Mendocino County Today: Thursday 12/19/2024

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): On the coast this Thursday morning I have 43F under clear skies. Be careful along the shore today as we have a sneaker wave hazard alert in place. 2 more dry days then a rainy Christmas week gets underway Saturday.

MILD AND CALMER conditions will continue today before a strong frontal system brings heavy rain and strong southerly winds to the area Friday night into Saturday. Additional atmospheric river storms are expected to arrive in quick succession into next week. (NWS)

BILL ALLEN

(Nancy Allen Updates Us On The Present Condition Of The Signal Ridge Man badly injured in a local car accident a couple of years ago.)

He is on his way to the place in Petaluma that we have been hoping he can go to. A little over a week ago he had his trache tube removed - this is a BIG step. It's also been scary for him! He is now in a facility not far from where he's been the last two years that is very large, 150 patients compared to 24 (the whole hospital had a lot more, but his ward had only 24 mostly very quiet patients. Here, there are people all over in the halls, walking or moving around in their wheelchairs, and some can be quite… vocal.

So, he still cannot move, eat or talk, but he is breathing totally on his own, and enjoys watching movies, and being read to, looking at pictures, etc. He can wiggle toes and fingers, occasionally move an arm or leg. We are still very hopeful for a great recovery. We are waiting for the admissions person at Vineyard Post Acute in Petaluma to figure out what sort of Medicare he has left. She thinks it's more than merely custodial care, but is having a hard time figuring it out.

Everybody has to report everything, but the reports are not always complete. All the reports she initially got said nothing at all about a car accident! I had to find a doc's report on that and send it to her! I guess she just couldn't find information from the first two places he was in.

But even if it is just “custodial care” the place in Petaluma will be much better for his continued healing, as well as much better for me! It will save an hour drive time on those rare occasions when I get to go home; and I will be able to walk to the facility from the home of my friend who has a room all ready for me to stay in. That will save me an hour of driving every day, so I can spend more time with Bill, and get some exercise, as well as save on gas. Plus, our acupuncturist is in Petaluma, who also does other kinds of work which has been very beneficial. He has a few patients in the Bay Area, so he comes down once a week and works on Bill, though he is not allowed to do acupuncture on him at the hospital. But once we're in Petaluma, that changes. And I guess we will have to fund-raise again to pay for more rehabilitation. The basic offering is petty mundane.

FROM WOODLANDS WILDLIFE:

Anyone know anything about a rabid fox in Little River?

It's a rumor. Someone was frightened by a fox, they said they were attacked but not injured in any way. I believe it was daytime, but foxes are often out and about during the day when they can't find enough food at night. The person called F&Game and they came out and shot the fox. F&Game is not qualified to give a diagnosis (until testing is complete). Why, or if the person was approaching a sick fox was never revealed. Any sick animal that couldn't run would snarl and snap at an approaching human. It takes at least a month, possibly more, to test for rabies, and distemper is very common in our area, rabies is extremely rare. An animal ill with distemper will show the same symptoms.

In any case, it's always important to protect our pets. Have them vaccinated, Highway 20 Feed offers vaccination clinics. Never feed them outside, always bring them and their dishes inside to feed them, then put the animal outside. Also pets should be confined to a safe shelter during the night. We do have mountain lions all over the coast. A dog run or enclosure is not a safe shelter unless it has chain link or wood fencing over top. The very act of eating outside leaves enough scent and tiny particles of food to attract wildlife, especially this year when the rain has created a lack of their natural food (except deer). The many visitors bringing unvaccinated dogs into our area have exposed (and killed) much of our wildlife to distemper, which is carried in the urine and feces.

Ronnie James (ronnie@mcn.com)

WARM 'EM UP

You can drop off clean Warm/winter clothing for those who need them - at the Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center at the corner of Franklin and Oak Streets - the former Old Coast Hotel or at the Hospitality House, 237 N McPherson Street.

Purity Market in Fort Bragg (across from P.O.) collects and and distributes them…

Hospitality House in FB will accept them and distribute to the needy. They are very nice to work with.

The Mendocino Rotarians are collecting.

Contact rotarian Jeff Stubbs at 937-6026

Ananse Village, Hwy 1, south of FB

The Methodist church at Corry St. and Laurel in Fort Bragg distributes food to the homeless every Saturday and also distributes warm clothing.

Project Sanctuary always accepts items theu dropoff t the Fort Bragg Food Bank.

AV FIRST RESPONDER ANNUAL AWARD WINNERS FOR 2024

Rookie of the Year - Silvano Osornio

Engineer -Josh Mathias

Outstanding Leadership - Gideon Burdick

Ambulance operator - Antoinette Von Grone

Firefighter - Jareth Guzman

EMT - Thom Elkjer

KZYX

Note: Year-end is a natural time to look back at the past with gratitude and ahead to the future with optimism. In that spirit, on behalf of the Mendocino County Public Broadcasting Board of Directors I want to thank Rich Culbertson for his many years of dedicated service to our community as Director of Operations. We wish him well. Second, we send thanks and best wishes to Victor Palomino, KZYX Program Director and bilingual reporter for three years, who has moved to a new job in Minnesota. Looking ahead, we welcome to the broadcast team Andre de Channes, who brings decades of radio experience to his position as the new KZYX Director of Operations.

We welcome Andre de Channes (pronounced “de-shan”) as the new Director of Operations for KZYX. Andre brings to the position valuable knowledge and experience from his 23 years as the Operations Manager for the five radio stations of Santa Rosa-based Wine Country Radio (KRSH, KSXY, KNOB, KXTS, and KSXY-HD2). He was also their Music and Program Director, and morning show host for the heritage Roots-Americana radio station KRSH (the Krush 95.9).

Also a musician, Andre told The KZYX Connector that he can be found doing solo guitar gigs at venues around Northern California, and with Tribal Hippie UnderGround Zone (The THUGZ) or sitting in with musical friends.

Andre had to hit the ground running on his first day at KZYX, December 11, because of a perfect storm of technical issues resulting in periodic dead air. His report on his first three days (posted on kzyx.org) may be interesting to audiophiles and educational to all listeners. It details his troubleshooting of the following problems, among others, in collaboration with Radio Engineer Brian Henry and Production Director Eddie Haehl: backing up a failed transmitter in Ft. Bragg; repairing the failed Wheatstone Blade at the Philo Studio that conveys audio from all sources; restoring the USB audio interface for the Air-PC; and analyzing Internet-related issues with the tie-line. Listeners will be glad to know that a silence sensor has been ordered that will automatically switch to a different pre-programmed stream when it senses dead air and switch back to the main programming channel when it senses that audio is back on that channel.

Welcome to the team, Andre!

‘A HARVEST FOR THE AGES’: NORTH COAST CANNABIS GROWERS REPORT BOUNTIFUL CROP

After enduring industry challenges, cannabis farmers in Sonoma, Mendocino and Humboldt counties reveal why 2024 was a success.

by Susan Wood

With Glentucky Farms grower Mike Benziger calling it “a harvest for the ages,” North Bay cannabis industry stakeholders rejoiced over a hot summer and fall that spurred rapid plant growth this year.

“It was incredible. The bud development was like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” said the Glen Ellen farmer known for his blue ribbon La Bomba strain.

“It’s the best season I could have remembered, starting out good and getting better,” Benziger said of a season that typically ends in November.

June and July were considered good, and August was deemed “amazing.”

“For five to seven days, we had buds triple in size,” Benziger said, adding even October’s hot days required using a shade cloth. “It’s the first time I’ve ever covered my cannabis plants.”

Benziger discussed the bounty at a panel discussion hosted on Dec. 12 by Solful CEO Eli Melrod at his new retail outlet in Healdsburg. The discussion was also part of a podcast hosted by Seattle-based cannabis website Leafly’s Editor and Producer David Downs, who referred to the harvest time as the “peak of perfection.”

The panel chatted about the robust growing season, supply-and-demand, pricing, local government and the growers’ favorite strains. A strain is a variation of cannabis that differs in appearance, aroma and effect.

Alpenglow Farms owners Craig and Melanie Johnson touted Blue Dream as part of the culture in southern Humboldt County, situated in the heart of the Emerald Triangle.

Mendocino County’s Mark Greenshock of Green Shock Farms and Sandra Khandhanian, who owns Moon Gazer Farms, also weighed in.

When asked how growers and retailers balance planting the old favorites versus something new, most agreed the farmers will often work off a base that’s succeeded in the past.

“There are a lot of wizards out there. You just got to adapt. You do something you love, but you also want to try something new. I say: ‘Do a row,’” Khandhanian said.

All agreed the season provided strains of exceptional quality. Growers are like chemists. They learn how to produce excellence as they go.

To ensure that at a retail level, Melrod referred to the process as “curating” the inventory.

He was a little less enthusiastic about the government’s take.

“Taxes are still really high,” he said, adding an average of 30% on a purchase imposed by local and state government. That part of the conversation morphed into “What can local government do?”

From grower to retailer, the pressures have mounted in the last four years among legal cannabis providers through the supply chain as they compete with an illicit market that undercuts their prices and pays no taxes.

Benziger calling the challenges “a roll of the dice, “ affecting whether businesses will return each year.

The celebration of this year’s growing season has a downside since it results in a supply glut. When this happens, wholesale prices drops

For a California industry measuring $5.1 billion in sales last year, the wholesale price per pound for indoor, premium, large-bud grows year over year has dropped by over 23% to $942, according to the Cannabis Business Times. But for outdoor, it has increased in the last year by over 50%, climbing to $462 per pound.

