Off the Record 5/6/2025

WHEN THE GRAND JURY published that smiling photo of themselves with the Supervisors and the Presiding Judge, they were basically declaring in advance that they had no intention of independently reviewing the County’s operations or performance.

They claim that “Many of the recommendations [in the Marbut report] were adopted by the BOS.” Really? Which ones? And if so, why hasn’t the County implemented a version of the Fort Bragg Care Response Unit which is based on the Marbut report? In fact, whatever of Marbut’s recomendations the Grand Jury may claim were “adopted,” it’s primarily rhetorical, grudging, and bureaucratic, not practical.

The Grand Jury removed all doubt of their collaboration with the Supervisors by adding this laughably pretentious statement which somehow found its way into their review of Mendocino County’s accomplishment-free homelessness industry:

“In a well-crafted letter to Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Maria states: ‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.’ The Grand Jury hopes [sic] Mendocino County will achieve greatness [sic] by developing and implementing a program to alleviate homelessness, while remembering that the unhoused are human beings deserving care that is sensitive and adequate.”

The Grand Jury “hopes”… Even if by some miracle Mendo was to make a measurable dent to “alleviate” local homelessness, the idea that it would amount to anything remotely like “greatness,” is metaphor right out of the Grand Trumpian Mythology. So much so that their entire “report” can be dismissed without the slightest thought.

(Mark Scaramella)

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AVA COMMENTER MAZIE MALONE ADDS:

A whole investigation and the conclusion is Homelessness is not yet a dire situation? What?

“While the homeless situation in Mendocino County is not yet dire, programs to address the issue before it becomes horrific are essential. It will be in the best interest of Mendocino County to develop and implement answers to prevent the expansion of homelessness. The Grand Jury believes CORE or other programs developed by the County should be designed to integrate well with the proven methods of CRU.”

“At the time of this report the Grand Jury has not received outcome results from the Care Response Unit that would verify the success of the program!”

WTF? First they say the proven methods are working yet no results have been given to verify it is successful!

Jesus.

So the plan to dislocate people out of the city limits and expand the CRU to do same in the surrounding areas if they cannot be sent home or accept some form of treatment, where will they go? Jail?

Where are they being taken?

What is the cost of sending someone home?

How many people have been sent home and to where?

How many people have been placed in housing and where?

How many placed in treatment and where?

How is the follow-through going once someone is sent off to their perspective place of support and treatment?

What are the numbers for conditions being addressed?

It is important to understand if you are asking for treatment of an SMI [serious mental illness] and substance abuse or just addiction!

Often people will not admit to the mental illness. More importantly, many suffer Anosognosia and do not know that they have one!

A READER WRITES: The County is tapping $3.3 million of the “Retirement Contribution Reserve” to pay for pension obligation bonds, an expense that has been around for decades. The “Retirement Contribution Reserve” was set aside by Angelo to shield the county from spikes in retirement cost increases, not for ongoing expected expenses. This is a very bad idea as nationally we’re teetering on the edge of a recession and historic shifts of trust in the US Dollar and general global trust in America. A retirement cost spike is coming, and they’re spending down the reserve on an existing predictable expense to prop up more unsustainable spending.

Also undisclosed is the Voluntary Separation Incentive. That actually costs money up front with savings down the road, mostly in subsequent fiscal years so long as you don’t refill the position. Where is that up front cost considered? There’s so much wrong here… The budget team seems lost.

It’s sad but predictable that Kendall is only now cluing in that the tax sharing agreement and annexation is a colossal screw job for the county and that there simply is no way it will not impact the Sheriff’s Office. One of Ukiah’s selling points that they made to the Board was that the City was going to take over law enforcement for those areas and the Sheriff’s Office even sent some dope to the meeting to agree that was somehow a good idea to take away the both the SO’s responsibilities and revenue. I’m pretty much convinced that Angelo and Pinches were the last two people to ever give a damn about the county and certainly the last two to have any intelligence in their approach to trying to save the county from itself. I don’t see how this does not end in bankruptcy at this point. If you’re a retiree you should be paying attention and getting organized. Your retirement can absolutely be touched.

ED NOTES

SPEAKING of ballgames, much as I admired the Giants’ Ryan Vogelsong back in his heyday, his post-game spiel after beating the Cardinals about how God had taken a personal interest in him and the National League playoffs, reminded me that it was time to grab my Old Testament for Mathew 6:5-6: “And when you pray you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Play ball!

