Mendocino County Today: Friday 11/22/2024

By AVA News Service on November 22, 2024

ROUTE 1 IS FULLY CLOSED north of Point Arena near the Garcia River (PM 17.36 TO 18.56) in Mendocino County due to flooding. Currently, there is no estimated time of opening. (Caltrans District 1)

ANDREW JONES:

I understand this has been covered before:

Point Arena School District : canceling school with a 10 minute warning and throwing students on the bus in hopes their parents can pick them up from a rain soaked bus stop. Plus unnecessary traffic on our flooded roads.

Gotta be better than this.

2 years ago during the January storms lives were put in danger by poor decisions. Doesn’t seem like anything has been learned yet.

Also you have a bus driver who can’t sleep at his own home tonight because the Garcia Flooded. Forecasts are here for a reason, listen to them. Thanks to the staff, I know this was stressful on everybody.

RAINFALL (past 24 hours): Laytonville 6.79" - Hopland 4.46" - Boonville 4.37" - Ukiah 3.50" - Covelo 2.78" - Yorkville 2.40"

A FLOOD ADVISORY is in effect for central and northwest California, including Lake County and southeastern Mendocino, due to heavy rainfall. The area has already received 3 to 6 inches of rain, and an additional 2 to 4 inches is expected. The advisory, effective until 4:15 p.m., warns of urban and small stream flooding, especially in low-lying areas and places with poor drainage. Water is accumulating on roads, and there is an increased risk of rockslides and landslides. Affected areas include Ukiah, Lakeport, Clearlake, and surrounding regions. (sfchronicle.com)

A STRONG ATMOSPHERIC RIVER storm system will continue to bring widespread moderate to heavy rainfall through today, resulting in life threatening flooding. Moderate to locally heavy rain, mountain snow and isolated thunderstorms will follow this evening through Saturday afternoon. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A warm 57F this rainy Friday morning. I have another 2.77" today which brings my storm total to 6.13". The hilly areas around here got about twice that much. As you can see from the satellite the shape of the system has gone to vertical & it is on the move to the south & east of us. Showers & windy today, maybe a break on Saturday? then showers into Tuesday, but the BIG rain is behind us it looks like.

JIM SHIELDS (Laytonville): Since this Pineapple Express hit at 9pm Tuesday night bringing .12 inches, on Wednesday 5.96 inches fell, and today at 2pm another 4.10 inches has been recorded as of 2pm. That’s a total of 10.18 inches so far and a lot more is on the way. So far, no serious flooding in the greater Laytonville area. We’ve been fortunate since there’s been breaks of light or no rain between episodes of heavy drenching allowing water to channel off into streams and creeks.

JULIE BEARDSLEY: You know I’ve lived here for a long time and I remember in the 1970s it rained for a several weeks at a time and we didn’t freak out and call it a weather bomb. It was just rain. I’m having a hard time understanding why normal weather is freaking everyone out…..ummm, maybe I’m just old, but remember that where we live is called a temperate rain forest. The important word in that description is rain. Hot in the summer and rainy in the winter…

UKIAH CITY COUNCIL CONFRONTS LACK OF OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN TOURISM COMMISSION PROPOSAL

The Ukiah City Council on Tuesday considered a controversial proposal from the Mendocino County Tourism Commission (MCTC) to increase its share of the transient occupancy tax (TOT) from 1% to 2% with an additional 0.5% increase included and to change the governance of the business improvement district that collects the tax.

Deputy City Manager Shannon Riley flagged several issues with the MCTC’s push to loosen oversight of its operations while increasing its funding. “There’s not a clear return on investment for the funds already being dedicated to the countywide business improvement district (BID),” Riley said, contrasting this with the city’s locally managed Visit Ukiah program.…

https://www.kzyx.org/2024-11-21/tourism-commission-oversight

Route 175 - Russian River near Hopland (Caltrans)

CONTINUOUS SEXUAL ABUSE OF MINORS

On Sunday, November 17, 2024 at approximately 4:01 P.M., Deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office were dispatched to contact an adult female, regarding a possible sexual assault committed against her two daughters.

During the initial interview, Deputies determined multiple sexual assaults had occurred over the course of 10 years involving 2 victims, one now 19 and the other 12, and the investigation was turned over to the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Investigations Bureau. The suspect in this case was identified as Matthew Adams who was currently out of the immediate area.

During the investigation, Detectives interviewed both victims and developed probable cause to author a search warrant for Adams’ residence.

Detectives learned Adams was scheduled to return to the Willits area during the afternoon of Wednesday, November 20, 2024, and they awaited his arrival. At this time, Detectives believed Adams was aware that a report had been made and he might attempt to avoid law enforcement. With the assistance of the victims' mother, Adams was located within the City of Willits.

Ultimately, Adams was placed under arrest for two counts of Continuous Sexual Abuse of a Minor.

Adams was subsequently booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held in lieu of $750,000 bail.

Based on the circumstances of this investigation, Investigators believe there may be additional victims of abuse perpetrated by Adams and the investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information related to this investigation is requested to contact the Sheriff's Office Dispatch Center at 707-463-4086. Information can also be provided anonymously by calling the non-emergency tip line at 707-234-2100.

JACK PETERS CREEK BRIDGE CONSTRUCTION NIGHTTIME CLOSURES

The Jack Peters Creek Bridge on Route 1, north of the community of Mendocino, will be fully closed on Sunday and Monday, Nov. 24-25, from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. for bridge falsework installation. These closures are weather-dependent and subject to change. Construction will escort emergency responders over the bridge during the full nighttime closures.

Built in 1939, the bridge will be widened to accommodate two 12-foot wide lanes, two 6-foot wide shoulders, and a 6-foot wide separated pedestrian walkway on the west side of the Bridge that will link the California Coastal Trail from County Road 500 D to Lansing Drive.

Construction is expected to be complete in Fall 2025.

(Caltrans District 1)

MENDOCINO UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT BOARD TO DISCUSS SALE OF MCN TO FORT BRAGG

by Mary Benjamin

On Thursday, November 14, 2024, the Mendocino Unified School District Board agreed to hold preliminary discussions with the City of Fort Bragg regarding the city’s suggestion that the school district sell Mendocino Community Network (MCN) to Fort Bragg.

In September of 2024, The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) awarded Fort Bragg $10.3 million to construct a public broadband utility to serve the community with a high-speed, fiber optic internet system made available to the community. The funding is part of the state’s Middle Mile Broadband Initiative to end the “digital divide” in rural areas.

According to the city’s press release, “the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the vulnerability of households without access to affordable and reliable internet—from the ability to access telehealth services to remote learning and remote working opportunities, participating in virtual events, or having access to modern business markets.”

Although the total cost of the project exceeds the grant by about $4.3 million, the city plans to close this gap with $1 million of federal dollars earmarked by Congressman Jared Huffman for likely approval. The remaining $3.3 million will be pursued through other funding opportunities.

Now in the planning stages for construction, city staff, led by Economic Development Manager Sarah McCormack, noted that many subscribers to MCN are residents of Fort Bragg. Sensitive to MCN’s long history on the coast, city planners realized that a large number of MCN’s 1200 subscribers would likely switch to the city’s internet system.

The city’s internet would offer up-to-date technology at affordable prices and, said City Manager Isaac Whippy, “would play a vital role in closing the digital divide and ensure equitable access to our entire community.”

Because this new opportunity might draw in up to 800 of MCN’s current clients, seriously impacting the viability of MCN, the city reached out to the Board of Trustees with the suggestion that the city purchase MCN and incorporate it into the new broadband system.

Early on in the public discussion, Superintendent Jason Morse announced that all MCN services “will remain the same and the listserv would continue as is.”

Both Isaac Whippy and Sarah McCormack were present at the school board meeting and responded to the concerns that MCN customers voiced during the public discussions. McCormack addressed some of the concerns that this idea might play out as a “hostile takeover,” she noted, “It’s about lifting all of us,” and stressed that the idea was exploratory and hadn’t even come to the City Council yet.

Other concerns ranged from possible loss of current MCN services such as Fusion, the email addresses of MCN users, and the vital community links that MCN had built over the years. The MCN listserv, recently handed over to a local nonprofit group operation, was also a topic of great concern to users who rely upon it.

Whippy assured the public that Fort Bragg had no interest in taking over or shutting down the listserv. For MCN users, the city would want the transfer of MCN ownership to be as smooth as possible without affecting the services current users are accustomed to.

Board Trustee Mark Morton supported pursuing a discussion with Fort Bragg. After recalling the early days of MCN with the help of NASA’s Ames Research Center to get it off the ground, Morton said, “It’s emotional for me, but it feels like this would be a good fit for Fort Bragg.”

Referring to the credibility of the staff at Fort Bragg City Hall and seeking to end any comparison of the City of Fort Bragg to a big corporate takeover, Morton added, “They’re aware of what MCN means to us.”

Board Trustee Michael Schaeffer pointed out that MCN was already unable to add any new Fusion customers since “AT&T won’t take on any DSL anymore.” He suggested that the school board agree to pursue this by designing a six-month step-by-step process for due diligence, negotiations, and decision-making.

Trustees Morton and Schaeffer expressed a strong desire to ensure that, throughout any discussions with Fort Bragg, MCN customers have opportunities to view and comment upon proposals ranging from email addresses to service packages to pricing.

The school board included MCN employees in the public discussion who related concerns about wages, pensions, and healthcare benefits.

These concerns reinforced the school board’s view that there was much to consider before any decision to sell MCN would be made.

After the public had participated in the discussion, including via Zoom, Trustee Shaeffer moved to “accept in principle and go forward with the next steps.” The motion was seconded by Trustee Windspirit Aum. The motion was approved unanimously.

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

FILLIGREEN FARM, BOONVILLE

Take advantage of the break in the rain Friday afternoon and Saturday and stop by Velma's Farmstand at Filigreen Farm to shop for Thanksgiving produce, dried florals, and olive oil from Filigreen Farm as well as holiday ingredients and gifts like chiles, beans, and other delicious things from Boonville Barn! Velma's will also be open on Sunday but Boonville Barn will not be there.

PLANS BY THE BUSHEL BASKET

The Staff Report(s) and Agenda for the December 5, 2024, Planning Commission meeting is now available on the department website at:https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/departments/planning-building-services/boards-and-commissions/public-hearing-bodies/public-hearing-bodies#!

Please contact staff if there are any questions,

Thank you

James Feenan, feenanj@mendocinocounty.gov

AV GRANGE HOLIDAY DINNER

Anderson Valley Grange and Anderson Valley Foodshed are hosting the Annual Valley Community Celebration of the Holidays and End of Year with a Potluck Dinner Sunday, December 8th, 2024.

We are all feeling grateful for living in this community and would love for us to all celebrate it together.

Food serving starts at about 5:30, but it takes a lot of help to make this happen. Meat Carvers, servers, potato cookers and mashers. Someone brave enough to take on the Gravy making.

Local turkey and local potatoes provided, but all other dishes are needed (more green salads this year please).

More Details on Facebook: https://fb.me/e/923Qn42Fb

Sign-Up to Help: Call Captain Rainbow @ 707-472-9189 for questions.

