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STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 35F under clear skies this Saturday morning on the coast. Our forecast remains the same except our friend "patchy fog" has returned for next week at times. Be careful near the shore as a large swell will be producing possible "sneaker waves" thru the weekend.
COLD WEATHER ADVISORY remains in effect until 9 am pst this morning.
THE DRY PATTERN likely continues for the next week. There is a threat of sneaker waves for the coastal areas this weekend. (NWS)
SAVE THE WATERTOWER
Editor,
An application has been submitted to the Mendocino Historic Review Board to demolish the water tower as a third attempt to disregard the important landmarks of Mendocino, this time with a plan to replace it with stairs. It is curious that anyone would want to demolish a water tower in Mendocino. This shows a real lack of understanding of what Mendocino means to locals and visitors alike and a disregard for the historic nature that makes our town so unique as a water tower was originally built at the turn of the century for the Mendosa’s market. In 1976, Barry Cusick purchased the water tower, which was painstakingly moved to its current location on Main Street and put back together with all of the same historic parts. This water tower is part of the storied fabric of our town, it is what tourists come to see and locals live to enjoy on a daily basis. This particular water tower is one of the last large remaining water towers left on Main Street in the village. This water tower is part of the unique skyline of Mendocino, a part of the historic fabric of our town. The Mendocino and Headlands Historic District is a nationally recognized and locally protected historic district. The Mendocino Historic Review Board will be hearing the issue, and will be reviewing public comments. Show your support in person by attending the site view at the water tower (next to Flow Restaurant) on Monday, December 2, at 4:00 pm. The regular meeting will reconvene at the Mendocino Community Center at 6 pm.
Send your comment letters to: pbscommissions@mendocinocounty.gov and reference MHRB application 2024-0009.
Be there, show your support of this historic water tower!
Deirdre Lamb
Mendocino
THE 4TH ANNUAL MAKERS & BAKERS HOLIDAY FAIR will be open from 11am to 4pm Saturday, November 30th at the Caspar Community Center. Featured will be arts & crafts, scrumptious baked goods and a delicious lunch featuring chili (both vegan & beef), with toppings, cornbread, turkey soup, slaw and lots of treats. A range of craft vendor booths will feature jewelry, ceramics, stained glass, huckleberry jam, succulents, herbal concoctions, bead work, wood carved sculpture, and more. This event benefits the Caspar Community. Admission is free. Hope to see you.
HELP MCOE BRING HOLIDAY JOY TO HOMELESS YOUTH
Every winter, Mendocino County Office of Education (MCOE) employees and community members partner to bring joy to homeless students through an annual Gift Drive. Now in its eighth year, this initiative has grown to serve over 300 students across Mendocino County annually, providing gifts and a sense of community and care during a challenging time of year for many.
Fulfill a Gift Request: Public members are invited to visit the MCOE River Campus lobby at 2240 Old River Road in Ukiah on weekdays, 8 a.m. - 5 p.m., and select a gift tag from the pegboard. Each tag represents a child’s wish and should guide a gift purchase of around $25. Log your chosen tag in the provided logbook and return the wrapped gift with the tag number by Friday, December 13.
“Every little bit helps, and you may never know the impact you have on a homeless student, but it is profound,” said Shane Hildebrand. “With the Gift Drive, we’re not just giving presents, we’re offering hope and connection.”
JADE (JAMES) TIPPETT
A note on the City of Fort Bragg Press Release:
The stay of litigation applies only to the City of Fort Bragg v. Mendocino Railway lawsuit in Judge Brennan’s Ten Mile Court in Fort Bragg.
The stay doesn’t apply to the Sierra Northern Railway v. City of Fort Bragg case in Judge Jon Tiger’s Federal District Court. In fact, the City is facing a December 4 deadline in that case to respond to Sierra Northern Railway’s amended complaint, a rehash of the Georgia Pacific vs. City of Fort Bragg case filed in 2013 and dismissed in 2014. City Manager Isaac Whippy assures me that the City is on top of and on time in that lawsuit, and is seeking a similar stay for that case.
The City’s Press Release, and the complete court filings, including the Coastal Commissions filing in opposition to the stay, may be viewed and downloaded at https://savenoyoheadlands.com/#stay24
PS. It is confusing.
The City of Fort Bragg sued, asking the court:
“1. For a declaration that the Mendocino Railway is not subject to regulation as a public utility because it does not qualify as a common carrier providing “transportation.”;
- For a stay, tempora1y restraining order, preliminmy injunction, and permanent injunction commanding the Mendocino Railway to comply with all City ordinances, regulations, and lawfully adopted codes, jurisdiction and authority, as applicable;…”
(https://savenoyoheadlands.org/fbvmr/21CV00850Summons_and_Complaint.pdf)
Mendocino Railway moved the case to the U.S. District Court, seeking “a declaration and injunction to the effect that, as a federally regulated railroad subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the STB under ICCTA and the Supremacy Clause, the Commission’s and City’s efforts to subject the railroad to state and local land-use permitting and oversight of its rail-related activities are federally preempted.”
(https://savenoyoheadlands.org/fbvmr-fdc/NOTICE_OF_REMOVAL.pdf).
Judge Tiger rejected this and remanded the Federal cases to the Mendocino County Superior Court. Mendocino Railway appealed that remand to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and lost there, too.
PPS. The other Federal lawsuit, Sierra Northern Railway v. City of Fort Bragg, concerns the allegation that the toxins in the mill pond came from City storm water run-off. Georgia Pacific tried this in 2013 and had to dismiss it in 2014 when the truth came out that the toxins originated in the hog waste burner and the co-generation boiler. See Mary Benjamin’s comprehensive article in the Fort Bragg Advocate News about the California Department of Toxic Substances Control rejecting a similar application from the train guys.
(https://www.advocate-news.com/2024/11/21/mendocino-railways-request-to-include-city-in-mill-pond-cleanup-denied/
SISTERS INVESTIGATE UNSOLVED MURDER IN NEW DOCUMENTARY ‘HIGH COUNTRY MURDER’
by Mary Benjamin
Released on November 20, 2024, and available for viewing on YouTube, the short documentary, High Country Murder, follows the journey of two sisters who return to Mendocino County to investigate the unsolved murder of rancher Dick Drewry.
Researched, written, and filmed by Keely Brazil Covello with her sister Michaela Brazil Gillies, the documentary was produced by Palladium Pictures LLC as part of its Incubator Program for young filmmakers.
The documentary was filmed mostly on-site in the area of Bell Springs, northeast of Leggett, where Drewry’s body was found in his truck just beyond his ranch that spans across the border between Humboldt and Mendocino Counties.
Covello has a background in writing and journalism, and with her sister started Go West Media Production in 2017. After filming a few environmental shorts for nonprofits, she saw the creative possibilities in pursuing filmmaking fulltime. “I loved the cinematography aspect of it and the visual storytelling,” she explained.
Covello said, “I’d been following this story for a while just out of my own interest. It felt so personal and close to home.” She wanted to counter the one-sided sensational stories that outsiders push out about the craziness of the Emerald Triangle.
She added, “Those films didn’t show a whole spectrum of the community. It acted like the locals didn’t exist, from the back-to-the-landers to the ranching families who have been there for a long time, even the native communities. Those aspects of our community were ignored.”
She continued, I wanted to tell the story from a local perspective about how some of these changes have impacted the people who have lived here through all of this.” She added, “People should be more aware of what rural Mendocino and Humboldt County people have to live with in terms of the organized crime influx.”
The two sisters grew up in Mendocino County and are no strangers to the ranch life. The documentary includes clips of old movie reels of local rodeos, and then young girls in a truck fade
into the two sisters today as their truck pulls into a graveled drive.
During their childhood, the area was one big ranching community where everyone looked out for everyone else and would welcome you back. People know them as two of their own.
But that life of the Mendocino rancher is no longer, and they are warned by a friend of the Drewry family that “things have really changed since you grew up here.”
On horseback, the two filmmakers see the destructive exploitation created by criminal groups on Mendocino National Forest land. They hear the stories of local landowners confronted by armed men who warn them to leave immediately. The trails many locals rode through the forestland for years are now dangerous.
Humboldt County Sheriff Billy Honsal and Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall are both featured in the documentary. Sheriff Honsal speaks about the high number of murders in Humboldt County and the criminal takeover of the cannabis market that was first initiated by small private growers back in the 60s and 70s.
The “back to the land utopia” of those days is long gone. Honsal relates to having seen foreign operators from China, Russia, and Bulgaria who use labor trafficking to exploit Mexican workers. More than a few local people remark that “legalization ruined it.”
Sheriff Kendall takes the two filmmakers out into the Round Valley area and directs them on what to do if they are all confronted. He doesn’t think anyone is looking for trouble and will challenge him.
Kendall calls these cannabis operations “a corporate criminal culture.” He sees the murder of Dick Drewry as the “manifestation of what everyone worries about working in these rural areas.”
According to Covello, what was intended as an examination of the criminal growers of cannabis and their takeover of land and water segued into a story of Mendocino ranchers’ loss of community, culture, and personal safety. One rumor held that Drewry’s murder was connected to organized crime.
Covello commented, “It’s shocking that would be the assumption. Something has changed in a community for it to even be a possibility for an old man to be killed by foreign crime.”
