Mendocino County Today: Thursday 7/10/2025

Warming | Debbie Holmer | Feverfew | Grange Floor | Price Grandchild | At-Risk Hospitals | Move Over | Crane Truck | Zone 3YOR03 | Local Events | Mendo Monographs | Tax Grab | 162 Pounds | Sea Carnival | Elk BBQ | Renters’ Rights | Donner Art | Ed Notes | Hopland Auto-Court | Yesterday's Catch | Quack Quack | Single-Mom Lottery | Overcome Obsession | Tough Bette | Mean Behavior | Great Call | Giants Lose | Tortured Soul | Enforcement Confrontation | Flood Escape | Parking Placard | Whole Mess | Filming Chinatown | Mamdani Fear | Undulate Architecture | Lead Stories | Both Sides | FBI Investigation | Lunch Order | Nonstop Insult | Custer Photo | Ezra Pound | Adequacy | Small Station

---

HIGH PRESSURE is building and generally hot and dry weather is expected for the next week or so. The hottest temperatures will start in the south on Friday and work their way north on Saturday and Sunday. Northeast winds overnight on Thursday and Friday will help to limit the stratus and potentially bring warmer temperatures to the coast. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A foggy 50F this Thursday morning on the coast. Well it stayed quite foggy & cool yesterday, I expect a bit more sun today after morning fog burns off. More clear than foggy into Saturday then more patchy to follow. There you go.

---

DEBBIE HOLMER

Debbie L. Holmer Beloved wife, mother, grandmother and friend Debbie Lynn Holmer passed away peacefully after a long illness on May 24, 2025, at Adventist Health Mendocino Coast Hospital in Fort Bragg. Born on July 2, 1944, to Bernard J. St.Germain and Hilda V. Laney in Bakersfield. She was 80.

Smart, creative and magnetic, Debbie set a high bar for herself throughout her life. She had three careers, the first as executive assistant to CEOs of large corporations such as Nissan Motor in Tennessee and to presidents of universities including the Citadel Military College of South Carolina. After earning her master’s degree in business education from Indiana University Pennsylvania, she began her second career as a professor at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, TN. She then became director of education at Barclay College in Orange County, Southern California. Her career and further doctorate degree studies were derailed by the onset of multiple sclerosis in her forties.

Debbie and her husband David moved to Lodi and then to the cooler Mendocino Coast. In 1997 she was hired as a typesetter at the Fort Bragg Advocate-News and The Mendocino Beacon where Publisher Sharon DiMauro tapped her many talents and nicknamed her “Flame.”

Over the 24 years of her third career, she was an arts and entertainment reporter, history columnist, and calendar, spiritual, almanac, and sports pages editor, and pinch-hit in the circulation and classified departments.

An engaging interviewer and prolific writer, she authored hundreds of feature articles, reviews and profiles on every aspect of the coast’s cultural scene for the newspapers, Mendocino Art Center’s A&E magazine, and other publications.

During their 40-year marriage, Debbie and David often boated the lakes, rivers and coast of Southern California, including trips to the Channel Islands and Catalina. After moving to Lodi, they spent many happy days exploring the San Joaquin delta on their houseboat. Once they settled in Fort Bragg, Debbie embarked on her lifelong dream of seeing the world, which she funded by working up to six part-time jobs at once. Over the last 20 years, she journeyed to China, Europe, the Mediterranean, Panama, and made seven trips to Paris. In the spring of 2014, Debbie met up with friends Connie and Joe Mickey in India for three weeks. Unlike most foreigners, she was fearless of anything she encountered, from riding open air tuk tuks on the Delhi freeway, to drinking spicy masala chais from street stalls, and even made friends with street dogs; everything except its complex menu, but she soon discovered that Indians can do anything with potatoes.

A master of the art of friendship, she cultivated lasting relationships with people at home and abroad, often well in advance of arriving at her travel destinations. She truly never met a stranger. Outside of work, Debbie was active in her community, which she loved. She belonged to and handled publicity for the Mendocino Study Club and the hospital auxiliary, and volunteered for the Mendocino Music Festival for many years. In recent months, she found a new creative outlet in watercolors, delighting family and friends with her work.

Debbie is survived by her soulmate and husband David Holmer, daughters Cheryl Lynn and Ann, three granddaughters, stepdaughters Lisa, Lynette and Julie, six step grandchildren, four half sisters and a half brother, and many great-grandchildren and extended family. Her treasured brother Bernard “Bernie” Lee St. Germain died 10 years ago. At Debbie’s request, no services will be held. Her family suggests honoring her life by donating to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Mendocino Music Festival, Symphony of the Redwoods, Dharamsala Animal Rescue, or to your favorite charity.

---

---

RAISE THE FLOOR, LIFT THE COMMUNITY: SUPPORT THE ANDERSON VALLEY GRANGE!

For decades, the Anderson Valley Grange has been a hub of community life—hosting pancake breakfasts, concerts, dances, classes, celebrations, and civic gatherings. Now, the building that has given so much to our valley needs a little help from us in return.

The Grange floor is in urgent need of repair. After 40 years of faithful service, the floor joists and framing beneath the building are showing signs of serious wear. You may have noticed a little sunlight sneaking in below the walls—it’s a subtle but clear sign that it’s time to act.

Thanks to a $10,000 investment last summer, new gutters and a drainage system are already protecting the building from rain and runoff. Now it’s time to restore the foundation. The good news? We’re ready to get started—with your help!

Local volunteers have already stepped up to handle demolition, debris removal, and rebuilding of the stage post construction. But the core structural repairs require skilled labor and must be completed quickly to minimize downtime for community events. That’s why the Anderson Valley Grange is launching the “Raise the Floor” campaign, with a goal of raising $25,000 for materials and professional labor.

This is more than a repair—it’s an investment in a place that brings us together.

How You Can Help

There are several easy ways to donate:

For tax-deductible donations:

Send your contribution to the California State Grange Foundation, 3830 U Street, Sacramento, CA 95817. Make checks payable to California State Grange Foundation and write “Anderson Valley Grange” in the memo line. Please include a brief cover letter directing your gift to the Anderson Valley Grange “Raise the Floor” Project.

Donate online via VENMO (@AVGrange) You are in the correct account if the profile picture is the building, the security code is 9340

Donate online via GoFundMe (search: AV Grange Raise the Floor).

Mail checks directly to: AV Grange, PO Box 363, Philo, CA 95466.

You can also drop off donations at any Grange pancake breakfast or hand them to a Grange member.

Every contribution, no matter the size, helps keep this vital space strong, safe, and ready to serve the Anderson Valley for decades to come.

For more information or to volunteer labor, contact Captain Rainbow at 707-472-9189.

Let’s raise the floor—so the Grange can keep lifting our community.

(Laura Baynham)

---

---

ON THE HIT LIST

Several local hospitals, including Adventist Health Ukiah Valley, were included on a list of rural hospitals across the country that could face closure or other significant impacts due to recent changes in Medicaid coverage.

In June, U.S. Sen. Edward J. Markey (D – Mass.), released “a list of more than 300 rural hospitals across the United States at disproportionate risk of closure, conversion, or service reductions due to proposed health care cuts” in the Reconciliation Bill that passed this month.

Previously, Sen. Markey notes in a press release, he and his colleagues released detailed data from the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill concluding that cuts in the bill “could place over 300 rural hospitals across the U.S. at disproportionate risk of closure, conversion, or service reductions. Faced with additional cuts to their revenue, many rural hospitals may be forced to stop providing certain services, including obstetric, mental health, and emergency room care, convert to clinics or standalone emergency centers, or close altogether. Rural hospitals are often the largest employers in rural communities, and when a rural hospital closes or scales back their services, communities are not only forced to grapple with losing access to health care, but also with job loss and the resulting financial insecurity.”

