Heat Peak | Strapped | Heat Wave | Madelyn Yeo | Church Pavillion | Housing Idea | Harvest Time | Farm Stands | Jumbo's Music | Redistricting Cost | Shamaz Farm | Reduced Flow | Live Music | Goodbye Bootsy | Rhody’s Café | Yesterday's Catch | Pickett Fire | Barred | Migraine Confidential | Tell Dems | Bierce Tales | Doubling Down | Chicago | Flame | Brigitte | Contempainting | Wine Shorts | Psychic Bullets | You're Hired | Giants Lose | Etc. | Redraw California | Natural Fanboy | Flag Burning | ICE Material | Burning Fuel | Lead Stories | Hapless Harris | The Farm | Israel's Assassination | Endless War | Compel Israel | To Feel | Bolton Raided | Hat Book
YESTERDAY'S HIGHS: Covelo 101°, Ukiah 99°, Laytonville 98°, Boonville 92°, Yorkville 92°, Fort Bragg 63°, Point Arena 62°
HOT and very dry weather will begin to peak today with a strengthening, shallow marine layer near shore. There is slight potential for thunderstorms over the interior late this weekend into early next week. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A foggy 53F under foggy skies this Friday morning on the coast. If you like "patchy fog", you'll love the forecast: Patchy fog until further notice.
NORTHCOAST HEAT WAVE
Editor,
This is Megan McFarland, spokesperson for PG&E. PG&E’s in-house meteorology department is forecasting a heat wave approaching our service area starting on Thursday and lasting into the early weekend. In parts of the North Coast, we will likely see higher than average temperatures lasting several days - 95 in Santa Rosa, 98 in Ukiah and even 90s in parts of Marin County. The National Weather Service has issued a Heat Advisory for much of the territory while an Extreme Heat Warning is in effect Thursday over portions of the southern territory.
PG&E encourages customers to have a plan for the heat. Here are a few tips to stay cool and reduce energy use. I’m available for on camera interviews to share additional energy efficiency tips.
Megan McFarland, [email protected]
MADELYN YEO
25 Year Ukiah Resident
Madelyn Gayle Keller Yeo was born in Springfield, Missouri on February 10, 1948, to Frank Beldon Keller and Roberta Roslyn Ragan. She died peacefully on August 18 at UCSF in San Francisco after a summer decline due to congestive heart failure.
Madelyn is survived by her husband Dennis and two adult children, Rebecca Daniels of Chicago and Matthew Yeo of San Francisco; a sister Paula Keller Smith of New Orleans, LA and a brother John Keller of Magdalena, NM. She and Dennis have been blessed with six grandchildren ages 6-16 years: Tate, Thatcher, and Cicily Daniels; Penelope, Walter, and Callista Yeo.
In 1966, Madelyn graduated from high school in Manhattan, Kansas. In 1970 she earned a BA in English from Kansas State University, and in1972 completed an MA in English literature from the State University of New York in Binghamton, NY.
Madelyn married Dennis Yeo on July 31, 1971, in their hometown of Manhattan, Kansas. Immediately after the wedding, the couple left for their wedding night in Kansas City, then on to Binghamton, NY; so, began their 54-year marriage. In 1972 they moved to Santa Clara, and later San Jose, where Madelyn was employed as a technical editor in the early days of Silicon Valley. In 1985 they founded a small software firm which led to retirement in1995.
In 2000 Madelyn and her husband purchased a historic 19th century residence in Ukiah and began an extensive renovation with the intent of reselling the home upon completion. During this interval, they lived in the home’s guest cottage and gradually fell in love with Ukiah’s surrounding beauty, welcoming residents, and the small-town atmosphere reminiscent of their hometown. By the time the renovation was completed in early 2003, all thoughts of reselling had evaporated and Ukiah became the couple’s permanent residence.
Shortly before passing, Madelyn Yeo asked for a few of her favorite things to be included in a story of her life. Madelyn loved any and all gardens; her own pristine vegetable and flower gardens; her fruit trees (particularly her sour cherry), preparing and eating good food; being with family and friends; skiing; biking; cheeses; her large collection of beach sands; the beauty of her brother’s photography; and the privilege of being a part of her grandchildren’s lives.
A service will be held at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, August 30, at Eversole Mortuary. Casual dress is optional. Immediately following the ceremony attendees are invited to attend a reception at the Todd Grove Room of the Ukiah Valley Golf Course, 599 Park Blvd.
The family suggests that, in lieu of flowers, a donation be made to the American Heart Association at Eversole.com/obituaries.
UNFINISHED BOONVILLE PAVILLION
A Reader Writes: This “pavillion” has been under construction for several years near Highway 128 outside Boonville. I believe this construction is in some way connected with St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church. I suspect there’s a story behind it, but don’t know what it might be.
LOCAL HOUSING IDEA
Editor,
Multi Family Housing Deal in Boonville Area
I am tossing out some brainstorming and want to mention that an amazing opportunity exists for land and home ownership for people who are capable of thinking outside of the box and have a handful of similar minded friends.
The former Frogwood Lodge property, AKA Bear Wallow, is for sale for $1.5M.
It has 39+ acres, seven homes, and a much larger lodge building with three floors and three bathrooms.
Six individuals or couples who could each afford to spend on average $250K could each wind up with their own 1-4 bedroom home plus have more to share as a community; including an additional cabin for guests or to use as rental, as well having a huge lodge building.
The lodge building has an apartment upstairs, three bathrooms (2 half plus one full), a fireplace, a large space with a hardwood floor on the main floor that is suitable for presentations, dancing or community activity such as mothers sharing minding the neighborhood children so that other moms can take turns having a break (all being uses that the lodge has seen during the last 20 years).
Downstairs there is what was once a large kitchen with a huge Wolfe 2 griddle, 6 burner and 2 oven range and a dining room that can seat close to 30 people.
Other features include a large Hot Springs Grandee hot tub, and mushroom foraging for white matsutake, black trumpets, several sorts of chanterelles, two hericiums, porcini and other edible species.
The site has seen a long series of upgrades and improvements over the years including adding paved skirts to the two driveway entrances. It has a protected well with a commercial seal and excellent quality drinking water that does not require treatment.
All eight of the buildings have their own separate electric meters, propane and septic tanks.
I am not involved with the sale but have lived there for 22 years and would love to see it continue to be used for area people’s residential housing bliss, and continue to be a community as has been the case for the past decade; rather than it be turned back into a retreat center renting to people visiting from outside of the Valley or outside of the county. In my opinion Anderson Valley needs housing for families much more than it needs another retreat rental.
If you have a group of friends with whom you want to share a neighborhood and co-own a property, this is by far the best deal for housing in Mendocino County.
See https://www.Frogwood.org for history, more information and photographs.
If you have interest, Anne Fashauer, the realtor in Boonville, can provide more details.
Geofrey Pomeroy
Boonville
AV WINEGROWERS ASSOCIATION:
After a year of care, it’s finally time - harvest has arrived to Anderson Valley! With the varietals grown here and the diversity of microclimates in the valley, harvest can stretch out for months.
Of course, timing varies year to year but usually harvest for acid craving Sparkling kicks off the season in August. In fact, tradition in the valley holds that harvest begins within two weeks of Naked Lady lilies blooming. The ladies are currently putting on a spectacular display and harvest is in full swing.
If you are visiting the valley though, unless you are out and about at midnight you may not directly see any harvest activity as most fruit is harvested overnight. Gathering the fruit at night helps retain the acids, and makes for a more pleasant work environment for the crews (no bees, though sometimes there are bears!)
Vintage 2025 is underway!
VELMA’S FARM STAND AT FILIGREEN FARM
Friday 2-5 pm
Open Saturday & Sunday, 11-4pm
This week’s offerings include: blueberries, french prune plums, Flavor King pluots, ‘Red Gravenstein’, ‘Gala’ and ‘Zestar’ apples, Hosui Asian pears, tomatoes (heirlooms, cherry, new girls), eggplant, sweet peppers, hot peppers, shishito peppers, new potatoes, carrots, sprouting broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce mix, arugula, hakurei turnips, onions, summer squash, cucumbers, kale, kohlrabi, celery, beets, cabbage, garlic, basil, olive oil, and dried fruit!
Follow us on Instagram for updates @filigreenfarm or email [email protected] with any questions. All produce is certified biodynamic and organic.
THE APPLE FARM, Philo
Apple Farm’s Farmstand is now in harvest mode and already have 8 apple varieties and Bartlett Pears. Currently Gravensteins, Connell Reds, Pink Pearls, the very rare Palladay Bouquet (only two trees in the known world) and more. Along with our usual bottled stuff—Juice, Vinegars, Jams and Chutneys. Plus some veggies and Tomatoes.
