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A QUICK HITTING RAIN system will continue to impact the area through this afternoon. The strongest rain will be focused along the Humboldt and Del Norte coast. Conditions will quickly calm and begin to dry by tonight. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): The rain just started at 5:20am with a warm 50F on the coast this Humpday morning. The rain should be short lived leaving the area by later morning, giving way to clear skies until about Saturday afternoon when we might get a brief shot of rain then again on Monday. That far out things can change of course, stay tuned weather fans.
SHERIFF KENDALL, this morning appointed Deputy Ryan Thomas, who has chosen to continue his peace officer career with the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office. Additionally, two new Public Safety Dispatchers, Ashley Edwards and Caylin Tipton took the Dispatcher’s Oath this morning. Both have already been proven employees of the Sheriff’s Office. Please join us in congratulating Ryan, Ashley and Caylin as they begin the next chapters in their law enforcement careers.
A NEW ERA FOR GEOTHERMAL POWER IN SONOMA AND MENDOCINO
by Monica Huettl
Sonoma Clean Power is looking underground to power the future. At a February 6 town hall in Cloverdale, SCP officials laid out their ambitious plans to tap into the GeoZone—a vast geothermal field beneath Sonoma and Mendocino counties—with the goal of adding 600 megawatts of clean, locally produced energy. The meeting drew an engaged audience eager to weigh in on the project’s potential benefits and challenges.…
https://mendofever.com/2025/02/18/a-new-era-for-geothermal-power-in-sonoma-and-mendocino/
HERE WE GO AGAIN
Bill Introduced To Get AT&T Out Of ‘Carrier Of Last Resort’ Obligation
by Sage Alexander
A state assembly bill was introduced earlier this month. The author intends it to be a placeholder to amend laws that make AT&T provide base-level phone service to thousands of Californians.
Carriers of Last Resort (COLR) are companies required by state law to provide some service to all customers who request it. AT&T is the largest COLR in California. The telecommunications giant has been attempting to get out of this designation for swaths of California, including Humboldt County, so far without success.
The bill’s author, Tina McKinnor (D-Inglewood) told Politico earlier this month that this bill, AB 470, is an intent bill that would phase out AT&T’s obligation for landline service in areas that have other coverage.
(Eureka Times-Standard)
PALMA TOOHEY GETS WELL-DESERVED AWARD
On Monday, February 17, 2025, Anderson Valley Lions Club and Lions Club International presented Palma Toohey with the Melvin Jones Fellowship Award.
This is the first time this prestigious award has been bestowed upon a local member. In 1973, Lions Clubs International created the Melvin Jones Fellowship Award to honor individuals who demonstrate exceptional service within their local club and community. Bill Holcomb, AV Lions member for over 50 years and Palma’s father, did the honors of presenting Palma with the plaque.
Other AV Lions members were recognized for their years of service with the club as well; Christine Clark for 35 years, Terry Ryder Sites for 15 and Renee Wyant Lee for 10 years. Congratulations to all!
Lions Clubs International is the world’s largest service club organization with 1.4 million members in more than 48,000 clubs worldwide. Founded in 1917, Lions are best known for fighting blindness, but Lions also care for the environment, feed the hungry, fight childhood cancer, and provide diabetes awareness and prevention. LCI will help to achieve its mission by empowering youth to inspire diverse communities to service. Locally, our Lions Club chairs fundraisers for local non-profits, awards scholarships to the local graduates, sponsors youth academic and atheltic endeavors and supports many other charities.
If you are interested in learning more or joining Anderson Valley Lions Club, they meet every third Monday of the month at 6 pm at the Anderson Valley Grange in Philo.
ANANDA LEHUANANI WESLEY (facebook): In search of any part time or flexible desk jobs, I’m currently navigating some serious medical issues so I am back-and-forth to the city a lot for doctors appointments. Unfortunately, I am no longer on disability so I am needing to look for some part-time employment to try to cover some bills. I’m hoping to find an office or desk job as I can’t do much heavy lifting and standing on my feet for long periods of time can be painful. I understand how difficult the job market is right now, and the issues I’m experiencing definitely make that more difficult. I would appreciate any leads for information anybody might have. Thank you!
ANNIE BURKE (1876-1962), a weaver who spent much of her adult life educating others on the ways of the Pomo, asked her daughter, Elsie, not to destroy her baskets upon her death. Elsie Comanche Allen (1899-1990) had a native artisan eye for esthetics, and she added to her mother's collection during the next 30 years, devoting herself to education as her mother had. She, in turn, appointed her oldest daughter, Genevieve Allen Aguilar (b. 1920), as the next guardian of the collection, who placed it on long-term loan to the Mendocino County Museum.
ADDITIONAL INFO ON POSSIBLE ZUCKERBERG CASPAR PROPERTY:
Eli Maddock: There’s definitely a house (more like a mansion), multiple buildings, a massive water tower, pond, tennis court, and more. All visible from google earth and from the road. No proof that Mr Z. is the owner, but definitely a wealthy person who built all of it. Here’s a pin if you want to look: https://maps.app.goo.gl/urhGsZ6XxyXTYy5q9?g_st=ic
Stephen Dunlap: I have been on the property I assume is the Zuck place. A LOT of $ being spent by someone there – the location is not impressive to me, a local. Seems a bit of an odd location for such a large & costly project? Plenty of hush hush involved among contractors.
ADAM GASKA:
The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors voted not to financially support the building of Coyote Dam back in 1950 primarily because coastal supervisors didn’t want to pay for a project that would only support inland water supply. People in Ukiah and south to Hopland organized a property tax measure to fund bonds to pay for a portion of construction to get some water rights. The community of Redwood Valley didn’t support the property tax because they didn’t see how they would benefit not being located below where the dam would be built and didn’t see how they would pump water over the hill to Redwood Valley. 25 years later, Redwood Valley borrowed $8 million to build a water system, treatment plant and install pumps to “pump water over the hill”.
Most recently, former supervisor Gjerde balked at the County financially supporting any efforts to support efforts to save the PVP as he felt the cost should be paid for by water users. In the 3rd district, there is also a good amount of support to decommission the dams hoping that it will help in the recovery of salmonids.
Currently we are in a similar situation. The County doesn’t have a stand alone water agency to focus on County water issues in large part because the different regions of the County are focused on their own issues and are reluctant to support each others interests when projects don’t directly benefit them. My feeling is that we need to work together to have a stronger voice at the state and federal level in order to increase our chances of getting funding for water projects.
MARK SCARAMELLA NOTES: My uncle, Joe Scaramella, was elected Fifth District Supervisor as one of a four-man “reform” slate in 1952, two years after Mr. Gaska says the Supervisors made the fateful decision to not put up much money for Coyote Dam. He served as Fifth District Supervisor until his retirement in 1970. As I remember his remarks on the subject, Joe Scaramella said that there were other opportunities after that 1950 vote to contribute to the dam construction and even then Joe Scaramella was the only supervisor who voted to contribute more. Joe Scaramella told me that his fellow Supervisors simply didn’t think there was a need for much more water than they already had access to considering how much money was involved. They thought they could meet future needs without Lake Mendocino. Joe Scaramella himself was somewhat torn on the question because Lake Mendocino would have (and did) take a large number of taxable ag parcels off the County tax rolls. But nevertheless he was in favor of contributing more than the other four supervisors would support.
2024 GRAPE HARVEST IN MENDOCINO COUNTY ECHOES INDUSTRY STRUGGLES
The 2024 California harvest season was marked by a historically light crop, dropping to 2.8 million tons — a 23% decrease from 2023. Despite a smaller harvest, approximately 100,000 tons of grapes were left unharvested, underscoring ongoing struggles in the industry. This follows the 2023 harvest, which saw an oversupply of 3.7 million tons, exacerbated by economic pressures and changing consumer preferences.
The light 2024 harvest did offer some relief from the oversupply impacting the industry, giving wineries the opportunity to sell their 2023 and earlier vintages.
In Mendocino County, the impact of the downturn was mixed. The tonnage of white varietals remained relatively stable, with Chardonnay matching 2023’s numbers. However, prices for Chardonnay saw a dramatic collapse, with nearly 25% of the county’s crop sold at fire-sale pricing of $500 per ton or less. Likely due to this incredibly low pricing, the tonnage of Chardonnay sold from Mendocino County hit a new high, accounting for 23% of the total North Coast Chardonnay transactions, the highest percentage to date.
Sauvignon Blanc saw a slight decline in price, but overall the crop held steady, with tonnage remaining relatively unchanged. The silver lining for white varietals is that due to lower pricing, a new audience purchased Mendocino County grapes, which will expose a broader market to the extremely high quality of grapes being produced in the county.
In contrast, Mendocino's red wine grapes—including Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Zinfandel—suffered a sharp decline. There was a notable increase in unpicked fruit, with Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel being the most affected. Although pricing for red varietals held relatively stable for fruit that was sold, the majority of sales were contracted in previous years. As contracts are cancelled or renegotiated, a clearer picture of the market going into 2025 harvest and beyond will emerge.
