Mendocino County Today: Friday 3/21/2025

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Another cloudy 43F on the coast this ~~Thursday~~ [Friday] morning. Maybe a sprinkle into tomorrow but then dry skies thru Tuesday. Rain returns on Wednesday & into the weekend. Again.

WET WEATHER continues for Humboldt and Del Norte counties through Saturday. Drier and warmer weather forecast Sunday into early next week. Wet weather returns mid next week. (NWS)

A FEMALE LIGHTS-OUT GANG

On March 18, 2025, at approximately 12:42 AM, Deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched to investigate two suspicious subjects entering people’s vehicles in the 3000 block of Estrella Court in Ukiah.

Upon arrival to the scene, Deputies immediately observed a female who was driving a vehicle at a slow speed with all of the lights turned off. The female was stopped by Deputies and identified as Sarah Simon, 48, of Lucerne. Deputies also observed another female hiding behind a nearby vehicle in the driveway of a residence, who was identified as Elizabeth Arnold [no photo available], 39, of Lucerne.

Both Simon and Arnold were detained, and Deputies began their investigation by canvassing the neighborhood. Deputies located multiple vehicles in the area with the doors open. Deputies contacted the homeowners where the vehicles were parked and learned several items had been stolen from the vehicles.

A search of Arnold, Simon, and their vehicle revealed numerous items that had just been stolen. Simon was also in possession of a controlled substance and drug paraphernalia, and had an active warrant for her arrest out of Lake County for Petty Theft with two priors, a felony.

During their investigation Deputies learned both Arnold and Simon were also suspects in similar thefts of numerous items taken from vehicles in the nearby neighborhoods of West Fork Estates and Lake Mendocino Estates, which occurred in the early morning hours of 02-18-2025.

Sheriff’s Office Detectives assisted with this investigation and gathered additional evidence and statements which led to the execution of search warrants for additional stolen property.

During the investigation, Simon was placed under arrest for her Felony Arrest Warrant out of Lake County for Felony- Conspiracy, Possession of a Paraphernalia, and Possession of a Controlled Substance.

Arnold was placed under arrest for Felony- Conspiracy and Felony-Grand Theft.

Simon was subsequently booked into the Mendocino County Jail where she was to be held in lieu of $10,000 bail for the Lake County Warrant and $15,000 bail for the current open charges.

Arnold was booked into the Mendocino County Jail where she was to be held in lieu of $15,000 bail.

Anyone with information related to this investigation and thefts is requested to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Dispatch Center at 707-463-4086 (option 1).

FORT BRAGG CITY COUNCIL VOTES TO CONTINUE MILL SITE PLANNING

by Mary Benjamin

The Fort Bragg City Council met in closed session after the public workshop on mill site development on Monday, March 10. The purpose was to discuss the next step in its lawsuit against Mendocino Railway. A court stay allowing for meetings between the two parties would end the coming Friday, March 14.

Options for city action centered around two main concerns. Should the city continue with its lawsuit, or should the city continue to work on a resolution with Mendocino Railway under an agreement for a second stay. A barrier of distrust between the two parties seemed to have eased and would have to be fully breached if the city requested another stay from the court.

The workshop was designed to allow the public in on what the two parties had proposed so far and included maps, sketched buildings and project steps. Having sued Mendocino Railway on behalf of the citizens of Fort Bragg, the city needed to be as transparent as possible about the next step.

The public workshop attracted more than 100 people who wanted information about the court’s temporary litigation stay in the Mendocino Railway lawsuit now in Superior Court. People also came to see the property development suggestions that the city and Mendocino Railway were considering in meetings already held.

Thorough descriptions and explanations about all litigation matters and all ideas for land use on the table were presented to the audience. A good portion of the workshop time was set aside for public comment and questions. The audience was also encouraged to post their thoughts and ideas directly on the displayed posters.

At the closed session later that evening, the City Council voted to request a second stay of the litigation and to “continue to move forward with Phase 1 of the Master Development Agreement process” with Mendocino Railway.

However, the city’s decision is tied to the viewpoint of the California Coastal Commission and the Superior Court judge.

City Manager Isaac Whippy commented, “Our goal is to work collaboratively toward a resolution. “ He added, “This path offers the potential to reach a community-driven agreement that resolves litigation and shapes a brighter future for Fort Bragg.”

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

BECK’S BURGLARIES

On March 16, 2025, at approximately 2:00 P.M., Deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched to 298 Plant Road in Ukiah (Mendocino County Animal Care Services), to investigate a reported burglary to several County-owned vehicles. Deputies responded and determined several vehicles were damaged during a burglary committed during the early morning hours, and several items were stolen from the vehicles.

During the investigation, Deputies positively identified a vehicle involved in the burglaries. Deputies advised surrounding agencies of the suspect vehicle and a request to notify the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office if the vehicle and occupant(s) were located.

On 03-17-2025, Officers with the Ukiah Police Department located the vehicle at the 900 block of South State Street in Ukiah. Ukiah Police Officers notified Deputies with the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, who responded to the location.

Ukiah Police Department Officers advised the driver and subject in control of the vehicle was a male subject identified as Warren Beck, 39, of Ukiah. Officers located a dangerous weapon concealed on Beck’s person during their contact.

Deputies arrived and conducted their investigation as it pertained to the burglaries. They located and identified several items stolen from the vehicles belonging to Mendocino County Animal Care Services. The investigation and evidence collected established probable cause to arrest Beck for Felony Theft with Two Prior Convictions, Felony Burglary, and Felony Vandalism.

Beck was subsequently booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held in lieu of $17,500 bail.

THERE IS NO SUBSTANTIAL COUNTY BUSINESS on next Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors agenda. None. Despite looming budget cuts, the recent return of the elected Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector and the coordination of financial staff and a looming civil suit there are no closed session items. Major unresolved issues such as HIP camps, AirBnB regulation and taxation, declining sales and cannabis taxes, the upcoming opening, financing, and staffing of the Psychiatric Health Facility and the new wing of the Jail, the decline of the wine industry, uncollected tax revenues, a years-long delay in even trying to comply with Measure B’s mental health and substance abuse services requirements, staffing shortfalls, Sheriff’s department budget gaps, homeless encampments, and on and on — remain unaddressed much less resolved. Instead, the only non-routine items are a bunch of awards for the County’s “leadership training” class, and a review of a letter of support for Assembly Bill 263 having to do with Scott and Shasta River watersheds and fishing. Mendo might as well have five AI robots sitting as “supervisors.” (Mark Scaramella)

LOCAL FAMILY LOOKING FOR HOUSING:

Family of 6 (two adults, four children) looking for housing in Anderson Valley. No pets, non-smokers. Both parents have employment in Ukiah. Please contact Nat Corey-Moran (707) 354-3330, Kathy Cox (707) 800-2300, Steph Arias (707) 367-1744, Donna Pearson-Pugh (707) 684-0325 or Kyle Clarke (707) 489-7107 if you have any information that might have. Thank you!

TOM YATES (The Coast):

The current story in the Chronicle about the end of Dick’s Place is about one-quarter of what’s real. The news has been out there since at least January. It’s a lot more than the bar. It’s the property from Main Street to Albion and includes Dick’s, the large retail building next door, the two story house on Albion and the liquor license — worth a lot by itself — and all fixtures. Not in favor of losing our history or culture. Just want to see the whole story

RONNIE JAMES:

Prion disease isn’t only deer.

I want to repeat the message sent by knotsure@gmx.com. As a Licensed Wildlife Rescue/Rehab facility we have been receiving warnings about “wasting disease” in deer for nearly 15 years now from California Public Health. California tried to deal with it by not allowing hunters to bring anything but muscle meat into Calif as the prion that causes the disease lives in the nervous system of the ruminants and cervid family it infects. But cattle, goats and sheep are also susceptible.

The problem is that the disease has been here in California for years. The first deer reported to me with symptoms here in our county was in 2005. But no one was testing so technically it wasn’t here. We do not know how it’s spread. There is some thought that it’s been around for a long time but prions were only recently (40 years ago or less) discovered and some think they may be the cause of the sharp rise in Altzheimer’s and dementia in humans in the last 50 years as it is extremely slow to develop and difficult to see or find. Science hasn’t come to any conclusions about that, but it’s worth educating ourselves and reading the article in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/20/chronic-wasting-disease-spread-zombie-deer-global-us-aoe

Granted that’s not the best source for facts and scientific information, and the article is a bit ‘sensational’ but the facts are all there under the glitz.

CAL FIRE MENDOCINO TRAINS VOLUNTEER FIRE RISK ASSESSORS

Reducing fire risk is an everyday activity; and suggestions from assessors can help.

by Sarah Reith

Mendocino County residents showed Cal Fire trainers that they are serious about fire prevention at a two-day class in Redwood Valley in mid-March. Cal Fire’s new assessment training program offered local volunteers an opportunity to learn what Cal Fire inspectors look for when assessing residential fire risks. The program was held for people who serve in various roles: on fire safe councils, as part of neighborhood Firewise groups, and others. Those who attended the program can become qualified to use Cal Fire’s assessment software to implement a recently amended Public Resource Code aiming to increase home-hardening and defensible space in California.

More than 55 representatives of Mendocino County’s qualified entities attended the recent assessor training. It was the program’s largest class so far, filling every seat in the room and every parking spot in the parking lot at the Mendocino County Behavioral Health Training Center in Redwood Valley.

In January 2023, the California State Legislature decided that qualified entities such as fire safe councils, Firewise USA® organizations, resource conservation districts, and political subdivisions of the state can be trained to conduct fire-safety assessments in their neighborhoods. Participants receive the same training as Cal Fire inspectors, except that they are not empowered to enforce the rules. This frees up Cal Fire inspectors to focus on properties out of compliance with current defensible-space regulations — or, as Gene Potkey put it, give participants “a peek at the test before the inspectors show up.”

