Mendocino County Today: Thursday 5/15/2025

A COUPLE WEAK systems to periodically increase cloud cover and present low chances for a few showers or light drizzle through Saturday. Breezy northwest winds are anticipated through the afternoons, with increasing strength Saturday and especially Sunday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 43F under clear skies this Thursday morning on the coast. Clear skies, cooling temps & breezy thru the weekend. Nuff said.

SONIA GILL PAINTS PEACHLAND ROAD

Come and see at the Flea Market on May 23 - 26 at the Anderson Valley Senior Center in Boonville.

STATE AWARDS NEARLY $40 MIL FOR NEW EASTERN HILLS EVACUATION ROUTE

Although construction is still years away, Mendocino County officials were more than pleased to receive another nearly $40 million in grant funding for a project that could eventually provide another evacuation route for the people living in the hills east of Ukiah.

“It is great to receive this allotment,” said Howard Dashiell, director of the Mendocino County Department of Transportation, referring to the nearly $40 million of grant funds the county received through “Cycle 2 of the Local Transportation Climate Adaptation Program to fund right-of-way acquisition and construction for the long-anticipated Redemeyer Road Extension Project.”

Predicting that actual construction is at least a few years away, Dashiell said that next steps for the project will be completing the CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) requirements, which he predicted would take at least a year.

According to information posted on the California Transportation Commission website, the Redemeyer Road Extension Project was one of only eight projects recommended for the latest round of LTCAP funding; however, Mendocino County also had a project on the “not recommended for funding list,” which was for the second phase of the Brooktrails Second Access project.

Dashiell noted that the county did receive funding for Phase 1 of the Brooktrails project, and staff plan to apply again for more funding.

For now, county officials describe the latest round of funding (which Dashiell said was from both state and federal grants) as supporting “a vital new connection across the Russian River to North State Street, enhancing regional safety, climate resilience, and emergency response capability. (The county) was previously awarded $12 million through LTCAP Cycle 1 to complete” previous phases of the project, which “includes extending Redemeyer Road west across the Russian River, constructing a new bridge, and adding an at-grade crossing over the Northwestern Pacific Railroad to connect with North State Street.”

In a press release, county officials also explained that “Mendocino County’s local match obligation will total approximately $3.99 million over four fiscal years (FY 2026–2030), with funding to be considered during annual budget cycles. (The county’s Department of Transportation) will seek external funding opportunities to meet this local match, but may ultimately request up to the full amount from the county.”

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

POINT ARENA COVE CLEAN-UP EVENT, May 17

MENDOCINO’S ICONIC WATER TOWERS ARE UNDER ATTACK — Will we let them fall?

by Scott Roat, Mendocino Coast Realtor

Imagine Paris without the Eiffel Tower, San Francisco without its cable cars – that’s Mendocino without its iconic water towers. These towering sentinels, woven into the very fabric of our coastal town, are now under threat. This is an urgent matter!

One of Mendocino’s iconic Main Street water towers is now at risk, as narrow planning codes clash with broader community goals. Despite the Mendocino Historical Review Board rejecting this proposal three times, it’s now heading to the Board of Supervisors for a final decision.

What’s at stake? The three/four story water tower that acts as the stairwell into the restaurant Flow has come under attack: it is alleged that this tower is at the end of its lifespan and has no historical value.

No historical value? This tower has such significance to the town that it was moved from another location. Nearby San Francisco has a long history of moving buildings exactly because of their historical significance, so such a move only supports its esteem – in fact, moving a building is a downright preservation strategy!

However, Planning points out that the tower was never registered on any historical register, and that it is too late to do so. I do not, and so cannot, explain why it’s too late – I would strongly think this can still be done.

In an effort to support their findings, the owner hired Duncan Engineering to look at the tower, and as such the report is likely to be biased, and it reads as such. Instead of remediation efforts, the report recommends that the tower should be “phased out”.

Here’s why this letter is inappropriate, incomplete, and surface-level for supporting a decision on removing the historical water tower.

No measurements or critical core sampling were taken to assess the strength of the tower, relying upon visual assessments only.
The report lacks quantitative data on the wood’s internal condition.
It omits critical information about the foundation, which is essential for evaluating the structure’s stability.
The tower’s historical significance is barely mentioned, missing a vital context for preservation decisions.
There’s no analysis of repair or reinforcement alternatives, ignoring less invasive, historically sensitive options.
The assessment fails to address potential building code requirements, making it incomplete for decision-making.
Finally, it declares the tower “at the end of its useful life” without any solid evidence, relying on surface-level observations rather than thorough testing, quantitative calculations and modeling.
The Duncan report tells us very little about the integrity of the structure.

Nevertheless, the flimsy words of David Duncan’s report will become the basis for a Board of Supervisor’s discussion and call to vote this May 20, 2025. They will have very little time to discuss a matter that may impact a sacred Mendocino landmark.

The Board of Supervisors has a unique problem – no matter their viewpoint, they cannot argue on historical, economic, or policy grounds, only judicial. So there are really only three possible outcomes, and here is the priority order that I believe best serves this Community:

Affirm the decision – Agree with the Review Board’s original decision.
Send it back for reconsideration – Have the Review Board take another look at the project, including for CEQA purposes.
Modify the decision – Change the Review Board’s decision as needed.

So it’s a very narrow course left to the board, with only a single board meeting and an anemic engineering letter on which to base such an important and historical decision. If this hasty decision sets the wrong precedent, it’s not just one tower at risk – other water towers are likely to follow.

Please act now, don’t wait. Send an email helping them understand your concerns to BOS@MendocinoCounty.gov. Even better, I find calling them makes even more direct difference, and here are their numbers – insist that they at least do due diligence to protect this landmark. Perhaps even ask that it be designated a historic structure. Your voice is critical.

Here’s who to contact:

Madeline Cline, 1st District
clinem@mendocinocounty.gov

Mo Mulheren, 2nd District
mulherenm@mendocinocounty.gov

John Haschak, 3rd District
haschakj@mendocinocounty.gov

Bernie Norvell, 4th District
norvellb@mendocinocounty.gov

Ted Williams, 5th District
williamst@mendocinocounty.gov

All emails should be CC’d to BOS@mendocinocounty.gov as well, as that makes it public record. Each of the Supervisors can be called during business hours at (707) 463-4221. Ted Williams is an exception in that he makes his cell number accessible to everyone, at (707) 937.3500.

Can you imagine if the key details that make Mendocino so charming were slowly whittled away because some short-minded policymakers weren’t preserving our most valuable assets? What would Mendocino be without it’s water towers!

I rarely speak up like this – please act now. Preserve Mendocino charm for future generations!

OUR LOCAL COWBOY Cash Johnson, is participating in the Cutest Little Cowboy Contest.

He’s selling raffle tickets for $1.00 each! You can purchase as many as you’d like. Thank you to everyone that has purchase tickets so far. He’s enjoyed visiting your place of business. We are hoping to be able to sell tickets this weekend but are recovering from a cold and it’s important to keep our community safe by not spreading germs. If you are interested in purchasing tickets we do accept Venmo, Apple Pay and/or Zelle. I can send you a picture of the completed tickets

Please message me (facebook) or his Dad W.t. Johnson. Thank you again for all the support!

All proceeds benefit Potter Valley Rodeo, prizes are in the comments.

FROM FINLAND TO FORT BRAGG

It's happening again but this time two related events: Wednesday, May 21 at 10am at the mural and 3:30pm at Toveri Tupa (Eagles' Hall)

==> 10-11am Come learn about my mural “From Finland to Fort Bragg”. Find out about the people, the sauna, a commune and all those cool buildings! I'm painting the Nelson brothers on the door in that wall and it's half done now! The double portrait represents Arvid and Enoch Nelson, the sons of Finnish immigrants who valued labor, community and equality, but whose paths led in two very different directions. A special part of Wednesday’s presentation: you will meet Sergei Nelson, who found out what happened to his grandfather Enoch and reunited the two sides of the family!

==> 3:30-5pm at Eagles' Hall

Puhutko suomea? Do you speak Finnish?

Would you like to hear what the Finnish language sounds like? Did you know that Eagle's hall was originally built by and for the Finnish community?

On Wednesday May 21st the historic Eagle's Hall will host a delightful afternoon of Finnish-style friendly community togetherness. There will be a reading of a classic children's story IN FINNISH by a native speaker with line-by line translation. You can learn to drink coffee or tea in the traditional Finnish style by sipping it from the saucer with a sugar cube. Potluck cookies, so please bring snacks if you have the ability, or just bring your enthusiastic self!

We will also have some recording equipment at the event and we are hoping to gather audio recordings of memories of the Finnish immigrant and generational experiences on the coast. Please share this event with ANYONE who is interested in local history, the Finnish community, or is a fun and curious human. This is a kid-friendly event. Huge thanks to Stathi Pappas for permitting us to hold this event in his building!

To see more about the mural: https://historymural.com/finn/

Part of the very successful Art for Alleyways project! Kudos to Lia V Wilson aka Lia Morsell for spearheading everything.

MENDOCINO GROVE - FIRST A BED UNDER THE TREES, NOW A SHOWER UNDER THE STARS

by Justine Frederiksen

Ten years ago, a fancy camping spot called Mendocino Grove opened its tents just south of the picturesque town of Mendocino.

And while you’d think that offering a comfy bed in a dense forest where you can also see and hear the Pacific Ocean just a short drive from one of the quaintest towns in California would be enough to keep most people happy, one of the reasons why the Grove has been open a decade now is that its owners never stop making improvements, both big and small.

“Cleaning sand off paws, that was definitely a need,” said Camp Manager Danielle Masters on a recent tour of the dog-friendly “glamping” property, pointing out both the off-leash area and the dog-washing station while passing two leashed dogs patiently watching their humans bat a ball back and forth at their campsite.

For guests who didn’t bring their own activities, the camp store where people check in also lets them check out board games and books, as Masters noted that many who stay at the Grove are hoping to escape their screens as much as possible.

And to help guests stay as warm as possible in the always beautiful but often frigidly foggy forest by the sea, Masters said the operators of the Grove, which include owner and proprietor Teresa Raffo, soon added a dry sauna for people wanting to be enveloped by heated, mostly dry air instead of the cold, mostly moist air typically enveloping the Mendocino Coast.

And while there are no heaters inside guests’ tents, since the electricity provided is prioritized for illumination and charging of electronics, Masters said heating pads help keep the beds warm.

Also frequently upgraded are the tents themselves, which Masters said are continually being improved for the needs of both the guests and the staff, making them not only more user-friendly, but also easier to clean and store.

To keep the tents useable for at least a few years, Masters said they are taken down at the end of each season (the camp closes for the winter at the end of November) and carefully stored until the camp opens again in April.

