WARMER AND DRIER weather will gradually build in Sunday through Tuesday. A troughing pattern could emerge by mid week. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Autumn starts at 11:19am this morning, I have a clear 47F at 5am. Some fog lingers nearby so we'll see what sunrise brings. Other than a small chance of a sprinkle Wednesday Autumn will look a lot like summer this week.
CHARLIE KIRK MEMORIAL, Todd Grove Park, Ukiah, September 21, 2025 (photos by Martin Bradley)
WILLITS RESIDENTS HOLD CANDLELIGHT VIGIL FOR CHARLIE KIRK
A vigil for the assassinated conservative activist was held in Babcock Park last week.
by Elise Cox
This story aired on the Mendocino News Network on September 19, 2025 it was reported by Damian Sebouhian.
About 175 residents gathered Monday night for a candlelight vigil honoring Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA, who was shot and killed last week at Utah Valley University.
The vigil, held at Babcock Park at 7:30 p.m., was titled A Moment for Charlie, A Moment for Peace, A Moment for Unity. It was organized by Rebecca King, a Willits resident, who opened the evening by explaining her motivation.
“God put this on my heart and Charlie would have wanted us to be bold in our faith, so here we are,” King told the crowd. She said she had sought advice from her pastor, who encouraged her to simply quote Kirk.
King shared one of Kirk’s most personal reflections: “The most important thing is my faith in my life.”
Deacon Adam Thrift from Calvary Chapel Willits offered a prayer over the gathering, which maintained a consistently solemn and Christ-centered tone. King spoke about Kirk not primarily as a political figure, but as a man of faith.
“Charlie Kirk is the founder and president of Turning Point USA, a national student movement dedicated to identifying, organizing, and empowering young people to promote the principles of free markets and limited government,” she said, adding that his values were rooted in biblical truth and resonated with young people “seeking clarity, direction, and meaning.”
Several attendees were visibly moved to tears as King described Kirk’s role as a husband and father of two young children, saying he exemplified “what their futures could look like.”
Quoting Kirk, King said: “All death can do to the believer is deliver him to Jesus. We all know he has now heard the words, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’”
King also noted a surge of interest in Kirk’s work since his death, citing spikes in social media followers, podcast rankings, and preorders for his upcoming book, Stop in the Name of God: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Transform Your Life, scheduled for release in December.
“This is revival. This is the Charlie effect,” King said, describing what she saw as a spiritual awakening.
The vigil concluded with participants sharing personal reflections, biblical passages, and words of support for Kirk’s family. As attendees slowly departed into the night, many continued quiet conversations about faith, loss, and hope for the future.
(mendolocal.news)
WESTPORT CONSTRUCTION UPDATE (via Robert Somerton)
SUNSHINE TAYLOR
Sunshine Taylor - beloved mother, wife and friend, artist and dancer - passed away peacefully on September 2, 2025, with her husband, Glenn Rude, and her daughter, Lilli Taylor, by her side. She was laid to rest with a simple, green burial at the Caspar Cemetery.
Sunshine was born in Burbank, California and came of age in North Hollywood. In 1978, she moved to Vermont with her husband at the time, Vince Taylor, where they welcomed their beloved daughter, Lilli. Inspired by the birch forests and pastoral New England scenery, Sunshine began her career as a watercolor artist in Vermont.
In 1989, Sunshine and her family moved to Caspar Gardens on the Mendocino Coast. Sunshine's passion for gardening and nature's beauty is still on display at the gardens she created and nurtured. She spent the rest of her life living in this beautiful oasis.
In 1999, her first marriage ended. At the beginning of 2000, in a Lindy Hop class at Second Story Studios, she met her true love, Glenn Rude. Sunshine and Glenn married in 2004 and began a wonderful life together. They taught various types of swing dance for many years on the Mendocino Coast. Insatiable lovers of movement, they travelled to dance workshops all over the world. Sunshine's creative vision and skill as an artist grew deep and wide over the years, and her repertoire expanded to include acrylics and collage. She was active in the Mendocino arts community and was a founding member of the Edgewater Gallery in Fort Bragg. Her work is currently shown at the Lynne Prentice Gallery in Mendocino. Sunshine and Glenn loved travelling to Europe, especially to Spain, where they spent countless days sightseeing, visiting art galleries, befriending locals, and dancing to their heart’s delight.
Sunshine is survived by her husband, Glenn Rude; her daughter, Lilli Taylor; stepdaughters, Lisa Taylor, Karen Taylor, and Lea Rude; nieces DJ Bivens and Randi Kory; and many other family members and dear friends. She is predeceased by her parents, Raymond and Phyllis Ackles. She was a bright and free spirit who will live on warmly in the memories of all who had the pleasure of knowing her.
TOO SOON OLD, TOO LATE SMART
by Tommy Wayne Kramer
Youth is lousy preparation for old age.
Everything boys learn from ages 5 to 30 is likely to result in scores of accidents, dozens of injuries, multiple trips to the emergency room and death by 40.
Being young teaches us all the wrong habits and attitudes that might otherwise help us survive if we hope to reach adulthood.
Our early years are blessed with youthful grace and effortless agility, a combo that does nothing to prepare for middle age. We mostly learn the wrong things. Being young is terrible training for those who’d like to grow old.
When in our prime (18 to 28) we might see a car speeding toward us and respond with quiet, unthinking reflex reactions. As the auto leaps the curb we do a sprightly two-hand cartwheel across the hood, spin around in mid-air and land lightly on the sidewalk followed by a single pirouette, a small bow, and quiet pride at not having spilled our beer.
Oh to be 25 again! At 65 the same scenario would have terminated at the “car speeding toward us” intro.
Being young, strong and nimble as an Olympic gymnast may have once saved our life, but also repeatedly taught us lessons that poorly serve us in later decades. We were instilled with not-altogether-false images of ourselves as equal parts Tarzan, John Wayne, Mercury and Evil Knievel as we slashed through the days and years of our youth.
We learn by age 15 that we are smart, tough, invincible, bulletproof and immune to consequences. But soon enough we become shadows of what we were.
By 65 we are equal parts Joe Biden, Willie Nelson, Methuselah and Bozo the Clown. We are soft, brittle, forgetful and vulnerable to everything from pianos falling out seventh story windows to cell tower gamma rays zapping through our tinfoil helmets and burning up memory banks in the cerebral cortex.
