Mendocino County Today: Wednesday 10/1/2025

By AVA News Service on October 1, 2025

A FRONTAL PASSAGE will continue to generate rainshowers on Wednesday, and potentially Thursday, before giving way to dry weather on Friday and hold through the weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): The rainfall collection year ended with a bang 1.29" yesterday, then starts the new year with .26" today. For the year that just ended here are my totals:

2024: Oct 1.26" Nov 14.53” Dec 12.05”
2025: Jan 1.65” Feb 10.18” Mar 6.37” Apr 1.45” May 0.34” Jun 0.00” Jul 0.15” Aug 0.00” Sep 1.58”
YTD: 49.56”

A cloudy 55F this Wednesday morning on the coast. We might see a sprinkle today but things should dry out quickly. It's looking clear into the weekend & next week.

NEIL KEPHART HAS DIED.

My friend and neighbor for many years, Neil Kephart, after a long battle with the stomach cancer that finally carried him off, will be sorely missed by everyone who knew this quiet, gentle, competent and unfailingly kind man. He died at his Boonville home surrounded by his family.

Neil was one of these increasingly rare men who are a boon to their communities because of their genius ability to do the practical things, the things that keep our houses from falling down around us.

I tried not to pester Neil too often with requests for help or the loan of a tool I knew Neil would surely have. 200 feet of extension cord? Neil had it. Have-A-Heart critter trap? Neil instantly produced a choice of three. Sump pump? Got it right over here. Fork lift? Here comes Neil himself driving it up to the heavyweight items needing a move from here to there. All this and a quiet, tolerant humor that made his company an ongoing delight.

BRAD WILEY ON THE LINEAGE OF THE KEPHART HOME:

Arthur Johnson Home, north of the Boonville Methodist Church, west side of Highway 128 (with the late Wes Smoot):

This one story home is about 25 feet across its front. It was built in the 1928 Glenn Johnson’s brother, Arthur. Arthur and Glenn were partners managing the Yorkville area Johnson Ranch. Wes Smoot believes that Glenn felt Arthur was an inadequate ranching partner, and persuaded his less work-motivated brother to move to Boonville to reside in this home.

Today, Neil Kephart and family live in this lovely piece of roadside architecture.

I particularly appreciate the small but gracious front porch elevated about four feet above the front lawn and enclosed beneath the home’s dormer-like ridgepole. (The main roof ridgepole runs parallel to the highway.) Bay windows, each with three glass openings frame the front door.

I suspect there is something quite aristocratic about sitting out there at the end of the day watching The Valley go by, but too far back from the highway to actually engage with passers-by. I also enjoy the way a handful of ancient apple and walnut trees in the north part of the front yard partly obscure the house, making it a bit more mysteriously magisterial.

One Sunday I walked up the driveway to look more closely at its design features and had the good fortune to run into Mrs. Kathaleen Kephart, Neil’s wife. Mrs. Kephart said that, yes, the brick chimney on the south side of the house was original, but no longer used to heat its interior rooms. She also said the shiplap siding was original and in good repair. But the roofing material, an elegant asbestos slate material, diamond-shaped, was a couple of years old, as the original tarred shingle roof began leaking in winter and had to be replaced.

The most dramatic design feature of the house is the two grand windows one can’t see from the highway. They are on the south and north sides of the house, each are three-bayed in a ten foot rough opening, but also bowed out from the house about a foot and of course elegantly wood-trimmed on all four of their sides.

CALTRANS V. BOONVILLE

by Mark Scaramella

In the next few years Caltrans plans to pave over most of downtown Boonville under the heading of: “Boonville Capital Preventive Maintenance (CAPM)/Complete Streets”

Caltrans describes their “preventive maintenance” or “rehabilitation” project as: “Caltrans proposes to rehabilitate the existing pavement surface on Route 128 from post miles 17.9 to 30.7. In Boonville, bike lanes, curb ramps, driveways and crosswalks will be added.”

Caltrans continues: “The project will restore the existing highway surface from ‘Fair’ to ‘Good’ Condition and extend the service life and improve ride quality. Enhanced connectivity features in downtown Boonville will improve safety and accessibility for non-motorized users.

“The project includes: Hot mix asphalt overlay and Transportation Management System (TMS) upgrades from post miles 17.9 to 30.7.

“Boonville: Class II buffered bike lanes from Mountain View Road to the Route 253 junction [downtown Boonville]. Sidewalk and curb ramp improvements. Pedestrian improvements at Mountain View Road and Lambert Lane.

Timeline

Construction is expected to begin in 2026.

Budget Estimates

Construction Capital: $21,057,000

Right of Way Capital: $172,000”

“Complete Streets” is a Caltrans buzzword that says that not just cars and trucks are to be considered in highway design and upgrades. But as a practical matter complete streets means pavement first. Liability second. Local considerations and preferences third.

Here’s what Caltrans says is an example of a typical Complete Streets Project:

A newly formed local group calling itself “BoontWorks” made up of Boonville residents and others is being led by relative newcomer Sash Williams (an engineer who now lives in the old McGimpsey house in downtown Boonville), Johnny Schmitt of the Boonville Hotel, and an architect/consultant named Ned Forest and others.

Monday night Boontworks held a public meeting at the AV Senior Center with a decent turnout of upwards of 70 mostly older and mostly Boonville residents to present what they propose to be accounted for in the Caltrans paving project.

According to their handout, Boontworks Guiding Principles are:

Anderson Valley residents of all ages depend on the town of Boonville for access to our businesses, schools, clinic, public transportation pick up, and social centers. Highway 128 is our Main Street — the only through street in town — as well as a highly-traveled gateway to wine tasting and the Mendocino coast. In addition to stores and restaurants, 128 provides direct access to fitness centers, the Mendocino County Fairgrounds, the Senior Center, the Elder Home project, post offices, lodging, offices, and the ambulance/fire department.

We are involved in the planning for the re-paving of Highway 128 because it is integral to the safety and enjoyment of our lives and the health of the environment. The following are guidelines that inform our efforts.

Calm vehicular traffic for the safety and well-being of drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists and wildlife.
Preserve the distinctive rural character of town with unpaved space, tree plantings, and suitable lighting.
Ensure watershed protection by minimizing new water pollution and erosion while mitigating that which currently exists. Explore use of permeable paving.
Improve access to community points of interest and create common places for congregating and socializing.
Support local businesses and improve the environment for conducting business, including during construction (parking, signage, deliveries).
Integrate the goals of the Mendocino County General Plan (Chapter 6: Community Specific Policies) in the design and construction to be undertaken.
Coordinate with imminent infrastructure projects: water/sewer lines, broadband, and undergrounding of utilities.

A lively discussion ensued as Williams and Forest presented various diagrams and sketches showing what they hope Caltrans will consider for the new Highway 128.

The Caltrans right-of-way through Boonville is 80 feet wide so that 80 feet has to accommodate two or three roadway lanes, a median (perhaps in segments) bike lanes, parking, sidewalks, guard rails, signage, ADA compliance, drainage, and, hopefully, landscaping within that 80 feet while incorporating as much as possible of Boonville existing roadway features (both within the right-of-way and alongside it on private property) and retaining as much of a rural feel as possible, as opposed to a Caltrans-style concrete island in the middle of Anderson Valley.

Reportedly the Caltrans bureaucrats in Eureka are “listening” to Boontworks. But so far there’s no evidence of concrete (sic) incorporation of the Boontworks principles. According to Williams, contrary to what Caltrans says about the project timing, the Caltrans Boonville Project will begin design work next year (2026) with construction to take place in 2029. Williams said the focus of the Boontworks group’s attention is downtown Boonville from the Boonville Apartments on the south end to Mountain View Road on the north end. Caltrans plans to eliminate the nose-in diagonal parking and replace it with parallel parking or back-in diagonal parking which would not only reduce the number of downtown parking spaces but doesn’t seem objectively safer than the current semi-haphazard mostly nose-in diagonal parking.

It was difficult to hear the discussion at times because of inconsistent microphone use and the casual/conversational statements. But it was clear that nobody in the room liked the Caltrans pave-over plan.

Much of the discussion revolved around bike lanes and a general preference for more landscaping. As the meeting extended into its second hour and details were further explored people started drifting out.

So far, Caltrans has not released any specific paving plans and that’s why the group hopes to get their preferences in early before the Caltrans pavement is, ahem, set in concrete.

One unnamed attendee got a round of applause after expressing a brief but consensus opinion about Boonville’s preference for less pavement: “Dirt! Yay!”

CLIFFORD GEORGE CHRISTEN

Clifford George Christen passed away at the age of 98 on September 20, 2025, at his ranch in Yorkville, California, where he enjoyed his retirement years with family and friends. He lived a good life, had strong faith, and was known throughout his community as a kind and helpful neighbor who was always willing to lend a hand and make new friends.

Cliff was born on August 1, 1927, in Alton, California to George and Mary (Renner) Christen, the second of seven children. He attended schools in Ferndale and graduated from Ferndale High School in 1945. He had already enlisted in the US Navy before he graduated and was still in training when World War II ended. He completed his commitment to the Navy and then went to Barber School in San Francisco before returning to Ferndale. In 1950, Cliff married the love of his life, Joyce Lowrey, and together they raised their four daughters in Eureka.

He was a partner in Eureka Barber Shop and Supply for many years before beginning a long career at Pacific Gas and Electric in Eureka, retiring in 1992. In retirement, he worked even harder on the family ranch in Yorkville with his wife, Joyce. Cliff was happiest working outdoors and preferably with good friends and family. He became a prolific gardener, enjoyed cutting firewood, raising sheep, and his many ranch chores.

While living in Eureka, he was a long-time officer and Fourth Degree member of the Knights of Columbus. Cliff was a member of St. Bernard and Sacred Heart Churches in Eureka, and in later years, St Elizabeth Seton Church in Philo and St. Peter Church in Cloverdale. He enthusiastically supported all the churches, including many days over the years helping with fundraising activities to build a new church in Boonville, a youth camp in Humboldt County, and other church-related and community projects. He was a volunteer at the Anderson Valley Historical Museum and worked with the Kimmies of the Codgy Moshe Club for many years to restore old steam engines and the 1929 Mack truck that his father-in-law used for logging.

