Mendocino County Today: Wednesday 9/18/2024

Coast Highway | Chance Showers | Flag Football | Local Events | Suspicious Male | Little Sticks | County Fair | Skunk Litigation | Not Paradise | Palestine Teach-In | Goll Photos | Prickly Pear | Tahja Talk | Autumn Equinox | Ukiah Cleanup | Ed Notes | 1930s International | Yesterday's Catch | Holster Cat | Junkfood ED | Cartoon Critics | Denson Memorial | Almost 75 | Create Something | US Elections | William Mulholland | Tina Turner | Lead Stories | Project 2025 | Swamp Thing | Pager Sabotage | 1958 TV

---

---

THERE IS A CHANCE for showers today with the highest chance across the interior areas in the afternoon. There is also a slight chance of thunderstorms. Thursday through early next week high pressure is expected to bring a warming and drying trend. Above normal temperatures are expected by the weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): I'm still dry at 5am but some rain is just offshore & slowly heading this way. A cloudy & warm 56F this Wednesday morning on the coast. We have a chance of showers most of the day before the system moves out tonight. Patchy fog of course after that.

---

PANTHER FLAG FOOTBALL

AV Junior High is attempting to start a flag football team - practices will be Monday, Wednesday and Thursday after school as part of the After School Program.

Please contact us if you would like your child to participate. This is open to boys and girls 6-8 grade.

Practices will start Wednesday 9/18

---

LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)

---

THE SHOOTING THAT WASN’T

On Monday, September 16, 2024 at approximately 6:53 P.M., Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Deputies were dispatched to the 1000 block of Road B in Redwood Valley for a call involving suspicious circumstances.

The initial reporting party advised there was a suspicious male subject who was seen on their neighbor’s property and was now walking up Road B. An additional reporting party contacted a Sheriff’s Deputy as he arrived in the area and advised they had observed a male subject breaking into a residence in the area.

Sheriff’s Office Deputies responded to that residence and observed signs of forced entry. Deputies searched the residence and did not locate anyone.

The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Dispatch Center began receiving additional calls from a male subject stating he had been shot. The male was not forthcoming with information and would not say where he was located or provide his exact whereabouts.

Sheriff’s Office Deputies continued to search the general area where they believed the caller to be located based on the GPS location of the phone which was used to call 911. This location was further up Road B from the property where the subject was initially seen and the location of the residence which had been broken into.

At approximately 8:20pm Sheriff’s Office Deputies were able to locate a 43-year-old male from Fort Bragg. The male advised that he had been shot in the leg while in front of the small, abandoned residence where he was now located. Deputies observed some type of wound on the subject’s leg and summoned medical assistance.

The male subject advised Deputies that two unknown subjects wearing ski masks and assault rifles had chased him to the location and shot at him while he was in front of the residence. The male subject was transported to a local hospital for medical treatment.

Deputies canvassed the scene and did not locate any evidence of a shooting taking place at the location. Deputies conducted further investigation to include speaking with neighbors and reviewing surveillance videos from the area and were unable to corroborate the male subject’s claims that a shooting occurred or that he was shot.

Medical professionals were unable to determine if the injury to the male subject’s leg was a result of a projectile grazing or some other abrasion or cut.

Based on the evidence located during this investigation and the inability to corroborate the male subject’s claims about the shooting incident, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office does not believe a shooting took place and does not believe there are any outstanding suspects.

This incident is still being actively investigated and anyone with information regarding this case is asked to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Dispatch Center at (707) 463-4086 or by calling the non-emergency tip line at (707) 234-2100.

---

---

LOVING THE MENDOCINO COUNTY FAIR & APPLE SHOW

by Terry Sites

This year was the 100th Anniversary of the Mendocino County Fair and Apple Show. For 100 years people have been visiting the Boonville fairgrounds and feasting their senses. Some people love France and they are Francophiles, some people love books and they are Bibliophiles; others love fairs and it is fair to say (no pun intended) that makes them Fairophiles. And what is there not to love? Color, lights, action, lively people, naughty food, rides, rodeos, sweet new babies, live animals, beautiful plants and flowers, and mildly intoxicating beverages! Yes, it is all there.

Particularly wonderful is the people watching. Those old enough will remember that Art Linkletter had a program on early TV called “People Are Funny” and boy are they. Sit on a bench watching the world roll by during the Fair. For sure you will see lots of strollers pushed by proud parents. Bands of teen-aged girls in skimpy summer clothes are closely followed by bands of admiring young boys. You’ll see couples of all ages holding hands. Kids sail by with their fair-bought new toys, things like battery-powered bubble blowers and giant inflatable Martians.

Old people in wheelchairs roll by pushed by care giving family members. There are smiles for miles and occasional weeping and wailing from babies and too-tired toddlers. Onlookers can’t help but fill their hearts with wonder at all the different things people can do and be. Few American towns have a current tradition of promenading around a square or downtown to give each other the eye. Once a year in Boonville we can all get our fill of checking each other out. It is fun and sweet and just so right somehow. It is reassuring to see how much kids have grown and adults have matured — some have even aged! There is continuity to this yearly ritual that fills a real need.

All this is made possible because our tiny fair staff and fair board put together this “little fair that could.” Also many volunteers give their time, energy and creativity to make the fair what it is. Without the staff (including the Fair Board), the volunteers, and (let us not forget) the vendors, there would be no fair. There are always things that could be done more efficiently or logically but that is really not the point. Given the resources that this small Fair has it is nothing less than a miracle that it offers so many different things and ultimately so much to enjoy.