HEAR! HEAR! From the AVA comment line: “First Five, founded by the now disgraced ‘MeatHead’ dude from Archie Bunker, ranks as the slickest liberal phony baloney ‘children’s’ scam ever devised. In Humboldt they wine and dine and plead for funds while absolutely nothing goes to the neediest. Solution: disband the endless county Commissioners (unelected) and give 100% of the cigarette tax to the children and families needing childcare to work, healthcare premiums and stipends to play sports and attend camps… This is a solid gold plum for a very few lucky appointed commissioners and their staff in all 58 counties and the State level.”

THE CalFire site just south of Boonville was once home to one of Anderson Valley’s most illustrious citizens, Henry Beeson, of the pre-Cal Bear Flag Revolt. He was a boy of 16 as I recall, when he and the rest of that rag-tag mob of drifters, outlaws and drunks, took over Sonoma, locked General Vallejo away, drank up everything in the General’s wine cellar, made themselves a flag with the drawing of a wild pig on it that they later said was a grizzly bear, and declared independence from Mexico. Beeson settled on his ranch south of Boonville where CalFire now squats in a malignant cluster of unsightly structures. Beeson, by the way, later became doubly famous also from his saddle-making, his being considered the best available in all of California. His customers traveled from far and wide to buy a Beeson custom saddle.

FROM THE SF CHRONICLE of November 5th, 1937: “A Fort Bragg grandmother today recounted a thrilling story of her fight against a giant octopus and how she and two other women finally beat the monster to death before it could drag her beneath the waves of the Mendocino Coast. Mrs. H.C. Graves was gathering abalones. She felt something brush against her leg, and thinking it was a bit of seaweed, tried to kick free. She was unsuccessful. Glancing down, she was horrified to see a monster devil fish sweeping its tentacles toward her. One long arm reached up and grabbed her left wrist. Another came up and swept around her body. Struggling frantically, Mrs. Graves kept her right arm free. Screaming for help, fighting to keep from being dragged down, she clubbed the octopus with her heavy abalone iron [a crowbar-like device used to pry abs from their rocks]. Her companions rushed to the beach to her aid and joined in beating the big devil fish until it was killed. The fish, when dragged ashore, measured 10 feet 5 inches from the tip of its longest tentacle to the opposite tip. There were seven of those mighty arms, and the octopus was one of the largest ever taken on the Mendocino Coast. Nearby were two smaller devil fish that slithered off as the women battled the big one.”

GREAT REPORT by Mike Geniella on the new County Courthouse nobody wants and few Mendo citizens even know about will begin construction at the foot of West Perkins, Ukiah. This project is a typical Mendo blunder whose unplanned consequences will be one more civic burden toted by our descendents, loaded onto their unsuspecting backs by a nexus of incompetents, including their majesties of the Superior Court, for whose sole comfort and convenience this eyesore monstrosity is being erected.

SUPERVISOR MO MULHEREN’S comment that it’s “too early to talk publicly” about the fate of the current Courthouse typifies the local non-process on this looming debacle. Too early? When were there any public discussions about the new or the old Courthouses?

I THINK it was a Frisco-Lib who said, re the homeless, “We can’t arrest our way out of this problem.” Yes, we can, sorta, by adopting, at last, the recommendations contained in the $50,000 Marbut Report commissioned by the County a few years ago and immediately ignored, except by Fort Bragg where, via a savvy, humanely concentrated effort lead by the Fort Bragg Police Department the intractable were identified and appropriately sorted out, with a bunch being provided with transportation outta here to their families.

IN OUR BESET County seat, governed by people who should never, ever be permitted anywhere near the reins of authority, and home to more nicely compensated helping professionals than there are free range homeless people the helping pros can pretend to be helping, the Ukiah Police Department and the Sheriff’s Department arrest the same small population of drunks, dope heads and un-helped mentally ill over and over again, all of them processed on through the County Courthouse with the rest of the walking wounded and citizens with annual incomes that put them also on the brink of permanent outdoors living. (The new courthouse should have been designed as a barrell with statues of armed judges on top shooting the fish below.)

