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STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): High clouds & maybe some fog this Monday morning on the coast with 47F. Maybe a sprinkle this morning then the usual sky cover mix rest of the week. Our rains for later this week seem to be fizzling out?
FURTHER NORTH: Moderate to heavy periods of rainfall through this morning along the coastal range in Del Norte and northern Humboldt counties, with lighter amounts for southern Humboldt and western Trinity. With lingering showers through this afternoon. Dry weather return on Tuesday and continues through late week. More active and unsettled weather is expected this weekend and early next week as a series of fronts moves through. (NWS)
PARTISAN POLITICS IN NONPARTISAN ELECTIONS
by Malcolm Macdonald
In 1986 California voters supported Proposition 49 by a 56% to 44% margin. Both the state senate and assembly had approved the idea behind the proposition by more than a two-thirds majority. Prop 49 amended the state constitution by prohibiting political parties or party central committees from endorsing candidates for nonpartisan elected positions. Thus Prop 49 became part of the Constitution of the State of California within Article II, section 6(b).
In 1991 ten California voters sued to overturn Prop 49, claiming it violated the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit agreed. The case was then appealed to the United States Supreme Court, where the Ninth Circuit's ruling was reversed.
Five years later, in 1996, in a case brought by the California Democratic Party, the U.S. District Court for Northern California ruled that Prop 49 violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. Within the ruling, the key statement proved to be, “California's desire to 'level the playing field' for potential candidates by suppressing political parties' speech is not a compelling interest because it is entirely at odds with the First Amendment.”
The U.S. District Court ordered the state to stop enforcing Prop 49. The prelude to the District Court ruling stems from the California Democratic Party's support for Delaine Eastin for Superintendent of Public Instruction, a nonpartisan office, in the June 1994 primary election. Anticipating a challenge the CA Dem. Party filed suit in mid-May 1994 while the Party sent out an endorsement mailer with Eastin's name on it. The California Republican Party responded twelve days later with a request for a temporary restraining order (TRO) from Sacramento Superior Court. Two days hence, the Democratic Party applied to the U.S. District Court for a TRO of their own. By August the U.S. District Court granted the Democratic Party a preliminary injunction, thus allowing them to openly endorse Eastin in the run-up to that year's November election. This set the groundwork for the U.S. District Court to cite the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech…” as well as the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The opposition argument, and the core idea behind Prop 49, is that nonpartisan elected offices were created to avoid the potential corrupt processes caused by the influence of major political parties. The reasonableness of the District Court's rebuke of this argument might best be interpreted individually in the context of political party influence in the most local of nonpartisan elections.
This brings us to the Mendocino Coast Health Care District and the two seats on its board that are up for election this fall. Four candidates have filed for those two seats. Paul Katzeff is one of them, having already served nearly two years on the MCHCD board. In early September Mr. Katzeff was interviewed by a panel of three members of the Central Committee of the Mendocino County Democratic Party.
At this point perhaps it is best to simply quote from Katzeff's September 12th email to Lynn Atkins, Chair of the Mendocino County Democratic Party:
“I humbly ask the Mendocino Democratic Club [sic] to reconsider my request for an endorsement for the 4-year term on the Mendocino Coast Health Care District. I believe my interview was proper but I feel my ideas were misrepresented by the team who interviewed me.
“I did speak to Ms. [Susan] Savage who informed me of the reasons for the rejection. When asked whether I would campaign for the seat I did say I would count on my reputation mostly, having been a Progressive community activist since 1972 when I arrived in Caspar from Aspen, Colorado, having just managed Hunter S. Thompson’s campaign for sheriff. I have been a Democrat for 64 years. I organized what became known as “The Circle” which in 1978 helped Norman deVall beat Ted Galletti in the 5th District race for County Supervisor. I wrote a weekly column for the Mendocino Grapevine for a decade. I have supported local issues and worked to stop off shore oil, Whaling off our Coast, Clearcutting, and many other local issues while building a nationally recognized coffee company which became the second B Corporation in our County. How can this record of merit and hard work be turned down? Why slap me in the face after 52 years of fighting with other Democrats to defend our community from Corporate abuse?
“The answer became clear when Susan [Savage] told me my candidacy was considered not beneficial to The Democratic Party because I said I would base my campaign on my reputation which meant to her that I would not promote my Democratic Party affiliation. This is crazy thinking. The job is to elect people who have done a good job representing the community, all the community, not just Democrats. The position is nonpartisan and I have put hundreds of hours in to my health care work in 2023 &24.
“I was a shoe-in until The Party supported my opponent and not me as well. You chose an unknown democrat instead of a tireless fighter because my interviewers misinterpreted my answer to the question of how I would campaign for the position.
“It was hurtful to learn that my people and my 50 years of work as a Progressive Democrat led to a rejection by my peers and I respectfully ask for reconsideration. At least level the playing field so I can campaign without having to explain to the coastal electorate why my opponent was supported and I was not. I would like to have an opportunity to explain my record to your Nominating Committee. I will travel anywhere and at any convenient time for your people to question me. I believe I am in the middle of my work and need more time to finish.”
The next day Atkins replied, “I am very proud of our endorsement process. Over the years we have reviewed, enhanced and improved it. Our goal is to invite the candidates through the process in a smooth, timely and deliberative manner. The process involves the written and aural [sic] questioning, additionally our Central Committee members are very active in their communities and often have experiences that are added to the information collected to complete recommendations and/or decision making. This is especially true of incumbents, as they have an audit trail within the position for which they are seeking endorsement. All of this is considered when making a decision.
“You have listed your many activities over the years, thank you for your service. However, please know that these activities do not guarantee you an endorsement for the Adventist Hospital Board. Our endorsements are not quid pro quo.
“Our Central Committee considered the endorsements. I trust and support the members of my committee. They have voted to endorse two candidates for the two openings for Adventist Hospital Board Member. You were not one of those candidates endorsed.
“Because of the above, I am unable to support your request for reconsideration.”
Readers should note that the chair of the “Mendocino County Democratic Party” did not know the name of the board upon which Katzeff currently sits. She called it the “Adventist Hospital Board,” not once but twice.
The three members of the “Central Committee” who interviewed Katzeff are a Philo resident who I've never seen at a Mendocino Coast Health Care District board meeting; a Fort Bragg resident who attended a handful of MCHCD meetings in the beginning of 2023 but has not been seen there since nor was this person at any MCHCD meetings prior to that short period in early 2023; and Susan Savage, who is a current MCHCD board member. Savage has voted with fellow Democratic Party members of that board at all turns over the past two years.
That's what this comes down to: the loyalists to the Democratic Party don't want anyone who might think even slightly independently on this health care board.
In a list of current Mendocino County Democratic Party Central Committee members only Savage has attended meetings of the MCHCD board in the last year and a half. The vast majority live outside the health care district's boundaries. The two candidates endorsed by the Mendocino County Democratic Party are Lynn Finley, who was let go from her job as chief nursing officer at the coast hospital months before MCHCD affiliated with Adventist Health in July 2020, and Mikael Blaisdell, a five year coastal resident who is a strident supporter of the “Change Our Name – Fort Bragg” group.
Interestingly, though the Coast Democratic Club includes the chair of the Mendocino Coast Health Care District Board of Directors and Ms. Savage among its membership, the Coast Dem Club refrained from endorsing any candidates in the MCHCD race this autumn.
AVUSD NEWS
Hello Anderson Valley Community,
It has been another fantastic week in AVUSD! Thank you to every parent and guardian who attended conferences. Your support of your child(ren)’s success at school shows! It was a wonderful turn-out, and our teachers and staff are grateful for the support. Together, we do better!
What’s New at AVES:
• Mr. Ramalia is loving our school! Stop by and say hello to him if you have not yet met him. He is a fantastic addition!
• Please give a big “Thank You” to consultant Jim Frost, a retired superintendent. Many of you had a chance to work with him while he filled in between principals; he will be back Tuesday and Wednesday to finish up a couple of tasks and say goodbye. We have been so fortunate to have the support of Mr. Frost.
• Last Wednesday, there was an English Language Advisory Committee / Craft Night! Students enjoyed making October luminaries while parents learned more about our school programs and shared their thoughts about best ways to serve their children. Thanks to Deleh Mayne, ELAC Coordinator, for planning this awesome night!
• Don’t forget to sign up! Saturday Camps and Winter Intersession are underway. Parent Square invitations have gone out for these October and November camps, and additional fliers are in the office:
◦ Spooky Saturday Camp on Saturday, October 26, 8:00-12:00 and ASP 12:00-5:00. The staff are planning some amazing activities!
◦ Cultivating Gratitude Camp on Saturday, November 16, 8:00-12:00 and ASP 12:00-5:00. Sign up now to reserve your child’s spot!
Jr/Sr High News:
• Spirit Week was a great deal of fun, as was the Homecoming dance. Thank you to Mr. Bautista, Mr. McNerney, and the Leadership Team for navigating last-minute changes (when the team we were supposed to play canceled last minute), and making it an awesome experience. Way to pump up the spirit!
• Senior College Night will be THIS Monday, 5:30-7:30, at the AVHS Cafeteria. Seniors and parents, please join us for carnitas dinner from Libby’s, a presentation by Mr. Nat Corey-Moran, and family work time! We look forward to hosting more events like this for our students and families!
• Students are getting into the fall spirit, and our FFA students are leading the charge! Last week, the floral class made darling, seasonal arrangements and some Bandham Rhode Island Red eggs hatched, revealing three fluffy, golden chicks. Monday afternoon will be the October Meeting, at which there will be pumpkin carving, pumpkin painting, costume dress-up, and s’mores making!
Giving to Our Community
Anderson Valley FFA is partnering with the Anderson Valley Food Bank to help supply Thanksgiving meals to our community members in need. They can’t do it without your help! Anyone can donate! The FFA is collecting items and financial donations. You can write a check for $40 (which will supply a dinner for 4) or use the QR code in the attached flier to pay by credit card. We appreciate your support!
Thank you to our community for your involvement in the education of our students! Please do not hesitate to reach out to me if you would like to discuss concerns or ideas!
With respect,
Kristin Larson Balliet
Superintendent
Anderson Valley Unified School District
WILDFIRE RESILIENCE IN MENDOCINO COUNTY
by the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council
As another fire season stretches into what used to be fall, Mendocino County residents have a chance to lay out their priorities for protecting their communities from wildfire.
The county is updating its Community Wildfire Protection Plan, which is a chance to bring in federal money to pay for fire resilience and recovery projects. The plan was last updated in 2015, well before “defensible space” and “fuel reduction” had become bywords in the age of weeks-long blazes.