As a true Fairophile, I have been to many fairs in California and this fair is the warmest, safest, welcoming-est, and most old-fashioned (in a good way) of them all. Corporate America does it differently (Disneyland, Six Flags, etc.) and that definitely has its place in the scheme of things. But for some the pace, goodwill and down home funkiness of the Mendocino County Fair and Apple Show suits just fine.

For a detailed description of what was seen this year through the eyes of one fair lover, one who attended all three days of the fair and was involved in some of the set up and tear down, tune in next week.

For now it’s just a message of appreciation going out to all those who made the 100 Year Anniversary of the Mendocino County Fair and Apple Show what it was: a truly joyful chance for us all to come together. Thank you.

---

JACOB PATTERSON (Fort Bragg)

MCN Listserv Chatter on the Cost of the Skunk Train Litigation

From what I have been able to learn (after much difficulty from the City of Fort Bragg who appears to be trying to hide the public costs, perhaps because they are so high), the cost of the litigation is into the millions not hundreds of thousands of dollars. The City is burning through money and is well over their approved legal budget, with last month’s bill over $70K–yes, $70K for a single month, around $60K of which was just for the Skunk Train litigation! That adds up quickly. The Skunk Train is also burning through money that could be used for improvements and environmental cleanup on the Mill Site; instead it is going to lawyers. Last year they spent more than $700K for the litigation and the costs are higher this year because the litigation has transitioned to a more expensive phase with more billable hours. This litigation has been going on for several years with legal expenses piling up over that time. Whether it is public money from the City of Fort Bragg or private money from the Skunk Train, this symbolic litigation with no practical benefits has already cost the community plenty.

I don’t see how anyone with any sense (or a basic understanding of litigation) would support continuing to incur these expenses when we have so many more pressing needs, particularly since it is about hypothetical future disputes that may or may not happen and we could have waited to see if any issues actually come to pass and then engage in more focused litigation with a concrete result if necessary. I mean, the only eminent domain case that was challenged in court through trial resulted in the landowner winning and getting awarded their attorney’s fees and other costs. The Skunk Train can’t even use eminent domain against the City of Fort Bragg because it can’t be used to acquire government property so where is the skin in the game that justifies spending tax dollars like this? Likewise for permitting on the Mill Site: the Skunk Train hasn’t done anything non-railroad related without local permits and, for the most important projects (those related to the mill pond where the remaining toxins are concentrated) they already applied for a Coastal Development Permit from the City of Fort Bragg and are having to fund a full Environmental Impact Report for that project, which will be developed by the City itself not the Skunk Train. You can’t get much more local land use control than that.

Instead of worrying about the Skunk train hypothetically not applying for permits for future Mill Site development, wouldn’t it make more sense to monitor what they actually try to do and then ensure they apply for and receive all applicable permits and only result to litigation if they do not? Same thing for hypothetical eminent domain actions, although there isn’t really anything left within the City of Fort Bragg to acquire through eminent domain and when they have been challenged about their attempts to do so outside of Fort Bragg, they lost and the landowner still ahs their property plus an award for the Skunk Train to pay their attorneys’ fees and costs. How is this symbolic litigation worth spending millions of dollars of community money?

---

---

PALESTINE TEACH IN, CASPAR, FRIDAY & SATURDAY

Mendocino for Palestine will be hosting a teach-in on The US, Israel and Palestine, Friday September 20th and Saturday September 21st at the Caspar Community Center. Special presentation on Friday by Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma and critical care surgeon, just returned from volunteering in a hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza. This is a free event.

Details at mendoforpalestine.org

---

BUSINESS AS USUAL

AVA,

Petty fees for a $150 million (at least) courthouse that nobody likes, is corruption that has saturated all of government. There’s no problem here, just business as usual.

Good Caitlin Johnstone and a powerful piece from Chris Hedges on the murder of Aysenur Eygi. Chris is familiar with “both sides” and his perception and rebuke should be well taken.

At this point, my economic stability requires that I start earning consistent income so my ability to venture around Mendocino at will and find good photos will be crimped. The daily input of photos will become occasional as time allows. It’s great to have been able to submit to the AVA and bulk-up my portfolio and since I always carry my camera with me, images will pop up during routine travel. I don’t miss an issue, that’s something that won’t change.

Enjoy this day,

Jeff Goll

Willits

---

---

TAHJA TO SPEAK TO COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY IN MENDOCINO

We're looking forward to seeing many of you at our upcoming history talk. This event is taking place at the Mendocino Presbyterian Church on September 21st, at 1pm. The historic church is located at 44831 Main Street in Mendocino.

Our guest speaker will be local historian Katy Tahja. Katy has always been fascinated by mineral springs and their history. Katy recently published a history of Orr Hot Springs which has a colorful history. While researching Orr Springs, she also learned about Vichy Springs, Point Arena Hot Springs, Duncan Peak Resort in Hopland, and innumerable smaller springs throughout the county. 

Tahja is the author of five books of North Coast history and recently published a biography of artist Charles Surendorf. She docents at the Kelley House Museum in Mendocino and writes about history for local newspapers. Her family has been in Comptche for 100 years.

The church hosting the talk is itself historically significant to the town of Mendocino. The present Sanctuary, started on October 7, 1867, was built of local redwood for a cost of $10,000, an enormous amount at the time. Half of this sum, as well as the land the church was built on, was donated by Jerome B. Ford. The new building was dedicated on July 5, 1868. Take some time after the talk to learn more about this landmark church.

