Mendocino County Today: Friday 10/31/2025

By AVA News Service on October 31, 2025

HIGH PRESSURE rebuilds over the area today. Light rain possible in Del Norte and northern Humboldt on Saturday, while dry weather prevails elsewhere. Unsettled weather conditions are expected to begin Monday into the middle of next week, with the potential of a strong Atmospheric River bringing heavy rainfall and high winds. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A cloudy 52F on the coast this Friday morning. Mostly sunny into Monday then some good rain arrives Tuesday for a couple days. It looks unsettled after that.

Roof view, Little River (Stephen Dunlap)

GARCIA GONE

On Tuesday, October 28, 2025, at approximately 2:16 p.m., Ukiah Police Department (UPD) Dispatch received a report from a caller at the Willow Terrace Apartments, located at 237 East Gobbi Street, regarding an unidentified male who had forced his way into a tenant’s apartment and was believed to be armed with a firearm.

UPD officers promptly arrived on scene, established a perimeter around the complex, and began coordinating with apartment management and the 35-year-old female tenant involved in the incident. Officers learned that the tenant had recently met the male suspect, who had been staying with her. Earlier that afternoon, the suspect allegedly forced entry into her apartment and brandished a firearm, prompting her to leave and call police.

During the investigation, officers identified the suspect as 43-year-old Armando Garcia. A records check revealed Garcia had three outstanding felony warrants for his arrest out of Santa Clara County, Lake County, and San Jose. Officers determined that Garcia remained inside the victim’s apartment. Due to the severity of the situation and concerns for the safety of other residents, UPD officers evacuated the complex.

Detectives from the UPD authored an arrest warrant, which was approved by a Mendocino County Superior Court judge, and a UPD sergeant issued a Nixle alert advising Ukiah residents to avoid the area due to active law enforcement operations.

Personnel from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, California Highway Patrol, Mendocino Major Crimes Task Force (MMCTF), and the Mendo-Lake Regional SWAT Team responded to assist UPD officers on scene. UPD also requested support from the Ukiah Valley Fire Authority and Med-Star Ambulance in the event medical aid was needed. Additionally, the City of Ukiah Public Works Department and UPD Community Service Officers assisted with establishing and maintaining road closures in the area.

Personnel from the MMCTF and Mendo-Lake Regional SWAT Team executed the arrest warrant. Garcia was located inside the apartment and taken into custody without incident. A search of the residence led to the discovery of an imitation firearm and suspected illegal narcotics belonging to Garcia.

Before being transported to the Mendocino County Jail, Garcia reported a medical emergency and was taken to Adventist Health Ukiah Valley for evaluation. After being medically cleared, he was booked and lodged at the Mendocino County Jail on outstanding warrants and related charges.

HARVEST MARKET STEPPING UP!

As we face increasing food insecurity due to the government shut down and cut to snap through November, we must come together as a community to support our neighbors that’s why harvest market in Fort Bragg will match donations at check out up to $10,000. There also be a barrel in store by the lottery machine for food donations.

Joshua Daniels:

It’s great that Harvest is stepping up, but I just fear people may not appreciate the scope of the need many in our communities will face without SNAP benefits in November.

About 1 in 5 residents of Mendocino county gets help with SNAP/CalFresh with an average benefit amount of around $200. In California about $1.1 Billion in SNAP benefits are distributed every month.

I too applaud Harvest for their efforts, but I’d also like to know more about who they plan to help, how they plan to distribute food to seniors with mobility issues, etc.

About 2/3 of SNAP recipients are children or seniors. Many people facing hunger in November will be too proud to ask others for help even if they desperately need it.

Don’t wait for others to ask for help if you know they will be having a hard time this month, and please check in on your neighbors, especially seniors and working-class families with children.

CASSIE TANNING:

Hey, Ukiah! What’s going on? The trees need to go.

People are not going to like what I have to say here. There's a petition to save the pistache trees on School Street in Ukiah. I also love the Autumn colors and was upset when I first heard about their removal. But here's the facts. The trees were planted 60 years ago and they live about 150 years. The species is way too big for sidewalk urban use. They keep growing into the buildings so they have to be trimmed on a regular basis. Trimming encourages root growth by redirecting the tree's energy. The roots keep pushing up the sidewalk making it dangerous especially for elders. In my opinion sidewalks need to be fixed and the trees replaced with a species that has beautiful autumn foliage. Pistache isn't the only tree with this color. Beneficial, long-term urban planning is a thing. Not so much 60 years ago. Live and learn.

City of Ukiah responds:

What?! The City is cutting down the trees on School Street?!

Um, no. What we HAVE done is been awarded a grant for the "School Street Multimodal Study," which sets out to preserve and enhance all of the things we love about School Street for our future. This project has included two public forums, interviews with businesses and other stakeholders, walking tours with engineers and other experts, an interactive tool for public input, a survey, a public webpage, and more. We have received input regarding the trees, parking, lighting, landscaping, events, and much more.

As part of this project, we are looking for ways to solve the problems that have been created by the tree roots. In short, the roots are destroying the sidewalks, the underground water and sewer utilities, and in some cases, the buildings. If we truly want to preserve the School Street we all love so much, we have to consider all options, which may include trimming roots and building root barriers, replacing trees in phases, or many other things. It is just a study; there are no preconceived outcomes.

You can learn more here: https://ghd.mysocialpinpoint.com/school-street-corridor-study/home/

JUDGE BRENNAN TO RETIRE

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Clayton Brennan announced this week that he will retire Friday after nearly 20 years on the bench. He’s the third county judge to retire in recent years.

THIRD DISTRICT SUPERVISOR NOVEMBER UPDATE

by John Haschak

Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations (FIRO) had a ribbon cutting event on Oct. 22 at Lake Mendocino. FIRO enables water managers to use the latest technology and weather forecasts in the Lake Mendocino watershed to guide their decisions. This is the first time in the U.S. that this approach has been used. This will allow for 20% more storage which is the equivalent amount of water for approximately 22,000 homes for a year. Another step towards greater water security and it starts here.

The Board discussed the Potter Valley Project and heard from the public at the Oct. 21 BoS meeting. With PG&E’s application to decommission (remove) the Scott and Van Arsdale Dams, no one can compel PG&E to divert water to the Russian River. There is a coalition of stakeholders in both the Eel River and Russian River watersheds working to ensure sufficient water for both basins. The coalition is working to ensure continued diversions and greater water storage capacity in the Russian River basin. It is one of those cases where everybody is conceding something while working together for the best outcome. Without this collaboration, PG&E will pull out and both sides will be in a worse position. The FIRO project is one piece of the puzzle in making a sustainable and reliable water future.

With the federal government shutdown, CEO Antle reported that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding will be cut off for 16,000 Mendocino County residents. This is happening in the richest country in the world!

Senator McGuire was able to get $50 million from Prop. 4 funds for the Great Redwood Trail. $41 million will be for the completion of the project, $650,000 to complete the master plan, $3 million for environmental restoration in the Eel River Canyon, and $5 million for the preservation of tribal cultural resources along the GRT. This will be a huge boost to the GRT project.

Election time is here. I hope that everyone gets out and votes, either by mail or in person on Nov. 4.

There will be a Talk with the Supervisor on November 13 at 10:00 in Brickhouse Coffee. You can always contact me at [email protected] or call 707-972-4214.

ALBION RIDGE RD FIRE MITIGATION WORK COMPLETED.

Dear neighbors,

The PG&E grant to remove fire fuel on Albion Ridge Road has been completed by Noyo Forestry.

The crew did a terrific job, consulting with land owners, traffic control and efficient and tidy work.

We are grateful to them and to Emily Tecchio, of the county fire safe council, and Lea Christensen, of the Albion Little River fire safe council, for the grant securing and overseeing the project.

It would be really helpful if, when you see scotch broom sprouting up, you yank it out of the ground - flammable and invasive.

Many thanks all around.

Sydelle

Albion Little River Fire Safe Council

OUR ASSEMBLYMAN’S BIGFOOT BILL

by Mark Scaramella

Among the ten bills that Local Assemblyman Chris Rogers pats himself on the back for is AB 720 which, Rogers says, “protects winemakers by clarifying the requirements of ABC licenses in regards to wine storage and production, and allowing off-premises wine tastings to occur through a simple permitting process.”

Rogers also reports that one of his bills, AB 830, was vetoed by Governor Newsom. AB 830 would have supported the rural community of Hopland by allowing Caltrans to fund the relocation or removal of the Hopland Public Utilities District's encroachment permit with Caltrans. In Mendocino County, Caltrans is slated to fund accessibility and safety improvements to U.S. Highway 101 through downtown Hopland, which would require water and sewer lines maintained and owned by the Hopland Public Utilities District to be relocated. As it stands, state law prohibits Caltrans from using their funds to move utilities when necessary for construction, leaving the Hopland PUD of less than 400 ratepayers to pay an estimated $3 million dollars in order for Caltrans to complete the project. The Governor was uncomfortable with the precedent this legislation would have set to shift costs to the state so he vetoed it.

Another Rogers bill that was vetoed was AB 1375. It “would have helped keep tribal children out of the foster care system by supporting tribal access to agreements with the Department of Social Services (DSS) to provide critical service programs for tribal families. Tribal children enter foster care two and a half times more often than White children. While Tribes are often on the frontline of providing services to tribal children and their families, they are unable to access funding similar to counties and community-based organizations. The Governor vetoed this bill because he believes the federal government would fund the agreements established under this legislation. I remain committed to this issue and will continue to work with Tribes and DSS to find a path forward.”

Rogers was apparently serious when he included AB 666 on his list of bills that did not make it to the Governor’s desk; they were held in committees. “Despite these bills not making it to the finish line,” Rogers declared, “I was proud to author them and I remain committed to the issues.” AB 666 is described as a bill that “would have made Bigfoot the official cryptid of California.”

Cryptid, n, “an animal whose existence or survival is disputed or unsubstantiated, such as the yeti or Bigfoot.”

The text of AB 666:

SECTION 1. The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(a) The most famous and beloved cryptid in contemporary California culture is the creature known as Bigfoot.

(b) A cryptid, for the purposes of this act, is defined as a creature that is believed to exist, but whose existence has not been proven definitively by science.

(d) Willow Creek, California, is widely recognized as the Bigfoot capital of the world, hosting the annual Bigfoot Daze Festival, bringing in approximately 2,000 people annually from across the world, doubling the population of the local community, to appreciate this iconic cryptid.