Compounding the problem, the U.S. wine industry continues to face an influx of foreign bulk wine. Reports indicate that 30 million gallons of bulk wine were imported in 2024, to the detriment of U.S. growers. “At a time when California’s wine industry is on its knees, we should not be importing this much wine,” says Lorenzo Pacini, treasurer of Mendocino Winegrowers, Inc. (MWI). “The U.S. should cancel all tax incentives for importing bulk wine, and wineries should be held accountable for where their wine comes from.”
Mendocino County’s harvest was emblematic of the broader struggles within California's North Coast wine-growing regions, where tonnage fell 16% from 2023 to 2024, driven by low demand as well as crop losses due to late-season heat waves. The quality of the fruit that was harvested was considered extremely high, meaning many grape and bulk wine buyers were able to purchase top-notch product at very low prices.
“California’s wine industry is experiencing an unprecedented crisis,” said Pacini. “Mendocino County is in the thick of it, but we will continue to focus on what we do best, which is make world-class wines, and we are committed to promoting Mendocino wines and grapes to the world.” Mendocino County was just named America’s Wine Region of the Year by Wine Enthusiast magazine, a
As MWI looks ahead to 2025, the organization remains committed to advocating for its members and the future of the county's vineyards. The Mendocino wine community continues to focus on producing some of the finest wines in the world, with a deep commitment to sustainability, innovation, and quality.
Mendocino Winegrowers, Inc. (MWI) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the grapes and wines of Mendocino County. With a membership of local grape growers and vintners, MWI works to ensure the long-term success of the Mendocino wine industry through advocacy, education, and sustainability initiatives.
ED NOTES
REMEMBER when the Chron's “10 Memorable Bottles” of the year included Anderson Valley Brut Rose, concocted at Roederer, Philo? Arguably the most exciting drink ever it was described by Jon Bonne as “Filled with scents of ripe butterscotch, dried roses, wild strawberry, heather, and unfiltered whim-whams, it was just old enough to have taken on a mellow pastry-dough sweetness, yet bright enough to burst with all the energy of the urique raton that gives this drink its unusual pale yellow color.”
BONNE'S mention of “whim-whams” is interesting. Zu-zu’s and whim-whams is prison lingo for candy, although wine writers oughta be locked up for crimes against reality. It's unlikely Bonne was ever locked up anywhere but at a wine tasting.
FRONTIERS OF FREE ENTERPRISE: The cheese & cracker sample table at Safeway, Ukiah, was once described as an “instructional tasting event” where a pleasant woman was available to “instruct” shoppers on the diff between Velveeta and Smoked Gouda.
ASSEMBLY BILL 605 allowed “free beer, wine and liquor tastings inside large supermarkets and large liquor outlets,” but with this caveat: “An instructional tasting event on the subject of wine or distilled spirits shall be limited to not more than three tastings per person per day. A single tasting of distilled spirits shall not exceed one-fourth of one ounce and a single tasting of wine shall not exceed one ounce. An instructional tasting event on the subject of beer shall be limited to not more than the tasting of eight ounces of beer per person per day.”
CONTEMPORARY AMERICA, as described by former governor of Pennsylvania Ed Rendell: “My biggest beef is that this is part of what’s happened in this country. We’ve become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butts in everything.” The governor was upset that an Eagles-Vikes football game was moved inside because of a snowstorm. “If this was China, do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium; they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.”
RECOMMENDED READING: ‘Catch/Release’ by David Ollier Weber, who once lived in Comptche, and recommended because the author captured an important Mendo vibe, the prevalent vibe in certain areas of the county. Set in the Emerald Triangle's most exciting outback venues, mostly along the Mina Road running between Covelo and Alderpoint, Catch/Release begins, “We still pick up hitchhikers in Mendocino County…” Yeah, lots of us do, but only because we know them and there might be social consequences if we don't stop. But if you're deep in the outback, somewhere south of Zenia, basic human solidarity will make you stop for someone who appears to be in need, which is what Ollier's nifty little novel is pegged to, a humanitarian impulse that nearly gets the humanitarian killed. The author has clearly spent a lot of time around low-lifes because the low life he gives a lift to is perfectly portrayed right down to the creative grammar of his vocabulary of curses. The book's a page turner. I picked it up and didn't put it down until I was confident the narrator would survive the Mina Road. Ollier manages to capture both the more comfortable Mendo vibe reflected by the fleshpots of Mendocino Village and the ominous one you can get in the Northeast sector of the county even without a demented hitchhiker as your passenger. In this tale, which is definitely an essential addition to the Mendo oeuvre, you not only get deftly drawn suspense but a nice set piece on fishing, funny encounters with a surly Klamath store clerk and a female Fox News zombie who picks up our hero on Highway 36 when he becomes the hitchhiker. Ollier's a guy who knows his Mendo, from the Pacific to the Yolly Bollys.
“MR. WALLER ordered lunch with the care of one to whom lunch is no slight matter. Few workers in the City do regard lunch as a trivial affair. It is the keynote of their day. It is an oasis in a desert of ink and ledgers. Conversation in a City office deals, in the morning, with what one is going to have for lunch, and in the afternoon, with what one has had for lunch.” — P.G. Wodehouse, 1910; from ‘Psmith in the City’
THERE are “spirit rocks” at various sites around the county, mute reminders that the native peoples managed to live here without disfiguring it beyond these ancient signboards. The spirit rock at Cloverdale is a registered archeological site sequestered from vandals behind a formidable fence not far from the Russian River. The spirit rock at the headwaters of Feliz Creek west of Hopland, east of Anderson Valley, is not easily accessed, fortunately, although vandals are determined and resourceful, especially when they think there's a sale to be made. Archeologists say both ancient monuments go back at least ten thousand years. The spirit rock at Feliz is more of a boulder than a rock, huge and covered with symbols carved into it. Feliz Creek, at Hopland, where we see it as we pass over it on 101, is a desolate, battered, lunar-like streambed that comes briefly to life only after a big rain. But at its headwaters deep in the hills between the Anderson Valley and Hopland, Feliz is a lush, Edenic stream, replete with landlocked summer time trout, flowing through a large meadow bordered by acorn-bearing old oak trees, the whole of it nourishing generations of Indians who lingered there long enough to chisel their forever presence into the big rock.
SOME YEARS AGO, Supervisor Pinches invited me and several interested friends to view a spirit rock Pinches said rested deep in the Eel River Canyon but accessible through his place, which itself is a very long haul east from Highway 101. The supervisor led us down to the abandoned rail tracks of the long-gone Northwestern Pacific RR, then left us with directions to the site while he, in the hundred degree heat, retreated back up the hill to his ranch house in his air conditioned truck. We trudged north along the tracks until it occurred to me that we just might be on a snipe hunt, my first since I was seven or so when a cousin left me holding a paper bag over a hole in the ground waiting to trap the creature that never appeared and didn't exist. But we soon forded the hip-deep Eel and there they were, cryptic signs carved tentatively, it seemed to us, into the stone on a boulder beside the river at an unsustaining juncture of vertical hillsides and rushing water. Why would the Indians have gathered here? The abundance of the Feliz Creek headwaters, in contrast to Pinches' alleged Eel River spirit rock, made Feliz an obvious place to settle in. When white settlers were hunting Indians like deer circa 1850, remnant inland tribes had fled to the hills west of Hopland, east of Yorkville, and may have also sought earlier sanctuary at the bountiful headwaters of Feliz when the Spanish soldiers attached to the missions at San Rafael and Sonoma rode north to capture Indians for work and salvation. Unaffiliated slave traders also beseiged the Indians as early as 1840, carrying off children to sell in the Sacramento Valley. From the time of the missions until today, Indians are beleagured, a huge irony considering that the rest of us in Mendocino County are a mere 200 years old, and our spirit rock is State Street, Ukiah.
I think this spirit rock is from Nevada but similar in inscriptions to the spirit rocks of Mendocino County.
CITY OF FORT BRAGG TO HOST PUBLIC WORKSHOP ON MILL SITE REUSE
The City of Fort Bragg reminds the community of an upcoming Public Workshop on Tuesday, February 25, at 5:00 PM at City Hall, with the formal meeting beginning at 5:30 PM. This in-person event is a key opportunity for residents to actively participate in shaping the future reuse of the Mill Site property. While the meeting will be live-streamed on the City’s website, Facebook, and Channel 3 for viewing, there will be no Zoom option—meaning in-person attendance is the best way to engage directly, ask questions, and provide input.
For over two decades, the City has been engaged in planning efforts for the Mill Site. In 2019, the City’s two- year reuse planning process was put on hold due to litigation between the City, Mendocino Railway, and the California Coastal Commission over land use authority. In November, the City and Mendocino Railway jointly requested a litigation stay to explore a collaborative planning approach. This workshop marks a critical first step in setting litigation aside and establishing a structured process with clear guidelines and commitments for developing a community-based reuse plan for the Mill Site. If successful, this effort could pave the way for new housing, job opportunities, and expanded open space for the community.