Yet evidence collected for the Dick Drewry case seems to speak of something else contributing to a lost way of life ranching and working in the eastern mountains. Sheriff Honsal calls it “a cloud of secrecy throughout the whole culture.”
A second rumor swirls around about. Talk filters through the community about witnesses to the murder about bitter outcomes concerning water use between neighbors. In Bell Springs, community members tacitly agree on who the murderer is, but since the incident occurred on January 26, 2021, no one has stepped forward with verifiable knowledge of the event.
Covello said she and her sister came back to bring justice to a well-known and well-liked man whose family had ranched in the two counties since the 1800s. Yet during their investigation, Covello commented to her sister that “the silence we’re getting is pretty loud.”
She added, “We don’t want to point a finger at somebody. We just want to tell the story.” In fact, the documentary opens the door to many voices, some reticent, some more opinionated. From these people, the viewer can draw conclusions about what likely happened.
Covello said, “We can only share what we saw. I wanted the focus to stay on the victim and the people who are living in fear after all this time.”
The open question is to what degree criminal growers have changed the long-standing culture of the area. The physical exploitation reveals of mounds of abandoned debris, long covered rows of cannabis in the middle of nowhere, and the loss of the local community’s free range throughout the hillsides.
However, the insidious impacts of a lot of money to be made in the cannabis market are bound to wash over into the established community. This was not the first unexplained murder since the criminals moved in, nor is it likely to be the last. As a friend of the Drewry family put it, “It’s a fact of life we have to face.”
The facts are that a murder that occurred in 2021 lacks enough evidence for the Humboldt County district attorney to file any charges. Dick Drewry, who always drove his truck with his wife beside him, was found alone, dead from gunshot wounds, and with an empty gas tank.
Covello is hoping that the release of the documentary will bring people forward to tell what they know. “One of the main points of doing this is to try to get justice for the family.”
“There is,” said Covello, “some compelling evidence and testimony. They do have a person of interest, but they do need the locals to speak out.” She understands that the release of the film may make some people very uncomfortable.
She added, “I think we’re going against the grain by telling this story because we are an insular culture, but I think Dick deserves us speaking up. He still has family who want answers.”
To view the film, visit the following link on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3kDbl0QQI4
(Ukiah Daily Journal)
WHEN RAY HALL RETIRED
by Mark Scaramella
In the fall of 2008, the Supervisors shoved their long-time Planning and Building Director Ray Hall out the door, wishing the portly bumbler well in the insincere fashion characteristic of Mendo farewells. In a deposition the previous year when the local legal aid society successfully sued the County for having a totally deficient Housing Element in its $2.5 million “updated” General Plan that nobody liked, former senior subordinate planner Pam Townsend described Hall as proprietor of an escalating in-box he seldom looked at. Hall had put in 31 years for Mendo’s taxpayers, years accompanied by a steady low roar of complaints about his job performance but the complaints never quite achived critical mass of three Supervisors to cause him to lose his job.
Hall was hired as a junior planner in 1977 and was promoted to Planning Director in 1985 by Supervisors John Cimolino, Marilyn Butcher, Jim Eddie, Norman DeVall and Nelson Redding. Hall was immediately attacked by the right-wing who complained that he seemed hostile to their projects. Hall outlasted repeated frontal assaults from Frank Creasey, to name one of his most fervent critics, but managed to survive them. In the years since it was the libs on his case, if you can call hippies unhappy with his increasing demands for more stringent Class K rules “on his case.”
Early on, apparently, Hall wisely ceased even noticing that he had an in-basket; he just rolled on, out when he was in, in when he was out. Hall was famous for taking months to approve even the simplest permit or finding one more petty hoop that had to be jumped through.
Supervisor Jim Wattenburger praised Hall’s “leadership, humor, baseball analogies, and duck-hunting abilities.”
Hall himself claimed credit for the amazing feat of using vehicle license fees to fund the first phase of the years-long General Plan Update. He also claimed credit for developing a way to merge lands in Williamson Act and timber production zones to keep them in ag, which the state, he said, later adopted to “save resource lands.”
Supervisor John Pinches congratulated Hall in a backhanded manner by saying that Hall’s service was “unprecedented” because Hall “told everybody in the county ‘no’ at least once and still survived.”
Supervisor Mike Delbar simply said, “It’s been an honor to work with you. Some things never change.”
And Supervisor Kendall Smith thanked Hall for his “efforts for citizens,” adding that Hall had taught her that she had to ask the right questions to get answers from him, implying that the planning boss was also something of a mystic — if not an oracle — while acknowledging that Hall kept a lot of his department’s activities a secret. Not that anybody asked much.
Supervisor Colfax asked Hall, “What's the secret of survival when everything’s coming down around you?” … And, “Thanks for dealing with complex issues and more,” a reference to Mendocino's Historical Review Board, famous for endless discussions about not much at all that continue to take up many hours of County staff and Board meeting time.
Hall replied, “The secret is to get the person who voted against incorporation the last time to vote for it.” (In other words, if the pretentious town was incorporated, their constant bickering would be contained to Mendocino and the Supervisors could wash their hands of it.)
SHERIFF KENDALL:
RE: ‘MY BROTHER IS DOING THE TRUMP DANCE’ (by Maureen Dowd’s brother)
This is pretty amazing and honestly I find it strange these things occur at a family gathering as important as the Thanksgiving Holiday.
Every year my family gathers at our house or the home of a sibling, niece, nephew or whomever drew the short straw. There seems to be an unspoken “your turn” which occurs within the family. I don’t know how the decision is made and I often think I would need to pay a little more attention to this if I truly wanted to understand it. So far it hasn’t hit the top of my list of things requiring comprehension and therefore, I simply go where I am told and bring what I am asked to bring. It’s easier that way.
When we gather the house is filled with conservatives and liberals, cowboys and Indians, firemen, cops, teachers, nurses, mechanics and soldiers. We have Irish kids, Native kids, Hispanic Kids as well as a mix of “your guess is as good as mine” Europeans. Hell I think we look like the front row of a Jelly Role concert. None of this matters because we are always family first. Blue collar and white collar alike we all came from the same family and in that family we always remain. Maybe it was leadership from our parents who wouldn’t imagine putting up with kids who act like todays politicians and corporate media.
Just like that unspoken rule of “someone has to host this” we go from the red side to the blue side in our nation but we aren’t we still Americans? Both sides seem to be getting a bad reputation when I’m certain both sides want to help, they just seem to have differing ideas of how that happens.
I wish we could all come together and find something as powerful as family ties that would unify the nation and cause us to laugh at the division, effectively putting it away and filing it under comedy.
For something to remain in place it must be serving a purpose. Therefore I truly believe this division in our county is definitely serving someone and that someone isn’t the American People.
ED NOTES
COUNTY OFFICIALS are likely oblivious of the fact that Anderson Valley's Nobel Prize winner (for chemistry), Kary Mullis, made his breakthrough DNA discovery on Highway 128 right at mile marker 46.7 near Mountain House as he drove to his home on Gschwend Road. How do we know that? He told us and the world simultaneously. I bring it up with the gratuitous shot at the supervisors because most places would memorialize a location from which a scientific discovery benefiting all mankind has flowed, that being the cloning of DNA ,which resulted in huge medical and forensic advances.
A READER WRITES: “I no longer wince at misspelled words. If actors appear in rolls, so be it. If bells peel out, let ‘em. I’m resigned to the fact that nobody any longer distinguishes between the verbs lie (intransitive) and lay (transitive). As for split infinitives, it now seems pedantic not to split them. But now and then misuse of a word bothers me. So it was when you said that ‘The Major, who tends to the crepuscular, his gait as deliberate as a land tortoise…..” Either you confused the word with crepitant or The Major, like a vampire or a bat, only emerges at twilight. Not knowing The Major, I can’t judge.”
KNOWING THE MAJOR, I can judge, and when he looms up out of the corner murk of his work station at whatever hour, well, he seems down right crepuscular. I concede the point, though. My usage stretched the definition beyond all known previous meanings.
GET READY for repeats times a million. ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, once needed 125 agents to round up 23 Mexicans in Arcata. The undocumented immigrants were at work at Sun Valley Floral Farms, and if there’s a sadder sight than a working mother being led away in chains from her job for the crime of seeking a better life, I can’t think of one.
ARBITRARY CRUELTY, though, is typical of ICE, an agency synonymous with random sadism. My friend Pol Brennan was living proof of ICE’s independence from rational oversight. An Irish nationalist prominent in the now disarmed IRA, Brennan was long ago granted permanent resident status by the federal courts based in San Francisco. Years later, he was driving through Texas with his wife to visit his mother-in-law when he was stopped by ICE in one of their highway hunts for Mexicans, and was then locked up in a for-profit prison for more than a year, occasionally appearing before a Bush-appointed judge who continued to keep him locked up for no reason at all other than, apparently, as a funding unit for the for-profit Texas prisons housing thousands of people whose papers are allegedly suspect.
