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A RETURN of the marine clouds and fog will bring cooler temperatures to the coastal and near coastal areas. The cooling trend is expected to continue through Thursday. There is a slight chance for thunderstorms over the interior mountains Tuesday and Wednesday. Sunny skies and breezy conditions are expected late in the week with continued temperatures in the 60s and 70s. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A foggy 49F on the coast this Tuesday morning. the NWS says foggy ish today & tomorrow then less so for the end of the week. But as we have learned (the hard way) forecasting the fog is a crap shoot at best, so...
AV UNIFIED NEWS
Dear Anderson Valley USD Families,
Spring excitement is in the air; the sun is out and it feels like summer is on the horizon! Many of our Seniors have received college admissions offers and they are making their choices now. They are looking toward the future! Please remind these students that they need to keep their grades up too: most college admissions decisions require the student to maintain good grades all the way to the end of senior year.
Coming to school and working hard helps kids learn, even for our smallest students. Did you know that a few days of absence can cause a student to miss new learning and new skills? It can be very difficult to catch up after missed days. Getting good grades is also important for participation in sports. Remind your athletes to keep their eyes on the prize!
We are proud of ALL our students for balancing their enthusiasm for being outdoors with the responsibilities of school. Please encourage your child to continue to stay focused and to avoid taking days off during the school week, unless they are truly ill.
Thank you for supporting your child by sending them to school every day with high expectations. It will pay off!
Memorial Assembly at AVHS
Students and staff have organized a memorial assembly to honor our beloved student, Yeanette Guadalupe Camarillo Balandran. There is also a beautiful ofrenda in the hallway by the office that was decorated by students and staff. Yeanette is deeply missed and will always be remembered at our school and in our community.
The assembly will be this Wednesday, April 16, 11:25-11:50. All AVHS students will attend and AV Jr High students who knew Yeanette are welcome to attend as well, as are any community members who would like to come to honor her memory. Yeanette will never be forgotten.
Upcoming Events - Mark your Calendars!
We are in the midst of enjoying Spring activities and there is still a lot to do as we head toward the end of the school year! Please mark your calendars for these upcoming events; we will continue to keep you posted about new ones.
April 17, 5:00-6:00 p.m. Academic Talent Search at AVHS
April 21-May 9 - CAASPP Testing at AVES (3rd-6th)
April 22, 6:00-8:00 Awards Night at AVHS
May 12-16 - CAASPP Testing at AV Jr/Sr High
May 30, Peachland Graduation
June 5, FFA Awards Night at AVHS
June 10, 6th Grade Promotion
June 12, High School Graduation at AVHS
CAASPP Testing Is Important!
We in AVUSD want to emphasize the importance of the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP), which includes not only the English Language Arts and Mathematics assessments but also the California Science Test (CAST). These assessments are essential tools that help us measure how well students are understanding grade-level standards and applying critical thinking skills across subjects. The results provide us with a clearer picture of student achievement and allow us to identify where additional support or enrichment may be needed.
In our district, we will be closely reviewing CAASPP and CAST scores to help target resources and interventions to students who need them. These scores may also influence course placement, including access to advanced or specialized programs. While no single test defines a student, we encourage all students to give their best effort so that we have accurate information to guide their academic journey. With your continued support at home, we can use this data to ensure every student receives the opportunities and challenges they need to thrive. Please ensure your child is at school, well rested, and ready to do their best during the CAASPP tests.
Thank you, Anderson Valley Education Foundation (AVEF)!
Did you know that the AVEF has donated $1.4 MILLION dollars to Anderson Valley scholars since the organization started in 1999? I had the pleasure of attending their fundraising supper on Sunday and had the opportunity to meet the wonderful people who do so much for our kids. The AVEF offers grants, internships, fellowships, scholarships, and summer programs.
Internship applications are due to our school librarian, Ms. Tere, by April 18, 2025. Please check the https://www.andersonvalleyeducation.org/Home website for important information about internships and all the other opportunities the AVEF supports.
Sonoma State University: Academic Talent Search for Grades 6-11 THURSDAY at 5:00!
Please join us for an Academic Talent Search (ATS) presentation at the Anderson Valley High School cafeteria, 5:00-6:30 PM on Thursday, April 17. ATS has worked in our district for nearly a decade supporting students in the process of applying for and being accepted to college.
They offer a variety of high quality free services and supports including guidance counseling, college tours, and application assistance. We hope you can join us to learn more about their program and to complete an application so that your student(s) can join in their supports. If you have any questions, please contact Nat Corey-Moran (email: natcomo@avpanthers.org, phone/text: (707) 354-3330).
THANK YOU School Site Council, DELAC, and School Community!
We had a pretty good turnout at last week’s SSC/DELAC meeting. we were happy to get somewhere between 20-30 participants, including staff, students, and families. We finalized input and plans for 25-26 and enjoyed taco bar afterwards. We appreciate the time and commitment of all people who attended and shared their thoughts and perspectives. Your input matters!
Vacancy on the Board of Trustees
Saoirse Byrne has resigned from the Board due challenges around scheduling conflicts. We in AVUSD are deeply grateful to Saoirse for her leadership on the board. She has kept the importance of outdoor instruction and the building of creativity and free expression at the forefront of our conversations. Her passion for student learning and her fresh perspective have been a great benefit to the district.
If you or someone you know might be interested in joining the Board of Trustees, please review this Board of Trustees Vacancy document and let us know!
Summer School
Summer School will be June 23-July 22
8:30-12:30 / ASP 12:30-5:30 Transportation provided
(bus leaves for the day at 3:00 p.m.)
AVES will provide activities including sports, crafts, science, art, and field trips. Here is the AVES Summer School flier
AV Jr High will provide fun learning activities. (More info coming soon.)
Sr High School provide credit recovery opportunities. (More info coming soon.)
We Value ALL Our Families: Immigration Support and Updates
Please find links to additional information for families below:
Mendocino County Office of Education: Immigration Resource Page
Immigration and California Families: State Immigration Website
National Immigration Law Center: “Know Your Rights” (English | Spanish | Additional Languages)
If you would like to be more involved at school, please contact your school’s principal, Mr. Ramalia at AVES or Mr. McNerney at AV Jr/Sr High, or our district superintendent, Kristin Larson Balliet. We are deeply grateful for our AVUSD families.
With respect,
Kristin Larson Balliet
Superintendent
Anderson Valley Unified School District
klarson@avpanthers.org
CONVENIENT AMNESIA
by Mark Scaramella
Summary: Supervisors Keep Pot Tax Money Promised To Taxpayer-Approved Purposes for Themselves.
“Measure AJ. Advisory Vote Only.” [2016] “If Mendocino County adopts business license taxes on cannabis businesses by the adoption of the measure adopting Chapter 6.32, Measure AI [the County’s version of a pot permit program which has since turned out to be pathetically unworkable], should the County use the majority of that revenue for funding enforcement of marijuana regulations, enhanced mental health services, repair of county roads, and increased fire and emergency medical services?”
The County’s “Impartial Analysis” which accompanied the Measure in 2016: “If the voters approve Measure AJ, it would serve to advise the Board of Supervisors that the voters want a majority of the revenue generated by the Cannabis Business Tax, Measure AI, for enforcement of marijuana regulations, enhanced mental health services, repair of county roads, and increased fire and emergency services.”
In other words, to get the public to approve the County’s Cannabis Business Tax program (as opposed to an alternative measure put forward by local cannabis farmers), the County sweetened the deal by promising to spend “the majority” of the cannabis tax proceeds on “enforcement of marijuana regulations, enhanced mental health services, repair of county roads, and increased fire and emergency medical services?”
Note the particular use of the words “enhanced” and “increased” which have never been mentioned in future discussions of Measure AJ.
For the first four years of the unworkable program which saw about two thousand growers attempting to get legal of whom less than a dozen actually obtained county and state licenses, well-meaning growers had paid about $16 million in cannabis taxes, yet nothing — absolutely nothing — was done to account for the revenues and expenditures as promised in Measure AJ.
In December of 2020, Supervisor John Haschak finally raised the question of how to distribute the County’s cannabis tax revenues in accordance with Measure AJ. They even set up a short-lived ad hoc committee to “examine cannabis tax revenue available for the purposes specified in Measure AJ,”
When the subject arose that day in December of 2020, Supervisor John McCowen said, “Maybe Supervisor Gjerde and myself should be able to ask questions of staff regarding the cost of certain budget items that legitimately could be recommended for coverage through the cannabis tax. The goal is to get down to a net amount that would then be divided according to the advisory measure of the voters.”
Supervisor Gjerde replied, “We can send an e-mail out by the end of the year and if the responses come in next year that's okay.”
In other words, four years and millions of dollars of misspent pot tax revenues and they were only then getting around to maybe asking questions of staff — next year.
Gjerde continued: “I think [sic, it shouldn’t matter what anyone “thinks,” the measure is quite clear] that one category alone probably we are spending the majority of the revenue on law enforcement. Mental health, county roads, and fire emergency services… If you look at our general fund allocations to fire and emergency services which are outside of Proposition 172 and which are outside the Campground Transient Occupancy Tax, between fire and emergency and enforcement we are probably spending all of our cannabis tax in the coming year could be shown as going to those services.”
Gjerde basically said that since the County spent some general fund money on the services mentioned in the Advisory Measure, then that was good enough and no special effort need be made to determine how to allocate the cannabis tax revenues.
Haschak and Williams quickly glommed onto Gjerde’s self-serving idea and it was accepted by his colleagues. Not one nickel of what had at that time become well over $20 million in cannabis tax revenues had ever been earmarked for the purposes the voters overwhelmingly advised them to allocate it to.
Everyone also carefully avoided the words “enhanced,” or “increased” in the language of the measure.
Fast Forward to now: On Tuesday, April 8, 2025, the subject of how to allocate the Measure AJ proceeds arose again during the budget presentation. No mention was made of the 2020 Dodge. As requested by the Supervisors at the prior meeting, staff even prepared this “guilty as charged” chart:
In 2023 the CEO’s staff presented this summary of Cannabis tax revenues:
Since 2023 another couple of million has come in, bringing the total cannabis tax revenue to well over $24 million. Yet no attempt whatsoever has been made to honor Measure AJ. As last Tuesday’s presentation admits, all those millions were just plopped into the General Fund and mindlessly absorbed with the “willful ignorance” of the Board based on Gjerde’s bogus 2020 interpretation.
On Tuesday, all five Supervisors played dumb. They pretended that the subject had never been discussed previously. They ignored their decision back in 2020 to make no attempt to properly allocate the funds. They ignored the fact that the measure specifically used the words “enhanced” and “increased.” And they pretended that all that was left to discuss was how to allocate the cannabis tax revenues in the future. Never mind the $24 million that had already been wasted on themselves.
Supervisor Madeline Cline asked what it would take to “track” the revenues, even though the staff has already been doing that. She also wanted to know what it would take to track the allocations according to the text of the measure, again failing to mention the words “enhanced” and “increased.”
Supervisor Mulheren, who had agreed with the Gjerde Dodge in 2020, added, “It’s a disservice to taxpayers to not follow the measure.”
Supervisor Bernie Norvell agreed with Mulheren and asked what were they going to do to “remedy this.” “It’s a trust thing,” said Norvell. “If we ever go back to the public to ask for taxes, we have to show that we are doing what we are supposed to be doing.”
Two-faced Williams, who had gleefully agreed with the Gjerde Dodge in 2020, was even so bold as to say, “The public expected we would pay for emergency services. The County hasn’t done any of that. Staff is trying to clean up a mess. We clearly didn’t do that. Let’s surface it and do what’s right. I don’t want to use an Enron style pass through the General Fund. Let’s fix it going forward.”