(e) The Willow Creek - China Flat Museum reports that its Bigfoot collection draws the most attention, with the museum bringing in 2,000 to 3,000 tourists per year.

(f) While the legends of a large, hairy, elusive creature persist in many parts of the world, its etymological origins reside firmly in California, with the first use of the term “Bigfoot” in 1958 by Andrew Genzoli for the Humboldt Times newspaper.

(g) This documented first use of “Bigfoot” squatches any other region or state’s claim to the legendary creature.

(h) Over the ensuing decades, Bigfoot has come to be associated with the stunning forests and wilderness of California, being sighted across the state.

(i) Since Bigfoot was first sighted in the County of Humboldt, it has since captured public imagination and energized popular culture across the world.

(j) Bigfoot has come to represent California’s own meteoric growth as the premier storytelling capital of the world, capturing the hearts and imaginations of people from all backgrounds.

(k) The search for Bigfoot has generated unquantifiable growth in tourism in rural areas, particularly on the North Coast where Bigfoot has repeatedly been sighted. This robust economic activity is most visible in the many roadside stops throughout the region proudly selling Bigfoot-themed wares.

(l) Popular descriptions of Bigfoot have described the cryptid as a large, bipedal hairy ape with environmental zeal, making the mysterious hominid an excellent mascot for California’s wilderness and culture.

(m) Naming Bigfoot as the official state cryptid of California will promote tourism for California’s wilderness and rural communities, as well as education, appreciation, and cultural preservation of California’s local folklore and cultural heritage.

The Bigfoot Bill: How An ‘Inside Joke’ Among Lawmakers Landed Sonoma County On National Television

by Anna Armstrong (February 2025)

A state Assembly bill that started as a playful “inside joke” among California lawmakers unexpectedly gained viral status and even landed on national television after host and comedian Stephen Colbert featured the proposal during a segment on “The Late Show” Friday night.

AB-666 (part of the inside joke), introduced by Assemblymember Chris Rogers of Santa Rosa, who represents California’s 2nd District, would adopt Bigfoot as the official state cryptid.

“The question of ‘which mythical creature best represents California’ is a hairy one — but we feel like it’s time to squatch the beef,” Rogers said in a statement. “It’s not the Tahoe Tessie or El Chupacabra that generates buzz and interest from outdoor enthusiasts: it’s Bigfoot.”

Still, in spite of the laughs, Rogers said, the bill was never meant to be taken seriously and instead was meant to serve as a “placeholder bill” — bills commonly written to hold a place while legislators work to finish up the language of a serious bill they want to introduce, he explained to The Press Democrat on Saturday.

Placeholder bills usually fade away and disappear, much like the elusive Bigfoot does in folklore and legends.

Now, though, the bill has generated a buzz among community members who are having fun with it and want to see it actually passed, Rogers said.

“I think the reaction we have gotten from folks might be because there is a moment of levity that we can provide in an otherwise tense political climate,” Rogers said. “We have been hearing from people across the nation who want to come and testify on the bill. It has been a bit of a fun week for us.”

On Friday night, the fun continued after the Santa Rosa lawmaker was flooded with texts notifying him of Colbert’s shout-out.

“I thought it was hilarious,” Rogers said about Colbert’s segment. “It is like when you have an inside joke that you and your friends think is really funny and then other people outside of that small friend group start to hear the joke and you never know how they are going to react to it.”

During his segment, Colbert nodded to Rogers and quoted an SFGate article about the bill that called Rogers’ district, which spans the coast from the Golden Gate to the Oregon border, “a region known as the epicenter of Bigfoot lore.”

“Yes, for decades people in Sonoma have reported witnessing Bigfoot on wine tours,” Colbert quipped.

Colbert’s Bigfoot bill segment lasted approximately two minutes and is available to watch on YouTube.

The bill may be heard in committee on March 17, legislative records show.

“The idea of designating things from your state is not a new one,” Rogers said. “We have an official state slug which, of course, is a banana slug. So, if nothing else this, this will be fun for third graders to research when they are learning about California history.”

“The details of the bill are still a bit fuzzy, but we believe they will come into focus in the coming months,” Rogers said in his statement.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

A READER WRITES:

I have been thinking about the sheriff’s comments for a week.

No one is going to argue that policies and legislation don’t go too far at times. Bureaucracy has its own machine-like mentality; it’s hard to stop once it starts. But to lay the blame for various problems like the disappearance of “blue collar jobs” and “increasing crime” on policies and policymakers overlooks one very important thing – the business practices that caused the policy interventions in the first place.

The industries that controlled and dominated the north coast – lumber, fishing, logging – did themselves no favors by clearcutting and overfishing. Pacific Lumber was taken over and ruined by a cartoonishly evil character who bankrupted the company, stole pensions and clearcut every tree it was legally allowed to cut. LP and GP overcut and left environmental damage we are still dealing with, fought against every common sense rule to make their industry more sustainable, then walked away and sold their timberlands for profit or tax breaks.

Agriculture in Mendo these days is primarily pot and winegrapes – giant industries dedicated to social vices. Pot had a black market affect on this country for decades, heavy pesticide use with a side of horrible crime. Grapes are a nonfood monoculture using tons of water and thousands of tons of pesticides and herbicides impacting many communities in the county and dependent on imported, often exploited labor. The biggest forces affecting winemaking and cattle ranching are the corporate monopolies (some foreign owned) that have consolidated large parts of these industries for their own profit taking.

The history of this country is little towns springing up when settlers decide some resource can be profitably extracted. After the extraction, those town die. We even have a name for the phenomena – Boomtowns. I read a book a few years ago about the big fire that led to the creation of the US fire service more than a century ago. It recounted how lumber companies came in and wholesale logged wild forests. Part of their business plan was to sell the land afterward to the workers who had cut all the trees down. The point is, businesses extract, then they move along to somewhere else and do it again. Sometimes they move along, because they can simply make MORE profit somewhere else. Masonite was still profitable when they moved their Ukiah mill to Tennessee.

Unless something else comes along to sustain them, the workers and people who made up these small boomtowns struggle along as long as they can until they die, or depart. The whole history of the country can be studied by studying boomtowns of the past that no longer exist.

Certain supervisors love to complain about the high cost of road maintenance. Sheriffs love to talk about how they don’t have the budgets to send officers all over this big county. Imagine if we had more little tiny towns all over that had paved roads and other infrastructure that had to be fixed regularly? More little towns that could not afford their own police force, more places the sheriff would have to respond to. We would be even more bankrupt than we currently seem to be.

There is a logical reason some towns grow and others wither. It used to be that people in small communities came to bigger towns regularly to do their shopping, go to church, see their community. People looked forward to seeing one another. That attitude is gone. I see complaints in Facebook groups all the time about how much people hate to come to town. The new streets are too narrow, infringing on their almighty right to mow down anyone in a crosswalk who dares to impede their errands. They complain that the see too many homeless or crazy people on the street. They can’t wait to get back to their property in the woods where they don’t see anyone for days. Sure their neighbor might be shooting deer out of season, or cooking meth, but they don’t have to interact with them. They have their little buffer of acres to keep the world at bay.

There’s no recognition or pride in our towns and cities, no acknowledgement that we are part of “their” community. These folks might live 15 miles outside Ukiah but they don’t consider themselves from here. They see themselves as country folk, more capable and hardy than soft city dwellers. The reality is cities provide shopping, doctors, healthcare facilities, schools and recreational resources like parks and playgrounds. Towns that don’t have those things nearby will eventually die. Stop being nostalgic for some lost nook of yesteryear and start building community ties where you live now. We will rise or fall together. The guns in your gun safe are of little use if the wider society around you is crumbling from drug use, lack of medical and mental health care, lack of opportunity, lack of housing, good jobs, and leaders who only look backward with nostalgic romantic notions of yesteryear.

I agree with one of Sheriff Kendall’s points – poverty creates crime. So does lackadaisical government regulation. Businesses lobby and pay legislators to get their worst policies approved, until their citizens get so fed up with the results that there is pushback and policy changes. Until we have a political system that values thinking about systems as a whole, we are going to encounter these kinds of problems.

The sheriff is correct that there has to be a better balance and where we are currently at is not sustainable.

GOWAN’S HEIRLOOM CIDER NAMED ‘CIDER MAKER OF THE YEAR’

by Sarah Doyle

The Great American Beer Festival isn’t just about beer. This year, the country’s largest beer competition in Denver received 178 cider entries (along with 8,000 beers), naming Gowan’s Heirloom Cider in Philo the 2025 Cider Maker of the Year.

For the second year running, Gowan’s was the only California cidery to win any awards, including gold medals for their Honey Citron, Spiced Apple and 1876 Heirloom ciders.

Founded in 1876 by Daniel Studebaker (of the Studebaker wagon family), the company initially sold apples and other produce throughout Mendocino County.

Today, the company is owned and operated by Don Gowan — Studebaker’s great, great grandson — and Gowan’s wife, Sharon. Today, the company is one of the only estate cideries in the country, with 100% of the apples grown on their Anderson Valley property.

To purchase Gowan’s award-winning ciders, visit gowansheirloomcider.com.

Fun fact: Gowan’s offers cider tastings in their 150-year-old orchard on Highway 128 in Philo. Tastings are $20 per person.

Gowan’s Heirloom Cider: 6320 Hwy 128, Philo; 707-205-1545; gowansheirloomcider.com.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

SOLIDARITY AND SCREENPRINTS: New exhibit features San Francisco artwork and an edible First Friday

"Mission Gráfica: Reflecting a Community in Print" opens at the Grace Hudson Museum on Saturday, Nov. 1, and runs through Feb. 1, 2026. The opening reception celebration will coincide with a special First Friday event on Nov. 7, from 5 to 8 p.m. The Museum will be open for free all day on First Friday.

World Women’s Conference by Juan R. Fuentes (1985)

Created in 1982 in the Mission District of San Francisco, Mission Gráfica became the most sought-after political poster center in the Bay Area, attracting well-established regional artists and those involved in international solidarity movements, and partnering with both rock stars and guerrilla activists. Today, they continue to offer workshop space and classes, and serve as a political and artistic meeting point for artists from both California and the wider Latin American art world. This traveling exhibition from Exhibit Envoy is comprised of dozens of screenprints from various artists, reflecting an enormous variety of styles, approaches and sensibilities.

Mission Gráfica was created as part of the Mission Cultural Center through the joint efforts of René Castro, a political refugee from Pinochet’s coup in Chile, and Jos Sances, a Sicilian-American war draft resister with a base in commercial printing. During the 1990s, Mission Gráfica was reformulated under the direction of Juan R. Fuentes, who emphasized community projects and classes. He created a more open workshop that served artists exploring personal visions as well as activists involved in local struggles from gentrification to homelessness.

