Off the Record 1/18/2025

JAMES M. MARMON

July 4, 1954 – January 3, 2025

MIKE KALANTARIAN writes: James Marmon was quite a presence here at theava.com. From 2012 through 2024 we published 9,443 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

A FRIEND sends along a copy of a notarized affidavit filed by a man named Erik Anthony Slye, of Gallatin County, Montana: “I Erik Anthony Slye, being first duly sworn upon oath, depose and say that jury service would entail undue hardship on me and that I request to be excused for the following reasons: Apparently you morons didn’t understand me the first time. I cannot take time off from work. I’m not putting my family’s well-being at stake to participate in this crap. I don’t believe in our ‘justice’ system and I don’t want to have a goddam thing to do with it. Jury duty is a complete waste of time. I would rather count the wrinkles on my dog’s balls than sit on a jury. Get it through your thick skulls. Leave me the fuck alone.”

CAR BREAK-IN, FRISCO DIVISION: Plain clothes San Francisco cops staked out a car at Middle Drive and Bowling Green Drive in Golden Gate Park. There were several items of value in the vehicle including a backpack, computer and an iPad, all of it visible. The officers were confident that a smash and grab thief would likely be along soon. Sure enough, he appeared, did his thing and was immediately arrested. A subsequent search of the suspect turned up hard drugs and items from a theft committed nearby earlier in the day. The guy had been arrested FORTY-NINE TIMES, including THIRTY-ONE TIMES for felonies. He was booked for burglary, possession of stolen property, theft and a narcotics violation. The cops figured this guy was committing “several robberies a day. And would soon be out doing his thing.”

FROM THE FINE PRINT in a recent local Anthem/Blue Cross health insurance bill:

“Your payment is due on 12/01/2024 as indicated on the attached invoice, unless otherwise specified in your Group Agreement and/or Evidence of Coverage. Failure to pay the Total Amount Due will result in termination of your coverage. Unless otherwise specified in your Group Agreement and/or Evidence of Coverage, you have a 30 day grace period. The date your grace period begins is the first day after the last day of paid coverage. If we do not receive your premium payment on or before the last day of your grace period, your coverage will be cancelled as explained in your Group Agreement and/or Evidence of Coverage. The cause of cancellation will be for non-payment of premium and your health status or need for health care services will not be considered. Any partial payment of the total amount due will not be sufficient to remove your coverage from the grace period and prevent cancellation. Coverage will continue during the grace period; however, you are still responsible to pay unpaid premiums and any copayments, coinsurance or deductible amounts required under the plan contract. Anthem will not provide benefits for any services received on or after the date your coverage ends. Any claims paid for services received after coverage ends will be retroactively denied and you will be responsible for the billed charges, unless not allowed by law. If we are required to pay for claims received after the date that coverage ends, you will be responsible for any premiums through the last day that services were received. We may pursue collections action against you if you do not pay the premiums to us.”

STEVE TALBOT

I am very pleased to say that my film ‘The Movement and the Madman’ has been broadcast on national television in Vietnam. It aired in two-parts in primetime on December 28 and 29, 2024. Translated into Vietnamese, of course. This comes as we enter the 50th anniversary (2025) of the end of the war in Vietnam (April/May 1975). An appropriate time to review the history and the impact that terrible conflict has had on both countries…and to be grateful for the peaceful and normal diplomatic relations we now have.

During this time of remembrance and reconciliation, I encourage you to view my film and to share it with others. You can find it easily on PBS Passport, Amazon Prime, and Kanopy.

I plan this year to do more speaking engagements with the film, especially on college campuses.

My film debuted on the PBS series American Experience. More later about upcoming repeat broadcasts.

On a personal note, this broadcast of my film in Vietnam feels like it completes a 50-year circle in my life. In January and February, 1974, at the invitation of journalists in Hanoi, I went to North Vietnam with David Davis and Deirdre Elena English as antiwar activists and young filmmakers to document what life was like there. The Paris Peace Agreement had been signed the year before, all the American POWs had been released, and the ferocious bombing of the north had stopped. It was one of the most memorable, sobering and intense experiences of my life. Seared in my memory. Dave Davis did the camera work with a 16mm Eclair lent to us by the famed cinematographer Haskell Wexler. Our filmed report first aired as a series of stories on what was then KQED‘s nightly news show, ‘Newsroom.’ Fifty years later, I used some of that evocative and rare color footage in The Movement and the “Madman”. And now that film has been broadcast nationwide in a reunited Vietnam at peace with the United States.