“Going forward”? Why only now, when the cannabis tax revenues have slowed to a trickle? How about for the entire program as required by the Measure?
A normal voter would interpret the language of Measure AJ as not more than half of the total proceeds going into the General Fund, and not less than half of it going to “enforcement of marijuana regulations, enhanced mental health services, repair of county roads, and increased fire and emergency medical services?”
In other words, the County can keep the $12 million accrued so far, but the other $12 million-plus must be allocated as directed in the Measure. Otherwise, as Supervisor Norvell noted, “If we ever go back to the public to ask for taxes, we have to show that we are doing what we are supposed to be doing.”
After Supervisor Mulheren casually noted that following Measure AJ “might be a way to fund struggling fire departments,” Supervisor Williams moved to direct staff to “Present as much accounting as we have today, with detailed reports, and a plan to allocate the funds in accordance with Measure AJ going forward, a plan to implement Measure AJ allocating the funds to the four voter designated categories.”
Nobody mentioned the millions already wasted. Nobody asked for a date when the staff will respond with another ignorable “presentation.” And nobody seemed bothered in the slightest that the Measure has been ignored for more than nine years now, and is only being considered for “remedy” “going forward.”
As we noted back in 2020 when the discussion first belatedly arose, those “struggling fire departments,” that Supervisor Mulheren mentioned were already owed more than $2 million to fund “INCREASED fire and emergency services.”
Will any allocations ever be made to the specified purposes?
Given the convenient amnesia of the Board and the CEO’s staff, and the County’s alleged multi-million deficit, the odds are very, very low.
The Board of Supervisors has betrayed Mendo voters yet again.
NEW MOMENTUM IN DECADES-LONG QUEST TO UPGRADE LAKE MENDOCINO’S COYOTE VALLEY DAM
With $500,000 secured by Rep. Huffman, officials have launched a study that could result in raising the level of the 67-year-old earthen dam impounding Lake Mendocino.
by Austin Murphy
Striding along the southern edge of Lake Mendocino on Friday, Rep. Jared Huffman spotted a bald eagle soaring 150 feet above, a fish in its talons.
An avid angler himself, Huffman then pointed to a nearby stand of partly submerged trees — prime bass habitat, he noted.
If he had a rod, said Huffman, the ranking member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, “I would be casting right into that.”
But the congressman, along with a group of local officials, tribal leaders, and members of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, had work to do.
The group had gathered to sign an agreement geared to significant future upgrades to the 67-year-old Coyote Valley Dam, which impounds Lake Mendocino, a reservoir providing flood control for nearby Ukiah, and other communities.
The reservoir, fed by the upper Russian River’s east fork, also stores water supplies for use in the long dry season in Mendocino and Sonoma counties.
Improvements under consideration include the possibility of dramatically increasing the reservoir’s storage capacity by raising the height of the dam, upon which Friday’s signing ceremony took place. It advanced a cost sharing agreement tied to a study of the dam modification.
Last year, Huffman secured $500,000 for the study, which is expected to take three years.
“If it goes well,” Huffman said, “we are pre-authorized for much more than that to come from the Corps.”
Past plans for dam modifications called for raising it by about three feet.
Previous efforts to work with the Army Corps of Engineers on the project were hampered by the narrow scope of its mission.
In the past, the Corps could only look at flood protection in its feasibility studies, said Huffman. Thanks to a 2024 change in the wording of the Water Resources Development Act, the study launched Friday will consider “a broad set of benefits,” he said.
In addition to exploring options for increasing the reservoir’s size, the Corps can also address its notorious turbidity issues.
The antiquated design of the dam, completed in 1958, has resulted in large amounts of sediment mixing with water that is released downriver.
That muddy water, Huffman said, “kills fish every year.”
Serving as emcee Friday was Janet Pauli, whose 20-year quest to upgrade the old, earthen dam calls to mind Ahab’s pursuit of the white whale.
A longtime champion of farming interests in Mendocino County’s Potter Valley, Pauli is chair of the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission, whose acronym, MCIWPC, tied the tongues of nearly all the event’s speakers.
Upgrading the Coyote Valley Dam, said Pauli, “is about more than infrastructure. It’s about preparing for a future where our water supply is less predictable and more difficult to manage.
“This study is a critical step toward building a smarter, more resilient water system in the face of droughts and changes to our historic water supply,” she said.
Huffman warned that inadequate storage threatens the region’s people, wildlife and economy.
Those threats, he added, may be exacerbated by uncertainties around PG&E’s planned abandonment of the antiquated Potter Valley Project — which for more than a century has diverted water from the Eel to the East Fork Russian River through a mile-long tunnel excavated in 1908.
Dismantling that infrastructure is a key element in the so-called “Two Basin Solution,” a complex accord, finalized in February, designed to restore Eel River fisheries while at the same time providing reliable flows for the Russian River basin.
PG&E’s plans to decommission the hydropower plant serving the Potter Valley diversion also call for dismantling two dams on the upper Eel River — the seismically unstable Scott Dam, which forms Lake Pillsbury, 35 miles northwest of Ukiah, and Cape Horn Dam, which forms Van Arsdale Reservoir, 12 miles downstream.
The two-basin solution was negotiated for a 30-year term, with possibility of a 20-year renewal. It is based on the understanding that upper Russian River users — towns, rural residents and farms from Potter Valley to Healdsburg — will wean themselves from the supplemental Eel River flows by developing new water storage and supply solutions.
Even though PG&E won’t take the Potter Valley Project offline until 2028, at the earliest, the agreement is generating anxiety among some Mendocino, Sonoma and Marin county residents concerned about the security of their water supplies.
While acknowledging “uncertainties” around the two-basin accord, Huffman said “there's also an opportunity here.”
Increasing the storage capacity of Lake Mendocino, now capable of holding 122,400 acre-feet of water, is an integral element of the two-basin solution. (An acre-foot is equivalent to the amount of water needed to flood most of a football field one foot deep, and can supply the needs of three water-efficient households for a year.)
When the Potter Valley Project is no longer operating, it will be even more important to “capture a lot of water in winter months from the Eel,” Huffman said.
“The question then becomes, where to put it?” he said.
Limitations from downstream users, some of whom didn’t want water in winter months, have placed constraints “on how much we can actually store and use on the Russian River side,” he said.
Adding capacity to Lake Mendocino, “helps us manage that demand, stretch those water supplies, take advantage of high-flow events in the Eel River, and better protect the area from floods,” he said.
“Water is life,” declared Andy Mejia, chairman of the Lytton Rancheria of California, one of two “nonfederal” sponsors of the study, along with the MCIWP.
For far too long, he said, “tribal voices have been left out of major decisions on water supply, ecosystem restoration, and long-term planning.”
The feasibility agreement signed Friday is “a powerful step forward in reclaiming a voice in how water resources and our ancestral territory are managed,” said Mejia.
The study “opens a new chapter” in which members of his tribe “are co-creators on a better path forward.”
(pressdemocrat.com)
TRANSPARENCY… OR THE LACK THEREOF AT THE MENDOCINO COAST HEALTHCARE DISTRICT
by Malcolm Macdonald
Transparency is a term elected officials like to bandy in order to brag about action or information that is inherently the right of the public to know in the first place.
In a July 2024 statement in response to a Grand Jury probe, Mendocino Coast Health Care District (MCHCD) Board Chair Paul Garza stated, “Our intent [is] to provide full disclosure to our residents on our progress toward improving the functioning of our District.”
Over the past year, in print or verbally one can find further examples of Garza touting the healthcare district's new found sense of transparency. Garza has cited the hiring of Regional Government Services (RGS) as a major step forward in providing transparency between the district board and the public it represents. Contracting with RGS certainly did provide needed support staff. However, readers might want to look back at the January 5, 2024 edition of the AVA to illuminate the less than transparent methods Garza used to bring about the contract with RGS rather than hiring an executive director employed by and answerable to MCHCD.
Rather than their own employee, MCHCD now has an agency administrator employed by Regional Government Services. That agency administrator is a Mendocino Coast resident, which makes the sixteen month employment by RGS rather than the local healthcare district all the more perplexing. That mystery will have to wait.
Nearly seven weeks before the agreement between MCHCD and RGS was reached, in late October 2023, the healthcare district contracted with Props and Measures (P&M). This consulting firm specializes in developing strategies leading to revenue raising bond measures. Throughout much of 2023 and the first few months of 2024 the leadership on the MCHCD Board of Directors was fixated on a bond measure for the November 2024 ballot.
See the August 29, 2024 edition of the AVA for details regarding Garza's rushed appointment of Jan McGourty to the MCHCD board in May 2024 and the disappearance of the bond issue as a priority a month later.
This leads us back to Props and Measures. Some observers of the MCHCD Board of Directors waited through the summer of 2024 for MCHCD to terminate the contract with P&M, a contract which cost the healthcare district $4,500 per month, a contract that could have been terminated thirty days after it became apparent in late spring that the district was not going to pursue a bond measure at the November 2024 polls. However, that termination did not occur. Monthly financial statements proffered by MCHCD's interim CFO showed Props and Measures collecting $4,500 each month.
Until... A November check register revealed that Props and Measures had been paid the reduced amount of $2,500 for October and November 2024. No mention of why this change had occurred was offered by Chair Garza at the November 2024 MCHCD Board meeting, nor in December, or January of this year. This writer asked an outgoing board member what was up. The former board member was equally bewildered by this lack of explanation.
Emails from September 2024 show the agency administrator assisting MCHCD Chair Garza in negotiating a renewed/amended contract with Props and Measures. On September 11th of last year the agency administrator for MCHCD sent an email to a contact person at P&M stating, “Attached is an executed copy of the contract change of terms. I had Paul sign it too.”
The latter sentence presumably refers to MCHCD Board Chair Paul Garza. Whether or not Garza directed the agency administrator to draw up the new contract with Props and Measures is unclear, no available documents show that to be the case. It would seem unlikely the agency administrator would have undertaken this alone.
More than seven months have transpired since. Neither Garza nor the agency administrator has brought the new contract to the attention of the public or the rest of MCHCD's Board of Directors (both Garza and the agency administrator give either a written or oral report at each monthly board meeting).
On top of that we have another September 2024 email exchange between the P&M contact and the RGS employee acting as agency administrator for MCHCD. The P&M official writes, “Attached is the amended contract that changes the monthly Props and Measures consulting fee to $2,500 until the MCHCD begins to plan for a 2026 bond measure. As we discussed on our call a couple of weeks ago, when the District decides to actively pursue a bond measure in 2026, the P&M contract will be amended again to our regular consulting fee of $6,500 per month.”
The agency administrator replied, “Thank you!! I will get this executed and back to you asap.”
These emails appear to make it clear that, as of early September 2024, the agency administrator and Props and Measures considered it a foregone conclusion that the Mendocino Coast Health Care District would pursue a bond in 2026. No “ifs” about it nor any “ifs” about the full MCHCD Board approving the larger consulting fee.
Again, at the monthly board meetings that have taken place since (more than seven months) neither the MCHCD Board Chair, Garza, nor the RGS employed agency administrator has mentioned any of the foregoing information to the full board or the public. No explanation has been given as to what Props and Measures employee(s) have been doing to earn $2,500 of public funds since October 2024. One could add a question wondering why P&M was being paid $4,500 for at least three summer months in 2024 when P&M was apparently doing no bond measure work for the healthcare district.
As something of a contrast, readers may want to know that at the March 2025 MCHCD board meeting Chair Garza included in the public session agenda a renewed (or amended) contract between Regional Government Services (RGS) and MCHCD for discussion by the board and members of the community as well as a vote by the full board.
