SNEAKER WAVE threat today through early Sunday morning. Light rain possible in Del Norte and northern Humboldt this afternoon and evening, while dry weather prevails elsewhere. Stronger storm possible Wednesday, with the potential for strong south winds, heavy rainfall, and urban/small stream flooding. Higher than normal astronomical tides Tuesday through Saturday. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A cooler 46F this Saturday morning on the coast. A mix of fog & sun the next few days leading to rain arriving sometime Tuesday. The timing & amounts of rain seem to be uncertain currently. As usual, we'll see. It looks like we are in for a period of rain in the 10 day forecast.
LAMBERT LANE BRIDGE PROJECT
All four main girders were installed across Robinson Creek in their carefully constructed concrete abutments on Thursday.
Fortunately, the specialized delivery truck operators were able to maneuver their vehicles with their 94-foot long girders onto the temporary bridge alongside their designated bridge position.
They were then carefully plucked off the trucks with cranes on either end and lowered into place.
Obviously the four delivery trucks with their special remotely drivable rear tractor made it up the Highway 253 switchbacks, albeit slowly and holding up traffic for a while. Next step is falsework construction to hold the concrete pour that will become the bridge roadway — likely to occur in the next couple of weeks, weather permitting. (They prefer to do the pour and setting period during dry periods.)
(Mark Scaramella)
AS PROMISED, a proposed ordinance to “deconsolidate” the Auditor-Controller’s office from the 2021 shotgun marriage with the Treasurer-Tax Collector is on Tuesday’s Supervisors agenda sponsored by Supervisors John Haschak and Bernie Norvell along with Auditor-Controller/Treasurer Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison. Interestingly, the two offices have always been listed separately in budget documents, while at the same time being managed by one elected official, albeit with separate sub-managers for each function. Based on the Board’s discussion at their last meeting on October 21, the ordinance to re-separate the offices after years of pointless turmoil is likely to pass since three supervisors are already on record supporting the “deconsolidation,” and the other two, holdovers from the vote 4-1 to consolidate the offices (Ted Williams and Maureen Mulheren), have not voiced any objections, nor have their defended their 2021 votes to combine them.
(Mark Scaramella)
ALSO ON NEXT TUESDAY’S AGENDA is a surprisingly brief item buried in the budget presentation listing options for improving the finances of the County’s three unincorporated ambulance operations. The CEO’s office simply lists three choices:
Option 1: a Local SalesTax Measure of 1⁄4 cent (0.25%) Countywide with revenues dedicated to EMS which would generate approximately $5.5 million. $2.2 million if applied only to the unincorporated areas of the County.
Option 2: “Utilize” (i.e., reallocate) Existing Revenue Sources by Reallocation of Measure P revenues. I.e. rob Peter (the fire services) to pay Paul (the ambulance services.
Option 3: Levy a service charge, benefit assessment, or special tax on “County Service Area 3 (the unincorporated area parcels) and process the charge through the Local Area Formation Commission.)
The Ambulance services were expecting a more detailed breakdown of the ambulance financing options, and the inclusion of options for the individual ambulance operations. Instead, the CEO’s office semi-punted. So we will have to wait to see what the Board decides to do next, if anything. At first glance, Option 2 might offer the Board the path of least resistance since it doesn’t involve much effort by the County and is General Fund-neutral. Easiest, that is, until the County’s fire service districts and chiefs object.
(Mark Scaramella)
PAT MEHTONEN
Pat Mehtonen, who graduated AVHS with the class of 1974, passed away on Monday, October 27, in Ukiah.
Pat suffered a stroke several years ago which had left him incapacitated. His obituary is scheduled to appear on the Eversole Mortuary website within the next few days. A celebration of his life will be held at the home of his friends Mike & Teresa Crudo at 234 Valley View Road, in Ukiah, on Sunday, November 16th, starting at 1:00 PM.
PERMIT REQUESTED FOR URGENT CARE FACILITY ON AIRPORT PARK BOULEVARD
by Justine Frederiksen
One of the first steps in transforming the former home of Mendocino Animal Hospital on Airport Park Boulevard into an Urgent Care facility for human patients was recently approved by the city’s Design Review Board.
At the board’s last meeting Oct. 23, Jesse Davis, the chief planning manager for the city of Ukiah, described the proposal for the property as an “adaptive reuse and reutilization of an existing structure at 1240 Airport Park Boulevard,” with the relevant permits being applied for by Mendocino Community Health Clinics.
“Their proposal is to reuse the existing facility for an Urgent Care Clinic and facility, including offices,” said Davis, explaining that the proposal includes merging two lots, “one developed, one undeveloped, to provide for the off-street parking, as well as additional landscaping.”
Davis described MCHC as “reviewing a number of properties for an Urgent Care facility here in the city of Ukiah,” and that they ultimately chose the former animal hospital (which was most recently utilized as the home of the United Disaster Relief of Northern California) in part because of its ability to be reused.
Davis also noted that the applicant had already made modifications to the plan after receiving comments from other agencies, in particular the Ukiah Valley Fire Authority, in relation to adding another another access point for an ambulance.
“That alteration to the access for emergency vehicles will allow ambulances to pick up patients who need to be transferred to the hospital from the rear of the facility, rather than being (moved) back through the facility,” said Davis, noting that the changes would also allow for “clean circulation of delivery trucks and emergency vehicles to the rear of the facility,” separating that traffic flow from the vehicles moving in front of the building.
Other additions to the application Davis noted were “two small solar projects” added as parking lot cover, as well as more landscaping, fewer parking spaces and additional signage.
“This project will also look to take advantage of the Great Redwood Trail,” Davis said, referring to the rail trail project that is currently being extending behind the property. “While they originally requested an access to the GRT, that was determined to not be advisable, but … staff’s recommendation is to accommodate bicycle infrastructure (such as) parking, signage and striping.”
When asked about the lack of infrastructure in terms of safe ways for pedestrians to cross Airport Park Boulevard, Davis acknowledged that “crossing Airport Park Boulevard is very difficult, there is only one legal crossing … at Commerce Drive, and I do think that’s something (that is not specific to this permit), but it is something that the city needs to look at” in terms of connecting pedestrians with the GRT.
The project was described by planning staff as including a “remodeled ground floor (that) will accommodate an urgent care clinic with seven exam rooms, imaging services, and support areas designed to meet OSHPD outpatient clinic requirements. A mezzanine second floor, constructed within the existing structural shell, will provide administrative offices, staff support areas, and a conference room. The completed building will total approximately 14,144 square feet of floor area (±7,186 sq. ft. on the first floor and ±6,958 sq. ft. on the second floor).”
The Design Review Board then approved the application, which will be further reviewed by other city officials.
(Ukiah Daily Journal)
SCHOOL STREET TREES NOT IMPERILED. YET.
by Mike Geniella
A hastily launched online petition drive is triggering a community outcry over a suggested possibility that iconic Chinese Pistache trees along School Street may fall as part of a larger downtown improvement project to overhaul sidewalks and shore up aging underground infrastructure.
About 2,300 people have signed the petition as of Friday, according to Change.org, the online site.
“The City of Ukiah is planning an 'improvement' project that will mean the removal of beloved trees along School Street,” proclaims the petition drive that was launched by Dennis O’Brien, a local resident.
O’Brien responded late Friday to requests for comments on a petition drive that is alarming local residents. (See below.)
The fear is that the city is prepared to remove six-decade old trees that have provided downtown shade on sizzling summer days, and colorful Fall displays.
City representatives, however, say the petition drive is premature.
