Mendocino County Today: Sunday 4/13/2025

Ephemeral Water | Warm Days | World's Largest | AV Today | Local Events | Budget Numbers | Hung Jury | Coyote Dam | Pet Eve | Dog Again | Book Sale | Child Day | Muchowski Newlyweds | Historic Claim | Original Lighthouse | Yesterday's Catch | Moe's Books | Marco Radio | Lisa Mugging | Giants Lose | Speed PSA | Wine Woe | Extremist Views | Billionaire Politics | Buckle Up | Keyboard Warrior | Human Condition | Lead Stories | Eaten Heart | One Difference | Petty Tyrant | Plan Point | Target Bernie | Objection | Stupid Bigotry | American Poor | Puddle Hop | Organ King | Spring Here

---

---

DRY conditions are expected today and Monday as an upper ridge builds over the West Coast. Highs into the mid 80s will occur in many interior valley locations on Monday. Cooler temperatures and the chance of mountain thunderstorms will develop Tuesday into Wednesday as an upper low drifts north from Southern California. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): On the coast this Sunday morning & have 40F under clear skies. The wind should lay down going forward with only slight mentions of clouds so looking mostly clear & lovely for the new week.

---

---

AV EVENTS (today)

Free Entry to Hendy Woods State Park for local residents
Sun 04 / 13 / 2025 at 8:00 AM
Where: Hendy Woods State Park
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/4511)

AV Grange Pancake and Egg Breakfast
Sun 04 / 13 / 2025 at 8:30 AM
Where: Anderson Valley Grange , 9800 CA-128, Philo, CA 95466
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/4510)

Invasive Plant Removal at Hendy Woods
Sun 04 / 13 / 2025 at 10:00 AM
Where: Hendy Woods, 18599 Philo-Greenwood Rd., Philo, CA 95466
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/4460)

The Anderson Valley Museum Open
Sun 04 / 13 / 2025 at 1:00 PM
Where: The Anderson Valley Museum , 12340 Highway 128, Boonville , CA 95415
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/4544)

---

LOCAL EVENTS

---

BUDGET BALANCING BY THE NUMBERS

by Mark Scaramella

At the Tuesday, March 25, Board of Supervisors meeting, Board Chair John Haschak casually mentioned that the County’s General Fund budget deficit might be as high as $28 million, adding, “but maybe that’s, um, closer to $15 million after the, kinda, the wish-list stuff is taken out.”

Then last Tuesday, CEO Darcie Antle and her office staff said the deficit was about $17 million. But, if one-time funds are applied, the gap might be reduced to around $9 million. A grain of salt must be applied to these estimates because, as Employees’ Union rep Patrick Hickey has noted, the CEO’s budget estimate track record is not particularly credible. CEO Antle said the gap was the difference between what the General Fund departments have asked for and the available revenue. Of course, in tight budget times like these they simply can’t have all that they have requested:

(or about $59 million of the $100 million General Fund for “public safety.”)

Selected other departments:

The General Fund budget request is now around $100 million. So that means that the departments would have to cut about 17% of their budgets to balance the budget without using one-time funds. If one-time funds are used the departmental budgets would have to be cut by around 9%.

The Supervisors said they didn’t like the idea of using one-time funds, but would consider it on a case-by-case basis.

The basic first step to balance the County’s General Fund budget would be require all the departments to reduce their budgets by 17%, and see what they come up with. The larger departments might be able to take a percentage cut in staffing, difficult as it might be. The smaller departments which cannot absorb actual staff cuts might have to reduce their hours of operation.

There are a few departments which seem to cost a lot more than they should, so they should be asked to take larger cuts than the nominal 17% of 9%. Those would appear to be Juvenile Hall (which we think should be shut down, since there are only one or two dozen delinquents in the Hall most of the time. And Human Resources which apparently costs a ridiculous $2.2 million. The Supervisors, Executive Office and Clerk of the Board should begin by cutting their own budgets 17%.

When the departments submit their proposed cuts they can make their case for exemptions or mandates.

Last Tuesday, it also came to light that the Pension Obligation Bond will be paid off soon and that will mean the County won’t have to continue contributing about $4 million a year, starting next year.

Board Chair John Haschak mentioned several cost cutting ideas, most of which are small dollar amounts, but his suggestion that the County renegotiate the health care contributions to align them with the target amounts sounds promising, although it would represent a de facto pay cut if employees have to contribute more. Haschak also suggested that all elected officials take a pay cut to the levels prior to last year’s big raises. When Haschak turned his suggestions into a motion, however, like most of his proposals, it died for lack of a second from any of his colleagues.

The point is that there are practical steps that could be taken now to face the budget deficit head on, assuming the CEO’s estimates are about right.

Instead, what we saw on Tuesday was the usual muddle with the staff asking the Board for more “direction,” and the Board expecting the staff to come up with “scenarios.”

As Union rep Patrick Hickey reminded the Board they also have to make sure they’re doing everything they can to collect all taxes due.

We said a couple of weeks ago based on the March 26 presentation that the CEO and her staff don’t have any idea how to close a General Fund budget gap of the magnitude of $9 million or $17 million or $28 million or whatever it is. After last Tuesday, it’s clear that they still don’t.

PS. All of this is before any accounting is made for the likely multi-million dollar pay off that the County will face when they lose the Chamise Cubbison civil suit, either by settlement or at trial. If it was up to us, we’d assign that cost to the District Attorney’s budget on top of whatever reduction percentage is imposed on the departments.

---

DA DROPS ANOTHER

A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned from its deliberations late Wednesday afternoon to report it was unable to reach agreement on the main charges pending against the trial defendant.

Defendant Nicholas Kent Tow, age 37, of Brooktrails, remains charged with driving a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol, driving a motor vehicle under the influence of cannabis, and driving a motor vehicle under the combined influence of both alcohol and cannabis, all as misdemeanors.

The jury did find the defendant guilty of a fourth count, so that count will not need to be revisited at the next trial.

The defendant was ordered to return to court on April 24th for picking a date for the retrial to be heard in front of a fresh jury.

---

“Mendocino County District Attorney has limited who can comment on this post.”

