Off the Record 5/26/2025

JIM SHIELDS:

I have some very sad news. My good friend John Pinches has just passed away. Johnny had been hospitalized for the past week. The family is requesting a bit of time to deal privately with Johnny’s passing. Johnny was 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. And he accomplished it all with old-school charm, down-home witty humor, and fierce commitment to finish what he started, even if he didn’t always win. I can say with no fear of contradiction, we won’t see another Johnny Pinches in our lifetimes. John Pinches was 73.

ED NOTE: I knew he wasn’t well, but he was his old self the last time I talked to him, still passionate about and dedicated to the best interests of Mendocino County. What always struck me about Johnny was how generous he was in his opinions, never a bad personal comment about anybody. One would have thought he’d be bitter about the way his “liberal” colleagues cordoned him off on the Board of Supervisors, seldom even granting him the basic courtesy of a second to many of his motions. But if he had a bitter or vindictive bone in his body I never saw any evidence of it. Johnny Pinches was among the best people I’ve had the pleasure and good fortune to know.

JOHNNY PINCHES, comment line Redheaded Blackbelt;

Johnny Pinches was sui generis (one of a kind) and truly irreplaceable. It’s a travesty that clowns like Ted Williams and John Haschak have destroyed Mendo County finances but have the gall to comment on Johnny Pinches’ budget acumen — they should keep quiet and hang their heads in shame.

After the 2020 census Williams and Haschak conspired to improve their re-election chances — Haschak re-districted Pinches out of the Third District and Williams got rid of Hopland — and that’s how you enshrine mediocrity in government.

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“We won’t see another Johnny Pinches in our lifetimes.” — Jim Shields,

Johnny reflects the character of his whole family. June (Pinches) Sizemore and Jimmy Pinches are his sister and brother.

I had the opportunity to work with him as a refrigeration contractor on his many retail projects. He was a partner with the Geigers. Later he built Park-n-Take-It, and I did some work for him in Willits on the place they now call “Brown’s Corner.” He was always fair and honest.

Both of our families have deep history in Northern Mendocino County.

Johnny was Northern Mendocino. We have never had such good representation, and probably never will again.

— Ernie Branscomb

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In the above vintage photo, Johnny was not only watching a train, he was watching the last train to roll down those tracks. Very near to the point that they drove the Golden Spike on October 23rd 1914: North Western Pacific Railway drove the Golden Spike at Cain Rock (east of Garberville) connecting Sausalito and Eureka by rail.

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So Long Old Boy. Thanks for connecting us to yesterday’s stories.

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Best supervisor I ever had. He stood up for the rural folk of northern Mendocino County. I sure hope we find somebody who can come close sometime soon. Supervisor Pinches would have spoken out and plainly about the corruption and chaos in our County politics today. Heck they wouldn’t even have tried it on his watch! RIP. And Thank You

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My rancher friends are treasures of knowledge and uncommon sense. So sorry about Pinches’ passing.

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The article (on Kymkemp.com) interviews three people Johnny didn’t exactly have a high opinion of.

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“All them helicopters have done is put the price of marijuana higher than the price of gold.”

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Johnny was respected by all segments of his district. He said he could have formulated a working marijuana policy in Mendo on the back of an envelope. It’s too bad they didn’t let him do it! — On the back of a napkin” to be precise. RIP John Pinches.

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LINDA MORALES:

My deepest condolences to John’s Family and friends. I will miss this man who cared a lot for the people of Mendocino County and how we were represented in each of the districts. I worked in the same Department many years ago with John’s Dad Sully when he was one of the County Trappers. John Pinches and his Dad Sully were what Mendocino County once was, Cattle and Sheep Ranchers and Farmers, logging and loggers. John and his Dad raised some very fine working stock dogs. The Pinches family cared a great deal for the district John represented and so did John. Unfortunately Mendocino County did lose a man who used to show up at the board meetings with his rifle in his gun rack in his pick up, something we don’t enjoy anymore. I always liked that about him, he was real. He didn’t care what anyone said about his down to earth ways or his lifestyle or what he had to say. He was one of us who worked the land in an honest way, conserved the water and was a good steward of the land. John Pinches tried to saved our water and ranching. He had a great sense humor and would return your calls made to him concerning his district any time of the day or night. He simply took time to talk to the County Employees if someone needed help. He listened and took time to understand the background of the problem. His down to earth common sense regarding what Mendocino County needed to preserve and protect was always on his mind. I will miss you my friend, until we meet again. Keeping your family in my prayers, Rest in Peace, John, and thank you for everything.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE REAL DUDE