PROJECT HERE
Headlands Environmental Remediation Education Project
The Headlands Environmental Remediation Education Project (called “Project HERE” for short) is pleased to announce that we have been awarded a Technical Assistance Grant from the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), to engage in community education around the condition of and environmental issues on the former Georgia Pacific Mill Site (Mill Site). This funding is part of the Cleanup in Vulnerable Communities Initiative (CVCI), authorized through Senate Bill (SB) 158 in 2021.
Our grant will allow us to hire a Technical Consultant to review and explain the Mill Site investigation and cleanup reports to the community. Over the next 18 months, Project HERE will be hosting open forum meetings to present this information to members of the Fort Bragg community. We invite you to participate meaningfully in the planning for the remaining remediation of the Mill Site.
Mill Site
The Mill Site covers the western third of the City of Fort Bragg, which consists of about 425 acres of land with about 2 miles of ocean frontage. Abandoned when the sawmill closed in 2002, the Mill Site has been sitting empty since then, with the exception of the Coastal Trail. There have been disputes over who is responsible for cleaning up the toxic chemical residues left from sawmill operations.
Who We Are
We are a group of Coastal residents who are deeply concerned with the lack of progress toward the sustainable cleanup of the Mill Site, particularly regarding the constraints caused by remaining contamination on the Mill Site. Our collective aim is to ensure a safe, productive, and inclusive future for this vital community asset. HERE is a project of a subcommittee of the Noyo Headlands Working Group of the Grassroots Institute.
Our Goals
Our primary goals are to provide the public with meaningful and accurate information about the condition of the Mill Site, particularly “Operable Unit E (OU-E),” the central section with the ponds that contain residual contamination preventing the public from future access. We believe that with this information, the community can effectively participate in the planning process as it moves forward. We aim to ensure that the entire community, including those who have been left out of the process previously, can have their voices heard and affect significant decisions regarding the future of the Mill Site.
What You Can Expect to See Over the Next 18 Months
● Community Public Survey: We will conduct a survey to evaluate public knowledge about the Mill Site and gather feedback regarding its future remediation.
● Technical Consultant: The grant will allow for hiring a technical consultant. Their role is to review and interpret the Mill Site data and present that information in an accessible way to the community. The technical consultant will facilitate community forum meetings in both English and Spanish, to explain the Mill Site history, remediation efforts and opportunities, exposure potentials and risks associated with residual contaminants, and to answer the community’s questions. The technical consultant will provide documents in both English and Spanish.
● Community Outreach: We will engage with service organizations, religious fellowships, schools, and other community groups to listen and learn about the community's desires for the Mill Site through small open forum meetings.
● Sampling and Citizen Science Projects: The technical consultant will lead us in sampling and citizen science projects, enabling community members to actively participate in research efforts.
● Walking Tours: During this period, we will host walking tours for the public along the Coastal Trail, fostering a deeper connection with the Mill Site and its future uses.
● Large Forums: Following the community outreach, we will organize meetings to present our findings and discuss the next steps as a community.
Technical Consultant
We have retained Farallon Consulting, L.L.C. as our technical consultant, working specifically with Steffany Aguilar, who is a bilingual Professional Geologist (P.G.) with over 9 years of experience conducting environmental assessments, including investigations, site characterizations, remediation activities, and compliance work. In addition, Steffany is an advocate for women in STEM and volunteers in the San Francisco Bay Area for Scientific Adventures for Girls and Oakland Unified School District (https://www.farallonconsultig.com/people/steffany-aguilar/).
How to Connect and Participate
Community participation is crucial to the success of this project. We encourage everyone to get involved and share their perspectives, ensuring a diverse and inclusive approach to the Mill Site’s future. If you are interested in contributing to the future of the Mill Site, please join our efforts and help us make a positive impact on our community.
Please reach out to us with questions or concerns at Project-HERE@mcn.org.
Visit us at Project-HERE.org.
HONORING EXCELLENCE: CAL FIRE Directors Awards
We’re proud to recognize Matt Wilson for receiving 2024 Directors Awards for your outstanding contributions to CAL FIRE!
Matt Wilson – Superior Accomplishment
Matt’s dedication as an Instructor for the HFEO Academy has resulted in exceptional contributions to CAL FIRE. His ingenuity, innovation, and creativity go beyond expectations, shaping the future of Heavy Fire Equipment Operators.
Joined CAL FIRE in 2014, starting in the Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit
Transferred to the Mendocino Unit in 2016, serving his home community in Anderson Valley
Active member of several key groups, including:
Heavy Fire Equipment Operator Cadre (2020–Present)
Mobile Equipment Planning and Advisory Working Group (2023–Present)
ESS Group, Mendocino Unit (2022–Present)
Recruitment & Retention Task Force, Mendocino Unit (2023–Present)
Congratulations to Matt for your well-deserved recognition! Your dedication and hard work make a lasting impact on CAL FIRE and the communities we serve.
Ed Note: Matt Wilson is the son of former AV Fire Chief Colin Wilson.
THE HAWK REPLIES to on-line comments about his letter re: replacing Ted Williams: “I don’t know if I will have more to say but I DO know I’m happy I stirred the soup!”
PS. Hawk’s reply to Chuck Wilcher: “My friend, Ted is PAID quite lavishly for solving the counties problems that’s why you sent him to Ukiah, and I’m strongly suggesting you get a new one.”
MONICA HUETTL:
Dear Bruce,
Today I learned a new word that was in the press release for the Noyo Harbor Multimodal Circulation Plan published in The AVA.
I had to look it up, and found this definition from Michigan State University, and it made me laugh. DO NOT BE FOOLED!
Thank you Sarah McCormick, of the City of Fort Bragg, for an interesting
press release.
KEEPING FAMILIES TOGETHER: HOW ONE MENDOCINO COUNTY PROGRAM IS CHANGING LIVES—AND NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT
Families without stable housing is a complex societal challenge impacting every community in California. Mendocino County is no exception. One program, Bringing Families Home, has had a significant and positive impact on local families struggling with housing. Unfortunately, funding for this program is expected to be exhausted locally by fall 2025.
Established in 2016, the Bringing Families Home program was designed to reduce the number of families in the child welfare system who experience or are at risk of homelessness. Its primary goals are to increase family reunification and prevent foster care placements. The program provides financial assistance and housing-related wraparound services, including rental assistance, housing navigation, case management, security deposits, credit repair, and other essential supports that help remove barriers to stable housing.
On March 20, 2025, the California Senate Budget Subcommittee convened to hear testimony on California Department of Social Services (CDSS) housing programs at risk of closure due to lack of funding. Speaking on behalf of the Bringing Families Home (BFH) program was Megan Van Sant, Senior Program Manager with Mendocino County Department of Social Services.
In Mendocino County, the impact of this program has been profound. In her testimony, Megan VanSant shared two local stories that highlight its success (names have been changed to protect privacy). As the future of this funding remains uncertain, it is crucial for community members to recognize both the human and fiscal benefits of the program.
One case involved a mother and her now 15-year-old son. After years struggling with addiction, the mother lost custody of her son when he was five years old. Her son was subsequently placed in the child welfare system and moved through multiple placements. Nearly two years ago, the mother committed to sobriety after almost a decade of homelessness and addiction. With the support of limited rental assistance and case management through the Bringing Families Home program, she was able to secure stable housing. As a result, she regained full custody of her son, and they are now fully self-sufficient and thriving in their own apartment
Had this family not reunified, this teenager would likely have remained in the child welfare system through the age of 18. The cost of his continued placement from age 15 to 18 including case management and related services could have amounted to $140,819, or more depending on the type and level of care needed. By comparison, the assistance provided by Bringing Families Home was a fraction of that cost at approximately $3,000.
According to Van Sant, “Bringing Families Home focuses on households experiencing trauma, confusion, despair, and extreme instability. Through this program, we are able to provide a wide range of housing-related support. This program has a direct impact on our county’s ability to return children to their homes from foster care or prevent their removal in the first place. It creates an immediate and positive financial impact for our County, and by extension, the State. But most importantly, this is perhaps the State’s only housing program focused exclusively on children, and those most at risk of harm and neglect. These children should be our highest priority as a community.”
Another Bringing Families Home success story involves a father, his four-year-old daughter, and her six-year-old half-sister. Through a family-finding process, Mendocino County Family & Children's Services identified the father as a potential caregiver after the girls’ mother was no longer able to care for them. He wanted to provide a home for both girls, keeping them together, but his single-room rental was insufficient. The Bringing Families Home program helped with a security deposit for a larger apartment and, through a partnership with the nonprofit Make It Home, furnished the space. Today, the family is stable, the girls’ education remains uninterrupted, and the sisters remain together.
The cost of a foster care placement for these two girls would have been roughly $6,847 per month including child welfare staffing support. Bringing Families Home supported this family with one-time assistance of less than $2,000, allowing them to stay together and bypass the foster care system entirely.
“While there are numerous programs addressing housing, many are limited in scope,” said DeDe Parker, Mendocino County Department of Social Services Director. “Families who are on the verge—couch-surfing, living in cars, or otherwise not visibly homeless—are often left out. This program gives us the opportunity to lift these families up and provide the support they need to succeed and stay together.”
To date, 171 families in Mendocino County have benefited from Bringing Families Home. Support provided ranges from single housing consultations to multiple engagements addressing long-term housing barriers. Currently, 56 households remain active in the program. Of the 115 families that have completed it, only four have had their reunification services terminated. Overall, 96% of participating families in Mendocino County have been able to secure or maintain a safe home for their children. This is an extraordinarily high success rate.
These statistics highlight the value of the Bringing Families Home program in supporting vulnerable community members while delivering significant cost savings. Funding was distributed in fiscal years 2021-2022 and 2022-2023, with counties allowed to spend funds through June 30, 2027. Despite Mendocino County’s success in maximizing these funds, they are projected to be fully exhausted by fall 2025.
Community members can help support Bringing Families Home by contacting their representatives.
Senator Mike McGuire, 200 S School St., Suite K, Ukiah or (707) 468-8914
Congressman Jared Huffman, 200 S School St., Ukiah or (707) 671-7449
Assemblymember Chris Rogers, 200 S School St., Ukiah or (707) 463-5770
For more information, visit the program’s website: Bringing Families Home Program.
ANOSOGNOSIA
Hiya Editor,
There is an actual medical condition called “Anosognosia.” That is the reason “the crazies are unaware they are crazy.” It means one has no insight into their illness. They do not know they are sick and because of that they are incapable of making a decision on treatment for said illness. Unfortunately, it is estimated that 50% of people with a serious mental illness experience Anosognosia. Again, if we are statistically speaking, then we have approximately 150 people in our county who are unaware they are ill and need treatment for their condition.
Also, most people do not realize whether drugs, mental illness, or in combination. Just looking at states of psychosis the longer we leave people in that state without providing intervention and treatment the brain damage increases. That’s right, the longer we allow someone to remain in psychosis it causes more damage to the brain, we are making things worse on so many levels.
As far as Mr. Bassler goes, I have no doubts about Jim writing letters requesting intervention for his son Aaron. It is a frightening situation to watch someone you love unravel into psychosis, no matter the cause. I made requests and demands multiple times and was ignored. Families’ cries for help are not addressed. We are often viewed as the problem and a nuisance that needs to be stifled. However, we are actually the solution!
Assisted outpatient treatment, also known as Laura‘s Law, possibly could have helped Aaron very early on. But the criteria is so strict it’s unlikely he would be admitted to the program. And if he were, he would have to commute daily, which probably would not have been sustainable.