MIKE GENIELLA: Another example of DA Eyster thumbing his nose at the public’s right to comment

---

ANOTHER LAKE MENDOCINO STUDY

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers San Francisco District is launching a three-year general investigation study to explore modernizing Coyote Valley Dam now that a key partnership agreement was signed today during an afternoon ceremony at Lake Mendocino.

At a table set up atop the 67-year-old earthen dam, officials from Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission and Lytton Rancheria of California, the two non-federal sponsors on the study, and the Corps gathered to sign what is referred to as a feasibility cost sharing agreement. The agreement outlines the roles and responsibilities of both the government and non-federal sponsors in the cost sharing and execution of work.

USACE is partnering with MCIWPC and the Rancheria to cooperatively investigate project alternatives, including potentially raising Coyote Valley Dam, to determine if there is a federal interest in increasing flood risk reduction and water supply for municipal, industrial, agriculture and recreational purposes in the Russian River Watershed. The Corps completed construction of the 160-foot-high dam in 1958, and the storage capacity of the reservoir is 122,400 acre-feet. Water from the reservoir serves approximately 600,000 people.

Last year, Congressman Jared Huffman, who served as keynote speaker at today’s ceremony, helped secure $500,000 in fiscal year appropriations to complete the study. Also joining the ceremony was Mendocino County Supervisor Madeline Cline.

Thanks to everyone for making this day possible!

[In Their Own Words]

“Modernizing Coyote Valley Dam is about more than infrastructure—it is about preparing for a future where our water supply is less predictable and more difficult to manage. This study is a critical step towards building a smarter, more resilient water system in the face of droughts and changes to our historic water supply. Signing the Feasibility Cost Sharing Agreement today shows that we, as partners, are committed to being forward thinking. Modernization really means using science and collaboration to improve our water storage and delivery systems to better serve our communities and the environment for generations to come.” — Janet Pauli, Chair, Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission

“This agreement marks a critical step toward a more inclusive and sustainable approach to managing our region’s water resources. The Lytton Rancheria is proud to partner in this effort, ensuring that tribal perspectives are part of the conversation as we work together to protect the water supply, restore ecosystems, and plan for the future.” — Andy Mejia, Chairperson, Lytton Rancheria of California

“I am honored to join the Lytton Rancheria and Mendocino Inland Water and Power Commission to celebrate this partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for this important first step to raise the Coyote Valley Dam. This will help start the process to provide a more reliable local water supply, increase flood damage reduction, and improve water quality in the Russian River. That’s why I fought to secure inclusion of this project in the Water Resources Development Act and for the initial funding for this study.” — Jared Huffman, U.S. Congressman

“I am confident this study will investigate all of the project alternatives, including raising Coyote Valley Dam, to determine if there is a federal interest and a path forward. The goal is to increase flood risk reduction for community safety and increase water supply, which we can all agree is crucial as extreme weather out here in the West means we have to find new solutions.” — Lt. Col. Timothy Shebesta, Commander, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers San Francisco District

---

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Eve is an inquisitive, young dog. Although she can be a bit shy, she is very sweet, and does well with people. More exposure to new and varied environments, people, experiences, and other pets will be a great way for her to gain confidence. It will be important that Eve gets gentle and consistent training, along with lots of TLC, to ensure she matures into a well loved and well behaved member of her new pack. This girl is eager to learn and be your BFF. And did we mention she’s Adorable?! Dobermans are intelligent, alert, loyal, energetic and watchful dogs — with a definite goofy side to their personalities. Eve is about 10 or 11 months old and 45 pounds. She’s spayed, so she’s ready to bop out the shelter door with you ASAP!

To learn more about Eve, and all of our canine and feline guests, plus the occasional goat, sheep, or tortoise, and for information about our services, programs, and events, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com .

Join us the first Saturday every month for our Meet The Dogs Adoption Event at the shelter.

Please share our posts on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter/

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

---

OH, TO BE A DOG AGAIN!

Such joyous barking
Unleashing Our Opinions
Wild and unrestrained

— Jim Luther

---

---

DONNA PIERSON-PUGH (retired AV Elementary School Principal): The Day of the Child is celebrated after the Boontling Classic 5K race or walk on May 4, 2025 from 12 - 1:00 with a potluck taco bar (bring your favorite taco filling) with homemade tortillas and beans provided. There is also a salsa cook-off, so bring your best salsa to share. From 1 - 3:00pm there will be the FFA petting zoo, the AV Historical Society with Living History activities: drill wood, play old-time games and dress-up. Bubble art, the smoothie bike, the Book Mobile, along with Public Health, family volleyball, an AV fire engine, and ambulance! Come have some fun with your family and community at the Day of the Child on May 4th!

---

---

CLAIM OF THE YEAR (2011)

---

FROM E-BAY, A STEREOVIEW OF SEMI-LOCAL INTEREST: The original Point Arena Lighthouse, circa 1870. (via Marshall Newman)

---

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, April 12, 2025

JOSE ADAME-JUAREZ, 46, Ukiah. Concealed dirk-dagger.

APOLONIO BARRIGA-IBARRA, 31, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, probation revocation.

JULIE BOND, 39, Ukiah. Willfully, maliciously sends, gives, transmits, sounds false alarm of fire; controlled substance, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

REYNALDO GUTIERREZ-GILLERMO, 23, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia.

RIYA KUMAR, 19, Palo Alto/Fort Bragg. Domestic battery.

NATHEN MARTIN, 36, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

MICHAEL MARTINEZ, 20, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. DUI.

CODY MENDEZ, 21, Ukiah. Public nuisance, probation violation.

TRISTIN WILEY, 29, Willits. Probation revocation.

KYLE WILLIAMSON, 30, Redwood Valley. DUI.

---

---

MEMO OF THE AIR: Things coulda been terrif.