Over the past two months, the City has reignited planning efforts with Mendocino Railway and its land use planning team. Economic & Planning Systems, Inc. (EPS), along with local planning professionals, is leading this initiative. EPS, which previously contributed to Mill Site planning in 2004, brings extensive experience in large-scale development projects.
Workshop Highlights
At the February 25 Public Workshop, attendees will:
- Review and provide input on the vision, goals, and draft Illustrative Land Use Map for the Mill Site’s reuse.
- Engage with City representatives, Mendocino Railway, and planning consultants. Next Steps A City Council Study Session is scheduled for March 10 at 6:00 PM to discuss the future of the Mill Site planning process. At that meeting, the Council will consider whether to extend the litigation stay and continue a community-based planning approach with Mendocino Railway and the Coastal Commission—or explore alternative options. The City encourages all community members to attend the Public Workshop on February 25 and the City Council Study Session on March 10 to help shape the future of the Mill-site property. For more information, please contact: Isaac Whippy, City Manager, Email: iwhippy@fortbragg.com
MENDOCINO COUNTY POET LAUREATE DEVREAUX BAKER WINS PRESTIGIOUS AWARDS, PLANS LOCAL READINGS
Our first Mendocino County Poet Laureate, Devreaux Baker, recently won the Willie Morris Award for Southern Poetry and will be flying to Oxford Mississippi on April 2nd to read her poem “Blue Requiem” and participate in the Oxford Conference of Books. She also recently won the Steve Kowit Poetry Prize and will be going to San Diego on April 22nd to read her winning poem “Body of the Beloved.” (See the attached document at the bottom of this email for the “Body of the Beloved” if you would like to read and/or publish it.)
One of Devreaux Baker’s projects as Mendocino County Poet Laureate is to edit and publish Spirit Of Place: Mendocino County Women Poets Anthology. (This is a follow up to the Mendocino Women Poets Anthology: Wood, Water, Air and Fire that was published in 1999 and which she also helped edit.)
Body of the Beloved
The morning the roof caught on fire we were not speaking.
I forget now what happened. It could have been a tone of voice
that made me think I was drowning.
.
Could have been a held resentment, entering me like something
familiar, rising in dark water swelling higher and higher,
until all my seasons were storms and I was a hurricane.
.
For whatever reason when the house caught on fire
we were not speaking until I heard you call my name
saw the flames roaring up from the roof and called 911.
.
But the wait for the fire department was too long,
you and your son climbed that roof and put out the fire.
I watched you standing up there, mythic in all that smoke
.
and thought how it took the damn house, bursting into flame
to make me swear I was done with small things that could never
match the sight of your body stepping out of smoke and fire,
.
clothes black with ash, hands burned.
.
When you climbed back down, I looked at your face and saw you
as though for the first time, felt you in me, like a great thirst
and knew this is our meeting place, beyond measurement, beyond
.
beauty and terror, where blood loves the way of veins and darkness
becomes light, where there are no road signs and ghost deer drift
with smoking hooves.
.
This is the crossroads where we meet face to face and I say
I can bear this life full of constant returning from the edge of despair
or disaster, if you are there, waiting, where living is all we want
.
and I am stunned with the lips and hands, eyes and fingers,
arms, legs and heart of the body of my beloved once again.
— Devreaux Baker
Calendar of Upcoming Mendocino County Poet Laureate Events
Friday, February 28
Benefit reading to support the publication of Spirit Of Place: Mendocino County Women Poets Anthology at the Grace Hudson Museum, 431 S. Main Street, Ukiah, CA 95482, on Friday, February 28th, 2025 at 6:30pm; $10 donation. This reading will feature Jabez Churchill, Georgina Marie Guardado, Linda Noel, Michael Riedell, and Theresa Whitehill.
Thursday, March 27
Devreaux Baker reads in the Writer’s Read series at the Grace Hudson Museum, Ukiah, 7pm.
Friday, April 11
Devreaux Baker reads at the Gualala Art Center in a benefit for Spirit Of Place: Mendocino County Women Poets Anthology.
Monday, April 24
Devreaux Baker reads at Gallery Books, Mendocino, with Santa Rosa poet Greg Randall and Bay Area poet Amanda Moore at 6pm.
Also:
Thursday, February 27
Mendocino County Poet Laureate Committee member, poet Larry Felson reads in the Writer’s Read series at the Grace Hudson Museum, Ukiah, 7pm.
(Mendocino County Poet Laureate Program Presser)
FROM E-BAY, MORE PHOTOGRAPHS OF LOCAL INTEREST (Marshall Newman)
NORTH COAST WINE INDUSTRY BRACES FOR TRUMP’S TARIFFS
At a time when the wine industry faces unprecedented challenges, potential tariffs would be particularly hard to absorb.
by Sarah Doyle
When President Donald Trump imposed a 25% tariff on still wines from France, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom in 2019, Wendy Lamer was ready.
The owner of Disco Ranch — a small wine shop in Anderson Valley beloved for its affordable imports and tiny, local labels — Lamer had planned ahead.
Before the tariffs went into effect, she purchased about 100 cases of “great value,” mostly French wine, a safety net against the rising cost of doing business with Europe.
In 2021, she was relieved when President Biden rescinded tariffs on European wine.
But last November, when Trump announced plans to impose new tariffs on Canadian, Mexican and Chinese imports on his first day back in office, Lamer braced herself for what could come next.
“I’ve never experienced a more challenging winter in the valley. Business is so slow, nobody has money to spend,” said Lamer, who opened Disco Ranch in 2019. “I typically keep more wine inventory than I need, but things are so unpredictable right now. This time, I can’t afford to tie up money buying extra wine.”
Lamer, who is also facing doubled insurance costs after being dropped by her previous carrier last year, said overseas shipping delays are making things worse.
“Shipping is backed up about 10 to 12 weeks. So even if I order wine, it may or may not arrive with tariffs,” she said. “I don’t want to be stuck with the wine if Trump changes his mind. Tariffs could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”
The wide web of wine tariffs
A tax on imported goods, tariffs affect the wine industry in a uniquely complex way.
That’s because of the three-tier system, a government structure that regulates how alcohol is bought and sold in America.
When a retailer, like Lamer, wants to purchase wine from France they can’t buy it directly from the winery. Instead, an importer makes the purchase, then sells the wine to a distributor. The distributor sells the wine to the retailer, who sells the wine to the consumer.
If a tariff is enacted, the importer pays the fee when the wine arrives in the U.S. But they often pass the cost to the distributor.
Every time the wine changes hands, a small profit is made. As a result of this multitiered system, American wine businesses earn $4.50 on every dollar spent on European wine imports. So tariffs disproportionately hurt American wine businesses, compared to European wineries, according to the U.S. Wine Trade Alliance.
A wine trade advocacy group formed to fight against tariffs on wine imports during the first Trump administration, the alliance quickly kicked into high gear after Trump’s reelection.
“Last time, the federal government had close-to-zero understanding of how the wine industry works and the three-tier system,” said Ben Aneff, president of the U.S. Wine Trade Alliance. “Now, I think senior trade officials understand there might be better, more efficient ways to solve trade disputes than wine tariffs, which do damage to small U.S. businesses.”
While Aneff is hopeful the current administration will eschew wine tariffs this go-around, he said “it’s difficult to speculate what they’ll do with any real accuracy.”
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” he said. “We still need to tell our story everywhere we go.”
This week, the Wine Trade Alliance released an action letter drafted to Trump’s primary trade officials, which they hope to send with 5,000 signatures from members of the wine trade.
“The last several years have been brutal to (the wine) industry, with shutdowns, inflation, labor shortages and tariffs,” it stated. “We’re asking that you help us protect the investments we as an industry make to the national labor force by protecting our ability to buy and sell affordable imported wine … (which) should not be on any future tariff list.”
On home turf
Tariffs don’t just hurt American retailers and restaurants that buy imported wines. They also affect wineries at home.
Andy Peay, co-owner of Peay Vineyards in Annapolis in the West Sonoma County appellation,said 5-7% of the winery’s revenue comes from export to countries like Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom and Japan.
When Trump imposed a 25% tariff on all goods from Canada and Mexico, and 10% on Chinese goods on Feb. 1, Peay received upsetting news.
“I immediately received a message that all our wines would be taken off warehouse and retail shelves in Canada, and all POs (purchase orders) would be stopped,” he said. “If Canada is going to retaliate by removing my wine from the market, that’s not good. We don’t have high domestic demand right now, so these export markets are very important to us.”
Existing value-added tax (VAT) on U.S. goods sold in the European Union already make Peay wines less competitive than their domestic counterparts abroad, he said.
“It’s distressing to see my $50 Pinot Noir sell for $80 in Canada and Mexico because there’s 17% VAT tax,” he said. “So I understand the impulse to say — hey Europe, let’s even the playing field. Stop putting an import tax on our wine, and we’ll not put one on yours. But the way it’s being done needs negotiating, or it’s going to be very bad for American wine.”
