn Monday morning.

The sun was scheduled to set at 7:28 p.m.

The wind would likely die down overnight as well, Schmiegel said, allowing fire behavior to die down a bit before daytime temperatures increase again on Monday. The high is expected to be in the low 90s.

5:27 p.m.: 4,000 residents displaced, evacuation center established

Authorities are saying as many as 4,000 residents in the evacuation zones have been displaced.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

(Ed note: An AV firefighter strike team was dispatched to the Boyles fire a little after 2pm Sunday afternoon along with numerous other area responders.)

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SUPES BEING RUSHED TO SUPPORT EXPANDED UNREGULATED CAMPING

by Mark Scaramella

Next Tuesday’s Supervisors Agenda includes a sneaky consent calendar item proposing that the Board “ratify” a letter in support of Senate Bill 620 (McGuire): “Low-impact camping areas.”

The draft letter reads:

“Dear Assemblymember (Buffy) Wicks (Chair of the Assembly’s Appropriations Committee),

I am writing on behalf of the Mendocino Board of Supervisors to express our support for SB 620. This bill defines and establishes "low-impact camping areas" standards to increase affordable outdoor access and create economic opportunities for rural communities, particularly those on the North Coast.

SB 620 aims to create additional camping opportunities on rural, private property across the state by eliminating prohibitively costly and time-intensive state permits unsuitable for small-scale camping areas. This change would enable Californians to engage in and benefit from our state's thriving outdoor recreation industry and create opportunities for rural economic development in communities like Mendocino County. In Mendocino County, campsites on rural and agricultural lands are already a crucial source of income, given the increased demand for outdoor recreation in recent years. The County recognizes the critical role of tourism, including rural recreation, in our local economy. Therefore, the Mendocino Board of Supervisors is currently working on permitting and additional support for small-scale, low-impact camping areas. SB 620 provides a foundation that Mendocino County – and other rural communities – can build upon.

Moreover, investments in small-scale, low-impact camping areas and resources are vital to the success of ambitious outdoor recreation projects like the Great Redwood Trail (GRT). The GRT aims to increase recreational access to remote areas in Northern California and create economic opportunities for the individual landowners and rural communities surrounding it. Since over 80% of land adjacent to the GRT is privately owned, SB 620 could be crucial in establishing sufficient camping areas to support recreation along the trail. Enabling local landowners to host campers could ensure that residents benefit from the economic impact of the GRT. In summary, SB 620 has the potential to significantly boost rural economic development, support California landowners, and improve outdoor access.

The Board of Supervisors of Mendocino County supports SB 620 for these reasons.

(Proposed signature: Maureen Mulheren, Chair, Mendocino County Board of Supervisors.)

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The proposed letter claims that, “the Mendocino Board of Supervisors is currently working on permitting and additional support for small-scale, low-impact camping areas.”

In fact, the Board has done no “work” whatsoever on this alleged “low impact” camping issue. If they had, they’d know that the idea is widely unpopular in Mendocino County.

The Planning Commission has been attempting to develop “HIP Camp” rules for such “low impact” camping for several months, but it has been hung up by a barrage of difficult to resolve downsides. In fact, just last August the Planning Commission voted against legalizing “small commercial campgrounds,” although it left the door open for further consideration. Public comment to the Planning Commission on this subject has been strongly in opposition.

https://www.kzyx.org/2024-08-21/mendocino-planning-commission-recommends-against-legalizing-small-commercial-campgrounds

It is extremely premature for the County to officially endorse this state level legislation when there are so many unknowns and unaddressed problems and so much local opposition.

HIP camps are the equivalent of AirBnB for camping and lots of locals are opposed to the idea for obvious reasons like who’s in charge when the “campers” present problems? What is the law enforcement and emergency response capacity? Will the “campers” present a fire hazard? What about trash? Sewage? Noise? Traffic associated with large RVs on already bad rural roads? Drug and alcohol use? Insurance rates for neighbors? Who’s going to enforce whatever rules the Planning Commission or County or State come up with in outback areas where campers show up without notice? Privacy? Trespassing? Who will make sure campers leave after their month-long allowance and that they don’t exceed the nine “camp“ maximum? What’s to prevent the camps from becoming homeless camps? What about camping on public lands? River and creek setbacks? Will permits be required? In what zoning? What is the budgetary and capacity impact on law enforcement and emergency services? Etc.

The proposed premature support letter has more to do with an unthinking attempt to support more tourism and increase transient occupancy camping revenues than good public policy. (The attached agenda materials say that supporting the Senate Bill would magically lead to “a thriving economy.”) Tracking and collecting transient occupancy taxes will also present tax significant collection challenges — Mendo already has trouble collecting the full amount of existing transient occupancy taxes on (supposedly) registered renters.

