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Off the Record 12/23/2024

WHOA! Feudin' and fussin' on the Fort Bragg City Council this week. Councilperson Tess Albin-Smith on her colleague Marcia Rafanan: “Marcia is a very nice person, she’s very friendly, but she’s definitely not a leader, not comfortable with public speaking, and sadly, we know that she is swayed by certain people who tell her what to say. So she doesn’t have original comments. The job of mayor and vice mayor is too important to give to a person who has no leadership skills. We need someone with a firm hand, quick decision-making ability, fortitude, and who doesn’t need or allow others to tell them what to say. I don’t think Marcia is qualified.”

MS. RAFANAN COUNTERED: “I know what it takes to live here. We need more jobs, not more walking trails. I understand this is a diverse community. I am part of that working-class majority of Fort Bragg here, and like so many of us we need two jobs to get everything done. That’s who I represent. I’m not a polished politician, I’m not a public speaker. I do have disagreements with you. I have my own mind… We don’t need another polished politician. We need somebody that’s real, somebody who knows the struggle to live and work here. That’s me.”

ANY PUBLICLY visible person is going to take his or her lumps. In this county, elected people seldom hear so much as a whisper of criticism, except here in this fine publication. Threats are routine in public life and certainly common in the news biz, which any media slime will verify, and which is why the large circulation papers have guards on their ground floors and uninvited persons never, ever get upstairs to complain directly to a reporter, editor or columnist.

THE ALWAYS MOIST SCOTT SIMON of NPR, a man who has taken audio ass kissing to pornographic levels, has described Biden as “astonishingly eloquent.” Which Biden isn’t. The only time Biden got anywhere near eloquence was when he ripped off a saccharine speech by Neil Kinnock, a British labor politician who was talking about how he was the first person in the thousand year history of the Kinnock family to go to college. Biden was too lazy to look for real eloquence to rip off, riffing on Kinnock to say that he, Joe Biden, was the first person in his family to go to college in fifty million years, I think it was. Without a teleprompter Biden's non-verbal, and even with a teleprompter he's only marginally coherent, angrily slurring his remarks like a raving street drunk.

RECOMMENDED READING: “Off Mike, A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life” by Michael Krasny, which it absolutely is, that and much more, the much more consisting of candid, often very funny, typically self-deprecating, consistently interesting, frequently poignant autobiographical revelations along with Krasny's encounters with an array of writers and intellectuals.

KRASNY retired from his morning slot on KQED Radio a few years ago, and his absence is filled with….. well, un- interesting happy talkers. I listened to Krasny’s talk show on KQED for many years because he’s one of the few radio talkers I could listen to without beating back murder fantasies. I heard him a few times years ago when he was just starting out on KGO, wondering at the time how long a civilized, deeply intelligent man might last in a line-up of blatherers, people who knew all the stories but none of the history and absolutely none of the literature.

SO MASTERFUL that he set the standard on commercial radio, and still sets the standard on public radio, Krasny tells us in “Off Mike” that he was once tempted to move on to the NPR mothership; fortunately for us in NorCal he didn’t because in San Francisco Krasny had control of who he talked with. At NPR he probably would have had to endure interviews with the movie stars and non-verbal musicians Terry Gross specializes in. NPR’s inflated rep as an audio oasis of smart talk is wildly inflated for an unlistenable fact.

OF COURSE when I read in the Chron that Krasny had a book out called ‘Off Mike’ I assumed it would consist wholly of interview transcripts, a very good thing by itself if that’s what it was. But what Krasny has done is to weave his life story in with the interviews, sprinkling these intertwined memories with behind-the-scenes anecdotes of his encounters with famous people, all of them revelatory, some of them startling, some of whom (surprise!) are not very nice.

TAKE the writer Richard Ford who spit on a young black writer named Colson Whitehead and got away with it because, I guess, Whitehead was intimidated by the alleged literary splendor of the older man, a man whose stuff, the best known of which is “The Sports Writer,” has always seemed to me about ten degrees removed from the truth of things. In real life the guy’s a pompous, drunken fool who’s probably gotten away with bad behavior for many years because he’s an “artist” and, you know, “artists” are “eccentric.” Whitehead should have clipped him one, but was apparently so startled he didn’t react. Ford’s an extreme case, and Krasny admires quite a few writers I emphatically don’t, and there are many literary judgments and implications in his book which, if we were having a cup of coffee, we’d argue about in Krasny’s uniquely generous but firm manner, as he moved the conversation along so seamlessly it never bogged down in repetition or simple tedium, and he'd do it without ever being rude, although as is clear from his book where he politely evens some scores, he’s often been sorely tempted.

