Mendocino County Today: Friday 1/24/2025

Web | Cold Wind | Machete Man | Bob Canclini | Prelim Continues | Norma Scaramella Iversen Combes | Water Meeting | Jake Wake | Seed Workshop | Navarro Shore | Move On | Ukiah 1937 | Salesman | Ed Notes | Bo Bo | Yesterday's Catch | Ascending | Destroying Farming | Civic Center | Sharing Childbirth | Facebook Addiction | Nonalcoholic Wine | Nancy Green | Deporting People | Dem Contempt | Craptocracy | Assassination Files | Jack & Bob | MAGA Granny | Beach Haven | Don't Worry | Nature Island | Lead Stories | Har Har | Trumpocalypse | Schrodinger Challenge | Quantum Descartes | Caution Mexico | Some Suicides | Camp Grandmother

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GUSTY NORTHERLY WINDS expected for coastal areas today and again Saturday. Strong northeast winds expected over the interior mountains and Lake County tonight through this weekend. Otherwise, mostly dry weather with cold nights and mornings is expected this weekend. A few light rain and light snow showers will be possible for Lake and southern Mendocino Counties on Saturday. Widespread rain with snow in mountains is likely toward the latter portion of next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): It's just a little bit warmer on the coast this Friday morning with 40F under clear skies. Colder morning temps this weekend & windy. Rain chances for later next week appear to increasing, the current pattern might be in for a change.

COLD WEATHER ADVISORY in effect from 1-9am Saturday (very cold wind chills as low as 25 expected). (NWS)

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JAVIER RAISES THE MACHETE

On 01/17/2025 at approximately 10:30 p.m., Ukiah Police Department (UPD) officers were dispatched to Cindee Drive in Ukiah for a report of a disturbance and violation of a restraining order. Officers were familiar with the location and the involved parties, and knew suspect Javier Ramirez of Ukiah was prohibited from being at the residence or contacting the victim. Ramirez was also on formal county probation out of Mendocino County for previous violations of the same restraining order.

Officers arrived and began searching the area for Ramirez. He emerged from behind a vehicle parked on the street, wielding a machete in his right hand. Officers immediately drew their department-issued firearms and began instructing Ramirez to drop the weapon. Ramirez began yelling at the officers to shoot him while pacing around with the machete in a threatening position.

Officers attempted to calm Ramirez down while maintaining a safe distance. Ramirez made several approaches toward the officers, raising the machete above his waistline. As negotiations continued, several officers moved close enough to deploy their Taser energy weapons with the intention of disarming Ramirez without injury to him or the officers. After multiple Taser deployments, the energy weapon achieved neuromuscular incapacitation (NMI), causing Ramirez to fall to the ground and drop the machete.

Officers moved closer to detain Ramirez; however, the NMI ceased, and Ramirez was able to grab the machete again, presenting it toward the approaching officers. Additional Taser probes were deployed, and NMI was once again achieved, providing the officers with an opportunity to kick the machete out of Ramirez's hand and secure him in handcuffs.

Ramirez was unharmed during the incident and was subsequently forthcoming about his intentions to die at the hands of law enforcement. After being evaluated by medical personnel, Ramirez was arrested and booked into the Mendocino County Jail on charges of 245(c) PC, 69(a) PC, 1203.2(a) PC, and 273.6(a) PC.

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LONG-TIME COAST FIXTURE AND FORMER SUPES CANDIDATE BOB CANCLINI DIES AT 93.

Whitesboro Grange Sunday Morning Breakfast CANCELLED

Our former Grange president, Bob Canclini passed away yesterday at age 93. In respect for his family, we have opted to cancel this Sunday's breakfast. Arrangements for a memorial will be issued by his family at a later time. At this time we ask for their privacy, as well as your grace and kindness as they navigate through this difficult time

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CUBBISON PRELIM CARRIES OVER INTO NEXT WEEK

by Mike Geniella

Two conflicting portrayals of suspended Mendocino County Auditor Chamise Cubbison emerged Thursday during a second day of testimony during a preliminary hearing on criminal charges filed against her and the county’s former Payroll Manager.

The hearing, scheduled for two days, continues next Tuesday. Its outcome will determine whether Superior Court Judge Ann Moorman orders the contentious case to trial or dismisses the felony charges as sought in a motion by defense attorneys for Cubbison and co-defendant Paula June Kennedy.

Cubbison was described by current CEO Darcie Antle as “angry, abusive” and displaying a “confrontational tone” when she learned of county administrator’s plan to strip the Auditor’s Office of its payroll oversight. Antle said she felt threatened, and so unsettled that she put her reactions in writing days later.

“I thought she was less than professional,” testified Antle.

Sheriff’s Investigator Andrew Porter, however, described Cubbison as calm and cooperative when the criminal probe was launched.

Porter said Cubbison met with him repeatedly during the early days of the investigation, and explained how a disputed county pay code was involved. Porter said he initially interviewed Cubbison while she sat in his “pickup outside her office.”

Cubbison denied, however, telling Kennedy to use it to cover the large volume of hours the Payroll Manager was putting in during the Covid pandemic to meet payrolls, according to Porter.

Porter said he quickly learned that it was in fact Cubbison who triggered the criminal investigation by alerting the County Counsel’s Office of a Kennedy threat to quit and sue the county for payment of 390 hours of uncompensated work over a three-year period.

Porter said he originally obtained from Cubbison a spreadsheet Kennedy kept of the extra payments she made to herself that contained regular entries of “per Lloyd,” or “per Chamise.” Later, the county’s IT department provided him with a copy that had been retrieved from Kennedy’s computer files.

Cubbison attorney Chris Andrian, a noted Santa Rosa defense lawyer, grilled Antle about her involvement behind the scenes about events that led to criminal charges being filed, and the subsequent takeover by the CEO office of the county payroll. Antle at times brushed aside questions, saying “I wasn’t CEO then.”

Kennedy’s lawyer Fredricco McCurry, a county Public Defender, sharply questioned Antle about County polices and procedures and how they compared to state and federal laws. He zeroed in on Antle’s earlier testimony that she testified she feared the County might be breaking the law by allowing Kennedy to single handedly work so many hours to meet the county payroll.

McCurry asked what might have happened had the county payroll not been done on time.

“1,200 employees would not have been paid,” responded Antle. McCurry then wanted to know what steps might have been taken, and whether that included the possible termination of Kennedy.

Antle sidestepped the question by saying her likely first action would have been development of a “performance improvement plan.”

At the end of two days of testimony, the Cubbison case appears so far to be one of “he said, she said, they said,” based on an earlier description by Andrian.

For the first time, however, the level of engagement District Attorney David Eyster in political events preceding Cubbison’s arrest and criminal charging emerged in the ongoing, long-delayed criminal case. Until now the DA’s role had been confined to documents on file in a parallel civil case Cubbison has filed against the County Board of Supervisors for denying her due process.

On Thursday, however, a recently disclosed private memo was cited, written by DA Eyster to a County supervisor advocating board members block Cubbison’s appointment in 2021 as interim Auditor.

The three-page Eyster memo includes details of a three-step plan where the DA secretly advocated for County supervisors to do away with an elected Auditor-Controller and an elected Treasurer-Tax Collector and merge the two offices into a single Department of Finance to be under the control of board members. Supervisors eventually did this, but their overall goal for control was thwarted when voters in 2022 elected Cubbison to lead the combined offices.

Antle acknowledged Thursday that her former boss Carmel Angelo had sent her and two other county administrators a copy of the Eyster memo the day before he showed up at a board meeting in 2021 and publicly denounced Cubbison.

Antle deflected how seriously she and others in the CEO’s office took Eyster’s private email, saying he is “known for his strong opinions.”

Why Eyster publicly denounced Cubbison and blocked her interim appointment remains the subject of speculation, but focuses on the DA’s reported vendetta against her because as retired Auditor Lloyd Weer’s chief assistant she had repeatedly questioned the DA office’s own spending practices.

