Mendocino County Today: Sunday 1/12/2025

Clear Skies | Hawk Moon | AV Events | Pet Echo | Ed Notes | Suspended Footbridge | Highway 128 Song | Brother Harold Palmer | Hotel Van | Yesterday's Catch | Sage 2025 | Commune Compliance | Still Alive | Jan Sixers | Math Games | Marco Radio | Various Orbits | Newsom Moving | Speed Record | DWR Action | Trail Runner | Self Pardon | L.A. Burning | Monkey Bars | Celeb Disgust | Imagine… | California Burns | POTUS Club | Normal Lives | Moonshine County | Tower of Song | Mister Elsewhere

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GUSTY NORTHERLY WINDS along the coast and robust offshore flow across the interior mountains continue this weekend and early next week. Lighter winds and continued dry weather is likely for at least most of next week as high pressure moves overhead. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A brrrr 37F under clear skies this Sunday morning on the coast. Cool overnight temps, clear skies & no rain in sight is our forecast.

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AV EVENTS

Free Entry to Hendy Woods State Park for local residents
Sun 01 / 12 / 2025 at 8:00 AM
Where: Hendy Woods State Park
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/4371)

AV Grange Pancake and Egg Breakfast
Sun 01 / 12 / 2025 at 8:30 AM
Where: Anderson Valley Grange , 9800 CA-128, Philo, CA 95466
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/3898)

The Anderson Valley Museum CLOSED UNTIL FEBRUARY
Sun 01 / 12 / 2025 at 1:00 PM
Where: The Anderson Valley Museum , 12340 Highway 128, Boonville , CA 95415
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/4296)

Preparation For the Rest of Our Lives Book Club
Mon 01 / 13 / 2025 at 1:00 PM
Where: Private Address, please log in to see more
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/4330)

Senior Center Lunch
Tue 01 / 14 / 2025 at 12:00 PM
Where: Anderson Valley Senior Center , 14470 Highway 128, Boonville, CA 95415
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/4360)

AV Library Open
Tue 01 / 14 / 2025 at 1:00 PM
Where: Mendocino County Fairgrounds, Boonville, 14400 Highway 128,
Boonville, CA 95415
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/4340)

Moving to the Groove
Tue 01 / 14 / 2025 at 1:00 PM
Where: Anderson Valley Senior Center , 14470 Highway 128, Boonville,
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/4350)

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UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Stunning Echo has a typical Husky personality--active, independent, mischievous, and playful! This girl likes to prance around when she’s happy, and enjoys playing with toys. Echo is easy to walk on-leash and enjoys getting out and about in nature, sniffing and exploring. Indoors, Echo is mellow and likes to be close to people.

Love the Husky breed? Come on down to the shelter and take this lovely lady-dog out for a stroll! Echo is a year old and weighs in at 38 beautiful pounds.

To see all of our canine and feline guests, and the occasional goat, sheep, tortoise, and for information about our services, programs, and events, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com.

Join us the first Saturday every month for our Meet The Dogs Adoption Event at the shelter. Please share our posts on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter/

For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

Making a difference for homeless pets in Mendocino County, one day at a time!

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ED NOTES

THE ANDERSON VALLEY as described by a Chronicle wine writer: “Anderson Valley was once a quiet, rustic haven, shut to outsiders, but for a long, winding low road and a vertiginous, winding high road. In the 1800s the local Boontling dialect was invoked to confound outsiders. A century later, the valley's foggy, redwood-lined slopes became a magnet for lovers of a subtler style of Pinot Noir.”

I COUNT FIVE errors of fact and six instances of flawed grammar, which isn't bad for a 50-word paragraph. The guy probably was loaded on free booze when he wrote it, but dialects aren't invoked, Boontling isn't a dialect, Boontling's early 20th century purpose was to amuse its speakers, about half of it is wonderfully impolite in ways impossible in the socially constipated times we live in, there's nothing particularly vertiginous about the Ukiah Road, the redwoods run on the west side of The Valley only, we don't get much fog, haven for whom from what?

WENT TO SEE a city doctor for another in a series of tests, ending only when I finally reach my pull date. My MediCare bill must be well into six figures. I try not to think of the basic injustice of all this attention for a guy who has flown way past the very top of the actuarial charts as, say, an uninsured ten-year-old dies for lack of medical attention.

For complicated reasons I got there by Muni.

I was sitting in the middle of the rear seat for the extra leg room. A tiny Chinese woman, also of ancient vintage, with three vacant seats on either side of me and the rest of the bus empty, nevertheless took the seat directly on my left.

Another time I was in an otherwise empty theater in the Kabuki complex at Fillmore and Post, a theater I always tried to avoid because of that nutty assigned seating policy of theirs. “Where would you like to sit, sir?” I don't care, so long as it's at least ten rows back.

So there I am, the only person in the place sitting contentedly in my assigned seat when darned if a Chinese woman sits down beside me. The lights were still on. I silently gestured to the empty theater and asked her, “Why?” She replied by brandishing her ticket with her seat number on it.

And years ago I was the only person in a theater when a retarded guy sat down next to me. I gently explained that in an otherwise empty theater there's no need to bunch up. “No problem,” he said, as he sat down one seat over.

But this Chinese lady, my new Muni neighbor, emitted no negative mental health indicators, but I just had to ask, “Do you mind moving over one seat?”

“Not speak,” she replied. With a martyred sigh because I was there first, I moved over a seat. If she'd also moved over to stay close to me I would have had my first direct experience with a Chinese crazy person. As an ethnic generalization, Chinese are rarely nuts. In public.

I figured this lady probably had taken the seat next to me out of some numerological good luck calculation. Maybe she'd hit a Scratcher the last time she'd sat in that seat.

On the second bus that finally got me to my destination, a white street guy, maybe 50, got on and plopped himself down next to a nicely dressed, plump woman of about 30. (As a second ethnic generalization, white people are frequently nuts in public. But you know that. We all know that.)

“Boy, you're a fat one,” the street guy gallantly remarked to his seatmate, chuckling, “How much you weigh, honey?" At which point the driver yelled, “Knock it off or you're off the bus,” and an old school standing passenger also reminded the street guy, “We're all just trying to get to work here. Be a gentleman, please.” And the street guy shut up.

The insulted woman stared straight ahead throughout, one more urban bummer endured, I imagined her thinking.

I wondered to myself if the street guy had shut up at the threat from the driver to eject him, or if he shut up because he suddenly remembered some long gone instruction from a parent in the days parents instilled basic manners in their children.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard an appeal from an individual for polite behavior, of which there is little on public transportation, San Francisco, the constant recorded reminders that the seats up front are for the elderly and the non-ambulatory notwithstanding. Muni drivers often have to get up from behind the wheel to clear those seats for the very old, who are totally dependent on Muni to get around the city, some passengers so ancient they shouldn't be going anywhere unattended. America is not a country where you want to spend your golden years alone.

