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WARM temperatures expected through Saturday with Friday expected to be the warmest. Inland areas will see much cooler temperatures Sunday with highs around 70. Rain is expected to spread across the area Sunday night and Monday. This will bring highs across the area around 60 on Monday. Gradual warming temperatures are expected after this. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 43F with clear skies (at 5am) on the coast this Thursday morning. The fog is very close by so sky conditions could change quickly. I do expect mostly clear skies later today & more of the same going into Sunday. Our forecast is still holding on to some rain arriving by Monday with clearing by Tuesday.
A READER NOTES: For the AV Chemtrail Conspiro Community
FORT BRAGG PROTEST THIS SATURDAY!
Weekly Rally: Stand Up For Our Rights
Saturday, May 10, 11am to 12noon
Main Street, sidewalk in front of Guest House Museum, Fort Bragg
— Susan Allen Nutter <sanutter@mcn.org>
SAVE THE WILDLIFE; STOP THE FIREWORKS
Last year after the 4th of July, I floated the idea of Fort Bragg making the celebration wildlife friendly, the response was great, I’m going to submit this during public comment, at the next City Council meeting 5-11-25, Please join me, and if you want to be a signatory, please reply off list, thank you!
— Chris Skyhawk
We the undersigned petitioners are urging the Fort Bragg Ca. City Council, to rescind the annual 4th of July fireworks celebration; the harmful effects on many species of wildlife including, but not limited to, cormorants, Sea Lions, nesting birds, and species of all sorts ; are well documented by many sources; the adverse effects are not limited to wildlife populations, as domestic animals often run away and hide, and human beings such as war veterans, and individuals who have experienced gun violence, often experience PTSD symptoms; the Mendocino coast tourism industry thrives due to the natural beauty that surround us, the abundant wildlife that shares this little corner of earth with us; to inflict the trauma of booming explosions; and flashing lights; that they have no way of understanding, is, in our view, unconscionable; we urge the City Council to find more humane and harmonious ways of marking this holiday, thank you, We believe that silent fireworks, drone and laser displays, can maintain the 4th of July tradition, while not stressing our animal neighbors, we would align with cities like San Jose Ca., Portlands Or. and Seattle Wa., thank you for your consideration, we stand ready to assist and collaborate with you!
UKIAH CONSIDERS GIVING $84,000 TO POTTER VALLEY PROJECT WORK
At its next regular meeting today, the Ukiah City Council is expected to consider approving the contribution of another $84,000 to another local entity for ongoing work related to the Potter Valley Project.
According to a staff report on the item prepared for the May 7 meeting, the City Council will be asked to approve a “financial contribution in the amount of $84,000 to the (Mendocino County) Inland Water and Power Commission for consulting and legal services related to the Potter Valley Project, and approve a corresponding budget amendment.”
To explain the significance of the PVP to the city of Ukiah, Seth Strader, Administrative Analyst, writes that “the Potter Valley Project (owned by Pacific Gas & Electric) resulted in the diversion of Eel River water into the Russian River throughout the year. These diversions supplement Russian River flows stored in Lake Mendocino, which supplies surface water to water users in Mendocino, Sonoma, and Marin counties.”
However, Strader continues, PG&E “will not seek to re-license the PVP and is moving towards decommissioning it. If the project is decommissioned, it could disrupt or eliminate the Eel River diversions that supply water to all Russian River water users in the Russian River drainage.”
In an effort to continue the diversions in some form, Strader notes that the IWPC, along with “the Round Valley Indian Tribes and the Sonoma County Water Agency have submitted a proposal to advance a regional solution for preserving flows in the Russian River and improving Eel River fisheries. The New Eel-Russian Facility proposal submitted to PG&E would provide for the creation of a regional entity that has the legal and financial capacity to own, construct and operate a new water diversion facility near PG&E’s Cape Horn Dam on the Eel River. The design of this new facility is currently nearing 60%. This facility would allow for ongoing water diversion through the PVP’s tunnel between the Eel River and Russian River, while allowing for upstream and downstream fish migration to support larger efforts aimed at achieving naturally reproducing, self-sustaining, and harvestable native anadromous fish populations.”
In years past while discussing similar contributions to the IWPC, Sean White, the city of Ukiah’s director of water and sewer, told the City Council that “essentially the Russian River, and parts of Marin County, are reliant on that flow continuing. The project will certainly be different than what we’ve seen historically. Currently, the preferred project is the abandonment and destruction of Scott Dam, which forms Lake Pillsbury, so that will probably go away some time in the future.
“But without this project continuing in some form, this region will be in dire straits for water supply,” White continued. “This (supply) is something that we cannot do business as we’ve done in the past without.” If the water from the diversion was no longer heading to Lake Mendocino, White said the lake would “be going dry most years, and a lot of the water rights below Lake Mendocino will not have any water left.”
This agenda item is on the Consent Calendar for the May 7 meeting of the Ukiah City Council, which will begin at 5:15 p.m. and be held both in the Council Chambers at 300 Seminary Ave., and online at https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84232575010
Also, you may view the meeting (without participating) by clicking on the name of the meeting at: www.cityofukiah.com/meetings
(Ukiah City Presser)
GUALALA MAN WENT MISSING without a trace. Then, his family found a devastating clue
by Jordan Parker
After her family launched a vigorous search along the north coast for any sign of her missing father, Rachel Ortiz received an alarming call: Her cousin found what appeared to be her dad’s pickup truck, submerged in the Russian River along Highway 1.
Ortiez and a group of family members rushed to the scene, where, as first responders worked, their worst fears were confirmed: It was his truck and his body was inside.
“We all comforted each other and it was so sad,” Ortiz said. “But at the same time this sense of relief because the fact that we couldn’t find him was just eating us up and we couldn’t imagine what it was going to be like if we never could find him.”
Clifford Souza, 74, of Gualala, was reported missing to the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office on April 23 when he failed to return home from a trip to Martinez, where he had grown up. His submerged Ford ranger was found around 2:30 p.m. three days later in the river near Highway 1 in Jenner, an unincorporated Sonoma County community, according to Ortiz and the California Highway Patrol. Investigators believe Souza veered off the roadway and into the river.
It wasn’t the first fatality involving a car plunging into the Russian River in that area. Two sisters died in 2016 after their mom lost control of their pickup truck, veered off the road and plunged 40 feet down a steep embankment into the river, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported.
Authorities have said little about why Souza went off the road. Ortiz said her family has speculated that the crash may have been caused by a health issue, given his declining health in recent years, but they are still waiting for Souza’s autopsy results to come back.
Souza, born in Oakland and raised in Martinez, was the oldest of three children. In 1950, he graduated from Martinez’s Alhambra High School, where he met his wife Denise. He continued on to San Francisco State, earning a degree in journalism. The couple eventually had three children: Rachel, Nicholas and Matthew.
Her parents loved to travel together, Ortiz said. The couple kicked off their marriage with a honeymoon to Hawaii, one of Clifford’s favorite places. They also took memorable trips to Jamaica and a cruise to the Caribbean. Now, Clifford leaves behind his lifelong partner of 52 years.
“She (Denise) is such a strong person,” said Ortiz. She’s doing really well, but I am thinking it hasn’t fully hit her yet. She’s just such a soldier, a trooper, you know?”
Souza retired in his early 50’s, Ortiz said and in 2008 the couple moved to Gualala, an incorporated community in Mendocino County, where they have lived ever since. “My dad was a huge animal lover, he especially loved boxers,” said Ortiz. “He took his boxer Siddy to the beach everyday and made friends there.”
Still, Souza did what he could to maintain his connection to the Bay Area. He loved driving down to Ortiz’s home in Fairfield to spend time with his grandkids, she said. “He would come once a month and stay overnight. We’d go out to dinner. He loved going to their baseball or soccer games, that was his favorite.”
Souza, Ortiz said, would also return to his hometown of Martinez monthly to visit his bank and get a haircut.
“He would get kind of bored in Gualala because it’s just a tiny little town,” said Ortiz. On the day Souza went missing, he had taken the drive down to Martinez, Ortiz said. As he was driving back toward the coast, Souza stopped in Petaluma to do his grocery shopping, according to Ortiz. He was never heard from again.