Though May is still technically the “shoulder season,” Masters said the camp was at “80-percent booking capacity” going into Mother’s Day weekend.

And one of the most recent upgrades available for moms or anyone else glamping at the Grove this month are the “Redwood Showers,” roofless showers in a wooden building that used to be metal, but now has a row of showers lined with “locally kilned wood” that looks and smells amazing, even before you’re engulfed with warm water while gazing at the sky.

“It’s especially wonderful under the stars,” said Masters. “And yes, we’ve always had great water pressure.”

For more information on Mendocino Grove, visit their website: https://mendocinogrove.com

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

ED NOTES

FOR ME, the most interesting store in all of San Francisco is… the Tai Yick Trading Company on the northeast corner of Broadway and Stockton, a fascinating collection of ceramics, jars, wild permutations of the Buddha and, oddest of all, Maoist tableaus so conceptually peculiar I've been mulling over the political implications ever since I first saw them.

(The store's been there for years.) For instance, on a glazed platter there appears a clothespin-size miniature couple, politically correct Maoist man and wife presumably, both in Red Guard uniforms complete with red star caps. The woman is cleaning the man's teeth. The seated man is not The Great Helmsman to whom that kind of devotion might be considered by a ceramics artist of the Red Guard period worthy of artistic rendering, hence the mystery. The Great Helmsman himself, complete with prosperous paunch, appears in mini-statues throughout the store. I bought a ten-incher for thirty bucks that has the old boy holding a ping-pong paddle, his lips painted a vivid red. There's another, larger ceramic with Mao, Chou En Lai and, I think, Lin Piao, seated and laughing in a careening jeep. The artist has tilted the jeep to one side to simulate motion. Most of the store is given over to jars and decorative items, heavy on lions, samurai-like warriors, fish (many of them smiling), and the Buddha, forever merry and well-nourished. None of that Hindu self-denial or sacrificial Christ on the cross for the Buddha. I suppose the jars are knockoffs of antiquities, but they're all intricately and beautifully done, and every square inch of the store up to the ceiling is covered with two or three of everything, it seems, in varying sizes. The most beautiful piece in the store is a four-foot sign featuring ceramic Chinese characters on a length of old wood, or facsimile thereof. I asked the proprietor, who could pass for a Buddha himself, what it said: “Welcome to my home, good wishes and so on,” he replied. It goes for more than two grand.

MORE TRUE THAN NOT: A San Franciscan comments: “SF has a reputation for being soft on crime. Hoodlums from outside the city know they can come here, create mayhem, sell drugs and basically act like savages with no threat of arrest by the city cops. Take a walk up Taylor Street just north of Market and observe the open-air drug market running 24/7. The city ramps up Muni inspectors to write tickets for fare cheats, starts a program to give dogs to homeless people and extends paid parking times while police patrols and prosecution of street crimes are obviously made a low priority. City drones like their fat pensions and gravy benefits that let them live in Atherton or Tiburon while we inner citizens are living in a filthy war zone. Even the dumbest tourists can see that the streets are dangerous at all times. Enjoy!”

MENDOCINO COUNTY, 1968: “Lyn [Lynette Fromme] loved Mendocino, but Charlie decided she should stay at Spahn Ranch. He depended on her, and couldn't afford to let her get mixed up in business far away. Unfortunately, Sadie and the other girls were unable to keep it cool during their assignment. Staying in a remote cabin near Philo, a tiny settlement in the redwood forest, the girls had begun to spread drugs and sex among the local boys. Soon, they were being called 'the Witches of Mendocino.' According to the late Bob Glover, a Mendocino old timer, the Family girls were somewhat discriminatory and turned away a bunch of older fellows who wanted to share in the love. That, and a bad trip or two among the Mendocino boys, brought the local law down hard — three sheriffs' cars and two from the Highway Patrol — and the girls got busted. Even worse, after the girls were picked up, the guys they had rejected came by and tore up the house they were staying in, stomping on the stereo and smashing their bus. These men then took the girls' clothes and scattered them across the yard, splattering them with orange paint. On the west wall of the house, written in the same orange paint, they left an eerie message: GET OUT OF HERE OR ELSE. Sadie, Katie and the rest looked at the scrawl and understood.” [1968] — from ‘Squeaky — The Life and Times of Lynette Alice Fromme’

MORE PRECISELY, Miss Fromme and her charming companions lived on Gschwend Road, Navarro, in a home owned and steadily transformed to a deepend cynosure of good vibrations by the Hayes Brennan family whose daughter now rents a portion of it out as a hip-camp.

VANITY PLATE on a beater pickup in Ukiah last week: “UGT NTIN.” Which, after a bit of thought, we decoded was, “You Got Nuthin,” which, in a prison setting reads, "You Got Nuthin' Comin’, Punk," which is the auto-response to inmate gripes from other inmates. A very amusing book by former Nevada prisoner Jimmy Lerner is called, “You Got Nothing Coming: Notes from a Prison Fish.”

From Lerner’s book jacket: “The true story of a middle-class, middle-aged man who fell into the Inferno of the American prison system, and what he had to do to survive. It is your worst nightmare. You wake up in an 8' x 6' concrete-and-steel cell designated ‘Suicide Watch #3.’ The cell is real. Jimmy Lerner, formerly a suburban husband and father, and corporate strategic planner and survivor, is about to become a prison ‘fish,’ or green new arrival. Taken to a penitentiary in the Nevada desert to begin serving a twelve-year term for voluntary manslaughter, this once nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn ends up sharing a claustrophobic cell with Kansas, a hugely muscled skinhead with a swastika engraved on his neck and a serious set of issues. And if he dares complain, the guards will bluntly tell him, ‘You got nothing coming’.” It's possible that the driver of the UGT NTIN is a local corrections officer, or related to one, but more likely the owner of the truck is a guy who's been there.

DENTURES (Coast Chatline)

Rick Ricca wrote: Can anyone out there share experiences or recommendations for dentures with me? I am at a crossroads and need to make some decisions. Thanks

Marco here,

Rick. Last night I read a story about the slaves' teeth they made George Washington's dentures out of. Each tooth came from a different slave, and their ghosts bedeviled him. One had heard the hypnotic song of a captured merman, which gave George dreams of longing for an ancient city beneath the sea. One was a blacksmith magician forced to make shackles and chains for other slaves, which caused George to will his 125 slaves free on his own death. One was an escape genius; that tooth kept going missing and being found in weird places. And so on.

I recommend you don't get dentures made of teeth from other people.

In Best American Science Fiction/Fantasy 2019, edited by Carmen Maria Machado.

Marco McClean

LOCAL EVENTS

ABOUT CLOTHES

Betsy Cawn:

In the early 70s I worked for a man who made his own clothes, everything from design to finish, uniquely adapted to the stylish mandate of males (of a certain class of worker) wearing “suits.”

Growing up in the 50s, moms made a lot of clothes, and fashion companies created “patterns” that the creator to use with their own materials, gussie up or tone down according to the purpose: school and work clothes, Sunday-go-to-meetin’ and humble court appearances, funerals, proms, and parades.

in the last few years I’ve watched a lot of “contemporary” film-making, often of televised series shorn of advertisement on “streaming” services, and watched a lot more news channels than necessary, fascinated by the appearances of geographically strewn reporters, and those carefully coifed anchors in magically plastic studios that could be on Mars for all we know.

Somewhere along the line fashion emphasizing women’s bodily attributes came into style, and nearly all of them wear some sort of adornment, sometimes ear gear, with very “au naturel” makeup. a surprising new fad, women’s un-“styled” hair, windblown, barely trimmed, no more bangs and no more clever cuts, it just hangs there unevenly and the actors hardly bother as they tear into their new hard-action, take no prisoners proof of “equality” . . . with all those drab men in their same-o suits, ties, clod-hoppers and no caps. (unless, of course, the new presidential cap-mania is your pick.)

Official old peoples’ clothes are sweats, matching colors not required; tees and tanks in “summer” and fleecy tops or flannel shirts. to hell with the buttons, anymore.

Oddball president of a country defending its sovereignty to the core, a previous television star and cultural comedian, switches to plain pants and shirts that bear only the symbol of his country, long or short sleeves. period, end of sentence.

When our president chided him for not wearing a suit, he replied that he would wear a “costume” when the war was over.

He meets in the most elevated offices of national officials all wearing suits and ties and the standard starched white shirt (women are allowed a little variety in their skirted versions) in his humble uniform. no one else minds.

In pictures of other “westernized” countries, all the men wear suits+; in “undeveloped” countries the inhabitants where the dress of their cultural heritage, men in pants/dresses, or just dresses, or robes. everywhere children wear regular pants and tops and if-they’re-lucky some kind of shoes. haven’t seen many socks these days, come to think of it.

Armed forces of any kind fortify their spines with girding gear and gun-toting outfits, badges and patches de rigeur, hard “tops” with more symbolic heraldry.

Bling For The Masses.

People joke about shoppers at Walmart wearing their pajamas.

Our secretary of state has a highly checkered (if plebean) past, but is almost always seen wearing the standard white collar male finery.

All over the world, people by the millions in marches are clothed in accordance with their culturally-driven societies, but mostly now its jackets and pants for the guys and gals. hypersensitive men get confused by women with really short haircuts entering public women’s rooms.

Burkas, Niqabs, And Hijabs.

Megatons of used clothes fill the dumps and waterways of the globe, fiber from fleece is now a micro-particle injuring the health of wildlife, cheap/shitty women’s “frocks” and boobalicious mini-blouses, almost all of the televised females show their décolletage between the lapeled and shoulder-padded semi-suits. tight skirts and bun-hugging trouserettes abound.

In the 50s, a high school teacher of mine was a rabid sino-phobe, who held up the example of men and women in China wearing identical monochromatic pants and jackets, as a consequence of giving in to Communism (the good old days of the Red Scare and the Yellow Peril).

Vietnamese revolutionaries under those conical rice straw hats, blending into the jungle in their anonymous black kits.

The regalia of state, military and royal, bedangled and fringed with the aura of tradition obliterating any personality but the liege’s, in elaborate photo-ops.

Asexual “scrubs” and authoritarian white coats, color-coded for functional recognition in the 24/7 chaos of hospitals and “care” homes.

Can you imagine how hard it is to maintain a proper set of clothing for work (office or shop or factory) if you’re living in your car? lucky enough to be able to keep a small storage unit, car costs including insurance, cell phone (essential), paperwork and medications and — how DO they do it — food? and then keep the car from getting towed while you’re at work? what a nightmare, huh Mazie?

