Off the Record 9/14/2024

MENDOCINO COUNTY HISTORY — Deb Silva fills in the blanks

Back in 2021, during the lockdown, the AVA published a few stories about old murders in Mendocino County. I did the research and Zack Anderson wrote the stories. One of those stories was about Herman Knaesche who murdered his wife of three weeks. It was by far the longest and most detailed of the series spanning from 1919 to 1960: https://theava.com/archives/149091

Not everything I turned up in the research made it into the story. There is one item I uncovered that involved warden Clinton Duffy. When Knaesche was erroneously released from San Quentin to the outrage of the citizens of Ukiah he was eventually sent to the Philippines in 1937 where he served as secretary to the owner of a sugar plantation, Ludwig Weinzheimer. Knaesche held the job for four years until the Japanese bombed the Philippines at the beginning of WWII. Anyone who was an American was put into internment camps including Knaesch and the Weinzheimer family. They were all sent to the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila.

Ludwig’s granddaughter Sascha Weinzheimer, who was born in 1933 and quite young at the time of her internment, later recalled a little something about Knaesche to a website devoted to those that were interned in the Philippines.

“10 April 2015: Hi All, Herman Knaesche arrived on our plantation, Calamba Sugar Estate, in the 1930s from San Quentin Prison. Warden Duffy (great reputation) was a good friend of my grandfather. When Knaesche, his model prisoner and a Trustee (secretary for Duffy), was nearing his parole date, Duffy contacted my grandfather in the PH to ask for a job for him.

His “crime of passion” murder was a big thing in California, the warden didn’t want to expose the story all over again by releasing Knaesche to the general public. He figured he would have a better start at life in a remote area of the world. Duffy liked his prisoner.

Duffy and my grandfather kept Knaesche’s secret about his past and he was hired by CSE as my grandfather’s secretary. I grew up with this mild-mannered kind man on the plantation who I always associated with his great pipe aroma. He was in Santo Tomas during the war and settled in a small tiny walkup apartment in the San Francisco tenderloin. We always included him in our Calamba SE reunions over the years in our Walnut Creek home. It wasn’t until 1960 when he died, that a reporter found his criminal trial and spread his whole history all over again in the SF papers.

My family kept a great secret all those years, and it wasn’t till I was married in 1960 that I found out about his past.

Aloha – Sascha”

Sascha being only 10+/- years old had the timeline a little skewed. At the time of Knaesche’s release from San Quentin Duffy was not the warden but rather the civilian secretary to the warden, James Holohan. Duffy did not serve as warden until 1950-1960 but he was the one who arranged to have Knaesche go to the Philippines and work for the Weinzheimer’s.

A little background on Sascha: https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-war/sascha-weinzheimer

THIS SENTENCE drifted in out of cyber-space: “Four veterans who served with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz came forward Monday to publicly criticize his service in the National Guard, particularly his decision to retire from service and run for Congress right before the unit was deployed to Iraq.”

WALZ'S alleged “stolen valor” stems from a preposition error. “We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are the only place where those weapons are at,” which is what Walz, a veteran of 24 years in the National Guard, actually said, immediately clarifying that he wasn't a combat vet. He'd retired from the Guard two months before his unit was deployed to Iraq so he could run for Congress.

I HAPPENED to mention to an acquaintance that I'd been in the Marines. I thought he was kidding me when he said, “Thank you for your service.” I laughed. Like the overwhelming numbers of veterans of all the services, the closest I got to combat was the daily battle of Noon Chow. This constant Gotcha about who did what in America's endless wars is another reminder that the emotional age of the average American male is ten. (10)

WOKE PROSE from the SF Chron: "A shelter-in-place was issued until law enforcement was able to find the shooter and take them into custody. Only one person was taken into custody."

