Mendocino County Today: Friday 8/8/2025

Hot | Pond Fire | Kelly Memorial | Christion Schoenfeld | Memorial Postponed | Recall Effort | Jail Diplomas | Court Files | Poison Oak | CRU Role | Variegated Tanoak | Haschak Report | Biggest Abalone | Senior Center | Local Events | AV Farmstands | Weathered Hope | Great Day | Feminine Standards | Tuso & Friends | Ed Notes | Old Photos | Yesterday's Catch | Landlines Essential | Cheap Comics | SMART Tourism | Four Winds | Mill Valley | Bar Tips | Alcatraz Visit | Goose & Gander | Divided/Conquered | As If | Two Cups | Rachel Carson | Texas Rangers | Lead Stories | Thinking Person | Too Soon | Gaza Takeover | Cute Patti

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HOT AND DRY conditions will continue to build through the weekend with heat peaking across the interior Sunday. Gusty offshore winds over the higher terrain in Del Norte County Friday and Saturday morning. Breezy northerly winds over the coastal headlands along the North Coast again Friday afternoon. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): An overcast 50F this Friday morning on the coast, looks be more of a haze than than fog. ( and the difference is ? ) Mostly sunny into the weekend then the fog is forecast to return next week.

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SERRES RANCH BLUEBERRIES (Laytonville):

Yesterday, August 6, 2025 The Pond Fire came terrifyingly close to wiping out our blueberry fields in Laytonville. Thankfully with the efforts from the fire departments and our amazing team our fields we spared. While we did suffer some damage, thanks to the Laytonville Fire Department and Mendocino County Cal Fire, we still have the majority of our fields in good shape.

We’re endlessly grateful to the brave crews who showed up and fought with everything they had. You saved our ranch from complete loss, and we will never forget it.

From our family to yours — thank you.

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MIKE GENIELLA: A dozen nuns from the Sisters of the Presentation order in San Francisco arrived by charter bus Wednesday to attend a Memorial Mass for Sister Jane Kelly at St. Mary in Ukiah. After they toured Plowshares, the legendary dining hall for the down and out. Sister Jane was a co-founder along with Debra Meeks and Martin Bradley and Susan Crane. Generous Mendocino County donors covered the costs to transport the nuns to Ukiah and back to SF.

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CAL FIRE regrets to share the passing of Mendocino Unit Firefighter I, Christion Schoenfeld, who passed away in an off-duty accident. This was Christion’s third year with CAL FIRE, with two previous fire years as a Handcrew Firefighter in the Amador-El Dorado Unit. Most recently, he was assigned to the Woodlands Fire Station in the Mendocino Unit.

Firefighter Schoenfeld will be remembered as a motivated, goal-oriented public servant, whose exceptional physical fitness and dedication inspired those around him. Please keep Christion’s family, friends, and his CAL FIRE brothers and sisters, in your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time.

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Christion Salvador Schoenfeld, born on June 16, 1999 and transitioned on July 31, 2025 at the age of 26. His sudden departure has left a profound void in the hearts of all who knew and loved him.

Christion was a firefighter on CAL FIRE for 3 years. He was part of the Mendocino Unit Woodlands Fire Station, and a firefighter previously on the Ponderosa Handcrew in the Amador-El Dorado Unit, and Served honorably in the Airforce Security Forces and was Raven #2866. Christion was a bright light to those around him—kind-hearted, deeply thoughtful, and unwaveringly loyal. His gentle spirit and warm presence were a comfort to friends, family, and all who crossed his path. Whether through his work, his passions, or his quiet acts of generosity, Christion made a lasting impact on those fortunate enough to know him.

He loved being in nature, pulling off into the forest and setting up camp and protecting the forest fiercely in his work with Cal Fire. Listening to music in his truck and sharing his favorite songs. Hanging with his brothers from all the different times in his life, from school to the Air Force, to Cal Fire. When he spent time with you, you left with a billion memories and a smile.

He is survived by his mother, Roxanne Garza, his father Todd Schoenfeld, sister Gabriela Bodishbaugh, his stepfather Jaime Garza and stepmother Linda Schoenfeld, and brother-in-law Daniel Bodishbaugh. He is also survived by his Nana, Virginia Carrillo, stepsiblings Jaime, Abraham and Citlali, Uncle Derek and Connie, Uncle Marc and Trina with Marissa & Joseph, Uncle David and Carol with Alicia, Anthony and Abriana. He was also nephew of Steve and Nancy Bellusa and Dianna Dingman. Cousins Stephanie, Carla, Dino, Dominic, Austin, Lorenzo, Vincent and Lillie, Rick and Erin Fischer, and a wide circle of friends and loved ones who will carry his memory forward with love and gratitude.

A memorial service will be held on August 23, 2025 at Saint Catherine of Siena in Martinez CA, beginning at 10:00 am. All who knew Christion are welcome to attend and celebrate his life.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to CAL FIRE Benevolent Fund in Christion’s memory.

Though his time with us was far too short, Christion's legacy of kindness, integrity, adventurous spirit and quiet strength will live on in the lives he touched. In life, I loved you dearly. In death, I love you still. In my heart, I hold a place that only you can fill.

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JOHN MARK MEMORIAL POSTPONED

Julie Beardsley: The family regrets that we must postpone John’s memorial until a future date. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused his friends and loved ones. We will let you know when the future date happens.

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THE RECALL EFFORT AGAINST DA EYSTER

by Justine Frederiksen

A Ukiah woman unsatisfied with the performance of Mendocino County District Attorney David Eyster has launched an effort to recall him from his position.

“I don’t think the county can afford his ego,” said Helen Sizemore, referring to expenditures such as the lawyer fees she said were related to a criminal case filed against Chamise Cubbison, who returned to her job as Mendocino County Auditor in February, more than a year after Eyster filed felony criminal charges against both Cubbison and the county’s former Payroll Manager Paula June Kennedy.

As Mike Geniella reported previously in the UDJ, “the charges focused on $68,000 in extra pay for Kennedy, (and) were tossed by (Superior Court Judge Ann) Moorman at the end of a lengthy preliminary hearing.”

After that, Geniella wrote, “Cubbison’s attention then shifted to her efforts to win 17 months of back pay and benefits from the county, and for damages to her professional reputation. So far, the county has spent more than a quarter of a million dollars resisting her claims.”

Sizemore pointed out that one of the main reasons for her even considering an attempt to recall Eyster is that his current term was extended by recent state legislation aligning the terms of District Attorneys with presidential elections.

“I would not be doing this if his term was still expiring in 2026,” she said, noting that she was opposed to “Eyster’s term being longer that what voters elected him to,” noting that it was extended to 2028.

Eyster did not respond to a request for comment from him on the recall effort.

When asked for a summation of the official recall process, Mendocino County Registrar of Voters Katrina Bartolomie said Tuesday that Sizemore was “working on the petition and will submit 2 copies for our review.”

Once her office approves the format, Bartolomie said Sizemore and the team she enlisted to help “will have 160 calendar days to gather about 8,200 valid signatures. Once submitted, my office will have 30 working days to check signatures. We are still in the beginning of this process, (which includes) reviewing all code sections to ensure all processes are followed.”

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

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JAIL DIPLOMAS

Celebrating Success at the Mendocino County Jail

We are proud to announce that Soyria Ethel Ramos, Christopher Robert Ashurst, Antonio Lopez Jr, and Michael Charles McGee have each earned their high school diplomas through our educational partnership with Ukiah Adult School!

Their dedication, perseverance, and commitment to their education is truly inspiring. Achieving this milestone is no small feat, and we celebrate their determination to create new opportunities for their future.

