Mendocino County Today: Thursday 10/2/2025

Tarwater Hill | Showers Ending | Sneaker Waves | Samuel Kraynek | Reilly Heights | Prescribed Fires | Deborah McWilliams | Redwood Checking | Camp Navarro | Local Events | Court Files | Art Show | Guilty Plea | Philo Bridge | Not Leaving | Yesterday's Catch | New Address | Code Cracker | Leopard Maidens | American Experiment | Commune Crackdown | Less Coddling | Get Dirty | Past Nuptials | Autumn Leaves | Situation Hopeless | Naked Baby | More Interesting | Lead Stories | General Silence | Weak President | Republic Lost | Your Country | The Wretch | Snow Birds | Abyss People | Three Generations | Gotham at War | Cruel World | Big Cities | Texas Panhandle | October Song | Grubby Boy

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RISK OF SNEAKER WAVES along beaches continues today. Otherwise, isolated to scattered showers are expected today before winding down on Friday. Dry weather is forecast for this weekend and early next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A foggy 52F this Thursday morning on the coast. Maybe a sprinkle this evening but otherwise the rain has passed. Mostly clear skies this weekend, that's what they are saying? Rain late next week, we'll see?

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FIRST SNEAKER WAVES SINCE SPRING

They Don’t Sneak—They Strike. Know the Risk, Skip the Beach

by Frank Hartzell

On Wednesday morning, KOZT’s Joe Regelski broke the news: the first sneaker waves of 2025 were forecast to hit that day. Seas surged past 15 feet—the highest since late spring—and the risk will linger through Friday, though Wednesday marked the peak.…

https://mendocinocoast.news/first-sneaker-waves-since-spring-they-dont-sneak-they-strike-know-the-risk-skip-the-beach/

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SAMUEL KRAYNEK

Samuel Kraynek devoted family man, and respected business leader, passed away on September 18th 2025.

Born August of 1947 and raised in Monessen Pennsylvania, Sam lived with his mother Nellie, father Samuel, and sisters Carolyn and Marie. Sam developed dedication to family and his work ethic from an early age, delivering papers and working in his uncle’s grocery store. Sam pursued higher education at St. Francis College. Sam excelled in college, lettering in soccer, organizing high school championships and pledging a fraternity while majoring in accounting. Following college, he moved to Cleveland where he started out in public accounting. From there his professional journey took him to several locations including Chicago, Arizona, Massachusetts, and finally California where he worked with several different companies in food operations and management. Over the course of several decades, he advanced through leadership positions, ultimately serving as Chief Executive Officer prior to his retirement. Colleagues valued his steady leadership, thoughtful decision-making, and his dedication to mentoring the next generation of leaders in the industry.

Family was always at the center of Sam’s life. In 1972 he met his wife Ginger whom he married in 1975. They recently celebrated their 50th anniversary. Together they raised two sons, Christopher, and Stephen, who brought him immense pride and joy. He coached them in soccer and baseball passing on his knowledge and love for the game to them and others. His greatest happiness came from being a grandfather to four grandchildren, whose lives he enriched with his constant presence, encouragement, and warmth. His family remembers him as a steady source of love, wisdom, and humor, whose influence will be felt for generations.

In 1997, Sam and Ginger relocated to the Mendocino coast, where they made their home for the past 28 years. Sam worked first at a local coffee roaster, before moving on to work for North Coast Brewing in 2013. He first served as their controller before moving up to COO, CFO, and ultimately CEO before retiring. In addition to his professional endeavors in Mendocino, he was deeply committed to his community; serving on the Mendocino Coast Chamber of Commerce, The Mendocino Sewer and Water board, and was the Treasurer for St. Anthony’s Church. He believed strongly in giving back and worked tirelessly to strengthen the organizations and initiatives that helped shape the place he called home.

In 2020 he retired to enjoy a simpler life. He spent a lot of his time at soccer fields, baseball diamonds, and softball games cheering his grandchildren on. When he could not make it in person, he would watch them remotely from his living room. He also enjoyed the simple pleasures of life listening to jazz, sharing stories with friends, and spending quiet moments by the coast.

Services will be held at the Sequoia Room of North Coast Brewing on October 18 th at 1PM. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to any charity you feel is fitting of his legacy.

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FOREST HEALTH - SEASON OF THE GOOD FIRE STARTING

With the cooler nights and early light rains, the change of season is in the air and there is a sense of excitement as increased humidity allows prescribed fire to resume in the Tenmile Creek watershed near Laytonville as part of an Eel River Recovery Project (ERRP) CalFire forest health grant. Resources for the project come from the California Climate Investments (CCI), a statewide initiative that puts billions of Cap-and-Trade dollars to work reducing greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening the economy and improving public health and the environment, particularly in disadvantaged communities Hundreds of acres of forest have been thinned by local forest health workers, and now extensive burning is planned for the upcoming fall and winter, beginning in October.

While many forest health projects only thin the forest and do not follow up with prescribed fire, ERRP and their partner Torchbearr plan to carry out controlled burns on almost all the acres being treated because studies after recent catastrophic fires showed that areas thinned and not burned were more susceptible to stand replacing fire than un-treated areas. The build-up of fuels on the North Coast after more than a century of fire suppression does not allow re-introduction of fire without site preparation. Crews from Elk Ridge Tree Service and Hybrid Indigenous Stewardship have thinned 561 acres and have an additional 370 acres planned for treatment by the end of June 2026.

Dozens of volunteers from the Mendocino County Prescribed Burn Association (MCPBA) and personnel and equipment from local fire agencies assisted with burning 177 acres in the first year of the project under the direction of Burn Boss Scot Steinbring of Torchbearr. From October to December 2025, there will be an estimated 20 burn days, and ground fire covering 200 acres on the in the Tenmile Creek watershed north of Laytonville . Thirty days of burning are also being planned for January through May of 2026, targeting mostly pile burns at sites throughout the watershed. We hope to enlist volunteers to help with burning on our present project, but also to build a stewardship corps to use prescribed fire to maintain a healthy landscape and fuel levels into the future in northern Mendocino County.