Gene Potkey is an assistant chief for Cal Fire’s Office of the State Fire Marshal, under the Community Wildfire Preparedness and Mitigation Division, overseeing the defensible space program statewide. Based in Sacramento, Potkey also manages and implements the qualified entities program.

He explains that “There is no enforcement mechanism tied to this program. The assessors are trained to the same level as Cal Fire’s defensible-space inspectors. They will educate the public to the same standard that our inspectors will enforce. They’re preparing the homeowner for that eventual inspection” or, more to the point, for a wildfire that could strike at any time.

The fact that the assessors have no enforcement power gives homeowners security in obtaining a first-hand look at their situations without the risk of being found noncompliant. The assessors can make plenty of suggestions to fix issues before a Cal Fire inspector ever shows up. And those suggestions are bound to make the talk with an insurance agent more productive.

In terms of violations, Cal Fire currently does not enforce shortfalls in home-hardening such as combustible building materials or vent screens with openings larger than 1/8-inch. Only defensible-space violations are subject to possible fines, and only after 30 days if a homeowner has made no progress in addressing them. Potentially, if violations persist to the point of three fines within a five-year period, property owners could face a lien on their property, with a state crew sent to mitigate the issue.

“It’s continuous, all year long,” says Craig Dudley, the Cal Fire Fire Prevention Battalion Chief in Mendocino County. In his travels around our rugged rural landscape, he sees “a fair percentage of homes that don’t meet all the standards under Public Resource Code 4291. Most residents are good about the basics — weed-eating, mowing and keeping debris off their roofs — but when it comes to maintaining 100 feet of defensible space around homes, “it’s a little more complex. It’s demanding work, and not everyone is capable of that. And we understand that. So if we can get the public to better understand, and do what they can, it’s a start.”

Dudley is hoping that the newly trained non-Cal Fire assessors will fan out across the county and reach a greater population than he and his crew can reach on their own. “We’ve had some devastating fires in this county over the years,” he reflects, “and they grab people’s attention. But as time goes on, we forget.” Getting more qualified entities out there will help people keep up the work that must continue year after year.

Natasha Fouts, a fire prevention specialist for Cal Fire’s Office of the State Fire Marshal’s Defensible Space Program in Sacramento, offers some reassurance about creating defensible space. Hint: it doesn’t mean razing every shred of living plant matter to the ground. “It’s okay to have trees on your property,” she says. “It’s okay to have vegetation. It’s okay to have mulch around your plants. We just don’t want to have that within five feet of your house.”

On her own property in rural California, she says, “I have a lot of native plants. I have trees on my property. I just keep them pruned up, I remove the dead branches, and I keep the vegetation in islands, to break a fire’s path. We’re not saying you should have no vegetation — we’re just saying make sure it’s properly maintained.”

Home-hardening and defensible space create a hostile environment for embers, which can smolder unseen until it’s too late, later flaring up to ignite whatever they can reach. In addition to protecting your own home, Fouts says that good defensible space can keep everyone around you safer, including firefighters. “When they’re tasked with protecting homes during a fire, if you have that good defensible space, you’re giving them a safe area to work in,” she notes.

And that’s not all — like most people who live in a wildfire-prone landscape, she says, “One of the things I love about living in a rural area is the beautiful trees and the wildlife. It’s more than just the government telling you what to do on your property. We need to look at it in more of a communal way. It’s to help protect your neighbors, the firefighters, and the wildlife that we’re blessed to have if we live in a rural area.”

And now, thanks to the assessment training, there is very likely a qualified home inspector in your area who can help you prioritize what improvements you can start making. To schedule your own free, non-judgmental, non-enforced Home Assessment, contact the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council at 707-462-3662 or admin@firesafemendocino.org

ANNUAL NORTH COAST TSUNAMI DRILL

The tsunami drill will take place on Wednesday, March 26, 2025, at approximately 11:00 AM.

The Mendocino County Office of Emergency Services, in collaboration with Humboldt and Del Norte Counties, the National Weather Service, and the Redwood Coast Tsunami Work Group, will conduct its annual North Coast Tsunami Drill.

This drill will involve a MendoAlert message sent to all coastal communities, prompting residents to practice their tsunami evacuation plans by moving out of low-lying coastal tsunami hazard zones. Those not in the low-lying tsunami hazard zones are encouraged to review and practice their earthquake safety procedures: Drop, Cover, and Hold on. Please note: This year’s drill will not include a test of the tsunami sirens.

Residents can register for the drill by visiting MendoReady.org

You can find tsunami hazard maps here: Tsunami Hazard Maps | Redwood Coast Tsunami Work Group or by visiting Know Your Hazards - MendoReady.

PETIT TETON FARM

Free: organic asparagus starts, organic Seascape strawberry starts

Fresh now: chard, kale, broccolini, herbs, mizuna mustard

All the preserved foods from jams to pickles, soups to hot sauces, made from everything we grow.

We sell frozen USDA beef and pork from perfectly raised pigs and cows.

Stewing hens and Squab are also available at times.

GOOD MOVE

To the Editor:

Three cheers for KZYX.

As the station moves inland into a new studio and offices at 390 West Clay in Ukiah — our county seat and biggest city — the station moves into relevance.

With new Board members (David Strock), and a brilliant General Manager (Dina Polkinghorne), a brilliant new Director of Operation (Andre de Channes), a brilliant new News Director (Elise Cox), and a brilliant new Production Director (Eddie Haehl), KZYX’s future is bright.

As the station moves into the future, it moves away from its past.

And what the station had been in the past was an inaccessible little station, located over the mountains in the Mendocino Range, via State Route 253 (treacherous in the rain and winter), in tiny Philo (population only 319).

The geographic isolation was only part of the problem. Since its founding, KZYX was the private clubhouse of a few insiders. It was set up that way by station founder, Sean Donovan, with his screwball by-laws and policy manual. Speaking as a former Board member and Treasurer, I would state under oath that station finances were, at best, opaque. The station fell into debt with NPR. Our IRS 990 tax returns were misfiled, even falsified. Staff salaries weren’t public information. Not all part-time jobs at the station, like news reporters, were advertised.

What followed was years of conflict at a station that did not truly represent the diverse ideologies and politics of Mendocino County — a fiercely independent people — but instead came to represent the “woke politics” and “cancel culture” mentality of a few insiders, and all the impossible arrogance that mindset represents.

What also followed at the station was increasing isolation, failing old equipment and a spotty broadcast signal.

Now the future is bright — but only locally. On the national stage, public media is imperiled. The Trump Administration seeks to eliminate federal funding at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which, in turn, funds PBS and NPR.

CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison recently said:

“There is no viable substitute for federal funding that ensures Americans have universal access to public media’s educational and informational programming and services.”

Ms. Harrison continued, “The elimination of federal funding to CPB would initially devastate and ultimately destroy public media’s role in early childhood education, public safety, connecting citizens to our history, and promoting civil discussions — all for Americans in both rural and urban communities.”

PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger issued the following statement:

“For the 17th year in a row, Americans have named PBS and our 330 member stations ‘Number 1 in Public Trust’ among nationally known institutions. In addition, Americans rank PBS second only to the country’s military defense in terms of value for taxpayer dollars. We are grateful to have the support of the public, and we will continue to keep our focus on providing services that change lives and strengthen communities.”

Bottom line? Here in Mendocino County, support KZYX. In Humboldt County, northern Mendocino County, support KMUD. In San Francisco, support KQED. Support local media best by becoming a member.

Also, write to Congress. · Tell your lawmakers to support their ~$1.60 per person annual investment that sustains quality, community-driven programming and outreach.

John Sakowicz

Ukiah

INSPIRING JOURNEY TO SOCIAL WORK

March is Social Work Appreciation Month, a time to recognize the dedication of the Mendocino County Department of Social Services staff who support our county’s most vulnerable residents. One such individual is Tamera Newell, a Social Worker with the In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program. IHSS enables elderly and disabled individuals to remain safely in their homes with the assistance of a care provider. Social workers like Tamera play a vital role in ensuring the well-being of IHSS recipients.

Tamera’s path to social work was not conventional. As a single mother of two, she faced the challenge of finding stable employment without a college education or prior work experience. Seeking support, she turned to CalWORKs Job Services, a program within the Mendocino County Department of Social Services. There, she enrolled in the Welfare to Work program, setting the foundation for her future career.

Through the program, Tamera gained essential workforce skills, including mock interview practice and classes at the Mendocino County Office of Education. Encouraged by those who believed in her, she took her first steps toward employment. As she learned basic typing and Excel, an opportunity arose for a clerical position within the County of Mendocino’s Employment & Family Assistance Services division. This experience solidified her desire to help others overcome similar challenges.

Tamera was promoted to an Eligibility Specialist while balancing full-time work, raising her children, and pursuing higher education. She took online classes through Mendocino College and later the University of Phoenix, relying on the flexibility of distance learning to achieve her goals. Late nights, early mornings, and a steady supply of coffee fueled her journey, often studying alongside her children.

Having been raised by her grandmother, Tamera always felt drawn to helping the elderly. She previously worked as an IHSS caregiver, so when an opportunity arose within Adult & Aging Services, she eagerly accepted. She initially joined Adult Protective Services but soon realized her true calling was with IHSS. “I’ve always been good with the elderly and disabled,” she shares. “I knew IHSS was the right fit for me.”

As an IHSS Social Worker, Tamera conducts home visits to assess the needs of recipients and ensure they receive the support required to remain safely at home. “The goal of IHSS is to help people stay in their homes,” she explains. “Resources in this county are slim, so you have to be creative.” She is currently assisting a recipient in securing resources to restore hot water and heat to his trailer, reaching out to local programs for support. “We don’t want to place people somewhere they aren’t comfortable. Our goal is to keep them home, safe, and well cared for.”

