Mendocino County Today: Monday 5/19/2025

By AVA News Service on May 19, 2025

TRANSITIONING weather patterns continue as moisture makes its way into the area around the top of the ridge. Light rain was observed this morning in Del Norte but is likely to taper off before noon. Clouds could hinder the inevitable warm up near the coast. Warming will commence Tuesday and Wednesday with highs around 90 inland. Cooler temperatures are expected late in the week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 44F under clear skies this Monday morning on the coast. Mostly clear & breezy to start the new week, but the fog is just offshore so you never know?

RED FLAG WARNING (and it's only May)

Low humidity and strong winds are forecast through Monday, prompting a red flag warning for a swath of Northern California. By midweek, temperatures may reach the 90s in parts of the inland Bay Area.

A red flag warning is in effect from Redding to Modesto between 8 a.m. Sunday and 8 p.m. Monday. The National Weather Service is forecasting gusting winds up to 35 mph, especially along the Interstate 5 corridor, and low relative humidity. “The combination of gusty winds and low humidity can cause fire to rapidly grow in size and intensity,” the weather service said in its forecast. …

As of Sunday morning, PG&E does not anticipate turning off power preemptively; you can check for future public safety power shutoffs on the agency’s website.

BEDS STILL AVAILABLE IN THE AV COMMUNITY GARDEN

"The Community Garden at the Elder Home in Boonville has beds available for AV community members. One raised bed (5'x20') and in-ground beds at 5'x20' and 10'x 20'. Water, topsoil and compost are provided, tools are available for gardeners to use. There is a very low annual fee (depending on bed size).

Join your neighbors, make new friends, grow food and flowers. It's a grand experience.

For information and to apply, contact: [email protected]

AV UNIFIED NEWS

by Superintendent Kristin Balliet

We have a new principal for 2025-26 for Anderson Valley Elementary School. We instituted a new, very rigorous selection process, which resulted in a deep field of qualified candidates. The press release is attached.

Jennifer “Jenny” Bailey Selected As Anderson Valley Elementary School’s New Principal

Anderson Valley Elementary School (AVES) is proud to announce the appointment of its new principal, Jenny Bailey, a seasoned education professional with over 18 years of teaching and leadership experience in Ukiah Unified School District and across Mendocino County. She lives locally in Ukiah with her three teenagers, a daughter who will be attending Occidental College in the fall and twin boys who will be sophomores next year. She maintains an active lifestyle working in her garden and enjoying the outdoors.

With dual teaching credentials in Multiple Subject and Single Subject Social Studies, as well as an Administrative Credential, Ms. Bailey holds a Master of Science in Curriculum and Instruction from Western Governors University and a BA in History from UC Berkeley. Her extensive career includes recent work as an Education Specialist with Mendocino County Office of Education (MCOE), developing professional learning opportunities and supporting district-wide initiatives in math and literacy throughout Mendocino County. In fact, Ms. Bailey has been instrumental in our own professional development in AVUSD in recent years, making her already well known to our staff. Throughout her career, Ms. Bailey has been deeply involved in curriculum adoption processes, professional development facilitation, and assessment coordination, with a particular focus on supporting English Learners and students with diverse learning needs. Her collaborative approach and commitment to equity will be vital in advancing AVES’s mission to provide high-quality education to all students.

“I am honored to lead Anderson Valley Elementary School, a community known for its dedicated staff, passionate students, and engaged families,” Ms. Bailey said. “Together we will work to create a nurturing and effective learning environment that equips students with the skills they need to thrive and contribute meaningfully to society. I look forward to collaborating with teachers, families, and the community to make this vision a reality.”

For more information, contact Kristin Larson Balliet at [email protected]

Photos: #1 - Dr. Richard Browning speaking at the Ribbon Cutting, #2 - Alondra Espinosa, Teresa Malfavon, Dr. Richard Browning, Mayte Malfavon, and Esmeralda Espinosa by the dedication plaque, #3-#7 additional photos from the Ribbon Cutting ceremony and tour (#6 principal Heath McNerney and student Soliel Cornejo cut the ribbon)

Dear Anderson Valley USD Community,

It has been a wonderful week, honoring Anderson Valley Unified School District history and planning for the future!

Many thanks to those who came out to the Ribbon Cutting ceremony at AVHS. We honored Dr. Richard Browning and William “Bill” Sterling with the formal dedication of our new Science labs, in recognition of their longtime commitment to AVUSD’s facilities and programs. Special thanks to alumni and representatives of Wings of Learning, as well as our fabulous librarian and longtime friend of Bill Sterling, Teresa Malfavon; each of these people took the time to share special memories as we planned and also during the ceremony. Also honored, though not able to attend, was former superintendent Louise Simson, whose hard work and expertise were integral to getting this project up and running! Finally, we thanked Cupples Construction for their quality work. Attendees enjoyed a tour of the beautiful new facilities that our students will enjoy for years to come! (Please read the article below if you would like to know more about this event!)

On Saturday, staff, students, and families came out to the “AVES Family Work Party.” We worked and played hard, and the day culminated in a barbecue hot dog feast with “Mr. Dave” at the grill! Many thanks to Cora Hubbert and Nat Corey-Moran for planning this awesome event! A great time was had by all and the campus looks fantastic!

Finally, I would like to share that Jenny Bailey has been selected as the principal for AVES, starting July 1, 2025! A proven expert in the areas of instruction and learning, Jenny is the perfect fit as we take next steps in the coming year. Read more about Jenny Bailey below! We are grateful for Mr. Ramalia’s leadership throughout 2024-25; we will miss him very much and we wish him the best.

Fondly,

Kristin Larson Balliet

Superintendent, Anderson Valley Unified School District

COST OF A COAST HOSPITAL

by Malcolm Macdonald

In the next year to year and a half, residents of the Mendocino Coast Health Care District (MCHCD) will face a $40 - $60 million dollar tax question. It is likely that by this time in 2026, the MCHCD Board of Directors will be asking you to vote for a bond issue. How much will it cost? It could be a math equation as old as Solomon. Or as Deep Throat said to Bob Woodward, “Follow the money.”

What will $40 million get you besides a better tax bracket under the current federal administration… a seismically retrofitted hospital in Fort Bragg, possibly some additional modernization of the facility. It may cost close to that $40 million threshold to maintain the status quo because a fifty-five-year-old medical facility needs a lot of upkeep to meet standards acceptable in the 21st Century.

By “a lot of upkeep” I refer you to the $7 million dollars in repairs, maintenance, and machinery replacement the healthcare district has approved for the Adventist Health run hospital in the last six months. Some of those expenditures can be attributed to delays caused by the Covid epidemic. However, the need for more costly new machinery and facility repair will likely continue into the foreseeable future. At a recent Measure C Committee meeting, Adventist Health's Project Manager referred to pieces of medical equipment in the coast hospital that are now one-of-a-kind, meaning they are so old that no other hospitals in the state have such ancient machinery = more expense coming soon.

Why are the coast healthcare district taxpayers paying for repairs in a hospital run by Adventist Health? That is a central piece of the voter-approved affiliation agreement between MCHCD and Adventist Health that took effect July 1, 2020. Each year of the affiliation, MCHCD is obligated to pay into an Improvements Fund that AH can spend on the hospital's upkeep. In fiscal year 2020-2021 that Improvements Fund amount was $2 million annually. Presently, the figure is $2,251,024. Next year the amount will go up slightly to $2,296,044.

In return Adventist Health makes a rent payment each year to the Mendocino Coast Health Care District. That amount started at $1,750,000 in 2020. By fiscal year ending (FYE) June 30, 2030 the annual payment will have risen to $3,193,175. To see all the payments made and received per the affiliation lease agreement go to the district's website, mendocinochcd.gov, then navigate to the legal documents section, click on the lease agreement, and scroll down to Exhibit D near the end.

The difference in payments out to Adventist Health and payments in to our health care district for the period between 2020 and 2030 is approximately $5 million on the plus side for the district. Most of the positive gain will accrue in the five years between 2025 and 2030.

Readers will correctly ask this question: What about the money from Measure C? Indeed, the parcel tax approved by voters in mid-2018 amounts to about $1.55 million per year for the healthcare district. Measure C sunsets on June 30, 2030.

Basic district tax receipts bring in about a million dollars each year. MCHCD has two long term debts to pay off. Those will total about $2.3 million before they are off the books in FYE 2029.

Let's get closer to a bottom line. Currently, MCHCD possesses about $16 million dollars. Adding and subtracting the rental payments in from AH and the Improvement Fund payments out, plus Measure C funds and the basic tax dollars received, while also subtracting the long term debt along with the district's annual budget, MCHCD could add nearly $12-13 million over the next five years. Meaning that by 2030, when the $1.5 million from Measure C runs out, the Mendocino Coast Health Care District could have approximately $28 million to spend on a retrofitted hospital or less than half needed to build some kind of new facility.

Therein lies the need for money from a bond. Leaving aside the most basic premise, voters approving a bond measure, where's the collateral to convince a bond carrier? There's an idea floating around that MCHCD would use the approx. $3 million annual rent payment from Adventist Health as some sort of guarantee. Of course, to guarantee a bond of $60 million that $3 million in rent would have to keep coming in for more than twenty years.

That assumption rests on Adventist Health viewing a coast hospital as a viable concern for the next quarter century. There's also the matter that as of July 1, 2030, MCHCD will no longer be receiving the $1.55 million annual payment from the Measure C parcel tax. Using the figures from Exhibit D in the lease agreement between AH and MCHCD, the district would have about $3.17 million available in “cash available for distribution” in FYE 2030. In 2031, and ensuing years, that cash figure would drop to about $1.6 million yearly.

So, how to finance a new facility? There is the option of splitting the difference. Let's say $60 million is needed. The difference can be split by making the taxpaying residents of the Mendocino Coast Health Care District responsible for only half that amount through a Government Obligation (GO) bond. The other $30 million could be raised through a revenue bond. Only the former would require a two-thirds vote of the public and the revenue bond would be backed by an insurer, likely Cal Mortgage.

At present the new facility seems like the safer option. Retrofitting the fifty-five-year-old current facility would meet the state standard, but it is likely that the old hospital is going to continue to require millions in repairs and new equipment for years to come, paid for through taxpayer dollars. Those ongoing costs plus the retrofit could add up to a total near the price of an entirely new facility. A new facility should also please the current tenant, Adventist Health, and help to encourage them to stay for the long haul. If the public is only responsible for something in the ballpark of $30 million that expense would scarcely be more than the money needed for a retrofit and a scant few of the much needed upgrades in medical equipment.

There is something of a wild card in the current mix. HCAI (The California state department of Health Care Access and Information), the modern version of OSHPD (Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development) has a pool of about $65 million available to hospitals for retrofit purposes only. How much of that would make a difference for MCHCD's decision making? The coast hospital would likely need to receive at least ten million dollars from the HCAI pool in order to have an impact. Remember, the HCAI funding would not be for construction of a new facility or extra modernization added to a seismic retrofit. It would only apply to the retrofit.

If MCHCD received $10-15 million from HCAI that could reduce the cost of the retrofit to as low as $10 million. That would allow for $20 million in needed modernization to the current hospital, which would help circumvent some of the continual costs of new equipment and repairs… but not all.

Obviously, such a grant from HCAI would lessen the load of GO or revenue bonds. As stated earlier, Cal Mortgage would be a likely insurer for a revenue bond. Cal Mortgage and HCAI are tied together in the state healthcare bureaucracy, as in the same building.

Want a second wild card, one-eyed jacks and deuces? As of this writing, the Mendocino Coast Health Care District had not completed audits for fiscal years ending in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. Without completed, satisfactory audits it is next to impossible to possess any credit rating let alone attract a bond carrier or provide encouragement to Cal Mortgage to insure a revenue bond. The potential good news here is that the auditors are allegedly within weeks of completion.

Perhaps a more pertinent and key question has yet to be resolved. What are Adventist Health's specific needs within a new facility? As usual, AH is playing its cards close to the vest. Once that is known, and it may not be far off, the MCHCD Board of Directors can explain the options to the general public. Those options essentially boil down to retrofitting the existing structure (for purposes of meeting state standards the coast hospital is several smaller structures pieced together, thus adding more costly intricacies to meeting state seismic standards), a retrofit with another $15-20 million in modernization, or building a new facility.

To get a specific list of the hospital's recent repair and equipment expenses go to the mendocinochcd.gov website, click on board meetings, then the Measure C Oversight Committee. Click on the May 5th meeting and the Measure C Pending Approvals item. On Page 1, you will find specific items, such as a new ambulance or new lab equipment (these things aren't cheap!). The Measure C Committee voted to approve all the items on page 1. The items on page 2 are still pending approval at the next Measure C Committee meeting.

LOCAL EVENTS

SUPERVISOR MAUREEN MULHEREN (facebook video transcription)

On a recent post, somebody said essentially: Do I think things have improved with the homeless situation without wearing my rose-colored glasses? Mind you, thank you for noticing that I am a very positive, optimistic person, Little Miss Brightside over here, trying to plan for the future and think optimistically about what Mendocino County can have and what Ukiah Valley can have. So yesterday as I was driving around. As somebody who has cleaned up homeless camps in Mendocino County for more than 10 years, I can see improvements. You can drive around, past Pear Tree Center, and you can still see people sleeping. Yes, absolutely, there are. And that is something we have to work on. People were in Orr Creek. At one point probably there were half a dozen campsites with 2 to 5 people making a mess. I can see improvements. I also have data that shows people have been housed. What’s the Point In Time Count going to say? I don’t know. I don’t really think it’s important. I think it’s an important tool. There was a recent article about the Grand Jury report showing that Native Americans now have a disproportionate amount in our unhoused situation because for years they weren’t even counted. So now, thankfully, we have tribal members that are helping do the Point In Time Count so we can get a more accurate representation of people who are unhoused or in need of housing. We still need to work on funding and find ways to house people. I was hesitant to post because I’m sure I’m going to hear from people. But I can tell you that I do see an improvement, We still have areas we need to work on in front of Building Bridges, Ackerman Creek, Russian River at Talmage… There are still plenty of places where we are still trying to get to people that are unhoused. But when I think about North State St. and the railroad campers we used to have and the comments people have about camping along the Russian River and so forth that we don’t get anymore… So have we made improvements? Yes. Is there still work to do? Absolutely. I am not saying that there’s not. But I also think that the service providers and the Ukiah police and the Sheriff’s Department and the others working on the unhoused deserve credit for what they do.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I lived in Fort Bragg 10 years ago, and even back then I could see that homeless was going to be a problem. Here you have nearly your entire economy dependent on hospitality, which doesn’t pay a living wage paired with a low inventory of housing which is exasperated by the hospitality industry (there’s just under 1000 vacation rentals) and nimbys fighting tooth and nail to prevent affordable housing from being built. They want to make money off the labor of those who work in the tourism that has kept those towns alive, but don’t want them to have housing they can afford. Not to mention all the Bay Area people acting like those whose families have been there for generations, including the Pomo natives, isn’t for them because they can no longer afford it after they helped inflate the housing costs. Mendocino needs to stop pandering to the rich and start taking care of the people who work in the industry that keeps their economy alive. It’s just that simple.

NPR LOSES ITS ALLOWANCE

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

Upon learning that funding for National Public Radio will be sliced from the federal budget I danced a little jig in celebration, cracked open a quart of Schlitz Malt Liquor and said “Whee.”

Next I took a couple big gulps and said “What Took So Long?”

There are 150,000 AM-FM radio stations, along with about 450 satellite radio channels in the United States. The world is host to more than 40 million podcasts with more than 500 million listeners. There are additional thousands of news-providing webcasts and online platforms.

Of all the news sources in this vast menu of choices, I can think of only one that requires taxpayers like you and me to reach for our checkbooks every year to fund the audio toxins broadcast by KZYX and thousands more NPR outlets. We aren’t forced to listen to NPR, but we sure do have to pay for it.

These government-funded infoganda sources offer a daily gruel of Democrat-approved news. It’s fine for the country’s 25% of progressive listeners, but the rest of us are forced to steer around its tedious, turgid reports and analyses.

Conservative voices (and listeners) are completely shut out. Does this fit your definition of Taxation Without Representation?

But don’t take my word for it.

Here’s a tiny piece of a blistering essay from a 25-year NPR veteran, Business Editor Uri Berliner, who outlines the organization’s “descent into rigid partisan ideology.” Says he: “An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.”