Antle in other testimony Thursday reinforced a perception that Cubbison, and Weer before her, jealously guarded the Auditor’s Office independence.

Antle testified that Weer while still in office told the CEO’s office in “no uncertain terms” that he would fight to keep the County Auditor’s Office as the official watchdog of the county payroll.

Cubbison during a later confrontation with Antle told her the CEO staff was too inexperienced to manage the complexities of the county payroll.

Special prosecutor Traci Carrillo, hired by Eyster to take the Cubbison case to trial, aimed at showing felony criminal intent on the part of Cubbison and Kennedy. Any confirmation is yet to be made.

Porter is expected to testify about specific details when the hearing resumes next week.

Cubbison chose to fight the felony charge, rather than accept an early Eyster offer to reduce it to a misdemeanor if she resigned.

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NORMA A. SCARAMELLA IVERSEN COMBES

Norma A. Scaramella Iversen Combes, a longtime Mendocino Coast resident passed away peacefully in her sleep on Tuesday, December 17, 2024 after 99 years and 8 months of living a full life.

She was born on April 7, 1925 on the Charlie Lawson Ranch. Josephine Ciapusci Aquistapace was her midwife. Her parents were Ferdinand and Ancilla (Curti) Scaramella from Italy. Norma attended grammar school in Manchester and High School in Point Arena. She graduated in 1943. She married Sam (Spud) Iversen and had two daughters, Cheri Piper Carlstedt (Butch) and Cynthia Reynolds Sundstrom (Gary). Cynthia proceeded her in death in 2010. She is survived by her daughter Cheri Carlstedt and her son-in-law Butch who lives in Point Arena, her brother Raymond Scaramella and his wife Sadie, her sister Lynda Curtis and her husband Howard. She was proceeded in death by her older brothers Bobie Scaramella, Alfredo Scaramella, Elmer Scaramella (Aggie), and her sister Esther Bean (Ralph). She had six grandchildren: Nikki Piper, Ericka Guynes, Heidi Piper, Greg Reynolds, Chad Sundstrom, and Trevor Sundstrom; eleven great grandchildren: Casie Smith, Bella Brostrom, Claire Guynes, Dominic Sahl, Andrew Reynolds, Ali Reynolds, Taylor Reynolds (deceased), Lucy and Will Sundstrom, Justin, Sabrina, and Ryan Sundstrom; and seven great, great grandchildren as well as many nieces and nephews and her God Daughter Angela Opperman and many good friends.

She worked at Bank Of America for 25 years, two in Point Arena and 23 in Fort Bragg. She was a beachcomber, bottle digger, collector, fly fisherwoman, hunter, and one hell of a woman. She could play scrabble, and cards with the best of them. She loved to play the slots, and have a good drink with friends. One of her friends Sonny Handley said, “She could out dig most of the guys!” She always had a kind word to say, and spoke her mind when she needed to. She was loved by many.

Honoring her wishes no funeral services are planned. In the summer there will be a small family burial in the St. Aloysius Catholic Cemetery in Point Arena. Any memorial donations can be made to The Redwood Coast Humane Society at PO Box 1072, Gualala, CA 95445.

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POTTER VALLEY TALKS, COYOTE DAM STUDY, AND PG&E UPDATES at Mendocino County meeting

by Monica Huettl

Mendocino County Inland Water & Power Commission (MCIWPC) held its regular meeting on January 16, 2025, with a focus on real property negotiations concerning the Potter Valley Project. The first two hours of the meeting were held in closed session, leaving limited time for public agenda items. Despite the shortened timeframe, key discussions included PG&E’s anticipated release of the final draft Surrender Application, a public meeting announcement, and updates on the ongoing water storage studies in Potter Valley. Additionally, progress on the Eel-Russian Project Authority and the Coyote Dam study were briefly touched on, with some agenda items postponed until the next meeting.…

https://mendofever.com/2025/01/24/potter-valley-talks-coyote-dam-study-and-pge-updates-at-mendocino-county-meeting/

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JACOB CODY ‘JAKE’ WAGGONER

May 31, 1988 – December 23, 2024

Jake Waggoner peacefully passed on December 23, 2024 surrounded by his family. Please come help us celebrate his life, his generosity, and humor at the Celebration of Life on Saturday, Feb 1. Bring your favorite side dish or dessert. Sandwiches, water and sodas provided. Bring your own beer and your funniest Jake story!

Saturday, February 1, Noon to 4pm. Camp Navarro (formerly the Boy Scout Camp), 901 Masonite Road, Navarro.

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SEED SAVING WORKSHOP

Join Victory Gardens for Peace Seed Bank Director, Matt Drewno for a hands-on seed saving workshop January 25 and 26. This intensive two-day workshop will focus on all the basics required to grow a wide variety of healthy garden seeds. Matt will cover planning, propagation, selecting, harvesting, and preserving common and endangered varieties. After completing the workshop you will have the resources, confidence, and support to take the next steps to become a better seed saver and an important part of our seed saving community.

Learn more and register: www.gardenbythesea.org/calendar/seed-saving

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AFTER THE APOLOGY…

Editor,

After watching the public comments at the Fort Bragg City Council meeting January 13, I reviewed videos of earlier meetings, starting with the originating Tess Albin Smith comments, and successive meetings where several speakers took issue with Tess Albin Smith. This was regarding Tess voicing her opinion that Councilwoman Marcia Rafanan lacked the qualifications and experience necessary for the position of Vice Mayor compared to the other nominee. Tess’s comments, which were intended as discussion with her fellow council before voting, were very critical and public. But the Council majority was not swayed, and Marcia Rafanan was elected Vice Mayor by a 3-2 vote. Despite being elected, Marcia and others became very angry and clearly decided Tess had to be reprimanded.

Tess was overheard trying to personally apologize to Marcia the next day at a committee meeting, and she made a full and sincere public apology to Marcia one week after the incident. Marcia did not acknowledge this apology, and last night, four weeks later, several members of the public continued to praise Marcia and harass Tess, telling her she needs to resign. Someone called Tess a bully, which is making me ask myself, who is the victim now? In searching for the topic online, I found parts of Albin Smith’s original comments and video were edited, for more impact perhaps, and people are believing the edited version.

Now the 2025 Fort Bragg City Council members have been assigned to committees and there is much work to do. One of the committees includes both Rafanan and Albin-Smith, who will need to work together. It is my hope that we can move on and let the Council do its work. We can use each and every one of these council members at peak productivity.

I hope Vice Mayor Rafanan will accept the apology and the healing can begin. I extend my sympathy to Vice Mayor Rafanan for the critical public comments, and wish her great success in her new role.

Marilyn Boese

Fort Bragg

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ELLIE WILLIS-LARGE

Remember When Ukiah Was Something Special?

This was on my memories today. I’m sure it’s been shared but some people might not have seen it.

A great re-edited film based on the December 1937 promotional film of Ukiah.

Ukiah, California - “Buy at Home Campaign” (1937)

https://youtu.be/t50HIE8mbEU?si=sPvsvDYbxA-4FaR3

(via John Sakowicz)

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ED NOTES

I WAS ON a Muni bus, the 1 California, almost always a sedate, mostly Asian commute line running from the Richmond District to Chinatown, a line seldom in need of the cops. I've been on other east-west buses a couple of blocks to the south, the Geary buses, where the cops often have to remove someone drunk and crazy-acting, menacing other passengers or trying to rob them, all of which used to be unthinkable but is now prevalent public behavior.

THIS DAY the 1 California was as sedate as usual, but a street nut did come in through the back door at Fillmore, trailing feathers and sticks and magpie bits of colored glass from his backpack and talking to himself. “There's eighty thousand of us and we're all going in the wrong direction.”

HE REPEATED the eighty thousand figure about ten times, each rendition louder. I wondered at his stats. San Francisco has a population of about 800,000 and there were maybe forty people on the bus. Eighty thousand didn't seem to apply anywhere I was aware of, but if he was referring to the number of free range nuts in the city 80,000 probably wasn't far off.