The Apple Farm
18501 Greenwood Rd
Philo Ca 95466 707 621 0336
philoapplefarm.com
THIS WEEK AT BLUE MEADOW FARM
BlueMeadow
Blue Meadow Farm
3301 Holmes Ranch Road, Philo
(707) 895-2071
HOW MUCH WILL NEWSOM’S BIG ANTI-TRUMP REDISTRICTING PLAN COST MENDOCINO COUNTY?
by Mark Scaramella
Governor Newsom’s proposal would put new congressional maps before voters in November. The maps are designed to oust at least five of California’s nine Republican members of Congress.
Acording to several recent CalMatters and other statewide news reports about Newsom’s redistricting plans, the California Legislature, where three-quarters of members are Democrats, has just voted to put Newsom’s new map on the ballot in a statewide special election on Nov. 4.
Because the redistricting would affect many if not most California Congressional district boundaries, seats and candidates, the new congressional lines need to be in place by the end of the year to meet next year’s June election deadlines, so that incumbents and other candidates know which voters they need to reach.
State Appropriations Chair Asseemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, said California taxpayers will get an official cost estimate before the special election. But it’s unclear who will end up footing the bill, since the Legislature has not earmarked funds or identified an official estimated cost. Wicks suggested California counties will have to pay now and get reimbursed later, someday.
“The estimates are about $230 million,” Wicks said. “We will continue to work through those numbers. We’re going to make sure that counties are made whole, that our election officials are made whole as they implement this.”
Wicks and other Democrats are defending the price guesstimate as a worthwhile expenditure for “defending democracy.”
“If we’re talking about the cost of a special election versus the cost of our democracy, or the cost that Californians are already paying to subsidize this corrupt administration, those costs seem well worth paying in this moment,” said Asm. Isaac Bryan, D-Culver City.
State law requires elections officials to mail a ballot to every voter starting 29 days before the redistricting election, and to military and overseas voters 45 days before, which means redistricting ballots must be ready by late September.
The Secretary Of State’s office has said the Legislature must act by this Friday (August 22) to leave enough time for local elections officials to meet those deadlines for a Nov. 4 election. Even then, the next month will be extremely busy for them.
The state has promised to cover the expenses counties incur running this unexpected election, which won’t be cheap.
California leaders will also need to account for the cost of court battles over the state’s redistricting effort assuming it passes. It’s not clear how much additional money that could cost taxpayers.
Mendocino County Assessor-Clerk-Recorder Katrina Bartolomie adds:
“It could possibly run over $400k for Mendocino County. All of our costs have gone up.
I actually revised my estimate from $300,000 to $350,000 for the actual election. If the Proposition passes and we have to redistrict it could cost as much as $150,000 in staff and vendor time. [ms note: Apparently it has passed the State Legislature, just today, Thursday, August 21, 2025.]
This is all such a tight turnaround. With the fairly new regulations, we are required to certify the election in 28 days or by December 2, unless we have ALL of our signatures cured (we contact every voter whose signature doesn’t match or no signature at all on the back of the ballot envelope), then we can certify before that date. We have to have our redistricting done before December 19, which is the first date to issue candidate paperwork (Petition in Lieu of Filing Fee) to those voters who wish to file for candidacy.
In SB280 it does say it is the intent of the Legislature to ensure counties have sufficient funding to effectuate the costs for this special election. In the 2021 Newsom Recall the county was paid for our costs of $293,000. With this election, we will report our actual costs to the Secretary of State. Any overage (from estimate to actual costs) will be used to offset state costs for the next statewide election conducted by the county.
SHAMAZ VALLEY FARM located at the top of Mid Mountain is a small fertile valley where we grow organic apples and pears.
We will be going to the Ukiah Farmers Market for the first time this Saturday morning. We have over 50 varieties of heirloom and standard varieties and will have apples until December. Anyone in our community of Potter can contact us and order and we will find a convenient place to meet.
This week we will feature Rosebrook Gravenstein and Akane.
Thanks for your support throughout the years. Always fresh picked!
‘SURPRISE’ DROP IN LAKE PILLSBURY WATER RELEASE stokes fears about PG&E’s Potter Valley Project decommissioning
Farmers and ranchers panicked earlier this month over a reduced flow of water from the reservoir made by Scott Dam; the utility says it was routine.
by Amie Windsor
A planned-for reduction in the amount of water Pacific Gas & Electric Co. is releasing from Lake Pillsbury caught Potter Valley farmers and ranchers off guard earlier this month during a key point in the summer growing and ranching season.
PG&E says stakeholders should have been expecting the dip in water pressure, which occurred on Tuesday, Aug. 5. But Janet Pauli, a rancher who is president of the Potter Valley Irrigation District board, says the utility failed to communicate about the change, which had been quietly approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
“Did we anticipate it? Yeah. But until FERC granted it, there was no reason for us to change what we were doing. Instead of giving us a ‘heads up,’ PG&E dropped their flows extremely rapidly,” Pauli said. “It was a surprise, and for a little while it was a problem.”
As the Potter Valley agricultural community panicked over keeping cattle and crops sated, rumors erupted on social media that PG&E had begun cutting off the water supply from Scott Dam in advance of the structure being torn down as part of the decommissioning of PG&E’s Potter Valley Project, which includes a shuttered hydroelectric power plant.
But that decommissioning, which has stoked widespread fears about potential water shortages throughout parts of Northern California, is still pending final approval and isn’t slated to begin until 2028 at the earliest.
Megan McFarland, marketing and communications coordinator with PG&E, said the rumors were based on “many, many inaccuracies.”
She pointed to the power company’s Feb. 15 request to the FERC for a water variance — or change in how much water is released from Scott Dam, down the Eel River, into the Van Arsdale Reservoir, through a mile-long tunnel that passes through the defunct powerhouse and finally into the East Fork of the Russian River.
McFarland said “the variance was expected by stakeholders” and noted that “the flows are consistent with previous variances requested over the past several years.”
Pauli said some ranchers and farmers were “in the middle of irrigation and the water just stopped. Some had cattle who were drinking water out of their district canals” — part of the Potter Valley Irrigation District’s 18-mile main distribution system — “and the water stopped. Some people had pumps in the river and the water stopped pumping.”
But, McFarland noted that the request has been an annual step taken by the power company, as it has come under growing pressure from state and federal wildlife agencies to improve conditions for federally listed salmon and steelhead trout below Scott Dam and Lake Pillsbury.
It’s a difficult balance for the power company to strike: Ensuring such improvements requires preserving a pool of cold water in the lake for release when necessary to enable fish survival. But, allowing the reservoir to be drawn down too much could risk bank sloughing and damaging the dam’s seismically-risky infrastructure.
As they have in previous years, the reduced flows are expected to continue through early October.
And this year, they’re frustrating water users more than ever as the company moves forward with its application to decommission the entire hydroelectric power plant.
The Potter Valley Irrigation District board, the city of Ukiah and the Mendocino County Farm Bureau vehemently opposed the annual PG&E request to reduce Lake Pillsbury’s flow.
In its appeal to the federal goverment, PVID suggested that the power company should reduce flows in response to real-time forecasting, using a system similar to one used by Sonoma Water to maintain reservoir levels in Lake Mendocino.
Ukiah city attorney Philip Williams didn’t mince words, writing to FERC, “The 2025 Variance Request repeats the sins of the past. It flouts firmly established law and good governance in the name of political expediency, agenda asymmetry and the failure of principle.”
FERC eventually denied the appeals, and the power company was allowed to ease the amount of water it released to Potter Valley and into the East Fork of the Russian River.
Determining a variance depends on a number of factors, including the timing of the season, geographical location and average rainfall for the water year, which begins Oct. 1.
For the 2025 water year (Oct. 1, 2025 to Sept. 30, 2026), the areas between the Eel River below Scott Dam, and the East Fork of the Russian River are expected to have normal water years. In such conditions — barring a variance — PG&E would have to release a minimum 60 cubic feet per second (cfs) into the Eel River below Scott Dam from June 1 through Nov. 30, and minimum 100 cfs from Dec. 1 through May 31.
PG&E would also have to release a minimum 35 cfs of water into the East Fork of the Russian River from April 15 to May 14, a minimum 75 cfs from May 15 to Sept. 15, and a minimum 35 cfs from Sept. 16 through April 14.
The water variance approval changes those requirements. Now, water released from the Eel River to below Scott Dam will be minimum 20 cfs. Additionally, water flows to the East Fork of the Russian River will be reduced to 25 cfs, with the option to go as low as 5 cfs.
