Mendocino County Today: Sunday 3/9/2025

Trestlecast | Mostly Sunny | State Finalists | AV Events | Pet Cassie | Looking Back | Local Events | Art Donations | Three Rats | Variety Show | No Comment | In Case | Empty Gallery | Ed Notes | Harp & Story | Trash Holes | Yesterday's Catch | Lucky Man | Getting Stoned | Marco Radio | Awkward Age | Water Costs | Heartless | Thankful Canadian | Stepfun | Changing Light | Vaudeville Volodymyr | Gulf X | German Return | Afterlife | Sexist Stereotypes | Every Corner | When Did | Lead Stories | Schwing Response | Elon's Musk | Taking Advantage | Squiddy

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CLEAR and mostly calm weather will continue through Monday. Wet weather will return late Tuesday through the end of the week. Gusty south wind will precede the heaviest rain late Tuesday night, and snow levels will below 2000 feet by Wednesday night as rain showers persist. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A brisk 37F under clear skies this Sunday morning on the coast. Our forecast is much the same today with rain returning later on Tuesday thru next weekend. Rainfall amounts forecast look to be in the moderate ranges still.

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CONGRATULATIONS to our 8th grader FFA members for being selected as State Finalists for the California FFA Agriscience Fair! 3 papers were submitted to the State contest in the areas of Animal Systems, Environmental Systems & Natural Resource Systems and Social Systems.

Estrella, Analee, Xiomara, Allison, Amalinalli and Violleth have been working on agriculture research projects that included conducting an experiment, writing a paper on their finding and creating a display board. We wish them the best of luck as they prepare for the interviews at the California State FFA Leadership Conference in April!

— AV FFA

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AV EVENTS (today)

Free Entry to Hendy Woods State Park for local residents
Sun 03 / 09 / 2025 at 8:00 AM
Where: Hendy Woods State Park
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/4373)

CANCELLED! AV Grange Pancake and Egg Breakfast
Sun 03 / 09 / 2025 at 8:30 AM
Where: Anderson Valley Grange , 9800 CA-128, Philo, CA 95466
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/4496)

The Anderson Valley Museum Open
Sun 03 / 09 / 2025 at 1:00 PM
Where: The Anderson Valley Museum , 12340 Highway 128, Boonville , CA 95415
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/4434)

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UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Cassie has a very sweet and playful side when she feels comfortable, but can be nervous and unsure with new experiences or people. Cassie is a young adolescent dog who will benefit from a guardian who can get her out and about, letting her experience new environments and people. Cassie came from a hoarding situation, and unfortunately, did not get much socialization with people, though she lived with several other dogs. Cassie is a mixed breed, 1 year old girl who weighs 45 beautiful pounds.

To see all of our canine and feline guests, and the occasional goat, sheep, tortoise… and for information about our services, programs, and events, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com

Join us the first Saturday every month for our Meet The Dogs Adoption Event at the shelter. Please share our posts on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter/

For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453. Making a difference for homeless pets in Mendocino County, one day at a time!

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LOOKING BACK at the statements made by DA David Eyster and Supervisor Ted Williams when Chamise Cubbison was charged with felony misappropriation and suspended without pay.

Annotated by Mark Scaramella [in brackets]

On Tuesday, October 17, 2023 District Attorney David Eyster told the Supervisors and the public:

“I would like to provide law-abiding citizens some background information that will hopefully encourage law-abiding citizens to not be influenced by the misinformation, to not engage in nonfactual speculation, and to let the local courts do their job and resolve their matters. Criminal charges were filed Friday against a current County employee…”

[Incorrect, Cubbison is an elected official.]

“…and a former County employee. Like all of us, these two defendants are presumed to be innocent [sic] until the contrary is proven in a court of law. …

[Not only was “the contrary” not proven in a court of law, it didn’t even stand up at the preliminary hearing. Cubbison was denied any Presumption of Innocence when the Board voted to suspend her without pay and without an opportunity to respond to the charges.

“…The court legal process to do this begins this afternoon at 1:30. The single charge filed against each defendant flows from a criminal investigation that was not initiated by me or anyone else in the district attorney's office. No, this investigation was initiated and conducted by the professionals at the Mendocino County Sheriff's office. …

[Actually, one “professional,” a professional who failed to retain or produce the evidence that was supposed to back up the charges. The County Press release (cited below) says that, “The District Attorney’s investigation was prompted after the CEO’s office found evidence of misappropriation of funds in September 2022.” No mention of a Sheriff office professional.]

“…As is the case in most criminal investigations, the sheriff's involvement began when information regarding the commission of possible crimes was received by his office from knowledgeable sources outside of the local criminal justice system.…”

[“Knowledgeable sources” being the CEO’s office and certain Supervisors who wanted Cubbison removed from her elected position. The only “knowledge” they had was that they knew they wanted her out of office. The rest of the knowledge turned out to be speculation.]

“Believing there was probable cause to proceed, the sheriff assigned an experienced investigator to do timelines, gather and analyze documents and interview percipient witnesses. …”

[“Believing”? But failing to preserve many of them.]

“…At the conclusion of the sheriff's investigation written investigation reports were prepared along with a charging recommendation naming the current and the former employee as the suspects. The sheriff's completed investigation package was then submitted to the district attorney's office for review and consideration of formal charges. After going through an initial district attorney office intake review, some additional investigation was conducted by experienced district attorney investigators both current and now retired [Andy Alvarado and Kevin Bailey, it was later learned] to supplement [sic] some [unspecified] aspects of the sheriff's investigation. The law enforcement investigation and intake review process I just mentioned is a process followed in all 58 counties for interactions between law enforcement and district attorney offices. Locally, between 5,000 and 7,000 crime reports are submitted by law enforcement to the district attorney's office every calendar year. Among other duties and given my many years of experience in doing so I personally review reports and make charging decisions seven days a week on most of these law enforcement reports, so there is a consistency in how we charge cases. Now to be very clear, neither my staff or I have used or will use our positions to pursue retribution or purported vendettas against any defendants, public sector or otherwise, here in Mendocino County. …

[An email from Eyster to (former) Supervisor Glenn McGourty uncovered during the run up to the dismissal of charges tells us that the charges were part of an not-so-secret plan to oust Cubbison and create a more pliable financial services department under the control of the CEO and the Supervisors.]

“…Again, the case involving the two county employees is a Sheriff's office investigation that now needs to be resolved in local courts pursuant to state law. Finally, although some don't like it, my staff and I will not discuss facts and/or legal theories of this case or any other case for that matter outside of court unless and until there is a conviction. …

[There was no conviction; the charges didn’t even pass the preliminary hearing. So, now that the case has been tossed and charges dropped without a conviction, one might expect that the DA would “discuss facts and/or legal theories of this case.” But no, nothing but silence, leaving the media and the public to assume that what Eyster called “misinformation” and “nonfactual speculation,” was really “information and factual.”

