Mendocino County Today: Sunday 11/10/2024

A WEAK FRONT departs this morning ahead of a stronger front which will deliver breezy southerly winds and a band of moderate to heavy rainfall tonight through Monday morning. Unsettled weather will continue through next week, including a strong front due some time around early Wednesday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A surprisingly warm 46F with clear skies on the coast this Sunday morning. Maybe a sprinkle this morning then showers arriving this afternoon. Rain tomorrow, clear Tue, rain Wed & Thur then clearing into the weekend.

ADAM GASKA TAKES DIRECTOR JOB FOR FARM BUREAU:

Recently I was offered and accepted the position of executive director of Mendocino County Farm Bureau.

On Monday, I started a month long process to transition from working for Golden Vineyards to working for MCFB. December 2nd I will be working full time for MCFB. I feel good about my first week. It will be a big change but I am ready for it.

— Adam Gaska, Redwood Valley

RENEE WYANT LEE:

Trying to get this out before I forget….

What an amazing turn out at the 2nd Annual AV Senior Center Chili Cook Off! Thank you to all that showed up and special thanks to all of our contestants! Congratulations to Wynne Nord (1st), Jay Newcomer (2nd) and Hilda Walker (3rd).

Thank you to: Savings Bank of Mendocino County for sponsoring prize money and lending your Mendocino branch tellers (Violet, Ronda and Ericha) to help out at the event.

Brian at AV Brewing Company.

My husband for going along with my crazy ideas.

Last but not least, thank you to Jessica, Julie, Dallas, Lily, Jacob, Elizabeth, Gwynn, Terri, Steph, and Jenna for—-EVERYTHING!!! I love ya’ll and you are my rocks!

Please forgive me if I forgot anyone. I’m tired and my brain isn’t firing on all cylinders.

THIRD DISTRICT SUPERVISOR REPORT

by Supervisor John Haschak

Let’s start with some good news! The Acting Auditor/Controller Treasurer Tax Collector has closed the books for fiscal year ’23-’24 which ended on June 30. The carry forward, which is the money left over, is over $11 million.

This is due to increased revenue from property taxes, cannabis taxes, and Cost Plan charges. While sales taxes and the Transient Occupancy Taxes were down, the Assessor’s office was able to get several million dollars in the supplemental billings. Cost cutting measures also reduced the expenditures.

The Board voted to reimburse the $7 million borrowed from Measure B to pay for the Mental Health wing of the jail. We need to invest in substance use disorder treatment programs and now the funds are available. Mendocino County has many people with mental illnesses and substance abuse issues. With this money, we can invest in programs that create healthier, safer communities. These programs should be where people can access them, not just centered in Ukiah.

Last month, the Board unanimously directed staff to keep the original intent of the cannabis ordinance which limited a parcel to 10,000 sq. ft. of mature cannabis plants. Staff came back with the appropriate language to close the loophole.

Supervisor Gjerde and I voted to honor the original intent and if expansion is on the table, let’s have community discussions open to everyone so that we can agree on a path forward. But the motion we made was not supported by the other three supervisors. The majority of the Board could not agree on any motion so the default is that the plain reading of the ordinance stands. This means that a person in non-resource lands can have two permits of 10,000 sq. ft. each on a parcel over 5 acres.

While we made it through another fire season, there is an increased prevalence of natural disasters. A reliable and effective radio infrastructure backbone is crucial to ensure first response communications are clear and resilient. The county just completed Phase III of the Microwave Radio replacement project replacing all the existing aging and out-of-warranty radio infrastructure. This new hardware will ensure robust and resilient emergency radio communications throughout the whole of Mendocino County.

Due to scheduling conflicts, no Talk with the Supervisor this month. I am available by email: haschakj@mendocinocounty.gov or 707-972-4214.

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Bernard is looking for a quiet home where he can spend his golden years being well-loved, sleeping on a soft doggie bed — or yours; he’s willing to share — soaking up the sun, listening to the birds, and etc! Bernard is mellow indoors, loves toys, treats, and naps. Due to food guarding with other dogs, he will need to be the only pet in his new home. Bernard is a Bulldog blend, 8 years young and 47 adorable pounds.

There are so many reasons to adopt a senior dog: compared to their youthful counterparts, older dogs tend to be more relaxed and they're often less reactive and more content with simple pleasures like a leisurely walk or a nap in a sunny spot. This isn’t just about diminished physical energy; it also points to a mental shift toward a more laid-back approach to life! Predictability is one of the major benefits of caring for an older dog. By this stage in their lives, their personality is well-formed. You'll get an immediate understanding of their likes, dislikes, quirks, and habits. If you’ve never lived with an older dog, fear not — there’s lots of great info online.

To see all of our canine and feline guests, and the occasional goat, sheep, or tortoise, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com

Join us every first Saturday of the month for our Meet The Dogs Adoption Event at the shelter.

We're on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter

For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453. Making a difference for homeless pets in Mendocino County, one day at a time!

AV EVENTS (today)

Free Entry to Hendy Woods State Park for local residents
Sun 11 / 10 / 2024 at 8:00 AM
Where: Hendy Woods State Park
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/3671)

AV Grange Pancake and Egg Breakfast
Sun 11 / 10 / 2024 at 8:30 AM
Where: Anderson Valley Grange , 9800 CA-128, Philo, CA 95466
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/3896)

Anderson Valley Open Studios
Sun 11 / 9-11 / 2024 at 11:00 AM
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/4232)

The Anderson Valley Museum Open
Sun 11 / 10 / 2024 at 1:00 PM
Where: The Anderson Valley Museum , 12340 Highway 128, Boonville , CA 95415
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/4000)

JAINNED BOON MCDONNELL:

Opening weekend was a success! A huge thank you to everyone who made it out to support the whole cast and crew.

If you missed it this weekend don't worry, we have two more shows Friday November 15th and Saturday November 16th. Tickets at the door. Show starts at 7pm. See you next weekend.

ED NOTES

TRUMP'S sweep, as I've said, shocked but didn't surprise me. I knew Big Lib was totally out of touch with the people they claimed to represent, but I thought for sure Trump was finished when he declared in his debate with Harris, “In Springfield, they are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there.”

MAGA MAN was obviously straight up nuts. Or senile, the kind term for crazy old people. Even the hardcore Trumpers would abandon him now. Nope, he went on to sweep the board. An earlier Trump declared, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? It's, like, incredible.”

YES, it is incredible, but also correct. Trump probably could get away with it, just as he's gotten away with a range of crimes, high and low, that would get us mere mortals locked up. Of course, he meant by shooting into a crowd on Fifth Avenue he would only hit liberals, one of the many remarks he's made signalling his and his followers' murderous fantasies about their “enemy within.”

WHICH TRUMP describes as "radical left lunatics." (My people! my people!)

AS ORANGE MAN PUT IT: “I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people. Radical left lunatics,” Trump told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo, “I think it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”

WITH MILITARY BRASS generally holding Trump in contempt, it's hard to believe they'd honor a Trump directive to round up us radical left lunatics. Depending on the circumstances, for instance if there's widespread “unrest,” he might give it go.

OLDER radical left lunatics will recall that during the Nixon years some of us fretted that the fascisti would activate the McCarran Act of 1950, also known as the Internal Security Act:

SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES Control Board (SACB)

The SACB was established to investigate people suspected of promoting a totalitarian dictatorship or engaging in subversive activities. The attorney general could petition the SACB to order a Communist organization to register with the Justice Department.