See the problem? See the big yellow sign up ahead that says “DANGER ROUGH TERRAIN”?
You certainly didn’t see it half a century ago, which led to overconfidence. That’s why you’re in a hospital today with tubes up your nose.
You walked off a curb this afternoon, stepped on a pebble the size of a raisin, twisted your ankle and fell on your shoulder because your reflexes and agility have failed. You’d gotten older but not smarter, a promise your parents warned you about, repeatedly, 50 years ago.
Maybe at age 10 you can ride your bicycle (“Look ma! No Hands!”) down a steep hill, heave a spiraling football off toward an imaginary end zone, then pedal furiously to catch the ball on the five yard line and cruise in for the touchdown while blowing a bubblegum bubble. Wow!
But that’s a misleading experience to rely on when you get your first motorcycle at age 50.
Playing tackle football with no equipment against teenagers who weigh 140 pounds is an exciting afternoon when you’re 17. But if the message is “Now that I’m 45 I think I’ll join a rugby team,” you’re probably suffering from a concussion 30 years ago.
Do you entertain lingering memories tinged with euphoria at having outrun cops in your ‘59 Chevy when you were 20? It’s best to get those memories expunged, with a lobotomy if necessary, because I guarantee you’ll never outrun a cop again, not even on your motorcycle. Certainly not in your wheelchair.
Having your daughter get involved in ballet is bound to have her overestimate her ability to avoid mud puddles, or hop an electric fence. On the other hand, a ballet background might some day help get her through a DUI field sobriety test.
Youngsters assume stairways are exercise equipment: Zip down three or four steps, then leap over the next eight stairs to the landing. Turn right, repeat.
But now we descend stairs as if they’re cunning traps; we suspect piano wire strung across the top step and we clutch the bannister hard and tight, leaving eighth-inch deep fingerprints in it all the way down.
We do this because we are old and have acquired much wisdom. When we were kids, momentarily losing our balance was easily corrected by slouching one way or the other, or twisting in a half circle to right the ship.
Losing our balance today means falling down backward on a flight of stairs so long and steep we’ll be dead before we hit the landing. So we grimace and dig our fingers back into the bannister.
Final word: How happy were you at age 50 that you learned to smoke cigarettes when you were 15?
Tom Hine and TWK agree that Sunday’s Daily Journal won’t be the same without Jim Shields. Jim’s gone, his column is gone, and filling the empty space on top of Page 5 will be no easy job. He was smart, tough, and most always right. I’ll miss my page mate.
BILL KIMBERLIN:
We had a lot of old cars when I was growing up at my Aunt and Uncle’s “Ray’s Resort”. Sixty acres to play around on. Every year a new crop of local girls who worked as waitresses for our guests, serving them three wonderful farm to table meals. Nearly a mile of river front and all the ice cream and soda pop you could handle.
They say you can’t go back, you can’t go home again. Yet, in Gatsby Fitzgerald gives us this famous closing line, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning… So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
I put a green light beside the door to my studio in Boonnville, that I can see from out a window in my house there. It tells me you can go home again.
JEFF BURROUGHS:
Me and my Dad, John Burroughs, about 1975, with the airplane we rented in Ukiah to fly over to Colusa where we would meet with Jim Zanocco of River Guide Service. My dad received his pilots license through the Anderson Valley High School flight program.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, September 21, 2025
CHAD BARTON, 39, Squaw Valley/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
JAMES CUNNINGHAM, 45, Willits. Possession of obscene matter of minor in sexual act.
ALDEN LARVIE, 39, Ukiah. Disobeying court order.
AGUSTIN MARTINEZ, 33, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
PEDRO MARTINEZ-MATEO, 28, Ukiah. DUI, no license.
JULIO NAJERA-LEON, 33, Elk. Domestic violence court order violation, parole violation, probation violation.
THOMAS THORSON, 40, Nice/Ukiah. Camping in Ukiah, probation revocation, resisting.
ROBERT VALADEZ, 37, Ukiah. Domestic violence court order violation.
AGUSTIN VILLASENOR, 53, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, contempt of court, unspecified offense.
JORGE ZAMARA-CUEVAS, 31, San Jose/Ukiah. Suspended license for reckless driving, failure to appear.
ART OR VANDALISM? NORTHERN CALIFORNIA CITY’S ‘DISTURBING’ GRAFFITI INVESTIGATED AS FELONY
by Brooke Park
Graffiti of human silhouettes hanging from frayed ropes with tilted necks has been reported on several buildings across Eureka, police said.
Eureka Police Chief Brian Stephens called the images, reported Friday morning, “disturbing” and said officers are investigating the tags as felony vandalism. The painted bodies each held a flower and appeared to be dressed in suits in at least four locations across the city, according to photos in the Eureka Police Department’s social media statement, which generated debate over whether the figures constitute art or vandalism.
“One person’s felony vandalism is another person’s expressionist art,” one commenter said on the police’s social media statement, drawing more 1,000 likes.
Police said the graffiti does not appear to target any specific group or race, but that the depiction of violence is not acceptable.
At one location outside a massage shop, “The Death of Greed” was scrawled next to a body hanging between two flowers sprouting from the ground, according to a photo posted by police.
Another wall featured six suspended forms and two bodies falling from snapped ropes. “This was never their land to extract from,” was tagged underneath.
Several comments interpreted the line as a reference to the area’s Indigenous tribes. The Wiyot people were the native inhabitants of Eureka before western migration led to conflict and disease that devastated the native population.
“The truth hurts and is messy,” one commenter said. “Just like killing all the natives here on this land was.”
Other commenters saw the tags as a protest against violence.
“I don’t agree with the idea of tagging other people’s property,” another commenter said. “But the message is clear, people are fed up with societal injustices and protesting peacefully via artwork.”
(SF Chronicle)
HAPPY AUTUMN EQUINOX
Warmest spiritual greetings,
Spent the afternoon at the Washington, D.C. Peace Vigil across the street from the White House in Lafayette Park. Whereas The Donald had the dome like structure protecting literature, signs, folding chairs, etcetera removed, vigilers showed up anyway. We don’t need no stinkin’ permits!!!
Otherwise, I am staying on here in America’s national capital. In a record three days, I have secured a Washington, D.C. driver’s license, the Social Security supplemental benefits are being restarted, and I am approved for a D.C. EBT card.