Providing some local flavor, presentation of "Mission Gráfica" at the Grace Hudson Museum will be supported by artwork from Felicia Rice, a highly accomplished Mendocino Coast book artist. One of her recent pieces, "Heavy Lifting," was created in partnership with Ukiah poet Theresa Whitehill.

Heavy Lifting (detail) by Felicia Rice with Theresa Whitehill

An edible First Friday

In addition to the engaging screenprints, First Friday visitors can enjoy edible art from members of The Great Tortilla Conspiracy, a food-based collective which also originated in San Francisco's Mission District. Guests are invited to watch the conspirators screenprint satirical images with chocolate on tortillas, toasting the artworks on a comal to make quesadillas. Jazz/flamenco/North African guitarist Yoba Bouabid will be the musical guest.

The Grace Hudson Museum is at 431 S. Main St. in Ukiah. For more information please go to www.gracehudsonmuseum.org or call (707) 467-2836.

42ND ANNUAL CHESTNUT FESTIVAL!

42nd Annual Chestnut Gathering at the Zeni Ranch will be Saturday, November 1st from 10 am to 4 pm.

Potluck dinner this year! Bring something to add to the table along with your own eating supplies.

Dogs on leashes are ok, but your responsible for your pet.

Chestnuts are $5.00 a pound if you pick, or $7.00 if already picked. No credit card service available.

Call or text Jane Zeni 707-684-6892

Fresh raw chestnut honey, T-shirts and our popular nut sacks will be available, and other farm products.

WORD OF MOUTH MAGAZINE:

It makes sense that the rain returns during the season of gratitude. That knot of worry labeled “fire danger” loosens a little more with every rainfall, leaving a sense of relief in its damp and misty wake. Days are shorter and the colors of the landscape have softened. Combine this with the occasional drenching from the sky and the season’s council is clear——maybe go inside and take a load off for a bit.

This is the time of year when the persistent urge to stop hovers in the periphery. Not as if it feels like there’s enough time for that—it never feels like there’s enough time. Still, November is like that moment after you’ve removed the car key from the ignition but not yet opened the door, or the pause between the end of an exhale and the moment the lungs expand again.

The point is, it’s a good time to stop for a minute. A little rest makes space to listen to the rain, mull over your gratitude list, and even get together with friends, family, and neighbors. As always, there are some great options below in our community event calendar.

See you out there ~

Torrey & the team

wordofmouthmendo.com

BILL KIMBERLIN:

This is a photo of my big brother on the left beside me and then my two cousins, Avon and then Mike Ray. We are waiting at Ray's Resort outside Philo for my uncle to drive this Ford pick-up to the Philo post office to get the mail. This was a daily event that was of exaggerated importance to us because we would be allowed to purchase candy and comic books at Cecil Self's Philo market.

Sitting on the tailgate and dragging our feet on the gravel that was in the middle of the asphalt paved road was the greatest of privileges. There was only room for four kids, at the most, and there was intense competition from the Resort Guest's children who we were supposed to show deference to but never actually did. Although at meals we were not allowed to eat until all the guests requests had be served. Mostly, this was to insure the favored deserts of apple pie and chocolate cake didn't mysteriously disappear from the big kitchen to which we had unlimited access.

One day on our trip to Philo a guest kid by the name of Jimmy Higgins had somehow finagled a prize seat on the tail gate, and I do not know how we could have let that happen, but it did.

Well, on the way to Philo on the old road, there was a rough patch and Resort Guest Jimmy Higgens bounced off the tail gate and landed with a thud on the road. Eventually, we got my uncle to stop and find the victim. Normally, this would be an insurance nightmare as many of our guests were San Francisco attorneys or even judges.

These we different times. Jimmy was picked up and returned to his prized seat on the tail gate and the matter was never mentioned again.

However, from then on if we were accused of anything we testified to our accusers, "Jimmy Higgens did it" and since our foil was now back in San Francisco and unable to testify in his defense it usually worked.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, October 30, 2025

BRENT ANDERSON, 39, Westport. Elder abuse with great bodily harm or death.

DEREK EASTEP, 40, Ukiah. Failure to register as sex offender with priors, probation revocation.

JOHNATHAN ECHOLS, 43, Sacramento/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

MIKEAL GARCIA, 19, Willits. Domestic abuse, contempt of court.

ALLYSSA HANN, 37, Vacaville/Ukiah. Under influence, controlled substance, resisting, bringing controlled substance into jail, unspecified offense.

MICHAEL KUBAS, 46, Willits. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

ELIAS RUTHERFORD, 37, Fort Bragg. Disobeying court order, county parole violation.

KHAYYAM SHAH, 41, Little River. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15%.

ALYSSA STRANGE, 31, Southgate, Michigan/Ukiah. Stolen vehicle, false personation of another.

ELOHI TRIPLETT, 19, Fort Bragg. “Proceedings.”

THE SKELETON IN SNEAKERS: ‘Being Halloween, The Veil Has Thinned Enough For Him To Be Found’

by Kym Kemp

Thirteen years ago yesterday, an eight-year-old girl and her father stopped their kayak on a familiar riverbank close to their home near Piercy (near the county line between Humboldt and Mendocino in California)—where two worn sneakers jutted from the ground. When they began to dig, they uncovered the remains of a young man who had lain there for decades, a man whose name, story, and life had been forgotten by all but a few brothers and sisters who had no idea what happened to him.

The Discovery

For years, the family of well-known local nature photographer Talia Rose had passed the tip of a single sneaker poking out of the ground not far from the South Fork of the Eel River while kayaking and mushroom-hunting near their home. “We joked there might be a body attached,” recalled Talia in a 2012 interview. But, they didn’t seriously consider the horrifying possibility that a homicide victim might be buried so close to their peaceful home.

However, as time passed, by October 29, 2012, the sand and dirt had worn away to reveal a second sneaker, slightly lower than the other. The bleached white tips of the sneakers looked almost as if they had kicked through the soil around them struggling to be free. Talia’s husband and her eight-year-old daughter, Grace Wildflower, pulled their kayak to the shore and began digging the shoes free, in part to just remove what was likely trash but also because the joke about a body being there was beginning to seem like it could possibly be real.

Grace said in an interview yesterday that she remembers being an eight-year-old child and being with her father as he “started digging [around the sneakers], and,…dirt was going on my shoes. And I was like, ‘Ew, what is this…dead body soil?'” So Grace said she climbed up on some nearby vines and from there she watched her dad uncover the sneakers and their grisly contents. “[H]e pulls up a shoe, and he pulls up a sock, and he pours out the bones, and we’re just like, in shock…,” she told us. Her dad tried to pretend the bones weren’t a bad sign. Grace remembers him telling her “to distract me from the situation, because I was eight” that maybe someone had had a picnic nearby and buried chicken bones in the sock.

Using a bag he had, Talia’s husband gathered what he now believed to be foot bones and carried them back to his wife.

The husband and wife returned later that evening with a small shovel to confirm what they suspected. Beneath the disturbed soil they uncovered a leg bone still inside a pant leg, confirming that the sneakers had been attached to a human body. Wanting to document the scene before alerting authorities, they replaced the shoe to photograph it from several angles.

he sneakers that caught the family’s eye in 2012, with a large stone resting roughly where the victim’s head would have been, like a tombstone placed by the killer’s hands. The remains were later identified as those of 21-year-old Warren David Hawkins, missing since 1986. [Photo by Talia Rose after replacing the one sneaker]

After a restless night, Talia called the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office at 6:59 a.m. on October 30, 2012. Deputies at first suspected a Halloween prank, but when the family handed over the bones and the photographs, investigators quickly realized they were dealing with a real burial.

That day, deputies and forensic anthropologists from Chico State excavated the grave. They found a headless skeleton in 1980s-style clothing—Pro Wings sneakers, jeans, a knife, and a T-shirt that read, “Before I started working here, I drank, smoked, and used foul language for no reason at all. Thanks to this job, I now have a reason.”

Below are clothing and a knife found with the body. Perhaps these images might spark someone’s memory.

The shirt says, “Before I started working here, I drank, smoked, and used foul language for no reason at all. Thanks to this job, I now have a reason.”

Talia told us back in 2012 that a friend told her, “Being Halloween, the veil has thinned enough for him to be found.” She liked that thought. “He was ready to be found,” she said, “and the veil got thin enough.”

The Thinning Veil, Again in October

Eight years after the family’s discovery, on October 8, 2020, a forester working in a creek bed only a few miles away made another grim discovery—a human skull. At first, he thought it was an abalone shell. It wasn’t.

Detectives recovered the skull from Lost Coast Forestlands property near the junction of Highways 101 and 271, close to the Humboldt–Mendocino line. When investigators later confirmed the skull was human, speculation on social media tied it to the body found by Grace and her dad. But there was no official confirmation.

The Man in the Ground

For nearly twelve years the “Skeleton in Sneakers” remained an unidentified homicide victim. Then, in spring 2024, Mendocino County detectives sent DNA from the remains to Othram Labs in Texas. Using advanced forensic genealogy, Othram matched the profile to Paula Hawkins Johnson of Oregon. The bones belonged to her little brother—Warren David Hawkins, a 21-year-old who vanished in 1986.

WarrenHawkins

Warren was born without his father’s name, Paula Johnson told us. His real father, William Draper, was killed by a train before Warren took his first breath. She said, “When Mom had him, she wasn’t married to Warren’s dad, so she gave him my dad’s last name… .So on his birth certificate, he’s a Hawkins, and [that] made him feel like part of the family, I guess… .”

His siblings called him “W.D.” or simply “W.” According to Paula, who was 14 years older than her youngest sibling, “[He was] cute, so playful and everything,” she remembered. She particularly remembered his big brown eyes. But, she said, he was a little slow and immature—”you know, he might have been 21 but in his head, he was probably 15 or something.”

In the summer of 1986, Warren went to jail in Washington State after being convicted on theft charges. When he got out, his mother bought him a bus ticket. He called his sister, Paula, and told her, “Don’t worry about me. I’m going to be gone for a while.” She never heard from him again.

Later, when she attempted to report him missing, she says a police officer in Kelso, Washington told her he had been seen in eastern Washington so they wouldn’t take her report. She still feels betrayed about the lack of help she had in tracking her little brother down.

