Mendocino County Today: Saturday 10/5/2024

By AVA News Service on October 5, 2024

TEMPERATURES INCREASE TODAY in the interior as high pressure builds back in. A gradual cooling trend begins early next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): On the coast this Saturday morning I have more clear skies & 46F. The next mention of fog is Thursday night, but you can see it has reached Monterrey Bay by this morning.

LAKE COUNTY WILDFIRE THREATENS 2,553 STRUCTURES

by Amy Graff

As sweltering temperatures broiled California on Friday, a wildfire near Clear Lake devoured two homes and threatened hundreds of others, triggering a flurry of evacuations, officials said. “The most active area of the fire is near Cerritos Drive,” Cal Fire said.

The Glenhaven Fire ignited at 11:37 a.m. near the intersection of Hillcrest Drive and Henderson Drive in Glenhaven, a small Lake County community, Cal Fire said. At 10:39 p.m., the agency said the fire was 403 acres with 10% containment. Evacuation orders and warnings were posted on Cal Fire’s online incident page.

“It’s still an active fire,” Cal Fire spokesperson Jason Clay said. “It’s burning on a hillside right above Glenhaven and Highway 20.”

Just after 5 p.m., Clay confirmed that the fire had destroyed two homes and threatened 2,553 structures. He said the fire was burning on the hillside in an area between the communities of Glenhaven and Clearlake Oaks. “It’s traveling north and east from its original starting point, traveling to the east toward Clearlake Oaks and to the north toward High Valley,” he said.

The fire is burning through a grassy area dotted with oak trees. Clay described its behavior as “spotty” with embers flying in the wind and starting new smaller fires. “We expect westerly winds to continue until sunset, really,” he said, “and the concern is that the winds could cause additional spotting. The winds could cause the fire to jump beyond the control lines we’ve set up so far.”

Smoke could be seen wafting above the hills above Clear Lake from a live AlertCalifornia webcam, used to help spot and observe wildfires.

Images posted in social media showed aircraft dropping retardant over the fire. Cal Fire said it has requested additional support from Napa County and Sonoma County. Clay said that as of 5 p.m., 200 personnel were assigned to the fire.

The fire broke out amid a California heat wave that has sent temperatures soaring since Monday and further dried out vegetation. On Friday, winds picked up and the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for southern Lake County for 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday.

Kathleen Zontos, a meteorologist with the weather service, said sustained winds of 8 mph, with gusts up to 13 mph, are forecast in the area of the fire into the early evening. Stronger winds are possible at higher elevations.

The winds developed in Northern California as a weak frontal boundary pushed across the Pacific Northwest on Friday, bringing rain to Washington and Oregon. No rain is forecast for California, Zontos said, “but it’s just a little bit of something to pick up the winds.” She said the combination of winds and dry vegetation and low humidity levels was the perfect recipe for rapid wildfire spread.

The cause of the fire is under investigation, Cal Fire said.

(sfgate.com)

NO RAIN IN SIGHT FOR CALIFORNIA IN OCTOBER AS HIGH PRESSURE RIDGE DOMINATES

by Greg Porter

October has kicked off with high temperatures across California and the Southwest, and that trend looks set to continue into mid-month, though we’ll see the usual fluctuations in intensity and microclimate effects. It’s clear that the first two weeks of October will feature above-average temperatures and little to no chance of precipitation across the state.

Beyond mid-month, the forecast becomes less certain — similar to the pattern of uncertainty noted in the September weather outlook, and that’s no coincidence.

Hot and dry through middle of the month

The ridge of high pressure responsible for the record-breaking heat across California and the Southwest is holding strong. In fact, it’s expected to restrengthen slightly and shift back over California this weekend and into the second week of October.

Across California, that means interior areas will continue to see temperatures in the 90s and possibly even triple digits. Coastal areas will be cooler in the 70s and 80s, but still above average for this time of year.

There are signs that the ridge of high pressure will strengthen and move closer to California next weekend. That could help push places such as San Francisco into the 90s once again for a day or two.

A series of strong storms will continue to develop over the Gulf of Alaska, somewhat enhanced by remnants of typhoon energy from Asia traveling across the Pacific. However, these storms are likely to stay well north of California, deflected by the persistent high-pressure ridge, keeping any meaningful precipitation away.

The second half of October

After next weekend, model agreement on the large-scale weather pattern diminishes. The trend suggests the ridge of high pressure will continue to dominate over California, keeping temperatures above normal and rain chances low.

Later in the month, the storm-generating gyre in the Gulf of Alaska will probably start to exert more influence over California, increasing the chance of storm systems sliding through the state. These storms, combined with the strong pressure gradient from the high-pressure ridge over the interior, could ramp up winds, especially across elevated terrain, leading to an enhanced fire weather risk. Fuels remain very dry, and the state has seen no significant rain in recent weeks.

Why all of the chaos?

The atmosphere across the Northern Hemisphere has been unusually chaotic and unpredictable for several weeks. There have been numerous instances where major weather models disagree on the placement and intensity of key weather features like high-pressure ridges and hurricanes.

Some of this uncertainty is expected: Autumn is a transitional season where tropical heat and polar chill clash, resulting in inherently unpredictable conditions. But the recent atmospheric chaos has been particularly abnormal.

A missing La Niña and an atmospheric traffic jam

One reason for the abnormality and challenging forecasts is the delayed emergence of La Niña. The climate pattern was initially forecast to be in place by early October but has yet to be confirmed. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s next La Niña update is due next week.

Another factor contributing to the chaos is the atmospheric blocking occurring across the Northern Hemisphere. The atmosphere typically flows from west to east, but blocks occur when that flow is disrupted for extended periods, often leading to anomalous weather events and lower predictability. And there have been a lot of strong blocking patterns recently that will almost certainly impact the development and location of the Pacific storm track as we head into winter.

For now, it remains unclear how active the storm track will be and how much rain California can expect in later October and into November.

(sfchronicle.com)

THE PRIMARY ITEM on Monday’s Point Arena Special City Council Meeting Agenda for October 7, 2024 is: Presentation, Measure X Sales Tax Ballot Measure.” The meeting starts at 6pm in the Council Chambers at 451 School Street in Point Arena. For more info go to: pointarena.ca.gov.

PRESCRIBED BURN PLANNED ON LOWER TEN MILE CREEK NORTH OF LAYTONVILLE

The Eel River Recovery Project, in collaboration with local landowners, and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), is planning a prescribed burn on lower Tenmile Creek in the coming weeks. This restoration burn will treat approximately 30-acres of forest understory fuels as part of an ambitious multi-year watershed-wide forest health project.

The Lower Ten Mile Creek project area is located near Hwy 101 approximately 5 miles north of Laytonville. Burning will begin as soon as favorable weather and humidity conditions allow for safe and effective operations. During the burn, smoke may be visible in the area. The burn will be assisted by qualified Burn Boss Scot Steinbring of Torchbearr with permission from CAL FIRE, pending an approved burn plan, burn permit, smoke permit, and cooperative weather conditions. Resources committed to prescribed burn include 2 engines and 20 ground personnel.

Funding for the Tenmile Creek Watershed Forest Health Project was provided by CAL FIRE’s Forest Health Program as part of California Climate Investments (CCI), a state-wide program that puts billions of Cap-and-Trade dollars to work reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, strengthening the economy, and improving public health and the environment — particularly disadvantaged communities. The cap-and-trade program also creates financial incentives for industries to invest in clean technologies and develop innovative ways to reduce pollution. CCI investment projects include affordable housing, renewable energy, public transportation, zero-emission vehicles, environmental restoration, more sustainable agriculture, recycling, and much more. At least 35% of these investments are located within and benefitting residents of disadvantaged communities, and low income households across California. For more information, visit the California Climate Investment website at: www.calclimateinvestments.ca.gov.

ERRP is interested in recruiting volunteers to participate in controlled burns to assist with meeting their current ambitious prescribed fire goals, and to help the community build a stewardship corps that can assist with cooperative controlled burns as a way of maintaining forest and grassland health into the future.Anyone with interest should contact Alicia Bales at 916-595-8724. ERRP Managing Director Pat Higgins may also be contacted, if the public has questions about the project at 707 223-7200.

Look for alerts to burn activity on the ERRP Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/EelRiverRecovery/.

UKIAH CITY COUNCIL WAFFLES ON PROP 36

On Wednesday, October 2, 2024, the Ukiah City Council discussed a resolution to support California’s Proposition 36, a citizen-led effort to address crime, overdoses, and homelessness statewide. City officials highlighted potential benefits for Ukiah, while council members expressed concerns about its similarity to ineffective policies from the war on drugs. Despite this, public commenters unanimously supported the measure, seeing it as a necessary tool to combat quality of life issues in Ukiah.…

https://mendofever.com/2024/10/04/ukiah-wants-new-law-to-reduce-crime-city-council-disagrees/

UKIAH CITY COUNCIL - ‘MISSING MIDDLE HOUSING’ DISCUSSED

by Justine Frederiksen

In an effort to add more of what city planners describe as “Missing Middle Housing,” the Ukiah City Council Wednesday approved introducing an ordinance making changes to the Ukiah City Code that are intended to encourage the creation of homes designed to accommodate more than one family.

“The domination of single-family neighborhoods and the trend towards building single-family homes geared toward higher-income earners has further contributed to the housing issues in the city,” Planning Department staff noted in the latest Ukiah General Plan, which Planning Manager Jessie Davis told the council was adopted in December of 2022, and includes “a number of goals, objectives and action items to facilitate” the creation of Missing Middle Housing.

As examples of the Missing Middle, Davis showed pictures of duplexes, fourplexes and multiplexes, and explained that the ordinance the City Council was being asked to introduce Oct. 2 would “allow for more unit types, further reducing setbacks where appropriate, and facilitating commercial activities at an appropriate scale, by allowing for ‘Mom & Pop Grocery Stores’ in the residential zoning districts,” which he described as helping to create more walkable neighborhoods.

“Most importantly, we’re fulfilling the obligations and the mission of the General Plan, which is creating actionable tools to allow people to create the vision we foresaw when we wrote that document,” he continued, describing the overall goal as setting the table “to allow for more incremental and more resilient growth in the city of Ukiah, where that growth is appropriate.”

The City Council approved introducing the ordinance Wednesday, which Davis said “amends the city’s residential zoning districts (R1-R3) allowing duplexes by-right, and making changes to the zoning district’s development standards to encourage more effective use of existing lots by reducing parking and setback requirements. In conjunction with recent updates to the City’s Lot Line Adjustment and ADU regulations, the City has set the table to allow for a variety of infill development projects.”

And while the latest housing project nearing completion on East Gobbi Street, the large Acorn Valley Plaza along Village Circle, isn’t technically Missing Middle housing, Davis said it does serve “as a strong example of infill development. Missing Middle housing supports the creation of housing options that fall between single-family homes and larger multi-family complexes, like Acorn Valley. Infill development can come in many formats, but it is essentially new residential, commercial or mixed-use construction in existing neighborhoods with access to public infrastructure and proximate to nearby amenities, like grocery stores.”

Davis also pointed out that the complex, built by Danco, “was one of the first projects to utilize the City’s Housing Trust Fund and Objective Design and Development Standards. The project is currently undergoing final building and public works inspections, and we expect completion in the coming weeks.”