(Note: Predictably, Mr. Berliner is no longer employed by National Public Radio.)

Me? I don’t care if someone tells me Joe Biden is sharp-witted and hardworking, or that Donald Trump is Hitler. But why should I have to pay for either? After all, I have Adam Schiff for ongoing disinformation (although I pay his salary too).

A recent Ukiah Daily Journal editorial in support of NPR pointed out that federal funding for National Public Radio “is not under direct authority of the executive branch; the purpose of this arrangement was to keep public media institutions truly public … preserving their independence from political forces.”

Well now.

If the “arrangement” designed to guarantee independence and inoculate it from political forces were any less effective, NPR would be broadcast from Obama’s living room with Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders as news anchors.

There’s an NPR franchise in Mendocino County, and it never fails to live down to our expectations. KZYX, holed up the other side of Philo, is a private nest of weird and unemployable lefty zealots who have successfully barred the doors to contrary opinion for 40 years.

There are plans to upgrade and move into fancy offices in Ukiah near city hall, all the better to pester us with their inane PC rhetoric. Hopefully a lack of federal funding will cause our Anderson Valley zanies to terminate the plan and abandon their KZYX employment crutch altogether.

Headline Of The Month Award

A recent headline in the Ukiah Daily Journal, “Officials roll out new homeless strategy” is notable because it a) requires no reading of the subsequent story to perfectly understand its content, and b) manages to trumpet the good news of the state’s bold plan to finally end the homeless quagmire without ever mentioning the billions of dollars already misspent in not solving the problem.

In fact, after many years the situation is much worse than when California began to fix it. But we’re all sure this new, more better excellent strategy will really do the trick.

Get ready to celebrate.

Palindrome Time

I’ve long been an admirer of those who can put together palindromes, the clever phrases that read the same backwards and forwards. It’s easy to do a palindrome like “Madam I’m Adam” or one using numbers as in a calendar date earlier this month: “5-2-25.”

But palindromes can be much more difficult and far more clever, as in “A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.” Another: ”Naomi, sex at noon taxes, I moan.”

One of my favorites is the the guy’s answer when his doctor tells him he’s overweight and needs to go on a fast. The response:

“Doc note, I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod.”

PINOT WEEKEND AND MEMORIAL WEEKEND A UNIQUE PAIRING

Earthy notes of turned earth, forest, and field — these flavors combine to create the taste of this remarkable place.

Barns, Color, and the Flavor of Place Art rooted in landscape

Dear Friends,

I’m delighted to invite you to experience my newest work at Domaine Anderson Tasting Room in Anderson Valley.

“Barns, Color, and the Flavor of Place” opens during the Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Festival (May 16-18) and will remain on view throughout the summer.

Just as terroir imparts a distinct sense of place to wine, I respond to the environment around me—breathing in the land’s textures, colors, and histories. In this dialogue between land and maker, I create art that carries the spirit and alchemy of Anderson Valley.

In addition to the tasting room show, my Studio & Sculpture Garden will also be open for two special weekends:

Saturday-Sunday, May 17-18 and Saturday-Sunday, May 24-25, from 11 AM to 5 PM each day. And open by appointment

You’re warmly invited to stop by, experience the work in person, and stroll through the Sculpture Garden.

Visiting the studio is taking a moment to slow down, have a conversation, make a connection. Whether you come to look, to talk, buy or simply to enjoy the quiet beauty of the surroundings, I welcome you.

A toast to art and spirit.

Cheers,

Rebecca Johnson

Domaine Anderson Tasting Room

9201 Highway 128, Philo, CA 95466

Open Thursday-Monday, 11 AM - 5 PM(On view May 16-18 and throughout summer)

Rebecca's Studio & Sculpture Garden

1200 Highway 128, mile marker 15.08, Navarro, CA 95463

Open Saturday-Sunday, May 17-18 and May 24-2511 AM - 5 PM

CHRIS SKYHAWK:

Good Morning,

Happy Sunday, Im am working on getting Fort Bragg to adopt animal friendly displays top celebrate the 4th, rather than the usual displays that are traumatic to animals I gave testimony to the City Countil this week:(see below) and am delighted to report I have a meeting this week with Chuncil memoer Lindy Peters to explore options! Stay tuned!

Greetings members of the Fort Bragg City Council,

My name is Chris Skyhawk, I am a Fort Bragg resident and I am speaking to voice my concerns about the impacts of fireworks, on our local animal populations (wild and domestic), and their numerous other toxic side effects, I have become increasingly concerned with these negative Impacts brought on by our Independence Day celebration, and I would like Fort Bragg to find friendlier ways to celebrate July 4th, After last years celebration, through social media and local email lists, I was able to ascertain, many other local residents feel the same,Many jurisdictions have adopted friendlier ways to celebrate the 4th, and we think fort bragg should too, since we are known for our wildlife and clean environment, I have already been in contact with MCHS, Eileen Hawthorn fund and they would support this, I believe the Audubon Society, and Noyo Marine Center would be on board, too, and since other cities, have adopted better practices ( such as La Jolla, Napa, and Seatle Washington. We would just need to replicate the efforts of others, Thus I’m asking how we might bring this issue to the council for discussion. Please know I’m standing by and ready (and many others) to collaborate with you.

Thank you!

Chris Skyhawk

707-409-4789

[email protected]

JOHNNY PINCHES REMEMBERED as Mendocino County’s straight-shooting supervisor

by Matt LaFever

John Pinches as a younger man, watching logs hauled from his property on Island Mountain [photo contributed by Ernie Branscomb]

John Pinches, a legendary Mendocino County rancher, budget hawk, and three-term county supervisor remembered for his folksy wisdom and fierce advocacy for rural residents, has died. He was 73.

The news of Pinches’ passing was first shared by his longtime friend Jim Shields, editor and publisher of the Mendocino County Observer, who called him “a good, good, good man who always cared about and represented the best interests of working people and salt-of-the-earth ordinary folks who had no one fighting for them.”

A fourth-generation rancher from northeastern Mendocino County, Pinches served on the Board of Supervisors for a total of 12 years, first from 1995 to 1998, and again from 2007 to 2014. Clad in his signature cowboy shirt and jeans, he became a trusted figure in county politics and chaired the board three times.

Former Sheriff Tom Allman remembered him as “a leader who will be quoted in the boardroom for the next 50 years.” He praised Pinches’ down-to-earth pragmatism, especially during difficult budget years. “He had the ability to be the ‘closer’ at budget time to make sure things worked,” Allman said. “Good roads were very important to Johnny.”

Pinches was known for a grassroots campaign style that reflected his rural roots. “He painted ‘Pinches for Supervisor’ on old tires and they were hung up on fences throughout the north part of the county,” said Allman. “It was a brilliant marketing idea and certainly assisted him in winning his first and continuing elections.”

“He made government work better,” Allman added. “I will miss him personally, because of his laughter and his warm greeting.”

Pinches was especially revered for his mastery of the county budget. “Johnny carried a tabbed budget book, marked with points of interest,” said current Fifth District Supervisor Ted Williams. “He understood the critical importance of tracking public funds and recognized that road infrastructure is one of the few investments that benefits everyone.”

Third District Supervisor John Haschak, who now represents Pinches’ former district, called him “personable, smart, and caring.” Haschak said, “Supervisor Pinches had a deep love for our county. He always had ideas about water security and the county’s budget. I very much appreciated him on a personal level.”

When Pinches stepped away from public office in 2014 to focus on family and ranch life, the Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution in his honor. It recognized his contributions across transportation, mental health, and law enforcement committees, and praised the “Pinchesisms” that brought levity to tense meetings:

“Whiskey’s for drinkin’ and water’s for fightin’.”
“Why can’t we keep not doin’ what we haven’t been doin’?”
“We’re not gonna catch up with the Joneses. We’re gonna meet them on the way back.”
“The Russians ain’t doing it to us, we’re doin’ it to ourselves!”

The resolution also celebrated his signature optimism, he always carried a comb in his pocket, and his belief that public service was about building the county up, not tearing it down.

Now, as the county reflects on the life and legacy of Johnny Pinches, many agree with what Jim Shields wrote: “We won’t see another Johnny Pinches in our lifetimes.”

John Pinches singing karaoke, having a good time [photo contributed by Ken Steely]

(mendofever.com)

SAKOWICZ LIKED PINCHES BECAUSE SAKOWICZ PERSONALLY BENEFITTED

To the Editor:

I was heartbroken to hear that Johnny Pinches had passed. He was the best among us.

When I was moved to Ukiah in 1998, and in the subsequent years up that followed up until the present, Johnny taught me what it meant to love Mendocino County. I was a city slicker — born and raised in the New York metropolitan area and had worked on Wall Street and lived on Perry Street in Greenwich Village — and I was clueless about how lucky I was to have landed in Mendocino County.

I was clueless until I met Johnny Pinches. I became his “project”.

I connected with Johnny while serving on the county grand jury, and we instantly bonded. Johnny took me to state water board meetings in Sacramento. Water issues were Johnny’s political passion. He would meet me for lunch at Board of Supervisor meetings.

On numerous occasions, I visited Johnny’s ranch in the northernmost reaches of our county.

On Johnny’s ranch, I did a lot of things for the first time in my life. I touched the flank of a cow for the first time in my life. I rode a horse. I smoked pot and learned how to roll a joint. I put my feet in the cold waters of the North Fork of the Eel River. I chased a puppy. I howled at the moon.

Johnny taught me about the massacres of Pomo Indians by white settlers and how Pomo ancestral lands were stolen from them and how Pomo children were subjugated to near-slavery condition picking hops — much like how Black children were forced to pick cotton in the Deep South.

Johnny taught me about Pomo culture. Once, we visited the Grace Hudson Museum together, and Johnny showed me Pomo baskets and taught me about the community support, spiritual practice, and ceremony behind traditional basketweaving.

The seasons passed from summer to winter, and the years passed, and Johnny’s diabetes caught up with him, and Johnny had to retire from the Board of Supervisors because he couldn’t drive anymore because his diabetic retinopathy caught with him. Yet, we stayed in touch.

Johnny encouraged me to be an “activist” grand juror on several do-nothing, do-no-harm county grand juries in an era when the same useless political sycophant got appointed foreman every other year for about a decade. Johnny encouraged me to serve on the board of Mendocino County Employee Retirement Association as a trustee and bonded fiduciary. Johnny encouraged me to serve on the board of the Mendocino County Redevelopment Agency and on board of the Ukiah Valley Sanitation District. Johnny encouraged me to run for 1st District Supervisors in 2020. Johnny encouraged me to keep doing my public affairs radio show, first on KZYX, then on KMEC, now on KMUD.

Johnny, you called me to public service. You called me to love and to serve Mendocino County.

Johnny Pinches, you were a good friend. A good mentor. A good, good man. I love you, brother.

John Sakowicz

Ukiah

PINCHES & THE EEL RIVER PICTOGRAPHS

by Bruce Anderson (Summer of 2012)

There are people who have lived all their lives in Mendocino County who don’t know where Island Mountain is and have never been to Covelo. This County is a big place with secrets and mysteries and whole worlds of hidden attractions and wild beauty in every part of its vastness. Consider yourself lucky if you’ve got a reliable guide who knows this place.

It was a warm summer day more than ten years ago when five of us got lucky. We'd responded to an invitation from former supervisor John Pinches to visit his ranch an hour and a half north and east off Highway 101’s comforting pavement, up and into the deep Mendo outback. Not that Mendocino County’s northeastern corner is uninhabited. There are people back there, but they aren’t what you would call “joiners.” There are outlaws and cowboys and combat vets who never got all the way back from Vietnam — four wheel-drive country in which it is wise to stick to the well-worn paths. If you go busting off the trail like the young dudes do in those off road Toyota ads you could run into intersecting fields of fire, or off a precipice never to be found.

On a previous visit to the Pinches ranch, the Supervisor had mentioned that there were some interesting Indian “artifacts,” or “pre-historic rock drawings” on a huge stone on the middle fork of the Eel not far from his ranch house.

Pinches’ place is far up on a ridge overlooking the river in a setting so splendidly isolated, so ruggedly beautiful that if I lived there I would spend most of my daylight hours looking out the windows, east to Yolly Bollys, north to Mount Shasta, south to Hull Mountain.

But the purpose of the visit was the mystery stone, not the views. The site we’d come to see wasn’t what you’d call easily accessed; it was a long way down from Pinches’ ridgetop ranch, and then a good hike north along the collapsing rail line of the totally collapsed Northwestern Pacific Railroad, which runs alongside the Eel, deep in the Eel River Canyon.

The former supervisor is not only a generous and gracious host, he’s a walking encyclopedia on the history of a fascinating region of the county — its wildest region. He's also an astute evaluator of local events and personalities, making him about as lively a companion and tour guide as one could possibly hope for. As a supervisor, Pinches was a rare combination of candor and commitment to the wider interests of the people who live with the consequences of what seemed like an endless succession of bad local decisions. He quickly got into trouble with the Ukiah-based bureaucracies.

Elected officials come and go. The bureaucrats stay. They don’t like the occasional maverick who gets elected but won’t sit around with them in endless meetings talking about “robust interfaces” and “new paradigms.” An elected person who asks for a look at the books and asks where the money goes? Cordon that person off, and keep them cordoned off. Pinches was the best supervisor we had in many a new moon, but made a run for the state senate where he got buried in an avalanche of special interest money.

“I’ve driven cattle by horseback over every inch of this country,” he says, seeming to toss off an anecdote about every topographical oddity his sharp eye lights upon.

We’d rendezvoused at the foot of Bell Springs Road early that morning: Joe and Karen Pfaff, Don Morris, Alexander Cockburn, and me. Morris, who spends a lot of time backpacking in the Yolly Bollys himself is a distant second to Pinches in knowledge of the area. The rest of us might be said to be eager students.

Pinches led the long trek up to his ranch. By the time we got all the way up the hill, it was lunch time. We broke out our provisions and spread them out on his kitchen table. After lunch, Pinches led us down into the canyon on a long and precipitously harrowing old skid trail. Half way down John stopped at an otherwise forgettable jumble of cliff-dwelling trees and volcanic rock. “Right here is where Mendocino, Trinity and Humboldt counties meet,” declared. “They all come together right here.”

At the foot of the ridge, and now on the west bank of the Eel, we regrouped on the railroad tracks. We were some 14 miles into the Eel River Canyon from Dos Rios on Highway 162, the road that links 101 to Covelo.

There were once certain professional officeholders we will call Mike Thompson, Wes Chesbro and Virginia Strom-Martin who were telling the public that the rail line we were standing on was vital to the ongoing commercial viability of Mendocino and Humboldt counties; that products off-loaded at Eureka’s deep-water port would reach markets to the south by ecologically sound rail rather than by the polluting fossil fuel trucks on Highway 101; that America's bounty would be hauled north by this very rail from the Bay Area to Eureka and on out to the burgeoning markets of Asia; that Asia would return-ship vast loads of products into Eureka’s deep water port for distribution south by rail; and that all this magnificent enterprise depended on three-quarters of a billion dollars Tom Strom-Boro would get from Al Gore to invest in 60 miles of troublesome track in the Eel River Canyon.

The problem was that the track was collapsed in many area between Dos Rios and Alderpoint, and where it wasn't collapsed it was covered with landslides that just keep on sliding as they have for many previous thousands of years. Three-quarters of a trillion dollars wouldn’t make the line permanently passable for the demands these cynical fantasists would make on it.

Another problem was conceptual: Even if there were a deep water port in Eureka capable of processing Asia’s bounty, why would entrepreneurs ship stuff in and out of Eureka when they’ve got Frisco (more or less), Oakland (fer sure) and San Pedro (for a fact)? Anybody who says trains can run regularly through the Eel River Canyon hasn’t taken a walk along its tracks.

Pinches shook his head at the folly of spending another dime on the line that bordered his property. “They talk about how it will cost more money to close it than get it going again? It’s not costing anybody anything as it is. Look at it. Think a train’s coming through here any time soon?”

Cowboy John was for letting nature reclaim its own and said he thought the focus of the ongoing state and federal bailout ought to be on getting the train running between Willits and Marin County, “which is doable.” He said if the government did anything at all in the Eel River Canyon it should convert the track to a trail for the enjoyment of hikers, bikers and recreational vehicles. And what a magnificent trail it would be. A trail from, say, Dos Rios to Alderpoint, or all the way up to Eureka, would draw thousands of people to enjoy the splendors few now ever see.

