Warming | Skip Newell | Sexual Assault | Jane Kelly | Mendo Local | Colorful River | Volunteer Work | Cafe Hours | Cannabis License? | Mendocino Bay | Ed Notes | Warm Memories | Ukiah Rail | Hop Flatters | RR Tunnel | Yesterday's Catch | Willie Mays | Not Waiting | Dear Karl | United Iranians | Speak Out | Leo Nomellini | Repent | Religion | Whiskey Dispenser | Food Banks | Courtney’s Store | Giants Win | Nothing Matters | War Protests | Leon Krier | Lead Stories | America Waits | Israeli Strike | War Compulsion | Many Cats | Sticking Together | How Far
NEAR to above normal temperatures are expected Monday through Wednesday, with highs in the upper 80`s to mid 90`s across the interior valleys. Fire weather concerns return mid to late week, with enhancing west to northwest winds and low humidity. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 44F under clear skies this Monday morning on the coast. Our forecast calls for summer time weather with light winds. However, as you can see from the satellite shot, the fog lurks just offshore.
THE PASSING OF A FRIEND - SKIP NEWELL
I just received word from Retired Sheriff Tom Allman that a very good friend of ours, Retired Reserve Deputy Sheriff Skip Newell passed away Saturday evening. He was a good friend and a strong supporter of Law Enforcement. May He Forever Rest in Eternal Peace and May His Spirit Soar High Above in Heaven. My Thoughts and Prayers are with His Wife, Barbara, and their Families. May God Bless them All
The image posted shows Skip standing next to Deputy Sheriff Frank Rakes and CHP Officer Tom Tommy Stone on the occasion of the Redwood Empire Fair. It was reported that Tommy was the first mounted CHP Officer.
(Former Sheriff Jim Tuso)
MAN IN MASK BREAKS INTO FORT BRAGG HOME, SEXUALLY ASSAULTS VICTIM
by Matt LaFever
Fort Bragg police are asking for the public’s help identifying a masked man who broke into a home and sexually assaulted a victim in the early hours of June 21, 2025. Officers responded around 3 a.m. to a residence on the 400 block of South Harrison Street, where a disturbing scene was unfolding, according to a press release issued by the Fort Bragg Police Department.
Initial findings revealed the suspect knocked on the victim’s window before forcing entry into the residence and carrying out the assault, police said. In a statement, the department emphasized the urgency of locating the suspect, describing him as an adult male last seen wearing a neck-gaiter style mask, a hooded sweatshirt, and leggings. Surveillance footage shows him in the area between South Harrison Street and Hazel Street between 1:30 a.m. and 3:30 a.m., the release noted.
In the hours following the attack, officers canvassed the neighborhood, spoke with residents, and collected surveillance footage in an effort to track the suspect’s movements, the department stated. They are now turning to the broader community for assistance.
“We are urging all residents in the area to check their home surveillance systems for any unusual activity during that timeframe,” the release said. Submissions can be made through the department’s online community portal, which allows residents to upload footage and include a brief statement about when and where it was captured. The portal also accepts anonymous submissions, police said.
The evidence will be uploaded directly to a secure platform for investigators to review. The department’s press release emphasized that even small details may be critical in identifying the suspect or tracing his path before and after the assault.
Residents with relevant footage or information are encouraged to visit the department’s portal or contact Officer Moore at (707) 964-2800 ext. 225 or by email at [email protected]. Anyone witnessing suspicious activity should call (707) 964-0200 or 911 in emergencies.
SISTER JANE KELLY (8 April 1930 - 7 June 2025)
Sister Jane Kelly PBVM (religious name Sister Mary Catherine Laboure), Sister of the Presentation (San Francisco) for seventy-eight years, died on June 7, 2025 at Alma Via Residence, San Francisco.
A native of Fresno, Sister Jane, was the daughter of Dorothy Doyle and Edward C. Kelly. She was predeceased by her twin sister, Mary Kathleen, and her older brother, Casey. Sister Jane leaves her loving Presentation Sisters and her many nieces and nephews. Sister Jane taught elementary school for twenty-six years at Presentation staffed elementary schools in San Francisco, San Lorenzo, San Pedro, and Los Angeles. In 1973, she ministered as a Director of Religious Education at Saint Mary of the Angels in Ukiah. In 1983, she co-founded Plowshares, a Peace and Justice Center and dining room for the homeless and poor in Ukiah. In the early 2000s, she worked to provide permanent housing for unhoused families. Most recently, Sister Jane has been engaged in the ministry of prayer.
Services will be held at All Saints Mausoleum, Holy Cross Cemetery, Colma on June 26, 2025: 10:00 a.m. Remembrances; Funeral Mass at 10:30 a.m. immediately followed by interment.
ELISE COX (recently laid off KZYX News Director)
It seems the word is out: KZYX will not be funding its one-person news department in the next fiscal year. The final broadcast of KZYX News under my leadership will be June 28.
When I took the job at KZYX, my goal was to build a self-sustaining newsroom that held itself accountable to editorial standards, as reflected in the editorial policy I proposed. I also proposed raising funds and launching additional programs to support long-term sustainability. I described this vision to the interim GM and the Board of Directors. While they approved the editorial policy, they were unable to support fundraising for the news department or any revenue-generating initiatives beyond the biannual pledge drives.
This was a missed opportunity. Following the example of other NPR network stations, implementing KZYX newscast sponsorships (underwriting) could have defrayed 110% of the cost of the news department. Raising the underwriting rates and expanding sponsorships had been discussed for more than six months but was never implemented.
Still, sometimes missed opportunities can lead to bigger, better, and more sustainable solutions.
Now is the time to build a stand-alone public media organization solely focused on news—one that can collaborate with similar organizations across the country to ensure equal access to taxpayer-funded distribution networks, including both digital and broadcast platforms.
It’s important for the public to understand that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has directed the vast majority of its funding to infrastructure (like antennas) and to large metropolitan media organizations.
In California, less than 3% of total funding has gone to rural radio stations.
If the Corporation for Public Broadcasting had dedicated equal funding to newsroom infrastructure—including reporters and editors—in rural areas, we might not be living in a deeply divided country where people increasingly turn to attention-seeking influencers and entertainment-style news.
If I were in Congress, I would not support giving money to CPB unless the entire allocation went to funding newsroom infrastructure in the rural areas they currently claim to serve.
With or without CPB, the community of professional journalists has continued to train the next generation, even in the absence of a viable economic model to pay them a living wage. Thanks to publicly funded infrastructure—antennas and broadband—this commitment to pay journalists is all that is missing.
Mendo Local is a news organization dedicated to producing factual, fair, and honest reporting that reflects the challenges we face here in Mendocino County. We do not claim to be “unbiased”—whatever that means. Instead, we are committed to accurately reporting on all sides of an issue when there are multiple, strongly held points of view. This includes covering perspectives our reporters may strongly disagree with.
As part of our mission, we recognize that power imbalances exist at every level of society. We will work especially hard to amplify the voices of underrepresented communities. While this typically includes people with fewer economic and social resources, it can also include farmers, industrialists, small business owners, and mom-and-pop landlords—as well as Tribal residents, people with disabilities, children, undocumented individuals, people experiencing homelessness AND people experiencing the effect that local homeless polices have on their own ability to uplift and serve their community.
We’ll be producing both digital and audio content, distributed through publicly funded infrastructure—broadband and broadcast—as well as through negotiated partnerships with other media organizations.
I am thrilled by this opportunity and humbled by your support. I feel the love of this county, and I am deeply grateful for the chance to serve you by doing what I love most.
Please note that Mendo Local has not launched and will not launch until we fulfill our commitment to KZYX. If you sign up, you will be notified of our first post. Please sign up!
THE DIGNITY OF WORK
by Marco McClean
New CEO Andre of KZYX wrote: “Because all our local music and public affairs programming is provided at no cost to KZYX via our amazing team of volunteer programmers, and because the only local content KZYX produces in-house is the local news, the difficult decision has been made to downsize our news structure and lay off KZYX News Director, Elise Cox.”