Assistant City Manager Shannon Riley said Friday there is no immediate plan to cut down the 60-year-old trees, and there is no funding yet available to implement any downtown improvement project that might call for the trees to be replaced with a more compatible variety.
At issue is despite their beauty and the welcome shade they provide during hot Ukiah summers, the existing Chinese Pistache trees have roots wrapped around city water lines, are threatening the foundations of aging downtown buildings, and are causing downtown sidewalks to buckle.
“Is tree replacement one of the options being evaluated? Of course,” said Riley.
Riley acknowledged that replacing the Pistache trees with a more adaptable variety is among the options being considered in the year-long planning study surrounding a future downtown improvement project. The work, if state funding is secured, would also include replacement of aging sidewalks, water and sewer lines, possible parking changes, and conversion of a portion of School Street into one-way traffic.
“We received a grant to do planning studies. Nothing further has been submitted, and there is not at this time any money available to begin a project,” said Riley.
Riley said two community meetings have already been held, and a third and final one scheduled for December.
“This project has been very widely publicized and has been going on for a year. There have been two public workshops, walking tours with engineers and other experts, interviews with business owners and other stakeholders, a project webpage, an interactive online tool for people to submit their likes/dislikes/ideas/comments, a survey, and more. We plan to have one more workshop in December,” said Riley.
Riley said the brouhaha created by the online petition drive is unfounded but understandable.
“We have overwhelmingly heard that our community loves School Street and doesn't consider it ‘broken.’ We get that,” said Riley.
Riley, however, stressed that “If we don't invest in infrastructure upgrades that will allow us to preserve and enhance the things we love about it, it will start to fail.”
Riley listed a litany of city, downtown business, and shopper concerns:
- Currently, it's nearly impossible to make the sidewalks level.
- The underground utilities are being destroyed by tree roots, impacting businesses.
- Some buildings have even been structurally impacted, with doors that won't open correctly and other issues.
The city’s ongoing study, preliminary to securing possible state grants, is an “opportunity for us to gather all the feedback about the things we love, gather all the ideas about how it could be improved, study all the ways to make that happen, and seek funding that allows it to become a reality,” according to Riley.
Riley said, “Nothing has been done in a bubble and there are no preconceived outcomes here.”
Local resident Cassie Taaning said when she learned of the possibility of the existing trees being removed, she too was upset.
In a subsequent online post to the community, Taaning took issue with the petition drive.
“I also loved the Autumn colors and was upset when I first heard about their removal,’ said Taaning.
Since, however, she has learned key facts surrounding the issue.
“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 regularly,” wrote Taaning.
Also, Taaning said she learned that as the trees mature, their roots keep “pushing up the sidewalk making it dangerous especially for elders.”
Taaning said, “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.”
Taaning said there is no doubt city officials should do their due diligence with community meetings before implementing what they already plan to do, which may be making School Street one way, and widening sidewalks with landscaping like the recently revamped State Street.
“Beneficial, long-term planning is a thing. Not so much 60 years ago. Live and learn,” Taaning concluded.
Riley said replacing the existing trees is among the options being studied, including the possibility of a new variety planted to get established before removal of the old.
“This project has been very widely publicized and has been going on for nearly a year. There have been two public workshops, walking tours with engineers and other experts, interviews with business owners and other stakeholders, a project webpage, an interactive online tool for people to submit their likes/dislikes/ideas/comments, a survey, and more,” according to Taaning.
Riley said, “Every tree has a lifespan, and the Downtown Streetscape has shown us that trees planted in ideal environments—with larger tree wells, irrigation, engineered soil that prevents root spread, and smart planning—can thrive without destroying their surroundings.”
Riley noted that newly planted trees in the larger downtown core are “only three years old, and some are already taller than the buildings!”
Another session for public input is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Dec. 11 at the Ukiah Conference Center.
O'Brien’s Response:
Thank you for your interest and outreach. Below is a link to the City's webpage for the project. The final round of public engagement is set for December, with final adoption December-February. Although there was a survey for the public earlier, it is now closed. Apparently there are a lot of people who were not aware of the project then, but are expressing their concerns now that they have heard of it.
As you noted in your email, "An arborist is to be consulted about whether any downtown improvement project can work around existing trees and their extensive root systems." This probably should have been done months ago at the beginning of the project; it is good to hear it is being done before the final public engagement.
As with any such project, there will probably be a balancing of people's concerns. The Goals listed on the City's webpage are laudable. But School Street is already the centerpiece of Ukiah's business, social, and cultural life, and the trees are a big part of that.
Even tonight, the street was full of families celebrating Halloween, surrounded by the fall colors of Nature, celebrating the change of seasons. The purpose of the petition is to make sure that the decision-makers are aware of how widespread and strong the support is for saving the trees.
Even though your sources state that “no plan has been adopted yet or is ready to be implemented” and “there has been no grant money to secure any plan,” it appears that time is running out for the public to express their concerns. In just one week, 2,375 people have signed the petition, more that the votes garnered by the first-place candidate in last year's City Council election. 65% of the signers are from the 95482 zip code; most of the rest are from nearby Mendocino County. This is both a local and regional concern.
Should any of your readers be interested, they can sign the petition by going to https://c.org/5KfY7wjf86. Thank you again for helping to inform the public of this important and timely matter.
Sincerely,
Dennis O'Brien, Resident
City of Ukiah
Mark Scaramella adds: Mr. Geniella quotes Ms. Taaning saying that “Beneficial, long-term planning is a thing. Not so much 60 years ago. Live and learn.” This is belied by what Ukiah looked like 60 years ago and what it looks like today. We’ll take the old planning over the new planning any day.
CONGRATULATIONS are in order for our Junior High-A Volleyball team for winning this year’s league championship!
HOME GAME DAY REMINDER!
Our Varsity Girls Volleyball team takes on Tomales High School this Saturday, November 1 at 7:00 PM in the Quarterfinals at AVHS Gym!
FIGHT OVER CALIFORNIA COAST AND OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING rekindled by leaked Trump administration plans
by Austin Murphy
Richard Charter of Bodega Bay has spent his adult life protecting coasts and oceans, especially from the ravages of energy extraction. When crude oil starts pouring into the sea, his phone tends to go off — as it did around 3 a.m. on an April morning in 2010, following an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
It happened again in the small hours of Oct. 2, 2021, when a plume of oil reached the surface of the Pacific Ocean a few miles off the coast of Huntington Beach. That 25,000-gallon spill, from a ruptured underwater pipeline, fouled 16 miles of Orange County beaches, with oil washing ashore as far south as San Diego.
“I always seem to get the call in the middle of the night,” said Charter, who now works with municipalities up and down the California coast, helping coordinate their response to offshore drilling threats.
That group is on high alert following a recent Houston Chronicle story revealing Trump administration plans to open large swathes of the California coast to offshore drilling.
A list of scheduled West Coast lease auctions for oil and gas drilling obtained by the Chronicle raises the possibility, said Charter, that Trump’s Interior Department could try to roll back protections for national marine sanctuaries formed after 2008.
That grim scenario could result in oil rigs within sight of the Sonoma and Mendocino coast, one of the most pristine, rugged stretches of seashore in the state, with a seminal role in California’s history of marine protection and the environmental movement at large.
Wouldn’t that be a bridge too far, even for the “Drill, baby, drill” crowd?
Charter isn’t convinced. “They did just tear down half the White House,” he said.
The leaked federal documents showed the Department of Interior’s proposed framework for auctions of oil and gas drilling rights over the next five years.
The draft plan would preserve a drilling ban off Florida, but open up much of the Atlantic coast and eastern Gulf of Mexico, along with the Pacific coast from Southern California to Washington, plus portions of Alaska’s Bering Sea.