THE CRAZY GUY sat himself down in the middle of the very back seat, wedged between an elderly Chinese man and a young girl who looked to be about 15. I was on a seat looking straight at him, and why Muni buses are designed this way is another mystery because placing the seats so people have to stare straight at each other is often a prescription for unhappy transactions with the facing person.

SO, I have to look straight at Mr. Nutball for about fifteen westbound minutes because it's either him or the ceiling. Anyway, I was not concerned about the elderly Chinese man, but the welfare of the girl was immediate. If you will excuse the ethnic generalization, the Chinese are better than any people on earth at simply not seeing what they're seeing. They seem to have a genetic gift for Zen-ing out the unpleasant, the untoward, the outrageous, which they and all of us get a boat load of every day in our crumbling society. They're just better at disappearing it than we are, letting the outrageous roll over them as if it isn't happening.

THE OLD CHINESE GUY reacted not at all to the crazy man singing out numerical arias next to him, but the young woman was visibly uncomfortable.

I WAS TAKING mental notes, half expecting crazy man to go off on me since I had the full frontal for his unhinged presentation as he sang out a final eighty thou lyric, reaching simultaneously for what looked to me like the young girl's thigh.

TIME for civic duty! “Wait a minute! Wha….” I fairly shouted as the girl calmly explained, “He's just petting my dog, sir. It's ok.” I hadn't seen the dog, but there it was muzzled at her feet, looking up at the crazy man who said to the girl, “You're very lucky to have a dog. I wish I had a dog.”

THE CHINESE gentleman never stirred.

THE CRAZY GUY soon got off at Clay and Taylor, Nob Hill, the high rent district, smiling to himself.

I WAS HEADED that day to the Embarcadero Theater to see a Werner Herzog film, “The Bad Lieutenant, Port of Call New Orleans,” a great little movie. The Chron's uncomprehending reviewer didn't like it much but I suspect that's because, and despite its rep as a cool-o groove-o decadent venue, Frisco is really a pretty tame place whose daily newspaper wouldn't want to find itself recommending real art because it might be bad for a newspaper business that's already in the process of going glub, glub, glub. Readers might be offended. “You suggested we should go see that, Mick?”

BE ALL THAT as it may or may not be, I've never seen a Herzog movie that wasn't fascinating. I knew this one, despite the reviews, was going to be worth a lot more than the $6.50 “senior” price of admission. Which it was, and then some. Harvey Keitel’s brilliant as Bad Lieutenant squared, and Nicholas Cage, who I'd always assumed was basically a feeb of the Tom Cruise type, is beyond good in the role of the berserk cop, so good that in a just film world Cage should have been a shoo-in for Best Actor at the Academy Awards.

THE STORY LINE is not even close to plausible, but that's not the point. The point, I'd say, is that old Werner, as a furriner, and a highbrow furriner at that, is basically taking his perception of America as completely berserkers and making that undeniable point in a movie. This thing is just terrific all the way through and very, very funny, but definitely not a film for the whole family, or most members of most families who haven't quite heard the terrible news.

KC MEADOWS remains the editor of the diminished, hedge fund gutted Ukiah Daily Journal. Some thirty years ago she wrote the following editorial which still applies:

“At Schat's Bakery a couple of weeks ago I was met by several teachers and the principal of the Grace Hudson Elementary School who were outraged at my comments back in October about the school's dismal performance. As a letter to the editor which we recently ran from those teachers says, they feel they have a great school and that they are making significant improvements all the time. As we talked that morning at Schat's there were several points discussed which I think bear repeating here. First, they objected to my calling the school restrictive and exclusive. However, they acknowledge that no child who does not already speak Spanish can enter the school past first grade. So, if you move into the south Ukiah neighborhood with a second, third, fourth, fifth or sixth grader who doesn't speak Spanish, that child will have to go to Nokomis or some other elementary school. I call that restrictive. This is no longer a neighborhood school — which most voters thought they were getting when they approved the funds to build it. This is now a special Spanish language immersion program school for which, I am told by these teachers, there is a waiting list. In fact, parents who want their non-Hispanic, English-speaking children to learn Spanish, are flocking to this school. There are students from Willits and even Lake County I am told. The teachers also felt that it was unfair for me to pick on Grace Hudson since all the Ukiah Unified School District elementary schools are underperforming schools with low test scores. The point I made is that the children underperforming the most are the children who are being taught in their native language (in kindergarten and first grade at Grace Hudson, teaching is 90% in Spanish and the English-Spanish ratio adjusts with each grade so that hopefully, by the time all the kids are in fifth grade they are bilingual). The problem is, according to the teachers, that while the children are being taught in Spanish, the tests are in English and therefore unfair. Also, tests are generically unfair. Testing kids does not help teach them anything, these teachers asserted. Interestingly, the non-Hispanic kids being taught in Spanish (a language they don't know) do better on the tests. In fact, the teachers claim that the English-speaking youngsters pick up Spanish very quickly. Being taught Spanish in kindergarten and first grade, they pick it up in a snap, they say. So why, I asked, does “immersion” into Spanish work so well for the English-speaking kids, but somehow, the Hispanic kids need five years to learn English? It's because their parents are poor and uneducated, I'm told. These Spanish-speaking parents — who mostly have third grade educations, they tell me — are unable to help their children and have the kind of involvement in their child's education that the English-speaking kids' parents do. I find that an extremely condescending attitude. So I did a little more research on Grace Hudson School and found out that the English learners at the school do take their California STAR tests in Spanish (which no one mentioned) and lo and behold, they do no better than the Spanish speaking kids at Nokomis or other local elementary schools where they are being tested in a language they supposedly can't learn very easily. For instance, Spanish speaking students at Grace Hudson, being taught in Spanish for 90% of the day, who took the California second grade language arts tests in Spanish, overall scored 306.9 (on a scale of 600). The second graders at Nokomis School (with a 44% population of English learners, being taught in English) took the test in English and scored 332.6 overall on the same test. In math, the Grace Hudson Spanish speakers taking the math tests in Spanish scored 323.2 overall, while the Nokomis kids, almost half just learning English and taking the test in English, scored overall 360.6. The Grace Hudson Spanish-speaking kids also take the tests in English and so, adding in the English-speaking kids (about 45% of the total population) the scores are about the same: 306.6 in language arts and 330.2 in math. And these kinds of score results continue into third and fourth grades as well. As we saw this week, none of Ukiah Unified Schools have anything to crow about in the test score arena. In fact, it looks like the state will be stepping in to improve all these schools where the District has been unable to. Teachers complain constantly that tests do not reflect learning or education. I disagree. Yes, you want children to be ‘life learners’ and love education for its own sake. But you also want them to be able to write a clear sentence and decode a bank statement. Finding out if they have achieved some basic level of competence is not unreasonable in my view. When the school district is looking at closing schools and wondering how it can afford to keep going, is it really necessary to have a specialized language school that does not seem to be achieving anything special, taking over the only brand new school in the district in a neighborhood where being provided a brand new school would have sent a clear message about the importance of education to parents who would have understood it even with their third grade educations?”

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, January 23, 2025

REGINALD AZBILL, 41, Covelo. Ammo possession by prohibited person, no license.

AGUSTIN BALANDRAN, 34, Cloverdale/Ukiah. DUI, suspended license, resisting.

JOELL BECK, 30, Fort Bragg. Vandalism.

MELISSA CROW, 37, Willits. Disorderly conduct-loitering, false ID, probation revocation.

ANTHONY HOAGLIN, 32, Ukiah. Domestic violence court order violation, resisting.

RICHARD HODGE, 27, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, concealed dirk-dagger, probation violation.

DANIEL KOWALSKY, 55, Ukiah. Elder abuse with great bodily injury, battery with serious injury.

