Mendocino County Today: Monday 3/10/2025

Warrior's Plume | Mostly Sunny | Budget Cuts | Local Events | AVUSD News | Dick's Place | Cruel Neglect | Hemlock Postmaster | St. Mary's | AV Hotel | Stagecoach Robbery | Yesterday's Catch | Midhusband | Time Change | Good Coffee | Senator Murphy | American Pity | Satya Yuga | Getting Punched | Tahoe Trouble | Bat Boy | Continuing Creation | That Look | New Low | Transgenic Mice | Deebo Bagged | Fixing Baseball | Job Talk | Go Alone | Scam Calls | Penis Building | Poor Woke | Just Drugs | Tesla Ire | On Repeat | Tax Rich | Reconstructing Lenin | Lead Stories | Guernica Painting | Firing Squad | NY Subway | Laughing Waters | The Homestead

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MOSTLY DRY weather today although conditions are changing synoptically as the ridge breaks down and the cutoff low continues south and offshore of SoCal. Mid to high level clouds are expected as moisture bands roll into the PACNW. Gusty south winds expected Tuesday night into early Wednesday. Heavy rain and heavy mountain snow is forecast late Tuesday night through Wednesday. Additional bouts of rain and mountain snow expected to follow late week into the weekend. Snow levels are forecast to fall below 2000 feet Wednesday night and Thursday as rain showers persist. Small hail possible Wednesday night and Thursday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Some scattered high clouds & a brisk 38F this Monday morning on the coast. It should be less windy today & Tuesday, rain returns tomorrow night. Generally wet is our forecast thru next Monday. Other than a strong forecast for Wednesday rain amounts are on the moderate to light side.

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TRUMP CUTS HIT FORT BRAGG

Editor:

Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s budget cuts already hurt my community. They cut funding for Fort Bragg’s Senior Center. The suspension of these funds will cause irreparable damage to the most vulnerable older members of our community. Many are veterans and depend on dining room services and home-delivered meals. The Redwood Coast Senior Center serves about 55,000 meals yearly. The cost is $500,000. Half its budget comes from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through the Administration on Aging and then the Area Agencies on Aging. These illegal and cruel actions must be stopped now.

Ed Oberweiser

Fort Bragg

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LOCAL EVENTS

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AVUSD NEWS

Dear Anderson Valley USD Families,

Thank you to all parents who came out for conferences and PLPs last week. We are deeply grateful for your partnership with us. Together, we can support your child in pursuing their hopes and dreams! 

In addition to attending scheduled conferences to set goals and review progress, maintaining regular communication with your child’s teacher helps to ensure continued teamwork. The home-school connection is essential! Reach out by calling, emailing, or meeting in-person.  If you ever have a concern, please reach out to the teacher. Site principals and the superintendent are available, as well, to support you and your child as well, if needed. Teamwork makes the dreamwork!

Donkey Basketball Tuesday - Don't Miss It!

This promises to be a good time for all!

AV FFA vs the AV Fire Dept! (Benefits the Anderson Valley FFA)

March 11, 2025  6:30 pm

Anderson Valley High School Gym 

See Ms. Swehla at (707) 895-3496

Adults - $13 now or $15 at the gate

Students 7th to 12th grade $10 now or $12 at the gate

Children K to 6th grade $7 now or $9 at the gate

Pajamas and Pozole at AVES

Wednesday, March 12th at 5:30 p.m. at AVES

Join us for a fun family night of pajamas,  pozole, and literacy activities. Here is the flier.

The Track Went Out to Rebid Last Week!!

We are so excited!! Please cross your fingers for bids under budget and with companies who work quickly. This project should be completed by June of 2026.

It Was a Great Few Days for FFA!

• Samantha Espinoza, Mariluna Rameriza , and Zoe Bennett competed in the regional speaking contests.
• Mariluna placed 3rd in the Spanish Creed speaking and will compete at the State FFA competition in April!
• Zoe placed 2nd in Impromptu Speaking. She will also compete at the State FFA competition in April!
• Mr. McNerney was awarded the Star Administrator award. He will be recognized at the State FFA Convention in April.
• Natalie Marcum Soto received her California State FFA Degree! She has worked hard the last 4 years with community service, leadership, school work and her SAE! Great job!
• Lastly, Jennifer Solano was elected as a 2025-26 North Coast FFA Regional Officer!
• This is the first time AV FFA has had a regional officer.

Photos:  Mr. McNerney receiving his Star Administrator award, FFA students with their FFA awards, and Natalie Marcum Soto receiving her State FFA Degree

We are so proud of her and look forward to seeing the great things she does for the North Coast Region.  Mr. Bautista and Ms. Swehla are so proud of them all!

Way to represent Anderson Valley FFA!  The FFA is looking forward to the FFA State Conference.  Here is the FFA State Conference Schedule

Dance Class is Coming to AVES After School Program! 

AVES students will be enjoying classes by the Mendocino Dance Project in ASP Mondays and Wednesday, starting March 17. Thank you, Mrs. Triplett, for organizing this fantastic opportunity!

Summer School Planning Has Begun!

Summer School will be June 23-July 22

8:30-12:30 / ASP 12:30-5:30 Transportation provided 

(bus leaves for the day at 3:00 p.m.)

• AVES will provide activities including sports, crafts, science, art, and field trips. Here is the AVES Summer School flier

• AV Jr High will provide fun learning activities.  

(More info coming soon.)

• Sr High School provide credit recovery opportunities 

(More info coming soon.)

We Value ALL Our Families: Immigration Support and Updates

Please find  links to additional information for families below:

• Mendocino County Office of Education: Immigration Resource Page
• Immigration and California Families: State Immigration Website
• National Immigration Law Center: “Know Your Rights” (English | Spanish | Additional Languages) 

If you would like to be more involved at school, please contact your school’s principal, Mr. Ramalia at AVES or Mr. McNerney at AV Jr/Sr High, or our district superintendent, Kristin Larson Balliet. We are deeply grateful for our AVUSD families. 

With respect,

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WHEN NEGLECT BECOMES POLICY

by Mark Scaramella

Reading the transcript of Judge Moorman’s rambling, at times almost incoherent, but fully justifiable, ruling dismissing the criminal cases against Chamise Cubbison and Paula Kennedy, there was one particular issue that stands out that has not been discussed elsewhere: the shift of the County’s payroll function from the Auditor’s office to the CEO’s office on dubious grounds having to do with the CEO and the Supervisors giving the impression that the Payroll function in the Auditor’s office was somehow screwed up or otherwise in danger of being screwed up.

Moorman basically says that the CEO failed to address the one-woman (Paula Kennedy) show that the payroll function had become during covid. Moorman adds that the CEO knew how precarious the payroll function had become and did nothing about it, letting it fester until it blew up when Ms. Kennedy threatened to sue the County for denying overtime compensation to Kennedy.

