Mendocino County Today: Tuesday 9/9/2025

PERIODS OF RAIN and thunderstorms are forecast to continue today through Wednesday. Locally heavy rain will be possible with storms in the interior each day. Drier weather will be possible toward the end of the week, followed by another chance of rain during the weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A cloudy 58F with .13" of new rainfall. Out forecast is for rain today but I'm not sold, we'll see? Showers possible again tomorrow then clearing into Saturday. More rain to follow starting Sunday? UPDATE: light rain at 6am.

A BOONVILLE old timer remembers one year in the 70s when it started raining first week in September, rained right through the Fair, and didn’t stop until late April.

CRANE TO RISE OVER UKIAH AS NEW COURTHOUSE CONSTRUCTION ADVANCES

by Sarah Stierch

UKIAH, CA., 9/8/25 – Progress is being made on the construction of the Mendocino County Superior Courthouse in Ukiah.

According to the Superior Court of California, a 265-foot crane will be erected at the site of the future courthouse on East Perkins Street this week. The new crane will be visible throughout the city, altering Ukiah’s skyline.

The crane will be an integral part of building the 3-story, 82,000-square-foot courthouse.

The crane will help install the Idaho-built structural steel frames for the building, a process the Superior Court expects to be completed by early October.

After the frames are in place, decking for the roof and flooring will be installed, with expected completion in November.

The goal is to complete as much of the exterior of the courthouse as possible before rainy season starts, the Superior Court said.

After the decking is installed, the courthouse will be wrapped in heavy plastic so crews can work on the interior during the winter.

The $120 million courthouse, funded by the Judicial Council of California, will replace the current courthouse in downtown Ukiah that was built in 1951.

A rendering of the planned Mendocino County Courthouse in Ukiah, Calif. The courthouse is anticipated to be completed in late 2027, replacing the countys current courthouse which was built in the 1950s. (Superior Court of California via Bay City News)

(mendovoice.com)

ED NOTES

There has been no local journalist I’ve held in higher regard than Jim Shields, perhaps because we shared the impossible task of producing a weekly newspaper week after week, month after month, year after year for more than forty years. And agreed, mostly, all that time in our mutual assessments of County functioning.

But there’s no ‘perhaps’ about how much I valued Jim’s friendship and how I admired his solid journalism all those years. Jim had no peer in his dogged coverage of county politics, a coverage that didn’t win him many friends in Ukiah but vital coverage that kept the rest of us unfailingly informed.

I don’t know how he did it. Production of a weekly newspaper seemed to me almost more than I could manage, but Jim made it look easy, all the while working full time at a second under-appreciated and, in its way, more difficult task — manager and guarantor of a steady supply of potable water for the ever-growing community of Laytonville.

A weekly newspaper and go-to guy for his community’s water!

I will always remember first meeting Jim, his wife Susan and his elderly mother at Observer headquarters in central Laytonville. It was quite an impressive operation, with grandma answering the phone, Susan busy at the paste-up boards and Jim writing and editing at a pre-internet time that editing was nearly a full-time task in itself as letters and articles had to be made presentable (and often decoded) prior to publication.

We both supported Johnny Pinches for supervisor, won over by his cowboy candor and honest devotion to an efficient, thrifty functioning of “Mennacina County,” as the old rancher pronounced it. Jim knew how the county worked. Or didn’t work. As did Pinches, who carried a thoroughly annotated County budget with him wherever he went, unnecessary spending underlined in vivid red.

Dominated by the illiberal liberals who dominate local affairs in all of NorCal, Jim Shields, unfailingly gentlemanly in person and print, deftly cultivated both sides of most issues, all the while holding weekly print tutorials on how local government functioned.

Jim was an omni-capable man, and a truly fine journalist in an area that gets little serious attention from outside media. I was always proud to call him my friend, and I will always miss him.

SOLORIOS’ ILLEGAL GUNS

On 9/5/25 at approximately 8:40 P.M. a Deputy with the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office was working patrol in the Covelo area when he observed a vehicle driving on Highway 162 with an inoperable headlight. The Deputy initiated a traffic enforcement stop in the 76000 Block of Highway 162 in Covelo.

Upon contacting the occupants of the vehicle, the Deputy noted Fernando Solorio, 30, of Clearlake, was the driver and Cornelio Solorio, 24, of Clearlake, was seated in the front passenger seat. The Deputy also observed an open container of alcohol within the passenger compartment of the vehicle.

A records check revealed Fernando’s driver’s license was suspended and he was on DMV Probation. Both occupants ultimately exited the vehicle, and Deputies located an unloaded handgun and a loaded rifle within the passenger compartment of the vehicle. Both firearms were within the immediate area of the occupants. Based on the unique features of the rifle it met the statutory requirements of an assault weapon.

Further investigation was conducted by the investigating Deputy which ultimately led to Cornelio being placed under arrest for Possession of a concealed firearm in a vehicle, Carrying a loaded firearm in a vehicle, and Possession of an assault weapon. This investigation also led to Fernando being placed under arrest for Possession of a concealed firearm in a vehicle, Carrying a loaded firearm in a vehicle, Possession of an assault weapon, Possession of an un-serialized firearm, Violation of probation, and Driving on a suspended license.

Cornelio Solorio and Fernando Solorio were transported to the Mendocino County Jail where they were both to be held in lieu of $15,000 bail.

DONALD PENMAN MADOLE

Donald (Don) Penman Madole passed away at his home surrounded by family after his courageous battle with cancer. He was a loving husband to Carolyn Madole and wonderful father to Edie McCord, Butch McCord ,Pamela Terrill and Dustin Madole. He was dedicated to his family and friends.

Don was born in October 20,1942 in Whitefish Montana to Herbert Harry Madole and Elizabeth Wright Penman Madole. He grew up in Whitefish Montana and at age 17 joined the Navy Nov. 1959 until Jan. 1964. After the Navy he began a successful career as a bread delivery driver for 38 years. He enjoyed fishing, reading, westerns, playing pool, watching sports, camping on the Colorado River and spending time with his family. Don took immense pride in instilling a strong work ethic in children, he was known for his kindness, sense of humor and his compassionate nature, which touched the lives of everyone he met.

Don is survived by his wife Carolyn Madole of 44 years, his children Edie McCord, Butch McCord , Pamela Terrill (Norman), Dustin Madole (Stephanie), 14 grandchildren and 18 great grandchildren and wonderful brother Chuck Madole. He was preceded in death by his parents Elizabeth and Herbert Madole, brothers Jim Madole, Bill Madole and son Dusty Teeter.

At Don’s request there will be no memorial service, in lieu of flowers the family request that donations be made to the veterans.

He will be greatly missed

DAVID GURNEY (Fort Bragg):

Here’s my 3-Minute Public Comment to the Fort Bragg Council, Sept. 8, 2025:

Good evening Mayor and City Council Members,

Right now, one guy is holding down three important six-figure jobs at City Hall. I’m talking about Isaac Whippy. He’s not only City Manager, making $192,000 a year, but also Finance Director and Community Development Director for the City of Fort Bragg. Both these two other positions carry six-figure incomes.

Mr. Whippy is either the greatest immigrant genius since Albert Einstein, or something else is going on, and I suspect the latter. What you have created is one-stop shopping for incompetence and corruption.

I’m not talking about bags of cash in the backrooms of City Hall. I’m talking about the corruption of a city government that ignores zoning, environmental and public participation laws to the detriment of all concerned. It’s not what you say, it’s what you do, and it’s not what you tell us, it’s what you don’t tell us that matters.

I was told by Chantell O’Neal, Project Manager for the Bainbridge Park Disaster, that Staff Meetings had taken place between the Fort Bragg Police Department and City officials called “Community Policing Through Environmental Design”. She called them “Sep-Ted” meetings (CPTED), which sounds more like a disease than city planning. But what Chantell didn’t say is that she’s married to Thomas O’Neal, who also just happens to be Captain in the Fort Bragg Police Department.

Linda Ruffing - who coined the term “Linda Roofing” for her name, despite the RUFF spelling – in the Twenty-Teens ordered the removal of half-a-dozen big old cypress trees in Bainbridge Park, which provided shade for people to sit under. I saw the stumps and rounds of the murdered trees, and they were sound. I have pictures of them, and of the slave-gang prison crew who cut down those beautiful trees.

Although Ms. Ruffing was City Manager at the time of the “Bainbridge Park Master Plan,” she’s not mentioned once. But complaints from the Police Department about “troublemakers, “transients” and “illegal activities” are mentioned eleven times.

The destruction of Bainbridge Park, with no EIR and no rightful permits or disclosure, is what happens when a Police Department and corrupt city officials secretly take over the job of city planning.

At the “Bainbridge Park Community Workshop” conducted on Nov. 17, 2015, the idea to “Allow Soccer Courts” received a vote of 32 opposed against 0 in favor. And yet you did it anyway. The public’s wishes in the Master Plan were clearly set out: to preserve the open space for public events. But you have done the exact opposite.

Putting in toxic playing fields at Bainbridge Park was never about soccer. It’s about a dysfunctional City Government and a lazy, poorly trained police force, who couldn’t handle the problem of the homeless hanging out in the park. You chose to destroy the open space of Bainbridge Park, and poison the ground water, the children, and the earth itself in the process.

Thank-you.

BOONVILLE PARK (photos by Elaine Kalantarian)

LOCAL PLANNING

by Betsy Cawn

After 25 years of engaging in local/county government, I am convinced that nothing matters more than local initiative in planning.