BRUCE MCEWEN:

My grandson does it in Montana. Lives in his car and drives all over the state, he’s been to every county multiple times, a traveling nurse, for old folks, and he supports my two great grandchildren and recently got a raise in wages. He wears scrubs unless out camping and fishing. Lots of opportunities for an outdoorsman like him to camp and fish. I lived there 20-odd years and had my share of outdoor sports.

But about old-fashioned dress. I shall never forget the time an old man came in the bar and took a seat at a distant table from where I sat chatting up the barmaid. She looked from him to me and said. “When you get old promise me you won’t wear athletic suits!”

I saw her point and assured her I never would.

Thanks, Betsy for the rummage through the old steamer trunk that holds my memories of how my elders used to dress!

Grandpa Was a Carpenter

Song by John Prine ‧ 1973

Grandpa wore his suit to dinner
Nearly every day
No particular reason
He just dressed that way
Brown necktie and a matching vest
And both his wingtip shoes
He built a closet on our back porch
And put a penny in a burned out fuse.

Grandpa was a carpenter
He built houses stores and banks
Chain smoked camel cigarettes
And hammered nails in planks
He was level on the level
And shaved even every door
And voted for eisenhower
'cause lincoln won the war.

Well, he used to sing me "blood on the saddle"
And rock me on his knee
And let me listen to radio
Before we got t.v.
Well, he'd drive to church on sunday
And take me with him too!
Stained glass in every window
Hearing aids in every pew.

Now my grandma was a teacher
Went to school in bowling green
Traded in a milking cow
For a singer sewing machine
She called her husband "mister"
And walked real tall and pride
And used to buy me comic books
After grandpa died.

NOBODY’S HOME

I’m all alone
When I’m with you
You’re on the phone
And texting to

People that
You’ll never see
I’m all alone
When you’re next to me

Gone are the days
Of the rotary phone
No message conveyed
When nobody’s home

— Elvin Woods

CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, May 14, 2025

NICOLE ALVAREZ, 40, Mendocino. Probation revocation.

ILIANA AMRULL, 47, Ukiah. Under influence, probation violation.

CHRISTOPHER COWAN, 38, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

MONTE FISK-MCCARTHY, 34, Willits. Failure to appear.

TIA HIGGINS, 34, Ukiah. Petty theft with priors, controlled substance.

DENA MORRIS, 63, Ukiah. Parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

JALAHN TRAVIS, 26, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia. (Frequent flyer.)

DELTA TUNNEL OPPONENTS SLAM Governor Newsom's Revised Budget Plan To Fast-Track Project

by Dan Bacher

Sacramento — Governor Gavin Newsom Wednesday announced, as part of his May Budget Revise, a controversial proposal to fast-track and “streamline” the Delta Conveyance Project, AKA Delta Tunnel.

Newsom claimed the project would advance “much-needed and long-overdue improvements to the State Water Project,” while a coalition of Tribes, fishing groups, environmental justice organizations, Delta water districts and Delta counties and cities say the project would do irreparable harm to the San Francisco-Bay Delta ecosystem and Delta communities.…

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/5/14/2322294/-Delta-Tunnel-opponents-slam-Gov-Newsom-s-revised-budget-plan-to-fast-track-Delta-Tunnel

WARRIORS’ SEASON ENDS in Game 5, trounced by T’wolves as Curry watches

by Sam Gordon

Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry and Buddy Hield react to a missed shot in 4th quarter of Dubs’ 121-110 loss to Minnesota Timberwolves in NBA Western Conference Semifinals’ Game 5 at Target Center in Minneapolis on Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (Scott Strazzante/S.F. Chronicle)

MINNEAPOLIS – Had the Golden State Warriors won Wednesday night against the Minnesota Timberwolves, Stephen Curry’s strained left hamstring might’ve healed so he could play.

They might’ve overcome their 3-1 deficit in the best-of-seven Western Conference semifinals.

Might’ve won the NBA title, too – fulfilling Draymond Green’s midseason guarantee.

But “injuries are a part of it. We’ve won championships when guys got hurt,” Green acknowledged Wednesday night, his 13th season with the Warriors complete.

“You want to be as a good of a team as you can be, but I always say you need a little luck just because health is a huge part of it. … They’re moving on. Congratulations to those guys. They beat us regardless.”

Leaving the Warriors to wonder … what if?

With Curry pinned again to Golden State’s bench, the Warriors couldn’t extend the series and offer his possible return to play. Absent his aging all-time greatness, prevalent throughout his 16th season, their postseason ended with 121-110 loss that sends the Timberwolves to their second straight Western Conference finals.

Brandin Podziemski scored 28 points on 11-of-19 shooting to lead Golden State while Jonathan Kuminga added 26 on 11-of-23 shooting.

Acquired to be “Robin” to Curry’s “Batman” but forced to take the leading role with “Batman” out, Jimmy Butler finished his first season with the Warriors with 17 points (4-of-11 shooting) while playing through a pelvic and deep glute contusion.

Favored before the series began, Minnesota shot 62.8% and 41.9% from 3-point range.

Curry sustained his hamstring strain – the first of his career – in the first half of Game 1 and might’ve been activated Sunday for Game 6. The Warriors announced Wednesday morning he was “making good progress” and cleared to participate in light on-court workouts ahead of a re-evaluation Saturday. Speaking pregame, head coach Steve Kerr said “it’s a possibility” Curry could’ve played.

If only Golden State overcame the inherent gap in talent without him.

Timberwolves forward Julius Randle, a standout bruiser with skill and strength, had 29 points, eight rebounds and five assists to garnish his series averages of 25.2 points (on 53.3% shooting), 6.6 rebounds and 7.4 assists. Burgeoning superstar Anthony Edwards blended speed, explosiveness, strength and shooting for 22 points, seven rebounds, 12 assists and averaged 26.2 points (on 47.5% shooting and 44.2% 3-point shooting), 7.6 rebounds and 5.6 assists.

Olympic teammates last summer in Paris, Curry and Edwards shared a postgame embrace as the Warriors classily congratulated the Timberwolves – collectively exchanging handshakes and hugs.

Kerr congratulated Minnesota and said: “Really proud of our guys. They hung in there and they battled all the way through – and quite a turnaround in our season to giving ourselves a chance and having a swing at the plate for some real chances to go deep. And we were right there and obviously, didn’t go our way.”

Though the Warriors finished it unfulfilled, their 2024-25 campaign should count as a success considering their midseason trajectory. They started it winning 12 of 15 with defense, depth and an unconventional 12-man rotation that worked until it didn’t – preceding a 13-23 stretch.

Kerr changed starting lineups like actors change outfits, his roster then but a Rubik’s Cube.

Acquiring Butler from the Miami Heat – for a 2025 first-round draft pick, Andrew Wiggins, Kyle Anderson, Dennis Schroder and Lindy Waters – stopped the twisting and turning and started the winning with a small-ball starting lineup centered by Green. The Warriors won 23 of their last 31 games and played the NBA’s top-rated defense (109 points per 100 possessions) to clinch a berth in the play-in tournament.

A play-in victory last month over the Memphis Grizzlies solidified their seventh seed in the Western Conference.

“I know we had a shot,” Kerr said, had Curry’s health remained intact. “I know we could’ve gone the distance. Maybe we wouldn’t have, but it doesn’t matter. … Everything in the playoffs is about who stays healthy and who stays hot.”

As spoils for the seventh seed, a seven-game series with the Houston Rockets followed. Emerging for the Warriors meant tempering their youth, athleticism, length, strength and size. Butler was undercut pursuing a rebound in Game 2 by Houston’s Amen Thompson, sustaining the pain that Kerr said lingered throughout the Western Conference semifinals.

Game 7 called for 45 minutes for Curry, 44 from Butler and 40 from Green.

Two days later, the Warriors beat the Timberwolves and Curry’s season ended unceremoniously. Kerr said he didn’t think the series against Houston caused attrition for Golden State to overcome, noting the Warriors won Game 1.

“That’s just the game and injuries happen,” Butler said, refusing the excuse like Green and Kerr before.

As Green alluded, Golden State was the beneficiary of playoff injuries: in the 2015 NBA Finals to Cleveland Cavaliers stars Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love; in the 2017 Western Conference finals to San Antonio Spurs star Kawhi Leonard; in the 2018 Western Conference finals to Houston Rockets star Chris Paul; in its 2022 first-round series to Denver Nuggets standout guard Jamal Murray and swingman Michael Porter Jr.

“You’re on the other side, you play who’s on the floor,” Green continued. “And that’s what (the Timberwolves) did, and they won, so you’ve got to give them a lot of credit.”

Without Curry’s handle, playmaking and scoring via clever movement on and off the ball, space his teammates exploited to score would vanish against Minnesota’s stingy defense. Timberwolves big man Rudy Gobert – four times the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year, as Green noted – patrolled the paint behind active ball pressure against Warriors overleveraged offensively.

Their offensive rating (104.5) against Minnesota would’ve been last leaguewide in the regular season.

Except for during their five-point Game 3 loss (102-97), they couldn’t sustain the level of defense, effort, hustle and execution required to overcome the difference in ability without their legendary, superstar guard.

“If we’re healthy, if all of this, if all of that, it may be different. We don’t know,” Butler said. “We’re going to take our chances for sure if (Curry) is out there. But we’ll come back and figure this thing out and next year do the same thing.”

As Curry sat stoically in front of his locker, thumbing through his iPhone in defeat, optimism emanated from the postgame podium. Kerr said he’s excited about Curry, Butler and Green returning with their youthful teammates, many of whom steeled by their first postseason as contributors. Green said “we think we got the piece to make another run at it and do it again. That’s about to be our mindset going in the summer.” Butler said “it’s about staying healthy as it always is and getting more comfortable playing with one another.”

Then, the visitor’s locker room emptied and the Warriors boarded their bus to the airport for their charter flight back to San Francisco.

What if?

“All you can really ask as a coach is for your team to commit to each other, to the cause, and for guys to fight through adversity when things to go their way,” Kerr said. “And we saw that over and over with all of our guys and that’s really satisfying. I thoroughly enjoyed our season. Love our guys. … Sad that it’s over, but a really fun year.”

(sfchronicle.com)

GIANTS FALL SHORT AGAINST DIAMONDBACKS AS JORDAN HICKS’ WOES CONTINUE

by Shayna Rubin

San Francisco Giants starting pitcher Jordan Hicks delivers a pitch against the Arizona Diamondbacks during the first inning at Oracle Park. (Credit: D. Ross Cameron)

Jordan Hicks’ second year as a converted starter for the San Francisco Giants has seen far more lows than highs. Wednesday’s 8-7 loss to drop a series against the Arizona Diamondbacks, one of the league’s better offenses, was a low point.