THE UKIAH DAILY JOURNAL of August 27th, 1958, reported that “Sheriff Reno Bartolomie told supervisors yesterday that if they insisted upon placing the county’s prison honor camp in the Comptche region, he would have to have armed guards to protect the prisoners from the populace! Bartolomie said he had received constant heckling from anonymous phone calls threatening to shoot the prisoners if they were located in that area. ‘They call me all during the day at the office and from 11 at night to 4 in the morning at home,’ Bartolomie said. ‘You don’t get a chance to say nothing; they just tell you what they’re going to do and hang up.’ The Sheriff said he was powerless to check on the calls because the phone company here did not have the equipment necessary to trace the numbers. ‘If I knew who they were,’ Bartolomie said, ‘I’d go over there and throw them so far into jail you’d have to pipe daylight to them.’”
THE BOONVILLE DAILY, as most of you regular readers know, is hostile to capitalism as social foundation. Sooner or later capitalism breaks down and takes a lot of us with it. Unfettered free enterprise is inherently unstable because the money always collects in fewer and fewer hands. The wolves of big money need strict regulation because they're smarter than most of us and they're absolutely ruthless, which is why FDR appointed Joe Kennedy, RFK Jr's great grandfather, to clean up Wall Street as the chairman of those first regulators, the Securities and Exchange Commission, privately telling people in so many words that he appointed Kennedy because “it takes a big crook to keep all the other big crooks in line.”
KENNEDY, a proto-fascist who admired Hitler, is often alleged to have made his dough as a bootlegger just as fortunes are made today in dope. At the time of his appointment as stock market czar in 1932, Kennedy was the 10th richest man in the country. Now that it's 1932 all over again and the free enterprise system — you have the enterprise, they have the system — has again been entirely freed from oversight by the two party dictatorship, most of whose stars are funded by the thieves.
WITH THE ELECTION of the magic comb across, the wolves have been formally elected. But we have a much larger, much less docile population than we had in 1932 when about half of us still lived in small towns and rural areas where we raised chickens, maintained big summer gardens, and grandma put up fruit and vegetables she traded for milk, butter and cheese from the neighbor's cow, and then used some of that to pay for the visiting doctor.
THE WAY out of the economic stranglehold the wealthy had on US was to tax incomes over a hundred grand at better than 90%, that and large-scale public works programs, with a big boost from World War Two, put money back in people's pockets, and free enterprise started up all over with a lot of regulation to make sure the wolves didn't eat it again.
BUT THE BI-PARTISAN brothel of Demo-Republicans gradually, then with a rush, un-regulated the wolves and here we are.
FREE BURN PILE WORKSHOP ON DEC 7 NORTH OF LAYTONVILLE
The Eel River Recovery Project, in collaboration with local landowners, and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), is working to return good fire to the land through an ambitious multi-year watershed-wide forest health project in the Tenmile Creek Watershed in the Laytonville area. On October 11, ERRP hosted a successful prescribed burn on almost 30 acres in the lower Tenmile, and on November 23 they organized a well-attended community pile-burn at Vassar Ranch. Both burns were led by Burn Boss Scot Steinbring and the nonprofit Torchbearrs.
On December 7th, Will Emerson of the Northern Mendocino Ecosystem Recovery Alliance (NM-ERA) will join ERRP to co-host a FREE onsite workshop at Vassar Ranch, open to all community members, to learn more about the pile burning and the Tenmile Creek Forest Health Project and see the burn effects from the recent pile-burn. Emerson will conduct a hands-on demonstration of the ecological benefits of different burning methods including conservation piles, “rick” burning, and the portable biochar kiln.
● Saturday December 7, 2024 10:00 am to 4:00 pm
● 7 miles north of Laytonville
● Learn how to build piles in the forest and safely burn them
● Get hands-on instruction in lighting piles, monitoring them, and quenching them.
● Learn about what permits are required and how to get them.
● Learn new techniques for burning, including the conservation burn technique, making biochar in a Ring of Fire kiln, and building a rick of poles and watching it burn.
● The workshop is FREE with a FREE lunch. The event is supported by a grant from the Mendocino Community Foundation.
Attendance is limited to 30 participants because of parking issues, so pre-register now. Directions and more details will be emailed to you once you register. Register by clicking HERE and filling out the form.
The Lower Tenmile Creek project area is located near Hwy 101, approximately 7 miles north of Laytonville. The workshop will begin at 10am, and smoke may be visible from Hwy 101 and surrounding areas.
Our native fire-adapted forests are choked with areas of dense trees and woody fuels on the forest floor, the consequence of over a century of fire suppression. Over the spring and summer, Elk Ridge Tree Service hand crews thinned slash and woody debris and built hundreds of burn piles at the Vassar site. Burning these piles will start to reduce the backlog of fuel loading so that prescribed broadcast burning can happen safely in the area in the future. The workshop on December 7 will explore climate-smart ways to burn piles that store carbon as biochar rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. For more information visit https://nm-era.org/
Contact: Alicia Bales abaleslittletree@gmail.com
Will Emerson will@nm-era.org
HOW A CALIFORNIA ROADSIDE STAND BECAME THE GATEWAY TO THE EMERALD TRIANGLE
by Matt Lafever
Over 30 years ago, Jay Nealis settled in Sonoma County after a decade working as a traveling salesman selling textiles across Northern California. Nealis, a seasoned connoisseur of California’s counterculture, immediately saw an opportunity. He parked his hippie bus along Highway 101 in Hopland, California, just 20 miles from the Mendocino County line, and began selling vivid tie-dye creations to passing travelers.
What began as a single tie-dye stand on the intersection of Highway 101 and State Route 175 has grown into Cali Kind, a clothing business with two locations across Mendocino and Sonoma counties. At its original location, the humble stand has greeted millions of travelers, its vibrant colors offering a glimpse into the soul of the Emerald Triangle. And even as Nealis’ enterprise has grown, it still embodies the flower child spirit that pulses through the North Coast.
How It All Began
Nealis’ journey to the roadside selling industry began long before his iconic corner stand in Hopland. In the 1980s, he carved out a niche selling high-end alpaca rugs and Persian carpets on the road, but when the economy tightened, that business fizzled out, prompting Nealis to seek a new path. By the early 1990s, he transitioned to selling T-shirts with counterculture slogans and designs across the Emerald Triangle.
All the while, he was accompanied by his young daughter. Born in 1988, she was by his side as he worked street fairs, roadside sales and events across 17 states and even Mexico — all before she was 9 months old. “We traveled a lot,” Nealis told SFGATE. As his daughter approached school age, Nealis knew it was time to settle down and provide more stability for her.
In late 1993, while selling in Ukiah, Nealis met a local tie-dye artist and bought six of her hand-dyed shirts. “It was Christmas time,” he recalled. “I was in front of Raley’s, in that empty lot next to the bowling alley.” The shirts resold quickly, sparking a collaboration between Nealis and the artist, and they began producing tie-dyes together at his Cloverdale home.
By May 1994, Nealis had set up shop on the corner in Hopland, putting down roots for his daughter as she started kindergarten. Working long hours during the week and even longer weekends in the hopes of catching the eye of passing travelers, Nealis laid the groundwork for what would become a Northern California roadside icon.
From Roadside Stand To Nationwide Brand
“I had a vision that it would work,” Nealis said, reflecting on the early days of the business. He worked the first three years by himself but eventually hired local help, transforming his operation into what he describes as “one of those iconic places to stop and shop on the corridor going north.” Despite lean times, he stayed the course, driven by his commitment to “see it to the end.”
Cali Kind eventually expanded to multiple locations, including Tucson, Arizona, and Aptos in Santa Cruz County while maintaining a strong presence at cultural fairs and music festivals across the American West. The Tucson store operated from 2007 to 2011, and the Santa Cruz location welcomed customers from 2009 to 2019. However, both locations later closed as the business chose to focus its efforts on growing its other operations.
Jay Nealis brought his nephew, Allan Nealis, on board to help with the business’s expansion. “I was out doing shows, all the way to Oregon to do the Oregon State Fair, some in Montana, Tucson, and a variety of prominent street festivals,” Jay recalled. “We did the Mushroom Mardi Gras in Morgan Hill and the Sonoma County Fair for 17 or 18 years.” These events were crucial in building the brand, pairing retail operations with community outreach to solidify Cali Kind’s reputation.
In recent years, Jay Nealis has visited the Hopland tie-dye stand less and less, leaving the day-to-day operations in the hands of his nephew, Allan. Allan oversees a small crew of three to four employees, adjusting staffing levels with the seasons. During summer’s long days and peak travel rush, the team grows to meet demand, while winter’s quieter pace requires fewer hands on deck.
These days, Cali Kind’s distinctive tie-dye creations are crafted in a small, family-run facility in northern Thailand, a project that stemmed from Jay’s interest in “controlling the quality” of the company’s products.
Allan Nealis explained that the idea came about after Jay got his daughter established at an international boarding school in Chiang Mai, Thailand, when she was 13 years old. While visiting regularly, he was able to meet a tight-knit team of just three workers that he hired and trained to focus on creating the brand’s signature designs exclusively for Cali Kind.
Allan told SFGate that Cali Kind pays for the workers’ housing because production is done out of a shared house. The environment, according to Allan, is “super family-like.”
The pandemic brought significant challenges that forced changes to Cali Kind’s business model. Allan shared how the traveling aspect of the business “kind of tapered off a little bit” after the pandemic. The loss of major events like Mendocino County’s Sierra Nevada World Music Festival and Ventura’s Skull & Roses festival — regular stops for Cali Kind — was particularly hard. “This year was really tough,” Allan said.