BRETT ROBBINS, 25, Willits. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15%.

BARAQUIEL RUIZ, 38, Lakeport/Ukiah. Controlled substance with two or more priors, paraphernalia.

MALISSA WARNER, 47, Ukiah. Petty theft, probation violation.

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FARM LIFE IN ROSS

Editor

Regarding the demise of dairy farming and ranching at Point Reyes National Seashore, it couldn’t get any better than a cadre of rich leftist donors meeting in the affluent town of Ross to gather million-dollar chump change to destroy farms, ranches and myriad livelihoods.

Ross, the “center” of the agricultural pulse of California, is the perfect place to eviscerate historic farms and ranches that were there way before Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom bought a mansion there to hide from burning Democrat-imposed failures downwind.

If they met in Corning or Dunnigan to toast themselves, they’d get a real whiff of California farming and dust on their Escalades and BMWs that would probably hinder their donations to destroy agriculture elsewhere. Hence, when they flock together in Upscaleville in Marin County to do it, it gets ink in San Francisco, not Red Bluff.

In the end, it’s sad no matter where farming and ranching is destroyed in California. It’s more than a living history to archive the voices of long-lost farmers; it’s a footprint that should be preserved in unison with the natural resources that neighbored together for generations as a family of one.

Robert T. Molleur

Manassas, Virginia

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HOW THE MARIN CIVIC CENTER CAME TO BE

The idea for Marin Civic Center came from the desire to consolidate county services at one location away from the center of San Rafael; the plans also included a proposed county fairground. In 1956, 140 acres of the Scettrini ranch were purchased for $551,416 near Santa Venetia.

It should be noted that Frank Lloyd Wright’s design of the Marin Civic Center is an example of organic architecture which blends buildings into their natural surroundings. Construction began in 1960 under the management of Wright's protégé, Aaron Green.

Construction timeline:

Administration Building: Groundbreaking in 1960, completed in 1962

Hall of Justice: Construction began in 1966, completed in 1969

Veterans Memorial Auditorium: Opened in 1971

Exhibit Hall: Opened in 1976

Despite the project beginning in 1960, there were bumps along the way. A work-stoppage was ordered by Supervisor Fusselman in January, 1961, who was opposed to the project and the choice of architect. Luckily, it only lasted a week…and the work continued. A May 2, 1962 Marin IJ article reported the Civic Center was one of six construction sites halted due to labor union strikes. After issues were resolved, building continued with the four-story Administration Building finished in 1962.

The Marin County Civic Center dedication took place Oct. 13, 1962. Olgivanna Lloyd Wright was in attendance and said that her husband had exclaimed, “What a site, what a site” when he first set eyes on the Marin land…”wait until you see what I’m going to do with that site”.

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ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

To bring a little fun to the day, interesting custom from Central Mexico:

According to Central Mexico’s Huichol ancient traditions, both men and women experience the pain of childbirth together.

The father would position himself on the rafters with rope tied around his scrotum, which would be pulled by the mother during delivery.

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NONALCOHOLIC WINE HAS COME A LONG WAY. BUT HERE’S THE HARSH REALITY

by Esther Mobley

I arrived at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition judging last week and discovered that someone (the universe? the competition’s organizers?) was playing a cruel trick on me. My first assignment of the morning would be to taste and evaluate 26 nonalcoholic wines.

The Chronicle Wine Competition is, confusingly, run not by this newspaper but by the Cloverdale Citrus Fair; the Chronicle has been its title sponsor since 2000. The event brings more than 50 judges from around the country to Sonoma County to taste more than 5,500 North American wines over the course of a week.

Marathon wine tasting is grueling under any circumstances, and tasting an unproven, still-developing wine category can often be the toughest job. We all know what to look for in a Chardonnay. But I find it harder to know how to evaluate, say, hybrid wines from Michigan — and harder still to evaluate wines that have no alcohol (wines that arguably aren’t even wines).

I’m not opposed to the idea of nonalcoholic wine, but I just had a feeling, before I began tasting, swirling and spitting, that trying this many in a row would not be a pleasant experience for my mouth. I knew well, thanks to having been pregnant, that there’s a lot of bad nonalcoholic wine out there.

Sure enough, the flight was dismal. Bizarrely, several of the specimens smelled or tasted distinctly of oregano. A plasticky flavor kept popping up, along with, in the reds, an artificial cherry note that made me long for Robitussin. My notes include: “pasta sauce,” “painful” and “jalapeno-infused?”

To be clear: Excellent nonalcoholic drinks do exist. There are tons of well made NA beers these days — even local craft darling Fort Point Beer Co. is doing it now — and I love some of the cocktail-adjacent offerings like Ghia and Curious Elixirs.

The most competent NA wines I’ve found tend to be what’s known as “wine alternatives” — a concoction of non-wine ingredients like tea, juice and herbs to approximate the taste of wine — as opposed to dealcoholized wines. (Although I wasn’t given this information, I’m willing to bet that all of the NA wines I tasted at the competition were dealcoholized.) Wine alternatives don’t necessarily taste exactly like wine, but they can taste good. Muri, Proxies and Kally are some of the best. I have tasted some decent dealcoholized wines, like Woody’s and Studio Null, but they weren’t in the glasses in front of me last week.

I have no doubt that this category will improve. Given how many people are cutting back on their drinking these days, it seems preordained that the market will rise to meet the moment. In the meantime, if you’re observing dry January, may I recommend a glass of soda water?

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AUNT JEMIMA

The branding of the syrup was a tribute to this woman’s gifts and talents. Now future generations will not even know this beautiful woman existed. What a shame. The world knew her as “Aunt Jemima”, but her given name was Nancy Green and she was a true American success story. She was born a slave in 1834 Montgomery County, Kentucky. and became a wealthy superstar in the advertising world, as its first living trademark. Green was 56 years old when she was selected as spokesperson for a new ready-mixed, self-rising pancake flour and made her debut in 1893 at a fair and exposition in Chicago. She demonstrated the pancake mix served thousands of pancakes, and became an immediate star. She was a good storyteller, her personality was warm and appealing, and her showmanship was exceptional. Her exhibition booth drew so many people that special security personnel were assigned to keep the crowds moving. Nancy Green was signed to a lifetime contract, traveled on promotional tours all over the country, and was extremely well paid. Her financial freedom and stature as a national spokesperson enabled her to become a leading advocate against poverty and in favor of equal rights for all Americans. She maintained her job until she died in 1923, at age 89. This was a remarkable woman, and sadly she has been ERASED by politics. I wanted you to know and remind you in this cancel culture period.

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MARIE MEYER:

The majority of Fentanyl (including what is on the dark web) is coming from China via Mexico. Deporting Latino immigrants and shutting down the border is not going to change that. Latinos deserve to be here. Their ancestors are indigenous to our region. The border should be open for people from all over the world to come; legally! The reason why they don't make an easy and affordable path to citizenship is because there is too much money in the immigration detainment industry. To pretend that deporting hard working immigrants who have assimilated here is going to help the country; is ridiculous. They are deporting the very backbone of our agriculture industry in California. They are losing millions in tax revenue from deported immigrants. The foriegn cartel members will continue to do great business here; so long as drugs remain illegal and thus create huge demand! They'll keep doing business via dark web, boat , jet, on foot, through underground tunnels ; it don't matter one bit; shutting the border and deporting people will not keep them out. Trump is wasting alot of money on this futile endeavor of his. This is why we need a Libertarian president. The logic behind how industry demand works is real. Just look at how Mendo ruined the value of our pot industry by legalizing it ; as an example.

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NOT BUYING IT

Editor:

On the whole the Musk fascist/salute thing, I call BS. I’m not buying what a fascist Democratic Party is selling. These same people who tried to force Genocide Joe down our throats, canceling primaries, and telling us all along that he was mentally fit, then when their lie could not be hidden, they selected (not elected) their nominee. And now they see Nazis hiding behind every corner? Puhleeezzzzz!