“If someone looking in from the outside tells you or you hear that they have divined what is going on and why, don't believe it. Our silence is an ethical, fair and honest way to protect the constitutional rights…”

[Cubbison’s “constitutional rights” to respond to the charges were hardly “protected” when the Supervisors pre-emptively suspended her without pay. And the DA’s silence now, after the case has been tossed, doesn’t seem so ethical, fair or honest.]

“…and to not inadvertently taint our limited pool of potential jurors.”

[No need for potential jurors now. Judge Ann Moorman took care of that.]

“Those who have actually paid attention over time know this is how my attorneys and I have successfully pursued justice in Mendocino County since I became the district attorney in January of 2011.…”

[That claim rings more than a bit hollow now.]

“This is how my prosecutors and I will continue to pursue justice in the Mendocino County courts.…

[Uh-oh.]

“…Thank you. I need to go downtown. I have other work to do.”

Whereupon DA Eyster departed the Board chambers without further comment or questions from the Board.

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The next day, the County issued the following Press Release, Presumably written by Supervisor Ted Williams since he is the only Supervisor quoted in it.

“…’The charges [against Chamise Cubbison] highlight the need for strong integrity by our public officials and business controls within our departments to safeguard the public interest and funds entrusted to us. Thankfully, we have a CEO who has done just that,’ said Supervisor Ted Williams.”

The presser continued, “The District Attorney’s investigation was prompted after the CEO’s office found evidence of misappropriation of funds in September 2022.…

[“Evidence” which the Judge subsequently concluded was not based on any criminal intent.]

“…‘I’d like to acknowledge and thank District Attorney Eyster and the Sheriff’s Office for the thorough and professional approach their offices have undertaken with this investigation.…”

[Maybe not so professional in this case…”]

We [We, who? The DA, Sheriff and Board of Supervisors?] are looking forward to continuing to work cooperatively together so that the County can come out of this stronger than ever,’ commented Supervisor Williams. Pierce’s acting appointment is a welcome addition, ‘Ms. Pierce is highly respected and capable, and we’re looking forward to the stability and operational continuity that she’ll provide.’

“After it became clear that further investigation was necessary, the Executive Office, Human Resources and IT worked together to further understand the extent of the issue and preserve evidence.…”

[Missing, aka UNpreserved, emails, especially exculpatory ones, became a major issue as the case slowly proceeded.]

“We also brought on a forensic auditing firm in March 2023 to concretely assess the overall strengths and weaknesses of our internal controls,” said Supervisor Williams.

[There has been no “forensic” audit, and the regular “audit team” that conducted the routine bookkeeping review made no mention of Ms. Cubbison.]

“While we don’t know what the outcomes will be with the criminal proceedings, nor the results of the State Controller’s audit that is also underway…”

[Turns out there was a lot that whoever “we” is didn’t know. Judge Moorman called it “willful ignorance.”]

“…‘we welcome the opportunity to understand where we can improve our systems and will be evaluating additional control measures,’ continued Supervisor Williams. ‘There’s simply no place for this type of misconduct in Mendocino’…”

[There was no misconduct, a clear slander that Williams should have known better than to say, especially given the “presumption of innocence” that DA Eyster said should be provided. The only misconduct that arose after 17 months of preparation for the preliminary hearing was on the part of Eyster, Williams, former Supervisor Glenn McGourty, former Auditor Lloyd Weer, and everybody else whose fingerprints were on the bogus case. And if there’s “no place for misconduct,” why don’t those involved in the false accusations and the people who used them to oust an elected official resign? Williams hasn’t publicly commented on the Judge’s dismissal of the case, nor has he apologized for declaring that Cubbison engaged in “misconduct.”]

“…and to the extent our policies can reaffirm public integrity, that’s what County leadership intends to do.”

Public integrity has been anything but reaffirmed.

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LOCAL EVENTS

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“FOR NATE B” and his art class…

Looking for donations to Nate B for use in kids’ art projections: Embroidery thread and hoops, yarn, crochet hooks, fabric remnants, beads, bead jewelry findings. If possible drop off donations at the High School front office labeled “For Nate B.” (Terry Sites)

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DEAL OF THE WEEK

I’m trying to find a new home for my three pet rats as i’m moving and can’t take them with me. they are under a year old and will come with a large cage/toys/and anything else i have for them. Free to a loving home. (Facebook post)

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VARIETY SHOW 2025 NEXT FRIDAY & SATURDAY

They’re on sale NOW at Anderson Valley Market and Lemons Market in Philo! $15 adults, $5 kiddos. Cash, check, & Venmo taken at the door!

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DOES THE DA HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT?

Editor,

DA Dave Eyster's Facebook post today from Lake County -- Still no public comment about Chamise Cubbison's case being dismissed. No apology. No regrets. Just amnesia. Amnesia and karaoke.

Eyster/Facebook: “It seemed like we took a few steps back in time tonight at the Riviera Hills restaurant and lounge in Kelseyville. Perhaps needing some updating help, the view nevertheless of Clear Lake from out back is fabulous, the waitress and her assistants were attentive, and the food was good. The real action was in the packed lounge where karaoke singing seemed to be the big draw of the night. From what we could hear from the smallish dining room, a few of the singers were really good and more than a few not so much.”

John Sakowicz

Ukiah

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JUST IN CASE

Pebbles Trippet

San Francisco

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Come support your local tea, coffee and gift shop! Open all day yesterday and not a single customer. We are open today and tomorrow until 5 inside the John Hanes Gallery across from the Boonville Hotel. Thank you!

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ED NOTES

TRUMP ISN'T LEAVING. This really is a coup underway. Implausible figurehead that he is, there's nothing funny about Trump and he continues to have enormous popular support, lots of it here in our rustic liberal paradise, muted though that support is in lib-dominated areas.

THE PEOPLE behind Trump, his deranged intellectuals, know exactly what they're doing, and they know Trump is their best shot to “throw off the precedents and legal paradigms that have wrongly developed over the last two hundred years, that scar tissue resulting from decades of bad cases and bad statesmen.”

THAT'S RUSSELL VOUGHT speaking, primary author of Project 25, primary creator of this latter day Mein Kampf guiding Trump's decree blizzard in his first month in office. Vought himself has been rewarded with a job in the White House as boss of the Office of Management and Budget. Musk is his executioner.

TRUMP'S unprecedented decree-spree is a harbinger of Vought's plan to vest all power in the president, especially this president or versions thereof, so that America will be ruled hereafter by an authoritarian version of this lethal clown. Trump is the rightwing's man on a white horse, and that big mustang is up and running straight at US.

POST-TRUMP? Godzilla Trump, his giant son Barron, is a few years away from the power levers, and Trump's other two rat-faced heirs are probably too stupid and obnoxious even for Maga Nation, but for now, and the speed with which the Project 25 Gang is gnawing away at our tottering democracy, no one can possibly predict how far they'll get into their dream of a fuhrer state.