The variances will stay in effect until Lake Pillsbury storage exceeds 36,000 acre-feet, which typically occurs after Oct. 1.
Much of that water is used by the PVID through an 89-year-old contract it holds with PG&E. Through that contract, PVID gets a steady stream of the diverted Eel River water, at a rate of 5 cfs — or about 37 gallons — as it flows through the area.
When that request was approved, PVID was pulling 45 cfs, McFarland said.
Pauli says the district has since adjusted how much water it is using.
“PVID was already on a demand-based request. We would tell PG&E how much water we wanted to divert,” she said.
She’s committed to keeping that open line of communication.
“We are working closely with PG&E on the management of the flows into Potter Valley for the rest of the contract year,” she said.
(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)
THAT WAS COOL: THE BEST GOODBYE: MY LAST MOMENTS WITH BOOTSY
by Justine Frederiksen
Losing a loved one is never easy. But if you have to say goodbye, the last moments I spent with our cat Bootsy were just about the best anyone could hope for.
“Just press this button when you’re ready,” the woman said after handing me my friend of 14 years. Then she closed the door so we could sit together in that quiet, comfortable room for as long as I needed to say goodbye.
That was cool.
Because I’ve lost many cats, but I’ve never gotten to say goodbye in such a soothing manner. And many times, I didn’t get to say goodbye at all.
Especially to my sweet boy Oz, a fluffy orange kitten I found crying up a tree. After eight years with us, he got very sick right before I was flying to visit family in Denmark, and died in the hospital before I got back home.
But the one good thing to come out of all the time and money my husband spent trying to give Oz, who was still a relatively young man, every chance to keep living — and yes, for me to see him again — was how respectfully that hospital treated both Oz and my husband at the end.
So when it came time to say goodbye to Bootsy — that handsome charmer who kept climbing over the neighbor’s fence to flirt with me before he and his brother Sasquatch officially moved in with us — we went back to that hospital to put ourselves in the hands of their kind, respectful staff again.
They began the process by giving me a quiet room before taking Bootsy into the back with the doctors. When they returned him to me, he was wrapped in a blanket, which helped hide the catheter now in his leg for administering medicine.
“Take as much time as you need,” the woman said after handing me that very skinny, but still very handsome, tuxedo cat, explaining that if I didn’t want to be present for his last moments, she would take him back to the doctor when I was ready. But if I wanted Bootsy to stay with me, the doctor would come to us after I pushed the button.
Wearing a Sasquatch shirt I chose in honor of his brother, who died suddenly a year earlier at 14, I sat with Bootsy and thought about how much nicer this goodbye was than all the others, even the other very expected one I had with another black and white cat I had for even more years.
Because while the vet who put that dear friend to sleep had also been incredibly kind and respectful, the process was much more disturbing: Standing at a table which we already associated with countless stressful visits, watching my beloved friend be poked with a needle under fluorescent lights, then being left with his limp body in the room where I would later take our much younger cat, was a distressing way for us both to spend his last moments.
Not like being given a calming room reserved for just such occasions, sitting down with him wrapped in my arms, allowed to quietly say goodbye for as long as I wanted.
“It’s OK, Bootsyman,” I whispered to him at the very end, and when the doctor bent over him, he said, “Goodbye, Bootsyman.”
That was very cool.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, August 21, 2025
MICHAEL ALPERS, 57, Ukiah. Domestic violence court order violation, probation revocation.
WILLIAMS COODY JR., 54, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, failure to appear.
JOSE ESPARZA, 30, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, no license.
ROBERT JACOB, 48, Covelo. Failure to register as felony sex offender with prior, county parole violation.
SYDNEY MILLER, 33, Long Beach/Ukiah. DUI-any drug, more than an ounce of pot, unspecified offense.
QUADE SMITH, 23, Covelo. Probation revocation.
DONALD SPICER, 36, Willits. Domestic battery.
THOMAS THORSON, 40, Nice/Ukiah. Probation revocation, resisting.
NAPA VALLEY WINERIES AT RISK AS PICKETT FIRE SPREADS NEAR CALISTOGA
by Aidin Vaziri
A fast-moving wildfire broke out Thursday afternoon on the northern edge of Calistoga, threatening several well-known Napa Valley wineries and prompting evacuation orders in rural parts of the county as crews worked through the evening to contain the flames.
The Pickett Fire, reported shortly before 3 p.m. on the 2300 block of Pickett Road, grew quickly in steep terrain south of Mt. St. Helena. By 10 p.m., Cal Fire estimated the blaze had burned about 1,200 acres.
The cause remained under investigation.
Evacuation orders and warnings were issued for several areas north of the Silverado Trail.
Several prominent wineries were within the evacuation area, including Sterling Vineyards, Eisele Vineyard Estate, Kelly Fleming Wines, Kenefick Ranch, Venge Vineyards and Phifer Pavitt Family Vineyards — a cluster that sustained significant damage during the 2020 Glass Fire and has since rebuilt or repaired facilities.
“Immediate threat to life. This is a lawful order to LEAVE NOW,” Cal Fire said in its report, urging residents with pets, livestock or special needs to depart quickly.
The Calistoga Community Center was opened during the day as an evacuation site before county officials directed evacuees to overnight shelter at Crosswalk Community Church in Napa.
Thick smoke from the fire was visible for miles across the valley, including from Highway 128, though no major road closures were reported.
Firefighters battled the blaze in triple-digit heat and gusting southwest winds of about 10 miles per hour.
More than 215 personnel were assigned, supported by 28 engines, six hand crews, four bulldozers, three water tenders, three helicopters, four air tankers and one air tactical aircraft. Fixed-wing planes were released after nightfall, while three helicopters equipped for nighttime operations continued water drops.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District issued an advisory warning that smoke from the Pickett Fire could drift into parts of Napa, Sonoma and Solano counties through Friday.
Officials cautioned that even when federal health standards are not exceeded, wildfire smoke can irritate the lungs and eyes and pose higher risks for children, older adults and those with respiratory conditions.
The Pickett Fire broke out just hours after crews in neighboring Lake County contained the McKinley Fire, which scorched four acres north of Middletown earlier Thursday.
Firefighters were expected to resume full air operations Friday morning as containment efforts continued.
(sfchronicle.com)
MIGRAINE CONFIDENTIAL
by Fred Gardner
As an activist/organizer in the medical marijuana movement, Pebbles Trippet had a vested interest in ending prohibition: she was a migraine sufferer for whom smoking the plant provided relief. Excruciating headaches had onset in childhood. Prescription pharmaceuticals failed her, one after another. When she began smoking marijuana in her 20s, she discovered that it alleviated her pain. Also, that it was a preventative if used steadily.
Trippet realized that even smoking leaf could fend off migraines. Friendly growers kept her supplied with low-THC trim –which is why Trippet, a longtime resident of Albion, was often in possession of pounds when her car was searched. She had an appeal pending in November, 1996, when California voters passed Proposition 215, legalizing possession of Cannabis for any use approved by an MD. Dr. Tod Mikuriya then testified in superior court that Trippet had a migraine diagnosis and was using the herb to fend off attacks. Pebbles then argued (pro bono, after dismissing her lawyer, who was named Stoner) that the new law implicitly legalized transportation. She beat the rap and re-enforced the law.
Fast forward to 2025. In last week’s New Yorker, Dr. Jerome Groopman, reviewing a book called “The Headache” by Tom Zeller, Jr., recounted his own saga of suffering. Groopman is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who also writes for the New York Review of Books and the Wall St. Journal. His migraines onset some 20 years ago, when he was in his early 50s. He has since been prescribed, “various medications, sometimes in sequence, sometimes in combination. I began with tricyclic antidepressants, which, years ago, were found to be helpful for some migraine patients. But they affected my blood pressure—if I got up quickly from bed, it dropped to the point that I’d almost faint—and also made it hard to urinate. I moved on to verapamil, a drug that blocks calcium’s entry into the smooth-muscle cells around blood vessels, causing the vessels to relax and widen. It made my vascular tone and blood pressure plummet. Next was Topamax, an antiepileptic medication, whose nickname in medical circles is Dope-a-max, because it makes you feel stupid. Indeed, I felt as if my head were filled with potatoes; I could barely think and could speak only slowly. I then added propranolol, a beta-blocker that reduces the effects of adrenaline on the heart and the blood vessels. It also brought on a degree of fatigue and gloom that became intolerable, a known side effect of the medication. During acute migraine attacks, I took triptans, targeting the neurotransmitter serotonin, which ameliorated the headache in the short term by blocking pain receptors in the head. But triptans can be taken only in limited doses because of their risk of inflicting rebound headaches and their side effects of nausea, vomiting, and chest pain.