BAD NEWS FOR MENDO PEDAGOGY. According to a recent study by the University of Buffalo, indiscriminate, undeserved compliments lead to serious reading and thinking problems. The study suggests that overconfidence lowers a student's ability to accurately assess and evaluate his or her reading level. Those who can accurately gauge their strengths and weaknesses are in a better position to identify realistic goals and achieve them. The research was the first large-scale international study of almost 160,000 students’ overconfidence and reading levels. Needless to say, love bombing the young is an instructional way of life in Mendocino County where few high school graduates can read much beyond a 6th grade level and are unable to write so much as an error-free paragraph.

ONE NIGHT, a “virtual riot” broke out two hours after the Buckhorn bar in Covelo had closed but the local mopes were still milling around outside when a 911 caller reported 45 locals were fighting in the center of town.

That night, 25-year-old Michael Pina, who once assaulted former AVA reporter Mark Heimann, was arrested but subsequently won a lawsuit against the Sheriff's Department alleging undue use of force during his arrest. A few years later Pina himself would become one of several eternally pending cold cases out of Covelo after he was found murdered. And there was a murder outside the bar and innumerable fist fights inside. A valiant soul called Allan Barr for years managed somehow to make a living as owner of the Buckhorn. The bar closed but has been re-opened under new owners who have made a go of it.

I USED TO ENJOY tuning in to allanjustallan on YouTube for a look at Covelo At Play. Barr owned the almost eponymous Buckhorn Bar in Covelo, an enterprise whose management probably can't be taught in business school, but Barr somehow made a go of what most of us would assume as capitalism at its most hopeless. The videos of the bar’s interior showed us what Barr was up against. Fat guys bursting through the door, throwing off their shirts and stomping belligerently up to other shirtless fat guys as each commences punching the other.

ONE SHOT of the street from Allan's security camera showed Allan's van being stabbed by some lunatic who plunges a dagger into its hood. And so on. To counterbalance these mini-movies of very bad Buckhorn behavior by Covelo's 30-year-old preschoolers, Barr also posted shots of happy, peaceful crowds dancing the night away without fighting or otherwise behaving in an oafish manner.

THE GUY somehow endured years of sociopathic hijinks in his place of business without throwing up his hands. Although despairing at times, Barr remained boldly in business in a community where a subset of the population feels free to commit mayhem whenever they feel like it.

THE BUCKHORN'S previous owner of many years, the legendary Wayne Cox, was said to keep a baseball bat and a gun behind the bar, resorting to the bat in lieu of a (delayed) police response to bar problems. But Allan Barr, last time I checked, had miraculously kept above water, writing, “It's astonishing how fast my business has turned around. Problems have been at an all time low, income has increased significantly this past month while expenses have dropped just as significantly… June Carter's daughter came into the bar last night, along with some very prominent members of this community, a birthday group… Please don't get a slanted view of this wonderful community due to the fact that many of my postings relate to dealing with a small minority of malcontents who believe it's their right to commit crimes against other people just because they get the opportunity.” Here's to Allan Barr, hero of free enterprise!

WHAT HAPPENED TO MSWMA, car-bomber Mike Sweeney’s old semi-independent Mendocino Solid Waste Management Authority? (Last we heard the County was having trouble finding someone to replace Sweeney in the County Transportation Department.)

In the agenda packet for next Wednesday’s Board of Supervisors Workshop we learned that somewhere along the way in the last few years the County has dumped agency management on the City of Ukiah. We don’t recall the change ever coming up at a Board of Supervisors meeting for consideration: “The City of Ukiah now serves as the Mendocino Solid Waste Management Authority (MSWMA) administrator; illegal dumping can be reported to the City of Ukiah Public Works Department, Attn: Seth Strader (707) 467-5719.” And, “The Haz-Mobile is open every Wednesday 9 AM to 1 PM at 3200 Taylor Drive, Ukiah, and on select Saturdays at various locations around the County. The current schedule can be found at: https://candswaste.com/services/household- hazardous-waste/#mendo-hhw.”