Marco here. Here’s the recording of last night’s (2025-04-11) 7.5-hour-long Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and also, for the first three hours, on KAKX Mendocino, ready for you to re-enjoy in whole or in part: https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0639

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

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

“This is how I attach the bag. I smoosh it on and I cut on a diagonal. That’s Ron in the background, drinking.” https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0otkEoHnwfs

How they shot them with arrows in the old days. https://laughingsquid.com/shooting-arrows-at-actors-before-cgi/

Everybody wants to be a cat. Years ago I wrote a column of questions for an imaginary game show where I would be amazing and staccato at it. One of the questions would be, “What does everybody want to be?” A cat. Then, “Why?” Because a cat’s the only cat who knows where it’s at. “Where what’s at?” Pass. https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2017/04/everybody-wants-to-be-cat.html

And all the commercials of David Lynch. (35 min.) https://laughingsquid.com/david-lynch-commercials/

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

---

THE MANY FACES OF LISA

A New York City lawyer (!) named Lisa Sriken wins the award for the widest range of facial expressions during her appearance on Jeopardy in 2023:

---

GIANTS’ JORDAN HICKS CLOBBERED BY YANKEES; Wilmer Flores’ big day not enough in loss

by Shayna Rubin

NEW YORK — The designated hitter has one perk playing in wintry weather: The opportunity to escape the cold. Between at-bats, DH Wilmer Flores slipped out of the dugout — where a misty rain and 40-degree weather had everyone at Yankee Stadium bundled up — and into the warm, dry batting cages to prepare for his next at-bat.

Those trips inside kept Flores warm and loose enough drive in all four of the San Francisco Giants’ runs in Saturday afternoon’s clash with the New York Yankees. His efforts, though, weren’t enough to salvage the fortunes of his frozen teammates as the Giants lost 8-4, evening the series at 1-1.

“It wasn’t a good condition for baseball,” Flores said. “I don’t think I’ve had worse than that.”

Friday, it was the Giants who took full advantage of Yankees starter Marcus Stroman’s struggles handling the cold. This time, it was starter Jordan Hicks who “tightened up” before a critical fifth inning in which New York tagged him for five of a career-high seven runs he’d allow.

“I feel like it takes more to stay warm, stay loose,” Hicks said. “Besides that, just felt like a normal day pitching. Just got hit around a little bit.”

Hicks’ outing started shaky. In the first, left fielder Heliot Ramos couldn’t track Cody Bellinger’s opposite-field drive, which wound up bouncing off the wall for an RBI triple. That, and a sacrifice fly made it 2-0 after the first. Hicks labored through a 30-pitch second inning in which he stranded the bases loaded by getting Aaron Judge to hit into an inning-ending ground out.

Flores landed his first counterpunch with a two-run homer to right-center field to tie the game 2-2. His sixth home run ties him for most in baseball (Judge is also among the group of six with as many).

Complications started to compound in the fifth inning, when Hicks saw the Yankees lineup a third time through. He liked the way his sweeper was playing, but instead opted to challenge the heart of the order with his fastball. That decision backfired as he surrendered four consecutive hits — including Judge’s 112 mph single on a sinker down and away.

“Didn’t want to give them too much of a chance with off-speed,” he said. “Judge got a good one, in and down, and he put the swing like he knew it was coming and that’s where I say mixing could have been better. But with a guy like that, for me, you either throw the slides for a ball — bases loaded, I put myself in a jam — but I have to challenge him. I’m not about to walk in a runner. Challenged him and he got the best of me today.”

Reliever Randy Rodriguez didn’t start warming until Paul Goldschmidt’s RBI double put the Yankees ahead by two runs and Hicks departed after issuing a walk to load the bases with no outs. Manager Bob Melvin was considering the tough stretch of 17 straight games ahead in his decision to keep Hicks in during the rough patch and not immediately run to the bullpen.

“We had to give him a little rope there, we have 17 games in a row,” Melvin said.

Rodriguez, used this season as the extinguisher in a jam, couldn’t put out this fire. All three runners scored with Jasson Dominguez delivering the gut-punch two-run hit to make it 7-2.

Flores retaliated. In the sixth, Willy Adames notched the Giants’ first hit since Flores’ second-inning home run and Jung Hoo Lee reached on Jazz Chisholm’s throwing error to second base, leaving all men safe. Matt Chapman drew a walk to load the bases with two outs for Flores, who shortened up and hit a two-run single to make it 7-4. All Flores could do in this cold wasn’t enough to overcome the fifth inning as the Giants went 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position.

Logan Webb will face off against Yankees starter and former Giant Carlos Rodon in the rubber match on Sunday afternoon.

(sfchronicle.com)

---

---

CALIFORNIA WINE IS IN SERIOUS TROUBLE

For 25 years, the wine industry boomed. Then it started to unravel.

by Esther Mobley

Megan Bell felt certain that her winery was going bankrupt.

When she released a new batch of wines in August, only three of her 19 distributors agreed to buy any. She was running $65,000 over budget on opening a tasting room in Santa Cruz. And she owed $80,000 to grape growers.

Sales in the second half of the year were the worst Bell had seen since starting her small business, ‘Margins,’ eight years ago. Bell labeled 2023 “a disaster” and said she knows she wasn’t the only winemaker feeling it: “If anybody’s not telling you that, they’re lying.”

The entire $55 billion California wine industry is, like the wine industry worldwide, experiencing an unprecedented downturn now. No sector is immune — not the luxury tier, not the big conglomerates, not the upstart natural wines. Wine consumption fell 8.7% in 2023, according to leading industry analyst the Gomberg Fredrikson Report, a sobering reversal for an industry that had, for a quarter-century, taken annual growth for granted.

This year could be the breaking point, with many industry figures predicting “a good-sized housecleaning,” as put by Ian Brand, owner of I. Brand & Family Winery in Monterey County.

“A lot of brands are dead, but they don’t even know it right now,” echoed Michael Honig, president of Honig Vineyard & Winery in Napa Valley.

An extinction-level event has not come to pass — yet. But regardless of the winery survival rate, it’s become clear in 2024 that the nature of the California wine industry has fundamentally changed. After decades of unfettered growth beginning in the 1990s, wine consumption started to flatten around 2018. Now, following what appeared to be a spike during the pandemic, it’s in dramatic decline.

“The industry’s had the wind at our back for a long time,” said Jeff O’Neill, CEO of O’Neill Vintners and Distillers, which owns more than a dozen wineries. “And finally the music has stopped.”

No single factor is responsible for California wine’s present predicament. Millennials and Gen Zers aren’t drinking as much alcohol as older generations. Hard seltzer and canned cocktails have stolen market share. The current medical consensus suggests that alcohol is unequivocally bad for human health. (Beer and liquor sales are struggling, too.)

