Mendocino County Today: Saturday 11/8/2025

Sunny | Horse | Food Drive | Food Cabinets | Diversity Luncheon | SNAP Reports | SNAP Ruling | Forks Market | Opioid Settlement | Playoff Game | PIT Count | Coccora Egg | Hopland Challenge | Butterfly Project | DUI Guilty | Card Catalog | Floodgate Spaces | Jury Duty | Cliffside/Hillside | Elephant Birds | Icehouse Comments | Bookshop Sale | Lights Festival | Yesterday's Catch | Just One | Don't Laugh | North Country | Humboldt Characters | No Reason | Trans Sanctuary | Ethical Farmers | No Hurry | LSD Pitching | Marco Radio | Steve McQueen | Too Little | Pet Projects | Umm al-Khair | How Long | Man Drinking | Socialist Mayors | Labradoodle Smile | Dick Cheney | Young Tolstoy | Ain't Me | Lead Stories | Being Governed | High Volume | Prefer Shitty | Lightbulb | Found Sound | Dog Map | Dog Power | The Airmail

---

WARMER and drier conditions will build and persist through next Tuesday with a hazy marine layer along the coast. Wet and unsettled weather conditions will impact the area mid to late next week, bringing heavy rainfall, mountain snow and multiple periods of strong south winds. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A much cooler 44F under mostly clear skies this Saturday morning on the coast. Some fog but mostly clear skies into Wednesday when our next round of rain arrives. The exact timing of the rain has been moved back a little, I'm watching closely of course.

---

---

FORT BRAGG ROTARY FOOD DRIVE
November 8 @ 9:00 am - 4:00 pm

With the recent pause of SNAP benefits, many local families are facing new challenges putting food on the table. The Rotary Club of Fort Bragg is stepping up to help and they need your support! You can donate fresh produce & non-perishable food items one of two ways.

Drop-Off:

Bring donations on Saturday, November 8 between 9 a.m. and 12 noon to
either:

• Redwood Elementary School parking lot (324 S. Lincoln St.)
• Fort Bragg Senior Center parking lot (490 N. Harold St.)

Or in the Mendocino area drop off your donations at Ray Alarcon Farmers Insurance (45060 Ukiah Street, Suite B, Mendocino) now thru November 7, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Or Front Porch Pick-Up:

Email your name and address to [email protected] by Friday, November 7 to be added to the pick-up list. Rotary volunteers will collect donations from your porch if you live between Pudding Creek Road and Simpson Lane in Fort Bragg, the morning of the drive (Saturday, November between 9 a.m.and noon).

Who benefits: Donations will go directly to the Fort Bragg Food Bank to support local families in need.

---

BRISET AGUILAR (AV High School Graduate/Facebook post):

If there are any families experiencing hunger due to the SNAP delay, please reach out to me. I’ll do what I can to help. I know our local food bank is a huge support for many of us, but sometimes there’s a gap between food bank dates when things get tight. To help fill that gap, I’m looking into setting up a few community food cabinets around Anderson Valley — places where anyone can drop off donations or pick up food as needed, no questions asked. If you’re interested in helping, whether by donating, helping stock cabinets, or suggesting good cabinet locations, please let me know. Together, we can make sure no one in our community goes hungry.

---

---

FULL SNAP FOOD STAMP BENEFITS BEGIN REACHING NORTH COAST RECIPIENTS FOLLOWING COURT ORDER

by Kym Kemp

Reports are coming in that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients are now receiving their full November benefits, following a federal court order issued earlier. One local reader told Redheaded Blackbelt that he and his children saw their complete benefits arrive today.

SNAP, often known as food stamps, provides monthly assistance to help low-income individuals and families buy groceries. The program is federally funded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and administered by states. Benefits are issued on electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards and can be used at most grocery stores and markets for food purchases.

The order, handed down by U.S. District Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island, directed the Trump administration to fully fund SNAP benefits by Friday, according to Reuters. The decision forced the administration to provide the full amount rather than follow it’s earlier plan to issue only partial benefits during the ongoing government shutdown.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the ruling “great news,” saying it would prevent hunger and relieve pressure on food banks. “More than 41 million low-income Americans rely on SNAP benefits to put food on the table,” Bonta said in a statement issued late this afternoon.

While the administration has appealed the decision, many households—including those in Humboldt County—are already seeing relief as full food benefits begin to appear in accounts.

---

JUST IN: Supreme Court Temporarily Allows Trump to Curtail Food Stamp Funding

Food stamps: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson late Friday temporarily halted a lower court order that would have required the Trump administration to fund food stamps in full, fueling new uncertainty around the anti-hunger program’s immediate fate. The justice did not rule on the legality of the White House’s actions. Instead, she imposed a pause meant to give an appeals court more time to weigh the legal arguments raised by the government, as it seeks to withhold funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) during the shutdown. Some states had already said that they were preparing to send out full food stamp benefits.

New York leaders have lamented the Supreme Court decision to temporarily allow the Trump administration to withhold full food stamp payments during the government shutdown, while an appeals court considers the case. New Yokr Attorney General Letitia James called it a “tragedy” in a statement. Gov. Kathy Hochul wrote in a social media post that President Trump “doesn’t care if millions of Americans go hungry.”

Shutdown negotiations: Senate Democrats substantially scaled back their demand for ending the government shutdown, saying they would be willing to do so in exchange for a one-year extension of expiring health care subsidies. But Republicans quickly rejected the offer, leaving lawmakers no closer to ending a stalemate that has shuttered the government for 38 days.

Retribution campaign: Lawyers for the New York attorney general, Letitia James, began a high-stakes effort to convince a federal judge to dismiss the criminal case against her, calling it a “flagrantly unconstitutional” prosecution fueled solely by President Trump’s animus.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that he was taking Ahmed al-Sharaa, the president of Syria and a former insurgent leader, and Anas Hasan Khattab, Syria’s interior minister, off the U.S. government’s list of specially designated global terrorists. The men had been placed on the list years earlier. The move follows President Trump’s executive order in June to lift economic sanctions on Syria. People on the U.S. government’s designated terrorist list are restricted in doing financial transactions in a global system that is tied to the U.S. dollar.

(NY Times)

---

---

OPIOID SETTLEMENT - FUNDS ALLOCATED TO FORD STREET PROJECT

by Justine Frederiksen

During its meeting Wednesday, the Ukiah City Council approved distributing up to $300,000 in Opioid Settlement Funds toward the expansion of the Ford Street Project in Ukiah.

“The Ford Street Project has been operating for 28 years, and they recently have undergone a very significant expansion,” Deputy City Manager Shannon Riley told the City Council at its Nov. 5 meeting, referring to the Ford Street Project’s new treatment pavilion and 24-bed Sober Living Facility, which Executive Director Jacqueline Williams said represented a 20-percent increase in the program’s capacity “to serve those ready for recovery.”

Before this new wing was built, Williams told the City Council, “during the opioid crisis, fentanyl also be came more prevalent, and we had to literally use beds that we had used before in our first Sober Living dorm, just for withdrawal management. The (hospital’s Emergency Room) was filled with people that didn’t require medical detox, but needed help, and there was no place for them to go.”

So the community needs that the facility would be addressing “morphed and changed as the needs in our community changed over the years it took to pull this all off,” she said. “And the good news is, at one point we had 18 detox beds because of the fentanyl crisis, but that is now down to between 10 and 12. The crisis is still there, it’s still horrible, but it’s not as (much of) an issue in our community as it was at one time.”

As for the Opioid Settlement Funds, Williams described them as very helpful, because they supplement state grants that don’t pay for the furniture, linens and appliances that her organization also needs to house people. And while Mendocino County did contribute $8,000 of its settlement funds towards beds for the facility, Williams said that the additional funds from the city would prevent her program from incurring debt.