We stood looking north along the undulating and occasionally disappeared track. Pinches pointed north where he said we would find the archeological site we had come to see. “You go on up the tracks two or three miles till you come to a big open meadow-like space. Across the river you’ll see two big rocks. Three or four years ago we put a winter stock fence in there and some of it should still be there. That’s where it is.”

John leapfrogged us two at a time up the track a ways on his four-wheeler, informing us that Dean Witter himself owned “everything on the other side of the river.” John said Witter had his own excursion car on the old Northwestern Pacific, “and naturally he was all for keeping the train going up here.” Witter would halt the train not far from where we stood, be ferried across the river by a ranch hand, and then driven on up to his ranch house not far off the Mina Road east of the Eel.

“I’m going back up to the ranch,” Pinches said. “The keys are in my truck. If you don’t show up by nightfall, I’ll come lookin’ for ya.”

It then occurred to me that Cowboy John might have spent the day setting us up for a kind of liberal snipe hunt. I imagined him at Boomer’s down in Laytonville regaling the bar crowd with an account of the day’s outing. “Ol’ Anderson’s been after me for years to show him the Indian rocks. ‘When ya gonna take me to see the rock, John?’ he asks every time I see him. So I take him and four other of these liberal types up to the ranch and down to the river. I tell ‘em, ‘Just keep walking until you see the big rock and the little rock. Far as I know they’re still walkin’ north. Must be up around Fort Seward ’bout now.”

Apologies to our host. I was the only one to whom this totally unwarranted suspicion occurred.

The five of us hiked on up the track, alert to topography featuring open spaces and the Mutt and Jeff rocks. It was hot, but not oppressively hot. Much of the footing was by railroad tie and, as anyone who’s done it, walking for any distance on railroad ties is awfully tedious because one has got to carefully watch each step instead of the scenery.

I'd seen what people call “spirit rocks” at two other places — one not far from the Russian River in Sonoma County and one deep in the hills between Yorkville and Hopland. They sit in areas astride what are said to be ancient Indian trails from east to west. To borrow a word from Dude-Bro Land, these spirit rocks are “awesome,” thousands of years of messages engraved in the stone by people who lived out their Edenic lives in absolute harmony with the land that sustained them.

I wasn’t quite sure we were looking for a spirit rock or cave drawings or ancient pottery shards; Pinches had referred to the site variously as a cave, hieroglyphics and artifacts. After a couple hours of serious track-trudging, Don Morris yelled that he’d spotted what we were looking for on the other side of the Eel.

Cockburn was first down the bank and out of his clothes, fording the river waist high with his belongings held over his head. Morris and I were next across. The water was warm, and near the banks stringy mosses had begun to coagulate in the flow. The middle branch of the Eel is pretty but it also seems sickly — it’s too warm, too lifeless, its flow too lethargic. It reminded me of a sort of aquatic version of one of those doomed tubercular patients in Russian novels.

The rock formation containing its two lines of markings — mostly sequences of circles with horizontal lines through them — was above the water line. The pictograms, if that’s what they were, had been chiseled into the stone outcropping above a recess that might serve as a cave but ran back into the rock only ten feet or so. The markings numbered less than 20. Pinches said archeologists who have visited the site have also been mystified by the signs. They apparently pre-date the earliest Indian pictographs found on the spirit rocks. Pinches said that these mysterious symbols were once the subject of a Chronicle story.

I pulled myself up above the clump of volcanic stone displaying the engravings hoping to find more, but despite what seemed to me much more likely slates on which our ancient ancestors might have carved out whatever message they’d carved out than the unlikely stone I’d just seen below, there were no more drawings. Looking around, none of it seemed a likely spot for a village or an ancient transit stop, but then I’m hardly an expert in these matters and the goddess only knows how many times the terrain has been shuffled in the great geologic upheavals since time began.

We all re-forded the river, trudged back down the track and climbed into our host’s pick-up truck. I didn’t look forward to piloting my comrades back up the precarious hill, and made the mistake of telling them, “There’s a blind area in my bifocals of about 20 feet. Let me know if I get too close to the cliff.” I also mentioned that I’d never driven a four-wheel-drive vehicle before. There was perfect silence in the truck as my passengers prepared themselves for catastrophe. With Karen Pfaff in the passenger seat emitting terrified yelps, and the three boys in the back seat mutely reconciled to catastrophe, I steered Pinches’ modern marvel of traction upwards.

Karen suddenly screamed and punched my arm. “Sorry,” she said, “but you were real close to the edge.” I looked to my right. “No!” she gasped, as I understood she much preferred I keep my eyes on the rutted upward path ahead. “You’re fine now,” she said in the voice of a person who knows in her bones the peril is extreme. The silence of the crypt reigned in the rear passenger seat. Cockburn still had six stitches in his forehead he'd sustained when the brakes on his old car went out on a steep Petrolia grade, forcing him to steer into the bank or take a premature step into the abyss. Here the poor guy was in his second near-death drama in a month.

But we made it, and from the ranch we even made it back out onto 101 just about dusk, even though I’d destroyed the oil pan of my decrepit vehicle on the road in, and the impressive late-afternoon attempts to patch the thing failed. Cockburn had slid beneath my van as if he did it for a living, laboring for a half hour to patch the leak with an impromptu gasket fashioned by Pinches. On the long drive out to the highway, Morris and I poured oil into the crankcase, and continued to pour oil into the crankcase all the way to Willits where the kid who came to tow the van to the shop complimented Cockburn’s repair attempt. “Whoever tried to fix this did a pretty good job, but it musta broke open again when you hit another rock.”

My wife retrieved me at the Willits Safeway. “Was it worth it?” she asked. “Yup, and then some,” I said.

PINCHES & COCKBURN AT ISLAND MOUNTAIN (August 2012)

Editor,

I was deeply saddened to learn from the July 25 AVA that Alexander Cockburn had died prematurely at the age of 71 on July 19, 2012.

It should have been a shock, but lately I've spent an inordinate amount of time attending memorial services and sending condolences as several friends and acquaintances of my generational cohort have quietly slipped away. Those of us born during the World War II years (1939-1945) are cynically called the “doom generation” because we have an intuitive realization that the shit can hit the fan at any moment.

As fellow Cornhusker Nick Nolte recently said, “At 70 you crest that hill and realize that you can no longer do something about the slow disintegration of the body.”

I didn't really know Alexander Cockburn personally, but I knew him well through his writing.

I met him briefly in Boonville in the late 80s when he and Fred Gardner performed at a bar that is now Lauren's, and again later when he appeared at the Casper Inn.

The last time I met him was during an outing to John Pinches Island Mountain Ranch accompanied by the Editor and Cockburn's friends from Petrolia, Joe and Karen Paff of Gold Rush Coffee fame. Our goal was to find the fabled ancient petroglyphs on the east side of the Eel River rumored to be near a certain milemarker.

Former Supervisor John Pinches, our gracious host, drove us down to the railroad tracks on the west side of the river and we started the difficult and slow hike on the railroad ties because there were few walkable areas on either side of the rails. John Pinches helped move us along ferrying people one by one on his quad runner which straddled the rails.

At the designated milemarker we started wading across the river occasionally disappearing into unseen holes. The east bank was a dense jumble of brush and rocks with no obvious outcrops. But there was one vertical slab of rock that beckoned, and we made our way there to discover the fabled petroglyphs on a vertical south face.

These petroglyphs had the traditional spiral and a zigzag motifs but were minimal by Southwest standards. Nonetheless, we were thrilled to find them. I thought about how long it took to make them and wondered what the graffiti artist was trying to say and concluded that it was just an ancient version of, “Kilroy Was Here.”

During this whole outing Cockburn was having a grand adventure, hiking way ahead of us as if he were on a personal quest for the Holy Grail.

Back at the ranchhouse we had to deal with a major oil leak in the Editor's pickup truck caused by the undercarriage scraping the tortuous rocky roads.

Cockburn slid under the pickup and determined that the oil drain plug had cracked. So he removed it, and in John Pinches' shop, devised a temporary patch that reduced the leak from a gusher to a stream which required frequent crankcase fill ups on the way back.

I had brought along a copy of the IWW publication by Walker C. Smith, “The Everett Massacre: A History of the Class Struggle in the Lumber Industry” that had belonged to my grandfather. Cockburn was very interested in the book and the Editor warned me not to lend it to him if I ever wanted to see it again.

To me, Alexander Cockburn's most endearing qualities were his mischievous sense of humor, his rapier wit, his world class bullshit detector, his stubborn, no-compromise positions on critical issues, and his genuine empathy for so-called “ordinary people” — the hapless victims of turbocharged capitalism. You could say he had a hard head and a soft heart.

I must admit, though, to being totally baffled when Cockburn dredged up obscure esoteric references to bolster his argument. My favorite Cockburn stories were his humorous, interesting accounts of cross-country jaunts in his Chrysler tunaboat searching for the perfect barbecue.

It would have been grand fun had Cockburn taken an extensive road trip through all 50 states reporting on the mood of America. (Though the drive to Hawaii would have been dicey). A contemporary Alexis de Tocqueville.

Though Alexander Cockburn's departure leaves a huge void, he will always be a member of the AVA family. He's just hit the road to another realm. I accept the Druid notion that death is just a gateway on a long journey.

Cheers,

Don Morris

Skunktown (Willits)

THE SCHOONER ELECTRA

by Carol Dominy

The schooner Electra was built in the mid-1870s at Little River, California, by shipbuilder Thomas Heinrich Petersen. A two-masted, single-deck lumber schooner, she measured 89 feet in length and displaced just over 92 tons. With her home port in San Francisco, she was part of a vital fleet of coastal vessels that carried lumber from the redwood forests of Northern California to the growing cities of the West Coast.

Over her nearly two-decade career, Electra gained a reputation as one of the fastest and most reliable sailing vessels along the Mendocino coast. She was long captained by men such as Captain Stanton and later Captain Griffith, under whom she earned the title of “champion of the coast” for her swift passages and dependable performance. Owned in part by the Mendocino Lumber Company and Charles D. Ford, she played a key role in the booming lumber trade, ferrying millions of board feet from Pacific Coast mills.

The Schooner Electra Under Full Sail, c. 1880. (Gift of Alice Earl Wilder)

But Electra’s sailing life was not without hardship. On October 10, 1893, while attempting to leave Mendocino’s harbor in the early morning hours, she ran aground on the rocks near the blowhole on the harbor’s north side. Though she floated free several hours later, she suffered serious hull damage. The steamer Cleone took her cargo, and plans were made to tow her to the city for repairs. Despite heavy seas, she was salvaged and underwent extensive rebuilding.

Tragically, Electra’s luck ran out the following year. On October 16, 1894, while anchored off Cambria in San Luis Obispo County, a fierce gale drove her ashore as she was unloading a cargo of 150,000 board feet of lumber. Captain Wilson and his crew barely made it to shore with the help of townspeople, and the Electra soon broke in two. It was a heartbreaking end for a vessel once celebrated for her speed and grace—a true workhorse of the redwood era, lost to the relentless force of the Pacific.

(kelleyhousemuseum.org)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, May 18, 2025

NAKOLO ANDERSON-JOENS-POULTON, 20, Willits. DUI.

KELLY CLARK, 40, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

JAMES GOWAN JR., 62, Ukiah. Parole violation.

JOHN HILL, 38, Ukiah. DUI, vandalism, trespassing, bringing controlled substance into jail.

ELIZABETH ILAR-PARRISH, 27, Ukiah. Misdemeanor hit&run with property damage.

SCOTT LINDERBLAD, 47, Lakeport/Ukiah. Domestic violence court order violation, resisting, probation revocation.

JASON SPARKES, 53, Ukiah. DUI, concealed weapon in vehicle.

KEVIN TURPIN, 59, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.

MYCHELL VEGA-AYALA, 31, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, resisting, probation revocation.

BAY TO BREAKERS: The overall winners were Oscar Medina, 32, of San Francisco, with a time of 37:08 and a pace of 4:59 per mile; Christopher Olley, 29, of San Francisco, with a time of 37:19 and a pace of 5:00 per mile; and Connor Clark, 30, of San Francisco, with a time of 37:28 and a pace of 5:01 per mile. The female winner was Julia Vasquez Giguere, 29, of San Francisco, with a time of 42:27 and a pace of 5:42 per mile, and the nonbinary winner was Cal Calamia, 28, of San Francisco, with a time of 43:21 and a pace of 5:49 per mile. Complete results were posted online.

DON'T BELIEVE PG&E

Editor:

You may have heard that rich rooftop solar customers are not paying their fair share of electricity costs. The truth is, it’s not just rich people who are cashing in on the savings. Sixty-one percent of rooftop solar users are working and middle class. Fifty-two percent are people of color. So the myth that it’s only the wealthy making their own electricity is PG&E’s lie.

Another lie is that rooftop solar customers are costing all other ratepayers a “cost shift” of $8.5 billion a year. The truth is that rooftop solar customers are saving other ratepayers $1.49 billion per year.

These figures have been calculated by the Solar Rights Alliance (solarrights.org). Go to their website and click on “Learn More” to find out how you can fight back and keep California on track to meet its clean energy goals.

Assembly Bill 942 was passed by the state Assembly on May 5 and has been sent to the Senate. Gov. Gavin Newsom said he will sign it. Call, email or write to your state senator and urge them to vote no on this unfair tax on rooftop solar customers.

Randy Jones

Santa Rosa

ON ENDANGERED SPECIES DAY, GROUPS TELL WATER BOARD FEDS ARE 'UNRELIABLE PARTNERS'

by Dan Bacher

On the third Friday in May every year, thousands of people throughout the world celebrate Endangered Species Day by participating in events, learning about and taking action to protect threatened and endangered species.

But in California, supposedly the most “green” and “progressive” state in the nation, there is little cause for celebration on Endangered Species Day as both the state and federal governments amp up their attacks on the Delta Smelt, Central Valley salmon and other endangered and threatened fish populations.…

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/5/17/2322704/-On-Endangered-Species-Day-CA-Groups-Tell-Water-Board-Feds-Are-Unreliable-Partners

GIANTS FINISH SWEEP OF A’S, BUT JUSTIN VERLANDER’S FIRST WIN FOR S.F. REMAINS ELUSIVE

by Susan Slusser

Another start and still no win for Justin Verlander with the San Francisco Giants. Sunday’s game gets an asterisk, though. The 42-year-old was dealing with an undisclosed physical condition that affected his velocity — and the Giants won, too, easing the sting.

The Giants completed the three-game sweep of the A’s even without Wilmer Flores driving in a run. Flores, the major-league RBI leader, fueled the previous two victories, but Sunday some top-shelf pinch-hitting and Heliot Ramos did the job in a 3-2 win on a day the Dodgers and Padres both lost. San Francisco is a game behind Los Angeles in the NL West, tied with San Diego.

Verlander declined to detail whatever was bothering him; a neck issue limited his effectiveness last year, but he didn’t appear to be in any discomfort Sunday, either on the mound or after the game. He said the coaching staff and trainers all knew what he was dealing with and there were no concerns he might cause any further problems, “but clearly it was affecting my velocity and my mechanics,” he said.

Verlander, winless in his first 10 outings, an ongoing career high, is optimistic he’ll be OK for his next start, Saturday at Washington. “If I can pitch today, hopefully I can pitch in six days,” he said.

The future Hall of Famer is in his 20th season he’d like to hang on to get 300 wins; he needs 38 more.

Given that his velocity was down 3 mph from his 94.2 mph average and his fastball location was off, Verlander did a nice job allowing only two runs. He looked particularly out of sorts pitching from the stretch, with four of the five walks he issued coming with runners on base. He worked his way out of a bases-loaded threat in the first by getting Nick Kurtz to fly out. But in the fourth, after Lus Urias’ two-out double, he walked Max Schuemann (for the second time) and No. 9 hitter Jhonny Pereda, and Lawrence Butler’s single sent in two.

Going into that final inning, Verlander thought he’d learned to finesse things effectively despite the physical issue. “Not stuff-wise, obviously,” he said, “but I thought maybe I’d kind of figured out a way to navigate the mechanics and throw the ball semi-where I wanted to. Then the fourth, was just a bunch of the same, so that was pretty frustrating.”

If there was a day that looked primed for Verlander’s first Giants W, it was Sunday. He entered the day with a 17-8 record and a 2.60 ERA against the A’s in the regular season and a 1.26 postseason ERA with 49 strikeouts in 36 innings.