THE NEW “MENTAL HEALTH WING” of the County Jail is expected in early 2026. It looks like the construction will come in more or less on time and within budget (around $42 million). The cost no longer includes any Measure B money since the County used about $7 million of last year’s carry over to cover the large cost overage above the state’s $25 million. The original project description said it would have “90 new maximum security beds in three pods with one recreation yard in each pod, a classroom, a visitors’ center, and a medical exam/procedure room.” We have looked over the plans for the new stand-alone facility and it looks like the maximum capacity is upwards of 200 beds if the cells are doubled up. The design is a modern octagon shape with a central observation post that is designed to allow monitoring of day rooms and the cells behind them on the outer perimeter with much less staff than the old square jail design. The plans also include a full complement of ancillary and administrative areas totalling about 21,000 square-feet. There are multiple interview rooms, visitor areas, health service staff rooms, storage rooms, sallyports, a dental exam room, medical and psychiatric exam rooms, a “staff courtyard,” attorney rooms, conference and meeting rooms… Sheriff Kendall says the new wing will require only ten additional corretions officers, but we have not seen a staffing/budget plan, nor have the Supervisors asked any questions about it, despite its planned opening in less than a year. Round the clock staffing for seven days a week typically takes 4-5 people per position, so we expect that the estimate of ten additional staffers is on the low end and may not include all the staffing to fill all the rooms and services that the building can accommodate. There’s been some talk of using some Measure B money to cover part of the staffing costs. But so far, the estimates for that are low because Measure B money is supposed to be focused on non-custodial mental health treatment and drug rehab. Obviously, given the County’s budget squeeze, there will be pressure to apply as much Measure B money to the jail staffing as possible. (Mark Scaramella)

SO, LIKE…. along with the Psychiatric Health Facility )PHF) nearing completion, there will be plenty of room for the habituals and the unattended 5150’s to be housed and maybe even get more or less functional again away from street drugs and other seductions. (Although the PHF is only for the “severely mentally ill.) In the meantime, and it’s meaner than ever out there, apply the Marbut strategy to all the Ukiah Valley’s dependent persons which, some of us will recall, means homegrown dependents accommodated and housed first, the rest strongly encouraged and assisted to leave or go home after no more than a couple of Plowshares meals and a map to north and southbound on-ramps. Ukiah has long been known by the traveling community as a soft touch, so soft a lot of them settle in permanently.

SUPERVISOR TED WILLIAMS

Several people have asked me about the recent news of a $144M courthouse at a time the county finances are a struggle. The Trial Court Funding Act of 1997 shifted the funding responsibility of courts from counties to the state. The courthouse is a state project. It has “Mendocino County” in its name, but the project is not by county government.

Why is the state doing this now? It’s been long in the making. I’m not a decision-maker. The efforts were under California Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jerry Brown, and Gavin Newsom (signaling bi-partisan). Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is the rough timeline:

Mid-2000s: Court officials acknowledged severe issues with the 1928/49 Ukiah courthouse, including safety, seismic risks, and ADA compliance, and began evaluating replacement options.

2008: California passed SB 1407, providing funding for courthouse projects through increased fees and fines. Mendocino County’s new Ukiah courthouse was listed as a critical need project under this program. State feasibility studies around 2008 recommended replacing the old Ukiah courthouse due to significant deficiencies.

2011: A public site selection process occurred. The state’s Administrative Office of the Courts and a local advisory committee studied potential sites. In October 2011, a Draft Environmental Impact Report evaluated two main locations: the downtown “Library block” and the East Perkins Street “Railroad Depot” site. The rail depot site was selected as the preferred location. Plans at this stage proposed an approximately 114,000 sq. ft. courthouse with 9 courtrooms, a budget of roughly $120 million, and an anticipated construction start in 2014.

2013: The project faced a funding setback. Ongoing state budget issues diverted courthouse funds, prompting the Judicial Council to delay Mendocino’s project funding until at least fiscal year 2014–15. At this time, the project budget remained approximately $119 million for 9 courtrooms, but it was effectively on hold.

January 2014: The Judicial Council approved construction plans for several delayed projects, including Mendocino’s courthouse, as part of a statewide cost-reduction and prioritization effort. However, this approval did not immediately resolve funding challenges.

March 2016: The State Public Works Board approved the purchase of 4.1 acres at the Ukiah rail depot site for the new courthouse, spending $3.65 million to acquire and prepare the property. Escrow closed in April 2016, officially securing the site. An 8-courtroom courthouse designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill was announced, with a tentative completion date set for 2020.