ONE PROVOCATION I disagreed with: “No one reads any of the work Faulkner produced after forty.” I do. I liked ‘The Reivers’ best of all Faulkner’s books, a book written late in Faulkner's career, and I hope Krasny will get around some time to the Bay Area’s best unknown writer, August Kleinzahler, and he never did get around to interviewing the pivotal Warren Hinckle, the only editor in America who’s never produced a boring publication, a central figure, certainly, in the political-cultural life of Northern California, and a fine, lively writer, too.

KRASNY describes Todd Gitlin as an “old lefty,” which is true only if one conflates “left” and the better Democrats. But I was with Krasny all the way on the removal of the Taliban government of Afghanistan while figures like Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dorn, a pair of sixties bomb throwers spared lengthy jail terms out of simple class privilege, both of them being descended from or connected to the wealthy old left who paid their legal bills for them opposed it. (Only in America can you be opposed to capitalism and get rich off it simultaneously.) Nobody paid Joe Remiro’s legal tab, and he’s buried, forgotten, at Pelican Bay, a Vietnam vet who, in the slogan of the time, literally brought the war home, but did it without the support networks enjoyed by Ayres and Dorn, most of whom re-entered with a vengeance, and if you’re surprised they became Clintonoids and, now, Kamala-ites, you weren’t there.

THE GREAT TALK JOCK took a ton of abuse over his Afghanistan position as only the lockstep left can dish it out, but continued to present guests who didn’t agree with him on the subject, and you’ll be dead and buried before you’ll hear comparably dissident opinion on Pacifica.

ONE REASON Krasny was so grounded, as the therapists say, is his background, which is blue collar Cleveland, not the Berkeley Hills and red diaper summer camps. Just thinking about the book winds me up, and how many books do that for you? If you admired Krasny’s radio work, and more than a million daily listeners did, you’ll enjoy the heck out of his book.

WHAT HAPPENS when you don’t pay your exorcist? You get repossessed.

— Johnny Carson

LAST YEAR, a social media team asked SF 49er players how they would prepare for a zombie apocalypse. Niner's running back, Patrick Taylor, replied, “First things first, rummage through all the stores — you know, Target, Walmart — get all the canned foods. Get you some peanut butter. Can’t really use bread ’cause it goes bad. Get you some rice, and then once you get the rice, you go to Home Depot. Go get you a sledgehammer. Go get you a shovel. Go get you some spikes. Go get you a baseball bat. Wrap them spikes in the baseball bat, you know what I mean?”

ANTHONY TROLLOPE WRITES in 1871: “I came across America from San Francisco to New York, visiting Utah and Brigham Young on the way. I did not achieve great intimacy with the great polygamist of the Salt Lake City. I called upon him, sending to him my card, apologizing for doing so without an introduction, and excusing myself by saying that I did not like to pass through the territory without seeing a man of whom I had heard so much. He received me in his doorway, not asking me to enter, and inquired whether I were not a miner. When I told him that I was not a miner, he asked me whether I earned my bread. I told him I did. 'I guess you're a miner,' said he. I again assured him that I was not. 'Then how do you earn your bread?' I told him that I did so by writing books. 'I'm sure you're a miner,' said he. Then he turned upon his heel, went back into the house, and closed the door. I was properly punished, as I had been vain enough to conceive that he would have heard my name.”

SHOCKING HEADLINE in Friday’s Press Democrat: “Napa’s carbon neutral goal unlikely to be met by 2030, report finds; suggests pushing the target to 2045…” This, or versions of it with even longer timeframes, can be said about all these climate change “goals” declared by the Newsom types who mostly offer nothing but lip service to the issue.

WE WILL NEVER FORGET a Press Democrat page laminated and sent to us by a reader in 1992. Almost the entire page was taken up by a nearly full page “White Flower Days” ad for Macy’s. At the top of the page was a one-inch strip with a short AP story titled: “Disaster Looms, Scientists Warn…” There were two sentences about a global warming report that some scientists had predicted accelerating catastrophes over the next 20 years if present trends continued. The contrast between the tiny article at the top of the otherwise happy talk Macy’s ad was so start as to be a perfect example of “found art,” which our reader had encountered.

I DON’T KNOW ABOUT Mendoland in general, but I’m not going to get on the “Bernie” train by calling recently elected Fourth District Supervisor Bernie Norvell by his first name. I don’t like calling Supervisor Maureen Mulheren “Mo,” and I’m not going to call incoming Supervisor Madeline Cline “Maddy.” Ditto for “Ted” and “John.” The insincere first-name/nickname familiarity and friendliness implies that negativity and criticism, even when it’s entirely justified, is to be avoided because these are people we know by their first names. We don’t care what they’re called in private by actual personal friends and acquaintances, but as Supervisors it’s last names or full names only. (Scaramella)

REMEMBER the Kenny Rogers case? He's still in prison for what local lawyers still call “the immaculate conviction” because it contained no evidence of the reasons Rogers was convicted. Zero. None. Nada.

