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ISOLATED thunderstorm threat for Trinity, Del Norte, and NE Mendocino County continues this afternoon into the evening. Warm temperatures continue today, however, a cooling trend will keep temperatures cooling steadily through the week. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): It's our favorite foggy 50F this Monday morning on the coast. More of the same for a couple days then clearing later in the week, they say? We'll see.
TRAGIC ENDING IN SEARCH FOR MISSING LAKE COUNTY TEEN
by Matt LaFever
The search for 14-year-old Andrew Roberts ended in heartbreak late Sunday night when his body was recovered from Hidden Valley Lake.
The North Shore Dive Team located Andrew at approximately 10:40 p.m., according to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office in a Nixle post to the community. “Our condolences go out to his loved ones,” the department stated.
Andrew, of Clearlake, was last seen around 4:15 p.m. near Big Beach, where he was attending a group outing. He told others he was heading to the pool but never returned. Search efforts quickly escalated, with dive teams, K9 units, and multiple agencies combing the area into the night.
The teen was described as 5-foot-4, 115 pounds, with dark blonde hair, last seen wearing a blue “Konocti Pathfinders” shirt, black pants, and a gray backpack.
The cause of death has not yet been released.
(mendofever.com)
AV UNIFIED NEWS
Dear Students, Families, and Staff,
How can it possibly be the last week of school?! It has been an amazing whirlwind of a year. Last week was very special, culminating with the Groundbreaking ceremony as Rege Construction begins their work on the new track at AVHS! We are thrilled to have this long-awaited endeavor underway, and deeply grateful to Caltrans for funding the project. There will be a press release from Caltrans coming soon!
To all parents and guardians: Thank you for entrusting your precious children to AVUSD, whether they are preschoolers who took their first steps onto our grounds last August, or high school seniors who will take their final steps as AV students when they graduate on Thursday, they are an absolute inspiration. We look forward to fun and families, and photos in the coming days. Please join us if you can, as we celebrate the hard work, the joy, and the accomplishments made by these remarkable students!
Fondly,
Kristin Larson Balliet
Superintendent
Upcoming Events - We hope to see you there!
June 10, 6th Grade Promotion
6:00 p.m. at the AVHS Gymnasium in Boonville
June 11, 8th Grade Promotion
6:00 p.m. at the AVHS Gymnasium in Boonville
June 12, High School Graduation
7:00 p.m. at the AVHS Gymnasium in Boonville
Adult Summer School Classes
Adult School summer classes start soon! I'm writing to share our summer class schedule. From early June to the end of July, we will be offering two classes at the Adult School- English as a Second Language (multi-level) and Child Development in Spanish. Please contact 895-2953 or [email protected] if you have any questions or want to register.
Thank You, Kira Brennan!
Mrs. Brennan is retiring! We are deeply grateful to Mrs. Brennan for her passion for student success and her hard work for many, many years in AVUSD. A recent email excerpt from Mrs. Brennan (below) about the Bike Club she started this year highlights her commitment to kids as well as one element of the legacy she leaves behind in our district.
“What I have seen to become a dream come true, and even beyond, are kids moving, smiling, working together, and taking responsibility. Mostly, I see Joy. I have been teaching several kids how to ride a bike. I have witnessed two students who took the time to fix a bike. I have watched students choose to ride bikes in the ASP instead of being on their phones. So, Kudos to all of us for making this happen. It has taken a village. Truly. I would also like to say that this Bike Club will continue into next year, no matter what…”
Thank you, Mrs. Brennan, for your service and for all you have done for kids throughout your career.
AN INTERESTING FOREST DEMONSTRATION
To the Editor:
Recently, my father and I attended a very informative field tour at Jackson Demonstration State Forest. We, along with other private landowners and forestry and fire professionals walked through 6 test plots designed to explore the effects of different fuels management on prescribed fire treatments in the redwood forest. The research project was a collaboration between the staff at JDSF and the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Extension staff. The tour was lead by Michael Jones, PhD, from the UC Cooperative Extension.
We found this on-the-ground practical tour extremely informative. It challenged our pre-conceived notions that fire is best avoided in our forest. As we walked through the plots we saw for ourselves how different fuels management treatments affected the forest ground and tree canopy. We also learned how wildlife were attracted to the more open treatment areas. As private forest landowners we greatly appreciate the educational role of JDSF and commend those who continue to manage our local state demonstration forest for all of it’s many public values. We take our role as land stewards very seriously and are pursuing proven methods to protect our forest from devastating wildfires. The best way to learn and understand best practices in land management is to see it for yourself through quality science-based research projects like this one.
We believe that JDSF can fulfill it’s mandate as a working, demonstration forest for the benefit of the entire community.
Nan Deniston
Parker Ten Mile Ranch
R.D. BEACON
It is that the heart I have heart, passing over Walter Matzen Junior, a good friend who was smart enough to move to Nevada, my understanding that he had some form of cancer, that he'd been fighting for several years, but looking back at the good old days, when we used to run up and down the coast, he was one of my favorite people, to correct with, Walter was involved with sports, getting the better industries, to sponsor a baseball game, he was a valuable member, in the early days, the Greenwood Ridge fire department, he also was a valuable member, many projects, in the town of elk, his father owns a grocery store, for many years and supported many events, and the community, overhead sister Joan and has already passed away, brother Johnny it was killed in an automobile accident, the 60s, and one brother's surviving William, Mattson of Nevada, we also understand, he has a wife and children that have survived, when he grew up in the town of elk, going to the great school, and through the high school system, he was a good Catholic, and was an altar boy at one time, at the local Catholic Church NL, he now walks with his father in heaven, and is now united with his original father and mother Walter Nora, it preceded him in death, along with sister and brother they can now walk the clouds together, I found two pictures, one was taken at t Apple show & fair, and the other one, was taken on the beach at Greenwood Creek, when a small boat crashed into a rock, Walter no walks with the Lord our God.
GOLF IS JUST A FOUR-LETTER WORD
by Tommy Wayne Kramer
Is every town overrun with golfers the way Ukiah is?
Is there any other group that seems to be everywhere all at once the way local golfers are?
If there isn’t a weekend golf tournament starting tomorrow it means there will be two weekend tournaments starting Friday. A weekend of golf brings them rolling in from as far away as Lake County. Heaven help us.
And if they aren’t out destroying their golf lawn you’ll find them having a banquet where they hand each other trophies.
And all this for what? To play the grand game of golf? I “played” golf one time and it cured me of wanting to go back unless the rules changed enough that there’d be a more interesting day of it. As it is, the sport of golf is the slowest, dullest stretch you can spend this side of watching daytime soap operas or doing six months in the county jail.
Sorry. I mistakenly referred to golf as a “sport” in the above paragraph but that overstates the nature of the practice. The word sport implies competition, as in badminton or checkers.
A sport involves two or more performers, each trying to score points while preventing opponents from doing the same. But the lazy frolic of golf has no intrinsic competition.
Golf can be played alone. This means golf is no more a sport than jogging. Or knitting or mowing the lawn. Golf is, at best, an activity dressed in silly clothes with glammed-up go-karts in fancy paint jobs and a driver who’s been drinking.
The fact you can drink while playing golf is one of the few things that recommend it. Drinking is what allows someone to endure six hours in the hot sun chasing someone else’s golf ball because his own ball went off and hid in the weeds.
And this, by the way, is yet another factor suggesting golf is something less than a sport. Think of NFL players passing around a quart of Seagram’s in the huddle. Imagine Mike Trout standing in centerfield, reaching in his back pocket for a thermos bottle filled with a nicely chilled Old Milwaukee beer.
But golf? Drinking might as well be written into the rule book, mandatory on some courses, optional on others but surely never forbidden. And after wasting the afternoon driving wedges, nailing putts and swearing at their nine irons golfers leave the course along with all the other fellow future AA members. And then what do they do? Why they drink!
And if today’s game is part of the ubiquitous tournaments Ukiah hosts all summer long, what do golfers do when it gets dark? They haul off to some fancy restaurant and have a big dinner honoring each other for their fine work at the task of golf earlier that day.
And drink some more.
And then tell each other lies about how swell a time they’d had in some sand trap, or how many birdies and free throws they accomplished. Because if there’s something every golfer does better than play golf, it’s tell lies about how great a golfer he is.
In fact there’s no known group more accomplished at lying than golfers, unless it’s politicians or car salesmen. How else but by lying to their wives about the price of golf carts and golf clubs could they manage to spend so much money on so frivolous an activity?
Not that it’s any of my business of course. What a golfer spends on his hobby is strictly between him and his priest or therapist or his lying buddies back at the clubhouse.
If the people in charge of the activity known as golf would sober up for a few days and make some small updates to the rules and regulations I might be persuaded to get back on the links or green or fairway. Whatever.
Put some speed and fun into the dreary old game. Allow an alternative style of hybrid golf that incorporates polo into the rules. Just think: Carts racing back and forth whacking at the green golf balls of their own and orange balls of the opposition. Teams would wear either green or orange uniforms and drive carts painted the same. It would make great television, and the more the players were encouraged to drink the wilder the action.
The carts themselves would have highly modified turbo engines but very little in safety equipment, starting with no helmets or seatbelts. Empty beer cans would litter the course, and hitting one while careening toward the next hole would improve the team score.
Light duty weapons would be permitted. Cheating would of course be part of the game.
After all, it’s golf.
ED NOTES (for the marvelous and intuitive Mazie Malone)
AS A KID, I never missed the televised fights on Wednesday and Saturday nights brought to me by the Gillette Blue Blades I was too young to use. I think the fights were among the most popular shows on early television. Carmen Basilio! Jersey Joe Walcott! Sugar Ray Robinson! Jake LaMotta! Rocky Marciano! Boxing's Golden Age!
I WAS plenty old enough for the Griffith-Paret fight, but I've always wished I hadn't watched it. Everyone who saw it remembers it because Griffith had Paret helpless on the ropes and, as I recall the awful scene, by the time the referee pulled him off, Paret was probably dead. You knew you were watching something awful, a murder really. The Times said that Griffith hit Paret 17 times in five seconds, 24 times in that flurry without a single counterpunch from Paret.