Moorman: “The evidence is clear to me that [Kennedy] was frayed emotionally by the time all of this came to light, that she was suffering under an inordinate amount of stress, not only because of the responsibilities of her job but also the stress that she was experiencing because she couldn’t get any relief, because she couldn’t take any time off because there [was] no one else to do the job. And I think Ms. Cubbison -- there’s evidence Ms. Cubbison was aware of it. There’s a lot of evidence Mr. Weer was aware of it. And the CEO’s office was aware of it. Yet nobody really figured out a solution.· They just — as counsel has indicated, they let the situation go on to try to figure out a solution later…”

Translation: This was another branch of the Supervisors’ Get Cubbison project. The only conclusion one can draw is that the CEO’s office wanted the payroll function to fail in some way so they could blame Ms. Cubbison for it and then take it over letting the Supervisors think that the problem was Ms. Cubbison.

Exactly how this played out is not entirely clear. But the underlying animosity that the CEO and the Board had for Ms. Cubbison for not being sufficiently in agreement with the Board’s bad decision to consolidate the financial offices, was clearly a factor in letting the payroll problem go unresolved for so long.

Obviously, this payroll problem was a predictable result of the ongoing staffing problems in the Auditor’s office created by the Board’s rash decision to combine the offices and overwork everybody in the combined office while dragging their feet or simply ignoring the staffing problems they had created.

This seemingly intentional failure to address staffing problems, especially in core functions like payroll and tax collection, based on petty personal animus is probably reflected in other county offices. For example, the County’s inability to collect all taxes due and conduct tax lien sales is another simmering offspring of this intentional neglect.

The Supervisors and the CEO deserve full blame for screwing up the Auditor-Controller’s office and the Treasurer-Tax Collector’s office, knowing that experienced people would quit, knowing it would create staffing and experience shortages. Then they denied that the problems in the understaffed Auditor’s office had anything to do with their own awful and totally unplanned decision to consolidate the offices against the advice of everyone who had an opinion on the subject but them.

Moorman: “The CEO’s office determination to take over payroll I think has some relevance in the case because there’s evidence and suggestion that Mr. Weer made salutations [Moorman probably said or meant solicitations] to the CEO’s office about getting on the board of supervisors to provide compensation to Ms. Kennedy and that was rebuffed.”

Actually, as best we remember, Ms. Cubbison tried to tell the Board that her office needed help doing payroll early on. (They should have solicited an outside payroll contractor early on, but apparently nobody considered that). Instead of insisting that the CEO and the Auditor resolve the problem, they let it fester. ·

Moorman: “I think the tension over the CEO’s office’s desire to take over the payroll system, which Mr. Weer and Ms. Cubbison and Ms. Kennedy all said was a bad idea, I think that tension played into decisions about whether to ignore Ms. Kennedy’s very desperate situation.· It was emotionally desperate. It was psychologically desperate. It bordered on cruel. In fact, it was cruel. It didn’t border on it. It stepped over the line.”

Apparently, by “it” Judge Moorman was referring to the “tension over the CEO’s office desire to take over the payroll system.” But what she really means is the Board’s and the CEO’s Payroll takeover element of the Get Cubbison project to undermine the elected Auditor-Controller. And if it meant “cruelty” to an employee, or jeopardizing paychecks to employees, well, that was just collateral damage.

It’s apparent that versions of this kind of neglect are manifest in many County departments these days.

These people have no business running an organization like Mendocino County. But we’re stuck with them because Mendo keeps electing people whose hubris exceeds their capabilities and whose shallow campaigns are run like high school popularity contests with empty slogans and generic pseudo-liberal position statements rather than serious interest in how the organization functions.

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MENDOCINO COUNTY WAY BACK WHEN

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ST. MARY’S HOSPITAL: A LOVE LETTER [from the archive]

by Bruce Anderson

The morning of July 23, 2011 I woke up with a stomach ache. By noon the stomach ache was bending me in half but, like a true child of the 50s — no blood, no injury — I thought it would simply go away. All I had to do was wait it out. I also couldn’t help but notice that I was unable to evacuate, and I don’t mean evacuate in the sense of emergency exits. Finally, about five in the afternoon when the stomach ache had gone from painful to excruciating, and as my poor wife threatened to call an ambulance if I didn’t go to the hospital right now, I drove myself to the emergency room at St. Mary’s Hospital on Stanyan, a quick couple of miles from our apartment.

The waiting room was full, but the nurse responsible for sorting the poly-ethnic, multi-lingual sufferers seemed the equal of a medical Napoleon. Almost at a glance she had us accurately assessed.

There was an ancient Chinese woman groaning in a wheelchair, a stoic Mexican kid in painter’s coveralls with blood oozing out of one of his boots, two black men of my vintage, an elderly white woman, her son vigilant by her side, and a young Chinese man, perhaps a frequent flier, who the RN generalisimo quickly sized up as a psychosomatic case. “Honey,” the black woman doing the sorting said, “the best thing you can do is go home and get some sleep.”

This intake RN radiated good-humored authority, which, while I was there, was not disputed. St. Mary’s promises a free pizza to anyone who has to wait more than 30 minutes in emergency; I wondered if anyone ever re-appeared to claim one. Madam General soon had each of us preliminarily diagnosed and cubicled, although It was so crowded I was laid out next to her office where I could listen to her work her assessment magic. I’d never seen anyone do high pressure work with such intelligent dispatch, and mentally kicked myself for not having my notepad to memorialize her by name.

A male nurse appeared bedside. “You need to be drained,” he said. “Your bladder isn’t working.” He explained that he was going to insert a catheter into that organ that causes strong men to cringe at the very thought. “Whatever you do,” he warned me, don’t grab me.” The nurse explained that men often reflexively lunge for the person doing the inserting. I assured him I wasn’t a lunger. The pain of the insertion was mild and over in an instant, but the relief it provided me from my treacherous bladder was instantaneous. For the next two weeks I was urinating through a tube into a see-through bag strapped to my leg. The nurse told me that bladder dysfunction was common to lots of older men including, as it happened, my two black contemporaries I’d met in the waiting room. They were also catheter cases.

The place was hopping. Another nurse said the emergency room would stay busy until 1 or 2am. People groaned from the wall of cubicles. An Aargh (street drunk) petulantly demanded, “Now you tell me exactly how I’m supposed to get from here to there.” The police bring lots of Aarghs to the emergency room from nearby Golden Gate Park and, it seems, lots of Aarghs make their own way to temporary succor before resuming their headlong plunges to extinction. I heard an exasperated staffer exclaim, “And they all have cellphones!” adding, “Gawd, I’m so tired of them.”

My urologist, a jolly young man named Dr. Grady, put me on some pills that he thought might get my middle kingdom plumbing fully functional again. Avodart! Flomax! Is there a male over the age of 60 unfamiliar with these frontline prostate prophylactics? I’d be on the catheter for two weeks until I saw Dr. Grady again.

And when I saw him, the catheter had come out. I went home optimistic that the Avodart and the Flomax had freed me. I did some celebratory push-ups and went for a bike ride in the Presidio. But my waterworks remained jammed, so jammed I again hit the road for St. Mary’s emergency room, this time at 3:30am. Other than an Aargh strapped to a gurney in one of the cubicles, I had a doctor and a male nurse all to myself. The nurse pointed to a stack of catheter apparatuses. “We keep a stack of them right there. That’s how common this is.” And he got one down for me and in it went.

