Mendocino County Today: Monday 10/27/2025

HIGH PRESSURE is building into the area bringing dry weather and this is expected to persist through much of the work week. Chilly nights and generally sunny afternoons are expected each day. A few clouds and showers are possible in Del Norte county Wednesday morning. The next chance for possible widespread rain is next weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A cooler 44F under clear skies this Monday morning on the coast. I have .28" this morning, .94" for the weekend & 2.06" for the month total. This week is looking dry, but I see rain in the 10 day forecast for next week, we'll see ? After a cool & wet October I hear talk of a warmer & drier November forecast, we'll see #2.

STEPHEN JOSEPH MUCHOWSKI

Stephen Joseph Muchowski, 87, passed away on October 15, 2025, surrounded by his family.

Steve was born August 11, 1938 to Mary Chrosniak and Stephen Paul Muchowski in Buffalo, New York. After graduating from Bishop Fallon High School, Steve enrolled in the Army and later spent 7 years in the reserves. He then attended Canisius College and later went on to work at American Machine and Foundry.

He married Valerie Wesel on July 14, 1962. In 1963 Steve and Val traveled the country looking for a place to settle. They landed in San Jose, California after a three month 14,000-mile journey. They settled in Santa Clara, California where he worked as an engineer for the City of San Jose, and raised their three children, Mary Beth, Larry and Laurie.

Steve and Val moved to Mendocino in 1976. He began building a Dome which he had designed. He worked with Bobby Glover designing and installing water systems while continuing construction on the house. A few years later, he set up the first computer classroom in Anderson Valley at Bachmann Hill School in Philo. This eventually lead to working with the County Schools as a computer consultant until his retirement in 2002.

His passions included cooking and photography. He loved to cook for family and friends, and he often prepared the entire Thanksgiving meal by himself, experimenting with new recipes every year.

Steve is survived by Valerie Muchowski, his wife of 63 years, children Mary Muchowski, Larry (Jenn) Muchowski, Laurie (Russell Michael) Muchowski, brother Mark (Elaine) Muchowski and grandchildren Marshall Michael, Robbie and Megan Muchowski.

A celebration of life will be held at a future date.

MENDO SAVED MY LIFE

Editor,

This happened a little less than a month ago, around 8-9 p.m., a bit outside of Laytonville. I was on my way up to Whitethorn from the Bay Area for a birthday trip when I suddenly hydroplaned and spun out off the road, crashing 50 feet down into a steep ravine (the site is named “Steep Gulch”) off the side of U.S. Highway 101.

My car barreled through some trees, and I lost consciousness after the car slammed into an old oak. According to the guy who towed the car out, I’m very, very lucky. Not only was the car totaled with extreme damage to the driver’s side, but it was held up by only a few trees before a steep drop into the riverbed.

I don’t remember this well but apparently I woke up, got myself out of the wreck, and climbed back up to the highway where some Good Samaritans stopped to coordinate help and called for emergency response.

The California Highway Patrol, the fire department, and EMTs showed up. They took me away to Adventist Health Howard Memorial in Willits, and I was taken care of by the nurses there. The CHP officer who came to follow up was surprised at how unscathed I was. He told the doctors about the drop and the significant damage to the car and suggested more scans.

I was discharged in a couple of hours after they confirmed that I had nothing but a cut and some bruises.

The vehicle driven by Steph (Yin) Zhao after hydroplaning and crashing 50 feet down a steep ravine outside of Laytonville, Calif., on Aug. 8, 2025. Zhao received minor injuries and was assisted by multiple people in Mendocino County after the accident.

This whole incident feels like a miracle. There were so many things that could have gone wrong, but they didn’t. A big part of that was because of all the kind strangers that I encountered through the emergency and in the aftermath.

I’m beyond grateful to:

The woman who caught me after I climbed up to the highway, kept me calm, put hand warmer packets in my socks, and let me wait in her car.

The man who couldn’t speak English or understand anything we were saying but kept me warm with his jacket and held me when I started coming down from the shock and started freaking out.

The people who drove ahead to call for help because the accident happened in a stretch of road without cell service.

When I was discharged from the hospital, it was well past midnight. I was over a hundred miles from home, no car and didn’t know a single person. I didn’t even have clothes because they were cut off in the ambulance.

I’m grateful to the nurses in the Willits ER who found something in the hospital that fit me.

The nurses coordinated during their breaks, and one gave me a ride to a nearby motel and waited until I was checked in.

The next day, the hospital called me to come back ASAP because they saw something potentially serious.

I had no way to get there, but the host at the front desk of the motel tried to coordinate a ride for me.

The motel owner ended up coming out just to drive me back to the hospital.

Then my partner came up from Oakland to bring me home. We went to the scrapyard where the wreck was towed, and I got to see the extent of the damage.

The man who towed the car out of the gulch and stored it took care to keep everything as dry as possible under a tarp. He was incredibly kind when we came to collect what we could from the car. He cracked jokes and gave me lots of advice about my bruised ribs.

I made it back home to Oakland the next day and I’ve just been recovering and processing it all. The thing that sticks with me is how every person that I encountered was wonderful.

Everyone told me that it was the first rain of the season. Apparently all the dust and oil gets picked up and flows downhill. The people at the hospital said there are a lot of accidents during the rainy season.

I had new tires and I was driving normally, at the speed limit with the other cars, and I just happened to be the one who hit a patch of water. I won’t be driving anytime soon, but if I get another car, I’ll definitely be slowing down a lot more when it’s wet.

Thank you, Mendocino County.

Steph (Yin) Zhao

Oakland

KIND HEARTS SUPPLY DRIVE

We’re moving into the next phase collecting supplies for outreach, support, and care for folks on the street.

Tarps, gloves, blankets, first aid, the basics that bring comfort and dignity.

We’re also accepting donations of jackets, socks, gloves, hats, and sleeping bags, anything that helps keep someone warm.

Please reach out if you’d like to help: [email protected]

Care without conditions, sustained by community.

Amazon Wish List: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2ZWCOTWDEOL6Z?ref_=wl_share

(Mazie Malone)

UNITY CLUB NEWS

by Miriam Martinez

What a wonderful time of year. The rains have returned and our clocks will fall back an hour to Pacific Standard Time. The green from my dormant bulbs is showing too. What's not to love?

Our November Unity Club Meeting will be held on the 6th, at 1:30 in the Dining Room at the Fairgrounds. Our special guests will be the Anderson Valley High School's Service Learning Team, led by Noor Dawood. They will present their progress on the creation of the AV Skatepark, adjacent to the Health Center, Playground and new Track, off Airport Road. This great, creative and motivated group of students will spark our day with their enthusiasm. If you like smiling, come to this meeting.

Our hostess crew, Dande Robb, Nancy Wood and Miriam Martinez will provide savory and sweet snacks as well as teas, coffee and apple cider. Get into the swing of Fall and enjoy the company of friends at our November 6th meeting.

Our Community Lending Library is open every Tuesday from 1 to 4 and Saturdays from 12:30 to 2:30. There's still a nice selection of books for sale $1 for hardbound and paperbacks 2 for $1. You can't get prices like that in Yorkville or Fort Bragg.

Prepare to bake, clear the OMG room of trinkets and Christmas decorations, and finish your crochet/knitting projects; it’s time for the Annual Holiday Bazaar. The Bazaar will be held from 10-4, in Apple Hall on December 6th. Sign up sheets to stand at our various booths/tables; set up and very importantly, clean up; and for providing prizes; will be circulated at the November 6th meeting. Our December 4th meeting will be devoted to preparation for the Holiday Bazaar. Don't miss enjoying all the fun of making it a success.

Proceeds from the Bazaar go toward local Scholarships and to support our other Community projects.

See you there.

BRIGITTE VARONE:

Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to read this. I didn't think I'd be needing to do a post like this again. As some of you know I've been rooming in Brooktrails since April. Some of you have gotten to know me through volunteering. Either in person or we've crossed paths online. A few of you are really good friends. I'm the main kitty volunteer at the Ukiah shelter. Since I moved up here, I continue to go there twice a week. I also started visiting HSIMC, helping feed one of the colonies here & volunteering at the Food Bank.

I love it up here, but because of possible changes for my roomie (might be moving out of state for work), I may need to find another place to live. I do hope to stay in this area. Looking at Willits or RV mainly. If my CT scans continue to be good, I will be stopping my treatment in a year. It will be five years. Then I could look in other areas. I'd still rather stay up here, though. It feels like the right fit.

As some know, I am a 3x cancer warrior. This time stage 4 uterine. I go in every three weeks for infusions. It's been 3 1/2 years without recurrence. I'm not just surviving, but thriving. I've been having an effect recently that my oncologist is monitoring & trying to find the right thing to get it manageable. I'm mostly depending on benefits. As I'm sure you know, those don't go far. I can't afford much for rent.

I've been wanting to go back to work. Either the Willits branch of ABC (Association of Behavior Consultants), I worked for the Ukiah location or as a caregiver (I'm with IHSS). With health somewhat off kilter right now, I don't feel I'm consistent & dependable for myself. Clients would definitely need that. Also, I didn't want to start a job not knowing where I'll be living. Possibly out of the county.