Look, this just means that all along, up to now, the many manager/CEOs of KZYX have been easily able to pay at least a pittance to all the local airpeople and simply chose not to while pocketing and cashing their own $5,000/month salary checks, as the current CEO will continue to do, won’t he, no matter what, because he can. See that.
KZYX has, for all the years of its existence, been swimming in rich donors’ money and tax-derived money and shenaniganly mismanaging it to flush through its system /more than three times what it actually costs to maintain the station./ They’ll be fine. But, speaking of news, many years ago I suggested just reading the AVA aloud on the air for an hour a day, and so cover local, county and world news and culture. When the AVA was a paper, that would’ve cost four dollars a month. Now that it’s a web publication it’s only two dollars a month. Easy. I’ll pay that myself, out of the $1000 a year KZYX will pay me for joining part of my live all-Friday-night KNYO and KAKX show, which arrangement can start right away with a few mouse clicks of KZYX’s automation techie and bookkeeper. I’m ready; I’ve been doing the show on various stations since February of 1997 with no reasonable complaints, and I already have uses in mind for the money, as I’m sure all the local airpeople at KZYX do. A couple of tires, car insurance, groceries, phone/internet access, maybe a movie once in awhile, the usual. What people do with money they’re paid for their work.
LEW CHICHESTER (Covelo)
Marco McClean has it about right in his observations/criticisms of KZYX management decisions. I wonder what the station management actually does to justify much of a salary at all. We operate a community radio station in Round Valley with all volunteer labor. The financial management and programming coordination takes about four hours a week, maybe. The operating engineering rarely requires anything more than fixing computer glitches once in awhile or showing new people how to make a radio show. The utilities and repairs run about $20,000 a year. Many of the smaller communities in Mendocino County, including Gualala, Willits, Laytonville and Fort Bragg have similar organizations broadcasting relevant and timely content to their listeners. Again, my question: what does KZYX management possibly do to require full time salaries? They should use the money instead to pay for local news reporting.
HOW TO TELL IF A CANNABIS GROW IN MENDOCINO COUNTY IS LICENSED
by Matt LaFever
It’s cannabis growing season once again in Mendocino County. Local and state cannabis regulators continue to point to unlicensed grows as a persistent problem, citing neighborhood complaints and market saturation that drives prices so low licensed cultivators struggle to stay afloat.
In 2023, a failed attempt to ban even licensed grows through zoning changes in Redwood Valley underscored the tensions. Today, the presence of new hoophouses—plastic-covered greenhouse structures commonly used for cultivation—still raises suspicion in some neighborhoods.
Fortunately, it’s fairly easy to determine whether a cannabis grow near you is licensed with the county.
The Mendocino County Cannabis Department provides a publicly accessible database called Accela, which tracks registered grows. You don’t need to be a cannabis applicant to use it—anyone can create an account. Once logged in, you can search by applicant name, property address, or license type.
If navigating the system proves difficult, you can also call the Mendocino County Cannabis Department directly at (707) 234-6680 to ask whether a specific property is in the licensing program.
As an example, a recent Accela search using only “Redwood Valley” as the search parameter returned 98 grows registered with the county. It may take a few tries to get results. Restarting your computer after registering can sometimes help.
Cannabis cultivators who construct hoophouses—also called greenhouses—must also obtain building permits. However, not all hoophouses are used for cannabis; many are for vegetables or flowers. To check for building permits, use the eTRAKiT database, also managed by the county. Like Accela, it’s open to the public and searchable by address after creating an account.
Both databases use strict naming conventions. For instance, typing “123 Example Road” may yield no results if the system prefers “Rd” instead of “Road.” Try entering only the street number and name (e.g., “123 Example”) to improve your chances.
Keep in mind that small personal medical grows may be exempt from licensing if they meet certain requirements and the grower holds a valid medical cannabis card. Those details are outlined in the Mendocino County Cannabis Ordinance.
In short, there’s no need to wonder whether the hoophouse down the road is part of the legal cannabis industry. With a little digging, the public tools are there to find out.
(mendofever.com)
ED NOTES
I'VE always been a sap for an argument, never having learned how pointless it is to argue with true believers. But I like to keep my hand in while I wait for someone to call with the news that Postmistress Collette has put me up on the door of the Boonville Post Office.
AN ARCHETYPAL true believer was the late Frank Lewis of Deer Meadows, the hills east of Boonville. We got to know Frank fairly well. He used to hang out at the AVA until he got mad at us over an argument about, of all things, fascism, and disappeared into his ridgetop fastness.
A RETIRED merchant seaman, Frank was a dogmatic dude, an autodidact with a surface affability but the kind of guy you mostly tuned out as he preached his skewed gospel on a range of issues. He claimed to be a Marxist but most of his information came from the New York Times, which most Marxists would say is simply the propaganda arm of the Democrats and conservative liberalism of the type dominant in Mendocino County.
ONE DAY, FRANK, who we called White Man Frank because of his dramatically non-Marxist race views, announced that America was a police state in full fascist bloom. Nope, not even close, we said. Probably headed in that direction but we're still a ways out, and even when we get there it'll be techno controls and media manipulation, not boots to the teeth.
WITH TRUMP, we've finally got there. Somewhere, Frank is happy. Maestro? A little Barry Manilow, please. "Looks like we made it."
BUT TO HEAR White Man the brownshirts were already marching over the hill from Ukiah. He seemed thrilled, and definitely preferred the jackboot brand. We told him he was wrong and ill informed, but soon showed up with a stack of books on fascism. "You morons think I don't know fascism when I see it?" he shouted, dropping the books on the counter in the face of a nonplussed visitor, and off he stomped.
NEVER saw him again. He was pretty tedious all-in-all, as only dogmatists can be. An isolated guy who, like all isolated people, go slowly crazy in their alone-ness. You indulge them until they become intolerable, and that's the end of them. Last I heard, White Man's stepdaughter owns his little handmade cabin with the million dollar view up on Deer Meadow.
MEMORIES ISN’T MADE OF THIS. THESE.
by Tommy Wayne Kramer
Memory is a funny thing for people. Especially old people. Or not funny.
It’s not at all funny for me, not that I’m old. But we hear people (I hear people, or at least voices) all the time (some of the time) saying their short-term memory is bad and getting worse. The old saying: “I remember what I wore to my Senior Prom but I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday.
I don’t consider not remembering yesterday’s lunch (brandy, codeine-enhanced cough syrup, strawberry flavored Ensure) something to fret over. What I worry about is not remembering if the previous sentence had to do with not remembering stuff, but whether I’d started writing this column in the first place and if it’s not about Christmas.
This has nothing to do with my getting old by the way, nor with cognitive decline or conservatorship or guardians ad litem, which is a Latin phrase for “Sharp as a Tack” aka the mental acuity of President Cabbage.
But for me and for now I have memory defects along the lines of not sure if it’s raining outside while staring out the window. Or coming home and not knowing if the woman in the dining room is my wife or if I should hurry her out the back door because my wife will be coming home any minute.
Or putting my wallet where it belongs and immediately not knowing where my wallet is, including Walmart, or on the roof of my car before I left Walmart. Or in my other jacket pocket. Or at your house. Or if I went to Walmart and remembered to bring my wallet.
This is a discouraging and time-consuming thing. Things.
Have you tried to write or talk about stuff you don’t remember? It’s surprisingly easy at my age.
A good example is my winning the American League batting championship in 1983, a once-in-a-lifetime-event of which I have no memory. I can’t even tell you where I put my big gold trophy or the photos of me standing next to Mike Trout.
Or the time I hiked the Appalachian Trail with Paris Hilton, all my warm memories vanished like yesterday’s forgotten lunch of cough syrup and brandy.
And if I have no recollection of this, how am I supposed to remember the Spanish I took in eighth grade? Yet not a single palabra comes to mind, also with French, which I never studied but by now what’s the difference? You tell me. Or don’t. I won’t remember.