Mendocino County has six or seven Municipal Advisory Councils, each of which has its own “central disposition” focusing on community-based issues.

Lake County has caught up to Mendo in the number of MACs, but our MACs have a combined impact on updating the county’s General Plan, through development of “Local Area Plans.”

Local area plans adopted as integral parts of municipal General Plans endows them with the added authority to obtain federal and state grants that smaller, independent districts cannot achieve (or achieve as easily). For Lake County, emphasis on protection of finite groundwater supplies and maximizing wildfire prevention drive the priorities of county policy makers.

Our Municipal Advisory Councils have strong engagement in the county’s long-term planning process through participation in general plans of development.

An example of a successful Local Area Plan in Lake County is the recently launched Guenoc Valley Project in our southernmost Supervisorial District. Members of Lake County’s first Municipal Advisory Council (the Middletown Area Town Hall, or MATH) anticipated the planned development as early as 2010, when their first Local Area Plan was approved. Fifteen years later, the first phase of Guenoc’s development is anticipated to increase local employment and the county’s general revenue, with the developer responsible for major highway modifications supporting wildfire protection and evacuation.

A Local Area Plan also has the option of “containing” major development through the protection of natural resources, albeit a balance requiring stronger community advocacy.

So, yes, you want a “general plan,” and you want that plan to meet the expectations of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (now called the Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation — not a nomenclature improvement, IMPO).

Hat’s off to all the communitarians in Boonville and the Anderson Valley!

A FEW DECADES AGO, I had the opportunity to sit in Phil Burton’s office, trying to interview him about Pacific Lumber Company-related issues as a steady stream of people paraded in and out. He barked orders and swore at those he felt were unnecessarily interrupting him. Burton took a call, and within a few minutes was shouting, “F you,” before slamming the receiver down. Through all of this, he would turn, smile at me, and ask, “Now, where were we?”

— Mike Geniella

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION COULD ROLL BACK PLANNED CALIFORNIA DAM REMOVAL

by Kurtis Alexander

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins took to social media over the weekend to express concerns about dam removal on California’s Eel River, even suggesting that the Trump administration may intervene to stop or revise the project.

Rollins, on X, cited the loss of water for cities and farms that would come with the proposed removal of two dams in Mendocino and Lake counties while also invoking well-worn Republican criticism about California “putting fish over people.”

In the post, the agriculture secretary said she was working with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to bring “real solutions” for securing Northern California water supplies. Exactly what she might do about the dam removal and how the federal government could get involved, however, remain unclear.

The Department of Agriculture did not respond to requests to clarify the post or detail the secretary’s plans.

The dams at issue, Scott and Cape Horn, are part of the Potter Valley Project, an aging hydroelectric complex operated by Pacific Gas and Electric Co. The utility is seeking to retire the facility and remove the infrastructure, including the dams, at a cost of $530 million, citing high operational expenses.

Many environmentalists, tribes and Eel River communities support the effort as a way to restore the natural flow of the river and aid struggling salmon runs and other wildlife. Several California leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, have thrown their support behind the cause.

While built for power production, the Potter Valley complex has become just as important for the water it provides. The project moves flows from the Eel River, where the dams are located, to a powerhouse miles away in the Russian River basin, ultimately sending water down the Russian River for the benefit of communities from Ukiah through Sonoma County.

As many as 600,000 people and countless farms, many growing wine grapes, will see reduced supplies without the water moved by the power project. A new water authority has been created to continue the diversions, but the amount of water moved is expected to be far less and come at much greater cost.

Critics of the plan, including many in the region’s high-profile agricultural industry, have reached out to the Trump administration for help preventing the project’s demise. They’ve appealed to the president’s recent directives to increase the nation’s water and power supplies. Until this weekend, the administration hadn’t publicly signaled that it would get involved.

The breakthrough follows a Zoom meeting last week between about a dozen people from Lake, Mendocino and Sonoma counties with the agriculture secretary and a handful of her deputies, according to people on the call or familiar with it.

Rich Brazil, a resident of Potter Valley (Mendocino County) and a large-animal veterinarian, who participated in the call, said Department of Agriculture leaders appeared sympathetic to their case about how important the Eel River water was to Northern California.

Potter Valley, a small town steeped in orchards and vineyards, would lose most of its irrigation supplies if the diversions were halted.

“This whole area, this whole (agricultural) industry has been developed” around PG&E’s infrastructure, Brazil said. “The wells for the vast majority of people in the valley are going to go dry and there’s not going to be any water.”

Brazil and others say they would like to see some other entity, including perhaps the federal government, step in and take over operation of the PG&E project.

Whether maintaining the project with a new owner is plausible remains to be seen.

PG&E has already submitted its decommissioning application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees hydroelectric facilities, putting the project on track for retirement once the regulatory agency signs off. The utility has said that dam removal could begin as soon as 2028.

In a statement to the Chronicle, PG&E officials didn’t directly address the agriculture secretary’s comments but said the company had tried for nearly 10 years to find someone else to run the Potter Valley Project, to no avail. They said their decommissioning plan was their best effort to restore a river and still provide some water to communities.

“This proposal will allow for continued water delivery to the East Branch Russian River while also opening up fish passage on the Eel River,” the company wrote in an email.

Many who were once critical of PG&E’s plan to get rid of the project also are now resigned to the project’s retirement and are working with the utility to simply ensure that some amount of water continues to be moved between the Eel and Russian rivers.

Rollins, on X, did not seem deterred by the momentum for dam removal.

“The work to protect our farmers against a weaponized and often radical government continues,” she wrote. “I’m working with @SecretaryBurgum, @USDA, @Interior, and others to deliver real solutions to secure Potter Valley’s water supply. Stay tuned!!”

(SF Chronicle)

FROM THE REDWOODS TO THE SEA, Timeless Mendocino Beckons

Anderson Valley and Mendocino, California, get glow-ups thanks to a new generation of chefs, winemakers, and residents.

by Lauren Mowery

While not exactly undiscovered, Mendocino’s three-hour distance from San Francisco has long protected it from the development and gentrification creeping into Sonoma. Yet for devotees of the ravishing region, myself included, its weathered charm risked tipping into stagnation: the same (increasingly dated) inns serving the same menus. After all, Mendocino once stood in for Murder, She Wrote’s sleepy Cabot Cove.

Lately, though, change is afoot. A younger crowd of farmers, chefs, and creatives seeking proximity to nature have brought new energy to the fog-shrouded cliffs and redwood forests—and to nearby Anderson Valley’s wine scene.

Driving up 128

If California has a last great road trip, this is it. Route 128 slinks through the folds of Anderson Valley like a slow river, past vineyards clinging to hillsides and orchards heavy with apple blossoms come spring. The valley isn’t big — a patchwork of forests, meadows, and grapevines stretched across just 15 miles — but it leaves plenty of room to think. To dream while awake.

I’ve been visiting this swath of California for 20 years. Just enough has changed to keep coming back. But given the pace of gentrification elsewhere in the state, it’s always hard to believe how much about the valley and the coast remains the same.

Here, time moves not by deadlines, but by pruning shears, budbreak, and fog breaks. Only a few restaurants operate mid-week. Those that do, close by 8 PM. Mornings are busier – and the best time to eavesdrop on valley life; the solitary coffee shop fills with retired farmers sharing gossip and talking politics.

Unlike its fancier siblings to the south – Napa and Sonoma – Anderson Valley still feels rural and low-key. And yet, it’s one of the most exciting wine regions in the country. Cool-climate Pinot Noir and Chardonnay flourish, alongside Alsatian varietals and old vine Syrah. Tastings remain personal.

While reservations are encouraged, it’s still possible to stop in to a winery, talk to a person behind the counter, and find a dog asleep under the bar. No need to commit $150 to a seated affair. Tasting here is unfiltered in the best way: face-to-face and unhurried. Everyone in Anderson Valley has a story about why they came — and why they stayed.

Recommended stops include Thomas T. Thomas, a tiny one-man operation making elegant, site-driven Pinot; Drew Family Cellars, whose tasting barn sits on a 26-acre ridge above the fog line; Baxter, pouring single-clone Pinot flights; and Roederer Estate for sparkling wine. Also worth a stop: Fathers + Daughters Cellars, Goldeneye, and Lula Cellars.

One of the most beautiful stretches of road connects the Anderson Valley to the coast. I follow it west through the redwood tunnel, past ridgelines and fern groves, until the trees thin and a burst of light cracks open the horizon.

That first glimpse of the Pacific is always a jolt. Fog brushes the bluffs like a tide turned into vapor. Below, the cliffs fall away into jagged inlets, sea stacks, and pocket beaches laced with driftwood. The air shifts — it’s saltier, colder, full of the sea’s electricity. I slow the car instinctively, windows down. There’s nothing to do but pull over and take it in.

Where the Forest Ends, Mendocino Begins

Just north of the Navarro River, where Highway 1 snakes along the coast, the town of Mendocino perches above the Pacific like a stage set. The Victorian buildings — mostly white with gabled roofs and picket fences — recall its 19th-century origins as a logging town, built by New England carpenters who came west chasing work and stayed for the ocean light.

A new generation of residents — some priced out of San Francisco, others simply tired of it — arrived during the pandemic years and stayed. They brought ideas, energy, and a new design sensibility. Today, Mendocino feels less like a sleepy coastal outpost and more like a place where creative people actually live.