The volume and value of cannabis grown is listed in county crops reports. For Sonoma County, outdoor grows amounting to 5,583 pounds accounted for $15.3 million over 12 acres harvested. Indoor cultivation sites bringing in 15,899 pounds represented almost $10 million.

From Garberville to Healdsburg to Sonoma Valley to the Petaluma Gap, growers and other enthusiasts remain optimistic.

Joyce Cenalli, of Sonoma Hills Farms outside Petaluma, said the volume of cured flower has grown by 12% this year (although she declined to provide exact numbers).

The flower “tested well” and the team on the farm processed 28 different genetics, with the famed Cherry Cheesecake strain.

“We’re super happy,” she said.

Erich Pearson, who runs SPARC dispensary in Sonoma and cultivates cannabis, provided a similar reaction as a nod to the Northern California climate.

“The key is cannabis outdoor,” he said. Pearson has brought back a new twist to the customer favorite Glitter Bomb.

“It’s got good nose appeal,” he said.

Pearson just wrapped up harvesting his two acres.

“It’s been a great season. The weather has held up well,” he said.

(North Bay Business Journal)

YOUR BANNER HERE

Dear Community Members,

We are excited to offer a unique opportunity to support Anderson Valley High School Athletics through tax-deductible sponsorship banners displayed on our tennis court fences. These banners serve a dual purpose—providing netting for the courts while offering excellent advertising visibility from Mountain View and Airport roads throughout the year. Your contribution will directly fund costs such as officials, tournament fees, team awards, and other sports-related expenses. These are costs not covered by the AV sports boosters and must be raised by the school.

We have multiple sponsorship options available:

Small Banner (4x7): $400 initial cost, $200 annual renewal

Large Banner (8x14): $1,200 initial cost, $400 annual renewal

Massive Banner (8x50): $3,200 initial cost, $1,200 annual renewal fee

This is a great way to promote your business or organization while supporting our student-athletes and the Anderson Valley community.

We will apply a UV coating annually upon receiving the renewal fee to protect the banners.

Thank you for considering this opportunity to invest in our athletics program.

To secure your banner or ask any questions, please contact our athletic director John Toohey at jtoohey@avpanthers.org

You can also fill out the form here:

https://forms.gle/Exmpbj2ojko3njsGA

Checks should be made out to: Anderson valley High School

Memo Line: “Tennis Banner”

Mail checks to: Anderson Valley High School. PO Box 130. Boonville, CA 95415

MENDOCINO COAST BOTANICAL GARDENS

A few years ago, I was listening to a lighthearted local radio show where callers sell things, buy things, and barter, when a women named Jennifer called in to ask if there was anyone listening from the Botanical Gardens. Well yes, I thought, there is.

Her family had placed a memorial bench for her aunt by the creek. Jennifer does not live nearby; she was hoping someone could record the sound of the creek so she could re-experience the magic of that spot. After locating the creek side bench and connecting with Jennifer, we were able to send her a recording of Fern Canyon Creek. It is a lovely reminder of how much the Gardens can mean to people and the many ways we can share those moments with each other.

What is your favorite memory of the Gardens? Was it the first time you turned the corner to see the dahlias full blast? Seeing friends or family light up when you brought them as first-time visitors? Experiencing the child-like joy as the volcano erupts at Festival of Lights? Discovering mini lupines on the bluffs and returning for a visit every year?

The Gardens is so much more than plants and sea. It becomes part of our collective experience.

Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens welcomes up to 100,000 visitors each year. During the busy season, more than twenty-six staff and seventy active volunteers work to make the Gardens more beautiful every day. As a non-profit, we rely solely on public support. Without our visitors, members, and donors, we could not exist. Please give as generously as you can this winter to ensure the Gardens continues to flourish and remain a place rich in experiences and memories for us all.

We thank you for your support,
Molly Barker
Executive Director, Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens

STRATEGIC PLANS AND THE INSURANCE CEO’S MURDER

by Jim Shields

Got a kick out of the December 17th Board of Supervisors agenda. Under the heading for the County Executive Officer’s report, was the following caption: “In May 2022, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors approved the first five-year strategic plan that will help guide the critical decisions the Board of Supervisors will face over the next five years with the ultimate goal of improving the quality of life for County residents. Departmental reporting will align with the strategic plan. Click HERE to download the Strategic Plan.”

When I clicked on the hyperlink for the strategic plan, there was nothing there.

Which has always been my opinion regarding the value of “strategic plans”:

There’s nothing there and never has been.

Reminds me of the old Soviet Union back in the 1970s when the Politburo announced they had just approved their Tenth Five-Year Plan, which was a new set of goals designed to strengthen the country’s economy and would be the very best Five-Year Plan ever.

The question that people from Western countries asked was, “What the hell happened with the first Nine of their Five Year Plans?”

Could ask the very same question here in Mendoland.

Over the years, multiple Boards of Supervisors have talked about various plans, vision statements, mission statements, and abstruse gobbledygook.

I don’t claim to know everything, or even close to everything about the political and governing processes, but I do know and can recognize fairly quickly when things aren’t working right. And here in Mendocino County, more often than not things just don’t work right.

I’ve also learned over the years that most folks understand and believe that our government is truly “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Nowadays they don’t have very high expectations of those people we elect to represent us. It’s a fact that most people are happy if elected officials and their support staff of bureaucrats practice the physicians’ oath of “Do no harm.”

Most politicians today don’t comprehend that there’s a reason why that Great Spirit In The Sky endowed all of us with two ears but just one mouth: Stop talking and start listening to the people you represent.

It’s impossible not to recognize the seemingly institutional dysfunction in the governing process of this county. Too many elected officials and “public servants” who are classified as department heads, middle management, and “staff,” go out of their way to create problems when their main goal and purpose is to provide basic services to the public and solve problems when they arise.

The Supervisors don’t understand their role as elected officials. Elected officials are supposed to carry out the wishes/demands of clear majorities of constituents unless what they’re asking is unlawful or totally unfeasible, neither of which are applicable with 99.9% of the issues they deal with. It’s not the Supervisor’s job to substitute their judgment for that of their constituents when those constituents overwhelmingly demand a different course of action than that contemplated by the Supervisors.

Out of the current BOS incumbents, District 3 Supervisor John Haschak comes closest to understanding these principles, but his colleagues have a long way go.

Here’s a short list of unsolved problems extant in this county that need to be resolved ASAP:

Settle the civil litigation over the illegal removal of elected Treasurer-Tax Collector/Auditor- Controller Chemise Cubbison.
Take formal action to rescind the County Counsel’s and Cannabis Department’s “default” opinions regarding illegal expansion of weed cultivation.
Order an audit of all county homeless, substance abuse, and mental health programs administered by its private-public and private sector providers.

The CEO Killing

Over the years I’ve maintained that Consumer Watchdog (CW), is this country’s preeminent consumer protection organization. Their organization has and continues to carry on the fight against corporate gouging, price-fixing, and other illegal monopolistic practices that economically adversely impact the citizen-consumer.

I’ve written recently about Watchdog’s battles with the state of California over the immediate need for greater public oversight of the insurance industry.

This week, CW’s executive director Jamie Court wrote an outstanding piece on the psychopathic jackass who murdered the CEO of an insurance corporation. Shamefully, internet idiots and mental pygmies piled on social media extolling a cold-blooded killer as some kind of

Speaking as someone who led working people in the Labor Movement (and continues to represent their interests to this day), I can tell you in my many battles with corporate CEOs, the thought never crossed my mind to assassinate any of them for what they represented, although I was tempted on a number of occasions to bust a few of them on the chops.

Might still doesn’t make right, it is the law of the jungle though.

Here’s some of Consumer Watchdog’s Jamie Court’s thoughts on the issue:

The Killing Of A Unitedhealthcare Executive Won’t Improve Anyone’s Insurance

Last week’s shocking killing of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive, Brian Thompson, reopened a national wound inflicted by the delay and denial of health coverage to countless Americans.

This was a violent crime that won’t solve anything. But the ensuing organic and spontaneous outpouring of populist anger underscored how many Americans have been cruelly and unjustly denied medical treatment.

After an election that showed widespread discontent with the status quo, this should be a wake-up call for Washington. Despite progress on healthcare coverage and rights, protecting American patients is unfinished business.

In the 1990s, California pioneered a patients’ rights movement that gave those covered by HMOs a right to second opinions, independent medical reviews of coverage denials and guaranteed coverage of certain commonly denied procedures. Many states adopted California’s model, and President Obama’s Affordable Care Act took important steps to insure the uninsured and prevent companies from denying coverage to people who want it. But America’s patients never got equitable access to justice when claims are denied. People who buy their own insurance or get it through a government job or program such as Medicare have the right to sue for damages if they believe they have been harmed by an unreasonable denial. But most of us get health insurance through our jobs and have no such right to go to court, no matter how outrageous the denial or tragic the consequences. More than 100 million Americans have no legal recourse if a health insurance company messes up our claim.

In the 1987 case Pilot Life Insurance Co. vs. Dedeaux, the Supreme Court ruled that people with employer-provided coverage do not have a right to sue their insurer for damages but rather only for the value of the denied benefit. If the covered person dies, any suit is rendered moot.