A MENDOCINO COUNTY HISTORY PHOTO:

THAT spectacular bit of derring do was brought off by a gang of white supremacists from their stronghold deep in the Northwest. The robbery was either extremely bold or extremely dumb, depending on your perspective on high stakes crime. But it worked. Or it worked until the putative representatives of the master race, soon exchanged ideological commitment for second homes and big engine motor boats, prompting their envious neighbors to wonder out loud to the cops, “How come the crazy bastard next door suddenly has a lot of money?” And soon everyone but the leader, a guy named Mathews who failed to emerge alive from a shootout with the FBI and about 500 cops on an island near Seattle, were in jail.

BUT THE WAY the Mathews Gang hit the Brink’s truck for something like $11 mil in cash was a one-of-a-kinder. It happened just east of 101 and the Redwood Valley turnoff on the long grade approaching the north end of Lake Mendocino. The hold-up men were in the back of a pick-up that suddenly stopped in front of the eastbound Brink’s truck as the truck labored up the hill. A man jumped from the bed of the pick-up onto the hood of the Brink’s truck, spraying its windshield with automatic weapons fire. The two (black) Brink’s men in the cab of the truck instantly advised the guard riding with the money in the back to open the door to the bandits. As traffic — including a Boonville-based Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department deputy named Dennis Miller — backed up nearly to Highway 101, the robbers, taking their time, threw thousands of pounds of money bags into the back of their pick-up, drove to one of Lake Mendocino’s grungy, deserted picnic areas, transferred the money bags to another vehicle, and drove the loot out Orr Springs Road to a travel trailer they’d parked at Armstrong State Park, somehow managing to drop $10 grand or so beside the road not far from Ukiah where it was eventually discovered by a group of disabled folks out for a walk. The bandits and the money were at Armstrong overnight, as I recall. The Mathews Gang was either dead or locked up within a couple of years of their big day in Mendocino County,

FROM THE FORT BRAGG Advocate-News of April 27, 1924: “According to figures received from W.H. Prather, county clerk, the total registration in Mendocino County for the Presidential Primaries to be held May 6th, is 7,563. Republicans number 5,426; Democrats 1,768; Socialists 33, Decline to State and scattering, 264.” A hundred years later, Socialists 4; Scattereds, 26,400; Republicans 3,000; Libs 22,569.

REAL QUIK book reviews, all recommended reads:

(1) ‘Eats, Shoots & Leaves, The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation’ by Lynne Truss. Best book on punctuation since Strunk and White, and twice as witty. Ms. Truss begins with this apostrophe-strewn skein of an advertisement reading, “CD’s video’s, DVD’s, and book’s,” commenting, “If this satanic sprinkling of redundant apostrophes causes no little gasp of horror or quickening of the pulse, you should probably put down this book at once…” I kept on reading, Bonnie Burgess will be happy to learn, and have profited, I hope’s.

(2) ‘The Essential Harold Cruse, A Reader, forward by Stanley Crouch.’ There’s a whole lot of stuff the late Mr. Cruse wrote about that explains how we got to where we are in the present context of unresolved racial conflict. An honest man, Cruse took on everybody from Harry Belafonte to Black Power. I learned more about Black history from this one book than any other single book I’ve read.

(3) ‘The Degaev Affair, Terror and Treason in Tsarist Russia’ by Richard Pipes. A page-turner, as they say in Hack Land, but the truly riveting true story of Sergei Degaev, among the insiders who planned and carried out numerous attempts on the Czar and finally did get the Czar’s chief of security in 1883. Degaev also ratted off his nihilist comrades, after which he fled to America where, reinventing himself as Alexander Pell, became professor of mathematics at the University of South Dakota.

(4) ‘One Man’s Castle: Clarence Darrow in Defense of the American Dream’ by Phyllis Vine. Not a very well-written book — Ms. Vine is an academic — but even awkward prose can’t destroy a naturally compelling account of the famous Darrow’s defense of a black doctor who was accused of killing a member of white mob as the mob besieged his home in a white neighborhood of 1925 Detroit.