“One weekend… after stopping propranolol, I had an explosive series of unrelenting migraines, each episode dovetailing into the next. There was a brief respite of an hour or two between waves of auras and pain. I couldn’t leave my darkened room and feared I would be consigned to a life of debility. A neurologist prescribed high doses of prednisone, a corticosteroid, which broke the vicious cycle but induced severe anxiety and insomnia, so much so that I had to take lorazepam, a Valium-like benzodiazepine. None of these numerous medications were consistently beneficial…
“Drugs developed to block the effects of CGRP [calcitonin gene-related peptide] arrived for patients in 2018. I was initially prescribed Aimovig, an antibody that is self-administered by injection once a month. For eight months, I didn’t have a single migraine, having previously averaged one every few weeks…. Alas, for me, the effects of Aimovig gradually waned, and I became despondent. Fortunately, another CGRP-targeting drug came on the market: Emgality. This worked for me, too, but, again, the benefit wore off after about a year.”
Either CGRP is a well-known term for a type of protein released from nerve endings in the brain during a migraine attack, or the New Yorker copy editors have lowered their standards. But back to Groopman’s search for relief… He next saw “a pain specialist who recommended Lamictal, an antiepileptic medication that is also used for psychiatric conditions such as bipolar disorder. It suppresses electrical depolarization and has been shown to be highly effective in people who have migraine with aura but not in those who have migraine without aura, a fact that lends credence to the hypothesis that aura represents an epileptic-like event in the brain. The benefit for me was substantial and has been ongoing. Meanwhile, the pain specialist I was consulting encouraged me to add on a long-acting CGRP antibody called Vyepti, which is given every three months. Sometimes, during the week or two before my Vyepti infusion, I feel tingling in my neck, without the flashing light in my eye but with moderate one-sided head pain. I’ve come to think of this as a mini-migraine. Immediately, I take Nurtec, another CGRP blocker, which can abort a full-blown attack.
“The use of multiple medications is common among headache sufferers. One study cited by Zeller found that the average patient was taking at least four medications and that forty per cent were taking five or more. Lamictal, Vyepti, and Nurtec are all preventative. During a full-blown attack, I take triptans…
“Globally, some 1.2 billion get migraines, some forty million of them in the United States. Female migraine patients outnumber their male counterparts at, a ratio of about three to one… An important theme running through [Zeller’s] book is the scant attention these conditions now receive, given how many people suffer from them, and the difficulty that patients have in being taken seriously. There are far fewer caregivers and researchers tackling the headache conundrum than there are working on movement disorders such as Parkinson’s, degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, and vascular maladies such as stroke.”
Cannabis does not get mentioned at all by Groopman in his New Yorker piece. Could it be that not one of the specialists he consulted over the course of 20 years mentioned Cannabis as an option in the treatment of migraine? Does the prominent professor consider the herb “beyond the pale?” His silence on the subject shows how successfully the neo-prohibitionists and their Big Pharma backers have chocked off the medical marijuana movement.
Migraine is one of the medical conditions for which cannabis provides relief for some people. This fact was reported in the medical literature prior to US prohibition in 1937. It was then almost totally forgotten by several generations of MDs. (The Cannabis leaf could be an emoji for cancel culture.) In the 1960s, a young psychiatrist named Tod Mikuriya searched for and found the relevant case reports in the National Library of Medicine archives. He included them in a book called Marijuana Medical Papers that he self-published after moving to Berkeley. Mikuriya met Pebbles Trippet while working on the state ballot initiative in 1971. They were comrades until his death in 2007. After the passage of Prop 215 in ‘96, it was Mikuriya who convinced a superior court judge that Trippet was using marijuana medicinally.
On December 30, 1996, Clinton’s Drug Czar, Barry McCaffrey, held a press conference to ridicule Dr. Mikuriya on national TV. He found it preposterous that one drug could impact disparate illnesses. An aide had made a poster headed “Dr. Tod Mikuriya’s (215 Medical Advisor) Medical Uses of Marijuana,” for McCaffrey to mock authoritatively. There was a misspelling: “Migrane.”
Mikuriya, at home in Berkeley, had taped the press conference at which he’d been slandered. Next morning he sent a fax to the Synapse office at UCSF.
ED OBERWEISER (Fort Bragg):
I keep getting numerous emails from the Democrats begging for money. This is how I answer them: So far you Democrats have shown no backbone or support for U.S. Democracy! I will never donate any of my scarce dollars to support your spineless, big money favoring presence in Washington DC.
The fact that any of you voted for the horrible republican spending bill is proof that you are traitors to Democracy.
Both California’s Democratic Senators voted in favor of the slaughter by Israel of more than 60,000 Palestinians. According to UNICEF, more than 50,000 were children. That is completely unacceptable.
We The People are going to have to take to the streets since the federal government is completely corrupted by billionaires buying the government and is traitorous to the Democratic ideals this country was founded on!
We The People must create a government of the people by the people and for the people. What we have now is one that is of the psychopathic billionaires for the psychopathic billionaires. This must change or the US is gone!
I urge all progressive-minded people to tell the Democrats something similar.
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
What I miss most is humor. Hell, it’s sort of fun when liars lie in a knowingly humorous way. But it gets tedious fast when liars lie and get a ‘twofer’ by preaching how stupid you are for calling bullshit to the lie. I love how mainstream media thinks we’re too stupid or lazy to have read the recently declassified documents. If the headline in the NYT tomorrow read ‘We Fucked Up! We Finally Read The Documents,’ they might have a future, but lying, preaching, and doubling down on the bullshit ain’t gonna get it.
NEW YORK is one of the capitals of the world and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic, San Francisco is a lady, Boston has become Urban Renewal, Philadelphia and Baltimore and Washington wink like dull diamonds in the smog of Eastern Megalopolis, and New Orleans is unremarkable past the French Quarter. Detroit is a one-trade town, Pittsburgh has lost its golden triangle, St Louis has become the golden arch of the corporation, and nights in Kansas City close early. The oil depletion allowance makes Houston and Dallas naught but checkerboards for this sort of game. But Chicago is a great American city. Perhaps it is the last of the great American cities.
— Norman Mailer
BRIGITTE
by Paul Modic
I got a call from my neighbor last night after I had finished my wine and was getting ready to roll a joint. She was feeling lonely and anxious, her family was out working.
I’m pretty good with women in crises. I listen, offer advice, and comfort them. “You could sit on these chairs or on the couch,” I said after giving her a long hug at the door. “No, just sit here by me.” We sat on the couch with my arm around her and she told me her latest anxiety.
I guess I’m good for something: earlier that week I had calmed her down after her landlord wanted to make a contract after fourteen years of a loose arrangement. She was taking it very personally.
“Well,” I said, “sure, everything is personal but it wouldn’t matter who was the renter, now they want to have a contract. I’m also making a contract after years, decades, of a loose arrangement. Things are just getting more official around here.”
Then I was having my breakfast outside her cafe when the landlord walked up with a binder of papers. They went over the last details and signed the papers. Later Brigitte told me that my calming words had helped. (Another friend had a lot of anxiety about visiting her mother after they had been estranged—I tried to offer her some perspective. Another friend was ranting about how can she have a good life when there are so many others suffering and I explained to her in length that she should be grateful for what she has without guilt-tripping herself about the suffering in the world.)
So I’m a friend. We do have an attraction but I respect her marriage. I went into the kitchen and got her the last half glass of wine. I stroked her arm and said “You know what your problem is? You’re a human being. A complex person.”
We talked and she told me some confidences. I massaged her legs and then her shoulders. “I keep thinking my husband will burst in here!” she said.
“Well we’re just friends. Oh, by the way, I do find you attractive and I hope you’re not sitting there thinking ‘Why doesn’t he attack me? Doesn’t he like me?’“ I lit the joint and she had a hit too.
We finally danced for while and she said, “I’m going to have to tell my husband about this.”
“What?! Oh shit,” I said.
“Maybe you could show him, teach him, how to be like you,” she said. “Attentive and affectionate.”
“I don’t think any man wants another man to teach him anything about his woman,” I said. “He is who he is, you are who you are. No one will be the perfect mate. How is your sex life, by the way?”
“It’s good. It could be more but…”
“Well, you’re still having sex?”
“Oh yes! It’s very nice.”
“Then I think you have a successful marriage after twenty years and with all the kids and financial worries. That’s good.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to sleep. I keep thinking over and over about my problems, anxieties.”