A new set of problems emerged with the pandemic, though wineries didn’t realize it at the time.

In 2020, with everyone stuck at home, wine sales skyrocketed. “We all thought, ‘This is fantastic, we’ve found the holy grail of selling wine, and this is just going to continue’,” O’Neill said. Many wineries increased production. But the demand dried up when people realized they’d bought too much and weren’t depleting it quickly enough, a phenomenon now known in the industry as “pantry loading.”

The unsold cases piled up. Meanwhile, with fewer people going out to restaurants post-COVID, wineries saw a key sales channel wane. Rising interest rates drove distributors to reduce their inventories, buying less from wineries. Because there’s a yearslong lag between the time a wine is made and the time it’s sold, it took a while before wineries could notice these effects — let alone do anything about them.

Slowly and then all at once, the simmer reached a boil.

“So far this year we’re down 10% (in sales), which is the first time in 17 years we’ve ever been down,” said Morgan Twain-Peterson, owner of Bedrock Wine Co. in Sonoma.

In her decade in business, “2023 was the first year that we didn’t grow,” said Martha Stoumen, whose eponymous winery is in Sebastopol.

“If you’re lucky, you’re down 10%. We are,” Brand said. For many California wineries, he added, a 10% drop could be “existential” if it lasts too long.

In the past, wineries had recourse when sales dipped and expenses rose: raise the bottle price. But that’s become trickier. “There’s too much competition,” said Steve Lohr, president and CEO of J. Lohr Vineyards in San Jose. “And with the overall market going down, there just isn’t room for price increases.”

Until recently, Megan Bell believed Margins was about to become one of the wineries that just didn’t make it.

Bell, 33, is energetic and outspoken, with a wide grin that tends to morph into a laugh. When she started Margins in 2016, she was one of many bright-eyed young California winemakers realizing the dream of having their own wine label.

Although it took five years before Margins was bringing in enough income to pay Bell a full-time salary, she felt confident she was on the right track. Her wines — mostly underloved grape varieties such as Cabernet Franc and Assyrtiko — received positive press. She built a loyal wine club and got distribution in 10 states. She started farming her own vineyard. She and a friend, winemaker James Jelks of Floréz Wines, co-leased their own winemaking facility, a former apple storage warehouse.

Finances were always tight. In her best year, Bell said, Margins brought in about $430,000 in revenue and just under $40,000 in profit. But in 2023, her net profit margin was merely 3%.

Knowing that opening the tasting room — a 120-square-foot nook that she affectionately calls the Wine Cubby — would be costly, she took out a $95,000 loan. But the buildout would ultimately cost $134,000, not including the rent and tasting room employee salary she was paying before it opened.

Bell prided herself on her resilience in the face of hurdles like these. This was just the nature of running a small California winery, right? But when fall 2023 rolled around and nearly all of her distributors declined to buy her new wines, the panic set in.

Bell estimated that, by the end of February, she’d be $11,000 in the red. That meant going out of business.

Margins managed to survive, barely. The bank increased Bell’s loan. After a failed inspection and a year and a half of waiting, the tasting room’s permit finally came through in December. Eventually, to her parents’ chagrin, she resorted to a crowdfunding campaign. The $24,000 in donations helped her get through a couple of scary months.

On a chilly spring morning, as she drew samples of wine from portable stainless tanks in her winery, Bell reflected on the strategic changes she plans to make going forward. “I’m going to make half as much wine this year,” she said, spitting a taste of Vermentino into a bucket. She was giving these wines a final assessment before a mobile bottling line arrived, making sure they passed muster. Bell paused and smiled. The Vermentino had summoned an aromatic memory, reminding her of the smell of sunscreen by a pool in the summer.

From now on, she announced, she will no longer bottle any product that hasn’t been at least 70% presold. She’s hoping to sell a larger proportion of her volume through the Wine Cubby, an inviting space with a muted-teal backsplash and open cabinets full of decorative knickknacks. There, she gets a bigger cut of the bottle price than when she sells to restaurants or shops.

But even if she makes it through, this last year has left Bell deeply disillusioned with her trade. “The tasting room will save us, but I was barely able to cross that finish line before the gate was shutting,” Bell said. Part of the reason she’s so transparent about her struggles, she said, is because she wishes someone had given her a clearer picture of what it would be like to run a winery before she’d decided to devote her life to it.

Interviews with 16 California wineries about the present crisis revealed one popular theory: This may simply be a market in need of a correction. There are too many wineries in California, too many grapevines planted, too much wine being bottled for the market to bear. This is an industry that grew complacent, so accustomed to its baby boomer-dominant customer base and its old way of doing things that it hasn’t been forced to meaningfully innovate in a long time.

And while winery owners may feel as if the sky is falling, many industry analysts hold a more measured perspective. “This is really, I believe, an inventory adjustment,” said Gomberg Fredrikson Report editor Jon Moramarco. Once all the pantry loaders finally drink through the wines they stockpiled during lockdown, he believes they’ll start buying wine again.

But even the optimists clinging to this view don’t envision the kind of growth that was standard a decade ago. “There were some other times when we saw little hiccups in the overall growth of wine,” Lohr said, such as during the 2007-08 recession. What the industry is experiencing now, he said, “is meaningfully different.” According to Moramarco, the best-case scenario is a return to the flattening growth curve of 2018 and 2019. The boom times are over.

For young winemakers like Bell, the end of the boom times may also mean the end of a certain version of the California wine dream. Everything that drew Bell to this work in the first place — the chance to farm, the geeky grape varieties, the community of fellow winemakers — is all for naught, she said, if it becomes impossible to pay the bills.

“Things feel really sad right now,” Bell said. “I’m looking at people who are like me eight years ago and thinking, you’re never going to make it.”

(SF Chronicle)

---

---

TOP 100 BILLIONAIRE FAMILIES SPENT A RECORD $2.6 BILLION ON 2024 FEDERAL ELECTIONS

by Dan Bacher

How did President Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans get elected?

I’ve read a lot of detailed analyses of the 2024 election and its aftermath, but a just-released report by Americans for Tax Fairness explains it best — follow the billionaire money: americansfortaxfairness.org

The top 100 political-donor families poured a record-busting $2.6 billion into 2024 federal elections—one of every six dollars spent overall, according to the report, “Billionaires Buying Elections: They’ve Come to Collect.”