SINCE COMMUNISTS and communism are defunct I'm sure the old language could be expanded much more broadly to “radical left lunatics,” of which there are, in the Trumpian definition literal millions.

AS I understand Trump's looming great repatriation, it will begin, and probably end, with presently incarcerated criminals. Beyond them, the logistics and expense of rounding up people who have lived here without papers for years, the bulk of so-called illegals, becomes pretty much impossible. In Mendocino County alone, there are x-number of people who will sab any such round-up however they can, and I seriously doubt our local cops will cooperate with the gestapo-style cruelty required. Americans aren’t Germans, let alone good Germans. Of course the primary consideration, which even Trumpers will concede, expelling so-called illegals would destroy great swathes of food production.

JUMBO'S WIN WIN, the booming Philo restaurant, is the work of a young guy who's obviously a kind of marketing genius. Scott Baird has quickly won over Anderson Valley with the quality of his basic Americano menu, the very cool re-design of the Philo Cafe, the zippy service, and his brilliant recent public relations coup by recognizing the annual Day of the Dead with free food for all comers. Prediction: Jumbo's will become a national franchise, and us rustics will be saying, “I knew that kid when…”

ELECTION ODDITY, among many electoral oddities this landmark election, occurred when San Anselmo overwhelmingly voted down a local rent control measure while next door Fairfax passed a similar measure. I say odd because S.A. was awash in Harris/Walz signs, as was Fairfax, so I'd assumed with so many libs strong for Big Lib the town would logically also be for a humane measure like rent control, especially in a notoriously cruel rental market of a little over three grand a month for a basic one bed, one bath apartment! Nope, wrong again.

BOONVILLE, OCTOBER, 1972

by Bob Wells

“To tell the truth, there just isn’t much going on in Boonville right now,” said O.W. (Dick) Winkler, manager of the Mendocino County Fair and Apple Show as he stood on the curb in front of his office gazing up and down Highway 128.

Judging from the traffic — or lack of it — Winkler’s appraisal was 100% accurate. Once in a while a car went past or a logging truck heading for Cloverdale and beyond with a heavy load, or another bound for the Coast with the trailer riding piggy-back.

Yet something is going on around Boonville. More than one thing, actually.

Winkler shortly before had played host to about 3,000 younger element persons taking part in some sort of be-in at the fairgrounds. He is not much of an incense-sniffer but has learned to take such gatherings in stride.

Under the heading of local doings, one might add that Richard Earle Kossow, a youngish attorney, has set up shop in Boonville and will oppose Judge Homer Mannix in the November election.

And over at Anderson Valley High School the rather dynamic superintendent, Melvin Baker, was supervising the finishing touches on a cluster of three novel geodesic dome design classrooms.

As a final newsy item, the community is getting geared up for a $5.5 million dam project which could solve the most immediate problem — lack of a water system.

The same day Dick Winkler made his curbside observation, Congressman Don Clausen and his aide, Gordon Tippit, called on Homer Mannix to talk over prospects for the federal grant required.

Why confer with Mannix? Any project of consequence in Boonville is certain to involve him in one way or another. Although not much of a drum-beater on his own behalf, he can be pried loose from pertinent facts while sitting in his justice court office in his Mannix Building, diagonally across the street from the fair office.

A native of Los Gatos, Mannix came to Anderson Valley in 1927 and attended Ornbaun Valley School, a one-room facility where he completed the eighth grade.

Later he finished high school at Sutter Creek and then majored in electrical engineering at Cogswell Polytechnic College in San Francisco.

Returning to Boonville in 1943, he had an electrical contractor business going.

At present, his wife, Beatrice, operates a beauty shop next door to the justice court.

A son, Jack, graduated from Anderson Valley High School and Sacramento State College and is an accountant at Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa.

Mrs. Mannix’s son, David Lampert, is with the Bank of America branch in London.

A daughter, Mrs. Bea Anne Wise, lives in Cloverdale. Another, Mrs. Neil (Kathleen) Kephart, lives in Boonville. Her husband commutes to work at Masonite in Ukiah. A third daughter, Frances, is 14 and completed eighth grade at the local school this year. A son, Homer, 11, has completed the sixth grade.

Judge Mannix probably doesn’t think of it this way, but he is in an unusual position as he also is editor and publisher of the local newspaper, the Anderson Valley Advertiser and Mendocino County Reporter.

He founded the paper and has been the sole owner throughout. Hence he has to write up his own court news, a rather tricky operation.

How did it all come about? “Well, I was in the major appliance and contracting business. I felt the need for a newspaper in the Valley.”

Circulation is about 1,800. A few years ago the paper was much involved in the “War of the Warrants” in Mendocino County, a subject which cannot be fully explained here — perhaps nowhere at all.

How did Mannix come to be judge? He had had political ambitions for quite a while, and ran for county supervisor some years ago, losing by 21 votes in the agonizing days when absentee voter ballots were counted later and could make a difference.

Harwood J. June had been the first manager of the County Fair, starting in 1928, and was judge for many years. Later, Maurice Tindall was judge and still writes an engrossing outdoors column for Mannix’s Advertiser.

Robert Rawles was elected judge, defeating Mannix soundly. Judge Rawles died in June of last year and Mannix was appointed by the County Supervisors to fill the vacancy.

When he ran for the office he had taken and passed a qualifying examination.

Judge Mannix also is his own landlord, having moved the court recently to quarters over his publishing premises.

The Anderson Justice Court is the arm of the Anderson Judicial District, extending generally from the Sonoma County line on Highway 128 to a few miles west of Navarro, including of course the hilly regions flanking the Valley.

This court handles misdemeanors, such as vehicle code and Fish and Game violations, logging pollution, petty theft up to $200 and civil cases to $500.

In November Mannix is to be opposed for a new term by the young attorney Kossow, who is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Minnesota law school.

He spent some early years with a big law firm in Minneapolis. “There was no lack of work there. They had a backlog for ten or fifteen years.” He became dissatisfied with that form of practice and eventually settled in Boonville after some preliminary looks at Mendocino Town on the Coast.

At first he was involved in a school called Compost College in the hills near Anderson Valley. The school is more or less defunct now. He wears his hair long and if you ask him if he is a hippie he says, “I don’t object to the term.” This comes with a laugh.

However, he agrees that his appearance is an advantage in his “store front” Boonville office. Many hippies and related folk are coming into Anderson Valley. They would be “put off” by the usual attorney with his jacket, white shirt and tie.

Law practice in Boonville — how does a guy get by? Not too badly, Kossow says. In real estate parlance property is “red hot” in Anderson Valley now. Sometimes groups of people, all “loving each other” will band together and pick up a piece of property.

Sometimes one or more will leave the area, without completing “establishment” paperwork on the property. Then there are easements, boundaries to be determined, even wills…

Kossow has all the usual certifications on his office wall. Magna cum laude — he laughs at that too, saying, “It’s just too much trouble to be summa cum laude.”

One has the feeling he could have made the higher honor too. Certainly he will be a strong opponent for Mr. Mannix.

The contest will be an almost classic one, a newcomer against a Solid Citizen, though Mr. Mannix notes with a bit of humor he was not born there and does not “qualify” in the strict Anderson Valley tradition.