And that has real ramifications, according to Emily Tecchio, the county coordinator for the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council. “Our last CWPP is from 2015, which is before we had our major fires,” she noted. “It’s also before a lot of the science started getting solidified around home hardening, especially that Zone Zero first five feet around your home, so none of that is in there.”
Also absent is any mention of the harmful effects of air pollution due to massive wildfires. In August, the US Environmental Protection Agency reported “elevated concentrations of fine particle air pollution” in New England, due to smoke from fires in Canada.
But now, there is a new recognition of the importance of fire resilience. That recognition includes money from the climate change programs contained in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Specifically, a five-year community wildfire defense grant is tied to projects listed in the CWPP. And Tecchio thinks finding out what your neighbors’ safety priorities are can be a great way to build community, too.
“The CWPP is really a vehicle for nonprofits and agencies to apply for funding for the projects that are listed in there,” she reflected. “It’s also an opportunity to bring awareness about the different projects and what your neighbors want. Maybe you guys have the same goals, and you can partner. The document is about trying to secure funding, but funding for what the community wants.”
The Mendocino County Fire Safe Council is encouraging local people to articulate their needs as clearly as possible, to improve their chances of getting funded for the projects that are most likely to protect them from wildfire. This month, there are two opportunities to learn about the plan in person.
People can also share written input through the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council website, at firesafemendocino.org/mccwpp/. There, visitors can peruse the current plan and find a link to a survey, where they can describe a project proposal to any degree of specificity or generality, from type of project and location to methodology and maintenance requirements.
On Oct. 21, there will be a community meeting with county officials and representatives from SWCA, the contractor preparing the new plan. That’s a Monday night, from 6-8 p.m., at the Regional Behavioral Health Training Center at 8207 East Road in Redwood Valley.
On a more festive note, community members also offered input on the plan at this year’s PumpkinFest in Ukiah. The Ukiah Valley Fire Authority hosted a Fire and Safety Expo on Saturday, Oct. 19. As kids pretended to be rescued from a staged burning, parents learned more about how to contribute to the upcoming Community Wildfire Protection Plan. “The purpose of a CWPP is to collect input from the community,” Tecchio urged. “Everybody is in danger of burning, whether they realize it or not.”
Mendocino County Fire Safe Council’s mission is to help communities survive and thrive in a wildfire-prone environment. Visit our website, firesafemendocino.org, to find out how we can help you improve fire resiliency in your neighborhood.
SAVE LAKE PILLSBURY
To the Editor:
If you don’t think that fresh drinkable water for people, animals, fish and wildlife is not the most important resource in California and beyond, stop reading and throw this letter in the trash.
The next time you fly over the soon to be built Sites reservoir project at a price tag of 3 billion dollars, fly a few minutes west to the Mendocino-Lake counties boundary and you will see a large reservoir called Lake Pillsbury. One of the most pristine lakes in California. This lake was built in 1920 by a small cement dam called Scott Dam. There is right now a very serious proposal to remove this dam and wipe out Lake Pillsbury.
Lake Pillsbury releases water 12 months of the year which supplies drinking water via a tunnel diverting water from the upper main stem of the Eel river into the very headwaters of the Russian river starting with Potter Valley down to Coyote Valley, then into all inland Mendocino County on down to Sonoma County and into north Marin County via the Wholer pumps. It benefits many thousands of your folks plus wildlife, agriculture, fisheries and recreation. It was told to me that our Congressman that lives in Marin County receives benefits from this water. He is on record as supporting the removal of Scott Dam which will make this over 100 year old project disappear. Tragic! This removal project although stupid and in violation of common sense is moving forward. As I am sure you are aware of the 4 dam removal project on the Klamath in the name of saving fish.
This disaster almost completed is creating an environmental disaster with sediment, agriculture losses and a large loss of water for people. Right now they are planting millions of hatchery salmon from a hatchery 7 miles away. (Fall Creek hatchery on the Klamath river). If salmon is the reason CDFW wants more salmon in our rivers than plant them! This is not a new concept. The Eel River had 3 hatcheries, 2 on the lower reaches of the river in the late 1800’s and one on the south fork above Leggett valley up until the great flood (either 1955 or 1964) check the Press Democrat on April 21, 2024 for facts. Don’t believe just me. I am 73 years old and have lived on the Eel River my whole life.
I am not an expert on fish or water, but I am pretty good on Common Sense. It takes water to sustain our citizens, agriculture and wildlife. Don’t let a few stupid guide us into a mudhole. If you would like to talk to me, my number is 707-216-1482 between 4 and 7 pm, as I only have phone and electricity here three hours per day.
John Pinches, Bigfoot Region on the Eel
Laytonville
FILL COUNCIL SPACES WITH NEW FACES
Editor,
Fort Bragg’s existing Council has for several years ignored Downtown Merchant pleas for essential things like proper directional signage, decorative lighting, landscaping, more public rest rooms, legal and safety attention to abandoned buildings, and grants that should be pointed towards things that need doing now (instead of funding pet projects earmarked for ten years into the future).
The present sitting Council has failed to even formally declare Downtown to be an “Improvement District.” This shameless refusal to assist our core small business economy comes with a corresponding black eye. Tax Revenue collected from these same businesses is being funneled by the millions into a detrimental lawsuit with the Skunk Train, while legally gag ordering us local citizens thirty five times over the last two years from learning the facts about the case. Not the democracy we were taught!
This is why the two available City Council seats should be filled with new faces, not the same old status quo. More than ever Registering and Voting is not only a right, but a necessity.
Bill Mann, Sue Rogers
Fort Bragg
REPORT FROM A SMALL FARM IN BOONVILLE
Hi friends,
In celebration of our 20 years spent creating a farm, and making the wild assumption that you're curious about how one would do such an insane thing, attached is a before and after essay in pictures. When we look back at the first photos, we too, are amazed at how everything has flourished when the landscape was so drear, dry and dark on first arriving. We fell in love with the “bones” of the place. To be completely honest though, the seasons, spring and fall, in which the pictures were taken, are opposites; we bought the property in May of 2004, and it was a wet and gray one. I've taken the recent pictures in the past week before everything dies back. Even the color of the skies are starkly different.
As to the doing of “such an insane thing”, we're talking about hard physical labor, much local help, and a steep learning curve (everything from how to drive a tractor, one of our first purchases, to where the water's coming from, what with the electrical system, how septic works, what kinds of fences to build and where, how and why, why are the toilet, sink and shower stained orange, how do you raise chickens, what do yaks need, and don't get me started on the marketing regulations for produce and meats, etc. etc.) One needs a vision, a faith in nature responding to what we consider improvements to their habitats, and a persistence that knows no bounds. It's a slow and often unsteady process that costs a lot in time, energy and the usual, money. The rewards are the critters and birds that come to pass through or to stay, produce that flourishes, and the creativity that's unleashed when there's an overabundance of everything and wasting nothing is the goal. In the end it's been my best masterpiece…a work of fine art in the true sense of the expression.
Come visit anytime and if you're interested in starting your own farm, we'll happily advise ;>)
Have a frightening Halloween (and an ecstatic election day. It will be, we promise!!).
Nikki Auschnitt and Steve Krieg
Boonville
FALCON:
Tomorrow is the last day to register to vote online before the November 5th election! Your vote is your voice – make yourself heard. Register at registertovote.ca.gov
After tomorrow, you can STILL register in-person through Same Day Voter Registration (Conditional Voter Registration)
You can also check your voter registration status online and sign up to track your ballot at WheresMyBallot.sos.ca.gov
THIS NORTHERN CALIFORNIA BAKERY SHOP IS THE BEATING HEART OF A SMALL TOWN
It has been a Mendocino County staple for more than 40 years
by Matt LaFever
Nothing captures the essence of American food nostalgia quite like the primary-colored pop art of Wonder Bread. First introduced in 1921, its pillowy-soft, slightly sweet sliced loaf hails from a more innocent time when refined sugars and starches were embraced.
Just two hours north of San Francisco, a relic of this culinary heritage still operates in the small town of Ukiah. The Wonder Bakery Thriftshop, tucked away in a nondescript shopping complex next to a cannabis dispensary, offers customers deeply discounted loaves of bread, Ding Dongs, Honey Buns, Danish pastries, Twinkies and other nostalgic treats. Open for over 40 years, rumors around town suggest the discount bread store, a vestige of a bygone era, may soon close its doors for good.
What is a discount bread store? Bakery outlets or bakery thrift stores are where baked goods go before being thrown out. Grocery stores remove items nearing their best-by dates and bring them to these outlets. Discounts vary by company and product, but average savings range from 25% to 50% off retail prices, with some markdowns reaching 75% or more.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the price of white bread increased from $1.37 per pound in March 2020 to $1.98 in September 2024, a 61-cent rise, highlighting rising food costs. Meanwhile, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that 16.7% of Ukiah’s population lives in poverty, making affordable food essential for many residents who are particularly affected by these price increases over the past four years.
In late September, a Mendocino County resident named Hailey Trahan made a Facebook post that read: "Hey y'all don't forget about the bread store in Ukiah, it's gonna go out of business if they don't start getting customers."
We reached out to Trahan after seeing her post on local social media. Trahan said she had “always loved the bread store.” She told us it “helps so many lower-income families with affordable bread.” An employee told her he was sincerely worried about it closing down.
SFGATE sought to understand why Ukiah’s Wonder Bakery Thriftshop was reportedly struggling. Store employees referred us to the Modesto-based owner, who then directed us to the corporate ownership of Flowers Foods, which acquired Wonder Bread, Hostess and other legacy brands in a $355 million deal back in 2013. We reached out to Flower Foods but did not hear back in time for publication.
SFGATE spoke with Mary Perez, a former employee of the Wonder Bakery Thriftshop for 24 years, who now works at AutoZone in Ukiah. Perez said she’d heard “rumors that it might close again because they're slow.”
During her time at the store, Perez described it as “a community thing,” supporting the food bank, senior programs and the local homeless shelter. She saw how much locals depended on the store, saying, “I've seen a generation of customers. I had the grandma, the mom, and then the child — it was like a family thing.”
Perez hopes the store can pull through, adding, “It's hard times. The more you can save, the better.”
Bakery outlets do seem to be becoming a thing of the past. Bimbo Bakeries, the company behind Entenmann’s and Sara Lee, closed 28 outlet locations on the East Coast this year. A general search for bakery outlets identified approximately a dozen remaining across California, including a Bimbo Bakeries in South San Francisco.