Which brings us, if I remember to finish this sentence, to a family joke that has to do with those li’l rascal tykes of mine who wrapped up and gave dad the same gift sweater three Christmases in a row.
Ho ho ho.
Last week was our next Christmas in six months. So now I think I can remember things that will happen in the future. Maybe I’m turning an evolutionary corner, already able to see right through the green-and-red foil wrapping paper to the sweater laying under the tree on Christmas morning tomorrow.
Happy New Year, Peace on Earth. Let’s go Brandon.
Soft Musical Segue
Now we’re at my doctor’s office, and he is patiently explaining results of my X-ray.
“What you have here is minor arthritis in your right hip. It looks like-—”
“—Wrong, twice!” I shouted politely. “One, my hip hurts like l got whacked with a sledgehammer, and Two, it can’t be arthritis because arthritis is what old people get and I’m not old.”
“Arthritis bah! Dude, I went to Woodstock!”
But I suppose I can still lead a happy, rewarding life, even with the misery and embarrassment of a deep well of pain in my right buttock region that’s the result of something only boring old people get. Wish I had something cool like a bullet wound or a motorcycle wreck. But no: Arthur-stinking-ritis.
Bright side. I’ll be able to trim my bucket list to a tidy two or three items, none involving anything more than eating and drinking.
For starters, no more running marathons, no climbing mountains or any of that parachute stuff. No more three-day bicycle trips across Canada, and my rugby career is officially over. Never again will I load stuff into a pickup truck, clean out a garage, stack firewood or hoist myself into a backyard hammock without assistance. No feeling shame when I tell strangers to fetch me a beer. Maybe someone will drive me around.
Will arthritis get me disability benefits, like free rent or meals on wheels? Cool, powerful painkillers? In-home healthcare workers? One of those Free Parking gizmos that cripples put on the rearview mirror?
I think I might be able to get used to this arthritis stuff.
UKIAH WAY BACK WHEN, DJ Ken Steely: Anybody remember when the Ukiah area had trains? I took these photos in the late 1980s on various visits when my parents were still in the area. I of course grew up in Calpella and Redwood Valley in the 60s and 70s so I remember when big trains used to go through the area hauling lumber products out.
THE HOP FLAT ADVENTURE, Some New Info, #84
by Brad Wiley
Since I submitted my Hop Flat explorations story last week, I have stumbled across some additions and corrections I would like to share with your readers.
The most interesting of them was a coincidental consequence of my rereading local journalist Donna Pardini’s collected portraits of colorful Anderson Valley old-timers like Luster Bivans, Edna Wallach, Cecil Gowan, Alvah Ingram, Russell Tolman, Smoky Blattner and more; and of various forgotten communities like Peachland and Evergreen Cemetery, and historic public places like Missouri House, Wiese’s Bar and the Track Inn. These vignettes, along with her weekly column about the births and deaths, comings and goings of Anderson Valley people and their friends, Donna reported between 1978 and 1980 for the then owners of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, Nan and Ward Scharrer.
Donna grew up in Anderson Valley and was a good friend to and an awed admirer of its local characters and culture in the post-World War II era, and was a compelling journalistic storyteller. Unhappily her reporting career lasted only a few years before her too-soon death in 1981. Fortunately for us her loyal husband, Donald and sons Ernie and Tony self-published her collected stories, accompanied with historically valuable photographs of people and places, under the title ‘An Anderson Valley Love Story,’ which it was.
One of Love Story’s old-timer portraits was of Alvy Price, the old Navarro woodsman I noted in my Hop Flat piece last week where I claimed Alvy had been born in Hop Flat. Not accurate. It was not Alvy but his mother who was born in the old mill town a long today’s below today’s Highway 128 west of Rocky Bluff, and moved from Hop Flat when the mill closed in 1902. Donna’s story also said Alvy’s mother told him the Hop Flat community also included a schoolhouse, which gives some indication of the size of the local population.
In Donna’s Luster Bivans story, this old-timer reported that one of his father’s many itinerant jobs was hauling tan bark out of Ray Gulch, just east of the high bluff where the rail line supporting the Hop Flat mill ended. Luster described an operation in the gulch flat as harvesting hand-split redwood railroad ties and tan bark on the side hill, the product then conveyed in a chute off the side-hill down onto the gulch flat and across the river onto sleds or railroad cars. Luster’s dad was crossing the Navarro in the chute when a single random tie slid down the chute and killed him. Apparently there was a whole work camp in Ray Gulch because Luster reported that his mother stayed onsite for two years after his Dad’s death and supported the family by taking in laundry.
Interesting details on the Caltrans Hop Flat survey maps include a dotted double line track identified as “Traveled Way,” which I take to mean a wagon road parallel with the railroad tracks; two areas with solid boundary lines called “Cultivated Fields;” and along the railroad right-of-way a rectangular box identified as an “old railroad trestle,” probably crossing a small stream or simply a swampy spot in the river silt.
Luster Bivan’s account of his Dad’s death provoked for me an interesting question. He describes the ties conveyed across the Navarro to the south shore and onto railroad cars. Does that mean that the Navarro River mill’s rail tracks were on both sides of the river? I believe that to be the case. I have walked pieces of the river south bank right-of-way all the way from Highway 1 upstream about two miles, around the prime swimming hole at Guest Camp, MP 6.48, and from Dimmick Park up to Mal Pass and found a well-graded roadbed. In later years, I know from personal encounter that this right-of-way was used by logging trucks, and, before the truck era, could have been a rail line as well.
Any local railroad buffs know?
Regarding the old Caltrans surveyor maps and the areas marked “Cultivated Fields,” one time back in the 1970s, Alvy Price took me on a guided tour of his and his father’s temporary summer farming activities along the logged over Navarro west of Hop Flat. In 1916. ’17 and ‘18, when Alvy was a teenager, he and his Dad had a two acre field surrounded by a thirty inch high split redwood picket fence where they planted and harvested potatoes in those years.
The logged-out flat Alvy and his Dad farmed was just west of Hop Flat, around MP 4.50. In the early 1920s a local forester and pioneer forest environmentalist, Walker Tilley planted redwood seedlings on the flat. A close observer of the current forest system here will notice that many of these plantings, now a hundred years old, stand in a straight line across the flat about twenty feet apart, and are of the same height, more or less 100 feet. The site is a bit confusing as there are randomly spaced a number of taller redwoods, likely suckers off the roots of the old growth trees clear cut a quarter of a century earlier than Tilley’s tree farm project.
While Alvy probed into the silt looking for the pig-deterring picket fence, he told me the thinking behind his Dad’s temporary farming activity ten miles from the family home in Navarro. During World War I, American food crop prices including potatoes rose due to the government’s commitment to feeding its growing military force, and I believe to provide allies England and France with less perishable foods, including potatoes. Thus the Price’s migration each April down to what I call Tilley Flat to plant potato seedlings and build and maintain the pig fence.
Their first spring on the flat, they also built out of salvaged redwood split stuff a one room cottage on a little rise east of the Navarro and between Tilley and Hop Flats, no kitchen, no living room, just a place to sleep. Cooking was done outdoors. The shattered remains of the cabin still existed when Alvy and I visited the old Price farm, and I found on the site a small ink bottle still holding a stopper. Unhappily I can’t find it today in my collection of Anderson Valley artifacts and memorabilia I won’t bore the reader describing. The bottle suggests the Price family were literate and perhaps keeping an accounts book or writing a diary. We will never know.
Alvy said that once they finished planting the potato corms inside the pig fence, they went back to Navarro village until sometime in early summer. There was no maintenance work to be done until the seedlings started pushing shoots through the silty soil. When summer did arrive, they came back to the flat for the summer to do crop maintenance like weeding, pig protection, a little irrigation hand-delivered from the river during heat spells. If I remember right, I believe Alvy told me the potatoes usually reached harvest ripeness sometime in September. They then dug up the potatoes, loaded them on a horse-drawn wagon, and hauled the crop back up the river and over the hill to Ukiah, where they sold the harvest to a wholesale agent, who then transported the crop on the NWP railroad to the San Francisco-area market.