Ramos homered on Jeffrey Springs’ first pitch of the game, and seven innings later, he knocked in Patrick Bailey from second to provide the margin of victory. Pinch-hitter LaMonte Wade Jr., who’s had a rough start to the season, tripled to open the eighth against Tyler Ferguson and Bailey, also struggling, provided his own pinch hit, a single that sent in Wade. Christian Koss bunted Bailey to second, setting up the go-ahead run.

Wade entered the day batting .159 with a .519 OPS and Bailey was at .178/.477, both among the bottom 10 in the majors among players with 100 at-bats or more.

“There are certain events that can be huge for you, and he’s had a history of being able to pinch hit, so even though it hasn’t been great for him. I think he’s ready for those type moments, and hopefully spurs Bailey too,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Two really good at-bats, they came up big for us. Koss gets down a bunt, and then Ramos does what he does.”

The bunt was big for Ramos, making him even more determined. “I felt had the pressure on me, and I was like ‘I have to come through,’” Ramos said.

Ramos’ homer was his fifth in his past 19 games, and he’s batting .396 in May.

San Francisco’s bullpen continued its remarkable work, with five scoreless innings, and Randy Rodriguez deserves special note. His most recent 1-2-3 inning lowered the right-hander’s ERA to 0.92, best in the National League and second best in the majors among pitchers with a minimum of 19 innings pitched. Ryan Walker recorded the save, striking out pinch hitter JJ Bleday to end it. The Giants allowed the A’s three total runs in the series.

Even with the A’s moving to Sacramento, the rivalry remained good for business, with all three games selling out. It was the first time the Giants have swept the A’s since July 24-26, 2015, also at Oracle Park.

Hicks On New Role:

Jordan Hicks spoke publicly for the first time since he lost his rotation spot and he said he still would like to start, that’s always been his goal, but he understands the move.

“We have a really good ballclub here, and things just weren’t going the way that we wanted with me as a starting pitcher,” said Hicks, who had a rotation-worst 6.55 ERA despite good peripheral metrics. “I’ve just got to turn the page for now and go do some bullpen work.”

Hayden Birdsong will start in Hicks’ former spot Tuesday against the Royals.

(SF Chronicle)

TRUMP WANTS TO LET CHAIN SAWS LOOSE IN CALIFORNIA NATIONAL FORESTS

by Kurtis Alexander

The Trump administration is calling in the chain saws at scores of national forests, including the 18 in California, hoping to ramp up timber production in places that millions of Americans visit each year.

But the effort will only get so far.

Despite fears of vicious clear-cutting, forestry experts say too many things are working against today’s timber trade to expect a vast expansion of logging, especially in California, whether it’s the forests around Lake Tahoe, near Yosemite or at Big Sur.

For starters, the industry has lost capacity to process wood. There are also issues with the trees, which have been degraded by wildfires and drought or set aside for protection. Additionally, recent federal staffing cuts are likely to hobble the Forest Service’s ability to prepare logging contracts.

“Operationally, they’re not going to get much done,” said Bill Stewart, emeritus forestry specialist at UC Berkeley.

The inability to significantly increase timber operations, while sparing trees, comes with downsides. Foremost may be a failure to reduce wildfire risk. Targeted tree removal, though often controversial, is sometimes used as a tactic to make wildlands less combustible by thinning overgrown vegetation.

With so much of the West burning in recent years, the need to safeguard forests and nearby communities is indisputable. California has seen nine of its 10 biggest blazes in the past decade. Just months ago, parts of Los Angeles were obliterated by flames.

The Trump administration cites fire danger as one of the reasons for wanting more trees cut, alongside wanting to “fully exploit” public lands for wood supplies and revive the domestic timber industry.

“Increasing logging, in and of itself, is not a terrible threat,” said John Buckley, executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, a nonprofit that advocates for healthy mountain landscapes. “If it is consistently (done) in a fashion that keeps environmental protection measures, it may result in a more fire-resistant forest.”

The president’s push for logging comes alongside a handful of other major initiatives intended to harden forests to fire, each of which may involve removing trees. They include the bipartisan Fix our Forests Act and Save our Sequoias Act, both being taken up by Congress. In addition, Gov. Gavin Newsom is directing expedited fire-prevention work, including tree removal, on state and private lands.

Many environmental groups remain wary of these efforts. Despite headwinds facing the timber industry, the groups say profit-driven logging companies will find ways to use the policies to cut down high-value trees that have little to do with fire danger. Even a small amount of logging, they say, can sometimes cause great damage to forests and ecosystems.

A steady decline. Then, an executive order

President Donald Trump’s executive order to boost logging was issued March 1 and has since crystalized into a U.S. Forest Service directive to increase timber production by 25% over five years.

Plans for how and where the additional logging will occur are yet to be drafted. Forest Service officials, though, confirmed that all of California’s national forests will play a role in meeting the target.

The agency manages about 20 million acres in California, from the Cleveland National Forest near Mexico to the Klamath National Forest along the Oregon border. The federal lands, which are obliged to serve several purposes, including recreation, wilderness and commercial activity, constitute more than half of the state’s forests.

“Active management has long been at the core of Forest Service efforts to address the many challenges faced by the people and communities we serve,” agency officials said in an emailed response to the Chronicle about the proposed increase in timber production.

While logging is a staple in national forests, the practice has subsided considerably in recent decades. Nationwide, timber sales on agency lands averaged about 3 billion board feet annually over the past few years compared to almost four times that amount in the logging heydays of the 1970s and ’80s, federal data show.

The drop in sales has come with a decline in infrastructure. In California, there are about 30 medium-to-large sawmills today, down from more than 100 last century. Most of the existing mills have been retooled to process smaller trees.

Scott Stephens, a professor of fire ecology and forestry at UC Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, said the industry simply doesn’t have the capacity to quickly rebound. He said a few mills in California’s far north may be able to increase output but that does little good for the rest of the state.

“They’ve actually tried putting (logs) on train cars and shipping them to Northern California or all the way up to Oregon, and it turned out to be fiscally implausible,” he said.

Biomass plants, which turn wood into energy and have been lauded as an alternative way to bring trees to market, are yet to prove viable on a large scale.

Even if the timber industry was able to process more trees, logging companies wouldn’t necessarily source the additional wood from national forests. The industry has increasingly shifted to private lands for supplies, with federal lands now accounting for less than 10% of the wood produced in California, compared to more than 40% in the 1980s.

Among the reasons that federal lands have fallen out of favor are that many high-value trees have burned or been marred by insects and disease, or they remain off-limits to loggers or are too hard to get to. The smaller, more accessible trees aren’t worth the cost of cutting.

Some forests, including the Los Padres National Forest, which is home to Big Sur, and the Angeles National Forest in Southern California haven’t seen significant interest from logging companies in decades.

The challenge of turning things around on federal lands would likely be complicated by staff reductions at the Forest Service. The Trump administration, as part of a broad effort to streamline government, has enacted layoffs, early retirements and forced leaves.

The number of employees lost at the 35,000-person Forest Service is unclear, with union officials initially estimating that 10% of the workforce was cut though some workers have since been reinstated and others have accepted buyouts. Even before the new administration, the agency was short staffed. More reductions are expected.

While logging in national forests is generally done by private companies, federal employees select the sites, bid out the projects, manage the permitting and keep tabs on the work — all responsibilities that would be slowed with fewer scientists and forestry technicians. Already, staff cuts are prompting forest managers to plan for fewer recreation services.

The largest logging company in California, Sierra Pacific Industries, declined an interview with the Chronicle to discuss the prospects for timber production under the new administration.

George Gentry, the senior vice president of the trade group California Forestry Association, acknowledged that the industry faces challenges but said he welcomes the overtures at both the federal and state levels to support logging and forest restoration. What exactly this will mean for timber production, he said, depends on how the policies play out.

A war on red tape

Last month, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins set the stage for expedited approvals of logging projects by declaring an emergency across 113 million acres of national forests, citing wildfires, disease and insect infestation. The designated area represents 59% of the agency’s total lands.

Forest Service officials have since detailed how new timber proposals on emergency lands will be advanced through scaled-back environmental reviews, public input and expert consultation, when legally possible.

While it’s unclear whether the streamlined approval process will spur more logging, the Trump administration isn’t alone in deeming red tape an obstacle to forestry work. Political leaders on both sides of the aisle, wanting to do more to address the wildfire crisis, are pushing to fast-track approvals of tree projects.

Both the Fix our Forests Act, with bipartisan authorship that includes Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and the Save our Sequoias Act, similarly sponsored by Democrats and Republicans, call for comprehensive forest management strategies on federal lands. In doing so, they codify rollbacks of project reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act for a range of activities. These include creating fuel breaks, proactively burning flammable vegetation and cutting down trees. (The Trump administration’s agenda is focused almost solely on cutting down trees.)

Newsom in March issued an emergency proclamation that supports a similar multifaceted approach to confronting wildfires on state-governed lands. Issued on the same day as Trump’s executive order on timber production, the directive suspends provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act and Coastal Act to accelerate forestry projects.

A raft of environmental groups, which includes the Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity, is concerned not only about the ecological harm that can come with efforts to sidestep regulation but that much of the intended forestry work, particularly removing trees, won’t temper wildfire danger. It’s a subject of increasing debate among scientists.

“Logging is not going to curb fires, not in the era of climate change,” said Chad Hanson, research ecologist and director of the John Muir Project. “It tends to make them burn faster and hotter and toward towns.”

Studies have shown that active timber sites can readily carry flames, as they did during the massive 2021 Dixie Fire. In many logged areas, the larger, fire-resistant trees have been removed while the smaller trees that replace them are more susceptible to burning. Also, tree removal can leave forests hotter and windier and hence more prone to an extreme fire, especially as the planet warms.

At the same time, studies have shown that many forests are dangerously overgrown, largely due to decades of putting out wildfires that would have otherwise cleared vegetation, and that selective logging would reduce the threat.

“Excess timber will come out of the forest in only two ways: Either we will carry it out, or nature will burn it out,” said Rep. Tom McClintock, R-El Dorado Hills, who represents parts of the Sierra Nevada and is a co-sponsor of both the Fix our Forests Act and Save our Sequoias Act. The congressman supports Trump’s order for more logging.

Stephens, who researches wildfire prevention methods at UC Berkeley, said logging can be good or bad for a forest, depending on how it’s done.

“The untreated forest is vulnerable to calamity. If you go in there and just focus on restoration and trying to reduce surface fuels, you can make it better,” he said. “But if you go in there and say we need to cut this many board feet, you miss” the point.

While opposition to logging is inevitable, some environmental groups have warmed to the idea as part of a holistic approach to improving forest conditions and lessening fire risk.

The National Audubon Society, Environmental Defense Fund and Save the Redwoods League are among those that are supportive of an all-of-the-above strategy. Each is backing at least one of the forestry bills in Congress.

The directives issued by the Trump administration, however, have not found favor with the environmental community. Many groups see the president’s interest in wildfire safety as simply a pretext to do more commercial logging.

Stephens said he’s not “alarmed” by the push for logging, underscoring the logistical constraints facing the timber industry. He’s happy to see any fire-mitigation strategies get off the ground at this point, after years with little progress improving forest health and more wildfires.

“Look at what we’ve endured,” he said. “The costs are so high. The restoration of our forests is paramount. I just don’t know what else to say. We need to address the condition of our forest.”

(SF Chronicle)

THE PERV BEAT, a reader notes:

Back when the movie ‘Cuties’ came out and everyone was arguing over its underage “sexy dancing” scene, a discussion I was in took an unusual turn: a fellow claiming to be an actual pedophile showed up to give his opinion. Now, obviously there's no verifying any of this, but it seemed plausible - he said he and his pedo friends didn't like the movie scene itself, because they found the girls ugly, but they did like the concept. And they all had “favorite” young girls that they followed on Instagram.

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY #2

It's not shocking to me what was a failed attempt at hiding Joe Biden's decline by him, Jill and his group, all unwilling to give up power. As an ordinary citizen, I saw the decline of a human being's health and mental state. It was right before my eyes and ears every time he spoke as the months and years during his first term slipped away as did his cognitive abilities etc. The debate was just the nightmarish pinnacle of that decline. Joe Biden was and apparently, still is, a stubborn, power hungry man who for all his now seemingly fake concerns for all of us, was only after one thing to maintain power and his legacy. Well,that legacy is destroyed now just as our country seems to be on a downward spiral.

KNOXVILLE: SUMMER OF 1915

by James Agee

We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the time I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child. It was a little bit sort of block, fairly solidly lower middle class, with one or two juts apiece on either side of that. The houses corresponded: middlesized gracefully fretted wood houses built in the late nineties and early nineteen hundreds, with small front and side and more spacious back yards, and trees in the yards, and porches. These were softwooded trees, poplars, tulip trees, cottonwoods. There were fences around one or two of the houses, but mainly the yards ran into each other with only now and then a low hedge that wasn’t doing very well. There were few good friends among the grown people, and they were not enough for the other sort of intimate acquaintance, but everyone nodded and spoke, and even might talk short times, trivially, and at the two extremes of general or the particular, and ordinarily next door neighbors talked quiet when they happened to run into each other, and never paid calls. The men mostly small businessmen, one or two very modestly executives, one or two worked with their hands, most of them clerical, and most of them between and forty-five.

But it is of these evenings, I speak.

Supper was at six and was over by half past. There was still daylight, shining softly and with a tarnish, like the lining of a shell? and the carbon lamps lifted the corners were on in the light, and the locusts were started, and the fire flies were out, and a few frogs were flopping in the dewy grass, by the time the fathers and the children came out. The children ran out first hell bent and yelling those names by which they were known? then the fathers sank out leisurely crossed suspenders, their collars removed and their necks looking tall and shy. The mothers stayed back in the kitchen washing and drying, putting things away, recrossing their traceless footsteps like the lifetime journeys of bees, measuring out the dry cocoa for breakfast. When they came out they had taken off their aprons and their skirts were dampened and they sat in rockers on porches quietly.

It is not of the games children play in the evening that I want to speak now, it is of a contemporaneous atmosphere that has little to do with them: that of fathers of families, each in his space of lawn, his shirt fishlike pale in the unnatural light and his face nearly anonymous, hosing their lawns. The hoses were attached at spigots that stood out of the brick foundations of the houses. The nozzles were variously set but usually so there was a long sweet stream spray, the nozzle wet in the hand, the water trickling the right forearm and peeled-back cuff, and the water whishing out a long loose and lowcurved and so gentle a sound. First an insane noise of violence in the nozzle, then the irregular sound of adjustment, then the smoothing into steadiness and a pitch accurately tuned to the size and style of stream as any violin. So many qualities of sound out of one hose: so many choral differences out of those several hoses that were in earshot. Out of any one hose, the almost dead silence of the release, and the short still arch of the separate big drops, silent as a held breath, and only the noise of the flattering noise on leaves and the slapped grass at the fall of abig drop. That, and the intense hiss with the intense stream? that, and that intensity not growing less but growing more quiet and delicate with the turn the nozzle, up to the extreme tender whisper when the water was just a wide of film. Chiefly, though, the hoses were set much alike, in a compromise between distance and tenderness of spray (and quite surely a sense of art behind this compromise, and a quiet deep joy, too real to recognize itself), and the sounds therefore were pitched much alike? pointed by the snorting start of a new hose? decorated by some man playful with the nozzle? left empty, like God by the sparrow’s fall, when any single one of them desists: and all, though near alike,of various pitch? and in this unison. These sweet pale streamings in the light out their pallors and their voices all together, mothers hushing their children, the hushing unnaturally prolonged, the men gentle and silent and each snail-like withdrawn into the quietude of what he singly is doing, the urination of huge children stood loosely military against an invisible wall, and gentle happy and peaceful, tasting the mean goodness of their living like the last of their suppers in their mouths; while the locusts carry on this noise of hoses on their much higher and sharper key. The noise of the locust is dry, and it seems not to be rasped or vibrated but urged from him as if through a small orifice by a breath that can never give out. Also there is never one locust but an illusion of at least a thousand. The noise of each locust is pitched in some classic locust range out of which none of them varies more than two full tones: and yet you seem to hear each locust discrete from all the rest, and there is a long, slow, pulse in their noise, like the scarcely defined arch of a long and high set bridge. They are all around in every tree, so that the noise seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, from the whole shell heaven, shivering in your flesh and teasing your eardrums, the boldest of all the sounds of night. And yet it is habitual to summer nights, and is of the great order of noises, like the noises of the sea and of the blood her precocious grandchild, which you realize you are hearing only when you catch yourself listening. Meantime from low in the dark, just outside the swaying horizons of the hoses, conveying always grass in the damp of dew and its strong green-black smear of smell, the regular yet spaced noises of the crickets, each a sweet cold silver noise three-noted, like the slipping each time of three matched links of a small chain.