What would you do in this world if you knew that you could not fail? Talk to me.
Craig Louis Stehr, [email protected]
THE CHILL OF AN EARLY FALL
lyrics by Gretchen Peters, Green Daniel (1991)
Well her old friend, from her own end of town dropped by today,
And way down deep inside me something died
When he came 'round to see her that way.
Here it comes again, that same old chilly wind
Will blow like a cold winter squall.
And I'll begin to feel the chill of an early fall.
And I'll be drinking again and thinking whenever he calls,
There's a storm coming on, it won't be too long till the snow falls.
Oh I'll be sobersome,
But when October comes and goes and no time at all
I'll begin to feel the chill of an early fall.
Oh how quick they slip away, here today and gone tomorrow.
Love and seasons never stay, bitter winds are sure to follow.
Now there's no doubt, it's gonna be cold out tonight;
I've shivered all day, and when I look in her eyes
Needing to hold her so tight, she just looks away.
Oh she'll swear that it's true, he's just someone she knew
Long ago, and I'll know that's not all,
And I'll begin to feel the chill of an early fall.
Oh I'll begin to feel the chill of an early fall.
ADVOCATES SAY SIGNING OF CALIFORNIA TRAILER BILLS IS ‘DEVASTATING BLOW’ TO CLIMATE AND PUBLIC HEALTH
by Dan Bacher
On September 19, Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 237, a bill that paves the way for expanded oil drilling in Kern County, as part of a climate package at a carefully staged press conference at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.
The Legislature passed the controversial “gut and amend” bill on the previous Saturday, September 13, despite fierce opposition from a broad coalition of climate, environmental, public health, community and public interest groups.
Climate justice advocates condemned the passage of the bill as a “devastating blow to California’s climate and public health,” while Newsom described the bill package as “sweeping bipartisan reforms to California's world-leading climate policy that promise to save Californians billions of dollars on energy costs.”…
PROP. 50: ‘A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF FAILING UP’
Editor:
Have the supporters of Proposition 50 thought about what it means for California?
To cut off your nose to spite your face means to harm yourself to punish or hurt another, even if the act causes more damage to the person performing the action. For the slight chance of affecting national politics, Proposition 50 would condemn Californians to more of the same for many years to come.
California has ranked No. 1 in homelessness, unemployment, gas prices, income tax, illiteracy, retail crime, budget deficits and poverty. It has ranked in the top two as far as housing and utilities cost s. Democrats already hold a supermajority in California, and a Republican has not won a statewide election since 2006. Does making a statement for Gavin Newsom’s 2028 presidential campaign mean more than giving California a chance to change for the better?
Proposition 50 is a perfect example of “failing up.” Don’t give politicians the wrong message that we’re happy with the status quo here in California. Passing Proposition 50 means California will continue to be No. 1 in residents and businesses leaving their state. Please vote no on Proposition 50.
Dan Pizza
Healdsburg
I THINK ALL OF US are looking for that which does not admit of bullshit… If you tell me you can bench press 450, hell, we’ll load up the bar and put you under it. Either you can do it or you can’t do it — you can’t bullshit. Ultimately, sports are just about as close to what one would call the truth as it is possible to get in this world.
— Harry Crews
GIANTS AVOID L.A. SWEEP AS TREVOR MCDONALD TAMES DODGERS IN 1ST START OF HIS CAREER
by Shayna Rubin
Injuries and trades have forced the San Francisco Giants to dig deep into their trove of young pitchers this year. The bullpen has completely transformed and the back end of the rotation has seen a carousel of arms pass through.
The entire season Trevor McDonald has been on the 40-man roster, waiting to help out. In the last road game of the season, the Giants — looking to salvage a dismal trip and avoid a sweep by their rivals — turned to McDonald. He delivered the type of start against the Los Angeles Dodgers that might make one wonder why it took so long.
Coming out strong with his curveball, McDonald went toe-to-toe with Emmet Sheehan, pitching into the seventh inning in the Giants’ 3-1 win on Sunday afternoon. The stop job ensured the Giants would avoid being swept in four games at Dodger Stadium.
“He’s my favorite pitcher to play defense behind,” said Giants rookie Bryce Eldridge, who played first base on Sunday. “Works quick, throws strikes. Makes our job a lot easier. So I’m very happy for him. That was awesome going against that lineup. That was badass.”
The outing also likely earned McDonald another start in the season’s final week and landed him squarely on the map for 2026.
“Yeah, definitely,” manager Bob Melvin said. “I think anybody at this point in time — you look at the numbers in Triple-A, it’s hard to evaluate Triple-A — and the guy comes up here and makes a start like that. And you can see why people in development are saying great things about him.”
The pitching dilemma is partly to blame for the Giants’ streakiness this year. The bullpen will need to be reconstructed in the offseason and the rotation has gaps. Logan Webb and Robbie Ray presumably will anchor the top end with the sidelined Landen Roupp earning a spot, too. But the fourth and fifth spots are open. McDonald is a top-20 Giants prospect, per MLB Pipeline, but hasn’t been at the front of the line.
The 24-year-old leads the Pacific Coast League with 142⅓ innings pitched this year with the Sacramento River Cats, and though his 5.31 ERA is unimpressive on its face, it is the third best among those who have thrown at least 115 innings in the hitter-friendly league.
McDonald was recalled earlier on this road trip as a fresh arm to aid a taxed bullpen and impressed in his third career appearance and first start. Presuming that the Dodgers would anticipate a heavy sinker, slider mix — the combination he has leaned on in the minors of late — McDonald went heavy with the curveball early against some of baseball’s best hitters and induced seven swings-and-misses on the pitch while striking out three.
Signs of promise showed when he struck out Shohei Ohtani swinging at a sinker out of the zone, getting ahead 0-2 with a pair of curveballs.
“It took a big amount of pressure right off the rip,” McDonald said. “It settled me down, got me in a rhythm. Felt like myself.”
Keeping his pitch count low, McDonald took the mound in the seventh inning but ran into trouble. Max Muncy walked to lead off and Andy Pages singled, leading to Michael Conforto’s RBI single — the game’s first run.
McDonald exited for Spencer Bivens, who got the first out on a sacrifice. Eldridge, making his debut at first base, then made a diving grab on Tommy Edman’s liner, then hurled the ball across the diamond to Matt Chapman to double Pages off third.