Since that exploration with Alvy years ago, I’ve often wondered what route the Prices took with their wagon to get to the Ukiah market. Alvy had previously told me that the pedestrian route from Navarro village to Ukiah was on logging roads along the North Fork of the river’s North Fork, over a ridge onto Robinson Creek and down the public wagon road that followed the creek, then back north into Ukiah. So I assume that was their wagon route to Ukiah. What I didn’t ask Alvy, as I didn’t know the local topography around those flats the way I do now, is how they got their harvest past the rocky bluff east of Hop Flat and onto the Ray Gulch flat. Was there enough of a foot trail to also support a single axle horse-drawn wagon?
To help solve this potato crop transportation route problem I got from Caltrans two more topographical survey maps covering the riverside terrain from the east end of Hop Flat, around the corners at the rocky bluff and further east to past Ray Gulch. Study of the Hop Flat doc revealed the existence near its east end of a second track or siding that exited the main track, ran about 150’ and rejoined mainline. The latter, this map shows, continued east and around the corner at the bluff.
However, the Ray Gulch area map shows only the surveyed highway right-of-way, culvert locations, etc., no railroad tracks up into Ray Gulch, nor further along the Navarro River. Nevertheless, I surmise that if the rail line did in fact squeeze past Rocky Bluff, then there was enough room for the potato wagon to drive past too and then on to Ukiah along the route I describe earlier in the story. I can imagine there being enough timber on the flats along the river and up the north side-hill to support several more years of logging, more rail line, and one or more summer labor camps. Does any reader know?
What I do know is that Alvy’s dad said he could afford to get the Navarro mill management to give him the summer off from logging work because the money he made in June, July and August was a lot more than his daily wages in the woods. I didn’t ask Alvy what his Dad paid him, though I suspect I know the answer.
About the time we were wrapping up our explorations and Alvy’s stories, his probe stick hit something solid. We dug down into the light silt about four inches and found three redwood pickets next to one another and leaning downstream of the river. A phenomenon caused by the weight of the decennial floods that began occurring later on in the twentieth century.
Thus ended a perfect day of exploration and recollection I still remember in detail. Actually there was one more destination to complete the adventure: we retired to Floodgate Bar to tell our story to the other local members of the daily Five O’clock Hour meetings.
Special Request: If any reader of this article can correct or add to this article’s anecdotes and assumptions, please contact Brad Wiley, (707) 895 2259. [email protected].
PACIFIC NORTHWESTERN RR TUNNEL ALONG THE EEL RIVER NEAR TATU
Came from Italy and homesteaded there. We have the letter from the president of the United States Calvin Coolidge deeded the land to Margarita Bacchi.
My husband's great grandmother we are living on the 162 side at the 10 mile bridge. Known as rodeo Creek.
In the early 1900s the creek was named Kenny Creek.
And on the other side of the river about a half mile there's a cabin that I was told used to be one of the stops for the Train.
The cabin was made out of railroad ties and is still standing today.
Oh and just FYI LoL My name is Ana Bacchi. My husband is Mike Bacchi
CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, June 22, 2025
JONELLE BRANCH, 43, Willits. Allowing an unlicensed driver to drive.
KENNETH BUTTREY, 67, Willits. Failure to appear.
JONA CHAPMAN, 45, Gualala. Paraphernalia, county parole violation.
RYAN DICKERSON, 45, Ukiah. Suspended license.
LUCAS DOSSANTOS, 25, Berkeley/Ukiah. DUI-any drug.
DIEGO HINOJOSA, 21, Modesto/Ukiah. Wet reckless driving, suspended license for refusing chemical DUI test.
HEATHER MARSH-HAAS, 34, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, parole violation.
TIMOTHY MCCOSKER, 56, Ukiah. Petty theft with two or more priors, shoplifting.
DENA MORRIS, 63, Ukiah. Parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)
WILLIAM OWENS, 36, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol,, parole violation.
DARRELL PINOLA, 24, Ukiah. Domestic battery.
SABRINATH TOUZENE, 35, Westport. DUI, reckless driving.
DON’T WAIT
Editor,
I’m not a green card holder nor an undocumented immigrant. I’m not attending a university on a student visa.
I’m not a corporate executive fearing my political views will bar me from federal contracts.
I’m not a lawyer who’s been coerced into performing pro bono work to undo diversity, equity and inclusion.
I’m not connected to any university, museum or nonprofit organization that had its tax-exempt status and/or funding canceled for promoting policies inimical to government ones.
I’m not employed by any federal, state or local government.
I’m not a scientist working on life-saving research at a government-funded lab.
I’m not a university professor, teacher or student.
I’m not personally affected by rising consumer prices.
I don’t live near oil or gas drilling.
I’m not worried about the financial stability of Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and the Veterans Affairs Department.
I’m not affected by dictates issued on and after Jan. 20.
In 1946, German Pastor Martin Niemöller berated himself for failing to oppose Nazi attacks on Communists, Socialists, trade unionists and Jews, until he, too, was attacked and no one remained to speak on his behalf.
I’m not waiting.
Paul L. Newman
Merion Station, Pennsylvania
DEBORAH WHITE: Times certainly HAVE changed if Dear Abby is quoting Karl Marx's fundamental principle of communism.
NOW THE CONSEQUENCES
To the Editor:
By crossing the line and attacking Iran, the United States should not be under the misconception that it has made a step toward peace. Instead it has created a new array of unexpected consequences that can only increase hostility and U.S. involvement in yet another protracted war. One thing that it has accomplished is to have united the Iranian people, including the opposition, against the United States’ decision.
Tom Miller
Oakland
STAND UP, SPEAK OUT
Editor:
I can say as a veteran I did not join the U.S. Navy to stand by and watch our Armed Forces attack America. All members of Congress, the judiciary and every other American should not stand by and watch this happen either. Stand up, speak out and be counted — now!
Joe Clendenin
Santa Rosa
LEO NOMELLINI
Before the age of multi-sport athletes was a common phenomenon, there was Leo Nomellini, an Italian-American powerhouse who dominated not one, but two demanding professional arenas: football and wrestling. His story isn't just one of athletic prowess, but of incredible longevity and versatility, making him a true legend in both fields. "The Lion," as he was known, roared loud and clear across the American sporting landscape for over a decade.
Nomellini's journey began at the University of Minnesota, where he honed his skills on the gridiron as a formidable tackle for the Gophers. His talent was undeniable, earning him first-round honors as the 11th overall pick in the 1950 NFL draft, selected by the San Francisco 49ers. This marked the beginning of an illustrious 14-season career, remarkably spent entirely with one team, a rarity in modern professional sports. For his first three seasons with the 49ers, Nomellini showcased his exceptional versatility by playing both offensive and defensive tackle, a testament to his sheer athleticism and dedication. He was a constant presence on the field, playing in an incredible 174 consecutive regular-season games, earning him the moniker "indestructible." During his time with the 49ers, he was a six-time First-team All-Pro and a ten-time Pro Bowler, earning All-NFL recognition on both sides of the ball. His impact was so profound that he was named to the NFL's 1950s All-Decade Team and the NFL 50th Anniversary All-Time Team, and his number 73 was retired by the 49ers.
THESE MENTIONS of Leo Nomellini remind of my childhood when I was a close neighbor of the Great 49er in Palo Alto.