To keep things afloat, Cali Kind leaned on its wholesale operations. The location in Cotati opened in 2006, which is just under 10 miles south of Santa Rosa, and it serves as both a retail and shipping hub. It has proved essential in helping the company continue to reach customers nationwide despite the extended closure of the tie-dye stand during the peak of pandemic protocols.
Embracing the Emerald Triangle
Jay Nealis attributes his business’ longevity to the vibrant tie-dye culture, deeply influenced by the Grateful Dead, which became a natural fit for Northern California. “There was a lot of interest in that, especially in California, because of that scene,” he told SFGATE. With Hopland at the heart of this countercultural hub, he was perfectly positioned to capture the spirit of the movement.
Nealis sees his tie-dye stand as inseparable from the Emerald Triangle’s counterculture roots; the bold, psychedelic designs echo the region’s free-spirited ethos. “We had a little bit of glass, a little bit of this, a little bit of that — it was a cultural thing,” he said.
Allan Nealis spoke about the stand’s deep ties to the Emerald Triangle’s cannabis culture. “The history of cannabis has been a part of this place,” he said, noting the overlap between the region’s cannabis economy and the stand’s early years. As cannabis evolved in the 1980s, so did the stand, marking a parallel timeline.
With the rise and fall of small-scale cannabis operations, Nealis observed how these changes affected the community. “A lot of the communities around here revolved around mom-and-pop cannabis,” he explained. “Some of our customers were trimmers that come into the town. And as those businesses declined, it’s not just our business that’s been impacted but everywhere.”
A Legacy Of Memories
Over the years, the tie-dye stand in Hopland has attracted a diverse cast of characters, many of whom helped shape the counterculture and entertainment scenes. “We’ve had numerous different famous people come through,” said Allan Nealis, naming Bud Gaugh, the drummer from Sublime, as well as the chef Emeril Lagasse, who dropped by long ago. He also recalled visits from iconic figures in the cannabis world, including Charles Edward “Eddy” Lepp, a well-known industry advocate, and the legendary cannabis rights activist Jack Herer.
The original stand has cultivated a loyal following over its decades near Highway 101. “A lot of people actually come once or twice a year on vacation or reroute their trips,” Jay Nealis explained.
The stand’s appeal wasn’t just about selling tie-dye; it was about building relationships with customers that spanned generations. Nealis shared a touching encounter: “I was in the Cotati store, and a couple came in, and they asked if I remembered them. I hadn’t been in Hopland for years, and it was a customer that used to come in there in the early ’90s.” The couple told Nealis they still owned a dress they’d purchased from the stand in 1995 nearly 30 years prior.
These stories aren’t uncommon, Nealis said, and families have passed down the Cali Kind tradition. “We had pictures of kids … when they were babies, and then I watched them come in when they were teenagers,” Nealis said. “It was really amazing.”
After 30 years, the iconic tie-dye stand in Hopland has become a lasting legacy of the Emerald Triangle. At 69, founder Jay Nealis is on the brink of retirement, but the stand’s future is in good hands. Allan, just 46, is poised to carry the torch, ensuring the vibrant colors and the spirit of the past continue to attract travelers and tie-dye enthusiasts for generations to come.
(SFGate)
RON PARKER: Ukiah Mendocino Co. Don Scotto ran for sheriff 1966. Reno Bartolomie won re-election.
KZYX’S NEW LOCATION: A Historical Perspective, Before There Was a Clay Street
by Victoria Golden
As we create new headquarters for KZYX at 390 West Clay Street, we want to honor the people who first lived and worked on this piece of land.
Although we don’t know how this precise spot was used by the earliest residents, it lay in the heart of their territory. The original people who settled in the Ukiah Valley arrived around 4000-5000 BCE. Their new home reached from Ackerman Creek on the north, to mountaintops east and west, to eight miles south, about where Highway 253 now meets State Street. These were the Yokaia (or Yokayo) Pomo, with Yokaia meaning “deep valley” and Pomo “people.” The Yokaia were part of a larger Pomo population that, prior to white contact, is thought to have totaled 10,000-20,000 people. The Yokaia lived peacefully with neighboring Pomo groups in what are today Mendocino, Lake, and Sonoma Counties, often engaging in trade, intermarrying, and sharing ceremonies and celebrations.
Wappo people also came to live in the deep valley, having traveled from Lake Sonoma along the Russian River. The Wappo had shared a language with the Yukia people to the south and east, but they assimilated Pomo language, culture, and lifestyle. The name “Wappo” was taken from the Spanish “guapo,” meaning “brave,” earned when they earlier stood up to Spanish domination in the Napa and Sonoma areas.
In the deep valley people found a good way of life. They moved with the seasons, constructing their thatched houses in a central village in winter and breaking up into smaller encampments with the arrival of spring to seek prime hunting, fishing, and plant-gathering spots. One village site appears to have been what later became the location of Nokomis school. Marvin Talso, Board President for the Mendocino County Historical Society, recalls being a child at that school in the 1950’s and helping to clear thistle with other students from a nearby plot so that it could become the Nokomis playing field. “While doing that work, we found dozens of arrowheads.” Marvin points out that the location would have been desirable because it was close to Doolin Creek, where salmon were still running.
Ukiah Valley’s flat lands, mountains, creeks and rivers provided much bounty for the native peoples. They fished, hunted deer and elk, and gathered foods such as acorns, manzanita berries, and grass seed. They wove plants into baskets of all shapes and sizes, nets, and boats. They collected ingredients for herbal medicines. Pomo weaving was intricate and could be tight enough for a basket to hold water; today their artistry is known worldwide for its versatility and beauty.
When the Yokaia didn’t find what they wanted in their deep valley, they swapped with neighboring peoples. Once a year they made a 45-mile trek to the coast along an extensive, complex network of trails to barter for seafood, kelp, tan-oak acorns, and clamshells to be made into strings of beads and used as money. From Lake County they obtained baked, uncut magnesite to be turned into more valuable beads. For salt, they bartered with people living near today’s Stonyford, near Covelo. Maci (milkweed fiber), used for making string, rope, and cloth was traded from the north, probably Round Valley.
Unlike their immediate Pomo neighbors, the Yokaia had a concept of private property. In the deep valley, a household could claim a prime hunting or fishing spot, for example, or a cluster of oaks that provided particularly sweet acorns in the fall. Ownership passed from father to son and could result in considerable wealth as the family swapped goods with others in their community or outside of it, or paid for food, tools, hunting weapons, and baskets with beads. However, when it was time for a Yokaia communal fishing foray or hunt, ownership of those designated locations was temporarily suspended.
The arrival of white people disrupted this peaceful and plentiful way of life and also initiated disruption of the ecosystem into which the native people had successfully integrated their lives. The arrival of Russians at Fort Ross, Spanish missionaries, and Euro-American settlers brought violence, forced labor, loss of their land, and disease. New settlers first came in large numbers during the California gold rush, 1848-1850, introducing cholera, measles, smallpox, and tuberculosis — illnesses to which the native Americans had no immunity. The result was a high fatality rate.
In 1856, the Yokaia Pomo were removed from most of the land on which they depended and forced onto a reservation that stretched from the coast to Ukiah. Military out of the San Francisco Presidio were put in charge and subjugated the Pomo, forcing them to farm the few arable acres. In 1867 the Bureau of Indian Affairs closed the reservation and sent the remaining inhabitants on a punishing walk to a reservation in Round Valley. Within a few years, the State of California opened the deep valley and surrounding territory to be purchased by non-Native people. It was the end of an era that had lasted thousands of years.
Faced with tremendous hardship, the original people of the deep valley persisted. Today, Pomos remain an active part of the Mendocino County community, making contributions and keeping many of their traditions and values alive. As a people, the original inhabitants have not only survived the oppression and violence of the past, they have reacquired and developed land in the area and rebuilt community life that continues to the present day.
{Note: Charles Willard was born in 1866, in Mendocino County, California, the son of the Euro-American man known as Henry Harper Willard Sr. & the Coast Miwok widow known as Mrs. Maxima Antonia (Ynita) Bennett. In 1913, Charles Willard married the Euro-American woman from Klamath County, Oregon known as Jessie Moore, and they raised two children before Charles Willard died in 1933.}
CATCH OF THE DAY: Friday, November 29, 2024
OSCAR AMADO, 19, Lakeport/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
RICHARD AULT JR., 56, Laytonville. DUI.
PARIS BEACHAM-VANDERPOOL, 33, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, false ID, failure to appear.
SETH COSTA, 21, Ukiah. Failure to appear.
JOSE DURAN-SERVIN, 29, Fort Bragg. Domestic abuse, damaging communications device, cruelty to child-infliction of injury, resisting, probation violation.
GERARDO FLORES, 21, Ukiah. Domestic battery.
GABRIEL HAWKINS, 26, Ukiah. DUI.
MICHAEL LANGLEY, 34, Ukiah. Probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)
RONALD NEWBERRY, 53, Covelo. DUI.
BLAMING SOLAR
Editor:
California’s three investor-owned utilities claim the successful rooftop solar industry shifts the cost of energy to those without rooftop solar. They released a study claiming rooftop solar has cost ratepayers $8.5 billion this year.
Using that figure, which they call a “cost shift,” utilities justified rolling back the net metering programs that pay customers for excess energy their systems produce. Policymakers including Gov. Gavin Newsom are using that figure as a reason to erode the economies of rooftop solar across the board.