My goal, living here, has been saving what I'm able & improving my credit. So I can eventually get a loan. To purchase a manufactured or tiny home & a couple of acres. Originally to have my own rescue/sanctuary. But now it will be to long term foster to help out shelters/rescues. Since I will need to live with someone else in the meantime, I would love it to be with a fellow animal lover. Who also is going through cancer or some other health issue. We would understand each other. Help one another the best we're able.

I don't smoke (anything), though am ok if someone else does pot. I rarely drink. No drugs except for the prescribed meds. I keep my area & the common ones tidy. I don't usually have friends over. We meet at restaurants or other places. I'm fairly social when I'm out, but at home I prefer solitude & will mostly keep to myself. I appreciate the same. I keep the volume lower for music/TV. I also appreciate the same for that. I have good character references. Please DM me (facebook). I'm not always on it & I don't always receive all of my notices. Thanks.

NORTH BAY VINTNERS FACE DUAL CHALLENGE: adverse weather and uncertain market demand

Despite cool season with wet finish, some call vintage ‘classic and age-worthy’

by Jeff Quackenbush

Fieldworkers With Enterprise Vineyards pick the last of Grenache varietal wine grapes at Rossi Ranch Vineyards, Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025, near Kenwwod. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)

The 2025 North Coast wine grape harvest is drawing to a tense and uneven close, with late-season rains, cool weather and a sluggish grape market creating one of the most challenging vintages in more than a decade.

Across Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake counties, growers and winemakers report mixed results: strong fruit quality in some vineyards, widespread disease pressure in certain vineyards but not others, and a market that remains uncertain as the final grapes come in.

Christian Klier of Turrentine Brokerage, who negotiates grape sales across the North Coast, summed up the season’s difficulties bluntly.

“For the most part, most white varietals are done,” he said early last week. “Even if they haven’t been harvested, there are no much hope to find a home for those white grapes.”

While early varieties like Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc had already come off the vines, Klier noted that the season last week remained in “the midst of red grape picking,” with Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, and Petite Verdot still hanging. But a number of vintners told the Journal they were set to wrap picking of reds by month’s end.

Klier and other industry observers have compared 2025 to the difficult 2011 vintage, when persistent rain and cool weather caused widespread bunch rot and delayed ripening.

“We are now seeing it in even loose cluster varietals such as Cabernet, which is also putting a damper on this year’s harvest,” Klier said.

Weather whiplash, stalled ripening

The challenges began with the weather. After a mild spring and cool summer that slowed ripening, a series of rain events hit the region just as harvest began to ramp up. “We haven’t had, you know, just a large, significant weather event, but we’ve had kind of smaller events that have added up over time,” said Glenn Proctor of Ciatti Company. “We are seeing botrytis. We’re starting to see some different types of mold growth. The fruit is not necessarily holding up that well.”

Brix levels — the measure of sugar content in grapes — have become a major concern.

“Most wineries want in between 24 and 26 bricks nowadays, and we’re seeing a lot of vineyards getting stuck at 22 and 23 bricks,” Klier said. “The continuous rain and cool temperatures are preventing grapes from reaching desired ripeness, causing frustration among wineries.”

Picking in Mendocino and Lake counties largely wrapped last week. But in Sonoma and Napa counties, harvest of late-ripening varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon continued “at a pretty brisk pace,” as growers raced last week to pick fruit another storm loomed in the forecast.

A harvest in ‘triage mode’

By mid-October, many wineries were operating in what Proctor called “triage mode,” forced to make quick decisions on fruit quality and readiness.

“We are seeing botrytis,” he said. “We’re starting to see some different types of mold growth. The fruit is not necessarily holding up that well.”

Some wineries accelerated their harvest schedules dramatically. Proctor noted that one winery “completed 15% of its crush in a single week,” a sign of both urgency and pressure on winemaking teams to handle the fruit quickly.

Despite the weather, Proctor maintained that total yields appeared “average to slightly above average,” with early estimates suggesting a statewide crop under 2.5 million tons, compared to 2.88 million tons crushed in the previous year.

He warned that this year’s difficult experience could influence future vineyard management decisions.

“One guy goes, ‘No, what I’m going to do next year is … prune it, sucker it, and leave it alone, unless there’s a market,’” Proctor said. Varying degrees of minimal to no farming of vineyards — commonly called “mothballing” — became an industry byword last season as the number of vintners seeking grapes in California and in the North Coast decreased.

The market turbulence underlying this harvest has been building for several years. Klier noted that white varietals were particularly hard hit by weak demand.

“I’ve seen a little bit more activity this year (for red varieties) than I did last year,” he said, “with less activity in white varietals this year than I did last year.”

Many growers have been forced to leave fruit unharvested. Klier said some vineyards of Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay “have gone completely unharvested.”

The options for growers are limited.

“Some are discussing price discounts, while others are exploring switching between different ranch blocks” that are more ready for harvest than ones under contract, Klier said. “However, wineries seem hesitant to seek alternative fruit sources, which might indicate slow market sales.”

Another tactic that growers have taken in such lower-demand markets is to take their grapes to a custom winery to make juice or wine that could be stored and sold. But that carries a lot of risk, Proctor said.

“We’ve seen people be very skeptical of making any bulk wine,” he said.

Klier said “bulk-wine pricing is not a profitable venture for most currently, just like grape growing is not. You’re lucky to make back your cost.”

In prior oversupply cycles, large producers might have stepped in to absorb excess, but this year, “no major players are currently stepping in to purchase surplus wine,” Klier said

With limited spot market activity and flat retail demand, Proctor predicted “continued vineyard removals and a cautious approach to farming in the coming years.”

Despite the gloom, Klier offered one faint consolation: “The North Coast probably has it the best of the worst. We have seen more activity in the North Coast than we’ve seen in any other regions in the state.”

Still, the speed of the market downturn has stunned industry veterans. “It’s quite amazing and dumbfounding to us all how quickly a market and industry can switch in just two years their position in regards to oversupply,” Klier said.

Clouds ahead

As another October rain system loomed last weekend, Klier captured the prevailing anxiety: “Most folks are thinking, if this is as heavy of a downpour as it was the last one, that this could be the end of the season for most wineries and most growers.”

Sonoma County Winegrowers President Karissa Kruse echoed those concerns. “We saw a rush around picking right before the rains,” she said. “Most Pinot Noir and Chardonnay varieties were already picked when unexpected rainfall occurred.” Roughly 80% of the county’s grapes were in by mid-October, but key red varietals such as Cabernet, Merlot, and Zinfandel were still on the vines.

The rain created disease pressures rarely seen in normally hardy varietals. “We haven’t had those heat spikes that sometimes follow a rain event,” Kruse said. “This lack of heat and wind has made grape drying more challenging,” she explained, leading to “disease pressure to typically more resilient grape types like Cabernet Sauvignon.”

Kruse also highlighted market uncertainty. “We have heard of some deals being made in what I would call the open market, in terms of grape purchasing,” she said. Some growers are producing bulk wine “with hopes of better market conditions in 12 to 36 months,” while others are scaling back vineyard maintenance.

Sonoma County Winegrowers, she said, are shifting from regional promotion to direct market support: “We’ve been really shifting our strategy into how do we actually help our winery partners sell wine and actually place wine.” Efforts include “wine club sales, restaurant placements, and even a private label deal with Aquasher Arena and the Coachella Valley Firebirds.”

While the outcome of this year’s harvest remains uncertain, Kruse remains grounded in optimism: “I always hear our farmers say they wouldn’t be farming if they weren’t a glass half full type of person.”

Stonestreet Winery’s Kristina Shideler was similarly upbeat. “Flavor development was quite advanced on our mountain estate,” she said. “The Chardonnays are showing beautiful character and acidity at lower alcohols and the Cabernets are remarkably concentrated… some of the most beautiful and age-worthy wines will come from 2025.”

Signs of strength at the top end

Even as growers and bulk producers grapple with economic headwinds, the highest tiers of the wine market remain strong. Dave Parker, CEO of Benchmark Wine and publisher of the Wine Market Journal, said collectible and luxury wines continue to outperform expectations. “Those very top players continue to appreciate,” Parker said, noting that the top quintile of California wines “has actually appreciated nearly 20% between 2023 and 2024.”

Traditional collectible categories such as Bordeaux and port are performing well, with “white Burgundy emerging as another robust category.” Parker suggested that shifting consumer habits may be driving demand. “We think white Burgundy may be up because it ties in more with people’s eating habits now, less meat, less beef, more fish, chicken,” he said.

The market segmentation is stark. “We hear all these stories about wine consumption being down and vineyards being ripped out,” Parker said. “These challenges predominantly affect bulk wine, box wine, and bottom-shelf products.”

Luxury producers, by contrast, are adapting. “Quite a few of the producers are cutting back on their productions or on their long-term contracts,” Parker said. Some Napa and Sonoma wineries are using this slowdown “to replant specific vineyard blocks or switch varietals.”

For Parker, collectibility begins at the high end: “For a wine to really be collectible in almost all cases, it’s over $100,” he said, with many “averaging between $200 to $400, and some exceptional bottles exceeding $1,000.”

His company’s performance underscores the resilience of that market: “We’ve had about seven record quarters in a row,” Parker said. Even as broader wine consumption cools, the luxury niche remains vibrant.

Glimmers of quality amid challenge

Despite the challenges, several North Coast winemakers describe 2025 as a year of unexpectedly strong fruit quality. Plata Wine Partners, a major custom production company sourcing grapes from Santa Barbara to Sonoma, called the vintage one of precision and balance.