ROGERS was the assistant fire chief in Westport accused of hiring a tough guy to shoot a few bullets into the front door of Westport Water and Fire District Board member Chuck Simon. The door shooting was in alleged retaliation for Simon engineering Rogers’ ouster from the fire/water department.

Richard Peacock, just after being arrested

THE TOUGH GUY who shot up Simon's door, Richard Peacock of Sacramento, worked for Rogers at Rogers' Sacramento auto-detailing yard. Peacock, less than an hour after the shooting, was caught by an alert CHP officer as he fled the Westport shooting when the CHP officer saw Peacock throw a gun out his car window on the Branscomb Road as Peacock headed back to Sacramento.

PEACOCK was subsequently convicted of a third-strike felony for attempted murder, although he clearly wasn't trying to shoot anything but holes in Simon's door. (And he always insisted that somebody else did it.)

SIMON, however, happened to be standing behind the door and sustained a great big scare when he was grazed by the two bullets shot through the door.

ROGERS, as Peacock's sometime employer, was charged with attempted murder for hire, and, at the same time, charged with illegally growing marijuana at his Westport property. The case against Rogers was, to say the least, opaque. He has always denied a murder for hire plot.

Rogers and Pecaock

PEACOCK, an old school tough guy of the never-snitch school, died in state prison long before he'd served even a few years of his 71-to-life sentence. He refused to talk even though he'd probably walk, or at least have gotten a realistic parole date, if he'd implicated Rogers. He obviously didn't drive from Sacramento to Westport to shoot holes in the front door of a stranger, although it's entirely possible he did it because he felt he owed Rogers for employing him as an ex-con when no one else would.

IN 2007, Fort Bragg Deputy DA Tim Stoen offered Rogers a no-jail plea bargain wherein Rogers would plead to the charge but get three years of felony probation and, uniquely, also agree to a lifetime ban from holding political office. (At the time Simon's door was shot up, Rogers also functioned as the Chair of the Mendocino County Republican Party Central Committee.)

Kenny Rogers Mugshot

BUT WHEN THE PLEA DEAL was presented to the reliably notional Judge Ron Brown, Brown refused to sign off on the plea deal saying that he thought the charge Rogers was pleading guilty to necessarily involved prison time, so Rogers withdrew his plea and decided, disastrously, to fight. And, with Rogers unable to pay a lawyer, but free on an old $250,000 bond, the non-case languished in legal limbo for a couple of years.

FINALLY, Judge Brown, the slo-mo-est attorney to ever ascend the local bench, agreed to have the County pay J. David Markham of Ukiah and Lakeport, himself later inevitably elevated to the Lake County superior court, to represent Rogers.

MARKHAM filed two new motions: 1. To reduce the main charge from “murder for hire” to “assault for hire” because, Markham reasoned, the DA's evidence said nothing about Rogers wanting to kill anyone, your basic distinction without a difference because it still assumed Rogers had initiated the scheme to shoot Simon's front door.

IF ROGERS or anybody else wanted to kill Simon, they would have shot him, not his door. Markham said he would present an “insufficient evidence” defense to the reduced charges if his motion was granted. And 2. Split the pot charges into a separate case so that they can be defended as a medical marijuana case.

ROGERS lost the case based largely on a “guilt by association” trial. Stoen knew that if he could put the tough-guy/inmate Peacock on the stand and simply show the jury that Rogers was associated with him, no matter what he may or may not testify to, Stoen would likely get the guilty verdict the jury ultimately delivered.

TIM STELLOH, then of the AVA, fills in the blanks of the Kenny Rogers saga: https://theava.com/archives/425

READER ROBERT SOMERTON of Westport sent in some pics of what we call the Ricard Building of Westport. The building has been abandoned, crumbling and dilapidated for years and now it has “lost its facade,” says Mr. Somerton. “During the recent 7.0 earthquake, the ‘Blue Victorian’ as it’s known locally, came undone. An attempt was made to shore it up and stitch it back together, shortly after that.” (See the “before” pic.) But Friday night’s storm and wind undid those efforts, and the upper righthand corner has now collapsed on to Highway 1.” (See the “after” pic.) Mr. Somerton added that he doesn’t know who owns the property, but hopes that somebody in Official Mendo will finally take notice and demand that the owner at least demolish what’s left of the decrepit old building because it is now not only an eyesore, but a traffic hazard.

