Mendocino County Today: Thursday 2/27/2025

Warmer | Storefront | Cubbison Returns | Right Thing | Failed Case | Arena Protestors | Search Continues | Chuck Davison | Longvale Mercantile | Ed Notes | Tree Debris | PTA Fundraiser | Blue Lake | Round Valley | Water Wheel | Yesterday's Catch | Sacto Bookstore | IHSS Caregivers | Economic Blackout | Night Loading | Warm Sun | Slick Interview | Zizian Homicides | Helms Truck | Rescinding NEPA | Little Madman | Press Bans | Bulletproof Glass | Incomprehensible | Lead Stories | Swasticar | Divided/Conquered | Old Navajo | Reynard Fox | An Illusion | Marx Program | Five Things | Grateful Nudge | Tea Party

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UNSEASONABLY WARM temperatures will continue through Friday with a strong ridge of high pressure. Unsettled and much cooler weather returns Saturday and will remain through the weekend. There will be more chances for additional rainfall and mountain snow next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 40F under partly cloudy skies this Thursday morning on the coast. Dry skies until Saturday afternoon then rain into Sunday. I have dueling forecasts for next week, I'll go with a chance of rain some of the days, details to be shaken out as we get closer. I do not think I have ever said "shaken out" in my forecast before?

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CUBBISON TAKES A VICTORY LAP

by Mike Geniella

Chamise Cubbison returned quietly to her top county financial office on Wednesday for the first time since she was locked out 17 months ago.

There were no corks popping, or balloons blown up but it was a triumphant return for a veteran county employee who risked a criminal conviction. Cubbison chose to fight felony allegations filed against her by District Attorney David Eyster in October 2022.

“I have returned to the office and look forward to getting back to the important work I was elected by the people to perform,” said Cubbison.

It was Cubbison’s first public statement since criminal charges against her were dismissed on Tuesday by Superior Court Judge Ann Moorman.

Cubbison said she was “proud of what my team of employees accomplished in my absence, and we hope to continue the positive progress.”

Cubbison said she was pleased and grateful for Judge Ann Moorman’s decision to end 17 months of prosecution.

“I thank the court, my legal team, my family, and the community of supporters and interested citizens of Mendocino County,” said Cubbison.

After Eyster acted, and Cubbison was escorted out of her office and suspended without pay or benefits by the Board of Supervisors, the embattled Auditor decided to stand her ground. Cubbison declined the DA’s misdemeanor plea offer in return for her resignation.

On Wednesday, a half dozen county officials including CEO Darcie Antle did not return calls Wednesday inquiring about Cubbison’s official status, and whether she had been formally reinstated now that she is free of criminal charges.

Defense attorney Chris Andrian was the first to confirm that Cubbison had in fact returned to work in her office at the county Administration Center on Low Gap Road in Ukiah.

“I can confirm she went back to work today, where she should have been for the past 17 months,” said Andrian. “I am very happy for her. She is a good person who did no wrong.”

Cubbison by Wednesday evening decided to issue her public statement.

Judge Moorman opened the door for Cubbison’s return to public duty when by tossing out criminal charges a day before, delivering a blow to Eyster, and ending his bid to permanently oust the elected head of the combined county Auditor/Controller and Treasurer/Tax Collector offices.

Eyster had quarreled with Cubbison over his office expenses and publicly denounced two years before charging her in an extraordinary appearance before the Board of Supervisors. Cubbison supporters accused the district attorney of waging a “vendetta” against Cubbison for challenging his office expenses.

Moorman on Tuesday made a scathing indictment of the prosecution case, citing a variety of weaknesses in the felony misappropriation of public funds case.

Eyster targeted Cubbison, and former Payroll Manager Paula June Kennedy in October 2023 in an alleged conspiracy to use an obscure pay code so Kennedy could collect about $68,000 in extra pay over three years during the Covid pandemic.

In her damning assessment, Moorman ripped what she believed to be “willful ignorance” among county officials who testified during a preliminary hearing, the soft investigation of what was an alleged white-collar crime, and the truthfulness of key witnesses including retired county Auditor Lloyd Weer.

CEO Darcie Antle did not respond to inquiries about Cubbison’s status on Wednesday, nor did Cherie Johnson, the county Human Resources manager who testified at the preliminary hearing.

Morin Jacobs, the San Francisco attorney representing county officials in a pending civil litigation Cubbison has against the Board of Supervisors, replied via an automatic email that she was out of the office and unavailable.

Andrian said Cubbison’s return to work does not mean her pending civil litigation is on the back burner.

“We are going to keep the heat on because there was a great injustice here,” said Andrian about the legal efforts. They are enhanced now that the criminal case has been dismissed.

Therese Cannata, Cubbison’s San Francisco attorney, said Tuesday her goal was “immediate reinstatement” of Cubbison.

During the preliminary hearing Antle, other county officials, and investigators testified there was no doubt Kennedy had worked the hours she paid herself for. Investigators said there was no evidence Cubbison personally benefitted from the extra pay.

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“SHE DID THE RIGHT THING. She did not try to cover anything up.” (Judge Moorman on Chamise Cubbison)

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A PRECURSOR TO THE CUBBISON CASE

by Mark Scaramella

The failed “misappropriation” case filed by DA David Eyster against Auditor-Controller/Treasurer Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison reminded us in some ways of the failed embezzlement case filed against a coast librarian back in 2006 who the DA (Meredith Lintott at the time) said had somehow skimmed tens of thousands of dollars from the Fort Bragg library’s rather small cash receipts over a period of years that were supposed to be returned to County coffers. We doubted the case from the outset because on its face it was pretty obvious that amassing tens of thousands of dollars from the Fort Bragg library’s tiny cash receipts from overdue book fees and the occasional donation was highly unlikely.

Like the Cubbison case, the dubious charges against the librarian limped along through various County offices starting with the Library bureaucracy, into the then-Auditor’s office and on to the DA, like molasses poured into Mendo’s already clogged wheels of justice.

Around that time I happened to have been visiting then-Deputy DA Victoria Shanahan’s office — this was before she took a job as Deputy DA in Sonoma County and then ran, unsuccessfully, for DA down there, before coming back to her home county of Mendocino in 2019 when she was appointed Superior Court judge.

When I walked into Shanahan’s office there were 17 banker’s boxes stacked against one wall. I asked her what the boxes were for. Shanahan replied that the boxes contained the “evidence” in the embezzlement case that had been dumped in her office by default after everyone else in the office refused the case. Like the Cubbison case, it had been languishing in County staff offices and the legal bureaucracies for months. Shanahan was supposed to use the box-dump to file embezzlement charges against the librarian. “I don’t know what they expect me to do with this,” Shanahan said, waving dismissively at the disorganized piles of boxed up paper and computer printouts. I made a joke about the 17 boxes being “insufficient evidence,” but Shanahan wasn’t laughing.

The case eventually went to trial but, just as Shanahan sort of suspected, the Librarian was acquitted because the County’s records were a jumbled mess and hardly amounted to proof of a crime, if there even was one.

The librarian then filed a wrongful termination and malicious prosecution case against the County and ended up settling for a six figure sum covering back wages and loss of employment.

A few years later, in 2011, the librarian’s long-delayed bogus case came before the Supervisors in a strange way when the Board was discussing the Library budget and library’s contribution to the County’s liability insurance costs.

At the time the County’s “risk management” budget was around $1.7 million a year. (It has since gone up substantially.) The cost of the risk management office is merged into a general overhead cost called the A-87 costs and then allocated to the various operating departments. This risk management budget covers a small office staff plus settlement and claim payments that are below the County’s (then) $150k deductible or outside formal insurance payouts. In any given year claims and settlements can add up to a sizable amount of money.

Among the payouts was the big but delayed payout the Library had to make for the costly settlement going back to that failed 2007 case against the librarian.