“This is more than double the amount donated by America’s oligarchs in the 2020 presidential election and is a nearly 160-fold increase in billionaire political spending since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United first allowed unlimited campaign donations,” the report reveals.…

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/10/2315692/-Top-100-billionaire-families-spent-a-record-2-6-billion-on-2024-federal-elections

---

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Right now most people are more concerned with the future of their retirement, due to all the market manipulation by The Fed and major institutions. A lot of people don’t realize that both employ trading desks & algorithms that pick up on word play in the news and go to work buying/selling accordingly. Or that the Fed has a “plunge protection team” (est. 1988) to get in there and do whatever is needed to prevent a collapse. There are reputable people saying that a major shock is not out of the question because at the end of the day, the entire financial system is fraudulent and nothing more than paper chasing paper, with no real assets behind most of it, just derivatives upon derivatives upon derivatives being passed around. If “they” ever let things sort themselves out and allow the market to settle at its actual value, buckle up and look out below.

---

---

SO IT IS the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one’s fatherland is to wish evil to one’s neighbors. The citizen of the universe would be the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer.

— Voltaire

---

LEAD STORIES, SUNDAY'S NYT

A Devastating Trade Spat With China Shows Few Signs of Abating

How Brexit, a Startling Act of Economic Self-Harm, Foreshadowed Trump’s Tariffs

Trump Has Added Risk to the Surest Bet in Global Finance

The Treasury Secretary Is Wrong About How Most Retirees See the Stock Market

DOGE Is Far Short of Its Goal, and Still Overstating Its Progress

Why Elon Musk Hasn’t Come Close to Finding $1 Trillion in Cuts

---

DO NOT LOOK for my heart anymore. The beasts have eaten it.

— Baudelaire

---

---

A LOT ABOUT TRUMP DOESN’T ADD UP

by Maureen Dowd

You have to give it to Donald Trump. The man is a marvel at multitasking.

In one sensational swoop, President Trump was able to set the global economy reeling, shatter our alliances, shred our standing in the world, tank consumer confidence, scupper the Kennedy Center and tart up the Oval Office, turning it into Caesars Palace on the Potomac.

And yet he still managed to find time to brag about winning his Jupiter golf club’s championship and sign an executive order relaxing restrictions on water pressure from shower heads — “I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair,” the president cooed. He also ordered an investigation of an election security official he had fired four years ago for having the temerity to acknowledge that the 2020 election was not stolen.

“We’re living in a bizarro world where heroes are being targeted and scoundrels are in a position to target them,” David Axelrod told me.

Trump is also consumed with terms of surrender for top law firms and Ivy League universities in his quest to get even with those he feels went after him unfairly or embraced wokeness too avidly.

My Netflix algorithm searches for “revenge,” “lives ruined” and “mayhem.” But I don’t want that in my government.

Trump is engaging the full power of the presidency to settle scores. The White House was not meant for petty tyrants on revenge tours. In the biggest job in the world, Trump seems like a very small man.

“Revenge is the oxygen that keeps him afloat,” said Tim O’Brien, the Trump biographer.

And he has surrounded himself with small people who elaborately flatter him and puff him up in risible cabinet meetings. Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, even has a Maoist golden Trump head on his lapel.

Barack Obama’s White House portrait was nudged aside for one of Trump pumping his fist after the assassination attempt.

The Emperor of Chaos told us to “BE COOL!” as markets cratered and people got “yippy,” as Trump put it. But how is that possible when everything is so unstable?

Trump may even turn into the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Jami Warner, the executive director of the American Christmas Tree Association, warned on CNN Friday that the holiday may be difficult for a lot of families accustomed to getting their cheap artificial trees, lights and ornaments from China, not to mention presents.

I had to go to summer school for algebra, but I don’t want a government that’s bad at math. O’Brien wrote in Bloomberg News that Trump’s “tragicomic ‘formula’” for tariffs “somehow positioned Cambodia and Thailand at the top of the heap of countries posing major economic threats to the U.S. and also caused tariffs to be imposed on uninhabited islands near Antarctica.”

The Republicans’ math on the budget bill is also fuzzy. You can’t give trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy and pretend it won’t cost anything.

Even before Trump opened a Pandora’s box of economic woe, we knew numbers weren’t his strong suit. He had six bankruptcies, and his father had to buy $3.4 million in chips to save one of his casinos.

The most conclusive evidence of his innumeracy was his appearance in 2006 on Howard Stern’s show with Ivanka and Don Jr. The Trump siblings’ insistence that they got into Wharton on their merits inspired Stern to give them a grade school-level pop quiz.

“What’s 17 times 6?” he asked.

After some nervous laughter, Don Jr. replied “96? 94?” His father interjected, “It’s 11 12. It’s 112.”

“Wrong!” Stern said, adding, “It’s 102!”

Donald Trump repeated “112.”

Trump should be alarmed that investors are skittish about buying U.S. government bonds, usually considered safe assets.

“And guess who owns a lot of U.S. debt?” O’Brien said. “China, Japan, Europe. Are they feeling good about us right now?”

As everyone else gets yippy — JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon warned of a recession — the president seems to be enjoying center stage, toying with the strings like a cat.

“All of this unnecessary, orchestrated dissent and doubt and damage for his own amusement,” O’Brien told me. “He’s the kid in the garage with matches standing next to the gasoline tank.”

Now that Trump’s tariff scheme has gone horribly awry — and the administration’s attempt to spin it as an “Art of the Deal” victory has fallen flat — it remains to be seen if this will be a “Wizard of Oz” moment when the curtain gets pulled back on the con man.

Will the global chaos puncture the sense of mastery that Trump has projected?

“This is not a reality show,” Axelrod said. “This is reality.”

He continued: “People like the idea of cutting waste and fraud and abuse until it means that the Social Security office in your hometown or veterans’ health programs close down, or there are measles outbreaks, because they don’t know what they’re doing. Do these add up so, at some point, people say: ‘You know what? This isn’t really working for me’”?

The former casino owner in the White House brags that he has never gambled. But he is gambling with Americans’ lives and futures. How strange, as even the dollar loses its allure, that a man long considered a branding savant has so badly mucked up the U.S. brand.