Yet he does “qualify” in a number of other directions. He was the chapter president of the Anderson Valley Lions Club when it was founded in 1951 and continues as an honorary director.

This club meets the second and fourth Mondays at a place called Our Place in the evenings to allow for travel times of members.

Mannix is a director of the Anderson Valley Chamber of Commerce. The President is S.W. “Smokey” Blattner of Philo.

Further, Mannix is former president and still a member of the board of the Anderson Valley Unified School District. Melvin Baker is superintendent and principal of the high school.

Louis Fortin, who is from Santa Rosa, is elementary school principal.

Mannix has been on the school board for six years and was president for three.

Next we have the Anderson Valley Volunteer Fire Department. The secretary-manager: Homer Mannix. This levies a tax of 42¢ per $100 assessed value. It operates three pumpers, plus another that is semi-retired; a four-wheel drive pickup pumper, and a retired ambulance used for rescue work.

O.W. “Dick” Winkler is chairman of the fire department board. Serving with him are Jack Clow, Frank Falleri, James Gowan and Archie Schoenahl, all very well known citizens.

Bill West, who is maintenance chief, is the new fire chief, having recently succeeded Smokey Blattner.

Carl Kinion is acting assistant chief. Then there are three area captains — Donald Pardini, Boonville, David Perkins, Philo, and Valfrid “Cap” Salmela, Navarro.

The community services district is the legal arm for other functions and hopes of Boonville, such as the proposed water and sewer systems and the Boonville Lighting District which operates street lights on a zone system in town.

Mannix is the district’s secretary-manager.

Television? Yes. Anderson Valley folks have it via a UHF receiver on a hill which reflects the vital rays to the waiting populace below. There is no cable, but receivers/antennas can pick up Channels 2, 4, 5 and 7 out of San Francisco.

Who pays for this? Anyone they can get. There is a television association, headed by Jack Clow. At the outset, the association raised more than $15,000 to get going, and collects about that much annually.

This is a $24 a year voluntary charge, and periodically editor Mannix runs reminders in the Advertiser to pay up.

Then there’s the Anderson Valley Ambulance Service. You pay $5 a year which entitles you to one “free” ride up to 70 miles. Other charges are made according to distance and use.

Frank Falleri is president of the ambulance association. Other directors are Ray Ingram, Margaret Charles, Howard Nelson, Walter Tuttle, Mrs. Arthur “Anna” Brenner, secretary — and Homer Mannix, of course.

A 1971 Pontiac station wagon is the vehicle and works quite well, though they may have to go to one of the “standup” types of ambulance one of these days.

Ray Salatena has been an ambulance driver for 15 years. Bill West (the new fire chief) for 10. Three new drivers recently joined, Patrick Sinnot, Carl Kinion and David Perkins. (Sinnot is Mannix’s printer.)

The ambulance service area extends generally from the Sonoma County line to the mouth of the Navarro River.

An old ambulance was given to the fire department and sits next to the fire station in downtown Boonville. This fire station, by the way, is owned by Lodge 411, Independent Order of Oddfellows. It was built ten years ago for the fire department and leased to it with the exception of three days during the county fair. The idea was that the lodge brothers would operate it as a refreshment stand, and the sides open out to form counters for the purpose.

However, it is hard to get the fellows to work on it these days and the business has not run for the past few years.

Homer Mannix is a past Noble Grand of Lodge 411.

He estimates the population of the Valley as around 3,000. Highway signs at either end of Boonville read 1,025 or 975, depending on which way you’re going.

There has been a substantial influx of people in the past few years, no doubt about it.

One of the unusual projects is Ideal City, just south of Boonville’s business district on Highway 128. A group of persons bought 600 acres and cleared off rocks and brush. The original idea was to put up a motel and shops, but so far it has been all agricultural, with the aid of irrigation.

The owners are not natives, but have been successful in professions elsewhere.

Anderson Valley’s limiting factor is water supply. It comes from wells for domestic use and from the Navarro River for irrigation, when available.

But Mannix, pointing out his justice court window, can mark the site of a proposed dam. One shoulder of a hill will be joined to a “ridgeback” nearby and a dam built to store 6,000 acre-feet of water.

Efforts to get money for this are via Public Law 984 and the US Bureau of Reclamation. It would be a multi-purpose project, providing water for irrigation, domestic use and fish propagation.

Included in the $5.5 million price is a pipeline running down and serving the Valley, a 33-incher at first where the heavy use would be, then converging to an eight-inch at the lower end of the service area.

The projected price is $25 an acre-foot for irrigation with other rates for various other uses.

People in Anderson Valley are mindful of the natural attractions of the area which bring in many tourists — many of whom stick around for years.

Mannix and others were instrumental in taking over a redwood area between Boonville and Philo: Indian Creek State Park.

This was to be turned over to a timber company but by way of a land swap the property was preserved in natural state and will be operated as a park by the local community services district.

One of the foremost “promoters” of Anderson Valley is the postmaster, Mrs. Peggy Bates. The post office was built in 1961 and looks newer than that.

She replaced George Lawson who retired at Boonville after having been postmaster for 34 years.

Mrs. Bates realizes that she is a “newcomer” though she has 22 years residence in the Valley. She knows something about Boontling, the strange local language which evolved in the logging boom period. “It’s controversial,” she said, “but I like it.”

Mrs. Bates noted that Boonville has a medical service, at least periodically. One thing about the town is the high percentage of man-and-wife business teams, such as at the Boonville Lodge, the local bar, and grocery stores and service stations.

A number of expensive homes are springing up back in the hills. One is that of Michael Shapiro, producer of the popular public television show, Sesame Street.

Getting back to Dick Winkler, the fair manager, he commented about the great hippie conclave of 3,000 persons at the fairgrounds.

A former Sebastopol apple grower, Winkler commented that, “They call it a fair. I call it a jamboree.”

In Anderson Valley, the jamboree has only begun.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat, October 1972)

Charles Yon and his wife driving in a car in a neighborhood in Pittsburgh, 1907.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, November 9, 2024

LEONARD CAMPBELL JR., 52, Hopland. Probation revocation.

GAGE GORMAN, 33, Laytonville. Less than 25 pounds of dangerous weapons, shuriken, paraphernalia, suspended license.

GRADY HOLLENBECK, 51, Maple Valley, Washington/Ukiah. Controlled substance while armed with loaded firearm, destructive device, paraphernalia.

NOAH LURANHATT, 34, Ukiah. Domestic violence court order violation, resisting, parole violation.

ORLANDO MUNOZ, 29, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

EUSEBIO ROBLES-JUAREZ, 28, Ukiah. DUI.

BARAQUIEL RUIZ, 38, Lakeport/Ukiah. Defrauding an innkeeper-under $400. controlled substance, paraphernalia.

ERIK SMITH, 59, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, probation revocation.

KRISTOPHER WHITE, 35, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

‘VICTORY CONVOY’ FOR PRESIDENT-ELECT TRUMP ROLLS THROUGH SANTA ROSA

In a sea of red, white and blue, a group of people in about 25 vehicles rolled through Santa Rosa on Saturday morning, honking and cheering to celebrate the election of Donald Trump.

by Anna Armstrong

In a sea of red, white and blue, a group of people in about 25 vehicles rolled through Santa Rosa on Saturday morning, honking and cheering to celebrate the election of Donald Trump.