The next day, Ortiz’s mom informed her that Souza failed to return home. “I immediately drove down to Martinez and he wasn’t (with his friends) so then worry set in and we put the missing person out on him,” Ortiz said.
The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office checked Souza’s cell phone and vehicle location data, which showed activity in Sonoma County, where the case was then transferred. The California Highway Patrol issued a silver alert on April 24 and the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office sent an advisory to neighboring counties and law enforcement agencies to inform them of Souza’s disappearance.
Meanwhile, Nicholas flew down from Alaska and the family expanded their search to the coast on April 25. “Everybody made a plan that we’d get together on Friday and we’d start looking for him,” said Ortiz.
Deputies with the Sonoma sheriff’s office used cell phone activity to search roads and highways Souza may have been traveling on the Wednesday he was last seen. The CHP and U.S. Coast Guard used helicopters to search the coast along Highway 1 from Bodega Bay to Gualala. Still, with both the family and authorities searching, there was no trace of Souza.
Finally, a breakthrough came.
Ortiz’s cousin, Philip Kling, stopped along the side of the road in Jenner to peer into the Russian River. “All of a sudden my cousin sees oil or gasoline on top of the water,” said Ortiz. Kling followed the path of the oil slick, which led him to the truck, which was nearly completely submerged except for a back tail light, Ortiz said. The family watched as first responders pulled Souza’s body from the truck.
“We just felt like he was resting and we just hope that he went peacefully,” said Ortiz. “I was overwhelmed and it almost didn’t seem real. It didn’t feel like it was my dad in there.”
She continued, “He had such a great sense of humor. He was a family man. He was such a good provider for his family. ‘He was a hard worker and raised us to be hard workers and have strong morals. He could light up a room.’
A fundraiser created in support of Souza’s wife had raised more than $7,000 as of Wednesday afternoon.
(sfchronicle.com)
MENDOCINO COUNTY LIBRARY ANNOUNCES DISCONTINUATION OF HOOPLA AND OTHER ONLINE SERVICES
Due to current and upcoming financial obligations, the Mendocino County Library has made the difficult decision to discontinue some online services including Hoopla, Kanopy, Pronunciator, ProCitizen, GrantFinder, and Kovels. We understand that this news will come as a disappointment to many who have enjoyed these digital services.
This decision follows a careful review of the Library’s digital resources and the impact on patron needs versus budget constraints. Although expenses continue to increase, sales tax revenue is projected to decrease. Measure O provides a sales tax revenue of one-quarter cent (0.25%) with 60% of the revenue for operating expenses and 40% set aside for capital investments. The 60% for operating investments is a small increase over the previous Measure A funds of one-eighth percent (0.125%).
“Please know that this decision was not made lightly. It was deemed necessary to ensure that the Library continues to be a good steward of taxpayer funds and can maintain other essential services and resources for our community,” said Mellisa Hannum, County Librarian.
Patrons will no longer have access to digital content of the following services as of these dates:
- Hoopla digital - July 1, 2025
- Kanopy - July 1, 2025
- Pronunciator & ProCitizen - November 27, 2025
- GrantFinder - November 10, 2025
We encourage patrons to use the services that will continue to be provided including Libby, the Palace Project, and other digital resources. We appreciate your understanding and continued support. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to us.
For more information, please view www.mendolibrary.org or contact the Mendocino County Library at (707) 234-2873.
NFSC MOWER POLICY AND FIRE SAFETY TOWNHALL
Greetings Fire Safe Leaders,
Ever seen a 60-inch remote-controlled track mower in action? It’s like a Roomba…but BIGGER—and it’s here to help you tame wildfire fuels! Find out how you and your neighbors can put this beast to work, and don’t miss the upcoming fire safety town hall where the experts will share the latest science-based developments on home protection, fire insurance, and community action.
Fire Safety Town Hall
Help us spread the word for our upcoming Fire Safety Town Hall on May 19th from 6-8 pm at the Mendocino College Little Theater, Ukiah Campus to get the latest science-based developments on home protections, fire insurance, and community action from the experts. Please RSVP and share the poster with your group!
Track Mower Rental, Training, and Policy
In 2024 the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council received a grant to purchase a remote controlled, track mower with a 60” wide cutting width.
The mower is engineered for hillside and steep-incline maintenance, roadside mowing, fire fuels reduction, and more. It can cut brush up to 1.5 inches in diameter and can easily tackle dense brush like poison oak and other roadside shrubs.
In the Fall, we held a workshop to showcase the mower and its capabilities. After understanding the capabilities and uses for the mower, the MCFSC has created the following ways it can be used, listed in priority project order:
1) Support for increased productivity of MCFSC crew work.
2) Mendocino PBA control lines supporting planned prescribed burns.
3) NFSC project requests that can be performed by MCFSC as part of an existing grant such as using the mower to assist with chipper days or community work parties.
4) Rental to NFSCs for qualified projects with MCFSC training. NFSCs interested in renting the mower for a project should send a note to the MCFSC outlining the proposed project, its community benefit objectives and the target date range/number of rental days required. The project cannot be for an individual property owner.
5) If the mower is not in use for any of the above purposes, MCFSC can rent it to individuals on a first-come basis provided that the individual must compensate MCFSC for the cost of an MCFSC employee to run the mower, and any other direct costs associated with its usage, plus the rental fee. See the full policy for rental fees.
Anita Soost
asoost5@icloud.com
ED NOTES
A DISCARDED BOOK from the Larkspur Library had this message from a time unlike ours written in longhand in the back inside cover: “Steal not this book for fear of shame, For in it stands the owner’s name, For the Lord will say on that Great Day, ‘Where is the book you stole away?,’ And if you say you do not know, He’ll cast you down below, You’ll go up the ladder and down the rope, And there you’ll hang until you choke.” It is signed by Colette Anderson (No known relation, unfortunately.)
STEWART BOWEN sends along a Green Death memory written by the late Charles McCabe of the SF Chronicle. It seems the infamous malt has been upgraded by the San Francisco Brewers Guild into a “craft” version of the drink.
Never was a Rainier Ale guy myself, but I had a friend way back who drank it all day long, kicking off his day with a couple of warm bottles from the case he kept under his bed. It became a kind of running joke. We’d go over to Bob’s grungy-dark apartment on Fell Street near Masonic and there he’d be, a bottle of Green Death in his hand as he sat in an ancient easy chair he’d dragged in off the street. He’d either be talking to some other leisure-class hippies or reading. Bob was a great reader, a good talker, but these weren’t avocations that pay much, especially if you had to do them sitting down with a case of Green Death handy. Bob’s wife, who wasn’t long for the relationship, went off to work every day until she wised up and went solo. Every morning she’d leave hubbykins with his beer and his easy chair and she was out the door, and when she came home Bob would still be in his chair with a green bottle in his hand. He only got up from the chair to go to the bathroom, which wasn’t often. We’d joke about his capacity, which may have been simple inertia. It was hard to tell, but I never saw him any place other than in his chair downing his Green Death. One day we were sitting around talking and Bob, right in front of our eyes, began to break out in red, measles-like eruptions. Bing, bang, bong! Every inch of his pickled flesh was soon covered with red spots. “Bob! Whatever’s happening here is serious. You’ve got to go to the emergency room.” He was reluctant, probably hoping he could somehow be transported in his chair with enough Green Death to get him to Mission Emergency and back. We finally trundled him out the door and off we went, arriving, as I recall, just after dark. Then and now, of course, Mission Emergency is like a combat field hospital in full triage mode. Gun shot wounds and stabbings take priority, and on down through all other visible injuries. Bob’s medieval pox didn’t appear life threatening so we sat and waited an hour or so until a doctor was available. When Bob emerged from his consultation with the harried healer he smiled and said, “Guess what? It’s scurvy. I’ve got scurvy, the first case in the Bay Area since Sir Francis Drake. All I gotta do is eat and it’ll go away.”