YOU LEFT OUT IVANKA. Here all us girls are out in the streets on International Women's Day smashing the patriarchy and you leave her out? I'll concede that Ivanka's the only apparently normal Trump, and not to seem overly ruthless about it, and bear with me here as I launch into garrulous old coot mode, but way back when I was a com-symp, I read how Lenin had ordered the basement execution of the Czar's family, right down to his small children. Intellectually, I understood why; the tenuous Boshevik government couldn't risk a restoration of the Czar's regime, but emotionally I chose career Lib-Lab-ism, Menshevism in com-think. And not that I'm suggesting mass extinguishment of the Trump family, but for the political health of the nation it would be a good idea to permanently exile them to the Greenland they seem to covet. Call it Ice-A-Largo, and confine them to a high rise igloo.

A SOUTH CAROLINA senior citizen was executed by firing squad Friday night. In his turbulent youth he'd beaten his ex-girl friend's parents to death with a baseball bat. (Hey! Nobody's perfect.) After decades on death row, the old boy was a different person than the maniac he'd been that one monstrous night in his youth, and talk about cruel and unusual punishment that our constitution says is forbidden, how sadistically cruel and unusual is it to keep someone alive for years only to kill him?

THE THEORY is that capital punishment serves as a deterrent to people who may be murderously inclined. Har de Har. That's a hot one in this country where there's a mass killing every day, mass defined by the stat-keepers as more than two people. And what kind of a deterrent could execution be when it’s carried out in private? By the government! Logically, state executions should be held in stadiums and televised. Thousands used to turn out for hangings, and millions today would certainly enjoy watching some indefensible criminal get what's coming to him. And think of the money that could be raised for the vics.

FAKE EXECUTIONS would also be boffo box office. The great Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, as a youthful revolutionary, ran afoul of the Czar. After months in prison, Fyodor and several of his comrades were tied to execution stakes, the order given to fire… and, ha-ha kids, you can go home but next time you get it for reals. Dos was scared straight into church but several of his fellows went nuts on the spot.

THE OLD BOY offed in South Carolina wisely chose to exit via a firing squad, which is a surer and radically superior method of death than the midnight needle, even if the serum works, which it often doesn't, and radically more efficacious than hanging, which also often doesn't work, killing slowly by strangulation. If revenge is the point, capital punishment in private serves less point than capital punishment as government policy, which never applies to anyone with the means to contest it.

GENE HACKMAN. What strikes me as especially odd, and sad, about the exit of the Hackmans, was their apparent isolation. You'd think that in their income bracket they'd have people popping in all the time, from housekeepers to maintenance people, nevermind immediate family. But they were incommunicado for almost three weeks, and it took a gardener peering through a window to alert the authorities that there was a major problem in the Hackman home.

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Trash hole people. It is also super bs that all the freaks run to the rez to hide. Is it something of tolerance to violence? Is it something of a tolerance within the culture or they think it’s okay for criminals to be defended or I’m not exactly sure. Look at the number of these trash hole type people that have wound up at the res Richard Allen Davis Coyote Valley. The Jerk that killed the people up in Samoa and at Weott. This jerk. Negie Fallis and missing Kadijah. The Covelo crew. The constant stream of craziness at Bear River. At some point harboring trash holes to continue being trash holes is a problem. Why isn’t there metal detectors and a screening to enter the Sherwood Casino site?

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, March 8, 2025

CHRISTOPHER KEYES, 41, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

VICTOR LUCAS, 28, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

LANCE TREPPA, 46, Ukiah. County parole violation.

JULIAN VALENTIN-CRUZ, 24, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Grand theft-firearm, taking vehicle without owner’s consent, stolen property.

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“I CAN'T BELIEVE that people give me money for this shit. . . . It's not work. At the end of the day, the TV show is the best job in the world. I get to go anywhere I want, eat and drink whatever I want. As long as I just babble at the camera, other people will pay for it. It's a gift. A few months ago, I was sitting cross-legged in the mountains of Vietnam with a bunch of Thai tribesman as a guest of honor drinking rice whiskey. Three years ago I never, ever in a million years thought that I would ever live to see any of that. So I know that I'm a lucky man.”

— Anthony Bourdain

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MEMO OF THE AIR: A little word.

“I hauled in the line, and I took my first look/ At the half-eaten horror that hung from the hook./ I had dragged from the depths of the limpid lagoon/ The luminous body of Mrs. Ravoon.” — Paul Dehn

Marco here. Here's the recording of last night's (Friday, 2025-03-07) 7-hour-long Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org (and, for the first three hours of the show, also 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino). Local announcements, poetry, theater, fantasy, science fact and fiction, music, current events and history, sex, jokes, puzzles, financial advice, yadda yadda: https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0634

Coming shows can feature your own story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or announcement. Just email it to me. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there and read it on the air. Send a little word.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not-necessarily radio-useful but worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

Amazing forest-protecting Bill Heil died this week. Here's a short video featuring Bill and Linda that gives you some idea what he and they were about, in their own words. https://www.rffi.org/oral-history-bill-heil-linda-perkins/

In honor of Bill Heil we have spared no expense to schedule a total lunar eclipse next week, visible from all of North and South America, given clear skies. It'll start late the night of March 13 and continue into the wee hours of March 14. You might want to know, in case a four-year-old ever asks you, how a lunar eclipse works. Here: https://science.nasa.gov/moon/eclipses/

News of the Voyagers' continuing missions. With video of their tracks through space, showing how a gravity slingshot works. https://newatlas.com/space/nasa-tweaks-voyager-probes-half-century-of-service

I don't remember which site showed this to me. It's a kind of story that always gets me. Some things a lot like it were: Odd John, The Child Buyer, the film Powder. Even Flowers for Algernon. And a story I don't remember the title or author of, but there's a line in it about how a human child raised by wolves will be limited to grow up to be a wolf, and it's like that with the next, better, smarter model of child, who could become anything, something way beyond us, but he's raised by us (raised by wolves), so. But this story surprised me; the adults involved are not oppressive and dim; they understand what's at stake, recognize the girl's value and potential. I think things might go okay for her, judging by the tone at the end. She'll shoot up through the dull canopy of us and drag some of the fabric of society a little bit after her into the sky. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMFhEBrwZso

Marco McClean, [email protected], https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

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WATER IS ABOUT TO GET A LOT MORE EXPENSIVE FOR MILLIONS OF CALIFORNIANS

Proposed double-digit increases in the state's second-largest county, San Diego

Millions of Californians are set to see significant water rate hikes over the next few years, with prices for essential water supplies jumping by double-digit percentage points. In one large city, cumulative increases could see prices jump about 70% just in the next five years.

San Diego County, the second-largest county in California by population, will see its water rates jump 14% for 2025, according to the San Diego County Water Authority. The public water agency, responsible for providing the majority of water to nearly two dozen area municipalities, including the city of San Diego, currently imports the majority of its water from elsewhere. The utility blamed the rate hikes on increased costs to import water, among other issues. Those costs, handed from a supplier directly to a consumer, are known as “passthrough costs.”

While the San Diego County Water Authority’s board of directors does approve percentage rate increases, as a purchaser of water from elsewhere, it does not control these passthrough costs. The agency “is required by law to set rates at the cost of service,” according to the water authority.