I REMEMBER the doctors of my youth as vaguely disheveled characters who likely as not dangled a cigarette as they tapped your knee with a little rubber hammer and chucked your pills for hernias as you tried not to cough in their faces. Knee taps and pill chucks comprised the basic sports physical. Everyone passed, including the terminally ill, as one of my football teammates turned out to be after he'd passed his “physical.”

At my house we didn't go to the doctor unless the bone was through the skin. No visible injury, no emergency room. These days gluttony gets you a handicapped parking space, double seats on airplanes and neurotics suffer from chronic everything while medicos run marathons and seem mildly disapproving of you no matter how robust your health is.

Frankly, if there were any, I'd be partial to doctors who smoked and were half-looped on the job like they used to be. This guy I went to last week for a routine once-over occasionally paused for a sip of bottled water as he ran through a Yes-No checklist, paying no attention whatsoever to my responses, all of which were NO to inquiries ranging from, “Have you shared needles in the last year with non-prescription drug users?” to “Have you visited Albania in the last year?”

If I'd turned green and confessed to having unprotected sex with prostitutes, which was one of the questions, he probably wouldn't have noticed, let alone cared.

Responding to ethereal beeps from the electronic gizmo the harried healer carried on his hip like a six-shooter, the doctor, who was long and lean and clearly a man who enjoyed torturing his flesh, suddenly dashed from the room without explanation. He did say, “Excuse me” as he rushed away. For all I knew he was running out of the building forever, abandoning his profession for a permanent bed of nails far from his diseased patients, maybe even far from our cholesterol-choked shores.

I looked around for something to read. But in this absolute vacuum of a space there was nothing, not even a People magazine or the usual depressing repro of a bad painting. It could have been one of those Russian desensitization chambers, the first stop to full-on torture.

I usually carry an emergency old Signet paperback of poems, but I'd forgotten it. These people, these caring professionals, go to a lot of school, so wouldn't you think they'd have at least one item on the premises to delight the senses, to please the temporarily unoccupied mind of their trapped patients?

I've never met an interesting doctor, although I'm sure they exist. Which isn't quite fair because I only encounter them when they're working. There was once Dr. William Carlos Williams after all.

Silently screaming, I sat there in the utter sterility of a room so devoid of interest it could, by itself, cause serious mental illness. I was about to leave just as the marathoner zoomed back in. “What was your name again?” he asked.

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Over the years there were several suspended footbridges over the Noyo River. One was east of Newman Gulch, and another was in the area of the company ranch. The photo here is taken from a postcard one of my grand aunts sent to another sometime between 1924 and 1931 and depicts what may be another, as it would seem to be closer to town than the ranch, and it doesn't match a photo I've seen of the bridge near Newman Gulch. If I had to guess I'd say this one might have been in the vicinity of Dolphin Isle. There appears to be a road running down to the river on the far right, and there are various buildings, including some on the top of the bluff in the distance. Does anyone recognize this pre-1930 bridge?

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JOHN REDDING:

My mother was a wonderful pianist who signed me up for piano lessons at the age of 10. I tried but was more interested in playing sports. When Rock and Roll and the Beatles took off, I fancied myself as playing guitar is a famous band. At the age of 12, I bought a Martin D-28 guitar. I learned to play songs by painstakingly listening to 45 rpm records. I became good enough to earn a few dollars playing gigs while in college. 

That D-28 sat in my closet for years and years after I got my first job as a nuclear engineer and started a family.

Many years later, I was getting my hair cut by a friend who plays in a local band. I let it be known that I had a guitar in my closet, very much feeling abandoned. He threatened to set my hair on fire unless I started playing guitar again. 

Being fond of having hair, I complied. 

Next thing I know I am playing guitar and singing at two Masses a weekend at St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Mendocino. Which is where I reside today. In addition to church music, I took voice lessons and learned to perform every well-known song from 1950s onward. I took to the stage at local open mic events and then started performing regularly at the local venues. This lasted until covid shut it all down.

After Covid, I went back to performing at local gigs, but I no longer found it satisfying. The noise level was distractingly high, and people weren't actively listening. My goal then became to perform original songs to audiences who were there to listen and learn the back stories to the songs. I am realizing that goal. 

https://www.johnniemendo.com

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CHUCK DUNBAR:

Here’s a great photo of Brother Harold Palmer, per my comment today—thought you might like to print it...

Brother Harold Palmer lived alone in the wilds by choice: The Northumbrian hermit died on October 4th, aged 93 

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MENDOCINO WAY BACK WHEN (Ron Parker): Willits Hotel Van

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, January 11, 2025

KEITH BROWN, 35, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

HOMERO CARMEN, 32, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation.

JASON DELCARLO, 41, Fort Bragg. Domestic violence court order violation.

CHRISOPTHER GONZALEZ, 22, Ukiah. Unlawful camping-private property, shopping cart, controlled substance, paraphernalia, unspecified offense, probation revocation.

DOUGLAS LINCOLN SR., 68, Covelo. Battery, unlawful act on school grounds, probation revocation.

DUSTIN LINCOLN, 39, Covelo. DUI, battery with serious injury, unlawful act on school grounds.

JESUS LOPEZ-LEON, 44, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, cruelty to child-infliction of injury, contributing, resisting.

EFRAN NUNEZ-SUCHILT, 40, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, public intoxication.

TASHA ORNELAS, 38, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

MAURICIO PANAMENO, 28, Fort Bragg. Rape-victim unconscious or asleep, probation revocation.

FACUNDO REYES-DELGADO, 42, Ukiah. Suspended license for DUI, evasion, resisting.

JEFFREY ROBINSON, 47, Redwood Valley. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, registration tampering.

ALEJANDRO SANCHEZ, 19, Willits. DUI, minor knowingly operating vehicle while carrying alcohol, pedestrian on roadway.

TOBIAS WOOD, 31, Ukiah. Controlled substance, concealed dirk-dagger.

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HUMBOLDT COUNTY'S MOST FAMOUS COMMUNE GOES LEGIT — SORT OF

Failure to meet code could see enforcement return, threatening Yee Haw's future

by Matt LaFever

Humboldt County’s Board of Supervisors voted this week to grant the controversial Yee Haw commune a path to legitimacy, despite the property’s long history of code violations posing health and safety risks for residents.

The county’s clashes with Yee Haw owner Charles Garth date back to 2001. During a September 2024 Board of Supervisors meeting, Planning and Building gave Garth 39 weeks to address code violations — including unpermitted residences, unsafe wastewater disposal, unapproved wells and over a dozen junk vehicles — on the Trinidad-area property or face tenant evictions and demolition of the unpermitted structures.

Critics have called Garth a slumlord, but Yee Haw’s around two dozen residents and its supporters have defended the commune as a grassroots response to Humboldt County’s housing crisis. That framing appears to have gained traction with county officials, who signaled a potential path forward for the commune in the Jan. 7 meeting.