Hicks can typically survive his starts by getting a fair amount of ground balls and inducing swings-and-misses on his high-velocity fastball, but the Diamondbacks are one of the more disciplined teams when it comes to whiffing and had good contact against Hicks, who then couldn’t create any space for himself to breathe.

Ketel Marte tagged him for a solo home run off a sweeper in the first inning, but Hicks started to spiral when a nine-pitch at-bat to start the second ended with Eugenio Suarez’s single. The Diamondbacks scored three runs on four hits and a walk, prompting Hayden Birdsong to get warm in the bullpen.

First baseman David Villar’s spectacular double play — snagging Corbin Carroll’s line drive and doubling off the runner at first — helped get Hicks through to the third inning. But Arizona put runners on the corners to begin the next frame with no outs, booting Hicks for his shortest outing of the season.

“Got a lot of groundballs finding holes. Obviously that’s not ideal,” Hicks said. “Think I got six or seven groundballs and one out of them. That’s unfortunate, but that’s how baseball goes sometimes.”

Birdsong couldn’t do much to clean up the mess as Suarez launched a three-run home run to extend Arizona’s lead to 6-2. Hicks’ final line: two innings, five earned runs, seven hits, one walk and one strikeout.

Not since he pitched six scoreless in Houston in his season debut has Hicks (1-5) recorded a win, though he’s often found ways to get deep enough into games to save the bullpen — Wednesday’s start the exception. A 60% groundball rate that rates as one of the best in baseball and a resulting 3.17 FIP (fielder independent pitching) with a 6.55 ERA in nine starts paints a picture of how Hicks' desired outcomes aren’t matching the actual results.

“I thought his stuff was pretty good again,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Hard groundballs that find holes. Some point in time, you’d think would be hit at somebody.”

Once out of the inherited third inning, Birdsong didn’t have his best stuff in relief. Marte hit a two-run homer to make a Giants’ comeback less likely. But Birdsong ate three innings, striking out three with two walks. With the season-high three earned runs on Wednesday, Birdsong has a 2.31 ERA in 23⅓ innings.

It’s an advantage for Melvin to have two young starters in Birdsong and, now, Kyle Harrison in the bullpen. Both can go at least four innings with the kind of stuff that made them top prospects and hot contenders for the fifth rotation spot when camp broke. Though they’d need to get stretched out further, they are also options to move back into the rotation should the team decide a change is in order.

Whether Hicks’ time in the rotation is on a shorter leash is a conversation Melvin wouldn’t discuss after the loss. Hicks had a short leash on Wednesday, later saying he wished he could have stayed in longer.

“I want to go as deep in the game as I can and try to limit the damage,” Hicks said. “I didn’t feel like I was getting beat up, didn’t feel like I was getting hit hard. Of course I want to stay out there and keep grinding. It’s never fun getting pulled in the third inning. … We battled back, we almost got it done. So I can’t really knock the decision, but for me it’s one of those things where I would have rather been out there.”

The Giants did almost erase a six-run deficit. Heliot Ramos’ two-run double in the fourth inning and Jung Hoo Lee’s two-run home run in the seventh — his second homer in as many games — cut the Diamondbacks’ lead to two.

The Giants, all year, have played better in the later innings and made attempts at a comeback in each of the last two innings.

A fiasco got the game-tying run in scoring position in the eighth inning. Christian Koss, who walked, was sprinting around second base on Ramos’ infield hit, but ran into second baseman Jordan Lawler for what appeared to be obstruction.

Koss crumpled to the ground and was initially called out as Arizona tagged him as he writhed in pain off the base. However, umpires ruled that Koss was obstructed and placed him at second base — much to the chagrin of Arizona manager Torey Lovullo, who was ejected and emphatically pretended to eject the umpiring crew in defiance. Melvin and third base coach Matt Williams argued that Ramos and Koss should have been moved to second and third due to the obstruction.

“They said it’s not automatic and their judgment was he wouldn’t have made it to third,” Melvin said of his conversation with umpires. “So they placed him at second.”

It was all for nothing as Wilmer Flores popped out to strand both runners.

In the ninth, the Giants loaded the bases. With one out, Matt Chapman singled and Willy Adames gave one a ride for a ground-rule double. Patrick Bailey’s walk loaded the bases for Mike Yastrzemski, who struck out. LaMonte Wade Jr. drew a walk to force in a run and bring up Koss, the hero thus far of the series, but he flied out to end the game.

“We’ve done it all year, so it’s not a surprise,” Melvin said. “You go down there good for a while, chipped away for a couple runs. Came within one swing of winning the game there at the end.”

(SF Chronicle)

STATE’S ECONOMY IS ALSO TOPS IN UNEMPLOYMENT, POVERTY AND DEFICITS

by Dan Walters

California’s economic output has surpassed $4 trillion a year and in doing so slipped past Japan to become, were it a nation, the globe’s fourth largest economy, surpassed only by the United States, China and Germany.

The news was an opportunity for Gov. Gavin Newsom to exercise his penchant for braggadocio.

“California isn’t just keeping pace with the world — we’re setting the pace,” Newsom declared. “Our economy is thriving because we invest in people, prioritize sustainability, and believe in the power of innovation.”

It was also an opportunity for Newsom to take another shot at President Donald Trump, saying, “while we celebrate this success, we recognize that our progress is threatened by the reckless tariff policies of the current federal administration. California’s economy powers the nation, and it must be protected.”

If California’s economy is booming, as Newsom boasts, one might wonder why the state’s unemployment rate is the third highest in the nation, with more than a million jobless workers, and why its poverty rate is the nation’s highest.

One might also wonder why, if California’s economy is so healthy, the state budget is experiencing chronic multi-billion-dollar deficits.

Newsom must tell the Legislature this month how he would alter the 2025-26 budget he proposed in January, touching off the annual whirlwind of negotiations to produce a more-or-less final version for adoption by June 15.

The January budget proposed at least $11 billion in short-term fixes, including off-the-books borrowing, dips into the state’s budget reserves and accounting gimmicks to close the gap between projected income and the spending dictated by current law.

Tax revenues are running a bit ahead of expectations so far this year, but not nearly enough to close the deficit, which has widened due to spending on Medi-Cal, California’s health care system for the poor that’s far exceeding the level of the 2024-25 budget enacted last June.

Overall, Medi-Cal expenditures are over $6 billion higher than expectations, with a major chunk caused by higher-than-expected enrollment of undocumented immigrants.

Therefore the May revise, as it’s dubbed, is likely to contain even more expedient fixes that may postpone the day of fiscal reckoning until Newsom’s governorship ends two years hence but will continue to plague his successor and the Legislature.

The Medi-Cal situation exemplifies the underlying reason why California’s budget is unhealthy while the state’s economy continues to grow, albeit without producing many new jobs.

The pertinent data is to be found in a recent publication by the Legislature’s budget analyst, Gabe Petek, called “CalFacts 2024.”

It reveals that since Newsom became governor in 2019, state spending has increased, on average, by 9% a year while annual revenues have grown by just 6%. The difference between those two numbers constitutes what budget mavens call a “structural deficit,” meaning that spending baked into law far exceeds what the current revenue system can generate.

The underlying discrepancy between income and outgo is important to remember, because when Newsom unveils his revised budget he’s likely to cite the Los Angeles wildfires and Trump’s tariffs as factors in the budget’s gap.

Both of those events are likely to increase the deficit, but they didn’t cause it. The deficit exists because Newsom and the Legislature have chronically spent more than the revenue system produces, even though Californians have one of the nation’s highest state and local tax burdens, relative to the state’s economy.

Moreover, by tapping into reserves meant to cushion the impact of recessions or other emergency situations, Newsom and legislators have weakened the state’s ability to cope with genuine economic setbacks or disasters, such as the wildfires.

(CalMatters.org)

HOW MUCH MONEY DO YOU REALLY SAVE BY OWNING AN ELECTRIC CAR IN CALIFORNIA?

by Jessica Roy

Californians love their electric cars.

More than 1 out of every 5 vehicles registered in California last year was a fully battery-powered electric one, according to data from Experian, compared to just under 1 in 10 nationally. Only 1.3% of cars on the road in America right now are fully electric, but over a third of those are registered here in California.

The California government loves electric cars, too.

“There are a lot of benefits to decarbonizing transportation that are just super obvious to the state of California,” said Scott Moura, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley and the faculty director of the California Program for Advanced Transportation Technology.

Offsetting the cost of EV ownership contributes to the state’s goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving air quality, which is why there are several state and local programs that benefit EV drivers.

Electric vehicles aren’t right for everyone. The sticker price puts EVs outside many people’s budgets. And if you don’t have a home where you can install a charger, the time and expense of using public chargers probably cancel out a lot of the benefits of an EV.

Lifestyle plays a role too, said Keith Barry, senior autos reporter for Consumer Reports. “Range anxiety,” or fear of running out of power before you get where you’re going, can be a realistic concern, especially if charging options are limited. If you occasionally have to hop in the car and drive 500 miles through the desert, an EV is probably not the right choice for you, Barry said.

But for people with a consistent local commute, the capacity to charge at home, and maybe a hybrid or gas-powered car on hand for longer road trips, an EV can be a good fit.

Electric vehicles, which produce zero tailpipe emissions, are objectively better for the environment than vehicles with a gas-powered internal combustion engine, even when accounting for the electricity used for charging, according to the EPA.

But are they better for your wallet?

The answer, as with many of life’s most vexing questions, is: It depends. The price of the car and the maintenance and mileage will all play major roles in your answer.

A CNET analysis using national averages for mileage, electricity and gas costs found that charging an EV costs about half of what it costs to fuel up a gas-powered car. But both gas and electricity are more expensive in California. That makes a cost analysis shake out differently.

Here’s an in-depth breakdown of the potential costs and savings of buying, owning and fueling an electric car in California.

Buying an EV Versus A Gas-Powered Car In California

Buying

If you’re shopping for a new electric car, brace for some sticker stock. Vehicle valuation site Kelley Blue Book said the average transaction price for a new electric car in the U.S. was approximately $59,200 in March 2025.

But electric vehicles are overrepresented in the luxury market, so that average is going to skew high. The site says all-in prices can range quite a bit, from as low as $29,280 for a new Nissan Leaf to upward of $100,000 for a Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV.

The average cost for a new gas-powered car in that time period was about $47,500.

On the used market, Kelley Blue Book says the average cost for a secondhand electric car in March 2025 was a little over $36,900.

The average used car (across all models, so including gas, electric and hybrid) was listed for $25,200 at the start of April, Kelley Blue Book reported.

As EVs get more popular, the prices will continue to come down, said Jason Zimbler, senior director for light duty vehicles for clean transportation nonprofit CalStart.

