Off the Record 5/21/2025

FRED GARDNER:

The discarded book from the Larkspur Library quoted admiringly in Ed Notes….

The night before I was reading a book of essays by Gore Vidal discarded by the Oil City, Pennsylvania library in 1973. I was so blown away by a paragraph that I copied it out to quote admiringly if I ever yield to the Substack Temptation. Vidal was reviewing "Midcentury," a novel by John Dos Passos.

"Dos Passos ends his book with a sudden lashing out at the youth of the day. He drops the labor movement. He examines James Dean. Then he does a Salengeresque first-person narrative of an adolescent who stole some credit cards (remember a similar story in Life?) and went on a spree of conspicuous consumption. Despite stylistic confusions, Dos Passos is plain in his indictment: doomed is our pleasure-loving, scornful, empty, flabby modern youth, product of that midcentury dream in which, thanks to the do-gooders, we have lost our ancient Catonian virtue. I found the indictment oddly disgusting. I can see that there is some truth in everything Dos Passos says. But his spirit strikes me as sour and mean, and finally, uncomprehending. He has mistaken the decline of his own flesh and talent for the world's decline. This is the old man's folly, which a good artist or a generous man tries to avoid. Few of us can resist celebrating our own great days, or finding fault with those who do not see in us in us now what we were or might have been. Nor is it unnatural when contemplating extinction to want, in sudden raging moments, to take the light with one. But it is a sign of wisdom to recognize one's own pettiness, and not only to surrender vanity to death, which intends to take it anyway, but to do so with deliberate grace as exemplar to the young, upon whom our race's fragile continuity, which is all there is, depends. I should have thought that that was why one wrote –to make something useful for the survivors, to say: I was and now you are, and I leave you as good a map as I could make of my own traveling."

PAUL ANDERSEN: Drove by “the bunker” (Press Democrat) and saw the “Support Local Journalism” banner and had to laugh/cry.

RESPECTABLE PEOPLE down on their luck tend to live in their vehicles while they search for work and a permanent place to live. They are fairly numerous in urban and suburban areas but are generally invisible. The difference between the car people and the people who alarm or dismay much of the settled part of the population is that the car people are trying. They aren’t lurching up and down State Street drunk or cranked out of their minds committing misdemeanors and making nuisances of themselves. There are a whole lot of people on the streets who aren’t trying, among them full-time criminals of the cruder type, who live out their days with one ambition — to stay loaded. Used to be these people went straight out to Talmage where they were pleasantly housed in separate rehab units for drunks, for drug people, for incompetents, for the criminally insane. They even had a baseball team and a working farm. People unable or unwilling to care for themselves were not permitted to live on the streets, and that’s where any meaningful discussion of today’s problem should begin.

BUT IT DOESN’T start there because there’s no real strategy, let alone the leadership that would be required to do something about the pure numbers of free-range Thanatoids roaming our fading republic. That strategy would have to come from the top, at the federal level. Anybody see the possibility of that happening any time soon?

THERE ISN’T a state hospital system in California, thanks to the usual bi-partisan treachery, and there won’t be a restoration of a state hospital system thanks to the bipartisan servants of the oligarchy presently defunding all the civilized amenities that we used to take for granted, a state hospital among them.

SIMPLY ROUSTING street people only propels them to some other undeserving community.Yes, there’s that many Thanatoids. But for now, it would be a giant step towards clarity if we stopped describing lifestyle derelicts as “homeless.”

A SAN FRANCISCAN OBSERVES: “After years of observation, I’ve concluded there’s a whole lot of reasons why the homeless are homeless and it goes beyond addictions, laziness and indifference. In the long run it has a lot more to do with a lack of common sense, not considering the ramifications of one’s actions, failing to take personal responsibility for oneself and being just plain stupid. All of the above is the difference between getting oneself off the street or making the streets one’s permanent address. The enablers in this city are an additional factor. They have created an industry.”

A STATEMENT seconded by Pete Wilford, also of San Francisco: “After getting out of the Army I knocked around the country for a few years, staying in rented rooms and working odd jobs. I would come to town, get a room and, neatly dressed, go down to the rent-a-drunk outfit or employment office. I invariably got a job immediately. I wasn’t fussy - took whatever was offered. When I had enough cash I was off to the next town. In all that time I never met anyone who was homeless because he was ‘down on his luck’ or mentally handicapped. They ALL had simply chosen a lifestyle of not working - begging for a living. To this day I have no sympathy whatsoever for ‘the homeless.’ Give them nothing. People like to say ‘It’s different now.’ No, it isn’t. Anyone who really wants to work can find a job.”