“I’m so grateful for these dollars, and I think as a community, we should be really proud of what we’re able to provide, given the scope and size of our community,” Williams told the council. “And I appreciate your support.”

“Jaqueline has been a pillar of resilience,” City Manager Sage Sangiacomo said, describing Williams as “having to pivot a number of times over the decades in providing a number of very important services to our community. Nearly all of our families have at one point been touched by addiction or mental health issues, and having these services in close proximity to where the families are, is so important; it is a really special place for our community to have.”

“And this is a unique opportunity for (the city of Ukiah) to help with the program’s incredible expansion,” said Riley, describing it as turning an “8-room boarding house into 24-bed treatment facility.”

The City Council then unanimously approved allocating up to $300,000 of the city’s Opioid Settlement Funds to the Ford Street Project, after most members thanks Williams for her work.

Also during the Nov. 5 meeting, Williams gave the Ukiah City Council an update Wednesday on what she described as the “CalFresh crisis,” which is due to the decrease in federal funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) during the government shutdown.

“If you look at the number of families that we serve at our local food bank, it’s over 4,400 every month, a very consistent number,” Williams said, explaining that “the number of people that come to the food bank doesn’t reflect all of the people that we call CalFresh, so we were a bit concerned when people were referred to those local food banks when those benefits had been suspended.”

But after a “quick emergency meeting,” Williams said that he Community Foundation of Mendocino County and North Coast Opportunities were able to “give us over $12,000 so we could begin to buy food at an accelerated rate, which began (Wednesday), and we also extended our distribution hours.”

Williams said that while the food bank was serving more people, “it’s not the crush of people we thought it might be, but there’s so much confusion out there about the elimination of the program, I don’t think we really know how this goes. But please know, we will keep the community informed as best we can. And we should be proud of the folks who step up and really help in times like this.”

When Sangiacomo asked Williams how people in the community could support the Food Bank, she explained that the “food that gets distributed in Mendocino County is coordinated by the Mendo Food Hub, which is located in Willits, and they share some of the food with the rest of us,” so people can either donate to the Food Hub directly, or make a donation to the Ford Street Project in Ukiah, which would then go to the Ukiah Food Bank.

As for donations of food, Williams said she would never turn those down, but that “for every dollar you donate to a Food Bank (either in Willits, Fort Bragg or Ukiah), we’re a part of the California Food Network, so my food bank dollar buys about three dollars worth of food. And that’s because California has farmers who make all of their overages and excess available to us at pennies on the dollar.”

There will also be more opportunities to volunteer at the food bank, Williams added, “if we have to continue to open up for longer and longer, so you can call your local food bank” for more information about volunteering.

Contact the Ukiah Food Bank at 707-463-2409.

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

---

---

RESULTS OF 2025 POINT IN TIME (PIT) COUNT RELEASED FOR MENDOCINO COUNTY

Ukiah, CA - The Mendocino County Homeless Services Continuum of Care (MCHSCoC) has released its results from the 2025 Point-in-Time (PIT) Count, an annual count of sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons in Mendocino County. More than 30 volunteers took part in this year’s PIT Count, which was held on the morning of January 29, 2025. The data collected on that night is organized and submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and is typically approved and released back to the community in the fall.

In 2025, volunteers counted 636 individuals experiencing both sheltered and unsheltered homelessness – 196 of those individuals were in shelter, and 440 of those individuals were unsheltered on the night of January 28. Utilizing a location-based application, short surveys were administered to individuals and families residing on the streets and in vehicles, makeshift shelters, encampments, and other places not meant for human habitation throughout the County. Non-responsive observed persons were documented and included in the Count totals as well.

2025 marks the second year that our community canvased and included Tribal lands in our PIT Count reporting. The participation of Tribal Leadership has enabled the County to more effectively document the prevalence of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness who identify as Native American, Alaska Native, or Indigenous. The Governing Board of the Mendocino County Homeless Services Continuum of Care is deeply grateful for our growing partnership with our Tribal Nations as we work collaboratively to solve the problems of homelessness with unity and in partnership.

The PIT Count is a single, imperfect tool aimed at measuring outcomes related to homelessness. Many different factors can influence the results of a PIT Count, including the weather, the number and experience of volunteer canvassers, the level of preparation and training in advance of the count, the availability and skill of Lived Experience Guides, and unexpected events on the day of the count itself. For these reasons, we believe that observing long-term trends over several years is the most effective way to use PIT Count data to measure homelessness outcomes. When taking a multi-year approach to data analysis, we observe the following:

• Since 2020, the number of unsheltered homeless has declined by 23%.
• Since 2020, the number of housing units identified specifically for homeless individuals has increased by 35%.
• Since 2020, the number of shelter beds has held relatively steady.

These multi-year trends indicate steady progress on reducing homelessness in Mendocino County. Trends in PIT Count data are supported by additional data points collected outside of the PIT Count process.

• Since 2021, at least 1,135 literally homeless individuals were housed in permanent housing in Mendocino County.
• Since 2021, the Ukiah Valley Fire Authority has noted a 34% reduction in calls for service for homeless individuals.
• Since 2021, 353 new units of housing have been built in Mendocino County, with 104 of those units specifically designated for persons and families experiencing homelessness.

These promising trends support the theory that creating and supporting permanent housing itself is perhaps the most critical pathway to the long-term resolution of homelessness in our communities. We give credit and gratitude to our local jurisdictions and developers working hard to build new housing and look forward to new projects opening in our community within the next few years.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires all Continuums of Care to conduct a Point-in-Time Count every other year, on odd years. Mendocino County Homeless Services Continuum of Care will not conduct the unsheltered count component of a full PIT Count in 2026 but will submit data to HUD of the Housing Inventory Count (HIC) which reflects a demographic analysis of the shelter beds available and in use on a single night in January 2026.

A detailed PIT count report for 2025 can be accessed at the CoC website at https://mendocinococ.org/pit-counts.

---

---

HOPLAND PUBLIC UTILITY DISTRICT FACES BROWN ACT CHALLENGE

Ratepayer requests a do-over public hearing

by Elise Cox

Hopland ratepayers have formally requested that the Hopland Public Utility District (HPUD) rescind steep increases in water and sewer rates that took effect on Nov. 1 or face immediate litigation.

Vernon Budinger, the leader of a group of concerned HPUD customers, issued a formal legal challenge in a “Cure and Correct” letter dated October 26, 2025. The letter describes widespread violations of California’s open meeting laws and financial transparency mandates.

The HPUD board approved the rate hikes on October 9, 2025, following a contentious public hearing at Brutocao Cellars. Under the new structure, the cost of water is set to triple over 10 years, while sewer service will rise by at least 68 percent. The first round of increases includes a 40 percent hike for water and a 25 percent increase for wastewater.

Ratepayers contend that the HPUD’s process violated both the Ralph M. Brown Act, which governs open meetings, and Proposition 218, which mandates rate justification and public transparency.

Budinger said Government Code §54960.1 “authorizes any person to require a legislative body to cure and correct violations of the Ralph M. Brown Act.”

Jared Walker, deputy director of water resources for the Ukiah Valley Water Authority, which provides administrative services to the HPUD, said he could not comment in view of possible litigation. Joan Norry, president of the board of HPUD, did not respond to a request for comment.

Allegations of Procedural Misconduct

The demand letter asserts that the HPUD Board unlawfully curtailed the public’s opportunity to speak and deliberate on the matter. Specific violations cited include:

• Unreasonable Limitation on Public Comment: The Board limited the total public comment portion of the meeting to about 10 minutes, with individual speakers limited to three minutes each. During the meeting, Norry stated this limitation was required by the Brown Act—a procedural misrepresentation, the petitioners contend, since the Brown Act sets no such limit.
• Premature Interruption: The public comment period was interrupted after roughly 10 minutes when Norry declared the “limit had been reached.” After closing public comment, an informal “back-and-forth” exchange occurred between board members and attendees that was not part of the official public comment segment.
• Late Release of Financial Statements: Fiscal year 2024–25 financial statements were not made available to the public in advance of the hearing, which the petitioner argues violates the Brown Act and Proposition 218 requirements that supporting materials be made available sufficiently in advance.

