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GENERAL GUSTY WINDS, showers and isolated thunderstorms with potential small hail are expected to continue through Tuesday along with moderate to heavy downpours today and Tuesday. Heavy mountain snow above 3000 feet elevation is anticipated through Tuesday, as well. Lingering showers through Wednesday, followed by dry weather for the remainder of the week are forecast. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): On the coast this last day of March I have light rain, 48F & .40" more rainfall collected. Light rain today & Tuesday then clearing appears to be the consensus forecast for the later week forecast finally.
THE SCHOOLBUS, THE ROUNDABOUT, THE CHP OFFICER & THE JUDGE
by Mark Scaramella
The roundabout south of Fort Bragg where Simpson Lane intersects with Highway 1 is the only roundabout on Highway 1 north of San Francisco. It was opened in 2018 after Caltrans did an analysis that concluded that a roundabout would be safer than a traffic signal.
Most California drivers are not familiar with roundabouts, even the simple ones like the one at Simpson Lane. If you’re driving west and heading north, the roundabout makes the right turn easy. But if you’re heading south, you have to enter the roundabout and drive around the center of the roundabout and exit in the southbound lane of Highway 1. In general traffic already in the roundabout has the right-of-way. Also, in general, you’re not supposed to stop in a roundabout, just slow down.
Caltrans insists that the roundabout is safer — therefore Caltrans lawyers say that a roundabout reduces Caltrans’ liability compared with a signaled intersection. They’re also supposed to be safer for bicyclists; and crashes, when they happen, are supposed to be less severe.
But what if there’s a school bus in the vicinity with its lights on and stop signs out?
That’s where things can get tricky.
Last December a Fort Bragg woman we’re calling “J” entered the roundabout on Simpson Lane. As she and a few other vehicles turned right onto Highway 1 northbound she saw a school bus across the road and then she saw that a CHP officer had parked in the nearby empty parking lot and was directing traffic to pull over. She and several northbound vehicles pulled over. Then J saw that that the southbound school bus had stopped with its lights on and stop signs out. J and a couple other drivers followed the car in front of her over onto the shoulder as directed and stopped. But by the time the four vehicles stopped on the shoulder, they had all passed the school bus.
The next thing J knew she and the three other drivers were all ticketed for not stopping for the school bus. “It’s for the kids,” the CHP officer explained, even though no kids could be seen at the time.
The tickets were $800 each.
A couple of J’s friends later urged her to go to court to explain that they were just doing as the CHP officer directed. If the officer hadn’t been there, J said, they would have stopped before any school bus violation.
In court a couple of weeks ago, the CHP officer told Ten Mile Court Judge Clay Brennan that he patrols the roundabout “all the time,” especially if there’s a school bus in the area.
“I told the judge that we were only following the officer’s instructions,” said J. “But the judge cut me off and didn’t want to hear me. The officer insisted that I said I didn’t see the school bus. But we did see it. I never said that. The bus was right there. Of course we saw it.”
The judge lowered the fine from $800 to $150 in an apparent attempt at compromise. “But now I have a traffic citation on my record when I did nothing wrong,” adds J. “I have to go to traffic school for $50 more to clear the violation and my insurance could go up. I have a perfect driving record.”
“All four people pulled over. All four people got tickets. What’s the probability that all four of us missed seeing the bus and carelessly drove past the bus’s stop sign?”
“I understand the rules and the reason behind it,” said J. “But kids don’t cross the road there. They don’t show them across the highway or anything. The kids just get off and stay on the other side of the road. There could have been kids getting off, but I didn’t see any.
“At this point I just want people to know to be careful at that roundabout intersection, especially if they see a CHP officer directing traffic. Be sure you don’t go past the bus while trying to follow his instructions.”
WATER: On March 26, 2025, the Mendocino County Water Agency (MCWA) released a comprehensive draft Drought Resilience Plan for public comment. Mendocino County’s Drought Resilience Plan is a stand-alone document that will be implemented along other state, County, and local planning documents.
The Drought Resilience Plan finds that 84% of domestic wells and 93% of state small water systems are at high risk of being impacted by water shortages and droughts, underscoring the importance of preparing for drought in Mendocino County.
For normal and wetter than normal water years, the plan identifies long-term mitigation actions to prepare for future droughts. The DRP also outlines a range of emergency response actions that would be triggered either Countywide or regionally (coastal and inland) at moderate and severe stages of drought.
The Drought Resilience Plan is being developed in fulfillment of the County’s obligations under Senate Bill 552 (SB 552).
SB 552 Overview
SB 552 requires state and local governments to share responsibility in planning and responding to water shortage events, particularly for state small water systems and communities supplied by domestic wells. This legislation requires all Counties in California to develop a DRP and establish a standing County Drought and Water Shortage Task Force Group (Drought Task Force).
Since 2021, when Governor Newsom signed SB 552 into law amid the historic 2020-2022 drought, Mendocino County has actively held regular Drought Task Force meetings to address water scarcity. In June 2024, MCWA hired EKI Environment & Water, Inc., as a technical lead and commenced development of the DRP.
DRP Development
At the State’s direction, the DRP was developed in four main sections: data collection, vulnerability/risk assessment, identification of short-term response actions and long-term mitigation strategies, and plan implementation. All four sections have now been completed, culminating in a draft DRP that is open for public comment from March 26 until April 25, 2025.
To incorporate public discussion and input into the development process, DRP agenda items were presented at the Drought Task Force meetings under the General Government Standing Committee (GGSC) meetings. Additionally, the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) has held two public workshops during development of the draft DRP.
After the commenting period closes on April 25 and comments are reviewed and addressed, a resolution will be brought to the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors on May 20, 2025, to authorize County staff to upload the final DRP to the DWR portal.
Why Comment?
Public participation is vital to the success of the DRP. By contributing your insights, experiences, and feedback, you will help shape both immediate and long-term strategies for addressing drought and water shortages. We seek participation from key community stakeholders, including domestic well owners, residents relying on local small water systems, tribes, and public water suppliers.
To submit a comment, please complete the General Commenting Form on the County DRP webpage. To allow County staff time to review and respond to comments, all comments must be submitted by April 25, 2025.
For updates and further information about the DRP process, please visit the County Drought Portal and DRP website, and sign up for email updates.
The draft DRP is available on the Mendocino County Drought Resilience Plan webpage: https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/departments/water-agency/drought-water-conservation/drought-resilience-plan
Submit a public comment via our online form: https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/departments/water-agency/drought-water-conservation/drought-resilience-plan/drp-general-commenting-form
Drought resources for community members are available on our Drought Portal, which was revamped in tandem with DRP development: https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/government/mendocino-county-water-agency/drought-water-conservation
Sign up for DRP updates: https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/departments/water-agency/drought-water-conservation/drought-resilience-plan/get-drp-email-updates
ED NOTES
HOME INVASIONS are expedited by Google Earth. Googling Boonville, for instance, you cannot only see the grows, you can easily figure out their addresses. Home invasions also still occur year-round these days because there are so many indoor grows. The indoor grows, of course, aren’t visible by satellite, but they’re just as prevalent as their outdoor cousins.