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

— Jayne Thomas

THE DAYS THAT WERE: “We all lament the loss of a certain type of San Franciscan that maybe ain’t ever coming back. It’s the guy who, like my dad, took me to Candlestick to see Mays and McCovey. He worked a real blue-collar job, where he just did it. Didn’t talk about it, or write about doing it. Just did it. A little like Steve McQueen’s character in the movie ‘Bullitt.’ These teamsters, mechanics and cops for the most part drank and smoked too much, and maybe they didn’t wear their seat belts, but most certainly they wouldn’t have texted while driving, or at all, and would never have thought of bringing a mitt to a ball game unless it was worn by their son, as mine was.” — Armando Lagunas

HUH? “Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets, then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again.” — TV listing for ‘The Wizard of Oz’ from the ‘Marin Independent Journal.’

IT WAS EXACTLY ten that Wednesday morning when I was standing on the south side of California Street waiting to board the 44, which would carry me across the park to the N Judah line. The N stops directly in front of that day’s destination, the ballpark. (I refuse to call it by any of its corporate names.) I heard a man yelling just as I saw him nearly collide with two little Chinese kids, a girl about ten who was holding the hand of a small boy of 6 or 7, her brother presumably. The screaming tableau was playing out in front of the liquor store at 6th and California. For an awful instant I thought the man was attacking the children. “How do you like it?” he screamed at nobody in particular, as the little girl and her tiny brother swerved around him without so much as an upward glance at the ultimate boogeyman who’d loomed up before them. The two of them simply walked purposefully on as if the crazy man was simply one more sidewalk obstruction. The crazy man was still screaming “How do you like it?” when he suddenly charged across California at us, a half-dozen senior citizens, Asian except for me and one tiny old lady, a very old old lady, bent nearly in half from ancient scoliosis. I’d noticed that the crazy guy had looked both ways before he’d made his shrieking plunge across California, so he wasn’t quite as unhinged as he seemed to be. When the publicly insane are all the way gone, they run straight into the traffic without a look. We’ve all seen that. On his first run at us the crazy guy pointed an accusing finger and screamed, “How do you like it?” And then, looking both ways, he ran back across California where, hopping up and down, he continued to scream, “How do you like it?” before he ran at us again. I angled my unintimidating bulk so he would have to get past me if he was psyching himself up for real mayhem. As the largest person present by a hundred pounds, I was the default go-to guy. Of course all I wanted to do was make it to the ball game without pausing to grapple with a street psycho, but these days simply stepping out one’s front door can be like prehistoric man emerging from the safety of his cave. The crazy guy was dragging a blanket, his shirt was ripped, his gray trousers, which looked like they had been suit pants in better times, were stained and dirty, his dress shoes untied. Assessing the guy, I’d say he was 35, maybe 6’2” — a coupla hundred pounds. He had good teeth and generally appeared, through his grimy dishevelment, like someone had put a lot of time and money into raising this suburban Josh or Jason only to see all their hopes disintegrate into this screaming wreck. “Relax,” I said, “we don’t like it either.” He stared at me, apparently considering my idiot conciliation. The bus rolled up, and the crazy guy ran back across the street, dragging his blanket. He resumed screaming. “Better call the cops,” I said to the old lady, who peered up at me from her bent back. “I already did,” she said. We’ve gotten used to the streets as open air psych wards, grown hardened to the public fact that people can suffer like this without even the possibility of safe remedy.

AFTER BALL GAMES, the outbound N Judah is jammed but quickly unjams at the Embarcadero stop as all the East Bay people get off to catch BART back across the Bay. That day, after the N had unjammed, a black street guy was spread across two seats, him in layers of clothes and an overstuffed garbage bag next to him. A Chinese woman of about 50 gets on at Powell. She points at the guy taking up two seats. “I sit there, preeze?” He looked back at her, smiling like he didn’t understand. Two black guys sitting opposite glared at the guy. The Chinese woman again said, “I sit there, preeze?” The street guy smiled at her. I rationalized not intervening because I was standing six or so feet away and anyway this seemed a matter for intra-ethnic resolution. Sure enough. One of the black guys sitting opposite the street guy suddenly told the bum, “Man, move your shit and let this lady sit down.” The bum immediately moved his stuff onto his lap, the lady sat down, and we all rode on in peace, the bum getting off at VanNess.

THE LAST LITTLE DRAMA of the day occurred as I and another older man boarded the 44 at 9th and Irving for the trip back across the park. A tweeker dude pushed past us and sprayed us with several — oh well, never mind what he said. When’s the last time you were creatively insulted by a stranger?

