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DRY WEATHER is expected to continue with above normal high temperatures and chilly nights for the next 7 days. Breezy to locally windy northeast winds return for the coastal headland and exposed ridges this weekend. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Still no rain in sight, 36F with clear skies this Humpday morning on the coast. A minor change to our forecast is overnight lows will stay in the 30's with this weekend's morning temps dropping down to freezing.
CELEBRATION OF LIFE FOR EVA HELEN JOHNSON Saturday January 11, 2025
by Terry Sites
The Celebration of Life for long-time Boonville resident Eva Johnson took place on Saturday January 11th at 1 PM at the Boonville Fairground Apple Hall. People knew about the service through personal contact with her family, flyers posted at all valley post offices, social media and the AVA. Anyone arriving right at 1PM entered a room so packed with people that sitting was out of the question for most. I have never seen the Apple Hall so filled to bursting. I know her family was grateful and I’m sure Eva would be gratified to know how many came to honor her and pay their respects. It was also a potluck that the family, with the able help of Terry Rhoades and her skillful crew, opened up to the entire community. I’m not sure they realized just how many would show up with dishes in hand. This is the amazing thing about a small community: the coming together in times of great sadness and great joy to share memories and support.
In December of 2011 Steve Sparks sat down with Eva to record her “Life and Times.” These interviews have become a wonderful resource and perhaps more valued than when originally published once the speaker has passed on. Rereading the interview, the vitality that anyone Eva knew always observed in her shines through. You have to smile when she describes her first grade child-self as, “Being a real tomboy, and the devil” who chased down a little classmate and kissed him.
If all of us could live our lives to the fullest as Eva did when approaching our ninth decade it would indeed be a wonderful world. Her family and friends will miss her terribly but will take comfort from the poem written by an unknown author that was printed on her Celebration of Life memorial program. I’m sure she really would want us all to “Bury our sorrows in doing good deeds” using the strength of our loss to help and love each other. May Eva Helen Johnson rest in peace
This is the poem that was on the program at Eva Johnson's Memorial
Miss Me- But Let Me Go
author unknown
When I come to the end of the road
And the sun has set for me,
I want no rites in a gloom filled room,
Why cry for a soul set free?
Miss me a little but not too long
And not with your head bowed low.
Remember the love we once shared,
Miss me- but let me go.
For this is a journey we all must take.
And each must go alone.
It’s all part of the master’s plan,
A step on the road to home.
When you are lonely and sick at heart,
Go to friends we know.
Bury your sorrows in doing good deeds.
Miss me- but let me go.
The following information appeared on the program given to attendees at the Apple
Hall along with her photo and the poem sent separately
In Memory of Eva Helen Johnson
Born January 16th 1934 in Biggs, California
Died December 23rd 2024, Boonville.
Celebration of Life was Saturday January 11th 2025 at 1 PM, Boonville Apple Hall, Boonville.
Officiating: Chad Simmons
Final Resting place: Evergreen Cemetery, Boonville.
EVA JOHNSON
Interviewed by Steve Sparks (December 2011)
A couple of weeks ago, a few days after Thanksgiving, I met with long-time Valley resident Eva Johnson at the Fairgrounds in Boonville and we sat and talked in one of the rooms at that facility.
Eva was born in the town of Biggs in Butte County, California, in the Sacramento Valley. Her parents were Fred Abreu and Emma Rose. “My father was born in 1901, his parents having both come over to the States in the late 1800’s from the Portuguese Azores Islands — one from Pico, the other from Fayal. Actually my grandfather did not come of his own free will. He was shanghaied off the island as a boy and forced onto a whaling ship where he worked as a cabin boy. At some point they sailed into San Francisco Bay where he jumped ship. Some years later, he met and married my grandmother. It was an arranged marriage that resulted when she was sent over from the Azores by her father, something he did with his other daughters when they became 18 too. My father was the middle child — he had two older sisters and two younger brothers. My mother was born in Ukiah in 1895. The family had been in the US for several generations, settling mostly in the mid-west. They eventually moved out to California and homesteaded on what is now Low Gap Road in Ukiah. They traded this home for the stage stop and post office in Ukiah, owned by a Mr. Snuffin, who has a road named after him there, and my grandfather became the postmaster.”
Eva’s paternal grandfather was a carpenter at the Hearst Castle and the family lived in the East Bay. Her father vividly remembered the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the fires that he watched from across the Bay as the city burned. “At some point, when my father was a teenager, they moved to the Sacramento Valley, to the Willows area near to Chico. Meanwhile, my mother’s parents were divorced and her father, the former postmaster, took her and her two sisters and moved from Ukiah to Eureka in the far north of the State. My mother and one sister married two brothers but mother’s marriage did not work out and she left town, with her young daughter Georgia, finding a job as a cook for a work crew back in Willows. She met my Dad and they were married in February 1922 and my brother Fred was born two years later. Then there followed us five girls — Mabel, Freda, Emagene, Ethel, and me in 1934. We’re all still alive and kicking!”
The family settled three miles outside the town of Biggs and three miles from the town of Gridley, living on farming land. “My father mostly worked for other people, driving a dump truck, hauling gravel, and working with team horses. It was the time of the Depression with many things bought and sold by the barter system and we were also fortunate to have his brothers and sisters as we all helped each other with food and supplies as we had the most kids in our family we got the most generous share. Like many immigrants at that time particularly, we were very proud people and did not accept charity easily. It was said that my Dad would prefer to dig a ditch for you rather than accept something for nothing. It was the time of President Roosevelt’s ‘chicken in every pot’ plan for the poor but my family would rather do something and be paid for it rather than accept the handout.”
“Where we lived it was mainly white families, some Portuguese, and one Mexican family. My Dad was racially prejudiced but my mother, a very big influence on me, brought us up to not be like that — she always said there was good and bad in all. I did feel a little of the prejudice though — we were half-white and half-Portuguese and it was the Portuguese who we lived around who would make the racist comments. All the races worked in the fields picking fruit alongside the many migrant workers from the southwest. I went to Biggs Elementary School where my friends in1st grade were Eva Bower and a prissy little boy called Buddy Streeter. Being a real tomboy, and the devil, I’d chase him down and kiss him!”
Eva grew up in a mixed race home but the American influence was stronger overall. ‘I could speak Portuguese back then and we did have Portuguese influences with some of the food and always had wine with our meals, watered down for the kids, but my mother was the strong influence and she was American. We entertained ourselves and helped with some of the chores like the cooking and I learned many farm skills such as chopping the heads off chickens and then picking and cleaning them, chopping wood, making fires, milking cows. My brother Fred worked with my Dad, when he wasn’t picking on us girls.”
In August 1943 the family moved to Anderson Valley. “My mother’s brother was living here and building the mill that was on Hibbert Lane near to the Pronsolino home, south of Yorkville. His wife couldn’t read or write, or drive, and my mother had gone out there to help him with some things when he became ill. She loved it and the climate here proved to be very good for her health, which was never good. After her brother got better, she came back to Biggs but decided that for her own health we would have to move from the area because there was so much field burning in the Sacramento Valley at that time. So we headed out here and lived in a house near to the corner of Highway 128 and Mountain View Road, rented to us by Harwood Junes’ mother, Grandma June, who took the ‘risk’ at a time when many people were prejudiced and would not rent to immigrants like us. My older siblings attended the high school and junior high and I went to the elementary school which was then at the Veterans Building, and later to the Little Red Schoolhouse, now the museum, near to where the elementary school is now.”
The Second World War was raging and as a result there were few men around. “Mrs. Zigler would come to the schoolhouse at 7am and build a fire to warm the building up and at lunch-times the students would do any necessary janitorial work. Our bathrooms were only slightly better than outhouses. I was shocked having come from a modern school with a janitor, a furnace, a cafeteria, and decent bathrooms. The school bus here had seats that ran along the side of the vehicle, front to back, rather than from side to side with an aisle. The kids would slide up and down when breaking and accelerating. I was certainly very sad to leave my friends and my school to come to this place where most people did not want us and which seemed so far behind in many ways.”
“My brother was 19 but because he suffered from a double hernia he was classed 4F and could not serve in the military. He had to deal with many comments and innuendos about that. We had lived three miles from the school in Biggs and would walk one way and pay 10¢ for the bus back. We would often go to the movies in town too. Here I was suddenly 21 miles from the nearest town, Ukiah, and because the road was just dirt and gravel, and very narrow so you had to wait as cars maneuvered past each other, it would take well over an hour to get to town. It was not paved until the logging boom after the war. Speaking of the war, the newsreels told of the Japanese concentration camps where they would torture prisoners of war. We were now fairly close the coast and supposedly there were Japanese submarines lurking in the ocean out there. With my wild and vivid 10-year old’s imagination, I thought the Japanese would land and capture us and then torture me by poking bamboo slivers under my fingernails! It was a tough time for me. I kept asking myself ‘Why are we here? Why? Why?’ I thought it was hell on earth!”
Eva also found herself a year ahead in terms of schooling. The teacher, Blanche Brown — “a wonderful teacher” — would not move kids up a class. “I therefore became very lazy and was an average student after moving. I did not like some of the teachers who were prejudiced against us newcomers. I played basketball and baseball where I played third base or in the outfield because I had the hardest throw. Not as hard as Arthur Knight, though. He hit me with a baseball once so I know! I was a tomboy throughout my childhood and always enjoyed sports and being outdoors.”
Following the War, the logging boom kicked in and many folks from the southwest moved up to the timberlands of northern California for work. “In 7th and 8th grade we suddenly had well over twenty kids in each grade — all in the same school room — I don’t know how we all fitted in. In 1947 I started at the high school and was joined by many kids from Arkansas and Oklahoma. I felt close to their community because I knew what they were going through as immigrants to the community. The Valley was a wild place at that time — every night was Saturday night in Boonville, with the three bars all packed full of many folks who loved to drink. The three main ones were The Boonville Lodge, Weiss’s Valley Inn, and The Track Inn. We moved to Navarro for a year and rented a place there but then returned to Boonville where my parents bought their first house — behind where the Hanes Gallery now is, in the middle of town.”
“Despite all these wild men from Arkansas and Oklahoma out on the streets at night, I didn’t worry about anything. The town was hopping but they did their fighting and carousing at the bars and never bothered us teenage girls. In fact, more often than not they were very polite, with a ‘Yes, Ma’am’ and ‘No, Ma’am’ if you spoke to them. These rough and tough guys lived very sparsely and most of them were really good people, although of course they had a fierce rivalry with the young men of the Valley who had grown up here, fighting guys like Jack and Delmar June. Fortunately the local girls generally stayed with the local boys. My mother was shocked that women went to bars at all. She occasionally drank a small glass of red wine at the most and continued to take us to Sunday school. She was very reserved and was a powerful influence on us girls. We were well behaved most of the time but I remember once I skipped class with Lovella Canevari and another girl and we were sent to the school office where the Principal, Denny Willis (Beth Tuttle’s brother), told us off. I sniggered and then really got it. He made me cry but I think he then felt bad because I was a good kid most of the time.”
Eva, who since her sophomore year had been dating a young man by the name of Floyd Johnson, who was two years her senior, graduated in 1951 in a class that included people such as Edith Hiatt, Tom Burger, Virgil Senn, Julia Pinoli, John Childers, Laura Foster, and Barbara Fashauer. The Johnsons had been in the Valley for a couple of generations and young Floyd worked for his uncle on the Johnson Ranch at the corner of Highway 128 and Highway 253 on the outskirts of Boonville. He left there and worked on the Bradford Ranch for a time before he and Eva were married in April 1953. They lived with his mother and stepfather in Boonville at the two-story house where Eva’s grandson J.R. and his wife Kati now live, opposite the Farrer Building in downtown Boonville. Floyd was drafted into the army in August 1953, towards the end of the Korean War, and he was sent to Fort Ord then Fort Lewis but the war came to an end and he was discharged.
“Not long after Floyd’s discharge from the army, we moved on to the Johnson Ranch. It was Dec. 12th, 1954, and we lived in the house on the property where Floyd was born. I’ve been here ever since, apart from a ninth-month period when we moved up to the Palmer House on top of the hill during the winter of terrible flooding in 1963/64. We ran sheep and drove a truck hauling livestock, hay, and feed and started our family. Janese was born in April 1955 and then Gary in November 1958. Floyd worked the ranch and I raised the kids and ‘held down the fort’ as Floyd would say. We became good friends with Donald and Donna Pardini and Bob and Barbara Canevari and ever since high school we would go to many gatherings at my mother-in-law’s with our friends, where we’d play poker, dice, and other card games. Gambling was frowned upon by some but at least the parents would know where their kids were!”
“At that time there was a bunch of us parents with little kids and we all gathered and ate Donald’s wonderful spaghetti with everyone bringing a dish. We would also go out dancing — at The Grange Hall in the Valley but also in Ft. Bragg, Cloverdale, and Ukiah, with Jim and Bernice Clow and Austin and Sylvia Hulbert. Jim was a guitarist and singer of tongue twisters! I loved to dance and had learned how to by going to the Portuguese fiestas. Janese was a school cheerleader and Donna Pardini and I were room mothers helping at the school for Gary and Donna’s daughter Julie all the way through their school years. Gary was a baseball and football player and Julie was ‘his’ cheerleader. I did the books for the ranch and often helped with the sheep and cattle. Many was the time we had to bring them in when it was dark, although Floyd had dogs, one great one called Tip. He was also on the School board for 17 years and I could not help but get involved in all of that. When Janese was in the 6th grade, in 1966, I remember she came home one day and said she did not like her new teacher. I said give him a week or so but then she said she still didn’t like him. He was a fake and tried to ‘buy’ loyalty and friendship, she said. It was Jim Jones, later of People’s Temple fame, who taught at the school for a couple of years until the School board, thanks to the insistence of Floyd and Paul Titus, finally got rid of him in 1968. We all know what happened ten years after that.”
“Of course, as many people know, the Valley has had far more than it’s fair share of bad guys. Charles Manson lived down there on Gschwend Road with his gang and all their girls and at some point gave an Arkie schoolboy some LSD. The boy’s father formed a vigilante force of local guys and went down there — he was so mad he probably would have killed Manson that day but he wasn’t there and never came back, fleeing the Valley after his place had been destroyed. This is a remote area where people can come and hideout. The mass murderers Leonard Lake and Charles Ng ran the Philo Motel here, now the Anderson Valley Inn run by Bob and Lydia, Lake’s wife worked at the Elementary School and they had a hot tub where they would invite teachers to join them. There was the child kidnapper, Tree Frog Johnson and that guy who kidnapped and abused those young boys Steven Stayner and Timmy White, and others I cannot recall now.”