So the City of Ukiah now negotiates with the waste haulers on garbage rates and services? Wouldn’t the City of Ukiah tend to give preferential rates and service to Ukiah as opposed to other Mendolanders in this arrangement? Theoretically, the MSWMA Board has the interests of the entire County in mind. But wouldn’t Ukiah officials tend to prioritize Ukiah to the extent that unincorporated areas and the other cities are disadvantaged in the waste hauler contracts and rates and service requirements? According to the MSWMA website Mendo’s rep on the MSWMA Board is former City Councilperson and current Ukiah area Supervisors Maureen Mulheren. Only two of the other seats are even filled (Jason Goedeke of Fort Bragg and Ukiah Councilman Doug Crane) the Coast rep position is empty and the Willits rep position is empty. So the MSWMA Board is dominated by Ukiah reps too.

(Mark Scaramella)

JON KENNEDY (Potter Valley)

As a former firefighter who’s been on my share of strike teams and EMS calls, back when we could actually fight fires, and more recently, as someone who worked with over 400 families who lost everything from wildfires, I’ve seen firsthand the grief, pain, and resilience it takes to rebuild. That’s why I’m absolutely disgusted by the politically motivated blame game I’m seeing. Ignorant, misinformed statements from the same scum who was somehow elected president again are now parroted by his cult followers.

The first thing these people do? Point fingers at politicians and policymakers, as if they’ve ever lifted a finger to help those who’ve lost everything. Blame is easy when you’ve done nothing. Where’s the compassion? The decency? If you’ve got no experience, no understanding, and no willingness to help, maybe it’s time to sit down, shut up, and let those of us who’ve been in the trenches handle it.

“ONE DAY, it's just gonna be the right wind and fire's gonna start in the right place and it's gonna burn through LA all the way to the ocean and there's not a fuckng thing we can do about it. If the wind hits the wrong way, it's just going to burn through LA.”

— Joe Rogan, July 24, 2024

A COUPLA CITY STORIES

IT WAS HOTTER than hot that Thursday and I, like all of San Francisco, am never ready for extreme heat. It was so hot as I trudged past the open doors of the fancy stores on Union Square's north side I'd pause to refresh myself in the full blast of their air conditioning through their open doors onto the street, surprised that the titans of high fashion would give up that kind of random relief to the non-consuming public until it occurred to me that the AC was one more enticement. “Get out of the heat. Come in here where it’s cool and buy yourself a $5,000 purse.”

I’D THOUGHT about walking all the way out to the Richmond, which I often do to baste myself in the urban ambiance, but if I was already a staggering, dehydrated wreck after a couple of blocks I knew I’d have to continue my trip west on the 2 Clement bus. I'd catch it on Sutter, at 500 Sutter, where a small but memorable act of random kindness soon occurred, one of those random kindnesses you see advertised on the vehicles of people who, from appearances, don't look very kind, and seen most frequently on the Golden Gate Bridge to and from Marin County, a very, very kind place, evidently.

I WAS STANDING at 500 Sutter with a half-dozen other potential heat stroke victims waiting for Muni's mobile hot box to wheeze into view when a black man in a doorman's uniform suddenly appeared. “Please come in,” he said, beckoning us to the cool interior of the building, “it's a lot nicer in here.” It was, too, and we all thanked him and stood around smiling at each other until the bus came.

ANOTHER STORY. On a day when all the news was about an East Bay kidnapper and the terrible account of an 11-year-old boy on his way home from baseball practice randomly stabbed by a street nut on the 14 Mission bus, I climbed cautiously aboard the 1 California, the most sedate bus line in the City to travel from the Pacific to the Bay.

THE PUDGY MAN opposite me was reading. Muni bus seating is often designed in a way that forces passengers to sit opposite each other. I've never been able to read on a bus or any other public place. The human distractions are more interesting than most books.

THE MAN OPPOSITE was reading ‘Love and Friendship’ by Allan Bloom, holding the book up so the title was provocatively in my face. I felt sorry for the reader. Is there a more surefire guide to remaining lovelorn all one's days than a how-to by Allan Bloom?