The so-called “Trump Victory Convoy” took off from White Oak Drive shortly after 10 a.m. and was hosted by the New Oakmont Conservatives Club and the Sonoma County Republican Party.

Participants, many of whom donned the signature red Make America Great Again hats, were encouraged to wave Trump flags and deck their cars out in banners and balloons to mark the occasion, a flyer sent by the Republican Party said.

A Cybertruck, old Willits police car and a couple dozen other ornamented vehicles drove through downtown Santa Rosa and across Highway 101 and Highway 12. Throughout the route, the convoy was met with cheers from supporters and boos from opponents ― and the occasional middle finger, participants told the Press Democrat.

Santa Rosa residents Deanna and Dennis Byrd decided to participate after receiving an email from the local Republican Party.

“We were born and raised here and we have seen the progress,” Deanna Byrd said. “We love it and we want to continue it.”

When asked why they supported Trump this election, they shared that the president-elect “checks all of their boxes.”

“We just need to get America back on track again,” she said.

Previous reporting by the Press Democrat revealed that 25% of people in Sonoma County voted for Trump, compared to 72% who supported opponent Vice President Kamala Harris.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

About this election in and about our county, State, and Country: “The bigger lesson being that America is just too big — and too wild, and too destructive, and rooted in the idea of individual freedom — for any self styled ‘elite’ to ride the horse for very long, without being thrown off.” By David Samuels published in Unherd, Nov 9, 2024.

Truer words have never been said. We are governed on a pendulum concept, It swings both ways through time. If it gets stuck one way for too long, the American people unstick it and shove it back the other way. That should provide hope for the 60% of Humboldt County citizens walking around today feeling like their world ended for good. We have all been there and done that. God bless America. Peace out.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA CHURCH FACING INVESTIGATION FOR BALLOT COLLECTION EFFORT

‘I don't think this is legal,’ the county's election official told SFGate…

by Matt LaFever

A prominent community church in Northern California is under scrutiny for orchestrating a nonofficial ballot drop box scheme in the month leading up to the Nov. 5 presidential election. After SFGate presented evidence of the church’s ballot-gathering activities to Tehama County’s registrar of voters, officials said they would refer the matter to the District Attorney’s Office.

Calvary Chapel, in the Tehama County seat of Red Bluff, is one of the larger churches in the town of around 14,400. While serving its parishioners, the church has been quietly deploying a multifaceted influence campaign called Real Impact with the explicit mission to “educate, equip, and encourage Christians to have a godly influence on our society and culture.”

Real Impact originated at the Chino Hills location of Calvary Chapel in 2019 and pledges to “[equip] the Church to stand for righteousness in the public square.” It has since spread to several locations across Calvary’s network of 1,800 chapels. Calvary Chapel Red Bluff’s website has a page dedicated to its “Impact” team that uses starkly militant language, promising to “equip” parishioners, “alert” them “with diligence and discernment” and “sound the alarm when the time comes from the church to act.” Finally, the site says, it will be time to “mobilize.” Each step is accompanied by a Bible verse.

The Real Impact strategy that is under scrutiny by local officials is a ballot collection drive advertised by the church on its “Impact” page. It instructed parishioners to bring their ballots to the church for delivery to county offices. A separate page explicitly marked as general election information read in all caps that ballots would be “collected safely and securely,” “protected under strict chain-of-custody rules” and “delivered to the county elections office the next day.”

SFGate contacted Tehama County Clerk and Recorder Sean Houghtby about Calvary Chapel Red Bluff’s ballot collection effort to ask whether it was sanctioned by county officials. Houghtby was unaware of the church’s actions until SFGate’s inquiry, he said over the phone. After reviewing the church’s website, he responded, “I don’t think this is legal and would forward it to our DA for review.” He cited a 2020 memo from the California secretary of state, which warns against “unauthorized, non-official ballot drop boxes” set up by churches, candidates or political groups and further states that those hosting “non-official” drop boxes could face up to four years in prison.

Calvary Chapel told its parishioners that their ballots would be “protected under strict chain-of-custody rules,” but according to Houghtby, “chain-of-custody” rules are applicable only for government entities that are officially facilitating elections. Those rules do not apply to private entities, he said.

Real Impact’s latest “Training Resources” document, updated over the summer, outlines specific guidance for “Ballot Collecting at Church.” It provides a template for churches to use in flyers advertising the ballot collection service and suggests secure storage boxes available for purchase online, presumably to store the ballots until their delivery to elections offices. Notably, the guidance makes no mention of the potential illegality of these activities.

SFGate reached out for comment from Calvary Chapel Red Bluff Senior Pastor Greg Phelps on multiple occasions but did not hear back by the time of publication. SFGate also sent multiple requests for comment to Real Impact Director Gina Gleason, asking for more information about the effort at Calvary Chapel Red Bluff, but they also went unanswered.

Janice Harris, a member of Calvary Chapel Red Bluff’s Impact Team, told SFGate that she and her husband John organized the congregation’s ballot collection. Harris said they followed procedures as laid out by Real Impact’s protocols. Those protocols were reviewed by Harmeet Dhillon, a prominent conservative lawyer who assisted with President-elect Donald Trump’s so-called “election integrity” efforts, to ensure they were legally sound, according to Harris.

“It was my husband and I that were doing it,” Harris explained, emphasizing that “everything we did collect was always under the chain of custody between the two of us, never left us.”

The couple used a secure collection method, transporting ballots in a specialized bag designed to prevent tampering. “We have a locking ballot collection bag that we collected those ballots in,” Harris said, adding that the ballots stayed “on our person or in our home under lock and key in that bag until we delivered them to the elections office the following day.”

Harris said she and her husband collected 41 ballots from Tehama County residents and eight from Shasta County residents over four weeks.

Harris firmly believes that ballot collection at her church aligns with constitutional freedoms. “The U.S. Constitution provides the ‘God-given right to practice our religion, and the state will not get involved in it’,” she said.

She continued: “If somebody is upset that people in a church are collecting ballots, they need to go back and look at those original writings,” she said, referring to the Constitution. “We, as individuals, have our religious freedom rights.”

As part of its “Real Impact” mission, Calvary Chapel Red Bluff also published a voter guide. To compile it, the church sent candidates running for local school board and municipal government positions a 10-question form to fill out. The questions reveal the priorities of the “Real Impact” initiative: The first four focus on transgender accommodations in schools, while others address whether marriage should be only between men and women, the teaching of Critical Race Theory, mask mandates and abortion rights.

Cynthia Nellums, an educator with over 50 years of experience, decided to run for a seat on the Reeds Creek School District board this year. She opted not to fill out the Calvary Questionnaire that landed in her mailbox because she felt the questions echoed an earlier era in her career, when people were discriminating against students with disabilities. She remembered parents saying, “I don’t want my child to have to go to the bathroom with someone with a wheelchair,” and said the questions about transgender accommodations felt similarly prejudiced. Because Nellums did not return the questionnaire, her column in Calvary’s voter guide just reads “NR,” for “Not Returned.” (She lost her bid for the school district seat.)