In collaboration with Ukiah Adult School, Mendocino County Jail remains committed to providing educational opportunities for those involved in the justice system. Seeing individuals reach their goals reminds us why this work matters.

Please join us in congratulating Soyria, Christopher, Antonio, and Michael on this impressive accomplishment!

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FRANK HARTZELL:

Mendocinocoast.news editor’s note on the August 1 Mendocino County Courts ending all public access to online criminal court files:

As a community-based news organization committed to transparency, accountability and public service, Mendocinocoast.news strongly opposes the new local rule adopted by the Mendocino Superior Court on August 1, 2025, which eliminates all public online access to criminal court files.

This rule excludes the general public, press, witnesses, and victims from reviewing records online that are essential to understanding and reporting on our justice system. We believe this policy violates the spirit – and potentially the letter – of the First Amendment and the constitutional principles of due process and checks and balances by excluding the press and making the public second class citizens to attorneys.

We urge the court to reverse this decision and restore reasonable public access to criminal records.  We also call on elected officials, legal experts, and community members to speak out against this erosion of transparency.

Justice must be visible to be accountable. Mendocinocoast.news will continue to advocate for open courts and informed communities. 

Justice In The Shadows: Mendocino Court Ruling Threatens Public Access And Constitutional Rights

On August 1, 2025, a new local rule quietly took place in Mendocino County – one that bars the general public, press, and even victims and witnesses from accessing online criminal court files and makes any access ridiculously and unnecessarily difficult. The rule was enacted in 2019 by an unelected advisory group named the California Judicial Council. Now online for criminal court is only the calendar, not any files. Those have all been removed.

What exactly is happening?

The Aug 1 new rule separates users of court files into two groups. Lawyers get increased access. The public, press and many others with business with the courts can only see calendars now online, not any criminal court files. To see the files, these newly second-class citizens must go into the courthouse, wait in line for a special terminal. If that person wants any copies, they must first pay to see the file on the computer (its not online, online means the open internet). Then pay a time to buy only full files from the county. One must pay twice and pay greatly increased fees on both purchases. If someone else wants the files or is using the computer, or if it isn’t working, the Judicial Council says the person seeking files is just out of luck. This is a direct attack on taxpayers. It effectively excludes journalists who wish to look through all the files or follow up on reports by confidential sources that their rights have been violated by the legal system.  For all practical purposes, it creates a closed court system, where facts are very expensive to verify and where research into the way justice is being administered is totally impractical.…

https://mendocinocoast.news/justice-in-the-shadows-mendocino-court-ruling-threatens-public-access-and-constitutional-rights/

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FORT BRAGG POLICE DEPARTMENT LAYS OUT THE CARE RESPONSE UNIT’S ROLE

by Mary Benjamin

On Monday, July 28, Fort Bragg Police Captain Thomas O’Neal held a community information meeting at the Fort Bragg Library about the role that the Care Response Unit (CRU) plays in the city’s proactive “community outreach” to identify unhoused people.

The CRU team, overseen by Captain O’Neal, is composed of three trained social liaisons who use county social services, county courts, and local housing resources to address the needs of people without appropriate shelter.

Captain O’Neal presented a PowerPoint overview of the cooperative efforts of the FBPD, its CRU team, its task forces and committees, its weather shelter program, the county court system, the county human services systems, and local nonprofits that provide temporary housing. He also highlighted the grant resources from the state that fund these programs.

Titled “Reducing Recidivism and Substance Use Through Relationships,” the presentation included information about Project Right Now, which provides services and resources to individuals aged 18-24. The city also has a Fentanyl Task Force to “combat the opioid epidemic and support those affected by substance use.”

There are many reasons why a person has no place to live, but the most likely causes are drug addiction, mental illness, or sometimes both. The City of Fort Bragg, the Fort Bragg Police Department, and the Care Response Unit sit at the top of a wide network of services and resources to respond to those who need help with substance abuse, mental illness, repeated arrests, joblessness, or lack of appropriate housing.

The CRU team’s success has resulted in a significant drop in calls to the police department about problematic people. These calls often ended in arrests for low-level crime. Mental health issues accounted for 14% of these situations. Now these types of situations are dealt with without arrest, freeing up officers to address violent crime.

At the heart of this outreach are the three CRU liaisons, Janette Ornelas, Mellisa Johnson, and Hannah Nanez. It is their one-on-one contact with the most vulnerable people that fuels the success when lives are turned around, whether people are found in encampments, living in cars, or evicted due to overdue rent often caused by the loss of a job.

The key to success lies in the relationships that the liaisons develop with the people they find, who are generally too skittish at first to accept help from strangers. It takes time and repeated contact to break through and gain trust with someone who has no reason to believe in any official person.

Overall, the persistent effort generally pays off. Bringing a hot cup of coffee, treating someone to a McDonald’s breakfast, or bringing someone a coat or sleeping bag could open the door to communication. These are people who have no way to get to the Ukiah County human resources offices, people who have no computers for online contact, or people who need job and social skills training

They may not have any understanding of how the social services systems work, or their previous experiences may have been disappointing or discouraging. The CRU team’s approach of respect and honesty can be the icebreaker that leads to mental health support or drug addiction treatment.

Once someone agrees to help from CRU, the first order of business is to set up temporary housing, if needed, for the new client. Sometimes this may be the primary need of someone without shelter. However, temporary housing is in short supply.

As an example, at the meeting, the CRU team spoke about a young pregnant woman living in a car. CRU was able to provide her with housing and the medical care she needed. As of the meeting that night, the young woman was close to her delivery date and housed in a far safer and more appropriate setting than the inside of her car.

However, many of CRU’s potential clients have been repeatedly arrested for violations of city ordinances or other law-breaking activities. One of the important goals of CRU is to end the cycle of repeated arrest.

Four-year grant funds from Proposition 47 finance the efforts of the city to reduce recidivism and keep people out of jail by giving them support on ways to avoid further arrests. Captain O’Neal commented, “This program has already demonstrated effectiveness in reducing criminal justice involvement.”

He continued, “There are several documented cases of clients transitioning from frequent police contacts and multiple involuntary psychiatric holds to sustained periods of stability without further law enforcement interaction.”

Proposition 47 funds have also allowed the program to expand geographically along the coast. In August, CRU will gain a fourth liaison who will work with the FBPD and the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.

This expansion includes collaboration with the county District Attorney’s office and the courts. Those brought into court who are charged but who have accepted the help of CRU have the opportunity to plea bargain an agreement to enter a rehab center or other assistance facility if charges are dropped.

These situations are handled by the CRU team. CRU will probably connect with county services to enroll the client in Medi-Cal. CRU often continues to provide support by accompanying the client to a facility once they have secured placement. Many clients who receive a plea deal choose to remain safely jailed until their placement date.

Of course, given human nature, there are those unsheltered people who refuse assistance and who may be aware of the services that are available. The CRU program has other options rather than leaving a person out in the weather. The individual, whose pattern may be one of constantly moving on, may decide to live elsewhere.

An individual may opt to take advantage of the program’s Homeward option. CRU will make contact with a relative or close friend who agrees to take responsibility for that individual. If a person is willing and someone is waiting at the other end, CRU will provide a bus ticket home.

Other support programs targeted for youth operate out of the Fort Bragg Police Department, which could include the resources that CRU can provide. The Fentanyl Task Force has set specific goals. It is working to educate “all sectors of the community” about the fentanyl and opioid crisis. It is also examining ways to improve access to outpatient treatment.

The group has coordinated with the local school district to develop an educational awareness program to inform teenagers of the dangers of opioids and fentanyl. It is also conducting a feasibility study for the construction of a youth inpatient facility located either in Lake or Mendocino County. Currently, only one treatment facility in Southern California is available.