Robert Koch, president and CEO of California’s Wine Institute, said Canada is the single most important export market for U.S. wines, with retail sales in excess of $1.1 billion annually.
In a Feb. 2 statement, he “urge(d) both governments to work together to resolve the dispute as soon as possible to minimize the economic harm.”
“Any loss of access to the Canadian market will damage the entire U.S. wine sector,” he said. “Beverage alcohol is already facing unprecedented challenges in the marketplace, so these tariffs and potential product removals come at a time when their impact will be particularly hard to absorb.”
While Trump has agreed to temporarily pause tariffs on Canada and Mexico through March 3, it remains uncertain whether they will be reinstated at a later date.
Shared angst
Peay, who works with 30 distributors to sell his wines in 29 states, said the company relies on U.S. distribution for 50% of its revenue.
If distributors are strapped for cash due to tariffs on imports, he’s worried they’ll have less money in the coffers for domestics.
“These are my important partners — they’re the people I’ve been dancing with the last 20 years,” he said. “If their business isn’t healthy, it’s going to hurt my business, too.”
Aneff, who is managing partner at Tribeca Wine Merchants — a popular wine shop in New York City — said “it’s a fact that distributors buy less domestic wines when they get hit with tariffs.”
“The U.S. requires healthy distributors. We don’t want them to be nervous bringing in domestic wines,” he said. “Producers need more markets, not less.”
A resilient industry
Michael Haney, executive director of Sonoma County Vintners, worked with the Biden administration in 2021 to remove Trump’s $7.5 billion worth of tariffs on European imports like wine, spirits and cheese.
“We’re really concerned about the possibility of future tariffs with our trade partners, especially Canada, which is one of our leading exporters,” he said. “These things impact not just our wine community, but also hospitality workers, agriculture workers, suppliers, vendors, consumers and other communities at large.”
Haney said the unpredictability of the situation is “frustrating,” as he believes there are alternative ways to solve certain government concerns besides tariffs.
In the meantime, he’s waiting to see how things play out.
“The one thing I know about Sonoma County’s wine community is that they’re extraordinarily resilient and creative,” he said. “I’m confident they’ll be able pivot and work with whatever comes their way.”
(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)
WESTPORT GRAVE MYSTERY: COULD IT BE A “PEACE” OF UNKNOWN HISTORY?
by Frank Hartzell
Two brothers who died on a ranch in Rockport in the 1940s are buried side by side in Westport with a message on their wooden graves that defies written history.
Peace!
The two graves in the Westport Cemetery contradict all the published history of the peace sign, that two-fingered salute that once was also the symbol of Mendocino.…
https://mendocinocoast.news/westport-grave-mystery-could-it-be-a-peace-of-unknown-history/
CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, February 18, 2025
TIMOTHY CARMACK, 59, Fort Bragg. County parole violation.
MICHAEL CATANO, 39, San Jose/Ukiah. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15% causing bodily injury with minor passenger with priors, suspenced license for DUI, no license.
RYAN JOYCE, 33, Ukiah. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15%.
MICHAEL KUBAS, 45, Nice/Willits. Trespassing, under influence, paraphernalia.
JESSE MARTINEZ, 28, Caspar. Probation revocation.
AUGUST SCHINDEL, 46, Willits. Domestic battery.
MALISSA WARNER, 47, Ukiah. Vandalism, probation revocation.
SHAUN WAY, 45, Potter Valley. Controlled substance for sale with two or more priors, paraphernalia.
MATTHEW WINTERS, 36, Willits. Domestic battery, child endangerment.
ANN SAYS: I'm 72. Obese most of my adult life, along w/the high BP and cholesterol I have the bad knees, etc to go along with it. But then I started walking 7X a week at dawn. My subdivision has a fair amount of ups and downs which challenge me. I started just walking to our mailboxes that are in a central location. Gradually I increased my distance so I'm that distance is just a tiny portion of my routine. I doubt I will ever run. I also started using the treadmill in the evening. As I increase my speed I added hand weights to see how long I could hold them up while walking. Changed my eating. Gave up fast food, candy, cakes, beef. Seek out low sodium/low sugar stuff when grocery shopping. Fruit is my new candy, as well as smoothies made from almond milk, frozen fruit, spinach, nuts, and lots of oats. Control portions, drink a lot more plain unflavored tea. Overall, lost close to 70 lbs. BP and cholesterol dropped a lot Moral; don't get discouraged because someone says something is “best”. Do what you can, what works for you. Stick with it. Food and exercise work together in combo when trying to lose weight.
MITCH CLOGG
On November 8 last, I said I wasn't going to watch the news for the foreseeable future. I've stuck with a modified version of that: a quick pass by the headlines of the New York Times, where I have a basic membership--just the headlines. (However important a story is today, it will be less tomorrow.) If the clickbait at the Times has something I might need to know, I glance at it, glance at it. I don't need to see every jot & tittle.
I own a primitive cell phone for when I leave home--in case of emergencies. Smart phones are worse than babies for distracting people. Having a powerful computer and communication device grafted onto my body offers to digitize my soul. I'd rather grapple with pre-ai methods of encountering my world.
Likewise TV. I watch Rachel Maddow, finger on the Off button. If she gets into the daily litany of what the god and his children did today, I run. NASA TV is often interesting (usually, in fact), and, in the same place, Classic Arts Showcase, a fabulous exposition of everything creative.
But no news.
This is not sulking; it's self-preservation. What has become of us and where that is leading us is too dire for me to stay there all the time. That's morbid and unhealthy.
They're Going To Lose!
THREE HORSES KILLED after motorhome crash on Highway 20 near Clear Lake
by Matt LaFever
A motorhome crashed and tipped onto its side while towing a horse trailer along State Route 20 east of Clear Lake on Sunday evening, sending the trailer down an embankment and reportedly killing three horses.…
AS DEMOCRATS GRAPPLE With The Role of Israel’s Genocide in Election Losses, Campaign Finance Disclosures Show Links Between Marin County Office of Education and pro-Israel JFCS
Indigenous group affiliated with JFCS education program exits; another group had no idea they were listed in JFCS report. And: To heroically desegregate a school district you must first segregate it.
by Eva Chrysanthe
Sometime before 1968, a young Joan Didion trudged through a blizzard that had shut down New York City to interview a Greek shipping heiress. Once Didion finally arrived (she didn’t identify the neighborhood but it was possibly Onassis’ four-story brownstone at Sutton Place), she was ushered into “a sitting room filled with orchids” only to be asked by her oblivious subject, “Is it snowing outside?”
I thought of Didion’s anecdote about the protective, if clueless, sphere that money affords last Tuesday when, in pale imitation of “Saint Didion”, I pedaled 20 miles through the February winds on a second-hand bike (don’t laugh, it’s paid for) to ask questions at the in-person-only Board meeting of the Marin County Office of Education.
My questions were in regard to $8.5 million in state grants the MCOE is tasked with funneling into an exceedingly wealthy, private, religiously-based “nonprofit” organization — the Bay Area’s opaque, 174-year-old “Jewish Family and Children’s Services” — for an “educational program” that reads more like pro-US/Israel propaganda than actual curriculum. …
https://marincountyconfidential.substack.com/p/as-democrats-grapple-with-the-role
COALITION SUES TRUMP REGIME TO LIST WHITE STURGEON UNDER FEDERAL ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT
by Dan Bacher
The White Sturgeon of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is one of the most treasured fish species among anglers in California. Known for its hard battles and jumps, as well as for its fine table fare, anglers are now restricted into catch and release fishing for these prehistoric giants as the Department of Fish and Wildlife comes up with a sturgeon management plan.…
BEFORE DYING IN DALLAS, JFK FOUND SOLITUDE IN THE CALIFORNIA WILDERNESS
In California, JFK inspired people. Weeks later, he fell to an assassin's bullet.
by Matt LaFever
September 1963: The nation contemplated Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream, the president questioned Vietnam, and another Black church was bombed in the South, killing four girls. Tension defined the times — Americans longed for something uplifting.
John F. Kennedy had a plan: a 10,000-mile “Conservation Tour” across America’s wildest landscapes.
He hopscotched from coal country to the Midwest to the Rockies before reaching the West Coast. On the afternoon of Sept. 27, JFK touched down in Northern California and made his way to Lassen Volcanic National Park, standing in the shadow of one of North America’s most dangerous volcanoes. No one knew it, but this was Kennedy’s final California tour before Dallas. Weeks later, an assassin’s bullet would thrust the nation into an era of turmoil.
The Kennedy White House announced plans for the Conservation Tour in early September, with JFK telling the press it would “focus attention on this vital part of American life and stimulate further efforts in the field of national conservation.” One newspaper likened the tour, billed as “non-political,” to Jefferson and Madison’s bird-watching trip through New England.
Not everyone bought it. A Los Angeles Times opinion writer dismissed the tour as a “political banking expedition,” accusing Kennedy of “attempting to deposit votes to his political bank account against a rainy November day in the South.” With Southern Dixiecrats turning on him over civil rights, the writer argued, Kennedy was “looking to other areas for support to compensate for his losses in Dixie.”