And it’s now reported there are 20,000 orphans in Gaza, 88% of the infractructure has been destroyed, all with bombs provided by Kamala and JB, with her promising (if elected) more of the same, and now you want us all to get fired up over Musk? I have no words that are adequate to express the depth of my contempt. This is the party that tries to convince the public that the FBI, CIA, and DOD are our friends, and have the doomsday clock closer to midnight than any time since WW2. OH! And if you don't buy what they are selling, you are automatically labelled a sexist and a racist.

Chris Skyhawk

Fort Bragg

ED REPLY: I share your contempt for the Democrats, Hawk, but I think that was definitely a fascist salute Musk threw up there. One salute you might excuse as inadvertent or out of ignorance. Two? Inexcusable, and mos def synonymous only with Nazis, in my opinion.

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TRUMP ORDERS THE RELEASE OF THE FINAL CLASSIFIED JFK ASSASSINATION DOCUMENTS

by Rob Crilly

The last secret files about the assassination of John F. Kennedy can now be published after President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered the declassification of all remaining documents about the 1963 murder.

Conspiracy theories continue to swirl 60 years after the killing.

And any new information will excite the amateur sleuths who continue to wonder whether there is more to the story than just a lone gunman in the shape of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Trump signed an executive order that directs his Director of National Intelligence to put together a plan within 15 days for the full release of documents about the JFK assassination.

'That's a big one, huh?' he said as he scrawled his signature on the order, before asking that the pen be given to RFK Jr. 'A lot of people are waiting for this for a long … for years, for decades.

'Everything will be revealed.'

The executive order, obtained by DailyMail.com, said: 'More than 50 years after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Federal Government has not released to the public all of its records related to those events.

'Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay.'

His intelligence chiefs will have 45 days to put together a plan to release the RFK and King archives.

Millions of pages of JFK documents have already been released leaving only a few thousand kept in the archives.

The most recent releases included CIA cables and memos recording visits by Oswald to the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City weeks before the assassination.

And experts doubt there are any major revelations lurking in the archives that would change the accepted version of events.

Trump promised during his reelection campaign that he would declassify remaining government records surrounding the assassination.

He made a similar promise in his first term but gave way to the CIA and FBI who argued that some documents should be kept from the public for fear they would reveal national security secrets.

Trump teased his plan during his Fox News interview with Sean Hannity on Wednesday evening.

“I’m going to release them immediately,” he said.

“We’re going to see the information. We are looking at it right now.”

Trump said he was persuaded by Mike Pompeo, his former CIA director, not to release them during his first term.

“I was actually asked by Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State, not to, and I felt he knew something that maybe, you know, when he asked you not to, you sort of say ‘why?’ and he felt that it was not a good time to release them,” Trump said.

The hidden records allowed conspiracy theorists the freedom to speculate on what might be hidden.

Was Oswald in the pay of the Cubans or Soviets? Was he a patsy? Why did nightclub owner Jack Ruby shoot him dead live on TV?

The new executive order, signed by Trump in the Oval Office, says: “I have now determined that the continued redaction and withholding of information from records pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is not consistent with the public interest and the release of these records is long overdue.”

(DailyMail.uk)

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EX-‘MAGA GRANNY’ IS TURNING DOWN TRUMP’S PARDON OF HER JAN. 6 CONVICTION

She was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. She pleaded guilty. Now, she doesn’t want President Donald Trump’s pardon because she wants to own what she did.

by Ben Brasch

A woman who once called herself the “MAGA Granny” has spent the past few years criticizing Donald Trump after she was sentenced to 60 days in prison for being part of the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Now Pamela Hemphill from Boise, Idaho, will decline the pardon that Trump offered her and other Jan. 6 convicts during the first hours of his second term…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/01/22/maga-trump-reject-jan6-pardon/

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OLD MAN TRUMP

Words by Woody Guthrie, Adapted by Ryan Harvey

I suppose that Old Man Trump knows just how much racial hate
He stirred up in that bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed that color line
Here at his Beach Haven family project

Beach Haven ain't my home!
No, I just can't pay this rent!
My money's down the drain,
And my soul is badly bent!
Beach Haven is Trump’s Tower
Where no black folks come to roam,
No, no, Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain't my home!

I'm calling out my welcome to you and your man both
Welcoming you here to Beach Haven
To love in any way you please and to have some kind of a decent place
To have your kids raised up in.

Beach Haven ain't my home!
No, I just can't pay this rent!
My money's down the drain,
And my soul is badly bent!
Beach Haven is Trump’s Tower
Where no black folks come to roam,
No, no, Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain't my home!

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DOMENICA 2 AND 3 (Nature and The Maroons)

By Randy Rowland

Dominica calls itself “The Nature Island,” I suppose in an effort to encourage tourism. It really is a relatively unspoiled, lush, tropical rainforest island with a rich culture, which boasts a low crime rate, a stable government, and folks who speak English, so you’d think there’d be lots of tourists. Until very recently, there were no flights here from the US. It's so mountainous that the airport’s runway, which is right on the coast, is barely long enough for a smaller jet. Our flight made a steeply banked turn between mountain ridges and sudden drop-down to land. Other than that flight from Miami, getting here requires flying to a neighboring island and then getting a small iner-island hop or catching a ferry. Perhaps that explains why the majority of tourists come by cruise ship for their single day peek-a-boo.

For nature lovers, there are waterfalls, hot springs—including a boiling lake, thanks to the volcanic anctivity, endemic species found nowhere else on earth, good snorkeling, and plenty more.

These massive trees have extensive ridges which extend from the trunk. It’s easy to imagine the “rooms” created by the ridges would make a good spot out of the rain if covered by a tarp or thatch .

This might not look like a poster for a Caribbean island vacation, but this is Dominica in the mountains.

I don’t know that there is a zoo here, I kinda doubt it. This is a wild hawk that happened by while we were hiking.

They have land crabs, which I heard are eaten as a delicacy. We didn’t disturb this one.

I read up a bit on these land crabs. Although they live on land, they evolved from ocean crabs, and this particular species returns to the sea to lay their eggs. That’s hard to imagine, considering we found this crab way up in the mountains, The crabs are mostly nocturnal to avoid being dried out by the sun, and have evolved to conserve water (including urinating on a little “nephritic pad,” in their shell, where microbes clean the water which is then re-absorbed by the crab).

The Maroons

I thought about writing a lengthy essay regarding the Maroons of Dominica, but decided to simply quote the dedication speech given by Dr. Lennox Honychurch here in Roseau for the unveiling of a statue saluting the Maroons. It was reading his speech that drew us to this island, and so, I’m going to let the historian who wrote the book “In the Forests of Freedom: The Fighting Maroons of Dominica,” do the talking. Here, painfully transcribed by me from the opening of his book, is his speech. (Shortly after typing out this whole thing, I found the speech online. Oh well! What I won’t do for you, dear reader, to take you on this trip.) Here’s my photo of the statue he’s referring to:

And here's the speech:

“In a socio-historical study of Dominica carried out in 1984, the Haitian historian Jean Casimir noted that Dominica shows the effects not so much of a plantation society but of a Maroon society. He argued that a late and weak plantation system in Dominica had resulted in a less colonised and thus less regimented and more open modern society. Briefly, Dominica was the last island in the Caribbean to be colonised. Its rugged mountainous nature enabled it to be one of the last places of refuge for the region’s indigenous people, the Kalinago. When the British took over the island in 1763 there were already more than 300 Maroons living in small settlements in the interior. As British and French planters opened up more land for sugar and coffee and imported more enslaved labor, so did the Maroon numbers increase. Plantations and villages clung to the coast while inland a vast jumble of forested ravines, cliffs and river valleys combined to create a complex natural maze which confounded the British forces who attempted to reduce the Maroons by any means possible.