HILARIOUS HITS on San Francisco just keep on coming from Fox News. “Nowhere is the radical left more on display than in the city of San Francisco,” one of their commenters declared — I don't watch Fox often enough to learn their names — as he described the greatest city in the world as teeming with “undesirables” and “your 60s hippie retreads,” the latter perhaps a reference to the Mendocino County Superior Court.

IN REALITY, San Francisco in no way resembles a town governed or created by “the radical left,” whatever that much abused tag might mean to the millions of Fox's Orange cultists.

A RADICAL LEFTIST is simply a person not sold on capitalism as the basis for social-economic organization. Which happens to be millions of contemporary Americans who never heard of the “radical left.” The people Fox describes as radical leftists — mainstream Democrats — are not hostile to capitalism. They think the beast can be reformed. San Francisco's management is kinda liberal on its best days but is mostly, like all city governments these days, simply overwhelmed.

AS FOR “UNDESIRABLES,” I remember a nonplussed City police chief exclaiming, “Hell, we can't just go around arresting people because they're undesirable!” Correct chief, besides which one person's undesirable is another person's president. And double besides, undesirables seem evenly distributed throughout our population, many of them celebrated, even elected to office. Political San Francisco is really a very tame place. Its so-called progressives are conservative Democrat liberals, not radicals, certainly not leftists.

MILE AFTER MILE of San Francisco is as sedate as Boonville on a rainy week night. There is, of course, a small army of drunks, dope heads, bums, and unconfined lunatics roaming the downtown, which is also where the hotels are located, so it's no surprise that many visitors come away shocked at the apparent “anarchy” outside their hotel lobbies. You could call it “local color” if it wasn't so large and prevalent. But beyond the city center? Boonville.

THE MANY OUTPATIENTS loose in America are more the result of the exemption of the owning classes from paying their fair share of the social load — no affordable housing, no state hospital system, not enough rehab programs, and so on, while the capitalist countries of Europe, Canada and much of Asia assume a basic network of social guarantees as basic to any civilized social order, a fact the Fox network and the semi-liberal mainstream media seldom mention. (“Progressive” San Francisco's idea of cutting edge politics is gay marriage and legalized prostitution.)

OF COURSE the tough talkers of the Trumpian right push political agendas much crazier than anything the “radical left” might come up with, and never mention that San Francisco remains the number one tourist destination for the whole wide world, which kinda of begs the question, doesn't it? If Frisco is so nuts and dangerous why does everyone want to visit?

A NEW LOW was recently achieved by NPR's consistently nauseating minutes given over to listener comment, the infuriating uplift essays inflicted on listeners too slow to hit the off button. Usually we hear a couple of minutes of very, very Nice People telling us how swell they are. But the other day, just as I reached for the off button when I heard the segment announced, my extended hand froze in mid-air as, so help me, a six-year-old boy recited his alleged beliefs, beliefs that included saving more trees, respect for parents, and thirty or so more saccharine sentiments straight out of the Leo Buscaglia-John Bradshaw-Music By Yanni playbook. It was clearly a fraud and probably child abuse. Six-year-olds don't have anything resembling belief systems. The kid's demented parents, and NPR's equivalently demented producers, obviously put him up to it. The poor little dupe had been dragged from his sandbox and compelled to recite this revolting litany of feeble-minded platitudes because his parents wanted a bigger audience for their faux prodigy than they could find at the neighborhood playground. I'd call CPS but I don't know where the kid lives. Yanni, incidentally, was arrested for domestic abuse in 2006. Anybody surprised?

A LETTER writer opined that so and so shouldn't be a department head because she doesn't have a college degree. Except for math, the sciences, engineering and other specialties, anyone who can drag himself to classes can get a college degree in the liberal arts. All you have to do is show up. I happen to know that because I got one myself simply by showing up. I wouldn't have gone to college at all if I hadn't been a mediocre athlete good enough to more or less hold my own at the college level, which got me big breaks on fees, a meal ticket, a job I didn't necessarily have to show up for. Take away the wonderful world of sports and I either would have stayed in the Marines or hooked up with the Longshoremen’s Union, the dream job of my youth because I liked the waterfront aesthetic.

I DIDN'T LEARN anything in college that I couldn't have discovered at the library, did discover in the library. If I hadn't taken the path less traveled, hadn't fallen in with beatniks and bolsheviks at an impressionable age, and with my BA diploma in whatever the hell it's in — Long Novels, I think — I might have become Paul Tichinin, Superintendent of Mendocino Schools! $140,000 a year plus perks for doing absolutely nothing! Instead, I stumbled on into the newspaper business at $10,000 a year and an occasional free drink at the old Boonville Lodge.