Scalded by intense, immediate bipartisan criticism, the Trump administration withdrew its plans to sell leases off the Atlantic coast, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. When it came to California and the West Coast, no such news was forthcoming.
Rep. Jared Huffman of San Rafael, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, excoriated the reported lease auctions, which come at a time, he noted, when the administration has gutted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s oil spill prevention and response programs.
Huffman further pointed out, in a statement released with fellow Democrats Sen. Alex Padilla of California and Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. Frank Pallone, both of New Jersey, that the leases aren’t necessary.
“The United States already leads the world in oil and gas production. The industry currently holds more than 2,000 offshore leases covering over 12 million acres of federal waters — yet fewer than 500 of those leases are actively producing oil and gas.”
There is no justification, the lawmakers added, “for opening vast swaths of our oceans to leasing when existing leases remain largely unused, while imposing mounting environmental and economic costs on coastal communities.”
The Department of Interior did not respond to a request for comment on the reported upcoming lease sales. Nor did the American Petroleum Institute, or the Western States Petroleum Association, two prominent industry trade groups that have generally cheered the Trump administration’s aggressive moves to open more public lands and waters to oil and gas development.
The leaked list included six lease sales off the California coast, three of those in “the Southern California planning area,” Charter said.
Two sales, one in 2027, another in 2029, are scheduled for an area stretching from the Big Sur coastline to the Sonoma-Mendocino border, he said.
A third sale, for drilling rights off the Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte county coastlines, would happen in 2029.
Vast coast, patchwork protection
From the Piedras Blancas elephant seal rookery near San Simeon, some 375 miles south, to Point Arena in Mendocino County in the north, the federal waters off California’s coast enjoy protected status as national marine sanctuaries.
But there are tiers in those bulwarks against energy development that the Trump administration could seek to exploit.
In 2008, then-President George W. Bush issued a memorandum rescinding a ban on offshore drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf — a prohibition put in place in 1990 by his father, President George H. W. Bush.
While national marine sanctuaries established before W’s 2008 rescission “are safe,” Charter believes, sanctuaries put in place since — or areas where existing sanctuaries were expanded — may be less so.
The original Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, reaching as far north as Bodega Bay, was established in 1981. In 2015, under President Barack Obama, it was extended from Bodega Bay up to Alder Creek Beach in Mendocino County. That extension, Charter believes, is in more peril than the original sanctuary.
“The newer a sanctuary is, the higher the risk,” he said.
Of greater concern still is the stretch of coastline north of Alder Creek, which is not a protected sanctuary, and now finds itself on oil companies’ wish lists.
Conservationists cheered when President Joe Biden, on his way out the door in January 2025, used the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to shield the entire U.S. West Coast from offshore drilling.
Until that day, there had been no protection for the Mendocino, Humboldt or Del Norte coasts.
A Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana, however, struck down Biden’s action in early October, ruling that he’d exceeded his authority.
That legal battle could drag on for years, Charter said. While it does, the entire California coast north of Point Arena is especially vulnerable.
Areas off the Central and North Coast are thought to contain “marginal reserves,” according to Charter, especially in comparison to the “big wells” in the Gulf of Mexico. Yet the oil industry is still said to be keen to get its hands on those leases.
With Trump having placed oil industry executives “throughout the Interior Department, throughout the EPA, throughout what is left of NOAA,” he said, “this is their only chance.”
“If they don’t get those drilling rights now, when Trump owns the government, they’re never going to get them.”
Sonoma County Board of Supervisors Chair Lynda Hopkins, whose district includes the county’s entire coastline, said areas now protected as marine sanctuaries should be safe.
“And yet, this is a never say ‘never’ administration.”
She also pointed out that oil on the water “doesn’t respect the boundaries of a national marine sanctuary. We’ve seen how much area (spills) can cover, and how they can harm generations of wildlife.”
The Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday will have an agenda item specifically addressing the renewed offshore drilling threat, and assigning Hopkins to serve as the county’s liaison to Charter’s group, the Local Government OCS Coordination Program.
‘They’re coming for us’
That bland handle — the OCS stands for “Outer Continental Shelf” — belies the high-stakes, giant-slaying work its members do.
In a sense, Charter is getting the band back together. From 1980 to the mid-’90s, he served as director of an earlier version of this consortium, which went head to head with Interior Secretary James Watt, the notorious, extraction-minded appointee of President Ronald Reagan, and with the oil companies whose interests Watt held dear.
Among their most effective tactics, Charter recalled, was helping local governments adopt rules — such as Sonoma County’s Ordinance 31 — making it close to impossible for oil companies to build onshore facilities that catered to offshore drilling.
Even if they could get the oil out of the ground, they didn’t have a convenient place to send it.
Fighting back, the oil companies sued a dozen different municipalities, and lost every time.
After 14 years coordinating those cities and counties, and helping spur the creation of the Monterey Bay Marine National Sanctuary, stretching from San Simeon to the Golden Gate, “they didn’t need me anymore,” recalled Charter, who continued his work on coastal issues with a series of foundations.
With the threat of offshore drilling once again on the rise, however, Santa Cruz County Supervisor Justin Cummings saw the need to mobilize.
Cummings is a scientist and former mayor of Santa Cruz who also served two years on the powerful California Coastal Commission, including a six-month stint as its chair.
As an “older millennial,” said the 42-year-old, he’d not been aware of Charter’s work in the 1980s and ’90s, going toe to toe with Watt and Big Oil, “organizing counties all up and down the coast.”
Upon learning that history, he reached out to Charter over the summer.
“He said, ‘We’re re-starting the program you used to run,’” Charter recalled. “’And we’d like you to run it again.’”
In addition to expected support from Sonoma County, the reconstituted program has been joined by Humboldt County, which had been tying its hopes to greener, Biden-era wind energy plans for the region — projects recently scuttled by the Trump administration.
“We just got off with the phone with Marin, they’re going to put something on their agenda,” said Cummings, whose office is also in conversations with Mendocino, San Mateo, Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties.
People have asked Cummings, “Aren’t those areas already protected?”
Based on the actions of the Trump administration, he replies, “Nothing’s protected. Our own rights aren’t protected, so how can we expect them to respect the laws around drilling?
“They’re coming for us. And we have to be ready.”
‘Existential threat’ to working coastline
Last May marked the 10-year anniversary of a 100,000-gallon spill near Refugio State Beach in Santa Barbara County. Crude oil from an aging, damaged pipeline contaminated the beach and created a 10-square-mile oil slick.
In 1969, a far larger spill offshore of Santa Barbara — still the most calamitous in California history — disgorged 100,000 barrels of crude into waters and onto beaches, a disaster that would propel the nation’s nascent environmental movement, which had some of its earliest and biggest wins just years later protecting the California coast.
More recently, Sable Offshore Corp., the Texas-based company which in 2024 acquired the pipeline responsible for the Refugio leak, has been charged with 21 criminal counts by the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office, including five felony counts of “knowingly” discharging material into nearby creeks and waterways.
“We keep having these spills, and we’re tired of them,” Charter said. “We know what offshore drilling means.”
As Hopkins sees it, oil rigs off the coast of Salmon Creek or Sea Ranch or Mendocino Village to the north would pose an “existential threat” to the “sustainable blue economy” many in the region are working toward.
That economy includes tourism, commercial and recreational fishing, and thriving waterfronts.
“We are working to support these historic industries, as a way of preserving the culture of the North Coast,” Hopkins said.
Dick Ogg, an esteemed Bodega Bay commercial fisherman and boat captain, also spoke out against oil drilling anywhere near the waters that provide his living. The fleet in his home port and those to the north and south are holding on as best they can while weathering crashes in their most lucrative fisheries, mounting regulatory hurdles and dizzying changes in ocean conditions that can upend everything.
