Off the Record 11/4/2024

WHERE’S KOJOE?

The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office is currently assisting the Anaheim Police Department in attempting to locate Kojoe (no last name). Kojoe is described as a 59-year-old African American male adult, approximately 5'9" and 170 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes.

Kojoe was last seen in Anaheim, CA on 06/26/24. It is believed Kojoe was going to Yosemite National Park for the weekend and planned to return on 06/29/24. However, Kojoe did not return and has not been heard from since. Family has attempted to contact his cell phone, but the phone goes straight to voicemail.

On 08/16/24, the California Highway Patrol located Kojoe's vehicle (2009 Black Infiniti M35) on State Route Hwy 128 (near Navarro) a few miles east of Paul Dimmick Campground. An initial search of the area was conducted, but Kojoe was not located. Additional searches of the area where Kojoe's vehicle was located have been conducted with Search and Rescue personnel, but did not yield investigative leads and Kojoe remains missing.

Anaheim Police Department is currently investigating leads into the whereabouts of Kojoe.

If anyone has seen Kojoe or has information regarding his whereabouts, please contact the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office at 707-463-4086 or the Tip Line 707-234-2100.

OUR RECENT discussion of abalone, prompted this visit to our archive, where we found,

AN ABALONE POACHER has been sentenced to jail time and also fined after he pleaded guilty to charges of felony conspiracy to take abalone for commercial purposes. Randy Lee Appleyard, 23, of Waterford (Stanislaus County not far from Modesto) was sentenced to one year in county jail and three years of supervised probation for illegally harvesting 73 red abalone near Fort Bragg this year (2007). Appleyard will also pay a $20,000 fine and be banned for life from getting a fishing license. He was arrested Jan. 15, by wardens from the California Department of Fish and Game who had received tips that Appleyard and three other suspects had been illegally harvesting abalone and selling them to restaurants in the Sacramento area. Wardens conducted surveillance on the group for a day before arresting them on Highway 20 as they were leaving Fort Bragg. The suspects were found to be in possession of 73 red abalone, well above the state limit of three abalone per person per day. Arrested with Appleyard were Alan Palmer who, along with Appleyard dove for the abalone, and Robert and Joseph Barrett, who served as lookouts. Palmer failed to appear for a court hearing and has been arrested on suspicion of failure to appear in addition to his other charges. Robert and Joseph Barrett both pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of commercial harvest of abalone and were sentenced to 90 days in county jail and three years probation and ordered to pay a $15,000 fine. Deputy District Attorney Tim Stoen, who prosecuted the case, praised Fish and Game Wardens Dennis McKiver, Gary Combes, Scott Melvin and Ronda Moore for their “solid investigation” in this case. “Our office is committed to vigorous enforcement of the abalone laws,” said Mendocino County District Attorney Meredith Lintott. “Each person who takes five abalone over the three-per-day limit now receives a jail sentence. Abalone are a public resource, which means all Californians are injured by abalone crimes.” Appleyard is scheduled to surrender to the Mendocino County Jail on January 2nd.

A YOUNG WOMAN called one day with a pitch for a “guest blog post.” I said I was just answering the phone for the owner of the paper and couldn't obligate him to additional expense. “What's yer name?” the young lady demanded. Chuck, I said. “Chuck what?” (Phone manners, like the face-to-face ones, are gone.) Chuck Manson, I said. “When will the owner be in, Chuck?” He's out when he's in and in when he's out, I said, but there's a window of opportunity Wednesday mornings, early. “Thanks, Chuck. I'll call back then. Chuck, you really rock.”

I USED TO LIKE to walk downtown to the ballpark to catch a couple of innings of Giant's baseball through the free viewing gap in the right field wall that the Giant's magnanimously designed into the park's right-center promenade. The view is surprisingly good from out there and the fans massed behind the screens looking into right field tend to be knowledgeable and fun. Of course there's always a couple of guys yelling non-stop insults at the oblivious ball players out on the field. The insults are of the uninspired “You gotta arm like a Little Leaguer” variety, but you get the bounce by security if you resort to obscenities. Always surprises me how sports bring out the child in chronological adults.