(5) ‘Straight Life, The Story of Art Pepper’ by Art and Laurie Pepper. For pure autobiographical candor, there’s this one and James Ellroy’s ‘My Dark Places,’ the two most honest autobios I know of. Pepper, who died in 1982, was considered the best alto sax player since Charlie Parker, and many others say he was better even than Parker. He was also a drug addict in the post-War period when drug addicts, even the famous ones, were just as likely to wind up in jail as in a treatment program. Pepper tells his story whole, sparing himself not at all.

WHITEHOUSE RESPONDS BOLDLY AND INSIGHTFULLY to the latest school murders by a 14-year old in Barrow County, Georgia, killing two students and two teachers and hospitalizing nine others on Wednesday:

“The Presidwent mourns the death of those whose lives were cut short. This is not normal. This is not normal. Students and teachers deserve to know that their schools are safe. They should focus on learning not lockdowns. While the President and Vice President have taken historic action to reduce gun violence, more msut be done to keep our schools and communities safe. We continue to call on Congress to do something. To do something.

— Karine Jean Pierre, White House press secretary

‘THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW’ is the single most moronic film I’ve seen since “Bill and Coo,” an epic I was dragged to as a child, circa 1950. Bill and Coo were talking parakeets, ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ is talking cretins, but still recommended by enviros of the dimmer sort.

The subject is global warning, kind of, which results in an overnight quick freeze of the northern hemisphere. As New York City is simultaneously hit by serial tsunamis, overnight millions of people become multi-ethnic ice cubes, all of it reported by Fox News whose logo appears constantly on screen in all kinds of contexts because Rupert Murdoch owns the Fox Network and the movie, basically a story about a cast of imbeciles who set out to save us from ourselves.

But it’s too late.

Gringolandia is now subject to such severe weather it is rendered uninhabitable, not that there are not enough freeze-dried or parboiled survivors left to make a go of the climatically volatile America. If the sudden freezes don’t get our citizens, the high tides and the tornadoes will. (The Day After Tomorrow was probably very popular outside the United States.)

The sole opportunity for something interesting to happen in the movie occurs near the end when our president freezes to death trying to get out of popsicle-ized White House, and his successor, made up to resemble Dick Cheney, orders Americans to haul ass south for the border.

In real life, millions of our fellow citizens fleeing apocalyptic climate change would have been turned back at San Ysidro by the Mexican Army. “Tough tamales, gringos. You bastards think you’re going to get into the warm weather after what you’ve done to us all these years?” But in this thing, the Mexicans are happy as hell to take on two hundred and fifty million of US as President Cheney advises Americans to hit the road for Mexico and points south for “what we used to call the Third World.”

Nice bit of racism in that line, but it’s read off by the Cheney figure without so much as a hint of irony. 'What we used to call the Third World!' The gringos have arrived so you folks just got promoted to the First World!

If you’re thinking of watching The Day After Tomorrow, I hope I've ruined it for you. But if you're determined, here’s the story line: Dennis Quaid and a Scotsman are the only two scientists in the world who understand why LA is suddenly besieged by serial tornadoes. Nobody will listen to the only two guys who know that the deep freeze is next. Quaid’s son and the kid’s love interest, both of whom are beyond vapid, are first stranded by tidal waves sweeping clean over the Big Apple and, when the high tides freeze over in 15 minutes, the love bugs hole up in the New York Public Library with exactly one black street person, the street guy’s dog, and a bunch of generically presentable white people. (More racism, but who’s counting at this point?)

When the kid gets real cold, sweetie pie saves him from hypothermia via, you guessed it! a prolonged round of rubbsies, solemnly explaining that as a high school honor student she’d learned in her advanced placement physiology class that a freezing man can quickly be thawed out if a naked 19-year-old girl with large breasts and bee stung lips dry humps him in front of a roaring fire.

Everyone outside the library had frozen to death early on, and not for lack of nymphets either. It was real cold, colder than it had ever been anywhere on earth, even way the hell up north at Santa’s workshop. The New Yorkers who’d frozen to death had been too damn dumb to retreat to the top floor of the library when the water rose above their armpits. Darwin got ‘em.