NORMAN MAILER had it perfectly: “The right hand whipping like a piston rod which has broken through the crankcase, or like a baseball bat demolishing a pumpkin.” It seemed to take forever for the ref to react, and by the time he did, Benny “The Kid” Paret was gone, and died a few days later.
PARET, during the weigh-in, had called Griffith a “maricon,” the Spanish word for “fag,” a fatal insult as it developed. Griffith was gay, and always denied he was out to kill Paret, but if you watch the film of that terrible event (or the excellent documentary from a few years ago which includes the film and the dramatic aftermath, “Ring of Fire,” you'll see that Griffith was out to kill.
THE ART COLLECTOR. Twice one week, a forlorn sixty-ish woman had appeared at my Frisco door, suitcases in hand. “Is Mr. Anderson the art collector in?” she asked in a British accent. My wife, suppressing a laugh, said that there was indeed a man by that name living at this address, but he could hardly be described as an “art collector.” The English woman shuffled off into the summer fog, But showed up again the next day to ask, “Do you know of a place I might stay?”
SHE PRESENTED, as they say, as a respectable person of the secure middle classes, not, in any obvious way, one of the small army of roving mental cases loose in San Francisco. We offered the usual menu of unappealing options: city-run shelters, Glide, and so on, none of them suitable for a person unlikely to do well in tough places among tough people. I would have liked to have known what disaster, or series of disasters, had made the English woman homeless, but with that kind of curiosity also comes the existential bogeymen: If I asked what had happened to make her a refugee, the next step would be an obligation to help somehow. Then would come the excuses: “I'm a person of ordinary means. My place is barely big enough for me and the little woman. We couldn't possibly take on another person. The government's supposed to help out. Where the government?”
THE GOVERNMENT, of course, has abdicated, and charity is stretched to the limit. There's not only no room at the inn, there's no inn.
ANYBODY who walks around The City can't help but see that there are lots of people living as they can, often in their vehicles, but still trying to lift themselves up and out. And every day we're told by the big white perfect teeth on television that the “Economy has turned the corner. The recovery is weak but we're headed in the right direction.” If a downward plummet is the right direction, we're certainly on the way. No doubt about it.
THE ENGLISH WOMAN didn't return. I have no idea how she got onto me, but we were still thinking and wondering about her for weeks after. This kind of thing is unsettling, isn't it? Her odd visit also had me wondering if my “art collection” added up to anything grand enough to be called a collection.
I'VE GOT two paintings by my friend Mary Robertson whose wonderful work has steadily grown in value, a collage by Winston Smith, once of Ukiah (hah!), a Crumb miniature of Devil Girl, some old prints that may or may not be fairly rare, and a World War Two artifact I bought years ago at a Ukiah garage sale.
THAT ARTIFACT, I learned, when, in a time of dire need, one of many over a long, impecunious life, I took this object to an appraiser. He offered an on-the-spot grand for it. “A one-of-a-kinder,” the appraiser said, “and very nicely done.” Which caused me to keep it. My aesthetic had been officially validated!
YOU'D HAVE TO SEE this thing to appreciate it, but the instant I spotted it in that Ukiah backyard with a twenty dollar price tag on it I couldn't believe my good fortune. I pounced. The garage saler was an elderly woman who explained that her late husband had served in the occupation of Japan immediately after World War Two. He'd brought the unusual little diorama home with him from Yokohama. Judging from the other art she had on sale, she was heavy into unicorns and chipmunks, which, come to think of it, are ubiquitous art forms in our County seat. I remember her saying of my treasure, “I never liked the thing. I made him hang it out in the garage.”
I LOOK at it all the time, and it endlessly rewards my attention because it's so intricately done, so sad in its desperate tribute to Japan's conquerors. I imagine the old Ukiah guy making a special trip out to his garage to gaze at his prize, perhaps geisha memories also warming him all those years after the biggest events of his life, 1941-46.
SO, what are we talking about here? We're talking about a tableau recreating the appearance of a triumphant American destroyer in Yokohama harbor set in a mahogany frame that was probably once home to some other iconic Asian item. It's about six inches deep, two feet long, a foot high. The frame is embossed with Japanese characters which, translated, hail the Yankee conquerors. Inside the frame is a plastic mini-replica of a destroyer with gray human hair serving as smokestack smoke, behind which the artist has meticulously painted in bright colors his hillside home town and, beyond, Mount Fuji. The whole of it is vaguely reminiscent of Grandma Moses and some Haitian street art I've seen. The Japanese, like the Germans, eked out existences as best they could in those first grim years after the war their disastrous leaders brought on, and I've always assumed my prized possession was made by a man surviving however he could.
A NUTS AND BOLTS ADVENTURE: EXPLORING HOP FLAT
by Brad Wiley
I began hearing about Hop Flat, the short-lived logging and millcamp west of the rocky bluff at Highway 128’s milepost 5.50, when I first moved to The Valley in 1971. The old Navarro woodsman bachelor and local story-teller Alvy Price whom back then I regularly sat next to at the Floodgate bar told me his father lived and worked at Hop Flat until the stud mill and railhead there shut down. When the parent mill burned down, Alvy’s father moved to Wendling, now Navarro where George X. Wendling, San Francisco capitalist and mill entrepreneur, established first a shake mill and brick kiln, later a sawmill. And so did the Hopper and Mabery families’ ancestors too.
The Hop Flat mill site was a subsidiary of the several mills established at the mouth of the Navarro River beginning in 1861. I have written inaccurately about their history in previous stories. These mills exploited the surrounding woodlands by building a rail line in pieces up the Navarro at the end of which would be for a year or two, a summer logging camp complete with cabins for the loggers, bachelors and family men, a common dining room and other amenities, perhaps a company store, infirmary, church, often a dance hall for Saturday night’s entertainment. Once the surrounding forest was clear cut, the rail line and work camp would be extended a mile or two upriver to a flat big enough to support the mill and temporary town.
The rail system bringing logs to the mill, probably a single track, ran along the south side of the Navarro for over three miles where it crossed the river at today’s famous Iron Bridge swimming hole at Highway 128 milepost 3.65. Bill Witherell told me the rail bridge there was literally made of steel. Whether there was a logging camp established at Iron Bridge, we archeologists have yet to find out.
The rail line later continued from Iron Bridge upstream along the river to Hop Flat where it ended due to the almost vertical rocky bluff descending from the flat’s east end straight down into the river making it impossible for the rail line to go any further. It was only in the 1920s, when the state built Highway 128, that the construction crew carved out the rock wall with steam shovels and dynamite to create its right-of-way.
Today, Hop Flat is entirely reforested with second growth redwood trees, sometimes three feet and more in diameter on the stump and huge pepperwood trees almost as fat at ground level. The flat area, about a quarter of a mile in length and over a hundred yards in width, is part of the California State Park system that stretches from Flynn Creek on Highway 128 down to about milepost 1.76 where redwood forest more or less terminates. About a hundred feet up the north slope of the flat an explorer can find every so often prominent yellow metal plaques mounted on fence posts calling out “Boundary” between Mendocino Redwood Company timber land and the state park.
Twice this spring, once in early April, and again on the first Sunday this month a cadre of amateur archeologists, John Pitts and Mike Reeves, experienced placer gold prospectors, Brad Wiley, your reporter, and in June retired logger and well informed local historian Ernie Pardini went down to Hop Flat armed with metal detector devices, shovels, trowels, prospecting pans and mosquito repellant, to practice our craft.
After accumulating six hours of labor and about five pounds of metallic artifacts, I have to acknowledge that the reporting that follows is very speculative about how the Hop Flat community was organized. Nevertheless, it appears that the railhead serving the logging and milling lay on sandy loam about twenty-five feet above the river. There was enough room for there to be two parallel tracks to serve the woods products to be hauled away downstream, though no evidence to prove the point. The stud mill whose purpose was probably for making two-by-fours from the smaller diameter logs we suspect lay right about where the Highway 128 right-of-way is today.
But we found some evidence north of the millsite, partly on the flat, partly on the sloping sidehill to the north, that the cabins for the woods and millworkers were located there. How many cabins there were we could not tell, nor did we find any evidence of where the cookhouse and dining hall stood, never mind the dance site which gave Hop Flat its name. Perhaps people just danced on a wooden platform as they did up at Hagemann’s “dance hall” up on Greenwood Road.
So now it’s time to discuss the historic evidence, actual artifacts, we amateur archeologists uncovered. Beside the anecdotes Hop Flat descendant Alvy Price and longtime Navarro resident Bill Witherell told me, my sole source of local mill history is an illustrated catalogue of the industry’s history organized by towns called ‘Mills Of Mendocino County,’ published by the Mendocino County Historical Society in 1996.
This resource states the H.B. Tichenor & Co. built the first mill on the Navarro River in 1861, and that after numerous riverine wharves for loading lumber onto ships bound for the San Francisco area were destroyed by storms, in 1878 the company built a six hundred foot long pier twenty four feet wide, likely out into the ocean. I have found evidence of steel pier fastenings drilled and cemented into the sandstone cliff face at the north end of the beach that suggest the location of this pier.
The ‘Mills’ resource notes that the Tichenor & Co. mill was sold to Navarro Mills Company and its several owners in the 1880s. Beelu Oswald Robinson, mother of Zac Robinson and Husch Vineyards owner, informed Mike Reeves that one of the Navarro Mills Company’s owners was her ancestor, Miles Standish, a famous investor in the timber industry all over Mendocino and Humboldt County, including the Standish-Hickey mill and forest, now a state park near Leggett, and Albion Lumber Company in Albion. Subsequently the Navarro mill burned down in 1890 and was rebuilt in a new site a mile east on the Navarro’s north side. This mill burned down in November, 1901, and ceased operations the next year.
