Mendocino County Today: Monday 6/2/2025

By AVA News Service on June 2, 2025

WARM conditions continue, albeit a few degrees cooler than the previous few days. Relatively gusty winds will continue though early this week. Warm and dry conditions for the first week of June are to be expected. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 47F under clear skies this Monday morning on the coast. While our forecast calls for mostly clear skies this week the fog is moving up the coast from Marin County as we speak (read). AKA typical summer pattern.

Along 128, south of Yorkville (Julie Buschman)

LOOK SKYWARD, MENDO

Streaks of colorful light could paint the sky over a large portion of the country on Sunday night into Monday morning amid a severe geomagnetic storm.

by Amy Graff

A geomagnetic storm is expected to set skies aglow in the northern part of the United States on Sunday night into early Monday morning, with the northern lights potentially visible as far south as Alabama to Northern California, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

The geomagnetic storm reached severe strength early Sunday morning. Though it was not expected to be as intense as the one in May 2024 that flooded skies around the world with light, Shawn Dahl, service coordinator for the Space Weather Prediction Center, said Sunday will be a great night to view the lights where skies are clear.

“Monday night would be another night to look out, especially in the more northern locations,” Mr. Dahl said. “But for those who are eager to see the aurora, where they usually don’t get to see it, the best chance would be Sunday night.”

The lights are expected to be most vivid in the northernmost states, such as Michigan and Washington State. They may also be visible on the horizon in the middle latitudes, from Oregon and Northern California across the country into the Mid-Atlantic, and down into the South.

Places with the best potential for clear skies on Sunday night include much of the Pacific Northwest, particularly earlier in the night, as well as a good chunk of Northern California.

The central Plains into the Ohio Valley, across most of the Midwest and also the Mid-Atlantic could provide good viewing opportunities.

New York City “isn’t looking great” as a place to view from, said Peter Mullinax, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center, who noted that the Northeast is expected to be overcast.

People should check their local forecasts on Sunday for the most up-to-date conditions.

To view the aurora borealis, go to a dark location with clear skies.

The northern lights, or aurora borealis, are streaks of colorful light that paint the nighttime sky.

They most commonly appear in the skies over locations closer to the North Pole, and people travel to Iceland and Greenland to see them.

They occur when eruptions on the sun’s surface, known as coronal mass ejections, emit material that triggers geomagnetic storms when they interact with Earth’s magnetic field.

An explosion of material from the sun was heading toward Earth on Sunday, triggering the geomagnetic storm.

These storms are measured on a scale from minor (G1) to extreme (G5). The storm reached G4 conditions as of Sunday morning. During stronger storms, the northern lights can be visible in latitudes that are lower than usual.

The aurora can be viewed when it is dark outside, with 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. often being the optimal time, according to NOAA.

It’s best to find a location outside city limits with clear skies and minimal light pollution.

While the aurora may appear in the skies overhead in the northernmost states, your chances of seeing something will be higher if you find a location where you have an unobstructed view to the north.

“As soon as it gets dark enough, people should be on the lookout to the north, outside of city lights,” Mr. Dahl said.

A full moon would diminish the colors from the aurora, but Mr. Dahl said, “The moon is very young, so that’s not going to be a problem.”

If you can’t see the aurora with the naked eye, you may be able to capture it with the camera of your mobile phone.

You can track the arrival of the northern lights on the website of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

(NY Times)

PILAR ECHEVERRIA, Mosswood Market Proprietor and Anderson Valley's Morning Mayor, as She Celebrates The Market's 15th Anniversary This Week

AV UNIFIED NEWS

Dear Students, Families, and Staff,

We are savoring these last days of school! It has been wonderful to be with parents at our various events as they students’ endeavors and celebrate their achievements. During times like these, I remember sitting at my own children’s graduations and wondering where the time had gone. As Gretchen Rubin, a bestselling author once said, “The days are long but the years are short.”

Last Friday, Peachland Preschool’s graduation was so cute! Mrs. Anita Mendoza and Mrs. Lupita Espinosa planned a beautiful ceremony. Watching the proud parents was almost as much fun as watching the proud preschoolers. As I sat among the audience, I reflected on how fortunate we are to live and work in this tight-knit community. These preschoolers will move through TK and Kindergarten, through 6th grade, then up to AV JrSr High. They will go on field trips, build new friendships, attend dances and join Leadership or the FFA. Their parents will be lifelong friends. I believe the parents of our 6th, 8th, and 12th grade students will feel the passage of time keenly in the coming days as they reflect on their children’s time in AVUSD: the friendships built, lessons learned, and memories that will last a lifetime.

Sitting among the parents of our youngest students, I reflected on the importance of focusing on the moments that will make our lifelong memories. I wish everyone a beautiful next two weeks!

Peachland students and Mrs. Anita Mendoza preparing for the preschool graduation ceremony

Upcoming Events

• June 4, 8:00-12:00 6th grade “Orientation” visit to AV Jr/Sr High
• June 4, 5:30, 6th grade parent information meeting at AVHS
• June 5, FFA Awards Night at AVHS
• June 6, 8:30 a.m. Track Groundbreaking
• June 10, 6th Grade Promotion
• June 11, 8th Grade Promotion
• June 12, High School Graduation at AVHS

Track Groundbreaking!

We are thrilled to announce the groundbreaking of our new track and soccer field, made possible through the generous support of the Caltrans Clean California grant. Please join us Friday, June 6th, at 8:30 a.m. This project represents a transformative investment in our school and community, creating a space that promotes health, recreation, and school pride. We are deeply grateful to Caltrans for recognizing the value of safe, clean, and accessible outdoor facilities and for helping us bring this long-awaited project to life.

This new facility will not only serve our students during school hours, enriching our athletic programs and physical education offerings, but it will also be open for community use during non-school hours—providing a shared space that promotes fitness, well-being, and connection for all. We are excited about the positive impact this track and field will have for years to come.

We would like to thank former Superintendent Louise Simson for her foresight and leadership in pursuing this grant opportunity, and Chris Vetrano for his skillful work in writing the grant that made this project possible. Our heartfelt thanks also go to the Anderson Valley School Board, Principal Heath McNerney, and Athletic Director John Toohey for their unwavering support and commitment to creating outstanding opportunities for our students. Continued thanks to Don Alameida, our exceptional architect for our many construction projects and Rege Construction, in advance, for their work! This project is a shining example of what’s possible when vision, dedication, and community come together.

Hey future 7th Graders! Ready for an Awesome Year? (Message from Mr. McNerney)  Join Us for 7th Grade Orientation!

We’re so excited to welcome you to AVJHS! We will have an awesome time together as you get the chance to tour our campus, learn about our school and see some of the amazing things we are accomplishing as a school.

At this tour/orientation, you’ll:

• Meet your teachers and some new friends
• Find your classrooms and get familiar with the school
• Hear about 7th grade
• Get answers to your questions—so you feel ready on day one!
• Join our current middle school students for break and lunch
• Have a rally!

Date: June 4th, 2025 🕒 Time: 8:10-11:45 

Where: Anderson Valley Jr/Sr High School

Whether you’re feeling excited, nervous, or somewhere in between—you’re not alone. Orientation is a great way to feel more confident and comfortable before school starts.

Can’t wait to see you there!

Parents are welcome to join for this tour, but we know you will have questions so we will have a parent information night that evening, 5:30-6:30 in the AVJHS Cafeteria!

Thanks,

Heath McNerney, Principal

Kindergarten Playground Update

As Kindergarten parents and teachers know, the small playground has, unfortunately, not been available to our littlest students for several weeks due to concerns about lead paint. The district will be mitigating as soon as possible. The California Department of Public Health requires that the district utilize a painter that is on their approved list of specially trained personnel. While we hoped this work would be done during Spring Break, we were not able to find an authorized painter to do it so it will now need to happen during the summer. While the ultimate plan is to replace the old windows entirely, the painting fix, which should be completed during the summer, will allow students to play safely in the yard. We thank parents for their support and understanding that the district is prioritizing the safety of our students.

AVHS Incident Follow-Up

We continue to investigate the incident in which a student was harmed at AVHS. Several students and parents have come forward with information and we are working with the Sheriff’s department and various advisors to ensure any students involved receive appropriate consequences. If you or your child have any information about this incident, please contact Mr. McNerney, Mrs. Larson-Balliet, or a trusted teacher. If a student has information but is afraid to report it, measures can be taken to protect their identities.

Previous announcements:

Join Our Community Engagement Initiative Team!

Dear AVUSD Community: we just found out that we got a 2-year Community Engagement Initiative grant and are looking to build a team. This group would also advise the Community School Partnership work; we're cautiously optimistic that we will receive funding for both sites for the coming 5-years.

We'd like to build a team of 12 people: teachers, staff, parents, students and community members, please read on if you're interested and complete the form to indicate your interest in being involved. Please complete this Google Form if you you are interested, and contact Nat Corey-Moran at [email protected] or (707) 354-3330 with questions.

AV Soccer Teams to Participate in Ukiah Valley Youth Soccer League!

We're organizing co-ed Anderson Valley teams to participate in the Ukiah Valley Youth Soccer League. Practices in Anderson Valley, games in Ukiah on weekends. We're looking for players, coaches and sponsors. Sign up by June 5. More information here.

First Day of Practice For All Fall Sports: August 11th

Please make or adjust your family plans now so your student can attend practice starting Day One. Daily attendance is expected from the first day forward. Teams without enough committed players during Week One may be disbanded.

Sports registration packets are available:

• In the high school office
• Or you can print one at this link: https://4.files.edl.io/423b/05/06/25/224512-83db717f-0bd9-416e-ab51-b21f58dc11c9.pdf
• You must have proof of insurance and a physical performed within the last calendar year to participate.
• Spots on teams will not be held for students delinquent on their paperwork or physicals so make sure it is schedule ahead of time.

Let’s get ready for a great fall season, Panthers! If you have any questions, please reach out.– Anderson Valley High School Athletics

Summer School

Summer School will be June 23-July 22

8:30-12:30 / ASP 12:30-5:30 Transportation provided

(bus leaves for the day at 3:00 p.m.)

AVES will provide activities including sports, crafts, science, art, and field trips. Here is the AVES Summer School flier

AV Jr High will provide fun learning activities.

We Value ALL Our Families: Immigration Support and Updates

Please find links to additional information for families below:

• Mendocino County Office of Education: Immigration Resource Page
• Immigration and California Families: State Immigration Website
• National Immigration Law Center: “Know Your Rights” (English | Spanish | Additional Languages)

If you would like to be more involved at school, please contact your school’s principal, Mr. Ramalia at AVES or Mr. McNerney at AV Jr/Sr High, or our district superintendent, Kristin Larson Balliet. We are deeply grateful for our AVUSD families.

With respect,

Kristin Larson Balliet, Superintendent

Anderson Valley Unified School District

[email protected]

Mrs. Swehla & friends/alumni barbecuing for the FFA Drivethrough Dinner

FRIENDS OF THE EEL

The Eel River dams will never produce hydropower again. The unreliable water supply they allow to the Russian River will fail as geology and physics proceed.

Pacific Gas and Electric’s (PG&E) Potter Valley Project has failed, forever, at the primary purpose for which Cape Horn and Scott Dams and the diversion to the East Branch Russian River were built. After the transformer at the Potter Valley powerhouse failed in 2021, PG&E declined to buy a new one. So the dams will never produce another watt of power.

Fortunately, this benefits PG&E’s embattled ratepayers. Between 2005 – 2016, the PVP generated less than ¼ of a percent of all PG&E’s hydroelectric production, yet the PVP cost PG&E (or rather, ratepayers) more than twenty dollars for every dollar’s worth of electricity it made. PG&E cites the significant economic losses of the project as a primary factor in their 2019 decision to withdraw their relicensing application, which led directly to current plans for dam removal.

