- Hopland History Talk & Prohibition
- For The Life Of Me…
- Hoping
- On Bended Knee
- Expiation Of The Week
- Don’t Do It
- More Ponds?
- Ditch Pennies, Nickels
- Capital’s Stranglehold
- How The Money’s Spent
- We Didn’t Hear The Musk Mention
HOPLAND HISTORY TALK & PROHIBITION
Hello Local History Fans.
Just around the corner is our March History Talk. We will be meet on Sunday, March 9, in the Rod Shippey Hall at the University of California’s Hopland Research and Extension Center. The event will be a multifaceted look at the history of the research center and the land it occupies. The Tribal Chairman of the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians, Sonny Elliott, will open the program talking about the deep history of Hopland and the Shóqowa People on this land. Other speakers will include Bob Keiffer, retired Superintendent of HREC, serving over 30 years with the UC and connected to the site for a lifetime. We will also hear from John Bailey, current Director of the Hopland Research and Extension Center.
The event will start at 1pm. Please reserve a seat by contacting us at 707-462-6969, or by email at info@mendocinocountyhistory.org. Reserve by Friday, March 7th, so we can guarantee you one of Beth Keiffer’s wonderful dessert treats! Also, remember to check your clocks, because March 9th, is the start of daylight-savings time.
Directions: From downtown Hopland (intersection of Highways 101 and 175), take Highway 175 east toward Lakeport. Cross the Russian River, drive straight across the traffic circle (second exit) onto Old River Road (also marked “Road 201”). Next, turn right onto University Road. (There is a UC sign at the intersection.) Drive up University Road for approximately 3.5 miles, following signs to “Event Parking.” Please park in this area and walk across the road to the Rod Shippey Hall. Blue badge parking is also available if you drive a little further along University Road. Car-pooling is recommended.
Also, our second annual fundraiser is coming up on Saturday, May 17th. The party this year will be “The Speakeasy Soiree,” thematically taking us back to the days of the prohibition era, with blind pigging, bootlegging, and the speakeasy history of the County. If you don’t know what “blind pigging” is, I’ll only tease you for now by saying that the Mendocino County Sheriff’s arrest records were full of this nefarious activity. Note, no pigs were hurt in the pursuit of this crime.
The night will include a dinner prepared by Chef Matt Allison and the good folks at the Ukiah Brewing Company, a silent auction, and amusement by Uklah Players actors. During the live auction, retired Sheriff Tom Allman will be rounding up the usual (and unusual) suspects to raise money for this great cause. Last year’s experience was a real success, with great reviews and a lot of enthusiasm for the next big event. We have some wonderful auction items coming in and planning a night of great food, drink, and entertainment, with some fun history thrown in.
Festivities will run from 5-9pm with dinner at 6pm. Barra of Mendocino is hosting us again this year, at 7051 North State Street, in Redwood Valley. Tickets are $100 per person and will be available soon.
We hope to see you there!
Tim Buckner, E.D., Historical Society of Mendocino County
100 So, Dora St. Ukiah, CA 95482
707 462-6969
www.mendocinocountyhistory.org
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
CASE DISMISSED; NOW WHAT?
To the Editor:
The malicious prosecution case against duly elected County Auditor-Treasurer Chamise Cubbison has been dismissed. Now what?
Now, every county actor tainted by the Cubbison affair needs to go.
District Attorney Dave Eyster needs to be sued by Cubbison, and his conduct should be reported to the California Bar Association. CEO Darcie Antle needs to be immediately fired. Supervisors Maureen Mulheren, Ted Williams and John Haschak need to resign or be recalled.
That’s just a start.
Everyone in the County Counsel’s office involved in the Cubbison case needs to go, too.
As a county, we, the people, need to ask: Leading up to Cubbison being charged, who was involved? Who fabricated a case against Cubbison?
And after she was charged, for the next two years, as the case wend its way through court, who obstructed justice? Who didn’t respond truthfully to discoveries? Who destroyed or falsified evidence? Who perjured themselves? Who intimidated witnesses?
John Sakowicz
Ukiah
PS. The people of Mendocino County deserve so much better than the governance we presently have. But nothing ever seems to change. We are governed by the same hacks elected by the same shadowy political machine regardless of the decade…the hacks 25 years ago seem a lot like the hacks we have now. Only the faces change. And county government itself seems like a jobs program for the otherwise unemployable. How to get a county job? Nepotisms and cronyism. Most jobs go to “townies.” Johnny Pinches was the last member of the BOS I truly admired.
Daney Dawson:
Please, no more lengthy and expensive lawsuits for the county to pay for. Let Eyster and/or others be pressured into leaving without running up hundreds of thousands in attorney costs for the county, or booted out next election.
Jean Arnold:
Shame is not a ‘thing’ anymore.