Despite many attempts to change this, including through Obamacare, the ruling has stood. That’s why insurance companies often act as if they have a license to kill: They face scant legal consequences for any harm they cause by delaying or denying payment for needed care.

This shouldn’t be hard. Congress — whose members do enjoy a right to sue over denials of their own health insurance claims — has many options for limiting the extent of insurers’ exposure to lawsuits, such as making them liable only when they show gross indifference to a patient’s suffering.

Insurance companies pay attention to whether patients can take them to court. At least one company, Aetna, even had a training tape showing how to process claims differently for those with and without a right to sue.

If insurance companies have no legal incentive to approve a claim, they will too often deny or delay it. It’s time for Congress to restore the possibility of justice for millions and answer the urgent calls for reform.

(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, observer@pacific.net, the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org)

ED NOTES

A MENTAL HEALTH professional describes the County's mental health effort: “Law enforcement is now and always will be the first responders when a mental health crisis goes bad. Long gone — except in the three or four big psychiatric hospitals — are the days of the big, white-suited psych techs who wrestle the person to the ground and whomp him or her with an injection of thorazine. County mental health crisis staff, i.e. low-wage workers, are prohibited to do a take down. Law enforcement keeps bringing in indigents with no MediCal who are psychotic from drug or alcohol abuse. County mental health has no funds for direct response and is not equipped to do anything for these people. The state psych hospitals require testing for drugs before a client can be admitted and will not accept anyone who tests positive. Right now in this county the jail is all there is for the “non-reimburseables.” Sheriff Kendall runs a good jail; incarcerated inmates have few complaints. In jail, under medical supervision, they detox. We need the mental health staff in the jail to provide follow-up case management. County government is, as you know, run by nincompoops so the County is applying its hiring freeze to positions fully funded by outside sources. The jail has had an outside-funded mental health position vacant for two years.”

JEALOUSY, the kid asked. What is it? The definitive analysis of that crippling mental condition was written nearly 150 years ago by Anthony Trollope in a novel called, ‘He Knew He Was Right.’ If anybody's defined it better, let me know. Another Trollope novel applying directly to the collapse of criminal capitalism we are presently witnessing is called, ‘The Way We Live Now.’ If you don't have the time or the patience for long novels, the Masterpiece Theater productions of Trollope novels are truly excellent, true to the master work and wonderfully acted.

THE PERSONAL TOUCH. Picked up a pair of glasses from Costco the other day. This card tumbled out of the case: “Certificate of Authenticity. Congratulations on your purchase of Costco's Premium Anti-Reflective Lens Treatment.” I looked around for the presenter with my trophy. Alas, no ceremony. But think of it! A corporate clap on the back for simply buying the cheapest pair of reading glasses I could find!

A READER WRITES: “Please clarify, if you're able, your confused remarks about the economy. Did you mean you think nationalization of the banks won't work?”

AS AN, ahem, generalist, I have no specialized knowledge of economics, or anything else for that matter. I read those economists who share my biases against capitalism as the linchpin of social organization, but I don't know anything more about our fatally indebted economy than you do. I'm sure Obama’s 2008 nationalization/bailout of the banks worked swell for the people who own and run them, but giving privately owned banks billions of public dollars to keep the rest of us employed with full wallets of credit cards so we can keep on driving around buying stuff? That won't work, long term, and we're being robbed unto the tenth generation besides! You don't need an economist to figure that out. Anyway, driving around buying lots of stuff is way over. They deliver the stuff to you!

FROM HERE ON it's strictly lowered expectations for higher costs which, if the transition is more or less serene, will be good for both the human and natural ecology. The insane acquisitiveness that drives half of us half nuts, and the rest of us to self medication, being no longer viable, we'll withdraw back into our families and to small communities like Boonville where we'll all have backyards full of chickens, cucumbers and cannabis, where we know each other and help each other out. Of course this is the rosy view. We may just as well be headed into a period of mass dislocations, roving bands of the armed desperate, and food riots, and from there quickly on into the militant fascism that industrial ruling classes always resort to when things get uncomfortable for them but unbearable for us.

MYSELF, I lowered my expectations fifty years ago when, in a flash of precocious insight never repeated, I concluded that I'd make a virtue of my already apparent unemployability, that I would permanently lower my expectations, that I'd substitute travel books for travel, home food for restaurants, thrift stores for clothing, solitude for society, walking and push-ups for exercise, a slug of Maker's Mark when things went awry. I knew that everything I'd learned in school was either wrong or unhealthy, a slam-dunk death ticket if it were taken seriously. No sir, the beatniks of my youth put me on the correct path.

THE HIPPIES & COWBOYS OF MENDOCINO COUNTY

by Keely Covello

When 85 year-old rancher Richard Drewry was killed, I shot an investigative documentary about his case and the changes in my hometown. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.

Richard ‘Dick’ Grayson Drewry was a cattle rancher who lived in Humboldt County, California. He was 85 years old when he was found murdered execution-style outside the home his pioneer grandparents built.

On the morning of January 26, 2021, his still-running blue Ford Explorer was found on a remote stretch of Bell Springs Road. Dick was slumped over the steering wheel, a single gunshot wound to the head, blood still dripping in the wet cold hours before a heavy snowfall.

His murder is unsolved.

I was living 500 miles away when I heard about Dick’s death.

My father is the ranch veterinarian for Lake, Humboldt, and Mendocino counties. He drives two hours in any given direction for his ranch calls, in a Dodge Ram pickup truck with a refrigerated vet pack in the bed. I grew up going to work with him. I’d help move cows or hold horses. It was always nice to have the vet’s kids around—extra hands eager to help at zero dollars per hour.

Michaela and I with our parents and brother John, at home in Mendocino County

Many of his clients are ranchers like Dick Drewry; old school with a blue heeler in the truck bed and a gun on the dash. Tough, keen, sharp, self-deprecating. They can tell if a blacktail deer on a distant ridge is legal, they know which parts of the forest to avoid. Over the decades, as the world around them changed, they quietly figured out new ways to navigate the mountains.

Others are back-to-the-landers, or “hippies” as outsiders might call them. Generous and friendly, these are the diehard flower children. They would give us homemade bread, fresh goat’s milk, strawberries from the garden. If the garden had a little fenced-off patch, that’s just another herb. They warned us about processed food and plastic long before such cautions were in vogue on Instagram.

Some of his clients are outlaw growers who came here after the back-to-the-landers changed the culture of the North Coast and legalized cannabis in the “Emerald Triangle” of Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity counties. They were friendly, too. They lived in remote mountain hollows on places like Spy Rock Road, down long rough private driveways. Sometimes we’d come up to a gate, and big men in camo with AR-15s would boil out of the woods to open it for us. They’d give me a nod in the passenger seat. The ranch vet was one of the few outsiders allowed.

To my dad, a father of eight and an elder at the little Bible church in Potter Valley, everyone he meets is a child of God. Growing up poor in the flat and dusty Central Valley, moving to a place as beautiful and wild as this makes him feel like a rich man.

He likes all his clients, sees the humanity in everyone, from the Hollywood motorcycle stunt rider covered in burns from a serious accident who now operates an enormous black market weed operation guarded by pet wolves, to the 80 year-old cowgirl named Billie who saddled up for every gathering and branding at the John Ford Ranch until the day she died.

Billie Drewry was Dick Drewry’s sister-in-law. I never met him, but there are a lot of Drewrys. They are one of our founding pioneer families.

In 2021 I was living in sunny Southern California, working in film, learning to surf. My childhood felt far away. The news of Dick’s death brought me back.

In some of these isolated hollows, you might not know many folks outside your “neighborwoods” even on the same mountain. Like Appalachia, the geography lends itself to outlaw enterprise. You could grow something or brew something in your backyard and no one would find it. There is a sinister and smothering quality to the dense forests and layered hills and it often intimidates outsiders. Fog rolls in from the Pacific Ocean, the giant redwoods and mossy oaks create a shadow world. You can’t see in front of you, you don’t know what’s down the next hill or through the next patch of trees. Anyone could be there, anything. This is where the Bigfoot myth was born. It’s logical to believe something supernatural lurks here.

For years we all saw and felt a dark new presence, but I told myself it would stay in the shadows. The sanguine coexistence of the hippies and the cowboys and the outlaws would go on. We would keep our common ground, overlook the rest.

Dick Drewry’s murder disturbed that illusion. It seemed our world had collided with something new, something I had never encountered face-to-face in all my years growing up in Mendocino County.

Cartels in California

“It sure looks like a hit to me.”

On a rainy day in Eureka, where rain is its most oppressive and gray, I was in the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office with my sister Michaela and a film crew—Ryan Francis, cinematographer and editor, and producer Graham Kelley.

It was 2024, three years since the murder, with no answers to the questions I asked anyone who would listen. Picturing my father in his pickup hours outside of cell phone service, I’d check local news websites, call friends and ask for updates, even the latest rumors. I reached out to the local FBI office, hoping to clarify the whispers I kept hearing about cartels and organized crime moving in, infesting themselves deeper in the remote mountains, getting bolder, more aggressive. Then I was accepted to the Palladium Pictures documentary film incubator in Washington, D.C., the chance to make a short film. I went home with a camera crew to look into Dick’s murder. Whatever we found out, there would be a story.

“It has all the Hollywood makings of a hit,” Sheriff William Honsal is saying. We’re looking at pictures of the crime scene: the pitiful Explorer in the snow, driver’s side window rolled down.