“The objective,” he said, speaking for his fellow fleet members, “is to commit to conservation, and to being stewards of the ocean. Our lives revolve around the opportunity to provide that resource to the public.
“I want this industry to last,” he said. “I want it to be here for centuries. And this” — drilling for oil off the North Coast — “is not how we’re going to do it.”
(pressdemocrat.com)
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.
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.
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.
WRITERS OF THE MENDOCINO COAST - CREATIVE WRITING AT THE FORT BRAGG LIBRARY
As a community service the Writers of the Mendocino Coast (writersmendocino.org) present: Creative Writing at the Fort Bragg Library, 2nd Wednesdays, 2:00-3:30 pm. The classes are taught by published authors and are open and free to all adults. On November 12th, the presenter is poet Elizabeth Vrenios. She calls her session, “Beloved Madness: Freeing the Creative Spirit.” Elizabeth’s presentation is sure to nudge your creative spirit.
LAUREN SINNOTT
Friday Nov. 7 -- Come see a curated wave of artwork flowing across the Co-op’s tall south wall. Hang out and drink wine, enjoy yummy snacks, live music by Kenny G and Keith Abrams, and talk about imagery that can be beautiful, funny, and tell stories. Is Point Arena the home of opinions (yes) and why is the face card theme fabulous? (Because you can paint portraits of people in sumptuous clothing that no modern individual actually wears.) Imagery ranges from a Portrait of Mendocino County to the Queen of Diamonds Paying Bills.
The creative life may be demanding but not dull. My diverse portfolio is the result of making a living as an artist in the modern world. Before photography was invented, everyone would want me to paint their likeness. Now, it’s really only canines that people commission portraits of (only half kidding). I once paid a vet bill with a mural of dogs, cats, birds, rabbits and mice.
This is what you can’t do with a smartphone image run through AI. I paint ornate murals that are full of subtle color, pattern, symbolism and tell stories with portraits. I also make things that regular people need, like business signs, logos, and even a high school mascot on the basketball court floor. You’ll find all of this in the Co-op show.
The framed archival pieces are affordable because it was me who bought all those cool frames from Pay ‘n’ Take over the years and I print the artwork myself. Also larger full-scale prints are available through local print shop Braggadoon Signs & Graphics + Fine Art & Display. If you like an image, we can make it work!
CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, October 31, 2025
ERIC ASTI, 34, Fortuna/Ukiah. Grand theft, controlled substance with two or more priors, paraphernalia.
JERED EAGLESMITH, 27, Willits. Domestic violence court order violation.
STEVEN HARPER, 41, Manchester. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation, resisting.
ALDEN LARVIE, 39, Ukiah. Disobeying court order.
CHRISTOPHER LOPEZ, 36, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, probation revocation.
KRISTO OUSEY, 41, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting.
MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio all Halloween night on KNYO and KAKX.
Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is six or so. If that's too soon, send it any time after that and I'll read it next Friday.
Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am PST on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KNYO.org. The first three hours of the show, meaning till midnight, are simulcast on KAKX 89.3fm Mendocino.
Plus you can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night I'll put up the recording of tonight's show. You'll find plenty of other educational amusements there to educate and amuse yourself with until showtime, or any time, such as:
A fun logic game. Not too hard. With narrated gameplay example video. https://boingboing.net/2025/10/28/new-online-logic-game-where-criminals-tell-the-truth.html
Mysterious Ways. (Full film, 98 min., free, without ads, through Halloween night) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJhSRmUJZbE
And further UFO debunkment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64zlyzojpPM
Marco McClean, [email protected], https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com
ON THIS NIGHT in San Francisco, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters threw what they called the Acid Test Graduation—a trippy farewell (sort of) to the LSD-fueled happenings that had defined a generation’s leap into expanded consciousness.
The Grateful Dead provided the sonic chaos, strobe lights pulsed through the ballroom, and liquid projections turned the walls into living art. Though Kesey declared the Pranksters were “graduating from acid,” the psychedelic wave was just beginning to crest.
PROP. 50 DOESN’T GUARANTEE DEMOCRATS FIVE SEATS. THEY STILL HAVE TO WIN RACES ACROSS CALIFORNIA
by Jim Newton
As voters weigh in on Proposition 50, which will appear on the ballot next month, the debate over the measure is complicated by one common concern and one common misconception: The concern is that the proposed redistricting moves California away from hard-won fairness in drawing congressional boundaries. The misconception is that this is a simple gift to Democrats.
It’s hard for some election reform supporters to feel good about Prop. 50. It does, after all, unravel the independent commission approach to drawing district boundaries, which California voters created in 2008 and expanded in 2010. That method is favored by many election specialists, who see it as more fair and less overtly political than having politicians choose their constituents.
Californians are rightly proud of their independent commission and its work, so it’s hard to let that go — even if temporarily. Prop. 50 would replace the current congressional map with one that creates five new majority-Democrat districts. It would remain in effect until the independent redistricting commission draws a new set based on the 2030 census, at which point California would resume its nonpartisan approach to the exercise.
Few people understand California redistricting better than Sara Sadhwani, a professor of politics at Pomona College and an ardent advocate of election rules that protect the public voice. She supports independent redistricting both as a scholar and as a participant.
When she applied for a position on the California Citizens Redistricting Commission in 2020, she noted that the commission “played an essential role in ensuring fair representation of all Californians by crafting district boundaries that met the needs of diverse communities.”
But Sadhwani is concerned not just with protecting California’s system, but also with the broader implications of attempts to improperly throw next year’s midterms to President Donald Trump and his Republican allies. Since Trump persuaded Texas to jimmy its congressional lines — Trump proclaimed that he is “entitled” to those now-gerrymandered seats — California has no choice but to respond, she argued.
“I’m a mom of three,” she told me last week. “I tell my kids on a regular basis that two wrongs don’t make a right. However,” she added, “I also tell them that if a bully punches you, you can defend yourself.”
Which brings us to the misconception. Although commentators do it all the time, it’s not correct to say that the new districts simply hand over new seats to Democratic candidates. What it does, rather, is create more districts with Democratic majorities.
Congressional candidates still have to do the work of collecting voters’ support and securing the office.
In some areas, of course, districts are effectively unchanged. Los Angeles is one of them, simply because L.A. is so overwhelmingly liberal. About 53% of the city’s registered voters are Democrats, compared to 17% who consider themselves Republicans. Any district boundary there will naturally produce majorities of Democrats.
Indeed, only two districts south of Santa Barbara will substantially increase their representation of Democrats: the 41st Congressional District, presently held by Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, and the 48th District, currently held by Republican Rep. Darrell Issa. In Calvert’s case, the new boundaries would leave the district heavily tilted in favor of Democrats, who would enjoy a 20-point registration advantage. In Issa’s district, the Democratic registration advantage would be just four points, but it’s still a big swing since the district presently gives Republicans a 10-point margin.
“Votes are earned, plain and simple. These districts work in the Democrats’ favor, but they don’t guarantee victory.”
Sara Sadhwani, California Citizens Redistricting Commission member and Pomona College professor
What does that mean on the ground? In the case of the 41st, Democrats envision a shift with Rep. Linda Sanchez, who lives in Whittier and currently represents the 38th Congressional District, moving over to challenge Calvert, effectively placing one incumbent against another and in a district now favorable to Sanchez. Meanwhile, L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis, a big name in Democratic circles, has already announced her intention to run in the 38th if Prop. 50 passes, replacing Sanchez.