The letter argues that the board’s actions unlawfully limited public participation, which is mandated “before or during the legislative body’s consideration of each item of business.”

Debate Over $5 Million Debt

The HPUD justified the steep increases by citing years of underinvestment and the looming expense of an anticipated Caltrans Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) project on Highway 101, which officials claimed would require the district to assume $5 million in new debt for utility relocation.

However, the petitioner’s letter and ratepayers at the hearing challenged this financial basis:

• Absence of Cost-of-Service Analysis (COSA): Ratepayers argue the HPUD failed to conduct a full COSA or proportional cost allocation required by Proposition 218 before or during the hearing. Ratepayer Vernon Budinger called the hike a “smokescreen” for an unjustified increase in administrative costs and questioned the absence of standard engineering estimates.
• Reliance on Speculative Costs: The public presentation relied on a summary table of rate increases and the consultant’s unverified opinion, with the justification for the rate hikes hinging almost entirely on the projected pipeline relocation. The letter states that the HPUD has offered no engineering plans, no scope definition, and no third-party validation for the costs.
• Disputed Estimate: While the HPUD consultant, Mark Hildebrand, pegged the amount attributable to HPUD ratepayers at $5 million, Assemblymember Chris Rogers, who represents the region, previously estimated the Hopland portion of the Caltrans project to be “about $1 to about $2 million.”

The demand letter emphasizes that HPUD’s reliance on the estimated $5 million future debt—despite lacking a proper COSA—violates Proposition 218, which requires that revenues “not exceed the funds required to provide the property-related service” and must be “proportional to the cost of service.”

Political Backlash and State Funding Workaround

The funding issue drew attention from state legislators who acknowledged that state law often burdens small districts like HPUD with utility relocation costs for Caltrans projects.

Assemblymember Chris Rogers introduced a bill earlier in 2025 that would have allowed Caltrans to cover these relocation costs. Although Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill on October 3, 2025, Rogers maintains that $1.5 million was secured and earmarked for the Hopland project in the state budget.

Rogers said the governor was concerned about setting a precedent for other public utility districts. He added that the project can be funded by reallocating the $1.5 million from Caltrans to the HPUD or to Mendocino County to implement the project.

The Call to Action

The formal demand letter stipulates that HPUD must take immediate steps to cure the violations, including:

• Rescinding the Oct. 9, 2025 rate-increase resolution.
• Re-noticing and re-holding the Proposition 218 hearing with adequate advance posting of all supporting materials.
• Performing and publishing a complete Cost-of-Service and Capital Needs Analysis consistent with industry standards (AWWA M1 and AACE Class 5).

Budinger said if the district does not correct the violations, ratepayers are prepared to seek a court order. “Legal counsel has already been engaged,” he said.

The next meeting of the HPUD board will be on November 13 at 6:30 p.m. Meetings are held monthly and can be attended via Zoom or in person at Brutocao Cellars, located at 3500 S. HWY 101 in Hopland, CA.

(www.mendolocal.news)

---

---

THE TIME IS NOW FOR MAN TO ACCEPT THE IMPORTANT MESSAGE THAT DUI DRIVING IS DANGEROUS TO HUMAN LIFE.

A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned from its deliberations Wednesday afternoon in Ukiah to announce it had found the trial defendant guilty as charged.

Defendant Christian Xavier Sanchez, age 21, of Lakeport, was found guilty by the jury of misdemeanor driving a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol and misdemeanor driving a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol concentration of .08 or greater.

The jury also found true a special allegation alleging that the defendant was driving with an aggravated blood alcohol concentration (meaning the defendant’s blood alcohol concentration was .15 or greater).

The evidence heard at trial was that -- when later tested by the lab -- the defendant’s blood sample taken after his arrest came back with a blood alcohol concentration of .19.

While the jury was not present, defendant Sanchez admitted a sentencing enhancement alleging that he had suffered an earlier-in-time DUI conviction in the Lake County Superior Court in May 2025, a conviction that occurred 19 days before the June 2nd DUI driving here in Mendocino County that was at issue in this week’s trial.

The defendant also admitted outside the presence of the jury that he was driving on June 2nd on a suspended license. His privilege to drive had been suspended by the Department of Motor Vehicles after the Lake County DUI arrest and conviction.

The law enforcement personnel who developed the evidence used at trial to convict the defendant were from the Ukiah Police Department and the California Department of Justice forensic crime laboratory.

The prosecutor who presented the People’s evidence to the jury was Deputy District Attorney Sarah Drlik.

Retired Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Richard Henderson presided over the two-day trial which spread over three days.

---

---

FOR LEASE OR RENT: office, storage, shop spaces available at The Floodgate 707-895-3517.

---

JURY DUTY BLUES

Dear Editor,

I finally made it to jury duty in Ukiah on Monday because they said they were no longer allowing anyone to get out of it because of distance. There were over 150 of us (many from the coast) at 9 am waiting for a felony trial that never happened because the defendant got chest pains, but by that time, the 1 o’clock group had already come in for a misdemeanor charge and there were people filling the room and the chairs down the hall up the stairs around the corner and down the hall there weren’t enough chairs provided and I even heard one guard ask someone to stop sitting on the steps, and then at around 2 we were all sent home. I also talked to 2 other folks near me who had relatives who lived in Ukiah and were sent to Fort Bragg for a trial. And down the street in the parking lot I talked to a man from Gualala who had sent back his summons because he can’t remember things and they said no you have to show up. And he did, and they sent him home five minutes later, that’s not very efficient. To be honest, I would’ve liked to be part of a jury, but not driving an hour and a half each way and not having my time considered.

Erin Wellington

Fort Bragg

---

MENDO GOES CORPORATE

Heard from Trailborn hotel rep that they are renaming the Mendocino Hotel as the Cliffside and the Hill House as the Hillside. An iconic shift like a corporate gut kick. Not to mention that rooms start at $350 a night. And no restaurant at Hillside. Opening in May and June. Marketing to 30-40 year old recreation oriented tourists as the name Trailborn indicates. Global positioning thru vast Marriott lodging advertising. Looking to partner with local entrepreneurs to do restaurants concerts dances weddings etc. Feedback is welcome; contact Kara Adamson 707-320-8922.

— Skip Taube

---

---

MIKE KOEPF: Re: Anticipating New Icehouse. Is this a joke? Most serious albacore fishermen have refrigeration on their boats, as they often range far out for many days. Days in which ice would eventually melt. Historically, ice was used primarily by salmon boats fishing closer to shore (thousands of tons seasonally), but mostly they’re all gone thanks to the Democrats and environmentalists in Sacramento and Jared “ice man” Huffman, who have destroyed the salmon season.

GARY SMITH: There are fisheries besides albacore still ongoing in Fort Bragg. The draggers all use ice. Hook and line black cod and rock cod need ice. Buyers need it. What surprised me about the article, and I hope it’s wrong, is that this plant only makes 20 tons in 24 hours. That would only ice up a couple of draggers or maybe ten smaller boats. It won’t ever do if salmon trolling comes back.

---

PRE-HOLIDAY STOREWIDE SALE at GALLERY BOOKSHOP

15% OFF ALMOST EVERYTHING!

Saturday November 8th only!

Wow, everything? Yeah! Almost everything! Even prepaid special orders & pre-orders!

There are just a few oddball items that don't count, and you almost certainly don't want those.

In-store only. Open 10am to 6pm.