THE GIANTS were playing the Yankees that Sunday and I wanted to see the great A-Rod with my own eyes. (I think I'm reverting, too. I used to go to literary-political events, but these days I read the sports page and go to ball games, and only glance at the book reviews. Politics? Every time I hear or read the word “progressive” I zone out even faster than I do at “Harris-Walz.”)

SO OFF I WENT about noon, figuring to transfer from the 1 California to the 30 Stockton to get to PacBell in plenty of time for the first pitch. Downtown was jammed. People everywhere, many of them seemingly headed south. Surely this mob couldn't be headed for PacBell? It was so crowded that the 30 bus was running only to the Union Square end of the Stockton Tunnel. I'd walked almost to Market Street where, as I approached, a flatbed truck with a dozen or so gyrating men in leather jockstraps moved across my viewshed. Oh, yeah, the gay parade. The annual event, larger every year, had eluded my flagging notice. I didn't know it was on until I got to it.

I KNEW there would be a million voyeurs along Market Street from the Ferry Building all the way up to Castro and Market, so many of them I would have a tough time getting to the ballpark side of Market Street. Then another flatbed truck passed, this one featuring a mostly unclothed, almost comically voluptuous woman swatting the flabby bare buttocks of a middle aged man with what looked like a kitchen broom.

FOR A MASS DISPLAY of sexuality the event seemed strangely de-eroticized unless, of course, the sight of a fat guy getting his bare butt swept turns your crank. As I stood watching the sybarites pass and thinking end-of-the-world thoughts, waiting for a break in the passing parade so I could scurry across Market and on to the ballpark, it occurred to me that my sexual community didn't seem to be represented. I mean really, with a parade that included everyone from straight accountants for gays to gay owners of transgendered pit bulls to gay grandmothers for peace in Iraq, how about us EPPSies, or Enlarged Prostrate Post Sexual Seniors? Maybe next year.

SHERIFF KENDALL:

Abalone memories brought back memories for me of old Clyde Doggett. Every time my wife and I would run to the coast, I would jump in and pluck a couple of abalone. On the way home we would stop in the cemetery in Boonville. Melissa normally would bring every yard tool necessary to ensure my ancestor’s, and her grandparent’s resting places were looking well kept. Clyde was a constant icon in the cemetery and always made quick work of visiting his way up to the bed of my truck and would rapidly inspect its contents. If he saw a dive tube the conversation would rapidly turn from family and friends to the fact he hadn’t had any Abalone “since he couldn’t recall”. I could always recall when he last gleaned one off of me however that didn’t slow him down from gleaning yet another. He also would ask we spend just a minute cleaning for him as well.

Clyde passed away just about the time Abalone harvesting closed. Perhaps he timed his passing in fashion which suited him. He was a darn good fellow and I enjoyed our conversations, even if they did cost me an abalone or 10 over the years.

LOUISE MARIANNA WRITES:

(Update from nurse Louise and her Appliance Sale)

Thank you to everyone who responded to my need for new housing and your well wishes, but I just couldn't afford those rents 1200 to 1500 square feet excluding. utilities. So I bought a single wide 2 bedroom mobile home (moho) in Fort Bragg in a 55 + unit park. It comes with appliances I don't want. So they are for sale. Here's what I’ve got: Whirlpool refrigerator. 28 by 30 by 62 made in 2019, color white, top freezer. Kenmore Propane Stove 30 by 25 by 36, color white. Washing machine, Maytag “Centennial,” white, with commercial technology. Kenmore Dryer, color white, huge drum. Call me at 707-937-4837 for more details. These are in Fort Bragg and available now.

Thanks,

Louise Marianna

louise416@gmail.com

FRED GARDNER:

Editor: I see your YA Title at Kezar and call…

In a carton marked “’80s” I found this sketch. Remco Hydraulics was then the biggest employer in Willits. I suggested that instead of a calendar they send out a small tape measure. When you introduced me to Judi B in Willits I asked her something about Remco and was surprised to learn that she didn't know a single person who worked there. I remember thinking, “This chick is no leftie.” PS. Hole cards: Frankie Albert and Otto Graham at Ebbets Field!