The earliest records SFGATE found for Ukiah’s Wonder Bakery Thriftshop at 1460 S. State Street date back to 1981, in the Ukiah Daily Journal. Since then, Ukiah’s population has grown by at least 38%, the region has witnessed the rise and fall of both the logging and cannabis industries, and now faces a poverty rate nearly 5% higher than the state average.
Hoping to understand more about how the Ukiah community has come to rely on the Wonder Bakery Thriftshop, SFGATE visited the store on a recent afternoon.
Kim Nailor, a Lake County resident and social worker in Mendocino County, commutes to Ukiah daily for her job helping those in need. Speaking with SFGATE, she explained she visited the outlet that day after seeing the social post about the store needing business. “I told my husband, ‘I’m gonna run down there real quick and see if there’s anything we need.’”
Nailor, 50, recalled the business being around since her childhood. “I just want to help because it’s local,” she said, emphasizing the store’s importance. “We can’t lose it. It helps. I work for social services, and so many people count on shopping here.”
Charlie Anderson arrived at the store on a worn-out bike, with $3.75 in his pocket. He needed to feed his two grandsons. Anderson told SFGATE that he had recently taken on the care of his grandsons after the sudden death of his son, Dakota “Porkchop” Anderson, who died while in Lake County jail.
According to Lauren Berlinn, a public information officer for the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, Dakota had been in custody and passed away in June. He experienced a sudden medical emergency while at the Hill Road Correctional Facility, was taken to Sutter Lakeside Hospital and “subsequently passed away,” she said.
Charlie Anderson came to the Wonder Bakery Thriftshop hoping to stretch his dollars. After hearing his story, an employee gave him three loaves of bread for free. With the remaining money, he bought doughnuts, pies and treats for his grandsons.
As he left the store, Anderson said, “This store helps a lot of people who are struggling.”
(sfgate.com)
MY DOG’S SMARTER THAN MY DOG
by Tommy Wayne Kramer
If you’re going to have a dog you might as well train it, and if you’re going to train it you might as well have someone else do it. I’d suggest your wife.
This gives you additional time at the Forest Club to work on your poetry, and someone else to blame when the dog misbehaves at the airport or a Thanksgiving get-together with all those pesky kids.
I added an extra layer of deniability by putting Trophy in charge of minor details: paying for the classes and making sure the dog attends them regularly.
Can’t wait to write another chapter of poetry (or is it a verse?) tomorrow.
Following training class last Saturday, Trophy and Sweetie dropped by the Forest to tell me about winning a big prize. Oh goodie. Probably a certificate. Nobody asked, but I think prizes should be $500 gift certificates at The Barkery.
But winning a prize is winning a prize, so to be supportive I ordered my wife a celebratory flute of The Club’s finest room-temp champagne, another pint of Coors for me, and a fat stick of beef jerky. I tore a piece off for the dog.
“So,” I said. ”She won a prize. Great. What for?”
“Fetch,” said Trophy.
Pause …
“Fetch?” I said.
”Fetch.”
Long pause …
“Fetch? She got a prize to learn how to fetch?”
Very long Pause …
Dear Reader, if your dog needs lessons to learn how to fetch, you might have a possum.
I ordered another pint and got wondering about what kind of academy this is, where dogs need a semester to master the art of finding a ball and hauling it somewhere.
Having to teach a dog to fetch is like having to teach a teenager to shoplift. What next? Nap lessons? How to go wee wee?
All the while I thought Sweetie was getting trained Old School, as in: “Gimme paw! Roll over! Gimme other paw! Thaasss a good doggie!”
Not that training a dog is easy, especially ours. Can’t tell you how many minutes I’ve worked with Sweetie trying to improve her table manners. Nothing seems to work no matter how much I yell at her.
We can’t take her anywhere. Went to some folks’ house for supper and before we could even get done saying Grace, the dog had her big snout buried in the casserole, with an eye on the butter.
And talking. Conversation? We speak good English in her presence trying to help Sweetie learn but she still garbles it all up. It’s partly being self-conscious about having a lisp. (I think it’s cute when she stammers and shakes her head and finally blurts out “Let’th go outhhide and chaeth th-th-th-thum thquirrelths!” And then cocks her head to the side. So darling!)
I sometimes make it seem worse than it is. Me and the dog talk pretty good together and have long conversations when the wife is gone. We wait for her to leave because I don’t want Trophy exposed to Sweetie’s coarse language and iffy opinions.
My darling wife would despair to learn her doggie hates all the pink stuff she has to wear, like the collar and leash and the fuzzy booties for around the house. And the dog’s not exactly politically correct, although Trophy would laugh to hear Sweetie impersonating Kamala Harris hucking up a hairball.
FIY: Ukaih Tourits Bord
Dear VisitUkiah.com website wizards: Let’s not keep meeting like this. In the town that invented marijuana everyone knows the song “Ukiah” was written and recorded by the Doobie Brothers. Not “Dobbie” Brothers as reported, repeatedly, in your VisitUkiah introduction.
No one has ever heard of a Dobbie but they’ve all smoked a Doobie. Or even two.
ADVICE: Lay off the doobies until you finish the assignment. Also: mess up again and you’ll be punished with DRINKS & TASERS.
(Did everyone notice that portion of the website got removed instamediately?)
October Baseball
The Cleveland baseball team formerly known as the Indians has reached the playoffs (who cares?) and by now might even be in the World Series. This tells me three things:
The gods of baseball have a sense of humor.
The gods of baseball are patient.
The gods of baseball hate me.
ED NOTES
A READER WRITES: The Niners, Sunday: In all my years watching football, and even playing in high school, I have never seen, or even heard of a kicker missing the ball on an on-side kick. The Niners might be cursed. The problems, in no particular order: (1) Shanahan's play calling, (2) the Offensive Line, (3) special teams, (4) injuries.
A PERSON writing as “Agreed” (Aggrieved?) basically accused many of the County's cops as a bunch of crooks and drunks. You want to paint with a broad accusatory brush like this, you gotta do it under your true name.
YOU CAN get anywhere in the city on the Muni's bus, trolley and train lines, but don't be in a hurry to get there and allow at least an hour for even the shortest journey if it requires a transfer. And always be ready to dismount and walk if you happen to be on the bus when the mutants are getting out of school, or traffic is so jammed that it doesn't move at all for long minutes at a time and you can walk ten blocks faster than the bus will carry you.
WHEN IT RAINS everyone learns to drive all over again, as seemed to happen the other rainy day on my long, long trip to San Francisco’s main library with the bus drivers in snarlingly bad humor. A depressingly large number of drivers seem to be active misanthropes. If you're not interested in people, if they especially annoy you in the aggregate, if you get to the point where you find yourself taking petty revenge on your trapped passengers as you wheel your bus up and down the Rice-A-Roni streets, maybe you should go back to school and get a law degree so you could do your fellow man more lasting harm.
AS A SUDDEN HARD rain fell, catching us without our umbrellas, six of us huddled in the southbound shelter at California and Polk, me clutching my transfer like a worried kid with a note home from school pinned to his shirt. The bus finally appeared, but rather than pull up at the shelter so we could board without getting wet, the driver stopped the bus a dozen feet beyond. A young girl and I exchanged glances and laughed. Two Asian women reacted not at all, a young Hispanic male muttered under his breath, a huge fat man in knee length grey shorts inscribed “Michigan Baseball” on one leg lumbered on board and loudly asked the driver, “Why'd you do that?”
THE DRIVER looked straight ahead, unhearing, uncaring. There's no answer to petty malice, of course, so the fat man, having satisfied himself (and us) with his rhetorical blast sat heavily down in the front section. These seats are theoretically reserved for the elderly and the infirm, but the young and firm are often planted in them, as two of the young and firm were that day, both of them mesmerized by hand held gizmos. I was hoping the fat man would sit down on them, but he took up two seats across the aisle, where he sat wheezing from getting wet, getting annoyed, getting on the bus, and now facing the prospect of repeating the annoyances in reverse order when he got off the bus because he could count on the driver letting him off in the most uncomfortable possible set of circumstances.
ETHNIC OBSERVATIONS and distinctions are impossible not to note among Muni passengers, although almost without exception young people of all races tend to be loud, vulgar, vapid, uneducable, and thoroughly unattractive. We've all been young and stupid, but today's crop of under-30s seems uniquely awful in every way, from their laundry bag fashions, tattooed butt cracks, their cretinous music, even dumber movies, and extreme verbal dysfunction. “Like I said to the dude, ‘Like dude, what the fuck you mean?’” Schools of fish have more individuality. The only kids you see around who look like they might be age-appropriately wholesome are probably very recent immigrants. Or they're home schooled by that tiny minority of parents who know the popular culture is evil and will eat their children.
THE MOST aggressive Muni passengers are Chinese women between the ages of 60 and 90. They just put their heads down and go, like mini-fullbacks on goal line plunges. You feel a soft but insistent pressure somewhere in your lower back and, when you look over your shoulder to see if it's a pickpocket or a perv playing bus rubbsies, what you see and continue to feel is an elderly Chinese woman, or a squad of them, making their relentless, head down ways up the aisle. “Grandma Fong gets maybe a yard in a huge pile-up of shopping bags and umbrellas. We'll probably need a replay here to see if she got to the back of the bus. But wait! She's still on her feet and still moving, shoving that old beatnik out of the way like he wasn't even there! She's in for six! How about that, Howie? Granny Fong kept her head down and her legs pumping like the great ones always do.”
I WAS ON A California Street bus one afternoon whose black female driver checked the transfer of every boarding white person, me included, while waving all other ethnicities on past. At California and VanNess there was an angry standoff between this driver and a young white woman whose transfer the driver had rejected. Typically, with people piling on the bus through both front and back doors, drivers, even the rare sticklers, don't even look at transfers other than maybe a glance at its color to see that it is that day's proper hue. They don't check the time. “You'll have to pay,” the driver said to the girl. “This transfer is no good,” The girl indignantly replied, “But I just got it.” The driver took the transfer from her and looked carefully at it. “It's an hour over,” she said. “This is from way early this morning. You gotta pay.” The girl continued to say she'd just got it on her previous bus. “You'll have to pay,” the driver repeated, this time with some heat. The traffic light had gone green to red three times while the transfer argument raged. There was an audible groan from the back of the bus. A man yelled, “Kick her off! Let's go.” The driver and the girl were staring at each other when the girl stomped off the bus. As we pulled out, I could see her waiting for the next bus, the expired transfer in her hand.