The tour kicked off on Sept. 24, 1963, in Milford, Pennsylvania, where Kennedy met with the family of Gifford Pinchot, a former governor and conservation leader. A scheduled stop at Lake Superior’s Apostle Islands was scrapped due to bad weather, so Kennedy flew to Ashland, Wisconsin, where he promised a panel to investigate pollution in the Upper Mississippi and Minnesota rivers. The day ended in Duluth, Minnesota, where Kennedy addressed the region’s unemployment crisis — twice the national rate — vowing action.
Over three whirlwind days, Kennedy crisscrossed the West, tying democracy, education and conservation to America’s global leadership. On Sept. 25, he urged a University of North Dakota crowd to uphold a “sound and vigorous democratic life,” championed colleges in Wyoming, and warned people in Montana that global conflict threatened conservation. He ended the day in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, beneath the Grand Tetons. The next morning in Great Falls, Montana, he touted his administration’s environmental efforts before breaking ground at a nuclear energy facility in Washington state and praising Salt Lake City as proof of why Americans must fight for the environment. On Sept. 27, in Tacoma, he rallied college students to tackle environmental challenges, announced a new military and Coast Guard facility in Oregon, and wrapped up the day in California.
When Kennedy landed in Redding that sweltering September day, it was 97 degrees. Instead of immediately boarding a helicopter to Lassen Volcanic National Park with Gov. Pat Brown, he and Brown made a brief detour to the airport terminal, where 400 ecstatic Californians mobbed him. According to the Los Angeles Times, Kennedy dove straight into the crowd, shaking hands for nearly 10 minutes, completely engulfed in the frenzy.
After the impromptu meet-and-greet, JFK and his entourage flew to Lassen’s “Devastated Area,” still marked by the 1915 eruption. Along the way, a photographer captured a moment of him shaking a young man’s hand.
Despite the earlier excitement, the Sacramento Bee described the Lassen visit as peaceful. The welcoming party at Manzanita Lake consisted of a busload of junior high students, a handful of park rangers, some tourists and a group of Chico State students recruited as servers. In total, no more than 150 people were on hand.
That night, Kennedy stayed in a three-bedroom cottage nestled by a willow thicket where deer wandered. Photographers caught him feeding one from his hand, standing in the sun in a casual sports shirt. After that, he remained in seclusion for the evening, with 34 National Park Service personnel ensuring his security. He later told reporters the park’s superintendent had “the best job in the world.”
The next morning, over breakfast, Kennedy huddled with the governor, who pledged to bolster California’s Democratic machine ahead of Kennedy’s 1964 run — an effort to reclaim the state after his narrow 35,000-vote loss to Nixon in 1960.
From there, the president traveled to Whiskeytown Dam, where 15,000 Northern Californians gathered for the dedication of the first completed section of the Central Valley Project, a massive federal water initiative for agriculture. While the crowd waited, they were entertained by parachuting smokejumpers, a waterskiing exhibition and a 150-piece band.
Kennedy called the dam “a monument to the success of all who had the vision of this dream” and “an inspiration to the entire nation.” He reminded the crowd of his 1960 campaign speech in Shasta County, where he had emphasized the importance of wise water use. Now, he said, that vision was reality.
“For too long, the precious waters of the Trinity have been wasted, running off to the sea,” he said. “For too long, surplus water in one area could not be used to make up the deficit in another. Now, by diverting these waters to the eastern slope, we can irrigate crops on the fertile plains of the Sacramento Valley and supply the municipal and industrial needs of the cities to the south.”
The tour ended that day with stops at Lake Mead and Palm Springs.
On Nov. 22, 1963, less than two months after sleeping beside the California alpine lake, the youngest president ever elected was assassinated. The nation mourned.
In Shasta County, locals remembered his energy at Whiskeytown Dam and honored him by naming the road leading to the facility John F. Kennedy Memorial Drive. Today, a large memorial stands in his name, celebrating his commitment to civil rights and conservation, as well as his dedication to California’s natural beauty.
(SFGate.com)
WAITING BY THE PHONE
by Anna Louie Sussman
When she was in her early twenties, the Argentine journalist Tamara Tenenbaum went to the apartment of a man she occasionally slept with. It was 10:00 PM and she had missed dinner, having arrived straight from university. Was there anything in the fridge, she asked? “I didn't bring you here to eat,' he answered, annoyed.” Once she realized he wasn't joking, she recalls, “I simply smiled and lay on his bed.” After sex, he didn't offer her so much as “a slice of cheese and some crackers,” and she left, still hungry.
He didn't hit her or call her names, but the brutality of his response, his frank assertion that no bodily need of hers should stand in the way of his own sexual satisfaction, shocks me each time I read that passage. And yet Tenenbaum acknowledges that she readily accepted it. “In general, we had a good time,” she writes in ‘The End of Love,’ one of a number of recent books arguing that we're doing sex all wrong and that contemporary sexual culture neglects the needs of, or even harms, heterosexual women in particular.
Since the late nineteenth century, writers from a wide range of disciplines — including philosophy, social science, and psychology — have attempted to analyze and diagnose the sexual culture of their time. Several of these analyses, written or published during the hopeful interregnum of the Biden administration and in the wake of Me Too, seek to explain why, despite having been raised by feminist mothers or at least exposed to pop feminism from an early age, a generation of heterosexual women still experiences desire so unequally. Despite rising anti-feminist backlash, women today are “winning” in many areas of life — they form the majority of college graduates in the US and an increasing share of homebuyers — so why do they wield so little agency when it comes to sex? How did we wind up, in Tenenbaum's piercing image, with “an entire sisterhood waiting torturously by the phone”?
One answer lies in the various ways that our intimate lives have taken on the worst features of the free market — inequality, precarity, impersonality. This is the argument made in ‘The Case Against the Sexual Revolution’ by Louise Perry, an unpersuasive polemic by the British columnist, anti-rape campaigner. self-described “reactionary feminist” Louise Perry. She writes that contemporary sexual culture, based on casual sex and hookups, fails women while benefiting men. She points to the outpouring of Me Too-era stories from women describing “sexual encounters that were technically consensual but nevertheless left them feeling terrible,” because, in Perry's analysis, “they were being asked to treat as meaningless something that they felt to be meaningful.”
Like Christine Emba in ‘Rethinking Sex’ — a short, essayistic “provocation” interwoven with anecdotes and interviews with straight, educated professionals, most of them women — Perry is at pains to expose the supposed “free market” of sexual exchange as a buyer's market in which women are getting a raw deal.
Both writers cite women's preferences for monogamy and committed relationships, as well as survey data showing that men are more open to hookups and more likely to orgasm during a casual encounter.
Perry, who worked at a rape crisis center earlier in her career, also believes that casual sex puts women at risk of sexual violence.
Perry argues that rape is not only about power, as Susan Brownmiller theorized and as Perry herself often repeated as a rape crisis worker; it is, actually, also about sex. After reading ‘A Natural History of Rape’ (2000) by Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer, Perry comes to believe that rape is an evolutionary strategy, hardwired into men's behavior, by which a minority of aggressive men spread their genetic material:
“Hundreds of thousands of years of sexual violence — not only in our own species but also in many others — is not a consequence of some kind of misunderstanding, swiftly cleared up during a 45-minute workshop in which kids are told in words of one syllable not to rape one another.”
This evolutionary account doesn't go very far in explaining why and how consensual sexual encounters, even ones between steady partners, have taken a turn for the mediocre. In ‘Rethinking Sex,’ Emba recounts how Kirsten, “a perfect stranger,” pulled her aside at a house party in Washington, D.C., and told her about her new boyfriend, who was funny, good-looking, smart, and gainfully employed. “But,” she continued, “he chokes me during sex?”
“She didn't really like the choking, Kirsten explained, but she really liked him. She wasn't sure whether to say anything, or even if it could actually be considered a valid problem. After all, sex like this was something that she'd said yes to; and she had definitely said yes to him — it was the bargain one made in order to leap off the dating app carousel into the arms of an otherwise great guy. And anyway, this kind of thing had happened to her friends too — the norm for heterosexual hookups seemed to have changed. Vanilla was out, extremes were to be expected.”
Why, I wondered, did Kirsten (and dozens of others like her in the book) seem unable to simply communicate with her boyfriend about her sexual preferences? What was stopping her from exercising what the scholars. Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan would call her “sexual citizenship”? Did her boyfriend think she liked it, or did he not seem to care? How much could he be blamed individually, and how much could be ascribed to his upbringing, schooling, experience with previous girlfriends who accepted or even seemed to enjoy his proclivities, or simply to cues from film, video games, pornography, music, or any of the other social and cultural phenomena that shape our preferences without our necessarily knowing it?
(New York Review of Books)
DELIVERY
Paper pusher, I'll tell you what it feels like
To spend the exact cash you make the same
.
Night you make it. That sky velveted as
An empty ring box. Disintegration coming out
.
Of the speakers again. Neck-deep in the quarry swimming
Hole. This thing between us like snapping a bar of cold
.