“There were no pyrazines in the fruit this year, even very early on in harvest,” the company’s winemaker said, referring to compounds that give bell pepper notes. “So we haven’t had to wait and wait and wait for the green bell pepper aromas and flavors to drop. We’ve been able to really just kind of pick based on flavor, taste, tannin development, rather than waiting for that.”

The cool, steady growing season helped preserve freshness. “We did not have any big heat spikes this harvest,” the winemaker explained. “This gentler climate allowed wineries to process incoming grapes more systematically and maintain grape quality.”

Pinot Noir showed exceptional color. “It seems to be a very high color year,” they said, while Cabernet vineyards avoided the extreme vegetal notes of 2011. “2025 is no 2011, and overall I am much happier with the quality of our Cabernet this year than in 2011.”

The company expects to meet all production goals. “We’re picking to our demand and getting all of our demand met this year, and really happy with quality so far,” the winemaker said, adding that 2025 may resemble “one of those classic old school Napa harvests… with balanced wines and moderate alcohols.”

Napa’s compressed but hopeful crush

At Napa Wine Company, a major custom crush facility, harvest tonnage was lower than average but quality remained promising. “We had clients start on the earlier side,” said spokesperson Priyanka. “Even though it did look like a cooler moderate year, we found that phenolic maturity was actually coming in at lower bricks, which is always exciting, you know, for winemakers.”

The company expects to crush around 2,800 to 2,900 tons, down from previous years. “We’re seeing clients stay a little more conservative, make only what they feel confident they can sell or correct for inventory that may already be in bottle,” Priyanka said.

Two rain systems caused some anxiety, but quick action minimized losses. “We continue to bring in fruit all over the weekend to help anyone that wanted to bring food in before the big shower,” she explained.

Smoke damage from Howell Mountain fires also reduced yields for some clients, but enthusiasm remained high. “Winemakers are very excited and optimistic about the quality of the vintage,” Priyanka said. “The rain showers presented more of an inconvenience than a significant threat to wine quality.”

Other Napa County winemakers had a generally positive outlook on quality.

“For me, this has been a great harvest,” said Chris Corley, winemaker at Monticello Vineyards. Working primarily in the southern end of Napa Valley, he credited afternoon breezes with helping dry clusters after rains.

“This year, the sugars are lower, and we’ve had some rains, so the breezes… have been helpful in drying the grapes and clusters after these late season rains,” Corley said.

Corley reported “fully ripened brown seeds, nicely resolved skin tannins, and great flavors,” predicting “nicely structured wines at lower alcohols.”

At Chimney Rock Winery, winemaker Elizabeth Vianna said the team would “wrap our harvest tonight (Oct. 23).” Vianna praised the “great freshness in acidity” and confirmed that “it was a lower brix vintage overall and ripe at lower brix without pyrazine – even though overall it was a cool year.”

Richie Allen, vice president of viticulture and winemaking at Rombauer Vineyards, described an intense but successful rush to beat the rain.

“We made the rush before the last rain to finish up for Rombauer and were crushing the last grapes as the sky opened up,” Allen said. “The team worked two weeks nonstop to make it all happen.” The quality, he emphasized, was “much better than these late rains would imply.”

Chris Dearden, owner and winemaker at Robert Biale Vineyards, reported that the winery “has been done for three weeks,” adding simply: “A great year, all in all!”

At Seavey Vineyard, winemaker Jim Duane said yields were “great” and the quality “classic, if not, outstanding in terms of quality for our Bordelais varietals.” With little ripening potential left, Duane predicted that “this pending rain is forcing growers and winemakers to decide if the fruit still hanging is going to meet their standards.”

Mendocino and Lake counties

In Mendocino County’s Anderson Valley, known for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes for table and sparkling wines, the harvest wrapped last week, according to the appellation’s trade group. Growers and vintners describe a season that tested patience but rewarded those who waited.

“Every great vintage begins long before the first buds break,” said winemaker Jeffrey Jindra. “The 2025 season rewarded those who trusted the rhythm of this valley — cool mornings, long hang time, and steady ripening that allowed flavor and acid to evolve in harmony.”

After abundant winter rains and a mild spring, the valley’s slow, even ripening produced clean fruit with vivid acidity. “The vintage kept us guessing early on,” said winemaker Phil Baxter. “But once flavor and sugar development aligned, the fruit came in beautifully. It’s one of those years where patience truly paid off.”

Norman Kobler of Philo Vineyard Solutions said that “over 50% of the vineyards up here probably left some fruit on the vines,” but those who harvested early were pleased. “We didn’t have any heat spikes like we’ve had in the last few years,” he said. “The harvest quality was generally positive, with slightly above average quantity and very good quality.”

Shannon Family of Wines’ Joy Merrilees reported that Lake County has largely finished its harvest under stable conditions.

“We’ve just completed it all yesterday,” she said Friday. The high-elevation vineyards saw only “two days recorded over 100 degrees.”

Sales of Shannon portfolio wines have been stable.

“Sales are flat, which is great,” Merrilees said. Sauvignon Blanc is on the rise and white blends have been popular. The winery’s 300,000-case annual production includes a large private label business, primarily for retail.

Still, market pressures are palpable.

“People are feeling it everywhere,” she said. “It’s time to get creative and come up with some new blends, new SKUs (variations on products), new ideas.”

Some Lake County vineyards are not going to get picked, she added.

Market correction or structural shift?

Industry analyst Jon Moramarco of BW166 and the closely followed Gomberg Fredrikson Report said the market appears to be at a turning point.

“The total wine market in the U.S. has kind of flattened out over the last 12 months,” he said. “Exports are down,” particularly in Canadian and packaged wine segments, reflecting a “weak export market” globally, partly because of tariffs and pushback on U.S. trade policy.

Exports of wine in bulk have also contracted, with prices remaining depressed, suggesting that producers may be catching up with inventory, Moramarco said.

With California’s wine grape crop this year potentially only 2.1 million to 2.2 million tons against a long-term annual need of 3.2 million or 3.4 million tons, Moramarco warned of potential shortages ahead.

“We could actually be looking at something… come springtime, where people are going to be saying we need to get more grapes,” he said.

That would mark a dramatic shift after years of oversupply.

“We could turn around and… back into a stable or possibly even a little bit of shortage,” Moramarco said.

A vintage of contrasts

Across the North Coast, 2025 will likely be remembered as a vintage of contrasts: rain and rot alongside elegance and restraint; market oversupply paired with luxury sector resilience; vineyards left unharvested even as others celebrate balanced, age-worthy wines.

For Klier, the final word may rest on weather still to come.

“Most folks are thinking,” he said, “if this is as heavy of a downpour as it was the last one, that this could be the end of the season for most wineries and most growers.”

Yet amid the uncertainty, many winemakers find cause for optimism.

“Maybe this is one of those classic old school Napa harvests that the trade has been talking about wanting for so long — with balanced wines and moderate alcohols,” said Crowe, winemaker at Plata.

(The Press Democrat)

IS AI CARNIVOROUS? WILL IT EAT US?

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

Question: Is media-generated fear of AI warranted?

For 25 years the technowizards at Goggle haven’t been able to tame the Spelchuck monster from scrambling real words into wrong words and / or imaginary ones. It takes more effort to proofread a sentence after Spullchck fixes it than if left to your own illiterate effortBEtTER?::cant prevent Spelchk from replacing real words with words that make no sense or not even exist?

Even if you don’t know what the previous paragraph says, I’m sure you understand.

But a problem no one seems to be addressing or maybe even thinking about is this: What will people who get displaced by the Ai-bots do when there’s nothing to do?

This presents an especially troubling future in Ukiah where roughly a third of the residents already have nothing to do, and aggressively pursue not doing it.

When Ai takes over all the intellectual work on the planet what will everyone be doing besides not going to work? And if they aren’t going to work where will they get the money to, you know, survive?

Although by that point if you aren’t going to work you will at least start saving money immediately by not having to buy clothing suitable for being employed, nor save enough to buy lunch five days a week or fill the tank of the car you don’t have with the gasoline you won’t need. I guess it might end up okay after all.

But dark shrouded fears gather in the imagination of me. I see storm clouds turning to thunder, lightning, tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions and meteors crashing into Ukiah’s fashionable west side.

Much turmoil will result if our fellow citizens, bored and useless, decide to spend their (endless, non-stop) hours writing poetry. It could happen. Gather a sufficient number of poorly educated college graduates with nothing to do but let their imaginations run loose, and a substantial percentage will imagine they are, of all things under the sun, poets.

And who among us will be surprised if Donald Trump, by then in his fifth term as King Hitler, demands compulsory attendance at all poetry readings and poetry festivals?

Assisted suicide might not come soon enough.

Vanquish The Vandals

Through the decades Ukiah has made determined, and successful, efforts to destroy its oldest and most handsome architectural features. Victorian houses. old lovely school buildings, courthouses (ahem) and pleasant landscapes have all fallen to city bulldozers.

Right now the oddly beautiful rock wall surrounding Todd Grove Park is being slowly but relentlessly destroyed. Maybe it’s a city-sponsored project but let’s hope not.

Walk around the park and take note of all the missing / broken / crushed rock remnants. Around the west side, nearest the golf course, the damage is most advanced. The wall is under steady siege.