In 1967, Eva and Floyd, with their friends Donald and Donna Pardini, bought the Redwood Drive-In. “I was over-ruled on that! It was a diner without the mini-mart and gas pumps that are there now. We bought it from ‘Twink’ Charles, Chili Bates, and Bob Rawles and basically it was Donna and I who ran it for twelve years. We had good staff — Bea Coffman, Bev McGimsey, Ruby Rosenthal, and there were always some high school girls working there part-time too, plus Janese and two of the Pardini kids — Ernie and Julie. It was a lot of work and we always just got by — not unlike ranching! We sold it to Karen Ottoboni in 1979 after Donna became sick but I was ready to leave anyway. I took a little time off before getting a job as a nutrition aid at the Elementary School — helping in the cookery classes and teaching the kids about nutrition. I was there for a couple of years before leaving and concentrating on helping Floyd with the ranch over the next decade.”
On Jan 12th, 1992, Floyd passed at the age of 61. “On New Year’s Eve he had a serious coughing fit. He had been a big smoker but had quit five years earlier. He had said ‘if I die from it, I die from it.” I thought it was pneumonia but it was congestive heart failure which led to a heart attack a week or two later. It was a genetic condition and he had very high cholesterol. He had had a stroke four years earlier on New Year’s Eve when he was out on the ranch with Gary. He told Gary that if he had to die there and then, ‘What better place to go?’ He pulled through on that occasion but it left half his body numb. To look at him you’d think he was fine but after that day he said it felt like he was always ‘almost out of the effects of a Novocain injection, but not quite.’ Floyd was gone but, as you have to do, I ‘tied a knot in the rope and carried on.’ I was not going to put the ranch on the market. It has been in the family for about 100 years. Sure, there have been times when I’ve said to my son, ‘What the hell are we doing here, Gary?’ but selling it is not an option. Floyd was a very capable person, and could have done so many other things but at the end of the day he said he had always wanted a ranch and that he’d done what he wanted to do. He was a real hands-on person who only regretted not going to college because it may have helped him with some business skills, not in any other qualifications. He loved ranching and he loved farming and got to do both for virtually his whole life.”
Following Floyd’s passing, and with Gary running the ranch on a day-to-day basis, along with his wife Wanda and also Janese and her husband David Summit, Eva took a job with ‘Mysteries by Mail’ through Soda Creek Press — selling mystery and romance books over the phone. She did this for five years part-time during which time she was a constant baby-sitter and cook. ‘I believe that if people work for you then you feed them as well as play them.” Following her stint at the bookselling, in 1997, Eva became the Executive Director for the AV Senior Center. “I enjoyed that but eventually I was burned out and it became too much, so I resigned. I also knew many of the seniors who passed and that was difficult to constantly deal with.”
In 2004, Eva noticed an ad in the AVA newspaper for tasting room help at Roederer Winery. “I applied and Sharon Sullivan hired me. I had been there just a couple of days when someone left at their ‘sister’ winery, Scharffenberger in Philo and I was asked to help out there for a time. By coincidence, the tasting room was in a house where I’d been many years earlier — for Floyd’s aunt and uncle’s Golden Wedding Anniversary in 1954. It was like I was coming home! They asked me if I wanted to go back to Roederer and I said ‘No, thank you’ and have been at Scharffenberger ever since. I like it very much, meeting new people everyday, and I get to talk about the Valley history with the visitors.”
As for family, Eva has Gary and Wanda’s two children as her grandkids — J.R., who as mentioned earlier is married to Kati, and Nichole, who married a young local man Derek Wyant earlier this year at a wonderful event on the Johnson Ranch, and two more, Laura and Lane, who are Janese and David’s children. The ranch is 1800 acres with cattle and about three hundred sheep which Gary works, when he is not being one of just two County Trappers, with help from the family too.
I asked Eva for a verbal image of her father. “I remember him teaching us how to play cards, and cooking his delicious eggs with onion dish. He was a very hard worker, and a hard drinker. He was gone often when we were kids, often in the woods. He was ambidextrous, able to pitch a baseball equally well with either arm.” And her mother? “Her health was not good and she was ill a lot. She taught all of us girls how to sew, embroider but I had no patience with much of that stuff. She felt it was important for us to go to Sunday school for religious training and education in general. She had a beautiful voice and loved to dance.”
BROTHERS FOUND AFTER BEING TRAPPED in Mendocino National Forest for six days
by Matt LaFever
Alan and Ivan CamposRodriguez were rescued on Saturday, January 11, 2025, after being stranded for six days in the Mendocino National Forest. According to a press release from the Glenn County Sheriff’s Office, the brothers became lost on Monday, January 6, when their Toyota Rav4 became stuck in a low-water crossing on County Road 311.
The Glenn County Sheriff’s Office Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) received an Apple SOS Emergency alert on Friday, January 10, at approximately 4:30 p.m., reporting that the brothers were stranded. In response, Sgt. Owens confirmed that Alan and Ivan were reported missing and activated the Glenn County Search and Rescue (SAR) team along with California Highway Patrol (CHP) Air Operations to conduct a search of the area.
SAR crews successfully located the vehicle and Alan, but the brothers had become separated in the remote, mountainous terrain. While CHP conducted an aerial search, they were unable to locate Ivan. Search efforts continued on Saturday, January 11, with the SAR deploying ground teams and a drone team to search the area.
At approximately 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, Ivan was able to find a location with cellular service and called the Glenn County Sheriff’s Office to provide his location, the press release noted. Dispatchers then relayed Ivan’s coordinates to the SAR team, which was able to respond and safely transport him to Willows, where he was reunited with his brother Alan.
The brothers had been traveling in a remote area with limited cellular reception and were relying on Google Maps to navigate non-maintained roads, which the sheriff’s office warns can be dangerous. The press release also emphasizes the importance of being aware of surroundings, road conditions, and vehicle capabilities when traveling in such remote areas, urging residents to turn around if encountering non-maintained roads and seek safer routes.
(mendofever.com)
MARMON’S ADVOCACY
To the Editor:
I was sad to hear of the passing of James M. Marmon. Although he was controversial, and his style was a bit brash, Mr. Marmon was a former social worker for Mendocino County who was also a whistleblower. He triggered grand jury investigations into mismanagement in county government, particularly as they related to child protective services and foster child programs.
In 2012, a five-month-old girl, Emerald Herriet, died from skull fractures after being beaten by her foster father, Wilson L. “Josh” Tubbs III, 38.
The murder occurred in Fort Bragg and attracted national criticism of Mendocino County Social Services.
A forensic pathologist who examined baby Herriet at Oakland Children's Hospital testified at Tubbs's preliminary hearing that she found at least 49 bruises on the baby's head and face, two skull fractures, multiple hemorrhages in her retinas and severe subdural hematoma — the accumulation of blood between the brain's surface and inside of the skull — all indicating the baby girl was likely abused over a period of time.
Following his wrongful termination from Mendocino County, James Marmon remained a tireless advocate for children and helping foster youth.
John Sakowicz
Ukiah
MIKE KALANTARIAN: James Marmon was quite a presence here at theava.com. From 2012 through 2024 we had 9,443 published comments from him (and we must have sidelined another 10,000). James was the first commenter we put in moderation. His final post here (Nov 1, 2024) was classic humorous/salacious Marmon: https://theava.com/archives/254990/comment-page-1#comment-1741775
UKIAH HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR SELECTED TO REPRESENT CALIFORNIA IN THE US SENATE YOUTH PROGRAM
Hello,
My name is Bode Gower and I am a senior at Ukiah High School. I was recently selected to be one of two students selected to represent California in the prestigious US Senate Youth Program and was hoping that you could feature this in the AVA.
I have attached the press release and a headshot as well. Here's a quote you could use in it as well if you would like: “I am humbled and grateful for the opportunity to represent California in the U.S. Senate Youth Program. As an advocate for youth in rural communities, I am excited to use this platform to elevate their voices and highlight the unique challenges that many rural communities in Northern California experience.”
If you have any questions, please let me know.
Thank you,
Bode Gower, Chair
Northern California Youth Policy Coalition
(707) 349-6127
gowerbo@gmail.com
Organized Voices for Rural
Northern California Youth
ncypc.com
California Students Selected for United States Senate Youth Program
Students Headed to Washington, D. C. and to Receive $10,000 Scholarship
January 13, 2025, Washington, D.C. —The United States Senate Youth Program (USSYP) is pleased to announce that high school students Ms. Sarah Rumei Gao and Mr. Bode Emet Gower will join Senator Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff in representing California during the 63rd annual USSYP Washington Week, to be held March 1 — 8, 2025. Sarah Gao of San Diego and Bode Gower of Hopland were selected from among the state’s top student leaders to be part of the 104 national student delegation that will attend meetings and briefings with senators, the president, a justice of the Supreme Court, leaders of cabinet agencies, and other officials throughout the week. Each delegate will also receive a $10,000 college scholarship for undergraduate study.
The USSYP was founded in 1962 by the sons of William Randolph Hearst and the senate leadership of the day -- Senators Kuchel, Mansfield, Dirksen and Humphrey – in response to the deep divisiveness and national anxiety following the McCarthy era. They outlined a plan to encourage America’s most talented young people to consider public service as an important, life-long, and noble pursuit, sponsoring Senate Resolution 324, which passed unanimously. As stated in founding testimony, the program strives “to increase young Americans’ understanding of the interrelationships of the three branches of government, learn the caliber and responsibilities of federally elected and appointed officials, and emphasize the vital importance of democratic decision making not only for America but for people around the world.”
Each year this extremely competitive merit-based program provides two outstanding high school students from each state, the District of Columbia and the Department of Defense Education Activity with an intensive week-long study of the federal government and the people who lead it. Each student will also receive a $10,000 undergraduate college scholarship with encouragement to continue coursework in government, history and public affairs. The Hearst Foundations have fully funded the program since inception; as stipulated, no government funds are utilized. (United State Senate Resolution 324)
Sarah Gao, a senior at Canyon Crest Academy, serves as the president of the School Site Council. She is also the vice chair of the city of San Diego’s Youth Commission and the 13th editor-in-chief of her school’s print magazine, Catalyst. As the president of the Greater San Diego Science and Engineering Fair Student Leadership Board, she directed the fair’s first boot camp to closely mentor students from underrepresented backgrounds. Sarah is also the executive director of Coast2Canyon, which focuses on biodiversity, environmental education, and water quality, and a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Young Changemaker Fellow. Beyond environmental science, Sarah is also passionate about using filmmaking to tell stories and has created documentaries on San Diego history. She was awarded the Environmental Protection Agency Sustainability Honorable Mention at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, was named a U.S. Department of Education National STEM champion and earned the NASA Earth Systems Science Award. Sarah aims to major in environmental engineering and public policy and eventually serve in public office
Bode Gower is a senior at Ukiah High School, where he serves as the president of the Associated Student Body. As the founder and chair of the Northern California Youth Policy Coalition (NCYPC), he supports rural youth by advocating for youth-related legislation at both state and federal levels,spotlighting the perspectives of rural youth and communities across Northern California. He also serves as a member of the Board of Governors for the Young Leaders PAC and the K-12 director of policy for GenerationUp, California’s largest youth-led advocacy organization. He has been a member of Senator Laphonza Butler’s Youth Advisory Council, where he regularly met with the senator, ensuring that the voices of rural communities are represented. Bode is also a commissioner on the Mendocino County Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Commission and founded the first-ever Mendocino County Youth Advisory Council which works with the County Board of Supervisors to engage the county youth on issues that come before the Board. Bode has been recognized as Outstanding Prosecution Attorney during the 2024 California State Mock Trial Competition and as Best Attorney from the UCLA Mock Trial Institute, as well as having received the Congressional Award. He has worked on multiple political campaigns at both state and local levels. Bode plans to major in public policy and pre-law studies, attend law school, and pursue a career in public service.
Chosen as alternates to the 2025 program were Mr. James Miller, a resident of Oxnard, who attends Westlake High School and Ms. Sriya Srinivasan, a resident of Fairfield, who attends Rodriguez High School
Delegates and alternates are selected by the state departments of education nationwide and the District of Columbia and Department of Defense Education Activity, after nomination by teachers and principals. The chief state school officer for each jurisdiction confirms the final selection. This year’s California delegates and alternates were designated by Tony Thurmond, State Superintendent of Public Instruction.
In addition to outstanding leadership abilities and a strong commitment to volunteer work, the student delegates rank academically in the top one percent of their states among high school juniors and seniors. Now more than 6,200 strong, alumni of the program continue to excel and develop impressive qualities that are often directed toward public service. Among the many distinguished alumni are: Senator Susan Collins, the first alumnus to be elected U.S. senator; Secretary of Transportation and former Mayor of South Bend Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, the first alumnus to be appointed as a cabinet secretary; Representative Sarah McBride, the second alumnus to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives; former Senator Cory Gardner, the second alumnus to be elected U.S. senator and the first to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, the first alumnus to be elected governor.
Members of the U. S. Senate Youth Program 2025 annual Senate Advisory Committee are: Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, the 2025 USSYP Republican Co-Chair and Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the 2025 USSYP Democratic Co-Chair. The full USSYP Senate Advisory Committee includes the vice president of the United States and the Senate majority and minority leaders, and four senators from each party who lend their names in support. Serving on the 2025 Advisory Committee: Senator Susan M. Collins of Maine, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas, Senator Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota and Senator Peter Welch of Vermont.
For more information please visit: www.ussenateyouth.org
WHY WE LEFT BOONVILLE
by Charlene Rollins
“Life becomes miserable when you are falsely accused.”
I’m guessing that 39 years later you must realize how weird all this is.
The shocking level of rancor in this article indicates to me that it’s a misplaced attempt to understand something else entirely.
I can’t tell you how much these lies hurt. Vernon and I made a number of mistakes on the financial side of running a business and we paid the price. We left everything we owned when we left the Boonville Hotel, except for a single vase and a suitcase with some clothes. We couldn’t pay everyone but we gave what we could to my father to pay employees. With the sale of the property by the limited partnership (who caused our debacle by failing to come up with a promised balloon payment on the property) everyone could and should have been payed off completely, and if not, it wasn’t our doing.