This is a complex and unpopular issue that the Planning Commission, which is made up of more competent, thoughtful people than the Board of Supervisors, should be allowed to deal with. They should not be undercut by a premature letter of support from the Board doing an end run around their own Commission and planning process. Supporting this tourism-sponsored idea before the Planning Commission has finished their review is typical of the mindless approach this Board of Supervisors so often takes. There is no supervisor listed on the agenda as “sponsor.” The letter appears to be the brainchild of CEO Darcie Antle and her administrative analyst and grant specialist Kelly Hansen without the slightest acknowledgement of the Planning Commission’s activities or the numerous problems that such camps present. These two have taken it upon themselves to put the “ratification” of the letter on the consent calendar where it clearly does not belong, and should not be approved.

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EXCERPTS FROM A RECENT Press Democrat report on their Point In Time (homeless) Count (conducted last January):

“Sonoma County Officials have pointed to the loss of COVID-era federal funds — among them grants that funneled about $13 million to Sonoma County from 2020 to 2023 to deliver homelessness services including housing — as one of the reasons for the increase.”

“This year's count showed a 22% increase in the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, at 1,577 up from 1,291 in 2023, and a 3% decrease in sheltered homeless people, from 975 to 945 in 2024.”

“There's a lot that's happened this year in Sonoma County, with SAY (Social Advocates for Youth, a SoCo non-profit) closing, with new (encampment resolution) grants coming online, people getting help through that. So I think it'll be interesting to see in the wake of all that, what happens,” Michael Gause, the county's ending homelessness manager, said.

“Sonoma County now spends roughly $20 million a year on homelessness, Gause said, when combining federal, state and local funds.” (And that’s after the decrease in Covid funds. — ms)

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TRUDY SMITH, commenting on our recent item about Donna Ronne (Michelle) former playboy model who lived in Anderson Valley.

“I remember Donna Ronne playing pool at the Boonville Lodge back in the 70s, Not sure the exact date, but from what I was told, she was in Playboy magazine at one time. My brother had that magazine. My mom put it way up in the closet. It might still be there! Donna had a very curvy shape, as I remember. She showed it off with the tight knit mini dress she wore.”

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ED NOTES

MONDAY MORNING BANALITIES, political type: Now that an infamously unrepentant family of war criminals has been embraced by the Democrats, can we look forward to seeing the Cheneys at next year's Labor Day picnic in Ukiah? Seriously, anybody out there still need evidence that there's no fundamental difference between the two parties, the incumbent party presided over by a fake president for all four years of his fake presidency, the opposition headed up by a bellowing dirigible of depravity? But, but, but… Democrats are nicer. Everyone knows that.” Correct. Democrats wish the Israeli fascists wouldn't slaughter so many Palestinians so, so, so…brazenly, while the Magas wish the Israeli fascists would finish them all off faster, and on the West Bank, too.

REMEMBER the Cheney-Leahy episode? Cheney told Leahy, a Democrat, to go fuck himself. Instead of Leahy planting one on Cheney’s lop-sided head, Leahy ran outside and whined to the media, “The Vice-President of the United States just told me to go fuck myself. I think it’s inappropriate.” Cheney then went on Sunday morning’s dead white man talk shows to gloat about what a tough guy he was for telling Leahy to go fuck himself. Leahy appeared on the same shows to blubber about the “inappropriateness” of being told to go fuck himself. Like most of US, I wish they’d all go fuck themselves instead of US, but…

WHATEVER became of the bogus “Steele dossier” that Hillary Clinton and other Democrat grandees wielded to “prove” that Trump was an “illegitimate” president? Adam Schiff, recently spotted having lunch in Leggett, was among the most ubiquitous Big Lib on MSM claiming that Trump was a tool of the Russians, as he and the Democrat's mass media — NYT, MSNBC, CNN — demanded and got the appointment of special prosecutor Robert Mueller, who assembled a “dream team” of prosecutors to prove Trump-Russian collusion. But Mueller found no evidence that Trump had improperly won the 2016 election with help from colluding Russians, and it all disappeared, and Schiff and the Democrats, rightly assuming a nation of amnesiacs, went on and on unto the mass hysteria of their impeachment and convention and Kamala, The Coach, and the First Gentleman.

HOW do you debate Trump? You don't. Just let him string out his whoppers in his usual semi-coherent stream of consciousness style on the safe assumption a “debate” with him will not change anyone's mind, trying hard to look sincere as you string out your own fanciful unicorns and puppies case, as the sensate sectors of the electorate despair that we've sunk this low.

BET YOU LAUGHED at this headline in a recent Ukiah Daily Journal: “Ukiah Officials ‘dissatified’ with lack of progress on Palace Hotel.” Which is the longest running dissatisfaction in the history of the county, having commenced 50 years ago.