All projects are with permission from CalFire and other agencies through approved burn plans, burn permits, and air quality permits. All burns will be staffed with trained, professional personnel and fire engines assigned for contingency purposes, local agencies and authorities will be notified of burning. All burning will proceed only if and when weather conditions are suitable as declared by an on-site Burn Boss. Members of the public can expect intermittent, short-duration smoke from these burns which can in some cases impact air quality or reduce visibility for drivers. Burn practitioners applying fire will do everything they can to minimize smoke impacts to local communities, in keeping with their smoke management plans and air quality permit requirements.

Opportunities are open for people who want to be observers to learn about prescribed fire and for volunteers who want to actively help. Email [email protected] or see www.EelRiverRecovery.org for more information. Sign up to volunteer on-line at https://tinyurl.com/yr7yv9nm. For more information on California Climate Investments see https://www.caclimateinvestments.ca.gov/.

Patrick Higgins, Managing Director, Eel River Recovery Project

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DEBORAH LYNN MCWILLIAMS

In Loving Memory of Deborah Lynn McWilliams

January 1, 1958 – September 28, 2025

Deborah Lynn McWilliams, beloved daughter of Trena and Freddie Rouse, passed away on September 28, 2025, at the age of 67.

Deborah’s life was filled with color, joy, and unmistakable style. Her festive holiday outfits, often worn well beyond the season, brightened every room she entered. A lifelong Disneyland fan, she found magic in its music, lights, and laughter.

She delighted in simple pleasures: daily coloring sessions, leisurely walks, and afternoons spent swimming. Shopping trips and visits to the salon for fresh hairdos and mani-pedis were among her favorite treats. Deborah also loved her work at the Sonoma Development Center’s second-hand store, where her cheerful spirit welcomed everyone who stopped by.

Her family and friends will remember her radiant smile, her love of celebration, and the way she brought a sense of fun to ordinary days.

Deborah is survived by her father Fred Rouse; siblings Trena Gibbs, Bob McWilliams, Cindy Parsons, James Rouse, and Marty Rouse; and many extended family members and friends who will cherish her memory.

She was preceded in death by her mother Trena Rouse, her sister Elizabeth McWilliams, and Robert Rolla McWilliams.

Consider honoring Deborah by wearing a splash of holiday color or enjoying a walk in the sunshine, just as she would have loved.

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CAMP DEEP END

by Terry Sites

The third and last music festival of the year at Camp Navarro was held deep in the Redwoods on September 19-21. The first one, “The Redwood Ramble,” was July 19-21 and the second, “Camp Redwood” was August 15-17. While the “Ramble” is not produced locally, the final two are run entirely by Camp Navarro.

All three are described as Family Music Campouts, but each has its own distinctive personality. The Ramble has more teenagers with grandparents along with plenty of parents and singles. The Deep End had 250 young kids this year, which created a high energy level. Camp Redwood falls somewhere in between.

The bands playing at the Deep End this year included, ALO, Hot Buttered Rum, Eggy, Diggin’ Dirt, Jimi’s Dead, Coyote Islands, Octave Cat, Vana Liya, Everyone Orchestra, Fireside Collective, Beau Beau Band and Embodied Groove. They gave the crowd what it was listening for. It took awhile for the swingers and swayers in front of the bandstand to come together as a light rain the first day had a somewhat dampening effect on the high spirits. But by Saturday things were cooking.

A nautical theme brought out the pirates, sea captains, mermaids and fish. One family had two mermaids: The littlest mermaid daughter with her mer-ma and mer-pa. There were plenty of yachting caps, some jewel encrusted and neon colored. The pirates both male and female were the best with their jaunty waistcoats, stuffed shoulder parrots and eye patches. Spectacular bellbottoms were everywhere and grown-ups and kids swaggered through the forest.

As day turned to night multiple sequin shimmering outfits began to appear. I had to ask why? Answer: It was “Sparkle Saturday” of course, and the wearers were gearing up for the headline band ALO with fantasy clothing. Many other creative clothing combinations were seen including a man in a cowboy shirt top and polynesian sarong bottom — fusion fashion. Two were spotted wearing fuzzy slippers to the party even though the ground was still quite damp.

The nonsensical slippers highlight the spirit of freedom people seem to slip into when they arrive at one of these festivals. Suddenly for a few charmed hours or days there is the time and space to be who you want to be. Parents and kids being silly, imaginative and frivolous together is unusual. It’s a great opportunity to relax together in a non-linear zone that is not “task oriented.” Quite a relief. This safe space holds a lot of happy faces. Frisking about, everyone seems to be having the very best time.

The festival has a “baby burning man” vibe where people check their conventional behavior at the registration desk as they come into the forest. The air under the redwoods acts like a tonic. Somehow it seems cleaner than clean, super oxygenated. If trees are “the lungs of the planet” the Navarro redwoods share their gift with all who enter.

In Japan they have something they call “Forest bathing” where they encourage the therapeutic use of the tree world. Tests have been done showing that the benefits are real. Sleeping outdoors probably contributes to the energizing. Kids never stop running and adults never stop smiling. Everyone is more patient and co-operative than in the “real world.” It’s a pleasure.

Kid watching was especially fun at the Deep End. With so many kids attending there was a forest of bikes in the forest darting here and there, dashing from camp site to the stage areas. In an epic assault on one of the large communal hammocks about 15 kids piled on. They were disinclined to disperse when asked politely and it took a walkie-talkie wielding grown-up to convince them. Not to rain on their parade, but it really wasn’t safe. The café was popular especially the old fashioned Sno-Cones. A vintage hand cranked machine actually grated the ice before their very eyes. Why do kids like Sno-Cones so much more than adults?

At one point a little girl looking for her mother was described as a lost child, a description quickly reframed as a case of a lost parent who was happily found a few minutes later .

Mercifully there was no obnoxious PA system blasting out bulletins at any of these festivals. All the sound comes from the music on the stage.