JUST LAST WEEK, on a rare outing to downtown Frisco, on a block from the downtown Hilton, on one corner a shoeless black man, about 60, appeared to be convulsing but, on closer examination, was merely drunk or drugged or both and was rocking out prone in full twitch mode to heavy metal. Across the street a shopping cart guy sprayed cleaning solvent in the doorway of a closed cafe, then carefully unloaded his bedroll and made camp. On a third corner a toothless man held a scrawled but legible sign that said, “I tune fish.” I fished up a buck for him as he explained, “I tune fish, get it? Tuna fish!” I was thinking about these spectacles last Saturday afternoon when a coyote trotted across a Presidio road not far from the Immigrant overlook, which isn’t a mile from the Golden Gate Bridge. It was the third coyote I’ve seen this year in the city, and I wondered if maybe he wasn’t a harbinger of an apocalyptic reclamation project that might return California to the day Father Serra, on foot the whole way from Mexico, and his phalanx of conquistadors, stopped to rehydrate at nearby Mountain Lake, which has lately been dredged and returned to its natural state. That day I’d made a big circle, starting out at Land’s End, on through the Presidio, down to Crissy Field, up and over the little hill to Aquatic Park, through Fisherman’s Wharf, then south to North Beach, Union Square, west through the Tenderloin and on out to Clement for a late afternoon beer at the 540 club, a kaleidoscope of a day in a city that may not know how but always manages to look like it does.
NOT THAT MANY YEARS AGO, deep in the hills east of Boonville, I encountered a beautiful two-foot steelhead trapped and thrashing at my approach in a pool about a hundred yards from the headwaters of Jimmy Creek, which is darn near the top of the Ukiah Road (Highway 253) on the Boonville side of the hill. That hardy fish had made it all the way to its ancestral ridgetop home from the Pacific Ocean at Navarro, then through a gauntlet of industrial wine draws on the entire watershed much of the way, not to mention the array of natural obstacles that steelhead had survived to get home. That intrepid piscine traveler demonstrated to me that the in-County fisheries could be restored with a little more help from their friends, and a serious crackdown on their enemies.
THE LATE JEFF COSTELLO: “The profile you present for Mendo liberals is pretty much universal to describe the breed. I send this from Marin, a highly rated place on the scale of smug, although real human beings can be found anywhere, even here. A quick memory, my first encounter with political correctness: In 1977 we were in Nashville TN, of all places, and had hired a young couple to babysit. The woman told me very earnestly that she did not discriminate against children, and therefore called them ‘small persons’.”
BENEFIT CONCERT FOR MENDOCINO COAST DOGS
Local organization Second Chance-Fort Bragg helps dogs owned by low- income and disabled people by offering and services and supplies to keep dogs healthy and happy.
Second Chance will be hosting its first-ever benefit concert at the Caspar Community Center on the evening of Saturday, May 10th. Gene’s band Nashville West will be performing, and there will also be a silent auction with many gift certificates, art works, handicrafts, and other wonderful items to bid on.
The event will start at 5:00 p.m., and the admission price is only $25—you can always donate more, of course, if you feel so inclined. Tickets sold at the door.
BEERFEST & JUMBO’S
Alright party people! Beer Fest is upon us!!
Jumbo’s will be open until 9 for live music and recovery burgers! Can’t wait to see you all
THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MENDOCINO COUNTY’S 1920s SPEAKEASY SOIREE
Don’t miss this final chance to transport yourself to the 1920s at our Speakeasy Soiree and explore the history of bootlegging in Mendocino County. Join us at Barra of Mendocino Winery & Event Center to enjoy music from the era and a delectable menu fashioned from the favorite foods of “notorious” bootleggers by chef Matthew Allison. The Ukiah Players Theatre will perform local bootlegging stories. There will be a live and silent auction filled with unforgettable Mendocino County experiences. The auction continues to support the opening of the Held-Poage Memorial Home Museum and the Historical Society’s effort to catalog its extensive collection. We invite you to dress in 1920s attire, however it is not required. See you there on Sat. May 17, 2025 at 5 P.M.
This year there will be quick check-in and check-out. Antique automobiles and a still will be available for photo opportunities.
This year’s menu has been carefully curated from the favorite foods of “notorious” bootleggers by chef Matthew Allison.
Buy Tickets
$100/General Admission
$1000/Table of 8 - In addition to supporting the HSMC, your table will include priority seating close to the auction stage, and special extras at your table as a thank you!
To buy tickets contact us: 707-462-6969 or info@mendocinocountyhistoy.org
NORM CLOW:
My mother graciously shared her birthday today with Willie Mays. This is her faculty picture from her first year teaching at Anderson Valley Union High School, 1940-41.
When she transferred from San Mateo Junior College to Cal, she already had a research paper on the Indians of the San Mateo Peninsula in the main library (as well as in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. and Stanford), compiled when she was the ripe old age of 19 at SMJC. I always wondered what the reaction would have been if she’d walked into the Bancroft Library on campus and filled out a form requesting to check it out. “Author: Elinor Heath”. “Requested by: Elinor Heath.” I didn’t even think of that when I was a student there 35 years later.
She pooh-poohed the whole thing as nothing to brag about. I don’t know about that. Tenured university professors could spend fifty years hoping to pull that off, and she did it as a college freshman. Anyway, she’s still smarter than me.
ELK RUMMAGE SALE
The Greenwood Civic Club invites you to take part in the 36th annual Elk Rummage Sale to
be held from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm on Saturday and Sunday, May 31st and June 1st at the Greenwood Community Center in downtown Elk. Discover antiques, collectibles, clothes, books, toys, housewares, furniture, tools and more at bargain prices. Come Saturday for the best selection and come back for the Sunday Super Sale starting at noon! While shopping, feast on bakes goods, drinks and tempting homemade lunch items for sale. Credit cards are accepted.
The Greenwood Civic Club is a non-profit organization. Proceeds from the annual event benefit community projects, children’s summer programs and scholarships. For more information, visit elkweb.org.
The Pepper Martin Baseball games will also be at the Greenwood Community Center on Sunday, June 1st from 1:00-5:00 p.m. The kids game starts at 1 p.m. and the adult game starts at 2 p.m. Hot dogs, margaritas and ice cream will be available for purchase.
BILL KIMBERLIN
When I was about 8 years old my mother had bought this house in Kentfield. It is still a choice area in Marin County. One reason she bought it was because it had a separate maid’s quarters and soon she was going to become quite ill.
My father had passed by then, but we were all used to servants when we lived in a big house in San Francisco. There was a Filipino house boy (a rude term today), a cook, and a black maid named, Freddie, that took care of me when I was a baby.
Then there were the gardeners and handymen rounding out the household. During WWII my father’s Japanese servant was ordered into an internment camp and my father took over his house so he wouldn’t lose it while detained.
Many of these people came to visit us years later in this Marin house bringing their children to meet us. I realized later that this returning meant something to both families.
Since every year we moved to my aunt and uncle’s resort (Ray’s Resort) outside Philo, now called “River’s Bend” for the whole three months of summer, my mother decided to rent our Marin house for the duration of summer.
Decades later I found out that one summer she rented it to Harry Bridges, the San Francisco Longshoreman leader. Bridges in the 1950’s and all the way back to the 1930’s was constantly attacked by J. Edgar Hover as the head of the FBI, and Congress including such people such as Joe McCarthy and others. But jailing and deportation of him had failed.
So what the FBI did, was to take over the house behind ours, which was over a small creek that separated the two properties. From that location they spied on Bridges, taking photographs, recording whoever visited and interviewing our neighbors.
Having just read a book on the FBI’s investigations of Charlie Chaplin during this same time period, I now know how to request a freedom of information act, a U.S. federal law that grants the public the right to request access to records from federal agencies. I am hoping to learn the history I never knew about.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, May 7, 2025
AARON BLACK, 33, Covelo. Battery with serious injury.
BRUCE CARTWRIGHT JR., 32, Willits, Petty theft with two or more priors, controlled substance, paraphernalia.
KENNETH DEWITT JR., 44, Ukiah. Parole violation.
KENNETH GOODELL, 34, Mendocino. Failure to appear, probation revocation.
JOHN HOAGLEN, 39, Covelo. Failure to appear, parole violation.
DEVAUN JOHNSON, 25, Ukiah. Resisting.
LAMONT JONES JR., 47, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, drinking in public.
DENA MORRIS, 63, Ukiah. Parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)
BENJAMIN RAU, 48, Potter Valley. DUI, evasion, probation revocation.