Tamera recognizes the ongoing need for IHSS providers and encourages more people to consider caregiving. “We have so many incredible providers in Mendocino County,” she says. “Part of my role is helping recipients find a provider who is the right fit. I’ve seen caregivers go above and beyond, forming meaningful connections with those they serve.”

While IHSS recipients employ their providers, the County of Mendocino facilitates the enrollment process and background checks. If you are interested in becoming an IHSS provider, please visit Mendocino County IHSS or call (707) 463-7900.

Reflecting on her journey, Tamera credits the CalWORKs program for providing the support she needed to continue her education while raising her children. “That little bit of assistance made it possible to keep going,” she says. “In my line of work, I see people just trying to survive. It’s important to understand their challenges while maintaining boundaries. That’s what makes these programs successful.”

For more information on the CalWORKs Job Services program, visit CalWORKs Job Services or call (707) 467-5500.

Tamera’s story is a testament to the power of perseverance, community support, and the impact of social services in transforming lives. This Social Work Appreciation Month, we celebrate Tamera and all social workers who dedicate themselves to making a difference.

ALBION HISTORY HELP

I work at Corners of the Mouth, and have been digging into some early Corners history. Our name came from the I Ching. I’m trying to figure out if Gary Sheppard picked the name by himself, or if it was a group of people involved. Some early collective members told me that the co-op was already named Corners before it even moved from Albion to Mendocino in 1975. We’re having a Corners exhibit at the Kelly House for most of April and May. I’m writing a brief history of our name. They want it by tomorrow. If anyone knows the true story of how our name came about… Thanks so much!

Felicia Gealey, felicia82@gmail.com

Marco McClean:

I don’t know about the origin of the name of the store, but in spring of 1985, almost exactly 40 years ago, I put an automatic radio station in the spire there. I don’t remember the names of the people who gave me permission, except for Osha. I haven’t seen her in awhile but I think she’s still there.

It had a telephone line running up the northeast corner of the building to an answering machine connected to a small homemade FM transmitter tuned to the low end of the FM band-- 88.1. The antenna stuck up inside almost to the point of the spire. I’d modified the answering machine so it wouldn’t hang up until the caller hung up, you could go as long as you want to, and I put posters up all over Mendocino and Fort Bragg.

When you called, the outgoing message went both to you and on the air, identifying the station, saying the phone number, and telling you you’re on the air and to have fun. Lots of people called to use it, even though the signal only reached the village and headlands and up the hill to the new grammar school. It ran for a month before somebody, I suspect it was Jacques Helfer, complained to the FCC and they sent an Agent Weller to investigate and shut it off.

A man used to call in the middle of the night, not say anything, but practice his bass guitar on the air. A boy in Comptche made a deejay setup and did a regular radio show. People called and read poetry. This was just after the school district took over the Community School and fired almost everybody, so I was back cooking in Brannon’s for awhile, and I left the radio on, to hear. Also the message cassette filled up fast and I went up there when I could to replace it. Those tapes are lost in all the moving around I’ve had to do since then, alas.

The posters worked great, but one of the cartoon designs was misunderstood. A cabinetmaker in his shop across from the red Chinese temple house looked daggers at me when I handed him one, and he said, “You’re all alike!” I said, “What do you mean?” He said again, through gritted teeth, “/You’re all alike!/” That and the $400 fine from the FCC were the only negative of the entire project. Jacques Helfer expressed to me in the post office that, as he put it, marijuana criminals might somehow use it to warn each other of a police raid, but that was just funny.

Regarding the current discussion on the listserv of the loss of wonderful Mendocino to potentates who can afford to pay millions of dollars for a building that used to be a chickenhouse banged together out of mill scrap, it occurs to me that there have been many decried losses of the same feeling of wonderful Mendocino. There was, hmm, when the hippies and weed came, when the trust-fund art and candle-store hippies came, when the Jack in the Box (or was it Burger King?) guy bought the hotel, when it became illegal to play saxophone on the corner for tips or sell burritos out of your car trunk, when they built the Hill House (I remember locals called it Hell House). When the forest and mill sold to Hurwitz. For me it was when, see above, MUSD absorbed the Community School, and then again when KMFB sold and was destroyed. In the late 1980s an appliance repairman told me that the coast was heaven until an army of old people drove up here with /their/ money and attitudes and turned the entire area into a retirement community, even though it was good for him; lots of poorly-made new washing machines and refrigerators. I talked to a woman in the bank once, whose family had been here since before the Great War, who felt that the point where quality of life cratered was when “outsiders moved in”. A woman who used to visit the teevee show I did on what was then MCCET drunkenly/angrily explained that things were so much better when men were /men/, you know, hard-drinking, hard-working men, and there were three bars and a whorehouse on every block. I never had a conversation with an Indian about the issue of when things went sour, but I can imagine how that would go.

Almost apropos: I recommend a movie called /The Ballad of Jack and Rose/ (Daniel Day-Louis, Camilla Belle, Catherine Keener, Beau Bridges, 2005).

ED NOTES

A RECENT INVITATION: “Grand tour of BART’s bathrooms — from the pristine to the pathogenic.” Pathogenic in my experience. If there’s a pristine public bathroom anywhere in the Bay Area it’s maybe one of those automated French loos directly after a cleaning crew treatment. Public bathrooms should all be privatized, one to each entrepreneur who would agree, as part of the deal, to work on-site for a minimum number of hours a week to ensure quality control. Rather than enter the fetid, toxic dank of the typical public lavatory, wouldn’t you pay a buck or two to use scrupulously clean facilities manned or womaned by a smartly uniformed attendant who hosed you down afterwards and handed you a fresh towel? Why, think of it! The national transformation of the public bathroom experience! Clearly a business made for free enterprise!

I ASKED former Boonville school superintendent, Louise Simson, for her opinion of the federal Department of Education. She said that the number of reports required of local superintendents by the feds is “crazy,” and too often don’t have anything to do with classroom education. Onerous bureaucracy, though, is not the reason the Maga Gang wants to eliminate the Ed Dept. They claim it’s teeming with “left-wing lunatics,” by which they mean its funding should go to rightwing lunatics to teach the kids all about the days America was great, i.e., white, and free of ethnic and sexual minorities.

SIGN OF THE TIMES: A Hopland man said he’d made an early run to Ukiah where, in the WalMart parking lot, he watched a “transient type kid with a backpack” rummage through a garbage pan, extract a crushed bag of Frito-Lay Potato Chips, then hold the bag up to his mouth, draining whatever crumbs were in it. “I drove over to him and laid a twenty on him, and he burst into tears and god blessed me so many times I darn near asked him for my twenty back. But you know what? Something’s gotta give in this country. We can’t go on like this.”

REMEMBER WHEN BALLOON MAN drifted low over The Valley on that wintry afternoon in his patchwork quilt of a homemade zeppelin, the airborne object looking as if granma’s sewing basket had turned upside down and had flown up and away. That time our aerie visitor had headed south until he put down at the Boonville Brewery about 4:30, after he and his passenger had drifted low and slow directly over Bill Charles’ sheep a few yards from my burn pile.

Kevin Herschman and four young passengers ready to lift off in his hot air balloon Sunday afternoon at Caspar Fest 2007.

THE WEEK BEFORE, Balloon Man had flown low and slow to the northwest, throwing pregnant ewes into perilous gallops. His latest voyage drifted in the opposite direction, Balloon Man again disturbing pregnant ewes near Philo where, according to another irate rancher, “Our livestock guard dogs went bonkers, the sheep went running all around, including the special baby doll sheep we raise for our vineyard, which are quite valuable because there aren’t very many of them around. We all have pregnant ewes at this time of year. I called the phone number you had in the paper but all I got was a very little kid.”

JUDGING FROM his subsequent letter of explanation. Balloon Man was unrepentant, seemingly unaware that he’d seriously aroused the ire of The Valley’s ranchers, armed ranchers, and that ire is not the ire one wants to arouse. And was lambing season for crimeny sakes!

THERE’S a lot of money in play here by ranchers who can’t afford to lose sheep which, by the way, do double duty in grazing crucial areas of The Valley to keep them in the open pasture that does so much to keep us rural. We begged Balloon Man, “Have some respect for the venue here, guy. Why not fly over in the summer months — well, the early summer months anyway — fly over the Anderson Valley at the low altitudes you seem to prefer, and you better hope you packed a parachute.

BALLOON GUY’S name is Kevin Herschman. He calls himself Hot Air Balloon Adventures, and from the look of the thing, hand-stitched by its owner, it would seem to be a rare example of truth in advertising; going up in the air in the thing would certainly constitute an adventure. Herschman was here in 2010 for a weekend festival called Mendo-A-Go-Go. People lined up at $75 a ticket for a ride lasting 20 to 50 minutes. The law says aircraft of any kind are supposed to stay at least 500 feet above terra firma, and Herschman is licensed by the FAA. He says his balloon can soar as high as 12,000 feet but he usually confines his flights to 6,000. Herschman’s truck is inscribed, “The sky’s not the limit.” In theory, he can be reached at 225-772 4208.