You can see it in the new storefronts, many run by Californians in their 30s and 40s. The Study Club stocks women's apparel, handmade homewares, and vintage textiles reinterpreted for a modern home. My Chic Farmhouse curates Italian linens and ceramics.

Barge North sells printed tees, sweatshirts, and fine art prints inspired by the local landscape. It shares space with Fog Bottle Shop, connected to the beloved Fog Eater Café, which offers natural wines and interesting pours from nearby valleys. These aren’t souvenir stores — they’re reflections of a community that cares how things are made and by whom.

The town remains compact, but it opens generously onto its surroundings. Walking trails thread through Mendocino Headlands State Park, where ocean winds flatten the grasses and waves pound the cliffs below. There’s always something to look at — migrating gray whales, candy cap mushrooms tucked into mossy trails, surfers waiting for breaks down at Big River Beach. The fog may roll in, but the coastline never hides for long.

Dinner options now range from old-school to inventive. Café Beaujolais still draws couples for candlelit meals, but you’ll also find wood-fired pizza and pét-nat at The Brickery next door. Fog Eater Café takes a lighter, Southern-meets-California approach to plant-based food. MacCallum House, set in a historic Victorian, makes for a cozy stop on a foggy night.

New lodging has lagged, but older options in various phases of renovation keep things fresh. Stanford Inn, long known for its wellness focus and gorgeous organic gardens, still offers one of the most eco-minded stays in town. MacCallum House’s rooms blend vintage charm with the convenience of a downtown location. And for those wanting full immersion in nature, The Inn at Newport Ranch, about 30 minutes north of the village, delivers a luxe coastal escape with sweeping views and a new tasting menu built around what the chef forages each day.

Heading South to Elk

Highway 1 climbs and dips along the cragged coastline before reaching the town of Elk — a speck on the map that feels increasingly like a destination. Once a logging outpost like Mendocino, Elk now draws travelers for its coastal beauty, laid-back pace, and direct access to the beach — something Mendocino itself lacks.

Greenwood State Beach unfolds below the bluff, a crescent of sand often empty but for driftwood piles and the occasional bonfire ring. Some visitors come just to walk the bluff trails, scan the water for whales, or sit on the beach with a thermos and a dog.

Elk California

What was once a pass-through town has garnered national attention for its growing food scene. The Maritime Café, open since 2021, offers a small, sharply edited menu of fresh seafood and seasonal produce, often with a view of the ocean if you sit near the window or on the patio. A handful of inns and rental homes sit scattered along the coast for those who want to stay the night.

Like Mendocino, Elk rewards those who take a slower pace, reserving its magic for those who put their phones in their pockets and look around. It’s a place for living in the moment. And if you’ve made it this far — beyond the vineyards and redwoods, past the last bend in the road — you already know to pull over, take a breath, and stay a little longer.

(forbes.com)

CREATIVE WRITING AT FORT BRAGG LIBRARY

The Writers of the Mendocino Coast present: Creative Writing at the Fort Bragg Library on the 2nd Wednesday of the month, 2:00 to 3:30 pm. Open and free to all adults.

On Wednesday, September 10th, Norma Watkins will be talking about writing memoir. “Scientifically, we may be 96% oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, but I say we’re made of stories. Come tell yours Wednesday, September 10th, at the Fort Bragg Library, 2:00 to 3:30 pm.

100+ WOMEN STRONG INLAND MENDOCINO

Date: October 2, 2025

Time: 5:30 PM-7:00 PM

Location: Ukiah Senior Center

Purpose: Collective Philanthropy

We’re excited to invite you to our upcoming 100+ Women Strong Inland Mendo giving event!

This is your opportunity to make your voice heard. Every individual who donates will have the chance to vote for the nonprofit they’d like to support. The nonprofit receiving the most votes will be awarded up to $10,000. Any additional funds raised will be shared equally between the two remaining nominees — ensuring all participants benefit from our collective generosity.

What is 100 Women Strong?

100 Women Strong is a giving circle that amplifies the power of individual philanthropy. By pooling our resources and making a collective decision, we’re able to create meaningful impact for local nonprofits.

Each member contributes $100 twice per year, and together we determine where those funds go. Here’s what that impact can look like:

100 members = $10,000

150 members = $15,000

200 members = $20,000

The more members we have, the greater the impact we can make together!

https://mendocinowomen.org

CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, September 8, 2025

JASON BACCHI, 44, Ukiah. DUI with priors, trespassing-refusing to leave hotel-motel where accommodations were obtained by refusing to pay, suspended license for DUI, no license, evasion, resisting, offenses while on bail.

AMANDA FIGG-HOBLYN, 24, Willits. Grand theft.

SONYA GALE, 29, Lucerne/Ukiah. Theft from dependent elder, getting credit with someone else’s ID, forgery.

TESLA HENCZ, 30, Laytonville. Probation revocation.

JAMES KING, 29, Willits. Theft from dependent elder, getting credit with someone else’s ID, forgery.

STEVEN MALEAR, 37, Ukiah. Domestic battery, false imprisonment, evidence destruction, damaging communications device.

COLLEEN STRICKLIN, 64, Yuba City/Ukiah. DUI-any drug.

GREGORY THOMPKINS, 56, Ukiah. Unlawful camping, polluting state waters, parole violation, unspecified offense.

MARSHALL NEWMAN: The pay telephone kiosk at a park - to remain nameless for its protection - in the Santa Cruz Mountains, August 2025.

HONORING RIOTERS UNDERCUTS MILITARY FUNERAL HONORS

Editor:

It is inconceivable that Ashli Babbitt, a violent insurrectionist of Jan. 6, 2021, should be awarded full military funeral honors. In no way is this woman a hero. By giving her these honors, the real heroes who have received them in the past, and those who may be awarded them in the future, are dishonored. Donald Trump and his lackeys at the Defense Department are doing their best to rewrite history and disable every institution that has helped to serve this country. Shame on them for dishonoring the true heroes who have fought and sacrificed for what this country is supposed to stand for. The heroes from Gettysburg, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and more are weeping.

Sheila Lichirie

Santa Rosa

ANOTHER INSULT FROM TRUMP

To the Editor:

Re “Trump Says U.S. Military Has ‘Never Fought to Win’ Since World War II“ (news article, nytimes.com, Sept. 5):

How insulting President Trump’s comments are to the brave men and women who fought in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and other places around the globe. So many gave their lives, and their families continue to live with their loss.

This dismissal of courage and sacrifice from a man who has never put on the uniform of his country nor experienced the anxiety of seeing a child of his go into battle is beyond disgusting.

Ann Lynch

Seattle

"This Executive Order says I can balance anything on my head. Anything!"

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I once heard an audio anecdote from a man-in-the-street interview with a voter. This voter had a big head of steam built up about how one particular reactionary crank candidate earned his vote. Having heard the candidate’s angry, resentful pitch, this angry, resentful voter figured ‘Yup, this is my guy all right’. What was the big issue this voter wanted dealt with? He figured that once in office, the candidate would do something about the hassle he was having over renewing his fishing licence. Yeah, you read that right. His fishing licence.

In case it needs pointing out, the candidate hadn’t said a thing about fishing licences. The candidate didn’t care about fishing licences. The candidate’s party didn’t care about fishing licences. To a first approximation, no one on god’s green earth cared or cares a fig about fucking fishing licences. What some people do care about, though, is power. And they understood something about that voter, namely, that the voter didn’t really care about his fishing licence either -- he cared about his feelings. And so, they trained their candidate to send an angry, resentful message, and this guy did what they wanted: he voted his heart. Power was lying in the street and they picked it up, thanks in part to this angry, resentful loser.

Multiply that by a few tens of millions, and you have MAGA: America’s angry, resentful, seething id. For the moment, at least, anger and resentment have the whip in hand, and they’re energetically cracking it to pursue their real agenda of turning back the clock: rolling back the 20th century, rolling back the Bill of Rights, rolling back as many as possible of the ways the USA became a better place over the 250 years since its founding.

D.C. PEACE VIGIL REMOVED, DESCRIBED AS ‘HOMELESS ENCAMPMENT’

Warmest spiritual greetings,

On Sunday, the American government removed the Washington, D.C. Peace Vigil, (which was across the street from the White House in Lafayette Park since June 3, 1981 with a U.S. Parks Department permit since June 3, 1981, 24/7 365). The official reason given was that the peace vigil is a “homeless encampment”. This ends whatever basic sanity is left in the District of Columbia, which is already compromised by an unimaginable number of national guard patrols and Metropolitan Police units, who are responding to an out of control criminal situation everywhere.

In the future, I am socially autonomous. I am no longer accepting America’s problems, while receiving practically nothing in support. Feel free to take care of your own problems from now on. And stop complaining that I request money and housing. Your criticism has always been irrational at best.

Yours for Self Realization,

Craig Louis Stehr, [email protected]

Edith Bry, American painter at work, 1927

LOTTERY JACKPOT WINNERS SHARE HARD LESSONS

Past big-prize winners recall fortunes found, mistakes made and advice for those holding a lucky ticket.

by Mark Walker

Regrets? Past lottery winners have had a few.

After the Powerball jackpot swelled to $1.8 billion, or an estimated $826.4 million in cash, officials said that two top-prize winning tickets were sold in Missouri and Texas, with the owners to split the jackpot.

It was the kind of prize, the second-largest in U.S. history, that sent people to corner stores and gas stations to buy tickets, which were then folded into a wallet or tucked into a glove compartment.