An independent study shows the opposite — that California’s 17 gigawatts of rooftop solar have saved us about $2.3 billion on our bills, reduced pressure on the grid, freed up energy capabilities for all of us and prevented the need for more power plants.
This “cost shift” notion is crazy. Why should solar users be penalized for using less energy? Should we be penalized if we increase the insulation in our homes or buy energy-efficient appliances? Should we pay grocery stores when we grow vegetables in our backyards?
Rooftop solar is clean energy, which climate change demands. Solar installation creates well-paying blue-collar jobs. Working class people can see lower energy costs over time.
Our utility bills are high for one simple reason. The utilities spend too much.
Jane Bender
Santa Rosa
STOP EXPLOITING HOTEL WORKERS
Editor,
The strike by hotel workers in San Francisco highlights a stark and disgraceful truth: Billionaire greed deepens while workers struggle to survive.
These hotel housekeepers, cooks and bellhops are not asking for luxuries — they are demanding fair wages and humane workloads. They often sacrifice their health for their job. These workers are being exploited, but at what cost?
While hotels boast about their ability to “operate and take care of guests” during the strike, they are dismissing the humanity of the people who keep their businesses running. Arresting striking workers as happened in October only exacerbates injustice, punishing those who dare to demand dignity and fair treatment.
It’s time to hold billion-dollar hotel corporations and billionaires accountable for exploitative practices that enrich the few.
Jules Pizano
San Francisco
MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio show all night tonight on KNYO and KAKX!
Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is 6pm or so. Or send it whenever it's done, after that, and I'll read it on the radio next week.
Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am PST on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KNYO.org. The first three hours of the show, meaning till midnight, are simulcast on KAKX 89.3fm Mendocino. It used to be just the first hour, but now it's three, thanks to Marshall Brown. I'll tell you all about that tonight.
Plus you can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night I'll put up the recording of tonight's show. Also there you'll find an assortment of cultural-educational amusements to occupy you until showtime, or any time, such as:
The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues. That's 35,000 miles down, a puzzling concept. It's like when the woman told Groucho Marx, “Hold me closer,” and he said, “If I hold you any closer I'd be behind you.” 35,000 leagues deep would on the other side of the planet and well on the way to the moon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar3zmZL9X9k
Nina Simone - My Baby Just Cares For Me (in claymation). (via AVClub) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYSbUOoq4Vg
And Robin Williams in /Toys/. I saw this in a big mostly-empty theater when it came out, and I really liked it, probably partly because apparently nobody else in the world did. Especially every bit of his relationship with his sister, which has a startling, sweet reveal, which I will not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P1hrusXw50
Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com
REPORT FROM A CAMPFIRE OF THE RESISTANCE, SAN FRANCISCO, 2024
by Jonah Raskin
The dust had not yet settled around the White House and the foul air had not yet cleared from above the nation’s capital, but the campfires of the resistance were already burning brightly. They were burning brightly on a recent night at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco’s North Beach, where UCSC Professor Emerita Dana Frank spelled out the lessons that might be learned from the Depression of the 1930s and applied to the present day.
In two words, her advice to the audience of wanna-be resisters was “collective action.” Or as many organizers, activists and protesters shouted in the 1930s, in the streets, on factory floors, in tenements and apartments where residents were threatened with eviction, “Solidarity” and even “Solidarity Forever.”
Frank explores the nature of collective action in a new book from Beacon Press titled What Can We Learn from the Great Depression in which she tells stories of ordinary people who did extraordinary things and against the odds.
The City Lights website that promoted Frank’s event explained that “While capitalism crashed during the Great Depression, racism did not and was, in fact, wielded by some to blame and oppress their neighbors. Patriarchy persisted, too, undermining the power of social movements and justifying women’s marginalization within them.” Sounds like the here and now, doesn’t it? What goes around comes around.
Frank writes that the big, timely message from the New Deal is that “recovery is a complex and painful process that requires the participation of many, not directives from a few. And that, ultimately, we’re all in this together.” Of course, some are “in this” more than others. The wealthy and the powerful have often argued that “we’re all in this together” to obscure inequalities and to blunt class warfare.
What We Can Learn from the Great Depression is both a work of deconstruction and reconstruction. It deconstructs many of the major icons, images, and stories of the 1930s: the white migrant woman, the white striking factory worker, and the white Dust Bowl Refugee from Oklahoma and Texas who flocked to California.
Omitted from the history books and the movies, Frank points out, were Mexicans who had worked in the US and who under pressure returned to Mexico, Black women who sold their breast milk and who went on strike for higher wages, plus the members of the Black Legion, a red-white-and blue fascist organization, and an off-shoot of the Ku Klux Klan that targeted the usual suspects: Blacks, immigrants, Catholics and Jews. Black Legion stalwarts believed in America First. They are the forerunner of the Proud Boys who stormed the nation’s capitol on January 6, 2021 and aimed to topple the US government. Black Legion Headquarters was located in Detroit, Michigan where they assassinated labor organizers. It could and it did happen here and it could happen here once again.
At City Lights, Frank was fired up. “We need an anti-racist, anti-imperialist working class movement,” she said. In response to a question from the audience about the mood of Americans during the Depression, Frank argued that “people were flipped out.” She added, “For a time, there was a lot of self-blame. Americans flawed themselves for their plight. They learned to place the blame on the government.”
She described John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath as a flawed account of the Dust Bowl and the refugees from Oklahoma that offered readers “white supremacist stuff.” She noted that the best book about the 1930s is still Studs Terkel’s Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. When she segued to the present, she observed that “Marco Rubio is insane,” and added, “We’re gonna see a lot of China bashing in the days ahead; anti-Asian racism will sky rocket and fascism will be resurgent. ”
Not a pretty picture, but a picture that calls for more campfires of the resistance from San Francisco to New York, from blue states to red states, and everywhere that Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly and Billie Holiday sang to and for the American people and to and for folks around the world.
(Jonah Raskin is the author of Beat Blues, San Francisco, 1955.)
WANDERING, CHAPTER 4
by Paul Modic
(A travel memoir from 1973, my most interesting year, when I was 19.)
Night was falling, the weed was gone, I had $220 in my pocket, (a tidy profit of $70) and decided to try to get closer to the stage where the Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers, and The Band had been playing all day. As I worked my way through the crowds surging the other way, people along the route were hawking their wares: “Ups? Downs? Pagan Juice?”
Pagan juice? What the fuck was that? Heroin? I finally gave up trying to get near the stage and went back to look for Connie's van to crash out. When I found it it seemed ratty and dismal and lonely while across the way a pretty, content couple were getting ready for bed in their flip top camper while I was riding out the drugs alone and disconsolate. (I've never forgotten the envy and longing I felt for their sweet little domestic scene while I tried to get comfortable in Connie's van far from the music.)
In the morning I dragged my groggy carcass out of the ratty van, surveyed the sea of cars, and got to talking to a couple of women nearby. One was kind of butch and the other was a cute little Jewish girl from Brooklyn named Trudy Seidman. (Who isn't cute at 17? Maybe even me.). We hit it off and Trudy invited me down to the city, where I could stay in her aunt’s apartment on 21st street for a few days while she was visiting Israel.
Her friend wove the little sedan out of the metallic jungle of rock fans and eventually we were flying down the Taconic Parkway to New York City. I realized I had left my little brown bag of money behind, $220, stashed in a corner of Connie's van but what to do? I irrationally thought about having the state police flag them down (you know officer, that VW van up there at the rock festival?) but thought they might have smoke so that was a bad idea. I sucked it up and we rode on down to New York, all that weed buying and selling gone to waste.
Later that night Trudy and I were going into drugstores up and down 8th Avenue looking for contraceptive foam. We went back to the apartment, she laid on her aunt's bed, and I guided the tube of foam into her, watering her delicate flower with mysterious chemicals to ensure that no baby batter would be mixed up that night. We were hard-bodied teens with little imagination, slam bam, a time when the girls were easy, hell everyone was easy, except our parents I suppose.
We went out to the Mercer Theatre off-Broadway to see 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.' It was theatre in the round and across from us sat a very attractive couple radiating cool Manhattan intensity. He took his woman's hand and I took Trudy's in mine as I began to mirror him. He put his arm around his companion and I did the same with mine, for some reason taking my cues from the very handsome man. (Two days later the theatre collapsed, killing four people, and soon after that I encountered the distinctive couple 150 miles upstate at a naked volleyball game at ‘The Center For The Living Force,’ or ‘The Crying Cult,’ as I liked to call it.)
It ended oddly with Trudy a few days later on a summer night in my cool grandma's backyard fifty miles upstate with me wrapped only in a sheet cavorting around the parking lot, freaking out under the moonlight. Trudy disappeared to college at SUNY/ Buffalo and I went off to Boston to find that Larry's pound had been stolen from his apartment at 96 Gainsborough, and he had also lost the woman of his dreams who he thought was waiting for him while he was in prison. (A couple years before, we all went down to the draft board and sung peace songs when Larry turned himself in for refusing to register.)
I lounged on the grass at Cambridge Commons with my pen and ink, drawing and writing poetry when Pam came up to me to talk. After awhile I invited her back to Larry's apartment to help make a soy bean pie, but she demurred. The next day she found me there again and said, “How about that soy bean pie?” She was a patrician Upper East Side girl about my age with long wavy red hair and a nose job in her future. As we made the soy bean pie she told me about the Center, a retreat in the Catskills.