Camp Navarro inherited a giant chess set after hosting what was described as a “Billionaire’s Wedding.” Instead of playng chess the kids were attempting to hurl the chess pieces like spears. Fortunately the awkward shapes slowed them down. Before that an enterprising gang of kids unscrewed all the pieces and then screwed them back together into one very long log of connected chess pieces, kind of like a battering ram. There is no limit to the imaginations of kids left to their own devices.

At these festivals the kids are largely given free rein as few helicopter parents seem to attend. I saw a column of about 20 kids marching along in formation led by a conspicuously bossy pants child who was shouting, “Single file, single file…” There’s one in every crowd.

At a big stump kids were climbing on (they climb on everything) one cautious child standing at the bottom was warned over and over, “Dangerous, dangerous!” When it gets dark the darting kids are traceable by the lights in their bike spokes, light-spangled capes, headdresses and shoes. They turn Camp Navarro into a fairyland.

You meet the most interesting people. A woman dressed as a renaissance era pirate gal told me she performs at the Dickens Fair in SF every year. This year was, “I’ll be the caterpillar” (in a performance of Alice in Wonderland). It’s not often you get to meet a middle-aged caterpillar woman. Toward the end, the kids say, “I don’t wanna go home.” I can see why.

Once again none of it would work without a mountain of logistical planning. The whole fanciful and seemingly effortless play date would definitely crash and burn. So thanks to the staffers (about 50 of them) and the volunteers who make everything tick. A special thanks for being willing to do it all over again next year.

If you haven’t attended one of these festivals I can’t recommend it highly enough. Come and be amazed. Special thanks to Dan Braun owner of Camp Navarro and producer of Camp Redwood and Camp Deep End for having a dream, believing in it, and making it happen.

A special wink and a nod to the Camp Manager, the sublime Nedjma and her assistant the understated Mick (Monster) who keep the boots on the ground marching. We bow down.

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LOCAL EVENTS (this week)

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DEMS & COURTS RESTRICTING LEGAL ACCESS

(and violating the Sixth Amendment Right To A Public Trial)

Dear Editor,

More on California's courts cutting off public access while everybody was distracted. Will anyone take time away from arguing? about Trump to take a look?

When the county court system took away all online access to criminal court files and all reasonable access to those, I blamed them and they are partly to blame. They had resisted for a long time but a big cheese here didn't like my articles showing foibles by the prosecution, or so I am told. They were. forced to bend to a truly Anti Democratic and unconstitutional edict by an unelected, incompetent, secretive state agency named the California Judicial Council. This agency does not let anybody criticize our courts. They do not want anybody pointing out corrupt DAs, judges or public defenders. They did this to us. We can change this if people would care. The Democrats claim to be opposing Fascist actions by Trump. They are. But this move is all Democrats all the time and as fascist, or actually MORE than anything Trump is doing.

We can contact State Senator Mike McGuire and Assemblyman Chris Rogers. Back 30 years ago when the likes of Bernie M was around we'd be all over this. This is the age of obedience and waiting for the world to change, I'm afraid. But if you care we can do this. Tell Newsom too. See if they have any mettle for a serious issue. Or if somebody has the guts to tell me how I'm wrong.

Frank Hartzell

Fort Bragg, CA 95437

707-964-6174

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FIRST FRIDAY ART SHOW IN POINT ARENA

Come to First Friday at Arena Market & Cafe for my art show! Enjoy music, local wines, and a wide-ranging exhibit.

Starting at 4pm we can hang out and talk about this imagery based on real life and making it as an artist in the modern world. Live music with Keith Abrams 5-7pm. Join us (and get some shopping done)!

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PHILO MAN PLEADS GUILTY TO TWO FELONY SEX CHARGES IN PLEA BARGAIN.

Thanks to California’s court fathers forcing the county to stop offering online criminal files, we won’t be able to keep reporting these felony cases like we had planned

by Linda Little

Ryan Clayton Davis of Philo pleaded guilty on Monday to two charges of unforced sex offenses against a minor. Davis faces Up to 2 Years, 8 Months in prison. Sentencing will be on November 12, back in the Fort Bragg courthouse. Mendocinocoast.news had detailed the charges in this story.

Eight members of the public—seven women and one man—watched the proceedings from the gallery, including the victim and members of the victim’s family. On the defendant’s side, two women were present. For a single case, it was a notably full courtroom. Dressed in a nearly tailored suit, the defendant responded politely to all questions posed by Ten Mile Court Judge Clay Brennan.

Davis’ attorney, Robert Boyd, negotiated a plea deal with Deputy District Attorney Eloise E. Kelsey, who oversees prosecutions in the Fort Bragg court. In exchange for Davis’ guilty plea, five additional felony charges were dismissed—one for lack of evidence, according to Kelsey’s statement in court. Davis, now 42 years old, admitted to one count involving oral copulation on him by a then-16-year-old girl, and another charge related to attempting to arrange a similar encounter. There was no allegation the encounters were forced. The defense requested that the phrase “lewd and lascivious” be removed from the felony description, and the court agreed. The case alleged the abuse went on for two years.…

https://mendocinocoast.news/philo-man-pleads-guilty-to-two-felony-sex-charges-in-plea-bargain-but-thanks-to-states-court-fathers-forcing-the-county-to-stop-offering-online-criminal-files-we-wont-be-able-to-keep-reporting-f/

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BILL KIMBERLIN: Indian Creek Bridge as it led into Philo. I am betting that there were lots of fish in that creek which was way before the current authorities banned summer earthen dams and destroyed our fishing holes.

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POLLY FROST: I live in a California coastal city that fits every Newsom disaster you can describe. But I grew up here and I ain't leavin'. As one of my city's late citizens yelled in a movie “Remember the Alamo!” I'm ready. Besides, where else could I be walking down the street, see a broken down old guy and think, “Did I make out with him when I was a teen and he was a cute young hippie?”

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, October 1, 2025

ILEANA AMRULL, 47, Willits. Under influence.

JOEL COWAN, 36, Willits. Stolen property, concealed dirk-dagger.

KEVIN KIMURA, 26, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

LORENZO MARTINEZ, 42, Ukiah. Controlled substance with two or more priors, paraphernalia, county parole violation, smuggling controlled substance into jail.