However, the challenge for Democrats is a little more pronounced in the 48th. Issa easily won reelection in 2024 and outperformed the registration in his district, winning by 20 points when the Republican registration advantage was 10 points. So even stripping away that advantage does not guarantee that Democrats will seize the seat.
All of this is a reminder that district line-drawing alone is not enough for political victory. Democratic districts do not necessarily add up to Democratic seats, and it’s conceivable that Calvert or Issa — especially Issa — could end up being reelected, even in a district that is more heavily stacked against Republicans.
It’s also worth noting that the same dynamics are in play, in reverse, in Texas, where better odds for Republican officeholders and candidates do not assure them of victory. The effort to maximize Republican-majority districts may have spread the party’s loyalists too thin, a phenomenon that a Boise State University political scientist described as “dummymandering.”
Again, Sadhwani emphasized that the real test of the California effort is not so much how districts are drawn but how elections are decided.
“Votes are earned, plain and simple,” she said. “These districts work in the Democrats’ favor, but they don’t guarantee victory.”
If Prop. 50 passes, it will certainly complicate Trump’s effort to steamroll the midterms by altering the lines in Texas and elsewhere, but it does not assure that Democrats can undo the damage with their counterpunch in California. It will take candidates, organizing, money and, ultimately, votes to make that happen.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
(CalMatters.org)
AMERICANS HAVE NO IDEA WHO THEIR GOVERNMENT IS BOMBING, And Other Notes
by Caitlin Johnstone
An article by Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp has highlighted the widely-ignored fact that according to AFRICOM the US waged a three-day bombing campaign in Somalia from October 26 — October 28, bringing the number of US airstrikes in that nation this year to 89.
What percentage of Americans even realize that Trump has bombed Somalia nearly a hundred times this year? I doubt it’s even one percent. The mainstream press barely mention it. Americans have hardly any idea who their own country is bombing.
In theory the press are there to create an informed electorate who can then use their votes to move their government in a healthy direction. In practice the press are there to keep the public too ignorant, propagandized and distracted to meddle in the workings of the imperial machine.
❖
Israel keeps violating the “ceasefire” and bombing Gaza whenever it wants to, then saying the ceasefire is back in effect. It’s like saying you’ve quit smoking whenever you’re not currently having a cigarette.
NPR reports that after a mid-“ceasefire” bombing campaign that killed 104 people including 46 children, Benjamin Netanyahu “ordered the strikes after accusing Hamas of violating the ceasefire for handing over body parts this week that Israel said were partial remains of a hostage recovered earlier in the war.”
Saying you massacred children because you weren’t given the correct pieces of a corpse just might be the craziest justification for a war crime that anyone has ever offered.
❖
Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon accused UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese of witchcraft for her report on Israel’s genocidal atrocities in Gaza. That’s right. Witchcraft.
“Miss Albanese, you are a witch and this report is another page in your spell book,” Danon said in response to Albanese’s remarks to the UN’s Third Committee on Gaza.
Says a lot about the strength of their arguments, really.
Pro-Palestine arguments are like, “Here’s raw video footage of atrocities, IDF admissions of war crimes, IDF soldiers documenting their own sadism, eyewitness testimony from western doctors, and analysis from every major human rights group,” while pro-Israel arguments are like, “You’re a witch doing witchcraft!”
❖
Israeli media report that their government is preparing to wage a “propaganda war” for when foreign journalists are able to gain access to Gaza in advance of the expected PR fallout as the world learns “the human stories from Gaza in the voices and faces of the residents themselves.”
It’s such a trip how as a state the Israelis understand the importance of perception management more acutely than any nation on earth, but as individuals they still can’t resist the urge to club an old woman on camera or post pictures of themselves wearing stolen panties in Gaza. Really drives home how the entire state is premised on the understanding that its existence depends on actively cultivating the support of powerful western military forces using aggressive lobbying and propaganda campaigns, but the state is also premised on extreme hatred and racism, and these two essential ingredients are clashing with more and more regularity when it comes to Gaza.
❖
It’s not okay to still support a two-state solution in 2025. Israel has spent two years showing the world that it should not exist as a state. It needs to be disarmed, dismantled, and denazified.
It was still excusable to naively believe a two-state solution was workable prior to 2023, but after two years of Israeli officials openly saying with the overwhelming support of their citizenry that there will never be a Palestinian state while committing a genocide in full view of the entire world, this is no longer a tenable position to have. There is no longer any excuse for still believing the state of Israel will allow the Palestinians to have a fully sovereign state and leave them in peace, especially not after watching it wage war on all its neighbors with the blatantly obvious goal of domination and territorial expansion.
The Israel experiment has been run. The results of that experiment show that it is not workable. Everything we’ve seen these last two years is the result of Zionists getting everything they want. This is what that looks like. The world needs to terminate the experiment by any means necessary and end the Zionist state forever.
❖
Groyper leader Nick Fuentes just went on Infowars to join Alex Jones in endorsing regime change interventionism in Venezuela by the Trump administration.
The entire American right is just Dick Cheney wearing various costumes. The empire doesn’t just control the opposition, it controls the opposition to the opposition.
(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)
DARK TIDINGS
"…the fake news isn’t reporting on Operation Arctic Frost. It’s not that they’re trying to cover it up… but that they actually think it was totally normal and legitimate." — Hans Mahncke
by James Kunstler
Surely you’ve noticed in recent years just how gruesome the Halloween townscape has become with our competitive yard displays of giant skeletons, shrieking ghouls, corpses seeming to emerge from the crabgrass, and miscellaneous body parts strewn about the property. The symbolism seems pretty overt: America yearns to become a death cult.
The world has seen this before and it generally doesn’t end well. Something in their equivalent of the zeitgeist drove the Aztecs to sharply ramp-up the scale of their human sacrifices in the years just before Hernán Cortés came to their capital city, Tenochtitlán. Bernal Diaz, a foot-soldier in Cortés’s legion, later wrote:
“I remember that they had in a plaza, where there were some shrines, so many places of dead skulls, which could be counted, according to the concert as they were set, that when they appeared they would be more than one hundred thousand; and I say again about one hundred thousand. And in another part of the square were as many rows of bones without meat, bones of the dead, that could not be counted; and they had in many beams many heads hanging from one part to another. And keeping those bones and skulls were three priests, who, as we understood, were in charge of them…”
Cortés had arrived in Mexico in April of 1519 with an expeditionary force of about 500 soldiers and by August of 1521, it was all over. He defeated the empire of a million Aztecs and commenced the systematic demolition of their monuments, including the horrifying great rack-of-skulls (tzompantli) where they displayed their thousands of trophies.
Something — more precisely, some cabal of somebodies — is attempting to systematically demolish the social scaffold of our country now. It can’t just be the Soros network of NGOs. The best we can do to identify the central animating agent is the Deep State or Blob, a malignancy within our own organs of national management. It’s shaping up as a kind of American Armageddon, a battle between the forces of darkness and light, death and life. The battle has been going on for at least ten years, since Mr. Trump invaded the body politic — rather like when Cortés entered Mexico and set off a chain of events that ended the cruel and despotic culture embedded there. We’re acting out something along those lines now.
The death cult is vividly on display in our time and place. Minneapolis is poised to elect the skeletal-looking Somali Omar Fateh as its next mayor. The once-emblematic city of Garrison’s Keillor’s “above average,” relentlessly “nice” prairie folk was wrecked in 2020 in tribute to BLM’s patron saint, George Floyd, and has never recovered, written off as a national sacrifice zone for the sake of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Omar Fateh styles himself as a “Democratic Socialist.” This is the next new thing.