While there have been plenty of stories of lottery winners being murdered or wishing they had torn up the ticket, some have fared better.

Ahead of the drawing on Saturday night, some past lottery winners shared their hard lessons learned and advice for those who might have held a lucky ticket.

In Iowa, in 1999, Timothy Schultz was at home when his father woke him with the news: The winning ticket came from the gas station where Mr. Schultz worked as a clerk.

In an interview, Mr. Schultz recalled waking up in a panic and not being able to find the ticket.

He said he rummaged through his desk and shuffled through old papers in his room. Finally, he discovered the ticket crumpled in a pocket of his jeans.

He then found a copy of The Des Moines Register and compared the numbers on his ticket to those in the newspaper. He learned that the quick-pick Powerball numbers on his ticket, chosen randomly by computer, matched. He had won $28 million.

Mr. Schultz, who now has a podcast, “Lottery, Dreams and Fortune,” where he interviews lottery winners, said that the majority of guests he’s talked to won by letting the computer randomly pick their numbers.

Still, he recommended choosing the approach that best suits you. Whether it’s letting the computer pick your numbers or choosing ones for yourself, trying to find the winning combination is part of the fun, he said.

Mr. Schultz cautioned that when the time comes to hire someone to mind your millions, don’t be swayed by smooth talkers who simply claim the title. What you want is a financial adviser with the hard-earned experience to back it up.

“If I had a dime for every person that called themselves a financial adviser and wanted to help, I would be a billionaire by now,” he said.

About a decade earlier in Pennsylvania, William Post paid the price for his mistake. In 1988, he won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania lottery. He bought houses, cars and a plane, and within a year, the money was gone.

Relatives demanded some. His landlord and sometime girlfriend sued. His own brother tried to have him killed, according to his obituary in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2006.

“Everybody dreams of winning money, but nobody realizes the nightmares that come out of the woodwork, or the problems,” he said in 1993, The Washington Post reported.

In Missouri, in 2016, Bradley Hahn scratched the silvery film from a $40 lottery ticket and saw the winning numbers that meant he had won $10 million. He stood in the store, stunned, but remained calm.

He could then pay off his debts. But next came the purchases: a midnight blue 2015 Corvette Stingray, his dream car at the time, and a 2016 Cadillac SRX that gleamed. Both cars lost thousands of dollars in value almost immediately.

“I probably would have financed them instead,” Mr. Hahn said.

Friends appeared, some to celebrate, some with open hands. The more he gave, the more they expected.

“It got to the point where I’m like, ‘Dude, I’m not a bank,’” he said in an interview.

These days, Mr. Hahn said he’s learned to keep the circle of people around him small.

And he remembers the warning of another winner, a friend who won $3 million and lost everything.

“Stay away from gambling,” said Mr. Hahn, who declined to disclose how much of his winnings he still has. “You already won. Don’t risk it.”

In Illinois in 2012, Urooj Khan had little time to consider such decisions. He won $1 million from a scratch-off ticket. A month later, poisoned with cyanide, he died.

The police investigated his death as a homicide, but no arrests were ever made.

In Arkansas, in the summer of 2022, Judy Dudley sat in her living room with her granddaughter who was visiting from Texas. The lottery numbers flickered across the screen. Ms. Dudley checked her ticket once, twice, then a third time.

“Oh my God,” Ms. Dudley recalled shouting at the time. She had won $2 million.

Ms. Dudley won on a Friday so she had to wait until the state lottery office in Little Rock, Ark., opened on Monday.

The ticket went into her wallet. That night, her husband made her sleep with it under her pillow until they could drive to the lottery office to claim it.

“I was 99.9 percent sure,” she said, “but I still needed the state to tell me.”

The couple, who were retired, had no debt at the time that they won the jackpot. They built a garage her husband had long wanted, and placed the rest of the money with a financial adviser.

“It’s been great,” she said. Her advice? “If you don’t buy a ticket, you can’t win.”

(NY Times)

GIANTS FLEX ON ARIZONA, smack 5 HRs and gain ground in wild-card race

by Shayna Rubin

Heliot Ramos celebrates with Christian Koss (50) after they scored on Ramos's two-run home run in the sixth inning as the San Francisco Giants played the Arizona Diamondbacks at Oracle Park in San Francisco, on Monday, Sept. 8, 2025. (Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle)

After a brief two-loss hiatus, the San Francisco Giants played free again Monday night.

Twice behind the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Giants chipped into a deficit. With the game tied in the sixth inning, they erupted for five runs in an inning so electric that Drew Gilbert — transforming into San Francisco’s energizer — took a big bite of pitcher Robbie Ray’s sleeve and wrestled it between his teeth as the two watched over the dugout rail.

Joy has been a familiar scene in the Giants’ dugout over the last few weeks as they’ve climbed back into the postseason race. The Giants beat the Diamondbacks 11-5 and — with the New York Mets having lost earlier — moved three games back of the last wild-card spot (though the Mets hold the tiebreaker).

Just last month buried deep and out of contention, the Giants have reversed course by unburdening themselves of expectation. Players and coaches say they aren’t worried about closing the gap, living up to hype of their hot start to the year or watching the scoreboard, though it’s positioned directly across from them from the dugout.

“It’s really fun to watch. Guys are feeding off each other,” Logan Webb said. “There’s a ton of energy in the dugout — mainly from Drew Gilbert. But it’s a blast to watch … We had a rough stretch for a while in every facet of what we were doing. Pitching, hitting, defense — it wasn’t how we wanted to play baseball. Now we’re playing the right way. Just giving ourselves a chance. We got a lot of energy right now.”

This was the Giants’ 12th win over their past 15 games and, over that span, they’ve outscored opponents 110-61 with an offense fueled by power. The Giants hit five home runs on a humid, warm Monday night, starting with Jung Hoo Lee’s two-run shot off Nabil Crismatt’s lazy curveball to cut a three-run deficit to one in the second inning. When the Diamondbacks answered with another run off Webb, Dom Smith retaliated with a game-tying two run blast.

Then in the sixth, San Francisco broke it open. They loaded the bases when Matt Chapman reached on an error, Luis Matos drew a walk and Lee laid down a bunt single. That led to Christian Koss’ go-ahead, two-run double into right field, Patrick Bailey’s sac fly and the dagger homer: Heliot Ramos’ 17th home run hit deep to center left, making it 9-4.

Chapman and Bailey chipped in solo home runs to cushion the lead. The streak of 18 games with at least one home run might’ve ended on Saturday, but the Giants look equipped to start a new one.

“That’s what we’ve been doing. It’s why we’ve been successful,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Been a huge reason for it. Warm night, ball carries here a little. I think even the ball Jung Hoo hit was 94 mph and went out. We definitely have the guys to do it, once (Rafael Devers) came in and accentuated what we have. We weren’t capable of doing it for a while, but you look up and down the lineup we can. And that’s really been the driving force of the way we’ve been playing here recently.”

Webb departed after six innings having reached a personal goal.

The ability to get weak contact has made Webb a Cy Young contender in recent years, but to keep opposing teams off his scent — especially familiar ones such as the Diamondbacks — he’s been generating more swing-and-miss, changing eye levels and racking up the strikeouts. He came into Monday’s game knowing he was six strikeouts shy of 200 for the season, and with a handful of starts left, little pressure to get there. He wanted it, though.

“I told (catcher Bailey) before the game, ‘I’m only six away, but I’m not counting,’” Webb said.

He struck out Adrian Del Castillo swinging at a changeup for his 200th, becoming the first Giant to get there since Carlos Rodon in 2022. He struck out seven over six innings to tick up to 201, which leads the National League as do his 184 ⅔ innings after six against Arizona.

The changes Webb made to his pitch mix in his seventh year in the bigs made the 200 strikeouts possible. His four-seam fastball isn’t a good-looking pitch, but it’s a valuable weapon, particularly in two-strike counts, to hurl at the top of the zone to counterbalance his sweeper, sinker and changeup in the lower parts of the strike zone.

“It’s just execution. This year he’s been really dialed in about location the pitches,” said Bailey. “No one is looking for it. How could you if you’re a hitter? It’s not the shape getting better, it’s about execution.”

Rodriguez surgery: Randy Rodriguez, one of the Giants’ biggest success stories of the year, will undergo Tommy John surgery during the last week of September, the team announced. Dr. Keith Meister will perform the procedure.

At the recommendation of doctors, Rodriguez, 25, decided at the end of August to undergo the surgery, but “timing, maybe scheduling” was a potential reason Rodriguez pushed the surgery a month after the decision. Tommy John surgery typically requires at least a year for recovery and a return to the mound, which means Rodriguez, an All-Star this season, will likely miss the entirety of 2026.

Sharks by the Bay: Sharks stars Will Smith and Macklin Celebrini, San Jose’s consecutive first-round picks in 2023-24, were on hand at Oracle Park to take batting practice. Smith had the more potent bat, hitting a few balls near the warning track.

(sfchronicle.com)

CALIFORNIA IS FULL OF UNTOUCHED PUBLIC LAND. GOOD LUCK REACHING IT.

Thousands of acres of public spaces are only accessible with permission from the private landowners who surround those lands.

by Emma Stiefel

In rural Napa County, about 2 hours north of San Francisco, a 700-acre plot of hilly scrubland near Atlas Peak is open to the public for hunting, hiking and camping.

But the public has no legal way of getting there — unless they manage to secure permission from one of several private landowners who own an adjacent property.