GLORIA VARELA, 39, Petaluma/Ukiah. Marshal’s warrant, false ID.

DOUGLAS WHIPPLE III, 39, Covelo. Parole violation.

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CHANGE OF MAILING ADDRESS Notice (10/1/'25)

Craig Louis Stehr
P.O. Box 34181
Washington, D.C. 20043

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YESTERDAY'S PUZZLE was correctly solved by first responder John McKenzie: "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"

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AFTER CH’U YUAN

I will get me to the wood
Where the gods walk garlanded in wistaria,
By the silver blue flood
move others with ivory cars.
There come forth many maidens
to gather grapes for the leopards, my friend,
For there are leopards drawing the cars.

I will walk in the glade,
I will come out of the new thicket
and accost the procession of maidens.

— Ezra Pound (1916)

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TO SAVE DEMOCRACY, WE MUST FIND A NEW WAY FORWARD

Editor,

Democracy, if it is to survive in the United States, requires that we bring to it the best of what is in us.

I am old. I can remember a time when honesty, generosity and courage were guiding values. We aimed to nurture and increase goodness in the world.

“The American experiment” is an attempt to do something very important and beautiful in and for the world. But we have been diverted from our path.

As a starting point for finding our way again, we must relinquish our adulation of money.

Julie Manson

Novato

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AFTER DECADES OF DEFIANCE, A CALIFORNIA HIPPIE COMMUNE IS DEFEATED

Supervisors move to dismantle the infamous Yee Haw commune tucked in the hills east of Trinidad

by Matt LaFever

After 25 years of warnings, fines and broken promises, Humboldt County supervisors finally voted last week to crack down on the infamous Yee Haw commune. Their unanimous decision set in motion plans to clear the 10-acre property of unpermitted structures and hazards, a move that would displace the approximate 10 residents who currently call it home and strip longtime owner Charles Garth of control. Officials say the site is riddled with environmental dangers and dotted with ramshackle dwellings that fail to meet even the most basic safety standards.

Less than nine months before, Garth had stood at the supervisors’ dais, pleading for more time. He promised to pay down thousands in fees and bring the property into compliance. The board granted him that grace period. But last Tuesday, supervisors made clear their patience had run out.

“We had a yearlong plan to go through the steps in this process, and those things didn’t happen,” Fourth District Supervisor Natalie Arroyo said. “… We need to take a different approach today.” First District Supervisor Rex Bohn was even blunter: “Nothing, nada, nothing has happened.”

Home or health hazard?

For residents, Yee Haw has provided freedom, community and a foothold in the forested hills east of Trinidad. Tucked off Highway 101 through a tunnel of fern and forest, the property became a refuge for people priced out of Humboldt’s punishing housing market. According to the California Housing Partnership, Humboldt County renters must earn 1.5 times the state minimum wage to afford the average rent, while 85% of extremely low-income households spend more than half of their income on housing. Against that backdrop, Garth’s patchwork of makeshift homes offered an alternative.

In September 2024, resident Michael Reeves begged the board not to shut the place down. “It’s going to put me and my wife and my two kids out on the street,” he said. While traditional housing proved impossible to secure, Garth and Yee Haw opened their doors: “Instead of a day-to-day spent surviving on the streets of Eureka, Yee Haw allowed my children to grow up around trees, not concrete and not addiction.”

That sense of refuge has long clashed with the county’s findings. Inspectors first cited the property in 2001, uncovering 15 unpermitted structures riddled with hazards — unsafe stairways, faulty wiring, and wood stoves without ventilation. Recreational vehicles were powered by extension cords and heated with stoves inside. A 2021 sweep tagged 14 “junk vehicles,” some occupied and storing barrels of human waste.

By November 2024, public health inspectors deemed the site an “urgent health hazard.” They found toilets emptying into barrels, a tarp covering yards of sewage and a “complex web” of water lines running between 21 structures — many at ground level and dangerously close to waste. With Trinidad’s heavy rains, officials warned that untreated sewage could wash directly into Trinidad Bay.

Photographs of Yee Haw published by Humboldt County reveal the disorder in startling detail: a jumble of structures crafted from scavenged materials, including school buses topped with canoes and a chimney; RVs with riveted metal hulls coated in a green patina after years beneath redwoods; a yurt fused with a protruding side addition; and a two-story house with brightly painted trim but an unfinished rear wall. One squat, pagoda-like dwelling featured natural wood siding and tapestries for windows. Inspectors also documented several 50-gallon drums filled with what appeared to be human waste.

‘This whole thing is a mess’

Humboldt County Planning and Building Director John Ford briefed supervisors last week on the stalled progress. In late 2024, Garth had sought to rezone the land under emergency housing provisions meant to ease Humboldt’s housing crisis. Staff acknowledged some progress — the installation of portable toilets and handwashing stations and “good faith” efforts from Garth to cooperate. But the property still lacked water and wastewater hookups, disqualifying it from being zoned as an “emergency housing village.”

Even then, the county bent further, floating the idea of amending the zoning code itself to make Yee Haw eligible — an extraordinary concession that would have allowed rezoning once the commune’s homes were permitted and utilities deemed safe. But nearly nine months later, Ford reported, no applications had been submitted, no septic testing completed, and none of the $63,000 in penalties paid. “Planning and Building will be reengaging in the code enforcement process unless the board directs us otherwise,” Ford told supervisors.

Garth, wearing a worn leather cowboy hat, his beard gray and hair down to his shoulders, strode to the microphone. “I want a new deal. This whole thing is a mess,” he said. He insisted he had “put up a bunch of money” for rezoning that seemed to have “disappeared.” Ford had “stated numerous times that there’s no way to build affordable housing,” Garth said, and cast himself as the solution: “I can build affordable housing all day long, till the cows come home. I can build it. Just let me do it.”

Advocates echoed him. Nichole Norris, a former Yee Haw tenant, told the board: “The heart of the matter today, though, is that affordable housing is very needed.” Another speaker said the commune was “way more safe than being on the street” and praised Garth for taking in “so many homeless children, families, elders and people.” One described the county’s crackdown as “unjust” and an effort to deny people “security and water.”