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

MAYOR PETERS RESPONDS TO HIT PIECE

Editor,

Mr. Hart, co-owner of the Skunk Train, has fully endorsed two of my opponents. That is his right. So we all know where this is coming from.

However, Mr. Hart, need I remind you we are meeting in mediation negotiations next week to try and resolve our differences out-of-court. I think we can both agree on that course of action. As a negotiating partner at the table during ongoing mediation, you don’t negotiate through the press. Ever. In most negotiations, there is language actually preventing either side from doing so. I’m surprised Mr. Hart, co-owner of the railroad, failed to realize this. In view of this fact, his team certainly doesn’t want to be negotiating in bad faith. His attack piece is an obvious political ad thinly veiled as an Op-Ed. Moreover, it is directed at a member of the upcoming mediation team. Namely me.

On behalf of the constituents I represent, it is better not to comment on Mr. Hart’s allegations through the media. I will be negotiating in good faith. I’ll respectfully decline any further comment on his misrepresentation of the candidates forum other than to suggest to readers that they should watch it for themselves if they haven’t already.

This town is not for sale.

Lindy Peters

Fort Bragg

JADE TIPPETT:

PS. RE: Chris Hart’s diatribe on Lindy Peters-

After the train guys secured ownership of the mill site, instead of coming to the people of Fort Bragg in an open process, asking how can we work together to develop the site for the best interest and future of the community, they carpet bombed the community with their Little Stinker PR salvo, a Knott’s Berry Farm Choo-Choo Land hookah dream that totally failed to account for the land use covenants attached to the property. When the city and the people recoiled at this, they doubled down with a second proposal to pave the whole mill site with loops of train track like an amusement park, to maximize their claimed immunity from local and state law due to federal preemption. That’s when the city put the brakes on. Later, the Coastal Commission joined in.

The Brown Act places stringent limits on what may be heard in closed session (Government Code Sections 54956-57). One of those topics is litigation or pending litigation. The train guys could have asked that the negotiations be held in open session if they wanted, but given Chris’s kvetching about Lindy’s slip, clearly they don’t. My take is that keeping any real discussions behind closed doors is part of their strategy to split off the city administration and City Council from the people, keeping the people ill informed and easily propagandized by missives like Chris Hart’s above.

The real issue here is power, whether a couple of wealthy outsiders get to colonize a community economically, expecting to be welcomed as saviors, as colonizers often do, ignoring the autonomy and agency of the community following the devastation of the mill closure. Or whether the Fort Bragg community should have a real say from the beginning about what happens to the most valuable third of the city’s land area.

The train guys are still operating under the assumptions of neoliberalism and shareholder value capitalism, both of which say that the owner of property should have absolute license to dispose of the property as they will. Concerns of the common good, rights of nature or other stakeholders, the people of Fort Bragg that will be impacted, are irrelevant to the quest for maximum return on investment. In case they haven’t gotten the memo, neoliberalism is over. Stakeholders and the common good are coming back into favor.

PPS. Re: the new Skunk Train Lawsuit-

Mendocino Railway’s latest lawsuit against the City of Fort Bragg is a replay of a 2013 lawsuit filed by Georgia Pacific against the City of Fort Bragg. Mendocino Railway’s goal now, like Georgia Pacific’s back then, is to offload financial responsibility for the toxic cleanup of the Fort Bragg mill site onto the City of Fort Bragg. Both lawsuits allege that dioxins and furans found on the mill site originated from the City of Fort Bragg, not the sawmill. Georgia Pacific, however, dropped their lawsuit entirely in 2014, rather than release documents the city had filed for under discovery. (See https://savenoyoheadlands.com/#snr-v-fb)

We do know that from 1971 to 2002 Georgia Pacific distributed fly ash containing dioxins and furans from the sawmill’s co-generation burner as soil amendments, fertilizer for lawns and gardens, given to employees and property owners, including school districts. Long term Fort Bragg residents still talk about hosing fly ash off their cars every morning. Any dioxins and furans found in current city runoff are most likely residual from that long term pollution by Georgia Pacific. (See https://savenoyoheadlands.com/#off-site-contamination)

Likely driving this new legal foray by Mendocino Railway is the Department of Toxic Substances Control’s unhappiness with their plan to permanently fence off the mill pond where the toxins are found and the runoff flows through, instead of cleaning it up. Mendocino Railway has lost every other lawsuit brought so far. My hope is that the city counter-sues and forces release of those documents Georgia Pacific kept hidden.

LEE EDMUNDSON

I used to see my urologist over here in her office on Sequoia Drive in Fort Bragg. She was in residence there twice a month. Whenever I saw her, my payment flowed through our Coast Hospital coffers.

She no longer attends here on the Coast. To see her, I have to drive over to Ukiah. Thus, my payments for my visits no longer flow through the Coast Hospital, but through Ukiah’s facility of Adventist Health.

I strongly suspect this factor — looked at over the entire sphere of medical practice of Adventist Health’s tenure running our coast hospital — suggests a very good reason the Coast Hospital runs at such a deep deficit: Adventist doesn’t send its medical practitioners over to the Coast, instead requiring us (the patients) to drive over there to Ukiah.

Thus bleeding the Coast Hospital’s revenue stream dry. Someone tell me I’m mistaken here.

To take another point (as long as I’m on this): The Coast Hospital District’s Board should be lobbying full-time and strongly for Sacramento to push back the Seismic Standards requirements to 2040, or beyond. We don’t need a new hospital, only our existing one retrofitted. The cost/plus benefit analysis should plainly show this to be true.

Finally, the Hospital Board should be lobbying Sacramento and Washington DC to pass legislation nationwide to subsidize rural Health Care Facilities, i.e. Hospitals. What’s going on here on the Mendocino Coast is occurring throughout rural America. Duh! As long as Medical Care in America is driven by the profit motive — as Adventist Health’s is — there will always be a shortfall of dollars. Health Care should not be considered a money making enterprise.

My 2-cents worth…

MIKE GENIELLA:

UKIAH'S PALACE HOTEL STILL SITS ROTTING. The owner refuses to act to prevent further damage, and City Hall administrators and the City Council publicly keep mum while talking among themselves behind closed doors about the fate of a downtown landmark. A summer ago, a new local investor had a promising plan to revive the Palace based on a design by noted San Francisco preservation architects. That effort collapsed when the current owner Jitu Ishwar, refused to accept a lower price and unexpectedly turned to a new group who hoped to piggyback a local tribe's ability to secure public funds to demolish the town's most historic building. That touted effort, widely promoted in the local community, collapsed after high-ranking state officials wondered if the tribe wasn't being used as a “mule” to secure public money for a private venture. Still, there are examples of what can happen when people and communities get serious. Here's another: "Take a peek inside this 112-year-old Fresno hotel as it finally reopens to the public"

HELL, YOU'D BE HAPPY TOO IF YOU JUST SCORED A COUPLE HUNDRED THOU FROM MENDOCINO COUNTY. NOBODY'S IN CHARGE OVER THERE SO WATCH US RUN THIS BABY UP.

DEAR INTERESTED PARTIES….

Correction to Date in Message for Cancellation of Planning Commission Meeting (10-17-24)

Dear Interested Parties,

The cancellation notice for the October 17, 2024, Planning Commission meeting is now available on the department website at: https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/departments/planning-building-services/boards-and-commissions/public-hearing-bodies/public-hearing-bodies#!

Please contact staff if there are any questions.

Thank you

James Feenan

feenanj@mendocinocounty.gov

ED NOTES

A READER WRITES: “My friend asked me to be her plus-one at a wedding today. I had never met the happy couple. When we arrived, most of the guests were already there. I wore attire that I thought was suitable for the occasion. I was sorely mistaken. In contrast with the white satin pants and blouse I had chosen, the other guests were milling around in cut-off shorts and matching plastic cups filled to the brim with Coors Lite. My friend and I (the only people of color in attendance) dutifully took our seats and waited for the ceremony to begin. The preacher asked us all to stand. Then, to the tune of Marvin Gaye's “Let's get it on” the wedding party emerged. After the ceremony, the groom yelled, “Let's Get it On” and chuckled to himself. That was our cue to go. Let the gringos party.”

IS THERE a more encouraging sight than the summer fog lying in gray wait at the Navarro end of the Valley, its breezes beating back the afternoon heat of Philo and Boonville, its soft damp settling over us as we sleep? So, like, where is it?

THE SHARP RISE in foreclosures in California is getting a lot of attention, but not much attention is being paid to the reasons, beyond vague references to “sub-prime” lending practices, i.e., no money down with escalating interest rates higher than those charged by the Mafia. Lots of people don’t read the fine print. Or if they do, they don’t understand what they read. The exploited certainly don’t do the math when they buy their house on terms cynically made fleetingly affordable to them. A year later, the homeowner’s payments can be so high as to literally force them out onto the street. In these cases the lenders and their realtors are co-conspirators. They know the victim is in over his head, but hey, they tell him, you can afford it. One fairly standard sales pitch pushed supposedly low interest deals, but buried in the paperwork were not only additional fees, but fees which applied repeatedly, and oddly triggered interest rate hikes which were at least 2% over conventional bank rates -- not the bargain loans they were advertised to be.

IF YOU'RE LIKE ME, and fortunately for you you aren't, you're mystified at the economics of the wine business, which now resemble the tulip mania which swept Europe’s speculating classes in the early 17th century. Investors pumped up the value of the bulb to fantastic prices before someone said, “You know, purty as tulips are, they sure as heck ain't worth ten thousand bucks each.” The bubble burst and several thousand Dutchmen jumped off their windmills. Palatable as wine can be when it’s very late and you’re out of beer and whiskey, how is it possible that Duckhorn, the people who famously painted redwood fencing white at their Philo Winery, could persuade a group of investors to fork over $250 million for it?

According to the Chronicle back in the day, “Duckhorn, meanwhile, with more than 300 acres of vineyards in Napa and Mendocino counties, had been exploring a possible sale since March, with a price tag rumored to exceed $250 million. Neither side would discuss the financial terms of the deal beyond saying that the shares held by Duckhorn's 80 individual investors had been replaced by a 'controlling investment' from GI Partners.” Further evidence that we're definitely in tulip mania territory was this statement, complete with the “V” word, from Margaret Duckhorn: “They seem to have the same vision and commitment that we have, and that was very important to us.” In a world dominated by people who whitewash redwood, Ms. Duckhorn is undoubtedly correct.

FROM the August 3rd, 1907 edition of the Mendocino Beacon, as once compiled by Debbie L. Holmer “About 3 o'clock last Tuesday afternoon, the stage leaving Ukiah for Wilbur Springs, Blue Lakes and Upper Lake was held up by a lone bandit and the eighteen passengers were lined up alongside of the conveyance and relieved of their jewelry, money and other valuables. A few minutes later, a second stage from Ukiah, bound for Potter Valley and carrying about ten passengers, came into view, and the robber proceeded to line up these people along the roadway with the occupants of the first stage, and appropriate all that they possessed of value. After making sure that he had secured all the valuables the passengers possessed, he ordered them to proceed on their way up the mountain road. The robber then disappeared in the direction of Ukiah and later held up two freight wagons, taking all the money the drivers possessed, and also some provisions. He then escaped into the brush.”

BLACK BART, whose real name was Charles C. Bolton, successfully worked the Emerald Triangle for nearly a decade until, at his last job in Calaveras County, the usually scrupulous highwayman left behind a piece of his shirt with an identifying San Francisco laundry mark on it. Bart’s uncharacteristic carelessness led the police to him and he was soon packed off to San Quentin for five years. Following his release, the famous hold-up man was never heard from again.

