WES SMOOT MEMORIAL, SATURDAY, 2PM, BOONVILLE FAIRGROUNDS
Wes Smoot's Memorial was originally planned to be held at the Rose Room at Anderson Valley Historical Museum on February 1st. It will now be held at the Apple Hall at the Mendocino County Fairgrounds on Saturday, February 1st at 2 pm. Please help spread the word so we can honor this amazing man.
(AV Senior Center Press Release)
DANNY JOHNSTON SR.
Danny Johnston Sr. passed 01/14/25. He had been living in Oregon with his sister and her husband. Mr. Johnston was a long-time resident of the Anderson Valley.
NORM CLOW ADDS:
Good man, good friend, married to my cousin Ann for many years. Danny was a valuable member of the Anderson Valley Volunteer Fire Department and was honored as the Fireman of the Year in the mid-1980s. Condolences to the family.
AV FIRE CHIEF ANDRES AVILA
Palisades Deployment On Wednesday Jan 8, the Anderson Valley Fire Department sent Engine 7471 to the Palisades Incident staffed by Ben Glaus (Engineer), Armando Morales (Firefighter), and Alex Aguirre (Firefighter). Mendocino County was not able to fully staff a five-engine strike team and strike team leader. So two engines from Humboldt, three engines from Mendocino County, and a Strike Team leader from Sonoma County were consolidated to form “rainbow” strike team and were deployed for work the following day. The Strike Team is working in tough conditions and with more fire weather conditions in the forecast, I am not anticipating them to return any time soon.
A LOCAL AVHS SENIOR is selling this smoker that he made to help pay for college expenses.
If you are interested, then text him at 707.657.3327. price:$600.
JEFF BURROUGHS on the departure of Vernon & Charlene Rollins, former owners of the Boonville Hotel:
I guess my biggest beef with them was the blatant disregard for preservation of the town's history that was in the many different items they found in the old hotel. During their so called renovation of the hotel, they brought in a huge dumpster and proceeded to throw everything they found into it like it was trash. Old photos, hotel ledgers, furniture, everything! Hours before the trash bin was to be taken away to the dump, the word got out to Michael Shapiro who got there just before it was gone and he retrieved a couple of the ledgers, one of which had Jack London's signature in it. Hazel Teague found a couple of framed old photos, one of which she thought looked like my great-great-grandmother so she gave it to me. My great-great-grandparents leased the Boonville Hotel while also running their own place, the Missouri House Hotel just up the street. Anyway, how much history was lost nobody really knows but it pains me to even give it serious thought.
FRAN KOLINOR
For the ones who may have known her, you may want to know that Fran Kolinor has passed away. One of a kind. A great friend, teacher, human and more. She will be in our memories and hearts. Rest in peace my beautiful friend. (Facebook post, AV Watch)
RICARDO SUAREZ (Redwood Drive-In, Boonville)
Hello hello Boonville
Here we go, as always hitting the comal. What is anti ha? Tacos shepherd, asada, Tripita, caveza, fajitas, menudo, enchiladas. You just don't say. Pure Redwood Drive-In 1-707-895-3441.
REPORT FROM A SMALL FARM SOUTH OF BOONVILLE
The farm is doing well. Our peak season, the holidays, was good, we have a new person to help in the kitchen, and we may be able to join another AIM farmers' market by summer. Since the abundant rains in November and December, the weather has been very dry, very cold, and very warm for this time of year. The temp swings between frozen in the mornings to mid sixties by afternoon…quite a wallop for us and the plantings. At least we're getting enough frost hours for the fruiting trees.
We hope you've all come through the holidays regenerated and ready for the coming year.
Stay well and keep your coping mechanisms well lubed.
Nikki Auschnit & Steve Kreig
WHAT'S IN A NAME
In 2009, Daniel Goode; Michael Andrews Church; Eugene Fedorov; and “Luo Yan,” all of Dos Rios, an inland Mendo locale not previously known for its cosmopolitanism or internationalism, were arrested on marijuana cultivation charges.
Mssrs. Goode, Church and Fedorov seemed to fit the general Mendo pot grower profile, although we noted that Fedorov's nationality was not listed on his booking sheet. He turned out to be a Bulgarian. Oddly, Bulgarians were then plentiful in the Northcoast dope business.
But Ms. Yan?
Yan Luo translates as either “God of Death” or “Ruler of Hell,” hardly names Chinese parents would choose for a female child. Ms. Yan was clearly having some fun with the cops who, incidentally, identified Asians by the blanket unwoke tag, Oriental, since elevated to Asian.
With arrests of Bulgarians and Israelis for pot violations, and lots of arrests of Vietnamese and Chinese poachers, with the occasional Hindu drunk driver thrown into the mix, and not to mention Ms. Ruler of Hell, local cops had to brush up on their socio-geography.
IN MY YOUTH as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Borneo state of Sarawak, my day job was with Broadcast House in Kuching where, under the tutelage of a wonderful Brit exile from the BBC, he and I wrote primitive English language plays for broadcast to students deep in the interior.
ALLAN MOORE and I enjoyed seeing how much we could get away with in provocative content, once pulling off, “Stalin, Man of Steel,” which surely must have mystified the little Dyaks who listened to it as their English lesson, deep, deep in the untracked jungle. (I stayed in Dyak longhouses where 12-year-olds had never seen a white person, let alone an American white person. These communities thought I had something to do with the British royal family. Sarawak had been a Brit crown colony and, before that, the sole proprietorship of the Brookes, the famous British White Rajahs. Finally, Sarawak became part of today's Malaysia.)
AFTER HOURS, I played basketball with Chinese guys who initially didn't care to include me, never wanted to include me but who became real good at faking inclusion since I was so persistent in tracking them down. Kuching was the largest town in Sarawak but not much larger at the time than Ukiah with about twenty basketball courts, all outdoors. But the top players always had priority to work out at one or another of them.
EAGER to play with the very best local hoopsters and, ahem, able to hold my own against ordinary competition, I imagined myself soaring into the equatorial sun high above the startled Chinese faces, a white streak against jungle green as I blew routine lay-ups. But these guys, who comprised the Sarawak national team, hid their daily game from me.
I'D have to jump on my motorcycle and drive frantically all over town, from playground to playground, to find the game. Which my would-be playmates kept moving to keep me out.
AFTER literal months of hide-the-hoops, and after literal months of me nevertheless ferreting them out every afternoon, I finally became a regular, a begrudged regular regularly addressed as Ang Mo Qui, which I thought for the longest time was simply a non-English speaker's attempt at “Anderson.”
WE'D be picking up teams and someone would gesture at me and say, “Ang Mo Qui,” as in “I'll take Ang Mo Qui on my team.” Nobody ever laughed so I assumed I was being respectfully referred to.
CURIOUS after hearing myself so addressed, I finally asked a host national, who also happened to be my wife, “What does Ang Mo Qui mean? The guys I play basketball with always call me that.”
SHE laughed, a little too heartily, then said, “It means either long-nosed monkey or, depending on how you pronounce it, red haired devil.”
FRANK'S FIREWOOD
We now have another 24 yards of woodchips available, great for weed control, ground cover, livestock bedding. $210 + tax which is less than $9.50 / yard delivered price. Includes free delivery in Anderson Valley. Call 707 895 2133
VIRGINIA SHARKEY
I’m honored my painting “Signatura” was chosen by the Portland Art Museum curator Grace Kook-Anderson to be one of the 80 out of 2500 works submitted for the Crocker-Kingsley Exhibition 2025. This is in the Sacramento area pictured here in the lovely Blue Sky Gallery in Roseville.
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