The Colfaxes had been friends, but their taking possession of our possessions (art, books, wines…) had nothing to do with us, everything to do with their own choices. They loaned us an old car, which we left nearby when my parents gave us one of theirs. We left precipitously because I was 8 months pregnant and we knew that we would be embroiled endlessly in legal issues that we had no money to resolve fairly.
We stayed and worked in France for a year, at a country inn owned by friends from Mendocino County. We worked in different restaurants in Washington for a year, Vernon as a waiter and I as a cook, while we tried to see a new future for ourselves.
(The day Vernon and I met at Chez Panisse’s 7th birthday party, -where I worked in exchange for dinners, trying to learn as much as I could about “real” food)- we spent hours talking about the kind of restaurant we each wanted to have. It was very much the same restaurant and 6 months later we got married and found the derelict New Boonville Hotel).
We have always done nothing but give our all to that vision. We are not cheaters and liars but honest hard-working people who loved what we do.
Vernon passed away in 2022.
Charlene Rollins
GRIEF RECOVERY SUPPORT GROUP
Dealing with grief is one of life’s most difficult challenges.
This support group offers:
- Practical tools to help you learn and move through the stages of grief.
- A safe, confidential place to share the overwhelming range of feelings brought on by the death of someone close to you.
The group is open to anyone who has lost a loved one.
Our first meeting will begin on Thursday, February 13th at Anderson Valley Health Center, 13500 Airport Road, Boonville. The meeting begins at 4:00 pm and ends at 5:30 pm. Registration is mandatory prior to joining the group.
For information and registration, please contact Group Facilitator, Susan Bridge-Mount, LMFT (707) 621-3114.
This is a free community service provided by Hospice of Ukiah. Providing Palliative care and Hospice in Ukiah, Anderson Valley, Redwood Valley, Potter Valley, Hopland, Talmage & Willits.
MENDOCINO WAY BACK WHEN (Ron Parker)
ED NOTES
I'M IN AN IRRITATING dispute with a bank credit card outfit. After years of usurious interest paid to a band of crooks associated with a much bigger band of crooks at the Bank of America, on a miniscule balance that wouldn't go away, I finally paid off the card, attaching a letter informing the lesser crooks that I'd made a note of their names, and come the revolution they could count on getting Mangioni-ed.
A MONTH LATER I get a statement that says I still owe them a one dollar “service charge.” They list a phone number and an e-mail address to contact them, but when I do contact them telephonically and electronically, they've got it automated so my particular beef, the one dollar service charge, cannot be addressed. And there's no way to talk to a human-type person about it.
TWO MONTHS in a row now I've paid the one dollar extortion simply because I know if I don't pay it I'll be looking at $51 a month — or more — in “late fees.” I haven't decided yet what to do about it, but I feel like a complete sap for paying them twice for no reason at all.
ONE OF OUR ALL-TIME FAVES: A Potter Valley man, arriving home late one evening after hours on the road, went directly to his outhouse. As he opened the door to what is essentially his bathroom, a naked man burst forth and grabbed Property Owner by the neck. Property Owner promptly bashed Naked Man in the head with his flashlight, stunning the intruder, and continued to pummel the intruder when Mrs. Property Owner came running out of the house with a sheet wrapped around her starkers self, screaming, 'No! No! Stop! I love him!' Property Owner stopped. But Naked Man, aware that neighbors were a little too pleased with all this running naked in and out of outhouses, and by now fully clothed, came back the next night and chopped down Property Owner's marijuana plants and commenced vengefully going around the neighborhood chopping down 'everyone else's pot plants, which can get a guy injuries far more severe than a couple of raps from a cuckold's flashlight. When Naked Man placed his frenzied machete to the throat of yet another pot grower who tried to stop Naked Man's revenge on area pot gardens, the cops were called and Naked Man and Property Owner were arrested and their plants seized. Mrs. Property Owner? Sheet Lady? Not known, but in Mendocino County Cupid's very arrows are made of hemp even if the flashlights aren't.
SANDOW BIRK illustrates our periodic literary excursions. I became interested in his work before I knew anything about him. I'd picked up a book of his paintings of the state prison system, not the system itself in all its terrible manifestations, or even aspects of the system I saw in another painting the other day that I also liked very much, a painting by Chester Arnold whose painting depicted individualized convicts walking in a perpetual prison yard circle.
ARNOLD is also a painter who views industrial civilization as a literal blight on the landscape. He’ll paint a pristine country lane with scattered spills of books at the end of it, or a stream running clear but surrounded by clearcut stumps.
BUT SANDOW BIRK'S prison paintings were of the prison structures themselves as seen from a distance in their soft natural settings. Looking at them was uniquely affecting, not jarring but topographically contradictory, which they are because almost all our prisons are located in rural areas, most of them placed in these areas as jobs programs for depressed communities, and all of them just about as unnatural intrusions on the landscape as it’s possible to get considering both the human suffering they contain and the industrial-scale hugeness of them plunked down in an otherwise rural setting.
EVER BEEN to Pelican Bay just outside bleaker-than-bleak Crescent City? Grateful for clearing CC, you drive along through reviving forest then it's suddenly there, this giant concrete excrescencse, the prison allegedly housing our worst boys.
LOOKING at Birk’s renditions of the prisons, I felt like I’d just walked up over a pre-industrial hill and there, suddenly, was one of our post-industrial holding pens, reproduced exactly in soft, sardonic pastels. I laughed because I was both surprised and amused, and I wondered if my response was what the artist intended, not that he’s a guy who would seem to spend much time with his worry beads over public responses to his work which, in a word, is apocalyptic, great canvases of vast, final battles for Los Angeles for example, with skateboarders battling the cops, and other satirical touches, all of it hugely rewarding the longer you look.
ONE OF BIRK'S works is absolutely unique. Called “American Qur’an,” it's his illustration of about half the Koran’s 114 suras or stanzas. Alongside each of the thundering Old Testament-like prose passages, which Birk has copied out in his own bold print, masterful prose calligrophy, he’s placed his rendition of the contemporary American experience. I found a lot of it funny as hell, frankly. His juxtapositions of the Koran’s dire moral instruction as illustrated by America's slovenly variousness! Paintings of chubby office pinkies next to an injunction on the necessity of honest labor; floozies alongside demands for female modesty.
ODDLY though, the net effect by this gifted infidel confirms everything about modern Americans that terrifies fundamentalist Muslims and fundamentalist Christians, for that matter, the two groups alike in emotional responses to life. The paintings confirm the decadence the Taliban-brains want to bomb out of existence.
BUT CHRISTIAN FUNDIES ought to be just as pleased with Birk's illustrated Koran, at least as pleased as the decadent writing this, but the young man working the gallery desk said he was “apprehensive” about how Bay Area Muslims “would receive it,” he said. “I didn't stand around by the door the first week, but so far it's all been positive.”
MARSHALL NEWMAN
From e-bay, another old photograph of semi-local interest.
The log chute at Caspar.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, January 14, 2025
CHANDLER BOWERS-PIERCE, 24, Willits. Domestic abuse.
TROY CHAMBERS, 60, Ukiah. Disobeying court order, probation revocation.
GABRIEL CHAON, 18, Ukiah. Burglary, attempted car theft, stolen vehicle, DUI, reckless driving, burglary tools, concealed dirk-dagger, vandalism, evasion, reckless driving, probation revocation.
BRITTANY DAVIS, 34, Ukiah. Under influence.
ISAIAH GARCIA, 29, Ukiah. Stolen property, obtaining personal ID without authorization, unspecified offenses.
NATALIE HAYDEN, 19, Ukiah. Domestic battery.
JOHN HOAGLEN, 39, Covelo. Domestic battery, false imprisonment, parole violation.
ROBERT HUANG, 42, Covelo. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, more than an ounce of pot, parole violation.
KYLE JOHNSON, 38, Hidden Valley Lake/Ukiah. DUI.
HANNAH LYTLE, 23, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery.
ADRIAN MANRIQUEZ, 19, Ukiah. Reckless driving.
JEVIN MARINO, 18, Ukiah. Reckless driving.
ORLANDO MUNOZ, 30, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, tear gas, resisting.
JESSICA NORTON, 33, Rio Dell. Probation violation.
ALYSSA ROJAS, 18, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
SCOTT TIREVOLD, 65, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
A READER WRITES: My wife and I were talking about the NFL playoffs and the name of the Commanders came up. She grew up just outside DC and was surprised to learn the Redskins were a thing of the past. While discussing this she came up with a great name for the next team that needs a'changin': the Mansplainers. The logo would be an open mouth.
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
Insurance companies are required to keep reserves far in excess of the premiums they collect. And they also buy reinsurance to insure themselves against catastrophic losses like the one in California. California regulators would not allow insurance companies to charge their insureds for the cost of the reinsurance. That is one of many roadblocks for insurance companies to charge a premium commensurate with the risk they take on. The insurance companies are not to blame. There is no “naked/unbacked insurance” in the home insurance market. Each state regulates insurers within their state, and California's regulators have tied the hands of the insurers. That is why they're leaving.
RANDY BURKE
RE: Steve Mnuchin
Any MAGA folks out there who remember the disastrous Secretary of Treasury whose handle is Steve Mnuchin. Recall the 2008 days of his partners in crime bought up vast tracts of underwater properties and turned right (far right) around and jacked up the acquired property values and rents? Shoes fitting a bit tight about now? Ah heck, with Goldman Sachs upbringing, he could not fail, but we could. The editor's recommended watch of Michael Moore's “capitalism” brought this Mnuchin memory back to light…a common memory lapse of the masses.
HOW TO MAKE YOUR HOME AND YARD SAFE FOR HUMMINGBIRDS
by James M. Cubie
Many species of birds face a deadly threat: window collisions. They cannot distinguish a clear pane of glass from the open sky, and hummingbirds, among the smallest birds, are particularly at risk. The good news is that we now understand this danger and can protect these tiny birds. We can easily create safe environments that can prevent unnecessary window-strike deaths.
Birds hit windows and die in staggering numbers. Every year, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, more than 1 billion birds strike windows in the U.S. alone. Hummingbirds are particularly vulnerable to deadly window collisions because they are small and fragile. The smallest bird is the bee hummingbird, weighing less than two grams. Collisions with windows at high speed are accidents from which these tiny creatures often cannot recover. Hummingbirds are 33 times more likely than the average bird to die hitting a window.
Hummingbird Safety 101
People who want to enjoy watching these birds up close need to consider the birds’ best interests. For example, if a feeder is left out too long in the fall, will it induce the birds to stay too long and die from cold? Is it necessary to buy commercial hummingbird food? What is the best way to keep ants off feeders? Is the red dye in sugar water safe? How do you secure a stunned bird for transport to a local wildlife rehabilitation center?
However, making the best choices for wild birds could be better if the yards where we feed them are true sanctuaries devoid of hazards. This means ensuring that feeders are clean, changing the sugar water often, and not using pesticides.
Hanging a feeder induces birds into an unsafe yard, creating an ecological trap. To make a yard safe, the homeowner must exclude cats and install a device or treatment to prevent birds from colliding with windows, like bird-safe window film.
Voracious Nectarivores
Hummingbirds are an incredibly unique species. Named for the humming sound created by their rapidly beating wings when in flight, they fly at incredible speeds and can stop on a dime. Their breast feathers are iridescent, and they can fly backward. They are the only birds that can hover in midair.
“Hummingbirds embody so many opposites that their very existence seems a miracle. They are the lightest birds in the sky—and also, for their size, the fastest,” writes naturalist Sy Montgomery. “These tiny, fragile birds undertake perilous, long-distance migrations. The rufous hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus) flies on gossamer wings from Mexican wintering grounds to nesting areas in Alaska.”
Because of their high metabolic rate, hummingbirds are voracious. They feed while hovering or perched, gorging on nectar from flowers, including annuals and perennials, and blossoms on trees, shrubs, and vines. Their diets also include insects, such as fruit flies and gnats, and tree sap if sapsuckers and other hole-drilling birds and insects have drilled sap wells in trees.
Feeders and pollinator gardens will attract hummingbirds, particularly native plants. “Hummingbirds have evolved with native plants, which are best adapted to local growing seasons, climate, and soil,” writes the U.S. Forest Service. “They prefer large, tubular flowers that are often (but not always) red in color.”
Hummingbirds & Windows
Doug Tallamy, a leading expert on plants, birds, and insects, warned that even as native plants attract hummingbirds, we may inadvertently create “ecological traps” if we invite birds into our yards and do not treat our windows to prevent collisions.
Scientists are still determining why hummingbirds may be more collision-prone than other bird species. Although they point to high flight velocity and fragility, one factor is that they are the most popular bird to feed. Researchers have not come to any definitive conclusion. They note that these collisions may occur more frequently because of hummingbirds’ long journeys and migratory patterns.
A Bird’s Eye View of Glass
These collisions occur because birds do not see windows. They do not recognize that windows are solid objects. Birds see a reflection in the window of the safe space they have been flying through. Unfortunately, windows are solid, and hummingbirds and other birds die by crashing into them.
No home without anti-collision treatment is safe for birds. Only rarely does a hummingbird fly right up to a window and stop. Often, people are unaware a hummingbird has hit their window and died. According to a study published in 2024 by Daniel Klem, Jr., a professor of ornithology and conservation biology at Muhlenberg College, window collisions kill three to five times more birds than previously thought.
Human Rationalization vs. Reality for the Birds
“It’s not my windows; it’s the skyscrapers killing birds.” Skyscraper windows cause only 1 percent of window collision deaths. Forty-two percent of all window collision deaths are at residencies, while low-rise buildings, including commercial buildings, cause 56 percent.
“But don’t the good things I do for my hummingbirds outweigh the deaths from windows and cats?” Unfortunately, they do not. All the “good things” one might do for hummingbirds—like providing native plants and maintaining a feeder—do not come close to offsetting their window-strike deaths. Hummingbirds do not need feeders; feeders are for human enjoyment.
“I have never seen a hummingbird die hitting my windows. Some hit, but they just fly off.” Collisions happen in a fraction of a second, and we may not be there when they occur.
Klem’s study found that twice as many hummingbirds bounce off and fly away as die immediately. Many bounce off, leave no trace and fly away. Almost all die. We know that 70 percent of living hummingbirds brought to rehab centers end up dying. Of course, most stunned or injured birds are never noticed, or a predator eats them.