(707) 937-2665

---

FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS

Celebrate the season at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens’ 15th annual Festival of Lights, a cherished holiday fundraiser supporting horticulture, conservation, education, and community programs. Each year, our dedicated staff and volunteers elevate the wonder of the season, creating an immersive experience that captivates our community and draws visitors from near and far.

The event runs rain or shine, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, November 28–December 21. Doors open at 5:00 PM, with last entry at 7:00 PM. Purchase tickets early to guarantee your spot and save.

This one-of-a-kind light show features glittering pathways, festive displays, and photo-ops galore. Shop for gifts at The Garden Store, sip warm drinks, and enjoy sweet treats at the Friends of the Gardens’ Holiday Café. All proceeds support the Gardens. Santa Claus will visit each Sunday, with extra festivities on December 7 and 14, including face painting, a lively dance zone, and fry bread tacos from Turtle Island Tacos.

Thanks to generous community sponsors, the Gardens can host this beloved event inclusively, offering low ticket prices, free admission for children, and tickets donated to local nonprofits. Special thanks to this year’s presenting sponsor, Sonoma Clean Power, whose commitment to cleaner, renewable energy helps power our community.

Children 16 and under attend free. Tickets are available online or in person at The Garden Store, open daily, 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM; they will not be sold at the door once capacity is reached. A free parking shuttle runs nightly from Mendocino College, 1211 Del Mar Dr, Fort Bragg. Please use the shuttle if lots are full, and never park on Highway 1. Dogs are not permitted.

We are thrilled to welcome members and visitors back to the Gardens to celebrate the wonder, creativity, and togetherness that make the Festival shine. Every ticket grants entry to an unforgettable holiday experience and directly supports the care, programs, and beauty of the Gardens throughout the year. Bundle up, bring your loved ones, and help us keep the Mendocino Coast aglow this season.

https://www.gardenbythesea.org/fol

---

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, November 7, 2025

KYLE GILLISPIE, 33, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-loitering.

JUAN RODEA, 48, Ukiah. Domestic battery, cruelty to animals, unspecified offense.

---

---

DON'T LAUGH AT ME

I'm a little boy with glasses the one they call the geek
A little girl who never smiles 'cause I've got braces on my teeth
And I know how it feels to cry myself to sleep

I'm that kid on every playground who's always chosen last
A single teenage mother tryin' to overcome my past
You don't have to be my friend, but is it too much to ask?

Don't laugh at me, don't call me names
Don't get your pleasure from my pain
In God's eyes we're all the same
Someday we'll all have perfect wings
Don't laugh at me

I'm the cripple on the corner, you've passed me on the street
And I wouldn't be out here beggin' if I had enough to eat
And don't think I don't notice that our eyes never meet

I lost my wife and little boy when someone crossed that yellow line
The day we laid them in the ground is the day I lost my mind
And right now I'm down to holdin' this little cardboard sign, so

Don't laugh at me, don't call me names
Don't get your pleasure from my pain
In God's eyes we're all the same
Someday we'll all have perfect wings
Don't laugh at me

I'm fat, I'm thin, I'm short, I'm tall
I'm deaf, I'm blind, hey, aren't we all?

Don't laugh at me, don't call me names
Don't get your pleasure from my pain
In God's eyes we're all the same
Someday we'll all have perfect wings
Don't laugh at me

— Allen Shamblin & Steve Seskin (1998)

---

---

HUMBOLDT CHARACTERS

by Paul Modic

Part 1: “Joey”

At the Trade Faire Joey was holding forth with a couple of us guys, telling stories quickly and sometimes mumbling in a sonorous tone. The problem was that he didn’t seem very interested in his own stories, like he’d heard himself tell them so many times he was completely bored with them. He was making us bored also, yet we were mesmerized into almost complete silence in the little half circle around him on a beautiful fall day at The Meadow, which Bob McKee had deeded to the community fifty years before.

The stories weren’t that good, well, the kernel or the gist had something to it but as a storyteller Joey was lacking, blowing it by adding unnecessary details instead of keeping to the basics, like I do for example. (For a prelude he had begun incoherently ranting about KMUD, about all the terrible things he heard all day long, which made me think then why listen to it? He wasn’t making any sense and I should have said, “Wait a minute, are you ranting generally? What are you trying to say, can you tell us your point in maybe nine words or less?”)

I also should tell him, “Just pick your ten best stories, edit out the rambling details a little, and just tell one or two of your best. Also you’re dominating and going on and on, aren’t you interested in what others might want to say? Maybe we have a story to tell or at least a response to yours, or maybe you don’t want to listen or would be bored if it’s not you talking?”

He’ll usually say he’s a comedian during one of his rants so why not organize his jokes a little? I’ve organized mine, in fact I had a list of stories and jokes, which I know by heart, with me right at that moment. I could have taken it out and asked any of them to choose one for me to tell, or better yet I could have chosen one.

The tone of his voice and his stories were all negative and I did finally say, “Well, do you have anything good to say about anyone or anything?”

“Oh, I’m just an old grump,” he said, or something like that, and soon we all wandered off, free from his rambling monologue.

---

Part Two: “Jenny”

I have a facebook frenemy who sometimes mentions her problem finding a good man but whenever I respond with a comment on the subject she unfriends me, so now I keep quiet. But really, why should I care if she cuts me loose, almost all she posts these days is about her vaccine obsession, when she’s not ranting about the extreme injustice of having chosen the wrong guy as the father of her young child. (Which brings to mind one of my original quotes: “The hotter the lover, the more shallow the relationship.”)

Of course her kid is the most important thing in her life, which is why she’s ranting about the vaccines and trying to avoid him having to take the required ones to go to public school, though she might have finally relented so she can have some “me” time.

What I would like to say to her is, “Jenny, why don’t you just be upfront from the get and tell any new hot crush that it’s your way or the highway and if he ever disagrees with any of your opinions then it’s adios muchacho?” But that wouldn’t get her laid, she is pretty hot at thirty-nine, so I guess it’s better to have some presumably good sex first, then later explain the actual situation, that she will accept nothing less in a partner than total fealty to her ideas, ie, his don’t matter.

I think the last comment that got me unfriended instantly was when I said that when someone gets to know you better things tend to go downhill pretty fast after that. (I know, the truth hurts and some people don’t like to presume that you know them, especially if you do. The only time I actually met her in person I wrote a thousand word story about the hour-long encounter the next day, shared it with her five years later and she said that’s not what happened.)

Another annoying ploy she likes to pull is making a provocative response to something I’ve written and when I respond and defend myself or my words she’ll say, “Oh, I was just yanking your chain, can’t you take a joke? Jeez…” Yes, that’s some pretty high class bullshit and actually reminds me of when I’d be high and talking to a lover, maybe about the future with her or some project I’d like to do and then I’d say, “Of course anything I say now while stoned is up for review in the morning. (“What? You can’t say that!” was the response from the last filly to whom I voiced that disclaimer.)

Jenny hasn’t posted about men recently though she’s now extolling the virtues of her ChatGPT relationship. “He agrees with everything I say and is very supportive of my creative projects,” she says.

---

---

A READER WRITES: Re: ‘Eureka Slated to Become a Trans Sanctuary.” My comments will be denounced and dismissed by radical trans activists and their allies (cancel culture) but I challenge anyone to read the entire post and factually refute it.

I don’t care if adult men and women want to pretend they’re something they’re not but leave the children alone!

Children aren’t remotely capable of understanding the consequences or of making an informed decision to chemically and surgically alter their sexual characteristics.

So-called “gender affirming care” (GAC) is an innocuous sounding phrase for genital mutilation.

When applied to children GAC is an extreme form of child abuse that inflicts irreversible changes including surgical “transformation” (mutilation) of normal genitalia and removal of healthy female breasts.