HARP & VIOLIN

This Sunday, November 24, 3:00 pm. Harpist Anna Maria Mendieta will be joined by violinist Ingrid Tracy, the newest member of her touring show, to perform selections from her award-winning album "Tango Del Cielo". Fiery classics by De Falla, Rodrigo, Albeniz, and the sultry nuevo tangos of Piazzolla and Ziegler are delightfully mixed with nostalgic Latin favorites for a program to excite, intrigue and delight! Preston Hall, Mendocino Presbyterian Church.

THE BOONVILLE HOTEL

Let the gatherings and celebrations begin…

Come join us for a quiet get-away weekend before the festivities begin or join in them all …

Tree lighting parties, family gatherings, gingerbread extravaganzas, roasts + toasts,

New Year's Eve dinner + dance party at Offspring

Offspring across the street offering an à la carte menu of handmade pastas, beautiful sides, main plates to share & of course wood fire pizzas. Lunches Saturday & Sundays now

Dinner Tuesday-Saturday 5:00-8:00pm

Lunch Saturday 12-3pm

Sunday 11:30-2:30pm

Join us for an Offspring dinner on Tuesday & Wednesday evenings and get 25% off room @ the hotel enter code "Offspring."

Good Tidings…

We are making gift giving a bit sweeter…

Purchase a gift certificate Thanksgiving Day thru

New Year's Day and we'll sweeten the deal by adding 10% more value to it.

Come Stay

Share our season of contentment, take a soak in the tub with the rain, sit by the fire wrapped in a blanket, take a walk in the redwoods, enjoy a leisurely beautiful meal by candlelight with your honey.

We have some beautiful seasonal drinks from our bar

on nights the restaurant is open.

Along with Friday through Monday evenings 4-6, we are offering a simple bar menu perfect for a light meal.

We're serving our prix fixe menu, sourced from local farms

friday thru mondays during the cooler months.

Perry posts the menu online Wednesday afternoons for the upcoming weekend.

www.boonvillehotel.com

SUPERVISOR ELECT BERNIE NORVELL: Running for Office?

The top four placers this morning. Need I tell you who won?

IN BLOOM AT MENDOCINO COAST BOTANICAL GARDENS

Bloom Blast! Read on for updates and info on upcoming events, bloom reports, gardening tips, educational opportunities, and more…

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, we at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens would like to take this moment to share our deepest gratitude. To our members, guests, volunteers, and everyone who contributes to this 47-acre haven—we thank you. Each of you plays an essential role in making the gardens a place of inspiration, growth, and tranquility. We are honored to help you create lasting memories and discover harmony in nature’s beauty. Your support allows us to continue cultivating this incredible landscape for all to enjoy, and we couldn’t do it without you. Wishing you a warm and wonderful holiday season!

Winter Hours (Nov - Mar):

9:00am to 4:00pm daily

Closed Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day

www.gardenbythesea.org

FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS RETURNS AT THE BOTANICAL GARDENS

The 14th annual Festival of Lights at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens begins the day after Thanksgiving. Get your tickets in advance, or be prepared to pay more at the door! The event will run rain or shine each Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from November 29 through December 22. Doors open at 5:00 p.m., and the last entry will be at 7:00 p.m..

Children ages 16 and younger attend for free. The traditionally low rate, $10 per adult, is available in advance online or at the Gardens’ gift shop. Ticket prices will increase to $20 at the door and will not be sold at the door on evenings when the event is at capacity. Dogs are not allowed at the Festival of Lights; clearly marked service animals are an exception to this rule.

Be prepared to use the free parking shuttle, which picks up from the Mendocino Community College parking lot off Highway 1 and Ocean Drive (1211 Del Mar Dr, Fort Bragg, CA 95437) each night of the event. The parking lots will fill up. When this happens, do not park on Highway 1!

Stroll the twinkling pathways, marvel at the glittering scenes, and capture a fabulous family photo. Find a unique present for your favorite person at the gift shop. Hot cocoa, apple cider, and sweets will be available at the Friends of the Gardens’ Holiday Cafe. This year, Santa Claus will be available for photos each Sunday.

Bundle up and enjoy the imaginative displays, sweet treats, and holiday fun during this year’s Festival of Lights! Advanced tickets are strongly recommended and may be purchased online or at the Gardens’ gift shop. Full event details and tickets are available at www.gardenbythesea.org/FOL.

ED NOTES

GRATIFYING as it is to see the end of Gaetz as chief of the Justice Department, Trump's next pick will also be a Gaetz personality-political type. Ironically, the libs now defending the FBI and the rest of the unjust Justice Department apparatus, don't seem to know that this country, and the legal profession, is teeming with Gaetzes. The FBI, founded by that old cross-dressing, blackmailing nutcase J. Edgar Hoover, has always been a political police force, until now and historically, in pursuit of the left. President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday named Pam Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida, to be U.S. attorney general just hours after his other choice, Matt Gaetz, withdrew his name. — AP

"CONVICTED FELON." Real tired of this one as applied to Orange Man, and I defy anyone reading this to explain, in 500 words or fewer, what exactly the 34 felonies were for and how exactly they were felonious. Trump was prosecutable on inciting the January 6th riot, and he was clearly prosecutable for trying to rig the Georgia election on his behalf. The 34 felonies? A little bookkeeping slight of hand to disguise his tryst with the fetching honeytrap, Stormy Daniels. Anybody else wouldn't have been prosecuted, let alone prosecuted for felonies. This thing was a soft misdemeanor, if that.

SPEAKING of Orange Man, the speculation about his mental acuity and general health is only half-difficult. Mentally, he seems maybe a step ahead of Biden, demented and more so by the day given his rambling, incoherent appearances. Physically? Hard to tell behind all that makeup and the world's greatest comb-across. Take away that facade I'd suppose he looks his age, the age of any other unfit 78-year-old.

BIDEN? Funny how media continues to pretend he's a functioning president when it's evident he was out of it even before he was elected, and totally out of it now while an unelected cadre of whomevers runs “our democracy.”

FORMER MENDO DA Joe Allen has been disbarred. Don't know the whys but it must have been something terribly egregious given the prevalent ethical standards of the profession. Eyster better start looking over his shoulder over his manufactured prosecution of Ms. Cubbison, which is certainly about as egregious as egregious can be.

I'M NOT the only local with fond memories of the City Bakery on Ukiah's South State Street, less than a block from the County Courthouse. Mrytle Schindler presided at the counter while her husband Karl, and then her son, Karl Jr., did the baking. The Schindlers were in business at that address from 1949 until 1984 when they retired. They made the best brownies ever, I'd say, and Myrtle, despite her formidable old fashioned, cloth coat Republican facade, was very amusing and surprisingly liberal in her political opinions. The bakery offered a range of goods, all of them delicious, and I always enjoyed stopping there when I was in Ukiah for a sandwich, a brownie, a cup of coffee, and a chat with Myrtle. The place reminded me of the lunch counters of my youth, and had obviously remained unchanged from the day it opened in 1949 to the day it closed in 1984, a tiny island of calm stability in a sea of stormy change. Myrtle died at age 90, and with her went the last piece of old Ukiah.

A KID asked Mr. Wizard why gasoline was still cheap in Mexico. Because the Mexican government owns the resource from the ground to the gas station, that's why, not that nationalization would ever happen here even if the country comes to a complete halt instead of the slo-mo stop now underway.

SPEAKING OF OIL, a reader sent me an interesting documentary film called “A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash.” It's pretty convincing, and shocking. I hadn't realized, and I know someone will correct me if I heard wrong, but all the energy alternatives presently out there won't, even taken as a whole, give us ten percent of the energy fossil fuel now provides. Even if we supplemented solar, wind, restaurant grease and the rest of them with ten thousand nuclear facilities it still wouldn't be enough, and since oil production has peaked and is now on a downhill slope of unknown decline – some say it's precipitous, some say less precipitous – industrial civ can count its days.

A FELLOW named Stuart Alden Hubler, landscape architect out of Los Angeles, stopped in one day. He said he was looking for information, “anything you know,” about the late Donna Ronne of the Holmes Ranch. I said I'd known Donna and had liked her, as had many people in the Anderson Valley, and like everyone else I'd known that Donna had been a Playboy centerfold and had also acted in some mainstream films and on television.

STUART ALDEN HUBLER appeared to be in his late 40s. As we chatted, it was evident he hadn't recovered from the Centerfold Experience of his youth. He certainly knew more about Donna than I did. He said Donna was not only “one of the all-time centerfolds,” she'd appeared in “lots of television shows,” and had even acted in a Fellini film, ‘City of Women.’ He wondered why Donna had “dropped out to the Anderson Valley.”

I DIDN'T WANT to insult the guy by reminding him that the Anderson Valley is hardly the Gobi Desert. And it’s pretty hard to hide out here, what with our small population and the place being re-discovered every month by wine and food writers, not to mention all kinds of semi-famous people living in the hills.

MAYBE DONNA got tired of panting landscapers leering and lusting after her images, tired of being known for her association with the world's silliest man, Hugh Hefner, tired of living in L.A. where every third female person has appeared in public without her clothes on. Donna had been 17 when she'd first appeared as one of Hefner's featured pneumatic photographs, inspiring priapic ripples among America's love starved millions and an undying obsession in Stuart Alden Hubler.

“DID she have a boyfriend?” Stuart Alden Hubler demanded. I took a closer look at the guy. I wondered if he did his landscaping late at night in obscure cemeteries. Should I remind him of what God had done to Onan? But he was too old for cautionaries, and besides I'd just met him.

“DONNA lived quietly with her horses and her dogs,” I said. “She was a good person. We all liked her.” I didn't want to tell him any more than that. I didn't want to tell him that Donna had worked for a while at the Boonville Dump where she was always good for a raucous joke, didn't want to tell him that she never talked about her previous life in the city of quartz, that she was only 58 when she died of a heart attack at her home near Navarro, and everyone who knew her was sorry to see her go.

THE 20 JUNE, 1908 edition of the Mendocino Beacon reported that “Peter Carlson, the contractor and builder of Greenwood (Elk), has the contract to build a $2,000 residence for G.C. Clow near Philo on the Elk Road. … Hop Flat school will close Friday; James Hurley has been wielding the rod there and has had a very successful term. He is well liked and will have the school again after July.” … And from the Beacon of June 9, 1883 we learn that “J.C. Cox, who lives at Gualala, but who owns the Cox copper mine about five miles west of Yorkville, was a Santa Rosa visitor on Thursday. He brought down quite a large number of specimens which assay from 12 to 80 percent copper. He is running two tunnels into the mine — one northwest, which have struck the lode, which Mr. Cox thinks is about fifty feet wide.”

THE COX COPPER MINE, by my crude directional calculations, was either on what is now the late Guido Pronsolino's Copper Queen Ranch near Yorkville, or to the east behind the Y Ranch near the headwaters of Feliz Creek at the very end of McNab Ranch Road. Also at the headwaters of Feliz Creek is the largest “spirit rock” in the county, a spirit rock being an ancient message board on which Indians, over thousands of years, carved mysterious (to us) messages.