The meds having failed to unblock me, Dr. Grady scheduled me for laser surgery at St. Mary’s sister hospital in Daly City called Seton, named after the famous saint Mother Seton, as is the Catholic church in the Anderson Valley at Philo. During the check-in I was asked my religious preference. Noting the pious iconography everywhere around me, I said with all the authority I could muster, “Catholic!” I half expected one of the statues to fly down from its creche and crack me in my lying head, but the Filipina clerk simply checked the Catholic box.

The laser expedition up my penile canal took almost an hour. As I probably misunderstand it, the laser chips away at the overgrown prostate to restore one’s flow. I thought of it as removing the dams on the Klamath. A pair of tiny Filipina nurses stuffed me into a paper hospital gown, a simple task I was unable to accomplish on my own. “Good thing this isn’t an IQ test,” I said. “Happens all the time,” one of the nurses said. The anesthesiologist, wearing a Cal headdress, explained that he’d be putting me out for almost exactly the time it took Doctor Grady to steer the laser to the prostate’s coal face, so to speak.

I felt zero pain during and zero pain afterwards. There was some blood in my urine for a mere two days before my stream was again running into my catheter bag as clear and true as Jimmy Creek high in the east hills of Boonville.

I was home by noon, me and my post-op catheter, and god how I’d come to hate those things. My wife, much more anxious about all this than her lout of a husband, became the equivalent of a live-in nurse.

A week hence Dr. Grady would remove the catheter for the last time and I would be free. I was weak after the operation and slept a lot, but I anticipated full recovery, and a fast one, too, fast enough to get me back to Boonville in a week.

But then something went terribly, almost fatally awry.

Dr. Grady was going to retire the catheter at 9am Tuesday, a week after the successful laser surgery. I was almost home.

But at 9am Monday, after a night-long malarial assault on my entire operating system, I was so weak I couldn’t get off the floor; I was alternately suffering from a teeth-chattering chill and sweats so severe they soaked through my blanket. I was vomiting and I’d lost all control of my bowels. I seemed to be passing in and out of consciousness. I couldn’t stand, and soon my apartment was filled with EMTs.

“Shoot me, please,” I half-joked to one of them. It was all so humiliating, so purely pathetic I couldn’t quite believe it was happening to me. I’d never been so completely powerless, so systemically deficient that I couldn’t stand or even get my feet under me to begin to stand. My years of daily hill hiking and push-ups had been negated in a few hours, although the doctors would later tell me that for my age I had “a very good foundation. No pre-existing medical conditions, no diabetes, no nothing. That helped you a lot.”

As the Korean lady across the street at her coffee shop stood on the sidewalk with a shocked hand to her mouth, I was lifted into the meat wagon and carried off to St. Mary’s Emergency.

When I arrived at the emergency room, I was pretty much out of it but still oriented, as they say, as to time and place. I still had a firm grasp of my name, age and address. But I was getting sicker, weaker. A young nurse commented, “You old guys always think you can tough it out, don’t you?” I had to plead guilty. “Yep, another old fool from the John Wayne era lies before you.”

Soon, I was hooked up to an array of IVs and other mysterious apparatuses. One multiple distribution center had been inserted into my collarbone. The doctor explained it was a rather delicate procedure that required him to accomplish it so deftly that it avoided my heart, a piece of information I really didn’t care to hear. Another distribution center was inserted into the area of my left elbow. My doctor told me that over the next few hours they put “more than twenty pounds of liquids” into my ailing bulk.

I wasn’t sure how much I was understanding, but I certainly understood that two female Asian nurses were pulling my toxic clothing off, pushing me up on my side one way then the other as they swabbed my unexplored regions with cleansing salves. “I apologize,” I said, “for exposing you to these grisly vistas.” They laughed. “Grisly vistas,” one said. “I’ve never heard that one.” I’d never seen those remotest of areas myself, and now total strangers, and whatever they’re paid it isn’t enough, were not only risking permanent visual trauma, they were gently scouring the fetid regions with great soothing strokes of antiseptic cloth.

When my trousers were finally off, one of the nurses said, “Are you aware there was a stool in your pants leg?” I was not aware of that, I said, embarrassed at the question. Surely she didn’t think I maintained a pet turd. “Oh, you must mean Bob. Yes, he’s been with me for years.” For all I was aware the Boonville Chamber of Commerce was holding a wine tasting in my pants leg. I was debilitated way past knowing or caring how fetid I’d become.

So commenced three days in ICU. The first night, as I learned the next day, it had been touch and go. All my vital signs were way off — white blood cell count ominously high; blood pressure ominously low. In the middle of the night a nurse had come in and read the numbers posted behind me where I couldn’t see them. “This guy is very, very sick,” she said to someone. The next day the same nurse said, “I thought about you when I was driving home. I was worried. You look so much better today. You’re going to make it.”

My primary physician, Dr. Yoss, soon appeared. “That was a sleepless night for me,” he said. “Someday I’ll tell you how close you came.” Close as I may have come to buying the store, at no time during my prone helplessness did I ever hear the tumult of angel wings, the harps tuning up or those long bright white avenues the almost dead say they enter.

There isn’t much time to think morbid thoughts in the hospital because every few minutes, even if you’ve managed to fall asleep, little nurses with big needles are perpetually injecting mysterious serums, or taking your blood, or your temperature, or measuring your blood sugar, checking your blood pressure; and there’s always someone, or a group of someones, clustered at the foot of your bed reading the numbers. Several times, suddenly waking to a cluster of doctors staring in on me, I felt like the Macy’s display window.

The doctors said there are a lot of fancy terms for what had happened to me but they all added up to old fashioned blood poisoning, probably from the catheter backing up.

Promoted from ICU to a room upstairs on the 8th floor with a kaleidoscopic view of the Bridge towers to the blue Pacific, the round-the-clock poking, puncturing and prodding continued as if I were still in ICU. But these people had saved me and I wasn’t about to complain. My appetite gradually returned and I was not only finally able to totter around the room, I began to fully appreciate just how good the St. Mary’s staff was. “Can I get some ice water?” Coming right up. “Extra pillow maybe?” How many do you want?

In ICU, a saintly little bundle of energy, Aeme, had even relayed the Giants scores to me. I’d never experienced anything approaching such a level of genuine concern, and all of it delivered with an unfeigned cheerfulness from the busy men and women charged with caring for a whole floor of very sick people, some of them senile and quite demanding, especially at night. I often heard one old boy demand, “I want a cop now!” Then a soothing voice, “Now Mr. Smith. Everything is fine. Would you like some juice?”

One afternoon I could hear a Russian-accented voice approaching my door. He was talking to himself, I discerned, about “Getting da hell outtahere.” And darned if he didn’t walk straight into my room. “Who are you?” he demanded. I said I was Count Brusco of Upper Mendonesia just as two nurses hustled in to retrieve him, and I could hear him complaining all the way to his room far down the long hall.

I don’t see how a hospital could be more accommodating. The doctors and nurses were angelic, the superlative that best fits my experience at St. Mary’s. They saved me and then they made me strong again, and I knew that soon I would be back in Boonville in plenty of time to get my winter garden in.