JUSTIN WILLIAMSON, 34, Fort Bragg. Criminal threat, evasion, resisting.
SEE AMERICA ON AMTRAK
Warmest spiritual greetings,
Please know that I have finished being supportive of the William R. Thomas Memorial Anti-Nuclear Vigil in front of the White House for the sixteenth time. I wish to leave the homeless shelter in Washington, D.C. and go to some place where I would be appreciated. The SSI appears to be cut, so I am receiving only the SSA which is $488 per month. I presently have $2,943.60 in my Chase checking account, and $94. 80 cents in my wallet. What can I get from you, and how soon? Thank you very much.
Craig Louis Stehr, craiglouisstehr@gmail.com
REAL ID IS A WASTE OF MY TIME AND I DON’T NEED ONE
by Olivia Harden
It’s May 5, 2025, and I’m taking one last trip to San Francisco International Airport without the coveted golden bear on my driver’s license. As I reach the front of the TSA PreCheck line at the San Diego Airport, I hand the Transportation Security Administration agent my driver’s license. He glances it over. “Just make sure you have a Real ID by May 7,“ he said. I politely respond, “I have a passport. Thank you.”
The United States passed the Real ID Act in 2005. It set a new standard for sources of identification, such as driver’s licenses, pertaining to anyone traveling domestically or entering certain federal buildings. One of the markers on a Real ID license is a golden bear emblem. On Wednesday, 17 years after the original anticipated deadline, TSA across all 50 states and all territories begins enforcement at the airport.
Although the Department of Motor Vehicles across California has seen a significant increase in the number of people trying to schedule an appointment to obtain their Real ID, I have no plans to get one — ever.
I’m not getting a Real ID, and though I’m not in the business of telling folks what to do, I do think it’s worth asking yourself if you should, too.
Does Real ID really make us safer?
There are several reasons why it has taken so long to implement Real ID. A significant point of contention was that not everyone was convinced it was necessary to keep America safe.
The Real ID Act was conceived in 2005 as part of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations, but the mandate has been controversial — specifically because it’s so expensive to implement for what NPR has said is essentially security theater. In 2008, the DMV said it would cost the state $300 million to initiate.
Before the first enforcement date in 2008, more than a dozen states were not on board and considered legislation to bypass it for the invasion of privacy. Maine legislators put their money where their mouth is and did just that in 2007. However, a decade later, the state overturned Legislative Document 1138 over concerns of what implications it would have for Mainers who were not in compliance with the rest of the country.
Ahead of Wednesday’s deadline, TSA Senior Official Adam Stahl wrote that the ID requirement “bolsters safety by making fraudulent IDs harder to forge, thwarting criminals and terrorists.”
Since the original enforcement deadline in 2008, the federal government has pushed the date back numerous times. And while there were plenty of warnings to head to the DMV to get one, the signs at the airport and the news articles started to lose meaning (SFGATE has published stories about Real ID at least a dozen times since 2007).
It raises the question — if new identification standards were so important, why did it take 17 years to implement?
“We should not need a ‘passport’ to travel within our own country. There have been no issues with just our state IDs ever, so there is no reason we all need this ‘national’ ID,” Los Angeles resident Jenn Lazo told SFGATE in a direct message on social media. “My state, California, already made me give a fingerprint and proof of identity when I got my driver’s license. My proof of residence is that I receive the license they mail.”
Just get a passport
Like others, I think the DMV is a hard place to visit. My protest against the golden bear ID largely falls on the fact that I have no desire to set foot inside a DMV for an extra bureaucratic process. California’s DMV has streamlined the process by allowing Californians to upload the required documents, like a passport or birth certificate, and a document that provides proof of residency online. Nevertheless, you still have to bring those documents to the DMV office for approval.
During the past few weeks leading up to the deadline, getting a last-minute appointment at the DMV to have a Real ID before May 7 has been challenging. Many DMVs don’t have any availability until July. The DMV even made the decision to add extra hours specifically for Real ID appointments at 18 locations. And even after you land one of the coveted appointments, it takes an average of two weeks for the ID to arrive in the mail, the DMV told SFGATE.
Anyone who visits the website for a Real ID will get a pop-up suggesting Californians stick to their passport until it’s time to renew their driver’s license. The DMV declined to comment on whether this was because of the backlog for office appointments.
“Individuals who have a passport or any other federally accepted document can use it to fly domestically or to enter a secure federal facility. They may wait until their driver’s license is due for renewal and then upgrade to a REAL ID at that time,” the DMV told SFGATE in an email.
TSA spokesperson Lorie Dankers told SFGATE that flying with a passport is not opting out of the Real ID process to fly. It’s just moving forward with “another acceptable form of identification.”
“You’re not going to want to travel long term with your passport, potentially losing it or damaging it when you can now just make an appointment to get a Real ID once the backlog starts to clear,” Dankers told SFGATE.
I, and others I’ve spoken with, disagree. I would rather fly with a passport, which grants me access to 183 countries without a visa, than step into the DMV once.
“All this verifying this and verifying that … it’s too much … I’m tired of giving the State and US governments information … my information. Sept 11th ruined it for all of us in terms of personal privacy,” Antonio Russo-Scullari, a San Francisco resident, told SFGATE in a direct message on social media. “A Passport is sufficient enough to meet their needs … and the less time I spend at the DMV, the better.”
Another option available to flyers worried about losing their passport book is obtaining a passport card, which will give access to land borders of Mexico and Canada. In 2024, the U.S. State Department issued 3,737,228 passport cards. Either option gets you out of participating in the additional bureaucratic process at the DMV.
What to expect on May 7 and beyond
The TSA estimates that at this time, a little more than 80% of Americans are prepared for Real ID enforcement, Dankers said. Travelers who show up at the airport without a Real ID on or after May 7 are subjected to additional screening and should be prepared to show up to the airport early. If their identity cannot be verified, they will not be permitted to fly.
“TSA is screening, on average, 2.5 million people per day, and at 19% would be about 500,000 people at airports nationwide who aren’t ready for Real ID enforcement,” Dankers said. “If you’re prepared, you know, I’m going to say, good for you, you planned ahead, you didn’t procrastinate, and you should expect a smooth and efficient trip through the security checkpoint. If you did not, arrive early.”
While there has been a lot of emphasis on May 7 as the finish line, Dankers points out that the deadline to be Real ID compliant is not May 7 but whenever is the next time to fly.
“The DMVs are still going to be issuing [Real IDs] after May 7. We’re still going to be enforcing it after May 7. So this is a hard deadline in terms of people who are traveling on May 7, but it may not be your deadline,” Dankers said. “So look at when you’re planning to travel. Look at what you can do, and then move on it. Don’t procrastinate anymore, because this is the policy moving forward.”
She makes a fair point, but that’s still not enough to convince me. After returning to SFO on my way home to San Diego the day before the Wednesday deadline, I presented my passport without any interruption, and the security agent even smiled as he waved me through.
JEFF BLANKFORT
Jonathan Cook, as always, tells it like it is about the leading “Jewish intellectuals” in Britain shilling for Israel’s genocide:
“These shills are as morally culpable as the court historians who in 1930s Germany denounced those who opposed the extermination of Jews, Romanies, Communists, the disabled and gays as anti-Aryan racists.
“Anyone who at this point is still prioritising concerns about tackling antisemitism in Britain, the United States or Europe over halting a 19-month genocide in Gaza is secretly in favour of that genocide. They need to be shamed – and urgently. [I would, personally preferred they be “knee-capped first-JB]
“We are long past the time when there can be any doubt that what the International Court of Justice feared 16 months ago was a genocide is actually a genocide. Israel is no longer even shy about admitting it is starving Gaza’s population. It has been expressly blocking all food and water into Gaza for more than two months.. . .
“But sadly, there are still plenty of people using their establishment platforms, and weaponising their establishment credentials, to muddy the waters. And muddying the waters, 19 months into a genocide, is as morally culpable as directly cheerleading that genocide.
I have the economic intelligence of an eight year old which is probably why I never became rich, but I do understand how our society works. It was taught to me by the board game Monopoly. Did you ever notice how, when the game is ending, the winner simply cleans up, buys everything, leaving all of the other players with nothing? That’s pretty much how it works in real life too.