“Well, as long as you come to some conclusion that’s alright. I do that. The other night in Matehuala I got high and wandered around the nopalera behind Las Palmas going over and over my plan to pay the gardener when I leave. I call it ‘mental masturbation,’ but I did finally come up with a plan.”
“Oh, so you really do worry about that, the gardener and everything?”
“Oh yeah, I’ve been thinking about and planning what to do, how to do it, for hours, days.”
“So you don’t want to talk to my husband?” she said.
“No. Look, you can’t change someone. We are who we are,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s true.”
“You probably overthink things. When you’re lying in bed and you can’t sleep maybe you should think about me!” She laughed. “Well, let me massage your legs.”
She hesitated. “You won’t be angry if you want more? What if we fight?”
“Hey, we’re friends. Friends don’t fight, or they shouldn’t anyway. If we were lovers then we could fight. I was fighting with a friend and I finally said, ‘Hey, we’re not lovers so I don’t want to fight.’ “
She put her legs on my lap and I kneaded her calves. Then I had her sit on the floor in front of me and she told me where her shoulders hurt. “You’re just a woman who needs a lot of attention and affection,” I said. “I have another friend who, even when she has lovers, still wants my hugs.”
We sat back on the couch and she said, “Well, now I can massage you.” I was surprised, I normally don’t get that. She reached over and lightly rubbed my shoulder.
“You changed when you smoked,” she said.
“You did too, getting up, going to sit in the picture window sill.”
“Yes, you’re right. You look tired, I better go.”
I thought about it. “No, don’t go! We haven’t even danced much yet.” We got up for more water and I said, “How about just one more dance?”
“Okay, let me go to the bathroom.” When she got back I put on one of my favorite songs and we danced.
“I was feeling so bad down the hill at home,” she said. “I packed a bag and was going to go to Balz’s farm in the desert. He always said I could come if I needed a break.”
“Well, now you can come up here when you need a break. Hang out in my house after I leave.”
“I want to visit the farm again.”
“I was thinking of going before I leave but now I’m not sure, I’ve seen it before. Hey, we could go together.”
“On a trip to Matehuala,” she said.
“Yeah, we could go in the morning and you could bring your swimsuit, we could go swimming at Las Palmas! But I always spend the night there.”
“Okay, then you could put me on the bus back to Real.”
“You wouldn’t mind riding the bus?”
“No, not at all.”
I danced her out the door.
ESTHER MOBLEY: What I’m Reading
This may have changed by the time this newsletter lands in your inbox, but for the moment, wines and spirits will not be exempted from European Union tariffs, according to a report by Jeanna Smialek, Tony Romm and Julie Creswell in the New York Times.
Dominus bought 86 acres of Yountville vineyard from Markham Vineyards, reports Kerana Todorov in the Napa County Times. The price is around $30 million, records show.
A memorable San Francisco dive bar has shut down after 60 years: Edinburgh Castle Pub in the Tenderloin, which appeared in movies like “So I Married an Axe Murderer” (one of my all-time favorite San Francisco movies, incidentally). Chronicle Food & Wine summer intern Nava Rawls has the details.
(SF Chronicle)
IN AMERICA all too few blows are struck into flesh. We kill the spirit here, we are experts at that. We use psychic bullets and kill each other cell by cell.
— Norman Mailer
GIANTS DROP SERIES IN SAN DIEGO, A REMINDER OF HOW FAR THEY’VE FALLEN
by Shayna Rubin
The San Francisco Giants arrived in San Diego on Monday trying to piece together crushed spirits.
Outwardly, team leaders spoke of the hope that they could climb out of a deep slump and play for a postseason spot that’s grown increasingly remote. Under the surface, this is a team that’s taking every loss — feeling every mistake and injury — as a gut punch.
A four-game series against the Padres was a sobering reminder of where this Giants team stands now compared to spring, when the National League West appeared to be a three-way race between these two teams and the Los Angeles Dodgers. At times the Giants were sloppy, showing often the ramifications of what’s become a transient lineup and defense. Their offense came in spurts and, save for their win on Monday, rarely put a solid Padres pitching staff on the ropes.
They lost the finale 8-4 on Thursday to drop the series 3-1, a fitting end to their season series with the Padres in which they went 3-10 overall. Over the last two series (seven games), the Giants went 1-6 and were outscored 44-13.
“Earlier in the year I felt like we matched up a little better against them,” manager Bob Melvin said. “But certainly it’s frustrating — a team in your division like that — that you feel like you should play better against, to go 3-10 is bad.”
The disparity paints a picture of two division rivals trending in opposite directions. Petco Park was packed nearly every day of this four-game series, but the buzz was less about the Padres burying a division rival in the Giants and more about gaining ground on the Dodgers for first place in the division.
The win put San Diego a game back of L.A. and the Giants 12 back of first place, 6.5 back of a wild-card spot with three teams to jump. Meanwhile, the Giants continued on one of the worst stretches in baseball this year. Their 9-24 record since July 12 — a day after beating the Los Angeles Dodgers before the All-Star break — is the worst in baseball over that stretch. They have a 0.8% chance to make the playoffs, per Fangraphs.
“We’re five, six games out of the wild card,” infielder Casey Schmitt said. “It’s not crazy, crazier things have happened. We’re still definitely in it. We just have to pull ourselves together and get back out there.”
Those slim odds appear more justified given the state of things. With a crew of younger players getting a shot at regular playing time — and, at times, moving defensive positions — the product has been sloppy on both ends. The offense’s strikeout numbers are spiking and its walk rate is plummeting. In San Diego, the Giants feasted on power, mostly. Rafael Devers and Willy Adames hit back-to-back home runs on Thursday, beautifying what was turning into another lopsided loss that stemmed from an error.
With two on and none out in the fifth inning, nine-hitter Freddy Fermin laid down a bunt and third baseman Schmitt airmailed the throw to first. Newly called up right fielder Luis Matos fumbled the ball trying to clean up the mess, allowing the second runner to score as San Diego took a 4-2 lead. Fernando Tatis Jr. followed with a bunt single and Luis Arraez laid down a sacrifice bunt to put both runners in scoring position, setting up for Manny Machado’s two-run double.
The error was Schmitt’s sixth of the year, and four occurred in this series. Schmitt is a natural third baseman, known for a flashy glove and even better arm. So his misfire to first base was uncharacteristic, but perhaps telling of the toll it takes to move positions as many times as he has this year — from first base, to second base and third in Matt Chapman’s absence. Chapman, nursing hand inflammation, could return Saturday in Milwaukee.
“I haven’t been over there in months so it’s been — you saw in Colorado, I made an error to lose the game — there’s some rust there from not being over there,” Schmitt said. “It’s not an excuse, it is what it is, go back out there tomorrow.”
The error set up a six-run fifth inning for the Padres and played in role in starter Justin Verlander’s exit with one out in the inning, despite the 42-year-old throwing some of his best stuff. He’d kept San Diego batters off the bases until the fourth inning — when Tatis (double), Arraez (single) and Machado (single) reach in succession in a two-run frame — but was yet again bitten by a bad luck defensive play. Verlander shouldered seven earned runs and wasn’t pleased about it after the game, either.
“This was one of the more frustrating games of my career. Especially the season I’ve had, scratching and clawing to find a way out of it. Feel like you kind of found something to grasp onto and you have a game, inning like that. I’m being tested for sure,” Verlander said. “You just have to deal with it. Just try to keep making pitches. I look back at the game today, Tatis hit a good pitch down the line for a double. Machado had a great at-bat, the double — tip your cap — Laureano had a nice hit. Other than that, I don’t know. To have that result seven, eight runs or whatever the hell it is. It’s tough.”
Added Melvin: “It looks terrible. When you’re not hitting and play bad defense, it looks awful. Two errors on one play, look at Justin’s line, he certainly did not pitch to that line. His stuff the first couple of innings was just as good as we’ve seen it, scratch a couple against him then the fourth and fifth got away from us.”
The road trip continues with a three-game series against the surging Milwaukee Brewers, a homecoming of sorts for shortstop Willy Adames.
(SF Chronicle)
GAVIN NEWSOM SIGNS BILL to redraw California districts in response to Texas effort to add five GOP seats
Signing comes day after Texas House sent GOP plan to add five seats on fast track to passage
by Josh Marcus
The redistricting war just escalated.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday signed a series of bills calling for new congressional maps that could add up to five Democratic seats in Congress, a response to an ongoing, Trump-led effort in Texas to use redistricting there to carve out five additional GOP seats.
“We’re neutralizing what occurred and we’re giving the American people a fair chance,” Newsom said on Thursday of the effort. “Because when all things are equal and we’re all playing by the same set of rules, there’s no question the Republican party will be the minority party in the House of Representatives.”