Likewise, New York City is about to elevate the Ugandan Marxist Jihadi (and self-styled Democratic Socialist) Zohran Mamdani into the top job at city hall. As usual with this brand of insurrectionists — that is, persons bent on destroying our society — the label is yet another language game meant to scramble your brain.
You have probably not failed to notice the incessant recital of the phrase “our democracy” by Democratic Party field marshals starting with “Joe Biden” in the final months of his, uh, late performance. “Our democracy” has nothing to do, really, with citizen participation in governance. The phrase is a cover for their desperate power-seeking — for instance, the “nomination” of Kamala Harris with zero democratic voting procedure — in the service of preserving a vast empire of rackets that siphon taxpayer dollars into multitudinous NGOs and countless government programs that provide jobs and free stuff to an ever-growing class of parasitic dependents in the party’s thrall.
So, the next ploy upcoming will be the sequel to the “No Kings” demos of recent months: “The Fall of the Trump Fascist Regime” mass protest event planned for Washington, DC, on November 5, following election day. The stated idea is to surround the White House with millions of shrieking “Resistance” warriors to exorcise President Trump. The unstated idea is to provoke the president to invoke the Insurrection Act and thus, supposedly, demonstrate that he is a tyrant to their satisfaction.
More likely, if things get out of hand and violence erupts, the Resistance warriors and their Antifa shock troops — sure to be on-hand — will only prove that they are the actual insurrectionists. In which case, this time, expect arrests and indictments of the folks behind the extravaganza, with the prospect of pretty harsh penalties. (Are you listening, Norm Eisen, Mary McCord, and friends?)
Meanwhile, the emerging scandal around the “Arctic Frost” scheme executed under “Joe Biden’s” DOJ to harass and persecute his admin’s political adversaries, takes shape as “worse than Watergate,” in the words of Senate Judiciary Committee chair Charles Grassley. Fresh evidence about this nefarious activity only reinforces the developing seditious conspiracy case that will be prosecuted out of the Southern District of Florida encompassing the entirety of treasonous acts from RussiaGate forward amounting to a long-running coup that never did manage to succeed, no matter how they keep at it.
You know the names of most of the major players involved, and ever more members of the supporting cast, lodged in the Deep State, are being revealed daily. Think of them when you see the ghouls and skeletons on display in America’s yards this Halloween eve.
Saturday, November 1, is the official publication date for my new book, the novel Look I’m Gone, live on Amazon tomorrow.
To celebrate, I offer readers an amusing excerpt from the book which you can find here at this link.
ORWELL WATCH: ON BILL GATES AND CLIMATE ‘DENIALISM’
Global warming is so powerful, it reversed the meaning of "conspiracy theory"
by Matt Taibbi
In the process of writing “Bill Gates Says We’ll Survive Climate Change, World Furious” the other day, I was forced down an interesting rhetorical rabbit hole, but it was too much of a mouthful for that article. The issue however came up again in the new America This Week, as Walter and I discussed Animal Farm. A sign from above! So, returning to the theme:
First, I misused the word “optimism” in describing Gates’s conversion on climate. As the Microsoft co-founder is a monopolistic reptile-whore of the highest order who smells money through his flickering tongue, never budging except in the direction of more profits, my guess is Gates reached a real “tipping point,” in which his climate advocacy had finally become too large of a pimple on the chin of Microsoft’s business model. Amid efforts to lock down the AI-generation equivalent of OS, his old firm will need the energy footprint of a small star. “It turns out humans will survive!” in that sense just feels like a follow up to other cheery posts about next-gen nuke plants.
Nonetheless, Gates and other climate activists have always issued caveats in fine print suggesting warnings like “We have 12 years to live!” weren’t meant to be taken literally, because (as the New York Times just put it) “even the most dire forecasts don’t predict… the end of civilization anytime soon.” As was the case with Covid, tariff catastrophe and other issues, a lot of modern press rhetoric is designed to inspire unmitigated terror.
This eliminates phrases like, “Very bad, but…” Things are either total disasters or not.
One fascinating way of doing that has been to reverse the concept of “conspiracy theory.” Once, you were a socially unacceptable kook if you believed in invisible connections between the Bildeburgs, Rothschilds, the CIA, and whatever else you’d read about. You know, like Michael Moore being the Bush administration’s bullhorn:
Ironically, Moore would get a taste of the new conspiracy theory concept when he later produced a movie that questioned the environmentalist movement. He became an exemplar of a new word, one which rendered Gibson-style kookdom upon those who didn’t absolutely believe in things.
Denialism’s ascent was due almost entirely to the global warming issue. If you look at the graph above you’ll see a spike in the early 2000s, which appears related to a handful of books and articles, mostly about denial of the Holocaust. But the term really took off with the 2009 publication of Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, by New York Times author Michael Specter:
Future themes not just of media campaigns but efforts to tackle “science denialism” through censorship were present in this book, which Specter explained grew in part out of a dinner party encounter…
https://www.racket.news/p/orwell-watch-on-bill-gates-and-climate
THE GAZA, the one that existed on the morning of October 7 is gone, decimated by months of saturation bombing, shelling, bulldozing and controlled demolitions. All that was familiar when I worked in Gaza has vanished, transformed into an apocalyptic landscape of shattered concrete and rubble. My New York Times office in the center of Gaza City. The Marna boarding house on Ahmed Abd el-Aziz Street, where after a day’s work I would drink tea with Margaret Nassar, the elderly woman who owned it, a refugee from Safad in northern Galilee. On my last visit to Marna House, I forgot to return the room key. Number 12. It was attached to a large plastic oval with the words “Marna House Gaza” on it. The key sits on my desk.
Friends and colleagues, with few exceptions, are in exile, dead or, in most cases, have disappeared, no doubt buried under mountains of debris.
The daily rituals of life in Gaza are no longer possible. I used to leave my shoes on a rack by the front door of the Great Omari Mosque, the largest and oldest mosque in Gaza, in the Daraj Quarter of the Old City. The white stone walls had pointed arches and a tall octagonal minaret encircled by a carved wooden balcony that was crowned with a crescent. The mosque was built on the foundations of ancient temples to Philistine and Roman deities as well as a Byzantine church. I washed my hands, face and feet at the common water taps, carrying out the ritual purification before prayer, known as wudhu. Inside the hushed interior with its blue-carpeted floor, the cacophony, noise, dust, fumes and frenetic pace of Gaza melted away.
The mosque was destroyed on December 8, 2023, by an Israeli airstrike.
The razing of Gaza is not only a crime against the Palestinian people. It is a crime against our cultural and historical heritage — an assault on memory. We cannot understand the present, especially when reporting on Palestinians and Israelis, if we do not understand the past.
There is no shortage of failed peace plans in occupied Palestine, all of them incorporating detailed phases and timelines, going back to the presidency of Jimmy Carter. They end the same way. Israel gets what it wants initially — in the latest case the release of the remaining Israeli hostages — while it ignores and violates every other phase until it resumes its attacks on the Palestinian people.
It is a sadistic game. A merry-go-round of death. This ceasefire, like those of the past, is a commercial break. A moment when the condemned man is allowed to smoke a cigarette before being gunned down in a fusillade of bullets…..
— Chris Hedges
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
In government propaganda videos, the Feds boast of going after ‘the worst of the worst.’ In reality, every day, masked agents are fanning out and hitting the easiest targets they can: day laborers, gig workers, tamale ladies.