Eldridge, still developing as a first baseman, said he benefited from having Pitchcom in his ear for that play; Edman had hooked a few foul balls his direction, so he was ready when the ball came his way. Though he might’ve been hasty trying to get the ball to Chapman when he saw Pages straying too far off the bag. Chapman stretched to make the catch.
“Of course, that was the one part of the play I almost messed up,” Eldridge said. “Thankfully we got a Gold Glover over there at the corner. I told him I’d get him back for that a few times.”
The Giants needed every bit of McDonald’s outing as they couldn’t get going against Sheehan, who struck out 10 and gave up one hit — a Rafael Devers single in the first inning — over seven innings.
Christian Koss got the Giants’ comeback against the Dodgers bullpen going with his legs, reaching on an infield single against Blake Treinen to start the eighth inning. Drew Gilbert kept the line moving with a hit and pinch-hitter Patrick Bailey tied the game with a ground-rule double into the right field corner. Willy Adames drew a bases-loaded walk to give the Giants a 2-1 lead and Chapman’s groundball scored another run.
(SF Chronicle)
NICK BOSA’S KNEE INJURY TEMPERS 49ERS’ EXCITEMENT AFTER DRAMATIC WIN
by Ann Killion
After his team survived yet another gutcheck, Kyle Shanahan tapped into his inner thesaurus.
“I told them how proud I was,” the San Francisco 49ers head coach said. “I used some big words. Fortitude, resilience, character.”
The 49ers gutted out an ugly win in Sunday’s home opener, outlasting Arizona 16-15. They’re now 3-0 and have sole possession of first place in the NFC West, with wins over two division opponents.
Yet there was a pall over the team after the victory. Because the 49ers are in another war of attrition when it comes to injured players. Already down several stars, the 49ers lost one of their most important players in the first half, when Nick Bosa went out with a knee injury of unknown severity.
Shanahan said after the game that the 49ers “can’t rule anything out.” He said the training staff did a sideline ACL test that Bosa passed, but added there was still concern about an ACL injury “because of how he feels … we are concerned and we’ll keep our fingers crossed for the MRI.”
The mood, despite the win, was glum enough to lead one to believe that Bosa’s injury may be serious. In Week 2 of the 2020 season, he suffered a torn ACL ending his second season in the league.
Fred Warner started his postgame comments by sending prayers to the players who were injured, including Bosa and Arizona running back James Conner who suffered what appeared to be a serious ankle injury.
“We’ll see what the news is,” Warner said. “Obviously Nick’s one of our best players, so it would be a huge loss.
“Unfortunately, we know too well about guys going down and next man up mentality, right?”
They do. The team is already missing Brock Purdy and George Kittle, Jauan Jennings and Brandon Aiyuk on offense. If the defense loses its premiere pass-rusher, well, we’ll let Trent Williams describe the feeling.
“Anytime you lose a guy like Nick, it’s a real buzzkill,” said Williams, who admitted that on the team’s winning drive Bosa’s injury was on his mind. “It’s cliche to say ‘next man up.’ But If you lose a guy like that you need three or four guys coming through.”
The game was a strange one from start to finish. The 49ers have tried to avoid September Sunday afternoon games because of the blistering heat that makes fans in the upper deck run for shade. This was a 1:25 kickoff on a hot day: the Cardinals trotted out sunscreens to shade their benches. No such luck for the paying customers, and swaths of the upper deck remained empty for the entire game.
For a team coming into its opener with a 2-0 record, the 49ers offense seemed oddly flat, going three-and-out on its first two possessions. The defense bent and bent, letting the Cardinals chew up clock and yardage, but didn’t break.
“It wasn’t going exactly how we would like with time of possession and stuff like that,” Shanahan said. “We had our seventh play on offense like seven minutes into the second quarter. They made it real tough.”
Both teams knew that the Rams had already lost and whoever prevailed would have the lead in the NFC West. Arizona has been a thorn in Shanahan’s side for much of his tenure: he had a 7-9 record against the Cardinals coming into the game.
In the second half, the 49ers finally put a touchdown drive together, but the Cardinals quickly answered. And when a holding penalty resulted in a safety, giving Arizona the lead, it seemed the 49ers might take a loss. But the 49ers got their weekly defensive play from Upton Stout, who broke up a pass play, the 49ers got the ball back and backup quarterback Mac Jones drove the team into position for the game-winning field goal.
“Frustrated,” said Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray. “Felt like we let that one slip.”
The Cardinals host Seattle on Thursday, meaning the loser will be the first NFC West team with two losses.
“As hard as it is to feel like we let one slip against the banged-up 49ers, we play on Thursday so we have to put this behind us,” Murray said.
The 49ers are off to a 3-0 start, the same as they were in 2023.
“Anytime you open up 3-0 with two division wins, that’s a big deal,” said Christian McCaffrey. “We’re definitely not satisfied with how we’re playing but still find ways to grind out some wins.”
The 49ers started last season 1-2. They are a different team this season, winning the close, ugly games that they couldn’t pull out in 2024.
“Those are some of the games that I think we struggled with last year,” Shanahan said. “And to have three like that, all three, I can’t say enough about the guys.”
But, in one of the worst ways, the 49ers are similar to the team they were a year ago. They are losing star players at an alarming rate.
And while they went home Sunday night basking in the victory, their happiness was tempered. Because once again the 49ers Victory Monday will include waiting for the dreaded MRI results.
(SF Chronicle)
MLB QUIETLY OMITS LGBTQ+ REFERENCES FROM LIAM HENDRIKS’ CLEMENTE AWARD BIO
by Scott Ostler
Subtlety has become a lost art, and that’s sad.
Right, Jimmy Kimmel? Jimmy?
Had Kimmel been fired in the old days, his network would have issued a quiet statement. “After careful consideration … mutual parting of ways … philosophical differences … wish him nothing but the best in future endeavors …”
The new way: The FCC chairman says he explained to Kimmel’s network, ABC, “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way.”
No nuance. No finesse.
That’s why you have to appreciate Rob Manfred and MLB.
MLB gives an annual Roberto Clemente Award to the player who “best exemplifies the game of baseball.” Sportsmanship, community involvement, charity work. Each team nominates one player.
Liam Hendriks is the 2025 Red Sox nominee. This is Hendriks’ seventh nomination. Decent chap, the Aussie relief pitcher.