When the big waves froze and every living thing died outside the library except a pack of wolves, Quaid’s kid and a couple of his underwear ad buddies fight them off, while botox lips and the nice white people inside the library feed their life-saving fire in the library’s huge, decorative fireplace with rare books. The black street guy and his dog, incidentally, never get close to the fire; they stand watch at the door, reporting on the latest catastrophe outside, like when an ocean liner becomes part of an iceberg on the front steps.

A skinny, effete-looking guy with big glasses — The Liberal Librarian — gives a speech about how he’ll freeze to death before he tosses the Gutenberg Bible into the fire. Who else besides skinny, effete guys with glasses read books or cares what happens to them? Obese football fans, that’s who, but no complications, no ironies were allowed into this filmic extravaganza.

Because the librarian is a librarian, he’s responsible for Western Civ’s key artifacts, and he draws the line at destroying he Gutenberg. (This movie is a lot more representative of Western Civ’s net accomplishment than the printing press, but there’s probably some dissent on the question, the issue being relative value in a value-free epoch.)

Meanwhile, Cheney-Quaid sets out on foot in sub-Arctic conditions to check on his son fighting the wolf pack. Dad says he wants to forgive the lad for flunking a high school math test. Most parents, of course, would settle for their kids not flunking drug and drunk driving tests, but we’re talking Nice People here, so these people are not only very nice people, so are their kids. “I’ve walked farther than this in the snow,” Quaid vows, as he sets out from on foot for a family values hike to Manhattan.

Mrs. Quaid is a doctor, occasionally assisted by an Asian woman whose hackneyed lines are leavened with timely references to Native American prophecies. My fellow movie goers I am here to tell you that no major ethnic group goes unrepresented! Mrs. Quaid, MD, looks very, very concerned and very, very compassionate. I could tell because her eyes got bigger and wetter the colder it got and the longer she was left behind in a frigid hospital ward with an 8-year-old leukemia patient while everyone else got into their LL Beans and highballed it for Ensenada and Sao Paolo.

Mrs. Q. and the bald kid are presented for no other reason than to demonstrate that the Quaids are double nice people, and Mrs. Q is triple nice. The emphasis throughout was on The Tragic Effect On Nice White People Caught Up In A Cataclysmic Event. I felt like laughing out loud a whole lot of times, especially when LA got wiped out, but I was in a mall theater surrounded by solemn viewers who seemed to think they were watching a documentary. Audible laughter while the end of the world was under consideration might have been severely misunderstood.

The only pertinent remark throughout occurred in an on-screen blurb at the end that said our fatso-watso ways of living were killing the planet, a statement of the obvious to everyone in the world except the Maga Cult. I was so upset by The Day After Tomorrow, as apocalyptic a viewing experience as I’ve ever had, that I walked briskly from the theater, pushed my way through the ambling double-wides thronging the mall, and strode directly to a shop specializing in negative food value items where I ordered myself a double bubble mayonnaised banana split.

JIM ARMSTRONG

There are few things better than a good rumor and a great one is that the Six Point Ranch (formerly the Matthews Ranch) at the end of Burris Lane has been bought by Buster Posey. No need to tell who he is. Anyone confirm or deny?

ED NOTE: True.

HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MENDOCINO COUNTY

by Katy Tahja

Orr’s Hot Springs (Mendocino County) around 1908. The small building at the top left was the sleeping quarters for the waitresses. To learn more about Orr’s Hot Springs, and other historic springs in the county, join us in Mendocino on Saturday September 21, to listen to a talk on historic springs in Mendocino County by Katy Tahja.

Location: Mendocino Presbyterian Church, 44831 Main Street, Mendocino, Ca

Time: 1pm

$10 at the door.

Beverages and treats will be available.