The board was responding to a Nov. 4 application from Garth to rezone Yee Haw as an “Alternative Lodge Park,” a designation allowing modified building standards under the county’s Emergency Housing Under Shelter Crisis Declaration. Garth argued the change would let Yee Haw continue providing shelter for Humboldt’s homeless population. However, at a Board of Supervisors meeting the next day, officials made it clear no rezoning would be considered until “urgent risks” to health on the property were addressed.

At this week’s meeting, Steve Lazar, a senior planner with the county’s Planning and Building Department, reported progress at Yee Haw. The commune has made progress disassembling barrel toilets — “a good chunk of it’s been done,” Lazar said — and has installed two portable toilets and a handwashing station to replace the previous system. Garth has also been coordinating with county officials to dispose of nearly 4 yards’ worth of human waste, Lazar said. Work was underway to install a lockable well cover to prevent contamination, and regular testing of the commune’s water sources had begun.

“I think it’s safe to say that they’re acting in good faith to work towards compliance with these public health directives, but there remains work to be done,” Lazar summarized.

Still, he said, county officials determined Garth’s rezoning request was not the “right pathway” to legitimize Yee Haw, most particularly because the area is not tapped into public water and wastewater services. He proposed a straightforward fix: Rather than amend the zoning designation of Yee Haw, amend the existing Emergency Housing Village zoning code accommodate how Yee Haw is currently zoned.

Lazar emphasized that these accommodations for Yee Haw were just the beginning. All existing structures would need permits verifying the safety of their plumbing, heating and electrical systems. Permitting RVs or yurts (referred to as membrane structures) could be challenging, and any shared spaces such as kitchens would have to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Additionally, Yee Haw’s water supply and on-site waste treatment systems would require thorough testing and ongoing maintenance.

Lazar stressed that amending the county’s emergency housing provisions wouldn’t erase the commune’s outstanding code violations, estimating the cost to bring the property into compliance could exceed $100,000.

Garth approached the podium after Lazar spoke and told the board, “This isn’t our first dance. Me and the county have been doing this for quite a while. There’s been a lot of testing already. You haven’t shut me down yet because we keep taking steps forward and you keep taking steps forward, and I appreciate that.”

First District Supervisor Rex Bohn voiced measured skepticism about Yee Haw’s progress, calling the property a “historical issue” the county had worked hard to resolve. He challenged the notion of real progress, pointing out that several junk vehicles removed from the property ended up in Loleta, a small community in his district. “The problem didn’t go away. The problem got moved,” he said.

Bohn also raised concerns that the county was “bending over backwards” to accommodate Yee Haw, describing the effort as “pretty extreme.” He warned the board’s flexibility could “open a door” for other landowners to seek similar exceptions.

Fifth District Supervisor Steve Madrone addressed Bohn’s concerns that accommodating Yee Haw would set a precedent for other property owners. “Does this open the door? Yeah, thank goodness because we have a housing problem,” he said.

Madrone further argued the real harm would come from not accommodating Yee Haw, stating it could result in “even more people out on the streets, which is a really horrible and very unsafe and very unsanitary place to be.”

Public commenters overwhelmingly supported Yee Haw, with several current residents speaking in favor of the commune. One commenter noted, “Many of the issues we see in RV parks locally are worse than what we are seeing at Yee Haw,” recalling an Arcata RV park where tenants were regularly exposed to raw sewage.

One commenter, who identified himself as a senior biology student at Cal Poly Humboldt and Yee Haw resident, told the board that the commune’s conditions were safer than the mold-infested rentals he had encountered throughout Eureka.

Addressing Bohn’s concerns about Yee Haw’s junk vehicles being relocated elsewhere in the county, the student responded, “Well, same with people, and people are a little bit more important.”

A lone dissenter summed up the skeptical viewpoint, stating, “When I look at these pictures and the uncare of how these toilets and sanitation has been conducted, it’s pretty sad.” The commenter also questioned Garth’s sincerity in addressing the violations, adding, “He’s had many chances to do something about it. People have said he’s been doing this for decades, and it’s only been since the county showed up that anything has really been done.”

In the end, Planning and Building’s recommendation to amend the zoning code to accommodate Yee Haw was approved. The ball is now in Garth’s court as he works to bring the commune up to code under the county’s emergency housing provisions. If significant progress isn’t made by September 2025, code enforcement could resume.

(SFGate)

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JEFF BLANKFORT:

I would say that I am still alive and kicking because I was fortunate to inherit good genes, have avoided junk food all my life and have had more than my share of luck. That others have not been so fortunate, including many believers--which I don't happen to be--this post would imply that they found less favor in the eyes of your imaginary deity.

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NO PARDONS FOR JAN. 6

Editor:

I try to be sympathetic with others of all viewpoints, but, as a veteran, I must state my views on Donald Trump’s plan to pardon all the criminal actors convicted of crimes at our Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. These people knew what they were doing, knew that it was not legal and should be liable for punishment up to the fullest extent of the law for the crimes they committed. Period.

Dwight Daley

Santa Rosa

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DEBORAH WHITE:

I'm still trying to figure out how people learn math, but one thing I'm sure of is that playing games is the most effective way. You start with Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, War, anything involving counting and ranking: introduction to algorithms.

Yahtzee is the perfect way to learn probability. One of my most brilliant students has become a fan. Plus, she brought some little objects back from Japan that you use like jacks, which she'd never seen, and now she is practicing elaborate dice rolls that she hopes will produce high scores. I mean, we live in Vegas…

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MEMO OF THE AIR: No spill blood.

"No matter how dark the evil, there is always a corner for ridicule's little lantern." -Timothy Snyder

Here's the recording of last night's (Friday, 2025-01-10) 7-plus-hour Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org (and, for the first three hours of the show, also 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino): https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0626

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

I've been doing my show on a montage of various radio stations every Friday night since February of 1997, when I stopped publishing /Memo/ on real newsprint. The project involves several hours every day of concentrated prep and then a couple of all-nighters, one to get ready and one to go. If you appreciate the show and want to help me out personally, you can trust me not to spend your money on drink, drugs, cigarets, or candy. https://paypal.me/MarcoMcClean

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

John Prine - When I Get to Heaven. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0EiV423j0M

Another activity one might expect them to have in a proper Heaven. But maybe add maple bacon and hot ranch dressing in that last step, with the lettuce. I think it's lettuce. (You might have to click the sound on.) https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oydwWC88HBw

Kaleidoscopic choreography. https://www.messynessychic.com/2025/01/07/the-lost-art-of-hollywoods-kaleidoscopic-fever-dreams/

A little about Remedios Varo and her art. Merlin Tinker, FSM (Fixer of Sewing Machines) had a copy of one like, but not, Hairy Locomotion on the wall of his shop in the 1980s. It gave me the same feeling that I got later from the film /Dark City/ (1998), when the Strangers moved smoothly through the air in an alley, upright, though not steering with their mustaches. https://www.maramarietta.com/the-arts/painting-drawing-sculpture/artists-p-w/varo/

A photograph of the suspect. He's peeking from the shrubbery, dressed in kind of a science fiction future army suit with hard shoulder-guards, and he has a round blonde burr-furry beachball for a head, no neck, flat fat-gun-guy sunglasses and a big wide purse-lipped muppet mouth. He's rather an Aryan South American cartoon military teddybear, isn't he. They're gonna catch him. Where could somebody like that blend in? Idaho, maybe. Look there first. (via Fark) https://kdvr.com/news/local/police-seek-identity-of-suspect-accused-of-multiple-sexual-assaults-near-denver/amp

And Say You'll Be There. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWQzyl9fg1Y

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

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GAVIN NEWSOM WILL NOW LIVE IN JARED HUFFMAN's DISTRICT

The two biggest disappointments in California politics will now be neighbors.