But, while the economic losses started PG&E on the path toward decommissioning, it’s clear that dam safety issues at this century-old, high-hazard facility are what is really motivating PG&E to act quickly to remove this massive liability.

Seismic Risk is Amplified by Structural Issues

Scott Dam, which impounds the Lake Pillsbury Reservoir, sits nearly atop the Bartlett Springs Fault Zone, capable of generating a M7 earthquake. Many elements of Scott Dam’s design and current condition compound the seismic risks of its location.

Congressman Huffman recently shared at a public meeting that an engineer with PG&E told him that of all the utility’s projects “Scott Dam is the one that keeps me up at night”. Here is a summary of the most concerning elements at Scott Dam fueling the nightmares of PG&E’s engineers:

a. Design v Construction

Scott Dam was originally designed to go straight across the river. During construction, however, builders discovered that what they thought was bedrock on the southern abutment was actually a giant boulder. This boulder shifted during construction and required a seat-of-the-pants redesign to build the rest of the dam in front of the boulder (nicknamed “the knocker,” it’s the dark purple blob in the image below), at a sharp angle to the rest of the dam.

b. Sediment accumulation

The Eel “has the highest recorded average annual suspended-sediment yield per square mile of drainage area of any river of its size or larger in the United States. This yield, in tons per square mile, is more than 15 times that of the Mississippi River and more than four times that of the Colorado River”. This sediment has been piling up, in the Lake Pillsbury Reservoir, for over a century, and is now placing significant pressure on the upstream face of Scott Dam.

These walls of sediment will at some point collapse and block the only low-level water outlet. When that water outlet, controlled by a needle valve, stops working, PG&E will only be able to release water when Scott Dam is full. The risk of sediment collapse is greater when sediments are exposed, and when reservoir levels are drawn down rapidly. Since this problem was identified, PG&E has managed the reservoir to always maintain at least 12,000 acre feet of water.

c. Aging infrastructure

Although any century-old infrastructure is going to degrade and pose an increasing risk of failure, dams are particularly subject to decay and especially vulnerable to catastrophic failure. However, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) flatly refused to address questions about the seismic safety of Scott Dam in the relicensing process, insisting that its Dam Safety division’s inspection process keeps all federally licensed dams safe, by definition.

Similarly, California has its own Division of Safety of Dams (DSOD), with significantly more capacity and authority than most state level bodies. This system gives the outward assurance of regular review by experts, but it is nearly impossible for the public to track this process.

Nearly everything about dam safety in the PVP FERC docket is classified as Critical Energy Infrastructure Information (CEII), a designation that keeps all such information out of public view. Over years of reading the unclassified parts of correspondence between PG&E and regulators on the FERC docket, we caught some glimpses through the CEII fence of Scott Dam’s deeper challenges.

d. Foundation

As Scott Dam was being built, contemporary observers raised what appeared to be serious questions about the materials and methods used to construct the dam’s foundation, but no investigation was ever undertaken. Again, much of the information about the stability of Scott Dam’s foundation is concealed behind CEII classification. What we do know is that many of the piezometers installed to measure uplift pressure have failed. FERC recommended that PG&E install new ones during routine dam safety evaluations in 2018, but we are unsure if that ever happened.

e. Seismic risk

Many dams built before we understood plate tectonics sit on fault lines because where river channels cross side-slip faults, they are pinched into configurations ideal for a small dam to create a large reservoir. This is exactly the case for Scott Dam. The Bartlett Springs Fault is a part of the San Andreas complex has been the focus of decades of work by USGS geologists, which by 2015 had begun to show that it is capable of generating up to a M7 earthquake. That new information slowly percolated into FERC’s systems, ultimately generating a new estimate of the potential maximum earthquake for Scott Dam.

In addition to Scott Dam’s precarious location atop the Bartlett Spring Fault system, there is also an active landslide above to the southern abutment of the dam (where “the knocker” is located). When Miller Pacific conducted a slope stability analysis in 2018, they concluded that the landslide, with a mass of over 8 million cubic feet, weighing over 520,000 tons, presents a significant geologic hazard. In PG&E’s 2016 safety review they state that the “susceptibility of these slopes to seismic events is not known and has not been studied.”

Failure as water supply infrastructure

When PG&E received an assessment of the seismic risk to Scott Dam in 2023, they quickly decided to mitigate that risk by lowering the radial gates atop the dam and keeping them down, reducing the capacity of Lake Pillsbury Reservoir by about 20,000 acre feet. Combine that with the sediment accumulation which has both reduced storage capacity and requires PG&E to maintain at least 12,000 acre feet to prevent blockage of the only water outlet, and that leaves relatively little water to spare for diversions. What had previously been a significant asset for water users is now at best uncertain, and very much at risk of complete failure.

When PG&E attempted to auction the PVP, they received no qualified bids. Representatives of water users in Sonoma and Mendocino county are clear that this is due to the liability of the dams and the annual operating losses. They say, “there is no legal basis for requiring PG&E to maintain the dams…and we cannot operationally or fiscally take ownership of or fix both dams.”

Thanks to the cooperation of stakeholders in both river basins, transforming the Eel into California’s longest free-flowing river will not end diversions into the Russian, but rather allow for a change that will be more ecologically appropriate for both watersheds. Dam removal is the inevitable solution to the public safety and environmental hazard that the current project presents. And let’s not forget, dam removal is also the single most important action we can take to support recovery of the Eel’s native salmon and steelhead.

MENDOCINO ON THE MAP

"After a friend tipped them off to a quaint town with a population of 600 called Mendocino, a former logging region that has since been revitalized as an artist colony, the couple chanced upon an unusual gem for sale: an octagon-shaped house built around a centuries-old redwood tree…"

I wonder where it is.

https://www.dwell.com/article/bret-rossman-mendocino-tree-house-578828b1

— Marco McClean

JULY 2025 AT FORT BRAGG LIBRARY

Where’s Waldo in the Library?

Find the little cardboard Waldo hiding in the library, and win stickers.

Free

Saturday, July 5, 2025, 2-4 pm

Contact: [email protected]

707-964-2020

Creative Writing Workshop

A monthly workshop taught by published authors. Each month will feature a different genre/style/or theme.

Open and free to all adults. Bring your notebooks and pencils.

This month: Young Adult Fiction with Norma Watkins and special guest, YA author, Ginny Rorby

Wednesday, July 9, 2025, 2-3:30 pm

Contact: [email protected]

707-964-2020

Fall/Winter Gardening with Sakina

Join us for this special presentation on prepping your garden for fall and winter with local gardening expert, Sakina Bush.

Free

Saturday, July 12, 2025, 10 am – 12 pm

Contact: [email protected]

707-964-2020

Giant Pac-Man Game

Become Pac-Man and the ghosts, in a walkable maze, and try to get the high score! For ages 8 and up.

Saturday, July 12, 2025, 3-4 pm

Contact: [email protected]

707-964-2020

Teen D&D Lock-In

Attention, wizards and warriors! The library will transform into a castle, with monsters to defeat and treasure to gain. Pizza and other provisions provided. You must sign up for this adventure by July 18.

Saturday, July 19, 2025, 6-9 pm

Contact: [email protected]

707-964-2020

Sinister Science – Shake and Make Ice Cream

Professor Shirley Seau and Dr. Shirley Knott will teach kids 5 and older how to make ice cream.

Wear your grubbies and bring some mittens/gloves to keep your fingers from freezing.

Free event

Saturday, July 26, 2025, 2-3 pm

Contact: [email protected]; 707-964-2020

Ongoing Programs:

Open Mic Poetry—Come, read your own poetry, someone else’s or just come to listen. In person and via ZOOM. First Thursday of the month, 7 pm

Kids Story Time—Join our Youth Librarian, Kim for stories and sing-alongs. Most Fridays & Saturdays, 10:30 – 11 am. Rhyme Time Story Time is the first Friday and Saturday of the month (except those months where the two days are separate).

Adult Book Group—Contact the library to reserve a copy of the monthly selection then join us the last Thursday of the month @ 4 pm for a lively discussion. Contact: Dan Hess, [email protected] 707-964-2020

Kids Craft Time—Kids & families! Come and make a fun craft the 1st and 3rd Saturday of the month, 11 am-12 pm. You bring the enthusiasm; we supply the rest!

Tech Help—Need help with library apps or some device help? By appointment only every Thursday, 1 pm – 2 pm

Teen D & D— Teens (12 to 18) will go on a Dungeons & Dragons campaign! No experience necessary, but space is limited. Snacks provided.

LEGO® & Games— Kids! Create your own LEGO® design or play a game with your friends and/or family members. Most Tuesdays, 2-5 pm

Book Donations - Friends of the Fort Bragg Library— Second Saturday of every month, 12-3, in the alley to the west of the library. Contact: [email protected]

Poetry Writing Workshop for Adults—Find your inner poet! Workshops are free. Second Thursday of the month, 3-4:30 pm.

*Always check the Calendar at fortbragglibrary.org for program updates, exceptions, and cancellations.

Hours of Operation:

T/W/T 10-7

Fri 10-6

Sat 10-5

Sun/Mon closed

Please note: The library is closed on Tuesdays following a Monday holiday.

For your convenience, our book drop is always open when we are closed, and our digital library is available 24/7.

Fort Bragg Library

499 E Laurel St

Fort Bragg, CA 95437

DANCING WITH LA MUERTA

Book Release Virtual Launch Event: Sunday, June 8, 5-7pm via zoom.

To access the Zoom event, go to Zoom and enter meeting ID 878 3732 9387, or go to: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87837329387

Books are available from:

the poet: [email protected]

the publisher: [email protected]

or from Lulu.com

https://theresawhitehill.com/ https://gregbem.com/carbonation-press-catalog/

Dancing with La Muerta is a short cycle of poems by Theresa Whitehill that speak of grief and of the impetuous urge to feel fully alive and awake in the face of the loss of her husband of thirty years. Beginning with an homage to fellow poet, William ‘Bill’ Bradd, poet Theresa Whitehill touches on memories of coming of age and other rites of passage, along with the passing of family members, while building a slow, sustained homage to La Muerta, giver of the great gift, consummate dance partner.

Books are available from:

the poet: [email protected] the publisher: [email protected] or from Lulu.com

https://theresawhitehill.com/ https://gregbem.com/carbonation-press-catalog/

MAGDALENA HOMES EXPANDS Housing Opportunities in Anderson Valley, Seeks Home Buyers and Renters, and Company Investors.

Anderson Valley – Magdalena Homes is proud to announce significant strides in addressing the housing shortage in Anderson Valley. With two newly established rental properties in downtown Boonville, the company is committed to providing high-quality, affordable housing solutions that benefit the local community.

Since the launch of these rentals, Magdalena Homes has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from tenants. One tenant shared that this has been her best housing experience in the more than 15 years that she has been renting, while another expressed that her new home has given her renewed hope and a fresh start. These testimonials underscore the impact Magdalena Homes is making in the region.

Magdalena Homes is actively seeking buyers for its thoughtfully designed homes, renters looking for a welcoming living environment, and investors interested in supporting a community-focused initiative. Our mission is to enhance Anderson Valley’s housing landscape and create sustainable, vibrant communities.

For more information or to get involved, please contact Magdalena Homes at 513-537-0974 or [email protected]. You can also visit our website: magdalena-homes.com. Together, we can build a brighter future for Anderson Valley.

LITTLE RIVER MUSEUM

Hi Neighbors,

The Little River Museum is getting ready to open 11-4 on weekends for the 3-month summer season, and we're looking for a few volunteers to give us one or two days a month to sit at the front desk, put out the 'open' sign, greet visitors, and give out a free raffle ticket to each of our guests (volunteers can have one too).

Museum exhibits are self-explanatory, we'll provide a half hour training so you'll know how to get into and close up the building, there's a kitchen available for coffee or snacks, and you'd be providing a good service for the community. We're FREE and usually get quite a few out of town and local visitors.