(New York Times)

---

---

TAIBBI AND KIRN

All right, so we heard a little bit of the flavor of the opposition’s take on this, which is that the tariffs are a tax on the American people. So how was the counter response delivered? It was delivered by all the people who suppressed, humiliated, smeared, and otherwise undermined Bernie Sanders over the last eight years or so, in ways both legitimate and illegitimate now suddenly upholding Bernie and giving him this gigantic platform because apparently he has credibility now and they need that. So the first hint that I had that something was up was when CBS this morning or CBS Sunday morning did a Bernie segment prominently over the weekend. And we could just show the first 40 seconds of that.

Speaker 1: He’s perhaps the best known voice for dissent in Washington these days. And in recent weeks, no one’s been drawing crowds everywhere he goes like Senator Bernie Sanders. On this weekend of protests across the country.

Speaker 2: Hands off. Hands off.

Speaker 1: From Maine to California to Washington DC, The Vermont Independent is talking with our Robert Costa.

Bernie Sanders: Bob, this country today faces an unprecedented-

Matt Taibbi: Bernie’s loving this, by the way.

Walter Kirn: Ouf.

Bernie Sanders: Something I’ve never seen in my lifetime. We are a nation that is moving rapidly toward oligarchy, which means that we have a government run by the billionaire class for the billionaire class.

Robert Costa: You’ve had this consistent message for a long time. Is there more urgency now in this moment?

Bernie Sanders: I think there is, and in many ways, I suppose you can thank Elon Musk and Trump for that.

Robert Costa: Ever since President Trump took office-

Matt Taibbi: Bernie starts arguing that the tariffs are an attempt to embolden the oligarch class in the United States. And suddenly he’s everywhere in the media. Everybody’s doing Bernie stories. There are major features and Slate. And then-

Walter Kirn: When was the Slate piece?

Matt Taibbi: The Slate was in the middle of the week. But more importantly, CNN elected to promote a Bernie Sanders town hall. Now remember, CNN is the same station that politically assassinated Bernie in 2020 by cooking up a fake story about how he had told Elizabeth Warren that a woman could never win the presidency. And asking that question to him as if it were a fact.

Walter Kirn: Let’s see that.

Matt Taibbi: Well, this is before the actual debate. This is the story that they released. But in the debate, he was asked this. CNN, which has done a number of hit pieces against Bernie over the years, just almost too many to count. Now all of a sudden they’re doing a town hall with Bernie and-

Walter Kirn: Former Russian asset, let’s remember.

Matt Taibbi: Former Russian asset. And we can see they have headlines in print stories. Bernie finds new message of resistance, right? ‘Bernie Sanders Message Of Resistance Finds Fresh Life As Democratic Party Searches For Direction.’ Okay? And this is contemporaneous with the town hall. And let’s just start with this. Actually, let’s start with the-

Walter Kirn: Wait. Who’s running a town hall with Bernie?

Matt Taibbi: Anderson Cooper. So it’s-

Walter Kirn: Out of election season, they’re just suddenly finding it necessary to run town halls with Bernie.

Matt Taibbi: Yes, exactly. So let’s start with the most important quote. Actually let’s start with the… Let’s go to number 22.

Anderson Cooper: Tariffs are aimed at part, and the president talks about bringing manufacturing jobs to America. And the White House talked about iPhones being made here in America. Some economists had said that it would cost thousands of extra dollars to buy an iPhone. Is that realistic?

Bernie Sanders: I don’t know the answer to that, but what I do know is the immediate harm is going to be very significant, and it is going to, I was just in Target the other day buying something, and I looked around there. Virtually all of those products sold in stores like Target are going to see significant increases in prices if Trump gets his way with tariffs-

Matt Taibbi: That’s going to hurt working people a whole lot, is what he said. So normally if Bernie goes into a Target and looks around at the products on the shelf, what he’s going to say is, this was all built with slave labor somewhere else, but now all this stuff is going to be more expensive. That’s the message, right?

Walter Kirn: So Target, I said on Monday that Bernie wisely hadn’t jumped on the bandwagon about falling stock markets nor had AOC, which suggested to me that they were preserving their virtue while everybody else decided to ride and fall with the Dow Jones Industrial Average. That was smart, and it was an indication to me that this was coming. Now, the decry for the Target Corporation, one that I grew up with in Minneapolis, St. Paul, I had Targets in the 1960s before anybody else had heard of them. It was the old Dayton-Hudson Corporation. It came out of Dayton Hudson department stores, and sometime in, I don’t know, the 1990s, it became like Walmart, a purveyor of the cheapest crap.

And I’ve written an article, I asked the readers to go look for something called, O Holy Crap, by Walter Kirn, in which I detail my adventures going to Target, which I have to drive 30 miles to, and my dilemma of whether or not when I pick up their stuff and I’m 15 miles back toward home and it has already broken, it is worth returning to the store, spending further energy, getting my four and a half dollars back for mittens that my hands have already poked through the fingers of, or not.

Bernie wetting himself to cheap consumer goods is a, not just a subversion of traditional labor oriented rhetoric, but a repudiation of it, because-

Matt Taibbi: His own, which we’ll get to.

Walter Kirn: … the reason Target even exists as a business is that American workers were shunted aside for cheap foreign labor. And now to portray the crappy goods that Target sells. And I’m not just being an old fart there. Target maybe used to be Target and have a slight edge over the Walmarts and the now defunct K-Marts of the country, but no longer. And to be portraying that as a dividend to the American worker, that now in your declining real wage situation and in your increasingly imbalanced wealth ratios, you at least have crappy things from Target to keep you warm for five minutes until your your hands poke through the finger of the gloves is a real weak sauce compared to the early Bernie who sounded more like a 1930s rabble-rousing-

Matt Taibbi: And this story goes back-

Walter Kirn: … labor advocate.

Matt Taibbi: … literally goes back to the 1930s and Bernie voted against NAFTA. He knows exactly what Target is. I’ve been covering this my whole life. I’ve known Bernie personally since 2005. I know exactly how he feels about this issue, and there is an ample record, we’ll get to it in a second, about how he feels particularly about China and the notion of going into a Target where if somebody gave you a stopwatch and dared you to find an American-made product in under 19 minutes, you would lose, right? We don’t make anything in the United States anymore. We don’t make microwave ovens, we don’t make TVs, we don’t make computers, we don’t make… There’s nothing that’s American made that you can really buy in a Target anymore.