LOCAL HISTORIANS may be able to tell us about a daring Ukiah High School teacher who was believed, at the time, to occasionally supplement his teacher’s pay as a stage robber. I've only seen one reference to the teacher in the histories of the area, and that was a vague one in the context of his much more renowned contemporary. A huge boulder near Willits, known as the Black Bart Rock or Bandit’s Rock, was once the hiding place of the enterprising bandit who, traveling on foot from the Sierras to the Coast Range, robbed a known total of 27 stage coaches between 1875 and 1883, a few of them on the long, lonely stretch of road between Cloverdale and Willits, but there were other bandits out there, too, among them it seems a Ukiah teacher. Bart, by the way, never fired a shot in all his robberies.

CIRCLE UP!

Make A Circle Film Screening - October 11th

Dear Felow Mendocino County Community Members,

The Mendocino County Office of Educations's Early Learning and Care Departmeent is hosting a FREE screening of the celebrated documentary film, Make A Circle https://makeacirclefilm.com/*, *on October 11th from 6:00-8:00 pm. There will be screeingins in two locations: Fort Bragg's Town Hall and at the Ukiah Valley Convention Center.

At this event, we will be treating our Early Educators and Caregivers as our VIPs! They are invited to dress up a la Oscars. They will enjoy snacks, preferred seating, and having their picture taken in front of a starry backdrop.

Join me and many others who will be attending one of these two screenings. The film is moving and eye openeing. Don't miss it!

You can register to attend here: https://docs.google.com/forms/u/0/d/1U-rePNp8QjPbg12pMGMm69bFeyFZbFkceVf6Tgy9okU/viewform?pli=1&pli=1&edit_requested=true.

Nicole H. Glentzer

SPACE PRESENTS MOLLY BELL’S HYSTERICAL MUSICAL

When your life becomes a medical mystery, why not turn it into a musical?

Fresh off its development at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s nationally recognized New Works Festival, SPACE is thrilled to bring you the latest chapter in the development of a new musical, Molly Bell’s Hysterical: a feel-good, laugh-out-loud exploration of what it’s like to ride the unpredictable rollercoaster of living—and performing—amid the chaos of an undiagnosed “something.” Make that TWO “some-things”. Oh, and Molly’s also living in this musical. That she’s writing. While she’s performing it - before a live audience. No wonder she’s wondering *how *to be sick. Told with cheeky humor, die-hard determination, and half a dozen kickass musical numbers, Molly Bell’s Hysterical is a tale of optimism, joy and resilience reminding us that sometimes it’s the humor, not the hardship, that gets us through.

“Molly Bell’s Hysterical is both a humorous and thought-provoking musical take on the artist’s journey. With her gorgeous singing voice and crystal clear acting precision Molly Bell embodies several distinct characters who delight the audience and will make you laugh and think more deeply about life and the choices we make along the way.” —Theatreworks Audience Member

THE CIRCUS IS COMING TO BOONVILLE

Internationally acclaimed Flynn Creek Circus returns to Boonville, with a super star line up in their all new show, ‘The Heavy Lift!’. Come enjoy the spectacle under the big top tent October 24th through 27th.

Featuring wild stunts and mind blowing skills, ‘The Heavy Lift’ is an original, film noir detective story. Flynn Creek Circus’ distinctive presentation marked by high comedy, modern creativity, and playful absurdity promises to exceed expectations.

Follow the lovable Private Detective as he fumbles into the case of the missing pigeons. The capable Secretary, a band of rowdy newsies, and the terrifyingly polite Building Inspector are some of the vibrant characters in this moody mystery. Adults will find layered metaphor, children will giggle at cartoonish antics, and everyone will be stunned by the skill and polish of the acrobatic cast. Flynn Creek Circus’ enchanting performances dazzle with unforgettable, animal-free entertainment.

In addition to the family friendly showings and the interactive children’s camp program, Flynn Creek Circus also presents the wildly popular ‘Adults Only Show’ boasting outrageous acts, dark comedy, and an infamous party atmosphere. Check the website for select adults only showtimes.

Spectators for all showings are invited to the tent to experience the magic up to 30 minutes before each show. The event will offer beer, wine, and light concession for purchase and include a 15 minute intermission during the two hour show.

Tickets for Flynn Creek Circus are now available for purchase online at flynncreekcircus.com. Individual ticket prices start at $18 or table reservation options start at $81 for two attendees. Early booking is encouraged for this highly anticipated event.

For more information, press inquiries, or interview requests, please contact Blaze Birge at circus@flynncreekcircus.com. High-resolution images and media resources are also available upon request.

Site Location, Dates and Times:

ANDERSON VALLEY BREWING COMPANY LAWN
BOONVILLE, CA 95415

October 24th – 27th

THURSDAY, OCT 24 AT 7PM (*OPENING NIGHT, ALL TABLES $10 OFF)
FRIDAY, OCT 25 AT 7PM (ADULTS ONLY 21+)
SATURDAY, OCT 26 AT 4PM
SATURDAY, OCT 26 AT 7PM (ADULTS ONLY 21+)
SUNDAY, OCT 27 AT 1PM
SUNDAY, OCT 27 AT 4PM

THEATRICAL EVENT AT THE PHILO GRANGE

Join us for 'Time Piece: A Play on Time' at the Anderson Valley Grange in Philo, on November 8, 9, 15, and 16 at 7, doors at 8.

‘Time Piece’ is a dialogue-less play set to music, with a story and score by local playwrights Jainned Boon and Daniel McDonnell, and visual direction by local artist Katie Williams.

Accompanied by a live band, the characters explore, through pantomime, the arrival of a new clock in their small town and the ways in which it impacts their lives.

Come early to enjoy live music before the show, and take the opportunity to visit one of Anderson Valley’s many excellent restaurants.

We look forward to seeing you there!

The GOAT HOUSE players: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61566590854866&sk=about

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, October 4, 2024

BRIANNA BELL, 21, Ukiah. Disobeying court order.

CHERYL CAREY, 60, Hopland. DUI.

MICHAEL FREEMAN JR., 30, Covelo. Vandalism, ammo possession by prohibited person, probation revocation.

CALLUM HENDRY, 33, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, under influence, possession of fireworks without permit.

KIMBERLY JONES, 53, Ukiah. Disobeying court order.

DARRELL PIKE JR., 30, Hopland. County parole violation, resisting.

ALFREDO ROMERO, 36, Hopland. Domestic battery, vandalism, suspended license for DUI, probation revocation.

I must go home periodically

to renew my sense

of horror.

— Carson McCullers

ERIK KIRK, THE SAGE OF GARBERVILLE, NICELY EXPRESSES THE LIB-LAB PERSPECTIVE ON THE LOOMING ELECTION:

President – Kamala Harris – Duh.

I like Harris even though I’m still angry that she allowed herself to be recruited to remove Terrence Hallinan from the SF DA position because he was prosecuting police violence and white collar crime. I do consider her to be, as Michael Harrington coined, “the left wing of the possible.” She is as progressive as one can be and still have a shot at the Presidency. I think she will be effective.

But we consider her opponent who collapsed the economy by mismanaging the pandemic. When he lost the election he attempted to overthrow democracy to remain in power using violent intimidation and other illegal means, and he maintains such a tight control over his party that no Republican can answer the question of who won in 2020 without political risk. Three dozen jurors have found him to be a liar, a rapist, and serial fraudster. Out of a grandiose sense of entitlement he stole boxes of classified documents and refused to give them back until the DOJ was forced to raid his bathroom. If he is not reelected and the case is taken out of the hands of corrupt judges, that conviction will be a slam dunk. He suffers severe delusions.

Why is this even close?

Senate – Adam Schiff

Adam Schiff wasn’t my first choice in the primary. He wasn’t even my second choice. But he’s fine. I appreciated his performance on the January 6 committee. I think he will be an effective advocate and is a huge upgrade from Senator Feinstein.

Steve Garvey was marvelous in that super-team Los Angeles Dodgers infield during my childhood. But I was a Giants fan and I preferred our first baseman. I wish Willie McCovey was still around. I’d probably vote for him if he ran.

State Senate Second District – Mike McGuire

He’s fine. Leads the Senate. Rumors are that he will run for Governor in 26. We could do worse.

Assembly District 2 – Chris Rogers

Santa Rosa Supervisor who made it into the runoff against a slew of Democratic candidates and the lone Republican Michael Greer from Del Norte County. Rogers wasn’t my first, second, or third choice. But he’s genuinely progressive and hopefully won’t follow in the steps of his predecessor by single-handedly blocking universal statewide healthcare. Hopefully he doesn’t neglect the northern portions of the 707 district.

IF THE STONERS CAN…

Editor:

After reading about 7,000 participants at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds setting a world record for the most joints lit at once, I’m left wondering why it’s not OK to smoke a cigarette at any county-owned property yet it’s OK for 7,000 people to light up marijuana at this county-owned facility (“Santa Rosa cannabis festivalgoers set world record for most joints lit at one time,” pressdemocrat.com). This is from Sonoma County’s ordinance: “Smoking shall be prohibited in all enclosed areas owned, leased or operated by the county. Smoking shall be prohibited in all unenclosed areas owned by the county.”

Carole Galeazzi

Santa Rosa

SELF IYAM

Dateline Washington, D.C. October 4th @ 4:06 p.m. EST

It’s a pleasant afternoon at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. , following the weekly 12:10 p.m. Mass in the Basilica’s lower Crypt Church. The daily world news is broadcast in the district, like everywhere else, and yet there is a calm abidance. Less of the emotional “let’s get riled” vibe, and more of the measured, experienced, contextualizing it all in an eternity context. The eternal witness, which is definitive of God, is more pronounced. Have a great weekend everybody. The social security disbursements are in, and the not-yet-reduced amount was received. Also, the California EBT amount was increased, and added to last month’s remaining balance. Am backing up the diet of fried chicken at the homeless shelter with trips to the impressive Whole Foods salad bar on H Street. Not identified with the body. Not identified with the mind. Immortal Self I am!

Craig Louis Stehr

HOTEL WORKERS STRIKE THREE HOTELS IN SAN FRANCISCO

by David Bacon

Over 1500 hotel workers, members of Unite Here Local 2, go on strike against three hotels in San Francisco, demanding higher wages - Westin St. Francis, Hilton and Hyatt Union Square. Strikers picket and beat on buckets and gongs to make noise.

Meanwhile, hotel workers, members of Unite Here Local 2, go into the lobby of the Oakland Downtown Marriott Hotel to tell management they want agreement on a new contract with higher wages. Hotel workers are on strike in many other hotels over the contract demand, including in San Diego, Boston and Honolulu.

Jin Ling Xie, a housekeeper at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square for ten years, said “Going on strike wasn’t an easy decision, but it’s what I have to do for my family. My job at the Hilton isn't enough to pay all the bills, so I'm always worried. My kids are in high school, and I don't know how I will pay for their college. I know that when we fight together, we can win.”…

https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2024/09/02-san-franciso-hotel-strike.html

STATE FILES COMPLAINT AGAINST SONOMA COUNTY WINE COMPANY FOR ALLEGEDLY RETALIATING AGAINST FARMWORKERS WHO ASKED FOR A RAISE

The Agricultural Labor Relations Board complaint contends a contractor for Foley Family Farms fired eight workers after they asked for a raise and started to use their paid sick days.

by Jeremy Hay & Jennifer Sawhney

A state agency set up to protect the rights of agricultural workers has filed a complaint accusing a Sonoma County-based winery giant and one of its vineyard management companies of retaliating against farmworkers who asked for a raise and used their paid sick leave.