“We realize cost increases are hard to swallow, and we are doing everything possible to combat rate inflation now and in the future,” water authority general manager Dan Denham said in a news release last summer.

Now the city of San Diego, home to nearly 1.4 million people, is preparing for the worst of the county’s rate hikes, with prices jumping as much as 70% between 2025 and the end of the decade. The San Diego City Council is staring down proposed rate hikes of 13.7% for 2026, 14.5% for 2027, and 11% or more in 2028 and again in 2029, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

The rate hike for 2025, which was narrowly approved by the city council this month and goes into effect on May 1, is only 5.5%. That number was negotiated down with the water authority from a previously proposed rate hike that could have been as high as 24%.

Cumulatively, those rate hikes could see average San Diego single-family homes go from paying about $90 to $145 or more by 2030, according to the Union-Tribune. The proposed hikes, as outlined in a city-funded budget analysis, will go in front of the San Diego City Council for a vote this fall.

Interestingly, despite statewide warnings of an incoming period of drought, the county’s rate increases aren’t because of a lack of water. For decades, the water authority has built out a robust infrastructure network to store water and supply San Diego County even during dry periods, but new water reclamation and desalination projects mean that the region may not need that much imported water in the very near future.

Yet for now, the cost of the water itself, and the price of maintaining all that infrastructure, is leading to increased rates for homeowners. Per the Union-Tribune, the rate hikes would be used to “cover sharply rising costs for workers, imported water, chemicals, energy, construction projects and other priorities.”

In 2015, San Diego’s Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant — the largest in the nation — came online, and it is currently producing water for area businesses and residents. And in 2027, the city of San Diego’s Pure Water program, which purifies recycled water, is set to begin. That project should be fully operational by 2035, further reducing the need for imported water from the water authority.

(SFGate.com)

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CANADIANS GET VALUE

Editor,

President Donald Trump is musing out loud that Canada should welcome being the 51st state. To make it more palatable to Canadians, he suggests that we will have lower taxes and better and more affordable health care. He is right but he is also wrong.

Canada has universal health care. Every citizen is automatically registered. There is no opting out.

In 2024, I had doctor visits for a blood test and a CT scan. This year I’ve seen a doctor for a bone density test and a chest X-ray.

My grandson recently had open heart surgery in Montreal and afterward had a pacemaker installed. During his three-week hospital stay, he was attended by a team of specialists around the clock.

The out-of-pocket cost for all of this: zero

How is that possible?

A portion of every Canadian’s taxes collectively pays the cost.

Am I happy that our taxes covered the entire cost my grandson’s care, including follow-up hospital visits? You bet I am!

So, yes, Canadians probably pay higher taxes than Americans but we are getting quality health care for it.

Mr. President, when you speak about our high taxes, why don't you mention some of the services they pay for?

Jerry Boroff

Dalkeith, Ontario, Canada

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THE CHANGING LIGHT

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The changing light
at San Francisco
is none of your East Coast light
none of your
pearly light of Paris
The light of San Francisco
is a sea light
an island light
And the light of fog
blanketing the hills
drifting in at night
through the Golden Gate
to lie on the city at dawn
And then the halcyon late mornings
after the  fog burns off
and the sun paints white houses
with the sea light of Greece
with sharp clean shadows
making the town look like
it had just been painted

But the wind comes up at four o’clock
sweeping the hills

And then the veil of light of early evening

And then another scrim
when the new night fog
floats in
And in that vale of light
the city drifts
anchorless upon the ocean

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VAUDEVILLE VOLODYMYR’S BIG NIGHT

by David Yearsley

It was a show that forever changed not just the entertainment industry but the world.

As the Sunday afternoon hour approached for the start of the 97th Academy Awards ceremony, rumors swept down the Red Carpet more quickly than the fires that had ravaged Los Angeles a few months before. That catastrophe’s toxic residue glazed the Californian light in a vintage 1970s hue that conjured a goldener era for American movies.

In every corner of the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard could be heard wildfire whispers: was Buster-Keaton-sad-faced-comic-turned-wartime-President Volodymyr Zelenskyy really in Tinseltown, fresh off his star turn in the White House? It could just be true, since the Ukrainian entertainer-cum-politician had gotten rave reviews and registered record-breaking ratings for Friday’s cross-talk act in the White House with the Vaudevillian bad-cop, bad-cop duo, Vance and Trump.

Faced with plunging popular interest and dogged by charges of irrelevance and ennui, the moribund Oscars needed a jolt. Maybe, just maybe the annual ritual would get one before it was too late.

As hundreds of Patek Philippe and Rolex wristwatches ticked past 4 pm Pacific Time and host Conan O’Brien ambled onto the Dolby Theatre stage for his opening monologue, the assembled glitterati emitted a collective sigh of resignation. Another stinker of epic proportions appeared to be underway.

The red-haired emcee cracked a crooked grin and started into his script: “There probably aren’t many of you out there who’ll think this is a Crimean shame, but I’ve been given the hook …”

That’s when the Miracle of the Movies’ Night began.

Four shotgun-wielding G-men marched in headed by Kevin Costner, who informed O’Brien that “we have the right for you to remain silent.” In a lanky cameo, James Comey handcuffed the ousted host and the FBI agents carted him off into the wings as the Academy orchestra’s brass section launched into a military fanfare.

Out sashayed Sunday’s savior and thus began what would become the Academy’s finest hours. His tuxedo piped in the Ukrainian colors was from Tom Ford and therefore “Built to Last,” as Zelenskyy proclaimed when Meryl Streep asked from the front row who he was wearing.

For the next twelve minutes Vaudeville Voldy wowed Hollywood and the world with a top-hat-and-cane song-and-dance routine that choreographed its way into a rollicking production number unsurpassed in the history of the Oscars:

Are you blue and yellow in the White House

And had enough of all those shits?

Putin on the Ritz …

The swelling strings were pierced by a train whistle. A locomotive with “Trans-Siberian Railway” painted across its black body blasted through the backdrop. Up on the big screen, the onstage camera captured the steamy kiss of the engineer and his brakeman—Woody Harrelson as JD Vance and the Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón. Her racist tweets had scuttled her Oscar changes, but now she was back in the spotlight. There was no quicker way to get there than by kicking the Hillbilly Elegist and MAGA-Manchild in the cojones.

From the bowels of the stage, up came Ed Harris strapped to the train tracks as Putin in a Ritz™. The dictator’s stubby fingers wiggled nefariously just beyond the scalloped edge of the greasy cracker as it was run over by the locomotive in a spectacular snack explosion.

Academy Award winner Casey Affleck, also eager to feast on the crumbs of decancellation, waddled out trussed up as an Elon Muskovy Duck, dabbled at the buttery debris and quacked:

Have you seen the well-to-do

Up

and down Park Avenue?