DEPUTY SQUIRES once said that the Boonville home invasions were the same extended family taking turns home invading each other.
72 YEARS AGO from the February 18, 1940, edition of the Fort Bragg Advocate: “It was announced today by A.N. Cruikshanks, director of the Fort Bragg Community Forum, that a complete spring series of forums will be presented in this city beginning on Friday evening in Cotton Auditorium. The Forum was able to obtain an exceptionally fine group of speakers who were officially endorsed by their various governments. The list included representatives of Japan, China and Nazi Germany.”
HMMM, February of 1940? Kinda late to be inviting the Nazis to redwood country, wasn’t it? And one has to wonder what the Chinese had to say to the Japanese in the aftermath of Japan’s infamous rape of Nanking in December of 1937. (Iris Chang’s excellent book on that terrible event is recommended reading.)
THE JAPANESE remain in denial about that one, joining the Turks in their ongoing claim that the Armenians just sort of disappeared, and the Zionist insistence that they alone made the uninhabited desert bloom, and our very own Judge Hastings of Eden Valley and Benicia, in whose name the famous law school was named, personally initiated the slaughter of Northcoast Indians by persuading the California legislature to hire Jarboe’s Rangers to systematically hunt inland Mendocino County’s Indians down and murder them. Jarboe himself, incidentally, became Ukiah’s very first cop.
DARRYL CHERNEY and the affiliated ghouls still profiting from the car bombing of Judi Bari in 1990, produced a hagiographic movie a few years ago depicting themselves heroically NOT finding the bomber. Cherney literally can’t afford to find the killer. I say killer because Bari enjoyed perfect health prior to the bomb but died of cancer in 1997. The bomb murdered her in slow motion. Cherney made a cool $2 million off a phony federal lawsuit arising from the FBI’s and the Oakland Police Department’s bumblingly premature arrest of Bari and Cherney for knowingly transporting the device. Bari later publicly fingered her ex, Mike Sweeney.
OUT of the proceeds of the phony federal suit which, not so incidentally, was carefully co-edited by the feds and Bari and Cherney’s lawyers to excise any mention of who might have done it, Cherney and Bari, having raised several million on the promise that they’d plant whole forests of trees, bought himself a pot farm near Garberville. Maybe Cherney used some of the money to make the see-through film, stupid even by their dim lights. They called their film Who Bombed Judi Bari?, production values and script lifted from Kim Il Sung-like. (The winning proceeds from the federal suit never planted a single tree.)
THE NORTHCOAST being a kind of open-air witness protection program, where everyone is whatever he or she says he or she is, Cherney’s self-interested version of the spectacular 1990 events still prevails on the skepticism-short Northcoast where KMUD, KZYX and KPFA shut out contrary views of the cash and carry event. An honest inquiry into the bombing, portrayed in Cherney’s film as a “mystery,” was made by Steve Talbot of KQED in 1990. It’s also called Who Bombed Judi Bari? But unlike the mercenary crew who’ve produced Cherney’s epic, Talbot is a well-known writer and documentary filmmaker whose work is often seen on Frontline. Talbot’s film points to Bari’s ex-husband, Mike Sweeney, as the bomber. In fact, Bari told Talbot during his production of his documentary, that she thought Sweeney bombed her.
SWEENEY, a man with connections to murders and bombs all the way back to the 1960s, is a cunning little sociopath who has went on to reinvent himself as a respectable citizen. As per the long local tradition of Mendo self-makeovers, Sweeney, with a big boost from the local Democratic Party, became Mendocino County’s well-paid chief garbage bureaucrat.
IN THE TURBULENT 1960’s and late into the 1970’s, Sweeney was affiliated with a Maoist terrorist gang calling themselves Venceremos. When the “revolutionary” fad ended, Sweeney, by then married to Bari, was living near Santa Rosa where he and Bari made a nice living shaking down Hewlett-Packard over the corporation’s development plans. It was in his Santa Rosa incarnation that Sweeney blew up a hangar at the old Naval airfield west of the Rose City. He was annoyed, you see, by the air traffic on weekends.
OUR HERO — presently retired to New Zealand — and Bari, having successfully made a nice hunk of dough off a lawsuit against H-P moved to Redwood Valley here in Amnesia County. They soon separated because Sweeney rightly objected to Bari’s affiliations with Cherney and other undesirables, especially as those undesirables influenced the couple’s two young daughters. (Whatever else you might say about Sweeney, he was a responsible parent.)
THE SWEENEY-BARI break-up was not a happy separation, to say the least. Sweeney threatened Bari with a court fight for custody of their children while Bari threatened to go public with Sweeney’s prior life as a political maniac. Women have been murdered for less reason, but somehow Sweeney, when the bomb exploded in his wife’s car in Oakland, was almost immediately excluded from the suspect pool, and has remained excluded by both the FBI and Cherney and Company, co-dependents, in my opinion, in an ongoing conspiracy to protect Sweeney. And here we are 35 years down the line and these creeps are still lying about the case and protecting the bomber. Or bombers.
VACAVILLE’S CLAIM TO FAME: I’m talking about “Last Resort,” the 2000 hit single by Papa Roach, which will probably outlive us all, much like the band’s namesake. Decades after its release on “Infest,” the rap-rock anthem is still cemented in the public’s collective memory, becoming a karaoke classic with more than a billion listens on Spotify and hundreds of millions of views on YouTube alone. Now, to commemorate the studio album’s 25th anniversary, Vacaville’s paragons of nu metal return to the stage for a victory tour across the U.S.
ED NOTE: OH, YEAH? Well, Green Day came outta Spy Rock (Deep Laytonville) and Willits, and you can ask Larry Livermore if you don’t believe me.
FIRST FRIDAY AT GRACE HUDSON
Grace Hudson Museum will be open as always for First Friday, from 5 to 8 p.m. on April 4. Musical guests will be renowned guitarist Clay Hawkins, accompanied by Andrew Robertson on standup bass. Visitors can tour the Museum’s latest exhibit, “Reclamation: Aboriginal Ancestral Homeland and Resilience of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe.” Or get reacquainted with the core galleries, featuring Grace Hudson’s artwork, exquisite Pomo basketry, and Carpenter-Hudson family history. With spring arriving amid plentiful rains, there are sure to be wildflowers blooming in the Wild Gardens. Light refreshments will be available.
The Grace Hudson Museum is at 431 S. Main St. in Ukiah. The Museum is open with free admission all day and evening from 10 a.m. on First Friday. For more information please go to www.gracehudsonmuseum.org or call (707) 467-2836.
TOWN HALL WITH JARED HUFFMAN AND CHRIS ROGERS
Join Congressman Jared Huffman and special guest Assemblymember Chris Rogers, AD-2, for a town hall on Friday April 4th from 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm at Mendocino College, Ukiah Campus. Rep. Huffman will provide an update from Washington D.C., share plans as Ranking Member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, discuss the new Trump Administration, and take questions from participants. A livestream of the town hall will be available on Mendocino Coast Media - Comcast Channel 3 or Channel 64; and also on KZYX & Z radio at 88.1, 90.7, and 91.5 FM, and kzyx.org.