Some board members and some library supporters objected to the amount being assigned to the library since it wasn’t clear who was to blame for the failed embezzlement case. Then-Supervisor Pinches said he thought the County’s entire internal insurance (“risk management”) program was a joke.

“We’re paying $148k for just one year of premiums for the library?” asked Pinches. “Just to pay back the premiums? Why call that insurance? That’s just self-insured. You pay yourself! There’s no benefit for the Library to be in the insurance pool. The Library was paying into the pool for years, then this $287k claim came along and they have to pay more than the total claim? Why pay the premium in first place? What’s the point of that?”

Then-Deputy CEO Kristin McMenomey tried to explain that the insurance allocation system is imposed on the County by the state auditor and that was the way the County had to do it. But that answer didn’t satisfy the Board. Neither did McMenomey’s statement that self-insurance would cost even more.

Pinches thought the County should look beyond the California State Association of Counties insurance pool for a better deal that would involve lower insurance premiums and lower deductibles.

Supervisor John McCowen said he had heard that the embezzlement acquittal stemmed from bad decisions by unnamed individuals “higher up on the food chain,” and that the Library was being unfairly and disproportionately charged for the entire settlement bill.

Supervisor Dan Hamburg said that over the entire five-year period the library budget had been hit with the increased insurance costs and the total added up to over $500k even though the total amount the County had to pay for the settlement was about $175k. “This payment does not add up,” said Hamburg, looking very puzzled.

Obviously, the County’s sloppy accounting practices went far beyond the Fort Bragg library’s modest cash receipts and whatever even smaller portion of that may have been missing.

County Counsel Jeanine Nadel: “An employee was prosecuted for embezzlement. After prosecution she was acquitted. The settlement was for back wages.”

McCowen: “The allegations were not proven at trial. But someone went down the road assuming she was responsible. The Library is not necessarily responsible.”

Auditor Meredith Ford: “We had to borrow funds for the library payout. It was more than the library could pay so we borrowed.” (Perhaps meaning that the library was being dinged to pay back the loan of the settlement money with interest over a period of years.)

Hamburg: “The library didn’t initiate the action against the employee.”

Ford: “The Library made the report. The Auditor did an investigation. The DA decided to prosecute.”

McMenomey: “The amount allegedly embezzled was received by the Library.” (Whatever that means.)

Then-County Chief Librarian Melanie Lightbody (who was not in charge at the time of the allegations): “Library practices were the reason for the claim. Cash handling could have been better.”

In other words, management and accounting was incompetently done, the Auditor’s analysis was screwed up, the DA didn’t really question how the charges were arrived at, and the County was looking for a scapegoat for some numbers that didn’t add up. So they dragged an innocent woman through what passes for a justice system and somehow the insurance company was the primary beneficiary because Mendo borrowed money to pay for the settlement out of pocket, instead of getting some of it from the insurance outfit that they had paid premiums to.

Only in Mendo.

Whether it was the Librarian then or Ms. Cubbison now, someone “higher up the food chain” — the DA, the CEO and the Supervisors — should be ashamed and/or removed from office. But in Mendocino County those someones are historically exempt from any and all accountability.

And now, here we are in 2025 after decades of fiscal irresponsibility leading to the bogus charge against Ms. Cubbison, another scapegoat for the County’s incompetence, the DA’s vengeance, and the Board’s own bad decisions, blithe fiscal assumptions, ill-conceived office consolidations, Board ignorance, and feckless top management.

Assuming Ms. Cubbison’s civil case is successful — the dismissal of the criminal case certainly makes it look like it will be, one way or the other — we suggest whatever money is paid to her come directly out of the DA’s budget, if not out of his own pocket. In a final touch of irony, when the time comes Cubbison could find herself signing her own settlement check to herself.

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SEARCH CONTINUES FOR MISSING WHALE GULCH MAN As Law Enforcement And SAR Converges On Remote Area Of The Lost Coast

by Lisa Music

The search for missing Whale Gulch resident Dave Taylor continues today, with the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO), Mendocino Search and Rescue, and Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office personnel assisting in additional searching efforts.…

https://kymkemp.com/2025/02/26/search-continues-for-missing-whale-gulch-man-as-law-enforcement-and-sar-converges-on-remote-area-of-the-lost-coast

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CHARLES WILLIAM DAVISON 1935-2025

Chuck (Charlie) Davison lived a full life, as a husband, father, grandfather, great grandfather, brother, son, and uncle, as well as friend, coach, teacher, and for many of us in Willits, our beloved Willits High School Principal or Principal at Blosser Lane Elementary. Chuck passed away on January 16, 2025 at St. Helena Hospital at the age of 89 years old. Charles William Davison was born in Berkeley, CA at home on December 20, 1935. He was preceded in death by his parents, Henry and Grace Davison, and brothers, Paul, Daryl, David, sister Carolyn (Janie), and infant son Michael William. He is survived by his loving wife of 68 1/2 years, Arlene (Gow) Davison, daughter Cathy (Rich) Estrada, and son Keith (Michele) Davison. Chuck was blessed with 4 grandsons, Garrett (Brooke), Brett (Rachel), Drew, and Grant Estrada. He was also a great grandfather to Cash, Harper, Savannah, Ariana, and Eve. The Davison family moved to Willits in 1970, when Mr. Davison became the new Willits High School principal. He was a history teacher as well as a football and wrestling coach, and was the principal at the high school in Los Molinos, CA before coming to Willits. Chuck, Arlene, Cathy, and Keith left Chico and headed to Willits. Chuck was a proud Willits Wolverine for 19 years. He was an advocate for a new building for an updated library called the media center, as well as a new building for a brand new cafeteria for the students. Chuck was supportive of athletics, academics, vocational studies such as auto shop, wood shop, and the ag farm. He also was instrumental and supportive of the arts, band, choir, drama, to name a few. Mr. Davison loved Willits High School, and the students loved him. A huge achievement for him was that he never missed a Willits High football game, until his first grandson Garrett was born! In 1988, Chuck became the principal of the newly opened Blosser Lane Elementary School. He enjoyed hiring all new staff and teachers, as well as all the things that come along with opening a new school campus. He loved the little ones at Blosser, and was their principal until 1996 when he retired. Along with his administrative duties, he was also the President of the Coastal Mountain Conference for 22 years, from 1991-2013. CMC is an athletic conference for secondary schools in Mendocino, Lake, Napa, and Sonoma counties. Chuck and Arlene had always loved camping and sailing, so they bought an RV and a sailboat and were excited for an enjoyable retirement. Chuck loved a good adventure, whether it was with the RV Club, the sailboat regattas, hiking the railroad tracks from Willits to Ft. Bragg, traveling in the states, or abroad. For 20 years they hosted 35 exchange students from all around the world. Chuck was active in the community throughout the years as the Rotary Club president, and a member of the HAM radio club. His hobbies included camping with the RV group, woodworking, for a long time he loved working out. In the past several years Chuck has loved his 4 rescue dogs, Fifi, Rylie, Mikey, and Lacy. Chuck will be missed by his family and friends, but his legacy of “best principal ever” will continue. A Celebration of Life for Chuck will be held on Saturday, March 1st from 11:00 to 2:00 pm. Please join us at the Willits Senior Center for a service and lunch reception to follow.

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LONGVALE MERCANTILE

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ED NOTES

I DON'T THINK it's an exaggeration to say that without Mike Geniella's dogged reporting on the Cubbison Case, the terribly wronged Mses Cubbison and Kennedy may have stayed wronged and ruined, their unblemished reputations for years of honest public work irreparably destroyed.

IN JAPAN, right up to modern times, officials who were found culpable of grave dishonor, literally fell on their swords. But I doubt that the Mendocino County officials who nearly destroyed two innocent women will so much as issue a public Sorry, let alone resign their tarnished positions.