When law enforcement contacted her with the DNA results of a close sibling being found dead, Paula said she looked at her husband and said, “I think they found Warren.” Months earlier, she and her husband had driven the North Coast route through Mendocino and Humboldt counties, past the very stretch of river near where his body had been buried. The coincidence shook her a little–to her it felt as if Warren had somehow reached out to them and brought them near him. “Oh, my god. It was just like Warren’s waving at me or something,” she told her husband.

A River of Strange Happenings

The South Fork near Cooks Valley has a history of tragic discoveries.

In 2018, a man believed to have taken his own life was found along that same riverbank—discovered by the same photographer, Talia Rose, who had documented the skeleton years earlier.

That same year, Margit Pritchard, an older woman suffering from dementia, disappeared nearby and was never found.

And, this summer, a man described as a Black male in his forties or fifties was found dead in the water just south of the county line–again not far from where Hawkins was found. Deputies reported no obvious signs of trauma.

And there was the partial skull found nearby in October of 2020.

For locals, the area has taken on a somewhat dark reputation.

Grace and the Grave

Now 21, the age that Warren likely died, Grace Wildflower remembers the day clearly. “It’s a story I still tell today,” she said. “I remember growing up, I would tell people all the time. They never believed me.”

Grace said she didn’t fully grasp the dark tragedy at eight years old but it made an impression. “I realized…since leaving Humboldt, that…, I still expect to find a body, like, if we’re looking in a dumpster, or,…if I see birds circling,…that’s the first thing that comes to my mind, which I don’t think is the case for most people.”

Still Waiting for Answers

For Paula Hawkins Johnson, the identification brought some closure—but not real peace. She worries because she still doesn’t know who killed her brother. she said. To her, in spite of the trouble he got into, he was just her baby brother trying to find his way.

She was able to tell us that the skull that was located in October of 2020 nearby was matched by DNA to her brother. She said that officers told her they believe an animal had drug it away from the skeleton.

She hopes that people who lived or worked in Southern Humboldt or northern Mendocino in the mid-1980s will think back. Maybe somebody remembers him—brown-eyed, dark-haired, working in the woods or on a farm, wearing a shirt like that. Maybe they’ll tell what they know.

Thirteen Halloweens after his discovery, and nearly four decades since he vanished, the case of Warren David Hawkins remains open. The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office asks anyone with information to call 707-463-4086.

Each October, as fog gathers in the redwoods and the river slips quietly between its banks, locals remember those bleached sneakers pushing through the soil—as if the lost young man beneath them had finally slipped through the veil of secrecy and back into the light.

THIS WINE BRAND WANTED TO OPEN A WINE COUNTRY POOL CLUB. Here’s why you won’t be swimming in it

by Esther Mobley

Jen Pelka, owner of Une Femme Wines, at her home in Sonoma. She wanted to open a tasting room with a pool, but learned that county zoning laws would prohibit it. (Gabrielle Lurie/S.F. Chronicle)

Jen Pelka had a vision for her wine brand, Une Femme. Instead of a traditional tasting room, she dreamed of a pool club in Sonoma where day-trippers could sip sparkling wine with views of vineyards and the Mayacamas Mountains. She would offer a free shuttle to and from San Francisco, catering to young people “in the Marina,” she said, who are “the kinds of people that we want to fall in love with wine and get up to Wine Country.”

Pelka got close to realizing the dream. She persuaded investors to commit nearly $7 million to the project. Her offer to buy the Patz & Hall tasting room, a well-known landmark in Sonoma, was accepted. She hired a pool designer, who began drawing up plans to add one to an open lawn. But when she brought the proposal to the Sonoma County planning department, the dream began to shatter.

Wineries and tasting rooms in Sonoma County cannot have pools, a county planner ultimately informed her.

A spokesperson for the county planning department, Genevieve Bertone, said the department doesn’t create these rules but merely enforces them. If Pelka wants the rules around pools at wineries to change, Bertone said, she should lobby her local supervisors for a change to the county’s zoning.

The dilemma gets to the heart of one of the central conflicts that defines modern-day Wine Country: Local governments must balance the growth of the wine industry, which powers much of their economies (wine accounts for one of every four jobs in the county, according to the Sonoma County Vintners), with the voices of those who don’t want to see the region become a wine-tinged Disneyland. In Napa County, with its particularly strict land-use policies and vocal anti-growth faction, this tension is familiar. But Sonoma County is known for being more lenient — more wineries here, for example, are allowed to host weddings.

To Pelka, the prohibition on a pool at a winery “feels like really significant regulatory overreach.” And she believes Sonoma County can’t afford that right now. Tourism to Wine Country is down. The wine industry is struggling to attract new drinkers. “We need freshness and newness to invigorate the customer base,” she said.

Pelka argues that Une Femme (“a woman” in French) is a rare success story in today’s wine industry. She launched it in 2020 as the house wine at her Champagne bar the Riddler, which had locations in San Francisco and New York. A few months later, the pandemic forced her to close the bars, so she decided to develop Une Femme into a proper brand.

Une Femme initially sold one sparkling wine, made by a female winemaker in Champagne, France. It still produces two bottled wines, but since 2022 Une Femme has primarily sold slender, shimmering cans of brut and rosé bubbly.

Overall wine sales were down 10.5% in the first quarter of this year, according to the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America, but canned wine is faring well. Grand View Research predicts that canned wine sales will grow 11.1% annually through 2034, with sparkling wine representing the largest segment — 60.3% — of the category. That’s partly because sparkling wine represents what a lot of people are looking for when they buy canned wine — something cold, crisp and refreshing, often intended for consumption at parks, beaches or other outdoor areas where glass is either cumbersome or forbidden — but also because carbon dioxide can help protect the wine from oxidation.

Une Femme’s sales are up 77% year over year, Pelka said. In 2025, the company is on track to sell more than 300,000 24-packs of cans, she said, reaching more than 6 million customers. (The company makes its products at Rack & Riddle, a custom crush for sparkling wine in Geyserville.)

Pelka had been looking for a tasting room for Une Femme ever since she and her husband, Charles Bililies, who owns the Souvla chain of fast-casual Greek restaurants, moved to Sonoma in 2023. Thanks to the fall of embattled developer Ken Mattson’s real estate empire, there were a number of wineries suddenly available to buy, Pelka said, but none of them felt quite right. She looked at some vacancies on the downtown Sonoma square, but said she was holding out for a space “where we could farm vineyards biodynamically, have beautiful culinary gardens and have a hospitality space to invite guests to.”

Then Pelka toured the Patz & Hall tasting room on Sonoma’s Eighth Street East, on the market for $5.9 million. With 12 acres of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes on-site, it satisfied all of her criteria. When she saw the open lawn outside the tasting room, she suddenly had an idea: a sparkly blue pool, where customers could swim in the sunlight and recline on chaise lounges while sipping from cans.

It seemed so obvious: Une Femme is already popular at pool-centric hotels and on cruise ships. “Our top use case is a pool,” Pelka said.

To raise capital for the purchase, Pelka embarked on what turned out to be “the easiest fundraise I’ve ever done,” with investors promising to put up almost $7 million — which would account for the property’s price, the construction of a pool and other improvements, plus “some additional working capital” — over the course of about three weeks.

“People in the community were like, ‘This is what Wine Country needs,’” she said, “innovative fun experiences that can attract people from the city to Sonoma. And also we as Sonoma residents want something like this.”

The main draw, in Pelka’s vision, would still be the wine, and customers would still be able to sit for a traditional wine tasting either indoors or outdoors, as Patz & Hall has always done. For any Une Femme wine club member, use of the pool would be free, as would the San Francisco shuttle — which would also stop in downtown Sonoma and supply riders with a map of other wineries, restaurants and attractions in the area.

She made the offer, which was accepted, with a 30-day inspection period during which she could pull out. Pelka set two contingencies: She would abandon the purchase if the financing failed to come through, or if the pool failed to materialize. The next day, she brought in a pool designer to draw up plans. An initial visit to the county’s planning department went well, Pelka said, and she walked away assuming that she’d be able to make it happen.

That changed after a subsequent email exchange with the department. After Pelka shared more details about her proposed project, county planner Jacob Sedgley delivered the verdict: “We’ve determined a pool would not be allowed in conjunction with a winery/tasting room,” he wrote in an email, which the Chronicle reviewed.

The primary reason, Sedgley explained, was that a pool at a winery would not be consistent with the Sonoma County General Plan, which requires that hospitality activities at agricultural sites — which include wineries — “must directly promote agricultural production,” he wrote. Selling wine at a tasting room or leading a tour through a wine cave count as supporting the agricultural goal of growing and making wine, the logic goes, but throwing pool parties does not.

Certain recreational activities are allowed in Patz & Hall’s “diverse agriculture” zoning, including hunting, fishing, paintball, zip-lining and mountain biking — but not a swimming pool.

The exception is Francis Ford Coppola Winery in Geyserville, which has two large pools and rents out its “cabines” with private changing rooms and showers. But Coppola Winery is under different zoning, in a commercial district rather than an agricultural one. To follow Coppola’s path, Pelka would need to rezone and amend the General Plan, which would likely take tens of thousands of dollars and several years, and even then, “that is not likely to get approved,” Sedgley wrote.

Pelka’s only hope for a pool at Patz & Hall, it seemed, would be to advocate for a change in the General Plan to explicitly allow a pool in agricultural zones. “We encourage interested applicants to stay engaged in that process,” said Bertone, the planning department spokesperson. In the meantime, Une Femme pulled out of the real estate deal.

“Frankly I’m incredibly sad for the sellers, because this is a hard market to sell a winery property in,” Pelka said. The price dropped from $5.9 million to $4.95 million in mid-October, according to Zillow. Last week, Patz & Hall owner James Hall said that the owners have decided not to sell the property for now. “I’m happy to share that we have signed a new lease, keeping the doors open at the Sonoma House at Patz & Hall,” he said.

Pelka is even more disappointed by the loss of what she believes could have been an outside-the-box idea for Sonoma County wineries to gain a new audience. “I really believe that a new generation of wine drinkers is looking for something highly experiential and less, I would say, traditional,” Pelka said.

“Imagine if you could market this to a broad national audience,” she continued. “‘Hey, come to our pool club in Sonoma.’”

(SF Chronicle)

FRED GARDNER:

I turned 84 today and created The Fuck-it List™. You know, of course, about the Bucket List – things you hope to do before you die. The Fuck-it List™ is for things you've been hoping to do, but now realize that you never will. By shifting projects, trips, and goals to the Fuck-it List™ you immediately reduce disappointment and sense of failure. The Bucket List is a function of hope. The Fuck-it List™ is a function of realism! You're never going to swim in the Black Sea. Put it on the of Fuck-it List™.

