Mendocino County Today: Sunday 9/7/2025

By AVA News Service on September 7, 2025

DRY WEATHER with seasonable temperatures today. Wet weather and possible thunderstorms Monday. Chance for rain and possible interior thunderstorms Tuesday through Thursday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Was yesterday a great day for Winesong (and my tennis & everything else) or WHAT! An overcast mix of high & low clouds with 53F this Sunday morning on the coast. We have an 80% chance of rain tomorrow & scattered chances for more rain a few days to follow this week. Hectic?

SEPTEMBER 6TH FORT BRAGG PROTEST (photos by Bob Dominy)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mendoevents/albums/72177720328850060/

BERNA WALKER HAS DIED:

On Wednesday around 5pm as I sat on the back porch watching the hummingbirds buzz around there came a quiet stillness. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a white as snow hummingbird a couple feet away from me just checking me out. I have never seen or heard of a white hummingbird. It hovered, hit the feeder closest to me and perched there for a moment. I went to grab my phone to snap a pic of the rare sight and it was gone In a flash.

Then at around 7pm I got the news the Grandma Walker had passed away. I don’t know how long it would take a hummingbird to fly from Humboldt to Boonville but I am pretty sure it was Grandpa Walker telling me he was on his way to pick up grandma.

I am sure Frank and JoAnn are happy to have their partners all together. They had a lot of fun trips the 4 of them. All four of them were huge influences and never turned family away. They helped me during the most difficult time in my life without hesitation.

Thank you grandma and grandpa! I love you and miss you!

Goodnight!

— Stacey Rose

JOHNNY SCHMITT: Keep meaning to ask, does anyone know what they're actually doing at the new athletic field behind the high school/health center? Hopefully it's not gonna be Astroturf, but some serious ground prep there… Are we losing the grass soccer field?! I didn't realize we even had a track & field team, but I do know that was a very popular soccer field.

FORMER AV SUPERINTENDENT LOUISE SIMSON: That is the construction for the $5 million grant that I wrote and received. It will be natural turf and then a synthetic six lane track and all of the required improvements that DSA requires for access. Caltrans is paying for it. It’s a good thing. It needs to absolutely be done by May 31, 2026.

JENNIFER SMALLWOOD (Point Arena) re: Jim Lutticken’s recommendation to the Community Services District board that they abandon the Boonville sewer system project:

The Point Arena city council used that reasoning – the project is too far along – when legitimate opposition to building a wall to “save” the parking lot at the cove were raised. Turns out the legitimate concerns were legitimate.

Maybe Boonville could invest in low or no interest loans to retrofit failing septic systems. Your community needs to think outside of the box or you could end up with a sewer system like the one in Point Arena – smelly, outdated and in disrepair because the city can’t afford to keep it running properly.

Just curious, how will Boonville determine the cost per household for being connected to the sewer system? People probably have wells so the typical way of connecting water usage to sewer costs won’t be practical.

I wish you luck.

MARK SCARAMELLA: The project engineers are nearly finished preparing their “rate letter” where all questions about cost per hook-up will be addressed. Property owners in the proposed sewer system district will then have an opportunity to evaluate that cost analysis to determine if they support the project or not.

BUT BEFORE YOU GET TOO EXCITED: It [total lunar eclipse] will be visible from start to finish across Asia and Western Australia. Glimpses of some phases will also be possible from Europe, Africa, eastern Australia and New Zealand. This event will not be observable from the Americas. (space.com)

SENTENCING DAY FOR TWO MURDERERS

DA David Eyster:

Thursday morning was sentencing day for two homicide defendants — Iran Lee Hoaglen III, age 43, and Lawrence Allen Joaquin, age 37, both of Covelo.

Both were involved in the unprovoked, brutal death of an agricultural worker in the early morning hours of October 31, 2023. It is noted that defendant Hoaglen was the one who wielded the hatchet that caused the victim’s demise.

No stranger to state prison, defendant Hoaglen was sentenced today to 25 years to life in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, having been convicted by plea of murder in the first degree (willful, premeditated, and deliberate).

Hoaglen’s adult criminal record dates back 25 years to 2000. In the intervening 25 years, Hoaglen has suffered seven felony and four misdemeanor convictions.

Hoaglen’s first commitment to state prison was in 2003 after he repeatedly violated terms of local probation. Thereafter, he was returned to state prison in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2015, and 2017. He was on parole when he committed the murder in 2023.

Also no stranger to state prison, defendant Joaquin was sentenced today to 17 years in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, having been convicted by plea of voluntary manslaughter pursuant to the legal theory of having aided and abetted Hoaglen in acquiring the weapon and setting up the victim for harm by perpetrating a ruse on him.

Joaquin’s adult criminal record is shorter — dating back “only” 15 years to 2010. In the intervening 15 years, Joaquin has suffered one felony and five misdemeanor convictions. His first trip to state prison was in 2021.

The law enforcement agencies that did the heavy lifting of crime scene investigation, interviewing witnesses, and compiling evidence used by the prosecutor to convict the two defendants were the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, the California Department of Justice forensic crime laboratory, and the DA’s own in-house Bureau of Investigations.

The attorney who has been working on this case since November [2023] — handling all court proceedings from arraignment through today’s sentencing hearing — is District Attorney David Eyster.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder presided over today’s sentencing hearing.

On-line comment: Why would these two heroic geniuses try to get rid of a body by burning it in car?! All that will result is a well roasted body and even the local cops will be able to figure it out quickly.

It's always a mystery to me why more effort isn't devoted to getting rid of a body so it will never be found. That entire area is a pretty wild and remote place. Driving half an hour or more out Mina Rd; Mendocino Pass Rd; Poonkinny Rd would get to any number of places where a body could be dragged a few hundred yards off the road. 2 hours work with mattock and shovel to bury it and unlikely it will ever be found.

From the looks of Messrs. Hoaglen and Joaquin; they aren't the sharpest tacks in the box. I wonder if specimens such as these have ever performed any sort of useful work; have ever had any plans that extend further into the future than next week?

JIM ARMSTRONG:

Since Potter Valley itself is the only stakeholder in the “Two Basin Solution” that gets no benefit from it (thrown under the bus sums it up), it is worth keeping in mind that all the water that Sonoma County and other Russian River users are yelling about is Potter Valley water. The total inflow to Lake Mendocino comes from about 100 square miles, all (except for Cold Creek and the Eel diversion), purely water that has fallen on Potter Valley during the rainy season. It is ours, then it goes and we may be able to somehow use that leverage to keep Eel River summer flow and save us from becoming high and dry. The alternative of giving up the fight should not be contemplated.

ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE List of Events

LEW CHICHESTER (Covelo):

A few thoughts on the Great Redwood Trail: it’s a boondoggle, all tangled up in what seems to be a typical California public project, heavy on the administration, planning, permits and process and not getting much done for a lot of time and money wasted. It’s too much like the high speed rail project which would not be hard to build somewhere else other than California. The engineering and construction is not complicated, but it’s to the advantage of a certain group of politicians, planners and paper pushers to make it take as long a possible. Once it’s built you are out of a job.

However, I still think The Great Redwood Trail is a good idea. As a person who used to ride bicycles all over the place, wherever a safe route could be found, and enjoyed exploring the world without much baggage, the potential to navigate from Sausalito to Arcata on a bicycle is intriguing. Particularly the part from Dos Rios down the Eel River canyon.

In the southern state of Georgia, where a hundred years ago there were rail lines all over the place, to every little town, and then many of them abandoned as highways and corporate consolidation bankrupted the little short lines, some of these old rail routes are now bicycle paths. People who know about this come from all over the country to make these bicycle trips. Where I lived many years ago in Cedartown now has a paved bike lane on an old rail line all the way to Atlanta. It’s maybe sixty miles. These various old rail now bike lanes intersect and groups of people can travel much of the state on bicycles, stopping in the small towns, staying in the old hotels, eating in the little restaurants. It is a special kind of tourist industry. We could do this up here if the Great Redwood Trail project wasn’t so convoluted and seemingly corrupt, benefitting a bunch of people invested in making it take forever. It should be easy. If ever built, it would certainly be a great trail, maybe one of the best in the world.

PAUL BUNYAN DAYS FILLED WITH EVENTS

by Mary Benjamin

Over this past three-day weekend in Fort Bragg, events celebrating Paul Bunyan Days rolled out all over the city in fine weather. Faithful locals came to cheer on their “home teams” in competitions as local citizens plunged into classic contests alongside the annual tourist competitors. Heavy traffic on Main Street backed up through two stop lights.

It was a mighty nod to the city’s logging history and a last hurrah of summer, which included basking on the beaches and strolling through the craft and gem shows. It was a weekend to forget the grim politics, the lousy job market, and the summer maintenance chores yet to be finished. It was an opportunity for Fort Bragg to throw itself open for the pure fun of it.

First stop on Saturday for those in the know was the annual Presbyterian Church Pie Sale, which raises funds for various local social service nonprofits. The specialty of freshly baked fruit pies of all kinds brought a long line of buyers snaking into the parking lot, waiting for the doors to open, finally. At $25 each, many did not hesitate to stack up four pie boxes in their arms, heading for the payment table.

In town, a small Classic Car Show in the parking lot of Classic Car Wash on Main Street displayed the pride and joy of classic car owners and admirers who came to see vehicles ranging from the 1930s to the 2000s. In the sunlight, the wax jobs on all the cars glittered like Christmas lights. On the far end sat a black 1932 Ford 5 Window next to a 1975 Corvette L-48 Stingray.

Glynn Fitzgerald owns the brown sugar Stingray with added pinstriping along the front fender tops. Fitzgerald lives three miles north of Fort Bragg and has been here since 1949. He commented, “I’ve been to this car show every year since it started.” As for his current show car, Fitzgerald said, “1975 was the last year of the Stingray until now.”

This Stingray features a T-top and is equipped with an automatic transmission. Fitzgerald said, “If you bought it off the showroom floor, this is what it would look like. It has the original transmission and engine. All the interior is stock. Nothing fancy about it.” It had sat in a garage for years, and its mileage was at 1,800 miles when he bought it.

Gary Malsom, also a local, owns the 1932 Ford, which he referred to as a “Bonnie and Clyde” era car. A friend previously owned it, and Malsom bought it after his friend’s death about six months ago. He plans to keep it within the family. “You don’t see many of these come onto the market,” he said. “They get handed down from generation to generation.”

Malsom did some needed refurbishing after the car had been stored for ten years. Necessities like brakes were replaced as necessary to get the car running. It sports the flathead V-8, which Ford first put out in 1932. Molsom said the car is considered a hot rod because “the engine does have some aftermarket products, such as aluminum heads, intake, and dual carburetors.”

The car sports the classic rumble seat, and all the upholstery is fairly new. The back window rolls down so those in the rumble seat can talk to those inside the car. Molsom does take the Ford out and about, but limits it to short trips and never in the winter. He said, “It’s just a toy. I got it from my friend, and it’s my turn to babysit the car.”

Out on the side of the C.V. Starr Community Center, annual craft fair goers had filled the parking lot and lined adjoining streets. Many booths displayed the wares of handmade pottery, silver workmanship, soaps, wood carvings, unique lotions, old-time aprons and oven mitts, and, of course, the local Cowlick Ice Cream cones.

Next on the list are the annual Water Fights held by the Fort Bragg Volunteer Fire Department and any other “visiting” fire department challengers willing to take them on. The event took place on Stewart Street in front of Portuguese Hall. This year, the competition was limited to Fort Bragg’s own department and the U.S. Coast Guard.

Volunteer firefighters were thick as thieves, either on the team or cheering from the sidelines. Out for the fun were Steve Angley, Lester Drake, Laura Lucier, Roberto Maura, Leon Orsi, Tony Orsi, Justin Celeri, Chris Brians, Joe Roach, Arthur George, and Ethan Hall Jeffries.

All other fire departments pulled out literally at the last minute. Fire Chief Orsi said, “Everyone showed up for the rehearsal last Monday, but due to fire calls in their areas this morning, there is just us and the Coast Guard.” Although not very experienced in using fire hoses, the young Coast Guard team was up for the challenge.