HE WORE earrings and hiking shorts, and what looked like a tux shirt, but America having become a kind of sartorial crap shoot, I drew no conclusions. “Excuse me, sir. If you allow me to burn that book I will be your friend all the way to the Embarcadero.” He wouldn't understand, so I beat back the foul impulse and tried to mind my own business with Allan Bloom directly in my viewshed.

PERHAPS in retaliation for what he may have sensed as my disapproval of his reading matter, the guy held the big hardbound library book up in front of his face so I couldn't help but stare back at the irritating title for the next mile and a half.

JUST before the offending title became unendurable, L&F got off at Divisadero, but not before he'd stashed the book in a colorful handwoven Third World handbag from which he'd simultaneously produced a little bottle of perfume to daub himself on each cheek and, damn! I was hit right in the face with White Shoulders, the only scent I know, and I was back in high school at the Junior Prom.

I WENT DOWN to the Embarcadero Theater to see a documentary-like movie about the Bader-Meinhof Gang, a small group of left-wing German revolutionaries similar to our Weathermen only more capable, narrowly speaking, both groups lacking, to put it mildly, popular support, although the Germans got themselves a 25% approval rating briefly, at least according to this movie. Unlike the Weathermen, rich kids whose parents and connections later got most of them off while prole bomb throwers like the SLA's Joe Remiro are buried in state prisons for life, Bader-Meinhof was competent enough to build bombs without blowing themselves up. There was a large turnout for the matinee, which surprised me because I didn't think there'd be much interest in the subject matter, but maybe the film's good reviews as a film, as art, were responsible for the crowd, but then again maybe there was a big turnout because things are again polarizing in extreme ways, and maybe some people are again thinking about offing the pig, as the pig was promiscuously defined but seldom offed however defined in the late sixties and early seventies. The movie's pretty good. Except for some cartoon Arabs and gratuitous frontal nudity by women way too attractive to pass for 60s radicals (unless the German rads were a lot better looking than their American counterparts, which I doubt), it sticks to the known facts. What surprised me, though, is at the end of the movie, a very long movie, a kidnapped industrialist is gunned down because he is who he is, and about a third of the audience applauded and cheered, an audience containing almost no one under the age of 50. In the film the murdered man had been trundled around by his abductors for a couple of weeks. His killers had gotten to know him, this uncomprehending capitalist who was depicted as not anywhere near the level of pure evil achieved by, say, Dick Cheney, or any number of sixties people, left and right. This was a guy the German revolutionaries might have spared if they'd had any thought about establishing themselves in the popular mind as the way to a more sensible social organization, if they'd thought of establishing themselves as an example of revolutionary humanity, if they'd thought about anything except their fantasy of scaring capitalism out of existence. Nope. They shot him, and the comfortable audience in a comfortable theater in a rich, comfortable, police-protected city clapped and cheered and went out into the comfortable late afternoon sun chuckling over that last visual of the dead fat man.

IN JULY, STATE FARM, one of the biggest insurers in California, canceled 1600 homeowner policies in Pacific Palisades. A year earlier, the same insurance company had dropped more than 2,000 policies in the nearby neighborhoods of Brentwood, Calabasas, Hidden Hills, and Monte Nido, all of which have now been ravaged by devastating wildfires. But the big insurers who have canceled policies for homeowners and businesses in climate-vulnerable states continue to insure the fossil fuel industries that make people’s homes uninsurable.

— Jeffrey St. Clair

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY is the excellent visual instruction that ought to be required viewing, especially at this time as free enterprise grows ever more exploitive.

Say what you will about Michael Moore, and it's all been said by “the left,” such as it is in this country, the guy can make a movie.

This Moore production is both crucially instructive and entertaining, making the irrefutable case that capitalism, unless it's heavily regulated, is straight-up organized crime, a system of theft with fewer and fewer beneficiaries, its prey the millions of Americans who feed it because they are unrepresented and specifically educated not to question this country's economic arrangements.

I wish ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’ was required viewing in the high schools. It's the best crash course a kid could get as to how this country really works, outlining the vast crimes concentrations of wealth have committed against US, among them the one committed right here in Mendocino County where the elite collections of capital known as timber corporations destroyed the Northcoast's timber industry in a mere decade in the interests of short-term profit-taking, throwing thousands of people out of work and doing lasting harm to Northcoast forests as crooks like Harry Merlo looted this area's natural wealth.