The complaint by the Agricultural Labor Relations Board followed its investigation into claims farm laborers made through North Bay Jobs with Justice — a coalition of local groups that advocate for workers — against a vineyard management company used by billionaire Bill Foley’s Foley Family Farms.

The ALRB complaint contends that Calistoga-based Dos Viñas Vineyard Management, LLC, a contractor for Foley Family Farms, fired eight workers after they asked for a $1 per hour raise and started to use their three paid sick days.

The complaint also said the workers’ supervisor — who communicated their concerns to Dos Viñas owner Mariano Navarro — was fired two days before they were.

The initial complaint was filed with the ALRB September 2023 by North Bay Jobs with Justice against Dos Viñas, and later amended to name Foley Family Farms, LLC. It says Navarro “told (the fired workers) that they were being permanently terminated because they did not have a foreman and because Foley requested that the crew be let go."

Following its investigation, the ALRB submitted its complaint against Foley Family Farms on July 30, 2024.

A pre-hearing meeting in the case is scheduled for Oct. 15. The hearing is scheduled to begin Nov. 11 and could take nine days.

“Me siento bien que si esta pasando algo,” Maria Martinez, one of the fired workers named in the complaint, said in Spanish during a recent interview. “I feel good that something is happening,” she told The Press Democrat, adding that the complaint affirmed the workers’ decision to officially press ahead with their objections.

“Debemos de pelear por nuestros derechos,” she said in Spanish — “We should fight for our rights.” — adding that she was seven months pregnant when she was fired, weeks away from taking time off before the end of her pregnancy.

$1 An Hour Raise, Sick Days

Martinez and seven others workers named in the ALRB complaint were hired in May 2023 to prune, harvest and do other grape crop maintenance tasks in Foley Family Farms’ Sonoma County vineyards. They were supervised by Dos Viñas, which was overseen by Foley Family Farms director of wine growing, Brian Malone, the complaint said.

The workers asked their foreman for a raise from $18 an hour to $19 an hour in May 2023, according to the complaint. After meeting with Navarro in June 2023, they were given the raise at the start of July.

In August, the workers jointly decided “they should use sick leave when they were sick” and started to do that, according to the complaint. Navarro complained to foreman Elbin Paz Herrera, telling him to get proof the workers were sick when they called out. However, according to the complaint, “medical evidence is not required” under the company’s policy.

On Aug. 21, 2023, Herrera was fired and on Aug. 23, 2023, Navarro fired Martinez and the other seven workers.

An ALRB attorney said the allegations made in the complaint are not uncommon.

“Many of the complaints (the ALRB) files allege unfair labor practices against agricultural employers for retaliating against workers who raise concerns about working conditions,” said Julia Montgomery, the agency’s general counsel.

She said there are no other ALRB cases against Foley Farms.

Martinez said Navarro asked her and the other workers to return within weeks of firing them, but they refused.

The ALRB complaint seeks to compel Foley Family Farms to take actions to protect their workers’ rights; compensate the fired workers for their economic losses and offer them their jobs back.

TOMMY ORANGE’S OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA INDIANS

by Jonah Raskin

Don’t call them “resilient.” The word implies a quick recovery from trauma or a crisis. Tommy Orange’s fictional Indians don’t make quick recoveries from the trauma of colonization, urbanization, gentrification and commercialization. And don’t call them “vanishing,” either. They and their ancestors haven’t vanished in the long long war that has been fought against them. Not if Tommy Orange has anything to say about the matter. Indeed, he wants nothing less than to change the narrative about the American Indian; to make it synonymous with the American story.

Orange’s first book, There There (2018, Random House)—a Pulitzer Prize finalist—ends with a predictable and an inevitable hail of bullets. It’s bang, bank, bang, a sound that echoes across the Coliseum in Oakland, California, where dozens of Indians have gathered for a powwow. Beginning in chapter one, and then all through the novel, the reader harbors the suspicion that something decisive will take place at the powwow, and indeed it does, right on schedule.

Doom and disaster stalk Orange’s Oakland and haunt his urban Indians. The shooters in the Coliseum are Indians and the wounded are also Indians; it’s a case of red on red violence with lots of blood, though the real killers aren’t Indians; they’re the same forces that have been making war on Indians for hundreds of years.

Orange’s second book, Wandering Stars (2024), doesn’t offer an ending as dramatic, as cinematic or as violent as the finale to There There. Instead of bang, bang, bang Wandering Stars ends with a carefully worded letter written by Lony, one of the main Indian characters, who tells his family members: “May we learn to forgive ourselves, so that we lose the weight, so that we night fly, not as birds but as people, get above the weight and carry on, for the next generations, so that we might keep living, stop doing all this dying.”

Wandering Stars is a battle cry, a prayer, and an indictment. It places Indian addictions in the context of colonialism, assimilation, eradication and genocide.

In that same letter to his family, Lony describes the “old whites who always thought they owned the earth…who’ve always led this country down its hole, to its inevitable collapse.” His words, which surely also express the author’s own sympathies, might resonate with others who aren’t Indians, though probably not with old whites who don’t see the inevitable collapse, but rather future glory. Orange doesn’t aim to please everyone.

Politically speaking, Wandering Stars feels more advanced, than There There. It’s more hopeful and less nihilistic, though it’s fair to say that Orange writes well about violence and about the madness of crowds. In Wandering Stars he goes back into the historical past and writes about Richard Henry Pratt, an officer in the US Army and a longtime superintendent at the Carlisle Industrial School. “Kill the Indian, Save the Man,” Pratt would say. Sounds like genocide to me.

Orange also writes about the massacre of Indians at Sand Creek in Colorado Territory in 1864. It’s also known as the Chivington Massacre; US troops were led by Colonel John Covington. His “body count” was near 600. Whatever the numbers, it was a slaughter.

Orange prefaces Wandering Stars with a quotation from our imperial president,Theodore Roosevelt: “The so called Chivington or Sand Creek Massacre, in spite of certain most objectionable details, was on the whole as righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the frontier.” Orange rightfully resurrects it from the annals of history and reminds readers of a past that Indians have not forgotten.

“Native people were in recovery,” one of Orange’s characters says. “Getting fucked up seemed almost logical.” In his fictional world, in which “healing is holy,” there’s always the alternative: the “bliss of oblivion.” No matter how low they sink, his Indians are always human and not “barbaric” or “uncivilized” as white men like Teddy Roosevelt might call them.

Even Orange’s most damaged characters, such as Tony Loneman, born with fetal alcohol syndrome and a drug dealer, redeem themselves. In There There many of the characters are artists, writers, oral historians and voracious readers. Dene Oxendene collects stories about Native people in Oakland. Edwin Black has an M.A. in comparative literature and Bill Davis, an ex-con and a Vietnam veteran, served a five-year sentence in San Quentin where he read Faulkner, Hunter S. Thompson, Oscar Zeta Acosta and Ken Kesey, the same writers Orange has read.

I heard Orange speak this past summer at the Mechanics’ Institute and Library in San Francisco and I was impressed with his cool. “School kids learn about the Indians and the Pilgrims, but they don’t get an update,” Orange said. He added, “There’s a gap between what it feels like to be a Native and the way we are seen.” Born in Oakland, and an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, he teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Orange grew up in an Evangelical Christian family, he explained, with an Indian father and a white mother; he read and studied the Bible and thought that the end of the world was imminent. After he abandoned the religion into which he was born, he worked in a bookstore and began to read novels, including The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Confederacy of Duncesby John Kennedy Toole, who, he added, “both killed themselves.” Last summer, Orange was reading John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, and, though he described one section, which is about Natives, as “horrible,” he said he was “loving it.”

In Wandering Stars, Orange writes that “to sell anything you wanted to brand it and have a singular name belong to your product alone.” After just two published novels, Orange already has a name for himself, a product and a brand. If and when he writes another novel he will likely set it in Oakland, and populate it with young men without fathers who are often raised by women who aren’t their biological mothers.

In one of the late chapters in Wandering Stars, the narrator explains, “We come from prisoners of a long war that didn’t stop even when it stopped.” He adds, “surviving wasn’t enough. To ensure or pass through endurance text after endurance test only gave you endurance text passing ability. Simply lasting was great for a wall, for a fortress, but not for a person.”

Orange’s Indians are survivors; they are also in recovery from the past and from their own worst addictive habits. Some of them are descendants of Jude Star, one of the stars of the novel, who survived the Sand Creek Massacre.

(Jonah Raskin is the author of Beat Blues, San Francisco, 1955.)

PROP 36 HAS DIVIDED CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATS — BUT MANY ARE REFUSING TO WEIGH IN AT ALL

by Sophia Bollag

Many top California Democrats won’t say how they will vote on the most high-profile issue on state ballots in November — a crime measure that has divided their party.

Spokespeople for Sen. Laphonza Butler, Rep. Adam Schiff and Vice President Kamala Harris did not respond to repeated questions from the Chronicle about how they plan to vote on the measure this week. Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber will not weigh in on the measure because of their official roles administering the election, their spokespeople said.

Nathan Click, Bonta’s spokesperson, said the only ballot measure where the attorney general has taken a position this year is Proposition 3, which would formally repeal a long-defunct ban on gay marriage in the California Constitution.

Spokespeople for Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson and Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara also did not respond to the Chronicle’s questions. Earlier this week, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao declined to take a clear position during an interview with news station KTVU.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan came out as early Democratic supporters. Gov. Gavin Newsom has emerged as the most prominent opponent of the measure, but most of his fellow statewide elected officials have avoided taking positions on it. Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis and state schools chief Tony Thurmond declined to say how they will vote during a forum for 2026 gubernatorial candidates over the weekend, with Kounalakis saying she wanted to keep her vote “private.”

Among California’s eight elected statewide officials, Treasurer Fiona Ma is the only one who has endorsed the measure, her spokesperson Steve Maviglio said. Controller Malia Cohen has sided with Newsom in opposing it. Sen. Alex Padilla has also come out against the measure.

The measure in question, Proposition 36, would roll back parts of California’s landmark 2014 sentencing law, which was passed by voters. The 2014 law downgraded drug possession and thefts worth less than $950 to misdemeanors. It intended to divert money from locking up low-level offenders into rehabilitation programs, but critics say it went too far and emboldened thieves.

Prop 36 would eliminate the $950 threshold for a third theft, meaning someone caught stealing three times could be charged with a felony, regardless of the value of the merchandise stolen. It would do the same for a third drug possession charge. It would also increase jail time for organized retail theft and includes provisions to compel people with multiple drug possession convictions into treatment, though nonpartisan analysts have said it would cut funding from treatment programs.

Newsom and other opponents say the measure would set the state back by locking more people in jail and prison, diverting more money into incarceration and away from the treatment programs Prop 36 supporters say they want.

“It’s about mass incarceration, not mass treatment,” Newsom told reporters during a press conference last month. “What an actual insult it is to say it’s about mass treatment when there’s not a dollar attached to it.”