RIGHT from the git almost three long years ago, it was obvious that DA Eyster conjured his phony case against Cubbison and Kennedy, made it up, used his position as, of all things, Mendocino County's lead law enforcement officer, to get rid of Cubbison simply because she challenged his public spending on Christmas parties for himself, his staff and assorted hangers-on.

THEN, with a big assist from the lame brains sitting as supervisors who removed the elected Cubbison from office on Eyster's say-so, commenced the longest preliminary hearing in the history of Mendocino County, during which, with not even two days to go in the seemingly endless farce, the judge and Eyster's star witness, CEO Antle, announced they had to go on vacation. If they didn't board the Love Boat, you see, they couldn't get their reservation money back! (This is the judicial equivalent of the dog ate my homework and, as we all know, both the judge and the CEO are paupers.)

BACK FROM VA-CA, Judge Moorman declared that which was obvious from the beginning of this cruel farce, that there was no evidence to support Eyster's see-through case. And please note here that as the Judge cited a few “incompetents” — which is a euphemism in this case for liars and cover-up artists — by name, the Judge didn't mention Eyster, the architect of the whole sordid show.

SUPERVISORS MULHEREN, WILLIAMS AND HASCHAK should, if they have even an elementary sense of honor, resign, and I hope they, along with former supervisors Gjerde and McGourty, are sued as individuals by the two women they so blithely tried to destroy.

EYSTER? He'll retire rather than risk re-election as he rides off to a lush retirement, guarding his lawn against gophers, maybe after a farewell dinner at the Broiler where his disgrace began.

THE PRESENT SUPERVISORS ought to fire Eyster's co-conspirator CEO Antle, and finally demand that that nest of appalling incompetents in the tax-paid County Counsel's office at last be purged and real lawyers installed in their place, lawyers who will defend our ripped off County rather than farm everything out to City lawyers at large cost to the beset taxpayers of this county.

MARK SCARAMELLA NOTES: Former County Counsel Christian Curtis was a co-conspirator in the preparation of the case against Cubbison with CEO Darcie Antle who, as reported shortly after Cubbison’s suspension in October of 2023 by former KZYX reporter Sara Reith, together began looking into the Payroll code question back in September of 2022, presumably when Cubbison herself started asking about it. In September of 2023 Curtis hired a $400 an hour SF attorney, Ms. Morin Jacob of Liebert-Cassidy-Whitmore (who's now defending the County in Cubbison’s civil case) to bum’s-rush the gullible “Get Cubbison” Board through the railroaded suspension proceedings (before giving Cubbison an opportunity to respond to Eyster’s bogus charges), citing what most people think was an incorrect government code section which applied to the Treasurer position, which Ms. Cubbison did not hold at the time of the alleged offense for which she has now been exonerated. In December of 2023, just two months after Cubbison was suspended, Curtis resigned as County Counsel to take a job as City Attorney in Redding, California. After Curtis resigned, CEO Darcie Antle then hired a $400 an hour “interim” County Counsel named James Ross, from the SF-based Renne Public Law Group. Mendo didn’t even need to hire Ross because a few months later Curtis’s Assistant County Counsel, Charlotte Scott, was appointed County Counsel, just as she should have been when Curtis left. We hope Curtis and Ross and Scott are all deposed in the Cubbison civil suit to see just how nefarious Curtis’s actions were in the Cubbison matter and if his suspicious December 2023 resignation was related to the bogus Cubbison charges. According to Sara Reith’s KZYX report in December of 2023 (based on Eyster’s initial filing of charges against Cubbison): “The Sheriff’s office began the investigation into Cubbison and her co-defendant payroll manager Paula June Kennedy in September of 2022. That was shortly after a meeting where CEO Darcie Antle and County Counsel Christian Curtis began to suspect Kennedy of embezzlement. According to Eyster, they were also ‘suspicious of Ms. Cubbison’s demeanor at the meeting and at least some of her answers to questions posed to her about what she knew and when’.” Eyster’s original declaration when filing the charges against Cubbison said his suspicions had to do with “Cubbison’s recollections about [the use of] an obscure payroll code changing over time.” Apparently, when first asked about the use of the “obscure payroll code,” Cubbison simply couldn’t remember the particulars of who authorized it and when. And that was all it took for Eyster to file the felony misappropriation charges which lead to her unjustified suspension and which were dismissed by Judge Ann Moorman at the end of the 18-month long preliminary hearing on Tuesday.

THE FARM BUREAU used to do tours of the Potter Valley Diversion and the Eel River venues that feed the Diversion. Given Congressman's Huffman's Two Basin Plan, the sons and daughters of the soil might want to revive their instructive outings because for them, the water picture is a'changin'. If you've never seen the thousand foot-long tunnel through which flows diverted Eel River water, you will have a hard time understanding just how precarious the entire downstream supply is for water consumers from Potter Valley to Marin County. The tunnel was hand dug by Chinese labor and Jim Armstrong at the turn of the century, mostly to run turbines that would provide electricity for Ukiah. Since those modest beginnings, the tunnel, resembling in its dimensions a horizontal mine shaft, carries Eel River water to water-short Santa Rosa and numerous other downstream consumers as far south as Sausalito where the Sonoma County Water Agency sells it for a nice profit. If the tunnel collapses, and an earthquake of '06 power will do it, Lake Mendocino, most of the Russian River, and suburbanites from Cloverdale to Sausalito will die of thirst. Anyway, if you want to get the full grasp of the situation, plus get a look at the cockamamie “fish ladder” serving the diversion, take a drive out to Potter Valley some time.

THE COVELO HOTEL was torched some 15 years ago. By the time firefighters from near and far could get enough water on the unoccupied building, it was in ashes. A couple of drunks were duly arrested for torching it. (They said they were in there looking around using paper torches for light… Recreational arsons are a persistent feature of life in Round Valley.) There was serious talk of outside money fixing up the old hotel and re-opening it, but that never happened. The old hotel had been the site of some exciting 19th century history where it was the scene of at least two pivotal revenge shootings, one of which put an end to the infamous Wylacki John Wathen, a white man fluent in all the regional Indian dialects who'd become a hitman for George White, the 19th century “King of Round Valley.” White, a wealthy cattle rancher, became nationally infamous for murdering, or plotting to murder, several wives. He was locally infamous for killing off competing homesteaders and anyone else who crossed him. Wylacki John functioned as White's gunsel. A fancy dresser and just as impeccably well-mannered in an area not known for either the sartorial or social graces, Wylacki John's total kill-count could never be precisely known, but many of White's enemies went into the mountains surrounding Covelo and were never seen again. Until the early twentieth century, Round Valley was more closely tied to Trinity County, Weaverville being Covelo's twin city and the site of the courts where Round Valley matters were sorted out. The trail from Covelo to Weaverville was a long, hard slog — three nights out by horse — and the bold men who took on White were lucky if they made it to Weaverville to testify against him. Wylacki John had insulted the daughter of another man named White, and that man shot Wathen dead in the now dead Covelo Hotel.

EVERY WEEK, a representative sample of suffering humanity appears in our office. One day, along with the usual tourists and kibitzers who stop in, an emaciated fellow called David Wood walked slowly through the door. For a panicked instant I thought he'd come to die, but as it developed Mr. Wood said he'd passed successfully through death's indiscriminate door some weeks prior to his arrival in Boonville. A resident of Fort Bragg, Mr. Wood said he'd found a cure for the cancer that had almost killed him and does kill thousands of people. “Just out of the corner of my eye,” he explained, “I once saw a reference in Harper's magazine to something called dichloroaceticacid, and when this tumor appeared in my chest, and the doctors were going to put me on chemo and all the other stuff I knew would kill me, I remembered that Harper's reference.” A little research soon took Mr. Wood directly to the magical stuff which, I believe, he said he'd found in Mexico. And here he was to urge me to pass along the good news about the miracle cure.