“It's called ‘Pathwork,’” she said. “We work on integrating our energy from our head to our toes, then we can feel the feelings. Most people are stuck in their heads, you know? Would you like to go there with me and learn about your higher and lower selves?”
We got locked out of the apartment while the pie was cooking and burning and I freaked out, but Pam was calm and soothing. The next day we swam in the Atlantic with a couple of her fancy friends, frolicking amorously in the intimate splash of new love.
“Let's go to The Center tomorrow,” she said as we dried off.
We hitchhiked to the country retreat in Phoenicia, NY where a sign out front said 'The Center For The Living Force.' A naked volleyball game was happening in the front yard and we joined right in. One of the volleyball players looked very familiar and I realized he was the handsome guy I had taken my dating cues from at the Mercer Theatre performance of 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' that night with Trudy. His name was Bert Shaw, who I later learned was the most respected 'helper' on The Path.
Pam told me that I should ask Chris, the Center manager, if I could work off my room and board. He said yes and I painted rooms, moved washing machines, and washed windows with others who were working off their time at The Center.
There were three main facets to the Path: private sessions with one of the helpers, group, and then every other week Eva, one of the Path founders along with her husband John Pierrakos, went into a trance and The Guide spoke through her, offering much general wisdom, though some of us exchanged skeptical smiles about that.
(Next: Living in New York.)
THERE OUGHT TO BE behind the door of every happy, contented man some one standing with a hammer continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or later, trouble will come for him — disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears others.
— Chekhov
DISCOMBOBULATION ‘24
Devastated? Yeah.
But we’ve been through worse before
And we’ll deal with this.
A perfect Union
Is built-in starts and setbacks,
Not in a straight line.
It’s failure, success,
Following on each other,
Endlessly and on,
Each replacing each
Till some gradual uphill change
Steadies. Reassures.
Having dealt with Kings,
We’ve learned our independence.
Lived through wars, depressions too,
Civil and uncivil strife,
Unnatural disasters,
Some pretty petty tyrants
And real political crooks.
We can handle this.
— Jim Luther
AT JUST 17 YEARS OLD, Jack Kerouac made headlines by scoring the winning touchdown for Lowell in the 1938 Thanksgiving Day game against Lawrence, catching the attention of college scouts. Among them was Boston College coach Frank Leahy, who witnessed Kerouac's game-winning run and was later invited to the Kerouac family home for Thanksgiving dinner. Leahy enlisted his PR man—Billy Sullivan, who would later become the first owner of the New England Patriots—to help recruit Kerouac. Sullivan had family ties to Lowell, as his uncles owned the print shop where Kerouac's father, Leo, worked. Despite these efforts, Kerouac chose to turn down Boston College and instead pursued academics and athletics at Columbia University, joining their football team as a halfback.
LEAD STORIES, SATURDAY'S NYT
For Rising Democrats, the Quiet Race to Lead the Party Began Months Ago
After Democratic Losses, a Little-Known Lawmaker Wants to Lead the Party
Democrats Weigh Dumping Nadler, Regrouping to Counter Trump
How Kennedy Has Worked Abroad to Weaken Global Public Health Policy
Pete Hegseth’s Mother Accused Her Son of Mistreating Women for Years
Trudeau Flies to Mar-a-Lago to See Trump Amid Tariff Concerns
Rebels Control Most of Syria’s Largest City, War Monitor Says
Could a Deadly Offensive in Syria Reignite a Stalled Civil War?
AS THE CRANKY GERMAN in the British Museum liked to point out, the capitalist system is always in crisis. Crisis is integral to the system. In too many ways, over the past four decades, brooding on its own crises, the left has forgotten that and in the low contour of radical ideas and of radical political organization in this electoral cycle we are suffering the consequences.
— Alexander Cockburn (2008)
WHAT PART OF MANDATE DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?
by James Kunstler
"This version of Trump knows what buttons to press, he knows where the bodies are buried, he’s absorbed their worst and now he is about to throw it right back at them." — Jeff Childers
You have every reason to believe that this arrogant, malicious, leviathan government, and the vicious intel / lawfare blob at its vanguard, is about to be turned upside-down, inside-out, and sideways. Every appointment by Mr. Trump is a dose of chemotherapy to this malignant beast, aimed at all its diseased organs. The rogue cells within are going to die hard, struggle against their extinction, shriek and thrash as the treatment proceeds. That is, if it is allowed to proceed.
And so: rumors arise of a coup to prevent it from happening. The benchmark version goes like this: “Joe Biden” keeps up his stupid provocation of Russia with those medium-range ATACMS missiles until Mr. Putin is forced to respond with a strike against a NATO member, say, a military base in Poland used to stage and target the ATACMS. Under NATO’s Article Five — an attack against one is an attack against all — Europe and the US must go to war against Russia. This becomes the pretext for “Joe Biden” to declare an extraordinary emergency (or Kamala Harris, if “JB” can be shoved out under the 25th Amendment.) The inauguration of the newly-elected government must needs be postponed. . . .
Such a move would surely provoke a domestic insurrection against the leviathan and Civil War Two would be on. Or else you might expect a swift counter-coup out of the US military not playing along. Mr. Putin, too, could demur from playing the game, that is, just not go for the bait, refrain from striking any NATO territory. After all, his beef is officially with Mr. Zelensky’s Kiev government. Russia could just pound Kiev until that government ceases to exist. So far Mr. Putin has carefully refrained from destroying the historic city center, mainly hitting power plants to turn off the heat and light to make life extremely uncomfortable in the Ukraine capital with winter coming on. But he could level the city.
The choice is Mr. Zelensky’s, and has been for months as his forces, armaments, and prospects dwindle. He could suspend hostilities, go to talks, even raise a white flag and put an end to the needless suffering. Under no circumstances will he get the Donbas or Crimea back. I doubt that Russia wants to take over the rest of Ukraine, considering the cost of having to support it indefinitely. Better that it should remain a sovereign state and look after itself — but neutral, demilitarized, and, if you like, de-Nazified. You understand that these will be Russia’s final terms? And that there is nothing unreasonable about them?
In short, the hypothetical coup would fail, and the Ukraine war will end, and Mr. Trump will get inaugurated if he is careful to avoid the blob’s assassins until January 20. As for Rep. Jamie Raskin’s scheme to prevent a Trump swearing-in on account of him being “an insurrectionist,” you can file that under “dumb-shit grandstanding.” So, the new government will come in, the new department chiefs will get into office, and the leviathan will get the therapeutic treatment it deserves.
You understand, of course, that the federal bureaucracy is a perverse reincarnation of the old 19th century “Spoils System,” an entrenched, self-replicating matrix of parasites. Both parties have nourished it, but the Democrats have made it their extra-special pet since Mr. Obama was in charge of things. He and his AG Eric Holder arranged for the DOJ to target their political enemies and for the to FBI mutate into a US-KGB, and that behavior persisted for eight long years since Obama and Holder left the scene. The malice all flowed from those departments, since any opponent of the Party’s agenda could get lawfared, financially drained, and put out of business. The party’s sole agenda, really, was to just feed the bureaucratic parasite, and grow it ever-larger and more dependent on the party in order to increase its power.
There will necessarily be confusion over the clean-up of all that. Because of Mr. Trump being the primary target of DOJ / FBI enmity, blob publicists will try to color it as “personal retribution,” but it is really the proper response of an aggrieved nation. A large number of current and former officials deserve to face charges for what they did, serious crimes against their fellow citizens. They also deserve fair trials to determine their culpability. The catch is, these proceedings ought to take place outside the DC federal district court, which is itself parasitized and corrupted.
Outside of these criminal proceedings, the rest is executive process — just firing a lot of dead-weight and bureaucrat officials who contribute nothing but inertia and impediment to the normal functioning of a society. And deconstructing whole agencies. The blob will likely attempt to block that effort by marshaling its own allied lawyer army to bombard the courts with suits and writs. If the Trump team does its work carefully, with scrupulous attention to correct process, that offensive can be overcome and worked-around.
After a while, we’ll discover just how much government is really necessary, sort of like twitter did, after Elon Musk fired 80-percent of the loafers on his payroll. Since so much of the US economy has shifted insidiously into government, this downscaling is apt to be painful, but especially for the local economy of Washington DC, which is to say, a grift economy of overlapping rackets. Upgrade a few laws and whole industries — such as lobbying by military contractors — might be wiped out. But you have to ask: how was that ever a good thing?
For now, we give thanks that important changes are probably underway. Stolen liberties will be returned. You will be free to succeed or fail in a society of voluntary transactions. That was always the essence of being an American, not being a client of a fake therapeutic state, savior of all, but really just protector of its own.
GREATER ENERGY LEVELS BY GOP PRODUCE VICTORIES OVER DEMOCRATS
by Ralph Nader
Over thirty years ago, Republican historian and political analyst, Kevin Phillips, remarked that the “Republicans go for the jugular while the Democrats go for the capillaries.” This serious disparity in political energy levels is rarely taken into account to explain election turnouts. The voluntary enfeebling of the Democratic Party started long ago. In 1970, writing in Harper’s Magazine, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, a co-founder of Americans for Democratic Action, wrote an article “Who Needs Democrats? And What It Takes to be Needed?” He argued that if the Democratic Party does not take on the corporate and political establishment, it has no purpose at all.