Speaking of which it’s been a long time since I’ve seen any stats regarding assisted outpatient treatment. Aaron needed a more radical long-term intervention that should have been provided and was not. All these years later if all that was happening right now we would still be in the same boat. No one would intervene on Mr. Bassler‘s behalf and that in itself is crazy. That is the system feeding off itself not knowing it’s crazy and pretending everything is fine!
Mazie Malone
Ukiah
MORE THAN ANYTHING CAN BUY
How cool this stone feels
Covered in vegetation
While the sun rises
Proud rooster crowing
Kittens playing in the barn
Moos at milking time
A dog’s righteous bark
At something really joyous
Just to bark about
How a woman’s legs
Can still 'rouse my fire engines
’Spec’lly in black silk
And each person’s smile
Thumbs up wink or nod assures
Quiet acknowledgement
Like swallows swooping
Away from their hidden nests
To protect their young
Or songs long not heard
To please bring it back after
So long without it
All help me recall
And remind me every day
All you are to me
— Jim Luther
STUDENT SCIENTISTS STUDY LOCAL FIRE CONDITIONS AT HOPLAND REC
Few things are more satisfying than learning how to use a dichotomous key and run a prescribed burn. On a drizzly day in late March, eighteen lucky middle-schoolers from Laytonville got to do both.
The Mendocino County Fire Safe Council (MCFSC) has teamed up with the University of California Hopland Research and Extension Center (HREC) to teach fire-science and wildfire-safety basics to about 800 students from 16 schools across the county this spring. The program is free to students, parents and schools, with MCFSC covering all the costs of materials and transportation.
The field trip is the second in a curriculum of three lessons, explained Emily Lord, a GrizzlyCorps Fellow working for MCFSCl. The first lesson is a classroom session on fire ecology and the history of fire in California. “We use trauma-informed educational practices to talk to kids about fire,” she said, adding with a laugh that “part of that is getting them excited about lighting things on fire when they come here.”
The second lesson is a field trip that includes a very controlled burn, with matchsticks representing trees, cotton balls standing in for vegetation, and volunteer trainers who nudge things along with scientific queries and safety tips. The kids also go for a hike in the woods to learn how to identify native species, and how they are adapted to wildfire.
For the third lesson, Lord continued, “We go back to the classroom and talk about wildfire preparedness and resilience.” They assess their school campus for potential fire-safety improvements, and vote on what items they should pack in a go-bag in case they have to evacuate.
The students were enthusiastic about identifying a California buckeye tree. Its mossy trunks wandered out of a nest of big stones, shaded by its palmately compound leaves. “It looks really hairy,” one student scientist observed. “Like a hairy leg,” agreed GrizzlyCorps Fellow Maggie Swanson. “I love what I’m hearing, and I’m ready to use the dichotomous key - what about you?”
The key is a no-tech, choose-your-own-adventure identification tool that directs users to questions, based on answers to previous questions, about the organism they are trying to ID. Does the tree have compound leaves, divided into leaflets? If yes, go to step 2. The buckeye’s leaves are called palmate because each leaf has five leaflets, or fingers, radiating out from a center that resembles a palm, if you use a bit of imagination.
Students also worked through a prescribed-burn protocol under the tutelage of Mike Jones, a UC Cooperative Extension Forestry Advisor for Mendocino, Lake and Sonoma Counties, and retired CAL FIRE forester Lynn Webb. Students learned the fundamentals of fire behavior, and then applied them by crafting a hypothesis about how three sets of matchstick “forests” would burn under different conditions. Arrangements of cotton balls represented different densities of vegetation, a key variable in wildfire behavior. The students then lit their miniature “forests” and determined which variables had the most significant impact on their fires. They measured the flames and recorded details as Webb and Jones pressed them with questions: “How would you describe the burn pattern that happened here? How did the wind affect your prediction? Did you see what happened with the vegetation? What is your data?”
Sixth-grade teacher Joni Kirvin was thrilled to see her students using real science. “It was so relevant,” she said. “We’ve been studying how California is a fire ecology, and the scientific method… It was just a perfect integration to let them use the scientific method and fire science. They were fully engaged, which is always magic.”
Hannah Bird, HREC’s community education specialist, shares Kirvin’s enthusiasm for applied science. She played an active role in developing the curriculum that is now available to middle-schoolers in Mendocino County. About five years ago, she worked with fire scientist Kate Wilkin to adapt a program called FireWorks, which was developed by the US Forest Service in the 1970s. “It’s been tweaked every year since then,” she said, “because our fire story is changing every year. And the conversations we’re having with students change every year because of other fires that may have happened nearby.”
Bird thinks this year’s model is the best yet. “We’ve been focusing this curriculum on middle-schoolers for a few reasons,” she said. One is the rigor of the material. “But we also wanted to work with a group of students who have some agency in being able to effect change, because sometimes the story we have around fire can make people feel like we can’t do anything. These students can do things. We just looked around the buildings here, and they pointed out, ‘We could rake the leaves!’ That’s something they could totally do. Sixth- to eighth-graders, much as they might tell you they can’t do it, they really can.”
Kirvin agrees that there is plenty these students can do. In addition to learning about the local fire-adapted environment, how they can adapt to fire, and career opportunities in fire science or firefighting, she concludes that, “Just by conducting research and using the scientific method, you are a scientist, in that moment.”
Middle-school teachers who would like to learn more about this free fire-science curriculum, courtesy of the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council and educators from the University of California Hopland Research and Extension Center, can contact Emily Lord at lord@firesafemendocino.org.
Photos:
On March 26, 18 middle schoolers from Laytonville enjoyed their field trip, putting the scientific method to work and learning about the natural world. All the attached photos were taken by me at HREC on March 26.
PHIL, OLD BOY, TIME'S UP. FORT BRAGG IT IS. FOREVER.
One People / One Fire Indigenous events open to the public
The Noyo Bida Truth Project invites the public to a series of cultural events April 26th (Saturday) and April 27th (Sunday). All events are free and open to the public.
On Saturday, April 26, at 6 a.m. we will meet at the Noyo Headlands by the West Cypress Street parking lot for a sunrise ceremony and wellness walk led by Clayton Duncan, an elder from the Robinson Rancheria.
From 1 - 2:30 p.m. join us at the Mendocino College Coast Center (1211 Del Mar Drive in Room 112, for an Indigenous Learning Session. Our community teach-in will be lead by Sherwood Valley Tribal members Misty Cook and Nora Morinda who will share their connection to the Noyo Community.
Then on Sunday, April 27 from noon to 7 p.m. join us for a community gathering at the Noyo Bida Ranch for Indigenous dances, native foods and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) Workshops. The Noyo Bida Ranch is at 21801 Highway 1, with an entrance at Airport Road.
These events are cosponsored with The Noyo Bida Truth Project by the Potter Valley Tribe, Love Wild Horses, the Coastal Conservancy, Save California Salmon, and Native Health in Native Hands.
The recently created 501(c)3 educational nonprofit The Noyo Bida Truth Project succeeds the earlier nonprofit Change Our Name Fort Bragg. Rebranding our organization demonstrates our end goal of returning Indigenous languages in identifying locations of cultural significance related to our natural environment. We acknowledge the ecological diversity of our California Coast and encourage our true history to be preserved and acknowledged. To date the city of Fort Bragg is named for a Fort associated with the Mendocino Reservation where acts of genocide were committed against California tribal communities. The Fort was named for a general who had no connection to the Mendocino Coast. We have chosen to cease the glorification of Confederate General Bragg and the erasure of the Tribal communities.
Philip Zwerling, Ph.D.
http://www.philipzwerling.com
The Noyo Bida Truth Project
www.changeournamefortbragg.com
STEVE HEILIG:
"Pleasure Map" of Mendocino County
— Mendo Chamber of Commerce, undated.
Dry ice listed as major product?
Pot not listed at all.
First Mrs. Reagan pictured tho….
Found in copy of Henry Miller’s "Tropic of Cancer."
KEEPING THE BAR; KEEPING THE PEACE
Editor,
I truly appreciated TWK’s article today, well written and reminiscent of a time that I remember and sometimes find myself missing.
I lived in Cloverdale in 1990 and spent a little time in the Dante as well as a few other fine establishments which I am quite certain “the upper crust” wouldn’t have been caught dead in. Being raised in Covelo caused me to gravitate to the locations where cowboys and Indians commingled, that always felt like home to me.
I enjoyed doing bar checks as a young deputy and learned early on to check them early in the evening. This allowed me to check the temperature of the room and look for friends I may need when last call was looming. In Mendocino County deputies were usually treated well by all in attendance and the bar keep normally kept a pot of coffee on for the cops as an unspoken reminder we were in this together. Cops and bar tenders often become very good friends as we have a mutual duty of keeping a lid on a pot that is destined to boil over eventually.
I learned a lot from the bartenders who worked these places. A good barkeep knows when to cut folks off and when to close shop early. He also knows when to call the law vs when to call someone’s wife or girlfriend. Once you knew the bartender and he knew you, life was much simpler. At times there would be a simple head nod as I walked in the door indicating all was well, or a glance down the bar with a look which said “that one is trouble.” There was a lot of unspoken communication in these small taverns.
Deputies had a duty to walk in without stirring the pot and still retaining authority. That’s what the barkeep expected and working with the patrons was always better than working against them. There are politics even among the inebriated, at times a very popular person won’t be so popular under the influence and his friends knew it long before I arrived.
Bars in the Ukiah area had their own flavor and often were exclusive to the clientele. Some were redneck bars where cowboys and loggers would toss a few back. Others catered to the more refined or youthful crowds. Those places seemed a little tamer than our small town bars because there wasn’t a large mixture of thoughts and beliefs.
Our small town bars were the places everyone wound up like it or not and that was where things got really interesting.
Dick’s place in Mendo, the Buckhorn in Covelo, Hoppers in Porter Valley and Boomers in Laytonville always carried a unique mixture of locals that sometimes seemed to be a testament to the sociology of our small towns while simultaneously testing the limits of toleration for many folks while under the influence.
There was an old David Alan Coe song where he described a dive “where bikers stare at Cowboys, who are laughing at the hippies, who are praying they get out of here alive.” At times I could hear that song in my head while walking into the weekly social experiment which occurred in these small taverns.
Funny how you can look back and realize every single weekend these establishments were tap dancing on a land and tempting fate with every shot which was sold. I laugh a little realizing although we are imperfect and completely flawed, somehow we do OK. It takes some patience and experience but somehow we get through the messes we all seem to pay good money to get ourselves in.
Matt Kendall
UKIAH WAY BACK WHEN (Ron Parker)
Palace post card and Frank Sandelin, Ukiah. c 1920s
Ukiah Baseball team. Almost every town had a baseball team, even Talmage had the "Sluggers", and the competition was really strong.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, April 14, 2025
EDUARDO ALVAREZ, 29, Ukiah. Failure to appear.
CARMEN ARENS, 40, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, resisting.
TIFFANY BAIRRINEHART, 30, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, resisting.
CHRISTOPHER GARCIA, 44, Ukiah. More than an ounce of pot, parole violation.
VICENTE ISRAEL, 32, Ukiah. DUI, no license.
ELIZABETH JOHNSON-COSGROVE, 34, Ukiah. Shoplifting, stolen property, disobeying court order, failure to appear.
KEEGAN KNIGHT, 34, Ukiah. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent, stolen vehicle, controlled substance with two or more priors.
JESSE MCGARY, 47, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance.
MONTE SHARP, 49, Willits. Domestic abuse, probation revocation.
MARK WINKLE, 55, Simi Valley/Willits. DUI-alcohol&drugs.
GIANTS SLUG 3 HOMERS and continue fast start with a 10-4 win over Phillies
by Dan Gelston
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Willy Adames and Mike Yastrzemski homered, and Tyler Fitzgerald also went deep, doubled and tripled to lead the San Francisco Giants to a 10-4 win over the Philadelphia Phillies on Monday night.