GAC is also a multi-million dollar industry for severely twisted people masquerading as medical professionals — anyone inflicting chemical and surgical mutilation on children should be stripped of their credentials and criminally prosecuted.

Here’s a riddle for the radical trans activists who prey upon children and their allies who aid and abet them — how do you reconcile the State of California’s “Youthful Offender Act” which decrees people up to age 26 (!) can’t be held fully liable for their crimes because their brains aren’t fully developed — with the ridiculous idea that a 5, 10, or 15 year old child is mature enough to agree to irreversibly alter their sexual characteristics?

---

SUPPORT ETHICAL FARMERS

Editor,

Regarding “UC Berkeley animal rights activist convicted in ‘chicken rescue’ trial” : As a Sonoma County resident who values ethical stewardship and the strength of our local food systems, I want to express my support for family livestock farmers following the recent conviction of animal-rights activist Zoe Rosenberg.

The verdict affirms something many of us already know: that justice, not ideology, must guide our actions.

Our region’s farmers have a tradition of caring for the land, animals and community. They are not faceless corporations — they are families who start work before dawn, invest in humane practices and make possible the high-quality foods produced by our county.

When groups like Direct Action Everywhere trespass, steal animals and stage break-ins for attention, it is not a protest — it’s a threat to livelihoods and to the truth.

The jury’s decision reminds us that lawful, transparent agriculture deserves respect. I encourage people to visit local farms, learn how they operate and continue supporting the people who feed our community with integrity.

Anton Cyril Petrash

Santa Rosa

---

---

HIGH CONCENTRATION HELPS

Editor,

Regarding “Shohei Ohtani would have had the ‘greatest ever’ game — but he wasn’t on LSD”: I am not sure if Open Forum writer Jack Chorley has ever ingested a tab of acid. To me, it is not surprising that Dock Ellis could pull off the feat of pitching a no-hitter on acid.

As I recall, Ellis said all he could see was the catcher’s mitt while pitching his no-hitter. In today’s micro-dosing society, increasing focus by taking acid seems to be the norm.

Ellis was an All-Star pitcher in 1971. He had the talent. Jerry Garcia could entertain a crowd focusing on his guitar and the vibe; I am not surprised Ellis could do the same.

Tony Zucker

Larkspur

---

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 goto https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night I'll put up the recording of Friday night's show. You'll find plenty of other educational amusements there to educate and amuse yourself with until showtime, or any time, such as:

Ironically, the joy of old real physical non-video educational tools. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0wn0i2j2gpQ

Pull-chain physics in space. I can see an application for this in launching a compressed wad of sausage-connected inflatable pods and spinning it out once in orbit to provide in instant space station, complete with gravity, and solve the pesky chaos problem by selectively stiffening the joints. Also, it's strange that it doesn't occur to these men to spin the chain on a cylinder of something rolled-up, and then pull the cylinder out, to get the action started in a good circle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtZaP8VMv0c

And a bear on Halloween. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uSJ65Je-XB0

Marco McClean, [email protected], https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

---

STEVE McQUEEN once walked off a movie set, drove into the desert, and didn’t come back for three days.

When the director finally found him, McQueen was sitting by a campfire, barefoot, carving his initials into the metal of a .44 Magnum. He said, “You can’t fake freedom,” and went back to filming the next morning as if nothing had happened. That was McQueen’s code vanish when owned, return when ready.

He grew up without a father, beaten by a string of stepfathers, surviving by stealing hubcaps and running scams in small-town Missouri. Reform school hardened him, the Marines disciplined him, but neither broke the wildness. He carried that raw energy into Hollywood, where he refused to play heroes who looked clean. “People like dirt under my nails,” he once said. “That’s how they know I’ve lived.”

When The Great Escape was filmed in 1962, McQueen argued that the script’s biggest stunt wasn’t dangerous enough. He rebuilt the motorcycle himself and jumped a twelve-foot fence while the crew screamed for him to stop. The director kept the camera rolling, it became one of the most replayed scenes in film history. McQueen didn’t smile afterward. “If I can’t scare myself,” he said, “it’s not worth it.”

He treated contracts like combat. Every movie came with demands of ten motorcycles, final cut, and a clause that his name appear bigger than his co-stars’. He read film financial ledgers like battle plans, fought studios over every edit, and once refused to sign a deal until the studio guaranteed him two hours a day to ride alone in the desert. He wasn’t protecting fame. He was protecting silence.

Behind the rebel image, though, was a strange loyalty. He sent thousands of dollars to the reform school that once punished him, calling the checks “repayment with interest.” He quietly paid the college tuition of crew members’ kids. But he never let anyone call him kind. He believed softness invited danger.

When cancer came, he ignored doctors and bought a plane ticket to Mexico. He wanted to die on his terms, under open sky. On his last night alive, he told a friend, “I’ve been running since I was a kid. Guess I finally ran out of road.”

Steve McQueen wasn’t chasing speed, he was chasing peace. And for a man who spent his life escaping cages, even dying became one last getaway.

---

---

LAWMAKERS FOUND MONEY FOR THESE PET PROJECTS EVEN AS THEY SLASHED THE BUDGET

by Ryan Sabalow

The biggest recipient of the earmarks in Senate Bill 105 appears to be the North Coast Senate district of Democratic Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire. After losing his legislative leadership seat this year, he seems to be positioning himself for a congressional bid, according to The Santa Rosa Press Democrat. If he does run, he’ll be able to tout all the cash he brought to his Senate district this year.

His district was the recipient of more than two dozen earmarks totalling more than $100 million, accounting for a quarter of the earmark funds CalMatters identified. They went to fund a regional hospital, harbors, habitat projects, schools and fire stations. His district also received $250,000 for the farm-animal rescue.

His largest earmarks included $50 million in Prop. 4 funds for a redwood trail that’s to run 320 miles across his district.

McGuire’s office didn’t make him available for an interview. McGuire instead sent an emailed statement defending the earmarks.

“Our state’s budget includes smart, one-time investments across California,” McGuire said. “Many in our state have been working on these projects for years to make California safer, stronger and more resilient.”

---

STEVE TALBOT:

A few days ago I posted a story from KQED News about an imminent Israeli government threat to demolish a large part of this Bedouin village in the West Bank -- Umm al-Khair, which I happened to visit during my travels last month in Palestine. Pictured is one of the village leaders, community and peace activist Eid Hathaleen.

Today, I am pleased to see that over 100 Democratic members of Congress -- led by Reps. Jamie Raskin, Jerry Nadler and others -- have written to Netanyahu urging him to stop the razing of this village, which has been besieged by Israeli settlers.

Settler attacks on Palestinian towns, villages and farms -- even churches -- in the West Bank have intensified significantly. It feels increasingly lawless and dangerous there.

---

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY #1

My grandmother was a hardcore Italian Fascist. She had no problem with a squad of radio operators using the ground floor of the house to reside in for much of the war. After all, her husband was somewhere in France fighting for the Austrian Painter, though she didn't know he had been taken prisoner a few short days after the invasion of Normandy.

The Fascists took care of her and her 9 siblings after the Great War given that her father and uncle were swallowed up and perished in the disaster of Caporetto. The fascists kept the family fed, gave the family money for clothing, and even paid for my grandmother's school books. My grandmother was a big strong girl so she was often put at the front of parades to carry a flag or banner whenever the big guy made an appearance.

My grandmother told us that everyone was a Fascist or NAZI right up until the very moment that the food ran out then no one was a Fascist or NAZI anymore.