Leo ‘The Lion’ Nomellini, star tackle for the 49ers from 1950-1963 died of cancer at age 76, October 22, 2000, at Stanford Hospital. Several of his football friends contributed tributes and anecdotes for a couple of pretty good Bay Area obits for the big bruiser the following day. We had our own. It happens that Mr. Nomellini was a down-the-street neighbor of ours when I was a kid growing up in Palo Alto from 1953 to 1955. Mr. Nomellini was born in Italy and grew up in Chicago. He was a tough but friendly man who was well known to the neighborhood as the big 49er lineman down the street who always waved, smiled at, and occassionally chatted with the star-struck kids who rode by on their bikes. These were the days of hand-powered push mowers. Nomellini, who stood 6-feet 3-inches and weighed upwards of 270 pounds, impressed us kids by being able to stand on one side of his suburban front lawn and give his push-mower a giant shove. It would somehow mow 20 or so feet of grass before it came to a stop near the other side of Nomellini’s front lawn. Nomellini would then stroll across the new-mown strip, turn the mower around, give the mower a couple of short pushes to catch whatever it had missed on its prior one-shove dash across the lawn, then shove the mower back across the lawn again, and again, and again in single bursts, back and forth, until it was thoroughly mowed. By the time he was done, Nomellini usually had ten or twelve awestruck kids standing around watching and applauding each shove. He didn’t pay us much attention though — when mowing, the future Hall of Famer was all business. — Mark Scaramella
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
Don’t worry about WW3, repent and believe the gospel. No one is going to want to be here to face God’s wrath that is about to take place.
DENNIS MERWOOD
"Religion poisons everything!" - Christopher Hitchens. Never truer words spoken.
If religious nut jobs would just keep it in their heads and in their Church the World would be a much more peaceful place.
Religion - People killing each other trying to decide who has the best imaginary friend.
All religion is bunk. There have been >3,000 Gods.
Christianity: The belief that God sacrificed God to God to save God's creations from God.
You do not believe in 2,999+ of them, Carolyn.
I just go one more.
BTW
“I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” – 1 Timothy 2:12
“The women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says.” – 1 Corinthians 14:34
ICE-COLD WHISKY DISPENSER from the 1950s! For a short period of time, these were Very popular in many office buildings.
‘AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT’: FOOD BANKS BRACE FOR FALLOUT FROM TRUMP CUTS
New York City food banks aren’t sure how they will survive the administration’s funding cuts, which could also affect the programs they turn to for help.
by Sarah Maslin Nir
Dressed in heels to run errands, or surrounded by tasteful art in her chicly decorated apartment, Delcina Williams maintains a public facade that defies her reality. She is by many measures destitute, reliant on food stamps and an $1,100 monthly Social Security check that she said leaves her with only a handful of dollars a day for food after rent, utilities and caring for her twin sister, who has Alzheimer’s.
Ms. Williams, 75, said she was once an editor for a fashion magazine and a doo-wop singer. She and her twin, Doreena Davidson, are breast cancer survivors. But now Ms. Williams spends her days going from food bank to food bank, seeking navy beans and split peas for soup — a meal that can stretch after she inevitably runs out of money each month.
It is, she said, a demoralizing experience. And recent moves in Washington to cut federal funding for food benefits have filled many New Yorkers like Ms. Williams with mounting panic.
“It’s tearing me up already,” Ms. Williams said as she carted home 16 ounces of frozen ground beef, four cans of tuna fish, scallions and oranges from the Food Bank for NYC Community Kitchen and Pantry on West 116th Street in Harlem. “Every month I’m praying to my bank account.”
A new bill championed by President Trump calls for cutting $295 billion in federal spending over the next decade from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as SNAP or food stamps, according to the Congressional Budget Office. “What are we supposed to do?” Ms. Williams said. “I know he doesn’t need it, but the rest of us do.”
More than 65 percent of food pantry users are employed, according to the Poverty Tracker by Robin Hood, an anti-poverty group, and Columbia University. Experts say that is a reflection of the city’s affordability crisis. Average monthly visits to pantries and soup kitchens have shot up 85 percent since 2019, according to an analysis of FeedNYC data by City Harvest, a food rescue nonprofit. Almost three million New Yorkers struggle to put food on the table, according to data from Feeding America, a philanthropic organization.
On top of surging demand, food banks also anticipate increased prices because of tariffs on steel that have raised the cost of canned food.
But even as the need has skyrocketed, the banks’ ability to meet it has abruptly fallen. In March, the Department of Government Efficiency took aim at Biden-era initiatives that had provided over $1 billion in grants to states to buy local food. Trump administration-backed cuts of the Emergency Food Assistance Program hacked away millions of pounds of deliveries to food banks.
“I have honestly never been as concerned as I am now,” said Randi Dresner, the president and chief executive of Island Harvest Food Bank, which serves Long Island.
The $2 million grant program Island Harvest used to buy products from Long Island farmers, the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, will end this summer instead of next as originally planned. No new grants will be issued after current funding expires. And the Trump administration’s 2026 budget proposal would eliminate the Department of Agriculture’s Commodity Supplemental Food Program, and the more than $1 million the food bank uses to supply monthly food boxes to about 6,000 older people. Another $1.7 million that the organization was supposed to receive from the program this year was also frozen.
“There is a broad-brush cutting across all social services,” Ms. Dresner said. “That concerns me for our neighbors that are most vulnerable.”
The results of Trump administration policies have already been dramatic for food banks like the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York, which serves about 48 million meals a year — 20 million more than before the pandemic — according to Thomas A. Nardacci, the chief executive officer.
Every year, the Regional Food Bank receives 400 tractor-trailers of food from the U.S.D.A.’s emergency assistance program — strawberries from California, citrus from Florida and meat from the Midwest. But cuts to the program will slice the number of trucks in half, costing about 5.8 million meals. This year, 27 trailers, equal to about 750,000 meals, have already been canceled.
“The whole charitable food system, we are all living in fear right now,” Mr. Nardacci said. “Because the need is as high as ever.”
The potential cuts to food stamps are also a major concern. New rules would further restrict who is eligible and expand the group of recipients who are required to have jobs to qualify. The version of the bill approved by the House of Representatives also proposes to divert some of the costs of the program to the states.
Under the scheme, New York would have to bear about a quarter of the cost. “The idea that we would be punished by the federal government with a 25 percent cost share, which would cost us $1.8 billion, is really an existential threat to the idea of SNAP being a safety net,” said Nicole Hunt, the director of public policy and advocacy for Food Bank for NYC.
Food banks say they are scrambling.
“Which issue do you fight first?” said David G. Greenfield, the chief executive officer and executive director of Met Council, which provides kosher and halal food to over 600 distribution sites. “You are going to fight SNAP cuts that is going to reduce millions of meals around the country? Or do you fight the actual food cuts? Or do you fight the tariff challenges?
“It is like dealing with water from a fire hose.”
Many food bank leaders have been frantically lobbying Washington, they say, with little to show for their efforts. Recently, at a summit in Albany that was supposed to be about food procurement, anxiety about the proposed cuts dominated the conversation, Ms. Hunt said.
Zac Hall, the senior vice president of Food Bank for NYC’s programs, said, “The amount of void that will be created by these SNAP cuts is insurmountable.”
For people already on the edge, there is little room to absorb further cuts. Ms. Williams, who lives in public housing in Harlem with her twin sister, is trying to figure out how to survive.
As she stirred the black bean soup that she hoped would last them the week, Ms. Williams said she felt helpless. But there was something she could do: From her food pantry haul she removed a few loaves of French bread and some greens and hung the bag of produce on her neighbor’s door.
They need the help too.
(NY Times)
In this evocative photograph from early 1898, Courtney’s Store stands as a symbol of frontier resilience and ingenuity during the Klondike Gold Rush. Located at Sheep Camp—one of the last major stopping points before the treacherous Chilkoot Pass—Courtney ran her store out of a simple canvas tent, offering vital supplies to thousands of fortune-seekers heading north in search of gold.
Boldly advertised on hand-painted signs are essentials: “Spuds” (potatoes, a critical staple), hay and feed for weary pack animals, groceries, and ammunition—items as valuable as gold itself in this rugged landscape. More than just a shop, Courtney’s tent also functioned as an informal post office, a crucial link to the outside world for miners desperate for news from home.
The scene captures more than commerce—it reflects the chaos, enterprise, and raw determination of the gold rush era. Courtney’s operation was one of many temporary but vital outposts dotting the trail, helping sustain the human flow into the Yukon. This modest tented store, flapping in the Alaskan wind, is a vivid reminder of the grit and adaptability that defined life on the gold frontier.