He was preceded in death by his beloved wife, Joyce Lowrey Christen and his brothers Ray and Al Christen and his sister, Cecilia Bucher, as well as his sisters-in- law and brothers-in-law: Lillian and Toni Christen, Jack Reidy, Howard Murphy, Carl Bucher, and Howard Spiker. Cliff is survived by his daughters: Catherine Christen, Mary Christen-Crighton (David), Joan (Guy) Tortorici, and Laurie (Paul) Sheppard; his six grandchildren: Andrew Crighton, Ali (David) Sanderson, Ben (Hannah) Sheppard, Ted Tortorici, Jack (Melinda) Tortorici, and Grace Tortorici; and his six great grandchildren: Cooper and Carly Sanderson, Ellie and Adalynn Tortorici and Logan and Jay Sheppard. Cliff is also survived by three loving sisters: Eleanor Reidy, Carolyn Spiker and Aileen Murphy, and many nieces and nephews.

Funeral services are scheduled at 11:00 am, on Friday, October 3, 2025, at St. Elizabeth Seton Church, 8771 School Road, Philo, CA 95466. Interment will follow at the Yorkville Cemetery, with a reception following the services. In lieu of flowers, please consider donations to the St. Elizabeth Seton Church building fund, the Yorkville Community Benefit Association, or the Hospice of Ukiah for Anderson Valley, who provided palliative care the last weeks of Cliff’s life.

The family would like to express deep gratitude for the invaluable friendship and support of Cliff’s neighbors – Ramon and Penny Avila, Pam and Jim Keown, Jim Hill and many others – their kindness and assistance meant so much to Cliff and his family in later years.

LOCAL EVENTS (this week)

TOXIC WORKPLACE REPORT, $2M DEFICIT DOMINATE WILLITS CITY COUNCIL MEETING

Council reluctantly passes a budget for the current fiscal year

by Elise Cox

The Willits City Council unanimously approved a formal response to a Mendocino County Civil Grand Jury investigation and adopted a budget for fiscal 2025-26 at its Sept. 24 meeting.

The grand jury report found that Willits had a toxic workplace culture that drove away highly qualified employees. The council accepted the finding but noted it did not know who had left or why.

“In essence we did not interview said employees because it was confidential,” Councilmember Gerry Gonzalez said. “In places we had to agree the grand jury found what they found because we didn’t interview these employees ourselves.”

The report also said employees lacked an effective way to bring complaints to management, in part because the city has no human resources director. Employees who spoke confidentially to Mendo Local said a senior manager who might have served as an alternative was also accused of toxic behavior.

City employee Nici Caldwell asked where staff can turn today? “Where can the employees now go to talk to who and where do we go with issues? … So all the stuff that happened over the last four years is not happening again?” she said.

Mayor Tom Allman acknowledged the gap had not been filled. “Right now the city does not have a personnel director,” he said. “A person working in the personnel department or the city manager would be the correct person to talk to, unless one of those two people is the issue. And if that’s the issue, you talk to the other.” He also volunteered to help find the appropriate person. “If any city employee wants to discuss a situation with me, I will direct them to someone they can talk to.”

Allman added that senior managers referenced in the report had already left the city. “It’s rectifying a situation which appears to be rectified,” he said. “It’s a moot subject.”

Later, the council voted 4-1 to pass the budget, with Councilmember Bruce Burton opposed. To balance the budget, the $7 million general fund will receive $2.1 million in Measure K sales tax revenue and draw $73,000 from reserves. The general fund’s projected balance at the end of the year will be under $400,000.

Other city funds showed strain. The airport fund is projected to end the fiscal year $430,000 in the red, and the water fund faces a shortfall with $3.3 million in revenue against $3.5 million in expenses.

Financial consultant Andy Heath warned of an ongoing structural deficit in the general fund. “The city’s general fund has a $2.4 million annual issue which is just not sustainable,” he said. Salaries and benefits for the city’s 63 employees make up 80% of general fund costs, he added, while most cities of Willits’ size spend closer to 60% to 65%.

Gonzalez said he voted for the budget reluctantly, with the understanding that the city manager will propose cost reductions and a reorganization plan. “We can’t continue this way,” he said.

Former Mayor Madge Strong criticized past financial reporting. “If I had known the city was basically driving down a railroad track that was going to go over the cliff, I would have been very alarmed,” she said.

Burton objected to balancing the budget with Measure K funds. “I don’t like approving a $2 million deficit budget,” he said. “The decisions aren’t going to get easier.” Burton blamed staff for not recommending cuts.

Councilmember Matthew Alaniz defended staff, saying the city had made progress. “This is the first budget I’ve seen that we are in the black with accurate numbers, and I think that counts for something,” he said. He added that fixing the city’s financial issues will take time. “It’s not going to get done in one year,” he said.

In other action, the council voted 4-0 to create new mixed-use zoning districts, revise off-street parking standards and allow franchise businesses to operate without a use permit. Burton abstained because he owns parcels affected by the changes.

RICHARD P. MCCLINTOCK JR., M.D. (1933-2025)

Richard P. “Dick” McClintock, Jr., M.D., passed away peacefully at his home Sept. 19, 2025, surrounded by his beloved wife of more than 55 years, Joy, and other loved ones. He was 91. Dr. McClintock first arrived in Ukiah in 1967 to open the town’s first dermatology practice on his way to becoming a widely respected and admired fixture of the town’s medical community. He was born Dec. 16, 1933, in New Hampshire and spent every summer on Cape Cod, where he developed a lifelong love of all things outdoors (including sailing). It was also where he discovered his future professional calling after a house-visit by a local doctor. To a young boy, the job represented ultimate freedom. Upon graduating in 1956 from Dartmouth College, his father’s alma mater, he headed straight for Harvard Medical School. A graduate of the class of 1960, he then served as a Navy doctor in Oahu, Hawaii, before moving to Northern California to complete a residency and fellowship in Dermatology at Stanford University’s School of Medicine. He also took his boards in Dermo-Pathology. Dr. McClintock closed his Dora Street office after more than four decades in 2012. But the 77-year-old physician wasn’t quite done and spent another seven years giving back to the community by working at the Mendocino Community Health Clinic. Through the years, he received numerous accolades for his expertise. He also served for years as an adjunct clinical professor working with young dermatology residents at Stanford. During his early years in Ukiah, Dr. McClintock bought an untamed piece of land and built his own redwood house a point of endless pride where he and Joy raised their growing family. A gentle spirit to the core, Dr. McClintock was an extraordinary and towering figure who whose generosity knew no bounds. He touched innumerable lives, whether a family member, a shopkeeper or complete stranger. He embodied such a wide range of qualities – strength, sensitivity, intelligence and empathy that he wrapped the people whom he loved in a warm blanket of affection, understanding and support. He is especially remembered for his devotion to his children; their interests became his and vice versa, whether opera, skiing, tennis, all matters military, journalism and golf (a major feat was co-founding Ukiah’s Junior Golf program). He was also a lifelong sports fan, reader, writer and poet. In addition to his wife, he is survived by his brother, Sandy McClintock; his children, Peter McClintock, Pamela McClintock, Wayne McClintock and Patrick McClintock, Liz Buderas and grandsons, Taylor, Bryce and Adam; and numerous nieces and nephews. A memorial will be planned at a later date. In lieu of flowers, donate can be made to your local hospice. Below is a poem he wrote of his land:

CHRISTMAS 1989

This is how I am and where I have been with all my children

Here is the gentle landscape
subtle shades of brown and green lasting through all seasons

We are here as dwellers and painters

We take snapshots of the timeless curve
paint with words the bent blades of rye and oat and live on

This is how I am and how I will be
Remember this is me

THE HEADWATERS OF THE EEL RIVER entering Lake Pillsbury (September 29, 2025)

NEW STRETCH OF CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY 101 TOOK 30 YEARS TO BUILD. IT’S FINALLY OPEN

by Rachel Swan

Drivers on Highway 101 can now coast from suburban Novato to Sonoma County, along a newly-widened stretch that marks the end of a 30-year rebuild.

The once-notorious Marin-Sonoma Narrows no longer befits its name, now redesigned with three lanes between Atherton Avenue and the county line. The new, high-occupancy vehicle lanes, which opened Monday at 5 a.m., link 52 miles of continuous carpool from Windsor to the Richardson Bay Bridge.

Conceived to eliminate bottlenecks, accommodate a development boom in Wine Country and modernize stretches of freeway that lacked grade separations, the project had its genesis in the 1990s but had to be completed in phases, as funding became available. It cost more than $1 billion to fix 101 from Windsor to the Marin County border, and $762 million alone for the 16-mile “Narrows” portion.

“This is the biggest public works project we’ve ever had up this way, and it’s been a promise for a long time,” said Petaluma Mayor Kevin McDonnell. His small Wine Country town, known for its grain silos and backyard chicken coops, could see an influx of day-trippers as a result of the highway expansion.

Though the 101 overhaul dates to an era when transportation planners embraced road-widening as a solution for congestion, it also reflected a more forward-thinking idea about multi-modal corridors. Besides adding freeway capacity for buses and carpools, original planning documents called for treating the Sonoma-Maria Area Rail Transit line and parallel bike path as the fourth and fifth lanes of 101, respectively.

To a large extent, the drivers and transit-loving environmentalists who compromised on this vision now see it fulfilled. The SMART train runs from Larkspur to Windsor with stations planned in Healdsburg and Cloverdale. SMART and partner agencies are building 70 miles of path alongside the train tracks.

And as of this week, drivers in Marin and Sonoma counties anticipate a faster commute.

STEPHEN HOWARD MERRITT

Stephen Howard Merritt Age 64, of Fort Bragg, California peacefully passed away at home on August 24th, 2025, after a short illness. He was born on September 6th, 1960, in Caspar, CA to Myrna (Washburn) Merritt & Howard Merritt. He was the loving husband to Kerry (Killion) Merritt. They were married on November 10th, 1979. They had a son, Justin, born July of 1982 and a daughter, Leslie, born December of 1983. He was a man of many talents and careers, including but not limited to metal-work/welding (woodstoves, commercial fishing boats and “boltman”). He was a Logging Truck Operator, as well as a Commercial Fisherman in Alaska. He was a Carpenter/Piledriver & Bridge Builder (Noyo Bridge, 10 Mile River Bridge, Confusion Hill Bridge) and a Millwright Foreman. He was well respected and admired for his incredible work ethic and kind nature. Steve retired in the Summer of 2022 and spent his time fishing, woodworking, and traveling. One of his favorite things was spending time in Merritt’s Camp with friends and family. He was known for his famous camp breakfast, caesar salads and quad rides for the kiddos. His greatest joy in life was his family. He is survived by his loving wife of almost 46 years, Kerry, his son, Justin and wife, Aderyn (Hürni) and their two daughters, Nadeen (19) and Josephine (15), his daughter, Leslie and husband, Dustin Smart and their two daughters, Sybelle (13) and Kenzie (10). He will be greatly missed as he was a wonderful husband, an amazing father, a fantastic grandpa and a loyal loving friend. A celebration of life will be held on Saturday, October 4th, 2025 in Merritt’s Camp, Fort Bragg, CA.