Some elevated caps on the scores of pillars are gone, hammered to dust.

Is it one, two or a dozen determined vandals who go to work at night with hammers and crowbars? I don’t know.

Can the city install surveillance cameras to catch the cretins responsible for the damage? I think so.

Trigger Warning

Old blind cowboy comes staggering into a bar, finds a stool, asks for a beer and says “Say bartender, wanna hear a Blonde Joke?”

And the bartenders says “Listen here cowpoke, before you decide to tell that joke: I’m blonde, 6-3, I weigh 175, with a black belt in karate.

“Over there the bouncer is a blonde holding a billy club. On your left is a blonde weightlifter, and on your right is a blonde boxing champ. Behind you there’s a blonde Olympic wrestler.

“Now then cowpoke, you dead sure you want to tell a blonde joke?”

The old cowboy sighs and says “Well, I reckon maybe not. Not if I’m going to have to explain it five times.”

(Tom Hine was sitting in a bar one day when a horse walked through the door. “Hey!” shouted the bartender. “Sounds great!” said the horse. TWK was there too if you don’t believe me.)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, October 26, 2025

DEAN AMMONS, 60, Ukiah. Under influence, parole violation.

KATHERINE FOSTER, 35, Albion. Suspended license.

TONY FOSTER, 53, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

SANTIAGO GONZALEZ-ALVAREZ, 33, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

JOHN HANOVER JR., 32, Covelo. Domestic battery, loitering, entering non-commercial dwelling, unspecified offenses.

BOBBY HENDRY SR., 69, Willits. Under influence.

JACOB LAWSON, 38, Willits. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15%.

JAZMIN LULENAJERA, 34, Ukiah. DUI, leaving scene of accident with property damage.

MICAH MATTOX, 26, Eureka/Ukiah. Suspended license.

JOHNATHIN ROSS, 31, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

TONY STEPHENS. 47, Willits. Controlled substance with two or more priors, failure to appear.

HIGHLIGHTS OF ‘79

by Paul Modic

I was walking down the Yellow Dirt Road on a sunny spring day in 1979, just 24 years old, on the way to the beach to pick mussels and hermit crabs off the rocks to add to my dinner later. I cut off the road and down the trail by the cabin, where Buzz was living, that being the most direct route people often took to the ocean. (His ex Mary was the landowner and she had run off with an acid cult called Shiva Lela.)

“I'd give twenty grand for this place,” I told Buzz. It was five acres with a one room cabin, 14 by 16, and an upstairs room you accessed by climbing up a row of two by fours nailed into the wall. The dwelling was nestled on the side of the mountain on a small sunny flat next to a huge Douglas fir tree. There was a spring above, another below and a wedge of ocean view to the southwest.

It seemed everyone had land fever in those days, the desire and obsession to find and buy a few acres and build a cabin or house. There was rarely anything available in the Gulch and if there was you could count on one or two other people also wanting it. Unlike large ranches to the east in Briceland and Ettersburg with large parcels of 40's, 80’s and 160's, the Gulch had been sliced up by Bob McKee into ones, threes, fives, sevens, thirteens, twenties, and any other acreage size he imagined. (My first “published” piece was a poem I had recently tacked up on the Yellow Dirt Road bulletin board called “Land.” One line I remember is, “The land is sliced like pizza, old and new money line up for their share.”)

After talking with Buzz I continued my hike down the rustic trail along Whale Creek for about an hour, at the sea I collected the shellfish off the rocks, then hiked back up the steep mountain trail. When I got back to the cabin Buzz said, “Mary was just here and she wants to sell the place, and she wants to sell it to you for fifteen grand.” That was probably the last great deal in Whale Gulch.

(A few years before that, Buzz, Mary, the crippled kid Jeff and I had made one issue of a radical underground newspaper called “Stickers and Weeds.” I had picked apples in Washington that fall, bought a mimeograph machine from a church in Chelan, shipped it back to Whitethorn and we cranked out the issue. It must have been pretty radical with a column by the newly arrived Paul Encimer and an article about how to do an herbal abortion.)

With a big crop growing back in Thompson Creek and another up at Fern Hill, I decided to go to HSU and got a rundown rental on Victor Street in Manila. I was following the World Series, made a date with a girl to go to a movie, but the Orioles came back to force a seventh game and though it wasn’t even my team I made the classic move, watching the movie while listening to the game with a transistor radio and earphone, unbeknownst to her. (Just like they that time in Archie comics.)

Buzz was still living down the hill at Mary’s place with his tiny crop, I abandoned HSU (and my Human Sexuality class) and the shabby house in Manila, drove out to Thompson Creek, cut down the plants, bound them in huge bundles, hauled them all down the hill to my new place, then went back up to my squatters cabin on Fern Hill, with the amazing ocean view, and cut down those plants as well.

We filled the room downstairs with so much hanging weed we could just barely see each other down a narrow corridor along the side. (I wanted to name the mass of plants “Ralph” but Buzz suggested “Ralphina” would be more apt for the female buds hanging there.)

Upstairs I hung the plants closely together on strings without leafing or cutting the branches off, just jammed them together where a lot of it got moldy and I kept throwing it out the window. (Buzz made a delicious omelet everyday with potatoes on the side, along with the coffee it took us about two hours to get going on the harvest-processing work in the morning.)

After the plants were all cut, dried, trimmed, and stored I flew off to Washington DC to visit my grandmother on the way to Europe. I went with my cousin to a New Years Eve party near the Pentagon where I shocked a woman who I tried to kiss at midnight. The next day I flew to London for a roots adventure in Yugoslavia, with stops in France and Germany along the way where I ate pizza every day.

I made it to the family farm in Slovenia unexpectedly on a snowy night in January.

“Ya zem Paul Modich,” I said when the door opened to my knocks.

They welcomed me heartily and the patriarch, my great uncle Josip, gave me shots of homemade schnapps. We talked for a while, as I constantly looked into my English-Slovenian dictionary. They called the city cousins, told them I was there and those relatives wanted me to leave immediately. I didn’t want to leave the farm and they put me to bed with a hot water bottle at my feet, fed me a breakfast of millet with pig grease poured over it in the morning, with as much fresh farm milk as I could drink. The distant great aunts, old ladies dressed in black, sat on the huge stone hearth keeping warm.

In the morning the cousins and uncle came and whisked me away to their nearby town, where I stayed a night in their modern house. (The family still has the farm but all the inhabitants have died.)

I went back to the capital of Ljubljana to catch a flight to Istanbul but I had gotten the schedule wrong so I went to Athens instead and ate more pizza.

Realizing I hadn’t gotten stoned in two weeks, I flew to Amsterdam, asked around, then went all over the city trying to find the coffee shop called “The Cosmic Circle.” When I finally found it the dealer there said there's no hash on Tuesday so I headed to the red light district where the ladies sit in the windows beside the canal, and I was so inexperienced I kissed my first prostitute on the mouth. (That night in the hostel I heard a guy screaming and figured he was having heroin withdrawals.)

I got back to California after a month in Europe, having neglected to visit Italy and Spain as my grandfather had recommended, traded cabins with Buzz, and moved into my own place: peace of mind on a piece of paper, another line from my first poem.

WHO’LL STOP THE RAIN

Long as I remember the rain been comin' down
Clouds of mystery pourin' confusion on the ground
Good men through the ages tryin' to find the sun
And I wonder, still I wonder, who'll stop the rain?

I went down Virginia, seekin' shelter from the storm
Caught up in the fable, I watched the tower grow
Five Year Plans and New Deals, wrapped in golden chains
And I wonder, still I wonder, who'll stop the rain?

Heard the singers playin', how we cheered for more
The crowd had rushed together, tryin' to keep warm
Still the rain kept pourin', fallin' on my ears
And I wonder, still I wonder, who'll stop the rain?

— John Fogerty (1970)

49ERS STYMIED BY TEXANS 26-15 AS DEFENSE GETS SHREDDED, DECIMATED BY NEW INJURIES

by Noah Furtado

San Francisco 49ers fans showed up to fill a lot of empty seats at NRG Stadium. They were, in turn, treated to a long afternoon of Texans football Sunday.

With reserves getting increasing amounts of playing time in the trenches on both offense and defense, the 49ers were manhandled at the line of scrimmage for four quarters against a team that entered and exited under .500. The Texans notched their third win of the season with a 26-15 final score that dropped their guests to 5-3.

The Niners already had a skeleton crew before kickoff, particularly on defense, sans All-Pro players Fred Warner (ankle, out for season) and Nick Bosa (knee, out for season), plus pass-rush specialists Bryce Huff (hamstring) and Yetur Gross-Matos (knee, hamstring). Then starting defensive tackle Jordan Elliott (ankle), starting linebacker Dee Winters (knee) and rotational defensive end Sam Okuayinonu (ankle) could not finish the game due to their own injuries.

Houston finished with 475 yards of total offense, a season high.

The 49ers cut their game-long deficit to eight points with still a full quarter to play. Their fifth and final 3-and-out, followed by a jump-ball interception to Texans cornerback Kamari Lassiter, left no doubt about the game’s outcome.

Behind an offensive line forced make do with two backups, quarterback Mac Jones was sacked twice, hit six times and appeared shaken up on more than one occasion in the latter stages.