GIANTS ARE TURNING BACK THE CLOCK TO THE DAYS OF TORTURE AND WINNING BASEBALL
by Ann Killion
The most iconic catchphrases for teams usually aren’t the ones dreamed up by marketing departments. They’re the kind that arise organically.
Which is why, 15 years after it was first uttered, the phrase “torture” continues to be used as a common descriptor for San Francisco Giants baseball.
When Buster Posey talks about what he wants his team to look like, it sounds very much like that original torture team from 2010, when Posey was a rookie. Pitching, defense, not a lot of hitting and a whole lot of close games in a raucous home environment. And a playoff push that might not be resolved until the final day of the regular season.
Here at the midway point of the season, the 2025 version of the Giants is starting to remind some folks of the original torture team. That includes the guy who coined the term, broadcaster Duane Kuiper.
“It sure does,” Kuiper said. “So many close games. It’s always torture to win by one run.”
Sunday’s game against the Red Sox was the anomaly in this edge-of-your-seat season. The Giants, who came into the game leading MLB in one-run games with 34, had a rare scoring outburst in the series finale against the Red Sox. Their nine runs on 11 hits in the come-from-behind 9-5 victory gave the Giants the series win. And it put a bounce in their step going into an off day, their last break before a stretch of 16 consecutive games.
“(The offensive output is) nice but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t stressful at times,” said Mike Yastrzemski. “That was a great team win. … One of the best things about this team is that we take a lead and all of a sudden it flips back, and nobody in the dugout gets down or frustrated.
“It was like, OK, let’s go. Let’s get a couple more.”
That’s another trademark of “torture” teams: they’re resilient. The Giants have been great at battling back, with a major league-leading nine wins when trailing by three runs or more. The confidence within the dugout is strong, but it’s still nice to have the occasional cushion going into the ninth.
“Typically it comes down to not only one run, but down to the last pitch,” manager Bob Melvin said. “But we have the ability offensively to have games like this. In day games here at home, the ball travels.”
The series against the Red Sox felt big. Not only because it was between two iconic franchises who rarely play each other. With the shocking trade of Rafael Devers just a few days earlier, the games were guaranteed to be swirling with emotion.
“It felt like a really big series for us,” said starter Robbie Ray, who worked five innings, giving up four runs (three earned) and striking out seven, but didn’t get the win. “Obviously the trade, getting Rafi over here, facing his old team almost right away. It was a big series for that; for him to put that behind him and to be able to move on.
“But also because we’ve been scuffling a little bit. It was nice to have the bats show up, and it was more than a one-run win.”
After going 0-for-5 in his first game against his old team Friday, Devers hit a two-run home run Saturday and singled and scored a run Sunday. The expectation is that as he gets more comfortable, and with the emotional reunion against the only franchise he’d ever known until last week over with, he’ll get in a groove.
“He’s been great,” Yastrzemski said. “He’s diving right into everything, talking to guys, just hanging out. He wants to be a part of the team. … I’m impressed with how comfortable he is, how willing he is to do whatever the team needs.”
Hitting is contagious and on Sunday, the Giants looked like they were spreading the offense germ among them. Heliot Ramos overcame a rough first-inning fielding error that led to a Red Sox early lead, and responded with a double and a home run, driving in four runs. Casey Schmitt went 4-for-4 with three runs scored. Yastrzemski hit his first home run since April and Willy Adames ended the scoring with a solo shot in the eighth.
The other reason the series felt special was the atmosphere. It was three straight days of sellouts and some of that is thanks to the legions of Red Sox fans who live in the Bay Area. But they were outnumbered by excited and engaged Giants fans who have a pent-up hunger for a baseball team they can connect with and embrace.
“You know in the early torture days there weren’t a lot of expectations,” Kuiper said.
That 2010 team was coming off six long years without making the playoffs. This Giants team is following a stretch of nine years with just one playoff appearance and vast disgruntlement among fans who were unhappy with how the team was being run.
So yes, there are similarities. The way to win games on the corner of 3rd and King is with a tight, tortuous form of baseball. And this team is indeed reminiscent of the original torture team.
“It really is,” said hitting coach Pat Burrell, who was a key player in 2010. “The pitching is so good and we’re scratching and clawing for every run. And these guys keep coming back, like that team.”
Fifteen years ago, when Kuiper first started saying things on the broadcasts like, “Giants baseball, it’s torture,” the team’s communications bosses said they weren’t sure they liked how that sounded. But, of course, he kept saying it.
And turned it into one of the most memorable catchphrases in franchise history.
What’s happening so far this season is a whole lot of torture. Which, for the Giants, is only a good thing.
(SFChronicle)
ACTIVISTS FROM AN ARRAY OF ANTI-WAR AND HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS PROTESTED THE U.S./ISRAELI WAR ON IRAN ON JUNE 18
by Dan Bacher
Sacramento Anti-War organizations held an emergency rally as part of a National Day of Action to oppose the war with Iran on June 18, 2025. The community rallied outside the Memorial Auditorium on the corner of 16th and J Street at 5 pm.
The national day of action was initially sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition, National Iranian American Council, the Palestinian Youth Movement, The People's Forum, and others. Demonstrations also took place in Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, D.C., Asheville, North Carolina and in dozens of other cities across the country.
In Sacramento, co-sponsors of the demonstration included the ANSWER Coalition, Sacramento Peace Action, Palestinian American League, Jewish Voice for Peace, Code Pink, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Peace and Freedom Party and Democratic Socialists of America.
"Israel’s latest attack on Iran was a totally unprovoked attack carried out with the backing of the Trump administration," according to a press release. "The idea that Iran is about to get a nuclear weapon is a total lie, just like Bush’s lie about 'weapons of mass destruction' ahead of the Iraq War. Even U.S. spy agencies say they don’t think Iran is about to develop a nuclear weapon."…
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2025/06/21/18877451.php
IN MEMORIUM: LEON KRIER
by James Kunstler
This Month we put aside the eyesore motif to remember Leon Krier (1946-2025), the great architect and urbanist who was “godfather” to the movement for restoring artistry, beauty, and decorum in an everyday world much debased by the idiocies of various Modern-isms, and by the fiasco of suburban sprawl.
Leo passed away this week at 79. I knew him somewhat, having spent time with him at conferences and in cafes, and corresponding with him over the years. He was a gallant, humorous, and supremely talented fellow who brought much light into an increasingly darkened world.
He is perhaps best-known for designing the project known as Poundbury in Britain, sponsored by Prince Charles (now King Charles III). Poundbury was intended to demonstrate that traditional urban design will produce places worthy of our affection — as opposed to the spiritually annihilating environments of strip-malls, “housing developments,” and skyscraper city centers that became the norm after 1950, the world of eyesores this website features.
Though he worked for King Charles on the Poundbury project, Leo dissociated himself from the “Globalist” / Woke agenda years ago, which he regarded as the political expression of the despotic Modern-isms cultivated in the graduate schools and promoted by the money-chasing architectural firms.
The reform movement Leo heralded became the New Urbanism movement in America, a very potent force, since the 1990s, for rectifying the mutilated human habitat all over our country. Alas, the past decade, the New Urbanists succumbed to Woke idiocy and, even more catastrophically, their model of the “walkable community” has become conflated with the Globalist “Fifteen-minute City,” based on surveillance and control of the population. I hope they can work that out.
Leo was also beloved for the books he wrote and the wonderfully witty diagrams he drew to graphically communicate ideas about architecture and urban design that are hard to put over with mere words. For instance: Get the picture(s)? I also highly recommend Leon Krier’s excellent book The Architecture of Community, for a compressive study of his work. Though born in Luxembourg, he wrote in English more eloquently (and wittily) than most Anglos. I leave you with a shot of another marvelous project designed by Leo, the Cayala district outside Guatemala City, a project completed more recently than Poundbury. As always with Leo, the picture says much more than mere words about the man and his art.