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JEFF BURROUGHS

Holy shnykies! I have never seen this photo before. I have been looking for a photo like this my whole life. Let me wipe the tears from my eyes and explain what makes this photo so fantastic. This photo shows the Hotel dining room up close. All my family has ever had are shots taken at weird angles, or too far away to be able to see any details of this dining room. I had all but given up ever finding such a photo. Wow!! This is the Holy Grail of photos for me and my family.

It’s like my birthday, Christmas and Shakeys Pizza all wrapped up in one little photo. This is the coolest thing. Thank you

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STAGECOACH ROBBERY, 1884

by Molly Dwyer

October 11, 1884 - The Mendocino Beacon reported that the stagecoach from Cloverdale to Mendocino had been robbed by two highwaymen just north of Boonville. “Thomas Bennett was driving and he was ordered to throw out the express box and the mail. He threw out one light mail bag, but protested that he could not throw out the box as his leaders were so restive that he must devote his whole attention to his team. Accordingly one of the fellows climbed up and helped himself to it.”

The robbers then turned their attention to the passengers, taking $3 from Rev. J. L. Drum, who “informed them that they should have taken them as they went down as they did have a little money then but of course they spent it all. They then proceeded to interview the ladies… Mrs. Klein informed them that she had $5 which she handed over, but informed them that she needed the money to get her some breakfast and for other expenses.” The robbers returned her money.

Susie Murray, daughter of Mendocino druggist J. D. Murray, was traveling with her mother Theresa and little brother Carl on the stagecoach that day. Susie, who was 19, told them she had no money and directed them to her mother, “advising her mamma to overcome at once any scruples she might have and give up her purse at once. Mrs. Murray bustled about as though very eager to comply with the request, but really she was not sure whether she had it and possibly Susie might have it after all.”

“Don’t you have it?” Theresa asked. “Why no, Mama,” Susie reportedly said. “But do find it, and give it to them before they kill us.”

Carl Murray told the Beacon the robbers argued over what to do next. They were reticent, he said, to ask his mother and sister to disembark, which would involve physical contact: the ladies would need help getting down from the coach. After a few minutes of indecision, the bandits fled.

Susie was sitting on her mother’s purse the whole time.

From Maidens to Mavericks, Mendocino’s Women by Molly Dwyer – Mendocino boasts some strong and remarkable women in its past. This volume honors and remembers some of them. For anyone who loves Mendocino, who lives on the Coast or claims some piece of it for themselves, discovering our foremothers can be transformational. $20.

(kelleyhousemuseum.org)

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, March 9, 2025

EDUARDO ALVAREZ, 29, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, suspended license.

HUGO BARRERA, 45, Ukiah. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15%.

STEPHANIE BROWN, 43, Ukiah. Disobeying court order.

TIA HIGGINS, 33, Ukiah. Petty theft with two or more priors.

DANIEL MILLER, 33, Ukiah. Parole violation.

ICEAN PACHECO, 18, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ANTONIO THOMAS, 45, Ukiah. Petty theft with two more or priors.

ALFREDO ZAMUDIO-GUTIERREZ, 37, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. DUI.

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DAYLIGHT SAVING 2025: WHY WE STILL ‘SPRING FORWARD’ DESPITE VOTERS’ WISHES

by Michael Cabanatuan

Just when you finally got all your clocks changed and your body and attitude adjusted, it’s time to take another leap in time — ahead to daylight saving time.

Daylight saving begins at 2 a.m. Sunday. Californians and most other Americans will set their clocks ahead an hour, losing an hour of sleep and making the mornings darker and the daylight later — until Nov. 3.

Most Californians relish the after-work daylight, as evidenced by a successful 2018 state ballot measure supporting but not mandating permanent daylight saving time.

But while many enjoy more daylight into their evenings, early risers who go for walks or runs or make predawn drives to work may dread the morning darkness. Critics call the shift outdated and unneeded, and medical researchers warn that it can be disruptive to health and sleep patterns.

For now, though, the seasonal switch between daylight saving time and standard time is here to stay. Here are some fast facts about daylight saving time:

When And Why Did Daylight Saving Time Start?

Tales of the outdoor industry or farmers creating daylight saving time to sell more tents or get more time in the fields aren’t accurate. Congress gave birth to daylight saving time in 1918 to help save energy costs during World War I, according to the Department of Defense.

Daylight saving was repealed when the war ended, then reinstated by Congress in 1942 during World War II. The law was once again repealed in 1945 at the war’s end, and individual states were allowed to establish their own standard time.

That led to chaos and confusion for the next two decades, particularly in industries like transportation and broadcasting. Then in 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which established a national standard time that permanently superseded local times. It established daylight saving time from the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October.

The law has been tweaked a few times since, including the dates when we spring forward and fall back.

Does Every State Have Daylight Saving Time?

Only two western states — Hawaii and Arizona — and most American territories, including Guam and Puerto Rico, opt out of daylight saving and operate on standard time year-round. The Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona also makes the time switch.

When does it start, and when does it end?

Daylight saving starts the second Sunday in March each year, when people are advised to “spring forward” even though it’s still winter. Spring doesn’t begin until the vernal equinox on March 20.

If it seems like it used to start later, you’re not confused — or overtired, yet. Daylight saving used to begin on the first Sunday in April and end on the final Sunday on October. The start date has changed a few times over the years, most recently in 2007, after President George W. Bush signed an energy bill that added about four weeks to daylight saving time.

Who came up with the idea for daylight saving time?

Historians credit George Vernon Hudson, an astronomer and entomologist in New Zealand, with suggesting a spring and fall time shift in the 1890s to increase daylight. In the early 1900s, a British home builder made a similar suggestion. But Germany was the first to adopt the idea, implementing it in World War I as an energy saving move. The U.S. quickly followed suit.

Didn’t California Outlaw Daylight Saving Time?

Not exactly. In 2018, California voters approved Proposition 7, giving it a majority of about 60%. But the proposition was more of a suggestion. To become law, it would require additional steps.

First, legislation would need to pass the state Assembly and Senate — each by a two-thirds majority. Then it would need to be signed into law by the governor. Two proposed bills to enact Prop 7 have died.

Finally, Congress also would need to vote to let California escape the annual clock-changing ritual. A similar federal effort to make daylight saving time permanent has failed to move forward in Congress.

So, for now, the spring and fall switch is still on.

(SF Chronicle)

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SENATOR MURPHY

I think Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy is the best voice speaking out with FACTS counteracting Trump, Elmo, and Project 2025. I’ve seen a lot of his videos on Twitter. Here is a YouTube link to a recent speech: https://youtu.be/hycoCYenXls?si=38ymuEga0vZ6lPfk

Monica Huettl, Redwood Valley

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Traveling abroad for the first time since November, I saw pity in the eyes of strangers when they heard my American accent. Pity, empathy, and utter confusion, as if to convey “What the hell is happening to your country?” with a mere glance or a quiet sigh.

Believe me, I’m American and I’m just as confused as you are.

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THE SPIRITUAL MOJO

Warmest spiritual greetings,

The silent chanting of OM on the outbreath is commenced at Brahma Muhurta (4 a.m.) each morning. This is preparation for “bringing in the spiritual mojo”; employing the magical formula from the Atharva Veda, for the purpose of accelerating Divine Intervention in this abominable dark phase of Kali Yuga, as it segues into the Satya Yuga, the age of truth and light.