HERE’S A PIECE of unknown local history (unknown to me anyway) which had very large subsequent implications. Look Tin Eli was born in Mendocino in 1870. In 1884 he left the country to visit China. When ‘Look Tin Eli,’ undoubtedly an Anglicized corruption of his true name, which was Look Tin Sing, tried to re-enter the country at San Francisco during one of the West Coast’s periodic fits of Yellow Peril, he was told he was unwelcome in the land of his birth. He sued, and sued successfully, and thenceforth a person born in America was and is an American. From humble beginnings in Mendocino, Look Tin Sing went on to become a leading business figure in the Bay Area and died a wealthy man.

I LEARNED about Look Tin Sing at the California Historical Society’s headquarters on Mission near 3rd in San Francisco via a fascinating exhibit on the history of Chinese in California, complete with artifacts and documents confirming their long persecution and eventual success.

THE ORIGINAL COMPLAINTS about the Chinese were, basically, that they were too smart, worked long and hard for low wages, always showed up, and had no vices that got in the way of their productivity. The lazy, the stupid and the drunk became quite alarmed at this new energy, much as the descendants of the lazy and the stupid are alarmed today at the Mexicans.

THERE WERE LYNCH MOBS, murders and burnings of Chinatowns up and down the state, many of them encouraged by elected officials. Mendocino County’s noble Sheriff Standley, however, would not tolerate crimes against the Chinese or anybody else. He once rode out to confront a mob of drunks and loafers poised to burn down Mendocino’s Chinatown. Standley had a simple negotiation strategy. He said he’d shoot anyone who didn’t go home. The mob dispersed.

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THE ALBION RIVER BRIDGE is a historic wooden deck truss bridge that crosses the Albion River along Highway 1, or the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH).

This bridge is the last of its kind on California State Route 1, providing stunning views from the town of Albion, and was recognized on the National Register of Historic Places in July 2017.

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ASSIGNMENT: UKIAH - INHERIT THE WINDFALL

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

If you read the Daily Journal you are old, wealthy and beginning to wonder what to do with all the money, houses, sets of China, bitcoins, Krugerrands, bongo drums and National Geographic magazines you’ve accumulated.

Can’t take it with you, as they say, and what’s the point of being the richest guy buried out at the Ukiah Cemetery? Faint comfort, that.

So people our age look at their options, and the first one is to give it all to their spawn, an investment of dubious value given the li’l darlin’s expensive tastes and sloth-like ambitions. Alternate options: give everything to a megachurch in Texas, or send it to Washington to help reduce the national debt. Or set everything on fire in your backyard.

If the idea is to donate your hard-earned money to a charity go right ahead, but first do your research. Don’t mistake a do-gooder “nonprofit” agency for a charity. Giving money to nonprofits is dubious and edging toward insane. Your tax dollars already subsidize these bloated agencies, and most provide nothing beyond big salaries for politically connected loafers with less initiative and good sense than your children.

I have a better idea. Sell your house and cash in your savings. Now take most all your money and give it away. Give hundred dollar bills to anyone you meet, and $10,000 to someone who could really use it to help her family, start a business, get out of debt or pay a bill at the veterinarian.

You’ve got nice neighbors and you have a rough idea on how difficult it is for them to get by. How could a few thousands bucks hurt any of them?

Tip the bartender $100. Per drink. Think she’s getting rich working in the kinds of joints you and your friends hang out in? Do you think she enjoys the clientele and the hours? Make it $200 a drink.

And give $5,000 to whoever does your yard work. You never worked half as hard for twice as much money.

Give your car mechanic(s) lots of money. They keep your family safe in that cheap car you drive. Tip the cashiers at Safeway and Raley’s and Grocery Outlet whatever you have in your wallet at the time, every time. What do you need it for? Your next dozen eggs?

Scour the internet twice a week looking to reimburse hard luck folks whose corn or potato or pot crop was devastated by lousy weather, or give cash to someone who just got out of prison and needs the elusive first and last month’s rent, a deposit and a suit of clothes to go hunt down a job. Why not?

Give cash to your friends. Ask if they know anyone who needs money (under the table; no IRS) to meet a mortgage payment or would like to spend a weekend in Las Vegas with a few thousand bucks for cocaine and hookers.

Plus, if you hurry up and give your inheritance away you’ll be impoverished and thus eligible for free Medicare room and board at one of those old folks’ homes.

Give money now. Help your Ukiah neighbors pay increases in monthly sewer taxes they’ll soon be shouldering, courtesy of our beloved leaders.

Or go grocery shopping

Inflation continues to roll along at three percent according to the imaginative calculations of creative economists who pretend any increase in the price of gasoline is offset by the fact oxygen remains available at costs comparable to those of four years ago.

Not so the price of, say, a 16 oz. package of ground beef at Safeway, now $10, or a smallish cabbage at the Ukiah Co-op. Take a deep breath and read on.

One cabbage, on the small side: $6.50. I kept the receipt because I knew no one, least of all my wife, would believe I had spent most of a ten dollar bill on what was once peasant food, and at prices like these will soon be again.