RVSP to the historical society by September 19 (we just need to have a rough idea how many are coming). To RSVP: comment below, message us, email: info@mendocinocountyhistory.org, phone: (707) 462 - 6969

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Katy M. Tahja is a retired librarian and a freelance writer, journalist and author. Married to David Tahja since 1975 her family has five generations on the family ranch in Comptche. A museum docent at Mendocino’s Kelley House Museum, she portrays women in history, including a native storyteller, a lady lighthouse keeper and a madam of a “house of ill repute”. Tahja's previous books include three photo-histories for Arcadia Publishing: Early Mendocino Coast, Humboldt State University and Logging Railroads of Humboldt & Mendocino Counties. She wrote the guidebook for the Skunk Train in Fort Bragg CA titled Rails Across the Noyo, two small books on her Mendocino County hometown Comptche, An Eclectic History of Mendocino County, Orr Hot Springs: A Brief History.

FAIR PLAY FOR JJ. A recent newspaper comment about celebratory Bloomsday irritated heck outta me. I know, I know. In a daily deluge of outrages you're getting in a snit about a book? Yes, because we're talking a great writer and his great book, the misunderstanding of whom and which, and silly woke comments about, are crimes nevertheless.

ESPECIALLY irritating were some lit-crit pieces that chastised Joyce for his alleged ethnic slurs, apparently unaware that Ulysses is fiction and not a joint communiqué of the Committee To Free Mumia. (Speaking of Mumia, if he'd admitted to murdering the young cop and said he was sorry he'd have been out years ago.)

THE PROBLEM Americanos seem to have with the greatest literary masterpiece of them all is that too many of US try to read it too young. Only the most precocious high school student is going to get it on any level, and why high school English teachers assign it so deep in the Age of Memes when attention spans are about a second and a half is probably accounted for by their own love for the book, not out of a concern that 16-year-olds are going to become Joyceans.

THE FIRST TIME I gave it a go I was in my early 20s, and Ulysses had popped up on all the lists of great books we're all supposed to read. Hell, I'd downed The Brothers Karamazov and Madam Bovary confident I'd gotten both of them on at least on a basic level so I figured I could handle this one.

AS A COMPULSIVE personality type it didn’t occur to me to read around in the book, putting in at the passages my watery eyeballs were naturally drawn to. Nope, I tried to plow straight through and quickly retreated to American lit, which I thought I’d fully grasped at one reading until I went back to Moby Dick at age 40 and discovered I’d missed about two-thirds of it.

A FEW YEARS later, and long after I’d read the most perfect short stories ever written — Dubliners, and Hemingway’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro — I returned to Ulysses, this time opening to random pages to scan them for the funny stuff. And there’s more of that than you’ll find in the Old Testament, let me tell you!

BY NOW, medically staggered but upright and alert, I’ve read Ulysses every which way, and I’m confident I could pass a PhD oral exam on the book, not that I’d want to. I like the book too much. No, check that; I love Ulysses. I’d kill for it, er, in defense of it, I mean. It’s the desert island book, I'd want with me if I were limited to just one.

I'VE ALSO LISTENED to taped versions, which seemed to me way, way too lugubrious, too slow, too uncomprehending because their net effect was a solemnity opposite the author’s obviously joyous intentions.

BUT IF YOU have a hard time with the print version, try a recording. There’s a recording of Joyce's Dubliners that’ll knock you out, guaranteed. And the recording of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man read by Joe Morgan is, in my opinion, a superior experience to reading it; it’s as if Ellison wrote it to be performed, but it’s another truly great book that seems to baffle too many intelligent readers. But please don’t give up on Ulysses. It’s the goods.

WHAT'S SHAKIN'. A swarm of small earthquakes was recorded Saturday morning by the U.S. Geological Survey. A 4.4 magnitude quake was detected 3.7 miles southwest of Cobb (Lake County) at 7:30 a.m., followed by a 4.2 quake 0.6 miles southeast of the Geysers in Sonoma County at 7:30 a.m. and a 3.9 quake 1.2 miles northeast of the Geysers at 7:31 a.m.

AMERICA'S MOST BEAUTIFUL HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL FIELD

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.