Also in urgent need of a reboot, Alec Baldwin slunk on stage as Don the Drag Queen of Hearts casting off falsetto skeins of de-tuned melody: “You haven’t got the cards,” he crooned as he mounted the cockpit for the threesome’s refrain:

“Pants with stripes and cutaway coat, perfect fits

Putin on the Ritz”

Jane Fonda in Ukrainian army-issue helmet and black war fatigues by Versace drove out in a budget-busting Abrams tank as Voldy soft-shoed in time to the rumble of the mighty treads:

“Dressed up like a million-dollar trouper

Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper (super duper)”

Busby Berkeley drones pirouetted in formation above the stage as the whole ensemble sang and high-kicked, the audience rising as one to join in on:

Move to the rhythm

We can

Move

Move

I want you to move

As if aroused by the massed crescendo, the muzzle of the Abrams’ cannon raised to an erotically suggestive angle, gave a “pop” and shot out a giant blue-and-yellow flag with a peace sign to climax the show-starting show-stopper.

And that was just the beginning.

The evening’s first award, for Best Supporting Actor, went to Kieran Culkin for A Real Pain in which he plays a mad/melancholic stoner (the character smokes weed from Ithaca, New York—that line got some laughs when I saw the film in that very city) on a heritage tour of Poland. Along with his cousin (a role taken by Jesse Eisenberg, who also wrote and directed the movie), he visits a death camp and other sites and goes in search of their recently deceased grandmother’s house. Culkin gave a concise and eloquent acceptance speech, first lambasting Rupert Murdoch’s anti-democratic depredations (Culkin played one of the media baron’s sons in Succession), then voicing support for Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer’s speech at last year’s ceremony decrying what Glazer had called the “hijack[ing] of the Holocaust by an occupation that has led to conflict for so many innocent people.” In a witty-weird closing flourish, Culkin promised not to force his wife to have any more children.

Later, Nobel laureate Bob Dylan and Timothée Chalamet, nominated for Best Actor for his portrayal of the bard in A Complete Unknown, sang “The Times They are A-Changin’” together, joined halfway through by the real Joan Baez and her screen epigone, Monica Barbaro (also nominated for Best Supporting Actress in the Dylan biopic).

Even though snubbed for her work in Callas, Angeline Jolie floated down from above like last year’s Barbie, and Mick Jagger bounced up from the auditorium to join in with the gang on a “Mr. Tambourine Man” for the Ages.

Throughout the seamless show, Voldy continued somehow to charm with silly one-liners like the one that started “Elon goes to Kremlin with chainsaw and asks Vlad, What is your Occupation? …”

Late in the broadcast Adrian Brody was declared Best Actor. He strode to the stage already carrying an Oscar—the one he had received for The Pianist more than two decades ago. In a terse but heartfelt address citing George C. Scott’s refusal of the 1970 Best Actor award for Patton, Brody renounced “the crass hucksterism of declaring one artist better than another.” He took his second statuette from last-year’s winner, Cillian Murphy, then handed both to the nearby Zelenskyy. “Not exactly rare earths,” said Brody, “But maybe good for a few bullets.” Sticking to his running gag of making a spooneristic muddle of his English, Voldy nodded and said, “No, no, I give these boys to VD Jance and Tronald Dump on way back to Kyiv to thank them—to really thank them!—for their terrific show on Friday.”

Next, Jeff Bezos bulldozed his way to center stage and announced that Amazon and all other streaming services, from Netflix on down, would close for business before the end of the year. Bezos instead would be putting 200 billion bucks into restoring America’s downtown movie theatres and providing free screenings in perpetuity, funding independent films, and remodeling (with windows and turf roofs!) all Amazon fulfillment centers and converting them to climate-safe agrarian theatre schools, daycares, and free-for-all hospitals.

In the last of the many shocks and surprises, the Best Picture went to the Croatian short film The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent, whose dramatic force and moral power harrow and build across its epic 12 minutes. There is no more compelling and urgent piece of cinema.

After this final award, dispensed after a crisp 100 minutes, the director of this year’s show, Steven Spielberg, took to the stage to announce that, however much the Academy had wanted to make it to 100, this would be the last Award ceremony. The first Sunday in March of 2026—if there turned out to be one—would instead find all of Hollywood Royalty in Kyiv’s National Palace of the Arts for the premiere of the first film in a ten-part series to be made in collaboration with Ridley Scott, called Fighting for Freedom and starring none other than … Volodymyr Zelenskyy! The Ukrainian shrugged: “Then maybe I keep these two Oscars after all.”

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest albums, “In the Cabinet of Wonders” and “Handel’s Organ Banquet” are now available from False Azure Records.)

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TAIBBI & KIRN: ‘THE RETURN OF THE GERMANS’

Walter and Matt battle fourteen-syllable words and discuss Germany's bold return to a center-stage role in world affairs. Plus, "A Perfect Day for a Bananafish," by J.D. Salinger

Matt Taibbi: All right. Welcome to America this Week. I’m Matt Taibbi.

Walter Kirn: And I’m Walter Kirn.

Matt Taibbi: Walter, you are back home?

Walter Kirn: Yeah. I’m back in Montana with the depressing, apocalyptic painting behind me. That’s how you can tell. It’s been a long, strange trip. I’ve been in the Wynn Hotel. I was there for a couple of weeks, trapped by my illness and my unwillingness to move out of the hotel, and then I went to my little apartment in Vegas, and now I’m here.

And this is home base, so I feel settled. I feel like I can really dig in from here. Those other places are kind of-

Matt Taibbi: That’s good, because we’re going to go heavy today. But what we’re aiming for, this is a high-concept show today. We’re aiming more for funny than for insight, I think, today, although there should be-

Walter Kirn: It’s time.

Matt Taibbi: … a little bit of insight. And let’s just put our cards on the table. This is a show making fun of Germany, and I don’t know. Do they need to be picked on? I don’t know. I think they-

Walter Kirn: I think throughout history, the problem has been that civilization has sometimes relented in its picking on Germany, and if you let them go for more than five, 10 years, they come up with a whole new all-embracing metaphysics and political philosophy, which they then arm themselves in order to spread, whether it’s the Holy Roman Empire or Prussia or Hitler or-

Matt Taibbi: Or Funnybot, and we’ll get to that.

Walter Kirn: Yes. And now, they seem to be rearranging and sort of revising their sense of self so that in the name of peace, they can now be warlike again.

Matt Taibbi: Right, right. And it’s a very thin veneer of peace that they’re putting on top of the warlike, the martial barking that they’re good at.

Some amazing speeches this week. I guess we’ll get to as many of them as we can. But let’s just start off with the German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock. All right. So she’s the foreign minister. She’s a Green, and I guess Green’s-

Walter Kirn: Yeah. To me, that’s dark. To me, that means something like Nazi, but for the good of the Earth, which if you ever knew any Nazis as I did way back when, people who had actually lived there during the time, I knew a few in London, and they told me that the hiking and the nature worship was one of the big, fun parts of being the Nazi. So they reverted to form in their-

Matt Taibbi: Alpinism.