Window Collision Prevention: DIY and Commercial Options
Here is the good news: People can protect hummingbirds in their yards at no cost or very low cost. Garden netting over windows prevents deadly bird-window collisions. Vertical lines on windows at most 2 inches apart signal to the birds that this is not a safe place to fly. The lines can be made with strings, ribbons, or soap, or they can be store-bought.
Some homeowners do not want screens or netting over their windows. Several good commercial and DIY options minimize the impact on the view out of your windows. These options are described in a Consumer Guide to Window Collision Prevention published by the Ornithology Center of the Acopian Center for Ornithology at Muhlenberg College. All of them have been independently tested. The guide is free and endorsed by the leading expert in the field.
The Consumer Guide includes photos of all the systems, which can be used to compare them when testing these options in homes. The guide also compares their costs and provides DIY instructions for each.
Debunking False Safety Claims
There is a lot of incorrect information and false advertising online. That is why the Consumer Guide to Window Collision Prevention is essential. All the options have been independently tested.
You may have read that hummingbirds are in no danger if you put your feeder close to a window or more than 30 feet away. That is half right. Closer is better, but hummingbirds hit windows other than the ones closest to where they feed. The 30-foot claim is based on a mistaken reading of a study.
Another disappointing option is widely spaced decals. The most popular choice—putting a few decals on a window a foot or so apart (as typically advertised)—does not work.
Here is a photo showing three decals on a small window. There is a smudge caused by a bird strike. Birds are not alerted by the decals. They think the open space is large enough to fly through. In fact, it is glass. The expensive UV choice is unproven—and costly. There are many more effective options.
Turning off the lights does not make a difference. The level of light that homes emit is so low that it does not matter, and birds are not active at night.
Conclusion
Safeguarding hummingbirds from window collisions is a crucial step in ensuring their survival. While these vibrant, delicate creatures enrich our lives with their beauty and energy, attracting them to our homes comes with responsibility.
Creating a bird-friendly yard involves more than providing food—it requires making the environment safe. We can significantly reduce the risk of deadly strikes by adopting proven window collision prevention methods, such as netting, vertical lines, or effective commercial treatments. Hummingbirds deserve our thoughtful care and consideration, and with simple, affordable measures, we can enjoy their presence without endangering their lives. Let’s take action to protect these tiny marvels, preserving their role in nature and ensuring they thrive for generations to come.
This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
(James M. Cubie, J.D., is a former chief counsel for the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee. He has played a decisive role in reforming and developing farm-related conservation programs, including 1990s-era farm bills. Cubie is the founder and former director of the Agricultural Conservation Innovation Center, Inc., once a project of the American Farmland Trust. Cubie is a consultant to the Muhlenberg College Center for Ornithology, where he advises on bird safety and native plants. He was formerly a presidential campaign speechwriter and chief counsel for the U.S. Senate. Follow him on Twitter: @jimcubie. (CounterPunch.org.))
COULD CALIFORNIA’S FAMOUS LOST COAST TRAIL SOON BE EXTENDED?
by Gregory Thomas
Could the famous Lost Coast Trail be extended further down Northern California’s rugged shoreline?
That’s a question federal land managers will likely consider in the coming months as they draw up a public access plan for a large, scenic coastal property in Mendocino County — about 30 miles north of Fort Bragg — that was just transferred to the Bureau of Land Management.
“There’s definitely a desire there for that concept, but we still have to go through our public process to say yes, it’s something we’d do,” said Dan Ryan, realty specialist for the Bureau of Land Management’s Northern California District, during a Monday phone call with the Chronicle.
Sandwiched between Highway 1 and the Pacific Ocean, the forested 4,500-acre property encompasses 8 miles of rugged coastline stretching south from Usal Beach, which is the southern terminus of the 58-mile Lost Coast Trail. The property was long owned and logged by a timber company until 2021 when the bulk of it was purchased for $36.9 million in a deal brokered by San Francisco conservation nonprofit Save the Redwoods League.
The property was transferred to the BLM last month with the intention that it “be set on a new path to become an old-growth forest of the future and potentially an iconic coastal redwood destination for all people,” according to the league’s description of the property. It features groves of redwoods and Douglas firs and miles of incredible ocean views and coastal bluffs — although no sand beaches, Ryan said.
“These types of acquisitions don’t come along very often,” he said.
With the property now in public hands and slated for recreation, it raises the obvious question as to whether it would make sense to introduce a new leg of the iconic Lost Coast Trail. BLM officials in Northern California say they are aware of such a notion, in part from informal conversations with local tribes and residents who will eventually help steer the formal planning process, which could begin later this year.
“It’s all speculative at this point, but certainly people have wondered about that,” said Jeff Fontana, public affairs specialist for the BLM.
The Lost Coast Trail is best known for its spectacular northern section that leads hikers and backpackers across remote stretches of gravelly shoreline and a black sand beach for 25 miles between Mattole Beach and the small town of Shelter Cove. Thousands of people make that journey each year.
The trail extends another 33 miles south of Shelter Cove through a mountainous section that is far less popular and ends at Usal Beach in Sinkyone Wilderness State Park, which abuts the newly transferred property.
Aside from a 2.3-mile hiking trail and some dirt logging roads, there isn’t much of any infrastructure on the property, Ryan said. That will likely change as the BLM begins developing a recreation plan, which will be subject to environmental impact reviews, tribal collaboration and public input.
When asked about the likelihood of extending the Lost Coast Trail into the newly transferred property, Paul Sever, manager of the BLM’s King Range National Conservation Area, where most of the Lost Coast is located, said the answer would become apparent in the months ahead.
“I can’t say for certain it will and I can’t say for certain it won’t,” Sever said. “It’s TBD until we get into the planning process.”
THEY STORMED THE CAPITOL ON JAN. 6. NOW THESE FOUR PEOPLE WITH BAY AREA TIES MAY GET TRUMP PARDONS
The president-elect has said he will pardon “many” Jan. 6 defendants. Four of them hailed from the Bay Area. They have shown little remorse.
by Mathias Gafni
As Donald Trump returns to the Oval Office, he has vowed to pardon “many” of the roughly 1,500 supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Four of those pardons could go to “J6ers” with ties to the Bay Area — and would come with little penitence.
Despite entering guilty pleas and serving short prison stints, three of these locals appear to now embrace their roles in the insurrection, a mob attack meant to keep Trump in office despite his election loss.
One, a former Gilroy yoga instructor, appears at rallies in an orange jumpsuit. A San Francisco man raises money for others convicted in the riot. A Santa Rosa father promotes Jan. 6 conspiracy theories on his X account with a bio that starts: “Trump won 2020!”
But its the fourth Bay Area J6er who may have the most to gain from a possible Trump pardon. Evan Neumann of Mill Valley, who was indicted by federal prosecutors on 14 criminal counts, including charges of assaulting cops, fled the country and became a fugitive wanted by the FBI. In early 2022, Belarus granted Neumann, 52, political asylum where he remains, separated from his family and two children.
While the three who were convicted remain deeply embedded in the fabric of that infamous day in Washington, D.C., only one responded to the Chronicle’s requests for comment about what a pardon would mean to them. Daniel Goodwyn of San Francisco replied by email with a 188-word critique of the CBS sitcom “The Big Bang Theory.”
In December, Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press“ that he’s “inclined to pardon many” of the Capitol rioters upon his inauguration on Jan. 20, even though scores of police officers were injured in the attack and four died by suicide in the aftermath. He said not all of those who breached the Capitol would likely get their records cleared, but he expressed sympathy and said they “suffered long and hard.”
Trump transition spokesperson Caroline Leavitt told CBS that Trump would “pardon Americans who were denied due process and unfairly prosecuted by the weaponized Department of Justice.”
Of the local quartet, Goodwyn, 36, has kept the highest profile. After finishing his supervised release from jail, Goodwyn — a “self-proclaimed Proud Boy,” according to federal prosecutors, though his attorney fought that label in court — became the president of the local chapter of the California Republican Assembly, a right-wing faction of the San Francisco Republican Party.
At a November meeting in a Richmond District restaurant, Goodwyn presided and urged his colleagues to help push the party further right in San Francisco and to find conservative candidates for local elections.
Goodwyn pleaded guilty to one count of knowingly entering a restricted building for his role in the storming of the Capitol, during which Trump supporters tried to stop what they falsely claimed was a stolen election. Prosecutors said he held a bullhorn and incited others by yelling, “We need critical mass for this to work!”
Less than two months after pleading guilty in January 2023, Goodwyn appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show and minimized his role in the riot, while soliciting donations to a website raising money for J6ers, according to prosecutors.
Goodwyn’s attorneys argued his autism played a role that day and that he left when he was told to. A judge sentenced him to 60 days in jail and a year of supervised release. After he was freed, he fought a judge’s attempts to monitor his computer activity for speech containing “disinformation.” A judge argued he was using his device for “rallying up other people in reference to what took place on Jan. 6,” but an appeals court temporarily stopped the surveillance.
By July 2024, a federal judge reinstated the requirement, but it became moot as Goodwyn’s supervised release had ended.
On his website, Goodwyn greets visitors with a message: “My goal is to give access to THE BEST INFO to save American Liberty! I’ve worked with the top investigators to collect and curate the most important January 6 evidence to exonerate Trump and the election integrity protesters who the Brandon Administration has turned into POLITICAL HOSTAGES!”
Neumann, the former Mill Valley resident, faced some of the most serious charges levied against J6ers. Prosecutors allege he wore a gas mask and spent at least four hours at the Capitol, at one point yelling at an officer: “I’m willing to die, are you?” Prosecutors allege he assaulted four officers that day.
A year ago, Neumann, 52, spoke to the Press Democrat by phone from Belarus and expressed regret about traveling to D.C. that day, but also questioned whether the election was fair and whether he and other rioters were entrapped that day by provocateurs or undercover law enforcement. Neumann has settled in Brest, Belarus, and said he hoped to open his own restaurant serving American cuisine.
As to the allegations of Jan. 6 violence, he told the paper, “I know that my frame of mind was of nonviolence and passive resistance.” He said he had no plans to return to face charges because any trial would not be fair, calling D.C. very “anti-Trump.”
A year ago, as Trump campaigned for a second presidency, Neumann said he thought it was 50-50 that Trump would get elected. If he did win, Neumann said he thought it was also 50-50 he could get amnesty.
“Trump is Trump,” he said. “He may say something today and decide that it’s not convenient tomorrow.”
Mariposa Castro pleaded guilty to demonstrating in the Capitol building and was sentenced to 45 days in prison. She livestreamed herself as she entered the Capitol that day, crawling through a broken window and saying into her phone: “The war has just started. It’s just the beginning. It was so ugly. … If I can do this, you guys can do this.”
In 2006, an errant golf shot by Trump sent a ball to Castro and her husband at the famed course at Pebble Beach. She spoke briefly to Trump, an encounter that fueled her loyal following over the next decade, according to court records.
When Castro’s husband lost his job in the wake of her arrest at the Capitol, the couple was forced to leave California and settle in Tennessee. Castro went on an internet talk show and said she was innocent of the charge she had pleaded guilty to, prosecutors said.
At her sentencing, she told the judge: “I got caught up in the energy, and if I could go back and change things over, I definitely would have brought more peace, definitely more love.”
After her release from prison, she was photographed at the Convoy to Save America Rally in Nashville in April 2022 wearing an orange J6er jumpsuit with the words, “Making Federal Prison Great Again” written across the chest.
Daniel Shaw, 58, of Santa Rosa, pleaded guilty to demonstrating in the Capitol building. In a post-plea interview with law enforcement, he said the Jan. 6 events felt like a “religious revival,” according to court records. He served 10 days in prison and is set to complete probation in March.
As of this week, Shaw’s X account had been “temporarily restricted,” with a note indicating it was due to “unusual activity from this account.” Shaw last posted in 2023, and before then he mostly reposted other conservative voices raising claims of J6 cover-ups and inside jobs. His X bio indicates he’s located in “Communist Northern California.”
“I was arrested in December for being at January 6,” he wrote. “I believe in the Constitutional Republic … let’s take it back!”
UNDER THE SANTA ANAS
by Anahid Nersessian
On Monday, 6 January, the National Weather Service warned Los Angeles residents of high Santa Ana winds. The Santa Anas stir in the deserts of Southern California, rush up over the mountain ranges that separate the high, dry inland regions from the coast, and then surge, hot and blustering down towards the ocean. They often come in autumn but can strike at any time, drying out the air and cloaking the city in a shroud of brown dust.
Often the Santa Anas pass without incident if not without notice. In the right conditions, though, they can be catastrophic. LA is an artificially lush environment, as densely packed with plant life as it is with people. There are the natives – scrubland plants and small trees collectively referred to as chaparral, including yarrow, manzanita, yucca – and the interlopers, such as the eucalyptus, pepper and palm trees brought to the area by its colonisers. There is pink bougainvillea, purple sage and sprawling rosemary. In the spring, there are small orange poppies along the roadside, alone or in bunches, and huge Matilija poppies that resemble fried eggs, their white petals flayed open around bright yellow stamens.
All this beauty is tinder. The Santa Anas that arrived on 7 January blew into LA at 85 miles per hour, across bone-dry hills and brown canyons, into a city whose rainy season should have begun in December. Los Angeles has recorded barely one-tenth of an inch of rain since last May. The winds whipped up fires on both sides of the city, to the west in the coastal neighbourhoods of the Pacific Palisades and Malibu and to the east in Pasadena and Altadena, at the southern edge of Angeles National Forest. By 9 January, 29,000 acres of Los Angeles had burned, twice the area of Manhattan. The figure is now more than 37,000 acres.
There seemed to be no time at all between the high-wind warnings and total destruction. Last Tuesday morning I taught my first class of the winter term. After about an hour, a student abruptly left the room; I later learned he had received an automated text message ordering him to evacuate his home. Driving back to my own house, I could see a large plume of smoke rising from the west in the rearview mirror, but that in itself wasn’t exceptional: wildfires are common in LA and the winds were high. I hoped it wouldn’t get much worse.
That night, I bundled my children into my bedroom and threw a mattress for myself onto the floor. My eight-year-old daughter asked if I was worried about a tree falling on the house. ‘No,’ I lied, ‘I’m worried that we’ll lose power and your nightlight will go off.’ The winds shook the shutters open and I hurried to secure them. With the kids asleep I looked at the news on my phone. There was a fire in Eaton Canyon, above Altadena. ‘Seeing there’s a fire near you,’ I texted a friend, ‘You OK? Want to come here?’ ‘We’re at a hotel,’ she said, ‘Brought passports and nothing else.’ I texted another friend: ‘Seeing the fire in Altadena, thinking of you.’ ‘Evacuated,’ came the reply. ‘Praying.’