On the other hand, this program has a limit to its grant funding. It will be operating for only the next eighteen months unless another avenue of funding is found. In the meantime, the group will continue general outreach, media campaigns, and community events to keep the public informed.

A second project for youth focuses on intervention. Project Right Now, funded by the California Youth Opioid Response Grant, provides assistance to young people aged 16-24 identified with opioid or substance abuse disorders. The program is designed to provide services to young people in crisis wherever they may be.

Its goal is to provide “early intervention, deliver immediate care, and educate youth and their support systems.” The project has forged agreements with five local schools. The police department just hired Daniella Aguirre, who will serve as a rotating substance abuse disorder (SUD) Coordinator on-site to support students in need. It will also include education for middle schoolers.

Captain O’Neal said, “Project Right Now (PRN) is embedded in the police department, enabling real-time response to overdoses, arrests, and crisis calls. Officers can immediately dispatch PRN for intervention with no referral delays.”

As an example, he added, “A 22-year-old was connected to Medicated Aid Treatment (MAT) services within two hours and was admitted to inpatient care within five days.”

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

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AUGUST SUPERVISORS REPORT

by John Haschak

With the budget based on future cuts to staff and resources ($6 million this year and a projected $16 million next year), the Board directed all departments to cut their budgets by 6 percent. I proposed that the Board take the lead and make cuts of 6 percent to its budget, by both cutting expenses and rolling back the raise that took place in July. The Board did not approve the proposed cuts to out-of-country travel, communications, special department expenses and so forth. The Board also voted down my proposal to roll back raises for the Supervisors.

It will be difficult to tell departments to cut their budgets which will affect all County services including public safety and social services. When I was a teacher, the mantra was always, “keep cuts away from the students.” As a supervisor, the mantra should be “Keep cuts away from the health and safety of the people of Mendocino County.” Unfortunately, reductions and cuts will become more difficult the longer we wait.

Kudos to CalFire. They have done prescribed burns along Hwy. 101 from south of Ukiah to the Ridgewood Grade. This reduces the risk from vehicle induced fires. We have been blessed by a relatively cool July at this point, but fire danger is always present. I also appreciate that CalFire was able to knock down the fire in Covelo quickly and efficiently.

The Office of Emergency Services along with CalFire, MC Sheriff’s Office, CalOES and others have been performing training exercises. Earlier in the summer, one exercise simulated a wildfire igniting during a Red Flag Warning, creating a complex and high-risk scenario. These keep everyone on their toes and show the strengths and weaknesses of all-out collaborations.

The Office of Emergency Services is providing Spanish language interviews and trainings. They are also working with HAM radio operators to ensure various methods of communication during disasters.

Since Phase 2 of the federal BRIC grant for the Brooktrails/Sherwood Road area was eliminated, the County has been working on a Hazard Mitigation Grant application for the Sherwood Corridor area. It is a hazardous fuels reduction program aimed at reducing the risk of loss of life and property. I appreciate the effort put in to developing the applications by County staff and other agencies.

The Board will hold a series of workshops on healthcare issues and the impacts of recent legislation and budget cuts on our local providers and services. The first workshop will be on Sept. 10, focusing on the fiscal impacts to the County, health clinics, hospitals, and public health. The winter and spring workshops will address impacts on people, health-system pressures, and future cuts that are coming to Social Services, In Home Support Services, and Public Health. With 47 percent of the residents of Mendocino County on MediCal, healthcare is a critical issue.

There will be no Talk with the Supervisor this month. You can always contact me at email [email protected] or call 707-972-4214.

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SUPERVISOR MADELINE CLINE

9 years ago, one of the biggest abalone I had ever harvested. Small compared to what some of the legends around here have brought in! I think the second to last year before they closed the season. Who knows if it will ever open again, makes me sad to think about.

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UKIAH SENIOR CENTER NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT

To the Editor:

A letter to the valued members of our community:

Ukiah Senior Center is facing financial struggles and asks you to consider making the choice today to set up a one-time, weekly, or monthly financial contribution to the Senior Center to help fund the valuable programs and services offered to seniors and disabled adults in our community.

For over 5 decades the Ukiah Senior Center (USC) has been an integral member of this great community, and we are very proud of the fact that so many seniors depend on us for their physical and mental well-being. Every month over 4,000 community members, who may have lost a spouse or don’t have family members in this community, embrace our support or services as we may be their only conduit to “the outside world”.

Each senior has a different set of needs whether it’s on-premises meals, meals delivered to them, sessions of Bunko, cards, quilting, bingo, computer assistance, meditation, transportation to appointments, fraud-prevention, nutrition and a myriad of other services. We have a dedicated staff and hard-working volunteers who make sure the needs of every senior are met.

Now WE need the community’s support. Like most local businesses the cost of keeping the doors open has increased dramatically. We cannot sustain the monthly deficits that we’re experiencing every month and continue to provide the level of services our seniors expect and deserve. Most recently USC staff have taken a reduction in their pay to help get over the current financial need, therefore closing the Center each Friday.

So, this is our plea to you – our valued members of this community. Though 21% of our current funding comes from community donations; in order to sustain the large variety of services offered by USC, we are asking for your contributions and help to increase this percentage and raise the funding needed.

We are asking each and every one of you to consider supporting the Ukiah Senior Center by making a monetary donation today, maybe volunteering your time, or participating in one of our many programs, activities or events. The USC Board of Directors, the paid staff, the many volunteers and the hundreds and hundreds of seniors affected in this community would be greatly served and would be enormously appreciative of your involvement.

Ukiah Senior Center Board of Directors, Staff and volunteers continue to remain dedicated to the fulfillment of our mission. Everyone is working diligently towards discovering ways to ensure our continued ability to provide the large variety of services and activities USC offers. If you would like to partner with these efforts, please call the Executive Director, Liz Dorsey 707-462-4343 x 7001, we would love to work with you on this challenge.

Other ways to connect, visit us on the web at: UkiahSeniorCenter.org, or come to the Center at 495 Leslie Street, Ukiah – 707-462-4343

Liz Dorsey, Executive Director,

Ukiah Senior Center Board of Directors.

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LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)

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BROCK FARMS NOW OPEN IN BOONVILLE

Wednesday-Sunday, 10-6. Closed Monday-Tuesday.

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THIS WEEK AT BLUE MEADOW FARM

Heirloom, Early Girl and Cherry tomatoes

Bumper crop of sweet Walla Walla Onions

Corno di Toro, Bell, Gypsy & Pimiento Peppers

Jalapeno, Padron, Anaheim & Poblano Chilis

Eggplant, Zucchini, Basil

Lisbon Lemons, local Olive Oil

Sunflowers & Zinnias

Blue Meadow Farm
3301 Holmes Ranch Road, Philo
(707) 895-2071

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VELMA’S FARM STAND AT FILIGREEN FARM IN BOONVILLE

Friday 2-5 pm

Open Saturday & Sunday 11-4pm

This week’s offerings include: blueberries, peaches, ‘Strawberry Parfait’ ‘Red Gravenstein’ and ‘Zestar’ apples, ‘Charentais’ melons and mini red watermelons (from Paul’s Produce and Russian River Organics), tomatoes (heirlooms, cherry, new girls), eggplant, hot peppers, shishito peppers, carrots, sprouting broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce mix, arugula, hakurei turnips, onions, summer squash, cucumbers, kale, kohlrabi, celery, beets, cabbage, garlic, basil, parsley, olive oil, and dried fruit!