Carolina Twilight

This once took place down in the south
the year was '68
in a twice All-American city
in the Palmetto state
don't ask what I was doing there
it would take a long time to explain
But this evening I was walking towards
the Capitol on Main

It was a pleasant evening
Into which I sallied forth
With honeysuckle in the air
like you don't get up north
A pretty girl comes up to me
and stands right in my way
she says You are a Scorpio, right?
When is your birthday?

I said the eve of Halloween
which proved that she was right
her smile was like the temperature
her eyes were like the light
she said her name was Debbie
and her age was but 16
I asked how she made me
Sight unseen

Scorpio, Oh Scorpio
She lilting laughed loud
It's just so obvious
And I suspect you’re proud
I said I don't believe in astrology
in Heaven or in Hell
She said maybe a triple Scorpio,
Well well well

That hippie chick seen through me like
Owens Corning glass
and I can still see her walkin' away
faded blue jeans round her past
Didn't know how to call her back
I didn't have a line
We might have been compatible
I should have asked her sign.

This ad reminded me of a joke from Woody Allen’s stand-up days: "At Blinkist, we gather the key insights from nonfiction books into 15-minute reads and listens. There are over 7,500 titles across 27 categories including entrepreneurship, management and leadership, and personal development. More than 38 million people, among them Apple CEO Tim Cook, are now expanding their horizons with Blinkist."

Woody’s joke: “I took the Evelyn Wood speed-reading course. It’s terrific, it really works. I was able to Read War & Peace in 20 minutes!" Pause 2 beats. “It’s about Russia.”

Here's a fresher one from Bob Lipsyte’s ex-wife: Old guy runs into a nursing home at dinner time yelling "Supersex! Supersex! Who wants supersex?" And one of the women says, "Ehhh? I'll have the soup."

Uppity behavior used to be called "fresh." I thought the term had gone out of style, but Donald Trump said on October 19 that Colombian President Gustavo Petro has "a fresh mouth toward America." Petro accused US of "murder" after a US missile killed a fisherman.

In recent decades we US taxpayers have spent billions on coca eradication in Colombia. But 10 years ago an ungrateful Colombian court ruled that aerial spraying of Round-up was dangerous to farmers and the environment, and put a stop to it.

Barry McCaffrey, the Democrats’ go-to general, was on MSNBC the other day criticizing Trump for failing to get authorization for his plan to conquer Venezuela – not for the plan itself – and for sending a battleship that would have no practical role play. McCaffrey said “we” should concern ourselves with cocaine production in Colombia, which had “vastly increased" thanks to "the leftist President." According to McCaffrey the situation did not call for interdiction but for "massive aerial eradication" and more involvement by “the magnificent men and women of the DEA.” A saying from my NYC youth came to mind: "The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats do it to us with lubrication."

Did you know that Barry McCaffrey prepped at Andover? Then he went to West Point. He was severely wounded in Vietnam it took multiple surgeries to repair his arm – and there was something Ahab-like in the atrocity he perpetrated in Iraq. The great Seymour Hersh exposed it in the New Yorker. Two days after the declaration of a cease fire, McCaffrey ordered an attack on a retreating Republican Guard unit. As described by Hersh’s editor, David Remnick, “American ground and air units all but pulverized a Republican Guard tank division on March 2, 1991, in one of the most devastating and one-sided battles of the war.

“A number of General McCaffrey's fellow commanders, including Lt. Col. Patrick Lamar, who was the division's operations officer, told Mr. Hersh that excessive firepower was used against a weakened and retreating Iraqi force that did not seriously threaten the Americans. They believe that the American assault was a clear and willful violation of the cease-fire rules of engagement that had been established by the Pentagon.”

Very Short Song

Cassandra of the legend
Cassandra of the myth
Always being right
Doesn’t always make you easy to be with

THE FAT OF THE LAND

Warmest spiritual greetings,

Just tapping out this message at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Public Library in Washington, D.C. while enjoying autumn jazz/bossa nova music on YouTube. Have had a sumptuous breakfast at Whole Foods which included their fine coffee. Otherwise, still digesting the blackened ahi tuna sashimi from Yard House the night before, washed down with the last of the Paulaner Oktoberfest beer, (as we continue to drain the kegs from Munich), and a hefty shot of Knob Creek Rye.

There is nothing crucial to do here in Chocolate City at the moment. The government has been shut down for a month. The Prez is returning today from wherever he has been playing golf, between high stakes meetings. Nobody has been at the Peace Vigil in front of the White House for days. Maybe they are all travelling.

Halloween is tomorrow. Put on your best mask and go out. But remember, you are not the body nor the mind. Immortal Self you are!

Don't Bother with PayPal; I've Got Enough

Craig Louis Stehr

HE INSPIRED ZORRO AND HAD TIES TO SONOMA: NEW BOOK TELLS THE CAPTIVATING STORY OF JOAQUIN MURRIETA

by Clark Mason

He was the bandit scourge of early California, one of the most enigmatic figures in American history, a man whose name alone once sent tremors through the gold fields of the Sierra Nevada and beyond. Even now, the echoes of Joaquin Murrieta’s story reverberate through Sonoma County.

In “Bring Me the Head of Joaquin Murrieta” (Hanover Square Press, 2025), New York Times bestselling author John Boessenecker revisits the man behind the myth, tracing the life of an outlaw whose legend outlasted the Gold Rush and is said to have inspired the creation of Zorro, the swashbuckling Californian vigilante of pulp fiction and Hollywood films.

Joaquin Murrieta as portrayed by San Francisco artist Charles Christian Nahl, 1868 (Greg Martin Collection)

Over the decades, Murrieta’s image has shifted like a shadow at dusk, elusive, changing shape with each retelling. To some, he was a ruthless killer; to others, a folk hero, a Mexican Robin Hood defying the Anglos who had taken his land and dignity.

With the precision of a historian and the instincts of a former lawman, Boessenecker peels back the layers of myth surrounding Murrieta, revealing not a noble avenger but an opportunist who robbed and murdered without discrimination — Latinos, whites, Chinese miners; anyone with gold and no way to fight back.

The narrative unfolds against a landscape both feverish and raw: gambling halls and fandango rooms, saloons that reeked of sweat and whiskey, towns that rose and fell on the glimmer of gold dust. The forty-niners, young and reckless, were heavily armed and quick to draw. A quarrel over a claim or a hand of cards often ended in bloodshed.

Yet Murrieta’s gang, Boessenecker writes, raised violence to an almost ritualistic level. They didn’t just rob; they slaughtered.

In search of gold

On Jan. 24, 1848, while working on the construction of Sutter’s Mill on the bank of the South Fork American River, James W. Marshall discovered gold, setting off the largest mass migration in American history.

Murrieta, then about 18, journeyed north from Sonora, Mexico, chasing fortune. He began as a gold hunter and gambler, one of thousands who poured into the Sierra foothills dreaming of riches. But within a few years, he turned to banditry, leading a gang that raided mining camps, robbed travelers and vanished as suddenly as fog lifting from the hills.

The Gold Rush arrived in the long shadow of the Mexican-American War, a conflict Ulysses S. Grant would later describe as “one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger nation against a weaker one.”

Veterans from both sides now worked side by side in the diggings, old resentments simmering.

“On top of that,” Boessenecker explained, “you had the outrageous racism of the era, personified and legalized by the Foreign Miners’ Tax Act. They would charge foreigners and alleged foreigners — including Californios who were American citizens — to mine.”

Chinese and Anglo miners working a sluice box during the Gold Rush. (California State Library)

Out of this climate of humiliation and violence, Murrieta’s hatred of Anglos hardened. He gambled, stole a pair of boots, served time in jail and eventually joined his brother-in-law Claudio Feliz’s gang.

A man of charisma, courage and a fast gun, Murrieta quickly gained infamy. His targets included Chinese miners, twenty of whom the gang murdered. By Boessenecker’s count, Murrieta and his men killed at least 45 people between 1850 and 1853.

“They were by far the bloodiest outlaw gang of the Old West,” Boessenecker writes. “They were bound together by the thrill of danger, gun smoke and gold.”

Captivating characters

Murrieta’s exploits played out in the rough-and-tumble settlements that sprang up overnight — Sonora, San Andreas, Columbia, Murphy’s Camp — places where the line between miner and outlaw was faint at best. His gang stayed one step ahead of the law by constantly changing horses, disappearing like ghosts at dawn into forests and chaparral-covered hills.

Boessenecker not only chronicles Murrieta’s daring, fleeting life but also unravels the stories of the captivating characters who surrounded him. These include his paramour, “Mariana La Loca,” or Crazy Mariana, the tough-as-nails lawmen who eventually brought him down and the fellow bandits who met their fate at the end of a rope.

The book also offers a closer look at Murrieta’s most infamous lieutenant, Bernardino García, better known as Three-Fingered Jack — a violent, half-mythic figure whose cruelty was legendary long before he joined Murrieta’s gang.

A Californio, García had fought against American forces in the Bear Flag Revolt of 1846 and was implicated in the grisly torture and disembowelment of two Bear Flag emissaries near Santa Rosa. His own legend as a ruthless outlaw spread as rapidly as Murrieta’s, and together, they terrorized the mining camps.

‘A mania for murder’

Rumors of Murrieta’s raids spread like wildfire. Newspapers placed him everywhere — riding through San Francisco’s Mission District, seen near Los Angeles, glimpsed in the Sierras. The fear he inspired seemed almost supernatural. A Stockton journalist captured the panic of the time:

“He rides through the settlements slaughtering the weak and unprotected, as if a mania for murder possessed his soul.”

In July 1853, California Rangers finally caught up with Murrieta in the dry bed of Cantua Creek, north of modern-day Coalinga. They shot him dead, severed his head and preserved it in alcohol. For a dollar, curious onlookers could view the macabre trophy at King’s Saloon in San Francisco.

California Rangers, two months after they tracked and killed Joaquin Murrieta. Left to right, Jim Norton, Harry Love and Billy Henderson in the daguerreotype taken in Marysville on Sept. 16, 1853 (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art)

Murrieta’s head passed from saloon to museum before vanishing in the 1906 earthquake and fire. Decades later, rumors resurfaced: In 1968, a Sonoma gun collector displayed what he claimed was Murrieta’s head, having paid $2,000 for it. It was later revealed to be a wax replica, once a museum prop in San Jose.