By morning, the second friend’s house was gone, along with the coffee shop where I last saw her. The other friend’s house was fine but surrounded by ruin, each long city block a tunnel of ash and twisted metal. Her youngest son’s preschool had disappeared.
By 8 January the air in my neighbourhood was acrid and thick, the sky pasted over by clouds the colour of pencil lead. The sun rose behind them, huge and red and grim. I dragged air purifiers out of the closet and set them up. My daughter burrowed under a blanket. My son, nearly four, sulked when I told him there would be no school that day. My ex-husband and I agreed that he would take the children south to his brother’s in San Diego, where the air was still clean. I wore a KN95 mask to take out the trash then lay down on my bed, glued to Watch Duty, an app that shows where the fires are and which direction the winds are blowing. It tells people to evacuate before the officials do.
Christopher Isherwood called Los Angeles ‘perhaps the ugliest city on earth’. People from New York, like me, are meant to loathe it. But to me it is the most beautiful city in the world. It is a city of working people and it feels like one. Apart from a few sealed-off enclaves such as Bel Air or Hidden Valley, even the toniest areas of LA have a large share of middle-class or low-income residents, although the rising cost of living and the unhinged real estate market are driving more and more people beyond the city limits. Ben Affleck evacuated his home in Pacific Palisades on Wednesday but so did the retirees, surfers and young families living in Palisades Bowl, a mobile home community, where units cost $1200 a month. The Bowl was obliterated.
Mike Davis warned in Ecology of Fear (1998) that ‘megacities like Los Angeles will never simply collapse and disappear. Rather, they will stagger on, with higher body counts and greater distress, through a chain of more frequent and destructive encounters with disasters of all sorts.’ Joan Didion, in Slouching Toward Bethlehem (1969), wrote that ‘Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse’, a fitting accompaniment to ‘the quality of life in Los Angeles … its impermanence, its unreliability’. Octavia Butler, born in Pasadena in 1947, in her 1993 novel, Parable of the Sower, describes enormous wildfires erupting in Los Angeles on 1 February 2025, the fatal byproduct of climate change and government corruption.
‘Apocalypse’ means revelation, and we feel there must be something to see here, some disclosure in the nightmare. Last year the mayor, Karen Bass, increased the Los Angeles Police Department’s budget by $125.9 million (roughly 7 per cent) while proposing a $23 million cut to the Fire Department. The mayor’s office has pushed back on this accounting, claiming that the LAFD’s operating funds have actually increased, but last month the fire chief, Kristin Crowley, declared that the budget cuts have ‘severely limited the department’s capacity to prepare for, train for and respond to large-scale emergencies’. In last November’s election, a majority of California voters declined to outlaw forced labour among incarcerated people, who make up around 30 per cent of California’s firefighters and are paid between $5.80 and $10.24 per day. At least eight hundred of them are now up against LA’s infernos. What the state will not pay to provide it will extract through coercion.
But if we need the language of apocalypse we also need a language that holds the ordinary life of our city. In Glitter Stucco and Dumpster Diving: Reflections on Building Production in the Vernacular City, the architect and urban planner John Chase describes LA as a city that follows no design or aesthetic ambition but insolently unspools from the desires of its people. LA has no Haussmann or Frederick Law Olmsted; it has Angelenos, and in the ‘mad and wonderful’ architecture of the city, with its stucco box houses alongside its faux Swiss chalets, its Tudor cottages, bungalows, faded pink apartment complexes and ancient auto repair shops, glittering strip malls and shabby hotels, there is a romantic stubbornness, at once dogged and extravagant, tender and brash. While the LAPD threatens to arrest non-existent looters and to charge anyone who remains in an evacuation zone with a misdemeanour, community organisers, activists and ordinary residents have sprung into action, setting up donation centres at churches, workers’ halls, schools, restaurants and music venues. This is a generous place. A staunch place.
‘Finally good news,’ the comedian Sammy Obeid tweeted on X. ‘Biden just approved an $8 billion package to fight the wildfires in California … Oh wait that was for Israel to fight hospitals, sorry.’ On Thursday, while LA burned, presidents gathered in Washington, DC, for the funeral of Jimmy Carter. It was a convivial affair. Sitting in a church pew behind the waxy Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Donald Trump grinned at each other and cracked wise, like two stoned schoolboys.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, a four-year-old girl asked her mother why it was snowing. The ash landed on her hair and turned their black car white. A fawn stumbled out of the smoke, and a horse ran back into it to nudge two other horses onward, faster. The Reel Inn, a seafood shack nestled against the Pacific Coast Highway, was reduced to charred wood and dirt. ‘If anyone needs temporary storage,’ an Instagram post said, ‘please DM Caveman Vintage Music.’ A man and his son, who had cerebral palsy, died while waiting for an ambulance. The remains of Victor Shaw, aged 66, were found in Altadena, in the house he shared with his sister. He was still clutching a hose.
(London Review of Books)
JUST GIVE IT UP. THERE’S NO ONE TO BLAME FOR THE LA FIRES.
by Kevin Drum
For God's sake, can we stop this nonsense?
People gobsmacked by empty fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades have wondered, why not just stick a hose in the ocean? Well, salt water can be very damaging to equipment (including firefighting machinery) and all sorts of other things as well, so the Pacific's bounty can only be used against conflagrations sparingly. But desalinated water sure could have come in handy this week.
How many coastal desalination plants are there between Santa Barbara and San Diego counties? Zero.
The problem isn't—and never has been—lack of water. The problem is pumping water up the hillside, where Pacific Palisades is. Seawater, whether desalinated or not, would be of no help.
The desire to prove that everyone else is incompetent is stupid bar stool talk. Smart people need to knock it off. The real story here is simple, even if no one wants to hear it: LA's system of water cisterns was built to manage a disaster, but not the worst possible disaster ever. Nobody does that because it would cost a fortune.
For example: California codes require buildings to withstand roughly a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. Quick: is that enough for Los Angeles? The Newport-Inglewood fault runs about ten miles from City Hall and can produce a magnitude 7.5 quake—but only every few hundred years. The San Andreas fault can produce earthquakes above magnitude 8.0, but never gets closer than 50 miles to LA.
So is 7.0 a high enough standard? Increasing it to 7.5—three times bigger—would be enormously expensive. And it's a pretty unlikely event in LA.¹ Should we do it anyway? You need to answer now, not after a worst-case event happens. It isn't easy.
Unprecedented disasters will always strain resources to the breaking point. There might be incompetence or ordinary mistakes involved, but usually not. The Pacific Palisades fire, whipped up by 60 mph winds, destroyed the entire neighborhood in a day. Nothing would have stopped it. LA firefighters were like a squirt gun in the face of something like that. In terms of the immediate response, there's no one to blame and no incompetence at play. Everyone needs to quit looking for politically convenient scapegoats.²
¹Though more likely in San Francisco, which sits right on top of the San Andreas fault.
²More than likely, we'll eventually know what caused the Palisades fire. A downed power line? A spark from some kind of machinery? A kid and a magnifying glass? When we figure it out, we'll be able to blame someone for starting the fire. But that's all.
AS WILDFIRES BURN, A CORRUPTION PROBE LEFT THE SENATE’S INSURANCE COMMITTEE CHAIR VACANT
by Ryan Sabalow
As fires rage through Southern California and exacerbate the state’s insurance crisis, the California Senate has no one in charge of its Insurance Committee due to questions surrounding a federal corruption investigation. Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire said he is waiting to hear from federal prosecutors about Sen. Susan Rubio, who’s been questioned in a federal corruption probe, before making a decision about reappointing her to her previous position as chair of the Senate Insurance Committee.
“We have requested and are awaiting additional information from the U.S. Attorney’s Office before finalizing any decisions,” McGuire’s office told CalMatters in an email.
Rubio, a Democrat from Baldwin Park, said she’s “currently not involved” in the federal corruption investigation that has already ensnared a handful of other officials in San Bernardino County, Compton, Commerce and Baldwin Park.
Federal officials have not identified Rubio by name in the case. However, there is nobody else matching the description of “Person 20,” who is accused in recently released federal court documents of asking for $240,000 in bribes from a cannabis company and accepting $30,000 in illegal campaign contributions. The allegations stem from when Rubio was a member of the Baldwin Park City Council.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles is overseeing the case. A spokesperson declined to comment about who Person 20 is or say when – or if – charges would be filed against them.
Experts in federal corruption cases suggest that McGuire is right to be concerned.
At CalMatters’ request, three former federal prosecutors reviewed the court documents.
The prosecutors – one of them a former U.S. Attorney – said there’s no way the U.S. Department of Justice would make public that much identifying information about a suspect in a corruption investigation if they didn’t think they could convince a jury of his or her guilt.
“If federal prosecutors are putting that level of detail — especially in a public corruption matter — into a public-facing document, they are fairly confident that information is 120% correct,” said Carrie H. Cohen, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in New York and former chief of the public integrity bureau at the New York State Attorney General’s Office.
Mark D. Chutkow, the former chief of the U.S. Attorney’s public corruption unit and criminal division in Detroit, said “it would appear that there is more due to drop in this case.”
Chutkow said when it comes to public corruption cases, federal prosecutors typically have their sights on the “highest-ranking public officials and not necessarily on … middle persons and the bribers themselves.”
“This Person No. 20 would be a higher-ranking (official) and the more important target of the federal investigation,” he said. “So one would think that they would want to finish the job.”
Last week, Rubio declined to be interviewed by a CalMatters reporter as she departed the Senate after the first floor session of the new year. Instead, her office responded with an emailed statement.
“It’s unfortunate that Senator Rubio continues to receive questions based on a case that she is currently not involved with,” her spokesperson, Matthew Z’berg, said in an email. “Senator Rubio’s focus is on serving the constituents of the 22nd Senate District and addressing important issues affecting California families.”
Spokesperson Says Rubio Didn’t Want Insurance Chair
Rubio did respond to Senate Pro Tem McGuire’s decision not to give her a committee leadership post when he recently announced his assignments for the two-year session that kicked off last Monday.
Last session, Rubio chaired the Senate Insurance Committee. The post was listed as a “vacancy” on McGuire’s list.
Z’berg said that Rubio told McGuire she wasn’t interested in being the insurance committee chair any more. She “encouraged (McGuire) to appoint a new chair to be announced with all other assignments.”She also conveyed to him that by leaving the position open, he would be feeding into false narratives and speculation,” Z’berg said.
Rubio also took a thinly-veiled shot at McGuire, suggesting that he’s playing politics by leaving the seat vacant due to speculation McGuire is eying a run for California Insurance Commissioner when he terms out in 2026.”Insurance issues affecting consumers across the state are of particular interest to him,” the statement read. “It is a critical issue that he has been very vocal about in the past, and will likely continue to do so.”In a statement emailed Friday, McGuire said “we’ve been leading on consumer-focused insurance reform for years — it’s personal for me because of the wildfires that have devastated the communities I represent. And this year will be no different.”The Southern California fires make it all the more clear how critical this issue is. Any premise that any legislation would be delayed is unequivocally BS,” he said. “A committee has been formed and we will name an insurance chair in the very near future.”The Insurance Committee is not scheduled to meet until March. Bills need to be in print for at least 30 days before legislators can act on them, so any new insurance-related legislation introduced this week wouldn’t be heard until at least February.
Is Sen. Rubio “Person 20”?
The recently released federal documents are a plea agreement signed by former Baldwin Park City Attorney Robert Tafoya. Federal officials released the agreement late last year. In the agreement, Tafoya says he helped facilitate bribes to local officials from companies seeking marijuana permits.
The Los Angeles Times was the first news outlet to report that Rubio matched the description of “Person 20.” The plea agreement describes Person 20 as a public official, in a position to be able to fire the city attorney, who won a primary for state office in 2018. No other local officials match the description.
The plea agreement says Person 20 sought $240,000 from a marijuana company seeking a city permit, but the company refused to pay that much so the deal fell through. Person 20 also sought and received $30,000 from Tafoya in a scheme to drum up support for Person 20’s 2018 state campaign, the documents say. Tafoya said he agreed to pay Person 20, in exchange for assurance he’d keep his city job and get state work from Person 20 after the election, according to his plea agreement.
Tafoya admitted to federal tax evasion and bribery charges in 2023, but prosecutors kept the plea agreement secret until last month since Tafoya had agreed to participate in the ongoing investigation.
“I have no idea who Person 20 is, but I am completely confident that the U.S. Attorney’s Office would not include these declaratory statements about Person 20’s actions unless they were very confident they could prove the truth of those statements in a court of law,” said McGregor Scott, a twice-appointed former U.S. Attorney based in Sacramento.Rubio has not directly answered whether she’s “Person 20.” She told the LA Times in a statement that she “volunteered hours of her time” aiding the authorities in their investigation and that she “has no reason to believe that she would be included in any criminal allegations.”
Senate Reviewing Ethics Complaint
Bill Essayli, a Republican Assembly member from Corona, requested the Assembly and Senate ethics committees to take up investigations after the LA Times report last month. Essayli spent about four years as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office that unsealed Tafoya’s plea agreement.
Essayli said he has no first-hand knowledge about this case since he left that job in 2018, but he said the allegations outlined in the plea agreement are troubling enough for the Legislature to act on its own without waiting for prosecutors. His ethics complaint also doesn’t identify Rubio by name.”When the Biden DOJ actually makes specific allegations like that against a sitting legislator, I don’t think we can wait as a public body for that investigation to play out – criminal investigations can take years to develop,” Essayli told CalMatters. “Meanwhile, this individual is still sitting in office. They still wield power in the name of the public, and they could be engaged in the same activity.”
Erin V. Peth, the chief counsel for the Senate Ethics Committee, told CalMatters Essayli’s complaint is under review, but provided no other details.
No woman California legislator has ever been indicted on public corruption charges while in office. Several male Assemblymembers and senators have been charged with such crimes over the years.
In 2010, state charges were filed against Los Angeles County Democratic Sen. Roderick Wright for voter fraud, perjury and other crimes stemming from him lying about actually living in his district. Then-Gov. Jerry Brown later pardoned Wright.
In 2016, a federal judge sentenced San Francisco’s Democratic Sen. Leland Yee to five years in prison for doing political favors in exchange for campaign cash.