Representing the Coast Guard were Petty Officer 3rd Class Miguel Hernandez from Orlando, Florida; Jacob Mariz from Stockton, CA; Ryder Hinks from San Diego, CA, who “has never been this far north before;” and Chase Miller from San Diego, CA.

About the competition, Petty Officer Hernandez commented, “We’re learning every year. This is their job, so they know how to work that nozzle really well. We do fire on water, but mostly just have yearly practice for that. They have a lot more experience.”

He continued, “It’s always fun to come out. It makes the kids happy. We try to get out into the community whenever we have the chance. We like to show the community we can help.”

They made a heroic effort to hold off the determined water blast the Fort Bragg firemen shot onto the metal keg as each team pushed the container in opposite directions. The supportive crowd encouraged the participants, and young boys in swimwear danced along the curbs in hopes of getting wet.

They weren’t disappointed. Several water blasts from both teams sent the metal keg bouncing toward the sidewalk curbs, and the competitors drilled down to push the keg back toward the street, showering many bystanders. After two rounds, the teams tied at 1-1. The contests continued throughout the hour, including a competition between Fort Bragg firemen.

Later, in front of C.V. Starr, the annual Dog Contest held at the dog park on South Lincoln Street got underway. Dog lovers, participants, and passersby enjoyed the entertainment of owners and their dogs demonstrating their skills. Entrants could choose from any of the following categories: prettiest dog, most intelligent dog, best with a frisbee, dog who most resembled its owner, ugliest dog, biggest dog, and smallest dog.

Reflecting their individual personalities, all the dogs soaked up the audience’s attention. The generous audience applauded even if a trick didn’t quite work out. Sympathetic judges allowed a second try. As one dog sat, ready to perform a trick, another competitor, tail wagging, decided to join him for the possibility of a treat.

Ace, a two and a half year-old, black and white Australian Shepherd-Miniature Australian Shepherd cross owned by 13-year-old Labhaoise Sharkey, bounded away with three blue ribbons: Prettiest, Smartest, and Best in Show. His energy and good nature easily won over the crowd. After all, he did have previous competition experience under his belt.

The Mendocino Coast Humane Society in Fort Bragg sponsors the Dog Contest. Executive Director Judy Martin was on hand to give out ribbons and prizes. After the show ended, a student from Art Explorers approached Martin to ask if there were any new dogs she could bring to the art center so he could paint them.

He said, “The last time I did this, the paintings sold and all the money went to them.” Martin commented that people love his paintings, and they sell easily. She also spoke about the status of dog and cat rescue. She said, “Everybody is overfilling. There are more dogs and cats than homes.”

She added, “What we’re asking is for people to foster. We need lots of foster homes and encourage taking an animal for the night for socializing. If you can’t adopt, just coming in and hanging out with the animals will show you they are loved.”

She continued, “Taking a dog out for a day is really good for us because it teaches us a lot about the dog. They learn more about the dog in a few hours out in the public than we can in the kennel. You can’t judge a dog by its kennel behavior. They’re pack animals; they want to be with you.”

“When people say they don’t feel they have enough time for a dog,” Martin said, “Really, your dog just wants to be with you. Letting your dog be with you is time with your dog. That’s all they want.”

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

UKIAH SHELTER PETS OF THE WEEK

This week we’re showcasing five wonderful long-term dogs who are all currently in foster homes, waiting patiently to find a family they can call their own, forever. Adopting a dog who’s been in foster care for several months is big win for the pooch, and new guardian, too! Potential adopters get a lot of information about their new bestie, such as: is the dog playful or serious, housetrained or trying to be, a cuddle-bug or a bit more aloof. You’ll find out if your BFF likes to chase balls, lives with another dog(s) or cat(s) or parakeet! Does your new charge enjoy hiking, agility, flyball, or is he/she more of a couch potato? And much, more more.

Head to our website to see our Pets of the Week, and all of our adoptable dogs and cats, at mendoanimalshelter.comÂ

While you’re there you can learn about our Foster Program!

Join us the first Saturday of every month for our Meet The Dogs Adoption Event.

For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

Making a difference for homeless pets in Mendocino County, one day at a time!

SUPERVISOR MAUREEN MULHEREN:

When I get to welcome new employees I always thank them for coming to work for the County because without our Team none of the work I do as a policymaker matters. Every single employee whether they interact with the public through Social Services, Behavioral Health, Law Enforcement or serve internal functions like IT and Retirement has the opportunity to make a difference in someone’s lives and support our community. I want to thank you all for continuing to show up and leading, guiding and supporting everyone in Mendocino County. I am incredibly grateful for your service.

JULIE BEARDSLEY RESPONDS:

Interesting that the take-over of the CDC by people with no Public Health experience, mirrors what happened to Mendocino County Public Health. When the current Director was put in place over 60 experienced public health employees left. The staff now seems to consist of very young, newly minted nurses and others with no public health experience. God help us if we have an actual public health emergency.

TERESA WARMKE:

The Coastal Commission will be here in Fort Bragg next week to consider an appeal of the City's decision to approve a development more than twice as large as their zoning regulations allow. Location is at the gateway to town, across Hwy 1 from McDonald's. The City broke many of their own policies, the Coastal Act and environmental laws in the process. Please join us on Wednesday.

MULTI-FAMILY RESIDENTIAL HOUSING PROJECT APPEAL HEARD BY COASTAL COMMISSION 9-10 AT 9AM FORT BRAGG TOWN HALL

Dear Community,

The item on the agenda for the Coastal Commission's September 10 meeting is item # 12 a & 12 b. Several people were interested to know how this project significantly impacts the environment. The answer can be found in the staff report, the appeals, the exhibits, and the correspondence.

Additionally no traffic study was done for this project, nor a visual analysis. There were no story poles indicating the size and height of this development. Habitat trees are allowed to be cleared contrary to a LCP Policy.Â An old hydrological study from 1995 for a project located on another site is being used even though the City of Fort Bragg found it no longer adequate in 2003. Impacts on Coastal Resources were not studied. They should be according to the Local Coastal Plan (LCP) and the Coastal Act. Noise levels were not studied for the children's playground, nor the Polliwog Play School.

These are some of the environmental impacts. Next Wednesday September 10 at 9am the Coastal Commission will meet at Fort Bragg Town Hall located at 363 N. Main Street. They will decide if the two appeals from many residents in regards to a decision made by the Fort Bragg's City Council raises a "Substantial Issue", or if the City's decision to grant this permit will stand. See https://www.coastal.ca.gov/meetings/agenda/#/2025/9 item 12 a & b.

If the Coastal Commissioners find no Substantial Issue, the permit will allow Kosh Grewal (owner of Emerald Dolphin Inn and Mini Golf) to develop a multifamily residential housing project with seven apartment buildings 32 to 38 ft. tall consisting of 83 (studio, 1-bedroom, & 2-bedroom) units, a 1,000 sq.ft. commercial/retail facility,?4 visitor-serving hotel suites without kitchens, a 107 space parking lot, 5 ft. high sound wall between parking lot and Harbor Ave., outdoor play area, landscaping, signage, property fencing, stormwater biofiltration planters, new sidewalks, improvements along Harbor Ave. and Frontage Rd.,and a public access path for access to Pomo Bluffs Park (north of the site) on a 2.6 acre lot at 1151 South Main Street in Fort Bragg.

As a few of the units are designed to provide "affordable housing" the State's Density Bonus Law allows that 32 units per acre, instead of the 12 to 24 units per acre that the City's adopted Highway Commercial Zoning requirement normally allows, will be built. Because a few units are designed to provide "affordable housing" the normally required height limit of 28 ft. (Highway Commercial Zoning requirement) can be as tall as 38 ft. Imagine a wall of 7 houses on the ocean side of Highway 1 in the Coastal Zone at the Gateway to Fort Bragg!

To fulfill the requirement to build a residential housing project in a Highway Visitor Commercial Zone the 1,000 sq.ft. commercial/retail facility, and 4 visitor serving hotel suites without kitchens were added. The Coastal Commission's staff report for this project acknowledges that the City of Fort Bragg approved more bonus incentives than required by state housing law. In fact, the City of Fort Bragg approved a project that is more than twice the size of that allowed by their zoning regulations. If they had required compliance with the City's zoning regulations, the project would have been less than half the size and they would still be in compliance with state housing law.

The City's decision to allow this huge project breaks many local coastal policies and doesn't comply with the Coastal Act, or the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Under normal circumstances such a development would require an Initial Study which would lead to a Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND), or an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) to address environmental issues required by CEQA.

This project with "Statutory exemptions"is apparently allowed to bypass the usual environmental review process as it apparently meets specific criteria set by the California legislature. These exemptions can streamline project timelines and reduce costs, particularly for projects that do not significantly impact the environment.

This project does significantly impact the environment! Please show up and bring your friends Wednesday, September 10 at 9am for the Coastal Commission meeting at Fort Bragg Town Hall located at 363 N. Main Street and fill out a form to speak.

Annemarie Weibel

Albion

ARTISTS TALKING WONDER

On Thursday, Sept. 11, from 7 to 8:15 p.m., the Grace Hudson Museum presents "Artists Talking Wonder," a virtual panel featuring four artists--Antoinette von Grone, Micah Sanger, Jazzminh Moore, and Red Wolf--who have contributed to the Museum's latest exhibit, "The Art of Wonder."

‘The Art of Wonder,’ featuring 15 local artists whose work highlights the fantastical and the spiritual, will be on display through October 19. To access the event, visit the Museum's website at www.gracehudsonmuseum.org, and go to the Events page. For more information, call the Museum at (707) 467-2836.

ENSURING FAIRNESS

Editor:

As resort owners, we welcome guests with open arms and, increasingly, with an open app. Like many in our position, we have listed our rooms on short-term rental (STR) platforms to stay competitive in a changing market. We pay transient occupancy taxes, hold the required permits, and comply with every local regulation. That’s why we strongly support Senate Bill 346.

SB 346 is about ensuring fairness; it’s not about limiting opportunity. The bill requires STR platforms to share basic data with local governments, allowing them to enforce the rules they have. It’s a smart, balanced way to bring illegal operators into compliance and protect legitimate hosts and small operators like me.

Too many listings bypass the rules entirely — no permits, no taxes and no oversight. These STR operators enjoy the benefits of the market without any of the responsibilities. That’s unfair and unsustainable. We’ve invested in safety systems, insurance, accessibility and community engagement — things every guest deserves and every jurisdiction expects. Watching others skip those steps while turning a profit on the same platforms is frustrating to say the least.

Some opponents claim SB 346 targets STRs, but as a small business that uses these platforms, we can say that’s not true. The bill doesn’t ban or burden legal operators. It simply gives cities the information they need to make sure local rules are followed — rules that protect neighborhoods, ensure fair taxation and uphold basic safety.

As resort operators who embrace traditional hospitality and modern tools like short-term rental platforms, we want to see the STR market thrive — but on even ground. We can’t have two sets of standards: one for licensed, tax-paying hosts and another for off-the-books rentals.

SB 346 is a smart step forward. It helps communities maintain local control, supports compliance without overreach and strengthens trust in a sector that’s become an essential part of California’s travel economy. We urge our legislators to pass it — for the sake of fairness, accountability and the future of hospitality in California.

Christopher A “Cab” Boettcher,

Mar Vista Farm + Cottages

35101 S Highway One, Gualala

OUR WOODS

In December 1904, the Albion Lumber Company launched the three-masted schooner-barge Sotoyome, the first ship built in Albion in 15 years. Designed by naval architect John W. Dickie and built by master shipwright Andrew Peterson, the vessel showcased both skillful craftsmanship and the strength of native timber. Peterson, who had built many ships during his long career, declared Albion’s wood to be superior to any he had worked with. Dickie, after testing its strength and durability, fully endorsed its use for shipbuilding. The name Sotoyome, derived from the Pomo language, was said to mean “our woods.”

The Sotoyome under construction, 1904. (Gift of Emery Escola)

The Sotoyome was a large vessel, measuring 170 feet long and 36 feet wide, with three masts over 86 feet tall and nearly two feet thick. Built from local timber with local labor, the ship was a symbol of pride for the small lumber town. Her forward and aft quarters were carefully designed for comfort and safety, and she could carry up to 900,000 feet of lumber. She was also intended to be the first of a fleet of similar ships built to carry local timber across the Pacific to ports in Asia.