OUTLAWRY didn’t start with drugs in Mendocino County. According to a Mendocino Beacon of early November 1933, at Bourn’s Landing not far south of Point Arena, “A gun battle between alleged rum runners and three federal prohibition agents two of whom were seriously wounded. The agents were reported to have come upon a group of five or six men, ostensibly engaged in unloading liquor from a boat anchored some distance off shore. As the three officers heard the splash of oars when the small dory was being brought to shore, one of them, Norman D. Austin, called out, “We are prohibition agents,” and was immediately answered by a volley of rifle fire. Austin was critically wounded, being shot in both arms, the left chest and side. Sam Byrd, also an agent, was knocked down by a bullet which cut through his scalp; William Goggins, the third agent, was uninjured by the fire. The rum runners then beached the dory that they were allegedly using to haul liquor for a boat to the shore, and rushing agent Byrd, captured him. He was carried in his own automobile to a lonely spot two miles from the shooting and freed after the ignition on his car had been locked and it had otherwise been made useless. Peace officers of both Mendocino and Sonoma counties were called out in an effort to capture the would-be murderers. No liquor was found.”

LAST WEEK we reviewed the clearance rates of serious felony crimes as reported by Mendocino law enforcement to the State Department of Justice. Those stats showed that in most felony crime categories Mendo either arrested or otherwise closed such crimes at rates somewhat better than state averages: https://theava.com/archives/254284#4

The Department of Justice also collects domestic violence call data by County.

It appears that post covid the number of such calls has dropped significantly. From 2014 to 2021 Mendo mostly reported from 400 to over 500 calls a year. But in the last two years (2022-2023) such calls have dropped by more than half. There’s no obvious explanation. It could be that post-Covid people are less likely to get so angry (or so drunk/drugged/angry) than they were before and during covid. Most of the calls appear to involve a “personal weapon,” typically hands/fists or household items. The majority of these calls are misdemeanors, not felonies, so clearance rate statistics are not maintained by the Department of Justice. Typically Domestic violence is charged as a felony when there’s serious injury, a deadly weapon, or if the victim is underage.

We know of a case a few years ago when a young woman was charged with domestic violence after visiting her ex-husband at his house while he was in bed recovering from a woodsworking leg injury. The responding cop told us that the woman was still pissed off at her ex for sleeping around so she started to denounce him for his philandering while he was lying in bed with a cast on his leg. The woman then proceeded to boldly announce that she was pregnant with the bed-ridden guy’s best friend’s child. The woodsworker-ex told the young woman to get out, at which point she picked up the guy’s bedpan and poured his own urine all over him. When he started to get up to grab her, the woman then went over to the wall and picked up the guy’s crutch and started beating his broken leg with it. That one was charged as a felony.

Another incident we heard about was when a woman went to a guy’s house to confront him about sleeping around. But when the guy opened the door, the complaining woman saw another woman standing behind the guy, the other woman being a (former) friend of hers. The complaining woman then decided that she was more pissed off at the other woman than the guy she intended to confront, so she lunged at the other woman. The guy tried to intervene and a scuffle ensued during which she scratched her ex’s face and pushed him onto a nearby couch. By that time the other woman had barricaded herself in the bathroom and was calling 911 on her cellphone. The confronting woman was charged with a misdemeanor.

(Mark Scaramella)

GLOATING about an award from their pals at ‘Wine Enthusiast’ Magazine declaring Mendo as “America’s Wine Region of the year for 2024,” Mendocino Winegrowers Inc, Executive Director Bonnie Butcher said: “Our winemakers have long been pioneers in organic and sustainable farming, dating to the Back to the Land movement, and this acknowledgment from Wine Enthusiast reinforces our commitment to producing world-class wines that reflect the terroir and values of our region.”

But according to the last County Crop Report (2021 — Mendo’s way behind on its crop reports since covid) abut 4,900 of Mendo’s total of 17,000-plus acres of vineyard are considered “organic.” Which is about 29%, which is fine as far as it goes, because most of those are Mendo’s smaller vineyards. But this demonstrates that more than two-thirds of Mendo’s wine acreage is most certainly NOT owned by “pioneers in organic and sustainable farming.”

This is typical of the local wine hype. They like to pretend that the County’s smaller, somewhat less harmful vineyards are representative of the industry, when the opposite is true.