“The scale of battery production has been going up dramatically,” he said. “With economies of scale, you're getting cheaper and cheaper batteries, and the batteries are the most expensive component in the EV. So as batteries are getting lower cost, we're getting a future of cheaper EVs.”

Both the federal and state governments offer incentives to buy electric cars that can take a bite off the bottom line. Under the federal Inflation Reduction Act, income-qualified buyers can get a tax credit of up to $7,500 for many new electric and plug-in hybrid cars. Used electric vehicles may be eligible for up to $4,000 in tax credits.

Turning in a gas-powered car that can’t pass a smog check can net you up to $2,000 in state incentives from the California Bureau of Auto Repair’s consumer assistance program for vehicle retirement.

Your city or county may offer additional incentives – check driveclean.ca.gov and enter your ZIP code to do an incentive search for your area.

If you’re interested in taking advantage of these perks, you might want to jump on your chance: House Speaker Mike Johnson recently said Republicans are likely to ax the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean vehicle incentives to pay for other tax cuts.

Leasing

As with traditional gas-powered cars, monthly lease payments are considerably lower than installments on a car loan: The average monthly lease payment for a non-luxury electric vehicle in 2024 was $486, compared to $817 for the average loan payment, according to Experian data – $331 less per month. (As a personal finance reporter, I’m obligated to point out that if you keep your car until the wheels fall off, buying is almost always less expensive in the long run than leasing.)

Owning an EV versus a gas-powered car in California

Maintenance

Maintenance costs are a major savings area for EV owners. An electric car doesn’t need oil changes, and with no internal combustion engine, there are fewer parts to maintain and replace.

The suspension lasts longer in an EV. And EVs brake differently than gas cars: Regenerative brakes convert braking into energy, instead of converting it into heat pinching a brake pad. That means brake pads need to be replaced a lot less frequently.

“I’ve owned an EV since late 2020. I’ve taken it in once” for maintenance, Moura said.

The battery makes an EV heavier than a comparable gas-powered car, so tires may need to be replaced slightly more often.

Insuring an electric vehicle can cost up to 20% more than a gas-powered car, or up to $44 more per month, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, but those prices are also coming down as more repair shops gain the capacity to service EVs.

Tolls and HOV lanes

If you live in the Bay Area, driving an EV can save you money on tolls. Eligible clean air vehicles can get a FasTrak CAV toll tag that gives drivers discounted rates during carpool hours. And for more than two decades, drivers of eligible EV and hybrid vehicles in California have enjoyed cruising solo in the carpool lane — but that program is set to expire in September, absent an extension by Congress.

Registration

Registering your electric vehicle is going to set you back a bit more than your old car. Because zero-emission EV owners don’t use gasoline, they don’t pay the taxes included in the cost of gas that go toward road improvement. To make up the difference, the state charges a road improvement fee of $118 with annual registration renewal for model years 2020 and newer.

Charging At Home Or In Public

The most cost- and time-efficient way by far to charge an electric car is with a home charger. Unless you happened to have bought a house that already had one, you’ll have to get the equipment and hire an electrician to install it.

“Don’t buy an EV until you know how much it will be to install the charger,” said Barry. He drives an electric car, but with a cautionary tale: He lives in a 200-year-old house without an attached garage, so he had to pay thousands of dollars to dig a trench and install his charger. In a newer home, the costs will be considerably less.

Expect the average cost of installing your charger to set you back between $200 to $2,000 in total, depending on whether you get a Level 1 or 2 charger and including the cost of labor, Zimbler said.

Installing a qualified charger could make you eligible for up to $1,000 in federal tax credits. Look for local incentives as well: Some utilities, including Pacific Gas and Electric Co., offer rebates to help offset the costs of putting in charging equipment.

Using a public charger costs an average of 35 cents per kilowatt-hour in California, according to AAA. Zimbler said most drivers will wait 15 to 20 minutes to get enough of a charge to get them to their destination or the next charging station.

Fueling an EV versus a gas-powered car in California

One of the biggest questions prospective California EV owners have is: How much will I save on gas?

I gathered the numbers and crunched them with the Chronicle’s data team, and here’s the bottom line: Charging an electric car in California costs about 40% less than fueling a car with gasoline. Our calculations put the equivalent cost of a “gallon of gas” for an electric car at about $2.90.

Our analysis had to make a lot of assumptions about annual mileage and fuel efficiency. Here’s how I arrived at these numbers, and how you can calculate them to figure out what your cost comparison would be:

Miles traveled per month: For both electric and gas-powered drivers, I used the U.S. Department of Transportation's average annual mileage for Californians (14,435) and divided that by 12.

Fuel cost per gallon: AAA lists the most recent statewide averages, which is where I got this number. Different cities and countries assess different fees. Search GasBuddy to find your local price.

Average miles per gallon: I used the Department of Energy’s overall average for fuel economy for gas-powered vehicles. You can look up your car’s average MPG by searching the make and model. Multiply the gallons needed per month times the cost of a gallon of gas to figure out what you need to spend on gas every month. Then, divide that total by the number of miles you drive to figure out what you pay per mile.

Average miles per kWh: This is the electric vehicle’s version of “miles per gallon”: how far you go per kWh your battery is charged. The average I used here was for all electric vehicles in 2023, the most recent year that analysis is available. Most electric vehicles list the kWh per 100 miles driven. Look up the make and model of any electric vehicle on fueleconomy.gov.

Average kilowatt-hours used per month to charge: This will vary depending on your model, battery and how much you drive. I took the average miles driven per month and divided it by the fuel economy for electric vehicles to calculate this number.

Average cost of electricity in California: For this chart, I took the average kWh cost across all of California for February 2025 from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. This number will vary depending on your provider, your plan and whether you utilize time-of-use rates to charge your car when electricity is cheapest.

For instance: If you’re on PG&E’s residential base plan in San Francisco County, your overall average is 38 cents per kWh. If you were on PG&E’s electric-vehicle-oriented EV2-A plan, you would pay as little as 31 cents per kWh to charge your car between midnight and 3 p.m., or as much as 62 cents per kWh to charge it from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the summer. Jennifer Robison, a PG&E spokesperson, said EV2A customers could expect to pay an average of $3.20 for the equivalent of a gallon of gas.

Cost per mile: For gasoline, divide the total you spend on gas per month by the total number of miles driven to determine what you spend per mile. For electric, divide the average cost of a kWh of electricity by the kWh per mile that the vehicle gets.

SETTING CONTROLS FOR THE HEART OF THE SUN

by Ron Jacobs

In most histories, the counterculture of the 1960s is usually considered a youth culture. In terms of sheer numbers, this is true, given that the majority of its adherents were people under the age of thirty. However, it was those that some like to call elders that inspired the culture and arguably led the way—if anyone led at all. In this regard, it wasn’t just the Beats whose distrust of authority and doubting eyes informed the movement the mainstream called hippies. No, it was also those who came before — poets like Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Duncan and various surrealists and artists such as the Sausalito Six and Philip Lamantia. As author Dennis McNally writes in his new history of the counterculture, titled The Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties, the birthplace of this movement was San Francisco. However, to be fair-minded and honest about the movement itself, McNally bounces between San Francisco, London, Los Angeles and New York in a work that unfolds into a comprehensive, entertaining and impressive history of the sixties counterculture.

Weaving his story on a loom composed of rebellious artists, unruly poets, rock, blues and folk musicians, instigators, agitators and actors unwilling to stick to the drama on the stage, McNally takes the reader into an enchanted world where freedom and love were prized, redefined, and celebrated. And attacked by those who feared such a world. Then, of course, there were the drugs: marijuana, amphetamines and LSD. The former were old timers in the history of mind expansion and mood modification. Marijuana went back to millennia before Christ, while amphetamines has been discovered and used for most of the twentieth century. LSD use, on the other hand, had been limited to a relatively few medical researchers, society types and a few artists since Albert Hoffman’s discovery of its hallucinogenic properties in 1943. It would be the mass production and popularization of LSD in the US and Europe that would do more than perhaps anything else to create the mindset enabling the exponential expansion of the countercultural ethos.

McNally’s telling is both linear and otherwise. Certain events that seem crucial to the existence of what became the counterculture, such as the civil rights movement and the reaction to McCarthyism and the Red Scare, are placed appropriately in the book’s timeline. So, too, are the beginnings of City Lights Books and publishing. As one reads on, other events and personalities appear in mostly chronological order. At the same time, the author incorporates spiritual and intellectual trends — phenomena that tend to be more difficult to pin down to a particular moment — and discusses their influence and how they became part of the countercultural zeitgeist.

Familiar names appear throughout the text, familiar and maybe famous: Ken Kesey, Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Joan Baez, and Bill Graham, the Living Theater, Julian Beck and Judith Molina, to name a very few. Likewise, influential persons in their field are discussed, including the composers Pauline Oliveras and Terry Riley; the Diggers Emmett Grogan and Peter Coyote; LSD chemist and soundman extraordinaire Bear Owsley Stanley and the filmmaker savant Harry Smith. The circumstances of these appearances, while often outside of how one might have previously conceived this group of individuals (or any of the others mentioned and discussed), only adds to the myth of the sixties. That myth is of course the spawn of any number of the truths revealed, realized and redeemed in the times of which McNally exposits. There are dozens more whom McNally kindly lists as an appendix of sorts towards the back of the text. Then there are the millions who carried the spirit onward and outward into the world and forward through time. The latter might include you.

Among many other possibilities, The Last Great Dream can (and should) be considered as a testament to the power of art, music, speech and the word. Simultaneously, it is also a history of the repression of all of the above. From the McCarthyite attacks on left political thought as represented by the House of Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings in San Francisco’s City Hall to the persecution and prosecution of comedian and social commentator Lenny Bruce, the authorities of the state as represented by the police and the courts were often if not always unforgiving in their repression. Whether they were attempting to criminalize art or words or actually criminalizing mind expansion aids (LSD was legal until 1966), the men in the gray flannel suits and their accomplices in the churches and in uniforms seemed to be everywhere, banning works, attacking gatherings and arresting musicians and their audiences. Nonetheless, the times moved forward, over, under, sideways and up, as if the gods themselves were involved. McNally’s narrative enhances that very prospect, as only a history written by one who knows intuitively of what he writes. Who but someone with such an understanding would call John Coltrane’s 1964 album A Love Supreme “one of the great works of western religious music” and go on to suggest that perhaps Bob Dylan heard Coltrane’s incantation as he was recording the song “Masters of War” on his album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan?