Sheriff Honsal is about 6 foot 4, well spoken. He made time for an interview that day after a taxing weekend dealing with a pro-Gaza protest at Humboldt State University. I know he has rubbed some locals wrong because of his outspoken political views. I’ve also noticed that all the peace-and-love hippie towns around here have started hiring real hardass conservative sheriffs.

Sheriff William Honsal of Humboldt County is echoing the predominant rumor in town. Most locals I’ve spoken to believe Dick Drewry was killed by some member of foreign organized crime. Some say he shot a dog who was harassing his cattle, and the dog belonged to a Bulgarian crime boss who put a hit on Dick’s life.

“Once people started recognizing that there's money to be made in marijuana, and it all has to do with scale, it just blew up up here,” Honsal says. “Then we started seeing the organized crime move in.”

I’ve had friends ordered to turn around and leave by men with guns while hiking on public land. While hunting or horseback riding, I have stumbled into large-scale grow operations complete with elaborate drip systems ripping water from the Eel River watershed, fragrant with chemical pesticides and fertilizers.

“We've seen Bulgarians, Russians, the Chinese moving in and trying to take over the illegal industry here,” Honsal says, “It's not just marijuana. We’ve seen our homicide rate go sky high, as well as human trafficking, labor trafficking, sex trafficking. You look at this and go, this got to be a third world country. No, this is Northern California, this is what's going on.”

Old Timers and the Green Gold Rush

Katie Delbar is a rancher in Potter Valley. I’ve known her since I was born. I grew up with her daughter, Kayla, a good friend.

“I never heard him say an ill word about anyone, he was just a kind, kind person.” We’re sitting at the big kitchen table in her dining room. She shows me photos of her dad, Jim Eddie, with Dick Drewry.

Jim is 89 now. Talking about his friend’s death pains him.

“It’s sad as hell.” Like Dick, Jim has been a rancher all his life. “If I had money, I’d put a reward out but it’d have to be big enough to get people to talk and I can’t do that.”

I ask if things have gotten worse in town.

“This is a different group of people here now,” says Katie. “People in the 60s who grew illegally were different. Now we have people from all over the country, all over the world, you hear 3-4 languages when you go to town. They’re here for one reason: To make money.”

We look at a photo in one of the photo books of a group of boys on their bikes.

“This is the crew,” Jim smiles. He looks at it for awhile in silence. “They’re all gone,” he says, “Except myself.”

6000 Illegal Grows on American Public Land

We are doing our best to follow Katie on a sketchy logging road to one of her grazing leases in the national forest. She is hauling a horse trailer, driving up the mountain like her rig has sport mode.

There are an estimated 6000 illicit marijuana grow sites on American public land, all over the West—California, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Colorado, Washington. The porous Southern border provides a constant labor stream.

“Even on the East Coast, everyone knows where Mendocino and Humboldt Counties are. They don’t have any idea what happens if that becomes your neighbor. Not only where you live, but in the national forest.”

Katie has been riding through these mountains pushing cows all her life. She’s a consummate cowgirl. The environmental damage left by these grows distresses her. “All the plastic, insecticides, and pesticides. The deer, the bear, all the animals are dead.”

Michaela rides her paint horse, Blue, up ahead with Katie and Kayla. Ryan, Graham, and I hike in on foot, lugging equipment. The deeper we get into the woods, the more unsure I am about this idea.

We arrive at the grow site, and I get the mother of all bad feelings. There is junk everywhere; propane tanks and decrepit campers and piles of odds and ends. I spot children’s toys and Christmas decorations, an old stove and a busted washer and dryer. Most disturbing of all: Set neatly beside the trail is a backpack with a fresh pillow on top. It had rained the night before, but the pillow is dry.

We grab some shots and get out of there.

Lawman in the Emerald

“For years and years, everybody here said, ‘Yeah, it’s illegal, it’s just a little more legal here.’”

Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall has found workers at grow sites who don’t know where they are. They believe they are in Washington, or Oregon. Many don’t speak English. They’re forced to work by the cartel, who gets them across the border and then puts them into forced labor on grow sites. Many have family back in their home countries who the cartel has threatened to kill if their loved one does not work.

“Sometimes ranching and pot growing are in competition,” Kendall says. “Fences have been cut, some of the water sources are being developed to provide water to marijuana. Cattle are shot to feed people in these grow sites. We’ve got some bad folks in competition for water, in competition for land.”

Tests show that much of the cannabis sold in legal dispensaries comes from black market grows. He says people should think of the current cannabis supply the way they thought of diamonds after the Leonardo di Caprio movie came out in the 90s.

“Blood cannabis.”

Tribal Towns Caught in the Crossfire

We meet Sheriff Kendall off Highway 101. Ryan and Graham are driving their windowless grip van. The first thing he says is, “That van is going to have phones ringing across the valley the second we hit town.”

He tells us to stay close as we head into Round Valley. I get in the passenger seat of his truck, next to a Bible and a patrol rifle. Country music plays on the radio.

Covelo is a tribal community deep in the Mendocino County mountains. It has a dark history: Here, local tribes were rounded up and forced to march in a West Coast Trail of Tears. Because I am a child of these mountains, I believe in things that modern, sophisticated people may not. I believe, for example, that places have memory. In this place the trauma is palpable, heavy and poisonous in the air of Round Valley like sickness in the blood.

Covelo is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. Long green valleys roll into purple hills. Live oaks, hay fields dotted with round bales. This town should be paradise. Instead it is covered in junk, old cars, rotted-out mobile homes, hoop houses row on row.

“It was really clean when I was young,” Kendall grew up in Round Valley. “There was a lot of business, a lot of industry here. This would never have happened if we still had good, sound, solid jobs.”

Foreign criminal organizations have entrenched their presence deep across the valley. Safe from local jurisdiction, they found pockets of land ripe for the taking. I had heard told stories about cartel members dating young Native women to steal their land rights, stories about packs of wild dogs let loose after harvest to terrorize locals and their cattle. One rancher up at Lone Pine told me all his cattle had torn ears.

“The Silk Road has been paved into Mendocino County with the illegal drug trade,” Kendall says. “We’re not far away from the things we saw in Mexico during the narco wars. We’re not far away from heads in the square, intimidation of entire populations, additions of entire populations. I don’t know how in the hell we’re going to hit the reverse gear and back our way out of it.”

Driving through town, a man in a black ski mask in a lifted Dodge dually passes us, hauling massive water tanks. It’s planting time, and the valley is buzzing.

I ask the sheriff if he ever gets any help from the state. He says no, Gavin Newsom has never returned his phone calls.

We pull over at the back of the valley. Ryan flies his drone over several grow sites. All of a sudden, a pickup truck roars down the main road across from us. Cool as ice, Kendall tells us to get back and waits by the truck with his patrol rifle until he is satisfied the driver doesn’t plan on a confrontation.

“It was a strange thing in Mendocino County not to know your neighbors 20 years ago,” he says as we drive on. “But people don’t know their neighbors anymore.”

On our way out of the valley a few hours later, he asks me if I had noticed the car following us all day. I never did.

Going Back to the Land

Bell Springs Road is an old stagecoach route, bad and rugged, winding its way north from Laytonville to Garberville.

We’re on the Laytonville side at Happy Day Farms, across the mountain from where Dick was killed. Brothers Lido and Casey Oneill feed half of Laytonville. They raise vegetables, pigs, sheep, and cannabis.

Their parents came here during the first wave of the back-to-the-land movement in the 1970s. After San Francisco’s Summer of Love, they were part of that searching post-war generation looking to recreate the American dream in their own image.

North of San Francisco, they found paradise: land beautiful and virtually empty, just a few loggers and cowboys. Property was plentiful and cheap. It was a chance to get back to nature, away from the plastic promise of 1950s suburbia.

Casey and Lido are rugged, capable, warm. They have a large Black Lives Matter sign outside the farm stand and a menagerie of hapless dogs. Lido is a former firefighter for CalFire, Casey articulates his policy views with the nuance of a career politician, neither of them look like guys you would want to face in a bar fight. They are true farmers. They care about every plant, every animal. At the roadside farm stand, they sell bone broth and kombucha and produce and gluten-free chocolate chip cookies.

The original Oneills bought this land, a piece of the old Drewry ranch. They only grew a few cannabis plants for themselves and their neighbors at first, the brothers tell me.

“In ‘85 they got busted,” Casey says. “National Guard, helicopter, all for 30 plants. That was real formative for us. Especially for Ma, it was an incredibly traumatic event that she never got over.”

I don’t ask the brothers, so I don’t know about them. I do know that many of the back-to-the-land families that came here with humble ambitions wound up making tens of millions of dollars selling cannabis on the black market.

Casey says he was busted again in 2008 after coming home from college. “Did some jail time in 2009, then I got really into the local food movement.”

The fallout of legalization, a process the brothers have gone through for their private cannabis label, frustrated him.

“If you can grow an herb for decades in an unregulated or semi-regulated environment and then all of a sudden the government’s like, the rules have changed and now they’re this long”—he makes a gesture like unrolling a scroll—”What are people gonna do? It’s still food on the table. People have a right to grow plants, people have a right to grow herb.”

He caveats that not everyone has acted responsibly. “When you see violence involved, when you see environmental degradation involved, that’s a different story. But when it’s just cannabis, you know I don’t think it should be a felony. I don’t think it should be a misdemeanor. Legalization lowered the penalties, but the price went down, and it made it less attractive to be involved. At this point you still see mom-and-pop small scale production but you also see really large-scale, kind of unregulated criminal element production. That was always happening. Now it’s on a bigger scale. The black market is still thriving because the tax rate is so high.”