(Mark Scaramella)

THE MORE conscientious among Mendo’s huge consignment of liberals, the more deluded among them daring to call themselves “progressives” to distance themselves from the Democrats they always vote for, will concede that there’s also as strong a fascist impulse among them as there is among the Magas. In my long experience as a left-lib in Mendocino County I have never been interfered with by Magas, past or present, but “liberals” have often tried to shut me up.

INLAND LIBS have also often tried to kill off Tommy Wayne Kramer, the Ukiah Daily Journal’s brilliant Sunday columnist (and a long-time friend of mine). One of Kramer’s opinion pieces that set off an avalanche of criticism and threats to un-subscribe and boycott the UDJ’s advertisers, lamented the number of lunatics on the streets of Ukiah, a statement of the obvious to most people not deriving their livelihoods from the walking wounded, the same people responsible for keeping the insane and the addicted on the streets. And, to a person, liberals.

THE SECOND KRAMER column that got the pseudo libs howling for both Kramer’s and the paper’s scalps objected to Project Sanctuary’s grisly annual art show featuring macabre messages from children not to beat on mommy, which always struck me and Kramer as an expression of child abuse. What else can you call leaning on little kids to depict their mothers getting assaulted when they are only thinking about their dogs, cats and Santa Claus?

ONE would think that liberals or, as the more delusional of them describe themselves, “progressives,” wouldn’t have wanted to ban writers at a time the national government had launched an all-out assault on Constitutional protections. And here we are again in ‘24, with libs trying to shut down sites that violate the lib catechism. Mendocino County is a funny place, a place long on righteous rhetoric, extremely short on righteous behavior, private and institutional.

A COAST READER WRITES: We have just had most of our seasoned oak firewood stolen. We can attribute stolen garbage to animals ,but stolen firewood? It was not just laying around in an informal pile, it was neatly stacked in our little shed. It took place in two separate robberies. We have no theories or ideas about who or why anyone would do this. If it is someone desperate for wood to keep warm that is one thing, if it is malicious or greedy, that is something else. Has anyone else experienced this recently? Please help us keep watch and send any information that might be useful via the AVA.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING: The new Zodiac doc on Netflix. America being global home of The Lone Nut, Zodiac was a departure, an upgrade from the usual low-grade mass killer. No sir, Zodiac was a genius-level mass murderer with desire for publicity and a macabre sense of humor as expressed in his letters to the SF Chron. He said he was amassing slaves for the next life. Zode’s divine cosmology was also unique given most depictions of Heaven, strictly a fair play sorta place we’re told.)

THE COPS KNEW for years that Arthur Leigh Allen was Zodiac, but knowing it and proving it are, as we know, two different things. A state high dive champ as a kid, Allen, as adult lunatic, was once seen doing some kind of triple fandango high dive into a reservoir late at night in the same Vallejo-area lover’s lane area where he murdered a young couple.

APART from being a homicidal maniac, Allen, we learn for the first time, was also a chomo, honing his predations as a credentialed elementary school teacher. In classic chomo fashion he ingratiated himself into the family of a beset mother of six children whose husband, super ironically, was incarcerated at the nearby Atascadero State Hospital for molesting children where Allen would also eventually be incarcerated for molesting children. You could say this lady had bad luck in men. There is strong evidence that Zodiac murdered one young couple on a beach not far from Atascadero while the kids he was babysitting waited for him on the highway above.

THE GREAT union man from Terre Haute, Eugene Debs, posthumously explains my vote for Jill Stein: “I’d rather vote for something I want and don’t get it, than vote for something I don’t want and get it.”

NORMAN MAILER dismissed G.W. Bush as “too stupid to be evil.” Ditto for Trump, mass hysteria about the orange oaf notwithstanding.

THE COURTHOUSE DESIGN goes from shockingly bad to simply appalling, with a load of pretentious grad school blather from the architect, the whole of it presented as simply wonderful by the court’s manager, Kim Turner, a resident of Marin. No comment from their majesties, the judges, of course, for whom this abomination is being foisted off on Mendocino County. The construction is being farmed out to some firm that specializes in judicial eyesores, meaning no jobs for Mendo labor. A major lose-lose for Mendo where win-wins are unknown.