Notes from the field: We’re harvesting the last of the blueberries this week just as the apple season begins to kick off. Tomatoes are going strong, along with eggplant and the first wave of hot peppers making their appearance. Our own melons are still ripening, so in the meantime, we’re offering delicious ones from our local farming community. As summer produce rolls in, we’re glad to keep a steady supply of brassicas and root crops to round out the mix!

Follow us on Instagram for updates @filigreenfarm or email [email protected] with any questions. All produce is certified biodynamic and organic.

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49TH ANNUAL GREAT DAY IN ELK, Saturday, August 23

Noon to dusk. Parade, games and contests, food and drink, belly dancing, live music, silent auction and raffle. Benefit for Greenwood Community Center in Elk (located 5 miles south of Hwy. 128 on Hwy. 1). For more information: [email protected] or www.elkweb.org

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SHERIFF MATT KENDALL

The Editor outdid himself yesterday! He definitely hit the nail on the head with the recital of a man attempting to do household chores!

Prior to meeting my wife. I had moved through life with a belief that I was doing OK on most things. My finances were stable my home was warm and for the most part acceptably clean. I made it to work on time daily. I truly believed I was meeting muster on all things.

Little did I know my overall rating was based on my standards, standards which I was grading myself on and therefore I could be lenient on the things I found to be less important.

After I met my wife I learned there was an entirely different level of what is acceptable. I also learned although I didn’t believe myself to be a complete slob and screw up, that was simply because I didn’t have an additional rater in the mix. Socks and handkerchiefs may be co-mingled but don’t try that with T-shirts and trousers!

I have attempted to complete my share of household chores, only to watch these tasks be repeated and completed “properly”. I often will vacuum the living room carpet and leave the vacuum cleaner dead center in the middle of the room for all to see. It becomes a beacon of my accomplishment which the wife is certain to see when she arrives home from work.

She often points out the fact I feel the need for a marching band and a round of applause each time I complete a task like vacuuming, the living room or mowing the lawn.

I do know one thing for certain. I can cut, split and stack firewood in a fashion most men can only dream of.

Each fall I find a reason to parade my spouse past the wood shed knowing full well there will be some kudos bestowed upon me!

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FORMER SHERIFF JIM TUSO & FRIENDS at the Redwood Empire Fair in Ukiah, early 1990s

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ED NOTES: IRATE GAUL STORMS BOONVILLE NEWSPAPER OFFICE

AVA News Service (October 2009)

Franco-American relations in the Anderson Valley took a turn for the worse last Wednesday when a dual citizen of France and Boonville, Gilles d’Aymery, stormed the tranquil offices of the Anderson Valley Advertiser.

The Frenchman was upset about his subscription.

Mr. d’Aymery was sputtering mad, so angry that his alcohol-ravaged features had turned a deep purple, whether from an escalating pique or a long morning with his head in serial bottles of pinot, was not clear, but the choleric Frenchman had a head full of blood for a fact.

Blurting out a wide range of mostly incoherent complaints and purely gratuitous insults which finally culminated in his demand for the return of the forty dollars he’d mailed to the Boonville weekly in lieu of our fifty dollar subscription price, Mr. d’Aymery could not be satisfied.

In a letter to the paper preceding his stormy visit, Mr. d’Aymery said the paper was “not worth fifty dollars.” We nevertheless pro-rated the forty he’d sent us to a 9-month subscription, but d’Aymery then demanded the whole forty back. If we wouldn’t return the forty, he said he wanted a full year for forty dollars.

The Advertiser’s policy since 1955, all the way back to our founder, the late Homer Mannix, has been No Refunds.

Especially to citizens of France.

Mannix once warned us, “I’ve been to France, and no more supercilious bastards exist on the face of this earth. And they all pretend not to speak English! If any of them ever show up in Boonville, squeeze ‘em for what you can and frog march ‘em back down the stairs and to hell outtahere.”

So, last Wednesday, here’s this French lunatic running through our office door like he’s Andre The Giant.

And without so much as an “Excusez moi,” Mr. d’Aymery, pronounced in American as “Jill Amory,” interrupted a scheduled consultation between AVA staffer Mark Scaramella and former interim AVA editor Dave Severn to discuss this season’s wine grape harvest.

“Give me my forty dollars back!” the rude Frenchman shouted.

Scaramella, for a frantic instant, thought maybe it was a hold-up, a work site mugging.

As Severn looked on aghast, the gentlemanly Scaramella calmly suggested to the intruder, “You could at least say hello, Jill, and try being polite.”

This appeal to whatever residual civility Amory might possess only further inflamed him.

“Forty now!” Amory repeated, extending his hand, his spud-shaped magenta nose throbbing neon shades of purplish fury.

Scaramella calmly explained to Amory that the AVA doesn’t give refunds, but the nine-month subscription he’d now purchased with his dubious forty dollar check, signed with an indecipherable, megalomaniacal flourish as if by the Sun King himself, could be sent to someone else if Amory no longer desired a week’s worth of bracing American clarity for the next nine months.

But Amory, who considers himself an intellectual, as do most of his windy countrymen – these are the people who think Jerry Lewis is funny and that Richard Nixon was a great statesman – was beyond all rationality. Leaping from subject to subject, spraying bilingual insults and demands, Amory soon complained about what had been written about him in two previous papers, angrily waving an AVA in Scaramella’s face. He said his first letter of complaint was not intended for publication, probably because even he understood it revealed him as a…

Well, whatever, as the young people say.

Scaramella explained to Amory that he’d had nothing to do with the decision to publish the wine-basted Frenchman’s letter nor the snappish ed replies that accompanied them.

Amory then demanded to see the no refund policy “in writing.”

Scaramella explained that paper doesn’t have written policies beyond those stated in our publisher’s box having to do with prices. In any case, demands for refunds were foreign to our experience, and we weren’t about to begin doing them now, especially for an uncredentialed person like him who regularly insults our fine, fat land as a country of imbeciles.

Mr. Severn spoke up to say that he’d never given refunds during his three-year tenure as boss at the AVA.

Amory looked at Severn as if he was considering a physical assault on him before issuing another demand, this one a demand to speak to Ling Anderson, his fraught mind somehow discerning where the publication’s real authority lay.

Scaramella said he “wasn’t at liberty to divulge Mrs. Anderson’s contact information,” and informed Amory that in any case he was more likely to get a refund from George Bush than he was from her.

Amory went from purple to apoplectic crimson as he proceeded to denounce Scaramella as an idiot, a flunky, and, several times, “a peece of sheet,” and so on in tediously repetitious fashion, all of the abuse utterly lacking in imagination, and all of it in cartoonishly accented French.

Scaramella and Severn said later that they’d had a hard time not laughing.

The AVA should have returned his check, Amory insisted, especially if we didn’t think it was enough for a subscription. If we hadn’t returned his check then he should get a full year’s subscription for his forty dollars.

Scaramella asked Amory what he thought The New Yorker magazine would do if he sent them less than the subscription price.

“They’d send it back,” said the irate Frenchman.

“Then why would you send it in the first place if you know they’d send it back? Just to hassle them like you’re hassling us?”

Amory fumed.

“I told Amory,” Scaramella recalled, “that since we don’t give refunds and the price of a subscription is $50, we gave him 75% of a subscription for his $40. That was not only the best we could do, but it was fair considering he was insulting us and harassing us as he went.”

“Do you realize what you are saying?” shouted the choleric Gaul. “You’re saying you only give me 75% of a subscription but I paid you 80%.”

Scaramella explained his math, pointing out that there was also a small deduction for the extra time handling his non-standard subscription, which, of course, Amory rejected. The Frenchman turned to Severn.