We are featuring a hands-on wildlife exhibit, an active antique toy train display, the map and census of the Little River Pioneer Cemetery (we get a lot of visitors from out of town looking for relatives), Native American exhibit with free Pomo trail maps, a great history library by local authors, transcriptions of our pioneer settlers' diaries, and much more. Our gift shop is a jigsaw puzzle hub with 40-50 jigsaw puzzles ($5 each).

The little cottage at 8185 Highway One (just north of the Van Damme Beach curve) hides a large hall with a domed ceiling built in 1885 by the Good Templars. It's the oldest building in Little River with it's full historic integrity intact. If you don't have a day to donate, just stop and visit us.

Visit our web site www.littlerivermuseum.org

To volunteer contact me at: [email protected] or call 707-937-2009 or 360-348-3414

Little River Improvement Club, [email protected]

FATHER'S DAY AT THE BREWERY with Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers!

What Dad Wants This Father’s Day

(That Mom Will Allow…)

Let’s get unhinged this Father’s Day. We’ll have the best damn ZZ Top cover band you’ve ever heard, Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers. These guys are going to knock you out, and we’ll go hard into the night!

We’ll fire up the grill, so bring your own meat and we’ll grill it up – and we’ll have a food truck on site if you’d rather just grab an easy bite.

And of course, we’ll be pouring all your favorite beers to make your night complete.

Doors at 3, and we rage from 5pm-8pm! This is a ticketed event, so grab your tickets now!

FLYNN CREEK CIRCUS PRESENTS “The Bridge”: A Daring, Original Fairytale with Acrobats, Comedy, and Myth

Mendocino, California. June 27-July 6. This 2025 season, Flynn Creek Circus invites audiences to “The Bridge” — a spellbinding new show inspired by a wolf, Nordic legend, and the kinetic architecture of connection.

Narrated through the voice of the silly Goat and his stubborn Shadow, The Bridge takes viewers on a journey with massive acrobatic stunts, irreverent comedy, and masterful showmanship. Meet the troubled Troll, the empty headed Emperor and the Red Countess as they encounter the realm of the wolf. The Ferryman and the Star enchant with feats of elegant skill. True to Flynn Creek Circus” signature style, the performance is visually stunning and truly authentic.

The Bridge is a modern, unforgettable, child pleasing circus to inspire audiences of all ages.

In addition to the family friendly showings, and the interactive children's camp program held under the circus big top, Flynn Creek Circus also presents the wildly popular 'Adults Only Show' boasting outrageous acts, dark comedy, and an infamous party atmosphere. Check the website for select adults only showtimes as well as special discount nights.

Spectators for all showings are invited to the tent to experience the magic up to 30 minutes before each show. The event will offer beer, wine, and light concession for purchase and include a 15 minute intermission during the two hour show.

Limited free parking is available on-site for attendees.

Tickets for Flynn Creek Circus are now available for purchase online at flynncreekcircus.com. Individual ticket prices start at $23 or, for table reservations, options start at $81 for two attendees.

Find showtimes and more details on the camp programs at flynncreekcircus.com

Early booking is encouraged for this highly anticipated event.

Location:

Friendship Park, 998 School Street, Mendocino, CA 95460 Under the circus big top

For more information, press inquiries, or interview requests, please contact Cory Black at [email protected]. High-resolution images and media resources are also available upon request

DEAR UNCLE BRUCE:

I finished escape from Alcatraz! Apart from some technical bike difficulties that pissed me off and dragged my time by about 5-10 mins. Everything else went well and I am relatively happy with my time. You can always push yourself harder to go faster. That being said it was a one of a kind pretty amazing race and experience and I had lots of fun!

https://www.escapealcatraztri.com/event-information/overview

ED NOTE: My niece is a tough one, smart, too. (Honor student at Columbia.) Escape from Alcatraz is a 1.5 mile swim from the old prison to Aquatic Park followed by an 18 mile bike sprint out to Golden Gate Park culminating in an 8-mile run that ends at Baker Beach. Just thinking about it made me lie down for a nap.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, May 1, 2025

SOLAMON ACOSTA, 27, Ukiah. DUI, suspended license for DUI.

IVAN AGUILAR, 19, Ukiah. Assault weapon, loaded firearm by prohibited person, resisting, offenses while on bail.

JASMINE BAILEY, 25, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

BRYAN GONZALEZ, 21, Ukiah. Petty theft, controlled substance, no license, failure to appear, probation revocation, resisting.

SADIE GRAVLEE, 27, Elk. Controlled substance.

MARTIN JOHNSTON, 62, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, public nuisance.

MICHAEL KUBAS, 45, Willits. Failure to appear.

JEREMY LOPRESTI, 39, Ukiah. Mandatory supervision violation.

ROLANDO PEREZ, 20, Willits. Ukiah. Assault weapon, loaded firearm by prohibited person, resisting.

SKYLER RABANO, 39, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ENER REYES-DELGADO, 44, Potter Valley. Attempted murder.

REALIA SPECIALE, 42, Willits. Under influence.

JASON TAFOLLA, 18, Willits. Ukiah. Assault weapon, loaded firearm by prohibited person, resisting.

DARLENE WHITE, 71, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

JUSTIN WILLIAMSON, 43, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

FRED GARDNER: Behind lock & key at a Safeway in Santa Rosa. Prices range from $12.99 to $20.99.

ABANDON SHIP, LIBLABS!

Editor:

Lies, lies, lies. Joe Biden’s term in office was due to the Democratic Party full well knowing that this man was incapable of carrying out the term of his presidency. Even his family knew it. It’s absolutely shameful what they did. This was done to slide in Kamala Harris to take his place. They need to investigate who was running the country. God knows.

Democrats can change this country back in the right direction. Drop your party and quit funding them. Become an independent. Your country needs you. The behavior of the Democrats is outrageous. The burning down of Elon Musk’s cars and dealerships, the protesting with violence, the consistent threats against officials, the foul language from House members and senators.

Last and worst, disinviting your own family from family events because of who they voted for. Look in the mirror. You did this to yourself. God bless America.

John Dubkoff

Santa Rosa

MEMO OF THE AIR: Relax, pal. What's the worst that could happen.

Marco here. Here's the recording of last night's (9pm PDT, 2025-05-30) 7-hour-long Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and also, for the first three hours, on KAKX Mendocino, ready for you to re-enjoy in whole or in part:https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0646

Coming shows can feature your own story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or announcement. Just email it to me. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there and read it on the air.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not-necessarily radio-useful but worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

The secret of how long-necked dinosaurs could breathe. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2D9kPjqLeRE

This man's wife is a lucky woman. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ekZPbo8jsSo

Apartheid Apartments. "If you lived here you'd be home by now." (via b3ta) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1RGFdI0e10

And Ahmed Alshaiba's oud. https://myonebeautifulthing.com/2025/05/24/repost-east-meets-west/

Marco McClean, [email protected], https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

RENOUNCING CHERISHED BELIEFS

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

There’s a fresh breeze in the air with mild gusts cleansing America of rot and decay from years of progressive ideology’s stranglehold on a civilized, well-governed republic. We shall survive.

Our ill-considered lurch into DEI-land has all but been reversed and I’ve heard no liberals whining about it. The extremely woke Disney folk have quit putting trigger warnings on old cartoons, and the media have not objected.

BLM once again means Bureau of Land Management; perhaps an overdue investigation of Black Lives Matter funding and spending will result. If so, our progressive friends will be embarrassed but not enraged.

Anti-free speech and cancel culture, once the foundation of Democrat Party ideology, is no longer trumpeted. Liberals have perhaps conceded.

Defending and encouraging homeless encampments is suddenly unfashionable among leftwing Democrats who now talk like rightwing Republicans. Gavin Newsom, is (almost) urging fire-hosing the ‘Frisco streets, an unsurprising ploy as he positions himself for a 2028 White House run.

Can we expect further renunciations of previously held beliefs? Have 40 years of apocalyptic noise from the Global Warming / Climate Change alarm-ringers reached their shelf life?

The near future will hopefully bring a more measured, reasonable, conciliatory approach to a future that is solvable, not existential. We’ve endured decades of hysteria about the latest Arctic iceberg to sweat off a few tons and the threat posed by so-called atmospheric rivers guaranteed to push Denver’s water level up 60 feet by 2030. Or six-tenths of a centimeter.

Environmental lunatics have been hectoring us since the 1970s with predictions that never come true. Old lies segue into new lies: phony forecasts of guaranteed planetary suicide unless we immediately cripple the American auto industry, halt timber cutting and stop using plastic straws.

Even nuclear energy is having a resurgence, which may bring swoons, but not riots, from our liberal friends. They’ve been fed lies for decades via narratives carrying an aura of plausibility, like the clever but dishonest linking of nuclear power with nuclear bombs. The left’s anti-nuke energy narrative had the richly ironic result of far greater use of coal over the past 50 years, shortening the lives of millions of Americans due to increased air pollution.

If your parents died of lung disease, thank an eco-scientist.

Not every lie has been corrected. We await the New York Times revoking its ban on honest news and opinion re: Global warming. We wonder when Big Media will acknowledge a 2023 statement signed by more than 1300 scientists (more than 300 in the USA) debunking leftist climate change nonsense.

A history of the progressivista epoch remains to be written, but it’s off to a good start. A new book, Original Sin, is co-authored by Jake Tapper, a self-admitted CNN liar who now acknowledges President Cabbage didn’t know his Jello dessert from shinola. Tapper says “the rightwing press had it right” in describing the dementia-burdened Biden’s cognitive collapse.

The disgraceful campaign to mutilate American children with surgeries and gender-reversing drugs awaits investigation. For years we’ve watched confident Democrats “Follow the Science” into the nearest sewer. Skeptics have been forever suspicious of its secret advocates and beneficiaries.

But for now it’s enough to set aside demands for more diversity, more multiculturalism and more tolerance. Those soiled banners and tired slogans are so yesterday!

America need not celebrate differences. It’s time to appreciate our unity and our freedoms. It’s time for joy and togetherness here in the most diverse and accommodating country on earth.

HARD-WIRED GENETICS

Our genetic code is immutable. Propaganda aside, we are male or we are female. Tampering with DNA is risky stuff. We are, overwhelmingly, who we are.

Consider the frail old Boonville logger heading over the mountains-and-cliffs road to Ukiah on a cold, dark, sleet-ridden night. Halfway, his truck slides over the edge, rolling and tumbling hundreds of feet to a crushed and messy bottom.

Unconscious, not yet cognizant of his broken bones and concussions, the old man awakens, barely, with the warming sun. Hours later a helicopter flutters high above, then lands in a clearing a few hundred feet away.

He’s barely aware of the young nurse scampering toward him, carrying a medical bag and wearing a light jacket. She’s quickly on one knee, and applies bandages and administers a pain-reducing injection.

The old man stirs, faintly. His dull eyes are slits. Instinctively he notices the two top buttons of her blouse are undone. His blurry gaze flickers toward her cleavage.

He feels her thigh press against his own as she administers the drugs.

He dies a few minutes later, speeding to a Santa Rosa hospital, a thin smile on his face.

That, my friends, is genetics going back nine million years.

HOT, WET SHOULDERS IN THE NIGHT

I wake in the rear corner of a sub-street level Puerto Rican social club on the lower east side of New York City. I am making love with my best friend's girl. She has long dark hair. She is a ballerina, 19 and from Ohio. She is determined. There are flashing eyes and legs.

The door to the street is open and a drunk Puerto Rican stumbles in with a meat cleaver in his hand. I make a gin & tonic with a small slice of lime. He taunts me and wildly swings his cleaver. Slashing the air! SWING! SLASH! I pick up a pillow. “Senor!,” I shout. SLASH! "SENOR!” The rage of these eyes, the cleaver, the pillow — we come to the same conclusion. I toss the pillow over the cleavered hand. There are a hundred people in the hall now. The ballerina giggles--hot, wet shoulders in the night, roar of cars.