Further along Main Street, Jerome B. Ford also built a house for his bride, Martha, in 1854. That house is now a museum. Exhibits at the Ford House Museum carry the visitor back to another era. The Ford House Museum is open from 11am to 4pm on the day of Tahja’s talk. 

Just up the hill from the Ford House is the Kelley House Museum which is yet another historic treasure in Mendocino. This historic home and research center was built in 1861 by William Kelley. The Kelley House is open from 11am to 3pm on the day of our meeting.

So, take some extra time to steep yourself in the rich history of Mendocino before or after our history talk. These locations all have lovely gardens to enjoy as part of the day. We will be serving sweets and beverages during the talk. Admission is $10. RSVP to 707-468-6969 or info@mendocinocountyhistory.org. 

We hope to see you there.

Tim Buckner, Executive Director
Historical Society Of Mendocino County
Archive & Held-Poage Memorial Home
100 South Dora Street
Ukiah, California 95482

---

HARVEST SUPERMOON & PARTIAL ECLIPSE [last night], and AUTUMN EQUINOX [this Sunday]

by Hanh Truong

Stargazers will be in for a special treat when the next full moon shines over California

A partial lunar eclipse will coincide with a harvest supermoon on Sept. 17.

During the celestial event, the moon will look “slightly larger-than-average,” according to Space.com.

What’s a harvest moon? A supermoon?

The harvest moon is the name for the full moon that occurs closest to the autumn equinox — considered the official first day of fall.

In 2024, the fall equinox falls on Sunday, Sept. 22.

“Usually, full moon names reflect the time of year they happen,” said Time and Date, an online world clock. “True enough, the harvest moon graces the skies in the harvest season in the Northern Hemisphere.”

“During these times, the moon can appear a bit larger in the sky, although the difference can be difficult to notice with the naked eye for most observers,” Space.com said.

When will full moon rise in sky above California?

The harvest supermoon will rise at 7:34 p.m. on Sept. 17, according to Time and Date.

What is a partial lunar eclipse?

Lunar eclipses occur when the Earth moves between the sun and moon, blocking the sunlight usually reflected by the moon.

When can I watch the partial lunar eclipse?

According to Time and Date, the partial lunar eclipse will begin in Sacramento around 7:10 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 17.

Maximum coverage of the moon is at 7:44 p.m. and the eclipse will end at 9:47 p.m.

Local times for the eclipse will vary depending on the city you’re in.

For example, in Los Angeles, the partial lunar eclipse will start at 6:55 p.m.

You can find out when to watch in your area by searching for your city on TimeandDate.com.

Don’t expect a big eclipse, the online time and astronomy resource said.

“At most, only about 4% — a tiny fraction — of the moon’s disk will be covered by the darkest part of Earth’s shadow,” Time and Date said. “But the effect will be striking, as one part of the moon’s edge becomes shrouded in blackness.”

---

ADAM GASKA:

September 28th is the Streets to Creeks clean up sponsored by the Mendocino County Resource Conservation District. I will be volunteering to help clean up Ackerman Creek. Volunteers register here. Volunteers meet at Low Gap Park then are assigned/pick an area to clean — attending Streets to Creeks Cleanup.

---

ED NOTES

MARIE THE MYSTERY WOMAN was so much the mystery it took some time to even discover her last name. Helme, Marie Helme. Marie was the older lady we recognized instantly in her identifying long black coat who lived in the Mannix Building, once the center of Boonville commerce and, in its day, an intriguing maze of upstairs apartments, in one of which Marie made her home. She and the Mannix Building are long gone, as is most of Anderson Valley’s vivid human tapestry of the 1960s and 70s, but Marie was something of a downtown fixture for more than twenty years, which is a long time in a transient little town in a transient time.

BEFORE Boonville, Marie lived in Ukiah. She was a hot lead typesetter and linotype operator from the old days of newspapers when typesetters plucked each letter of each word out of overhead cases containing all the letters of the alphabet in many typefaces and sizes to make every word that went onto every page of the newspaper when newspapers were composed by hand, one letter at a time.

WHEN the Ukiah paper went from hot lead to cold type technology, Marie moved to Boonville where Homer Mannix continued to produce his paper the old fashioned hot lead way — one letter, one word, one story, one page at a time. Without Marie Helme Homer’s handcrafted weekly would have been impossible, and Marie may well have been the last working hot lead typesetter in California, maybe the last one in the United States.

HOMER MANNIX worked out a deal with Marie where she would live upstairs in his eponymous Mannix Building and work downstairs every Tuesday where Homer’s Advertiser was put together on an antique hot lead linotype machine. On production day, from the service counter up front, you could make out a dim, wraith-like figure moving very fast from task to task amid the ancient wheezing and clanking print machinery. It was Marie in her long, black coat, fingers flying at hummingbird speed, blindly but unerringly plucking letters from their overhead cases, placing them exactly where they had to go to make a word, then a complete story, then a full page of stories.

BOONVILLE OLD TIMERS remember Marie as the thin, spry, tall-ish elderly woman who always wore that long, black dress coat even if it was a hundred degrees outside. Most locals knew she had some sort of function at Homer’s newspaper, although they didn’t know what that function was. And Marie wasn’t talking. The only people still with us who may have exchanged a word or two with this mysterious figure are Bill Mannix, Homer’s nephew, and Kathalene Kephart, Homer Mannix’s daughter.