The Historical Society book also shows the Navarro Mill Co. letterhead, with a picture of the first mill, a large steam-powered operation with a bridge just downstream of it across the Navarro River, various mill cottages behind it and perhaps the still-surviving mill manager’s dwelling on the scene’s left edge. Text framing the drawing says “manufacturers of and dealers in shingles, posts, railroad ties, etc. Redwood cargoes sawn to order.” The address for the company is 42 Market Street, San Francisco. An aerial photo on the same page shows a large mill building with what looks like railroad tracks entering it from the downriver side, next door a three bay round-house-looking building with tracks going to the bridge across the river. I am guessing the mill used the rail line to move finished product to the wharf for loading onto schooners and steamers headed for the Bay Area.
The photo also shows behind the mill and worker cottages, several large two story buildings obscured by the mill boiler smoke that look like hotels or guesthouses for bachelor millworkers, and several non-descriptly shaped buildings whose function (perhaps one is the cookhouse/dining hall) I can’t determine.
Meanwhile, back to Hop Flat: our April exploration was not a very successful one. Michael, John Pitts, metal detectors and tools, and I spent over two hours trudging over both sides of 128 and on the north’s sidehill where we supposed the cabins to have been. The largest number of items we found were a half dozen small wood screws and finishing nails and two bobby pins (modern roadside camper debris?) all in a small area on the north side of the road flat about forty feet inland. Could they have been fasteners for redwood board or shake cabin siding and roofing? Walking the rest of the flat and a little ways up the sidehill we found no further evidence of cabins or of anything else.
The most dramatic find was on the south side of the highway, again about forty feet onto the flat where we surmise the stud mill and railhead were. Both the metal detectors screeched over two square feet of ground among small ferns. Our frantic digging first found a square foot of thin rusted sheet metal under which we dug up a deeply rusted 4 X 1” bolt and nut about four inches long. A machine bolt would not be part of housing construction, so we surmised that what we found was associated with the stud mill machinery or from railroad equipment.
We also found in this location a very rusted eight inch wide cast iron skillet. We are still arguing about whether this artifact, obviously an element of household life, was evidence from the cabins on the north side of the flat or a remain from a later campsite. Michael is doing further research to support or deny our hope it came from the cabins.
Our June expedition began around 10 AM on a warm windless late spring day and included Ernie, Michael and Brad. We parked further down the flat than we had in April and began our recon by walking away from 128 north two abreast with Brad the senior citizen stumbling along behind the forward patrol leaning on his shepherd’s crook. About a hundred feet up the sidehill above the flat the metal detectors started whining around a three foot square site nestled among ferns. Digging revealed a different kind of soil from the sandy silt down on the flat. It was a dense clayey dirt more typical of the Franciscan soil on my Navarro ranch. The Hop Flat sample was more red than the brown soil at my place and filled with rusty red rocks that the detectors’ fussing told us were filled with iron magnetic enough to stick to Michael’s prospector trowel magnet.
This particular dig site also revealed the only evidence of camp cabins we found that day: a relatively square two inch piece of redrock that upon close inspection we all three archeologists agreed was evidence of a chimney brick. We spent another hour or so patrolling the north side of the highway both east and west, sidehill and flat, regularly getting detector signals identifying iron-filled rock or dirt on the side hill, and way too many beer cans and tabs down on the flat. But no further signs of cabin remains beyond the one piece of brick evidence.
The three researchers then crossed over to the south side of Highway 128 and began our patrol over there. About thirty feet toward the river the two metal detectors got excited. And our excavation discovered, along with the drink can tabs, a very rusted 12 X ½” machine bolt with attached nut. Bingo, just what we hoped to find.
After walking another fifteen feet toward the river, the detectors became excitedly noisy in an open area surrounded by a cluster of large ferns. Digging by both Ernie and Mike began to turn up a trove of bolts, nuts and washers, including carriage, machine and lag screws between four and ten inches in length and half to a full inch in diameter.
This lode of rusted materials led us a few feet farther across the flat to a ten foot diameter old growth redwood stump with some interesting man-made additions to it. Most prominent was a twenty foot long, two inch in diameter modern galvanized pipe vertically mounted and attached to the stump with steel straps. Our recollection at the instant was that this was the site of the US Weather Service gauging station that measured the Navarro River’s daily flow for the purpose of issuing El Nino winter flood warnings or summertime alerts regarding too much water removal for ag irrigation during drought years. This service was terminated around 1990, if I remember right.
More interesting was the steps sawn into two sides of the stump to enable a person to mount it to its now rotting top. Driven into the top of the stump we found three two inch wide quarter inch thick L-shaped angle irons sticking up about two feet above its top. Digging further into the rotting stump, we found another array of carriage and machine bolts, nuts and washers of various lengths and diameters. Total weight of our findings around the redwood stump Michael estimated to be about five pounds.
About ten feet away from the river side of the stump our detectors enthusiastically told me we had found something important. We dug up a ten inch round, convex shaped steel object with something like one inch flanged on its edge. It was partly eaten away on one edge to the extent we surmised it was a frying pan, though it was far away from where the cabins and cookhouse supposedly were across 128. On Sunday, we showed it to Jeff Burroughs participating at the AV Historical Society presentation about Pomo culture prior to the European settlers. Jeff identified it as a boiler aperture cover, the deeply corroded edges had, we guess, about ten machine screws, to secure the cover to a railroad steam engine.
Our excavations were accompanied by various hypotheses about the logging/milling camp function of what we had found around our evidence-rich redwood stump. My guess persuaded the other scholars of its credibility. Acknowledging it was a much a hope as a theory, I proposed that what we had found at this site was remnants of a conveyor belt that carried finished studs from the mill to rail cars sitting on the siding or sidings at the nearby railhead. In retrospect, I can only hope that my assumption about what our diggings had found is accurate.
We archeologists then spent another half hour cruising the south side of the highway flat without the detectors finding any more remnants of the Hop Flat community. I should mention that at all of our specific April and June excavation sites, we never had to dig more than eight to twelve inches into the silt where we found our artifacts.
The end of our workday we spent having lunch at the Navarro Store, speculating about our findings and listening to Ernie Pardini tell stories about his great grandparents way back in 1924 founding the hotel Italia across the old highway from the store where the music arena is today. And the sense of tragedy in the whole Anderson Valley community when the still-operating hotel burned down in 1972.
So where did Hop Flat get its name? As we know about American small town history, every community had a dance hall or like space for the community’s entertainment on Saturday nights. And according to Alvy Price, Hop Flat had such a structure though the archeologists found no evidence of its location. But why the word “hop” to describe the community? Your journalist’s assumption is that most of Mendocino County’s immigrant labor back at the turn of the twentieth century were Scots, Welsh and Irish; no Italians had arrived yet to work in the woods.
Price, Hopper and Mabery are all Welsh or Scots names, I believe. And the style of dancing in these communities, supported by bagpipes and fiddles, were jigs or “hops.” Hence the name Hop Flat. Ernie Pardini, supported by Jeff Burroughs another local historian, however believes the name did come from the locals’ style of dancing, and was provoked by the need of participants to keep moving vigorously to keep warm on cold evenings, fall, winter and spring. I like that version too.
Confession
Most of my version of the Hop Flat story is based on speculation and the recollections of Alvy Price and Bill Witherell, along with our archeological work. The Mendocino Historical Society’s ‘Mills Of Mendocino County’ is the only historical record based on actual Navarro River mill records. If any readers of this article have some knowledge of Hop Flat supporting or revising my story, please let me know. Or if you have any pictures of the Hop Flat community, advise me.
Brad Wiley, (707) 895 2259, [email protected]
CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, June 8, 2025
ZACHARY AKIN, 38, Kelseyville/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
ARIANA ARNOLD, 21, Ukiah. Contempt of court.
JAN BROOKE, 77, Ukiah. Misdemeanor hit&run with property damage.
LEONARD CAMPBELL JR., 53, Hopland. Petty theft, resisting, probation revocation.
ROBERT JAMES JR., 30, Ukiah. Controlled substance, county parole violation.
JESSICA JONES, 47, Lakeport/Ukiah. Speeding, suspended license for DUI.
BRITTANY KOHLMANN, 34, Ukiha. Probation revocation.
ALEJANDRO LOPEZ-GARCIA, 19, Fort Bragg. Domestic abuse, kidnapping, false imprisonment, attempted robbery, protective order violation resulting in injury.
FRANCISCO PEREZ, 31, Clearlake/Ukiah. Marijuana cultivation and diversion of water, assault weapon.
KRISTOPHER SHEPPARD, 47, Fort Bragg. Under influence.
MARK SMITH, 32, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.
KEVIN WOOD, 40, Willits. DUI, child cruelty-infliction of injury.
‘KEEPS ON CHUGGING NORTH’: Smart In Line For State Award To Extend Service To Healdsburg
The SMART Board believes construction work on the newest extension could begin as early as Spring 2026 with a targeted completion goal set for the end of 2028.
by Anna Armstrong
In exciting news for North Bay transit enthusiasts, the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit, or SMART, is in line to be awarded $81 million from the State of California to extend its passenger rail service north to Healdsburg, SMART officials announced in a Saturday morning news release.
The funding, which would extend SMART rail service from the newly-opened Windsor station to Healdsburg, would also expand the network’s bike and pedestrian path and support a new zero-emission locomotive for the railroad, officials said.
SMART’s recommended award comes from two state grant programs: the Solutions for Congested Corridors Program and the Local Partnership Competitive Program, officials said. The grant will also be matched by $187.7 million in federal, state and local funding SMART previously secured.
“The momentum is real and the SMART Train keeps on chugging north and will soon be serving riders from one end of the North Bay to the other,” said Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire in the release. “This success builds off the state’s prior $40 million investment to connect the Sonoma County Airport with the Town of Windsor.”
The SMART Board believes construction work on the newest extension could begin as early as Spring 2026 with a targeted completion goal set for the end of 2028.
A spokesperson for SMART could not be reached for comment or additional information Saturday afternoon.
“Everywhere I go, people say they can't wait to be able to take the train to Healdsburg for lunch,” said SMART Board member and Healdsburg Councilwoman Ariel Kelley in the release. “I am personally just as thrilled my family and neighbors can take our kids on a bike ride on the Foss Creek Pathway to the SMART Station and ride the train to San Rafael for lunch. SMART is truly connecting communities.”