Friday, April 4th, 5:00 pm (PDT) - 6:30 pm (PDT)
In-Person with RSVP: Mendocino College Ukiah Campus, Center for Visual and Performing Arts, 1000 Hensley Creek Rd, Ukiah, CA 95482. RSVP here. Priority will be given to constituents of California’s Second District on a first-come, first-served basis.
If you would like to attend in-person, RSVP by Thursday, April 3rd at 5 PM. Please click here to RSVP. Guests will be admitted on a first-come, first-served basis. An RSVP does not guarantee admittance. Large bags or backpacks and signs will not be permitted in the venue. Please contact Huffman.Response@mail.house.gov if you need translation assistance.
If you have questions please contact the office at (415) 258-9657. Please do not reply to this email.
Hope to see you there,
Office of Congressman Jared Huffman
A national day of mobilization sponsored by Indivisible. Stand up against those who believe they can take whatever they want--our democracy, our future, our rights.
Ukiah event at the Courthouse from 10 am to 12 p.m.
A rally with speakers and music.
CALL FOR ARTISTS for Fort Bragg Open Studios July 19th and 20th.
Deadline to apply is April 30th.
Contact : Neno at nvillamor@gmail.com or Thani at swansong26@comcast.net
PASS ON THE MAC-N-CHEESE
by Tommy Wayne Kramer
In California ‘foodies’ are snooty sorts who browse their tiny plates of wild-sourced, shade grown servings of French herbs with Peruvian potatoes on the side and a delicate sauce applied with an eyedropper. They sip Calabria juice and drive vehicles made anywhere but the USA.
In North Carolina “foodies” are people who like to eat food, and boy do they. They drive Ford F-150s.
North Carolinians enjoy barbecue and deep-fried chicken, and that’s for breakfast, midnight snacks and all consumption opportunities in between. Regional fare is debated, sometimes by shouting. BBQ sauce schisms divide North and South Carolina more clearly than state boundaries.
But a food that unites everyone everywhere is Macaroni and Cheese, abbreviated by them, and you, as good ol’ Mac-n-Cheese. It appears on more North Carolina menus than salad.
Mac-n-Cheese is the state meal. The North Carolina state flag features three steaming bowls of Mac-n-Cheese on a field of blue, and a crossed Knife & Fork above the Latin phrase ’Sede. Comedite.’ A tiny winged pink pig hovers above the emblem.
Down here, family mac-n-cheese recipes are passed along from generation to generation. These recipes, some written 200-plus years ago on tree bark, are more fiercely guarded than spouses or trucks.
I don’t know where all the pasta fields and Velveeta farms are located, but I’d like to plant a few hundred rows of macaroni bushes in my back yard. You never know when artisanal pasta products might catch on down here, and the guy who corners the inside track on fresh organic elbow macaroni will have a lucrative market not seen since cotton was king.
The problem: I have yet to find even one restaurant serving a mac-n-cheese dish you would feed your dog. Maybe your kids, but not your dog.
Macaroni and cheese in North Carolina is uniformly bland and tasteless. It sits on the plate an unhappy congealed mess of gluey pale yellow sauce so thick you could dilute it with a hundred gallons of water and it still wouldn’t pass through an eyedropper.
North Carolina cheese sauce squeezes, barely, through four-inch pipes at some well-hidden central cheese goo processing facility. The sauce is sometimes used to hang wallpaper.
Kraft Macaroni and Cheese has a better version of the stuff Trophy and I had yesterday at an upscale sandwich shop. It, along with cole slaw, fried green tomatoes and boiled yams were the side dishes offered; as always I gambled on the mac-n-cheese. And as always I left two-thirds of it in a fat lump on the small plate it arrived on.
In a state populated by tens of millions of eager mac-n-cheese eaters, why is it the state’s most popular menu item is uniformly and predictably uninspiring and dismal? Why can’t one chef in one kitchen mix in some bacon, onion, good quality cheese(s) and when it emerges from the kettle, sprinkle another fistful of good quality cheese along with some bread crumbs and grated parmesan, then run it under the broiler for 30 seconds?
Why not? Why not make a mac-n-cheese that would revolutionize the sickly dish and turn it into something North Carolinians could justifiably brag about? And wouldn’t the chef who performed this gourmet miracle appear in food and recipe magazines all over the country?
Our cuisine conquering hero might then return to North Carolina and run for Governor, unopposed.
Willits Goes Upscale
Whatever it is they’re doing in Willits to survive the dearth of (illicit) marijuana money ought to be copied, purchased or stolen by Ukiah’s leaders.
New good-quality eateries have sprung open, along with a knockout of a new brewery (The North Spur) on the north side of town. The Noyo Theater, under new ownership, is running the kinds of movies I’d like to see, and has split itself into four-screens in four theaters, with at least one featuring recliner seats and cocktails.
Somebody wake me up.
My friend Kip, who’s lived in Willits since Highway 101 was a dirt road and the town was called Willitsville, says it’s hard to keep up with the businesses opening and the economy swelling.
All that has to happen in Willits now is build the Highway 101 bypass and get rid of the 18-wheelers rolling through the middle of town.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, March 30, 2025
MARBELLA BAEZ, 52, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery.
CARLOS GARCIA-ARENAS, 24, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, probation violation.
ROYCE FULTON, 41, Ukiah. Secretly recording identifiable person without consent or knowledge to arouse, etc., failure to appear.
FRANK KEECH, 59, Ukiah. Dometic violence court order violation, unspecified offenses.
KEVIN LEONARD, 30, Ukiah. Vandalism.
LEAH MCKAY, 41, Willits. Domestic battery.
STEVEN NOVOA, 44, Ukiah. Probation revocation.
DEANNA RENFORT, 49, Willits. Under influence, paraphernalia.
ALICE STRANG, 46, Redwood Valley. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting.
JUAN VEGA-GARCIA, 25, Ukiah. Domestic battery.
FRED GARDNER: Facial Recognition.
This PGE Regional Vice President…
moonlights in a Toyota ad.
I wonder why?
GIANTS’ ROBBIE RAY WOBBLES AFTER 5 PERFECT INNINGS, BUT OFFENSE SAVES THE DAY
by Shayna Rubin
Cincinnati — Robbie Ray didn’t need to throw hard. Command of his four-seam fastball set the tone for his strong season debut in which he flirted with perfection and paved the way for the San Francisco Giants‘ 6-3 series-clinching win over the Cincinnati Reds on Sunday afternoon.
Working his four-seamer at every corner of the zone, incorporating his slider and, at times, the new changeup, the Giants’ starter didn’t allow a single member of the Cincinnati Reds lineup reach base through his first five innings. As the offense built a four-run lead for him, thoughts of a perfect game, or at least a no-hitter crept into Ray’s mind — it was at Great American Ball Park, after all, that former Giants starter Blake Snell no-hit the Reds last year. And Ray was in that kind of rhythm, rolling toward the late innings.