August 2016: Facing a $1.4 billion shortfall in the courthouse construction fund, the Judicial Council halted further work on the Ukiah courthouse immediately after the site acquisition. The project was indefinitely shelved pending future funding.

2017–2020: The courthouse project remained on hold. In 2019, a judicial branch facilities reassessment reaffirmed Ukiah as a top-priority courthouse project should funding become available.

2021: Governor Newsom’s 2021–22 state budget included General Fund dollars to reactivate the Mendocino courthouse project. The California Legislature approved an initial allocation of $3.3 million, plus future bond financing. The Judicial Council reactivated the courthouse project in 2021, adopting a design-build approach.

2022: The design-build procurement process proceeded, selecting Hensel Phelps and Fentress Architects to design and construct the courthouse, now planned as approximately 81,000 sq. ft. with 7 courtrooms and a budget of around $144 million. Preparatory site work began.

2023: The project was officially classified as an “immediate need” and received full funding through the state budget. State and local officials finalized designs and logistics.

2024–2025: Construction began with groundbreaking ceremonies held in spring 2025. Construction of the new Ukiah courthouse was underway, with completion anticipated by 2027, culminating roughly two decades of planning.

https://courts.ca.gov/…/mendocino-county-new-ukiah…

ED NOTE: Supervisor Williams has merely relayed the state’s version of the project, as if it’s all kinda magical, that at no point could locals not do a thing about it. In fact, the new courthouse, three long blocks from the present courthouse, will cost Mendocino County a lot of money it doesn’t have just in the logistics of getting the DA from his office in the old courthouse to the new one, nevermind the other court-related functions left behind in the present courthouse or similarly stranded. Local authorities, predictably, waved the new courthouse right on by, right down to its eyesore design. And it’s laughable to think this thing can be built, by outside contractors, for $144 million, all those millions paid for by the fines and fees paid by us, brothers and sisters. Williams has signed off on every disaster and misfire to come before him and his colleagues, and even helped engineer the disastrous prosecution (and persecution) of Ms. Cubbison, and here he is, predictably, signing off on one more.

SUPERVISOR TED WILLIAMS: (Good reminder to have a supply of water, food, medicine, batteries (first learned from my daughter who is in the outage with an estimate of one week):)

Brussels (CNN) — In an unprecedented wave of cyber assaults, critical infrastructure across Europe was targeted early Monday in what officials are calling one of the largest coordinated cyberattacks in history. European Union cybersecurity agencies have pointed to Russian state-backed groups as the primary suspects behind the widespread disruptions.

Power grids, financial institutions, airports, and healthcare systems across more than 15 countries were affected. Several major European banks reported temporary outages, and airports in Frankfurt, Paris, and Madrid experienced system failures that caused extensive flight delays. Emergency services in parts of Germany and Poland were forced to revert to analog communications after losing digital capabilities.

“This is a direct attack on European sovereignty,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at a press briefing. “We will respond with unity, strength, and resilience.”

The Kremlin has officially denied involvement, dismissing the accusations as “baseless and provocative.”

At the same time, NATO forces reported unusual naval movements in the North Atlantic. According to U.S. European Command (EUCOM), at least six Russian naval vessels, including two destroyers and a submarine, were detected maneuvering near critical undersea cable routes between Europe and North America. Additional allied naval assets have been deployed in response to what a senior Pentagon official described as “a significant and deliberate show of force.”

“This pattern of behavior is deeply concerning,” said Admiral James Thornton, commander of NATO's Allied Maritime Command. “We are closely monitoring all maritime traffic and are prepared to safeguard transatlantic security.”

WILLIAMS CAUGHT OUT AGAIN

Bob Abeles

The panic piece that Ted Williams graced these pages with yesterday is not an actual CNN report. You’d think he’d be a bit more careful when re-posting random stuff he found on the intertubes.

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George Hollister

Other outlets have said the same things as CNN. This will take some sorting out to get to the best evaluation. Yes, Europe is in panic mode, as maybe they should be. Putin is a psychopath on the war path, and Trump wants them to take the lead in dealing with it.

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Bob Abeles

Except CNN didn’t say it. Or write it.

There is a clear tell that immediately makes the story suspect: CNN is not a wire service. They don’t contribute stories to what little remains of the print media.