— Don Shanley (1978)

CRAIG GETS SERIOUS BACK-UP

Take Two: Insane Incident At D.C. Bus Stop In Declining Chocolate City

At 10:20 a.m. on May 31st, at the Queen’s Chapel Road & Bladensburg Road (west side) bus stop, the same insane individual violently threatened me, screaming that he hated white people. He is 5’10”, black, slightly fat, and wears black square rimmed sunglasses. And he growls a lot. He did not physically assault me as he did yesterday. I jogged northward to the previous bus stop. First paying, and then informing the bus driver of the situation, I asked that the Metropolitan Police be called, and that he not let the insane individual on at the next stop. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority bus driver replied: “We don’t call the police”. The driver then drove to the next stop and let the insane individual on! The insane individual proceeded to sit across from me in the rear portion of the bus and did not cause a problem. He simply glared at me for the entire ride to H Street, whereupon I deboarded. End of report.

Craig Louis Stehr

Adam’s Place Homeless Shelter

Washington, D.C.

PS. Because I've been a good friend at the shelter, the seriously dangerous dudes (i.e. the ones who wear the “Southeast 4 Life” tattoos) told me last night that if anybody bothered me again in “the district,” that they would kill the individual and let me watch!

AI ENCOUNTER

by Fred Gardner

I've had my first encounter with AI. I was at the Cafe Mac in Sonoma when an email arrived from a site called "Academia," purportedly linking to an AI podcast of an article that ran in O'Shaughnessy's Winter/Spring 2013 issue. (Cafe Mac is where old folks go with their computer problems. O'S is a publication I produced for a pro-cannabis doctors' group.)

The article summarized by AI was headlined, "Doctors stress need to document anti-cancer effects of Cannabis 'oil.’” Foolishly assuming that the podcast would be an accurate summary of the article, I emailed some knowledgable friends wondering who would be making money off my work. When I then listened to the podcast, I stopped wondering and denied Academia permission to post it.

I didn't record the verbiage before telling them not to display it. The voice was that of an Englishman, and what he said was antithetical to my POV. The voice had me extolling randomized clinical trials. Capital-M Medicine has made a cult of clinical trials, according to the real me.

My most knowledgable correspondent, an engineer, emailed back: "The cost of crawling through posts and doing AI 'podcasts' is negligible, fractions of a cent in all likelihood and no human being was in any part of the chain, it was all a program that does the same thing millions of times a day. It isn't initiated by the AI companies themselves (it's just another data point for a garbage scraping consolidation site to inflate their numbers)… Live with the comfort that no one will ever listen to that or read your article from that garbage source."

MITCH CLOGG:

Posted on Facebook Don Lattin 6/1/25, slightly altered on FB Mitchell Clogg

I read an article in the recent New Yorker about psychedelics, etc. and will read Don Lattin’s “God On Psychedelics” ASAP. The NYer article mentions him by name.

I’m older than Don. I was in the army and he was three when another army recruit (happy b’day, U.S. Army) gave me my first hit of pot. I went on, way too cautiously, to learn much of the alphabet of overstimulation — DMT, MDA, LSD, cocaine, MDMA and on and on. Don went on, too, but he converted his interest into a bunch of books and articles, a brief stint with cocaine addiction: “Doesn’t matter,” said he, his eyes shadowed, “if there’s cocaine around, I’m gonna snort it.” So he kicked it. But this is not about that. This is about my first experience with psilocybin, which was also with Don.

We were in (or on) the Yucatan, that odd, humpy hunk of Mexico that thrusts into the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. We spent a while at a place called Isla Mujeres, an island warm enough to swim in February, which it was — but not too warm. A speck on the far horizon was another island called Cancún that Mexico was developing as a resort. This was sometime in the first half of the Seventies. In the pictures my hair is still there and still dark.

We met a young American doctor, also vacationing there, and he knew about a drug we’d only heard of called psilocybin, AKA Magic Mushrooms. He drew a little sketch of the ’shroom and told us where to find it, a place on the mainland where it grows wild in and around cowpies. We couldn’t wait.

When the odometer in the rental car said we’d gone far enough, when we’d passed a laid-back place where a bunch of young Americans were swaying content in their hammocks, looking totally no-count, where the terrain was meadow and forest—skimpy lousy-soil forest not worthy to be called “jungle,” we thought, and, across the road, pasture where cow paddies were bound to be found. We parked the car.

Travel has its little hazards: locals were also heading for the same place. They were carrying things that looked fer sher like they were for harvesting mushrooms. They had inscrutable Mayan faces and gave us zero notice. We agreed that those people looked like they were pursuing their livelihood. It was no stretch to feel that a couple of big gringoes would not be welcome in the gathering.

On cue, a little Mexican boy arrived, straight off the easel of Norman Rockwell, cute as a button, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat, the brim artistically, Rockwellishly unraveling. “Señores, would you like to buy this?” He held up a see-through plastic bag that had an almighty bunch of mushrooms in it. No question what they were.

Five bucks. It was a favorite observation of the times, the wholesale value of an illegal substance versus “the street value.” God only knows what the value of that bag would have been that day on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley or Haight Street in San Francisco. We didn’t haggle.

We and the kid stood on the road between pasture and trees. We took the bag into the trees and began eating ’shrooms. I don’t remember how they tasted, probably sandy; we didn’t eat enough for the flavor to make a lasting impression. Don began doing a curious and funny jig.

“What’s the matter?”

“Fire ants!” They were crawling up his legs, biting their way up. I was suppressing laughter for a few seconds until the ants started up me. Better to not have a bag of psilocybin in the car in a country where the Federales are in charge. We stuffed the bag into the crotch of a tree, took a sighting on the landmarks and headed on down the road to Zona Arqueológica Palenque.

A million people visit Palenque each year. When we arrived, no one was there — no officials, caretakers, Mayans, tourists — nobody except us, we thought. And we were getting stoned on shrooms.

(How strange! Why in the world would we have this extraordinary place to ourselves?)

But we did. At least we thought we did.

Today’s Maya is a small person, inclining to shyness, where we went, and somewhat submissive, it seemed, as though when the royal families departed, the smaller citizens remained — and still do.

The Maya pyramids, some much bigger than Egypt’s biggest, are still mostly covered by forest. They look like hills. They are still being excavated. The biggest one at Palenque marked the grave of a ruler who was quite tall. A steep stairway up top went down deep below ground level to the place of his sarcophogus. A bare light bulb was the sole light source . The king’s crypt is picked clean of its treasures, but nothing takes away the eeriness of the place.

Eating psychoactive drugs is a slower and longer-lasting way to feel their effects than inhaling or injecting them. When we arrived at the pyramid after strolling across the grounds around it, we were faced with the steps. Pictures don’t do them justice, and I don’t know what explains them. The risers are more than waist high. The tallest person that ever lived would find them a stretch. I was six feet, Don six-feet-plus. We had to climb like each step was a wall.

On top, it was not a point. There were structures up there where you celebrate the gods, say, on odd-numbered days and cut people’s hearts out on even-numbered ones, and having your heart cut out might be a good thing or a bad. Maybe you’ll have the gods’ everlasting favor or maybe you’ll have the ending of a distinguished enemy: the privilege of seeing your heart held up for your inspection, still beating (a pretty intense scrutiny, inasmuch as you will die in seconds, and they won’t be your best; the removal hurts enough that cessation is relief—ah, it’s slowing down. C’mon dear heart, dear body, dear, damned consciousness…QUIT arready!)

So, while we wondered at the oddness and wonder of the world — who needs magic, who needs religion? — we spotted a living person. He was atop a smaller pyramid a couple hundred yards away. It didn’t have super-structures. He lay there face up under the midday Mexico-Gualemala (the border was right there) sun. I don’t remember if we shouted to him. If we did, he gave no sign of hearing.

Don has traveled the world in search of truth again and again. My passport…MY goddamn passport…lacks one single stamp on it.

OVER 7,200 SENIORS FROM SONOMA COUNTY TO THE OREGON BORDER RELY ON FOOD AID TRUMP WANTS TO CUT

For decades, the aid has come in boxes provided by food banks to the poorest of seniors. The White House wants to change that in favor of a new, direct-to-consumer model that state and local officials hasn’t been explained or vetted.

by Adriana Gutierrez

Dozens of seniors lined up outside the Rohnert Park Senior Center bright and early on the morning of May 13.

Each waited for a box filled with nonperishable foods like canned vegetables and meat, pasta, rice, beans and oats. Redwood Empire Food Bank volunteers placed the boxes into their carts, followed by a bounty of fresh produce, precooked meals and other snacks.

Many of the seniors are on low fixed incomes and depend on the once-a-month food pickup, with boxes paid for by the U.S. Department of Agriculture through its Commodity Supplemental Food Program, or CSFP. For some, the nonperishable items plus fresh food added by Redwood Empire Food Bank, get them through the month.

For others, it cuts their grocery costs significantly.

“Everything is getting so expensive, the food at the store, we can’t afford it,” said Rosy Bop, 76. “We have Social Security but it only goes that far. So you have to do something once a month for some free food.”

The need among food box recipients such as Bop is clear, and yet, in another round of President Donald Trump’s sweeping budget cuts, the administration is seeking to slash $425 million in USDA spending by eliminating the federal supplemental food program, which was created by Congress in 1969 to address hunger in specific populations.

In its place, the administration has proposed an as-yet not fully formed program under President Trump’s Make America Healthy Again initiative that would source fresh food from American farmers to give directly to households, bypassing food banks and shelf-stable foods the administration has labeled “high in sodium and other harmful ingredients.”

Food bank officials have rejected some assertions tied to that move by the administration. They also are raising questions about the lack of information provided by the federal government so far on how the new program would work, potentially leaving critical food aid for low-income seniors in the lurch.

Cuts on top of cuts, more limits

The proposed cut is not the only one affecting local food assistance programs. Another popular one managed by nonprofits — meals delivered to seniors in need — also is at risk, with nearly all of its federal funding targeted for elimination.

The moves by the federal government come as many food banks already are grappling with funding losses and aid shifts that have affected critical food supplies for the needy.

In Sonoma County, just under 4,000 seniors rely on the CSFP food boxes, which they can pick up at various Redwood Empire Food Bank locations.

Across its entire five-county operating region, also including Lake, Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte counties, that figure is 7,200 seniors.

Nationwide in 2024, almost 732,000 seniors signed up for the monthly donations.

A wrinkle in how those boxes are allotted has already forced the local food bank to pull back on its donations through the program.

In previous years, the five-county region was allotted a total 6,900 of the food boxes and the food bank was allowed to order excess boxes from counties across California that could not donate their entire supply. So, for the past few years, Redwood Empire Food Bank has given over 300 extra boxes to hungry seniors each month.

“The real reality has been for the last five years we have been allowed and, in fact, encouraged locally to exceed our caseload,” said Redwood Empire Food Bank President and CEO Allison Goodwin. “So because the state was not at 100% of caseload, any food bank that could overserve was (encouraged to) because you’re kind of helping the state if you get us closer to 100% served.”

But a limitation earlier this year for total donations across the state of California has since ceased, leaving little leftovers from other counties and an overall cut to the food bank’s allotment. Redwood Empire is now only allowed to serve 6,849 boxes a month across the region, leaving almost 400 seniors a month to go without the supplemental food.

Since that limitation, California food banks have been forced to do something they hadn’t before: turn seniors away.

Redwood Empire Food Bank created a first-come, first-served process, no longer sending out reminders for seniors when there are donations or disenrolling seniors in the plan who haven’t picked up a box in two or three months, Goodwin said. That advice came from the state Department of Social Services, which oversees the program’s administration in California.