For years, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and his family have lived in a $3.7 million home in Sacramento County, purchased in December 2018 by a company registered to Newsom’s cousin, Jeremy Scherer. Now, the governor is upgrading — at least part-time to Kentfield (formerly Ross Landing) in Marin County

Gavin Newsom's name appears nowhere on the title to his Sacramento home.

Newsom's new home, described as “architecturally stunning,” is a three-story home featuring six bedrooms, five-and-a-half bathrooms, and an open floor plan. Its chef’s kitchen and floor-to-ceiling windows highlight the luxury of the property, allowing unobstructed views of Mount Tamalpais and natural light to pour in

Gavin Newsom will have his own private bathroom for hair gel and other grooming products.

This high-profile purchase has drawn criticism as it comes amid heightened concerns over California’s affordability crisis, with many residents struggling to make ends meet under soaring housing costs and rising taxes.

Apparently, Newsom is also throwing DEI out the window in buying his new home. Kentfield is predominantly white and rich.

Kentfield is only 0.5% Black

What about Brown demographics, you ask? Probably fewer than five per cent. Asian professionals, and professionals from India and Pakistan, seem to outnumber working class Latinos.

As with their Sacramento home, it's no mystery why the Newsom family secretly bought the home through an LLC.

Newsom’s purchase highlights the growing disparity between political elites -- like U.S. Representative Jared Huffman, who also lives in Marin County -- and the average Californian, fueling further scrutiny of the governor’s leadership during these challenging times

"Heroes and Patriots Radio" has learned the $9.1 million property was acquired on November 14 via a limited liability company controlled by Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

Again, Gavin Newsom's name appears nowhere on the title.

Stay tuned for more about the secret financial lives of the politicians who purport to represent us.

— John Sakowicz, cohost, "Heroes and Patriots Radio" on KMUD

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CA DEPARTMENT OF WATER RESOURCES FILES DELTA TUNNEL 'VALIDATION ACTION' WITH COURT

by Dan Bacher

On January 7, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) filed a “validation action” with the Sacramento County Superior Court regarding DWR’s authority to issue revenue bonds to finance the planning, design, construction and other capital costs of Delta conveyance facilities, such as the Delta Conveyance Project DWR approved in December 2023. 

On January 16 of last year, the Sacramento Superior Court ruled that DWR lacks the authority to issue revenue bonds to finance the embattled Delta Conveyance Project, commonly referred to as the Delta Tunnel. DWR has appealed that decision: sacramento.newsreview.com/...

The Delta Tunnel is a project opposed by several California Indian tribes, nearly all environmental groups in the state and beyond, Southern California ratepayers, recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, conservationists, Delta businesses and Southern California water ratepayers.

Opponents say the tunnel, which would divert Sacramento River at Hood and Courtland before it flows through the Delta, would hasten the extinction of Sacramento River winter and spring-run Chinook salmon, Delta Smelt, longfin smelt, Central steelhead, green sturgeon and other fish species, as well as impact the cultural resources of Tribes and devastate Delta communities in the path of the proposed tunnel. 

“Although DWR has existing legal authority to finance and construct the proposed project under the Central Valley Project Act, a validation action is necessary to provide the requisite assurance to the financial community for the sale of revenue bonds,” DWR claimed in a statement. “DWR is pursuing this path in parallel with its appeal of the decision issued in its previous validation action to explore all possible paths to resolve the validation question with expediency.” 

DWR also claimed it “derives its authority to issue bonds to finance planning and construction of the State Water Project (SWP)” under the State Water Resources Development Bond Act of 1959 (Burns Porter Act), California Water Code section 12930, and the Central Valley Project Act, California Water Code section 11100.

Bob Wright, attorney for the case DWR is appealing, slammed the latest litigation by the Department as “duplicative” and “frivolous.”

"The Department of Water Resources is engaging in duplicative, frivolous litigation by filing a new case repeating the case they lost last year and are presently trying to get reversed in the Court of Appeal,” said Wright. “They are trying to do to the taxpayers by frivolous lawsuits what they are trying to do to the health of Delta residents and users and the endangered and threatened fish species. I won't use the word describing what they are doing in a family news article."…

https://www.elkgrovenews.net/2025/01/ca-department-of-water-resources-files.html

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Congratulations to Tara Dower for becoming the fastest person in history to complete the Appalachian Trail! The 31-year-old from Virginia completed the 2,168 mile (3,489 km) backcountry trail in 40 days, 18 hours, and five minutes, a distance usually covered by an A.T. thru-hiker in five to seven months.

To set the record, Dower ran and hiked an average of 54 miles each day on the often rocky and steep trail, which includes a total vertical gain of 465,000 feet as it runs through fourteen states. She started her daily runs at 3:30 am and continued for approximately 17 hours with several short breaks for meals and 90-second "dirt naps."

Dower used her record-setting run to raise money for Girls on the Run, saying that she hopes her feat will inspire girls and women. “I hope more women get out there,” she said. “It’s not about beating men, it’s about finding our true potential. And, you know, if you beat the men, that’s an extra bonus.” When she reached the trail's end on Saturday night, the exhausted but jubilant Dower fell to her knees and put her hands on the bronze plaque that reads, “A footpath for those who seek fellowship with the wilderness.”

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

He’ll only be a convicted felon for a week or so. Once he’s sworn in as the 47th President, he can saunter back to the Oval Office, put his feet up on the Resolute Desk and with a stroke of a pen, declare, “I, Donald J Trump, with the power vested in me, by me and by MAGA, do hereby pardon… Me! For any and all crimes, Federal, state or municipal, in any and all states or municipalities from the date of my birth and for the rest of my days.”

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TAIBBI & KIRN

Matt Taibbi: Hi, welcome to America This Week. I’m Matt Taibbi.

Walter Kirn: And I’m Walter Kirn.

Matt Taibbi: All right, Walter, well, part of the world is ending. I guess this is just part of our news reality. Los Angeles is on fire and the situation is 0% contained as of this morning. This is Thursday. Let’s just take a look at some of the pictures because this is what I guess our future looks like. That’s from inside a house. You can sort of see…

Matt Taibbi: Whoever that person is, they might need to move. Let’s try the next one. So you can see the embers there. That’s the problem. We’ve got Santa Ana winds, which is blowing hot embers all over the place, and these are landing on the roofs of houses. They’re landing on dried trees, and it’s just blowing right in the direction of setting the entire city of Los Angeles on fire.