FOR YEARS Marie, vivid in her inevitable black coat, was part of Boonville’s human panorama, as eccentric as the rambling, pre-code Mannix Building she lived in. She walked like a seabird, a few quick head-down steps, then a few more quick steps with her head up looking fast left and right, then head down again, gingerly but briskly making her way to the Boonville Lodge for her one half-beer a day, or the Horn of Zeese where she took most of her meals. She had no family that anybody knew of, no friends, belonged to no associations, and was never, ever seen at community events. But up close, Marie always looked amused, her eyes twinkling. She got along just fine outside the social ramble.

AT THE BOONVILLE LODGE, infamous on the Northcoast as a fightin’ bar, Marie would linger on her habitual stool at the end of the bar over her late-afternoon Miller’s — special ordered for her in half-bottles, for her only public appearance, but a daily one. Marie was locally famous for continuing to sip her half Miller’s the day a woman was shot to death a few stool’s down by a jealous husband. Marie had looked on impassively at the mayhem, finished up her drink and walked her blackbird’s walk on home to her front bedroom in the Mannix Building, bathroom down the hall. Nothing got in the way of Marie’s one daily beer, and the Lodge in those days could be an extremely distracting establishment, even before nightfall when it might become positively life-threatening.

THE OCCASIONAL afternoon mayhem didn’t seem to bother Marie. She was downing her daily mini-Miller’s the afternoon a little guy broke off a cue stick and stuck it deep in a big guy’s back. The matador ran for his life out the door of the bar right into the middle of 128, pivoted south and kept on running towards Cloverdale, the bull right behind him with the pool cue still sticking out of his back, blood running down into his Levis. Marie would be back the next afternoon right about four. If the venue got a little rough sometimes, so what? There she was at the bar every afternoon except paper day, the day her flying fingers worked their obsolete magic in Homer Mannix’s living history newspaper museum, Boonville, California.

MARIE spent her Boonville life in that austere room in the Mannix Building where she was the beneficiary of many kindnesses from the Mannix family. Homer’s wife Bea gave Marie clothes because Marie always refused the raises Homer tried to give her because she was afraid the extra money would reduce her pension and social security income. Which she hid away, it was said, somewhere in her sparse quarters.

HOMER’S HOT LEAD linotype operator had come to Ukiah from “somewhere back east” to work for the Ukiah Daily Journal until the Journal, and every other daily newspaper in the country, went to new print technologies in the early 1960s. And when Marie’s one-day-a-week job with Homer’s Advertiser ended with the sale of the paper and the technology upgrade that came with the new owners, Marie went on living in her room upstairs over the print shop, went on walking down the pitted margins of the long block from her lonely room to the Horn of Zeese for a bite to eat and, every afternoon, to the Boonville Lodge for her one half-beer.

MIKE MANNIX remembers Marie. “She was about the same age as the old linotype machine. I had the impression that she drank a lot. All week long nobody saw her, but she’d come down on paper night and work her miracle with that cranky old Merganthaler, c. 1898, and make it happen. Things would start sparking and arcing and jamming up, but she never lost her cool. She always wore that long, black coat. Homer would say to me, ‘Just stay away from it. She can make it happen.’ I remember her fingers flying in and out of the type boxes. When something happened, something went wrong, Marie would know just what to do. She didn’t seem to have a life other than those Tuesday production nights. Now that you mention it, she was dark like an Indian, with a sharp-featured, angular face.”

MARIE HAD ALWAYS intrigued me, too, but the one time I’d tried to talk to her in the Lodge she’d said, “Sorry, gotta go,” and got up and went. Someone told me that Marie was an Indian, not that that was a question I would have asked her. But she intrigued me. Who the heck was this person? I was hoping to get to know her a little bit so she’d volunteer some personal bona fides. Nope. Sorry, I gotta go, she’d said, making it clear that she’d be forever on the move if I intruded upon her again.

I KNEW an Indian from Covelo who’d been trained as a hot lead printer in an Indian school in the 1940s. He told me that Mendocino County Indians were frequently taken off to Indian schools up through the 1950s to get them out of their Indian-ness, which the government viewed as incompatible with consumer capitalism. The abductees, my Covelo friend told me, often took advantage of the Indian school’s vocational emphasis on the print technology of the times. I thought maybe Marie had learned her amazing trade at an Indian school.

NOT having seen Marie for some time, I asked Homer Mannix where she had gone. “A nephew came to get her,” Homer said, not elaborating as a man formed in a discreet time.

AND THEN, one of Marie’s nephews called. He’d seen the Marie speculations on the internet where even an old typesetter gets talked about. “Marie,” Mr. Helme began, “was my mother’s sister, an older sister, my aunt. She often visited us when I was a kid. She lived in Grand Rapids and we lived near Lansing. I don’t know how she learned hot lead typesetting. I remember going to stay with her in Grand Rapids when she worked at the Herald there. At that time she was on the night shift at the Grand Rapids paper. We’d sneak in to watch her run the linotype. My uncle had an old linotype at his paper in Weyland, the Weyland Globe, but I don’t think she learned on it.”

BEFORE she’d come west, Marie had suffered a nervous breakdown. She was confined to a mental hospital after running naked through the streets of Grand Rapids. When she’d regained her senses, Marie landed a hot lead job in Ukiah at the Ukiah Daily Journal. When the Journal phased out its hot lead presses, Marie came to Boonville and settled in at Homer Mannix’s Advertiser. She’d been married briefly in Grand Rapids to a man named Dominic Massera, with whom she bought a house and a 1951 Studebaker.