ON DIVISADERO I was sharing a bus stop with a woman I guessed to be early AARP. She was dressed in a purple sweatsuit, wore one of those Tibetan wool knit doofus caps on her head with its five or six dingleberry ties bouncing down off it, a metal pentagram around her neck, and she carried a pink “Hello Kitty” backpack festooned with various size cartoon cats. I remember when city women never went anywhere near downtown without their formal day clothes on complete with hats and gloves, and all the men wore suits, ties and fedoras. A large percentage of the old downtown crowd might have been totally crazed in those days, too, but you wouldn't know it looking at them. And you can't know it now, either, in a time when only the truly dangerous wear suits and ties.
THIS LADY, it turned out, wasn't nuts. Or, I should say, standards of mental health being what they are, she was maybe half-way out there given the wacky visual she presented and given her lack of hesitation in asking me where I was going the instant I walked up to the bus stop. Considering she was asking a stranger a question unlikely to have an interesting answer, and that my destination was none of her business, I replied, but only because I wanted to see if she was as wacky as she looked. “I'm going to the Castro Theater Noir Film Festival,” I said, “to see a movie called ‘Cry Danger’ with Dick Powell and Rhonda Fleming.” She said, “I met Raymond Burr once.” I replied, “Do you know who my uncle is?” She said no, but looked interested in what I might say. “He's my uncle.” She laughed. She'd passed the sanity test, and passed it again when she sat as far away from me as it was possible to get on an empty bus.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, October 20, 2024
RUDOLPH ESQUIVEL JR., 62, Willits. More than six pot plants.
CHANTAL GARCIA, 27, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
JARED LAMARR, 33, Ukiah. Domestic abuse, vandalism.
NIKOYA LEAHY, 52, Covelo. Under influence, probation revocation.
GILBERTO MIRANDA, 22, Ukiah. Speed contest.
TALON TREPPA, 18, Redwood Valley. Burgarly, vandalism.
ADAM VASQUEZ, 34, Hopland. Controlled substance, probation revocation.
ALEAH VELASCO, 21, Ukiah. Assault, disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting.
RANDALL WALDER, 70, Westport. DUI.
SHADAYSHA WILLIAMS, 27, Redwood Valley. DUI.
NAPA’S DYING RIVER
Editor,
Thanks to the AVA for recently publishing the YouTube video, ‘A Dying Napa River’ created by Chris Malan, Executive Director, ICARE.
The video prompted a walk for public awareness (I would have preferred to call it a protest march) last weekend, which made Press Democrat headlines today: https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/napa/napa-river-dry-environment
Christina Aranguren
President, The Institute for Conservation, Advocacy, Research, and Education (ICARE)
Mendocino
ELON MUSK SUES COASTAL COMMISSION, INCLUDING HUMBOLDT COUNTY SUPERVISOR, MIKE WILSON
by Daniel Mintz
Elon Musk’s SpaceX corporation, a space transportation company and satellite manufacturer/operator, which operates the Starlink communications satellite network, is suing the California Coastal Commission, citing allegedly politically-based comments from county Supervisor Mike Wilson and other commissioners. Governor Gavin Newsom recently weighed in on the side of Musk saying, “I’m with Elon.”
The nexus between politics and regulation figured into the commission’s discussions on expanding rocket launches by SpaceX, Musk’s satellite communications corporation.
Commissioners’ comments, including Wilson’s, are included in Musk’s 280-page federal court lawsuit, which was filed on Oct. 15.
The document challenges the commission’s majority rejection of the launch expansion, arguing that commissioners based the decision on factors that have no relevance to coastal protection.
“The commission’s public hearing record indisputably shows overt, and shocking, political bias,” the lawsuit says. “There is no pretext—the political basis of the commission’s action is plain for all to see.”
The U.S. Air Force seeks to increase SpaceX launches at the Vandenberg Space Force base in Southern California, a bid that was up for a Coastal Act consistency determination at the Oct. 10 commission meeting.
SpaceX got a conditional commission sign-off for 36 rocket launches last August.
An increase to 50 launches was on the table and commission staff said a further increase, to 100 launches, is planned for 2025.
Commission staff recommended approving a consistency finding due to a number of conditions, including measures to minimize sonic booms and other effects on wildlife, biological monitoring and formation of a working group to evaluate impacts.
The project applicant is the U.S. Air Force-affiliated Space Force agency but Musk’s involvement shadowed the proceedings.
Wilson described Musk as “the richest person in the world with direct control of what could be the most extensive global communication system on the planet.”
According to Wilson, Musk joined Former U.S. President Donald Trump onstage at a recent rally and spoke of “political retribution,” using language that Trump is “working to normalize.”
He added, “We can’t hide from that and we have to push back against that.”
A majority of commissioners voted against approving a consistency finding. Despite his comments, Wilson was among the minority of commissioners who voted for it, saying it will keep the commission involved in federal/state agency partnerships.
But his vote didn’t spare him from Musk’s condemnation.
Days after the commission meeting, Musk demanded that commissioners resign due to “shamelessly breaking the law.”
He also posted a compilation video of comments from the meeting, including Wilson’s.
Commissioner Gretchen Newsom said SpaceX harasses its employees and has a poor safety record. She scolded Musk’s behavior and his “bigoted beliefs against California safeguards and protections of our transgender community.”
She added that Musk is “hopping about the country spewing and tweeting political falsehoods” and pulling a “sick ploy” on hurricane victims by offering them free Starlink Internet access, which she said involves purchase of pricey equipment later followed by fees.
A public comment period included representatives of environmental groups who urged the commission to reject the launch increase.
But Commissioner Susan Lowenberg noted the agreed-upon conditions and said the commission should be involved in their implementation. “I don’t want to lose our seat at the table,” she continued.
The commission voted 6 to 4 against the project. Among the dissenters was Commission Chair Caryl Hart, who said there’s a lack of information on potential impacts of sonic booms and coastal debris.
But earlier in the hearing, she said Musk has “aggressively injected himself into the presidential race and made it clear what his point of view is” and has run SpaceX “in a way that I find to be very disturbing.”
As to the consequences of the decision, commission staff had said mediation can be done to address any concerns.
But the SpaceX lawsuit argues that launches are governable as federal activity, not private, for-profit business and as such, need only comply with state requirements “to the maximum extent practicable.”
The lawsuit notes that “no space launch operator has ever applied for or obtained a CDP (Coastal Development Permit).”
(kymkemp.com/redheadedblackbelt)
ZIP IT
Editor:
Political Silence…
A couple weeks from now the game will be over. They'll tear down the goalposts and pin the tail on either the donkey or the elephant. Take your pick. Who knows? Who cares? In the meantime I have personally taken a vow of political SILENCE. I've promised myself to create a media blackout until and beyond when the Fat lady/Fat guy/Fat transgender person etc.etc. sings. I invite my friends and neighbors to join me: Mail in your ballot, buy a t-shirt with your favorite candidate's picture on the chest and just CHILL.
My vow of political SILENCE has just three rules:
1. No Facebook, No Instagram, No network talking heads.
2. If the wife has the TV on and is watching Rachael Maddow--walk thru the room with your hands over your ears singing “La La La I can't hear you.”
3. Take a big breath and repeat this mantra over and over:
“Politics is not the highest form of consciousness.”
At some point when the election is over someone will probably let slip the results and then I'll know if I wasted my money on that t-shirt…
Steve Derwinski, aka JoeBlow
Boonville
ACCEPT THE RESULTS
Editor:
I will accept the results of the 2024 presidential election no matter which candidate wins. I believe in the election system as set forth in our Constitution. I believe the election winners in 2016 and 2020 were the legitimate victors. I may be very unhappy with the outcome in November, but I will accept it as the result of our system of government. Will you? Just asking.
Dave Heaney
Petaluma
ASK HIM
Solemn Sunday Mass at the Basilica in Washington, D.C. Celebrated
The very warmest spiritual greetings,
Following the solemn noon Sunday Mass in the upper church, in observance of the “One Hundred Years of Worship at the National Shrine”, please accept this email message of great love. The Mass was celebrated by Msgr. Rossi, with full clergy support and a professional choir. Overwhelming and soaked in holiness, the hour and a half defined what God is. Self-realization, immortality, eternal life in heaven, full salvation now, and forever bliss divine. Let your light shine!
Please know that a daily trip is being made to the Peace Vigil in front of the White House in order to provide food and hydrating beverages. Am still at the homeless shelter in the northeast region of the district. You are invited to establish a spiritually focused direct action base here with me. I guarantee you that Christ Almighty is in favor of this! If you are uncertain, ask Him. ~Peaceout~
Craig Louis Stehr
THE LATEST GOVERNMENT STATISTICS estimate that between 11.5% and 12.4% of Americans lived in poverty in 2022, depending on the measure. That amounts to between 37.9 and 40.9 million people, or roughly the population of California. Still, some close followers consider these counts too low. In 2022 a family of four was considered poor if they made less than $29,679 that year, but a 2023 Gallup poll found that most Americans believe such a family needs at least $85,000 to get by.
One can make the poverty problem seem smaller than it is by ignoring all those Americans who are poor in many ways except officially: people who aren't hard up enough to qualify for public housing but will never be able to afford a mortgage; those who aren't poor enough to receive MedicAid but can't afford private insurance either. Some prefer a more expansive definition of poverty, one that considers someone to be poor if a $400 emergency would prevent them from covering their basic monthly necessities. Using that metric, in a country of 337 million people, an astonishing 140 million are poor or low-income.
— Matthew Desmond
CHIEFS
Est. Ed.,
Thanks for the painting of Falstaff hugging his hug jug of vino blissfully. I was in some consternation after watching the new version of him in The King, wherein he was portrayed as a sage, sober soldier whereas in the original King Henry dumps and distances his Royal person from the old sot. And Falstaff was left in a Cheapside taproom, not the king’s master tactician and most trusted advisor.
This flagrant denial of history, human nature and the genius of Shakespeare represents the epitome of politically correct deconstructionist rewriting as a palliative analgesic for the troubled soul of post-modern man.
And the immortal speech the Baird gave Hal at Agincourt was right up there with Mark Anthony’s elegy for Caesar — but that too had to be revised into a platitudinous pander to nationalist patriotism.
As you have neither the time nor the inclination to address this issue and advise me on it, I ask only whether I should put my money on the Niners or the Chiefs for today’s game?
The McEwen,
Walnut Creek
IN NORTH BEACH/TELEGRAPH HILL, getting the light of sunset along its building's top, the Savoy Tivoli sits on the east side of Grant Avenue between Green and Union streets.