The Giants took two of three over the weekend from the Yankees and added a win against the defending NL East champions. Only San Diego (13-3) was off to a better start than the Giants (11-4) entering Monday.
Nick Castellanos homered for the Phillies.
Giants reliever Erik Miller came within inches of allowing a three-run homer to J.T. Realmuto in the seventh only for the ball to land just foul in left. Miller struck out Realmuto looking, preserving an 8-4 lead.
Landen Roupp (1-1) struck out eight and allowed four runs in five innings as the Giants won for the fourth time in five games.
Roupp gave up three runs in the first inning — an early win for the Phillies' tepid offense after they scored six runs total over the last four games.
Taijuan Walker (1-1) couldn't hold the lead. Fitzgerald hit a three-run shot off Walker into the left field seats and Adames atoned for getting picked off first an inning earlier with a solo shot for a 6-3 lead.
Walker also was charged with a throwing error that affected his final line of six runs, four earned, with five strikeouts in five innings.
Yastrzemski added a two-run homer in the seventh and an RBI double in the ninth.
(sfgate.com)
PAUL MODIC
I made a gallery, 97% Mexican folk art with a few local artists and a Lichtenstein print mixed in.
CHINA TAKES TAIWAN. HERE IS HOW.
Editor,
China doesn't want a smoking ruin. No Gaza. China wants a Taiwan nice and orderly and prosperous and useful. The current big military exercises around the island are designed to keep us preparing for a war with ships and planes fighting battles like it was 1945 and not realizing the actual situation.
Here is how I think they will do it. And I think they will do it pretty soon. (Disclaimer: I'm just a guy, not a spy. I've been a China-watcher since spending years working in China long ago and having appreciation for their astounding transformation. These are the smartest and most organized and most focused people on earth. They are the new empire rising.)
China is building massive landing ships. They aren't for soldiers, they are for technicians who have been in training for years. Taiwan is an open country. Its infrastructure is known. Some of the Chinese residents of Taiwan want reunification with the new prosperous and powerful China. They may be helpful. For some time China has been training tens of thousands of men and women for a takeover of all the power points on the island. They learn the streets, the buildings, the offices, the doors, the connections which they will follow to complete their particular assignment.
At 10 PM all the electricity on the island is turned off by an electromagnetic wave. The invasion is carried out swiftly and silently. All communication is jammed by the ships and planes circulating around the island. Their true purpose all along. Each tech has specific instructions to go to a place already mapped and described to do the one and only task they have been trained to do. No one is armed. Some go to media studios, some to the water system, some to the power grid, some to military bases… Every control point has been carefully thought out to be taken quickly without opposition.
At 7AM the power is restored, the TV is playing China's national anthem, "The East Is Red" and a smiling Xi Jinping is welcoming back the compatriots of Taiwan Province.
Not a shot has been fired. We can do nothing about it. It is over. China has demonstrated that the American Empire is old and dumb and living in the past. Asia is theirs.
When it happens remember: You first read about it in the Anderson Valley Advertiser.
Michael Nolan
Comptche
THE SAN FRANCISCO WRITER WHO TURNED DOWN A PULITZER AND USED HIS OSCAR AS A DOORSTOP
The alley named after him is home to a famous North Beach dive bar.
by Greg Keraghosian
You wouldn’t know to look at it now, but the Academy Award that sits in a small San Francisco office above a bank has been through enough adventure, distress and mystery to warrant a movie of its own.
That Oscar went missing, with no one knowing for sure how long, before reappearing in a Mission District pawn shop window. The widely celebrated local writer who first won it had reportedly used it as a garage doorstop or hat holder after a legendary clash with the film’s studio head.
It wasn’t the only award William Saroyan disdained, either. His most visible San Francisco legacy today is a North Beach alley that’s named after him, but in his prime, he was a walking landmark and a charismatic nightlife fixture. Saroyan coined his own literary style and found overnight stardom while writing from a second-floor flat next to Kezar Stadium — and then made and lost fortunes due to a gambling dependency he openly acknowledged.
“I certainly didn’t gamble away every penny,” he wrote in a 1961 memoir. “… I drank some of it away, and I bought a raincoat.”
Even Saroyan’s frustrations over his Oscar for writing 1943’s “The Human Comedy” stemmed from a gamble on himself that didn’t pay off.
Before writing that script, Saroyan was already an immense literary success story. The child of Armenian immigrants, at the age of 3, Saroyan lost his father to an illness and spent the ensuing five years in an Oakland orphanage before reuniting with his mother. His day jobs in San Francisco before becoming a full-time writer included serving as the youngest Postal Telegraph office manager in the country, when he was in his early 20s.
When the telegraph company denied Saroyan a raise even though he had tripled its business as manager, he quit — accelerating his focus on making it as a writer.
This didn’t go over well with his family, who strongly preferred Saroyan to keep a more traditional job as the Great Depression hit in 1929. At one point, his uncle Aram tried physically throwing Saroyan out of their home on 348 Carl St. until his mother, Takoohi, intervened.
Saroyan’s brother Henry did support his writing quest, however, by giving him a dime every morning to take the streetcar to the San Francisco Public Library downtown. Saroyan also walked to the Sunset library branch and wrote from home, completing 30 short stories in 30 days.
By 1934, he had published a compilation of those short stories, led by the Depression-era story of a young struggling writer called “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze,” which made him famous at 26 years old. Saroyan was so in demand, his critics compared him to a cult leader. The word “Saroyanesque” became an adjective for any story that captured the enthusiasm and optimism of the human spirit.
“When famous writers came to town, as did Carl Sandburg, it was essential that Saroyan meet them,” wrote Lawrence Lee and Barry Gifford in their biography of the writer. “He was a tourist attraction himself.”
A San Francisco legend
Saroyan made San Francisco its own attraction in his writing. He centered his gritty 1939 play “The Time of Your Life” on the fictional Nick’s Saloon on the Pacific Street waterfront. It was a stand-in for a real dive called Izzy’s, where owner Izzy Gomez served steaks and drinks with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.
His preface to the 1939 guide book “Let’s Have Fun in San Francisco” brushed away the city’s critics in much the same way he might in 2025: “All I know is that nothing in San Francisco bores me. I live here and like it. And when I say I like it, I mean I like all of it.
“I have heard that San Francisco appears to be ugly, in spots, to some visitors. Well, it’s never been ugly to me. The ugliest, the poorest, the loneliest neighborhoods of San Francisco are beautiful to me.”
For all his signature bravado, when Saroyan attended the Curran Theatre premiere of “The Time of Your Life,” he wore an overcoat with an upturned collar, watched near an exit and escaped during its multiple curtain calls.
The play, which Saroyan wrote in six days, earned him a Pulitzer Prize — an award he had warned he’d turn down and promptly did, along with the $1,000 check that came with it.
Saroyan did keep enough from his works in 1939 to buy a house on 15th Avenue in Golden Gate Heights, where his mother and sister lived until they died. From there, he wrote in the basement and often walked for miles to and from Ocean Beach, collecting driftwood and stuffing his pockets with anything he found interesting, said
“He loved the rhythm of the ocean,” Janigian told SFGATE. “The rhythm captivated me because it’s in his writing.”
The gambler
Janigian, who runs an archive and website devoted to remembering his cousin, said he was too young to join Saroyan for his other favored outings: to San Francisco’s gambling halls and nightclubs. The many women who accompanied him included tennis star Helen Wills Moody, and before marrying actress Carol Marcus, he visited madam Sally Stanford’s place of business enough times that Stanford knew how to prepare his eggs (scrambled).
Saroyan was notoriously bad at gambling, as summarized by his friend, Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, who described an unfortunate poker session in North Beach.
“Not only did he not possess a poker face, in spades, he usually revealed his hand,” Caen was quoted as saying in the biography. “In seven-card stud he’d say, ‘Don’t bet against me, I got aces back to back!’ He was not lying.”
Saroyan’s penchant for losing money inadvertently got him his Oscar. He initially turned down a screenwriting offer from MGM Studios because he didn’t need the money, until one night in Las Vegas when he lost $3,000 (roughly $60,000 today) in one night.
“Very often, more often than not, whenever I gambled I lost all the money I had,” Saroyan wrote of that night in his memoir, “I Used to Believe I Had Forever. Now I’m Not So Sure.”
Writer vs. mogul
Enter the writer’s future nemesis, MGM chief Louis B. Mayer, who had been trying to recruit Saroyan for several years. Saroyan accepted a salary of $300 a week just to look around the Los Angeles studio before developing and writing “The Human Comedy.” Part of his agreement with the studio was that he could direct his own movie, something he had never done. Which movie that would be doesn’t appear to have been written down.
Saroyan’s larger-than-life personality seemed a bad fit for the studio’s top-down hierarchy. At one point, feeling confined by what he called “that dungeon” known as Hollywood, Saroyan escaped without telling anyone to write “The Human Comedy” from a hotel in San Francisco before being ordered back.
“They were a sight,” screenwriter Budd Schulberg told the New York Times of Saroyan and his agent, Stanley Rose. “Those two strays from the honky-tonks, swinging their weight around the stately halls of Metro, calling the imperious L B. ‘Louie’ and twisting him around with a flamboyance that none of the movie greats had ever dared.”
Saroyan ended up selling “The Human Comedy” to Mayer for somewhere between $50,000 and $60,000. The movie, a family drama starring Mickey Rooney, focused on a teenage telegram delivery boy (his former job) during World War II in the fictional California town of Ithaca.
As for Saroyan’s insistence that he direct the movie, Mayer gave him a tryout — a short film called “The Good Job.” It was never released, and according to the Saroyan biography, MGM thought it looked “stiff and stagy.”
When Mayer told Saroyan he was going to hire a different director for the feature film (it would be Clarence Brown), this reported exchange ensued:
“But I have a contract with you that I am to direct my own film.”
“Well, you’ve directed your own film.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The film that you’ve just directed.”
An incensed Saroyan walked out of MGM while they were still making the film, left LA and quickly wrote the novelized version of “The Human Comedy.” Unable to buy the original screenplay back from MGM, he also wrote that year a revenge play called “Get Away Old Man,” in which Mayer is the inspiration for the titular egomaniacal studio head oppressing an idealistic young writer.
Saroyan offered the play’s rights to Mayer for $250,000, sight unseen. Mayer declined.
The novelized “Human Comedy” was released just before the movie, and it became a bestseller. As for the play, which incensed Mayer, it bombed and closed after 13 nights.
Despite Saroyan’s deep disappointment with the experience, “The Human Comedy” gave him some vindication. Of the five Academy Award nominations it got, he was the only winner, for Best Story.
“Ironically, both of them helped the other,” said Scott Setrakian, president of the William Saroyan Foundation, of Saroyan and Mayer. The foundation keeps the largest repository of Saroyan’s works and correspondences at Stanford University, where it also awards a biennial writing prize in his name.
“Down at Stanford,” Setrakian said, “some telegrams between the two of them when they’re both being released, you can taste the poison. ‘Oh, congratulations on your success, you must be so happy.’ But it was written out of spite.”
An Oscar Odyssey
Saroyan fell out of favor as a celebrated author after World War II, though he remained prolific in his work until he died at age 72 in 1981 (he even co-wrote the song of the summer in 1951, “Come On-a My House” by Rosemary Clooney).
Like many of Saroyan’s possessions, the Academy Award initially went to his foundation before his sister Cosette kept it in her 15th Avenue home. She died in May 1990, by which time the Oscar had been missing, possibly for years.