Children so malnourished they’re losing their sight: Inside Israel’s aid blockade on Gaza | The Independent
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/gaza-hunger-israel-idf-netanyahu-b2745801.html
MEMORIES OF VIETNAM: THE WAR AND THE PEACE
by Jonah Raskin
“The Vietnamese national character is rapidly changing. Our value system is falling apart. Gangsters are making incredible fortunes on the black market.”
–Professor Hoang Ngoc Hien, Hanoi intellectual, 1995
“We’re getting wonderful cooperation from the Communist Party. What we need now is more accountability on the part of the Vietnamese.”
–Bradely Babson, Director, World Bank, Hanoi office, 1995.
The War in Vietnam pushed me out of academia, turned me into an anti-imperialist and cast a long shadow on my life. The March on the Pentagon, the 1968 Tet Offensive, May Day in 1971, and helicopters hovering above Saigon — all of them seem like yesterday. For my parents and for members of their generation who survived the Depression of the 1930s and the Red Scare of the 1950s, “the” war was World War II when fascism was defeated and the atomic age began with the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For my generation and at least two generations that followed it, “the” war was Vietnam, which lasted more than a decade and brought about the loss of millions of lives, both Vietnamese and Americans.
I never served in the military and was never drafted. A lucky bastard. Along with tens of millions of people around the world I protested against the war beginning in 1964 and until the war’s end in 1975. I wrote and distributed leaflets, marched, rioted, burned my draft card and went to jail. The war in Vietnam, which the Vietnamese call “the American war” — to distinguish it from the wars against the French and the Japanese—divided American society between pro-war “hawks” and militarists and anti-war “doves” and pacifists.
I remember when Che Guevara called for “Two, Three, Many Vietnams.” I remember he went to the Congo and to Bolivia to foment guerrilla warfare that he hoped would provoke and overextend the US militarily and lead to the end of American hegemony. With help from the CIA, Bolivian troops captured and assassinated him; his dream of a global anti-imperialist revolution driven by the Third World fizzled. What’s difficult to conjure is the zeitgeist, the sense of being permanently on the edge and on fire.
Didn’t the U.S. teeter on the brink of a civil war. I was sure it did and that was prompted by rise of Black Power, bloody riots in big cities like Detroit, the assassinations of Malcolm and Martin, the Kennedys and more, the women’s and the gay liberation movements, young men who went into exile in Canada and France rather than go to Vietnam, and a counterculture that lured a generation or two away from white American values and into the world of sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll and rebellion.
For a time it seemed to me and to my circle of self-proclaimed revolutionaries, and to the circles beyond that circle, as though the American Empire, like the Roman and British empires before it, was destined to decline and fall. We were waiting for an end that never came. Maybe imperialism wasn’t the highest stage of capitalism.
Maybe Lenin was wrong, and maybe Mao was also wrong. After the US military defeat in Vietnam, the Empire struck back. George Lucas was right about that. Imperial America rebounded slowly and steadily and the flowers of decadence blossomed from Hollywood to Wall Street, the Hamptons to Miami Beach and beyond. Society is rotten to the core. Where are the barbarians and when will they arrive to upend the empire?
Now, in 2025 the policies and politics of the Trump administration tell me that the American Empire still has fangs and can still frighten ministers and presidents from Mexico City to Manila. Though for how much longer remains to be seen. It’s only a matter of time. Empires can take decades to fall apart.
I remember meeting the American anti-war novelist, Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan, Cat’s Cradle, and SlaughterHouse Five, which is set during WWII but wasn’t published until the Vietnam War when it became a bestseller.
As an American soldier Vonnegut was captured by the Germans and imprisoned in a slaughterhouse in Dresden which the Allies bombed and nearly destroyed. “Our side did terrible things during WWII,” the British novelist and Nobel Prize Winner Doris Lessing told me. I had assumed “we” were the “good” guys and didn’t commit the kinds of atrocities the Germans committed in World War II. Vietnam lifted the veil and revealed American barbarism.
In Vietnam in 1995, two decades after the end of the war, when I was a tourist, I came to the sobering conclusion that Lessing was correct about “our side,” and also that no one “wins” a war today; there are only losers. Lessing introduced me to Vonnegut’s fiction and it was Vonnegut who insisted that the pen is not always mightier than the sword. Indeed, while many wonderful anti-war books have been written and widely read, including Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, (1895) Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1928) and Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun (1939), anti-war novels have not ended war.
Still, it seems likely that antiwar novels will continue to be written and read. My favorite is The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, who was born in Vietnam in 1971 and who came to the US in 1975. He’s also the author of The Committed. In The Sympathizer, Nguyen dissects American culture, and lampoons Americans who “pretend they are eternally innocent no matter how many times they lose their innocence.” Fuck American innocence.
In The Committed, the novel explores the brutalities behind the veneer of French culture. “Everything sounded better in French,” the narrator explains, “including rape, murder, and pillage!” The author describes the baguette as the “symbol of France and hence the symbol of French colonization!” Nearly everything in his world triggers his reflections about empire, invasion, occupation and liberation. He advises readers to take revolutions seriously but not revolutionaries.
In the late 1960s, I learned about the war in Vietnam from American soldiers, some of them wounded in action, others suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and some of them baby-faced 19- and 20-year -olds who were students in the literature classes I taught at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. John Brown, an officer from a wealthy family, had pursued an “enemy” soldier down a foxhole only to have a grenade go off in his face, which doctors stitched back together and with visible scars. When he slept at my apartment he’d wake with nightmares.
Sad to say there will be no end to wounded veterans of wars, no end to civilian casualties and surely no end to anti-war movies. My favorites include Grand Illusion, Paths of Glory, The Human Condition, Apocalypse Now!, and Full Metal Jacket. During the War in Vietnam I read dozens of articles by the Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett and half a dozen or so books about the war, mostly non-fiction, including Frances FitzGerald’s Fire in the Lake, and Michael Herr’s Dispatches, plus the poems in Ho Chi Minh’s Prison Diary, which he wrote in Chinese characters while he was a prisoner of the Chinese in 1942 and 1943.
Ho’s Diary was not published in English in the US until near the height of the War in Vietnam, when it became widely read and appreciated. Since its initial publication it has been translated into 37 languages. Ho’s immortal line still haunts me. “When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out,” he wrote. My favorite non-fiction book, Giai Phong! The Fall and Liberation of Saigon (1976), is by the Italian journalist Tiziano Terzani. It belongs on a bookshelf alongside John Reed’sTen Days that Shook the World that chronicles the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
In 1971, when I published The Mythology of Imperialism, a study of British literature and the British Empire, I dedicated it to Ho Chi Minh, the founder of the Vietnamese Communist Party and the President of Vietnam who was born in 1890 and who died in 1969. When I wrote about Conrad’s novella 1899, Heart of Darkness, which is set in the Belgian Congo, the war in Vietnam was never far from my thoughts. Kurtz, Conrad’s anti-hero was the quintessential imperialist. “Exterminate all the brutes,” he writes.
Of all the 20th century communists, Ho is in my book the most likeable, the least horrific. The Declaration of Independence had inspired him. In Hanoi in 1995, on the 20th-anniversary of the end of the war, I visited Ho’s mausoleum which was guarded by soldiers with guns. I met Vietnamese men a decade older than I who had fought in the 1950s against the French who were decisively defeated at the battle of Dien Bien Phu.
I also met Vietnamese who were too young to have fought against the French or the Americans. Nguyễn Huy Thiệp was the only Vietnamese man I met who belonged to the same generation as I did. We bonded at his home, which had been in his family, he said, for 700 years, and at his restaurant on the banks of the Red River in Hanoi where we talked about his short stories, including “The General Comes Home,” an anti-war classic in which a general goes home from a war and no one pays him any attention.
When Thiệp learned that I had friends in Hollywood he wanted me to connect him to them. At his restaurant, which specialized in “jungle food,” I ate snake and “paddy” rat which apparently only eats rice. In my hotel, I disliked the clouds of cigarette smoke that filled the air nor did I appreciate the playing of the International on loudspeakers in the streets which woke me at 7 a.m. every morning. The veterans of the war against the French sat in cafes, sipped green tea and smoked cigarettes all day long. I sat in one of the cafés with them and read Graham Greene’s prophetic novel, The Quiet American about an undercover CIA agent. It was the perfect novel to read there and then.