The list of “338 rural hospitals at-risk of reducing service lines, converting to a different type of health care facility, or closing,” include: Adventist Health Ukiah Valley, Adventist Health Clearlake, Sutter Lakeside Hospital (in Lakeport), and Adventist Health St. Helena.

When asked to respond to community members’ concerns regarding potential impacts to the Ukiah hospital, spokeswoman Cici Winiger said “all we can say at this time is: As a healthcare system committed to serving our communities with compassionate care, Adventist Health is deeply disappointed in the outcomes of the Reconciliation Bill vote because of the catastrophic impact it will have on access to care for all.

“Provisions in the bill cut Medicaid availability for patients and will impact hospitals and our communities,” Winiger continued. “More than 70 percent of our patients who enter our hospitals rely on Medicaid and Medicare for their care. Additionally, this legislation threatens to widen disparities and undermine the financial stability of hospitals and clinics, which are the lifeline and economic engine of local communities. We will continue to advocate for patients and their well-being with elected officials at the State and Federal levels.”

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

---

---

LAST MONDAY, local social media briefly lit up when some traffic was held up on Highway 128 east of Yorkville because, according to an initial report, “a train had fallen on a truck.” It turned out that the “train” was actual a “crane” which had been misheard on some garbled scanners. A local first responder later told us that a rented crane operated by a Caltrans contractor doing road work on or near Highway 128 had somehow tipped over and landed on one of the contractor’s unoccupied pickup trucks. No one was injured and there was no emergency response. Apparently some traffic was held up while the contractor righted the crane and dealt with the whatever damage was done to the pickup. (Mark Scaramella)

---

MENDOCINO COUNTY EVACUATION ZONE CHANGE: YORKVILLE ZONE

Effective July 9, 2025, the Mendocino County Office of Emergency Services (OES) has revised Evacuation Zone 3HOP06, which is now designated as 3YOR03. This adjustment was made in coordination with the Sheriff’s Office and local fire agencies to ensure our evacuation zones more accurately reflect their corresponding geographic areas. Please note that only the name of the zone has changed; the geographic boundaries remain the same. Residents within the newly adjusted zone are urged to familiarize themselves with the updated evacuation maps and information. Visit MendoReady.org to view the updated evacuation zone on the Current Emergencies Map and to sign up for MendoAlert and Nixle.

---

LOCAL EVENTS (this week)

---

MENDO MONOGRAPHS

by Katy Tahja

If Mendocino County history fascinates you, there is a great source of entertaining information in the 60 year old publications of the Mendocino County Historical Society. Readers can find them in libraries, in the archives of museums, and if you’re really lucky at a thrift store for one dollar.

I picked 20 of these monographs, as the Historical Society called them, to share. Some were organized into a series, like logging, law, adventure, biography and autobiography, and some belonged to no category. They were all written by volunteers with hand drawn covers. Some were six pages long and some over 30 pages long. Binding was three staples along the side with tape over it. They were labors of love by old folks focusing on a single topic.

Three monographs in the Kelley House Museum in Mendocino were undated and seem to be from the 1960s. “Lore of the Coast: Fact or Fiction” offered five stories on singing fish, killer bears, the Chinese people and the County’s first election. “Logging with Ox Teams: an Epic of Ingenuity” focused on the south coast. “The Saga of Little River: 1854-1865” has a great tale of an alligator found in Little River Bay. “Mendocino County Vignettes” has law and adventure stories with the long involved story of the Mendocino Outlaws, Black Bart and Sheriff Doc Stanley. Another volume on logging, “Where There is a Will There is a Way,” looks at unusual logging and lumbering methods on the Mendocino coast, with nine photos.

“Tales of Mendocino County” in 1966 was the first in a series of collected stories from around the county. Nine tales and a great poem are included. “Reminiscences:L Early Days on the Coast” covers Fort Bragg, Kibesillah, and one man’s memories for 19 pages. “The Saga of Redwood Valley:Last of the West” told of white people settling the valley. Again, once man shared 28 pages of “Memories of Redwood Valley”. There’s “Bridgeport” 16 pages on a tiny coast town, and “Tales from the Redwood Coast” with stories from Rockport to Navarro.

“Valleys of Mendocino County” gives history of 45 locations in the county. Some, like Gravelly Valley and Coyote Valley are under lakes now. Some like Lost Valley and Wheelbarrow Valley I’d never heard of . “Footprints of the Mendocino Coast “ is the biography of Reverend John Simpson Ross with 3 pages of his missionary work from 1871-1903. “Harry Beeson Story: the last Bear Flagger 1829-1914” referred to the coast’s “living landmark” being alive in 1908 after having witnessed the Bear Flag Revolt in1846. “A Pioneer Lumberman’s Story: Autobiography of John Simpson Ross II (the second) was completed in 1927. Ray Schultz wrote “A Boy in the 1900” about growing up in Ukiah.

Last but not least in the Kelley House collection was “Bear Tales and other stories” with 17 stories about bears around the county — some guaranteed to be true. There are a dozen place names in this county with the word bear or grizzly attached.

One story here is by Charles Brown of Philo and is a bear hunt told in poetry in 1940 and printed in the Mendocino Beacon.

Turning to my own library shelves I also found ”Reward $300 for the Arrest & Conviction of the Mendocino Outlaws” by John Keller at over 35 pages long and “Boontling-Strange Boonville Language” by Myrtle Rawles. There was the “Potter Valley Story” and “Eden Valley: Epic of Yesteryear.” And another saga, this one of “Round Valley” with photos.

So wherever or however you find them, be aware that these little jewels of county are out there to discover.

---

R.D. BEACON

I realize, the city of Ukiah, or not give up easy, their annexation, did, but voting for such, craziness, it’s like going out, going on a three-day drunk, and shooting yourself in the foot, the annexation, is about taking, more money out of your pocket, it’s about creating more rules and regulations, for the select few, grab your land, it’s all about imposing, dictator rules, within the community, and imposing greater regulations, by government agencies, the map is self-explanatory, for those of you, and never lived in the city, here’s the things they can do without, going to the voters, and asking, for permission, they can put a meter on your well, and charge you, for your own water, if you’ve got a milk cow or any livestock, they can eventually make you get rid of it, either because the Cal league’s maneuver, at the flies are to dance, or the cow moves, and wakes up a neighbor, and God forbid, if you have chickens, most city people don’t like the sound, a rooster crowing, etc., so you have to get rid of your fresh eggs, some cities, and impose regulations for painting, and other house improvements, selling you mountains of permits, for you to do, repairs on your house, stuff you got, done for nothing, before, they can even tell you, when you can water your guard, they can impose regulations, to deny you the right to use your own water, keeping your flowers beautiful, no city does anything, for the advancement of the populace, most city governments, are all about collecting high taxes, and having control of people if you look around the county, and look at other areas and other communities, throughout Northern California, look what people lost, to annexation, most communities, in regards to annexation, the good people move out, and the blue ice moves in, and the sad thing about all this, people that are involved in, most of time were not born in the area, not true locals to the county, transplants from large cities, it couldn’t get anything done, where they lived before, so they take over your city and neighborhood, in the name of progress, but it is just a giant, tax grab.

---

A LETTER TO THE EDITOR in this week’s edition of Jim Shields’ Mendocino Observer from a writer calling himself “The Thorn, Laytonville” entitled “Yet Another of Five Stupid Mistakes Made by Mendocino County Administrators — #4” complains about the County’s failed cannabis program and its oversight or lack thereof or code enforcement and related complaints. At one point in the letter, however, Mr. Thorn claims that “back in the day a wife of a member of the DA’s office was apprehended with 165 pounds of weed in the Chicago area.”