Chocolate. I like wading into my weakness &
Treading there like the final girl. This life no
.
Bigger than a drugstore makeup aisle, than waking
Only to learn of the late-night car accident. Who said
.
To stitch shut is to mend. Each morning the dogs kept Us alive, even when we hadn't planned it The room slow
.
Spun the way the water had moved around us, & the bare
Light on the water, those apparitions-our love's
.
Strategy, a deer tendering into the kitchen through
A back door left open, through the rooms where we
.
Undressed. Bring me to myself & sew the horizon Into place. Out of the winedark that sun we like
.
Was coming back into style. What we borrowed
We know we cannot return. I held your jaw
.
Like a piece of fruit. Your hand rested on the warm Animal between us, running in its sleep.
— Amy Woolard
WHY DEMOCRATS WON’T THROW A REAL PUNCH
by Dave Zirin
A relative of mine—an older gent with a penchant for salty language—yelled over the phone at me in frustration, “Where are the damn cojones in the Democratic Party?”
His use of language aside, this argument—that the Democrats are not raising nearly enough hell as Apartheid's xenomorph, Elon Musk goes on a rampage—is all over the liberal left. The phrase going around is, “The Democrats have brought a lectern to a social-media war.” Masses of enraged, terrified people are looking at the analog, slow-motion leadership of Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer and the zero-calorie rhetoric of House leader Hakeem Jeffries and want them replaced by people who know how to fight. As The Nation has reported, when Democratic politicians have shown up to protests, people aren’t cheering their presence. They are howling at them to do more.
To be clear, people aren’t criticizing the efforts of individual Democrats trying to expose this deadly grand theft taking place in plain sight. The cry is, “Why aren’t the Democrats as unified and ruthless toward their enemies as Republicans?”
Why aren’t they taking the fired federal workers who are sharing their heartbreaking stories—the ones that Musk says were being paid to do nothing—and making them famous? The cancer researcher on the verge of a breakthrough? The Park Ranger in Yosemite who won’t be there to conduct rescues and save lives? The air-traffic-control worker who can speak to the connection between understaffing and recent plane crashes? Is it even safe to fly in Trump’s America?
The Democrats should be amplifying these folks—writing op-eds about them, refusing to go on camera without sharing their spotlight, pressuring their IG influencers to raise them up—but instead, we learn their stories from Reddit. As Moira Donegan wrote in The Guardian, “Why are the Democrats so spineless?” The conventional wisdom is that they simply “don’t know how” to wage a social-media and public-relations attack that can, to use one blaring example, define people like JD Vance as a Nazi-curious Manchurian Candidate.
But we need to lose the theory that these Dems are “spinless” and just don’t understand how to wage political war. We know they can do it effectively because we’ve seen them execute that kind of operation against the left since Ralph Nader caught them sleeping in 2000. We have seen them do it maliciously during Senator Bernie Sanders’s two primary runs. We saw Black and brown women stamped as “Bernie Bros” with enough, yes, ruthless, repetition to make it stick. We’ve seen President Barack Obama with all his rhetorical powers hector young Black men, but not aim his electric cadence at Musk and his Palo Alto brownshirts. It's not that they cannot—they will not. When it was Sanders or an individual who demanded even a modest change in policy on Gaza, they brought out the knives. When it’s Musk and his apartheid army of incels, they wield sporks. Yet, as we keep seeing, spork fighting is demoralizing.
The question then is why, amid this tornado of anger, are Democratic institutions so soft?
Here is what I think and here’s what I think we can do about it:
1) They’d rather have peace with the billionaire tech bros—see Jeffries’s recent Silicon Valley visit to “mend fences”—than wage a struggle to get their money out of politics, have campaign finance reform, and, for the love of God, tax their obscene and unearned wealth.
2) A wing of the Democratic Party actually supports the substance if not style of what Musk is doing, accepting the argument of bureaucratic excess and the need to stop “waste.” Several put themselves forward to join the entirely made up, extra-constitutional operation known as DOGE. It’s not that this “waste” doesn’t exist—looking at you, defense budget—but in politics timing is everything. Legitimizing the need for DOGE at that moment provided Musk with the runway to destroy lives—he thinks workers are the “waste”—and wreck the best parts of this country: like the parks, the medical research, or the ability to fly on a plane with the certainty of landing safely.
3) The legacy of Clintonian triangulation and the corporate centered, rightward pull of the New Democrats means their top campaign consultants for a generation have been insulated, isolated, and utterly incapable of being left populists or the “brawlers for the working class” that AOC says they need to be. I remember Reverend Al Sharpton crushing right-wing hecklers at a Democratic primary debate when they went after fellow candidates Wesley Clark and Joe Lieberman. Since Sharpton was the only person on stage with real movement experience, he actually knew how to assert his will and inspire a crowd to join him in shutting them down. Too many Democrats are weak under the bright lights. Again, not everyone melts, but as an institution, this party is melting.
4) The legacy of Obama was that a coalition based upon “demographic destiny” would win elections in perpetuity as long as they were not Republicans. This not only bred inertia; it meant that in 2016, they were caught unaware by how much this country was becoming unglued. Yes, a “whitelash” was a big part of Trump’s electoral-college win, but that doesn’t explain everything. According to the highly respected University of Virginia Center for politics, 15 percent of Trump voters had pulled the lever for Obama. When Hillary Clinton lost, the party explained it by saying, “She won the popular vote, and there was Russian election interference” (both true!). But the party’s institutional response should have been: “Holy shit. What did we do wrong that caused us to lose to this fascist ass-clown caked in orange concealer?” Maybe if Democratic leaders pretended Elon Musk was a 22-year-old Palestinian from Dearborn, Michigan, they’d show more fight.
5) Israel. Israel. Israel. In 2025, marching lockstep behind Israel means defending ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and billions in weapon sales so they continue unhampered. It’s also taking the opposite position of what their potential voters, particularly young voters, want to see. To watch Trump yank Netanyahu to the ceasefire table was so enraging because Biden could have done that any time. Instead of disciplining Netanyahu, Democrats armed him. They did this even at the price of not being able to do a rally on a college campus in an election season out of fear of being heckled and, due to the aforementioned isolation, they have no stomach for hecklers. When a Columbia University encampment for Gaza, led by Jews and Muslims, called for peace, Democratic darling Representative Jared Moskowitz compared the organizers to the Nazis of Charlottesville—instead of, say, comparing the actual Nazis around Trump to Nazis. This is morally bankrupt, and voters know it.
6) Democrats are allergic to raising people’s expectations, and as a result, they cannot solve problems. Instead of codifying Roe legislatively after the Supreme Court killed it, they raised money off its death. Biden could have opened clinics on federal land, and before one says, Trump would have just closed them, that’s politics: creating viral images of Trump shuttering abortion clinics. And before one says they didn’t have the votes to codify Roe, think about how Trump’s thugs crack down on any Republican with even a stray musing that, for example, the drunk rapist with the Pat Riley hair and plausibly deniable white-power tattoos shouldn’t be in charge of the military. The contrast is shattering. President Biden let Senator Joe Manchin, a corrupt and charisma-free coal baron from a small, unwinnable state, become the most powerful person in the world. Real “brawlers for the working class” find a way to browbeat Manchin into voting accordingly.
I get why people are maddened by Democratic Party fecklessness. It’s easier to accept that we could build a fight, but the party is too cowardly.
We also do not have the time, nor is there any sign of mass inclination, to build a new third party for the working class. What we need to do is, yes, pressure these Democrats at every turn to fight and fight harder. I’ve made so many calls that my finger has become a misshapen claw, and you should be making calls, too. We need to go to town halls during the current recess and raise hell. We must also start to organize independent plans at every demo to move past Democratic passivity.
I’ve been to several rallies in D.C. where I’m among hundreds of people ready to tear apart Elon’s smug soldiers. But they end with Dems telling us not to lose the faith and, of course, to give them money. And then we go home. What’s needed is not compliant shows of strength but active disruption. If Representative Maxwell Frost is being stopped by security from entering the Department of Education—an absolute outrage—he shouldn’t just tweet about it (and raise money off of it) He should show up with hundreds of people. We are here: masses of us who would not be so easily moved. And if Frost wants to lead us inside, then more power to him. But if that’s not his plan, he needs to get out of the way.
Democratic Party leaders are not built for this moment. New DNC chief Ken Martin is no Marek Edelman. But for the Democrats that get the stakes and the ones who want to fight, they need to realize that their audience is vast and the time for niceties, like abiding genocide-enthusiast John Fetterman’s efforts to become the new Manchin instead of openly planning to primary him, is over. The salty old man in my life is ready to throw himself on the gears of this system. And he’s not alone.
THE ORANGE RAMPAGE
Editor,
President Donald Trump’s appointees have adopted words and phrases meant to denigrate people and policies but convey no clear meaning or truth.
Matthew Vaeth, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the government may withhold federal grants (under a now rescinded executive order) for programs that “advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies.”