HOP FLAT was a thriving little mill town west of present-day Navarro, complete with a hotel, a tannery, a telephone exchange, a train stop, and a teacher named Hurley, a rod-wielding pedagogue. Hop Flat was busy from early in the 20th century until just after World War Two with a lively community of woodsmen's families locally famous for their weekend dances. All trace of this lively little community a stone's throw off 128 not far from Navarro has disappeared as if it never existed.

MIKE GENIELLA:

RIP, MARGIE HANDLEY. Our paths occasionally crossed over the last four decades. While we differed politically, I count myself among the many who recognized Handley's devotion to the Willits community and Mendocino County in general. She was old school, from an era when the local timber economy provided profits, jobs, and stability. Handley cared for her town and its well-being. I was pleasantly surprised earlier this year when Handley, a Reagan devotee, spoke out against Trump and his crowd. My personal admiration deepened. I salute Handley. She was among people across the political spectrum who truly made America great.

(Mike Geniella)

PS. Handley's Letter earlier this year to The Press Democrat:

Editor:

Donald Trump has single-handedly destroyed the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan, who would turn over in his grave to hear the vitriolic words out of Trump’s mouth calling people vermin and telling Vladimir Putin to “do whatever the hell he wants.”

He is not the same man that I voted for twice. He is so full of revenge and retribution that he thinks of nothing other than how to get even for an election he full well knows he lost, but just can’t live with the results.

If you listen to his rhetoric, he repeats his lies over and over and over until people actually believe him. He uses the tactics of a cult leader, as Jim Jones did, to keep the MAGA group engaged. Even Republicans in Congress are drinking the Kool-Aid.”

I cannot vote for a morally corrupt man who thinks he is on the same plane as Alexei Navalny and Jesus.

Please vote for Nikki Haley on Tuesday. I look forward to the day I can turn on the TV and not hear the name Donald Trump mentioned. The man is a threat to our democracy.

Margie Handley, Willits

HOW A DEADLY CLOVERDALE ROAD INFLUENCED THE ROUTE OF HIGHWAY 101

by John Mercer

Between 1877 and 1928 at least 10 people were killed and at least 42 injured (some seriously) crossing Heald’s Hill north of the northern Sonoma County town of Cloverdale.

Heald’s Hill was a steep hill separating Cloverdale from the Oat Valley. The road was treacherous with several curves to the top of the hill and down the other side. Horse-drawn wagons, stagecoaches, bicycles, and automobiles all fell victim to the hill. In fact so many people were thrown from their vehicles and dashed against the rocks the newspapers started calling the spot “Death Rock.”…

https://mendofever.com/2024/10/07/how-a-deadly-cloverdale-road-influenced-the-route-of-highway-101/

Haul Road, Fort Bragg, California's Scenic Trail

MENDOCINO’S FIRST PEOPLE

by Kelley House Museum

November is National American Indian Heritage Month and the Kelley House Museum is observing it by opening a new exhibit on the history and culture of the Northern Pomo Indians, who have lived on the Mendocino Coast for thousands of years. The Pomo people comprised a network of Indigenous communities that crafted canoes, baskets, and other tools from local materials. Known worldwide for their exquisite baskets, they inhabited parts of Mendocino, Lake, and Sonoma Counties.

The Pomo, Cahto and Yukis hunted, gathered, fished, and traded in this coastal area. The Pomos occupied the region stretching from the Noyo River in Fort Bragg to the southern part of Mendocino County. Their territory was divided into Northern, Central, Southern, and Southwestern Pomo communities. The Coast Yukis resided in the area extending from the Noyo River to the Ten Mile River and beyond to the north. The Cahtos traveled here from the area around what is now Laytonville.

Numerous shell mounds are scattered along the coastline, indicating where Indigenous communities once gathered seasonally to harvest, consume, and store shellfish and seaweed. When William Kelley and Jerome Ford arrived in Mendocino in 1852, there was a Pomo village located just east of the current Highway 1 bridge on the north side of Big River. According to Samuel Barrett, an anthropologist and linguist who studied the Indigenous people of Northern California, “They established a village they called Bu’ldam (pronounced Bool-dam), signifying the ‘big holes,’ the blowholes on the headlands at Mendocino and Russian Gulch.”

The Pomo’s way of life was significantly altered by the arrival of Russian fur trappers at Fort Ross in 1811, Spanish missionaries at San Rafael in 1817, and Euro-American settlers in the 1850s who came for the redwood forests. Logging activities replaced their villages near rivers and streams; their land was appropriated, and their lives were threatened by violence and deadly epidemics of cholera and smallpox.

Many Northern Pomo were relocated to the Mendocino Indian Reservation, established by the federal government in 1856 on 25,000 acres between the Noyo and Ten Mile Rivers. Thousands of California Indians—Northern Pomo, Southern Pomo, Yuki, Wappo, and Whilkut—were gathered from as far away as Eureka and Chico and held on the reservation for about nine years before it was closed in 1866. Most of the inhabitants were then relocated elsewhere, with many force-marched inland to the Round Valley Reservation. In 1869, the Mendocino Reservation lands were offered for sale to the non-Indian public for $1.25 an acre.

In 1903, Samuel Barrett documented three sites along the Mendocino Coast—in Fort Bragg, Noyo, and Little River—where Pomo Indians still lived, having managed to remain there when the reservation closed. The Fort Bragg site was just outside the northeastern boundary of the city, about half a mile from the ocean. There had been five houses there and maybe 20 people, but many of them moved to the Noyo site, situated on the site of a former sawmill on the northern bank of the Noyo River near its mouth. Their descendants are still there today.

Barrett was told by his Indian informants that the main trail from the Ukiah Valley to the coast, one of the earliest routes the Pomos used through the mountains, ended at the site of the Little River village. It was on a low ridge just south of the river and consisted of two houses and around six residents. There is no trace of it today.

But the Pomos are still here! Come to the museum to learn their more recent history, look at photos, and enjoy some Pomo baskets and contemporary artwork.

The exhibit was made possible by an Arts and Culture grant from the Community Foundation of Mendocino County; it was curated by the Kelley House staff in consultation with Buffey Wright Bourassa, a member of the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians in Willits. The important exhibit runs through March.

(kelleyhousemuseum.org)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, November 21, 2024

MARK BERQUIST, 69, Ukiah. Petty theft, failure to appear.

PATRICK DAVIES, 36, Lakeport/Ukiah. Theft-non-return of rental property, contracting without license, failure to secure payment of compensation.

CHANE KOUIYOTH, 50, Oakland/Laytonville. DUI.

RAYMOND TOOT, 61, Potter Valley. DUI.

THE WHOLESOME KELSEY

Editor:

Accompanying the Bartleson-Bidwell Party, and with her husband Ben and Kelseyville namesake Andrew, Nancy Kelsey crossed the Sierra Nevada in 1841. Reportedly, she was the first white woman to do so. In 1846, it is said she was called upon to sew the first Bear flag, derivatives of which are seen in classrooms, courthouses and flagpoles throughout California to this day. For her contributions to the flag, Andrew Kelsey’s sister-in-law became known as the “Betsy Ross of California.” Interesting the connections one finds when scratching the surface of history.

Dave Delgardo

Cloverdale

STEVE TALBOT:

Congratulations to Percival Everett for winning the National Book Award for his novel "James," his brilliant and bracing re-imagining of Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

My peak reading experience of the year so far remains re-reading Twain's classic novel and then reading Everett's in which the character of Jim becomes James and takes center place in the story. Satiric, soulful, scathing. An American reckoning.

MITCH CLOGG

Movie. Night. Bad guys outside. The music doesn’t bode well. The threatened couple, working fast, shove furniture against the doors. We are not to worry about the windows. Funny thing, this strong inclination to respect the integrity of windows. In chancey neighborhoods there may be bars on ground-level windows, but mostly not. Mostly, invading somebody’s home is not by breaking windows. Odd.

If I didn’t know the weather’s stormy, our power’s on, so the TV tells me. There I am on the Weather Channel, Pacific Northwest. There’s Fort Bragg (California) in the red part, where the wind and rain are especially intense. Fart Bag's eight miles north.

Over my kitchen there’s a skylight. When the downpour gets fire-hosey, I glance up. Rain falls on the skylight more than it comes out of my shower. It’s the kind of rain where you’re better off not making a dash for it—to the car, say, any more than you’d make a dash under a waterfall and hope to stay sort of dry. This is the kind of weather they’ve been having in Florida and North Carolina, where the rain was like this constantly, no breaks. I can see how fast it would overwhelm all drainage systems, man-made and natural.

I, guiltily, like heavy weather, the excitement of it, but last winter (wrong! Winter before last. Time flies.), a big pine tree fell on the roof. Coulda been worse, but it was a pain.

(Was that last year? I’ve been two years mostly in and out of hospitals, mostly confined to my bed because of a sick foot. ‘Twas a mess. It’s better. I’m not. A couple years in bed screws you up. Your muscles go away; your bones get thin and porous. You look like a cadaver, like a golem (Jewish folklore), like the Gollum (“Lord of the Rings”), like Sméagol (Tolkien again; the gollum was what it was. Sméagol was its name.)

I bring this up because that’s what I thought of after I entered the nursing home in Pacifica. (Today’s TV showed me angry breakers on the beach at Pacifica.) I was in the bathroom, a complicated business when you’re all screwed up and lame, and I avoided the person in the mirror. I have avoided the spectacle of dead people in their coffins in the same mood. But it’s a small room and a standard-size bathroom mirror, and the skinny wight in the mirror kept moving in insulting imitation of me, and I saw all I wanted to out of the corner of my eye. “ Sméagol,” thought I.

Now I’m in Mendo, still grateful. Novelty hasn’t worn off, even after these couple of months. I’m working to restore myself.

Ellie comes back in from her quick swim to the store. "How long ago was it the tree fell on the roof?" Ellie has a steel-trap memory. Don’t say anything to E.E. Cooney if you don’t want it remembered. "Two years."

So. Two years ago I was on the roof, rope around my waist so I wouldn’t fall all the way to the ground, chainsaw in hand, lopping that tree. I couldn’t probably do that now. I said Ellie you should take a picture of this. Nobody’d believe it. She said if you fall off of there, you’re going to break yourself (and I didn’t. My bad foot turned out to be a casualty of poor arterial circulation and some tiny injuries to my foot too small to notice. They infected, and my foot declined to the point that the Veterans Health Administration, after no fewer than four freakin operations, declared it a liability. They’d have to cut it off to keep blood poisoning from creeping up my leg and killing me.

I disagreed. I’m glad I disagreed, but the ensuing years, months, weeks, days, hour and minutes have been pains in the butt. I’m 86. Who has two years to waste when you’re 86?

I don’t know where I was going with this weather report. Here’s the rain again. Now I’m just under a skylight. It sounds like hail. I better post this eternal post before the power goes out again.

ESTHER MOBLEY:

If my list of Thanksgiving ciders is just a bit too ~out there~ for you, plenty of other writers will be happy to guide your Thanksgiving wine selection. Here’s Eric Asimov’s annual list of recommendations in the New York Times (he also recommends six ciders!); a roundup of sommeliers’ Thanksgiving wine picks in Wine Spectator; and a smart list of bottles from the editors of the New Wine Review.