Tamara LaBorde also ran for a seat on the Reeds Creek School District board, but unlike Nellums, she did complete the questionnaire. She told SFGate she found the document “a little confusing. I wasn’t sure if it was all school-related.” To LaBorde’s knowledge, this was the first time local candidates had received a questionnaire of this kind, and based on the questions, “I assumed they were interested in political views and information.” She ultimately erred on the side of transparency, telling SFGate, “I don’t mind if a church knows my views.”

SFGate reached out to the Tehama County District Attorney’s Office for information about the status of the investigation into Calvary Chapel Red Bluff’s ballot collection effort but did not hear back by publication time. Houghtby, the county clerk, said it’s “standard practice” to refer “these types of issues” to the DA because the elections office has no “enforcement authority.”

Religious institutions are allowed to engage in what the IRS refers to as “voter education activities,” such as compiling voter education guides or hosting nonpartisan public forums. Any activities found to have “evidence of bias” are prohibited.

Andrew Leahey, a tax attorney who has written extensively on the topic of religious organizations testing the IRS’ limitations on political speech, said Calvary Chapel Red Bluff may not have broken IRS rules but “more likely ran afoul of the election code.” Leahey did not expect consequences for the church, though, saying, “Even if they were in direct contravention of the restrictions on politicking, the IRS has been largely derelict in its duty of actually pursuing these matters (at least as far as we can tell as outsiders).”

(SFGate.com)

SCHIFF SAILS ON

Editor:

With an overwhelming victory on election night, the American people have spoken. President Donald Trump not only won the Electoral College, he also won the popular vote by more than 5 million votes. In spite of this historic result, our Golden State chose to vote for a former member of the House Intelligence Committee (Adam Schiff) who repeatedly lied to the American people night after night with his Russia collusion hoax. He said he had information that Trump was a Vladimir Putin puppet. As a result of his lying, the House censured him in June 2023. It’s time we take back our state. Tuesday was a great start.

Mick Menendez

Santa Rosa

MEMO OF THE AIR: A boot stamping on a human face forever.

Here's the recording of last night's (Friday, 2024-11-08) 8-hour Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org (and, for the first hour, also 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino). This show marks the completion of 12 years of MOTA on KNYO, after almost 15 years on KMFB-that-was, so a total of 1,386 shows so far. You'd think I'd know how to do it right by now: https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0617

Coming shows can feature your story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or announcement or whatever. Just email it to me. Or include it in a reply to this post. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there and read it on the air.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not-necessarily radio-useful but worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

The Doors live at the Hollywood Bowl in 1968. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE2cVA5yi4U

The Status Quo - Pictures of Matchstick Men. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP6RzRfVlpA

I was just thinking of how, more and more, everything in the world seems like Kristen Wiig pretending to be Liza Minelli trying to turn off a lamp. You might not know what I mean by that, so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVvxOwxuk_w

And young people don't have anything like this anymore. Or do they? and I just don't see it? Could you say that Burning Man is something like this? Discuss among yourselves. https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2024/11/good-morning-starshine.html

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

49ERS' NICK BOSA FINED BY NFL FOR MAGA HAT STUNT

by Alex Simon

San Francisco 49ers star Nick Bosa has been fined by the NFL for violating the league’s uniform policy for his Donald Trump-supporting stunt.

According to the NFL Network's Tom Pelissero, Bosa was fined $11,255 for crashing the “Sunday Night Football” postgame show after the Niners beat the Cowboys on Oct. 27 to display a “Make America Great Again” hat.

As SFGate first reported last week, Bosa’s stunt appeared to be in direct violation of Rule 5, Section 4, Article 8 of the NFL rulebook. While the rulebook says all personal messages need to be “approved in advance by the League office,” the rulebook strictly prohibits political messages.

“The League will not grant permission for any club or player to wear, display, or otherwise convey messages, through helmet decals, arm bands, jersey patches, mouthpieces, or other items affixed to game uniforms or equipment, which relate to political activities or causes, other non-football events, causes or campaigns, or charitable causes or campaigns,” the rulebook reads.

While the NFL did not respond to SFGate and other outlets’ request for comment on whether Bosa requested and whether he received approval for the attire, the report of a fine makes it clear that he did not get approval from the league.

The NFL itself did not publicize the penalty. In general, the league hasn’t been as forthcoming about fines for uniform policy violations as it was in the past, but the more public a player is with the message, the more likely the public will find out about any repercussions thereof. NFL Network insider Tom Pelissero reported last season that star Miami wide receiver Tyreek Hill received numerous uniform policy fines after the player posted online about receiving more than $100,000 in fines without specifying what for.

Typically, these sorts of penalties have been handed down the Friday after games. But it was leaked to several reporters late last week that any potential fine for Bosa would be delayed, seemingly so the NFL could avoid perceptions of partiality ahead of Election Day.

The five-figure fine for Bosa — who signed a $170 million extension last year and is making $16 million in cash this year, according to Over The Cap — comes just four days after Election Day. Bosa spoke to the media Wednesday, one day after Trump won the presidential election, and said he knew a fine was possible but that it would be "well worth it" to him if it did.

THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER AND PROFESSOR, Noam Chomsky, loses the ability to speak and write at 95 years old, this forces him to give up the throne of speech, in which he exposed the truth about global systems some of his most famous sayings:

There is no such thing as a poor country. There's only one failed system in resource management!
No one will put the truth in your mind, it's something you have to discover for yourself.
If you want to conquer a people, create an imaginary enemy who seems more dangerous than you, then be their savior.

One of the clearest lessons in history: Rights are not granted, they are taken by force.

There is a purpose in distorting history and making it seem like great men did it all. It's part of how you teach people that they can't do anything, that they are powerless. and they should just wait for a great man to do it.

The world is a very mysterious and confusing place, if you are not willing to get confused, you become a replica of someone else's mind.
So you can control people. Make him believe that he is the reason for his delay and that you are coming to save him.
The world or the West will regret its trivial ideas that divert a person from his humanity or his nature. They must know the right religion. and the right belief.

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT A NEANDERTHAL LOOKED LIKE.

This species inhabited Europe and Asia between (allegedly) 400,000 and 40,000 years ago.

Characterized by their robust complexion, prominent fronts, and notable eyebrow ridges, these hunter-gatherers not only developed stone tools and mastered the use of fire, but they also built rudimental shelters and used mineral pigments in their objects, suggesting an advanced aesthetic and cultural sense.

A percentage of Neanderthal DNA has been proven to remain present in modern European & Asian humans, indicating a cross-species that enriches our understanding of human evolution. Furthermore, recent discoveries suggest that Neanderthals possessed linguistic and artistic abilities, demonstrating greater cultural complexity than previously estimated. These findings reaffirm their legacy in our evolutionary history and bring us closer to a better understanding of their life and environment.

Fuentes: “Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes.” Basic Books, 2014

“The last Neanderthals: Recent excavations and perspectives.” Evolutionary Anthropology, 2000.

“PEOPLE WILL VOTE FOR YOU even if they don't like you, but they will never vote for you if they think you don't like them.”

— Richard Nixon

LEAD STORIES, SUNDAY'S NYT

The White House Will Be Shedding Its Union Label

Immigration Lawyers Prepare to Battle Trump in Court Again

Trump Won’t Have Nikki Haley or Mike Pompeo in New Administration

Missing in Europe: A Strong Leader for a New Trump Era

Taiwan Sees a Higher Price for U.S. Support as Trump Returns to Power

WELL, WE LOST the presidential election, [but] in many cases, our Democrats in the House ran ahead of the presidential ticket. So, your branding that we all got rejected, we didn’t. We’re still in the fight right now, and it’s going to be a very close call. I don’t see it as an outright rejection of the Democratic Party. Now, I do have a discomfort level with some of the Democrats right now who are saying, “Oh, we abandoned the working class.” No, we didn’t. That’s who we are. We are the kitchen table, working-class party of America.