COUNTY NOTES

by Mark Scaramella

According To The Latest CEO Report, the County’s cannabis department took in a whopping $11,509 in pot permit fees in April. That’s about $138k per year which barely covers the cost of the cannabis department manager’s salary and benefits. This of course fits right in to one of the cannabis department’s top enumerated priorities: “Ensure Fiscal Efficiency.” According to the Cannabis Department’s April report they issued 10 Cannabis Business Licenses, plus a few renewals and withdrawls.

The cannabis department’s license chart looks like a stoner prepared it, so it is too jargonized and decontextualized to make any sense of. But considering that there have been about 2,000 applications since the program began in 2017, 625 licenses in eight years is about 78 per year, or just under 7 per month . Pretty dismal, considering that Mendocino County was once one of the premier pot growing counties in the country.

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CEO Darcie Antle will add County Air Pollution Control Officer to her long list of titles this month. Why? According to the consent calendar item on next Tuesday Supervisors Agenda: “the District has a vital and time sensitive need for management and support given the vacancies of all management positions, and the County’s Chief Executive Officer is willing to provide that management and supportive role for as long as necessary…”

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Also on the consent calendar is a proposed expense of $19,000 for an attorney to provide “legal advice and analysis regarding negotiation of tax sharing and the annexation process between the County of Mendocino and other local entities.”

So if you thought 1. That is what our County Counsel is for, and 2. the agreement was finalized last summer, you’d be wrong.

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AS A BOY, I was an early newspaper reader, the sports pages specifically because sports, especially the 49ers and the old San Francisco Seals, captured my imagination early. Major League baseball still hadn’t arrived on the West Coast. For a baseball fan, then, the Seals and the Pacific Coast League were it. But one day, I read my first news-news story and, like everyone else in Northern California, I kept reading that story as it unfolded over the next two years. It had begun with the kidnap and murder of a 14-year-old Oakland girl, Stephanie Bryan, by a 27-year-old U.C. student named Burton Abbott. The story ended with Abbott’s execution at San Quentin two years later.

Stephanie was grabbed in 1955, Abbott was executed in 1957. Justice had been swift and maybe not always so sure in those days, but if you killed someone you could count on the state killing you in a matter of months.

Abbott maintained to the end he’d been framed, that Stephanie Bryan’s purse and undergarments found in the crawl space beneath his house had been placed there by a relative who didn’t like him. But the girl’s body had been found on Abbott family property in Trinity County, and if Abbott was framed, it was about as thorough a frame job as could be devised.

STEPHANIE BRYAN was only a couple of years older than me, which may have diverted my attention from the sports page to the front page. I could relate to her, more or less, as a peer. But I wasn’t the only one diverted. For two years, Bay Area papers ran the Abbott case on their front pages every day. I can still remember one story that said a girl, presumably Stephanie, had been seen struggling with a man in a speeding car headed north. With every edition of the four dailies out of San Francisco you could almost feel a collective chill go up the Bay Area’s collective spine. (My best friend’s father used to pack up his family for Sunday outings to Alameda just to stare at Abbott’s house where so many horror tourists showed up every day that the police had to cordon off the street.) A young girl walking home from school snagged in broad daylight? It was the Bay Area equivalent of the much earlier Lindbergh kidnapping. This kind of thing never happened in those days. Now, in these days, much more spectacular criminal events occur on a daily basis.

I REMEMBER a single week in Mendocino County, a rural area assumed to be beyond the primary psycho zones, that saw two babies almost killed out of parental fecklessness; a man running naked and bloody down a central Ukiah street required a whole defensive backfield of cops to restrain him, and there were two episodes classified as “elder abuse.” In one of those a 60-year-old woman caring for an 80-something-year-old woman bit the 80-year-old so severely that the old lady scuttled out her Fort Bragg door for help. In the other, a daughter in her forties simply hauled off and slugged her 80-year-old mother in the face, hospitalizing the old lady. And there was the usual sea-to-sea scumbaggery, of course, everywhere in the land, all of it non-occurring a short half-century ago in the days of my placid, uneventful youth.

THE POINT? Couple of points: The first is that the country is unraveling faster than even us pessimists have expected. Aberrant, even murderous behavior, has become so prevalent we barely notice the media accounts but can’t help but notice it the instant we step out our front door. We now live in a daily envelope of insanity which, to finally get to the trite point I’m making, is that it’s the chaos the feeds the fear in the gun people, but the gun people’s sense of reality is much more accurate than, say, Congressman Huffman’s sense of reality.