MLB always announces the nominees on its website, with a blurb on each guy. Hendriks and his wife Kristi do a ton of fundraising and personal work for veterans’ groups and cancer patients. Liam is a cancer survivor.
The Hendrikses are also big on supporting LGBTQ+ causes.
Last year’s blurb on Hendriks included this: “He is a staunch ally of the LGBTQ+ community …”
Hendriks’ Clemente bios for ’23, ’22 and ’21 all mention his work with LGBTQ+. (There were no bios in 2017 and ’19, when Hendriks was the A’s nominee.)
This year there are extra-long bios, but zero mention of Hendriks’ work in and for the LGBTQ+ community. Even though that work is so important to Hendriks that when he was a free agent in 2022, he let teams know he would not consider them if they didn’t have a Pride celebration.
“Because I don’t want to go necessarily to a team that doesn’t do” Pride Night, Hendriks said back then. “It’s something that I’ve believed in.”
President Donald Trump seems less enthusiastic in that sphere. His administration has canceled scientific grants and funding for HIV/AIDS organizations. His Secretary of Defense stripped Harvey Milk’s name off a U.S. Navy ship. The Kennedy Center in D.C., under self-appointed chairman Trump, canceled a week’s worth of events celebrating LGBTQ+.
And so on.
Also, as you may have heard, DEI is DOA. When a Pentagon data base was scrubbed for DEI related mentions, a photo of the Enola Gay, the bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb, was targeted for removal simply because of the word “gay.”
How does this relate to baseball?
There is evidence that baseball Commissioner Manfred, uh, listens to suggestions from Trump. Earlier this year Manfred lifted Pete Rose’s lifetime ban for gambling, shortly after having a chat with Trump, a big Rose booster.
For Jackie Robinson Day last April, the official MLB news release omitted the part from previous years about MLB spearheading initiatives that “meaningfully address diversity and inclusion at all levels of our sport.”
And now Hendriks’ awards bio has sprung a leak.
See? Quiet. Subtle.
Who knows, maybe Hendriks lost interest in LGBTQ+ stuff and took up stamp collecting.
(sfchronicle.com)
EARLY SUNDAY MORNING
by Edward Hirsch (2009)
I used to mock my father and his chums
for getting up early on Sunday morning
and drinking coffee at a local spot
but now I’m one of those chumps.
No one cares about my old humiliations
but they go on dragging through my sleep
like a string of empty tin cans rattling
behind an abandoned car.
It’s like this: just when you think
you have forgotten that red-haired girl
who left you stranded in a parking lot
forty years ago, you wake up
early enough to see her disappearing
around the corner of your dream
on someone else’s motorcycle
roaring onto the highway at sunrise.
And so now I’m sitting in a dimly lit
café full of early morning risers
where the windows are covered with soot
and the coffee is warm and bitter.
THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE’S FIRST DRAFT: 1922 DESIGN WAS AN INDUSTRIAL MESS
by Peter Hartlaub
We just passed the 84th birthday of the Golden Gate Bridge, and with it came another excuse to appreciate the span’s enduring Art Deco design and timeless engineering.
But with every celebration, the city should also breathe a collective sigh of relief. Because the original bridge design, all but lost in time now, was about as classic as your seventh-grade orthodontia from the 1980s. It combined cantilever and suspension elements, which is like combining demolition derby and ballet. No one would want to put this bridge in a snow globe.
The subject came up upon discovering century-old Golden Gate Bridge concept drawings in The Chronicle archive, which led to a deeper dive into the newspaper’s early coverage of the bridge. While there had been talk of a bridge joining San Francisco and Marin County for decades — with questions about whether it was even possible to bridge the mile-wide gap with such a strong current — a 1922 front page article was the first time the public viewed a sketch of the potential design.
The single image published Dec. 8, 1922, resembles the industrial Carquinez Bridge, except at 20 times the scale. It’s the kind of bridge one designs when all they have to work with is Popsicle sticks and string.
“The Golden Gate can be bridged,” The Chronicle article began. “A feasible plan just submitted, if it obtains the sanction and approval of the War Department, will open a new era for San Francisco.”
Other San Francisco newspapers quickly called the bridge design ugly. One competitor described it as an upside-down rat trap. But The San Francisco Chronicle was strongly in favor of the Golden Gate Bridge, later lobbying heavily for the bonds to fund the structure. Like everything else involving the bridge in the 1920s and 1930s, the first Chronicle article was embarrassingly effusive.
“No structure raised by man, in the opinion of those who studied the design, would be more spectacular than the proposed bridge,” The Chronicle article continued. “The greatest span lengths in the world would be supported by two towers exceeding the height of the Eiffel tower. The view from the tops of these towers, to which visitors would be conveyed by a system of elevators, would be one of the wonders of the world.”
Indeed, additional architectural renderings, which didn’t run in the newspaper but were filed and remain in The Chronicle archives, show bulbous rooms at the tops of the towers that look spacious enough for large observation decks (or very small casinos).
In early interviews, Golden Gate Bridge engineer Joseph Strauss didn’t pretend that the 1922 bridge design was about looks. He said cantilever alone would be too heavy, and suspension alone would “lack rigidity and be too expensive.” The hybrid design remained throughout the 1920s, and was even adopted into the logo of the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District in 1928.
The first image of a leaner, all-suspension design finally appeared in The Chronicle on Jan. 12, 1930, although it confusingly wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the news article. The handout drawing, also found in The Chronicle archive, is a sleeker and less angular version of the current bridge.
Confirmation of a suspension bridge appeared on March 10, 1930, in the middle of a Page 5 story. Explaining the change in plans, Strauss simply stated in the seventh paragraph that, “the cable suspension type has been adopted because of the faster construction and lower cost.”
With a major bond measure that would provide $35 million to fund the Golden Gate Bridge set for November 1930, Chronicle writers quickly defaulted back to high praise, gathering a group of artists to rave over the new design, and telling readers the bridge would change the city’s future.
“Every school geography in the world would feature the bridge as one of the world’s wonders and the greatest of man’s engineering achievement,” The Chronicle reported, “giving advertising to the Golden Gate and to San Francisco which the boosters deem priceless.”
This time, they were right.
LOIS LASSITER:
I wish everyone would calm down. Kimmel was FIRED, not censored. He is free to say whatever he wants on whatever platform he chooses to use…He was not kicked off TV….if another network or NetFlix, etc wants to pick him up, they can.