It will be no different here.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY #2

I agree with you, but, how long does it take. $36 trillion in the hole and counting and the money is still thick. Lines at Disneyland are long. I-phones sell as fast as they are released. NFL stadiums are still full of season ticket holders. Pornography still generates multi-billions in revenue every year. Everyone is driving newer vehicles costing well over $40,000 (I drive a 2007 Tacoma, can't afford a new truck). New, $650,000 homes are still being purchased, old $500,000 homes are still being sold. I see motorhomes, RV trailers, Side by Side UTVs and toy haulers every where, especially on the weekends. Cable companies are still raking in the dough from cable subscriptions. People still have money, and lots of it, to spend apparently.

Eventually the money will dry up, you are correct. But when? It takes a looooooooong time to bankrupt a republic, especially one that has the reserve currency status of the world. I remember reading predictions back in 2008 that the US would lose its reserve currency status in 2011. Here it is 2025 and the debt ship continues to plow forward leaving its awful wake for everyone to clean up. Nothing has changed.

---

---

MAMDANI, AN ON-LINE COMMENT:

There seems to be quite a bit of pearl-clutching over Mamdani’s election as Mayor of New York City, being as how he is a self-proclaimed Socialist, that ranges from over-the-top hysterics to pragmatic skepticism. As for me, politically, my roots are in Kansas populism, as ably described by Thomas Frank. That makes me sympathetic to policies favoring small businesses, entrepreneurs, and family farms over big corporations and oligarchs generally. So I am with him on many of his policy goals. But as with any politician, deeply skeptical that he can actually deliver on his ambitions. This has nothing to do with the label “Socialism” which I believe, like that other capital first letter word, “Capitalism,” comes in both benign and odious forms. I might also point out that, according to Wikipedia, there have been 174 socialist mayors of American towns and cities since 1911 -- six currently plus Mamdani, including the improbable Khalid Kamau of South Fulton, Georgia. I haven’t heard that civilization as we know it has collapsed in any of those places. I don’t live in a city with a Socialist mayor, so I don’t have a dog in the fight, but I wish them all well, and in particular, I hope Mamdani does well enough to dispel the fears that the Socialist moniker appears to create.

---

SIDE OF JIHAD WITH THAT PASTRAMI ON RYE?

"Socialism is a wonderful idea. It's only as a reality that it has been disastrous." —Thomas Sowell

by James Kunstler

Does Zohran’s radiant smile put you in mind of a labradoodle puppy? The guy was just that soft and fluffy during the mayoral election campaign, beaming remorselessly for the cameras, summoning a cushy nirvana of give-aways that would deliver an “affordable” life to the moiling masses of under-employed latte-clutchers doomed by their unpayable college loans and the gender-study diplomas they innocently bought with all that money. Under Zohran, New York City will soon be one colossal student lounge, and even the baristas serving the lattes will get nice one-bedroom river-view apartments, ride to work on free buses, and buy their take-out chili-crisp fried tofu for cheap at the city-run food store.

Look (above): there is Zohran with his billionaire friend and patron Alex Soros. Alex does not seem to realize that Zohran wants to eat him for lunch. Fluffy as they might be, labradoodles are actually carnivores. And Zohran has declared that billionaires should not exist. He says the billionaires of New York are going to pay for those lattes, free buses, river-view apartments, and all the rest of the package. Is he planning to hold them hostage? Staple their John Lobb bespoke alligator leather loafers to the parqueted floor of the penthouse at 15 Central Park West while he loots their accounts?

No! They are going to make like Snake Pliskin and escape from New York with all their assets and chattels. Florida, Nashville, Boise! It’s a big country and, let’s face it, your laptop is your office. Then what? Maybe it will be like the old glory days of Soviet Russia in New York. The people will pretend to work and Zohran will pretend to pay them and everybody will be all happy and equal. That city-run food store will become the city-run free food store, just like the hippies dreamed about in 1967, the summer of love! Jews and Jihadis will march together, arm-in-arm, into a gleaming future…!

Then there was the victory speech. Not so labradoodle smiley. More like Fidel Castro (if anyone remembers that guy) in harangue mode. But know this: Zohran is a talented demagogue. He got game! He can bring it! He exudes charm like the Knicks’ Jalen Brunsen sweats at the three-point line! He can put it over, whip up a crowd, paint dazzling word-panoramas of a democratic-socialist promised land in the offing. He will have a glorious Christmas season awaiting the swearing-in at one minute past midnight, New Years Day.

Waitaminnit! Zohran probably doesn’t do Christmas, and certainly not Hanukkah. But it’s conceivable that he will huddle at Zabar’s with his constituents, the altekakers of the Upper West Side who (perhaps foolishly) voted for him, and together figure out how to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu the next time he comes to the UN — a campaign promise! And he can prepare to ride out of the gate on Jan 1 at warp speed to freeze a million rents, change-out social workers for cops, set up the free child-care, and perform all the other miracles promised.

I hate to break the spell, but here’s what you are really going to get in New York City with Mayor Zohran Mamdani: far and away the most corrupt administration ever in the history of the place, making the Boss Tweed era look like a model of efficiency and rectitude. I will tell you why: Zohran has zero managerial experience. In the decade, roughly, since he graduated from Bowdoin College up in faraway piney Maine, Zohran has worked as a campaign volunteer, a rapper (“Kanda Chap Chap” under the name Young Cardamom), a voter field-operator, a music supervisor for his Mom’s documentary film, and, since 2021, a New York State Assemblyman for District 36 in the Borough of Queens who rarely shows up in the chamber to vote for anything.

The New York City government comprises over a hundred agencies with a budget of $112.4-billion. The opportunities for grift are fantastic beyond comprehension. Now, appoint and hire thousands of Gen Z DEI types to run all those services, young folk who worked for Zohran’s campaign and were promised jobs in the new admin. What will you get? Cosmic level incompetence at best, and more likely wholesale looting of the public till. Now layer-on the omnipresent mob action in the New York City unions and the mafia-associated contractors who do business with the city. Doesn’t look great. And how much will be creamed off for the Zakaat, the obligatory Islamic tithe turned over to the poor, the needy, the homeless, the debtors and the practice of jihad?

So, good luck Big Apple as you await the luscious caramel coating of Woke-socialism to be laid on you. Zohran’s elevation capped an election week of Democratic Party triumph that left the faithful too hungover to even perform the much ballyhooed “Trump Must Go Now” exorcism promised for the day after the vote. Alex Soros & Friends bought plane tickets for a few “furry” Transtifas to fly in from Portland, OR, their training ground, but the event was a bust. Mr. Trump was not squeezed out of the known universe like a watermelon seed, as hoped. The Golden Golem of Greatness lurches on, coping with the Democrat’s never-ending seditious jihad against our country, featuring such new stars as New Jersey’s Mikie Sherrill and Virginia’s next governor, Abigail Spanberger, shown below wearing the winsome regalia of Covid-19 she modeled on the floor of the US House of representatives back in pandemic-time. You go, girl!

How does that thing work…?