The launch was a community-wide celebration. People arrived from Albion, neighboring towns, and the surrounding countryside to witness the event. The day was clear and cool, perfectly suited for the occasion. At the signal, the Sotoyome slid gracefully into the water to the cheers of the crowd, accompanied by music from a Mendocino band, the ringing of bells, and the blowing of whistles. Mrs. H. B. Hickey, wife of the Albion Lumber Company’s superintendent, christened the vessel by breaking a bottle of champagne across her prow and proclaiming, “I christen thee Sotoyome!” That evening, festivities continued with a grand banquet and ball at Albion’s famous South Side Hotel.

In early 1905, the Sotoyome was outfitted with two 125-horsepower gas engines to supplement her sails. Later that year she went into service, loaded with lumber from Albion’s mill and towed to San Francisco by the tug Sea King. There, her cargo was transferred to the British ship Largiemore for shipment overseas. Like many vessels built along the Mendocino Coast, the Sotoyome played a key role in connecting local industry to global markets.

Tragically, the Sotoyome’s career ended in disaster just three years after her launch. On December 7, 1907, while carrying a cargo of lumber from the Coquille River under charter to the Eastern Redwood Company, the ship caught fire eight miles off the Humboldt coast. Flames were first seen bursting through the deck aft, and with a strong wind blowing, all efforts to stop the blaze failed. The crew was rescued by the steamer Lakme, and the Sotoyome was engulfed soon afterwards. An investigation later revealed that backfiring from the gasoline engines, combined with leaking oil tanks, had caused the fire.

(Kelley House Museum)

FROM EBAY, ANOTHER PICTURE OF SEMI-LOCAL INTEREST (via Marshall Newman)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, September 6, 2025

RICKIE CURTIS, 52, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

JAMES DODD, 65, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, disobeying court order, failure to appear.

SCOTT JONES, 43, Ukiah. Burglary.

ANTHONY LAM, 25, Berkeley/Laytonville. DUI, reckless driving.

ANDREW PIERCE, 42, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

CORNELIO SOLORIO, 24, Ukiah. Assault weapon, concealed weapon in vehicle, loaded firearm.

FERNANDO SOLORIO-SOLORIO, 30, Clearlake/Ukiah. Assault weapon, concealed weapon in vehicle, loaded firearm, fabrication of firearm from parts, suspended license, probation revocation.

JASON TAFOLLA, 18, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting.

ANTHONY TOLBERT, 37, Ukiah. Under influence.

DON WILTSE JR., 38, Willits. DUI-alcohol&drugs, child endangerment.

FALL

by Edward Hirsch (1986)

Fall, falling, fallen. That's the way the season
Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition
With the final remaining cardinals) and then
Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last
Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager
And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun
Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
Changes and moves in the split second between summer's
Sprawling past and winter's hard revision, one moment
Pulling out of the station according to schedule,
Another moment arriving on the next platform. It
Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away
From their branches and gather slowly at our feet,
Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving
Around us even as its colorful weather moves us,
Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.
And every year there is a brief, startling moment
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
It is the changing light of fall falling on us.

ATTENTION MR. JAMIESON

WE CAN DO MORE FOR BELOVED BEES, BUTTERFLIES

Editor,

Wouldn’t it be lovely if America was lit up with beautiful butterflies, hummingbirds and bee gardens nationwide? What if there were medals for the most beautiful, life-sustaining home gardens? Imagine if arched trellises crossed our streets and were filled with blooming roses and wisteria, cooling the streets and cutting into the urban-island heating effect? America the beautiful, indeed. I think it would be a major tourist attraction.

There is a lot we can do, teaming up as neighborhood collectives, to save the butterflies and bees with organic gardening corridors. Please ask your neighbors, and please pass this idea around widely to school PTAs. I recommend “The Life Cycles of Butterflies” book and the Xerces Society’s “Gardening for Butterflies” and “100 Plants to Feed the Monarch.”

As Stephanie Seneff, a senior research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, revealed in her must-read book “Toxic Legacy: How the Weedkiller Glyphosate Is Destroying Our Health and the Environment,” in one single almond orchard, 1 billion bees died in one winter alone. Seneff writes that it is not solely neonicotinoids, but also glyphosate involved in the disappearance of bees, butterflies and many other insects.

All should refrain from using insect-killing sprays in yards and school play areas. I hope people will take note that organic gardening, specifically food and cotton, are terribly important to the survival of our pollinators. We depend on them.

Drina Brooke

Novato

A READER WRITES:

What a weird variety of empty calorie columns the AVA posted on Saturday. You could have saved everybody a lot of time by summarizing their articles as follows:

Bernie Sanders: RFK JR. Bad.

Harris & Emersberger: Trump Bad.

Kunstler: Ineffectual Liberals Bad.

Taibbi: Censorship Bad. (As if anybody is really “censored” these internet days.)

Callahan: Fake Liberal Was Bad, But Now He Agrees With Me So He’s Good.

Hartmann: Trump Very Bad, Getting Worse.

These columns (with the partial exception of Harris/Emersberger) do not provide new information, offer no substantive alternatives or corrections to their generic complaints, and will not convince anybody of anything they didn’t already think. They are badly written, robotic, time wasting and mostly dumb regurgitations of other internet stuff meant to satisfy the egos of these armchair choirmasters to prove to their particular invisible e-choirs that they can still wave their standard-issue songsheets at them. AVA readers deserve better.

PROGRESS REPORT

Am already receiving responses from the president’s correspondence department, who assure me that my complaint has been sent to various appropriate federal agencies for review and possible action. Meanwhile, feel free to do a Mendocino County fundraiser for me and then send the money to me at Paypal.me/craiglouisstehr

I’ll get the heck outta Washington, D.C. and return to Mendo, force the local government (which does not apparently appreciate me) to give me what is legally and sanely mine as a senior American citizen, and then we’ll all go for pints at The Forest Club. ;-))

Craig Louis Stehr, [email protected]

MEMO OF THE AIR: Hey. Look what Zog do.

Marco here. Here's the recording of last night's (9pm PDT, 2025-09-05) 8-hour-long Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and also, for the first three hours, on 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino, ready for you to re-enjoy in whole or in part: https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0660

Coming shows can feature your own story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or announcement. Just email it to me. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there and read it on the air.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not-necessarily radio-useful but worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

"Remember, it's only arson if it's from the French region of Arsonne. Otherwise it's just sparkling fire." Knowledge of fuses. That's what they need throughout all of Star Trek. When an enemy's attack damages your motor or weapons or anything, wherever that is on the ship, the backed-up power squirts all the way through the pipes to the bridge, and your control panel explodes in your face in a shower of sparks. And seatbelts, how about, the instant they start shaking the camera on you, don't wait. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wdL818qPTv4

This knowledge is over 3,000 years old. If we lost books and people with this skill, we'd be pushed back even farther than that. And it's just a knife. Suppose you want something to write with and something to write on, or pants, or a pot to cook in, or something to cook in it. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6uPSnSONE4M

Or a radio. But this person has unlimited enameled wire, a safety pin, a fricking /amplifier/. And powerful transmitters nearby to choose among their frequencies. I'm shortcutting my train of imagination here, and I don't want you to misunderstand and think I disparage making things; quite the opposite. I'm simply reminded of the story of a scientist justifiably proud and excited about physics and biology and progress and knowledge. He says to God, "What do we need you for anymore?" God takes some dirt, adds chemicals and water and electricity in just the right complicated way, and he makes a butterfly. The scientist says, "I can do that." He thinks about it, goes out to dig up some dirt to start with. God says, "Uh-uh, pal. Make your own dirt." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AI2Jixj5Bs

The official map of the Star Wars galaxy, throughout which shooters shoot and shoot and miss and miss, and even if their aim is true, if you're quick you can dodge getting shot. If only their science had advanced to the point of developing a basic blunderbuss full of nails. One shot with your eyes closed would take out every rebel all the way down the hallway or cave. https://kottke.org/25/09/the-official-map-of-the-star-wars-galaxy

Marco McClean, [email protected], https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

ANOTHER JUSTIN VERLANDER GEM SPOILED as Giants unravel in St. Louis

by Susan Slusser

San Francisco Giants starting pitcher Justin Verlander throws during the first inning of a baseball game against the St. Louis Cardinals Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

ST. LOUIS — Of course the San Francisco Giants’ streak of gamer with homers came to an end with Justin Verlander in line for another win.

The team was three outs from wrapping up its 12th victory in 13 games when closer Ryan Walker unraveled, failing to get an out at Busch Stadium on Saturday evening. Thomas Saggese’s bases-loaded single sent in one run, Jordan Walker’s double two more in a 3-2 victory over baseball’s hottest team.

“I mean, it’s frustrating,” Verlander said. “That’s a frustrating one, not just for me personally, but obviously we’re playing good baseball, chasing down teams ahead of us. And, you know, sucks, but that’s baseball. Can’t win them all.”

With 20 games left in the season, the Giants remain four games behind the Mets for the final wild-card spot, which in reality is five games thanks to New York holding the tiebreaker.

Ryan Walker was unscored upon in his previous 10 games, but of course Verlander was the pitcher of record when he had a rough one; that also happened April 20 at Anaheim, when Walker gave up four runs in the ninth in a 5-4 loss. On June 29, he came in against the White Sox with men at second and third and the Giants up 2-1 and Verlander still in line for the win and walked one batter, then gave up a two-run double, balked in a run and then an RBI single.

“It’s just happenstance,” Walker said. “There’s nothing behind it. It’s just sucky, how it’s been going. Unfortunately, it’s been me most of the times, but that’s not on my mind at all. I’m just out there trying to win the game.”

“It’s just sucks, you know,” Verlander said. “Obviously he’s not trying to do that. He’s my teammate, and you have to turn the page — next time he’s out there, I have the utmost faith in him, you know. It’s just unfortunate.”

The more prevalent trend most of the season popped up again: Verlander has received no more than three runs of support in 20 of his 25 starts this season.

Verlander did pass San Francisco Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry for eighth on the all-time strikeout list, but the Giants’ loss cost him a tie with Hall of Famers Bob Feller and Eppa Rixey for 34th on the all-time win list; he remains at 265, but should have at least a handful more by now the way he’s pitched. In 19 of his starts, Verlander has allowed no more than three earned runs. He’s 3-4 in those starts, and the Giants are 6-13.

After recording 18 hits Friday, they had seven Saturday, two by Matt Chapman, and went 1-for-7 with men in scoring position. The Giants had homered in 18 consecutive games, one shy of the franchise record set in 1947.

Verlander was all but showing off by the end of his six-inning stint, striking out the side to tie Perry, pass him and add another for good measure, and that was against the Cardinals’ No. 2-3-4 hitters, Ivan Herrera, Nolan Gorman and Masyn Winn, each seeing him for the third time Saturday.

“You kind of need to change things up and not always go the same game plan,” Verlander said. “That’s kind of my goal throughout the game. There’s a lot of game theory in there about situations and when you throw what. If everything goes according to plan, you can get deep in the game with nobody really knowing exactly how you’re trying to attack them. I feel like the game plan today went went pretty well. A couple of stun fastballs kind of down late I think surprised a couple guys. They hadn’t really seen that all game.”

Over his past three starts, Verlander has allowed two runs, total, in 17 innings, giving up 13 hits and six walks and striking out 21. Since Aug. 26, he’s been the team’s stingiest starter.

“You feel good about somebody who has that kind of experience and who is pitching as well as he is at this point in the season,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Shoot, he threw 122 pitches last time out, and then shut them out through six today, didn’t walk anybody again, getting swings and misses, ramps it up on certain pitches. He’s just doing a lot of the stuff that he’s done in the past to be successful.”

“It’s been pretty fun to watch,” Walker said. “He looked really good today. He’s going to finish strong — and so are we.”

As Melvin noted, Walker’s ninth inning stumble happened quickly, with a groundball single by Gorman and a soft bloop by Winn starting the inning. Walker then hit Jimmy Crooks, setting up Saggese’s single and Jordan Walker’s double.