“Equity” is no longer a laudable goal because it’s “Marxist.” Now “transgenderism” is a political movement instead of people, and since it’s an “ism,” it’s OK to discriminate against them.
And Vaeth managed to denigrate “green,” the “new deal” and “social engineering” all in one packed phrase. This could lead to eliminating any “green” efforts to combat climate change or any of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, such as Social Security. “Social engineering” could cover almost anything.
Then there’s “wokeness,” criticized by the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. That means no money for any program that is trying to bring justice or a decent living to people.
The language of Trump and his appointees is meant is keep us from thinking critically and appeal to fear and prejudice.
Nancy Bartell
Berkeley
I STRONGLY SUSPECT that our moral and spiritual disintegration grows out of our relative lack of experience with plenty… A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half-remembered glory. When the greatness recedes, so does the belief in greatness.
— John Steinbeck
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
If the worldwide reaction to covid was “let's not do anything at all because this is just a bad flu year” millions of lives would have been saved and the economy wouldn't have been destroyed as we racked up trillions in unnecessary debt. You do know that every year in the northern hemisphere, death rates rise dramatically among the very old, very obese and very unhealthy right? Trump's first thoughts were correct. While it is true that his ego won't allow him to admit “Warp Speed” was a disaster, his first thoughts on how to deal with the issue were correct. The “pandemic” was primarily fake numbers scammed with over-cycled PCR test data, deaths in the general population increased from ridiculous and harmful medical protocols and all the theatre around shutdowns, masking, plexiglass, social distancing, etc. That doesn't include the useless but dangerous shots. If you don't wake up soon you are going to be wandering around muttering “What is wrong with all these people. How can 99.9999% of the population be wrong? Am I the only sane one who really knows?'
LEAD STORIES, WEDNESDAY'S NYT
Trump’s Pivot Toward Putin’s Russia Upends Generations of U.S. Policy
Trump Issues Order to Expand His Power Over Agencies Congress Made Independent
Trump Administration Moves to Fast-Track Hundreds of Fossil Fuel Projects
Will That Asteroid Strike Earth? Risk Level Rises to Highest Ever Recorded
Kennedy Says ‘Nothing’ Off Limits in Scrutinizing Chronic Disease
Trump’s Cuts Could Make Parks and Forests More Dangerous, Employees Say
Musk Team’s Next Target Is Probationary Pentagon Employees
Pope Francis, Hospitalized, Has Pneumonia, Vatican Says
ATTENTION MIKE JAMISON
Will That Asteroid Strike Earth? Risk Level Rises To Highest Ever Recorded.
The threat from space rock 2024 YR4 has surpassed that of Apophis, an asteroid feared by scientists 20 years ago. The danger remains low, but experts are estimating the damage that could be done.
by Robin George Andrews
Astronomers on Tuesday said that the asteroid designated 2024 YR4 had become the most likely sizable space rock ever forecast to impact planet Earth. The object, first detected in December, is 130 to 300 feet long and expected to make a very close pass of the planet in 2032. Its odds of impacting Earth on Dec. 22 of that year currently stand at 3.1 percent.
That exceeds the threat once posed by Apophis, a much larger asteroid that was discovered in 2004. Astronomers initially calculated its chances of hitting Earth in 2029 at 2.7 percent. Further observations of Apophis reduced the odds of an impact at any time during the next century to zero. But the prospect was, for a time, unsettling.
While 2024 YR4 is far smaller than Apophis, a diminutive asteroid is still capable of causing tremendous devastation. Much depends on where it would enter Earth’s atmosphere.
Although 2024 YR4 would not come close to decimating a country, it could scar or demolish a city with a direct hit. And there is a very slim chance that it might. Much of the object’s estimated track passes over empty ocean, but some possible impact locations are close to large cities like Bogotá, Lagos and Mumbai.
The kinetic energy of an asteroid is a proxy for how destructive its impact would be. And as asteroids mostly move at the same speed — about 38,000 miles per hour — the key variable is its mass.
With just a handful of observations to rely on, astronomers only have a range of estimates for the mass of 2024 YR4. “We don’t know how dense or porous it is, so its mass, and therefore the energy it would release if it strikes Earth’s surface or explodes in the atmosphere, is uncertain,” said Mark Boslough, a physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
In all cases, though, “the bigger it is, the worse it is,” said Gareth Collins, an asteroid impact expert at Imperial College London. And small increases in size translate to giant leaps in destructive potential. The rule of thumb is that if an asteroid’s radius doubles, it has eight times more kinetic energy; a 300-foot asteroid will do far more damage than a 130-foot one.
The composition is also important. An asteroid made mostly of iron, for instance, would plunge deeper into the atmosphere and deliver a more injurious punch to the planet. But 2024 YR4 is statistically likelier to be a stony asteroid, which is more prone to fragment into smaller pieces as it is heated during its atmospheric descent.
But even a midair immolation of an asteroid — an airburst — can be extremely fierce.
If 2024 YR4 is stony and on the smaller end of estimates — 130 feet — the odds of an airburst are high, said Kathryn Kumamoto, the head of the planetary defense program at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
“The main comparison point we have for a stony asteroid impact of this magnitude is Tunguska,” Dr. Kumamoto said. The Tunguska event of 1908 involved an asteroid similar in size to 2024 YR4 exploding above a sparsely populated part of Siberia. It generated a blast wave of roughly 12 megatons, not unlike that of a nuclear weapon, that destroyed a forest more than twice the size of New York City.
A 130-foot rock exploding above the open ocean, or even nearer shore, would not be particularly concerning, as it “would be unlikely to cause a significant tsunami,” said Lorien Wheeler, an expert at the Asteroid Threat Assessment Project at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California.
An airburst above a city would be more unpleasant. Windows would explode inward, producing shotgun sprays of glass, and the damage to buildings would be widespread. Some injuries could be life-threatening.
The angle at which the asteroid enters the atmosphere makes a difference. If it comes in straight down, it may come closer to the ground before exploding and potentially inflict more destruction. Entry at a more gradual angle may result in an explosion at a much higher altitude.
If 2024 YR4 turns out to be 300-feet long, its impact “could cause more severe damage,” said Michael Aftosmis, an expert at the Asteroid Threat Assessment Project.
Such an asteroid “is more likely to make it through the atmosphere, particularly if we are unlucky and the entry angle is steep,” said Dr. Kumamoto. “A portion could make it to Earth’s surface relatively intact.”
An impact in the remote ocean far from land would pose much less risk, said Dr. Kumamoto — tall waves that would quickly shrink before reaching land. A splashdown next to a coastline, however, could cause a tsunami capable of inundating nearby land.
Should this larger version of 2024 YR4 hit solid ground, it could carve out a crater perhaps two-thirds of a mile across.
“The asteroid would create an enormous explosion,” Dr. Boslough said. And the blast wave would be astonishingly powerful. Multistory buildings around the crater would buckle and crumple, bridges would fold over, and cars, trees and people would be thrown in all directions. Dr. Boslough also noted the potential for a “hot jet of asteroid vapor that would descend to the surface and incinerate everything.”
People close to ground zero would very likely die, he said. And people tens of miles away would still be hit by a thundering, expanding blast wave. “People within the local region would be at risk of serious injury,” Dr. Kumamoto said.
Experts said that it’s still unlikely that 2024 YR4 will impact Earth in 2032. But this range of impact outcomes is precisely why planetary defenders are taking this asteroid deadly seriously.
(NY Times)
HAIKUS FOR SENIORS
My three pronged cane sits
Nestled near the depends
the prunes await me
.
The sunlight's reflection
on my new metal walker
where is the viagra?
.
Your new black knee brace
Rests near the melatonin
What did you just say?
.
Put it in honey
Not there, in the dvd
Another night of Love
.
slumber escapes me
i'm drifting - suddenly dawn
what? no half & half?
.
i wake up late again
stumbling past a mirror
who the &@(^% is that?
.
And One For The Dogs
I wake to dawn’s grace,
Dog breath wafts over my face.
How lucky am I?
” native peoples managed to live here without disfiguring it beyond these ancient signboards”
This is a common, and old misconception by Europeans. The misconception was heavily influenced by JJ Rousseau, and has carried over to today. What was here in 1492 was an environment created by human enterprise. Human fire was the single most effective tool to alter the environment from what was here a mere 10,000 years ago before the extinction of most mega fauna. Today, we might call human fire unnatural, disfiguring, and destructive. I don’t.
https://www.cardcow.com/images/set1045/card00691_fr.jpg
I believe this link will take you to an old photo of the Spyrock petroglyphs. I have a sweatshirt with the same designs on it that my sister gave me when she worked in Laytonville.
I once borrowed a few slides from Kate Frey, of the Feliz Creek petroglyphs, which were from a property owned at the time by an old hippie guy named Dehinda.
The last time I was there, Dehinda’s old handmade house was still standing although it looked like it had always been uninhabitable. I recall vague reports that he had a cult going there for a while.
Great Basin Curveliner style is definitely different than the rock carvings I’ve seen here. Migration spirals are more widely seen. It’s considered more ancient than the sheep and kokopelli that seen from Southern California to Colorado.