I wouldn't bet on his accepting any blame for any of this expensive mess. He had to have been shameless at the time he plotted it (and when he kept trying to pass off his parties as training events); I can't imagine he's changed his persona since.
HOPING
Editor:
Seventy years ago, everyone in the United States smoked, or at least it seemed that way. Today, far fewer Americans smoke. I suspect that social media is headed in the same direction.
Today, it seems as if Americans cannot ignore social media or the telephones that distribute social media, even though they are addictive, bad for the people who use them and bad for those of us who have to be around those who use them. A significant industry has been erected to perpetuate, promote and defend their use.
I suspect that 70 years from now, we will look back on social media in a similar manner: a toxic relic visible mainly in old shows from this time.
Stephen Anderson
Phoenix
ON BENDED KNEE
Editor:
It’s difficult for me not to notice that almost every issue or problem covered in articles and news reports, is attributable to one cause: an economic system that grossly favors the wealthy and is allowing those same rich folks to extract more and more money from our taxes (privatization) and directly from our pockets (inflation).
Fewer and fewer of us are being allowed to enjoy what the richest country in the world should be able to provide, whether it’s education, health care, housing or employment. So, schools close, homelessness increases, retail crime rises.
But you won’t read this in any article or hear it in any news report. You won’t hear it from your president or your city council member. Even your local “leaders” prefer to take your abuse when you complain than tell you the truth. “There isn’t enough money,” but they never say why. Under Democrats or under Republicans.
Prepare for it to get worse because there are too many people who thought those getting richer by the minute would solve the problem. When has there ever been any evidence of that? The money is there, but this system doesn’t work for us.
Susan Collier Lamont
Santa Rosa
EXPIATION OF THE WEEK
Everyone, I made a mistake in my recent newscast on Chamise Cubbision returning to work and I mispronounced Darcie Antle’s name. CEO Antle’s name is pronunciated An-tel. I should have known this because I interviewed her. These kinds of mistakes aren’t acceptable, but unfortunately, they can happen, particuarly in the absence of a check list to use on deadline.
To reduce their frequency, I’m crowdsourcing a KZYX News Pronunciation Guide. This will help me, it will help the KZYX Newsroom as we grow, and it will be available to anyone who creates content in Mendocino County.
It is an easy way to help rebuild local news and it costs nothing but your willingness to contribute a few minutes of your time.
(Elise Cox, KZYX newswoman)
DON’T DO IT
Editor:
Lake Pillsbury, Lake Mendocino and the entire Russian River watershed depend on water from the Eel River dams. For years, politicians have cried save water, use rain barrels, go solar, go hydropower, go green energy, save ecosystems, and be the California examples, the guardians of nature. Now we are being forced to watch as two beautiful lakes and a beautiful river system are destroyed.
They are not going to save the fish, wildlife and fauna that exist from this 100-year-old ecosystem. And cannabis farms can grow acres and drain watersheds up north without watershed studies. Bears, deer, otters, salmon, bald eagles in these rivers and the two beautiful lakes will be brutally sacrificed, killed, dehydrated and starved instead of saved.
This is the opportunity of a lifetime to build a green hydropower dam and use the Eel and Russian river ecosystems systems equally. Don’t sacrifice one to save the other, but build an equal future of water for all without killing a local dream of people caring about all of nature.
Catherine Lair
Ukiah
MORE PONDS?
To the Editor:
I am extremely disappointed having heard the constant rhetoric attempting to explain the cause for the last few years of drought in California. Not once have we investigated the root of the problem. Farmers are fallowing millions of acres, development of waste water use is expanding, communities are conserving everywhere, and we are being forced to over use our groundwater aquifers. We need more surface water storage if we are to meet the unnatural release, and ever increasing use of our stored water supply for fish flows directed to the ocean for unproven and over stated expected results.
Fact is, an increase in surface storage is not being pursued aggressively because of the overwhelming opposition from minority preservation and environmental organizations. Their ability to sue every state and federal agency (us the TAX PAYER) to the detriment of all, using every environmental legal loop hole they can find under the premise that the misused Endangered Species Act supersedes all as the law of the land. There seems to be no balance between man and the environment anymore.
When you look to your rivers during these past few drought years and you see those unnatural and unseasonably high flows during the summer and fall, ask yourself, when all of the creeks are dry, where is the water coming from?? It’s coming from stored water in our reservoirs that were built to hedge off the effects of DROUGHT. This water was stored, and licensed for beneficial uses including agricultural, domestic, and industrial. The fisheries and environmental concerns are entitled to a share of this water, but natural accretion flows that reflect actual season changes only. If ten cubic feet per second (CFS) is the inflow into a storage facility after the last spring rains, then 10 CFS should be the flow release from storage, NOT 200, or 140, or even 40 CFS. It must be 10 CFS to mimic natural conditions!