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BILL KIMBERLIN

This is looking South from my place towards Boonville. The local fire department advised getting all tree debris off the floor of my trees so if a grass fire came through it would not have enough fuel to get up into the trees.

PG&E on the other hand, insisted on cutting trees and limbs down and leaving them on the ground. They told me this is what the fire department recommended. So, I asked the local fire department about that and they said that was not true, they did not recommend that.

So now, after words with PG&E my property is listed by them as "unsafe to approach".

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MENDOCINO K-8 FUNDRAISER

Flow Restaurant & Lounge is hosting a Whale Watch Fundraiser on March 22nd with a Grand Prize Raffle Drawing for a fabulous "Spotting Scope" (which can also be used as a telescope) with tri-pod.

This is in cooperation with the Mendocino K-8 Unified School District Parent Teacher Organization to which all profits generated will be donated along with however much we make selling Raffle Tickets ($25 each/3 for $50) after I pay myself back (I bought it at "Out Of The World," a wonderful brick and mortar store here in Mendocino Town, who are throwing in a tutorial for people like me who wouldn't know how to set it up or use it correctly); total was close to $600 but I am sure we'll triple that amount generating support for the schools.

I'm buying tickets myself and if we win I will install it for Whale Watching from Flow, which has the Best View on the Coast (no shit) and Sunsets to die for (I am praying for good weather March 22nd). We will have someone on hand from the Noyo Marine Center to tell us what we're looking at/for. We will be serving special Bar Treats both edible and drinkable (think of Grey Whale Organic Humboldt Vodka and Fresh Juice Mocktails) from 3 O'clock as well as regular dinner menus/weekend specials starting at 5 PM.

Meredith Smith merrie@mcn.org

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ANOTHER E-BAY POSTCARD OF SEMI-LOCAL INTEREST (via Marshall Newman)

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REZ NOTES: ROUND VALLEY

by Eric Enriquez

I have never spent the night in Covelo. The primary reasons that I have visited are rodeos, funerals and to clean or visit graves. My grandfather Elbert Perry ‘John’ Crabtree was from Round Valley. He was a lifelong cowboy and poured concrete septic forms on Thomas Lane in Ukiah for the first few years of my life, which were the last few of his. His brother, Francis ‘Jap’ and mother Ella lived on the Eel River near Dos Rios during my childhood and we would stop to visit on the way to Round Valley during these trips. He had more siblings, but I never knew them. Grandpa John died when I was two years old, but looms large in my personal mythology.

My first memory is of him taking me to the Red Bluff Round-Up. A clown did the old exploding outhouse/ass-on-fire bit and I was jarred into time and place, deciding that I very much liked this absurd life and its people. John would take me around, both of us in cowboy boots, western shirts, jeans and hats. We hit backroom card games in downtown Ukiah cafes and often checked in at The Hub (a classic old news-stand/cigar shop) or Western Auto, both near the Ukiah Courthouse. John’s Ukiah was all buckboard plank, cigar, beer and laughs, it seemed. Winos lived in the tunnel-bridge at East Henry Street and Chinese folks ran the high-ceilinged grocery at the old Victory Theater.

We were John's second family. His first family was always cheerful and engaging with me and mine. It was like we all existed together under his giant Oak of a life. He was scary for many, stubborn and fierce. For me, though, he was as tender as could be. I mourned his passing for many years. His children have never really recovered, I think.

John was Wailaki and Concow Maidu. Barrel-chested and skinny-legged, he was movie star handsome with sad cowboy eyes. He and my grandmother Dorothy raised their children first on Stipp Lane before receiving a simple home on Pinoleville from Dorothy's parents. They did farm-work mid-century. I do believe there was some drinking going on as well. My mother's story is hers to tell, but it seems that the household was rather rough and tumble.

I feel a kinship with the Cowboy-type of Indians out of Covelo. We are formed from the frontier experience more than the barefoot joy of nature. More fence than rolling hills, we reflect our bitter journey from many lands to that great reservation. Marched in on foot or kidnapped by wagon and train, our predecessors became different people there.

I cannot, in good conscience, claim Round Valley. I have not paid my dues and it is not my right. I wish someday to know that the people there would choose, in some part, to claim me. In my heart, though, I know that the sacred dirt at the Headquarters Cemetery will accept me.

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GARCIA RIVER WATER WHEEL

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, February 26, 2025

CHRISTOPHER AZIMI, 38, Point Arena. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, ammo possession by prohibited person, failure to appear.

CHARLES BLUNT, 38, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

CORBIN BOEK, 21, Ukiah. Domestic battery, false imprisonment, criminal threats.

DEBRA CABORN, 66, Ukiah. DUI.

NICOLAS MARTINEZ-LOPEZ, 34, Ukiah. DUI.

ORLANDO MUNOZ, 30, Ukiah. Under influence, paraphernalia, resisting.

JESSICA NORTON, 33, Rio Dell/Ukiah. County parole violation.

JACK POLLOCK, 39, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, resisting.

DOUGLAS WHIPPLE III, 36, Ukiah. Registration tampering, parole violation.

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TIME TESTED:

Last Sunday in Sacramento I visited “Time-Tested” books, a distributor of the AVA in years past. Scott Soriano, the long-time manager, “got married and moved to San Francisco,” according to Peter Keat, the long-time owner, who was behind the register. The inventory hasn’t changed drastically, the prices still reasonable. Fortunately for Keat, two restaurants directly across 19th street are extremely popular. Given a 45-minute wait for a table at The Morning Fork (the place to have brunch), and a used bookstore right across the street, wouldn’t you do some browsing?

(Fred Gardner)

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NATIONAL CAREGIVER RECOGNITION DAY

by Betsy Cawn

“Work your fingers to the bone, what do you get?”

Mendocino County Today, February 25, 2025: The Vital Role of IHSS Caregivers

During every discussion about “workforce development” our [Lake County] Board of Supervisors and “staff” always mention the importance of recruiting and retaining “health care” workers holding the essential (but low paid) jobs in hospitals, clinics, long-term care facilities, nursing care “homes,” and labs — as well as “independent” professions such as physical therapy, speech therapy, billing [now there’s a lucrative field], office administration, and — as long as we’re on the subject — In-Home Supportive Services.

Recognizing that both the workforce itself and somewhat younger populations will need their own IHSS help in the not too distant future, our Board of Supervisors nonetheless refuses to negotiate a “liveable wage” for these laborers, who often — like Ms. Sides — come into the arena motivated by personal connection to a patient.

Indeed, the majority of registered and trained “professionals” are vastly outnumbered by family caregivers in our county (200 workforce registry members, 2000 “family” caregivers, circa 2023) — while “elder nutrition” and “ombudsman” services funded by the Older Americans Act — have not been “renewed” by the House of Representatives.

And yet, when our local elected officials participate in the California State Association of Counties (CSAC) priority-setting meetings — for lobbying the state’s Senate and Assembly — they consistently agree with CSAC’s bedrock position on holding IHSS wages and benefits down, and refuse to allow our IHSS union to negotiate directly with the elected officials. The periodic “negotiation” process for IHSS union members is conducted by the Department of Social Services, which hires its own consulting attorney(s) on our dime.

CSAC’s “maintenance of effort” position is explained here: https://www.counties.org/ihss-moe.

Lake County’s Department of Social Services recently reported to our Board of Supervisors that funding for Lake and Mendocino County Agency on Aging delivery of “Meals on Wheels” and the other minimum-compliance program services are endangered by the current Congressional failure to “reauthorize” the Older Americans Act late last year, and local funding for those programs will “run out” in June 2025. No one knows what poor rural counties will do to maintain those critical preventive care programs. IHSS federal funding is from a different budget source, but the Department of Social Services “manages” both for Lake County.