“The call of the conch shell, the kon lambi, echoed across the valleys sending messages and warnings from camp to camp, from one “Neg Mawon” leader to the other. The name “Maroon” had come from the Spanish word cimarron meaning ‘fugitive, runaway, living on mountaintops” (from the Spanish cima meaning “top, summit”). It was adopted by the English and anglicized into “Maroon.” For the French Creoles it became “Neg Mawon;” in those days the French word negre did not merely mean black man or Negro, it also referred to a slave.

“This memorial that we are about to unveil recalls the ‘Neg Mawon” chiefs such as Balla, Congo Ray, Gorre Greg, Jacko, Cicero, Pharcel, Zombie, Jupiter, Juba, Mabouya, Sandy, Quashie, Nicki, Hall and many others. There were also women among them: Charlotte, Calypso, Angelique, Marie-Rose, Tranquille, Rosay, Victorie, and Rachel, and hundreds of others with unrecorded names who, from the 1760s through to the first stage of emancipation in 1834, held out against the plantation forces that were pitted against them.

“It is significant that most of the senior chiefs had been born in Africa, for unlike the Creole, Dominican-born slaves, these Africans had once lived in and experienced a society other than the plantation society. They knew that an alternative system existed and they had no difficulty imagining that it could be recreated here on the other side of the Atlantic.

“In one way, I had hoped that this statue would have been erected in a prominent place in the mountainous heartland of our island home. For in those hills the statue would overlook the mighty green citadel of jagged peaks that was the place of liberty and freedom. It was a sanctuary for those who escaped the system and fought to overturn the institution of enslavement that had been imposed upon them. For, up there, among those forested mountains, was truly their land of Zion.

“Instead, this symbolic representation of Maroon heritage has been placed here on this hill in the Centre of the nation’s capital. Within a few hundred yards in every direction there are places that were, for many of the Maroons, familiar: the site of arrival, the site of sale, the place of punishment and the point of death. For this area was indeed their Babylon. Just down the hill in the harbour below us anchored the slave ships that had completed the treacherous Middle Passage across the Atlantic Ocean from the coast of west Africa. There, on that coast, renegade chiefs, not unlike the drug lords and cocaine dealers of today, had connived with European traders to engage in human trafficking in return for the equivalent of bling and ill-gotten gain.

“Along the Bay Front stood the warehouses and open yards, the taverns and main marketplace where the sales of the newly arrived slaves were transacted. The last of these building to survive is the barracoon building near the end of Dame Eugenia Charles boulevard on the junction with Hillsborough Street.

“Besides being a place of sale, the Old Market was the scene of horrific public punishments and executions. After the great Maroon conflict of 1814, the cobblestones are said to have run with blood, so much so that the populace refused to continue to draw water from the public well and it had to be filled in and covered over.

“Right next to us at Fort Young, the Maroon chief Balla was brought in half dead from the heights of Layou in 1786. According to the British Governor, John Orde, “Balla refused answering almost any questions that were put to him…he called upon his captors repeatedly to cut off his head, telling them that they might do so, but that Balla would not die - his Obi or charm and his child were the only things that he expressed much anxiety about. The former he wished to bury, the latter, a boy of about five years old, he bid to remember that the Beckeys or White Man had killed his father.” Balla was taken to the marketplace to be displayed in a narrow iron cage called a gibbet and took a week to die. The people sang a refrain ‘Balla mort, Bwa gottay Oh.’ ) ‘Balla is dead, the woods are spoilt.’) And as for his son, Governor Orde took the little boy to England where he was sent to school and where he disappeared into the social whirl of Regency London.

“But perhaps the greatest tragedy of the whole Maroon campaign was that many of the “Neg Mawon” lost their lives at the hands of their own people, the so-called ‘trusted Negroes’ who joined their masters’ Ranger Corps. You can go to the National Archives on Kennedy Avenue in Roseau and see the receipts for rewards and bills of freedom paid to Rangers in return for killing the aged and respected chief Jacko, on 12 July 1814, and other chiefs.

“A couple of hundred yards to the south of us is the House of Assembly, which in those days also served as the Court House. There, and at Fort Young and also at the Market House, which still stands overlooking the present Old Market, is where the “kangaroo court” trials of the Maroons took place. The planters produced and quoted legal and religious books to justify the power that they had seized in this colonial society. For we must be frank about this: the Judaic Christian Bible was just as much a tool of colonization and control as were the draconian laws, the land titles and the maps of appropriation and possession.

“That House of Assembly echoed with Biblical quotations plucked from the Old and New Testiments to justify the institution of enslavement. Among the most favored passages used by the planter-legislators was Leviticus 25:44-46: ‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves…and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life…’

“In exhorting their human property to accept their state in life, they turned to passages such as Peter 2:18: ‘Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.’ And when they were debating the Amelioration Acts in the 1820s, aimed at reducing some of the greatest abuses of the system, they turned, in their defence, to Exodus 21:20-21 ‘If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property.’ It is fitting to note that as the tide against slavery began to swell, other verses from that same Bible were used by the Anti-Slavery Movement, Methodists, and Moravians prominent among them, to ask, ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’ It is truly a religious text for all seasons.

“When emancipation was granted on 1 August 1838, exactly 175 years ago today, it was far from the end of the struggle. The Emancipation Act granted compensation not to the former slaves but to their masters for the loss of property. The slave holders of Dominica received £275,547 from the British government while the 14,175 former slaves were left with absolutely nothing to start out their lives as free people. This must be taken into account when considering Dominican society today for, when seen in that light, it is remarkable what has been achieved in areas such as education, home and land ownership and self-government, given that the majority of our ancestors started off with nothing.

“In the decades following emancipation, a raft of laws, such as the wide-ranging vagrancy acts, were passed to keep control of the masses. The aim was to deprive them of land so as to tie them to reliance on the estates, to limit the right to vote and to determine everything in their lives from the rates of their labour to the nature of their sexual activity. The so-called obeah laws were a front for a government policy of de-Africanization of the population. Carve a mask or a statue out of wood and you could be charged with the possession of an instrument of obeah.

“Many of these post-emancipation laws of control still litter our legislation. On independence, we maybe should have done as Nelson Mandela did in South Africa: sweep everything away and start afresh to meet the needs of a modern nation state. But we were too timid, maybe we are still too timid, and that—unlike what the Haitian historian Jean Casimir said of Dominican society—we have been too well and thoroughly colonised to “free our minds of mental slavery.”

“However, it must be said that we were bold enough to go directly into independence as a republic, the only Commonwealth Caribbean country to do so (Trinidad and Guyana became republics some years after their independence.) Even today, we are the only member of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) where our head of state, elected by our own representatives, sits among us, as he does today, and participates in the life and aspirations of our people rather than being a governor-general representing a distant figure 5,000 miles away.

“So the message of this statue does not end with the end of slavery. It does not even end with political independence. Its message carries on, to look back and remember, but also to look forward to influence our present ideals and those in the years ahead. Together with the nearby cenotaph commemorating Dominicans who died in the two world wars, this statue represents a spirit of determination against all odds, a spirit of self-reliance and a respect for the forested citadel of this island that has given its natural resources for our survival and for the continued protection of our people.

Dr. Lennox Honychurch

August, 2013”

That speech piqued our interest in this island and I’ll just add a few words. The first Maroons on Dominica escaped from the Spanish who landed on the island. Others found their way to freedom from nearby islands. And among the Maroons and Kalinago, there were, from the beginning, a few Europeans who had deserted or fled indentured status. According to an estimation cited by Dr Honychurch, in 1569 there were 30 Spanish and 40 Africans living among the Kalinagos on Dominica. From these early days, for the next approximately 250 years, the Maroons defended their freedom on Dominica. These Maroons were tough. For instance, in 1815, when the island’s Governor issued a reward for the head of Quashee, a much-feared Maroon leader, posters went up in town wherein Quashee promised double that amount for the head of the Governor. The Europeans controlled about a 2 mile coastal zone ringing the island, the Maroons, for the most part, had the rest.