— Nancy Pelosi

NO SHE COULDN’T

by David Yearsley

It is hard now to think back beyond Tuesday night.

But I do remember that when I heard “Yes She Can” on Monday afternoon, released that day by the ardent Democrat, will.i.am, I felt that the song was a surer sign than any poll or pundit’s prediction that Kamala Harris’s White House bid was doomed.

The sybils of the ancient world sang their prophesies. Mr. Am rapped his.

His last-ditch political paean sounded much more like a lament, even though it faithfully echoed the hymn he offered up to Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign.

At the beginning of January of that year Obama lost to Hilary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary. But the junior senator from Illinois used the defeat to go on the offensive, unleashing his considerable oratorical talents to intone his cherished theme of Hope. He practically sang, preacher-like, the refrain, “Yes We Can.” The unvoiced countermelody was heard clearly by Clinton and must have angered her, though it too proved to be prophetic: “No She Can’t.”

A few days later, will.i.am announced that he was assembling a political album, Change is Now: Renewing America’s Promise—its title sounding less like a pop chart-topper than like a Democratic Leadership Conference PowerPoint presentation. The pretentious mouthful would later get chewed into the more digestible bolus of “Make America Great Again.”

Will.i.am released the first track of the album as a single just a few weeks later at the beginning of February. He took the words of Obama’s New Hampshire concession speech and set them against a cyclic pattern of four chords, three major and one minor connected by a couple of unthreateningly churchy harmonic moves.

Given that all the lyrics were his, Obama shared a song-writing credit, the first and only pre-President to add that honor to his CV. Just how historically significant this was can be gauged by imagining Teddy Roosevelt as a Tin Pan Alley song plugger, yowling through his moustache while taking a big stick to the old upright:

Did you hear the story ’bout old Bullmoose?

He played piano, really tore it loose.

Whenever his heart was filled with gloom

He’d beat out a song in the old lunchroom.

All the guys and gals would gather ’round

Just to hear that Bullmoose sound.

Sayin’

Go Bullmoose!

The four-and-half minute video for “Yes We Can” was shot in high-minded, hifalutin black-and-white and featured spoken and singsong cameos from a parade of celebrities, beginning with the actor Scarlett Johansson, the retired basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the rapper Common, and the singer-pianist John Legend. The closing benediction was provided by Herbie Hancock at the piano.

Blended in was footage and audio of Obama making his speech so that the refrain and other eloquent phrases were heard as he uttered them with will.i.am shadowing his words melodically. The video began by pairing, in split screen, will.i.am singing and Obama speaking with a resonance that was nearly song, not just because of the strumming guitar accompaniment, but thanks to his tuneful metrical pacing.

“It was a creed, written into the founding documents

That declared the destiny, of a nation – yes we can”

The big names started joining in, next with Obama flanked in triple-split screen by Kareem and Common Courage so as to form a power trio, the rapper’s name embracing the adjacent candidate: Courage and Hope.

In contrast to the studied pictorial clarity of the celebs, the footage of the candidate had a historic, archival quality that courted associations with JFK: handsome, Periclean, resolute. The diverse Democratic supporting cast seen and heard in the video did not seek bright lights and big gestures. The famous folk just grooved in the studio, Johansson even strapping on the headphones and singing into a mic. There were no bright reds, whites and blues.

Change is Now of 2008 anticipated its own 2024 return and nullification. Its reappearance proved that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

On the eve of this week’s election, the familiar four chords were back. The only decisive difference was in the pronoun. The burden was now to be shouldered by a woman: she would carry her supporters to victory or fail—on her own. “We” had run for cover.

Instead of the antiqued, uplifting photography of the original, will.i.am appeared in the new video in lugubrious color. Austerity had set in: text cuts had chopped the product down to less than half its former stature—a paltry 1:43. That in itself was an augury for the Democrats. Sure, the message had to be gotten out, as did the Democratic vote. But time was slipping away. Hope too.

Gone was visionary rhetoric ushering in a glorious future. The poised optimism of 2008 had given way to timid worry and a lethargy that inoculated the resuscitated song from any possibility of going viral. However engineered the celebrity contributions and will.i.am’s own voice had been sixteen years ago, they had sounded human, connected. The grand message rising from the ashes of New Hampshire’s defeat was powerfully, positively broadcast to the people who would loft Obama to the presidency.

“Yes She Can,” by contrast, begins in tight close-up on the rapper staring bleakly at the camera then looking away as if scanning the vicinity for attackers, Proud Boys storming the studio. Instead of fearless optimism, the gendered lyric brings to mind a child clinging to the maternal skirt: “Momma, what’s wrong with America? / Why can’t we get along in America?” The relative warmth—by no means fevered—of the 2008 track has been sucked out of Monday’s version. Will.i.am’s voice goes rigid from the astringent auto-tune which works like formaldehyde sonically injected into the walking corpse of the campaign.

The chiaroscuro solemnity of the original has been crowded out by color and smoke: shots of the attack on the Capitol are seen as will.i.am mournfully sings of the “People entertained by the predator,” his words boosted by studio reverb as if to echo inside the rotunda stormed by the vandal horde; he defends abortion rights as we see protests in front of the Supreme Court; he extols freedom over drone shots of the Statue of Liberty and across the harbor to New York City, which loathes its native son, Donald Trump.

Unlike its predecessor, “Yes She Can” got no reinforcement from the Great and the Good. Instead of the bolster of big names and big money, it offers quick cuts of everyday American faces of all different hues. Later they lip-sync dutifully to the refrain. It was telling that their voices were not heard.

Even more ominously, the “She” of the title was nowhere to be seen or heard in the video. This late in the game, there was no time to edit in Harris’s own speechifying. The woman of the hour never speaks or sings for herself in “Yes She Can.”

The musical monument to Hope had been dismantled, remnants of the conceit now heard only in the conditional mode: “We could be better than we ever been.” The solidarity of the original, however manufactured, evaporates in a haze of condescending encouragement, as if this canny politician needed a musical pat on the back, a mechanical mantra like that boosting the Little Engine That Could.

The Democratic dirge sounded first on Monday, even before the funeral. Mr. Am’s requiem rap will find no peace in eternity, but will lurch forever through the purgatory of the internet, ghostly and grieving.

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest recording is Handel’s Organ Banquet. He can be reached at dgyearsley@gmail.com.)

DEMOCRATS AND THE CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY POLITICS

by Maureen Dowd

Some Democrats are finally waking up and realizing that woke is broke.

Donald Trump won a majority of white women and remarkable numbers of Black and Latino voters and young men.

Democratic insiders thought people would vote for Kamala Harris, even if they didn’t like her, to get rid of Trump. But more people ended up voting for Trump, even though many didn’t like him, because they liked the Democratic Party less.