(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)
PROTESTS INTENSIFY IN LOS ANGELES AFTER TRUMP DEPLOYS HUNDREDS OF NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS
In San Francisco, officers monitoring protests arrested dozens of people Sunday night after a group of people refused to comply with an order to disperse, police said in a statement on social media.
(Associated Press)
Tensions in Los Angeles escalated Sunday as thousands of protesters took to the streets in response to President Donald Trump’s extraordinary deployment of the National Guard, blocking off a major freeway and setting self-driving cars on fire as law enforcement used tear gas, rubber bullets and flash bangs to control the crowd.
Many protesters dispersed as evening fell and police declared an unlawful assembly, a precursor to officers moving in and making arrests of people who don’t leave. Some of those remaining threw objects at police from behind a makeshift barrier that spanned the width of a street and others hurled chunks of concrete, rocks, electric scooters and fireworks at California Highway Patrol officers and their vehicles parked on the closed southbound 101 Freeway. Officers ran under an overpass to take cover.
Sunday’s protests in Los Angeles, a sprawling city of 4 million people, were centered in several blocks of downtown. It was the third and most intense day of demonstrations against Trump’s immigration crackdown in the region, as the arrival of around 300 Guard troops spurred anger and fear among many residents.
The Guard was deployed specifically to protect federal buildings, including the downtown detention center where protesters concentrated.
Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said officers were “overwhelmed” by the remaining protesters. He said they included regular agitators who show up at demonstrations to cause trouble.
Several dozen people were arrested throughout the weekend of protest. One was detained Sunday for throwing a Molotov cocktail at police, and another for ramming a motorcycle into a line of officers.
Trump responded to McDonnell on Truth Social, telling him to arrest protesters in face masks.
“Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!” he wrote.
Dozens arrested at San Francisco protest
In San Francisco, officers monitoring protests arrested dozens of people Sunday night after a group of people refused to comply with an order to disperse, police said in a statement on social media.
Officers were monitoring a protest in the area of Sansome and Washington streets but declared an unlawful assembly when people in the group became violent, the San Francisco Police Department said. Many people left the scene, but some remained and some moved to Market and Kearny streets, where people vandalized buildings and a police vehicle.
A small group continued to Montgomery Street and when they didn’t comply with a dispersal order, police said officers arrested 60 people. Three officers were injured, including one who was taken to a hospital, police said.
“Individuals are always free to exercise their First Amendment rights in San Francisco but violence — especially against SFPD officers — will never be tolerated,” the statement said.…
YASTRZEMSKI PLATES 3 IN GIANTS’ WIN vs Braves to snap month-long slump
by Shayna Rubin
The past month hasn’t been a pleasant one for Mike Yastrzemski.
He had spent several weeks heading into Sunday’s series wrap against the Braves mired in a slump that saw him batting .167 and without a single hit with runners in scoring position since the San Francisco Giants departed for Chicago on May 4. It was the kind of skid that bumped him from his usual spot atop the lineup against right-handed starters and, twice against the San Diego Padres, out of the starting lineup altogether.
It marked a sharp reversal of fortune for Yastrzemski, who had been one of the engines that propelled the Giants offensively during their hot April. But then the 34-year-old wore down, and a few days off did wonders for his mental state.
But on Sunday against Atlanta’s Spencer Strider, Yastrzemski got his first RBI and first hit with runners in scoring position since May 4. Both were the key swings in the Giants’ 4-3 win at Oracle Park that secured a series sweep with their seventh straight game decided by one run and their fifth straight one-run win.
“It was big,” Yastrzemski said. “Obviously it’s not been ideal, but we’ve been pushing through to win games and that’s the most important thing. You all know me well enough to know that’s all I truly care about, is how many games we’re winning. This organization’s success. That makes it easier to battle through those things because they are tough. It’s a lot on your plate at times. Taking advantage of those rest days and trying to come back and putting together productive at-bats. Then eventually when things feel great we can expand on it.”
With those rest days, Yastrzemski took advantage of the extra time in the batting cage by virtue of not feeling rushed to prepare for the game. Nothing can eat up a hot hitter’s momentum like the daily grind. Time off afforded Yastrzemski a mental reset and he felt good about his approach in his last few at-bats.
“Just trust. It’s a mental thing,” Yastrzemski said. “Where you have to trust yourself and know your abilities and hone in on your approach and I feel like I’ve done that well the last three or four days. That feels a lot better and I feel a lot more relaxed and ready to attack my pitch versus do too much.”
Yastrzemski’s fourth-inning double erased a two-run deficit that was all Matt Olson’s doing against Landen Roupp. Olson’s two-run double in the third inning was the Braves’ big hit of the day.
With the Braves leading 1-0 in the second, Yastrzemski’s sacrifice fly scored Matt Chapman, who was part of a successful double-steal with Dom Smith that set up the play. The flyball ended Yastrzemski’s run of 28 games without an RBI.
Yastrzemski also scored the go-ahead run after his double when Giants second baseman Tyler Fitzgerald’s grounder took a bounce off Braves second baseman Ozzie Albies’ glove and the ball ended up in the outfield.
As has been essential for Roupp of late, he relied on a full four-pitch mix that includes more changeups and cutters to get through his six innings. Incorporating those pitches with his curveball and sinker have allowed Roupp to survive starts when he doesn’t have his “A-game” stuff. Ryan Walker, Randy Rodriguez and Camilo Doval combined for three shutout innings and six strikeouts to preserve the lead.
“We’re resilient,” Yastrzemski said. “We knew that was the case this year and most like any year, you’re going to play a lot of close games. There aren’t going to be a lot of blowout games in this ballpark. It’s such a finicky place to hit that it becomes that scenario where you’re going to play one-run games. Credit to the bullpen for being so lights out and the offense for chipping away and grinding and fighting through what wasn’t our best stretch. We still found ways to score a few here and there and do just enough to keep winning games. Hopefully things turn around and we get hotter on the offense. Maybe give those guys a few more comfortable outings rather than these crazy high-leverage situations that they’ve handled so well.”
Jammed up: Chapman jammed the middle three fingers of his right (throwing) hand while attempting to get back to first base in the eighth inning. He was picked off, but stayed in the game at third base for the top of the ninth. Chapman underwent X-Rays after the game that he said came back showing no broken bones or fractures, but that in the moment during the game he “felt like (he) tore all three of these ligaments” in his index, middle and ring finger. Chapman described the pain as soreness and said that his hand felt stiff, but that he will see how it feels on Monday before the Giants' series in Colorado.
“In the moment it was scary,” Chapman said. “I was pissed at myself for getting picked off and then compounding that was hurting my fingers. Stupid.”
On fire: Shortly before 11 a.m. and before gates opened to fans, a grease fire broke out at the Korean chicken sandwich concession stand Fuku on the main concourse at Oracle Park.
Smoke from the flames triggered alarms around the ballpark, including in the home clubhouse, prompting the Giants’ players to evacuate onto the field for several minutes.
In a post on ‘X,’ the San Francisco Fire Department said the fire was “confined to the cooking area” and extinguished with no reported injuries and that ballpark staff were also evacuated.
(sfchronicle.com)
DOUG HOLLAND
“The public schools do a good job right up through the sixth grade. They teach most of our little savages to read and to do the basic calculations. Edu-collapse coincides with adolescence. Which is also when our brutal and stupid popular culture kicks in, overwhelming young people by basting them in stupidity and wrong-think. The public schools, rather than resist, too often capitulate.”
That’s your editor’s standard-issue brilliance right there.
Thank You Miss Brandt for teaching me reading and writing and arithmetic. thank you to some other fine teachers who taught me the basics of US and world history, civics, research, science, art, music, and genuine thinking. All that was stuff kids need to learn, and it was taught early, before adolescence, up to about 6th grade.
After that, at least for my schooling, school was mostly what I’d call “polishing” — stuff some kids might need, fewer might appreciate, and many or most neither needed nor wanted. Me, I wanted OUT, so I quit in high school, and 50 years later my only regret is not dropping out sooner.
Quitting is what I always recommend for kids who find middle or high school boring, insulting, dangerous, or simply irrelevant. If you’re not going on to college, the last six years of public education are a waste of time. Get a job.
I miss “peace to the cottages.”
SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION TO REQUIRE IN-PERSON IDENTITY CHECKS FOR NEW AND EXISTING RECIPIENTS
Associated Press is lying, right from the first few words: “In an effort to limit fraudulent claims…”
Bullshit. None of this is about battling fraud, and Social Security is about the cleanest, most fraud-free agency possible. Over 99% accuracy:
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/setting-the-record-straight-on-social-security
PAUL MODIC: “I’ll read anything by Doug Holland except his political commentary as I’m not interested in amateurs’ opinions. (Trump bad, yeah, I get it.) Also, since retiring last year and kicking back on social security, he’s run out of content since he no longer has to get shitty jobs for about three weeks (the average time it took for him to hate it or them to hate him), writing about real life shit which I had found very entertaining.”
Absolutely fair assessment of me and my site, Paul. I’m trying to be more miserable, because it makes for better writing, but without a boss it’s difficult.
THE GOLD SPIKE special trains were present at the station in Sausalito.
This marked the first train journey all the way to Eureka, around October 23, 1914.
A condensed overview of the Golden Spike Celebration on October 23, 1914, which commemorated the completion of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad, was held at Cain Rock, Humboldt County, California.
CALIFORNIA’S FISHERMEN ARE STRUGGLING. IS THIS TINY CATCH THEIR LAST BIG CHANCE?
by Kali Shiloh
From the cockpit of his 63-foot fishing boat in Monterey Bay, Porter McHenry is on the hunt for what might be the last lucrative catch in California — though competitors and tariffs are closing in on his profit.
To spot his prey, he scrutinizes the behavior of seabirds, the patterns on his sonar screens and especially the tell-tale movements of the boats around him. His tiny target: California market squid, sometimes called Monterey squid, each 6 inches and 10 arms of opalescent white and purple.
With salmon season closed for three years in a row and Dungeness crab season dramatically shortened, squid is now the only species in the state that still holds the promise of a massive payday for struggling fishermen. “A good crab season, you could probably gross $3… $400,000,” said McHenry. “Squid here, you could gross well over a million.”