“Did you see what Bruce wrote about me last week?” he asked Severn. “Bruce” seemed to be an overly familiar reference to Mr. Bruce Anderson, publisher and editor of this fine publication.

“I haven’t got around to reading last week’s paper yet,” replied Severn.

“Do you have last week’s paper?” Amory asked Scaramella. “I’ll show him what Bruce wrote.”

“Back issues are $1,” Scaramella blandly replied.

Amory was astonished.

“I thought he was going to hit me,” Scaramella said. “I thought I’d have to give him my old Air Force one-two, but I couldn’t remember the three-four if the one-two didn’t work on him.”

Scaramella explained to Severn how Amory tried to pay $40 for a $50 subscription because, Amory had declared, a year’s subscription “wasn’t worth $50.”

Severn asked Amory if he really had tried to get fifty for forty.

“Yes,” replied a seething Amory.

“Then I agree with Mark,” Severn said.

It didn’t seem possible that Amory could become angrier than he was, but he was instantly even more enraged, shaking with indignation, his face going from wino purple to Muscat black.

Scaramella poured on the provocations.

Scaramella told Amory that he was free to take the AVA to small claims court, but a small claims action would probably cost him at least $40 and he’d lose anyway.

Amory seethed.

A moment of tense silence passed until Scaramella said, “I have nothing more to say, Jill. We’re obviously not getting anywhere. Good-bye.”

Amory stood silent, his chest heaving.

“He looked like he was going to implode,” Scaramella said.

Amory suddenly reached across Severn to shove a pile of papers and a nearly full cup of coffee on Scaramella’s desk into Scaramella’s lap.

“I caught the cup of coffee just in time and reset it on the desk,” Scaramella said later. “I was getting mad. ‘That’s it, Jill, I’m calling the cops.’ I reached for the phone.”

Amory dashed out the door.

Severn said, “Well, he was obviously tanked.”

“Tanked or not,” Scaramella said, “that last outburst was way outta line. It reminded me of the time Supervisor Colfax spit on my shoe.”

A few minutes after Amory had left the office, Scaramella, on his way to the Boonville Post Office, encountered resident Deputy Keith Squires. Scaramella told the deputy about the Frenchman’s verbal assault on the AVA’s work space, and how Amory had shoved Scaramella’s in-basket and coffee cup at him.

Squires said he’d never had any contact with Amory and didn’t know him.

“You will,” Scaramella said, “if he comes into the office like that again.”

Editor Anderson, the agent of all this trans-Atlantic hoo-rah, was at the ballpark in San Francisco at the time. “The only place I find true peace anymore.” Informed of the incident and that the Frenchman wanted his money back, the Editor snorted, “If we start caving into every side street Parisian pimp who wanders in here wanting a ten dollar discount, hell, it might cost us another ten bucks some day. Homer Mannix was right. No refunds!”

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MORE E-BAY PHOTOGRAPHS of semi-local interest (via Marshall Newman)

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, August 7, 2025

JUNE ANDERSON, 36, Covelo. Failure to appear.

GINA BEAN, 47, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

PAN BRADY, 48, Point Arena. Felon-addict with firearm, ammo possession by prohibited person.

JAMES DODD, 64, Ukiah. Vandalism.

TONY HANOVER, 19, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, vandalism, probation violation, resisting.

KEVIN KEMP, 66, Laytonville. Burglary.

RONALD MAIN, 49, Laytonville. Unlawful camping on private property, storage of camping paraphernalia, resisting.

MONICA MCDONALD, 57, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

SARINA MCDOW, 42, Ukiah. Shoplifting.

JOSEPH NOONAN, 45, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, elder abuse without great bodily harm or death.

ARSENIO SINGLETON, 37, Alameda/Ukiah. Stalking, extortion, criminal threats, disorderly conduct-alcohol, domestic violence court order violation, resisting, unspecified offense.

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LEGISLATURE LAND LINE PROPOSAL WILL ENDANGER PUBLIC SAFETY

Editor,

AT&T wants to eliminate copper landlines through Assembly Bill 470. I think many Mendo residents would agree that landlines are essential infrastructure. As the safest, most resilient, dependable, time-tested telephone network, they work during power outages and emergencies. They reliably connect people to loved ones, 911, doctors and emergency personnel — all with exact location data. People continue to receive updates and evacuation notices on landlines during disasters, fires and public safety power shutoffs, after batteries on cell phones and VoiP systems die. The elderly, disabled and those with medical conditions especially need 24/7 access to family and physicians. Other modes aren’t reliable even in urban areas.

Landlines have saved countless lives. According to filings by the California Public Utilities Commission, AT&T moved landline revenue to its wireless operations and isn’t maintaining the equipment. The company no longer wants to be a “carrier of last resort.” I think the Assembly caved to AT&T when it approved AB 470 before summer recess. Only the Senate is left to protect the public. Please contact state senators to reject AB 470.

Nina Beety

Monterey

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INSTEAD OF A COMMUTER LINE, TURN SMART INTO A TOURIST TRAIN

Editor:

SMART was built to reduce highway traffic and serve regional commuters. But the world has changed. Our population is declining. Remote work has reshaped commuting patterns. And across the Bay Area, transit ridership is down — even as costs remain high. It’s time for a strategic pivot.

Sonoma and Marin counties are global tourism destinations. Visitors come for wine, food, natural beauty and small-town charm. Why not reimagine SMART as a car-free Wine Country experience? A seasonal or weekend tourism line could connect riders to wineries, hotels and restaurants. With bundled packages — train, tastings and hotel plus electric shuttles to vineyards and towns — SMART could thrive. Add a midsize convention center in Santa Rosa, and we create an economic engine that supports jobs and boosts tax revenue.

At the same time, local transit riders need frequent, affordable, accessible service. Regional bus systems can meet those needs more cost-effectively than a rail line built for a different era. Redirecting a portion of transit investment to expand bus frequency and late-night service across Marin and Sonoma would meet real, daily demand.

This isn’t about abandoning SMART. It’s about making it work smarter. Let buses do what they do best. Let trains fuel tourism. Let’s align our investments with the future we’re actually facing.

Gary Campbell

Santa Rosa

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THE FOUR WINDS

by Paul Modic

‘The Four Winds’ by Kristin Hannah starts out pretty promising with a family in the Texas panhandle a hundred years ago making bank plowing up the prairie and growing wheat soon after World War One. They’ve got two lovely daughters, who are getting married off, and one homely lass who they treat like shit. Mostly she stays upstairs in her bedroom reading novels with no plans for marriage, as she’s already deemed an old maid at twenty-four.

She goes downtown to buy fancy red fabric for a pretty dress and the shopkeeper says, “Oh, your sisters will like this.” She makes the dress, sneaks out of the house on a Saturday night, goes to the lone nightclub in her Texas town of Dalhart, and the door man won’t even let her in. (Everyone knows everyone else in small town America.) She leaves in tears, meets a cute Italian boy, and after a couple secret meetings romping in a hayloft she becomes pregnant. (Mostly it’s just him slam-bamming, she don’t know jack about sex and pregnancy.)

Her mother notices her morning sickness and knows before she does that she’s expecting. Her father thinks it over and within the hour she’s got her suitcase packed and he’s driving her to the home of the eighteen year old boy where he demands that the Lothario marry his daughter. His parents are hesitant but after the boy confesses, Elsa is left there to live, done deal. (Just that day the boy, already betrothed to an Italian girl, had packed his suitcase and was on the way to college, and the next day Rafe and Elsa are married.)