But no one can explain why the largest population of low- and very-low income residents in Lake County have been unable to get help from the highest elected officials, two of whom (from each county in AAA’s Planning & Service Area #26, Lake and Mendocino) serve as the agency’s “Governing Board,” or why the Board of Supervisors omit their oversight of the agency’s performance 20 years after North Coast Opportunities decided to no longer provide AAA administration. 20 years later, none of the “new” supervisors have any institutional knowledge of why that Joint Powers Authority was formed, and never has our Board of Supervisors included the needs of “more than half of the county’s population relying on Medicaid” (per retired DSS Director Crystal Markytan in January 2023), which is also imperiled by mysteriously cowed federal “law makers.”

Our senior centers were nearly destroyed by the 2020 Corona virus pandemic — since they are dependent on volunteers for all of their operations, usually donated by retired “older adults” who could no longer expose themselves to the highly contagious disease.

During that highly disruptive period, senior centers were unable to conduct fundraising activities, and delivery of “meals on wheels” have (in some cases) been reduced to bulk frozen meals dropped off once a week by hard-to-find delivery drivers. While senior center operations have resumed in some locations, Lake County’s very poor, old, and “unhealthy” population has been ill-served for many years due to food production and operational costs.

After reviewing departmental past-year accomplishments, performance “metrics,” and “points of emphasis” (for the coming year’s “goals”), our Board of Supervisors nonetheless continued its policy of leaving the Department of Social Services’ Adult Services programs to fend for themselves, while its delivery of state and federal “relief” money — recently estimated to bring in $9 Million per month to our local economy — depends on fewer licensed clinical social workers and degreed eligibility workers, some of whom rely on Medicaid for their own family health care.

If you are caring for a family member or friend, and want to provide good services, joining the IHSS registry will help improve the reputation of that vulnerable workforce, and you will find that dedicated local staff reporting to the “Public Authority” (an unfunded responsibility of the DSS administration) are supportive and caring. Registry enrollment itself does little to improve the salary and benefit standing of this critical workforce, but joining forces with those “stand up” county employees will bolster the standing of the state-mandated Public Authority, federally structured Older Adult Services, and local IHSS workers.

Also highly recommended is participation in the California In-Home Supportive Services Consumer Alliance (www.cicaihss.org http://www.cicaihss.org/), which brings together IHSS Advisory Boards, Public Authorities, state agency program representatives, and CICA board members with lifetime knowledge of disability needs and program capacities throughout the state.

Finally, joining local IHSS Advisory Boards is imperative, since these bodies — required by state government code — have the authority to “lobby” elected officials to support those department functions we desperately need but do not locally fund.

CICA is continuing to support one extremely important change to the Ralph M. Brown Act, which would allow disabled members (who can only “attend” meetings via online meeting platforms) to vote on advisory-only committee recommendations. Our Board of Supervisors sent an official letter to state senators and assembly members supporting that legislative change, but it never made it to the Governor’s Office in the past legislative session, and our local Board of Supervisors hasn’t followed up on the easily available solution we all desperately need.

We are also in danger of losing our local IHSS Advisory Board's capacity to support workers and agency program providers, since the State wants to take over all wage and benefit “negotiations” — removing the most important role of workers themselves to explain the delta between available services and the enormous mountain of need that was foreseen by the Older Americans Act in 1965.

Greatest thanks to Ms. Sides and all IHSS caregivers, service providers, and advocates like the unnamed author of today’s illustration of “outreach” to AVA readers.

Betsy Cawn The Essential Public Information Center Upper Lake, California

Member: Lake County General Plan Advisory Committee, appointed “subject matter expert” for Lake County's Senior Support Services.

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NIGHT LOADING PECKER POLES. On the Oregon Coast, awaiting the hurricane-force winds that are supposed to smack Astoria sometime today [Wednesday], I was awakened at 4 am from a dream of playing centerfield for the Orioles by loud metallic noises, thinking that part of the roof of the old motel had been shredded off. Well, the winds hadn’t arrived yet, but about 25 log trucks had queued up right outside my motel room door, their engines rumbling like flatulent bears in the fog, waiting to enter the log export docks, where they were being loaded up, one by one. I grabbed my Gore-Tex jacket — which is missing either the Gore or the Tex because I was quickly soaked — and my iPhone and stumbled out into the rain, and snapped a few photos of the malign art of log-loading in the dark until security chased me off the site under threat of either arrest or being loaded along with the logs and sent to a pulp mill in South Korea. Most of the logs were thin, almost emaciated-looking, another grim indication that the big trees in our temperate rainforest are mostly gone, and all that’s left are pecker poles and piss firs that log truck drivers 30 years ago — who prided themselves on driving three-log-loads — would have been embarrassed to haul. Perhaps that’s why they do it at night: to hide their shame.

(Jeffrey St. Clair)

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HE SAT ON THE LOGS, smoking, drying in the sun, the sun warm on his back, the river shallow ahead entering the woods, curving into the woods, shallows light glittering, big water-smooth rocks, cedars along the bank and white birches, the logs warm in the sun, smooth to sit on, without bark, gray to the touch; slowly the feeling of disappointment left him.

— Ernest Hemingway, Big Two-Hearted River

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GRACE SLICK RECALLS HER WILDEST MOMENTS, FROM SLEEPING WITH JIM MORRISON TO PLOTTING TO DOSE NIXON

by Aidin Vaziri

Jefferson Airplane’s frontwoman Grace Slick opened up about some of the most outrageous moments of her career in a recent interview. From her rebellious antics to her wild one-night stand with Jim Morrison, her battles with sobriety and her disdain for her ’80s hits with Jefferson Starship, Slick shared insights that reflect her unique place in rock history.

At 85, the iconic voice of the San Francisco psychedelic rock scene still exudes the same mischievous humor and candidness that defined her career. Here are the key moments from her interview with the Guardian:

The plot to spike Nixon’s tea with LSD

In one of her most audacious revelations, Slick recalled planning to spike President Richard Nixon’s tea with LSD during a White House visit in 1970. Slick had 600 micrograms of LSD with her but was barred from the event after security realized who the young woman born Grace Barnett Wing was.

Asked if she got a kick out of being naughty, Slick said, “I don’t know if naughty is the word. Illegal is probably a better term.”

A wild encounter with Jim Morrison

Slick shared a memorable, intimate encounter with Jim Morrison of the Doors that included the rock star howling at the moon on all fours. She described their sexual encounter as “like making love to a floating art form with eyes,” and added that the “Light My Fire” singer’s key anatomical feature was “slightly larger than average.”

Slick admitted she was disappointed when Morrison didn’t call back.

“Apparently, I wasn’t his style,” she said.

Reckless days in the ’70s

Looking back on her wilder days, Slick openly discussed her reckless behavior, including drunk driving and chaotic stage moments.

She recalled a particularly dangerous episode in which she raced guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, crashing into a concrete wall at 80 mph.

“Very stupid of me,” she said, but noted that the wall suffered more damage than she did. “I was lucky.”

Regret over being sober in the ’80s

Slick reflected on her sobriety in the 1980s, a period she now regrets. Despite scoring major hits with Starship like “We Built This City” and “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” Slick felt disconnected from the music, as much of it was written by external songwriters.

“I thought they were ridiculous,” she said, mocking the lyrics: “There isn’t a city built on rock ’n’ roll! Los Angeles was built on oil and oranges and the movie business.”

Even though she didn’t connect with the songs, she felt obligated to perform them to make up for her wild past.

“I kind of had to because I was trying to make it up to the band,” Slick said. “I’d been this wild, crazy-ass drunk. So to make up for it, I was sober all through the ’80s … which was a mistake.”

Slick’s new creative ventures

Since the 1990s, Slick has embraced new creative outlets, particularly painting and lyric writing.

“I will paint for a couple of months straight, all day, all night. Then I stop for a while to regenerate,” she said.

These days, she’s also writing punk songs with her son-in-law, including tracks like “Yankin’ Boogers and Blowin’ Gas (Everybody’s got a Nose and an Ass).”