“Guys say they don’t know,” Ray said. “You always know. You just try not to think about it.”
Unfortunate, then, that Ray’s rhythm was interrupted. Gavin Lux ended Ray’s perfect game bid in the sixth, hitting a first-pitch fastball for a single. Third baseman Matt Chapman kept things moving with a difficult play to get Blake Dunn out at first, but a pitch clock violation in the next at-bat completely threw Ray out of whack.
“I was frustrated,” Ray said. “I didn’t think it was a violation. I’m pretty sure I started before it got to zero. I have to go back and look at it, but it definitely was frustrating because it messes up my pitch sequencing in that at-bat.”
Ray paced around the mound between pitches, then threw a hanging slider that Austin Wynns hit for a two-run home run. Matt McLain then went back-to-back to make it 4-3. A visit from pitching coach J.P. Martinez couldn’t do much to settle Ray down as he issued a four-pitch walk to Santiago Espinal and, soon, manager Bob Melvin was out to take the ball. Ray went 5⅓ innings, allowing three runs on three hits with one walk and four strikeouts on 78 pitches.
“We move on, we won,” Ray said. “It’s a big team win and big series win to start the season. That’s all that matters right now.”
Ray and the Giants were fortunate to get that four-run lead early.
Reds starter Nick Martinez was throwing the kitchen sink at them, preventing a single Giants baserunner himself until Heliot Ramos broke the seal with a solo home run in the fifth. In the sixth, Jung Hoo Lee hit an RBI double — one of his two hits — that scored Tyler Fitzgerald, who had doubled.
Chapman then delivered two winning plays.
First, he extended the lead in the sixth when he cranked a two-run home run to left field, his first of the year. Then came a defensive gem with the Giants up three in the eighth inning and Cincinnati getting the potential tying run to the plate. Reliever Tyler Rogers got Espinal to hit a soft, but shallow groundball. It was food for Chapman, who in one motion charged, scooped the ball, tagged the runner advancing toward third base and got Espinal at first base with a half-second to spare. Chapman’s running motion had him down the visiting dugout steps before his teammates could digest the 5-3 double play.
“Experience helps, being in tune with the game,” Chapman said. “Sometimes if you let the game show you what to do, good things will happen. I saw the runner coming and was able to run right into that tag and throw it across the diamond. Usually on defense, I feel like I’m under control and able to make those plays.”
The Giants used a little small ball to create a cushier lead in the eighth inning. Fitzgerald reached first on an error by shortstop Elly De La Cruz and advanced to second on LaMonte Wade Jr.‘s sacrifice bunt. Fitzgerald then stole third base — the umpire initially called him out on Wynns’ throw, but the call was challenged and reversed.
“I was really bummed. Not going to lie,” said Wynns. “It was a big momentum swing too right there. Because I was like all right, and you know Willy (Adames). He’s looking for something up in the zone he can hit in the air.”
As Wynns suspected, Adames’ sacrifice fly was just deep enough to score Fitzgerald. Then Lee got his second hit of the game and Chapman walked to set up Ramos for an RBI single to make it 6-3.
Notably, Camilo Doval pitched the ninth and got the save over closer Ryan Walker. Walker experienced back tightness after pitching in the series opener Thursday, Melvin said, and was sidelined Saturday and Sunday. The Giants don’t think the injury is too serious and expect him to be ready to pitch on Monday in Houston, if needed. For now, Melvin got to experience the luxury of having an All-Star closer to back up his current one. Doval struck out one in a perfect ninth inning.
“We’re lucky to have that dynamic,” Melvin said. “Someone who has pitched in that role before and been successful before. If ever you can withstand something like that, it’s having someone like Duvy that everyone feels confident in.”
Rotation outlook: Logan Webb will stay on regular rest and pitch Tuesday in Houston, pushing Landen Roupp‘s season debut to Wednesday. The hope is that Hayden Birdsong can be fresh to sop up innings in long relief during the Astros series, when the rest of the bullpen is taxed.
CALIFORNIA STARS
by Woody Guthrie
I’d like to rest my heavy head tonight
On a bed of California stars
I’d like to lay my weary bones tonight
On a bed of California stars
I’d love to feel your hand touching mine
And tell me why I must keep working on
Yes, I’d give my life to lay my head tonight
On a bed of California stars
I’d like to dream my troubles all away
On a bed of California stars
Jump up from my starbed and make another day
Underneath my California stars
They hang like grapes on vines that shine
And warm the lovers glass like friendly wine
So, I’d give this world just to dream a dream with you
On our bed of California stars
BILL KIMBERLIN:
This was the building “C” theater at our studio in Marin County. Originally, it was designed as the mixing theater for what became Skywalker Sound. I sometimes gave a tour to whatever VIPs we were courting. The theater was hung independently from the building’s structure itself so as to not transfer loud sounds in or out. There were very thick doors to enter and then a sort of air lock space and then another set of air lock doors before you entered the theater itself. When we ran a film the sound was extraordinary. When I brought people in to view it, their first words were invariably, “Wow”. Never varied.
A MOMENT AT TARGET MADE 49ERS’ BROCK PURDY REALIZE HE’S SUPER FAMOUS NOW
by Alex Simon
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy came out of nowhere to become an NFL superstar. That sudden rise to stardom came with a hefty adjustment period.
Earlier this week, Purdy was a guest on the “Built 4 More” podcast, hosted by quarterback trainer Denny Thompson and Jacksonville-based pastor Joby Martin. In a wide-ranging discussion focused on faith, football and more, Thompson asked Purdy how his life has changed since becoming the starting quarterback of the 49ers. Purdy mostly focused on how things have changed since he married his wife Jenna (nee Brandt), a former college volleyball player who also went to Iowa State.
“Friends, family, it’s like, dude, we love everybody in our life, and it’s like we want to get back to everybody and share our life with everybody, as if everything was normal. But it’s just slightly changed,” Purdy said. “You can’t get back to everybody all the time. Jenna and I, since getting married, it’s been about Jenna and us and our relationship and marriage. From there it’s like, ‘OK, how can we love everybody in our life?’ It’s been tough, I’m not going to lie.
“I put that like it’s a burden on my shoulders, because I don’t want to change because of the spotlight or the platform. I’m still the same kid from Queen Creek, Arizona, and I’m prideful about that, in terms of being the same kid with the same heart, same classmate and teammate growing up all those years. So that hurts when I’m not able to get back to everybody.”
Purdy said the couple has had to “do a little more planning and mapping out” whenever they go out in public, whether it’s on a big vacation or even just a night out for dinner. That change hit hard on a trip to a Target back in Arizona in early 2023, he explained.
“We went to a Target to grocery shop and stuff. People back home just started taking pictures, and then we’re on TikToks, and all these people at the store were asking for pictures,” Purdy said, adding the attention upset his wife. “And she started crying. She’s like, ‘This is tough. You know, we’re not able to do normal life things.’ And it is tough, and we’ve had to learn that. We’re still learning it.”