OF COURSE it’s the liberal arts people, people like me, and the liberal arts grads called lawyers, who run most public bureaucracies, hence the social-political dysfunction from sea-to-shining sea. The people who really know how to run big organizations run private ones, so we get people who can’t do anything except correctly pronounce “paradigm” overseeing 1,200 Mendo workers and a $300 million budget!

ERNEST HEMINGWAY wasn't woke. This passage from ‘The Sun Also Rises’ certainly would have been edited out if Hemingway was writing today: “Two taxis were coming down the steep street. They both stopped in front of the Bal. A crowd of young men, some in jerseys and some in their shirt-sleeves, got out. I could see their hands and newly washed, wavy hair in the light from the door. The policeman standing by the door looked at me and smiled. They came in. As they went in, under the light I saw white hands, wavy hair, white faces, grimacing, gesturing, talking… I was very angry. Somehow they always made me angry. I know they are supposed to be amusing, and you should be tolerant, but I wanted to swing on one, any one, anything to shatter that superior, simpering composure…”

IT WAS ONE of those eerily sun-shiny, globally-warmed, post-storm days when I coasted on my bike all the way down Irving to Ocean Beach where I took a seat on one end of a bench looking out to sea. On the other end sat an elderly, European-looking couple, Mr. and Mrs. Cabbage Patch. Russians, I figured, using an ethnic calculation based on nothing more than the fact that lots of Russian immigrants live at the ocean end of nearby Geary and Clement streets, and the Russians tend to look Old World, the men in suits and ties, the old women in dresses, muted blouses, scarves, and top coats. This couple was the picture of dignity, a picture you don't see much anymore.

USED TO BE you didn't go out in public unless you looked presentable by the standards of the 1950s. In that time it was as if there was a city-wide dress code. The women always looked positively Parisian in their hats and gloves, the men spiffy in their suits and fedoras.

SO WE SAT THERE SILENTLY in the sun, the elderly couple and me, an elderly person of a different era, thinking our thoughts. The city being the city, we didn't speak. If I'd said anything to them they'd have assumed I was a nut or some kind of predator. If they said anything to me, I don't know, I might ask them where I could get a good piroshki, and they'd turn out to be American-born from North Beach.

WE LOOKED OUT at the ocean where a few surfers rode tame waves. It was very warm, and I fell asleep.

SUDDENLY, from behind us, a voice sang out an obscene lyric in a very loud voice, loud enough to wake me up, loud enough to cause me and my ancient benchmates to turn around for the source of the sudden blast of profanities.

THE SINGER was a blonde beast of a surfer dude, the kind of narcissistic sociopath common to the sport, if you'll forgive a totally unfair generalization. (Surfers and skiers, surfers and skiers, I ask you, have you ever met a wholly sensate one?)

THIS PARTICULAR MAN-BOY was about 30, I guessed, old enough not to do what he was doing, which was spraying profane disregard and contempt in all directions. He had that self-satisfied grinning look the bone stupid get when they think they're being amusing. Another blank-faced cretin half out of his wetsuit sat chuckling beside the singer.

HOW ANYBODY but a stone fascist could think there was anything amusing about an oaf singing out obscenities at random old people, well, there they were with their surfboards and their blank blue eyes.

THE TWO ANCIENT Russians glanced over their shoulders then quickly looked straight back to the sea. They knew it was simply one more episode of the boorish public behavior we all swim in these days. I kept on looking back at the guy, and he locked onto me and sang louder.

"WHY are you doing this?" I asked him. "Why don't you go fuck yourself?" came back the witty riposte.

IF I'D had a gun handy, you might have read a blip on page 12 the next day that read, “Murder at Ocean Beach. A perfect afternoon at the beach was shattered Thursday when a man described by one witness as ‘kinda like an old hippie’ suddenly emptied a revolver into John Smith, a Chico State graduate and former student body president at St. Ignatius High School. Mr. Smith was well-known and greatly admired among surfers at Ocean Beach. He is believed to have worked as a bartender in the Marina District. An elderly man who'd been sitting next to the shooter said that while he ‘wholly approved’ of the murder and hoped the gunman ‘gets away with it,’ he said he wished the shooter had shot his district supervisor instead.”

“I GOTTA HAND IT TO JOE, he don't move as fast as he used to, he don't talk as fast as he used to, but that middle finger still works. Only an animal would not pardon your son. Every parent in the world would pardon their son, except the parents of the Menendez Brothers.”