SCIENCE MEETS SHORELINE: KELP FUTURES: Seaweed Seed Banks, Shore Plantings, and Human Selection – Learn more at North Coast Kelp Festival Oct. 3–6

by Linda Little

Imagine a moment when Fort Bragg stood not just at the edge of the Pacific, but on the brink of possibility. In 1875, as the redwoods towered and timber fever gripped the coast, a new kind of forester arrived—not with axes alone, but with ideas. They spoke of selective cutting, seedling stewardship, and forest cycles that could last generations. Their vision? A town empowered by sustainable industry, employed by thoughtful harvest, and enriched by an environment that could endure.

Had we listened then, Fort Bragg might have become a model of ecological foresight—a place where prosperity grew alongside preservation. Instead of clearcuts, corridors of canopy. Instead of boom-and-bust, a legacy of balance.…

https://mendocinocoast.news/headline-science-meets-shoreline-kelp-futures-seaweed-seed-banks-shore-plantings-and-human-selection-at-north-coast-kelp-festival-oct-3-6/

CHRISTOPHER PAUL KEIFFER

" I've headed to the happy hunting grounds to find my peace at last”!

Christopher Paul Keiffer, a life-long resident of Hopland, passed away on Thursday, September 18th, 2025; after a valiant, prolonged battle with Parkinson’s.

He was preceded in death by a long line of local family from his parents; Chris and Betty Keiffer to Anderson, Enrights, and Pomas of Ukiah, to Henderson of Sonoma Co., and a nephew Robert Parker of Clark Fork Idaho.

After several years pursuing a wildlife degree @ Humboldt State University in Arcata, CA.; he spent a career (25+yrs) with UPS in and around Mendocino county and helped to work the family ranch from Henderson Bros. To the Chris Keiffer Ranch….from hops, pears, prunes and walnuts to grapes and vineyards.

He is survived by his son, Christopher Michael Keiffer of Hopland, and siblings Patricia Keiffer Parker and husband, Mark; of Clark Fork, Id. and Robert J. Keiffer and wife Beth; of Hopland; nieces Jessica and Laurel and nephews Michael and Ryan and great nieces and nephews Niko, Max, Theo Madi and Autumn; As well as many cousins and extended family.

Interment of ashes will take place and be announced @ a later date; most likely in the spring of next year @ the Hopland Cemetery in the family plot.

THE BEST OF FIBER FAIR, Fort Bragg

Pacific Textile Arts' Much Loved Fundraiser Coming Soon!

Opens First Friday, Oct. 3, 5-7:00 PM

450 Algar St., Fort Bragg, CA 95437

707 409-6811

Best chance to find unique, top quality fiber treasures!

Market and Yard Sale

Saturday, Oct. 4, 10 AM - 4 PM

Textile Rummage and Maker's Bazaar

Bargains on fabric, yarn, equipment

Shop the vendors for unique handmade items

Silent Auction

Starts on Oct. 3, runs throughout the month.

Bid on donated gifts and goodies!

Fiber Fair continues in the Gallery throughout October with new items added regularly.

www.pacifictextilearts.com

TIM BRAY

Noyo Pelagics has three trips going out this weekend, to see the fantastic marine life just offshore. Birds, whales, and dolphins have been abundant out there! October is typically the peak time to see Humpback Whales here, and we have been seeing Fin Whales pretty regularly as well. Blue Whales are also possible now. And it's bird migration season, so there could be large numbers of seabirds moving through the outer waters.

Still room on the boat for all three trips - sign up now at noyopelagics.com or just show up at the dock with money.

Friday October 3 - All-day seabirding trip ($185) - a chance to get out to deeper waters and see Albatrosses, possibly Petrels if we're lucky, and many other open-ocean birds not seen from shore. We found Tufted Puffins on two consecutive days earlier this month.

Saturday October 4 - Half-day trip for seabirds, whales, dolphins, etc. ($125) - will go to the upper Noyo Canyon area where marine life often concentrates.

Sunday October 5 - Half-day trip focusing on marine mammals: whales, dolphins, fur seals, etc. ($125) - will be especially looking for Humpbacks that can be identified as individuals by the pattern of their flukes!

All trips on the Kraken departing at 7:30 AM from the dock at the bottom of the hill on North Harbor Drive. Plan to arrive at 7 so you can get parked and board by 7:15. Parking is across the road, at the far end of the lot (do not park in the signed spaces closer to the road).

Cheers,

Tim Bray

Mendocino Coast Audubon Society

TASTES LIKE CHICKEN, Friday, October 3, 5-7pm

Join us for a night of music, food, and fun as AVBC welcomes Tastes Like Chicken this Friday. This high-energy local band brings an unforgettable mix of rock, pop, R&B, disco, and more. With three lead vocalists and a horn section, their shows always keep the crowd dancing.

Fuel up with Smash Daddy Burgers, serving up handcrafted smash burgers packed with bold flavors and fresh ingredients.

REGARDING YESTERDAY'S STORY on child sex crime

Good to see that the story has been updated. Sergeant Juan Valencia said that the charges “Could be re-instated” “IF” the investigation uncovers credible/sufficient evidence. There has been no finding of innocence or guilt at this time.

So that means, as of right now, there is no credible evidece, does it not? The Judge has seen all the available evidence, and released John without requiring bail. Had the Judge felt there was a serious risk releasing John, he would have required the $250K bail, not zero bail.

John has spent his life helping and defending children of abuse. Seems lots of people here are rushing to judgement on pure speculation.

— Jeff Boschert

DOPE: “…Late starts characterize some of the state’s historically conservative, more anti-cannabis counties, like San Bernardino, which saw a nearly 115% increase in legal sales over the past five years. Some of these places have even become relatively easier to do business in, granting more permits than traditional cultivation areas like the “Emerald Triangle” counties of Mendocino and Humboldt, where sales have stagnated after a pandemic-era spike. (Sales in Mendocino County have seen the second-biggest net statewide decline, after San Francisco.)” — SF Chron

A RECENT FIND is this postcard, about 1915, that says “Deer Creek Indian. The Wild Man” his name was Ishi and was the last known member of the Native American Yahi people from the present-day state of California.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, September 30, 2025

ABEL AGUADO, 41, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, theft by use of access card info, obtaining personal ID info without authorization, conspiracy.

ANNELISE BECK, 29, Willits. Failure to appear, false ID, probation revocation, resisting.

LAURA COLBY-DUBOSE, 63, Durham/Fort Bragg. DUI, vandalism.

HAILEY HAWKINS, 22, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

DANIEL KOWALSKY, 55, Ukiah. Theft by use of access card info, obtaining personal ID info without authorization.

JEFFREY LOWERY, 54, Holland, Michigan/Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ALFREDO MENDEZ-SALDANA JR., 24, Covelo. Stolen property, unlicensed sale of firearm, resisting.

JULIO RODRIGUEZ-CHAVARIA, 42, Ukiah. County parole violation.

ASHER SILVA, 34, Redwood Valley. Domestic abuse, domestic violence court order violation, vandalism.

JULIE BEARDSLEY: President Bone-spurs calls all the top military brass back to the USA, (at a cost of millions of dollars), and has his alcoholic Faux News host tell them he intends to use US cities as “training grounds,” and if anyone disagrees with him, they’ll be demoted. Shutting down the government, no problem. Going after people who he considers enemies, no problem. He’s got Congress tied up, the Senate and Supreme Court in his pocket. If this doesn’t sound like a coup, I don’t know what does. I believe he will try and use the military to stop the 2028 election. I just hope there are enough people of character in the military who honor their oath to protect the Constitution, and if that means removing him from office, so be it.

ED REPLY: Joe Biden was clearly non compos mentis from the get, and became steadily more obviously impaired as he stumbled along, but he was quietly non compos, and his public performances, while sadly inept, were blandly, recognizably mainstream liblab. Trump is wildly unfit, delivering every day wacky, barely coherent monologues that would get the loud mouth at the end of any American bar jerked off his stool. Described accurately as “a raving lunatic” by an anon military member after his shockingly nutso presentation before the UN last week, every day Trump says something that screams 5150. It continues to amaze me that this laughable but ominous character is president of the United States.

DAVID GURNEY [MCN listserve]:

Exact quote from today's Big Don speech, to an audience of hundreds of generals and admirals in Quantico, Virginia:

"We're under invasion from within, no different from a foreign enemy but more difficult in many ways 'cause they don't wear uniforms. At least when they're wearing a uniform you can take 'em out. These people don't have uniforms. But we are under invasion from within, and we're stopping it, very quickly..."

"We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military..."

MORNING IN A WAR ZONE

in war ravaged Portland
morning geese comb the grass
for worms

leaves fall quietly from the branch
yellow dahlias rise in salutation to the sun
squirrels rush home with acorns for their hearth

loaves of sourdough rise in the bakeries
coffee scents the streets like Rome
cherry blossoms ballerina at the river’s edge

but beware the icy seed-sown fear
a conjured nightmare
a most cruel gruel

the delusion from a man insane
has come to conquer like Quixote
upon this tranquil hill

— Mimi German

EASY STREET

Warmest spiritual greetings,

Just sitting here on a public computer at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in Washington, D.C., enjoying on YouTube Day 9 of Navaratri (nine nights in worship to the divine mother). The SSI money has come in; received a large disbursement retroactively for what was withheld since May. Awaiting the D.C. (permanent) driver's license to be delivered in the mail. Still waiting for California to send verification that the Cali EBT account has been closed, so that I may get the D.C. EBT card. Biding my time at the Catholic Charities homeless shelter for the moment.

On the planet earth identifying with the Divine Absolute, or "that which is prior to consciousness", I am recommending the formation of spiritually based nomadic action groups.

I am presently contactable. May you have enduring untellable bliss.