Another change they discussed was Purdy’s living situation. The quarterback famously lived with teammates for his first two years with the 49ers, which NBC turned into a massive storyline in October 2023. Purdy moved into his own place in 2024 (something roommate and teammate Nick Zakelj joked about ahead of time), but when Thompson offered a joke about it, Purdy chided the broadcast network for overdramatizing the living setup.
“They took that and ran with it, saying I was like Harry Potter, living underneath the staircase,” Purdy said. “I was like, ‘Really?’”
It was a notable peek behind the curtain for the notoriously wooden and private Purdy. For 49ers fans, though, the biggest topic of interest — Purdy’s potentially massive contract extension that has people extremely divided — didn’t get discussed on the podcast.
(SFGate.com)
I COME FROM A FAMILY where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.
— Flannery O’Connor
A RABBIT WALKS INTO A PUB and says to the barman,
“Can I have a pint of beer, and a Ham and Cheese Toastie?”
The barman is amazed, but gives the rabbit a pint of beer and a ham and cheese toastie.
The rabbit drinks the beer and eats the toastie. He then leaves.
The following night the rabbit returns and again asks for a pint of beer, and a Ham and Cheese Toastie.
The barman, now intrigued by the rabbit and the extra drinkers in the pub (because word gets round), gives the rabbit the pint and the Toastie. The rabbit consumes them and leaves.
The next night, the pub is packed.
In walks the rabbit and says, “A pint of beer and a Ham and Cheese Toastie, please barman.”
The crowd is hushed as the barman gives the rabbit his pint and toastie, and then bursts into applause as the rabbit wolfs them down.
The next night there is standing room only in the pub.
Coaches have been laid on for the crowds of patrons attending.
The barman is making more money in one week than he did all last year
In walks the rabbit and says, “A pint of beer and a Ham and Cheese Toastie, please barman.”
The barman says, “I’m sorry rabbit, old mate, old mucker, but we are right out of them Ham and Cheese Toasties.”
The rabbit looks aghast.
The crowd has quietened to almost a whisper, when the barman clears his throat nervously and says, “We do have a very nice Cheese and Onion Toastie.”
The rabbit looks him in the eye and says, “Are you sure I will like it.”
The crowd’s bated breath is ear-shatteringly silent.
The barman, with a roguish smile says, “Do you think that I would let down one of my best friends. I know you’ll love it.”
“Ok,” says the rabbit, ‘I’ll have a pint of beer and a Cheese and Onion Toastie.’
The pub erupts with glee as the rabbit quaffs the beer and wolfs down the toastie.
He then waves to the crowd and leaves.
Never to return!
One year later, in the now impoverished public house, the barman (who has only served four drinks tonight, three of which were his own), calls closing time.
When he is cleaning down the now empty bar, he sees a small white form, floating above the bar.
The barman says, “Who are you?”
To which he is answered, “I am the ghost of the rabbit that used to frequent your public house.”
The barman says, “I remember you. You made me famous. You would come in every night and have a pint of beer and a Ham and Cheese Toastie. Masses came to see you and this place was famous.”
The rabbit says, “Yes I know.”
The barman said, “And I remember, on your last night we didn’t have any Ham and Cheese Toasties. You had a Cheese and Onion one instead.”
The rabbit said, “Yes, you promised me that I would love it.”
The barman said, “You never came back, what happened?”
“I DIED,” said the rabbit.
“NO!” said the barman. “What from?”
After a short pause, the rabbit said …
“Mixin-me-toasties.”
I KNOW the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started.
— Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
BLOODSHOT EYES
by Hank Penny & Ruth Hall (1949)
Now, just because you're pretty, and you think you're mighty wise
You tell me that you love me, then you roll your big blue eyes
But when I saw you last week, your eyes were turnin' black
Go find the guy that beat you up and ask him to take you back
Hey, don't roll those bloodshot eyes at me
I can tell you've been out on a spree
Well it's plain that you're lyin'
When you say you've been cryin'
So don't roll those bloodshot eyes at me
I used to spend my money just to make you look real sweet
I wanted to be proud of you when we walked down the street
But don't expect me to dress you up in satins and in silk
When your eyes look like two cherries in a glass of buttermilk
Now, don't roll those bloodshot eyes at me
God, I can tell you've been out on a spree
Well it's plain that you are stallin'
When you say you've been squallin'
So don't roll those bloodshot eyes at me
Well, I guess our little romance has finally simmered down
Now you outta join a circus, man, you'd make a real good clown
Your eyes look like a road map, I'm scared to smell your breath (Ha!)
You'd better shut your peepers 'fore you bleed to death
Now, don't roll those bloodshot eyes at me
I can tell you've been out on a spree
Well you've had your cake and eat it
So baby, go and beat it
But don't roll those bloodshot eyes at me
A FEW WORDS FOR MOTHERHOOD
by Wendell Berry (1980)
It is the season of motherhood again, and we are preoccupied with the pregnant and the unborn. When birth is imminent, especially with a ewe or a mare, we are at the barn the last thing before we go to bed, at least once in the middle of the night, and well before daylight in the morning. It is a sort of joke here that we have almost never had anything born in the middle of the night. And yet somebody must get up and go out anyway. With motherhood, you don't argue probabilities.
I set the alarm, but always wake up before it goes off. Some part of the mind is given to the barn, these times, and you can't put it to sleep. For a few minutes after I wake up, I lie there wondering where I will get the will and the energy to drag myself out of bed again. Anxiety takes care of that: maybe the ewe has started into labor, and is in trouble. But it isn't just anxiety. It is curiosity too, and the eagerness for new life that goes with motherhood. I want to see what nature and breeding and care and the passage of time have led to. If I open the barn door and hear a little bleat coming out of the darkness, I will be glad to be awake. My liking for that always returns with a force that surprises me.
These are bad times for motherhood — a kind of biological drudgery, some say; using up women who could do better things. Thoreau may have been the first to assert that people should not belong to farm animals, but the idea is now established doctrine with many farmers — and it has received amendments to the effect that people should not belong to children, or to each other. But we all have to belong to something, if only to the idea that we should not belong to anything. We all have to be used up by something. And though I will never be a mother, I am glad to be used up by motherhood and what it leads to, just as — most of the time — I gladly belong to my wife, my children, and several head of cattle, sheep, and horses. What better way to be used up? How else to be a farmer?
There are good arguments against female animals that need help in giving birth; I know what they are, and have gone over them many times. And yet — if the ordeal is not too painful or too long, and if it succeeds — I always wind up a little grateful to the ones that need help. Then I get to take part, get to go through the process another time, and I invariably come away from it feeling instructed and awed and pleased.
My wife and son and I find the heifer in a far corner of the field. In maybe two hours of labor she has managed to give birth to one small foot. We know how it has been with her. Time and again she has lain down and heaved at her burden, and got up and turned and smelled the ground. She is a heifer — how does she know that something is supposed to be there?