Craig Louis Stehr, craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

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‘THERE IS LITERALLY NO ONE’: The fallout coming to Lake Tahoe after forest service gutted

From wildfires and water clarity to Fourth of July tourism, Tahoe is in trouble.

by Julie Brown

The U.S. Forest Service manages 78% of the land in the Lake Tahoe Basin. Yet, a hiring freeze on seasonal workers and recent firings of key staff have gutted an already-stretched-thin agency, putting on hold critical work in water quality, environmental restoration and forest fuels reduction projects while also diminishing the forest service’s capacity to manage the millions of visitors who come to Lake Tahoe every year — especially on the Fourth of July.

Eleven people who work at the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit lost their jobs last month in the so-called “Valentine’s Day Massacre” led by Elon Musk’s U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, according to former employees. The job losses compound chronically low staffing, plus a hiring freeze on seasonal workers that went into effect last fall. In all, the management unit has lost a third of its recreational staff, including the lone permanent wilderness ranger position in Desolation Wilderness.

The Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit is the smallest forest in California, but it sees more visitors than any of the state’s national parks. The management unit’s 156,335 acres are a fifth the size of Yosemite National Park, yet data shows the management unit welcomes almost twice as many visitors as Yosemite. But the forest service has gone dark in communications about how Lake Tahoe will be impacted by the Trump administration’s mass firing of forest service employees last month.

The only news coming out of the management unit since the firings have been public notices about prescribed burns. An inquiry sent by SFGATE in February to the management unit about how many people were fired went unanswered. On Monday, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Agriculture sent SFGATE an emailed statement that said 2,000 forest service employees had been fired but did not give any further information about how the firings were spread forest by forest or how many people had been let go at the management unit.

In that information vacuum, two former forest service employees and South Lake Tahoe residents — Nadia Tase and Kelly Bessem — have organized a small resistance to make known the full weight of the impacts coming to Lake Tahoe, aligning with similar rogue initiatives led by people who work on public lands. Tase worked for the forest service in Lake Tahoe for 13 years before she took another job on Election Day in 2016. Bessem was a hydrology technician and seasonal employee until she was let go last fall, due to budget cuts.

“I have to speak up for my colleagues [who] can’t speak for themselves because they’re afraid of losing their job,” Tase said in a phone interview with SFGATE this week. “It’s a very strange world right now, and things are not happening the way they typically do. They are just very scared.”

Both Tase and Bessem say they have been in touch with current and former forest service employees, some of whom hold high-ranking positions. Tase published a letter to the editor in South Tahoe Now on Feb. 23 that detailed the jobs lost — and what Tahoe should expect in the coming months as a result.

“If this purge were truly about government efficiency, these would not be the individuals to target,” Tase wrote in the letter on South Tahoe Now. “These are some of the hardest working people, the most dedicated, the most productive worker bees that simply put, get stuff done.”

From Picking Up Trash To Forest Thinning — Critical Work That Just Won’t Get Done

The Trump administration fired people who built trails. They managed aquatic invasive species efforts and led creek and meadow restoration projects that play into Lake Tahoe’s vitally important water quality goals — the projects that, to borrow from the League to Save Lake Tahoe’s tagline, quite literally “keep Tahoe blue.”

The cuts mean fewer people to pick up trash left by tourists on beaches, put out illegal campfires in the backcountry and enforce rules about bear canisters. Tahoe’s popular Taylor Creek Visitor Center and Tallac Historic Site will have reduced hours. While many forest service beaches and campgrounds are operated by concessionaires, places that are run by the forest service, including Luther Pass Campground and Watson Lake Campground, will also see shorter opening seasons.

The loss also represents decades of experience, Tase said. Some of those people had more than 20 years of experience working for the management unit.

“We lose these positions. We lose that ability to serve the public,” Tase said.

Two people who worked on aquatic invasive species projects were also fired. Tahoe has seen recent success with projects eradicating aquatic invasive species. Last fall, the forest service joined the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency to remove heavy, sunlight-blocking mats that eradicated a 17-acre infestation of aquatic weeds in Tallac and Taylor creeks.

Monitoring needs to continue so the weeds don’t return, said Bessem, the former hydrology technician. Yet the two employees fired in February were both leaders on the aquatic team.

Wildfire Defenses Are Hit On Multiple Fronts

Three people who were fired worked on fuels reduction projects that protect Lake Tahoe communities from wildfire danger — all the more prescient in Lake Tahoe, since forest-thinning projects saved hundreds of homes in Christmas Valley from burning in the Caldor Fire.

The Trump administration has frozen funding for partner nonprofits the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit has traditionally relied on to lend extra hands and support critical work, such as fuels reduction projects that buffer Tahoe’s forest-dense neighborhoods from wildfire risk.

In Tahoe, the Great Basin Institute has partnered with the management unit on a large-scale forestry project to reduce the risk of wildfire across the Tahoe Basin. But the institute nearly had to furlough staff because, at the start of the Trump administration, it stopped receiving payments from the federal government for work completed months ago, said Great Basin Institute CEO Peter Woodruff.

Payments have resumed for work completed months ago, and the institute avoided furloughs, Woodruff said. However, all new work that doesn’t have funding already committed has been suspended.

“The forests are being asked to do heroics or shutter critical facilities and recreation,” Woodruff said. “Typically, we’d be a solution in these circumstances when they reach their own limitations, they reach into whatever backup funding they may have and shift to our labor force, but that’s not possible this time around.”

The Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit also lost employees who held fireline qualifications, Tase said. They might not be firefighting personnel, but they still do firefighting work in the Tahoe Basin, during a fire and after. These were the people who rehabilitated the fire breaks that crews cut through the forest during the Caldor Fire, she noted, reducing erosion and sediment flows into Lake Tahoe.

And Then There’s the Fourth of July

Last summer, Bessem worked at Kiva Beach on the Fourth of July, handing out trash bags and patrolling for safety. The forest service was part of a basinwide effort to staff up for Tahoe’s busiest holiday weekend of the year, after thousands of pounds of trash was strewn across the lake the year before. And it worked. Last summer, thanks to the enforcement and education efforts on the holiday, on the morning of July 5, 2024, volunteers found beaches in much better condition than the year prior. The total amount of trash picked up was a quarter of what it was in 2023.

Uniformed staff made a big difference in that enforcement, Bessem said. That’s not something that can be easily replicated by volunteers.

“As someone in uniform, you have a radio. You can go up to people, tell them you know the rules and regulations. You can call for backup law enforcement,” she said.

She doesn’t know if the forest service can muster the same kind of response this coming Fourth of July.

Desolation Wilderness — one of the most heavily visited wilderness areas in the country — has also been hit especially hard, Bessem said. With a medical issue, an earlier layoff and seasonal job losses, she said the management unit currently has no staff for Desolation.

Management Unit] side of Desolation is completely gone,” she said. ”There is literally no one on the [Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit] side at all.”

The Damage Is Not Done

This week, the chair of the Merit Systems Protection Board issued an order that forest service employees who lost their jobs in the mass firings must be hired back for 45 days while an investigation is underway about whether the firings were illegal.