I ask if they have seen more organized crime since legalization, and if the climate on Bell Springs Road has gotten more dangerous. They brush this off. Like everyone else out here, they don’t believe or don’t want to believe that they are in any danger. It would be hard to live here if you were afraid.

“It all depends on your neighborwoods,” Casey says. He blames the government for whatever violence there is. “Doesn’t mean the people who do violence are off the hook but the conditions for violence are 100% the result of bad governance.”

With our cameras rolling, a truck hauling equipment pulls up and stops outside the farm stand. “Can I have your autograph?” the driver shouts, and the brothers laugh.

He wants a grapefruit kombucha. “What do I owe you?”

Casey says don’t worry about it, thanks him for some favor.

“Get outta here ya hillbillies,” the man chortles.

“Love ya buddy.”

Throughout our interview, the brothers wave at every vehicle that passes. They know everyone in their neighborwoods, but they don’t know what happened to Dick Drewry across the mountain. The case unsettled them. Lido had a camera on that side of Bell Springs Road, but he says it was off that day because of the snow.

“I think the ranchers have it the hardest because they’re managing large tracks of land in which there are trespass grows and you are dealing with a criminal element and weapons,” Casey says. “One of the neighbors moved out, tired of having to deal with that for his cattle. I feel for the ranchers. We run just real small pasture, but if you had to factor into your animal raising paradigm that that somebody might shoot my animals, somebody might shoot me, that’s hard to deal with. If you live out here, you gotta be…”

He trails off. Lido picks up his thought.

“You gotta be self-sufficient in all ways. Because law enforcement’s a long ways away from us. That’s for sure.”

The Last of the Wild West

Through all my feral childhood in these hills, I’d never been to or heard of Rodeo Valley. We pull up and I am struck again by the vastness of Mendocino County. Here I am, still surprised by its beauty, discovering a new facet of it. I feel a wave of homesickness. I love Mendocino from the bottom of my heart. It’s the only place I ever feel right. In that moment, I resent my life back in Orange County. I feel uprooted, a house divided.

Dan Moore is married to my friend Kayla Delbar, now the ag teacher at our high school, another generation of her family keeping the town together, the center that holds. To me, she is the heart of this place. Dan is a full-time cowboy.

I’ve known Dan since we were kids, too. My neighbors in Orange County would not believe he exists. He is in short what an old timer might call—the highest compliment it is possible to give—”the real deal.” He doesn’t wear a cowboy hat for Instagram and I doubt he watches Yellowstone. He is my age but seems ageless, like he grew out of the ground organic as the oaks. Pulling up to our truck on his stocky bay quarter horse, if you watched this moment in black-and-white it could be 1880. There is no perceptible difference between him and those pioneer explorers whose blood runs in his veins.

Dan was Dick Drewry’s nephew.

“They kind of felt like things had eased up,” Dan was saying. He is moving cows to summer pasture all that week in Rodeo Valley. It had been a long day. He and Dan Arkelian are sitting on the back porch of the old bunkhouse. “When my brother and his wife found Dick’s body, it was kind of a step back for all of us. You know, like maybe things aren’t getting a little better. Maybe they’re actually getting worse.”

Dan Arkelian is another old friend, the foreman at John Ford Ranch. Dick Drewry’s death angered him. “How could a guy live there 80-some years and then have an end like that?”

I asked what he is seeing out in these mountains, how things have changed.

“You didn’t really see any cartel before. You’d see signs in the roads, or they’d leave clothes. The cows quit going places. You just figured there’s places you didn’t go. Even here, there are gardens all over, and this is private property.”

Dan Moore grew up about an hour north of his uncle’s ranch on the same ridgeline. He gives me a set of classic rancher directions; I nod like I follow. “Myers Flat; Mail Ridge starts right there north of Laytonville at the old white house, runs to the forks of the river north of Weott, on the old stagecoach route. Further north you get the more tame it becomes. Go south it gets pretty western pretty fast.”

“What was it like growing up there?”

“You drove pretty slow, minded your manners.” Dan is nonplussed, like he’s discussing the downsides of taking the toll road on his Irvine commute. “Pretty much loaded a pistol when you got off the blacktop.”

I ask if he believes the rumors about his uncle being killed by the cartel.

His answer surprises me. He says no.

“It’s probably somebody that was pretty close to him.”

Culture of Silence

No one will talk to me.

I’m sitting in the passenger seat of my truck outside the Ridgetop Cafe in Fernbridge, a half eaten breakfast burrito on the console, and all the folks I’m supposed to be interviewing in a couple hours are canceling on me. Dead end after dead end. Suddenly, no one wants to talk.

We were about to head up to the Drewry ranch on the north side of Bell Springs Road, where I have interviews scheduled. It’s our last day of filming, and I’m out of leads.

Dan’s gut feeling he shared in Rodeo Valley fits what I am hearing from my sources. The closer I get to where the murder took place, the more people seem to know. Even the Oneill brothers on the south side of Bell Springs have no idea what happened. It’s like the forest kept the secrets close, and the truth from getting out.

I was hearing rumors about water, and a neighbor. This neighbor, according to the rumors, was in his 70s. He was originally from Berkeley but came here to Humboldt to grow weed. The rumor was, he had reached a water agreement with Dick Drewry. Then Dick, who neighbors told me was very opposed to cannabis, found out that his neighbor was using the water to grow. He ended their agreement.

One source said this neighbor may have been trying to go legal, following those onerous regulations laid out by the state of California so he could be a legitimate operation. But he needed a water source to do that, and Dick Drewry cut him off.

And so, the story went, he stewed on this for a couple years, blamed Dick Drewry for everything going wrong in his life.

Then one morning, people tell me he came home and announced to his daughter and his son-in-law, “I shot that motherfucker.” Then he went back to his trailer.

I have heard various parts of this rumor over and over again, in bits and pieces, until this story has taken shape.

But the one thing no one wants to give me is a name.

Scene of the Crime: Bell Springs Road

Dick Drewry was killed in a lonesome place.

To my left, whiteface cows graze in the near distance. Then the valley dips low and sweeps up into heavily wooded foothills beneath a universe of purple mountains. To my right, the green hillside rises steep. At its base there is a homemade wooden sign wearing Dick’s name and the Drewry ranch brand. A set of blacktail antlers hangs off this sign—a North Coast tribute.

I don’t know a soul out here, and for as long as we are posted up getting drone footage and shots of the crime scene, I only see a few cars. Each driver is alone, each looks at us intensely.

Only one stops. An elderly man in a beat-up Toyota. He rolls down his window.

“What are you all doing up here?” he asks me.

We are conspicuous with our drone, our grip van, our radio headsets. If in fact Dick Drewry was killed by a neighbor, I don’t know what that neighbor looks like. I watch the elderly man in his truck disappear down the road. I don’t breathe easy until we are back in Garberville.

Small Town Rumors

All I’ve got are rumors. Everyone is scared to talk.

I heard that after the murder, that neighbor was arrested for assaulting his son-in-law. Someone else told me he beat his son-in-law with a metal pipe after he went to the police and told them what he knew about the murder.

The police neither confirm or deny anything. They tell me they have a person of interest, and that the DA doesn’t think they have enough to make an arrest, and that they need more witnesses to come forward and tell police what they know. That’s all they will say.

I searched local property records on Bell Springs Road near the Drewry Ranch. I searched for relatives and family trees. After many hours of digging, I came across a woman’s profile on Facebook. Her name fit.

She shared photos of weed, antiques, dogs, and a landscape that looked familiar. She posted a lot, and her posts were public. Her posts were sort of stream-of-consciousness. I read, and read, and kept reading. I got the sense that she was a good person, a person searching. She alluded to childhood pain and attempts to reconcile with a father she barely knew, a man she came to live with, along with her partner, in a remote part of Humboldt County. Now, she says, they no longer talk. She lives in a different state.

I kept scrolling. I scrolled back years. Back to 2021.

She talked about the neighbor’s cows getting out and into their garden. She talked about fear, and “getting away from the bad guy.” She posted about criminals and guns and bad dreams. In one post she wrote, “I would do a lot of selfless acts, but one I would never do is take the blame for a crime I didn’t commit.” In another she asked Facebook, “Where do they put people who are old and have dementia that killed someone and kind of violent?”

And then, there it was:

“Been staying at a hotel with my man, my son, and my dog, had to leave by dad’s because he has been getting increasingly violent over time…last year, he killed our neighbor, and felt no remorse at all…nobody knew it was him…they suspected it was him, but were not sure…he put us all in a bad situation…and he was getting more scary every day…was a loose cannon…didn’t know what he was going to do next…so we decided that no inheritance is worth the kind of stress this involved, and went to the police because he kept saying that he should kill the rest of the guy’s family…he shot the guy while he was sitting in his car, and people in the community were scared, my dad hasn’t been arrested yet, but they are testing the evidence they have, but might be arresting him sooner for assaulting my man…just needed to let people know”

Putting Together the Pieces

Dick Drewry was 85 years old when he was murdered. That morning in January, a snowstorm was coming. He drove down his long driveway and turned onto Bell Springs Road, where for some reason he pulled over. His wife Phyllis was always with him, but she wasn’t with him that day. Perhaps he was checking road conditions before they drove to town together, or perhaps he was getting a coffee at the New Harris Store. His son Patrick told me the family went armed for months, believing the cartel was after them.