Others defended Garth himself. One commenter argued “Charles is not made for bureaucracy,” pointing out that he had attempted required septic testing but “just did it wrong because he doesn’t know what he’s doing.” By his measure, Garth’s talents lie elsewhere: “He can bring back your car to life. He can fix anything that’s broken in your house. Charles is the guy you want when stuff’s falling apart.”

No supervisor has been more patient with Garth than Fifth District Supervisor Steve Madrone, who represents Trinidad and the surrounding area. For years, Madrone gave Garth and his tenants chance after chance to turn a new leaf. Last Tuesday, the tone shifted. “I have gone to bat for this community for my entire six and a half years up here as a board member over and over again,” he said. He credited residents for pitching in with the “cleanup on the property, gathering up debris, etc., and loading dumpsters and other kinds of things.”

Then he drew the line. “Promises keep being made, but then they don’t get fulfilled,” Madrone said. Of the $62,000 in fines and penalties Garth owed — which he had promised to begin paying back in January — none had been paid, according to the county. To critics who argued the county was being too heavy-handed, Madrone pushed back: “Where were they earlier in the process when that could have actually made a difference? That’s always kind of confusing for me. If everybody cares so much about all this, why not step up and deal with all that?”

‘What’s the definition of insanity?’

The day’s biggest twist came when supervisors learned Garth was no longer the official owner of Yee Haw. Through a quitclaim deed, the title had been transferred to a nonprofit called Evergreen. Allen Ng, who introduced himself nervously as a board member of the organization, said Evergreen intended to use the land as “a training facility” with “beds and … living quarters” where “workers learn tree climbing to go into the trees to gather the redwood seeds.”

The explanation baffled supervisors. Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson said he was “confused” how such a facility aligned with any of the zoning paths Garth had pursued. Madrone warned Ng about the “big liability you’ve taken on here,” noting the property would require hundreds of thousands of dollars in cleanup “to deal with, like now.”

Under sharper questioning, the nonprofit’s structure came into focus: Evergreen’s CEO was none other than James Garth, Charles Garth’s son, whose name appeared on the quitclaim deed. To Bohn, the first district supervisor, the transfer was little more than misdirection. “This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a shell game,” he said.

Bohn reminded colleagues this wasn’t the first time Garth had shifted his problems elsewhere. When ordered to remove nuisance vehicles from Yee Haw, Bohn said, Garth just hauled them 35 miles south to Loleta and “dumped them on an empty lot.”

For Bohn, the past quarter-century is evidence enough that the county’s approach had failed. “What’s the definition of insanity — doing the same thing over and over again?” he asked.

Arroyo agreed: “I am ready to get to some kind of consensus today and have a decision and not kick the same can down the road.”

Bohn made the motion: “We move forward after 25 years — I’ll repeat that, 25 years — with the abatement program,” starting with “removing some of the junk, make sure everything’s out of there, and start the abatement process.” The motion passed unanimously, 5-0.

For Norris, the former Yee Haw resident and longtime advocate, the board’s decision raises a larger question: “If the county can force people off private property who are not doing anything wrong … this could happen to anyone?” In a statement to SFGATE, she called the fight over Yee Haw a “David v. Goliath situation at the root” and acknowledged that the commune “may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it beats the streets.”

In an email to SFGATE, Ford clarified that the board’s decision last week gave Garth 14 days to “come into compliance at which point the abatement process would begin.” The county must first declare the property substandard and then relocate residents before demolition and cleanup. If Garth appeals, the process will be delayed, but within 60 to 90 days, the county expects to focus on “addressing the needs of the residents and making certain they have housing.”

Ford said tenants could receive eviction notices as early as spring 2026, with demolition of structures and cleanup of the area beginning around the same time. Ultimately, the county could either place the property in the hands of a court-appointed receiver to oversee repairs or undertake the cleanup itself and charge the costs back to the owner.

The path forward, Ford emphasized, “depends on what the property owner chooses to do.” He added: “Hopefully, the property owner will resolve the violations in the next 14 days.”

(SFGate.com)

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Mothers need to back off coddling their children and toughen them up. What other animal species prepares their offspring for life out of the nest by making them weak and unable to survive on their own? Children need to learn self-discipline and mothers are failing to give them that. Life is tough. No one ever said it was easy. You're born, you find purpose in life to make it meaningful, you die. In a nutshell.

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DEMS HAVE TO GET DIRTY

Editor,

The concept of gerrymandering is abhorrent to me, but I’m sick and tired of the dirty tricks Republicans play while the Democrats just sit back, let it happen and never fight back by playing the same game when it’s their turn.

Remember Senate Republicans blocking President Barack Obama from making a Supreme Court nomination? That little maneuver will hurt the country for at least another generation.

It’s time for Democrats to take action and get a little dirty themselves, like Republicans in Texas who have gerrymandered their congressional districts. Otherwise, Democrats will be betrayed again by a team that plays by a different set of rules. We must pass Proposition 50.

Phil Rossington

Mill Valley

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MY AUTUMN LEAVES

I watch the woods for deer as if I’m armed.
I watch the woods for deer who never come.
I know the hes and shes in autumn
rendezvous in orchards stained with fallen
apples’ scent. I drive my car this way to work
so I may let the crows in corn believe
it’s me their caws are meant to warn,
and snakes who turn in warm and secret caves

they know me too. They know the boy
who lives inside me still won’t go away.
The deer are ghosts who slip between the light
through trees, so you may only hear the snap
of branches in the thicket beyond hope.
I watch the woods for deer, as if I’m armed.

— Bruce Weigl (2002)

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WHEN THE SITUATION IS HOPELESS, there's nothing to worry about.

— Edward Abbey, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (1990)

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NEW YORK TIMES: A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from a man who was featured as a naked baby on the cover of Nirvana’s 1991 album. The man claimed he had been the victim of child sexual abuse imagery.

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“I drink to make other people more interesting.”