Unlike Trump, who WAS kicked off a major platform and then gag ordered about trial proceedings, or Alex Berenson who was, at the direction of the White House, deplatformed from Twitter. These were not firings.
You boss has every right to tell you to shut the fuck up when you are jeopardizing the business. Quite frankly, ABC was likely ELATED when he kept his nonsense going…..his show was tanking and now they had a solid insubordination to fire him with.
The FCC did NOTHING. The dude made some comments that were vague threats, but took no action….UNLIKE the Biden White House which sent specific instructions to FaceBook, Twitter and God knows who else about who to censor and how.
There is NO comparison.
Trump is not suggesting censorship. Pam Bondi is a HORRIBLE public speaker and no one should ever base anything on her spoken word. She may be good at her job, but they need to let someone else speak.
I’m pretty right wing. I don’t want censorship…but I do want consequences. It’s the lack of consequences for ANYONE saying nasty shit on the left that got us here. They can still talk all they want. They can still say the most vile things…..but, and this is coming as an employer….if one of my employees is standing outside my business with a megaphone, pissing off half my clientele, you better be sure I will fire them.
The First Amendment does NOT protect anyone from the consequences of free speech, it simply says, say whatever you want, we won’t stop you.
Kimmel is NOT funny now…not sure if he every was, but he isn’t right now. He was hired to be funny. He did not fulfill that obligation. Case Closed. It’s not censorship…it’s stupidity and arrogance.
And he will be just fine…..he made more money in a month that I will likely make in 10 years and I’m a veterinarian…I have little sympathy for him and no one else should either.
No one should EVER shut the other side up…….if we silence them, how do we know what they are planning?
”SO MANY THINGS were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were ‘Bleak House,’ ‘Treasure Island,’ ‘Ethan Frome’ and ‘The Last of the Mohicans.’ Did it then seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall?”
— Joseph Heller, ‘Catch-22’
“SO THERE I WAS in the air again, drinking a double vodka-7. I was in with the salesmen and businessmen. I had my small suitcase with extra shirts, underwear, stockings, 3 or 4 books of poems, plus typescripts of ten or twelve new poems. And a toothbrush and toothpaste. It was ridiculous to be going off somewhere to get paid for reading poetry. I didn’t like it and I could never get over how silly it seemed. To work like a mule until you were fifty at meaningless, low jobs, and then suddenly to be flitting about the country, a gadfly with drink in hand.”
— Charles Bukowski, Women
“ONE FINE DAY you decide to talk less and less about the things you care most about, and when you have to say something, it costs you an effort… You’re good and sick of hearing yourself talk… you abridge… You give up… For thirty years you’ve been talking… You don’t care about being right anymore. You even lose your desire to keep hold of the small place you’d reserved yourself among the pleasures of life…You’re fed up… From that time on you’re content to eat a little something, cadge a little warmth, and sleep as much as possible on the road to nowhere. To rekindle your interest, you’d have to think up some new grimaces to put on in the presence of others… But you no longer have the strength to renew your repertory. You stammer. Sure, you still look for excuses for hanging around with the boys, but death is there too, stinking, right beside you, it’s there the whole time, less mysterious than a game of poker. The only thing you continue to value is petty regrets, like not finding time to run out to Bois-Colombes to see your uncle while he was still alive, the one whose little song died forever one afternoon in February. That horrible little regret is all we have left of life, we’ve vomited up the rest along the way, with a good deal of effort and misery. We’re nothing now but an old lamppost with memories on a street where hardly anyone passes anymore.”
— Celine
FORE/MOTHER
by Sarah Howe
Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true;
Real becomes not-real when the unreal’s real.
Dream of the Red Chamber, Cao Xueqin
What I know begins
outside/within
the limits of Shanghai.
A girl is born, youngest of many.
One day –
if it helps say the bowls are empty –
the girl is
sold to strangers.
If it helps say it sounds like a fairy tale.
Did you see the look in her mother’s eyes?
This is what happened/happens
then/now
where money buys
desire/silence.
If it helps say her mother was dead.
What she went on to live, what she became
you
can
imagine.
*
Imagine,
can
you,
what she went on to live? What she became –
if it helps, say. Her mother was dead
desire/silence.
Where money buys
then/now
this is. What happened/happens?
Did you see? The look in her mother’s eyes –
if it helps say it sounds like a fairy tale –
sold to strangers.
The girl is,
if it helps. Say the bowls are empty.
One day
a girl is born, youngest of many.
The limits of Shanghai
within/outside
what I know begins.
1939 REVISITED
by Fred Gardner
A few months ago, in honor of the editor's birthhday, I scanned in the cover of my paperback "Time Capsule 1939" to contribute as a graphic. The Capsule contained highlights of the year as reported in Time Magazine, whose influential publisher, Henry Luce, was no fan of FDR. Thinking I'd give it a glance before putting it back on the shelf, I opened the Capsule and read its succinct answer to a question about World War Two that has puzzled me ever since I got woke many wars ago.
Why, after blitzkrieg conquests of Poland and Czechoslovakia, did Hitler attack France and England instead of advancing further East into Russia? The standard answer is that the terms imposed by the Western powers after World War One had been so hard on the German populace. But by 1939, the German economy already been revived by rearmament. The factories of the Ruhr region had reverted to German ownership. What had the Third Reich not regained from France and England by that year?
From the Capsule: "Feb. 6: the German Reichstag met in Berlin's Krull Opera House one night early this week to hear the address of Fuhrer Adolf Hitler on the occasion of the sixth anniversary of Nazi rule. While Germans listened with pride to the recital of past Nazi victories, an anxious world combed the speech for cues as to what Nazi moves could be next expected. The cues were not long in coming, and they were sensational. First, Herr Hitler notified Europe in the most direct manner possible, that Germany wanted back the colonies she lost in the world war, colonies, now largely held by Britain and France. The theft' of the former German colonies, the Fuhrer said, was 'morally wrong' and 'sheer madness.'"
In other words, reclaiming German coloni was literally at the top of the Nazis to-do list!