A Chronicle analysis found this parcel, owned by the Bureau of Land Management, is one of the hundreds of “landlocked” pieces of public land across California. These plots are completely surrounded by private property and cut off from roads. They total at least 75,000 acres, nearly three times the size of San Francisco. Most of these plots are found in the state’s more rural counties, like Siskiyou and Kern counties, but there are also plots in Santa Clara and San Diego counties.

That total doesn’t even include the many public lands connected through corners in a checkerboard pattern. The legality of accessing them by “corner-crossing,” or stepping diagonally like a checkers piece over the exact point where public and private lands meet, is ambiguous in California. If corner-crossing is forbidden, then the amount of inaccessible public lands in California balloons to 530,000 acres, according to an analysis from the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) and the hunting app OnX.

Corner-crossing has been disputed in a high-profile case between hunters and a ranch owner in Wyoming. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the practice is legal in the six Western states that make up its jurisdiction, and the issue may make it all the way to the Supreme Court.

Outdoor groups including OnX, TRCP and the popular hunting lifestyle company MeatEater have rallied hunters and hikers around maximizing recreational public land access. At the same time, alarmed landowners have tried to uphold strict trespassing laws and property protections, fearing loss of property value and personal safety from rifle-toting hunters crossing their property. The Wyoming landowner argued the corner-crossing hunters cost him upwards of $7 million in property value.

Corner-crossing and trespassing to reach public lands hasn’t led to a major court case in California, but the issue is still present. One of the landowners who knows this best is Richard Bissett.

Bissett has lived alongside the BLM land near Atlas Peak in Napa County since he was born in 1963. The land teems with wildlife like deer and mountain lions From the porch of his white house perched atop one of the area’s many rolling hills, he and his wife can easily see a meadow on the BLM land below, not too far from the nearby road. The scene is typically peaceful, the wind-buffeted quiet broken only by the occasional bird call or engine burst from the road below.

For the past five years, however, Bissett has occasionally heard another sound: rounds of gunfire from hunters who hike around Bissett’s “No Trespassing” signs to shoot in the meadow. Bissett said the trespassing began when the OnX app, which maps public land, became popular, letting any hunter with a subscription see just how tantalizingly close the large plot of BLM land is to nearby Capell Valley Road.

Before that, few knew about the parcel and Bissett said no one tried to access it. Now, Bissett said it is something of a destination for those who want to feel like they’re “in the Wild West.”

“We were watching a guy shooting a gun (in the BLM meadow), doing fast draws with his AR-15,” Bissett told the Chronicle. He would shoot at his target, not toward Bissett or his house, Bissett said. “But then since he was all fired up he turned 90 degrees and shot straight in our direction,” said Bissett. “I could see dust clouds kicking up from his bullets.”

The app also clearly shows the ring of private property that surrounds the BLM land, but that hasn’t dissuaded hunters. Napa County sheriff’s deputies often visit the property to escort trespassers away. While Bissett said the sheriff has been helpful, he also noted that it can take up to an hour for a deputy to arrive. He worries it’s “just a matter of time” before one of the trespassers starts a fire. The still-visible burn scars from the 2020 Hennessy fire are a constant reminder of the landscape’s flammability.

The only legal way for outdoorspeople to access landlocked public lands is by obtaining permission from owners to pass through private property. The Chronicle was able to photograph the BLM land in Napa because Bissett allowed a Chronicle photographer and reporter on his property.

But tracking down owners can be difficult — many parcels are owned by opaque corporations — and they generally have no incentive to open their gates. Bissett told the Chronicle no one has contacted him about passing through his land.

The Chronicle also reached out to a private campsite, the other significant barrier between the BLM land and the road, to inquire about access for this story. They said “The only people who can come into the campsite are owners, and that’s it.” Owners of private property around another Napa County plot of landlocked BLM land did not respond to several messages.

Across the country, onX’s analysis found nearly 17 million acres of inaccessible public land, including corner-locked plots. Nearly all of it is in the west.

Permanent access to these lands could only be secured by connecting them to public roads, either by purchasing adjacent private land or securing an easement that allows the public to pass through the private land. Earlier this year, OnX and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation conveyed 23 acres of previously private land to the BLM, facilitating access to 13,000 acres of public land in Idaho. Such transfers are often expensive and time-consuming — nearly five years passed between the land purchase and its transfer to BLM stewardship.

California outdoors enthusiasts have pushed for the state to expand access initiatives, such as copying Idaho’s “Access Yes” program for coordinating passage through private land or Montana’s Access Issues Reporting System for collecting data on barriers to public land.

“Public land access is important because that’s how people spend time outdoors,” Eric Hanson, Chair of the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers California Chapter, told the Chronicle. “Whether they’re hunting, angling, birdwatching or just wanting to be outside. In California, we have tons of amazing public land, but it’s also an increasingly crowded state. So it’s important to have access to land closer to where you live.”

Backcountry Hunters and Anglers advocates for partnerships between the public and landowners that balance property rights and public access, including a California program that facilitates limited hunting on private land. Hanson encourages anyone interested in visiting questionably accessible public land to “be willing to make a call.” The local BLM or U.S. Forest Service office can confirm what roads and trails are accessible, and reaching out to private landowners may result in permission to pass through.

In some cases, the government may be able to negotiate a property exchange that would transfer landlocked public property to a private owner in exchange for a more accessible part of their land becoming public. Hanson has mostly seen these deals happen in other states but would support them for California — as long as the public doesn’t lose out. The details of such a swap, including a U.S. Forest Service exchange in Montana’s Crazy Mountains, can be controversial.

Bissett would prefer the BLM land behind his property remain inaccessible. He worries that welcoming in campers and hunters would only increase the risk of wildfire, skeptical that the federal government or a nature conservancy could ensure visitors follow fire-safety rules. If anything, he’d want the land to be sold to a private owner so that the region sheds a “lure for illegal activity” and hopefully gains a new neighbor to take care of the land.

“If it was sold, maybe someone would build on it and not do stupid shit like set campfires or recklessly shoot their gun,” Bissett said. “From my perspective (public access is) all negative. More access is more trouble for locals.”…

https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/landlocked-public-land-21029663.php

LEAD STORIES, TUESDAY'S NYT

Israeli Military Orders Residents of Gaza City to Evacuate

House Panel Releases Drawing for Epstein Apparently Signed by Trump

Supreme Court Lifts Restrictions on L.A. Immigration Stops

Trump Administration Says It Has Begun Immigration Crackdown in Chicago

Inside the Deal Ending the Murdoch Succession Fight

Reading Skills of 12th Graders Hit a New Low

WHERE THINGS STAND

Immigration stops: The Supreme Court at least temporarily lifted restrictions on a immigration-related stops by government agents in the Los Angeles area that challengers called “blatant racial profiling.” The decision lifts a federal judge’s order that agents not make indiscriminate stops relying on factors like a person’s ethnicity or that they speak Spanish. But the ruling is not the last word in the case.

Foreign aid fight: The Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to let it freeze billions of dollars in foreign aid at the center of a convoluted and consequential court fight over presidential power. The administration’s request is part of its bid for broad authority to halt spending appropriated by Congress, and argues that a judge’s order that it spend $4 billion in appropriated aid was itself “a grave and urgent threat to the separation of powers.” Read more ›

Chicago: At least three people were arrested on Sunday by federal agents in Chicago, an advocacy group said. It wasn’t clear if the arrests signaled the start of Mr. Trump’s promised immigration crackdown in the city.

(NY Times)

DAYS OF THUNDER

by James Kunstler

“If we hadn’t won this election we would have all been vaxxed to death and censored so no one could hear our dying screams” — Mike Benz on “X”

That reckoning you’ve heard about lo these many years? It’s here now. We’re in it. You just can’t see all the moving parts, and if you did, you might not understand how or where they are moving, and what they are fixing to do next. Aside from certain US senators playing their pre-scripted mad scenes for the cameras, a disquieting quiet blankets the swamp like a miasma. It feels like a long, still moment before some shaking of the earth. Everyone senses it and the guilty must feel it most keenly.

That’s why they are laying low and keeping their traps shut. Every criminal defense lawyer inside the beltway is burning the midnight oil (and racking up the billable hours, ka-ching). Meanwhile, where are their clients? No longer peddling alibis on MSNBC (MSNOW), at least. I doubt that John Brennan is even in the country. My guess would be he’s cooling his heels in Abu Dhabi, where the extradition protocols with the USA remain comfortably squishy to his advantage. (He reportedly became a Muslim while running the CIA station in Riyadh between 1996-99, just in time for 9-11. . . hmmmm. . . .)

Hillary Clinton has been keeping her pie-hole closed for weeks now while rattling around that big house in Chappaqua, NY, like a BB in a packing crate. Is anyone counting the wine-boxes coming and going from the place? It must be maddening to be HRC — but that new extra edge of prosecution terror would just be larding the lily, considering what Vlad Putin learned about her mental state way back in 2016: deeply unstable. . .diabetic. . . on tranqs. . . often plastered. . . bursts of rage. . . .

Comey and Clapper? No more cute pranks on the beach for Big Jim, 86 on the menacing messages in seashells and putting out Taylor Swift fan-boy Tik-toks. Was that some attempt to not be taken seriously? Like you’re some kind of overgrown, harmless child?