“It’ll be interesting to see what kind of repercussions I get from that,” she said, embracing her legacy as a rule breaker with no plans to slow down.

(SF Chronicle)

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'SHOW HER THE BODY': ALLEGED KILL ORDERS AND ABUSE INSIDE THE ZIZIANS

Are the Bay Area group about to join a list of infamous California cults?

by Katie Dowd

Astrange web stretching across the country, linked by a group of people known as the Zizians, has been tied to six homicides over the past few weeks. Seven members of the group, including its mysterious leader, “Ziz,” are now in jail, awaiting trial on charges that range from trespassing to murder. At least one other member is missing, possibly in hiding. The Zizians have been characterized as a cult by friends and family members who said they’ve lost loved ones to Ziz’s thrall. But what exactly is a cult, and do the Zizians qualify as one?

What is a cult?

There is no single definition of a cult, nor is there a legal one. Cults can have vastly different ideologies, but they share a few core similarities. Cults have strict rules and values. The most extreme beliefs — the ones they eventually become known for — are rarely presented early on to new members. They are led by a persuasive figure, like slick gospel leader Jim Jones or the wild-eyed hippie Charles Manson, and they are usually highly hierarchical.

Jones’ Peoples Temple, for example, began as a progressive church that celebrated all races during a time of segregation. Members were lured in with the promise of racial equality and free social services, and Jones normalized violence, coercion and subservience that ended in mass murder in Guyana. In Scientology, which some consider to be more like a cult than a religion, members aren’t introduced to the lore of extraterrestrial past lives until they’ve invested significant time and money — by which point, many members feel too invested in the ideology and distanced from loved ones to back out.

To control their members, cults also employ tactics to isolate and wear down the followers, such as drug use, sleep deprivation, cutting contact with loved ones and forced labor. Many cult leaders also exploit their members financially or sexually. Manson, for example, sexually abused some of the young women in the Manson Family, many of whom were also heavy drug users.

What do the Zizians believe?

We have a remarkably extensive paper trail of the Zizians: Almost all of the approximately 12 people connected to the group have large online footprints. The apparent leader of the Zizians, Jack “Ziz” LaSota, wrote long, rambling accounts of life in the Bay Area on her blog, elucidating some of the reasons why she broke apart from mainstream society.

Nearly all of the members are highly educated — Ziz interned at NASA — and many found work in the Bay Area tech sector. They were prolific coders and software developers; one member, Emma Borhanian, won awards at Google for her work. But, like many young people working in tech, the group became disillusioned by the industry and the high cost of living in the Bay Area.

Their orbits crossed primarily through rationalism and effective altruism groups, both of which seek to create a higher moral compass through improved decision-making processes. For the Zizians, modern society felt irrevocably broken, and the rise of artificial intelligence only deepened their fears about the future. As part of their quest toward altruism, some became virulently against eating meat and embraced a radical vegan lifestyle. Ziz referred to non-vegans as “flesh-eating monsters” and likened animals to human babies.

Part of the Zizians’ appeal may have been their tenet that people can be split into halves. That belief extended to gender — most members identify as trans or gender fluid — and even the brain itself, which some members argued could be turned on and off in sections. Like many trans people, the Zizians feared persecution and violence, and the insular nature of the group may have given them a sense of safety.

They feared the “singularity,” the biblical moment when AI rises up and becomes one, decimating the human race. Some wrestled with their role in the Bay Area tech scene in the face of a modern-day Book of Revelation: Destroy AI or help build it to save themselves?

One of their driving forces appeared to be that concern of societal collapse brought on by AI. Members attempted living on boats and off the grid, seeking to buy property in rural Vermont. The presence of white box trucks, often kitted out with solar panels and high-tech equipment, at nearly every place they frequented spoke to a need to flee at a moment’s notice.

“If you keep the vehicle in good running condition, build amenities that approximate first-world living conditions, and keep financial buffer, it gives you a foundation to build on that is independent from the system of rent and social politics,” Zizian Gwen Danielson, who is currently unlocatable, wrote. It was in one of these trucks, referred to as “slackmobiles” by the group, that Ziz was finally found and arrested in Maryland last week.

Although pop culture tends to deride cult followers as weak-minded or stupid, it’s common for them to be well-educated, high-functioning members of society. The Order of the Solar Temple, which had hundreds of members worldwide, recruited from affluent circles. In the 1990s, over 70 members killed themselves or were slain as the cult collapsed; among the victims were business executives and politicians. Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese religious cult behind the 1995 sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway, primarily recruited elite university students who were disillusioned with the pressures of modern career culture.

How cults work: Isolation

Isolation is one of the first steps that cult leaders take to control their members. Cults may cross socioeconomic, gender and racial lines, but members almost always lack a strong support system. Once separated from family and friends — if they had them to begin with — members can be more easily manipulated. Cult leaders often have a keen ability to identify vulnerable people. NXIVM, for example, was established as a self-help group, giving leader Keith Raniere access to a steady stream of possible recruits.

Children of God, a religious sect established by David Berg in the 1960s, warned against sending children to school and told adults to work within the confines of the group as they waited for the end times. In reality, there was no apocalypse, and this isolation instead allowed for rampant sexual abuse, as children who grew up in the cult, like late actor River Phoenix, would later attest.

In the most extreme cases, members may be physically isolated as well. Peoples Temple members were ordered to hand over their passports when they arrived at Jonestown, cutting off any hope of escape. Eventually, concerned family members in California began lobbying politicians to investigate why they couldn’t reach their loved ones. That request turned into the fateful trip where Congressman Leo Ryan flew to Guyana and was gunned down on the tarmac, kicking off the events that led to the deaths of over 900 people.

Friends and family of the Zizians have told remarkably consistent stories about what they say happened to loved ones after meeting Ziz. Daniel Blank had a promising career coding at a startup in Oakland in 2019 after graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in bioengineering, when he fell in with the group. By Thanksgiving 2022, he became secretive before cutting off his parents completely. In his last contact with them, he sent a gruesome video of farm animals being slaughtered alongside the message, “Look what you’ve done.”

Ophelia Bauckholt had a robust circle of friends and was making $500,000 a year at a New York trading firm. Two years ago, though, friends told NBC News, she became tight-lipped about her phone calls and weekend trips. In November 2023, she reportedly took a flight out of Newark Liberty International Airport and never contacted her old friends again. In January, they learned on the news that Bauckholt had died in a shootout with Border Patrol agents.

In Gwen Danielson, Ziz found a person vulnerable to manipulation. “I liked this person,” Ziz wrote of their first meeting at a rationalist meetup. “I told them that if they could be turned to the dark side, they would make a powerful ally.” She later suggested “we make Gwen the ‘dictator.’”

Danielson left behind a full academic scholarship at Rice University to join Ziz on a doomed rusty tugboat in San Francisco Bay, where the group imagined a rent-free life as part of Silicon Valley’s intellectual rationalist scene.

“I’m a tugboat captain trying to save the world,” Danielson wrote on an online profile. But life on the boat soon turned into a nightmare. One dark night, Ziz felt threatened by Danielson and fantasized about violence. “We might as well try to kill each other right then and there,” she wrote.

Not long after, Danielson disappeared. For a time, her parents thought she had taken her own life. “This is something that’s been scary,” her father Brett Danielson told the San Francisco Chronicle of the group. “Hopefully, they will spend a fair amount of time behind bars.”

Sleep deprivation

Extreme sleep deprivation is considered by some experts to be a form of torture due to the physical and psychological stress it elicits. As anyone with an infant can attest, sleep deprivation can lead to cognitive issues like memory loss, mood swings and depression and to physical symptoms like fatigue and headaches. It’s no surprise that cult leaders liberally use sleep deprivation as a means of control. Aum Shinrikyo’s leader Shoko Asahara restricted followers’ sleep, as did Marshall Applewhite of Heaven’s Gate.