Not exactly. The woman was the wife of colorful Ukiah-based defense attorney Bert Schlosser (who was never a member of the DA’s office), Mrs. Deborah Schlosser. She was arrested in Utah (not Chicago) in 2009 with 162 pounds of processed and bagged primo Mendo bud while driving her covered Toyota pickup to Minnesota. She got 18 months probation which irked lots of local pot growers who had been jailed for a lot less than 162 pounds of pot, especially while doing interstate transportation and presumed sale of a controlled substance. Around that time, (the late) Bert Schlosser was running for District Attorney against (now judge) Keith Faulder and (now former DA) Meredith Lintott in a special election following the death of DA Norman Vroman in 2006 at the age of 69. Schlosser got about 12% of the vote, if I recall correctly. Lintott won and served one very undistringuished four-year term and then lost to current DA David Eyster. It wasn’t that long ago, actually, but it seems like a different age entirely now. I would guess that processed bud in 2009 pre-legalization was going for maybe $2,000 a pound in those days, so 162 pounds of it could have been worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. (Mark Scaramella)

---

FORT BRAGG’S CARNIVAL BY THE SEA

The Carnival by the Sea returns today (Thursday)! They are busy setting up. Thanks to the Lion’s Club and the Skunk Train for allowing use of their property. Just enter at the west end of Redwood Avenue and have fun!

(Lindy Peters)

---

ELK FIRE BARBECUE

The Elk Volunteer Fire Department celebrates 69 years of service at its 19th Annual Summer BBQ on Saturday, July 26, noon to 4:00 p.m. at the Greenwood Community Center in downtown Elk. Savor tri-tip, chicken or polenta and mushroom entrees plus sides, dessert and coffee. Donation: $30 for adults, $15 for kids 7-12; 6 and under are free. Enjoy a no-host bar featuring Elk’s famous Margaritas, live music with Bryn and Blue Souls, a performance by Mendo Taiko, a silent auction, a raffle, and activities for kids. Come out and support the firefighters who serve Elk and provide mutual aid to and share projects with Anderson Valley. As the department’s only fundraiser, the annual BBQ generates critical funds to maintain the department’s facilities, vehicles, equipment, ongoing training and safety gear for the firefighters. Kindly leave the dogs at home. For more information, contact Sarah Penrod at 877-1607.

Left to right - standing: Logan Umble, Captain Joe Castanera, Chief Bob Matson, Captain Brian Weston, Eric Bloyd, David Gates, Harolde Searles, Westin Benfield, Olie Erickson

Left to right - kneeling: Luke Weston, Asst Chief Jay Penrod, Connor Umble, Wylie Benfield, Jessica Ballard, Matt Drewno. Not pictured - Asst Chief Bob Askew, Ty Benfield, Judy Bonney, Miranda Edison, Ronnie Karish, Curtis Koval, Jared McKenney, Clancy Powers.

---

RENTERS’ RIGHTS WORKSHOP

Learn How California Protects Tenants

The Ukiah Branch Library invites the community to a free Renters’ Rights Workshop on Friday, July 25 from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. This educational event is designed to inform tenants living in California about their legal protections and rights, specifically related to the Tenant Protection Act of 2019.

Hosted by Legal Services of Northern California, this workshop will cover an overview of renters’ protections under the Tenant Protection Act, including understanding the eviction process and proper landlord notice requirements; just-cause eviction protections for tenants and when a landlord must provide a relocation payment and tenant protections when a landlord wants to increase the rent. This workshop will also cover tenant resources and where to seek assistance if needed.

Losing your home can be one of the most devastating events of your life, causing tremendous financial setbacks, with a potential risk of homelessness. Know your rights. Every tenant in California deserves to know their rights and how the State of California protects them.

This event is sponsored by the Ukiah Valley Friends of the Library and the Mendocino County Library. For more information, please visit www.mendolibrary.org or contact the Ukiah Branch at 707-463-4490.

---

ART WALK UKIAH

Solo Spin-Out: The Captivating Art of Tamsen Donner

The Ukiah Branch Library invites the community to join us for Art Walk Ukiah on Friday, August 1 from 5 - 7 p.m. The library will feature an art exhibition by local artist, Tamsen Donner. The exhibition will be on display at the library from July 1 through August 30.

For over 50 years, art has been an anchor for Donner and a way to order the cacophony of the world. She enjoys the sheer pleasure of studying something and imagining what it could become. Tamsen’s colorful and whimsical oil paintings transport the viewer to a different place and time where the ordinary becomes the extraordinary. When asked what she enjoys most about her art, Tamsen says she loves being the ruler of her own tiny empire of paint.

The Branch will host live music by Mendo Jazz Collective. Guests can enjoy an all-ages mini canvas painting program and a book sale by the Ukiah Valley Friends of the Library as they browse the Art Walk.

This exhibition is free to the public, open to all ages, and is sponsored by the generous support of the Ukiah Valley Friends of the Library and Mendocino County Library.

For more information, please visit www.mendolibrary.org or contact the Ukiah Branch at 707-463-4490.

---

ED NOTES

FROM THE ARCHIVE (September 2009) — Tim Lincecum Arrested For Marijuana Possession…

THE FURIES are unleashed daily.

Tim Lincecum, the Giants ace pitcher, gets stopped for speeding at Hazel Dell, Washington. His Mercedes smells like pot, and by golly Lincecum fesses right up. “And here’s the pot itself, officer.” As sports fans know, Lincecum is a little guy who maintains a retro-stoner look, circa 1975, complete with unfashionably long hair that flows to un-jock lengths down his back. If you didn’t know he was a famous ballplayer, just saw him on the street, you’d think, “There’s a toker right there.”

It’s not like drugs are unknown in sports world, they’re integral to it. We all remember that Dock Ellis pitched a no hitter on LSD, which seems to me improbable beyond all improbability, but he did. Ellis said when he saw three hitters at the plate he simply pitched to the middle one, a take off on the old joke by Babe Ruth that when he was playing drunk he swung at the ball in the center of the three coming at him. A huge fan favorite, Lincecum is smart and funny, witty even, which sets him apart in the sports world. Little kids in droves show up at the ballpark in their Lincecum jerseys with their hair growing as long as Mom will allow. Judging from the response of Giants fans to Lincecum’s pot bust — “We love him even more now” to “Maybe he should get a High Young to go with his Cy Young,” nobody cares if he smokes pot. Except for an 88-year-old grandmother who said she was so disappointed in Lincecum that she wouldn’t be going out to the ballpark with the kids again, that he should take his inescapable role model responsibilities much more seriously. When I was a kid I read every thing I could find on Babe Ruth, who sometimes played drunk, often played with serious hangovers and was known to enjoy late nights with women he wasn’t married to. The rounders I knew as a child seemed to be nicer people, more human, more understanding than, say, the school teachers and other authority figures I encountered. Role models? If a kid has to look outside his family for role models he’s already on a tough road, but holding up celebrities and athletes for kids to emulate is sad, pathetic even, and Lincecum is better than most, although he might explain to little kids that dope at an early age is a very bad thing to get into.

Here’s a sampling of Bay Area opinion on the Lincecum bust:

• “Least surprising pot bust ever.”
• “State lines are notorious speed traps. Guess TL will know that now. What I want to know is how do you drive Hwy 5 and not get high?”
• “The smells of burned and unburned weed are quite different, and easy to tell apart (even to Partnership for a Drug Free America types like some of you commenters, and especially to trained cops). There is no indication whatsoever that he was ‘tokin’,’ while driving; actually quite the opposite. He had to get from point A to point B. He had to bring his weed and pipe, they weren’t gonna get there by themselves. (Timmy: put it in the trunk next time or just buy some more when you get to Seattle, brah.) The speeding is just laughable. 74 on I-5 in a Mercedes? He must have felt like he was jogging. What a non-story all around. Do NOT apologize, Tim!”
• “The funniest thing about this is that my friends and I had nicknamed Lincecum ‘The Stoner’ for the past two years while we’ve been rooting for him. He just always looked kind of stoned when he’d go out there and take the mound, but it didn’t seem to affect his performance. Now he’s officially ‘The Stoner’.”
• “How come the story doesn’t mention the fact that Zito was in the backseat packing another bowl? You know that’s where he got it. Gooooooooooo Giants! Another playoff-less, world series championship-less season awaits you.”
• “No wonder Lincecum’s best pitch is the High Heat.”
• “It’s tragic the way drugs have stunted his career.”
• “Weed is a performance enhancing drug, for some of us lucky types who don’t vegetate while stoned. I can ride my bike better and faster and wreck less cause I’m in the zone. And when peddling up a big climb, the question is not ‘do my lungs hurt more?,’ but rather, ‘who gives a dern about this hill?’ Perhaps Lincecum CAN pitch best whilst he is baked!”
• “You’d smoke too if your win total depended on guys like Renteria, Rowand, Wynn, Garko and Ishikawa! Oh well, there goes the picture on the Wheaties box!”
• “‘It was determined he was not impaired. He was cited and released at the scene…’ Love it. Did the cops put on a catcher outfit, and ask him to throw it right down the middle? Ha ha. Those cops now have a priceless autograph.”
• “So what? How many San Franciscans, and Bay Area folk DON’T get busted? Everyone engages every so often, even if you don’t, who cares? And speeding? C’mon, kid. 74? That’s not even his slowest curve ball. Pick it up a notch.”
• “Unless you have never smoked some weed, then just shut the eff up. And if you never have, I don’t want to know you or hear from you. Timmeh just got a lot more real to all us Giants fans!”
• “I’d have to get high too if I had to play for the Giants. I guess he has to smoke dope to cope. Lemme guess: when he gets high it makes him concentrate more and makes him become a better pitcher. Wow, what genius!”
• “Maybe the Giants hitters should smoke a bowl or two.”
• “Hey Tim! Light it up at home, in private! Didn’t you learn anything from Michael Phelps?! Regarding this affecting his contract negotiations, Uh, nope not this guy and not in SF!”
• “There is an old formula that says ‘If A equals B and B equals C than A equals C.’ If Tim is one of, if not the best, pitchers in baseball and he smokes some pot, than give some to the whole darned team. Maybe a World Series will be the result.”
• “Well, as far as I’m concerned…. We should… there should be… um… What were we talking about again????”
• “Oh no, a baseball player with drugs! Amazing. I am shocked, not a major leaguer. (Insert sarcastic facial expression here)”
• “Rather than rat out his dealer, I hope he had the presence of mind to say, ‘I bought it off a guy in Golden Gate Park.’ That’s what every conscientious grass smoker did when I was a kid.”
• “See, it’s just like what they used to tell us kids: Smoke pot and you’ll never amount to anything in life.”
• “A budding superstar!”

---

---

CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, July 9, 2025

TINA CORNWALL, 31, Ukiah. Controlled substance with two or more priors, paraphernalia.

YVONNE LABOYTEAUX, 73, Napa/Ukiah. DUI-any drug.

NIKOLAS LOPEZ-SALAS, 23, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

RICHARD NEAGLE, 45, Willits. Placing pollutants near state waters, disobeying court order.

GILDA REAL, 56, Willits. No license, suspended license for DUI, habitual traffic offender.

ASHTYN TAYLOR, 19, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

CHRISTINA TORRES, 37, Ukiah. Battery with serious injury.

EDUARDO VICENTE, 32, Laytonville. DUI.

NORMAN WHITE, 45, Ukiah. Controlled substance with two or more priors, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

KYLE WILLIAMSON, 37, Redwood Valley. DUI.

---

---

TESSA KNIGHT:

As a single woman who has lived in Shelter Cove since 2000 and purchased a home 18 years ago, I would like to propose a Home Maintenance Lottery for single women. Bingos, bake sales, raffles, donations.

It has almost always been a dream of mine to suggest this after seeing my friend’s single mom struggle with 3+ kids and no assistance in maintenance. I have fallen victim to the struggle of my home as well and have found it’s just easier to let it go and move on. (I can’t afford health insurance because the government concludes due to owning my home, i make $57,000 a year.) Drowning in property taxes. With the burden of geography, economy and coastal weather, please check in on your single and elderly neighbors.

---

OBSESSION!

Editor,

As long as we exist, we change. While we strive to prevent it, we cannot. Life is a form of predestination. Aging will come about regardless of our wishes. Maybe that’s why humans focus on micromanaging each other. Perhaps that is why our obsessions isolate and prevent us from hearing outcries or recognizing the harm we cause.

The first step to recognizing an obsession is understanding that it makes us powerless to reason, insensitive to others, and brutally dedicated to a cause.

Every 4th of July, I think about Fredrick Douglass’ speech about disparity. Insensitivity(racism) was a problem during his lifetime and now. Then, I think about how Columbus imported a European obsession, the lust for gold. And how our culture destroyed native civilizations for the sake of possessing it. While we might think our behavior is different now, we should note that we are still obsessed with wealth and destroying each other’s lives to attain it. Change will never happen unless compassion is internalized. Once embedded into our conscience, civility will guide us to better decisions.

Tom Fantulin

Fort Bragg

---

“What am I going to do next? I’m going to get in my Mustang and drive to Yale and ask them if they’ll hire me as a teacher, because I’m bored and that’s the only thing I haven’t done yet, and if they will, I’m going to teach those kids how to act without all this Actors Studio crap and all this self-indulgence actors have today. I’ll be rough as a cat, but they’ll learn discipline, because that’s the only way to survive. I survived because I was tougher than everybody else. Joe Mankiewicz always told me, ‘Bette, when you die they oughta only put one sentence on your tombstone—‘She did it the hard way!’ And he was right. And you know something else? It’s the only way.”

— Bette Davis/Interview with Rex Reed/1968

---

THE PEANUT BUTTER EVENT

Editor:

So there I was shopping for discounts on senior citizens day at Oliver’s, braving the slower walking and decision-making of my fellow seniors. When I went up the bread aisle (going south), a woman was blocking the aisle and trying to decide to choose from myriad types of peanut butter. Another woman (going north) was waiting to pass and, judging by her expression, fuming in her shoes. I stopped and politely said “Excuse me,” and the woman making choices said, “Oh, I’m so sorry, I may be here awhile,” and laughed. At the same moment, the other woman, with a mean expression on her face, rammed the woman’s cart, pushing it down the aisle and smugly marched after it.

I was saddened to see this because on a national level, one man and his mean-loving political party has normalized this behavior. Oh sure, the woman could’ve said the same thing I did. But she didn’t. She was mean and bullying.

I knew then the danger we’re in is as simple as this: our behavior toward each other will dictate the survival of our nation. And judging by what I see in public, we may not make it. We need to be better.

Marc Andrade

Santa Rosa

---

SF GIANTS BROADCASTER DROPS PERFECT RADIO CALL OF WALK-OFF INSIDE-THE-PARK HOMER

‘One of the all-time great calls in Giants history’

by Alex Simon

When an unforgettable San Francisco Giants moment happens with Dave Flemming on the radio broadcast, you can usually count on two things: Flemming’s voice sounding like it may crack (or just straight-up cracking) and the longtime broadcaster absolutely nailing the call.

That certainly was the case on Tuesday night, when Giants catcher Patrick Bailey hit an unbelievable walk-off inside-the-park homer to turn a two-run deficit into a 4-3 Giants win.

Bailey stepped up to the plate with runners on first and third and one out in the ninth, with the Giants down 3-1 to the Phillies. On the first pitch of his at-bat against Philadelphia closer Jordan Romano, Bailey crushed a ball to right-center. Here’s what Flemming said on KNBR-AM/FM from there.

“Patrick hits a high drive, deep right-center field. This one is … off the top of the wall! And it ricochets! And it’s rolling on the warning track! Two runs are in, Bailey coming around third. Patrick Bailey scores! It’s an inside-the-park walk-off home run! Now we’ve seen everything. And Patrick Bailey gets tackled as he crosses home plate. Amazing.”