LEAD STORIES, MONDAY'S NYT
Shifting Views and Misdirection: How Trump Decided to Strike Iran
Iranian Officials Try to Project Sense of Normalcy, Though Nothing Is Normal
‘It Felt Like Kidnapping,’ Khalil Says in First Interview Since Release
Dangerous Heat Wave Expands Over Central and Eastern United States
Tesla Begins Limited Robotaxi Service in Austin
DONALD TRUMP BOMBS IRAN, AND AMERICA WAITS
by David Remnick
It’s not easy to trust the President to make an optimal decision. For one thing, he is suspicious of nearly every source of information save his own instincts.
The United States joined Israel in its war against the Islamic Republic of Iran on Saturday night as President Donald Trump ordered American bombers to destroy three key nuclear sites. Just before 8 p.m., Trump went on Truth Social to deliver the news:
We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home.
In a brief television address at 10 p.m., Trump declared the operation a “spectacular military success” and said the three sites had been “completely and totally obliterated.”
In recent days, polls have shown that a majority of the American people, including a majority of the President’s supporters, opposed going to war with Iran. By ordering these strikes, Trump acted without congressional approval and in contradiction to his campaign promise to avoid the kind of disasters experienced in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan. I recently wrote a piece reviewing many of the dangers and possibilities that could follow an American bombing in Iran. After hearing the news, I immediately called one of the country’s most knowledgeable experts on Iran, Karim Sadjadpour. He is a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and worked as an analyst with the International Crisis Group in Tehran, from 2003 to 2005.
“I’m in shock,” Sadjadpour told me, about ten minutes after Trump’s announcement. “I’m sitting here watching this on CNN and trying to see the reaction on Persian-language Twitter.”
“This is unprecedented, dropping a thirty-thousand-pound bomb,” he continued. “Anyone who has observed the last two decades of history in the Middle East would think hard about unleashing such an attack. You would want to think several steps ahead, and there is no evidence that the President has done that. His tweet and his public comments have given the impression that this is the end of war and the commencement of peace, but I suspect the Iranians think differently. They have a program on which they have spent hundreds of billions of dollars. The regime—perhaps not the people, but the regime—takes pride in that and now it is destroyed. No dictatorship wants to look emasculated and humiliated in the eyes of its own people.”
The question now is how Iran will respond. “If the Ayatollah [Ali Khamenei] responds weakly, he loses face,” Sadjadpour said. “If he responds too strongly, he could lose his head.”
“A lot of the options that they have for retaliation are the strategic equivalent of a suicide bombing,” he went on. “They can do enormous damage to our embassies. They might mine the Strait of Hormuz. They can continue missile barrages against Israel. They can attempt to do real damage to the world economy, though the regime might not survive the blowback.”
In the past couple of weeks, Israeli intelligence and bomber pilots have wiped out much of the upper echelons of the Iranian security establishment, along with the country’s top nuclear scientists. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is still in place, however, and, according to numerous analyses, they are likely to fill any power vacuum, at least in the short term. But the truth is, Sadjadpour said, the events of the coming days and months will be hard to predict.
Will the Israelis or Americans ever come forward with hard, convincing evidence about the Iranian nuclear threat and its timing? Not for the first time, Benjamin Netanyahu asserted that the threat was imminent and acted on it, and yet he did not provide the public with clear evidence of Iran being close to obtaining a nuclear weapon. Nor did Trump. Israel and the United States have now set back Iran’s nuclear program as never before. And yet, if this regime survives, it could well make a secret effort in the future to produce or obtain an atomic weapon as deterrence against a repeat of the strikes that have just taken place.
“Will we look back and say this prevented an Iranian bomb or insured one?” Sadjadpour said. “Similarly, have we hastened the demise of the regime, or have we entrenched it? The modern history of the Middle East does not give favorable answers to these questions. Iran is in a unique situation. It’s plausible that the Revolutionary Guard commanders will look at the Supreme Leader, Khamenei, and say, ‘You have led us to ruin. We have been the most sanctioned and isolated country in the world, and now your nuclear program is destroyed and we are humiliated. It is time to move aside.’ ”
Khamenei is eighty-six, and has been in power since 1989. “He’s one of the longest-serving dictators in the world—you don’t get to be that by being a gambler,” Sadjadpour said. “He has instincts for survival but also instincts of defiance. Right now, his survival instincts and his defiance instincts are in tension. Imagine it: You are eighty-six with the physical and, perhaps, cognitive limits that come with that. You have limited bandwidth, but now you are meant to lead a war against the U.S., the world’s biggest superpower, and Israel, the region’s biggest military power, and you are doing it from a bunker. It is hard to see how the outcome can be positive for him.
“But, as we have learned too often in history, military success doesn’t always translate to political success. In my opinion—and maybe history will view it differently—so much that we do now as a nation is not a reflection of national deliberation or national interest. It is the impulse of one man. Trump came to office believing his mere presence would resolve world conflicts in twenty-four hours: Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine. When Trump saw that he wasn’t successful, he had a great sense of urgency to come to a resolution in Iran. The combination of Netanyahu’s persistence and Khamenei’s defiance transformed Trump from a self-proclaimed peacemaker to a warmonger.”
In Saudi Arabia last month, Trump delivered an extraordinary speech that was highly critical of military interventions and nation-building adventures in the Middle East. “In the end, the so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built,” Trump said. “And the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand.”
During his speech, Trump seemed to draw a sharp distinction between himself and Republican predecessors such as George W. Bush, saying, “In recent years, far too many American Presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it’s our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use U.S. policy to dispense justice for their sins.” It is this kind of rhetoric that has won the approval of the isolationist strain of the maga movement and the Republican Party, including Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson. Trump’s action in Iran on Saturday night will inevitably alienate that faction as it earns praise from the likes of Fox News commentators such as Mark Levin and Sean Hannity, as well as Senators Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham.
“Trump came to the Presidency with a Nixon-goes-to-China idea where Iran is concerned,” Sadjadpour said. “He wanted to build hotels there. And now he has dropped a thirty-thousand-pound bomb. He was frustrated that he hadn’t solved Gaza or Ukraine. The nuclear deal that Obama worked out with Iran and the rest, the J.C.P.O.A., was a two-year-long negotiation. He had no patience for that. And when Khamenei wasn’t agreeing to his terms very quickly, and when he encountered Netanyahu’s persistence and Khamenei’s resistance, he changed. The morning after the Israeli invasion, Trump wanted to associate himself with that success. He didn’t want Netanyahu alone to have a Churchill moment. He wants to be remembered for destroying nuclear facilities. But it means the next President will be faced with the same challenge.”
Although it is true that many Iranians despise the ruling theocracy, and though it is true that the Iranian people are among the most pro-American in the region, there is no reason to be confident that even the most restive will welcome foreign intervention. And it is unlikely, at least in the short term, that what will follow this regime, if it falls, will be a secular liberal democracy with civil rights for women and religious minorities. Regime change is rarely, if ever, regarded as a gift. The C.I.A. and British oil companies helped the Army topple Mohammad Mosaddegh, a popular Iranian Prime Minister, in 1953, and that coup is still part of the political conversation in Iran, Sadjadpour said.
“From World War Two to 2010, more than half of authoritarian regimes that fell were followed by other authoritarian regimes, and Iran, in 1979, is just one of many,” he said. “Only a quarter of them led to democracy. And that number was lower if it was triggered by violence or foreign military invasion. We should be very wary of the idea that what happened tonight will somehow automatically lead to a democratic Persian Spring.”
(The New Yorker)
BOMBING IRAN IS PART OF THE USA’S REPETITION COMPULSION FOR WAR WAR WAR
by Norman Solomon
Twenty years ago, one day in June 2005, I talked with an Iranian man who was selling underwear at the Tehran Grand Bazaar. People all over the world want peace, he said, but governments won’t let them have it.
I thought of that conversation on Saturday night after the U.S. government attacked nuclear sites in Iran. For many days before that, polling clearly showed that most Americans did not want the United States to attack Iran. “Only 16 percent of Americans think the U.S. military should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran,” YouGov pollsters reported, while “60 percent say it should not and 24 percent are not sure.”