Craig Louis Stehr, [email protected]

ALL BECAUSE WE GAVE UP GOD, an on-line comment:

Yes. As God has been eliminated people turn their object of their affections to other things to worship. Instead of worshiping God they worship money. They worship houses. They worship celebrities. They worship themselves (tattoos, piercings). They worship the Earth, trees and pets. See a pattern here?

Too many people, I'm afraid, no longer have any faith in anything. There is no meaning for them. No reason to improve, to get better, to be more than they are. If they aren't improving they are regressing or they are dying. Their lives are empty, as shallow and meaningless as the hollywood celebs they worship.

We are society that worships death. Women murder their children as a form of birth control. Criminal justice is justice for the criminal, not the victim. Video games, movies, television shows are full of horror and violence. How does this bring joy?

Pornography is rampant because young men are no longer attracted to young women because young women do all within their power to mutilate themselves, tattoo their bodies and become as ugly as they possibly can be (even the pretty ones). So young men look to unrealistic pornography for sexual pleasure. The result? Young men who can't pop a nobber for a woman and an angry woman because she can't find herself a man. So she becomes a lesbian looking for donated sperm to impregnate herself with because, every month, her body tells her she is a woman.

It's all screwed up. All of it. Every nook and cranny of our society is fucked over. Churches have lost their purpose. Government no longer has the confidence of the people. Families no longer have father and mother in charge. Children are angry, scared and addicted to their phones.

All because we gave up on God, gave up on his teachings, and gave him the middle finger. To save this sinking ship known as America people must first correct themselves inwardly. Fix their own homes and their own lives. If that would happen, everything else would fall right in line. I truly believe that.

TATTOOS (On Line comments)

(1) I'm an old man. It is amazing to me how many women in 21st century America have tattoos! Growing up and as a young man, I don't believe I ever knew one woman with tattoos. Now, maybe there were some with hidden ones, but I never saw one up close and personal, and not to brag but the girls were fond of me ;) I almost believe that more women have tattoos than men now. Not good, in my opinion.

(2) I think you are right. I still see a lot of dudes with tats but the majority of women that I see now are tatted up. And it isn't just the thin pretty ones. The fat ones get the tats. I see Moms with tats. I see older, more mature women that have tats on flabby arms. I see plain jane girls with tats. It is truly bizarre. Men do it to look tough. I get it. But women? I just don't get it.

I do have to say, however, in my observations at the gym, that there are women who are not usually bearing tattoos all over their arms and legs. Latina women. Las Mexicanas las parecen que ellas no quieren poner tattoos sobre sus cuerpos. Mexican women do not appear to be as eager to cover their bodies with tattoos as the crazy white American women are.

(3) And rarely does the tattoo enhance the attractiveness of these women. It makes the vast majority of them look the exact opposite. Hopefully future generations of girls will figure it out, and stop it!

SONGS ABOUT RAIN

Well, this town has closed down way too early
And there's nothin' to do
So I'm drivin' around in circles
And I'm thinkin' about you
Today I heard you got a new last name
Sure didn't know it was gonna hit me this way
And the radio just keeps on playin'
All these songs about rain

Now there's all kind of songs about babies
And love that goes right
But for some unknown reason
Nobody wants to play them tonight
Hey, I hope it's sunny wherever you are
But that's sure not the picture tonight in my car
And it sure ain't easin' my pain
All these songs like

"Rainy Night In Georgia" and "Kentucky Rain"
"Here Comes That Rainy Day Feelin' Again"
"Blue Eyes Cryin'" in the "Early Mornin' Rain"
They go on and on
And there's no two the same
Oh, (it would be easy to) (how I wish I could) blame
All these songs about rain
(All these songs about rain)

Well, I thought I was over you
But I guess maybe I'm not
'Cause when I let you go
Looks like lonely is all that I got
Guess I'll never know what could have been
Sure ain't helpin' this mood that I'm in
If they're gonna keep on playin'
These songs like…

— Pat McLaughlin and Liz Rose

WANDA TINASKY AND RELATED MATTERS

by Fred Gardner

Correspondence With Kipen

On Nov. 29, 2000 S.F. Chronicle book editor David Kipen wrote a rave review of Donald Foster’s book “Author Unknown.” Kipen especially liked the chapter in which Foster identified Tom Hawkins —not Tom Pynchon— as the author of the Wanda Tinasky letters to the AVA and other Mendocino publications. Because he falsely described my role in compiling the Tinasky letters, I e-mailed Kipen on Dec. 3:

Note to David Kipen

I was sorry to see you repeat Donald Foster’s inaccurate putdown of me in the Chronicle. I thought you’d been following the situation closely enough and long enough to know better…

What’s true is that I set out in early ‘95 to compile the WT letters and to evaluate Bruce Anderson’s hypothesis that Pynchon had written them. But in June, when Pynchon’s wife/agent denied authorship on his behalf, I told all concerned, including Bruce, that we had to focus on the Mendocino possibilities and shouldn’t make any false claims.

I was never for a second in a "partnership" with T.R. Factor. She desperately wanted to get involved in the project and I thought I had a good assignment for her: pursuing the Mendocino leads (which well may have led to Hawkins). She refused because she was convinced that Pynchon was the author and no further investigation was needed. Bruce endorsed her approach and they published "The Letters of Wanda Tinasky" (vers libre, $22) with the Pynchon-was-Wanda intro, over my objections.

David Kipen wrote back an e-pology of sorts on 12/4:

“… in retrospect, i could have been more accurate, and i apologize. I had forgotten that your name wasn't on the book. but all i said was:

‘Independent scholars Fred Gardner and TR Factor argued that Pynchon wrote the letters while working on his 1990 California novel, “Vineland." They published a collection of Tinasky's letters in 1996, at which point Pynchon's agent stepped forward and -- like Joe Klein, at first -- denied the whole thing…What might it mean, too, that brilliant scholars who've devoted their lives to Pynchon's gloriously humane oeuvre could still confuse it, even for a moment, with the jottings of a barely published, sympathetic but ultimately homicidal postal clerk?’

Would you like me to apologize for the implication that you're brilliant too? why not review some upcoming book for me soon - say, gerry nicosia's vietnam book, unless you have a better idea - and we'll call it square.

No offense intended, and with all due gratitude for you role in clarying the whole affair, david”

Of course I accepted the invitation:

To: David Kipen

Sent: 12/4/2000 6:36 PM

Subject: Re: Not for publication

Thanks for your note; I wasn't asking for an apology… I assumed the "brilliant scholar" reference was to Ed Mendelson. I won't know until I see it if I'd have anything useful to say about gerry nicosia's vietnam book. Will you send it along?

Ed Mendelson is a Columbia University English professor who was convinced that Pynchon had written the Tinasky letters until Pynchon’s agent/wife told him otherwise. Kipen himself had written something implying that he thought Pynchon was Tinasky… Brilliant scholars, indeed… Kipen replied the same day—

“…it's not out yet. but you have dibs. remind me if i forget, or if

something else grabs you. you ever write one of these?

best, david”

Which made me wonder if he was having second thoughts… I wrote back right away to reassure him:

I have written a few book reviews for various publications over the years. I assume you'll provide guidelines —length, etc. FG

Kipen wrote back adding another hurdle:

“i sure will. can you send me a sample?”

Only at this point did it occur to me that the original offer was kind of condescending. David Kipen assumed he could cancel out a careless insult by allowing me to write for the sacred Chronicle book section… And I went for it! Only to be insulted again! Am I the schmuck of the earth?

Before I got around to writing Kipen a self-destructive kiss-off note, a book arrived that I figured I ought to review for The Chronicle. It’s about the medical marijuana movement —in fact, the book covers exactly the same story I’d been following all these years without an outlet… A review would enable me to make a few important points about our government’s grotesque stall in the name of science, and the takeover of our movement by Soros’s operatives, and the Chronicle’s refusal to cover the subject in a sustained way, minimizing the significance of the vote for Prop 215, ignoring the struggle for implementation.

So I swallowed my pride and e-mailed Kipen January 12:

A book has just been published that I'd like to review for the Chronicle —Waiting to Inhale by Alan Bock, published by Seven Locks Press in Santa Ana. It's about the medical marijuana movement in California. Bock is an Orange County Register reporter who has covered the story since '96.

Okay? Please advise,

Note that I hadn’t asked for a copy, just the green light to review it. Kipen’s reply didn’t come until Feb. 1—

“I'm afraid the publisher never coughed up a review copy. It's getting a little late to be doing a january book anyway, but please keep an eye peeled for something else suitable. What/who again do you consider your stocks in trade? Also, I'm about to curl up with david hajdu's new book about dylan, baez, the farinas and you know who in the village circa '64. Can you recommend a nice reading spot, redolent with pynchon scat, someplace in sf?

All finest,

david”

I replied Feb. 5

Note to David Kipen:

I'm not sure I understand —you want me to advise you where you should be, physically, while reading this new book? Also, the Chron doesn't review books after they're a month old? Even if they've been ignored? Even if the subject is one of the most significant, under-reported stories of our time and place? Well…

You’re the man, Kipen. Have you assigned the forthcoming anthology of Dashiell Hammett's letters?

As ever,

Fred Gardner

Afterthoughts

Not every scene and every line in Pynchon’s ouevre is "gloriously humane." To me some of it has a perverse, repellent edge —just like the Tinasky letters. Wasn’t there a scene in Gravity’s Rainbow where Malcolm X goes down a toilet bowl? What about the Humbert Humbert stuff?

The amazing Wanda Tinasky caper was set in Mendocino, but you could say it took place along the borderlines between obscurity and fame, reality and print, and that our recent correspondence is an extension of it. It was thought-provoking and humbling (made me feel uncultured). Properly laid out, it would have made a great book no matter who the author turned out to be. You almost got this in your review.

The rich/poor system creates very little room at the top financially and the culture reflects that. In many fields you’re either a star or you’re nameless. The difference in skill level between basketball players who make the NBA and those who don’t is really thin. Why shouldn’t the same apply to writers? And musicians? And scientists? And many others? I suppose that after years of inadequate re-enforcement the unsuccessful ones tend to give up, find other ways of making a living, while the winners, thriving on kudos and support, are more likely to keep improving. Tom Hawkins was lucky to find an outlet in his late fifties; it enabled him to produce some fantastic material.