Texans defensive end Will Anderson Jr. hits 49ers quarterback Mac Jones just as he is releasing a pass in the third quarter of Sunday’s game at NRG Stadium in Houston (Alex Slitz/Getty Images)

The Texans led 16-0 with 58 seconds left in the first half. The 49ers had managed only 30 yards of total offense at that point with three 3-and-outs, while their hosts hogged the ball for more than 24 minutes.

The Niners did something with their limited time. Backup running back Brian Robinson returned the ensuing kickoff 46 yards to midfield, plus 15 yards tacked on to the end of the play for a facemask penalty. Four plays later, Jones threw a back-shoulder ball to All-Pro tight end George Kittle, who corralled the pass while sandwiched between Texans defenders on National Tight End Day. Touchdown. A game in which the Niners were initially wholly dominated for 29 minutes was suddenly well within reach.

Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud sailed a ball into the arms of cornerback Deommodore Lenoir to enter halftime on an interception, the 49ers’ first after 14 games and 469 pass attempts without one. The momentum seemed to be shifting.

That is, until the Niners were on offense again. They started the second half with the ball, which was given back to the Texans after another three offensive plays and a punt. Thomas Morstead pinned them at their own 6-yard line, but Stroud methodically marched his team down the field once more and capped a 6-minute drive with his second passing touchdown of the day.

Stroud had practically all day to throw behind what looked like a Pop Warner offensive line just six days earlier. The Niners’ largely non-existent pass rush was credited with two quarterback hits for an entire afternoon of work.

49ERS GAME GRADES: S.F. left humbled and hurting after Houston dominates

In a 3-hour game, the San Francisco 49ers played about 10 minutes of good football as the Houston Texans dominated in every aspect of a 26-15 loss that was nowhere near as close as the final score might indicate.

Offense: D+

In their first three drives, the 49ers ran 10 plays, gained 30 yards, had no first downs and kept the ball for only 4:56. It was that kind of day. San Francisco finished with a season-low 223 yards — more than 140 below its season average. Christian McCaffrey rushed for 25 yards on eight carries — his lowest output since the final game of the 2018 season when he had 18 for Carolina. Mac Jones, under constant harassment, managed to complete 19 of 32 passes for 193 yards and — in honor of National Tight End Day — threw TD passes to George Kittle and Jake Tonges.

Defense: F

Simply defenseless. Houston marched the length of the field early and often with little resistance from the 49ers. The Texans had six scoring drives, five of which covered at least 10 plays (and the other was a nine-play march). As S.F. watched a series of defenders (Dee Winters, Jordan Elliott, Sam Okuayinonu) forced from the game by injuries, Houston, held to 254 yards in an embarrassing loss to Seattle last week, piled up 475 yards, 299 of that in the first half. Looking for a bright spot? The no-interception streak that went back nearly a year ended on the final play of the first half courtesy of Deommodore Lenoir.

Special Teams: B

It looked for a brief moment that a play by this unit — Brian Robinson Jr.’s 46-yard kickoff return that was followed four plays later by S.F.’s first TD — might spark a rally. But it was not to be. It’s never a good sign when your punter has a good day, but Thomas Morstead averaged 47.6 yards on his five punts and had one downed at the Houston 6-yard line. Eddy Piñeiro didn’t have a chance for try a field goal, his contribution being limited to one extra point.

Coaching: C-

Neither Kyle Shanahan on offense nor Robert Saleh on defense had an answer for anything Houston was doing. Using the absences of Brock Purdy, Fred Warner and Nick Bosa can only go so far to explain this one. After all, all three missed last week’s dominating effort of Atlanta as well.

Overall: D

The 49ers’ most impressive and inspiring win of the season was followed in quick succession by their worst showing. The highlights can be counted on one hand, the lowlights nearly too numerous to count. Houston was supposed to be a soft spot in the Niners’ schedule but instead laid bare multiple deficiencies. Another 10 a.m. West Coast start against a subpar opponent looms next week against the Giants, but which 49ers team will show up?

(SF Chronicle)

DELTA TUNNEL UPDATE: Governor claims two 'victories,' CalChamber files dangerous initiative

by Dan Bacher

The San Joaquin River and Tinsley Island in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in San Joaquin County on May 11, 2023. (Courtesy of California Department of Water Resources)

Opponents of the Delta Tunnel project last month celebrated their successful campaign against Newsom’s trailer bill to fast-track the Delta Conveyance Project through the State Legislature, but the zombie project continues to slowly move through other government processes.

Newsom on October 23 announced what he described as “two recent key victories” in his unrelenting political campaign to advance the 43-mile long Delta Tunnel. He cited a court decision reversing a preliminary injunction that was previously blocking pre-construction geotechnical work, along with a California Department of Water Resources (DWR) submission to the Delta Stewardship Council for a “certification of consistency” for the broader project.…

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/10/25/2350197/-Delta-Tunnel-Update-Governor-claims-two-victories-CalChamber-files-dangerous-initiative

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I work in land development and we are seeing more and more proposals to develop land as "package" data centers specifically because of AI. The amount of power and water these facilities require is staggering, especially for smaller communities. One of these facilities comes with its own power generator, however, in my state power is generated using natural gas. Even though it will generate its own power it will still be sucking natural gas out of the system that could be used elsewhere. Using this amount of resources for something as useless as AI is not prudent.

WHITE HOUSE DISFIGURED

Editor,

It just turns my stomach to see the White House being so quickly designed and violently remodeled. As an architect, I know that it will not be done with the appropriate sensitivity with less than 60 days of design time.

What a telling metaphor, seeing the backhoe, the exposed wall cut open like a wounded soldier in war and Old Glory flying in the background, trying so hard to be proud and undeterred in the afternoon golden hour light as this onslaught takes place. Just unbelievable.

We will now have to live with a Mar-a-Lago aesthetic at the White House from now until someone with equal bravado does it the right way. I only hope its lifespan is about the same as a Holiday Inn in the suburbs, which is the decor it seeks to replicate.

Kurt Worthington

Berkeley

DEAR AMERICA

Can we take something
Something really really good
And fuck it royally?

Dear America
Dear Dear Dear America
I fear we’ve just done.

— Jim Luther

Hill & Bill, Fayetteville, Arkansas, 1975

NEWSOM, HARRIS BOTH CONSIDERING RUNS FOR PRESIDENT IN 2028

by Jenny Jarvie

In a sign of California's rising status as a major hub of Democratic politics, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Sunday he's considering a run for president in 2028 - just a day after former U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris made the same pronouncement.

Newsom, a Democrat who has won national prominence this year pitching himself a leader of the resistance to President Trump, admitted for the first time publicly that he is seriously weighing a 2028 presidential run.

In an interview with "CBS News Sunday Morning," Newsom was asked whether he would give "serious thought" after the 2026 midterms to a White House bid.

"Yeah, I'd be lying otherwise," Newsom replied. "I'd just be lying. And I'm not - I can't do that."

Harris said this weekend in an interview with the BBC that she expects a woman will be president in the coming year. "Possibly," she said, it could be her.

"I am not done," she said. "I have lived my entire career as a life of service and it's in my bones."

It's still more than three years until the November 2028 election, and entirely possible only one or neither of the two California politicians could throw their hat in the race.

But the early willingness of Newsom and Harris to publicly consider a White House bid shows that the Golden State is still a major hub of Democratic politics. It also sets up a potential 2028 political showdown between two of California's weightiest political figureheads.

For years, Newsom has denied presidential ambitions. But since Trump defeated Harris in the November 2024 election, the California governor has emerged as a vocal critic of the Trump administration's agenda.

Under Newsom's leadership, California has filed dozens of lawsuits against Trump - most noticeably against the Trump administration' deployment of National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles. The governor has also become more aggressive on social media, taking to X to taunt and troll Trump.

Still, Newsom, whose term ends in January 2027 and who cannot run again for governor because of term limits, cautioned that he is not rushing into a 2028 presidential campaign.

"I have no idea," Newsom said Sunday of whether he will actually decide to run.

After Trump defeated Harris in November, Harris was viewed as a possible candidate for California governor. But in July she announced that, after "serious thought" she would not run for the top California office.

"For now, my leadership - and public service - will not be in elected office," Harris said in a statement. "I look forward to getting back out and listening to the American people, helping elect Democrats across the nation who will fight fearlessly, and sharing more details in the months ahead about my own plans."

Newsom's interest in the White House raises the stakes for passing Proposition 50, a California ballot measure he has pushed - in response to a similar initiative in Texas - that would allow state Democrats to temporarily change the boundaries of U.S. House maps so that they are more favorable to Democrats. California voters will vote on Prop 50 in a special election next week.

Newsom has cast his effort as a response to Trump's push to redraw maps in Republican-controlled states to make them more favorable to the GOP.

"I think it's about our democracy," Newsom said in the CBS interview. "It's about the future of this republic. I think it's about, you know, what the founding fathers lived and died for, this notion of the rule of law, and not the rule of Don."

If Newsom is successful and Proposition 50 passes, the move could potentially help future Democratic candidates for the White House.

But either way, both Newsom and Harris would face high hurdles in battleground states if they ran for president.

Just being a Californian is a liability, some argue, at a time when Republicans depict the state as a bastion of woke ideas, high taxes and crime.