At that point, Flemming finally takes an extended breath and allows the stadium sound to come through the airwaves for several seconds. On a play that you feel like you’d need to see to believe, the Giants broadcaster gave listeners everything you needed to know about the play and how it happened, while nailing the timing to get the key moment to listeners as Bailey crossed home plate.

In the afterglow of the moment, KNBR played Flemming’s call throughout the rest of the night on the postgame show. One KNBR caller, perhaps caught in the moment and getting a bit hyperbolic, said Flemming’s call was the greatest radio call of all time. His partner for the night, former big leaguer F.P. Santangelo, didn’t go that far, but did agree to an extent on X.

“Dave Flemming’s call of Bailey’s walk-off inside-the-park home run was one of the all-time great calls in Giants history,” Santangelo wrote.

For most Giants fans, Flemming’s call of Edgar Renteria’s game-winning home run in the clinching game of the Giants’ first World Series win in San Francisco in 2010 will be forever etched in their brain, especially because his voice cracked in the middle of the call. Now, Tuesday’s call — with no full voice crack, though he sounds like he came close — may end up close to that one in the memory bank.

(SFGate.com)

---

JUSTIN VERLANDER DESERVES BETTER as Giants suffer season’s worst loss

by Shayna Rubin

The San Francisco Giants had a chance to sweep the Philadelphia Phillies. Instead they turned in one of their ugliest losses of the year, a 13-0 drubbing on Wednesday afternoon that is this team’s largest margin of defeat in a shutout loss since 2018.

Justin Verlander, the afternoon’s starter, would have every reason to be frustrated. The defense committed three errors, leading to two unearned runs. The offense could muster only four hits off Jesus Luzardo and the Phillies’ bullpen. Verlander (0-7) is still without a win at the All-Star break. He’s received 26 runs of support in 15 starts, tied for second-fewest in baseball for a qualified starting pitcher.

But Verlander wasn’t frustrated by the latest chapter in this historically unlucky stretch. On the contrary, he was more optimistic than he has been all year.

A mechanical tweak he’d been working on led to some of the best pitches the 42-year-old has thrown this season. Verlander saw it as a breakthrough, validated when his first pitch to Trea Turner clocked in at 96 mph, two ticks higher than his season average.

“The first pitch of the game was 96 and I was like, ‘Oh, my god, thank you,’” Verlander said, throwing his head back and chuckling.

The tweak was simple in concept: Verlander has been working to get the ball out of his glove earlier in his delivery, during his leg kick. The surefire Hall of Famer has been “harping on” finding a way to create more deception, and ensuring that opposing hitters don’t see the ball too soon. Hours working on the tweak in bullpen sessions gave him hope, but he was relieved when he saw it worked amid the faster pace of an actual game.

Verlander’s excitement grew when he saw the Phillies take ugly swings on his off-speed offerings, an indication that he’d achieved the deception he wanted to. In his last outing, lack of deception allowed the A’s to barrel the ball consistently and score six runs off Verlander, resulting in a start he later called “embarrassing.”

“I’ve been searching a lot. It’s been difficult,” Verlander said Wednesday. “Been working my butt off. But I’m very optimistic that, hopefully, this mechanical fix is the one that kind of sends me into a good second half.”

Added manager Bob Melvin: “I thought it was his best stuff of the year, maybe by a pretty good margin. We just didn’t play well behind him and we didn’t score many runs. And that’s been the theme when he’s pitched.”

The Giants would benefit from this type of outing from Verlander in the second half — of course, they’ll hope to score a few more runs for him, too. He struck out seven and induced 16 swings-and-misses, second most to the nine strikeouts and 20 whiffs he got in a start on April 9 against the Cincinnati Reds. His slider induced nine whiffs, not including the two on his sweeper, and his curveball three.

Improved timing gave Verlander’s start something of a throwback feel velocity-wise. He touched 97 mph on his four-seamer in the first inning and consistently stayed 1 mph above his season average (94 mph) through his six innings while not issuing a walk.

“Timing is everything. The thing you’re searching for is to be on time, get out in front, that makes it harder on the hitters. They don’t see the ball as early and it gets on them a little more,” Verlander said. “I saw a lot of bad swings, a lot of results I’d like to have as a pitcher. I throw a pitch in a certain count they read as a fastball out of hand and they swing through it. Overall, all my pitches played better.”

As has been the case numerous times, Verlander may have deserved a win.

Bryce Harper was Verlander’s biggest thorn. He hit a 3-1 fastball to left for a solo home run to make it 2-0 in the fourth. The 105.4 mph exit velocity was the hardest hit Verlander allowed all afternoon.

In the sixth, Harper doubled to begin a two-run inning for the Phillies. Nick Castellanos reached out to connect on a slider for an RBI single, then stole second and advanced to third on catcher Andrew Knizner’s errant attempt to catch him. He’d score on Max Kepler’s sacrifice fly.

A team win was still in play, but the bullpen put a victory out of reach by the eighth as Philadelphia scored seven runs off Tristan Beck and Scott Alexander, both recently recalled to aid a taxed and injured bullpen.

Meanwhile, the Giants could get nothing going against lefty starter Jesus Luzardo, who had some of his best command. Luzardo struck out seven and walked one, giving up just three hits. Wilmer Flores accounted for two of them. Things were so out of hand that Mike Yastrzemski made his second career pitching appearance in the ninth. The Phillies tacked on two more runs.

“I feel like I come in here saying the same thing,” Melvin said. “It feels like every time we don’t score runs for (Verlander). At this point in time, he should certainly have a couple wins and he doesn’t. Unfortunately, I think we all kind of feel it.”

(sfchronicle.com)

---

---

TENSIONS ESCALATE IN SAN FRANCISCO OVER IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT

Videos captured a scuffle between protesters and immigration agents outside a courthouse. No injuries were immediately reported, the police said.

by Francesca Regalado & Soumya Karlamangia

Tensions over immigration enforcement in San Francisco escalated this week when federal agents clashed with activists who tried to block an arrest outside a courthouse, with the agents at one point driving away in a van with protesters hanging from the hood of the vehicle.

The confrontation on Tuesday came as frustrations grow in the San Francisco Bay Area over federal agents’ aggressive efforts to detain immigrants after they attend required immigration proceedings.

Since late May, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have regularly been spotted around the San Francisco Immigration Court building downtown, including in its hallways and waiting rooms and outside its doors. Their presence has attracted a growing number of protesters who have tried to block the building’s entrances and shouted at and scuffled with officers. A month ago, demonstrations forced the immigration courts in both San Francisco and Concord, about 30 miles northeast, to close for nearly two days.

The new ICE approach is a significant break from past practice, when immigration officials largely steered clear of courthouse arrests out of concern that they would deter people from complying with legal orders.

Videos taken by witnesses and local news media, and verified by The New York Times, on Tuesday show masked agents, with body armor and batons, pushing through a crowd of demonstrators to load a handcuffed man into a black minivan. The footage shows agents and protesters shoving one another as some protesters surround the van.

The van then began to drive slowly down Montgomery Street, even as several protesters clambered on top of it, footage shows. One video captures the van speeding up with one protester clinging to the hood before falling onto the asphalt.

“Someone’s going to get run over,” Joel Garcia, an entrepreneur who captured the footage from a high-rise building across the street, says in the video, which he posted to X.

Emily Covington, a spokeswoman for ICE, said in a statement that protesters on Tuesday had “violently attacked and obstructed federal ICE officers who were simply doing their job by enforcing the rule of law.” She added, “Of course these protesters have zero respect for the rule of law, as they so casually violate it.”

The courthouse arrests have come as the Trump administration is trying to increase deportations as part of its immigration crackdown.

In an email, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security defended the arrests. Immigrants who have a valid claim for asylum can continue with their proceedings, but those who don’t “will be subject to a swift deportation,” the spokesperson said. The department said that most immigrants who entered the United States within the past two years are subject to “expedited removal” if they could not show that they have a valid claim for credible fear of returning to their home countries.