The same month Cosette died, a man identifying himself as Fortunato Velasquez Jr. walked into Mission Jewelry and Loan Co., in the Mission District, and he hocked the Oscar for a $250 loan. He claimed to be a Saroyan family friend, although then-foundation head Robert Setrakian, Scott Setrakian’s father, said he had never heard of him and the Los Angeles Times reported in 1991 that the foundation called the award stolen.
Academy Awards don’t just show up in pawn shops every day, and the people who ran this one wanted to make sure it went to a rightful owner. Mission Jewelry worker Scott Schlesinger told the San Francisco Examiner in 2001 that a book dealer offered him $25,000 for it, but he turned him down.
The now-shuttered shop’s former owner, Darryl Kaplan, who is retired, told SFGATE he posted a sign in his window next to the Oscar that read, “Will the original owner please redeem.” He also turned down five-figure offers to buy it, declaring it not for sale, though he did show it to viewers at a screening of “The Human Comedy” while it went unclaimed.
“I thought maybe it would go back in the family,” Kaplan said in a phone interview. “It would be better off that way. The money wasn’t going to change my lifestyle.”
By now, selling the 1943 award would have gone against the academy’s rules. Since 1951, it has forbidden Oscar winners from selling an Oscar without first offering it back to the Academy for $1.
Someone called the Saroyan Foundation about the sign in Kaplan’s window. In April 1991, almost a year after it had been pawned, the award found a home. Kaplan attended a ceremony on Saroyan Place in North Beach, the alley named after the writer in 1988 and where the iconic dive bar Specs’ remains, to celebrate a new Saroyan postage stamp and hand off the award to the Fresno Metropolitan Museum. The foundation lent it as part of the museum’s Saroyan wing (Saroyan grew up in Fresno and lived there as an adult).
Also that month, Caen wrote in his Chronicle column that Fortunato had now told him he was not a Saroyan family friend. Rather, he had bought the award at a San Jose flea market and pawned it for cash for his girlfriend “because I was having romantic problems.” Caen wrote that the girlfriend dumped him anyway.
The nearly 50-year-old award was badly weathered. It’s unclear how that happened, but it’s likely Saroyan’s contempt played a role.
Scott Setrakian, who said Saroyan kept the award in his garage as a door jam, told SFGATE, “It looked like someone had hit it with a hammer for 25 years.”
The Oscar’s happy ending was seemingly assured, at least for around 15 years, until the museum went bankrupt. The foundation took it back, but to its surprise, it found the statuette had done what so many movie stars do to try to reclaim their youth: It had some work done.
The museum had sent the stripped and dented Oscar back to the Academy for replating, said foundation member Haig Mardikian, whose late father, George, was a celebrated chef and restaurant owner in San Francisco — and one of Saroyan’s biggest creditors when he went into gambling debt.
“Of course we said, ‘What are you talking about?’ The whole uniqueness of this Oscar is William Saroyan’s handling of it,” said Mardikian, who met Saroyan several times.
There isn’t a scratch to be found on the Oscar during a visit to the foundation’s office. It quietly sits alongside an old typewriter Saroyan used and scores of watercolor paintings he created over the years. Setrakian said he had just given one of the paintings to the Armenian ambassador to the United States.
Saroyan’s bitterness toward Louis B. Mayer remained years after winning that award, even at his own expense. He ran into Mayer at the Hollywood Park racetrack, and Mayer gave him a hot tip to bet on the horse he owned in the upcoming race. Saroyan bet on another horse, and Mayer’s won.
“Perhaps I should have bet his horse, though,” Saroyan wrote in a 1963 Saturday Evening Post article. “But again, I wanted to be free.”
RURAL POPULATIONS NEAR FEDERAL LANDS WORRY JOB CUTS WILL HURT THEIR COMMUNITIES
by Zoë Rom
As government agencies slash staff managing federal lands, rural populations dependent on outdoor tourism face mounting economic and environmental risks that are trickling down from the cuts.
The Trump administration, as part of a broader initiative by its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut federal spending by up to $2 trillion, laid off thousands of federal workers in February, a disproportionate number of them working in public land management. The DOGE initiative, led by billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk, cut approximately 1,000 National Park Service employees, 800 Bureau of Land Management staff and 3,400 U.S. Forest Service personnel, sparking widespread concern about the future of public lands and the gateway communities that rely on them.…
TAYLOR LORENZ IS CRETINOUS AND DERANGED
The former New York Times and Washington Post reporter takes Luigimania to a new level
by Matt Taibbi
Former New York Times and Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz, speaking about accused killer Luigi Mangione on CNN MisinfoNation with Donnie O’Sullivan:
“To see these millionaire media pundits on TV clutching their pearls about someone stanning a murderer when this is the United States of America. As if we don’t lionize criminals… There’s a huge disconnect between the narratives and the angles that mainstream media pushes and what the American public feels… You’re going to see women especially that feel like, ‘Oh my God,’ right? Like, ‘Here’s this man who’s revolutionary, who’s famous, who’s handsome, who is young, who’s smart.’ He’s a person that seems like this morally good man, which is hard to find.”
I know Lorenz is a human bug-zapper whose purpose is luring people to doom by drawing them to the glow of the impossibly stupid online utterance, but even by her standards this is nuts. For one thing, Lorenz is a leading advocate for dumbed-all-the-way-down media like her “beloved” Vine, which featured six-second-max videos. If someone handed her a hardcover book, she’d be a serious threat to bite it. Her invoking Flannery O’Connor and A Good Man is Hard to Find in the context of Luigi Mangione is high comedy. Regarding America “stanning” murderers because “we give them Netflix shows,” which does she mean? Americans may be fascinated by O.J. and Bundy and Phil Spector, but we don’t gush cartoon hearts at them over cable, we watch them in lurid docudramas.
In reply to co-host Walter Kirn’s deserved ribbing about the MisinfoNation being “the least organic interview in history,” Lorenz charged him with being one of those “weird men who have these outrage meltdowns when I try to talk about extremism online.” Doesn’t she mean “endorsing” extremism in this case? As for “weird,” let’s recap:
When I first read Lorenz I thought she was CIA performance art, a Langley-designed version of a Tony Clifton act designed to collect the names of the 907% of readers who’d recoil in revulsion. In a 2021 Times piece called To Fight Vaccine Lies, Authorities Recruit an ‘Influencer Army,’ Lorenz described a White House effort to use TikTok influencers like Ellie Zeiler to get 12-18-year-olds to get the shot:
“Ms. Zeiler quickly agreed, joining a broad, personality-driven campaign to confront an increasingly urgent challenge in the fight against the pandemic: vaccinating the youthful masses, who have the lowest inoculation rates of any eligible age group in the United States.”
Writers made of lesser stuff might be troubled by questions like “Do 12-year-olds need this vaccine?” Months later, fellow Times writer David Leonhardt wrote that “for children without a serious medical condition, the danger of severe Covid is so low as to be difficult to quantify.” Others might wonder about the ethics of government end-running parents and “news” by using online jewelry and dress merchants to hype vaccines to kids. I remember finding impressive the breezy unconcern Lorenz showed for such questions.
Most interesting was the happy ending to the piece, in which influencer Christina Najjar a.k.a. “Tinx” interviewed Anthony Fauci. Questions ranged from whether or not it was safe to try to get pregnant with Harry Styles after the vax to how old Fauci thought Najjar looked:
Stories like this are what make the recent Lorenz transformation into a spokesperson for popular rage against “barbaric establishment institutions” a tough one to swallow without laughs. For years, Lorenz was a one-person global surveillance operation, hunting unorthodoxy in every corner of the Internet and investigating the dangers of “unfettered conversations” on sites like Clubhouse, where the level of freedom was such that one user “discouraged people from getting the shots.” Lurking, she heard billionaire Marc Andreessen, or so she thought, wantonly using the word “retard” while no one stopped him:
It turned out not to be Andreessen and Lorenz had to agree the issue had been “clarified” for her, which naturally resulted in a lot of chuckling in media. Glenn Greenwald described her as a “deeply unwell Swiss-boarding-school-educated neurotic who is paid by the New York Times to lurk outside teenagers’ TikTok houses.” Tucker Carlson meanwhile said she was “at the top of journalism’s repulsive little food chain.” After tweeting that the abuse she’d had to suffer had “destroyed her life,” she was the beneficiary of a whole academic study devoted to tracking the abuse she suffered after the Carlson-Greenwald meanness (I don’t remember a school offering to provide any of my friends with similar services), then went on MSNBC to discuss the results. One clip went viral:
Lorenz was mocked anew for this performance, becoming the prize subject of a wide range of Internet meme artists (the AI version of Joe Biden as crying Lorenz was disturbing). Naturally, she blamed the right people for the development: MSNBC.
Lorenz claimed the network and host Morgan Radford (the one trying desperately to be sympathetic in the video) for throwing her “under the bus,” adding, “If your segment or story on ‘online harassment’ leads to even worse online harassment for your subjects, you fucked up royally and should learn how to cover these things properly.”
This wouldn’t be relevant, except as prelude to Mangione. Pre-Luigi, Lorenz had perhaps the world’s most stringent definition of harm, identifying private use of the “r-slur,” being described as a “Swiss-boarding-school-neurotic,” and an MSNBC host failing to aggressively edit out her own embarrassing interview comments as life-imperiling behavior.
She went from the New York Times to the Washington Post to (ironically) Substack. After the Mangione murder on December 4th last year, Lorenz became Luigi’s version of Bundini Brown, telling Piers Morgan she “felt, along with so many other Americans, joy” after the murder of United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson (she denies the murder is what was what caused the “joy”; be your own judge).
Her Substack for a while was a Luigi fan page, which makes sense now that we know that “I saw the biggest audience growth that I’ve ever seen” with Mangione text. With article titles like “The merchification of Luigi,” “Inside the CEO shooter standom,” and my personal favorite, “Why ‘we’ want insurance executives dead,” Lorenz practically lashed her business to Mangione’s public image. Overnight, we went from living in a world where calling someone an untalented Swiss-boarding-school dipshit is unconscionable PTSD-inducing unfairness, to one where shooting an insurance executive in the back is cause for giddy celebration and smiles.
When the Thompson/Mangione affair happened I laughed at the idea that there would be a counter-massaging campaign framing Mangione’s half-cocked Unabomber imitation (with its mailed-in, tweet-length manifesto) as an improvement on Trump-style underclass rage. Now, Mangione as press darling is definitely a phenomenon, and not just in publications like People and US Weekly (wildest headline: Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Is Not Jealous of Luigi Mangione: ‘There Is No Truth to It’). Ken Klippenstein responded to news of federal efforts to seek death penalty charges by writing that “Luigi Mangione Becomes a Political Prisoner,” while the New Yorker before the New Year ran a piece comparing Luigi to Walter White of Breaking Bad and other “man of the people” American outlaw archetypes.
Mangione the rich sociopath is the opposite of that archetype, far more Leopold and Loeb than Bonnie and Clyde, and it’s telling that there are people who think this can have mass appeal. It’s one of the dumbest ideas of the era, but who better than Lorenz to sell it?
THE ATLANTIC tells the story of Nicholas Gilbert, a farmer in upstate New York, near the Canadian border. He had just gotten a shipment of livestock feed with a $2,200 tariff surcharge attached.
Gilbert cannot increase the price of the milk he sells, which is set by the local co-op. He cannot feed his cows less food. He cannot buy feed from another supplier; there aren’t any nearby, and getting it from farther away would be more expensive. When he got the delivery, he stared at the tariff for a while. Shouldn’t his Canadian supplier have been responsible for paying it?
“I’m not even sure it’s legal! We contracted for the price on delivery! If your price of fuel goes up or your truck breaks down, that’s not my problem! That’s what the contract’s for.”