SO, MR. PONTIFICATOR, what’s your solution? There might not be one in any conventional sense because the economic apparatus is also collapsing from its own ongoing criminality, but I’d start by reversing the flow of the money upwards to establish a social floor consisting of guaranteed work, housing, medical care, free education through the college level, and everything else that would remove the national fear and anxiety. Won’t happen, of course, because the limo people of both political parties are simply couriers for the money accumulators, but it’s the only way to stabilize life for the ever more millions who have been destabilized and are now going crazy every day everywhere in the United States. The gun people are as unlikely to go for socialist strategies of psycho-social remediation as the libs are. The system has de-stabilized itself, and here we are on the slippery slope to national ruin, and all the untied people, millions of them, are going crazy.

HUEY P. LONG, governor of Louisiana, 1930: “How many men ever went to a barbecue and would let one man take off the table what’s intended for 9/10th of the people to eat? The only way to be able to feed the balance of the people is to make that man come back and bring back some of that grub that he ain’t got no business with! Now we got a barbecue. We have been praying to the Almighty to send us to a feast. We have knelt on our knees morning and nighttime. The Lord has answered the prayer. He has called the barbecue. “Come to my feast,” He said to 125 million American people. But Morgan and Rockefeller and Mellon and Baruch have walked up and took 85% of the victuals off the table! Now, how are you going to feed the balance of the people? What’s Morgan and Baruch and Rockefeller and Mellon going to do with all that grub? They can’t eat it, they can’t wear the clothes, they can’t live in the houses. Giv’em a yacht! Giv’em a Palace! Send ‘em to Reno and give them a new wife when they want it, if that’s what they want. [Laughter] But when they’ve got everything on God’s loving earth that they can eat and they can wear and they can live in, and all that their children can live in and wear and eat, and all of their children’s children can use, then we’ve got to call Mr. Morgan and Mr. Mellon and Mr. Rockefeller back and say, come back here, put that stuff back on this table here that you took away from here that you don’t need. Leave something else for the American people to consume. And that’s the program.”

IT TOOK GUALALA ten years to get their power poles buried, but they’re buried. Elk, Point Arena, Hopland? Done. Boonville’s been on the burial list for at least thirty years, but our unsightly tangles of poles and wires are still with us.

(Mark Scaramella Notes: I’ve heard unofficially that there’s a chance Boonville’s power lines will be buried as part of the proposed Boonville water/sewer trenching — if one or both of the projects is/are approved. But one of the insiders will have to confirm that.)

COMMENT OF THE DAY: “Eating has always been an intensely political issue: those with money eat, those without starve. With food in abundance, the only thing stopping its fair distribution is the profit motive. This explanation not only helps us understand the regularity of famines, but likewise explains the daily suffering caused by inadequate nutrition amongst the poor, be they in rich, or impoverished societies. It is hardly a new phenomena that global food supplies are largely controlled by a just handful of global corporations; although with ongoing mergers this number are continually concentrating their power to enhance their ability to regulate our diets. These same corporations are usually at the forefront of anti-union activism, and dedicate themselves to ensuring that their workers’ pay and conditions are as low as possible to maximize their shareholders profits. Nevertheless as the self-appointed guardians of most of the world’s food, it is simply not good press if these elites are seen to idly stand by as the working class starve. So when large proportions of people are forced into the dire position that they cannot afford to eat, the big-hearted capitalists of the food industry see it as their obligation (to sustain capitalism) to step forward to lend a hand. This magnanimous benefaction comes in the form of charity; although in many business leaders minds, such actions are seamlessly enmeshed with the generously funded endeavors of their corporate public relations departments. — From “The Politics of Food Banks” by Michael Barker

WHAT BETTER PLACE than lightly populated Mendocino County to at least try to devise an effective, humane strategy for housing the unhoused, especially the derelict part of that population? Let’s start from the premise, and my broken record, that persons unable or unwilling to care for themselves be compelled to shelter, and Mendocino County be responsible for providing that shelter where the temporarily unmoored, miscellaneous incompetents, alcoholics, drug dependent, and plain old bums are required to abide while they reside in Mendocino County on the street and in the bushes along the battered Russian River.

I’VE OFTEN suggested a revival of the old County Farm concept, which was a working farm and not simply a time-out spa, where all the above, especially the habituals among them, were confined for however long it took them to pull themselves together. It they immediately reverted upon release, they were immediately re-sequestered. The Supervisors, preoccupied with their ongoing persecution of Ms. Cubbison, should take the lead in the discussion, and that discussion should involve the judges and, of course, the police.