That was the fun part, thinking this is going to be a great read, actually book on CD. The new couple have a couple kids, lose a few more, the wheat is bountiful for another ten years, and then comes drought, massive dust storms, and the Great Depression creating the Dust Bowl. A year or so later Rafe deserts his family in the dead of night, the dust storms become so bad it almost kills her young son, and Elsa finally hits the road with her kids after the doctor says the only thing that’ll save the boy’s life is to get out of the Dust Bowl.

The story is painful to listen to when they get to California, living in a tent with hundreds of other “Okies” (all the migrants hate that name) along a drainage ditch, and Elsa goes out to try to find work with all the others. She quickly gets a job, works ten hours cleaning a lady’s house and is paid four dimes. (I’m thinking there’s probably not going to be a happy ending but how about a happy moment or two?)

Elsa’s family befriends a neighboring family and when there are complications with the child birth of her friend, she rushes the woman to the local hospital and is refused help since she’s just a poor Okie. The nurse at the door says “Your kind don’t pay taxes and live like animals. Here’s some aspirin.” That night after the baby dies, Elsa’s feisty thirteen year old daughter Loreta gets fed up with the whole scene and tries to run away and gets picked up by a Communist organizer/agitator who takes her to a secret meeting in an old barn out in the country where he and his comrades/ fellow travelers are planning their next action in support of the exploited workers. Loreta likes what she hears and becomes radicalized.

A storm blows through, the drainage ditch floods and destroys the encampment. Elsa saves just the truck, losing everything else, including her $26 life savings, and the commies are the only ones helping to rescue the hundreds of people. Finally they catch a break when the commie leader helps them get a cabin at a cotton plantation, though they have to buy everything at the company store and are trapped in debt. All three of the family, including the eight year old boy, start picking cotton.

The Mexicans who had been picking the cotton and fruit all up and down California had been deported, called criminals (yeah, sounds like today), and 1000 migrants a day are coming into California, desperate to feed their families and paid seventy cents a day to pick 200 pounds of cotton.

The commies are the only ones who care about the exploited workers but at first nearly everyone is afraid to associate with them, a familiar refrain: blame the commies! They commies try to lead a strike and like nearly everything else in this story it probably won’t end well. (Well, yes, there were a few uplifting moments, like when the whole family gets makeovers at a beauty parlor by a former Okie who is actually nice to them, and when Elsa has a romance with the commie leader.)

This book is similar to ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ but told this time by a women’s point of view. Hard times indeed.

(I wonder if there’s a local angle? From reading the AVA over the years I’ve noticed there was a lot of migration to Anderson Valley from Arkansas and other places and I wonder if any of the desperate Dust Bowl “Okies” from the Depression era survived, made it up north, and settled in the greater Boonville area?)

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THE BEST SEAT AT ANY BAY AREA RESTAURANT

by Esther Mobley

The best seat in the house is always at the bar.

Tables are islands, marooning each party in their own little private world. Communal tables are, let’s face it, a little awkward, leaving you to rub elbows against a stranger while shouting to your friend across the wooden expanse. High tops are uncomfortable, too small to accommodate more than a couple of plates and forcing that uneasy dance of dangling legs.

The bar is pure energy. It’s at once intimate and open: the one zone in the restaurant where you and your date can get whisperingly close, but also the place you’re most likely to have a meaningful interaction with someone you didn’t come with. Proximity to bartenders means quick service; prolonged conversations with them means memorable service. The cocktail shaking, citrus peeling, wine pouring, beer tapping — it all becomes a quiet spectacle that adds some ineffable quality to your evening out on the town.

In an expensive restaurant, the bar has always represented a refreshingly low-stakes proposition: You might not be able to afford the tasting menu at Quince, but light snacks and a glass of Champagne at the bar is a forgivable splurge.

Most of all, that delicious bar energy has always been inextricable from a sense of spontaneity — something that’s now in flux as more San Francisco restaurants move to reservation-only policies at their bars, the subject of a story I published Wednesday. (Perhaps it is an underexamined element of the vibe shift that my colleagues J.D. Morris and Tom Li report is underway in the city.)

Many restaurants in San Francisco still kindle that energy, like Bix, whose general manager feels strongly that a full bar populated by walk-ins is the best kind of audience for the restaurant’s nightly live jazz.

I love the glam bar at Spruce, with its cushy leather chairs (order the burger) and the bar at Heirloom Café, with its mantle of trophy wine bottles emptied by customers past (also order the burger, a secret menu item). I’ve shared two bar seats among three friends at Nopa (I was the seat straddler between them), crowding around a shared pork chop and bottle of Cornas. My husband and I adore the bar at Loló. We pore over the vintage maps that line its surface as we drink mezcal margaritas.

The bar is, of course, the natural destination for a loner, and over the years I’ve had lovely solitary experiences ordering a couple of sardine chips while Larry Piaskowy makes me a cocktail at Rich Table; a glass of Etna Rosso with a bowl of that hauntingly delicious maccaronara at A16; a martini at the Progress, where I unexpectedly ran into old friends.

As more bar seats move to OpenTable and Resy, I’m getting with the program. I recently dined on pre-booked stools at Ernest, Copra and Jilli. But I can’t help but feel that there’s something fundamentally different about the reserved bar seat, however subtle it may be. Making a reservation feels so staid, so predictable. The thrill of showing up without a booking, squeezing into a stool, not knowing where the night is going to take you: That’s living.

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What I’m Reading

Should we have all been investing in fine wine over the last decade? It’s had very high returns, according to John Schmoll in Yahoo! Finance. (I’ll be sticking with my 401(k).)

The Free Press is covering wine?! Josephine de La Bruyère reports that as the older generation of French winemakers retires, their children are increasingly uninterested in taking over the family domaines.

On Substack, Randy Caparoso argues that most wine drinkers are never going to care about the concept of terroir.

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IT TOOK ME 55 YEARS TO VISIT ALCATRAZ. WHAT I LEARNED

by Peter Hartlaub

As I stand on Alcatraz for the first time on this gloomy day, looking out from the island prison I’ve looked at thousands of times, two emotions overwhelm all others: enchantment and deep regret.

I’ve lived within 10 miles of Alcatraz for the vast majority of my 55 years. I’ve worked for the Chronicle for more than half of that time, including two years as a paperboy. Most recently, my job has focused on helping readers explore every corner of the city, from little known parks to the real crookedest street.

So, how is it possible that I’ve never stepped foot on one of San Francisco’s most prominent landmarks? And for locals who have never made the trip to Alcatraz, is it worth seeking out?

My first day on Alcatraz starts like any other tourist, at the Pier 33 terminal for Alcatraz City Cruises, the only way for civilians to get to “the Rock.”

That is, unless you work for President Donald Trump. Eighteen hours after my visit, Alcatraz will get a surprise tour by two White House cabinet members after the president’s pledge to reopen the prison. The idea is ridiculous for many well-documented reasons, but high among them is this: It’s a tremendously successful tourist destination. According to the National Parks Service, Alcatraz nets $60 million in revenue every year.

When Alcatraz closed in 1962, because of high costs, crumbling infrastructure and a series of escapes, “tourist destination” was far down on the list of ideas for the prison’s future.

The brainstorms included a casino, performing arts center and, most loudly, a Statue of Liberty-style monument, an idea championed by Chronicle columnists Herb Caen and Merla Zellerbach. But after former President Richard Nixon in 1972 signed legislature that made Alcatraz a national park, the former prison opened to tourists on Oct. 26, 1973 — and was immediately booked weeks in advance.

Fifty-two years later, Chronicle photo intern Anna Connors (who also hasn’t been to the island) and I are among the 1.6 million visitors who come here annually. As we glide into the dock I’m already learning things. The 22-acre island seems much larger when you step on it, and it’s unexpectedly colorful. From a distance Alcatraz looks sepia-toned, but up close it’s filled with blooming gardens.