The San Francisco Police Department said in an email that no injuries had been reported from the episode on Tuesday, and that it had not been involved.

The courthouse arrests in San Francisco appear to be part of a new Trump administration effort to detain migrants at immigration courts immediately after hearings if they have been ordered to be deported or if their cases have been dismissed.

California is home to an estimated 1.8 million undocumented immigrants, more than any other state. Though Los Angeles has become ground zero for the nation’s immigration protests this year, the Bay Area also has seen large and tense demonstrations over immigration raids, with more than 150 people arrested at a single demonstration last month.

In June, President Trump mobilized about 4,000 California National Guard troops and 700 Marines in Los Angeles after protests and resistance against ICE agents intensified in Southern California. He has not sent soldiers to the Bay Area or other parts of California.

In San Francisco, federal immigration agents since late May have waited outside courtrooms, waiting to arrest asylum seekers, said Milli Atkinson, the director of the San Francisco Bar Association’s immigrant legal defense program. The organization has confirmed that about 25 people have been arrested at the immigration court in the past month, she said.

“ICE used to show up once or twice a week. Now they’re a daily occurrence,” Ms. Atkinson said, adding that it had spread fear among migrants. “Because it’s random and it’s hard to know when ICE will show up or who they’ll target, there’s been a large increase of people who don’t show up to their hearings.”

Ms. Atkinson declined to identify the man arrested by ICE on Tuesday, but said that a lawyer from her organization had met the man inside the building to guide him through court proceedings. After he was arrested, the asylum seeker was taken to another federal building in San Francisco, where immigration officials did not allow a lawyer from the bar association to speak with him, Ms. Atkinson said.

ICE and Homeland Security officials did not comment on individual cases.

(NY Times)

---

MAYHEM AT THE RIVER INN CROSSING: A Dark-of-Night Flood Escape

Along the Guadalupe River, a 60-room inn and nearby homes were quickly filling with water. Confusion, desperation and heroism ensued.

by Meredith Honig & John Branch

The screams were coming from outside, through the dark and the din of the thunderstorm. People along the overflowing Guadalupe River were desperate, scared for their lives.

The rain had been coming down hard, into the grim early hours of July 4, but it was the lightning and thunder that kept people awake. The electric sky lit up the landscape like a strobe light, providing glimpses of what was happening and adding a surreal effect to the night.

In a flash, the manager of an inn saw the river where he had never imagined it could reach. A family saw into the house next door, where furniture floated in the living room.

What is happening? Room to room, house to house, minds tried to make sense of the water rising all around. A woman in bed saw animals run past her window, not realizing that they were logs and debris being carried by a river that had climbed 30 feet in the dark. A woman told neighbors that she awoke in bed to discover her two dogs swimming toward her. People awoke to strangers banging on their doors.

It was the middle of the night. The water was rising. And somewhere out there, people were screaming.

As all this played out around Marymeade Drive and River Inn Resort, in Texas’ Hill Country, other scenes of horror unfolded up and down the river in the early morning of July 4.

At Camp Mystic, an overnight camp for girls about a mile downstream, hundreds were in their beds and bunks. The youngest campers slept closest to the water. At least 27 of the campers and counselors died in the flood.

Other places were epicenters of heartbreak, too, like the R.V. park and campground with waterfront cabins, pull-through sites for trailers and, across a small bridge, on a low-lying island, people staying in tents. Many would die that night.

They were victims of the cruelest perfect storm: a severe, stalled weather cell wringing out over a remote river basin in midsummer holiday, all in the dark of night.

Had this one come 12 hours before or after, when the light of day would have allowed people to see what was happening before it was too late, there would likely have been far fewer fatalities. A 1932 flood of similar scope struck the region during midday. It ripped away six cabins at Camp Mystic, but no campers died.

This storm was far more sinister. Stories of tragedy, heartbreak and regret abound from the dark hours of July 4 and the days since. There are also tales of heroism, survival and luck.

This is the story of one place, on one bend of the Guadalupe River, that experienced all of that in a matter of about two hours.

A man and his wife, sweethearts since the summer of 1967, escaped into their car and intended to head uphill. They did not get there.

Three generations of a family, ages 6 to the 80s, nearly trapped inside their house, found the only path was through the water.

In a tiny cabin nearby, a grandmother and four young girls clung to a tree, climbing higher and higher to escape the rising water. They screamed into the dark — heard, but not reached.

Off Marymeade Drive, people shuffled uphill, the only place that might be safe. Many were barefoot, in nightgowns and pajamas. On the slope, shivering in the rain, they could see the swirl of chaos below — their beloved river, coming to get them.

Desperation and Panic

Scott Towery, 66, is the general manager of River Inn, a two-story, 60-room resort on a small rise along the Guadalupe. The units are individually owned, and they’re commonly rented out for retreats and family reunions. Parents with children at nearby summer camps, like Mystic, stay there when they drop the kids off or pick them up.

Nearby, the two-lane Highway 39 crosses the south fork of the river with a low-water bridge. Locals call it the River Inn Crossing, and they know that water can cover it sometimes. Just don’t cross when the water’s deep.

The rooms were full for the holiday weekend. The evening before was nice. People talked, grilled and played games outside to dusk. But by midnight, rain was falling hard. Most people were in bed. A weather alert reached some phones at 1:14 a.m. A flash-flood alert. No surprise. It happens a lot.

But the storm cell seemed to have stalled over the Guadalupe River. The lightning and thunder were relentless.

Connie Towery, Scott’s wife, was one of those who could not sleep. At about 2 a.m., she got up and looked at a rain gauge: 4.5 inches. She woke up her husband. In minutes, another inch had fallen.

“Intense lightning, intense thunder and raindrops as big as your fist,” Scott said.

He quickly understood that the river was rising, fast. The boathouse disappeared. The water was coming for the River Inn next.

“The water sounded like a bunch of train engines running together,” Scott said. “A big force of noise.”

The Towerys woke up Lisa Coffey, 61, who was staying in one of the two units she owns. We’ve got to get everyone up, he told her.

The three split up and banged on doors. Not everyone moved quickly. Many were confused. “It’s 2:00 and we’re telling people to get up,” Scott said. “‘You gotta get off the property.’”

He told people that the cars in the lot behind the resort could carry them to safety. Take a left, and then head up the hill.

The river kept rising. Soon it was washing into the first-floor rooms, rearranging furniture. Then it was in the parking lot, moving cars. Desperation and panic rose with the water.

The three repeated their pleas with more urgency and louder knocks. Scott sent Connie to higher ground in the car; she returned to say that the road was flooded. They were trapped.

Among those who got into a car were Randy and Mollie Schaffer, a couple in their 70s. They had been together since 1967.

Mollie drove, Randy explained in a social-media post. She took a left, as directed, but ran into a jam of confusion — cars stopped, some making U-turns — and pulled over. Water rose up the doors around them. Soon, the car was floating and banging against a tree. The doors wouldn’t open. Mollie told Randy to climb out the window. He struggled as she slipped out her side.

“You have to push harder,” she said, and then was gone.

Randy escaped through the door and was pulled under. He thought he was going to die until he bumped into a pole and hung on. He scanned the rushing water, searching for Mollie and the car. He never saw them.

He clung to the pole for an hour, he said, inching up it to stay above the water’s rising reach until he nearly got to the top. The landscape around him was black; the power was out, and sunrise on July 4 wasn’t until 6:40 a.m.

The water slowly receded. Randy shimmied down the pole to the ground. It was still dark. He wandered the area looking for Mollie.

Her body was found on Sunday. Randy identified it through a photo of her ring.

“I met Mollie in June of 1967, weeks after we graduated from high school,” he wrote on Facebook. “We’ve been together ever since, separated only at the end by the raging waters of the Guadalupe River.”

It’s unclear if anyone else who stayed at River Inn died that night. The resort does not keep a precise list of occupants.