It takes some doing even for the three of us to get her into the barn. Her orders are to be alone, and she does all in her power to obey. But finally we shut the door behind her and get her into a stall. She isn't wild; once she is confined it isn't even necessary to tie her. I wash in a bucket of icy water and soap my right hand and forearm. She is quiet now. And so are we humans — worried, and excited too, for if there is a chance for failure here, there is also a chance for success.
I loop a bale string onto the calf's exposed foot, knot the string short around a stick which my son then holds. I press my hand gently into the birth canal until I find the second foot and then, a little further on, a nose. I loop a string around the second foot, fasten on another stick for a handhold. And then we pull. The heifer stands and pulls against us for a few seconds, then gives up and goes down. We brace ourselves the best we can into our work, pulling as the heifer pushes. Finally the head comes, and then, more easily, the rest.
We clear the calf's nose, help him to breathe, and then because the heifer has not yet stood up, we lay him on the bedding in front of her. And what always seems to me the miracle of it begins. She has never calved before. If she ever saw another cow calve, she paid little attention. She has, as we humans say, no education and no experience. And yet she recognizes the calf as her own, and knows what to do for it. Some heifers don't, but most do, as this one does. Even before she gets up, she begins to lick it about the nose and face with loud, vigorous swipes of her tongue. And all the while she utters a kind of moan, meant to comfort, encourage, and reassure — or so I understand it.
How does she know so much? How did all this come about? Instinct. Evolution. I know those words. I understand the logic of the survival of the fittest: good mothering instincts have survived because bad mothers lost their calves: the good traits triumphed, the bad perished. But how come some are fit in the first place? What prepared in the mind of the first cow or ewe or mare — or, for that matter, in the mind of the first human mother — this intricate, careful, passionate welcome to the newborn? I don't know. I don't think anybody does. I distrust any mortal who claims to know. We call these animals dumb brutes, and so far as we can tell they are more or less dumb, and there are certainly times when those of us who live with them will seem to find evidence that they are plenty stupid. And yet, they are indisputably allied with intelligence more articulate and more refined than is to be found in any obstetrics textbook. What is one to make of it? Here is a dumb brute lying in dung and straw, licking her calf, and as always I am feeling honored to be associated with her.
The heifer has stood up now, and the calf is trying to stand, wobbling up onto its hind feet and knees, only to be knocked over by an exuberant caress of its mother's tongue. We have involved ourselves too much in this story by now to leave before the end, but we have our chores to finish too, and so to hasten things I lend a hand.
I help the calf onto his feet and maneuver him over to the heifer's flank. I am not supposed to be there, but her calf is, and so she accepts, or at least permits, my help. In these situations it sometimes seems to me that animals know that help is needed, and that they accept it with some kind of understanding. The thought moves me, but I am never sure, any more than I am sure what the cow means by the low moans she makes as the calf at last begins to nurse. To me, they sound like praise and encouragement — but how would I know?
Always when I hear that little smacking as the calf takes hold of the tit and swallows its first milk, I feel a pressure of laughter under my ribs. I am not sure what that means either. It certainly affirms more than the saved money value of the calf and the continued availability of beef. We all three feel it. We look at each other and grin with relief and satisfaction. Life is on its legs again, and we exult.
IF MAN'S IMAGINATION were not so weak, so easily tired, if his capacity for wonder not so limited, he would abandon forever such fantasies of the supernatural. He would learn to perceive in water, leaves and silence more than sufficient of the absolute and marvelous, more than enough to console him for the loss of the ancient dreams.
— Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire (1968)
LEAD STORIES, MONDAY'S NYT
Trump Says He’s ‘Not Joking’ About Seeking a Third Term in Defiance of Constitution
Greenland’s Prime Minister Says the U.S. Will Not ‘Get’ the Island
Trump’s U.S.A.I.D. Cuts Hobble Earthquake Response in Myanmar
Haiti Doesn’t Make Guns. So How Are Gangs Awash in Them?
Skateboarders Are Defying Gravity Once Again
“SOMETIMES during the night I’d look at my poor sleeping mother cruelly crucified there in the American night because of no-money, no-hope-of-money, no family, no nothing, just myself the stupid son of plans all of them compacted of eventual darkness. God how right Hemingway was when he said there was no remedy for life - and to think that negative little paper-shuffling prissies should write condescending obituaries about a man who told the truth, nay who drew breath in pain to tell a tale like that!”
— Jack Kerouac, ‘Desolation Angels’
TRUMP SAYS HE’S ‘NOT JOKING’ ABOUT THIRD TERM — AND NOTES THIS APPARENT LOOPHOLE: ‘THERE ARE METHODS’
by Steven Nelson
President Trump said he’s “not joking” about serving a third term in the White House — and thinks there’s a loophole to make it happen.
Trump, 78, told NBC’s Kristen Welker in a Sunday morning phone call that “a lot of people want me to do it.”
Trump claimed that “there are methods which you could do it,” including having Vice President JD Vance, 40, run for president with Trump as his vice president. Vance would then resign to allow Trump to regain the top job.
“But there are others too,” Trump said, without further elaboration.
The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, says “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice” — allowing for the potential loophole of Vance resigning in Trump’s favor.
“I mean, I basically tell them we have a long way to go, you know, it’s very early in the administration. I’m focused on the current,” the president said.
Trump explained he’s interested in potentially serving as president until 2033 because ”I like working.”
“I’m not joking,” the billionaire developer and former reality TV star told Welker. “But I’m not — it is far too early to think about it.”
Trump has repeatedly mentioned potentially serving a third term, though initially the idea was perceived as a way to troll Democrats and to avoid the perception that he’s a term-limited lame duck, which would sap his influence as politicians court potential successors.
Trump carried all seven swing states last year and says he’d be interested in serving longer because he likes to work.
The president has been greeted at several recent public events with chants of “four more years!” in recognition of that notion.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the only American president elected to more than two terms — dying partway through his fourth. Presidents traditionally served just two terms, following George Washington’s example, until FDR’s presidency, which prompted the Constitution to be amended to make it a rule.
Trump, the second president in US history to serve non-consecutive terms, is set to be the oldest-ever commander-in-chief when he completes his second term in January 2029 at age 82 and seven months — beating out former President Joe Biden, who left office in January at age 82 and two months.
He would be nearing age 87 at the end of a hypothetical third term.
Trump said one possibility is having JD Vance run for president in 2028, and then resign to allow another Trump term.
Biden was forced by fellow Democrats to abandon his quest for a second term last July as doubts were raised about his cognitive fitness, paving the way for then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ doomed campaign. She ultimately lost all seven swing states to Trump.
However, a small handful of leaders have led major Western democracies well into old age.
West Germany’s Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was 87 when he resigned in 1963 — after 14 years in power — and is historically well-regarded for his accomplishments in rebuilding his country from the aftermath of World War II.
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) in January introduced a constitutional amendment to allow Trump to be elected to a third term, though that the legislation would need to be passed by two-thirds of the House and Senate and then be ratified by three-fourths of states — likely an impossibility due to Democratic opposition.