― Hemingway, Ernest

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LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT

White House Uses Shutdown to Maximize Pain and Punish Political Foes

Trump Administration Asks Colleges to Sign ‘Compact’ to Get Funding Preference

Supreme Court Allows Lisa Cook to Remain at Fed, for Now

‘Enough Is Enough’: Many Palestinians Say Hamas Must Accept Cease-Fire Plan

A Run on Canned Mackerel and Emergency Radios. The Reason? Drones.

Jane Goodall, Who Chronicled the Social Lives of Chimps, Dies at 91

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DONALD TRUMP WALKED INTO QUANTICO TUESDAY EXPECTING A RALLY. HE GOT A FUNERAL.

The generals sat in perfect silence, faces locked in the kind of grim stillness that comes from years of watching idiots talk and choosing not to react. Trump, of course, couldn’t handle it. “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before,” he confessed, his voice trembling somewhere between wounded pride and panic. Then came the kicker: “If you want to applaud, you applaud.”

This wasn’t leadership. This was a washed-up Vegas act begging the crowd to clap. The Commander-in-Chief turned into the Clapper-in-Chief, reduced to prodding the nation’s top brass like a sad carnival barker who forgot his punchline.

A campaign rally in uniform.

Instead of strategy, Trump delivered his usual medley of grievances: Barack Obama ruined everything, Joe Biden ruined it twice as hard, and only Donald J. Trump, self-proclaimed “two-term, maybe three-term president” could save America. It was less a military briefing than an episode of The Apprentice: Pentagon Edition.

The generals, trained to withstand battlefield chaos, sat stone-faced through the barrage of nonsense. They have endured artillery fire with more enthusiasm.

Enter Pete Hegseth, America’s Pastor-in-Arms. Trump’s “Secretary of War” took the podium with the intensity of a man who thinks Tom Clancy novels are actual military doctrine. He promised “fire and brimstone,” called for purges of “fat generals,” and announced he wants the next war to look exactly like the Gulf War, because apparently it’s still 1991 and CNN is running that same grainy footage of tanks in the desert.

But Hegseth wasn’t done. He led them in prayer. Yes, prayer. The nation’s top generals, summoned by presidential ego, now folded into a forced altar call like extras at a megachurch revival. The separation of church and state? Obliterated. Constitution? Shredded. Jesus, apparently, is now Commander-in-Chief. Trump can play Vice.

Weakness on parade

Trump likes to brag about firing generals who “aren’t warriors.” But on Tuesday, the real firing squad was silence. Not one clap. Not one cheer. Just the steady hum of contempt vibrating off the brass like feedback from a dead microphone.

These men and women have seen actual combat. They’ve buried soldiers. They’ve lived with the weight of real command. And now they’re expected to cheer for a man who brags about moving “a submarine or two” like it’s a toy in a bathtub, or who lectures about “two N-words” as though nuclear strategy were a stand-up routine.

No wonder they didn’t clap.

The pin-drop presidency

What happened at Quantico wasn’t just awkward. It was diagnostic. Trump’s presidency is a hollow shell propped up by applause, and when the applause disappears, so does he.

And Hegseth? He’s the zealot-in-chief, delivering sermons about war and Christ in equal measure, a man confusing the Book of Revelation with the Pentagon’s operations manual. Together, they make quite the duo: one desperate for claps, the other desperate for amens.

The generals gave them neither.

Instead, they gave silence, the most cutting judgment of all.

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OUR REPUBLIC: FINALLY LOST TO A MORON

by James C. Nelson

As Benjamin Franklin was leaving the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a woman asked: “Well Doctor, what have we got a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin’s retort has been passed down through history: “A Republic, Madame, if you can keep it.”

Fast forward: A hundred years ago, H.L. Mencken observed:

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

As it turns out, both statements were prescient.

Donald Trump’s administration is a graveyard of failure, misconduct and broken promises presided over by a demented, totalitarian monarch-wannabe.

His cabinet is a ship of fools—a junk drawer full of cronies, by one description–sailing onto the shoals of illegality and unconstitutionality at every turn. Indeed, as Hanna Arendt noted in Foreign Policy:

“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”

Trump struts around as a conquering war-time, hero-President, the bold Commander in Chief; renaming the Department of Defense as the Department of War; naming military installations and ships after Confederate generals.

Yet, he weaponizes our Military and uses it as a “training ground” in our cities and against us, the citizens. Apparently We the People are now the enemy.

Trump the corrupt, insurrectionist leader and 34-times convicted felon, ironically declares war on crime and criminals, but, transparently, in only Blue states and metropolises.

He enlists his gestapo of ICE Brown Shirts to harass, arrest and deport people of color whose only crime was to come to this Country for a better life, and for the opportunity to work (and pay taxes) at jobs beneath the dignity–and probably the ability–of the members of the Dear Leader’s lickspittles.

In response to Demonstrators rallying near Great Lakes base and in the Loop to decry potential ICE action, Trump proclaims “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning,’”– a meme referencing the 1979 Vietnam War film “Apocalypse Now.” where Robert Duvall’s character Lt. Col. Kilgore says, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

Lest Americans forget, however, Trump is no war hero, no generalissimo. In fact, he is a draft-dodging coward—Captain bone-spurs–calling our own wounded and missing warriors “suckers and losers.”

He relishes beating up on the poor, the disabled, the vulnerable, LGBTQ and trans people–anybody without a voice, and without the ability to fight back. He is racist, misogynistic, homo and trans phobic and xenophobic. He is the epitome of hatred and discrimination.

He wreaks economic vengeance on our allies and friends. Yet, when it comes to standing up to America’s actual enemies and the world’s dictators, he welcomes them on the red carpet and fawns for their adulation and approval.

In truth, he is one of them–a weak and gutless bully–the fascist dictator he promised to be from day-one.

The damage Trump has done and will do to our formerly democratic republic will take decades to repair–if we can ever repair it. Indeed, to the question, can we keep our constitutional republic? It appears that we have, for the first time in 250 years, lost it.

Our inner soul has been fulfilled. The White House is finally adorned with a downright moron.