“Now you’re leaving the most vulnerable groups of people and (us saying): ‘No, we’re not going to have enough for people who are trying to access the food,” Goodwin said. “It’s tricky.”

All while navigating the new constraints, the hammer swung again on May 2 as Trump’s proposed spending plan was made public.

The budget accuses the food box program of being “misused for DEI” — meaning the diversity, equity and inclusion efforts targeted by the Trump administration — and “logrolling” — a dated term for favor-trading among lawmakers — as well as providing unhealthy foods.

Where to find food aid

Redwood Empire Food Bank CEO Allison Goodwin said the food bank is committed to serving seniors if the 56-year-old Commodity Supplemental Food Program is eliminated.

The food bank has weekly food pickup events across its territory, including Sonoma, Lake, Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte counties.

A list of those sites can be found on its website.

More information and help from Redwood Empire Food Bank staff on food assistance programs is available at the organization’s Food Connections Resource Center at 3990 Brickway Blvd., in Santa Rosa.

Sonoma County residents can also text “FOOD” to 707-353-3882 for more information.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

WINSTON CHURCHILL

Most men are measured
Against the times they’ve lived in
Fair enough they’d say

Few have faced testing
Against every darkest time
In all darkest times

He was one of those
Those few who’ve had to do that
Fair enough he’d say

— Jim Luther

BILL KIMBERLIN

The day before yesterday I was one of the speakers at a meeting of the Dipsea race club which manages the foot race from downtown Mill Valley to Stinson Beach. The race has been going on since at least 1907. To my surprise it drew a crowd of around 300 people.

Photo provided by Barry Spitz. Mason Hartwell, all-time Dipsea Race runner, runs to a second-place finish in the Dipsea during the 1910 race. Hartwell had the fastest time that year, finishing in 52 minutes, 43 seconds.

I was there because I had a great cousin named Mason Hartwell who ran the race from the earliest race days and has been called one of the greatest competitors in Depsea history. He won the best time award, seven times between 1910 to 1926. A record that took 74 years to break.

There were family stories about this race but I never really knew his history. So when I was researching my book on my years at Lucasfilm, I looked into him.

My grandfather’s sister Mary Mason married a Hartwell and he was one of their sons. He was born in Oakland and in high school he ran the mile in 4 minutes and 45 seconds. It took until 1954 for Roger Bannister to break the four minute mile so this was pretty good for a high school kid, and it caused the Olympic Club of San Francisco to sponsor him in the Dipsea.

In 1910, Mason won his first best time award with a 52 minutes and 43 seconds. This is impressive considering these were handicap races meaning most runners were given several minutes head start before Mason could begin. However, he did win once despite those who left before him, he simply passed them all. Sixteen years after his first race he was only 11 seconds slower.

There was an account written by the San Francisco Chronicle sportswriter Howard Smith of that last 1926 race that I will quote here…

“Their faces tell the story of the hard Dipsea Trail as the runners come down the road between the double bank of spectators at the Stinson Beach finish.

Their tided-up leg muscles show the effects of unaccustomed strain. But there comes one, coasting like a miler on a good track. There’s a half smile on his face as he comes down the stretch. His legs work with an easy loose-muscled action. It’s Mason Hartwell…greatest of Dipsea runners. No trainer reaches to catch Hartwell as he crosses the finish line.

Leave the cots and the rubbing for the youngsters.

The veteran, fresh as a daisy and, without resting, goes to join his family for he has another race on that day’s schedule. He has promised to swim out beyond the breakers with his 11-year-old daughter.”

Then, after the swim, Mason ran back to Mill Valley making his a Double Dipsea (which hadn’t been invented yet). He was 37 years old.

LITTLE BIG LEAGUE

by Williams J. Hughes

The New York Yankees are coming to Sacramento — more specifically to West Sacramento. It's like saying Picasso is coming to your drawing class. I'm born of New York Yankee blood, so to think that the Babe Ruths, the DiMaggios, the Mickey Mantles and now Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees will be in town isn't a dream come true, it's the truth become a dream.

It’s all because the Oakland Athletics have no place to play, no new lease in Oakland and as of now, no new stadium for their eventual Las Vegas Athletics. So to fill the gap, the SF Giants' AAA team, the River Cats and their AAA stadium of a mere 14,000, will have to do for now. “Holy Cow!” as the famous Yankee announcer, Phil Rizzuto would say.

Tickets — big league prices: $89 to sit on the outfield green grass hill — perfect for a small stadium but gone in a hurry for a Friday night game. We have to go to $200 — not complaining, once in a lifetime. Only once before across the river to West Sacramento to the River Cats for a AAAgame. Good on all of them but AAA is the kind of “field of lost dreams.” End of the road for most and the games, for me, don't matter much, the stadium quaint and compact, casual, part of the expansion of West Sacramento from actually almost being a frontier west town compared to central, Capital Sacramento.

I'd been trying to find where the Yankees were staying in the city. I spun the hotel wheel and came up with the Sawyer Hotel: newer, swankier, somewhat closer to the ballpark. No one can confide in me as to where the Yankees will be. We'll see.

Game time. My friend, Javier, has his glove. We're sitting far down the left field line, far and away from the 6' 7" Aaron Judge in right field. About 5:30 p.m., game time at 7pm, crossing over the golden Tower Bridge, bundles of fans heading to the game, more Yankee gear than I've ever seen in town. The NY Royals have come for a visit. The loyals from all over have come to pay their respects. Me too, in my Yankee shirt, Javier in his A's cap.

$42 to park. No complaints. When in the big leagues… Fans lined up outside the compact River Cats ballpark. An army of Yankee fans, thinking I rnight be the only New Yorker blue blood in the crowd. We're in, crack of the bat in batting practice. We sit on the right field grass for a bit to take in the cozy big time. There’s Aaron Judge, now leading the league in all batting statistics. I've even forgiven him for a costly error in the last World Series. Easy to forgive not quite forget when Judge is hitting right around .400. An unheard of number. Our seats are around the other side of the ballpark, hot dogs and beers and the crowd ebbing and flowing along the concession causeway, Yankee fans galore, outnumbering the home-field A's.

Ah, man, bad news. Our seats aren't lousy but they sort of stink. Modern life where nothing is left to chance. All must be perfect. There's tall netting, a screen right in front of us. Lousy. Used to be you’d see a game at own risk, for years upon years. Now it’s protect the customer at all cost. Lousy. I don't come to a game in fear. I don't need protection. We feel like monkeys in a cage, seeing the game through a fish net at $200 per.

A's fans and Yankee fans gabbing and sharing, the outfield and infield being prepared, the A's left fielder right below us, through the netting. I don't know any of the A's. But here come the Yankees at bat. What a sight, “The” NY Yankees in West Sacamento.

The place is packed, carnival colors galore, the crowded outfield hill looking like a grand picnic. And up cornes Aaron Judge batting second, all 6'7" of him. He rips a monster double off the left field wall. We Yankee fans explode in appreciative applause. OK, we can go now.

Of course not. $42 for two beers and two hot dogs, as the Yankee lineup pounds the A's pitching. Familiar names of the familiar Yankees rounding the bases, home runs and extra bases, festive all around, except for the stinking netting distorting all of it.

So we decide after an inning or two to move onto the green grass hill without interference. Ah, there he is, all 6'7" of Aaron Judge, No. 99 in right field. 99, I think, to honor Yankee No. 9 Roger Maris who hit a record 61 home runs which Aaron Judge broke with 62 a few seasons ago. Everyone is yelling ‘”Hey Aaron!”

One more full inning and we get to see a Yankee launch a right field grand slam, slamming a 10-2 beating on the A's.

We hustle away to beat some of the exiting crowd, No. 99 on a lot of backs.

Back in town the next day, I'm staying a night at the somewhat swanky Sawyer Hotel in case the Yankees are staying there. Since I've mentioned prices, it’s around $340 for a night. I visited Linden, California, about an hour south of Sacramento, about 18,000 residents in a cherry orchards’ town — met his mother-in-law and lots of folks who know him. Wrote a nice piece for the AVA a couple of years ago. Sent it to Linden Chamber of Commerce. Got a nice response and will send it to family and Aaron.

I have it with me sitting in the Sawyer lobby about 4pm, the Yankees in another day game which should be just about winding up. Folks in Yankee gear with balls from the stands from our night game. Yes, the Yankees are staying here. “Yes!” And here comes their big bus, security guards at the ready in the lobby. Here come the Yankees, very casual, Aaron Judge head and shoulders above, a young fan with a ball shouting, “Aaron, Aaron!” but no luck, here and there, then gone, recognizing a lot of them. “Holy Cow!” them. I'll catch their exit for their Mother’s Day game in the morning.

“Go Yankees!”

CHUCK WEPNER: I was born in New York, and moved later to Bayonne. It was a rough town, blue-collar, with a lot of mob influence. Each part of town had its own tough guy. Through the years, I ended up fighting three of them, and beat them all. You had to earn your way there, you might say. Nobody gave you anything. If they had a title, 'Toughest Guy In Bayonne,' it would have been me.

GIANTS’ OFFENSE DOES JUST ENOUGH TO WIN, PITCHING SEALS IT AGAINST MARLINS

by Shayna Rubin

On the concern scale, the San Francisco Giants’ ineffectiveness against left-handed starters took a back seat to their collective weeks-long slump at the plate.

Entering the final game of a three-city, nine-game, 11-day road trip, the Giants were hoping to snap a 13-game streak in which they had been unable to score more than four runs. An added difficulty was facing the task against tough Miami Marlins lefty Ryan Weathers.

The Giants extended the streak to 14 games, but did beat a lefty starter to clinch the series in their 4-2 win on Sunday afternoon.

Luis Matos, playing center field against a left-handed starter in place of a resting Jung Hoo Lee, got the elusive big hit. In the fourth inning, Matos crushed Weathers’ changeup that hung in the zone for a three-run home run. It was his fourth home run of the year and the Giants’ fourth homer of the road trip.

“That’s huge. I mean, the way we’ve been scoring runs, it felt like a 20-run homer at the time,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Obviously, we had to grind at the end. It would be nice not to have to play that game every day.

“But a huge swing for a guy that works really hard every day and doesn’t get to play a whole lot. Number gets called on a day like this, when we’re not scoring any runs and (he) has the biggest swing of the game. So really, really, hats off to Luis for working hard and being prepared for something like that.”

Still, Matos’ blast was their only hit with runners in scoring position of the afternoon.

Earlier, Wilmer Flores made good on one of a handful of scoring opportunities. Heliot Ramos — who was among baseball’s top performers in May with a 1.007 OPS and .347 average in 25 games — had collected his second hit of the game and Tyler Fitzgerald, batting second, drew a walk to busy the bases. The pair executed a double-steal for Flores, who notched his 47th RBI of the year with a groundout.

“Anytime you win a series on the road, you have to feel good about it, especially the way we’ve been scoring runs,” said Melvin. “So we’ll take it.”

While the offense is mostly to blame for a 13-14 record for the month of May, the pitching staff put together one of the best months in franchise history to keep them afloat.

The staff’s 2.64 May ERA is San Francisco’s lowest for a single month since September and October 2010, whose staff had a 1.91 ERA en route to a World Series title. The last time the Giants had such a low ERA with a losing record was when the 1985 team put together a 2.53 ERA with a 7-12 record as a team.

Starter Hayden Birdsong kept the May trend going into the first day of June. The 23-year-old glided through the first five innings, allowing just two hits with all four of his pitches working in harmony.

Similar to his start in Detroit, Birdsong ran into trouble as he saw the Marlins lineup a third time through and his pitch count got into the 80s. One out into the sixth, the top of the lineup scored a run on back-to-back-to-back singles. Ryan Walker, in his new role out of the closer spot, retired the side in relief.