It says it opened in 1907 as a hotel and restaurant for Italian immigrants though the city says the building dates from 1913. In 1967 it changed ownership and became a nightclub catering to the Beats and others, hosting the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, and Ken Kesey. Later, counterculture influences abounded. In 1974 Beach Blanket Babylon debuted here. In 1976 the Ramones played and other groups included the Jefferson Airplane, the Mutants, along with Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters. Today it is an event space and bar and still has live acts, from music to stand-up comedy.
49ERS FALL TO CHIEFS AGAIN AS BROCK PURDY STRUGGLES WITH DECIMATED RECEIVING CORPS
by Eric Branch
The San Francisco 49ers found themselves in a unique position Sunday, running out of proven wide receivers, and it helped lead them to a familiar result: A loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Eight months after their defeat to Kansas City in Super Bowl LVIII, the 49ers dropped their fifth straight game to their AFC nemesis, falling 28-18 at Levi’s Stadium.
The 49ers (3-4) began without wide receiver Jauan Jennings (hip), only had wideout Deebo Samuel (illness) for a handful of first-quarter snaps and lost Brandon Aiyuk to a knee injury late in the second quarter. After the game, head coach Kyle Shanahan said initial testing indicated Aiyuk suffered a torn ACL, but that has not yet been confirmed by subsequent tests.
The result wasn’t pretty against the back-to-back Super Bowl champions. Quarterback Brock Purdy had the worst passer rating (36.7) of his 28-start career while completing 17 of 31 passes for 212 yards while throwing three interceptions.
In the second half, the 49ers’ remaining wide receivers were Ronnie Bell, Chris Conley and rookies Jacob Cowing and Ricky Pearsall, the latter making his NFL debut 50 days after he was shot in the chest. That quartet had combined for two catches while playing 133 snaps in the season’s first six games. Pearsall finished with 3 catches for 21 yards.
Despite the attrition, the 49ers still had a chance against the unbeaten Chiefs (6-0), owners of the NFL’s ninth-ranked defense, partly because their own defense limited Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes. The two-time NFL MVP completed 16 of 27 passes for 154 yards with two interceptions and posted the worst passer rating (44.4) of his eight-season career.
Trailing 14-12 in the third quarter, the 49ers had a 3rd-and-6 at Kansas City’s 34-yard line, in range for a go-ahead field goal. However, Purdy sailed a sideline pass to Bell that was intercepted by cornerback Christian Roland-Wallace. Bell looked back to Purdy in confusion before he went to the sideline, where he briefly conferred with Samuel.
Trailing 21-12 with nine minutes left, Purdy threw his third pick on 3rd-and-goal at the 5-yard line when he was drilled by defensive end George Karlaftis in mid-throw, causing a flutterball that was intercepted by safety Jaden Hicks in the end zone.
The 49ers held Mahomes in check, but they were partly undone by another old nemesis, Mecole Hardman. The Chiefs wide receiver had the walk-off touchdown catch in the 49ers’ 25-22 overtime loss in Super Bowl LVIII and scored three touchdowns in Kansas City’s 44-23 win at Levi’s in October 2022.
On Sunday, Hardman helped Kansas City build a 14-3 lead before putting the 49ers away with an 18-yard touchdown run that gave the Chiefs a 28-12 lead with 3:18 left.
In the second quarter, Hardman had a 20-yard run to the 49ers’ 19-yard line to set up Kansas City’s first touchdown: Four plays later, running back Kareem Hunt’s 1-yard run gave the Chiefs a 7-3 lead.
The 49ers punted on their next possession and Hardman struck again, returning the kick 55 yards to the 49ers’ 30. The runback set the stage for a 7-play drive that was capped by Hunt’s 6-yard run that provided a 14-3 lead with 6:53 left in the second quarter.
(SF Chronicle)
49ERS GAME GRADES: BANGED-UP AND HUMBLED AT HOME BY UNBEATEN CHIEFS
by Michael Lerseth
The ailing and injured San Francisco 49ers were humbled at home Sunday by the Kansas City Chiefs, falling to 3-4 after a 28-18 loss.
Offense: F
Already playing without receiver Jajuan Jennings, the Niners watched as Deebo Samuel (illness) played just three snaps and then saw Brandon Aiyuk carted from the sideline after a knee injury late in the first half. (Postgame, the 49ers said initial testing indicated Aiyuk suffered a torn ACL.) Ricky Pearsall, recovered after being shot Aug. 31, made his NFL debut but wasn’t a factor. Neither was Ronnie Bell, who wasn’t on the same page as QB Brock Purdy on a momentum-killing overthrow interception in the third quarter. Purdy finished 17-for-31 for 212 yards and his third pick — thrown into the end zone midway through the fourth quarter — effectively sealed the outcome. The 49ers converted just 2 of 11 third downs and 26 of Jordan Mason’s 58 rushing yards came on one run.
Defense: D
Exhibit A for the Niners’ defensive play was Patrick Mahomes’ career-best 33-yard run in the final minute of the third quarter on which he first eluded Fred Warner and then juked a pair of defenders to the ground. Four plays later, Mahomes’ 1-yard sneak on 4th-and-goal made it 21-12 and K.C. was back in control. Mahomes was hardly sensational (16-for-27, 154 yards, two sacks, two INTs and a career-low 44.4 rating), but the Niners allowed K.C. to rush for 184 yards, collect 22 first downs and convert 8 of 14 third downs.
Special Teams: C
A mixed bag. Stopping the Chiefs on a fake punt in the first quarter was a highlight, as were the two field goals (55 and 24 yards) made by Anders Carlson, this week’s plug-in kicker. But on the flip side, Carlson banged an extra point try off the left upright and then the punt return team allowed Mecole Hardman’s 55-yard runback in the second quarter that set up K.C.’s second touchdown.
Coaching: C
Kyle Shanahan kept his team’s short-lived rally alive by going for it on 4th-and-1 at the Chiefs’ 14 in the third quarter — and it paid off when Purdy converted on a sneak and later scored the Niners’ first TD. But he eschewed a similarly risky call when he opted for an extra-point try instead of a possible game-tying two-point conversion; salt in the wound came when Carlson missed the kick. It’s hard to knock Shanahan too much when he was forced to play much of the game with his fourth-, fifth- and sixth-string receivers.
Overall: F
On the bright side, the 49ers didn’t blow another double-digit second-half lead. But this was as poor an outing the 49ers have had since they began their run of being annual Super Bowl contenders. There is no shame in losing to the unbeaten Chiefs — every team that has played K.C. since Christmas has come away with an L — but the banged-up 49ers are now 3-4 and don’t face another team that currently sports a sub-.500 record until Dec. 12. Good news is quickly needed on the injury front — see also: Christian McCaffrey — or the season may become unsalvageable.
ABORTION CLINICS IN RURAL CALIFORNIA CHALLENGE STATE’S REPUTATION AS HAVEN FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
by Kevin Fagan
Redding — Damian Roberts glared at the man standing before him.
“What you have here is crap,” he yelled, pointing to the man’s pickup truck, parked a few feet away with a giant wooden cross fixed to the bed. A string of posters set up alongside the truck proclaimed, “You’re going to hell,” plus other slogans railing against abortion.
“You people are how we wind up with babies in dumpsters, coat-hanger abortions and women throwing themselves down stairs,” Roberts snapped.
The truck’s owner, Chad Hunt, stared back as Roberts thrust his face close to his. “We are saving women here, and Jesus loves what we are doing,” Hunt said slowly. “There is falseness coming out of your mouth.” Roberts took a deep breath, shook his head. “I believe in God too, but Jesus would be so mad at you,” he said.
Behind the two men sat the Women’s Health Specialists clinic. It was a Wednesday, the only day of the week abortions are performed in the only clinic that offers such procedures for about a 100-mile radius.
Hunt comes to this clinic every week. So do an increasing number of other demonstrators, dozens on some days.
In a state that presents itself as a safe sanctuary for abortion, the intensifying protests here are a prime example of how that image is not universal — especially in far-flung areas. And how it can be terrifying for women who see clinics like this as their only practical choice for abortion care.
Here, and in other rural areas, the fight over abortion rights has only ratcheted up since the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court Dobbs decision overturning the national right to abortion, according to those on both sides of the abortion debate. With sparse resources in the sticks, those who perform abortions say they feel like they are under siege. Abortions still take place in Redding, but only after women are compelled to pass through a gauntlet of hostility and pleadings for them to reconsider.
“California is a reproductive freedom state — full stop,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an email to the Chronicle. “Threatening violence or physically blocking patients trying to access care in Shasta County — or anywhere else — is unacceptable, and exactly why I signed AB2099 last month. In California, we will never stop fighting to protect every person’s right to get the reproductive care they choose.”
In recognition of the challenges that abortion clinics face, Assembly Member Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, D-Orinda, wrote two bills signed into law last month that made it a felony to intimidate or injure patients entering reproductive health clinics and helped streamline the opening of new clinics — particularly in “health care deserts” like far Northern California.
“We’ve done so much to protect the right here in California that a lot of people feel it’s not an issue, but it absolutely is, and we need people to understand that,” said Bauer-Kahan, who is chair of the Assembly Select Committee on Reproductive Health. “Opposition to these clinics is just wrong.
“Look, if you want to open a clinic in a city, you generally will not get a lot of pushback. But in the rural areas? It’s difficult. And it’s not just abortion care — you’re accessing cancer screenings and other health care too, and that’s very important. It’s significantly harmful to not have access to those services both for women who want to bear children and those who need abortions,” she said.
The tumult in ultraconservative Redding is so tense, and the town so remote, that the clinic has to drive or fly doctors in from hundreds of miles away to perform the procedures. Nobody closer will do the job.
“People are so fearful they don’t like to talk openly about this stuff,” said Doni Chamberlain, editor of the local left-leaning publication A News Cafe. “And I understand why they’re afraid. I’m afraid myself.
“I think Shasta County is a special backward-leaning place. I really don’t understand why there is still such opposition here to abortion. But it’s off the hook.”
Cars coming to the clinic on Wednesdays with a patient are swarmed by protesters begging them to turn back, waving signs proclaiming abortion is murder, telling them they are sinning against God. Inside those cars, many of the nearly dozen clients who usually show up look horrified and hide their faces.
Hunt and others preach their message with megaphones, some lean over the clinic’s fence and shout their slogans, others line up along the road and pray. “Babies are not body parts,” proclaims one 4-foot-high sign. “Repent and believe,” reads another. Rarely do large groups of counterprotesters like Roberts show up.