To me, though, the most important part of Moore's movie is an old clip of FDR from one of his 1944 fireside chats; there's Roosevelt, who would be dead in a few months, reading out his Second Bill of Rights which, in today's degraded political context, would simply be unthinkable coming from a president, especially the orange hued clown about to move into the White House for another round of chaos.

Here's what Roosevelt said, and see for yourself how far we've slid:

“We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous [sic] men are not free men. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a Second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all — regardless of station, race or creed. Among these are: The right to a useful and remunerative job.

“The right to a good education. The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies. The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment. The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health. The right of every family to a decent home. The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.”

REQUEST FOR CUBBISON CASE EXPENSE INFO

From: Mike Geniella

Date: Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 12:47 PM

Subject: Cubbison case expenses

To: Sara Pierce pierces@mendocinocounty.gov

Cc: scottc@mendocinocounty.org

Please consider this a formal request under the 2004 California Public Records Act for the following information regarding criminal and civil litigation surrounding suspended county Auditor Chamise Cubbison pending in Mendocino County Superior Court.

1 - All fees/costs from January 2024 to present paid to special prosecutor Traci Carrillo under contract reached with District Attorney David Eyster for the prosecution of Ms. Cubbison and former county Payroll Manager Paula June Kennedy.

2 - All fees/costs paid to date to the San Francisco law firm of Liebert Cassidy Whitmore (Morin I. Jacob), including costs from October 2023 to the present to defend the county of Mendocino and the Board of Supervisors in pending civil litigation filed by Ms. Cubbison.

3 - For defendant Paula June Kennedy, all assigned costs of Public Defender services from October 2023 to present provided by the Mendocino County Public Defender's Office (Mary LeClair and Fred McCurry).

Thank you,

Mike Geniella

Ukiah Daily Journal

Anderson Valley Advertiser

MIKE GENIELLA'S probably futile request to learn how much DA Eyster's pursuit of Ms. Cubbison has cost us captive taxpayers, consider the timeline and try, just try, to do the legal billing math in your head as everybody involved, except the court reporter, is paid at $400 an hour. And up.

It all started in August of 2021 when Eyster went before the Supervisors to lobby against Ms. Cubbison becoming Auditor, not mentioning of course that she had challenged his expenditure of public funds to the Broiler Steak House for end of the year bacchanals under the guise of “trainings.”

Former Auditor Lloyd Weer never dared challenge the monarchical-tending DA as the DA enjoyed tax-paid jaunts here and there, always written off as the public's business which, maybe, it was now and then.

In October of 2023 Eyster filed criminal charges against Cubbison and her subordinate, Kennedy, for, basically, theft of public money, a charge supported by zero evidence, a fact ordinarily confirmed in preliminary hearings of which there have been none in this case.

The matter of Eyster vs. the two innocent women has limped along for more than 15 months without ever reaching the prelim, as lawyers and judges played tag and Eyster named a stand-in for himself, a SoCo lawyer at $400 an hour. She , natch, needed time, you see, “to get up to speed” on the matter, i.e,, come up with a plausible defense of the guy who hired her, Eyster.

Since the truth of this matter was so much libelous bullhsit aimed at Cubbison and Kennedy by Eyster, Eyster's $400-an-hour stand-in must have had lots of catching up to do.

Many, many thousands of dollars have been spent on what is merely a matter of Eyster's pique at having his expense chits challenged by Ms. Cubbison who, in the meantime, a very mean time, was summarily fired from her auditing job by our five ethically-challenged, wholly insensate, supervisors, who sacked Cubbison on the say-so of Eyster! (Only in Mendo)

In January of 2025 this farce of a non-case finally reaches a (scheduled) preliminary hearing, having involved a brace of lawyers and judges at huge public expense. Today, Tuesday the 14th of January is the prelim in Judge Moorman's courtroom. Expect another delay.