ON LINE COMMENTS re: New Courthouse:

A READER WRITES: Using my fine-tuned bullshit detecting powers, the award for biggest steaming pile of poo goes to the architect and county personnel who dare to say the design for the new county courthouse—that prison/bar code atrocity, “creates interesting shadows and provides a sense of movement (like) in the forest.” I cannot imagine a building less like nature or what the average Ukiahan would describe as ”intended to replicate the verticality of the redwoods, with shivelight coming through the interior public corridors.” This is it? This monstrosity will be forced down our throats? Why bother asking for public input if that input is summarily waved away by not only the “architect” but also our artistically-challenged public officials? I’m pretty certain Gerard Manley Hopkins would upchuck his dinner were he to see these plans. It IS the blight man was born for. It is Ukiah I mourn for.

JULIE BEARDSLEY: That courthouse design just butt-ugly. How about facing the outside with natural local stone? How about some actual local wood if you find our trees so inspiring? Beautiful oak? How about a green wall? Is it a green building? There is nothing about this design that suggests it’s in Mendocino County! Rather it’s in the Walmart category of dull, uninspired public architecture that could be anywhere. It looks like an Amazon warehouse. If you’re going to spend public money- try harder!!

FALCON: It’s supposed to be butt-ugly — a representation of, a re-presentation of something bad, a place where a person would not want to be, a place a person would want to escape/get away from as quickly as possible at the speed of light…

BRIAN WOOD: I agree the courthouse design is abysmal. Turner said the exterior design of the building is “intended to replicate the verticality of the redwoods, with shivelight coming through the interior public corridors.” Yeah, right. In seriousness, the design doesn’t evoke anything natural that would represent the county. It’s crass.

HARVEY READING: No uglier than the White House, the US capitol, or most state capitols. Get over it.

MARCO MCCLEAN: Re: “Shivelight” and its influence on courthouse architecture and, farther down the page, Peter White writing about how the rich “pat you on the shoulder, from their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretense of bringing them culture.” It’s weird– just last week I quoted the scene in Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, where Rabo Karabekian says something in the same mental department, addressing surly, resentful denizens of the town’s dim bar, to explain why his painting, a large canvas covered in leftover greenhouse paint with a single vertical stripe of reflective tape down the left edge, which took him five minutes to slap together, is worth $50,000 (in 1973 money) to the town, thanks to a grant from the Elliot Rosewater Foundation and the Midland City Festival for the Arts. He wins the bar-flies over to his point of view, and you’re kind of happy for his triumphant moment, if you’re fourteen.

SARA KENNEDY OWEN: Interesting analogy! There have been beautiful works of art done using tape “bars” (Frank Stella comes to mind) but usually color is involved. In this case the blankness of the black and white seems wrong for our county, with its colorful population and varied (if sometimes very regrettable) history.

To add to the insensitive-to-the-public design, as tempting as it is to accept the architect’s reasoning, trees do not grow in straight lines, in fact there are no straight lines in nature. “Shivelight” in the forest, falling on the soft understory, is one thing, but sunlight falling in rigid lines on straight hard floors heats up and makes the building less energy-efficient, reminding us of the folly we created that led to global warming. Not a particularly wonderful feeling.

Also, the old train station could have been more incorporated into the design, and its style a jumping-off point for a more “local” feel. Very big missed opportunity there, another indication of the haughty indifference the “movers and shakers”(including locals) show toward the Mendocino County population.

As to the (new) courthouse “turning its back” on the downtown, that’s pushing it, but there is definitely a “disconnect” between the flow of public foot traffic and commerce and the cold stature or even autistic isolation, of this sad and lonely, strange building. So unlike the current courthouse, the hub of a busy downtown, where attorneys can be seen walking around with their briefcases and jurors can find lunch at a choice local spot.

Let’s not blame the architect, however, who was trained in a certain style. Instead, I would like to know who chose this location, this architect and who promoted this design? Who gets to make these momentous (and sometimes disastrous) decisions for the people who pay for it and are forced to accept it?

MARK SCARAMELLA: Sorry, but this ridiculous courthouse design is exactly what Ukiah deserves. It will be the death blow to downtown Ukiah. The City let the Palace Hotel fall into ruin (as well as several other old buildings to a lesser degree) while they approved junk buildings up and down the newly repaved but soon to be nearly abandoned State Street as they make it impossible for legitimate businesses to repurpose some of the junk buildings. And the County, “lead” lately by uncomprehending Supervisor Mulheren of Ukiah (formerly of the Ukiah City Council), has stood by as the Courts and their Courthouse minions chose this location when there was a better location across the street from the current courthouse. They have done nothing about the disruption all the ancillary judicial offices to be caused by this isolated location. Together, the City and the County have allowed this atrocity to metastasize in slow motion into the monstrosity it has become without a word of complaint. It will stand as a huge, grotesque monument to Ukiah’s and Mendo’s legendary incompetence. In that sense, it’s perfect.