Becky Stetson, a volunteer who helps escort women into the clinic, sighed heavily as she watched the opponents setting up chairs and tents. “They say, ‘We just want to give the women alternatives,’ but they really just hate abortion,” she said. “And they make things so much harder for young women who are at a very difficult point in their lives, making a choice that is not easy for anyone.”
With just 90,000 residents, Redding contains half the population of Shasta County, a vast landscape three times the size of Rhode Island dominated by forested mountains, tiny towns, cowboys — and a long tradition of conservatism that hardened after Donald Trump was elected president. The county has voted for Republican presidents by 60% or more since Ronald Reagan. Local radio bristles with conservative and religious talk shows decrying abortion and LGBTQ rights, and spurred by leaders based in Redding, the county this year declared itself the only sanctuary in the state for the Second Amendment, pledging to defy any attempt to limit constitutional gun rights.
The county also has a higher poverty rate, lower income and fewer people with college degrees than the rest of California, which means women who need abortions are less able to afford to take time off work and travel far distances for care, according to the Guttmacher Institute and other nonprofits that advocate for abortion access. A more recently opened Planned Parenthood clinic in Redding also draws protests — but the sole abortion care it gives is the pill mifepristone, which can be taken only up to about 10 weeks of pregnancy.
Women can also obtain mifepristone prescriptions over telehealth calls, which have gained in popularity in recent years and can help people avoid long drives to a clinic or doctor’s office. But the Guttmacher Institute reports that physical clinics still account for more than 80% of abortions provided by a clinician.
So anyone in the Redding area who needs an abortion after a pregnancy has passed the window for using mifepristone has no easily reachable alternative to the Women’s Health Specialists Clinic. That makes those swaths between here and Oregon, the coast and Chico an abortion-service desert, according to leaders of the clinics.
The situation stretches far beyond Redding to other rural areas, with cities such as Ventura and Fontana blocking the creation of new clinics over the past year. Planned Parenthood reports that since the Dobbs decision, demand for abortions has gone up 11% in the far north region of California which includes Redding, with no new resources.
At the same time, according to the National Abortion Federation, attacks and protests at abortion clinics have shot up nationally since Dobbs at least 100%, and death threats and threats of harm against care providers increased by 20%. No California-specific statistics were available, but clinic providers in Redding and elsewhere say they’ve seen a significant rise in enmity.
The vast majority of what the two Redding clinics provide is the other women’s health needs, such as pap smears, birth control and breast exams. And the majority of their clients are low-income, adding the stress of negotiating cumbersome Medi-Cal funding to pay for their care.
But that doesn’t matter to those who believe abortion is an abomination.
“Abortion is a sin, and it breaks my heart to drive by that clinic on Wednesdays and know there are little babies whose lives are being ended,” said Pastor Levi White of the Redding Christian Fellowship, which sits next door to Women’s Health Specialists. He and his congregation work to steer women to the two nonprofits in town that advise women on what they describe as alternatives to abortion, such as adoption, and he said he feels those alternatives are the right answer “even if it’s rape or incest.”
“Through God’s sovereignty, maybe something can happen down the road, even in those situations, for the greater good,” he said.
“Ridiculous,” said Frank Treadway, a local political consultant who has served as an escort at the surgery clinic.
“I’m 82, I’ve been here since 1944, and I’ve just seen these protests get worse and worse,” he said. “This new generation of protesters is into screaming, even more gigantic signs, and getting in the back of pickups with megaphones.
“Look, this area is quirky and open-minded — it’s not a bad place,” he said. “It’s conservative, but that’s not all there is. There’s a growing lesbian and trans population here, and more people are moving up from the Bay Area. So I think change is coming. But for now, with those clinics? It’s crazy. The protesters are wrapped up in their religiosity.”
Those who run the clinics say they are undaunted. The Women’s Health Specialists Clinic has been bombed twice and set on fire two times more since it opened in 1983, and though the last attack was in the 1990s, the ferocity of the opposition has not abated. Most placard-wavers who come on Wednesdays are peaceful, but the knots of those who bellow and lean over the fence with bullhorns jangle everyone.
Longtime Women’s Health Specialists co-director Katrina Cantrell said her focus is more on “the beautiful people who work at the center and believe in what we do” rather than those who yell outside her walls.
“We are tenacious, courageous and compassionate,” she said. “And we are not weak. It’s really our own tenacity and dedication to liberty, integrity and bodily sovereignty that keeps us going.
“We are in a philosophically and politically divided community, but challenge also brings opportunity,” she said. “Since our inception, (the clinic’s) turf is a well-known center of progressive activism and resistance in many fields — we have always believed in our commonalities, and that our lived experience has great power. We have fought endless battles to keep abortion available throughout the nation, and we will persist and win that battle.”
Anna Meldrum, Planned Parenthood’s director for the region that includes Redding, said it’s hard enough to keep that clinic going at full strength, let alone to open anything new nearby.
“We have such a high demand in Redding we can’t keep up with it,” said Meldrum, who is based 146 miles away in Eureka, the nearest other clinic to the west. “You can’t get an appointment with us for about three weeks because demand is so high, and staffing is difficult. It’s hard to hire up here.
“If you’re in the Bay Area, the clinics are close together, so if you have a clinician or staff member who has to be out, you can get someone nearby. But if you’re in Redding, no one is close enough to reroute on the same day so we have to cancel appointments.”
Protesters this month estimated they have persuaded dozens of women over the years to abandon abortion plans, but based on at least a dozen or more women obtaining surgical or medication abortions each week at the clinics, those persuasions would be from among more than 20,000 patients.
“It’s very important that we have this here,” said Annika Peets, waiting for a ride home after a recent visit to the Planned Parenthood clinic in Redding for birth control. “It took me a month to get an appointment because they’re so booked up. There just aren’t that many choices around here. We need this.”
But for local leaders who would like nothing better than to see the clinics close, it doesn’t matter if the turn-aways are dozens or thousands. The principle doesn’t change. They and protest leaders say they are encouraged by the visible increase since Dobbs in the number of protesters.
“This is a very conservative county, and we are proud of that,” said county Supervisor and former Redding Mayor Patrick Jones, a leading voice over the past decade for hard-right Trumpism. “I am not in favor of abortion, and I would like to see it stop in this city.”
He sat in his family-owned gun store that he manages in Redding, the mounted head of a buffalo looming above him while a full shop of customers browsed the expansive array of pistols and rifles.
“We believe in God here, and we have the highest percentage per capita of CCW (concealed gun permits) holders in the state,” he said. “It’s a good county. I don’t think we have the authority to stop their operations at those clinics, but I wish we did.”
Chamberlain, the editor, hopes that never happens. But she’s not counting on anything.
“The protests are crazier than ever, and I struggle to find a lot that’s good here lately,” she said. “The people who oppose abortion so much — it’s like they oppose helping poor people. I really don’t know what the future will bring.”
(SF Chronicle)
LEAD STORIES FROM MONDAY'S NYT
Inside the Last-Ditch Hunt by Harris and Trump for Undecided Voters
Musk’s $1 Million Offer Raises New Legal Questions
Israel Strikes Hezbollah-Affiliated Financial Institution in Lebanon
Drone Hits Building Near Netanyahu’s Home in Coastal Israel
Cuba Suffers Second Power Outage in 24 Hours, Realizing Years of Warnings
Liberty Oust Lynx in Overtime to Capture First-Ever WNBA Championship
ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
I do regret email. Even though I’ve turned off the ping that once heralded every new message, I regret how susceptible I am to its constant interruptions. I regret all the times I look, only to find there’s nothing there. I regret the minutes it takes for my attention to fully return to other work at hand after stopping to check. I regret how I can spend an hour a day writing back to people I’ve never met, explaining why I can’t speak at their school or judge their contest or read their novel. I regret how every person who hits “reply all” to the holiday message sent to a hundred people shaves off a few seconds from all of our lives. Those seconds add up.
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY (2)
A former poster here called Obama effeminate (and of course Michelle manly). I decided not to respond, but I was thinking that it was really projection or something. His (the former poster) guy wears crazy amounts of makeup (and badly as anyone can see the edge where he didn’t bother to blend), has a construction of hair that is ridiculous. Wears lifts in his shoes and uses that long tie to diminish his gut.
Trump acts like he is a tough guy, an alpha, but he whines more than my teenage grandkids. A whole lot more. Constantly. Whine, whine, whine.
IN ALL MY YEARS of watching the operations of Washington—including the Bush/Cheney criminal invasion of Iraq—I have never seen such a servile position by top officials of an administration to a foreign power. Not even close. They are humiliating the United States of America. They are jeopardizing the United States of America—because as you know, the Department of Defense, CIA, NSA have studies and scenarios of blowback. So this war in the Middle East is gonna come back to the US in terms of reprisal and retaliation. And we are not able to anticipate that because we think, as the ruling empire in the world, that we're invulnerable. But we're not invulnerable.
— William Hartung
THE END OF A VILLAGE
by Wallace Shawn
Jonathan Schell published ‘The Village of Ben Suc’ in the July 15, 1967, issue of The New Yorker when he 23 years old. (That was the same year the article came out as a book, published by Knopf.) I'd been Schell's classmate and friend since we were very young, and in 1967 I had thought we were both still more or less boys, figuring things out. When I read his article I realized that Schell had mysteriously and secretly grown up. To my amazement, he'd somehow figured out how to express his intense and passionate outlook on the world through the cool and simple sentences of a factual article about a military campaign, and I could even see his characteristic sense of the absurd glinting out from behind the grimly serious story that he told.
Indeed, the essential features of his sensibility were all there in the unselfconscious pages of his first published work: a sort of tranquil respect for all living things; a steadiness of moral vision; an unblinking and almost semihumorous awareness of the ridiculousness in what people thought and said; and all the same, a warmth and affection that were extended even toward individuals whose actions he couldn't accept. And underlying everything else, an unmistakable kindness and gentleness of spirit. And as it turned out, his article was the beginning of his speculation on the subject to which he devoted his life: human destructiveness — the apparently unquenchable madness that drives people to kill each other — with a particular focus on the citizens of the United States.
It's quite a terrible thing to expose the crimes of one's own tribe. A deep part of our nature cries out against doing that. And the United States at the time he published the article was not the cynical nation that it was about to become and has fully become today. On the contrary, I think most Americans at that moment had a very idealistic belief in the basic goodness of their country, their government, and most particularly their military establishment, which was still basically seen in the glowing light of its victorious and apparently honorable role in World War II. Schell began his career as a writer by presenting a sour, disillusioning image of the US military forces in action, and some people never forgave him for it.