HOW TO PAY for it, how to confine people who don’t want to be confined, is a matter for local government to figure out, it looks like the new psych wing at the County Jail is going to be the first option.

IT’S NOT LIKE humane, workable options don’t exist. In Eugene, Oregon, a lib bastion much like Mendocino County, nobody is allowed to live on the streets. The Eugene option is a massive church-run shelter or jail, the sole options for persons attempting to live on the streets or in the parks. Nobody is allowed to camp out in front of stores panhandling or otherwise menacing passersby. Simply hauling the habituals to the Mendo County Jail and running them through the hi-ho here you go justice system is expensive and futile. (Our monarchical Superior Court lacks, shall we say, civic spirit, simply processing on through our porous legal system people who should be locked up or placed in locked psych hospitals, most of the latter owned by doctors of the cash and carry type and also a revolving door. Looked at as a whole, we have highly paid people exacerbating the prob while a cadre of other highly paid people make handsome livings off human misery.)

THE ABANDONED but nicely maintained Point Arena Air Force Base would make an ideal County Farm. Inland, there’s plenty of room adjacent to the County Jail, to name one likely site. Simply hassling street people away from Mendocino Village, downtown Ukiah, Willits, and Fort Bragg is futile. And cynical. If there were real alternatives in Mendocino County along the lines of the above, the kind of bums everyone complains about, the aggressive, criminally-oriented ones, would move on to more indulgent jurisdictions, as the savvy town of Fort Bragg has proven by a coordinated, intelligent, efficient strategy that simply doesn’t allow street people to destroy their public spaces. Ukiah does.

ALMOST A THIRD of registered voters believe their gun rights have been so threatened that an armed revolution might be necessary in the next few years, hence Timothy McVeigh, hence the Jan 6th mob. Farleigh Dickinson University surveyed 863 registered voters for the Public Mind poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4%. The questions focused on gun control and whether armed revolution would be necessary to protect individual liberties. The survey included the statement: “In the next few years, an armed revolution might be necessary in order to protect our liberties.” 29% of respondents said they agreed, 47% disagreed, 18% said they didn’t agree or disagree, 5% said they were unsure, and 1% refused to respond. Most of those who agreed that armed revolution might be necessary were Republicans. Republicans seemed far more certain that armed revolution was needed, with 44% of those agreeing with the statement identifying as Republicans. 18% of those who agreed were Democrats, and 27% were Independents.

I THINK the Maga types are more counter-revolutionary than revolutionary in that they are devoted to the billionaire class and, scratch one and he’ll reveal that he really looks forward to killing his fellow citizens — liberals and ethnic minorities, especially black people who the Maga-minded see as threatening.

THE GUN NUTS are heavy on fantasy if they think (1) this government would even attempt to confiscate their guns and (2) a fat guy in camo, or a whole bunch of fat guys in camo, could hold off the government if the gubmint did try a gun grab. Pure hysteria but not surprising in the End Times-quality furor out there.

IN 2015, when two convicted murderers broke out of a prison in upstate New York, it kicked off a weeks-long manhunt — and put the prison’s tailor shop supervisor under intense scrutiny. The Emmy-nominated 2018 series Escape at Dannemora depicts the events surrounding the real-life jailbreak committed by inmates Richard Matt and David Sweat, including the involvement of the prison employees who aided and abetted them. Directed by actor-director Ben Stiller (‘Severance’) and created by Brett Johnson (‘Ray Donovan’) and Michael Tolkin (‘The Offer’), the crime series stars Patricia Arquette, Benicio del Toro, and Paul Dano. Arquette won a SAG Award and a Golden Globe for her performance. (Full disclosure. i own four guns, only one I bought, the other three, a pistol, a shotgun and a rifle. I bought a gun after a series of what I thought were viable threats.)

LAUREN SINNOTT

Come to two mural events this Wednesday, May 21!

10-11am - presentation at the mural about Fort Bragg’s Finnish heritage, right next to Bojh Parker‘s beautiful work, across from Racine’s on N. Franklin St.

Then 3:30pm at Eagles’ Hall, pictured here soon after it was built by the Finns in 1914 and portrayed in my mural. We will have hot coffee drunk the Finnish way (you’ll see), tea and cookies, and a reading of a Finnish children’s book in Finnish and English, and we’ll hear stories. Join us!