I thought about Wanderin’ Tom last week when I heard Jason Epstein on the radio, shilling for his memoir “Book Business,” casually boasting that he had invented the “quality” paperback. But Harper’s —not Doubleday, where Jason was an editor in the early ‘50s— brought out the first successful quality line. This was the kind of number that Wanda Tinasky used to call, so adroitly, in the paper of record… Jason Epstein, jogging his victory lap with Terri Gross, recalling how he and Vladimir Nabokov, at the Ritz Bar in Paris, had toasted Richard Nixon… Nabokov was all for U.S. intervention in Vietnam, convinced it would hasten the fall of the Soviet Union and the return of his family estates… How right he was!

Wanda Tinasky was a provocateur
Traveled with a pun on every hand
All along the countryside, crashed on many a floor
And was even known to tease an honest man

In Mendocino County, a time they talk about
In the pages of the press he or she took a stand
And soon the situation there was equally in doubt
The great ones just leave footnotes in the sand

All along the Internet that name will resound
And the real identity be proved and improved
And everyone around will tell you how they found
The fingerprint, the signature move

PS. Vineland Flick/Movie Review: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/opinion/one-battle-after-another-fascism.html

NEW YORK, ‘The Big Apple,’ ‘The Naked City…’

“There are eight million stories in the naked city,” a voice-over concludes at the end of the 1948 film ‘The Naked City.’ Taking its title from a book of Weegee photographs, ‘The Naked City’ is not, however, just a noirish police procedural but a love letter to an ineffable place alternatively known as the modern Babylon, the city that never sleeps, and Baghdad-on-the-Subway. It’s the place where Henry David Thoreau found the pigs wandering in the streets the most respectable part of the population, where the novelist Ann Petry heard a “cacophony of pneumatic brakes,” and it bestowed on you, wrote the essayist E.B. White, two gifts: one of privacy, the other of loneliness.

— Brenda Wineapple

PERMIT ME A VOYAGE

Take these who will as may be: I
Am careless now of what they fail:
My heart and mind discharted lie
And surely as the nerved nail

Appoints all quarters on the north
So now it designates him forth
My sovereign God my princely soul
Whereon my flesh is priestly stole:

Whence forth shall my heart and mind
To God through soul entirely bow,
Therein such strong increase to find
In truth as is my fate to know:

Small though that be great God I know
I know in this gigantic day
What God is ruined and I know
How labors with Godhead this day:

How from the porches of our sky
The crested glory is declined:
And hear with what translated cry
The stridden soul is overshined:

And how this world of wildness through
True poets shall walk who herald you:
Of whom God grant me of your grace
To be, that shall preserve this race.

Permit me voyage, Love, into your hands.

— James Agee

Salvador Dali painting *The face of war*, 1940-41; photo: Eric Schaal

MY SENATE TESTIMONY ON SURVEILLANCE

Americans have become numb to surveillance, and eliminating Quiet Skies is hopefully just a start.

by Matt Taibbi

Last year, former Hawaii Congresswoman and Presidential Candidate Tulsi Gabbard was placed in a surveillance program called Quiet Skies by the Transportation and Security Administration. Across eight flights she was subject to intrusive searches, followed by bomb-sniffing dogs, and trailed by three Federal Air Marshals per flight, who if they were following procedure were attempting to listen to her conversations, following her to airport exits to see who if anyone met her, and even recording how often and at what times she went to the bathroom.

To cover the story I contacted the TSA. They no-commented the main question – “TSA does not confirm or deny whether any individual has matched to a risk-based rule,” they said – but they added, as if in mitigation: ”Simply matching to a risk-based rule does not constitute derogatory information about an individual.”

In other words: “We can’t say if Ms. Gabbard was in the program, but if she was, don’t draw conclusions, because we do this even to innocent people.”

Before Quiet Skies was discontinued by this administration, it was a symbol of the steep decline of federal enforcement since 9/11. The government spent $200 million a year following up to 50 people a day for a program that in its history never once led to an arrest, or thwarted a single criminal act. Despite its demonstrated inutility and grave civil liberties concerns it was re-funded year after year because this is what our government does now: it gathers information on its own citizens as an end in itself.

In a week in which the question of whether federal security officials always tell the truth to Congress is back in the news, it’s worth noting that it’s been 13 years since then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper answered, “No, sir,” and “Not wittingly” when Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon asked, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

Clapper later explained that he’d responded in the “least most untruthful manner.”

That episode solidified the principle that if you lie about mass surveillance programs in America, even under oath, you not only get to keep your job, you get to be hired as a professional truth-teller after retirement, a National Security Analyst for CNN. If you try to tell the truth about the same issues, your options are prison or leaving the country forever.

In those 13 years since, Americans became numb to surveillance. It was once a core principle that government couldn’t or shouldn’t spy on citizens without predication. Now much of the country accepts as inevitable the idea that every move we make is being recorded and analyzed.

We know emails and phone conversations are being collected passively, via programs of dubious legality, and the mountains of data we leave behind as our lives move online– from geolocations of cell phones to GPS tracking to travel, banking, and medical records – are increasingly fodder for overt and covert acquisition by federal analysts. As Google admitted last week, federal officials partnered with companies not just to monitor speech but to suppress it on a grand scale.

A lot of these changes have their roots in War on Terror programs that exchanged predication for a pre-crime theory out of Minority Report. Quiet Skies was the paradigmatic example of a program that could take endless liberties with the Constitution because it was secret. When you gather information with no intention of going to court, as the TSA did with Quiet Skies, you never have to justify yourself to a judge. This leads to a lot of what one court called “the exact sort of ‘general, exploratory rummaging’ that the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent.”

This is a betrayal not just of the public but of people we trained at taxpayer expense to do real and important work. Former Marshal Robert MacLean put it best when he said “The air marshal’s job is to protect the cockpit and the pilots. Let somebody else do the intelligence.”

Similarly in the last decade current and former FBI agents – fellow witness Tristan Leavitt’s firm has represented a number of them – have talked about how since 9/11, the FBI spends less time building cases but does more generalized spying, much of it political. One agent I interviewed said “The distinction between people who believe bad thoughts and people who do bad things” has been “completely lost” on our government since 9/11.

Once you start down the road of collecting information on innocent people, it creates the intellectual justification for doing it again and again. From a contracting perspective, this is the proverbial self-licking ice cream cone, a spiral of endless expense. Morally, all this information-gathering reverses the natural political order, giving elected officials undeserved and unearned power over their bosses – the voters. These programs all need to be reevaluated. A lot of them have to go. People who lie about them in this chamber need to be fired.

Let’s hope the elimination of Quiet Skies is just the beginning. Thank you.

A READER WRITES: This is the “splash” page of Housing & Urban Development, an official US government website.

LEAD STORIES, WEDNESDAY'S NYT

Shutdown Enters First Full Day With No Hint Either Side Will Give

How the Shutdown Is Affecting Federal Services and Workers

Trump and Hegseth Recount Familiar Partisan Complaints to Top Military Leaders

Trump Announces Deal With Pfizer to Sell Drugs to Medicaid at European Prices

White House Pulls Pick to Lead Labor Data Agency

Judge Rules Trump Unlawfully Targeted Noncitizens Over Pro-Palestinian Speech

California Governor Signs Sweeping A.I. Law

The Book That Taught Nonna to Cook Is Coming to America

*Kurfürstendamm* - Street Scene (1925) by George Grosz

HOW A GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN WILL AFFECT SOCIAL SECURITY

Retirement, survivor and disability payments will continue, but some services may be temporarily unavailable.

by Tara Siegel Bernard

The failure to reach a budget agreement will shut down much of the federal government on Wednesday, but that won’t stop the flow of several critical benefits, including Social Security retirement and disability payments, which are sent to more than 74 million people each month.

Applying for benefits will also still be possible, either online, over the phone or at the agency’s field offices, which generally remain open in the event of a budgetary lapse.

“We will continue activities critical to our direct-service operations and those needed to ensure accurate and timely payment of benefits,” according to a recent document from Tom Holland, Social Security’s chief financial officer. The letter described the agency’s contingency plan in the event of a federal shutdown.

Both Social Security and Medicare are not subject to annual budget negotiations by Congress — their funding is mandatory because it has already been authorized by the Social Security Act. (Social Security’s dedicated revenue source is generated largely by payroll taxes, which are split by workers and their employers. Medicare is partly funded by the same revenue stream.)

That means retirement, survivor and disability benefits will continue uninterrupted. Supplemental Security Income, a needs-based program for poor or disabled beneficiaries that is administered by the agency, works a bit differently: It is funded through appropriations made by Congress, but those payments are available through December, experts said.

Still, some of the Social Security Administration’s more general services will be put on hold. They include benefit verification, benefit updates that are unrelated to the adjudication of benefits, corrections to an earnings record and the replacement of Medicare cards, according to the agency’s letter explaining its contingency plans.

If the shutdown drags on, it could delay Social Security’s annual cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, which adjusts payments for price inflation. That measure is based on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (called C.P.I.-W), a figure that was set to come out in mid-October. But it is calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is expected to suspend operations.

In a politically charged message sent to Social Security employees on Tuesday afternoon, the agency’s commissioner, Frank Bisignano, said that President Trump opposed a government shutdown but that Democrats were blocking efforts to keep it running.

“The agency has contingency plans in place for executing an orderly shutdown of activities that would be affected by any lapse in appropriations forced by congressional Democrats,” he said in the message.

Most of Social Security’s frontline employees will continue to report to work, though, like other essential federal workers, they will not be paid. The agency and its staff have already experienced a lot of tumult this year, which began when the Department of Government Efficiency slashed roughly 12 percent of its work force.

“We have a well-documented morale crisis at Social Security, made worse over the past eight months as we have lost thousands more employees,” said a statement from Social Security Workers United, a committee of the American Federation of Government Employees union that represents 40,000 agency workers. “Delaying our paychecks will make the morale crisis even worse. We are being asked to keep delivering earned benefits while our own financial situations suffer.”

(nytimes.com)

TRUMP'S N-WORD JOKE FALLS FLAT AS AMERICA'S TOP GENERALS LAUGH AWKWARDLY AT GAG ABOUT FIRING THEM

by Katelyn Caralle

Donald Trump tried to soften his military leaders with a series of jokes that didn't quite hit with the serious crowd of top brass.

The president spared no expense by gathering every single general from across the world at Marine Corps Base Quantico on Tuesday.

But his speech proved to be largely meandering as Trump found himself addressing a largely silent crowd of military generals rather than the raucous, overtly supportive audiences he typically commands.