Professor Hoang Ngoc Hien, one of Hanoi’s leading intellectuals, told me in my hotel room: “The Vietnamese national character is rapidly changing.” He added, “Gangsters are making incredible fortunes on the black market.” On the other side of town Bradley Babson, the director of the World Bank’s Hanoi office told me when I visited him in his office, “We’re getting wonderful cooperation from the Communist Party. What we need now is more accountability on the part of the Vietnamese.”
After a month of talking and touring, looking, listening and learning, Hanoi was tattooed in my heart, Vietnam tattooed in my soul. I will never forget the streets which were swept clean every evening by a battalion of women armed with brooms and shovels, or the young Vietnamese men who took me to see Arnold Schwarzenegger movies and wanted me to explain “special effects.” They had lived in Moscow and had learned Russian. Now they wanted me to teach them English. I was happy to oblige. If they had anti-American sentiments I never heard them or saw them.
I was in Hanoi during Tet, which a Vietnamese translator explained was a combination of The Fourth of July, Christmas and New Years. I never saw so much shopping and so many buoyant people in the streets. I met members of General Giap’s family, ate food specially prepared for Tet and drank Scotch with a former Vietnamese diplomat who had translated into Vietnamese Gone With the Wind and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Oddly enough he identified with the defeated South in Margaret Mitchell’s epic about the American Civil War.
Out of favor with the Communist Party, the former translator complained that the Hanoi government was selling state-owned enterprises to private companies and taking the capitalist road. No imperial power was forcing it to do that, but investors and entrepreneurs were seizing the opportunity to make money. I met a financier with the World War newly arrived in Hanoi with high hopes for profitable ventures.
Vietnam was an independent nation, choosing its own future. Isn’t that why we had opposed the American invasion and occupation and the long brutal war against the Vietnamese. So, Vietnam could decide its own future independent of the USA? Yes, I thought so. When Tiziano Terzani wrote his book about the fall and liberation of Saigon, one of his translators told him, “Inside every Vietnamese there’s a mandarin, a thief, a liar who sleeps—but there’s also a dreamer.” That sounds about right. To that list I would add, “and a survivor.”
(Jonah Raskin is the author of Beat Blues, San Francisco, 1955.)
‘TOUGH AS NAILS’: THE WARRIORS HAVE A NEW MUSTACHIOED FAN FAVORITE
by Gabe Fernandez
With about 2:40 left in the third quarter of Tuesday’s Warriors-Timberwolves playoff game, an unassuming man with an unassuming name wearing an unassuming jersey number drove the length of the floor. With the smooth touch of a seasoned vet, he banked in a hook shot to extend Golden State’s lead to 21. It was one of the most talked about plays of this second-round series opener, but mostly because of people comparing the previously anonymous Dubs player to a company’s creative director, a YMCA pickup gym rat and a Pinkerton.
Yet for a select few, this guard is much more than those fake job descriptions make him out to be. To most Warriors fans, he’s a fan-favorite spunky NBA G League call-up who’s managed to mostly get minutes in garbage time, particularly this postseason. To an even smaller group of sports fans, he’s perhaps the greatest college lacrosse player of all time. By the end of the Dubs’ Game 1 win against the Timberwolves on Tuesday, however, almost everybody would come to know Pat Spencer.
As often as the jokes were flying, Spencer’s performance in Tuesday’s 99-88 win over Minnesota got him plenty of praise as well. A TikTok posted during the game with the text “Pat Spencer Is My Goat And IDC What Anyone Thinks” splashed across the screen — and Game 1 playing on a television in the background — garnered over 395,000 views as of midday Wednesday.
The person who made that TikTok went into the mythology of Spencer’s athletics career, which has previously been reported on, but only a niche segment of sports fans have truly committed it to memory.
In high school, Spencer was an All-American lacrosse player who got recruited to Loyola University, Maryland. While at the Baltimore school, he led his team to an NCAA Final Four, won multiple national awards — including the Tewaaraton Award, given to the country’s best college lacrosse player — and finished his career as the Patriot League conference’s all-time leader in points, and the NCAA’s all-time leader in assists.
But Spencer also played basketball in high school, and loved the sport so much throughout his successful collegiate career that he skipped out on playing in the Premier Lacrosse League’s inaugural season — he was selected first overall in the league’s 2019 draft — to use his final year of collegiate athletic eligibility to play basketball at Northwestern. Spencer was solid, finishing as the Wildcats’ second-leading scorer at 10.4 points per game. He also led the team in steals in his lone season. But the team was nowhere near good enough for Spencer to get even the slightest attention, and he wasn’t selected in the 2020 NBA Draft.
He played one season in Germany before playing in the G League for the Wizards affiliate Go-Go, and then the Warriors affiliate in Santa Cruz. He came up last season on a two-way contract and made only six appearances, with only one lasting longer than three minutes. However, while Spencer has still been closer to the end of the bench than the starting five, fans have gotten to see more of him this season, with a couple decent highlights that include a 17-point performance against the Pacers in January, and scoring an and-one on LeBron James.
What most endeared him to Warriors fans came in the postseason. In the infamous Game 5 blowout loss against the Houston Rockets, head coach Steve Kerr waved the white flag early and put in a backup rotation. Through sheer willpower, that group started cutting into the huge lead, and it was enough for coach Ime Udoka to put his starters back in. Shortly after, Spencer went up against Dillon Brooks to fight for a loose ball. The former lacrosse star threw Brooks to the ground, and, when Rockets center Alperen Sengun confronted the Dubs guard about this, Spencer gave him a mini headbutt. The 28-year-old was ejected to a guard of honor by his veteran teammates.
Spencer returned to his role as a reserve for the final two games of the series, as the Warriors went on to win 4-3. While one might expect someone with his playing time to see even less of the floor in the second round of the playoffs, Kerr was forced to expand his rotation when Steph Curry picked up a hamstring injury during the second quarter of Tuesday’s game in Minnesota. While it certainly helped that the Dubs were up 19 when he first came in, Spencer still put in real, honest-to-god playoff minutes for a team desperately seeking a series-opening win.
Naturally, the team has rallied around Spencer for his postseason performances. Not only did they help pay his fine from his ejection against Houston, Draymond Green gave the guard a big shout-out in his postgame press conference for what he did in Minnesota, and what he has done since joining the team.
“Pat is a damn good basketball player,” Green said. “I know he don’t look like it. He don’t just jump off the page at you when you see him in a basketball jersey — I don’t think the number 61 helps him. But he is one of the toughest guys on this team. That includes myself, that includes Jimmy, Pat Spencer is tough as nails.”
The veteran forward continued the laundry list of compliments that included “selfless,” “a voice on the bench” and “extremely intelligent” before predicting Spencer will be on the team for a long time. Green even shared that Spencer beat him in practice while he was recovering from a calf injury, and the 28-year-old spent those wins “talking crazy” that made Green “mad as hell.” Confrontation isn’t something Spencer shies away from, something he attributes to the sport he played in college and “just being off in the head, my brother and I have been going at it for years,” he told NBC Sports Bay Area on Tuesday — Pat’s brother, Cam Spencer, is also a former Division I lacrosse player who’s in the NBA as a member of the Grizzlies.
That reputation probably would’ve been a helpful thing to know for Wolves forward Julius Randle. In the slow-motion replay of Spencer’s hook-shot layup, Randle is visibly incredulous that a player like the Dubs guard is trying to drive and score on a guy like himself. But that expression changed quickly as the shot went over his head and fell right into the basket.
If he didn’t know then, he definitely knows now: underestimate Spencer at your own risk, especially since Minnesota will be seeing more of him for at least the next week.
FURNITURE
Oh, I don’t need all these antiques,
the Chippendale mahogany, the Gothic chair,
the Cromwellian oak buffet,
no; orange crates would be fine with me.
.
He was going to buy Ethan Allen furniture
when he was discharged.
He said it was the best furniture money could buy.
.
She only had rugs & a few large pillows.
No, she didn’t want any furniture.