See more about the mural www.historymural.com/finn/

THE CUBBISON FIASCO. Remember it all began because a petulant DA Eyster wanted Cubbison out because she, in her elected capacity as County independent bean counter, challenged Eyster’s annual Christmas debauch at the Broiler Steak House, which Eyster had blithely charged to Mendocino County’s beset taxpayers. Ms. C was simply doing her job. She should be honored for standing up to Mendocino County’s blustering “lead law enforcement officer.” So Eyster goes to the Board of Supervisors with a false claim that Ms. C had committed a felony theft of public funds, a charge the Sheriff’s Department’s investigators were unable to find, but Eyster’s own over-large investigative posse duly discovered. “Right, Boss, she did it. Can we go home now?” The Supervisors proceed to fire Ms. C on Eyster’s say-so without evidence of any wrongdoing, without any opportunity to respond, and without any apparent awareness that Ms. C is an elected official. When this farce finally stumbles into court two years later after delay after delay, Judge Moorman tosses it as unfounded. The board that did that, along with Eyster, should be held personally liable, but here comes Supervisor Haschak, the dimmist of dim bulbs, with a snide comment obviously written for him by one of the legal masterminds running up her billable hours at public expense: Haschak to Cubbison: “…With this understanding, please let the Board know as soon as possible if you are unable or unwilling to fulfill the duties and statutory requirements of your position. Thank you.” Haschak, Williams and Mulheren might ask themselves the same question, but Haschak’s moronic sarcasm will of course pad Ms. C’s payday when she wins her slam dunk wrongful suspension suit. Instead of trying to settle with Ms. Cubbison before the costs of this clown show go any further, our cretinous supervisors, led around by their uncomprehending noses by San Francisco County lawyers and the incompetents in their own laughable County Counsel’s office, keep on insulting her and getting in the way of her work.

THE PD PUBLISHED a puffaroo the other day about how to attend Giants games without taking out a mortgage to fund a day at the ballpark. Probably the best thing you can do is ingratiate yourself with someone who has season’s tickets and negotiate for the games that person can’t attend. My nephew — all blessings upon him — lays a certain number of day-game Giants tickets on me every season. I pass on night game tickets because I’m strictly a day-game guy. Of course I take my own food. Ballpark prices are beyond extortionate and the food isn’t all that good. To get to the ballpark, before decrepitude kicked in, I used to ride my bike down through the Presidio, Crissy Field, Aquatic Park, Fisherman’s Wharf, and along the waterfront to the ballpark. Or I took Muni. For ballpark food, I’d buy a $5 sandwich at Acme Bread in the Ferry Building or I packed in some Clement Street dim sum. When I didn’t have a free ticket, I attended when the Giants were playing someone hopeless, when the scalper guy I knew was receptive to any and all cash offers. Or, with the Giants “market pricing” policy, I could get a ticket at the window up in View for under twenty bucks. (“Market pricing” means for the big games with the Dodgers, say, the Giants run the ticket price up double, even triple. I operate on the theory that major league baseball is major league baseball, that no matter who’s playing you’ll see guys making plays no one else in the world can make. And I prefer the seats way up top on the rim of the stadium where, between pitches, you have that panoramic view of the Bay.)

COMING in to The City from the north, be sure to take the regular ferry from Larkspur; if you’re a geeze or a wheeze, tickets are only six bucks on the regular ferry. The special ballpark ferry is expensive, and you’re squeezed in with the most repellant drunks in all the Bay Area — Marin County drunks. If you’re driving in to The City from the north, you can park free in the Marina and take the 30 Stockton to within a block of the ballpark. Or you can park free way the hell out by the beach and catch the N Judah for the ballpark.

THE 30 STOCKTON becomes a geriatric Asian mosh pit as it passes through Chinatown, so be prepared to be bullrushed and generally pummeled by tiny old ladies in big bill sun hats.

CHILDREN. Only take a kid with you if the child has been properly trained in the basics of civilized behavior. If you take a “I wanna, I wanna” kind of kid you’ll have to borrow money to get back home.

I HAVE NO IDEA how to get to the ballpark from the south; I haven’t been farther south than the airport for 50 years. From the East it’s easy access by BART and a short ride on Muni. Play ball!

MOVING ALONG, and curious about the recent allegations that Budweiser is watering its beer, one day I downed a tall Bud on my way home from the Ballpark, plopping down on a bench beside a street guy near Pier 27, at that time an horrific eyesore given over by “progressive” San Francisco to one billionaire so he and two other billionaires could race their billionaire boats on the Bay. “Wouldn’t want to give me a hit of that, would you partner?,” the street guy asked. But he said it, “Woodja wanna gimme a hit o that, woodja pardner?” No, my good man I’m sorry, but I’m conducting a taste test here, I said.