GERMANY AFTER HITLER
by Christian Caryl
On May 8, 1945, the Third Reich came to an end. Eighty million Germans confronted an apocalyptic scene. The economy lay in ruins, shattered by years of aerial bombing and months of ferocious ground combat; in many cities barely a building remained intact. Government-issued currency had lost so much of its value that it was supplanted as a primary medium of exchange by cigarettes. The victorious powers stripped the country of a quarter of its territory, and 14 million ethnic Germans from areas ceded to the USSR, Poland, and Czechoslovakia began a long trek to join their compatriots in the West.
Germans had spent the war years in comparatively privileged circumstances thanks to the Nazi regime’s exploitation of conquered territories. Now they faced starvation, epidemics, and homelessness.
In July 1946, the average German man in his 20s weighed 130 pounds. By February 1948, that had dropped to 114 pounds.
In some ways, the moral and spiritual consequences of the defeat were even more devastating than the material ones. The Third Reich stood exposed in the eyes of the world as a criminal state. The systematic murder of six million European Jews led a long list of German sins.
The gas chambers and the execution pits had also claimed Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, and disabled people; concentration camps housed dissidents across the political spectrum, from Communists to priests.
Nazi Germany had conquered Europe and governed its conquests on the assumption that it could exploit defeated people and their resources without any legal or ethical constraint. In the course of the war, the Third Reich and its fascist allies had slaughtered countless Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Yugoslavs, often treating noncombatant civilians just as viciously as they did uniformed soldiers. Millions of slave laborers were taken from their home countries and subjected to lethal working conditions.
The sheer scale of German defeat underlined the moral failures of the Nazi regime. Six million soldiers were dead or missing. The combat veterans who managed to make it home were often physically and emotionally crippled. For many of them, their sense of emasculation was compounded by the fact that their wives had been empowered by the war, which had pushed them into jobs and responsibilities they now found hard to relinquish.
In the East, the widespread rape of women by Soviet soldiers had dramatized the inability of their absent husbands to defend them. In the West, the swagger and wealth of GIs, boasting ample quantities of “nylon stockings, chocolate and cigarettes,” made for a different form of humiliation. (The actress Hildegard Knef called the Americans “taut soldiers with tight bottoms and fixed bayonets”; she later married one.)
Even on a purely emotional level, the vaunted “master race” was now irrefutably under the mastery of others in every sense that counted. As the Allies became occupiers, they braced themselves for partisan warfare by forces still loyal to the Führer — the infamous “werewolves.” Yet the anticipated guerrilla war never materialized — one more testimony to the finality of the regime’s collapse.
After World War I many Germans had succumbed to conspiracy theories tha absolved the military from defeat or the battlefield and blamed it instead on alleged Jewish intriguers in the government (the so-called stab-in-the-back myth).
In 1945 it was hard to blame anyone for the catastrophe but the all-powerful leader who had so clearly led the country into the war. Indeed, in the ensuing decades, the unsurpassably evil Hitler offered a useful alibi to many Germans wishing to conceal their own complicity. As German historians show, many sought refuge from the heavy weight of the past by trying to assert their own forms of victimhood.
Yet even if most Germans didn’t believe that they bore personal responsibility for the crimes of the regime, there was still an inescapable sense of guilt. There is ample evidence that many experienced Allied bombing raids as direct retribution for the atrocities committed against the Jews. Most ordinary Germans hadn’t known the precise details of the extermination program, which the Nazi government had tried to keep secret. But the scale of the crime precluded the complete ignorance that many later tried to claim.
Modern scholarship concludes that at least 200,000 people were directly involved in implementing the Holocaust, and that number doesn’t include the many soldiers of the regular armed forces who also took part in genocidal actions. (Many Germans persisted for years in clinging to the idea that the regular German army, the Wehrmacht, had remained unsullied by the unspeakable crimes of the SS, but subsequent scholarship revealed this to be yet another myth.) Too many had been involved in the savagery.
Still, this morally compromised Germany gradually began to find its way forward. Denazification produced wildly different results in the two halves of the divided nation.
The East, deeming itself free of any responsibility for the Nazi era, promoted a version of history in which Communists were the Nazis’ main victims and that gave little acknowledgment to the Holocaust. In its early years the West lurched between confronting the past and effacing it. Even so, the purge of the highest-ranking Nazis on both sides of the divide in the years immediately after the war did at least provide space for new elites — some of them former political prisoners or returning émigrés — to establish themselves.
(New York Review of Books)
ON JANUARY 12, 1937, the Soviet revolutionary Leon Trotsky and his wife arrived in Mexico after Norway had revoked their right to asylum. Upon their arrival at the port of Tampico, they were received by the painter Frida Kahlo, wife of Diego Rivera, also a painter, who had acted as a mediator for Mexico to offer refuge to Trotsky. The revolutionary was hosted in the Casa Azul, Kahlo and Rivera’s second residence in Mexico City, where he remained until 1939, when the couple broke off relations with him. The breakup was partly due to the change in political positioning of Rivera and Kahlo, who were increasingly close to Stalinist thought, but the brief idyll between the painter and the revolutionary also played a part: they used to meet at Kahlo’s sister’s house and Trotsky hid love notes in the books he lent her, until his wife discovered the affair and forced her husband to break up with the painter.
IN BLACKWATER WOODS
by Mary Oliver (1983)
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
it seems to me the roundabout at Simpson Lane has been a great success to date
The first time I drove a roundabout was in Sydney Australia. I’d just arrived that afternoon on business. As the member of the dinner group closest to sober, I was elected to drive. On the left. At night. Jet-lagged. Mildly buzzed. No worries. Roundabouts are fine with me.
Oh man, in those circumstances, I could picture you, Bob, going round and round and round–“Help, how do I get off this thing?” But you did it fine, good going down there in Australia… I also kind of like roundabouts, but drive round them with a bit of extra caution.
TRUMP SAYS HE’S ‘NOT JOKING’ ABOUT THIRD TERM — AND NOTES THIS APPARENT LOOPHOLE: ‘THERE ARE METHODS’
Sady, we’re dumb enough to give the brainless mutant another term. What a pitiful excuse of a country, right up there with Ukraine…
Willits Goes Upscale
“All that has to happen in Willits now is build the Highway 101 bypass and get rid of the 18-wheelers rolling through the middle of town.”
TWK
Is that “Tongue in Cheek” or “Foot in Mouth”?