I mentioned that lots of people in Boonville assumed Marie was Native American. She had high cheekbones and, as people used to say in less sensitive times, she was “dark-complected.” And undoubtedly quite attractive as a young woman.

”But we’re Norwegian,” Mr. Helme said, laying to rest ethnic speculation. ”Funny you should say she looked like an Indian. Irvin, Marie’s brother, was a tall thin fellow also mistaken for Native American.”

Marie had left for California after her stay in the mental hospital, and the family had no contact with her. “We always thought she was so ashamed of her breakdown that she just wanted to start new somewhere else. But in Grand Rapids, when we were little kids, and she was our Aunt Marie, we loved Marie. We visited her often and we always got presents from her at Christmas. The presents were certainly surprising. One Christmas she sent us a live goose. Another year we got a cask of apricot liqueur complete with tiny cups. She sent my mother a beautiful tea trolley; another time she sent my mom a mangle, you know, that you use to iron clothes. That thing today would be a collector’s item. If Aunt Marie saw something she liked she’d buy it for us.”

Marie, her family remembers, after her marriage ended, was pretty much a recluse even in Grand Rapids, and she’d always been eccentric. “She had four large wooden crates with doors and hasps,” her nephew recalls, “that she kept right there in the front room of her studio apartment in Grand Rapids. It was always a mystery as to what was in them, and she’d just smile that smile of hers when we asked her.”

The family recalls Marie “taking up” with a man named Harold Steele, a railroad worker. “My mother,” Mr. Helme recalled, “always said he was a bum who only claimed he worked for the railroad, but Marie liked him and he was nice to us kids.”

With the passing of both the hot lead print process and Homer Mannix’s version of the Advertiser, Marie continued to live in the Mannix Building, and still made her way every afternoon to the Boonville Lodge for her one half-bottle of Miller’s, her high-stepping walk more tentative, her black hair gone gray. And then she was gone, and there was a sudden absence in the Boonville tapestry.

Homer Mannix had probably called the Helmes in Michigan. He would have said something like, “Marie is infirm. She really can’t take care of herself anymore. You’d better come out here and get her.” And the Helmes came out and got her, and Marie went home to die on December 16th, 1989. She was 91.

---

---

CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, September 17, 2024

ROSS ATTERBURY, 39, Ukiah. Grand theft, taking vehicle without owner’s consent.

KEVIN BECKMAN, 53, Lucerne/Ukiah. Parole violation.

CRISTOBAL BUENROSTRO, 59, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

DAVID BURLESON, 59, Ukiah. Failure to register as transient, county parole violation.

ALDAR FRAGOSO, 31, Redwood Valley. Fighting in public.

JODI HODGES, 37, Ukiah. Parole violation.

MICHAEL MCCLELLAN, 51, Fort Bragg. Probation violation.

CELESTINO MENDOZA-ROJAS, 24, Boonville. Domestic battery.

JOHN SULLIVAN, 52, Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

ALTHEA TREJO, 46, Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, toluene or similar.

---

---

ED DENSON & ME

by Paul Modic

Why does HumCo Attorney Ed Denson get to eat hamburgers, french fries, and a milk shake and I don’t? Why does Ed get to live for now, eat anything he wants, and I have to worry about the future? Unlike the rest of us nobodies Ed is a Somebody. When people were posting birthday greetings on his page recently I wanted to say, “Happy birthday, Ed! Most likely local to get a New York Times obituary!” Ed probably would have chuckled but as he had a pretty bad cold at the time I restrained myself. Last local to get a New York Times obit was Ed’s neighbor Frank Cieciorka, the artist famous for his rebel fist. What is it about Alderpoint? (Ed, pushing eighty, seems to be a junk food junkie, as well as appreciator of all things culinary, from highbrow to low.)

Like most of us I admire and respect Ed Denson. He became a lawyer at freaking sixty, after many other colorful careers including manager of Country Joe and the Fish, and has been a tireless advocate for all of us out here in the outlaw regions. He lives life to the fullest and many depend on him as he tools thousands of miles to courthouses over mountains and vales in his old Volvos. He’s always there for us with a phone call or a moment on the street.

A few years ago I stopped him on the sidewalk outside the credit union with a question. “ED, if I’m over the plant limit and I hear the cops coming should I stay or should I go?”

“Well, you should get under the limit,” he said.

“No, that’s not going to happen,” I said.

“Then skedaddle,” he said. Sage advice: Skedaddle! I handed him twenty bucks.

Another time I called him from the border after I thought Customs had found my cash stash and confiscated it. He gave me some long-distance advice and a few months later when I saw the Volvo out front of his law office I popped in and handed him a fifty. “Thanks Ed.”

Today I sign up for Medicare. Tomorrow Ed may finally be cut off from BLTs, Mexican Cokes, hamburgers, french fries, milk shakes, and double chocolate cake.

We will survive…until we don’t.

(Written a few years ago…)

---

---

REMEMBERING ED DENSON

A community gathering to remember ED Denson (Eugene C. Denson) will take place on Saturday September 28th from 2-7pm at the Southern Humboldt Community Park, 1144 Sprowel Creek Road, Garberville. Follow the signs for “ED.” As part of the “Food & Flowers Potluck,” attendees are encouraged, but not required to bring main dishes, sides, salads, appetizers, desserts, all manner of beverages, bouquets and memorabilia to share. All food and drinks are donated by attendees, including at the bar, and will be offered at no charge. Donations buckets will be on hand.