“We felt like we had that game,” Melvin said. “Even though it’s 2-0, we’re in pretty good shape. … And you know, Walk’s been really good here recently. Unfortunately, when a closer has a bad day, you end up losing a game.”

Walker said that apart from the hit batter, he felt his stuff was good, but perhaps he should have thrown more sliders; three of the four hits came on sinkers.

“Maybe I could have mixed up my pitches more,” he said, “but I’m happy with was called and what I threw. It comes down to execution at that point. If I pitch a little bit better, it’s a different story.”

Heliot Ramos was out of the starting lineup Saturday; Melvin essentially is using a rotation in the outfield because of all the hot bats. With Drew Gilbert in right, Luis Matos was in left. Matos was off Friday, Jung Hoo Lee on Wednesday — and Lee had a four-hit game Friday and added two more Saturday. Gilbert followed Casey Schmitt’s sacrifice fly in the fourth with an RBI double, all of the Giants’ scoring against Andre Pallante.

Gilbert also made a trick play in the second, running to the side wall in foul ground in right for a pop fly by Crooks only to have it pop out of the top of his glove. He grabbed it again for the out, and mimicked juggling with a big grin as he trotted back to right field.

Patrick Bailey also came up with a terrific throw to get Victor Scott II trying to steal third in the fifth, a call upheld on replay, a big play at the time with two on and one out.

Briefly: Sunday’s starter was not listed Saturday but it will be Kai-Wei Teng, coming off a super start at Colorado to start this trip. … Chapman continues to await the outcome of his suspension appeal after being ejected from Tuesday’s game at Colorado. Chapman was suspended one game for shoving Kyle Freeland but, in effect, he’s already served one since he was ejected two batters into that game, an argument that might carry some weight when asking for a reduction. So too might the fact that the Giants are in the heat of the pennant race. … Tyler Fitzgerald is playing the outfield — center and right — at Triple-A Sacramento and general manager Zack Minasian said he’s being prepared to be a utility player.

(sfchronicle.com)

49ERS MUST REAP BENEFITS OF ONE OF THEIR SMARTEST RECENT MOVES IN WEEK 1

Christian McCaffrey is set to play in Week 1, but the 49ers would be very wise to lean on his insurance policy.

by Nicholas McGee

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The 49ers will kick off a new season on Sunday after an offseason that has seen a host of substantial changes to their roster, but, for the second year running, they go into their Week 1 matchup with Christian McCaffrey an injury concern.

McCaffrey was a surprise inactive in Week 1 last year due to Achilles tendinitis, a problem that lingered throughout the year and was a key factor in the 49ers’ inability to avoid a Super Bowl hangover.

On that occasion, McCaffrey was listed as questionable before being named among the inactives for a primetime opener. With Jordan Mason reportedly told he would be starting the previous Friday, the 49ers’ handling of the episode provoked plenty of questions, along with outrage from the fantasy community.

Fast forward to the present day, and fantasy players everywhere are again in a cold sweat, and there’s a sense of deja vu with McCaffrey insisting he is going to play after being listed as questionable for the 49ers’ season opener with the Seattle Seahawks after missing Friday’s practice with a calf injury.

McCaffrey’s positivity followed a press conference from Kyle Shanahan in which the 49ers head coach could at best be described as guarded as he was peppered with questions about his star running back.

For now, there isn’t any suggestion that McCaffrey’s calf issue marks a recurrence of the tendinitis that derailed his 2024 season, and the expectation is that he will play in the 49ers’ 2025 opener.

But the injury still represents an early red flag, one that makes last month’s trade with the Washington Commanders for Brian Robinson Jr. look increasingly prescient.

As was the case with Mason last year, Robinson gives the 49ers a high-end backup who can not only keep the run game on schedule, but also provide a big-play threat from the backfield.

Indeed, last season Robinson ranked 19th among all backs (min. 100 carries) for rate of his designed runs that went for 15 yards or more, per Pro Football Focus. He isn’t the home consistent home run threat that McCaffrey represents, but Robinson is a player who has the all-round game to take a lot of the burden off San Francisco’s lead back.

With Robinson on the depth chart, the 49ers don’t need to raise the risk of a significant McCaffrey injury by leaning on him too hard.

The 49ers have consistently been guilty of relying on McCaffrey too much, and that is understandable given the upside he brings in the passing game. But having a number two of Robinson’s caliber ensures the 49ers can still harness McCaffrey’s talents as a receiver while getting him much more rest than he has been afforded in recent years. They even have the option of going to Pony personnel and playing with both on the field at the same time.

McCaffrey is famously not a fan of rest, but, by trading for Robinson the 49ers have a way to maximize the former Offensive Player of the Year’s chances of staying healthy for the entire campaign. It was a smart trade to make and, with a long season ahead, the 49ers need to make sure they immediately reap the benefits. McCaffrey will play in Seattle, but the 49ers must protect him from himself and make the most of the Robinson insurance policy in Week 1.

(ninersnation.com)

UNDERCOVER COPS IN 49ERS GEAR TO BE USED IN SEATTLE SUNDAY TO BUST UNRULY FANS

by Jeff Carrillo

49ers fans traveling up north to Seattle for the team’s season opener on Sunday: If you’re nervous about entering hostile enemy territory, you can now travel with some added peace of mind. And some secret spies as backup.

The Seahawks announced on Thursday that they will employ undercover cops dressed in opposing team jerseys this season to help prevent any unruly behavior by fans. The announcement comes just days before Seattle’s clash with their biggest NFC West rival to kick off the season, meaning officers should be dressed in 49ers red and gold this Sunday.

In the announcement, the Seahawks said the undercover cops will take action in response to a wide range of inappropriate fan behaviors, such as the use of offensive language or gestures and verbal or physical harassment of fans of either team.

Seattle’s Lumen Field is known for having one of the biggest home-field advantages across the entire NFL, primarily due to its deafening noise levels. It has also notably been a house of horrors for the 49ers.

San Francisco is just 7-16 at Lumen Field dating back to the 2003 season, and it was the site of one of the most heart-wrenching moments in recent 49ers history, courtesy of Seahawks cornerback and Stanford alum Richard Sherman, who later played three seasons with SF. But it’s also the site of perhaps the biggest singular play of the Kyle Shanahan era — Dre Greenlaw’s game-saving tackle at the goal line in 2019 to preserve the 26-21 win and home field advantage for San Francisco throughout that postseason on the way to a Super Bowl appearance.

It is not the first time Seattle has turned to undercover cops at their games. The team used the tactic back in 2013 during its peak Legion of Boom days, which saw them win the Super Bowl that year.

While there haven’t been many reports of 49ers-Seahawks specific fan violence at Lumen Field in the past, a recent fan brawl outside the stadium after a Leagues Cup match between the Seattle Sounders and Inter Miami seems to have spurred action ahead of the 49ers’ visit up north.

The 49er Faithful are known for traveling well, especially in the Shanahan era. The team’s social account showed a horde of fans already gathering for the “invasion” of Seattle for Week 1.

Kickoff in Seattle is set for Sunday at 1:05 p.m. on Fox.

(SF Chronicle)

THE TRAGEDY THAT HAS BEFALLEN BASEBALL

by J.R. Moehringer

I interviewed Henry Aaron right after the cops arrested his fellow Milwaukeean, Jeffrey Dahmer, and that was all Hammerin’ Hank wanted to talk about. Not because Dahmer used a hammer on some of his victims, but because Aaron believed that America’s most notorious serial killer would have turned out perfectly normal if only he’d played Little League as a boy.

I was once put on hold for close to an hour by Curt Schilling, the polarizing star pitcher, who apparently didn’t want to talk anymore about vanquishing the 2004 Yankees on one good leg, flamingo-style. And yet he was so flummoxed when he came back to the phone and found me still hanging on that he patiently answered all my questions.

I dragged an equally reticent W.P. Kinsella, whose novel inspired the movie “Field of Dreams,” to a frigid night game in Denver. When the snow started to fly, Kinsella became extremely downcast, but moments later I managed to swat away a screaming foul ball just before it rearranged his sinuses, and his whole mood lifted. In gratitude he wrote me a haiku.

Clearly this is the résumé of a true baseball expert, if not a savant, someone more than qualified to comment on the current state of the game. And so in that spirit let me just say to all those who worry about gambling ruining baseball, eroding its integrity, the same thing I said to Schilling:

Hello? Hello?

Gambling isn’t doing anything to baseball’s integrity. Baseball has no integrity. Not anymore. Indeed, many of the ills plaguing baseball are caused by everybody’s refusal to acknowledge this glaring fact.

For 100 years or so, baseball was based on integrity. (Other than spitballs and steroids, sign stealing and head hunting, colluding owners and entrenched segregation.) The only major sport to suffer a world championship asterisked by gambling, baseball was zealous about its self-policing and righteous in proclaiming its zero-tolerance policy. Then, seven years ago, the Supreme Court struck down a longstanding federal ban on sports gambling, and in unison baseball’s owners cried: Yee-haw! Let’s party!

Virtually overnight, Major League Baseball entered multiple partnerships with the gambling industry, permitted stadiums to be plastered with ads for gambling entities and betting apps, and even allowed sports books to operate at some of our most sacrosanct baseball cathedrals, including Wrigley Field, which is like nailing slot machines around the rim of the Grand Canyon.

The least surprising result of this instant paradigm shift has been widespread confusion among players about where exactly baseball now stands on the whole gambling thing. In the past year, five players, one umpire and one translator have been suspended, banned, fired or imprisoned for gambling-related activity, and those are just the ones who’ve been caught. It’s a pretty safe bet that not every bad actor is exposed.

Of course, the same confusion reigns in all major sports. Eleven N.F.L. players have recently been suspended, three N.B.A. players have been investigated, and last month a star college quarterback became embroiled in a wild gambling scandal that involved lurid screenshots of his Venmo.

My main concern, however, is baseball, because it’s my first love, and because we’re approaching the playoffs, and because the entire Cleveland Guardians season is taking place under a shadow while baseball investigates the team’s ace reliever and one of its starting pitchers. The starter bounced a pitch 30 feet from home plate reportedly at the same moment a surge of bets were made on him throwing a bad ball. I’m not saying he’s guilty, but the video resembles that time 50 Cent threw out the first pitch at Citi Field, a toss so wild that it almost hit a plane taking off from LaGuardia.

What’s notable isn’t all these players getting busted — it’s that baseball has the audacity to bust them. After making a deal with the devil, baseball still wants to perform the occasional exorcism? That’s incoherent. It might even be entrapment.

To eliminate this chaos, to restore sanity to the game, I urge one sweeping fix. Rip up the rulebook. It feels obsolete anyway, like a fold-up paper road map or the U.S. Constitution. If some games are fake, or played under false pretense, then it’s all a farce and no rule is ever technically in effect.

At the very least, get rid of that bothersome and pointless Rule No. 21, which prohibits “placing wagers.”

We live in an age of absolutes; half measures no longer work. Just as baseball once enforced zero tolerance, it must now adopt total tolerance. Full participation, plus full transparency, that’s what I’m talking about. Let players gamble all they want, so long as they do it out in the open.

Apart from the refreshing honesty, think of the drama.

The scene: A playoff game between the Yankees and Astros. Late innings, score tied. The Yankees have two pitchers warming up — a righty and a lefty. Since the batter for the Astros is left-handed, surely the Yankees will bring on the lefty …

But wait! What’s this? Inside a special box on the scoreboard we see that the lefty in the Yankees bullpen has 10 grand riding on the Astros. Maybe he’s not the best option after all.

Uh-oh — now we see that the Yankees manager also has serious coin on the Astros. Fifty racks! Maybe we are going to see that righty.

Win probability starts to fluctuate, the scoreboard flashes like the Fourth of July, the crowd oohs and aahs as fans in the stadium and across the country load up on the Astros. But the batter has eyes, too. And a FanDuel account. Peering at the scoreboard, he steps out of the box and signals to the ump that he’s putting $100,000 on the Yanks.

National Pastime, meet “Squid Game.” For any skeptics who might scoff at such a scenario, I have news. We’re halfway there already.