Ziz practiced “unihemispheric sleep” or “partial sleep,” a scientifically dubious technique apparently developed by Danielson, in which one half of the brain rests while the other is active. An anonymous blog post accused Ziz of using the technique as a form of sleep deprivation to manipulate followers. The post alleged partial sleep was used on a Zizian in Poland named Maia Pasek, who was born Chris Pasek and transitioned later in life. A post from Pasek’s online alter ego, Squirrel in Hell, titled “Decision Theory and Suicide” has been referenced as a possible suicide note. A 28-year-old named Chris Pasek died in Slaskie, Poland, a few weeks later, although SFGATE could not confirm this was the same person.

According to Michelle Zajko’s LinkedIn page, while working at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, she conducted research regarding “sleep deprived individuals.” Zajko is a person of interest in the double homicide of her parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, who were killed in their home in late 2022.

Physical abuse

While psychological abuse is near-universal in cults, direct physical abuse is not always present. At the Peoples Temple, Jim Jones cultivated an aura of fear by ordering boxing matches between followers. He also directed children to be spanked or beaten as a form of punishment. “Many onlookers cheered,” Jeff Guinn wrote in “The Road to Jonestown.” Dissenters often found they didn’t have the financial means to leave, as they’d already turned over their assets to the church. In NXIVM, the initials of cult leader Keith Raniere were branded near the genitals of female members with a hot cauterizing iron.

Allegations of sexual abuse within the Zizians are littered throughout the lengthy blogs written by its members. Much of this abuse allegedly occurred at a Bay Area home referred to as “guilt” or “guilty house.” One anonymous commenter referred to the home as a “brothel.”

Alex “Somni” Leatham, who is facing homicide charges in Solano County for the 2022 samurai sword attack on Curtis Lind that left Borhanian dead, wrote darkly about a house member repeatedly beating another “with a stick.” Danielson also described the “many months long abusive living situation” in a post titled “Fighting Abuse.”

Leatham’s posts from the time also allege that someone in the house offered a member of the group up as “a ‘toy’ I could have sex with.”

Creating enemies

Enemies, both real and imagined, are critical tools for cult leaders. By creating a narrative of persecution, loyalty to the leader is strengthened. Enemies are often a product of their time: In the 1960s and 1970s, Jim Jones leveraged the very real fight for racial equality for his own purposes. Jones told his followers that the American power structure would fight their quest for equality and they would only survive by creating a utopian society abroad.

Enemies can also come from within. L. Ron Hubbard, the creator of Scientology, coined the term “suppressive persons” to label people who went against his church. The term came about after the defection of Hubbard’s son from the group, necessitating an explanation for why a high-profile member would suddenly depart. “Suppressive persons” are destructive personalities who are capable of harming others, Hubbard explained. People who have left Scientology often say they were labeled as “suppressive” and cut off from contacting their loved ones still in the church.

Among the Zizians, the concepts of “single good,” “double good” and “nongood” became ways to categorize people. Nongoods were described as “neutral and evil when referring to a human.” In one of her final posts, Ziz characterized them as “a cancer and willful embrace of death.”

The fractures created in the group culminated in Ziz ordering one member to kill another, according to a blog post written by Zajko.

The alleged kill order was made against a fringe figure in the group named Alice Monday, whom Ziz once referred to as “sort of a mentor” but later became an enemy. As allegations of abuse within the group increased, Monday and Zajko appear to have left the Bay Area and moved to the East Coast, where they lived as a couple.

A police charging document against Zajko for gun charges in Vermont mentions a “romantic partner” of Zajko’s. Voter registrations for the property at 1300 Webster Road in Coventry, Vermont, show both Zajko and Alice Monday living there. Around this time, Zajko wrote on her blog that Ziz had ordered her to kill Alice.

“During our last phone call, Ziz informed me that the only way I could gain her trust and make up for what I did to her was to murder Alice, preferably sometime soon,” Zajko wrote, “… then told me that after I should video call Ziz and show her the body before I destroy it so she could get proof positive that I’d really done it. And if I didn’t do it, Ziz planned to drive across the entire continental United States to murder me.”

Monday’s footprint online is sporadic. She once worked for the Oregon startup Beeminder. Her bio for the company described her as “an autodidactic student of mathematics and applied rationality.” She went by the pronoun “Ze/Zir,” but the bio said, “The linguistically less radical can by all means call her she.” In various profile pictures of Monday, she can be seen smiling, often wearing glasses, with curly strawberry blond hair.

As far back as 2014, she interacted with rationalist thinker Scott Alexander on his influential Slate Star Codex blog. In 2017, she signed up to attend a violin concerto in a home in the Lower Haight in San Francisco. But around the time the alleged threats came from Ziz, she appears to have left the country.

In 2022 a profile that matches her email address wrote of living in Chile on a Workaway trip, where she helped build homes in San José de Maipo with a man named Leo, in exchange for lodgings and food. “Leo made us a large, excellent vegan lunch every day, and in the evenings we often cooked together and getting to know each other,” Monday wrote.

Monday did not return a request for comment for this story.

At the top, a godlike leader

Although not all cult leaders liken themselves to religious figures, most have intense, grandiose beliefs about themselves. Asahara told Aum Shinrikyo followers that, like Christ, he could take on their sins. Applewhite of Heaven’s Gate convinced his followers that he was chosen to help them ascend to the next life. David Koresh proclaimed himself the new messiah.

In her own writings, Ziz described how she viewed herself as a “Double Good” figure — the highest designation in her hierarchy — and often wrote as if her words were a gift to be studied.

“I want people to be able to extract the updates that I made by understanding what algorithms I ran,” Ziz wrote. In one post, she fantasized about a road-rage killing, framed in “Star Wars” lore. “Imagine an enraging road situation, that gets stronger. …” she wrote. “The Sith do what they want deep down. They remove all obstructions to that and express their true values.”

Other Zizians acknowledged the scale of Ziz’s ambitions, even in sometimes mocking comments. “You are not innocent, Ziz,” Zajko wrote in response to one of Ziz’s posts. “You are afforded no protection from the hammer of justice because what have you done, exactly? Made a religion? Who cares.”

The abruptness with which the Zizians cut ties and became enveloped in a new ideology convinced loved ones that they were under the influence of a cult. Alexander Blank, whose son Daniel is in jail in Maryland, called him “a victim of the cult.” A friend of Bauckholt’s referred to the Zizians as a “death cult.” A classmate of Suri Dao, who is facing trial in Solano County, worried the friend he knew as Elizah was lost forever.

“My belief about cults is that there is a cult for everyone,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I just knew that this was the cult for Elizah.”

What happens next to the Zizians is now largely in the hands of the justice system. Seven members — Dao, Leatham, Ziz, Zajko, Blank, Maximilian Synder and Teresa Youngblut — are in custody across the country, awaiting trial for charges ranging from trespassing to murder. Ziz faces some of the lightest charges of the bunch: trespassing, obstruction and illegally possessing a handgun in her vehicle. Law enforcement agencies in California and Pennsylvania have not said if she will eventually face any charges there.

Like many cult leaders, Ziz had long prepared for the day that law enforcement caught up with her. In a 2019 blog post titled “Punching Evil,” she made an egomaniacal prediction: “There are more people who would probably actually avenge me if I was killed or unjustly imprisoned than almost anyone in the modern era.”

(SF Chronicle)

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FROM 1931-1969 THE HELMS TRUCK TOOT-TOOTED IT'S WAY AROUND SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA NEIGHBORHOODS.