Digging a little deeper, you’ll find that nothing in the story is true. For example, Ursula von der Leyen didn’t hold the press conference reported in the story, nor did she utter the words attributed to her. Instead, she delivered remarks in Valencia lambasting the Trump administration for its attacks on education and its erratic trade policies. Here is a sample of what she did say, “Controversial debates at (European) universities are welcome. We consider freedom of science and research as fundamental, not only because it is a core value for us but also because this is how excellence and innovation thrive.”

Doing a search on the first sentence of the phony story brings up references to it as a piece of disinformation that has been making the rounds on social media.

Whether or not Putin is a psychopath is beside the point. Ted was taken in by an obvious piece of fiction to the extent that it triggered him to shout it from the rooftops. It clearly brings his judgement into question.

LOWBROW GOES HIGHBROW. I climbed aboard the 2 Clement one late December day and headed east for SF MOMA, knowing I'd find a whole building of provocations beginning with the building itself with all its wasted space and its dependably overwarm, recirculated air.

CHINESE SENIOR CITIZENS occupied all the Senior seats on the bus where, at Presidio and California, there was a stare down between a standing Russian woman and a seated Chinese woman, both of them clearly seniors. The Russian woman seemed to assume that the Chinese woman was not a Senior and should, therefore, give up her seat to the Russian. The Russian was dumpy, aggrieved-looking and muttering martyred Slavic exhalations, all the while staring at the Chinese woman who was so short her feet didn't reach the floor.

AS MUNI RIDERS will tell you, elderly Chinese women can be absolute boulders of intransigence. They are also absolute geniuses at Not Seeing You. A knife fight in the aisles would be none of their business. Apologies for these stereotypes and the implicit sexism, but I'll bet SF readers will agree with me that that both live up to the generalization. Sure, the Russians have much to be aggrieved about given their experiences in their mother country, and Chinese, whose loyalties and affections begin and end with their own families, have much Not To See in this unhinged, anything goes country.

THE NUMBER TWO rumbled east, the Russian woman sighed and grumbled and stared curses at the Chinese woman, until at Post and VanNess the Chinese woman, suddenly brandishing a California ID card, stood up and said to the Russian. “You sit. I stand, but I older than you.”

I GOT OFF at Union Square where the giant plastic Christmas tree was up and being festooned with buoy-size ornaments. I was headed for MOMA at 3rd and Mission. Counting the mendicants as I went, I'd seen eleven in the time I walked to MOMA, maybe six blocks from Union Square.

OPPOSITE the museum entrance a black guy, age maybe 50, was selling a crumpled-beyond-readability Street Sheet. I gave him a dollar, not bothering to ask for my purchase. “That five you got looks pretty good,” he said, hanging on to the paper that in theory he'd just sold to me. He wasn't getting the five he'd glimpsed, but he'd earned my admiration, a dollar's worth, for immediately asking for five more.

INSIDE the most annoying museum I've ever visited, a teacher was saying to a group of inattentive high school students, “Architecturally, this building is very cool…” Which it is not. It's a big atrium with a pile of stuffy rooms stacked on its east side. Up the stairs you're confronted with a Disney like cartoon panel of laughing mushrooms, and it was on to Rafael Lozano-Hemer — something like that, with the hyphenated name putting me on full pretension alert.

MR. HYPHEN'S exhibit was called, “Frequency and volume.” No thanks. I know the two frequencies I frequent and I can turn a volume knob with the best of them. Next was an exhibit by a teacher at Mills College described as “fiercely independent.” The worse the art at the MOMA the fiercer the artist.

THESE UNHAPPY abstracts looked like the back ward project of a heavily medicated depressive, shades of gray slapped up on the canvas. Richard Serra took up a whole room with a pile of metal splashed with concrete, and darned if this particular fraud wasn't called, Splash: Night Shift.

NIGHT OR DAY, it's a swindle MOMA probably paid a couple hundred grand for. Jasper Johns was the big draw, and if you're thinking of going just to see him, don't bother. It's his worst stuff.

I was hoping his big American flag painting would be included, but no, there was one nice abstract and then things like a mounted toothbrush and a slice of bread glued to black cardboard.

BEFORE OL' JASPER this month, the big MOMA draw was a photographer who changed her look 20 times and blew each photo up into big pictures. It costs $22 (!) for a senior ticket to see this stuff.