The president bragged that liberals didn't even put up a fight when he wanted to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War, claiming: 'There's been no fight… They're sort of giving up. They've had it with Trump.'

He claimed the 'first sign of wokeness' in the military was in the mid 1900s when the War Department, which existed for 158 years, was renamed to the Department of Defense.

But those usual attack lines didn't hit, Trump attempted to soften the stone-faced generals with a series of quips at the top of his remarks – including making a joke about the 'N' word.

'There are two "n" words and you can't use either of them,' Trump said, telling the room of uniformed leaders that the second 'N' word is 'nuclear.'

'We can't let people throw around that word. I call it the 'N' word,' Trump insisted, explaining how he moved one or two submarines to the coast of Russia after the Kremlin spoke about nuclear-armed adversaries.

As he departed the White House for the unprecedented gathering, Trump suggested that some of his military leaders could be losing their jobs.

'We have great people. We have our real warriors over there. And when they're not good… you know what happened? We say you're fired – get out,' he told press before taking Marine One to the Marine Corps base.

'If I don't like somebody, I'm gonna fire them right on the spot,' Trump insisted.

Still, during the top of his speech, Trump told his generals to 'loosen up,' and even 'applause' if they wanted to.

'You can do everything you want, and if you don't like what I'm saying, you can leave the room,' Trump said, but then added: 'Because there goes your rank, there goes your future.'

This earned him a hearty laugh from the auditorium of military leaders.

'You just feel nice and loose because we're all on the same team,' he said.

The president claimed that he almost fired his War Secretary because he gave such a good speech.

Pete Hegseth, who spoke before Trump, warned America's enemies not to 'FAFO, which stands for f*** around and find out.'

'From this moment forward the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: war fighting, preparing for war and preparing to win,' he stated.

What started as a pep talk to military leadership turned into a list of new directives for his subordinates.

The War Secretary said that there would be a male standard of fitness for all service members because he was 'tired of seeing fat troops.' He insisted, however, that these new rules are 'not about preventing women from serving.'

'If women can make it, excellent, if they cannot — then so be it … it will also mean that weak men won't qualify. This is combat,' Hegseth said.

TRUMP AND HEGSETH RECOUNT FAMILIAR PARTISAN COMPLAINTS TO TOP MILITARY LEADERS

The U.S. generals and admirals summoned from around the world had been given little information about the planned event.

by Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt & Shawn McCreesh

In the end, it was just another campaign-style presentation. President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recited a familiar litany of partisan culture war talking points in their highly anticipated call-up of several hundred military officers on Tuesday.

But in a rambling and sometimes incoherent speech in which he praised his own tariffs and insulted former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Trump disclosed that he had told Mr. Hegseth to use American cities as “training grounds” for the military.

It was an evolution of one of Mr. Trump’s favorite themes — that cities run by Democrats are lawless, urban hellscapes. But now he was telling military commanders charged with waging war his thinking on where their next deployments could be.

“It seems that the ones that are run by the radical left Democrats, what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places,” the president told the generals and admirals at a military base in Virginia. “And we’re going to straighten them out one by one, and this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room.”

“That’s a war too,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s a war from within.”

Mr. Trump’s comments were greeted by expressionless faces — the Pentagon’s senior military leaders had warned the officers not to react or cheer, per the norms of what is supposed to be a nonpartisan military. The result: the audience was quieter and much more still than Mr. Trump usually encounters in his stump speeches.

One senior officer said they were told to clap only when the Joint Chiefs of Staff did, like at the State of the Union address.

The news last week that Mr. Hegseth had hastily summoned hundreds of the country’s top brass to Marine Corps Base Quantico for a first-of-its-kind gathering had led to a flurry of speculation and apprehension about what he had planned. More firings? A declaration of war on Venezuela? A loyalty pledge to the president?

Instead it was more criticism of the military, which Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth complained had, under their predecessors, become distracted by political correctness.

Mr. Hegseth, who spoke first, told the generals and admirals that he was tightening standards for fitness and grooming, cracking down even more rigorously against “woke garbage” and rejecting the notion of “toxic” leadership.

It was unclear why, with a shutdown of the federal government looming, Mr. Trump and his defense secretary decided to gather the country’s senior military leaders from deployments in the U.S., Europe, Asia and the Pacific to tell them face to face that they were straight out of “central casting,” as Mr. Trump said.

“I’m thrilled to be here this morning to address the senior leadership of what is once again known around the world as the Department of War,” Mr. Trump said. (Though Mr. Trump has renamed the Defense Department, Congress has not yet approved the change.)

Mr. Trump praised his own policies as he looked to the future. “You’ll never see four years like we had with Biden and that group of incompetent people that ran this country that should have never been there,” Mr. Trump said, to silence in the room. “With leaders like we have right here in this beautiful room today, we will vanquish every danger and crush every threat to our freedom.”

In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has ordered National Guard soldiers to Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago and Portland, Ore., to assist immigration efforts and combat crime. Local political leaders have objected to the mobilizations, with many pointing out that violent crime rates have fallen sharply in recent years after surging during the coronavirus pandemic.

The president also directed the military to attack boats in the Caribbean that he said were carrying drugs to the United States, but he offered no detailed legal justification.

Even before the event was finished, former military officials were criticizing the president’s and Mr. Hegseth’s remarks.

“I couldn’t be prouder of our highest-ranking leaders for maintaining an apolitical face under immense pressure,” said retired Army Maj. General Paul D. Eaton, who served in the Iraq war.

He added, “Pete Hegseth spent millions to fly in all of our generals and admirals to rant about facial hair and brag about how many pull-ups he can do, and have Donald Trump sleepwalk through a list of partisan gripes.”

Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the gathering “an expensive, dangerous dereliction of leadership” by the Trump administration.

“While American forces confront real threats across the globe, Mr. Hegseth and President Trump chose to pull generals and admirals away from their missions to listen to hours of political grievances,” Mr. Reed, a West Point graduate and former officer in the 82nd Airborne Division, said in a statement after the speeches.

In his address, Mr. Hegseth also railed against what he called “stupid rules of engagement” that he said limited soldiers and commanders in the field. He defended his firing of more than a dozen military leaders, many of them people of color and women.

And he said that, from now on, promotions would be based on merit, which in his view, they previously were not.

“We’ve already done a lot in this area, but more changes are coming soon,” he said.

When Mr. Hegseth summoned the senior officers last week, he gave no reason for the meeting, which has no precedent in scope and scale in recent memory. The military leaders were told to expect a speech from the secretary heralding a so-called war-fighter culture he has championed since taking office, but they were given little other information.

The event took a new twist on Sunday when Mr. Trump said he would attend. That raised alarm among military specialists over his tendency as commander in chief to use U.S. troops as political props and visits to bases as occasions to bash political rivals, Democrats and the news media. During a speech at Fort Bragg, N.C., in June, Mr. Trump led troops to boo journalists and Mr. Biden.

The president criticized the news media on Tuesday as well, but this time there was no response from the crowd. “We have a really corrupt press,” he opined. One officer rolled his head and looked restless. “Terrible,” another senior officer said of the speech later, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The top four-star combatant commanders and Joint Chiefs of Staff typically meet at least twice a year in Washington, often holding a working dinner with the president. But the large number of lower-ranking generals and admirals at Tuesday’s meeting was highly unusual, military officials said.

In the days before the event, Democratic lawmakers and military specialists questioned the cost and disruption to daily operations caused by the meeting, as well as the security risks of concentrating so many top military commanders in one place. All, it appeared, for Mr. Hegseth to be able to lecture military leaders with decades of combat experience on an enhanced “warrior ethos” in a forum that was televised live.

“It appears to be one more demonstration of Secretary Hegseth mistakenly believing our military leadership needs to be directed to focus on fighting wars,” said Kori Schake, a former defense official in the George W. Bush administration who directs foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Mr. Trump acknowledged the cost of the gathering as he boarded a helicopter to head to Quantico.

“These are our generals, our admirals, our leaders, and it’s a good thing, a thing like this has never been done before, because they came from all over the world,” the president said. “And there’s a little bit of expense, not much, but there’s a little expense for that. We don’t like to waste it. We’d rather spend it on bullets and rockets.”

(NY Times)

A DISTURBING DIATRIBE

Trump put on a disturbing show for America’s generals and admirals.

by Tom Nichols

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s convocation of hundreds of generals and admirals today turned out to be, in the main, a nothingburger. Hegseth strutted and paced and lectured and hectored, warning the officers that he was tired of seeing fat people in the halls of the Pentagon and promising to take the men who have medical or religious exemptions from shaving—read: mostly Black men—and kick them out of the military. He assured them that the “woke” Department of Defense was now a robust and manly Department of War, and that they would no longer have to worry about people “smearing” them as “toxic” leaders. (Hegseth went on a tirade about the word toxic itself, noting that if a commitment to high standards made him “toxic,” then “so be it.”)

All in all, an utterly embarrassing address. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The assembled military leaders likely already knew that Hegseth is unqualified for his job, and they could mostly tune out the sloganeering that Hegseth, a former TV host, was probably aiming more at Fox News and the White House than at the military itself. What they could not ignore, however, was the spectacle that President Donald Trump put on when he spoke after Hegseth.

The president talked at length, and his comments should have confirmed to even the most sympathetic observer that he is, as the kids say, not okay. Several of Hegseth’s people said in advance of the senior-officer conclavethat its goal was to energize America’s top military leaders and get them to focus on Hegseth’s vision for a new Department of War. But the generals and admirals should be forgiven if they walked out of the auditorium and wondered: What on earth is wrong with the commander in chief?

Trump seemed quieter and more confused than usual; he is not accustomed to audiences who do not clap and react to obvious applause lines. “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before,” he said at the outset. (Hegseth had the same awkward problem earlier, waiting for laughs and applause that never came.) The president announced his participation only days ago, and he certainly seemed unprepared.

Trump started rambling right out of the gate. But first, he channeled his inner Jeb Bush, asking the officers to clap—but, you know, only if they felt like it.

Just have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud. And if you want to do anything you want, you can do anything you want. And if you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank; there goes your future.

Laughs rippled through the room.

Trump then wandered around, lost in the halls of history. He talked about how the Department of War was renamed in the 1950s. (It happened in the late 1940s.) At one point, he mentioned that the Atomic Energy Commission had confirmed that his strike on Iran had destroyed Tehran’s nuclear program. (Iran still has a nuclear program, and the AEC hasn’t existed since the mid-’70s.) He whined about the “Gulf of America” and how he beat the Associated Press in court on the issue. (The case is still ongoing.) The Israeli-Palestinian conflict? “I said”—he did not identify to whom—“‘How long have you been fighting?’ ‘Three thousand years, sir.’ That’s a long time. But we got it, I think, settled.”