Let’s check one more. This is a view from an airplane. You can see not looking so hot. Things on fire. And we’ll get to the celebrity stuff later, but should we start maybe with the Joe Rogan prediction? Because I think that’s an interesting thing. This is a story that people in California obviously have known was a possibility for quite a long time. And the crux of this thing is that it was not planned for terribly well, possibly they couldn’t plan for it, but this is what Joe Rogan said earlier this past summer.

Joe Rogan: I talked to a fireman once, this is one of the reasons it freaked me out, and he was telling me, he goes, “Dude, one day,” he goes, “It’s just going to be the right wind and fire’s going to start in the right place and it’s going to burn through LA all the way to the ocean, and there’s not a fucking thing we can do about it.” I go, “Really?” He goes, “Yeah, we just get lucky.” He goes, “We get lucky with the wind.”

Speaker 2: Jesus Christ.

Joe Rogan: He goes, “But if the wind hits the wrong way, it’s just going to burn straight through LA and there’s not going to be a thing we could do about it.” Because these fires are so big, dude. You’re talking about thousands of acres that are burning simultaneously with 40 mile an hour winds, and the wind’s just blowing embers through the air and those embers are landing on roofs and those houses are going up and they’re landing on bushes, and those bushes are going up and everything’s dry. And once it happens, it happens in a way where it’s so spread out that there’s nothing they can do. There’s nothing they can do.

Speaker 2: Yeah, you just have to evacuate, right?

Joe Rogan: Nothing. Nothing they can do.

Matt Taibbi: So, okay. Walter, do you have initial impressions, or what’s the story here? Apart from the fact that this is horrible and this is a natural disaster, is this a climate change story? Is it an incompetence story? Is it a political story? What’s your angle on this?

Walter Kirn: Well, I have a child who lives in one of the evacuation areas. I have a friend who lost his house in the Pacific Palisades. I used to live on the beach in Malibu in a little apartment, didn’t have a mansion, but it was my Midwestern dream to have an apartment on the beach. That whole area is gone. All along the Pacific Coast Highway on the ocean side, everything’s burned. So my first impression is not that of someone with an angle, but really great sadness.

Matt Taibbi: Just sadness.

Walter Kirn: Yeah, and I will say though, that this isn’t the first fire or set of fires in Malibu. Just a few years ago, there were big fires. There always are. They’re inevitable. Anybody who knows the area knows that it is in some ways meant to burn, in the sense that nature has a cycle of recovering from fire and then fire comes again. That’s how the vegetation grows. That’s how it’s been for thousands of years, forever. But having built this giant city in this place with this vulnerability, there are measures that can be taken to contain and to fend off the worst. Just as they know there are going to be earthquakes in Los Angeles, which can’t be fobbed off on climate change, there are going to be fires. It’s unclear whether…

Matt Taibbi: There could be earthquakes and fires, by the way.

Walter Kirn: They could come at the same time. The compact that people make when they settle a place like this with government and with one another, is that they will do their best to mitigate, minimize, prevent, and be able to handle when the worst happens, these kind of disasters. To fob it off on climate change, as I say, is a wonderful thing to tell yourself, but none of this started yesterday. So the question of whether all those things have been done, whether they’ve been done well, whether there was adequate water in fire hydrants, whether they were working at all, things like that, and whether the fire department was properly trained or properly staffed, all those questions are going to arise, because to me, the basis of civil government, everything else aside, is mutual protection. That’s why people get together in the Midwest to make crop insurance and things like that. It’s why when I was a kid in Midwestern cities, if the city didn’t plow the snow after a blizzard, it could face dismissal and often did.…

https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-jan

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SHAME ON THE ABHORRENT A-LISTERS Who Have Just Done The Most Egregious Thing Imaginable Amid The LA Fires (But Is Anyone Shocked?)

by Maureen Callahan

Well, that didn't take long.

Celebrities have once again proved that no amount of tragedy or carnage can humble them. No amount of collective human loss will bring them down to our level.

Exhibit A: America's one-time sweetheart, Mandy Moore.

As LA wildfires continue raging, the 40-year-old actress is begging for money on Instagram.

Yes, the star of 'This Is Us', a ratings juggernaut that reportedly earned her $23 million over the show's entire six-season run, wants average Americans to donate to her own family members.

Check out Moore's galling, tone-deaf, frankly obscene Instagram post, promoting a GoFundMe for her adult in-laws, one of whom is a 'touring musician' with a baby on the way.

Maybe he should get a real job. Just a thought.

The target fundraising goal for these two privileged, hipster Angelenos, by the way: $60,000.

Please. That's the equivalent of change in Moore's surely custom-made couch cushions.

No matter. This is what she wrote in that gibberish post, defending herself against critics who say she has plenty of money to help her family out:

'People questioning whether we're helping out our own family or attributing some arbitrary amount of money google [sic] says someone has is NOT helpful or empathetic.'

Of course not, Mandy. That's the point.

Why would, or could, we empathize with you? Empathy is the result of having experienced the exact same set of circumstances.

Most of us aren't sitting on $23 million.

America made Mandy Moore, a mediocre talent at best, a multimillionaire. She never has to work another day in her life. She and her family can live like royalty off her substantial passive income.

Yet she has the unmitigated gall to ask honest, hardworking, regular people of little-to-no means to finance her in-laws — while spewing outrage at anyone who rightly takes offense!

This post is unbelievable. She hasn't even disabled the comments, which are scathing.

A sampling:

'The audacity'.

'I just lost my measly 1 bedroom apartment I owned and worked super hard for . . . but do I have a go fund me no! I have struggled and made my own way'.

'You're a multimillionaire lmao figure it out'.

'You have an obscene amount of money. I think you could help your own family and also some others while you're at it'.

'Just the nerve'.

'Did their bank account burn down too?'

Friends, I don't think Mandy's reading these comments. If she is, she clearly doesn't care.

She goes on:

'Our buddy Matt started this go fund me' — so don't blame her, even though it's her post! — 'and I'm sharing because people have asked how they can help them'.

Really? People are asking how they can help a couple they've never heard of, related to one of LA's wealthiest A-listers? Okay. Sure.

'We just lost most of our life in a fire too', she writes.

Here's the difference, Mandy: You can easily rebuild, insurance or not. You can build back better and bigger or move your family anywhere in the world. Most everyone who has lost everything cannot.

Most people have been left with nothing. Unbowed, Moore concludes with this salvo:

'Kindly F off. No one is forcing you to do anything'.

You know what, Mandy? You kindly 'f' off. 'F' alllll the way off.

Let's hope this is a reputation-defining, extinction-level event that Moore and her fellow heartless celebs — like Khloe Kardashian — never recover from. Khloe (reported net worth: $60 million) who oh-so-proudly announced she has donated $2,500 in meals to first responders.

Wow.

Or Khloe's equally vulgar sister Kim, who promoted 'Winter Sale' prices for her Skims line — replete with sex-doll photos of Kim bursting out of her undergarments — as LA burned to the ground on Tuesday night.