LEAD STORES, SATURDAY'S NYT
Uncertainty Persists for Americans Waiting for Monthly Food Stamps
Fact-Checking Trump’s Claim About SNAP and Partisanship
Here’s Who Will Be Affected by Disruptions to Federal Food Aid
Shutdowns, Obamacare and the Risks of Bargaining for Policy Wins in a Crisis
Putin Brandishes Menacing Nuclear Weapons as Talks With U.S. Falter
Canadian Prime Minister Says He Apologized to Trump Over Anti-Tariff Ad
Trump’s Team Offers to Keep Some Ballroom Donors Incognito
Saudi Prince Plans Ambitious U.S. Visit, but Opening Ties With Israel Is Unlikely
WHERE THINGS STAND
Food Stamps: A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to continue paying for food stamps during the federal shutdown. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, aids roughly 42 million people and was set to run out of funds on Saturday without intervention. The judge ordered distribution of funds “as soon as possible.”
Government Shutdown: Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, again rejected President Trump’s call to eliminate the filibuster in order to force an end to the government shutdown. The move would strip away a longstanding Senate rule that most legislation needs 60 votes to pass rather than a simple majority. Many Republicans fear that any weakening of the rule could backfire spectacularly.
Air Travel: Insufficient staffing at air traffic control facilities caused a second day of widespread delays, as several large airports reported service interruptions. The controllers’ union released a statement on Friday that effectively endorsed congressional Republicans’ approach to ending the shutdown.
(New York Times)
ONE NIGHT in his twenties, Carl Sandburg jumped a freight train heading west. He carried nothing but a pencil and a notebook. He wasn’t chasing adventure. He was chasing America.
He slept in boxcars, shared meals with drifters, and listened to factory workers, farmers, and miners talk about wages, hunger, and hope. Every face he met became a verse. Every town became a line. He called it “learning the country by foot.”
When he finally settled in Chicago, he wrote what he had seen. “I am the people, the mob,” he wrote, “the crowd, the mass.” His poems didn’t rhyme neatly or wear fine clothes. They walked like men coming off the night shift. Critics called his work unrefined. He called it honest.
Sandburg refused to write about kings and heroes. He wrote about barbers, carpenters, and switchyard workers who kept the world moving without being seen. His words gave dignity to people who never expected to find themselves in poetry.
As his fame grew, he still spoke with a plain voice. He sang folk songs on stage, recited poems that sounded like work songs, and carried the same notebook wherever he went. In it were scraps of overheard dialogue, old jokes, the smell of smoke and rain from towns that didn’t make the maps.
When someone once asked him why he loved the ordinary, Sandburg smiled. “Because the ordinary is what lasts,” he said.
Carl Sandburg didn’t just write about America’s soul. He walked through it, slept beside it, and listened until it spoke back.
“THERE IS A TIME in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun.”
— Sherwood Anderson, ‘Winesburg, Ohio’
YOU'LL FIND that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.”
— J.D. Salinger
ROBERT CRUMB:
Maybe I’m less angry. I don’t know. Actually, I’m not less angry. When I go back to America, after a few days I am once again filled with this kind of angry alienation and disgust with this thing there that America has got – you have no idea how pervasive it is there. The public relations and propaganda put out by the corporate mono-culture there is so pervasive. When I’m over here, I look at America and think, “Why are people not more angry about what’s going on? Why are the people not more up in arms?”
Mark Scaramella replies: One could have asked the same question 200 years ago about slavery. The answers for that time in many ways parallel conditions today. And the conditions then were demonstrably much worse.
BLUES
by Geordie Greep (2024)
You're all grown up
You have your own stove
And your own pair of oven gloves
You have arrangements and assignations
You keep up appearances and have a reputation
You sit in the park and work on your sonnets
You talk about yourself in the past tense
You have opinions that can't be shaken
And morals firm
Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean?
Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean?
Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean?
Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean
Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean
Is your favourite turn of phrase
You know what I mean, you know what I mean
You know what I mean, you know what I mean
Is your second favourite turn of phrase
You can speak English better than anyone
And you can curse like no one ever has done
And you have a bigger dick than any man who's ever lived
And you can cum more than a hundred stallions
In a room that smells of cigarettes and carrion
Under sheets freezing cold with damp
You voyage far and wide across plain and ocean
Steppe and marsh on celestial bridges
And knock down doors and climb in windows
And listen in, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen
Can you hear that?
The signs of life?
Not yet awake?
The stirring, the screwing up of eyes?
A blanket that forms mountains
The valley between knee and cheek
The steep slide down to the feet
The toe poking out - be careful, don't touch!
Have discipline, my boy, just watch - stay outside, stay outside
In the cold
Can you feel it, you can feel it, you can feel it
See? There's a universe in this room
You scrounger of toilets and pillager of tombs
You don't have to work because working is for schmucks
You know God will light your way
You are ready to admit to murder, to assault
To robbery, to pederasty, to fraud
You are ready to take blame for every crime of all men
But the jury is out to lunch
You imagine the roaming camera that captures your melancholy
You walk the streets that stink of disease
You turn up your collar like James Dean
You put your right hand under your jacket
And pretend you have a gun
You put your left hand under your jacket
And pretend you're Napoleon
You squeeze your spots till they bleed
You turn your face so no one sees
Do beggars still play accordions?
You should pay one to follow you around and play your theme
Soon your nails will sing
Soon your earrings will ring
Soon your organs will grow little mouths
And speak for themselves
Soon your body will stage a civil war
Soon your heart will burst out free
And soon it will look you in the face and ask
What have you done?
Why have you led it astray?
Soon your brain will migrate
Soon your balls self-castrate - your feet will scuttle off
Your hands will fly away
Soon your eyes will glue themselves shut
Soon your legs refuse to hold you up
So embarrassed to bear your name
Your body will vanish out of shame
The first step is acceptance
Admit you have no idea what you are doing
Admit you have no name and no ambition
Admit that you sleepwalk through life
Admit that you sleep only sleepless nights
Admit your best dreams involve being carried
That spirit that enters your room
Those arms that envelop poor you!
That carry you away
In those arms you escape - you dissolve through clouds
London shrinks as you leave it behind
London turns to a model village
And now you are one with yourself
You are finally proud
Admit that you've tried to cry and can't
Admit to yourself - no one else cares
There's no jury present, there's no reporters
There's no examination, it's only you
Soon you'll disappear
Soon you won't be here
Soon you'll have all the time in the world
Soon your lips will unwrap
Soon your lips will expand
You'll pull them apart, up over your head
Soon you'll be inside out
Soon your veins will spring off
Soon they'll spread out for miles
Soon your veins will transport trains all over the world
Soon your veins will be a railroad
Soon your mind will extract itself
And very soon you'll disappear, soon you'll disappear
You'll be fine, just relax
Soon you'll disappear
That's the only fact
THE AMERICAN WAY
by Gregory Corso (1959)
1
I am a great American
I am almost nationalistic about it!
I love America like a madness!
But I am afraid to return to America
I’m even afraid to go into the American Express—
2
They are frankensteining Christ in America
in their Sunday campaigns
They are putting the fear of Christ in America
under their tents in their Sunday campaigns
They are driving old ladies mad with Christ in America
They are televising the gift of healing and the fear of hell
in America under their tents in their Sunday
campaigns
They are leaving their tents and are bringing their Christ
to the stadiums of America in their Sunday
campaigns
They are asking for a full house an all get out
for their Christ in the stadiums of America
They are getting them in their Sunday and Saturday
campaigns
They are asking them to come forward and fall on their
knees
because they are all guilty and they are coming
forward
in guilt and are falling on their knees weeping their
guilt
begging to be saved O Lord O Lord in their Monday
Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
and Sunday campaigns
3
It is a time in which no man is extremely wondrous
It is a time in which rock stupidity
outsteps the 5th Column as the sole enemy in America
It is a time in which ignorance is a good Ameri-cun
ignorance is excused only where it is so
it is not so in America
Man is not guilty Christ is not to be feared
I am telling you the American Way is a hideous monster
eating Christ making Him into Oreos and Dr. Pepper
the sacrament of its foul mouth
I am telling you the devil is impersonating Christ in America
America’s educators & preachers are the mental-dictators
of false intelligence they will not allow America
to be smart
they will only allow death to make America smart
Educators & communicators are the lackeys of the
American Way
They enslave the minds of the young
and the young are willing slaves (but not for long)
because who is to doubt the American Way
is not the way?