BALLOON MAN SPEAKS

Editor,

An Insulted Balloon Guy (now eerily close to middle-aged man) wants to inform you, that he takes offense at you calling his hand-made and carefully planned balloon design—”patchwork.” Also hoping you’ll give me the opportunity to get the record straight on a few things misrepresented in the “Valley People” Section on November 9:

Balloons are required to maintain minimum altitudes “except when necessary for take off or landing.” Although it may seem that I am just flying along without a care in the world, if you see me at “treetop level,” it is because I am using a ground wind to try slipping into or out of a nearby parcel. The rest of the time, you will see me well over 500 feet.
I do not fly heedlessly over sheep. I pay very close attention to how they respond to the noise and overhead menace and try to maintain ascents over them so that the noise and fear will be minimal. I have erred in this as I do not have every holding of sheep in the valley accounted for. Once I have encountered an angry rancher or a scared flock I make sincere and successful attempts to avoid future proximity.
I don’t have an assistant, but happily allow anyone who is competent and willing to drive my old pickup truck on balloon chases. I should know better than to let a guy with dreadlocks drive my truck, but I thought the people of the valley could handle it. He claims he is not a rasta — too demanding of a religious observance for the faint of heart (or lungs).
I haven’t taken off on Gschwend road ever. Though now, thanks to the article last week I may have an invitation to.
The only things written on my truck are “F250,” “Louisiana,” and “www.Pro-Creation.US.” The writing, “The Sky Isn’t the Limit” was on a trailer that I have pulled with me in previous years.
At the Mendo-A-Go-Go festival, people clustered around to donate $5-10 to go up in the air for 2-4 minutes.
And finally to the angry rancher(s): Shooting at an aircraft is a federal crime, and more importantly its really rude and unsportsmanlike to shoot at unarmed people in a giant colorful object. All you have to do is yell unpleasantries and I’ll avoid you in the future. Please don’t try killing me or going to prison over a running sheep.

Thanks for giving me a chance to correct some of your inaccuracies. Love,

Kevin Herschman, Balloon Guy

Louisiana/Anderson Valley

AND now the rest of the Balloon Man file:

BARNSTORMING WITH HOT AIR: A Self-Made Balloon Man

by Mark Scaramella (November 2007)

His name is not Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs, but he’ll answer to Kevin Herschman. Oz, as his friends may call him, is the engaging young man piloting the blue balloon many locals have seen drifting over the Valley for the last couple of weeks.

Herschman, as his nickname implies, is somewhat of a wizard. The enterprising 25-year-old from Louisiana operates aground and aloft as “Hot Air Balloon Adventure.” He literally built his own business, making his balloon himself soon after graduating from Oberlin College in 2005. Then it was him and his balloon On The Road all the way to the Anderson Valley, land of sunshine and mild breezes perfect for a young man who earns his way lifting the adventurous up, up and away.

Herschman says he became fascinated with balloons when a series of championship balloon races were held in his home town of Baton Rouge when he was seven years old. He earned his commercial hot air balloon pilot rating while still in high school but couldn’t do much ballooning during his college years.

When the young aerialist graduated from college he took his modest accumulated savings and put this question to himself: Should I buy a car or should I buy the materials to build a balloon? No contest. The Wizard chose balloon.

It took Herschman about a month to put the balloon together, most of that time devoted to hours and hours of sewing. He learned to sew on his own after graduating from Oberlin, using a friend’s sewing facility to piece his dream ship together. The friend, you see, had just finished stitching together his own blimp. The helium brotherhood is as close knit, you might say, as the seams on their magnificent flying machines.

After the initial materials were obtained and the basic sewing was complete, Herschman discovered that he had a circle with “raw” fabric edges around the outside that needed to be tacked down. When told by his blimp-making buddy that the balloon had to be, in effect, hemmed, Herschman yelled, “I don’t want to do it! I’ll sew load tapes around the edge! Anything! I can’t hem! Hemming is for girls!” Having purged himself of this most un-Oberlin-like macho, Herschman hemmed his balloon’s skirts.

The sewing complete, and we’re talking A LOT of sewing, to make his balloon ready for lift-off for himself and paying customers, Herschman bought propane tanks, a burner and a collapsible basket. (Persons ascending with Herschman will be reassured to learn that the under-belly of his balloon is made of fire-proof Nomex, the material firefighters wear. The Nomex can’t catch fire from the propane burner.) Herschman bought himself a used pickup and a trailer and went on the road hoping to support himself by selling rides.

Drifting into Anderson Valley for the Mendo-a-Go-Go festival a couple of weeks ago, and confident he could persuade at least a few attendees to go up in the air with him because he and his balloon had been a big hit at the Caspar Community Fair the week before, the normally ebullient entrepreneur ran right into a big Friday rain.

But Saturday and Sunday were perfect for ballooning, warm, the valley’s air sweetened by Friday’s downpour. Mendo-a-Go-Go’s producers, the vivacious Jeff and Jan Peters of Philo, and a few other locals were soon drifting over the Valley’s late fall kaleidoscope of a hundred shades of gold as the earthbound waited for their turn in the sky as fascinated locals volunteered to serve as the balloon’s ground crew. “Anyone can come over and get involved in the air or on the ground,” says Herschman. “All kinds of participation is fine. Just walk right up. I’m always ready for more help on the ground.”

“I’m not running a typical balloon ride business,” says Herschman. “It’s a small balloon. So I can’t handle heavy couples. There’s a weight limit of about 300 pounds or so in addition to me. I’m a pretty good pilot — commercially rated. I don’t have as much air time as some of the older pros — I’m not up to 1000 hours yet. But I’m pretty good. I know what I’m doing. I’ve been doing this for years already.”

Herschman says he’s not doing what some people might call “Wine Country Tours” like the ones in Napa County where balloonists always take the same route. “With this decent fall weather and fairly calm winds I can give people a new look at their Valley,” Herschman says, “and have some fun in the process.”

The typical Valley ride lasts between 20 and 50 minutes, depending on weight, wind at take-off, and landing areas. So far Herschman’s been going up from the Philo area and floating towards Boonville on the sea breezes wafting in off the Pacific. “It’s $75 per person, and more if they can afford it because that barely covers my expenses. I’m on a real tight budget — I’m not in this to make a big profit.”

Asked about the unplanned landings he’s made in yards and ranches of Valleyites, Herschman explains, “I haven’t heard any complaints yet. That’s just the way I have to operate. I try to be as careful as possible.”

Herschman says he’s pretty good at sizing up how someone might react to a possible landing by looking at the landing zone area from the air. “I can usually tell if it’s OK,” he says. “In these light winds, if I see someone down on the ground I can yell down, ‘Hey! Is it OK if I land here?’ Sometimes I’ll put it down and ask for permission to bring the truck up to the balloon when the people who own the place come up to me. Usually they’re tickled to let me do it. If they’re upset, I can usually add a little heat to the balloon and get up and go on to another spot.”

By special arrangement with a single customer who’s not too, ah, heavy, Herschman says he can do longer distance flights if the winds are blowing from, say, Anderson Valley to Ukiah. “I usually don’t go much over 6,000 feet, but I can get as high as 12,000 or so without relying on oxygen,” he says. “With one passenger we can do some cool landscape flying.”

Herschman says he follows all the FAA rules, including the ones about staying at least 500 feet above the ground while in the air. “We’re regulated and licensed through FAA just like other aircraft.” (Indeed, we found a copy of his FAA license on line.)

Herschman says he’ll be in the Valley until the weather gets bad. To book a flight give him a call on his cellphone at 225-772-4208.

The slogan on Herschman’s truck reads, “The sky’s not the limit.” I asked him what that’s supposed to mean. “It’s just what I painted on the truck,” he chuckled. “I thought it sounded cool. It means whatever you want it to mean.”

November 2007: BALLOONIST Kevin Herschman, who spent a few weeks in Anderson Valley recently taking locals up, up and away, moved his balloon barnstorming tour to Willits, announcing upon his arrival a promise to “stay awhile.” But he might not be all that welcome because on November 6th the Willits-Little Lake fire department received “a frantic call” that a hot air balloon had crashed near the end of Muir Mill Road outside of Willits. CDF and Little Lake fire crews mounted an all-out emergency response, replete with multiple fire engines and a fleet of emergency services vehicles. An ambulance from Ukiah was also dispatched. When the responders arrived on scene, they found Mr. Herschman calmly packing up his balloon. “What’s the problem?” Herschman asked. All he’d done was land in an empty field.

THE BALLOON GUY is back, and there are more than a few people in the Navarro area not particularly happy to see him. Last Thursday, Balloon Guy apparently launched himself aloft in his battered basket and patchwork balloon from somewhere on Gschwend Road, drifting up The Valley toward Philo while his rasta dude assistant followed along on 128 in a full-size pick-up truck. As Balloon Guy flew heedlessly low and slow at elevations estimated by witnesses “as tree top level,” pregnant ewes in two pastures were startled into full gallops, and pregnant ewes are not supposed to run, and boy o boy were some ranchers hot, with one threatening to “crank off a couple of rounds at that nut’s balloon if he comes over us again.”

MIKE GENIELLA RECOMMENDS

The best podcast yet on Freedom of the Press issues

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fresh-air/id214089682?i=1000698771278

CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, March 20, 2025

GARRETT LABUDA, 26, Ukiah. Camping in Ukiah.

ROBERT MCKEE, 41, Lompoc/Ukiah. DUI-any drug.

PETER SAARI, 52, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, parole violation.

SIMON THORNTON, 36, Ukiah. Parole violation.

TED DACE:

At the very least, Columbia University must make a public statement on Mahmoud Khalil’s detention and disclose its role in his arrest. Let’s not be “good Germans” in this crucial moment.

“A university is a place where ideas are meant to be challenged, where the status quo is questioned, and where students push boundaries to make change in the world. Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs claims to educate students to serve and to lead in support of the global public interest. Instead, under your leadership, it has become a place where students are punished for speaking the truth, intimidated for advocating justice, and detained for standing against genocide.”

A BONUS IS COMING TO YOUR CALIFORNIA PG&E BILL: ‘CUSTOMERS ARE FEELING THE PRESSURE’

by Amanda Bartlett

California PG&E customers can expect an automatic bonus to appear on their April bill.