James Clapper, of course, would be voted most likely to flip on his compadres, if such a canvass were taken on Coup island. He was the first to publicly announce his lawyering-up in the Russia collusion affair. He never expected it would come to this, this ordeal of interrogation, his “good soldier” self plopped ignominiously in the witness chair, the odor of his own fear, the proffer (just tell us what really happened), the US attorneys appearing to leer at him, his house mortgaged to pay the attorney’s fees… what’s a poor boy to do?

Adam Schiff has gone radio silent. A miracle! Alas, the autopen pardon granted for his J-6 Committee doings apparently does not apply to matters such as mortgage fraud and wire fraud. He realizes with chills and sighs of despair that this ain’t no foolin’ around. People go to jail for these things. . . gulp! His attorney absolutely forbids any televised appeals to his fan-base, as if the glamorati of Rodeo Drive could do anything to stop what’s coming. Too bad Ed Buck and his magic checkbook are no longer around.

Even the seeming untouchables, Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Lisa Monaco, Norm Eisen, Mary McCord, Anrew Weissmann, Marc Elias must be listening hard for shoes to drop. They thought they had it made in the shade after 2020. They had the USA on a string, they thought. Home free. The trouble with the smarty-pants way of life is sometimes you out-smart yourself and your pants fall down. But all they can do in this late hour is induce a bunch of federal judges — recently imported from countries where justice means casting goat neckbones across the dusty floor of a mud hut — to gum up every executive action coming out of the White House with a poorly-argued TRO. They might as well be on a U-haul box truck throwing furniture off the back at a fleet of pursuing cop cars.

Mr. Trump is having sport with them now. Their crimes spanning the decade past are being bundled into one big coup case against the country, a color revolution on their own citizens and against “the democracy” that they never stop pretending to tout. If I am perceiving all this correctly, the days and weeks ahead will be as consequential a train of events as ever rolled down the tracks into Union Station, DC.

Looks like it will start this week with Robert F Kennedy, Jr., announcing the suspected culprits in the great autism question. That will rock the pharma industry to the very hairs on its roots. They have been trying since the 1980s to bury that idea that autism comes from anything they do. Next, the nation will have to ask: why did it take Mr. Kennedy only seven months to arrive at a plausible answer to the decades’ long autism mystery? Maybe because it was not such a difficult mystery to solve. Just that nobody wanted to collate and assemble the information. The answer was too ugly. So, they buried it on-purpose.

That set of revelations will segue soon enough into the reveal of facts, data, studies retrieved from the thought-to-be hidden files of the CDC, FDA, and NIH as to just how damaging the Covid-19 vaccinations really were… which will lead to answers as to how the various agencies under HHS (and likely the Pentagon, too) conspired to materialize the Covid virus in the first place, and that means the names and titles of actual persons whop did it: the deputy secretaries of this and that, higher-ups, folks in dark NGOs… and all that will combine with new information about the supremely messed-up election of 2020, and so on down the long line of the many related, serial coup operations.

It’s one thing to reveal all that information, with its criminal overtone. And it’s another thing to get around to prosecuting it. I doubt you will be disappointed, though. Like I said. We’re in it. It’s happening. It’s roiling under the surface.

(kunstler.com)

MATT TAIBBI: “The Pentagon just issued a statement saying they don’t consider what’s happening in Gaza a genocide. I strongly disagree. How do you feel about what’s happening there?”

It was once considered a virtue in journalism to decline to answer a question if you don’t know what you’re talking about. I explained to her that Gaza wasn’t a subject that I had ever covered, and that as a reporter, you “get in trouble” when you speak outside your area of expertise. I was clearly talking about getting in trouble factually, but we live in a conspiratorial age.

“Get in trouble with who?” she said. “Zionists?”

This was nuts. I work for myself. My income is from individual subscribers sending a few dollars a month. Do “Zionists” have the power (or inclination!) to stop all those little transactions? “I just don’t think I’m obligated to talk about things I haven’t covered,” I said, trying to be polite.

“I think I disagree with that, Matt,” she said. (She disagreed that I prefer to only speak when I know what I’m talking about!) “Genocide is a serious, serious issue.” (She was telling me the answer to her question.) Next, she said Glenn Greenwald told her nobody is an expert and Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté “get a lot of pushback” and “people smear them all the time” for speaking about Israel. (All your friends have already given the right answer, why won’t you?) Then: “I don’t think you have to be afraid of the pushback.”

I tried pointing out that if I were to say something on the subject, I’d just be regurgitating someone else’s thoughts. She went with: “You’re a parent. How do you feel about the kids that have been killed?”

Whatever a discussion is, this was its opposite. It got worse. She moved to Coleman. “I think for me the reason why I wanted to have this conversation with you,” she said, “is because I wasn’t sure if you were familiar with who uh Coleman Hughes actually was.”

Uh-oh, I thought. Was there a damning biographical detail about Coleman that I should have known? I asked what she meant. “Often times what will happen is that there are outlets and there are organizations that they will use people like Coleman Hughes,” she said, “so they will use a black face to push forth with their agenda.”

What organizations? Was he on the WEF payroll? A fellow at an RNC-funded institute?

We never got there. Instead, she described an argument Coleman had on Twitter with Aaron and Briahna Joy Gray over, you guessed it, Israel. This was about whether rapes occurred on October 7th, or whether it was nails pushed into the gentials of a female corpse, or — I lost track. I did learn that Coleman took the pro-Israel side and Aaron took the pro-Palestinian side (“Dear genocide apologist,” he began). After this detour, Sabrina explained that sometimes, “the media” and “powerful people… in this country” will “use… a face like a Coleman Hughes” to forward their “agenda.”

So, the “organizations” turned out to be “the media” and “powerful people.”

I ignored this and just said I thought racial harmony as an aspiration was a good thing. If she was trying to imply by proxy that I shared Coleman’s Israel views, it’s worth noting I’d written in support of Aaron a lot more than once.

In the world of left-leaning podcasts that exploded to prominence in the wake of October 7th (they are the modern answer to right-wing talk shows that proliferated after 9/11), I was raked over the coals for this appearance. The hosts of Vanguard, who between them have the brains of one Skee-Ball attendant, did a segment about how I “floundered” in the face of “easy” questions about Israel.

Vanguard rewound tape of me saying that if I spoke I’d just be regurgitating someone else’s words. Heckle said to Jeckle: “He doesn’t want to say that he opposes the fucking slaughter of children, he’s too fucking cowardly, what a little bitch.” Jeckle to Heckle: “Again, all he has to say is, like, even if you don’t want to condemn it, just be like, ‘I think it’s despicable that people are being censored for speaking out about this.’”

Never mind that I had spoken about Israeli censorship (probably before these assholes hit puberty), that I’ve repeatedly said Palestine is often a canary in the coal mine previewing new forms of censorship, that I defended Roger Waters after German authorities investigated his Palestine remarks, or that I opposed the Antisemitism Awareness Act and Trump’s Executive Orders on Antisemitism. I wasn’t asked about censorship. I was asked to agree with the “easy” proposition that Gaza is a genocide.

Is that an “easy” question? Of course not. Nothing about Israel and Palestine is “easy.”

Ask me about the bombing of women and children in a vacuum, and of course I’m against it. Ask me about the zeal I hear in Rabbi Ronen Shaulov’s voice when he talks about starving children in Gaza, and I’ll tell you I feel revulsion and horror. I was against Israel’s suppression of Palestinian Internet accounts when I first wrote on the topic seven years ago and still am. Do I want the United States to be funding any of these activities? That’s an easy no for me, too, as I’ve said. Israel doesn’t need American taxpayer money, particularly if it implicates us in morally extreme acts. Moreover, they know it. I talked to an Israeli reporter early in the conflict who saw the anti-Israel political movement in the United States as a good thing, something that might lead to a less incestuous and interdependent relationship. Hell, you can even find that sentiment in The Free Press, which according to certain friends of mine has never published anything that goes against establishment thinking. “End U.S. Aid to Israel“ was an early headline.

None of this is taking place in a vacuum, though, and what’s made me reluctant to salute the constant demands to denounce Israel is the way the pro-Palestinian movement has broadened and inspired its American followers to accept more and more extreme ideas. Until 2023 I thought it was uncontroversial that terrorist murder of civilians was morally abhorrent, but the events of October 7th, 2023 have gradually been reframed as “resistance” and a necessity, a way to “raise an alarm“ about the plight of Palestine.

I grew up in a left tradition that revered Thoreau, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King. I’m familiar with the argument frequently made by Noam Chomsky that Israel and the United States are themselves terrorist states, but if you’re now telling me terrorism is an acceptable form of “resistance,” don’t act like that’s not a huge shift in liberal thought. Same with the taking of hostages, justification of which is now at the center of the coming drama. I didn’t like it when George Bush used “enemy combatant” terminology to circumvent the Geneva Conventions, and protests that implicitly support Hamas’s continued holding of hostages mass-delegitimizes the Geneva rules. A response I hear a lot is that Israel’s Palestinian prisoners are also hostages, but that’s no answer. You’re still asking me to justify an abhorrent practice.

This is typically when someone says, “Well, why don’t you complain about Israel’s behavior?” Then I point out I don’t say anything at all. The refusal to wink at murder and kidnapping is the thought process that’s made me a bête noire of the left.

You know what should be easy? Protesting on behalf of a persecuted minority. That shouldn’t require mass c-bombing women or forming squads of joke police or denouncing people for failing to prioritize your happy words or repeatedly libeling people over things they don’t say. I remember it being about eliciting sympathy, but maybe “they” got to me?