This inevitably brings us to Costco, a store I shunned for many years because I assumed it was cheap junk in bulk. Wrong two times in two assumptions.

Costco is where you go to save money and you do, except you have to spend an enormous amount to save a few bucks. In the long run you’re ahead, but in the long run you’re also dead.

Being dead is one reason I load up at Costco every week or two. It forces me to shop in vast quantities, which means I’ll have something to leave the kids when I’m gone.

“To Lucas goes the eight Goodyear tires that would have fit our 2007 Cadillac and 26 jumbo jars of green olives. Emily gets three pallets of paper towels, rotisserie chickens and 96 cans of salted Virginia peanuts. And there’s a check for $10,000 in case you need to pay rent or make bail or whatever.

“You can split the cabbage.”

(Tom Hine has been writing this weekly column 52 times a year since 2006 . He is assisted (Please hold your applause) by his imaginary playmate and voluntary typist, Tommy Wayne Kramer. Thank you.)

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, September 8, 2024

DEAN AMMONS, Lakeport/Ukiah. Paraphernalia, parole violation.

CHRISTOPHER BECK, Willits. Felon-addict with firearm, criminal storage of firearm, paraphernalia.

TIMOTHY BENNETT JR., Laytonville. Controlled substance.

SKYLER EASTERWOOD, Ukiah. DUI.

AMANDA GRIFFIN, Willits. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15% probation revocation.

KATELYN PICTON, Ukiah. Domestic battery, probation revocation.

ANTONIO THOMAS, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

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LAKE COUNTY, an on-line comment:

I’m no fan of the dank and stinky cannabis reefer grows that sprouted up all over Lake County after 2017, but Lake county had already trashed Kelsey, Cole and Adobe creeks by allowing booze vineyards all around the base of Mt Konocti, and southwest into the Mayacamas Mnts, in my opinion.

There’s just no saving private land from the average landowners need for yummy money…

County needs that inflating property tax money

Trashy weed grows, fancy weed grows, fancy wine grows, fuggly shoppers

Commute here, commute there

Drop the kids off here, drop the kids off there.

Took the kayaks to the Russian River yesterday and launched at Johnson's Beach. Very few people on the water which was like a lake because of the dams they erect about June 20th or so and remove October 1st. Also brought some water toys and went swimming after exploring the river and seeing all the cool houses and docks you can only see from the water. One of the best days on the water here in a long time. Warm but not too hot.

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NOWHERE LEFT

Editor,

My family carries a deep reverence for nature, seemingly in our DNA. We also were raised to go about our business; we rarely brought up our family history with others, and I’m breaking an unspoken family rule in writing this.

It’s truly irksome to read opinions, especially by random members of the public, using my great-grandfather William Kent’s words to their own ends — in the most recent case, to argue for electric-assist bikes on Marin Municipal Water District land. I don’t know what he would have thought about it, and none of you do, either.

Yes, he wanted the public to enjoy the lands he and his wife donated rather than keeping them for private use — but he couldn’t have anticipated the huge buildup of the local population, the radical increase in recreational watershed land use, the development of e-bikes, and the lack of respect and reverence for nature (and for other users) seen on those lands, worsening by the year.

We don’t know what Kent would have thought of e-bikes any more than we know what the Founding Fathers would have thought of automatic weapons when drafting the Second Amendment, and for the same reason.

I do know that I can’t enjoy the watershed while wondering when or whether I’m going to be knocked down by or have to interact with riders, polite or not.

There is nowhere left to go.

Jean Arnold

Mendocino

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Well, I guess I’m old too, because when I was growing up, there was exactly one tranny that I knew of – the Moog musician Walter/Wendy Carlos. My dad was a music aficionado, and had an album by Walter before he transitioned. Then he did.

I had never known such a thing other than that. Now, I am fed up to hell with this “trend.” Not to mention – I was at a festival today and I still cannot get over how effeminate young guys look these days. And it pisses me off, because they live such cushy special snowflake little lives, not to mention the toxins in plastic that are known to cause higher estrogen levels. I can’t remember the last time I actually saw a teenager shoveling snow off their walks and driveways. The parents do it, while the kids are inside playing video games.

I’m reminded of the saying, about “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times”

I’m also reminded of the very graphic description provided by H.G. Wells of the Eloi, in his novel The Time Machine. Small, weak, pale, fragile, and frightened.

I feel like First World society is not headed in a good direction. At all.

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GARY DURHEIM:

Does anyone else notice the eerie resemblance between “Catch of the Day” celebrity Chad McCallum and Jimmy Kimmel?

Put a toupee on Chad, and presto, Jimmy!

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BRUCE McEWEN:

Another violent night in Oakland – YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B65GV-ElWtI

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THE MOVIE ‘Hacksaw Ridge’ tones down the heroism of Army medic Desmond Doss because Mel Gibson felt audiences would find it too hard to believe.