The bills, which Newsom said are unique in U.S. history, ask voters to approve the congressional maps in a special election in November through a constitutional amendment that would bypass the state’s independent redistricting process.
The effort passed along party lines, with a sole Democrat voting against the proposals.
Republicans criticized the redistricting scheme as undemocratic, arguing it violates the will of Californians who created the independent redistricting process.
“You move forward fighting fire with fire, what happens? You burn it all down,” Republican Assembly Leader James Gallagher said on Thursday. “And in this case, it affects our most fundamental American principle: representation.”
The bill’s passage comes a day after the Texas House approved a redistricting plan for the state that could add up to five GOP seats in the U.S. Congress. President Trump had called on the state to do so.
In July, Trump said he was pushing the Texas GOP to pursue a rare mid-decade redistricting and redrawing of congressional maps in the state to pick up more Republican seats, with the president later claiming the GOP was “entitled” to more seats after his successful 2024 campaign there.
“Texas will be the biggest one,” Trump said at the time. “And that’ll be five.”
Texas Democrats temporarily fled the state to delay voting on the measure
The redistricting face-off appears set to move beyond Texas and California though.
Republican-led states, including Ohio, Missouri, and Florida, have been floated as possible next venues to pursue redistricting, and Democratic states like Illinois could alter their districts too before the 2026 midterms.
(independent.co.uk)
TRUMP TO SIGN ORDER DIRECTING DOJ TO CRIMINALLY CHARGE FLAG BURNING despite being protected speech.
by John Bowden
Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order directing the Justice Department to re-examine the feasibility of issuing criminal charges against Americans or others on U.S. soil who engage in flag-burning.
A controversial means of protest, burning the American flag is an act that has long been viewed by the Supreme Court as a protected First Amendment right. News of Trump’s order signals a willingness to relitigate that legal precedent before the nation’s highest legal authority.
He is set to sign the order later Thursday. NewsNation first reported the impending executive order.
Trump has personally condemned protesters for burning the American flag in the past, and has even called for a constitutional amendment to scale back free speech protections in order to criminalize the practice. Flag-burning emerged in the Vietnam War era as a popular form of protest against the U.S. invasion, and was criminalized in many states until a Supreme Court ruling voided those state bans.
“You should get a one-year jail sentence if you do anything to desecrate the American flag,” Trump in 2024 during a “Fox & Friends” interview.
“Now, people will say, ‘Oh, it’s unconstitutional.’ Those are stupid people. Those are stupid people that say that,” he said at the time. “We have to work in Congress to get a one-year jail sentence. When they’re allowed to stomp on the flag and put lighter fluid on the flag and set it afire, when you’re allowed to do that — you get a one-year jail sentence, and you’ll never see it again.”…
We are burning fuel
like there's no tomorrow.
LEAD STORIES, FRIDAY'S NYT
Gaza City and Surrounding Areas Are Officially Under Famine, Monitors Say
Trump’s Attacks on Institutions Threaten a Bulwark of Economic Strength
Immigrant Population in U.S. Drops for the First Time in Decades
Judge Orders That ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Detention Center Be Shut Down for Now
Divided Court Eliminates Trump’s Half-Billion-Dollar Fine in Fraud Case
Menendez Hasn’t Been a ‘Model Prisoner,’ Board Says in Denying Parole
WHAT ABOUT KAMALA HARRIS — the hapless loser to Trump in November’s presidential election? She must think she has something to say on behalf of the 75 million people who voted for her or against Trump. Silence! She is perfect bait for Trump’s intimidation tactics. She is afraid to tangle with Trump despite his declining polls, rising inflation, the falling stock market and anti-people budget slashing which is harming her supporters and Trump voters’ economic wellbeing, health and safety.
— Ralph Nader
ISRAEL’S ASSASSINATION OF MEMORY
Israel’s razing of Gaza is not only about ethnic cleansing. It is about the erasure of a people, a culture and a history that expose the lies used to justify the Israeli state.
by Chris Hedges
As Israel ticks off its list of Nazi-like atrocities against the Palestinians, including mass starvation, it prepares for yet another – the demolition of Gaza City, one of the oldest cities on Earth. Heavy engineering equipment and gigantic armored bulldozers are tearing down hundreds of heavily damaged buildings. Cement trucks are churning out concrete to fill tunnels. Israeli tanks and fighter jets pummel neighborhoods to drive Palestinians who remain in the ruins of the city to the south.
It will take months to turn Gaza City into a parking lot. I have no doubt Israel will replicate the efficiency of the Nazi SS Gen. Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, who oversaw the obliteration of Warsaw. He spent his final years in a prison cell. May history, at least in terms of this footnote, repeat itself.
As Israeli tanks advance, Palestinians are fleeing, with neighborhoods such as Sabra and Tuffah, cleansed of its inhabitants. There is little clean water and Israel plans to cut it off in northern Gaza. Food supplies are scarce or wildly overpriced. A bag of flour costs $22.00 a kilo, or your life. A report published Friday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classifications (IPC) , the world's leading authority on food insecurity, for the first time has confirmed a famine in Gaza City. It says more than 500,000 people in Gaza are facing "starvation, destitution and death", with "catastrophic conditions" projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis next month. Nearly 300 people, including 112 children, have died from starvation.
European leaders, along with Joe Biden and Donald Trump, remind us of the real lesson of the Holocaust. It is not Never Again, but, We Do not Care. They are full partners in the genocide. Some wring their hands and say they are “appalled” or “saddened.” Some decry Israel’s orchestrated starvation. A few say they will declare a Palestinian state.
This is Kabuki theater — a way, when the genocide is over, for these Western leaders to insist they stood on the right side of history, even as they armed and funded the genocidal killers, while harassing, silencing or criminalizing those who decried the slaughter.
Israel speaks of occupying Gaza City. But this is a subterfuge. Gaza is not to be occupied. It is to be destroyed. Erased. Wiped off the face of the earth. There is to be nothing left but tons of debris that will be laboriously carted away. The moonscape, devoid of Palestinians of course, will provide the foundation for new Jewish colonies.
"Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will be sent to…the south to a humanitarian zone without Hamas or terrorism, and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries," Israel's Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich announced at a conference on increased Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
All that was familiar to me when I lived in Gaza no longer exists. My office in the center of Gaza City. The Marna boarding house on Ahmed Abd el Aziz Street, where after a day’s work I would drink tea with the elderly woman who owned it, a refugee from Safad in northern Galilee. The coffee shops I frequented. The small cafes on the beach. Friends and colleagues, with few exceptions, are in exile, dead or, in most cases, have vanished, no doubt buried under mountains of debris. On my last visit to Marna House, I forgot to return the room key. Number 12. It was attached to a large plastic oval with the words “Marna House Gaza” on it. The key sits on my desk.
The imposing Qasr al-Basha fortress in Gaza’s Old City — built by Mamluk Sultan Baibars in the 13th century and known for its relief sculpture of two lions facing each other — is gone. So too is the Barquq Castle, or Qalʿat Barqūqa, a Mamluk-era fortified mosque constructed in 1387-1388, according to an inscription above the entrance gateway. Its ornate Arabic calligraphy by the main gate once read:
“In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, Most Merciful. The mosques of God shall establish regular prayers, and practice regular charity, and fear none except God.”
The Great Omari Mosque in Gaza City, the ancient Roman cemetery and the Commonwealth War Cemetery — where more than 3,000 British and commonwealth soldiers from World War I and World War II are buried — have been bombed, and destroyed, along with universities, archives, hospitals, mosques, churches, homes and apartment blocks. Anthedon Harbor, which dates to 1100 B.C. and once provided anchorage for Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman ships, lies in ruins.
I used to leave my shoes on a rack by the front door of the Great Omari Mosque, the largest and oldest mosque in Gaza, in the Daraj Quarter of the Old City. I washed my hands, face and feet at the common water taps, carrying out the ritual purification before prayer, known as wudhu. Inside the hushed interior with its blue-carpeted floor, the cacophony, noise, dust, fumes and frenetic pace of Gaza melted away.
The razing of Gaza is not only a crime against the Palestinian people. It is a crime against our cultural and historical heritage — an assault on memory. We cannot understand the present, especially when reporting on Palestinians and Israelis, if we do not understand the past.
History is a mortal threat to Israel. It exposes the violent imposition of a European colony in the Arab world. It reveals the ruthless campaign to de-Arabize an Arab country. It underscores the inherent racism towards Arabs, their culture and their traditions. It challenges the myth that, as former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak said, Zionists created, “a villa in the middle of a jungle.” It mocks the lie that Palestine is exclusively a Jewish homeland. It recalls centuries of Palestinian presence. And it highlights the alien culture of Zionism, implanted on stolen land.