I know the history McNally discusses in this text, but like all history, every time it is told one learns something new of that history. Dennis McNally’s new book about the birth of the 1960s counterculture verifies this truth once again. When a writer of McNally’s abilities and knowledge is the one providing the history, the reader is in for an unforeseen delight, an excursion beyond the norm and outside the predictable. Connections are made which one might not have made before; questions arise which did not consciously exist prior to the reading, all while the reader hopes the book never ends.

However, since it does end, perhaps the suggestion made at the end of every broadcast by the counterculture radio commentator (KSAN and KFOG) Scoop Nisker applies — ”If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.” If you don’t like the culture around you now, go out and create one of your own.

(Ron Jacobs is the author of several books, including Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. His latest book, titled Nowhere Land: Journeys Through a Broken Nation, is now available. He lives in Vermont. He can be reached at: ronj1955@gmail.com. CounterPunch.org)

MLB REINSTATES PETE ROSE AND SHOELESS JOE JACKSON, MAKING THEM HALL OF FAME ELIGIBLE

by Ronald Blum

Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson were reinstated by baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred on Tuesday, making both eligible for the sport’s Hall of Fame after their careers were tarnished by gambling scandals.

Rose’s permanent ban was lifted eight months after his death and came a day before the Cincinnati Reds will honor baseball’s career hits leader with Pete Rose Night.

Manfred announced Tuesday he was changing the league's policy on permanent ineligibility, saying bans would expire at death. MLB said 17 individuals had their status changed by the decision, including all eight banned members of the 1919 Chicago Black Sox, former Philadelphia Phillies president Williams D. Cox and former New York Giants outfielder Benny Kauff.

Under the Hall of Fame’s current rules, the earliest Rose or Jackson could be inducted would be in 2028.

Rose agreed with then-Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti to a permanent ban on Aug. 23, 1989, following an investigation commissioned by Major League Baseball concluded Rose repeatedly bet on the Reds as a player and manager of the team from 1985-87, a violation of a long-standing MLB rule.

Rose first applied for reinstatement in September 1997, but Commissioner Bud Selig never ruled on the request. Manfred in 2015 rejected a petition for reinstatement, saying “Rose has not presented credible evidence of a reconfigured life.”

Rose died Sept. 30 at age 83, and a new petition was filed Jan. 8 by Jeffrey Lenkov, a lawyer who represented Rose. Lenkov and Rose’s daughter Fawn had met with Manfred on Dec. 17.

Rose’s supporters have included U.S. President Donald Trump, who has said he intends to pardon Rose posthumously. Manfred discussed Rose with Trump when the pair met in April, but he hasn’t disclosed specifics of their conversation.

In a letter to Lenkov, Manfred wrote, “In my view, a determination must be made regarding how the phrase ‘permanently ineligible’ should be interpreted in light of the purposes and policies behind Rule 21, which are to: (1) protect the game from individuals who pose a risk to the integrity of the sport by prohibiting the participation of such individuals; and (2) create a deterrent effect that reduces the likelihood of future violations by others.

“In my view, once an individual has passed away, the purposes of Rule 21 have been served.”

Marcus Giamatti, son of the former commissioner who signed the agreement banning Rose, said in a statement he was “incredibly disappointed” in Manfred's decision.

“I am also disappointed that my family was not consulted prior to this decision,” he said. "The Commissioner’s decision makes this a very dark day for baseball, the country and the fans.

"My father’s mission by banning Rose was to uphold the integrity of the game. Therefore, reinstating Rose in this manner puts that integrity, Rule 21 and everything that my father fought to uphold in peril."

A 17-time All-Star during a playing career from 1963-86, Rose holds record for hits (4,256), games (3,562), at-bats (14,053), plate appearances (15,890) and singles (3,215). He was the 1963 NL Rookie of the Year, 1973 MVP and 1975 World Series MVP. A three-time NL batting champion, he broke the prior hits record of 4,191 set by Ty Cobb from 1905-28.

Jackson was a .356 career hitter who was among the eight Black Sox banned for throwing the 1919 World Series. He died in 1951, but he remains one of baseball's most recognizable names in part for his depiction by Ray Liotta in the 1989 movie Field of Dreams.

What Else Needs To Happen For Rose Or Jackson To Reach The Hall of Fame?

Under a rule adopted by the Hall’s board of directors in 1991, anyone on the permanently ineligible list can’t be considered for election to the Hall. Jackson was twice considered on ballots by the Baseball Writers' Association of America, but received just 0.9% in 1936 and 1% of a nominating vote in 1940.

Rose’s reinstatement occurred too late for him to be considered for the BBWAA ballot. If not on the permanently banned list, Rose would have been eligible on the ballots each from 1992 through 2006. He was written in on 41 votes in 1992 and on 243 of 7,232 ballots (3.4%) over the 15 years, votes that were not counted.

Without the ban, both players are eligible for the Hall’s Classic Baseball Era, which next meets to consider players in December 2027 and considers those whose greatest contributions to the sport were before 1980.

A 10-person historical overview committee selects eight ballot candidates with the approval of the Hall’s board, and the ballot is considered by 16 members at the winter meetings, with a 75% or higher vote needed. The committee members include Hall of Fame members, team executives and media/historians.

Hall of Fame Chairman of the Board Jane Forbes Clark confirmed in a statement that players affected by Manfred’s ruling Tuesday would be considered.

“The National Baseball Hall of Fame has always maintained that anyone removed from Baseball’s permanently ineligible list will become eligible for Hall of Fame consideration,” she said. “Major League Baseball’s decision to remove deceased individuals from the permanently ineligible list will allow for the Hall of Fame candidacy of such individuals to now be considered.”

Among the players in the 2028 class eligible for the BBWAA ballot are Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina.

Did Trump Help Get Rose Reinstated?

Trump has said he would pardon Rose, but it’s not clear what a presidential pardon for Rose would entail.

Rose entered guilty pleas on April 20, 1990, to two counts of filing false tax returns, admitting he failed to report $354,968 during a four-year period. Rose was sentenced on July 19, 1990, by U.S. District Judge S. Arthur Spiegel in Cincinnati to five months in prison. He also was fined $50,000 and ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service as a gym teacher’s assistant with inner-city youths in Cincinnati as part of a one-year probation period. The first three months of the probation were to be spent at the halfway house. Rose repaid the Internal Revenue Service $366,042.

(AP)

THE LATE PETE ROSE IS FINALLY WELCOME IN BASEBALL’S MORAL SLOPHOUSE

by Dave Zirin

Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred’s shock announcement that alleged game fixers “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and “the Hit King” Pete Rose would no longer be banned from the sport’s Hall of Fame was not about justice or closure. This is Manfred telling the high-minded baseball world that in the current political and economic climate, ethics are for suckers.

For those who don’t know the specifics, Joe Jackson hit .358 in his career—the second-highest batting average ever—and was banned for being a part of the Chicago “Black Sox” plot to fix the 1919 World Series. The charges beggared belief since Jackson hit .375 in the postseason with zero errors. Jackson, who could neither read nor write, almost certainly took money although it's unclear if he understood the ramifications of what he was doing. Along with seven other Chicago White Sox teammates of varying innocence and guilt, Jackson’s career was destroyed. Baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who had recently used the Sedition Act to sentence leading trade unionists to prison, banned the players from baseball, sending a message to the country that the honor of the sport could never be compromised.

As for Pete Rose, aka “Charlie Hustle,” no one in Major League Baseball has ever had more hits. He’s part of the history of the game whether people detest him or not. But fealty to the game’s history is not why Manfred is making this move. Some are positing that Donald Trump’s advocacy for Rose, his fellow alleged statutory rapist, is why this is happening. At the end of February, as ICE was abducting people off of US streets, Trump found the time to tweet the following: “Over the next few weeks I will be signing a complete PARDON of Pete Rose, who shouldn't have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on HIS TEAM WINNING.” Trump also apparently met with Manfred to facilitate this, part of his campaign to force every independent institution to wallow with him in his moral degeneracy.

Part of Trump’s reasoning is that Rose “only bet on his team winning.” Rose, from what we know, bet on his team as a manager, not a player. Shadowed by heavy debts and mobsters, Rose may have made pitchers stay on the mound longer or played people who were injured even if risking their long-term health. That’s why the “gambling on his team winning,” as if this were admirable, is a morally bereft argument. Trump sees nothing wrong with such managerial decisions, since it’s how he’s always treated his workers.

But please don’t believe that Trump is the reason Jackson and Rose are finally going to enter Cooperstown. Manfred may allow Trump to bask in the smell of his own influence, but this decision is rooted in something bigger: the sport’s surrender to the gambling-addiction economy, which could, in theory, be subject to federal or legal intervention.

Baseball has always taken pride in its history of patriotism and piety. Its early proponents were charged with spreading the sport in order to mend the United States and fortify the union after the Civil War. The first professional athletes to be feted at the White House were two baseball teams, guests of President Andrew Johnson in 1865. In 1889, Walt Whitman said, “Baseball is the hurrah game of the republic! [It] belongs as much … as our constitutions and laws. It is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.”

Hypocrisy, just like the country of its origin, is also baked into the game. It’s “the national pastime”—and it maintained a color line until 1947. Its Hall of Fame has shut out union trailblazers like legendary All-Star Curt Flood while honoring several rumored KKK members including Rogers Hornsby. The MLB has enshrined alleged steroid users it likes and banned the ones it finds disagreeable.

But if there was one policy that would never be treated as ethically disposable, it was the league’s punishment for game-fixing: banishment. The game had to be a stern exemplar of Christian probity even if the team owners were surely not. These war-profiteers and miscreants had stumbled upon virtue-branding: the profit potential of making clear to the public that this was not a low-born sport—like boxing or dog fighting—that lent itself to vice. Baseball would be a pastoral game on a verdant field that’s fit for the entire family.

This iron-clad commandment around game-fixing is now a casualty of Manfred’s reign, another example of his penchant for treating the game’s history as a nettlesome barrier toward greater financial windfalls.

The Jackson and Rose decisions need to be seen in this context. Baseball has an aging fan base, and Manfred is trying to turn this around by catering to young, male addicts swarming around gambling apps. The sport that once suspended its greatest retired stars for shaking hands at a casino now has gambling partnerships with five different companies. The American Gaming Association is banking on MLB receiving $1.1 billion in betting profits this year. That’s four times the number in 2023.

Funding after-school leagues is not how Manfred sees growing the game. Instead, he is pursuing more and more partnerships that deliver gambling to kids without the brain development to handle the rush or the crash. The league used to want kids to want to become Major Leaguers. Now it wants them to steal their dad’s FanDuel code and become the class bookie. (I have a kid in high school; there is, in fact, competition over who gets to be the class bookie.) And if the addiction hotlines are ringing with youth gamblers, that’s not Manfred’s problem.