After taking the brunt of a grenade blast to save his fellow soldiers on Okinawa during World War II, Desmond Doss was left with 17 pieces of shrapnel stuck in him, an injury that's shown in the movie. He waited for five hours until fellow soldier, Ralph Baker, was able to reach him. Baker, along with several other men, carried Desmond on a litter through an intense enemy attack.

What's not shown is that as they were moving him, Desmond saw another soldier on the ground who was badly wounded. He rolled off the litter and crawled over to patch the man up. Desmond gave up his litter to the man. While waiting for help to come back, Desmond was wounded again, this time by a sniper's bullet that shattered his left arm. He fashioned a splint out of a rifle stock and crawled the remaining 300 yards under fire, eventually reaching the safety of an aid station. He was transported to the hospital ship Mercy.

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A MAN ON HIS DEATHBED asks his wife, “Martha, soon I will be gone forever, and there's something I have to know. In all these 50 years of marriage, have you ever been unfaithful to me?”

Martha replied, “Well, Henry, I have to be honest with you. Yes, I've been unfaithful to you three times during these 50 years, but always for a good reason.”

Henry was obviously hurt by his wife's confession, but said, “I never suspected. Can you tell me what you mean by ‘good reasons’?”

Martha said, “The first time was shortly after we were married, and we were about to lose our little house because we couldn't pay the mortgage. Do you remember that one evening I went to see the banker, and the next day he notified you that the loan would be extended?”

Henry recalled the visit to the banker and said, “I can forgive you for that. You saved our home, but what about the second time?”

Martha asked, “And do you remember when you were so sick, but we didn't have the money to pay for the heart surgery you needed? Well, I went to see your doctor one night and, if you recall, he did the surgery at no charge.”

“I do recall that,” said Henry. “And you did it to save my life, so of course I can forgive you for that. Now tell me about the third time.”

“Alright,” Martha said. “Do you remember when you ran for president of your golf club, and you needed 73 more votes?”

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THE DECLINE OF THE U.S. EMPIRE: Where Is It Taking Us All?

by Richard D. Wolff

The evidence suggests that empires often react to periods of their own decline by over-extending their coping mechanisms. Military actions, infrastructure problems, and social welfare demands may then combine or clash, accumulating costs and backlash effects that the declining empire cannot manage. Policies aimed to strengthen empire—and that once did—now undermine it. Contemporary social changes inside and outside the empire can reinforce, slow, or reverse the decline. However, when decline leads leaders to deny its existence, it can become self-accelerating. In empires’ early years, leaders and the led may repress those among them who stress or merely even mention decline. Social problems may likewise be denied, minimized, or, if admitted, blamed on convenient scapegoats—immigrants, foreign powers, or ethnic minorities—rather than linked to imperial decline.

The U.S. empire, audaciously proclaimed by the Monroe Doctrine soon after two independence wars won against Britain, grew across the 19th and 20th centuries, and peaked during the decades between 1945 and 2010. The rise of the U.S. empire overlapped with the decline of the British empire. The Soviet Union represented limited political and military challenges, but never any serious economic competition or threat. The Cold War was a lopsided contest whose outcome was programmed in from its beginning. All of the U.S. empire’s potential economic competitors or threats were devastated by World War II. The following years found Europe losing its colonies. The unique global position of the United States then, with its disproportional position in world trade and investment, was anomalous and likely unsustainable. An attitude of denial at the time that decline was all but certain morphed only too readily into the attitude of denial now that the decline is well underway.

The United States could not prevail militarily over all of Korea in its 1950–53 war there. The United States lost its subsequent wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The NATO alliance was insufficient to alter any of those outcomes. U.S. military and financial support for Ukraine and the massive United States and NATO sanctions war against Russia are failures to date and are likely to remain so. U.S. sanctions programs against Cuba, Iran, and China have failed too. Meanwhile, the BRICS alliance counteracts U.S. policies to protect its empire, including its sanctions warfare, with increasing effectiveness.

In the realms of trade, investment, and finance, we can measure the decline of the U.S. empire differently. One index is the decline of the U.S. dollar as a central bank reserve holding. Another is its decline as a means of trade, loans, and investment. Finally, consider the U.S. dollar’s decline alongside that of dollar-denominated assets as internationally desired means of holding wealth. Across the Global South, countries, industries, or firms seeking trade, loans, or investments used to go to London, Washington, or Paris for decades; they now have other options. They can go instead to Beijing, New Delhi, or Moscow, where they often secure more attractive terms.

Empire confers special advantages that translate into extraordinary profits for firms located in the country that dominates the empire. The 19th century was remarkable for its endless confrontations and struggles among empires competing for territory to dominate and thus for their industries’ higher profits. Declines of any one empire could enhance opportunities for competing empires. If the latter grabbed those opportunities, the former’s decline could worsen. One set of competing empires delivered two world wars in the last century. Another set seems increasingly driven to deliver worse, possibly nuclear world wars in this century.