AND A THIRD SAN FRANCISCAN OBSERVES, “The discussion of street people in America is important, but I don’t agree with comments that try to heap blame on the victims. The reasons people end up on the street are as varied and numerous as their number. Instead of trying to discern some common defect among the members of this rapidly growing group, the larger view would include context. This condition is the fruition of greed is good, and taxes and representative government and regulation of capitalism’s excesses are bad. If you are avaricious, it’s a great place to be; if not, it’s Welcome to Trickle Down World. Consider this: from 1932-1981 the top tax rate in this country was kept well above 50%. This kept a lid on excessive greed and allowed the middle class, and the country as a whole, to grow and flourish. Wealth was shared. Since 1982 the top tax rate has remained well below 50%, and we are living with the results, a winner-take-all society where the number of losers continues to grow. In this healthcare-for-profit country, all that stands between most of us and the street is a misstep in health. As of last year, six Walmart heirs owned more wealth than 40 percent of Americans. The terrible irony in this fact is the Walton business plan thrives when large numbers of people have to scrimp. Walmart is the perfect icon for our time.”

FROM DAVID HELVARG’S , “The Golden Shore,” an AVA recommended read: “North of Gualala is Anchor Bay and its beach and Smuggler’s Cove where rumrunners used to drop their loads during Prohibition. Another half hour up the road is the town of Point Arena, a place author Stephan King would appreciate. There’s something insular and vaguely threatening about what some tourist books call ‘this sleepy hamlet.’ I remember a night my late love, Nancy Ledansky, and I couldn’t find a place to stay driving south down Highway 1 on a foggy Saturday night and finally we found a cheap motel there. The town was empty, cold and clammy and the taciturn innkeeper acted insulted when we pointed out there were no towels in our room and we walked under the marquee of the empty theater to a café where we were the only customers and a waitress who’d been crying served us soup from a can. Today Point Arena’s population is around 450 and its local politics have turned toxic as a result of a two-year campaign to recall the mayor and city council. Main Street is a hilly affair with the only movie theater for about one hundred miles….”

MARCO MCCLEAN:

When I was five, winter of 1963, my mother’s then-boyfriend took us to Disneyland. His name was Gino Pelli, he was in college to be a doctor. I don’t know where his money came from, but he had a modern-art palace of a house in a canyon (or the hills) of L.A., that was enclosed in a wet green labyrinth of trees and vines and moss all around, with lights in the ground shining up through the moss. I clearly remember going there at night in my mother’s Oldsmobile and how, when we went back to the car to leave, the car looked so technologically attractive there, like a magazine ad for the car. When I saw ‘Once Upon A Time in Hollywood,’ the neighborhood the main character lived in seemed familiar. When my mother was working for realtors we often went to places like that in the hills. She’d measure everything with a 100-foot tape measure that I was allowed to wind up with its crank. She’d bake bread in the oven, take Polaroid pictures, make notes, use the phone, stick signs in the grass by the street. Go to the next place, repeat. Go back around to all the places and shut the ovens off, meet with anybody who showed up, run out the clock. And then maybe Bob’s Big Boy for hamburgers and milkshakes on the way home. I don’t remember what happened to the bread. The actual bread wasn’t the point; it was for the smell in the house. And I still slightly expect, whenever I open a car trunk, to see a mound of real estate signs there. That’s what a trunk is for, like Charlotte in ‘Pushing Daisies’ was raised by her aunts who made cheese for sale, so when she’s visiting a new friend and sees her friend’s refrigerator she says, “I like your cheese closet.”

In 1963, Disneyland still had the hovercraft flying saucer bumpercars ride, and the spinning teacups ride, that they had to tear out right after that because of too many expensive neck injuries. My favorite ride was the round theater rocket ride to the moon with the screen in the floor and the ceiling, and hydraulic chair cushions and footrests to simulate G-forces. It gave me the same good-shivery, anticipating-the-future feeling that I got from ‘The Outer Limits,’ and from Klieg lights up to the sky that you’d see from the freeway and say, “Can we go there?” “Sure.” Turn off, follow the pillars of god-light, and behold! A brand-new gas station or a new movie opening, or a furniture store sale…

Juanita and I went back there to get married in November of 1988, on the roof of the Griffith Observatory, above the vast shimmering fairyland plain of L.A., and Juanita’s best friend Annye’s mother (they’re both dead now) gave us the wedding present of the next day and evening at Disneyland and then a night in the Disneyland Hotel. I hate and fear hotels, but it made it easy to stay in the park until the rides closed at midnight, which meant no lines; you could get off a ride and run straight to the front of the line of that one or the next one. I was almost 30; I still liked rides then. The only ride I really like now is the carnival one where you’re in a ring of chairs around a tower, they lift you up to the top, and they drop you. It’s very simple but it’s the best feeling. You’re not spinning around and being jerked this way and that until you throw up. It’s the exact opposite of nausea and a headache. It feels like the last instant as you deliciously fall asleep, especially if you’re sleeping at a desk or otherwise in a cramped position. Juanita still likes rides where they shake you like a can of spray paint.