Walter Kirn: Alpinism, the worship of trees, pagan groves, and so don’t think that Green means what it does in America, in California.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, because I used to be a Green, so when I see that, I’m confused. I think it means pacifism and some other things, but-

Walter Kirn: In Germany, it means dancing under a tree at midsummer with the meat of your enemies dripping from your jaws, okay? Haven’t you seen things like Wicker Man and Midsommar? I know they’re not set technically in Germany, but-

Matt Taibbi: Right, right. Maybe that might not be true, but probably, so take our word for it. So let’s take a listen to Tiffany Baerbock, or I’m sorry, Annalena Baerbock.

Walter Kirn: Tiffany Baerbock.

Matt Taibbi: Tiffany Baerbock.

Walter Kirn: If they Americanized the series, she would be called Tiffany Baerbock.

Matt Taibbi: Tiffany Baerbock and the Vampire Slayer. Let’s hear what she has to say. And what’s so great about this is that it’s in the German, and so we get the vibe in addition to the meaning.

Annalena Baerbock: Many of you may have slept restlessly tonight in light of the unspeakable videos from the White House, honestly, I did too. Unfortunately, it was not a bad dream, but a harsh reality. Our horror is greater today than before, but so is our commitment to the people in Ukraine. for our own security and for peace in Europe. Last night has emphasized, a new era of lawlessness has begun. A lawless time in which we must defend the rules-based international order and the strength of law more than ever against the power of the stronger. Because otherwise no free country can sleep soundly, which has a stronger neighbor. All of this has been looming for some time now. And that is why we have been working on nine reinforced alliances for a long time with all those in the world who are willing to continue advocating for a rule-based international order and the strength of the law, rather than standing for the law of the stronger. We, as Europeans, must advance more strongly than ever before and stand resolutely for our interests and international law, without any ifs or buts. For us, it is therefore clear: we stand firmly on the side of sovereign and free Ukraine. Ukraine is part of free and democratic Europe. Who in this war against Ukraine is the more brutal aggressor and who is the braver defender, who here is the perpetrator and who the victim, that is completely beyond question. Three years ago, Putin's Russia attacked Ukraine illegally without reason. People murdered in a terrible way, women brutally raped, children abducted, parents separated from their children. And this terror continues to this day.

Just recently, in Butscha, not far from Kiev, a well-known Ukrainian journalist was killed in her home by a drone. The latest air war continues unabated every day and every night. Therefore, I say clearly and across the Atlantic what is right and what is wrong should never be of no concern to us. No one needs and no one desires peace more earnestly than the Ukrainians. The diplomatic efforts of the USA are, of course, important. But such peace must be fair and lasting, not just a temporary pause until the next attack by Russia. No one should therefore be mistaken about the enemy. The enemy is alone in the Kremlin, not in Kiev or Brussels. We can never accept a reversal of roles between perpetrator and victim. Because a perpetrator-victim reversal is the opposite of security.

It's the opposite of peace and therefore cannot be a good deal. A perpetrator-victim reversal would be the end of international law and therefore also the end of the security of most states. And ultimately, it would also be disastrous for the future of the United States. Because hardly any country could rely more on the credibility of the oldest democracy and the strongest military power, if a reversal of the roles of perpetrator and victim were to occur. We do not want any of that. We want to maintain the transatlantic partnership and shared strength. But yesterday made it once again abundantly clear, Just as transatlantic, we must not be naive. We must stand up for our own interests, our own values, and our own security for our people in Europe.

Above all, we have no more time to lose. We must act quickly now, both at a European and national level. We cannot wait until the formation of a new federal government, because the situation is serious. Germany must take the lead at this historic milestone. All democratic parties in Berlin should do this in close coordination between the current and future federal government during these transitional weeks. The world is watching us, especially in Europe, but no one in the world is waiting for us to complete negotiations here in Germany. We live in uncertain times, my esteemed ladies and gentlemen. But if in these moments, in these days once again, as we did three years ago, in Germany and in Europe, we set the right course, then Europe will show what it is at its core. A strong peace project, peace in freedom for its millions of citizens. A peace project that radiates out into the world. Glory to Ukraine, long live Europe. Thank you very much. Many thanks.

• text has been transcribed and translated from the original German

Walter Kirn: Peace and freedom! The Germans are good at those.

Matt Taibbi: A peace project-

Walter Kirn: Paradox.

Matt Taibbi: … that radiates out into the world.

Walter Kirn: And kills people.

Matt Taibbi: It’s Ukrainian. Slava Ukraina is what she said.

Walter Kirn: Quick thoughts. Language may indeed be destiny. I mean that in a strict anthropological sense. The structure of your language and the way it’s spoken, and its cadences and the way it forms its verbs, and all that may actually be the most trenchant way of understanding a national group. The Germans certainly believed that. They were always analyzing language groups. That’s one of the ways they came up with the Aryan idea.

And listening to her speak, I can imagine it on loudspeakers during a Cabaret production. If you didn’t understand German, and you did a production of Cabaret, and you wanted to show the dawning fascism that that play is about, you could put that speech in a street scene and it would work. It has the same self-righteousness, the same ultimacy, the same rigidity, the same urgency, and also this rhetorical or semantic tactic they use constantly: peace and freedom, you know? They take two abstract nouns, you know? Arbeit macht frei. Work makes you free. Peace and freedom.

Matt Taibbi: A peace that radiates out into the world. Now, if that phrase doesn’t make you nervous…

https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-mar

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‘I WANTED TO PROVIDE FOR THIS BABY WHAT HE NEEDED, WHICH WAS ME; TO DO THAT, I NEEDED CHRIS,’ WRITES LARISSA PHILLIPS.

In the ’70s, my mother gave me a print that read: ‘A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.’ After 25 years of marriage, I couldn’t disagree more.

A lifetime ago, I watched from the second-floor window as my boyfriend cut tiles in the backyard of our little row house in Brooklyn. The saw whined sharply as it spewed tile dust into the ragged weeds. I was deeply frustrated. I’d known we would be doing this type of hard work on the fixer-upper we’d just bought on the shaggy border of Park Slope. But I’d always assumed we’d be doing it side by side. And yet there I was, marooned in the bedroom, nursing the baby to sleep.

I never meant to become a wife. When I was growing up in the ’70s, the daughter of two activist types who hoped to change the world, marriage sounded like a trap. Wives seemed sad and overwhelmed, like the always-pregnant Irish mom who lived around the corner from us when I was little. Or they were repressed and miserable, like the ones I read about in The Women’s Room, that classic 1977 novel beloved by the second wave feminists—who were busy deconstructing every idea foundational to family life, from gender roles to monogamy, aided and abetted by the hippies and iconoclasts. In Ptolemy Tompkins’s memoir about growing up in the ’70s, he describes the time his eccentric scientist father brought home a female grad student and announced to his wife and kids that marriage was a bourgeois institution, and thus henceforth Betty would be part of the family.