According to the order, the mass firings included 5,692 employees — almost three times the number of people compared with what the USDA has admitted. Former management unit employee Tase said she doesn’t know of anyone who has gotten their job back, at least not yet. She said the management unit employees will be reinstated soon.

However, more job losses are likely imminent. Politico reported on Thursday plans to lay off 7,000 more workers in the forest service.

“Certainly a grim picture,” Tase wrote in an email to SFGATE on Thursday night. “And despite the apparent good news with the reversal of the illegal firings, I fear those positions are ultimately still on the chopping block.”

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ANIMALS embody every quality found in the human personality. In the whole range of human temperament and character there is nothing unique, nothing not found as some aspect of another species. It is the only other place they are found. What men do that may be unique or is at least unusual is to know this. Man is capable, to a limited degree and with great effort, of stepping out of the stream of events for a moment, even of his skin, and looking at the whole fauna and flora as a composite of his own possibilities.

By “possibilities” is not meant another bouquet to humanistic autonomy or another claim that all things are possible and that man can be whatever he chooses. “Possibilities” is a reference to the total context of living phenomena within which the human species has its own forms and limitations. This is why recognition of limitations is the essential step in achieving the freedom implicit in intelligence; it increasingly identifies one’s kind of being to one’s self. It goes beyond this defining and narrowing of our species sense to a widening within that frame. The same faunal ream within which humanity is but one point among many provides a patterned model for discovering and allocating the positions and quality spaces within society.

Paul Shepard, Thinking Animals: Animals and the Development of Human Intelligence

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Idealizes life with only its head out of water, inches above the limit of toleration of the corruption of its own environment… Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal.

Paul Shepard

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Our world does not make us; nor do we make ourselves; we are the continuing creation of the interaction between our organic structure and the way we shape the world around us. It’s possible to do it badly. It’s also possible to do it well. We are an epigenetic phenomenon: our development is elaborated continuously during our entire lifetimes as it has been down through the ages.

Paul Shepard, Coming Home to the Pleistocene

(via Bruce McEwen)

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EVER LOWER

Editor:

President Donald Trump has reached a new low, disgracing himself and embarrassing this country before a worldwide audience. The Oval Office meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine turned into a spectacle of tag-team bullying with Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, doing all they could to humiliate and intimidate their guest.

Even before the meeting, Trump could not resist publicly denigrating Zelenskyy because he was not wearing a suit and tie. Everyone knows, except it seems Trump, that the president of Ukraine, a man most of the world considers a hero, wears what he does as a reminder to all that his nation has been invaded and continues to be brutalized by Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its ally North Korea.

The bully brothers, Trump and Vance, have left Putin gloating, Americans embarrassed and the rest of the world nauseated.

Vic Suard

Santa Rosa

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RON PARKER:

Our president didn’t know the difference

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DEPARTING 49ERS STAR RECALLS UNFORGETTABLE MOMENT IN BAY AREA TARGET

by Katie Dowd

In a poignant and revealing letter to San Francisco 49ers fans, departing wide receiver Deebo Samuel shared the moment that he’ll never forget about moving to California.

Samuel, who was traded to Washington on March 1, grew up far from the West Coast in South Carolina and stayed close to home for college, attending the University of South Carolina. In 2019, he was selected by the 49ers in the second round of the NFL Draft. The life-changing move hit Samuel in an unexpected place: a Bay Area Target.

“Cali was different,” Samuel wrote in a Thursday Players’ Tribune article. While at a rookies’ mini camp in Santa Clara, Samuel recalled making a quick trip to Target.

“All of a sudden, the cashier asked me, ‘Do you want a bag?’ Bruh, I know this normal to some of y’all, but never where I’m from have I ever been asked if I want my groceries in a bag,” he wrote.

Surprised, Samuel replied in the affirmative, only to learn that he needed to pay for the bag. “I remember leaving the gas station and calling up my stepmom,” he wrote. “I was like, ‘Buddy just asked me do I want a bag.’ And Mom was like, ‘What you talking about?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, they said it was 10 cents!’ And she just busted out laughing, too. It was just so funny at the time. One of the first things that had me like, What am I getting into?”

Presumably, Samuel acclimated to life in the Bay Area and its many quirks, as the farewell letter was full of fondness for his time with the 49ers. He gave special mention to his unconventional relationship with head coach Kyle Shanahan (“The relationship that me and Kyle got is ridiculous. You can ask anybody in the building.”) and ended on a sincere thank you to 49ers fans.

Samuel ended up with 22 receiving and 20 rushing touchdowns in 84 games with the 49ers. The Commanders are giving San Francisco a fifth-round draft pick in exchange for the wide receiver.

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I REMEMBER how my father used to come home each night and talk about his job to my mother. The job talk began when he entered the door, continued over the dinner table, and ended in the bedroom where my father would scream “Lights out!” at 8 p.m., so he could get his rest and his full strength for the job the next day. There was no other subject except the job.

~ Charles Bukowski

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“WE DO NOT KNOW our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds’ feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable.”

–Virginia Woolf, On Being Ill (1926)

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Scam calls. I’ve had this landline for 35 years. I keep it for my elderly family members and the grandkids who finally have remembered it. It’s an easy number to remember (if they, the actual grandkids get stuck somewhere and their phone is out of juice and they don’t remember phone numbers). My cell doesn’t get much spam at all, but I use it not as nearly as much. Flip phone for the win.

I’m well aware of the spam crap I get. “Medicare” plans mostly, which I ignore. We have a great local plan. Plus I would never have had the “Hey Grandma” calls, which amuse me to no end. Yeah, I’m easily amused.

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EYESORE OF THE MONTH

by James Kunstler

“God is in the details.” Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Behold the decorative cornice of this humdinger from Dennison, Texas, corner of Rusk and W. Chestnut. Known locally as the “Penis Building,” the motif supposedly emerged from a dispute between the developer and the city’s building code department, which repeatedly refused him a permit because his proposed building “lacked suitable ornamentation.” Moral of the story: Bureaucrats, be careful of what you wish for.

History note from Jim Owen, realtor, who nominated this charmer:

Denison in the late 1800’s was a thriving railroad town until the town pissed off the railroad, who wanted to expand their presence, thus, they moved to Houston. During that time, prostitution was the main business in the very blocks where the Penis Building was located, perhaps that’s why the builder chose that ornament. In fact the town was in dire financial straits and saved the coffers by charging the prostitutes a license fee.

The building appears to have been severely modified since its heyday. Weep for history! The same address today:

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COOL AIN’T WHO IT USED TO BE

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

Have we considered how sad and miserable life must be among the “Woke”?

How rigid must be their days, how tear-stained their pillows, a generation raised to obey rules, cultivate fears, lash out at reason and avoid whatever is, or might be, intellectually stimulating or challenging.

And the pain of Today. Our friends on the left are still working through their personal Seven Stages of Election Grief: Denial, Anger, Aromatherapy, Hitler, Resist! Suicide, Past Lives Regressions until, finally, the agony of sharing the planet with disagreeable oafs.

Let me help. Sedation is a known pain-reducer, and mixtures of Robitussin with brandy bring short-term relief. Beyond that, 300 milligrams of Valium thrice daily. For permanent pain reduction, 10,000 milligrams Fentanyl, once.