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SHERIFF MATT KENDALL: Marco that was great! Thank you for sharing your memories of Disney Land. Loved reading this!

When I was growing up the creek behind our hay field was the best spot on earth. We had tree forts and BB guns. A nasty old brick of day's work or brown mule plug tobacco was normally hidden somewhere near our fort.

We had An old horse and a mule named Amanda who lived the good life. They were our Cavalry. Those two took us on short rides while defending the pasture from communism, the NVA or whoever was currently an enemy of the US.

There were times when defense of the ranch turned for the worse and we brothers and cousins engaged in civil wars. These skirmishes consisted of rock fights, BB Gun assaults and grenades carved from oak balls.

My grandmother encouraged us to settle our issues in boxing matches which we held in an old corral by our barn. It was Madison Square Garden for us back then and definitely a more civilized means of squaring up with each other. We only turned to this option when we couldn’t muster our soldiers for war.

A few bumps, bruises and abrasions were to be expected. Occasionally one of our battle hardened 13 year olds proudly displayed an arm cast which was signed by all the kids in school.

It’s been a while since I have seen a kid in an arm cast. I wonder if that means we are getting smarter or perhaps our fears have grown to the point they won’t allow today’s children to engage in the childhood endeavors most of us experienced.

For better or worse it’s definitely a different world today.

LOOKING BACK: Some bright fellow was stealing copper from the old Point Arena radar station. He cut into a live high voltage wire and was found dead with his bolt cutters in hand. He`d been there over a week before he was found and I was told he was so full of maggots that they were making a sound that was audible. The stench was indescribable, I was told.

SIDE-BY-SIDE movie announcements in a recent Chron announce these two epics: ‘Manson Family’ and ‘Spring Breakers.’ Given that choice the ‘Manson Family’ doesn’t look bad. The media are full of spring break stories accompanied of course by the point of these stories — barely clad young flesh. The local hook: Many people are aware that the Manson Family briefly made its rural headquarters in the Anderson Valley in a then-ramshackle house on Gschwend Road near Navarro. That would have been about 1967 or ‘68 before Chuck led his gang into random murders in the LA area. The man himself was arrested near Ukiah in ‘68 and held briefly on suspicion of being a hippie and as possibly responsible for the seemingly senseless bludgeon murders of two women across the highway from today’s Remco between Ukiah and Hopland. Those murders, which occurred in 1968, were almost certainly the work of a CHP officer named Dulaney who, represented by Timothy O’Brien, later a Mendo judge of the superior court, was never arrested or charged. Dulaney was in debt to the old lady who ran an antique shop at the site and he was unhappily married to her granddaughter.

DOWNSTREAM DRAWS on the finite waters of the overdrawn Russian River are becoming ever more obvious in their finite-ness, and the need to meter those draws from Potter Valley to Healdsburg should become ever more urgent, not that they are. Yes, Cloverdale also taps its water table, but most of that growing burg’s water comes from the Russian River, and the Russian is dependent on the South Fork of the Eel, which is diverted through an essentially 19th century redwood-timbered tunnel at Potter Valley, and from there into Lake Mendocino just north of Ukiah. The water thus diverted and stored at Lake Mendocino is mostly owned by Sonoma County which, although Sonoma County is also pretty much tapped out because it hasn’t dipped into the plentiful waters of Lake Sonoma, sells a lot of diverted Eel River water to Marin County at premium prices. The entire water supply for several million people from Potter Valley to Sausalito is precarious in the extreme. The next big earthquake will probably turn everyone’s taps off for some time, especially those taps fed by an ancient tunnel in the hills of Mendocino County.