Also in 2016, a federal judge sentenced Sen. Ron Calderon of Montebello to 42 months in federal prison for receiving over $150,000 in bribes. His brother, Assemblymember Tom Calderon, was sentenced to a year in prison for laundering his brother’s bribe money.
Following the Yee and Calderon indictments, voters in 2016 approved Proposition 50, which gives legislators the authority to suspend a disgraced colleague without pay. Doing so requires a two-thirds vote of the lawmaker’s chamber.
(CalMatters.org)
A CALIFORNIA WILDFIRE DESTROYED MY HOME IN AN INSTANT. IT TOOK YEARS FOR ME TO RECOVER
by Frances Dinkelspiel
There are few things as shocking as watching your home burn down.
I felt numb after my house, the first I owned, the one in which I hoped to raise my family, was destroyed in the Oct. 20, 1991, fire that swept through the Oakland and Berkeley hills. It was a hot and blustery day, and my husband, his parents and I had blithely gone to San Francisco for brunch at Zuni Cafe. When we looked down Market Street and saw the towering plume of smoke over the East Bay hills, we rushed back. But we were too late. My husband borrowed a bike to try to rescue our cat, but firefighters descending from the burning hills told him to turn around; our street was too hot even for them.
When we were able to return a few days later, I stared at a heap of twisted metal, smoldering wood and piles of ash where my house once stood. Nothing recognizable remained.
All I had left was a bundle of workout clothes in the trunk of my car.
When the Tunnel Fire, as it came to be known, destroyed 2,900 houses and killed 25 people, I thought it was a one-off event, a rare disaster. I had no clue it was a harbinger of things to come in our hotter, climate-challenged world. In the past 34 years, thousands of destructive wildfires have swept through California. We remember them by their names — Camp, Tubbs and Woolsey — and their death tolls.
But, honestly, there have been so many that they blend together.
The fires ripping through Los Angeles County are of a magnitude never seen in California. The entire community of Pacific Palisades, home to 23,000 people and dozens of movie stars, is gone. The Eaton Fire has decimated large parts of Altadena, a historic Black community. At least 10,000 structures have burned. Fortunately, the death toll has been low. Officials have discovered 10 bodies, although they warn that the number will grow.
The sheer number of fires over the decades means there is a pattern to recovery. It will be years before the sections of Los Angeles County that burned will return to a normal state. But they will, and when they do, the communities will be better than ever. Paradise, the Butte County town where 86 people died in the 2017 Camp Fire, was the fastest-growing city in 2024, according to the California Department of Finance. People are returning in droves. Three decades after my neighborhood burned, it is again filled with houses (mostly stucco with metal roofs to make them fire-resistant), green trees and flowering plants. The only signs of the 1991 catastrophe are a few lots with no houses, only foundations.
The time, effort and expense to rebuild is enormous, however. Homeowners’ lives will be disrupted for years.
The pattern is akin to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
When the call comes to evacuate, you can’t believe this catastrophe is happening to you. At first, you are grateful that no one in your family has been hurt. Only material things have been lost. You find a new appreciation for life. This fades after time, and people will get angry over all the mistakes made fighting the fires.
Then there are the practical aspects. Where will I live? How will I pay for it? There will be a rush on rentals in Los Angeles, and prices will rise. My husband and I waited a few days to search for a home, and most rentals were taken. We finally found one in North Berkeley with exorbitant rent. Luckily, our insurance company agreed to pay.
Dealing with insurance will be difficult and stressful. This is the anger part, particularly for people whose policies were canceled as insurance companies pulled out of the state.
Rebuilding is the bargaining part. There are many questions and decisions: How to remove debris from your lot, do you leave or rebuild, do you recreate your once-beloved home or construct a more resilient one? The little decisions can make you crazy; there will be hundreds of choices about finishings, lights, appliances and the like. And those questions are for the lucky ones with sufficient insurance. Renters and the underinsured might be couch surfing for years or living in Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers.
Of course, many will feel depressed. Studies show that sadness from losing a home can linger for years.
The end stage is acceptance. But I would argue that the last stage is more positive than the word suggests. Disasters can bring out the best in people. (And some bad behavior, although I prefer not to go there). We’ve seen it this week in Los Angeles. Residents knocked on door after door, warning people to flee. People hosed off their neighbor’s houses. Far-flung fire companies sent engines and personnel to help battle the blazes. Strangers hugged one another. Money flowed in from around the country, including the federal government, to help restore the area.
What helped me survive the destruction of my home and neighborhood were the good deeds done by others. Stores in Alameda County offered discounts to fire survivors. Professional photographers took pictures to replace photos that were lost. The broader Bay Area offered its condolences in many touching ways.
And it helped that I wasn’t the only one who had a house burn down. I didn’t have to cope in isolation. Thousands of others had lost their homes, too, and we had one another to turn to.
So, while large swaths of Los Angeles have been destroyed in an unprecedented disaster, a new, stronger community will rise.
JUST A BUM
by Greg Brown
I saw a man, he's a well-dressed man
He had a tan from the Yucatan
He had a car, he looked like a star
I said, Hey, don't I know who you are
But when he glanced into my eyes
I saw yes I saw was such a big surprise
He was afraid that he's just a bum
Someday when all his stuff is gone and he's left without a dime
Time ain't money when all ya got is time
And you can see him standin on the corner with a nine-day beard and bright red eyes
I know a guy, he's a pal of mine
I say, hey. He say, I'm doin fine
I'm movin up the ladder, rung rung rung
I'm gonna get my million while I am still young
But at night when he's had a few
His eyes say different than his tongue
They say I'm afraid that I'm just a bum
Someday when all my stuff is gone and I'm left without a dime
Time ain't money when all ya got is time
And I can see me standin on the corner with my nine-day beard and my bright red eyes
Goin hey, hey hey hey hey, come on and listen to my story, hey, hey hey hey hey, ah hey
Some people live to work, work to live
Any little tremble and the earth might give
Ya can't hide it in a Volvo or a London Fog
Can't hide it in a mansion with an imported dog
No matter how we plan and rehearse, we're at pink slip's mercy in a paper universe
And we're afraid that we're just a bum
Someday when all our stuff is gone and we're left without a dime
Time ain't money when all ya got is time
And we can see us standin on the corner with our nine-day beards and our bright red eyes
Goin, hey hey hey hey hey hey hey
Hey hey hey hey, come on and listen to my story man hey, hey hey hey hey, ah hey
The man of sorrow's acquainted with grief
Stands in line waiting for relief
He will tell ya it wasn't always this way
One bad little thing happened one bad little day
Heartbreak has bad teeth and a sour smell and lives when he can in a cheap hotel
And he's afraid that he's just a bum
Someday when all his stuff is gone and he's left without a dime
Time ain't money when all ya got is time
And you can see him standin on the corner with a nine-day beard and bright red eyes
Goin, hey hey hey hey hey hey hey
Hey hey hey hey, come on and listen to my story man hey, hey hey hey hey, ah hey
HEAD OF INFAMOUS “INFORMATION DISORDER” COMMISSION PROMOTED AT NPR
by Matt Taibbi
Amid a busy news day Monday, a familiar figure was named Chief Operating Officer of National Public Radio. Ryan Merkley, who directed the Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder and also appeared in the Twitter Files as Wikimedia’s liaison to “Industry Meetings” with federal law enforcement, was elevated to the job by NPR president/Titania McGrath clone Katherine Maher. “Throughout his career Ryan has demonstrated a commitment to the public trust, leading organizations that prioritize universal access to the common good,” Maher said Maher, perhaps best-known for describing the First Amendment as the “number one challenge” that makes it “tricky” to remove content.
Merkley’s name figured in several high-profile efforts to control “disinformation” through aggressive content moderation. In 2021, the Aspen Institute created a Commission on Information Disorder, whose big-name participants included Katie Couric, “Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex,” and DHS official Chris Krebs. Merkley was the Commission’s Director.
The group’s never-published draft report, found in the Twitter Files and appended below, contained a series of hair-raising proposals, including: creation of content “holding areas,” into which “influencers with repeat bad behavior” would be placed for “manual moderation and scrutiny”; use of “demonetization” to “remove access to product features for violative behavior”; establishment of an organization dedicated to “misinformation countermeasures” to be funded “by general taxes, voluntary investment from tech companies, taxes on social media ads, the allocation of FTC fines, or other appropriate means.”
The aim was to emphasize increased “accountability” for platforms that didn’t crack down on misinformation from “uninformed and disconnected centers of power.” It recommended use of public and private authority to correct current and historical misinformation, like “misrepresentation of Indigenous genocide” and “gender injustice of all kinds.” Its ideas were far-out enough that former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov resigned from the Commission, saying some of the recommendations recalled an approach that was “common practice in the USSR.”
Kasparov’s resignation letter was addressed to Merkley: Merkley in the fall of 2020 was Chief of Staff at Wikimedia, under then-CEO Maher. It was Merkley’s name, not Maher’s, that appeared in Twitter Files emails about the setup of a regular “Industry Meeting” on election content that involved the FBI and DHS as well as Facebook, Google, Twitter, Microsoft, Wikimedia and other firms. Emails showed Merkley asking Twitter’s Yoel Roth for an FBI contact number, and volunteering for a Signal group for industry reps and feds.
There are also exchanges showing Merkley in a group of industry reps who became signatories to a joint statement on misinformation. When Facebook was later investigated by Jim Jordan’s Weaponization of Government Committee, emails were produced showing Wikimedia was one of a handful of companies warned in advance by federal authorities about a “hack-and-leak” story due to come out that would “undermine the election conversation.”
Notable also: Aspen Digital, where Merkley was the Senior Technology Fellow, held a “hack and leak roundtable” to prepare for the Burisma story as far back as June of 2020, months before the story came out in theNew York Post. Merkley was not listed among the exercise participants, however.
Merkley has yet to respond to a request for comment. Digital censorship years ago expanded beyond removing content, as key actors saw opportunities to promote political objectives like correcting historical injustices or advancing diversity goals by expanding the definition of “misinformation.” NPR has long been an outlet in alignment with Aspen ideas, which became clear when former business editor Uri Berliner last April penned a whistleblowing essay in The Free Press. Beliner pointed among other things to NPR’s statement about the Hunter Biden laptop story: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.” It may be that these moves become moot shortly, but they’re worth pointing out nonetheless.
LEAD STORIES, WEDNESDAY'S NYT
What We Know About the Proposed Gaza Cease-Fire Agreement
Biden to Deliver Farewell Address, Capping a 5-Decade Political Career
Four Takeaways From Hegseth’s Confirmation Hearing
S.E.C. Sues Elon Musk Over Twitter-Related Securities Violations
South Korea’s President Is Detained for Questioning
Meet the Latino Boys Decked Out for Their Version of the Quinceañera
FINALLY SEEING MOVEMENT TOWARD A GAZA CEASEFIRE As Biden Moves Out Of The Way
There are still a lot of things that could go wrong at numerous steps along the way, but it’s something, which is more than we’ve seen for the last 15 months.
by Caitlin Johnstone
It looks like we’re closer to a Gaza ceasefire deal than ever before. There are still a lot of things that could go wrong at numerous steps along the way, but it’s something, which is more than we’ve seen for the last 15 months.
As Antiwar’s Dave Decamp has noted, both AP and CBS News are reporting that Hamas and Israel have agreed “in principle” to the terms of a ceasefire, set to be rolled out in multiple tentative phases the details of which have yet to be fully nailed down. According to AP, the current deal would allow Israel the option of resuming its onslaught after a 42-day pause rather than moving on to the second phase of peace deals.
So it’s very, very far from perfect. But it’s something.
Though Biden and the Democrats are of course trying to take credit for these developments, according to Israeli media this sudden rush of movement after 15 months of stasis has been the result of pressures and negotiations from the incoming Trump administration.
According to the Israeli outlet Haaretz, president-elect Trump’s middle east envoy Steven Witkoff called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Friday to tell him he was coming to Israel to discuss ceasefire negotiations. Netanyahu’s people tried to tell Witkoff that it was the middle of the Sabbath so any meeting would need to be postponed, but Witkoff replied that the Sabbath was of no interest to him and demanded the meeting anyway. Haaretz reports that Netanyahu’s aides were taken aback by the bluntness of Witkoff’s response.
According to a report from the Israeli outlet YNet, Trump was able to persuade Netanyahu to agree to the deal by assuring him that he could back out of it at any time, along with pledging to remove sanctions on extremist Israeli settlers and the Israeli spyware firm Pegasus. So it’s not as though Trump has taken a strong position against Israel; he’s just doing something instead of nothing.
The deal that’s in the works is reportedly almost the same as the one Hamas agreed to all the way back in May of last year, which Netanyahu sabotaged with the complicity of the Biden regime. Biden could have ended this nightmare back in May, or indeed at any time since it began in October 2023.
Ever since the genocide in Gaza began it’s been an open question whether the Biden administration’s facilitation of the slaughter has just been standard US empire depravity, or an evil that would only have occurred under Biden. The fact that we’re now closer to a ceasefire than ever before, reportedly due to pressures exerted by Trump, suggests that the latter could be the case. It suggests that these 15 months of human butchery could only have occurred under a dementia-addled lifelong Zionist surrounded by Zionist puppeteers.
Trita Parsi wrote months ago that Biden’s completely unconditional facilitation of every Israeli demand is historically the exception rather than the norm under US presidencies. If Trump does in fact wind up presiding over a de-escalation in the genocidal atrocities in Gaza, this will have been officially confirmed. It will be a proven fact that a Biden presidency was the worst thing that could possibly have happened for the Palestinian people. That for 15 months a psychopathic apartheid state was essentially left unsupervised to do what it has always wanted to do to the Palestinians in ways it never could have under any other circumstances, resulting in unfathomable horrors we’ll still be learning details of for years to come.
I am still not sold on the idea that Trump will bring even a relative amount of peace to Gaza. I will need to see this reflected by the facts on the ground throughout his term. But if those facts prove what it seems they might prove, it means that Biden was an even bigger monster than anyone realized, and that anyone who supported his election was indisputably wrong to do so.
Just something to be aware of.
(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)
SUMMER WAGES
by Ian Tyson
Never hit seventeen when you play against the dealer
For you know that the odds won't ride with you.
Never leave your woman alone, when your friends are out to steal her
Years are gambled and lost, like summer wages.
And we'll rolling on till we get to Vancouver
And the woman I love whose waiting there
It's been six long months and more since I've seen her
May be gambled and lost like summer wages.