I have often talked about how my dad stayed up all night on the night Harry Truman was elected because he was so excited. And my brother stayed up all night the first time Trump was elected because he was so excited. And I felt that Democrats would never recover that kind of excitement until they could figure out why they had turned off so many working-class voters over the decades, and why they had developed such disdain toward their once loyal base.

Democratic candidates have often been avatars of elitism — Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and second-term Barack Obama. The party embraced a worldview of hyper-political correctness, condescension and cancellation, and it supported diversity statements for job applicants and faculty lounge terminology like “Latinx,” and “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, People of Color).

This alienated half the country, or more. And the chaos and antisemitism at many college campuses certainly didn’t help.

“When the woke police come at you,” Rahm Emanuel told me, “you don’t even get your Miranda rights read to you.”

There were a lot of Democrats “barking,” people who “don’t represent anybody,” he said, and “the leadership of the party was intimidated.”

Donald Trump played to the irritation of many Americans disgusted at being regarded as insensitive for talking the way they’d always talked. At rallies, he referred to women as “beautiful” and then pretended to admonish himself, saying he’d get in trouble for using that word. He’d also call women “darling” and joke that he had to be careful because his political career could be at risk.

One thing that makes Democrats great is that they unabashedly support groups that have suffered from inequality. But they have to begin avoiding extreme policies that alienate many Americans who would otherwise be drawn to the party.

Democrats learned the hard way in this election that mothers care both about abortion rights and having their daughters compete fairly and safely on the playing field.

A revealing chart that ran in The Financial Times showed that white progressives hold views far to the left of the minorities they champion. White progressives think at higher rates than Hispanic and Black Americans that “racism is built into our society.” Many more Black and Hispanic Americans surveyed, compared with white progressives, responded that “America is the greatest country in the world.”

Gobsmacked Democrats have reacted to the wipeout in different ways. Some think Kamala did not court the left enough, touting trans rights and repudiating Israel.

Other Democrats feel the opposite, calling on the party to reimagine itself.

Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a vulnerable Democrat in a red congressional district in Washington, narrowly held her seat. The 36-year-old mother of a toddler and owner of an auto shop told The Times’s Annie Karni that Democratic condescension has to go. “There’s not one weird trick that’s going to fix the Democratic Party,” she said. “It is going to take parents of young kids, people in rural communities, people in the trades running for office and being taken seriously.”

Representative Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the party needs rebranding. “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone,” he said. “I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

On CNN, the Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky said that Democrats did not know how to talk to normal Americans.

Addressing Latinos as “Latinx” to be politically correct “makes them think that we don’t even live on the same planet as they do,” she said. “When we are too afraid to say that ‘Hey, college kids, if you’re trashing a campus of Columbia University because you aren’t happy about some sort of policy and you’re taking over a university and you’re trashing it and preventing other students from learning, that that is unacceptable.’ But we’re so worried about alienating one or another cohort in our coalition that we don’t know what to say.”

Kamala, a Democratic lawmaker told me, made the “colossal mistake” of running a billion-dollar campaign with celebrities like Beyoncé when many of the struggling working-class voters she wanted couldn’t even afford a ticket to a Beyoncé concert, much less a down payment on a home.

“I don’t think the average person said, ‘Kamala Harris gets what I’m going through,’” this Democrat said.

Kamala, who sprinted to the left in her 2020 Democratic primary campaign, tried to move toward the center for this election, making sure to say she’d shoot an intruder with her Glock. But it sounded tinny.

The Trump campaign’s most successful ad showed Kamala favoring tax-funded gender surgery for prisoners. Bill Clinton warned in vain that she should rebut it.

James Carville gave Kamala credit for not leaning into her gender and ethnicity. But he said the party had become enamored of “identitarianism” — a word he uses because he won’t say “woke” — radiating the repellent idea that “identity is more important than humanity.”

“We could never wash off the stench of it,” he said, calling “defund the police” “the three stupidest words in the English language.”

“It’s like when you get smoke on your clothes and you have to wash them again and again. Now people are running away from it like the devil runs away from holy water.”

(NY Times)

I WORKED ON KAMALA HARRIS'S CAMPAIGN - and this is why it turned out to be an utter shambles

by Sharon Churcher

When I volunteered for Kamala Harris a few weeks ago in a swing district in the New York commuter belt, I was assured by Democratic Party organizers that their ground game would cream Donald Trump.

Though the polls were showing the two contenders running neck and neck, the confidence was understandable.

This, after all, was the party machine that generated more than 81 million votes for Joe Biden the last time round.

And it was better funded than ever. Nearly a billion dollars had poured into the party's coffers since the start of 2023, well over twice what Trump had raised in the same period.

The campaign in New York's 17th district focused not on Kamala but Mondaire Jones, a gay, black former congressman who was challenging a pro-Trump incumbent, Mike Lawler, for a seat in the House of Representatives.

Jones had all the charisma Harris lacked and, if he defeated Lawler, there was a fighting chance Kamala would pick up additional votes on his coat tails.

At 37, Jones was a made-for-Instagram candidate. And, with registered Democrats outnumbering Republicans by some 80,000 in the district, I thought we were in with a good shout.

Yet what I found soon changed my mind: a self-regarding shambles of a campaign staffed by temporary workers with little experience, less know-how and, apparently, zero interest in talking to Main Street America.

My turf included the affluent Westchester County horse country - home to the sprawling estates of high-profile Dems like Richard Gere and David Letterman - as well as hard-knock Hudson River towns like Ossining, where employment is provided by the Sing Sing supermax.

I’d been assigned to a campaign office in the attractive commuter village of Mount Kisco, one of three the Democrats had opened in the district. But it was a disappointing start.

There were just a few scruffy posters on the rather grubby door. Outside, Harris’s trademark 'not going back' signs were nowhere to be seen.

One smartly dressed woman strolling by told me she thought our headquarters was an abandoned shop.

Then I met my new bosses. It’s fair to say they were young – and that some of them knew little about the area we were canvassing.

Though the door knocking was performed by unpaid enthusiasts like me, our labors were overseen by temps the party hired at rates advertised from $15 an hour on a recruitment site.

I counted nine or ten of them lounging around the office.

The next surprise was to find that I would be using a supposedly state-of-the-art phone app called, incongruously, miniVan.

It would pull up addresses as I went from house-to-house, I was told. And it would synch the outcome of each approach in split seconds with the Democratic campaign's computers.

Advantage Mondaire and Kamala!

Yet the only names on the list were registered Democrat and – in what had been described as the tightest race in recent history (until the results came through, of course), we were to talk to no one else.

'The app lists the registered Democrats in the district. We're only approaching Democrats,' a temp explained.

Incredulous, I called Mitch Saunders, the party's Northern Westchester County organizer, for some guidance.

'The idea is to get Democrats to turn out,’ he confirmed. ‘It's all about turn out.’

How about people like the neighbors near my home in Westchester who strung a gaudy Trump banner in the trees?

‘No,’ said Mitch.

What about the throngs of well-to-do female shoppers outside the campaign base – the very demographic that the Democrats were supposedly shooting for?

'No.'

I said I'd like a Kamala-Mondaire yard sign for my verge at home. The Mount Kisco office had run out of them. 'You don't need them,' yawned an unshaven youth. 'Just use the app.'

But the app failed to synch when I hit the streets on November 5.

A few doors were answered by puzzled Democrats who’d already cast their ballots and were fed up with being 'harassed' – as they put it – by the non-stop texts and calls pestering them for money.