You want answers to the question of why our lakes are dry? Ask the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) they are a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They have a regional office in Santa Rosa. They have taken control of all water rights in the United States through their development of Biological Opinions (BO). In our area of the Upper Main Stem Eel River and the East Branch Russian River the BO was formalized in 2004. It mandates the flow releases from storage that will continue until the water is gone. Their only concern is fish, period. They are not balancing the beneficial uses or needs as directed by the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The point is, these inequities have been addressed with viable solutions, and corrections, but to date they have been largely ignored by NMFS. I believe their mismanagement of California’s water supply is unacceptable, and those responsible must be held accountable. Our legislators have proven to be less than helpful, every time. I get the impression they have an agenda and it seems to be destroying water storage in this state, not improving it…
Our elected representatives must step up. We all need to say enough is enough. We must protect the people’s share of developed water storage for all people and agricultural uses through a balanced formula that of course includes fisheries and environmental resources.
Steven Elliott
Potter Valley
DITCH PENNIES, NICKELS
Editor:
I’ve said for years we should get rid of the penny, not so much because it costs more to mint than its face value, but because, with inflation, it just isn’t worth anything (“Pondering consequences of ditching penny,” Feb. 23).
The nickel is a money loser, so let’s ditch it, too. Canada’s smallest-value coin is the dime. We could add a 50-cent piece. Yes, it’s been tried and failed. Without pennies and nickels, there would be room in the till for it. The article notes that other countries have more coins than we would with just two or three. So what? Besides, two of Canada’s five coins are the dollar “Loonie” (it has a loon on it) and the $2 “toonie.” Two of the Eurozone’s eight coins are for one and two euros. Still too many different coins.
We could round prices to the nearest 10 cents. And get rid of prices ending in 99 cents. This was started by James Cash Penney (that really was his middle name) to keep employees honest. Payments went by pneumatic tube to a cashier on the mezzanine; if an item was $2.99, and she gave the clerk $3, she would receive a penny in change.
Finally, we’re fast becoming a cashless society, so let’s taper off coin production now.
Barbara Vaughan
Santa Rosa
CAPITAL’S STRANGLEHOLD
Editor:
The furor about immigrants is a matador’s red cape concealing decades of job loss, inadequate wages and inadequate support for child care, health care and Social Security to buttress our working class.
Every one of these issues is tethered to our nation’s failure to shelter our politics from the power of America’s great fortunes and corporate sector. Congress is now a wholly owned subsidiary of capital because the Supreme Court has rewarded money with every advantage over citizens. The best legislators must calculate how stringently they can push for the public good before losing the money they require to stay in office. The worst simply open their suitcases.
News broadcasts, now owned by the corporate sector, will not allow ideas to reach a public they consider threatening to profits. Consequently, Americans never hear actual left-wing (Social Democrat) policy alternatives available to our European and Scandinavian allies.
Aging rich people and C-suites have calculated that they can stall action on global warming and die with their toys and power intact before the horrific bill arrives. Alas, the planet will not wait for us. Unless citizens get serious, they will never perceive that the best and the worst serving us do so under the thrall of money, and money always gets the last word.
Peter Coyote
Sebastopol
HOW THE MONEY’S SPENT
To the Editor:
Re: delayed funding from the National Institutes of Health:
As an N.I.H.-funded researcher and a faculty member at Washington University in St. Louis, I wanted to add further context about how grant money is spent.
When I was a student, I assumed that most grant money was spent on equipment and supplies. But actually in my neuroscience lab, most of the budget, about 80 percent, goes to salaries of the people who work in the lab. That’s because salaries of skilled, highly trained scientists carrying out experiments and analysis are the main costs of research.
Universities invest in lab space and equipment so we can start our labs, but N.I.H. grant funding lets us hire scientists so we can carry out our research. If N.I.H. funding is left to wither on the vine because of these administrative shenanigans, many scientists will be left unemployed.
Martha Bagnall
St. Louis
WE DIDN’T HEAR THE MUSK MENTION
Editor:
We’re some of the “whiners and complainers about what Donald Trump has been doing.” Rick Oxford says we weren’t paying attention when Trump was campaigning. We were. We didn’t hear him say Elon Musk was going to be copresident; we didn’t hear him say he was going to fire thousands of federal workers, close important institutions and dismantle the government. We didn’t hear him say he was going to cause confusion and mayhem (although that isn’t a surprise). We did hear him say he was going to bring prices down on the first day and end the Russia-Ukraine war — a bunch of empty promises only his base would believe. How many of those fired federal workers voted for Trump?
The letter also says “he’s only been in office a month. Think what he can do in another three years and eight months.” We shudder to think what this country will look like then. We are embarrassed to be Americans at this point.
Louise & Denny Udall
Santa Rosa
Be First to Comment