My parents weren’t that extreme, but they still wanted to take a sledgehammer to social norms. They both adhered to the blank-slate idea: that differences between men and women were socially constructed, and a little tweaking would solve the problem of disparate outcomes. My mother dressed my sister and I in overalls and Earth shoes, and if we got baby dolls or tea sets, it was with a hint of disapproval. Why would girls play at being mothers or wives when they could sit on the Supreme Court or fly to the moon? When I was in sixth grade, my mother gave me a framed print that said: A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

By the time I got to college, I’d sworn off the idea of ever being a wife. It wasn’t only about avoiding repressive gender roles. Every marriage I had known about as a child had ended in divorce. My grandparents were divorced before I was even born. The family weddings I went to throughout my childhood—the hippie gathering in a pine forest, the traditional ceremony in a church, the one in Boston where my uncle wore a yarmulke and broke a wineglass to marry a Jewish woman—all ended in divorce. Most of my friends’ parents got divorced, as did mine. Everyone got divorced.

In college, my friends shared my skepticism. One night, in a discussion about what we wanted out of life, a group of us laughed at a preppy, naive housemate who said getting married was a priority for her. The rest of us planned to have art careers, travel the world, write books, get law degrees, move to Manhattan or Paris. In comparison to the things we hoped for, being a wife seemed small and backward and insignificant.

If I could have sworn off men the way I sporadically quit eating meat or using politically incorrect language, it would have been easier. But I was wired to consort with the enemy. When I was 26, in the mid-’90s, I fell hard for a funny and intense artist named Chris. Another child of divorce, he had his own reservations about marriage; but perhaps because of our unstructured childhoods, we both craved the stability of monogamy. It turned out that even if I didn’t want to get married, I wanted something like marriage. But what?

So many of the tools and traditions for keeping couples together had been burned to the ground. I identified with the couple in Margaret Atwood’s stark little poem “Habitation,” in which she describes marriage as two people crouched at the “edge of the receding glacier,” where they are “learning to make fire.” Maybe every young couple feels this way, but surely our generation was the first one tasked with building such an essential vessel—that births and raises the next generation of civilization—from so much wreckage.

In our first year together, Chris and I worked side by side to scour and rehab the rundown apartment I occupied in then-gritty Williamsburg. When my roommate announced she was moving out, it made sense for Chris to move in. I remember confiding to a friend that I was nervous about this step. I had been in New York City for a year and had begun publishing essays. A temp job at a news agency had turned into a steady gig. Would I lose my independence? Shouldn’t I stay focused on my career?

I was right to worry: It turned out I loved living together. I loved it so much it made me a little uneasy.

I had a friend in the building who’d been raised by boho leftists, just like I’d been, and was pursuing a writing career, just like I was. Over wine one afternoon we admitted to each other—and it really felt like a taboo secret—that we liked cooking dinner for our boyfriends, sometimes even more than we liked our day jobs, where we did dreary tasks like filing paperwork or writing up marketing meetings. By the rules of our feminist upbringings, this felt like admitting we wanted to be scullery maids.

Even worse, I liked all sorts of domestic arts, like baking pies with fanciful decorations on the crusts. I often spent countless hours on outrageously female-coded projects, like creating a handwritten cookbook with silhouette cutouts for illustrations or sewing a quilt from felted wool sweaters or stitching traditional clothes for a fabric doll I’d made just because I found some caramel-colored velvet and had a vision. This was long before Instagram; at the time I knew very few women who pursued such small and irrelevant, such female, hobbies.

I couldn’t have imagined that one day, quite soon, countless women would publicize just this sort of hobby, thanks to the rise of social media—or that they would become associated with a new archetype, the tradwife. This fringe group of women builds brands and personas based on the kind of domestic projects I had been doing privately, almost in secret.

Perhaps the most famous among them, Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm, has around 15 million followers on various platforms, where she shares videos of herself making homey meals from scratch, or getting dressed for church, or packing up the flowers that she and her husband sell. I’ve gone to her website a handful of times over the last few years, and every time I visit, there are more items for sale, ranging from protein powder to enamel mixing bowls to beef boxes. The trad wife influencers have been disparaged and scorned by the masses; but perhaps attaching economic value to female-coded domestic labor is a solution to the income disparities between men and women, which protest marches and feminist theory have failed to do.

Before we had kids, our solution for avoiding regressive gender roles was to follow the roommate model, splitting every bill and chore. Sure, I did more cooking, but Chris always helped, and what little housekeeping we did was equally shared with minimum discussion. He earned more from his job in the animation industry than I did as a freelance editor and writer, but we figured out a loosely proportionate system for paying bills. We did our laundry side by side at the laundromat. Four years into our relationship, even as we began hunting for a house to buy, we still had no plans to get married. Perhaps we would have continued like this indefinitely if not for a singular event. Two weeks after I turned 30, we became parents.

I assumed I’d go back to work when our son was a few months old, as seemed to be the norm in New York City. But this turned out to be impossible. First, I didn’t earn enough as an editor to justify day care or a nanny. But even more importantly, leaving that soft little creature who fit so snugly and easily into my arms—who burrowed his face into my neck and slept against my chest as if he belonged there—felt deeply, in my bones, wrong. So I stayed home.

Then we moved into that little row house, which needed work. Between the baby—who preferred me to Chris, and wouldn’t take a bottle—and the labor on the house, and our disparate incomes, the next several years would be an exercise in discarding so many of the beliefs and ideals I’d grown up with. If I’d given any thought at the time to that print my mother gave me, about needing a man like a fish needs a bicycle, I would have scoffed at it. I wanted to provide for this baby what he needed, which was me; to do that, I needed Chris, far more than a bicycle or anything else. There was just no way around this equation.

Around this time, a friend who had no kids mentioned that she would never let a man hold the door for her, on principle. I was by then maneuvering through public spaces weighed down with a baby, a stroller, and sometimes various shopping bags; I thought her view was ridiculous. I needed all the help I could get, and I was starting to notice that the principles of equity laid out by the feminists weren’t exactly working in my favor. I was working from home as an editor and writer, conducting DIY jobs on the house, nursing a baby, and running the household. So, women just did everything now? And since men couldn’t help with birthing and nursing, and the babies all seemed to want their moms more than their dads, men were just off the hook for half the labor in the house? I started passing up on some of the male-coded jobs I’d always tried to do, on principle.

In chaotic times, ideals give way to the most practical, efficient way to get through the day. Chris and I fell into doing the tasks that made the most sense. Working on our house, for example, I couldn’t contribute the way I’d thought I would. This was frustrating at first, but sometimes it was just fine. For example, we had salvaged a cast-iron farmhouse sink that needed to be carried up to the third floor, a job I wasn’t looking forward to. Fortunately, Chris was able to get a friend to help him. They hoisted and heaved this massive sink up the stairs, grunting and cursing as they went, as I held the baby and watched. Let the men do their work, I thought grandly.

Chris and I were realizing that building a family was hard, nearly impossible, and we began looking for all the structure we could get. When our son was 2, we finally got married in Brooklyn Bridge Park, looking across the East River toward the Twin Towers. The words boyfriend and girlfriend had become entirely inadequate; and it felt like it was time to grow up. But though I was happy to be married, it didn’t solve the problems I’d hoped it would. Life was still chaotic and messy. There were still too many chores, no matter who did them.