While California boasts the world's fifth-largest economy and is home to the massive tech powerhouse of Silicon Valley and the cultural epicenter of Hollywood, it has struggled in recent years with high housing costs and massive income inequality. In September, a study found California tied with Louisiana for the nation's highest poverty rate.

Newsom, 58, a former San Francisco mayor who was born to a wealthy and well-connected San Francisco family, suggested in the CBS interview that he had already surmounted significant obstacles. Early on, Newsom struggled in school and suffered from dyslexia.

"The idea that a guy who got 960 on his SAT, that still struggles to read scripts, that was always in the back of the classroom, the idea that you would even throw that out is, in and of itself, extraordinary," Newsom said. "Who the hell knows? I'm looking forward to who presents themselves in 2028 and who meets that moment. And that's the question for the American people."

Harris, 61, who served as a U.S. senator and California attorney general before she became vice president in 2020 and then the Democratic Party's nominee in the 2024 presidential election, received criticism last year after losing to Trump by more than 2.3 million votes, about 1.5% of the popular vote. Some Democrats accused her of being an elite, out-of-touch candidate who failed to connect with voters in battleground states who have struggled economically in recent years.

But speaking in Los Angeles last month as she promoted her new memoir, "107 Days," Harris appeared to take little responsibility for her 2024 loss.

"I wrote the book for many reasons, but primarily to remind us how unprecedented that election was," Harris said.

"Think about it. A sitting president of the United States is running for reelection and three and a half months before the election decides not to run, and then a sitting vice president takes up the mantle to run against a former president of the United States who has been running for 10 years, with 107 days to go."

Newsom has already raised eyebrows this year by traveling to critical battleground election states.

In July, Newsom traveled more than 2,000 miles to South Carolina, a state that traditionally hosts the South's first presidential primary. He said he was working to help the party win back the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026. But at the time there were a dozen competitive House districts in California. South Carolina, a staunchly conservative state, did not have a single competitive race.

After Newsom spoke in South Carolina, Rep. James Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black member of Congress and renowned Democratic kingmaker who rescued former President Biden's 2020 campaign, told The Times that Newsom would be "a hell of a candidate."

"He's demonstrated that over and over again," Clyburn said, stopping short of endorsing him. "I feel good about his chances."

But other leading South Carolina Democrats voiced doubts that Newsom could win over working class and swing voters in battleground states.

Richard Harpootlian, a South Carolina attorney, former state senator and former chairman of the state Democratic Party, called Newsom "a handsome man with great hair."

"But the party is searching for a left-of-moderate candidate who can articulate blue-collar hopes and desires," Harpootlian told The Times.

"If he had a track record of solving huge problems like homelessness, or the social safety net, he'd be a more palatable candidate," he added. "I just think he's going to have a tough time explaining why there's so many failures in California."

(Los Angeles Times)

PARTY TRIVIA

Editor,

The Iranian Embassy in Washington DC was known for its opulent parties and banquets. In 1975 ‘New York’ Magazine reported that:

a. They would be serving alcohol despite the muslim prohibition.

b. An important contract had been signed saving an American from bankruptcy.

c. Most guests thought the food was too spicy.

d. The kitchen was infested with cockroaches.

e. An eastern senator and a midwestern congressman were copulating with prostitutes in full view of other guests.

J. Mills

Ben Lomond

Party trivia answer: e

THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER

by George Orwell

Published in 1937, this book is a powerful and unflinching exploration of poverty, class, and industrial life in Depression-era Northern England. The book is divided into two distinct parts: the first is a vivid documentary account of Orwell’s firsthand observations of the living and working conditions of the working class in industrial towns like Wigan, while the second is a more personal and polemical essay on socialism, class prejudice, and the challenges of achieving social change.

In the first half, Orwell immerses himself in the lives of coal miners, factory workers, and the unemployed, painting a stark and often harrowing picture of their daily struggles. He describes the grueling labor of the miners, the squalor of overcrowded housing, and the pervasive sense of hopelessness that accompanies poverty. Orwell’s writing is both empathetic and precise, capturing the resilience and dignity of the people he encounters while exposing the systemic injustices that keep them trapped in hardship.

The second half of the book shifts to a broader discussion of socialism and the barriers to its acceptance in Britain. Orwell critiques the middle-class attitudes that hinder solidarity with the working class, including snobbery, fear of change, and a romanticized view of the past. He also reflects on his own complicated relationship with class and identity, acknowledging the contradictions and challenges of advocating for a more equitable society.

The Road to Wigan Pier is a deeply human and thought-provoking work that combines social critique with personal reflection. Orwell’s commitment to truth and his ability to connect with people from all walks of life shine through in his writing. The book remains a powerful reminder of the importance of empathy, solidarity, and the ongoing struggle for social justice.

For readers interested in history, politics, or the human condition, The Road to Wigan Pier is an essential and enduring read. It’s a testament to Orwell’s ability to blend sharp analysis with heartfelt storytelling, making it as relevant today as it was nearly a century ago.

THE MORNING AFTER

by Edward Said (1993)

It would therefore seem that the PLO has ended the intifada, which embodied not terrorism or violence but the Palestinian right to resist, even though Israel remains in occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The primary consideration in the document is for Israel’s security, with none for the Palestinians’ security from Israel’s incursions. In his September 13 press conference Yitzhak Rabin was straightforward about Israel’s continuing control over sovereignty; in addition, he said, Israel would hold the River Jordan, the boundaries with Egypt and Jordan, the sea, the land between Gaza and Jericho, Jerusalem, the settlements and the roads. There is little in the document to suggest that Israel will give up its violence against Palestinians or compensate those who have been the victims of its policies over the past 45 years.

Neither Arafat nor any of his Palestinian partners who met the Israelis in Oslo has ever seen an Israeli settlement.

There are now over 200 of them, principally on hills, promontories and strategic points throughout the West Bank and Gaza. Many will probably shrivel and die, but the largest are designed for permanence. An independent system of roads connects them to Israel, and creates a disabling discontinuity between the main centers of Palestinian population. The actual land taken by these settlements, plus the land designated for expropriation, amounts — it is guessed — to over 55% of the total land area of the Occupied Territories.

*Home of the Desert Rat* (1944-1945) by Maynard Dixon

LEGEND has it that in 1954 when Ernest Hemingway, at the time the most famous novelist in America, visited Toots Shore’s New York saloon where every New York swell, resident or visitor, made a point to be seen at one time or another, Hemingway was introduced as a famous writer to New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra who immediately asked, “What paper ya with, Ernie?”

— Allen Barra

LEAD STORIES, MONDAY'S NYT

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“WHAT DO YOU THINK you are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin'? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average asshole out walkin' around on the streets and that's it.”

― Ken Kesey, ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest’

I’D LIKE TO STAY 85 FOREVER

by Roger Rosenblatt

Now that I’m deep in my 80s, I’d like to stay here forever, and I’ll certainly try. I enjoy being here. The decade is the October of aging. And October is a lovely month, don’t you think?

To be sure, there are setbacks, such as the other day, when all at once I found myself on the floor. As I rose to leave the living room chair, it slid out from under me, leaving me astonished, my head banging against the piano keyboard nearby. So weak is my twice operated-upon back, so immobile my muscle-less legs, all I could do was sit there looking plaintively at my wife, Ginny, hoping for leverage, and recalling an ad on TV some years ago. A woman about my age now is on the floor, calling out, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” — her cry as noble as Beowulf’s or any tragic hero.

For my part, I felt more foolish than tragic. The fall was a reminder of the liabilities of the 80s. Yet these are more than counterbalanced by the gifts this decade brings. I have a great deal of free time these days, which I’ve chosen to fill in several satisfying if idiosyncratic ways.

I recite lots of poetry, sometimes to Ginny, often to the window. Poetry that has hibernated in my head since my 20s when I used to teach English and American literature at a university. I memorized great swaths of poetry then because it allowed me to talk directly to the students, eye to eye, as if the poetry existed not in a book, but in the air. Right now, if you turned me upside down and shook me (it really isn’t necessary), I could give you several Shakespeare sonnets, a Dylan Thomas villanelle, “The Mind is an Enchanting Thing” by Marianne Moore, the last lines of Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” and all of the introductory stanza to Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.” That may sound like bragging about my memory, but I share it because I think it says something about the lasting power of poetry. Also to brag.

These days, I play more of the piano on which I knocked my head. Playing by ear, too lazy to learn to read music as a kid, my range used to be very limited, especially the chords. With time on my hands I’m getting a little better. You would never mistake me for Bill Evans, or Nat King Cole before his singing days, but my touch is pretty good, and I can do a fair job with “My Romance,” “My Funny Valentine,” “What’ll I Do” and nearly everything by the Gershwin brothers, Fats Waller and Cole Porter. At my age it’s a triumph to get better at anything.

Things I can’t do any more: Run. Play basketball or tennis. I also can’t worry myself to death, or I choose not to. Before my October years, there seemed to be nothing, however inconsequential, that I could not stew over until it grew as big and menacing as Godzilla at night. Nothing was too trivial for my troubled mind. No small rejection. Not the slightest slight. I once came up with a rule, “Nobody’s thinking about you — they are thinking about themselves, just like you.” I wrote it but I didn’t believe it. Now I hardly care if anyone is thinking about me, or not. Hardly.