Before World War I, theories circulated that the evolution of multinational corporations out of merely national mega-corporations would end or reduce the risks of war. Owners and directors of increasingly global corporations would work against war among countries as a logical extension of their profit-maximizing strategies. The century’s two world wars undermined those theories’ appearance of truth. So too did the fact that multinational mega-corporations increasingly purchased governments and subordinated state policies to those corporations’ competing growth strategies. Capitalists’ competition governed state policies at least as much as the reverse. Out of their interaction emerged the wars of the 21st century in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, and Gaza. Likewise from their interaction, rising U.S.-China tensions emerged around Taiwan and the South China Sea.

China presents a unique analytical problem. The private capitalist half of its hybrid economic system exhibits growth imperatives parallel to those agitating economies where 90–100 percent of enterprises are private capitalist in organization. The state-owned-and-operated enterprises comprising the other half of China’s economy exhibit different drives and motivations. Profit is less their bottom line than it is for private capitalist enterprises. Similarly, the Communist Party’s rule over the state—including the state’s regulation of the entire Chinese economy—introduces other objectives besides profit, ones that also govern enterprise decisions. Since China and its major economic allies (BRICS) comprise the entity now competing with the declining U.S. empire and its major economic allies (G7), China’s uniqueness may yield an outcome different from past clashes of empires.

In the past, one empire often supplanted another. That may be our future with this century becoming “China’s” as previous empires were American, British, and so on. However, China’s history includes earlier empires that rose and fell: another unique quality. Might China’s past and its present hybrid economy influence China away from becoming another empire and rather toward a genuinely multipolar global organization instead? Might the dreams and hopes behind the League of Nations and the United Nations achieve reality if and when China makes that happen? Or will China become the next global hegemon against heightened resistance from the United States, bringing the risk of nuclear war closer?

A rough historical parallel may shed some additional light from a different angle on where today’s class of empires may lead. The movement toward independence of its North American colony irritated Britain sufficiently for it to attempt two wars (1775–83 and 1812–15) to stop that movement. Both wars failed. Britain learned the valuable lesson that peaceful co-existence with some co-respective planning and accommodation would enable both economies to function and grow, including in trade and investment both ways across their borders. That peaceful co-existence extended to allowing the imperial reach of the one to give way to that of the other.

Why not suggest a similar trajectory for U.S.-China relations over the next generation? Except for ideologues detached from reality, the world would prefer it over the nuclear alternative. Dealing with the two massive, unwanted consequences of capitalism—climate change and unequal distributions of wealth and income—offers projects for a U.S.-China partnership that the world will applaud. Capitalism changed dramatically in both Britain and the United States after 1815. It will likely do so again after 2025. The opportunities are attractively open-ended.

(counterpunch.org)

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KIND OF BLUE: STILL ON THE JOB AT 65

by David Yearsley

Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue turned sixty-five last month, the same age at which the trumpeter would die thirty-two years after recording the album. The record shows no signs of infirmity. It has no plans to retire, isn’t tempted to ease into the rocking chair heard to sigh and squeak in Davis’s elegiac rendition of “Old Folks“ recorded a couple years later in 1961.

The album was released on August 17, 1959. That was ten years after, and ten degrees cooler than the little big band of Miles’ Birth of the Cool. With Kind of Blue the baby had grown up: sleeker, more earnest, now distrustful of irony, and also cagier, suspicious without wanting to show anything that might suggest defensiveness. Its icy hauteur sets the standard for art that draws you in by pretending it doesn’t need anyone or anything but itself.

Kind of Blue sold like cool-cakes. Its popularity has only increased over the years. Often said to be the best-selling jazz record in history, it had attained quadruple platinum status by 2008; by then, some four million copies have been sold in the US. At sixty it has topped five million. In 2019, at the age of sixty, it was certified five times platinum.

The recording took place in 1959 on two days separated by six weeks. First came the double three-hour sessions from 2:00 to 5:00 in the afternoon and 7:00 to 10:00 in the evening on March 2, 1959 in the converted church on 30th Street in Manhattan that was the Columbia studio. Union rate was then pegged at $48.50 per session, and since there were two services Davis’s sidemen were entitled to double scale. Davis argued for a bonus of $100 for the first day’s work for his stalwarts, bassist Paul Chambers and saxophonists John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley.

As Ashley Kahn noted in his Kind of Blue: the Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece (Da Capo, 2000), the initial producer of the session, Irving Townsend (his voice can be heard on the studio sequences included on the fiftieth anniversary re-issue of the album) wrote in an internal Columbia Records memo that Davis would “accept an advance of $10,000 with only a mild oath” after the success of Birth of the Cool and the subsequent Sketches of Spain. Miles had asked for $15,000. It’s hard to know how much Miles made off the record in total, but it’s a lot.