Supporters of the measure acknowledge that it would drive up costs to the state but have argued California needs to crack down on drug possession and retail theft. They say there aren’t enough consequences for people who steal and who use drugs.

“Too many Sacramento politicians have attempted to dismiss the pleas of local officials seeking common sense solutions to address the crisis of drug overdoses, theft and homelessness plaguing our communities,” Mahan wrote in a statement last week.

A recent poll conducted from last August through early September by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found that the measure had support from 71% of likely voters. The poll found 85% of Republicans, 73% of independents and 63% of Democrats supported it. A poll conducted in September by researchers from several Southern California universities found a lower but still significant 58% of likely voters support the measure.

The issue has also divided the Democratic mayors of California’s largest cities. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken have joined Breed and Mahan in endorsing the measure. Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg has come out against it.

While Mahan has emerged as a leading proponent for the measure, traveling across the state to campaign for it, Democrats who oppose the proposal have taken a lower profile. Newsom hasn’t contributed any of his considerable war chest to the effort, according to campaign finance records. He has said he doesn’t have plans to aggressively campaign against it, though he eagerly excoriates the measure anytime reporters ask him about it.

Although Democrats are divided over the measure, Republicans are not.

Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin, has been a vocal supporter of the measure. His congressional campaign has reported doing $45,000 worth of campaign work to support it. State Sen. Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, and Rep. Vince Fong, R-Bakersfield, have each contributed $20,000 from their state campaign accounts. State Sens. Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, and Brian Jones, R-Santee, and Assembly Member Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, have also made significant contributions.

The primary campaign committee supporting the measure also reported contributing $500,000 to the California Republican Party last month. A spokesperson for the campaign did not immediately respond to a question about what the contribution was for.

(SF Chronicle)

THE GREAT UN-DEBATE

by Jeffrey St. Clair

This week’s vice-presidential debate, one of the most tedious and dull in US history, was praised by the punditocracy for its civility. Is civility in politics what we want when the current government is arming a genocide and the rival campaign wants to arrest 15 million people and deport them?…

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/10/04/notes-from-a-phony-campaign-the-great-un-debate

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Hard to believe the degree to which narcissism is running this country. Give to other nations, while our own country is bankrupt, and cannot "afford" to provide aid to its own people in response to injurious, murderous natural disasters. It's disgusting, it's deplorable and it's as evil-intentioned as an administration can get. I wonder what would happen, if this REAL news were shared with all the apathetic, idealistic, clueless and naive, who seek "change," yet can't figure out for themselves that Harris represents the status-quo of the past 4 years of struggle, and then some.

SATURDAY'S LEAD STORIES, NYT

Israel Expands Its Attacks Against Hezbollah in Lebanon 

As Israel Attacks, Many in Lebanon Feel Dragged Into Someone Else’s War

A Michigan father was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, his family said.

This is what game theory can show about the threat of an Israel-Iran war.

WHAT IN THE BLUE HELL IS A BIDEN DEMOCRAT?

by Dave Zirin

The Democratic consultant class—the immortal swamp things of D.C.—only ever seem to have one election-year idea: pitch your campaign to the political center. In 2024, this means trying to win over what are being called “Cheney Democrats”—whatever the hell that means. This strategy apparently requires ignoring your base on domestic issues and horrifying it on foreign policy by funding Israel’s genocide. In our current polarized political world, this is electoral suicide.

The Harris-Walz ticket is running a campaign rooted in the fantasy that there is a centrist wing of the GOP appalled by Donald Trump. For this to work, Trump would need to be an outlier, and a significant section of the GOP would need to be looking for an alternative.

But those “reasonable” Republicans are gone, if they even ever existed. Liz Cheney lost her re-election run (against a Trumpist stooge) by 30 points, the second greatest loss of an incumbent member of Congress in US history. The modern-day GOP base is proudly nativist and out for blood. Republican politicians aren’t offering health care or higher wages. They are instead spending this election season drooling for a pogrom against a small Haitian community in the midwest. (Former Senate majority leader Trent Lott, who once was roundly rebuked for praising Strom Thurmond’s segregationist campaign for the White House, isn't punished but promoted in today's GOP.) Republicans now would sooner gargle kerosene than challenge their own racism and sexism to vote for Kamala Harris. Some of these folks may have been Obama voters, but if they haven’t already become Democrats, they certainly aren’t now.

The Harris-Walz campaign clearly shares Biden's belief that this Trumpian “fever will break” in the GOP if the elephants lose, a position that requires a self-abasing level of naïveté. Even if Trump is humiliated at the polls or his arteries finally cry mercy, the Trumpian GOP—fueled by invented grievance—will undoubtedly continue to call the 2024 election stolen. If the desultory VP debate showed us anything, it is that there is a generation of Trumps—the slimy JD Vances of this world—waiting out in the wings.

The center did not hold. It’s gone, and you will therefore not attract new voters by welcoming war criminals like Dick Cheney or four-star generals like Stanley McChrystal who oversaw the cover-up of Pat Tillman's killing in Afghanistan. The Harris-Walz campaign boasted about such endorsement on social media, and now Liz Cheney and Harris stand together and rally in battleground Wisconsin at the birthplace of the Republican Party.

The same people who shouted with joy—yes, joy!—when Biden stepped down and Harris and Walz stepped up are now recoiling. Harris needs the base to turn out, and we already know they are hemorrhaging votes, especially in battleground states like Michigan, by arming Israel’s genocide. Young people will stay home or vote third party, because they are being told that there are no electoral avenues for them to change a morally abhorrent policy. In Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, about 35% of Democratic voters say they would be more likely to vote for the Democratic nominee if the person supported an arms embargo, compared to just 5 percent being less likely to vote, according to a poll in August conducted by the Institute for Middle Eastern Understanding. In an October poll, among Arab Americans deemed most likely to vote, Trump is leading Harris 46 to 42.

I have no doubt the Harris-Walz team knows that it is repelling a section of a generation and many Arab American voters. And we know now that Biden says in private what so many critics have been saying in public: that Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is refusing a ceasefire and launching a regional war in part to hand Trump the presidency. And yet, still a Democratic administration arms him. Netanyahu is humiliating Biden for the world to see, and Harris won’t break from Biden’s Israel policy. Facing such an obvious sucker punch, the Harris campaign insists on sticking out its chin.

This is not incompetence. As Dan Denvir of the podcast The Dig tweeted, “What we’re seeing is not so much Democratic Party elites ignoring the anti-war demands of their constituents so much as a coordinated reaction against the party’s anti-war base. They want to silence and demobilize their base so party elites can pursue endless Israeli war abroad.”

It’s a betrayal of every person terrified of another Trump term who is working to make sure that never comes to pass. The Harris campaign is repelling its base, because it refuses to adopt positions that could cost them those all-important votes held at the Cheney compound in Wyoming or among Upper East Side fundraisers.

There is a different campaign that could have been run, a campaign that the Democratic Party does not feel built for: one that broke early from Biden on Palestine, one that opposed the execution of Marcellus Williams, one that didn't run to the right on immigration, opening the door for Trump/Vance to take the issue to an even more rabid place. It is easy to blame their campaign manager—an Uber vice president and DC technocrat David Plouffe—for trying to robotically triangulate Harris’s positions. The campaign is clearly afraid of pissing off Zionists—of both the Jewish and Christian variety—and of raising people’s expectations with a bold economic vision. They are playing prevent defense instead of going on offense. They’re hoping that Trump will say enough crazy things and that Vance will make more people hate the sight of his face, and they’ll eke out a victory. Walz, the ex-defensive coordinator, should know that the only thing a prevent defense prevents you from doing is winning. This is a base election. And the Harris-Walz campaign feels way off base.

Burlington County, New Jersey, 1938 - Girl picker at cranberry bog. Three-fourths of the cranberry pickers are children. (Source: Farm Security Administration Arthur Rothstein photographer)

OCTOBER SURPRISE

by James Kunstler

“Normally, Western politics gives us actors who are trying to play the role of politicians. Walz is like an actor who is trying to play the role of an actor trying to play the role of a politician. Almost everything about him is just a few degrees off-centre. He’s like what would happen if you endowed Chat GPT with a human body and sent it off to campaign for political office.” —Eugyppius on Substack

Tuesday night’s veep palaver could be the last time you see the frightened animal known as Tim Walz for the duration of the campaign. He’s famous for his wild body language — jumping around on stage, flapping his arms — but this time the action was all concentrated in his face. You saw his eyes bug out, dart left and right, as if something fierce was coming at him (it was), and more than a few times, his head jerked around sideways so hard you wondered if it might do a whole three-sixty. His mouth, a pain-inflected frown in repose, turned down so deeply it looked like he had sashweights hanging from the corners. Altogether, his face said more than the embarrassing mishmash of mangled English that came out of it. I expect to see a few Tim Walz masks on the little goblins begging for Kit-kat bars the night of October 31.

That same obvious void of conviction you see on Tim Walz’s labile face is on display with the feds’ response to mass tragedy in the Appalachian hurricane zone. It was a point in my book, The Long Emergency, that our national government would become increasingly impotent, ineffectual, and incompetent as conditions worsened — and now here it is. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), could not bestir itself to aid stricken citizens around the flood-ravaged region in North Carolina and Tennessee. Sec’y Mayorkas of Homeland Security said that FEMA was out of money which, in this season of political weirdness, is especially weird, seeing as how the nation’s fiscal year began Oct 1, and Congress’s continuing resolution for funding US agencies should assure that FEMA’s checkbook is full. What was up with that?

Well, everybody and his uncle has heard by now that FEMA (and many other agencies under Mayorkas’s DHS) commits tons of money to pamper the millions of mutts from foreign lands sneaking over the US border, with lots of assistance from NGO cut-outs funded by your tax dollars, who marshal groups of aliens south-of-the-border for the crossing, and then fly or bus them around our country for the special purpose of distributing them in swing voting districts to then coordinate with other NGOs devoted to registering non-citizens to vote in order to “harvest” their ballots. Quite an operation. Completely lawless and corrupt. And official!

So, no aid for you, baskets of deplorables, shivering in the dark in your hills and hollows of Appalachia, your houses splintered, scant chattels lost, and your beloved hound-dogs carried away in the roaring torrents. The money that might have helped you begin to recover from the complete devastation of your lives is paying for Guatemalans to bunk in the Roosevelt Hotel and order-in quesadillas and churros, and refill their government-issued debit cards so they can afford a few nice things as they wait for mysterious others to cast ballots in their names.

This is the work of your Democratic Party, the party of chaos, party of the Woke mentally ill, party of wrecking the country, of America’s end times. And you’re going to vote for more of it? Of course not. And despite the attempts to knock him out of the arena with scores of utter bullshit lawfare cases, and efforts to shoot him dead, Mr. Trump keeps coming at them, an implacable, relentless force, the true Golden Golem conjured up by their catamite news media. Their inability to destroy him has wrecked their minds.

One surprising October surprise is advanced by whistleblower Mike McCormick on Substack (Midnight in the Laptop of Good and Evil). Mr. McCormick was White House stenographer under Presidents Bush II, Obama, and Trump. His job was to transcribe meetings, speeches, and interactions between major political figures. He was the proverbial fly-on-the-wall for years and years. He has seen and heard a lot and still hears a lot from people who know a lot. He says the Obama-Biden-Harris faction of the Deep State blob is anti-Israel and that Israel understands what this means. He says that Benjamin Netanyahu has told “Joe Biden” (or, let’s say, told errand-boys Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan) that if the blob engineers a phony victory for Kamala Harris, he will blow up the oil fields in Iran and the anti-Israel Democrats will have to pick up the pieces.