JAMES MARMON: THE CLEARLAKE FIRE, AN EYEWITNESS:

I’m safe from the Boyles fire, I live on 33rd and Boyles, the fire’s forward progress ended at 23rd and Boyles. I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening hosing down my house and property, my water bill is going to be ridiculous. A lot of people here in the Avenues suffered big losses. It actually started somewhere around 2nd Avenue which is sparsely populated where a lot of homeless have encampments are common, behind Walmart, Tractor Supply, Big 5, and the DMV Office. I was without power until early this morning.

It’s not uncommon for fires to start behind that Shopping Center, the homeless have taken over that area for years. The City went in there and cleared a lot of brush which made it more attractive to the un-housed. This time the fire reached 18th Ave. which is heavily populated, it took out homes from 18th to 23rd. The Shopping center has several fast food chains as well. The City of Clearlake needs to adopt a zero tolerance regarding encampments in that part of the City. Where are you Alan “the Kid” Flora?

REALLY? So many people came down on Hall of Fame football player Terry Bradshaw today that his alleged offense made the national news. Ready? Bradshaw said he hasn't been this excited for football season “since my aunt taught me how to play spin-the-bottle.” Which made me laugh, laugh for the first time at anything Bradshaw has said. Ever. To me, he's one of these famous persons who makes a lotta money acting like a fool, and I sit there wondering, “You really need money this bad?”

ACCORDING to John Strausbaugh, author of Sissy Nation: How America Became a Culture of Wimps & Stoopits, “America has become a sissy nation. A culture of fat, soft, stupid, fearful, fatalistic, groupthinking victims.”

HOLD IT right there, John, let’s see your samples. For every groupthinking lardo there’s at least one lean, mean stoopit, and for every fearful, fatalistic sissy there’s at least one fat, soft, fearless alienato fully prepared to open fire on a school bus.

WIMPS, however, are too wimpy to bother anybody, so I say lighten up on us wimps, crack down on the psychos, as we reconcile ourselves to the armies of stoopits like the lady (sic) who called me up one day to tell me I was stoopit for “talking shit about my brother.”

THAT CALL was the first time I’d heard stupid pronounced “stoopit.” Turns out the charming maiden’s brother was so irremediably stoopit he couldn't even pull off a smash and grab rural robbery without getting caught.

IT'S MY FAULT this stoopit’s name appears in the Sheriff’s Log? But who’s stoopiter? Me, for assuming a stoopit can make elementary distinctions, or the stoopit who can’t even say stupid right?

AN OBESE PERSON, in my early years, was a rare sight, but group thinkers are forever plentiful. (cf Democrats and Republicans.) Wimps? Needs some defining. but if the non-wimp standard is Hulk Hogan I'd rather be a wimp.

THERE are lots more overweight people around for a visible fact, but there are also lots more fit citizens than there used to be. I don't recall seeing a recreational walker, let alone a jogger, until I was about thirty, circa 1970. And as a kid heavily into sports in the 1950s, coaches knew nothing about conditioning. "Okay, boys. Gimme twenty push-ups and do a lap." That was it for football in a time when even the pros were smoking in the locker room at half-time.. Basketball? No such thing as a line drill. It was just assumed you could get up and down the court. Baseball? Zero physical training.

MENDOCINO COUNTY SHERIFF MATT KENDALL

Davina Sentak has joined the Mendocino County Jail Inmate Services as a new chaplain. She brings more than twenty years of experience in chaplaincy within Mendocino County, having worked with CAL FIRE, the Ukiah Valley Fire Authority, and the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office. Chaplain Sentak retired from CAL FIRE in 2017, where she coordinated employee support services and helped during major incidents across the state, helping employees and their families during crises.

A resident of Mendocino County for four decades, she and her husband live in Willits and are active members of the River Church in Ukiah.