I love the spirit of this ranking of wine bar small plates by Hannah Staab in VinePair. (As my editor Janelle Bitker has pointed out, the food at wine bars these days “is all the same”!) To Staab’s list of tinned fish, hamachi crudo and “sweaty charcuterie” (lol), I would also submit mortadella sandwiches and oeufs mayonnaise, both of which seem to have become requisite menu items at Bay Area wine bars lately.

In the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Phil Barber takes a deep look at the controversies surrounding Napa County Supervisor Belia Ramos in recent years, including Ramos’ account of having been allegedly harassed by Ryan Klobas, the late CEO of the Napa County Farm Bureau.

(SF Chronicle)

AHOY, JIVE-O MUTHAS!

Following Catholic Mass in the (lower) Crypt Church at the Basilica in Washington, D.C., went to the Immaculate Conception shrine room located next to it, and fingering the hematite beads Indian style, contemplated the homily of the priest. He pointed out that some day the church itself and all of that associated with it would not be necessary, because we will have ascended into heaven for life eternal. In the meantime, am non-attached to this world, which will be left behind. It appears that we have found the path!!

Craig Louis Stehr

Blaze Starr in her living room, Baltimore, Md. (1964) by Diane Arbus

BOOM!

by Howard Nemerov

SEES BOOM IN RELIGION, TOO
Atlantic City, June 23, 1957 (AP).-President Eisenhower's pastor said tonight that Americans are living in a period of "unprecedented religious activity" caused partially by paid vacations, the eight-hour day and modern conveniences.
"These fruits of material progress," said the Rev. Edward L. R. Elson of the National Presbyterian Church, Washington, "have provided the leisure, the energy, and the means for a level of human and spiritual values never before reached."

Here at the Vespasian-Carlton, it's just one
religious activity after another; the sky
is constantly being crossed by cruciform
airplanes, in which nobody disbelieves
for a second, and the tide, the tide
of spiritual progress and prosperity
miraculously keeps rising, to a level
never before attained. The churches are full,
the beaches are full, and the filling stations
are full, God's great ocean if full
of paid vacationers praying an eight-hour day
to the human and spiritual values, the fruits,
the leisure, the energy, and the means, Lord,
the means for the level, the unprecedented level,
and the modern conveniences, which also are full.
Never before, O Lord, have the prayers and praises
from belfry and phonebooth, from ballpark and barbecue
the sacrifices, so endlessly ascended.

It was not thus when Job in Palestine
sat in the dust and cried, cried bitterly;
when Damien kissed the lepers on their wounds
it was not thus; it was not thus
when Francis worked a fourteen-hour day
strictly for the birds; when Dante took
a week's vacation without pay and it rained
part of the time, O Lord, it was not thus.

But now the gears mesh and the tires burn
and the ice chatters in the shaker and the priest
in the pulpit, and Thy Name, O Lord,
is kept before the public, while the fruits
ripen and religion booms and the level rises
and every modern convenience runneth over,
that it may never be with us as it hath been
with Athens and Karnak and Nagasaki,
nor Thy sun for one instant refrain from shining
on the rainbow Buick by the breezeway
or the Chris Craft with the uplift life raft;
that we may continue to be the just folks we are,
plain people with ordinary superliners and
disposable diaperliners, people of the stop'n'shop
'n'pray as you go, of hotel, motel, boatel,
the humble pilgrims of no deposit no return
and please adjust thy clothing, who will give to Thee,
if Thee will keep us going, our annual
Miss Universe, for Thy Name's Sake, Amen.

NEWSOM RENAMES THE PERIPHERAL CANAL PROJECT

More water agencies vote in favor of Delta Conveyance Project for LA Expansion

The recent votes of Alameda County Water District, Palmdale Water District, and Desert Water Agency — representing hundreds of thousands of Californians — follow numerous other districts in supporting continued planning, permitting and engineering design to protect water access against the threats of climate change for 27 million Californians.

Within the past week, a series of major water agencies have voted in favor of the next phase of funding for the Delta Conveyance Project, illustrating continued support for this necessary infrastructure that will protect access to clean drinking water for 27 million Californians.

The redesigned Delta Conveyance Project would upgrade the State Water Project, enabling California’s water managers to capture and move more water during high flow atmospheric rivers to better endure dry seasons. The tunnel, a modernization of the infrastructure system that delivers water to millions of people, would improve California’s ability to take advantage of intense periods of rain and excess flows in the Sacramento River. It would also help protect against the risk of an earthquake cutting off water supplies to millions of Californians.

Governor's Press Office: (916) 445-4571

DOMESTIC WORKERS: A NEW FACE OF INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY

Interviews by David Bacon

Domestic workers rallying in Los Angeles on behalf of striking workers at an Audi plant in Mexico, February 10, 2024.

When it passed the U.S. Congress in 1935, the National Relations Act recognized the collective bargaining rights of U.S. private-sector workers and established a process to require employers to bargain with their unions. The law carried a political price, however. Racist senators and congressional representatives in the Democratic Party, mostly from the U.S. South, demanded exclusions. Domestic workers, who were still largely African-American women, would not be covered. Neither would farm workers, who were mostly Mexican and Filipino immigrants in that era. …

https://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/1124bacon-interviews.html

Bald Eagle's nest with a ranger for scale.

THE PRECARIOUS PRECARIAT & THE GARRISON STATE

by Jonah Raskin

If the Garrison State isn’t already here, it’s sure to be here very soon. Wait and watch and observe the arrival of a suped-up American political and economic system buttressed anew by the military. True, all eyes, or at least a great many of them across the US and around the world, have been focused on Washington D.C., the White House and Trump’s controversial appointees to cabinet positions.

But those eyes will soon shift to the 1,951-mile border that separates the US from Mexico and that’s said to be the busiest in the world. Millions cross it every year. Ever since Donald Trump’s arrival on the political scene, it has been one of the most hotly contested borders on the planet.

On Monday November 18, Trump confirmed that he intends to declare a national emergency and use U.S. troops to assist the mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. Sounds like neo-fascism to me. Immigrants are the scapegoats, the persecuted and members of the precariat.

Of course, the border along the Rio Grande has been a political hot spot ever since the so-called Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, when the U.S. invaded and occupied Mexico, and Mexico ceded to the US for $15 million a vast territory that now belongs to California, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and parts of Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas and Wyoming. It was one of the biggest land grabs in modern history. In three words, “Mexico was robbed.”

Now, one wonders how precisely and how exactly Donald Trump will make good on his campaign promise to deport millions of migrants who entered the US illegally. Will there be mass round-ups in the dead of night, concentration-camp-like detention centers with barbed wire and armed guards? Along with military operations that will violate human rights and civil liberties and that will send truck loads of Mexicans and other Latinos across the border to poverty, chaos, drug traffickers, violence, hunger and homelessness.

If one believes that Trump is a fascist that course of action seems inevitable. Or, will Trump make a last minute deal with Mexican authorities and with members of the Republican party and the supporters who elected him because they loved his lies, racist comments and real or manufactured hatred of immigrants.

It’s hard to imagine how Trump will execute his threat. After all, the US is dependent on Latino laborers who work in agriculture and in hotels and restaurants and who usually perform the jobs that whites refuse to do and at or below the minimum wage. A popular 2004 movie titled A Day Without a Mexican, imagined a California with no Mexican laborers. Not surprisingly, the whole economy collapses. Will capitalist America go along with the Garrison State? It might not have a say in the matter, and make no mistake about it we’ll all be impacted. The U.S. will resemble those military dictatorships around the world.

The movie fantasy of a day without a Mexican will likely become a reality. UC Berkeley Professor Stephanie L. Canizales knows that. The daughter of immigrants from El Salvador, as well as the Faculty Director of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative and the author of the new book, Sin Padres, Ni Papeles, Canizales recently interviewed some of the many young people who entered the US without their parents and without legal documents that would prove they have a right to be here.

No sooner do they arrive then those teenage and twenty something migrants quickly fall into the social class at the bottom of the economic ladder where they do not have secure jobs, or secure living situations and who are in danger every day of arrests, detentions and deportations. The class is known as the precariat and it’s among the most vulnerable demographic in the Garrison State.

Canizales was able to develop trusting relationships with the teens and the twenty something migrants because she grew up in L.A., knew the community and because her parents entered the US illegally, though they never talked about that experience when she was growing up. Perhaps they viewed it as something shameful, something to be hidden. Canizales had a smattering of Spanish when she began her interviews; she became increasingly fluent and learned the words and expressions the migrants used. She originally titled her book, “Without Parents and Without Papers.” She changed it to Sin Padres, Ni Papeles to honor the language that the Latino youth used.

“History tells us that mass round-ups and deportations rarely go well,” she told me. “It’s true that anti-immigrant racism is a powerful force, but can our society really function without undocumented labor? That’s not clear.” Canizales says that migrants who have legal documents now carry them on their persons all the time. Also, some of them attempt to be invisible and to blend into non-Latino communities of color, wear clothes that don’t make them stand out and drive vehicles that reduce their vulnerability.

“To blame Haitians and other immigrant groups for the economic woes Americans are facing is to be greatly misinformed,” she explained. Canizales says that for many of the Latino youth who enter theUS illegally the psychological and emotional burdens weigh on them as heavily as their economic burdens.

If they were French and had read the classics of existentialism they might say they feel alienated. But they’re children of the Catholic Church and Mexico’s labyrinth of social inequalities and injustices. At home they had their families close to them. In Los Angeles they’re sin padres and lonelier and more isolated than they imagined they would be.

“They say that they’re in perdition, a condition in which they inhabit a place of loss and damnation,” Canizales told me. “They feel like they’re drowning.” She added, “they want to undrown themselves, and to learn what they need to learn to survive in the place of perdition they inhabit. Many of them initially blame themselves for their condition. Then, when they meet others in their generation and in the same or in similar situations they’re released from feeling like failures and gain the energy to keep going.” They heal themselves and their friends.

They’re like the 1930s Dust Bowl refugees in the US who faulted themselves for their precarious situations and who gradually learned that the system was responsible.

Woody Guthrie sang about the members of the precariat in his own day and age in his timeless song “Deportees” recorded first in 1948 : “some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,/ Our work contract’s out and we have to move on;/ Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,/ They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.”

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

THE GUMBY PAPERS

by Jon Shultz

A Friday night search for ice cream in Hades…

On a warm Friday afternoon in late May 1974, Terrence and I decided to take “the Raiz Diabolicum,” the diabolical or devil's root, the conquering Spanish Catholics’ name for Datura plants in use by indigenous people, i.e., “the Indios.” The Catholic clergy mistook the symptoms of Datura intoxication for demonic possession. Certainly people on it look “strange, crazy or possessed.” Datura intoxication is not a state of sanity, but one of delirium. I've never seen any of the beautiful patterns one might see on, say, LSD (or any other “classic” psychedelic). Instead, Datura/jimson weed opens a door to a bizarre “Gumby-like world,” not visions per se, but actual hallucinations (some “fun,” some not). Included are various bouts of amnesia or simply unconsciousness (which can lead to death).

That Friday Terrence and I ate perhaps a two-inch piece of Datura Meteloides (aka Datura Innoxia, a member of the nightshade family) root each, a yellow white, bitter, parsnip-like root, but tougher and stinkier. We grimaced as we swallowed the slimy bitter pulp.