There it is, raw power politics, like so much meat on the table. “Joe Biden” cannot control Bibi. “Joe Biden” is too far gone and two weak, and Israel does not aim to let itself get wiped off the map, as Iran’s leadership never tires of saying. The blob, McCormick says, has to ask itself: does it help rig the election for Harris or stand down on all its ballot harvesting and other trickery and actually allow a real election to roll out? Surprise! Now, take your Kit-kat bar and go home.

EDWARD HOPPER

by Alain de Botton

The collective loneliness brings to mind certain canvases by Edward Hopper, which, despite the bleakness they depict, are not themselves bleak to look at but rather allow the viewer to witness an echo of his or her own grief and thereby to feel less personally persecuted and beset by it. It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.

In 1906, at the age of 24, Hopper went to Paris, where he discovered the poetry of Baudelaire. He was to read and recite the Frenchman’s work throughout his life. The attraction is not hard to understand: the two men had shared interests in solitude, in city life, in modernity, in the solace of the night and in the places of travel. In 1925, Hopper bought his first car, a second-hand Dodge, and drove from his home in New York to New Mexico. From that point on he spent several months on the road every year, sketching and painting along the way, in motel rooms, in the backs of cars, outdoors and in diners. Between 1941 and 1955, he crossed America five times. He stayed in Best Western motels, Del Haven cabins, Alamo Plaza courts and Blue Top lodges. He was drawn to the sorts of places whose neon signs blink “Vacancy, TV, Bath” from the side of the road, offering beds with thin mattresses and crisp sheets, large windows overlooking car parks or small patches of manicured lawn, the mystery of guests who arrive late and set off at dawn, brochures for local attractions in the reception area and laden housekeeping trolleys parked in silent corridors. For meals Hopper would stop at diners, at Hot Shoppes Mighty Mo Drive-ins, Steak ‘N’ Shakes or Dog ‘N’ Suds, and he would fill up his car at gas stations displaying the logos of Mobil, Standard Oil, Gulf and Blue Sunoco.

And in these ignored, often derided landscapes, Hopper found poetry: the poésie des motels, the poésie des petits restaurants au bord d’une route. His paintings (and their resonant titles) suggest a consistent interest in five different kinds of traveling places:

Hotels: Hotel Room (1931), Hotel Lobby (1943), Rooms for Tourists (1945), Hotel by a Railroad (1952), Hotel Window (1956), Western Motel (1957).
Roads and Gas Stations: Road in Maine (1914), Gas (1940), Route 6, Eastham (1941), Solitude (1944), Four-Lane Road (1956).
Diners and Cafeterias: Automat (1927), Sunlight in a Cafeteria (1958).
Views From Trains: House by the Railroad (1925), New York, New Haven and Hartford (1931), Railroad Embankment (1932), Toward Boston (1936), Approaching a City (1946), Road and Trees (1961).
Views Inside Trains and of Rolling Stock: Night on the El Train (1920), Locomotive (1925), Compartment C, Car 293 (1938), Dawn in Pennsylvania (1942), Chair Car (1965).

Loneliness is the dominant theme. Hopper’s figures seem far from home; they sit or stand alone, looking at a letter on the edge of a hotel bed or drinking in a bar; gazing out the window of a moving train or reading a book in a hotel lobby. Their faces are vulnerable and introspective. Having perhaps just left someone or been left themselves, they are in search of work, sex or company; adrift in transient places. It is often night, and through the window come the darkness and threat of the open country or of a strange city.

In Automat (1927); a woman sits alone drinking a cup of coffee. It is late and, to judge by her hat and coat, cold outside. The room seems large, brightly lit and empty. The decor is functional, with a stone-topped table, hard-wearing black wooden chairs and white walls. The woman looks self-conscious and slightly afraid, unused to sitting alone in a public place. Something appears to have gone wrong. She unwittingly invites the viewer to imagine stories for her, stories of betrayal or loss. She is trying not to let her hand shake as she moves the coffee cup to her lips. It may be eleven at night in February in a large North American city.

Automat is a picture of sadness; and yet it is not a sad picture. It has the power of a great melancholy piece of music. Despite the starkness of the furnishings, the location itself does not seem wretched. Others in the room may be on their own as well, men and women drinking coffee by themselves, similarly lost in thought, similarly distanced from society: a common isolation that generally has the beneficial effect of lessening the oppressive sense within any one person that he or she is alone in being alone. In roadside diners and late-night cafeterias, hotel lobbies and station cafes, we may dilute our feeling of isolation in a lonely public place and hence rediscover a distinctive sense of community. The lack of domesticity, the bright lights and anonymous furniture may come as a relief from what are often the false comforts of home. It may be easier to give way to sadness here than in a living room with wallpaper and trained photos, the decor of a refuge that has let us down.

Hopper invites us to feel empathy with the woman in her isolation. She seems dignified and generous, only perhaps a little too trusting, a little naive — as if she has knocked against a hard corner of the world. Hopper puts us on her side, the side of the outsider against the insiders. The figures in Hopper’s art are not opponents of home per se; it is simply that in a variety of undefined ways, home appears to have betrayed them, forcing them out into the night or onto the road. The 24-hour diner, the station waiting room and the motel are sanctuaries for those who have, for noble reasons, failed to find a home in the ordinary world — those whom Baudelaire might have dignified with the honorific poets.

As the car slips along a winding road through the woods at dusk, its powerful headlamps momentarily light up whole sections of meadow and tree trunks — so brightly that the texture of the bark and individual stalks of grass can be made out in a clinical white light better suited to a hospital ward than to woodland — and then dip them back into the undifferentiated murkiness as the car rounds the corner and the beams turn their attention to another patch of slumbering ground.

There are few other cars on the road, only an occasional set of lights moving in the opposite direction, away from the night. The car’s instrument panel casts a purple glow over the darkened interior. Suddenly, in a clearing ahead, a floodlit expanse appears: a gas station, the last before the road heads off into the longest, densest stretch of forest, and night completes its hold over the land — Gas (1940).

The manager has left his cabin to check the level on a pump. It is warm inside, and light as brilliant as that given off by the midday sun washes across the forecourt. A radio may be playing. There may be cans of oil neatly lined up against one wall, along with sweets, magazines, maps and window cloths.

Like Automat, painted 13 years before it, Gas is a picture of isolation: a gas station stands on its own in the impending darkness. But in Hopper’s hands, the isolation is once again made poignant and enticing. The darkness that spreads like a fog from the right of the canvas, a harbinger of fear, contrasts with the security of the station itself. Against the backdrop of night and wild woods, in this last outpost of humanity, a sense of kinship may be easier to develop than in daylight in the city. The coffee machine and magazines, tokens of small human desires and vanities, stand in opposition to the wide nonhuman world outside, to the miles of forest in which branches crack now and then under the footfalls of bears and foxes. There is something touching in the suggestion — made in bold pink on the cover of one magazine — that we paint our nails purple this summer, and in the imprecation above the coffee machine to sample the aroma of freshly roasted beans. At this last stop before the road enters the endless forest, what we have in common with others can loom larger than what separates us.

Hopper also took an interest in trains. He was drawn to the atmosphere inside half-empty carriages making their way across a landscape: the silence that reigns inside while the wheels beat in rhythm against the rails outside, the dreaminess fostered by the noise and the view from the windows — a dreaminess in which we seem to stand outside our normal selves and to have access to thoughts and memories that may not arise in more settled circumstances. The woman in Compartment C, Car 293 (1938) seems in such a frame of mind, reading her book and shifting her gaze between the carriage and the view.

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is before our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, and new thoughts, new places. Introspective reflections that might otherwise be liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape. The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralyzing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand. Thinking improves when parts of the mind are given other tasks — charged with listening to music, for example, or following a line of trees. The music or the view distracts for a time that nervous, censorious, practical part of the mind which is inclined to shut down when it notices something difficult emerging in consciousness, and which runs scared of memories; longings and introspective or original ideas, preferring instead the administrative and the impersonal.

Of all modes of transport, the train is perhaps the best aid to thought. The views have none of the potential monotony of those on a ship or a plane, moving quickly enough for us not to get exasperated but slowly enough to allow us to identify objects. They offer us brief, inspiring glimpses into private domains, letting us see a woman at the precise moment when she takes a cup from a shelf in her kitchen, then carrying us on to a patio where a man is sleeping and then to a park where a child is catching a ball thrown by a figure we cannot see.

On a journey across flat country, I think with a rare lack of inhibition about the death of my father, about an essay I am writing on Stendhal and about a mistrust that has arisen between two friends. Every time my mind goes blank, having hit on a difficult idea, the flow of consciousness is assisted by the possibility of looking out the window, locking on to an object and following it for a few seconds, until a new coil of thought is ready to form and can unravel without pressure.

At the end of hours of train-dreaming, we may feel we have been returned to ourselves — that is, brought back into contact with emotions and ideas of importance to us. It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.

Hotel rooms offer us a similar opportunity to escape our habits of mind. Lying in bed in a hotel, the room quiet except for the occasional swooshing of an elevator in the innards of the building, we can draw a line under what preceded our arrival; we can overfly great and ignored stretches of our experience and reflect upon our lives from a height we could not have reached in the midst of our everyday business. We may be subtly assisted in this endeavor by the unfamiliar world around us — by the small wrapped soaps on the edge of the basin, by the gallery of miniature bottles in the minibar, by the room-service menu with its promises of all-night dining and by the view onto an unknown city stirring silently 25 floors below us.

Hotel notepads can be the recipients of unexpectedly intense, revelatory thoughts, taken down in the early hours while the breakfast menu (“to be hung outside before 3am”) lies unattended on the floor, along with a card announcing the next day’s weather and the management’s best wishes for a peaceful night.

The value we ascribe to the process of traveling, to wandering without reference to a destination, connects us, the critic Raymond Williams once suggested, to a broad shift in sensibilities dating back to some 200 years ago, whereby the outsider came to seem morally superior to the insider:

“From the late 18th century onwards, it is no longer from the practice of community but from being a wanderer that the instinct of fellow-feeling is derived. Thus an essential isolation and silence and loneliness become the carriers of nature and community against the rigors, the cold abstinence, the selfish ease of ordinary society.” — Raymond Williams, The Country and the City

If we find poetry in the service station and the motel, if we are drawn to the airport or the train carriage, it is perhaps because, despite their architectural compromises and discomforts, despite their garish colors and harsh lighting, we implicitly feel that these isolated places offer us a material setting for an alternative to the selfish ease, the habits and confinement of the ordinary, rooted world.

TONY MANDARICH

There's probably never been a bigger meathead than Tony Mandarich.

At 6'6" and 330 pounds with 11% body fat, Mandarich absolutely crushed his NFL combine workout and got himself selected in the top 5 in the 1989 NFL draft- ahead of 1st ballot Hall of Famers Emmitt Smith & Deion Sanders.

On the field you would never know it, but on paper Mandarich was a monster who was faster than one of them and stronger than both of them.

Mandarich ran an official 4.65-second 40 yard dash time (which was faster than Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith), benched 225lbs x 39 (his max was 545lbs), had a 30” vertical leap, broad jumped over 10'3".