Imagine thinking that the Canadian supplier was responsible for the import tax that President Donald Trump levied on the delivery.
But Trump’s voters really believed him when he said that foreign countries would be the ones paying his tariffs. It never made sense, but they believed it. And now, Gilbert’s expenses are so high, he may soon be out of business.
He should’ve known better, but propaganda is a hell of a drug.
LEAD STORIES, TUESDAY'S NYT
Trump Administration Will Freeze $2 Billion After Harvard Refuses Demands
El Salvador’s Leader Says He Won’t Return Wrongly Deported Maryland Man
What to Know About the Mistaken Deportation of a Maryland Man to El Salvador
Why I.R.S. Audits, Already at Their Lowest Levels, May Fall Further
This Kidney Was Frozen for 10 Days. Could Surgeons Transplant It?
Worth Thousands on the Black Market, Lego Kits Are Now a Target of Thieves
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
Over the years I’ve watched the “working man’s party” abandon working men and women in favor of the latest shiny thing politics grounded in feeeelings. Thirty five years ago you’d be hard pressed to find a Republican in my union (operating engineers). Today it’s the opposite, but they still play the working person card. Don’t believe them. Fake unions that support bureaucrats aren’t unions, they're money laundering scams that support Democrat politicians.
THE DANGEROUS SILENCE OF RETIRED US PRESIDENTS
by Ralph Nader
If there was ever a strong contemporary case for declaring that silence is complicity, consider the hush of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and even George W. Bush as they grind their teeth over the Donald Trump/Elon Musk wrecking of America. Trump is destroying freedom of speech and due process, abolishing democratic restraints, and establishing a criminal fascistic dictatorship.
Trump pounds Biden for the Trump Administration’s blunders and failures an average of six times a day. These assaults go unrebutted by the Delaware recluse, nursing his political wounds.
The Clintons? Bill sticks to his private telephone wailings. While Hillary, who gave us Trump in 2016 with her smug, stupid campaign, penned a self-anthem op-ed in the New York Times on March 28, 2025. She writes: “Mr. Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (of group chat fame) are apparently more focused on performative fights over wokeness than preparing for real fights with America’s adversaries.” Trump is not belligerent enough for the war hawk Hillary Clinton who has been the pro-Iraq sociocider butcher of Libya and the ardent supporter behind provocative “force projection” of the Empire around the world.
Before turning to the excuses for essentially shutting themselves up during our country’s greatest political upheaval – unconstitutional and criminal to the core, here is what prominent Democratic Presidents and Presidential candidates COULD do:
“1. Tens of millions of Americans voted for our past Presidents. They are waiting for their leaders to speak up, stand up, and mightily help lead the fight to stop Trump’s mayhem against the American people in red and blue states. The people want former Democratic leaders to galvanize the Democratic Party, still largely in disarray about confronting Trump.”
Don’t they know they have a trusteeship obligation to citizens, many of whom are voicing their demands for a comprehensive plan of offense against the GOP in town meetings and other forums?
The media, threatened daily by Trump, is eager to give former Democratic Party leaders coverage.
“2. They are all mega-millionaires, very capable of raising many more millions of dollars quickly with their fame and lists of followers. They know very rich people as friends. They could set up strike forces in Washington and around the country to provide needed, fighting attorneys, organizers, and other specialists to ride head-on against the proven damage to health, safety, and economic well-being of people here and abroad and counter Trump’s daily cruel and vicious assaults. They could end Trump’s unrebutted soliloquy of lies and false scenarios over mainstream and social media.
- They could push the Democrats in Congress to hold constant “unofficial” public hearings and file resolutions and legislation that provide the daily evidence of this dictator and his recidivistic criminality and push for Impeachment and Trump’s removal from office. Impossible, you might say with the GOP in narrow control on Capitol Hill. Look back at Nixon who for far fewer violations was told by Republican Senators that his time was up. Politicians save their political skin in approaching elections before rescuing an unstable, egomaniacal, vengeful politician like the one now camped at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Trump will be soon plunging in polls and stock market drops, inflation, recession, and more Gestapo-like kidnappings and disappearances to foreign prisons of targeted individuals. These conditions are not popular with the American people.
- The former Democratic leaders could do what Bernie Sanders is doing and traverse the country supporting the fighting civic spirit of the American people who oppose the painful afflictions wrought by Tyrant Trump.
- Gore is well-credentialed to show how the actions of Hurricane Donald, Tornado Trump/Drought Donald, and Wildfire Musk’s fossil-fuel-driven greenhouse gases are leading to a climate catastrophe. The facts and trends Trump omnicidally ignores need to be front and center.”
Even George W. Bush, known for causing the deaths of over one million Iraqis and the destruction of their country by his criminal war of aggression has a beef. His sole claim to being a “compassionate conservative” – the funding of life-saving AIDS medicines overseas – has gone down in flames with Trump’s illegal demolition of the Agency for International Development (AID). Bush may be mumbling about this, but he’s staying in his corner painting landscapes.
All this abhorrent quietude in the face of what they all believe is a mortal attack on the Republic has the following excuses:
First, they don’t want to get into a pissing match with a slanderous ugly viper, who unleashes his hordes of haters on the Internet. That’s quite a surrender of patriotic duty at a time of unprecedented peril. What would all the GIs, who they caused to lose their lives in their presidential wars, think of their timidity?
Second, it wouldn’t have much impact. America doesn’t listen to “has-beens.” Then why is Obama still the most popular retired politician in America with over 130 million followers on Twitter? That attitude is just convenient escapism.
Third, plunging into the raucous political arena with the Trumpsters and Musketeers is just too disruptive of a comfortable daily routine life by politicians who believe they have been there, done that, and deserve a respite. Self-diminishment gets you nowhere with tens of millions of people in distress who seek powerful amplifiers from well-known leaders behind the demand that Trump understands: YOU’RE FIRED, ringing throughout the nation from liberals and betrayed Trump voters hurting in the same ways. That mass demand is what pushes impeachment of the most visibly impeachable president in American history.
In the final analysis, it comes down to their absence of civic self-respect and cowardliness in confronting Der Fuhrer. Aristotle was right: “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.”
SYSTEMIC CONSIDERATIONS
by James Kunstler
“Every western society is confronted by an internal cultural conflict between those who wish to distance society from its civilizational legacy and those who wish to renew it.” —Frank Furedi on Substack
Whatever else you think is happening in our world, contraction is the reality-based order-of-the-day, and everything else is downstream of that. The world has to get by with less. Nothing is going to fix this for everybody, though any number of schemes for redistributing what’s left will preoccupy the political mojo.
Right now, it’s tariffs, which are an attempt to restore industry ceded to the formerly left-behind people elsewhere in the world — taking back what we used to do. You are correct to wonder if this is even possible. The wish is surely understandable, if a bit fuzzy and over-simplified: to be again a nation of people occupied purposefully in the service of a bright future. Redemption stories are deeply appealing.
Many of us are aware that the hour for this is late. We’ve already lived through our decades of pumping cheap oil out of American ground, extracting the ores, fashioning the metal into I-beams and rails, raising the skyscrapers, laying the asphalt ribbons of highway, and strewing the landscape with split-level houses and strip-malls. Let’s not try a re-run of that.
What have we got to work with? An overly-complex matrix of systems and subsidiary systems operating on the verge of failure at excessive scale. For example, our cities and their asteroid belts of suburbs. The rot is already well-advanced in many of them from their centers outward, and we can see the process underway of strip-mining the remaining assets on-the-ground. Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore. . . all occupy important geographically strategic sites. All are populated by dwindling societies of the cope-less, floundering their way out of existence. The geographies will abide without them. Others will come along and make something of these places’ virtues.
Agri-business is a method for strip-mining the value from what remains of our fruited plains. Everything about it is on an arc of failure, mortgaged to a futureless giantism. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and now that time has passed. The remaining soil itself can probably be rescued with heroic ant-like peasant labor over generations, which is to say a long and rather desperate project with no quick resolution. Even if Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., hadn’t come along to read America the riot act on food, anyone can see that the age of Froot Loops is drawing to a close.
Town and country, what human society at its best was composed of, has got to be rearranged. This is something that MAGA is not talking about. MAGA looks like it is seeking a reenactment of the years 1950 to 1964. That isn’t going to happen. What then? The tech broz propose something that looks like an A-I printed robotic future. They are drunk on their own Stanford University brand Kool-Aid, hallucinating a future that is little more than math dressed in spandex.
It is nearly impossible to grok the size of their vast fortunes, their billions. Thousands upon thousands of millions. From what? From marshaling squadrons of lawyers to draw up ownership documents for this and that venture enabling idiots with nose-rings to lecture each other about sexual etiquette on cell-phone screens? Warning: don’t become infatuated with singularities, journeys beyond biology and the ecology of planet earth. That’s a story for saps, cargo-cultists, the mentally ill.
Speaking of all that money, one thing you can surely depend on is a violent unwinding of global finance. The vast bottom of humanity already has plenty of nothing, and their abundance will abide. The hedge fund broz and related broz in the shared hallucinations of capital can make some provision for wealth preservation if they have half-a-brain. It’s the great wad in the middle that has the worst problem: they get wiped out and then they discover they have no Plan B. That’s when the fun really kicks off in America (and other sovereign lands, of course.)
Things are breaking ‘out there.’ The financial world’s feedstock is promises. In a trusting world, promises are a splendid technology. Promises allow you to borrow hamburgers from next Tuesday to have a hamburger today. . . .and all else that follows from that. In a not-so-trusting world, promises go up in a vapor with the morning dew.
The folks in charge will attempt to manage the manifest contraction that is upon us by doing everything possible to pretend that it isn’t happening and to deflect from any signals that happen to get through the muzak they broadcast about blue skies and staying on the sunny side. If you are serious — even serious about the comedy sure to arise out of this — you will be prepared for all kinds of trouble: shortages, hunger, civil strife, cold, darkness, the absence of TikTok. Your number-one job is to stay sane. Now, go forth and revel in today’s fine spring weather, mindful of the many more fine days to come as history spools out.
NOT BASED ON A TRUE STORY
by Jason Okundaye
When ‘Adolescence’ was released on Netflix last month, it was pegged as an incisive inquiry into the manosphere and the ways that misogynist influencers like Andrew Tate are poisoning the minds of young boys. In fact the series is quite light on that, beyond parsing some red pill emojis and making a few references to podcasts. Should all under-sixteens be banned from smartphones and social media? The proposal is fervently discussed even though it’s obviously unworkable.
Right-wing online commentators meanwhile accused the program of taking the cases of two real-life Black teenage killers of girls – Axel Rudakubana and Hassan Sentamu – and scapegoating white working-class boys by making them the face of such acts of violence. This has been an incredibly resilient fiction, despite the insistence of the show’s creators that “Jamie’s story, specifically, isn’t based on a real person or event.”
Keir Starmer, who has twice referred to ‘Adolescence’ as a “documentary” in a slip of the tongue, invited a writer and a producer from the series to Downing Street to discuss child protection. The people behind the show have done vital work in putting the radicalization of boys and risk to girls at the top of the political agenda, but they are not experts in child protection. The invitation has encouraged skeptics to view the official embrace of the show as a piece of political theater, like knighting Captain Tom or clapping for the NHS.
‘Adolescence’ has been compared to ‘Mr Bates v. The Post Office,’ last year’s ITV series that dramatized the Post Office Horizon scandal and provoked a government response, with Rishi Sunak announcing legislation to exonerate postmasters who had been wrongly convicted and offering thousands in compensation. Government by television show is a depressing prospect. What does it take to get any kind of action on long-standing issues in this country? A compelling lead actor? A child plucked from obscurity giving the performance of his life? Intriguing camera work?