But when squid season opened in late April, there was no mad dash for the first catch. Instead, with Chinese tariffs threatening the price, a standoff ensued. Fishermen refused to fish, and their local processors, who buy and freeze their catch for transport, refused to offer a high price in an industry reliant on exports.
The vast majority of all squid caught in the U.S. is shipped abroad, with the largest portion caught in California and sent to China. Last year, China purchased some $113 million worth of squid from the U.S. — 64% of the exported product.
That makes today’s tariffs particularly ominous for squid fishermen. “It’s just the uncertainty,” said McHenry. During a 2018 trade dispute, China temporarily stopped buying U.S. squid altogether. Even after the U.S. and China agreed in early May to substantially lower their tariffs on each other, the price of squid stayed down 25% from last year.
There’s an ongoing effort to sell more market squid to local buyers, bypassing tariffs and expanding the niche market for squid that stays in California. Michelin-starred restaurants like San Francisco’s Kin Khao are already on board, offering diners some of the freshest, most tender squid caught in the U.S.
But China remains the No. 1 customer, and this year, fishermen like McHenry could face even fiercer competition in an industry that is cutthroat even in times of economic peace.
“If I went and caught five tons of squid tonight, by the morning, everybody in the industry would know that I’d caught five tons of squid, and probably where I caught it,” said McHenry. “The amount of espionage is incredible.”
The Games Begin
Squid season starts with a rumor. Around April, the cephalapods return to their favored spawning grounds in Monterey Bay. Until then, fishermen like McHenry wait impatiently, passing the time by working on their boats until they catch wind of a recreational fisherman who has spotted a shoal, or a halibut fisherman reports that his catch have mouths full of squid guts.
News travels fast in this small community. Last year, just 72 boats brought in the season’s 126 million pounds of squid. And getting into the squid fleet is its own competition: With a fixed number of permits, each with a one-time cost of about $900,000, the only way in is to wait until someone else retires or sells a coveted permit. But 72 can feel like a lot when a few dozen 60-foot vessels are crisscrossing paths as they furiously search for fortune.
On April 23, after weeks of anticipation, word spread that a fisherman in Monterey found 50 tons of squid. That should have marked the opening of the season. Instead, when he brought his catch to a processor expecting $1,200 per ton, they offered $800, citing concern over the impact of tariffs.
The rest of the fleet decided not to fish until a price was settled. But solidarity is fragile when every day spent waiting is a day of income lost. On April 29, local processors offered several of the fishermen in Monterey $900 per ton, which they accepted. Squid season had begun.
Dropping An Anchor
Rather than broadcast their deal, the Monterey fishermen seized the advantage. They used their head start to deploy one of the most powerful moves in squid fishing: dropping an anchor.
A dropped anchor is effectively a force field — no other boat is supposed to fish within an eighth of a nautical mile of an anchored boat. “That’s where the competitive nature of the squid fishery comes in,” said Frank Sousa, McHenry’s fishing partner. “You’ve got to be kind of aggressive in trying to find the right spot, and guys will try to push other people off their eighths, or try to get as much room as they can get in the best area.”
Sometimes, a massive shoal of squid picks a spot to spawn and doesn’t move. When that happens, the first one to drop anchor in the right place can keep their boat there for weeks, hauling up hundreds of tons from their untouchable supply.
The cavernous belly of McHenry’s boat can hold 120,000 pounds of squid, enough to fill four semitrucks at the dock. When he’s found squid, he unrolls the massive seine net bolted to his deck, unspooling it like a giant web of thread, then uses it to encircle up to 80,000 pounds of prey, cinching it at the bottom to trap them. Almost every squid fisherman also employs a smaller secondary vessel, called a light boat, which shines bright lights into the water at night, attracting squid to their capture like moths to a flame.
But squid are unpredictable. Just as easily as they settle on a spot, they can drift away, out of your eighth and into the next boat’s. “It’s a chess game with a moving board,” said Sousa.
Looking For Clues
Out on the ocean, sometimes for days on end, fishermen pass the time tuned into the same radio frequencies and talking on group calls. Even if a captain finds squid miles away from the nearest boat, chatty workers at the unloading docks and processing facilities make it nearly impossible to keep a secret. “Everybody’s got, you know, spies out,” said McHenry.
There are clues to the squid’s whereabouts on board, as well. McHenry’s $14,000 sonar system scans the water around and below him for sea life. “These are little pieces of squid,” he said, pointing to red, Rorschach-like blotches on a blue sonar screen. “Four or five ton, maybe.” Tall and always dressed for a chilly night out on the ocean, McHenry is a second-generation Half Moon Bay fisherman, and he uses his historic knowledge of preferred spawning grounds and knowledge of habitat features like fathom curves to track his targets.
“The fishermen probably know more than any scientist about when the squid move in and how long they stay on the spawning beds,” said William Gilly, a professor at Stanford who has studied the physiology and behavior of squid for more than 40 years, catching thousands of market squid specimens in Monterey Bay.
A Big Appetite
For as long as he’s been researching them, Gilly has been ordering squid at restaurants. Most of the time when he sees “Monterey squid” on the menu, “it’s blatantly obvious that it’s not Monterey squid … they’ll be a quarter-inch thick, and Monterey squid mantles don’t get that thick,” he said, referring to its body. Once, when Gilly was conducting research in La Paz, Mexico, he ordered what the restaurant assured him was market squid from California. Doubtful, he brought the dish back to his lab and tested the squid’s DNA; it was Chinese.
China is both a source and destination for squid because it processes more squid than any other country. When McHenry started squid fishing with his father in 2001, they earned $250 per ton. Today, thanks to buyers in China, he can make five times that.
“Asian countries have always liked this smaller squid because it’s similar to what they have,” said Diane Pleschner-Steele, who spent nearly two decades as the executive director of the nonprofit California Wetfish Producers Association. The original squid fishermen in Monterey Bay were Chinese immigrants, pushed out of other, more profitable fisheries in the late 1800s, and fishing by night with torches to attract their catch.
While countries halfway across the globe are clamoring for California’s squid, Pleschner-Steele said it’s been more of a challenge to find buyers close to home. And even if the U.S. appetite for market squid were stronger, there are few processing facilities here, and the U.S. can’t compete with China’s low cost of labor. Ultimately, it can be cheaper to send squid on a 12,000-mile round trip than to process it domestically. The irony is calamari rings consumed in the U.S. may have been caught here, shipped to China for processing, then shipped back.
Keeping It Local
Still, the domestic market for squid has increased in recent years. At Japanese restaurant Rintaro, on the northern edge of San Francisco’s Mission district, chef and owner Sylvan Mishima Brackett buys unprocessed squid wholesale from Monterey Fish Market at Pier 33 after it’s trucked from Monterey.
Brackett honed his instinct for ingredients while training in Japan and serving as the creative director at Berkeley’s Chez Panisse. He likes the fresh, clean flavor of the market squid, and has made the small, delicate species the star of one of Rintaro’s signature dishes, ika no nuta, for which it is poached, marinated in vegetable oil, and mixed with mustardy miso sauce and vegetables.
With no cost for pre-processing, he said the squid is “really cheap.” On his most recent order sheet, it cost $6.95 a pound, the same price as Manila clams from Washington and far less than the halibut that cost him $12 per pound. But it takes work. “Cleaning squid is not, you know, super fun, but you just do it,” Brackett said. Five pounds of squid takes his team about 20 minutes to clean, debeak, and prepare for cooking.
Brackett’s outlook is rare. The most recent Fisheries of the United States Report, compiled by NOAA, estimated that 75%-90% of all seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported, the flip side of the roughly 80% of seafood caught in the U.S. that is exported.
That’s disappointing to some fishermen like Sousa. “I wish that a lot of our seafood here was utilized more here,” said Sousa. “But, you know, what it comes down to is we’re trying to survive and support our families, and if shipping overseas is our best option, then I’m 100% okay with it.”
Down in Monterey Bay on June 4, he and McHenry unloaded a small batch of squid through a tube at the dock. It hadn’t been a great start to the season, but they found a decent spot around 3 a.m., and by the time the sun had warmed the walkways of the wharf, they’d caught 6 tons. This year’s squid are bigger than last year’s, about 10 per pound, which McHenry said signals a healthy ocean — and the potential for better fishing in the coming weeks.
“We’ve got that ever optimistic hope that it will get good,” he said.
CA SENATE VOTES FOR REGIONAL ELECTRICITY DEREGULATION DESPITE CONCERNS ABOUT TRUMP
by Dan Bacher
You know when a MAGA Republican Senator calls a piece of controversial energy legislation a “Big, Beautiful Bill” that it isn’t going to serve the residents of the state of California.
But that’s what Republican Senator Tony Strickland called SB 540 (Becker). And despite Democratic floor speeches outlining concerns about cost, oversight and loss of control to Trump, the Senate voted 33 - 1 to advance the deregulation bill, a priority of Governor Newsom’s, according to a news release from Consumer Watchdog.…
MUSK ON DOPE
Editor:
I am shocked at the report of Elon Musk’s drug use, both in his role in the Trump administration and as the recipient of federal contracts totaling several billion dollars. Every federal contractor is required to sign a “drug-free workplace” certification that strictly prohibits workplace drug use by employees and even requires an employee antidrug education program. This requirement attaches to federal funding that is distributed to states, counties and cities and then contracted out to other companies. How did Musk avoid these strict requirements? Why did the New York Times wait until Musk “left” the administration before reporting on his illegal drug use?
Abby Arnold
Santa Rosa
WHO WAS MARTHA GELLHORN (HEMINGWAY)?
In 1936, Ernest Hemingway’s love for Spain, its culture, and its people had him following the developing Spanish Civil War with an increasingly troubled soul. Late that year, he met established journalist and war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998) in Key West; they agreed to work together to get to Spain. His literary career in the 1930s seemed to be ebbing (critics were saying “permanently”). And although he certainly benefited from Pauline’s family resources, that also must have chafed. His journalism career, now existing in part because of his famous name, was ongoing; covering the Spanish Civil War thus seemed a good idea in many ways.