“This better work, Shultz! I don't want to see Don Juan!” (Carlos Castaneda's shamanic muse).

I assured Terrence we would see “something.” Perhaps 20 minutes after chewing down these nasty tasting roots we started to feel sleepy and very thirsty. Our pupils dilated into large, vacant black holes, while random disconnected thoughts drifted through our heads like wispy clouds.

“This isn't much fun, Shultz! I'm tired and thirsty! Let's go to Baskin Robbins and get some ice cream!”

I groggily agreed to get something cold and wet to cut through this bleeping atrocious cottonmouth! Our tongues were dried like tough leather and stuff was moving around right at the corners of the eye range.

We headed to Imperial Highway eastbound toward the Safeway market on an unsteady pilgrimage for cooling confectionery treats. We were like two drunken monks. The sidewalk rose up and down like a cooked piece of bacon. We stepped carefully to avoid tripping over the tops of the ripples. The sidewalk was like a cement escalator going in reverse.

Terrence asked me, “Where is the ice cream?”

I answered, “It's up the hill!”

What?

Terrence said, “What's up the hill?”

“The ice cream!”

Terrence then said to me, “I never asked you that!”

I could not tell if I was hearing my own thoughts or Terrence’s spoken words, or if Terrence was so whacked out by the Devil's thorn apple that he could not remember what he was saying.

This was just part of the general confusion of the Datura/jimson weed experience, and there is just no way to control its effects. Brain spasms, chaotic and absolutely real-looking actual hallucinations, solid-state realities and/or ultra-vivid walking dreams occur. It is as if some center in the brain shuts down that is usually awake, or at least partially conscious and then subconscious materials such as dreams ooze out uncontrolled.

We walked along, our faces flushed bright red, eyes glassy and vacant, our brains gone slack, our fuzzy mouths were full of laundry lint, spitting flecks of cottony foam.

“Gee, this is a lot of fun!” I thought I heard Terrence say. I started to hear the constant refrain in my head, “Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear, fuzzy-wuzzy had no hair!” – over and over, a repetitive fuzzy mantra repeated ceaselessly and pointlessly.

At times I hallucinated that we were both wearing our pajamas and ready for bed.

“But first let's have some ice cream!”

“But there are miles to go before I sleep.”

It seemed like we were moving forward but we were not. It also seemed much steeper than I ever imagined! At one point Imperial Highway turned into a river full of rushing green water with lots of trees on the opposite bank waving at us. They were very friendly trees! The river was full of people swimming around and yelling at us to come into the river and join them! They seemed to be having a great time!

Actually it was 5 o'clock in the afternoon during rush-hour traffic. I was very thirsty and hot, and I was very tempted to jump in and swim about with the friendly people, but I held out for the ice cream first. Then the swim. A few people climbed out of the river to join us. I recognized them as familiar friends of mine – Linda E. and Yvonne W. and Donnie “The Duck” Beck, and surf buddy Timbee. We had a wonderful time talking about school and parties, jobs and drugs, etc., but they kept vanishing.

“Did you see that, Terrence?”

“No! What?”

We passed a chain-link fence. There was a dog-like creature sitting behind the fence. It was a big round animal with a humanoid face. It greatly resembles Timbee! It looked at me and said in plain English: “What the fuck are you looking at?”

The Timbee Dog had this huge bulbous red nose like a clown nose, which made me hysterical with laughter.

“Hey, check this out!” I yelled.

“What?,” he mumbled, his eyes ringed like a raccoon’s. He was trying to piss on a fence. He didn't seem to be having any success at this. (Alkaloids in the Datura plant temporarily paralyze your bladder muscles.)

We fuzzily marched on – the pajama boy parade. It was hot. I took off my “pajama top” (t-shirt) and dropped it, forgotten on the sidewalk. Lots of people from La Mirada High School, friendly and casual acquaintances, were walking up Imperial Highway to talk to us! It was like Imperial was one big block party!

Terrence asked me, “Can you smell it? A rubber factory is burning!”

There was no rubber factory in La Mirada.

“That's where they make the rubber bums! We have to put the fire out!”

“No!” I said. “Let's get our ice cream first!”

Between spasms of whacked-out hallucinosis there were small periods or islands of relative lucidity. None of the people we encountered on Imperial Avenue were real. The dog with the Timbee face was actually a large tumbleweed caught in the chain-link fence. We mumbled and bumbled our way in an eastward direction. It was a long journey, actually only half a mile, what with all of the fun people to talk to, lots of heart-warming conversations with friends!

We finally got across from Baskin Robbins. How we figured out the traffic lights and got safely to the other side of the highway escapes me. We shufflebummed our way into the brightly lit ice cream dispensing store like zombies from outer space, walking corpse-boys. We were the Night of the Living Dead looking for Rocky Road. We were doing good!

About 50% of the time we could act semi-normal and behave appropriately. The other 50% we don't remember. At this point our mouths were so dry we could barely talk and our speech center and brain kept disengaging. Baskin Robbins employees looked at us very warily – annoyed or alarmed? – at our scrumbling and babbling.

We might as well have walked in there with buckets on our heads naked! Somehow we obtained ice cream. It seemed like we were in there for days trying to find or choose a flavor and figuring out how much it cost, how to talk, find the counter. And why was there a pack of picture perfect pterodactyls preening in the parking lot? Why was Terrence talking enthusiastically to his ice cream cone while standing in the corner alone like some loser with a Mr. Microphone, a popular 1970s Popeil pocket product?

How we got out of there without the Baskin Robbins manager calling the Norwalk Sheriff's Department or the Whittier cops to help straighten out our attitudes remains a mystery to this day. Truthfully, being slapped around by the cops and thrown into a cell would have been a lot safer for us than being “the lost boys.”

We were vacant-eyed, stuporous, Wee Willie Winkies with our imaginary friends and acute cases of mumblemouth. We ate our ice cream dream with our raging cottonmouths temporarily soothed. It was like bringing water from the Colorado River to thirsty Los Angeles! We were enormously grateful for the temporary rehydration and thanks to Baskin Robbins we worked our way back home. Westward Ho!

We gobbled the ice cream in seconds, it seems, and we were eating or attempting to eat the waffle cone bottom that holds the ice cream. We had little success. The waffle cone crumbled to oven-dried sawdust that clogged our throats, making it hard for us to breathe. No saliva!

The cone formed into hard, pasty, dry clots producing asphyxiation and was potentially life-threatening. So that's what spit is for: to help swallow stuff! It was a moment of jimson weed enlightenment.

We gagged on our cones and spat them out before we suffocated. We might as well have crumbled them in our hands because our throats were too dry and constricted to swallow them.

At one point Terrence sprouted soft dense green fur all over his body like green velvet. I touched the fur.

Terrance yelled, “Stop it, fag! I knew you were gay!”

I couldn’t get over the fur.

“Is it permanent? What will happen when we go back to school on Monday?”

I touched the fur. It certainly looked and felt real, a tactile and visual hallucination. We ended up at the flood control abutment where the sidewalk crosses the flood control canal. We gazed blankly into the concrete-lined channel. Out of the narrow conduit tunnels emerged the ugliest kids I’ve ever seen. They looked like bat-faced babies and ultra-deformed dwarves who peeked out of the tunnels and waved at us and called us names as huge, frightening foot-long potato bug creatures swarmed along the flood control channel bottom.

“We have to go put out the fire at the rubber factory and save the latex bums!” my friend insisted. He pointed at the Shell Oil refinery flame, a big smokestack across town. Our legs wobbled like slinkies out from under us. Terrence pulled on my arm. I told him, “We'll go later! Let's go to my house and smoke some gold Colombian!”

He reluctantly agreed with me and we decided to hop the fence and take the flood control access road home two blocks or so. It took us quite a while to scale the six-foot chain-link fence. Hands, feet and brain didn't coordinate at all. I fell over the fence onto the concrete roadway followed by Terrence right on top of me. The deformed “kids” laughed and cheered at us. “You're in big trouble! You just wait and see!”

The houses along the access road twisted and warped as if made of play doh. Strange looking people violently yelled at us then vanished into thin air. Grotesque dogs with human faces barked at us! We were tired and very much wanted our bedroom slippers but we could not find them.

I realized I was missing my pajama top (t-shirt) and one shoe. Terrence looked like a cancer patient. His pants were soaked in front with some unidentified stain. We wandered cluelessly and aimlessly looking for my backyard fence among what looked like hundreds of identical backyards. At one point the sky filled with countless police helicopters with angry cops yelling at us, “You are under arrest! Lay down and put your hands in your pockets!”

We both did this several times until the copters left. This may have been a shared hallucination.

Days later Terrence said he also saw the copters and the ugly kids, but some other details were different.

We finally arrived at my house and climbed the ivy-covered chain-link fence. It seemed like a good time for a nice quiet nap! After all it was dusk, early summer and we had ice cream! We never smoked the bowl full of pot. We lost the lighter.

It seemed like a great idea to lay down on the garage floor like old Shanghai Chinese opium bums and gaze emptily at a water heater pilot flame. The fact that my grandfather was home, a person who greatly resembles Fred Mertz of the I Love Lucy Show, and my highly nervous pot-phobic mom, did not warrant even our slightest flicker of concern.

We layed on the floor like stunned tomato worms, slack bags of dusty dry delirious mummy dust. The pilot light flame was very blue and comforting and the garage floor was nice and cool. We mumbled and gumbled and giggled at each other, but we did not have the strength or the will to get up. I kept seeing this “pig person” peering through the back garage door or window. It waved at me and tapped on the glass then disappeared. Finally, after what seemed like hours of watching highly energetic fuzzy-wuzzy pieces of laundry lint frenetically fighting each other between bouts of total amnesia, the garage door opened.

It was about 7pm Friday evening, and there was grandpa wearing plaid Bermuda shorts and wingtip shoes like “My Three Sons” with Fred McMurray. He looked at us and shook his head, then he called us “hop heads.” That was his 1920s term for pothead. We were amazed and totally befuddled, defenseless and quite in awe of the wingtip shoes presented to us at eye level, set off nicely by white nylon kneelength support socks.

We layed there unmoving like curare victims with blowgun poison cooking in our veins. Was Gramps real or not? We tried to discuss this wingtip aberration but we couldn't remember each other’s responses. But gee, he certainly seemed real and he/it kept coming back calling us slanderous names.

But like all of the rest of the stuff we had seen that afternoon was he/it real? We couldn't be certain.

Slowly the world was losing its “Art Clokey” quality – the creator of the Gumby cartoons – and it was becoming more clear that the rather agitated and persistent grandpa in wingtips was in fact real and he was not very happy with our paralytic pilot light gazing. Hey, at least we were not out running around town getting into trouble!

We finally gained some control of our limbs. The walking dreams slowly faded, but not the horrendous cottonmouth. We croaked hollowly at one another. Muzzy dunce dumbler dudes sporting mouths full of laundry lint with a vague but growing sense that we might be in trouble. Didn’t the deformed kids and helicopter hordes tell us this? It was getting dark and we eventually became ambulatory.