Even as he was growing up, Schell had always been open to the attraction of what people in the 1950s called “different cultures.” He was drawn to the ideas of Zen Buddhism when he was 15 years old, and as he got a bit older he was inspired by his older brother, Orville, to specialize in East Asian history as an undergraduate. (Orville ultimately became one of his generation's most influential American writers and thinkers on the subject of China, which he has written about for the last 25 years.)
Immediately after he graduated from college in 1965, Schell went to Tokyo to study Japanese, and during the year and a half he spent in Japan the American presence in Vietnam grew from fewer than 100,000 soldiers to more than 300,000, and he eventually decided that on his way home to the United States he would stop off in Vietnam to see for himself what was happening there. In the early days of the war — and these were for the United States the early days of the war — the American military was not particularly paranoid about what the press might write, and Schell was able to gain remarkable access to people and places using only his college newspaper’s press card.
It was natural that Schell would submit what he wrote to The New Yorker. He and I had both grown up on a steady diet of The New Yorker, where my father was the editor-in-chief. From an early age we absorbed countless factual articles about far-flung subjects, such as the techniques involved in the cultivation of oranges or the customs of herdsmen in Uganda, as well as the more abstract and thought-provoking pieces by writers including James Baldwin and Hannah Arendt.
While we were reading New Yorker articles, President Lyndon Johnson was changing his mind back and forth, as we now know, about whether he ought to involve the United States in a full-scale war in Vietnam.
In 1965 and 1966 he decisively committed American forces to the fight.
Obviously Lyndon Johnson was not an original thinker. He naturally accepted the dogmas of his time and place. And very few Americans in positions of power at that time questioned the rather elaborate theoretical structures of thought according to which the United States was threatened in every corner of the planet by a frighteningly powerful and implacable foe, World Communism, whose clear intention was to devour the entire globe piece by piece until it finally swallowed up Washington and New York. The growing conflict between the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communists did not prevent the philosophers of American strategy from theorizing that if any country were to “fall” to Communism, Communism as a whole would grow stronger, America's will to fight would be doubted by friends and enemies alike, and countries geographically close to the “fallen” country would fall themselves.
Vietnam had been part of the French empire. Ho Chi Minh and his Marxist-Leninist anticolonial forces had defeated the French, but the military equation that had obtained after that triumph nevertheless obliged the winning side to accept a compromise victory. Vietnam was split in half. Ho and his colleagues ruled over North Vietnam, while a strange and chaotic collection of anti-Communist figures, with the United States in the background, attempted to create a nation, or the appearance of a nation, out of South Vietnam. Meanwhile Ho's revolutionary forces carried on with the struggle to achieve their ultimate goal — a unified country under their leadership — and the revolutionary guerrilla forces were indeed winning the support of the peasant population in a growing proportion of the South. And this was precisely the moment when Schell arrived in Vietnam.
Schell decided not to write in his article about Lyndon Johnson and Ho Chi Minh and whatever they might have believed or felt. He wrote exclusively about what he saw in and around a single military operation centered on a single village, the village of Ben Suc, which once had had a population of around 3,500. It turned out that Schell had a remarkable affinity for telling his tale in a quiet, deliberate, orderly manner that fit perfectly into the pages of The New Yorker of that era, patiently laying down one fact after another, without drawing any particular attention to himself or to what it felt like to report the story, without making any obvious attempt to attract or charm his readers or grab them by the throat, and without pandering to whatever depraved interest they might happen to have had in irrelevant but lurid material appealing to their sadistic or prurient instincts.
And yet despite the calm and gentle surface of his prose, the story he told his readers in ‘The Village of Ben Suc’ was grotesque, though perhaps the grace and lucidity of his sentences made its impact particularly shocking. Ben Suc was in an area that the Americans believed to be dominated by the revolutionary guerrilla forces, and so the American soldiers understandably saw everyone who lived in the area as a possible threat, but there were no reliable techniques available to the soldiers for distinguishing those in the area who might be trying to kill them from those who simply happened to live there. It was rumored and believed that the enemy guerrillas wore black clothing. That was often true, but it was also the typical clothing of a great number of Vietnamese peasants. The American operation in Ben Suc killed perhaps 25 people, maybe several more; it was very hard to say. But in any case apart from those who died, all the people who lived in Ben Suc at that time — they were mostly women, children, and the elderly, because many of the men fighting in the war — were forced out of their homes and their land by the American soldiers, who then proceeded to drench the grass roofs of their houses with gas and light them on fire. Finally the Americans crushed all the buildings with bulldozers, and then the entire area — buildings, fields, and trees — was bombed to rubble, to nothingness.
Schell didn't write extensively about the technicalities of the military operation. He wrote about the peasants who were removed from the village and the American soldiers who removed them. When describing the villagers, he wrote with a sort of delicate, restrained compassion, without pretending to understand their suffering or their thoughts any more than he did. When he described the American soldiers and officers he met, he was not at all unsympathetic to them. Of course there are certain writers who clearly despise their fellow countrymen. (Thomas Bernhard comes to mind.) But Schell was not one of them. He generally seemed to like the military men he encountered. It's just that what they were doing was appalling.
Plucked from the farms, small towns, and slums where they had lived in the United States, and where up until a few months earlier they had worked in factories or barns or shops or offices, packing shirts in boxes or selling greeting cards to familiar customers, the draftees and even the officers of the American military had awakened to find that they'd been dropped down into a land that for them was alien, strange, and actually uncanny, where they were surrounded by people whose words, gestures, and expressions they couldn't interpret. These American soldiers were not malevolent or vicious. At least as Schell met them in 1966, they didn't really seem terribly different from the fresh-faced, smiling, gum-chewing, candy-distributing American GIs who were greeted as liberators by people in many countries at the end of World War II.
They certainly composed an army much less deliberately cruel, much less motivated by hatred, than many we all know about. They were fairly nice young men. The problem was only that they knew basically nothing about the place to which they'd been sent, they had no idea why they were there, and they didn't really know what they were supposed to do there. They had no idea what sort of danger these Vietnamese peasants could possibly pose to their own American families back home; they had no idea what their “enemy” was fighting for; and they had no idea why they were supposed to kill certain Vietnamese peasants but not others, and what exactly it was about those they were assigned to kill that made them worthy of death.
To call the American soldiers racist would not be exactly inaccurate, but the more important fact was that they were situated inside an enormous multibillion-dollar operation that was entirely based on the unquestioned assumption that the Vietnamese peasants weren't very bright and could be easily manipulated. That wasn't true. So the American soldiers were confused. Schell clearly portrays the early signs of the frustration and rage to which their confusion led in the next couple of years, resulting ultimately in the shooting of American officers by their own men and the deliberate, crazed massacres of entire peasant villages by out-of-control American troops.
Roughly speaking, the first half of Schell's book shows that indeed the American military, equipped with well-worked-out principles of military organization and brilliantly constructed machines for transporting people and for blowing things up, did a very good job of accomplishing its basic military objective, which was to remove the village of Ben Suc from the face of the earth so that it could not be used by the enemy as a base or refuge.
It's in the second half of the book that we learn how bad a job the Americans did when called upon to answer the question inevitably posed by their successful destruction of the village, namely: What were they going to do with all the people who had lived there? And beyond that, how were they going to deal with the villagers in a way that would actually please them, that would earn their loyalty and support, that would win over, in the phrase of the time, their “hearts and minds”? How could they persuade the villagers, in other words, that the people who had just destroyed their village and killed their family members were in fact their friends? Because this was the ultimate objective of the American invasion of Vietnam. On the ground, at least.
The American establishment in Washington and the soldiers on the ground both contrived in a way to be oblivious to the fact, to forget the fact that people generally don't like to be ruled by foreigners, and that to persuade people who've been invaded and occupied by a foreign army to feel a loyalty to that army, to support that army, to risk their lives and die for that army… Well, that couldn't be anything other than a very hard trick to pull off. All the same, a great many of those who were in charge of the American side of the war did have at least a vague understanding that without winning those hearts and minds they couldn't win the war.
And in Schell's description of the miserably third-rate attempt of the American soldiers to construct a temporary camp for the villagers in the days after their village had been obliterated, we can see with perfect clarity why the Americans were destined to lose the war, why the Communist forces would inevitably one day march into Saigon and rename it Ho Chi Minh City. In attempting to build this supposedly temporary camp for the villagers, the soldiers and officers of the American army behaved the way unmotivated people with lousy jobs do in any mediocre, low-morale office in any mediocre, low-morale business back home. They did the minimum required.
But that wasn't enough to win over many hearts or minds.
The Vietnamese revolutionaries were fighting for their own country, for their own families. The Americans were not. They didn't know what they were fighting for. They did what they were told to do, and as Schell shows almost poignantly, they pretended to one another, and they pretended to themselves, that they were doing a pretty good job. The only ones who weren't fooled were the Vietnamese. They weren't fooled at all.
In other words, Schell's book could have been the crystal ball that led American policymakers to realize that quasi-imperial American interventions of this type could not succeed in the contemporary world, and if the policymakers had read Schell's book and studied it carefully, who knows?, maybe a million or more Vietnamese lives could have been saved, along with the lives of 50,000 American soldiers, along with countless lives in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Anyway, the policymakers who read the book — and of course there would have been a few who did — apparently didn't take the time to think through its pretty obvious implications.
One of the writers who most influenced Schell throughout his life was Hannah Arendt. And four years before the publication of his article on the village of Ben Suc, Schell had been exposed to an alarming four-word expression that Arendt had first introduced to the world in the pages of The New Yorker: “The banality of evil.” She used this phrase in the course of explaining that the extermination of six million European Jews had been carried out by a bureaucratic organization that operated more or less in the manner of any typical, ordinary industrial enterprise — and that this organization's many thousands of employees were not a group of crazed fanatics whose principal motivation was a loathing of Jews but rather group of fairly typical humans obediently carrying out the tasks assigned to them by their bosses.
The disturbing implication of this was that monstrous crimes could be perpetrated by people who did not necessarily, in their thoughts, speech, or demeanor, appear to be evil. And this raised deep questions about the much more popular way of looking at the world, namely that there are good individuals and bad individuals, good groups and bad groups — and that the world would be a lovely place if only all the bad individuals and all the bad groups could be stopped, contained, or killed.