And, the worst is, that Trump is involved in a coup right under our noses; he is finishing what he started on January 6, 2021.

(James C. Nelson a retired Montana Supreme Court justice. He lives in Helena.)

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BREATHES there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd,
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.

— Sir Walter Scott (1805) My Native Land, Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto 6, st. 1

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SNOW BIRDS

To the Editor:

Here in the north, it’s that time of year again. Autumn’s cool breezes have the Canada geese preparing for their annual journey to warmer climes. Climate change has affected the migratory patterns of some birds.

There is a bird whose migratory pattern has changed dramatically, but not from climate change. It’s the Canadian snowbird.

After decades of flying to places like Arizona, Texas and Florida for the winter, the snowbirds are now choosing to fly somewhere else. Unlike the Canada goose, the snowbirds bring cash: an estimated $20 billion per year.

The reason for the change in annual migration has something to do with threats to their home territory through tariffs and annexation. While they don’t get to vote in their winter territory, they do get to vote with their money.

A significant change has happened to the migratory pattern of the Canadian snowbird, and all indicators point to the change being permanent.

Ken Hildebrand

Winnipeg, Manitoba

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IN THE SUMMER OF 1902, Jack London disguised himself as a stranded American sailor and stepped into the East End of London, determined to see what the world most refused to acknowledge. What he found became the basis of his 1903 book, "The People of the Abyss."

He wrote about stories about entire streets lined with sleeping bodies. Aged people, young people, and even children slumped on doorsteps, curled on stone steps, soaked from the night rain.

Some stood, asleep on their feet. Others stretched out in “painful postures,” their red inflamed skin showing through ragged holes in their clothes.

Each doorway became a shelter for the unwanted. Heads drooped onto knees. No blankets. No comfort. No sound only the silence of neglect.

And this, London stressed, was not a time of war or economic collapse. “These are not hard times in England,” he wrote. “Things are going on very much as they ordinarily do.”

That was the most chilling part. Misery had become so common that it felt normal.

More than a century later, the poverty we see everywhere in the world is still true.

We still walk past people sleeping on the streets. We still explain it away. We still live in a world where suffering is tolerated, and as long as it does not touch us directly, we are able to push it out of our minds for someone else to pursue.

This past could be our future if we do not realize that we are living a life of deadness when we are not living in service to the causes that give people a chance at living in dignity. Our minds have been trained to believe that what affects you does not affect me. But nothing could be farther from the truth.

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THESE NEW YORKERS HATED FASCISTS BEFORE IT WAS COOL

In “Gotham at War,” Mike Wallace shows how the American fight against the Nazis started years before World War II, in the Big Apple.

by Jacob Heilbrunn

In 1922, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party established an outpost in the Bronx. To Adolf Hitler and his henchmen, America seemed ripe for subversion. “Nothing will be easier than to produce a bloody revolution in the U.S.,” the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels bragged in 1936. “No other country has so many social and racial tensions. We shall be able to play on many strings there.”

It never happened. Instead, Franklin Roosevelt successfully united a fractured country against fascism at home and abroad. How did he do it?

The answer: with a helping hand from New York. Or so Mike Wallace suggests in “Gotham at War,” the third and final volume in the Gotham series. Wallace, a professor emeritus at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for the trilogy’s first installment, “Gotham,” which he wrote with the Brooklyn College professor Edwin G. Burrows.

“Gotham” began with the Dutch on Manhattan in the 17th century and ended in 1898, as the five boroughs came together to form the modern city. “Gotham at War” is a stupendous study that begins in interwar New York. It spans everything from bebop to comic books, from the New Deal to the America First movement. For all Wallace’s assiduity, the pace never lags as he briskly marches across an enormous amount of territory.

Goebbels had good reason to believe that American bigotry could be exploited for Nazi gain. The influx of millions of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe into New York around the turn of the century had led to a powerful nativist backlash and made the city the epicenter of a prolonged battle over fascism.

The Nazis followed events in America closely, drawing on the template set by the Jim Crow South and sterilization laws in California and Virginia to draft their own antisemitic measures. They also tracked the activities of New York eugenicists like the Upper East Side grandee Madison Grant. In 1916, Grant published a white supremacist treatise, “The Passing of the Great Race” (Hitler called it “my Bible”), and, in 1924, he championed the passage of the Johnson-Reed Act, which essentially terminated immigration from southern Europe, eastern Europe and Asia.

As Wallace shows, such obstructions didn’t stop New York immigrants who did make it across the Atlantic from incubating a new brand of antifascism. In the late 1930s, President Roosevelt and his lieutenants went on to nationalize their movement, forming a broad coalition that led the city and country on to war.

One prominent combatant was the celebrated Columbia University professor Franz Boas, a German American anthropologist whose books were burned by the Nazis when they came to power. The American Jewish Committee supported Boas financially as he sought to coordinate the work of the 78 antifascist groups that had popped up in New York by the mid-1930s. In 1936, Time magazine put Boas on its cover, saluting him for “knocking the flimsy props from under Nazi ideas of race purity and race superiority.”

Still, the depth of opposition that Roosevelt and the antifascist New Yorkers confronted can hardly be exaggerated. In February 1939, six months before Hitler invaded Poland, the German American Bund held a frenzied rally, complete with raised arm salutes, at Madison Square Garden. The Garden was surrounded by antifascist protesters, but national Gallup opinion polls consistently showed that a majority of Americans were against military intervention in Europe.

As Roosevelt’s supporters created a welter of interventionist organizations in the city, New York quickly became a major focus for the president’s efforts to battle homegrown fascism and isolationism (often one and the same). The Union for Democratic Action, which had roots in New York’s refugee associations, called for combating racism and defending labor rights. The Fight for Freedom Committee, which set up shop in Rockefeller Center, was led by Anglo patrician types.

Some elite members of the committee had little interest in New Deal reforms, but they nevertheless stirred local citizens — playwrights, the clergy, newspapermen — to help expose anyone in the way of confrontation with the Nazis. In October 1941, the committee held its own event at Madison Square Garden, a rollicking pageant called “Fun to Be Free” that featured stars like Ethel Merman, Jack Benny and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. After actors dressed up as Nazi storm troopers carried in a black coffin that represented Hitler’s demise, Robinson tap-danced atop it as the band played “When That Man Is Dead and Gone.”