When I covered the genocide in Bosnia, the Serbs blew up mosques, carted away the remains and forbade anyone to speak of the structures they had razed. The goal in Gaza is the same, to wipe out the past and replace it with myth, to mask Israeli crimes, including genocide.
The campaign of erasure banishes intellectual inquiry and stymies the dispassionate examination of history. It celebrates magical thinking. It allows Israelis to pretend the inherent violence that lies at the heart of the Zionist project, going back to the dispossession of Palestinian land in the 1920s and the larger campaigns of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948 and 1967, does not exist.
The Israeli government bans public commemorations of the Nakba, or catastrophe, a day of mourning for Palestinians who seek to remember the massacres and expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians carried out by Jewish terrorist militias in 1948 for this reason. Palestinians are even prevented from carrying their flag.
This denial of historical truth and historical identity permits Israelis to wallow in eternal victimhood. It sustains a morally blind nostalgia for an invented past. If Israelis confront these lies it threatens an existential crisis. It forces them to rethink who they are. Most prefer the comfort of illusion. The desire to believe is more powerful than the desire to see.
Erasure calcifies a society. It shuts down investigations by academics, journalists, historians, artists and intellectuals who seek to explore and examine the past and the present. Calcified societies wage a constant war against truth. Lies and dissimulation must be constantly renewed. Truth is dangerous. Once it is established it is indestructible.
As long as truth is hidden, as long as those who seek truth are silenced, it is impossible for a society to regenerate and reform itself. The Trump administration is in lock step with Israel. It too seeks to prioritize myth over reality. It too silences those who challenge the lies of the past and the lies of the present.
Calcified societies cannot communicate with anyone outside their incestuous circles. They deny verifiable fact, the foundation on which rational dialogue takes place. This understanding lay at the heart of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Those who carried out the atrocities of the apartheid regime confessed their crimes in exchange for immunity. By doing so they gave the victims and the victimizers a common language, one rooted in historical truth. Only then was healing possible.
Israel is not only destroying Gaza. It is destroying itself.
(chrishedges.substack.com)
WHEN THE TERM ‘GENOCIDE’ FALLS SHORT
It is not enough for national governments to “recognize” a Palestinian state. It is time to compel Israel, via sanctions, diplomacy, and UN enforcement, to stop the killing and any talk of forced relocation.
by Barton Kunstler
Israel has made its intentions in Gaza clear: to eradicate or remove the Palestinian population. Netanyahu was recently reported talking with South Sudan about shipping Gaza’s population there. South Sudan’s government called the report “baseless” (Diplomacy 101) but Netanyahu’s notion of “voluntary migration” of Palestinians to Africa has come up before. South Sudan is also a dumping ground for ICE-abducted immigrants. There is a ghastly irony in Netanyahu’s brainstorm because the Nazis, before implementing the Final Solution, considered sending Europe’s Jews to Madagascar. Netanyahu is literally, unabashedly following Hitler’s footsteps. Never again.
West Bank Palestinians have also been targets of escalating violence. The attacks by Israeli settlers and security forces mimic on a larger tactical scale street thugs who curse, shove, and arm-punch an intended victim before building to a full-scale assault. Netanyahu’s governing cabal may well be waiting to clear out Gaza before turning their full destructive attention to the several million West Bank Palestinians. The frenzy of eradication observes no limits unless forcibly stopped.
Many Jews and Israelis balk at calling the slaughter a genocide. It is painful to apply the term to the same people who experienced the most thorough attempt at extermination in human history. And the label might seem hyperbole, ignoring the catalog of blame and counter-blame that marks the region’s conflicts.
However by now such objections carry no weight. The situation is simple. A powerful army is slaughtering civilians en masse with the goal of obliterating their presence in what has become, however involuntarily, their homeland. It is genocide whether Netanyahu’s gangsters plan to kill every last Gazan or tens of thousands, or kill them off by starvation instead of death camps.
Yet the term “genocide,” loaded as it is, can obscure the true criminality and sadism of what it stands for. It is linked forever to the Holocaust. As children in the 1950s we viewed on TV mounds of bodies towering over the disbelieving Allied officers who liberated the camps. The starving survivors, many of whom would soon die of typhus or physical collapse, or be murdered when they returned to their home villages; the torture of prisoners disguised as “medical” experiments; the evidence provided by survivors, liberators, and even Nazis; the collaboration of Germany’s corporate giants in using prisoners as slave labor until they dropped dead of starvation and exhaustion; the six million non-Jewish victims of German mass slaughter; and the dispassionate industrial efficiency with which those twelve million murders were carried out, has played a central role in how we view politics, history, and humanity itself in the 80 years since.
Most atrocities do not leave such an exhaustive record. Bodies are photographed where they fall or scattered or interred in mass graves. Jumbled bones carry less visual impact than the gas chambers and ovens of the extermination camps, or old film of Jewish families torn apart at the gates of Auschwitz, many to be gassed within hours. The Germans’ meticulous records of the dead and the wealth harvested from their bodies is unique. The impact of other genocides has been devastating but the evidence for them, while irrefutable and compelling, remains fragmentary compared to the voluminous visual and written documentation of the Holocaust.
The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust points out that the Holocaust’s unique aspects in no way lessen the horror of other genocides. Nor do the numbers killed provide meaningful comparison, morally or in terms of severity. Genocides each carry their own distinctive horrors, and each marks the bottom of human depravity. Yet applying the term to Gaza can create a subliminal comparison with the Holocaust. As with the word “murder,” news reports of mass shootings in which “only” two people died, soldiers killed on a “training exercise,” or “collateral damage”, the banality of language casts a spell of indifference over events. Terms that lose the ability to shock fit easily into the background noise of contemporary atrocities and disasters.
As Americans we have to face up to our role in Israel’s invasion. While the U.S was slated to give Israel $3.8 billion a year in military aid, in 2024 alone the total was at least $17.9 billion. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has claimed that Trump has approved $12 billion in aid in 2025. So in the past year and a half what would normally be $6 billion appears to have become $30 billion, a $24 billion dollar excess mostly dedicated to destroying Gaza. The “aid” consists of financial credits given to Israel, which then passes them back to U.S. defense contractors in return for their killing machines, creating a cycle of graft and profit paid for by U.S. taxpayers. (Some direct transfers of used weapons are included). Beyond weapons, the failure of Biden, Harris, and Trump to condemn the invasion and pressure Netanyahu may have cost Harris the election and made our country an active partner in genocide.
Trump, an unhinged extortionate clown, has been broadcasting his own solution to the stateless condition of the Gazan population: he will line the newly emptied coast of Gaza with (Russian- and Saudi-financed?) Trump Resorts. Netanyahu’s plan to annex Gaza and ship its people to South Sudan could well be part of a deal to partner with Trump in turning Gaza into a monument to the genocide they are committing.
A few days ago Israel targeted and murdered 28 year old Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al Sharif, a father of two small children. Israel accused him of leading a Hamas cell, a bald-faced lie. Five other journalists were killed with him: four Al Jazeera staffers including Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Moamen Alkqa, and Mohammed Noufal, and Mohammed al-Khalidi who worked for digital media outlet Sahat. Other prominent Palestinians, including doctors, have been specifically targeted for murder. For instance, Doctor Marwan al-Sultan, director of Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital, was blown up along with his daughter, wife, sister, brother-in-law and three other people. He was the 70th medical worker killed in the 50 days preceding his death on July 2.
So far, 270 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israel since the invasion, many targeted. Dozens of Gazans die of malnutrition daily. Israeli soldiers regularly kill Gazans gathering to receive food and medicine. According to IDF soldiers, they were ordered to do so. Just following orders.
I can relate to other Jews’ discomfort in using the term “genocide” regarding Israel, but as Netanyahu’s goals expand with little resistance from Israel’s armed forces, there is no other way to describe it. Yet the very term seems inadequate. Since World War II the world has provided so many examples of mass civilian killings that we have grown used to the term. It’s as if programs of death and the clamor of protests have become an expected and accepted feature of the global order, a fact of war and the transition to… what exactly?