One of the differences between ‘Adolescence’ and ‘Mr Bates,’ though, is that the Post Office drama is focused on a real, definable miscarriage of justice. This is not to say that ‘Adolescence’ doesn’t reflect a societal truth: that boys are vulnerable to online radicalization, and this can enable very real acts of violence, particularly against girls. But it is imprecise, and it is not a fact-based drama. If anything, it has been stripped of factual elements to create something indistinct and universal, so that the offending boy, Jamie, could be anyone’s child, in anyone’s home. It is this that has made ‘Adolescence’ such a cultural phenomenon: how does a normal boy from a happy home go on to repeatedly stab a girl to death? It unlocks the most primal anxieties of a parent, even those who have little reason to suspect that their child is capable of such evil.
This appeal to an idea of universality has helped the series take off, but as chairs are assembled around political roundtables, no one knows exactly what to do next. With the ‘Mr Bates’ drama, compensation and legislation were very clear aims. ‘Adolescence’ has a less certain pathway: aside from the unworkable suggestions to ban social media and smartphones, there’s nebulous talk of “male role models” and “talking to boys.”
In 2014 and 2016, BBC Three broadcast the dramas ‘Murdered by My Boyfriend’ and ‘Murdered by My Father,’ the former based on a real-life domestic violence case, the latter assembled from instances of honor killing. What struck me about both series was the precision: even if ‘Murdered by My Father’ wasn’t drawn from one particular case, it was culturally specific, taking account of the South Asian Muslim background of the violence it portrayed, and developed a clear storyboard of how a fixation on community shame can lead to such deadly consequences.
I’m not saying that the right-wing commentators are correct in wanting Jamie to have been replaced by a character with a background like Rudakubana or Sentamu’s. But the fact is that most teenage killers are nothing like Jamie, who has no history of offending or indications of a propensity towards violence beyond spending too much time in his bedroom tapping away at his computer.
Eighteen-year-old Nicholas Prosper, who murdered his mother and younger siblings, was obsessed with mass shootings at US high schools. Danyal Hussein, who had just turned 18 when he murdered sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, had written a demonic contract signed with his own blood. Rudakubana, who murdered three children at a dance class in Southport, was obsessed with extreme violent material and had a “kill list.” One of Brianna Ghey’s murderers, Scarlett Jenkinson, had a fixation with serial killers; the other, Eddie Ratcliffe, a fascination for knives. The defense barrister for Sentamu, who murdered fifteen-year-old Elianne Andam with a kitchen knife, described his “violent streak” as coming from his “lived experiences from when he was a little boy.”
Teenage killers, in other words, tend to be profoundly disturbed, detached in their home lives and fascinated with extreme violence. And in some instances, parents have been well aware of their children’s radicalization but their attempts to get help for them have been futile. A week before he committed mass murder, Rudakubana’s father had stopped him from travelling to his old school to attack teachers and pupils there. He had also been referred to Prevent, the government’s anti-radicalization program, three times but wasn’t considered a serious enough threat. Prosper killed his mother, Juliana Falcon, when she confronted him as he was intending to carry out a school shooting.
In ‘Adolescence,’ Jamie’s parents are oblivious to his radicalization and taken aback by his crimes. Had they known, had Jamie already exhibited violent behavior, perhaps abusing his sister and repeating far-right talking points aloud, what help could they have accessed? Is Prevent fit for its purpose for tackling radicalization? Are local council multi-agency services adequate? A mother in Northumberland says she “begged for help” with her son’s violent behavior and struggled to receive targeted support for his complex needs. Will she be invited to Downing Street to discuss how families with violent children can be supported in interventions? Perhaps if Lesley Manville is available to play her on television in season two.
(London Review of Books)
Spent yesterday early afternoon at the Washington, D.C. Peace Vigil across the street from the White House. Some dude with a sound system continuously plays the Village People’s YMCA to criticize the Prez who played it at rallies believing that it propped Lou Ferrigno (The Hulk) who campaigned for him, unaware that it had become a gay anthem. And then the sound system dude follows it up with “Happy Birthday”, but do not know why. This is adding to an already fairly insane spectacle, and there is discussion about ending the peace vigil because there is nobody across the street who is “reachable” anyway. How long will it be justifiable to keep a vigil going for a big white building? So, I dropped by the Capitol Brewing Company for two pints, before returning to the homeless shelter, to again listen to this crazy ranting from a variety of irrational individuals. And then, ate the free chicken alfredo and went to sleep. Awoke early, shaved and showered, and got the hell out of there. Not identified with the body nor the mind. Immortal Self I am! I am accepting housing in postmodern America, and ready to return to California. So give me something. Craig Louis Stehr (Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com)
FYI, given your desire to return westward:
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/homeless-housing-shelter-beds-20213872.php
Gift article link
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/homeless-housing-shelter-beds-20213872.php?utm_source=marketing&utm_medium=copy-url-link&utm_campaign=article-share&hash=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2ZjaHJvbmljbGUuY29tL3NmL2FydGljbGUvaG9tZWxlc3MtaG91c2luZy1zaGVsdGVyLWJlZHMtMjAyMTM4NzIucGhw&time=MTc0NDczMjc3NTc4MQ%3D%3D&rid=MmNmNmNmNGUtMDUxNS00OTJmLTgxZGItMDJiODVmZGQwMzgw&sharecount=MA%3D%3D
So, DC is number 1 in shelter beds and SF number 2
Thank you very much for the networking information. That is precisely NOT what I was looking for, in this socially alienated disaster of an attempt at a society. Where’s my country, dude?
Craig Louis Stehr
Email me at: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com
$700 / 220ft2 – Good sized room available in large sunny Victorian Farmhouse w gardens (vallejo / benicia. (posted: about 6 hours ago)
We have a nice sunny room with hardwood floors in the East Bay/North Bay in a good part of Vallejo, near to Downtown and the Waterfront. Available mid April or May 1st. Single occupancy only. Rent is $700/month… We split the cost of the utilities per month divided by the number of household occupants, which includes WiFi. No credit check. Great personal/professional references are needed. Move-in is 1st month’s rent and deposit. We have a washer & dryer.
We are a non-smoking/non-vaping/drug-free household, which includes no smoking marijuana. Now that marijuana is legal, edibles would be fine. Alcohol’s fine.
If interested, please send a detailed email telling us about yourself, your current housing situation, and what you’re looking for in housing…
We have a very spacious, Turn-of-the-Century, 10 bedroom, 3-story Victorian Farmhouse with 4500 sq. ft., and plenty of room for everyone. We also have a large park-like yard with garden and trees and outside front and back patios to have your tea/coffee.
Near to the waterfront, shopping, Saturday Farmer’s market, art galleries, cafes, and restaurants. There’s a bus right by the house that goes Downtown, & to the Waterfront. There’s both the commuter Ferry & the transbay bus that runs multiple times daily to San Francisco, 7 days a week.
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/sub/d/vallejo-good-sized-room-available-in/7842709786.html
Hi Craig,
I cannot give you housing, but I can surely give you a tip a piece of knowledge. The immortal has no self/ it is free of ego if your wish is to be housed back in California and are expecting it to be given to you then you should change your mantra because it is not working. You are chanting and affirming a duality. When stating immortal self I am you are cancelling out the eternal by using the words self and I am creating resistance to what you want, in this case a home. A better chant would be “Thank you for the home you have given me”! Gratitude is the way not expectation. I say this to you in all sincerity as fellow spiritual person who wants to see you housed!!
mm 💕
Good Morning,
Interesting that my blurb about Anosognosia was placed under “The Bringing Families Home” article.
Re-unification——making every effort to assist and aid families to rebuild and remain whole and intact. Many tools to accomplish this….
If only this approach was addressed and considered with adults experiencing Serious Mental Illness.
If only, we considered aiding families navigating the difficulties of these conditions with such ardent consideration, resources & support we would see the number of ill street folks suffering dwindle to a few.
But thats not the way we do things, adults have choices in their actions & behaviors, or so we like to believe and allow them freedom of that choice no matter how sick and in need of intervention & support they are! On the other hand our children do not have a choice in the action’s & behaviors of their parents that cause harm so we intervene & protect!
Not always though, I was an abused kid no one intervened on my behalf, different times in the 70’s, I had to stand up for myself and remove myself from harms way.
If we could look at serious mental illness, homelessness, and addiction more like we look at reunification and support for families with minors we would make major strides in solving these issues.
Unification is necessary for survival.
mm 💕
SYSTEMIC CONSIDERATIONS
—> The remaining soil itself can probably be rescued with heroic ant-like peasant labor over generations, which is to say a long and rather desperate project with no quick resolution. Even if Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., hadn’t come along to read America the riot act on food, anyone can see that the age of Froot Loops is drawing to a close.
— by James Kunstler
TAYLOR LORENZ IS CRETINOUS AND DERANGED
Wonder how many people have been killed by having for-profit health coverage that rips them off for premiums and/or fails to pay at all for needed procedures and prescriptions??? Oops, forgot, we live in a putrid kaputalist system, complete with ripoff-artist top dogs, who are now called CEOs, a term that, if I recall correctly, became popular in the 70s,
There’s a growing realization that if a court issued arrest warrants for Bondi, Rubio and Noem (due to contempt of court), that Bondi could stand down the arresting agency, ie the US Marshall Service. She can do that!
BUT, courts have an option in that case:
https://www.democracydocket.com/opinion/if-the-marshals-go-rogue-courts-have-other-ways-to-enforce-their-orders/
Of course our officials didn’t put the tax revenue where the voters voted it to go. They NEVER do. So the bigger question is why the hell do voters keep voting taxes upon us? When do we learn? And this is what politicians count on, a stupid public with no capacity to question or remember past offenses by politicians. Wise up voters!!! Thank you Mark for your ever diligent work on keeping us all informed. Appreciated.
Interesting additional information regarding Measure AJ Reconciliation. I didn’t really follow this tax measure over the last few years, but in our local, Round Valley Municipal Advisory Council meetings of the last few months a related topic has consistently been discussed. The local, legal, permitted cannabis growers are being taxed to oblivion and right down the street will be unpermitted, untaxed grows with apparently no code enforcement. A few of us locals had a meeting with county planning and building, code enforcement, third district supervisor John Haschak and Sheriff Matt Kendall, attempting to gain some understanding as to the county’s position on the various code violations which typically accompany the unpermitted grows around here. The story seems to be that the county has no inclination to go after the scofflaws with their abandoned grow sites, crappy fences, broke down vehicles, and household garbage scattered about but still want to collect the taxes on the growers trying to do the legal thing. It is just too much trouble, abatement is a hassle, county counsel doesn’t support the concept, and so consequently nothing happens to support the taxpaying growers in competition with the growers who pay no taxes and trash the place at the same time.
It would seem like an exaggeration, but is more likely an understatement to say the county’s sole interest in the pot program was to collect as much pot tax money as possible, for as long as possible for the county’s general fund. There was no interest in making the program work, just collect taxes. There was no interest in hiring the staff needed to implement the program, as long as taxes were being collected. There was also no interest in rejecting pot permit applications from growers who were unable to meet fundamental requirements because they were paying taxes in exchange for avoiding arrest and prosecution. There was no concern on the part of the county that the dysfunctionally implemented pot program destroyed the Ag Department. Of course there was no money for mental health, or anything else the county promised. That was never the intent. The all knowing CEO sat on her hands as the Board berated the acting Ag Commissioner for a program they solely created and were, along with the CEO, responsible for dysfunctionally implementing. It is a sad, and tragic history. Government can be as greedy as any person or group can be, and Mendocino is as good of an example as there is for that.
+1
Cicada?