The history of the Moroons in Dominica illustrates a point that has lately been on my mind; progress comes in fits and starts, and seldom does a single battle lead straight to a better day. It’s worth keeping in mind that in a sense the cause of the oppressed proceeds through a series of surges and setbacks. The Maroons here were almost wiped out several times. In the end, none of their battles directly led the British to abolish slavery. But their fight contributed to the overall abolitionist struggle. And when at last the Maroons here had been hunted almost to extinction, the Christmas uprising associated with Sam Sharpe erupted in Jamaica. It too, led to apparent defeat, but the end result, only a few years later, was emancipation throughout most of the British Empire.

Today, around 94% of the people here have African roots. (The Kalinago count for another 4% of the island’s population.)

(via Fred Gardner)

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LEAD STORIES, FRIDAY'S NYT

Trump to Visit North Carolina and California, With Disaster Aid an Open Question

Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump’s Plan to End Birthright Citizenship

Trump Issues Executive Order to Support the Growth of Cryptocurrencies

Egg Prices Are High. They Will Likely Go Higher

Don’t Look Now, but Kidz Boppers Have Graduated From College

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TRUMPOCALYPSE

by Juan Cole

My name isn’t important, only what I have to say. I’m writing with a pencil because I need to conserve my batteries tonight. It’s Year 24 of Our Trump (though he himself, of course, is no longer with us, just his kids who are running things). I feel like I should try to explain our era to whoever opens this time capsule a century from now, though you may need scuba gear to get at it. A lot of records could be lost by then. The Chinese climate hoax was less of a hoax than we thought at the time. Forgive me, Donald, but despite what the New Evangelical Church says, you were anything but infallible — even if I still can’t say so publicly.

I’d like to move away from the coast, maybe even go north. But real estate in the interior is too pricey, especially at higher elevations away from the flood plains. Looking on the bright side, though, my bunker has held up alright so far, even during the usual Cat 7 hurricanes, and I’ve stocked plenty of canned soup. I do worry, though, about being submerged by a storm surge. No one wants to end up like those poor people in Galveston.

I only hope that the state police won’t find my solar panels, which charge my contraband batteries to keep the AC going down here. We’re all haunted by that Black August in Palm Beach. It turns out that they had 100 percent humidity then. Combine that with temperatures reaching 120º F and it dead-on kills you. Your sweat just can’t cool you down anymore and you end up with terminal heat stroke. Of course, most of them could have been saved by air conditioning if it hadn’t been for the blackout at that new nuclear plant. Bad timing. It turns out such plants use water for cooling and, that day, the local water was so hot they had to shut the plant down.

Tipping Point

There was an unforeseen climate tipping point we blundered into. Looking back, I now realize that the U.S. put out 4.7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in the year before — yes, before! — the Second Advent of Our Trump. Horrific as that may have been, it was only about 11% of total global emissions, which hit 41.6 billion metric tons that year before the Second Advent (up from 40.6 billion tons in 2023). In short, we used up our carbon budget twice as fast as anyone had predicted, though I wasn’t paying attention at the time. My friends then would have thought me crazy if I had.

Even a few years ago, such facts and figures would have seemed unbearably wonky to me. I didn’t realize my wife would divorce me over them and I’d end up alone here in my bunker, doomscrolling the dark web looking for the catastrophes they don’t let the mainstream media report anymore. Don’t worry, I use a virtual private network and I don’t think the NSA can trace me. The long and short of it is that the world was going in the wrong direction even before Our Trump returned that second time and turbocharged that all too unfortunate trajectory.

Some people think we should flee the Big One. For me, it’s too late. The highways are a parking lot and the price of gasoline is too steep because of the fracked fields going dry. Maybe Our Trump shouldn’t have banned EVs. And I can’t fly out of here anymore (even if I could afford to). It’s too hot for the airplanes to take off. I hadn’t known it, but flying depends on the air having a certain thickness, and hot air has less volume because the molecules speed up and spread around. That’s what Alfred, my PAIC (Personal AI Chatbot), told me when I asked him. Not sure I understand, but it doesn’t matter. The planes are grounded, and so am I.

The Resurrection and the Triumph of Coal

When Our Trump and Secretary of Energy Joe Manchin put billions into reviving Big Coal, that shot U.S. emissions up to six billion metric tons of CO2 in just a couple of years, then seven billion, and so on, launching an international trend as Trumpist-style parties took over ever more governments globally.

As you might expect, once Elon Musk bankrolled the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and helped put it in charge, its Fourth Reich held huge rallies in soccer stadiums where they piled up banned solar panels and wind turbine blades and burned them. Then they rounded up immigrants to use as slave labor in Germany’s revived coal mines. When the European Court of Justice ruled against them, the fascist government in Berlin promptly annexed Belgium. And that essentially marked the end of the European Union.

Russia also doubled down on coal. Even in the early 2020s, its Kuznetsk Basin in Siberia was one of the world’s largest coal producers. When Our Trump gave Eastern Europe back to Moscow, the Russian Federation prohibited electric cars and heat pumps so it could sell its oil and gas. Poland predictably returned to being all coal all the time and the Le Pen cartel in France, taking its marching orders from Russia, soon legislated the same prohibitions on green tech. Europe’s carbon dioxide production soon skyrocketed.

But the worst problems lay in Asia, an area about which I’ve only recently started to get up to speed. The leaders of China and India insisted that they were damned if they would make sacrifices and risk labor unrest shutting down their coal industries, when the U.S. and Europe were planning to go all out promoting theirs. Imagine the Chinese communists being afraid of their own workers and, worse yet — something I hadn’t faintly realized then — but at the time half the coal mined in the world came from China and even before Our Great Leader came to power a second time, the Communist Party already had plans to mine a billion more tons of it per year.

With America’s implicit permission, Beijing promptly ramped up production. I found out that they were already putting out 70% of the world’s methane emissions from coal mines in the early ’20s. Even then, there were 1.5 million Chinese coal miners while more than 6% of that country still depended on coal plants for electricity. All those numbers only went up when the Communist Party, citing Our Trump, ramped up coal production, sending billions of tons more CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. Alfred says methane is up to 80 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, even if for a shorter period of time.

In the early part of this century, India was already increasing its coal-fired power plants. When the Hindu nationalists fell in love with Our Trump, however, they became yet more bullish on coal. Their CO2 emissions went through the proverbial roof. They say that, given the smog in New Delhi, the capital, nowadays you can’t see two feet in front of you on a typical day, and 10% of Indians have chronic bronchitis.

The Indians had rejected criticisms of all those carbon-dioxide emissions from low-lying Bangladesh as “anti-Hindu propaganda.” Our Trump used to say that we’d just get more top-notch beachfront property out of sea level rise, but now I realize that was a sick joke. If you keep heating up this planet, it melts the surface ice, which goes into the ocean and does indeed cause its level to rise. Warmer water also takes up more space, contributing to sea level rise. So, the Bay of Bengal did indeed rise to claim the capital, Dhaka, along with 20% of the rest of the country. Famine left tens of millions of its people gaunt or skeletal. When millions of Bangladeshi climate refugees then tried to get into India, its army committed what’s now known as the Great Bangla Genocide. Historians say killings on that scale had never been carried out before.

Goodbye to Trump Tower

At an old, banned National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration site on the dark web I found a document that said, “Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than ever — accelerating on a steep rise to levels far above any experienced during human existence.” That was from 2024 and whoever wrote it may now be in one of those reeducation camps for Beijing Ministry of State Security spies accused of promoting what the Trump Environmental Protection Agency branded “the climate hoax.” I might find myself there, too, if anyone discovers just how I feel these days.

I now realize that scientists have known for over a century that carbon dioxide absorbs the ultraviolet light reflected off the earth’s surface, keeping more of the sun’s heat in our atmosphere. I guess those UV rays used to hit this planet and then radiate back into outer space at a significantly greater rate, leaving us so much cooler than we are now. I never paid attention to any of this back in the twenties of this century. Since then, however, I’ve had time to get up to speed. After all, what else is there to do in this bunker?