But as a practical matter, democracy has nothing to do with the chokehold that the warfare state has on the body politic. That reality has everything to do with why the United States can’t kick the war habit. And that’s why the profound quests for peace and genuine democracy are so tightly intertwined.
On Saturday evening, President Trump delivered a speech exuding might-makes-right thuggery on a global scale: “There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days.”
More than ever, the United States and Israel are overt partners in what the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946 called “the supreme international crime” – “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression.”
Naturally, the perpetrators of the supreme international crime are eager to festoon themselves in mutual praise. As Trump put it in his speech, “I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before.” And Trump added: “I want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they’ve done.”
A grisly and nefarious truth is that, in effect, the Israeli military functions as part of the overall U.S. military machine. The armed forces of each country have different command structures and sometimes have tactical disagreements. But in the Middle East, from Gaza and Iran to Lebanon and Syria, “cooperation” does not begin to describe how closely and with common purpose they work together.
More than 20 months into Israel’s U.S.-armed siege of Gaza, the genocide there continues as a joint American-Israeli project. It is a project that would have been literally impossible to sustain without the weapons and bombs that the U.S. government has continued to provide to the Orwellian-named Israel Defense Forces.
The same U.S.-Israel alliance that has been committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has also enabled the escalation of KKK-like terrorizing and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people in the West Bank. The ethnocentric arrogance and racism involved in U.S. support for these crimes have been longstanding, and worsening along with the terrible events.
The same alliance is now also terrorizing Iranian society from the air.
As we have seen yet again in recent hours, the political and media culture of the United States is heavily inclined toward glorifying the use of the USA’s second-to-none destructive air power. As if above it all. The conceit of American exceptionalism assumes that “we” have the sanctified moral ground to proceed in the world with a basic de facto message powered by military might: Do as we say, not as we do.
While all this is going on, the word “surreal” is apt to be heard. But a much more fitting word is “real.”
“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction,” James Baldwin wrote, “and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” Now, people in the United States have real-time historic opportunities – to do everything we can to take nonviolent action demanding that the U.S. government end its monstrous role in the Middle East.
(Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, includes an afterword about the Gaza war.)
“Having many cats is good. If you feel bad, you look at the cats and you feel better, because they know that everything is just the way it is. You don't have to be nervous about anything. And they know it. They are saviors. The more cats you have, the longer you will live. If you have a hundred cats, you will live ten times longer than if you have ten. One day, this will be known and people will have thousands of cats."
— Charles Bukowski
ANNE LAMOTT
I said to the kitty as we were getting up this morning, “I wish I had better news for you.” I didn’t want to get out of bed, but I had to let the dog out. And I turned on the news: Shock and awe again, same old same old; here we are. possible end of the world, or at the very least, horror. Sigh. Panic. Numbness. Rage. Hopelessness.
So now what? Well, again, same old same old. We do what we’ve always done after unfathomable brutality, from going to war on Iraq to the shootings at Sandy Hook to Uvalde.
After the election last year, feeling complete defeat and fear, I asked myself what I could possibly do to help. After a second cup of coffee, I smote my forehead and remembered I can write.
This morning, feeling complete terror about what bombing Iran will unleash, on what it will be like for America to live in a pariah nation, I dug out some posts I wrote on earlier mornings after, and have cobbled together this inadequate response:
At some point we will get back to marches and registering voters, but today? Today we can unleash waves of love on each other, our families and communities and even our extremely disappointing selves, because love is bigger than any bleak shit and barbarity that the world throws at us. We will have hope again, because of this love, because we always do again, eventually. We have to remember that today. Susan B Anthony’s great niece said in times of horror and hopeless, “We remember to remember.” We remember having come through the apparent end of the world other times, and of having resurrected.
What is helpful right away is to stick together in our horror, grief, anxiety and cluelessness. We cry or shut down, we blame, despair, rage, pray; gather in community, or isolate. I recommend that we do this today. Some of us won’t be able to eat at all, some of us will eat our body weight in ice cream and fries; some of us can’t turn off the TV, some of us can’t turn it on. These are all appropriate. Today we just keep the patient comfortable.
If you don’t know what else to do right do, do love: take a big bag of food over to the local food pantry. Don’t forget Oreos for the kids and Ensure for the elderly. Walk around the neighborhood and wave or hug everyone and pick up litter. My husband Neal said that everything true and beautiful can be discovered in a ten minute walk. Love and beauty are truth.
Talking and sticking together is usually the answer. We become gentler, more patient and kind with each other, and that's a small miracle. It means something of the spirit is at work. For me, it is grace made visible. It doesn't come immediately, or by bumper sticker, and it doesn't come naturally. What comes naturally is rage and blame. Blame R Us. But Grace bats last.
We never gave up on peace and love before, and we won’t now. We’ve always even danced again eventually, with limps. But it’s the “eventually” that feels so defeating. It takes time for life to get itself sorted out. I so hate this and do not agree to this, but have no alternative, because it is Truth: healing and peace will take time. And in the meantime, always always always always, we take care of the poor. This will help you more than anyone else, and put you in Jesus and Buddha’s good graces.
After an appropriate time of being stunned, terrified and in despair, we sigh and help each other back to our feet. Maybe we ask God for help, or Gus, the great universal spirit. We do the next right thing. We buy or cook or serve a bunch of food for the local homeless. We give a few dollars to the vets and mothers begging at busy intersections, no matter our tiny opinions on their hygiene or enterprise. We return phone calls, library books, smiles. We donate money as we are able. We practice radical self-care and say hello gently to everyone, even strange people who scare us. We go to the market and flirt with lonely old people In the express line with their coupons. It can’t be enough but it will be.
I have no answers but do know one last thing that is true: Figure it out is a bad slogan. We won’t be able to. Life is much wilder, complex, heartbreaking, weirder, richer, more insane, awful, beautiful and profound than we were prepared for as children, or that I am comfortable with. The paradox is that in the face of this, we discover that in the smallest moments of taking in beauty, in actively being people of goodness and mercy, we are saved.
A hint for today’s puzzle: The hanging cable does not form a parabola. If you know the formula for the curve that it does form, you can calculate the distance between the poles. Another hint: The name of the curve starts with the name of a common household pet.
It’s a catenary (cosh) but since the length of the cable is given, it’s a trick question. The answer is 0m.
+1! There I go, missing the obvious!
Way too complicated for me
Perhaps the editor should put some good old dot to dot tracing pages in. Loved those when I was a kid!
It’s an Air Force plot! The Major has been reactivated to find people adept in Trig, Algebra, etc because recruiters are having a hard time finding people with the skills and knowledge to work with complex tech and systems.
Thank you Anne Lamott. I needed that read so very much. I appreciate you.
Yes for sure, Me, and me too, and sent her words to several friends
Fascist bloom.
Here a fascist, there a fascist, everywhere a racist…cha, cha, cha. If everyone and anyone calling another American a fascist, actually met a real fascist (say circa. 1938) they would be dead, dead, dead.
We do have Stephen Miller. All that’s missing is the SS insignias on his collar.
Just so, an evil soul he is.
You don’t need to kill people to be a fascist and the US has a fine history of fascism. Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh were part of a large fascist movement that supported the fascists in Europe and wanted to keep us out of the war. MAGAs walk like a duck and talk like a duck.
The distance between the poles is zero and the cable is folded in half.
The visual representation is not accurate.
Skip Newell,
Knew him when we worked together at Bailey’s mail order logging supply. We flew together one night on Smith Air out of Ukiah to Eugene, Oregon to represent Bailey’s at the Oregon Logging Conference. It was raining hard when we left and got worse on the trip. We never saw anything but black clouds, and rain with terrible up and down swings the entire trip. The pilot was great, never said anything, didn’t get excited, just flew with instruments and down we came right into the airfeield perfect. Skip and I were never so relieved to touch ground. Weather broke and was beautiful for the conference.
it cant hurt, bruce: but i actually “pray” for you and mark,,and especially ling… a very accomatating lady..
you make my day, and i like it better on the machine…every day, incredible…
Very kind of you, Dale. Thank you.