---

JEFFREY ST. CLAIR:

• Dick Cheney told the deadliest lie in American history: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use them against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” He paid no price for orchestrating this still-unfolding catastrophe and upon his death was celebrated by political elites and the mainstream press as a “patriot” and “devoted public servant.”
• Democratic Party leaders like the Clintons, who have scorned Mamdani, have heaped praise on Dick Cheney. And they wonder why they poll worse than Trump…
• The bipartisan whitewashing of Dick Cheney is as much of a perversion of US history as Trump’s eliding any mention of the horrors of slavery, the internment of Japanese-Americans and the genocide against the indigenous population of the US from national parks and museums.
• As Andrew Cockburn reports in his scathing obituary for Cheney, the Yale dropout and former electrical lineman from Wyoming once discounted ethical and legal concerns about torturing people by waterboarding them until they nearly drown as a mere “dunk in the water.”
• Trump isn’t smart, but he possesses shrewd, if crude, political instincts. He knew that Cheney was the dead-eyed face of a war most Americans had long ago turned against. Unlike Kamala Harris, a political illiterate, who doomed her faltering and aimless campaign by refusing to condemn the genocide in Gaza and aligning herself with the most ruthless and unrepentant neocon of them all, Dick Cheney.
• As a “devoted public servant,” Cheney helped steal an election, shot a man in the face and covered it up, lied the US into a war, set up a black ops unit inside the White House to run kidnappings and torture sessions, authorized mass surveillance of Americans, and steered long-term no-bid contracts to his former corporation, which he was still deeply invested in…
• Biden has always considered himself an “institutionalist,” which is another way of saying a member of the elite political class that runs the permanent government. As such, Biden and Cheney circled in the same orbit for nearly 50 years, more often in synchronous alignment than not. When Cheney needed help, Biden was usually there to give it. In 2001 and 2002, when Cheney wanted the Authorization for Military Force (AUMF) and the PATRIOT Act sped through Congress, Biden was there for him. When Cheney wanted to go to war in Iraq, Biden helped to stifle Democratic resistance in the Senate and push it through. When Obama briefly considered pursuing charges against some Bush officials, Biden advised against it. This is what Biden means when he praises Cheney’s devotion to “public service,” though he was well-compensated for his “sacrifices.” Cheney’s compensation package from Halliburton: $12.5 million in salary, $18 million in stock options, retirement $20 million, deferred compensation $2.4 million, bonuses $1.45 million. Total $54.5 million.
• Clinton’s affinity for Cheney can be explained by the fact that Clinton transformed the Democratic Party into an interventionist neoliberal operation much like the Republican machine that Cheney played such a key role in engineering and fine-tuning from his time in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush I White Houses. What Clinton calls Cheney’s “sense of duty” included having his Deputy Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, out a CIA officer (Valerie Plame) in retaliation for her husband (Joe Wilson) writing that the Niger yellowcake story promoted by Cheney to justify invading Iraq was a hoax.
• This kind of bi-partisan garbage is a big reason why we ended up where we are: The Democrats ran three presidential candidates who voted for Cheney’s manufactured war on Iraq and then, when Obama, who opposed the war, had a chance to hold Cheney, brashly asserted the unitary power of the vice presidency, and his repellant crew accountable, he appointed Iraq war supporters to be his VP and run the State and “War” Departments and then shrugged it all off with: “I guess we tortured some folks.”

---

---

“IF I WAS SURE OF ANYTHING, it was that I would never see Vietnam, much less Rome. My childhood dream was to travel, but I’d given up on that. And I was comfortable with the fact that, well, this is how it’s going to be. I had had a lot of hard times, so that I was gainfully employed and healthy at 44 was sort of a shock to me. I was just glad to be alive. I’m not going to delude myself about what I could have been. I’m sure that at no point in my life could I ever have shown the kind of focus and discipline and commitment necessary to work a chef station at elBulli or Le Bernardin. No. That ain’t me.”

– Anthony Bourdain

---

LEAD STORIES, SATURDAY'S NYT

Supreme Court Temporarily Allows Trump to Curtail Food Stamp Funding

Judge Blocks National Guard From Portland, Ore., Permanently

Here’s What We Know About the Shutdown’s Effect on Air Travel

How the Trump Administration Is Giving Even More Tax Breaks to the Wealthy

Trump’s Vision of a Mar-a-Lago on the Potomac Upends an American Ideal

Democrats Scale Back Shutdown Demands, but G.O.P. Digs In

A Light in Very Dark Days: Nancy Pelosi and AIDS

---

THE POOR sometimes object to being governed badly. The rich always object to being governed at all.

– G.K. Chesterton

---

---

THINGS ARE SHITTY Because We Are Ruled By People Who Want Things To Be Shitty

by Caitlin Johnstone

Which sounds more likely: (A) that things are bad because the population keeps organically voting for policies which just so happen to hurt ordinary people while benefitting the rich and powerful, or (B) that things are bad because the rich and powerful want things this way?

Does it seem more likely to you that (A) the democratic process consistently leaves people unable to advance basic human interests because the population always organically splits itself into an exact 50–50 deadlock that leaves everyone unable to get anything done long term, and that this deadlock always just so happens to land on a status quo that serves the interests of the rich and powerful, or (B) that the rich and the powerful artificially created this status quo via manipulation?

You don’t need to know anything at all about politics or parapolitics to see that (B) is the most likely explanation for why things keep getting worse for everyone besides the rich and powerful. Your own basic reasoning and understanding of human behavior will tell you that there’s no way democracy is working as advertised if things keep getting worse and worse for ordinary voters while billionaires and empire managers keep getting everything they want.

Things are shitty because we are ruled by people who want things to be shitty. Once you awaken to this undeniable reality, you will inevitably find yourself growing more and more radicalized.

Our rulers want nonstop war and genocide. Our rulers want obscene levels of inequality. Our rulers want the public to be poor and struggling. Our rulers want people to be getting dumber, sicker, and more miserable. Our rulers want the unrestricted industry that’s killing earth’s biosphere. Our rulers want us to have vapid, unedifying mainstream culture. This dystopia looks more or less exactly how they want it to look.

Our rulers want war, militarism and genocide to be the norm because military force is one of the critical ways by which they dominate the planet, control resources and trade routes, and prevent foreign states from trying different systems and establishing a different world order. Waging and preparing to wage war has the added bonus of also being extremely profitable.

The plutocrats want inequality to continue because it’s what allows them to live as modern-day monarchs. When money is power and power is relative, you’re going to see the people with the money making sure they have as much as possible while everyone else has as little as possible, because if everyone is king then nobody is. They want the public to have just enough spending money to keep the wheels of capitalism turning, without having enough money to do things like fund political campaigns or buy up media influence. The poorer everyone else is, the more powerful they are.

Our rulers want us to be stupid, misinformed, distracted, sick, struggling and suffering, because if we all had enough time, information and mental acuity to form an understanding what’s going on in our world, things would get mighty guillotiney real quick. They have a vested existential interest in keeping us all in a mental fog of propaganda, diversion, ignorance, illiteracy, and psychological dysfunction.

Our rulers want companies to be free to destroy our planet’s ecosystem, because offloading the costs of industry onto the environment is the only way to steadily increase profits. So long as they’re free to fill the air with pollutants, fill the oceans with plastic, clear the rainforests, incinerate biodiversity and poison people’s drinking water at the expense of other people and other organisms, corporations can continue to grow and to maximize value for shareholders.

An alliance of corporate and state power has emerged to advance these agendas in service of the few people who benefit from them, while the rest of humanity flounders in suffering and toil. They use mass media propaganda, campaign donations, lobbying and other influence operations to ensure that this remains the case. The more you learn to spot the signs of these dynamics and the more clearly you perceive them, the more urgently you see the need to end this way of being.

Truth and clarity paves the way to real revolutionary change. That’s why our rulers spend so much energy trying to obfuscate truth and clarity via propaganda, censorship, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, mainstream culture, AI, garbage education systems, and other forms of perception management. They’re doing everything they can to stop us from following the strings of our society’s ailments to the hands up above that are pulling them.

They want us to be stupid, so we need to get smarter.

They want us to be ignorant, so we need to inform ourselves.

They want us to be uncaring, so we need to become more compassionate.

They want us to be compliant, so we need to become disobedient.

The world is a mess because our rulers want it to be a mess. So we need everything in us to be pushing in the exact opposite direction.

(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)

---

---

AEOLIAN AMRUM: FOUND SOUND, LOST CHILDHOOD

by David Yearsley

Nature makes music—the wind, the waves, the rain, the rustle of leaves, the creak and complaint of trees. The human impulse to transform these sounds into something that might be called Automatic Art spawned the Aeolian Harp. Stretched tight across a resonant wooden soundboard, its strings were not to be plucked or strummed by fingers but “by the desultory breeze caress’d,” as Coleridge put it in his 1795 poem The Eolian Harp.