The duty of these educators is no different
than the duty of a factory foreman
Replica production make all the young think alike
dress alike believe alike do alike
Togetherness this is the American Way
The few great educators in America are weak & helpless
They abide and so uphold the American Way
Wars have seen such men they who despised things about
them
but did nothing and they are the most dangerous
Dangerous because their intelligence is not denied
and so give faith to the young
who rightfully believe in their intelligence
Smoke this cigarette doctors smoke this cigarette
and doctors know
Educators know but they dare not speak their know
The victory that is man is made sad in this fix
Youth can only know the victory of being born
all else is stemmed until death be the final victory
and a merciful one at that
If America falls it will be the blame of its educators
preachers communicators alike
America today is America’s greatest threat
We are old when we are young
America is always new the world is always new
The meaning of the world is birth not death
Growth gone in the wrong direction
The true direction grows ever young
In this direction what grows grows old
A strange mistake a strange and sad mistake
for it has grown into an old thing
while all else around it is new
Rockets will not make it any younger—
And what made America decide to grow?
I do not know I can only hold it to the strangeness in man
And America has grown into the American Way—
To be young is to be ever purposeful limitless
To grow is to know limit purposelessness
Each age is a new age
How outrageous it is that something old and sad
from the pre-age incorporates each new age—
Do I say the Declaration of Independence is old?
Yes I say what was good for 1789, is not good for 1960
It was right and new to say all men were created equal
because it was a light then
But today it is tragic to say it
today it should be fact—
Man has been on earth a long time
One would think with his mania for growth
he would, by now, have outgrown such things as
constitutions manifestos codes commandments
that he could well live in the world without them
and know instinctively how to live and be
—for what is being but the facility to love?
Was not that the true goal of growth, love?
Was not that Christ?
But man is strange and grows where he will
and chalks it all up to Fate whatever be—
America rings with such strangeness
It has grown into something strange and
the American is good example of this mad growth
The boy man big baby meat
as though the womb were turned backwards
giving birth to an old man
The victory that is man does not allow man
to top off his empirical achievement with death
The Aztecs did it by yanking out young hearts
at the height of their power
The Americans are doing it by feeding their young to the
Way
For it was not the Spaniard who killed the Aztec
but the Aztec who killed the Aztec
Rome is proof Greece is proof all history is proof
Victory does not allow degeneracy
It will not be the Communists will kill America
no but America itself—
The American Way that sad mad process
is not run by any one man or organization
It is a monster born of itself existing of its self
The men who are employed by this monster
are employed unknowingly
They reside in the higher echelons of intelligence
They are the educators the psychiatrists the ministers
the writers the politicians the communicators
the rich the entertainment world
And some follow and sing the Way because they sincerely
believe it to be good
And some believe it holy and become minutemen in it
Some are in it simply to be in
And most are in it for gold
They do not see the Way as monster
They see it as the “Good Life”
What is the Way?
The Way was born out of the American Dream
a nightmare—
The state of Americans today compared to the Americans
of the 18th century proves the nightmare—
Not Franklin not Jefferson who speaks for America today
but strange red-necked men of industry
and the goofs of show business
Bizarre! Frightening! The Mickey Mouse sits on the throne
and Hollywood has a vast supply—
Could grammar school youth seriously look upon
a picture of George Washington and “Herman Borst”
the famous night club comedian together at Valley
Forge?
Old old and decadent gone the dignity
the American sun seems headed for the grave
O that youth might raise it anew!
The future depends solely on the young
The future is the property of the young
What the young know the future will know
What they are and do the future will be and do
What has been done must not be done again
Will the American Way allow this?
No.
I see in every American Express
and in every army center in Europe
I see the same face the same sound of voice
the same clothes the same walk
I see mothers & fathers
no difference among them
Replicas
They not only speak and walk and think alike
they have the same face!
What did this monstrous thing?
What regiments a people so?
How strange is nature’s play on America
Surely were Lincoln alive today
he could never be voted President not with his
looks—
Indeed Americans are babies all in the embrace
of Mama Way
Did not Ike, when he visited the American Embassy in
Paris a year ago, say to the staff—“Everything is fine,
just drink Coca Cola, and everything will be all right.”
This is true, and is on record
Did not American advertising call for TOGETHERNESS?
not orgiasticly like today’s call
nor as means to stem violence
This is true, and is on record.
Are not the army centers in Europe ghettos?
They are, and O how sad how lost!
The PX newsstands are filled with comic books
The army movies are always Doris Day
What makes a people huddle so?
Why can’t they be universal?
Who has smalled them so?
This is serious! I do not mock or hate this
I can only sense some mad vast conspiracy!
Helplessness is all it is!
They are caught caught in the Way—
And those who seek to get out of the Way
can not
The Beats are good example of this
They forsake the Way’s habits
and acquire for themselves their own habits
And they become as distinct and regimented and lost
as the main flow
because the Way has many outlets
like a snake of many tentacles—
There is no getting out of the Way
The only way out is the death of the Way
And what will kill the Way but a new consciousness
Something great and new and wonderful must happen
to free man from this beast
It is a beast we can not see or even understand
For it be the condition of our minds
God how close to science fiction it all seems!
As if some power from another planet
incorporated itself in the minds of us all
It could well be!
For as I live I swear America does not seem like America
to me
Americans are a great people
I ask for some great and wondrous event
that will free them from the Way
and make them a glorious purposeful people once
again
I do not know if that event is due deserved
or even possible
I can only hold that man is the victory of life
And I hold firm to American man
I see standing on the skin of the Way
America to be as proud and victorious as St.
Michael on the neck of the fallen Lucifer—
Good Morning, ☀️🧊
I just want to send a check-in to Laz. How are you doing? 🤗
mm💕
Thank you for asking, Mazie.
Laz is alive and well. My best friend was in a car accident… I’m dealing with the fallout and helping with her recovery.
I still check in at the AVA, but nothing has provoked me to enter the arena. My interest is elsewhere.
Keep up the good work you do. The System needs to know someone is watching.
Take care, and be well.
Laz
Awww Laz, sorry to hear that about your friend, hope she’s on the mend. 😢💕
Yes sometimes better to lay low and regroup! Take care! 🤗
mm💕
I hope someone defecated into a paper bag and set it on fire in Kunstlers doorstep last night
The Catcher
I keep thinking of that Salinger quotation from yesterday’s AVA, well-chosen by our stalwart AVA guys in their mysterious ways:
“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.”
It’s one of my favorites, and I still remember reading the book as a teen, grabbed by those haunting words–a classic American quotation for sure. It seems in, some kind of half-hidden meaning, one that fits our times in America now. I think, as I write this, of Ms. Mazie and her work helping those without homes, and of all the millions of social workers and counselors, of food people in groceries and food banks, of nurses and doctors, of police and fire fighters–of all the good helping folks out there there in the “big field of rye” of America’s hard times, trying in their own ways and means, to “catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff.” Bless them all.
The easiest decision I’ll make today: Not clicking on Kunstler’s link to his book excerpt.
Mark S: Many of us born and raised here would also welcome back the Ukiah of 60 years ago.