Turning to other sources I learned (or re-learned, given my excellent forgettery) that at the start of WW1, German holdings in Africa included lands that now comprise Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Cameroon, Namibia, and parts of Nigeria and eastern Ghana. German holdings as of 1914 are yellow on the map below:
It was Germany's Chancellor Bismarck who in 1884 had called a conference to formalize the European nations' division of control in Africa. After WW1, the Versailles Treaty stripped Germany of its colonies and "mandated" them to England and France; but by 1925 German settlers were returning with a mind towards regaining control. According to a paper entitled "A Foot in the Door" (Cambridge University Press, 2024), "The German Foreign Office's Colonial Section took on a proactive role to facilitate these Germans’ settlement in their former colony, including working with German ministries to release funding and navigating the British administration and settlers on the ground in Tanganyika. While Germany had lost its overseas colonies, these officials, many of whom had served in the pre-war empire, did not view their activity in colonial spaces like Tanganyika as belonging to the past. Officials in the Colonial Section navigated the appearance of political neutrality while also promoting their ‘colonial-political’ goals, hoping to create footholds of Germanness in Tanganyika that would keep open the possibility of future empire."
It was to this crowd that Hitler was playing on the eve of World War Two when he called the Allies' takeover of Germany's colonies "Morally wrong."
The editors of Time Magazine could hardly conceal their admiration for him.
• March 27 "In power politics, Adolf Hitler exhibits all the amazing intuitive timing and swift footwork of a boxer. The speed, precision and preparation with which he moves should no longer surprise the world. But last week he outdid himself. The four steps of a Hitler conquest – preliminary propaganda, conference with victims, march of troops, and triumphal entry – followed each other like the rapid fire of a machine gun. His accommodating campaign in Czechoslovakia lasted exactly 3 days.
Imperialist positioning was uppermost in FDR's mind, too, according to the Time Capsule:
• April 24: Personal Message: Franklin Roosevelt addressed a new warning to the Dictators... Even while the President spoke, a far more dramatic message by him was being handed around secretly by his closest advisers for final editing. This was a direct personal message to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Coupled with the message in the President’s mind was a momentous order to the US Navy. The President had decided that the 11th hour had struck. With one hand he would beckon the Dictators to a peace conference table, with the other he would make the largest gesture of 'force to force' that he knew how: move the Battle Fleet back into the Pacific, where it could offset any Japanese menace to Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands in the Orient."
"To avoid upsetting the stock market, announcement of the fleet order was withheld until afternoon Saturday. Then, slowly, using the occasion of an address before the Pan-American Union, the president read his words to A. Hitler and B. Mussolini: 'You realize I am sure that throughout the world hundreds of millions of human beings are living today in constant fear of a new war or even a series of wars… You have repeatedly asserted that you and the German people have no desire for war. I trust that you may be willing to make such a statement of policy to me as the head of a nation far removed from Europe, in order that I, acting only with the responsibility and obligation of a friendly intermediary, may communicate such declaration to other nations.'
• May 8: Adolf to Franklin: had someone reminded Franklin Roosevelt to put into his peace offering message to Adolf Hitler last month some honest acknowledgment of the faults of the Versailles Treaty, Herr Hitler’s reply last week might have been much shorter, less sarcastic. The man-to-man repartee:
[The following was not set off by quotation marks. I assume a Time Magazine editor had done a rewrite and was being more than fair to Hitler. Quotation marks are then suddenly introduced.]
Roosevelt: Millions of people now fear war.
Hitler: This fear has undoubtedly existed among mankind from time immemorial. For instance, after the peace treaty of Versailles, 14 wars were waged between 1919 and 1938 alone, in none of which Germany was concerned.
R: All international problems can be solved at the council table.
H: Theoretically, perhaps. My skepticism, however, is based on the fact that it was American herself, who gave sharpest expression to her mistrust in the effectiveness of conferences. For the greatest conference of all time was without any doubt the League of Nations, which the United States itself declined to enter. It would be a noble act if President Franklin Roosevelt, were to redeem the promises made by President Woodrow Wilson.
All this was smart talk from Adolf Hitler to undermine Franklin Roosevelt at home. But he saved his very smartest answer for his last. To Franklin Roosevelt's declaration that heads of state are responsible for the fate of humanity, A. Hitler cried: “Mr. Roosevelt! I fully understand that the vastness of your nation and the immense wealth of your country allow you to feel responsible for the history of the whole world and for the history of all nations. I, sir, am placed in a much more modest and smaller sphere.
“You possess a country with enormous riches in all mineral resources, fertile enough to feed a half billion people and provide them with all necessities. I once took over a state which was faced by complete ruin. I have conquered chaos in Germany, reestablished order, and enormously increased production in all branches of our national economy. I have succeeded in finding useful work once more for the whole of 7 million unemployed, who so appeal to the hearts of us all. I, who 21 years ago was an unknown worker and soldier of my people, have attained this, Mr. Roosevelt, by my own energy, and can, therefore, in the face of history, claim a place among those men who have done the utmost which can be fairly and justly demanded from a single individual.
"You, Mr. Roosevelt, have a much easier task in comparison. You became President of the United States in 1933 when I became Chancellor of the Reich. In other words from the very outset, you stepped to the head of one of the largest and wealthiest states in the world. Conditions prevailing in your country are on such a large scale, but you can find time and leisure to give your attention to universal problems. Consequently, the world is undoubtedly so small for you that you perhaps believe that your intervention and action can be effective everywhere.”
• Sept. 11. "World War Two began last week at 5:20 AM (Polish time) Friday, September 1, when a German plane dropped a projectile on Puck, a fishing village and airbase in the armpit of the Peninsula. At four5:45AM, the German training ship, Schleswig Holstein lying off dancing fired what was believed to be the first shell: a direct hit on the Polish ammunition dump at investor p in the first five days, hundreds of Nazi bombing plans dumped a ton after ton of explosive on every city of any importance, the length and breath of Poland.
• Sept 25 "Hero Speaks. Last week began the great debate on US Neutrality. Franklin Roosevelt argued for action, short of war. Idaho's Senator Borah for Isolation. Elder Statesman Henry Lewis Stinson for tr“aditional neutrality. In all the talk, there was no fresh voice forBut one night last week that oice was heard. the voice of the one US citizen who could command a radio audience comparable to Franklin Roosevelt – Charles Lindbergh: 'We must not be misguided by this foreign propaganda to the effect that our frontiers lie in Europe. What more could we ask than the Atlantic Ocean on the East and the Pacific on the West? An ocean is a formidable barrier, even for modern aircraft."
“NATIONALISM is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.”