He added later: “War is very strange.” Indeed.

And so it went, as Trump recycled old rally speeches, full of his usual grievances, lies, and misrepresentations; his obsessions with former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama; and his sour disappointment in the Nobel Prize committee. (“They’ll give it to some guy that didn’t do a damn thing,” he said.) He congratulated himself on tariffs, noting that the money could buy a lot of battleships, “to use an old term.” And come to think of it, he said, maybe America should build battleships again, from steel, not that papier-mâché and aluminum stuff the Navy is apparently using now: “Aluminum that melts if it looks at a missile coming at it. It starts melting as the missile is about two miles away.”

Ohhhkayyyy.

Even if these officers had never attended a MAGA event or even seen one, they were now in the middle of a typical, unhinged Trump diatribe. The president had a speech waiting for him on the teleprompter, and now and then Trump would hunch his shoulders and apparently pick off a stray word or phrase from it, like a distracted hunter firing random buckshot from a duck blind. But Trump has always had difficulty wrestling Stephen Miller’s labored neoclassical references and clunky, faux Churchillisms off a screen and into his mouth. Mostly, the president decided to just riff on his greatest hits to the stone-faced assembly.

As comical as many of Trump’s comments were, the president’s nakedly partisan appeal to U.S. military officers was a violation of every standard of American civil-military relations, and exactly what George Washingtonfeared could happen with an unscrupulous commander in chief. The most ominous part of his speech came when he told the military officers that they would be part of the solution to domestic threats, fighting the “enemy from within.” He added, almost as a kind of trollish afterthought, that he’d told Hegseth, “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military—National Guard, but military—because we’re going into Chicago very soon. That’s a big city with an incompetent governor. Stupid governor.”

This farrago of fantasy, menace, and autocratic peacocking is the kind of thing that the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan evocatively called “boob bait for the Bubbas” and that George Orwell might have called “prolefeed.” It’s one thing to serve it up to an adoring MAGA crowd: They know that most of it is nonsense and only some of it is real. They find it entertaining, and they can take or leave as much of Trump’s rhetorical junk-food buffet as they would like. It is another thing entirely to aim this kind of sludge at military officers, who are trained and acculturated to treat every word from the president with respect, and to regard his thoughts as policy.

But American officers have never had to contend with a president like Trump. Plenty of presidents behaved badly and suffered mental and emotional setbacks: John F. Kennedy cavorted with secretaries in the White House pool, Lyndon Johnson unleashed foul-mouthed tirades on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Nixon fell into depression and paranoia, Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden wrestled with the indignities of age. But the officer corps knew that presidents were basically normal men surrounded by other normal men and women, and that the American constitutional system would insulate the military from any mad orders that might emerge from the Oval Office.

Likewise, in Trump’s first term, the president was surrounded by people who ensured that some of his nuttiest—and most dangerous—ideas were derailed before they could reach the military. Today, senior U.S. officers have to wonder who will shield them from the impulses of the person they just saw onstage. What are officers to make of Trump’s accusation that other nations, only a year ago, supposedly called America “a dead country”? (After all, these men and women were leading troops last year.) How are they supposed to react when Trump slips the surly bonds of truth, insults their former commanders in chief, and talks about his close relationship with the Kremlin?

In 1973, an Air Force nuclear-missile officer named Harold Hering asked a simple question during a training session: “How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?” The question cost him his career. Military members are trained to execute orders, not question them. But today, both the man who can order the use of nuclear arms and the man who would likely verify such an order gave disgraceful and unnerving performances in Quantico. How many officers left the room asking themselves Major Hering’s question?

(Atlantic Monthly)

THE TRUMPANYAHU “PEACE” PLAN, AND OTHER NOTES

by Caitlin Johnstone

The Trumpanyahu administration is pushing a “peace plan” for Gaza which critics are saying would damn Palestinians to permanent subjugation under the thumb of Israel. The proposed plan would see Gaza supervised by Trump and by war criminal Tony Blair, and Netanyahu is already saying that the deal will allow the IDF to remain in the Palestinian territory indefinitely.

The last time the US brokered a “peace plan” between Israel and Hamas, the US and Israel torched it in a few weeks, laid siege to the enclave, and announced a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. So even without all the major problems with the offer, there’s not going to be a whole lot of enthusiasm about it.

I’m seeing a lot of purportedly pro-Palestine voices proclaiming that Hamas needs to accept the deal in order to end the genocide. I personally will never tell Palestinians what they should do to address their abuse at the hands of the empire or what deals they should accept. My job as a westerner is to oppose the western empire that is butchering them, not to finger-wag and moralize at the empire’s victims.

The onus is on the party committing genocide to stop committing genocide. The onus is not on the victims of the genocide to sign agreements in the hope of saving themselves from the genocide. This is obvious to anyone who isn’t a psychopath.

❖

The Israeli Foreign Ministry keeps trying to claim that the Global Sumud Flotilla bringing aid to Gaza is actually a Hamas operation. Their latest effort in this ridiculous campaign was a statement trying to connect the dots between Hamas and people associated with the flotilla which bizarrely featured a photo of British politician George Galloway whom the ministry falsely identified as a British Palestinian man named Zaher Birawi.

Not one single person in the entire world believes this narrative. Literally nobody believes the Gaza flotilla has any connection to Hamas. It’s just a framing they’re circulating to preemptively justify any cruelty they might inflict upon the flotilla activists.

Meanwhile the death count of people who have starved to death in Gaza has risen to around 453. Israel is trying to convince the world that the Global Sumud Flotilla are terrorists for trying to help stop this.

In addition to everything else this genocide has been, it has also been one nonstop insult to our intelligence.

❖

Two separate news reports have just come out about Israeli propaganda operations to manipulate western opinion.

In an article titled “Israel is paying influencers $7,000 per post,” Responsible Statecraft’s Nick Cleveland-Stout reports on documents showing that 14 to 18 individuals have been receiving significant compensation to generate pro-Israel content for platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

In a write-up titled “Trump’s Ex-Digital Guru Works to Combat Antisemitism,” O’Dwyer’s PR News reports that “The firm of Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale has a four-month $6M agreement for strategic communications and media services in support of Havas Media’s engagement by Israel to develop a nationwide campaign in the US to combat antisemitism.”

Journalist Jack Paulson notes that we know about Parscale’s six million-dollar psyop because he had to register as a foreign agent of the Israeli government, saying Parscale was paid “to map out Gen-Z influencers and distribute a narrative about antisemitism in the United States.”

This is what happens when a state doesn’t have facts, reason or morality on its side, but has unlimited funding.

❖

It’s silly how people call it “the Holy Land”. If the land was holy it would have turned Israelis into decent people.

❖

One of the many ugly things about the Trump era has been watching so many hippie woo woo spiritual types turn into crazed transphobic QAnoners, because those were my people. It’s kind of an embarrassing admission at this point, but they were.

I didn’t come to where I’m at ideologically from reading Lenin or talking to Marxists, I got here because I did a lot of inner work and had some transformative experiences and came out the other side with a deep love for this beautiful planet and for the strange naked ape mutants who people it, and with a yearning to help create a healthy world. I just kinda felt my way through the human experience as the barefoot hippie earth mama that I am, and it carried me to a clear intuitive understanding that the western empire must end and that capitalism cannot carry our species into the future.

And I’d just sorta assumed the people who looked and talked like me were on a similar journey this whole time. It looked like we were for a hot minute a decade ago when we were all getting excited about Bernie Sanders and the possibility of a real socialist movement in the western world, but then after that it got really weird and gross. I started watching so many of the leftwardly-inclined spiritual types I’d connected with in 2015 and 2016 start getting sucked into the Trumpian worldview and getting crazier and crazier with QAnon and all its related psyops until they were indistinguishable from garden variety American conservatives.

I remember a Bernie guy I’d made friends with in 2016 shrieking at me in 2020 and accusing me of acting like an Iranian mullah when I criticized Trump’s assassination of Qassem Soleimani. My Facebook feed increasingly morphed from Bernie Sanders stuff to Jill Stein stuff to pro-Trump stuff, and then with Covid a lot of them went full-blown wingnut and started posting crazy right wing shit about trans people and Muslims and immigrants and China. I saw it happen to people I’d known in person my whole life, transforming from the barefoot peaceniks I’d always known into stuffy reactionaries in just a few years.

I’d tell them they’d turned into Republicans and they’d generally get all huffy and indignant and claim they were just like me, free-thinking leftist dissidents who opposed the fake two-party system. But there they were, fully buying into the entire worldview of one of those parties — and it was the one that’s further to the right.

And I just found the whole thing baffling. I mean, why were these people ever attracted to the left in the first place? Did they not have any values? If they did, what happened to them? How could they not see they were being duped into throwing their support behind the establishment they used to oppose? What happened to their spiritual insight? Their intuition? Their rebelliousness? Where was their connection to nature and to heart which had previously caused them to stand for peace and love?

And eventually I learned that it was just an act for most people. For most people spirituality is just an accessory for the ego, and being a hippie is just a feel-good fashion statement. They’re not engaging in the kind of rigorous interior excavation and ruthless self-honesty that would have protected them from imperial psyops to corral their political energy back into the mainstream herd. They just like how weed makes them feel and enjoy Alex Grey art. They wear spirituality, but they’ve never lived it.

This feels like kind of a confession because I’m admitting to having been naive about something many of you probably already knew for a long time, but it’s just the truth. I was naive. I stumbled into this commentary gig after years of focusing almost entirely on spirituality and inner work without paying much attention to what other people were doing. I have a journalism degree and I was a news junkie when I was younger, but then I fell down the rabbit hole of inner exploration and lost track of the outer world. It took me a while to get a read on things once I tuned back in.

It’s been a trip, man.