SO? Put me down with the people who claim they’re watering down the Bud. Something’s different, for sure. We get ripped off so many ways anymore, and now the corporations are watering down the beer. That tears it! I’m writing to my Congressman! (Which is like writing a complaint to your backyard fig tree. (An on-line commenter promptly and rightly pointed out that all beer is watered down, but Bud had a certain taste that my unfailing palate detects has been altered, presumably by more water in the recipe.

A SENIOR TICKET to see the Terracotta Warriors at the Asian Art Museum cost me $16 bucks, but once you’re inside you’re informed they are five life-size facsimiles, not that anyone could tell, and what the hey, what’s one more little swindle in the Land of Swindles. Or, as George Carlin famously put it, “This country runs on bullshit. Take away the bullshit and everything collapses.” And on that Thursday morning I was surprised to have to wait in a long line, surrounded by wheelchairs and walkers and barely ambulatory old people, aware that I was only a stutter step away from late life wreckage myself. I might have been the youngest person on the premises and was well into my seventh decade. I’d seen the upstairs exhibits, and was mentally kicking myself about paying $16 to see five concrete statues when a kid in an usher’s blazer walked up and said, “I’m sorry, sir. You’ll have to check your backpack.” I went immediately to senile mode: “You can’t have my checkbook, and if you ask me for it again I’ll call the police.” He walked off, presumably to consult with his supervisor, but no one reappeared to make an issue out of it. Back out on the street I was pleased to see a street preacher on the steps of the appellate court shouting through a bullhorn about sin. At least he was yelling at the right people. I’ve seen the same guy on Market Street with his aurally weaponized bullhorn. He’s a tough-looking old bird even in his suit, and so loud-angry that you have to listen carefully to understand that he’s not looking for a fight but urging passersby to give up their wicked ways and follow Him, which isn’t a message that finds much receptivity in San Francisco even when it’s delivered by a man who doesn’t look like he’d rather slug you than pray with you.

THAT SATURDAY, there was only one crazy guy on the 1 California, the most sedate of Muni lines at all hours. Youngish, maybe 35, conventionally dressed in shirt and slacks except for a hole punch he wore like a bolo tie. “Are we there yet?” he asked no one in particular several times. Suddenly, opposite the hospital at Laurel he screamed, “Off! Let me off!” The driver let him off in the middle of the block.

I ALWAYS stopped in at the Ferry Building to pick up a sandwich for the ballgame, Giants vs. Colorado that day, which started down the street at 1:05. For $5.70 you got a “rustic baguette with Mt. Tamalpais triple creme cheese, fruit jam, arugula, and black pepper.” Even if I have a few extra bucks I don’t buy ballpark food, not out of hostility for negative food value viands but out of hostility for Giants ownership and the South Carolina concessionaire that pays the concession workers about one dollar out of the ten dollars they charge for a beer. And you’d think at least a couple of the ballplayers would step up to the plate for the people who make the game go, people making an average of $11,000 a season. From a couple of blocks away the concession workers were picketing the ballpark. I’d bought a $20 ticket from this scalper-dude I kinda know and was chagrined that now I’d have to turn around and go home, never having crossed a picket line and reluctant to start at an advanced age. But a picketing lady said it was fine to “go on in and enjoy the ball game — just don’t buy anything.” No prob for me. I always bring the sandwich from the Ferry Building. Inside, most of the concessions were closed. 70 years ago the whole city would have been on the picket line, but 70 years ago these days might as well be 700 years ago. No one remembers, no one cares, it’s every pre-schooler for himself.

SEATED BEHIND six raucous women of my vintage, one of them sporting a gray mohawk, the tanned woman’s back directly in front of me featuring a butterfly tattoo with a bumble bee forever hovering over a flower, these girls of many summers were talking about the concession strike. “I don’t care,” the tattooed babe said, “I bought a beer and I’m going to buy another goddam beer, strike or no strike.” The old lady next to her commented, “Gawd. What are they trying to do, starve us?” Later in the game, which ended in mass ecstasy with Angel Pagan’s inside-the-park homerun, Zito hit the Rockies centerfielder, Crawford, on the hand with a Zito fastball. “The tattooed lady exclaimed, “Eighty miles an hour fastball? Big goddam deal. He’s not hurt. Play ball!” They were a ruthless bunch, commenting knowledgeably on both the game — “Belt got under the tag. He was safe” — and the sartorial deficiencies of female passersby, “Why not let it all hang out, honey?” And, “I wonder how she got her tits up that high?” one wondered. “Maybe with a forklift,” answered another. That kind of thing, always to the chuckling agreement of the other ladies.