Interestingly, the Supreme Court saw this coming. Justice Samuel Alito, in his decision seven years ago, checked off the harms prophesied by opponents of legalized gambling. Young people ensnared in yet another online addiction. Folks of modest means sliding into debt. Public faith in the legitimacy of sport subverted. Check, check, check. Alas, Justice Alito felt the court was unable to weigh in on this dystopic scenario, because the federal ban on sports gambling was flatly unconstitutional.

Actually, that’s not quite true. Parts were unconstitutional, and Justice Alito, a die-hard Phillies fan whose confirmation dinner featured an appearance by Philadelphia’s mascot, the Phanatic, averred that bad bits can’t be severed from an otherwise good law. One defect and the whole thing has to go.

In other words, I guess, if you find a spider in your bathroom you need to burn your house to the ground.

To Justice Alito — and five other justices — the legal microsurgery known as “severability” was the urgent problem, far more worrying than the mundane evils of gambling, and that makes me wonder about the unseverability of baseball itself — from gambling. In the olden days, baseball was little more than an excuse to gamble. Players and umpires in the mid-1800s routinely bet on their own games, and the diamond was the demesne of all sorts of touts and sharps and hustlers.

So maybe baseball is merely returning to its roots? Which would be the most baseball thing ever, given that the game is “entirely about going home,” according to its greatest commissioner and staunchest gambling opponent, Bart Giamatti. It was Giamatti who learned in the late 1980s that Pete Rose, manager of the Cincinnati Reds, and the game’s all-time hits leader, wasn’t just violating Rule 21, he was wiping his muddy cleats on it.

Today it seems that Rose was just a man ahead of his time. But Giamatti, a brilliant and charismatic scholar, author of a book about poetic representations of the Garden of Eden, felt that Rose had so desecrated the earthly paradise of the ball yard that only one penalty was appropriate — the same one God gave Adam and Eve.

The strain of arriving at this decision, combined with the combativeness and litigiousness of Rose, was too much for Giamatti. Days after announcing Rose’s lifetime banishment at a magisterial news conference, Giamatti suffered a fatal heart attack — 36 years ago this week.

Though he gave his life to keep baseball free of gambling, I think Giamatti would be amused, at a bare minimum, by the narrative symmetry of what’s unfolding. I can say that because I met him once, a moment I put at the very top of my baseball résumé.

He was the president of my university, and I was his biggest fan, therefore I asked him to be my adviser. We sat in his office and he explained that it wasn’t possible, because he was planning to resign soon and take a new job: running the National League.

I remember feeling awed and proud that such a towering figure was agreeing to watch over the game I loved. I remember being proud again three years later when Giamatti ascended to the commissioner job. And again when he stood up to Rose.

“I will be told that I’m an idealist,” Giamatti declared when laying out his case against Rose. “I hope so. I will continue to locate ideals I hold for myself and for my country in the national game as well as in other of our national institutions.”

I got goose bumps when he said that. Now a small voice in my ear asks: What did all that idealism get him? Or baseball, or the country, or any of us who believed we’d never live to see these bleak, ignoble clouds of corruption lowering over our Elysian fields?

Banishment, that’s what. Or call it self-exile. Either way, it’s a marked estrangement from the game we grew up with. To return, to remain fans, it seems we must embrace this new game. Maybe even replace the iconic cry, “Play ball!” Something along the lines of, “Betting windows now open!”

There are some stone-cold idealists out there who think this is all temporary, who expect baseball’s owners, or America’s owners, a.k.a. the Supreme Court, to change course. Part of me admires them and defers to them. They give me the same feeling I had when Hank Aaron assured me that a budding cannibal might’ve been a decent second baseman. Um, OK, if you say so?

The bigger part of me, maybe the part that grew up in Manhasset, Long Island, fears that the idealists are in for a world of hurt and frustration and repeated, brutal disillusionments — even more than Mets fans. And, as anyone from Long Island can tell you, that’s really saying something.

(J.R. Moehringer is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who writes frequently about sports. He is writing a book about a University of Southern California class on the meaning of life.)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I have lived in California for almost half a century. Other than the fact that I have to pay so much state income tax, I don't have a lot to complain about. And the weather is nice most of the time.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

My father had advanced Alzheimer’s and lived at home — he was unable to care for himself. He had some savings, Social Security and a Veterans Pension. If his expenses were more than the money could cover as it often was, my family made up the difference. We were not paid to care for him, and it was a 24/7 responsibility. As a die hard bleeding heart liberal I chose to vote in favor of programs to provide assistance for those that needed support from Medicaid, services for Veterans, food and shelter for the homeless. I did not judge or hold bias. I trusted that if my care required support from our government, it would be there. You had just as much information as I did. And chose to vote for an bankrupt of morals and ethics convicted criminal, and his cronies who have every intention of destroying democracy for their own personal gain at your expense. You trusted that was the better choice? I will have to make sacrifices to insure my aging years and so will you as much as it pains me to say this, but don’t ask me to send letters and call my Republican Senator and Congressman who do not hold town halls, did not respond to me and thousands of others who called, sent letters, rallied, and did everything possible we could to try to change the BBB vote. Your vote - your choice, and now you and I have to live with it, cutting in to income, savings and budgeting to stay alive. Welcome to the reality Neighbor. Best of luck.

Children in an iron lung before the polio vaccine, 1950

TRUMP’S MIND-FORGED MANACLES

To the Editor:

President Trump’s persistent and mangled use of language has been pounded home to us for 10 long years. Few presidents or candidates for office — Franklin D. Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan come to mind — have had such an extended time to impose themselves on the national psyche.

Mr. Trump boasted during his first run for the office: “I have the best words.” If that is true, he isn’t using them. He frequently resorts to “the best anyone had ever seen” and “how good it was.” These and his recurrent condemnations (“Nasty!”) are his starting and finishing points.

His words are those of a man captured mentally by his own constant P.R. campaign, a man who has spent most of his adult life trying to convince the world, and perhaps himself, of his greatness. The words grow in a poisoned garden of highly limited thought processes. They reflect an overarching tragedy of these times.

Doug Terry

Olney, Maryland

A DOG IS A DOG

I read that more people in America today have dogs than have children. Let that sink in for a minute. I went on a back packing trip just last weekend and I was stunned at the number of people hiking with dogs but…..no children. I think one couple had a sleeping child in a back pack apparatus of sorts.

We had a dog, a beagle-shepherd mix. She was a gorgeous dog and a beloved pet and she had a special soul. At about 8 years she got diabetes and went totally blind. The vet told us that we could treat the diabetes with daily insulin injects but that the eyes would have to be removed due diabetic onset glaucoma. This was a proud dog. Seeing her so depressed was heart breaking.

I took her to the vet and held her in my arms as they quietly put her down.

My point? People treat their pets as if they are their children. I even see ads on the internet that show the animal as if in human conditions. Such as, sitting at a table in a restaurant and eating food from a plate, or, sitting in a car and watching a television show depicting other animals. There appears to be some strange effort to entice people to forego having children in favor of having a dog. It isn't cute to me. It's deeply bothersome and frightening.

A dog is a dog. It will never evolve beyond that. It will never improve itself. It will never get smarter or learn new skills. It has no desire to improve itself or become better. It will always be a dog. Putting these animals on par with a human child is deeply disturbing.

— Anon

STEPS

by Frank O'Hara

How funny you are today New York
like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
and St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left

here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days
(I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still
accepts me foolish and free
all I want is a room up there
and you in it
and even the traffic halt so thick is a way
for people to rub up against each other
and when their surgical appliances lock
they stay together
for the rest of the day (what a day)
I go by to check a slide and I say
that painting’s not so blue

where’s Lana Turner
she’s out eating
and Garbo’s backstage at the Met
everyone’s taking their coat off
so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers
and the park’s full of dancers with their tights and shoes
in little bags
who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y
why not
the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won
and in a sense we’re all winning
we’re alive

the apartment was vacated by a gay couple
who moved to the country for fun
they moved a day too soon
even the stabbings are helping the population explosion
though in the wrong country
and all those liars have left the UN
the Seagram Building’s no longer rivalled in interest
not that we need liquor (we just like it)

and the little box is out on the sidewalk
next to the delicatessen
so the old man can sit on it and drink beer
and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day
while the sun is still shining

oh god it’s wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much

MEN + WOMEN + APPS = BAD ROMANCE

by Maureen Dowd

When I wrote “Are Men Necessary?” two decades ago, the book’s title was meant to be mischievous.

Sure, men and women seemed in a muddle at the dawn of the millennium. As women climbed up, poking their heads into spaces long dominated by men, the shift in power affected romance.

There was an assumption that courtship rituals, where women “trapped,” “landed” and “bagged” a man, waiting to be chased and expecting to have their restaurant tab picked up, would fade as equality grew.

No more games, like the ones recommended by “The Rules,” the 1995 bible that told women to play hard to get. (“Always end phone calls first.” “Let him take the lead.” Don’t stare at men or talk too much.)

When I wrote my book, women were in a tangle of independence and dependence. But I figured we’d get through it and the battle of the sexes would simmer down.

Boy, was I wrong.

I joked in the book that men were evolving slowly, if at all. But now many men do seem rudderless in an era when they are doing worse than women, by many metrics. More women are enrolled in college than men. And a worrying number of men say they have no close friends. Some women still want men to take care of them. And some men are anxious about being a provider if they can’t even afford a starter home.

Social media and the media are bristling with women — and sometimes men — expressing resentment, irritation, frustration and exhaustion about the opposite sex.

As one post circulating on Instagram grumbled, “The fact that men think they can spend all their good years whoring about & can come back to you in the sunset of their life with their erectile dysfunction, Michael Jordan jeans, & receding hairlines is really just crazy to me.”

Literature is filled with women’s keening about the less voluble and less emotional way that men communicate — and their tendency to pull back.

Dorothy Parker expressed it best in her story about a woman staring at the phone, waiting for her promised call from “him.”

“Dear God, let him call me now. … He couldn’t have minded my calling him up. I know you shouldn’t keep telephoning them — I know they don’t like that. When you do that they know you are thinking about them and wanting them, and that makes them hate you. … Couldn’t you ring?”

Now the tension rages in a digital derecho, with oh so many ways beyond a rotary phone to make and drop connections. To excite interest and to dismiss interest. Dating apps, once a godsend, now bedevil people. And all complicated by the fact that younger generations have less and less in-person communication. Social media, hailed as an innovation that would knit us together, is driving us apart once more.

A whole vocabulary has sprung up around digital trysting — and a whole cottage industry of “experts” including ChatGPT — willing to help you fathom the mind of a love interest.

The lexicon includes situationships and ghosting, of course. And “submarining,” which is ghosting, then returning, then ghosting again. “Breadcrumbing,” sending sporadic messages of interest that keep you on the hook. Limerence, a romantic obsession that develops when you’re “love-bombed.” The response, many say, to “Impulsive Dumpers” should be “No contact.”

It’s uncomfortably close to “The Rules.”

Sometimes, it’s men complaining about being ghosted, and of women deciding they don’t need a man. But usually, women are the ones on Instagram obsessing on men who are “Dismissive Avoidants” skittering away from “Anxious Attachers.”

Women get frustrated at men when they grow absent. Women are advised to absent themselves in response to men’s absence to lure the men into being more present. It’s a vicious cycle.

As Rachel Drucker wrote in a Modern Love piece for The Times, many younger men have been rewired to prefer “frictionless” stimulation. The more time they spend online, she contended, the more men drift away from intimacy and vulnerability toward indifference.

“They weren’t sitting across from someone on a Saturday night, trying to connect,” Drucker wrote. “They were scrolling. Dabbling. Disappearing behind firewalls, filters and curated personas.”

And, God help us, uncannily beautiful A.I. girlfriends who are never too much.

In The Times Magazine, Jean Garnett explored “heterofatalism,” lamenting men’s growing anxiety about desire. Garnett said she has been bruised by “the ambivalence of men, how they can first want me and then become confused about what they want.”

At a vegan restaurant in downtown Manhattan, she and her girlfriends wondered: “Where were the men who could handle hard stuff? Like leaving the house for sex?”