Chaplain services address the various religious and spiritual needs of inmates at the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Jail. These services work in conjunction with the Restorative Justice Program Manager of MCSO Inmate Services to organize volunteer efforts. Davina assists incarcerated persons with their spiritual needs, which include personal counseling, study programs, religious services, and Bible studies. She will also handle urgent situations such as death notifications and family trauma, coordinate community resources, and oversee donations.

Interested in volunteering or donating spiritual items, please contact Buffey Bourassa at (707) 234-2136 or bourassab@mendocinosheriff.org.

“Chaplaincy is a ministry of presence and is about showing up for people in the midst of crisis. When we do this, it gives people a sense of hope and helps them see beyond where they are in that moment.” — Davina Sentak

THE PROBLEM with pop art of this type now blighting Petaluma is (1) it's trite, (2) unamusing even the first time you see it, (3) it's not art because it doesn't require skill to create, (4) it's unimaginative even by today's degraded standards, (5) the “artist” couldn't get away with this most places.

ADD LOOK-ALIKES: The great court reporter (ret) Bruce McEwen and 49er kicker, Jake Moody

THE FOUNDING FATHERS have gathered for Tuesday night's presidential debate at the conclusion of which there's a shocked silence before George Washington says to Thomas Jefferson, "Tom, we've made a terrible mistake."

AS THESE EYESORE adopt-a-road signs proliferate, the signs that falsely promise thousand dollar fines for littering and warn that vehicle speed limits are enforced by aircraft eyes in the sky are, in the first case rarely prosecuted, in the second case untrue. Mendocino County traffic is not monitored from the air. HumCo, yes, Mendo, so far as I'm aware, no.

A READER WRITES: “In your comments about the palsy-walsy incestuous hiring practices of Mendocino County, you need to remember the old saying ‘If I don't give my cousin a job, who will?’ If these incompetents do not get on the public payroll they probably will end up on the welfare rolls. Your taxes are going to support them, one way or another.”

AND TED SODERBERG COMMENTS: “Bookstore owners and managers once claimed that Bill Clinton’s book to be the greatest book of the century. Bad enough our president led us down his sordid trail of sexual transgressions and twisted behavior, and made us the laughing stock of the world, but now he says we must pay to read about it. He is right; the American public will buy anything if it is marketed correctly. The book I am waiting to read is the one written by Chelsea Clinton, ‘Living in a Dysfunctional Family.’ This book will complete the Clinton trilogy.”

A SOUTH CAROLINA death row inmate has three options for his execution this month via lethal injection unless he chooses either the electric chair or a firing squad. Freddie Owens, 46, a convicted killer who gunned down a store clerk during a botched robbery in 1997 has left his fate up to his lawyer, arguing that his Muslim faith means he cannot take an active role in his own death.

CONSIDERED strictly as a debate, Kamala Harris mopped the floor with Trump, who seems to have become a more dynamic version of Biden but, like Biden, clearly impaired, tossing out a whole load of false statements, made-up statistics and outright crazy talk as when he declared that illegal immigrants were eating a town's household pets and when he described Harris as a Marxist. Harris's policy statements were a promise to continue a murderous foreign policy and the limping domestic policies of her and Biden's past four years. Buckle up, America. Rough weather ahead.

RON PARKER (Mendo Photo Historian)

This property was next door to my Uncle Lewis Ripley on Boonville Rd. He is lucky he was not a victim as he checked out the place when the owners were away. He wondered why they needed three wells on this small place. He also reported full automatic gun fire coming from the place. Then a dying Hells Angel spilled the beans on the place being a HA's burial grounds.

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Ed note: “Comrade Hall?” Fnnish immigrants up and down the West Coast were split between red and white political factions, the reds for old country revolution, the whites for the Czar. And each had their own newspapers headquartered in Astoria.

ELEANOR COONEY:

Another bummer! Enterprise car rental will be closing its office in For Bragg at the end of October. Not a huge deal until you really need to rent a car…

ATTENTION BOOK LOVERS

Attention book lovers! Cloud Nine Art Gallery is hosting a monthly get together for the purpose of sharing remarkable books recently read. Beginning on Thursday, September 12, from 5:30 til 7, and continuing on the second Thursday each month thereafter. Local authors are also invited to share their latest book. Light refreshments.