And so much debris. Retired ranger John Cantwell later describes the national park to me as a “stabilized ruin,” and that’s a perfect description. Among the very few aging buildings we can explore are condemned structures that look ready for demolition, burnt-out edifices embraced by post-apocalyptic vines, and piles of rubble so abstract it’s hard to envision what they once formed.

I take a lap around the island, admiring the unique views of San Francisco, Marin County and Angel Island, before reluctantly following the largest line of drones on this busy ant hill to the cell block, the largest standing structure on the island, where the audio tour is waiting.

San Franciscans have a sort of reverse polarity toward touristy things. There are unseen forces that repel us from Pier 39, rickshaw drivers (“it’s cool — I like to walk!”) and discount steakhouses near cable car turnarounds.

I’m feeling that as I stand in a line longer than any recent airport security queue to pick up some Bill Clinton-era headphones I’m warned will make a horrible noise if I try to smuggle them off the island.

But here’s the plot twist: The Alcatraz audio tour is astounding.

A collaboration between the Golden Gate Parks Conservancy and Antenna Audio first designed in the 1980s, the tour takes you in and out of cells, the dining hall and the emotions of incarcerated people. You hear the real voices of guards (“I played checkers with Robert Stroud. I don’t think I ever beat him”) and the men who had their hopes beaten down on “the Rock,” but never lost their souls, or capacity for poetic expression.

“You could hear girls laughing,” one former incarcerated person remarks in my headphones, remembering the San Francisco Yacht Club New Year’s Eve parties that carried on the wind from 1.25 miles away. “You could hear all the sounds coming from the free world at ‘the Rock.’”

With that perspective change — start with the cell block tour, Alcatraz first-timers! — I walk the rest of the island with a combination of inquisitiveness and gratitude. There are 19th century cannons from when the island was a fortress (with a military jail that housed county inmates displaced by the 1906 earthquake and fire). During the prison years, staff and their families slept on the island, with children riding their bikes on a southern cement yard.

The National Park Service has restored the red paint “Indians Welcome” and “Home of the Free” slogans written on signs and a water tank during the 1969 Occupation of Alcatraz, with both virtual and real exhibits to add perspective to that 18-month protest led by Richard Oakes.

There’s no sewer, running water and spotty electricity, and the landmass is truly a rock (still want to make this a prison again?), but a volunteer corps of gardeners have carried on the prison-era tradition started in 1941 by counterfeiter Elliott Michener of a blooming Alcatraz. They carry in soil and sometimes fresh water from the mainland to maintain rose hedges, flowerbeds, succulents and trees that arch over beaten pathways.

It doesn’t happen often, but the nation’s most famous prison may be the city’s all-time underrated wedding destination.

The clouds are especially high today and the views of the free world are stellar throughout. But never better than when I turn a corner to face downtown San Francisco, and see a Hitchcock movie‘s worth of cormorants nesting in the ruins. Thousands of the shiny black birds, some with five-foot wingspans, inhabit the largest rookery I’ve ever seen. They truly rule this island.

I’m sheepish at this point. My editor once referred to me as “San Francisco’s camp counselor,” and I’m just getting around to a tourist destination that as recently as last week has made “best attraction in the United States” guidebook lists. This is like finding out Roger Ebert never saw “Star Wars,” or Ansel Adams never bothered visiting the Grand Canyon.

But it turns out my story is pretty common.

I meet a kindred spirit in Barbara Howald, who first visited Alcatraz about 15 years ago when an out-of-towner dragged her along, and has been a twice-a-week volunteer gardener since.

“I was shocked, like so many people are,” Howald said, rose bush clippers in hand. “I didn’t want to come, but a house guest wanted me to do it.”

My retired ranger friends Cantwell and John A. Martini, who worked on the island for more than a half century combined, heard similar stories every day.

“It’s one of these things, like the Statue of Liberty in New York,” Cantwell says. “I’ve talked with a lot of people who came as they were leaving San Francisco. They wanted to go as their parting shot.”

I look in my own heart for answers as to why I never made the trip, and find just one: snobbery. The same smug provincial armor that causes us to introduce ourselves with “I’m a third-generation San Francisco native” makes it feel unseemly to join a ticket line within sight of Pier 39.

But here’s the thing: Cable cars are fun. Sea lions are fun. Top of the Mark is fun. Chinatown is fun. Camera Obscura is fun. The tourists themselves are fun.

Alcatraz is fun, but also humbling and historic; it will stir your emotions. And that makes it the best tourist destination of all.

(SF Chronicle)

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Marxist? Love y’all but there’s probably 5 total “Marxists” in the entire US.

Socialism = Economy organized for the benefit of the people

Capitalism = Economy organized for the profits of a select few

Marxism is not charity. Charity is charity. Which is what I assume you’re referring to when you write about Marxism in LA. This exaltation of the individual at the expense of society as a whole is called liberalism. Unchecked immigration is financial capitalism raising their profits by bringing in cheap labor. Def nothing to do with Marxism. And I’m def opposed to unchecked immigration. Like, duh.

I think we can agree that the US needs a government of action that fights for working families. Lord knows how we get that with Americans programmed to hate each other, but someday maybe people will begin to understand how we the people have been divided and thus conquered.

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IT’S AS IF

by Mimi German

wrapped in red ribbons and sparkles that blind

they drone on about war as if they were talking about stock prices

as if it were a bloodless event war when they should be reporting

that the sun has stripped the yellow from its flower in shame and

the rose has lost her scent to the emptiness of heaven

it’s as if the mountain still stands in its grief

as if the tide that pushes the beating heart towards shore has not

beached itself like a lost whale

as if tomorrow will rise with the sound of children laughing at the city park

as if the blossoms of a ceasefire truly exist

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RACHEL CARSON’S ‘SILENT SPRING’

by Bill McKibben

To call something “middlebrow” seems to dismiss it as unserious, but, when America was arguably at its intellectual peak, in the 1950s and 60s, this was the territory in which its writers excelled: distinguished work, aimed at readers who took the world seriously, available in mainstream magazines. That was the ocean in which Rachel Carson swam like few others.

Her lyrical ‘The Sea Around Us’ won the 1952 National Book Award and appeared on the Times’ best-seller list for an astonishing 86 weeks, a stretch when other recent releases included “East of Eden,” “Invisible Man,” and Anne Frank’s ‘The Diary of a Young Girl.’ Oh, and ‘Charlotte’s Web.’

As it happens, the author of that last volume, the New Yorker essayist E. B. White, could have written Carson’s classic ‘Silent Spring,’ which exposed the dangers of DDT and other pesticides.

In the late fifties, Carson tried to interest White in the dangers of the chemicals then used for insect control on American farms and in gardens; White, after all, had written memorable reflections from his Maine cabin about the era’s most important environmental issue, the fallout from nuclear testing.

But White encouraged an overworked Carson to do the job herself and alerted The New Yorker’s editor, William Shawn.

Before Carson turned to writing books, she had spent much of her career as a marine biologist at the federal Bureau of Fisheries, the kind of job that would now likely be DOGEd. By the 50s, she had earned enough from her best-sellers to write full time, but she was taking care of her mother; also, she had breast cancer, which required a full mastectomy. But she worked steadily on ‘Silent Spring,’ presenting it to Editor Shawn in January, 1962; he responded, “You have made it literature, full of beauty and loveliness and depth of feeling.” Indeed she had.