Both sexes seem trapped. There are still reverberations from the #MeToo quake. Men are more tentative about approaching women in public and chary that their texts will be circulated. In a look at dating in New York magazine, E.J. Dickson found that many single men think that “women inherently believe all men want to hurt and embarrass them.”

Women are ever more equal, but are advised to adhere to hoary dating “Rules” that are older than they are: Don’t chase. Don’t text or DM if he doesn’t. Don’t smother him. Lean into the feminine.

Corinne Low, a Wharton professor of gender economics who wrote a book called “Having It All,” told New York magazine that she realized that having it all would be easier if she started dating a woman.

Women are becoming more like men but men are not becoming more like women. And humans are becoming less human.

Men are necessary and so are women. But they need to get it together.

TAIBBI & KIRN

Walter Kirn: I’m off schedule because we didn’t record our live stream Monday, and so I melted back into the normal non-podcasting population and forgot to have an opinion on everything last week.

Matt Taibbi: It’s good. You need to take a vacation. It’s like What About Bob. Take a vacation from your podcasting.

Walter Kirn: Right, exactly. Exactly. And so I live like normal people do, doing household chores and taking walks and so on. And then a couple of days ago I said, “Wait a second. I have to have a take on everything that’s going on, and all I’ve been doing is bird watching.”

Matt Taibbi: Are you a bird watcher? I didn’t know that.

Walter Kirn: No, I’m not in any way a programmatic bird watcher.

Matt Taibbi: Oh, okay.

Walter Kirn: I just like seeing birds. I have a specific interest in them as omens and portents. Different kinds of birds mean different things will happen. What other people use astrology for, I use the apparition of the ornithological animal, and so if I see crows, if I see woodpeckers. Woodpeckers, just as we’ve said many times in the show-

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, no, we just want to shoot all of them.

Walter Kirn: … yeah, yeah. And they are really, really smart. That’s what you learn once you become the enemy of a woodpecker. It can see your ill will and fly away far before your shotgun, if you happen to have one, is able to be aimed.

Matt Taibbi: It’s a little bit like how only a very close relative knows the exact moment when you will be annoyed by a certain word or sound or interruption.

Walter Kirn: Yes.

Matt Taibbi: The woodpecker that is familiar with your house knows just how long it takes to drive you to verbal rage. It gives you enough time to settle down. And as soon as you’ve calmed down, it comes right back and starts pecking again at your house. yeah, we’ve discussed this.

Walter Kirn: My chimney is sited in cedar shingles and it is systematically dismantling that thing. And once it’s done that it will move on to other parts of the house as it has in the past. And there’s really nothing I can do. It forces a certain humility on you. They’re like trolls on Twitter actually, woodpeckers.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, exactly. They probably are trolls. That’s probably where they’re flying to is Twitter and Instagram in between. In my town we have the Pileated Woodpecker.

Walter Kirn: A beautiful animal.

Matt Taibbi: A beautiful gigantic woodpecker. Only seen them a few times, but God help us if they actually discover my house. They have not yet. But we do have the other varieties. We have the Northern Flicker outside our house. We have some others. We have the Red-Headed Woodpecker. And they all seem to enjoy eating my house even after we resided in it. Anyway, we’ve discussed this.

Walter Kirn: Yeah, yeah. We’ll devote a whole show to it someday.

Matt Taibbi: Yes.

Walter Kirn: Someday they’ll get in the news. They’ll take down a celebrity or something like that, and we’ll have our chance to pile on and flood the zone on the woodpecker issue.

Matt Taibbi: In America This Week: The Movie, or America This Week: Private Parts, the next scene would us doing this, but woodpeckers actually on our heads-

Walter Kirn: Yes.

Matt Taibbi: … in the shot.

I wouldn’t say it’s a slow news week, but it was a fascinating news week. Last week obviously we had a tragedy, this Minnesota shooting by this figure, Robin née Robert Westman, this gunman. There’s been an ancillary controversy about that and we’ll get to some of that. I think somewhat coincidentally, or maybe not coincidentally, the week let off with the arrest of someone I think we both know, Graham Linehan.

Walter Kirn: Well, I don’t know him personally, but I have a friend in common with him, a comedian who knows him and works with him and assures me that he really is one of the most gifted comedy writers in the English-speaking world. I mean, he talks about him in the highest way in terms of his talent and his gift.

Matt Taibbi: Have you watched Father Ted?

Walter Kirn: No.

Matt Taibbi: He’s famous for being the writer on an Irish sitcom called Father Ted. It’s twisted and hilarious. It’s one of those rare shows that gets on TV that sort of blows beyond the usual boundaries of what the sitcom is. Reminds me vaguely of The Young Ones. Remember that, the show that was on MTV-

Walter Kirn: Yep.

Matt Taibbi: … where it had a little bit of the flavor of Monty Python mixed in with sort of traditional sitcom format? Very funny, very strange, and also I would say apolitical show. It just kind of takes the piss in all directions. It’s classically like that. Very popular in its time. And what’s happened is that since the trans issue became a thing internationally, along with J. K. Rowling who is the most famous villain in transgender lore, Graham became infamous for being outspoken and refusing to accept the idea that these sort of biological men are women or trans women or women or any of these things….

PRESIDENT TRUMP WARNS that Chicago is ‘about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR’ in incendiary Truth Social post

by Alyssa Guzman

President Donald Trump threatened Illinois's biggest city with a 'Chipocalypse' ahead of expected Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.

Trump, 79, took to his social media platform, Truth Social, on Saturday to post a meme about himself, where he wrote: 'I love the smell of deportations in the morning.

'Chicago about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR.'

Trump rebranded the Pentagon to the Department of War this week.

The White House reposted it on X with three helicopter emojis.

Governor JB Pritzker responded to Trump's post on X, writing: 'The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city.

'This is not a joke. This is not normal.

'Donald Trump isn't a strongman, he's a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.'

Trump's threat comes as ICE readies a raid on the Windy City after Trump said he selected it for the next federal military takeover.

The Department of Homeland Security asked the Pentagon to have access to Naval Station Great Lakes - the largest military base in Illinois - to base the operation, The Washington Post reported.

The request said that around 250 federal agents and 140 vehicles would utilize the base.

National Guard troops could also be sent in to assist the effort, according to The Chicago Sun-Times.

Equipment and personnel started arriving at the naval base earlier this week. One MAGA radio personality has branded it the beginning of 'the siege of Chicago.'

Governor JB Pritzker warned the raids could start on Saturday.

On Tuesday, Pritzker accused Trump's White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller of choosing to target Chicago in September because the city hosts a myriad of events for Mexican Independence Day.

'We have reason to believe that Stephen Miller chose the month of September of come to Chicago because of celebrations around Mexican Independence Day that happen here every day,' Pritzker said.

Miller is the administration's top immigration hardliner, the architect of the first Trump administration's controversial child separation policy.

'It breaks my heart to report that we have been told ICE will try and disrupt community picnics and peaceful parades,' the governor continued. 'Let's be clear: the terror and cruelty is the point, not the safety of anyone living here.'

On Thursday, El Grito Chicago organizers scrapped a planned two-day festival over ICE raid fears.

The city's Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson is resisting the federal action.

Last weekend, he signed an executive order that, among other things, bars law enforcement from wearing face masks, as ICE agents have done in other US cities.

Johnson and Pritzker are sticking with the state's sanctuary city policies that ban local law enforcement from helping ICE agents, unless they have a criminal warrant.

On Thursday, the mayor encouraged Chicagoans to still celebrate Mexican Independence Day.

'Why would I ask you to stay home?' he asked. 'Why would we allow someone who is auditioning to become a dictator of democracy to intimidate the soul of America, the city of Chicago? We should celebrate.'

The president claims that sending in the National Guard is helping the Democratic cities' crime problem.

The National Guard deployment in DC came hand-in-hand with ICE raids in the city.

On Thursday, DC's Attorney General Brian Schwalb filed a lawsuit arguing the more than 1,000 troops now deployed to the capital are an illegal use of the military for domestic law enforcement.

'No American jurisdiction should be involuntarily subjected to military occupation,' Schwalb said.

Two weeks ago, Trump revealed that after Washington, DC, Chicago was his next pick for a troop deployment.

'When we're ready, we'll go in and we'll straighten out Chicago, just like we did DC,' Trump said in the Oval Office at a World Cup event.

'Chicago is a mess. You have an incompetent mayor. Grossly incompetent and we'll straighten that one out probably next, that will be our next one after this and it won't even be tough,' Trump said.

'And the people in Chicago, Mr. Vice President, are screaming for us to go. They're wearing red hats, just like this one. But they're wearing red hats,' Trump told Vice President JD Vance, who was standing alongside him.

'African-American ladies, beautiful ladies, are saying: "Please, President Trump, come to Chicago,"' the president continued.

He added that he did 'great' with the black vote.

'So I think Chicago will be our next and then we'll help with New York,' he said.

(DailyMail.uk)

JEFFREY ST. CLAIR:

Kill 11 people riding somewhere in the Caribbean on a dinghy with an outboard motor, broadcast the kill shot, gloat about it as if you’d sunk a Chinese battleship, then ask your minions to try to come up with a legal basis for the assassinations a couple of days later, if they could (they can’t)…
There is no legal justification for Trump’s military strike on an alleged “drug boat” off the coast of Venezuela. The boat, a simple speedboat, posed no threat to the US Navy vessels. The little boat could have easily been interdicted, searched for drugs and its occupants detained if any were found. No proof was offered that it was carrying drugs or was associated with the Tren de Aragua “narco-terrorist organization.” In any event, drug trafficking is not a capital offense, even when it’s been proven. Most countries would consider this an act of terrorism and mass murder under international law. Indeed, such a strike is also prohibited under US law.
The Trump Administration didn’t know where the boat was going or why 11 people would be taking up space on a small, open-air craft that was supposed to be packed with illicit drugs. Were they fishermen? Immigrants? Who could believe them? Rubio’s State Department has repeatedly lied about Venezuela and accused immigrants from that country of being Tren de Aragua gang members based solely on tattoos or the fact they’re wearing Air Jordans…

In his latest Substack post (“On Anonymous Sources“), Seymour Hersh once again appears to claim sole credit for “exposing” the My Lai Massacre:

“In 1969, I exposed the My Lai massacre in a series of freelance reports for a small anti-Vietnam War Saigon-based writers’ cooperative known as Dispatch News Service. Earlier I had covered the war as a Pentagon correspondent for the Associated Press, and—despite that experience and my writing for the New York Times Magazine about secret US work on chemical and biological weapons as well as a book on the topic—I could interest no major media outlets in what I had uncovered about the massacre at My Lai. I had obtained access to an Army charge sheet accusing a young Army 2nd lieutenant named William Calley of being the “bad apple” who engineered the crime. My work for Dispatch won me many prizes, including a Pulitzer, and a front-page story in the New York Times about the award for foreign reporting going to a freelance writer. Then, as now, the Times was the place to be a reporter.”

In fact, the slaughter was first exposed by Hugh Thompson, who tried to stop the killing, and wrote a report about it the day it happened. Then, in March 1969 (seven months before Hersh’s first story), another Army veteran and investigative journalist, Ron Ridenhour, wrote a detailed account of the war crime and sent it to Nixon, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and leading members of Congress. It wasn’t just Ridenhour, either. As I recounted in my piece “The Last Child of My Lai,” the day before Hersh’s first story for Dispatch News appeared, Wayne Greenshaw published a front-page piece in the Alabama Journal on the massacre, under the title: “Fort Benning Probes Vietnam Slayings: Officer Suspect in 91 Deaths of Civilians.”

The atrocities committed in “Pinkville” were no secret to the Vietnamese. Within days of the massacre, investigators with the Census Grievance Committee in Quang Ngai City released a fairly accurate account of the killings. But in a striking parallel to the Palestinian journalists covering the genocide in Gaza today, the reports by the Vietnamese were denounced as “VC propaganda” and dismissed by the Army, US investigators and western reporters.

Ridenhour and Greenshaw’s ground-breaking work also goes unmentioned in Cover-Up, Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus’s new documentary on Hersh, which has been greeted with enthusiastic reviews following its premiere at the Venice Film Festival. It’s also worth noting that Hersh’s reporting on the US’s biological and chemical warfare program for New York Times Magazine in August 1968 (and an earlier piece in the New York Review of Books in April 1968) leaned heavily on work first done by the Portland-based investigative journalist Elinor Langer (“Chemical and Biological Warfare,” Science, January 13/20, 1967).