Laz
Traffic circles are fine with me too as long as we’re clear, a) they’re called traffic circles because they ease motor vehicle traffic, much like Robert Moses’ gorgeous Cross Bronx Expressway eases motor vehicle traffic, and b) they do not benefit bicyclists https://mendofever.com/2024/02/17/please-stop-leading-us-in-circles-ukiahs-roundabout-proposal-endangers-cyclists-and-pedestrians-op-ed/
Long before there were round-a-bouts, I experienced my first traffic circle. Paris, 1972. I was riding shotgun with a guy named Nagle, and we were coming into Paris from the east, in heavy traffic. It was late in the day and raining when we found ourselves traveling in a counter-clockwise direction at a surprisingly fast speed. Having no idea which of the several rues that were available for exit was the one we should take, we did a couple of laps to figure it out. Unfortunately, by the time we figured it out we were about 4 lanes (there were no marked lanes) from the outside of the circle from which one would exit. We continued around at the fast pace for a few more laps, until Nagle was able to maneuver back to the outside and get out of the circle. Trust me when I say that none of the good parisians seemed anxious to allow a couple of young men in a VW bug with U.S. military personnel license plates to work their way to the outer portion of the race track (traffic circle). The only thing organized about the whole thing was that everyone was driving in the correct direction. An experience I will never forget.
Now, that’s a real round-a-bout, have to experience one like that to really know what they’re about! Thanks, Norm.
Pulling a calf is one of the most special things in animal husbandry.
Hunting up a cow in a briar thicket and carrying the fresh newborn back to the barn while the cow follows calmly for my grandmother is one of my best memories.
Ive pulled a lot of calves in my lifetime. Most of the time it worked out and it was a good experience. My brother pulled three this year and lost one. Sometimes it’s great sometimes it’s not.
A shout out for Lowline Angus breed. They are amazingly easy to raise. For the 15 yrs I have been working them I have never once had a birthing issue. I have a small herd for personal use and can pasture them around without a horse, just by foot and stick. In fact my grand child at age 10 easily moved them last summer. They are easy going and do not grow horns. The best issue though is their TASTE! They come out great on various foraged materials grass/hay/weeds (except creeping butter cups) and even various tree leaves. They NEVER needing any “grain finishing” to taste spectacular. Even 3 year old bulls will came out tasting delicious.
Been there, done that (a couple of times). Not for the faint of heart.
What is the meaning of shoes on a power line?
This and that apparently, ranging from gang markers to just for the heck of it. Deep in the East Oregon outback I rounded a corner on a remote stretch of road to enjoy the sight of maybe fifty pairs of mostly running shoes festooned above me on a power line.
Those particular shoes follow a very rare pattern of hanging separately instead being connected to each other by their laces. For some reason they are in a TikTok video but not an image search.
My Willits Online email non-service, is in its fifth day without explanation or calls returned. It looks like paying for it in advance was a bad idea.
Pacific email continues to work, but we are likely moving on…
I wonder how many Willits Online customers are left?
Be well,
Laz
Just the dumb ones.
Pacific has a peculiar business strategy — never explain disappearances of service. As a late-stage geezer, I resist all change, but the mighty ava may be moving on from Pacific.
I get what you mean about change. The same business owns Willits Online and Pacific. Most, if not all, of the employees have left, so I’m not sure who’s in charge. The whole deal is strange…
Be well,
Laz
The true story of Judy Bari getting blown up will likely always remain a mystery. I remember meeting her in the old Nobody’s Business in Laytonville a week or so before the bombing, seeing the posters of her picture in rifle scope cross-hairs and offering to spend some time helping her learn practices to protect herself that I learned on the streets of Berkeley and defending Diné (Navajo) elders from Peabody Coal’s planned mine expansion. Judy took a pass.
Shortly after the bombing, the late Chris LoPinto told me a male customer driving north-bound on 101 stopped in to his Ten Mile Pizzas and Cream south of Laytonville for a pie. While there, he bragged that he had planted the bomb in Judi’s car. Taking appropriate precautions, I anonymously relayed that tip to the San Francisco office of the FBI. They never contacted LoPinto.
According to law enforcement remarks on the scene of Judi’s bombing, the bomb itself was a virtual carbon copy of a bomb used in a law enforcement training academy on car bombing, held a month or two prior to the actual bombing, through College of the Redwoods south of Eureka. A number of security personnel from sawmills and lumber companies reportedly attended. Folks who investigated the bombing tried to get a copy of that class list, but to my knowledge, it has never been released.
Personally, I have my doubts about Sweeney as the bomber. There are too many dots leading in another direction, but that trail has long gone cold.
Although the Oakland Police was quick to obtain a search warrant for Bari’s house in Redwood Valley immediately after the bombing, they never even applied for a warrant for the house a few yards away in which the ex-husband lived, an ex who was going through a bitter divorce and custody dispute with the victim of the bombing. The FBI said on Talbot’s documentary that the husband should always be the prime suspect. Yet no attempt at an investigation of Sweeney was ever made. The FBI had the Lord’s Avenger letter for years before returning it to the Press Democrat where it was later lost. During those years the FBI never submitted the envelope or the stamp for DNA testing, as DNA testing developed during the 90s and leading up to the false arrest case that Bari-Cherney won during which nobody wondered who did it or why no investigation of the ex was undertaken. The OPD and the FBI could have sought warrants for phone records at the MEC where the ex had an office and a phone, and at Sweeney’s house. They could have looked at bank records. They could have looked at Sweeney’s criminal record. They could have interviewed neighbors of the Redwood Valley house. One can throw out chatter and rumor and possible suspects all one wants. But first one must ask why no attempt to investigate the obvious prime suspect was made? A look at the Arizona 5 case the year before and at the history of the FBI and their stalwart protection of their sources might give one a clue about the answer to that question.
Or they already knew who did it, and didn’t want to waste the resources propping up a fall guy, only to have their game blow up in their faces…
They knew, and the implications are, well, kinda frightening. If the feds give a guy a free shot at his ex-wife, why would they do that? To me, this late in the day, I’d say they gave Sweeney a pass because he was in a position to reveal the FBI’s ops during the Redwood Summer period so….. The letter that could have been tested for DNA, as the Major points out, was “lost” by the PD, then a large circulation publication with its own archive and full-time librarian. Important documents don’t get lost by reputable newspapers. And there was only media attention for the first post-bomb few days because W. Bush’s war on Iraq had kicked off and enormous media attention went there. Mike Geniella of the PD, who knew the area and all the players, could have wrapped up the “mystery” of what happened if the PD had resourced his time. As it was, it took PBS’s Steve Talbot to reveal the likely perp as Bari’s ex, Mike Sweeney.
Talbot was the only outside Mendo journalist to ever express an interest in the case. Sweeney has turned out to be the biggest ignored elephant in the smallest room ever.
Green Day clarification dear editor. Billy Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt , both born in Oakland, formed a band called Sweet Children later changing the name to Green Day in 1989. Tre Cool, an amazing drummer, did not join the band until 1990, replacing their existing drummer.
I have always heard that shoes on the line indicate you can purchase drugs in the neighborhood!
For some reason I thought Green Day was a bunch of second generation hippies who Larry Livermore brought down out of the hills of Laytonville and they all went off to Oakland and got rich. Please except my plea of ignorance of any pop music after Sinatra.
Tre Cool grew up on Spy Rock, north of Laytonville. I remember seeing him as a kid playing drums with Mickey Hart at the Hog Farm’s Camp Winnarainbow.