How lacking in spontaneity their thoughts and actions. Wokies are the product of those who grew up Questioning Authority, but today demand youth don the straitjacket of tolerance: full-blown bigotry calcified into rancid ignorance and lockstep conformity.

And how the word “liberal” has been transformed! The left side of the spectrum is inside-out. In the 1960s and ‘70s we were tuning out, turning on, and dropping in at nearby welfare offices to get food stamps, with which we bought weed at $10 a lid with government funny money.

Generation Woke, sorry to say, is curled up in the fetal position in a Safe Space with a cuddly toy and some nice hot (but not too hot!!) cocoa. Lactose-free, of course, and only from shade-grown cows.

Teens were once eager to read On the Road, Catcher in the Rye, Naked Lunch and Fahrenheit 451. Wokesters are in a semi-coma. They aren’t permitted reading anything but dogma about racism, the failure(s) of capitalism, outraged poets and global warming catastrophes.

Can anyone name a book that grabs today’s youth the way To Kill a Mockingbird caught us?

We protested the Establishment, but today the Establishment instructs students on what to protest (racism, capitalism, literature by dead white males, global warming) where to protest (on campus) and when to protest (Finals Week; everyone gets an A in everything anyway).

I knew cats who wore black leather jackets, smoked Camel nons and raced motorcycles the wrong way down freeways for the fun of it. Now I sigh when I see people half my age skipping down sidewalks in pinwheel beanies.

We wore long hair, carried Buck knives and drank tequila. Now? A t-shirt of Che Guevara (its wearer thinks is a brand of tequila) and a man-bun dyed blue, producing all the shock of a big fat yawn.

We drank too much, did too many drugs and had random sex with strangers, except sometimes we knew their first names. Regrets? We had a few.

Today they drink soy milk and do nothing with their private parts except let weirdo therapists convince them to have those parts mangled. Regrets will come when the fad wears off and a 35-year old remains trapped in irreversible mistakes.

In short, today’s progressive obeys and does as told by the dullest group of advice-mongers ever assembled. These are intellectual leaders who fight freedom of speech, demand contrary voices be silenced and keep college campuses pure in their mind-numbing conformity.

Today’s leftoids are required to monitor their speech, mind their pronouns and avoid humor because to slip up and utter an incorrect word is Violence against anyone hoping to be offended. Also: Silence is Violence.

Humor is no more. There is nothing funny about the marginalized, systemic racism or the weather. No one has ever uttered a woke joke. Music? I’d love to hear a woke song! How about “Someone Pulled My Trigger Warning (Now My Safe Space is a Prison”) ?

The invention of micro-aggressions requires libs to mentally rehearse conversations prior to speaking for fear of offending someone who doesn’t realize they were offended until a college professor tells them they were, and grievously.

None of this is cool. None of this inspires or allows spontaneity, free thinking, intellectual curiosity or a yearning to live, learn and burn through the days and years of our lives. Those now on the liberal end of the spectrum want to be told what to do, and given the power to tell others what to do. More Joe Stalin, less Abbie Hoffman.

But there’s progress. Our leftist progressive friends may now abandon the nonsense they’ve been pretending to believe the last 20 years.

Shake off your shackles and get off your knees. Ya got nuthin’ to fear.

The dead hand of the mentally disturbed wing of the Democrats has been exposed!

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ANGER AT ELON MUSK TURNS VIOLENT: Molotov cocktails, gunfire at Tesla lots.

…Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, more than a dozen violent or destructive acts have been directed at Tesla facilities, according to court documents, surveillance photographs, police records and local media reports reviewed by The Washington Post.

The incidents come as Elon Musk has rocketed to prominence as Trump’s best-known backer and as a conservative provocateur in his own right.

The ire directed at the tech billionaire online has increasingly spilled into real life, with vandalism directed at Tesla storefronts, charging stations and vehicles.

In March several Tesla superchargers at a shopping center in Littleton, Massachusetts, were set ablaze. Vandals in Maryland also spray-painted “No Musk” on a Tesla building, alongside a swastika-like symbol.

In February, a man brandishing an AR-style semiautomatic weapon fired at a Tesla storefront in Salem, Oregon.

Just a few weeks earlier, investigators say, the same man attacked the same dealership by throwing molotov cocktails at Tesla vehicles and through the store window. He caused an estimated $500,000 in damage, according to court documents…

— Rob Anderson, District5Diary

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THINGS take on a repeat, you understand? You keep seeing the same thing over and over again: the same substance, the same action, the same reaction. So you get a little bit tired of life. So, as death comes, you almost say, Ok, baby, it’s time. It’s good.

~ Charles Bukowski

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BILL KIMBERLIN

Recently I was challenged by the esteemed editor of our beloved local newspaper, the Anderson Valley Advertiser. I had posted a reply to a comment in his paper to the effect that Vladimir Lenin was not the simple son of two Russian school teachers.

His response to my post was basically to say, “Nope, they were school teachers of modest means.” To my assertion that Lenin’s mother was close enough to the Czar at the time that she had Lenin’s imprisonment softened to a lavish country house, was met with the statement that Lenin’s brother was hanged, so much he said for the Czar connection. Let me say that I have great respect for our editor and his newspaper, for which I sometimes write. This is just a clarification to my objections.

When I pointed out that Lenin’s brother, Aleksandr refused to accept simply giving an apology, preferring to die a martyr, the response was a demand for the book I claimed that all this nonsense was coming from.

Frankly, there are several books that document this. The one in question I can’t find right now because I don’t remember which house I left it in.

However, how about this one? “Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography” by Tamas Krausz, a prolific Hungarian Marxist professor of Russian history.

Here is a sample of Lenin’s family history. Lenin was born and raised by his parents and grandparents. His father was born in humble circumstances but raised himself to a position in the Czar’s government. Lenin’s father was a Nobleman. He was “Director of Public Schools for the province, overseeing the foundation of over 450 schools as part of the government’s plans for modernization. In January 1882, his dedication to education earned him the Order of Saint Vladimir, which bestowed on him the status of hereditary nobleman.” This meant that his son Lenin was considered a nobleman in waiting. When his father died he would inherit that distinction.

Lenin’s mother was Maria Alexandrovna. After her mother’s death her sister took her into her patronage. Her father acquired hereditary nobility, as did her husband, and thus she herself became noble, though the title appeared only in the paternal line.

Maria’s father (Lenin’s mother) bought the famous Kokuskino estate in 1848, approximately 1,200 acres with 39 serfs and a watermill, where his grandchildren (Lenin and his siblings) later spent many summers. Maria’s wedding was also hosted on this estate.

In short, revolutions are not started by peasants or school teachers. They are started by the intellectuals who often come from wealthy families. Lenin himself said this. We saw this in our own revolution of the wealthy plantation class. So I don’t know why that is in dispute.

The three photos are first of the book I mentioned, then the Lenin’s family home where he grew up, and then the country estate of his grandparents where he summered every year and near where he was later, “imprisoned” in a huge mansion with a large library that his mother arranged for him.