Friends remember Dick Drewry as a kind, gentle, soft spoken man. He graduated from the Cal Poly SLO, served in the military, worked for the county, and ran the home ranch all his life. He and Phyllis adopted two sons. He was a gentleman, kind to all his neighbors, including the hippie newcomers. One Bell Springs resident told me he would always pick up a hitchhiker. He was, in the parlance of the area, an “old timer,” which is a term of endearment and respect. There are very few photos of him left. I was only able to track down a few. One of his relatives told me many of his photos were lost in a house fire. His wife Phyllis died shortly after Dick’s murder.

A cowgirl named Jenny runs cows over on that part of Bell Springs. She is blonde and tough as nails, another person Orange County wouldn’t believe. Working out there, she says she has had guns on her while she works since she was a girl. Once her sister’s cows got out; she came back to find them decapitated, their heads stuck on fence posts.

She says the last time she spoke with Dick, he pulled up next to her in her pickup and chided her. “Honey I don’t see your gun,” he said. He reminded her she needed to be packing up there, always.

Whatever happened to Dick Drewry, he knew his neighborhood was dangerous. Maybe he knew someone was out for him. Maybe not. It seems he rolled down his window to speak with his killer. Within days of reminding Jenny to carry a gun with her wherever she went, he was found dead, with no gun in his vehicle.

“Water is your motive,” Jenny told me. “Water is going to be the motive for a lot of murders.”

In this part of Northern California, water is always scarce. The government is taking out hydroelectric dams that the communities rely on for water supply in order to facilitate the habitat of some fish, even as a constant flow of organized criminal groups bring labor across the Southern border to meet increasing global demand for marijuana. The government does nothing to stop it. In Mendocino County, ranchers go armed, living in fear, now forced to worry about the water systems they have built over generations to care for their cattle. To my knowledge, Gavin Newsom still has not returned those phone calls.

Paradise Lost

Growing up, we knew all the neighbors and all the neighbors’ gate codes. We used to swim in the irrigation ditch, ride green horses all over the hills. We picked wild blackberries and made jam, went to church on Sunday. We had friends whose parents grew, friends whose parents ranched.

“You know the way the rumor mill works,” a neighbor said to me. “Anything unexplained is blamed on a stranger, the cartel, some ‘other,’ not us. Always someone else.”

I thought this would be a documentary about organized crime, the global drug trade, the open border, coming into my beautiful little town and destroying it.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart.”

Greed is corrosive. Maybe it was greed that attracted bad actors. Or maybe it was greed that turned decent people bad. The structures we sacrificed for a new and better American dream ended up mattering most when they were gone. Maybe the loss of community led to silence, and then our silence killed whatever community was left. Whatever may have happened before January 26, 2021, all I know is that on that day an old man was killed in his car on a snowy morning—an old man who raised cows all his life and welcomed his strange new neighbors, killed in the same place he was born, except now it was entirely different, a place where a neighbor can be murdered and no one will talk.

The hippie movement set out to bring paradise on earth, remade in man’s image. We would do away with all the rules and structures honored since time immemorial by square communities like the cowboy towns of Mendocino County. We thought we could remake Eden and escape evil. But evil found our garden, too.

Watch High Country Murder

High Country Murder is a production of Palladium Pictures film incubator. Directed and produced by Keely Brazil Covello and Michaela Brazil Gillies. Director of photography Ryan Francis. Editor Ryan Francis. Creative producers Graham Kelley and Ryan Francis. A Go West Media production in association with Naknek Films.

MENDOCINO BACK WHEN: Old Coast Hospital, Fort Bragg (Ron Parker)

RETIRED SHERIFF’S DEPUTY RON PARKER:

Several deputies knew what a terrible person Jones was but no one would listen to them. They were aware of Jones’s breaking up families to gain donations. Property was given to Jones with only one spouse agreeing to do so. These cases were civil not criminal so there was little or nothing deputies could do. Jones also promised local politicians the vote of 100% of his congregation to keep them in line. He had employees in social services, banks, the DA’s office, and the sheriff’s office to gather information for him. Early on Tim Stoen was in fact a true believer, but recanted later on. Jones had one of his members drive past the Redwood Valley church firing a pistol in the air, at night, so he could convince his sheep they were under attack. He did so much bull shit like this but the politicians still supported him.

ROUND VALLEY DIASPORA and real history of California Indians.

William J. Bauer, Jr.: California Through Native Eyes: Reclaiming History

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWmrSG1Af8I

ANOTHER OLD E-BAY POSTCARD: An early picture of Wendling (Navarro). (via Marshall Newman)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, December 18, 2024

CHRISTOPHER AZMI, 36, Garden Valley/Ukiah. Burglary.

SERGIO CERVANTES-RODRIGUEZ, 33, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, under influence.

SKYLAR DOTY, 27. Redwood Valley. Criminal threats.

BRYAN LOCKWOOD, 33, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, parole violation.

LORENZO MARTINEZ, 41, Ukiah. County parole violation.

EWIK MORINDA, 29, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

BARAQUIEL RUIZ, 38, Lakeport/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, paraphernalia.

ANDREA SANTOS, 31, Ukiah. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent.

THOMAS STRICKLIN, 48, Willits. Marijuana for sale, controlled substance, offenses while on bail, serious felony with prior, failure to appear.

THE OLD MAN ordered one no frills hamburger, one order of French fries and one small soft drink. He unwrapped the unadorned burger and carefully cut it in half, placing one half in front of his wife. He then carefully counted out the French fries, dividing them into two equal piles, one of which he gently placed in front of his wife. The old man took a sip of the drink then passed the drink to his wife for her sip. The old lady placed the drink between them. As the couple began their austere meal, the people around them kept looking over and whispering. You could tell they were thinking, “That poor old couple; all they can afford is one meal for the two of them.” An earnest young man appeared with a polite offer to buy the two seniors another meal. The old man said they were just fine. They were used to sharing everything. But everyone noticed that the little old lady hadn't eaten a bite. Again the kind young man came over and begged them to let him buy them another meal. This time the old woman replied. “No, thank you. We’re used to sharing everything.” As the old man finished and was wiping his face neatly with his napkin, the generous young man again came over to the little old lady who had yet to eat a single bite of food and asked, “Ma’am, what are you waiting for?” “The teeth,” she said.

YO, BILL!

Hey, Bill Kimberlin. I lived in that building where Sociale is in 1969. At the time, it was still an intact Victorian (or maybe Edwardian) town house. The entrance to the restaurant was a driveway to the carriage house in the back with servants quarters over top; the whole was connected with cat walks to the backs of all the units. It was owned by a publishing company who occupied the first story 9-5, mon-fri.

We rented the upstairs flat that went over the archway, $250 a month. There were two small apartments to the left; a little old lady lived in the upstairs one that shared a wall with our living room over the arch. She said, “I’m deaf, so make all the noise you want.” And we did; what great parties we had; what a great time to live in the city.

Dick Whetstone

MOST REPORTS ORDERED BY CALIFORNIA’S LEGISLATURE THIS YEAR ARE SHOWN AS MISSING

by Sameea Kamal

California lawmakers pass nearly 1,000 new laws each year. How do they know whether they are working?

Many new laws include a requirement for progress reports to the Legislature, but state agencies and commissions assigned to prepare those reports often fail to submit them on time, or at all, according to the Legislature’s website.

Of the 867 reports due between Jan. 1 and Dec. 9 of this year, 84% have not been filed to the Office of Legislative Counsel, according to a CalMatters analysis. Of the 16% that were submitted — 138 reports — 68 were filed late. Another 344 reports are due by Dec. 31.

Some agencies told CalMatters the reports were completed, but they were not properly filed with the Office of Legislative Counsel, as state law requires. It’s not clear how many of the missing reports were improperly filed.

The data is in line with previous CalMatters reporting that found 70% of about 1,100 reports due between February 2023 and February 2024 had not been filed to the Office of Legislative Counsel. About half of those that were filed were late.

Legislators say the lack of data can make it challenging to decide, for example, whether to grant a program more money.

Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, the Irvine Democrat who previously chaired an Assembly administrative oversight committee, says delayed or missing information is a “huge issue, and a huge challenge.”

“We’ve got to ensure that we are making data-driven decisions and evaluating programs using real information,” she said. “I don’t think there’s enough attention and focus on the oversight and accountability piece of what we do in state government.”

One of the key policy areas where that’s been an issue, she said: spending on housing and homelessness programs.

“We are spending billions and billions of dollars … on programs to end homelessness,” she said. “And not only are agencies unable to tell you the program’s working. In some cases, they’re not even able to tell you where the money was. That’s really shameful.”

Izzy Gardon, spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose branch oversees state agencies, said via email that departments “actively coordinate with the Legislature to prioritize the high volume of required reports.”

“The administration welcomes opportunities to work with the Legislature to streamline reporting requirements to enhance government efficiency, improve oversight, and reduce taxpayer costs,” he said.

Last year, the Legislative Analyst’s Office flagged delayed reporting on funds for wildfire and forest resilience as an example where, “reporting has not been provided by the statutory deadlines, making it much less useful for informing decision-making.”

“If you don’t have the reporting, it’s hard to do an oversight hearing that’s as effective,” said Helen Kerstein, one of the legislative analysts, at a June 2023 hearing. “That’s why it’s so critical to have that front-end accountability, to make sure that the state is well-positioned to ensure that the dollars are being spent in the most effective way.”