But the men by now, one by one, have silenced their hoses and drained and coiled them. Now only two, and now only one, is left, and you see only ghostlike shirt with the sleeve garters, and sober mystery of his mild face like the lifted face of large cattle enquiring of your presence in a pitch dark pool of meadow; and now he too is gone; and it has become that time of evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently and watching the street and the standing up into their sphere of possession of the trees, of birds hung havens, hangars. People go by; things go by. A horse, drawing a buggy, breaking his hollow iron music on the asphalt; a loud auto; a quiet auto; people in pairs, not in a hurry, scuffling, switching their weight of aestival body, talking casually, the taste hovering over them of vanilla, strawberry, pasteboard and starched milk, the image upon them of lovers and horsemen, squared with clowns in hueless amber. A street car raising its iron moan; stopping, belling and starting; stertorous; rousing and raising again its iron increasing moan and swimming its gold windows and straw seats on past and past and past, the bleak spark crackling and cursing above it like a small malignant spirit set to dog its tracks; the iron whine rises on rising speed; still risen, faints ; halts, the faint stinging bell; rises again, still fainter, fainting, lifting, lifts, faints forgone: forgotten. Now is the night one blue dew.

Now is the night one blue dew, my father has drained, he has coiled the hose.

Low on the length of lawns, a frailing of fire who breathes.

Content, silver, like peeps of light, each cricket makes his comment over and over in the drowned grass.

A cold toad thumpily flounders.

Within the edges of damp shadows of side yards are hovering children nearly sick with joy of fear, who watch the unguarding of a telephone pole.

Around white carbon corner lamps bugs of all sizes are lifted elliptic, solar systems. Big hardshells bruise themselves, assailant: he is fallen on his back, legs squiggling.

Parents on porches: rock and rock: From damp strings morning glories : hang their ancient faces.

The dry and exalted noise of the locusts from all the air at once enchants my eardrums.

On the rough wet grass of the back yard my father and mother have spread quilts. We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there. First we were sitting up, then one of us lay down, and then we all lay down, on our stomachs, or on our sides, or on our backs, and they have kept on talking. They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all in particular, of nothing at all. The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near. All my people are larger bodies than mine, quiet, with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds. One is an artist, he is living at home. One is a musician, she is living at home. One is my mother who is good to me. One is my father who is good to me. By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of night. May god bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.

After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her: and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.

"Poetry's another word

For losing everything

Except purity of heart."

THE 12 O’CLOCK MASS, Roundstone, County Galway, 28 July 2002

by Paul Durcan

On Sunday 28th of July 2002 –
The summer it rained almost every day –
In rain we strolled down the road
To the church on the hill overlooking the sea.
I had been told to expect “a fast Mass”.
Twenty minutes. A piece of information
Which disconcerted me.

Out onto the altar hurried
A short, plump priest in late middle age
With a horn of silver hair,
In green chasuble billowing
Like a poncho or a caftan over
White surplice and a pair
Of Reeboks – mammoth trainers.

He whizzed along,
Saying the readings himself as well as the Gospel;
Yet he spoke with conviction and with clarity;
His every action an action
Of what looked like effortless concentration;
Like Tiger Woods on top of his form.
His brief homily concluded with a solemn request.

To the congregation he gravely announced:
“I want each of you to pray for a special intention,
A very special intention.
I want each of you – in the sanctity of your souls –
To pray that, in the All-Ireland
Championship hurling quarter-final this afternoon in Croke Park,
Clare will beat Galway.”

The congregation splashed into laughter
And the church became a place of effortless prayer.
He whizzed through the Consecration
As if the Consecration was something
That occurs at every moment of the day and night;
As if betrayal and the overcoming of betrayal
Were an every-minute occurrence.

As if the Consecration were the “now”
In the “now” of the Hail Mary prayer:
“Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.”
At the Sign of the Peace he again went sombre
As he instructed the congregation:
“I want each of you to turn around and say to each other:
‘You are beautiful.’”

The congregation was flabbergasted, but everyone fluttered
And swung around and uttered that extraordinary phrase:
“You are beautiful.”
I shook hands with at least five strangers,
Two men and three women, to each of them saying:
“You are beautiful.” And they to me:
“You are beautiful.”

At the end of Mass, exactly twenty-one minutes,
The priest advised: “Go now and enjoy yourselves
For that is what God made you to do –
To go out there and enjoy yourselves
And to pray that, in the All-Ireland
Championship hurling quarter-final between Clare and Galway
In Croke Park, Clare will win.”

After Mass, the rain had drained away
Into a tide of sunlight on which we sailed out
To St Macdara’s Island and dipped our sails –
Both of us smiling, radiant sinners.
In a game of pure delight, Clare beat Galway by one point:
Clare 1 goal and 17 points, Galway 19 points.
“Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.”

UNCLE PATRICK’S SECESSIONIST BREAKFAST

Short Story by Dave Eggers

The day was cool and the sky a satin white. Edie was hustling around the courtyard carrying folding chairs and coffee cups. No one was helping.

The night before had been more than anyone wanted. It was the first night of the Mahoney reunion, and the tweens had driven the ATV into a ditch. Cousin Aurora, a Monterey whale-watching captain, had gotten tipsy early on Oisin’s bathtub gin and had broken a chandelier while trying to change one of the bulbs. Shards of it were still being found all over the kitchen and TV room of the main house. Aurora was still in bed, afraid to be seen.

By midmorning Patrick, the patriarch, was up and insisting that everyone come to the courtyard. He and Edie had set up a dozen mismatched chairs in the shade of three badly bent lemon trees. The Mahoney family reunion, Patrick’s idea, had been hitched to his 82nd birthday, with Edie, his middle daughter, doing most of the planning. As she always did.

Maeve, Patrick’s wife and Edie’s mother, had been in charge for half a century. She’d passed on one warm night in September, and Edie and her kids had moved onto the property to watch over it and Patrick. The main house was a chalky and falling-down Spanish colonial sitting on a hundred and thirty-four rolling acres on California’s Central Coast. Tucked into the straw-colored hills were a half-dozen crooked outbuildings, and a man-made lake, and a pile of rusted metal that had once been a WWI biplane. The land had been used for cattle grazing for a hundred years, but when Patrick turned 80 he let Edie sell the cows and plant fruit.

“I’m setting out the strawberry lemonade,” Edie said, “and the kids are gathering some fruit and there should be some good bread coming. Oh, here it is. Thank you, Lori.”

Lori, her younger sister, was 54, an immigration lawyer in San Jose. She’d sliced two loaves of French bread and set it on the pizza oven Cole had built, which had never worked. No one had the heart to tell Cole, but in the meantime it made a very good staging site for the refreshments.

“Serve yourselves,” Edie said. “We know how Oisin feels about being waited on.”

Oisin, Patrick’s younger brother at 78, lived in Idaho and had a thing about restaurants, waiters and anyone acting like a waiter. He refused to be served and liked to talk about why. At the moment, though, Oisin was sitting on a stiff wooden chair, his body a perfect 45-degree angle, his arms crossed over his chest. His hair was long and white, his nose narrow and broken, and with his sunglasses on, it was impossible to know whether he was judging or napping.

The night before had gone late, and Patrick and Edie had pushed the morning event back an hour to accommodate hangovers and jet lag. By eleven, the marine layer had burned off and the sun was high and bright. The guest speakers were ready, sitting side by side on two wingback chairs that Edie and her baby brother Cole had dragged out of the living room.

“I don’t ask much of you all,” Patrick said to the twelve Mahoneys gathered. Beyond Patrick’s kids, there was a smattering of their spouses and cousins, and everyone felt sure this symposium would be stultifying. “I’ve never asked you to listen to a lecture or fireside chat before,” Patrick said. “But I ask you to indulge me and listen to our guests. I saw them speak at the library in Gilroy and was very impressed. They kindly agreed to come speak to our gathering, so I expect manners and engagement. Let the record show, Calla, that I don’t approve of your T-shirt.”

Lori’s daughter Calla was wearing a homemade shirt that said, simply, genitals. A willowy eighteen-year-old with a mop of curly blond hair, she’d recently been suspended for listing her high school for sale on Craigslist. She was so clever, and her pranks had such wit, that no one worried much about her. Sitting on a tilting beach chair, she gave her grandfather a professional nod. She apparently had no regrets.

“Anyway,” Patrick continued, “this is Franklin Ghent. … Wait. Is it ‘Gent’ like ‘gentleman,’ or Ghent like Belgian Ghent?”

“Ghent like Belgium,” Franklin said. Franklin was shaped like a refrigerator box, with bright pink skin and a neatly trimmed white beard. He wore red-rimmed glasses, jeans with suspenders, and a crisp pale-blue button-down. He seemed very at ease, very content, delighted to be surrounded by people and food, like a happy mall Santa.

“Good,” Patrick said. “And this is Daniel Chavez. They’re from the California Independence Coalition. I think what they’re proposing makes at least as much sense as the current situation, which is, in a few words, illogical and stupid. So Daniel and Franklin, take it away.”

Daniel was taller, leaner, with a sharper look — dark bright eyes, assessing eyebrows, a V-shaped chin. He was wearing a plum-colored T-shirt and black basketball shorts. He stood and swept his eyes across the attendees and smiled stiffly. “I want to first say that I’m sorry I’m wearing shorts. I saw the forecast and thought it would be about 100 degrees down here. I’m from Concord, so …”

No one was quite sure what being from Concord had to do with the temperature and his shorts.

“Don’t worry for a second,” Patrick said. “We’re not a formal group. Look at Oisin here. He’s had those shoes since 1981. And he might be asleep.”

Oisin did not stir.

Edie looked at Oisin and winced. Whenever they had company like this — people who had never been to the property, had never met the family — she was struck by how odd they surely seemed to outsiders. There was a bathtub visible in the meadow below the main house, and in the tub someone had put the upper half of a mannequin. That must have happened last night; the model and its unblinking stare hadn’t been there the day before. The main house was behind a wide dirt and gravel roundabout, built for stagecoaches and now crowded with cars and trucks and the petals of a series of cherry blossom trees that no one could remember planting.

“Wait,” Edie said. “Sorry. I should have given you guys some lemonade. Hold on.” She got up, which provoked a groan from her son Torin. Everyone knew Edie didn’t like to sit still. Tanned and lean and wearing baggy jeans and cloth tennis shoes, she poured Daniel and Franklin strawberry lemonade. Theirs were the only two glasses that matched. Edie and Patrick were alike in that neither saw the point in matching sets of anything.

“The kids and I made it this morning,” she said. “All grown here.” Ghent and Franklin glanced at the lemon trees immediately behind them and smiled.

“Oh, not those,” Edie said. “Those don’t produce anything good. The best ones are over there.” She pointed beyond the main house and beyond the half-burned gray barn, to a parched mohair hill where a necklace of florid green trees stood. The lemons that dotted the trees looked like dollops of yellow paint straight from the jar.

“Even better,” Franklin said. “Have you all been on this land a long time?”

“Is two hundred years a long time?” Patrick said.

Edie sat down. “It hasn’t been two hundred years, Dad. We got here in 1855.”

“Our people bought this parcel off the Spanish,” Patrick explained. “It’s been mostly cattle land until a few years ago. I retired and then Edie filled it with bizarre fruit trees.”

“Exotics, Dad,” Edie said, and got up again, headed back toward the house.

“Edie please sit,” Patrick said, but she was gone, under the hummingbird feeder and around the hedge. “Sorry. You guys can start.”

Daniel stood up. “Should we wait for …?” he asked.

“Edie? No,” Patrick said.

“Well, thank you, Patrick,” Daniel said. “We’re very honored to be here, and we believe this couldn’t be a more important moment in our state’s history …” he smiled, and seemed, for an inordinately long time, to lose his power of speech. It was clear that he was scanning the group for Katherine Sarver, Patrick and Maeve’s eldest daughter. She’d been a two-term senator from California and was now three years into restless retirement. Katherine was somewhere in the main house, or out hiking; she’d let Edie know that she didn’t want to be within ten miles of these crackpots.

“Katherine’s not here. Did you want her here?” Lori said, a shade of mocking in her voice. Of course Franklin and Daniel wanted the former senator there. Lori had been the most vocal about her displeasure with the morning’s program. Shorter and feistier than her sisters, Lori was an unceasingly pragmatic Democrat who’d run her sister Katherine’s first campaign and loathed impractical idealogues from either side.

“Not a problem!” Daniel said. “I don’t know how the former senator feels about the topic, but —”

“How does a former senator of the United States feel about its most populous state seceding?” Lori said.

“Keep your mind open, Lore,” Patrick said. “They haven’t even started yet.”

“The rest of us are listening,” Edie said, rushing back to the scene with a plate of scones. She was eyeing Oisin, who still had not stirred.

“Well,” Daniel said, “as Patrick noted, we’re from the California Independence Coalition. I’m the chief strategist, and Franklin is the director of research and policy. As you probably inferred, we’re in favor of California either seceding to become an independent nation, or somehow attaining a degree of autonomy that would have all the benefits of nationhood.”

“More than any other time in California’s history,” Franklin said, “it’s clear we want drastically different things from most of the rest of this country. California’s approach to immigration is different. Our environmental standards are decades ahead of most of the country. We respect a woman’s right to choose and value diversity and overwhelmingly want single-payer health care. We’re like a rocket ship that could do and see the most extraordinary things, but we’re held back by carrying the deadweight of regressive states and their regressive policies.”

Daniel jumped in. “Right now our role in this country’s fortunes is untenable. We provide more to the federal coffers than any other state, and yet our votes have not counted in a presidential election since 1876. We are drastically underrepresented in Congress, a body that is determined to retreat into the past, while California has always been a forward-looking place.”

He looked to Franklin, who was sipping his strawberry lemonade. Franklin took the cue. He released the glass from his mouth, but a filament of spittle stretched between the two and took an agonizingly long time to give up.

“On every issue,” Franklin said, unaware that a dozen people had just seen what they’d seen, “California is held in the past by a regressive Republican base. The cold truth is that the issues you’re seeing with Trump, these are Civil War issues. The majority of his voters are poorly educated whites, the same people who fought the Union 160 years ago. And in most ways they haven’t changed much. Meanwhile, twenty-seven percent of California is foreign-born. This is a state that respects diversity. It’s in large part why we’re the biggest and richest state.”

“California has had more Nobel winners in the last ten years than the South has had in the history of the nation,” Daniel noted. “This is a state that’s open to innovation. Some of these Trump states, not too much.”

“It’s like someone from 2025 married to someone from 1889,” Franklin said. “Naturally, no one’s happy.”

“That’s a good line,” Oisin said. “You two write that?”

“He speaks!” Patrick cried. Oisin still hadn’t moved.

“Now, you may be wondering how a single state could become its own nation,” Daniel said. “Our belief is that in most ways, we already are a separate nation. And we certainly have the resources to act as one. In 2022 our GDP was $3.64 trillion — the fifth-largest economy in the world …”

“I thought it was sixth,” Cole said.

Lori turned to her little brother and assessed him. Cole was 42, dark haired and soft shouldered and open to any and all alternative histories of UFOs, the building of the pyramids and the origin of COVID. Every few years he reshaped himself, without fanfare, into some new career. He’d been in IT, then sold solar panels, then was a fish broker, and most recently worked for a company that built panic rooms. Of all the family members in attendance, he was the most likely to have voted for Jill Stein. Lori could not speak, ever again, to anyone who had voted for Jill Stein, so was determined to never ask him.

“It varies,” Franklin clarified. “Sometimes we’re bigger than England, sometimes they’re bigger than us.”

“And we have 40 million people,” Franklin said, “about one-eighth of the U.S. population. But because of the Electoral College, our votes are almost meaningless.”

“I once voted for Gary Cooper,” Oisin said. “I wrote him in second time Nixon ran.”

“Was he still alive?” Patrick asked.

“Not sure,” Oisin said.

“Remember when Carrot Top ran for governor?” Edie asked Calla.