The newcomer on drums, Jimmy Cobb, and the pianists Wynton Kelly and Bill Evans had to make do with their union wages. For the April 22 afternoon session that concluded the recording, Davis’s sidemen got $64.67, since the proceedings went overtime by half-an-hour. Miles got double that. An invoice reprinted in Kahn’s book shows that union rules also dictated that Wynton Kelly got paid the same amount for the April 22 date even though he had only played on the first session back in March. By 1959 Kelly was the Davis group’s official pianist and was surprised on hurrying to the studio by cab for the March date that Miles’ former keyboardist, Bill Evans, was already sitting at the Steinway. Kelly had been brought in for the only “real” blues number on the recording, “Freddie the Freeloader,” which was done in the first session. Kelly doubtless didn’t stick around for the evening, but cashed the checks for his non-work on the April date.

As his later television commercial appearances for mopeds and the like make clear, Davis was a canny money man and promoter of his own image, one he always sailed close to the cool winds of fashion and favor. Another Townsend memo from April of 1960 relates that “Miles Davis is primarily concerned with the amount of jazz now on jukeboxes in many areas of the country while he is not represented.” Columbia promptly turned out promotional 45s with a tune from Davis’s Porgy & Bess paired with one from Kind of Blue on the flip side. Many first heard this music in diners and bars over the jukebox.

The first pressing of Kind of Blue, released into sweltering August, numbered 50,000 with the titles of the B sides, “So What” and “Flamenco Sketches,” mistakenly switched, an error probably due to the fact that Townsend had handed the project off to Teo Macero, who was ultimately credited as producer.

The fiftieth anniversary year brought various commemorations. There was a Kind of Blue tour by the So What Band of Jimmy Cobb, the last surviving member of the sextet that met in the Columbia studio back in 1959.

Much is now made of the spontaneity of the recording, how all was done in the studio without rehearsal or reflection, how the tunes were new to all and that the entire effort is akin, as Bill Evans put it in his liner notes, to the “Japanese visual art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous, [and] must paint on a thin stretched parchment with a special brush and black water pan in such a way that an unnatural or interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the parchment.” But things were not as spur-of-the-moment as all that. “All Blues” had evolved over a six-month period prior to the recording session for Kind of Blue. Cobb reminded devotees that Miles’s group had played “So What” on gigs before the recording session.

The studio chatter included on the Kind of Blue Legacy Edition is quite illuminating, though its main purpose here seems intended mostly to conjure Miles’s presence by summoning his distinctive gravelly drawl. His voice had been wrecked when he shouted too soon after an operation on his vocal cords, rutted further by countless cigarettes. But it was the voice that later sold mopeds and managed second-rate dialogue on an episode of the television series, Miami Vice, among other Hollywood forays towards further fame and fortune.

The halting introductions, the searingly efficient swing, the brooding defiance of Kind of Blue, seem so poised that one hardly thinks of it as the product of real musicians. Its cool seems at times like the proof of the laws of thermodynamics. Even the tumultuous solos of Coltrane and Adderley strike me as otherworldly. To be confronted with the voices of the creators, especially that of Davis, at work is at first shocking. True, his voice had been heard on earlier recordings, as when one of his classic lines, “I’m gonna play it first, and tell you what it is later,” introduces “If I Were a Bell”—the opening track of the 1956 Prestige record Relaxin’. There, the words and the sense of musicians being eavesdropped upon goes along with an unbuttoned feel reflected in the album’s title.

But such is the perfect hipness of Kind of Blue that Miles’ voice here has a completely different effect, not least because we are so used to hearing the succession of tunes as on the original album without the “non-musical” presence of the performers reinserted. This humanizing of the sacred text seems an act of uncool iconclasm.

Still, there are interesting things to be heard in these odd inclusions. Over the years, the twelve-bar blues, “Freddie the Freeloader” is the track that I’ve listened to ten times for every one of “So What.” That ratio in the blues favor increases for the other tunes. In “Studio Sequence 1” of the Legacy Edition, Townsend introduces the take as “no title.” The name would be added afterwards in honor of the Miles groupie Freddie Tolbert—a bartender and street character who moved from Philadelphia to New York to be able to hear all the trumpeter’s performances. Miles played it first and told himself what it was later.

Before the band starts in on the tune, a voice asks about whether “to play a B-flat on the end.” This must be Wynton Kelly inquiring of the bandleader what to do with the final chord of the form, since this blues doesn’t return to its home key as expected for the final two bars. Miles cancels the second and longest false start also heard on the Legacy Edition because Kelly adds more than Miles wants rather than keeping to the obsession with less that pervades Kind of Blue, the effusions of Coltrane and Adderley notwithstanding.