State law requires agencies to submit a printed copy of the reports to the Secretary of the Senate, an electronic copy to the Assembly Chief Clerk’s office, and either a printed or electronic copy to the Office of the Legislative Counsel. The Assembly and Senate each compile a list of reports received.

Legislators have recently prioritized more oversight of how the laws they pass are carried out by government agencies. As the new session kicked off on Dec. 2, the Legislature announced new rules to reduce the number of bills lawmakers can introduce — something Petrie-Norris thinks will help.

Last year, in the Assembly, Speaker Robert Rivas also reorganized the oversight committee into one focused on the budget to have better oversight of spending.

“We must ensure that existing state programs are working full-speed ahead,” he said at the start of this year’s session, adding his oft-repeated manta: “Our job is not just making new laws. It’s looking in the rearview mirror.”

(Jeremia Kimelman provided data analysis for this story. CalMatters.org.)

SITES RESERVOIR IN THE SACRAMENTO VALLEY REMAINS A SECOND ENVIRONMENTAL BATTLEFRONT BETWEEN NEWSOM AND CALIFORNIA TRIBES AND CONSERVATION GROUPS

by Dan Bacher

Gavin Newsom continued his “California Jobs First” tour last week with a press event at a farm in Colusa in the Sacramento Valley where the governor promoted efforts to build Sites Reservoir. However, similar to Newsom’s embattled Delta tunnel. Sites is a water project that is strongly opposed by a broad coalition of indigenous tribes, environmental groups and fishing organizations.

“The future of California’s water supply flows right through Colusa County — and with that comes enormous economic opportunity and more jobs,” Newsom asserted at the event. “Farms like this one, and all across the state, have led the charge by transitioning to smart water practices that not only save water but also conserve critical habitats.”

He added, “But we have to do more to protect our water supply for generations to come: That’s why we’re building more critical water infrastructure, faster to be able to store and move water for the hotter hots and the drier dries.”

In his remarks, Newsom also addressed working with the Trump administration to build Sites Reservoir.

“And we’re gonna get Sites done and we’re gonna continue to advocate for federal resources,” the governor said. “Donald Trump, this is your kind of project (chuckles). We’re gonna continue to advocate for local water agencies to enthusiastically embrace this.”

Addressing widespread criticism of his support for the Sites Reservoir, Newsom went on to contend, “We have got to get out of our own damn way. The world we invented is competing against us. We’re consumed by process. And we’re paralyzed by process, and litigation, and NIMBYism. And people frankly taking advantage of the public. And as a consequence we fall behind.”

Newsom further stressed his administration wants to be “doubling down on efforts to replenish the state’s critical groundwater supplies.”

According to the Governor’s Office, Davis Ranches, a farm started in the 1800s, became an example for Newsom about sustainable operations and crucial floodplain habitat restoration.

The governor has been championing the controversial Sites Reservoir as he’s met with local leaders of the California Jobs First Capital Region collaborative, getting input from about their economic priorities.

Newsom’s stop in Colusa was just miles away from where construction of Sites Reservoir is planned. The Governor’s Office maintains the reservoir “is critical to California’s Water Supply Strategy and meeting California’s goal of expanding above and below ground water storage capacity by 4 million acre feet. “

Late last year, Newsom certified the project for so-called “streamlining, saving it from years of litigation delays.”

Sites is proposed to be a 14,0000 acre reservoir in the lower Sacramento River/Upper Bay Delta near Maxwell, California which will depend on large-scale water diversions from the Sacramento River, according to project opponents. It would become one of the largest reservoirs in the state. Like the Delta Tunnel, it would be designed to mainly deliver water to Southern California and South of the Delta corporate agribusiness interests. California has promised over $816 million in taxpayer money to the project.

In response to Newsom’s praise for Sites, critics of the reservoir note that Sacramento River water is “already over-allocated by five times its availability and that the reservoir will add to climate change emissions.” Critics also say the tribal impacts, water supply quality, and environmental harms would be “devastating,” especially as Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations move closer and closer to extinction.

“Our governor has decided to sideline our most important public processes in order to build a 1.5 million-acre-foot reservoir on lands that are sacred to California Native American tribes,” said Regina Chichizola of Save California Salmon. “All Californians should be concerned about privatization of our public water resources. It is obvious the interests of water brokers, big ag, and Southern California water districts mean more to the governor than justice for Native American tribes and California’s most important public resource, clean water.”

Chichizola added that tribes recently testified about addressing significant concerns that pertain to the reservoir’s footprint. They highlighted the “lack of meaningful tribal consultation on the project” and advised that the reservoir would flood tribal cultural resources, Native American graves and sacred sites, and further degrade water quality and salmon runs, harming an important Indigenous food source and traditional lifeway systems.

They also testified that the reservoir “threatens tribal water and fishing rights and would build new diversion pumps to take fresh water from the Sacramento River and release warm, polluted water into the Bay Delta.”

Sherri Norris from California Indian Environmental Alliance did not mince words about what had happened.

“It is offensive that the state so poorly consulted with tribes and then congratulated tribes for stomaching the state’s neglect and continued abuse of their requirements under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA),” Norris pointed out. “Tribes are still in need of Consultation and this project remains in violation of CEQA regardless of how the agencies want to spin it.”

In addition to that testimony, scientists testified that Sites Reservoir threatened to release toxic algae, warm water and mercury into the state’s water supply, according to Chichizola. These experts warned discharges of polluted water have the potential to adversely impact downstream tribal lands and water quality, along with the drinking water for over 25 million Californians and the health of local ecosystems.

“Tribes and other project opponents have valid concerns including contamination of drinking water supplies, salmon extinction, and inundation of lands that hold irreplaceable Native American sacred sites and cultural resources,” concluded Kasil Willie, Staff Attorney for Save California Salmon. “The project, as proposed, will cause irreparable harm to tribal cultural resources, including ancestral village sites and burial sites. Governor Newsom should apologize to tribes for his statement.”

‘FAT POSITIVITY’ EXPERT HIRED BY SAN FRANCISCO DEPT. OF HEALTH TO CONSULT ON ‘WEIGHT STIGMA’

by Yael Halon

The San Francisco Department of Public Health has hired a self-described “anti-weight-based discrimination” expert to consult on “weight stigma and weight neutrality.”

Virgie Tovar, the author of ‘You Have the Right to Remain Fat” and other published works on “fat positivity and body acceptance” announced on her Instagram Monday that she was hired to consult for the department, calling the collaboration an “absolute dream come true.”

“I’m unbelievably proud to serve the city I’ve called home for almost 20 years in this way!” she wrote. “This consultancy is an absolute dream come true, and it’s my biggest hope and belief that weight neutrality will be the future of public health.”

Tovar’s website lists her as a “plus-size Latina author, lecturer, and leading expert on weight-based discrimination and body positivity with over a decade of experience.”

Virgie Tovar is teaming up with the San Francisco Dept. of Public Health to consult on “weight stigma.”

She is a contributor for Forbes, where she covers stories on the “plus size market.”

Her most recent articles include features about hosting a “size inclusive” Thanksgiving and alleged “fatphobia” in current TV shows.

It is unclear what role Tovar will play within the department.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health did not respond when asked by Fox News Digital about details of Tovar’s consultancy.

“Weight neutrality will be the future of public health,” Tovar said.

Tovar has been vocal against diet culture and BMI metrics on her social media platforms.

In a video posted by Project Heal, Tovar discussed how medical professionals pressured her to lose weight since she was a child and that she had falsely believed they were doing so with her health in mind.

“I really believed that this was about my health. I really believed my doctor was right and so I was using the language of getting “better” but I was actually deeply in the throes of anorexia,” she said.

Tovar is anti-Ozempic because she thinks it won’t “solve weight bias.”

In July, Tovar posted that she conducted a weight bias training for unidentified government workers, sharing 4 tips she taught to help decrease “stigma around food and bodies at work.”

“1. Talk less or not at all about how you and others eat at work,” she wrote. “2. Talk less or not at all about you or others’ bodies at work. 3. Talk less or not at all about exercise at work. 4. Don’t presume that food, weight, body size or exercise are safe or comfortable topics to discuss at work for everyone.”

It’s not clear how exactly Tovar will collaborate with the government officials.

In a separate Instagram post, Tovar held up a sign with the words “I don’t want Ozempic,” sharing that she was offered the weight-loss drug free of charge but declined it because it would not “solve weight bias.”

She has also been critical of the characterization of obesity as a “disease.”

Tovar offers DEI corporate trainings, per her website, which lists the Seattle Transit Agency, UC Berkeley and other notable companies as former clients.

Tovar could not be reached by Fox News Digital for comment.

(Fox News Digital)

CHRISTMAS CARNAGE: NETFLIX’S BLACK DOVES

by Jonah Raskin

Crime series all boast violence, and, while some of the violence is abhorrent and gratuitous some of it is framed as necessary and justified. In the Netflix thriller, Black Doves, the good hitmen and the good hit women mostly only kill when it can’t be avoided and when they have to kill to save their own skins. The bad killers have no sense of morality or ethics. They kill for sport and money. With the exception of Helen Webb (Keira Knightly), the good hitmen and women are gays and lesbians, though there is no kinky sex of any kind in the series. Violence yes, sex no.