The current system has no end-game, no program to sustain itself. It lurches along from one psychotic killing spree to another, from local mass shootings to Oct. 7 planned massacres to sustained slaughter in one-sided wars. Each is the equivalent of a purge driven by sadists so immersed in greed for power and blinded by the infantile ideologies of nationalism and religion that they no longer accord life any value. Each killing requires that a body be torn to pieces by shrapnel and explosives, riddled with bone-shattering and organ-bursting bullets, evaporated into a reddish mist. And the deed must be repeated over and over and over again, efficiency demanding many simultaneous killings, each death shattering the lives of surviving family, friends, lovers, colleagues. Each death dehumanizes us. Reduced to powerless onlookers, we sense we are being drawn to an unavoidable reckoning. When slaughter is the standard currency of global affairs, there is no escaping the lurch towards greater massacres to come. We are so fixed on the killing we ignore the world falling apart around us.
Genocide is not a weird aberration that crops up, upsets everyone, and then subsides with comforting assurances of “never again”. Scholars of genocide have shown that it is always prepared for by a campaign of scapegoating, hate, and dehumanization of intended victims for the purposes of manipulating public sentiment to achieve political aims. In truth, the culmination can only be viewed as a collective act of ritual slaughter without rationale, purpose, or sense. We might remember this when we hear Republicans’ and other bigots’ hate speech against immigrants, transgendered people, Muslims, gays, blacks, and yes, Jews as well.
Genocide has become a pallid descriptor of what it is about. It ought to be described one killing at a time with all its attendant madness, violated bodies, and loss, horror, and grief. It should not be cushioned by terms like “collateral damage” or “unintended” or “they were being used as cover for terrorists “. It should not be dignified as a historical commonplace, an inevitable outgrowth of political contention.
It is also dehumanizing for all of us to be reduced to head-shaking, tut-tutting onlookers. Netanyahu has damaged Israel irrevocably; so too has the world wounded itself by limiting itself to impotent denunciations. Those fixated on a distant rising flood often look down to find “that the waters around [them] have grown.” It is not enough for national governments to “recognize” a Palestinian state. It is time to compel Israel, via sanctions, diplomacy, and UN enforcement, to stop the killing and any talk of forced relocation. From there, the momentum should continue into establishing a Palestinian state for the sake of both Palestinians and Israelis. It is simply no longer viable to maintain this inherently brutal status quo.
(NationofChange)
“A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words.
This may sound easy. It isn’t.
A lot of people think or believe or know they feel — but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling — not knowing or believing or thinking.
Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”
— E.E Cummings
UPDATE: BOLTON RAIDED, LEAK PROBE WIDENS
Hold on to your hats. The Russiagate investigation is heading into high gear
by Matt Taibbi
From the New York Post at 7:12 a.m. this morning:
FBI agents raided the DC-area home of President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton on Friday morning in a high-profile national security probe, The Post can exclusively reveal. Federal agents went to Bolton’s house in Bethesda, Md., at 7 a.m. in an investigation ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel, a Trump administration official told The Post. “NO ONE is above the law… FBI agents on mission,” he said in a cryptic post to X shortly after the raid began.
As the Post noted, President Donald Trump previously accused Bolton of leaking classified information in his 2020 memoir, “The Room Where it Happened.” Trump even filed a lawsuit to try to block publication, claiming it was a “breach of agreements he signed as a condition of his employment and as a condition of gaining access to highly classified information.” The effort failed.
“It’s tied to classified documents,” a Justice Department official said this morning, adding it was an “investigation closed by Biden, reignited by Kash Patel.”
The Trump administration claims Bolton was denied permission by the National Security Council to publish the book. Bolton’s attorneys have denied that claim. Either way, the raid is a serious escalation. It underscores what Racket was told by a senior Trump official a month ago, that recent releases of documents related to Russiagate and other topics are not a “hearts and minds” campaign, but precursors to legal action.
The raid comes a day after Patel announced that “agreements have been reached with 10 FBI Whistleblowers (and counsel) to include a combination of backpay, security clearance, and reinstatement.” The whistleblower firm Empower Oversight confirms that five of those deals involve their clients, some details of which were made public in a letter to FBI General Counsel Sam Ramer in March. Four of those names remain anonymous, but one is Marcus Allen, the former FBI agent well-known for his dramatic testimony to the House Weaponization of Government Committee last year.
The Justice Department notes the raid and the whistlelblower deals are “not related.” More from Racket soon on what will be a busy day.
(racket.news)
ED OBERWEISER: “We The People must create a government of the people by the people and for the people.” I agree, but in an effort to do so we have created a government of the government, by the government, and for the government. That is always the inevitable socialist model.
The current federal government looks more like “of Trump, by Trump, and for Trump”. Not good.
It’s the inevitable authoritarian model. No, not good, for sure, and far less favorable than any socialist model I can think of…
There is a simple solution, limit the responsibilities of the federal government.
An even simpler solution would be to impeach trumples and then deport him to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, or perhaps, the Gulf of MEXICO.
Sounds more fascist/authoritarian than socialist. Better read up on your subject before babbling aimlessly. You, George, strike me as one of those who will be pleased when social programs, like Social Security and Medicare, are destroyed by authoritarian rethuglicans and their “dear leader”, trumples the brainless mutant.
No its not. Nice of you to spread that Fascist myth. Authoritarian dictators are the inevitable result of conservatism. Hope you enjoy having your Medicare and Social Security reduced for tax cuts for the wealthy. Such horrible socialist programs!
You should be working for the Guv, my good man. He’s standing up to ‘em like you do.
I like things to be on an equal playing field. Newsum gave Texas the option to not gerrymander and he would drop California’s gerrymander. Abbot opted to go along with Trump’s request to gerrymander, therefore Newsum did the same. Why did Trump demand red states to gerrymander if his policies are so liked by the masses? Dems need to counter this obvious illegal gerrymandering state by state. An eye for an eye as the Bible says, or we can just all drop this nonsense for dictator Trump and his power grab and do bipartisan commission redistricting every 10 years like we have been.
Sure Kash…. No one is above the law. Hmmm… Epstein files maybe? Or the the Israeli pedo you let escape from Vegas? Pu- leeezz
Seems Bolton is getting investigated for the same thing Fearless Leader did at Mar a Lago. Wonder if the FBI checked the bathroom first searching for classified documents. I’m sure Bondi won’t be treating this investigation like Garland did.
Thank you for bringing the art back to your publication, it’s awesome!
I always light up when I see there’s a Jurgen Stoll post. Ever since he brashly put up his physical address and dared some annon troll to stop by for a bout of fisticuffs, I’ve been a fast fan of this man! Never been disappointed in his work (though I almost stepped on his bad side once); wish I could say the same about the Giants.
We’ll thanks Bruce, but I’m actually a pacifist. Haven’t been in a fight since high school and I lost that one. I will however, defend Democracy any time and any place it needs defending.
I don’t care what label you pin on a dictator. I still despise them.
What’s amusing to me is people on the left falling over themselves about the John Bolton raid. Here’s the same John Bolton who was one of the prime instigators of the invasion of Iraq. The same John Bolton whose basically a cro-mag neoconservative. It reminds me of the lamebrain “strategy” of the Harris campaign trotting out Liz Cheney as though that was going into the Republican vote. We see how well that turned out!
Matter of perspective, even that great environmentalist Nixon looks pretty good right around now…
+1. When your enemies are fighting among themselves, for God’s sake let them fight.
I looked up some other Andrea Kowch paintings.
Some have disturbing themes and most have wild hair, but the one above seems to be the only one painted in the future.
Substance abuse indoctrination for migraine pain masking, as a substitute for proactive health care, preventative dentistry, and substantive recovery, except when not possible.
RE: MIGRAINE CONFIDENTIAL
—>. April 9, 2025
Women with poor dental health are more likely to suffer agonising migraine attacks, groundbreaking new research has revealed…
Intriguingly, the researchers also suggested bacteria-containing probiotics shots and supplements—taken to boost gut and immune health—may trigger mouth problems and potentially lead to pain conditions….
However the researchers suggested their findings ‘raised questions’ over its use, adding that these bacteria are ‘acid producing… and… may not be cleared away by toothbrushing. Migraine affects one in seven people and the majority, roughly three quarters, are women…
Patients often say certain things trigger their migraines, including hormonal changes, stress, sleep issues and certain foods and drinks…
In the new study, those reporting poor oral health were also more likely to report body pain and a complex, incurable condition known as fibromyalgia…’Our study shows a clear and significant association between poor oral health and pain…
‘Fibromyalgia is a chronic condition characterised by widespread musculoskeletal pain, and headaches including headaches, as well as fatigue, sleep disturbances, and cognitive problems.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14588215/migraines-breakthrough-new-treatment-bacteria-microbiome.html
—> August 5, 2025
Why Americans Flock to Mexico’s “Molar City” for Dental Care. (Transcript and audio file)
https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101910811/why-americans-flock-to-mexicos-molar-city-for-dental-care