This week, the Oakland-headquartered utility giant announced that residential households with an active gas and electric account will receive a total of $125.26 as part of the California Climate Credit initiative, funded by the state’s Cap-and-Trade Program. Customers paying for an electric bill only will receive a $58.23 credit; others paying for a gas bill only will receive a $67.03 credit, the company said in a news release.

Residential and small business customers can also expect to receive the electric credit in April and October.

“We know many of our customers are feeling the pressure of rising energy bills,” Vincent Davis, senior vice president of customer experience for the company, said in the news release. “We support bill relief for families and fostering a more climate-resilient future.”

The California Climate Credit program kicked off in 2014 and is guided by the California Public Utilities Commission, which requires power plants, fuel suppliers and large industrial facilities that emit greenhouse gases to buy carbon pollution credits equal to those emissions. Funds are typically distributed twice a year and are “designed to help customers as California transitions to a low-carbon future,” with a goal of reducing emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030, when the program will conclude, according to the CPUC’s website.

Customers can find the credits listed as electric and gas adjustments on their account summaries. A line item reading “CA Climate Credit” or “California Climate Credit” will be shown with the credit amount and a bill message briefly explaining the credit. People who don’t see the credit on the bill are encouraged to contact PG&E.

(SFGate.com)

YOU’RE LIKELY NEXT

Editor:

My mother-in-law was born in France and lived there during its Nazi occupation. She, her sister and her mother joined the French Resistance. However, her good friend ignored what was happening. Instead, he focused on his passion for roller skating and couldn’t be bothered with politics. That is, until the Nazis shut down the roller-skating rink in his town, which galvanized him to join the Resistance too.

For those still on the fence about the behavior of Donald Trump and his supporters, what will your roller-skating rink moment be? A canceled visit to a national park because there are not enough federal workers to keep it open? Many months of waiting for a tax refund because of a halved IRS workforce? Your unpicked crops?

We are not represented by GOP senators in California or by a GOP congressperson in Sonoma County, but Republicans and their Democratic colleagues are intended to have oversight of the executive branch. Contact GOP members of Congress to say that remaining in lockstep for political power’s sake is dangerous and undemocratic for us and our country. Remind them that courage against tyranny is a form of power too.

Karen Holmes

Healdsburg

A WAGON TRAIN following the California Trail through Nevada during the 1860s.

The Bartleson-Bidwell Party was the first wagon train to travel the California Trail through Nevada in 1841. By 1869, about 450,000 people had traveled in a covered wagon along the California Trail in Nevada. The 40 mile wilderness between Lovelock and Fernley was the worst part of the trail because there was no water. In Fallon, during the 1930s, it was still possible to find many wrecks of the wagons that crossed that stretch of desert.

WHO’S NEXT?

Editor:

When 100 or so white neo-Nazis march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, shouting antisemitic chants, they were “some very fine people” in Donald Trump’s words. When a single man of Palestinian origin is a leader of protests that Trump doesn’t like he’s thrown in an immigration detention center across the country from his pregnant American wife and threatened with expulsion and loss of his green card, all without due process (“ICE arrests activist who helped lead protest,” March 10).

If you think this is an isolated incident, you aren’t paying attention. In Trump’s own words: “We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it.” So who is next?

Matt Stone

Petaluma

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

As a Jewish alumnus of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, the graduate school that Mahmoud Khalil attended, and the stepfather of a first-year Barnard College student, I am horrified by the unconstitutional mistreatment of Mr. Khalil. If he had expressed pro-Israeli views, the Trump administration would have lauded him; for defending a Palestinian perspective, Mr. Khalil faces deportation. Time for Columbia to stand by its motto: “In lumine tuo videbimus lumen,” translated from the Latin as “In your light we will see the light.”

SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES

Editor:

It took Donald Trump 10 years to build his MAGA army and only a few weeks to change the international perspective. For Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party, with an immigrant-friendly policy and a focus on the environment — the voters were fed up. But since Trump suggested Canada become the 51st state, voters have flocked to the party, and new Prime Minister Mark Carney could win the next election. The same is happening in Europe. It is part of the paradox of nationalism; what happens when “my country first” meets “your country first.” What we are seeing is a man not building, but tearing down.

Lars Richardson

Ukiah

SITES RESERVOIR RECEIVES AN ADDITIONAL $134 MILLION IN FEDERAL FUNDING FROM THE TRUMP REGIME

by Dan Bacher

The Sites Reservoir Project, a controversial water project in northern California promoted by Governor Gavin Newson and opposed by a coalition of environmental groups, fishing groups and Tribes because it will divert more water out of the Sacramento River, recently received $134 million in federal funding from the Trump Administration.

Critics note that the money was issued as Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom develops an increasingly cozy relationship with President Donald Trump — and has been elevating and embracing far right-wing media stars such as Charlie Kirk, Michael Savage and Steve Bannon by featuring them as guests on his new podcast.…

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/20/2311274/-Sites-Reservoir-receives-an-additional-134-million-in-federal-funding-from-Trump-regime

THE MAGA WINO WAR

by Nadia Lopez

How Tariffs will hurt the wine industry

With the threat of massive tariffs on European wine looming, importers in California are preparing for a potentially devastating toll on the industry.

Why it matters: California bought $502 million in wine from France in 2024, second behind New York’s $780 million, per the American Association of Wine Economists.

Nationally, wine importers spent $6.8 billion last year, 80% of which went to European producers.

The big picture: If President Trump’s 200% tariffs on Europe were to drastically cut imports, an industry already facing financial difficulties will take a huge economic hit down the chain.

What they’re saying: “We are bracing for what could be just catastrophic to the import segment of the business,” said Scott Forrest, a sales representative at Martine’s Wines, a Northern California-based importer and wholesaler specializing in French wines.

Friction point: Tariffs levied abroad could drive up prices here, even on domestically produced wines, disrupt supply chains and “create an even narrower distribution pipeline,” according to wine economist Mike Veseth.

By the numbers: California produces more wine than any other state, with about 609 million gallons made in 2023, according to data from the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.

“Small wine producers from Napa or Sonoma or Mendocino County, for example, would find it even more difficult to get their wines through distribution to restaurants and retailers,” Veseth told Axios.

Zoom out: Wine importers could see their revenue fall to near zero because after stripping out European imports, they would have almost nothing to sell.

Between the lines: Consumers could also see huge price increases, where a $20 bottle might end up retailing at $60, Veseth noted.

Such an extreme markup would not only kill demand for European wine, but it would also drive companies out of business, Forrest predicts.

(axios.com)

TOP OF THE MARK, San Francisco (1956)

By 1956, the Top of the Mark, located on the 19th floor of the Mark Hopkins Hotel, was one of San Francisco’s most famous cocktail lounges. Offering sweeping views of the city skyline and bay, it was a favorite spot for both locals and tourists. During World War II, it had become a popular farewell destination for servicemen leaving for the Pacific, with their loved ones watching from the windows as ships departed from the bay. By the 1950s, it remained an elegant venue for fine dining, live music, and celebratory toasts overlooking the city lights.

THE BAY AREA IS HOARDING CHAMPAGNE LIKE IT’S TOILET PAPER IN EARLY COVID

by Esther Mobley

Since last week, Champagne seller Chris Nicola has seen a dramatic surge in business.

One client of his, a retail shop, “basically wiped me out of hundreds and hundreds of bottles of one Champagne,” said Nicola, who is based in Half Moon Bay. It was the first time he’d seen a customer buy virtually his entire inventory of a single product.

“I’m talking pallets,” he said.

The shopping spree was triggered by President Donald Trump’s threat last Thursday that he would instate 200% tariffs on all European “wines, Champagnes and alcoholic products” if the European Union doesn’t back away from a planned 50% tariff on American whiskey.

Possibly because Trump singled out France’s famous sparkling wine, Champagne seems to have seen a bigger boost than other types of European wine. That’s made it something of a wild week for Nicola, who sells Champagne exclusively through his importing business, the Alchemists, and his two direct-to-consumer wine clubs, Grand Cuvee and Champagne Camp. He sells high-end producers like David Leclapart and Colette Bonnet that many Michelin-starred restaurant wine lists covet.

Grand Cuvee members have asked to double their allotments, Nicola said, which is highly unusual. Subscriptions aren’t cheap: The tiers range from $540 to over $1,000 per six-bottle shipment, before tax and shipping. One club member reached out to ask if he could buy two cases of a particular Champagne.

“The last time I saw people doubling their allocations was the whole toilet-paper shortage during COVID,” Nicola said.

Last weekend was the busiest weekend that Bill Marci, owner of the SoMa lounge San Francisco Champagne Society, had seen in a while. It was a noticeable turnaround: His wine business, like many others, had seen a 50% drop in sales in the first two months of the year. “Thursday, Friday and Saturday were very, very busy and great volume,” Marci said. Some new customers that he’d never met before dropped $1,500 on three bottles of Champagne.

That’s not to say that Nicola and Marci are happy about the tariff threat; on the contrary, a 200% added fee on the only product category that they sell would effectively end their businesses. The looming possibility has put Nicola’s importing company in an uncomfortable limbo state.

“I’ve got incredible wine that I could be selling to Atelier Crenn or Quince sitting in port in France,” he said. He can’t risk the chance that by the time those wines arrive in the U.S., he’d be required to pay a 200% tax on them. “I’ve pressed the pause button, and those wines will have to stay there until I understand where we stand on this.”

Other Bay Area wine shops saw a modest bump in European wine sales following Trump’s announcement. K&L CEO Brian Zucker described it as “a little bounce,” and Farmstead Cheeses & Wines owner Dave Chambers said that he’s seen “a few extra cases going out the door, for sure.”

“Some customers who are members of our wine club have jumped on the chance to purchase a year upfront in order to lock in the pricing,” said April Sack, co-owner of Tomorrow’s Wine in San Francisco.