Gellhorn, who is now considered one of the finest war correspondents of the 20th century, was in every way a spur to Hemingway’s ambitions. Where he feared he was growing comfortable and soft, she was a strong individual who seemed to seek out discomfort. Where he was approaching his middle years, she seemed vital and vigorous. Whether or not they were already romantically involved before they left for Spain remains a question, as thoughts and feelings happen before they appear on paper; in any case, their relationship ignited while abroad.
Hemingway remained with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, until 1939, during which time his relationship with Martha intensified, in part because she seemed elusive, traveling frequently on high-profile assignments, covering increasing political turmoil in Europe. She was equal parts glamorous, athletic, and adventurous, all of which Hemingway found extremely attractive.
When they returned from Spain, they lived together openly in Cuba, renting the Finca Vigia (loosely translated "Lookout Farm") in San Francisco de Paula, just outside of Havana. They traveled extensively throughout the American West, working on their writing and embracing the sporting life in the company of wealthy friends, many of whom were celebrities in their own right. After Ernest's divorce from Pauline was final (November 4, 1940), they married (November 21, 1940) and bought the Finca Vigia outright (December 28, 1940).
Martha seemed to fit seamlessly into Hemingway's preferred lifestyle. She enjoyed spending time with his children, who participated enthusiastically in their father's outdoor pastimes. (Jack and Patrick's passion for the outdoors and nature conservancy informed their later careers; Jack ran the Nature Conservancy from his father's last home in Idaho, and Patrick has worked tirelessly on issues of land stewardship in the U.S. and abroad, especially in Africa.)
“We loved Marty. She was so much fun.”
– Patrick Hemingway
Martha Gellhorn's experiences with Ernest Hemingway in wartime Spain (and perhaps her long absences from him afterward) were fundamental to his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), which he dedicated to her. She lends her appearance to Maria, and her strength, toughness, and fierce loyalty and commitment to both Maria and Pilar. (Pilar, a composite character, also owes much to Gertrude Stein.)
The sale of the movie rights to ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ in 1940 marked the first time in Hemingway’s career that his literary income was sufficient to live on, even given his many dependents (his children and members of his family of origin, including his mother). He no longer needed to supplement his income from publishing by working as a journalist and relying on wealthy relatives-by-marriage (especially Pauline's uncle, Gustavus (Gus) Pfeiffer). Even given the high-profile lifestyle he'd enjoyed since marrying Pauline in 1927, his own income was finally sufficient to meet it.
Not long after their marriage, the publication of ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls,’ Martha's completion of ‘The Heart of Another,’ and the purchase of the ‘Finca,’ Martha Gellhorn's contract with Collier's magazine to cover the Sino-Japanese war had the Hemingways traveling together to China, with a layover in Hawaii. Although both their stars, already luminous, were on the rise, for the first time in his life, his career wasn't setting the map; his wife's was.
Of the many roles Martha Gellhorn fulfilled in her lifetime—writer, war correspondent, outdoorswoman, athlete, celebrity, even stepmother—the only one she never fully integrated was "Mrs. Hemingway."
Her ever-rising star and dauntless pursuit of her journalistic calling sparked a darker side of Ernest Hemingway: his competitiveness and his insecurity. The combination proved disastrous to their relationship. During the build-up to D-Day (June 6, 1944), Martha informed him she was leaving for Europe to cover the war for Collier’s magazine. He did not want to go, perhaps because he did not want to relive past trauma in what would be his third war (or fourth, counting his brief trip to accompany Martha to China), but when it became clear he couldn’t convince her to stay with him in Cuba, he offered his own services as war correspondent to the very same magazine.
As he must have known it would, his fame won out. He received a contract.
Martha Gellhorn was justifiably furious.
Journalists were prohibited from crossing the English Channel on D-Day. Ernest Hemingway obeyed this restriction. Although he did get a glimpse of the beach from the Channel, he delayed his landing until the next day. But Martha snuck aboard a medical ship, hid in a closet, and arrived in Normandy only hours after the battle, giving her first-hand experience of its aftermath. Check. But when their D-Day pieces appeared in Collier’s, Ernest's was the cover story. Checkmate. The marriage was over.
In 2008, the U.S. Postal Service issued a series of stamps marking contributions of five 20th-century journalists: "Working in radio, television, or print, the journalists reported—often at great personal sacrifice—some of the most important stories of the 20th century. They did their part to keep people informed about the world around them."
Martha Gellhorn was the only woman among the five.
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
Until the Democrats shed their embrace of failed, absurd and, above all, widely unpopular progressive policies on immigration, crime, identity politics, homelessness and trans demands, all the power and political theories in the world will not make a difference for them.
LEAD STORIES, MONDAY'S NYT
Live Updates: Tensions Flare Between Protesters and Law Enforcement in L.A.
Newsom Formally Asks Trump to Pull National Guard Out of L.A.
What to Know About Trump’s New Travel Ban
Deportee’s Lawyers Push for Contempt Proceedings Despite His Return
YouTube Loosens Rules Guiding the Moderation of Videos
Tonys 2025 Takeaways: ‘Maybe Happy Ending’ Wins 6 Awards
GRETA THUNBERG'S 'FREEDOM FLOTILLA' BOARDED BY IDF TROOPS: Israel confirms it has intercepted Gaza-bound ship and will deport activists after seizing aid
by Taryn Pedler, Kaltherine Lawton & Sam Lawley
Israel has said Greta Thunberg is 'safe and in good spirits' after officials intercepted her 'selfie yacht' when it entered the sea close to Gaza.
The country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) shared an image of the Swedish climate change activist happily accepting some bread from an Israeli soldier, after she complained about them 'kidnapping' her hours before.
Thunberg, 22, made the claim in a pre-recorded Instagram video shared from on board the Madleen 'freedom flotilla', which intended to deliver aid to Palestine.
Israel's MFA mocked the activist's 'selfie yacht' carrying 12 'celebrity' activists as they intercepted it, saying the 'tiny amount of aid' on board would be 'transferred to Gaza through real humanitarian channels'.
'The passengers are expected to return to their home countries,' the government department wrote in a statement shared on X.
'While Greta and others attempted to stage a media provocation whose sole purpose was to gain publicity — and which included less than a single truckload of aid — more than 1,200 aid trucks have entered Gaza from Israel within the past two weeks, and in addition, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has distributed close to 11 million meals directly to civilians in Gaza.
'There are ways to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip — they do not involve Instagram selfies.
'The tiny amount of aid that was on the yacht and not consumed by the “celebrities” will be transferred to Gaza through real humanitarian channels.'
In a video posted to her Instagram page earlier on Sunday, Thunberg, 22, said: 'If you see this video, we have been intercepted and kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli occupational forces, or forces that support Israel.
'I urge all my friends, family and comrades to put pressure on the Swedish government to release me and the others as soon as possible,' she added in the clip recorded on board the Madleen ship.
Israel has been blockading the Mediterranean Sea beside Gaza to prevent Hamas from importing arms.
The country's foreign ministry said on Sunday night that Thunberg's 'selfie yacht of celebrities' was 'safely making its way to the shores of Israel' where the 12 people on board would be promptly deported.
Footage shared to X before the IFM confirmed it had intercepted the vessel showed crew members rushing for cover and urging others on board to 'assume positions' as the drones allegedly swarmed overhead.
'Please get into position, it's a quadcopter, take cover,' Member Thiago Avila was heard saying in a clip. He then goes on to urge Thunberg to take cover.
'Please sound the alarm, we are surrounded by Israeli drones, the same ones that bombed our boats one month ago,' he added.
In a separate video, Avila claims the ship is under attack and has been sprayed with an unknown substance.
In a press release following the attack, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) wrote: 'The FFC confirms that its civilian ship, Madleen, carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, has been attacked/forcibly intercepted by the Israeli military at 3:02 am CET in international waters.
'The ship was unlawfully boarded, its unarmed civilian crew abducted, and its life-saving cargo - including baby formula, food and medical supplies - confiscated'.
Earlier, vessels were said to have been surrounding the Madleen causing the crew to raise the alarm, but in an update, Freedom flotilla dubbed the incident a 'very unlikely false alarm' as the ships ultimately ended up going their own way.
Avila took to Instagram to tell supporters that the vessel was approached by many boats at the same time before circling them and disappearing.
'It can be IOF vessels, it can be a strategy to come from behind us with their lights off, we're not sure,' he said.
Most people are now surviving on a single meal per day, consisting mostly of pasta, rice or canned food, it reported.
More than 3,700 children were newly admitted for treatment for acute malnutrition in March alone, it said, an 80 per cent rise on the previous month, per UNOCHA.
UN Security Council members criticised the US on Wednesday after it vetoed a resolution calling for a ceasefire and unrestricted humanitarian access in Gaza, which Washington said undermined ongoing diplomacy.
It was the 15-member body's first vote on the situation since November, when the United States - a key Israeli ally - also blocked a text calling for an end to fighting.
The draft resolution had demanded 'an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza respected by all parties.'
It also called for the 'immediate, dignified and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas and other groups,' and demanded the lifting of all restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
But Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement after Wednesday's 14 to 1 vote: 'Today, the United States sent a strong message by vetoing a counterproductive UN Security Council resolution on Gaza targeting Israel.
'The United States will continue to stand with Israel at the UN.'
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and abducting 251.
They are still holding 58 hostages, a third of them believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
(DailyMail.uk)
THE LAST DAYS OF GAZA
The genocide is almost complete. When it is concluded it will not only have decimated the Palestinians, but will have exposed the moral bankruptcy of Western civilization.
by Chris Hedges
This is the end. The final blood-soaked chapter of the genocide. It will be over soon. Weeks. At most. Two million people are camped out amongst the rubble or in the open air. Dozens are killed and wounded daily from Israeli shells, missiles, drones, bombs and bullets. They lack clean water, medicine and food. They have reached a point of collapse. Sick. Injured. Terrified. Humiliated. Abandoned. Destitute. Starving. Hopeless.