Anyway, so this is going to be the position that he’s taking, that the short-term hit to ordinary working people is too much to bear and is a betrayal of the working class. And then he goes on and it’s not enough to go there. We have to also talk about how what Trump is doing with these tariffs doesn’t just hurt American working people, but is a kind of racism that we should reject.

Walter Kirn: It’s xenophobia. It’s xenophobia.

Matt Taibbi: Xenophobia. Right. So let’s look at number four.

Bernie Sanders: Extremist idea to divide us up. Somebody’s gay and somebody’s this and somebody’s that, and you were born someplace else. We are all human beings and we all have the same needs and we all want the best for our kids. We want kids to get a good education and good healthcare, to breathe clean air, not to deal with climate change and so forth-

Matt Taibbi: Breathe clean air. Hold on, let’s put a pin in that for a second.

Walter Kirn: Let’s do that.

Matt Taibbi: To breathe clean air.

Walter Kirn: Let’s do that by showing the skyline of an industrial Chinese city as it belches 50,000 times the legal number of particulates into the winds and trade winds of the world.

Matt Taibbi: Right? I mean, am I high or something? Am I watching a completely different…? We’ll get to that. Anyway, this answer, the question essentially was, how did your experience growing up as a Jew in the wake of the Holocaust influence your approach to these challenges? Right? So let’s listen to the-

Walter Kirn: First of all, Matt, has there ever been a question that’s more of a setup than that?

Matt Taibbi: Oh, my God.

Walter Kirn: If you were interviewing Bernie Sanders on CNN in the context of tariffs and that, would you pull out this answer? No, I mean this question, this is a complete, it’s not just a softball. It’s like a softball on a string-

Matt Taibbi: I know. I know.

Walter Kirn: … that will hang in front of him until he swipes at it.

Matt Taibbi: It is. It’s political T-ball. And Bernie, once upon a time, would not have swung the bat. He wouldn’t have done it once upon a time. I am convinced of this. And here he does. Listen to what he says.

Bernie Sanders: Reinforce the belief that we are a common worldwide humanity. We don’t have to hate China, we don’t have to hate other people. Let’s figure out a way to work together. And by the way, if we don’t figure that out globally, climate change is going to destroy this planet. Climate change is not an American issue. It’s not a Chinese issue. It’s a global issue. We’ve got to work together.

Walter Kirn: It some Pat Robertson way. It’ll just come in like the wrath of God.

Bernie Sanders: The scientists tell us more pandemics may likely come. We can’t-

Walter Kirn: More pandemics, too.

Bernie Sanders: Combat those just in America. We’ve got to work globally.

Matt Taibbi: We got to work globally.

Bernie Sanders: So the goal has got to be, is to break down these-

Walter Kirn: Can you stop for a second?

Matt Taibbi: Yep.

Walter Kirn: Can you stop for a second? Okay. What you just heard was amazing Protestant apocalypticism from someone who’s wearing his Judaism on his sleeve-

Matt Taibbi: Right.

Walter Kirn: … without any cause and effect, except to say that maybe as a result of sin or just God’s judgment….

---

---

“WILL FUTURE AGES believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!”

— Sir Walter Scott

---

“AMERICA is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves… It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters.”

— Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007)

Vonnegut called George Orwell his favorite writer and admitted that he tried to emulate Orwell. “I like his concern for the poor, I like his socialism, I like his simplicity,” Vonnegut said. Vonnegut also said that Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley heavily influenced his debut novel, ‘Player Piano,’ in 1952. The novel also included ideas from mathematician Norbert Wiener’s book ‘Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.’ Vonnegut commented that Robert Louis Stevenson’s stories were emblems of thoughtfully put together works that he tried to mimic in his own compositions. Vonnegut also hailed playwright and socialist George Bernard Shawas “a hero of [his]” and an “enormous influence.” Within his own family, Vonnegut stated that his mother, Edith, had the greatest influence on him. “My mother thought she might make a new fortune by writing for the slick magazines. She took short-story courses at night. She studied writers the way gamblers study horses.”

Early on in his career, Vonnegut decided to model his style after that of Henry David Thoreau, who wrote as if from the perspective of a child, allowing Thoreau’s works to be widely comprehensible. Using a youthful narrative voice allowed Vonnegut to deliver concepts in a modest and straightforward way. Other influences on Vonnegut include ‘The War of the Worlds’ author H. G. Wells and satirist Jonathan Swift. Vonnegut credited American journalist and critic H. L. Mencken for inspiring him to become a journalist.

---

---

TARIFFS & THE KING

by David Yearsley

The report to President Nixon submitted on June 11th 1971 by the U. S. Tariff Commission considered the petition of the “Pipe Organ Workers Federal Labor Union, AFL-CIO, with the assistance of the United Furniture Workers of America, AFL-CIO … for a determination of eligibility to apply for adjustment assistance on behalf of production and maintenance workers, members of Local Union 21108, formerly employed by M. P. Moller, Inc., Hagerstown, Maryland.”

The petition had been filed two months earlier by a number of laid-off Moller Pipe Organ workers. The four members of the tariff panel who considered the case were split evenly on the case. Two ruled that foreign imports had not cost the petitioners their jobs; the two others (including George Moore of Maryland) asserted that all four requirements of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 had been met so as to rule in favor of the workers: “(1) Imports must be increasing; (2) The increase in imports must be a result in major part of concessions granted under trade agreements; (3) The workers concerned must be unemployed or underemployed, or threatened with unemployment or underemployment; and (4) The increased imports resulting in major part from trade-agreement concessions must be the major factor causing or threatening to cause the unemployment or underemployment.”

The report informed the President that Smoot-Hawley Tariff had set the rate for organ imports at 40%, reduced to 35% the next year, then to 25% in 1936 and 17.5% in 1939. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) brought the rate down to 15% in 1948, then 10% in 1951. By 1971 it lay at 6%, scheduled to shed another percentage point the following year. Those tariff board members sympathetic cited the flood of organ imports (pipes not human body parts) from Canada that bi-literal agreements had allowed, but also, beginning in the 1950s, the influx of instruments from West Germany and The Netherlands.