New York comic book artists mocked Hitler too. “What a natural foil he was, with the comical mustache, the ridiculous cowlick, his swagger, goose-stepping minions,” Joe Simon recalled in his indispensable memoir, “The Comic Book Makers.” Almost a year before Pearl Harbor, Simon and Jack Kirby, both children of Jewish immigrants, were working in Manhattan for Timely Comics when they created Captain America, a scrawny 4-F reject whom Professor Reinstein injects with an experimental serum. According to Wallace, the first issue, whose cover featured Cap decking Hitler, sold a million copies.

There can be no doubting that Roosevelt’s own record on immigration was a mixed one — Breckinridge Long, his assistant secretary at the State Department, blocked as many Jewish refugees as possible.

But Wallace singles out Roosevelt’s visit to the Statue of Liberty on the 50th anniversary of its dedication as an important step. “Journeying up to Gotham in October 1936,” he writes, “Roosevelt boated out to Bedloe’s Island and gave a speech that for the first time officially acknowledged that the monument had accrued a whole new status — as secular patron saint of immigrants — in addition to the role as torchbearer of international republicanism.” A year and a half later, Roosevelt told the Daughters of the American Revolution to “remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.”

Even after Pearl Harbor, the reactionary spirit continued to flicker. The lament that Roosevelt was doing too much to stymie the Nazi threat fell to a hush, but the complaint that he wasn’t doing enough to combat the communist one grew louder. In 1944, the southern Democratic governor Eugene Talmadge decried the “Moscow-Harlem zoot suiters trying to take over Georgia,” and the Republican representative Clare Boothe Luce claimed “Moscow stooges” were in control of the New York labor unions that backed the president. It was a precursor of the charges hurled at the Truman administration in the postwar era, when the right depicted liberalism as synonymous with communism.

In fact, the liberal internationalism championed by Roosevelt and Truman ensured America’s rise to global pre-eminence. And a plethora of commercial, civic and political organizations, Wallace writes, ensured that New Yorkers were at the forefront of a new round of impassioned debates, this time about reshaping America and constructing a new global order that could avoid another world war.

“The successful prosecution of the conflict itself,” Wallace writes, “heightened people’s belief in their ability to alter the sense of history. Out of the horrors of combat a tremendous optimism bloomed.” Whether that buoyant optimism can be revived by a new antifascist fighting faith or whether it has permanently wilted is the unanswered question that hovers over Wallace’s masterwork.

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STEVE JONES:

For non-US cities, I've been to Vancouver, Toronto, Paris, Porto, Nairobi, and Montreal. Plus a couple very small cities that are more town-like, such as St. John in New Brunswick.

But when I think of big city, being born American, I think of things I've been to like New York, Seattle, Chicago, Miami, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Baltimore, Washington DC, Dallas, Atlanta. They're almost all crime-riddled leftist dumps at this point, and they weren't much better when I was there. Everything's too tall, jammed in, and often very dumpy-looking. I don't care about the "culture" which is just museums and art galleries (now riddled with leftist propaganda), preachy plays, and what the urban youth really mean by "culture" which is just having clubs and bars where they don't need a designated driver. I prefer to golf and hike, which is about as opposite from the city as you can get (I have golfed city courses; but I prefer the countryside where I can take a piss behind a tree in the woods without getting arrested). And I hated urban life even when I was the "age" for it (20's/30's).

I lived in a city maybe about 6 years of my life, most in my early 20s, so maybe about 10-12%. They weren't even big cities, either. Heck, the neighborhoods were just really crowded suburbs. I still hated every last second of it. Cramped, noisy, overstimulating, smelly, and sometimes dangerous (worse now, it seems). I also lived another four years or so in a very crowded center of what was officially a town, and that wasn't great either (other than marrying the person I lived with; that was by far the brightest spot).

The nicest thing I'll say is the only two I ever really liked at all were Paris and Montreal. But that's probably because they have more green space, a limit on building height so it doesn't feel so claustrophobic, and of course amazing French cooking, and I'm primarily of French descent. Also, the subways were safe, clean, and ran on time, at least when I was there. But even some of Paris, like the concrete walls of the Seine, felt kind of gray and drab. I guess Porto was OK-ish - the people were friendly - but I wasn't digging the food. Or how hard it was to find wi-fi to get an Uber away from public transit.

I still want to be rid of the American shitholes. What's weird is in these places of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people, only NYC and Washington seemed to actually be populated with people milling about in proportion to the official population statistics. The rest often felt like ghost towns (New Orleans and Seattle especially). The untrusting part of me wants to ask, wait a minute, is the population of these cities REALLY what we're being told? They certainly seem to have enough dead voters in the USA.

But I stand by what I said. Man was meant to live in villages of 150, not brutalist open-air gulags of 1.5 million. And if I could get rid of the places where the people harming me and my country live, I'd have a much better country, I think. I certainly never got bored in suburbia as a kid. I just rode my bike, and then later I could drive.

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OCTOBER SONG

I'll sing you this October song
Oh there is no song before it
The words and tune are none of my own
For my joys and sorrows bore it
Beside the sea
The brambly briars
In the still of evening
Birds fly out behind the sun
And with them I'll be leaving

The fallen leaves
That jewel the ground
They know the art of dying
And leave with joy their glad gold hearts
In the scarlet shadows lying
When hunger calls
My footsteps home
The morning follows after
I swim the seas within my mind
And the pine trees laugh green laughter

I used to search for happiness
And I used to follow pleasure
But I found a door behind my mind
And that's the greatest treasure
For rulers like to lay down laws
And rebels like to break them
And the poor priests like to walk in chains
And God likes to forsake them

I met a man
Whose name was Time
And he said I must be going
But just how long ago that was
I have no way of knowing
Sometimes I want
To murder Time
Sometimes when my heart's aching
But mostly I just stroll along
The path that he is taking

— Robin Williamson (1966)

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