But dozens made it up the hill to safety before the rushing currents turned the resort into an island and pulled parked cars downstream. Most were stranded on the property. They waded through waist-deep water, with the storm in full bellow, unsure where to go.

Nearly 50 people, using sheets tied together, were pulled to a rooftop to wait out the storm and hope the water didn’t rise too high. At least one couple in an upstairs unit sat through the storm and survived.

Two River Inn employees in a nearby cabin were among the last to wake up, finding their room flooded. They survived, returned this week to grab their belongings, and said they were never coming back.

Lisa Coffey and Scott Towery credited Connie Towery for getting people moving.

“I don’t want to think what it would be like if Connie hadn’t woken up,” Lisa Coffey said.

“We could have been the next Camp Mystic,” Scott Towery said.

‘Middle of an Ocean’

The river climbed higher, past the River Inn. Like others, the Killians never saw it coming.

Matt and Leslie Killian, from the Houston suburbs, had arrived to a relative’s home with their four children, ages 6 to 12, after dark. Everyone was excited for the holiday weekend on the river.

They parked their gold Toyota Sienna van behind the house and didn’t unpack everything, like battery chargers, life jackets — things they wouldn’t need overnight, certainly.

The house belonged to Matt’s uncle and aunt, Tom and Sandy Killian. They built it in the 1990s and lived there full time, near where Buffalo Creek merges with the Guadalupe River. That acute angle, a wedge, between two swollen waterways, became the site of destruction.

The children went to sleep. Matt and Leslie played on their phones, and then dozed, off and on. The rain was loud on the metal roof. Matt looked out the window at the van at 2 a.m. The driveway was merely wet. Nothing to worry about.

A cracking sound stirred them at 3:30. From bed, Leslie glanced out the window and saw two deer, or some kind of big animal, dart past. That’s what she thought, anyway. She stood to use the bathroom. Her feet landed in a puddle. A light showed that it was growing fast.

Stirred from the fog of sleep, Leslie looked out the window again. What she had thought were running animals were logs and other debris, rushing past in a current.

The Killians woke up their children and told them to get dressed. They roused Tom and Sandy, both in their 80s. Through the home’s glass doors, they could see water rising against the panes. Soon things were floating in a swirl — mattresses, tables, cushions, the refrigerator.

The most surreal sight was dozens of deer antlers, floating through the house. Tom and Sandy had a huge collection, and now they were loose, crashing all around them.

The sound was unforgettable: groaning wood, shattering glass, clacking antlers, all under a downpour on the roof and the rush of water through the seams of the house. The smell, too: sewage up from the toilets, gasoline from spilled containers in the garage.

The water in the house rose, now to the edge of the counter, now to the chin level of 6-year-old Cora, soon beyond 6 feet. There was no upstairs, no attic. The only escape was out, into the open water.

“The lightning is flashing, and it’s like we’re living in the middle of an ocean,” Leslie said. “It felt like the story of Jesus and Peter, when Jesus was commanding Peter to walk out onto the water. And Peter was like, ‘No.’”

The doors were pinned shut by the force of the water. Matt used all his strength to fight the weight of the flood. The parents and the children rushed through the opening before it snapped shut. Tom and Sandy were still inside.

Matt lifted the children atop a 4-foot garden wall, the water up to the last brick. He looked for a way to climb to the roof so that everyone could hang on to the chimney. He pushed the door open just enough for his uncle and aunt to squeeze outside.

Lightning flashed. “Land!” 12-year-old Case shouted. He had spotted a rise behind the house.

The parents instructed the children: Jump into the water. Case, carry Cora on your back. Gemma, Ruby — follow them. Steer to one side because the current might drag you the other way. The water was up to 9-year-old Ruby’s neck.

They pushed uphill. Matt helped Tom and Sandy. They shouted encouragement and instructions. Those were the screams that others nearby had heard.

“If we were a minute or two or five behind, we wouldn’t have gotten out,” Matt said.

Just two hours earlier, the van sat in the rain. Now it was gone, carried downriver with the life preservers inside. Tom and Sandy lost one of their three dogs, too — only to discover it safe the next day, floating on a mattress in their ruined home.

The family made it uphill to solid ground, to a neighbor’s house, where the water licked the front steps. Leslie took their children higher, up a steep gravel road. There was no reason to think the water wouldn’t keep climbing, too.

For a few terrifying minutes, in the confusion and dark, Matt lost sight of his wife and children. He ran up the hill, frantically.

“Dad!” one his daughters shouted.

“It’s the best feeling in the world,” he said, “after the worst feeling in the world.”

Dawn approached. The sky started to brighten. The water began to recede.

(NY Times)

---

---

THE WHOLE MESS… ALMOST

by Gregory Corso

I ran up six flights of stairs
to my small furnished room
opened the window
and began throwing out
those things most important in life

First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:
'Don't! I'll tell awful things about you!'
'Oh yeah! Well, I've nothing to hide… OUT!'
Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:
'It's not my fault! I'm not the cause of it all!' 'OUT!'
Then Love, cooing bribes: 'You'll never know impotency!
All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!'
I pushed her fat ass out and screamed:
'You always end up a bummer!'
I picked up Faith Hope Charity
all three clinging together:
'Without us you'll surely die!'
'With you I'm going nuts! Goodbye!'

The Beauty… ah, Beauty--
As I led her to the window
I told her: 'You I loved the best in life
…but you're a killer; Beauty kills!'
Not really meaning to drop her
I immediately ran downstairs
getting there just in time to catch her
'You saved me!' she cried
I put her down and told her: 'Move on.'

Went back up those six flights
went to the money
there was no money to throw out.
The only thing left in the room was Death
hiding beneath the kitchen sink:
'I'm not real!' It cried
'I'm just a rumor spread by life…'
Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all
and suddenly realized Humor
was all that was left--
All I could do with Humor was to say:
'Out the window with the window!'

---

IT’S CHINATOWN, JAKE

At one point during the filming of “Chinatown” (1974), Roman Polanski and Jack Nicholson got into such a heated argument, that Polanski smashed Nicholson’s portable television with a mop. Nicholson used the television to watch Los Angeles Lakers basketball games, and kept stalling shooting.

Polanski had been planning to make a film with Nicholson for a while, but hadn’t found the right property yet. He actively pursued the script when he learned about it. As luck would have it, Polanski was also producer Robert Evans’ first choice for director, as he wanted a European vision of the United States, which he felt would be darker, and a little more cynical.

Nicholson’s character, Jake Gittes, is present in every scene of the film. To emphasize the point that the audience is seeing everything from Gittes’ perspective, Polanski often put the camera behind Nicholson, so the audience sees his back and shoulders.

At the time of filming, Nicholson had just embarked on his longstanding relationship with Anjelica Huston. This made his scenes with her father, John Huston, rather uncomfortable, especially as the only time Anjelica was on-set, was the day they were filming the scene where Noah Cross interrogates Nicholson’s character with “Mr. Gittes…do you sleep with my daughter?” (Huston was offered the chance to direct this movie, but he decided that he did not want to).

Cross’ mispronunciation of Gittes’ last name wasn’t in the script. Huston couldn’t get it right, so Polanski had Nicholson add a line trying to correct him, and after that just let it go.

The scene where Polanski slits Nicholson’s nose was extremely complex to film, and the two men involved got so tired of explaining how it was done (by using a specially-constructed knife with a short hinge that would be safe as long as it was handled VERY carefully) that they began to claim Nicholson’s nose was actually cut.

The film’s enigmatic title is a metaphor for moral corruption by unseen forces. Throughout the film, Gittes refers to his time as a police officer in Chinatown, where “you can’t always tell what’s going on.” In Hollywood, the movie’s line, “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown”, has become a mantra for those who have been burned or snubbed by the entertainment industry, the implication being that it’s better to “let it go” than make an issue of it, because that’s just how the industry works. (IMDb)

Happy Birthday, Jack Nicholson!