The board’s split decision meant that the Moller workers were out of luck. Looming across the ensuing decades were the OPEC oil embargo, the austerities of Carter neo-liberalism with high interests that peaked above 20%. Once the biggest organ company in the world, Moller went bankrupt in 1992 having churned out nearly 12,000 organs across its 120-year history and survived the Depressions of the 1870s and the 1930s, not to mention the Panic of 1893. It was de-industrialization that did Moller in.

Two fascinating books by Bynum Petty, long-time archivist of the Organ Historical Society, chronicle the entrepreneurial spirit of the company’s founder M. P. Moller. Trained as a furniture maker in his native Denmark, he had emigrated to the United States in1872 as an eighteen-year-old with seven dollars in his pocket. He died in 1937 a wealthy man, owner of the world’s biggest organ factory, one that employed hundreds. Along the way Moller had become president of a bank, proof for Petty of his resourcefulness, resolve, even, perhaps, his righteousness.

The title of the first of Petty’s volumes captures the energy of American industry as it approached its peak: An Organ a Day: The Enterprising Spirit of M. P. Möller (Pendragon Press, 2013). That level of output had been achieved in the 1920s, the legion of workers bolstered by a team of hardworking salesmen armed with the company’s belief that all should be able to afford organs—churches, synagogues, funeral homes, auditoriums, cinemas, schools, office buildings and private homes. Petty tells us that Moller was convinced that productivity had been boosted by the 18th Amendment, the sober Dane claiming that “we are indebted to prohibition … for this unusual prosperity in our line of work.”

Moller instruments, most of them of modest size, were sent from sea to shining sea. Large-scale projects were also important for the balance sheet. Crucial contracts came from the military, for whom bigger is and always will be better. In 1910 Moller won the bid for the organ in West Point’s Cadet Chapel. The firm’s Opus 1200, continually expanded over the ensuing decades to its now-nearly 25,000 pipes, purports to be the largest organ in the world in a religious building. The Moller organ built for the Naval Academy boasts a mere 15,000.

Petty’s second book on the company, M.P. Möller: The Artist of Organs — The Organ of Artists richly chronicles technological developments, shifting aesthetic and social conditions, business developments, and economic headwinds. Oral histories of the surviving workers, especially the petitioners of 1971, would make for a welcome third volume in the series. Petty’s subtitle overstates the aesthetic value of these instruments, unless we take that title more as a play on the name of the company’s most popular model that pushed their serial numbers into five digits.

I learned to play on a Moller Artiste organ at the Episcopal church on Bainbridge Island Washington. The instrument had been installed in the 1940s, the opus number somewhere in the high 6,000s. By electric sleight-of-hand the same few sets of pipes (called ranks) were wired up to various, differently named stops so as to give the impression at the console of a much bigger organ with a substantial and varied sonic palette. This ruse couldn’t fool half-way discerning organists.

Though it is hard to tune back into those teenage years and ears, especially after so much subsequent time spent playing historic organs of Europe, I do remember thinking that every pipe of that Moller Artiste produced a hard, industrial sound. There was nothing beautiful about any of it. Like a steam whistle, the instrument had the decibel power to organize the small church’s congregation into corporate song. But Bach’s music, ever-resilient, could not be machined into oppressive blandness by the Artiste, and I learned large chunks of it on that trusty Made-in-America machine.

As often as I could, I took the ferry across the Puget Sound into Seattle to play two foreign imports both arrived in 1965: one by the Dutch firm of Flentrop in the Episcopal Cathedral and the other by the West German firm of von Beckerath. Both of these organs had come from the countries deemed sometime threats, during the disruptive decade cited by those tariff commissioners sympathetic to the unemployed Moller workers in 1971.

These European competitors also used older methods of construction, crucially adopting mechanical action keyboards that let wind into the pipes through an intricate network of slender wood batons (called trackers) rather than the on-off magnets of late-model Mollers. The members of the tariff commission who had denied the laid-off organ workers, concluded that the awarding of contracts to foreign firms resulted from taste and was not driven by economic factors.

Other crucial developments were taking place behind the front lines of these trade wars. A new generation of American builders became interested in antique organs of Europe (and to a lesser extent, those of their own country), and pursued the artistic aspects of their craft as handcraft, rather than maximizing production and sales, even while they had to remain fiscally afloat—an often-precarious endeavor.

Some of these men were seeking refuge from the military industrial complex. Charles Fisk, a Harvard physicist who had been involved in the Manhattan Project, turned to making mechanical action organs. Most of these took years to make. None was made in a day.

John Brombaugh had trained at Cornell as an electrical engineer, then studied with Rudolf von Beckerath in Germany. Brombaugh spent a long career making scrupulous historically, non-electric instruments, one of which from 1978 I also had the good fortune to visit often in Tacoma, Washginton. There I heard the legendary European organists Klaas Bolt and Harald Vogel, from The Netherlands and Germany respectively.

In 1977 another apprentice of von Beckerath in Germany, George Taylor founded a small firm along with John Boody that handcrafted baroque style organs in a repurposed schoolhouse in their rural outpost of Staunton, Virginia.

The Pacific Northwest builder Paul Fritts was taught the trade by his father in Tacoma, but he also learned from and contributed to the projects of his global colleagues. Fritts produced dozens of exquisite organs for the region and for churches and universities across the country; he has also made substantial additions to and renovations of the landmark Flentrop organ in Seattle that I so often played as a teenager. These American firms exported organs to Japan, Sweden, Canada, and England. Artisans from around the world came to study with these masters. On interconnected artisanal, scholarly, and aesthetic levels, these builders reshaped and reinvigorated global organ culture even while being rooted in the local.

What emerged from the wreckage of the organ industry were works of musical art rather than commodities. The lessons to be drawn from these developments in the history of the King of Instruments—one that extends for more than a millennium in Europe and its colonial outposts into the globalized present and perhaps post-globalized future—is that a culture of artistic quality, built on the local but animated by a cosmopolitan openness thrived even as the neo-liberal order toppled the biggest organ company that the world had ever seen. Long before the end, it had been too big not to fail.

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

---