Manfred waited patiently and cruelly for the hard-living Rose to die, which occurred last August when Rose was 83, only then did Manfred decide Rose could enter the Hall of Fame. Some of this was surely spite, as Rose has been a critic of league gambling hypocrisy, but it’s also because Rose in death can serve a new purpose: He can become a symbol that Major League Baseball isn’t your father’s stuffy sport as well as a symbol that gambling and addiction, far from being harmful, are really as American as apple pie. This has been a year when ethical guidelines once held as eternal, have been shredded. MLB’s embrace of online betting signals the demise of another principle in a time of abject moral carnage.

E.B. WHITE, born Elwyn Brooks White on July 11, 1899, in Mount Vernon, New York, was one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century, particularly renowned for his contributions to children’s literature, essay writing, and his distinctive voice in the literary world. White's collaboration with William Strunk Jr. on The Elements of Style (1918) became a definitive guide to American English grammar and writing, influencing generations of writers. His stories, including Charlotte's Web (1952), Stuart Little (1945), and The Trumpet of the Swan (1970), are iconic works that capture the wonders and complexities of childhood, imbued with deep moral lessons and themes of kindness, bravery, and the human-animal connection. His ability to weave profound messages with gentle humor made his books beloved by readers of all ages.

On July 11, 1969, White offered a candid reflection of his inner conflict in The New York Times, noting, "If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." This statement reflects the broader cultural and philosophical tensions of the time, especially amidst the turbulent 1960s, a decade marked by civil rights movements, anti-Vietnam War protests, and rapid social change. White’s words resonate deeply as they capture the existential dilemma faced by many: the struggle between seeking personal enjoyment and fulfillment versus engaging with the world’s injustices and striving for progress.

The 1960s and early 1970s were a time when many artists, writers, and intellectuals were grappling with how to reconcile personal happiness with broader social responsibility. White, who had witnessed two world wars, the Great Depression, and the political upheavals of the 20th century, was particularly sensitive to this balancing act. His reflections also reveal the personal toll of being an observer and participant in history while trying to maintain a sense of individual joy. His writing, whether in his essays for The New Yorker or in his children’s books, constantly reflected this duality — the constant tension between action and reflection, improvement and enjoyment. His legacy endures not just in his literary works but in the timeless questions he raised about how one lives a meaningful, thoughtful life in an ever-changing world.

THE REAL DUDE

Some might like to know that there is a real Lebowski: Jeff Dowd, son of well known leftist political economist, Doug Dowd (1919-2017 in Bologna, Italy). He was involved in film productions in the LA area and friend of the Coen Brothers who stayed at his place occasionally. Jeff had also been a radical anti-war activist, part of the Seattle Seven. He absolutely was “The Dude” and after the film’s success enjoyed appearing at various Lebowski festivals across the country. He has a sister, Jenny Dowd, a teacher and artist in Prundale (not Jennifer, but Jenny, after Marx’s wife).

— Jayne Thomas

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

They buy massive boxes off Amazon. 100 or more per box. Could even be sold as WHIP-It’s but contain something else. It is a food product. Should NEVER be sold except out of a kitchen supply store. No Tobacco Shop, Smoke Shop Anywhere In Us Should Sell Whip-Its As An Intoxicant! This has been going on over 20+ years. No one listened. The thousands of cartridges thrown out on the roadside. This is a Crisis.

'l was a big bleeder. l had 328 stitches in my career. My nose was broken nine times in 16 years. And, uh, it never fazed me, you know?'

— Chuck Wepner

LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT

In Birthright Citizenship Case, Supreme Court Examines the Power of District Judges

House Republicans Push Forward Plan to Cut Taxes, Medicaid and Food Aid

Kennedy, Defending Downsizing, Clashes With Democrats in Tense Hearings

Drug Overdose Deaths Plummeted in 2024, C.D.C. Reports

Cassie Ventura Says Sean Combs Used Sex Videos as Blackmail Tools

How to Win Eurovision in 7 Easy Steps

THE ASPECT OF FACEBOOK that is most annoying for me, though, are the people with leftist politics who spend their time complaining about the world but never seem to actually act on their dissatisfaction. They don’t attend meetings or protests but will tell you why meetings and protests don’t work. This is despite their usually perceptive take on the issues. I am reminded of theorists who have never leafleted or picketed; writers who have never sat-in and debaters who have never faced down a cop. They may have attended a meeting or two, however, if only to argue their point. Then, when tasks were put on the table, they volunteered for none. Even those they had the talent for. As a person who has been involved in leftist politics for almost five decades, I can assure you that this behavior is older than Facebook. However, Facebook just makes it easier to get away with it.

— Ron Jacobs

CNN:

One in five people in the Gaza Strip are facing starvation as the entire territory edges closer to famine, a new United Nations-backed report warns, after nearly three months of Israel’s blockade of critically needed humanitarian aid.

The warning comes as the UN and several NGOs, as well as civilians in Gaza, say the situation has deteriorated since Israel launched its renewed assault on the enclave in March, as residents struggle to access food, medicine and clean water.

The enclave’s entire population is experiencing “high levels of acute food security” and the territory is at “high risk” of famine, the most severe type of hunger crisis, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said in its latest report Monday.

“Goods indispensable for people’s survival are either depleted or expected to run out in the coming weeks,” the IPC said. Food is running out, and what little is left is being sold at exorbitant prices that few can afford, it said.

Israel imposed a humanitarian blockade on Gaza on March 2, cutting off food, medical supplies, and other aid to the more than 2 million Palestinians who live in the territory. Israel says the blockade, along with the military’s expansion of its bombardment of Gaza, is intended to pressure Hamas to release hostages held in the enclave – but international organizations say it violates international law, with some accusing Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war.

There is a “high risk” that famine will occur between now and the end of September, the IPC report warned, leaving most people in Gaza without access to food, water, shelter, and medicine.

“Only an immediate and sustained cessation of hostilities and the resumption of humanitarian aid delivery can prevent a descent into famine,” the report said…

I LIKE OLD MEN. They can be wonderful bastards because they have nothing to lose. The only people who can be themselves are babies and old bastards.

— John Updike

STARVATION IN GAZA

by Alex de Waal

Deprived of any nutrients, a previously healthy adult will starve to death in sixty to eighty days. A child will succumb more quickly. On 2 March, Israel imposed a total blockade on the two million Palestinians in Gaza. During the two months of ceasefire, food stocks had been partly replenished, but they are rapidly running out. Without humanitarian aid, without commercial traffic and with only a tiny amount of locally grown food, hunger deepens day by day.

The standard humanitarian ration is 2100 calories per person per day. Depending on how much food there was at the start of the blockade – estimates vary – average food availability in Gaza will at best fall to 1400 calories in the next few weeks, or may have already dropped below that level as early as mid-April. Adults are going hungrier to keep children better fed. The most vulnerable – infants, pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and others needing special diets – are already starving. The very poorest, those unable to call on better-off relatives, those cut off by military checkpoints, are already wasting away as their internal organs suffer irreparable damage.

Between 28 April and 6 May, staff with the World Food Programme, under the umbrella of the UN-accredited Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system (IPC), conducted a phone survey of Palestinians in Gaza. They asked what people were eating, how often, and what they were doing to get food. Several aid agencies also compiled data for how thin young children are – ‘wasting’ or ‘global acute malnutrition’. It was the fifth such survey since the outbreak of war nineteen months ago.

It’s extraordinarily difficult to collect this information in a war zone, and any interpretation of the data is contentious. Did the monitors miss the most desperate people who don’t answer their phones because they can’t use up their last minute of battery life answering humiliating questions? When health workers are measuring children’s upper arm circumference to get a simple indicator of malnutrition, are they missing the worst-off who can’t make it to the distribution centres? Or are their errors in the other direction, missing those whose parents are managing to get by? Humanitarian statisticians can pick through the data and find reasons to query them, but until Israel grants aid agencies access to the stricken people, we have to make do with these gleanings.

The IPC’s results, published in summary form on 12 May, estimated that 925,000 Gazans (44 per cent) were already experiencing ‘emergency’ acute food insecurity – close to the starvation threshold. A further 244,000 (12 per cent) were in ‘catastrophe’, meaning they had fallen below that threshold. That’s consistent with what we know about food stocks and the rate at which they’re being eaten.

Gaza is unique in the annals of starvation because of the simplicity of this calculation. In any other humanitarian calamity, a host of other factors complicate the picture, and overall food availability is a poor guide to levels of hunger. In Somalia or Sudan, for example, when food becomes scarce, people fall back on age-old alternatives such as gathering wild grasses and berries, or modern strategies such as calling for family members abroad to transfer cash. Palestinians in Gaza can’t do any of this. Israel controls every shekel, every sack of flour, every connection to the outside world.

Most common of all, when famine threatens, people move. In the ‘Famine Codes’ of the British Raj in India, colonial officers noted the ‘aimless wandering of the destitute’ as a sign of impending famine. Gaza is starvation under siege. The blockade is also a cordon sanitaire – we haven’t seen communicable diseases such as cholera, which are common in other famines, entering Gaza. And because vaccination rates were so high before 7 October, there have been no outbreaks of potential killers such as measles. In almost every other famine on record, communicable diseases are the big killers. Gaza is an anomaly, a laboratory in which we will discover how much nutritional stress a population can withstand before succumbing en masse.

IPC analysts are accustomed to the uncertainties of poor data and unforeseeable circumstances. Their reports deal with scenarios and degrees of risk. Monday’s ‘snapshot’ report concluded that Gaza is ‘still confronted with a critical risk of famine’. The authors wrote of a possible ‘scenario of protracted and large-scale military operations and continuation of the humanitarian and commercial blockade … under this reasonable worst case scenario, food insecurity, acute malnutrition and mortality would surpass the IPC Phase 5 (Famine) thresholds.’ They could have stated the matter more simply. Mass death through starvation is the certain outcome of Israel’s continued blockade and ongoing military campaign. The only question is when.

Several times over the last nineteen months Israel has turned the aid tap on, blunting the rise in levels of distress. When it allows the trucks to roll in – as it did a year ago, when Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was required to testify that Israel was not diverting aid, on pain of suspending American weapons supplies; or in January, as part of the ceasefire – the positive impact is quickly evident in the improved nutrition of Gaza’s children. Israel accuses Hamas of stealing aid for its fighters, but hasn’t provided evidence of this happening at scale. Even if it has, it hasn’t prevented aid getting to the children who need it most.

Until now, most aid has been managed by international agencies. Israel wants to shut down the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and shut out other agencies, with the exception of the World Food Programme as a supplier.