My love of nature has grown much deeper in this decade. I had always felt an affinity with the natural world, but it was general, casual and fleeting. These days you can catch me at the window, gazing in wonder at the East River (estuary technically), and mesmerized by the shapes in the blue-gray water, the welts and eddies, the tides, the invading armies of the waves, the clouds reflected, looking like submerged sheep.

It’s not what you do in this decade that’s so unusual, or what you think, but rather how you think. The air changes in October. I find myself thinking far less selfishly, giving much more of myself to my friends and family.

In the poem “October,” the sublime Louise Glück found that these years presented one’s life with a cold clarity, as “an allegory of waste.” Me? I see only harvest. I seem to have been partly responsible for creating a crop of six extraordinary grandchildren (add your own excessive compliments here). Before my October years, I would write the same breezy daily note to each of them: “Love you.” Now I have the time and freedom to putter around in their lives, asking this or that, making private jokes. The kids seem to take my attention gladly, or are too polite to tell me they don’t. Either way I have a flourishing garden of young people with whom I can banter to my heart’s content. So I do.

The general improvement is this: In my younger years I was always looking ahead for whatever would befall me. Now I look at what I have. And as those in their 80s appreciate, what one has is considerable. I don’t fear winter, and I don’t regret spring.

The other night Ginny and I watched the film “They Might Be Giants,” with George C. Scott, who thinks he is Sherlock Holmes, and his psychiatrist, played by Joanne Woodward, who actually is a Dr. Watson. I finally realized what it’s about. The film’s title refers to Don Quixote, for whom the windmills at which he tilted might have been giants, though they were not. But the fact that Don Quixote thought they might be giants meant that his capacity for dreams was greater than his fears.

I still have those. Dreams. Dreams for my country and for the world. And love. I have love intact. Ginny, for instance, the remarkable old woman who helped me to my feet when I parted ways with the chair. My view of Ginny is one thing that October has not changed. I see her as a rescuer now, as I saw her when we married 62 years ago. Bright colors, cool winds, perfect weather.

(Roger Rosenblatt is the author of “Making Toast,” “Kayak Morning,” “Cold Moon” and the satirical novel “Lapham Rising.”)

*Fisherman and Children, the old Canal, Springtime, Schuylerville, New York* (2024) by James Kunstler

THE WHOLE MESS… ALMOST

I ran up six flights of stairs
to my small furnished room
opened the window
and began throwing out
those things most important in life

First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:
“Don’t! I’ll tell awful things about you!”
“Oh yeah? Well, I’ve nothing to hide … OUT!”

Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:
“It’s not my fault! I’m not the cause of it all!” “OUT!”

Then Love, cooing bribes: “You’ll never know impotency!
All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!”
I pushed her fat ass out and screamed:
“You always end up a bummer!”

I picked up Faith Hope Charity
all three clinging together:
“Without us you’ll surely die!”
“With you I’m going nuts! Goodbye!”

Then Beauty … ah, Beauty—
As I led her to the window
I told her: “You I loved best in life
… but you’re a killer; Beauty kills!”

Not really meaning to drop her
I immediately ran downstairs
getting there just in time to catch her
“You saved me!” she cried
I put her down and told her: “Move on.”

Went back up those six flights
went to the money
there was no money to throw out.

The only thing left in the room was Death
hiding beneath the kitchen sink:
“I’m not real!” It cried
“I’m just a rumor spread by life … ”

Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all
and suddenly realized Humor
was all that was left—

All I could do with Humor was to say:
“Out the window with the window!”

— Gregory Corso (1959)

SYNCHRONICITY AND THE CITY

by Ted Dace

And I'm wondering who could be writing this song.
– Syd Barrett

Since moving to Paris I've discovered how truly terrible my French is. Even when I can find the words, I can't understand the response. Everything I hear is Coltrane. Dazzling but indecipherable.

After selling or giving away or throwing out the bulk of my possessions and putting the rest in storage in Kansas City, I'm trying to remember why I came here. Yes, it's exhilarating but also frustrating, not just the language barrier but immigration requirements and tasks that would be easy back home like setting up a bank account or getting a phone number. Things are just different here. Take the door to my apartment, for instance. It locks automatically as soon as you shut it, but it's also got a secondary lock that extends a pair of poles into slots in the ceiling and floor as well as four extra bolts into the wall. You have to wonder if the French are a little uptight.

But they're not insecure. Whereas Americans are afraid of being judged by onlookers, the French freely scold their kids in public for bad behavior. Whereas American kids are shuttled about in SUVs, in Paris they swarm the parks and shout and play unattended. People of all ages, not just the young, get romantic on park benches. Part of why so many Parisians are so well dressed is that they're not afraid to stand out, to look different. They're certainly not shy about articulating their grievances through bullhorns at public demonstrations. Clearly I have something to learn from these people.

I live in the 16th arrondissement in a little neighborhood wedged between the Seine and the Boulogne Woods. My stately building has an adorable little elevator and a sumptuously carpeted stairway. Unfortunately, I live on the seventh floor and the elevator and stairs stop at the sixth. The only access to my apartment is on the ground floor through a creaky old door that hides a narrow wooden staircase, the servants' stairs. Not that I'm complaining. Going up and down those steps is keeping me in shape. Only once did it get on my nerves, my first full day in town. I'd left my phone charger at a friend's house back home and needed a new one toute de suite. The nearest Apple store is on Champs-Elysees. So I went down the six flights of stairs and a couple blocks over to the metro, but the station was closed. Sure, there's also the bus, but you get bus tickets in the metro. All the stations serving line 9 were closed just for that day. Since my phone was off, I had to trudge back up the stairs and consult my laptop to figure out what to do. Turns out if the metro is closed, the bus driver will take coins.

So I descended the stairs again and headed for the bus stop. Within 30 seconds of taking a seat at the shelter, I heard faraway music. The source of it seemed to be getting closer. Before long a parade emerged on a street that crosses Ave Mozart at an angle, cutting off all traffic. A celebration of the descent of the holy spirit, as I later learned, it was composed of ordinary people waving flags and singing joyously. Charming, even heartwarming. I figured it would be over soon, but it just kept going. There must have been 10,000 people in that parade. I gave up on the bus and decided to take my chances on foot. I just had to go a couple kilometers and take a right at the Arc de Triomphe. Big deal. It was a lovely walk. It's always a lovely walk in Paris. Is that why I moved here?

Eventually, on Ave Victor Hugo, I came to a huge square. There was no way of just walking across it. I had to go around and pass several streets along the way until resuming my course. But no matter how far past that square I got, the colossal monument to hollow victory never appeared. Then I noticed a familiar street and soon realized I was just a few blocks from the bus stop. Apparently when I hit the square I went all the way around, not halfway, and continued triumphantly in reverse. So it was back up the six flights of steps (19 each) to drink some water and regroup. I figured the charger could wait a day, but then my obsessive drive kicked in and soon I was hurtling back down the stairs and over to the bus stop. The parade was of course long gone. The bus showed up immediately, as did the transfer bus, and I was soon striding in to the store.

The place was packed. None of the merchandise seemed to include a charger. When I found an employee, I told him in French what I needed, but he didn't seem to understand. I said I left my charger back home, so I might as well get one with a European adapter. Finally he understood and he picked out a box and handed it to me. It cost 25 euros, exactly the price of a charger in the States. I took the two buses home, climbed the stairs and opened the box. Guess what? It was just the adapter, no cord to connect to the phone. So I ate some leftover travel food and once again skipped down the steps and out to the bus stop. This time the buses took longer. Back in the store I had to find another salesperson. I asked if I could exchange the adapter for a charger, and he had no idea what I was talking about, but he did sell me a cord, just the cord, for 25 euros.

Perhaps it was this sequence of events that planted in my mind the idea that Paris was hurling adversities at me. Nothing was going as planned. Everything was harder than it should have been. I'd been swamped with anxiety for months, compulsively examining all the things that could possibly go wrong, and now it was even worse. I began to wonder if my irritation was somehow attracting resistance. I was so convinced things would go wrong, they did.

One day the town hall of the 16th arrondissement held a free performance of a Schubert string quartet, so I went to see it. Just as the music started, I had a completely random thought: what would the musicians do if one of the instruments suddenly broke? Would they carry on as a three-piece? Of course, I'd never seen anything like that at a concert and had no reason to think it would happen then.

Weirdly agitated I had trouble sitting still, much less following the music. My usual laser-like focus returned only in the fourth movement when I noticed one of the musicians trying to tune her instrument. Why would she do that while the others were playing? And then it happened. The violin snapped in two, the pegboard hanging by a string as she looked on in shock. The whole room gasped. But my question was answered. The concert was over.

Back in my miniature attic apartment I was reminded of something that happened when I moved to Los Angeles in 2001. Intimidated by the big city and all the strange people wandering the streets of Hollywood, I was worried about my safety. After spending my first night in a sleeping bag on the floor, I awoke to a sunny morning feeling much better. I did notice, though, that the door to my apartment was unlocked. No way had I left it unlocked the night before.

A few days later I was seated on my new folded-over futon, my mind wandering, eyes staring into space, when the door unlocked. Just like that. I literally saw the handle of the lock turn. So I got up, walked the 15 feet or so to the door and swung it open, half expecting to be murdered where I stood. No one was there. I stepped into the hallway and looked around. If someone had sprinted away after unlocking my door, I would have heard footsteps echoing off the wooden floor. Nothing.