SHE got all HER furniture at the Salvation Army.
The hide-a-bed was only thirty-bucks
she said.
.
I always build all my furniture to fit the space I move into he said. Never move with it & it usually becomes the next person’s kindling.
.
Bauhaus, the chairs are Bauhaus originals,
1920 modern antiques, museum pieces,
oh, & the glass table? the glass table, oh,
what’s his name? It’s a what’s his name. No, they’re not
a lot of trouble. … The girl cleans them.
.
Stones, just a couple of smooth stones.
One for me & one for my tea
sitting in a creek-bed, booted heel inverted,
foot on its side, drawn up to my butt for the stewpot.
.
Oh, I dunno
a rotted stump maybe,
hunk of old tie or rail. Just enough to keep my ass outta the mud. Sat on my pack once.
Sat on the path once:
…Lookin’ all around
……for
………the
…………path
and there I was
ON IT!
Butt in the mud,
laughing!
— Don Shanley
GIANTS STAY UNBEATEN IN ROBBIE RAY STARTS, S.F. TAKES SERIES FROM CUBS IN 3-1 WIN
by Susan Slusser
On a day of deep chill and blasting winds that pushed balls back toward the field, the San Francisco Giants scratched together just enough runs to keep Robbie Ray’s record unblemished.
Ray is the anti-Justin Verlander; no matter how he pitches, and it’s mostly been very well, the Giants find a way to win. Wednesday, they took the rubber match at Wrigley Field 3-1 and improved to a season-best 10 games over .500 at 24-14, just behind the Dodgers (25-12) for most wins in the majors.
San Francisco is unbeaten in Ray’s eight starts; the last time the Giants were undefeated in a starter’s first eight appearances was 1992, when they didn’t lose in any of Bill Swift’s first 11 starts.
“It is nice when the team wins when you start,” Ray said. “Regardless of personal wins, I’m just trying to go out there and give my team a chance every single time, put up as many zeroes as I can until they take me out of the ballgame.”
“When he takes the mound, we feel like we have a really good chance,” manager Bob Melvin said. “He seems to be getting better as the season goes along.”
Ray is the first Giants pitcher to go 5-0 in his first eight starts since Tim Lincecum in 2010, and he’s tied for the most wins in the National League. Meanwhile, Verlander remains winless after eight starts despite four consecutive quality starts.
In Verlander’s start Tuesday night, Ryan Walker blew the save, but there doesn’t seem to be any closer controversy: Camilo Doval pitched the seventh again Wednesday, Tyler Rogers the eighth (a six-pitch inning) and Walker had the ninth. Carson Kelly greeted him with a base hit. “I’m not going to lie, when he hit the single I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? I can’t even get a soft groundball?’” Walker said.
He got a quick double-play ball from Justin Turner and then a groundout by Nico Hoerner to end it.
“It means a lot,” Walker said of Melvin putting him right back into a save situation less than 24 hours later. “It shows how much faith he has in me, more than I have myself, which is awesome. It helps me keep my faith in myself, too.”
The temperature dipped into the low 50s, but with 27 mph gusts, the wind chill made it feel 44 degrees during the afternoon. That made hitting more difficult, as cold generally does, and the wind knocked down a few balls including Pete Crow-Armstrong’s flyball in the sixth. Heliot Ramos took a half-step back and then raced forward as the wind pushed the ball back toward the infield, and it dropped in to send Hoerner in from second, the Cubs’ only run off Ray.
“That wind was just howling out there,” Ray said. “It’s tough on days like this, you’re going to give up a run in that situation.”
“That ball that got down in left field, that looked like a wedge up in 30 mph winds,” Melvin said. “You can’t really blame Ramos for that one; that would have been a tough play for anybody.”
The strangest play of the day didn’t involve the wind. In the second, Turner hit a 95 mph grounder toward third that banged off Matt Chapman’s chest. As Chapman glanced everywhere for the ball, it popped over to shortstop Willy Adames, who completed the 5-6-3 out at first.
“That didn’t feel good,” Chapman said, displaying a red welt on his left collarbone. “When the ball’s hit right at you, so I just was like, ‘I’m going to body it up and try to keep it in front of me and make a play, because I know he’s not the fastest runner.’ And I did that, and I had no clue where the ball was, and all of a sudden I see Willy throw him out at first. That’s got to be one of the first times that’s happened.”
“It’s plays like that that change ballgames,” Ray said.
Ray allowed a strong Cubs offense only three hits and two walks in six innings, and he struck out five. He went fastball heavy, 41 of his 98 pitches, and he got 25 swings on it and five swings-and-misses, nine called strikes and 13 foul balls, but he said that his other pitches were working well and he was able to pitch more down in the zone than usual, too.
He got a bit of support immediately: Ben Brown walked Mike Yastrzemski to start the game, Adames reached on an infield single and with two outs and two strikes, Wilmer Flores did his cool, calm RBI thing, poking a single to right.
The other runs came in the fourth, starting with another walk, this time to Chapman. Flores chipped in another base hit, one of his three on the day, and with one out, LaMonte Wade Jr. drove in one run with a double to right. With two outs, Christian Koss’ hit to center sent in Flores, but Wade was out at the plate to end the inning.
The sixth was less successful. San Francisco picked up two hits and two walks off Gavin Hollowell but got nothing; Hollowell got Sam Huff to hit into a double play in the middle of all that, and with two on and two outs, Drew Pomeranz — remember his four-day, no-appearance stretch with the Giants last year? — struck out Yastrzemski to end it.
Huff had a tough day at the plate, going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts and the GIDP, but he’s been outstanding behind the plate when working with Ray. Ray has a 4.85 ERA in three starts with Patrick Bailey catching, but a 1.72 mark in five outings with Huff.
The Giants went 4-for-17 with men in scoring position but still took the road series against a division leader.
“That’s huge,” Chapman said. “Especially after the first game of the series, we kicked the ball around a little bit, we didn’t play our best game and it could have been very easy for us to roll over. They came back and tied in the ninth (Tuesday) and we could have folded but we found a way to come back and we won that game, then come back today and win. I think it just shows that we’re resilient and it was really big for us against a really, really good team.”
MUSICIANS AGAINST CLIMATE CHAOS Protests CalPERS’ Investments In Fossil Fuel Corporations
by Dan Bacher
A dedicated and creative group of climate activists from Third Act Sacramento gathered in front of the CalPERS building in Sacramento on May 6 to demand that CalPERS and CalSTRS stop funding climate change by investing in fossil fuel companies.…
NEW ANALYSIS BY FOOD & WATER WATCH REVEALS BIG AG IS DRAINING COLORADO RIVER DRY
by Dan Bacher
The environmental organization Food & Water Watch on April 29 published a new analysis exposing the impact of Big Ag on the Colorado River. The impact of Big Ag in California has been particularly egregious, leading to the dewatering of the once thriving Colorado River Delta where the region’s Indigenous Peoples have fished, hunted and farmed since time immemorial.…
CALIFORNIA GAS PRICES Could Rise 75 Percent by End of 2026: USC Analysis
by Brad Jones
Consumers can expect to pay as much as $8.44 per gallon on average, says the report.
California gas prices could skyrocket by as much as 75 percent by the end of 2026 with the expected shutdown of oil refineries in the state, according to an analysis released May 5 by a researcher at the University of Southern California (USC).…
I TRIED TO COVER A MAY DAY PROTEST. Antifascists Had a Problem With That.
A movement that wants to topple the world order seems to be terrified of talking to journalists.
by Ben Kawaller
Last week, I was hounded out of a protest by a pair of authoritarians opposing fascism.
Billed as a “May Day” rally on behalf of workers, the event, which began in Foley Square in downtown Manhattan, was one of dozens of such protests promoted by 50501. This one was organized by a coalition of unions and other progressive groups, including the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. I attended the rally and had spent about an hour interviewing participants and onlookers when the trouble began.
My questioning a DSA member about the idea that private ownership was the root of our nation’s troubles had evidently aroused the suspicions of a cadre of masked, yellow-vest-clad organizers bearing arrow signs reading “Right-Wing Troll,” which they then deployed to warn any future interview subjects from speaking with me.