‘Silent Spring,’ which Shawn published in three parts, in June of that year, was the best kind of middlebrow: powerful enough to activate emotions, never florid, willing to use the tropes of pastoral Americana for all they were worth. In reporting on the emerging science of pesticides, ‘Silent Spring’ knocked some of the shine off modernity, nailing difficult questions to the door of the Church of Progress. Carson thought that man had grown overlarge and was upsetting a necessary balance.

She was immediately attacked by the industry she had called into question, in a way that set the playbook for the companies that profited from tobacco, asbestos, opioids, and fossil fuels.

Pesticide producers assailed Carson’s credentials, her childlessness, and, more broadly, her gender. But she triumphed on the force of her writing and on the credibility that came from her centrality in mainstream intellectual life — a Book of the Month Club edition came with a special pamphlet by the Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who called it “the most revolutionary book since ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’.” When she testified before Congress, some people, paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln when he met Harriet Beecher Stowe, called her “the little lady that started it all.”

In 1962, John F. Kennedy - whose ‘Profiles in Courage’ had won a 1957 Pulitzer Prize while sharing the spotlight on best-seller lists with Carson’s ‘The Sea Around Us’ follow-up, ‘The Edge of the Sea” — saluted “Miss Carson’s book” and launched a Science Advisory Committee investigation. The next year, the committee largely confirmed her reporting, and more rigorous federal regulation of DDT followed.

By then, events were gathering pace. On the one hand, environmentalism, which Carson had done so much to launch, gained momentum; within a decade, Earth Day became the largest political protest in the country’s history, and public scrutiny spread to a wide range of pollutants.

But the era’s turbulence also began the erosion of the culture that lent Carson its powers, replacing ascendant middlebrow authority with the ten thousand flavors of contrarianism that have come to dominate civic life.

That J.F.K.’s nephew now stands astride D.C., contaminating health policy with the crank complaints of Carson’s time — about fluoride in water, for instance — is as sharp a repudiation as one could imagine of everything that she stood for.

(The New Yorker)

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A rare glimpse into a bygone era, this 1868 photograph reveals two of the earliest Texas Rangers—James Thomas Bird on the left and John J. Haynes—young men hardened by the relentless frontier. Long before the iconic image of polished badges and pristine uniforms, these Rangers looked more like guerrilla fighters, dressed for the brutal and chaotic warfare that defined their world. Their gear wasn’t just for show; it was a testament to a time when survival meant adapting to every harsh twist of the rugged Texas landscape.

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LEAD STORIES, FRIDAY'S NYT

Israeli Security Cabinet Approves Plan to Take Control of Gaza City

Trump Orders Surge of Law Enforcement in Washington, D.C.

As Trump Administration Plans to Burn Contraceptives, Europeans Are Alarmed

How One Company Maintained a Monopoly on U.S. Fire Retardant

What Can MLB Learn From the Savannah Bananas? A Lot, It Turns Out

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“FOR THE THINKING PERSON there is no such thing as idleness… By contrast, one might say that the thinking person is at his most active when he is supposedly doing nothing. This is beyond the comprehension of genuinely idle people.”

— Thomas Bernhard

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ISRAELI SECURITY CABINET APPROVES FULL MILITARY TAKEOVER OF GAZA

The risky plan by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not backed by the Israeli military’s chief of staff and will thrust the war with Hamas into uncharted territory.

by Adam Rasgon, Natan Odenheimer, Ronen Bergman & Isabel Kershner

Israeli leaders early on Friday approved a plan for the gradual military takeover of all of Gaza, a pivotal and risky decision that went against the recommendations of the Israeli military and promised to take the nearly two-year war into uncharted territory.

After 10 hours of deliberations, a majority of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet backed his proposal to prepare to conquer the core of Gaza City, according to a pre-dawn statement from his office.

At a later stage, the military is expected to push into central areas of the enclave where Hamas is believed to be holding Israeli hostages and where Israeli troops have largely refrained from operating before.

The goal, according to the statement, is to achieve a decisive victory over Hamas, which led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that started the war. The plan also allows for the provision of humanitarian aid to the civilian population “outside the combat zones,” it said.

The cabinet also approved five principles for ending the war, including the disarming of Hamas; the return of all 50 hostages, 20 of whom are believed to be alive; the demilitarization of Gaza; Israeli security control over the enclave; and the establishment of an alternative civilian administration there that involves neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority, the rival Western-backed body that exercises limited control in parts of the occupied West Bank.

It is likely to take the military days, at least, to call up reserve forces, carry out troop deployments for a push into Gaza City and allow time for the forced evacuation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the new areas of combat.

Some analysts have said that the plan for the new offensive may be a threat to compel Hamas to offer concessions in stalled cease-fire negotiations. Days ago, American and Israeli officials floated the idea of an all-or-nothing deal for Gaza that would see all the hostages released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, and the war end under certain conditions. Otherwise, the Israeli military would continue its campaign.

The Israeli military has said that it had already conquered about 75 percent of Gaza. The coastal strip stretching from Gaza City in the north to Khan Younis in the south is the main area outside Israeli control. Many of the two million Palestinians in Gaza, including those displaced from their homes, have squeezed into tents, makeshift shelters and apartments in those areas.

Mr. Netanyahu said on Thursday that Israel planned to take control of all of Gaza, bucking the advice of the Israeli military and warnings that expanding operations could endanger the hostages being held there and kill more Palestinian civilians.

He made the comments in an interview with Fox News ahead of the security cabinet meeting. They came as talks to achieve a cease-fire and the release of the hostages have hit an impasse, with Israeli and Hamas officials blaming each other for the deadlock.

When asked whether Israel would take over all of Gaza, he responded, “We intend to.”

Mr. Netanyahu said the move would “assure our security,” remove Hamas from power and enable the transfer of the civilian administration of Gaza to another party.

“We want to liberate ourselves and the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas,” he said in an excerpt from the interview, without providing details on any planned operation.

The prime minister, however, suggested Israel was not interested in maintaining permanent control over the entire enclave. “We don’t want to keep it,” he added. “We don’t want to govern it. We don’t want to be there as a governing body. We want to hand it over to Arab forces.” In the excerpt published by Fox News, Mr. Netanyahu offered few specifics about his plan.

Hamas, in a statement on Thursday said Mr. Netanyahu’s comments “represent a clear reversal of the course of negotiations and clearly reveal the true motives behind his withdrawal from the final round.”

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THE GREAT AMERICAN POEM

by Billy Collins

If this were a novel,
it would begin with a character,
a man alone on a southbound train
or a young girl on a swing by a farmhouse.

And as the pages turned, you would be told
that it was morning or the dead of night,
and I, the narrator, would describe
for you the miscellaneous clouds over the farmhouse

and what the man was wearing on the train
right down to his red tartan scarf,
and the hat he tossed onto the rack above his head,
as well as the cows sliding past his window.

Eventually—one can only read so fast—
you would learn either that the train was bearing
the man back to the place of his birth
or that he was headed into the vast unknown,

and you might just tolerate all of this
as you waited patiently for shots to ring out
in a ravine where the man was hiding
or for a tall, raven-haired woman to appear in a doorway.

But this is a poem, not a novel,
and the only characters here are you and I,
alone in an imaginary room
which will disappear after a few more lines,

leaving us no time to point guns at one another
or toss all our clothes into a roaring fireplace.
I ask you: who needs the man on the train
and who cares what his black valise contains?

We have something better than all this turbulence
lurching toward some ruinous conclusion.
I mean the sound that we will hear
as soon as I stop writing and put down this pen.

I once heard someone compare it
to the sound of crickets in a field of wheat
or, more faintly, just the wind
over that field stirring things that we will never see.

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