If you don't know American football, those are insane numbers. Even today's best offensive tackles at that height and weight, like Ryan Hayes (6'6 298lbs) ran 5.18, and he although he hit 30", he didn't even attempt the bench. On the other end, Agree Vorhees stands 6'6" 310lbs, benched 225lbs 38x & had a vert of 29", but he's slow.

Comparing him against the World Strongest Man guys of that era, the 1989 WSM winner was 6'3" 330lb Jamie Reeves, who was much fatter and slower than Mandarich, but slightly stronger- he benched 601. Mandarich was about the same size & strength as Jon Pall, though, and if he'd gone into strongman they'd have had some titanic battles, with or without Kaz in the mix.

Rather than trying his hand at the mostly unpaid TV game show sport of WSM, Mandarich treated his body like a penny stock - he pumped up for the combine with the knowledge he'd bust once the drug testing in the NFL got him off the gear. Making matters worse, Mandarich stopped lifting twice a day, stopped eating 7 meals a day (totaling 12-15k calories), & dropped 40 pounds, so he lost a ton of strength, and fizzled out as arguably the biggest draft bust of all time.

100 YEARS AGO, YANKEES LEGEND BABE RUTH PLAYED A GAME AT THE BASE OF MT. SHASTA

by Matt LaFever

Mount Shasta looms large over Dunsmuir, a town carved from the Northern California wilderness. Born of the Golden State’s railroad age, it became a major stop along the Central Pacific Railroad in the 1880s.

Located in Siskiyou County, Dunsmuir and nearby towns like McCloud, Yreka and Weed are frontier towns forged by hard-charging gold prospectors, railroad workers and lumberjacks. These people worked hard and played hard. Specifically, baseball. On their few precious days off, communities from around the region would watch local baseball teams go head to head, dressed in their Sunday best: men in ties, women in dresses.

One particular late October matchup became the stuff of legend. On Oct. 22, 1924, Babe Ruth, the Sultan of Swat, and his New York Yankees teammate Bob Meusel stepped off a train and into Dunsmuir history to play a game for the locals.

The legendary Babe Ruth at bat in Dunsmuir, Siskiyou County, on Oct. 22, 1924.

Two days after the game, the Dunsmuir News wrote, “If any doubt ever existed in the minds of baseball fans of Siskiyou county regarding Babe Ruth’s widely-heralded ability to hit ’em over the fence, that doubt was 'ruthlessly' knocked into a cocked hat Wednesday when the ‘King of Swat’ gave an exhibition of hitting in the baseball park here that provided thrill after thrill for the fans.”

The Big Bam Hits The Road

Ron McCloud, 83, is considered the historian of Dunsmuir, having written not one but two books on the town. McCloud and his wife, Pat, are well-known in town as longtime proprietors of Dunsmuir Hardware, a store that first opened 130 years ago. After 47 years, the McClouds retired in January 2023 for a well-deserved change of pace, though they remain mainstays in the community.

McCloud spoke extensively with SFGate earlier this fall about the Great Bambino’s barnstorming stop in his tiny NorCal town nearly a century ago.

In October 1924, the baseball season ended, but unlike the previous year, the Yankees didn’t make it to the World Series. During the offseason, Ruth and Meusel planned to go on a barnstorming tour across America, a common practice for players at the time. McCloud told SFGate that the duo planned to travel across America, joining teams that would visit smaller cities and towns to play games with paid admission.

Ruth was under the watchful eye of Christy Walsh, his private agent, who was tasked with managing the larger-than-life slugger’s public affairs and finances. Ruth was legendary for his hard drinking, and Walsh was determined to keep this offseason professional, McCloud said.

Meanwhile, baseball was navigating turbulent waters. Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the first commissioner of professional baseball, was fiercely dedicated to restoring the sport’s integrity after a series of scandals and allegations of fixed games. Given Ruth and Meusel’s reputation for revelry, Landis was concerned about the duo venturing out on their own, McCloud recounted.

So, Walsh took charge and devised an ambitious plan: a grand tour across the United States, covering over 8,500 miles by train. The tour would not only feature exhibition games but also include a comedy routine, ensuring a mix of entertainment for fans nationwide while keeping a careful watch over the iconic players.

A Dunsmuir resident, businessman and promoter named Frank Talmage caught wind of the upcoming exhibition tour and saw a golden opportunity, McCloud explained. Knowing that the players would be traveling by train from Portland, Oregon, to San Francisco, Talmage realized they would likely pass through Dunsmuir. He reached out to Walsh to propose that the duo make a stop in the town for an exhibition game.

Walsh agreed to the exhibition but at a cost of $1,000, McCloud told SFGATE. Determined to make it happen, Talmage approached the Dunsmuir Lions Club, an international service organization founded in 1917, with chapters worldwide. He explained the funds would be used to bring Babe Ruth and Bob Meusel to town. The Lions Club was supportive but could raise only $250. According to McCloud, Talmage paid the remaining $750 from his own pocket.

The game was on.

Game day

On Tuesday, Oct. 21, 1924, the Yankees arrived in Dunsmuir. The next morning, they played the game at the Dunsmuir ballpark. Tickets were priced at a dollar for adults and 25 cents for kids, and an estimated 900 people turned out to watch. McCloud described how teams were quickly assembled, with Ruth managing one and playing on the other. Legend has it that Ruth approached the opposing pitcher and said, “Pitch right over the plate. People didn’t come here to watch me walk; they came here to watch me bat.”

And bat he did. Ruth hit two home runs during the game, though the rest of the final stats have been lost to history, McCloud said. There are whispers within the Dunsmuir community that someone might have recovered them, he said, but that remains unconfirmed. What is known is that despite Ruth’s impressive performance, his team did not emerge victorious. (That is, the team he played for. Given he was managing the opposing team, Ruth, ever the slugger, was bound to win either way.)

A page in the San Francisco Examiner when Babe Ruth played baseball in Dunsmuir, Calif., 1924.

The Oct. 24, 1924, edition of the San Francisco Examiner said, “It made no difference to the King of Swat whether there were only 5,000 fans on hand at Dunsmuir Wednesday, he worked just as hard to please them as though he were performing before the eyes of 60,000 at Yankee stadium.” The day after the game, McCloud explained, the locals in Dunsmuir went all out to show their appreciation. They took the baseball legends on a fishing expedition to the Klamath River, where they caught some steelhead trout.

That evening, the Dunsmuir Lions Club hosted a special dinner for them, followed by a public meeting at a local hotel. There, Ruth delighted fans by signing autographs, and the community presented a championship cup to the Dunsmuir High School football team, McCloud added. After this warm welcome, Ruth and Meusel continued their journey to San Francisco.

Later on, McCloud told SFGate, Ruth penned a heartfelt letter to “Bones” Coon, a player from the Dunsmuir baseball team. In it, Ruth expressed his fondness for the town, writing, “We do not know how to tell you what a wonderful time we had in Dunsmuir. When it comes to beautiful girls, wonderfully fine fellows, and the real two-fisted spirit of California, Dunsmuir gave us more laughs, hospitality, thrills, and memories than any place between Broadway and Shasta.”

Work Hard, Play Hard

For Mike Giacomelli, the modern incarnation of Dunsmuir’s baseball past was always the annual slow-pitch softball tournament. Now 53, Giacomelli and his wife Chris were born and raised in Dunsmuir. They grew up steeped in stories of Dunsmuir’s early days, when the economy depended heavily on the locomotive and local mills. People rarely traveled, and life revolved around work during the week and family and sports on the weekends. In the summers, every town had a baseball team, and “they took the games seriously,” Giacomelli told SFGATE.

The softball tournament, which kicked off in the 1970s, grew from Dunsmuir’s early baseball heritage. As the years went by, Giacomelli watched as the tournament, once a keystone feature of Dunsmuir’s Railroad Days, “fizzled out,” with participation and enthusiasm waning. After peaking in the ’80s, it started to lose momentum by the late ’90s and limped along until “COVID presented an opportunity for a reset,” Giacomelli said.

In May 2022, Giacomelli and a dedicated crew of community members rolled up their sleeves and restored Dunsmuir’s ballpark, including the original grandstands where people once watched Babe Ruth play. “The ballpark was dilapidating after years of neglect,” Giacomelli said. “And we just said, ‘Let’s do this.’ So, we got after it.”

Giacomelli told SFGate that while he and his wife were making moves to reinvigorate the tournament, Dunsmuir High School teacher Jake Makeel was cooking up similar plans himself. They caught wind of each other’s plans, joined forces and brought the community together to host the tournament this past June at the newly restored Dunsmuir ballpark. The tournament organizers invited players from the glory days to throw the first pitch, keep score and announce the games. “The tournament of today is now back to what it used to be, and they’re appreciative of what we have done,” Giacomelli said.

Dunsmuir’s revamped softball tournament attracted 16 teams in 2024, up from 14 in 2023 and 12 in 2022. Giacomelli said the event is now filling up local hotels and restaurants, a boon for the small NorCal town’s economy.

This year’s tournament celebrated the 100th anniversary of Babe Ruth’s visit to Dunsmuir. The tournament featured murals of the Yankees icon and a chain saw carving of him made by local artists. Cornhole boards with portraits of him were raffled off to benefit Dunsmuir High School.

Babe Ruth and Bob Meusel, in their Yankees uniforms, pose with players from the Dunsmuir and Mount Shasta baseball teams.

One hundred years after the Sultan of Swat came to town, Giacomelli still hears people debating his performance at the plate. He said there is a “story of Babe Ruth hitting a home run all the way to the river, though he was a lefty, so he would have had to go opposite field for that to happen.”

McCloud, the local historian, said there is a monument to the 1924 Babe Ruth exhibition game near the rehabilitated Dunsmuir ballpark. A bronze plaque mounted on a large boulder reads, “Baseball legend ‘Babe’ Ruth and his New York Yankee team, Bob Meusel, played an exhibition game with local teams here October 22, 1924.”

For most, Babe Ruth’s stopover in Siskiyou County remains a footnote in baseball history. But for the town of Dunsmuir, as Giacomelli put it: “These kinds of stories become legends.”

(SFGate)

CLEM ENLOE, 84, let a photographer take her picture in 1937 in Great Smoky Mountains National Park in exchange for a box of snuff, which is poking out from behind her blouse. A tough bird, she refused to observe the park’s fishing regulations and instead fished year-round and with worms, which supposedly were prohibited. “Are you a little park man or a big park man?” she’d snap. Without waiting for an answer, she’d say, “Big park man or little park man, you son of a bitch. I fish when I please, winter or summer. See that can of worms?”

Courtesy Great Smoky Mountains National Park Archives

22 Comments

jim barstow October 5, 2024

So Kunstler says that FEMA is sneaking immigrants in, moving them to swing states, registering them to vote then harvesting their votes. You disdain anti-vaccine crap so why do you print this? It isn’t opinion, it’s demonstrably false. It reinforces the lies created to serve an anti-immigrant right wing. Kunstler has long departed from the realm of a valid, opposing view.

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- Jacob October 5, 2024
  
  I find Kunstler’s rants to be amusing. They are obviously fiction and I think it is admirable that Bruce will publish different viewpoints and supports everyone’s First Amendment Rights, which includes the right to make things up and present a false narrative. Most of us can recognize that when we read it so I see no reason for any media source to censor people just because they might be a little crazy of biased. Some media outlets choose to fact check things and Bruce doesn’t always do that but the readers, like you, often do in their comments. I do the same thing for posts about local issues that contain nonsense people might believe. I think the AVA is working just fine, that is why many of us choose to start our days reading the latest posts in Mendocino County Today.
  