Hero or ruthless killer?

Immediately following Murrieta’s death, the mythmaking began. In 1854, John Rollin Ridge published a novelized biography that portrayed the outlaw as a righteous avenger and a symbol of resistance. From there, Murrieta’s legend galloped through dime novels, pulp serials and eventually morphed into the masked figure of Zorro — righteous and romantic.

But Boessenecker prefers the record to the romance. When it comes to the Old West, he explained, there’s much that’s been written, and much that’s untrue.

“Whether (it’s) Billy the Kid, Jesse James or even Bonnie and Clyde — there’s so much cockamamie stuff,” he said. “I always told everybody for years it would take a government commission to unravel all the myths about Joaquin Murrieta.”

With access to digitized archives, Boessenecker has been able to mine court ledgers, personal letters, state records and the searchable troves of online newspapers. These windows into the past have allowed him to take a closer look at the legendary outlaw.

In the end, Boessenecker concludes, there are two Joaquins: the Joaquin of history and the Joaquin of fiction. The one people idolize — the gallant avenger with a sword and a code — belongs to legend. The real Murrieta, Boessenecker writes, rode a darker path through the hills of California, leaving behind not justice, but fear.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Here in Vermont we have had three major floods three years in a row on exactly the same day in July. Then this fall, the northeast has experienced the worst drought in 75 years. I’ve lived here my whole life. We don’t get nearly the snow accumulation in winter that we used to even 25 years ago. It’s getting weird, that’s all I know.

A WEEK ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO FATHOM

Editor:

Just contemplate what this current president has done in less than one week: posted a ridiculous and offensive AI video on his social media account addressed to the American people who participated in No Kings marches; tore down the East Wing of the White House with not so much as a demolition permit or warning; and now has the gall to ask U.S. taxpayers to give him $230 million of our hard-earned wages to compensate him for the heart ache and expense he endured because the U.S. government prosecuted him for a few of his very expansive crimes.

I can’t wrap my head around this series of horrific events (and these things pale in comparison to the cruel policy changes and illegal actions he has taken since January). Any other president in the history of this nation would not have come close to this series of insane, delusional actions. Not in one week or in a four-year term.

How much longer will the Republican Party ignore the insanity and continue to support this man?

Patricia Westman

Santa Rosa

YOU CAN’T LEARN FROM HISTORY IF YOU KEEP COVERING IT UP

by Jim Hightower

Our country’s magnificent National Park System has been called “America’s greatest idea.”

These 433 treasures — along with our rich diversity of national museums and historical sites — each have their own stories to tell. But the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, for together they express America’s egalitarian spirit and “little-d” democratic possibilities, urging us to keep pushing for economic fairness and social justice for all.

And that’s exactly why Trump and his cabal of moneyed elites and right-wing extremists are out to purge, erase, and officially censor the parks’ historical presentations. After all, it’s hard to impose plutocratic autocracy if such tangible examples of historic truth and democratic rebellion are openly displayed!

Thus, as dictated by the GOP’s secretive anti-democracy clique, Project 2025, Trump’s ideological Thought Police have set themselves up as an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth” to sanitize and Disney-fy the telling of our people’s real history.

For example, Trump complains that parks and museums hurt America’s self-image by telling “how bad slavery was.”

Donald, that’s not an image — its reality. It’s as central to our national character as our historic commitment to equality. And the explosive conflict between ugly repression and flowering egalitarianism is ever present today.

Consider the push by Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) and others in the GOP’s Christian Nationalist movement to deny the unifying principle that “all men are created equal.”

There’s not enough whitewash in the world to cover up the deep ugliness of slavery, and it’s self-destructive for the government to try. The fundamental purpose of recording our shared history is to learn from it.

THE BUST OUT: Trump’s Tony Soprano Presidency Is Bleeding the Country Dry

by Dave Zirin

In summer 2016, Vanity Fair published the article, “How Tony Soprano Paved the Way for Donald Trump,” which argues that the protagonist of the lauded television series, The Sopranos, explains the allure of Donald Trump. The article is written with a blasé air as if to say, “Trump may be a charming sociopath like Tony Soprano, but it’s not like he’s ever going to be president.”

It’s time to update the parallel for 2025. In the first Trump term, skittish advisers nudged him away from ideas like shooting protesters or sending in the armed forces to seize voting machines. This time, there are no guardrails, and the Tony Soprano presidency has reached an inevitable plot point: the “bust out.” A bust out is when the mob seizes a business from an indebted civilian, bleeds its resources, bankrupts it, and then maybe burns it down for the insurance money. This entire country is now David Scatino’s sporting goods store in Paramus, NJ—a once thriving place being consumed from the inside for the benefit of a corrupt few.

The fundamental moral question of the show is whether the audience should want to save Tony, a sociopathic but charismatic mid-level mob boss from depression, panic attacks, and the emotional torment of a lousy childhood. And yet, like so much mafia-related entertainment, and much to creator David Chase’s agony, viewers seemed to care more about the adrenalized violence than the ethical dilemma of a psychiatrist helping a melancholy murderer become a better mobster. No matter how repellent Chase made Tony and no matter how much contempt Chase expressed through the show toward his audience (leading to the cruelest last shot in the history of the medium), people tuned in to watch Tony kill people with his bare hands and treat people—especially women and Black people—like trash. Chase was trying to comment on misogyny and racism, but he also used his ear for dialogue to make it appealing to an audience that wanted to be entertained by slickly presented hit jobs, creative ethnic slurs, and the silicone implants at the mob strip club, the Bada Bing.

It’s also fascinating how many Sopranos actors were some of the first celeb Trump supporters back in 2016. Drea de Matteo, whose Adriana was the kindest hearted character on the show and was executed while being called a c---, justified supporting Trump by claiming in 2024—and color me skeptical—that her privileged kids were “not allowed to go anywhere because of how bad crime is right now.” She has now, true to the grift, parlayed this into becoming a MAGA celebrity: a market-corrected Scott Baio. If Chase looked at his audience with contempt, his heart must break when he sees how thoroughly much of his cast also bought into the scumbag-archetype he spent years using them to critique.

Trump, who values loyalty and servitude above all, doesn’t even pretend to be the steward of a country of 330 million people. He’s a mob boss who pardons and commutes the sentences of criminals who have either lined his pockets or sworn cringey loyalty. He’s an extortionist who showers honors on billionaires who give him hundreds of millions of dollars in return for presidential favors. He’s a thug who uses the Justice Department, ICE, and the military to wage war against the cities that voted against him. It’s kiss the ring or feel the wrath of retribution. Now, he is demanding $230 million of our money to compensate him for his past legal battles. His brazenly amoral personal attorneys running the Justice Department are in charge of deciding whether he gets this payout. The potential seizure of $230 million is a classic “bust out”—soaking a legitimate business of its assets (in this case, the US Treasury) and then, once all value has been extracted, light it on fire (or in Trump’s case, tear down the East Wing).

Some Trump defenders admit that he’s corrupt but shrug it off, saying every president was a disreputable scoundrel and at least Trump is open about it. There’s an air of truth to this: Heading this empire guarantees the committing of war crimes and having your strings pulled by the billionaire class.

But the Trump regime is different. This is a nakedly authoritarian operation, and just about every Republican has bent the knee to a demented, frustrated strongman yearning for martial law—all while he paves the White House Rose Garden and builds his ballroom bunker.

Trump is, in fact, so repugnant, it makes me want to defend our friend Tony. At least Tony had nothing to do with Epstein’s island of pederasts. At least Tony occasionally got his hands dirty. At least Tony knew a good plate of food and didn’t eat ketchup covered steak. And yet as a Sopranos/mob-film junkie, I realize I’m falling into the TV version of the same vortex that the right is caught in: the moral relativism that says, “Tony may be a garbage person, but I’m entertained—so who really cares?”

We all see the Big Lie that Donald Trump is still working to make us believe: that the 2020 election was fixed and that the now pardoned throng of bloodthirsty clowns and future cabinet members who tried to sack the capital were freedom fighters. There is another lie however: that he is some kind of peacemaker; he is working overtime to brand himself as a future Nobel laureate and great leader instead of a lowlife elevated to the highest office whose only talent is picking the meat off the bones of what remains of a functioning government. He demands that underlings treat him like Cicero instead of the sleazy, aggrieved criminal he has always been.

One of the great jokes of The Sopranos was that Tony did not see himself as a murderous parasite, instead believing himself to be more of a military general or “captain of industry type.” Trump has similar delusions that he is something more than what he is: a manifestation of the worst of us and—to quote the title of the last Sopranos episode—“made in America.”

Chase has rarely spoken about the Tony-Trump connection but he did so in 2019 to The New York Times, “When news shows talk about Trump,” he said, “they'll say it's like The Sopranos. People, including your own paper, use The Sopranos as an example of crookedness and culpability. I don't watch a lot of series television. Unfortunately, what I do is spend my time watching CNN, Fox, and MSNBC. So I get good and depressed and angry.”

“Getting good and depressed and angry”—somehow, it’s comforting to know that Chase is like the rest of us. But Chase is also guilty—at least in the first three seasons before he turned on his own audience—of pandering to us with the sex, slurs, and violence he aimed to critique. And damn, it was entertaining. The Sopranos was low art—a mobster dramedy—brought to artistic heights.

Maybe Chase, a TV writer of limited success before The Sopranos, could see in 1999 that this country was ready to embrace the archetype of the charming sociopath. Maybe he just stumbled into it and unwittingly altered the history of both Hollywood and politics. Either way, the charming sociopath has escaped the confines of fiction and, from what used to be the White House, is engaged in the ultimate “bust out”: selling off the country in parts while pouring gasoline and striking a match.

WOLE SOYINKA, a Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian author, said the U.S. revoked his visa. He has been a vocal critic of Trump. (NYT)

Wole Soyinka at home in 2021. (Yagazie Emezi for The New York Times)

STANE GERICKE:

I wish this nation could start from scratch on some issues, one of them being Big Finance. It has gotten so secretive, complicated, and murky that these private lending operations are going to take the real economy down with them--again.

I'd make all finance except direct loans and repayments between lender and borrower illegal. Or, if we have to suffer these maddening instruments for, reasons, mandate that all finance operators including private be subjected to the same rules that apply to deposit banking.

DOGE claims massive fraud and theft in public money? I think it's far worse in private money. If these outfits want to lend to each other and die from their own fraud, fine by me. But leave the real economy out of it.