The last chord sidesteps the home key of B-flat and holds out a tone lower before finally being pulled up to its proper harmony when the twelve bar cycles starts anew. With this single, minimal touch, Davis (if it was indeed his idea) embodies the essence of his cool through harmonic means: not only can he lag behind the beat with graceful reluctance, but he can also hold the posture of resistance and disdain across larger expanses of elapsing time. Those final two measures of apparent disinterest seem to stretch to an eternity before these blues slide up grudgingly to their proper position. Miles gives Kelly the honor and duty of the first improvisation, and his opening solo does more than simply its duty, snapping things back to attention.

Just before starting the tune, Davis has an idea: “Say Wynton, after Cannonball, you play again and then we’ll come in and end it.” In the final take, Kelly does solo once more after all the horns have had their say, but instead of his characteristic right-hand curlicues, he supplies only glassy chords allowing Paul Chambers’ bass to stride into the foreground: here the harmonic and, indeed rhythmic, foundation for the preceding eight minutes of the track emerge in all its easy grandeur. An unmatched improviser of jaunty lines, Kelly also ranks among the greatest blues ensemble players, and it seems to have been his intuition to lay back for these final choruses. Chambers was also a great soloist, but he keeps to the business of walking his bass line. Kelly plays just as Davis had directed him, but perhaps not as Davis had expected. Kelly loved most to accompany—to comp—and here near the close of “Freddie the Freeloader” grants himself the full pleasure. With the ornament stripped away, it is as if to allow us poised contemplation of the flowing source from which the horn and piano improvisations draw their power.

Davis’s hiring of Kelly for this blues instead of Evans was a brilliant decision. But equally as vital was the way Davis used both his pianists.

The sparse horn chords that constitute the “tune” of “Freddie the Freeloader” allow, indeed demand, jaunty intervening commentary, and Kelly’s pianistic optimism brightens the somber mood: he is the light in the shade. Given the chic that glints in the shadows of this music, it is hard to believe it was recorded in the middle of the afternoon—proof that the studio and church keep to their own hours.

Davis also gives Kelly the first solo as if to acknowledge that his warmth is crucial to the maintenance of the Davis cool. With an apparent nonchalance that belies the emphatic nature of the gesture, Davis then begins his subsequent solo by taking two quarter notes from Kelly’s last chorus in what amounts to a casual but unmistakable reassertion of his authority.

Another small but striking difference heard on this the first false start is that the blues is introduced by an upbeat comment from Jimmy Cobb’s snare drum that anticipates the rest of the band—both the pulsing progress of the other members of the rhythm section and the ritual solemnity of the horns. Had this version found its way onto the record instead of the synchronized beginning of the canonic take, there would have been a tiny, but telling, chink in the hermetic hipness that insulates “Freddie” from the outside world.

Miles calls off the first take for being too fast. Then Townsend cautions the trumpeter to stay close to the microphone. Davis asks if he can move it. Townsend replies that “It’s against policy to move a microphone”—apparently a joke about the regulations governing a union facility. The quip attains retrospective resonance given the earnings disparity between Miles and his sidemen.

After two more miscues, the fourth take rolls into jazz history without edit: it is the only complete one of this tune on the session. Kelly could now go home, and the other pianist, Bill Evans, could get to work.

In light of how much money the record made, the shabby payout for the sidemen is very uncool, but especially so in the case of Evans, whose harmonic and aesthetic senses were so crucial to the album’s sound—a broader impact than Kelly’s shaping of “Freddie.” All the compositions are credited to Davis: the trumpeter was never shy or in the least apologetic about appropriating the work of others. How much Evans’s invention of the ostinato for “Flamenco Sketches”—the final track on the album — is worth is hard to say. The tentative musings of Evans and Chambers that serpentine across the arid landscapes of “So What” are priceless, yet worth millions.

I will admit that I’ve never found Evans’s Iberian Zen ruminations as appealing as Kelly’s bluesy swing. Evans’s thing was never my kind of blue, but his unmistakable sound colors the album as a whole and makes the disparity between the earnings of Davis and Evans far bigger even than the numbers of zeroes suggests. The blues have their price. The ghost in Evans’s melancholy chords will always haunt Davis’s masterpiece, which, even at 65, has no intention of signing up for Medicare.

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest book is Sex, Death, and Minuets: Anna Magdalena Bach and Her Musical Notebooks. He can be reached at dgyearsley@gmail.com.)

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I SEE MEN ASSASSINATED around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead; men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas.

— Charles Bukowski, "Sunlight Here I Am"

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THIS CIVILIZATION is so mentally ill that you'll get treated like a gibbering lunatic for expressing the most sane and rational opinions anyone can possibly express. Something as basic as "The world's most powerful government should stop ramping up nuclear brinkmanship on multiple fronts" will get you treated like a kook, when really it's so obvious and common sense it shouldn't even need to be said. That's how crazy mass-scale brainwashing has made everyone.

— Caitlin Johnstone

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THERE'S SOMETHING about a mass-market Luxury Cruise that’s unbearably sad.

— David Foster Wallace, "Shipping Out"

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