WHAT REDEEMS the MOMA is its permanent collection — the Klees, Riviera, Arneson's truly radical sculpture of George Moscone and, my favorite two paintings, Intermission by Hopper and the San Francisco painter Robert Bechtie's Potrero Hill.

THERE'S SOME GOOD THINGS at SFMOMA but they just barely outnumber the fakes.

ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] Republicans will be quick to say that once you use the Hitler analogy you've lost the argument. This is 2025 America - not 1930's Germany so obviously it's not an exact comparison. But it's getting closer. Deporting citizens to foreign gulags would be a huge escalation. Gaming the system to run for a third term sounds a little dictatorial.

[2] There are people out there who argue that viruses do not exist, that the covid virus was never isolated or identified and that the sicknesses we as people are experiencing is because of the foods we are eating and the chemicals and preservatives they put into the foods. That sickness is the means of the body attempting to de-toxify itself. I am just a stupid schmuck from rural Utah so I don't know one way or the other. Just things I read from time to time.

[3] The last 25 years has seen a economic roller coaster of "squeeze, release…..squeeze, release" - especially for the lower classes. The Dot.Com bubble, 9-11, the 2008 downturn, curious equity flow issues, the rise of the crypto scams, the Plandemic, etc. While some are saying be patient, I think Trump 2.0's honeymoon is drawing to a close. The actions coming out of the administration are too little, and way too late - and the wrong ones - to help out a totally beaten down blue collar worker.

There's little to no resilience left in many parts of the economy, at least in terms of supporting the higher standard of living we've enjoyed in the U.S. for the last 80 years. It appears that several sharp lurches downward are imminent, and I think tariffs will be the catalyst/scapegoat blamed when it fact the foundation has been crumbling for decades. I think the only thing left to debate is whether the policies have been intentional to bring about a crash, or more "organic" as how other collapses of civilizations are described.

The working man won't care about the causes - he'll just be in reaction mode, and that probably won't be pretty.

[4] We live in a country with catastrophically low levels of information. Yes, the Trump polls are tanking, but this was all obvious to anyone with a brain who did the required homework (not much) before going to the polls last November. Example: there is a video online of a woman in Nebraska who identifies herself as a farmer. In that video, she says “we all voted for Trump and now he is deporting the undocumented immigrants we rely on to work at our farms. We are going to go bankrupt.” Who would have thought he would do such a thing? I leave this as an exercise to the reader.

[5] The next time a Christian says, “If you had faith in God you’d enjoy loving, caring thoughts. I’ll pray for you,” notice how the sentence is used.

Is it a kind expression of love and concern, or is it what it is meant to be ~ a big ole slap in your face? “I am superior to you. I’m chosen. I have access to truths that you do not have. You are stupid, I know the truth. I am not all angry and do not hate everybody else like you do”

There is no condescension and arrogance like Christian humility, no ignorance like Christian knowledge and no hate like Christian love.

[6] All these tough MAGA guys need their own beauticians: Trump gets his face with orange paint, Vance has his eyes done up in kohl and Hegseth needs to get prettified in his own make-up room. The Trump cabinet is starting to look like an over-the-hill glam rock band.

— Jeffrey St. Clair

[7] INSENSITIVITY, AN ON-LINE COMMENT:

Sometimes people can unknowingly be hurtful and dismissive. When my husband was first diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer, a colleague told him it was no big deal, everything would be fine. After it metastasized and he was on testosterone suppression, another (female) colleague joked how now he knew what menopause was like. He didn’t think it was funny. Women expect menopause, this was due to deadly cancer. He fought through and it is remarkably in remission but his oncology docs think the probability of return is a matter of time. Or maybe he’ll be in that 5%. Recently he had a conversation about lifespan with a financial advisor he was consulting who assured him that prostate cancer was the good kind because you die of something else. It is very upsetting when people say these things. No, people do die of prostate cancer, suffering from treatment isn’t funny and you don’t know if everything will be OK. When you hear people say they have cancer, commiserate, say you’re sorry to hear it, let them talk, ask questions…..but don’t tell them everything will be OK. Meanwhile, we live every day grateful for that day. He is healthy and active and life is good. You can’t predict the future or live in worry. That is suffering.

[8] ON-LINE DELUSION

President Trump’s first 100 days, he’s doing pretty good getting things done, correcting a lot of problems from the last Administration. Of course opposition and progressives in general, and idiots overall are out there chanting all the wrong he is doing, and problems he’s causing. But they really aren’t real.