In all the beer parlors all down along Main Street
All the dreams of the season are all spilled down on the floor
All the big stands of timber just waiting for falling
And the hustlers sitting watchfully as they wait there by the door
So I'll work on the tow boats, with my slippery city shoes
Which I swore I would never do again
Through the gray fog-bound straits where the ceders stand watching
I'll be far off and gone like summer wages
She's a woman so fine, I may never try to find her
For the good memories of what we had before
They should never be changed, for they're all that I'll take with me
Now I've gambled and lost my summer wages
Woke up early in Washington, D. C. , since today is the pest control and deep cleaning at the Adam’s Place Shelter where I’ve been housed free of charge since September. The District of Columbia is poised to properly celebrate the insanity of Donald Trump’s re-inauguration. Signs are wheat pasted announcing unspecified street protests beginning at 11 a.m. on Monday January 20th. “Fuck Trump!” is written in black paint all over the area by one determined individual, who is most visible. The Washington, D.C. Peace Vigil invites all to join in at the usual protest spot at 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, below the statue of General Sherman, which is next to the treasury building, which is next to the White House. Otherwise, I am ready to leave Washington, D.C. because I have accomplished what I came here to do. I am accepting housing in California. What can I get and how soon can I get it? You can also send me money at Paypal.me/craiglouisstehr. Thank you very much for appreciating me. Craig Louis Stehr (craiglouisstehr@gmail.com)
One thought on housing, Craig– it remains very scarce, very expensive out here. Might want to try for affordable, available housing somewhere else in the country, midwest and south. Lots of Catholic churches in small towns all around those areas, maybe they would help a longtime Catholic Charities worker find a permanent place in a good community… Good fortune to you, Craig.
Am “following spirit” as usual. The rest is details.
P.S. It isn’t necessary that any particular religion be attached to future situations; such will present itself when appropriate, (as was the case here in order to get the D.C. Peace Vigil on the official prayer list at the Basilica). ;-))
Craig, it was, perhaps, just that “spirit” that moved me to suggest something realistic-pragmatic for you, as you seem stuck at times. If I seem pushy at times, it’s my old social worker perspective trained to suggest that folks need to take positive actions in the real world to realize desires and dreams. The ones who did not do so did not fare as well as those who did….
I confess to missing James Marmon here too, even/because we tended to tangle. When he became “MAGA Marmon” and his comments became more delusionally nonfactual I worried about isolation and maybe even dementia. But he remained mostly civil and I respected him for using his real name (unlike some others here, cowards who just spew anonymous bile) and for what I knew of his professional career, or most of it, and his seeming commitment to make some things better for the vulnerable. I hope he was at least aware of the recent election results and that those made him a bit happier at his end (the one possibly positive impact there).
So respect to Marmon, and rest in peace.
Genocide is inherent to Zionism.
Zionism and mendacity go hand in hand – always.
Zionism is rooted in antisemitism.
You can’t argue these facts. You can only call people names.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong, Wrong. At least you are consistent.
Kind of proving my point. Something isn’t wrong just because you say it is.
For the sake of brevity I will paste two links in case any reader is interested in exploring further –
Norman Finkelstein and Benny Morris debate the genocidal essence of Zionism – https://lexfridman.com/israel-palestine-debate-transcript
Herzl’s Mauschel and Zionist antisemitism – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herzl%27s_Mauschel_and_Zionist_antisemitism
And nothing is right just because you and a couple of talking heads so.
Correct. I think he (must be a he) might be “challenged” too. What does Gaza have to do with the late Marmon? I don’t recall him even mentioning it here. Nor have I. And trolls like Call It have zero impact on anything, other than annoying others. If this were a bar he, a drunk shouting incoherent insults in the corner and whining “free speech” when told to clam up, would have been 86’d long ago.
“WHY WE LEFT BOONVILLE”
It was one of those incredible warm summer days in the Berkeley hills. My friends Rick and Julie were coming for dinner and bringing their friends who had been living in the South of France. I had bought a whole salmon, probably at the Philo market, and was barbequing it on the back lawn under an enormous shade tree.
It was such a beautiful evening that we hauled the dinning room table through the French doors, across the deck and out onto the lawn. I had taken a weekend class at the University of Ca. at Berkeley on barbequing taught by the makers of my Weber. There was a butcher, a chief and Weber sales brass at this unusual campus seminar.
The couple from France were quite knowledgeable about food and wine. We talked all evening about movies and we all later remembered it as a special evening and meal. Later I learned that the couple my friends had brought were Charlene and Vernon Rollins of post Boonville Hotel fame, where I dinned every Friday night when I was able to escape movie work and hide out at my country place, but I had never met them.
New York Times Today:
OPEN SOCRATES: The Case for a Philosophical Life, by Agnes Callard
Maybe this is the year that you have resolved to drink less and exercise more. Or maybe you want to be kinder, gentler and more caring to the people around you.
In “Open Socrates,” Agnes Callard suggests that self-improvement, at least as we usually understand the term, isn’t so much a matter of willpower, but of ideas. It’s not that we are weak-willed creatures, who know what “the good” is and then fail to pursue it; it’s that we haven’t given enough thought to what “the good” is in the first place. “The hard work of struggling to be a good, virtuous, ethical person” is, “first and foremost, intellectual work,” she writes…
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/15/books/review/open-socrates-agnes-callard.html
The Secret of Life Is Not to Be Frightened
The writer and painter Frederic Tuten, 88, insists, “I’m beginning again.”
The Unstoppables is a series about people whose ambition is undimmed by time. Below, Frederic Tuten explains, in his own words, what continues to motivate him.
I never had an ambition to be a painter, to be a writer. I had a yearning. It was a yearning for life, and I equated life with the life of an artist, a life of freedom, generosity, a life with other people who had the same interests in making beautiful things together. I thought that was everything in the world.
Part of my yearning was to leave the Bronx, where I lived, to come out of that dreary little world where everything shut down by nine o’clock and where there were no bookstores…
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/12/style/frederic-tuten-life.html
Paul Modic/Agnes Callard
THE GOOD THAT IS:
ALL SENTIENT BEINGS ARE GOOD.
*Tap into how you feel when feeling gratitude, this opens up supply of goodwill you can use to express towards others. It takes practice.
*Craig Stehr suggested I not to be so preachy.
Response to online comment…
“California regulators would not allow insurance companies to charge their insureds for the cost of the reinsurance. That is one of many roadblocks for insurance companies to charge a premium commensurate with the risk they take on. The insurance companies are not to blame.”
This is incorrect. As of January 1st 2025 insurance companies are now able to charge for the cost of their reinsurance. The insurance companies are to blame as are the Public Utilities Commission which is corrupt. These insurance companies have taken their clients money for decades and bought up real estate like shopping centers and apartment complexes from which they gain enormous income, aside from their actual business of providing insurance. ” Following a 2.6% YOY increase, the U.S. insurance industry’s exposure to bonds surpassed $5 trillion at year-end 2022 for the first time.”
That $5 trillion is just their bonds, they own 12% of the real estate in the U.S. “Yield-hungry insurance firms are adopting an unconventional strategy: they’re skipping mortgage-backed bonds and buying the underlying whole loans outright. It’s a trend that’s picked up pace over the last few years.”
“About 85% of U.S. insurers’ bank loan investments were held by life companies, an increase from 82% at year-end 2022 and 76% at year-end 2021.” I could go on.
L.A. fires
“Hurricane-force winds fueled the fires, and meant that in the first days planes and helicopters couldn’t fly and drop water, experts say.”
The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (LADWP) said water pressure was lost “due to unprecedented and extreme water demand to fight the wildfire without aerial support,” according to a statement on its website.
MORE UPDATES
The number of hydrants that needed to be opened in Los Angeles to fight the fires that were rapidly spreading for dozens of blocks caused the water pressure to drop. That drop first affected locations at the highest elevations, meaning the homes in the hills.
Debunking 5 claims about the California wildfires –
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/debunking-5-claims-california-wildfires/story?id=117549503
3 million gallons was available. Santa ynez res holds 117 million gallons but was emptied for repairs on the plastic liner. Billions of gallons were available to refill but at a slow pace, which left fire fighters without water. Most water districts only empty the res when the contractor is ready to repair the liner.
If you keep making excuses you won’t learn from your mistakes. Domestic and hydrant water were on the same line. As houses burned the water lines burst and the pressure dropped. Separate the domestic water from the hydrant plumbing.
“In the hills above Pacific Palisades, there is crime scene tape and scattered debris, clues to what may have caused the initial fire that eventually raged through thousands of structures.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/13/us/palisades-fire-cause-ignition-point-site.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
Tictok proved that day 1
Caitlin Johnstone has allowed herself some hope. And those of us who care about actual human beings – the Palestinians – would all like a dose. She even treads close to crediting Trump, when he actually prolonged the genocide.
First, it must be realized that even at this hour, the “Israelis” have not approved the deal – it does not go into effect until Sunday. Despite the endless characterization of Hamas as the obstacle to peace, it has always been the “Israelis” that have blocked peace. Hamas offered the return of ALL of the hostages in early October 2023 – Israel refused the deal: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-armed-wing-says-israel-stalled-possible-deal-over-hostages-2023-10-28/
Second, when a deal does arrive, it is a victory for Hamas and for the Palestinian people, for whom existence is victory. There will be attempts to credit Trump (who prolonged the genocide), to credit Biden (who armed and funded the genocide), even to credit Netanyahu (who directed the genocide), but the credit belongs to the fierce and heroic resistance of the Palestinian people under the leadership of Hamas, who have fought and fought and fought, even as the most of rest of the world has betrayed them.
Third, there is history, and it informs us.
Despite the rantings of some in the Boomer generation who insist, “we stopped that war!” it was the fierce and heroic resistance of the Vietnamese people who won the war.
In his 1968 campaign for the presidency, Nixon proclaimed he had a “secret plan” to end the war. As usual, he was lying. His “plan” was to escalate the war, including using nuclear weapons. His team then proceeded to disrupt the peace talks, ensuring no peace deal would be reached during the campaign.
In the 1980 campaign, team Reagan likely did the same thing. Carter was on the verge of a deal that would have seen a release of the American spies held by Iran, but GHW Bush reportedly met with Iranian diplomats in a hotel in the Salamanca neighborhood of Madrid and made a deal – delay the return of the spies and the US would send arms as soon as Reagan was in power.
The spies were released literally the moment Reagan became president. The first shipment of arms to the new Iranian theocracy began in March 1981, just a few weeks later. Reagan cultists credited Reagan’s “toughness” for the return of the spies, when in reality it was treason.
Trump, whether he is aware of it or not, is working off of the same playbook. He had direct communications with Netanyahu, and peace talks were constantly sabotaged by Tel Aviv as the genocide continued for month after month. Once he won the election, he directly inserted his negotiator, Steve Witkoff, into the negotiations (with the blessing of the Biden administration). At some point, Netanyahu balked, and that is when Trump posted a Jeffrey Sachs video on Truth Social in which Sachs calls Netanyahu a “deep, dark bastard” who is responsible for most recent US wars.
So, once again, the president will be credited with “toughness” that “freed the hostages” … when in reality this is a victory for Palestinians and Trump engaged in war crime by delaying the inevitable end to the current conflict.
Finally, it’s not possible to trust a deal with Zionism, which is built on terrorism, antisemitism, and mendacity. “Israeli” media is already reporting that… “President Trump…has already promised Netanyahu and Minister Ron Dermer that if they agree to a ceasefire and the withdrawal of IDF forces from the Gaza Strip, he will support Israel retroactively if it decides to return to fighting and violate the ceasefire.”
Dude! Can you make it a little shorter?
Noted for future. Of course, you could just take me off of moderation status to make it easier. I promise not to use bad words.
Perhaps should have submitted it as an article for publication (haha).
Bruce – Can’t you just shut him down? Let him back under his real name if he wishes, and see if his comments change. Would be an experiment of sorts in anon vs. real input. As it is, his Gaza diatribes are inane and his nastiness just lowers the whole section here. Thanks.
The king of censorship wants his buddy Bruce to shut him down. And the Libtards that run this paper censored my first comment.
Last chance. Continue the childish insults and yer outta here.
You say “it was the fierce and heroic resistance of the Vietnamese people who won the war.” Please elaborate. The North Vietnamese or the South Vietnamese? What actions directly contributed to the end of the war, and who won? Your statement begs for substantiation. And about Nixon’s fake plan to end the war, and his real plan to escalate and use nuclear weapons, please provide your sources. And the statement that his “team” disrupted the peace talks: who comprised this team, and what did they do to disrupt the talks? I came of age watching the Vietnam war on the nightly news, along with years of anti-war demonstrations and protests. These things eventually changed public opinion about that war, and most politicians saw that, including Nixon. So from this Boomer to what ever the F you are, we did stop that war.
If the editor will indulge me, that’s a lot of questions to answer, and the answers aren’t short. I wasn’t trying to create a big hubbub today. I thought most of these things were in the mainstream by now. I’m really kind of shocked that you would ask these questions if you lived through the events as an adult.
So if I’m allowed to answer…here goes.
The North Vietnamese or the South Vietnamese? What actions directly contributed to the end of the war, and who won?
The Vietnamese resistance, primarily the Viet Cong and the People’s Army – among others – killed 58,000 Americans, and that is how they won the war. All of us know people who were affected by this. They would not have won if they had killed zero Americans, or 10 Americans, or 500 Americans. The hundreds of fragging instances also helped, but those were indirectly caused by the resistance as well – you don’t grenade your own officers if things are going well!
about Nixon’s fake plan to end the war, and his real plan to escalate and use nuclear weapons, please provide your sources.
“Nixon intentionally planned to signal to Moscow and Hanoi that he was a ‘madman’ capable of any irrational deed, up to and including using nuclear weapons, to end the stalemate at the negotiating table and bring about an end to the war….’We’ll just slip the word to them that ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button’—and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.’ — United States Office of the Historian – https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v34/d59
“From Oct. 10, 1969, through the rest of the month the US military was ordered to full global war readiness alert, without any provocation, and with no explanation to US commanders as to the alert’s purpose. Nuclear armed fighter planes were dispersed to civilian airports, missile countdown procedures were initiated, missile-bearing submarines were dispersed, long-range bombers were launched, targeting was begun. On Oct. 27, in the climactic action designed to make it seem the madman was loose, the Strategic Air Command was ordered to dispatch B-52 bombers, loaded with thermonuclear weapons, toward the Soviet Union. Eighteen of the bombers took off from bases in the United States in an operation named Giant Lance. ”The bombers crossed Alaska,” Sagan and Suri wrote, ”were refueled in midair by KC-135 tanker aircraft, and then flew in oval patterns toward the Soviet Union and back, on 18-hour vigils over the northern polar ice cap.” The ominous flight of these H-bombers to, and then at, the edge of Soviet territory continued for three days. This was all done in total secrecy — not from the Soviets, of course, since they knew quite well what was happening, but from the American people.” — Boston Globe (archived) – https://web.archive.org/web/20050617013319/http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/06/14/nixons_madman_strategy/
Christian Science Monitor: Nixon’s ‘Secret Plan’ That Never Was
https://www.csmonitor.com/1997/1209/120997.opin.column.1.html
his “team” disrupted the peace talks: who comprised this team, and what did they do to disrupt the talks?