In no way is this meant to detract from Hersh’s vital reporting. But to recognize the contributions of Thompson, Ridenhour, Greenshaw and Langer, who weren’t “anonymous” sources and shouldn’t be rendered as such. One of the reasons Alexander Cockburn dismissed journalism prizes, such as the Pulitzer, is that he believed, correctly, I think, that journalism is a collective endeavor, where one so-called “exposé” almost always builds on and is enhanced by the work of other journalists.
“Then as now, the Times was the place to be a reporter.” Really, Sy?

“WHEN A CHILD first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic and desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.”

— John Steinbeck, ‘East of Eden’

MEGAN BAKER:

Israel is a country, Judaism is a religion. Religions don't have armies, economies, foreign policies, income taxes, nuclear weapons, etc. I assume you wouldn't accuse critics of Iran of being anti-Islam or the American revolutionaries of having been anti-Christian, or racist against white people, for not wanting to live under a monarchy, and you should drop this exception you make for Israel. Demanding that people hold an expansionist, genocidal, nuclear-armed state above criticism because most of its leaders are Jewish (remember, at least one member of the Knesset is Arab, a fact I'm guessing you love to hold up when it's convenient) is a requirement that colossal abuses of power be forgiven and even ignored. The very idea that any government anywhere should be above criticism for any reason at all is astonishing and plainly dangerous. Do you by any chance have any actual argument in defense of the regime, like — I don't know — those of the many Israelis demonstrating in the streets against their own government? (Are they anti-Semitic too?) I mean, if we're so wrong, you must have lots and lots of other arguments on behalf of Israel and its behavior, right?

SYLVIA BEACH & JAMES JOYCE, Paris, 1920

Photographed in Paris in 1920, Sylvia Beach and James Joyce stand in the doorway of what would soon become one of the most important partnerships in literary history.

Two years later, Beach made the daring decision to publish Joyce’s Ulysses through her bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, after it was rejected and banned elsewhere. She later recalled: “I knew I was looking at a genius.”

Joyce, in turn, showed gratitude for her loyalty and courage: “Sylvia, you have made a great many friends for me. And I have never been ungrateful.”

Together, they helped reshape modern literature from the heart of Paris.

LEAD STORIES, SUNDAY'S NYT

Trump Tramples Congress’s Power, With Little Challenge From G.O.P.

Tensions Mount as Trump Threatens Federal Enforcement in Chicago

Trump Sends Mixed Messages With His Newly Rebranded Department of War

South Korea Negotiates Release of Korean Workers Detained in Georgia Raid

Wildfire Fighters, Unmasked in Toxic Smoke, Are Getting Sick and Dying

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba of Japan Says He Will Step Down

AT LEAST 300 PRO-PALESTINIAN PROTESTERS ARRESTED IN LONDON ON TERRORISM CHARGES

The demonstrators oppose the British government’s decision to designate Palestine Action as a terrorist organization.

by Lizzie Dearden

At least 300 people were arrested in London on Saturday under British terrorism laws during a protest of the government’s decision to ban a pro-Palestinian activist group.

The group, Palestine Action, was designated a terrorist organization in July after two of its members broke into a British military base and damaged planes to protest Britain’s military support for Israel. It was the first organization to be banned under a segment of Britain’s legal definition of terrorism that covers serious property damage, rather than violence against people, to advance a political cause.

The designation put Palestine Action on the same legal footing as groups like Al Qaeda, and it criminalizes membership or involvement with the group, as well as some public expressions of support.

Saturday’s arrests escalated the confrontation between the British authorities and supporters of Palestine Action over applying the terrorism law to protests, an otherwise protected form of expression in Britain.

As Big Ben struck 1 p.m., hundreds of protesters who had gathered outside Parliament took out pens and wrote “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action” on pieces of cardboard and paper, before sitting silently on the ground.

The police began arresting demonstrators one by one, asking them if they would cooperate before carrying them away if they refused to walk, as supporters applauded and shouted “shame on you” at officers. The arrests continued into the evening.

The law used criminalizes the wearing, display or publication of anything that “arouses reasonable suspicion” of support for a banned group.

Among the protesters was Diane Afhim, a 69-year-old teacher, who said she was “happy to be arrested.”

“I feel that justice is not working if people are being arrested for holding a sign,” she said. “This is not my Britain.”

Also holding a sign was Emily Hepburn, 36, who had traveled more than 100 miles to join the protest from her home on England’s south coast. She called the ban of Palestine Action “nonsense” and voiced hope that it would be overturned by the courts.

“I’m here because I feel like not enough people are speaking up and there’s not enough outrage about what is happening in Gaza,” she said. “I wanted to do something.”

The Metropolitan Police said that by 8 p.m., around 300 people had been arrested. In a statement, the force said the arrests were made for “expressing support for a proscribed organization” and for assaulting police amid efforts to “prevent officers carrying out their duties.”

(NY Times)

SALONEN & THE SWANS

by David Yearsley

I had come from the State Library on my bike, a long-term rental courtesy of an excellent and cheap Dutch company called Swapfiets with outlets in many European cities. I’d just pedaled down Unter den Linden, then picked my way through the evening crowds milling in the square on the east side of the Brandenburg Gate.

Through the sandstone columns, I could see that the tourists beyond all had their backs to the Gate. They were looking not at the monument but west at the sun setting in spectacular shades of red and orange, trailing bands of magenta and pink at the far end of the Straße des 17. Juni, Berlin’s widest, longest, straightest avenue—though the Karl-Marx Allee in the eastern part of the city gives it a run for its capitalist money.

The name of the “Street of the 17th of June” resounds with echoes of the Cold War. Formerly called the Charlottenburger Chaussee, it was rebranded in the early summer of 1953 in support of widespread workers’ protests in East Berlin and across the German Democratic Republic.

The boulevard’s present conception—its ruthless drive out towards the province of Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin, and seemingly to the horizon—was the work of Nazi architect Albert Speer. In 1938, Hitler had charged him with creating a triumphal avenue that would lead from the Brandenburg Gate six miles west to the Olympic Stadium and down which victorious athletes and armies could march.

The thoroughfare takes on a whole new meaning when one realizes that its thoroughness is of totalitarian origin. Where would it end, this paved parade ground, in its journey west out into the wide, white world to be united under the 1,000-year Reich?

A mile down the avenue, an angel glowed, perhaps dangerously, in the evening light: Viktoria atop the Siegesäule—the Victory Column. Speer had had the know-how, resources and arrogance to move this nineteenth-century monument from its original position just northwest of the Brandenburg Gate by the Reichstag to a grand circle (“star”—Stern) down the avenue.

The column is decorated with sixty gilded cannon barrels set vertically in their niches, the weapons supposedly captured in the three wars of unification (against Denmark, the other German states and Austria; and France) fought between 1865 and 1870. The victories led to the establishment of the modern German nation, which called itself an empire, and crowned its king a Kaiser (Caesar) in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. The square at the Brandenburg Gate is called the Pariser Platz, tonight a hall of handheld mirrors. Raised in reverence or routine, hundreds of screens displayed hundreds of suns.

In those looking glasses, as on her column, Viktoria appeared to be on fire. Would she collapse in a heap of molten gold or blast off from her perch and towards the Prussian blue heavens?

The traffic light changed from anodyne, electric red, to orange, and then to green. I pedaled into the intersection. Just after I’d crossed over the line of bricks set into the asphalt to mark the former course of the disappeared Berlin Wall, I turned slightly left towards the city’s central park, the Tiergarten.

A mass of dark matter whizzed just in front of me in the opposite direction, missing me by what seemed like less than an inch. I’m not sure I ever saw the thing, but I felt the wind and the frightening closeness of mass and velocity. Before I realized what had happened, this stealth delivery guy was already long gone, trailing only a vicious baritone curse that sounded like “Arschloch” (asshole) and was quickly sucked away with him in the draft of his supercharged e-bike.

I pulled into the shaded park and stopped, shaken. Waiting for the light to change, I’d been basking in sunset worship, historical reverie and its coefficient of melancholy amidst the theater of photo-op tourism. E-bikes are a new development in Berlin and certainly new to me here, and one of them had nearly ended my sojourn and/or me.

It would have been quite the crack-up and surely meant a trip to the Krankenhaus if not the morgue instead of my intended goal—the Philharmonie just through the park.

I got back in the saddle and a few minutes later pulled up to the famed concert hall with its celebrated acoustics and groovy 1960s design—an unpredictably polygonal whose yellow-gold corrugated cladding was also ablaze in the evening light.

I found an available stand among the throng of parked bikes, locked mine and made my way inside and up through the three-dimensional maze of stairways that led to the various seating sections. The auditorium is in the round, and I was in K-block, up behind the orchestra. At one of the higher stairway landings, concertgoers were lining up at a west-facing window and taking photos of the sunset. I waited for my turn, directed my phone westward, then continued upward and to my seat.

The concert was by the Orchestre de Paris under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen, Finnish by birth and musical training, but by now a borderless cosmopolitan. A simultaneously energetic and poised 67, he was a wunderkind director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in his twenties. At 32, he took over the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he was an important force in the building of Disney Hall. He was chief of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and, while also serving as an iPad pitchman and creative consultant for Apple a decade ago, directed that group in a concert at the Apple Store in Berlin. Until May of this year, Salonen was music director at the San Francisco Orchestra, but parted from that institution’s board of directors on brittle terms, citing artistic differences unbridgeable even in the City by the oft-spanned Bay.

Salonen’s Berlin appearance came on the third evening of the city’s Musikfest, which, over its more than three weeks, presents thirty carefully curated concerts by leading international orchestras and ensembles, interspersed with avant-garde, improvised, experimental, and electronic offerings.

Conductors thrive—indeed exist at all—as gravitational centers of attention, black holes of fascination both for the musicians and the audience, not to mention the media and marketers. Last Monday’s concert expanded that truth in unforeseen directions.

The program opened with the Requies of Luciano Berio, who would have been 100 this year. The work was a memorial to his ex-wife, the category-busting soprano Cathy Berberian, who had died of a heart attack on March 6th, 1983, at the age of 57, the night before she was to have sung the Internationale “in the style of Marilyn Monroe” on television on the 100th anniversary of Karl Marx’s death.

Working without his baton for Requies, Salonen was less still than a statue, but not by much, at least not for a conductor. His fingers stroked and sculpted the air, precisely, gently, respectfully. His bearing was as ramrod straight as those Siegesäule cannons, his mien reverential as a priest and as impassive as a general. His hands drew out ethereal pitches and timbres. Plaints emerged, then insisted. Not melodies, but intimations of melodies pulsed, haunted, and then receded from the pared-down Parisian ensemble, which at full strength numbers more than 100. Salonen had also studied in Italy and, as this moving, minimal performance proved, paid his dues to the modernist titan, Berio.

Salonen is also a compelling composer, even if his own path has been a more accessible, though by no means facile one. Prone to taking leaves from his busy conducting career to concentrate on his own music, Salonen has in recent years produced a catalog of concertos for leading soloists. The latest, his horn concerto, was premiered earlier this year by Stefan Dohr under Salonen’s direction in Lucerne. Along with composition and conducting, Salonen had studied the horn at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. In this work, autobiography then, was inherent, inevitable. Standing next to Salonen at his podium, dedicatee Dohr, principal hornist for the hometown Berlin Philharmonic, was as much narrator as soloist, explaining with measured confidence, cajoling with arcing humor and celebrating the collaboration with an all-embracing exuberance.

Salonen has confessed an Oedipal desire to escape the pervasive presence in his homeland of Sibelius, the father of Finnish music. Yet while a student in Italy, Salonen discovered a score to the Fifth Symphony at an antiquarian and saw in it a divergent path of modernism; even though a euphonious one, it strayed willfully from received symphonic forms and conventions.