Some retailers preemptively stocked up on European wines in the early months of this year, anticipating the possibility of tariffs under the Trump administration. But there’s a sizable contingent of the industry that believes the tariffs are all talk — or at least, that if they do take effect, they won’t be 200%.

“We’ve decided not to increase our inventory at this time,” said Josh Shapiro, partner at San Francisco’s Flatiron Wines and Spirits. A 200% tariff would “likely lead to the closure of our store,” he said, so stocking up “would only help to mitigate the losses.” If the tariff were merely temporary, Shapiro said the store could rely on wines already in the U.S.

If Champagne became nonviable to sell in the U.S., Nicola said he would look into importing sparkling wine from a non-E.U. country instead, like England. In the meantime, he’s viewing this week’s frenzied purchasing activity through a skeptical lens.

“Surge buying doesn’t really help,” he said. “It might give you a shot in the arm from a revenue perspective, but it doesn’t help you longterm.”

(SF Chronicle)

‘WE WILL HUNT YOU DOWN’: Why ads targeting immigrants are blanketing Bay Area airwaves

by KoLyn Cheang

Oakland resident Lisa Hix was driving to the city’s Fruitvale neighborhood to run errands Monday, when she heard a woman’s voice on her radio praising President Donald Trump before vowing to “hunt” down people in the country illegally. She later learned it was Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“Let me deliver a message from President Trump to the world: If you are considering entering America illegally, don’t even think about it,” Noem said in the television version of the ad. “Let me be clear, if you come to our country and you break our laws, we will hunt you down. Criminals are not welcome in the United States.”

Hix was alarmed.

“It was just such a dystopian moment to hear an authoritarian message coming from the radio,” Hix said. “Even if people are documented, they could still feel scared or threatened. Immigrants are such a vital part of Oakland’s community and I don’t want them to feel unwelcome here.”

Bay Area residents have in the past few days been inundated by versions of this advertisement on mainstream and Spanish-language media. It’s played on televisions in businesses and in people’s homes.

The ads are part of an international $200 million campaign by the Department of Homeland Security that’s pushing its message on radio, television and the internet in multiple countries and languages, according to the department.

The spending comes as the Trump administration is slashing services and has fired thousands of government employees.

“Ads will be hyper-targeted, including through social media, text message and digital to reach illegal immigrants in the interior of the United States, as well as internationally,” a Department of Homeland Security statement announcing the campaign on Feb. 17 stated.

The campaign launched on March 15, according to the department.

Dan Newman, a Democratic strategist, said that data pulled from his media buyer showed the Department of Homeland Security spent at least $150,000 on the ad campaign for broadcast television in the Bay Area, including $30,200 on KNTV NBC Bay Area, $8,400 on KSTS Telemundo Bay Area, $39,300 on KGO ABC7 News, $36,800 on KPIX CBS Bay Area, and $34,200 on KTVU Fox.

Trump’s administration has justified its plans for mass deportation of an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants who live in the U.S. by saying it is in U.S. interests to secure borders, and accusing migrants of committing crimes, including drug trafficking. Last weekend, the administration defied a judge’s order to cease its use of an obscure 1798 law called the Alien Enemies Act to deport hundreds of migrants without hearings, bringing the executive branch closer to a showdown with the judiciary.

An analysis of incarceration rates by the National Bureau of Economic Research showed that relative to U.S.-born people, immigrants’ incarceration rates have declined since 1960 and immigrants today are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born people. The study didn’t include data specific to crimes committed by unauthorized migrants.

The overwhelming majority of people sentenced for drug trafficking in the 2023 fiscal year — 82% — were U.S. citizens, according to United States Sentencing Commission data. A 2023 Chronicle investigation found a majority of Honduran migrants who deal drugs in San Francisco come from the same cluster of villages in Siria Valley, a region in central Honduras, although most Honduran migrants in the Bay Area or elsewhere in the U.S. find legal work.

Don Rosenberg, president of the nonprofit group Advocates For Victims of Illegal Alien Crime, said he approves of the advertising campaign but that it remains to be seen whether it will deter people from coming to the U.S. illegally or pressure migrants here to self-deport.

Rosenberg’s son was killed driving his motorcycle in San Francisco in 2010 when he was run over by an unlicensed driver from Honduras.

“Everyone who came here illegally is not a murderer, rapist or child molester,” Rosenberg said. “Most want to better their lives. But when you come here illegally, we don’t know anything about you and as my son and my family found out, once we do it’s too late.”

Hix said she found it disturbing that the advertising campaign has been accepted by major media companies.

“I don’t know if people would have the resources to just leave or even want to but they’ll feel, ‘Can I trust my neighbors? Are people going to turn me in?” Hix said. “That’s the sort of authoritarian conditions that I do not want to live under and I hope no one else wants to live under those conditions.”

An NBC Universal spokesperson said the networks review all potential advertising buys in accordance with company standards, and that the Department of Homeland Security ads met the threshold to air. NBC states in its advertising standards that it reserves the right to reject advertisements with “discriminatory and/or potentially offensive content that is deemed incompatible with NBC’s viewing environment or general standards.”

“An advertisement may be rejected if its content … is grossly offensive (e.g. on racial, religious or ethnic grounds),” the standards state.

The other television networks did not respond to requests for comment.

Although Trump’s crackdown on unauthorized migrants and those with temporary legal status who Biden had granted entry to the U.S. has been met with fear and opposition among many new migrants, including Hispanic immigrants, Trump received more votes from Hispanic voters in the 2024 presidential election than in 2020, particularly Latino men, a majority of whom had voted for President Joe Biden in 2020. Last November, 54% of Latino men voted for Trump, according to the National Exit Poll 2024 conducted by Edison Research.

Republican strategist Mike Madrid, an expert on Latino voting behavior who co-founded a conservative political action committee that opposed Trump’s 2020 reelection, said that’s because of the increase in share of U.S.-born Latino voters, who tend to prioritize economic pocketbook issues over concern about immigration. When immigration does come up, Madrid said, Latino voters are much more hostile toward illegal immigration than in the past.

A poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy and Telemundo in October found 70% of California Latinos believe illegal immigration to be a somewhat or very serious problem.

“Latino voters have changed and it’s really hard to make the case that Trump is wrong when he’s siding with a majority of Latino voters,” Madrid said. “That’s the conundrum I think that the Democrats find themselves in.”

That said, Madrid added he thinks it’s “hypocritical” for the Trump administration to be spending $200 million on advertising something that’s already the law while they’ve also championed massive budget cuts to federal agencies through the Department of Government Efficiency.

“It’s designed to incite and divide and cause fear and havoc,” Madrid said. “Probably not the best use of tax dollars.”

(SF Chronicle)

ON THE SUBWAY

by Sharon Olds

The boy and I face each other.
His feet are huge, in black sneakers
laced with white in a complex pattern like a
set of intentional scars. We are stuck on
opposite sides of the car, a couple of
molecules stuck in a rod of light
rapidly moving through darkness. He has the
casual cold look of a mugger,
alert under hooded lids. He is wearing
red, like the inside of the body
exposed. I am wearing dark fur, the
whole skin of an animal taken and
used. I look at his raw face,
he looks at my fur coat, and I don’t
know if I am in his power —
he could take my coat so easily, my
briefcase, my life —
or if he is in my power, the way I am
living off his life, eating the steak
he does not eat, as if I am taking
the food from his mouth. And he is black
and I am white, and without meaning or
trying to I must profit from his darkness,
the way he absorbs the murderous beams of the
nation’s head, as black cotton
absorbs the heat of the sun and holds it. There is
no way to know how easy this
white skin makes my life, this
life he could take so easily and
break across his knee like a stick the way his
own back is being broken, the
rod of his soul that at birth was dark and
fluid, rich as the head of a seedling
ready to thrust up into any available light.

SF GIANTS OWNERS LOSING TOUCH WITH THEIR FAN BASE

by Dave Tobener

Ah, the telltale signs of spring for a San Francisco Giants fan. Pitchers and catchers reporting, prospects and veterans showing signs of life, and infuriating, out-of-touch comments from ownership. Seems to come earlier every year.

From “lightbulbs“ to “somewhat break even,” the Giants top brass has provided plenty of fodder for disaffected fans to stew about over the past few years. Time seemed to be running out for this year’s entry, but thankfully, Larry Baer came through with flying colors.

In an article discussing the Giants’ selling about 10% of the club to a private equity firm — which would seemingly give the Giants an enormous cash infusion, considering they were valued at around $3.8 billion by Forbes last year — Baer went out of his way to make sure fans didn’t get any wild ideas that the money would be used to dip into future free agent markets.

“This is not about a stockpile for the next Aaron Judge,” Baer told the New York Times. “This is about improvements to the ballpark, making big bets on San Francisco and the community around us, and having the firepower to take us into the next generation.”

Not quite as attention-grabbing as his light bulbs comment, but a worthy addition to the list nonetheless. The CEO of the San Francisco Giants, after a major financial windfall for the club, flat-out telling the fan base to not get any wild ideas about using that money to bring a superstar to the city. It’s almost as if the ownership group knew the public would demand a higher payroll once news of the sale hit and decided to cut their legs out from under them immediately.

Even more grating is the fact that the Judge comment just wasn’t necessary. All Baer had to say was something along the lines of “Hey, we want to make major additions to the ballpark experience and invest in the city itself,” and it would have been fine. Nobody is against making the ballpark better, just like nobody would have an issue with the team investing cash back into the community. Those are great things that require a lot of money, and apparently, the Giants didn’t have enough of it lying around to make the investments they wanted to make and sold part of the team to get more of it. Fine!