ADAM GASKA:

John Pinches plan [to renegotiate water rights with Sonoma County] would never happen. Environmental interests would never allow it.

Water is metered per SB 88. It requires metering of all surface water diversions. Mendocino County has one of the highest compliance rates in the state. You can look up people’s diversion on the state data base. I have seen them aggregated onto spreadsheets. Some areas have water demand management plans at least seasonally to better coordinate diversions to fine tune stored water releases and maintain minimum stream flows. There is a telemetered pilot project about to launch on the Russian River that is upgrading monitoring equipment-pump meters, flow meters, well transponders-to develop better models.

The place where loss of the PVP will hit hardest is summer and we are already feeling it. Most water rights and licenses are for summer time diversions. Even if people want to shift to winter diversions and increase storage (i.e. dig more, larger ponds) it requires a change petition on your license/permit. That process can take a decade, usually two, and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars just to switch from a May-October diversion to a October-May and storage.

There will be more demand on groundwater which also can create its own issues with the requirements of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).

I chair UVWA, the new JPA working to consolidate the Ukiah area water districts. The move to consolidate our small water districts will help a lot, being able to legally and functionally share water to ensure drinking water supplies. There are tens, possibly hundreds, of millions of dollars in state funding to develop the infrastructure necessary to more easily distribute domestic water from Redwood Valley to south of Ukiah. Hopefully we can tie in and expand the sanitation district so we can allow for pockets of more intense development and reclaim the water, lessening the demands on surface and groundwater supplies.

Losing he PVP will hurt but it will hurt Sonoma and Marin more because they are entitled, and have come to rely on it, more than Mendocino County. They have more to lose than we do.

GOOD for the LA Times for refusing to endorse for the best reason of all, true principle, this one being the refusal to endorse a person who's all the way on board for genocide and apartheid.

YO, HYSTERICS! If Trump was a fascist he'd have made his move first time around. When Hitler got enough votes he moved immediately to crush his opposition, and he had smart, capable people around him to help him do it. Who does Orange Man have around him? A gang of nuts and special ed cases.

SO, UNPACK your toothbrushes, Mendolib, Orange Man is sending nobody, least of all a bunch of weepy puffballs, to concentration camps.

BUT will he try mass deportations? Rhetorically, of course he'll give it a go, just like rhetorically he's going to put the NYT in camps. Think about the logistics of mass round-ups even of Magas. Not doable. I often think O-Man throws this stuff out there just to freak out the libs, and/or he is clinically demented. It is clear even by his semi-coherent standards he's failing.

I THINK KAMALA and her smarmy, woman-beating husband will be elected by a large margin, battleground states and all, and I think in lieu of real issues, stuff that might help millions of Americans like rent and price controls, medicare for all, a crash housing program, and on and on, all she and the Democrat cabal have got is Trump as Hitler and abortion, which Trump has already backed away from because he knows he can't stomp out freedom of choice.

KAMALA HARRIS will end the war on Palestinians when Netanyahu (a real fascist) says she can end it, she has zero plans for an exit from Ukraine, an incoherent domestic agenda and so on. She's backed away from global warming because it doesn't poll well for her, and her stated plans to boost taxes on the rich are rhetorical only, and even if they aren't they're insufficient given the stranglehold the owning classes have on government at all levels. The AVA recommends Jill Stein for president.

ON LINE COMMENT RE: Courthouse Design:

My husband says it should be built with Roman design since they were known to be one of the first empires to have Organized judiciary systems.

I however love that Lee was so inspired by the Shivelight! I love that she conducts her architectural design upon inspiration from nature. People that have know insight to this must not know what it’s like to loose inspiration and then get it back vis versa. It’s a gift and I’m so happy to hear that our court house might come to life from a pure manifestation of someone that knows joy and the true meaning behind natures beauty.