The irrelevant, one-time reality star Heidi Montag filmed herself crying and clutching her 2-year-old son for clicks and likes.

'I just want to go home', she wailed.

Cost of said home: $3 million. Tell it to your shrink, lady.

JLo, who currently has a $60 million Beverly Hills mansion on the market, encouraged her followers to donate. Stop this. JLo: Just take a chunk of your millions, donate yourself, and stop telling the little people — who can barely afford groceries in this economy — what to do.

Even Henry Winkler, once known as the nicest guy in show business, wrote this, about a suspected local arsonist, on X: 'May you be beaten [until] you [are] unrecognizable!!!'

And celebrities wonder why America increasingly has no use for them. Why we have zero interest in being lectured by a bunch of wealthy, famous hypocrites on how to live, what to think, who to vote for.

This is who they really are behind the mask. The truth is ugly.

Same with the media. David Muir of ABC 'News' — what a joke — preening like Zoolander with his cinched-back, big-boy firefighter jacket amid smoldering ruins.

Or CNN's Anderson Cooper 'braving' the LA wildfires. The first rule of journalism: It's not about you, the reporter. It's never supposed to be about you.

There is absolutely zero reason for these overpaid, perfectly groomed anchors to be flying in from the East Coast. Drones can do this.

Muir, Cooper and their ilk are there for one reason only: Their own vainglory.

Maybe all these celebs and newsreaders could, I don't know, use their leverage to demand answers from local and state government, from Mayor Karen Bass to the cowardly Governor Gavin Newsom (last seen running away from an outraged LA mom in broad daylight).

Maybe they could shut up and stay off social media for a few measly days.

Maybe they could engage in their favorite pastime and 'recognize' their 'privilege' as they hole up at the Beverly Hills Hotel and share war stories over that famous $44 McCarthy salad.

And maybe, just maybe, they could show some respect for the less fortunate, whose lives will never be the same.

If not, at the very least, why not do what they're paid so handsomely to do: Fake it.

Because that sure beats the alternative.

(Daily Mail)

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CALIFORNIA BURNS

by Mike Davis (November, 2008)

Every year, sometimes in September, but usually in October just before Halloween, when California’s wild vegetation is driest and most combustible, high pressure over the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau unleashes an avalanche of cold air towards the Pacific coast. As this huge air mass descends, it heats up through compression, creating the illusion that we are being roasted by outbursts from nearby deserts, when in fact the devil winds originate in the land of the Anasazi – the mystery people who left behind such impressive ruins at Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon.

There is little enigma to the physics of the winds, though their sudden arrival is always disturbing to greenhorns and nervous pets as well as to lorry drivers and joggers (sometimes scythed by razor-sharp palm fronds). Technically, they are ‘föhns’, after the warm winds that stream down from the leeward side of the Alps, but the Southern California term is a ‘Santa Ana’, probably in ironic homage to Mexico’s singularly disastrous 19th-century caudillo. For a few days every year, these dry hurricanes blow our world apart or, if a cigarette or a downed power line is in the path, they ignite it.

They also offer lazy journalists the opportunity to recite those famous lines from Raymond Chandler and Joan Didion, in which the Santa Anas drive the natives to homicide and apocalyptic fever. But just as one shouldn’t read Daphne du Maurier to understand the workings of nature in Cornwall, one shouldn’t read Chandler to fathom the phenomenology of weather and combustion in Southern California. A better choice would be Judy Van der Veer, an unfairly forgotten writer who spent most of her life ranching in the rugged hills near the hamlet of Ramona, 35 miles north-east of downtown San Diego. Despite the BBC’s incurable penchant for portraying Southern California through the prism of celebrity, it wasn’t Malibu, but Van der Veer’s Ramona that was the epicentre of the Witch Creek fire, the largest and most destructive of the recent firestorm swarm. Like one of the cattle queens played by Barbara Stanwyck, Van der Veer rode line and mended her own fences and from the saddle of her cow-pony Delilah she had a clearer view of chaparral ecology than did Chandler through his gin bottle or Didion through the rolled-up window of her speeding car.

Brown Hills (1938) – the second in a brace of carefully observed memoir-novels – is the diary of a long drought similar to the current aridity in Southern California. (My twin toddlers, like the calves in Van der Veer’s book, scarcely remember what rain looks like.) ‘Should a good fairy ask me what I wish, I know what I would say! I wouldn’t ask for a golden palace, or Arabian horses, or a handsome lover. I would wish for rain.’ But instead of rain, an October Santa Ana howls over Black Mountain and blasts her Ramona ranch:

I could see herds of dust being driven into the eastern end of the valley and hurried down the river, leaving, for a second, clearness behind them. Then another gust and the east was hidden and more yellow clouds came surging through the valley. The trees curved this way and that, losing more leaves with every swoop, and branches were torn away. Later I found arms of eucalyptus trees in the corral, red sap, like blood, at the severed places . . . We seemed to be watching a big fire whose flames were yellow instead of red, and it was consuming our land while we looked helplessly down.

Luckily, the Santa Ana abates before the lightly inhabited back-country of the 1930s catches fire; the good fairy finally brings rain; and the brown hillsides turn green with clover, deerweed and alfilaree. But, as Van der Veer insists, happy endings are not inevitable: Southern California is a land of risk and natural drama, where the unpredictable cycle of the seasons is as suspenseful as any noir novel. Her ranchers and farmers don’t so much settle the land as learn to roll with its punches, enjoying luxurious interludes of beauty between waves of disaster. Moreover, in Van der Veer’s time, the ‘back-country’ was truly that and a broad corridor of avocado and citrus orchards separated the cow ranches and turkey farms from the urbanised coastal strip.

Three generations later, the vast citrus forests that once surrounded Los Angeles, as well as cities like Riverside and Anaheim, have been transformed into pink stucco death valleys full of bored teenagers and desperate housewives. East of Los Angeles, in the San Gorgonio Pass above Palm Springs, where 4000 giant wind turbines harvest the Santa Anas, new subdivisions are being built next to fifty-year-old chaparral standing eight feet high and yearning to burn. Throughout the foothills, meanwhile, free-range McMansions – often castellated in unconscious self-caricature – occupy rugged ocean-view peaks surrounded by what foresters grimly refer to as ‘diesel stands’ of dying pine and old brush.

The loss of more than 90 per cent of Southern California’s agricultural buffer zone is the principal if seldom mentioned reason wildfires increasingly incinerate such spectacular swathes of luxury real estate. It’s true that other ingredients – La Niña droughts, fire suppression (which sponsors the accumulation of fuel), bark beetle infestations and probably global warming – contribute to the annual infernos that have become as predictable as Guy Fawkes bonfires. But what makes us most vulnerable is the abruptness of what is called the ‘wildland-urban interface’, where real estate collides with fire ecology. And castles without their glacises are not very defensible.