These natural forces played the instrument into sustained yet shifting harmonies that could imply amorphous meta-melodies to the pensive listener. This auto-harp mediated the ambient movements of this world but seemed to conjure the next or another. Placed in narrow passages, at the entrance to a grotto, or in a copse or other features of the landscape that likewise funneled the elements, the Aeolian harp sang with and in nature. When perched in an open window, its tones could roam through domestic interiors to calm or worry the wakeful, trouble or soothe sleeping minds. Even the most docile wind chime is a New Age bully by comparison.

Known to the Ancients, the Aeolian harp was (re)invented by the Renaissance Egyptologist and polymath Athanasius Kircher in the 17th century, and it soon enthralled European scientists and poets. Romantics like Coleridge were especially captivated by its Siren song.

The Berlin-based electronic music specialist Stefan Götsch, known as Hainbuch, has an Aeolian Harp. Unlike the Romantics, he also has a sturdy and adaptable tripod that allows him to place the instrument almost anywhere, including in the dunes and on the beaches and mudflats of a low-lying North Sea island right up against the Danish border called Amrum. That is also the title of the newest film, now in German cinemas, from pathbreaking, prize-winning German film director Fatih Akin. He enjoined Hainbuch to equip this beautiful yet disturbing movie with “music like the wind.”

Hainbuch wields a cool—analog of course—recording kit to capture his harp’s nature-sympathetic soundings. Back home in his Berlin studio, Hainbuch has an instrumentarium that includes an old out-of-tune piano, lots of other keyboards, as well as “nuclear instruments”—gauges and gizmos from cyclotrons and the like. Through technology ancient and modern, Hainbuch listens not just to the already audible but to the otherwise inaudible. His musical materials range from the atmospheric to the atomic.

Hainbuch is a good moniker for an ambient music-maker with a reel-to-reel tape recorder and an Aeolian Harp in his toolkit. Hainbuche is the German word for hornbeam, the ubiquitous European hedge shrub that miraculously keeps its leaves even after they turn rusty brown in the autumn. Fully clothed against icy gusts, it shakes and shimmers all through winter and loses its old leaves only when the green ones of spring push them from their spindly branches into whispered songs of farewell. Hainbuch made his reputation with a fascinating YouTube channel launched in 2011. I suppose YouTube is like the wind. Open up the casement (as Coleridge put it in The Eolian Harp) of your computer and tune into YouTube, and the instrument plays itself—and you.

Akin wrote the script for Amrum with Hark Bohm, who as a boy spent the last years of World War II on the island. Bohm makes a lone cameo at water’s edge, looking out to sea at the end of the film. He hadn’t yet turned six when the war ended, though his alter ego Nanning (Jasper Billerbeck) is twelve in the film. Auto-fiction, like the tales told by an auto-harp, is to be edited and emended in post-production.

Nanning is the oldest child of staunch Nazis, the absent father a prolific author of racist tracts that the boy finds lined up on the house’s bookshelves, though he doesn’t know what to make of them. His mother (Laura Tonke), like a good Nazi mother pregnant again with child number four, grew up on the island and has now moved back with the kids after the firebombing of Hamburg in 1943 by the RAF’s Operation Gomorrah. A swastika flies in front of the family’s ancestral thatch-roofed, whitewashed farmhouse, guarded also by a giant whale-bone arch for a gate. The boy is fascinated by the novel Moby-Dick, also in the family library. The sea is in his blood. Unlike his father, we would like that blood to be called Amrumian rather than Aryan.

Nature’s sounds are as crucial to the movie as its gorgeous sights of sand and sea. Yet the first thing we hear is unnatural: Lancaster bombers approach. Like so much else in the film, the baritone chorus of doom is authentic, taken from an archive of recorded sound. Nanning and his schoolboy pal Hermann (Kian Köppke) are unfazed by the bombs that explode close by offshore. “Just ballast,” they reassure each other, crouching in the furrows of the potato field as the behemoths swoop overhead, bigger industrial and urban centers their target.

The local language, called Öömrang—a dialect of North Frisian spoken only on the island—is musical too, its melodiousness enlivened by a clipped diction that has the ring of Danish about it. Nanning doesn’t really speak it, though he understands perfectly. His mother conducts the household in the official language of High German rather than her mother tongue learned as a girl.

The Amrum natives seem almost universally to loathe Hitler. After the bombers disappear from view and from the soundscape, the farmer—a woman (Tessa Bendixen), since all the men are off fighting to the end—for whom the boys are working looks on the bright side of the calamity: “At least Hitler’s shitty war will soon be over,” she says acidly.

After returning home from the fields, Nanning asks his mother if the war is lost. She proceeds to browbeat the source of this illegal, impossible idea out of the lad, with potentially grave consequences for the adult offender. The pitiless, pervasive culture of conformity and eager enforcement of fascism is thus dramatized over the afternoon soup. Nanning’s aunt (Lisa Hagmeister) also lives in the house and hates Hitler like so many of the other islanders. She tries to stop the mother’s vicious cross-examination of her firstborn Hitler Youth son. The boy deflects the questions for as long as he can, sensing innately the depraved wrongness of her remorseless interrogation. Finally, he is forced, unwittingly, to divulge the source. Sound is crucial here too. The clinical grammar and unforgiving tone of her High German, an imposition on the island from afar, beat the boy into submission.

The new baby is born, and the mother wants white bread with butter and honey. She is suffering not so much from postpartum depression as from her own realization, fanatically suppressed, that the war is indeed lost. The post–Third Reich world is not one this German mother wants any child of hers to have to grow up in. She lets the newborn cry without comforting her. Master Race medicine held that long bouts of bawling strengthened the lungs. The baby cries as relentlessly as the coming storm.

Nanning valiantly searches for the scarce ingredients that will, he hopes, produce the desired delicacy. The task is Herculean in the final ration-restricted days of the war on an isolated island.

In his quest Nanning crosses treacherous tides and encounters sonorous wildlife and wild youths—starving refugees driven from the east as the Russians advance to Berlin. Hainbuch’s Aeolian harp and microphone follow the boy, as does Akin’s camera. Both pause to bask in the visions and voices of the island’s natural beauty: the cry of the wind and of the geese, the gentle-then-deadly sluice of the tide, the surge of the surf as shorebirds swarm and chatter, the oystercatchers going about their business of harvesting periwinkles, utterly unaware of the war except perhaps when the giant metal birds drone by.

On the soundtrack, birds and wind and waves are hazed and harried by the harp’s electro-acoustic overlay. These Aeolian sounds are not Romantic ruminations but instead are often harshly mechanistic, the ghostly ongoing echo of total war. These sonorities menace and grate like traumatic memories held tenuously just below the surface of shallow waters, lethal and life-giving, like those along Amrum’s shores. Hainbuch’s mechanistic transformations of the sounds found by his harp are more often soothing, imparting a nostalgic glow that makes these often troubling boyhood memories bearable.

If one wants to hear just the Aeolian harp and the call of the wind and the birds, Hainbuch has provided some of this raw sonic material to Bandcamp beachcombers in The Amrum Harp Tapes.

The soundtrack draws on and vitally contributes to the allure of this powerfully understated film, but Hainbuch’s rich contributions also reveal a beautiful flaw: neither nature nor a Nazi boyhood can ever sing of and for itself. On screen, the island gleams bright, in sight and sound, even in the darkest times.

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest albums, “In the Cabinet of Wonders” and “Handel’s Organ Banquet” are now available from False Azure Records.)

---

---

THE POWER OF THE DOG

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie—
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet’s unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find—it’s your own affair—
But… you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear.

When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!).
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone—wherever it goes—for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart to a dog to tear.

We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we’ve kept ’em, the more do we grieve:
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long—
So why in—Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

— Rudyard Kipling (1922)

---