The most maddening mistake Obama made in his eight years was letting the bank and bond rating house CEOs walk away from the economy-imploding collateralized mortgage scandal scot-free, on the grounds of "we look to the future, not the past." They should all have gotten ten years for their crimes.

LEAD STORIES, FRIDAY'S NYT

Judge Skeptical Over Trump Administration Decision to Suspend Food Stamps

Air Controller Shortage Causes Delays in Orlando and at Other Major Airports

Trump Calls on Republicans to End Filibuster in Shutdown Fight

In Fight for Control of Congress, Virginia House Takes Step Toward New Map

Executions and Mass Casualties: Videos Show Horror Unfolding in Sudan

Prince Andrew to Be Stripped of His Royal Title

Study Finds Evidence That Text-Based Therapy Eases Depression

I KEEP PICTURING all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.

— J.D. Salinger

THE DEATH HOUSE

The genocide in Gaza is not a freakish anomaly. It is a harbinger of what awaits us as the ecosystem disintegrates and governments embrace climate fascism.

by Chris Hedges

*Courting the End of the World* (2025) by Mr. Fish

Gaza does not mark the end of the settler colonial project. It marks, I fear, its final phase. Western states, enriched by their own occupations and genocides — in India, Africa, Asia, Latin America and North America — are returning to their roots as they face a global climate crisis and the obscene levels of social inequality that they engineer and sustain.

As the world breaks down, as the climate crisis drives millions and then tens of millions and then hundreds of millions of people north, in a desperate search for survival, the genocide in Gaza, which Israel is slow walking until it can resume its usual murderous pace, will replay itself over and over and over until the fragile social and environmental networks that hold the global community together disintegrate.

The refusal to extract ourselves from fossil fuels, the steady saturation of the atmosphere with carbon dioxide emissions (CO2), ensures soaring temperatures in which most life, including human life, will eventually be unsustainable. The global average concentration of CO2 surged by 3.5 parts per million, from June 2023 to June 2024, to reach an average of 422.8 parts per million, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. The following twelve months saw an even further increase of 2.6 parts per million of CO2. Violent conflicts, already exacerbated by extreme weather and water scarcity, will erupt across the globe with volcanic fury.

There is no mystery as to why the genocide is funded and sustained by Israel’s Western allies. There is no mystery as to why these states flout the Geneva Conventions, the International Court of Justice, the Arms Trade Treaty, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and international humanitarian law. There is no mystery as to why the United States has given a staggering $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel since Oct. 7, 2023 and has repeatedly blocked resolutions at the United Nations censoring Israel, in what the latest U.N report on Gaza calls an “internationally enabled crime.”

The U.S. accounts for two-thirds of Israel’s weapons imports. But it is not alone. The report names 63 countries that are complicit in “Israel’s genocidal machinery” in Gaza.

In the words of a report from the Quincy Institute and Costs of War project, published on Oct. 7 of this year, “[w]ithout U.S. money, weapons and political support, the Israeli military could not have committed such rapid, widespread destruction of human lives and infrastructure in Gaza, or escalated its warfare so easily to the regional level by bombing Syria, Lebanon, Qatar and Iran.”

There is no mystery as to why thousands of citizens from the U.S., Russia, France, Ukraine and the United Kingdom serve in the Israeli occupying forces and are not held accountable for their participation in genocide.

“Many States, primarily Western ones, have facilitated, legitimized and eventually normalized the genocidal campaign perpetrated by Israel,” the U.N. report, compiled by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, reads. “By portraying Palestinian civilians as ‘human shields’ and the broader onslaught in Gaza as a battle of civilization against barbarism, they have reproduced the Israeli distortions of international law and colonial tropes, seeking to justify their own complicity in genocide.”

According to the report, by September 2024, the U.S. had supplied Israel with “57,000 artillery shells, 36,000 rounds of cannon ammunition, 20,000 M4A1 rifles, 13,981 anti-tank missiles and 8,700 MK-82 500lb bombs. By April 2025, Israel had 751 active sales valued at $39.2 billion.”

We will see this again. The same mass killing. The same demonization of the poor and the vulnerable. The same tropes about saving Western civilization from barbarism. The same callous indifference to human life. The same lies. The same billions of dollars in profits extracted by the war industry that will be used to suffocate not only those outside our gates, but those within them.

How will the wealthiest nations react when their coastal cities flood, their crop yields plummet and drought and floods displace millions internally? How will they replace dwindling resources? How will they cope with hundreds of millions of climate refugees pounding at their gates? How will they respond to social upheaval, declining living standards, crumbling infrastructure and societal breakdown?

They will do what Israel does.

They will use disproportionate violence to keep the desperate at bay. They will steal the fertile land, the aquifers and the rivers and lakes. They will seize by force the rare earth minerals, natural gas fields and oil. And they will kill anyone who gets in the way. Damn the United Nations. Damn the international courts. Damn international humanitarian law. The industrial states are cementing into place, as Christian Parenti writes, a “climate fascism,” a politics “based on exclusion, segregation and repression.”

“What we are seeing in Gaza is the rehearsal of the future,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro argued at the COP28 U.N. Climate Change Conference in 2023.

The masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) goons deployed on our streets to terrorize undocumented workers will show up at our door. The concentration camps, now being built across the country, will have room for us. The law, twisted to persecute an array of fictional internal enemies, will criminalize dissent and freedom of expression. The billionaires and oligarchs will retreat into gated compounds, mini Versailles, where they will feed their insatiable lusts for power, greed and hedonism.

In the end, the ruling billionaire class too will become victims, although they may be able to hold out a little longer than the rest of us. Industrial nations will not be saved by their border walls, internal security, expulsion of migrants, missiles, fighter jets, navies, mechanized units, drones, mercenaries, artificial intelligence, mass surveillance or satellites.

Before this final extinction takes place, however, huge segments of the human species, along with other species, will be consumed in an orgy of fire and blood. Gaza, unless there is a rapid reversal in how our societies are configured and ruled, is a window into the future. It is not a freakish anomaly. War will be the common denominator of human existence. The strong will take from the weak.

The destruction of civil society in Gaza is the template. Chaos is the objective. Subject populations are controlled by arming proxy militias and criminal gangs, as Israel has done in Gaza, along with its arming of rogue Jewish militias in the West Bank. They are controlled — as Israel has done — by banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East to block humanitarian aid. They are controlled — as Israel has also done — by destroyinghospitals, clinics, bakeries, housing, wastewater treatment plants, food distribution sites, schools, cultural centers and universities, along with assassinating its educated elite including over 278 Palestinian journalists. When life is reduced to subsistence level, when disease and malnutrition is endemic, resistance can be broken.

Language in this emerging dystopia bears no correlation to reality. It is absurdist. Israel, for example, has violated the current ceasefire agreement from its inception, but the fiction of a “ceasefire” is maintained. Israel apparently “has a right to defend itself” although it is the occupier and perpetrator of apartheid and genocide and the Palestinian resistance poses no existential threat.

The “Trump Plan,” supposedly formulated to end the genocide, offers no route to Palestinian self-determination, no mechanism to hold Israel accountable and proposes to hand Gaza over to updated versions of imperial viceroys, with Israel controlling the borders.

The struggle for Palestine is our struggle. The denial of freedom for Palestinians is the first step in the loss of our freedom. The terror that defines life in Gaza will become our terror. The genocide will become our genocide.

We must fight these battles while we still have a chance. The openings for resistance are closing with alarming speed. We must, through civil disobedience, shut down the machine. We must remake the world. This means removing the ruling global class. It means demolishing a society constructed around the mania for capitalist expansion. It means ending our reliance on fossil fuels. It means enforcing international law and dismantling Israel’s settler colonial and genocidal rule. If we do not succeed, Palestinians will be the first victims. But they won’t be the last.

(chrishedges.substack.com)

I ASKED HER FOR WATER

Oh, I asked her for water, she brought me gasoline.
Oh, I asked her for water, she brought me gasoline.
That's the troublingest woo-hoo (woman?), that I ever seen.

The church bell tollin', the hearse come driving slow.
The church bell tollin', the hearse come driving slow.
I hope my baby, don't leave me no more.

Oh tell me baby, when are you coming back home?
Oh tell me baby, when are you coming back home?
You know I love you baby, but you've been gone too long.

— Chester Burnett (1956)

“HIS FEELING for the South was not so much historic as it was of the core and desire of dark romanticism--that unlimited and inexplicable drunkenness, the magnetism of some men's blood that takes them into the heart of the heat, and beyond that, into the polar and emerald cold of the South as swiftly as it took the heart of that incomparable romanticist who wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, beyond which there is nothing. And this desire of his was unquestionably enhanced by all he had read and visioned, by the romantic halo that his school history cast over the section, by the whole fantastic distortion of that period where people were said to live in "mansions," and slavery was a benevolent institution, conducted to a constant banjo-strumming, the strewn largesses of the colonel and the shuffle-dance of his happy dependents, where all women were pure, gentle, and beautiful, all men chivalrous and brave, and the Rebel horde a company of swagger, death-mocking cavaliers. Years later, when he could no longer think of the barren spiritual wilderness, the hostile and murderous intrenchment against all new life--when their cheap mythology, their legend of the charm of their manner, the aristocratic culture of their lives, the quaint sweetness of their drawl, made him writhe--when he could think of no return to their life and its swarming superstition without weariness and horror, so great was his fear of the legend, his fear of their antagonism, that he still pretended the most fanatic devotion to them, excusing his Northern residence on grounds of necessity rather than desire.”

— Thomas Wolfe, ‘Look Homeward, Angel’

NIGHT MAIL

This is the night mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,

Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door.

Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient’s against her, but she’s on time.

Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,

Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from bushes at her blank-faced coaches.

Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.

In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in a bedroom gently shakes.

Dawn freshens, Her climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends,
Towards the steam tugs yelping down a glade of cranes
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In dark glens, beside pale-green lochs
Men long for news.

Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or to visit relations,
And applications for situations,
And timid lovers’ declarations,
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled on the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, the adoring,
The cold and official and the heart’s outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

Thousands are still asleep,
Dreaming of terrifying monsters
Or of friendly tea beside the band in Cranston’s or Crawford’s:

Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
But shall wake soon and hope for letters,
And none will hear the postman’s knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

— W.H. Auden (1935)

*Desert Journey* (1935) by Maynard Dixon

20 Comments

Chuck Artigues October 31, 2025

John Bossenecker also wrote Gentleman Bandit, a book about Black Bart.