If one accepts the idea that the ugliest of crimes can be perpetrated by people who aren't obviously ugly criminals, then the possibility seems to arise that even reasonably nice people might at times be involved in evil. And without mentioning Arendt's thoughts or getting into any philosophical speculation, this is precisely what Schell shows us in his description of the American soldiers in ‘The Village of Ben Suc.’ At least until relatively recently, most Americans have liked to think of themselves as well meaning, friendly, basically decent people. That wasn't an entirely false belief in 1966, and it's not even entirely false now. But reading this book today, over half a century after it was written, over half a century since the village of Ben Suc was obliterated, and over ten years since Schell's death, I feel Schell's steady, questioning eye still staring at all the innocent people maimed and killed around the world by the possibly overconfident, friendly Americans.
(Wallace Shawn is an American actor, playwright, essayist, and screenwriter. This essay appears, in somewhat different form, as the introduction to a new edition of Jonathan Schell's ‘The Village of Ben Suc,’ to be published by New York Review Books in October.)
(New York Review of Books)
Good morning Mendo! Am at the Catholic University library in Washington, D.C. on a guest computer about to go to the (lower) Crypt Church for a Monday Mass. Then it will be on to the D.C. Peace Vigil to provide hydrating beverages and food to the vigilers. Will move on to check the lottery tix. Much later, will purchase a few mundane items and then take a relaxed series of Metro train/the Circulator/bus rides to return to the Adam’s Place Homeless Shelter for the evening. The end of season weather is ideal; warm, sunny, with a slight breeze. There are very few campaign signs anywhere. Nobody here is interested in the presidential election, and nobody here is paying attention to the Federal government anymore. Local district politics still generate some lively discussion. Most residents are cheering on the Washington, D.C. sports teams. That’s the news from America’s national capitol. Craig Louis Stehr (craiglouisstehr@gmail.com)
Online comment #1 is by Ann Patchett in yesterday’s NYTimes. Full essay is a treat.
Yes, fine piece by Ann Patchett, here’s another bit from it that I liked, as it reminds me of my wife and me:
“People with smartphones look at me as if I’m the last of the carrier pigeons… I live so much of my life outside of these times… I have no accounts on social media (though my bookstore does). I don’t watch television (though my husband is watching a football game now). I own an independent bookstore, for heaven’s sake. I read in bed with a flashlight.”
The Story of My Life:
From Five Years Old to Twenty (An 80-part series)
Chapter 1
We moved to Muncie, Indiana from Oswego, New York in August, 1959 when I was five (with a stop in Cleveland for the summer at my grandmother’s small apartment building) when my dad got a job teaching English at Ball State Teachers College (later BSU). He had hired a sketchy-looking guy with a big old red truck to haul our belongings out from Cleveland for twenty-five dollars, including a painting the soon-to- be rich and famous painter Roy Lichtenstein, one of Pop’s colleagues at Oswego State, had given us. (When we were in his studio picking out the paintings I wanted the “Donald Duck” which later sold for millions when Roy’s Pop Art career took off.)
When the truck arrived at the rental at 225 North Celia across from Ball Memorial Hospital (where ambulances screamed into the emergency room at all hours), the driver said he wanted thirty-five dollars instead of the agreed upon twenty-five, and there was a big argument on the street while our furniture, and the painting, was held hostage. It was a hot sweaty August night and he and the movers were wearing short-sleeved tee-shirts.
My father refused to pay extra, the movers took off with our stuff, and he chased after them in his old Chevy station wagon. The police came, my sister wailed to them that they had all her toys, and finally the truck was returned and unloaded.
RE: FILL [FB] COUNCIL SPACES WITH NEW FACES
I couldn’t agree with Bill and Sue more but I’ll say it more succinctly: “Anybody but Lindy” for Fort Bragg City Council.
Musk Sues Coastal Commission…
“Governor Gavin Newsom recently weighed in on the side of Musk saying, “I’m with Elon.”
If Governor Gavin Newsom is “with Elon” he should fire these Coastal Commission snobs immediately. However, don’t hold your breath.
Have a nice day,
Laz
The way the California law is, the State legislature appoints who is on the Coastal Commission. The law was challenged in court a few years ago on the basis of a violation of the separation of powers, and a State Supreme Court judge upheld the law, despite the law being clearly inconsistent with the California Constitution. The judge. admitted as much, but upheld the unconstitutional law anyway. One gets to appreciate judges who actually stick with the law.
Since Mr. Musk has Fuck You money, this suit will likely go on, no matter who says or does what… Write it down…
Be well,
Laz
I heard an interview this morning about the Potter Valley Project.
I didn’t hear who it was being interviewed, but was able to find out and to hear (and read) it again.
I never heard this guy in person before and was appalled by his diction and use of language, let alone his take on the subject.
Here it is:
https://www.kzyx.org/2024-10-21/two-basin-solution
I had hoped for some responses to this,
The interviewee was Jared Huffman and I found his speaking skills about as sad as his performance as our representative in Congress.
Another suggestion to spend a few minutes listening to this morning’s broadcast.
My suggestion is vote for Chris Coulombe.
His rebuttal was on KZYX this morning. His take on the removal of the dams is indeed better than Huffman’s. Neither one of them gets my vote, however.
If anyone can tell us what the effect on Anderson Vally grapes the PV Project has (a la Huffman), please tell us.
The daily AVA: There’s the “Catch of the Day”, no longer so interesting, all the faces are gone. Then there’s sometimes the “Laugh of the Day,” via the ED NOTES. Today there’s the editor’s observations on riding Muni buses, made me laugh out loud a couple times—one of the best was our dear editor watching the huge fat guy enter the bus, going off on the bus driver, then sitting next to 2 young folks mesmerized by their cell phones: “I was hoping the fat man would sit down on them..” No such luck. All told, the bus tales made me glad to not live in the city, ever.
SAVE LAKE PILLSBURY
Nothing “pristine” about a reservoir created by humans, driven by greed and growth. Drain the thing and let nature renew itself. Get the human population down go its natural carrying capacity, and maybe the fish stocks will increase. People can do without their wine.
JJ Rousseau would be so very happy to have you as a true believer, and follower.
Suggest you look up the definition of “pristine”.
Re: the article with pictures of the sky over the farm. In the early 1980s I briefly had a 1964 Rambler that exact shade of aqua blue teal. And then a little farther down the page you show the three-on-the-tree shift pattern of that very car, and also my first car, a 1971 Chevy Nova not nearly that pretty a color but it smelled just as good.
The parts the shift control moved on the engine side of the firewall of the Nova– the pivots on the shaft and the rods that went down from there and connected to /two four-inch levers on the left side of the transmission/– were a bit loose and allowed for getting things wrong. Sometimes shifting from first to second gear resulted in a jam so it was stuck hard between gears. You’d have to shut off the motor, engage the parking brake for safety (the Nova had a pedal for that, whereas the Rambler had a handle next to your knee), slide under the car with a big screwdriver, stick it between those levers to separate them and directly push them the right way. There was a solid, swallowing /clunk/ sound from inside the transmission that indicated success. You slide out. Dust yourself off. Get back in the car, and you’re free to go. It was very satisfying.
But then farther down the page I see that same tealish color of sky in a photograph of a hotel in San Francisco. And the frame around the HI, MOM cartoon, too. Huh. Maybe it’s just my eyes today. But the sky out my window is not that color, so I dunno.
In other news: The millions of dollars’ worth of prime ocean-front real estate that used to be the mill: It shouldn’t be a Monopoly ™ game for rich developers. It should be a park. So there’s some poison left over from the last owners who misused the place, so what. There’s poison in everything. Bananas are naturally so radioactive that the banana is a common measuring unit for radioactivity. The mill site is not all that poisonous. It’s way healthier than watching sportsball games on teevee. Tear out all the remaining fences, mitigate concrete-chunk hazards, send schoolkids out on made-up holidays with seeds and plants and let it just naturally turn into a real park.
Wishing all Filipinos in the U.S. ‘happy you are here day’.
From Attorney General Rob Bonta:
10 new laws represent a comprehensive approach to addressing criminal behavior by focusing on the aggregation of related offenses. Furthermore, the legislation enhances penalties for significant thefts, reflecting a zero-tolerance stance on property crimes that have a substantial impact on victims and communities. The new laws will soon take effect on January 1, 2025, except for Assembly Bill 1972, which took effect immediately on August 16, 2024. With DOJ’s guidance, local law enforcement agencies and departments can plan, deploy resources and staffing, work with the business community, and otherwise prepare to maximize the efficacy of this new suite of laws.
SACRAMENTO – California Attorney General Rob Bonta today unveiled a new law enforcement bulletin highlighting 10 new California Organized Retail Crime (ORC) bills that were signed into law by the Governor on August 16, 2024. These laws are essential tools to help law enforcement address organized retail crime in California. These laws will take effect on January 1, 2025, except for AB 1972, which took effect immediately on August 16, 2024.
“The only way we can take these criminals down is by beating them at their own game,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta. “We need to be equally nimble, coordinated, organized—and then some. I am thankful for great partners like CHP, local law enforcement and district attorneys. We must be a united front that spans law enforcement, prosecutors, retailers, and online marketplaces. This bulletin summarizes the new laws that can be used as tools to fight organized retail crime head on.”
“The CHP’s organized retail theft investigation teams are making significant progress, dismantling criminal networks that target our retailer,” said California Highway Patrol Commissioner Sean Duryee. “Their relentless efforts, strong partnerships with local businesses, and focus on community safety show that we are actively tackling organized theft head-on.”
The new laws summarized in the bulletin represent a comprehensive approach to addressing criminal behavior by focusing on the aggregation of related offenses. This means that when multiple offenses are committed that are connected in some way, they can be treated as a single, more serious violation. This provision aims to ensure that individuals who engage in a pattern of criminal activity are held accountable for the full extent of their actions.
Additionally, the new laws include different provisions that allow for arrests to be made under suitable conditions. This empowers law enforcement to take decisive action when they encounter situations that warrant an arrest. Furthermore, the legislation seeks to enhance penalties for significant thefts, reflecting a zero-tolerance stance on property crimes that have a substantial impact on victims and communities. By increasing the consequences for these serious offenses, the laws aim to deter individuals from engaging in such criminal behavior and to ensure that those who do are met with appropriate repercussions.
Overall, this legislation is a proactive measure that guarantees that individuals who violate the law will face suitable consequences for their actions. It underscores a commitment to maintaining order and protecting the rights and safety of citizens, while also addressing the complexities of criminal behavior in a more nuanced and effective manner.