— Chris Rock

A READER ASKS if Mendo County is balancing its budget by replacing older, experienced workers with younger, less experienced, cheaper ones? It’s very likely to be a contributing factor in the County’s recently “discovered” $10-$12 million “surplus”/carryover from last fiscal year (ending June 30, 2024). Supervisor Haschak has bragged lately that the early retirement incentive program he suggested has had a few takers and generated some savings but that’s certainly not going to generate millions of dollars in savings. Since salaries make up about 80% of the County’s expenses, a surplus of upwards of $12 million, if it’s verified, is most likely from salary savings which could stem from resignations, terminations, a hiring freeze, lower cost replacements, higher vacancy rates, etc., and leads to reduced office efficiency and output, larger caseloads and workloads, delays, mistakes, etc. We have not heard any public comments on the subject of the surplus, the vacancies or trading older employees with younger ones from any of the County’s labor unions. Also, the $12 million presumed surplus was in the General Fund. So, there could be even more staffing reductions and lower cost replacements in the much bigger non-General Fund departments — mainly social services — as well. If any former, retired, or replaced employees — or their friends or relatives — have anything to offer on this subject, we’d certainly be glad to have it, on or off the record.

(Mark Scaramella)

A READER WRITES: “Have you noticed folks like this in Fort Bragg? In fact they're everywhere! Take a close look around Willits — mostly cro-magnon, right?” Enclosed was a letter from Gail Stumpf of Fort Bragg printed in the October, 2008 edition of National Geographic. Ms. Stumpf writes: “The artists did a fine job of fleshing out a Neanderthal female and showing us what she possibly looked like. My problem was that she looked just like one of us. In my small hometown in northern California, I have seen females of northern European, Iberian, and Native American ancestry who look remarkably like her, including the receding chin, heavy build, and heavy browridges. One can find humans with heavy browridges, sloping foreheads, receding chins, and short, squat, barrel-chested, heavy-boned builds in almost every population one cares to examine. I know there are differences among the skeletal remains of Neanderthals and many modern humans, but I wonder just how significant those differences really are.”

A READER sends along this warning from Thomas Jefferson: ”If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” Which is exactly what has happened, I'd say.

IN OTHER ANIMAL NOTES, I saw the darndest sight in Frisco the other afternoon. I was walking on 6th Avenue near Irving when, from about a half-block away, I saw a woman and her leashed little dog emerge from an apartment. The woman was of middling years and nicely dressed. She stood with her leashed pet on the sidewalk, then held an egg up to the sky. “Hmmm,” I thought. “Doesn't look like a nut. Wonder what she's doing with the egg.” As I drew closer the woman placed the egg at the foot of a typically struggling urban tree and two crows flew down and began pecking the egg. “Excuse me, ma'am,” I said. “I've never seen that before.” The woman looked at me for a few seconds to make sure I wasn't a nut. “Oh, they're kinda my pets. I've known them for years.”

FROM THE MENDOCINO BEACON of November 4, 1883: “Black Bart, the gentlemanly, respectable, patriotic, courteous, charitable, merciful, considerate, pious highwayman, after a successful career of six years during which he has committed 23 stage robberies in Northern California with impunity, has at last been bagged by the police, stimulated by the offer of rewards aggregating $18,400. Capt. Harry Morse is one lucky man who will receive the principal part of the money and glory. His history of the tracking and capture of the wily rascal is equal to anything in Pinkerton's book. The unsuspecting manner in which Bart ran his neck into the noose which Morse held for him evidenced anything but shrewdness on his part. His last dodge is to gain immunity by confession. We shall have no doubt of a pamphlet edition of his exploits, which will be a textbook in the hands of boys ambitious of a similar career.”

BLACK BART held up a number of stage coaches on the Willits Grade and between Cloverdale and Ukiah. There were persistent rumors at the time – c. 1880 – that the highwayman was a Ukiah school teacher posing as the better known Bart.

THAT TERRIBLE SCENE on the bluffs at Mendocino village late in November 2008 remains as a doubly terrible reminder that the ocean's edge is a very dangerous place. This particular tragedy was partially captured on video by horrified onlookers, whose film subsequently appeared on television news and the internet.

MAURIZIO BIASINI, 54, an Italian national in the US as a visiting scholar at UC Riverside where he taught physics, had climbed down the bluff at the ocean end of Main Street to get a closer look at a rock formation that had caught his interest when, his horrified wife and twin 18-year-old sons looking on, Biasini was swept out to sea by a sneaker wave, shouting for help as he was borne ever farther out into the ocean, but visible for long minutes before he disappeared.