The gathering is hosted by MaryAlice Denson, KMUD Radio and Environmentally Sound Promotions. Volunteers are needed for set-up, clean-up, and help during the gathering as well as the Friday before and the Sunday after—to sign up, call Emily at 707-223-4471) or email esp@asis.com. Additionally, please use this link: https://www.gofundme.com/f/ed-denson-sat-sept-28-memorial-funeral-costs if you’d like to donate towards memorial expenses—extra funds collected will go towards KMUD Radio

ED was a beloved Southern Humboldt music producer, activist lawyer, all around public figure, and devoted husband to his ‘sweetie’ MaryAlice. He will be lovingly remembered for his witty writings, legal acumen, selfless community service, and love of great music. Please join us on 9/28 from 2-7 to celebrate this community treasure.

There will be time for sharing memories and tributes, along with musical entertainment by Barry “The Fish” Melton, Camo Cowboys, the Funnicators, and Darryl Cherney. Archival recordings of ED’s own “Don’t Get Trouble on Your Mind” KMUD radio show recordings will be played.

---

ON COMPUTER 8

Message fr. Craig Stehr 9/17/’24 Washington, D.C.

The very warmest spiritual greetings,

Awaiting the incoming rain here at Adam’s Place Homeless Shelter, presently on computer #8 at the drop-in center located behind the shelter. Identified with that which is “prior to consciousness,” the mind effortlessly chanting the Hare Krishna mahamantra continuously, the Absolute working through the body-mind complex without interference.

As the 75th birthday approaches on September 28th, I am available for taking effective spiritual action on the planet earth. I have sufficient money to go anywhere. Must have a stable living situation upon arrival. I’m ready!

What would you do in this world, if you knew that you could not fail?

Craig Louis Stehr

---

“I BELIEVE IN WORK. If somebody doesn’t create something, however small it may be, he gets sick. An awful lot of people feel that they’re treading water, that if they vanished in smoke, it wouldn’t mean anything at all in this world. And that’s a despairing and destructive feeling. It’ll kill you.”

– Arthur Miller

---

---

THE DISGRACEFUL END OF CALIFORNIA’S WATER KING

William Mulholland promised to bring water to LA. Today his legacy is one of success and death.

by Phil Faroudja

Mulholland Drive sits high atop the Santa Monica Mountains, overlooking the vast expanse of the Los Angeles Basin. If you’ve ever been there, the view is especially spectacular at night: With the whole city beneath, a thousand lights glitter in the darkness like jewels.

The roadway is named after William Mulholland, an Irish immigrant engineer who, almost by accident, became one of LA’s most important figures — before becoming a cautionary tale.

Mulholland’s great achievement came when Southern California needed him the most. He is LA’s first water king, the man who brought much-needed Sierra snowmelt to the city by completing the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Finished in 1913, the 233-mile-long aqueduct runs from the Owens Valley in eastern California to the San Fernando Valley and on to countless homes and businesses. Because of Los Angeles’ semiarid Mediterranean climate, Mulholland’s massive public works project enabled dramatic population growth, which in turn fueled the explosive development of the motion picture industry — and LA’s many grass-covered properties.

Today the aqueduct is as beloved and relied upon as it is embattled, part of a bitter conversation about who controls water and land in an increasingly volatile American West. But the aqueduct that made Mulholland was not his undoing; it was his decision to turn off the flow of water that would cost hundreds of lives and lead to his exiting in disgrace from the public eye.

A Man For The Moment

Born in Belfast, Ireland (now Northern Ireland), in 1855, William Mulholland had an adventurous personality, according to the biography “Heavy Ground: William Mulholland and the St. Francis Dam Disaster” by Norris Hundley Jr. and Donald C. Jackson.

Escaping unhappy family circumstances, at 15 he joined the British Merchant Navy and sailed for four years. Following that, he tried his luck in America, working odd jobs in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Once, he nearly lost a leg in a logging accident.

Arriving in Los Angeles, Mulholland found opportunities scarce. He parlayed a job as a ditch digger into a role with the city’s burgeoning Water Department, where he attained a steady income and eventually rose to superintendent. He married and became a U.S. citizen. His educational background was limited, so on his own, he studied civil engineering, geology and hydraulics. Eventually, the movement and collection of water, pulled down from the steepest slopes in California, became his life.

By 1900, Mulholland and former co-worker and then-LA mayor Frederick Eaton were convinced the city was poised for enormous growth. Local officials and the general public shared this estimation. Los Angeles had long lagged behind San Francisco in population, but in 1890 it counted 50,000 residents, and by 1900 had doubled that to at least 100,000.

The rapid expansion was anything but smooth. Issues included labor uprisings, disagreements over where to place a new harbor, land booms and busts, unsightly oil derricks populating the landscape and a growing lack of reliable, usable water. Of these, the water shortage was the most significant.

Mulholland and Eaton believed the solution was to divert water from the Owens River near the eastern Sierra and to bring it south. City government and the citizenry agreed, and bonds were passed providing funding.

Los Angeles finally had a solution to its water woes. There was just one problem: The water belonged to someone else.

The river drained into Owens Valley, which resembled a small Switzerland at the time in its landscape. Rather than freely give away their water to a boomtown hundreds of miles to the south, farmers there leaned on previous federal support for a grandiose plan to irrigate crops and build a hydroelectric plant, and they appealed to Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt to safeguard the water for local use.