“For too long, the precious waters of the Trinity have been wasted, running off to the sea,” he said. “For too long, surplus water in one area could not be used to make up the deficit in another. Now, by diverting these waters to the eastern slope, we can irrigate crops on the fertile plains of the Sacramento Valley and supply the municipal and industrial needs of the cities to the south.”–JFK
Reads like the hokum they peddled to me in grade school and high school. Now, look at the mess we created…
Thanks sincerely to the AVA subscriber who gifted via Paypal! It is moving week here at the Washington, D.C. Peace Vigil, since the reviewing stands in front of the White House have now been deconstructed, and therefore it is possible for the vigil to return to its place at the sidewalk, directly across from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. We have no idea whatsoever if there will be any complaint from the current resident across the street. However, the U.S. Parks Dept. permit, which was issued in June of 1981, is current, and the non-voting member of congress (who represents the District of Columbia) is the vigil’s main supporter on Capitol Hill. If you are coming to Washington, D.C. for Cherry Blossom festival, do visit…contact spokesperson Philipos Melaku-Bello at philiposbello@gmail.com. ;-))
Just wait: “CASPAR TO BE RENAMED ‘ZUCKERBURG’”
Ps: the online comment of the day re Covid is 100% nonscientific garbage. Who wrote it, Kunstler?
THE ORANGE RAMPAGE
“The language of Trump and his appointees is meant is keep us from thinking critically and appeal to fear and prejudice.”
Hell, critical thinking has been dead for decades. Otherwise, Trump wouldn’t be where he is. And, sh_t like Carter, Reagan, the Bushes, Clinton, Obama, and Biden would never have been presidents.
Re the approach of the 2032-arriving asteroid: many of the X participants in #ufox or #ufotwitter have been jazzing themselves up in excited anticipation of something big arriving in the near future. In some cases it’s a very large alien ship being tracked by the Webb telescope. Some imagine a killing of the power grid by a damaging eruption hitting us from the sun. An imagined pole shift also is seen as a civilization-ending event that will rob us aging boomers of the comfort and ease of the nursing home.
All this engineered dread on the x domain did get mitigated for many there when a splendid 5 volumes of books, with heavy and shining paper stock divided by golden ribbons, were FOR FREE mailed to those requesting them. This was a gift from a seriously grieving billionaire from Las Vegas named Robert Bigelow. He paid many people to write papers that provided “proof of survival of human consciousness beyond permanent bodily death”. (Proof might be too strong….maybe more accurate to say “highly suggestive evidence”.)
I keep those volumes by my bed.
Yet even more accurate to say, “Pure hokum, with a dash of wishful thinking thrown in for flavor…”
Actually the documentation re the children birth mark/prior lethal wounds cases housed by the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia likely approaches proof status for reincarnation.
Why in the world would a reincarnated soul bring along old wounds to the new body? What possible reason, much less what mechanism, accounts for that? Pure fantasy.
Typically the child has vivid memories of being a specific person who suffered a fatal wound that oddly matches a birth mark. University therapists researching the claims confirm the existence of the prior persona AND uncover medical and autopsy records also confirming the child’s story. All of this documentation is published in multiple volumes. So, you are factually incorrect re all of this being fantasy-based. Maybe next time look it up before opining foolishly?
The answers to your questions probably exist in the.dynamics playing out on a quantum level….our gaps in knowledge our huge.
“Approaches” is the giveaway to the fact that what they “found” is pure hokum. I remember when “scientists” were claiming that the body lost weight immediately after death. It was “attributed” to the “soul”, whatever the hell is, leaving the body.
Jesus said, “whatever a man may believe, so he shall receive.” Reports from near-dead and clinically dead patients, revived by the miracles of the A M A, report they were going toward a bright white light… perhaps these poor devils were about to pop out of a birth canal into a waiting physician’s latex-gloved hands? Or a midwife in some third world hellhole?
The global south.
An unimaginable hell, in light of the article on where our garbage goes. All these wasteful Americans thinking their personal problems will end with their comfortable lives may be in for a hellish surprise if they are reborn in some country we’ve consigned to nothing more than a dump for our garbage…can you imagine a more hellish Karma?
Reincarnation, Kismet, Karma and Fate scares Christians worse than brimstone and hellfire. These forces, imaginary or otherwise, cannot be mollified with devotional pledges of faith, confession or repentance.
‘Twil na’ dae, as the Scott’s say. (English translation: It simply will not do.)
“Thy fate is fixed around thy neck like a millstone and thou cannot push it away.”
—Mormon proverb
There’s a growing movement urging folks to stay on this side of the light as going beyond it puts one in a reincaration-trap. I don’t know all the details around this notion but I think it involves beings feeding on negative energy.
Tibetan Buddhist practitioners and others say the light is us, our essential nature. Realizing it as such in effect liberates us from illusions and conditioned patterns, thus freeing us from an educating round of birth, death and rebirth.
Otherwise, going into the light is also entry into subte afterlife domains. Where we stay until many years later we plan another incarnation in order to grow thru experiences and learned lessons. So the claims commonly asserted about all this are stated..
great senior haikus!
The On Line Comment today is pure BS. And BS crazy. Is this person “the only sane one”? Evidently not. The Covid vaccine has saved hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of American lives. Proven facts beyond dispute, except for the most cognitively dissonant.
Some obscure German thinker whose name eludes me once wrote — I’m paraphrasing here — that intellectuals have an obligation to not waste time or effort arguing matters for which there already exists majority or consensus opinion. Like Global Warming for instance. Or the value of vaccines (polio, anyone?).
Covid is with us now until the end of time. Like the common cold or the flu.
Now, shall we discuss Bird Flu? And RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz? And the Musketeers decimating the Federal Budget and Government?
It was likely better to get the Covid vaccine, than not. But that vaccine did not prevent contracting, or spreading Covid as we were told, and as the CDC knew. The booster did less. I got the vaccine, and two boosters, but will be more skeptical in the future. The lock downs, distancing, and face masks were of little value, particularly regarding children. It pays to be skeptical of anything, coming from anyone in Washington. This is really not knew, but I always thought I could trust what the CDC said. With JFK jr. there, I know to go in the opposite direction of whatever he recommends. If he says do, then don’t. If he says don’t, then do.
George- I go with the 60’s saying don’t trust anyone over 30. Fauci. I also don’t trust any drug or vaccine under 30
If you’re feeling down about now, and I know many if not all of us are, this video is a sweet reminder of the inherent decency hidden in all of us that is just waiting for the right moment to assert itself. Mad respect to all those who make service to others the first priority in their lives: paramedics, fire fighters, police officers, doctors, nurses, teachers…
Having “covered” major and minor disasters in the County of Lake since 2012, I can attest to the amazing responses of fellow human beings during and after unanticipated but overwhelming situations (mostly wildfires, a couple of serious floods, winter and summer extreme weather “events”) in which our astonishing “first responders” (including firefighters, EMTs, and paramedics) assist injured, dying, or dead humans in immediate “real time” — leading to despairing “end of watch” self-inflicted (suicide) fatal wounds.
The evolution of our region’s strengthened emergency management services over the 10 years since the Valley Fire (and subsequent Mendocino, Sonoma, Napa, Solano, Lake County wildfires) has altered both the political and social landscapes — led by local governmental agencies — in which the primacy of “mutual aid” now “informs” most of our community organizations and neighborhood-scale activism for “mitigation,” “preparedness,” “relief,” and “recovery” processes.
While the current global disasters, largely of anthropogenic causes, dominates the “media” only recently proliferated (in the last 30 years since the creation of the “world wide web” and accessibility of “technology”), leading to near instantaneous recordation of real-time events by some 60% of the population and recognition of corruption in the systems of governance at all levels, we humans reach out to help each other — demonstrating the presence of altruism assumed to be inconsequential by those perpetuating said corruption* and our heretofore presumed ignorance of the brutally abused populations belied by new skepticism and re-examination of “American” roles and responsibilities as the only “world power” on the planet.
We gladly eschew the maniacal claims of our elected government officials, and espouse the principles of good governance regardless of the chaos unleashed on the “public” since January 20, 2025.
Patience and kindness prevail in the worst situations, and my “faith” in the unquenchable spirit demonstrated by examples of humane responses to unimaginable “events” — time after time — is nourished by the testimony of survivors like the subject of this post-disaster interview. Thank you, Mr. Abeles.
*Corruption in this instance encompassing everything from the ordinary decay of software codes and outdated instructions or directives to the immiseration of half the world’s population by psychopathic elected and appointed officials. I have never, in 81 years of life, encountered any remotely equivalent destruction wrought by the current inhabitants of the “White House” (all too white, and aimed at destruction of foundational principles of American governance). Where the fuck is Congress, at this horrific juncture of global destruction (such as the wholesale pollution of the indestructible waste we foist on impoverished countries around the world) and unlimited authorities granted to a maniac (and his pals) who seeks to obliterate the half of American citizens that did not vote for him?