— George Orwell
LEAD STORIES, MONDAY'S NYT
U.N. Gathers Amid Its 80th Anniversary and a ‘Free Fall’
Britain, Australia, Canada and Portugal Recognize a Palestinian State
At Kirk Service, an Extraordinary Fusion of Government and Christianity
Trump Demands That Bondi Move ‘Now’ to Prosecute Foes
Trump’s $100,000 Visa Fee Spurs Confusion and Chaos
Hamburger Helper Sales Rise as Americans Try to Stretch Their Food Dollars
Chicagoans Avoided Their ‘Filthy’ River for Years. On Sunday, They Swam in It
WHAT I FIND JARRING is that there are so many people willing to excuse the most reprehensible things that Charlie Kirk said, that they agree with that, that they’re willing to have monuments for him, that they want to create a day to honor him, and that they want to produce resolutions in the House of Congress honoring his life and legacy. It is one thing to care about his life, because obviously so many people loved him, including his children and wife, but I am not going to sit here and be judged for not wanting to honor any legacy this man has left behind. That should be in the dustbin of history, and we should hopefully move on and forget the hate that he spewed every single day.
— Congresswoman Ilhan Omar
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE:
Westerner: I support a two-state solution.
Israel: There will never be a Palestinian state.
Westerner: Okay then I support a one-state solution where everyone has equal rights.
Israel: You’re calling for an end to the Jewish state you monster.
Westerner: Alright then I support the Palestinian resistance.
Israel: That’s supporting terrorism. You are Hamas and we can legally murder you.
Westerner: Well can I at least support a permanent ceasefire to end the genocide?
Israel: [cocks pistol] What did I just tell you about supporting Hamas?
Westerner: Okay then, I support Palestinians living as a permanent underclass until they can be slowly salami sliced out of existence as a people.
Israel: Getting warmer.
Westerner: I support removing all Palestinians from their historic homeland via ethnic cleansing or extermination before the end of Donald Trump’s presidential term.
Israel: [puts away gun] That’s more like it.
JUST A LOAF
by Khaled Juma, translated from the Arabic by Tayseer Abu Odeh and Sherah Bloor
For ten or so days
I’ve been searching for a loaf,
just a loaf.
They said it vanished from global warehouses.
A child saw it take to the stage,
or was it bombed by a plane.
The loaf is elusive, and my feet are tired.
My little ones don’t understand,
they think they’re in the old days,
you ate whenever you got hungry,
they wonder what they did wrong,
why do I punish them with this hunger and this thirst.
The last thing my youngest says to me this morning—
isn’t this too much punishment, Dad?
HOW TO BLOW UP A PLANET
by Trevor Jackson
What happened to the future? When did we lose it, and what has taken its place? Political scientists have found a continual decline in visions of a shared transformative future since the early 1980s. Around the world, in party manifestos, inaugural speeches, and programmatic policy documents, principled statements about an open-ended future have given way to numerical targets like GDP growth achieved, emissions reduced, or people deported. The political right has been more interested in returning to an imaginary glorious past; consequently, the change has been most pronounced on the left, where the politics of an alternative liberatory future have ceded to the policies of technocratic governance and market discipline.
This story fits the interregnum of the 1990s and 2000s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the slide of social democratic parties into neoliberalism. When Francis Fukuyama declared the “end of history,” he was looking ahead to a melancholy time when we would be “jaded by the experience of history.” The conflict over the best way to organize human society had ended, and liberal capitalist democracy would remain triumphant, but the future appeared to be an empty stretch, without passion, without struggle.
The financial crisis of 2008 did not recover the future so much as reveal that its absence was an ideological project.
Writing in the aftermath of the crash, the radical cultural critic Mark Fisher diagnosed a phenomenon he called “capitalist realism,” meaning “the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it.” Elsewhere he wrote that the future had been “foreclosed,” and the metaphor was apt: we had been evicted from it, and now it belonged to the banks.
But nothing has depleted the future quite like climate change. As target after target has been passed and promise after promise broken, the time remaining to avert global catastrophe has been squandered. There is no noncatastrophic future left, and in fact it’s already here. How, in conditions of runaway climatic disaster, can the future be recovered? What visions of a shared transformative future are possible, and what happens to emancipatory politics, and to democracy itself, without them?
(New York Review of Books)
Re Fred Gardner’s report, this also from Germany, 1939 – Nazis “end careers” of comics who made fun of them:
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1939/02/04/102395933.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0&fbclid=IwY2xjawM-TR1leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFYcVBncFBMT212NGZiOXVaAR6bvDdzXTISt9WLmR-7O-DmeQliLDPf5YcnJqc51UZMA53I-s50n0fK_T9mAQ_aem_-9AR_O8SM88uBhma9sbRyQ
“One fine day… We’re nothing now but an old lamppost with memories on a street where hardly anyone passes anymore.”
–Celine
Ouch, that hurts an old man’s heart, too close to the brutal truth of it.
WILLITS RESIDENTS HOLD CANDLELIGHT VIGIL FOR CHARLIE KIRK
LOL! This country is much closer to disintegration than it has been in my 75 years of living here. What’ll they do next? Celebrate the immigrant-hating dictator, Trump, and his putrid backup, Vance??? It’s like living in a right-wing nightmare.
These were proxy Trump rallies, Harv. The Magas around Mendo don’t seem bold enough to do a straight-up rally.
I attended the vigil in Ukiah last night. It wasn’t a trump rally. I was raised with faith and retain much of it now.
Remembrances, peace, prayer and forgiveness were the topics of discussion. Painting everyone with the broad brush strokes is likely what got us here and what will keep us here.
Even the most cursory review of what Kirk stood for was consistent with Trump’s assurance that he hates all of us outside his destructive, non-forgiving circle.
That’s not what was discussed last night Bruce, you’ll have to trust me on that one, I was there.
Went into the check cashing/Western Union/Lotto place on H Street in Washington, D.C. on Friday and purchased MegaMillions and Powerball tickets. Gave the clerk at the window a $20 bill, receiving $12 in change. Walked back to the counter, filled out the back of both tickets, and noticed that the ten dollar bill was missing. Mentioned it to the clerk at the window, who suggested checking my pockets, looking on the floor, etcetera. The ten dollar bill simply disappeared! The next day, I went into the same place because I had won $10 in the MegaMillions drawing. The same clerk laughed, and said: “The fairy folk are having fun with you!”
Craig Louis Stehr
Washington, D.C.