New York Times: Nixon Tried to Spoil Johnson’s Vietnam Peace Talks in ’68, Notes Show
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/us/politics/nixon-tried-to-spoil-johnsons-vietnam-peace-talks-in-68-notes-show.html
Smithsonian: Notes Indicate Nixon Interfered With 1968 Peace Talks
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/notes-indicate-nixon-interfered-1968-peace-talks-180961627/
Oxford Press: Lost in Translation: Vietnam, the Paris Talks, and the Chennault Affair
https://academic.oup.com/dh/article/48/5/633/7758644
These things eventually changed public opinion about that war, and most politicians saw that, including Nixon. So from this Boomer to what ever the F you are, we did stop that war.
I’m certainly not saying the anti-war movement was a stain. It was one of the best things America ever produced along with Civil Rights. But if had basically zero affect on Johnson. It did move Nixon, but not in a good direction – he intensified the bombing campaigns and expanded the aerial bombing to additional countries rather than have more soldiers come home in body bags. Kent State was 1970 and by 1971 the last large protests were happening. The draft ended in 1972. The Vietnam War continued until 1975.
It is complete hubris to say that anti-war Americans ended the war. The fierce and heroic resistance of the Vietnamese people ended the war, facing down the most powerful military on Earth – nuclear weapons and all. Just like Hamas and the Palestinian resistance faced down “Israel” with all of its might.
The anti-war movement continued on with little to no success. There’s some evidence that an outright invasion of Nicaragua was avoided because of the threat of protests (“The Pledge of Resistance” movement). The second death of the movement occurred when the Todd Gitlin types supported the attack on Serbia in the 90s, and the final blow occurred in 2009 when Obama became president and most formerly anti-war folks became rabid warmongers. By the time Obama attacked Libya based on 100% lies – https://www.salon.com/2016/09/16/u-k-parliament-report-details-how-natos-2011-war-in-libya-was-based-on-lies/ – hardly anyone uttered a peep.
I hope that covers everything. Let’s hope our editor does not have to deal with more.
There was an evolution in the opinions of most Americans during Vietnam, from being in support of our involvement to eventually becoming against our involvement. This evolution in thinking was aided considerably by the many anti-war demonstrations, which were widely condemned early on. But they caused people to look closer at our involvement, eventually changing their attitudes towards the war. Political pressure from these changing opinions mounted to the point that supporting the war was a losing proposition for any presidential candidate. Accordingly, most politicians acquiesced to this new attitude. It is not hubris to recognize and acknowledge this phenomenon. It is, however, hubris to deny these things occurred because they do not fit with your misinformed and ill-conceived accounting of that period. With regard to the victory you claim was won by the NVA and VC, It would no doubt have ended differently if American troops had been able to invade North Vietnam, rather than serve as border guards. I have a few more questions: Did you use AI in any of your posts on this subject, and do you post on the AVA using another name?
Dear Mr. or Ms. “Do Not Comment” and Mr. Thurston: First I appreciate the explanations and citations provided, as well as the assertions challenging them — but my recollection of the times and events reflects both of your perspectives, aided by my time as an “underground” newspaper factotum (The L.A. Free Press, 1964-1967) and ten years of street level activism, while supporting the protesting GIs (almost destroying my adult relationship with my career Army father, oh well) and in 1969 trying to persuade my youngest brother from enlisting (he was fatalistic about his draft status, which turned out to be very low on the list, as he learned from his Long Beach Naval Hospital ward, to which he had been evacuated, with over a year’s endurance of restorative surgeries and eventual honorable discharge with 10% disability it took almost 40 years to correct to 100%).
The Bay Area being the magnet for dissenters of all kinds, the incarceration of a handful of soldiers at the Presidio and their acquittal at a widely observed trial became a kind of “tipping point” for the “movement”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidio_mutiny
It was GIs “acting out” in public demonstrations in the South and West that engaged the unwitting “public” and led the civic upheaval that ended in front of the White House with the rejection of military awards, along with “alternative” media publishing the hideous facts about Nixon and Kissinger in Paris.
Numerous official websites published by branches of the US Military are enlightening (https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/wb10-legacy-of-vietnam/), and no respectable historian of that undeclared “war” should ignore the profound impact of Robert McNamara, JFK’s Secretary of Defense (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McNamara).
The American Shit Show — generations of Presidential puppets and the bamboozled public (who cannot seem to distinguish a meme from a reliable fact) are newly shocked by American belligerence and the blatant colonialism we cannot — as tax payers and voters — redirect through licit electoral processes, as we have discovered (again and again) now with revelations of Biden’s dysfunctionality and the internal ghosting of responsibilities for his haphazard performances.
“We’ll give all these inner-city blacks and backwards country fucks something to do for their country: die in Vietnam Nam.”
—Robert McNamara
The theses behind McManara’s Legion, of which I was one of those backward country fucks and my platoon in 1969 was mostly black men — the Marines had started to draft for the first time in history, after Tet Offensive and the Siege of Khe Shan —with a few Hispanic men having joined to win citizenship, but mostly black men and me and a Cajun kid from the bayou who was issued his first pair of shoes in boot camp.
However, you put a bunch of disadvantaged guys together and they start to compare notes and thereby educate themselves and when they got out wrote books showing what they had learned — books like Sand in the Wind, The Thirteenth Valley, Full Metal Jacket,et al. And this is the real reason the defense dept did away with the draft and created this new warrior class (as explained by Robt. Fisk). Diversity of opinion in the military being a liability to lethal efficiency.
The books written by Vietnam vets were bad for recruitment and as we’ve seen from more recent wars the few books written by primary sources from Iraq and Afghanistan are more like the old WWII movies, in that they glorify the heroic slaughter, rather than deplore it.
Ms. Cawn: Your political and familial experiences in the area are substantial, so I would treat any contributions from you with respect. Likewise to Mr. McEwen for his experiences (thank-you for your service).
Ms. Cawn, thank you for your service.
GI resistance was, of course, important to the effort to end the war. In particular, those that chose to frag their officers.
By the time of the second Iraq War, military resistance slowed to a trickle. Less than 20 escaped to Canada, some of whom remain there to this day. About 60 went AWOL. Only two refused to serve on the basis that the war was illegal and that deploying would have been a violation of the UCMJ (following an illegal order), Wilfredo Torres and
Ehren Watada. Both were discharged without punishment. Watada was court martialed, but the judge dismissed his case because he refused to make a determination on the legality of the war.
I searched to see if any US service members have refused to support the genocide in Gaza. I’ve found accounts of three – https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/01/military-officers-conscientious-objector-status-gaza
No one is disputing that the war became unpopular with the American public. WHY did it become unpopular with the American public? Because Americans were dying and the reasons for their deaths didn’t seem reasonable (as compared to, say, World War II).
Why did they die? Because the Vietnamese resistance killed them, despite being up against the strongest military in the world.Once Americans stopped dying in large numbers, and once the protests became lethal (e.g. Jackson State and Kent State), the protests waned, but the war escalated and expanded to other countries.
“You” didn’t stop the war, the Vietnamese resistance did. The anti-war movement certainly helped, but to say “we stopped that war” without acknowledging the fierce heroism of the Vietnamese people is indeed hubris.
“It would no doubt have ended differently if American troops had been able to invade North Vietnam”
A lot more Americans would have died, and to what end? For victory? So that you could starve the Vietnamese with more famines, more massacres, and more gang rapes? The communists put an end to all of that. Hell, you “coulda/woulda/shoulda” nuked Hanoi for that matter. However, history has already happened. The Vietnamese resistance kicked your asses, just like Hamas is kicking the IDF out of Gaza as we speak.
Did you use AI in any of your posts on this subject
No AI. I doubt AI would use a term like “the Vietnamese resistance.” I did use google to find the right sources and links to verify and support my assertions.
do you post on the AVA using another name?
Only under my previous pseudonym, ZtoA. As I’ve stated before, I’m nobody worthy of note when it comes to the Valley, simply someone who has lived here full and part time since 2009. My extended family moved to deep end full time in 2014. Not sure what my bio has to do with the discussion, but there you have it.
Now my question for you… Cowboys fan? (That’s an attempt at humor, no answer needed.)
Your humor (like your logic) is lost on me.
The Orange Monster just posted the following on Truth Social .: We have a deal for the hostages in the Middle East. They will be released shortly. It’s another one of those despicable M A G A things and he’s not even in charge of the country yet, Biden is!
I hate to break it to you but…Joe Biden is not “in charge” of anything.
Ask around,
Laz
It happened on Biden’s watch which means – whether or not he was “in charge” – he did the work and he gets the credit.
If you actually believe that, I believe you feel the deal will work out. Because the alternative would destroy what little of the man, is left.
Risky business… ain’t it?
Laz
I’d like to think it will, but the fractious nature of Hamas and the current Israeli government suggests otherwise. Crossed fingers that both sides have had enough of this war and realize more will actually be less.
Comon Laz, use the sarcasm lense and you’ll understand my humor. Brokering peace is not despicable and the Trump effect made it happen, despite sharp as a tack Biden being in charge! Does anyone actually believe that Biden is in charge of anything
Let’s be real. This is a pause in the fighting, not peace. I suppose the Middle East will evolve past their constant state of war, but not in any of our lifetimes.
Yes, that’s the terribly sad reality of all the terrible killing on both sides. Boundless, endless hatred that will live on and on, passed by all to coming generations. Revenges pledged and acted on. The chances for lasting peace after all this are so low. The Israeli’s bought themselves some time with their horrors in Gaza, but at a huge price. Shame on Biden for helping them.
The photograph of the wounded Marines is one of those that says a thousand words.
They look like they might make it home, but 58,000 didn’t.
May JFK, LBJ, RMN and HK, among others, roast in Hell.
There it is. You are right, Jim.
“There it is.”
Haven’t heard that phrase since I was a handsome young marine getting off the plane in Okinawa. The squad bay had a couple of posters, one of an airplane banking to spill a stream of fire into a village with mini guns at full power: General Electric “We bring good things to life”; the other a naked girl burnt with napalm and running from her burning village, the caption read “DuPont, Better things for better living…!
Newbies like me (we were called “Cherries” due to our virginity in the ways of war) would stare at these abominable jokes with wonder and the salty old marines would say that simple phrase: “There it is.”
One old salt confided to me and some of my fellow cherries, “You boys would probably like to screw these cute gooks, but old Uncle Ho (Ho Chi Minn), he’s about to send his schoolgirls up against us so the thinking must be we might hesitate to shoot ‘em…”
There were more varieties of opinion in “the old corps”— and every war has its improvements on the old cadre — so Bruce Anderson’s experience was “old corps” to me. We were not punched around like he was by the DIs. Big guys who stood up to the DIs were set up and taken away after one or two incidents and were never seen again. And too my day no longer applies, except to note that the Marines learned not to recruit conscripts, let the Army deal with the Dirty Dozen..(Sec.Hagseth mentioned the difficulties in getting criminals and murderers to serve in his confirmation hearings, and I attest to it as I knew all the recruiters in Ukiah and always saluted ‘em and thanked ‘em for their service on their many errands to the clerks office to keep the nastiest candidates out of the ranks.)
Guys bold enough to swing on DI’s were place in the Special Instruction Platoon or the Bad Ass Platoon. The DI’s in charge of the bad asses were ultra bad asses. They scared me just looking at them.
Bruce, the phrase came to me as the just right response to Jim’s brief comments. I read a military-flavored fiction book a while back–I think it was the Vietnam-based book by former soldier Karl Marlantes, where this phrase was used as the definitive statement of a (usually bad) reality. It’s a good book, read it twice now.
MOVIE
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DEykWCQp3MH/?igsh=MWhmdm4yOXRlNTJuYw==
DESIGN FOR DISASTER
Hollywoodpicnics
In 1961 Bel Air faced a massive wildfire that wiped out the community destroying 484 homes, burning 6,090 acres, and causing injuries. Started by 54 mile an hour winds the fire started on the north slope of the Santa Monica Mountains and raced across Mulholland into Stone Canyon.
These fires have occurred before.
Contextualizing history and understanding our terrain is essential to our cohabitation. Presenting our current events as “unprecedented” signals to residents that we are living in unusual times when in reality, these are repeated events that must be examined through the lens of climate change.
With no significant rainfall since May 2024, these fire events were unfortunately destined.
Elderly and disabled the main victims of this tragedy.
Saturday. We’re being told to buckle up. (The all too familiar and overused phrase on ufotwitter) Alleged participant(s) in Air Force crash retrieval operations that include recovering alleged extraterrestrial craft is not only coming out. Reportedly, film of one such recovery, of a white egg-shaped object (size of a SUV) will be shown on News Nation on Saturday. The witness(es) re this have testified before key staff and members of Senate Select Cmt on Intelligence committee and staff at the DOD AARO and reportedly have been well vetted. Jake Barber is the whistleblower-witness already shown on a News Nation preview clip being interviewed by Ross Coulhart. Two other persons who were with this helicopter pilot (Jake Barber) are also coming forward. 5pm Saturday, Pacific time, News Nation
This will be looked at carefully. As there already have been unvetted tall tale tellers giving us BS on x and reddit.
“Reportedly, film of one such recovery, of a white egg-shaped object (size of a SUV) will be shown”
Key word: “reportedly.”
Film will be shown for sure.
A little bit of it was shown last night by Donald Trump Jr on his podcast while interviewing Ross Coulhart, an Aussie journalist working for News Nation
Film is no more than what the camera operator and creative editors want it to be. ET would have no interest in this gutted planet, no matter how creative the guvamint gets in its race to completely brainwash us. Gullible ones swallow their propaganda whole.