“Who’s Carrot Top?” Calla asked.

“Focus, people,” Patrick implored.

“The point is,” Daniel said, “we’re a net giver into the federal economy. We put in $2.5 trillion, and we get out $350 billion.”

“And we have proportionally little power in Congress,” Franklin said. “We have one senator for every 20 million people. Wyoming, on the other hand, has one for every 300,000. The same disconnect holds in the House.”

“The rural states are overwhelmingly white,” Daniel added, “and they have wildly disproportionate power in Congress and the Electoral College.”

“Which was by design,” Oisin noted.

“And still they make fun of us,” Cole said.

“They hate us,” Edie said. “Or pretend to hate us. Then they come to Universal Studios.”

“What about the vulnerable in these red states?” Lori asked. “Who protects them?”

“You’re saying California currently protects, say, the undocumented in West Virginia?” Patrick asked. “And yes, I know you’re a lawyer.”

“The vulnerable elsewhere could move here,” Franklin said. “You’d have the largest population realignment since WWII. Oh, who’s this?”

Paolo, Edie’s five-year-old, had appeared at Franklin’s side, carrying an armful of unusual fruit. “Oh, don’t do that, Paolo,” Edie said, striding toward him. But Paolo had already dumped the fruit in Franklin’s lap.

“Okay! What do we have here?” Franklin asked.

“That’s a lychee,” Paolo said. “That’s a dragon fruit.”

“The kid knows his fruit,” Daniel said, and reached for a strange cucumber still in Paolo’s hand. “Do I get some?” he asked, but Paolo didn’t acknowledge him. He’d chosen Santa.

Franklin didn’t know what to do about the fruit in his lap. Smiling politely, he moved them, one by one, to the stone deck next to his chair.

A phone began ringing. Pockets were checked. Franklin and Daniel smiled serenely.

“Dad, that’s yours, I think,” Edie said. Patrick looked at his own pocket for a long time, as if disappointed in the audacity of the phone within. He took it out and looked at the number. “It’s Wes calling from Boston.” He pushed the red button to send his nephew to voicemail.

“I’ll call back later,” Patrick said. “There’s always more time in California.”

Groans sounded from all quarters. Patrick had been saying this for decades. When the East Coast was going to sleep, he’d say, California had three more hours. When the Midwest was huddled inside, sequestered by snow, California had months of sun. “Always more here — more land, more sun, more time,” he’d say.

“Let’s talk about taxes,” Franklin said. “Right now, we pay more than any other state. You have the federal income tax, then you have our state’s progressive income tax, which tops out at about twelve percent for the wealthiest. I’m guessing some of you pay twenty-five percent or more to D.C. Then another ten or so to Sacramento …”

“Between the two, I’m at 44 percent,” Patrick said, and Oisin’s head fell forward. He lowered his sunglasses to look at his brother.

“Well, imagine that federal tax is gone,” Franklin continued. “If California becomes its own nation, you’d only pay one tax, and we’d make it a progressive one, and very reasonable. If the billionaires who live here paid their share, even at twenty or thirty percent we’d have more than enough revenue to fund everything — health care, Head Start, day care, infrastructure, firefighting, gun control, schools. Remember that $2.5 trillion that now stays in California? We could make every UC free to every student forever.”

“And this becomes a draw for businesses. Same thing — one tax rate instead of two,” Daniel said.

“That’s major,” Cole said.

“And imagine they’re free from the absurdity of covering their employees’ health insurance,” Franklin said. “Remember that we’re the only country in the industrialized world operating under that absurd system. Why is a snack shop involved in an employee’s cancer treatment? The rest of the world — their jaws are on the ground when we try to explain our health care system.”

“There’s no way to explain it,” Edie said.

“With single-payer,” Daniel said, “all the inexcusable waste in the health care system floats away. And again, billions saved that we can spend more wisely.”

Franklin was looking for something in his valise but didn’t find it. “I had a chart …” he mumbled, then looked up brightly. “Anyway, between health care, the best schools, and a lower overall tax rate, we’d instantly become the most appealing location in the world to do business.”

“Huh,” Oisin said, which from him was high praise.

Daniel opened his palms theatrically. “And can anyone think of anything we get from the federal government that we couldn’t reproduce on our own?”

“Okay, I’ll bite. What about the military?” Oisin said. Now his sunglasses were halfway down his nose. He seemed to be slowly acknowledging that he was awake and listening.

“Honestly, we wouldn’t need one,” Daniel said. “Not a significant one at least. We’d have the same kind of army that, say, Norway has. Functional but not adventuresome.”

“Think of us like New Zealand,” Franklin added. “That’s a good corollary, in terms of our politics and way of life. Or Costa Rica. These countries are advanced and progressive, and decidedly peaceful.”

“Think of Canada, too,” Daniel said. “Trump says that Canada needs our military, but when was the last time Canada was invaded? Did I miss some Russian assault?”

“Hear that, teens? You wouldn’t have to register for the draft,” Patrick said.

Calla gave Patrick a fake smile. Torin, though, was lost in thought, picturing the explosion of the nearest star. A week ago, he’d seen a video that showed what would happen to Earth if the nearest star died a violent death. The blast would obliterate Earth, of course, but the thing that Torin couldn’t get out of his mind was that it would take 4.3 years before the explosion reached Earth. Four years! Astronomers would know the instant this star exploded, but then we’d have 4.3 years to live, waiting and knowing. How strange that was! What would humanity do? What would he do? For one thing, he wanted to spend more time with Calla. He was secretly and chastely in love with Calla.

“Hey,” Calla said, and kicked his foot. He startled and his eyes focused and found her. “If I have to listen, you have to, too,” she said.

“Okay. I was,” he said.

“You weren’t,” she said.

After watching the video — just a brief animation made by some Danish graduate students — Torin hadn’t been able to sleep. The thought of the 4.3 years came to him often throughout his nights and days, and had come to him now, while these two strange men were babbling about politics.

She kicked him again. “Hello? Are you high?”

“No,” he said, and decided not to say, I’ve never been high. Though that was the truth. Torin was sixteen but had not smoked pot, and even if he did smoke pot, he was not the kind of person who would smoke pot in the morning, at a family reunion.

“I think you’re high,” she said.

“I’m not high,” he said.

“Then pay attention,” she said, and she turned toward the two men, who looked to Torin like an insufferable comedy duo from a black-and-white movie.

“What about the 46 percent of the state owned by the feds?” Patrick asked.

“They own 46 percent of California?” Calla asked.

“They do,” Daniel said. “But we could buy it back. The federal government will need our money — the money they’re not getting from our tax base — so they’ll be happy to sell it.”

“They won’t be happy to sell it,” Franklin corrected. “But they’d sell it.”

“They can use the money to buy Greenland,” Cole said, but no one laughed.

“What about China?” Calla asked. “Like in terms of being a threat?” Lori, her mom, winked at her and mouthed Good question.

“We don’t believe that China would invade a sovereign Western nation,” Franklin said. “It’s never happened before. And we’d be a member of NATO and the U.N., of course, so any such invasion is kind of unlikely. No offense.” He winked at Calla, who looked to the hills.

“The main thing you’d need is border patrol,” Daniel said. “But again, with the $2.5 trillion we’re keeping, we could probably buy some boats and trucks.”

“But what would the border policy be?” Lori asked.

“Finally!” Edie said. “I thought I was going to have to ask for you.”

“That’s TBD,” Franklin said. “But it would be sane, and organized, and would reflect the state’s multicultural history.”

“Well, that tells me very little,” Lori said.

“I should underline that we’re not kings here,” Franklin said. “We’re suggesting a path that would make this state the most prosperous and progressive nation on Earth. But we’d be a democracy, and border policy would be determined by elected lawmakers.”

“So we’re sticking to bicameral, or something else?” Patrick asked.

“The simplest thing is to just use Sacramento as the capital of the new nation, with the legislative districts more or less the same,” Daniel said. “Our personal view is that you’d retain whatever you could to ease the transition. And Sacramento currently functions pretty well.”

Patrick coughed extravagantly but said nothing.

“Can’t we get rid of the two-party system?” Calla asked. “If we’re going full European and all.”

“Other parties would definitely have more viability in a new nation,” Franklin said. “Especially if we remove all private money from elections — which is my personal goal. Daniel is not as insistent, but I do think we might as well excise one of the central cancers festering within American democracy. No monetary donations would be allowed to any candidates, period. Elected officials would be prohibited from trading stocks while in office, and prohibited from becoming lobbyists after leaving office. Take all the money out, period. We all know it’s the right choice, and it’s only blindness and sloth that’s gotten us to this point of maximum corruption.”

“Again,” Franklin said, “we’d be looking to Western Europe for inspiration on some of these things. We’d borrow the best practices from there and all over the world. While keeping all that we like about the U.S. Constitution of course.”

“Well, I sorta like the whole idea,” Edie said. “If nothing else, it’s worth a try. We can’t just sit around and watch the country implode.”

This got Torin’s attention. “I agree,” he said, and Calla turned to him and smiled.

Lori’s mouth fell open. “I can’t believe you people.”

Edie stared back at her little sister. “What? It’s exciting,” she said. She turned to Daniel and Franklin. “Seriously, can it actually be done?”

“I’ll answer that,” Lori said. “No way. The Constitution forbids it.”

“Well,” Franklin said, “it’s not constitutionally forbidden. But the process would be challenging.”

“We already tried this once,” Lori said. “Remember 1861? Seems like there were some hiccups that time around.”

“Lori, we’re just listening here. No one’s taking up muskets,” Patrick said. “So guys, this is via referendum, I assume? Don’t you need the cooperation of the rest of the states? Otherwise it’s the Confederacy all over again.”

“Good question. Thank you,” Daniel said. “The first step would be a referendum on the state ballot. We get 600,000 signatures, and the question can be voted on. If a majority of voters favor secession, we send those results to Congress.”

“And they say go fuck yourselves,” Lori said. She caught Calla’s eye. “Sorry.”

“Well, yes, Congress does need to sign off on the secession,” Franklin said. “It has to be a mutual breakup. It would take a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress, and would have to be ratified by thirty-eight states.”

“I bet we could get thirty-eight,” Patrick said. “That’s basically Trump’s Electoral College. Honestly, who would object?”

“The other blue states, dummy,” Lori said. “We’d be leaving them high and dry.”

“So if Congress votes against it, then what?” Edie asked.

“We’d still have a new kind of leverage,” Franklin said. “The rest of the country would be on alert that on many fronts, we’re going to do our own thing. I’m personally in favor of the state withholding federal tax revenue unless certain concessions are met.”

“That’s the Civil War again,” Lori said.

“The governor of Maine proposed the same thing a month ago,” Franklin said. “Things are going so far off the rails that it’s time for more states’ rights. The GOP can’t argue with that.”

“I think health care would be first,” Daniel said. “We’d start single-payer the day after the referendum.”

“And the Supreme Court shoots it down,” Lori said.

“On what grounds?” Daniel asked.

Patrick looked to the house. “It’d be nice if Katherine were out here. She’d know.”

Lori’s neck veins went taut. “Kath doesn’t run the Supreme Court, Dad. She barely practiced law.” Her father shrugged.

“But let’s say for the sake of argument that we no longer are bound by the Supreme Court,” Daniel said. “Maybe as a function of our voters’ will to secede, we say we’ll stay in the Union, to some extent, but that court is no longer our court.”

Lori scoffed loudly. “Insanity.”

“The point is, there would be a balance of power,” Daniel said. “The next time some congressman from Mississippi threatens to withhold aid after a wildfire in our state, we can withhold the billions our citizens put into the federal coffers.”

“Why not just focus on the Electoral College?” Lori asked. “If you get rid of that, most of these issues go away. California and New York would actually have the power of their populations.”

“That means amending the Constitution,” Franklin said. “And that takes a supermajority. Do you know twenty Republican senators and a hundred congressmen who would willingly vote to decrease their own influence?”

“But you’re contradicting yourselves,” Lori said. “Seceding requires the same supermajority.”

“Yes, but we believe that the Republicans would actually vote for it. Most of them,” Franklin said. “They’d see it as removing the primary counterweight to their agenda. So no, they wouldn’t vote to get rid of the Electoral College, given that reduces their leverage. But letting California go gives the GOP far more power.”

“They really don’t like us,” Calla said. “You should see what I see online.”

“Some of these leaders they elect …” Cole said. “The current Speaker of the House thinks Noah’s ark was real. That the world is 6,000 years old.”

“No, he does not,” Calla said.

“Good segue. What about water?” Oisin asked. “Most of what California uses is from the Colorado River. Which starts in Colorado.”

“We could buy water,” Daniel said. “Make an arrangement with Colorado and the feds. Or there’s the Sierras — billions of liters in snowpack every year. And then there’s Mammoth for SoCal. There are so many options.”

“What’s the feds’ incentive to make a deal on water?” Lori asked.

“Food,” Daniel answered. “We’re the largest agricultural state by a mile. Ninth largest agricultural economy in the world. Everything grows here, and they need the food we grow.”

“There’s also desalinization,” Franklin added.

“We do have eight hundred miles of coastline,” Daniel said.

“Twelve hundred and fifty kilometers of coastline. After we switch to the metric system,” Cole said.

“Right, right. We could do that,” Franklin said. “Face it, we’d look more to Europe than to much of the U.S. We’d go metric, and we’d be able to enact every rational policy that’s currently held back by the regressive states.”

“We could join the EU,” Cole noted.

“We could,” Edie said. “And we should.”

Lori scoffed and Edie turned to her sister. “Lori, we’re in an actual abusive relationship. With a rapist. Whose best friend is a Nazi. Seventy-six million people voted for the rapist-Nazi combo. Staying with these lunatics makes no sense. It’s based on sentiment or cowardice or both.”

“It’d be cool to make a new flag,” Cole said, and half the adults in the audience silently remembered that Cole still played with Legos. Hadn’t he auditioned for Lego Masters? “And new money.”

“I’d want the kind with the little plastic window,” Calla said. “Isn’t there some country that has money like that?”

“New Zealand,” Torin said.

“Again with New Zealand,” Oisin said.

“I say we make it oversized, too,” Calla said.

“But then we’d all need oversized wallets,” Oisin noted. “Then oversized pockets for the oversized wallets. Then oversized pants to accommodate these enormous pockets. It’s a lot to think about.” Calla and Torin looked to him, unsure if he was joking.

“Don’t listen to him, kids,” Patrick said. “But do we really need new money? Wouldn’t it be easier to use U.S. dollars?”

“Cuba does,” Cole said.

“Bad example,” Patrick noted.

“Our position is that we’d want our own currency,” Franklin said. “We don’t want our economy tied to the rise and fall of the U.S. dollar. Especially if we have no say in how they run their Treasury.”

“Or how Elon runs it,” Cole added. No one laughed.

“I’m out,” Edie said, holding an empty pitcher high. “Should I make more?” No one answered. “I’ll make more.”

“What about the rest of the blue states?” Lori asked.

Daniel sighed. “It might be a tough road for them.”

Lori laughed. “A tough road? What’s left of the country would be a permanent Republican stronghold. Without California, there couldn’t possibly be another Democratic president. No power in Congress, either.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” Franklin said. “The Dems would have to make some adjustments, and actually address their policies better to the working class. Then they could win. I personally believe Bernie could have beaten Trump.”

Cole nodded vigorously.

“If we leave the union, the Northeast leaves next,” Patrick pointed out.

“Right. They’d have to do the same thing,” Lori said. “They’d have no choice. Maybe Illinois and Colorado and Minnesota, too.”

“I see nothing wrong with that,” Edie said. She was back, squeezing lemons. “I like it. Three countries. California, New England with whoever else, and then Trumpland. Everyone’s with who they want to be with. Three saucy singles instead of an unhappily married throuple.”

“I see this like Brexit,” Lori said. “A lot of buyer’s remorse. Tariffs, trade wars, so many complications. Twenty years of painful adjustments.”

“Just the opposite, Lore,” Patrick said. “Everything gets simpler. As is, this country is like this giant old house full of rats and garbage and ghosts. We’d be moving into something new and clean.”

“We’d trade with the U.S., just as we would with Canada, Mexico, China, Japan,” Franklin said. “It would be quite friendly. Like the U.S. relationship with England is now.”

“Or was, until a few months ago,” Patrick said.

“It’s good to remember the former Soviet Union,” Daniel said. “When that broke up in ’91, you had a lot of hand-wringing about whether these countries could stand on their own, would there be border skirmishes, would there be chaos. … But it was almost entirely peaceful. And everyone’s happy.”