And then we added to our workload. In 2010, when my kids—by then we’d had another child, a daughter—were 6 and 11, we moved upstate and began running a small hobby farm. Here’s where the last of my feminist principles fell apart. There is too much work to do on a farm to bother fussing over who does which jobs. We do what we’re good at. The fact that many jobs sort automatically into classic sex roles—by virtue of biology or preference—is simply reality.

I can’t climb a ladder higher than about 10 feet, while Chris is unfazed by heights. He once repainted a metal-shingle barn roof in the August heat, 20 feet off the ground. When he came in for lunch looking like he’d walked through an inferno, I was just fine with my contribution: offering him a glass of lemonade and an egg-salad sandwich. He also does all the shooting and killing and culling of animals, along with the dicey rescues. When we found a starling embedded in a chicken wire panel—or a fierce yellow-eyed owl glaring out at us from inside a Havahart trap—he was the one to wrangle the bird out and back into the wild.

I do hard work all the time, pushing five-foot-high hay bales across the yard, hauling five-gallon buckets of water in each hand, carrying 50-pound bags of feed, corralling reluctant sheep or goats into a stall. But the work Chris does is harder, because he is significantly stronger. He is also bolder, steadier, and more willing to do grueling tasks. Like most men, when he hears about a problem, he wants to solve it.

As a college student I used to bristle at my grandmother’s constant sexist stereotypes. “When your brother gets here, I’m going to ask him to bring that heavy box inside,” she’d say. I’d indignantly remind her that I was strong, too, and I’d show her, hoisting the box and hauling it to wherever she wanted. But now I imagine my grandmother and her sister giving each other side-glances and shaking their heads at my swagger. Of course you can do it, I imagine them saying. That’s beside the point. Why would you give yourself extra work while taking away the job that men feel good doing for you?

Any kind of successful partnership relies on finding who does what best and then giving them leave to do it. Like most women, I’m probably better at organizing the family calendar or managing a crisis than most men, and I liked being the primary decision-maker on the medical and educational needs of our kids. It has become fashionable for women to complain about this “emotional labor,” but why wouldn’t I gladly contribute these skills and talents to our family? Besides, there are other kinds of emotional labor, which men tend to excel at. When I get caught up in anxious overthinking, my husband’s wry, unflappable response is stabilizing.

I stand by a lot of the feminist lessons I learned as a child. Of course women can sit on the Supreme Court and be astronauts or physicists or lawyers. Of course we can survive without men. But getting married, being a wife, being a mother, is not a step back in time, or a surrendering of ground. It’s actually the best part of my life.

After 25 years as a wife, I sometimes feel like my whole family has walked through an inferno—and survived. And I’ve come to realize that marriage is too difficult—and deep and important and personal—to be hampered either by sexist stereotypes, or the doctrines of the people who want to smash them to smithereens. Make quilts and pies if you feel like it. Tar the roof. Fix the water pipes. Have the babies and take turns carrying them and feeding them—or send your husband off to work while you stay home making videos of your sourdough journey—however your family works it out. That’s the best thing about marriage: You get to create your own world at the edge of the glacier.

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WHEN DID IT END?

When did it end

The dream we had

When did it begin

To get this bad

.

When did we start

To hate each other

When did we stop

Loving our brothers

.

When did the truth

Cease to exist

When did the lies

Stopped being myths

.

When did our country

Start to fall

Will it all end

With Elon’s wrecking ball?

— Elvin Woods

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LEAD STORIES, SUNDAY'S NYT

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Ambitious Democrats Have a New Game Plan: Yak It Up About Sports

Rage Against Elon Musk Turns Tesla Into a Target

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TAIBBI & KIRN ON PUTIN

Matt Taibbi: And this is the thing that always drove me nuts when they compared, like George Bush to Putin or to George W. Bush. George W. Bush had everything in the world handed to him. He didn’t have a job until he was 40 and failed at everything that he did and was still made president of the United States. I mean, it’s nothing against the guy. I don’t really dislike him as a person per se, but they compared him and Putin as if they were similar leaders. Putin is a self-made criminal mastermind. That’s what he is.

Walter Kirn: It’s like comparing, I don’t know, he’s like Conor McGregor or something. This is a guy who every inch that he took was absolutely bathed in conflict, strategy, and ruthlessness.

Matt Taibbi: Ruthlessness, murder, death, right?

Walter Kirn: Yeah.

Matt Taibbi: I mean, all those things, it’s what’s always made Putin a scary figure, is that Russia is a mob state, and he rose from nothing really, from the middle ranks of the former KGB. He hung around as the deputy to a quasi-popular St. Petersburg mayor and schemed and blackmailed and murdered his way to the top. And yeah, he’s still in power because of that. And that’s not speaking on his behalf, but that is a person who got to that podium at the Bundestag with a trail of bodies behind him. And that’s intimidating. It is. It’s a thing. But I guess what I was trying to point out is there’s something about a person who speaks like that, that causes that schwing response in Germans, and I can’t define it, can you? I mean, I don’t know enough Germans really to understand it.

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RUSSIA BOMBARDS UKRAINE

KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched heavy aerial attacks on Ukraine for a second night Saturday after the United States stopped sharing satellite images with the Ukrainian government, officials said. At least 22 people have been killed.

The U.S. decision to withhold intelligence and military aid came on the heels of a tempestuous White House visit last week by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. President Donald Trump is trying to pressure Ukraine into accepting a peace deal with Russia.

Without U.S. satellite imagery, Ukraine’s ability to strike inside Russia and defend itself from bombardment is significantly diminished.

“This is what happens when someone appeases barbarians,” Polish President Donald Tusk wrote on X Saturday. “More bombs, more aggression, more victims. Another tragic night in Ukraine.”

At least 11 people were killed in multiple strikes on a town in Ukraine’s embattled eastern Donetsk region late Friday, and another seven people were killed in four towns close to the front where Russian troops have been making steady advances, said regional Gov. Vadym Filashkin. Three others died when a Russian drone hit a civilian workshop in the northeastern Kharkiv region, emergency service officials reported. One man was killed by shelling in the region.

Filashkin declared a day of mourning Saturday and warned that more victims could still be found in the rubble.

Russia fired two ballistic missiles into the center of the front-line town of Dobropillya, then launched a strike targeting rescuers who responded, according to Zelenskyy. Forty-seven people, including seven children, were injured in the attack.

“It is a vile and inhumane intimidation tactic to which the Russians often resort,” he said.

Just 24 hours before the attacks, Russia hit Ukrainian energy facilities with dozens of missiles and drones, hobbling its ability to deliver heat and light to its citizens and to power weapons factories vital to its defenses.

Trump Says Putin Is ‘Doing What Anybody Else Would’

When asked Friday if Russian President Vladimir Putin was taking advantage of the U.S. pause on intelligence-sharing to attack Ukraine, Trump responded: “I think he’s doing what anybody else would.”

(AP)

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