ONE OBSERVER put it this way: “Yes: The billionaires right now are fighting over which neo-liberal candidate they want to see in Room 200, and the progressives seem solidly behind Peskin. Supervisor Dean Preston, in a tight race for re-election and facing a torrent of Big Tech and real estate money, noted: ‘The narrative funded by a bunch of billionaires is that somehow this city was transformed overnight into a place where people hate tenants and artists and only want billionaires to live here’.”

HALLOWEEN seems to have overtaken Christmas in voluptuous outdoor displays. A guy down the street has erected a ten-foot skeleton, and every other house on the block seems festooned with wispy white faux spider webs hanging off their fences and bushes, some with giant spiders pinned to them. (What's scary about spiders and their webs?) Of course there are plenty of the usual creatively carved pumpkins and macabre witch figures. Fortunes are annually spent on this stuff, and seem more elaborate every year. I will always regret handing a tiny trick or treater a potato when he knocked on my door. “Here ya go, Zorro,” I said as the child burst into tears. I tried to make amends by shoveling some cash and a couple of feet of candy into his beggar's bag, but he was still sobbing as his mom led him away, mom shooting me death glares over her shoulder.

IN MARC REISNER'S crucial 1987 book, ‘Cadillac Desert,’ Reisner describes a hugely anticipated water meeting between former Northcoast Congressman, Republican Don Clausen, and California's then-governor, Ronald Reagan. Clausen, described by Reisner as “very persuasive,” went to see Reagan about building a dozen dams on Northcoast rivers, most of them on various forks of the Eel. The congressman, naturally, was representing Big Ag and desert cities like LA, entities always short of tax-subsidized water at artificially low prices. But a minute or so into his pitch, Clausen was stunned to see that Reagan had fallen asleep. If Reagan had manage to stay awake, the Northcoast's rivers would today be entirely fish-free and running due south.

ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] I have to say, as a woman, I despise soy boys. All women do. They'll use them for whatever they need, but at the end of the day, women despise weak men.

[2] I don't think the Democrats had anything else in their quiver. They weren't counting on Joe's dementia taking an upturn so fast (divine intervention?), and they didn't have any other viable candidate that they felt could win against Trump, so they went with the tried and true of color and gender. Hence, we have Harris.

[3] I don't expect big changes if Trump wins, but maybe just stop the bleeding a bit. Slow down the downhill tumble. I am too old to care about me, it's my grands I ache for that they might have a shot at a normal life. Nevertheless given this is a most unique era, I am on high alert for anything.

[4] What would make a man take up arms? Discomfort, desperation and acceptance of death. We haven’t gotten close to discomfort yet. You look at the Palestinian men throwing their lives away against a far better equipped military. Those men live in squalor, have been considered dogs their entire lives, have a spiritual belief of accepting death. They take up arms in a vain attempt to end the apartheid of their entire lives. Unless the power goes out for the majority of this country, I don’t see that happening country wide in the USA. There will be pockets of resistance, which will be overwhelmingly destroyed and made examples of. I guess my point is, if the blob can keep the majority fed, housed and entertained, no “revolution” will occur.

[5] Yes, I think that the Woke BS is simply a tactic to weed out anyone predisposed to think for themselves. Already, the population of people (southerners) who have traditionally been the mainstay of the military are backing off enlisting and serving. Now, only the most malleable personalities are willing to serve and to stay in the armed forces.

But acknowledging that, a widespread civil war would be a complete shitshow. There are fault lines everywhere. I have long maintained that the paradigm would not be anything like the American Civil War of 1861-65, but more like the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, or maybe even like the 30 Years War of 1618-48. The disintegration of an Empire can be very messy and ugly because of all the divergent fault lines: political, economic, ethnic, racial, ideological, theological.

[6] This is my twelfth "most important election of my lifetime" (since becoming voting age) and when I reflect back, it hasn't mattered which flavor the presidential candidate was, pretty much all of them were accused of being either Hitler or the Antichrist and they were all going to destroy the world (in the opinion of the opposition). Somehow, regardless of what happens, we always survive until the next "most important election of our lifetime".

[7] The public is shallower than you can imagine. They need to be told calming lies and to be nannied about. They need to be reassured that they are “safe” and “free” and told what to do. Idiocracy is here.