“Everyone’s happy?” Oisin said. “Have you been to the Baltics? No one’s happy there.”

“But was anyone ever happy in the Baltics?” Patrick asked. No one knew.

“We’d have new passports!” Calla said.

“And if someone from Nevada wanted to come live here, then what?” Edie asked.

“Americans would have the inside track to becoming California citizens,” Franklin said. “But it would be a process. Just like if one of us wanted to move to Canada.”

“Progressives from elsewhere could come here, and the regressive people could leave,” Cole said. “A million would leave us, a few million would move in.”

“More than a few million. We’d be inundated,” Edie said. “Free health care and lower taxes and no assault weapons killing our kids?”

“And the weather!” Patrick said. “And the time zone.”

“Don’t say it, Dad,” Lori warned.

“Always more time here,” Patrick said loudly.

“Back to immigration,” Lori said. “My clients are hiding in churches now. They’re not showing up to work. And what about the Dreamers?”

“We instantly make the Dreamers citizens,” Franklin said. “They’re Americans, after all. They’ve been here all their lives.”

“Good,” Lori said, her arms crossed over her chest. Edie took note — Lori was softening.

“They’d be called Californians,” Edie said. “We’re Californians, right? Because we’re no longer Americans.”

“We naturalize the temporary protected status folks, too,” Franklin said. “The Venezuelans and Salvadorans. That’s about 67,000 in California. That’s Day One. After that, though, the border policy has to be rational and organized. I mean, most people just want a system. Among immigrant voters that number actually goes up. System, system, system. That’s what everyone wants.”

Edie looked at her sister and knew Lori was coming around. Lori had been representing immigrants for twenty-two years, and had come to believe that any period when the border was chaotic, or seemed chaotic, led to tidal Republican wins all over the country. The key was an orderly border that recognized our need for immigrants, recognized the plight of asylum-seekers, but also observed an orderly queue. No one could argue with an orderly queue.

Lori let her mind wander to a preposterous idea: that if California had its own national borders they could maintain a better system, free from GOP xenophobia, its whims and panic. She laughed to herself, realizing all at once that the movement’s only hope would be if Katherine was its public face. And she and Lori could run the campaign. They could improve it and professionalize what these oddballs Franklin and Daniel began.

But would a former senator, who had championed the rule of law for decades, come within a thousand miles of an independence movement? Katherine had been determined not to meet these two envoys. She didn’t want them to have a picture or an anecdote.

“So what do you want from us?” Oisin said. His sunglasses were back on the bridge of his nose and his posture had returned to that of napping.

“Excuse me?” Franklin asked.

“Action items,” Oisin said. “We’ve heard the talk, now what do you want us to do?”

“They wanted Katherine here,” Cole said. “Right?”

“Well, sure,” Franklin said. “It’d be helpful to have an esteemed former senator on the team. But we need you all to talk it up, we need volunteers, we need —”

“Money,” Oisin said. “A lot of money to get a prop on the ballot.”

Franklin looked at the fruit at his feet and frowned. “Yes, sure. But we’re not really in the fundraising mode. We’re actually not good at fundraising — the two of us aren’t at least.”

“But you’ll accept a donation?” Oisin asked.

“You’re ready to donate, kid brother?” Patrick said.

“I like it,” Oisin said. “I’ll write a check. You take a check?”

“Sure,” Franklin said.

Oisin patted his pockets. It was unclear if he really thought he might have brought a checkbook with him. “I don’t have it. My brother in the top tax bracket will cover me. You in, Paddy?”

“I’m the one who called this meeting,” Patrick said. “Of course I’m in.”

Edie had spotted Katherine in the kitchen. She leaned over to Lori. “There she is,” she whispered.

Katherine was fifty yards away, peeking from behind a linen curtain. Edie caught her eye. Katherine tapped her wrist and turned her hand up, as if to say, “How long will this be going on?”

“I need to talk to her,” Edie said, and stood up. Excuse me, she mouthed to Franklin and Daniel as she stepped between the mismatched chairs and remnants of fruit.

“Wait, I’m coming too,” Lori whispered, and followed Edie into the house.

Katherine had the fridge open. “How long till they’re gone?” she asked. She was wearing shorts and sandals and a white Hastings School of Law hoodie. “They look like guys selling Moody Blues records at a flea market.”

“I know, I know,” Edie said. “But the plan is startlingly rational.”

“The secession plan? Are you stoned?” Katherine asked. She turned to Lori. “Don’t tell me you’re one of them now.”

“I thought it was insanity, too,” Lori said. “Now the idea of staying seems insane. We’re married to seventy-seven million maniacs who reelected a rapist who tried to overthrow the country. This is when historical schisms happen, Kath. How much crazier does it need to get?”

“Lori,” Katherine said. “Compare this to the war in Iraq. W is a cuddly elder statesman now, but don’t forget he started two wars that killed a million people. By comparison, this is small beans.”

“And the attempted coup?” Edie said.

“Outrageous. Catastrophic,” Katherine said. “But here we are. We survived. The country survived. A thousand of those people went to jail.”

“And now they’re all out,” Lori said.

“Pardoned by the architect of the coup,” Edie said. “And now he’s dismantling the entire government.”

“So wait four years,” Katherine said. She had found a very small watermelon and cut it in half. “It might not even be four years,” she said. “Trump will die in office. Mark my words. He’s very old, and very unhealthy.” She looked out the window again. “Why’s the one guy wearing basketball shorts?”

Edie opened the fridge. “He said he was from Concord.”

Katherine winced. “They don’t wear pants in Concord?”

“Our point is,” Lori said, “that these two guys should not lead this movement. They should be hidden away in some research room.”

“And you want me to be the public face. No chance.”

“Hear us out. Just close your eyes,” Edie said.

“I’m not closing my eyes. What are you doing, a magic trick?”

“I just have this picture of the three of us working together again,” Edie said. “Like your first run for Congress. One last rodeo.”

“You liked the rodeo. I never liked the rodeo,” Katherine said.

“We had fun,” Edie said. “We were good. Everyone said we were good.”

“I wouldn’t touch this with a mile-long pole,” Katherine said. “My entire legacy would be toast.”

“Did she just say legacy?” Lori asked.

“You shouldn’t use that word, Kath. It’s unseemly,” Edie said. “And remember you can’t just rest on your record. Reevalulations happen.”

Lori wanted to say, too, that there were few glittering highlights to Katherine’s twelve years in office. She voted for the Affordable Care Act. She served on committees. She brought some federal money back to the state. But she was more of a uniter than a leader. Her name wasn’t on any legislation that anyone remembered. Instead she said, “That Iraq vote when you were in Congress is not aging well.”

Katherine’s eyes bulged. “You’ve always had such a nice touch, Lore.”

“Sorry,” Lori said. “But you know I’m right. You could lead this. It would be an iconic second act.”

“I still don’t know what you two see in this,” Katherine said. “I get why someone like Cole would be aboard. He loves dumb ideas. Did I tell you he cornered me about UFO disclosures last night?”

“That’s Cole,” Edie said. “This is us.”

“I bet he voted for Jill Stein,” Katherine said.

“I know he voted for Jill Stein,” Edie said, and Katherine looked to the ceiling.

“Think of it like this,” Lori said. “We create a platform. The anti-Project 2025. Make it practical and applicable to California — a slate of policies that California could enact if we broke off. Call it California Values.”

“I hate that name,” Katherine said.

“Project 2026,” Edie suggested.

“That’s worse,” Katherine said.

“You could be the public face of it,” Edie said, “and maybe play down the actual independence part if you want. Say you’re not sure about that, but it should be explored. In the meantime, you can talk about a slate of policies that we can all agree on. That’s enough to get the platform on the news, and the 600,000 signatures is a cinch. We don’t have to think further than that.”

“You don’t have to think further than that. I do.”

“Fine. Then let’s think even further,” Lori said. “We’re talking about the founding of a country. A far better country. Take what works and press ahead. I was skeptical but I actually do believe it’s time. Why not make an indelible mark on history?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“New countries form all the time,” Edie said. “In this case, it’s just lack of imagination that stops us.”

“Are these still good?” Katherine asked. She’d found a small crate of brown strawberries in the fridge.

“They’re organic, so probably no?” Edie said. Katherine dumped them in the compost.

“What are you doing up there in Grass Valley, anyway?” Lori asked.

“Plenty,” Katherine said. “I’m happy. Don’t I get a minute to reflect?”

“You’ve been out of office three years,” Lori said. “How long do you need? People will forget you exist.”

“Again, Lori, you are all charm. Don’t you think, Torin? Do you know we used to call her Pitbull?”

Edie looked to the doorway to find her son. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Just a minute,” he said. “But can I talk to you all?”

“Only if you’re changing the subject,” Katherine said.

“I’m not changing the subject,” he said. “Aunt Kath, I think you should do it.”

“You too? Did someone spike the lemonade?”

Torin stepped into the room and scooted onto the kitchen counter. Somehow his thoughts of 4.3 years had only made the secessionist presentation more urgent. A nearby sun had not exploded, but still the lesson seemed apt. Why not do monumental things now?

“I just wanted to like, add my voice here, if you’re, like, getting a sense of how the family feels about this.”

Katherine held up her palm. “Tor, stop. I can’t take you seriously with all the ‘likes.’ Talk in a straight line.”

“Fine,” Torin said. He’d been chastised for this before. He took a moment and talked slowly, deliberately. “Aunt Kath, I listened for an hour to those guys and I expected nothing. Then I got excited about their idea because it’s bold and brave and it would actually improve the lives of, like, 40 million people. Just like Mom said, leaving is far more rational than staying. It’s just sick masochism to stay. Leaving and creating something new is the way of hope. I know Aunt Lori is against this, but I think you could be different.”

“Honey,” Lori said.

“No, don’t. Please, Aunt Lori. Don’t kill this. You adults always complain about us not being interested in anything, not having passions, and then one, like, actual inspiring idea comes along, and we get inspired, and then you instantly stomp all over it. You have to actually make up your minds. If you want us to be inspired, then inspire us.”

“Tor,” Lori said.

He’d lowered his head. He assumed he was about to be scolded. “What? Sorry.”

“I’m trying to tell you that I’m in,” she said. He lifted his eyes enough to catch his aunt walking toward him. She took his head in her hands. “Now we’re just working on Katherine.”

“Why are you all in the kitchen?” Calla said. “Everyone out there’s wondering if someone died in here.”

“No one’s dead,” Katherine said. “But everyone’s lost their minds.”

“Wait. Are you all trying to talk her into it?” Calla asked. “Aunt Kath, you should. Please do it. I’ll be your assistant.”

“This has every hallmark of a cult,” Katherine said. “And what are you wearing?”

Calla was still wearing her genitals T-shirt. “You’re only 60. You can’t just wait out the clock,” she said.

“Excuse me?” Katherine said. “Take that off. How does she know how old I am?”

“Calla. You’re out of line,” Lori said. “And cover that shirt up. You can’t be part of this if you’re dressed like an adolescent.”

Calla found an apron draped over a chair and put it on. The words kitch bitch were printed across it.

The aunts gave up.

“What else are you doing these days, Aunt Kath?” Calla asked. “Writing another Washington memoir?”

Katherine leaned her head back and dropped a handful of blueberries into her mouth. “Lori, is your daughter really talking to me this way?”

“Calla,” Lori said sternly.

“Sorry,” she said, and looked at Katherine and smiled apologetically. “I just don’t want you to do that thing where you all paint a picture of something actually beautiful and great, then act like it’s a dumb nothing. Or that it’s unfeasible and not worth trying.”

“It is unfeasible,” Katherine said. “In a thousand ways it’s unfeasible. We could spend the next three years on it, and millions of dollars, and we’d get almost nowhere.”

“We could get on the ballot,” Edie said.

“Yes. We could,” Katherine said. “Lots of idiotic things end up on the ballot. Last year a guy got enough signatures for a proposition that would free all the chickens in the state.”

“I voted for that,” Calla said.

“Of course you did,” Katherine said. “So we’d get on the ballot and it would get about 30 percent of the vote, because every dumb proposition gets 30 percent. Then what? We’ve spent tens of millions of dollars and thousands of hours only to be embarrassed and with nothing to show for it.”

“But if you did it, it’d be different,” Calla said. “You could explain it to people. The reason those other measures don’t pass is because they don’t have a two-term senator and feminist icon behind it. People trust you.”

Katherine turned to Edie. “Listen to this one. Did you coach her?”

“I didn’t talk to her. I’ve been in here with you,” Edie said, and looked out the window. Franklin and Daniel seemed to be lost. Their presentation had ended, Oisin appeared to be asleep, and Paolo had begun piling fruit on Franklin’s lap. “I better get back out there,” she said, and returned to the patio.

Lori took Katherine’s hand. “Can we walk? Kids, we’ll be back.”

They left the kitchen and took the stone-step path through more cherry blossoms that no one could remember planting.

Lori picked a pink-white blossom. “Would you consider doing this for Edie?”

“Running a fringe campaign? As a favor?”

“I think Edie needs it. When her kids are at school she goes to see movies alone. She brings a thermos, if you know what I mean. She needs some kind of purpose.”

“She’s welcome to do this!” Katherine said, and stopped, her arms stiff and gesticulating all over the dappled light. “That’s what you both are missing. And your Lady Macbeth kids! They are scary, Lori! You’re all welcome to do this without me.”

“I think you need it, too,” Lori said evenly. “You’re so young. Senators fade quickly. You want to start teaching the occasional course at UC Davis? Are you the adjunct type? You want to grade papers written by kids who didn’t want to write them?”

“What do you want me to say? Yes, I want to grade those fucking papers. More than I want to do another campaign. I haven’t worn heels in six months and I don’t plan to do that again till one of those kids gets married.”

“I think you should do this.”

“No.”

“You mean yes,” Lori said. “In this state we say yes.”

“No.”

Katherine sat down on the buffalo grass Edie had planted under the apricots. Lori sat across from her. They were cross-legged, their backs rigid, eye to eye.

“You’re only 60,” Lori said. “You have so much time.”

“No.”

“There’s always more time in California.”

“You’re such an idiot.”

“I think I’m hearing you say yes.”

Katherine looked over Lori’s shoulder, at Torin and Calla, who were watching from the kitchen window. The funny thing was that Katherine had thought seriously about secession all the way back in 2000, before she’d run for Congress. When five men on the Supreme Court gave the election to Bush, she thought the republic had pivoted, hard, to something different from a democracy. Then there were the wars, the school shootings, the hyperviolence made possible by an increasingly unregulated gun market, the climate change denial, the shredding of the social safety net, the skyrocketing health care prices, an attempted and forgotten coup — all the relentless chaos of Republican rule. And now the cycle was complete. The U.S. was an oligarchy-in-training, a kind of fawning kid brother to Russia, a kleptocracy whose wealth — most of it, anyway, a criminal percentage of it — was in the hands of a handful of selfish men. And these men controlled a government that was determined not to benefit anyone in any way. It was time to split off and start over.

“And when they outlaw abortion, we need to be apart,” Lori said.

Katherine looked at her sister and wanted to say, Of course I want a new nation. But I’m tired. And I don’t want to look foolish. And did I mention I’m tired?

Instead she said, “I’m not saying yes.”

Lori leaned in and hugged her. “Your words are saying no, but your eyes are saying, ‘Yes, yes, we must, let’s three sisters do this! Because only we can! Yes! Yes! Yes!”

“No.”

“This’ll be fun,” Lori said. “You’ll be Joan of Arc.”

“Please no.”

“Susan B. Anthony.”

“That’s better.”

“No one remembers the cautious and weak,” Lori said.

“You need to stop.”

“I’ll stop.”

Katherine fell back onto the plush grass and looked at the satin sky through the gaps in the trees. “I do want to be near you and Edie,” she said.

“Right,” Lori said. “You can.”

“I’m realizing that I’ve been lonely,” Katherine said.

“Good,” Lori said. “Sorry. You know what I mean. We’ll fix that.”

“I’ll do it for you two first,” she said. “California second.”

“That’s fine,” Lori said. “For me, it’s the other way around, but we don’t have to quibble. We’ll figure it out. You know what they say —”

“Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it.”

“There’s always more time —”

“Stop. Don’t.”

“But you know it’s true.”

“I do know,” Katherine said. “You know I do. I really do.”