Two of these people followed me doggedly, eventually driving me from the event to a nearby side street, where they continued to monitor me until I eventually whipped out my phone and made a contribution to the GOP.
I kid. But my revulsion at the repressive behavior of folks ostensibly gathered to defend democracy was enough to remind me of how emotional our political allegiances can be.…
https://www.racket.news/p/i-tried-to-cover-a-may-day-protest
LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT
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Trump Withdraws Surgeon General Nomination and Announces New Choice
Fed Keeps Rates Steady and Flags Heightened Uncertainty About the Economy
EYESORE MAY 2025
by James Kunstler
Behold: The new home for the Milwaukee Public Museum — to be renamed the Nature & Culture Museum of Wisconsin — in downtown Milwaukee. Kind of looks like four laundry hampers, though the official PR says “the rock formations at Mill Bluff State Park in central Wisconsin served as design inspiration.” Credit the architectural firms of Ennead Architects (New York), with Kahler Slater (Milwaukee).
Like many state museums, this one is a hodgepodge of history, nature (what used to be called natural history), ethnography (i.e., Indians), DEI nonsense (hey, it’s Wisconsin), and a miscellany of artifacts and freakish stuff that was the stock-in-trade of old-time Midwestern raree shows: a stuffed ivory-billed woodpecker (extinct). . . the William J. Uihlein Postage Stamp Collection. . . a deck of “Apache playing cards”. . . the skeleton of a mammoth found by farmer John Hebior in Kenosha County. . . costumes from Deakin’s Lilliputian Comic Opera (a theater company of midget circa 1880s). . . The DeFlores Collection of Disney Memorabilia, 1965-1987. . . and a clay seal imprinted with a hieroglyph signifying the name Tutankhamen (a.k.a. King Tut). Heck, I’d pay ten bucks to see all that!
Below is an artist’s rendering of the lovely public plaza attached to the laundry hampers — as usual in American landscape design, an ambiguous zone with no formal elements, arbitrary tree plantings, and apparently no seating (homeless magnets). It’s how we roll!
THE ANGRIEST DEMOCRAT IN THE ROOM
by Byron York
JB Pritzker, the billionaire hotel heir who since 2019 has served as governor of Illinois, wants to be president. Like many Democrats, Pritzker believes his party has not been tough enough in opposing President Donald Trump. Now, he is urging them to take to the streets to engage in mass protests, mobilization and disruption so that Republicans “never know a moment of peace.” It is not clear how far Pritzker wants Democrats to go in their disruptive activism, but when you vow that your adversary will “never know a moment of peace,” you probably mean just that, whatever ugly measures it might entail.
Pritzker made the vow Sunday night in a speech to Democrats in New Hampshire. A key part of his address was to push back against members of his own party who say Democrats have gone too far left and should moderate their positions in order to reconnect with more voters.
First, Pritzker touted some of his accomplishments in Illinois: “We enshrined reproductive rights into law,” he said. “We legalized cannabis. We protected labor rights. We joined the U.S. Climate Alliance.” Abortion, pot, minimum wage and climate — maybe that’s not a comprehensive platform, but it’s what Pritzker highlighted.
And then he declared: “We may have to fix our messaging and our strategy, but our values are exactly where they ought to be — and we will never join so many Republicans in the special place in hell reserved for quislings and cowards.”
It is common for a party, following a painful defeat, to have a debate about whether its beliefs and policies were the problem, or whether party leaders simply failed to communicate to voters how wonderful they were.
The people who prefer the messaging explanation often prevail, because their solution — more and better spin — doesn’t require any introspection. If a Democratic leader today tells voters that the party just needs to tweak its messaging and strategy, he is also telling them that they don’t have to reexamine their beliefs on the border, and woke, and crime and other issues where the party embraces minority views.
So Pritzker was telling the New Hampshire crowd: You don’t have to change a thing — just fight, fight, fight. Some Democrats really like that.
Pritzker focused on the stories of three Americans he admires for fighting back against the Trump administration. “In this fragile moment, the direction of this nation will turn on who we choose to listen to,” he said, “whose stories we decide to tell about what is happening, who we elevate and who we ignore.” He discussed Andi Smith, an Edwardsville, Illinois, woman who formed a Trump protest group; Gavin Carpenter, a Yosemite National Park employee who supplied an American flag displayed upside down as a protest against Elon Musk and DOGE; and Lucy Welch, an employee of the Sugarbush ski resort in Vermont who denounced Vice President JD Vance before a visit there in which protests forced Vance and his family to relocate.
“These three Americans acted on an instinct that we teach our children as one of their first lessons in life,” Pritzker said. “When you see a danger, you yell for help at the top of your lungs. We Democrats, we shouldn’t be comfortable ignoring those cries for help — the fact that so many are speaks to the real reason we lost last November.”
That was another reference to the ongoing debate Democrats are having about the 2024 loss. Don’t listen to those people who won’t hang the flag upside down or hector JD Vance out of a hotel, Pritzker told the crowd in New Hampshire. Listen to the people who want to fight. “Listen, I understand the tendency to give in to despair right now,” Pritzker continued. “But despair is an indulgence that we cannot afford in the times upon which history turns. Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now.” With that the audience burst into applause, and one man in the audience yelled, “Yes!”
Pritzker went on: “These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soap box and then punish them at the ballot box.
They must feel in their bones that when we survive this shameful episode of American history with our democracy intact — because we have no alternative but to do just that — we will relegate their portraits to the museum halls reserved for tyrants and traitors.”
If you get the sense that JB Pritzker likes to condemn people to everlasting punishment, you’re right. And if you get the sense that his talk will eventually end up where such talk always does, by likening President Trump and his supporters to Adolf Hitler and Nazis — well, Pritzker does that, too. He did not mention Nazis in his New Hampshire speech, but in a February speech to the Illinois state legislature, he denounced the Trump administration and added, “If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this: It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic.”
Rainier Ale was my husband Frank Many’s favorite brew. It was always his first choice as long as it was available in the market. I was a PBR gal in those days.
REAL ID IS A WASTE OF MY TIME AND I DON’T NEED ONE
by Olivia Harden
Olivia you are the reason we have this new requirement, Procrastination will kill us all, pick a new battle to resist on, this one is over your pay grade!!!!
I use Kanopy almost every week. I am very sad to hear the library can no longer afford to offer it.
There’s no information about this on the library website. Maybe more information will be forthcoming?
If you have a library card from another library system, you can probably access Kanopy and Hoopla through them. It’s not hard to sign up for other libraries online.
Do you have an alternative suggestion? I was under the impression most library services were for local residents who can show proof of residence.
Any California resident can apply for a San Francisco Public Library card. They have a big assortment of ebooks, audio books, music, and video streaming. You can apply online.
You do have to show your ID in person at an SF library branch. I got my SF library card when I worked in the City years ago and I still use it to check out audiobooks.
The story you copied from the Ukiah Daily Journal regarding the latest $84,000 provided to the IWPC for work related the Potter Valley Project was not a “presser” from the city of Ukiah.
Awoke early at the Adam’s Place Homeless Shelter in northeast Washington, D.C. and proceeded by bus to the MLK Public Library (and purchased a 100% Tangerine Juice in the library cafe area). Am free! Totally Free!! May now go where I need to go and do what I need to do. I’ve got a valid U.S. passport for Real ID. My retirement plan: 1. non-dualistically identify with that which is “prior to consciousness”, 2.perform Goddess rituals to destroy the demonic, and 3.order Red Breast Irish Whiskey with Sierra Nevada Hazy pints back. ~The Beginning~
Craig Louis Stehr
Adam’s Place Homeless Shelter
2210 Adams Place NE #1
Washington, D.C. 20018
Telephone messages: (202) 832-8317
Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com
Paypal.me/craiglouisstehr
May 8th, 2025 Anno Domini
If you make it down Chestnut Street in a perambulation of The City you should stop in at Sully’s Marina Lounge. It’s an unpretentious neighborhood watering hole, not unlike the 540 Club.
“But without this project continuing in some form, this region will be in dire straits for water supply,” White continued.”
Then move somewhere else. Obviously your area is overpopulated (in excess of its natural carrying capacity with respect to human monkeys) given its its “need” for water diversions that adversely affect fish populations.