While the Republicans were stressing authenticity, we were confined to a verbatim script.

‘Hi! I'm a volunteer with the NY Dems. I just want to confirm that we can count on you to vote for Mondaire Jones…’

The script was constantly rejigged. By Election Day its most notable feature was that had nothing to say about Mondaire Jones other than his name.

From time to time, I got to treat my victims to the spiel.

Not that there was space to record their replies, just eight boxes to tick, from ‘strong support’ to ‘strong against’.

So much for listening to the voters.

If loyalists replied that they were planning to vote for Mondaire Jones and Harris, I read out a lengthy paragraph triumphantly announcing that: ‘we’re expecting a REALLY close election with VERY high voter turnout….’

Correct on one point, at least.

This was supposedly a battle for democracy itself, yet 11th-hour conversion attempts were outlawed.

If someone told me they didn't support Mondaire or Kamala or that they didn't plan to vote, I was to back off immediately, and politely say, 'No worries, have a great day!'

The atmosphere at the Mount Kisco office was celebratory right until the end. Soft drinks and snacks sat piled on a table on election night.

The friendly student overseeing the operation took an early cut, explaining that she was ‘flying back home to Canada in the morning.’

Canada. I was not surprised.

Before her plane had taken off, news broke that Lawler was beating Mondaire by a margin similar to Donald Trump’s defeat of Kamala.

‘What an absolute ass-kicking,’ Lawler crowed in a victory speech. It was hard to disagree.

In the last two weeks I had spoken to no Republicans. No independents. But I have to hand it to the Democrats: they are not for giving up!

My phone buzzed Thursday night with a text from San Francisco, where Nancy Pelosi had bucked the odds and won a landmark 20th term.

'Rush in a contribution!' it demanded.

'Nancy Pelosi is working incredibly hard to help Democrats hold Trump and Republicans accountable — and ensure they can NEVER hold full power again.’

(dailymail.co.uk)

THIS IS WATER

by David Foster Wallace

Greetings parents and congratulations to Kenyon’s graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story thing turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you’re worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don’t be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.

Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I’m supposed to talk about your liberal arts education’s meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let’s talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about “teaching you how to think.” If you’re like me as a student, you’ve never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I’m going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I’d ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your scepticism about the value of the totally obvious.

Here’s another didactic little story. There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: “Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God. It’s not like I haven’t ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn’t see a thing, and it was 50 below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out ‘Oh, God, if there is a God, I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me.’” And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. “Well then you must believe now,” he says, “After all, here you are, alive.” The atheist just rolls his eyes. “No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.”

It’s easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people’s two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy’s interpretation is true and the other guy’s is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person’s most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there’s the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They’re probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists’ problem is exactly the same as the story’s unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up.

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centredness because it’s so socially repulsive. But it’s pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

Please don’t worry that I’m getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It’s a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being “well-adjusted”, which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education–least in my own case–is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualise stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.

As I’m sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotised by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about “the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.”

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let’s get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what “day in day out” really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I’m talking about.

By way of example, let’s say it’s an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you’re tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there’s no food at home. You haven’t had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It’s the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it’s the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it’s pretty much the last place you want to be but you can’t just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store’s confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to manoeuvre your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren’t enough check-out lanes open even though it’s the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can’t take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.

But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line’s front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to “Have a nice day” in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.

Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn’t yet been part of you graduates’ actual life routine, day after week after month after year.

But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I’m gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it’s going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.

Or, of course, if I’m in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV’s and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, 40-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] — this is an example of how NOT to think, though — most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children’s children will despise us for wasting all the future’s fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.

You get the idea.

If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn’t have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It’s the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I’m operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the centre of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world’s priorities.

The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it’s not impossible that some of these people in SUV’s have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he’s trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he’s in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.

Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket’s checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.

Again, please don’t think that I’m giving you moral advice, or that I’m saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it’s hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won’t be able to do it, or you just flat out won’t want to.

But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.

This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.

Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship–be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles–is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.

They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn’t sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don’t just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

“This is water.”

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.

I wish you way more than luck.

10 Comments

John Sakowicz November 10, 2024

This commencement speech by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College is essential reading. I read it several times a year. I’ve printed it out and given it to each of my children and many of my friends.

The speech is plainly astonishing. Its themes of solipsism, loneliness, monotony, education, and the importance of sympathy and conscious awareness is the very bone marrow of human existence.

Thank you for posting it.

Chuck Artigues November 10, 2024

My observation is that the electorate is simply more conservative than we would like to believe. Even here, in supposedly ‘liberal’ California, there was a ballot initiative that would have eliminated forced labor by prisoners for sub standard wages. There was no organized opposition to it, yet it failed. A very simple issue, to me a very clear case of right and wrong… Clearly I am in the minority, and I can accept that.

Eric Sunswheat November 10, 2024

RE: ELECTION ODDITY, among many electoral oddities this landmark election, occurred when San Anselmo overwhelmingly voted down a local rent control measure while next door Fairfax passed a similar measure.

—>. Not true. Factual error in Marin IJ article. Fairfax approved rejecting stronger rent control ordinance previously approved by town council, thus in effect voting down local originating rent control measure.

Cotdbigun November 10, 2024

Dear Editor,
I got it , I got for umpteenth time, the majority of folks aren’t even close to being as enlightened as we are in our quaint little echochamber, and super important: Orangeman B A D. Now what?

The honorary trumper award goes to Gage Gorman, 25 pounds of dangerous weapons.

- McEwen Bruce November 10, 2024
  
  Astounding how the readership can be exposed to articles like yesterday’s Jonathan Cook piece; the day before’s Chris Hedges piece; the bits by Caitlin Johnstone on both days— and not only deign to comment, but blithely go right back to either celebrating Trump’s victory or bemoaning Harris’ loss! Truly awesome how thoroughly conditioned we all are here in the readership … or at least those on the subscription list, for while it’s evident we all can read, a good many seem too obstinate to do so as all these tedious posts prove.
  
  Master Baiter here, for instance, could hardly have put up this post without blushing self-consciously had he read the commencement speech printed above!
  
  - Cotdbigun November 10, 2024
    
    The condescending attitude and name calling continues. Remember the young man, the one that you belittled publicly in this publication by supposedly sensing his feelings at the other end of of a private phone call, that one that you snooped on in Milano’s Bar ? Your holier than thou , superior intellect and command of the English language may not be the only cause of his suicide, but you sure didn’t help, you arrogant all knowing pos. Astounding indeed.
    
    - McEwen Bruce November 10, 2024
      
      You’re right. I don’t remember it. I don’t even remember Milanos Bar though I must have been in there once at least. I probably said something stupid and now you mention the consequences I sincerely regret it. Out of respect for you and anyone else involved I’ll say no more.
      
      - Cotdbigun November 11, 2024
        
        Thank you. It would go a long way to enhance our interaction if we exhibit compassion and respect. A little kindness can be enjoyed by all of us.
        
John Kriege November 10, 2024

Re: Haschak report:
Based on Jim Shield’s recent article and a look at the ordinance, I thought the maximum was 10,000 sq. ft. per parcel, not two 10,000 sq. ft. permits if the parcel is five acres?

- peter boudoures November 10, 2024
  
  Pretty sure 10k flowering canopy and another 10k nursery. Separate permits.

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