In a stunning rebuke, Roosevelt decided in favor of Los Angeles. “It is a hundred or a thousandfold more important to the State and more valuable to the people as a whole,” he wrote, “if used by the city than if used by the people of Owens Valley.”

While the legal process played out, Los Angeles secretly purchased land and water rights along the Owens River anyway, and soon construction of the aqueduct began on its collection of private land. Built in less than six years, and powered solely by gravity, the Los Angeles Aqueduct proved to be a great engineering feat comparable to the Panama Canal.

The aqueduct was not only of record length, but had been constructed on difficult terrain. It went up nearly vertical walls of canyons, across their horizontal surfaces, and down. It traveled over and tunneled beneath chains of mountains. Miles of it passed through the Mojave Desert, open and baking in the scorching heat, before reaching greater Los Angeles.

On Nov. 5, 1913, the aqueduct was completed and water arrived in the San Fernando Valley. A ceremony to mark the occasion drew some 40,000 people, many with a tin cup to take a drink. Mulholland was called on to speak.

“There it is,” he famously proclaimed. “Take it!”

Take it they did. Many Southern California industries flourished soon after the aqueduct was finished. By the mid-1920s, movies made in Hollywood were dominating the silver screen, while simultaneously the LA aircraft industry seized the skies and the region’s vast oil reserves fueled the cars on the road. The real estate market was red-hot.

The public appreciated what Mulholland had accomplished, and he became a celebrity. Called “the Chief,” he received an honorary Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. At one point there was serious talk of Mulholland running for mayor.

Back in Owens Valley, people resented the appropriation of the river by a distant metropolis. The valley dried up, and agriculture withered. The situation became ugly, with farmers redirecting the water and dynamiting the aqueduct a number of times. Hundreds of armed guards were brought in just to protect the flow.

Mulholland’s Deadly Reversal Of Fortune

Ironically, despite the impressive growth, it turned out that the Los Angeles Aqueduct provided far more water than was needed. The surplus was diverted to surrounding communities and to control the excess, numerous reservoirs and dams were built outside the city.

Mulholland himself, ever the civil engineer, designed the St. Francis Dam, 15 miles north of Los Angeles proper, to help hold water inside a large reservoir. Crucially — and fatally — there were several errors in his construction.

Close to midnight on March 12, 1928, after the reservoir had recently been filled to the limit, the dam collapsed. The left and right sides melted away, leaving only the middle standing. An enormous wave a mile wide traveling at 18 miles an hour headed west to the sea, demolishing everything before it.

The dam keeper and his son, who lived in a small cottage a quarter of a mile away, were killed instantly. Their bodies were never found. A group of 140 Edison company workers camped nearby were hit, and about half perished. Power lines to Los Angeles were cut, and for a brief time, the city could only manage a morose twinkle as the lights fluttered on and off.

Word spread and police hurried to warn residents, but not everyone escaped. Five and a half hours later, the flood emptied bodies and debris into the Pacific Ocean. Over 400 people had died.

Mulholland’s dam failure was one of the worst man-made disasters in U.S. history. In the aftermath, plans for new regional reservoirs were abruptly canceled. People eyed the Los Angeles Aqueduct skeptically. They wondered, would it also come apart? The St. Francis Dam disaster changed how California manages its water. The state began earnest regulation efforts and, going forward, required all municipal civil engineers to be licensed and all projects to be approved by the government.

An inquiry concluded the cause was flawed engineering. Mulholland’s towering reputation was ruined, and he retired, disgraced.

Mulholland’s life was ultimately one of contradiction: He was responsible for one of the greatest American engineering achievements, and additionally for one of the biggest catastrophes. But water from the Los Angeles Aqueduct is still used by millions today, and the city continues to grow.

(SF Chronicle)

---

TINA TURNER

Just like many singers, Tina Turner started off not liking her voice. In an interview with Gayle King from CBS News, Turner said, “You know, in the beginning, I didn’t [like it]. I thought it was kind of ugly because it didn’t sound like Diana Ross. But then afterwards I thought, ‘Yeah, it sounds like the guys’.”

Turner opened up the female rock vocal sound with her edgy tone. She pulled on influences from blues, funk, gospel and soul and singers such as Etta James, Ruth Brown, Hank Ballard, Big Mama Thornton, James Brown and Mahalia Jackson. Sometimes described as having an “androgynous” voice, Turner’s naturally deep voice was incredibly flexible and robust. She loved using a wide variety of vocal qualities and had a wide range, recording notes as low as F2 and as high as F6. You can hear her using qualities such as yells, whoops, growls, grunts, cry, sob, rasp, belt, chest and head register, mix, and speech.

She could manipulate her upper range to imitate high electric guitar like notes. Often as she sang in belted ranges her voice became quite nasal giving her a brassy/saxophone tone that could cut through the band.

While not always singing with a perfectly healthy technique Turner obviously did understand something of vocal health and was cognisant of its limitations. She said to Janis Joplin on their first meeting, “Honey, you can’t continue to sing like that or you’ll have no voice […]”.

Turner used her voice foremost to express emotions, tell a story and feed the music. Whatever she was doing with her voice Turner managed to sustain a very busy career up to the age of 69, always dancing and always in high heels!