In his third start since replacing Jordan Hicks in the rotation, Birdsong went 5⅓ innings with one run allowed on five hits with five strikeouts and no walks. He induced 12 swing-and-misses.

“I actually felt good today in the sixth,” said Birdsong. “A couple of bleeders, couple pitches probably could have been a little better. Felt good. Bullpen came and picked me up.”

Hicks, who hadn’t pitched since Monday, added a stressful inning in the seventh. He walked three of the four batters he faced before Tyler Rogers took over. A short hopper by Xavier Edwards, his fourth of five hits on the day, scored the runner from third, but Rogers struck out Jesus Sanchez and got the inning-ending groundout.

There was more trouble for the typically-nails bullpen in the eighth inning. Erik Miller put the potential game-tying run on third base, giving up a leadoff single and a out-out double. After a popup, Camilo Doval entered an issued a walk to load the bases loaded before getting the inning-ending groundout.

Doval converted his second straight four-out save.

MANNING UP IN THE BURBS

by David Yearsley

The suburbs are a war zone. That was how the General saw things. He was my aunt’s father-in-law. I met him only a handful of times over the years, mostly at family celebrations, like my grandparents’ golden wedding anniversary. The General came from generations of men from his own family who’d gone to the Citadel, though he was from Southern California, not the Deep South. I used to enjoy sitting next to him on the beach house deck at those family events. The reflection of the flares from the Texaco oil refinery across Padilla Bay in Anacortes, Washington laughed in his Ray-Ban sunglasses.

Though he’d been trained to command troops and had done so in times of war, the General’s long retirement was a lone battle against the forces of evil arrayed behind two-car garages and in enemy HQ down at city hall. Even those kids on bikes needed to be neutralized:

“I’m not going to pay a buck for that goddam paperboy to throw that rag into the shrubs!” The General drove his Cadillac through the hostile territory of his new subdivision in Rancho Palos Verdes to the nearest shop to buy the morning newspaper. There was never any mention of friends, only foes.

Misplaced deliveries also figure in the ill-fated bromance of Friendship, the new cringe-fest of a film from first-time director Andrew DeYoung that treats man-to-man social relations as a form of combat. A package intended for a neighbor arrives at the doorstep of Craig Waterman (SNL alum Tim Robinson) and he dutifully traipses down the street to return it to the rightful recipient, the charismatic local tv weatherman Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd).

The soundtrack warns Craig against the mission with fateful Hitchcockian strings augmented by medieval choral omens.

Craig is loathsome, but every other man in the movie is too, with the possible exception of Austin, who nonetheless flaunts his suspect charisma.

Velcroed for an evening to his recliner, stay-at-home Craig can’t believe his good luck when he’s invited to the weatherman’s house for guy night. Beers in the hand, the men break into sentimental song. All but Craig know the words (“I wanna be your baby …”). Craig is besotted by the sight and sound of what he hears, but is tone-deaf to the music’s dubious message.

When the plot’s plan of campaign requires it, new packages for Austin turn up at Craig’s place. The real address is disaster. The General knew by bitter experience, as Craig does thanks to a fool’s intuition, that suburban civility is often a mode of clandestine warfare. A succession of skirmishes drawn from training ground of sketch television, the movie’s rules of engagement are darkly, embarrassingly comic and deadly for the prospects of male companionship.

Beneath all the angry tirades, there was music in the General. I couldn’t tell whether it fueled his anger or assuaged it. He had a winning baritone voice etched and polished by officer’s club cigarettes and cocktails. I remember him serving up snatches of “My Way” when he came up for air after blazing away at “the DC politicians and so-called journalists.” Did melody provide him solace or did it fuel his rage?

The same question is posed throughout Friendship, a movie thick with music. None of it soothes. It’s a weapon, both within the story’s suburban hellscape and in the filmmakers’ strategies of subliminal destabilization.

Singer-songwriter and film composer Keegan Dewitt’s soundtrack launches a two-pronged attack. The valium-laced optimism of gentle grooves and bell-like keyboard riffs sound like the intros to lost Carpenters’ songs. These soften up the ears and minds of moviegoers for the subsequent assaults of Gothic chanting that both warn Craig against his foolish quest for unattainable friendship and at the same time urge him towards his annihilation. Everyone hates Craig, even the soundtrack.

At King Arthur’s court, Sir Gawain battled a Green Knight and other adversaries from across the color spectrum. Craig is always clad completely in the blandest beige, his over-big down coat is a loser’s puffy armor. He convenes a men’s group of his own with the guys from work who spend their break time outside the building smoking and making fun of Craig even as he looks down at them from his window, clueless that he is the butt of their jollity.

Back at his place he pulls out a tiny dagger claiming it is the antique sword of an ancient knight. The bully-boys chortle at its ridiculous size and Craig angrily ejects them from his garage. The soundtrack laughs at him too.

The General always had a stiff drink in one hand. With the other hand he’d gesticulate as he ranted about how, if not for those bureaucrats in Washington, we’d have won the Vietnam War.

At a party in Friendship hastily organized to celebrate the rescue of Craig’s wife Tami (Kate Mara) after she’d gone missing in the city sewer system, a drunken man stands on a chair and gushes about how much he loves her, though she’s not his wife. The man can’t help but conclude his weirdly effusive speech with what he feels is an important message, the General would surely have agreed with: “We should still be in Afghanistan!”

This addled veteran has just come from the garage where he encountered Craig sitting alone at the drum set he’s bought in hopes of gaining some cred with Austin, who fronts his own band that plays around town. The vet has stumbled into the garage supposedly in search of the bathroom and begins a pleasant conversation with Craig.

But behind every amiable exchange lurks an ambush of toxic masculinity and loathing—almost all of it directed at Craig, who, frankly, deserves the abuse if anyone does, especially for purposes of getting some laughs in the movie theatre.

After extolling the cool 1970s green hue of the drums, the vet suddenly shifts into attack mode, screaming at Craig for deserting his wife in the sewer. In this suburban jungle, everything from coffee breaks to muscle cars to mini-vans to sliding glass doors can be weaponized—and is. A gold-plated handgun eventually discharges its Chekhovian duty, but that is only the loudest and most obvious incident of unfriendly fire.

Across the half-century from Fritz Lang’s White Heat (1949) to Sam Mendes’s American Beauty (1999), moviegoers have been ushered into the moral darkness and isolation of suburbia. There, the male gaze of longing and envy drifts across the driveway and through the neighbors’ window. The repressed same-sex urges that haunt American Beauty are kept at a seemingly safe distance from Friendship, deflected by the usual flak of irony. When those monastic male voices join together, it’s not in the spirit of brotherly love. There are snatches of rough harmony, but these unseen soundtrack singers don’t seem to like each other either.

As the beige oaf blunders away onscreen, we eventually hear female voices also of medieval cast, simultaneously angelic and acid. In this unabashedly binary movie, composer Dewitt has both genders beat up on Craig.

Kicking him to the curb like a piece of spent amazon packaging sent to the wrong house number might make you laugh and squirm, but the derisive anti-optimism that saturates the movie seems more intent on convincing every guy that he’s as vicious as the next—and just as alone.

As the credits rolled on this bleak bromantic comedy, I thought of the General, the whiskey sour sweating in his grasp as he opened up his pipes: “I ate it up and spit it out / I faced it all, and I stood tall / And did it my way.”

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest albums, “In the Cabinet of Wonders” and “Handel’s Organ Banquet” are now available from False Azure Records.)

Back row L-R: Beryl Bishop-Collett and her husband, Rev. F. G. Collett

Front row: Daisy Lowell-Boon (Nomlaki) holding her daughter, Lena Boon (Nomlaki) - circa 1895

FRONTLINE ADVOCATES RALLY FOR MAKE POLLUTERS PAY CLIMATE SUPERFUND ACT AT STATE CAPITOL

by Dan Bacher

Lawmakers heard directly from frontline advocates and climate disaster survivors who are already living with the painful costs and health harms caused by fossil fuel industry operations.

On a warm and balmy Sacramento evening, a coalition of climate justice advocates, health care professionals and representatives of frontline communities rallied at the State Capitol in Sacramento on May 27 to show their support for the Make Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act.…

https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2025/06/01/18876911.php

TRANSGENDER, AN EXCHANGE

Wouldn’t it be more like me putting on a Giants cap and then not only claiming it makes me a member of the team but also demanding the Giants let me play short stop?

Pretending to be an MLB player doesn’t make someone an MLB player. Pretending to be a woman doesn’t make someone a woman. Pretending to be a man doesn’t make someone a man.

That some people are transgender is like some people being Dodgers fans.

You don’t have to like it,

you don’t have to understand it,

but their decision really has no impact on your life whatsoever.

So get over it.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I live in Florida. I don't need NOAA or the National Weather Service to tell me a hurricane's coming. And I don't need them to tell me what to do. We've been doing this for a long time. We have hurricane shutters on all doors and windows. We evacuate if our relatives in Miami tell us it's coming our way. Those guys you see on TV are selling air time for sponsors. Florida people aren't watching the guy with the rain hat and umbrella.

At the turn of the century, scenes like this were far from uncommon in the United States. Children filled the ranks of workers at coal mines, steel mills, textile factories, and other industries where the days were grueling, the wages were meager, and the conditions were anything but safe. See more photos that reveal the grueling reality of child labor in early 1900s America: https://inter.st/ueqx

LEAD STORIES, MONDAY'S NYT

Eight Burned in Attack at Colorado Event Honoring Israeli Hostages

More Than 20 Killed Near Aid Distribution Site in Gaza, Health Officials Say

In Russia Airfield Attacks, Ukraine Aims for Strategic and Symbolic Blow

Ukraine and Russia to Meet for Second Round of Talks as Attacks Escalate

U.S. Dependence on China for Rare Earth Magnets Is Causing Shortages

A 355-Year-Old Company That Once Owned One-Third of Canada Is Shutting Down

OUR RULERS did not expect this. They did not expect the public to sustain ferocious opposition to the Gaza holocaust for 20 months. In October 2023 they would’ve been assuring each other that all the protesting and outrage would die off soon, because that’s what normally happens.

And it just didn’t. People refused to let this thing fade into the background. The mass media were forced to keep reporting on it — albeit with extreme bias — because if they didn’t report on it at all they’d lose their last shred of credibility in the eyes of the public, and people would keep sharing the information on their own anyway.

Remember how excited the Israel apologists got when those two embassy staff members were killed? They were like “Welp, that’s it for the pro-Palestine movement! Saying Free Palestine is not allowed anymore everybody! Ahh, thank goodness, I was worried people would never let this thing go.”

And it just didn’t pan out that way. Nobody bought it. The embassy staff killings were shuffled off in the daily news churn and forgotten, while Gaza remained.

And I just think it’s worth flagging what a miracle that is. How completely unexpected and unanticipated this would have been for our ruling institutions. They really thought we were all sufficiently ground down and subdued by life under the empire to just let them do what they want to Gaza without any resistance. And they were wrong.

There’s some life left in us yet. It is not a foregone conclusion that we will just passively watch our rulers carry us off over the ledge of dystopia, ecological disaster and nuclear armageddon. Revolution is not an impossible pipe dream. There is still a spark of hope.

— Caitlin Johnstone

*High Hills of Tehachapi* (1936) by Maynard Dixon

ISRAEL IS LOSING AMERICANS’ SUPPORT. WILL THE DEMOCRATS LISTEN?

New polls show broad opposition to Israel's genocide — and that Democrats' intransigence on Gaza greatly reduced turnout in the Nov. 5 election.

by Halah Ahmad

In recent months, multiple new public opinion surveys have illustrated the extent to which Israel has lost Americans’ support. In early April, a poll from the Pew Research Center attracted widespread attention when it revealed that more than half of U.S. adults now express an unfavorable opinion of the Israeli state — an increase of over 10 percent since March 2023. And this month, after Israel launched a new military operation to occupy the entire Gaza Strip, a new poll from Data for Progress showed that 76 percent of U.S. voters support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and 51 percent think that U.S. President Donald Trump should demand one.