(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)

*The Doryman (Evening) Port Clyde, ME* (1933) by NC Wyeth

33 Comments

Paul Modic October 1, 2025

Tuesday Musing
I’m sitting here with delicious coffee, starting a new notebook for October, and watching the birds feeding on the wet deck: a flock of red-winged blackbirds, scrub jay and a couple others. Fifteen years ago a woman got me into feeding the birds, inspired me to organize and type up stories culled from my pile of journals and after telling me that men’s houses were like furniture stores I moved one of the couches out of the living room.
( I had read some quirky stories to some trimmers down the street at a friend’s house and one was intrigued and came over for a morning sauna. She came back that night for a glass of wine and a game of Scrabble, said she wasn’t interested in a one-night-stand and I said that’s fine, just enjoying the company. Then we were sitting on the couch and she leaned over and kissed me. “I know!” she said. Women like to give their “I am not a slut” speech and after that it’s on?)

Reply
- Chuck Dunbar October 1, 2025
  
  Paul, “Tuesday Musing” was amusing, made this old guy laugh.
  
  Reply
  - Paul Modic October 1, 2025
    
    Thanks, you inspired the second paragraph. I was going to just post the first, then thought better make it more lively for Chuck…
    
    Reply
    - Chuck Dunbar October 1, 2025
      
      Now I’m even more amused….Thanks, Paul.
      
      Reply
Harvey Reading October 1, 2025

And as of this week, drivers in Marin and Sonoma counties anticipate a faster commute.

Maybe by a minute or two…

Reply
- Eric Sunswheat October 1, 2025
  
  Maybe Novato Narrows will be slower, than during the past month… and perhaps even faster over the next two plus years, if the SMART Train signature collection drive now underway, is successful for extending existing sales tax in Marin and Sonoma counties, and as a result, expands service, to allow linked EV last mile options for carpool passengers to transfer to final destinations.
  
  Status update:
  Carpool lane hours now on 101 harmonized, from Sausalito to Windsor, changed September 30th, 5-10am and 3-7pm.
  Hybrid and Electric Vehicles with single occupancy, are no longer available to operate, except with additional passenger in car pool hours lane, as of October 1st, with 60 days enforcement grace period.
  FasTrak Flex updated device, have a slider switch for recording one, two, or three vehicle occupants, to get toll credits and comply with carpool law as enforcement tightens.
  
  —> September 3, 2025
  Every gadget has an expiration date, including those FasTrak toll-paying tags that have carried motorists across Bay Area bridges for years. Tags made before 2019 — distinguished by their large, blocky shape and sun-faded logos — will become useless in two years, when the California Department of Transportation discontinues their technology. At that point, bridge toll-reading equipment will no longer recognize the vintage transponders, which could lead to a surprise invoice or notice of violation for the driver.
  
  To avoid the hassle of having to pay the old-fashioned way, drivers with obsolete tags can easily order new ones, either by requesting one via the FasTrak website or in-person at the customer service center in SoMa. Anyone who wishes to discard an old tag can simply drop it in the mailbox, said John Goodwin, spokesperson for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which runs the FasTrak electronic toll collection system.
  https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/fastrak-tag-expires-21027621.php
  
  Reply
John McKenzie October 1, 2025

I looked at this picture puzzle and wondered if there were some trick in the answer because the lemons appeared to be slightly different sizes. I quickly decided that would make it unsolvable so worked it out as is. Answer is 55.5

Reply
- George Hollister October 1, 2025
  
  I came up with the same. The potential trick is, by convention, in each equation the multiplication has to be done first, then the addition.
  
  Reply
bharper October 1, 2025

39
Apple plus tomato= 14

Reply
James Tippett October 1, 2025

55.5

Reply
Me October 1, 2025

48?

Reply
Eric Labowitz October 1, 2025

from KB:
BRAD WYLIE ON THE LINEAGE OF THE KEPHART HOME:
His name is Wiley: Brad Wiley

Reply
Chuck Dunbar October 1, 2025

“Tatoos”

I’ll second this comment: “I’m an old man. It is amazing to me how many women in 21st century America have tattoos! Growing up and as a young man, I don’t believe I ever knew one woman with tattoos.”

That’s also true for me, though as an older guy in my late 50’s, I had a girl friend who had largish tatoos of a Buddha and a snake. The Buddha I didn’t mind, the snake I disliked as I’m afraid of them. Mostly I ignored them, as she had other, prettier assets. I, too, hope this strange trend in women’s adornment falls by the wayside.

Reply
- Matt Kendall October 1, 2025
  
  I got my first tattoo when I was 15, I was drinking some wine on the reservation with a buddy of mine after hauling hay for an old rancher in Covelo. My older buddy had an uncle who served some time in the joint and came home with a new skill. He built a tattoo gun out of a Walkman tape player an ink pen barrel and a guitar string.
  
  He burned a white plastic spoon while holding a frozen coffee cup over the burning spoon. As the spoon burned the smoke and some nasty black webs went upwards and were captured in the cup. He then mixed it with a little water and voila we had tattoo ink.
  
  This masterpiece was the initials of a young princess who I thought I was in love with that summer. It was small and couldn’t be seen if I kept my shirt on which wasn’t often during the summers of my youth.
  
  When I was about 19 I entered a real tattoo parlor and had it covered up. Now it’s basically a blurry spot on my skin.
  
  My mother called tattoos the “self inflicted scars of youth”. I think she hit the nail squarely in the head. Too much freedom without good sense, that’s what it was like being 15 in Covelo.
  
  Reply
  - Chuck Dunbar October 1, 2025
    
    That’s a good tattoo story for sure. Your mom was a wise woman. (I see that I misspelled Tattoo–left out the third “t”– in my above comment, dang, I hate making spelling errors.)
    
    Reply
  - Justine Frederiksen October 2, 2025
    
    Thanks for sharing that about the homemade tattoo gun and ink; very clever and resourceful. I would have loved to have seen it in action, and makes me wonder about all the other types of gadgets people made themselves in prison.
    
    Reply
  - Bruce Anderson October 2, 2025
    
    As I went off to the Marine Corps at age 17, my mother said goodbye by warning me, “If you get a tattoo, don’t come home.”
    
    Reply
- Marco McClean October 1, 2025
  
  Back in the late 1980s or very early 1990s Juanita got a tattoo from Mister G of Triangle Tattoo in Fort Bragg. It took more than one session. It’s angel wings folded down over her entire back, from her shoulders, following her hourglass shape, down over her butt. The ink is UV fluorescent, invisible except under an ultraviolet light, with the wings glowing yellow-green. At first there were faint raised lines in the skin for all the feathers and lines in the feathers, but that healed over. The ink eventually lost its virtue and/or was absorbed and eliminated, so now it doesn’t shine anymore, but she designed it herself on clothes-pattern paper and brought it to them and paid them to do it, and it paid off in naked modeling jobs, that and her various pet birds she brought with her, and she doesn’t regret it at all. At the time, I asked her if it hurt, and she said, Not really. She treated it with vitamin E cream; that’s probably why it healed so well.
  
  Here’s a science talk about tattoos. It isn’t just shoving ink in and leaving it there. Tattoos interact weirdly with your immune system.
  
  Reply
bharper October 1, 2025

Sneaky x
350
Or if you multiply first the apple/tomato and the lemon then add the watermelon:
220

Reply
Aaron Sawyer October 1, 2025

56

Watermelon is 11, Lemon is 15 and Tomato is 3

Reply
- bharper October 1, 2025
  
  It’s both tomato and apple.
  Look closely at the top.
  
  Reply
  - Aaron Sawyer October 1, 2025
    
    So it’s a tomato to the power of an apple?
    
    Reply
    - Matt Kendall October 1, 2025
      
      I got 56
      
      Reply
- Eli Maddock October 1, 2025
  
  I’ll go with 220. But that tomatappleaf is a wildcard so who knows
  
  Reply
  - Eli Maddock October 1, 2025
    
    A second look gets me to 205.5
    Apple 10
    Tomato 3
    Lemon 15
    Melon 10.5
    But now I’ve looked too long and found little dots in the upper left corners and I give up
    
    Reply
Stephen Dunlap October 1, 2025

ya doesn’t has to hurt ma feelins does ya ?

Reply
David Gurney October 1, 2025

Re: Big Don’s “DISTURBING DIATRIBE; & “N-WORD JOKES”
Extremely disturbing, as FOX News camera-candy Pete Hegsrath, and Reality TV Star Big-Don McTRump put on a grotesque farce, that mangled not only the English language, but all norms of decency and respect for the military, by two unqualified, pompous, self-righteous louts.
But it goes further than that, and all the other reasons mentioned in the press of why this gathering was stupid, risky, wasteful and an abrogation of duty:
All our Generals and Admirals have now exposed their faces, all at the same time, in this semi-public event for A.I. photo-recognition software like Palantir. Foreign nations like Russia, China, Israel, Iran etc. have similar face-recognition technology, and are probably clinking champagne glasses over the sheer stupidity of Hegroth and tRump, thanking them for the clear head-shots of 800 of our top military brass.
. . .

Reply
- Eric Sunswheat October 1, 2025
  
  —>. September 19, 2025
  Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday criticized a statement made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Kirk’s murder, accusing him of trying to “hijack Charlie’s memory” when Kirk “was appalled by what was happening in Gaza.”… Carlson then claimed that while Kirk loved the state of Israel, “he did not like Bibi Netanyahu” and felt the Israeli Prime Minister was “a very destructive force.”
  
  “He was appalled by what was happening in Gaza. He was, above all, resentful that he believed Netanyahu was using the United States to prosecute his wars for the benefit of his country and that it was shameful and embarrassing and bad for the United States, and he resented it,” Carlson said.
  https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/charlie-kirk-candace-owens-rob-mccoy-conspiracy-theories-b2829583.html
  
  Reply
Kirk Vodopals October 1, 2025

Re: all the Generals summoned back to hear Dear Leader bloviate about the war within…
It’s a religious war, unfortunately. All ye non-believers and pagans shall be smited by the mighty (small) hand of Orange Douche and his Calvary of Christian Fascists.
They killed Charlie, so it’s time for revenge.
God help us all…

Reply
- David Gurney October 1, 2025
  
  I keep getting this nagging feeling –
  Is Pete Hegseth direct-lineage, or just a reincarnation of George Custer?
  Someone please do the math.
  Praise the Lord!
  
  Reply
  - Nobody October 1, 2025
    
    I think he is a reincarnation of Rocket J. Squirrel.
    
    Reply
    - David Gurney October 1, 2025
      
      Yep.
      Custer just rolled over in his grave screaming “NO!!!!!!!!”
      
      Reply
Nobody October 1, 2025

I knew there was something I liked about Caitlin Johnson. Now it has been revealed to me why.

Reply

Mendocino County Today: Wednesday 10/1/2025

33 Comments

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