320 N Franklin Street, Fort Bragg

Margaret Paul

707 357-5000

ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] They say that Jeffrey Dahmer had an IQ of about 145. If he was so smart, why did he eat so much? We’ve all heard about overeating, but that was ridiculous! Some say he should have eaten more vegetables.

[2] Social media probably accounts for a lot of the insanity out there. The freaks get to get their freak on with lots of likes, and like abets like. I’m against censorship, but I think filming crimes like the numerous fights and knockouts shown there and just lewdness in general should be removed. I guess removing lewdness requires some kind of morality though, which in our post Christian society is often absent.

[3] The US had a pretty good balance when immigration was near zero, Christianity (Catholicism) was high, men and women married young, resultant birth rates were high and the men smoked and drank at high rates and worked dangerous/high-paying jobs. Men left the work force at younger ages, allowing for the younger folks to take positions of power and make high salaries at younger ages in order to provide for their young families. The men died in their 60’s/early 70’s, limiting health care and elder care costs and the drain on pensions. The old women hung on for longer, lived with the daughters/sons families and were able to provide childcare/guidance/stability for their daughters/grandchildren. It was a pretty good equilibrium from the late 19th century to 1990 or so.

[4] 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.

[5] 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.

[6] THE 49ERS, AN ON-LINE COMMENT:

Levi’s Stadium is the perfect home for a Kyle Shanahan outfit. Overpriced, humorless, more debilitating than the surface of the sun, completely lacking in joy, and ready to bleed every last ounce of hope from you, while simultaneously draining your wallet. If there indeed are dignity wraiths, the 49ers are mine. I hate this f—king team almost as much as I hate myself for loving them. I wanted to believe during the Super Bowl. I really did. I wanted to think our defense was good enough to give us a chance against Mahomes. But I was lying to myself. I knew we had no shot. The defensive coordinator was s—t all year and had the whole unit out of sync, and so we were going to rely on Purdy to outdo Mahomes? After Shanahan apparently didn’t teach his team the overtime rules? I am convinced Shanahan is 90% responsible for the rehabilitation of Andy Reid’s reputation. Deebo Samuel can’t stay healthy. George Kittle does ads for Chubbies. I am excited though for us to finally get an answer to the question of whether Brock Purdy is actually any good or just benefiting from having all-pros around him (I say he’s not, but don’t listen to me because I once got into an intense argument with a drunk fan at Candlestick about the merits of Gio Carmazzi).

[7] Walz on the balance beam, trying to straddle the fence…

He’s not going to score any points that way…

Nobody likes someone that tries to play both sides against the middle…

Meanwhile…

Kamala Harris is unclear on the concept…

She is trying to convince, (confuse), everyone in her Party that the “issue” of the war in Gaza is “not binary”…

“Harris previously said that it was important to remember “the war in Gaza is not a binary issue. However, too often the conversation is binary, when the reality is anything but.” ”

Whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean…

“If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit”…

[8] TWO HILLBILLIES walk into a restaurant. While having a bite to eat, they talk about their moonshine operation.

Suddenly, a woman at a nearby table, who is eating a sandwich, begins to cough.

After a minute or so, it becomes apparent that she is in real distress. One of the hillbillies looks at her and says, Kin ya swallar?’

The woman shakes her head no. Then he asks, ‘Kin ya breathe?’

The woman begins to turn blue, and shakes her head no.

The hillbilly walks over to the woman, lifts up her dress, yanks down her drawers, and quickly gives her right butt cheek a lick with his tongue.

The woman is so shocked that she has a violent spasm, and the obstruction flies out of her mouth. As she begins to breathe again, the Hillbilly walks slowly back to his table. His partner says, “Ya know, I’d heerd of that there ‘Hind Lick Maneuver’ but I ain’t niver seed nobody do it!”

[9] 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?”