Reply
Me October 31, 2025

An address for the Zenni Ranch would be nice :-)

Reply
Chuck Dunbar October 31, 2025

THE HOPE

The Epstein Mess:

The Brits know what to do with their sex fiends and abusers, friends of Epstein:
“Andrew stripped of ‘prince’ title and will move out of Royal Lodge”
Politico, 10/30/25

How about the U.S.? What about our own high-level sex fiends and abusers, friends of Epstein? When will we see a similar headline about Donald Trump? We can’t let the Brits outdo us on matters of character and accountability, can we?
“Donald Trump stripped of ‘president’ title and will move out of White House” That’s what the headline would look like.
Politico, Date to be determined

Let’s hope.

Reply
Mazie Malone October 31, 2025

Happy Halloween everyone, stay safe!!! 👻🎃😘

mm💕

Reply
- Matt Kendall October 31, 2025
  
  Happy Halloween you dandy corker. I dressed up as an old gray haired cowboy from Covelo!
  Strangely when I went looking for the clothes to do it, I had them all in my closet.
  
  Reply
  - Mazie Malone October 31, 2025
    
    Hiya, Sheriff 🤠🚓
    
    Great way to scare the criminals a Covelo Cowboy ha ha ha!!…..😂🎃.
    
    Strangely I dressed as myself too, a Dandy Corker, lol, vintage 2025!!! Hahaha 🍾👻
    
    Out of curiosity Halloween being what it is, what is the scariest Halloween Happenings you have experienced in Law Enforcement? I mean there must be extremely strange incidents on this day throughout your career, would love to know! 🫣
    
    mm💕
    
    Reply
    - Matt Kendall November 1, 2025
      
      Halloween night in my 20s when a dog brought a human skull onto a person’s porch on highway 162
      
      Turns out there had been a vehicle accident no one had seen until the family dog did.
      
      Reply
      - Mazie Malone November 1, 2025
        
        Morning Sheriff, 🤠🚓
        
        I think you told us that story last year, haha got another one? lol👻
        
        Ok what about this, the jail is old so a lot of history in those walls, got some paranormal stuff going on in there? Lights flickering, keys missing, any of that stuff? Inquiring minds, lol 😘🧠
        
        mm💕
        
        Reply
Bob Abeles October 31, 2025

Lambert Lane bridge project update: The steel spans arrived hours late yesterday, but our intrepid construction crew had all four of them in place by the end of the day.

Reply
- Kathy Janes October 31, 2025
  
  I passed those girders coming up 253 yesterday. They were huge!
  
  Reply
Ted Stephens October 31, 2025

A couple of comments from today’s read.

On Supervisor Haschak’s comment about 16K Mendocino Co. residents being cut off from the SNAP program. That is about 18% of our population! That is remarkable that we have that many people that can’t support themselves.

On a Reader Writes (after pondering our Sheriff’s comments for a week). I would think they would want to post their name after all that pondering for a week.
I certainly think our county was a better place to live and work. I hope we bring back the jobs, work ethic, and less govt. intrusion we used to have. I think we were better for it and maybe we could get down to about 5% of the population needing SNAP.
Bigger government and more regulations has never made any population more prosperous or more free.
Out our way, in the hills around Yorkville, as a kid we had sheep roaming the hills and brought in a few times a year. It wasn’t greed and big business corruption that ruined our industry. There was foreign competition, but the worst coffin nail was predation. When I was a kid if you had 5 or 6 sheep ranchers that ran sheep all their life very few had ever seen a lion. Now everybody has a crazy lion story. If you tried to raise sheep, you need to lock them in behind a high fence. If the lion still kills them, the lion gets a “three strikes” policy before you can legally kill it. The locking them in the barn might make sense in town, but it will never allow for use of our larger ranches.
I read that California now has more mountain lions than any other state. The lions are nice, but why do we need to have so many that they wipe out ranching and the deer population? It is because the voting population (CA voted twice to not allow lion hunting) in California has a urban world view that doesn’t understand our way of life in our beautiful county. This is very important to think about when we have ballot measures like Proposition 50 in front of us. We need representation for our type of population, life experience and way of life.

Our best from the wilderness side of the hills!

Reply
- Kimberlin October 31, 2025
  
  Big government brought us the GI Bill, Social Security, The Internet, Government intervention since the Great Depression has been credited with preventing the routine occurrence of severe economic depressions, eradicating diseases like polio, cholera, and smallpox from the U.S, Interstate Highway System, Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and Title IX, safety of food and drinking water, establish a federal minimum wage, protect workers with OSHA regulations, and require child-resistant packaging for medicines and household cleaners. car safety designs, seat belts ect.
  
  Reply
  - Chuck Dunbar October 31, 2025
    
    Thank you very much, Mr. Kimberlin, for simply listing all these facts, and they are only some of the benefits–for all Americans– that have come from government over all the years. It is so common to hear disdain for government thrown around. Facts like these, we’d hope, would make them stop and think.
    
    Reply
- Betsy Cawn November 1, 2025
  
  In Lake County, “over one half” of the population depends on Medi-Cal, and roughly one fourth are enrolled in the federal SNAP program (Crystal Markytan, Director, Department of Social Services, January 2024). Our total population is under 70,000, and 20,000 of those are aged 60 and over (World Census 2023).
  
  Mendocino County has always been food-focused, from the horticulture classes and greenhouses at the college to the farmstands on tertiary backroads, food at every event and hundreds of community events every year. And in spite of the general incompetence of your Board of Supervisors, civic participation seems to keep your government from going off the rails (it helps a lot to have a decent person in charge of county law enforcement).
  
  We share your frustration, and envy your achievements, especially the everyday citizens who provide and pay for common infrastructure and congregate to address the ebb and flow of social crises.
  
  (And I wonder, does it have to be like this — the constant delivery of crises and endless bemoaning of reasons? The government could just quick dicking with us, like ending Daylight Saving Time.)
  
  Reply
Frank Hartzell October 31, 2025

Re Bigfoot:
I wish everybody would stop picking on my Little Brother, whom we fellow bigfoots call Saskys. He has been stuck in his “back to the land” phase for a very long time and just won’t stop going around barefoot in the woods. If he is picked, it’s going to go to his head and we will never hear the end of it.

Reply
Marshall Newman October 31, 2025

Harry Love met his own nasty end. His wife, who had left Love and returned to her own ranch near Santa Clara, feared for her life and hired a bodyguard; Christian Iverson. Love came to her house and – in a jealous rage (he though Mary was having an affair with Iverson) – began shooting with a shotgun. Iverson returned fire with a pistol. Harry Love killed Mary and wounded Iverson, but was wounded himself and later died.

In a side note, Christian Iverson’s primitive redwood cabin in Portola Redwoods State Park stood until 1989, when the Loma Prieta earthquake destroyed it.

Reply
Andrew Lutsky October 31, 2025

Re Pistache trees … Cassie Tanning makes several claims in support of her wish to remove these trees which are debatable at best. Cassie, can you share your credentials in science and/or urban planning and engineering with AVA readers?

Reply
Andrew Lutsky October 31, 2025

I left this comment on a friend’s Facebook page on 10/27 regarding the City of Ukiah’s study and proposal for redesigning School St that will likely BE VOTED ON BY CITY COUNCIL IN THREE TO FOUR MONTHS:

The comments on this thread that oppose the removal of trees on School St. pertain to a study that the City of Ukiah contracted with, it seems, Blue Zones LLC, the lifestyle brand owned by Adventist Health (the hospital corporation). (Btw if you’re wondering why the City of Ukiah is contracting with a lifestyle brand to design our infrastructure, you’re not alone.) The study is called the School Street Multimodal Transportation Corridor Study (https://cityofukiah.com/school-street-multimodal-study/) The timeline for this project indicates that by this December (through February) they will have “Final Plan Development and City Council Adoption.” So this plan is moving forward quickly, right now. Here is the info page about the study, including the timeline (you have to click on ‘Ukiah’s Recent Planning Work’ to see it): https://ghd.mysocialpinpoint.com/school-street…/home/. The city’s website directs those who wish to comment here for City of Ukiah and Bluezonian contact info: https://ghd.mysocialpinpoint.com/school-street…/contact/

Reply
- Andrew Lutsky October 31, 2025
  
  Sorry for the bad links, here are ones that should work …
  
  Link to the timeline:
  https://ghd.mysocialpinpoint.com/school-street-corridor-study/home/
  
  Link to City of Ukiah and Bluzonian contact info:
  https://ghd.mysocialpinpoint.com/school-street-corridor-study/contact/?fbclid=IwY2xjawNyMThleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFrWFVqYzRObWt1TUlXT1REAR6cA75FdrE69X4q0tIVsgSbAeMdUoB7ynTnXnFhBvDwgePHNcNVcvnuAQJueA_aem_1HkmC6SD3DAAIsVqMxvVLA
  
  Reply
Andrew Lutsky October 31, 2025

Here is an exchange I had with an anonymous City of Ukiah worker yesterday on the city’s Facebook page in response to their post which was republished in today’s AVA:

Andrew Lutsky: Wow City of Ukiah, you managed to be disingenuous, smarmy and dismissive all at once … that’s a trifecta. Not a good look for a local government that is supposed to work for our whole community. I took the city’s survey and out of the four options presented for the redesign of School St., three involved removal of these trees. It is completely reasonable to conclude that one of those tree-removal plans may move forward for a vote by council as early as this December, according to the timeline on your website. So no one is overreacting here, and your tone is quite insulting. Get a grip, and take a break from trolling the people you’re supposed to be serving.

City of Ukiah: Andrew Lutsky You’re wrong. This is a planning study, which includes no money for designs or implementation. The meeting you reference in December is a public forum for this project, not a City Council meeting. Maybe you should attend.

AL: City of Ukiah nope sorry I am not wrong, maybe you should read your own website, which states “Final Plan Development and City Council Adoption, December 2025-February 2026.” https://ghd.mysocialpinpoint.com/school-street-corridor-study/home/

And while you’re at it why don’t you tell us your name, since you are a civil servant and you know mine

City of Ukiah: Andrew Lutsky That’s possible adoption of the study. Any design and implementation depends on a) a subsequent grant application, b) a grant award, c) design and implementation. If you know anything about government, you know that means it’s years away. Again, the process is still open and we invite you to continue to participate. Stay tuned for the details about the upcoming public forum.

AL: City of Ukiah yes years away, set in motion by the city council approval that is happening in the next three months. Why are you minimizing the importance of that approval? Why is a city worker trying to convince us that a council vote doesn’t matter? Please stop this attempt to mislead the public. Also, did you mention your name?

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Mendocino County Today: Friday 10/31/2025

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