In 2001, long after the 1980 Reagan landslide of Jimmy Carter, Labor Secretary under Clinton, Robert Reich, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post which declared, “…The Democratic Party. It’s Dead.”
In the following years, while the Democrats were accelerating their abandonment of half the country as “red states,” and became more out of touch with blue-collar workers and unions, whom they took for granted, the Republicans were becoming more energized by the year. Their mouthpieces dominating talk radio – e.g., Rush Limbaugh – were directly sowing unrebutted discord, day after day, among blue-collar workers against the Democrats. Why? It’s because the Democrats essentially gave up on Talk Radio and didn’t bother listening to how these corporatist radio bloviators were turning hard working listeners into Reagan Democrats.
While the GOP was eroding the core base of the Democratic Party and taking total control of red state legislatures, governorships, and courts, the Democrats, starting in 1979, were plunging into enticing and taking corporate PAC money, as urged by then Rep. Tony Coelho (D-CA). This reliance on corporate campaign money weakened the Party’s positions and actions on behalf of workers, consumers, the environment, and the need for an expanded social safety net for the populace. Western nations have provided their citizens superior health care, family support and education programs for decades.
The comparative energy levels were exhibited in the 2010 state gerrymandering drive. While the Democrats were snoozing, a laser beam effort in several states, like Pennsylvania, took the Dems to the cleaners. The result: majority GOP Congressional delegations for a decade even though the Democrats won the popular vote there. (See: Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America’s Democracy by David Daley.)
Recall, in 2009 Obama had a large majority Democratic advantage in the House and Senate as a result of his win over John McCain in November 2008. Instead of going forward full throttle with this mandate, Obama chose extreme caution. He focused on Obamacare, after giving up right at the beginning the crucial “public option” allowing people to opt out of the corporate health insurance grip. He gave it up unilaterally before negotiations began with the obstructive GOP.
For the rest of his term, Obama appeared to be resting. He promised a $9.50 federal minimum wage in his 2008 campaign but didn’t lift a finger for it during his first term. It is still at a poverty wage of $7.25 per hour to this day. He didn’t really put up a grassroots fight for his stimulus bill following the Wall Street collapse and the great recession starting under George W. Bush, (the war criminal against the Iraqi people.) Obama even declined to prosecute the Wall Street crooks.
In the meantime, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, managed to lose the House to a reactionary GOP in the 2010 elections, the 2012 elections, the 2014 elections and the 2016 elections, straightjacketing any possible Obama agenda in the Congress. The Dems had the popular New Deal agenda update in their grasp, but let it slip through their fingers while the GOP had a corporatist anti-worker, consumer, and women’s agenda and with ferocious energy blocked improvements supported by a majority of people in the US.
Even more inexplicable was the Democratic Party’s refusal to strongly support the galvanizing political civic movement to cancel the Electoral College (see NationalPopularVote.com). This organizing effort has led so far to the passage of state laws (California, New York, Illinois, etc.) handing the Electoral College vote to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote. The Democrats won the popular vote in 2000 (Al Gore) and 2016 (Hillary Clinton) but lost the Electoral College vote to G.W. Bush and the surprised Donald Trump. Still, the Democrats stay on the sidelines though this movement already has enabled state laws totaling 215 Electoral College votes, needing only to get to 270 to neutralize this anti-democratic vestige from the historic era of slavery.
Almost everywhere you look you see this huge disparity in energy levels. Compare the smaller Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives with the Pelosi-toady Progressive Caucus. The difference is that between thunder and slumber over the years.
Compare the Tea Party’s slamming impact on the established GOP in Congress with the tepid attitude of most labor unions and the AFL-CIO deferring to the Democratic Party.
Compare the over-the-top corporate judges to the so-called liberal judges, as relating to federal cases against Trump.
Compare the comprehensive ghastly Heritage Foundation’s 900-page 2025 blueprint directed toward the GOP expansion of the corporate state and the stripping away of services to the people and their rights with the agenda advanced by the progressive citizen groups. No comparison. The media notices this difference in energy levels which is one reason it gives more coverage to the right-wing messianic bulldozers who show in every way that they are hungrier for taking power as they take no prisoners.
Partisan energy disparities even extend to the right-wing vs. left-wing media. The former has the brazen Fox News network. The left has nothing like that. Bill Moyers told me he urged mega-rich George Soros and allies to start a competing progressive network after Fox became quickly formidable. No way.
The right-wing magazines cover the actions of their right-wing allies, plus those gatherings and books. While the progressive media mostly ignores reviewing progressive books and what citizen groups are driving for against corporate power in Washington, DC, and at the state level. The Progressive media prefers publishing their opinions and exposé pieces. That’s one reason why there are more non-fiction right-wing corporatist books which become best sellers, while progressive tomes gather dust.
Further weakening the energy gap in favor of the GOP are the Democrats who look for scapegoats like the Greens to account for their disgraceful losses. They rarely look at themselves in the mirror. Democrats like Norman Solomon (See, Roots Action) issue “autopsy reports” following Party defeats. The 2017 report documented the Democratic Party’s arrogant, entrenched leadership which ignores the progressive base.
After the November 5th debacle, have you heard about mass resignations by Democrats responsible for this victory by the convicted felon, chronic liar, bigot, corrupt, phony promisor Trump? Well, the DNC chair, Jamie Harrison is resigning but that is pro forma. Other Democratic leaders are still on board at the state and federal level, in addition to, astonishingly enough, the failed corporate political/media consultants who enriched themselves while wasting away the biggest flood of campaign money in American history on the Kamala Harris campaign.
Younger Democrats who raise the need to displace the failed Democratic apparatchiks, and who want popular vigorous progressive agendas, as espoused by the naturally popular Senator Bernie Sanders, get ignored or worse pushed out of contention, visibility and, importantly, respect.
The Party’s losing elders have assured the absence of farm teams, of successors. Speaker Pelosi and her deputy Rep. Steny Hoyer are experts at this geriatric supremacy despite their track record of losing to the aggressive Republican plutocrats. Energy counts, matters and wins the political battles. There isn’t even any adrenaline around the Dems’ capillaries.
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
Start small - big pharma can no longer advertise, just like big tobacco can not. That will change much of the narrative as news outlets (sic) will no longer receive 75% of their income pushing unnecessary drugs. Maybe they will do some actual reporting.
Next up - you can no longer work for any outfit you've "regulated". No more retiring from the government service just to jump over to the MIC. That has to stop. While we're there, any government employee who works from home is instantly fired - let them try to sue for their pension.
Finally, term limits and election reform. You can not donate money to anyone that you can't vote for—period. This would be followed by term limits in the Senate and House, and that would remove a fair chunk of the problems.
CRYPTOCURRENCY ENTREPRENEUR WHO BOUGHT BANANA ART FOR $6.2 MILLION EATS IT
by Kanis Leung
HONG KONG (AP) — A cryptocurrency entrepreneur who bought a piece of conceptual art consisting of a simple banana, duct-taped to a wall, for $6.2 million last week ate the fruit in Hong Kong on Friday.
Chinese-born Justin Sun peeled off the duct tape and enjoyed the banana in a press conference held in The Peninsula Hong Kong, one of the city’s priciest hotels, in the popular shopping district of Tsim Sha Tsui.
“It tastes much better than other bananas. Indeed, quite good,” he said.…
ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT
by Robert Frost
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
ACTS V. OMISSIONS
by Nicholas Reed Langen
Under English common law, you have no duty to act. An ordinary person cannot be held liable for something that happened because they chose to do nothing. If you are walking beside a lake on a summer evening, hear cries of “help!” and notice a swimmer flailing their arms, you are under no legal obligation to do anything. You do not have to call for help or throw them a lifebuoy, let alone dive into the water to save them. You could idle on the shore and watch them slip beneath the surface, for all an English court would hold you accountable.
This principle applies not only to ordinary citizens, but also to those explicitly charged with the protection of the public. The police and other emergency services are under no special obligation to act. If a police officer stood by and watched the swimmer drown, the courts would come to the same conclusion – so long as the officer didn’t make the situation worse.
In a recent case, Tindall v. Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police, the Supreme Court was “faced with a claim … which raises in acute form a question about precisely where the dividing line falls between failing to protect a person from harm and making matters worse.” On 4 March 2014, the police were called to the scene of an accident on a rural A-road in Buckinghamshire. Mark Kendall had skidded on black ice, losing control of his car and veering into a ditch. He extricated himself and signaled to other vehicles to alert them the danger before calling the emergency services.
When the police arrived, they interviewed Kendall, breathalyzed him and handed him over to an ambulance crew. They put out a “Police: Slow” sign, swept the road and requested a gritter to spred grit for road traction. They then picked up their sign and left. Black ice was still all over the road. An hour after the first accident, another car skidded on the ice. This time, the driver, Carl Bird, careened across the road, colliding head-on with another car, being driven by Malcolm Tindall. Both were travelling at about 50 mph. The two drivers died almost instantly.