(racket.news)

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: ARCHITECTS OF COWARDICE, ACCOMPLICES TO FASCISM

by Henry Giroux

The Democratic Party has forfeited every claim to moral and political credibility. It is not a bulwark against fascism but an accomplice to it, a party of cowardice and complicity that props up the most barbaric features of gangster capitalism-extending from staggering levels of inequality to its refusal to support national health care. Its leadership, craven, visionless, and drunk on Wall Street money, has become a machinery of war and despair. It is wedded to the military-industrial complex and normalizes through its silence a culture of war, misery, and cruelty. It sends billions in weapons to Benjamin Netanyahu, an indicted war criminal, fully aware those arms sustain a machinery of occupation and repression. With one act, fighting to cut off the flow of weapons, the Democrats could help end this slaughter. Instead, when Netanyahu recently visited the White House, they shook his bloodstained hand and smiled for the cameras, their shamelessness captured in a widely circulated, obscene photograph. This betrayal abroad mirrors the Party’s collapse at home. The Party’s cowardice is written into its very DNA.

It is a party of whiners, trapped in ideological smugness and a flaccid discourse of compromise. Given its political and ethical weakness, it is ironic that on occasion it drapes itself in the hollow language of “resisting Trump’s authoritarianism.” This becomes more obvious when it advocates, on occasion, working with the regime, even as it props up authoritarians abroad and tightens the screws of neoliberal cruelty at home. Moira Donegan writing in The Guardian is right in stating that the Democratic Party is the party of self-sabotage, that is, it has a vision of American politics in which they have no power to set the terms of the debate on their own.” Its neoliberal policies have hollowed out working-class communities, shredded social protections, remained largely moot in calling out Trump’s regime as a criminogenic organization, and left despair in their wake, conditions that became the breeding ground for Trump’s authoritarian ascent. They created the void that fascism fills, and now they tremble before the monster they helped unleash.

The racist bile and fascist rhetoric spewed by Trump’s loyal sycophants, especially Stephen Miller, the president’s homeland security adviser and deputy chief of staff, receives far less outrage than the criticism directed at progressive voices like Zohran Mamdani, now running for mayor of New York City. When Miller brands the Democratic Party not only a domestic extremist organization but “an entity devoted exclusively to the defense of hardened criminals, gang-bangers, and illegal, alien killers and terrorists,” the silence from Democratic leaders is deafening. No effort is made to expose such language as rooted in the poisonous legacies of fascism and white supremacy, or for that matter call for his resignation. Yet there can be no doubt that Miller’s discourse, and his influence in shaping Trump’s militarized immigration, education, and policing policies, is a five-alarm fire for democracy, one that demands unrelenting opposition. There is no effort on the part of the Democratic Party leadership to acknowledge that the Department of Homeland Security has become not only a domestic terrorist organization but a “white nationalist content, mill churning out bigoted, jingoistic schlock.”

This cowardice abroad is matched by their silence in the face of fascism at home. Matters of moral witnessing, addressing war crimes, calling out massive violations of human rights at home and abroad are rarely acknowledged by the Democratic Party leadership. This is especially true with respect to the genocide taking place in Gaza. Not only is it morally indefensibly silent about its own complicity in arming Israel, it also reveals itself too timid to confront Israel’s genocidal policies in Gaza, where more than two million people have been reduced to conditions resembling a “vast Ground Zero.” As a party wedded to Wall Street, it is too timid to challenge the predatory capitalism that now mutates into one of the most destructive and exploitative economic systems on the planet, an order that thrives on the obliteration of human needs, elevates profit as its only sacrament, and transforms the state into a corrupt crime syndicate.

At home, the Democratic leadership refuses to lift a finger for candidates who represent genuine hope. Their refusal to support Zohran Mamdani in New York is not an oversight but a betrayal. Schumer and Jeffries embody the Party’s moral bankruptcy: Schumer the coward, Jeffries the gutless tactician, both locked in servitude to corporate power, both content to preside over a politics of endless war, mass incarceration, obscene inequality, and the normalization of state terrorism.

They are the pallbearers of democracy, not its defenders. Commenting on the fact that Jeffries and Schumer have so far refused to endorse Mamdani, journalist Mehdi Hasan wrote in a Wednesday column for The Guardian, “If you want to understand why the Democrats are polling at their lowest point for more than three decades, look no further than these two uninspiring Democratic leaders in Congress.” Mehdi only gets it partly right: these two politicians embody not individual cowardice, but a party that supports genocide in Gaza, refuses to stand up to the military-industrial-academic complex, and could not care less about the future they are destroying for young people.

The American people deserve more than these moral zombies. What is needed is a new party, one unafraid to fight for radical democracy and the dignity of all. A party that calls for the end of staggering inequality, a universal wage, free health care, free quality education for all, housing for everyone, strict gun restrictions, the abolition of poverty, and the dismantling of the warfare state. A party that will slash the bloated defense budget and redirect those trillions into schools, hospitals, homes, and the expansion of social rights. A party that will name criminalized capitalism for what it is: a death-dealing order of greed, violence, corruption, and disposability.

Fascism does not arrive fully formed; it is cultivated in the soil of despair, in the immiseration engineered by Trump’s cruelty and the Democrats’ cowardice. Left unchallenged, it corrodes everyday life until cruelty appears normal and democracy becomes little more than a corpse draped in patriotic slogans of hate, disappearance, and lawlessness. The Democratic Party cannot halt this descent. It is too compromised by its allegiance to corporate power, too wedded to the financiers of misery, and too invested in the politics of fear to offer anything resembling resistance.

The time for illusions is over. The Democratic Party cannot be reformed, nor can it be trusted to halt the march of authoritarianism. What is required is not the rehabilitation of a party of cowardice, but the creation of a new political formation, one that does not tremble before fascism but confronts it head-on. A movement that refuses to confuse capitalism with democracy, that rejects the barbarism of endless war and the plunder of Wall Street, that refuses to sacrifice children in Gaza or in America’s streets on the altar of profit and power.

Such a movement must be rooted in the struggles of ordinary people, grounded in solidarity and sustained by collective courage.

The future belongs to those who can imagine and fight for a radically different order: a socialist democracy grounded in solidarity, justice, and care. It belongs to those who demand free health care and education, who insist on housing and dignity for all, who struggle for racial, gender, and economic equality, and who reject the culture of disposability that treats lives as expendable. It belongs to those willing to rise up, organize, and fight for a world where freedom, justice, and equality are not a privilege of the few, but the common inheritance of all.

If fascism grows in the soil of despair, then resistance must grow in the soil of hope. Against a politics of fear, we must summon a politics of courage. Against the machinery of death, we must build a mass working-class movement with the power to imagine and fight for a future in which socialist democracy is not an empty slogan but a hard-won reality, hammered out in struggle, sustained by solidarity, and carried forward by those who refuse to be ruled by fear. Democracy will not be saved by the cowards of compromise or the apostles of war, but by those in the struggles of workers and the oppressed who risk everything for justice, equality, and hope.

(Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include: The Terror of the Unforeseen (Los Angeles Review of books, 2019), On Critical Pedagogy, 2nd edition (Bloomsbury, 2020); Race, Politics, and Pandemic Pedagogy: Education in a Time of Crisis (Bloomsbury 2021); Pedagogy of Resistance: Against Manufactured Ignorance (Bloomsbury 2022) and Insurrections: Education in the Age of Counter-Revolutionary Politics (Bloomsbury, 2023), and coauthored with Anthony DiMaggio, Fascism on Trial: Education and the Possibility of Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2025). Giroux is also a member of Truthout’s board of directors.)

WESTERNERS HAVE A MORAL RESPONSIBILITY To Help Curb The Empire’s Abuses

by Caitlin Johnstone

In a sense all I’m ever really pointing at here is the importance of taking responsibility. Taking responsibility as westerners for the suffering and destruction inflicted upon the world by the western power structure that we live under.

To be a westerner is to live in a civilization that is powered by the abuse and exploitation of the people of the global south. Every one of us benefits directly from the way resources and labor are exploitatively extracted from nations that are held in subjugation to the western empire at the barrel of a gun. The very electronic device you are reading these words on is a testament to this reality.

We each have a moral obligation to end this abusive dynamic. We have a responsibility to oppose the mass murder, tyranny, theft and abuse which is being imposed upon the rest of the world by the nations in which we live.

This is one of the reasons why I have no patience for rightists who whine about immigrants. It is not legitimate to live in a civilization which bombs, destabilizes, exploits and extracts from the global south and then complain when the victims of the bombing, destabilization, exploitation and extraction move to your country to get away from the misery your society caused them.

Whenever I say this I get rightists telling me “It’s not OUR fault there are immigrants! It’s our leaders! They’re the ones doing this, not us!”

And to them I can only say, nah. You’re just shirking your responsibility. You’re being immature and irresponsible. You need to grow up and take responsibility for your part of the bargain here. You need to stop blaming your problems on the desperate victims of your country’s abuses, and start doing what you can to end those abuses.

Don’t whine to me about how powerless you are. You know who’s a lot less powerful than you? The immigrants you’re bitching about. The exploited, abused nations they’ve been driven from. You’ve got a hell of a lot more power to effect meaningful change than they do. They’re being blown about by the winds of circumstances which you directly benefit from. Quit your bellyaching and get to work.

Ferociously oppose genocide. Ferociously oppose war. Ferociously oppose militarism. Ferociously oppose imperialism. Stand in solidarity with the ordinary workers around the world who are being exploited by the empire under which we live. Do everything you can to wake your fellow westerners up to the reality of the empire’s abuses and help create a grassroots movement to tear it down. That’s your responsibility.