In the last pages of this horror story, Israel is sadistically baiting starving Palestinians with promises of food, luring them to the narrow and congested nine-mile ribbon of land that borders Egypt. Israel and its cynically named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), allegedly funded by Israel’s Ministry of Defense and the Mossad, is weaponizing starvation. It is enticing Palestinians to southern Gaza the way the Nazis enticed starving Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto to board trains to the death camps. The goal is not to feed the Palestinians. No one seriously argues there is enough food or aid hubs. The goal is to cram Palestinians into heavily guarded compounds and deport them.
What comes next? I long ago stopped trying to predict the future. Fate has a way of surprising us. But there will be a final humanitarian explosion in Gaza’s human slaughterhouse. We see it with the surging crowds of Palestinians fighting to get a food parcel, which has resulted in Israeli and U.S. private contractors shooting dead at least 130 and wounding over seven hundred others in the first eight days of aid distribution. We see it with Benjamin Netanyahu’s arming ISIS-linked gangs in Gaza that loot food supplies. Israel, which has eliminated hundreds of employees with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), doctors, journalists, civil servants and police in targeted assassinations, has orchestrated the implosion of civil society.
I suspect Israel will facilitate a breach in the fence along the Egyptian border. Desperate Palestinians will stampede into the Egyptian Sinai. Maybe it will end some other way. But it will end soon. There is not much more Palestinians can take.
We — full participants in this genocide — will have achieved our demented goal of emptying Gaza and expanding Greater Israel. We will bring down the curtain on the live-streamed genocide. We will have mocked the ubiquitous university programs of Holocaust studies, designed, it turns out, not to equip us to end genocides, but deify Israel as an eternal victim licensed to carry out mass slaughter. The mantra of never again is a joke. The understanding that when we have the capacity to halt genocide and we do not, we are culpable, does not apply to us. Genocide is public policy. Endorsed and sustained by our two ruling parties.
There is nothing left to say. Maybe that is the point. To render us speechless. Who does not feel paralyzed? And maybe, that too, is the point. To paralyze us. Who is not traumatized? And maybe that too was planned. Nothing we do, it seems, can halt the killing. We feel defenseless. We feel helpless. Genocide as spectacle.
I have stopped looking at the images. The rows of little shrouded bodies. The decapitated men and women. Families burned alive in their tents. The children who have lost limbs or are paralyzed. The chalky death masks of those pulled from under the rubble. The wails of grief. The emaciated faces. I can’t.
This genocide will haunt us. It will echo down history with the force of a tsunami. It will divide us forever. There is no going back.…
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-last-days-of-gaza
THE QUIET UNRAVELING OF THE MAN WHO ALMOST KILLED TRUMP
Thomas Crooks was a nerdy engineering student on the dean’s list. He stockpiled explosive materials for months before his attack on Donald Trump, as his mental health eroded.
by Steve Eder & Tawnell D. Hobbs
Thomas Crooks was acting strangely. Sometimes he danced around his bedroom late into the night. Other times, he talked to himself with his hands waving around.
These unusual behaviors intensified last summer, after he graduated with high honors from a community college. He also visited a shooting range, grew out his thin brown hair and searched online for “major depressive disorder” and “depression crisis.” His father noticed the shift — mental health problems ran in the family.
On the afternoon of July 13, Mr. Crooks told his parents he was heading to the range and left home with a rifle. Hours later, he mounted a roof at a presidential campaign rally in western Pennsylvania and tried to assassinate Donald J. Trump.
That scene has been etched into American history. After a bullet grazed Mr. Trump’s ear, he lifted his blood-streaked face, pumped his fist and shouted the words: “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Mr. Trump has said that God saved him in order to save America, and the White House recently unveiled a statue in the Oval Office commemorating the moment.
The near miss revealed alarming security lapses that allowed an amateur marksman barely out of his teens to fire at a former president less than 500 feet away. And it galvanized support for Mr. Trump, inspiring voters who saw him as a righteous hero triumphing in the face of smear campaigns, relentless prosecutions and even an attempt on his life.
Now, nearly a year later, with Mr. Trump in his second presidential term, much of the world has forgotten about the 20-year-old who set out to murder him. Mr. Crooks — who also killed a bystander and wounded two others before being shot dead by the Secret Service — had kept to himself and seemed to leave little behind. His motive was a mystery, and remains the source of many conspiracy theories.
A New York Times examination of the last years of the young man’s life found that he went through a gradual and largely hidden transformation, from a meek engineering student critical of political polarization to a focused killer who tried to build bombs. For months he operated in secret, using aliases and encrypted networks, all while showing hints of a mental illness that may have caused his mind to unravel to an extent not previously reported.
This account offers the fullest picture yet of Mr. Crooks’s life. Although many aspects of his background and mental health are still unknown, The Times’s reporting is based on thousands of pages of his school assignments, emails and logs of his internet activity, as well as text messages, government reports and interviews with dozens of people who knew him or were familiar with the case.
Mr. Crooks followed his dark path with seemingly little notice from those closest to him. He stockpiled explosive materials in the small house he shared with his parents in Bethel Park, Pa. When his face was plastered across the news, his classmates couldn’t believe it. Investigators later found a crude homemade bomb inside his bedroom, not far from where his parents slept.
His parents, Matthew and Mary Crooks, did not respond to interview requests, and their lawyers declined to comment. But on the night of the shooting, Matthew Crooks told federal agents that he had been concerned about his son's visits to the gun club.
“I should have known better,” Mr. Crooks said, one of the agents later told congressional investigators.
‘A Really Intelligent Kid’
Before his deadly assault, Thomas Crooks’s only record of trouble was a lunch detention in middle school for chewing gum.
In high school, he earned a top score on the SAT — 1530 out of a possible 1600 — and received perfect marks on three Advanced Placement exams, according to his academic records. He did not socialize much, but came out of his shell in a technology program in which he built computers. His teacher, Xavier Harmon, nicknamed him “Muscles” — an ironic nod to his slight frame — which made him laugh.
One high school classmate said Mr. Crooks enjoyed talking about the economy and cryptocurrencies, encouraging others to invest. On the rare occasions when the conversation turned to politics, he seemed to be in the middle of the road.
On President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s inauguration day in January 2021, Mr. Crooks donated $15 to a committee backing Democrats. But when he turned 18 that fall, he registered as a Republican. His family’s political affiliations were as diverse as the swing state they lived in: His older sister, Katherine, and his father were registered as Libertarians, and his mother was a Democrat.
Mr. Crooks enrolled in the Community College of Allegheny County. He was the kind of student others sought out for help, and a regular member of a math book club, though he didn’t appear to hang out with friends outside school. He endeared himself to his professors not just with high marks but also for showing up at office hours and trading emails about how to improve his work.
“He seemed like a really intelligent kid — I thought he would be able to do whatever he wanted,” said Trish Thompson, who taught Mr. Crooks engineering. In her class, he designed a chess board for visually impaired people, like his mother.
Mr. Crooks was close with his immediate family, according to a video he recorded in the fall of 2022 for an oral communication class. He described preparing Thanksgiving turkey with his father and baking Christmas cookies with his mother, saying, “I don’t think there’s any better way to spend time with family than cooking meals together.”
Another assignment in that class required him to speak in front of five adults. He asked the professor for an exception, as he had only his parents and possibly his sister. “I do not have access to any other adults,” he wrote.
In April 2023, Mr. Crooks showed a glimpse of his frustration with American politics. In an essay arguing for ranked-choice voting, he lamented “divisive and incendiary campaigns which are pulling the country apart.”
“As we move closer to the 2024 elections we should consider carefully the means by which we elect our officials,” Mr. Crooks wrote. “We need an election system that promotes kindness and cooperation instead of division and anger.”
Around the time he wrote the essay, he began using an alias to buy from online firearms vendors, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He would make at least 25 gun-related purchases before the fateful rally.
Declining Mental Health
Mr. Crooks bought a membership in August 2023 to the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, a shooting range about 30 minutes from his home. This was not unusual in his community, and his father was a gun enthusiast. By the end of the year, he was visiting the range roughly once a week, including on Christmas Day.
Through a public records request, The Times obtained logs of Mr. Crooks’s internet activity while he was signed in to the community college network. The records are somewhat limited: They show website domains rather than specific pages, and Mr. Crooks often used an encrypted connection to obscure his online footprint.
Still, the digital trail suggests that he was focused on Mr. Trump, the news and guns.
On Dec. 6, 2023, about seven months before the shooting, he rapidly cycled through about a dozen news websites, including CNN, The New York Times and Fox News, before visiting the Trump administration’s archives, the logs show. Minutes later, he visited seven gun websites, including one focused on the AR-15, similar to the rifle he would use in the attack. Later that day, he paid a visit to the shooting range.
The next month, he placed a $101.91 order online for more than two gallons of nitromethane, a fuel additive that can be used in explosives, giving his home address for delivery. The package did not arrive promptly.
“I have not received any updates of the order shipping out yet,” he wrote to the seller on Jan. 31, 2024. He used his community college email account, but included a screenshot of his order confirmation showing he had provided an encrypted email address. “I was wondering if you still have it and when I can expect it to come.”
On Feb. 26, a couple of hours before a physics class, he visited a series of websites, including an ammunition manufacturer, the Trump campaign site and NBC News, as well as YouTube, Reddit, Spotify and a site for Xbox users.
Interviews with his teachers, friends and co-workers suggest that many people who interacted with him regularly did not know he was troubled, let alone capable of premeditated murder.
He had worked for years as a part-time dietary aide at the Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Employees said Mr. Crooks was punctual and dependable, though he didn’t talk much. He showed up for work in the weeks before the shooting and nothing seemed amiss.
“What I heard from people in his department is that there was no clear indications of changes in his behavior or routine,” said Reggie Brown, a former human resources manager at the center.
After back-to-back semesters on the dean’s list, he earned his associate degree in engineering and was set to transfer to Robert Morris University. He had told classmates he hoped to have a career in aerospace or robotics.
His father noticed his mental health declining in the year before the shooting, and particularly in the months after graduation. He later told investigators that he had seen his son talking to himself and dancing around his bedroom late at night, and that his family had a history of mental health and addiction issues, according to a report from the Pennsylvania State Police, parts of which were shared with The Times. The younger Mr. Crooks was also making the depression-related queries online, investigators found.