But going out of his way to make sure the fans knew that this investment wouldn’t result in a higher payroll is incredibly enraging, which, unfortunately, has become par for the course from ownership. What does it think really matters to the fan base, when it comes down to it? Is it a modern ballpark experience, or is it a team built to contend for a World Series every year?

I’m realistic enough to realize that many people don’t come to the ballpark just for baseball, and the Giants would be silly to not try to cater to that segment of ticket buyers — they’re in the business of making money, after all. But there are also plenty of fans who’d buy a ticket to watch the Giants if they played their games in a parking lot, and those fans deserve to be catered to just as much. To dismiss using this windfall investment on payroll out of hand, as if it were a silly afterthought, is beyond insulting. Fans want a winning team, and fans want ownership to repay their loyalty by investing in the team. Ballpark improvements are nice, but lineup improvements are even better.

So, while the Giants are busy adding new features to the ballpark like “soccer-style rooter sections” (which may be cool to some but sounds like an absolute nightmare to me), it’s fair to say their approach to roster-building will remain largely unchanged. It’s a begrudging, apathetic acceptance from the fan base now. It might work some years and fall apart other years, but that’s the reality of this era of Giants baseball.

Does this Giants ownership group care about winning? On a macro level, sure. Winning drives interest, sells tickets and generates revenue. But what kind of winning does it care about?

Ownership certainly doesn’t seem to be all-in on winning a World Series every year. Instead, it appears to be more concerned with putting a team on the field that, if everything breaks its way, will compete for a wild-card berth each year. It’s understandable in the era of expanded playoffs, but is that what fans want to see? When their high-revenue team now has one of the largest markets in the country all to itself and just received an enormous amount of cash after selling a stake in the team, shouldn’t fans be willing to demand more?

The answer should be yes. The answer from Giants ownership, clearly, is no. But maybe you can forget that as you drink beer from a baseball bat-shaped container or sit stand in a rooter section in the future.

CANCEL JACKIE ROBINSON FOR MAKING HISTORY? ONLY TEAM TRUMP WOULD TRY THAT

by Scott Ostler

Oops, sorry, Jackie Robinson.

For several hours Wednesday, you disappeared from history. You were instantly downgraded from national hero to a blank page. Hey, a lot of us would like a fresh start, but that’s pretty extreme.

On the U.S. Department of Defense website, a tribute page to Robinson was taken down. The missing page told of Robinson’s exploits in college, in the military, and as the man who broke through Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947.

That’s a lot to wipe out, but the DOD scrubbing crew has maniacal energy. Those scrubbers — and the people who order the scrubbing, starting at the very top — make up for with crazed gusto what they lack in intelligence, morality, honesty, integrity, respect for history, stuff like that.

It’s all part of the new governmental policy: Drop bombs first, ask questions later.

Also temporarily wiped off the DOD website, by people who would tidy up a baby’s nursery with a bulldozer, were pages saluting the World War II heroics of the Navajo code talkers and the Tuskegee Airmen. Gone.

Hours later, the pages were restored, with an explanation that is creepier than the original action. The explanation, not an apology, was that these people are still being saluted, but their color has nothing to do with their heroics.

I’m glad my children are grown. It would be hard to teach them why Jackie Robinson is a national hero without mentioning the subject of race. Kids, Jackie Robinson’s the most important and courageous figure in American sports history because he could really lay down a sacrifice bunt. Such a lost art!

The cleansing of the DOD website has been very thorough. Removed was a photo of the Enola Gay, the airplane that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Everyone knows our warplanes were not homosexual.

As for Robinson, it’s right to salute him, the current U.S. President and his DOD leader preach, as long as you don’t get into all the woke crap about how the man fought for racial equality all his life.

But since the key elements of Robinson’s military service and sports career might already be wiped from official government existence, let’s take a moment to see what we were missing.

Robinson was drafted in 1944, during the war. A UCLA graduate and four-sport letterman, he applied for officer training, and was denied. In the strictly-segregated (until 1948) military, there were few openings for Black officers. However, famed heavyweight champ Joe Louis was stationed at the same base and quietly used his influence to get Robinson reconsidered.

Robinson trained and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. As a morale officer, Robinson fought for equal seating for Black soldiers at the base PX, and was told by a commanding officer, “I just want you to know that I don’t want my wife sitting close to any colored guy.”

Robinson was transferred to a Texas base, Ft. Hood, where outhouses were marked White, Colored and Mexican. One afternoon, after visiting the Black officers’ club, Robinson hopped on a base shuttle bus. He spotted the wife of one of his fellow Black officers in the middle of the bus and sat next to her, chatting. The woman was light-skinned. The bus driver, a white civilian, ordered Robinson to move to the back of the bus.

Robinson angrily refused, and objected to being called the N word.

“I told the driver to stop f----g with me,” Robinson would explain years later. Military police took Robinson off the bus and into custody, handcuffed and shackled. When a PFC at the scene referred to Robinson as an N-word, he snarled, “If you call me a (N-word) again, I’ll break you in two.”

While the MPs were taking Robinson’s formal statement, the stenographer, a civilian woman, interrupted with questions of her own, such as, “Don’t you know you have no right sitting up there in the white part of the bus?” When Robinson objected to being grilled by a stenographer, the officer conducting the questioning told Robinson he was “uppity and out to make trouble.”

The court martial, for multiple violations of the Articles of War, lasted four and a half hours. Robinson was acquitted when a key witness was found to be lying about his use of the N-word.

But of course that court martial business had nothing to do with race, so let’s scrub that off the historical records, shall we?

And surely race and racism had nothing to do with the big national to-do three years later when Robinson broke into the big leagues with the Dodgers. His number 42 has been retired forever across MLB because… because he intimidated pitchers with his daring baserunning, maybe?

We know the current President admires Robinson, because he said so recently at a Black History Month press conference, and the current President never lies.

“Jackie Robinson, what a great athlete that was,” the current President said. Apparently, one of Robinson’s pronouns is “that.”

Yes, what a great athlete that was! And all the Jackie Robinson pioneer business, that’s all woke hokum. If Robinson simmered over racial taunts from opposing dugouts, he must have been the first snowflake.

As a result of the outcry, Robinson is back up on the DOD website, in some form. But the big overall historical purge and cultural cleansing continues. One recent Presidential order opens the door for Federal government contractors to have segregated restrooms, waiting rooms and drinking fountains. Someone is determined to Make America Go Ass-backwards.

Here’s a number I’d like to see retired: 47.

Miss America 1924: Ruth Malcomson won the title at age 18 after winning Miss Philadelphia in 1923. Back then, the beauty pageant was called “The Atlantic City Pageant” and the winner was named “The Golden Mermaid.”

NASA ASTRONAUT Butch Wilmore has revealed who he believes truly rescued him while he was stranded in space for more than nine months.

The astronaut admitted that being stuck on the International Space Station (ISS) was not ideal but said: “It all works out for those that will believe.

“It’s bound in my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ he is working out his plan and his purposes for his glory throughout all of humanity and how that plays into our lives is significant and important,” Wilmore explained in a newly released interview.

The astronaut is a devout Christian and has not shied away from his faith while being in the public eye.

Born and raised in Tennessee, he now lives in Texas with his wife, Deanna, and two daughters, Daryn and Logan, who are all members of the Providence Baptist Church in Pasadena.

Wilmore paused moments before the June 5 launch, huddling in prayer with technicians and his crewmate Sunita Williams.

— DailyMail.uk

LEAD STORIES, FRIDAY'S NYT

Fire Halts Operations at London’s Heathrow Airport, Throwing Global Travel Into Disarray

Pentagon Set Up Briefing for Musk on Potential War With China

Trump Signs Order Aimed at Eliminating Education Department ‘Once and for All’

Administration’s Details on Deportation Flights ‘Woefully Insufficient,’ Judge Says

Intelligence Assessment Said to Contradict Trump on Venezuelan Gang

Israel Expands Gaza Ground Offensive as Hamas Fires Rockets at Tel Aviv

Snow White and the Seven Kajillion Controversies

PROUD TO HAVE HIM

The Pentagon is scheduled on Friday to brief Elon Musk on the U.S. military’s plan for any war that might break out with China, two U.S. officials said on Thursday.

Another official said the briefing will be China focused, without providing additional details. A fourth official confirmed Mr. Musk was to be at the Pentagon on Friday, but offered no details.

Providing Mr. Musk access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded military secrets would be a dramatic expansion of his already extensive role as an adviser to President Trump and leader of his effort to slash spending and purge the government of people and policies they oppose.

It would also bring into sharp relief the questions about Mr. Musk’s conflicts of interest as he ranges widely across the federal bureaucracy while continuing to run businesses that are major government contractors. In this case, Mr. Musk, the billionaire chief executive of both SpaceX and Tesla, is a leading supplier to the Pentagon and has extensive financial interests in China.

Pentagon war plans, known in military jargon as O-plans or operational plans, are among the military’s most closely guarded secrets. If a foreign country were to learn how the United States planned to fight a war against them, it could reinforce its defenses and address its weaknesses, making the plans far less likely to succeed.

The top-secret briefing for the China war plan has about 20 to 30 slides that lay out how the United States would fight such a conflict. It covers the plan beginning with the indications and warning of a threat from China to various options on what Chinese targets to hit, over what time period, that would be presented to Mr. Trump for decisions, according to officials with knowledge of the plan.

A White House spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment about the purpose of the visit, how it came about, whether Mr. Trump was aware of it, and whether the visit raises questions of conflicts of interest. The White House has not said whether Mr. Trump signed a conflicts of interest waiver for Mr. Musk.

The chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, did not respond to a similar email seeking comment about why Mr. Musk was to receive a briefing on the China war plan. Soon after The Times published this article on Thursday evening, Mr. Parnell gave a short statement: “The Defense Department is excited to welcome Elon Musk to the Pentagon on Friday. He was invited by Secretary Hegseth and is just visiting.”