Did my fear of someone breaking into my LA apartment cause the door to unlock? Did my irritation at things going wrong in Paris provoke the violin to break? Surely I'm not gifted with telekinetic powers. No, I believe something else is going on.

One day long ago in Switzerland, Carl Jung was treating a patient whose strict allegiance to rational thought blocked her from the breakthrough she needed. As she was describing a dream in which she found a golden jewel shaped like a scarab beetle, Jung heard a gentle but persistent tapping at the window behind him. He got up and opened the window and grabbed the insect hovering before him. He then walked over to his patient and showed her what was in his hand. It was a beetle, closely related to the rare golden scarab. "Here is your beetle," he said. Amazed and enchanted, his patient finally lowered her defenses and started healing.

Jung went on to develop the concept of synchronicity in collaboration with another of his patients, Wolfgang Pauli, who was one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics. What does quantum mechanics have to do with strikingly meaningful coincidences?

Kick a soccer ball and the force and direction of the kick determines its trajectory. At the atomic level, however, the simplicity of classical mechanics is unavailable. Between observer and event is a fog of probabilities. We can calculate the possible outcomes of a given event but not the actual outcome.

An electron typically has many possible values of its properties, such as location or energy level, etc. To assign probabilities to these values, physicists use a mathematical tool called the wave function. Quantum measurement forces the electron to settle on one of those possibilities, in effect breaking the probability wave against the rock of tangible existence. We know the wave function accurately represents the system in its default state because measurement results agree, after many repetitions, with probabilistic calculation. Yet Einstein rejected quantum mechanics on the grounds that physics ought to tell us what actually happens, not just what might happen. What he overlooked – and what was later confirmed by experiments on quantum entanglement – is that the electron itself is "uncertain" unless something interacts with it in such a way as to force it to make up its "mind." Pauli was one of the first theorists to recognize that if quantum mechanics is taken at face value, mind and matter are intertwined not just in us but all the way down to the subatomic.

If nature is mind as much as matter, the outer world of sensible objects and events ought to randomly coincide on occasion with the inner world of thought. This is synchronicity. When the violin broke shortly after I'd entertained that very possibility, it was a coincidence, sure, but a coincidence with a message.

Pauli's obsessive, hyper-critical mind seemed to attract bizarre incidents. He was banned from at least one laboratory because its equipment failed every time he visited. Am I too a walking vortex of synchronicities? I'm a perfectionist, a character flaw that stems from insecurity. For nearly a year before my move, I'd been writing a long essay linking physics to biology to consciousness to self-delusion, stirring together in one great pot everything from the collapse of the wave function to human origins to self-perpetuating social evils. I had a rough draft by the time of the move, but that was the easy part. The challenge was getting it just right – that is, perfect – prior to publication.

As the weeks went by and I toiled away at my doomed task, I became obsessed with the lock on the door to my apartment but not because I feared someone would break in. After residing in a sketchy part of Midtown KCMO – full of insecure overgrown boys trying to prove their manhood – I feel very safe in Paris. No, the problem here is getting locked out. Because the doors lock by default, if you forget your key and don't have a backup tucked away somewhere, you have to call a locksmith. The charge is 350 euros. Happens all the time. Locksmiths are everywhere and they do great business. No way was I paying 350 euros to get into my own apartment. My fail safe was to pat the keys in my pocket before leaving, but I got so obsessive about it that every time I left the apartment my keys had to be in my hand as I shut the door.

After a trip to Belgium to visit a philosopher of science who kindly agreed to reconnect after nearly 30 years absence, I came home with a great feeling of relief. My first brush with an international community I've known at a distance for many years and wish to engage with – and it was fine. We got along famously. I was not summarily dismissed for my unconventional thinking. The next day, a weight off my shoulders, I went out for a walk. But something odd happened just as the door snapped shut. I heard the distinct sound of a metallic object hit the floor in my apartment. At first I turned and started down the hall, but the program kicked in and sent me scurrying back to the door. I just wanted to see what fell. Surely it was nothing. I put the key in the lock and turned it and pushed. The door opened slightly at the top but at the floor it was jammed tight. Whatever had fallen was totally wedged in.

The gardienne of the building directed me to my landlord, who lives a couple floors down. He came upstairs with a knife and poked it around through the crack under the door. No dice. So he directed me to the nearest locksmith and soon I was doing the one thing I swore I would never do.

The locksmith, a man of about 30, was out of breath by the time we got to the seventh floor. I clumsily articulated the problem to him, and immediately he began drilling a hole near the bottom of the door. He then stuck a narrow tool through the opening and proceeded to gently prod the pole that sticks into the floor when you lock the door all the way. After quite a bit of effort, he dislodged the tiny metal object and we went inside. It turned out to be a nut that had gotten loose from a bolt attached to the locking mechanism and, by amazing chance, had fallen exactly the right way so as to bounce back and embed itself at the base of the pole. Why didn't it follow its momentum as it fell away from the door? And why did the plummet have to take place when I was leaving instead of returning? The whole thing was nuts. Or maybe this was mother nature's way of telling me I was nuts.

The trouble with classical physics is that all those laws are just approximations. A lock might stay locked or it might not. A nut might bounce harmlessly away or it might not. The only fundamental law is the quantum law, the one that determines the possible outcomes of a given circumstance. In the leap from a set of possibilities to a single actuality, funny things can happen.

By sheer chance the longtime home of my philosopher-hero, Henri Bergson, is situated directly between me and my beloved woods. Whenever I find a place full of trees and birds, I look for a spot to meditate. For that you need sloped ground or a shelf, and the Bois de Boulogne is remarkably flat. So it was a wonderful stroke of luck when I practically ran into a chair, a proper French armchair no less, mysteriously deposited in the middle of a pathless area of the forest.

Just over from the building where Bergson lived and died is a community garden. I recently noticed a flyer there about new composting bins and a training session for people who'd like to help enrich the soil. Since it sounded like it would stretch the limits of my French, I sent an email asking if anyone at the session could speak English. Later I got a response in the affirmative. But when I arrived, the translator's English was no better than my French. Then a woman showed up whose English was superb, and she clued me in on the details. The next day I returned to the garden with my food waste, determined to drop it in the bin before heading on to the woods. But she'd left out one thing: the combination lock on the bin. Incredibly, at the very moment I was done tearing up my avocado skins and noticed the lock, I heard a friendly "hello." It was my translator with a bag of her own food waste. She explained that the combination was our postal code, 75016, but in reverse order with the zero left out. She proceeded to enter the code into the lock, but it didn't open. Frustrated she asked me to try. I realized she'd been looking at it from the wrong angle. The code had to be entered onto the side of the lock with a stripe running along the numbers. So, with a bit of teamwork, we got past the lock and opened the bin. It was empty. We were the first ones.

Right around this time I discovered that my storage unit back home had been burglarized. A friend who investigated it for me said the lock had a design flaw. I ascertained from pictures she sent that my collection of foreign coins was gone. But it hardly bothered me. I was just glad I finally took the leap and escaped the comfortable prison I'd constructed for myself in my previous life.

Far from a docile servant of unyielding mathematical laws, nature weaves together the tangible and the ineffable, balancing closure with opening, complication with simplicity. Try as we might to attain perfect control and predictability, nature shows who's boss when she unleashes the Trickster on us, Jung's name for the "archetypal" tendency to trip up just when we think we've triumphed. Better to respect the Wise Old Woman and listen carefully when she taps out a message for us.

6 Comments

Chuck Dunbar October 27, 2025

“Mendo Saved My Life”

What a sweet thank you note to our little County, by Mr. Zhao, fortunate to be alive and fine after a dangerous crash. His enumeration of all the kind helpers who came forward in his time of need is touching. It’s a tribute to all the good folks in our small towns here, as Sheriff Kendall and many others here, comment on from time to time.

Bless your heart, Mr. Zhao, for taking the time to write your note of thanks. Good fortune as you move past all this and onward in your life, saved by good fortune

Kirk Vodopals October 27, 2025

Sheesh, not only do we have to put up with his garbage writing but now we have to look at his amateur paintings. No thanks Kunstler
His last name is artist in German. Seems fitting.

Chuck Dunbar October 27, 2025

“Dear America”

Jim Luther: A lament of a love letter, a heart-ache in few words. So many of us feel just this.

- Bob Abeles October 27, 2025
  
  Jim’s poem brings to my mind Alan Ginsberg’s Howl, which Ginsberg follows with Footnote to Howl, closing with the hopeful lines:
  
  Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours! bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
  Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!
  
Mazie Malone October 27, 2025

Hiya AVA’ers, 😉😘

Just a quick note on my Kind Hearts Initiative supplies request. For practical purposes, to reduce waste and keep things cost-effective any jackets, blankets, or cold-weather items I hand out are marked with my name and number. That way, if something’s found later or isn’t being used anymore, it can be returned or collected to help someone else. It’s just a small way to keep things sustainable and make sure good items keep going where they’re needed most.

Thank you, 😘

mm💕

Chuck Dunbar October 27, 2025

Age 85

Very cool essay on aging, the gains and the losses, by Roger Rosenblatt. He has a good perspective on it all. Love the tribute to his wife of 62 years as he closes. Thank much, you youngsters at the AVA

6 Comments

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