BIASINI'S distraught sons, not understanding that the Coast Guard is the only agency in the area equipped to carry out a rescue involving an ocean rescue, and that it takes about a half hour for their emergency helicopter to appear offshore, the frantic boys, screaming for someone to do something, anything, with their father already invisible after being last seen some 50 yards offshore, began grappling with the police dangerously close to the edge of the same precipice that had claimed their father.

ONE of the boys was violently fighting the police who were simultaneously trying to comfort and restrain him, but sweet reason was no match for the pure hysteria inspired in the Biasini family by the awful sight of their patriarch's final frantic waves far offshore.

THE BOY was eventually tazed into submission which, by the time the taser was deployed, Mendocino's Search and Rescue people, all volunteers, were doing their best to calm the Biasinis. Everything possible that could have been done was done.

HAVING SEEN the film, I'd say the taze was justified on the kid. Both the Biasini boys were large and fit, and both boys, out of their minds with grief, were violently out of control. One brother, however, had become less combative by the time his brother, who showed no signs of reconciling himself ever, was electronically subdued. If he hadn't been tazed, the three or four people trying to calm him on the very edge of the bluff might have tumbled over the side into a rough sea and the tragedy multiplied.

A CALLER TOLD ME that on that same day she'd warned a family whose children were gamboling in the surf off the Haul Road in Fort Bragg that the kids shouldn't be anywhere near the surf given the ocean's unpredictable ferocity. She was denounced by the parents as a killjoy and told to mind her own business.

THE REMAINS of Maurizio Biasini were found by a hiker on the beach at Jughandle State Park, about six miles north of the Mendocino Headlands where Biasini was washed out to sea on November 29th, the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. He was found on Christmas day. Biasini was visible for some hundred yards until he disappeared forever. His twin sons, 18, were so distraught at what they perceived as the tardy response of rescue teams, had to be subdued by Sheriff’s deputies who feared that the boys, and the police attempting to calm them at the edge of the bluffs, might also fall into the sea.

MARK TAYLOR (Fort Bragg)

Growing up in the Chicago area, we had four newspapers, two in the morning, two in the afternoon. The Tribune, which leaned Republican and preached fiscal responsibility, was the most respected of the four and had a national reputation. They also owned the American, which was much more aimed at the masses and their prurient tabloid interests, with more hardcore conservative editorial outlook.

The Sun Times, the only one of the four that came in a true tabloid format, was more staunchly Democratic Party and was aimed, both in editorials and human interest, at working folks. They owned the Daily News, another afternoon paper that was filled with exciting news of the sensational nature. All four had separate cartoon and sport sections, which made youthful reading a real pleasure. Colored funnies on Sunday, too!

My Dad worked nights for the Sun Times and would bring home all four newspapers, hot off the presses. It became a habit early for all us kids to pore over those papers, the sections we explored expanding as we grew older and events became more volatile as the Viet Nam war and civil rights protests progressed. We were staunch Democrats in my family, even the moreso since our Dad worked for the Sun Times, and were firmly opposed to just about anything the Tribune stood for.

But we read them all anyway. The politicians in our state (aside from Mayor Richard J Daley, who was pretty gruff and direct, sometimes) weren’t bomb throwers or name callers, and neither were the papers. They all had firmly held views, certainly, but they generally made reasoned arguments, even if the Tribune/American were “misguided”. You could read the opposing editorials, getting angry, sure, but without your head exploding. On top of it all, my Dad would bring home all the behind the scenes newsroom gossip, dirt and backstories. For me, it was the golden age of journalism.

Now here I am in Fort Bragg. The Advocate News is pretty worthless, the Ukiah Daily Journal and the PD corporate shills, the SF Chronicle too expensive and spare, and the internet untrustworthy and sharply divided. Luckily, there’s still the AVA, not without its own bias, but with a pretty good mix of views, local news, history, and wonderfully sharp humored editorial insights. I wish you still hard a hard copy version.

I’m looking back through the kindly gauze of history, I know, and I’m sure it wasn’t as rosy as I remember. Still, I miss the variety I had back in my youth, the news stands and circulation trucks, the paper boys, the distinctive smell of ink, and the snap and crackle of the paper every time one turned a page. It’s just not the same, scrolling and clicking my way through the news and views of the world now. I miss the packaging, I guess, it just made things more palatable.

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Dunlap Roofing)

The (roofing) crew found this under an old roof today. Does anyone know her and possible year?

(Moments later Dunlap added: Ok, here's the info - Lila & Norb are two different people who ran in 1998 & lost their races. They ran against Gjerde, White and Bennedetti who all won. 1998 City Council election. They fired City Attorney, Planning Director and City Manager in like two meetings. All over the Blue Roof motel. [Affinito’s North Cliff Motel]. They were going to tear it down they thought, but were all totally wrong. Motel is still there and it cost us $7 million.