About an hour later, Mr. Parnell posted a message on his X account: “This is 100% Fake News. Just brazenly & maliciously wrong. Elon Musk is a patriot. We are proud to have him at the Pentagon.”

— NYT

NEW OFFER! FREE TESLA CYBERTRUCKS!

Goes from $100k to $0 in just months!

(In fact dealers will now pay you to drive away!)

Tesla is recalling most Cybertrucks.

Tesla owners seeking to offload cars in for a nasty surprise.

BIG TECH’S AI PITCH SEEKS LICENSE TO STEAL

Open AI and Google, having long trained their ravenous bots on the work of newsrooms like this one, now want to throw out long established copyright law by arguing, we kid you not, that the only way for the United States to defeat the Chinese Communist Party is for those tech giants to steal the content created with the sweat equity of America’s human journalists.

“With a Chinese Communist Party determined to overtake us by 2030,” Open AI wrote Thursday to the federal Office of Science and Technology Policy, “the Trump administration’s new action plan can ensure that American-led A.I. built on democratic principles can prevail over CCP-built, autocratic, authoritarian AI.”

Built on democratic principles? More like built on outright theft.

That’s why news organizations, among them newspapers in our group and the New York Times, have sued Open AI and its partner Microsoft over their breaking copyright law by vacuuming up millions of newspaper articles without permission or payment, constituting copyright infringement on a colossal scale.

Now Open AI comes back with the absurd argument that this was somehow necessary for national security.

In their letter, Sam Altman’s crew added a whole lot of obfuscating, self-serving blather about “scaling human ingenuity” and “freedom of learning and knowledge” while describing the innovations of ChatGPT as part of some great and glorious trajectory from domesticated horses to steam power to electricity to printing presses and the internet.

You see the irony there? Printing presses.

For generations, those presses sent out the work of America’s reporters, the fruits of capital invested, and hard labor performed, in city halls and crime scenes and throughout all the communities they served. They amplified and distributed a news organization’s work, as now does the Internet.

They didn’t steal the work of someone else and then pass it off as their own.

Gutting generations of copyright protections for the benefit of AI bots would have a chilling effect not just on news organizations but on all creative content creators, from novelists to playwrights to poets. That iron-clad commitment to protecting the rights of owners of work they themselves created is precisely what distinguishes the United States from communist China, not the reverse.

This country has dominated the world of news and information by respecting not just the precious freedom of the press but also its right to protect its work. Had it not done so, there would have been no economic base on which to build the kinds of news organizations that can, and still do, keep a check on the government. Heck, there would have been no economic basis to build anything creative whatsoever.

Securing permission from, and fairly compensating, those publishers who created this great foundation of knowledge is the right, just and American thing to do.

The government should reject these self-serving proposals and protect the work of artists, authors, photographers, journalists and all other creators and copyright holders who have been the victims of these companies.

(MediaNewsGroup Editorial)

CROSS THE GREEN MOUNTAIN

by Bob Dylan

I cross the Green Mountain
I sit by the stream
Heaven blazing in my head I
I dreamt a monsterous dream
Something came up
Out of the sea
Swept through the land of
The rich and the free

I look into the eyes
of my merciful friend
And then I ask myself
Is this the end?
Memories linger
Sad yet sweet
And I think of the souls in heaven who will be

Alters are burning
The flames far and wide
the fool has crossed over
from the other side
They tip their caps
from the top of the hill
You can feel them come
All brave blood do spill

Along the dim
Atlantic line
The rapper's land
lasts for miles behind
the lights coming foreward
and the streets are broad
all must yield
To the avenging God

The world is old
The world is great
Lessons of life
Can't be learned in a day
I watch and I wait
And I listen while I stand
To the music that comes
from a far better land

Close the eyes
of our Captain
Peace may he know
His long night is done
The great leader is laid low
He was ready to fall
He was quick to defend
Killed outright he was
by his own men

It's the last day's last hour
of the last happy year
I feel that the unknown
The world is so dear
Pride will vanish
And glory will rot
But virtue lives
and cannot be forgot

The bells
of evening have rung
there's blasphemy
on the end of the tongue
Let them say that I walked
in fair nature's light
And that I was loyal
to truth and to right

Serve God and meet your full
Look upward beyond
Beyond the darkness that masks
the surprises of dawn
In the deep green grasses
and the blood stained woods
They never dreamed of surrendering
They fell where they stood

Stars fell over Alabama
And I saw each star
You're walking in dreams
Whoever you are
Chilled as the skies
Keen as the frost
And the ground's froze hard
And the morning is lost

A letter to mother
came today
Gunshot wound to the breast
is what it did say
But he'll be better soon
He's in a hospital bed
But he'll never be better
He's already dead

I'm ten miles outside the city
And I'm lifted away
In an ancient light
That is not of day
They were calm they were gloomed
We knew them all too well
We loved each other more than
we ever dared to tell

Alcatraz, viewed from California street, 1880 (Carleton Watkins)

16 Comments

Marshall Newman March 21, 2025

Who shot the “San Francisco Bay (1880)” photograph? Looks like an I.W. Taber.

- AVA News Service Post author | March 21, 2025
  
  Carleton Watkins
  
Stephen Dunlap March 21, 2025

I have decided today is Friday after all – & an alert from a fan………

pca67 March 21, 2025

Mark, I bet they’re hunkered down at Fort 501, scrambling to clean up their mess. P.S. AI robots might be a lot more efficient.

Bill H. March 21, 2025

Wagon Train
Which is it an ignorant mellenial or AI?
Are the wagons powered by pedaling?
There are no oxen or horses in that obviously fake color “photo”.
Maybe there is a locomotive pulling the wagons.

Why is this in the paper Bruce?

B Harper

- Bruce Anderson March 21, 2025
  
  I thought the artificial recreation of a wagon train was so obviously a recreation, it didn’t require pointing out. I liked the graphic, too.
  
  - Bob Abeles March 21, 2025
    
    The truly delightful side-effect of publishing AI generated garbage without labeling it is that it will get ingested via web scraping and become part of the training set for the next release of (fill in the blank) AI tool. Thus, AI pollutes itself and becomes progressively more useless. Progress marches on!
    
    Or, as we say in the computer trade, Garbage In, Garbage Out.
    
  - Jim Armstrong March 21, 2025
    
    Does “…graphic…” mean caption?
    I love wagon train photos but find this one (and the caption) kind of offensive.
    Actually, I think it, and other fakes like it, probably should start being marked as such.
    
Bill H. March 21, 2025

Balloon Guy

He had to put the burners on to climb over the ridge we are on at tree top level. i thought it was a D-9 coming through the woods. Very loud (notice the girl plugging her ears).
Scared the dog, who from then on barked at any noise like it.
Burning enough gas in an hour to heat your home for a month.
Thanks to all who called him out and got rid of this menace.

Bill H

- Matt Kendall March 21, 2025
  
  When I was a kid in Covelo, my brothers and I were out in the pasture between my parents and my grandmothers house. I heard a noise that I had never heard and looked up to see a US Navy A-6 intruder flying at tree top height.
  I will never forget my brothers and I ages 8 and 11 jumping up and down with excitement and waiving at the aircraft. That pilot circled around the valley and flew back over us wagging his wings. We could see him in the cockpit and he obviously saw us.
  Never going to forget that!
  
Bernie Norvell March 21, 2025

Tuesdays meeting,
I cannot argue that there is not a lot of meat in this agenda. However, staff is in in the middle of budget building,
Meeting with department heads to hear their needs. Hip camps was given back to planning and building and we should see that come back soon. Cannabis in on for Wednesday’s GGC meeting. There are in fact three closed session items on Tuesday’s agenda, 6a, 6b, 6c. We were told at the last BHAB meeting that the RFP for a PHF service provider was in the review process, per DR. Miller. Homeless encampments have not been forgotten and are being worked on. The county’s CORE program is new and still being worked on I hope to have some updates to share soon.

David Stanford March 21, 2025

ED NOTES
I ASKED former Boonville school superintendent, Louise Simson, for her opinion of the federal Department of Education. She said that the number of reports required of local superintendents by the feds is “crazy,” and too often don’t have anything to do with classroom education. Onerous bureaucracy, though, is not the reason the Maga Gang wants to eliminate the Ed Dept. They claim it’s teeming with ” by which they mean its funding should go to rightwing lunatics to teach the kids all about the days America was great, i.e., white, and free of ethnic and sexual minorities

What a stupid ass statement by a so called educator, she paints all megas as right wingers, as a former democrat and now registered as an independent sure glad she is not teaching my grand children!!!!!!!!!! So Sad

- peter boudoures March 21, 2025
  
  It’s been known for years that conservative kids aren’t welcome in public schools. Think they would be treated equally? Read the statements in this paper from local teachers. 2020 was the nail in the coffin. It’s war in their minds.
  
- Bruce Anderson March 21, 2025
  
  The superintendent was quote only once when she said that the federal reporting requirements were crazy. The rest of the comment is mine. I guess I should have paragraphed the separation from her to me, but most Americans able to competently decode their native tongue would have noted where she left off and I began.
  
Harvey Reading March 21, 2025

KTVU Fox

So, KTVU sold out to FAUX. When I lived in the bay area in the 70s the station was independent and had decent programming, including movies. I’m so glad to have left the wasteland California has become.

Marco McClean March 21, 2025

Re: the photographs. Miss America 1924: Ruth Malcomson (in the Miss Philadelphia sash) looks like Antonia Lamb did at that age. And far above that– the photo where Momma’s got a squeezebox– she looks very like my grandmother did. She had a squeezebox too.

16 Comments

Leave a Reply Cancel reply