FOR ALL THE CELEBRATING of free enterprise we hear in this country and in this County from Chamber of Commerce groups and other soldiers of free enterprise, commercial rents in Mendocino County make it almost impossible for mom and pops to make a go of asmall business. There are Ukiah landlords, for instance, who can afford to sit on vacant storefronts for months, even years in one School Street case, thus assuring the deaths of downtowns in struggling communities like Ukiah, and everywhere else in the state. San Francisco rents are even more egregiously exploitive, which comes as no surprise, but even I was startled to learn that one of my favorite bookstores, Adobe Books in the Mission, now gone, paid an extortionate $4,500 a month. You’ve got to sell a lot of books to make that nut, and book buyers are a dying breed. But it’s businesses like Adobe that give the town the charm it markets to tourists. The City’s “progressive” board of supervisors is unlikely to enact or even discuss commercial rent control at a time when landlords are demanding a rollback of the dwindling number of rent-controlled apartments because, well, because the owning classes have always called the tune in SF, and they’ve never called it as loudly as they do these days. Ditto for Mendocino County.

TED STEPHENS (Yorkville): Brown Act Done MCERA Board Style…

Mark Scaramella’s “Does Anyone Read the Board Agenda” made me reflect back to my time on our county retirement board and what I would call “Brown Act Done Mendocino County Employee Retirement Association (MCERA) Board Style.” We took a vote in closed session, on if an embarrassing and costly mistake should be reported out of the session or just swept under the rug. If not reported, the cost, although very material, would just be lost in the next year’s actuarial report Mumbo-Jumbo that nobody can ever understand and all mistakes always inure to the taxpayers to pick-up. These mistakes are amortized over several decades, with an artificially high return rate making the cost today very small, and are lost in the amount of extra contribution the County has to pay on their side of the pension contribution; the employees absorb none of the cost (it is why we, our county, have a quarter of Billion dollars, and growing, in unfunded pension debt as of June 2024). Of course the rest of the board voted to not disclose or report out any vote. (Heck, it was embarrassing!) It was in total violation of the Brown Act on several fronts, but what can one do against a super majority board of foxes (by charter), elected by fellow foxes, counting taxpayer guaranteed chickens. You could go full lawsuit on them, but other than that they can just shrug their shoulders knowing, by design, no one can really do anything about it or understand it anyway. I imagine when it looks like the chickens can’t really be guaranteed there will be a mad rush to rearrange the chairs on the Titanic and many more will be paying attention. The county will find that quarter Billion extra in the budget won’t they? If they can’t, the state will pick it up, won’t they? If the state can’t find the scratch, I am sure the feds will pay for these pensions, they can just borrow another quarter Billion from our friends in China…

ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] If only you would instigate and further the notion of a General Strike in the entire country. If only. Each person doing something for their fun isn't going to cut it, not now, not ever. That is not the way to solidarity. You might feel better but it's fleeting. A General Strike is the only way. Weekly protests on your town's street corners is a frail attempt. The only way is for everyone to get out and blast this impertinence off the face of the earth.

The clear lack of respect for science by President Trump and his administration is beyond disheartening. It is extremely dangerous.The looming threat of the climate crisis is very real and cannot be eliminated with a bold pen stroke. As more emissions accumulate in the atmosphere, we all face the threat of more and more serious climate issues. These disasters can be very costly — in terms of lives, livelihoods and the funds required for recovery.

[2] SALAMI, an on-line comment: 
One of the very worst foods one could eat is a mix of puréed animal organs, skin, tongue, flank, sinew and tendons stirred together, mashed into a log, encased in animal sinew and sliced.

[3] I’m an expert in aging because I tell you I am. I’m an expert at conning the public out of money with stories I make up as evidence to my scam. This is what the world has come to, people paying others to scam them for information they already know. Eat healthy, sleep and exercise. I’m an expert.

[4] My definition of assault is irrelevant. Yours is too. The legal definition is pertinent.

18 U.S. Code § 111 says, “whoever forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes with any person (or formerly served) designated in section 1114 of this title who are engaged in the performance of official duties, shall be fined and imprisoned for up to one year for simple assault, and up to eight years where such acts involve physical contact with the victim of that assault or the intent to commit another felony, and use of a deadly or dangerous, or inflicts bodily injury shall be fined and imprisoned not over 20 years “

[5] Trump hasn’t done a damn thing about drug prices, nor does he have any power to do so. If he had, things like Ozempic and Paxlovid wouldn’t be $1500+ a month (or just a box) without insurance. Nor would insulin and other diabetes medicine cost more than a new car for a year’s supply. Drug manufacturers have essentially told him to F- off on the pricing. Also that whole “most favored nations” thing is a throw back to Clinton, when he claimed China as such when it comes to trade.

[6] After a family gathering a close relative sent me a very cryptic email commenting on the long road ahead for me and that she wished me well. I had no idea what the heck she was talking about so I sent a response saying I was quite puzzled by her remark but wanted her to know I was very happy and very healthy and wished her the same. Never heard another word. Odd. People are odd.