Helen Warren is a heterosexual married to a British cabinet member and the mother of their lovely children. She cheats on her husband, Wallace Webb, (Andrew Buchan) and adds to the body count that mounts with each of the six episodes, which take place in posh London locations at Christmas. Knightly played Elizabeth Bennett in a recent film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice so you know before she appears on screen that she’s not going to be evil or sinister, though you’d be right to suspect that she’d have flaws which land her in trouble. She’s gullible and too easily deceived.

Her husband, Wallace Webb, is squeaky clean. Webb’s pal and partner in crime, Sam Young, (Ben Whishaw), a gay guy with an uptight Black lover, spares the life of a young boy he’s supposed to kill, so you know he’s not a crazy killer. The episodes take place at Christmas, and as you might suspect there’s a Dickensian happy ending. Episode six reaches a crescendo with Christmas trees, Christmas lights, the Christmas spirit and scenes that take place in a London church. ‘Tis the season to be jolly.

Black Doves features an international espionage organization, the Black Doves, that collects and sells information to the highest bidder. The series also features a British Prime Minister, CIA agents, representatives of the Chinese government and gangsters galore. Ten Downing Street emerges rather spotless, the CIA and the Chinese less so.

Reed (Sarah Lancashire) plays the sinister head of the Black Doves, but her bark is worse than her bite. Helen Webb spars with her and out wits and out flanks her. The fact that Helen cheats on her husband, works for the Black Doves, kills her enemies and engages in subterfuge is all part of the job. She saves the British government, her marriage and her family with a lot of help from triggerman Sam Young, a deadly shot with a good heart who recruits two lesbian trigger women who provide comic relief in much the same way that fools provide comic relief in Shakespeare’s plays. The lesbians steal the show.

If you want a gruesome thriller watch Justice, which comes from Poland and that offers a cop, Tadeusz Gadacz, who was a police officer under communism and who would like to revive police methods now supposedly illegal and immoral. Gadacz does just that and solves the crimes, including a robbery and murders in cold blood, which the camera shows up-close and without a drop of empathy. They’re challenging to watch.

Justice is partially based on a true story: a bank robbery where three employees and a security guard were gunned down in cold blood. Black Doves is pure fantasy, a kind of Christmas carol for the holidays. What’s believable in Justice probably wouldn’t be believable in Black Doves, and what’s believable in Black Doves would not be believable in Justice.

In thrillers involving espionage, cinematic success is largely dependent on the setting, the identity of the killers, the hitmen, and the culture of the country that provides the political context for the crimes. What’s permissible in Poland isn’t permissible in England and visa-versa, at least by Netflix standards and rules. Maybe one day a British director will bring down-and-dirty Warsaw to London and spare us the happy ending. If you have the stomach for Polish noir, watch Justice. If you crave Christmas fluff watch Black Doves. You pay your money to Netflix and you make your choice.

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

I OFTEN SEE QUESTIONS like “Why are the billionaires destroying the world like this? What’s the point of amassing all that wealth if you’re just going to spend the rest of your life in some underground bunker?”

Such questions assume a level of rationality I don’t believe these people possess. Billionaires are driven by unconscious, irrational forces within themselves, not by rational concerns. Becoming a billionaire is itself an irrational thing to do; nobody needs that much money. Nobody’s safety, security, or quality of life is significantly improved by having billions of dollars instead of millions. No matter how much wealth you control, you can only drive one car at a time, wear one suit at a time, live in one house at a time. Past a certain level, accumulating more money becomes an absurdity by any possible metric.

People who amass that much wealth aren’t behaving rationally — they’re trying to fill a gaping hole within themselves that can never be filled. They’re reacting to early childhood trauma and compelled by dysfunctional psychological coping mechanisms. They’re subconsciously trying to compensate for believed stories of deficiency and lack; trying to chase after their long-dead father’s approval; trying to feel a sense of control in a world which felt very threatening to them when they were small. They’re not even acting based on any real concern for their own future, so why would they act based on concern for the future of the planet?

The obscenely wealthy people who rule our world are destroying it not out of stupidity or spite, but out of unconscious compulsion. A heroin addict doesn’t keep using because they don’t understand that heroin is bad for them or because they hope to overdose one day, they keep using because their addiction is driven by inner pain and psychological forces within themselves which they have not yet brought into consciousness. Becoming a billionaire and becoming a heroin addict are both irrational destructive behaviors driven by irrational internal dynamics. The only difference is that the billionaires are taking the rest of us with them.

— Caitlin Johnstone

CAPTURING ATTENTION

by Fred Gardner

Once upon a time the district attorney, or sheriff, or police chief would announce –unaided– that a crime had been committed, or a charge was being leveled, or the jury had decided x, y, or z. Nowadays the official making the announcement is flanked by six or seven people whose connection to the case is that they want to be on TV.

The press conference itself can have “production values” worthy of the Academy Awards. Manhattan's porcine DA, Alvin Bragg, added a little pizazz to the indictment of Luigi Mangione by defining the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson as “an act of terrorism.” Bragg actually said, “This type of premeditated, targeted gun violence cannot and will not be tolerated, and my office has been working day in and day out to bring the defendant to justice. This ongoing investigation is the product of an incredible partnership at all levels with the NYPD, and I want to thank Commissioner Tisch and the prosecutors and detectives who worked tirelessly to apprehend Mr. Mangione.”

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch then intoned, “I applaud our dedicated NYPD investigators for their relentless work in identifying the suspect and their unwavering commitment to seeing this crucial case through to its resolution.”

The corrupt NY Mayor, Eric Adams, starred in his own press conference claiming credit for finding Mangione, which everybody knows was done by a sharp-eyed McDonald's customer in Altoona, PA. The top NYC law enforcers had ignored a tip from the San Francisco Police Department identifying Mangione as the shooter. Joseph Kenny, the NYPD chief of detectives, admitted to the New York Times that “Mr. Mangione was not on the department's radar before he was captured on Monday in Altoona, Pa.”

GOOD MORNING, AMERICA!

Up early at the drop in center behind the Adam's Place Homeless Shelter in northeast Washington, D.C., doing the laundry. Hopped on a guest computer to check in with the rest of the world. The district is gearing up for massive crowds expected for the re-inauguration. Nobody in the district could care less, because the Federal Government is irrelevant to residents of the District of Columbia, particularly the Black Lives Matter local population, which would prefer that the Federal Government up and moved to Saint Louis! The situation is probably no more schizophrenic than the rest of postmodern America. The Federal Government is scheduled to shut down soon. Meanwhile, never identify with the mind nor the body. Let the Dao work through without interference. There is no other sane way to be in the United States.

Craig Louis Stehr

LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT

‘Murder Hornet’ Has Been Eradicated From the U.S., Officials Say

Chaos Consumes Drive to Avoid Government Shutdown, With 2 Days to Go

Dominique Pelicot Gets 20-Year Sentence in Rape Trial That Shook France

California Declares an Emergency Over Bird Flu in Cattle

Starbucks Has a Pumpkin Spice Latte Problem in China

FAKE REVOLUTIONS everywhere you look. Hooray, the brave freedom fighters ousted the dictator in Syria! Hooray, Donald Trump is fighting the Deep State! Hooray, Bernie Sanders and AOC are transforming the Democratic Party and fighting for economic justice!

As the need for real revolution becomes more and more urgent, we’re seeing more and more fake revolutions designed to keep the status quo in place. People’s rage against the machine is harnessed by phony billionaire populism and shitlib progressivism so that their political energy can be fed right back into the machine. People are trained to cheer for foreign rebels who are backed by the CIA and fight to expand the might of the US empire instead of for the groups around the world who are fighting against imperial domination.

They funnel our attention and energy into fake revolutions to keep us from fighting a real one. The more discontented the public becomes, the more existentially necessary it will be for them to do this. The longer we keep getting redirected into political dead-ends by those who benefit from the imperial status quo, the longer the imperial status quo will keep abusing us all.

— Caitlin Johnstone

4 Comments

Kimberlin December 19, 2024

Dick Whetstone, thank you for your history of Sociale on Sacramento. Now I know why the walkway down to the restaurant is so steep and driveway like. Because, it was a driveway.

Kimberlin December 19, 2024

On the subject of billionaires, I know six. One inherited $10 billion dollars in 1983, one whose grandfather invented the washing machine, one who’s father started the first venture capital firm in the country, one who graduated from Anderson Valley Highschool, one who’s grandfather invented the yellow pages, and one I worked with for twenty years. If you don’t know any billionaires, I don’t think you should write about them until you do.

- George Hollister December 19, 2024
  
  I have never known a billionaire, and hold no inherent animus, admiration, or envy of them, either. I seldom think of them, and am thankful I am what I am. I do have negative prejudices toward people with inherited wealth; billionaires, or otherwise. They tend to be out of touch. But that is more their problem than mine.
  
George Hollister December 19, 2024

THE HIPPIES & COWBOYS OF MENDOCINO COUNTY supports my case that legalizing pot is better than a black market pot economy. The negative unintended consequences of the black market are many, and those consequences effect everyone who lives here. The pot black market has attracted a criminal element to the county since that black market’s local beginning. This is not knew. Of course there are the pit bulls, too, and the meth users looking for an easy way to make a living in the black market. The road to legalization has been bumpy, but hopefully we will get through it. Giving states the ability to determine if they want legalization, or not, and getting the federal government out of it should be the better, but not perfect goal. Then we can begin a science based approach to the risks of consuming THC.

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