Believe me, it was kind of embarrassing in 2034, even to me, when The Tower of Our Trump collapsed in Manhattan. Of course, as he said then, it was absolutely not his fault. Instead, he blamed the immigrant construction workers who built it, but they weren’t to blame, either. These days, at least three or four percent of the buildings in New York City are at risk from groundwater table rise. And it isn’t just that. Every time another big storm hits, flooding damages tens of thousands of buildings and turns the subway into a swimming pool.

Worse yet, more than a third of the buildings in New York are at risk from storm surges in year 24 of Our Trump. I read somewhere that the southern tip of Manhattan, the East Village, the Upper East Side, and the Tribeca and Canal Street areas now flood for some months of the year. Likewise, the Queens neighborhoods near Jamaica Bay are thoroughly waterlogged. Wasn’t Our Trump originally from Queens?

And to jump across what’s left of this country for a moment, today I caught someone on the dark web reporting from Phoenix, Arizona. It seems like the population there is just a quarter of what it was 25 years ago. Half of the year now it’s dangerously hot and there isn’t enough water. And the electricity blackouts that take out your AC are evidently a nightmare and a half. Same problem, hot river water can’t cool the plant equipment.

That fellow reporting from Phoenix said those local diehards who refuse to leave call themselves Fremen like in the remake of the Dune film and say they need stillsuits. When the Proud Boys won the election for city council there, Our Trump told them to deep-six the local climate action plan, which he swore was for “pussies.” Painting everything white, he insisted, made the city look like a tomb and he wanted the urban tree cover to be cut down for firewood.

Trump’s will be done, as they say.

At least Phoenix is still there. Los Angeles wasn’t so lucky. As it got drier and drier every fall, the Santa Ana winds regularly whipped up wildfires, and one neighborhood after another was turned into cinders. When Beverly Hills went up in flames the way Pacific Palisades had 20 years earlier, that was the nail in the coffin.

The Big One?

Now, I spend my days thinking about the Big One, about how it could all go down. When Chinese forces fired on that American destroyer off Taiwan, the Trump dynasty went ballistic. They said they would bring pain to Beijing like the world had never seen before. They didn’t want to send in ships or troops though, claiming their Dad had been against wasting money on foreign wars.

That was when someone on Fox & Friends (the only “news” show still allowed) suggested a symbolic response, an attack on that big new Chinese military base on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). The Trump family immediately ordered a nuclear strike there. I hear Tiffany was the only one who didn’t think it was a good idea. But it melted a lot of the Thwaites glacier, one of the biggest in the world, and the rest of it slid into the ocean. They say it will raise sea level by two feet globally and pretty darn quickly, too, because of that nuke melting so much surface ice. Count on one thing: it will truly be a Trumpocalypse.

That would put my bunker under, of course. I only hope it’s watertight.

(This piece first appeared on TomDispatch. CounterPunch.org.)

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“The task is not to see what has never been seen before, but to think what has never been thought before about what you see everyday.”

— Erwin Schrödinger (1887 - 1961)

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QUANTUM DESCARTES

by Ted Dace

Ever since Rene Descartes characterized matter and mind in terms of an extensive substance and a thinking substance, people with some time on their hands have struggled to resolve the mind-body problem. How do fundamentally different things collaborate in the seamless workings of cogitation? Surely there's ultimately one substance, not two. Yet the materialist reduction of mind to brain makes no more sense than the idealist reduction of brain to mind. As philosopher Henri Bergson (1911, pp. 10-11) pointed out, the brain cannot be at once a center of physical activity and a seat of representations of physical activity. A material object is bound by the principle of identity: A = A. Representational thought, on the other hand, entails A = B. Whatever it is you're thinking about, it differs from the thought itself. To reduce mind to brain — to claim that the mind in reality is only the brain at work — is to suspend the principle of identity in the case of neurotransmission, endowing the brain with a magical property.

The failure to resolve the mind-body problem allowed it to fester and mutate into the central dilemma of physics today: the quantum measurement problem. According to the measurement postulate, resolving the indefinite value of a property of a quantum system into a determinate value requires a measurement, meaning an interaction and therefore an event or happening (Heisenberg 1958, p. 142). In essence, what is postulated is time. In order for humans to sense objects, quantum systems — atoms and their components — must have definite properties at distinct moments of time.

Of course, measurement is supposed to uncover values, not create them. Yet quantum measurement, instead of just telling us what state an atom is in, calls forth from a cloud of indeterminacy a particular result that could just as easily have been totally different. Why does an event, including the event we call measurement, endow with definitude a quantum system ordinarily consisting of a set of possible states?

Since quantum mechanics is fundamental while classical mechanics is the emergent approximation, we might ask why there is a tangible world at all. Where is the divide between the inherently vague quantum system and the device by which we investigate it? A measuring device is itself composed of atoms. What prevents the indefiniteness that characterizes the atom being measured from “infecting” the measuring device? To put it another way, what magical property enables the device to impose a precise outcome onto the quantum system?

“Measuring devices,” writes philosopher Peter J Lewis (2016, p. 50), “are just hunks of matter, obeying the same physical laws as any other hunk of matter.” He might as well have been referring to brains.

A measuring device might include a microscope through which an observer views a mark left by an atom on a photographic plate. Nothing fundamental divides that mark from the microscope or the observer's eye or the optic nerve that leads to the occipital lobe of the observer's cerebrum. As far as theorist John von Neumann could see, the only divide or “cut” is between the brain and consciousness. That which imposes certainty onto an otherwise uncertain atom is none other than the “abstract ego” of the observer (Whitaker 2006, pp. 173, 198). The quantum dilemma is the mind-body problem transposed onto physics.

Niels Bohr developed the concept of particle-wave complementarity to enable continued physical research under the hostile new conditions dictated by quantum mechanics. Though long regarded as deeply perplexing, from the temporal standpoint complementarity makes perfect sense. Implicit in a definite position of a high-speed electron is a distinct moment. In this case we refer to the electron as a particle. The wave aspect is illustrated by momentum. By its nature, momentum cannot be confined to an instant but carries over from one to the next. Whereas position is a snapshot — a single instant in a succession of instants — momentum is the current that runs through them, converting snapshots into the cinema of the sensory world.

We can regard time as continual passage or the precise moments which — like carp jumping from a creek — periodically emerge from the flow. In quantum investigations it just depends on whether we seek to measure the momentum of the atom or capture its position at an instant. Likewise, measuring ourselves from within we find a flux of feeling and thought and memory and drive, but if we try to measure the mind externally we find only a brain, a classical object as precisely defined as a shoe or a cardboard box. Mind and brain are indeed the same thing but in different contexts. Whereas the mind is the brain in a purely temporal setting — a propagating wave of potentiality — the brain is the mind exteriorized at each fleeting moment as an observable object.

Bergson often pointed out that music entails the flow of past into present, without which it would come across as disjointed sounds, mere noise (Ansell-Pearson 2018, p. 20). For the author of ‘Matter and Memory,’ the spatial world of the senses is only the surface of existence. All true depth, everything that makes us human, is temporal, whether the infusing of our current state with our past states or the quest to actualize our potentials. Yet theoretical physicists assure us that Einstein long ago reduced time to the fourth dimension of a space-time manifold, as static and inanimate as the three spatial dimensions. Perhaps Bohr's conceptual framework provides a resolution. Like particle to wave or brain to mind, space-time is complementary to fundamental time.

Food for thought.

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THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH

if I suffer at this
typewriter
think how I'd feel
among the lettuce-
pickers of Salinas?
I think of the men
I've known in
factories
with no way to
get out-
choking while living
choking while laughing
at Bob Hope or Lucille
Ball while
2 or 3 children beat
tennis balls against
the wall.
some suicides are never
recorded.

— Charles Bukowski

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