On 26 October, day six of the fires, I saw the ruins – perched precariously on a wild mountainside – of what my friend Kozy Amemiya described as ‘a Tokugawa fortress in a Kurosawa film’. Its twin turrets had been reduced to some twisted girders rising 9/11-like from a smouldering mound of grey ash, but the putting green next to the driveway remained eerily pristine. Kozy and her English husband, Tom Royden, are Ramona avocado growers, the last of a dying breed in a rapidly suburbanising landscape. One of their two ranches is located in the hills east of Ramona where Van der Veer’s horses once grazed; the other, larger orchard occupies the side of a boulder-studded mountain overlooking Lake Ramona. Kozy has a PhD in sociology, but Tom’s graduate degree – from California State Polytechnic at Pomona – is, literally, in avocados.

Tom has Lloyd George eyebrows, always appears in pressed khaki shorts and is armed with an encyclopedic knowledge of irrigation and tropical agriculture. He could easily pass for one of those planter types who caroused at Raffles and ran vast rubber estates in Malaya or raised coffee and caused white mischief in the Kikuyu hills. Indeed, his father wrote ‘merchant adventurer’ as his occupation on his passport, and his mother was descended from generations of Kent cherry farmers. But the old-school English stereotype is deceptive. Tom has spent most of his working life advising village co-operatives in Tanzania and Andean farmers in Ecuador. On one of their first dates he and Kozy went to hear Chalmers Johnson lecture on the decline of empire, and he proudly displays ‘Stop Blackwater!’ bumper stickers on all his trucks (the mercenaries want to build a training facility in the San Diego back-country).

Kozy and Tom are also eloquent evangelists about the need to save what remains of an agricultural fire break in Southern California. Their own fire history is instructive. In 2003, the Cedar blaze (which killed 15 people and destroyed 2200 homes) passed south of the larger orchard; this time, 50-foot-high flames charged the mountain twice, burning dozens of isolated homes, before resuming their march towards the Pacific. Both ranches were once again saved – or so it seemed. Then, in the midst of the evacuation of Del Mar and Encinitas north of La Jolla, the Santa Ana suddenly stopped howling; it was replaced by a strong sea breeze that turned the fire around, saving the beaches but condemning the avocados in Ramona.

Still, as Tom points out, his trees put up a ‘bloody stiff fight’, providing a firewall that saved several of his neighbours’ large houses. ‘Except in an extreme conflagration, fire will only penetrate about 10 or 15 metres into orchards when the ground is cleared and well irrigated.’ He takes a penknife and scrapes at charred bark: the flesh is still green. ‘Most of the burnt trees are still alive, although they won’t bear fruit again for several years.’ When I express surprise, he chuckles. ‘You should see oranges. They’re almost as fire-resistant as the live oak.’ (Our native oaks, in fact, have an erotic need for an occasional fire to assist their reproduction.) The burly toughness of the trees is reassuring, but there’s bad news too. When we drive along the dirt tracks (occasionally having to use machetes to chop through barricades of wind-toppled trees) we leave behind a deep, mushy trail of guacamole. The fire and wind have stripped several hundred thousand fruit from the trees, and Tom estimates that he has lost 70 per cent of his crop.

The Witch Creek fire has also destroyed much of the irrigation infrastructure throughout the Ramona valley, melting plastic and aluminum piping and knocking out the big generators that pump water over the mountains from the Colorado River two hundred miles away. Water authorities are apprehensive about toxic contamination and contaminated wells. On the road to Ramona, an electronic billboard flashes an urgent warning: ‘do not use the water.’

Kozy has heard that, overall, 50 per cent of the San Diego avocado crop has been lost, only three weeks before harvest, and the future of local horticulture looks bleaker than ever. Soaring land prices and increasingly expensive water have conspired to squeeze their bottom line, along with suburban ignorance of farm life (newcomers complain to the sheriff if they hear a tractor engine before 7 a.m.); and the monopoly power of the supermarket chains has forced growers to substitute alligator-skinned, easily refrigerated Hass avocados for the thin-skinned, anise-flavoured Fuertes that connoisseurs prefer. As if that weren’t enough, California’s honey bees, which are needed to pollinate avocado flowers, are dying en masse from a mystery disease.

Now, I know as little about the delicate manoeuvres of avocado pollination as I do about the mechanics of putting stallions to stud. But I do care deeply about avocados. In the 1930s, my older sister cantered her Indian pony through my parents’ avocado ‘ranchito’ in Bostonia, ten miles south of Ramona, and the little house my father built with its knotty-pine walls has survived every fire. Otherwise, little of my childhood Bostonia remains. The Barker family’s 1880s general store, the irrigation ditches, the country-western dancehall, the gas station that sold cigarettes to 12-year-olds, the Fryes’ hardware store, the lemons and the pomegranates: all vanished in a whirlwind of ‘growth’. What remains are ageing tract homes, auto body shops, intractable methamphetamine addiction, and long lines of tail lights headed out towards the brave new suburbs of Lakeside and Ramona.

Kozy thinks my nostalgia is sheer defeatism and tries to cheer me up. ‘Did you know there are some really magnificent Fuertes still bearing fruit on Chase Avenue? They’re probably a century old.’

This is not quite the consolation I need. Avocados have always been the icon of San Diego’s countryside (which produces much of the US harvest) and if the remaining growers are forced to sell out, the past will become as inaccessible as the future will be combustible. I can easily visualise the impending apocalypse: more view homes on the graves of trees, the art-deco Ramona Theater bulldozed for a Home Depot, the Turkey Inn turned into a Starbucks, a Cineplex where Judy Van der Veer’s home used to be. I suppose the realist view is that our fire problem will ultimately be solved by burning all the fuel and then paving the ashes. In Southern California, catastrophic fire only fertilises more sprawl.

I pop the big question to Tom. ‘Can you really get this ranch up and running again, or will some home developer make you an offer you can’t refuse?’

Tom furrows his eyebrows for a moment, then smiles. ‘Do you know the etymology of the word “avocado”?’

‘Aguacate in Spanish,’ I mumble.

‘Yes, but the Nahuatl original is ahuacatl – balls.’

(Mike Davis was the author of City of Quartz, Late Victorian Holocausts and Planet of Slums, among many other books. He died in October 2022. (London Review of Books).)

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FIVE PRESIDENTS AND A FUNERAL

by Maureen Dowd

Jimmy Carter was exactly where he wanted to be at his funeral on Thursday — at a deliberate remove from his fellow presidents. And slightly above them.

When Brian Williams asked Carter in 2010 about a striking Oval Office photo of him with President Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and the Bushes, in which Carter had separated himself, he conceded he felt “superior” to the others because of his stellar post-presidency.

The spectacle in Washington this week was extraordinary — a deceased president and a revived president at opposite ends of the moral scale. Here was Carter, the righteous, ascending to heaven, as Donald Trump, the felonious, ascended again to the Oval Office. Carter’s passion for honesty was as ingrained as Trump’s addiction to lying.

Even as Carter was being praised at his state funeral at the National Cathedral for working tirelessly to eradicate diseases and build homes around the globe, Trump was hunting for a disease to pin on immigrants to justify sealing the border.