These dramatic shifts come alongside several recent polls demonstrating that Gaza played a definitive role in the Democrats’ loss in the November U.S. presidential election. In February, a YouGov poll from the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project found that the genocide was the leading reason cited by former Democratic voters who did not cast a ballot for former Vice President Kamala Harris.

And beyond those “single issue” anti-genocide voters, new data analysis suggests that Democrats lost a larger population of voters — whose top concerns were rising inflation, the state of the economy, and other domestic issues — due to the demobilization effects of the Democrats’ failure on Gaza. In other words, more than by a rightward shift among Democratic voters, the November election was shaped by the fact that many of them simply sat it out.

These findings add to the evidence not only that support for Palestinian rights and a Palestinian state are far higher than many within the political establishment have been willing to acknowledge, but that Democrats’ refusal to take these issues seriously has become a severe political liability.

Yet over four months into the Trump presidency, even as it positions itself as the party defending democracy, the Democratic establishment has failed to respond to public sentiment and signal any serious shift in its support for Israel.

At the beginning of April, for instance, Senator Cory Booker broke Congressional records with an over 25-hour speech on the Senate floor in April to protest the Trump Administration and “defend democracy”; two days later, he voted against two resolutions that would block billions of dollars in new weapons sales to Israel, shortly after it violated the ceasefire with renewed attacks on Gaza.

Meanwhile, in the battleground state of Michigan, Attorney General Dana Nessel is fashioning herself as a leader in the anti-Trump democratic resistance. But she is drawing from Trump’s playbook when it comes to the Palestinian rights movement, even working against the actions of local law enforcement to target and intimidate pro-Palestine activists on college campuses.

At an institutional level, too, the Democratic party has demonstrated no meaningful plans to change its position on Israel-Palestine — illustrated recently by the election of the new Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair in February. Several pro-Palestinian advocacy groups pushed for a chairperson who would treat the November election as an indictment of the Democrats’ policy failures on Palestine, press the party to reconsider its unconditional support for Israel, and implement a plan to regain the trust of Arab, Muslim, and pro-Palestinian voters.

Top DNC Chair candidates Ken Martin, Martin O’Malley, and Ben Wickler were hard to distinguish on this issue, despite two of them having expressed some regret over the barring a Palestinian speaker at the 2024 Democratic national convention. But Ken Martin, who was elected as the new chair, has a notable history of pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian positions, including condemning widespread chants of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as “extremist” and “disgusting.”

While Martin may have other progressive political alignments as a former labor organizer, his “progressive except on Palestine” stances make clear that Democrats are still not reading the room. And as Democratic strategists gear up for a fight to take back a majority in Congress in 2026, this imperviousness to new data may have serious consequences.

A ‘Couchward’ Shift

There are a few ways to look at the drop in support for Democrats in the November election. To be sure, Democrats lost votes to the right and to left-leaning third party candidates, such as Jill Stein, as well as potentially to conservative third-party candidates. But evidence suggests the rightward shift was less significant than the “couchward” one: It turns out many Democratic voters simply did not vote or could not conscience a vote for the party’s status-quo candidate.

Nationwide U.S. vote tallies show a 2.5 percent decrease in voter turnout, representing some 6.6 million fewer eligible voters participating in the election compared to 2020. Of those 6.6 million, roughly 40 percent were in strongly Democratic states, which represent the largest numbers of electoral college votes based on population. These states saw 2.6 million fewer votes for Harris in 2024 than for former U.S. President Joe Biden in 2020, only 690,000 of which are accounted for by votes for left-leaning third-party candidates. That drop is a sign of serious demobilization on the left — not a rightward shift.

In swing states, most reports agree that Republicans primarily gained votes within Republican strongholds and suburban areas, but had largely stable turnout compared to 2020. However, most urban areas of swing states, which are Democratic strongholds, saw notable decreases in voter turnout. This includes Detroit, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Atlanta — the largest cities in four key swing states.

So while many have bemoaned the suburban Democrats who were moved by misleading media or ambiguous anti-incumbent sentiment related to the economy, the Democrats that felt demotivated most by a choice-less election were those in swing state urban areas, where support for and awareness of the Palestinian rights movement is strongest — and far more widespread than many polls captured.

According to screening parameters in the YouGov-Underpin poll conducted right before the election, opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza was actually a top-four voting issue for 24 percent of swing state independent and Democratic voters. A Swayable randomized control trial related to Gaza also showed that reminding voters of the issue only depressed voter motivation in swing states. With repeated exposure to images of Palestinian children dismembered and slaughtered in the weeks before the election — even as such news was suppressed across outlets and social platforms — many voters simply refused the flawed dichotomy they were presented between Harris and Trump, and sat the election out.

Palestine as a Bellwether

The degree to which Gaza was an intensifying issue on top of existing discontent cannot be underestimated. Several policy issues with the vast majority of Americans’ support, not only overwhelming Democratic support, had been left unresolved or stagnant under Biden. When Democrats held majorities across the legislative and executive branches, they failed to pass popular policies — securing common-sense gun control and universal background checks, passing universal paid leave and pre-K education, expanding the Supreme Court, cancelling student debt, or codifying reproductive rights — all while warning of the threat that Republicans posed to American democracy.

Even when Harris became the Democratic standard-bearer, voters were counterintuitively told to expect more from a leader who simply promised more of the same. When considering the major role of anti-incumbent sentiment related to inflation in this election — and the overlap with strongly pro-Palestine sentiment — polling suggests a population as large as 8.4 percent of Democrats and independents in swing states were likely demobilized as they witnessed no deescalation in the genocide.

Democrats needed a different candidate, at best, but more importantly, they needed to change policy on Gaza. This was not only a significant issue for voters, it was one of the few policies the Democratic administration had the executive power to change before election day. Now, as the new administration grows more authoritarian by the day, shifting public opinion on Israel and its imperviousness to U.S. or international law becomes a tell-tale sign of weakened democratic institutions. The inability of the opposition Democratic party to embrace a holistic critique of that attack on both democratic and international norms will only mar its ability to respond to and utilize social movements to counter an oligarchic, technocratic, and authoritarian future.

Still, some Democrats are paving a way forward on support for Palestinian rights within a broader pro-democracy agenda. Pennsylvania Representative Summer Lee, another outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights, overwhelmingly defeated her opponent with almost 1.4 percent more votes than Kamala Harris in her blue district. In New York City’s mayoral race, State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani’s popularity among progressive voters has raised him unprecedented funds as a candidate that openly supports Palestinian rights and opposes suppression of pro-Palestinian activism.

Palestinian-American elected officials have also continued to maintain widespread support in their districts as they have pushed for legislation favoring a ceasefire in Gaza and acknowledging the repeated massacres of Palestinians — State Senator Iman Jodeh of Colorado and Representative Rashida Tlaib among them.

With polls revealing significant declines in Americans’ support for the Israeli state, more Democrats may be emboldened to take similarly strong stands against the genocide in Gaza. Indeed, as pro-Palestinian free speech is used as a flashpoint for anti-immigrant suppression and the erosion of U.S. constitutional rights, the issue of Palestinian rights will continue to be a bellwether of the American political establishments’ ability to combat growing authoritarianism — and respond to American public opinion.

(Halah Ahmad is a policy analyst with Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, and an independent researcher, writer, and policy communications expert. She conducted several polls and advised on progressive campaign strategy in the 2024 election cycle, and is the Principal at Underpin. +972 Magazine.)

43 Comments

Katy Tahja June 2, 2025

Jim Luther…do you know Winston Churchill was here in Mendocino County in 1929? I can tell you, and readers, the story upon request…it’s funny…

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- James Luther June 2, 2025
  
  No, Katy, I don’t know that story, and I’d like very much to hear it. Please tell us all. Jim
  
  Reply
George Hollister June 2, 2025

As I read Tommy Wayne Kramer I am sure I heard the ghost of Jerry Philbrick clapping.

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Mike Williams June 2, 2025

Well it looks like TWK has taken a big swig of MAGA kool-aid. He rails against DEI and Black Lives Matter like our fair land never experienced a long history of discrimination and outright hostility towards women and minorities. He even trots out the totally debunked list of “scientists”, who deny the existence of man made climate change. He is obviously under the spell of right wing misinformation, and unable to see through their misleading and false narratives. He was better off doing bar reviews in the Grapevine, that was when he peaked, since then the slow slide into grumpy old man.

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- Paul Modic June 2, 2025
  
  I’ve always found TWK readable, but last week for the first time I couldn’t finish the ramble, I’ll try again this one…
  
  Reply
Harvey Reading June 2, 2025

“Our genetic code is immutable.”

The writer should do some research into that matter and speak with a competent geneticist. “Errors” in the reproductive process, at the molecular level do happen, which should come as no surprise given the massive number of possibilities involved.

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Chuck Dunbar June 2, 2025

“NO OTHER LAND”

Yesterday, my wife and I attended the showing of the documentary, “No Other Land,” a part of the Mendocino Film Festival. This film was denied a wider showing in the U.S., as no major distributor chose to take it on. So a few people get to see it in smaller venues like this one. The film depicts the slow, steady, brutal destruction of Palestinian villages in the West Bank by Israeli troops prior to 2023, and prior to the attack on Israel of by Hamas. The purpose stated by Israel: to provide land for a tank training ground. One watches it close-up, in sadness and horror. Especially terrifying was the destruction of an elementary school and the sealing of a water well with cement. One leaves such a viewing down-cast, broken-hearted, seeing such brutality toward men and women and children who have already have so little—and this by a people who have suffered terribly in the past, and who, above all others, should know better.

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- Bruce McEwen June 2, 2025
  
  By God, Vicar Dunbar, you’ll bring the wrath of the Almighty down on your happy home if you go around shrieking antisemitic screeds like the one above! Best to come clean and denounce that film as antisemitic propaganda and stop hating America! Remember, you wouldn’t have your own comfortable house on the coast if our dashing ancestors hadn’t helped the US Army before and after the Civil War exterminate the aborigines who we found squatting on this, our God-given land, in these here United States.
  
  Reply
  - Chuck Dunbar June 2, 2025
    
    Hey, Bruce, I hope you are jesting, or just being a bit cantankerous here, in your assertion of antisemitism. Just in case you’re serious, nothing in my post justifies that allegation, and I am not antisemitic. I noted facts in my post that are not disputable, and the modifiers for those facts–“brutal destruction,” “steady,” “terrifying”- are justified.
    
    Reply
    - Bruce McEwen June 2, 2025
      
      You can’t really have read the AVA all these years so engagingly as to have missed the almost daily alarm concerning how a kind of Fifth Column from a foreign state has muzzled both houses of congress, the entire western press, and is currently labeling anyone who criticizes said foreign state or its policies as a dangerous antisemitic radical terrorist—you can’t honestly have missed all those indisputable articles, dear vicar… have you?
      
      No, you saw them. So why are you acting so naive and confused by what I said? Do you think you are specially nice and the Anti-defamation League will turn a blind eye to your “justified criticism” due to your advanced age and mild nature?
      
      Reply
      - Bruce McEwen June 2, 2025
        
        Honest to God, vicar, I shudder to think what the music professor at Mendocino College (the one who was attacked going to a symphony in the city last month and wrote about it right here), I say, I wonder what he would have to say about your (maybe a little too rash) movie review—yikes!
        
        Reply
        
        Chuck Dunbar June 2, 2025
        
        Ok, got it–dense I am at times.
        
        Reply
David Stanford June 2, 2025

DEAR UNCLE BRUCE:

Bruce we are caring for an uncle Bruce with Dementia, you should be proud that your genes run deep. enjoy!!!!