“I think we could actually do this.”

“God help us. I do, too.”

35 Comments

Harvey Reading May 19, 2025

https://consortiumnews.com/2025/05/18/chris-hedges-the-new-dark-age/

“Civilization…” Ha!

Reply
Bruce McEwen May 19, 2025

That’s the best short story I ever read— the Irish are gifted storytellers!

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- Bruce McEwen May 19, 2025
  
  At risk of repeating myself, if that story doesn’t gladden your heart then the Irish have no charm and the Pope ain’t American!
  
  Reply
- Jim Armstrong May 19, 2025
  
  Spare me his long stories!
  
  Reply
Cotdbigun May 19, 2025

Aye Tommy Wayne, this trick works on any talk radio format, regardless of idealogy.
If you turn the volume way down, so you can barely hear it, so low that you might not be able to hear some of the dialog, a sense of enlightenment washes over you.
With practice, a feeling of superiority develops and rises to the point where you start to admire yourself.

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- Chuck Dunbar May 19, 2025
  
  Hah–that’s a good one, made me smile. I’m getting to be hard of hearing, so don’t even have to mess with the volume, my ears have turned the volume down. And yes, here comes that feeling you note…. A glass of wine while one listens, helps, too.
  
  Reply
- Bruce McEwen May 19, 2025
  
  I suspected from your last post that you’d taken a page from Kramer ‘s book, as I had never seen you use the sardonic arts of irony before. And now you have a rapport with him. Well.The rest of us will be obliged to improve our own armor and hone our points to joust with you in future. Forewarned is fore armed. To the lists!
  
  Reply
  - Bruce McEwen May 19, 2025
    
    The late James Marmon, God rest his soul, started out on this page using little more than his disgust with the county and crude sarcasm. But as he sparred with Anderson and some of the other wits, he developed some lethal turns of phrase and a fatal understatement. Then one fine day he posted some poems he’d written after taking a course in poetry and they were beautifully crafted. I’ve improved my own style here and seen others come along as well. Nothing, I say, polishes one’s style (read character), like being obliged to defend your position in a public forum.
    
    Reply
    - Norm Thurston May 19, 2025
      
      Nice post.
      
      Reply
Lazarus May 19, 2025

Supervisor Pinches:
I have known John for 40 years or more. He developed the first Mini Mart with a gas station in Willits. The place is now known as Brown’s Corner.
Johnny was one of the good guys, no brag, just fact.
My favorite Pinchism is, Kinda makes you wonder…don’t it. He used that line when talking about some stupid thing the County Brass had done.
Rest in peace, old friend.
Laz

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- Chuck Dunbar May 19, 2025
  
  I have to say I relish the tributes to this man, an old fashioned guy who deeply knew and deeply understood a whole bunch about the world. And a man who spoke plainly and clearly–common sense the first rule, not afraid to speak his mind, no fancy, truth-hiding bureaucratic crap. We need more–many more– of his kind–these ideals and ways are getting lost in our culture and society. Look at the loony techies and the way they think and speak…
  
  Reply
Call It As I See It May 19, 2025

Wow a lot to unpack with Photo Op MO’s observations. If she has seen improvement it’s not because of any decisions her and her fellow politicians. Things must be a little blurry in those rose colored glasses.

Any improvement comes from business and property owners. In other words, they have taken matters into their own hands. Also, key properties that attracted homeless on Perkins St. have sold. The owners have put fencing around the buildings closing them off to the homeless. The owners at their own cost. Prop 36 has enabled law enforcement tools to help address this issue. I believe Mo was against 36 or remained non committed to one side or the other. John McGowan and Adam Gaska have done more clean ups than any person and their time is donated. John has been working with the railroad to move homeless off the tracks. That’s why there is improvements in that area.

Now really think about her admissions about work we still have to do. Building Bridges, where just about a week ago people driving down S. State St. witnessed six police cars blocking the southbound right lane with several homeless sitting on the curb handcuffed.
This is a county funded business of the Schrader’s who Mo does have influence on. And she admits it’s a problem. She loves stats and numbers because you can make them work in your favor. She once quoted that homeless was 23% down in the county. What she didn’t tell you is that the number was because of Bernie Norvell’s CRU program was responsible for this number.

Mark Scarmella has devoted some ink to her public spat with local business owner, Ken McCormick.
The irony is Mo started this with a Facebook post. If you don’t fall in line with MO’s plan, then you’re obsessive or threatening her. She has accused Ken of both. Is this how a Supervisor should act? Having childish public arguments with constituents.

News Flash Mo! You’re a politician not a cheerleader.
High school was 25 years ago, stop trying to be the popular girl that enjoys gossip. You are getting some pushback because you can lie to people for only so long before they figure out your game.

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- Mazie Malone May 19, 2025
  
  CSI,
  
  You cannot be serious, Mr. McCormick started the spat with Mo. He himself has stated he is not the “business owner” he treats people like he is a spoiled entitled teenager throwing a fit.
  
  As far as the trail goes unhoused people are sometimes there sometimes not, many factors attribute to where they may be located at any given time. It does not equate to less homelessness or it getting better. In fact getting worse.
  
  mm 💕
  
  Reply
  - Bruce McEwen May 19, 2025
    
    Nobody takes him seriously, Mazie. He’s in his 70s and talks like a highschool sophomore. Misogynistic homophobic lunatic spouting patriotism and piety, wrapped in the flag he cherishes like the thrice beshitted shroud of Christ.
    
    Reply
    - Bruce McEwen May 19, 2025
      
      I hiked the trail back when the old timber trestle came across the river under HWY 20 and up to the sawmill. I’d come all the way from Willits. (North of Willits was impassable due to undergrowth coming up through the tracks)). The critics of the trail have never seen more of it than what’s visible at a glance crossing it on Perkins Street by the drug store where some local vigilantes murdered and robbed a homeless wight, years ago. Still, these critics know all about it and who frequents it and why and in what state of inebriation and how much they spend at Walgreens, etc. etc. the famously fatuous Beaver Club, they know what’s what, and they call it as they see it.
      
      Reply
      - Norm Thurston May 19, 2025
        
        Nice post. I am fascinated at the evolution of a popular phrase. It all started as “I calls ’em like a sees ’em” just to end up in the castrated, grammatically correct “I call it as I see it”. I prefer the honest, blue-collar tone of the former to the condescending, arrogant vibe of the latter.
        
        Reply
      - Mazie Malone May 19, 2025
        
        Bruce,
        
        I suppose if there were no street people we would have nothing to bitch and complain about, then what? 🤣😜🤔
        
        Even if every single person was housed and off the street there are many people that would suggest that those using/addicted should have it taken away, they do not deserve it.
        
        I like the trail and the homeless folks I run into. Most are harmless as murders go I am sure there are more murders of housed people than street.
        
        There are also homeless at parks and other hidden nooks and crannies that people do not see!
        
        mm 💕
        
        it will never end !
        
        Reply
  - Call It As I See It May 19, 2025
    
    The facts are clear, it was Mo who posted on her Facebook. And the response from Ken. We know you don’t like Ken as you have confronted him in the past. You close this thread that’s in getting worse. Mo is trying to tell you it’s improved. That doesn’t bother you?
    
    Try again, Bruce! You’re not as smart as you think you are. I’m 63 years young. And yes, I love this Country and patriotic, guilty. Unlike you I’m not a America Hater or a Libtard. Brought that word back for you. On the trail which you claim we know nothing about, what is fact, is that it’s the most common place where homeless on homeless crime occurs. Ask UPD! Oh, and guess what, there have been multiple murders committed by homeless on homeless. Just as everything you write is BS. Trying to sound educated in drunken state is not the way to go through life.
    
    Reply
    - Bruce Anderson May 19, 2025
      
      Which Bruce are you talking about here, Maga Man? Both Bruces are Marines, our patriotic credentials are in order and superior to yours, we both like a drink, and I daresay either of uscould fix you up fast in hand-to-hand combat.
      
      Reply
      - Call It As I See It May 19, 2025
        
        I’m talking to your boy McEwen, read the posts.
        
        Reply
        
        Bruce Anderson May 19, 2025
        
        We’re inseparable.
        
        Reply
        
        Matt Kendall May 19, 2025
        
        “We’re inseparable” this is the part my pop would say
        “Get your waders boys, it getting deep in here”
        God bless both you old inseparable Marines.
        
        Reply
    - Mazie Malone May 19, 2025
      
      CSI,
      
      yes, she did post. That’s what Facebook is for. at least she’s not rude and condescending and holier than thou.! It is Ken who began harassing her and calling her out warranted or not. his tactics are nasty. You should find someone else to look up to! I have asked him questions in a civil manner multiple times some he answers some he avoids and when he doesn’t like what you have to say, he deletes your comments and blocks you. I tell you what I will meet you down there at t-up we can chat with all the “vagrants” we can invite Mo too. I’ll even buy you a beer unless your chicken.? haha 🐓🤣 It bothers me that she believes that yes, but nothing I can do about it, I also do not hate her for it!
      
      CSI if you are 63 maybe your alliance with Ken is you are old school buddies? 🤣🫶🏻
      
      mm 💕
      
      Reply
      - Call It As I See It May 19, 2025
        
        Mo won’t show, she only goes to things she can control. Sounds like Ken treats you like Mo treats her constituents, when answering or not answering questions. By the way, Ken and I are not school buddies, nice try. You and McEwen are 0-2 on your guesses.
        
        Speaking of McEwen, no one from UPD patrolled the trail. They only went there if they were called. Here is a hint, I know UPD really well. As a matter of fact, there has been several deaths on the trail. Arrest was made one night at the Quik Mart on the corner of Brush St and N.State St. Homeless arrested for murder of another homeless, what I can tell you is Pete Hoyle was not there.
        
        Reply
        
        Bruce McEwen May 20, 2025
        
        You said “multiple murders of homeless by homeless,” now you equivocating varlet you amend it to “several deaths” and one arrest you believe was for a murder of one homeless person by another, as if you were privy to more than the rest of the public in these matters. When the case of the Quick Mart arrest goes to trial it’ll be reported in the AVA like every other crime in Mendo and we will see if it was a homeless vagrant or not. If it it will be a first in many years.
        
        Reply
        
        Mazie Malone May 20, 2025
        
        CSI,
        
        He treats everybody who does not agree with him like that. Mo does not treat people poorly whether you agree with her or not. There is a big difference!
        
        And glad you are not his old school buddy, I was asking as a curiosity, not as a fact!
        
        mm 💕
        
        Reply
    - Bruce McEwen May 19, 2025
      
      I have asked the Ukiah PD. Some of the officers would buy me a beer and say keep up the good work. Sgt Peter Hoyle patrolled the trail until Covid, and he busted the guy, a comfortably housed racist like you, who committed the last homeless murder I know of in Ukiah and that former resident recently died in prison. He was about your age, you false lying dog.
      
      Reply
Craig Stehr May 19, 2025

In front of a guest computer in the downstairs Fabrication Lab area of the Martin Luther King Jr. Public Library in Washington, D.C. This follows a satisfactory morning of picking up litter beginning at the Adam’s Place Homeless Shelter, all the way down Queen’s Chapel Road on both sides, to the B2 Anacostia bus stop, paying particular attention to the detritus left by the club kids who visit Echostage and Karma. And then a scrumptious lunch at Whole Foods from the salad bar was enjoyed. Moving on to a coffee and pastry soon. Identified with the nameless formless Absolute! Otherwise, we need a brand new civilization based on the “Immortal Atman” (Look it up if necessary. The period of free links is over.) Am still at the homeless shelter in northeast Washington, D.C. My father once said: “It doesn’t make any difference how much good you do, Craig, because most people are selfish and stupid”. My reply was: “Regardless, I will continue doing good”. I accept the fact that the spiritually lost American experiment with freedom and democracy does not particularly value me. Clearly, if it were otherwise, there would be enthusiasm for my receiving money and housing. But there isn’t any. The tragedy is thine only. ;-(
Craig Louis Stehr
Adam’s Place Homeless Shelter
2210 Adams Place NE #1
Washington, D.C. 20018
Telephone Messages: (202) 832-8317
Email: [email protected]
May 19, 2025 Anno Domini @ 3:08 p.m. EDT

Reply
Mazie Malone May 19, 2025

Hi Bruce,

lol 🤣 …..hmmm thought he was my age for some reason regardless, always irritated for sure.

mm 💕

Reply
- Call It As I See It May 19, 2025
  
  I guess if irritated is because I care about this town, then yes I’m irritated.
  
  Reply
  - Mazie Malone May 19, 2025
    
    CSI.
    
    Ok well caring is good being irritated all the time can give you a heart attack! Breathe!!! 🙏
    
    mm 💕
    
    Reply
Mark Donegan May 19, 2025

Irritated people are irritating…

Reply
- Call It As I See It May 19, 2025
  
  Don’t you have some covert operation to complete for Mo? Like filming business and property owners who disagree with Mo.
  
  Reply
Frank Hartzell May 19, 2025

Fabulous history of the Mendo original, John Pinches. Best of all was Malcolm’s work on the hospital. No doubt, a big ask of us is coming. I’d vote for a hospital bond, seeing how critical itis. But most people, including me, unless I am reading Malcolm, have zero idea what the district is up to. We need to know the need, so we will support a bond. A fire bond failed in the Little River Albion area recently, a place that needs everything the fire department can provide, especially disaster planning. Malcolm gives a great summary. We need the community to find out something about this agency we all pay taxes to. Once that is done, we need something like a big thermometer that shows how much we need and for what?
I doubt if our representatives hear much from the voters about what we need for health care. We need that earthquake exemption for one-story buildings!! I’d like to see Malcolm do a piece on the direct impact of whatever MediCaid cuts are likely to be here. The press release folks (the rest of the media) won’t tell us.

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Betsy Cawn May 20, 2025

As Mr. Hartzell said, the press release folks (the rest of the media) “won’t tell us.”

The art of confabulation is entrenched in the vocabulary employed by elected officials and their appointed henchmen/women.

Lack of accurate facts about the conditions for which local rule-making is deemed unquestionable; there is no legal mechanism available to the public that forces the revelations we need for reasoning with the power brokers.

Delivery of non-answers is lubricated by terms implying genuine recognition of these conditions impacting the lowest ranking members of “society,” wrapped in matronly assurances that “we have been talking about this for a long time” and buzzwords like “fast tracking” and “definitionally.”

Mendocino’s bane in that category is RMC and Camille Shrader’s mental health enterprise. Lake’s empowerment machine focuses on wildfire.

Nonetheless, the County of Lake hired professional lobbyists to improve the county’s ability to advocate for issues prioritized during special meetings (for spending more public monies to increase the bureaucracy at our expense, in many cases).

Tucked into otherwise proclamation-packed agendas our Department of Social Services calmly confronted our Board of Supervisors with the ugly anticipated losses of federal funding for “safety net” programs. The highly paid lobbyists’ representative, in the second “discussion” of local impacts, avoided harsh realities by claiming no personal knowledge of particulars. Other unpleasant topics were dispatched with vagueries and popular stylizing.

Explicating the state’s response to the “controversial changes” in burdensome health care programs like MediCal, SNAP, and increased local administrative costs, the Zoomed-in PR pro explained that the separation of discretionary spending programs from the Congressional reconciliation process “makes the message, I think, a little more complicated.”

Throughout the ensuing “dialogue” with members of our Board, the consultant used phrases salted with “sort of like” and “pretty strong,” concluding that, for California, “there’s definitely reason to be concerned.”

The public is unable to penetrate the organizational barriers to demand a factually substantive explanation of anything. Departments put on displays of “updates” on their work plans, larded with “data” leading to the usual budgetary “holes” and staff shortages.

Unlike your Executive Office, however, our Chief Administrative Officer has constructed a system of superficially transparent processes by which the Board of Supervisors is the primary instrument of authority, constrained to addressing the selected topics and formulating innumerable “ad hoc” committees who talk to each other and selected constituents before reaching positions that support Administrative goals.

[No local “media” outlets report on the outcomes of our Board decisions, with one or two exceptions, so the concerned citizen is forced to devote several hours to watching their recorded meetings via on-line “platforms,” for which we are supposed to be suitably grateful.]

AVA readers and informed Mendocino citizens provide the only challenges to blissfully authoritarian-but-ignorant management of your municipality. Ours is no less authoritarian, but we seem to have a slicker dictionary.

Reply

Mendocino County Today: Monday 5/19/2025

35 Comments

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