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LEAD STORIES, MONDAY'S NYT

Trump Declines to Rule Out Recession as Tariffs Begin to Bite

Banker Mark Carney Wins Race to Lead Liberal Party, and Canada

Immigration Authorities Arrest Pro-Palestinian Activist at Columbia

White House Cancels $400 Million in Grants and Contracts to Columbia

Chaos Sweeps Coastal Syria

The Oscar-Winning Movie That Pets Can’t Stop Watching

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THE CRACK OF RIFLES, THEN SILENCE: A FIRING SQUAD EXECUTION

One of the three media witnesses to the execution of Brad Sigmon in South Carolina on Friday describes what he saw.

by Jeffrey Collins

I’ve now watched through glass and bars as 11 men were put to death at a South Carolina prison. None of the previous 10 prepared me for watching the firing squad death of Brad Sigmon on Friday night.

I might now be unique among U.S. reporters: I’ve witnessed three different methods, including nine lethal injections and an electric-chair execution. I can still hear the thunk of the breaker falling 21 years later.

As a journalist, you want to ready yourself for an assignment. You research a case. You read about the subject.

In the two weeks since I knew how Mr. Sigmon was going to die, I read up on firing squads and the damage that can be done by the bullets. I looked at the autopsy photos of the last man shot to death by the state, in Utah in 2010.

I also pored over the transcript of his trial, including how prosecutors said it took less than two minutes for Mr. Sigmon to strike his ex-girlfriend’s parents nine times each in the head with a baseball bat, going back and forth between them in different rooms of their Greenville County home in 2001 until they were dead.

But you don’t know everything when some of the execution protocols are kept secret, and it’s impossible to know what to expect when you’ve never seen someone shot at close range right in front of you.

The firing squad is certainly faster — and more violent — than lethal injection. It’s a lot more tense, too. My heart started pounding a little after Mr. Sigmon’s lawyer read his final statement. The hood was put over Mr. Sigmon’s head, and an employee opened the black pull shade that shielded where the three prison-system volunteer shooters were.

About two minutes later, they fired. There was no warning or countdown. The abrupt crack of the rifles startled me. And the white target with the red bull’s-eye that had been on his chest, standing out against his black prison jumpsuit, disappeared instantly as Mr. Sigmon’s whole body flinched.

It reminded me of what happened to the prisoner 21 years ago when electricity jolted his body.

I tried to keep track, all at once, of the digital clock on the wall to my right, Mr. Sigmon to my left, the small rectangular window with the shooters, and the witnesses in front of me.

A jagged red spot about the size of a small fist appeared where Mr. Sigmon was shot. His chest moved two or three times. Outside of the rifle crack, there was no sound.

A doctor came out in less than a minute, and his examination took about a minute more. Mr. Sigmon was declared dead at 6:08 p.m.

Then we left through the same door we came in.

The sun was setting. The sky was a pretty pink and purple, a stark contrast to the death chamber’s fluorescent lights, gray firing-squad chair and block walls that reminded me of a 1970s doctor’s office.

The death chamber is less than a five-minute drive from Correction Department headquarters along a busy suburban highway. I always look out the window on the drive back from each execution. There is a pasture with cows behind a fence on one side, and on the other, I can see in the distance the razor wire of the prison.

Armed prison employees were everywhere. We sat in vans outside the death chamber for what I guess was around 15 minutes, but I can’t say for certain because my watch, cellphone and everything else were taken away for security, save for a pad and a pen.

Over to my right, I saw the skinny barred windows of South Carolina’s death row. There were 28 inmates there earlier Friday, and now there are 27.

That’s down from 31 last August. After a 13-year pause while South Carolina struggled to obtain the drugs for lethal injections, the state has resumed executions. Inmates may choose among injection, electrocution or the firing squad.

I witnessed Freddie Owens being put to death Sept. 20. He locked eyes with every witness in the room.

I saw Richard Moore die Nov. 1, looking serenely at the ceiling as his lawyer, who became close to him while fighting for his life over a decade, wept.

And I was there, too, when Marion Bowman Jr. died Jan. 31, a small smile on his face as he turned to his lawyer, then closed his eyes and waited.

I remember other executions, too. I’ve seen family members of victims stare down a killer on the gurney. I’ve seen a mother shed tears as she watched her son die, almost close enough to touch if the glass and bars weren’t in the way.

Like that thunk of the breaker back in 2004, I won’t forget the crack of the rifles Friday and that target disappearing. Also etched in my mind: Mr. Sigmon talking or mouthing toward his lawyer, trying to let him know he was OK before the hood went on.

I’ll likely be back at Broad River Correctional Institution on April 11. Two more men on death row are out of appeals, and the State Supreme Court appears ready to schedule their deaths at five-week intervals.

They would be the 12th and 13th men I’ve seen killed by the state of South Carolina. And when it is over, I will have witnessed more than a quarter of the state’s executions since the death penalty was reinstated.

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NYC SUBWAY RIDE IN THE 80s

The subway in the 1980s was a rolling canvas of graffiti, a place where artists and vandals alike left their mark on New York’s underground arteries. Commuters packed into the steel cars, their hands gripping overhead bars as the train jerked into motion. Businessmen in wrinkled suits stood beside punk rockers in leather jackets, each lost in their own world. The walls and ceilings were covered in spray-painted tags, a chaotic mosaic of names and symbols. Boomboxes blasted hip-hop beats in one corner while a breakdancer entertained passengers in the next. The smell of damp newspapers, old metal, and distant fast food lingered in the air. Token booths, their glass scratched and clouded, served as the last point of interaction before stepping onto the platform. For some, the subway was a daily necessity; for others, it was a moving portrait of the city’s raw energy. No matter how rough the ride, the train always got you where you needed to go—eventually.

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TWO FRIENDS and I took a walk into Aravaipa Canyon a few days ago. We walked because there is no road beyond the parking lot. There is hardly even a foot trail. Twelve miles long from end to end, the canyon is mostly occupied by the little river that gives it its name, and by streambanks piled with slabs of fallen rock from the cliffs above, the whole overgrown with cactus, trees and riparian desert shrubbery.

Aravaipa is an Apache name (some say Pima, some say Papago) and the commonly accepted meaning is "laughing waters." The name fits. The stream is brisk, clear, about a foot deep at normal flow levels, churning its way around boulders, rippling over gravel bars, plunging into pools with bright and noisy vivacity. Schools of loach minnow, roundtail chub, spikedace and Gila mudsuckers - rare and endemic species - slip and slither past your ankles as you wade into the current. The water is too warm to support trout or other varieties of what are called game fish; the fish here live out their lives undisturbed by anything more than horses' hooves and the sneaker-shod feet of hikers.

The Apaches who gave a name to this water and this canyon are not around anymore. Most of that particular band - unarmed old men, women, children - huddled in a cave near the mouth of Aravaipa Canyon, were exterminated in the 1880s by a death squad of American pioneers, aided by Mexicans and Papagos, from the nearby city of Tucson. The reason for this vigilante action is obscure (suspicion of murder and cattle stealing) but the results were clear: no more Apaches in Aravaipa Canyon. During pauses in the gunfire, as the pioneers reloaded their rifles, the surviving Indians could have heard the sound of laughing waters. One hundred and twenty-five were killed, the remainder relocated in the White Mountain Reservation to the northeast. Since then those people have given us no back talk at all.

— Edward Abbey, Down the River

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