Paul Helms was a retired banker when he created the novel concept of bringing the experience of baked products 'daily at your door' and an EXPERIENCE it was! The trucks played a distinctive whistle and smelled like a bakery factory on wheels! A smell so fresh and pungent one could almost outline every doughnut, pastry, and loaf of bread from their living room! Their glazed donuts were the specialty at 5 cents each. Kids looked forward to the Helms truck as much as the Ice Cream truck. They offered over 150 different products only available via the Helm's delivery truck. Helms distributed placards a blue 'H' to place in windows so the truck would know to stop at a certain house. This top photo is the yellow truck I remember, never knew what we had until it was gone, right?

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TRUMP WHITE HOUSE RESCINDS RULES IMPLEMENTING THE NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY ACT (NEPA)

by Dan Bacher

The Trump administration’s assault on the nation’s environmental laws continues at an unprecedented pace, with its latest target being the landmark National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

On Feb. 19, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) eliminated all of the rules that implement NEPA in an effort to “unleash” oil and gas drilling at the same time that the world is heating up from fossil-fuel driven climate change.…

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/25/2306183/-Trump-White-House-rescinds-rules-implementing-the-National-Environmental-Policy-Act-NEPA

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“You realize that a man can take a train and never reach his destination, that a man has no destination at the end of the road, but that he merely has a starting point on the road—which is Home. You see it all, this epic of mankind, before your eyes; it is a limpid and awful truth, it has a naked and beautiful reality. You are now a man, little madman.”

― Jack Kerouac, Atop An Underwood: Early Stories And Other Writings

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THE WHITE HOUSE kicked HuffPost, Reuters and a representative of the foreign press out of the traditional “press pool” Wednesday, making good on press secretary Karoline Leavit’s pledge to pick which outlets cover the president in confined spaces. Ahead of Trump’s first Cabinet meeting, the three reporters were told they weren't allowed to join the rest of the pool by press aides. They were banished alongside the Associated Press reporter and photographer, who were ousted from the pool indefinitely earlier this month over the wire service’s refusal to use the term “Gulf of America” instead of “Gulf of Mexico.”

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FOR THE LIFE OF ME…

Editor,

I’m in my 70s and have lived a remarkably ordinary life: going to school, working, taking care of my family, paying my taxes on time. I’ve never broken the law, except for two speeding tickets about 50 years ago.

At my age, I’m supposed to have gained some wisdom, but for the life of me, I am unable to comprehend how the Jan. 6 insurrectionists can see themselves as victims.

They broke into a building, causing physical damage, ignored the orders of the individuals in charge of securing the premises, assaulted the police and other security personnel and caused several deaths and serious injuries. They did all this in fealty to the current president, even as they threatened the life of Mike Pence, who was then the vice president.

No one forced these people to breach the Capitol, invading the Senate floor and the offices of legislators while staff members cowered in fear. These criminals did not leave the premises until President Trump sent them his love and asked them to go home. Law-abiding citizens like me watched all of this activity in horror, live on television.

For their criminal activity, the insurrectionists received blanket presidential pardons.

Since Donald Trump entered the political arena, American life has become incomprehensible.

Stephanie Nicholas Acquadro

Westfield, New Jersey

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LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT

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The People Carrying Out Musk’s Plans at DOGE

Chief Justice Allows U.S. to Continue Freeze on Foreign Aid Payments

Organ Transplant System ‘in Chaos’ as Waiting Lists Are Ignored

Gene Hackman, Hollywood’s Consummate Everyman, Dies at 95

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ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

The rich and elite have won by getting the poorest and least educated to look at their fellow Americans as the enemy. My heart breaks for this country. But maybe that situation has been substantially caused by the liberal’s angry rhetoric that everyone who disagrees with them is a fascist, racist, xenophobe, etc or as Hillary Clinton put it, “a basket full of deplorables.” That seems pretty far along the way of making Americans see each other as enemies.

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ONE OF THE OLD MEN, one of the old Longhairs with a Mongolian mustache and tall black hat, is standing in the dust and sunlight in front of the Holiday Inn, talking with two of his wives. A big car rolls up — a Buick Behemoth I believe it was, or it may have been a Cadillac Crocodile, a Dodge Dinosaur or a Mercury Mastodon, I’m not sure which — and this lady climbs out of it. She’s wearing golden stretch pants, green eyelids and a hiveshaped head of hair that looks both in color and texture exactly like 25¢ worth of candy cotton. She has a camera in her hands and is aiming it straight at the old Navajo. “Hey!” she says. “Look this way.” He looks, sees the woman, spits softly on the ground and turns his back. Naturally offended, the lady departs without buying even a postcard.

— Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire (1968)

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EXCERPT FROM REYNARD THE FOX

by John Masefield

The fox was strong, he was full of running,

He could run for an hour and then be cunning,

But the cry behind him made him chill,

They were nearer now and they meant to kill.

They meant to run him until his blood

Clogged on his heart as his brush with mud,

Till his back bent up and his tongue hung flagging,

And his belly and brush were filthed from dragging.

Till he crouched stone still, dead-beat and dirty,

With nothing but teeth against the thirty.

And all the way to that blinding end

He would meet with men and have none his friend.

Men to holloa and men to run him,

With stones to stagger and yells to stun him,

Men to head him, with whips to beat him,

Teeth to mangle and mouths to eat him.

And all the way, that wild high crying,

To cold his blood with the thought of dying,

The horn and the cheer, and the drum-like thunder,

Of the horse hooves stamping the meadows under.

He upped his brush and went with a will

For the Sarsen Stones on Wan Dyke Hill.

(via Bruce McEwen)

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There is a moment in every person's life when they realize that everything they have lived for was nothing but an illusion, and that the days pass by, carrying nothing with them but the exhaustion of the soul. Laevsky, as he gazed at the turbulent sea, suddenly understood that all his conflicts, all his harsh words, and all the anger he had harbored for years were meaningless. How can a person live believing that justice takes the form of victory? How can we measure a man's worth by how many others he has defeated?

The sea before him remained calm despite the storm raging within him, as if nature were mocking him, telling him that everything would pass — whether he liked it or not.

– Anton Chekhov, "The Duel"

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MARX'S PROGRAM AS DESCRIBED IN THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. Given the ignorant Magababble aimed at conflating liberals and communists, here's what the old boy was after:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. (To be applied these days to Americans who hide their money in offshore accounts.)
5. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. (Uh, not a good idea, Karl, although we pretty much already have it in the corporate media's fealty to the Democrats. Transportation? It does take a government to make the trains run.)
6. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. (Now more than ever. Corporate land is depleting the soil and making unhealthy fatties out of us as they go.)
7. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. (Even the bums would have to put their idle shoulders to the wheel of the potato patch.)
8. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. (Less concrete, more trees, more space for everyone.)
9. Free education for all children in public schools. (We've got that although the political right would like to privatize it.)

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WE NEVER HAD BOOKS at home when I was a kid; food and shelter nosed them out of the budget. The savior for us was the local library. In grammar school we had to write book reports. I hated it at first until I saw the new worlds books could open for me.

Our local library was The Saratoga Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, maybe a 15 minute walk from home. I can still recall the musty smell of books as you entered. Just past the librarian’s desk were the neat rows of card catalogs in sturdy oak cabinets.

The librarian was right out of central casting… gray haired, cardigan sweater and a champion shusher. She wielded that rubber date stamp like a six-shooter and tolerated no horseplay in that place of learning on her watch. She also put me onto some great books.

Luckily, I got into a good high school where discussing literature didn’t automatically earmark you for a schoolyard beating. One of my English teachers, Patricia Hornberger, really fed my reading habit. She was all of five feet tall with a pixie haircut, big horn-rimmed glasses and a serious overbite. She’d make us read Shakespeare aloud in class. The Bard would never recognize Macbeth as read by a room full of street guys with pronounced Brooklyn accents.

As you go through life, there are people who sometimes give you a nudge in the right direction. They might be family members, clergy, teachers, coaches or yes, even librarians. I'm grateful for them; they will never know how much their nudges helped.

— Louise Penny

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