Israel is now proposing a new aid scheme that will provide essential rations to screened individuals, who will be notified by cellphone message where and when they should report to pick up food packages, hygiene kits and medical supplies, after their IDs have been verified by face recognition software. Each package would be sufficient for a family for several days, after which the designated family member will be notified by text to return for another ration. The US is now championing the scheme, proposing to use American private military contractors, along with something called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a new agency that is being built from scratch.

This is surveillance humanitarianism, the food-targeting counterpart to the IDF’s algorithms that select whom to bomb. Israel will provide the bare minimum to sustain life to those who show, to its satisfaction, that they’re compliant. It’s also an individualised version of late colonial counterinsurgency, as practised by Britain in Malaya in the 1950s, when the army defeated Communist guerrillas by controlling the entire food supply, feeding those in protected villages and starving those outside.

The UN and liberal humanitarians are horrified. One of the founding principles of humanitarian law is that actual starvation should be prevented, even if it means the controlling power forgoes military opportunity. As Israel moved to suffocate UNRWA, the UN asked the International Court of Justice in The Hague to provide an advisory opinion on Israel’s obligations to co-operate with UN bodies. Public hearings were held in the week of 28 April.

Israel didn’t participate: in its written statement it dismissed the case as ‘patently biased and one-sided’. It claimed that UNRWA staff had participated in the 7 October atrocities, that the agency is hostile to Israel and that Israel is under no obligation to co-operate with any international organisation unless it chooses to do so, because its security requirements are overriding. It dismissed the UN investigations into its allegations and the measures taken to ensure neutrality, impartiality and end-to-end monitoring of relief supplies.

Thirty-nine states made presentations in The Hague, along with Palestine, the UN, the Arab League and the African Union. Only the US and Hungary supported the Israeli case. The US lawyer invoked only the 1948 Geneva Conventions, ignoring all subsequent law and the question of whether Israel had an overriding obligation to prevent Palestinians from starving.

Might Israel’s new aid scheme feed the starving while satisfying its demand for absolute security? The outline plan, shared with journalists, would involve four distribution centres and reach only 60 per cent of the population, all in a small part of the overall territory. (Aid agencies ran about four hundred locations before the blockade.) That might keep enough people fed to avoid the IPC’s arcane threshold for famine – which requires 20 per cent of the population to fall short of certain measurements for access to food, malnutrition and elevated death rates – but it would be gaming the system, not preventing widespread starvation.

Even if scaled up, the scheme doesn’t address needs for healthcare, water, sanitation, shelter and electricity infrastructure – all of which have been reduced to rubble. Nor does it provide specialised treatment for acutely malnourished children, who are already dying.

Twice already during this war, the people of Gaza have pulled back from the brink of categorical famine – both times after warnings from the IPC – but the recovery has been momentary before another plunge. Few humanitarian workers believe this cycle of deprivation followed by partial respite can continue for much longer before there’s rapid and uncontrollable collapse.

The IPC report contains two paragraphs by the Famine Review Committee, an independent group that goes over IPC findings where there’s a risk of famine: ‘The situation remains highly dynamic as food stocks are exhausted, water becomes increasingly scarce, healthcare ceases to function and social cohesion starts to break down.’ Hunger is only part of this breakdown. The Palestinians of Gaza have been driven from their homes, forced to live in cramped, unsanitary and overcrowded camps or in piles of rubble that contain decomposing bodies, unexploded bombs and the remnants of their prior lives.

Last month the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern ‘that Israel appears to be inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life increasingly incompatible with their continued existence as a group in Gaza.’ These carefully weighed words evoke the Genocide Convention: Article 2(c) prohibits ‘deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part’. Here again, Israel has done its sums, tested its policies and made clear that its permanent security overrides all other obligations. It can have no doubt about the outcomes of its actions. It may do just enough to keep most Palestinians alive. Whether this prevents the destruction of Palestinians in Gaza as a group is another matter.

(London Review of Books)

7 Comments

Paul Modic May 15, 2025

Damn, full issue today, gonna print off nine of these articles (and one song) and read ’em later today. Get the lowdown from Ted Stevens, et al…
EB White
Ed Notes
Zirin/ Rose
Jacobs
Prine
Walters/Economy
Roat/ Water Towers
TWK
Stevens/ Retirement fund

- Bruce McEwen May 15, 2025
  
  Hey Paul,
  
  Here’s another great one from Prine that captures both the advent of the national plea for organ donors to get their drives license stamped for the morgue and also references strongly Robert A. Heinlein’s book Stranger in a Strange Land, which a lot of my generation read and recognized in Prine’s ‘cut me up and pass me all around’ chorus.
  
  Please Don’t Barry Me
  Song by John Prine ‧ 1973
  
  … Woke up this morning
  Put on my slippers
  Walked in the kitchen and died
  And oh what a feeling
  When my soul went thru the ceiling
  And on up into heaven I did ride
  … When I got there they did say
  John, it happened this a’way
  You slipped upon the floor
  And hit your head
  And all the angels say
  Just before you passed away
  These were the very last words
  That you said
  … Please don’t bury me
  Down in the cold cold ground
  No, I’d druther have ’em cut me up
  And pass me all around
  Throw my brain in a hurricane
  And the blind can have my eyes
  And the deaf can take both of my ears
  If they don’t mind the size
  … Give my stomach to Milwaukee
  If they run out of beer
  Put my socks in a cedar box
  Just get ’em out of here
  Venus de Milo can have my arms
  Look out! I’ve got your nose
  Sell my heart to the junkman
  And give my love to Rose
  … But please don’t bury me
  Down in the cold cold ground
  I’d druther have ’em cut me up
  And pass me all around
  Throw my brain in a hurricane
  The blind can have my eyes
  And the deaf can take both of my ears
  If they don’t mind the size
  … Give my feet to the footloose
  Careless, fancy free
  Give my knees to the needy
  Don’t pull that stuff on me
  Hand me down my walking cane
  It’s a sin to tell a lie
  Send my mouth way down south
  And kiss my ass goodbye
  … But please don’t bury me
  Down in that cold cold ground
  No, I’d druther have ’em cut me up
  And pass me all around
  Throw my brain in a hurricane
  And the blind can have my eyes
  And the deaf can take both of my ears
  If they don’t mind the size
  
  Source: Musixmatch
  Songwriters: John Prine
  Please Don’t Barry Me lyrics © Walden Music, Inc., Sour Grapes Music, Inc.
  
Lee Edmundson May 15, 2025

Scott Roat’s reporting of the peril facing the future life of the Main Street Mendocino water tower is persuasive, and compelling.
I would add only one caveat: The Board of Supervisors has only a single choice to make in this matter:. That is; to uphold the authority of the Mendocino Historical Review Board (MHRB) to determine the appropriate protections to preserve historical architecture within the Town. To do so, the Board must deny applicant’s appeal to overturn MHRB’s ( 3 times now) decision(s) to protect the Landmark Category 1 historic water tower from destruction..
The demolition/destruction of the water tower is anathema to the reason MHRB exists: To protect and preserve the Town’s historic architecture and the historic architectural character of the Town.
This issue should be a clarion call to everyone who cares about preserving the integrity of the Town for future generations..
Kudos to Scott.

Harvey Reading May 15, 2025

HOW MUCH MONEY DO YOU REALLY SAVE BY OWNING AN ELECTRIC CAR IN CALIFORNIA?

How many nonrenewable resources are required to build the damned things, from mining, refining, and manufacturing to transport to delivery to customer to recycling (assuming the batteries are even recyclable)? This is a question that never seems to be addressed by electromobile fans… No effen thanks, yuppies.

Call It As I See It May 15, 2025

Charlie Hustle finally can be recognized! It came a little late but it’s the right thing if you’re a baseball fan.

I grew up 12 miles from Dodger Stadium, so that makes me a die hard Dodger fan. My favorite player was Pete Rose, I’m baseball fan. The way Pete played had to be respected. When you see great player’s play, you know it. It doesn’t matter who you root for.
I remember a Rose story, when Pete was a rookie, Reds manager talking to an opposing coach in spring training said, “We got a kid who gets down the first base line in 4.3 seconds.” The other coach responded, “ That’s okay, it not great.” Reds manager responds “Yea, but that’s when he walks.” Classic Pete.

Maybe Pete didn’t handle this issue very well, but he does belong right beside of the all time greats.
One last story. About 10 years ago, my son was in Vegas, he noticed Rose was doing a book signing. He thought, it would be a great gift idea for me to get the book and have Rose sign it. Before Pete signed it, my son told him, this is for my dad who is a lifetime Dodger fan, but you were his favorite player. Rose laughed and said, “I like your dad.” He then signed the book, To my favorite Dodger fan! Still got this awesome gift and it’s proudly displayed.

- Chuck Dunbar May 15, 2025
  
  That’s a fine story about your son and that treasured gift. By odd coincidence, I just finished reading the biography of Pete Rose, “Charlie Hustle,” an engaging, detailed story of his life and toward the end, his downfall due to addiction. Like you, I am glad Rose can be recognized at last– he paid a high price for his misdeeds and perhaps that was just. But now that he’s gone, it was time to relent a bit. He indeed loved-loved-loved the game, gave it his all.
  
Craig Stehr May 15, 2025

Warmest spiritual greetings, Sitting here contentedly at the Martin Luther King, Jr. public library on a guest computer, reading through today’s Boontling Greeley Sheet. Had an incredibly enjoyable afternoon yesterday. Ambled into the one bar open early on Capitol Hill, and quaffed three pints of Goose Island IPA and a shot of Woodford Reserve Rye. Left a generous tip, and proceeded to the corner hot dog stand for an everything-on-the-dog nosh. Sat quietly digesting all on a bench in the park nook across the street from the Capitol Hill Hotel. It would be impossible to be more comfortable than this on the planet earth! Regrettably, had to leave for the Metro to return to the Homeless Shelter. Paused on the way at Union Station for a Sbarro’s slice of pizza with everything on it, and then dropped into Hudson News to see what new disasters were reported in the newspapers and magazines. The cashier chided me for hesitating to fork out $5 for a king size Butterfinger candy bar. Of course it was necessary to save face. And consequently, enjoyed it on the long Metro and two bus return to the homeless shelter. I am eager to leave the District of Columbia because I do not have further reason to be here. Living on $488 social security, with $3,000 in savings. I can get to Mendocino County. Where do I go? Thank you very much for your ongoing appreciation of my last 50 years of peace & justice and environmental activism, which has done a helluva lot more to make America great than current politicians imagine that they are doing.
Craig Louis Stehr
Adam’s Place Homeless Shelter
2210 Adams Place NE #1
Washington, D.C. 20018
Telephone: (202) 832-8317
Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com
May 15, 2025 Anno Domini

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