---

MAMDANI, an on-line comment:

Exactly what’s so frightening to Americans or New Yorkers or the elites (who never ride the buses or take the subways) that would make buses free and child care free? For a city that’s rapacious to a fault and thrives on crimson capitalism, is it anathema to bring in a little humaneness to the have-nots? Those (newspapers) who decry the current incumbent of the white house and devote columns and op-eds and main page real estate to decry the current administration policies as too radical actually think free bus rides and protections for the poorest is frightful? What am I not getting? Have they visited countries like Sweden, Germany and Italy? Socialist Democracies all. With high per capita incomes. Have they not thrived and are sought after by refugees? So, if you can actually in your mind accepted a man like RFK Jr to be your health secretary, then this Mamdani guy is a centrist politician by comparison, not a leftie.

---

ASTOUNDED YET?

by James Kunstler

This slumping row-house in London’s Charterhouse Square is not a “building” per se, but rather an objet-d’art from the Stunt-and-Clutter school of contemporary art called “A Week at the Knees” by one Alex Chinneck. I confess, I don’t even get the verbal gag. Seems like a non-sequitur to me. But so is most of the production from Stunt-and-Clutter Ltd.

The aim is to astound the public with startling originality. Since there are no longer that many new things under the sun, this calls for ever more extreme ventures into the absurd and hallucinatory. Between the general overload of Internet-generated info civilized folks are subjected to these days, and the new over-lay of paranormal mischief inherent to artificial intelligence, we are becoming a society increasingly untethered from reality.

So, then it must be celebrated, right? As we celebrate every other psychical abnormality foisted on us by the grant recipients of what passes for the culture industry.

One might say what you get here is a perfect domicile for the drug-addled homeless. Living in the tunnel created by this undulation, they could find exactly the kind of home that suits them, without sacrificing their identity as “homeless.” Genius!!

Salutes to J. David Green for the nomination!

---

LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT

Camp Mystic Cabins Stood in an ‘Extremely Hazardous’ Floodway

Administration Takes Steps to Target 2 Officials Who Investigated Trump

Comey Tracked by Secret Service After Post Critical of Trump

Trump Pledges 50% Tariffs Against Brazil, Citing ‘Witch Hunt’ Against Bolsonaro

Measles Cases Hit Highest Total Since U.S. Eliminated the Disease

This Is the Moment for Mexican Indian Food to Flourish

---

---

NOTE ON THE BRENNAN & COMEY INVESTIGATIONS

Yes, Kash Patel did let slip on the Joe Rogan show that he was investigating his predecessor

by Matt Taibbi

One additional note on the news that the FBI has opened criminal investigations into former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA chief John Brennan. Many are speculating on social media that FBI Director Kash Patel dropped a hint when he appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience a month ago, on June 6th:

PATEL: Think about this: me, as the director of the FBI, the former Russiagate guy, when I first got to the Bureau, found a room that Comey and others hid from the world in the Hoover building, full of documents and computer hard drives that no one had ever seen or heard of. Locked the key and hid access and just said, “No one’s ever going to find this place.”

ROGAN: Wha-a-a-t?

PATEL: Yeah. So my guys are going through that right now.

ROGAN: What’s in there?

PATEL: A lot of stuff!

Patel was indeed referring to this investigation, according to my sources, which tells us a few things. For one, the idea that the Brennan and Comey probes were opened as a PR gambit after the Jeffrey Epstein mud-bath is a non-starter. It’s not excluded that the timing of the Fox story breaking the news is germane to Epstein, but the FBI and the CIA have both been working on Russiagate for months.

The story about a room of documents and hard drives at the old FBI headquarters in the J. Edgar Hoover building is noteworthy. When Patel became Director, a problem he had was that materials from the investigation he oversaw under Devin Nunes were located at CIA headquarters. As noted before, reporters gleaned bits of the Langley material over the years, but what might have been found by karmic accident when the FBI decided to move out of the Hoover building is unknown. Could be something, could be nothing, but interesting either way. Incidentally, I’m told Brennan and Comey may not be the FBI’s only investigative targets. As depressing as the Epstein story is, there seems to be real momentum behind this matter. Only, how much?

(racket.news)

---

---

THE EMPIRE IS A NONSTOP INSULT TO OUR INTELLIGENCE

by Caitlin Johnstone

The US has imposed sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for using her position to oppose the most thoroughly documented genocide in history.

At the same time, the US has removed Syria’s Al Qaeda franchise HTS from its list of designated terrorist organizations, because its leader successfully carried out the regime change in Damascus that the western empire had been chasing for years.

At the same time, the UK has added nonviolent anti-genocide activism group Palestine Action to its list of banned terrorist organizations for opposing the Gaza holocaust.

At the same time, the Israeli prime minister who is carrying out that holocaust has nominated the American president who is helping him perpetrate genocidal atrocities for a Nobel Peace Prize.

At the same time, Israel has continued its ban on foreign journalists entering Gaza, while also arresting the Israeli journalist who helped expose the IDF officials who cooked up fake atrocity propaganda about burnt babies on October 7.

At the same time, the Trump administration has enraged its MAGA base by concluding that Jeffrey Epstein had no client list for any kind of sexual blackmail operation and definitely committed suicide.

The western empire is one nonstop insult to our intelligence. The peace advocates are terrorists, the genocide architects deserve peace prizes, the journalists are dangerous, and Epstein was just a wealthy socialite who made a few mistakes.

They do everything they can to make us stupid via propaganda, Silicon Valley information control, and indoctrination schooling systems, and then they treat us like we’re morons for the rest of our lives.

The empire depends on ignorance. The more stupid, racist, gullible, and easily distracted we become, the nastier agendas the empire can roll out. Now here we are watching a live-streamed genocide unfold right in front of our eyes for nearly two years while being tube fed a daily diet of the most ridiculous lies imaginable.

As Aaron Bushnell said, this is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.

(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)

---

August 1874: a fleeting moment, frozen in time by photographer William H. Illingworth, captures Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and his Indian scouts huddled intently around a map in the heart of the Black Hills. Among them, the Arikara scout Bloody Knife points with unshakable focus—his expression unreadable, his fate unknowable. On the surface, it’s a scene of calm strategy under the sun. But behind the stillness brews a coming storm; less than two years later, this very scout would die beside Custer at Little Bighorn, a place now etched in history as the site of a brutal and iconic defeat.

What seems like an innocent act of mapping and exploration was in truth a mission steeped in ambition. The expedition, cloaked in the guise of science and progress, carried the deeper intent of expansion—charting resources, identifying rail routes, and ultimately, breaking sacred treaties with the Sioux Nation. Custer’s tent, gifted by his railroad executive friend and emblazoned with the initials of the Northern Pacific Railroad, stands as a quiet symbol of the economic motives that drove this so-called discovery. When gold was found in the hills, it wasn’t just ore unearthed—it was the spark of a fierce and inevitable conflict.

Look closely at this photo and you’ll see more than men and maps—you’ll see the fragile threads of trust, stretched thin beneath a summer sky. This moment is a prelude, a quiet breath before the roar of history. The alliances formed here, the paths traced on parchment, and the ambitions barely concealed beneath the canvas of that tent would all collide in violence. Illingworth’s lens gives us not just an image, but a haunting glimpse into the cost of conquest—and the lives caught in its path.

---

BE INFLUENCED by as many great artists as you can, but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt outright, or to try to conceal it.

— Ezra Pound

---

ADEQUACY

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

NOW, by the verdure on thy thousand hills,
Beloved England, doth the earth appear
Quite good enough for men to overbear
The will of God in, with rebellious wills !
We cannot say the morning-sun fulfils
Ingloriously its course, nor that the clear
Strong stars without significance insphere
Our habitation: we, meantime, our ills
Heap up against this good and lift a cry
Against this work-day world, this ill-spread feast,
As if ourselves were better certainly
Than what we come to. Maker and High Priest,
I ask thee not my joys to multiply,-
Only to make me worthier of the least.

---