  Reply
  - Chuck Dunbar October 5, 2024
    
    The problem at this point in the good old USA is that so many folks cannot, as you clearly can, discern fiction from reality. Too many believe some or all of Kunstler’s junk, and that of Alex Jones and all the others. And of course Trump. Our nation has in effect been infected with this stuff, a lot of it internet-related. Now, as we see at times even in the AVA, reality is confused with lies and untruths. I agree that censorship is not the answer–education and the teaching of critical thinking is part of the solution, perhaps.
    
    Reply
    - Chuck Dunbar October 5, 2024
      
      I’ll add that editorial discretion is not the same as censorship. What is fit to print and what is essentially trash, not supported by facts and evidence, is a matter of the former. Editors can do as they seem fit. First Amendment rights are not revoked if an editor says “No way” to material submitted. The author can go elsewhere to express views. This right, relating directly to government interference of speech and expression, is a very important one, but the right is often discussed in loose terms and out of context.
      
      Reply
Jacob October 5, 2024

RE Jade Tippet’s Crazy Rant #1232 About the Skunk Train and the City of Fort Bragg

This is more complete BS from Jade. We all understand you don’t like the Skunk train but your account is so hyperbolic and ridiculous you have no credibility left. The unfortunate thing is that many of us agree that some of what the Skunk train has done is objectionable but you add in a lot of nonsense that detracts from what could be a valid point. I have attended every City meeting, including the public comment portions of each closed session and can attest that your account is absolute nonsense and propaganda. The Skunk (and several community members including myself) have requested that the City hold a few open session meetings about the litigation so the public can be informed about some of the specifics. The City has chosen to do everything behind closed doors not the Skunk, which was probably the advice of the city’s legal counsel and is not anything the Skunk Train has any influence over. I read Chris Hart’s op-ed and it is factually accurate. Even if you find the Skunk train to be in the wrong in a lot of what they have done–none of which is even remotely as you have described in your comment–that doesn’t mean Lindy isn’t also a problem. Both sides of an issue can be in the wrong. The full planning process was open and involved the public. Your totally false narrative is complete BS. The current version of the proposed land use map is the result of the City’s public planning process and the Skunk Train proposed the same thing as the community through the City’s process developed. The map in the Little Stinker showed the same land use plan as the maps developed by Marie Jones at the City. There is no difference and this is easily shown with records readily available on the City’s website and online documents archive. There is no “paving over” or theme park in the proposals. Your claim that the land use plan didn’t account for the land use covenants is also totally false. The only portion of the land proposed for any development with land use covenants is right around where the Skunk Train already operates and the proposed land uses are in line with the covenants. That is why there isn’t any residential uses in between Laurel and Pine streets for a few blocks west of Main Street. Do you literally just make up nonsense to try to justify your positions that are actually not based on any real facts? it looks like it.

The only diatribe is your comment. Lindy is an ass and a bully and is pushing an unsupported narrative as part of his re-election campaign. He literally has nothing to offer other than creating a false narrative that the two most popular challengers he has are allegedly just straw men for the Skunk so we need to vote for him or else. You appear to be carrying his water in that, which is unfortunate since some people probably believe your lies and misrepresentations. I recall you said you had to resign from the health care district board in part because the stress (due to very valid criticism, IMO) was threatening your mental health and sobriety. This crazy comment makes me wonder if you are drinking too much because it comes across as the rantings of a drunk person issuing a tirade. What adult refers to a train as a choo-choo? Seriously Jade, maybe you need to take a break and check yourself into some sort of retreat or recovery center to try to come back down off your high horse and live in reality.

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Jacob October 5, 2024

Re Jade Tippet’s “Opinion” About the New Stormwater Lawsuit between the Skunk and City

The Skunk Train likely won’t have access to the GP records so the City would need to get them from GP. Also, although superficially similar to the earlier litigation, this case is distinct in that it only deals with alleged contamination that has occurred since the settlement date. DTSC hasn’t expressed any formal opinion regarding the Skunk’s plans regarding the dam and mill pond so far as I know so your speculation regarding that aspect is not accurate. I agree that the dioxins originated from the mill operations and power plant on the mill site but that doesn’t make the Skunk Train legally responsible for the spread of the toxins around town and then the subsequent contamination distributed throughout the storm drain system and onto their property and into the ocean. The City has liability related to how their storm drain system operates and if it contributes to contamination as a result. If the City loses the current case, I imagine they could sue GP for indemnity as the ultimate origin of the toxic substances but maybe not and they wouldn’t have any cause of action against the Skunk Train to countersue since the Skunk didn’t create the pollution or distribute it around town. As the current owners of the mill site property, the Skunk has liability for cleanup of toxins on their property that originated and stayed on the property but they don’t carry the liability from all the operations of the prior mill or for off-site contamination. A lot of the contaminated fly ash was purposefully distributed to non-mill site property and was done with the property owners’ permission so this is not a straight-forward issue as Jade suggests.

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George Hollister October 5, 2024

“IF YOU’RE LIKE ME, and fortunately for you you aren’t, you’re mystified at the economics of the wine business, which now resemble the tulip mania”

At some point, the same can be said for all economies including newspaper economies. The wine business is experiencing a 2% annual decline in US wine consumption, after 60+ years of annual increases. US alcohol consumption across the board is facing the same reduction in demand, with the sole exception of tequila. This is what I read in the WSJ a few months ago. According the California Farm Bureau, the immediate need to get wine production in balance with demand requires the removal of 50,000 acres of wine grape production in California. But that wine grape acreage reduction doesn’t address the long term trend of declining US alcohol consumption. There is nothing mystifying about it.

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- Bob Abeles October 5, 2024
  
  If CA needs to remove 50,000 acres of wine grapes, let’s start with those in Anderson Valley. And please, let them take their infernal fans with them.
  
  Reply
Kirk Vodopals October 5, 2024

While I appreciate his name (my brothers name is Erik, mine is Kirk), no supposed “sage” would ever give a an even tacit thumbs up to the likes of Adam Schiff. Must be the liberal soup of Garberville that allows someone such leeway.
The uniparty has no heroes.

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- Ehlee Heller October 5, 2024
  
  👍🏻 Adam Schiff..my hometown Rep. who called me, on the fone, to ask me for my vote. I appreciated that 👍🏻.
  
  Reply
  - George Hollister October 5, 2024
    
    Adam Schiff will be elected as California’s very own elected embarrassment in the Senate. There will be no way for us to hide from that.
    
    Reply
    - Lazarus October 5, 2024
      
      +1
      Be well,
      Laz
      
      Reply
Chris Hart October 5, 2024

Skunky Stuff / MAYOR PETERS RESPONDS TO HIT PIECE

Once again, Peters is being loose with facts. In the header he refers to himself as mayor. While he was mayor in the past, it is misleading to use a former title in this way when someone else now holds the position.

His very first sentence is false. I have not endorsed any candidate, nor has our company. Further, I have not made any donations to any candidate, nor has our company. I find his accusation especially troubling since last weekend his campaign person Laura stated I was buying candidates, and he now writes the town is not up for sale, implying that I’m doing something wrong in this election. If he has a shred of information to back his slanderous accusations, share it.

For a person with 22 years of on the Council, I appreciate his public service, but using fake scare tactics to bolster a campaign is beneath him. My only involvement in this election is to respond to the attacks he has thrown at me for the past 2 years. That is my right. My comments are available in yesterday’s AVA and are all in response to his statements.

He writes how we are about to meet and how I should not negotiate in the press, but he did that very thing on Spt 19! He misrepresented a string of significant facts. Further, he said he can’t reveal protected information but then proceeded to do it anyway. Apparently in an attempt to bolster his image, he criticized my company with false information. So its okay for him to go on tv and negotiate in the press on the 19th, but I can’t respond a week later? For a person who likes to say how we should play by the same rules, I think he should listen to his own advice.

Reply
- Chuck Wilcher October 5, 2024
  
  Hart writes: “I have not endorsed any candidate, nor has our company. Further, I have not made any donations to any candidate, nor has our company. ”
  
  You or your company may not have explicitly donated to any candidate in the upcoming election, but your Sacramento based PR team has endorsed them. Most folks would say it’s the same thing.
  
  Reply
  - Chris Hart October 5, 2024
    
    Chuck, i think you are referring to the Alliance for a Better Fort Bragg. I am one member of this group comprised of several dozen locals that was formed earlier this year to address the town’s business climate. We did make endorsements after inviting all 5 candidates to respond to a questionnaire. Those endorsements were announced at a meeting on the 18th. I did ask my guy to help with the press release and that meeting. This was the start and end of our involvement in the election. The group is not doing anything else in the election. I hardly think this endorsement is going to be a big factor in the election.
    
    Reply
  - Jacob October 5, 2024
    
    Chuck, that isn’t true at all. The Alliance for a Better Fort Bragg, which is not run by anyone other than its members with an assist getting the website, etc., set up by Kabacheck, made its endorsement based on the views of the members themselves. The so-called PR firm wasn’t involved with that. I am not a member but my mother is as are several of my friends and statements like yours are both false but also insulting to the good people who are actually taking their time to create a civic group to try to make Fort Bragg a better place. You might as well be Kunstler for posting this, there is about as much truth to what you write as what he includes in his rants.
    
    Reply
    - Chuck Wilcher October 6, 2024
      
      “…which is not run by anyone other than its members with an assist getting the website, etc., set up by Kabacheck”
      
      Is Kabacheck performing all of this out some sort of benevolence? If not, who is cutting the checks?
      
      Reply
John Kriege October 5, 2024

Chris Hart says the Railway hired Kabateck Strategies to do public communication work, and then he asked Kabateck to help organize Alliance meetings. I guess that work is the “etc.” in “website, etc.” And Chris Hart calls Kabateck, “my guy.” It’s hard for me to see Mr. Hart’s involvement in the Alliance as being just another one the members.

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Zanzibar to Andalusia October 5, 2024

The Cardinals are 27th against the run so far this year. Looking forward to a Shanahan classic with heavy use of Jordan Mason up the middle and in the zone run. Still waiting for breakout games by Aiyuk and Samuel. Suspect we won’t see Christian McCaffery for the remainder of the year.

Betting odds for SF to win the Superbowl this year are now twice what they were before the season began (+300 to +650). I don’t indulge, but it’s interesting to watch the odds swing. The Chiefs are favored, followed by the 49ers, Ravens, Bills, and Lions.

LFG

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Jim Armstrong October 5, 2024

How about including your password with the NYT links?

Reply
- Ehlee Heller October 5, 2024
  
  Go to your library’s website ‘Search for’ box. Type NYT…follow prompts for remote access.
  
  Or
  
  Go to your library’s main menu, and look for ‘Newspapers, and Magazines’.
  
  Reply
Bob Abeles October 5, 2024

Ode to a Racoon Dying in the Road

Could I capture the moment?
Seal it, sign it, dispose of it.
Plans fall weightless,
No appeal, no horse trade, no prayer.

I dreamed I read a message once
Written in a language of termite holes beneath the bark
Of a rotten log
Traced in dust it read…
No, I cannot remember it.

The cup is drained
Lips are dry.
A whispered word
I cannot comprehend it.

Reply