Terrence still talked about putting out the fires at the rubber bum factory, and I was still seeing big odd bug creatoids out of the corners of my eyes. I shuffled off to bed and woke up at noon Saturday with fuzzy vision and that dumb fuzzy-wuzzy rhyme still dancing in my head.

Gramps was quite critical of Terrence and me and our non-activity, but he chalked it up to a marijuana overdose and said that Terrence was obviously a bad influence on me and made me a long list of household chores to do while calling me a hophead again.

Terrence somehow got home all the way across town and collapsed in bed, mercifully there were no parents around. He kept seeing a tall circus clown with a big knife surreptitiously following him through La Mirada Regional Park. Terrance was more affected by the alkaloids in the Datura root: scopolamine, hyoscamine, atropine – from the Greek atropos, the cutter of cord is shown as a gilded human skeleton with a pair of scissors cutting the cord, the connection to life, so the soul will enter the underworld.

I had some resistance to this potent cocktail of alkaloids but they really slammed Terrence. He was quite upset with me for days afterwards and even years later blamed me for “that bad trip – Shultz!”

Two weeks later I took more Datura with another friend at Terrence’s house where in our delirium we tore his room apart over and over for hours looking for a totally non-existent yet very magical skeleton key.

Back in the 70s there were quite a number of stories created by Datura derangement. Carlos Castaneda's book tempted quite a few people to readily gobble or drink the Devil’s thornapple often with frightening and/or disastrous results.

PS. Biofuels Billy and his famous recycling donkey “Jerry” will be traveling through the Albion Ridge area and other parts of Mendocino County. Biofuels Billy and Jerry are working on a new formula for filtered compost tea vehicle fuels. We call it “Donkey Juice.” These two helpers of humanity are on a travel mission through coastal western Mendocino County and we hope for an enthusiastic reception from other “like affiliated minds” in our county! We haven’t worked out all the bugs yet, so Biofuels Billy comes to your community for “shared wisdom.” We will work together to create a new fuel for mankind. Meanwhile we will clean our messy planet of unwanted materials. Jerry will eat peanut shells, laundry lint, old phone books, construction debris, old clothes, etc. These are broken down by Jerry The Recycling Donkey’s intensely adaptable (and sustainable) digestive system and formed into convenient and usable “patties,” which can be burnt as fuel after drying, or made into a rich compost tea with “diesel-fuel-like qualities” that might be used to power vehicles and appliances. Biofuels Billy is an Avatar, an Enlightened Being, a World Citizen with compassion for all! He asks that we come together – Bruce Anderson: you are included! – and work with Jerry The Recycling Donkey and Biofuels Billy to help make this world a shared utopian vision full of infinite possibilities for all!

PPS. Don’t denigrate the Power Of Dung. See you all in Mendo!

(Mr. Shultz lived in Willits at the time this was written.)

UNPLUGGING THE NEWS (AND HISTORY) IN SAN FRANCISCO

by Peter Byrne

Reporters are tasked with wading into the maelstroms of current events—fires, hurricanes, battle spaces, crime scenes, accidents, political riots—to record what we see, to print, televise, and preserve stories of events in the world as viewed through our professional lensing.

Hence the adage, “Journalism is the first rough draft of history.”

Flawed, biased, and duplicitous as contemporary journalism can be as it wanders the political spectrum, remembered, spoken, carved, and written news accounts have been the first drafts of history since time immemorial.

Historians have long recognized the importance of mining news archives for information and context, which is why, in the previous century, libraries made space for indexed, bound volumes of newspapers and magazines as aides for exploring the past.

To reduce the cost of storage, newsprint was increasingly archived on often blurry, illegible microfiche, and libraries destroyed paper originals, as Nicholson Baker documented a quarter century ago in Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper.

Then along came the internet transformation of news from print to digital presentation and storage. Unlike solid paper or microfiche records, electronic archives can be liquidated with the toggle of a switch. Not only are online news archives vulnerable to destruction for reasons of cost-saving or rewriting history—that destruction is actually occurring.

At the turn of the millennium, Craigslist and corporatized social media were deflating advertiser-based newspaper business models, even as journalists enthused about new abilities to gather troves of information at light speed and to be read by anyone with a computer modem. Our first drafts of history would be eternally accessible in cyberspace, preserved forever as infinitely storable electrons, or so we thought.

Sadly, there are considerable costs for digitally storing the firehose of reported news. And preserving historical evidence is not a priority for profit-seeking publishers who are wired to regard the news as brain bait, political weaponry, a commodity, and a frame for attracting advertising revenue, which is the primary purpose of corporate media.

As advertisers migrated towards online media and the universe of newspapers accordingly shrank, billionaires and necrophiliac private equity investment firms bought up “traditional” and “alternative” newspapers, merging multiple media “properties” into online formats whilst ditching the high costs of newsprint and investigative and foreign affairs reporting. Financiers dictated editorial and “content” policies from afar; fired armies of reporters, editors, and support staff; drastically slimmed the size of the daily and weekly “books;” and off-loaded electronic archives to commercial third parties or the trash bin.

For the most part, the international newspaper industry has largely abandoned the pursuit of solid journalism and pivoted to selling what I call NEWZ™ or advertising or political spin disguised as journalism, also known as native advertising and branded content—hardly trustworthy drafts of history.

News Cemeteries

The New York Times and a few national dailies have monetized their news archival search functions back to the (First) Civil War, and some libraries selectively curate digital news archives and databases. And there are pay-to-play resources such as NewspaperArchive, a graveyard of local, mostly corporatized newspapers. But that useful national archive does not contain alternative weeklies such as the SF Weekly, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Bay Area Reporter, Metro Silicon Valley, Pacific Sun, or North Mission News, journalistic stalwarts that reported decades of civic history but are now vanishing online.

Founded in 1981, the SF Weekly had long maintained a solid mix of take-no-prisoners investigative reporting, long-form cultural and political features, music and film reviews, and profiles of scientists and entertainers. At the turn of the millennium, the weekly edition clocked in at more than 200 pages and was freely available on city street corners—and it was influential.

Today, the formerly comprehensive online archive of the SF Weekly has about 95 percent vanished, leaving behind random links to a smattering of stories that present the illusion of an archive. Missing is most of 40 years of weekly investigative and cultural feature reporting and, unsurprisingly, a 2001 profile of the SF Weekly’s new owner, a real estate investor and political candidate named Clint Reilly with a known antipathy towards the press.

That profile is widely regarded as having forever ruined Reilly’s chance of gaining elected office. And its censorship has everything to do with the decline of journalism in San Francisco. But, first, some historical context.

San Francisco News Desert

In a city once bristling with scores of morning and afternoon and non-English language newspapers, today’s news offerings in San Francisco approach zero. A handful of nonprofit news sites with a bare-bones staff, such as Mission Local and 48 Hills, attempt to hold power accountable, but they are outgunned by the NEWZ, which includes San Francisco Chronicle, SF Examiner, and nearly 200 television and radio stations controlled by corporate advertising.

The glossy online San Francisco Standard is owned and operated by Silicon Valley billionaire investor Michael Moritz—enough said. San Francisco Chronicle is owned by international business conglomerate Hearst Corporation, which strives, as it always has, to dominate local power plays with politically agendized news reporting—endless diatribes about the horrors of consumers being forced to step around houseless campers even as the planet burns amidst capitalist-generated genocides, perfectly habitable office towers are left empty, police sell drugs and rampage the poor, and city bureaucrats unabashedly line their pockets while the NEWZ whistles Dixie and sips fine wines at Gavin Newsom’s Balboa Café.

Exacerbating the demise of journalism in San Francisco, in December 2020, the SF Weekly and San Francisco Examiner were purchased from a Canada-based media conglomerate by Reilly, a former political consultant who owns a portfolio of downtown office towers.

At the time of the sale, Reilly said, “I learned during my 25 years as a political consultant how important strong journalism is to a functioning democracy, and it has never been more critical than it is today.”

A year later, Reilly fired the SF Weekly staff and transformed its website into an advertising adjunct to the print-online hybrid Examiner, itself a faint shadow of a once-renowned daily. In Reilly’s meager publications, “news” and advertising are consumable as synergetic and indistinguishable commodities: NEWZ. Clint Reilly Communications also owns Nob Hill Gazette, a mirror for Pacific Heights socialites like himself.

Before Reilly bought the SF Weekly, its online archive was historically complete and easily searchable; it is now a ghost. Today, one cannot find thousands of investigative and feature stories for which the SF Weekly won many journalism awards, including a Polk Award for environmental reporting on the radioactive Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, now, nonetheless, repurposed as prime residential real estate. Forty years of recorded San Francisco history is gone, including the first deep profile of Kamala Harris, Kamala’s Karma, written by me in 2003 when she ran successfully for district attorney. Prior to Reilly’s purchase of the SF Weekly, the national media frequently linked to that story as unveiling Harris’s “political DNA”—but now it is a 404. You can read it here, however, where I saved a copy for history.

A sprinkle of SF Weekly columnist Matt Smith’s investigative stories survive in the archive, but not the vast majority of the historically invaluable hundreds of columns he wrote detailing city affairs. And I could not find any of the hundreds of stories I wrote during a six-year stint as a staff writer from 1998 to 2004. Reilly did not respond to repeated inquiries about why he largely liquidated the Archive and its first drafts.

Who Is Clint Reilly, Really?

During decades of operating lucrative political campaigns, Reilly, known for his fierce temper and disparagement of employees, was nicknamed, by those who knew him best, “Satan.” In 1999, Reilly retired from consulting on mayoral races and ran for San Francisco mayor himself. Reilly’s campaign mailers featured a series of SF Weekly investigative reports on the terrible condition of the municipal bus and rail systems, MUNI, reported by me.

He called me often during and after the campaign, buttering me with “off the record” stories, mostly gossip about his foes. Reilly lost massively after spending millions of his own money, $4 per vote. His campaign collapsed when he was repeatedly portrayed in the media by a former employee as having an anger management problem and beating a girlfriend. But hope springs eternal.

In winter 2001, as Reilly sought to restart his political career, I spent a week with him under the condition that everything he said was on the record. I taped all the conversations. Despite Reilly’s often expressed hatred of reporters, he somehow fancied that I was his admirer.

“Who is Clint Reilly, Really?” was widely acknowledged as destroying Reilly’s political career because his mother, Bess Reilly, told me on the record, “People do not really like him. He’s not lovable.” Ironically, when Mrs. Reilly said that in her small living room in San Leandro, my tape recorder had malfunctioned, and she was not on tape, which Reilly did not know. I subsequently asked Reilly to respond to her observation. A few minutes later, after a quick call to her, Reilly confirmed that his mother had said he was not lovable. “She knows me best,” he quipped with a strangling chuckle.

A few weeks after the profile was published, a Reilly confidant told me that the story had permanently killed “Satan’s” political career, as future opponents could always quote his mother to great effect. And Reilly has not run since.

Today, the SF Weekly archive pops up an array of flattering stories about Reilly, his Catholic philanthropies, and his spouse, Janet Reilly, who also has political aspirations. The missing profile can be found here, as I saved it when Reilly bought the SF Weekly. It is also available on microfiche at the San Francisco Public Library, as are SF Weekly back issues. The history of San Francisco’s political underside is not dead yet, as long as you know where to look.