MARK SCARAMELLA NOTES: Not exactly. The anti-Affinito city council reform slate (Dan Gjerde, Michelle White and Vince Bennedetti) won election handily because they were opposed to Affinito’s illegal motel for a number of legitimate reasons, such as the lack of sufficient water for the oversized motel and it being one story too tall, illegally blocking the ocean view from the city and in direct violation of the city’s planning regs and the Coastal Act. (Affinito misrepresented the baseline for the height measurement in his planning documents so that the extra floor measurement was off by one floor.) I don’t think anyone actually proposed tearing it down, although there were statements made about closing down the upper floor or maybe even removing it, but nobody proposed such things in any council meetings. I have no idea where Mr. Dunlap got his $7 million number. Affinito sued the Coastal Commission and the city, Affinito being a very wealthy man who could drag the case out indefinitely if necessary for denying his permit after the permit misrepresentations were discovered. The city had a good case. But Judge Conrad Cox ruled that since the motel was already there, there wasn’t any case, denying the other legitimate arguments the city made. Cox was right about it already being there, but wrong about not requiring mitigations and penalties from Affinito. Most of the court costs were covered by the state/Coastal Commission. I don’t think the City of Fort Bragg was out anywhere near $7 million. The suit was initiated by Affinito, not the City.

Here’s Roanne Withers report on Cox’s ruling at the time: https://theava.com/archives/135426

A YOUNG BAGPIPER was asked by a funeral director to play at a grave-side service for an old lawyer. The funeral was at a cemetery way out in the country. This lawyer would be the first to be laid to rest there. Not being familiar with the area, the bagpiper was late, so late the backhoe crew was already eating lunch. The hearse was nowhere in sight. The bagpiper apologized to the workers for being late and stepped to the side of the open grave where he could see the closed lid of the coffin. He assured the workers he would not hold them up for long, but he'd been hired to play and he was going to play. The workers gathered around, still eating their lunches. The bagpiper played his heart out. The workers began to weep as soulful versions of “My Home” and “The Lord Is My Shepherd” and “Flowers of the Forest” were squeezed from the ancient instrument. The bagpiper closed with a moving rendition of “Amazing Grace” and solemnly walked off to his car. As he was opening the door and taking off his coat, he overheard one of the workers say to another, “I've never seen anything like that before, and I've been putting in septic tanks for twenty years.”

ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] Having ensured Trump was always personally in the public eye for all the years after he lost the last election by making everything about hating Trump and never about, well, issues, Trump knows now that not only is mindless criticism not harmful, it is of great benefit to him.

[2] Declining birth rates started long, long before “the vax.”

Birth rates declined because birth control gave women other options than being constantly pregnant, equality movements gave women more ability to earn money while pregnancy and motherhood meant less income for themselves and their families. Children are expensive. And retirement benefits meant that children were no longer needed as a hedge against old age. Easy divorce left more women being the sole breadwinner in a household. All things that society found agreeable.

Frankly, people now have the ability to be more self indulgent and contempt for parenthood has skyrocketed. Motherhood is hard and women never got much respect for “women’s work” by society anyway except from their own children. So what sensible person could be so surprised at the result that they explain it by a conspiracy theory?

[3] While Brian Thompson was an executive at the company, UnitedHealthcare used an AI system to automate the denial of medical services. The program had a 90% error rate, resulting in thousands of people being denied medically necessary and fully covered treatments.

[4] The legitimacy of billionaire fortunes has always rested on the entrepreneurial myth our super rich invoke at every opportunity. Our brilliance, that myth goes, made us our billions. How dare any government make any move to tax away any significant chunk of our “self-made” riches! Never mind that most of the money was made with publicly schooled workers and publicly paid infrastructure.

[5] Trumpism is capacious. It contains contradictions and absurdities. It borrows from the left and the right. An explosive mix of love and hate propels it. Anyone can afford the price of admission. They only need to embrace Trump, MAGA, and conspiracies.

[6] Drones. No reason at all to shoot one down. There are many ways to bring down drones and you can be sure the DOD is familiar with and experimented with them. My favorite is the drone to drone net-gun which brings the enemy drone down in one piece. The feds could solve this problem as soon as it started. My guess is most of these "sightings" are the result of overactive imaginations, regular aircraft, stupid news people, and mass psychosis.

I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead; men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas. ~Charles Bukowski

[7] Years ago I drove from a little Delta town to Sacramento on weekends. It’s amazing to see the planes line up out over the Sierra Mountains all the way to Sacramento airport at night. I’m guessing they turn their lights on early to find the way to Sacramento.

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