IN THE EARLY years of the 20th century, Chinese herb doctors concocted a potion heavy on rattlesnake venom that they claimed cured rheumatism. Enterprising ranchers here in Mendocino County trapped the snakes and shipped them to Frisco where they sold in Chinatown for $5 each. The brewmasters then poured a half gallon of alcohol into a two-gallon jar in which the snake was immersed until he died an unnatural serpent's death, having been basted in booze. A secret ingredient was added to the mix and, after six months' ferment, sold as just the thing for aching bones.

A CASE that still bothers me involved a literal tin foil hat guy named Anthony James Pelfrey. Visibly deranged during court appearances, Pelfrey was sentenced to 13 years in state prison for attempted murder by Judge Ron Brown, living proof that the Bar exam had been dumbed way, way down.

PELFREY, chattering obliviously to imagined presences as he twitched at the defendant's table, Brown nevertheless packed him off to 13 years in the state pen.

THE UNFORTUNATE Pelfrey was fairly well known in Mendocino County. He occasionally appeared in Philo to complain about the strange messages he was picking up from certain KZYX transmissions. Because he couldn't allow himself to make left turns, his travel time from Ukiah to the Anderson Valley was extended as Pelfrey travelled to Philo via Fort Bragg.

AMONG OTHER DELUSIONS Pelfrey thought that Nazis had a remote machine that was making his head bigger. Mostly Pelfrey's torment was confined to his own seething mind, and why Judge Brown didn't commit the bedeviled man to the state hospital amounted to one more instance of the judicial cruelty we often see here in “liberal” Mendocino County.

PELFREY was only 30 when he took total leave of his senses in July of 2007 and attacked two men with a knife, but he was found sane by Judge Brown even though psychiatrists testified that Pelfrey was the most obviously insane person they'd ever seen.

BUT JUDGE BROWN, in the insanity phase of Pelfrey's trials, and with the piety of the true judicial idiot, said words to the effect that much as he felt for Pelfrey the law compelled the judge to torture him further at San Quentin rather than send Pelfrey to a hospital where he belonged.

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.”

ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] Say what you will about the Dems, they accepted Trump’s victory in the November election, didn’t file frivolous lawsuits in federal courts charging rigged machines, didn’t call up the Pennsylvania AG demanding he “find” 130,000 Democratic votes, didn’t enlist teams of “alternative electors”, and certified the vote without massive whining and — rioting.

In other words, they acted like adults regarding losing the presidential election. Republicans could learn a thing or two about that kind of adult behavior.

[2] Ever sit a day someplace and just watch bird behaviors? It’s outright warfare all day every day. Starts off with the early ones getting the worms and bugs, then the crows show up to get the scraps to push their dominance and get into your trash. Then the jays show to scope out the other birds nests. Then the ravens come by to laugh at the crows and show them who’s boss. The vultures are just circling and getting chased by angry mom tweety birds. The humming birds just find a way to get at the flowers without getting killed and then the ospreys and eagles cruise through, everything scatters, but it is not them they’re concerned with. It’s the falcon and hawk assassins, and the pigeons are on notice to vacate the area. Or die mid air. Or anything that moves really. And the seagulls are just there to make a mess and noise. Not to forget there’s the thousand starlings going tree to tree like locusts in a field getting in everyone’s way. The ducks and geese are merely interstate travelers stopping at the pond and lake rest areas in their travels.

[3] If a crowd of NPR listeners. eyes bugging out from too many cappuccinos and Maddow conspiracy theories, were to try to disrupt the election certification, the Inauguration or whatever, nobody on CNN would be proclaiming this The Greatest Threat In History To Muh Democracy.

We'd instead be hearing the same pompous talking heads piously remind us about how The Right To Protest Is Sacred. The ghost of St. MLK would be duly invoked.

At the same time, were protesters to try to force their way into an important building, say, NSA headquarters, they'd be shot on sight, and nobody would be waffling and making imaginary snowballs while waiting for orders from Higher Up.

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

[5] As we mark the fourth anniversary of January 6, Joe Biden keeps departing and Donald Trump keeps arriving. The soon-to-be former president and the still-future president are like comic-tragic characters in a political zombie film.

Let’s face it: the U.S. presidential transition is a constitutional travesty. The months-long transition is undemocratic, unseemly and quite dangerous.

[6] My prediction for 2025 is that “bulldozer driver” will be the fastest growing occupation. Welding drops to second.

[7] 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.