IT WAS A WONDERFUL day high up in View with these long gone Golden Girls, the wind whipping the stadium flags, the sun and the sailboats all afternoon on the water, the delirious game-ending heroics of Pagan.

ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

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

[2] Hulls Valley is a beautiful place. And marijuana is a beautiful plant. I loved it. Small scenes were good times. I was saddened to my heart to see the greedrush and “the industry” destroy our counties. Covelo area worse than most others. This murder may not be directly tied to weed but weed greed was what spun us all into a dark place we are still experiencing…

[3] Biden’s hubris is symptomatic of bigger failures in the DNC & American political system. Democrats won’t be able to rally in 2026 or 2028 without some serious and honest self-reflection and some serious and honest reforms -- like younger candidates and leadership (people who can make a good case they’ll be around to see the consequences of their legislation in ten or twenty years); like candidates who aren’t exclusively center-right; like candidates who win primaries instead of being anointed. And then maybe, just maybe, we can make some even infinitesimal modicum of progress towards more equitable taxation and a living wage, universal health care, gun control, global warming, consumer protections, a legal immigration system that works, renewing infrastructure, improving education…

[4] Hulls Valley is a beautiful place. And marijuana is a beautiful plant. I loved it. Small scenes were good times. I was saddened to my heart to see the greedrush and “the industry” destroy our counties. Covelo area worse than most others. This murder may not be directly tied to weed but weed greed was what spun us all into a dark place we are still experiencing…

[5] I find it laughable to read more writers, like Maureen Dowd, act as though Joe Biden’s decline is something new and surprising. It was OBVIOUS to any one watching him in the last two and half years. The media blatantly stated over and over and over that he was fine and he was clearly not. This is one more example why people feel misled by many in the media. It was clear to anyone watching but they were told not to believe “their lying eyes.”

[6] 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.

[7] 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.

[8] PG&E, AN ON-LINE COMMENT:

So I just got my new bill. It has changed. Now it shows clearly that I use $59.00$ of power and pay $159.00 to have PGE send it to me.

[9] As an 8th grade teacher it is obvious that there is a growing misogyny in our culture right now. I also strongly suspect that porn is a big part of the problem. However, there is an obstacle to teachers such as myself doing anything about it. A current paranoia in education circles about pedophiles and “grooming” has made it incredibly difficult for teachers to have frank and honest classroom discussions about sex. Admins and curriculum designers have the shared delusion that 13-14 is too young to talk about porn in a classroom setting. As a male teacher, it sometimes feel like it is dangerous for my career to even say the word “porn” during a staff meeting. But, I think 7th and 8th grade is EXACTLY when open discussions about porn should be happening. This is the age when many kids are first getting exposed to it, and should therefore be when schools can start talking about it. Any parent currently concerned about this should write their school board and demand that porn literacy discussions start getting incorporated into middle school sex ed programs.

[10] 101, AN ON-LINE COMMENT: I came from SF this weekend and once I got past Santa Rosa, I counted no less than 20 sports cars (most of them anyway) doing well over 100 between there and Scotia. 5 CHP seen the entire way, and 2 of them might have been the same one. Half of the speeders were the newer corvettes, a few Porsches a yellow Mclaren by Hopland and one guy on a motorcycle with a rider on back easily going over 100 lane-splitting everybody by Willits. Party lights were not seen at any time following them or pulled over, and I don’t think any of the LEOs would have had a chance.

[11] I just needed to see Biden in action during the Clarence Thomas hearings to know I didn’t like the man. He allowed a brave black woman to be trashed and gave us Clarence Thomas. Papa Joe was Obama’s VP and was behind the brilliant decision to make the Bush Tax cuts permanent in exchange for a few weeks of unemployment benefits for federal workers (which the republicans undoubtedly would have caved on had the democrats stood their ground). I remember thinking of the colossal stupidity of giving away the only leverage they had against the strident Republican Congress. Apparently all Biden’s idea - the evidence of his years of negotiating experience in the senate! Whatever good Biden did during his first term will be wiped out and then some. I honestly think it would have been better if Trump had won in 2020 because then we would be over him now and he wouldn’t have had 4 years to come up with the Project 25 plan. Then the democrats could have spent four years coming together instead of desperately trying to prop up Biden and limiting their focus to opposing Trump. The democrats need to focus on more than just being anti Trump.