Representative Clay Higgins, a Republican from Louisiana who worked on a congressional task force on the shooting, told The Times that he learned worrisome information about Mr. Crooks’s mental health while investigating the case on a trip to Pennsylvania.
He was “having conversations with someone that wasn’t there,” Mr. Higgins said, adding that many questions remained unanswered. “There was a mysteriousness to Thomas Crooks’s descent into madness.”
In the final month before the shooting, Mr. Crooks conducted more than 60 searches related to Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, the F.B.I. said. And yet there were hints that he hadn’t fully committed to an attack.
“When can I expect the diploma to be mailed?” he wrote to his college registrar.
About a week before the shooting, Mr. Crooks’s internet searches became especially focused, the F.B.I. said. On July 6, he registered for Mr. Trump’s rally at the fairgrounds in Butler, Pa., and searched, “How far was Oswald from Kennedy?” In his remaining days, he looked up where Trump would be speaking on the site.
Just after 6 p.m. on July 13, Mr. Crooks fired eight bullets toward Mr. Trump. Investigators later found two explosive devices in the trunk of the car that he had driven there.
As word spread the next day that he was the gunman, one of his few friends from community college reached out.
“Hey Thomas, you weren’t the person who tried to shoot Trump and then got killed right?” texted the friend, who was interviewed by The Times but requested anonymity because he feared being associated with Mr. Crooks. “I really liked you as a friend and I desperately don’t want you to be dead.”
A Homemade Explosive
Shortly before 11 p.m. on the night of the shooting, Mr. Crooks’s father called 911, saying he had not seen his son since that afternoon.
“We’ve gotten no contact from him, no text messages, nothing’s been returned, and he’s not home yet,” Matthew Crooks told the operator.
“That’s totally not like him,” he added. “So we’re kind of worried, not really sure what we should do.”
Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had begun surveilling the 1,000-square-foot house, according to a transcript of agent testimony provided to Congress.
Around 11:40 p.m., the agents approached the house. Matthew Crooks opened the screen door and asked, “Is it true?”
They entered and noticed Mary Crooks sitting with the family cat in the living room, television on. The agents swept the house for potential dangers.
Down a short hallway was the young Mr. Crooks’s bedroom, door open. The room was fairly organized, with a made bed and large 3-D printer. An empty pistol belt and holster lay on the floor.
At the room’s threshold, an agent looked down and saw a .50-caliber, military-grade ammunition can “with a white wire coming out,” according to the testimony. The agent also observed a gallon jug labeled “nitromethane” in the closet.
The agents immediately evacuated. While they waited for the bomb squad, they interviewed Mr. and Ms. Crooks outside late into the night, asking about their family and what made their son “tick.”
The parents were calm and polite. They said Thomas loved building things, like computers, and visiting the gun range. They didn’t think he had any friends or girlfriends. His father said he didn’t “know anything” about his son, according to the testimony.
On the subject of politics, Matthew Crooks said his son would “go back and forth and kind of argue both sides,” an agent testified. The father said Thomas would talk about Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, but “never really indicated that he liked one or the other more.”
Mary Crooks, who had been mostly quiet, spoke up to ask if her son was really dead. The agent told her yes, and she began to cry. Her husband “put his hand out and said, you know, ‘It’s OK. It’s not true until we see the body’,” the agent testified.
The couple has kept a low profile since the shooting. This spring, Ms. Crooks left the job she had held for 27 years — as a rehabilitation therapist for the visually impaired at a state agency — because of the shooting, according to a resignation letter obtained by The Times. “Certain circumstances have left me with no other option,” she wrote.
Matthew Crooks had been in social services for over two decades, first working with spina bifida patients and later managing the medical care of patients in a Pittsburgh health system. The health system declined to say whether he still worked there.
Madeleine Frizzi, the mother of Ms. Crooks, was short when asked about her daughter and son-in-law. “I do not have any contact with them — whatsoever,” she said, declining to elaborate.
A Cloud of Conspiracy Theories
The F.B.I. has led the investigation into Mr. Crooks, working with the A.T.F. and the Pennsylvania State Police. In the weeks after the shooting, the F.B.I. released preliminary findings based on details gleaned from interviews and Mr. Crooks’s devices suggesting that he had been planning an attack for over a year.
In a news conference late last July, F.B.I. officials said they had not found evidence of mental health treatment, institutionalization or medications. The next month, the agency said Mr. Crooks had begun searching online about how to make explosives as early as 2019, when he was 16, but did not elaborate on the timeline. Investigators said they had not uncovered a motive or any co-conspirators.
In the absence of new information, conspiracy theories about Mr. Crooks have grown. Some have claimed that he had an accomplice, or that he was an agent of the so-called deep state. Kelly Little, who lives across the street from the Crooks house, said that another theory floating around claimed that she and other neighbors had built underground tunnels to aid the shooter.
“Why do we still know nothing about that guy in Butler?” Elon Musk asked in February in front of a large crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington. “Kash is going to get to the bottom of it,” he added, referring to Mr. Trump’s F.B.I. director, Kash Patel. The crowd cheered.
But in a recent interview on Fox News, Mr. Patel at his side, Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the F.B.I., said there was simply no “big, explosive there there.” He added, “If it was there, we would have told you.”
Helen Comperatore, an avid Trump supporter whose husband, Corey, was killed by Mr. Crooks, still wants to know more. She told The Times she had not received any official updates from investigators in months and felt she was owed a fuller explanation of what had happened.
“I am praying the president gets to the bottom of it and keeps working on this case for me — and him,” she said.
(NY Times)
10
I have against & with the Ukiah golfers several times & always enjoyed their company, they are a great bunch of guys. The Ukiah golf course is a really challenging course that requires you to make specific shots. Bring on more of them !
13
Me too.
Yeah, 13, but only because you guys said so and made me re-count. Originally I was gonna say 12 and be wrong.
I wrote down from the late judge Tim O’brien that Hop Flat was located at the 4.5 mile marker on Hwy 128.
Good Monday Morning, ☀️🌷💕
Dear Editor Bruce,
Thank you, happy you are alive and kicking, wasn’t sure if you had been kidnapped and held hostage or were out for the count..🤣🥊!?
Interesting your love for boxing. I believe my father was born the same year as you 1941. He also had a love of boxing! I never could understand why one could enjoy getting the shit beat out of them by another person, that never made sense to me. Maybe the money was good and I suppose men wanna prove how tough they are? Getting your teeth knocked out and brain damage, no thanks, 🦷🧠.
A few years back, my son brought a homeless man to our door after going for a walk. The reason he did so is the had a puppy that had gotten loose and ran away from home right up a homeless person who decided he was going to keep and take care of the puppy, but he had no food to feed it. So my son, knowing that we have dog food since we have a dog, decided to bring him home and help him take care of the puppy by giving him some food. I of course, spoke with the man we gave the dog some dinner this individual was so excited to have this little dog but also very anxious about how he would care for it. Boy was he happy to have that dog, later that evening I was on Facebook and saw someone had lost their dog looked like same exact dog pup had broke free from home. I did notify them that there was a homeless man who had a dog that looked exactly like theirs and where they might find him to get their dog back. Unfortunately I never found out if they did indeed get their puppy back.
The thing is, I do not know if the man had actually stolen the puppy or if it was as he said that the puppy ran up to him out of the blue and he just felt the love and wanted to protect and take care of the little guy. Who knows but I did tell my son please not to bring homeless people to the door and he has not since done that..
mm 💕
13 too.
R. CRUMB, “STREET MUSIC” AVA JUNE 6
Kept thinking about this one, so went back and took another look. It’s more upbeat, less dark and despairing than much of his work. “Still, miracles DO happen, and once in a while—NOT often—one encounters GREAT music being played on the street.” That first word, “Still”— almost apologetic—sets this one off as having a different tone. It sings the praises of unknown musicians out there for all to see:
The young “ragtime guitar wizard” playing on the streets of SF; the “blind accordion player at the Sacramento State Fair—“I was stopped in my tracks by his music and stood listening for a long time”; the “blind girl singing in a tiny sweet voice and playing the autoharp” in the front of Macy’s in downtown SF; and on the “sad” K Street mall in Sacramento, the “skinny little ‘Okie’ redneck guy singing and playing in a rockabilly-blues style,” a large, black, “protective” friend standing nearby to help him when he drinks too much.
It’s an unexpected gem of discovery and appreciation. Kudos to R. Crumb.
Wandering around one day in the Haight mid 70’s I came upon a group playing some tunes from the 30’s. One of the band members was easily recognized as Mr. Crumb.
There we go, his love of music–did not know Mr. Crumb had musical foundations in street music. Thanks, Chuck.
Warmest spiritual greetings, Adding to my woes in collapsing postmodern America, is the fact that the California EBT isn’t working at the Washington, D.C. H Street Whole Foods. Received the usual email informing me that the monthly sum was in my account, and yet the balance this morning was still around $7. This is on top of the fact that the Social Security Administration SSI disbursement disappeared last month. And of course Donald J. Trump is not remotely taking care of me as a 75 year old senior citizen, as I continue living in a homeless shelter and being part of the William R. Thomas Memorial Anti-Nuclear Vigil in front of the White House, in Lafayette Park. 50 years of frontline radical environmental and peace & justice activism, and writing about it all. The truth is that I don’t need postmodern America, and I don’t owe anybody anything.
Craig Louis Stehr
Adam’s Place Homeless Shelter
2210 Adams Place NE #1
Washington, D.C. 20018
Telephone: (202) 832-8317
Email: [email protected]
June 9, 2025 Anno Domini
CORRECTION
NOT Big River
Beautiful day for many, many people who came down to Noyo Harbor this weekend…the excitement was palpable.
Full steam ahead.
Travel advisory- 101 and CHP traffic stops.
CHP is absolutely killing it, with their non descriptive sublime door badged new SUV, whose medium gray greenish tan bland colors defies description, unless they have a variety of these practically unmarked vehicles.
Seen today from Hopland to Ukiah, with multiple traffic violators at the roadside. Drive safe!