This is why I’m always dismissive of people who say “Why are you always criticizing the west? Why aren’t you talking about that evil regime over there in Asia or Africa?” Those aren’t my responsibility. I am a westerner. I live under the US-centralized western empire whose abuses dwarf those of any non-western power structure by orders of magnitude. I focus on the power structure under which I live, which also happens to be the most murderous and tyrannical power structure on earth, because that is my responsibility.

Obviously our rulers are far more culpable in the abuses of the western empire than the ordinary individuals who live here, but we in turn are far more culpable in those abuses than the non-westerners whose labor and resources are being extracted so we can have cheap stuff whenever we want it. I’m not saying this exploitation makes all westerners inherently evil, I’m just saying we have a responsibility to do whatever we can to help end an abusive situation.

We need to stop trying to offload the blame for our circumstances onto others and set to work opening eyes and fomenting a revolutionary zeitgeist. Our leaders aren’t going to cease their abuses of their own volition, so we’re going to have to find a way to force them to.

That is our duty. That is our responsibility. We will never create a healthy world and become a truly conscious species on this planet until we have gotten real about this.

(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)

ANIMALS

by Frank O’Hara (1950)

Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

it's no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn't need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

I wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days

“ALL MEN FEAR DEATH. It’s a natural fear that consumes us all. We fear death because we feel that we haven’t loved well enough or loved at all, which ultimately are one and the same. However, when you make love with a truly great woman, one that deserves the utmost respect in this world and one that makes you feel truly powerful, that fear of death completely disappears. Because when you are sharing your body and heart with a great woman the world fades away. You two are the only ones in the entire universe. You conquer what most lesser men have never conquered before, you have conquered a great woman’s heart, the most vulnerable thing she can offer to another. Death no longer lingers in the mind. Fear no longer clouds your heart. Only passion for living, and for loving, become your sole reality. This is no easy task for it takes insurmountable courage. But remember this, for that moment when you are making love with a woman of true greatness you will feel immortal.

I believe that love that is true and real creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving or not loving well, which is the same thing. And when the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face like some rhino hunters I know or Belmonte, who is truly brave, it is because they love with sufficient passion to push death out of their minds. Until it returns, as it does to all men. And then you must make really good love again. Think about it.”

— Woody Allen

“I KNOW ENOUGH to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother.”

— Martha Gellhorn

THE SUMMER DAY

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

*Seated woman, Green Interior* (1961) by Richard Diebenkorn

17 Comments

Jacob September 9, 2025

Re Gurney’s nonsense. I won’t bother responding to most of his nonsense but he keeps repeating patently false information despite people correcting him. There were never 32 alleged no votes against soccer courts from the community outreach meetings about what people wanted in Bainbridge Park. He is just claiming this because the color of the some of the stickers used by people to identify what they wanted to see go in are red. The colors of the various stickers had no meaning, people were simply given a set number of stickers to place on the idea boards for the items they supported. There were not any “no” votes at all! I know because I was at those meetings and participated. Where was he?

- David Gurney September 9, 2025
  
  Woah! Mr. Jacob accuses me (2x) of “nonesense.”
  He might have “been there,” but maybe he wasn’t paying attention
  to where he stuck his stickers.
  He writes “There were never 32 alleged no votes against soccer courts”
  But it says right there, in black and white, on Page 8 in the “Bainbridge Park Community Workshop Preference Results,” in the chart of recorded (not “alleged”) votes. (lol)
  Look near the bottom, in the “Least Favorable” column of peoples preferences, under “Allow Soccer or Tennis Courts”
  Sorry pal, it reads 0-32 in the nay. See:
  https://www.city.fortbragg.com/home/showpublisheddocument/4522/638248523062130000
  
  By the way, Mr. Legal Scholar, was this an official public meeting covered under the ‘Brown Act’ (the “Sunshine Act”)? Or are sticker workshops exempt?
  . . .
  
  - Jacob September 9, 2025
    
    Yes, nonsense. The document you cite was for the master plan way back in the day, not the more recent meetings I attended, which are what I was talking about. Moreover, did you even read the chart you cite? The line about the soccer fields is that people didn’t want to allow soccer to be played on the existing tennis courts. And, you are correct, the community meetings are exempt from the Brown Act but they were still publicized. Only meetings of legislative bodies like the City Council or Planning Commission are covered by the Brown Act along with the City Council standing committees.
    
    - David Gurney September 9, 2025
      
      Mr. Jacob,
      Rumor has it that you, who were once the bane of the entire City staff (to the point they developed a protocol for dealing with your numerous visits, bordering on harassment of personnel, and dozens of nonsensical Public Records Act requests) are now on the payroll of the City of Fort Bragg.
      Is this true?
      . . .
      
Chuck Artigues September 9, 2025

If Lauren Mowery wrote anything sweeter we would all be in a diabetic coma. Someone might explain to her that the reason you put your cell phone in your pocket when you get to Elk is because there is no cell service.

- Bob Abeles September 9, 2025
  
  The article reads to me like it’s AI generated, at least in part. For example, this paragraph: “Greenwood State Beach unfolds below the bluff, a crescent of sand often empty but for driftwood piles and the occasional bonfire ring. Some visitors come just to walk the bluff trails, scan the water for whales, or sit on the beach with a thermos and a dog.” While syntactically correct, the “occasional bonfire ring” and the “thermos and a dog” make no sense.
  
  - Bruce Anderson September 9, 2025
    
    These travel pieces pre-date AI by many years. Anderson Valley has been discovered at least a dozen times annually since 1950 when the first article on Boontling appeared, carefully edited to exclude the sexual innuendo and ethnic slurs comprising about a third of the lingo. The best story, at least in terms of pure delusion, was published by the NYT back in the early 80s when the Rollins’ New Boonville Hotel was discovered by agog gastro-maniacs several times a week. The writer described how the food came straight from the hotel’s backyard, fresher than fresh. But if she’d looked closer, or hadn’t been bribed by a free meal, she would have seen a kind of backyard petting zoo, where a bedraggled collection of fowl, a goat, a starving pig, and an ancient sheep posed for the yard-to-table fantasy, all the while Chef Charlene was across the street at AV Market frantically buying pork chops for the visiting gourmets.
    
  - gary smith September 10, 2025
    
    “Where the Forest Ends, Mendocino Begins” Really?
    
C September 9, 2025

Gurney might be on the right path thou, Now is the time for the city to get a two for one a new Chief and a new City Manager, neither positions being held has any competency or leadership! Actually all of the city directors should be terminated. Lets ask some serious questions why didn’t the city get proper permits to complete the water line project, all work is stopped right now, why are all the police complaints, there is a lot of them, not being properly investigated? I heard there is a video of O’Neil beating a handcuffed prisoner and the officer altered the report, Big Dave Eyster crew has viewed it, or that O’Neil ordered a homeless person to be driven to the Santa Rosa Mall and dropped off, is this why Cervenka is retiring on a suspected back injury?
So much for Transparency, Honesty, and Integrity within out city council, yep Lindy you said it best the only people who like you is the Paul Bonyan judges who gave you third place for participation in the parade, but you could change all of that today with a little bit of honesty and commitment to the people you represent!

John Sakowicz September 9, 2025

Three cheers for Jim Shields! A life well-lived!

- Norm Thurston September 9, 2025
  
  +1
  
  - Pam Partee September 9, 2025
    
    +2 We will miss him. Peace be with Jim and his family.
    
    - BRICK IN THE WALL September 9, 2025
      
      +3
      
Marco McClean September 9, 2025

I don’t have a thermos now, or a dog. The last time I had a dog was in the 1970s, when my comic memory puts a thermos in every room. But I know for a fact I’ve never had a thermos on a beach. It just never happened. When I was a little boy they were Southern California beaches.

A couple of months ago Juanita broke a thermos that she had since high school. I tried to find one like it, the same odd size and construction, but they don’t make that model anymore, and they were fragile. The vacuum bottle glass was as thin as paper.

Real glass-inside Dewar flasks figure heavily in the Roald Dahl book My Uncle Oswald. They’re used to keep at liquid nitrogen temperature the stolen sperm of geniuses and celebrities, for Oswald’s money making scheme. His accomplice, innocent/treacherous Yasmin, travels the world and uses blister-beetle-based irresistible perfume (Bitch, from the delightful short story of the same name) to seduce everyone from Einstein to Picasso to Hemingway to Ben Shawn to Rudolf Valentino and return with the goods so he can potentially sell it to rich women desperate to have children by such men. This would never be possible with unbreakable thermoses. They’re inferior where it counts.

There was a trick my Uncle Pat used to keep coffee hot longer in his big all metal thermos, and that was to fill it with boiling water, spill the water out, and only then put the coffee in it. Wasteful, but the coffee didn’t have to heat up the metal, so it stayed hot just a little bit longer.

Steve Heilig September 9, 2025

Nice placement of “now let’s hear from a raving lunatic” cartoon just before Kunstler.

And Woody Allen over Trump’s drawing and note. (Ps – Trump was 57 when he did that. So mature?)

(These nice editorial items don’t always go unnoticed…).

- Chuck Dunbar September 9, 2025
  
  Yes, exactly. The unsung work behind the scenes at the AVA.
  
  - Bob Abeles September 9, 2025
    
    Subtle, but powerful. It’s one of the reasons I always start my day here.

17 Comments

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