While the centenarian was heralded for his virtue and monogamous 77-year marriage with Rosalynn, Trump was bracing to be sentenced on his vice — falsifying records to cover up an infidelity with a porn star, conducted while Melania was home taking care of her newborn son.

As Carter was praised for being prescient on climate change, Donald “Drill, Baby, Drill!” Trump maintains his archaic views even as magical neighborhoods across Los Angeles are being incinerated.

Carter was a genuinely pious man. I saw his joy teaching Sunday school in Plains. “Two Corinthians” Trump treats faith, as he does everything, as a transaction, a ploy to get him where he wants to be.

President Biden shaded Trump by talking in his eulogy about the homespun Carter’s “character, character, character.” But after hiding his own aging difficulties, Biden is an imperfect messenger on that subject.

The tableau in the first three rows of the nave was mesmerizing, a sweet and sulfurous brew of historic grudges, grievances and battle scars, along with some flashes of the unique kinship that comes from being in the most powerful club in the world.

Trump may be buoyed by his win, but in this exclusive club, he was largely narcissist non grata. Karen Pence, not over the little matter of Trump shrugging off acolytes’ threats to hang her husband at the Capitol, iced Trump in the pews. Others appeared to, as well. Hillary, Bill, Kamala, Doug, Joe. And Jill (who was also in Tension City with her seatmate Kamala). Mike Pence turned the other cheek and shook Trump’s hand.

W. has clearly not changed his opinion of Trump since he famously said, after watching his American Carnage Inaugural speech, “That was some weird shit.” He ignored Trump, who has blamed the younger Bush president for not stopping 9/11 and for the invasion of Iraq, which Trump said “may have been the worst decision” in White House history. But W. shook hands with Al Gore, probably still grateful that, unlike Trump with Biden, Gore conceded their whisker-thin election. And W. briskly tapped Obama’s stomach, as though they were old D.K.E. brothers meeting again.

Michelle Obama, sick of the whole political scene, didn’t show. Trump, eager to hang with the cool kids, cozied up to Barack. The president-elect regards W., Gore, Hillary, Kamala, Pence, Biden and Carter as losers, but Obama won twice and transcended his party with a personality cult, as Trump did.

For her part, Melania, looking like a Valentino pilgrim, seemed immersed in a world of her own, probably trying to figure out the fastest route out of D.C.

It would seem as if the man who sold the presidential yacht, eschewed “Hail to the Chief” as too pompous and washed Ziploc bags to reuse could not have much in common with the flashy King of Gilt.

But Carter and Trump both tended toward the excessive, vain in their own ways; Carter was excessively virtuous, irritating Americans when he was in office with his parsimonious, micromanaging ways and blunt, demoralizing truth-telling. Who wants to be ushered into a miasma of malaise? Trump wallows in the artifice Carter disdained, hawking Bibles and perfume. He goes over the top demeaning people, often veering into searing cruelty.

They both prided themselves on being outsiders and breaking norms, and they both were suffused with grievances.

When I went to Plains to interview Carter in 2017, on the occasion of his 93rd birthday, his resentments were on display. He felt ignored and mistreated by his Democratic successors (just as they got annoyed when he did foreign-policy freelancing and tossed virtue-signaling darts at them). Carter confessed he didn’t even have Obama’s email. He said his best relationship with a successor was with George H.W. Bush. He was most bitter that his wife had been left out of a mental health forum for first ladies held by Michelle Obama, though that had been Rosalynn’s special project.

Even though he was renowned for not playing the game of politics, Carter expertly played the game when I interviewed him at his modest home, as he wore a big “JC” belt buckle and showed off the furniture he had built. He was ahead of the curve in saluting Trump, which Republicans and tech executives have now done en masse, even defending him on his hypocritical relationship with evangelicals — perhaps in a bid to get Trump to send him to North Korea on a diplomatic mission.

At a concert for his birthday, he was asked by the pianist if he had a request. “Imagine,” he shot back.

The John Lennon classic was sung by Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood at the Washington funeral.

The farmer from Plains always wanted to imagine a world where people lived in peace, treating one another with human decency. If only the Emperor of Chaos could take a cue from that.

(NY Times)

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IN 1933, Buncombe County, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, was a region defined by both its breathtaking natural beauty and the hardships of the Great Depression. The area, known for its steep hills, dense forests, and winding rivers, was home to families who relied heavily on farming, livestock, and hunting for survival. With the economic downturn, many local residents found themselves struggling to make ends meet. The rugged isolation of the county, however, provided fertile ground for a thriving underground economy: the production of moonshine.

Moonshining became a prevalent and secretive trade in the region during the 1930s. Faced with limited economic opportunities, many mountain families turned to making homemade whiskey, which could be sold for much-needed cash. Utilizing the remote and often inaccessible areas of the county, moonshiners crafted elaborate stills out of repurposed materials like car radiators and copper piping. These makeshift distilleries were typically hidden in dense forests or along creeks, where the steep terrain made it difficult for law enforcement to locate and shut them down. The craft of moonshine production became a skill passed down through generations, with families guarding their recipes and methods closely.

The legacy of moonshining in Buncombe County is preserved in part through the photographic work of Frank M. Hohenberger, whose collection at Indiana University offers rare insight into the lives of Appalachian families during this period. His images capture both the daily struggles of mountain life and the ingenuity involved in the moonshine trade. Despite its illegality, the practice was viewed by many as a necessary means of survival and a symbol of Appalachian self-sufficiency. Today, the history of moonshining in Buncombe County is celebrated as a significant part of the region’s cultural heritage, reflecting the resilience and resourcefulness of its people during one of the most challenging eras in American history

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TOWER OF SONG

Well, my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on
I'm just paying my rent every day in the Tower of Song

I said to Hank Williams, how lonely does it get?
Hank Williams hasn't answered yet
But I hear him coughing all night long
Oh, a hundred floors above me in the Tower of Song

I was born like this, I had no choice
I was born with the gift of a golden voice
And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond
They tied me to this table right here in the Tower of Song

So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll
I'm very sorry, baby, doesn't look like me at all
I'm standing by the window where the light is strong
Ah, they don't let a woman kill you, not in the Tower of Song

Now, you can say that I've grown bitter but of this you may be sure
The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor
And there's a mighty judgment coming, but I may be wrong
You see, you hear these funny voices in the Tower of Song

I see you standing on the other side
I don't know how the river got so wide
I loved you baby, way back when
And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed
But I feel so close to everything that we lost
We'll never, we'll never have to lose it again

Now I bid you farewell, I don't know when I'll be back
They're moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track
But you'll be hearing from me baby, long after I'm gone
I'll be speaking to you sweetly from a window in the Tower of Song

Yeah, my friends are gone and my hair is gray
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on
I'm just paying my rent every day in the Tower of Song

— Leonard Cohen (1988)

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“The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up. What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don't know where that elsewhere is.”

— Emil Cioran