Censoring History

The Internet Archive’s Way Back Machine is a hit-or-miss tool; it only samples selected publications on random dates. It did save Kamala’s Karma, but not the Reilly story. With most newsprint journalism dead or on life-support, consigning stories to online archives controlled by politicians and financiers is a formula for destruction.

For example, in 2011, I published an impactful eight-part investigative series on the financial conflicts of interest of sitting University of California Regents, especially those of Regent Richard Blum, the husband of US Senator Dianne Feinstein. The Investor’s Club: How the University of California Regents Spin Public Money into Private Profit was crowd-financed by online-only Spot.us, one of the first journalism organizations to pivot to online crowdfunding, led by David Cohen, with support from the Knight Foundation.

Portions of my voluminous series on regental corruption were published in print and online in many different publications, mostly alt-weeklies, but the whole series was only available online at Spot.us. In 2012, Spot.us was purchased by American Public Media, which immediately nuked The Investor’s Club….

That online-only investigation of the Regents does not exist on paper or microfiche. But it remains available here—you might want to print it out, especially if you are curious about why Janet Reilly, a former public relations consultant and failed candidate for city supervisor and state assembly member, was appointed chair of the University of California Regents last July.

You won’t read about whatever deals were involved to secure Reilly’s plum Regent’s job in the SF Weekly, SF Examiner, or Nob Hill Gazette. But the key to understanding the political present is grasping history, and, when appropriate, talking to the mothers of politicians who know them best.

(This piece first appeared on Project Censored. CounterPunch.org.)

HITLER’S MISUNDERSTOOD ‘WHITE HOPE’

by W.E. Reinka

On June 22, 1938 thousands of boxing fans poured through the turnstiles at Yankee Stadium. Most couldn’t wait to to boo Max Schmeling, the German fighter they viewed as Hitler’s white hope against African-American heavyweight champion Joe Louis.

Fist-shaking protestors against Hitler’s regime had greeted Schmeling’s ship when it arrived in New York Harbor. Pickets marched in front of his hotel. Schmeling tried to point out that, if he were a Nazi, he would not have an American Jew as his manager. But people didn’t seem interested in explanations.

Almost everyone sensed that, sooner or later, the United States must go to war against Adolf Hitler. No surprise then that the heavyweight title fight between Schmeling and Louis was shaping up to be one of the most politicized sporting events in history.

Adding to the drama was that two years earlier Schmeling had handed Louis his only professional defeat. Few had given 10-1 underdog Schmeling a chance in that 1936 fight. After all, he was ten years older than Louis and long past the days when he had become the first European world heavyweight champion. Hitler himself encouraged him to cancel the fight since Schmeling’s sure defeat against an African-American would discredit Nazi theories of racial superiority. However, like most great athletes, Schmeling remained confident.

At the 1936 fight, Schmeling, who said later that he had exploited a tell discovered when viewing some film of Louis’s prior bouts, surprised Louis, Hitler and the rest of the world with an overhand right that dropped the American favorite. Two more rights finished Louis off in the 12th round after which Schmeling helped carry the wobbly Louis back to his corner.

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels wired Schmeling: “I know you fought for Germany; that it was a German victory. Heil Hitler!” After Schmeling’s return to Germany, Hitler invited him to lunch and to watch a movie of the fight. Hitler slapped his knee gleefully whenever Schmeling landed a punch.

Come time for the 1938 rematch, the Yankee Stadium boo birds didn’t seem to care that Schmeling had steadfastly resisted personal appeals from Hitler and Goebbels to join the Nazi party. Forgotten to the throng that pelted him with garbage as he walked to the ring was how Schmeling had extracted promises from Hitler to treat American athletes fairly and respectfully at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

At the opening bell, Louis jumped out of his corner with a barrage of punches that knocked Schmeling down three times in the first round. The fight barely lasted two minutes. Joe Louis had avenged his one defeat and, so millions of Americans believed, struck a blow for democracy.

In November after Schmeling had returned to Berlin, Nazi pogroms against Jews reached new heights of brutality during what became known as Kristallnacht, or “the night of broken glass.” As mobs attacked Jews in the streets, Schmeling hid Henry and Werner Lewin, teenage sons of a Jewish friend, in his hotel room. Later, he helped the two boys escape to the United States.

The truth of that night didn’t come out until 50 years later when the two boys, by then older men themselves, publicly revealed Schmeling’s help. Likewise, for years rumors have floated about how Schmeling used his influence to save Jewish friends from Nazi death camps. Schmeling never confirmed those rumors but he did recall how one Nazi official upbraided him about his attempts to intervene on behalf of politically persecuted friends. “Whenever anyone hears from you, it’s always about Jews! As if there weren’t more important matters at the moment.”

To punish Schmeling for his continued refusal to cooperate with the Nazi propaganda machine, the German army conscripted him though, at 35, he was supposedly past draft age. After Schmeling was wounded in Greece, Goebbels ordered that Schmeling’s name never again appear in a German newspaper.

Following the war, Schmeling scraped together enough money to buy a Coca-Cola franchise in Germany. American soda pop made him rich. He and his wife gave generously to charities throughout their lives. He once said, “I don’t want anyone to say that I was a good athlete, but worth nothing as a human being — I couldn’t bear that.”

Just as he never revealed how he helped hide the Lewin boys, Schmeling never bragged about how he quietly helped when drug addiction and financial problems beset Joe Louis after his boxing career. Time and again, Schmeling slipped his old opponent money to get by. After Louis died in 1981, Schmeling paid for the funeral.

This quiet generous man was no war criminal. He was a hidden hero who rejected the idea of racial purity while promoting the ideals of sports. Late in life, he recalled how in a personal meeting with Adolf Hitler he once tried to explain that in boxing, “We are not conscious of Protestants, Catholics, Jews or Negroes… We are interested only in boxing.”

He remembered that Hitler replied only with stony silence.

BILL RIENKA ADDS: “The Joe Louis/ Max Schmeling relationship is a fascinating story — hard to squeeze into a few hundred words. Among the things I left out was that, although Max Schmeling was once champ, he was still a 10-1 underdog in the first Joe Louis fight where he surprised everyone. One of the reasons that was a surprise was that Schmeling had already lost to Max Baer (Jethro on Beverly Hillbillies’ dad). Already there was a groundswell in the US against the once-popular Schmeling because of his alleged ties with Hitler. Baer wore a Star of David on his trunks and KO’d Schmeling. So when Schmeling agreed to fight Louis the first time, Hitler and his gang were really concerned — Schmeling had already lost to a Jew and after Louis beat him (considered a sure thing) the Aryan race would not be looking like Super Men. Schmeling was also ostracized when he dared to wed a movie actress who was (as I recall) Czech. The Nazis didn’t appreciate the possible tainting of the bloodline. Turned out they had a long marriage but no kids.

LEAD STORIES, FRIDAY'S NYT

‘Wicked’ Fans Singing in Movie Theaters Are Anything but Popular

Matt Gaetz Withdraws From Consideration for Attorney General

Trump Picks Pam Bondi, Florida’s Former Top Prosecutor, for Attorney General After Gaetz Withdraws

The ‘Landslide’ That Wasn’t: Trump and Allies Pump Up His Narrow Victory

What’s Behind the Remarkable Drop in U.S. Overdose Deaths

With Use of New Missile, Russia Sends a Threatening Message to the West

‘This Helps Netanyahu’: Israelis Rally Around Netanyahu Over Warrant, for Now

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Nothing foolish about the nomination of Gaetz at all…

Genius level Trump diplomacy…

Lots of bad press was surrounding Gaetz…

Trump abhors bad press…

So Trump effectively cleaned up that mess, while outwardly appearing to promote Gaetz…

That Gaetz remains loyal, just means it was just all the more masterul of a highly skilled political maneuver by Trump…

It’s not a difficult concept…

Very predictable outcome.

Never underestimate your opponent. And it made a lot of his other appointments seem less bad.

US HOUSE PASSES BILL TO PUNISH NON-PROFITS DEEMED TO SUPPORT “TERRORISM”

The Republican-controlled US House on Thursday passed a bill that would give the government broad powers to punish non-profit organizations it deems support “terrorism”.

This was the second time members voted on the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, or HR 9495. Last week, after suspending House rules to fast-track the bill, the lower chamber failed to garner the two-thirds majority required to pass. This time, after passing the House committee on rules, the bill – requiring only a simple majority to pass – survived by a vote of 219-184. Fifteen Democrats joined Republicans in supporting the measure.

The bill, which gives the treasury the power to strip non-profits it claims support “terrorism” of their tax-exempt status, does not require the treasury to adhere to any evidentiary standard in releasing its findings. Although groups targeted could appeal to the IRS or the courts for review, simply being identified as a supporter of terrorism could have a chilling effect on advocacy groups, critics warn.…

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/21/house-republicans-bill-nonprofits-terrorism

THE EMPEROR HAS NO BRAINS

America's post-electoral military escalation might amount to nothing, or it could be the last act of an empire gone mad. On ATACMS, ICBMs, and more nuclear poker

by Matt Taibbi

One more time, maybe the last, Joe Biden stared through sunglasses and angrily delivered a speech written to be uplifting. “The Amazon is the lungs of the world!” he barked at the G-20 summit in Brazil, before loping off with an unsmiling half-wave, like a man leaving a restaurant with lousy service. The President of the United States disappeared into trees.

Aides said the jungle exeunt was planned, but who knew? In an all-time awkward moment Monday, G-20 leaders waited and finally took a group photo without Biden, absent for “logistical reasons.” It was like taking a holiday portrait at the mall without Santa. When Biden reappeared the next day, a reporter shouted, “Mr. President, why did you change your mind on Ukraine shooting long-range missiles?” Biden said nothing, so other heads of state had to speak for him. “I had an excellent conversation with President Biden, he’s a friend and ally,” said Canada’s Justin Trudeau, through a nervous smile. “We talked about a lot of different things.”

Who’s calling the shots for NATO? On the heels of Tuesday’s news that U.S.-built ATACMS missiles were fired into Russia, up to 12 British-made “Storm Shadow” missiles were shot into the town of Marino yesterday in Russia’s Kursk region. Reportedly, French SCALP missiles may be the next Western long-range weapons deployed. But that’s just the beginning…

https://www.racket.news/p/the-emperor-has-no-brains

TODAY IN IMPERIAL RECKLESSNESS AND INSANITY

Everywhere you look it’s powerful criminals getting away with far too much while the people who are supposed to be resisting them do far too little.

by Caitlin Johnstone

The International Criminal Court has formally issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

No such arrest warrants were issued for President Biden or any of the other western officials who’ve been backing Israel’s genocidal atrocities, which is a bit like a judge issuing a warrant for a mass murderer but not for the guy who gave him the gun and stood next to him handing him ammunition and drove the getaway car and lied to the police to cover up the crime.

Nothing will come of this new development because it is completely unenforcible and international law is only as real as the US empire agrees to pretend it is, but it is a significant step in the deterioration of international consensus on Israel as the entire world watches the Zionist regime commit atrocity after atrocity right out in the open.