— Peter Lindbergh

---

LEAD STORIES FROM WEDNESDAY'S NYT

Exploding Pagers Targeting Hezbollah Kill 11 and Wound Thousands

What Fed Rate Cuts Will Mean for Five Areas of Your Financial Life

Instagram, Facing Pressure Over Child Safety Online, Unveils Sweeping Changes

Deep Links Between Alcohol and Cancer Are Described in New Report

Jordan Chiles Appeals to Swiss Court Over Fight for Olympic Gymnastics Bronze Medal

---

KEVIN DRUM ON PROJECT 2025

…It’s not as if the Heritage Foundation has ever been a watchword for rigorous, honest research in the first place. And the entire conservative movement has become Trumpist, so you can hardly blame Heritage for following along. In the end, maybe Heritage could have worded things less belligerently. But for the most part the policy recommendations are garden variety modern conservatism. They just aren’t hedged for a popular audience, which is typical of these things. … Conservatives are mostly mad because their true beliefs have been set down in black and white — and the Harris campaign has decided to highlight them. Boo hoo.

---

---

THOUSANDS OF HEZBOLLAH FIGHTERS INJURED IN LEBANON When Their New Pagers All Simultaneously Explode — Causing Horrifying Wounds To Their Groins And Hands

by Ronny Reyes & Caitlin Doombos

Paging all terrorists!

Thousands of Hezbollah terrorists were injured in southern Lebanon on Tuesday when their new pagers all simultaneously exploded — causing horrifying wounds to their groins and hands as the devices detonated on their belts and in their pockets.

Lebanese officials said 2,800 people were injured and nine killed in what Hezbollah officials claimed was an attack by Israel.

Hezbollah — a Lebanese militant group that the US has designated as a terrorist organization — confirmed the wide-ranging attack on its operatives, including fighters and medics. One official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, called it the “biggest security breach” since the group began its near-daily attacks on Israel on Oct. 8.

The devices that detonated were all the latest models acquired by Hezbollah in recent months. They were distributed to members after Hezbollah’s leader warned his fighters not to carry cell phones — telling them they could be used to track their movements or carry out targeted strikes.

Hezbollah members were rushed to hospital after pagers exploded.

Before Tuesday's attack on Hezbollah that left thousands injured after their pagers exploded, Israel has long-been accused of carrying out top secret operations on foreign soil targeting Iran and its terror proxies.

The Israeli spy agency Mossad allegedly intercepted the shipment of pagers five months ago and rigged them with pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), a highly explosive material, sources told Sky News Arabia, according to a translation from Israeli media.

The explosive material was allegedly placed inside the pagers’ batteries and detonated by an external command that caused the batteries’ temperatures to overheat and trigger the explosion, the sources added.

Videos uploaded to social media show several incidents in which seemingly unaware men had devices in their pockets blow up, with the victims crying in pain as bystanders ran away.

One such video shows a man shopping at a local grocery store when an explosion occurs in his pocket, sending debris flying out of his pants as he falls to the floor.

Other videos circulating on social media show dozens of men in hospitals covered in burn wounds, with one man with his fingers blown off and another covering his bloody face.

Several of the men caught by the blasts could be seen covering their groins and thighs, which were likely wounded when the pagers went off in their pants.

Doctors could also be seen treating the injured men lying on cardboard mats in the hallway as the hospitals were quickly inundated Tuesday morning.

Israel has not commented on the attack, and US said it had no advance knowledge of any operation against Hezbollah.

On July 31st, 2024, Iran accused Israel of planting a bomb inside the Tehran facility housing former Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, who died when it was detonated.

In December 2020, Israel allegedly used a satellite-controlled machine gun equipped with “artificial intelligence” to kill Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who founded Iran’s nuclear program.

In 2010, Massaoud Ali-Mohammadi and Majid Shahriari, two nuclear scientists in Tehran, were blown up by a remotely detonated bomb hooked up to a motorcycle.

That same year, the Stuxnet cyberweapon devastated Iran’s nuclear program, with reports later confirming it was deployed in a joint effort by the US and Israel.

In 1997, Hamas’ Khaled Meshaal was poisoned by Israeli agents in a botched operation that saw the terrorist receive the antidote in a move made to prevent the king of Jordan from walking away from a historic peace treaty.

The attack will have a significant impact on Hezbollah’s military effectiveness, Seth J. Frantzman at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies told The Post. The group is believed to have about 40,000 fighters.

“Hezbollah invests a great deal in its recruits and its members and views them as an elite force,” he said. “Thousands of members injured by exploding pagers will be a serious setback for Hezbollah on multiple levels.”

One Hezbollah official told the Wall Street Journal that some members felt their pagers heat up and disposed of them before they detonated.

Officials said at least 14 people were also wounded in Syria, with Navvar Saban, a security and conflict analyst at the Omran Center for Strategic Studies, saying those injured in Syria were members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Syria.

“It’s thousands of assassination attempts at the same time that happened in different geographical areas,” Saba told Al Jazeera. “The psychological impact is huge. It’s going to affect Hezbollah.”

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was also among those injured in the blasts, according to Tehran’s Mehr news agency.

Hezbollah officials claimed Israel was behind the pager attack. The Israeli military has not commented on the incident.

“We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression,” Hezbollah said in a statement, vowing that Israel “will certainly receive its fair punishment for this sinful aggression.”

Lebanon’s Health Ministry called on health workers treating the wounded to remove their wireless devices.

Residents said the explosions continued to occur even 30 minutes after the initial blast.

Israel and Hezbollah have engaged in near-daily attacks over the border since the terror group began attacking the Jewish state in solidarity with Hamas.

(New York Post)

---