As with any death that occurs on the constabulary’s watch, the officers’ conduct was examined by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The commission concluded that there was a case for gross negligence manslaughter and misconduct in public office, and referred it to the CPS. They declined to prosecute. A disciplinary tribunal found two of the officers guilty of misconduct and one of gross misconduct. After an inquest recorded a narrative verdict that the police “should” have done more, the widow of one of the victims, Valerie Tindall, sued Thames Valley Police in the civil courts for negligence.
Even if you accept the distinction between “failing to protect” and “making matters worse” that the courts have maintained since 1941, Valerie Tindall should have had a good case. Before the police arrived, Mark Kendall had been trying to alert other drivers to the ice that he’d skidded on. When the emergency vehicles were on the scene, their blue lights, as well as the “Police: Slow” sign, served as a warning to other drivers. But when the officers left, well aware of the risk still posed by the black ice and knowing that a gritter could still be some time away, they took the only safety precaution with them.
In their defense, the officers claimed that they had no proper training in road traffic accidents. It should not take formal training to realize that removing warning signs from dangerous roads will expose drivers to unnecessary risk. But they did not need even this defense. Overruling the Court of Appeal, which had found the officers negligent, the Supreme Court exonerated them. The officers were guilty of an omission, not an act. According to a unanimous court, the officers had done nothing to make the scene more dangerous or to expose drivers to extra risk. They left the road in the same state in which they had found it.
This follows the precedent set by the Supreme Court in the fatal case of Michael v. Chief Constable of South Wales Police. Joanna Michael called 999 from her mobile phone at 2.30 a.m. on 5 August 2009 to say that her ex-boyfriend had turned up at her house in Cardiff, where she lived with her two young children, and attacked her. She had been with another man, whom her ex was now driving home. But he would be back “any minute literally.”
The call was picked up by a neighboring force, Gwent Police, who graded it as a G1 call, requiring an immediate police response, and passed it on to South Wales Police. But they graded it as G2, requiring a response within an hour. Less than fifteen minutes later, a second call was made from Joanna Michael’s mobile. The operator heard a scream and the line went dead. A rapid response vehicle was sent to the house, arriving eight minutes later to find Michael dead from multiple stab wounds.
Her parents sued the police for negligence. The Supreme Court justices, by a majority of 5-2, rejected their appeal:
The duty of the police for the preservation of the peace is owed to members of the public at large, and does not involve the kind of close or special relationship (“proximity” or “neighborhood”) necessary for the imposition of a private law duty of care.
If the call handlers had prioritized Joanna Michael’s call correctly and officers had rushed to the scene but still arrived too late to save her, it would be hard to blame the police, just as it would if the fatal crash on the A413 had occurred before the police got there. But in both cases there is a strong argument that the police failed in their public duty. If officers had set out for Joanna Michael’s house as soon as her first 999 call was received, they would have arrived before her ex-boyfriend returned. The reason they did not – the misgrading of the call as lower priority – was the fault of the police service. The police were at the scene of Malcolm Tindall’s death an hour before he was killed. By removing the caution signs, they placed him, and every other driver, at risk.
When police officers take up their position, they swear an oath to preserve the peace and protect the public. No one expects them to be superheroes, leaping into burning buildings or launching themselves unarmed into the middle of a gunfight – although some officers do sometimes behave with extraordinary bravery. But we ought to be able to expect them to be competent. Expecting the police to respond urgently to a 999 call from someone who is about to be murdered, or to ensure that black ice is flagged to drivers after attending the scene of a road traffic accident, is not imposing a huge burden on the emergency services. It is expecting them to do their jobs.
On Line Comment: Sound comment, except for being a little vague on the Court’s basic distinction, between public duty and private duty. ”Doing their job” is a duty owed to the public, represented by the police service and ultimately the government. You should well expect it to be done competently -- but that doesn’t mean you have a private right to be compensated if they don’t. You're not “the public.” Which brings in the arguments over where to draw that line. British courts seem readier to decide that on principle, as described in the piece, where they used to be more explicit about the policy elements -- which brings in the arguments about the proper role of courts!
Can you give us more details about the life of Charles Willard? He looks like an interesting and thoughtful person. Surely there was more to the story of his life than his parentage.
Ms Golden’s story linking KZYX’s new studio to the Pomo and Wappo is gratuitous.
Guapa/guapo also can mean handsome, angry or bully. Settlers rarely used complements to describe the people whose land they were taking. Indio is often used as denigrating name.
CNN article in July, 2024:
“State Farm is seeking increases of as much as 52% for some of its residential insurance rates in California, which could ramp up the financial burden for many homeowners and renters in the state’s troubled insurance market.”
I just got a bill from State Farm that almost exactly doubled last year’s premium.
A 100% increase!
No change in coverage. No claims.
No explanation.
How about you?
This is a reflection of the disparity between the sizes of the mega yachts owned by insurance industry executives vs other industries such as gas & oil, automobile (Tesla), communication (ATT), big pharma, etc. It is a natural market correction in a capitalist economy and is long overdue, especially in an industry regulated as much as the insurance industry is in California. Can’t wait for our country to be rid of all odious regulations and let the free market reign supreme. Trumps cabinet pick’s will help remove the obstacles to hard working capitalists, investors, and under appreciated billionaires getting just compensation for their hard work…..
You are so right, Jurgen. I once painted a ranch in Boulder for an insurance exec’s son, a playboy who had grown weary of sailing around in fancy yachts and collecting artifacts and status symbols. The scion had converted the barns to garages for his motor homes and rec vehs, restored classic cars and such, and hired local beauty queens to help with his daily online shopping. His wife wandered by one day and remarked “I don’t know why we have all those cows.” It was another status symbol, and he hired a couple of local guys for ranch hands to look after them. Hugely under appreciated for all the hard work he did— the contractor billed him $38 per hr for my services but only paid me 7.25 per hr. I had to call the rich boy client and threaten him with a lawyer to get paid my last measly check, just before Christmas — so let’s also drink to those selfless wannabe insurance mogals, the small business owners who so religiously kept my wages down to seven dollars and change for the last fifty goddamn years. Hear! Hear! Bumpers all around for small business owners!
I came downstairs and heard Bill singing. “Irony and pity, give them irony and pity”
—Jake Barnes, The Sun Also Rises
The article by Victoria Golden is interesting. She mentions the Nokomis school area as a possible Pomo village site. She quotes Marvin T as seeing salmon in neighboring Doolin Creek in the late ‘50’s. I was a Nokomis student and saw a salmon in the creek in 1965 or ‘66. Regarding the potential village site this is from The Ethnogeography of the Pomo, by Samuel Barrett 1908.
co’kadjal just north of the ranch house on the Rhodes ranch at a point about four miles and a half south-southeast of Ukiah. There was formerly a small pond at this place which was situated just west of the hop kiln and the ranch house, and it was on the east or northeast shore of this pond that the village was located. This was the largest of the yo’kiaia villages and the largest village in the southern part of Ukiah valley. It appears that this village and ta’tem were the only two in this immediate vicinity which might properly be called permanent villages, although there were various others which were more or less continuously inhabited, but the people of the other villages seemed to consider these two as their real homes and it was here, particularly at co’kadjal, that large gatherings for ceremonial and other purposes were held.
After what is known as the Bloody Island massacre at Clear Lake in 1850, when a detachment of troops under Captain Lyons visited that region to avenge the so-called Stone and Kelsey massacre and succeeded in killing a large number of Indians who had taken refnge on Bloody Island, the detachment of troops crossed the divide into Russian river valley and killed many Indians there. Among the other places visited was co’kadjal, where, upon being met with a slight show of resistance, they killed, according to information obtained from Indians who escaped, about seventy five.
While the description of co’kadjal does not exactly fit the Nokomis school site, it was likely the main source for what might have been a seasonal village in that part of the valley.
Awoke early and went directly to the Washington, D.C. Peace Vigil, and supplied breakfast. Viewed the huge parade reviewing stands in front of the White House. Are gladiator games next? Took the Metro to Pentagon City for a fabulous shrimp and blue crab omelette at Chevy’s, then rode back to Chinatown. Bought a ginseng drink (with the root in the bottle) at the shop above Chinatown Liquors (where the lottery tickets are sold). Am tap, tap, tapping away at the MLK Public Library on a guest computer here and now. Not a care, not a single care. ~Happy Holidays~
Craig Louis Stehr
Adams Place Homeless Shelter
2210 Adams Place NE #1
Washington, D.C. 20018
Telephone: (202) 832-8317
Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com
November 30th, 2024 A.D.
I fully agree with Online Comment about prohibiting TV commercials for prescription drugs. I am also in agreement with no donation to any politician you can’t vote for. Those 2 things alone would make a difference, methinks.
Jolly good to hear from you. Ms Houston! I fondly recall a case you prosecuted, asking the jury to deliberate on how John Wayne would have handled the situation— And then I heard Willie Nelson’s song, “Come on back, Jesus … and pick up old John Wayne on the way…” Made my day.
St Andrew Day
Ads for Rx drugs are really sneaky.
Take ’em on Kitty, it just big pharma, big media and the medical industry.
My oldest sister has worked in the medical field her entire career as a RN and a surgery nurse. She warned me about the opioid crisis long ago when the medical field moved towards pain maintenance.
Another friend, a physician told me pain is a portion of life just like joy and happiness. Sometimes we see people attempted to remove the pain and inadvertently remove every good feeling and emotion right along with it.
I think there is something to that.