Sibelius was the most performed international symphonist of the first decades of the 20th century, but not yet 50, he felt himself a has-been, left behind by the avant-garde bad boys Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg and their demolition of tonality. A wintery writer’s block seized up Sibelius’s imagination. But in the spring of 1915, he went walking in the wild and a dozen swans flew over him, circling him. Their honking chorus gifted the composer the finale’s half-note theme swinging across wide intervals that, under Salonen, now wielding his baton, was transcendent rather than triumphant, shudderingly profound in its reconciliation of art and nature, the naked, yet artful beauty of its humanity. Viktoria, on her pillar, could never achieve this kind of limitless, ungraspable victory.

A Ravel pastry of an encore let the French band bite into their French brand, even if the pastry chef hailed originally from near the Arctic Circle.

The next morning, it was announced that Salonen would become principal conductor of the Orchestre de Paris. The sun had yet to set on his far-flung, ever-moving musical empire.

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest albums, “In the Cabinet of Wonders” and “Handel’s Organ Banquet” are now available from False Azure Records.)

*High Hills of Tehachapi* (1936) by Maynard Dixon

31 Comments

bharper September 7, 2025

RE Steinbeck
“Once you realize they are lying about race you realize they are lying about everything.”
Molly Ivins

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George Hollister September 7, 2025

Democratic Socialism is an oxymoron.

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- Kirk Vodopals September 7, 2025
  
  Libertarianism is a fantasy….
  
  Reply
- Bruce Anderson September 7, 2025
  
  Tell that to the Scandinavians, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Boonville.
  
  Reply
  - George Hollister September 7, 2025
    
    In any of these countries, are their government agencies democratic?
    
    Reply
    - Harvey Reading September 7, 2025
      
      What agencies here are democratic?
      
      Reply
    - Bruce Anderson September 7, 2025
      
      Huh?
      
      Reply
Mike Jamieson September 7, 2025

I think the AI enhancement of that 1950s era photo would be more complete with also Godzilla lurking in the background.

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Mazie Malone September 7, 2025

Dear Craig, ✌️🕊️

In order to help you, I have to be extremely blunt. You want housing and help, but you’re not willing to do your part to get it. You are hinging everything on expectation, and that is living in contradiction.

I tried before to appeal to your spiritual senses, but you didn’t want to hear it. I understand some of your struggle comes from systemic barriers, but part of it is you. You cannot claim a guru’s enlightenment while bypassing the true spiritual work of living fully as a physical human with real, physical needs.

And I say this as someone who practices spirituality myself. The difference is, true practice doesn’t bypass the body or the work it takes to living fully as a physical human with real, physical needs.

I want you to succeed in obtaining housing but 1/2 the hurdle is your own thinking! Two quickest ways to fix that is practicing forgiveness and gratitude!

Take care of yourself✌️

mm💕

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- Jeff Fox September 7, 2025
  
  MM, you are spot on. Last May here on MCT, about 5 months ago, in one of his many posts asking for housing assistance, Craig stated that he was getting $488 SS and had over $3000 savings in the bank, plenty enough to get a ticket back to Mendo and set up at least an interim housing arrangement (even a motel room?) and work with people locally to get settled into a place. Since then he’s apparently used up those savings so now he is requesting that someone in Mendo set up a fundraiser for him and send him money. If he didn’t use the money he had last May to get back to Mendo what makes anyone think he’ll use the money raised from a fundraiser to do it this time?
  
  Although he peppers this page almost every day asking for housing in Mendo he seems completely unwilling to lift a finger on his own behalf toward that goal.
  
  Reply
  - Paul Andersen September 8, 2025
    
    Craig had the opportunity to move into subsidized housing on South State Street in Ukiah, but he declined because it was “too far.”
    
    I’m sympathetic to his plight, but only to a point. The guy’s been taking up a bed in homeless shelters for the last three years, perhaps a spot someone else needs a lot more.
    
    Let’s be clear, Craig is not homeless. He’s unhoused by his own choice.
    
    Reply
    - Mazie Malone September 8, 2025
      
      Hi Paul, 🍁🍃
      
      I remember and i know exactly the place it was a small square one room space, cause I looked at it for someone. Which of course would be much better than the shelter or the streets. A stepping stone until something better arrived.
      
      I would beg to differ on the part of being unhoused by choice, but I can see why it seems that way, especially after not taking advantage of that one spot he could’ve had shelter of his own.
      
      mm💕
      
      Reply
    - Eric Sunswheat September 10, 2025
      
      Those notorious small one room square spaces, as part of a row of now former motel slum rooms, are chronically infested with invasive bugs, which travel from space to space, and are difficult to eradicate, because of lack of funds to repeatedly clean all the laundry and bedding, with teamwork of similarly disenfranchised individuals, who have their own focuses or distractions. It’s not a healthy situation for the elderly or the young, and not necessarily better than the street.
      
      Reply
      - Paul Modic September 10, 2025
        
        Read All Fours by Miranda July, she turns a crappy motel room into a palace. When the room is that small it can be made into something nice. Then again the whole world beckons, at least DC for Craig, but then you might end up worse off. Can the aging poor homeless pick and choose? There is a homeless facility being built here in Garberville, ten 10 by 8 sheds with heat and air conditioning, and Craig might like it there, though it’s under the redwoods so could be instant death at any moment during a big storm.
        
        Reply
        
        Mazie Malone September 10, 2025
        
        Hi Paul, 🎃🤘
        
        Thanks for the book recommendation, will check it out. I love that you gave a hopeful opportunity then turned in to the possibility of death by a redwood tree. lol 🌲 Great they are building a shelter in GV!!
        
        mm 💕
        
        Reply
      - Mazie Malone September 10, 2025
        
        Hiya Eric, 🤘🍁
        
        Oh yes, the little devil bedbugs are very hard to get rid of, however that actually falls under the responsibility of the building owner. Problem is disenfranchised people rarely fight back. I’m not sure if this places have laundry, hook ups or a laundry facility, which would help in eradication. Bed bug infestation is not something they’re gonna warn you about when you go to rent a place. You make a good point. 💕
        
        mm💕
        
        Reply
Chuck Dunbar September 7, 2025

“One of the reasons Alexander Cockburn dismissed journalism prizes, such as the Pulitzer, is that he believed, correctly, I think, that journalism is a collective endeavor, where one so-called “exposé” almost always builds on and is enhanced by the work of other journalists.” Jeffrey St. Claire.
That’s a good point, worth remembering.

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Kirk Vodopals September 7, 2025

Trump is nothing more than a reflection of our mass psychosis on both sides …. Ideas like “Nobody died at Sandy Hook” and the irrational gender/race politics of the left are prime examples.
Immigration is another. Neither side wants to actually solve the problem. It’s just a tool for division and control of power.
Throw in a culture of hyper-consumerism, a disdain for physical health, and celebrity idolatry and you’ve got the modern American experience.

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- Norm Thurston September 7, 2025
  
  In Biden’s final year in office, Congress came up with a bi-partisan immigration bill that Biden supported. Then Trump leaned on republican law makers to kill it, which they did. Trump had the bill killed because he thought it would help Biden in the election, and republican law makers acquiesced. To say “neither side wants to actually solve the problem” is not accurate.
  
  Reply
  - George Hollister September 7, 2025
    
    The most promising bi-partisan immigration bill was written, and failed during George Bush’s presidency. Democrats had a majority in the House, and a super majority in the Senate. If all Democrats supported it, the added Republican votes along with Bush’s support would have ensured passage. The AFLCIO successfully lobbied enough Democrats to kill it. The key problem with last years immigration bill was the high number of illegal immigrants that would still be allowed to come in. I think the maximum threshold was 5,000 a week.
    
    Reply
    - Harvey Reading September 7, 2025
      
      Immigration is not a real problem. It’s used as a tool by politicians, and MAGAts, to blame all problems, including their own incompetence, on immigrants. People forget that this country is populated by the offspring of immigrants, including Indians, who migrated here before the others were even aware the place existed.
      
      Reply
    - Norm Thurston September 7, 2025
      
      The key problem was Trump did not want it passed. Period.
      
      Reply
      - Chuck Dunbar September 7, 2025
        
        Yes, and just for his personal gain. As usual. He cared naught for the country’s interests, or that of immigrants.
        
        Reply
Teresa Warmke Skarr September 7, 2025

I’d like to clarify something Annemarie stated in her article about the huge apartment complex approved by the Fort Bragg City Council which is the subject on appeals to the Coastal Commission. She said, “This project with “Statutory exemptions” is apparently allowed to bypass the usual environmental review process as it apparently meets specific criteria set by the California legislature.” She’s correct that the City allowed this project to bypass CEQA review; however, the City’s decision to exempt the project from CEQA does not meet the criteria set by the California legislature and was neither valid nor appropriate. For example, an exemption requires the development to be within 1/2 mile of a major traffic stop, defined as having 2 or more routes with frequency of 15 minute intervals. There’s no such traffic stop in Fort Bragg, let alone within 1/2 mile of the project. Read our appeal linked to the Coastal Commission September meeting agenda for details.

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- peter boudoures September 7, 2025
  
  CEQA was reformed because wealthy landowners used it to block housing over tiny technicalities while families got crushed by rents.
  
  Reply
- Jacob September 7, 2025
  
  The City of FB used categorical not statutory exemptions to avoid detailed environmental review. They relied on two different exemptions, only one of which requires proximity to a major transit stop.
  
  Reply
  - Teresa Warmke Skarr September 7, 2025
    
    Jacob, as you stated at the city council and planning commission meetings, the other exemption claimed by the city was also not valid for this project. Read my appeal linked to the Coastal Commission agenda for details.
    
    Reply
James Tippett September 7, 2025

Responding to Maureen Dowd’s observations on the emergence of women in what was once a “man’s world” and the impact on (heterosexual) relationships, one of the contributions of second wave feminism to the zeitgeist was the principal that women are not responsible for men’s feelings, don’t even want to hear them, but men are still responsible for anything and everything wrong that women feel or experience. I can’t even count the number of times I have spoken from my heart to a woman or to women, just to have it deflected, denied or been scolded for even sharing it. Women are coming into their power in the world as Dowd observes, outpacing men in every measure of academic matriculation and success. The contra-positive liberation for men is on the emotional level, our emotions having been denied and suppressed, many since birth, in the service of militarism and patriarchy. If healing between the genders is to happen, that needs to change.

There is a brain science piece to this. Brain development is a “use it or lose it” proposition. The newborn’s brain contains twice as many neurons as a one-year-old. If that newborn or toddler fails to get the pre-verbal nurturing, mirroring of emotions, face expression play, etc. the neurons that process those experiences dry up and resorb. Numerous studies demonstrate that baby girls get all of those attentions in much greater quantity and depth than baby boys. No wonder girls and women are more competent at emotional communication.

As boys and men grow older, expressions of emotional tenderness, almost any emotion beyond anger, are treated as signs of weakness to be scorned or preyed upon. Given the emotional incompetence of never being allowed to practice and develop skills in expressing themselves emotionally without being attacked, no wonder men are reticent to take the risk.

The answer to men’s emotional incompetence and reticence that feminists have issued for the last 50 years is that men need to go off by themselves and figure it out, because women can’t handle and reject the idea of being part of the solution. Clearly, that hasn’t worked.

Additionally, where so many men have gone with this, left to their own devices, is “Bro Culture,” the politics of male grievance and Trumpism, the incipient fascism threatening our multicultural democracy, the hard emotionless eyes of all these ICE thugs.

So the question becomes, how do we, as a culture, legitimize male emotionality, heartfulness and open presence? In my mind, this is a significant next frontier we need cross, if we, men, women, people of all genders and affections, are going to progress into a more safe and liberated world. And I don’t think men can do this by ourselves.

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- Lil' Heller September 8, 2025
  
  I grew up with nine boys, and we never fought, or argued. They never bullied or intimidated me, never in eighteen years I lived, at home.
  
  It’s possible.
  
  I didn’t do anything. In my view, it was the male adults in my family who made it happen.
  
  Reply
Mazie Malone September 8, 2025

Hi Jeff, 🍁🍃

I remember that too.

mm 💕

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Jayne Thomas September 8, 2025

This is for Doug Terry and others interested in Trump’s mangled English. Check out Caitlin Speaks:

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Mendocino County Today: Sunday 9/7/2025

31 Comments

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