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Mike Geniella June 2, 2025

So Tommy Wayne Kramer is feeling a ‘fresh breeze in the air with mild gusts cleansing America of rot and decay,’ eh? Odd. I’m smelling the stench of pardons for pay, incompetent cabinet appointments (how about RFK’s ballyhooed health declaration, which contained made-up reports?), and private White House tours for investors in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency ventures. There’s more, plenty more. My Pollyanna side wants to stand outside and feel that fresh breeze Kramer writes about. My cynical self believes the smell of bullshit will come with it. I agree with Mike Williams. Kramer’s sterling days, beginning in the Grapevine era, have faded, tarnished by his full embrace of the Liar in Chief and maggot politics.

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- George Hollister June 2, 2025
  
  Trump is throwing a lot political mush at the wall. We will just have to see what sticks.
  
  Reply
  - Jurgen Stoll June 2, 2025
    
    Trump is not throwing anything up on a wall, he is following the heritage foundations 2025 plan for a fascist takeover of this country item by item. We can fight him every step of the way in his attempt to shit can the Constitution and become dictator. And then hold him and his traitorous suck ups accountable. This democracy is not going away that easily……
    
    Reply
    - Chuck Dunbar June 2, 2025
      
      +1!!!
      
      Reply
    - Marshall Newman June 2, 2025
      
      +1
      
      Reply
    - Harvey Reading June 2, 2025
      
      +2!
      
      Reply
    - Norm Thurston June 2, 2025
      
      +3
      
      Reply
- Brian Wood June 2, 2025
  
  TWK’s engaging essays on local issues used to be a joy to read. He’s gone downhill fast.
  
  Reply
  - Bruce McEwen June 2, 2025
    
    Yes, but he got half a dozen comments already, and still counting. Jerry Philbrick often got as many, but TWK only rarely. And, like Philbrick, he got some real rich ones dripping with sarcastic pity and hugely arch indignation! If Lee Edmundson posts his annoyance—Lee never missed a chance to shout down a Philbrick post— but has been quiet as a church mouse since the am Blue lost the Empire to Trump…again. You’ve found your true voice—channeling Jerry—TWK, and you’re on a roll!
    
    Reply
Lilian Rose June 2, 2025

Dear Uncle Bruce…

Just reading about it made me tired,
Congratulations to the Anderson family.

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Craig Stehr June 2, 2025

Many email replies were received in response to my report about the decline of social life in Chocolate City. The violent situation at the bus stop in particular, was shared with you as a public safety concern. It was responded to by many friends and relevant social service organizations. Everybody, beginning with Washington D.C. Catholic Charities, offered the same advice: “If you feel threatened, call the police!” Thank you all very much. What would I do without you? One can only wonder.
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]
June 2, 2025 A.D. @ 12:47 p.m. EDT

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Stephen Dunlap June 2, 2025

Dunlap Roofing did the octogon roof that wraps the redwood tree a few years back. I know right where it’s at of course. That is a tpo single ply membrane roof is you are wondering.

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Chuck Dunbar June 2, 2025

Weasel in the Garden

I don’t think I’d ever seen a weasel in nature until the other day. I saw this strange sight near our back porch–looked like a big fat hot dog with a head and tail. Had to look twice to be sure, and first thought was “what the heck is that?” It was quick, darted off and that was it. Our cats came around later, sniffing the area, no doubt a unique odor. Told my wife about it later, and she also didn’t think she’d seen one in nature. Any other folks seeing weasels about these days?

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- Paul Modic June 2, 2025
  
  Never saw a weasel, but knew a guy named Weasel…
  Chuck, really enjoyed reading about your E St Commune…
  (When I first came out here, a hitchhiking lad of nearly eighteen,
  I was “looking for a commune.” Probably good I never found one,
  given my inability to get along with people, especially in close quarters, though
  the country community I lived with for thirty years were free-range communards,
  in a sense…)
  Looking forward to your next memoir, the likes of which makes this “paper” great…
  
  Reply
  - Chuck Dunbar June 2, 2025
    
    Thanks much for your kind words, Paul. I’ve been thinking a lot about a little town in Kansas where I lived for three years, 3rd, 4th and 5th grade. It was an idyllic place to be a young boy, safe, fun, friendly, had some good friends there, we went all over the place on our bikes…I have often dreamed over the years of bike rides through the streets. Maybe will write a short love letter from an old man to Chapman, KS, 1,300 and some souls these days, about the same in the mid-50’s when I lived there.
    
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    - Paul Modic June 2, 2025
      
      Kansas sounds shady…
      I just finished compiling all the issues of my ‘zine Gulch Mulch,
      written from 1987 to 2002, and the memories are
      flooding back, starting with ’87…
      A couple years ago I surprised myself by compiling
      all my memories from the age of 4 to 19, quite a document,
      sent some copies to my 50th reunions back in Indiana…
      Your Kansas reference reminds me of the time I pissed in
      Burrough’s back yard in Lawrence in ’95…
      Here’s another Kansas experience:
      
      My First Time
      I was driving my cool grandma’s car west on a
      clear summer day and I hit a ladder in the road
      on crowded Interstate 465 in Indianapolis at 70 mph,
      got completely turned around and found myself
      aiming headlong into an oncoming semi-truck.
      I veered toward the shoulder and glanced off
      a brown sedan then banged into the guard rail
      just to make sure I was completely off the road.
      (That accident would lead to losing my cherry
      and an international espionage incident in China.)
      The car was totaled and we were all shaken up.
      Grandma and Ricardo headed to the train station
      to continue their trip to Los Angeles where she
      was returning Ricardo to his parents and I tried
      hitching on a private plane at a nearby airport.
      I turned down a flight to Jackson, Mississippi
      and decided to get back on the Interstate and
      hitchhike on to Emporia, Kansas where I was
      on my way to visit an old friend from 6th grade.
      Just outside the airport a young brother-sister
      combo picked me up and took me back out to
      the entrance ramp and the highway to Kansas.
      I got hung up outside Topeka for a couple hours
      and started making silly signs which said
      Heaven, Russia, China and God
      I was so proud of my absurd signs that I ran to
      the other side of the road going East to wave
      my wacka-doodle dandy as the police started
      to get interested in the spectacle.
      That fall I was visiting my friend Larry at
      Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana and
      he said someone there knew me.
      It was Lisa, the sister from the car, majoring
      in the popular Chinese studies program
      That night we got it on at the edge of the cemetery
      where I buried my last three joints along
      the fence line, never to be retrieved.
      A couple years later there was a story about Lisa
      on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle,
      expelled from China as a suspected spy.
      
      Reply
- Marco McClean June 3, 2025
  
  In the future history of Cordwainer Smith’s stories there’s a planet defended by special weasels. The government produced them to have tremendous nuclear bomb levels of psychic power. They’re kept asleep until an enemy fleet of spaceships approaches, then they’re awakened and the full force of their angry psychic power blasts out into space and explodes the invaders’ brains. There are no measures possible against this. Attackers have no chance. You’d think that something would go wrong sooner or later with this system, but nothing ever does. No matter how far away the invasion starts, the weasels can explode the enemies’ brains with concentrated rage and fear.
  
  When I read someone’s story on the air that has swears in it, that I didn’t notice before I started reading it, and it’s before 10pm, I’ve learned to seamlessly say another word instead, and I always stop for a moment, apologize to the writer for effing up their story, and explain about generally having to read swears a little later at night so not to agitate the weasels. Cordwainer Smith’s weasels are the one’s I’m talking about, as well as the human angry weasels who can fly into fits of rage and project this when they hear a word they don’t like, because long ago their parents put soap in their mouth and held their mouth closed on it until they threw up, because they loved them so much, and that sort of love is carried forward.
  
  Speaking of which, another wood rat got into my house last month. This time it didn’t just eat a big semicircle out of the bar of soap on the bathroom sink, it took the whole bar of soap completely away with it. I’ve asked about how a creature that small can eat, at one sitting, an amount of soap bigger than its whole resting abdomen and not die. The answer is: it might taste terrible, and it might make the rat feel ill, but the useful calories in soap outweigh this in consideration. The rat makes a decision and toughs it out.
  
  Reply
Paul Modic June 2, 2025

Printing and reading in the AVA today:
Yearsley, TWK, Hughes, Gardner, Clogg,
Kimberlin…
(Nothing worth reading in the NYTimes today)

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- Lilian Rose June 2, 2025
  
  To P. Modic
  
  ‘…given my inability to get along with people…’ 🤣
  
  Luv it when applying for a new job, and criteria states must get along with people…to me it says ‘it’s our way or the highway’.
  
  Reply
  - Marco McClean June 3, 2025
    
    I saw a picture the other day of a man holding up a big live goose. The caption had the man saying, “I’m a people person,” and the goose was saying, “I’m a geese goose.”
    
    Reply
Mike Jamieson June 2, 2025

The many excited fans here at the AVA (not, lol) of the Great Redwood Trail might be interested to know that work has started on the next segment:
https://youtu.be/ggJNJK34Ejo?si=tbQBr3mhpOAzHeWd

Signs in this area have detailed warning not to trespass (likely due to previous large encampments there).

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- Mike Williams June 2, 2025
  
  I’ve walked the rail line from Healdsburg to Spy Rock but couldn’t make out where the video is? North Ukiah Valley, Willits?
  
  Reply
  - Mazie Malone June 2, 2025
    
    Mike W,
    
    That is South Ukiah …. the area that is behind the shopping center that contains, comfort Inn Cannavine, Isis Pizza, the dollar store, Gamestop and Panda Express.
    
    mm 💕
    
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David Stanford June 2, 2025

Lets keep electing Jackass in California and see what it gets you!!!!!!!!

California’s homelessness crisis has reached a breaking point. According to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, more than 187,000 people were homeless in the state last year — nearly 24% of the entire nation’s unhoused population. The pressure is mounting on state and local leaders to act fast.

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- Eli Maddock June 2, 2025
  
  Well, at 39,430,000ish (39.43 million) population, California houses more than 10% of the population of the entire USA.
  So it’s pretty easy math to figure that we will have more homeless than the other 49 (1/50) states. And then there’s the weather…
  FFS
  
  Reply
David Stanford June 2, 2025

Jerry Philbrick.

What a great man, not to many of him were made, he employed my father for over 30, years’ what is not to love about JERRY*********************

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- Kimberlin June 2, 2025
  
  Let me tell you why Jerry Philbrick was not a great man. When I was 16 years old and going to Anderson Valley High, Jerry Philbrick got roaring drunk out in Comptche at a dance there. He suddenly attacked me because he thought I was a hippy. I was never a hippy. He punched me in the face knocking me to the ground and then chased after me until one of my highschool friends stopped him by saying, “That’s Leonore Ray Falleri’s nephew.” He was a adult probably in his med to late twenties. This was a crime as I was only 16. A few months later my aunt said to me, “If your father was still alive Jerry Phibrick would be getting out of jail just about now with child molestor on his record. That would have probably got him either beatten up in jail or killed. I ran into him years later at the Redwood Drive-in and he said, “How come I don’t know you?” And I said, “Oh you know me, you just don’t remember.”
  
  Reply
David Stanford June 2, 2025

Mike Geniella
June 2, 2025

I am not as smart as as a lot of you posting here but you cannot tell me that Trump is worst than Biden, not that it matters, I am retired and living with lots of grandchildren and loving life peace to all of you today

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- gary smith June 3, 2025
  
  You mean “worse”. Poor grammar diminishes your credibility. You hear anyone around here praising Biden? Did you know that hating Trump does not equal loving Biden? The world isn’t like that.
  
  Reply
Dale Carey June 3, 2025

yeah bruce; i pray for your genes every day….addicted to the AVA.. thanks mark and bruce and ling.. especially ling.

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Mendocino County Today: Monday 6/2/2025

43 Comments

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