Predictably, Benjamin Netanyahu has responded to this decision by shrieking about antisemitism and calling the ICC’s move “a modern Dreyfus trial”. He is doing this because he does not have anything resembling a real argument in his defense, and neither does anyone else.

We saw this illustrated in a statement from Senator Tom Cotton, who proclaimed that the US would invade The Hague if the ICC tries to enforce its arrest warrants.

“The ICC is a kangaroo court and Karim Khan is a deranged fanatic,” Cotton said. “Woe to him and anyone who tries to enforce these outlaw warrants. Let me give them all a friendly reminder: the American law on the ICC is known as The Hague Invasion Act for a reason. Think about it.”

This is as psychotic a public statement as anything you’ll see from the most far-right extremists in the Knesset. The United States is run by demented zealots with nukes, just like Israel.

The “Hague Invasion Act”, formally known as the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, is a US federal law passed during the warmongering frenzy of the early Bush administration which authorizes the president to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.”

That “or allied personnel” bit is why Cotton is able to cite this law in reference to an arrest warrant for Israelis.

Speaking of Israel and US senators, a bill by Bernie Sanders to block a shipment of tank shells to Israel was just killed in the Senate by a vote of 18 to 79.

Sanders framed the bill as an effort to restrict “the sale of offensive arms to Israel”, making a distinction from “defensive” arms like the Iron Dome, which is absurd and obfuscatory to begin with. All arms to Israel are offensive rather than defensive in nature, in that they are all used to help Israel murder people without experiencing the deterrence they would receive from a retaliatory response. There’s a reason body armor is regulated in a way that’s similar to firearms; it’s because someone who wants to commit a violent crime can wear a bulletproof vest while doing so to ensure that they can perpetrate the crime without being stopped by police. That’s exactly how Israel uses its so-called “defensive” weaponry.

And speaking of progressive US lawmakers taking feeble stands on Israel, congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has come under fire for voting to support House Resolution 1449, a bill which purports to simply denounce antisemitism but in reality promotes the false conflation of antisemitic hate speech with speech that is critical of Israel.

Progressive congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who voted against the bill, said in a statement that she did so because “the bill endorses the harmful definition of IHRA that dangerously conflates legitimate criticism of Israel to antisemitism and further harms our ability to address antisemitism.”

Everywhere you look it’s powerful criminals getting away with far too much while the people who are supposed to be resisting them do far too little.

This happens as Russia hits Ukraine with a new type of hypersonic missile, which Putin went out of his way to mention could easily have been equipped with a nuclear warhead. This attack was a warning to Ukraine for using long-range missiles supplied by the US and UK to strike targets inside Russia, and occurs as Moscow revises its nuclear doctrine lowering the threshold for when nuclear weapons may be used.

This is unsustainable. It cannot continue. One way or the other, all this madness is going to come to an end.

(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)

24 Comments

Me November 22, 2024

Why don’t you give the additional $ that Visit Mendo wants to the Sr Center to support the vital services to our elders? Why doesn’t the city support them in any way? Every slick video post I see about visit Ukiah, Mendo Magic etc never shows elders. In your perfect world the elders are shoved aside, hidden and unsupported but you sure take their tax money. Time for change. No one gets younger, some day you all will be old and abandoned too if you don’t change the course soon.

Reply
- Justine Frederiksen November 22, 2024
  
  And sometimes even the elders shove themselves aside: A local newspaper that covers the “Honoring Elders” celebration held at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas every year decided to run photos of some of those elders instead of just the usual photos of drummers and dancers. An “elder” then emailed the paper to express disappointment that the elders themselves were featured in front-page photos instead of the “beautiful dancers and drummers.”
  
  Reply
  - Craig Stehr November 22, 2024
    
    Woke up this morning at the homeless shelter in northeast Washington, D.C. and proceeded to go to H Street for food and coffee at Whole Foods, before taking the Metro to Catholic University to attend Mass at the Basilica. Am constantly paying attention to the 75 year old body-mind complex. which goes through a whole range of feelings and emotions and consideration of survival and the unknown future and death and the hereafter and on and on and on and on. The Eternal Witness is the real me, you, and everyone. Anchor in that! Obviously, amidst the chaos and confusion of postmodern America, it will require Divine Intervention for the earthly situation to improve. Meanwhile, am continuing to provide beverages and food to the Washington, D.C. Peace Vigil.
    Craig Louis Stehr
    Adam’s Place Homeless Shelter
    2210 Adams Place NE #1
    Washington, D.C. 20018
    Telephone: (202) 832-8317
    Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com
    November 22, 2024 Anno Domini
    
    Reply
Call It As I See It November 22, 2024

Mike G.
Over 76 million voters disagree with you and Handley.

But just keep writing this Democratic Party garbage.
It has worked, you type of reporting got Trump elected. Thank God for that, otherwise we would have a nation modeled after California. Hopefully your last nominee won’t get us in World War 3 before Jan. 20

Reply
Mike Geniella November 22, 2024

What got Trump elected was the distortions that you and the cult happily embrace. Ms. Handley nailed the collapse of the Republican Party, once a Main Street fixture but now submerged in the swamp i.e. Gaetz and the others. Perhaps a look at facts instead of the Trump world fiction might help: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/22/us/politics/trump-election-landslide.html
Lastly, If you don’t like California, move on to Arizonna, Idaho, Tennessee, wherever. I’m a born and raised and could use a little extra breathing room.

Reply
- Call It As I See It November 22, 2024
  
  Yeah I embrace low Intrest rates, laws enforced, closed border, world peace, less government and not be lied to by a corrupt media. I’m really distorted!
  I would love to move out of California but I have family that makes that impossible. You see I care about family not power, unlike the Democrats.
  
  Reply
  - Mike Geniella November 22, 2024
    
    Hmmm. It seems the ‘corrupt media’ bothers you, but being lied to over and over and over by Trump and the crowd receives no mention. What’s up with that?
    
    Reply
    - peter boudoures November 22, 2024
      
      Obviously your way isn’t working and that’s why only 1.5% of U.S counties voted with you. California policies are very unpopular country wide and when you run on those for president it’s a L. If your crew doesn’t blow up the world before next year things are looking up.
      
      Reply
      - Jurgen Stoll November 22, 2024
        
        You seem to have conveniently overlooked the fact that your fearless leader only won the popular vote by 1.6%, 48.4% for Harris and 50% for Trump. What a lopsided victory! What a mandate that gives him to throw a wrecking ball at our democracy. How are you liking his cabinet picks? His unelected goverment efficiency experts? Gimme a break!
        
        Reply
        
        peter boudoures November 22, 2024
        
        My opinion of each pick will never come from the main stream media. I like Pam and tulsi. Anyone with a life doesn’t know half these people.
        
        Reply
        
        McEwen Bruce November 22, 2024
        
        “Listen as the fox slowly and deftly unbinds his whole pack of tricks—his flattery and fine words, his warm and sugary russet charm, his bold-faced blandishments. He has brought forth a spool of raw lies and spun them into a glittering web of truth to trap them all. Every last one of them.”
        
        Anne Louise Avery, Reynard the Fox
        
        Reply
    - Call It As I See It November 22, 2024
      
      Hmm, pretty funny how Trump’s conspiracy theories seem to come true. You shouldn’t talk about lying since the Democrats have become experts at it. You should really get help for your TDS. Maybe run out to the yard and fall to your knees and scream. Then you can come inside and cuddle your favorite stuffed animal with a cup of hot cocoa. That seems to be a calming influence on most liberals.
      
      Reply
      - Chuck Dunbar November 22, 2024
        
        CIAISI–Worked well for me, that same advice. Just so you know, my stuffed animal is a foreigner, a platypus from the great country of Australia. He is legally here, have all the right legal papers for him, so Trump’s cruel minions can’t grab him and send him back…
        
        Mr. Bruce– a fine and fitting citation, that of Reynard the Fox. Trump lacks his wit, deftness and guile, too crude for that particular fox-world. But he does fits right in to our American FOX world, a messy, crude, and sinister place that bespoils the name of a beautiful, wild mammal.
        
        Reply
        
        Call It As I See It November 22, 2024
        
        Glad I could help, Chuck.
        
        Reply
        
        Matt Kendall November 23, 2024
        
        Wow sure am glad this election is over! now we can get back to the standard insults!
        Like a persons looks, levels of intelligence, social status you know just like we did in Jr High!
        
        Reply
        
        McEwen Bruce November 23, 2024
        
        I meant no insult to Peter who I respect as one of the best people in the county, a responsible parent with faith in his children and the system, but I find it hard to believe that the President Elect is some kind of maverick who will make it morning in America again. Sorry if I sounded like I was mocking him but the whole Punch and Judy puppet show has convinced me that someone or something, some wizard of oz is actually running things and our elected officials are all puppets.
        
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        McEwen Bruce November 23, 2024
        
        I share your burden, Vicar. I have a daughter who breaks out in hives at the sight of a Republican and a wife whose family were all true blue Democrats before it went mainstream. So I stand with you in defense of the people who have gleaned some standing for progressives in a world hitherto ruled by ambition of the conservative stripe, like we were still all real 49ers and there was still lots a gold in them there hills if only we can kill off these savages standing in the way. And if you want some real history of Mendocino let me refer you to The Typographical Howitzer, by Jack Davis who worked for my great-great- grand uncle Arthur McEwen, Editor of the Infamous San Francisco Examiner!
        
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        McEwen Bruce November 23, 2024
        
        Uncle Art has been credited with the invention of Yellow Journalism, a lost art.
        
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Jim Armstrong November 22, 2024

I sense a little glee in your report above.
IMHO, since I moved here in 1970 Joe Allen and Norm Vroman have been about the only bright spots in a rather disappointing run of DA’s. I liked and respected them both.
It is easy to find the exposition of how his “disbarment” came about.
https://apps.calbar.ca.gov/attorney/Licensee/Detail/48922
The whole thing is not really fresh news, having taken place seven or so years ago.
It was sad to read in the above an email Joe sent to the Board reminding them of his previous resignation:
“Thank you. I have been very ill. I am sending another
resignation tomorrow. I will send you a duplicate copy. In any case, I am too ill to participate
and too poor to retain counsel.”

Reading over the report, it was hard not to realize that lawyers treat themselves like shit too. (Jim L excepted).

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Bruce Anderson November 22, 2024

I think Eyster was an excellent DA until he ran off the rails in pursuit of the innocent Cubbison. I liked Joe Allen and Vroman, too.

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Paul Modic November 22, 2024

Ummm, as someone who recently spent some months in Mexico, I disagree that gasoline is cheap there. Mexico is now expensive, the only bargains left are food and labor, in my opinion….

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- gary smith November 23, 2024
  
  I was going to say the same. Prices are about what they are in CA
  
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bharper November 22, 2024

Donna turned me on to box of unplayed European pressings of jazz, pop and classical records when she worked at the transfer station
I think of her every time I play Sam Cook, Luis Jordan and the rest.

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Gary Durheim November 24, 2024

An outside observer’s* reply to the adage, “Journalism is the first rough draft of history.”, another, lifted from the NY Review of Books, something to the effect that “The best Journalism is an invasion of privacy.” It’s why I subscribe to the AVA, and I hope this will inspire the Snoops everywhere!

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Mendocino County Today: Friday 11/22/2024

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